We were able to reproduce the problem. The error appears to be in the MaxHair SDK provided by Autodesk, so it is out of our direct control. We have reported the problem to Autodesk and they will be investigating the cause.
We will keep you posted. If they can fix the issue, we will try to provide an updated build.
We were able to reproduce the problem. The error appears to be in the MaxHair SDK provided by Autodesk, so it is out of our direct control. We have reported the problem to Autodesk and they will be investigating the cause.
We will keep you posted. If they can fix the issue, we will try to provide an updated build.
Ok, thank you for that.
hey I was wondering if anyone could help me with a simple magma flow. I have a PRT sequence, of a vein growing, I am meshing it in frost I want the radius to change by age, so the first particles are small in radius and grow up to a point and so on. I know its simple but I find magma flow intimidating.
The simplest way would be to predefine age/lifespan prior to caching the PRT Sequence. Where are you getting your PRT seq particles from?
Some pertinent reading material:
http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-magmaflow-fading-by-age
If the PRTs contains Age and LifeSpan channels from, say, PFlow, FROST has the ability to scale the Radius internally even without a Magma! Just check the “Change Scale With Age” option, set Sync by to LifeSpan, click the >> icon next to the “Change Scale…” label and select “Grow Over Lifespan” - this will set keys with values 0.0 to 1.0 on frame 100. This will cause a particle with 100.0*Age/LifeSpan of 0.0 to 0.0, and a particle that is about to die to 1.0. Of course, you can change the keys to go from 0.5 to 3.5 or anything…
You CAN do that with a Magma, but it is easier with the built-in Frost controls.
Hello,
I know I’ve already posted this question but I really need to know how to solve this, as I searched without success.
When I add a krakatoa channel modifier on a prt volume, the magma flow interface is the same as I always knew (see pic-1), but, when I save the max file, and open it in a new instance of max later on, then the krakatoa channel modifier behaves differently, controls have disappeared from the modify panel and, when I open magma flow the interface is also changed, and I cannot load kmf files (the loaded lcm in the pic is from the previous instance of max). Another annoying this is that the magma flow interface is very laggy and slow when I moves nodes. So I decide to delete the krakatoa channel modifier and I make a new one, and suddenly the controls are there and the magma flow editor interface is the old and smooth one (pic-2).
I wanted to get used to the new interface, no problem with that, but since I saw that there are other issues like the impossibility to open kmf files anymore, the swapping and laggy interface, etc, I really need to know how to deal with that now.
Does anyone lived the same experience in krakatoa 2? Help woulb be appreciated.
Thank you.
We posted an updated 2.0.1 build which should fix the slow updates on some machines (it was always fast on mine for some reason, but slow on my laptop).
What you are seeing is a BIG misunderstanding, I will have to figure out how to document it better.
The Krakatoa Channels Modifier is Magma 1.6. Even in 2.0, it is the same old modifier. It supports only one output, lacks a lot of the new operators, uses a single Editor for all KCMs and so on. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE IT unless you are passing data back to people using Krakatoa 1.6. You are supposed to use the modifier called “MagmaModifier”. That is the 2.0 implementation. Note that the “KCM” icon and the Krakatoa > Add Krakatoa Channels Modifier… menu item both apply the NEW MagmaModifier.
When a 1.6 scene is loaded and Krakatoa MX 2.0 is installed, the old Krakatoa Channels Modifiers in the scene are converted automatically to Magma 2.0 Modifiers. That explains the difference in the appearance. The new modifier (once you update and fix the slow updates) is vastly superior to the old KCMs. It can still load KMF files (File > Import Magma 1.x KMF Flow…) and will attempt to convert them to the new flow format. You can also use the browser in the editor’s command panel when no node is selected to load both 2.0 and 1.x flows without using the File menu.
There is a non-sticky option under System Preferences to skip the conversion of old KCM to new MagmaModifiers, and we found a few bugs in 3ds Max itself that prevented this conversion in some cases (a 2.0.2 build should be available next week with more fixes, but I can post the updated scripts if anyone wants them).
The Magma 2.0 has a huge amount of improvements - separate editor per modifier, multiple Output nodes per flow, multiple Output sockets per node, Default values for Inputs, MAXScript-based flow format for sharing online, better Debugging mode, custom Texture Sampling, Proxy Particles data sampling, better geometry operators with access to more channels, better Curve operator, Normalize option in Noise functions and much more.
So we kept the old KCM around for compatibility, but you should start learning the new MagmaModifier. You can download the updated build from
http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/krakatoa-downloads/
Things are clearer for me now.
The new build has also eliminitated the lag in magma flow interface, it’s now smooth.
I wanted to get used to new magma flow editor anyway and train on it so I can get the most of the software.
Nice : )
Thank you
Thanks for that, the reason I didn’t want to go to the original pflow and set it up there is because that file is lets say a bit crash prone and i am finding it hard to adjust the pflow to my new needs, I was hoping i could just reuse the prts that I had saved before. But I guess that would be simpler if I can make the file work.
Hi guys is is somehow possible to select (not use volumeselect) particles like in pflow selection rollout, whitch are loaded in prt loader and then detele them. I tryed use prl loader in pflow select some particles in selection rolout but when i use delete operater with delete only selected otion nothing happens, can you help me how to solve this problem?
Thank a lot
There are three ways to delete particles - if it is a PRT Loader, you can create some simple geometry objects (e.g. Boxes) to include the particles you want to get rid of, then add these objects into a Named Selection Set and use the Particle Culling option to remove.
The second approach is using a Magma modifier to set the selection of the particles. You can use various logical approaches here, but you cannot really click them individually, it has to be procedural. In Magma 2, you can use InVolume to check if a particle is in a volume. Then drop a Krakatoa Delete on the stack to delete.
And finally, Volume Select CAN be used to pass the selection up and then delete, but you said you don’t want to use it…
There is no way to specify particles with the mouse though.
You could and this shouldn’t take take long but recreate a new pflow and just include same particle counts/spawns/events/age tests/ and add appropriate delete ops in events where applicable. Forget all of the other operators like speed/rotation/ect. You just need the age/time info.
Cache that new system out to prt and blend the new age/lifespan channels into the existing prts via KMM.
Hi Bobo thanks a lot but finaly i found the fourth clicking way It is in pflow group selection operator and selection condition by snapshot.
I was under the impression you asked how to do it LIKE in PFlow but WITHOUT PFlow. Glad it worked the 4th way… 
I only needed some way to do that. For me It is weird, that when you are using some birth loaders inside pflow, the selection is not distributed to operators. So Im happy that at least this methot works.
Hello,
I have the problem that when I want to have realtime feedback in the viewport (here with the “control particle density and color by age using magma flow” tutorial from the doc), it doesn’t work while “auto” is checked and I’m forced to click manually the update button to have an actualisation in the viewport. I’m using MF 2.
Does anyone has a solution to fix this, or am I missing something?
Thank you
I like the splash screen you did, I would really like to do the same.
Can you tell how you changed the image? Before max 2012, it was a splash.* file, but now I don’t find it and splash seems uneditable…
