Baking particle animations for FBX that include Data Operator

[andrew_ratcliff]

I’ve created a particle animation that includes a Data Operator to take the positions of one particle system to use as Find Target – By Script Vector in a second particle system, it works just fine however I would now like to export it as an animated FBX for use in Unity. I’ve used the PFlow-Baker script (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/pflow-baker) before with good results but with flows using Data Operator it doesn’t work. Is there another way?

[Anonymous]

Can`t Unity read Alembic files? Might be worth a try.

https://github.com/unity3d-jp/AlembicImporter

[andrew_ratcliff]

Thanks @Anonymous, this is really interesting, I knew nothing about Alembic files. First quick test selecting the emitter and choosing Export Selected as Alembic seemed to produce an empty file, headers at least and no errors but no content. I'll look into this a bit deeper and get back to this thread if I get anywhere with it.

[Anonymous]

I did a quick test and was able to successfully export a Pflow setup. However it might depend on the 3dsmax version that you are using.

In the exporter dialog, did you get an option to export 'Particle Shapes as Mesh' ?

[Anonymous]

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@andrew.ratcliff wrote:

I’ve created a particle animation that includes a Data Operator to take the positions of one particle system to use as Find Target – By Script Vector in a second particle system, it works just fine however I would now like to export it as an animated FBX for use in Unity. I’ve used the PFlow-Baker script (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/pflow-baker) before with good results but with flows using Data Operator it doesn’t work. Is there another way?

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I also did a test with this PFlow baker script (which is really great,btw) using DataOperator and it seemed to work.The motion of particles got captured properly.So maybe you could check this again? 

Other things you could try are :

Use the cache disk operator before baking.

Try contact the author and ask why it wouldn`t record your setup.

[andrew_ratcliff · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous Success! Seems the first particle flow instance has to be visible for it to work, I'd hidden it not wanting it to get baked along with the intended particle flow assuming the math would still be there. Thanks for making me revisit it this is a huge relief to me.