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A: You have not added the plug-in. Click on the Add Plugins button in the Options panel. b) You did not install Particle Storm yet. Consult the Installation Guide for details. Q:I'm getting an Activation Failed Error: A: The location for the plug-in as specified in the LW.cfg is not a valid location. The plug-in may have been moved to a different location or deleted. Q: Particle Storm crashes when I click on Options to bring up the interface A: Are you using the latest version of lwpanels.p? If not, that is probably the reason why Particle Storm is crashing when it tries to bring up the interface. Q: Is there any place other than this help file where I can find more up-to-date tutorials, FAQs and support regarding Particle Storm? A: You bet there is! Visit our website at www.dynamic-realities.com. You can link to our On-Line forum and FAQ area from there. Q:PS2 crashes on systems with an Oxygen 102/202/402 OpenGL card. A: Yes, this is caused by faulty drivers. The newer 3.1 drivers available from http://www.3dlabs.com will fix this problem, but unfortunately, are only available for the PC and not DEC Alpha. Check with 3D Labs as to the availability of the new drivers for DEC Alpha. Q: What is an Effect Object, how do I create it, and where is it saved? A: The Effect Object is the file created by PSCreate that contains the particles (single point polygons). If you are using sub-objects or sub-polygons, it will contain the specified number of objects or polygons (multiple Effect Objects will be created if Lightwave’s point or polygon limit is exceeded). Creating the Effect Object requires you to right-click on the particle group you wish to create the effect object for and selecting the ‘Create Effect Object’ option. The name and path of the file is whatever is entered in the Effect File Base in the Particle Group property page with a ‘.LWO’ file extension. Q: What is a PSM file, how do I create it, and where is it saved at? A: The PSM file is the data file created by PSCreate for each particle group in your project. This file contains, for each timestep, each particle’s position, shading information, age, orientation, and size. This information is necessary for PSPlay and other applications such as HyperVoxels and Genesis VFX. This file needs to exist, otherwise PSPlay would have to re-simulate all particles for each frame that is rendered. Creating the PSM is actually automatic in PS2. Whenever you are in PSCreate, there is an opened PSM file ready to be saved to. Saving to this file is as easy as enabling ‘Record’ on the main PSCreate interface and then playing the simulation by pressing the ‘Play’ button. Any played timesteps after that point are written to the file as long as the simulation is playing. The name and path of this file is whatever is entered in the Effect File Base in the Particle Group property page with a ‘.PSM’ file extension. If you create a new particle group, a new PSM file is created with that name (unless one already exists with that name in the file path, in which case that file will be overwritten). Q: How do I right-click on the Mac? A: By holding down the Open Apple key while clicking the mouse. Q: What is the PSDefault project, what is it used for, and where is it stored? A: This is the default project that is loaded into PSCreate for each new session. This file contains defaults for parameters that you can customize such as 3DView colors, Fountain Emitter parameters, Camera setups, etc. Since this is a standard PS project, everything that can be saved to a normal project can be saved to the PSDefault project. This file is stored in the default Newtek content path. If this file does not exist, then one is created there for you using internal defaults. Q: I understand PS2 is more integrated into Layout. What does this mean and what are the steps to link PSCreate to Layout so parameters can be changed without re-entering Particle Storm and re-simulating? A: The initial setup is the most difficult, but after setup the process of adjusting PS values from Layout and seeing the results is very easy. Follow the steps below to set up for integration. 1) First of all, you need to reference a value in PS2 to a Layout item. This will allow the changing of your parameter based on something you can tweak in Layout. 2) Then create an Effect Object and record a PSM the way you normally would. 3) Before exiting PSCreate, make sure to leave the Record on, simulate on, and Lock-out Changes off. 4) In Layout, load the Effect Object and in the Displacement Plug-in for PSPlay, reference the SAME PSM file you did in PSCreate. 5) In that same interface, make sure the Link option is enabled. This enables the link between Layout and PSCreate. 6) Now as you move the Layout scrub bar through time, your particles should behave the same as they did in PSCreate when you created them. 7) Adjust the reference item and create keyframes for it. Replay the animation in Layout and your PS values should reflect the new adjustments. Q: When I reference parameters in PS to Layout items, how do the units convert? A: The base units for both Lightwave and PS2 is metric. This means that a positional value in PS2 referenced to a positional value in Layout will be 1 m = 1 m and a rotational value in PS2 is referenced to a rotational value in Layout 1 degree = 1 degree. However, when a rotational value in PS2 is referenced to a positional value in Layout, 1 m = 1 radian. Q: When I load the Effect Object and reference the PSM, I still don’t see any particles. Why not? A: Try advancing the current Layout frame to a point in time that you are sure there should be particles visible. Single point polygons are very hard to see in Layout. Depending on the size of your particle effect, try moving the camera back or get a distant perspective view of the scene, or try zooming in. If you are viewing your objects as OpenGL solids in Layout, you might want to try viewing them as wireframe instead as particles can become hidden very easily behind or even within solids. Q: My particles emit for a while, but then stop, sometimes starting up again after a few seconds. Why? A: Particles are emitted from a pool of dead particles (particle group). If your simulation time multiplied by the birth rate is more than the particles in your pool, then you run out of particles to emit. Basically use the formula below to determine the number of particles you will need. total number of particles necessary = t * birth rate If you are using a Death Wish to kill your particles, then your particles will eventually die and be recycled, thus allowing more particles to be emitted. Q: Why does PS2 play really slow on my computer? A: This can be caused by several things. First, the PS2 3D view is OpenGL with transparency. If you do not have a hardware accelerated OpenGL display card, you can expect slower playback. Even on very high-end OpenGL cards, playback can be slowed greatly by lots of 3D activity. This includes lots of transparency enabled (particles fading, controller shapes, collision shapes, etc.), lots of particles in general (over 1000), lots of sub-objects/polygons, drawing particles with Point/Line size bigger than 3 or 4, or simply lots of things being drawn in the 3D view. Another cause can be slowed simulation times, which can be confirmed by turning off the Update Each Time Step option (if the scrub bar does not get any faster when this is disabled, then your simulation is the slowdown). Try the following to increase playback speed:
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