Messages

16

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Physical material tutorial

« on: 2021-12-06, 16:57:11 »

I'm really glad that you're making these films. It's definitely needed!

To agree with ShahynRox some of the simple stuff can be moved over a bit quicker. Most users are not rank beginners.

The real need is to address some of the new ways of working - which to existing users are definitely not more intuitive.

Example below...  a simple bottle with greenish glass where it's thicker. Simple using the legacy material.
But the same settings give a completely different result in Physical. I have no idea how to set up my glass now - so just stick with legacy 99.9% of the time.

Can you enlighten me?

Thank you for the feedback, appreciate it!

For your particular example, I'm guessing you have the roughness set to a value quite a bit higher than 0% which is making the material ... Rougher.

We'll tackle this in the upcoming tutorials in the series but the roughness parameter affects both the roughness of your reflections as well as your refractions. So set that to match what you have set in the refraction channel in the legacy material and it should look similar. The physical MTL does use a different physical model for calculating refractions so values that aren't 100% glossy won't match 1:1, you'll probably want to tweak those slightly.

17

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2021-12-06, 13:20:33 »

I am on a 3970x machine for 6 months now, and I am thinking of adding a second one to render consecutively. I am between the same 3970x or a 5950x, but I think the first one makes more sense, since I am used to the times it takes to render etc.
It's also about 2000€ in my country, and generally available (I hope I won't regret saying that).
(Also I have read somewhere about the 5950x rebooting randomly, but that may affect a very small percentage, or may be have been fixed by now.)

I would like to wait for the next year to see if anything new comes out, but not only do I need the second machine quickly, I also hope that those two will not feel obsolete with the new generation.

I am thinking of operating the second one independently and not as a render slave (copying the files over through the network and firing up 3dsMax and rendering). It may sound silly, but I have not tried Distributed Rendering yet, and with some crashes I'm reading about I think It might be a safe and not very time-wasting option.

Well on a $ per performance I think the 3970x will come out as less optimal but if time is of the essence then it really is the only option (that or the 3990x :) )  - in my opinion that is.

One thing to consider is that if you want to be running 3ds Max + Corona concurrently on a second machine you'll probably need to buy another set of licenses. With DR you typically don't.

18

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Physical material tutorial

« on: 2021-12-06, 09:58:24 »

I appreciate the new initiative for more tutorials as it is a still a desideratum for C4D users. But the “design” of the tutorials is not ideal. In my opinion the videos are far too long compared to the low amount of content. Too many repetitions and redundant information. I do not need to hear every 5 sec that the physical material is much smarter and much more realistic than the legacy material. If you do not explain WHY, it is enough to say that once and then bring relevant information how to use it. Try to condense the explanations to the real core information so that the videos are 5 minutes long. The first “tutorial” is 12 minutes long and has no info that is worth more than 2 or 3 minutes. The same with the second video (17 minutes!). You could communicate all relevant information in 5 minutes. The time saved could be used to produce more tutorials on other features of Corona for C4D.
I hope you do not misinterpret my critical review of the tutorials published so far. I really hope to see more videos! So thank you for the effort!

@jojorender
You are welcome! Yeah, the clearcoat tutorial is still on the way and I'm hoping it'll answer the rest of your questions. Clearcoat to me is one of those things that once you "get" how it works you really start to realize just how many things you can do with it.

@ShahynRox
Howdy! This comment definitely comes off as constructive criticism and we're happy to hear feedback like that, so thank you!

We'll keep that in mind for future tutorials and future series. That said, to give you a little background on why we've decided to make these longer rather than shorter... Well, this series is designed to be all about the basics - and we're hoping these will be a good starting point for novice users as well and so we've figured it's better to say more rather than say less.

There's more content planned besides this series so we plan on covering lots of different topics in the future. And as a tidbit of production info, the length of these doesn't really affect the time needed to get them out the door. Surprisingly so! :)

@ianosss
Thank you for your feedback as well! Appreciate the references and the kind words!

19

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Physical material tutorial

« on: 2021-12-03, 14:44:27 »

Howdy! So we've been kind of hard at work getting a new series of tutorials out and... The first two videos are out today! The series is all about the Physical Material so hopefully they'll help answer most of your questions.

Check out the Cinema 4D version here -

Now because some of the tutorials are still in the making I'd like to try and answer some of your questions here as well.

