Messages

16

[Max] General Discussion / Rendering an animation - Lock Sampling Pattern on? 4k 2ndary Solver? Corona HQ?

« on: 2022-07-25, 03:18:48 »

Hey all,

I'm rendering out an animation, which has moving cameras and objects, its an interior scene with lots of natural light.

In order to have no flickering would it be best to have the "lock sampling pattern" left on, and is the 4k Secondary Solver appropriate for this scenario...
And lastly does the Corona HQ denoiser produce the best denoising result?

I'm rendering my frames to 3% noise level limit.

As always any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
,Luke.

17

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Best file format for saving frames in animation

« on: 2022-07-22, 11:57:04 »

It really depends what exactly you are planning to do with those frames. Post-process them further? Use render elements too? Make some 32-bit adjustments?
If you just need to render some frames and assemble them into an animation without using too much disk space, you can even save in JPG. :)

Thanks Marcin,

I usually render my stills to exr, so I'd usually do that for the animations, though with these ones I'm not doing too much post work, maybe just some luts/vignetting in premiere... is tiff or png a better option? I'm worried jpg would be too lossy especially given it'll get compressed for youtube when exporting...

18

[Max] General Discussion / Best file format for saving frames in animation

« on: 2022-07-22, 10:39:57 »

Hey all,

I'm just wondering for those who have more experience than I at animations, what file format are you saving your frames out as? exr, png, tiff... something else?

any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks.

19

[Max] General Discussion / Re: General tips for speeding up rendering without sacraficing image quality...

« on: 2022-07-22, 01:22:47 »

You can render one frame and see what takes most time: the pre-rendering steps like parsing, calculating displacement, etc, or maybe the actual rendering process?

In case of no moving objects (fly-through) it's easy to save the GI precomputation time by reusing a single GI cache file for all frames. This way the GI does not have to be recomputed for each frame.
See: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4528617365649

With moving objects/lights it is more tricky, but if they are moving smoothly, and not very fast, you might get away with using the "load+append" option. That can also help reduce GI calculation times per frame.

If you don't want to save your frames in a high bit depth format (like 32-bit EXR), you can go to the System tab and change Highlight Clamping (not highlight compression!) to non-zero. Values like 1-2 should work, but you may need to find the right one by trial and error. This will clamp the brightest pixels in the image so you will actually get better quality of things like hard edges and shorter render times. The drawback is only that it clamps those highest values so you lose the high dynamic range.

Simplifying materials helps with render times. For example: using a single Corona Physical material with texture masks for different properties rather than a Layered Material with two different materials in it that are mixed together (obviously this is not always possible).

It really depends what the scene looks like and what features you are using. If you could share some images/screenshots/sample frames, that would be very helpful.
You can contact the support team here: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Hey Marcin,

Thanks for that, here are some screen shots. I'm rendering at 1920 x 1080, we have moving cameras and moving objects...

Does things like collapsing the stack on the geometry make much / if any difference? Proxies? My render times aren't huge but I'd love to be able to get them down a bit if possible...

I'm using PT + UHD (animation flicker free) with lock sampling pattern off, I've not changed any of the settings/values... and I'm rendering to noise level 2.4% fwiw...

20

[Max] General Discussion / General tips for speeding up rendering without sacraficing image quality...

« on: 2022-07-21, 12:00:16 »

Hey all,

I'm wondering if there are some general tips for speeding up rendering, particularly with animations...? things like collapsing the stack on geometry inc. uvw modifiers, using proxies (if so what type of objects) etc etc... general stuff like that.

I'll be creating some animations with moving cameras and objects, are there things that we can adjust in the performance settings that might help, once again without affecting the image quality?

Any advice is always greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

21

[Max] Resolved Bugs / [solved] Won't render unless 3ds max is the active window..? Stuck on Parsing

« on: 2022-07-14, 01:27:12 »

Hi,

I'm having an issue since moving to Corona 8 whereby 3ds max will not render, it just hangs on Parsing unless it is the active window?
I'm using max 22 and corona 8, and it's happening on every scene on my workstation...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

22

Hardware / Re: Upgraded to 10Gbe - what is a reasonable expectation for LAN speed

« on: 2022-05-29, 11:14:55 »

According to Synology's website the 1621+ has Dual M.2 2280 slots for NVMe Cache...
it's running 6 x 4TB drives (not ssd's)... it also has 8Gb RAM, I think Raid is SHR...

23

Hardware / Upgraded to 10Gbe - what is a reasonable expectation for LAN speed

« on: 2022-05-28, 13:31:26 »

Hey All,

I recently upgraded my NAS to a 1621+ with a 10Gbe NIC and upgraded my PC's NIC to a 10Gbe card as well (I actually have 2 - an Asus XG-C100C & Startech st10gspexndp dual port 10Gbe PCIehttps://www.startech.com/en-us/networking-io/st10gspexndp)

I'm connecting it all with a Ubiquiti Enterprise 24 x 10gbe switch. and running Cat 6 cable.

