thinkingParticles.INI File

 

thinkingParticles uses an INI file to store important information about preferred directories. This INI file is called Thinking.INI and it resides within your \plugcfg folder. If you open this file within Word Pad or Note Pad, you'll see that there are three sections within this INI file:

  1. The Pathes section

  2. The UIPath section

  3. The SchematicViewColors section

Whenever you save a Black Box to the hard drive the path found in Pathes is updated or a new one is added to the list. In this way, all of your Black Boxes can be used at a later time, and even stored in a network location so that multiple users can access them.

thinkingParticles also uses an Open UI concept, and this lets you change and adjust nearly all icons of the program. The directory entered in the UIPath section is used to search for the thinkingParticles UI settings and to load the various icons seen within the thinkingParticles user interface.

Finally, new to thinkingParticles is the SchematicViewColors section, and it's here that you can set the various RGB colors that you want to see within the plug-in when working inside of thinkingParticles.

Here is an example version of the Thinking.INI file:

[Pathes]
Dir0=C:\3dsmax6\cebas\BlackBox

[UIPath]
Dir0=C:\3dsmax6\cebas\Thinking_UI

[SchematicViewColors]
In=180 210 238
Out=57 93 185
Draw_Antial=1
Text_Antial=1
BG=210 210 210
Wire=0 172 255
Body=193 202 213
Frame=0 0 0
Title_Sel=255 255 255
Invalid=232 32 32
Group=146 168 195
Condition=237 193 146
Operator=168 169 96
Helper=161 134 195
DynamicSet=186 186 186
Initiator=203 204 97
Generator=211 154 154
Shape=107 193 196
Need_Dis=255 204 0

Important Notes about [Pathes] Section 

A new default thinkingParticles setup file has been added to TP, and it allows you to define a default layout for the DynamicSet UI. Whenever a new thinkingParticles particle system is created, it will use the file called startup.thi, if this file is present in the first available BlackBox search path. Startup.thi allows you to save custom setups for TP like Dynamic Sets and Groups. For instance, if you are always creating 3 Groups and 4 Dynamics sets (named as you like with properties you like), then you can simply save out this setup in the startup.thi and every time you create a TP particle system they will be created for you.

Startup.thi will be loaded, when present, from the first Path entry in this list!