Krakatoa

#821 
Let's try some more debugging:

*What happens if you disable the FumeFX Follow in the second event? Does it start rendering stuff?
*If you would delete the whole PFlow and recreate it from scratch, does it still end up not rendering?

The PFlow Utility is part of Max 2010, so all you have to do is go to the Particle View’s “Tools” menu and call the “Synchronize Layers” and “Repair Cache System” options.

Another thing to look at - first of all, create a Krakatoa Toolbar as instructed in the documentation and drag all icons from the Krakatoa category onto it. It hurts me watching people going to the Render dialog’s Renderer Tab to open Krakatoa. Seriously, never use that.

One of the icons (also exposed in the Preferences rollout) lets you open the Krakatoa Log window. Switch it to Debug mode and look at the output when rendering. I expect it to report that “0 particles” we loaded. If you want, select the relevant lines, copy and paste them into a post or send us an email to the krakatoa support address with the content so we can see if there is anything strange there…

#822

ok. just had a long commute home. But I will follow up with the debug and toolbar install.
Might take a day though,

#823

Hi Bobo,

I dont know how or why but it works now.

Thanks,
Mike

#824

Just a heads up that we have posted an short tutorial dedicated to mixing of Additive and Volumetric rendering within the same particle system using Krakatoa v1.5.0 and higher:

http://software.primefocusworld.com/software/support/krakatoa/mixing_additive_and_volumetric_shading.php

On a related note, the online documentation is now also available as an offline CHM help file which can be downloaded from
http://software.primefocusworld.com/downloads/Krakatoa_1_5_1_38002_CHM.zip

Share And Enjoy!

#825

hi bobo
i created a paritcle simulation in realflow , then i import that with PRT loader .
i want to render that with voxel shader , but when i render that i see this :

i think voxel geometry is inverted .
whats the problem ? how can i solve that ?

thanx a lot

#826

There is not such thing as voxel geometry, but the Density is obviously very high, producing severe self-shadowing.
First thing to try is reducing the Final Pass Density - it is by default set to 5.0/-1.
Documentation of the controls and how to use them is here:
http://software.primefocusworld.com/software/support/krakatoa/main_controls.php

Now keep in mind that if you are loading a BIN file, it might contain a channel called “Density” with values that have nothing to do with Krakatoa’s concept of density. If you cannot get a better look by setting the global Final Pass Density to something like 1.0/-3 or 1.0/-4, then you might have to override the Density value using MagmaFlow. Try to reduce the density and if it does not help, please let me know and I will explain how to reset the incoming Density.

For particle rendering, we have a chapter in the help which explains how things can go wrong when density is too high.
http://software.primefocusworld.com/software/support/krakatoa/particle_density.php
For voxel rendering, the principles are similar, it just looks uglier when it is wrong :wink:

#827

hi bobo
thanx a lot for ur help , problem is solved now with:
fp density 1.0 and density exponent -5

i have another question (sorry i`m basic in krakatoa) :

can i increase quality for voxel ?

thanx again

#828

By default, the Voxel Filter Radius value is 1 which means “no filtering” but is the fastest setting. Increasing the Filter Radius to 2 will smooth out the rendering at the cost of performance. At the same time, since increasing Filtering also increases the apparent size of a particle in a voxel, you can balance the look by reducing the Voxel Size. For example, if Voxel Size is 1.0 and Filter Radius is 1, you can go to Voxel Size 0.5 and Filter Radius of 2 to get a similar look but with smoother voxels.

I highly suggest reading the documentation which has a large amount of example images, like this page:
http://software.primefocusworld.com/software/support/krakatoa/voxel_rendering_mode.php

Another thing you can do is play with the balance of the Lighting Pass Density vs. Shadow Pass Density to tweak the look of the cloud seen by the camera vs. the cloud as seen by the lights. Some shading artifacts can be fixed that way, too.

Also, if you are using a commercial copy of Krakatoa, you should be posting to our support forum instead.

#829

Hi everyone, first of im not really sure if im posting in the right place, but hope its okay.

