quick question on pClouds + camera

[Ls3D]

Try manual clipping your camera, but you may need to make some instances unique, let us know...

-Shea
www.Ls3D.com

[LyonHaert]

i'm not familiar with manual clipping, so i'm curious exactly what that does (how to do it is relevant if it'll work). i created the asteroid field so a ship could fly around through it, but the camera would then also follow the ship through the field. i thought further information might help, since i've not much experience with max, and only trying to finish a project from last semester's course for showcasing.

[jugger]

when the particels only disappearing in the viewport adjust the viewport clipping ranges (right click menu on the viewport label).
you'll get a slider right hand in the viewport to adjust.
the clipping ranges comes very handy if you get very complex scenes to cut some heavy geometry in the distance.
normaly in render this option is not in affect. you can control the render clipping ranges direct an the camera rollout.

ciao
franky

[LyonHaert]

hehehe, i guess i'm screwed.

the particles don't just disappear from the viewport, they literally vanish. i thought at first that it was just a viewport thing, but then i rendered a test animation and the moment the camera enters the pclouds, all the asteroids just suddenly weren't there.

[jugger]

hmmm... is it possible that your particle life is too short and so they disappear when your camera moves in? if i remember correctly particle dislpay and life is set to 100 frames b default.
this would affect rendering and viewports.

ciao
franky

PS: if thi sis not the case just stripe the scene and put it up so we can look at it.

[LyonHaert]

the particles were set up fine. none were being born except the ones that exist from frame 0, and particle life was set to the end of the scene. it was the most efficient way to creat a decent asteroid field.

i'll strip the unnecessary stuff from it, make sure it still does it, and u/l it tonight.

[LyonHaert]

ok, here's the .max file. this all happened in 3.1, so it may not happen in 4.x. it's possible the 3.1 on the station i was using was misbehaving. (school doesn't properly maintain their lab stations).

.max file (http://www.lyonhaert.net/N235/animation.max)

[jugger]

sorry LyonHaert, the problem is exactly what i thougt in my last post.

select on of the clouds. go to the modifier panel, particle generation and the particle timing.
Display until&life is set to 100. you have to adjust these values to the entire length of your scene. in this case 900.
I've opend the scene in max 4 but dont think these values would be different in max3.

[LyonHaert]

<---- moron

thanks for the help jugger, it works now :)

too bad i didn't think to look right under my nose when i was trying to finish this to turn it in last semester.

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