Defect: PFlow "Post Ops" not working

Description:

Hey Marsel!

In the latest version of Lucid, it seems that Particle Flow's "Post-Cache Ops" are not working.

I am using the Post Ops in reference to John Rand's fantastic video tutorial:
https://vimeo.com/95607037

I have prepared 2 example scenes to this defect. Zipped them and uploaded them here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lma0uri1o5lbrj6/Defect_PflowPostOps.rar?dl=0

1st Scene "Pflow_only" shows what should happen. The cubes are in the simulation. They are cached to disk. The post-cache operator then replaces each cube with a teapot. I can turn off all of the operators in the original flow because the cache is active.

A fantastic way to get really quick sims with low res geometry and then swap out to high res for rendering.

In the 2nd scene, Each particle is simulated with lucid using a simple Shape (cube). It is then cached to disk. The post operator then switches out each cube with a teapot.

However the teapots are only visible for the first frame. It is as if Lucid does not pass the transformations of the particles on to particle flow.

I have also found issues with similar plugins, I believe this is due to the same issue.

Examples:
-Using the free "RFConnect" plugin, Trying to Export a particle flow Simulation to .bins using RealFlow's "Export PFlow Particles" results in all frames of the sequence being the first frame only (no animation is passed through).

-Trying to use the fluid with Frost to instance a geometry object on each Pflow particle, and Frost can also not see past the first frame.

Steps to Reproduce:

Unzip the files
Open the scenes. The particle flow caches may need to be relinked. They are sub-directories of the .max scenes so should be fine.
In the 01 scene, the particle cache should play back, and the shape instance is a teapot.
In the 02 scene, the particle cache is showing frame 000 for every single frame. This is also true when trying to send a PFLOW event to RealFlow or Frost. They can't see the animation added by Lucid.

Title:	PFlow "Post Ops" not working
Category:	Workflow
Status:	Open
Posted By:	michaelwbell ( Michael Wentworth-Bell )
Date Created:	5 February 2016

7 February 2016 #7688
EPHERE	Thank you for the detailed description, Michael. In the PFlow only scene, after I correct the cache file path I don't see anything in the viewport though, but I can feel the lag if I drag the time slider so something must be happening. I'll dig a bit. Marsel Khadiyev (Software Developer, EPHERE Inc.)
8 February 2016 #7695
michaelwbell	Thanks for looking into it! If this feature works it gives a lot of flexibility to lucid sims - simulate with low res geometry, and swap the "shape instance" to the high res geometry for render. On this line of thought, will this ever be an option for the Lucid Mesher? In Lucid 2.0....As well as Isotropic, Anistropic, etc meshing, a user could select "Geometry instance". The geometry would then be instanced on each particle, with correct rotations etc. Michael Wentworth-Bell -- Test system for Lucid: i7-4790k GTX 780 6GB 32GB Ram Windows 7 Pro 3ds Max 2016 EXT2 -- Portfolio - http://thelode.com.au Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DigitalLode

Summary

Problem