Okay, this is a really simple utility.. What it does is
let you take a snapshot of a particle system so that you
can have an unchanging mesh that was created with the
friendly and powerful particle systems in 3ds MAX.  For
example, if you wanted to make a galaxy mesh, you could
just make a spray and then bind it to a spherical gravity
warp and you have a galaxy.  But now if you wanted to
do an animation, your galaxy would be moving around, and
if your animation takes place over 5 or 10 seconds, a
moving galaxy looks dumb.  So you snapshot it and get
rid of the old particle system.  This also saves a LOT
of memory and let's you export dxfs and 3ds's with the
particle system.  So that's the scoop.  Using it is easy.
Copy the partsnap.dlu to your 3dsMAX plugins directory,
and then run 3dsMAX.  Go to utilities, and select
particle snapshot.  Click on pick object, and then pick
your particle system.  It'll create a box which
represents the particle system at the current time, and
it may LOOK like a box, but it will render like a
particle system.  Voila.

Have fun, and Happy Halloween!
--
Version 2 Modifications:
It now shows the particles as little mesh objects instead
of the stupid bounding box.  Looks alot better now, I
think it's kinda cool.  It also works on any time of
geometric renderable object, turning it into a mesh.  So
you can use it for lots of stuff.  When I get back on
monday, I'll probably add ranging and multiple snapshots
so that this will completely replace both the snapshot
command and snapshot pro by those guys over at THAT
plugin company.  So if you didn't buy BonesPro, you are
in luck, you still get all the features of snapshot
pro for FREE!  woohoo!
