Topics

1

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Weird rendering issue

« on: 2018-07-19, 13:08:49 »

Hi!

I really need help figuring this one out.

Basically I have a volume job of 350 renders for a company that specializes in metal framing for cable management.

Now, the issue is that for some reason I get weird lines and dark spots on my renders sometimes. Not sure why exactly. And I don't remember whether this was an issue in 1.7 (currently using Corona 2).

I tried checking for the obvious things, like flipped normals, double geometry, etc - couldn't really find a fault.

The scene file (textures and model included) can be found HERE.

The reason I mentioned I have 350 of these to do is because I don't want a "just fix it in photoshop" as a solution, because it would be impractical for such a volume.

In the mean time, I'll see if I have an install of Corona 1.7 to test with as I'm pretty sure I've not seen these error before.

2

[Max] I need help! / Sampling issues

« on: 2018-01-17, 18:09:07 »

Hi, guys!

I've got a question about sampling. I think it's since the last update here VRay's adaptive sampling was introduced I started getting really crappy sampling in AO and certain other passes, which annoyed me on this latest job especially.

If you look at the images below - I think it's because the sampler just sees the white reflection as finished and doesn't give it any more samples (look at where the white reflection ends on the right side of both passes!) - which is fair for the beauty pass, but the same areas are also neglected in other passes, such as AO, where it makes no sense and makes for a very blotchy render with noise, which is quite annoying... Happens all the time now and I hate it because resolving those areas either requires manual intervention or leaving the image to render forever - neither of which is viable when rendering a job in bulk, say, via Backburner - and I have one job coming up where I'll have 300+ renders to make of various parts for a company.

Is there anything I can do about it beside having to focus rendering power on those areas every time I need an AO pass (area masks)???

Thanks!

3

[Max] I need help! / Vector masks - is it possible?

« on: 2018-01-10, 15:26:54 »

Hi, guys,

Happy new year!

I have a question: Is it possible to render out/save vector masks?

Essentially we have a client that needs a bunch of product renders, but with the images they also need masks of various parts so that they can recolor things on-the-fly in their web engine. They want the masks supplied in a vector format for their use.

So far I figured I'd render out a stupid resolution image with B/W masks and vectorize those in Illustrator - and that works for the most part, but it breaks in places of small detail - no matter how I adjust the trace settings some small details just get lost no matter what (or sorta appear back, together with an exaggerated stair-step and waviness effects which were never in the original image) - you'd think that Illustrator could pick up the details I can easily see with my eyes...

So I was wondering if there was a way to extract vector outlines out of Corona (or MAX, for that matter) to use as a mask?

Thanks!

4

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Black dots...again :)

« on: 2017-11-01, 11:13:41 »

Hi, everyone!

1.7 is here and so are fresh new problems xD

Here's a video showing what's going on with Corona: LINK

A rundown:
I'm getting black dots that appear to be spawning from one window, at the corner, and affecting the reflections that have anything to do with the window. Corona VFB cannot save the beauty pass (saves white) and blacks out in a few seconds (the only way to see the beauty pass again is to switch to the reflection pass and back). There also appears to be a square area around each dot, 48x48 pixels in total, that will not respond to denoising at all (visible in the video once I crank up the contrast in PS).

This was an overnight render that I left chugging at work. The test renders I made before this one didn't have this problem, everything was fine. The only thing I changed, as far as I remember, was the resolution. Since I couldn't save the beauty pass I had to piece 16 screenshots together in PS....blah...

ANy ideas what could have happened?

5

[Max] Bug Reporting / Region render - only the border is noise-free!

« on: 2017-06-26, 11:14:40 »

Hi!

I'm fairly certain this is a bug as it never happened before the 1.6 release...

I can't get a noise-free result if I render an area snip within the Corona VFB. There's a strange border of a few pixels around the crop marker that does render correctly and then the rest inside is just left noisy. This, as I said earlier, did not use to be the case before.

I'm on Corona 1.6.1. Any ideas? It's quite annoying, especially when I need to do a patch render to fix an issue somewhere - the result barely resolves.

The issue is not present when rendering the full viewport.

6

[Max] I need help! / Excessive noise/fireflies with ComplexFresnel

« on: 2017-04-21, 11:42:49 »

Hi!

I've noticed quite a few people use Siger's Complex Fresnel in their work but I keep having problems with it :/

My current problem is that the rendered image with abundant use of the plugin causes an excessive amount of fireflies all over the scene!

