Motion Media

KRAKATOA™ is Thinkbox Software's production-proven Volumetric Particle Rendering, Manipulation and Management Toolkit.

It provides a pipeline for acquiring, caching, transforming, modifying, deforming, culling, shading and rendering vast quantities of particles at unprecedented speed to represent natural phenomena like dust, smoke, silt, ocean surface foam, plasma and even solid objects. Krakatoa™ integrates well with Particle Flow, the flexible 3ds Max built-in Event-Driven Particle System, and provides data exchange capabilities for sharing particles with other 3D and simulation applications.

The rendering features include Particle and Voxel representation of the same data, support for shading and texturing using standard 3ds Max maps and materials; Particle Self-Shadowing and Shadow Casting from and onto matte objects; support for per-particle Scatter, Emission, Absorption and Density data, Various Light Scattering models incl. Isotropic, Phong Surface, Schlick and Henyey-Greenstein; Environment Reflections; Motion Blur and Depth Of Field effects; Ambient Participating Medium Extinction and more.

The Particle Manipulation pipeline includes Particle Culling using arbitrary geometry and Particle Deformations using 3ds Max deformation modifiers and Space Warps like Bend, Twist, PathDeform and Free Form Deformation lattices; Particle Retiming using custom graphs, offset and limit range behaviors; Particle Data Channels access via a powerful node-based MagmaFlow editor; read and write access to particle data via MAXScript

The Particle Management features include the ability to generate millions of particles using a unique Particle Partitioning method which overcomes memory and system limitations of 3ds Max; Input and Output support for Prime Focus' open, compact and flexible .PRT particle data format, NextLimit's RealFlow 3,4 and 5 particle BIN file format and a versatile and easy to use ASCII Comma Separated Values .CSV format which could be used to interact with any application that can read and write text files. Particle files can be saved from Krakatoa™ and also loaded into 3ds Max using Krakatoa™ Particle Loader objects or into Particle Flow using dedicated Krakatoa™ File Birth and Krakatoa™ File Position operators, thus allowing for a full data flow cycle where particles can be saved, reloaded and processed multiple times through different particle system setups.

Krakatoa™ provides a highly sophisticated Presets and History System which does automatic book-keeping and thumbnail management of any rendering and saving operation performed in the Krakatoa™ GUI and allows any settings and render results to be browsed, compared and restored partially or completely to easily achieve the same look in later projects.

Krakatoa™ integrates well with Deadline, Thinkbox Software's Network Management Software and allows any number of CPUs to process particle files or render particles.

Krakatoa™ takes full advantage of 64 bit computing and has proven to run up to twice as fast on 64 bit builds of 3ds Max and Windows XP64 thanks to better memory management.

Krakatoa™ has been used to generate visual effects and elements for movies like "Stay", "Cursed", "Superman Returns", "Journey 3D", "G.I.Joe", "Twilight:New Moon" and "Avatar".

The Particle Manipulation pipeline includes Particle Culling using arbitrary geometry and Particle Deformations using 3ds Max deformation modifiers and Space Warps like Bend, Twist, PathDeform and Free Form Deformation lattices.

Krakatoa is a demanding 3D rendering application. While it is designed to render more particles than 3ds Max alone, Krakatoa will still be limited by system processor and memory. Krakatoa can cache particle data to disk, often demanding large quantities of storage space. Keep in mind the simple principle that more particles require more space and more memory.

Minimum System Requirements

• 3ds Max 9, 3ds Max 2008, 3ds Max 2009, 3ds Max 2010 or 3ds Max 2011 (32-bit)
  • 3ds Max 8 was supported by version 1.1.x and earlier. It is not supported by 1.5.0 and higher anymore.
• Intel® Pentium® IV or AMD Athlon® XP or higher processor (same as 3ds Max)
• 1 GB RAM
• 50 Gigabytes free hard drive space

Recommended System Configuration

• 3ds Max 9, 3ds Max 2008, 3ds Max 2009, 3ds Max 2010 or 3ds Max 2011(64-bit)
• Intel® EM64T, AMD Athlon® 64 or higher, AMD Opteron® processor (same as 3ds Max 9 64-bit)
• 8 GB or more RAM
• 1 Terabyte network hard drive space

