3d Studio Max Particle Flow (PFLOW) workflows to instance objects on a surface and drive the density of those objects are criminally slow, or criminally complex for large scale execution. The slow down arrives when you realize that ‘vanilla’ Pflow requires a "speed by surface" and a "lock / bond" two operators that are inexplicably slow.
Because of that slow down, I've abandoned using normal pflow and just done direct trigonometric functions, like transforming matrices, in order to get a few thousand particles to stick to another object's surface and align to its normals. Other packages have managed to figure out a less obnoxious method for achieving something as simple as villi on a cell, or trees on a displaced surface. Why do we need a plug-in to do something so ubiquitous in max?
Imagine my surprise when I checked out this tutorial:
Of course the next question is, okay, well that’s fine for grass and all, but I don’t do landscaping.
---Can you instance custom geometry and drive the density of where that geometry is placed?
Can you change how much of the grass is visible in viewport vs render?
Can you override material?
Will it react to forces?
Is it reasonably responsive?
Can you cache the data for even faster fidelity?
Unbelievably the answer is yes to each one! `\_(o.0)_/`
Basically follow the tutorial above and replace the object with a custom object here:
That’s literally it. The variety can come from within the hair and fur itself, also covered in tute.
How about Density maps? Here:
Just drop your map in the blank box to the right of the Density Spinner.
Viewport visibility? Here:
Caching? Here:
The above image is clipped in the screen grab, but its under dynamics tab. Also, for something wild check on that live and see the grass react in realtime 0.0. To use the “precomputed” for advanced or heavy sims, that’s where the “stat” files work. Then you set start and end and click ‘run.’
That’s literally 1 million times more responsive, intuitive and useful than getting a PhD in euclidean geometry to make things stick on a surface.