Hey guys!
I am a student and I just can’t get the hang of the Type, Bias and Animation Offset Keying options available in the scale operator. :[
The description in the MAX help is really confusing. Is there anybody who has used these options in a project? I’d really like to know a practical example as in how can these options be used together in a simulation or what kind of particle simulation can make use of these options?

*Beerz*

For the Type, it’s how the scale gets translated to the particles. Overwrite Once and Inherit Once use a single scale value while the other three use an animated value. These have subtle differences and I think the best way to remember them is to play around with them.

For Bias, if using any variation, this tells it where to place it (none = distributed equally). The others are kind of self explanatory.

For Animation Offset, it tells it how to interpret the animated scale values.
Absolute Time = the scale values according to keyframes in the timeline.
Particle Age = from the particles birth is when the scale animation starts.
Event Duration = from when the particle enters the event with the scale is when the scale animation starts.

A practicle example is using scale to decrease the size of the particles when you want them to die off, or when the particles get to a certain point in the flow or reach an object, they change scale. I used the scale operator on another thread with pflow if you want to check it out. Link

And you can check out Allan McKay’s site and DVD’s for some really good tutorials. Link
Pete Draper also does some particle tutorials along with a lot of other really good ones. Link

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC