How do I turn off KCM automatic renaming?

Deprecated Krakatoa 1.5 Beta Discussion
1

I forget, how do I turn off the KCM automatic naming? I have a bunch of KCM_Color’s that I am using to display various values, and I keep getting them mixed up.

  • Chad
2

I could add an option to disable the auto-renaming. Right now, it is on all the time. Good call…

EDIT: Done.
There will be a new option “Disable Auto-Renaming” in the KCM’s UI. When unchecked (default), updating the MagmaFlow will update the name to reflect the Output type. When checked, the renaming will be off and you could name the modifier whatever you want. Every new modifier will have the option turned off, regardless of what you did with the previous modifier.

3

Dunno if this is too late to chime in, but could you put the checkbox in the modifier panel UI, not the MagmaFlow UI? Since the typical means of renaming the modifier is done in the modifier stack, having the checkbox nearby would be helpful.

  • Chad
4

It IS in the Modify Panel, it is a property of the modifier stored in the ParamBlock, not an Editor option. The Editor will query that property and rename or not on Update.

5

Great. Thanks!

6

1.5.0.37202

Trying this out in 2009 x64 sp1…

I have a PRT Loader with a KCM, which renamed itself correctly to KCM_Color. I add another KCM, and no matter what the output is, it stays Krakatoa Channels. The second KCM processes fine, just the name doesn’t reflect it.

  • Chad
7

The name is updated by the MagmaFlow editor (MAXScript code) whenever an AUTO update is performed or you press the UPDATE button.
If you add a KCM, turn off AUTO and add another KCM, the second one won’t change its name unless you update it.
I cannot repro what you are seeing any other way, please provide new step by step description if you feel I am missing something.

Also note that the name has nothing to do with what the KCM does, it was just a convenience feature so you know what its output is. So it will work regardless.

8

I tried update, auto, interactive… None of them triggered it. I’ll try a fresh scene monday when I get back to the office.

9

Looking at the code, the renaming is inside a try()catch() with a bunch of other operations - if you managed to produce some other bug that triggered the error trap, the renaming would never happen.
It would be interesting to disable that error trap for a moment and see what kind of crash that modifier would produce :wink:
We can talk about this on Monday and try to debug it, you might have uncovered some other bug in the update code…

10

It’s an error with redraw apparently.

Adding/removing a modifier makes it update correctly.
Deselecting/reselecting the PRT Loader makes it update correctly.
$.Modifiers returns #modifiers(Krakatoa Channels:KCM_TheCorrectName)

So it’s probably not an issue with setting the name, but with getting the node to refresh the modifier stack.

  • Chad