Topics

16

General CG Discussion / Improving Blender - videos by Andre Price

« on: 2013-10-09, 23:42:35 »

These are not directly related to Corona but very interesting videos non the less. For me, as a non blender user (never liked the UI), it really opened the eyes to some critical user interface design decisions which Corona had and still has to face in the future. Definitely worth watching!

Part 1

Part 2

17

Gallery / Skull

« on: 2013-08-23, 21:31:29 »

It's a quickie but I thought you folks may like it :)
60 min @ 1080p

Btw, the model is currently a free download from
ten 24 (http://www.3dscanstore.com/index.php/default/free-samples/free-male-skull-3d-scan.html) . I just gave it a little bit thickness for better translucency.

[Edit] uploaded a bigger version

18

Gallery / Midge

« on: 2013-07-03, 23:54:56 »

I've been showing Corona to a friend these days and we came up with this little rendering. His model, my lighting and rendering :)
Hope you like it.
took 30 mins, 110 passes, 3d dof.

19

[Max] General Discussion / VRay 3.0 sneak peak

« on: 2013-07-01, 11:57:58 »

VRay 3.0 sneak peak from EUE 2013. I let this stand uncommented ;)
http://vray.info/news/article.asp?ID=553

20

Gallery / forestpackforest, or: why I love vertexColors :)

« on: 2013-06-12, 19:13:20 »

I finally had some time to test the new vertexColor map support (woohooo, awesome!) . The scene is pretty old by now, but it wasn't possible to render it in Corona up to this point.
Rendertime is 38min (78 passes) on my dual xeon E5530 machine. I'm sure it would still be noisy in animation but it's ok for a still image.
Hope you like it :)

P.S. Dof is post-dof (no need for 3d dof here imho)

21

[Max] General Discussion / VFB autosave feature

« on: 2012-10-29, 11:21:53 »

I tested the autosave feature today and there are several things that would be necessary to make it really useful:
1) choice of image format (at least 16 or 32 bit float for exr)
2) autosaves are saved without infobar, there is no info about passes or rendertime, so it should be saved if it's activated in the options.
3) It would be great to be able to use the same variables as in the render stamp, e.g. "C:/coronaRenderings/myScene_v01_%t_%p_.exr"

edit: btw, I'm not sure but "on render end" saving doesn't seem to work...
4) both features should have a checkbox to disable them

another edit: now it works... may be some random thing

22

Gallery / Farewell, my friend...

« on: 2012-10-25, 17:22:54 »

This is a scene which was first intended as a scatter test (the grass), but then it got bigger and bigger...
I'm a very lousy charactermodeller, or to be more precise: I really suck at modelling humanoid stuff ;) So the girl was the hardest part here ;)
I hope you like it :) . Rendertime was about 1.5 hours in 1080p (resized it to get rid of the dof noise).

23

Gallery / Spongeboooob! :)

« on: 2012-10-11, 20:36:02 »

I found a website offering free 3d-scan models (http://www.sampleandhold.co.uk/downloads.html).. and look what I found :) I hope you like spongebob as much as I do :D

24

[Max] Corona Goodies - User Contributions / Corona Material/Lights Converter (legacy)

« on: 2012-10-10, 22:19:47 »

IMPORTANT NOTE
The Corona Converter is now maintained and developed by the Corona Team. I decided to stop dragging it out any further. As you may have noticed, updates and fixes were rather slow and quite far apart. The reason is that I haven't been using Corona in quite a while, mostly because my focus shifted more towards other DCCs where Corona does not exist. So, I fell behind following the news and changes that have been made in Corona and at this point I have missed many things that should be reflected in the converter. I think that it is unfair to the users to let the converter wither like that and asked the Corona guys if they wanted to take over - which they thankfully did :) .

Long story short: As of now, bug reports and feature wishes go directly to the respective forums.

Thanks to all of you for your support and the great connections and friendships I made here since 2012.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written by Martin Geupel (http://www.racoon-artworks.de)

The Script will be continuously updated. You will find the latest versions and the changelog at the page linked below.