Here's the image without any denoising after 17 hours of rendering on an i7-5960X!
http://www.clikcreations.co.uk/corona/cf/Bathroom_Noisy.jpg
Take a look at the metal bits, the candles, the side of the bathtub, toilet roll holder...unusable!

Fireflies all over the place...

If I disable the complex fresnel map and do thins manually (set the IOR back from 999 to 25 instead of using the map as intended) - the problem goes away completely. Comparison image HERE:
http://www.clikcreations.co.uk/corona/cf/Bathroom_noCF.jpg
Just quick patch renders here and there, not long at all, while the fireflies caused by the plugin don't go away pretty much at all...

I used to have black pixels all over my metals some time ago, but I traced it back to the plugin f-king up after a Corona update. So I updated the plugin and for some reason it worked out fine.
Now I'm running Corona 1.5.2 and the plugin version 1.0.6 (I'd expect most people to use that instead of 1.0.7 that is now available because it only came out a few days ago to support MAX 2018, as it says in the changelog). Does anyone else have this problem or is it something I did wrong? Should I just give up on the plugin altogether?

Thanks!

7

[Max] General Discussion / Realism - Caustics

« on: 2016-11-23, 13:24:24 »

Hi, guys!

It's that time of the year when someone somewhere has to b*tch about Corona caustics rendering, and here I am! :D

This topic stems from the fact that I have to create a set of indoor house CGIs for a wealthy client who will also have an indoor pool in his basement. And, to no surprise, I ran into big problems trying to make the thing look convincing. But that's a story for another day.

I was wondering what people's thoughts are regarding the lack of caustics in Corona in general? I personally think it takes away a LOT of realism in scenes with metals, glass and reflective materials in general, ESPECIALLY if they're a focus point (I still remember writing stuff near a window as a kid and how the sun would hit my fountain pen's nib and produce beautiful caustic patterns - something that's not possible in Corona without slowing it down to a grind ATM).

I'm attaching a couple of very simple renderings of a scene to illustrate the difference. The setup is the same for both: a "pool" mesh with SOLID water geometry (water geometry that actually does have sides and the bottom, a closed mesh, displaced at the top) and a Corona sunlight. The water material has caustics enabled as does the chrome material of a piece of tube to the right. Nothing fancy. The ONLY thing I changed between the renders is the engine: default PT+Cache vs PPM (Progressive Photon Mapping). I must add that while a lot more realistic - the PPM engine is super slow and never really converges into a noiseless picture, so can't be used for projects as it is.

The difference is crazy, in my opinion. And it bugs me that something like this has been ignored for so long :(
As a photographer who photographs interiors I understand that caustics can actually be irritating (I sometimes have to photoshop weird caustics reflecting on the ceiling caused by spotlights shining down on metal parts of furniture, especially in bathrooms), but it's all there in the real world and should be an option in Corona.

Thoughts?

EDIT: If caustics is not possible without photon mapping in Corona (like Iray and the likes that have caustics enabled at all times pretty much) - maybe an option would be to add an option to pre-calculate a photon pass for caustics, similar to how Redshift/Mental Ray/VRay do it? I could live with that, as long as it can eventually be used to generate sharp, detailed caustics.

8

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Weird reflections - how to solve?

« on: 2016-10-13, 16:20:35 »

Hi, guys!

Long time no post, but I'll get right to it.
I'm rendering some VR stuff of a scene I created from scratch and I'm getting some weird reflections of my roller blind behind a sauna/shower glass (marked on the right side, see files below!). I'm on Corona 1.5 and I've not seen this problem before on 1.4. Two things that have changed are:
I've updated to Corona 1.5 AND I'm rendering a stereo equirectangular (only providing the top half below, both halves exhibit the same problem).

Any ideas?

Offending file:



Previous correct rendering:

9

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Strange speculars/fireflies on the floor! [SOLVED]

« on: 2015-06-02, 14:56:02 »

Hello, good people of Coronia!

I need your help once more and hopefully someone can help me crack this...

I'm doing an interior render for a client and I ran into a problem with weird specular reflections coming out of seemingly nowhere.

The problem is as follows:

First, the reflections make no sense whatsoever - they appear in the shadow areas where the angle of view would probably reflect the dark wall anyway...