Multi-Core Support

• Krakatoa v1.1.x was largely single-threaded except for the Particle Sorting operation and a faster CPU with more RAM was generally recommended over a Multi-Core CPU with less RAM.
• Krakatoa v1.5.x improved the support for multiple cores in various stages of the rendering process except for the actual drawing of particles, so a 4 or 8 core system would provide significant speed increase.
• Krakatoa v1.6.0 further improved the multi-core support by accelerating the particle drawing and Matte Objects ZDepth pass generation.
• Adding more RAM to a 64 bit system in all versions always improves Krakatoa performance and allows the renderer to handle higher particle counts.
• According to internal benchmarks, Krakatoa with 3ds Max 64-bit renders almost twice as fast as Krakatoa with 3ds Max 32-bit on the same machine and Windows XP 64-bit operating system due to the larger addressable memory space and better memory management.
• The following table shows the areas of Krakatoa that have been multi-threaded in the various major versions:

Operation	v1.0.x	v1.1.x	v1.5.x	v1.6.x
PRT Loader - Reading	Yes(2)	Yes(2)	Yes(2)	Yes(2)
PRT Loader - Material	No	No	Yes	Yes
PRT Loader - Culling	No	No	Yes	Yes
Particle Sorting	Some(2)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Particle Drawing	No	No	No	Yes
Matte ZDepth Drawing	No	No	No	Yes
Voxel Rendering	N/A	N/A	Yes	Yes
KCM Evaluation	N/A	N/A	Yes	Yes

• The color coding in the above table has the following meaning:
  • Red means single-threaded operation that does not support multiple cores.
  • Yellow means a multi-threaded operation that does not use all available cores. The number of cores supported is shown in brackets.
  • Green means a multi-threaded operation that supports all available cores.
  • Blue means not applicable (the operation was not implemented yet).

Krakatoa Memory Usage Estimates

Please use the following guidelines to estimate approximate storage space and memory usage.

PRT Files

• PRT Files can save any channels provided by the particle source, but the user can specify which channels will be saved and with what precision (16, 32 or 64 bit per component), so the file size will vary from case to case.
• The Position channel is the only channel that is absolutely required in a saved particle file.
• A typical channel setup would be:
  • Position:12 bytes (3x4)
  • Velocity: 6 bytes (3x2)
  • Density: 2 bytes
  • Color: 6 bytes (3x2)
  • Normal: 6 bytes (3x2)
  • ID: 2 bytes

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Total: 34 bytes per particle

• Some of the above channels could be excluded from saving depending on how you intend to use the particles:
  • The ID channel should only be saved when the particles are originating from Particle Flow and are intended to be reloaded back into Particle Flow or the ID channel is to be used by Krakatoa Channels Modifiers for special operations.
  • The Density and Color data can be provided later via 3D procedural textures assigned to the material of the PRT Loader or using Krakatoa Channels Modifiers.
  • In most cases the Normal information can be discarded unless Phong Surface shading or Environment Reflection Maps will be used.
• Without the Density, Color, Normal and ID channels, only 18 bytes would be need to save Position and Velocity.
• If the particles are static or no motion blur is required, one could save only the Position channel, resulting in only 12 bytes per particle.
• Finally, the PRT file is compressed internally using a ZIP algorithm so its size can vary from frame to frame and is typically much smaller than the number of particles times bytes per particle.
• The level of compression is highly dependent on the content of the data channels - if a lot of the values are identical, similar or highly organized, the compression will be much better,
  • For example, if all particles have the same Color value, the compression will be much higher and the file much smaller than in the case where each particle has a unique color.

• The following table shows the compression of the same particle system using varying data in the Position and Color channels.
  • The particles were generated using a 100x100x100 units Box and a PRT Volume set to Spacing of 1.0, resulting in one million particles.

Position Channel	Color Channel	PRT File Size	Bytes Uncompressed	Compression Factor	Percent
Regular Grid	None	1,646,878 bytes	12,000,000 bytes	7.28651x	13.724%
Random In Cube	None	9,037,457 bytes	12,000,000 bytes	1.32781x	75.3121%
Regular Grid	Constant Color	1,775,154 bytes	18,000,000 bytes	10.14x	9.86197%
Regular Grid	Cellular Map	4,978,310 bytes	18,000,000 bytes	3.61568x	27.6573%
Random In Cube	Constant Color	9,273,494 bytes	18,000,000 bytes	1.94102x	51.5194%
Random In Cube	Cellular Map	11,859,370 bytes	18,000,000 bytes	1.51779x	65.8854%

• As you can see from the table, highly organized data like a regular grid of 100x100x100 particles compresses to a 7 times smaller file, while random positions allow only little compression 9MB down from 12MB uncompressed (1 million particles x 12 bytes).
• Similarly, adding a Color channel with a constant value makes the file quite easy to compress, resulting in a size of 1.7MB vs. 18MB uncompressed (1 million particles x 18 bytes).

