Is there a way I can see what values are going into my exported channels before I send my PRT to render? tks.
The typical approach is to load the PRT in a PRT Loader (which is the way to render it anyway) and open the Particle Data Viewer (PDV) which is accessible via the Main Controls rollout in the Krakatoa GUI (bottom row of buttons), the Krakatoa Menu or the Krakatoa Toolbar (if you have set up one).
The PDV is a spreadsheet-like dialog which will list a subset of the particle records and display the content of each channel.
You can also select one or more entries from the list to visualize the particles in the viewport. Holding SHIFT and clicking the channel’s title will display the value in the viewport next to the particle.
This approach is applicable not only to all PRT objects (PRT Loader, Volume, Hair etc.), but also to Particle Flow and Thinking Particles.
Here is the relevant documentation:
thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-part-data-viewer/
If I misunderstood your question, please clarify!
thanks Bobo, I have been sending my prt to render but for some reason the age and lifespan channels return 0 in the PRT. I checked and made sure that I had them selected for saving in the channels dialog so I was trying to see if I could look at the channel data before I sent the prt so that I could debug why the data wasn’t coming over from my Thinking Particles setup. When I tried to run the PDviewer on the Thinking particles I got an error that said, “–Unknown Property “” in ReferenceTarget:ReferenceTarget”
So I suspect there is something in my TP setup that Krakatoa doesn’t like but I am not sure what it is right this minute.
Can you please post the versions of TP, Krakatoa and Max you are using?
For example, I haven’t tested PDV with TP5 in Krakatoa 2.1.3 under Max 2013… I know it used to work with TP4 in Max 2010 in older versions of Krakatoa, but many things might have changed. Knowing your exact configuration will help us look for the issue!
Sure thing, I am using TP 4.0.7.5, Krakatoa v2.0.2.46508 on Max 2012 update 7. Another thing that might help is that the other day I was getting a similar problem whereby I kept getting 0 in the velocity channel. In my TP setup I had two particle groups nested into an overall group and as soon as I took these two groups out of the nesting I was getting velocity data again in the PRT but that wasn’t the case this time for the age and lifespan properties that I am having trouble with now.
I will need a (simple) scene that shows the problem, so far I am unable to reproduce it using TP4.