Topics

1

[C4D] I need help! / ***SOLVED*** License Problem

« on: 2025-03-10, 13:46:58 »

Not related to the other user's post, but I'm sure I'm just as frustrated. I have a ticket Request #354956 in the system, but it's 7 hours with no reply and I'm getting desperate. This online system is infuriating to say the least. In my late night attempts to get Corona running on a new system, I tried the borrow license thing. That's was also frustrating. All the help says to do these steps, download the .crt file (or whatever it's called). I was never able to find where to get it. When you're done with the borrow thing, just click the release button. I was never able to find that button. ARRRRRGGH!

I'm going to have to call my client soon

2

Hardware / New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-07, 19:08:50 »

I might be in the market for a new Mac. I'm in deep in the Apple ecosystem, so let's not go there. ha.

Anyway, there are two new Mac Studios coming out next week. Since I do video editing, motion graphics, lots of Photoshop work and of course, Corona rendering, seems like the M3 Ultra SHOULD be the better choice. No benchmarks yet between the two to see if the the speed difference is worth the extra cost.

I found a Geekbench test that shows the M4 Max 16-core multicore score at around 25,913, while the M3 Ultra 32-core at 27,749 multicore. Not a massive difference to be honest. If I save 2 min. on a render that would be nice, but maybe not $2,000 USD nice. I'd have to have 20 render per day to save any significant time. ha.

The theory is that they are saving the M4 Ultra or maybe even a new M5 chip for the Mac Pro tower so they are trying to get more difference between the Studio and the insane cost of the tower. I used to live for getting the towers, but don't really need it so much anymore. Right now, the Studio outperforms it. Question is, how much better is the slightly older M3 vs. the newer M4 in real-world rendering tasks?

If anyone finds a real-world comparison out there, feel free to post it here.

3

[C4D] General Discussion / Any Way to Catch Reflections?

« on: 2025-01-31, 02:10:43 »

The shadow catcher material is great and has many ways to utilize it. The way I'm using it right now is to render my object with its shadow baked in, which makes it cleaner to just have the on object with the shadow already there so you don't have to export a separate layer.
 
What would be even better is to also have the object's reflection captured also. In my case, I have a flat floor, but it is pretty reflective, like polished marble. Having the shadow with the object allows the flexibility to make small adjustments it the object's position or size in compositing. Since I don't know how to capture the reflection, I've had to resort to baking the shadow into the floor and have the object on its own layer. This is to allow other objects and people to be placed behind the object. And by rendering the shadwo into the floor, it also has the reflection of the object, but this almost eliminates the ability to make adjustments later.

Anyway, it would be nice if we could have an option for a Reflection Catcher material. ha.

4

[C4D] General Discussion / Chaos Academy

« on: 2024-12-18, 18:46:59 »

Saw this in my e-mail and thought, fantastic! I'd like to spend some time learning Corona better. Nope. Not a single Corona video. Only V-Ray, Enscape, and Vantage, at least so far. You couldn't come up with even one Corona video or is that not the purpose of the Academy? Just curious. If that will not feature Corona, why send it to a Corona user? Seems pointless for me.

Now I have to watch the news to get my excitement down again.

5

[C4D] I need help! / Lights and Glows in Masks

« on: 2024-12-02, 17:23:09 »

I need a little advice. I have this animation I'm working on. This truck will roll into the shot and end like this. There are also cars on the truck. I'm trying to render the truck and cars separately so I only have to render the truck once, and I can switch out the cars as needed.

My issue is I can't get the lights or the Bloom and Glare included in the mask. As you can see more easily with the large banner and the bigger lights, they only appear where there isn't the alpha channel. I have tried so many things and can't get this to work. The lights are placed along splines via a Mograph Cloner, however, I've tried converting the Cloner to individual lights with the same result.

Any ideas what I am missing?

6

[C4D] I need help! / ***SOLUTION*** Chaos Cosmos Won't Load

« on: 2024-08-05, 20:14:38 »

I was going to download a mode and the update message came up. I clicked update since it says it will only take a few seconds. After a few minutes, I canclelled it. Now all I get is this message when tryin to open Cosmos Browser:

"Cannot open the Cosmos Browser, because Cosmos Service is not running."

Any idea how to fix this?

7

[C4D] I need help! / Slow Preparing Geometry

« on: 2024-07-19, 23:50:02 »

I'm curious if there is a typical reason why a scene can spend a lot of time Preparing Geometry before actual rendering begins? The image below is my scene. A grid of cars in a Mograph Cloner set to Render Instances. These cars are relatively hi-res models.

Size of texture files?
Calculating displacement?

