Krakatoa v2.1.7 Public Beta Build Available

Krakatoa for 3ds Max
1

A new Krakatoa v2.1.7 build has been made available in the Downloads section of the Thinkbox Software website:
thinkboxsoftware.com/krakato … ilds-beta/

For the Release Notes, please see here:
thinkboxsoftware.com/krakato … change-log

Major Highlights

  • New PRT Surface object to create particles on the surface of one or more objects.
  • New option in the PRT Cloner modifier to distribute particles randomly within a spherical volume.
  • ActiveType is now part of the Magma Editor - press [`] or [Ctrl]+[SPACE] to invoke, [Esc] or [Enter] to close.
  • New options in the Particle Data Viewer and Magma Debugger to display data with 8,12 or 16 decimal places.
  • Magma Errors will now stop the rendering, preventing Krakatoa from producing incorrect results.
  • Relevant Magma Output channels will now be forced to the Renderer’s channel format defined in the Memory Channels rollout.
  • More filter options added to the Main Controls and VFB Extensions to support PRT Surface, Phoenix FD and more individually.
  • Finally fixed the MAXScript Macro Recorder problem thanks to some help from Autodesk.
2

Wow cool, some great stuff in there! Active Type! PRT Surface! Working MXS Listener!, great work!

3

Haven’t installed yet, but are the ActiveType definitions editable? Like could we add “IBMBlue” to make an InputVector, or localize the entire list to German?

4

I knew you would ask for that :slight_smile:

Right now, the list is populated from the Magma nodes and their categories and descriptions (so the same script works in Krakatoa, Genome and Ember without changes). The Alias list though is coded in the MS file itself. I could externalize it, but did not want to do that just yet - the whole script was written on a Saturday because I felt challenged. :wink:
So you can go and add IBMBlue easily by editing the source file MagmaFlow_ActiveType.ms, but that won’t survive updates.

Look for the line

local theColors = #( #("White", [1,1,1], "Colors", "White Color [1,1,1]"), #("Gray", [0.5,0.5,0.5], "Colors", "Gray Color [0.5,0.5,0.5]"), #("Pink", [1,0.5,0.5], "Colors", "Red Color [1,0.5,0.5]"), ... #("Black", [0,0,0], "Colors", "Black Color [0,0,0]") )
and add whatever you want.

Same for the Aliases, custom Values etc.

local theValues = #( #("Plus", "Add", "Aliases", "Alias For 'Add' Arithmetic Operator"), ... #("Left", [-1,0,0], "VectorValues", "Left Vector [-1,0,0]"), ... #("Pi", pi, "FloatValues", "The Value of Pi [3.14159...]"), ... #("Frame", "CurrentTime.frame as float", "InputScripts", "Current Scene Time in Floating Point Frames") )

I will probably move these out at some point, but for now you should be able to do whatever you want with the source file itself…

5

I just updated the ActiveType to support all Output Channels directly. In the previous version, all you could do was “Output”, then you had to select a channel from the list.

With this update, you can type “Out” to see all Output channels.
Typing “OutPos” gives you the “Position” output channel, “OutCol” shows “Color” and “ColorScalar” and so on. Note that once an output node is created, its channel will disappear from the ActiveType list since creating two Output nodes with the same channel is not desirable.

To install,
*In Administrator mode, back up the original MagmaFlow_ActiveType.ms file in your \Krakatoa MX\Scripts folder
*Replace the file with the one found in the attached ZIP file.
*Simply hit ` or Ctrl+Space again - the script is being reloaded each time you hit the hotkey, so you can make live changes without restarting Max
Krakatoa_Magma_ActiveType_20130123.zip (4.73 KB)

6

What’s Stoke?

7

Not King-Kong :mrgreen: