05-30-2014, 04:04 PM
A few issues I've found makes this tool kinda unuseable as it stands.
1. It needs to be well documented how important it is that the ffxFumeSource stays aligned in 3d space to
the Fume grid it references. And that the new Fume grid -that is reading the ffxFumeSource at least overlaps
this grid as well (or you will generate 0 byte caches).
Its easy as a user to think all this is working with default setups with everything sitting at the origin. But with production scenes-to scale- the fume fx grids are *NEVER* at the origin. Depending on what you have selected the ffxFumeSource may get created at the origin and not aligned to the fumefx grid you'll want to select for reference later.
2. Selecting a reference FumeFX source grid and doing a FumeFX>FumeFX Source does NOT
'Attach selected' that reference fumefx grid to the resulting ffxFumeSource1 object. It should. You have to do this by hand afterwards. Buggy. See the workflow for attaching an object source to see the expected workflow (with the geometry correctly 'attached').
3. (the biggy) FumeFX Sources only seems to understand sims with a single simple source! Which makes it not realistic for production. At first I thought it was the type of source (only simple) but now it seems having anything more than ffxSimpleSource1 (see scene attached) won't show up as expected in the result.
Repro steps (scene attached)
a) load scene and localize the FumeFX cache output paths to an appropriate location for all FumeFX grids.
b) Sim FumeFX1 so you have a cache to ref.
c) You will notice that fumeFX1 has three sources - two simple sources and an object ('pPlane1_source')
d) sim FumeFX2 (which is reading the ffxFumeSource1) it will only create a fluid from ffxSimpleSource1
and not any of the other two.
e) set up a similar scene with fumeFX1 using just a single object source (like pPlan1_source) to generate the reference cache. You'll get another 0 byte cache aka no result.
f) I bet a particle source would also fail-but i haven't tried it. But worth checking while you fix the others.
1. It needs to be well documented how important it is that the ffxFumeSource stays aligned in 3d space to
the Fume grid it references. And that the new Fume grid -that is reading the ffxFumeSource at least overlaps
this grid as well (or you will generate 0 byte caches).
Its easy as a user to think all this is working with default setups with everything sitting at the origin. But with production scenes-to scale- the fume fx grids are *NEVER* at the origin. Depending on what you have selected the ffxFumeSource may get created at the origin and not aligned to the fumefx grid you'll want to select for reference later.
2. Selecting a reference FumeFX source grid and doing a FumeFX>FumeFX Source does NOT
'Attach selected' that reference fumefx grid to the resulting ffxFumeSource1 object. It should. You have to do this by hand afterwards. Buggy. See the workflow for attaching an object source to see the expected workflow (with the geometry correctly 'attached').
3. (the biggy) FumeFX Sources only seems to understand sims with a single simple source! Which makes it not realistic for production. At first I thought it was the type of source (only simple) but now it seems having anything more than ffxSimpleSource1 (see scene attached) won't show up as expected in the result.
Repro steps (scene attached)
a) load scene and localize the FumeFX cache output paths to an appropriate location for all FumeFX grids.
b) Sim FumeFX1 so you have a cache to ref.
c) You will notice that fumeFX1 has three sources - two simple sources and an object ('pPlane1_source')
d) sim FumeFX2 (which is reading the ffxFumeSource1) it will only create a fluid from ffxSimpleSource1
and not any of the other two.
e) set up a similar scene with fumeFX1 using just a single object source (like pPlan1_source) to generate the reference cache. You'll get another 0 byte cache aka no result.
f) I bet a particle source would also fail-but i haven't tried it. But worth checking while you fix the others.