WARNING - THIS BUILD REQUIRES AN UPDATE TO DEADLINE SUBMISSION SCRIPT. PLEASE SEE SEPARATE POST IN THIS THREAD FOR AN UPDATE.
Krakatoa Build 0.9.12 is now available.
To install, download and unzip krakatoa0912.zip (attached to this thread.) Uninstall any previous Krakatoa builds, then run the krakatoa.0.9.12.msi installer.
Release notes follow.
So what happened to Build 0.9.11?
We had a candidate 0.9.11 which we intended to post last week but decided to wait a bit and add some more features. Also, it sounded like something designed by Osama B.L. and it did not feel politically correct.
Changes from Beta Build 0.9.10 to 0.9.12 (as of March 7th, 2007)
GENERAL
Finished refactoring of the Particle Streams system to allow adding and removing custom channels.
Added support for Custom and Factory Defaults.
Custom Defaults can be created from the current GUI settings using a new button in the Preferences rollout.
When a new instance of Krakatoa is created, these settings will be used to initialize all settings.
Another button in Preferences removes the Custom Defaults and reverts to Factory Defaults by renaming the INI file with the Custom defaults from .INI to .BAK
The custom defaults can be edited manually in the INI file if necessary
Moved all INI files related to Krakatoa to the same Krakatoa sub-folder of the Max PlugCFG folder and consolidated the data a bit.
The MAXScript render() method finally works as expected and can be used to render or save particles.
RENDERING AND SAVING
Attempt to save to empty path now handled correctly with pop-up message.
Added support for Near and Far Camera Clipping Planes
No VFB when saving. VFB closes when saving, opens when rendering.
Limited Motion Blur Segments to 2 - 1 and 0 make no sense. To turn off, uncheck >Use Motion Blur
3ds Max Multi-Pass Motion Blur is now supported. It will be much slower than the Krakatoa version as it has to load the particles N times - once for each pass, but if you want to match the Max look, you can now use it. Make sure Krakatoa's >Use Motion Blur option is turned off when using it to avoid double-blurring the particles. NOTE that Max Multi-Pass DOF is not supported yet!
Added a progress display when using the H (History) buttons in the Advanced File Controls area. Using this feature requires sorting of all history files by creation date and extracting the necessary info, so with thousands of files it might take a couple of seconds. In addition, optimized the code so it sorts much faster now.
Motion Blur Pass Number will be displayed in the Render Progress text.
Current Light being processed will be displayed in the Render Progress text.
CACHING
Allowing the rendering of frame sequences with PCache and LCache turned on. Previously, rendering of multiple frames was disabled in cache mode.
Changed the Cache Size report right-click menu to show Megabytes instead of bytes.
Selecting the Cache Size item in the menu copies the value to the Log Window.
PRT LOADERS
Added Particle Density Source drop-down list to use Saved Density, Material Opacity or Both
Added Playback Graph option and spinner to control animation playback using keyframes.
Added display of Particle Count (Disk, Render, View) in the GUI
Added display of Particle Count in the Viewport next to the bounding box.
Frame Offset and Playback Graph now disabled when "Load Single Frame Only" is checked.
Strict File Name check for PRT sequences - if a file in the sequence is missing, Krakatoa will throw an error and stop rendering. This is to ensure consistent rendering if a single file was not created or deleted.
Added an option to specify the particle display type - Small Dots, Large Dots and Velocity.
Small Dots is the mode used by PFlow and Krakatoa 0.9.10
Large Dots is the mode used by Krakatoa 0.9.6
Velocity is similar to Lines in PFlow (but orders of magnitudes faster). When there is no velocity, no particles will be drawn. PFlow switches automatically to small dots when the velocity becomes 0, but this is time expensive and thus not supported by the PRT Loader. If you want to see static particles, switch to Small Dots.
PARTITIONING
Added "Increment Seeds of Selected Objects Only" option. It is supported in both Local and Deadline mode.
Partitioning on Deadline now provides two modes
One job with as many tasks as partitions, where each task renders a whole partition via MAXScript.
Multiple jobs where each job renders a partition and each task represents a frame. (the old mode)
Added "Concurrent Tasks" and "Limit Tasks to Number of CPUs" options. When rendering in One Job/Task Per Partition mode, this allows one machine to dequeue multiple tasks (as long as there is enough memory) and save partitions from multiple Max sessions employing all CPUs. These controls define how many tasks to dequeue. For example, if set to 4 and true, a machine with 4 CPUs would dequeue 4 partitions at once, a machine with 2 CPUs only 2. NOTE: In Deadline 2.6, you have to explicitly allow this by disabling the "Fail On Existing Process" option if it is enabled (it is disabled by default so you probably don't have to change anything). In Deadline 2.7, the "Fail..." option will be overriden by the submission for the particluar job only.
Changed the incrementing of Partitions so that the first partition does not increment at all and produces results identical to the base particle system. Partition two offsets the seed by 1 and so on. After each partition, the seeds will be decremented to ensure the system is back to its original state. This is especially important when calculating on Deadline since Deadline could continue with the next partition without reloading the file.
Reworked the Local Partitioning mode to use similar code to the new Deadline mode.
Two progress bars will show the frame within the partition and the partitions progress.
Pressing Esc. will cancel the saving.
A text line will report the partition, frame, elapsed time and the ETA and also mentions that pressing Esc. will cancel the saving.
Deadline Jobs now have the correct Output Path for the PRT files included, so Ctrl+O opens the Windows Explorer at the correct path and the option to copy the output path is now available.
MATTE OBJECTS
Added option to load a pre-rendered Depth Map sequence, allowing for example clipping against render-time displacement geometry from Gelato or VRay.
