Within the Master DynamicSet Rollouts, you can tell thinkingParticles how you want it to interpret your particle system's animation. You can also globally turn the entire particle system on or off, by using the controls within this rollout. The Master DynamicSet rollout also contains a very important option: the Edit on the Fly button is accessible from the Master DynamicSet rollout.

To access this rollout menu, the Master DynamicSet must be selected from the DynamicSet Tree View.

ON - Activate this button to enable thinkingParticles's rule processing and particle generation. When this button is disabled, no rules will be processed and no particles will be generated.

Edit on the fly - With the Edit on the Fly option active, you are able to edit your particles system in real-time, without having to wait for it to update. The particle animation will update only at the beginning of the cycle, if you have the animation running. This can provide a much more efficient tweak mode, when you have a rough animation that you're looking to refine. However, if you are dealing with simple settings that you want to see in real time, or when you're adding new rules and conditions to your particle animation, you will want to turn this option off.

Particle Shape - From this drop down list, you can choose from several particle visualization styles to show in the 3ds Max view ports for the selected DynamicSet.

Sprites are the latest display addition to thinkingParticles. Sprites are Hardware (GPU) accelerated particle displays that either represent a little “ball” or any bitmap of your choice. Sprites are highly efficient and safe use a reduced memory footprint. Representing particles with sprites offers a better visualization of depth and volume that simple dots or ticks. This is the ideal Viewport display method for visualizing Sand or Snow effects.

Besides the aforementioned particle Viewport display styles, thinkingParticles offers a display option that shows the Particle ID for each particle. This ID can be used in conjunction with the PSelection Operator to delete specific particles, for example.

Show Mesh - Activate this check box to display the particle mesh, in addition to the particle display option, for the selected DynamicSet.

Force this Setting - When this check box is active, the global settings will be used for all particle groups regardless of their individual settings. In effect, it overrides all of the local particle Group settings. This is on by default, so if your particle groups aren't showing up as you expect, be sure to turn this check box off.

Show Every Nth - defines how many particles are drawn in the view port, a valuer of 2 will draw every second particle, only.

Render Resets Simulation - by default this option is turned on. For each frame that is rendered the simulation is re-calculated from start up to the frame that is rendered. However, for fast material and lighting adjustments this might not be a desirable effect. Lets assume you want to render frame 167 to check on the material and light situation for a fluid simulation. Every time the renderer is invoked the simulation has to start over from the beginning even though the Viewport already shows frame 167. Disable this option to render only the information available at frame 167 without the need of re-simulating the whole animation. This is a big time saver when working on specific frames.

Debug Log Window - check this option to enable the port debugger of thinkingParticles. When active, individual ports may be enabled to output their values in a log window.

Analyzer - when checked, the Analyzer window/tool will be opened. The key board shortcut is “A” form inside a DynamicSet or SHIFT+ALT+A from outside of tP.

Show InfoTooltip - check this button to query information about any particle in the 3ds Max modeling Viewport by hovering over it. A single left click on any particle will show a menu selection presenting the possible parameters to display when hovering over a particle..

As shown in the illustration above, several options are available.
Hovering over any particle created by thinkingParticles will reveal the information as defined by the selector menu.

Help - click this button to bring up the thinkingParticles Help File. Note: it is better to use the F1 key on a selected node to jump right into the help section of that operator.

Offline Help - by default the thinkingParticles help file will be displayed within the active web browser from our www.cebas.com server. If for any reason you wish to use the (outdated) offline help file, which was installed with your product, check this option. Keep in mind that the offline help file will not be updated and always represents the state of your first installation of any Service pack or Subscription Drop.

Groups as Objects - Activate this check-box to create invisible objects in 3ds Max that can be selected and assigned standard 3ds Max Object Properties. These invisible objects will be created for each particle Group that is generated in the Particle Group Tree View.

Render Instance - when checked, particles can be treated as real instanced objects. This is a highly efficient method to handle millions of High-Poly objects in a scene. Compatible renderers for 3ds Max are able to handle this option.

Max Animation - Select this radio button option when you want thinkingParticles to evaluate rules and conditions for the particle system, during the entire animation sequence.

User Defined - Choose this radio button option when you want thinkingParticles to evaluate rules and conditions for the particle system, starting at the frame specified in the spinner below.

Frame - This spinner value sets the frame, where you want thinkingParticles to start the evaluation of its rules and conditions.
 

All of the settings below apply only to the Viewport representation, for the processing of the thinkingParticles rules and conditions.

Per Frame/Half Frame/Samples Per Second - this drop down menu will only be active when an old scene (pre tP 7.0) is loaded that still has Subframe samples set to per second. All new scenes will only allow sub-frame sampling per frame! Older scenes saved with this new per frame option will be set to a frame based sub-sampling for ever.

