I created this node to easily switch on and off particle caching, and to switch from write to read mode:

• when disabled, the node redirects the input directly to the execute output
• when enabled in write mode, the node enables a particle cache node setup in write mode
• when enabled in read mode, the node enables another particle cache node setup in read mode, and don’t evaluate the input port.

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I downloaded the trial version of XSI 7.01 last week. I was really impressed by the power of the new ICE feature. It allows the creation of complex effects by building an ICE tree, which is a visual graph. You just drop preset nodes into the graph and connect them, combining them to create interesting effects. Its power lies in the variety of basic nodes available (conditional nodes, mathematical expressions, etc.) as well as complex nodes like slide on surface, bounce off surface, etc.

I saw an impressive video of a fake ray-tracer done with ICE and I wanted to do something similar, so I created a fake Photon Mapping simulation entirely in ICE.

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