My bad you don't need to do the empty volume. Notice also how the operation is set to Minimum and the combination is perfect!
vdbCombine.hip
edit: Union is also perfect.
You need to create an empty volume that is the size/res that you want and then vdb combine sop to add them in (make sure they are vdbs). I'll try to whip up an example...
You could also use Python (inside or outside of H) to clean up the unwanted letters for you. Each one of those characters has a corresponding integer representation. Poke around stack overflow and I'm sure you will find help with cleaning it up.
@Atom you are always dealing with volumes in FLIP. When you go to create a mesh from particles it will be converted to a volume/sdf first. This is where I would blend in other volumes but if you need a really large extension it might make sense to use volumes to blend into your lake mesh.
You can drop an Attribute Wrangle before the scatter sop and enter:
@P += @N * chf("shift");
Then press the 'Create spare parameters...' button to the right of the VEX code box which will create a slider for you to control the offset. Negative values will push it inward.
tubeShift.hip
Like Carlo said, $F# or $SF# (#=3, 4, 5...) will pad numbers with # number of 0's. When reading file you an also use filename.`padzero(#, $F/$SF)`.ext if that helps at all.
You can create a custom vector attribute on the broom geo , let's call it disturb, throw some curl noise in there or whatever you want using VOPs, and attribute transfer it to the particles and throw that into the v attribute. Just one way out of an infinite number...