Messages

31

Gallery / Re: TPA - Westland Bunker VR Tour

« on: 2014-04-17, 15:20:10 »

All is pretty good. Can i ask how you did the stone wall, I like it. I suppose you used a BIM for the architectural design, would of been cool to see more of the Mechanical system, I notice you have cooling towers on the roof. good work.

Hi Alex, thanks! (you do awesome work yourself, btw!)

It's all modeled in Sketchup actually.... I know, I'm a real glutton for punishment!!  The modeling is then imported to 3dsMax for final details and rendering.  Here's a dropbox gallery showing the SU model, if you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mqnzoxgonv8ep78/lYR8SdMg1f

That said, I've been looking for quite a while to make the switch to a good BIM modeler.  Currently leaning towards ArchiCAD... but none of them (Revit, Chief Architect, Vectorworks, etc) are really a perfect solution and are very clunky!  But I just need to "bite the bullet" as they say, pick one and get it to work!  It looks like you have some experience with BIM, have any recommendations?

Regarding the stone, it was done with a displacement map.  I had to really pre-subdivide the mesh and crank up the Corona "Max subdiv per poly" variable to like 400-500 to get somewhat clean results.  I'd say displacement mapping is one of the areas Corona still needs a lot of improvement (I know Ondra has said this himself before).  It would be nice to have the subdiv variable on a per material basis, and not global, for one.  Also a better form of displacement that's geometry independent and doesn't required the base geom to be subdivide (like Vray 2d disp, but for 3d).

32

Gallery / TPA - Westland Bunker VR Tour

« on: 2014-04-16, 13:30:33 »

Hi everyone!

I actually rendered this one back in January with one of the V6 daily builds, but wasn't able to show it at the time due to confidentially reasons. :(

Would have loved to had the new spherical cam from the latest daily build as it would certainly have my things a lot easier!!

Is was a really fast turnaround project (3 weeks to help building design, model/render the full exterior/site/interior, 8 view VR Tour, and 3+ minute animation) so I wasn't able to let the interior views render as long as I would have preferred, so they're still a bit noisy.  With the new spherical cam and the huge improvements in noise reduction in the final V6 alpha I bet these would have rendered much cleaner now for the same time!

Here's the VR Tour: http://thepixelartist.com/vrtours/westland/

Also had to do a 3 minute animation.  Ended up using Vray RT for the exterior portions, but the interior segments where done using the same 360 spherical Corona images used in the vr tour.  Used them as backgrounds in After Effects with an animated camera.  Really saved me a lot of time!!

Animation:

Thanks for viewing!

33

News / Re: Spherical + cylindrical camera added

« on: 2014-04-16, 12:59:44 »

This was one of my most wished for features!! Awesome, thanks Ondra!

I actually rendered a full VR tour in Corona a couple months ago but wasn't able to show it at the time.  I had 8x360 views to render and, of course, had to render 6 cube images per view.  Sure would have loved to had this camera then!

I think it's OK to show this one now, here that final VR tour: http://thepixelartist.com/vrtours/westland/

34

Gallery / Re: Cottage in Noyabrsk, Russia

« on: 2014-02-11, 17:26:47 »

Wow, gorgeous images and fantastic attention to detail!  Congrats!

35

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Hard to remove noise & fireflies when using rounded edges on metals.

« on: 2014-02-06, 23:15:18 »

I just need the image for debugging

Ok, will do.

Do not ever do that, ever....  setting Enviro override to constant color may solve the issue but it will significantly lower quality of your output. The problem here is insufficient amount of AA samples, so try to lower PT samples to something like 4, so more of the power goes to AA instead of GI.

Another source of problem could be using fine bump map in combination with small chamferred edges or rounded corners feature. If that is the case, then the result you are getting is pretty much right.

Rawalanche, thanks for your help.  Now, forgive my ignorance, where do I find the "PT samples" you've mentioned.  Unless I'm just not seeing it, I don't see that parameter anywhere.  Is that maybe the same as MSI?

Also, reading in another thread I found during a search, you mentioned that metals should generally never use pure black nor a level of 1, but something like .55 for aluminum, .7 for steel, and .95 for mirrors, increasing the IOR to increase the reflectivity.  Now, my questions is, what should I set the Reflection color at, 255 or should it be something under 220?

