Tuesday, April 15th, 2014 Posted by Jim Thacker

Thinkbox Software ships Krakatoa for Cinema 4D

131217_KrakatoaC4D

Originally posted on 17 December 2013. Scroll down for updates.

Thinkbox Software is to bring Krakatoa to Cinema 4D. The high-volume particle renderer is currently available for 3ds Max, Maya, and as a standalone edition.

Initiated by users
The Cinema 4D port was initiated by Ugly Kids‘ Daniel Hennies, who took advantage of the standalone edition’s C++ API to bridge the two applications.

“”I was really motivated to incorporate Krakatoa into my workflow since the majority of my projects involve creating fluids, particles and high-quality renders, which are time and memory-intensive in Cinema 4D,”” explained Hennies. “”I didn’’t want to switch creative applications so I took matters into my own hands. Krakatoa renders blazingly fast in Cinema 4D and handles particles in a way that wasn’’t possible before.”

Thinkbox Software has now acquired Hennies’ code, and plans to launch an official beta of Krakatoa for C4D early in 2014.

Other VFX tools for Cinema 4D
Krakatoa joins a growing line-up of new, indie-developed, VFX-focused tools for Cinema 4D, including Insydium’s X-Particles and Navié’s Effex simulation framework, itself compatible with Krakatoa.

Updated 15 April 2014: Krakatoa for Cinema 4D is shipping. It is compatible with Cinema 4D R14 and R15, and runs on Windows and Mac OS X. According to Thinkbox, key features include:

  • Point or voxel representation of particle data with various filter modes, motion blur and depth of field camera effects, and HDRI render passes output to OpenEXR files.
  • Concurrent support for additive and volumetric shading models, with per-particle control over data including color, emission, absorption, density and more.
  • Support for various light scattering algorithms, high quality self-shadowing and occlusions from geometry objects.
  • Integration with the native particle systems of CINEMA 4D as well as with third party products like X-Particles by Insydium Ltd. and TurbulenceFD by Jawset Visual Computing.
  • Dedicated objects for quick conversion of mesh volumes and surfaces to point clouds.
  • Particle loader objects to read Krakatoa’s native .PRT file format as well as NextLimit RealFlow particle .BIN files and .CSV text files.
  • Tools for saving particles to disk and support for saving multiple variations of the same simulation with different initial seeding using Batch rendering or via network rendering with Thinkbox Deadline to achieve higher particle counts.
  • A powerful render-time particle repopulation option to produce high-density particle clouds from low count base simulations.
  • Dedicated tools for creating “sticky” Camera Projection mapping for advanced dissolving effects.

A workstation licence costs $595, just over $400 cheaper than the 3ds Max or Maya versions. Render licences cost $495, and work with any version of the software.

Read more about Krakatoa for Cinema 4D on Thinkbox Software’s website