Kraken
Animators, Developers, Filmmakers, & Artists. This Belongs to You.
Documentation is currently experimental, so please don't mind the dust over at docs.wabi.foundation. Top level pixar docs can now be found here, eventually, we can get most pages looking like this.
Home of the Kraken -- The free and open source 3D animation platform redefining animation composition, collaborative workflows, simulation engines, skeletal rigging systems, and look development from storyboard to final render. Built on the underlying software architecture provided by Pixar, and extended to meet the ever-growing needs of both artists and production pipelines. It is with this strong core foundation, that we may begin to solve the most challenging issues the world of modern graphics demands, and push the framework for composition & design into the future.
Phoenix
The OpenSubdiv-based real-time render engine of the 21st century.
Swift
Pixar USD for the first time - natively supported for the Apple programming language, Swift. It's a hefty work in progress. But this works!
File Format
The one and only -- Universal file format. The first of it's kind, that addresses the need to robustly and scalably interchange and augment arbitrary 3D scenes that may be composed from many elemental assets.
Automated Builds
All commits result in a ready-to-install Kraken package, just visit the actions tab and select your operating system. The "build artifact" linked at the bottom of each successful workflow will download it directly. Currently only macOS on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, ...) is supported, with Windows and Linux soon to follow.
Static Python Bindings
Kraken has an embedded Python interpreter which is loaded when Kraken is started and stays active while Kraken is running. The internal Kraken module kpy statically binds both the (kpy.context kpy.data kpy.app, ...) API and all the Pixar USD python bindings within the same python module with substantial crossover between the two APIs at it's core. This is USD as a runtime, and is the framework for which all core development is founded upon. On the outset it might not look like much as this is still early days -- but you can imagine something similiar to Blender's bpy python module, with the main difference being the "Scene" or in this context, the "Stage", having total control over the underlying API schematics and/or opinions. A digital content creation suite which evolves to the content - rather than the content having to adapt to the needs of a platform.
Credits
- Blender Foundation: https://blender.org
- Pixar: https://graphics.pixar.com
License
Kraken uses the GNU General Public License, which describes the rights to distribute or change the code.
Please read this file for the full license. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt
Apart from the GNU GPL, Kraken is not available under other licenses.