To Download the latest Script versions click here:
> > Corona Material Converter

_________________________________________________________________________________________

25

Gallery / Grapes

« on: 2012-09-21, 20:49:07 »

A new test with translucency and Dof...mmhhh... more with dof than with translucency ;) Dof is reaaally hard to get clean, or to be more precise, nearly impossible. This image rendered in 1600x900 with 300 passes reached in 1.5h. But dof was still very noisy. I had to blur the background via z-depth and resize the image to 720p.
Anyways, hope you like it :)

[edit] fixed the "wood" material

26

Gallery / Rendering is magic :P

« on: 2012-09-18, 23:52:05 »

A very nice guy on deviantart shares some pony models (http://kp-shadowsquirrel.deviantart.com/art/Pony-Model-Download-Center-215266264) so i thought this would be perfect for testing corona (you know, real production environment :P).
I wanted to create a kind of plastic collectors-edition look. Hope you like it :)
Now everyone get those models and do some awesome pony-rendering :)

27

[Max] General Discussion / Sampling Worklfows

« on: 2012-09-09, 19:43:43 »

I've been testing a really heavy scene the last couple of days. 56.000.000 instanced polygons, about 7.000.000 unique. It's a cathedral with lots and lots of very small openings (windows) everywhere. I had big problems to get acceptable rendertimes with normal engines like vray etc. Now, after serveral renderings and different tests of various settings I'm getting better rendertimes with less noise.
Currently I'm using (besides the defaults):
Pathtracing as primary GI solver
HD Cache as secondary GI solver
Subpixel AA: 2
Display AA: 5
GI samples: 4
Lights group, samples:16

I've noticed that most of the noise is in the direct lighting pass, so i decreased GI samples and increased Lights samples. I think i'm getting a good balance now - more or less the comparable amount of noise in direct light and GI passes.
Now I'm wondering if there are some techniques to make it better. For example, I don't know what subpixel AA exactly does (since it's not explained somewhere).

Thanks for any suggestions ;)

28

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / deadclowns wishlist

« on: 2012-09-06, 13:21:18 »

There are some minor and major wishes I have for future versions of Corona:

- a button to save beauty and renderelements in one go (as in vray)
- AO map - distance mapslot (great thing to make those rotten buildings look)
- glossy reflections values linear. Currently it looks like the glossiness curve is more of an exponential function. It would be a lot easier to "guess" the right values if it would be a more linear way (vray & mr are linear, finalRender is like corona here)
- anisotropy with world axis (it's uvw coordinates right now, right?)
- diffraction/obstacle map/colored aperture maps
- matte-shadow material/ object properties
- visible in reflection switch in object properties
- pflow support
- world position renderelement
- keep continuity for displacement
- reflection dim distance
- spherical (360*180°) camera
- aperture, exposure, white balance settings in camera
- affect GI / reflections in corona lights
- direct lights / ies lights
- Endless plane primitive object

29

[Max] Resolved Bugs / DeadClowns Buglist

« on: 2012-09-05, 23:16:03 »

I will use this thread for further bugs I may find (if that's ok).

build 30.8 2012
- 3dsmax crash when map in emission slot
_Keymaster: FIXED
- 3dsmax crash with multitexture map in diffuse slot (which is a plugin but it would be awesome if it would be supported)
- corona light (rectangle mode) is only creatable in one direction (1st click and drag to several directions). In my opinion it would also be more practical if the light was created with flipped normal direction (currently its pointing towards the camera, so i have to rotate it about 180° everytime.
_Keymaster: FIXED
- 3dsmax crash in scatter when distribution scatter objects frequencies are set to 0
_Keymaster: FIXED
- I noticed a very noticeable change in the look of the images attached to this post. Especially the bottom part of the humming top looks very purple now. Left image is alpha v2, right image is build 30.8 2012

30

Gallery / Humming-Top

« on: 2012-09-05, 12:04:36 »

Hi there,
I discovered Corona yesterday and had some hours to test it. First i need to say: It's awesome! I'm really amazed by it's speed and already pretty usable features. Lightning fast! Keep up your excellent work!
This image here is based on an old Vray scene which was ridiculously easy to convert to Corona Materials. I'm having a lot of fun converting old scenes ;)