So, I've been studying SOPs for the past 2 years, and am ready to learn simulations, since I have some background with Particles in XSI/ICE, I'm starting there.

Disclaimer, I've never done a H simulation in my life, so I consider myself a great barometer on the learning curve for Particle Simulations in H.

After playing with shelf tools/reading docs, I think I've found some issues, but, I feel like maybe I dont understand the basics enough to log Bugs/RFE's.

All I have is a DOP Network which inside has a Pop Object, Pop Location and Pop Solver.

* Pop Location node: Shouldnt the tooltip for Const. Activation read:
"Turns constant emission on and off. Constant emits the number of particles in the Constant birth rate below each second. A value of 0 means off, any other value means on."?

* Constant Birth rate doesnt seem predictable at all. Disabling Impulse Activation and set Constant Birth Rate to 1 with default values for all other nodes, I would expect a new particle every 24th frame (1 sec), but that's not the case. Only way I found to get predictable results in regards to Constant birth rate, is to remove the expression on the Time Step Pop Network parameter and set the Time Step parameter to 1.

* Impulse Activation/Count works as expected, with the default Time Step expression in place on the Pop Network node.

I feel I should understand these 3 nodes before I attempt to go further.

Thanks.

Constant birth rate is statistical. The rate is average per second. Under the hood it uses a scatter though, so if your rate is too low, you might just get no particles per frame. If I need something rhythmic or some other precise source control, I use a source set to ‘all points’, and generate the points to be added per time step in sops.

Constant birth rate is statistical unless you turn off “Probabilistic Emission”. However, as I was verifying that, I realized to my chagrin that there is a bug causing the fractional birth code path not to work :< Hopefully it will be fixed in a not-too-distant build.

@jsmack - Thanks. I'll look at POP Source next…after I understand POP Location

@jlait - Thanks. So that's why I didnt see anything when I disabled Prob. Emission huh? Makes sense…and hey…found a bug my 1st time out the DOPs Gate!

@jlait - Thanks for the quick fix and help/tooltip adjustments. Now Constant works in a predictable fashion with “Probabilistic Emission” disabled.