Rendered Particles

Overview

• In the first version of Krakatoa, the memory footprint was hard-coded to 38 bytes per particle, always allocating Position, Color, Density, Velocity, Normal and Lighting channels.
• Starting with Krakatoa v1.1.x, only channels that are required by certain features will be actually allocated.
  • These channels are displayed in the Memory Channels rollout.
  • A dedicated Memory Calculator can be used to compute the memory requirements for a given amount of particles or the number of particles that would fit in a given amount of memory.
• In Krakatoa v1.1.x, when the Override Color option was enabled, the Color channel would not be allocated and the user-defined color would be assigned to the particles directly at render time.
  • Krakatoa v1.5.0 removed this ability in favor of support for per-particle Override Color Maps and Color plus Map Blending, which means the Color channel will always be allocated allocated.

Supported Memory Channels

• The following table shows the channels that can or will be allocated at render time in Krakatoa v1.5.0 and higher:

Channel Name	Bytes	Notes
Position	12(3x4) Fixed	Always Allocated, Always 32bit per channel.
Color	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Always Allocated.
Density	2 or 4	Always Allocated.
Velocity	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Allocated when Motion Blur is on.
MBlurTime	2 or 4	Allocated when Jittered Motion Blur is on.
Lighting	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Allocated when Lighting is not off.
Normals	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Allocated in Phong Surface mode or Environment Reflection Maps on.
Emission	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Allocated when >Use Emission is on.
Absorption	6(3x2) or 12(3x4)	Allocated when >Use Absorption is on.
SpecularPower	2 or 4	Allocated in Phong Surface mode if per-particle channel on.
SpecularLevel	2 or 4	Allocated in Phong Surface mode if per-particle channel on.
Eccentricity	2 or 4	Allocated in H-G or Schlick mode if per-particle channel on.

• The Minimum Data Per Particle when only Position, Color and Density are allocated can be 20, 22, 26 or 28 bytes per particle depending on channel depth specified for Color and Density.

Particle Sources:

• Acquire data from 3ds Max particle systems like Particle Flow, Thinking Particles and the legacy particle objects.
• Convert FumeFX voxels to particles for direct rendering of fluid simulations.
• Use geometry vertices as particles.
• Load particle files in Krakatoa´s PRT format, CSV files or RealFlow BIN files.

Rendering Options:

• Render particles as points or as voxels.
• Render particles using volumetric or additive shading models, or a blend thereof. The volumetric model simulates light attenuation due to the density of particles that the light passes through.
• Select from a range of shading models including Isotropic, Phong Surface, Henyey-Greenstein and Schlick to determine the way light is scattered while passing through the volume.
• Control particle Color, Density, Emission and Absorption with 3ds Max Standard Material's Color, Opacity, Self-illumination and Filter channels, supply a custom color, override the particle color globally, or design your own shading data sources using the node-based MagmaFlow Editor.
• Use the 3ds Max´s built-in DOF or Motion Blur multi-pass effects for compatibility, or employ the native Krakatoa Motion Blur and Depth of Field effects which can be applied at the same time.
• Apply Ambient Participating Medium Extinction to particles to simulate light behavior in air or under water.
• Cache particles in RAM before or after the lighting phase to adjust lighting parameters or camera placement and re-render in a fraction of the time.

Saving and Partitioning

• Save any supported particle type to disk for direct access to every frame without preroll.
• Specify the exact channels layout to be saved, or create new channels to save custom data from 3rd party systems or channels created by Krakatoa Channel Modifiers.
• Use the Advanced Partitioning capabilities of Krakatoa to render more particles than 3ds Max could normally process by itself. When running Max in conjunction with Deadline®, distribute large particle simulation jobs over multiple machines, or even over multiple cores of the same machine.
• Recombine partitioned files and render them as a single particle cloud - ultimately, the only limitation on particle counts is your available RAM.

Interaction With Other Renderers

• Load specified scene geometry to act as matte objects to obscure particles from the camera and cast shadows onto particle systems.
• Use the Krakatoa Shadows Generator to generate Deep Opacity Map shadow maps in Krakatoa and to apply these shadows in other renderers like Default Scanline and V-Ray.
• Use the Krakatoa Shadows Explorer and Matter Objects Explorer utilities to mass-assign, manage and inspect the shadow and matte object settings of the scene.

