70 minutes of video footage recorded live during the first Krakatoa MX Webinar on May 22nd and May 23rd 2012 are now available for offline viewing in the "Learning Krakatoa MX" area of the website.

The Webinar entitled "Krakatoa MX Fundamentals - Part 1 - Choosing The Right Path" was intended mainly for existing Krakatoa MX users, but could be useful as introduction for new customers, too. It goes back to the basic approaches of User Interface interaction and highlights the Best Practices as well as some common mistakes when working with the complex volumetric particle rendering, manipulation and management toolkit that is Krakatoa MX.

The ultimate goal of this first Webinar is to make the user more productive by reducing the number of mouse clicks while increasing the effective time for productive rendering.

In a recent interview with The Art of VFX, Platige Image's Technical Director Lukasz Sobisz revealed that Thinkbox Software's Krakatoa MX Volumetric Particle Renderer, Manipulation and Management plugin for 3ds Max was used to create the magic spell effects in the game cinematics for "The Witcher 2".

Quote from the article on The Art Of VFX:

TAOVFX: How did you create the beautiful particles effects of the two spells?

LUKASZ SOBISZ (FX TD): To achieve enough level of details and handle multi-milion particle sims we used famous Krakatoa renderer. Particles where driven with thinking particles system, which gives some unique workflows with Matterwaves node. It allowed us to control the emission with procedural maps and uv coordinates for maximum freedom.
The motion was enhanced with fumeFX, which integrates very well with TP and gives access to any voxel field stored within fume’s cache. Another feature that saved us a lot of time was MagmaFlow coming with Krakatoa. Editing particle channels after simulation is finished, streamlines render passes generation and gives additional control over the look of particles.

Please go to  The Art Of VFX article to read the whole interview with Platige Images and watch the full video as well as a breakdown!

Ian Clemmer, who recently helped Hydraulx deliver all those awesome Krakatoa effects in "The Avengers", has posted a personal project entitled "The Universal One" on his website.

Based on Superflow particles driving Naiad simulations which were then rendered in Krakatoa, the project is as beautiful as it is epic:

Please click the above image to visit Ian Clemmer's page and experience the whole project in full resolution!

KRAKATOA™ MX is Thinkbox Software's production-proven Volumetric Particle Rendering, Manipulation and Management Toolkit for 3ds MAX. Recently given a scroe of 5/5 in a Max Underground review and commonly described as a ‘mad scientists laboratory on a space station’, Krakatoa is an incredibly deep product that delivers amazing results.

This Webinar has been designed to teach existing Krakatoa MX users how to more effectively interact and use Krakatoa to maximize its potential.  

Register for a session now by clicking a date below:

As reported by FX Guide, Hydraulx used Thinkbox Software's Krakatoa volumetric particle renderer in the opening sequence of the box office smash "The Avengers" released in North America on May 4th.

“We did the opening ten minutes of the movie, other than the opening set-up in space,” says Hydraulx’s Colin Strause... “For the actual destruction shots, they were 100% digital,” he says. “So we had to make every building and light and pieces of glass and cars, and add in the fireballs and explosions. We modeled in Maya, rendered in Mental Ray, and then did all the destruction using Thinking Particles in 3ds Max, Krakatoa and Fume FX for the dust and particles and explosions.”

In addition, Hydraulx was one of the first Thinkbox customers to employ Thinkbox' XMesh geometry caching toolset for moving Thinking Particles data from 3ds Max to Maya.

For more information on all companies contributing amazing visual effects for this movie, please read the complete FX Guide article "VFX roll call for The Avengers" written by Mike Seymour and published on May 6th, 2012.

A new Genome Videos page has been added to the Genome online documentation. The videos cover some of the topics presented during the Genome Webinars on April 12th, 2012 and are mostly based on and expand upon the written Genome tutorials.

Note that all videos have been recorded at 1920x1200 resolution, so watching them in HQ and Full Screen on YouTube is recommended.

All videos contain an English Closed Captioning track.

Written by Hristo Velev, a highly experienced Krakatoa user who has worked for companies like Pixomondo and Scanline VFX, the review also features a very good introduction to what Krakatoa really is, a topic that has always been very difficult to cover due to the complex nature of the product.

Chris Bond [President & CEO] and Thomas Phariss [Director of Sales] will be in Las Vegas during the show, as well as at our close friends Shotgun Software's booth [Booth # SL13416] at the following times:

Monday April 16th: 9:00-12:00 

Tuesday April 17th 2:00-5:00

Wedneday April 18th 2:00-5:00

Thursday April 19th 9:00-12:00 

We will be discussing Pipeline and Worflow automation for Post-Production and VFX with Deadline and Shotgun as well as our other products and recent releases - Krakatoa 2, X-Mesh and Genome.

Following NAB - Thinkbox will be in NEW YORK beginning April 23rd thru April 27th

Bobo and Chris Bond will be presenting at a the Digital Heroes event at 7:00 pm at the  Manhattan Autodesk office space located at 38 West 21st Street on the 9th Floor, New York NY 1001

The rest of the week we will be touring facilities and taking meetings. 

If you would like to schedule a private meeting to discuss our upcoming products and plans while we are in Las Vegas or New York, please contact Sales.

However - there is an important note about 2012 SP3 and 2013 and compatibility with Deadline 5.1 and the upcoming 5.2 release that we want to make our users aware of:

Deadline 5.1 + Max 2012 SP3

1) Deadline 5.1's advanced 3dsmax plugin will not work with 2012 SP3 due to a change in the Max SDK. We are recommending that our clients skip/uninstall this update. Autodesk will be addressing this issue in an upcoming 2012 update. 

2) Deadline 5.1's basic 3dsCommand plugin will still work with 2012 SP3.

Deadline 5.1 + Max 2013

3) Deadline 5.1 will NOT support 2013. Support for 2013 will be added in Deadline 5.2.

4) Deadline 5.2's advanced plugin will not work with the initial 2013 release due to a change in the Max SDK. Autodesk will be addressing this issue in an upcoming 2013 update.

5) Deadline 5.2's basic 3dsCommand plugin will work with the initial 2013 release.

We have been working closely with Autodesk to solve this and will update this Thinkblog post once we have an ETA for Deadline 5.2, and the 2012 and 2013 updates from Autodesk. We believe this will be solved in a timely manner!

If you have any questions, please contact support@thinkboxsoftware.com

Chris Bond