Messages

1

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Does a higher resolution image require more passes?

« on: 2024-05-16, 12:57:25 »

Less passes to look visually good, but also less passes for same noise, but never checked any formula :- ).

But this is good thing to pay attention, so you don't end up with too little AA done. Since high-res images don't need as many passes for GI/Light, they can for example end up being around 2-3perc. noise (visually clean) with only 25 passes for example, but roughly 100 passes are needed for really clean anti-aliasing from my experience.

This is the sort of thing im trying to work on. Clients asking for higher and higher res images year on year and i need to get better at adjusting the finer render settings to suit the output rather than just leaving it to render for a nominal amount of time on my workstation because theres only so many hours in the day.

2

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Gamepad mapped camera control - is it possible?

« on: 2024-05-16, 12:55:00 »

https://github.com/cb109/maxstick

It hasnt been updated in 9 years but mnaybe this still works?

3

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: User-created physical material presets

« on: 2024-05-16, 12:22:02 »

what kind of base materials would you make apart from the one which are already present in the preset, corona material library and cosmos?

More plastics and ceramics would be good but thats not really why i think the feature could be useful. It would make consistency slightly quicker to achieve and also be a great timesaver.
 For instance im currently doing lots of work with a 'studded plastic brick company' and it would be great for storing presets that dont need maps, just specific SSS settings and colours from brand guidelines.
Its the same sort of reason id love to be able to load libraries into the corona colour map to be honest. It would just be great to have things like paint manufacturers, pantones and brand colours easily accessible within the material.

4

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Does a higher resolution image require more passes?

« on: 2024-05-15, 16:53:24 »

Actually, higher resolutions usually need less passes to visually "look as good", though I don't know how that translates into noise level. But of course it still takes longer to get there, due to the extra processing needed for all the extra pixels :)

Interesting, thanks Tom. Just doing a lot more render farm work recently and trying to wrap my head around the pricing has raised some questions. this being one of them.

5

[Max] General Discussion / Does a higher resolution image require more passes?

« on: 2024-05-15, 15:23:45 »

Does a higher res image require more passes to reach a certain noise level? Or does each pass just take longer?
For instance will and image of 1000x1000 and an image of 5000x5000 reach a 3% noise level at the same number of passes but each pass takes a longer time on the 5000x5000 image?

Ive never really thought about it before, i usually just let it run until it looks nice.

This help page is really useful but it didnt answer my question unless i missed it.

https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4528236666257-How-many-passes-is-enough

6

[Max] I need help! / Setting RGB baseColor values with maxscript defaulting to linear input?

« on: 2024-05-15, 01:18:37 »

Hi,

Whenever i try to change the baseColor of corona materials via maxscript, the values end up being input in linear by default. Im assuming this is because of the way max internally handles colors and the conversion between rgb 255 and rgb 0-1. How can i ensure theyre added in sRGB or how can i convert the values correctly?

for instance color 250,200,10. If i manually add it into the picker in srgb mode the colour is correct.
However when i add it via maxscript it adds it in linear mode and so the resulting srgb colour is 254,228,59

How can i fix this? Is there a formula i need to implement in my script or do i need a different approach?
I tried using the max standard color map but the same thing happens even if i set the gamma to 1.0. It has to be to do with the way maxscript handles the (color R G B) values internally.

Thanks!

EDIT: The solution was to gamma correct the sRGB colours

Heres a function

Code: [Select]


 fn adjustColorGamma _inputColor _maxVal _gammaVal _doInverse =
 (
 if _doInverse then
 (
 outputR = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.r/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 outputG = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.g/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 outputB = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.b/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 
 (color outputR outputG outputB)
 ) else
 (
 outputR = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.r/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 outputG = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.g/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 outputB = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.b/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 
 (color outputR outputG outputB)
 )
 )

adjustColorGamma (color 255 255 255) 255 2.2 false

 

7

[Max] Feature Requests / User-created physical material presets

« on: 2024-05-14, 16:33:19 »

It would be fantastic if we could save and load custom presets to have in the physical material presets list for common starter materials.
The ones there are useful but having your own custom ones would be even better. Think of it as an alternative to a material library for base materials already set up how you like them.

8

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Rough refraction in reflection acts strangely at values other than zero

« on: 2024-05-14, 16:30:30 »

Not something that we currently track. Feel free to let us know here of course as to how often you make use of it, like you just did!

