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pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:11 pm
by Tok_Tok
Hi everyone,

I'm trying to do water drops on a bottle using pFlow in 3ds Max. The Blobmesh in 3ds Max ridiculously slow and almost unusable. Unfortunately Thinkbox's Frost is not supported (as far as I know) and rendering the particles from pFlow isn't a succes aswell. Maxwell has a very nice mesher build in but is only compatible with BIN files but not pFlow emitters. When trying to render the pFlow particles directly, maxwell renders all the particles in one event the same size. Below the comparison.

Image




Does anyone know a trick to get this done? Maybe another plugin that's supported?

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:39 pm
by seghier
can you convert the result to mesh ?
and try with blender and bmaxwell
or maybe can that help you : http://support.nextlimit.com/display/rf ... +and+PFlow

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 2:14 pm
by Mihai
I guess the RealFlow renderkit can export bin files from the pFlow particles:
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/rf ... low+Export

So pFlow can't export to bin?

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 2:41 pm
by Tok_Tok
Mihai wrote:I guess the RealFlow renderkit can export bin files from the pFlow particles:
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/rf ... low+Export

So pFlow can't export to bin?
That will probably work like a charm but I don't have those buttons. I only have a Mesher object and a Particles object which both ask for realflow BIN files, not export them. I don't know how to get to the window that's described on the support site. It says I have to press the first BIN button but I don't have those, also I don't have the icon thats described.

The exporter seems perfect for the job though.

EDIT - Oh wait that is the realflow support page! Give me a moment to try it out :)

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 5:14 pm
by Tok_Tok
Oke i've exported every pFlow event and loaded those in the mxMesher. Unfortunately I can't figure out for the life of me how to get the mesher to mesh.. I only see dots(particles) in my viewport, and there is no help file on the support page for the mxMesher.

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 6:50 pm
by Mihai

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 4:08 am
by Tok_Tok
Yes that's it. I was searching for mxmesher but that's the name for it inside 3ds max.

Will look at this when I get back from vacation :)

Btw looking forward for MR 3.2's nested dielectrics! I did some test renders with blobmesh and got dark waterdroplets.

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 11:31 am
by Tok_Tok
I updated Maxwell to 3.2 (beta) to try the nested dielectrics but found that the max plugin is not compatible with this yet. So I exported the scene to Maxwell Studio and tried the nested dielectrics there, but what I found was that there was no difference with giving the droplets or the bottle priority over each other, they were rendering fine either way. This is strange because when rendering the scene directly from 3ds Max the droplets always render as black dots. This is the raw render(WIP), I think this looks correct right?

Image

I also tried the mxmesher but it freezes my PC almost completely when I use it with fire. The orientation of the mesher object is also turned 90 degrees. This is probably because of the not updated max plugin, mxscatter is also not working. For the render above I used the Blobmesh, it works but only with patience :)

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:40 pm
by seghier
i see beautiful render created with lightwave and drops created from texture with displacement
Image
author : Eugenio García Villarreal‎

i made a test :
glass priority = 0
drops priority = 1 ( drops created with maxwell scatter )
liquid priority = 2 ( because some drops inside the liquid )

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 12:16 pm
by Tok_Tok
Yeah that looks pretty good. I like the way the droplets are distributed and rolling of the bottle. The render itself seems a bit flat to me.

I want to do another test, the rolling droplets with Pflow (because they follow the surface nicely) and the other drops, which shouldn't be as round as they are now, with maxwell scatter and model them by hand. If I can find a good displacement map I'll test that too.

Anyway enough to do still :D

Re: pFlow, Frost & Maxwell

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:54 pm
by seghier
give the drops a thikness or you can use any shape than apply nested feature