Hi everyone,

There's an important update to the Houdini-Real Flow plugins now available at:
http://www.digitalcinemaarts.com/dev/real_flow/download.html [digitalcinemaarts.com]

There was a significant problem with the SD files exported by the Real Flow Export SOP and ROP, which was made more obvious in Real Flow 3 (RFD). There's also been a change to the number of fluids in a RF3 particles and the mapped values are different as opposed to RF2.5 and lastly the RF3 BIN2 particle file is now version 8 (RF2.5's was version 7).

Many thanks to everyone at Jim Henson's Creature Shop (Vish, Sean, Jesh and Pete) for their assistance in identifying and helping me solve these problems! There's still an outstanding issue with the RF ROP when in vertex mode, it needs more investigation. If your geometry is deforming, you'll need to write the SD files in vertex mode using the RF Export SOP.

A few other changes include having the “regular” velocity attribute “v” created along with the Real Flow velocity attribute (p_velocity and m_velocity), which makes it more convenient when appending a SOP such as a Point SOP to manipulate velocity values. The same sort of addition has been added for velocity and texture coordinates in mesh, and normals for RF3 particles.

Because of the changes in RF3, I'm dropping support for RF2.5; if anyone needs RF2.5 support, please contact me.

There will be a new release after the new year with the ROP vertex mode bug fixed, and if time allows, a few more new odds and ends. As always, email me if you find any problems, have suggestions, etc.

Happy New Year!!!!


–Mark


From the change log:

December 26, 2004: v0.98.3 -
SOP_RF_Export:
1) Now exports SD file format for Real Flow 3
2) Particle files are now version 8 (Real Flow 3)
3) Particle file now use Real Flow 3 fluid types
4) There is now a menu to select matrix or vertex mode when exporting a SD file

SOP_RF_Import:
1) Mesh velocity and attributes are now vectors (instead odf 3 floats )
2) Particle velocity, norlnam and force attributes are now vectors (instead odf 3 floats )
3) Speed improvements
4) Particle and mesh velocity, texture and normals attributes have corresponding Houdini
attributes (v, uv, N).

RF_ROP:
1) Now exports SD file format for Real Flow 3 (vertex mode disabled until Real Flow 3
conversion complete ).
2) Bug fixed in the way the vertex count was calculated when more than one object is exported,

*** RF ROP: Vertex mode (for deforming geometry) is disabled temporarily until the rest of the
Real Flow 3 SD file conversion is complete. Selecting “vertex mode” in the Real Flow ROP
ignore transformations made at the object (/obj) level.