@Bobo
I believe you made this tuturial at some point?
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/Disintegrate-Geometry-Objects-using-Frantic-Films-Krakatoa-and-Autodesk-3ds-Max_10691.html

If its alright I have a few questions to it, because I get stuck in some loose ends here and there.

step 5-6-7 about creating the 2nd Pflow and turning off the 1st one makes no sense to me because if I do turn off the first one, then I wont have any particles to bake, since that where the disintegrate effect is made…?

Uhm I have got it to work I think, I have made the particles, baked them and can sort of render them, but I have to create a new light setup for them since using Vray lights apparently everything blows up in bright white. However I kind of got the idea that light would not be need after everything is baked, shading, particles and so on? or am I wrong?

Thanks in advance, I will give more clear examples if none of what im saying makes any sense :slight_smile:

  • Thomas
#830

Another problem is I can’t seem to get the baking of the colour and ID’s correct following your guide :frowning:

http://thomaskc.dk/wip/krakatoa/butwhy.mov

( I know the effect itself is very bad and screwed but my problem is once the 2nd stage of the particles are activated they become white/black and do not keep their colour. )

thanks in advance.

  • THomas
#831

hi bobo
thanx a lot for helps
okay i post my other questions in the krakatoa forum

#832

Let’s start with the obvious questions: What version of Krakatoa, what version of Max?
The tutorial was written for 1.1.2 and in 1.5.x the procedures are slightly different.
Also, the loading of Color does not work in 3ds Max 2009 and earlier unless the Creative Extension is installed. If you are using Max 2010, then you are safe and just doing something wrong.

If you are using Krakatoa 1.5.x, the following changes apply:
*Particles do not render as self-illuminated if lighting is turned off, you have to provide an Emission channel (new in that version) with the values of the Color channel applied - there are several ways to do that, as explained in my Krakatoa Blog.

*Then, the Particle Flow operators for reloading PRT files have been changed to use a PRT Loader as the source. Thus, most of the steps involving the second PFlow (the first really belongs disabled as described) are different in the new version of Krakatoa. You have to create a PRT Loader, then add Krakatoa PRT Birth and Krakatoa PRT Update operators and instead of picking a sequence from disk, you pick the PRT Loader instead. There you check the Position, ID and Color channels for loading and your baked particles with the camera mapped colors should appear.

Please replay with the version information so I can look into what you might be doing wrong.

#833

@Bobo

Thanks a lot for the information! makes sense then.

Im running 1.5.x on max 2008.

reading the about the changes on the blog and giving it another go.

ill post the new result.

thanks again.

#834

Hmm Im thinking is it really necessary to do this in two steps, the baking i mean. couldn’t you just setup the particle spawn and the deflector effects with the camera mapping nodes and bake it all in one go?

#835

First of all, the tutorial does not work in the shipping verson of Max 2008 (we have a fixed version of Max 2008 in the office with an update from Orbaz that fixes the problem reading a Color channel, but most people don’t). It works in 2010 and in 2009 with Extension.

Second, if it was possible to do with a single pass, I would have done it (in fact, it IS possible to do, but using an inhouse plugin which you don’t have).

The problem with projecting colors onto moving particles is that your particles would be moving through the projection. But you want your colors LOCKED to the particles. As a particle moves through space, it should still keep the color it would get from the projection if it did not move at all.

So the first pass bakes the colors into the particles (including any camera moves that change colors from frame to frame because of the changing projection image).

Then the second pass reads the particles with locked colors and blows them in space.

Hope this helps.

#836

@Bobo

Thanks mate, helps a lot! and yeah it makes total sense actually.

Ill look into it, thanks again!

#837

hi,

maybe its a stupid question: i have three animated objects in one object (animation baked in pointcache). at this point i can’t seperate the objects.
this three objects emit particles (in one event). my problem: every emitting object have different colors (submaterial). now i want to bake the 3 colors into the particles. it sounds simple, but kraka doesn’t with submaterials?
thx. tom

#838

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know that I got everything to work as intended, thanks bobo.

http://thomaskc.dk/wip/krakatoa/3mill_krakatoa_render.mov

  • Thomas
#839

Glad to hear it worked.

I would suggest reducing the density a bit - usually it looks better if a single particle is not recognizable as a pixel. When you reduce the density, a particle will be perceived as “sub-pixel-sized”, but with 3 million the original object would still look quite solid…

#840

Hmm I hear you… that one was made with a density of 2,0 / -1 how much lower would you suggest it to go?