Samples - This spinner defines the number of sub-frame samples taken to evaluate and update the rules within thinkingParticles. For proper shape-based collisions (such as those that occur from the Fragment Operator and accurate physics simulations), a value between1-4 is recommended as a minimum.
 

All of the settings below apply only to the renderer's representation for the processing of the thinkingParticles rules and conditions and only if the Check Box has been checked, or else the Viewport settings will be used!

Per Frame/Half Frame/Samples Per Second - this drop down menu will only be active when an old scene (pre tP 7.0) is loaded that still has Subframe samples set to per second. All new scenes will only allow sub-frame sampling per frame! Older scenes saved with this new per frame option will be set to a frame based sub-sampling for ever.

Samples - This spinner defines the number of sub-frame samples taken to evaluate and update the rules within thinkingParticles. For proper shape-based collisions (such as those that occur from the Fragment Operator and accurate physics simulations), a value between1-4 is recommended as a minimum.
 

Particle Simulation Caching has been enhanced a lot and now offers more power than ever. thinkingParticles cache files can now be easily transported to any other thinkingParticles program of the same version or higher, without having to re-create the scene setup. Loading a cache file into an “empty” thinkingParticles setup is now supported, including re-timing it in certain boundaries and with full control of transformation in all axis. DynamicSets has new input options to support the newly gained freedom in a fully procedural way, as known from thinkingParticles.

Simulate - when enabled, thinkingParticles will perform in standard mode, all operators and DynamicSets will be evaluated and calculations done at play-back or render time.

Play - activate this option to set thinkingParticles to playback mode. When this button is active and a valid playback file is found, all DynamicSets and operators are no longer evaluated! Keep this in mind, changing values will not affect the particle system at all, because the particle movement and shape changes will be read form the cache file.

Select Record File - when clicked, brings up a standard Windows file dialog. This lets you define a name for the cache file or select an already existing cache file.

Statistics - displays the statistics of the cache file. This might be used as an indication of whether the file is valid for a scene or not.

Time Offset - sets the play offset of the recorded cache file. This can be used to start at a certain frame when playing back the particle system.

Position X,Y,Z - sets the position, in World Units, where the cache playback should happen.

Rotation X,Y,Z - rotates the particle cache playback along each of the individual axis, around its center point

Scale - defines a scale factor for the particle cache playback.

Link to Object - instead of specifying discreet X,Y,Z values as explained above, you may also use any object to position the particle cache playback in the scene. Even another particle system may be used to position and place particle cache playbacks!

Out of Range Hold Particle - the following options define the playback behavior of the cached particles. Out-of-range playback can behave in the following ways

Off - cached particles outside of “their” recorded time will not be visible at all on playback

<Hold Start - will show the first frame of recorded particles when the cached particles are outside of “their” recorded time

>Hold End - at end of playback the last cached frame is kept visible  

<Hold Start,End> - shows and holds the particles from their first cached frame from beginning of playback and at end of playback, the last cached frame of particles is kept visible.

Wait for Next (*.tpc, only) - choose this option, when playing back a cache, which is still in the  process of being calculated. thinkingParticles will wait for the next *.tpc cache file/frame to appear in a directory or folder for playback. Note, this also applies to rendering, thinkingParticles will keep the renderer waiting for the next cache file to show up, before continuing with the render.

Recording particle simulations is a very powerful workflow enhancement and a great time saver with complex scene setups. In addition to “record and forget,” thinkingParticles allows the removal of specific particles from the recording, afterwards. A simple list of Particle IDs defines which particle should be removed from the particle playback.

DEL - deletes the selected Particle ID form the list view.

PICK - lets you pick a particle within the 3ds Max viewport. The selected particle will be added automatically to the list of particles that should be excluded on playback.

ADD - lets you manually add a particle ID to the list view. To specify the particle ID, use the spinner control right underneath the ADD button. To obtain the Particle ID of a specific particle, turn on the particle ID visualization method.

thinkingParticles offers a global particle caching system that has been introduced to the tool-set of thinkingParticles. Particle Baking, Recording or Caching enables the user to store a complete particle simulation to a single file. After recording a complete particle system to a single file, no more calculations and evaluations are needed when playing back the result! In fact, all changes in the DynamicSets will be ignored, when Playback is active.


Viewport - check this option, if you wish to bake the particle simulation, as seen in the viewport! Some modifiers, for example, have different settings/behaviors in the viewport, compared to their behavior at render time.

Render - check this option to obtain the exact behavior as you would expect when rendering the animation with thinkingParticles effects activated.

Record - press this button to start the recording session of the particle animation that was created by thinkingParticles.

Frame Subsample - defines the amount of frame sub-sampling to use for exporting the data. A value of 0 means the export will happen per frame; regardless of the sub-samples set in thinkingParticles. A value of 1 means half frame; 2 equals 90 sub-frames and so on …