MaxwellMesher

Description

This extension implements the RealFlow RenderKit Mesher Tool inside maxwell. It is a Geometry Loader extension This tool can load some particle sequences and build a mesh surrounding those particles. It can also load a RealWave .sd file, seed it with particles and build a mesh around them. It can also load a RealFlow .bin mesh file to render it and last, but not least, after building a mesh it can save it to disk in .md format, to be loaded later and rendered.

Besides creating vertices and faces, it can create one or more UV channels. The first UV channel, or channel "0", stores the native vertices UV's, which RFRK creates mapping particle UV's. If there were more than 1 particle sequence involved in creating the mesh, the following UV channels are numbered from 1 to the number of fluids or particle emitters used to create the mesh. The "ith" channel contains the weight of the particles of the "ith" particles emitter in every vertex. This is useful to mix colors in the mesh.

Particle .bin files, if saved from RealFlow, always contain a broad range of attributes, stored for each individual particle. These values can be assigned to meshes to visualize particular physical properties, for example velocity, pressure or the number of neighbour particles. These properties are called “magnitudes” and they can be used to drive textures while rendering the mesh. Depending on how many magnitudes are selected, there will be one or more UV channels generated after the fluids weight channels.

To properly map the magnitudes' values to textures, there are also some fields that should be filled, with the maximum and minimum values expected for these magnitudes during the sequence. These values are used to normalize the magnitudes to values ranging from 0.0 to 1.0.

The maximum number of particle sequences is 10.

Sequences Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Sequences

Name

Type

Description

"Sequence X On"

byte

enables or disables loading the sequence X, X from 0 to 10

"File X"

char*

complete filename/prefix of the sequence X, X from 0 to 10

"Offset X"

int

frame offset of sequence X, X from 0 to 10

"Radius X"floatparticle radius of sequence X, X from 0 to 10
"Core X"floatcore filtering of sequence X, X from 0 to 10
"Splash X"floatsplash filtering of sequence X, X from 0 to 10
"maxVelocity X"floatLimit particles' max velocity of sequence X, X from 0 to 10
"Subtractive X"byteSubstractive field of sequence X, X from 0 to 10
"Wait X"byteWait until file available of sequence X, X from 0 to 10

 

General and Mesh Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Mesh

NameTypeDescription

"Reference Frame"

int

frame used to calculate all frame numbers

"PolygonSize"floatPolygon size
"Smooth"floatSmoothing filter parameter
"IsoLevel"floatDistance to isosurface
"AutoPolygonSize"byteFlag to enable auto sizing of polygons
"FieldType"unsigned intSphere or Metaball field to generate the mesh
"Axis"unsigned int3D app axis system

 

Filtering Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Filtering

NameTypeDescription
"FilterMesh"byteEnable filtering
"Relax"floatRemove rounded borders
"Tension"floatRemove ripples
"Steps"unsigned intNumber of filtering cycles

 

Clipping Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Clipping

NameTypeDescription
"Object Clip"byteEnable object clipping
"Camera Clip"byteEnable camera clipping
"Inside"byteOnly for object clipping, remove polygons inside the object
"SD File"char*Filename of the .sd file containing the clipping geometry

 

Optimization Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Optimization

NameTypeDescription
"Optimize"unsigned intType of optimization: No, Curvature and Camera
"Quality"floatMerge quality factor
"Reduction"floatDecrease polygon count, percentage.
"Distance"float

Distance between the camera and the area where the first polygons will be removed

 

RealWave Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher RealWave

NameTypeDescription
"Insert RealWave"byteInsert RW or not
"RW Polygon Size"floatThe polygon size of the original RealWave mesh
"Resolution"floatHow many particles will be distributed in the triangles
"Radius"floatParticle radius, like particle sequence radius
"RW File"char*Filename of the .sd file containing the realwave geometry

 

Bin Mesh Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher BIN Mesh

NameTypeDescription
"Insert Bin Mesh"byteLoad or not a .bin mesh
"Bin File"char*Filename of the .bin file
"Bin Frame# Offset"intFrame offset
"Wait"byteStop the rendering process until the specified mesh file is available

 

System Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher System

NameTypeDescription
"Threads"unsigned intComputing threads
"Memory(MB)"unsigned intMaximum size of each sub-mesh in megabytes

 

Export And Lazy Compute Parameters

For a complete review of these parameters, please refer to RFRK_Mesher Export and Lazy Compute

NameTypeDescription
"Action"unsigned intOff, Export .md mesh, Import .md mesh
"MD File"char*Filename of the .md file
"MD Frame# Offset"intFrame offset

 

Magnitudes

All these parameters enable or not loading the corresponding array of magnitudes.

NameTypeDescription
"Force"byte 
"Neighbors"byte 
"Age"byte 
"Isolation"byte 
"Viscosity"byte 
"Density"byte 
"Pressure"byte 
"Mass"byte 
"Temperature"byte 
"Vorticity"byte 
"Id"byte 

 

Magnitudes ranges

All these parameters are the maximum and minimum values of the magnitudes use to normalize their values into the 0.0-1.0 interval.

NameTypeDescription
"Min Force"float 
"Max Force"float 
"Min Nneighbors"unsigned int 
"Max Nneighbors"unsigned int 
"Min Age"float 
"Max Age"float 
"Min Isolation Time"float 
"Max Isolation Time"float 
"Min Viscosity"float 
"Max Viscosity"float 
"Min Density"float 
"Max Density"float 
"Min Pressure"float 
"Max Pressure"float 
"Min Mass"float 
"Max Mass"float 
"Min Temperature"float 
"Max Temperature"float 
"Min Vorticity"float 
"Max Vorticity"float 
"Min Velocity"float 
"Max Velocity"float