Hey Krakatoa Community,
I try to render a close up shot of particles with the Krakatoa DoF. There are a lot more particles in the scene, but the selected camera can’t see them. I try to render the scene and it takes A LONG time (Krakatoa Camera Modifier: Sample rate: 1.0, f-stop: 0,2). I think it’s because it blurs the particle which are not in the view of the camera (they are really out of focus - they need much blur), but there are really only a few in the FoV of the camera. Is it possible to delete these particles out of the camera view/disable the DoF effect for them (via Magma)?
One frame takes 12-15mins at the moment with 110K particle (maybe 10000 visible for the camera) and since I try to render at a really high frame rate it would take 9 night for my PC to complete the 900 frames I also read that a sample rate of 1.0 is really high, but I somehow can’t choose a value like 0.1 (it gives me an error '0.11111111… is not a valid value - i typed 0.1).
I hope someone know how I can speed up this progress
Matthias
PS: I could try to pipe the particles back into pflow with an Data OP, which deletes the particles with coords way out of the camera view - that would be my next attempt…
First of all, make sure you have enabled Camera Clipping Planes with a reasonable Near Range to remove particles that are really extremely close (like right in front of the camera). These would produce huge circle of confusion, but would be so out of focus you would barely see them. I understand you want very close particles to become very blurred, but you should still limit how close they may come. Even in real life, if you put a small object right into your eye, you won’t see it, but it might hurt a lot
It would be possible to cull other particles using Magma, but I can tell you right now that if a particle is not seen in the image, it won’t waste time drawing. It will be loaded, processed, illuminated, but it won’t draw if its samples are outside of the frustum. So most probably your problem is caused by extremely close up particles.
As for the sample rate, on my installation it supports any value I enter (both in the main UI and in the VFB controls).
Are you running build 2.3.1.56082?
That is due to the German decimal format
I guess you must switch your settings to US decimal format - 0.1 instead of 0,1.
I will log it as a bug, but for now that’s the only solution I am afraid. I am surprised it happens only for this value…
Alternatively, you could set the property via MAXScript.
FranticParticles.SetProperty “DepthOfFieldSampleRate” “0.1”
Did you enter the value manually using the spinner, or did you use the Presets button?
That’s possible with the German decimal format, but I have my 3DS Max in Egnlish (I like my software in english because the greatest part of the community speaks english). How do I only change my decimal format?
I also tried writing 1.0 and 1,0 but it always switched to 1,0.
I think I did enter the value using the Presets button, but when I noticed (a few months back) that it was not possible to render with a Sample Rate of 0.1 I removed this preset.
It is a Windows OS setting.
On my Windows 7, it is under Control Panel > Region and Language > Additional Settings… > Decimal symbol and Digit Grouping symbol. With German OS settings, the Decimal symbol is probably set to ,. On my system with English locale, it is set to period . and the Digit Grouping is , to produce 123,456,789 and a floating point number looks like 0.7.
I would have to check where it is in Windows 8, but it should be similar.
I also read that a sample rate of 1.0 is really high, but I somehow can’t choose a value like 0.1 (it gives me an error '0.11111111… is not a valid value - i typed 0.1).
