Please download and test the Beta 7 build of what is to become v1.6.0 in about a month.
The major changes/bug fixes in this build are:
[size=150]Installation[/size]
*New in-house developed dialog for specifying the license file/server location which actually works replaces the old FlexLM dialog.
[size=150]Bug Fixes[/size]
*A network rendering error where Deadline complained about a “Krakatoa OFF” dialog preventing it from starting has been fixed.
*A crash when loading a KMF preset via the KCM UI with MagmaFlow Editor closed has been fixed.
*When submitting a Krakatoa Rendering job via Submit Max To Deadline (SMTD), the Comment was taken from the Krakatoa Partitioning rollout instead. Now the comment and job name will be assigned just when a partition job is submitted and will not override the SMTD settings.
*Backgrounds were being added up incorrectly in Beta 6 when using Motion Blur and multi-threading, resulting in brighter color than expected. This has been fixed.
*PRT Volume handled modifiers incorrectly when no default selection existed. This has been fixed.
[size=150]Rendering and Render Elements[/size]
*The CustomData Render Element can now access more channels than just those requested by the Renderer itself. Thus accessing a channel like Mapping2 or Age will now cause that channel to be cached in memory and the data will be available for outputting to a Render Element image. This does not apply to custom-made channels that are not on the Memory Channels list.
*The CustomData Render Element will now default to the same Color->Output flow as regular KCMs.
*The list of render elements has been expanded to include Normal, Tangent, Velocity, ZDepth and SpecificLight elements, as well as separate elements for shader components, currently Diffuse and Specular from Phong Surface. Note that the previous compound Render Elements have been removed because they caused problems in Render Pass Manager and other Render Pass solutions which expect a Render Element to have a single possible output. Older scenes with Render Elements will require manual fixing.
*The SpecificLight element can be used to extract the lighting (including particle and light color, attenuation and specular highlights from Phong Surface) of a single light to a Render Element image. The ability to extract separate light and shadow info from the first light only has been removed for now.
[size=150]Matte Objects[/size]
*Added a new Matte Objects Explorer to Krakatoa to determine which Matte Objects specified in the Krakatoa GUI will end up affecting the rendering. It will take into account properties like Hidden, Hidden By Layer, Frozen with Hide Frozen enabled, Renderable, Visible To Camera etc.
[size=150]PRT Objects[/size]
*Added new menu options to the PRT Loader’s File Sequence Manager to load all PRT’s from a folder, or recursively from a folder structure. All sequences will be added as disabled in viewport regardless of preferences to avoid surprises.
*The PRT Volume UI has been changed to resemble the PRT FumeFX object’s UI. The corresponding PRT Volume Explorer has also been updated to reflect that.
*Added Out-Of-Range Type controls to the context menu of the Graph value in the PRT Loader.
[size=150]MagmaFlow[/size]
*Added To World and To View buttons to relevant Inputs (Position, Velocity, Acceleration, Normal and Tangent Channel and Vector Input nodes) for faster insertion of transform operators.
*The Transform Type (Point/Vector/Normal) will now be shown as §, (V) or (N) next to the Output socket’s name.
*Fixed shading of connected nodes in BlackOps - previously, some nodes were shaded as unconnected even when connected due to incorrect assumptions about the root node.
*In order to work around a new bug in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 which prevents custom tracks from changing their controllers, the MagmaFlow controllers had to be reworked to use List Controllers hosting the keyframe and the connect to track controllers. Instead of replacing controllers, MagmaFlow now just changes their weights, which has the nice side effect of preserving keyframe animation after connecting and disconnecting from a scene track.
*Added an option to the File menu of MagmaFlow to “Bake Controllers” for use in Krakatoa v1.5.x - this removes the list controllers and makes the 3ds Max scene usable with older versions of Krakatoa - for example if you want to give a scene to a person with an older version.
*Updated the right-click Node Creation menu and reworked the shortcuts to make more sense.
*Added Convert To Vector button to Float Channels and Float Input Nodes.
*Changed MagmaFlow to create a single Undo record for a whole node creation and auto-connect operation. In the past, a separate undo record was created for the node creation and for each auto-connect operation.
[size=150]PDV[/size]
*Changed the >AUTO checkbutton in the Particle Data Viewer to a drop-down list with 3 options: Manual (previously AUTO unchecked), Auto (previously AUTO checked) and Stats (new, shows only the averages in the bottom list without updating the detailed particle data). The Stats mode is up to 8 times faster to update when only the averages of large particle counts are needed.
[size=150]Schematic Flow[/size]
*Fixed crash in Schematic Flow when using VRay lights without an .ON property.
*Schematic Flow Matte Objects node will now turn red of one or more scene objects won’t render due to properties or layer settings. Added display of the objects to context menu with the reason for not rendering and an option to open a new Krakatoa Matte Objects Explorer dialog to figure out the issues. Similar options added to the Krakatoa GUI’s Matte Objects rollout.
*Sped up the Schematic Flow updates in production scenes with thousands of geometry objects - the right-click menu of Geometry Vertices node attempted to add thousands of entries, now all scene object menus will be limited to the first 40 entries. Update time with 1800 objects went from 40 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
*Improved the subjective speed of the Schematic Flow by speeding up the rollover highlights redrawing. Previously, the whole tree was rebuilt when moving the mouse away from a node, now only the nodes will be redrawn. To actually rebuild the tree, either left or right click in the view or use the Update menu item.
*Removed all callbacks for updating Schematic Flow, since a single click anywhere in the flow will cause a fast update. Changes to the Krakatoa GUI will still be reflected correctly, but changes to the scene like hiding/unhiding/creating/modifying/deleting objects will not cause an automatic update. This is to speed things up when working in heavy production scenes with thousands of objects.
[size=150]UI[/size]
*Added a color indicator and a button to the Matte Objects rollout to display validity info about the currently specified Matte Objects.
*Changed the “Bytes/Particle” label to a button that can be used to force an update of the channels display, added more channel names to the list to support the new Render Elements that can request channels to be cached at render time.
See software.primefocusworld.com/sof … _notes.php for all release notes since the beginning of the Beta.
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