Topics

16

[Max] I need help! / long parsing times/not responding

« on: 2016-09-27, 12:25:11 »

I did a search for 'long parsing times' the corona forum gave me 1 topic and it was said to be solved with more RAM. im running 32gb DDR4 but its only using 16gb at the moment and my parsing times are taking about 10 minutes. problem is they are really unstable and can cause crashes or moments of not responding where it sometimes recovers.

the scene is using forest pack and xrefs for housing types. is there much i can do to optimise this?

17

Off-Topic / 360 stitching with kodak sp360 4k

« on: 2016-09-06, 15:48:59 »

Wondering if anyone here is using a kodak sp360 4k or similar and what you use to stitch the 2 files together?

The default software is rubbish, i find it clamps the hell out of anything you put into it. the jpegs save out at about 1mb in size but have an 8k resolution. Doesn't seem right to me when trying to keep quality and their support hasn't responded to my emails, thought i dont think they actually have any support.

I've tried stitching the video with kolor autopano video pro, it actually stitches really easily and fast but its only the trial at the moment so im left with watermarks, dont want to buy something when there might be a better option but it definitely keeps the quality that pixpro stitch lost.
I also cant seem to stitch together stills with autopano...odd that i can easily knock together a video but the stills just dont seem to be recognised with the autopano pro side of the suite.

anyway, if any of you have any recommendations or tips that would be great

18

[Max] I need help! / faceting in a sand material

« on: 2016-06-24, 10:01:05 »

Having trouble with a sandy object/material. It keeps rendering really faceted in raised areas. I've something similar on here before where if the object was a low poly you would get strange shading results so i tried smashing up a turbosmooth to 4 on the object but it didnt help. I also tried tesselating it and then turbo smoothing it and that also did not help.
I've attached some images of whats happening. If i turn the sun off its not as bad...but its visible on the shadow edges for sure. The sun is at intensity 1 and the size is 4, i thought size might help soften it.

any idea what i could do to fix this without drastically changing the lighting.

edit - ive also tried using the smoothing groups but the sun seems to just cause this faceting.

19

[Max] I need help! / DR causing render crashes

« on: 2016-06-09, 12:21:09 »

If i switch DR one theres like a 33% chance that max crashes during the transforming vertices stage, without DR this doesn't happen. I don't understand why having DR on is causing this problem. It's not happened before and has been a recent thing with Corona 1.4 in heavy scenes using Forest Pack or vegetation models in general.

EDIT -In a bit of annoyance, i spammed the ESC key and it canceled the render and started to respond again, so thats good. but its still annoying that it happens.

some extra info for this, is that the render window displays everything at 99. so frame 99, time left 99:99:99. everything goes to 99 which is how I know its not going anywhere and crashed.

20

[Max] I need help! / Corona balancing light automatically

« on: 2016-05-23, 12:08:19 »

Got a problem in one of the scenes where no matter what happens, corona balances the light back to a standard level.

If we try to over expose the scene with interactive it starts overexposed then brings it back to the middle ground. If we under expose it starts black and then levels it back again. Basically we cant seem to adjust the lighting at all because corona keeps levelling it out.

Is this a new thing? some check box accidently hit?

Going to try using in a different scene to fix it.

max 2016 and corona 1.4

21

[Max] I need help! / multiple region DR

« on: 2016-05-17, 16:04:27 »

Started using a multiple region render on the DR and the nodes begin to render between my regions, slowly rendering the whole image rather than concentrating on the regions. Is there a way to stop this?

Just wanted to render regions of interiors from an exterior view, basically all the windows, thought multiple regions would make this quicker avoiding needless parts inbetween. Is there a faster way and is the DR suppose to be filling in gaps?

max 2016
corona 1.4

22

[Max] I need help! / struggling with metals

« on: 2016-05-13, 11:34:46 »

trying to work on metal materials with Corona. Finding that ours tend to look quite flat. I've tested with premade metals from other users and it still seems to happen, so something is going wrong somewhere.

I've attached two examples, one from Vray and one from Corona. Using a basic scene and just using sun & sky for both versions. Vray metals tend to show a gradient from bottom to top that make the panels look less flat. Corona seems to light the whole face the same, making it look flatter.

