Particles to mesh?

[Anonymous]

This might be really silly question, but is it possible to convert single frame of my ICE Particle simulation (the emitted particles and their location) to a simple mesh, or mesh objects? I don't need the simulation anymore, only the result on one frame, so keeping my complex ice tree on a already busy scene is slowing my work down.

[Anonymous]

Go to the frame you want then right click on the icetree in the explorer and click on freeze.
That should do it, unless you are thinking of something more complex like replacing every particle with an actual mesh or instance.

[Anonymous]

If your looking for a solution to create a mesh from particles, have a look at FXNut's (Andy Nicholas) SaveRenderMesh: http://www.andynicholas.com/thezone/index.php?area=downloadinfo&app=XSI5&file=2&curpage=2

[Anonymous]

How did you install it it is not even an XSI addon file it says xml

[Anonymous]

Ah forget it figure out how to install it but doesnt work well

[Anonymous]

If you want a simple set of static points, just freeze the pointcloud at the desired frame, and check to make sure all operators etc are removed.

If you are loooking for a mesh which approximates the 'shape' of the pointcloud, well that's a different story. There are a number of ways this suprisingly difficult task can be approached, the the most common being a 'blob mesh' generation. The problem is that XSI currently doesn't have a mesh generation from pointcloud tool, leaving us stuck with third party solutions and workarounds.

Importing the pointcloud into realflow is one approach. Another is 'Pwrapper' which seems to be getting good reviews from XSI users. Sadly, there isn't much out there as far as freeware, and 'on the cheap' solutions carry with them a lot of headaches.

Hope this helps.

- AM

[Anonymous]

Ah forget it figure out how to install it but doesnt work well

In what way doesn't it work well ? Can you be a little more specific?

[Anonymous]

Ive tried it on a displacement and it the obj comes up with light blue wireframe in places as the faces are not closed properly and when I tried it on particles it wouldnt even created a obj.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the help, freezing does the job for now, though getting it to actual geometry or instanced geometry was my original goal. I tried the SaveRenderMesh add-on ChristianB suggested but I didn't quite understand how to use it. I tried to follow the instructions, and got it installed, but when trying to use it it in rendertree it always ends up with:

// ERROR : LINK 0.1 error 191007: cannot load C:\Users\Owner\Softimage\XSI_7.01\Addons\FXNut_SaveRenderMesh\Application\spdl\..\bin\nt-x86\FXNut_SaveRenderMesh.dll, The specified module could not be found.
// ERROR : PHEN 0.4 error 051011: shader "FXNut_SaveRenderMesh" not found
// ERROR : PHEN 0.4 error 051011: shader "FXNut_SaveRenderMesh" not found

I installed the latest c++ 2008 redist (x86), but it didn't do any difference 😞