Messages

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

Off-Topic / Re: Clients and AI

« on: 2024-12-18, 14:05:19 »

It sounds to me like Jay is under the impression that he is your supervisor rather than your client and that he owns you a little bit.

I would suggest trying very hard to diversify your income from clients a little so you dont rely on his work as much. Thats a bad position to be in quite frankly because as others have said, he should respect that you know what youre doing and have the expertise to do so. Im sure we have all had clients like this in the past and all agree that they are a nightmare.

Do you have a contract in place specifying a number of free revisions before you charge extra? In the past when a problem client has come back ive put in that sort of clause so that when they want tiny little changes i can say to them, i can absolutely do that but itll cost an extra $XXX for another round of revisions. They often realise that moving a chair 2inches to the left isnt worth it. Or they will spend the time to collate all of their feedback into a single round of revisions saving you both time.

Going beyond AI it seems the reason he wants AI to do the work is because he thinks it would save him money. So If thats what he wants then you should agree on a charge per apartment (or per sqft perhaps if theyre inconsistent), set a time limit per sqft and then work to a quality that you can achieve in that time. If he isnt happy then you explain that if he wants higher quality then you need more time.

Or you spend some time doing r&d yourself into workflows that can speed up your output to make the bulk of the work easier on yourself in the long run. Is there a modular approach you can take in any areas? Could you spend time creating some parametric assets or rooms using something like railclone and its splineID tools to position furniture against walls or for kitchen cabinet arrangements etc. Are there scripts out there to help already for things like mouldings and kitchen cabinets? These sorts of things could save you time and hassle and can be reused in future for other clients too and if you save yourself time, you can either pass that saving on to the client depending on how youre billing. Or you can get the client their work faster with less of a time cost to yourself.

If youre doing 200+ apartments its worth looking at your workflow and seeing where you can semi-automate things with some upfront work even if that r&d time is unbilled.

3

Hardware / Re: Color space/mode

« on: 2024-12-18, 13:48:14 »

Im just reading a few threads on this topic at the moment trying to ascertain how to get consistent sRGB or AdobeRGB outputs from Corona now that colour management is a thing.
This seems to be the most recent thread discussing it and sorry to hijack it for a slightly different question. But If someone who has a better understanding than I could post some advice on what settings to use within colour management and then what to do within photoshop to ensure consistency between the VFB and the image im seeing in photoshop that would be great.

Juraj, i followed some steps from a post you made a few years ago which were very helpful thank you. But now colour management exists in max is there a better way to ensure consistency? Or does the missing profile assignment in the max save system still dictate that the below is the best way?

This is the comment i mentioned above.

Quote from: Juraj on 2021-03-05, 21:30:18

This is correct workflow for this monitor for 3dsMax/Corona.

1) Monitor OSD Menu: Select sRGB mode. Then adjust brightness to your liking. (Fun fact: Calibration is also done to exact brightness levels, but if you move it +/- 50perc. the difference in accuracy is not drastic).
2) Type Color management into taskbar in Windows, select your monitor, check "Use my settings" and select "sRGB" ICC profile. Set "Use as default".
3) When loading any rendering into Photoshop, you don't need to do anything if your settings are set to "Don't Ask". It will stay unmanaged and you only need to "Assign" sRGB profile at the end of export, for examply when saving to final file. Don't convert to any other profile.

The above workflow doesn't work for high-gamut displaying (DCI-P3, HDR workflow,etc..) or printing (AdobeRGB, LAB,etc.). But since 3dsMax & Corona are not color managed (Autodesk Maya and Vray for example are), this is the best scenario to use right now. Least headaches. Colors are always correct, you're just not using wide-gamut capability, which is ok since most devices are sRGB only, even today.

4

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

« on: 2024-12-18, 11:03:29 »

I tried simplifying the scene and tried merging those pieces to a new file but i couldnt replicate it.
This file however has been through a handful of different saves with the issue still presenting until i replaced the decal.

5

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

« on: 2024-12-17, 19:09:01 »

I believe i have solved this.

The culprit appears to be a Corona Decal that was created in corona 12.0. Im using 12.1 now.

