I am using a prt volume to create some particles. I use a magma selection to create a kind of swiss cheese volume. I also use a involume select and magma delete to cull particles not seen by the camera. I then use frost to mesh these particle. My camera is animated I want to create a preview in max viewport but the preview is stopped at everyframe and the dialog ask me if I want to stop or continue the preview and I have to click every frame to create the whole preview. My guess is that the frost meshing process is stopping the preview… Do you have any ideas what’s going on?
I saved my prt volume to disk and loaded it with a prt loader. And the preview is still stopping at every frame so I guess the problem is with frost.
Frost has some special Esc key handling to let you stop the meshing.
I wonder if it is interfering with the Esc handling of the Preview…
Paul?
Maybe I could work work arounf this if I had xmesh to cache frost… I will ask for a trial just to see.
Sorry, I missed this post!
Unfortunately I was unable to reproduce this problem. I tested using Frost 1.4.1 inside 3ds Max 2013, 2014, and 2015. Here’s what I tried:
-
Created a new scene with a default Particle Flow system. Increased the number of particles to 20000.
-
Created a Frost node, and added the Particle Flow system to Frost’s Particle Source list.
-
Moved the time slider to frame 30, switched Frost to Anisotropic, and increased the Radius Scale and Resolution parameters until Frost’s “Press [Esc] to cancel.” status bar message began to appear.
-
Selected the Tools menu -> Views - Grab Viewport -> Create Animated Sequence File… In the Make Preview dialog that appears, pressed the “Create” button.
The preview was created as expected, and I did not see a cancel dialog. Next, I saved the particles to a PRT sequence, loaded it using a Krakatoa PRT Loader, and Frosted that instead. Again, the preview was created as expected, and I did not see a cancel dialog.
What version of Frost and 3ds Max are you using? Do you notice any difference between what you and I are doing?
Hi Paul anf thanks for your answer,
I have max 2015 SP2 and FrostMX_1.4.1.56170_win64
The diffence is that I have a modifier on top of frost. It’s a displace modifier. And my particle count is around 4.5 millions
When I deactivate the displace it is working. I also had a bug with frost with a modifier on topwhen I try to create a copy viewtopic.php?f=89&t=12231
Now with the same scene I can’t get the preview to work at all when the displace modifier is activated. I am getting a pop up error from frost:
BuildMesh (Frost001): particle_array.insert_partickles() - Did not recieve the expected number: 3974407 of particles.
Instead it received 1764061 particles.
The stream still has: 0 particles.
What version of Krakatoa are you using?
Would it be possible for you to please send us a scene file that reproduces this problem (along with any required assets, such as a PRT file)? You can send us files using our ticket system. You may need to ZIP the files to get them through.
I use KrakatoaMX_2.3.1.56082_x64
I was able just now to make a whole preview without stoping (I only tweaked the diplacement map (a bercon map), but there is at least a frame where the mesh could not be built. I have to make a preview of this frames alone. It was the same thing yesterday after passing through all the stop preview dialogs at every frame there was a frame missing (a different one)
I will send you the file, but please keep it confidential! 
File sent!
The prt was to big so I sent only the file. The prt volume that I used to generate the prt file is in the scene, just activate, it, save the prt out of it (on the first frame only) and load the prt in the prt loader please!
I cached the mesh with xmesh and also tried the alembic now included in max and deactivated frost in each case. Thee result is that it’s still very difficult to make a preview. There is always at least a frame that do mot appear correct in the preview. And now the preview stopping dialog bug is still happening but without frost.
So I guess the problem is with max when there are too many poly to trace in the viewport preview.
Alright, thank you for letting us know!
I’m glad that you tracked down the problem. I was stumped trying to reproduce it.