Good to hear the Phys Mat presets are doing a good job of being the base starting point for things for you, definitely what we hoped for and intended.

There's no plan at the moment to allow for the creation of your own Physical Material presets (but you know the drill with feature requests lol ;) ). There is a plan to allow custom Cosmos assets, perhaps this year (so Corona 13 for us), which if plans and intentions over on the Cosmos dev side come to pass, will mean being able to add objects, materials, etc. of your own into Cosmos. We'd have to wait and see if that happens, and what it looks like / how it works when it does :)

Good to know thanks Tom! Ill definitely drop in a request for adding custom physical presets because it would be very useful to not have to deal with the max material libraries.

9

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Rough refraction in reflection acts strangely at values other than zero

« on: 2024-05-07, 23:44:33 »

PS - the CML will still be there, initially like today as part of the install, but in the future as a separate manual download and install if you really want it.

Im curious, do you track CML useage as part of the useage stats? Is it a minority of users that actually use it frequently?
I use it every day for starter/base materials but increasingly find myself using the presets in the physical material.
Is there a way to allow users to create their own physical material presets?

10

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Rough refraction in reflection acts strangely at values other than zero

« on: 2024-05-03, 10:50:55 »

If the bug only appears when using a Corona Legacy Material, then it means that it is already fixed in the Corona Physical Material.

Would be a great idea to update the material library in that case, im sure its on your radar.

11

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Rough refraction in reflection acts strangely at values other than zero

« on: 2024-05-03, 00:54:12 »

Scene setup:

Metal ball, white diffuse. 0.0 Roughness
Box below, Frosted Glass material library preset
Corona light below the box.


When the metal ball has a roughness value of 0.0 then the reflections are correct. Anything higher and the frosted material almost disappears and the hotspot from the light is the only thing visible.
This doesnt happen with the corona physical frosted glass preset, only the legacy material.

12

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Toon Outlines

« on: 2024-05-02, 14:08:30 »

Hi,

This is currently logged as a feature request in our system.

(Report ID=CMAX-947)

If it could be logged as a card on trello id be even happier!

13

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Toon Outlines

« on: 2024-05-01, 18:43:44 »

+1 For this.

If corona wire had a way to just do profiles and not all edges it would be absolutely ideal for rendering elevations. Im certain ive seen tons and tons of this same request for the past ten years. If you did it, it would likely make a ton of people very happy!

14

[Max] Feature Requests / Unsupported material override

« on: 2024-04-22, 15:57:22 »

It would be really great if there was a way to override the red self illuminating material that gets applied to unsupported materials with something of our choosing.
I see it has been requested a few times over the past decade.

Use case: Ive imported a ton of revit models and im halfway through processing them for new materials. I need to render out an image to show the progress and check my materials but because of the unsupported materials that are yet to be processed the render looks a mess, the reflections are full of red and the image is affected far too much for me to be able to reliably check anything.

Previously proposed solutions:I could run the converter but sometimes this again leads to unwanted results with things like metals and self-illuminating materials
The red illuminated material is very useful for identifying objects that need fixing and thats why i dont want to actually remove the ability to use that, it just needs a temporary override in some situations.

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: CoronaPhysical Mtl & Physical Mtl Questions

« on: 2024-04-20, 00:26:40 »

#1. Corona colour correct is not linear, if you want to get the same result as with invert in Max's bitmap or output nodes, then you can use curve adjustments in CCC.

Good answer thank you, i did not know that.

#2. If you want metal, then switch Corona physical to metal node. 2-3 IOR is not metal.

I think you slightly misunderstood my intent. Im saying that to match the coronaPhysical metal in with a physical material i have to set the physical material IOR to 2.5-3. Coronas metal mode locks the IOR of course, which is physically incorrect anyway because metal ior has a fairly broad range range and absolutely cannot be defined by a single arbitrary number. I would hope this is something that gets changed in future so we can get physically correct metals.

#3. what denoising you are using and what image filtering. If that's Corona HQ denoiser, then filtering also should be set to HQ, otherwise it will severely underperform. I didn't notice dependency on material type, but maybe that's because i almost exclusively use Corona physical.

Its the Nvidia GPU denoiser in IR. It just seems to handle the physical materials faster for whatever reason.

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