Integration of realflow with 3dsmax

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Dragon
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2012 9:35 am

Integration of realflow with 3dsmax

Post by Dragon » Sat May 26, 2012 9:35 pm

I am still new to realflow and have limited time to experiment, but I have been looking at tutorials and my plugin doesn't appear to behave the way they suggest it should. Referring to the exportation of a bin file and the creation of meshes for import into 3dsmax
In Hybrido realflow 5 tutorial basic 4 it states that Under Export > Export Central, the "Grid Emitters" can expand and a number of options are available to select. My "Grid Emitters" does not expand. Nor do most of the other items. So that option isn't available to me.
(Is this normal? Is my plugin working properly?)

So I try the process from the other end, 3DSMAX
Under the drop down box (RHS of screen) I select "Realflow". I have a choice here of ParticleLoader or MeshLoader. I can find my project, I can apparently load it, i.e. find a sequence of bin files, e.g. I want a flow from a point source "Sphere01_00000.bin to Sphere01_00200.bin" but I can only select one file. I try the first one and then try to play the sequence. No effects appear, even when I change some of the the available parameters. I do get a camera, which from the appearance looks like a "target_camera", which points towards, but not at the origin.

I also get an error message in Realflow stating "Invalid ID signature found in file E:\Realflow_Projects\...... (path to project file) ..." However I do get an animation i.e. the particle flow from the point source (sphere).

Please could someone point me to a tutorial(s) that I can follow. I want to generate a flow from the back of a moving object in 3dsmax. This flow to drop on a character below. Can this be done? AND if so please someone guide me to information that works. I have three weeks to complete the project and I'm running out of time.

Thank you in advance

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FlorianK
Posts: 238
Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2010 9:56 am
Location: Cologne, Germany

Re: Integration of realflow with 3dsmax

Post by FlorianK » Wed May 30, 2012 6:29 pm

Hi Dragon, sorry for the late reply.

What you are describing considering Export Central feels like a but. I do not know the tutorial you are referring to, but I am used to working with Realflow and Max.

- In Realflow, press F12, then Exoprt Central opens and you can expand any node and set up export settings.

- If you select one file, this should automatically select the whole sequence. If you cannot see anything, this might be due to scaling. Maybe the particles you are importing are brought to max tiny little, so you cannot see anything. Look carefully at the max node's modify panel. If particles are imported, there is a number telling you how many particles are in your scene in this very node. You might need to scale things up (or down...depending on your scene scale).

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