Messages

5461

General CG Discussion / Anyone want their work seen by ILM?

« on: 2016-05-05, 15:37:23 »

Artstation has a new Concept Art based contest starting soon (note, we are not affiliated in any way with this contest, I am just sharing for those who may be interested). Looks like it will be a challenging one! I do love to see Corona entries into contests, so if anyone does take part, let me know!

https://www.artstation.com/contests/ilm/challenges/8

5462

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Corona-Materials.de is online

« on: 2016-05-03, 22:39:26 »

Nice work!

5463

General CG Discussion / Project Soane contest (with free model of Sir John Soane’s Bank of England)

« on: 2016-04-29, 19:41:25 »

Anyone entering the Project Soane contest?

Grab yourself a model of Sir John Soane’s Bank of England, and create your interpretation and render to enter this contest (note, we are not affiliated in any way with the contest, just a share so people know it is there!)

You have to use Autodesk software but any renderer is allowed (http://www.projectsoane.com/rules)

I see some Corona entries in there already :) When browsing the gallery, select the filter drop down and choose Corona, as for some reason when looking at the image the Render Engine is simply listed as "NVIDIA GeForce" or similar.

http://www.projectsoane.com/#home

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-29, 18:41:01 »

Installed Apr 29 build, and ran Max 2016.

Now, in Max 2016 I have changed the default folder (apparently, I forget!), as the default path in the RTT is now pointing at a folder on my F: drive, so a completely unrelated location.

Interestingly, leaving this as the default and rendering from RTT fails to create the file. If I manually change it to another path, it works and creates the file - even if I change it to the sceneassets/images location that wasn't working before.

So it seems specifically to do with the default path only, and seems to occur in 2016 in the same way as 2017?

Hope this helps!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-29, 18:11:25 »

I found that if i explicitly specify path, then Corona saves file, but if i leave default path, then it doesn't. Anyone else can confirm this?

Haven't tested in 2016 yet to compare to 2017, and not yet updated to the newest daily build before testing - but yes I see the same thing. If I even just move up one level to the sceneassets folder rather than sceneassets/images folder then it works, so it doesn't need an entirely different folder.

As a note, I did that and it worked, and keeping the scene in that state, I repainted with the base material, changed the path back to the /images folder in the RTT dialog (thinking that perhaps if it had been manually set one time, it would start working) - but it still didn't work. So could be specific to that path, whether set as a default or chosen manually.

Hope this helps!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-28, 22:11:49 »

Some more info -

I followed the same process, but this time I set the path to be on my E:\ drive, left the same default filename. This time, the file *was* created.

So first thought is maybe some sort of Windows permissions thing?

But one extra puzzle.

- Reload the scene to the default state before baking with no restart of Max
- Open the RTT dialog, add the Corona beauty but leave path set to the default
- Render from RTT
- Inspect the resulting material: the bitmap node in the baked material shows the expected path in the Bitmap field (the C:\....sceneassets\images\), and this is the path that opens if I click on the field to browse for an image (and the image is indeed not there)
- But the Bitmap node is in fact loading the image from the E:\ drive, and will render and show that image, even though it is not what is in the Bitmap's path field.

Image attached, you can see from the Bitmap preview that it is showing the image, and that the path is pointing to the C:\ drive location (where there is no such file). Clicking Reload doesn't change anything, the image from the E:\ drive location continues to be displayed. If I delete the image at the E:\location, it does vanish from the Bitmap node.

Don't know if that is just a Max thing when a bitmap is not found, or some extra piece of this puzzle.

Thanks!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-26, 23:50:30 »

TY! Sometimes it helps to be new at something, then you make all these strange choices and so test new things :)

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-26, 22:26:07 »

Sure! I've kept it barebones, with everything as default as possible

- Create sphere
- Apply Standard shader with checker pattern in diffuse (Standard so I can use the same shader in Corona and MR)
- Open RTT
- Add Corona Beauty to the output elements
- I leave this at default path and name Sphere001Corona_Beauty.tga being written to the Documents\3dsMax\sceneassets\images folder
- Render from the RTT dialogue (leaving to do the autounwrap since just a simple object and test! Sometimes lazy is good!)
- Screengrab attached of the resulting baked material, with the bitmap open - path etc is correct in that, but the preview is black
- The file does not exist at that location when I open it up

- For checking the save to an existing file, I change the "leave the default filename" for the RTT step to point to an existing file
- I change the checker colour just to be sure I know if something has changed
- Render from RTT, the file correctly appears in the baked texture and is loaded, but has not changed - second screengrab attached showing the yellow checkers that are the source material, and you can see the baked bitmap still has the old colours in it, the file was not overwritten

Performing the same steps with MR does create a file if none existed, and does overwrite the file with the render if one did exist.