AND



Weirdly enough, it happens on the side closer to the camera. The floor looks fine further away:



Now onto the details:
I'm using my usual setup for parquet - a texture set bought from turbosquid (includes diffuse/ref/bump maps), somewhat reflective, half-way glossy...nothing special. I've double-checked that my texture maps are at blur value of 1 (default) and are not sharpened or overdone. Bump is at 0.3, the bump map itself is between values of 20% grey (tiles) to black (crevices), so nothing extreme either. Here's the shader itself (note that it renders fine in the preview):



I'm using Corona Sun&Sky to light the scene, default settings, nothing special once more:



This is the same scene that I was having trouble with black highlights on the sofas. The workaround was to render with no glass refractions for the skylight (roof) and render the frosted glass as a separate pass to comp in later. I can live with that. But the hite specs appear regardless of whether I use the frosted glass or nothing at all, prompting me to thing it has something to do with the engine itself or the way shader/light are set up?

Here's the overall view:



Dropping the obvious out of the way:
1) I've tried rendering with both frosted glass, no refraction and even no glass at all. Same results.
2) I am not willing to render without the bump map as it gives the flooring realistic look when looking at it against light.
3) The lighting has been approved by the client/director - I can't go to an HDRI easily now.

I hope someone can help with this issue as it's quite obviously destroying the picture. Please don't tell me this is an engine bug just like those black highlights (https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,6883.msg53754.html#msg53754) :/

Thanks!

10

[Max] Resolved Bugs / [SOLVED] Corona DR - no response from MAX (3dsmaxcmd.exe)

« on: 2015-04-16, 14:06:13 »

[SOLVED] - Don't render a negative frame in your timeline.

Hi again!

This time I'm having problems with Corona DR (it's a shame as alpha 7 was perfect in every way and everything just worked! :( )
I'm attaching the log files so someone can have a look at them and explain what I need to do to fix this ASAP.

Basically it receives the ping, accepts the file, tries to launch 3dsmaxcmd.exe, fails and then stops. Rinse and repeat that indefinitely.

Thanks!

EDIT: Works fine with a new scene on MAX 2015 on both machines. Does NOT on my current scene on MAX 2014 or 2015 for some reason. No errors on rendering as far as I can tell on the master!

What I've already tried:
1) Made sure the slave has the license activated
2) Installed Backburner 2014 (Max Design 2014 on slave machine)
3) Even made sure I've got the local content (files and textures) in the same directories as the master
4) Tried re-installing Corona with DR on the slave machine

11

[Max] I need help! / Exposure disabled when using CameraMod???

« on: 2015-04-16, 13:29:57 »

Hi!

I need to create some 360 equirectangular pano renders, but I am used to adjusting the exposure on-the-fly with corona tonemapper while rendering. However, even if I change nothing more than the projection on the Corona CameraMod - the exposure gets locked out from the tonemapper. This is inconvenient :(
Any way around this? I'd really appreciate an exposure override toggle in the future version if there's no workaround as this is just a little...annoying.

Thanks!

12

[Max] I need help! / Activated until...next month (bought an annual license!)

« on: 2015-04-16, 10:44:00 »

Hi!

I've just purchased Corona and paid the annual fee (works out a touch cheaper and less fuss). I've logged in, activated the Fair SaaS license and put the details on my workstation and a render node.
However, MAX says my license is active for the next 30 days?! Is this normal?

Thank you!

EDIT: I've also noticed that my max kept crashing on trying to change the material type or adding any texture. I've narrowed it down to the Lightworks Iray+ beta plug-in. Had to remove it to get my materials working again. This was not the case before Corona.

13

[Max] I need help! / Bright corners - hi-res rendering error?

« on: 2014-10-08, 10:12:28 »

Hi guys!

Let me begin by saying that Corona is absolutely incredible and switching from Mental Ray/iray was as painless as it can be! Really pleased with the speed and quality! :)

Anyhow, I have a bit of a booboo, which is why I'm here.
So I'm testing Corona's 360 pano capabilities for our production work and I did a low res (1920 width) test:
http://www.clikcreations.co.uk/p13/P13.html - Everything is fine.
Then I rendered out a large image (10000x5000) of the same scene:
http://www.clikcreations.co.uk/p15/P15.html - I now have glowing corners!

click/drag to move around, double-click to go full-screen

Any idea why that might have happened? I didn't change the settings as far as I remember...

Thanks!