The "RF Mesh Exporter" plugin writes mesh data into RealFlow BIN sequence from LightWave's "Layout". The exporter can be reached in the "Next Limit Plugin Manager" master plugin’s "Mesh Export" tab. The mesh BIN file contains the vertices and faces of the object, and the texture UV coordinates. If the mesh consists of more fluids and provides additional velocity vectors for each vertex then a weight map will be applied as well.
"RF Mesh Exporter" setup interface.
Here are the setup parameters:
- "Item" is the LightWave object which will be exported.
- "Directory" points to path of the directory where the RealFlow mesh file sequence will be written.
- "Name" is simply the name of the mesh and used in the BIN file name.
- "Padding" is used in the BIN file name.
- "Start frame" and "End frame" indicate the frames you want to export.
- "Inc Frame" defines the increment of the exported BIN files.
- "Export Texture" adds UV coordinates to the BIN file.
- "Number of Fluids". A mesh can contain more than one fluid. Each fluid can have a vertex map to define which vertex belongs to the given fluid. The name of the map must be "RF_Mesh_Weight_[index]", where [index] is the fluid's index, starting from 1. Values are floats between 0.0 and 1.0.
- "Export velocity" adds velocity information to the vertices.
- "Recalculate". When this option is turned on the plugin tries to calculate the velocity vectors by the current frame and next frame vertex positions. Vertices can be identified with their indices between the frames. This is the reason why the calculation can result wrong velocity vectors If this option is turned off, the plugin reads the velocity from a vertex map. The name of the map must be "RF_Mesh_Speed".
- "Export" starts to export the mesh sequence.