What can I do to achieve a look closer to the Vray example? I've tried various IOR values.

people in the studio are preferring the Vray metal over the Corona metal.

thanks

23

[Max] Resolved Bugs / AO using bump in occluded areas

« on: 2016-05-03, 17:28:42 »

Is the AO pass suppose to use the bump map in occluded areas? I've never got AO on a brick map just using bump, there always has to be displacement in the geometry. however when playing around in a current scene i noticed the AO is using the brick bump map in corners. Is this correct? If it can do it in the corners, is there anyway to make it work on the rest of the brick so that it can be used as a slight definition boost in post.

example attached. not sure if this is normal, i have never noticed it before.

24

Work in Progress/Tests / Forest treehouse

« on: 2016-01-29, 11:23:56 »

Got some time to work on a little side project, its based on an image i saw of a diamond like shaped house in a forest. It is in its early stages, still trying to decide if i like the composition and lighting. The models are more like placement holders to fill the space i want them to use. I want to suspend the building from the trees rather than use stilts. Might not be realistic in build but thought it might look cool.

Some feedback on composition and lighting would be cool.

p.s the cat rig was just in there for tests.

25

General CG Discussion / Speedtree to After Effects Copilot Elements

« on: 2016-01-26, 14:44:58 »

anyone know how to take the wind animation from speedtree through to aftereffects plugin video copilots elements. Speedtree seems to export as fbx n point cache but elements requires an OBJ. so inbetween with 3ds max can i some how bake the point cache data to work? or is there a decent way around this?

26

[Max] I need help! / God Rays - troublesome

« on: 2016-01-20, 15:39:35 »

Playing around with a foresty scene and trying to get some volumetric fog for a bit of god ray play. Really struggling to get any kind of defined ray. It's always looking like a very big blur of fog or a lack of fog.
The only way i get a defined ray is to point the sun toward the camera and then block it with a tree, however i do not want to point the sun at the camera.

I've attached an image from a tutorial i followed, except my results are very different. Im not sure if its just my setup that wont work very well but i tried using a box with holes and shining light through the holes and that did the same, there was lack of contrast from light and shadows with the fog. it just lightly mists over everything.

Anyone got some time to help me define these rays a bit more?

edit scene is in cm :) and roughly spans across 10,000 cm if that helps with material stuff

27

[Max] I need help! / [solved]DR node not picking up work

« on: 2016-01-19, 12:03:23 »

Hi

Got a problem with one of the nodes not picking up any work when submitted with DR. The node can submit renders and get help from DR but it wont help with other renders, the log window just stays empty after booting up. Doesn't receive any pings from other computers.

What can cause the node to not pick any work up?

28

[Max] I need help! / forestpack and geometry object with zero scale will be ignored

« on: 2015-12-01, 17:56:42 »

Suddenly got an error saying "geometry object with zero scale will be ignored" for all of my forest pack grasses, it spams me with error messages in the corona error window while rendering and it spams so much that it causes the PC to slow down ALOT. I clicked ignore similar messages and the workstation now renders the scene fine but the nodes on DR crash trying to render the grass, i can only assume the same thing is happening on their end but theres nothing I can click on in the DR window to stop it.

Why is this happening? everything has a scale of 100. nothing has been scaled, just imported like normal from forest pack.

29

[Max] I need help! / Corona DR

« on: 2015-11-25, 18:26:22 »

So we use a NAS drive shared across all our machines, all mapped to the same letter - N. When we try to use Corona DR it constantly says it cant find materials using the following N path even though all those machines can access the drive with the same directory.

The only way it does work is if we go to the asset tracker thing in max and resolve path to UNC location. Is this a must every time we want to use the DR?

Then the other question is....some of the machines are different specs, so sometimes a scene will run out of RAM on a couple of machines and it warns about having different results in the final image, how do we stop this from happening while still using all the machines?

Thanks

30

[Max] I need help! / Railclone and multi-texture

« on: 2015-11-10, 13:53:38 »

Are these not supported in Corona? Having issues where my railclone is only randomizing the edge rows and columns.

Railclone documentation says to simply add a material node and randomize the ID to match the amount of bitmaps being used in multi texture. Then make sure that multi texture is using material ID. Both of these have been done and the center mass of my model uses just 1 texture and only the edges have random IDs. Can't get this to work, can anyone else use rail clone LITE and multi texture together?