Presets And History System

Available in Krakatoa v1.0.0 and higher

Overview

  • Achieving good results with Krakatoa requires careful balancing of a large number of parameters.
  • Krakatoa provides a sophisticated sub-system for saving and loading all or a portion of the UI settings to be able to restore specific settings at a later point.
  • This system can be operated both manually (saving and loading Preset records) and automatically (saving and loading History records).
  • In the latter case, the History records are generated by default each time a frame or a frame sequence is rendered or saved to disk.
  • The History record also contains source file, output path, render timing, software version, particle sources and memory statistics that can be useful to analyze the rendering process at a later point.
  • The History record also stores a full copy and a thumbnail version of the RGB output generated by the renderer - both as a reference and as a visual search help.

GUI Presets

  • “Presets” in Krakatoa are custom INI files saved manually by the user to snapshot the current settings of the Krakatoa GUI.
  • The number of presets files is, other than the User Startup Defaults, unlimited.
  • When loading a Presets file, the user can specify which values to be loaded and which not, thus providing the ultimate level of control otherwise unavailable in the 3ds Max Render Presets.
  • The Presets file is backwards and forward compatible - as controls come and go between versions, the Preset loading can determine which controls are valid and will load only the compatible data.
  • The main drawback of this Presets system is that is requires user interaction. It is supposed to be used to store typical settings to be loaded during the work with Krakatoa, while the Factory and User-defined Startup Defaults are meant to simply initialize a fresh instance of Krakatoa.
  • Note that the KrakatoaDefaults.ini used by the Factory Defaults stores the internal property names used by the renderer and their values, while the Presets store the UI-level control names and their values.
The reason for this design decision was that the User Interface exposure of certain internal properties can be a lot more descriptive and meaningful than the internal name and are easier recognizable since they reflect what the user sees in the rollouts all the time.

Rollout Presets

  • To simplify the storing of a single rollout’s settings, Krakatoa v1.5.0 added a <||> button in the upper left corner of all relevant rollouts.
  • When pressed, a menu will appear that would provide the same Presets and History loading and saving options as the Presets and History rollout, but with the ability to automatically check only the current rollout’s checkbox in the tree view selector, thus saving a lot of time clicking checkboxes to disable all other rollouts from saving.
  • For more information, see the dedicated topic Presets Management at Rollout Level.

History Records

  • The History records are very similar to the GUI Presets, but are created automatically each time an image is rendered or a file is saved using the Krakatoa GUI.
  • The History records do not require any manual intervention to get saved and can be loaded manually just like the Preset files.
  • The History records store useful information about the current scene, objects and the render times and memory usage.
  • A full copy of the rendered image will be saved with the History record, providing a visual reference of the final result the saved settings would produce when applied to the given particles.

History Data Mining

  • The Presets and History rollout of the Krakatoa MX GUI represents the main interface for managing and browsing the Presets and History records.
  • In addition, several other Krakatoa Rollouts tap into the same data to provide lists of previously used values:
  • The Global Render Values rollout has History buttons that can list previously used colors for the Color, Emission, Absorption and Density Overrides
  • The Save Particles rollout has History buttons that can be used to browse previously used paths or portions thereof.
  • The User Interface and Interaction Preferences rollout of the Krakatoa Preferences floater also exposes a History button for its “Default Path For New PRT Loader” option.

3ds Max Render Presets

  • In addition to all the native systems, Krakatoa is also fully compatible with the 3ds Max Render Presets system. In fact, Krakatoa uses this system for fast saving and restoring when switching back and forth between renderers.
  • The 3ds Max Render Presets system will store and restore the Render Elements tab in Krakatoa v1.6.0 and higher, while the native Krakatoa Presets and History system does not support Render Elements yet.
  • The main drawback of the 3ds Max Render Presets system is its coarse granularity - it does not provide controls to store specific controls, it is all or nothing with only the Render Setup dialog tabs appearing as filterable categories.
Note: A bug in 3ds Max 2010 and 2011 64 bit causes 3ds Max Render Preset Files (.RPS) to become corrupted when saving while the Compress On Save option is checked in the Customize > Preferences > Files tab. Krakatoa v1.6.0 will detect this case and fall back to an alternative method for switching between renderers to avoid crashes.