10-02-2019, 11:05 AM
Well, right now there is just no clean way of controlling materials when using shapes with multiple face IDs.
I ended up:
A) Caching the flow twice, disabling the cloth and spline geo on the respective parts, where I wanted the different materials applied.
B) Also using groups to filter out other particles and then creating two tyCache objects for each different shape in the flow.
C) Finally, since i couldn´t trigger any material changes in this flow, due to the limitation of having to stick to the material IDs of the respective shapes, I had to render the tyCaches twice, with the blend material applied once and then comp it in post with a Zbuffer mask, which worked in this case.
I would much rather control materials inside the flow to create stuff like "On impact, have these particles change their material to a light material) or "When these particles meet, have them turn black)".
Ideally that material op would also have timing controls.
I had the idea to work around this, by assigning a different shape for the event, where the material blending animation should happen, syncing by particle age, so I would just havee to animate the material blending on that other shape mesh.
But in this case this did not work, because in that event the shape was immediately turned into cloth, so I had no way of controlling any material blending, at least not to my knowledge.
I guess an option to just shift the material IDs as you suggested would also not have worked in this case, because I still would not have had any way of controlling the material blending timing.
If I could control materials directly in the flow and would want to use overrides after simulating, wouldn´t it be possible to just add one checkbox and a material pick button in the tyCache object, that would allow an override material (using the existing material IDs)?
Or wouldn´t it be possible to just pick the material from the flow icon, like we do with other objects in max, and then you would get a multisubobject material in the material editor, like picking from a mesh with multiple face MatIds and materials assigned to them?
I guess in that case tyFlow would have to ignore all material Ids that were set in the flow, to create one big multisubobject material.
But in that case it would also be easy to override any materials simply by changing the materials in that multisubobject material.
Or maybe you could have that als as an option in the tyCache object.
Something like "ignore matIds and create multisub material for whole flow".
I don´t know, I´m just throwing ideas out here and letting you know of a limitation, that can get prety annoying, when you ahve to deal with it a lot.
I ended up:
A) Caching the flow twice, disabling the cloth and spline geo on the respective parts, where I wanted the different materials applied.
B) Also using groups to filter out other particles and then creating two tyCache objects for each different shape in the flow.
C) Finally, since i couldn´t trigger any material changes in this flow, due to the limitation of having to stick to the material IDs of the respective shapes, I had to render the tyCaches twice, with the blend material applied once and then comp it in post with a Zbuffer mask, which worked in this case.
I would much rather control materials inside the flow to create stuff like "On impact, have these particles change their material to a light material) or "When these particles meet, have them turn black)".
Ideally that material op would also have timing controls.
I had the idea to work around this, by assigning a different shape for the event, where the material blending animation should happen, syncing by particle age, so I would just havee to animate the material blending on that other shape mesh.
But in this case this did not work, because in that event the shape was immediately turned into cloth, so I had no way of controlling any material blending, at least not to my knowledge.
I guess an option to just shift the material IDs as you suggested would also not have worked in this case, because I still would not have had any way of controlling the material blending timing.
If I could control materials directly in the flow and would want to use overrides after simulating, wouldn´t it be possible to just add one checkbox and a material pick button in the tyCache object, that would allow an override material (using the existing material IDs)?
Or wouldn´t it be possible to just pick the material from the flow icon, like we do with other objects in max, and then you would get a multisubobject material in the material editor, like picking from a mesh with multiple face MatIds and materials assigned to them?
I guess in that case tyFlow would have to ignore all material Ids that were set in the flow, to create one big multisubobject material.
But in that case it would also be easy to override any materials simply by changing the materials in that multisubobject material.
Or maybe you could have that als as an option in the tyCache object.
Something like "ignore matIds and create multisub material for whole flow".
I don´t know, I´m just throwing ideas out here and letting you know of a limitation, that can get prety annoying, when you ahve to deal with it a lot.