Well, IIRC the main reason was the metadata support in the shader definition which was added around version 2. Of course, I could be wrong and RSL could be supporting the same feature, but I was told it did not.
It helped tremendously exposing the shaders to our host application the way we wanted them which in turn made the life of simple artists with zero GSL knowledge significantly easier. This is of course not a feature of the language per se, but it made a huge usability difference.
This is really OT and I am out of here, too.
Good to know! It must be hidden pretty well or called something else, because I could not find any mentioning of the word “metadata” in the 3Delight documentation.
This is btw. not a language feature but one of the compiler.
I know, otherwise I wouldn’t have written “This is of course not a feature of the language per se” in my previous post
That’s because the term ‘metadata’ is a relatively recent buzzword (i general, but particularly as its use in VFX goes). Even before computers existed, there was “data about data”.
I wonder how much memory needed for Krakatoa?
Everytime I try to save out my fumefx files to disc within krakatoa it gives me an memory error.
I have a rather simple setup with a pflow operator that generates 200000 particles, a fumefx grid with only smoke. All I want to do is to save out a prt file from krakatoa, and it gives me some memory error when he try to load in my fumefx files that I saved to disc first.
While having a lot of memory when using Krakatoa is a must, saving particles from Krakatoa does not use ANY memory above what Max/PFlow/FumeFX already use. Saving just gets particles from the source and dumps them to disk without loading the data into Krakatoa-managed memory.
From your post, it appears that the problem is when you are loading the already saved particles for rendering via a PRT Loader? In that is the case, the 200K particles should not use too much memory on a 4GB system, but if you are running 32 bit OS/Max/Krakatoa and resources are already used by Max and plugins AND the memory is highly fragmented, memory errors can occur. This is why we recommend using 64 bit OS/Max/Krakatoa to be able to use all memory without being affected by fragmentation. Plus it is twice as fast.
If the problem happens when saving, it would be a mystery for me because Krakatoa does not use memory when saving particles, only FumeFX/PFlow would.
Can you provide a screenshot of the error message you are getting? Also, please specify the version of Max and Krakatoa you are running, including 32/64 bitness.
You could also keep an eye on the Task Manager to see how much memory is used before and during Krakatoa rendering/saving. Try rebooting the machine and launching a fresh Max session, then rendering the same scene immediately - does that change anything? (memory fragmentation would be low in this case).
As with all bug reports, it is highly recommended to provide clear step-by-step description of the problem so we don’t have to read “between the lines”.
For example
*I saved 200K particles from PFlow driven by FumeFX to a PRT sequence with these channels:…
*I created a PRT Loader and selected the saved PRT sequence.
*I pressed the Render button in the Krakatoa GUI (a list of enabled features might be useful)
*RESULT: “Out Of Memory” dialog box with OK button.
or
*I created 200K particles in Pflow driven by FumeFX.
*I set up Krakatoa to save the following channels to PRT sequence:…
*I pressed the “SAVE PARTICLES” button
*RESULT: "Out Of Memory: dialog box with OK button.
Can someone point me some tips on how to color particles based on particle age with krakatoa ? Basically i hv a scene comet like ,with color mapping based on particle age ,as the particles get older they go trough a gradient ramp map.
In adv. Thanks for your time .
Fisrt thanks alot for the link johnny ,i tried to fallow the tutorial ,but unfortunatelly i was not able to get it to work . For some reason after adding the second KCM to the PRT Loader ,nothing showed up on the render anymore .
Anyone has a simple setup willing to share on gradient setup on magmaflow ?
Thanks Once again .
i spent more time looking in the forums and Primefocus tutorials…
Another lesson learnt.
some good news though. The shot is realy coming together and in terms of work flow I’m much happier. I’m sending all the previz and tests to the Director today.
As soon as I can show it on here with breakdowns I will.
Either turn on Force Additive Mode or assign a Krakatoa Material to the PRT Loader and add the Gradient Ramp to the Emission Channel of the material and turn on Use Emission. If you want the Emission effect brighter turn up the Density Scale value in the KRK material.
OK so am getting almost everything I want from Krakatoa now. Although I think I have found an issue.
After reading the FAQ and taking all of your advice. I can render per PFflow events using the Phantom render options for standard workflow, no problem.
Although this doesnt work when you have a fumeFX follow in the event.
basically I have a fumeFX object source Sphere that drops through the floor. and I want to render in Krakatoa only the resulting impact using the FumeFX sim for the great fluid movement.
to do this I have a Fumefx follow in the first event
then a collision test with the ground
then a fumefx follow in the second event
in the second event I have the Phantom renderer
in the Krakatoa render options PFlow Geometry is turned off.
oddly when you render that you get nothing. Not even the watermark when rendering larger images.
I watched the video and could not find anything wrong with your setup.
So I opened a scene that had FumeFX sim in it, create a PFlow that looks exactly like yours, drove the particles with FumeFX Follow in both events and sent them out to the second event via Collision test. Set the second event to Phantom, left the global to Geometry and it rendered just like I would expect it - I could check PFlow Geometry and the first event would render, I could check PFlow Phantom and the second event would render, I could check both and the whole system would render.
At this point, I have NO idea why your system would not render, but one possible issue could be layer mismatch in the PFlow itself. If you have Box #1 or the PFlow extension to Max 2009 or Max 2010, you could use the PFlow Utility to sync the PFlow to a single layer. (If you don’t have layers in your scene, then ignore me). Sometimes it can happen that you created the PFlow on one layer, then did something else in the scene and the active layer changed to one that is either hidden or disabled for rendering, then you added the second Event to PFlow and it ended up on the wrong layer. The only way to fix this is to use the Synchronize Layers utility mentioned above, or recreate the second event while on the correct active layer.
This is just a shot in the dark based on my experience with PFlow. I don’t see anything else wrong in the video you posted, but I could be just overlooking something…
