Messages

46

Gallery / Re: Essence - 4K Animation

« on: 2020-07-20, 21:05:13 »

Nice animation, but some of those shots look quite "juddery". Is this a frame rate issue or a lack of motion blur?

47

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

« on: 2020-07-10, 11:30:26 »

Super craftmanship :- ). Fills me with anxiety only thinking of eventual maintenance.

10/10 for choice of tubing and fittings!

Yep, not looking forward to that!

The 3995wx seems like an odd move from AMD considering that the Zen 3 consumer launch is months away...and Zen 3 TR's will be out towards the end of the year.

48

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

« on: 2020-07-04, 13:44:13 »

Hey AgentDark,

saw your chip & build on twitter :- ). My block was sent only last week (delayed further by my request to switch to all-silver after seeing how beautiful it is), who knows when it arrives but I have no intention to really build it.
How's the system?

Hey Juraj,

The system is great! I can now max out all PBO settings without going into immediate thermal throttling on the previous air cooler (Dark Rock pro TR4). The system is completely silent and still very quiet under load, I would definitely recommend the Arctic P12 PWM PST fans as a cheap alternative to the pricey Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM's.

The RAM was not stable at XMP timings, but Ryzen DRAM calculator sorted that out nicely.

The case is extremely cramped with 4 radiators (absolute pain to fit everything together) - but it was the only case on the market that wasn't extremely expensive/massive and that didn't have massive gaps in any panels for dust to get in.

Both of my D5 pumps had to be replaced due to the PWM signal cable dying, so not sure what the cause of that was!

I definitely wouldn't recommend water cooling if you were going to run everything at stock settings. However the Optimus components are extremely impressive, I've never seen such flawless machining.

Here's some pics of the build if anyone is interested: https://imgur.com/gallery/KVllEvD

49

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 6 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2020-06-29, 15:10:09 »

Checked a couple pages back, not sure it was reported or not. Also not sure if this behavior is intended by design.  -
Saving a cxr directly from framebuffer won't include the lightmix elements inside the file. One has to save from settings CXR to have it include those elements for later tinkering via CIE.
using build JUN 18

This has been the case for a fair while now, not sure why though as it would always make sense to save the lightmix with the CXR.

One issue that I regularly run into though is that when loading up CXR files with lightmix values that aren't set to 1, I'll have to manually change a lightmix spinner value to something arbitrary then change it back to view the accurate lightmix result.

It would be good to just load up the CXR and see the image as intended, with the lightmix values doing what they are set at in the saved file.

50

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 6 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2020-06-04, 21:41:32 »

No worries, we have it logged. :)

While you're looking at lightmix stuff, would it be possible to include the ability to assign objects with Corona Light materials that have "emit light" unticked into proper lightmix channels? Currently they all go into the unassigned channel which is quite annoying for things like interior spotlight light mix channels (when working around black Corona lights with certain ies files that the preserve black appearance button doesn't solve).

51

Gallery / Re: Northern Shelter

« on: 2020-06-03, 16:21:34 »

To many details in the same image. If you use so many details in the close up don't use also cumulus clouds in the back . They for  form outside of main land. In this case on the seaside .
Sometime : Less is more.
The images could be great if had different clouds in back .

I disagree, I think the issue is just a slight lack of distance haze/fog as the mountains are looking a bit too super sharp as if the air is particulate free.

52

[Max] I need help! / Re: create realistic sky with corona sky/sun

« on: 2020-05-31, 15:33:50 »

A lot of photographers use graduated ND filters to essentially underexpose the sky to avoid the white burnout effect:

https://www.diyphotography.net/are-graduated-neutral-density-filters-really-useful/
https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-replicate-a-graduated-neutral-density-filter-in-photoshop--photo-4888

As we have a lot more control, you could simply stick a BW gradient mask over a 32 bit exr of your image in photoshop, or even simulate it in the render scene. This would only lower the exposure, AFAIK ND filters use a polarizing film so I'm not sure what effect this will have compared to simple exposure reduction.

53

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

« on: 2020-05-31, 15:28:23 »

Thanks agentdark45 !

I will try to do the low clock ram test.  To give you more info the full specs are:


TR 2990WX
Asus ROG ZENITH EXTREME ALPHA
GTX 1080Ti
Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB
DDR4 3000MHz CL15
Cooler Enermax LiqTech TR4 II RGB 360
SSD Samsung 860 EVO
Seasonic Prime 1300W Platinum
Thermaltake A500 Aluminum case

I usually find it frozen after more hours of rendering but often it is working while rendering, but once we stop the render it goes into this half dead state where we could click certain buttons like the win start button but nothing else (restart, task manager, max are not responding). We also have to dual xeons in the same office that never freeze like this even though software/scenes are the same an all.

No probs man, yeah the 2990wx was a notoriously finicky CPU - it was way ahead of it's time and there were a lot of compatibility issues (especially with RAM). I would also be extremely cautious with that LiqTech AIO - almost every one of them had issues and gunked up over time (causing the CPU to overheat).

