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Presets and History

  Available in: Krakatoa v1.0.0 and higher.


Getting the particles to look right in the final rendered image can take a lot of tweaking of various parameters. Krakatoa provides a highly sophisticated Presets and Render History sub-system to make sure you can save and load renderer settings and restore settings used to do test renderings at any time in the future.

Presets

Presets are used to manually store either the full set or a sub-set of rendering settings from the Krakatoa GUI to an INI file on disk. The Preset files are written to a sub-directory of the Plugin Configuration folder of 3ds Max: ..\Plugcfg\Krakatoa\presets\ and have the extension .KrakatoaPreset.

Other than the Render Presets implemented by 3ds Max for all renderers which provide granularity at Render Tab level, the Krakatoa Render Presets allow the user to specify exactly what to be saved or loaded with the highest precision possible - every single control or rollout can be included or excluded from saving or loading if desired.

Note: The standard 3ds Max Render Presets are fully supported by Krakatoa and are even used by the Krakatoa GUI, Switch Back From Krakatoa and Krakatoa Shadows Utility scripts to keep full records of a renderer's settings when switching between Krakatoa and other renderers.

Saving Presets

To save a Preset,

  • Expand the "Krakatoa:Presets and History" rollout
  • Press the "Save Preset..." button - a dialog showing a tree view of all supported rollouts and their controls will appear.
  • If you want to disable the saving of the controls belonging to a specific rollouts, uncheck the checkbox in front of the rollout.
  • If you want to disable the saving of specific controls, uncheck their corresponding checkboxes.
  • Enter a descriptive name in the text field at the bottom of the dialog.
  • Press the SAVE button to save the preset or Cancel to exit the dialog without saving.

Loading Presets

To load a Preset,

  • Expand the "Krakatoa:Presets and History" rollout
  • Press the "Load Preset..." button - a dialog showing a tree view of all saved rollouts and their controls of the currently selected preset will appear.
  • Select the desired preset name from the drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog.
  • If you want certain rollouts' controls or just specific controls to be excluded from loading, uncheck their corresponding checkboxes.
  • Press the LOAD button to load the preset or Cancel to exit the dialog without loading.

Support for Future Versions

When loading Preset or History files, only values currently supported by Krakatoa will be considered. Preset files saved in the current version of Krakatoa should remain usable in future versions as long as the control names have not changed.

Render History

Krakatoa provides an automatic Render History feature which is enabled by default. It can be disabled temporarily from the UI, but the state of the checkbox is not sticky. If you close and open the Scripted GUI again, the Render History will be enabled automatically. Since the size of Preset and History files is only about 3KB, we believe it is a good idea to keep the Render History enabled all the time.

  • The Render History feature will save a preset file with the current settings of the Krakatoa GUI before each rendering.

The settings will be stored in the same format as the Preset files, but in a different sub-directory ..\Plugcfg\Krakatoa\history\ and with the extension .RenderSettings.

  • When the "Save Render History" checkbox in the "Krakatoa:Presets and History" rollout is unchecked or if the Krakatoa Scripted GUI is not open, NO render history will be saved.
  • When saving multiple Partitions using the Krakatoa Particle Partitioning rollout, no history will be saved.
  • The Render History file will be named automatically using the current 3ds Max Scene Name and the current date and time.

Exploring the Presets and History Folders

  • Press the Explore Folder... button in the upper right corner of the rollout to open a Windows Explorer with the path ..\Plugcfg\Krakatoa\.
  • You can manually delete, copy, move, edit or just browse the settings files found in the sub-folders \Presets and \History. Any .KrakatoaPreset or .KrakatoaSettings files not placed in the respective sub-folders will remain "invisible" to the Presets/History system.
  • If you want to remove some older history files without deleting them, simply move them to a sub-folder of ..\Plugcfg\Krakatoa\history.
  • You can also copy history and preset files between computers to share settings with co-workers. Since the file names are based on the scene name and a time stamp, the history names will be unique with a very high probability.

Loading From History

  • You can load all or some of the settings used to create a specific rendering by pressing the "Load From History..." button and following the same steps described above for "Loading Presets".
  • The drop-down list in the Load Presets dialog will be automatically positioned at the History name selected in the LEFT drop-down list of the Compare Settings group of controls.

Compare Settings

Krakatoa provides means to compare the content of any Preset or History file to the Current Settings or any other Preset or History file. It also allows the copying of specific settings from either one of the compared files to the Current Settings in the GUI. This will let you load settings from previous successful renders or saved Presets in order to acquire similar output with your current scene.

Using the Compare Settings options

The "Compare Settings" group of controls in the "Krakatoa:Presets and History" rollout has two drop-down lists placed side-by-side. Each one can contain either all Presets or all History files found on disk, depending on the states of two sets of Radio Buttons labeled "Presets" and "History". In addition, the right set of files will display a special entry called [Current] on top of the list. This entry represents the current settings in the Scripted GUI.

