partitioning problem?

Krakatoa for CINEMA 4D
1

Hello all,

I’m having trouble getting the partitioning and prt-loader to work properly.
I’m having different results sometime, but most often I don’t get the turbulence applied in the prt files, it does show up in the viewport.
I experimented a lot trying to find the culprit, but no luck.

Did any of you experienced something similar?

Thank in advance, Robert

2

Thank you for your report!

As a general rule, providing exact steps (or a scene file) to reproduce a problem would save both you and us a lot of time :slight_smile:

In this particular case, it is not clear from your post what the particle source is. Unfortunately, each particle source in CINEMA 4D has its own potential limitations - Emitter, TP, X-Particles can behave differently or even have their own unique bugs in Krakatoa C4D judging by the Beta testing we had in the last few months…

So when you say the Turbulence is not applied,
*What is the underlying particle system you are partitioning?
*Are you partitioning using the Render Queue or Deadline?
*Anything else we should know that makes your scene different from, say, the tutorial posted here? thinkboxsoftware.com/kc4d-sa … partition/
*What version of CINEMA 4D, and what OS (Win/OSX)?

3

Thanks a lot Bobo for answering.

Yes you are right I was not very helpful with all of the details, sorry for that.
Not sure if it matters now at all but… I used the regular particle emitter/turbulence of R15 for windows in the render queue, and I followed the tutorial that you mentioned in your answer.
Still don’t know what happened, but I solved it by creating a new file and starting from scratch.

There is still something else troubling me, and that is the naming convention.
For instance after rendering to prt files I could end up with files that are named: test_part01of10_i30010.prt for instance.
So the the “i3” after the last underscore is that a reference to the fact that I rendered this two times already?
The way I understand it, is that in this case Krakatoa treats the file as if it belongs to frame 30010, am I right here?
I still could not figure out when this “i3” pops up in the file’s name.
I work around that I used was to use a little renaming tool to place an underscore right after i3.
Also is there anyway to not have the images rendered when writing these prt files.

Thanks for helping.

Kind regards, Robert

4

I believe, the i3 is added by the renderqueue of cinema 4d in case it finds/thinks there is an existing sequence already. so the “i” stands for incremental. Check your output log for incremental file names/saves messages…

5

I have never seen this happening, but then again I am a new user of CINEMA 4D. See TylerAfx’ answer.
Instead of renaming, you could use the Offset feature of the PRT Loader to tell it to load from frame 30000 :wink:
We have seen that happening in older versions of RealFlow where Circle01 would produce BIN files named Circle0100000.bin. RealFlow was hard-coded to 5 digits, but Krakatoa saw that as frame 100,000! In more recent versions, they started adding an underscore.

We were able to hack something to delete the images from disk when partitioning, but we could not find a way to delete them when “rendering to PRT”. Just one of many CINEMA 4D limitations we found (most others were related to Shadows and Motion Blur).

6

Hi there.

First time posting here. Really enjoying Krakatoa for C4D, but I am also having no luck getting multiple partitions saved. I am using X-Particles to generate the particles and a Krakatoa X-Particles Source object.

Very basic setup up:

  1. Create X-Particle emitter. Set emitter shape to sphere. Set birthrate to 10k particles. Emit from frames 0-180. 90 frame lifespan. Add X-Particles turbulence object, set it to curl noise.
  2. Add Krakatoa X-Particles Source. Drag X-Particle Emitter into the Emitter field in the Krakatoa X-Particles Source. Check all channels in the Krakatoa X-Particles Source.
  3. Add X-Particles cache object to the scene. Build the cache.
  4. Set C4D Renderer to Krakatoa. In Output set ‘Render To’ dropdown to ‘Save Particles to File Sequence’. Check all Export channels (except BirthPosition). In ‘Partitioning’, click ‘Save Multiple Partitions’ and leave the ‘Total Partitions Count’ at the defaulted 10.
  5. Go to C4D Output set size and width to 1280x720. Frame rate to 30fps. Frame range ‘All Frames’.
  6. Go to C4D Save and set file path. PNG, 8bit, with alpha. Uncheck Multi-Pass Image - (which raises a question…are the partitions saved as multi-pass???).
  7. Render the sequence.
  8. Create a new C4D project. Add a Krakatoa PRT Loader object. In the Particle File tab, load the PRT sequence from the result of step 1-7. Check sequence box.
  9. Particles are displayed, but in the Partitions Found is always ‘0’.

I have tried this multiple times, but the result is always 0 partitions found. I have NOT tried using the standard emitter system in C4D (as described in the tutorial link).

Has anyone at Thinkbox had success with X-Particles and Krakatoa for C4D and creating partitions?

Also, using C4D latest version - R15.057 and OSX 10.9.3 on a new 12 core mac pro (late 2013).

Thanks,

Jason

7

In the Krakatoa output tab there is a button that says: “submit saving job or partitioning job”.
Try that instead of rendering, it will open another output screen that will show the progress of outputting, works fine here.

Good luck, Robert

8

Ahh yes…

Thank you, Robert. I just needed to open my eyes.

Thanks!

Jason