Why does IOR get greyed out when in “metal” mode? Have I been setting up metal wrong for years?
IOR gets greyed out because metals aren't defined by a single IOR function to begin with - it isn't the wrong way to do it but it isn't quite physical either. It can be done more intuitively and that's what we tried to do with Physical Material.
Metals typically have a curve that is much more complex than the IOR curve. The biggest thing is what happens towards the edges, those grazing angles can even be of a different color and so with the new Physical Material you can use the "Edge color" parameter to define how that behaves - whenever you are using the Metal metalness mode that is. Now strictly speaking, the Edge color parameter is not a scientific way to define every metal - again, every metal has its own "reflection" curve. But, you know, it'll get you there better than that single IOR will. You can also use the Complex IOR feature inside the Physical Material but at that point you are basically splitting hairs - lots of effort for not a whole lot of a result.

What does the “Level” setting do in edge color?
It controls the strength of the reflections on those grazing angles on metals.

Cleracoat: what’s the difference between “Amount” and “Roughness” (when to use what)?
Amount basically defines the strength of it. It can visually also look like how thick that clearcoat is - full amount will look thicker, more reflective.
Roughness controls how rough the surface is on a micro level basically - same as with the base layer roughness just that it only affects that clearcoat only.

Hopefully these answers will be helpful for now. Do make sure to pay to attention to our Youtube channel for more tutorials that'll go more in depth into the new Physical Material :)

20

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2021-12-02, 11:43:00 »

Why on Earth is the 3990x (64/128) priced at ~$6,000 in 2021? Are we basically just waiting for the 96-core Genoa chip before 3990x prices will drop? What about 5950x, or is it not sufficient to operate as a render node?

Ha, here I'm able to find a 3990x for around 4000€ but getting a non 1000€ motherboard for it is... An art form.

Given the leaks lately there's a chance there won't be any Zen 3 Threadrippers except potentially Pro versions but somehow I can't quite imagine that they'd be priced in a way that it makes sense - the 3990x Pro model (WX) costs north of 5000€ and with the global chip shortages plus no competition in the HEDT space, I'm kind of inclined to think that if there is a Zen 3 Pro Threadripper lineup, it'll cost a lot more than the 3990x currently does. I could be wrong though :)

edit:
As for the render node, I think the 5950x makes sense but only in the context of the entire rendering farm you have and your workstations. My opinion is that if you are riding on a single machine, say a 3960x, a 5950x will complement it nicely. Plus, it's $ efficient, especially so with the recent discounts (the higher up the stack you go the more power you get but in terms of $ per performance its diminishing returns style). Now if you already have a 3990x and a 3970x in your office, well, in my opinion then the 5950x starts making a little less sense because you already have a lot of firepower - and to notice a big difference you'll need to add even more firepower.

Just thinking out loud here but if a 3990x and 3970x net you 10 hours of rendering (let's say you do animations) then a 5950x is going to make a bit of a dent to that render time but not a whole lot more. Now if you'd add another 3990x to that mix, well, you'd take hours off that total render time. Conversely, the other way around, if you're sporting a 3960x and you add a 5950x next to it... Well, you'll cut your render times down significantly - probably near 40-45% is my guess.

Again, just a personal opinion. We just chatting here :)

21

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Volume light

« on: 2021-12-02, 09:04:16 »

I Found solution. Ambient Oclusion as Scattering. But with this Corona renderer slows extremly.

https://imgur.com/a/Ja1GDJj

https://imgur.com/a/M0kmQLu

I'm not quite sure why you've used the AO shader in there but I would pretty much second what Tom has said here - scattering is key. Once you have some absorption AND some scattering (so just assign a color to it, can be white too) you'll get that effect from the reference you posted. It also helps if your light has some directionality to it.

22

Hardware / Re: 3970x RAM Upgrade - 3200 or 3600mhz

« on: 2021-12-01, 09:20:47 »

Take this with a grain of salt a bit but on my 3970x system changing the RAM speed from 3600mhz to 3200mhz doesn't seem to affect the speed in most tasks I do (modeling, rendering etc.). At the very least, the benchmarks don't show it.

I'm using the same latency too and I get scores equal to other 3970x builds.

Hopefully thats of any help, maybe someone else will chime in and prove us all wrong :)

23

Hardware / Re: Threadripper 3990x vs 3970x

« on: 2021-11-24, 14:43:42 »

@Majeranek

Thank you for sharing! Just out of curiosity, could you give the Corona benchmark a couple of concurrent run and report back the effective clock numbers? Just interested in seeing what you are getting there :)

24

[C4D] Daily Builds / Re: translucency channel

« on: 2021-11-23, 13:02:09 »

Hey fabio81, make sure you've got the "thin shell (no inside)" mode enabled inside the "general" tab in the new Physical Material. That'll enable you to control the translucency for your materials.

