Binary Loader 1 Intro

What's a Binary Loader

You can find it on the emitters list although, strictly speaking, a Binary Loader is not really and emitter as it will not create particles. Instead, it reads a sequence of precalculated binary files from the disk.

Some facts about Binary Loaders
-The Binary Loader can be placed, rotated or scaled. These transformations can then be animated.
-Particles from a binary loader can affect particles.
-It can play particles in differents ways such as loop or ping pong.
-It can also play the particles for a while and then release them so they are calculated. It can even use new settings for those particles Ex.:
You can calculate a fluid for 30 frames, bring it into a new scene an load it using a Binary Loader, change the particle type to Elastic and set "release Particles" to 30. The simulation will run for the first 30 frames exactly as it did in the first simulation, but at frame 30, those particles will behave like an elastic and interact with other emitters or daemons or object or rw ...
-The subdivision funtion will interpolate particles in time so you can dmake your simulation longer.

Binary loader parameters

Bin Sequence: here you can select the sequence of files to load.

Mode: This is how the sequence is going to be played.
   -Normal: Plays the sequence form the first frame to the last one.
   -Hold: Keeps the last frame of the simulation when it reaches the end of the sequence.
   -Loop: Goes back to the first frame when it reaches the end of the sequence
   -PingPong This is how the sequence is going to be played.

Reverse: Plays the sequence from the end to the beginnig.
Number of files: The length of the selected sequence.
Frames Offset: Specifies when the emitter has to start playing related to frame 0 (positive or negative values).
Release particles: Indicates the frame where the binloader will stop reading from the disk and RF will actually calaculate those particles using the settings from the scene.
Load particles: Reloads particles
Reset Xform: Resets the binloader to the position of the original emitte.r
Subdivisions: The amount of frames that are going to be created in between frames. The new sequence can be saved using 'output sequence'.

What's an N-Binary Loader?
It's nearly the same as a binary loader, but it can load as many sequences as you want. So you can transform two or more calculated emitters into just one.

So, why is all this so usefull?

-Binary Loaders can be used to split an effect into smaller simulations. See the Compositing Particles tutorial
-By offseting some Binary Loadres a bit (in time and space), you get a lot of particles behaving nearly the same way... like incresing resolution, but no calculation is needed. Offesting binloaders is also a great way to get a better mesh.

Fig1: BinLoader as a trick to increase resolution

-Sometimes the best way of meshing emitter is using a new scene and bring in all the emitters using binloadres.
-The binloader can also be used for fixing parts of the mesh.See the Fill and Drill tutorial