Particle Initial State in MEL
 

Hey guys,

Trying to work with particles in MEL and I'm not sure the correct way to get my particles to the state I want to save as initial.

Here's what I want to do,

1) Create emitter/particles
2) Play for 50 frames
3) Save Particle Initial State
4) Delete Emitter

I'm golden for steps 1 and 3, and I figure step 4 shouldn't be too bad - I'm just not sure how to play my animation for 50 frames before setting the initial state. If I use currentTime 50, that gets me to frame 50 of course, but my particles have not moved as I never actually played through those frames.

Is there a flag/command I can use when creating the particles, something like setInitialAge(50 frames)?

I can see how it would be possible to overcome this by using playbackOptions to set the time slider from 0-50, but for usability I'd prefer my script not need to mess with the user's time slider. Unless there's a way to save and then revert back to the user's previous time slider settings?

There must be an easier way to do this.
Any help?

Lookup the command called "runup" in the docs...

Quote:
"runup plays the scene through a frame of frames, forcing dynamic objects to evaluate as it does so."