Meshing

 

 

Meshing Grid

Spacing – Iso-surface meshing in done on a regular grid where each grid cell calculated contribution of each particle. Smaller spacing will result in more detailed mesh but it`ll take considerable more memory and time to compute.

 

Viewport % – Scales the grid spacing, resulting in a lower-resolution mesh for faster viewport creation and display.

 

 

Particles

This group of parameters determines how particles will be meshed. The particle radius and threshold are shared across all meshing modes, but they have very different impacts on the resulting mesh.

 

Radius – The particle radius that will be used to generate the iso-surface. A larger radius, combined with a higher threshold, will create a smoother surface but will result in slower generation and less detail.

 

 

Threshold - Iso-surface threshold. A higher threshold will produce a smoother surface, but it will contain less detail.

 

Min. Neighbours (Anisotropic) - Particle will be stretched only if it has at least this many neighbours.

 

Lambda (Anisotropic) - Smaller value will result in surface with more disconnected areas.

 

Max Stretch (Anisotropic) - Maximum particle stretch amount.

 

 

Data Transfer

ISurf can retrieve velocities from any particle system and UVW data from NodeWorks particles, then bake them onto the resulting mesh. However, velocities are always generated as they are required for motion blur and filtering, while UVW is generated on demand.

 

Rendering Only – Once you have everything setup, enable this option to minimize viewport memory consumption.

 

Radius Scale – When transferring particle data to the mesh, this value will multiply the Radius value to transfer data across a broader range of voxels. In most cases, this value can remain at 1.0, but as soon as you use smoothing, you may need to increase it to obtain correct velocities or UVWs across the surface.

 

UVW – Enable this option to transfer mapping coordinates from particles to the mesh. In NodeWorks, you must create a custom channel for the particles and assign UVW values to it. Enter the name of this custom channel in the text box. This option supports NodeWorks and tyFlow particles.

 

Channel – Mapping channel that will hold UVW coordinates.

 

Display Velocity – This option does not require the mesh to be recalculated, making it useful for verifying whether velocities are properly written to the mesh and determining which velocities to use for the Filtering Mask. Velocity issues may occur with high smoothing values but can be resolved by increasing the Radius Scale value.

 

 

FumeFX Meshing

This option lets you mesh FumeFX smoke, fire and temperature fields.

 

Spacing Scale - When meshing FumeFX fields, the ISurf grid spacing will be set to the FumeFX Grid spacing. Use this option to create finer of coarser meshes.

 

Threshold - FumeFX grid voxels with channel values lower than threshold will be considered as empty.

 

Channel - Channel you with to create mesh from.