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Krakatoa PRT Loader Particle Flow Operators

 Available in Krakatoa v1.5.0 and higher.

Overview

  • The Krakatoa PRT Loader Birth and Update operators provide a superior workflow to the previously available Krakatoa File Birth and File Update operators for loading saved particles back into Particle Flow systems. See this topic for a practical usage example.

Krakatoa PRT Loader Birth

  • The PRT Loader Birth operator can be used to give birth to particles according to the particle sequences and settings of a selected PRT Loader object in the scene.
  • The operator has only two controls:
    • The first is a pick button which is labeled as None when no PRT Loader has been selected. It can be used to select a PRT Loader from the scene. A prompt will be issued suggesting to automatically turn off the Renderable property of the PRT Loader to prevent it from rendering in Krakatoa. This is useful when the PFlow system will be rendered instead.
    • The second is a button labeled Clear PRT Loader which does exactly that.

Krakatoa PRT Loader Update

  • The PRT Loader Update operator can be used to update particles created using the PRT Loader Birth operator according to the particle sequences and settings of a selected PRT Loader object in the scene.
  • All relevant settings including Offset, Playback Graph, Custom Range and Start/End Behavior, Render Percentage and Limits as well as Deformations and Culling will be taken into account, allowing particles rendered through PFlow to be manipulated in a number of ways non-destructively without the need to resave the PRT Loader's particles to disk before loading them in PFlow.
  • If the ID channel is detected in the incoming particle stream, a FileID channel will be set by the Krakatoa PRT Loader Update operator marking any particles that were previously in the PFlow system but are not found anymore in the incoming stream as dead (marked with value of -1). Using a Krakatoa File ID Test operator, these can be sent to an Event with a Delete operator in it.
    • If no ID channel is detected, the particles will be loaded based on their order inside the stream, resulting in unpredictable behavior of particle birth and death.
  • It provides the same two buttons as PRT Loader Birth as well as the following controls:
    • Channel List - after picking a PRT Loader, the list will show all channels available in the particle files of the PRT Loader. The channels that are set to load will be marked with plus signs. NOTE! The exact file name listed in the PRT Loader will be used to determine the available channels. If the frame listed there does not contain any particles, the channel list will not be acquired correctly. Please be sure to specify a frame number that contains at least one particle to allow for correct Channel names acquisition!
    • Use Channel - this checkbox can be used to enable/disable the loading of the channel selected in the Channel List.
    • Blend/Add - these radio buttons define how to load the particle data. The default mode is Blend 100%, which will replace the existing channels data with the incoming data. Changing the spinner to less than 100% will blend the existing and incoming data respectively. Switching to Add will accumulate the data by adding the specified fraction of the incoming data (between 0 and 100%) to the existing data in the channel. 


 WARNING!!!
 Enabling the Color channel in the Krakatoa PRT Loader Update in 3ds Max 9, 2008 and pure 2009
 will cause a Particle Flow error which cannot be closed - a restart of 3ds Max will be required. 
 This is a known bug in Particle Flow which has been fixed in 3ds Max 2009 with Creative Extension
 and 3ds Max 2010.

Krakatoa File ID Test

  • The Krakatoa File ID Test should be used in conjunction with the above two operators to ensure dead particles are removed from the flow as needed.
  • See Krakatoa File ID Test for details.