Hi,

I just read Thinkbox Software launch Krakatoa SR, a stand alone version provided with Python interface and C++ API.
http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/krakatoa-sr-overview/ [thinkboxsoftware.com]
I am not a Krakatoa user but I am curious.
What do you think of Krakatoa extension for Houdini ?

I think it would be very interesting to get access to a Houdini implementation of this, but my C++ knowledge is almost non-existant

…as my own C++ knowledge !
The only thing is I would like to know what Krakatoa could bring to Houdini.
How this engine works compare to Mantra ?
Can someone compare the speed, memory managment, shading capability between the two ?

I'd be interested, too.

I did some basic tests (but it was quite some time ago, actually) with mantra, rendering (a few million) particles using the micropolygon engine, and it is pretty fast – but AFAIK krakatoa can work with pretty extreme settings (tens of millions of particles with very high transparency and small point size). It would be interesting to do a comparison.

One thing that's a “con” for krakatoa is it's resolution-based (so, it's similar to the dynamation/maya old hardware render buffer, where the final look of the render depended on the AA settings and resolution both), and I don't think it's a good way to go. (But since I haven't had any first-hand experience – my info is from a colleague who uses it –, I might be mistaken.)

Looking interesting,but I just wonder what advantage will Krakatoa SR bring to Houdini?

hi
I did some tests end of last year with a beta version of SR. mainly rendering naiad particles.
the main issues I have was the lack of control, like using attributes to drive values/colors etc..

As far as I understand 3dsmax users, use something called Magma to control Krakatoa attributes. I think this is similar to VOPS?
anyway, unless you got full control of your particles via Houdini it's kinda pointless to use.

for me using mantra is still way better, you don't have any motion blur/holdout issues between passes!

the current problem I got with Mantra is the new CVEX point replicate shader is lacking severely on documentation, so unless you are already an expert on cvex there´s no simple way to use it.
I checked two scene around this forums that used it, and every time I looked inside cvex I couldn´t understand most of it, the reason being, there´s very sparse documentation on it…

Some examples on the docs with a few notes would make it far more useable.