I was thinking, would it even be possible to add the option to save/cache out a 3D map (single frame or sequence)? It would lighten the load a bit for the purpose you are using it for.
There is no concept of saving 3D maps from Max since all other procedural maps are generally based on mathematical functions (including the Substance ones, AFAIK). Saving from Ember would require the saving of a discrete 3D grid in some form. This is planned for the future using one or more industry standards. That would reduce the calculations on the SIM Ember side and replace it with disk I/O, but wouldn’t change much on the Ember Texmap side where it would still have to read all the voxels and calculate the shading as before.
Just thinking aloud…
What are our options for querying the ember data? Is there a maxscript interface?
Not yet. We have a wishlist item for a Data Helper that could be used to query values from a grid (useful for wiring to other objects’ properties like the ExposeTM helper in Max), but I just logged the request for a MAXScript interface, too.
Currently, you can create a PRT Ember and use the existing Krakatoa interface to read particles from it, but this is sub-optimal because you cannot query a specific point directly.
Yeah, I guess my thinking was that if you have a semi-heavy SIM Ember generating the 3D map it would make a substantial difference. Thanks for the reply and your ideas for the future. I guess adopting an industry standard format like field3d would be a nice option, especially for working between Houdini and Max. In fact, an import option for Field3D would be very nice so you can get velocities from Houdini into Max and then use Ember to either use it with particles directly or as a spacewarp.
Yeah, could solve two problems, caching and interoperability at the same time, just as .PRT or XMesh does.
I don’t think an Ember Texmap that evaluates an Ember that does nothing but load a Field3D makes much sense compared to just loading a Field3D as a texmap, but I would give you the ability to add other things like filtering or geometry masking.
I didn’t mean having an Ember Texmap that loads Field3D, I meant being able to save Ember velocities into Field3D. It was a separate thought from the texmap, sorry for the confusion.