So, I was following the KMY tutorials on the site (although without the benefit of the supplied materials), when I discovered a problem with the partitioning and motion blur.
On this page, I followed the instructions and got everything to work correctly, except that motion blur doesn’t seem to work with the partitioned particles. It goes through the steps (8 in this case) but the result is identical to that of the non-motion blurred render.
We will provide the scenes upon release (I still have to clean them up and package them).
Attached is a file from Maya 2012 with my setup and the resulting PRT Loader (but I am not including the PRTs).
Can you try partitioning this one?
The only thing that is important when partitioning is that the Velocity channel must be saved to PRT for the PRT Loader to motion blur or to be able to perform retiming. If you included the Velocity channel and it does not motion blur correctly, could you upload your scene or one resulting PRT file so we can take a look? KMY_ParticleTurbulentSmoke_Partitioning_v005.zip (11.4 KB)
Ok, used your scene, and got the same result. No motion blur.
Also, it seems that if I create partitions once, it works, but if I do it again in the same scene… the seed value isn’t changing anymore, and the partitions come out identical to one another. But, that’s another thing altogether. If nothing else, I’d love to just get the motion blur working.
If you display velocities in the PRT Loader, does it show lines, or do the particles disappear in the viewport?
If you set the Shutter Angle to a very high number (like 1440), do you get any difference?
Can you please send over ONE PRT file from your partitioning so we can take a look at what is inside?
Finally, can you provide version numbers of Maya and Krakatoa?
Is this with Release Candidate 2 or an earlier build? (I just updated to RC2 myself, rendered my scene and motion blur was ok).
I have attached frame 100 of partition 1 from my sequence.
Can you create a new PRT Loader, pick this frame, go to frame 100 and render? Do you get motion blur?
If you do, then the problem you are having is somewhere in the PRT saving. If you don’t, then there is something wrong with your renderer. Plasma_particleShape1_part001of100_0100.zip (688 KB)
I looked into the content of your file and it has only Position and Color channels, no Velocity.
Are you positive you had the “Velocity” channel checked for saving while running the PRT SVR utility?
At this point we have to suspect that there is something wrong with your installation, but we are not sure how to approach this.
Can you report the Creation Date of your “MayaKrakatoa” plugin file? Mine is from January-25-13, 6:48:44 PM
Then do the same with the script “KMY2PRT_Saver.mel”.
A good idea is to make sure there is no other file called “KMY2PRT_Saver.mel” anywhere in your user \scripts folders - I had a scary experience yesterday where the same script refused to work until I discovered I had an older version in my maya\scripts folder.
You can also try editing the KMY2PRT_Saver.mel file and adding some debug prints.
Locate line 670 (or near that line) and look for the code
string $channelInfo[] = { "position", "float32[3]" };
if ($chk_saveChannelVelocity > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"velocity", $ddl_saveChannelVelocityFormat}, 2);
if ($chk_saveChannelDensity > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"opacity", $ddl_saveChannelDensityFormat}, 2);
if ($chk_saveChannelColor > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"rgb", $ddl_saveChannelColorFormat}, 2);
if ($chk_saveChannelID > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"particleId", $ddl_saveChannelIDFormat}, 2);
if ($chk_saveChannelNormal > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"normalDir", $ddl_saveChannelEmissionFormat}, 2);
if ($chk_saveChannelEmission > 0) appendStringArray($channelInfo, {"incandescence", $ddl_saveChannelEmissionFormat}, 2);
Right after it, please add the lines
print "Channel Info Array Is: ";
print ($channelInfo);
print "\n";
Source the modified script, then try to partition and then send us the result of that debug print. I want to know whether the $channelInfo variable contains the correct channels before saving…
The good news is that the MEL script is settings the channels list right.
So you are doing everything right.
For some reason, the PRT files you are producing are missing the Velocity channel, which is strange.
No, you are actually awesome! I wish all beta testers were like you
We just figured it out. It was a copy&paste bug in the MEL script and not a core bug (thankfully).
When we were adding the license handling, the wrong array was pasted and all systems started using a reduced channel set specifically designed for PRT Volumes… Normally, a PRT Volume cannot have an ID channel or a Velocity channel, so we decided to exclude those from PRT saving of PRT Volumes to save some space on disk. But now that we have “modifiers”, it is actually possible to give a PRT Volume a Velocity channel, so I added that back. The only channel PRT Volumes won’t save is now the ID.
Attached is the fixed script: KMY2PRT_Saver_20130219.zip (6.63 KB)
Please give it a try and let us know if it fixes the issue for you…
