Ok, i know this wont make you earn any more direct money, but I see that you use the prt format as a global cache format.
What do you think about making a free plugin to make particle caches in prt format? a free prt exporter/importer for maya/max/softimage/houdini and other platworms you want to support.
I know that what i’m saying is non for direct profit, but there is a big empty hole in the inter application workflows when we talk about particle caching, not even Autodesk is solving it with their OneClick workflow, and with that you can get indirect benefit from people using more your software (i know there are TONS of people out there using your soft, i’m just trying to see the good part
Other solution would be to sell this as a small widget for differet apps, a cheap item that is included in all your plugins, but you sell it as standalone plugin for 75$ or so, something cheap that you develop inside other plugins.
I don’t know if you think this is a good or a bad idea, don’t take me wrong, i know your work is done to be sold, but i though this is a big hole in general workflows, and this could help companies working with KrakatoaMX take leverage of apps like maya, softimage or Houdini just for simulation, and use max for rendering.
We already kind of do that, but there is more to be done.
First, PRT file saving and even loading is free in Max using the Evaluation version of Krakatoa MX, so no costs involved. This also applies to the Krakatoa PRT Birth and Update PFlow operators. In addition you can reprocess PRTs via PRT Loaders+Magma and resave them as PRTs, and you have full loading and saving access via MAXScript for the cases where you want to do crazy stuff.
Then we published the format specification and several commercial applications including RealFlow, Naiad, Glu3D GPU etc. added support for it in the last couple of years. This year, Thinking Particles 5 also added support for PRTs.
Some people published free plugins for Maya and Houdini, but we also implemented our own from scratch. Both the Maya and the Houdini saver plugins should be available from the Krakatoa SR forum.
Houdini: viewtopic.php?f=116&t=6853
Maya: viewtopic.php?f=116&t=7687
Note that the free 3rd party Houdini plugin was both a saver AND a loader, we haven’t written a PRT Loader for Houdini yet.
Wow, i didn’t know it was so spreaded along the packages, i think this is something that it not too “public”, i mean, i think this should be made more popular, the thing that you can save/load prt files with the trial version of krakatoaMS, men!! this means that max has a very good particle cache system since a long time, but i saw people in forums saying that particle flow need a particle cache system, so it’s something not very known.
I was going to try the krakatoa SR exporter becuase is the only option i see to pass particles from maya to max.
Obviously, the Maya and Houdini plugins are not public yet because Krakatoa SR (like Krakatoa MY) is still in a closed Beta.
But Krakatoa MX has always been free like that - only the rendered image gets a watermark, plus the Atmospheric effect and a few PFlow Geometry operators require a license. We felt that it would be better to allow anyone to download and learn Krakatoa for free instead of pirating it. That being said, PRTs are not really a PFlow caching solution (although some people have used them like that). You can load PRTs back into a new PFlow and reprocess them, but there are certain limitations.
I know, I know, everything related to KrakatoaMY and SR is under secret right now.
I think i’ve not used the proper expression, what i mean to say is that it’s not a very well known fact, at least amongst the generalist people, and once KrakatoaMY and SR gets released, it could be a great option to interchange particle systems between softwares without having to acquire a expensive plugin like the one from exocortex (which i tried and gave me more problems than solutions ).
You know that i do some off-topic questions sometimes in my threads hehe, so I have a question regarding a future release of Xmesh, will the xmesh saver license be able to all the softwares with one license or there will be an specific license for max, another for maya, etc… ?
).