Previous Topic (None)

Features Overview

Particle Sources

Input particles from 3ds Max particle systems like Particle Flow and legacy particle systems (PArray, SuperSpray etc.), as well as 3rd party particle systems like Cebas Thinking Particles.
Use geometry vertices as particles.
Load (and save) particle files in Krakatoa's PRT format, CSV files, or RealFlow BIN files.

Render using Volumetric, Additive or Constant Alpha shading models. The volumetric model simulates attenuation due to the density of particles that the light passes through, accurately modeling physical light.
Particles can be rendered self-illuminated, or with volumetric lighting. When the particles have normals, optional specular shading can be calculated.
Shade particle color and density with 3dsMax material's color and opacity. Alternatively supply a custom color, or use blended z-depth or blended camera distance to render a form of a Z-Depth pass.
Native Krakatoa Motion Blur and Depth Of Field effects are supported. The 3ds Max built-in multi-pass effects can also be used for compatibility, but are generally slower.
Cache the results of the particle pipeline in RAM, either before and after the lighting phase. This allows quick adjustment of lighting parameters, camera placement and particle density.
Additionally and optionally cache the results of the lighting pass in RAM for even faster camera placement and particle density adjustments.
The light behavior in environments like air and water can be simulated using the Ambient Participating Medium Extinction (APME) feature.

Save sequences of particle files to disk in PRT, CSV or BIN file formats.
Write all the channels from the particle sources to disk for full generality when loading later, or minimize disk storage by baking materials into a single color per particle.
The list of channels to be saved can be customized. The PRT and CSV file formats support arbitrary channels, including Position, Velocity, Normal, all 100 UVW channels supported by 3ds Max, and many more.

Use the Krakatoa Partitioning feature to render more particles than 3ds Max particle systems can process at once. Also parallelize large particle simulation jobs over multiple machines on your Deadline render farm. Partitioning generates massive particle counts by evaluating the same system multiple times with different random seeds for each partition.
Partitioned files can be recombined by Krakatoa and rendered as a single particle cloud. Effectively, the only limitation on particle counts is the available RAM.

Load specified scene geometry to act as Matte Objects, occluding particles from the camera view and casting shadows onto particle systems.
Load Z-Depth passes created in other Renderers to act as an occlusion map, for example to capture fine detail from microdisplacement in VRay, Gelato, mental ray etc. and occlude particles based on the displacement without having the render-time geometry available as occlusion object.
Use shadowing attenuation maps created during the rendering process to project shadows from particles onto scene geometry in other renderers. A Shadow Utility simplifies the process of switching between renderers and re-applying the shadowing attenuation maps to the scene lights. See tutorial here.

The Particle loader (PRT Loader) allows the loading and preview of particle files in the 3ds Max viewport, and specifies how particles will load and render in Krakatoa.
Transformations like Translation, Rotation and Scaling can be applied to the PRT Loader.
3ds Max Object Space and World Space Deformation Modifiers can be applied to the particles just like to any other object. Both particle positions, velocities and normals will be deformed.
Custom geometry objects can be used as Culling Volumes for selectively excluding particles from rendering, acquiring normals from the culling geometry and removing particles inside or outside a user-defined threshold.
Animatable Playback Graph option, Offset and Range values can be used to retime particle sequences with correct position and velocity interpolation.

The dedicated Krakatoa File Operators can be used to load particle sequences saved to PRT, CSV or BIN file formats back into Particle Flow, including dynamic updating of newborn and dying particles.
The Krakatoa Options Operator can be used to copy Color and Density data from the Particle Flow Scripted Channels into the Krakatoa Color and Density channels without passing the data through the 3ds Max shading system. Thus, MAXScript and Box #3 Data Operators can be used as a custom shading language to define colors based on particle properties etc.
The additional Krakatoa Geometry Test Operator implements the particle culling technology available in the Krakatoa PRT Loader as a Particle Flow operator. It can be used to send out particles based on a geometry volume test and surface proximity.

Presets can be saved from any portion of the available UI rollouts/controls via a TreeView-based dialog. Presets can be loaded fully or partially using the same dialog.
Each rendering performed while the Krakatoa GUI is open will automatically create a History record including all GUI settings, statistics about the scene and render/save time and a full copy of the render output image. The output of each History record can be seen as a thumbnail in the Krakatoa GUI.
The GUI settings of any two History or Presets records can be automatically compared to determine what values were different.
Any History/Preset settings can be compared to the current settings and acquired as current settings to achieve a similar render output as the one stored in the History.
Both lists can be searched using wildcard pattern.
Two thumbnails are being displayed at the same time for visual comparison of the outputs of any two History or Preset records. The full images can be loaded into the RAM Player for complete comparison with A|B wipes with a single click.