Krakatoa Beta Build 1.0.100.30288 (November 30th, 2007)

[Bobo]

 Please download and test

Krakatoa Beta Build 1.0.100.30288

This build will NOT work with your existing 1.0.x license. Please send a request for an updated 1.1. license. You can run the beta in evaluation mode with watermark until then.

A list of new features, changes and bug fixes will be posted shortly.

 

[Bobo]

KRAKATOA GUI

• Added a Cache indicator which will turn green when the cache contains data and gray when it is empty.
• Changed the logic of PCache clearing. Previously,turning the cache off and on again would effectively remove the data from memory when "Keep Last Frame" was on. This has been changed - turning off and on the cache will not affect its content until a new frame is rendered with PCache off or the right-click menu option "Clear Both Caches" has been used explicitly.
• When the >USE LIGHTING option is turned off, the LCache option will be disabled and turned off.
• When the >Use Normals option is turned on, the LCache option will be disabled and turned off.
• If a channel is required but not cached, the cache will be rebuilt automatically (for example, if you enable MBlur after having cached without Velocity channel active in memory, Krakatoa will have to rebuild the cache to get the Velocity channel. If you disable MBlur after recaching, the Velocity channel will stay cached and will not be removed)

SAVING PARTICLES

• Fixed "Overwrite file" message which was issued once for every frame to be overwritten during particle file saving. Now the prompt will appear only once.

PARTICLE LOADER

• Added color swatches to the Load Mode drop-down lists to represent the current selection - Red=Every Nth, Green=First N, Blue=Last N, While=Use Render Mode.
• Added Viewport and Render toggles to each file sequence. Added Toggle menus in the File Sequence Manager (Edit... button) to toggle them on and off in various ways.
• Added an option to copy the Density channel to an arbitrary Mapping Channel.
• Added an option to assume the Density channel to have a value of 1.0.
• Split the User Interface of the PRT Loader into more smaller rollouts. This allows you to collapse portions of the UI that are not used at the moment or fit the UI better in multi-column Command Panel.
• Added a dedicated PRT Loader Manipulator - enable Manipulate mode in the Main Toolbar of 3ds Max and control particle count in viewport and renderer as well as icon size and particle count display type via on-screen manipulators. By default, the Manipulator will snap to every 10%. Hold SHIFT to slide the values with floating point precision.
• The Normals From Surface feature now respects the Threshold value.

NEW PARTICLE FLOW OPERATORS

• A new set of Krakatoa Particle Flow Operators has been introduced to remove the severe limitations imposed by the original v1.0 versions. They require the particle sequences to contain a particle ID channel to function properly!
• Krakatoa File Birth can now load a dynamic sequence of particle files, creating only particles that do not exist in the flow yet (based on their born ID)
• The Krakatoa File Update operator can load arbitrary channels from a particle file sequence and write to any Particle Flow channel with matching data type.
• When loading data, it can be mixed with the existing data in the destination channel using either Blend or Add modes. The amount to be loaded can be controlled by an animatable percentage value.
• Particles that are supposed to die because they do not exist in later frames of the sequence will be marked in a dedicated File ID channel with a value of -1 and can be sent out and optionally deleted using a new Krakatoa File ID Test operator.
• A new Krakatoa Geometry Test operator allows particles to be sent out based on their position relatively to an arbitrary volume using the same code as the Particle Culling in the PRT Loader. This methods is much faster and leaves less particles behind than comparable operators. It also provides Distance Threshold controls for leaving only particles that are close to the surface, or only particles that are far from the surface.
• All operators including the existing Krakatoa Options have dedicated icons now.