I'm clearly a moron

[dantetron]

Ok- I should be able to get this but I'm too inexperienced. 

I'd simply like to take 3 separate marble objects (they are grouped objects because of the little squiggle in the center)...

   

And have them stream randomly (between the 3 objects) out of the tube being birthed inline from the position icon (very much like if you simply took the 'shape' operator and had 3d spheres flow out)...

   

However, as you can see from the image, that's not happening with the way I have it set up.
Currently, all marbles appear at the same time and the system lines them up upon birth. Also, the materials for marble 02 and 03 are being ignored and only the marble 01 texture is being assigned.

Here's my current setup. I get why it's NOT working but can't seem to figure out a solution...

   

Thanks so much for looking at this!

[tyFlow]

I'm not sure I understand your setup, or why you're using the Birth Objects operator in combination with a Position Icon. And I'm not really sure what the ultimate problem is? Just the material issue?

Could you describe a little more what you're trying to achieve? 6 marbles rolling out of the tube, with random material variations?

[dantetron]

I'm not sure I understand your setup, or why you're using the Birth Objects operator in combination with a Position Icon. And I'm not really sure what the ultimate problem is? Just the material issue?

Could you describe a little more what you're trying to achieve? 6 marbles rolling out of the tube, with random material variations?

Hi! Thanks for the reply!  Yeah- I could have stated my need more simply.

Here's all I need...

Birth 15 of the 3 separate marble objects I created along the icon arrow of the position icon.
Identical to the way the 'shape' operator births the basic 3D spheres in the attached example.

Yes- the only difference between the 3 marble objects is the multi/sub material assigned to them.


  birth.mp4 (Size: 276.29 KB / Downloads: 152)

[dantetron]

I'm not sure I understand your setup, or why you're using the Birth Objects operator in combination with a Position Icon. And I'm not really sure what the ultimate problem is? Just the material issue?

Could you describe a little more what you're trying to achieve? 6 marbles rolling out of the tube, with random material variations?

Nevermind!

I figured it out on my own. You know why I figured it out on my own?
Because this pluigin is brilliant and intuitive. Autodesk owes you a billion dollars. While they let Houdini eat their lunch, this plugin brings 3D Max a step closer to modern animating.

[tyFlow]

What was the solution you ended up going with?

[dantetron]

What was the solution you ended up going with?

Sigh. The solution couldn't have been more simple and I know why it originally eluded me.
As you can see in the screenshot, It was all about utilizing the "reference node" option under "mesh" in the "shape" operator...

   

This is what I originally tried before I sent up the flair and I THOUGHT it wasn't working but I was wrong.  While using 3DSMax with the Active Shade window open I'm finding the software behaves very janky and really sucks up bandwidth. This causes elements in the program to really lag or malfunction.  I intuitively figured the way to get a custom shape into the tyflow system would be by using the birth and then shape operators. But when I would mouse over the box under the "reference node" it wouldn't react. And when I clicked on the box it wouldn't react. So, I assumed it was locked out because I hadn't chosen the proper birth approach.
As it turns out, it was solely because I had Active Shade open and that was truncating Tyflow's functionality. With Active Shade off, I moused over the box and it reacted to my mouse over and my click and sticking in my marble objects was a breeze. As you can see from the test render below, I now have control over a deluge of custom objects (and a template sphere shape).

   

Thanks again for the attention!

BTW- I'm using the Arnold shader and am looking forward to experimenting with Tyflow and that shader specifically.

[tyFlow]

Ah yea, active shade works a bit differently and doesn't respond to selection events the same way. Glad the solution was so simple!