Topics

1

[Max] I need help! / Phoenix & Lightmix

« on: 2024-12-18, 14:34:40 »

Are we able to add phoenixFD fire to lightmix layers?

Currently lightmix places it on the 'rest' layer. I cant add the actual grid to a lightmix layer but i can add the particle source object. However this results in an empty lightmix layer and the actual light ends up on the 'rest' layer again.

What scene object do i need to add to gain control over the fire objects in my scene using lightmix?

2

General CG Discussion / Render Network

« on: 2024-12-12, 12:18:56 »

I just stumbled across this and thought it was interesting.

https://rendernetwork.com/

Its essentially a p2p style render farm if I'm understanding correctly.
Id love to see something like this for CPU renderers to somewhat democratise render farming. Does such a project exist?

Its a long shot and probably a pipe dream but I cant help but imagine if something like DR Server had additional functionality to allow users to 'rent' their licensed workstations as render nodes in a p2p fashion it would be a useful addition seeing that chaos cloud compatibility doesn't appear to be in the pipeline for corona.

3

[Max] I need help! / UHD Cache precomp issue

« on: 2024-12-09, 17:45:44 »

Im having an issue with a previously fine file whereby the UHD Cache precomp stage seemingly doesnt finish in either interactive nor production rendering. Last try at a 2k image i stopped it after 90 minutes.
There have been some small changes to the file since i last rendered but these were purely positional changes to objects in the scene and switching to a slightly different camera angle.

I tried merging to a new file but the issue persists. Ive tried hiding various selections of objects to narrow down a problematic object but still nothing.
Its having an extremely low UHD Cache success rate in the low single digits according to the VFB but in a previous save version it is around 25%.

Its an exterior scene, lit with a HDRI. Lots of translucent vegetation and some water in the right side of the image.

Any ideas how i can further troubleshoot this file as currently it just will not render and reverting to an older save loses quite a bit of work.

4

[Max] Bug Reporting / Cant always type numbers into New VFB

« on: 2024-10-04, 16:31:26 »

Several times over the past few months ive been frustrated with the new VFB and when it randomly stops accepting keyboard input. It doesnt let me type anything into any spinner. If i use the numpad it will randomly default to the 'arrow key' mode of the numpad even with numlock enabled. Numpad works fine in other applications. Even the numeric input on the main keyboard wont work when this happens. The spinner can be dragged to change the value but cant be typed in. It seems to happen at random.

I encountered this error back in v2 too. It appears to happen mostly with large scenes both during IR and rendering.

5

[Max] I need help! / Does the VFB suport the OCIO output transform?

« on: 2024-09-27, 12:14:37 »

Does the VFB support the OCIO output transform?
Does the CIE retain the colour management info?

I rendered from a render farm and the CXR that returned has some colours that look very different to what render from the exact same file locally and im questioning my understanding now.

Essentially, what was in the VFB locally, appeared correctly. What ive got back from the farm, some colours (not all strangely) are much brighter. The image appears much more muted in general.
It also happens when i render using DR locally.

6

[Max] I need help! / Do I need a separate license for image editor?

« on: 2024-09-24, 12:55:58 »

I work in a team like many others here likely do. Sometimes further down the pipe they might want to make a stylistic decision that could be resolved by adjusting a lightmix layer.

Would i need a separate full corona license just to give them the ability to open and adjust the cxr files?

7

[Max] Bug Reporting / CoronaColor srgb values changing between file saves

« on: 2024-09-13, 11:48:11 »

Ive noticed recently whilst using the OCIO colour management that if i set a corona color node to a specific  sRGB colour, when i save and reopen the file they have all changed rather significantly.

For instance i have a brand colour 0,61,165 and on file open it had changed to 54,62,156.
0,0,255 has changed to 64,36,239

This isnt a one time occurrence. I thought perhaps i had screwed up somewhere but its happened to every coronaColor node. Ive switched to using pngs because i can rely on them.

Max 2024, Corona 12.

8

[Max] General Discussion / Does a higher resolution image require more passes?

« on: 2024-05-15, 15:23:45 »

Does a higher res image require more passes to reach a certain noise level? Or does each pass just take longer?
For instance will and image of 1000x1000 and an image of 5000x5000 reach a 3% noise level at the same number of passes but each pass takes a longer time on the 5000x5000 image?

Ive never really thought about it before, i usually just let it run until it looks nice.

This help page is really useful but it didnt answer my question unless i missed it.

https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4528236666257-How-many-passes-is-enough

9

[Max] I need help! / Setting RGB baseColor values with maxscript defaulting to linear input?

« on: 2024-05-15, 01:18:37 »

Hi,

Whenever i try to change the baseColor of corona materials via maxscript, the values end up being input in linear by default. Im assuming this is because of the way max internally handles colors and the conversion between rgb 255 and rgb 0-1. How can i ensure theyre added in sRGB or how can i convert the values correctly?

for instance color 250,200,10. If i manually add it into the picker in srgb mode the colour is correct.
However when i add it via maxscript it adds it in linear mode and so the resulting srgb colour is 254,228,59

How can i fix this? Is there a formula i need to implement in my script or do i need a different approach?
I tried using the max standard color map but the same thing happens even if i set the gamma to 1.0. It has to be to do with the way maxscript handles the (color R G B) values internally.

