CGTalk - Export maya fluid density field ?

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essencedesign

06-09-2009, 05:05 AM

Hi there ,
I'm wondering if anyone has attempted , or where I might start to go about. writing a mel to kick maya fluid sim's out of maya as a point cloud seq or what not.

The goal here is to render the density field in a custom volume renderer I'm working with ... I've not spent much time with MEL, more Houdini background, what calls might I start to look at to build this MEL.

Thanks for any info or tips !

JJ.

cbamber85

06-09-2009, 04:19 PM

getFluidAttr is probably what you want. Another approach could be to read to nCache once a sim has finished, this may be more practical due to fluid sim times.

essencedesign

06-10-2009, 05:40 PM

Thanks for the reply. Im not very familiar with Ncache, is this new to maya, sorry I'm a Houdini guy, Im just addicted to the speed of Mayas' fluid solver and the results I can get from it. Just need to get that data to a true raymarcher ... ;)

So cahce out my fluid, transfer that cache to ncache , does ncache have export capabilities ?

I'll do some digging, Thanks

JJ

cbamber85

06-10-2009, 06:52 PM

nCache are slowly replacing all the old cache systems to bring them in line with the new nucleus solver, so if you make a fluid and want to cache it, I think you can only use nCache now (I assuming you're using an up to date version of Maya).

The nCache is an XML descriptor file (most of the data from can be called from MEL any way I believe) which points at all the .mc files which holds the sim state at that particular frame. I have to confess though, I've no idea how to read the mc files.

true raymarcher

mental ray supports photons through participating media doesn't it?

essencedesign

06-14-2009, 07:31 PM

Thanks , I shall give that a try.
I should have said before, I'm using a custom raymarch renderer for this.

Thanks !

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