Hi, I have a PRT volume loaded onto a mesh that inherits the object’s texture coordinates ( from 3ds max channel 1 and 2). If I assign a texture to the volume everything works and the texture shows up fine. However if I add a PRT cloner on top of the PRT volume, my texture coordinates fail. Is there a way to reassign the original texture coordinates over the PRT cloner?
Thanks, cheers!
Hi!
Right now, the mapping coordinates are taken from the source particles (as opposed to the “distribution” particles). For example, if you have a PRT Volume in the shape of a Geosphere as the distribution system, and a PRT Volume of a Teapot being distributed, if both have a TextureCoord channel, a map using Mapping Channel 1 will see the coordinates of the Teapot and not of the Geosphere.
We realize that this is not optimal, so we plan to expand it in the near future like this:
All channels of the Distribution system will be renamed with some prefix like “D” or “Dist” or something like that, e.g. “DistColor”, “DistTextureCoord” etc.
The channels of the source systems will be left untouched. The final particles after the PRT Cloner modifier will thus contain two sets of channels - the source channels and the distribution channels. So if you need the TestureCoord channel to be set to the DistTextureCoord channel, all you have to do is drop a MagmaModifier and pipe the one into the other. Or if you want to mix the Color of the source and distribution channels, you can use any custom blending in the MagmaModifier, thus having ultimate flexibility.
A possible workaround right now would be to clone the Distribution system and use a MagmaModifier to sample the channels from the clone into the final particles of the PRT Cloner either using the NearestParticle or ParticleSumRadius operators.
I have attached an example (3ds Max 2013) which shows a possible setup. If you enable the Magma modifier above the PRT Cloner, the particles will acquire the mapping of the closest distribution particle using a hidden copy of the PRT Volume.
KRA2_PRTCloner_ChannelFromNearestDist_v001.zip (18.2 KB)
Hi Bobo, thanks for the quick reply!
The future implementation seems perfect. I was actually trying to do something similar, but if I understand correctly it wouldn’t work in the current release? What I did was add a KCM right above the volume (dist) and save the textmapping to a custom channel. Then I have the PRTcloner modifier and then I added another KCM over the cloner with a channel input set to my custom channel (saved in the stack below) and piping into the texture coordinates output. I thought that would read the channel from below the stack and replace the current coordinates (taken from the source).
P.S. your current workaround works, I’m just curious…
The problem is that PRT Cloner modifier takes the source channels and creates a new particle stream with them, so no channels coming from below the stack actually pass through it. The custom channel trick works for regular Max modifiers, but PRT Cloner is a special kind of beast.
Got it, thanks a lot!