I'm at a loss to narrow it down. This is one frame of an animation where the vehicles flip up out of the floor. It will sit there for 8 minutes at Preparing Geometry and then as little as 4 min. to actually render.

Mac OS 13.6.7 Ventura
Corona 12 Build timestamp • Jul  1 2024 11:08:36

8

[C4D] I need help! / Scene Converter Details

« on: 2024-03-18, 18:54:56 »

I'm trying to find details on what the options in the Scene Converter tool actually do. I'm talking about:

Metalness-->Autodetect, All Metal and No Metal

Convert Shaders-->As Selected and All In Selected Objects

I see a new Cinema Bitmaps option too.

9

[C4D] General Discussion / Chaos Vantage

« on: 2024-02-23, 15:43:41 »

I keep seeing mentions of Chaos Vantage, but never knew what it was. I watched part of a Chaos video and the main feature, from what I saw, was real-time (or close to it) previews. Isn't that one of the great features of Corona and V-ray, and Octane and Redshift for that matter? We have ability to have good real-time previews and updates as you work. Why  is Vantage needed if the engines already provide a similar function?

Asking for a friend. ;-)

10

[C4D] General Discussion / Cosmos and Vray

« on: 2024-02-18, 00:37:42 »

So I'm exploring some materials in the Cosmos browser. Oh, here's a nice looking asphalt material, let's take a look. I hit download. Perfect. When I click import, it says "You need Vray and Vantage". What is that all about? Why am I being served Vray materials in Corona? So far, I've only found two, but am surprised. Is this a mistake or is their a filter to only show me Corona-compatible materials?

asphalt-cracked-d01-200cm

asphalt-b01-100cm

11

[C4D] Bug Reporting / Text Cut Off

« on: 2024-02-06, 17:46:26 »

Any time I export a render from the VFB, the text will be cut off at the bottom. Sometimes more than this example. I can usually still see the words enough to continue, but sometimes not.

Corona v11
Nov 29 2023 19:27:40
C4D r25
Mac OS 12.5.1 Monterey

12

[C4D] Bug Reporting / Possible Bug with Mograph and Cosmos Model

« on: 2024-02-06, 17:43:33 »

I'm making a small restaurant mockup. I setup some basic tables and chairs. There are some scaling issues in this scene due to some LiDAR scanning, so the scale of the chairs was huge. I converted them to mesh and they reappeared in the viewport. They did NOT appear in any render however. When you convert some models, Cosmos included, sometimes it makes some sort of parent object and a child. You can't select anything on the parent and it has the material on it. I don't understand how that works.

So, I merged those two pieces of the chair into one mesh. Boom. Everything appears and renders as expected. Render Instances or Multi-Instance don't affect this issue.

Since this sample scene is so small, I've attached it directly here. This scene is new and there are no scene scaling issues.

Corona v11
Nov 29 2023 19:27:40
C4D r25
Mac OS 12.5.1 Monterey

13

[C4D] General Discussion / Convert Scene v11

« on: 2024-02-01, 22:43:08 »

Wanted to give the latest incarnation of the scene converter a go with a city street scene I got from Evermotion. It has over 200 V-ray materials. Upon opening the file, there was a window asking about how to convert things, figuring it would use these settings when I hit the convert button Well, it seems to be doing something, although at a snail's pace. There is no visual indication Corona is thinking which is frustrating. Only think is the textures slowly appeared in the viewport which is progress. V-ray will just appear a solid grey color for me. The Material Manager as you can see in the image is doing something. It has taken 30 min. to get to this point. How long can I expect this to take? Also, is this the same as if I had clicked the Convert Scene button? It is unclear what exactly is going on.

14

[C4D] General Discussion / Best Images for Dome Mapping

« on: 2024-01-31, 20:41:36 »

I wanted to try some dome mapping before setting up an actual street scene. I'm trying all sorts of HDRIs with equirectanglar distortion. Some look okay, but most are just impossible to work with.

What should I be looking for when choosing images for dome mapping? I assume equirectangular, but not 100% sure. I'm placing a car and want a big city street scene. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

15

[C4D] General Discussion / Complex Material Help

« on: 2023-12-05, 18:12:24 »

Okay, so I have a client that sells all sorts of Italian food. They came up with these little delicious-looking dough nuggets with frosting and cinnamon. Being people that think things can be created with a snap of the finger, they want to launch this product and this is the only photo they took and sent to us. This image was smoothed out with Photoshop and edited a bit, but it's not good. Bad lighting, depth of field is wrong and lots of noise.

I can make all of this in C4D and Corona, except for the sugary frosting effect. I'm preparing to tell them I can't do it easily if at all, but wanted to toss it out here. Also if you have seen a material for sale that might look close, I'm open to that too. Thanks.