How can I Convert PFlow to Mesh AND retain UVs and ID?

[Morne]

Hi all

So this is driving me NUTS!
I have a huge area to populate with some objects that repeats millions of times. I DON'T HAVE ForesatPro or MultiScatter or any of those so I have to resort to making a minimal object with pflow, then use this object and scatter it millions of times with ForestLITE.

Problem is, try as I may, I cannot convert the Pflow to a MESH while retaining the UVs.

I tried "Mesher" compound object, which gives me a perfect mesh, but it looses all UVs and materials.

I tried the "Snapshot" tool, but this doesnt seem to do anything. I'm on Max 2011 and found this in the Max Help file: "Can I useSnapshot or dynamics with Particle Flow?
No. TheSnapshot tool is not currently compatible with Particle Flow, nor is reactor or the legacy dynamics system."

So then, how the bleep do I convert the thing? I made a small square hedge of 400mmX400mm by 500mm high. It has about 10 000 leaves. This hedge needs to be populated couple million times over an area of about 300METER X 300METER.

So far I can't find any way of doing it by converting the Pflow hedge.

I'm going to attempt to just make one HUGE HUMONGOUS Pflow Hedge over the WHOLE area and see if my poor little XP machine with only 6GB will die a quick and painful death.

[Morne]

Particle Instancer Script seems to do the trick.

Instance geometry to particles > attach all objects > convert to proxy > scatter with ForestLite > Done > Happy Max user > Happy Boss > hopefully happy client > salary increase > only ears stop smile from going right around

[JohnVK]

Glad to see you found a solution!!

I was wondering though, maybe I'm misunderstanding you but you said the mesher compound object didn't retain the UVs? When I use it, it seems to always retain the UVs and Material IDs. Sure, it does lose the material but that's no problem. I re-assign the material to the mesher object once created and then instance it as many times I need (using Forest Pro usually). The UVs are still there. See image below.

If I change the UV map on the original object used for the particles (the one selected in the image below) and update the mesher, all mesher objects are also updated to use the new mapping coordinates. So the UVs are definitely not lost?

[Morne]

I have a parent leave with 3 children with different mat ids and this is used in PFlow

[JohnVK]

Hmm.. strange it still works for me when using a single object with three elements and 3 different mat IDs and also when I link the sub-leafs to the main leaf where all of them have different mat IDs. See image.

Weird must be something we're doing differently.