To install, download and unzip krakatoa0917.zip (attached to this thread.) Uninstall any previous Krakatoa builds, then run the krakatoa.0.9.17.msi installer.
Changes from Beta Build 0.9.16 to 0.9.17 (as of June 27th, 2007)
NOTE:
A large number of internal changes have been made to this version. Please keep an eye out for suspicious behaviors, old scenes that do not open in the new build etc. Please see the Known Bugs list for some things we know about but have not fixed yet, and some known issues with rendering old files (since default color sources have changed)
GENERAL
The color source handling has been revamped to take advantage of particle channels. Color source controls are vastly simplified now.
By default, each particle system will render using its material color, if no material is available, using its wireframe color. This is in line with the way Max works. PRT Loaders will render using the saved, wireframe or material colors as before
New >Override Particle Colors option added to the Main Controls rollout which can be enabled to override the above color sources.
Custom Particle Color is now an override option and will apply to ALL particles, including those from PRT Loaders.
Most other modes have been removed and implemented elsewhere.
New "Material Editor Slot #1" option replaces the old Material and Custom Material options. This allows a single material placed in the Slot 1 of the Editor to replace all colors in all particles in the scene.
Removed Wireframe color option. Only objects with no material will render in Wireframe color.
Removed Script Vector Channel option. The channel is now automatically provided as UVW Map Channel 43 and can be rendered using a Vertex Color Map, thus can be used in both Color and Opacity slots.
The source color from materials is now the DIFFUSE, not the Self-Illum. Materials without self-illumination will render correctly now.
PRESETS AND HISTORY
Fixed the bug causing the Cache rebuilding to pop up too often. In typical operation, rebuilding the cache should almost never be necessary anymore.
MAIN CONTROLS ROLLOUT
Redesigned the rollout, it is now shorter and has less controls reflecting the simplified color workflow.
Inverted the meaning of the Lighting Pass Densities option to be unchecked by default while doing the same.
PARTICLE CHANNELS TO SAVE ROLLOUT
Added new Rollout to control which channels will be saved to disk in a similar style as NSS in Matte/APME rollouts.
Added options to specify the data format (16, 32, 64 bit) for all channels. NOTE: Position is the only channel fixed to 32.
Added button to update channels from scene.
Added controls to select all and invert the selection. Both lists are multilistboxes.
Both lists will be cached and stored in the renderer with the scene, so refreshing will only be necessary when new channels have been introduced.
Removing channels from the scene will NOT remove them from the list of available channels until a new manual refresh is performed.
Active channels will NEVER be removed automatically, even if not available in the scene anymore. (will be saved with default values)
PARTITIONING
Fixed a bug in the second Deadline submission mode (1 job per partition) - seeds were decremented incorrectly when submitting a range.
When saving particles to disk, Krakatoa now writes to a temp file name and renames it to the real file name once finished. If canceled, it will delete the temp file. In the past, Krakatoa would write a partial file and leave it there, potentially causing bad files that could crash the PRT Loaders.
THINKING PARTICLES AND PARTITIONING
Added TP Random Seed support to the Partition controls. All operators with a random seed can be affected. NOSEED is detected in DynamicSet Comments field and TP name.
While adding Seed support to TP, also added an option to affect legacy particles seeds or not.
Added a Thinking Particles Groups rollout prototype for selecting TP groups to render. Not hooked up with the renderer yet.
MATTE OBJECTS
Removed options to save and load geometry as matte. (This was originally used to export to the Stand-Alone version of Krakatoa).
Changed the behavior of the Named Selection Set lists in Max 9+ where editing or deleting a named selection set would remove it automatically from the active list in Krakatoa. If edited or deleted, the NSS will remain on the active list - if the NSS is created again, it will still be used by Krakatoa. If the NSS is moved to the left and it turns out that it has been deleted from the scene, it will disappear.
PRT LOADERS
Replaced the Density source drop-down list with a simple checkbox "Load Particle Densities".
Removed the "Load Normals" option.
Fixed a bug preventing PRT Loaders from creating selection sets in Max 8.