The thinking here is that with the "thin shell (no inside)" mode being turned on you are telling Corona to simulate scattering on models with no thickness. And that is what the translucency parameter is there for. Now if your leaves / plants / or whatever actually has thickness, well, SSS / Volumetric Scattering will be the better choice.

25

[C4D] I need help! / Re: What is the purpose of the Opacity channel in this example??

« on: 2021-11-15, 12:55:54 »

In that leaf example the geometry of the leaf itself is just a simple plane mesh - so just a basic rectangular shape. Then, because that plane is properly UV mapped, the leaf bitmap texture fits onto it perfectly but... That still doesn't solve the fact that the geometry is a simple plane and the leaf is a more complex shape than that, right?

Well, you can then just use the opacity map to "cut" the non-leafy parts of that plane. It beats modeling it (time wise) plus there's less actual polygons to render.

Hope that helps :)

26

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2021-10-29, 09:46:30 »

Maybe you should look into the IceGiant's ProSiphon Elite. Supposedly it's doesn't feature the "a leak will kill you" feature but offers pretty much all the benefits.

Btw, does anybody know, what is the verdict on PBO and warranty? Supposedly AMD doesn't allow PBO if you want to keep your warranty but on my motherboard from Asus it came enabled by default.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Hi : How to create such lighting?

« on: 2021-10-12, 16:09:30 »

Glad to hear it was at least a little bit helpful. Go rock the project! :)

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Hi : How to create such lighting?

« on: 2021-10-11, 14:20:24 »

Hey Yvesjaye,

Sure, I'm attaching a couple of screenshots of a potential set-up.

I've used a free JPG of a starry night sky and I've put that bitmap into a Corona Light material and applied it to the ceiling. Now because the map is 8bit you can start running into limitations when you tune up the intensity - If you want it to light up your interior you'll probably end up adjusting the intensity to be higher.

Then, in my opinion, you are faced with at least two options:
A) Place a Corona Light just underneath the ceiling, match its color to the starry night sky bitmap a bit and disable it from being seen directly, in reflections and in refractions. Also disable it's ability to occlude other lights. That'll create an effect that will look like the starry night sky ceiling is outputting more light than it actually is while in fact there's an invisible light there now doing all that grunt work. (Example: "Starry Ceiling with an additional extra light.png")
B) Either find a cool HDR image of a starry night sky or do some Photoshop magic with layering and masking. You can do that in 3ds Max as well imho where you try and isolate the stars (bright spots) from the background using the Composite map and then just up the star's intensity instead of upping the intensity of the rest of the image as well. It's a bit more of an advanced technique I suppose.

I'm pretty sure our resourceful users could think of even different ways of doing the same thing. Hopefully though, at least that option A I've listed above is of any use to you :)

Oh and as far as the rail light goes, its just a Corona Light Material applied to a spline / cylinder.

29

[Max] General Discussion / Re: CPU or Graphics Card

« on: 2021-10-08, 09:06:57 »

If you are using Corona then CPU is the primary factor that'll speed up your rendering times because Corona is a CPU renderer. GPU is primarily used for denoising in Corona and for denoising even older GPUs can be used (CUDA is required and Maxwell generation of cards is the last we officially support so that is GTX 9xx series).

As for 3ds Max's viewport, well, a stronger GPU will help keep the viewport more fluid if you are working on heavy scenes. In that case more VRAM will help too. Except a more powerful CPU nothing will speed up the actual rendering part though.

30

[Max] I need help! / Re: Hi : How to create such lighting?

« on: 2021-10-07, 10:01:33 »

Well, if you're referring to the starry ceiling then I'd start by using a Light Material and see where that takes me. You'd need a nice starry bitmap to drive the material, obviously :) If you'd like to get a really nice glow from the stars then I'm guessing that with the Light Material you'll want a pretty strong contrast between space itself and the stars - you can further emphasize that by using a Composite / Layer shader and do some extra masking there. Or you know, you can use the Color Correct shader to get it behaving exactly like you want it.

Alternatively, you could also do it with a Physical MTL by putting the starry ceiling into the self illumination slot but then you gotta realize that you can't use that material to light the room - self illumination is not to be used like that. But what it does do is it offers you slightly more control over how you want to light a room - f.e putting a giant rectangle light just below the ceiling. I mean this one isn't exactly a realistic approach but can be an option if you're trying to art direct the lighting in a different way.

There's probably a couple of different ways to approach it too.

Hope that helps :)