The decal had a corona material applied and was purely being used for displacement. If I hid the decal, the UHD/4K Cache would work as expected.
If i unhid it during IR, The render would continue as expected. But if i tried to begin a render IR or production, with it visible. The UHD Cache wouldnt complete.

This makes sense as to why both a material override or disabling displacement globally would fix the issue.
Replacing the decal with a new one with the same settings and same material applied appears to have fixed the issue.

This suggests to me that there is a potential bug in decals created with v12 but migrated to v12.1.

I will see if this still happens when the scene is simplified and if so ill send it on the support ticket.

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

« on: 2024-12-16, 18:24:49 »

I submitted the scene on the support portal a few days ago

ID 326017

Ive noticed that if its getting stuck on the UHD pass isolate an object and then render it with IR, then stop it and start the render it tends to actually start rendering.

7

General CG Discussion / Re: Render Network

« on: 2024-12-13, 15:14:40 »

I would imagine its encrypted in some way. One of the main investors is J.J.Abhrams so its not some tin pot thing.

8

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.

9

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

« on: 2024-12-10, 12:18:00 »

TY for the extra info! If the scene is shareable (perhaps it can be shortened to the problem object and another object or two, enough that the problem occurs, but reduced so that nothing NDA breaking is involved), you can send it in by ticket for us to look at https://support.chaos.com/requests/new - otherwise nothing springs to mind for me at the moment based on the description :(

Ive reopened the original file this morning and its rendering fine. Very very strange.
If it happens again and i can strip the file down to a problem object ill send it over.

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

« on: 2024-12-09, 18:18:52 »

Just thoughts on troubleshooting steps

- If you load the old scene, it still calculates fine? (in case it is an update to Corona or some other plugin, and not a scene change, that has caused the issue)

- What happens if you use the 4K cache instead of the UHD?

- You can force a minidump, which if you want to send in a ticket will basically let us see what the software was doing at the time,https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4649117083409-How-to-report-issues-3ds-Max for forcing a crash

- I know you did some object hiding, but what about hiding everything leaving the HDRI and a new cube, does it work then? Then add objects back in groups?

- What happens with a Material Override set to a default Physical Material? Might pin it down to some translucency or volume textures.

- Thinking of volume textures, anything that uses a volume (including the absorption etc in a standard Phys Mat) is applied only to enclosed objects, and not to single sided things like planes? (Remembering that on a plane, Corona has no idea where the volume stops, which can "embed" the camera inside a volume)

The material override was a great idea that I hadn't thought of.

That narrowed it down to a material issue. I disabled the override and disabled displacement it got to rendering fairly quickly so i thought theres clearly a rogue material somewhere.
Couldnt find anything odd so went back to randomly hiding things.

I thought i found the problem object. When i hide the object the scene renders and the success rate increases significantly.
But when i apply a new blank material to the object the problem doesnt go away. Also the object in question renders fine when isolated.

The object in question or its material hasnt been altered for a dozen or so versions of this file either.

I then tried hiding half the scene but kept the problem object visible and the scene renders fine.
Im wondering if this is some sort of memory issue. I have 128gb in my system and using about half of it.

Since this scene was successfully rendered i have updated to 12.1 from 12.0

Ill do some further digging but i will try and send a minidump as this is looking like a very hard issue to troubleshoot without seeing internal workings.

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[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.

12

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Chaos Vantage who is actually using it ?

« on: 2024-11-20, 16:44:32 »

Is there any way we can get vantage trials reset? As the corona link improves it would be good to be able to try it and see if it better integrates with our workflows.

13

[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.

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[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona 12h1 Color managment on Render farm

« on: 2024-09-27, 16:01:32 »

Can confirm im also facing a similar issue. Rendered several large images with Garagefarm and after receiving finished renders with clearly incorrect colours, myself and the support both tried rendering locally and the images were rendering correctly on a single local machine.

I later tried the same file using DR locally across two machines and the same issue occurred meaning this is a network-only issue.

Using Max 2024 and OCIO Defaults. Garagefarm support tried the env variable fix but it didnt work.

Can confirm going back to linear works fine.

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

« on: 2024-09-27, 15:30:46 »

If the word on the street is correct, this is a 3ds Max issue - as reported in https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=43590.msg228057#msg228057 (the details in that message was taken from information on Facebook).

Thanks Tom and thanks for your message. It was very useful!