Thinkbox Software announced the release of Krakatoa MX 2.9.0, the latest version of its high-volume particle renderer for Autodesk 3ds Max.

Krakatoa MX 2.9.0 - JUNE 17th, 2019:

- Added support for 3ds Max 2020
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2015 and 2016
- Added support for FumeFX 5
- Fixed a bug where PRT sequences with frame numbers of 1000 or larger could not be loaded in 3ds Max 2019 and later

About Thinkbox Krakatoa MX. KRAKATOA MX is Thinkbox Software's production-proven Volumetric Particle Rendering, Manipulation and Management Toolkit for Autodesk 3ds Max.

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, Kajiya-Kay and Marschner; 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 Thinkbox' open, compact and flexible .PRT particle data format, NextLimit's RealFlow 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 PRT 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. Particles can also be generated procedurally from geometry volumes, splines and hair strands, FumeFX simulations or using 3D fractal functions.

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 64bit thanks to better memory management.

Krakatoa has been used to generate visual effects and elements for movies like "Avatar", "The Avengers", "G.I.Joe", "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2", "Journey 3D", "Thor", "Transformers 3", "Superman Returns" and more.

This 70 minutes video training for Krakatoa MX 2, its volumetric particle renderer and render-management toolkit for 3ds Max. The video cover best practices for using the software - which is less entry-level than it sounds.

In the first chapter, Thinkbox's Borislav 'Bobo' Petrov reveals that experienced Krakatoa users often choose the most labour-intensive method even when simply assigning the renderer in 3ds Max.

About Thinkbox Software Inc. Thinkbox Software provides creative solutions for visual artists in entertainment, engineering and design. Developer of high-volume particle renderer Krakatoa and render farm management software Deadline, the team of Thinkbox Software solves difficult production problems with intuitive, well-designed solutions and remarkable support. We create tools that help artists manage their jobs and empower them to create worlds and imagine new realities. Thinkbox was founded in 2010 by Chris Bond, founder of Frantic Films.

Product: Thinkbox Krakatoa
Version: MX 2.9.0
Supported Architectures: x64
Website Home Page :
Language: english
System Requirements: PC
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7even or newer
Software Prerequisites: Autodesk 3ds Max 2017-2020
Size: 57.2 mb