Max Points support

[Eloi Andaluz]

3ds Max 2027.2 is a huge update, implementing a new point/point instance class.
Would be amazing to implement a direct support in tyflow.

-First implementation could be just load points and instances.   We can in 3dsmax array objects as points, and create instances, Its a single object.  If tyflow supports points, we could load this single object, and tyflow will recognize positions, transforms and mesh instances.  Loading heavy instanced meshes will be way faster, we will get all the transforms, etc....

-Will be great a way to output tyflow as a point/point instance data. The solution could be in different forms,  convert a tycache to points?  or a live modifier on top a tyflow that does this on the fly?

[tyFlow]

The interface should be supported in the next build

[Eloi Andaluz]

The interface should be supported in the next build

Amazing! I forget, but tymesher suporting points, could be a big win too! We could create vdb meshes from splats for collisions, or matte shadows, etc.

Example: Load a splat from a street. Create with tymesher a mesh, use this mesh as collider for a tycar, where the car interacts with the splat.

[Eloi Andaluz]

I was thinking....  could other modifiers add support over points?
take tyconform:  Allowing to work over points, the points will conform to geometry as mesh does, but we could have additional options like adquire normals as a normal data channel.  We could use uvs or material IDs to transfer uvs or material ids as a point data channel, could add a lot of great power to the existing points.

typush: push points based on mesh, or normals.

typarticleskin: allowing to animate points based on a mesh or tyflow simulation. 

tyselect: we could add support to do all what we can do on mesh as points, we can send outputs to custom channels adding a lot of new options to points. 

Theres for sure more tymodifiers could add support,those just some ideas.

[Eloi Andaluz]

And if we are with this already... Using the instancing API from max, could be possible? Trying to render Tyflow particles with motionblur is still very buggy in Arnold (Arnold complaining about changing topology constantly and failing to render with motionblur. From the arnold side, the response is that tyflow should use the max instancing api.

[N-particle]

I'm working with Tycache at the moment. I have .las files that I need to either convert to .prt by taking them through Krakatoa .prt loader and rendering them to a file sequence, or I have to go through Blender and use the 'Point'Cloud Visualizer' plugin to convert to .abc. Do you think this update could include the capacity to bring a .csv / .las / .e57 straight into Tycache (in a way that Tyflow would be able to convert directly to particles)?

[tyFlow]

If you have a non-supported format, you can ask an LLM (ex: Claude Code) to write a C# importer and import using a Script operator. You can pipe in the Script op API and code from the Script op example files to bootstrap it. Should be pretty trivial for it to do the rest.