Enter 30 in the second socket’s default value. To achieve the same result, you will have to add multiple Krakatoa Channels Modifiers to the modifier stack and output the Velocity individually to each Output channel. Note that this last step cannot be performed directly in Krakatoa 1.6.x, because MagmaFlow does not support multiple output nodes in that version.RESULT: If you move the time slider now, the colors of the particles will be based on the Magnitude of the Velocity mapped onto the Gradient Ramp’s colors. Set the colors in the Ramp from blue to white (or any way you want them).Uncheck the U Tiling to clamp the Mapping to the range from 0 to 1.Set the Gradient Ramp to Mapping Channel 2 (same as in the Output of the Magma Modifier!).Assign a Gradient Ramp texture map to its Diffuse Map slot.Assign the first default Standard material to the PRT Loader.Open the 3ds Max Compact Material Editor.We only care about the U component (which is the X of the ToVector), but connecting the Divide to all 3 inputs would also be ok. Press C and then V to insert a Convert > ToVector operator.Press / to insert a Divide operator, enter 15 in the second socket’s default.Press V and M to create a Magnitude operator.Press Ctrl+V to create a Velocity input node.Press Ctrl+O to create an Output node, set it to Channel “Mapping2”.Add a new empty Magma modifier to the PRT Loader.
RESULT: At this point, dragging the time slider will display the particles with colors in the range from blue to white depending on their Velocity Magnitude. In the View menu of MagmaFlow 2.0, select the “Show COLOR SWATCHES in InputValue nodes” option - the colors selected in the two inputs will appear in the nodes.With the Blend node still selected, press SHIFT+3 and SHIFT+7 to create two InputValue nodes with these colors. We now want to wire a blue color into the first socket and white into the second.Press Ctrl+W to swap the first and the second sockets, then SHIFT+Ctrl+W to swap the second and the third. The Divide operator will be connected to the first input socket, but we want it to be connected to the third. With the Divide operator selected, press F for Function and then B for Blend to create a Blend operator.(in v1.6.1, you will have to connect a Float Input with a value of 15 to provide the Divisor). To do this, select the Magnitude node and press the / key (Divide) on the Numeric Keypad and enter 15 in the Default value of the second socket. The value of 15 would be Velocity at which the particles turn completely white. We now want to “normalize” the Velocity in the range from 0 to 15 (this is an arbitrary range based on the simulation at hand, a higher or lower values might be needed depending on the data).Adding new nodes will automatically rearrange the flow. Press Ctrl+R to switch to Reorder mode - the flow will be reordered automatically anbd the word will appear in the title bar.Starting with the previous Velocity->Color flow, select the Velocity input and press the V key for Vector, then M for Magnitude - a new Magnitude node will be inserted between the two existing nodes.As result, one generic unit in this case represents a whole meter, and the bounding box of the particle cloud is just a few units in total.Īssuming that the 3ds Max System Settings default to 1 Generic Unit = 1 inch, we have to scale up the PRT Loader 39.3701 times (3937.01 percent) because 1 meter has 100 cm, and one inch contains 2.54 cm. This is because most simulation packages including RealFlow use metric units (SI) of meter, kilogram and second to perform their calculations. You will notice that the size of the particle cloud is very small when compared to the home grid or the PRT Loader’s icon.
Go to the last frame of the simulation (in the case of the demo scene used in this example, this was frame 200).
Click the “% of Render” button in the Viewport rollout and select 100.0 from the list - this will set the PRT Loader to display all particles.Add the BIN file sequence saved by the RealFlow simulation to the PRT Loader’s file list.Alternatively, hold SHIFT and click the PRT icon if you have created a Krakatoa toolbar as instructed in the Krakatoa documentation. Create a PRT Loader by holding the SHIFT key and selecting “Create a PRT Loader.” option in the Krakatoa Menu.On the one hand, this will allow users of RealFlow 5 to use this tutorial, on the other hand, the PRT Loader performs some coordinate system conversions when loading BIN files that are more difficult to perform when loading PRT files saved from RealFlow 2012. Note that even though there is an option to save Krakatoa PRT files out of RealFlow 2012, we will use the native BIN file sequence.