new to krakatoa some questions

hi all thank you for reading my thread.

i am creating an animation of an animated fish with smoke trails behind it as it moves . i have set up a fume fx simulation simulating the trailing smoke from the fish , and i have used the PRT fume fx to bring the simulation into krakatoa. i have also used the PRT volume to bring the fish model into krakatoa.
i am trying to create an ink effect. my question is can i control the density indevidually for each PRT i have used as i have managed to create a nice looking volume for the fish lowering the density in the render window but the smoke trails are alsmost invisible. also if any body has any tutorials that can point me in the right direction would be great.

regards

DJ

Hi DJ,

There are so many ways to control the density per object (and even per particle!) that I don’t know where to start :slight_smile:

First of all, if you assign a Standard Material to a PRT object, the Opacity channel will be used to modify the existing density. For example, if the Density of a particle is 1.0 (which is the default with PRT Volume for example, or for PRT files loaded in a PRT Loader when there is no incoming Density channel), if you set the Opacity to 50.0, you will get a Density of 0.5 (50% of 1.0). Since the Opacity channel of a Standard Material can be assigned an Opacity Map, you can even control the Density with maps.

Also, we have a simpler Krakatoa Material which has only the controls relevant to Krakatoa, including a Density control. If you assign this material to a PRT Volume or PRT FumeFX, you could tweak the Density per object.

On top of that, the PRT objects support the Max Visibility track as a Density multiplier, So if you tweak or animate the value, it will affect the Density of all particles of the object. While the Object Properties UI limits the visibility value to the range 0.0 to 1.0, using TrackView you can specify ANY values for Visibility, including negative or higher than 1.0. For example, setting the Visibility in the Object Properties to 0.01 will render the particles 100 times less dense. Opening TrackView, adding a Key to the Visibility track and setting the Key’s value to 100 will render the particles 100 times more dense. But since these controls are not “in your face” but hidden in the Object Properties dialog, I don’t recommend using them in your case.

The Advanced method for tweaking Density would be the Krakatoa Channel Modifiers. You add a Krakatoa Channels modifier to the stack of a PRT object, open the MagmaFlow Editor and set the Output node to Density, the Input node to Density, then with the Input node selected, hit the * key on the NumPad to add a Multiply operator node, then with it selected hit Ctrl+1 to create an Input node with value of 1.0. Now tweak its value up or down to scale the Density (you can keyframe it, too). You can right-click the Input node and select “Expose Control” and the multiplier will appear in the Command Panel as Custom Attribute of the Modifier so you can close the Editor and tweak the density directly from the Command Panel. In the MagmaFlow editor, you could set up complex relationships between channels, for example control the Density by Age/LifeSpan, Speed, Position or whatever. See this tutorial for more: thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-ma … ng-by-age/

you could also break them out into separate passes and have greater control in post, but as BOBO mentioned, there are literally
tons of ways to go about controlling density. The more channels you feed krakatoa, the greater control you have!

Compositing them in post is nice, but you have to be very careful because of the lighting and sorting. It’s not advised for new users.

thankyou Bobo, chad & Jramirez for you advice.
Bobo you given me tonnes to explore here , thanks.
i have composited before using aftereffects this short ink sim. its low qualitiy but the principle is their.

youtube.com/user/wangwangster?feature=mhee

i now want to create a fish that has an ink effect. here goes lol

thanks for your time