Custom surface file not being used

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oliverhotz
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:38 pm

Custom surface file not being used

Post by oliverhotz » Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:35 pm

The Custom surface file works great when using the next limit master plugin, however, when you choose the object replacement (for rendering on a farm), the setting gets ignored, and results in grey meshes.

Any chance we could fix that quickly ?

Thanks

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Oldcode
Posts: 170
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 12:35 am

Re: Custom surface file not being used

Post by Oldcode » Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:26 pm

Hi,

What's happening is for each frame of geometry, you are bringing in the mesh as a deformation rather than importing the object itself in the conventional sense. When you change the surface properties like color or texture maps, you are not changing the original file for that frame. Once you go to another frame, your software makes a fresh call to the geometry of the next frame, which has the default surface properties. Even if you go back to the original frame, the changes you made are overwritten by the default surface properties of the geometry for that frame.

Part of the solution is to change the surface properties in all the geometry of all the frames of your simulation. One way to do that is to open every frame object, assign the new surface, then save it, one frame at a time, but who has time for that?

I just solved this problem with Lightwave. I had to export my fluid geometry as LWO. Then, I use this little utility here...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U2ZL2Y7E

...To assign a Lightwave surface file to each fluid frame object. When I import the fluid mesh into Lightwave, it now has the texture file I want assigned to it.

Make sure you have the "Smoothing" turned on in your surface file.

Hope this helps.

Good luck, 8-)

oliverhotz
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:38 pm

Re: Custom surface file not being used

Post by oliverhotz » Sat Dec 17, 2011 10:35 pm

yeah.. i know of that workaround... thank you. But, it should still be fixed in the actual realflow replacement plugin, as you can actually define the surface file to be loaded for the meshes, which, is great, if it worked... i'll see that i can do a little bit more debugging on my end as to why it fails.

Best,

Oliver

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Oldcode
Posts: 170
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 12:35 am

Re: Custom surface file not being used

Post by Oldcode » Sun Dec 18, 2011 4:33 pm

There is also a function when you import the RF mesh sequence into Lightwave, you're supposed to be able to assign a Lightwave surface file to it, but that does not work either.

I hope they fix it.

oliverhotz
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:38 pm

Re: Custom surface file not being used

Post by oliverhotz » Mon Dec 19, 2011 6:50 am

See.. through the master plugin, that actually works for me

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