AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

tyflow support in native?

Hello, anything way to rendering for tyflow particles in native?
Waiting 30 minutes each time when export tyflow particles…

Yes, you can create a Krakatoa PRT Source from the tyFlow:

  • Select the tyFlow object and check "Enable Particle Interface"
  • Hold down the SHIFT key and select from the Krakatoa menu the Create PRT Source object(s)… option to create a PRT Source from the selected tyFlow. It will be created at the world origin, and produce a clone of the tyFlow particle system. You might have to adjust the transforms of the PRT Source depending on how the position of the tyFlow particles is defined, as the tyFlow transforms work differently from PFlow where all data is accessed in world space.
  • Optionally adjust the % display in the viewports if you have millions of points

Known limitations:

  • There is no way to control which Events are turned into particles - all particles anywhere in the flow will be acquired.
  • Only the channels available in the legacy particle interface of 3ds Max (used by pre-ParticleFlow particle systems) will be acquired. These include
    – Position
    – Velocity
    – Age
    – LifeSpan
    – Orientation
    – Spin
    – Scale (X,Y,Z)
    – ID
    – Radius
  • No mapping coordinates / particle color information will be available
  • No custom channels can be passed to solve the limitations via Magma operators, unless you sacrifice an existing supported channel like Scale (see further below for the workaround).

Still it is much better than PRT export for live updates, assuming you are ok with getting all particles from all Events.

The reason for these limitations is that tyFlow does not publish a Krakatoa-compatible PRT interface, but only the legacy 3ds Max interface. Thus, it cannot be fully integrated with Krakatoa, Frost and Stoke. This could be solved either by Tyson who would have to contact our developers to get access to the necessary libraries, or by our developers, assuming Tyson offers an SDK or integration library to access tyFlow data from other plugins. Given the current development state of the Thinkbox tools, I would guess the former approach would be better…

Here is how you can remove any particles from some events while keeping others in the PRT Source:

  • Add a Scale operator set to “Absolute” value of 100.0, 0, 0 to the Events that you want to render in Krakatoa
  • Add a Scale operator with “Absolute” value of 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 to the events you want to discard.
  • Create a PRT Source from this tyFlow
  • Add a Magma modifier and set it to [InputChannel: Scale] --> [Breakout: X] --> [Equal: 0.0] --> [OUT: Selection]
  • Add a Krakatoa Delete modifier on top of the stack

This will delete the particles that have the Scale 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 operator, and keep around the rest.

Thank you sir. It worked :slight_smile:

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