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Krakatoa beta 2 is now available

 Attached is Krakatoa build 0.9.2, our second beta build.

(Note: This installer has been improved to remove the manual step of adding the plugin to your max application.)

To install:

  1. Download and unzip the installer package.
  2. Double click and run Krakatoa0.9.2.msi to install the Krakatoa program files.
  3. The program will ask you to select the 3ds Max installation in which to add Krakatoa.  Browse to and select 3dsmax.exe.

Optionally, you can insert Krakatoa into other 3ds Max versions on the same machine using the helper application:

  1. Run Start|Programs|Frantic Films|Krakatoa 1.0|Add Krakatoa to 3ds Max to insert Krakatoa into your current 3ds Max application.
  2. The program will ask you to select the 3ds Max installation in which to add Krakatoa.  Browse to and select 3dsmax.exe.

To install a node-locked license:

  1. Submit your computer details (machine name and physical Ethernet address) to me privately at dmarks@franticfilms.com to obtain your beta license.

  2. Launch 3ds Max and open the Rendering dialog box. On the Common tab, scroll down to the Assign Renderer panel, and assign Krakatoa to the Production renderer slot. If no license for Krakatoa has yet been configured, the FLEXlm License Finder will pop up.

  3. Select Specify the License File and click Next.

  4. Click Browse and navigate to your Krakatoa license file.

Server-based Licensing:

  1. Submit your computer details (machine name and physical Ethernet address) to me privately at dmarks@franticfilms.com to obtain your beta license.
  2. Run Start|Programs|Frantic Films|Krakatoa 1.0|License Manager Tools to configure the FlexLM license.

Note that two versions of Krakatoa are currently included:  3ds Max 6/7 and 3ds Max 8. The 3ds Max 8 version supports floating point rendering.  (3ds Max 9, announced at Siggraph 2006, is not supported by the current build of Krakatoa, but is expected soon.)

Please post any comments or questions in the Krakatoa Discussion forum.  Bug reports should be posted to the Krakatoa Bug Report forum.

Krakatoa 0.9.2 change log.

Changes made to Krakatoa since beta release 0.9.0:

Installer:

3542/3564: Installer now directly inserts Krakatoa plugin information into the plugin.ini fie. This previously required manually launching a helper application after installing the .msi file.

3565/3751: Installer now properly removes Krakatoa references from affected plugin.ini files during uninstall.

3651: Program shortcuts are now placed in start menu for “All Users” rather than the current user profile.

3654: There are now program shortcuts for LMTools and Uninstall

3696: Licensing tools can now be installed separately. Previously, the entire application needed to be installed. This option is intended for administrators setting up the license server only.

3750: Installer running in “quiet mode” no longer has pop up dialog boxes.

3656: Registry keys are now consistent with other Frantic Films applications. Keys are stored under My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FranticFilms. Previously, there was a space in “Frantic Films”

Renderer:

3405: Matte Object render times have been improved.

Problem: Matte objects were bogging down significantly in some cases where they shouldn't have. Notably, two separate kd-trees, tried separately, were way faster then all of them merged into a single one for almost identical geometry.

This can be optimized using the Surface Area Heuristic in the kd-tree. Information on the implementation is available in two sources:

1. Ingo Wald's PhD Thesis, Chapter 7: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~wald/PhD/

2. On building fast kd-trees for ray tracing, and on doing that in O(N log N) Ingo Wald and Vlastimil Havran http://www.sci.utah.edu/~wald/Publications/

The implementation of the greedy SAH using the O(N log^2 N) algorithm is now performing reasonably.

3563: Particle wire colors now render correctly. Previously, color was inadvertently being blended with white and desaturating the result.

3702: Load Limit now behaves correctly. Previously, an improper conditional statement required Load Percent to also be set below 100%.

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