Support for Camera Space Z Depth maps in OpenEXR format from Gelato - pixel values represent the Z depth in camera space using world units.
Support for Inverted Normalized Camera Space maps from 3ds Max Render Elements - pixel values represent the normalized distance between a near and far clipping plane and require these Near and Far values to be entered. In this mode, white pixels are near, black pixels are far.
Support for Normalized Camera Space - like above, but white values are at the Far plane, blacks at the Near plane.
All 3 modes currently support OpenEXR files only (to ensure highest precision).
SHADOWS ON GEOMETRY (WIP)
Currently only Spot/Direct Lights are supported. Omni Lights do not produce correct attenuation maps yet.
Attenuation Maps now correctly exclude matte objects between the light source and the particles.
Krakatoa: Shadows Utility Script allows the adding and removing of attenuation maps to scene lights as projector maps:
The user can specify the location of the attenuation maps (as saved during Krakatoa rendering)
The attenuation map sequences will be matched to the names of the scene lights and assigned as an IFL to the projector map slot
If an existing projector map (but not a Krakatoa Shadow from a previous application of the script) is found, the attenuation map will be multiplied with it.
The tool allows the removal of the attenuation maps from all scene lights.
The animation sequence will be taken into account, so if the first shadow frame is 0015, the bitmap will be offset to start on that frame. End behavior will be set to Hold.
The tool can also be used to switch to a different renderer (either by class or by loading a render preset). A Krakatoa preset of the current settings will be stored automatically and can be restored any time.
THIS IS THE FULL 2.7 UPDATE TO SUBMIT MAX TO DEADLINE AND THE 3DSMAX PLUGIN
We've made a patch available for the the 3ds Max Deadline plugin incl. the submission script and tile assembler.
It can be downloaded from here:
http://software.franticfilms.com/download/SMTD_27.zip
To install the new patch, unzip the file and do the following:
1) Copy the contents of the TileAssembler folder to \\your\repository\bin
2) Copy the contents of the Plugin folder to \\your\repository\plugins
3) Copy the contents of the Submission folder to \\your\repository\submission\3dsmax
4) Copy the contents of the ClientSetup folder to \\your\repository\ClientSetup\3dsmax, then install this script on your max workstations like you did when you followed the steps here:
http://software.franticfilms.com/index.aspx?page=deadline/3dsmax/scriptsetup
After this, open the Deadline Monitor and configure the max plugin as necessary by entering super user mode and selecting Tools -> Configure plugins. Then restart the slave application on your slave machines so that they recognize the changes immediately.
You have to be running Deadline 2.6 to apply this patch.
NOTE: We discovered a bug that prevents Krakatoa from rendering DOF on Deadline when using the Max Camera + the Mental Ray DOF MultiPass Effect. The Deadline plugin assumed that when that MPass effect is present in a camera, only Mental Ray would be running. The result were empty black frames saved without even rendering the particles.
This update to the Max Plugin for Deadline fixes this problem, too.
Other issues addressed by this update:
Support for Tasks Per Slave and local override for the Fail On Existing Max Process - submitting partitions from Krakatoa will automatically set up the job to run on multiple CPUs without the need to switch the whole network to not fail on existing Max process.
For non-krakatoa jobs, Tile rendering has been improved significantly:
The Tile Modes work correctly (fixed the drop-down list bug)
Render Elements will be rendered correctly as tiles and also assembled correctly.
The Tile Assembler handles names with spaces correctly now (would have failed to assemble in the past)
The Tile Assembler now supports OpenEXR, TGA, JPG, PNG, BMP and TIF files!
Check out the Options tab for a large number of new options incl. control over timeouts, control over render-specific output etc.
Krakatoa will now dump all renderer settings to the JOB file - in the 3dsmax tab in the job Properties in the Monitor, you should be able to tweak most of the parameters post-submission. (Some settings do not work, this is WIP)
The Dependencies list dialog was fixed.
There were even more tweaks to the submitter, bit these are the highlights from top of my head...
This Service Pack 1 contains the following improvements and fixes:
PRT LOADERS
Added three new options to the drop-down list:
Particle Display Mode - lists the display mode of the PRT Loaders (small dots, large dots, lines)
Missing Frames In Scene - lists the missing PRT frames in all sequences in all PRT Loaders based on the scene range.
Missing Frames In Render - lists the missing PRT frames in all sequences in all PRT Loaders based on the render range.
Both Missing Frames modes take into account Frame Offset, Load Single Frame Only and Playback Graph settings, thus reporting the exact frames that are going to be affect the PRT Loaders. Krakatoa now has strict file checking when loading PRT files and will fail to render if any of the files is missing. These modes are meant as a tool to detect such problems.
Added drop-down list and Set Mode button to the Viewport Mass-Changing Utilities to switch the viewport display mode (dots/lines)
MATTE OBJECTS
Added better test for selection validity - PRT Loaders and PFlow Emitters now filtered out, added message boxes if the selection is not valid or the NSS name is empty.
PARTITIONING
Added error traps and checks for 2.6 Deadline - if 2.6 or earlier is detected, the Tasks per Machine and Limit to CPU will be disabled
Added garbage collection after each render() call in the Local Saving - this fixed a memory leak that crashed Max 8 for some users. The only memory climbing should be caused by the actual particle systems. Generated 6 partitions of 10M particles each - memory usage went up from 1.46GB to 2.00GB and then back to 1.46GB for each partition.
Added the same fix to the Deadline Rendering code.
The attached ZIP file contains the updated KrakatoaGUI.ms and an updated KrakatoaPartitionTasksOnDeadline.ms file.