36

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Forest Pack objects with opacity mapping "leaking" through foreground objects

« on: 2014-02-06, 20:59:26 »

I'm happy to confirm that as of the 2014-02-06 update it does appear to be fixed based on my first tests!  Awesome!!!!  Thanks again!

37

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Forest Pack objects with opacity mapping "leaking" through foreground objects

« on: 2014-02-06, 19:00:58 »

That's terrific to hear, thanks KM!!

I'll make sure to test it out.  Is this already fixed in the 2014-02-05 build or the next one?

38

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Hard to remove noise & fireflies when using rounded edges on metals.

« on: 2014-02-06, 15:38:08 »

What's your PT samples value?

Default values, I believe, as I'm actually not sure which the PT samples are (I'm assuming that mean path tracing samples).  I don't see that listed, is that the same as MSI or the GI multiplier maybe?

Either way, I turned everything back to default for this image.

39

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Hard to remove noise & fireflies when using rounded edges on metals.

« on: 2014-02-06, 02:28:38 »

No, it's actually rendered with an HDRI.

BTW, is there a way to render a scene with the Corona Sun/Sky combo, but also use an HDRI for the background/reflection/refraction?  I use this setup in Vray, but couldn't get it to work in Corona.

40

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Forest Pack objects with opacity mapping "leaking" through foreground objects

« on: 2014-02-06, 01:18:07 »

ok, I think I know what is causing this. Will attempt to fix later

Keymaster, any luck with this problem?  It's really driving me crazy, because all of my good trees/plants use opacity mapped leaves and will cause this problem with FFP or CoronaScatter.

41

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Hard to remove noise & fireflies when using rounded edges on metals.

« on: 2014-02-06, 01:04:16 »

I've noticed that when using the "Rounded corners" option on metallic materials (highly reflective/glossy/etc) it will produce a lot of glossy noise or fireflies that just won't clean up, even after a few hundred passes.

Not sure if there's a way to fix this or if it's just a bug.  Any ideas?

42

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Forest Pack objects with opacity mapping "leaking" through foreground objects

« on: 2014-01-27, 18:06:32 »

Cool, that's very good news.  Best of luck and thank you!

43

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: TIFF/TGA/PNG/ETC textures with alpha channels not working properly

« on: 2014-01-27, 01:45:23 »

I actually did try try that, but it makes the whole object almost ghost-like.  See image.

Typically, with vray/MR/etc, you can just use the can TIFF image, instanced in both the diffuse and opacity slots, setting the mono channel to alpha and the alpha source to "Image Alpha", using the Premulitplied Alpha option

44

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Forest Pack objects randomly disappearing at rendertime.

« on: 2014-01-27, 00:22:33 »

OK, here's another FP/Corona issue I've seen in the last few builds (1/16, 1/17, 1/24). I've done my best to try to figure out what the issue is or if it was something I was doing wrong, but alas, I does things it is.

Basically, the plants in this scene are FP scatters using the custom edit option.  When I try to render this view (still need to test other angles) either some, none, or all of the FP object will render, quite randomly.

The attached images below were all render one, after the next, and all show different plant rendering or not.  This last one shows how it show look once they all render at the same time.  However, that image also shows a bit of the other "leaking" FP object issue mentioned in my other bug post.

45

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Forest Pack objects with opacity mapping "leaking" through foreground objects

« on: 2014-01-26, 23:59:13 »

I just tried building a small test scene and imported that exact same mesh and FP object.  But couldn't reproduce it in the new scene. (see attached image)

However, I've seen this issue now in 3-4 scenes, all quite large scenes with lots of geometry/texture/xrefs/etc, that also started off as Vray scene, then converted to Corona.  So this could be a tricky one as the problem could be do to scene scale, conflict with other mats or FP objects, etc.  Some of the problem plants are also xref'd, but I ruled that out already (did a test were I merged everything).   Could be a conversion issue or bad mat, but I've gone though all the tree mats to make sure they were OK.  Only factor I found was the opacity maps.

I'm going to PM you a dropbox link to another scene that was showing some of the same problem, plus another big Forest Pack issue that I'm about to make another post about.  (random disappearing FP objects).