Messages

691

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona 1.4 render setup UI overhaul

« on: 2016-03-04, 09:48:42 »

Haha that is great Romullus..

For what it's worth, Ondra, you have my backing for this approach 100%. Simplicity is Corona's main selling point. We would always rather spend more time on rendering and less time on fiddling with settings. Time is money. Machine money is less than user money. If we need to spend an hour optimising a render so it renders 1 hour less, it's a total waste of effort.

But we would probably suggest keeping these settings hidden away somewhere in the UI so at least those who do need them can get at them. Seems no point in removing them altogether.

For me, Corona can (and perhaps should) grow in complexity when it comes to features, such as elements, overrides, VFB tools and all that good stuff. That stuff increases productivity. Personally if I never have to look at another sample setting or AA/GI balance again I'd be a happy man. But give me lots of toys to make my images realistic and beautiful.

Cheers,

692

Gallery / Re: Daily Renders [updated]

« on: 2016-03-02, 09:23:44 »

Love your work here! Some of these would make for great album covers...

693

[Max] I need help! / Re: output autosave

« on: 2016-03-01, 10:08:53 »

Great stuff thanks Romullus :)

I'd still request that this be on by default.

694

[Max] I need help! / Backburner render not getting to required no. passes, but "complete"

« on: 2016-03-01, 10:04:29 »

Hi folks,

We sent a job off to backburner last night, max 300 passes and no time limit. We set the job to have a backburner timeout of 20000 to avoid any issues there.

The job "completed" and the output file saved correctly at 262/300 passes.

"3dsmax adapter : CORONA : Pass 262/300
"Application is down
3dsmax adapter: Autodesk 3dsMax 18.6 shutdown."

Any idea at all how this could have happened? We double checked the max file, including the one BB saves in its own local folder, and there are no time limits set and the pass limit is definitely 300.  If max crashed then there would be no output file, but there is one, so it must have been a "successful" job. Backburner reports it as "completed".

Using 1.3 retail with max 2016 sp2.

Cheers,

695

[Max] I need help! / Re: output autosave

« on: 2016-03-01, 09:46:52 »

Great! Thanks Ondra. Would you consider making this the default? I can't see any reason not to, and it would be very useful to most people I think.

696

[Max] I need help! / Re: output autosave

« on: 2016-02-29, 21:43:31 »

You know what. It would be really nice if the autosave appended the number of passes in the filename. Example: view_01_autosave_001_247_passes.exr etc.

697

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: romullus's wips

« on: 2016-02-29, 15:39:22 »

While i find adaptivity absolutely awesome, i have mixed feelings about denoising. On one hand, in animations like posted earlier, it could be godsend, OTOH i doubt that i will use it often on stills. I'm not a big fan of clinically clean images in a first place, besides i don't quite like those jpeg compression like artifacts after Corona's denoising. While those usually can be seen only in high zoom, it still leaves "dirty" image impression for me.

I agree. But I think if we can simply paint mask between normal and denoised we could control this. The "dirty", "wobbly" areas are visible in some areas of that animation but not in others, so as long as you can easily control this it should still be super useful. I can see myself using it to remove speckles in certain areas, smoothing out noisy large glossy surfaces, spotlight reflections in floors etc.

698

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: romullus's wips

« on: 2016-02-29, 14:21:13 »

Great results...!

Quick question, more related to the denoising feature really - can Corona output a version with and without denoising at the same time? I think it would be ideal if we could blend between them for final renders in post, as some areas become warped during denoising.

Heh I asked exactly about this to Ondra when we talked recently, basically controls for aggressivness of filter, and blending of filtered and non-filtered in framebuffer. He said it's doable, but said it didn't yield positive results from his tests. But that's no definite no :- )

How I planned to use this, was to do this manually, output both filtered and un-filtered results, and mask them with mat-ID  pass for mats with little high-frequency details, like flat painted surfaces. There is no detail that I can loose in white ceiling, but I always have shit-ton of noise there.

Cool. I mean for us it's probably not that important at all to have the blending controls within Corona. I would just like to be able to paint between the normal and denoised versions in photoshop/AE etc like we do now - if a render is a little noisy we'll denoise it in LR then matte between the two in PS manually. Having a sophisticated method for masking might be beneficial too. For now it would be great if there was a simple checkbox "Save Denoised Version Separately" or similar, so we get two files to work with each time.

699

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: romullus's wips

« on: 2016-02-29, 13:38:44 »

Great results...!

Quick question, more related to the denoising feature really - can Corona output a version with and without denoising at the same time? I think it would be ideal if we could blend between them for final renders in post, as some areas become warped during denoising.

700

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: romullus's wips

« on: 2016-02-29, 12:35:28 »

This is great..... can't wait to try this in production!

701

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Render Autosave EXR Bug - Wrong White Balance & EXR Format

« on: 2016-02-26, 14:20:02 »

Thanks Maru, that's what I figured. We can load and resume one of the autosaved renders, cancel it and then re-save, which works fine. It's a little cumbersome though. It would be great it it saved out 2 renders each time - one raw and one tonemapped.

702

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Render Autosave EXR Bug - Wrong White Balance & EXR Format

« on: 2016-02-26, 12:22:22 »

I thought that might be the case, but the file is still 6k and I though the Corona EXR (the raw one) was double resolution?

Either way I'm not sure if this is the ideal behaviour. I wonder if it would be possible to have Corona save out both a raw version which can be resumed *and* a "proper" version with user tonemapping applied, so you can simply use file directly in post. I guess the workaround is to load the file and "resume" it, then immediately cancel and save it out. Seems a bit cumbersome...

703

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Render Autosave EXR Bug - Wrong White Balance & EXR Format

« on: 2016-02-26, 10:18:06 »

Hi folks,

I think I found a bug here, or maybe two related ones.

I have set my main Save File output to Half Float (16bits/channel) EXR in the Common Tab, with zip compression per scanline band, Store Image as Tiles, Save Full Image. When I enable render output autosave in System Tab, any autosaved renders are coming out enormous file size (350mb instead of the proper file which is only 90mb), even though they are the same resolution (6k). So I assume that the autosave renders are not in fact respecting the settings from the Common Tab.

Furthermore, the autosave EXRs have an incorrect white balance compared to the final proper file. They are considerably warmer. Even the _end001.exr file is incorrect compared to the final proper file.

I am guessing there is an inconsistency between the autosave EXR settings and the Common Tab Save File EXR settings.

Cheers,

704

Gallery / Re: Pied à Terre

« on: 2016-02-19, 18:07:41 »

Thanks Marcin! Appreciate the kind words.