Can we write a PRT cache from maya and use in Krakatoa MX?

Deprecated Krakatoa Maya Beta Discussion
1

That’s my question.

I’m facing a problem to simulate some things in max, max is terribly slow, and nParticles is several times faster, so ithough that maybe i can use KrakatoaMY to write a prt cache and use it in max with frost.

Can that be done?

Cheers.

2

You cannot write out PRT files in the current release of Krakatoa MY. However, writing PRTs is a feature we consider to be necessary, so we will provide support for it by the first public release.

3

Don’t we have a stand-alone PRT saver in Krakatoa SR that could be called from MEL?

4

Bobo is correct. I was over-thinking it. Krakatoa MY has a PRT Exporter for Maya particle and nParticle systems.

To use it, make sure the Krakatoa MY renderer is installed, and use the following MEL command (you can modify the channels as you see fit):

string $channelInfo[] = { "rgb", "float16[3]", "velocity", "float16[3]", "opacity", "float32", "particleId", "uint32", "position", "float32[3]" };
PRTExporter( "myParticleFile.prt", $myParticlesSceneObject, $channelInfo );
5

I’ve written a Python function that exports prt files into the Maya project’s particle dir. I’ve attached it to this email.
krakatoa_utils.py.txt (3.42 KB)

6

Awesome! That is a handy script, thanks for posting it.

7

No problem.

As I get the free time to experiment with Maya Krakatoa, I’ll probably be improving and cobbling together more Python scripts. I’ll post any that can help the community. In a few weeks I’ll probably set up a Github repository that anyone can clone. If anyone has some changes of their own, I can fold them into the code as well.

Feel free to use, augment, distribute.

8

Here’s an update to the script.

  • added the ability to cancel with escape key.
  • added subframe sampling ability. It calculates the subframes using the setting from the user’s global “Playback by” preference in Window–>Settings/Preferences–>Settings–>Time slider.
  • added an error check for the loaded MayaKrakatoa.mll. It was throwing a Pymel MelUnknownProcedureError exception.
  • fixed a bug where the start frame defaults to 1. Now it will use the actual start frame from the timeline.

Notes:

  • subframe sampling now assumes the same subsampling that the user is currently playing back by. If your particle is cached, there’s no need for subsample so, for efficiency, the user should set the “Playback by” preference to 1.0 before PRT export. I’ll probably do a check for cache in the next version which will skip subframe sampling on the presence of particle cache on all selected particle objects. If even one particle is not cached, I’ll do subsampling by user pref since that’s what he expects to see from his own playback.

  • the progress dialog is a little wonky(won’t display properly). This doesn’t affect the functionality of the script. I’ll fix the display in the next version.
    krakatoa_utils.py.txt (4.64 KB)