Thanks!

EDIT: The solution was to gamma correct the sRGB colours

Heres a function

Code: [Select]


 fn adjustColorGamma _inputColor _maxVal _gammaVal _doInverse =
 (
 if _doInverse then
 (
 outputR = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.r/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 outputG = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.g/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 outputB = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.b/_maxVal)^(1.0/_gammaVal))
 
 (color outputR outputG outputB)
 ) else
 (
 outputR = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.r/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 outputG = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.g/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 outputB = _maxVal * ((_inputColor.b/_maxVal)^_gammaVal)
 
 (color outputR outputG outputB)
 )
 )

adjustColorGamma (color 255 255 255) 255 2.2 false

 

10

[Max] Feature Requests / User-created physical material presets

« on: 2024-05-14, 16:33:19 »

It would be fantastic if we could save and load custom presets to have in the physical material presets list for common starter materials.
The ones there are useful but having your own custom ones would be even better. Think of it as an alternative to a material library for base materials already set up how you like them.

11

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Rough refraction in reflection acts strangely at values other than zero

« on: 2024-05-03, 00:54:12 »

Scene setup:

Metal ball, white diffuse. 0.0 Roughness
Box below, Frosted Glass material library preset
Corona light below the box.


When the metal ball has a roughness value of 0.0 then the reflections are correct. Anything higher and the frosted material almost disappears and the hotspot from the light is the only thing visible.
This doesnt happen with the corona physical frosted glass preset, only the legacy material.

12

[Max] Feature Requests / Unsupported material override

« on: 2024-04-22, 15:57:22 »

It would be really great if there was a way to override the red self illuminating material that gets applied to unsupported materials with something of our choosing.
I see it has been requested a few times over the past decade.

Use case: Ive imported a ton of revit models and im halfway through processing them for new materials. I need to render out an image to show the progress and check my materials but because of the unsupported materials that are yet to be processed the render looks a mess, the reflections are full of red and the image is affected far too much for me to be able to reliably check anything.

Previously proposed solutions:I could run the converter but sometimes this again leads to unwanted results with things like metals and self-illuminating materials
The red illuminated material is very useful for identifying objects that need fixing and thats why i dont want to actually remove the ability to use that, it just needs a temporary override in some situations.

13

[Max] I need help! / CoronaPhysical Mtl & Physical Mtl Questions

« on: 2024-04-19, 17:21:21 »

Recently ive been confused by a few things in the the Corona that over the years ive learned to live with.
couple of questions; For the attached example, Physical material is on the left and corona on the right.

1. Why does inverting a map in the bitmap node result in a different output than if i invert it within a corona colour correct node?

2. Why do the same PBR maps connected to both a corona physical material and an autodesk physical material render differently to each other?  Ive attached an example compariso_galv.jpg. On the left is a physical material, the right is a corona material. Both seem slightly different colours and also seem to be reflecting differently. It seems corona assumes metals have an IOR of 2-3 because i had to set the physical material to 2.5 to get a close match. Is it just down to a different implementation of metalness?

3. It appears to me that physical materials render much faster and clean up much quicker with the gpu denoiser. At least during this testing thats what i saw. For instance in the attached comparison, the corona material on the right is far more blurry than the physical on the left which has cleared up in the same number of passes.

Not a huge difference but im looking at the viability of using physical materials instead of corona for better compatibility with our pipeline at work and just noticed a few subtle differences.

14

[Max] Feature Requests / Remote DR

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:52:55 »

It would be fantastic if we could offload rendering to another machine on my network through DR without having to render on the host PC itself too.
I work on my work-supplied laptop but also have a personal workstation that is much more powerful. I often use them in tandem to render but sometimes id much prefer if i could just submit to render on my main workstation without needing to manually transfer all of the textures, open it on my workstation, relink the files and then render.

Im sure there are other requests for similar features but just a checkbox for 'include this machine' on DR would be great. I don't even mind if the host machine still just assembles the sent passes in a vfb. I just dont want it rendering and locking up my machine when i could be working on other stuff during the render. Yes i could set up deadline or similar but it feels like a potential easy win for those only rendering on one or two machines.

15

[Max] Feature Requests / Better implementation of corona maps in Nitrous viewport

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:20:43 »

Often when people complain about the max viewport vs say the blender viewport capability its because most people arent using native renderers in max and therefore the viewport support isnt as complete as say the max physical material might be.
Id love to see greater compatibility between the max viewport and corona materials and maps. Probably not a priority item but it would benefit my workflow greatly being able to show more complex material graphs in viewport without needing to render or use IR for design reviews in real time.