54

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

« on: 2020-05-29, 12:48:39 »

Hi guys!

I need your advice. We have a 2990wx in the office, that likes to freeze almost every day. I understand that TR's are moody with some types of memory.
 Do you guys have any recommendations for a specific type of memory that can make the system stable?

here is what we have now

TR 2990WX
Asus ROG ZENITH EXTREME ALPHA
Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB
DDR4 3000MHz CL15

thanks!

It could be either unstable RAM, the motherboard VRM's overheating or the PSU's over-current protection kicking in.

To test I would massively down-clock the RAM in the bios first to something like 2333mhz, perform a long render and see if the system still crashes. I would also monitor your motherboard's VRM temps with a tool like HWinfo - I had a 2990wx system with the Zenith Extreme where the VRM's would hit 115c in minutes of rendering and would down-clock the CPU like crazy. I also could not get the 128gb of GSkill RAM stable at anything over 2933mhz, I promptly sent that system back. AFAIK the MSI Meg was the only x399 motherboard capable of dealing with the massive power draw of the 2990wx, but I see the Zenith Extreme Alpha looks to have a beefier VRM setup/cooling so difficult to say what exactly the problem might be without separate testing.

I'm now on a water cooled 3970x with a Gigabyte Designare motherboard, 128gb GSkill RAM @ 3600mhz and it's been completely flawless.

55

Gallery / Re: Living Divani

« on: 2020-05-29, 03:58:31 »

That lut should be from the dubcat thread. I have reuploaded it, if you want to try it out.

Thanks man, I'll definitely test it out.

56

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Corona Tiles

« on: 2020-05-28, 14:09:26 »

I suppose the ideal form of this map would be to include everything that bercon already does, but handles bump and displacement better.

One thing that any texture option out there fails to do however is handle corners well, especially when using multiple textures. Need an option for wrapping corners, and ideally how to handle mortar joints like concave or struck, etc (but that might be asking too much without actually modeling it).
I recently started trying out ATiles for bricks and it seems like a viable option (especially since you can use custom objects), but I haven't put it to the test of a full facade yet.

This would be ideal!

I'm going to suggest another idea: spline definable tile shapes/patches. Would be such a time saver for things like simple floor tiles with irregular shapes but repeatable patterns. I currently use railclone for this, but would rather not have to when I only really need the functionality for the UV variation/grout line separation on a flat plane.

If the devs are looking at implementing the Geopattern feature from FStorm, it would be almost exactly the same but contained in a material map vs cloning real geometry.

57

Gallery / Re: Living Divani

« on: 2020-05-27, 04:32:54 »

Great work man, I just had a look at the breakdown vid - the tonemapping settings are quite similar to dubcats ACES settings but I see you are using an additional LUT, may I ask which one you're using?

Cheers

58

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-09, 19:10:49 »

3- And one more thing. This is a question:
Does anyone know what this does exactly?

Great test btw, the seperate surface effect is very noticable on the Fstorm renders especially in the corners.

The relative tickbox essentially changes the "max sample intensity" (as a comparison to Corona) per camera view/frame by detecting how bright light sources are. Its quite hit and miss so I usually untick it and keep the power to around 3-6 for frame lighting consistency.

59

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-05, 13:00:39 »

Here is a video of me turning on layers in photoshop :)  https://share.getcloudapp.com/WnuGqzoO

You can download the original image I posted and zoom in to see how much of a terrible job I did! [img width=1024 height=1187]https://i.imgur.com/SjeKjtJ.png/img]

I know it can be hard to be confronted with information you don't like. But I have nothing to gain out of convincing anyone that Corona is better or worst, I'm a corona user! I want corona to be the best possible render engine! Actually, corona render is my main source of income now that I think of it... so NO I don't want it to stop improving!  BUT! I think it can improve more drastically by being easier to use and easier to achieve it's potential, than to extend it's potential even further. LETS DO BOTH, but lets do the easy one first!

Haha fair play, I'll concede that I was indeed duped by this.

60

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-05, 02:10:56 »

If it wasn't a typical Fstorm render, wouldn't you say you would have been able to notice?

Not only you didn't immediately notice but you even complained about the same things you are complaining about corona. And not only you, so maybe there is something else to it than objective observation.

Not sure why you label it as "tricked"  we are talking about comparisons and every serious study requires the elimination of variables.

I'm sorry you didn't like the results of the experiment, I bet that if the result was different and you actually noticed, you would have felt really good about that fact, and confirm your previous notions. So I think just because you didn't get the expected result, there is no reason to say "I did something to the Fstorm version".

Yeah, I'm not buying this. You're saying you went through the effort of purchasing a full Fstorm license, matching the watermark 1:1 in photoshop, and your "swapped" Fstorm render just happens to exhibit exactly the same grain pattern and concrete microdetail as your previous tests...