I use KrakatoaSR along with C4D, but I have a question to the Max and Maya user who have a more evolved Krakatoa-plugin.
How do you visually integrate the Krakatoa-render in your scene when Karakatoa seems not to render any shadows on non-particle-objects or is that possible with your plugins ?
In C4D (with Krakatoa (Effex)-Plugin), Krakatoa is performed as a post-effect and added after the main rendering (Vray, Iray, AR), but only the particles have a shading, no krakatoa-shadows can be produced from the particles onto non-particle objects in the scene.
Here is a first rough test I made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLq6udb60w&feature=youtu.be
As you can see, no shadows are produced by the particles on the floor, wall or the Buddha.
In general the way to solve this would be to export a shadow map from renderer A, and apply it to the lights for renderer B. However, regular depth-based shadow maps are not particularly good when using Krakatoa because of the volumetric nature of the render.
The way we solved this problem in Krakatoa is we added support to export “deep” shadow maps from lights. These deep shadow maps are in our own custom EXR format, so they are not simple replacements for depth-based maps.
In Krakatoa MX, we have a shadow map plugin called “Krakatoa Shadows”. This plugin can read our deep shadow map format.
Krakatoa MY does not support these deep shadow maps because Maya does not allow for programmable shadow plugins. Thus, I believe we would have to write a custom Maya light to support our deep shadow maps. We have not done so in Maya.
So just to be clear there is no method currently for casting any shadows from particles onto the matte geo? For instance the water of a waterfall casting shadows on the rocks below? I have been successful in casting shadows from the rocks onto the particles(water), but it looks wrong if the particles don’t then cast shadows on the geo underneath it. Any suggestions of a workaround?