sorry for this newbiew question, but i want to know the plus of krakatoa if you have a license of RF?

thanks

HI
The export of particles from 3ds max to realflow is not simple as that,it's true that you can import particles from RF to max but we are talking here about exporting and importing of particles  created within Max.And because Krakatoa can handle a large amount of particles (10 + Million) this alone make a big difference,without forgeting the super rendering time.
cheers

bubs wrote:

Hi
This tutorial is about exporting particles from 3dsmax to realflow using Krakatoa plugin
Maybe help some of you who are max user.
http://bouchakour.de/video/NotHinted16578.mov

cheers

Hi Bubs,

Thanks for the tutorial. Glad you are having fun!

Just wanted to let you know that you can add a couple of icons to a toolbar in Max (Go to Customize>Customize UI>Toolbars tab>Krakatoa Category) to speed up the switching to Krakatoa GUI. These icons will also allow you to store the previously used renderer (e.g VRay, Scanline or mental ray) so you can go back and forth between Krakatoa and the others without losing settings. (see http://www.franticfilms.com/software/su … cripts.php for details).

Also note that the BIN files saved from Krakatoa could be loaded in Maya or any other 3D app with the Realflow plugins installed. One user got some particles from Houdini into Max using the same workflow...

Regarding particle counts, Krakatoa 1.0.1 can load around 60 million particles on a 4GB 64bit machine without swapping. This is because the memory requirement per particle was hard-coded to 38 bytes. On 32 bit machines, there is a limit of 2GB per application, so you cannot go much higher than 16-20 million.
The upcoming version 1.1 of Krakatoa can more than double this as it will be allocating only the channels in use. In other words, if you are not using motion blur, lighting, normals or are overriding the color, the velocity, lighting, normals and color channels would not be allocated and you could end up with as few as 14 bytes per particle.
It will also provide a calculator to show you how many particles you can fit into given amount of memory or how much memory a certain number of particles would require. And, since the main speed bottleneck is the memory allocation, loading less data into memory speeds up the process, so 1.1 will be even faster in many cases.
At 14 bytes per particle, you could load 224 million particles in 3GB of memory.

Also note that the 64 bit of Max renders Krakatoa particles twice as fast as the 32 bit version thanks to the better memory management.

bubs wrote:

Love your comments,very Instructional.

Thanks! It pains me to see people suffering when trying to open the GUI via the Render Scene Dialog - the idea is not to have to go there at all, not even for time and output changes (thus the Render Button Context Menu). Every second saved in navigating the GUI is one second more for tweaking parameters

one point thou,i get some error message when i tempt to save particles from a particle flow system wich have a test operator,i mean when there're more than one event in the flow,it said missing particles count or something like this.Anyway Thank you so much to give some very useful tips and i'm so exited to meet the new version of Krakatoa!

This is strange, I see you are using v1.0.1 and I don't recall such an error. Could you by any chance provide me with a simple scene suffering from this problem, or at least a screenshot of the Particle Flow and the error message you are getting?
Thanks in advance!

mfG,
Bobo

Last edited by bobo (February 8, 2008 6:57 am)

hi Bubs,

when you write " Realflow Pflow and Krakatoa" are you talking about "pflow" form the MIT http://web.mit.edu/13.021/www/pflow_soft/index.html or another software?

cheers,

bubs wrote:

Hi
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/5964 … dx3.th.jpg

Thanks you to take time to help me.
CheersFarid

No, thank YOU for posting the bug and the screenshot.
I can confirm the bug - I created almost the same setup and the first 5 frames refuse to save correctly although they have valid particles. Not sure what the role of the Test operator is in this problem but it obviously has something to do with it.

You can use the following workaround in the mean time:
*Save your particles to PRT files - it should not show the error.
*Disable the PFlow
*Create a PRT Loader
*Set the save output to BIN again
*Save the particles from the PRT Loader to BIN files.
*Delete the PRT files to free space.
You should end up with correct BIN files for all frames.

I will make sure the bug is logged and a developer will take a look at it next week.

(Edit: Logged as defect 4486)

Last edited by bobo (February 9, 2008 12:08 am)

bubs wrote:

maybe the next release without such bug (LOL)

That's my hope, too

Btw, if you have missed it, here is a basic video introduction to Krakatoa 1.0 (not RealFlow related, but might be helpful).
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/richmedia/8500.html

bubs wrote:

Hi
Thanks Bobo,this is indeed the only link i found,and mister Jignesh Jariwala from Jignesh Jariwala.com a great tutorial about great piece of software.
I hope to see more.
cheers FArid

I watched the 3 videos again yesterday and got into the right mood to record more, esp. with 1.1 approaching release. I might actually do it.

bubs wrote:

Thanks for the advice,this is the way i tell my friend to do it (i don't own Krakatoa),maybe the next release without such bug (LOL)

cheers

I am happy to report that this bug was fixed today!

HI
The export of particles from 3ds max to realflow is not simple as that,it's true that you can import particles from RF to max but we are talking here about exporting and importing of particles  created within Max.And because Krakatoa can handle a large amount of particles (10 + Million) this alone make a big difference,without forgeting the super rendering time.



Hi Bubs,

is it possible to import RF to 3dmax then modified  amount of RF partikel in krakatoa?

bubs wrote:

rafif3d wrote:

is it possible to import RF to 3dmax then modified  amount of RF partikel in krakatoa?

Hi
I don't think this is possible cause the Krakatoa read the particles from the Krakatoa loader wich don't have possible way to increase the amount,to be honest i'm trying to find how i can do this,maybe Bobo can give more information about it.
cheers

In Krakatoa 1.0, you can load a BIN file from RealFlow 3 or 4 into Particle Flow, but there are severe limitations - the particle count has to be constant, particles cannot be added or removed, but can be driven by velocities (and/or positions) from the BIN file or PRT file to perform the same animation as in Realflow. This is in addition to the direct loading of BIN files via the PRT Loader object where particles can be retimed and deformed.

In Krakatoa 1.1, we revamped the Krakatoa Particle Flow operators to allow for full circle import and export of particle files (PRT, BIN, CSV). As long as the particle file source contains an ID channel (I am pretty sure BIN files always do), particles can be loaded dynamically including birth and death to mimic exactly the original animation. Additional operators (like forces, tests, collisions etc.) can be applied and the channel values can be blended, copied and multiplied, then the resulting particles can be saved out once again as PRT or BIN and if necessary, reloaded again into either a PRT Loader, PFlow or Realflow.

Obviously, the saved particles can be a portion of the originally loaded particles. What is not directly possible is the Partitioning (increasing the density by changing random seeds) since the BIN and PRT files are pretty deterministic when it comes to the stored data - we cannot directly affect them.
But one could indirectly do this by loading the same BIN file multiple times and either applying the velocities with a different blending influence (for example, 99% instead of 100% would cause the particles to get a slight bit less velocity and thus perform a little bit different animation) and then combine the resulting outputs to get an increased density.

There might be other tricks that could be done using the new Krakatoa 1.1 PFlow operators, but that's from top of my head.

If I misunderstood the question, please let me know...

Hi,
sorry for off top, but can anybody explain how to shading and texture krakatoa particles, step by step, i see several tutorial, but don't undestend.

Thanks.
P.S. sorry for my bad english