Hi (my answer from our forums),

Thanks first of all. Let me try to answer individually

The simple reason is that Effex will have an own ‘repopulation’ feature which is also multithreaded and not a render-only feature. There was a similar feature though to the v1.7 ParticleAttach clone feature for rendering. The repopulation feature of KSR is (last time I looked) not multi-threaded but more seriously only works for the Krakatoa rendering (one could convert to a KSR particle set, repopulate and use the result for new Effex particles and changing the current ones, but these are two steps that are not really necessary and cost valueable performance time that is simply avoided with an own solution).
This is a feature, considering Effex, that should be applicable to any particle set Effex supports (this includes cachers etc. which is especially important for exchange), that’s why it’ll be available in the simulation pipeline already (as other nodes in Effex also only applicable at render time if you want to). Actually it is already there, you can use the Sheet operator to fill wholes in the whole liquid particle body but our particle filler will have additional options.

Just because it’s not in the rendering interface, it doesn’t mean Effex doesn’t allow or support it.

Sorry I don’t know what you mean. Meshes are automatically matted (hold out masks). You can exclude meshes from being used as matte too. If you skip the rendering of C4D (there is a checkbox) you get exactly what KrakatoaSR renders, so you can do your compositing yourself. If you activate the multipasses you also get normal, velocity, occluded rgba & depth passes (though the depth pass is buggy in the early bird version). So all passes that KSR renders. Or what do you mean?

And according to the Krakatoa developers there is no feature in KrakatoaSR that gives you shadows. We would need to integrate shadow support for it on our own (based on a DSM file KSR can export), which we’ll do in the future (though it’s not yet a priority for the first version…however we have shadowing code available in our voxel renderer already and a DSM should be quite easily converted to our proprietary volumetric shadow map. But Effex parts are currently more important and time is short until release) but it is not a native KSR feature that we don’t support…the sdk simply doesn’t give us shadow rendering.
Please see the discussion here in the KSR forum: viewtopic.php?f=166&t=9402

If there is please point me to it and I will gladly add support. Otherwise I don’t understand what you exactly mean. Please elaborate. Thanks

Thanks. Yap, missed that one! Just added it. In the release version available then.

Simple reason, we have our own advanced voxel renderer which offers more and more specific feature support (as you can imagine). It’s the Gas Renderer. Just splat your particles onto a custom scalar channel and render that channel. We specifically added Krakatoa for its particle rendering (splatting) technique which is simply great, fast and a standard. But we have a highly multithread, highly Effex specific optimized voxel renderer on our own so we don’t need the voxel mode.

ok, that’s a feature request but not a native KSR feature is it? If so I cannot find it. Could you point me to it? Unfortunately, I don’t know the MX plugin so a screenshot would be helpful. Surely sounds useful.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean with this sentence. Could you elaborate?
You can render points of any meshable objects with the Effex Krakatoa implementation. Just drop the object into the particles field. Did you mean that?
Creating 14 Million particles within the volume of any object takes on my i7 quad core exactly 2.2 seconds. It could probably be worth looking into some further optimizations to gain some speedup but not sure which part is painfully slow for you (the whole emission procedure is 100% multithreaded)? Please be more specific so I can fix or change the behavior you encounter. Feel free to post a scene file.

Sorry I cannot confirm. We support the:

• isotropic mode: no settings are available for this one…logically
• henyey-greenstein & schlick: we support the global anisotropy value, there is no other value for these phase functions. And we support per particle anisotropy defined by any Effex particle property, so the user has full access and full customizability
• phong: we support the global specular level & power settings, there are no other values available. And we support per particle definitions of these. So fully customizable.

And it works all fine here. Please elaborate what exactly you mean so I can take a look. Thanks

even our beta plugin was more advanced than this… seriously, and charging money for this is just plain cheeky…

R-K, better stop wasting money or efforts and wait for the real deal…

Hi Samir, thanks for the detailed reply.

Let me precise some of my points.

1. Shaders:
   I meant the individual settings within each shader type.
   I attach the corresponding part of the SDK-documentation:

2. Krakatoa-Shaddows:

here is the link to my question from the Krakatoa-Max-Forum concerning that point to make clear what I mean:
please look the answers here:

http://forums.thinkboxsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9659

3. No choose-option for Particle or Voxel-mode:

OK, but when I want to do a render with Iray or Vray, it would be nice to have it as I want to render all (DPIT-solution and the other Non-DPIT-scene-parts) in one step using Krakatoa as post-effect along with the main rendering (Iray, Vray).
The Gas-renderer is not available for Iray, Vray, I think ?

Look here at 8:25 min:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eudomaAnI6o

For the ‘particles generated from objects’ I will check and try what you wrote.

Best regards,

Ralf

Tyler, I wait impatiently for the release of your solution

Hi!

Thanks. Just as the sdk docs show we have all these settings available for the shading models we support, so I am still not sure what you mean I’m afraid. Could you further elaborate?
Please see my previous answer for details.

Thanks. yep, it just says what I wrote in my previous answer actually. DSM file etc…

We support Vray’s own volumetric renderer by passing the simulation data to Vray with a special channel shader. That was also already possible in v1.5 btw and works a treat. Iray, I don’t know, never used it actually.

thanks, I’ll check it out.

Ah yes, you’re right.
Sorry, my fault, I oversaw that you implemented the settings for the shaders.

as the api is making a few changes, we will adapt to these, but progress is nice so far, patience will be rewarded;)

Hi Tyler, very nice to hear.
Does your solution provide a shadow generator-feature (for shadows inside the particle-volume as well as shadows from the particles onto scene objects) ?

will see, if possible, our plugin will offer it of course.

Hi Tyler,

Even thou im glad to hear that there is a solution on the way, i would appreciate if there is any further information then told in this thread?

• what is it called
• can you tell when your solution will be available week/month/year/? So we can plan our projects
• any website?

regards

Thanks, that helped actually. There will be a color preview in the release of 2.0 too.

hey Samir, glad to hear that!

btw is there any way to to give particles a colour at birth? for example to achieve results like these: youtube.com/watch?client=mv- … nomobile=1
could you please also implement the krakatoa repopulation feature and particle size for non-effex-particle setups? that would make effex even more attractive!

best
wolfram

Yes, you can add a color property (or a vector property) to your particle emitter (it is then per particle and you can assign a color variably). This color property you can then drop in the according color field in the Krakatoa settings.
A surface color operator will be available for release too.

Already did actually. Also our version is ready.

There is no particle size feature in Krakatoa afaik. One pixel size points is all it renders (+ filtering), there is no particle size setting available I’m afraid.

perfect

when will it be available?

With the final release of 2.0

Official plugin with all features and based on the latest API will be released soon and for free!

Interface.jpg2560×1388 1.32 MB

Samir:
very good news. Looking forward for the release of V 2.0

Tyler:
Also, very good news.
Can’t await to try out your release.
As I see from your picture, you implemented Krakatoa as a full separate renderer.
Did you test if the result can seamlessly be integrated into the main rendering of a complete scene, f.e. with Iray or Vray ?
And did you also implement finally the shaddow generator ?

BR,

Ralf

hey Samir,

this is amazing! especially the osx-version!
if you could implement this as well for effex 2 final release, you would get 100 points plus for your karma

best
wolfram

We will see to implement the OSX support soon. And remember, it will be free;)