PRT Objects

• Use the PRT Loader object to preview input particle files in the 3ds Max viewport â“ and specify how they will load and render in Krakatoa™.
• Convert any more or less closed geometry surface to a particle cloud by filling its volume with particles using the PRT Volume object.
• Convert the voxels of a FumeFX simulation to a particle cloud using the PRT FumeFX object.
• Convert 3rd party particle sources exposing the Krakatoa particle data streams into Krakatoa-compliant particles using the PRT Source object.
• Apply 3ds Max object space and world space modifiers to PRT Objects just like with any other geometry object to bend, twist, path-deform, free-form-deform, displace etc. your particles.
• Use custom geometry as culling volumes to selectively delete particles while being loaded by the PRT Loader.
• Use the 3ds Max Vol.Select modifier to provide Selection or Soft Selection and pass it up the stack to affect deformation modifiers, to use as control channel in MagmaFlows or to delete particles selectively using the dedicated Krakatoa Delete modifier.
• Offset or tweak the timing of a PRT Loader using a custom curve to speed up, slow down, or create playback effects like reverse, repeat, ping-pong etc. while adjusting correctly position interpolation and velocity data.

Particle Data Editing

• Use the powerful node-based MagmaFlow editor to read, modify and write back particle channel data.
• Perform per-particle mathematical operations , transform particle data between coordinate systems, convert values between data formats and so on.
• Test particles against arbitrary geometry surfaces using raytracing or nearest point lookup operators to acquire information like position, normal, mapping, face index, barycentric coordinates and more.
• Construct custom shaders by using particle data like Position and Normal as well as scene objects like Light Sources and Camera position and orientation to calculate the color, emission, absorptions, density etc. as needed.
• Input Color, Mono and Normal Perturbation data from 3ds Max Texture Maps.
• Access arbitrary scene data using MAXScript and the Script Input node.
• Use the Global Channel Override option to apply MagmaFlows to all scene particles at render time.
• Debug the values at each step of the flow or generate graphical representation of the final output.
• Save groups of operators as compound operators (BlackOps), save flows to reuse and share or save Macros from the editor's Undo buffer to demostrate the dynamic building of the flow with custom timing and comments.

Explorer Utilities

• Use the Particle Data Viewer utility to browse the content of PRT Loaders, PRT Volumes and PRT FumeFX objects.
• Use the PRT Scanner utility to collect and output information about the particle count in PRT Loaders or about missing frames in the file sequences.
• Use the Krakatoa Schematic Flow to analyze the state of the various components of the renderer and resolve problems like missing objects, modifiers etc.
• Use the Krakatoa Explorers utility to mass-modify relevant properties of particle source objects in the scene.
• Use the Krakatoa Log Window to gain insight into the various operations performed by the Krakatoa renderer and its components, browse performance statistics and get informed about error conditions.

MAXScript Exposure

• Develop your own scripted tools to read and write particle files in the Krakatoa PRT format.
• Access all relevant properties of the Krakatoa renderer and most of its tools via MAXScript.
• Learn from the Krakatoa User Interface and Utilities script source code provided in unprotected form.
• Tweak and extend the scripted components of Krakatoa to better fit your pipeline.

Particle Flow Interoperability

• Take advantage of the dedicated Krakatoa PRT Birth, Krakatoa PRT Update and Krakatoa ID Test operators to load particles from particle file sequence back into Particle Flow for reprocessing, or use the same approach as a form of customizable disk caching or as a particle deformation pipeline.
• Use the high-performance bonus operators Krakatoa Geometry Test, Krakatoa Geometry Lookup and Krakatoa Collision to test particles against closed geometry volumes, acquire data from geometry surfaces or collide millions of particles with high-resolution meshes at unprecedented speeds.

Performace and Scalability

• Most Krakatoa operations scale in linear fashion, e.g. rendering twice as many particles takes twice as long.
• Krakatoa is largely multi-threaded and will take advantage of multi-core systems to accelerate operations like particle sorting, lighting and drawing.
• Material evaluation and particle culling as well as the processing of Krakatoa Channels Modifiers containing custom MagmaFlows are also fully multi-threaded.
• Krakatoa will not only take advantage of the larger memory address space of 64 bit systems, but performs up to twice as fast as in 32 bit due to the lower memory management overhead.