Pflow - Dynamic material and distance tex

[Deflaminis]

Hello, having some trouble and hoped to ask here if anyone knows an answer.

After mucking with particle age and failing when having duplicate systems, I decided to try to use a distance tex and set the ground as the object to control the fade of my particles as they get further from the ground.

Works great on one machine. Everything works. But when I send it to render over the network, I get no particles at all.

Weird?

[im.thatoneguy]

If you can't get Distance Tex to work another way to do would be to use the Pflow DataOperator and calculate the distance internally and then pipe that into the Vertex Color for your texture color(just did that this morning).

[Deflaminis]

Interesting. Haven't used DataOperator before, I'll look into it. Thanks!

EDIT: A bit new to dataoperator. Any tips for the proper flow here? Much appreciated.

[Deflaminis]

I was able to figure it out with Data Operator, as suggested, but not with vertex color. I'm sure I was doing something wrong. Was able to use a bit of UDK knowledge to understand the node maths, and looked up a tutorial or two for how to configure it.

In the end I wasn't able to figure out the distance calculations or the vertex bit, but I used the particle age/lifespan to assign a U coordinate for a gradient ramp. Now I can lay out my opacity curve visually and control it far easier. Renders faster too. Got tripped up on the conversion of time -> real but a tut on deki.it helped a lot.

Screenshots of what I did. No idea if it's 'correct', but it works and that's good enough for me right now. Thanks for the idea!

[im.thatoneguy]

Instead of mapping I used the Output (Standard) like you did and chose "Vertex Color Channel" and then used the 3ds Max "Vertex Color" map. Far more direct. If you then put an output map on the Vertex Color you could use the Color Map curve to define your ramp up and down with bezier points. I personally don't like using the gradient ramp for anything because you can't tweak the falloff at all.

[Deflaminis]

Neat. When I linked in the vertex color I was multiplying it against the billboard alpha with a composite map. Maybe not the best method there?

My opacity falloff does seem tweakable on my end, it matches what I see pretty well. If I go black->white-white-black it's represented 1:1 on the screen, but I see what you mean about the blend between values. (No curves.) I can see why that would be less than ideal. When this project wraps I'll try to get your method working because I can see the benefits now that I think about it a bit. Thankfully it's a cartoon so a straight falloff actually works well in this case.

Thanks for all your input! I'm pleased that I could get some results within an hour or so. Thanks again!

[im.thatoneguy]

Here's a basic example of using the vertex color and an output curve to drive color in a mix map. Instead of distance between points you could just also drive it based on a Z-Distance if your ground is relatively flat. I don't know if the Dataoperator has a raytrace sample to actually calculate its distance above a surface.

[im.thatoneguy]

Also I just learned a new Pflow Data Operator feature. Instead of using "Position" you can use "Geometry : Closest Point" that will give you an exact distance to a displaced ground plane. So you should be able to completely replace the distance Tex.

[Deflaminis]

Ah this is very helpful. I really need to spend more time in here, I never had the box expansions before and I've been ignoring them for too long. Thanks again!