Sim multiple grids & vrayproxy question

[AlexP]

Couple more qs while expermenting:

Is it possible to have a couple of different simulators/grids and sim them all simultaneously?
Or queue them to sim? So I can run all of it over night for example?

Additionally, can the particles be exported to vray proxy somehow?

[Ivaylo Katev]

it was possible since 2.1, was forbidden because it complicates the system and makes the innocent users that do not use it to suffer
you can queue the simulations using the script functions. there is a callback OnSimulationEnd, write inside a_startsim $next_simulator_name, for example a_startsim $phoenixfd02

[AlexP]

Ok thanks, good to know.
How about exporting particles to Vray Proxy? Is that possible?

[Ivaylo Katev]

i'm think it is possible, because vlado published a video in google+ featuring particles rendered in vray proxy, but can't find it now

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Here it is

[ivaylo.ivanov]

This was done using the Phoenix FD SDK. More user friendly way is to export the particles to alembic and then render it with proxy. I don't know how this can be done in Max, in Maya you must create particle system from Phoenix particle group. However Maya is pretty slow with particles, and anything above a million will be pain.

[AlexP]

Thanks!
Hopefully there'll be a way to do this eventually.

Much much prefer Phoenix to FumeFX, and would like to cut krakatoa out of the equation.

[Ivaylo Katev]

if you want to replace krakatoa, you can try to use the foam shader in point mode.

[AlexP]

Cool.
But the only way to get 100s millions of particles in any reasonable amount of time would be split the sims on different machines with slightly different randomness, like with partitioning I guess?
Last year when I was messing with Krakatoa, its quite easy to get 500 million particles using 10 PCs & partitioning without having to wait too long.

Phoenix demo only goes 10,000 so cant really test how fast it would be at doing 100 million particles in one grid.

[AlexP]

I dont know how to edit post, but 500 million is a bit off. More like 200 million

[Ivaylo Katev]

this video has 60M particles and the simulation+rendering is 6 min per frame. the simulation is faster, i suppose almost all the time is for the rendering

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

that's a beautiful demo. nice work. We are working on creating similar effects for a current production. We were hoping to use phoenix particles as the source for krakatoa PRT partitions, but that's failing because Krakatoa wont read the velocity value in the nParticleShape node you are feeding with phoenix. As I type this, I've setup a sim for the night with a sphere moving through a container, with the velocity set to 300 in the source, and the particles set to 1500, steps at 10. We'll see where it ends up in the morning.

The problem with Krakatoa not reading the velocity field isn't just with Phoenix, but with the particles exported from fumefx for maya as well, so I have an email into Thinkbox....and a cold beer in the fridge at home. G'night (morning in Sofia, I'm sure).

[ivaylo.ivanov]

If the guys from Thinkbox need anything else exported, we can try to provide it. From our side, we already export the two channels that are used for motion blur - velocity and particle id. If you have both checked in the output section, there is nothing more to it settings wise.

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

I got the latest build from Thinkbox of Krakatoa for maya. works great. Got my vectors. They could really use a client download site like my friends over at Chaos. Currently, you have to email and ask if there are any updates, and then get a url from them.