Added Gizmo Size controls (all animatable) to control the size of Object Space Modifiers. Initial size is based on the icon, but can be changed/keyframed subsequently.
Playback Graph is now a float value and PRT Loaders will interpolate particle positions and velocities based on the closest full frame sample, allowing for smooth speed changes and correct motion blur.
Fixed bug in Graph display that would hang if a frame had 0 particles as max. value.
Added gradient displays for missing frames and CSV frames (count unknown). Showing count as ??? when CSV loaded.
When exactly one file is selected in the listbox, the Add Files... will open the dialog at that path. If the editor is open and exactly one file is selected there, its path will be used. If 0 or more than 1 are selected, the defaults will be used as set in Preferences.
PARTICLE SCANNER UTILITY
Switched to an internal Krakatoa method for checking particle counts which supports both PRT and BIN files. CSV will return no count as it is difficult to get without reading the whole file. CSV particle sequences will show up in a gradient like missing frames, but in the normal color like good frames.
Added the option to save and open a text file containing the paths of all missing frames collected by the Scanner. It could be used to determine which frames need to be created again.
SHADOWS ON GEOMETRY UTILITY
Added display of the current renderer so it is clear what renderer is active at the moment.
DEFORMATIONS cause troubles in Max 8 and will most probably be disabled for Max 8 in the final 1.0 release. ADDING A MODIFIER TO A PRT LOADER IN MAX 8 WILL CRASH MAX! Please keep in mind that Max 8 uses the Max 6 SDK which is extremely buggy. The only reason we still support Max 8 is that Thinking Particles 2.5 is not available for Max 9. Once TP 3.0 ships, we might drop support for Max 8 in future versions of Krakatoa as it is a pain to work with a 4 years old SDK. Do yourself a favor and use Max 9 64bit with Krakatoa and you will never look back. ;)
Since the default mode now is to use the object's color, older scenes that used the Custom Particle Color will load and render with the new Override Particle Colors option OFF and will appear different. Checking the option will fix that.
We suspect that some older scenes using PRT Loaders AND Culling Volumes might crash on load. We are looking into it, but please post to the Bugs forum if you find any such files.
The PRT Loader might not display the particle count in the viewport (could be graphics driver related, still investigating).
There is a short debug print going to the Listener each time you render. Just ignore it.
When saving a partition, a new feature in Krakatoa that prompts for overwritting existing files will pop up a message for EVERY existing frame in the partition. This was an oversight and we just fixed it for the next update. In the future, you will be asked to either overwrite all partition frames without any more prompts, keep on prompting or cancel the partitioning. When doing the same on Deadline, existing particle files will be generally overwritten. As a temp. workaround, please delete partition files before resaving a partition.
When submitting Partitions to Deadline, sending a job in One Job Only mode and 2 tasks per machine and immediately after that in One Job Per Partition mode would make the later jobs use 2 tasks per machine, too. This has been fixed for the next update.
Just a reminder that our documentation has gone online. We are using a wiki-based system for the beta docs, allowing us to publish updates much more quickly.
(This is still a work in progress, but the online docs already contain much more information than our earlier documentation.)
To install, unzip and copy the content into the C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Krakatoa\Scripts\ folder.
It addresses the following problems:
Fixes a stupid bug in SP1 where you could not use the [...] file pick button.
When saving particles over existing files using the local Partitioning features, a prompt was issued for each frame. Now, a Yes/No/Cancel dialog will pop up once and ask you what to do with the rest of existing files. If Yes pressed, all files will be overwritten. If No, the old prompts will continue to appear. If Cancel, the partitioning will be aborted without overwriting anything.
Same problem was addressed in the Deadline Partitioning Script, but in that case no prompt will be issued, all files will always be overwritten.
Fixed double-extension problem when saving to a CSV or BIN file and picking a new path. The old extension will be preserved unless a new type is specified from the types drop-down list.
Fixes a bug that caused Deadline submissions using the second submission method after having used the first method to run multiple tasks on the same machine.