Let me know if any more info would be of help!

EDIT - PS ignore the checker going into the diffuse on the baked texture :) I would normally delete that, set diffuse to 0, turn on Self Illumination, to check how that compares to the originally lit object, in this case, but didn't do that here since just testing.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-26, 21:56:20 »

Some confusion arose there - looks like the render to texture when using Corona was not saving the file (even though pointing to an already existing file; I knew it didn't create files, but thought it was ok writing to an existing one), so a bug there I suspect.

I rechecked results by manually saving the result of the RTT from Corona. Looks like padding makes no difference there, 0, 2 and 10 all gave an identical result. I do see the difference with MR, if I set to 0 then the seams show up (not as entirely black, but they are visible). So another bug there perhaps, that padding is not being used?

Thanks!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-26, 21:34:15 »

So it should be bug then. I will check it out and make report. Thanks.

Doing some more testing, sorry I may have posted in haste. Getting mixed results at the moment, going through steps to pin down what I am seeing.

5471

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Texture baking prototype

« on: 2016-04-26, 21:28:21 »

Padding is edge bleeding. It helps to prevent seams to be visible in baked textures. You can find padding control in RTT window's objects to bake rollout. By default it is set to 2, check if it's not set to 0 in your Corona scene. Also try to rise it to 10 or so and see if Corona obeys this settings.

Aha this was the very thing - but it was in reverse. Padding was set to 2. Increasing to 10 made the gaps larger, setting it to 0 removed the seams.

5472

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Seams show in textures from Render to Texture

« on: 2016-04-26, 21:05:03 »

My blank stare will be all the answer you need :)

In other words, what is padding and where do I find it?

Thanks!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Adaptivity and region renders, woohoo!

« on: 2016-04-26, 20:25:51 »

I noticed that the Apr 24th release has fixed something I found odd with render regions and adaptivity, and now it works as expected, brilliant!

Previously, two odd things happened - first, when rendering a region I got MUCH better results for that region than the same region looked when rendering the whole image, as if the adaptivity was "focused in" on the small region. This made it impossible to use render region to check anything with adaptivity enabled,as the look was different from rendering the whole scene. This is no longer the case, and results seem identical whether region or scene is done.

The other thing was the recalculation passes value - render region would run fast up until it hit the number set there, and then every pass after that was slow. It made render region significantly slower with adaptivity on (for about 15 passes, without adaptivity was 3 seconds, with it on at the default interval of 5, it was 23 seconds). That also no longer happens!

Just wanted to post to say thanks for the improvements there, and whatever changed, wanted to say it did not go unnoticed!

Max 2017, Apr 24th daily

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[Max] Daily Builds / Seams show in textures from Render to Texture

« on: 2016-04-26, 19:58:08 »

Hi all!

A quick mod, replacing the cube with a sphere, and then same process to test. Result from the render to texture was used as self illumination in both cases, with no effect from scene lights. The Corona texture shows the seams where the object was unwrapped, but this does not occur with MentalRay. No displacement etc involved here, just a straight Standard material with checker pattern in the diffuse as the source.

Thanks!
   Tom

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[Max] Daily Builds / Automatic Flatten UVs from render to texture causing displacement oddities

« on: 2016-04-26, 19:48:52 »

Hi all,

So with my same cube scene, I returned to test displacement. One I run the Render from Render to Texture, the cube becomes distorted when rendering with the original (unbaked) material. If I turn off the resulting "Automatic Flatten UVs" that's been added as a modifier, it returns to normal (or of course if I remove the map going in to the displacement slot). If I paint with a new material copied from the original before doing the render to texture (just in case anything was changed in the materials by the process), the distortion still occurs.

If I follow the same process with MentalRay, the cube does not distort even with the Auto Flatten modifier still enabled.

Thanks!
   Tom