The cheapest possible way to make this happen is for me to create a PRT object that reads its data from a socket. You could transmit particle data in the PRT file specification via the socket and I wouldn’t have to change much except make a PRT Loader that takes URIs instead of Windows paths.
On the other hand, this doesn’t use the 3dsMax reference system so you would lose change notifications and reference-loop prevention. I could make a simple subclass of BaseInterface that offers a stream object (possibly via a std::ostream subclass) that I could use to extract the data from.
I like the concept of transferring data via the PRT file spec, since it’s an established interface that isn’t going to change.
Thoughts?
I would probably see it consisting of two scene objects. Object A would be your scene object, and object B would have a reference to your object via a scene INode. When object B went to evaluate its particles it would call INode::EvalWorldState(t) on the INode pointing at object A. The result in the ObjectState would support GetInterface( KrakatoaPRT_Extension_Interface ) returning a simple class that has a std::istream& which I can use to extract the particle data.
My current schedule suggests that this could be prototyped for the next-next beta release. Ie. I’m working on a beta release now, and then it should fit into the one after that. A couple weeks maybe?
Can you elaborate on this? I assume you mean that your object would pass a pipeline object up the stack that I could get the stream from.