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Box#3 Pro allows you to create your own PFlow operators by creating data presets. Each operator/preset is stored as a separate file with the extension PFP (Particle Flow Preset). You can designate a network folder to keep the presets, and artists in a studio can create and exchange their presets without needing to restart 3ds Max.
Box#3 Pro comes with seven presets to get you started. Because you can load a preset into Data Operator and check out the data flow in Data View, the presets can be used as tutorials as well.
Some of the presets show up in the Particle View depot as regular operators: BlurWind, Random Walk, and Spin Limit. Others--Delete By Elevation, Particle Per Vertex, Reduce Cached Lifespan, and Suction Hole--are available via both the Data Preset operator and the Load Preset button in the Data operator.
BlurWind and Random Walk are the results of collaboration between Orbaz Technologies and the CG animation and VFX powerhouse Blur (www.blur.com). Orbaz converted Blur's well-known particle space warps to PFlow operators as Box#3 Pro data presets.
Blur Wind controls particle speed to simulate wind force. It does not have the shortcoming of the standard Wind space warp where a particle is accelerated indefinitely, and you have to apply additional Drag space warps to fix it. You can also apply a viscosity effect and specify whether the speed force and viscosity are affected by particle size.
Random Walk creates chaotic, turbulent particle motion. As with the BlurWind operator, you can add viscosity and use particle size as a control factor.
Spin Limit operator lets you control spinning of particles by defining minimum and maximum spin rates. You can animate the maximum spin rate parameter to slow down the spinning effect.
Delete By Elevation is a simple but very effective operator that deletes particles if they go above or below the specified elevation level. If you have particles that might leak through collision surfaces and fall into the abyss of negative-infinity Z space, you can use this operator to save CPU cycles on those lost particles.
Particle Per Vertex spawns particles to match the number of vertices in a reference geometry object, and places the particles at the reference object's vertices. The operator should be preceded by Birth operator that creates a single particle as a seed for spawning. This way you can match each vertex of the object with a particle, without the trouble of setting the amount of particles in the Birth operator, and using the Position Object operator--everything is done automatically for you. You can increase segmentation of the reference object, and Particle Per Vertex operator will do its job right away.
Suction Hole operator functions as a force space warp by attracting particles from an icon-defined half-space and sending them through a circle icon outward as a stream.
Reduce Cached Lifespan decreases particle lifespan as defined by the Reduce By parameter. It can be used only as a Post-Cache operator in Cache Disk or Cache Selective operator. Cache operators should have the Delete operator to define the original lifespan. This operator is further testament to the flexibility achievable with Box#3 Pro, where you can pre-calculate and store the motion of particles and then work on coloring and materials properties that can be dependent on particle lifespan.
