Thinkbox Software today announced the release of Krakatoa MY, the high-volume particle renderer for the Autodesk Maya 3D software running on Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.

Krakatoa MY seamlessly connects Autodesk Maya with the Krakatoa renderer and provides a number of features designed to accelerate artists’ workflow when manipulating millions of particles. Krakatoa MY shares the same rendering core with Krakatoa SR (Stand-alone Renderer) and Krakatoa MX (3ds Max) and will produce identical results given the same input data and settings.

Key features of Krakatoa MY 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
• Simultaneous support of both additive and volumetric shading models, with per-particle control over color, emission, absorption, density and more
• Support for various light scattering algorithms, high-quality self-shadowing and occlusions from both geometry and DTEX maps
• Dedicated particle loader object supporting Krakatoa .PRT file sequences, RealFlow .BIN file sequences and .CSV file sequences, with the ability to offset, retime, combine and modify already cached particles
• Dedicated PRT Volume and PRT Fractal objects inside the Maya viewports provide procedural particle creation from polygon mesh volumes and mathematical algorithms
• Particle partitioning tools for caching multiple versions of the same simulation to combine into high-density particle clouds
• Particle repopulation for render-time conversion of low-count simulations into high-count particle clouds

“Versatility and performance have made Krakatoa a favorite tool among studios of all sizes for years. With the release of Krakatoa MY, we are thrilled to bring Maya users access to an efficient pipeline for particle effects creation, something they have been requesting for some time. We love feedback from our clients and are more than happy to go above and beyond to make whatever they want a reality so it’s exciting to see Krakatoa MY come to fruition,” said Chris Bond, founder, Thinkbox Software.

Krakatoa MY requires its own dedicated workstation license for interactive use inside of Autodesk Maya, but is compatible with the network rendering licenses used by the other Krakatoa implementations (Krakatoa SR and Krakatoa MX). Workstation and render license bundles are available at a reduced price.