Configuring the Renderer

• 1 Configuring the Renderer
  • 1.1 Macroscript Shortcut to Krakatoa Renderer
  • 1.2 Manually Selecting the Krakatoa Renderer
  • 1.3 Quick Render

3ds Max has a plug-in architecture for rendering, which allows third party renderers such as Krakatoa integrate into the system in a fairly seamless manner. To enable the Krakatoa renderer, you must assign it as your production renderer.

Macroscript Shortcut to Krakatoa Renderer

If you have customized your user interface to take advantage of the included Krakatoa macroscripts, simply click on the Toggle Krakatoa Scripted GUI icon to launch the Krakatoa interface.

Note that when Krakatoa is not the currently assigned renderer, you will receive a warning dialog. Simply click Yes to save settings and switch renderers to Krakatoa.

The first time the prompt will look like this:

In future sessions, the dialog will change to this because Krakatoa will find a previous render presets file containing last known settings and will propose to load those instead of switching to defaults:

Manually Selecting the Krakatoa Renderer

To manually select the Krakatoa renderer:

1. Open the Render Dialog, and select the Common tab. Expand the Assign Renderer rollout. Click the Lock icon to unlock the Material Editor and Production renderers.

   Note: Krakatoa is a specialty renderer, not generally useful as a Material Editor renderer. If used in the Material Editor, Krakatoa will render the vertices of the sample spheres as points using the Self-Illumination Color and Opacity value.

   
2. Click the … button and select the Krakatoa renderer.
   
3. Switch to the Renderer tab and click OPEN KRAKATOA GUI. Krakatoa’s main interface appears.

Quick Render

Click RENDER at this point to render any scene particles using the default Krakatoa settings. Rendering options are discussed in later topics and tutorials.

Note: If you have not configured the license, the FLEXlm License Finder will appear. See instructions in the Node-locked License or Floating License topic.

Expert tip: The user interface for Krakatoa is written in MAXScript and can be customized to hide or configure specific features for your studio. This level of customization is beyond the scope of this User Guide. Modify at your own risk and be certain to make backup copies of any Krakatoa scripts you alter.