Firstly, when in installed the Startech dual port card I was only getting about 0.3 Gbps (write) when testing with the Lan Speed Test ap... I took that out and put in the Asus one and am getting 4-5 Gbps write and around 6 gbps read...

Is around 5Gbps/6Gbps a reasonable expectation with this set up? Or should I be able to get more?

the PC has a AMD TRX40 AORUS MB if that's of any help?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

24

Hardware / Data storage-Archiving Older files/projects

« on: 2022-04-23, 01:05:22 »

Hey All,

I'm just wondering what systems people are using for data storage? I'm currently running a Synology NAS DS918+ with 5Tb of data, it's coming close to being full and I'm wondering if there is a better solution or should I just upgrade the amount of storage in my NAS?

Also, do people here archive there old projects by moving them to external HDD's, or what solutions do you use for this?

Much appreciated.

25

Hardware / Re: Laptop Suggestions

« on: 2021-10-26, 00:28:11 »

Does any know if you can get a Laptop with 128Gb Ram and a AMD chip or something with more than 10 cores?
I can't find one anywhere, I looked up clevo and couldn't find it anywhere?

I contacted their Australian reseller and he's pointed me to these 2:
https://www.metabox.com.au/store/Prime-X-Range/Buy - 128GB Ram but i9 (10 core cpu)

https://www.metabox.com.au/store/Prime-Ai-Range/Buy - 64GB Ram (Max) and AMD 5900x (12 cores)

I quickly went through their options and priced up this machine as i think the 128Gb Ram is essential for me...

Metabox Prime-X X170KM-G
Intel Core i9-10900KF 10-Core (20M Cache up to 5.30 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 16GB GDDR6 VRAM with G-Sync (165W TGP)
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut - Ultra High Performance Thermal Dissipation
17.3" UHD 4K IPS-Grade Edge-to-Edge Matte 60HZ LED - G-Sync & 100% AdobeRGB Colour Gamut
Per-Key Edge-Lit Colour Keyboard - Adjustable Colours Per-Key with N-Key Rollover
128GB DDR4 2666MHZ (4 x 32GB)
**Bonus** Metabox Performance 2TB PCIe NVME M.2 SSD
No Secondary M.2 SSD Drive - Optional Upgrade
No Tertiary M.2 SSD Drive - Optional Upgrade
No Quaternary M.2 SSD Drive
Killer 1650 AX Low Latency WIFI & Bluetooth 5.1 (up to 2.4 Gbps) with Killer Double Shot (4.9 Gbps)
No Optical Disc Drive - Optional Upgrade
Win 10 Professional 64BIT License - Installed & Ready-Out-Of-The-Box
3 Year Metabox Platinum Care Onsite Pickup Protection

what do you guys reckon?

26

Hardware / Re: Laptop Suggestions

« on: 2021-07-15, 05:51:20 »

is there anything out there that has more than 8 Cores and can take 128Gb ram? I'm looking for a solid solution for being able to work on the road...

27

General CG Discussion / Is there any benefit in moving from mm to cm for archiviz?

« on: 2021-06-29, 06:12:01 »

Just wondering if there is any derived benefit of changing my workflow in max from mm to cm?
I've worked in archiviz for 13 years and just always used mm, but after reading around I've noticed that a lot of ppl are using cm...?

28

[Max] I need help! / Re: Help with shadowcatcher for studio lighting setup

« on: 2021-02-17, 00:27:22 »

You should be able to achieve the result you need with the shadowcatcher material pretty much out of the box. Can you explain what seems to be wrong?

Here are some educational materials:

1) Our video tutorial (5 parts):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JDGmzZaMkE&feature=emb_title

2) A forum thread with a sample scene and renders:
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=18936.0

I always assumed that was how it was supposed to work, but when I set the projection mode (screen/enviro) the hdri i'm using is visible on the shadowcatcher plane. it also seems to project/reflect light upwards underneath the object...? 

29

[Max] I need help! / Help with shadowcatcher for studio lighting setup

« on: 2021-02-16, 02:25:29 »

Hey all,

I having trouble getting the shadowcatcher to behave how I'm wanting, I have a basic studio set up - whereby i'm rendering out objects (Furniture) on a curved white backdrop, it's being illuminated by a hdri and a couple of corona lights. If I render the scene without the shadowcatcher it comes out exactly as I'm wanting, however, I need to be able to remove the backdrop in photoshop and compose the shadows in. The CShading_Shadows is too noisy, so that doesn't work.

Is there a way that I can do this with the shadowcatcher?

Basically, I'd like to not be able to see the shadowcatcher at all in my scene and just have the alpha with the shadows so that I can remove the background and comp my object and shadows into a new background in photoshop?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

30

[Max] I need help! / Lots of crashes when adjusting textures and using interactive rendering...

« on: 2020-12-03, 04:39:21 »

I get a lot of crashes if i try to adjust a material when using interactive rendering. simple things like changing the refl colour and max just completely crashes, no attempt to save the scene in autoback just completely closes out...

is this common, or is there something going on here locally..? I'm using corona 6 hot fix 1 on a TR3970 w/ 128Gb RAM and max 21.

thanks.