  • When two valid Preset or History files have been selected in both lists, the comparison list box will show all controls and values which are different in the two files. Each line will represent a different pair of settings, listing the Rollout Name, the control name , the value found in the left file and the value found in the right file (or the [Current] state of the GUI). When the two files are identical, the list will remain empty.
  • When a line from the comparison list is selected, the current values from both files will be displayed in two text boxes with corresponding Set... buttons. You can press these buttons to take the value from the corresponding file and load it into the GUI (thus making it the current value of the control). If the right file is set to [Current], pressing the left "Set..." button will cause the right side to match the left side value - the currently selected difference line will disappear from the comparison list.
  • Alternatively, you can double-click the difference line in the comparison list - the value from the left list will be make current automatically. 
 NOTE: While using the "Compare Settings" feature allows you to move values from a file to the Current GUI settings 
 one by one interactively, if all you want is to load ALL settings from a History or Preset file, consider using the 
 "Load From History..." resp. "Load Preset" buttons described above for faster loading.
  • Current Preset and History files will be supported by future versions of Krakatoa. If a key stored in a Preset file does not exist in the Current settings anymore, or if an existing control is not present in an older Preset file, the comparison window will report it's value at the corresponding side as [no such key].

Updating The Settings

  • The Update button in the Compare Settings group of controls will force a refresh of the currently displayed history/preset files, but in general the update will be performed automatically when
    • the Presets/History radio buttons are changed,
    • new Preset or History files are generated manually or automatically
    • the Compare Settings drop-down lists are being changed or
    • the Set... buttons are being used.

Align and Scroll Lock

  • The Align button can be used to align the right drop-down list to the left drop-down list with one item offset. Typically, when you perform consecutive test renders, the History files will be created in the order of the renders. Since the History feature also orders the files in creation order, having the two lists aligned with an offset of one means that you can easily compare two consecutive attempts to render the same scene with slightly different settings.
  • Engaging the >Scroll Lock button will link the two lists permanently using the current offset, so scrolling either one of the lists will automatically reposition the other list, keeping the existing offset. This way, you can advance either of the lists by one History record and have the other list show the previous or following History record, thus showing the effect of the different settings on your scene.

Search Fields

  • Each drop-down list provides a text field for entering a search pattern, like "Skydome" or "*Cheese?".
  • When the field is empty, the corresponding list will show all available entries.
  • When the field is not empty, only records whose name matches the entered search pattern will be displayed.
  • Since the date and time of the record are also part of its name, you can filter history records by date, for example entering *3_6_2007 will show all records saved on that March 6th 2007. Note that Krakatoa will assume implicitly a * symbol at the end of the pattern. The search is Case-INsensitive.
    • SKY will search for any records STARTING with "SKY", like "SkyDome", but not "BlueSky"
    • *SKY will search for any records containing SKY anywhere in the name, so both "SkyDome", "TheSkyIsTheLimit" and "BlueSky" will be listed.
    • *3_?_2007 will search for any records containing a March 2007 date, where the day can be any character.
    • *3_??_2007 will search for March 10th to 31st.
    • NOTE that depending on your country specific Windows settings, the date might be in a different format, for example day first, then month and then year.

Scene Info

  • In the middle of the rollout, two list boxes display additional scene information about the two compared files. This information cannot be loaded but is useful to determine when and from where the Preset or History file was saved, what the render output path of the scene was set to, how many lights, geometry and Particle Flow objects it contained and what the User Notes were at the moment of saving.
  • Double-clicking the Path: or the Output: entry in either of the two Scene Info lists will print the path to the Krakatoa Log window. In addition, if the path exists, a copy of Windows Explorer will be opened at that location.

Sample Images

  • When the Save Image Sample checkbox is checked (default), a copy of the image rendered using the settings stored in the preset will also be saved to disk in the sub-directory ..\plugcfg\Krakatoa\samples\
  • The image will be saved as .EXR file using the current OpenEXR settings.
  • When selecting a History file from either of the two lists, if the corresponding EXR file can be located, it will be displayed as a thumbnail at the bottom of the screen.
  • If an image was saved but cannot be found anymore, the thumbnail will be displayed as gray with a red cross.
  • If no image was saved (in the case of manually saved Presets or a History file written in Save Particles mode), the thumbnail will be displayed as brighter gray with a red cross.
  • To open the full version of the image, click the corresponding thumbnail - the image is always saved in the original resolution.
  • The sample image would be saved even if no output was specified in the Render Scene dialog, which allows you to tweak settings and hit QUICK RENDER as often as you want, saving a copy of the resulting image and all settings that led to its creation automatically.
  • If you set both lists to History, select the latest History file in the left list and the previous file in the right list, when you render again, both lists will keep their relative positions but will show the NEW last and previous samples, allowing you to easily compare the result of the new settings to the previous ones after each preview render.

NOTES:

  • Presets and the [Current] settings entry do NOT include a Sample Image, only History files do.
  • History and Sample Images are only saved if the Scripted GUI is open and the corresponding options are checked.
  • You can delete the content of the \Samples\ folder anytime if you want to free up disk space. The thumbnails will become gray, but the History files and comparison features will still work as before.

Comparing Images in RAM Player

The thumbnails shown in the Presets and History rollout are scaled down versions of the actual output image. While you can open either one by clicking on the thumbnail, the RAM Player provides a way to compare the images of two History records with an A|B wipe. Select two History records you want to compare and press the "Compare Images in RAM Player" button to open both images. If either one is empty, the RAM Player will load only the existing image. if both thumbnails are empty, no RAM Player will be opened.