PRT Loader File Sequence Manager

Available in Krakatoa v1.0.0 and higher

• Pressing the Edit… button in the PRT Loader opens the File Sequence Manager floating dialog displaying
  • The File Name of the particle sequence. This is the base file name of the particle file or sequence. If Load Single Frame Only is enabled in the PRT Loader, this is the exact name of the file that will be loaded.
  • The file Type of the particle sequence, currently supported types are .PRT, .BIN and .CSV;
  • The Viewport display flag - when set to “View”, the particles will be displayed, when “–”, they will not be displayed;
  • The Rendering flag - when set to “Rend”, the particles will be rendered, when “–” they will not be loaded;
  • The Full Path to the particle sequence;
  • The Found state of the sequence - if the file name was detected at the given path, this column will contain “Yes”, otherwise it will read “No”. In the latter case you can use the Repath Selected Files option in the File menu to resolve missing files, or disable the file sequence in the Renderer to avoid missing file errors.
  • The available channels.
    • For each particle file or sequence specified in the PRT Loader, the list of all available channels will be collected.
    • The channels used by all particle sequences will be displayed as columns in the File Sequence Manager.
    • If a file contains a given channel, the data format of the channel will be listed, e.g. float32[3], float16[1] etc.
    • If a file does not contain a given channel used by other files/sequences, the column will contain “–” and a default value will be assumed for that channel in case Krakatoa requires the channel for rendering purposes.

For example, if one sequence contains a Color channel and another sequence does not, and the PRT Loader is set to use the saved colors and Krakatoa does not override the colors, the former sequence will render with the saved colors, while the latter will render using the default white color.

• The title bar will display the name of the PRT Loader being edited. If multiple instances of the same Loader have been selected, the dialog will display the name of the first instance and the number of other selected instances.
• The dialog will use an ActiveX TreeView control in 3ds Max 8 and a DotNet TreeView control in 3ds Max 9 and higher. The general functionality should be identical between these versions.
• The dialog will remain open until closed manually even if the PRT Loader it was opened from is not selected anymore. It will close automatically if you attempt to perform any operation with the PRT Loader object deselected in the scene.
• If a file or sequence is added or removed, the TreeView will be updated automatically to reflect the changes, including actual channel names and data.

Menu Bar

• The menu bar provides the following options (the same options are available in slightly different order via a Right-Click context menu):

File Menu

• Load File List… –Loads a pre-saved file list from disk and appends it to the current list - this means that you can easily combine the content of multiple lists. To replace the list, delete all entries first, then load the list from disk. If the file list contains a path identical to an existing entry, it will be skipped.
• Save File List… –Saves all paths to a File List File to be loaded later in the same or other PRT Loaders.
• Save Selected Files… –Saves only the selected paths to a File List File.
• Add Files… –Equivalent to the Add Files… button in the PRT Loader.
• Add Files From Folder… –In v1.6.0 and higher, opens a Directory Selector dialog and then loads all particle sequences found in the selected directory.
• Add Files From Folder Recursively… –In v1.6.0 and higher, opens a Directory Selector dialog and then loads all particle sequences found in the selected directory and any sub-folders thereof.
  • In both cases above, all sequences will be added with Viewport OFF regardless of the preferences settings to avoid display overload.
• Repath Selected Files… –Replaces the paths of the selected file sequences. This option can be used in two ways - either pick a different folder containing the same files/sequences as the ones loaded in the PRT Loader, or pick a root folder of the folder containing the same files/sequences. In the latter case, the File Manager will scan recursively all sub-folders and use the first path containing the same file name.
• Remove Selected Files… –Removes the selected entries from the list
• Remove All… –Clears the whole list
• Close –Closes the File Manager.

Edit Menu

• Select All –selects all entries on the list
• Select Invert –inverts the current selection
• Cut Selected –cuts the selected entries - this saves them into a temp. buffer on disk and removes from the list
• Copy Selected –copies the selected entries - this saves them into a temp. buffer on disk without removing them
• Paste –pastes the content of the disk buffer. NOTE that the buffer is never deleted so it can be used between 3ds Max sessions, even months apart. The clipboard buffer is just a custom File List File stored like regular file lists.

Reorder Menu

• Move To Top –moves the selected items to the top of the list. This is useful when using Load First N particles mode with less than 100% and you want to specify which particles should be displayed first.
• Move Up –moves the selected items one line up.
• Move Down –moves the selected items one line down.
• Move To Bottom –moves the selected items to the end of the list.
• Sort File List –sorts the list alphabetically.

Toggle Menu

Available in Krakatoa v1.1.0 and higher

• Each file sequence can be toggled on or off in either the Viewport, in the Renderer or in both. This menu provides various options to affect the selected or all files and enable or disable them in the viewport and/or the renderer:
  • Toggle Selected In View - toggles the state of the View flag in the selected sequences. If the View flag was on it will be set to off and vice-versa.
  • Toggle All in View - toggles the state of the View flag in ALL sequences. This effectively inverts the viewport display flags - if a sequence was set to display in the viewport it will be disabled and vice-versa.
  • Toggle Selected in Reder - toggles the state of the Render flag in the selected sequences. If the Render flag were on it will be set to off and vice-versa.
  • Toggle All in Render - toggles the state of the Render flag in ALL sequences. This effectively inverts the render flags - if a sequence was set to render it will be disabled and vice-versa.
  • Enable Selected In View - sets the Viewport display flag of the selected sequences to ON regardless of its current state.
  • Disable Selected In View - sets the Viewport display flag of the selected sequences to OFF regardless of its current state.
  • Enable All In View - sets the Viewport display flags of the ALL sequences to ON regardless of their current state.
  • Disable All In View - sets the Viewport display flags of the ALL sequences to OFF regardless of their current state.
  • Enable Selected In Render - sets the Render flag of the selected sequences to ON regardless of its current state.
  • Disable Selected In Render - sets the Render display flag of the selected sequences to OFF regardless of its current state.
  • Enable All In Render - sets the Render display flags of the ALL sequences to ON regardless of their current state.
  • Disable All In Render - sets the Render display flags of the ALL sequences to OFF regardless of their current state.
  • Solo Selected In View - sets the Viewport display flags of the selected sequences on ON while setting the Viewport display flags of all UNSELECTED sequences to OFF, effectively showing only the selected sequences in the viewport.
  • Solo Selected in Render - sets the Render flags of the selected sequences on ON while setting the Render flags of all UNSELECTED sequences to OFF, effectively enabling only the selected sequences to load and render.

Right-Click Menu

• The Right-Click menu contains the same functions as the Menu Bar, but ordered differently.
• You can use either menu to perform the same operations, but the Right-Click menu is usually easier to access when working with selected sequences.