Beta 0.9.17 Release Notes

• 1 Beta 0.9.17 Release Notes
  • 1.1 GENERAL
  • 1.2 PRESETS AND HISTORY
  • 1.3 MAIN CONTROLS ROLLOUT
  • 1.4 PARTICLE CHANNELS TO SAVE ROLLOUT
  • 1.5 PARTITIONING
  • 1.6 THINKING PARTICLES AND PARTITIONING
  • 1.7 MATTE OBJECTS
  • 1.8 PRT LOADERS
  • 1.9 PARTICLE SCANNER UTILITY
  • 1.10 SHADOWS ON GEOMETRY UTILITY

Changes from Beta Build 0.9.16 to 0.9.17 (as of June 20th, 2007)

GENERAL

• The color source handling has been revamped to take advantage of particle channels. Color source controls are vastly simplified now.
  • By default, each particle system will render using its material color, if no material is available, using its wireframe color. This is in line with the way Max works. PRT Loaders will render using the saved, wireframe or material colors as before
  • New >Override Particle Colors option added to the Main Controls rollout which can be enabled to override the above color sources.
    • Custom Particle Color is now an override option and will apply to ALL particles, including those from PRT Loaders.
    • Most other modes have been removed and implemented elsewhere.
    • New "Material Editor Slot #1" option replaces the old Material and Custom Material options. This allows a single material placed in the Slot 1 of the Editor to replace all colors in all particles in the scene.
    • Removed Wireframe color option. Only objects with no material will render in Wireframe color.
    • Removed Script Vector Channel option. The channel is now automatically provided as UVW Map Channel 43 and can be rendered using a Vertex Color Map, thus can be used in both Color and Opacity slots.
  • The source color from materials is now the DIFFUSE, not the Self-Illum. Materials without self-illumination will render correctly now.

PRESETS AND HISTORY

• Fixed the bug causing the Cache rebuilding to pop up too often. In typical operation, rebuilding the cache should almost never be necessary anymore.

MAIN CONTROLS ROLLOUT

• Redesigned the rollout, it is now shorter and has less controls reflecting the simplified color workflow.
• Inverted the meaning of the Lighting Pass Densities option to be unchecked by default while doing the same.

PARTICLE CHANNELS TO SAVE ROLLOUT

• Added new Rollout to control which channels will be saved to disk in a similar style as NSS in Matte/APME rollouts.
• Added options to specify the data format (16, 32, 64 bit) for all channels.
• Added button to update channels from scene.
• Added controls to select all and invert the selection. Both lists are multilistboxes.
• Both lists will be cached and stored in the renderer with the scene, so refreshing will only be necessary when new channels have been introduced.
  • Removing channels from the scene will NOT remove them from the list of available channels until a new manual refresh is performed.
  • Active channels will NEVER be removed automatically, even if not available in the scene anymore. (will be saved with default values)

PARTITIONING

• Fixed a bug in the second Deadline submission mode (1 job per partition) - seeds were decremented incorrectly when submitting a range.

THINKING PARTICLES AND PARTITIONING

• Added TP Random Seed support to the Partition controls. All operators with a random seed can be affected. NOSEED is detected in DynamicSet Comments field and TP name.
• While adding Seed support to TP, also added an option to affect legacy particles seeds or not.
• Added a Thinking Particles Groups rollout prototype for selecting TP groups to render. Not hooked up with the renderer yet.

MATTE OBJECTS

• Removed options to save and load geometry as matte. (This was originally used to export to the Stand-Alone version of Krakatoa).
• Changed the behavior of the Named Selection Set lists in Max 9+ where editing or deleting a named selection set would remove it automatically from the active list in Krakatoa. If edited or deleted, the NSS will remain on the active list - if the NSS is created again, it will still be used by Krakatoa. If the NSS is moved to the left and it turns out that it has been deleted from the scene, it will disappear.

PRT LOADERS

• Replaced the Density source drop-down list with a simple checkbox "Load Particle Densities".
• Removed the "Load Normals" option.
• Fixed a bug preventing PRT Loaders from creating selection sets in Max 8.
• Added Gizmo Size controls (all animatable) to control the size of Object Space Modifiers. Initial size is based on the icon, but can be changed/keyframed subsequently.
• Playback Graph is now a float value and PRT Loaders will interpolate particle positions and velocities based on the closest full frame sample, allowing for smooth speed changes and correct motion blur.
• Fixed bug in Graph display that would hang if a frame had 0 particles as max. value.
• Added gradient displays for missing frames and CSV frames (count unknown). Showing count as ??? when CSV loaded.
• When exactly one file is selected in the listbox, the Add Files... will open the dialog at that path. If the editor is open and exactly one file is selected there, its path will be used. If 0 or more than 1 are selected, the defaults will be used as set in Preferences.

PARTICLE SCANNER UTILITY

• Switched to an internal Krakatoa method for checking particle counts which supports both PRT and BIN files. CSV will return no count as it is difficult to get without reading the whole file. CSV particle sequences will show up in a gradient like missing frames, but in the normal color like good frames.
• Added the option to save and open a text file containing the paths of all missing frames collected by the Scanner. It could be used to determine which frames need to be created again.

SHADOWS ON GEOMETRY UTILITY

• Added display of the current renderer so it is clear what renderer is active at the moment.