- Slide 1The Origins of Krakatoa
The Origins of Krakatoa
A VFX rendering journey from one film challenge to an industry-standard renderer
Ben Houston · 2024-12-06
How a custom point renderer built for a single visual-effects challenge evolved into technology used on films like Avatar, Harry Potter, and more.
- Slide 2The Story in One Sentence
The Story in One Sentence
- I joined Frantic Films in 2002 and started solving hard rendering and simulation problems.
- One of those problems was rendering massive animated point clouds for Doc Bailey's SPORE imagery.
- The custom renderer I built for that work became the foundation of Krakatoa.
- It later grew into one of the most recognizable particle renderers in VFX.
- Slide 3The Original Problem: Rendering SPORE
The Original Problem: Rendering SPORE
- In early 2004, we needed to render Doc Bailey's luminous SPORE imagery for the film Stay.
- The images had to hold up at high resolution with clean anti-aliasing, matte-object cutouts, and camera fly-throughs.
- They also needed to be animated, which meant generating many frames efficiently.
- Existing tools could make the images, but they could not scale to the production requirements we had.
- Slide 4Why Existing Renderers Fell Short
Why Existing Renderers Fell Short
What we needed
- Extremely large point counts
- High-resolution output
- Reliable anti-aliasing
- Matte objects and clipping planes
- Practical animation workflows
What the available tools did poorly
- Instancing-based approaches hit scaling limits
- Some SPORE images reached billions of points
- Traditional renderers were not designed for point clouds at that size
- We needed a purpose-built renderer, not a workaround
- Slide 5Building the First Version
Building the First Version
- Doc Bailey provided the core procedural algorithm as a Windows DLL that could stream points incrementally.
- I adapted an older OpenGL and C# renderer I already had and turned it into a custom point renderer in just a few days.
- The early version already supported matte objects, volume clipping, lens effects, and depth of field.
- Mark Wiebe contributed important feedback, file I/O work, and depth-of-field support.
- Slide 6First Real Use: Stay
First Real Use: Stay
- Work on the renderer started on March 18, 2004.
- It enabled Frantic Films to complete the post-production work for Stay by June 2004.
- That first success validated the core idea: streaming and rendering enormous point sets could be practical.
- What began as a one-off production tool suddenly had broader potential.
- Slide 7Second Use Case: Wispy Smoke in Cursed
Second Use Case: Wispy Smoke in Cursed
- The next major use was Cursed (2005), where we rendered wispy smoke effects.
- We advected large numbers of particles through Frantic's fluid simulator, Flood.
- That pushed Krakatoa beyond static point imagery into fully simulated particle effects.
- It also required adding motion blur, making the renderer much more capable.
- Slide 8Scaling Up Further
Scaling Up Further
- One of the last projects I touched before leaving Frantic involved work connected to Superman Returns.
- The renderer was being pushed toward even greater scalability for SPORE-like crystal internals and explosive effects.
- I was exploring hierarchical data structures and ray-casting approaches to handle the increasing complexity.
- By then, it was obvious Krakatoa had become more than a single-show solution.
- Slide 9From Internal Tool to Industry Renderer
From Internal Tool to Industry Renderer
- I left Frantic in early 2005, but Krakatoa kept evolving under Mark Wiebe and others.
- It was eventually ported from C# to C++ and integrated more deeply into 3ds Max and later Maya.
- Public releases followed around 2007 and 2008.
- Krakatoa went on to be used in many major productions, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Avatar.
- Slide 10A Spiritual Successor: Exocortex Fury
A Spiritual Successor: Exocortex Fury
- After Frantic, I founded Exocortex and helped build Exocortex Fury, a GPU-driven spiritual successor to Krakatoa.
- Fury focused on real-time rendering of millions of particles with depth of field, motion blur, self-shadowing, and stereo rendering.
- It integrated with Softimage and Maya and found strong adoption in parts of the VFX industry.
- The core idea lived on: specialized particle rendering could unlock visuals that general-purpose renderers struggled to deliver.
- Slide 11What This Story Taught Me
What This Story Taught Me
1. Start with a real pain
- Krakatoa began as a production necessity
- The problem was urgent and concrete
- That made the first version easy to validate
2. Design for the workload
- Billions of points changed the architecture
- General-purpose tools were not enough
- A focused renderer beat generic solutions
3. Great tools keep evolving
- Others extended Krakatoa after I left
- The core concept survived multiple generations
- The tool's legacy now includes open source