Krakatoa Factory and User-Defined Startup Defaults
- The Krakatoa User Interface contains a large number of values and options that can affect the render output.
- The Krakatoa Development Team has spent a significant amount of time figuring out the best default settings of each one of them to allow for quick iterations when starting a new scene.
- Still, every user has different needs and preferences and it would not be possible to satisfy the preferences of every single customer.
- For that reason, Krakatoa provides a multitude of different methods to define both the initial settings and save and load settings later in the rendering process.
- When assigned via the Render Scene Dialog > Assign Renderer dialog, a new instance of the Krakatoa renderer will be created. This renderer will have all its settings initialized to what is known as “Factory Defaults”.
- These Factory Defaults are hard-coded in the file KrakatoaGUI.ms and could be potentially changed by the end user, but this is discouraged because a future update of Krakatoa would remove such changes.
- When launched via the Krakatoa GUI icon while a different renderer is active, the user will be prompted about loading the last known Krakatoa settings from a 3ds Max Render Preset or using the Factory Defaults. Selecting the NO option is identical to assigning the renderer manually via the Render Scene Dialog.
- Krakatoa 1.0.0 provided a global option to save all current settings to a KrakatoaDefaults.ini file.
- Each time a new instance of the renderer is created, the settings from this file would be loaded to initialize the internal settings and thus override all Factory Defaults.
- This way, the user had the option to set up the complete UI of Krakatoa the way he would like to find it next time a new renderer would be assigned and save this complete setup to disk.
- Krakatoa 1.1.0 expanded on this concept by allowing each setting to be stored to the KrakatoaDefaults.ini file individually.
- By simply right-clicking a checkbutton or using the Presets menu of value spinners, the current setting of the corresponding UI control could be stored in the defaults or removed from them.
- For numeric values like Particle Density, Motion Blur Samples etc., Krakatoa also provides a system to store and restore value presets.
- Clicking or right-clicking the [>>] buttons opens a menu which provides the following options:
- Add the current value to the preset list if it is not there yet - it will be written to a local INI file and will appear in future sessions.
- Load an existing value from the list - select a value that is already on the list and the corresponding spinner(s) will be set to that value.
- Remove the current value from the list if it is already there - the value will be deleted from the local INI file and will not appear on the list anymore. To remove a value, you have to first Load it, then open the list again - the current value in the spinner is compared to the list and the Remove option appears only if the two match.
- Store the value as User Startup Default - the value will be written to the Startup Defaults INI file and will be used to initialize future new sessions of Krakatoa. For example, if you prefer your Motion Blur Segments to always start at 4 instead of the factory default of 2, you can enter 4 in the spinner, then select “Set [4] as Default”.
- Remove the value from the User Startup Defaults if it is already there - if a Startup Default value is already in the INI file, the option “Reset Default [X]” will be displayed in the menu, where X is the stored number. Selecting the option will delete the entry from the INI file and tell Krakatoa to use the factory default in the future.
- Presets And History System
