Saving Selective Particles - PF Events

Krakatoa for 3ds Max
1

Oh wise one, Bobo…

I have a situation where I want to have an event “invisible” in Krakatoa terms. Im saving to disk and I want to igonre the particles in a certain event.

Would scripting the density channel to 0 during that event do the trick? (Assuming I make it 1 in the next event)

Fred

2

Hey, I spoke to soon. Looks like Krakatoa supports the option for Phantom! Awesome.

3

Seems like although I don’t have Phantom checked in the main rollout, it still saved that events particles? Next I’ll try geometry type (none) and see if they save

4

Ok, I need help. It can’t seem to get rid of those event particles no matter what i do? Any suggestions?

Fred

5

Adding a local Render Operator with Phantom and disabling Phantom from the global enable checkbuttons should have given you the particles you want minus the Phantom ones. I just tested it here and it works, so I assume you made some mistake in the setup.

Here is an example:

*Create a Standard Flow
*Add an Age test to send out particles
*Drag a Render operator to create a second event.
*Wire the Age test to the new event.
*Set the GLOBAL Render operator in the PF_Source to Phantom
*In Krakatoa, uncheck all options except for Geometry.
*Set the mode to Save particles, specify PRT output file name, save sequence
*Load back with PRT Loader

RESULT: The particles born on the first frames are not saved because the Global Render Op is set to Phantom and Phantom is unchecked.
Once the particles enter the second event which has a local Render Op (and Render Ops are always evaluated last regardless of the eval. order), they become visible to Krakatoa and save to PRT.

NONE is a very special Render Mode in Krakatoa - it NEVER saves any particles out, but forces the flow/event to evaluate regardless. We added this for cases where one flow depends on another (either via Script or Box #3 DataOps) - for example you define target positions on a surface using Flow 1 for Flow 2 to target, or a low-res Flow1 to drive the particles of Flow 2. Setting Flow1 to NONE ensures Flow2 will see valid particles, but also makes sure Flow1 won’t end up saved/rendered by Krakatoa.

6

Got this working this like a charm. Thanks Bobo