Messages

1

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: New VFB Skin and functionality

« on: 2024-03-15, 15:23:55 »

Can we put suggestions in this thread?

I'm here to raise a hand for custom background or reference image overlay, that maybe works like A/B history so you can compare your render to any image of your choice. Color management here is of course priority otherwise the feature is completely useless.

I want to A/B my current render to either my own renders of the same scene/product or reference images.

2

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-12, 13:46:54 »

I'm disapointed here too. Like every commercial software just keeps increasing in price. Some add features people want, some don't, and people want different things. However, the landscape is shifting towards open source and real time for many people, and the timing is just feels way off.

When the price was increased before we also got Phoenix etc, and Chaos could cash in on many more users by bundeling software and charging for something they were producing anyway.
If this increase was timed with "now Anima is included" I would've jumped out of my chair screaming hooray! Now the feeling is just "what? why? Is it an indication of a new direction and is going to keep happening every year? And has Corona usage decreased so much they have to charge more to break even or what is this?"

And to everyone working at Chaos/Corona I really like using the product. It's really great at what it does. For me it's the best and most fun to use CPU-renderer.

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: Lens tilt/swing?

« on: 2023-12-15, 18:58:47 »

Not sure if this is the same thing. But definitely interesting as a topic of discussion. And definitely an edge case for arch-viz first Corona.
What characteristic of an anamorphic lens do you want to mimic? Is it just how out of focus highlights look or the whole thing like how funky a focus pull looks?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Lens tilt/swing?

« on: 2023-12-15, 18:28:41 »

This is a fairly good example of how tilt/swing works.
https://www.westechoptical.com/blog/the-scheimpflug-principle

It’s hard to explain what I want to do without making a diagram. But it’s basically a diagonal shot across a product and the plane of focus is also diagonal across the product, but I would like the plane of focus to be more in the local orientation of the product. Unlike the train track example on the link, I don’t want to use the effect tot get longer or shorter perceived dof, I still want it to be short, only hitting the right details on the product.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Lens tilt/swing?

« on: 2023-12-15, 16:45:42 »

Yes, but it also affect the geometry/projection. Tilt on my real tilt-shift lens does affect the projection a bit, but the focus plane more. And with a ray tracer maybe one could separate the angle of the dot plane completely from the geometric projection?
Tilt in the corona can is more like “camera tilt correction” too me. And I just want to tilt the front lens.

With reservations for me hallucinating all of this :) wil try if I can get a nice result with corona cam tilt, maybe one can counteract the geometric affect with shift.

6

[Max] I need help! / Lens tilt/swing?

« on: 2023-12-15, 16:01:33 »

Hi!

I suspect this is way too niche and also something that will fly over most heads.
But I wonder if someone with insight into writing a ray/pathtracer (preferably a developer of corona ;) ) could answer if it would be possible to implement lens tilt/swing in order to change the angle of the focus plane according to the scheimpflug principle?

Doing product shots in Corona, I use a lot of lens shift to obtain desired perspectives/projections - as one would do in a real studio. And it would be cool if I could have all the tools of a physical camera in corona too.

Using tilt/swing in real life is really really hard. But having focus plane preview on the corona cam, it would be a nice tool to have up my sleave.


</ weird question that probably doesn't deserve much attention in the grand scheme of developing corona render>

7

General CG Discussion / Re: 3D Gaussian Splatting

« on: 2023-11-16, 15:36:38 »

I am sure some smart people are already thinking how to de-light these to create "PBR" Point-Clouds/Nerfs/Splats :- ).

Exactly, "how many papers down the line?" ;D


TomG:
I understand the difference between 3DGS and traditional photogrammetry that generates a mesh and textures (that one probably de-lights in some way).

With 3DGS I would have some of the same problems that I do with my regular workflow of matching a rendered building into a photograph of a location. I would have to match the lighting on the model to fit the environment in both cases. But there would be more interaction. The model could reflect and possibly be shadowed by the 3DGS surrounding. Preferably also cast shadows on it, even if that might cause non-physical effects of something being shadowed twice by the sun.


Why 3DGS? It seems easier and more lightweight than photogrammetry. Also 3DGS capures view dependant effects in a way that traditional photogrammetry does not. And not to mention handles thin objects such as vegatation and eyelashes (look at the spline demo!). It all seems very nice.

8

General CG Discussion / Re: 3D Gaussian Splatting

« on: 2023-11-16, 14:59:54 »

TomG:
In the near term, my interest is on the input side of things. To get locations, and possibly objects, that are difficult to scan or model with traditional methods. It would replace photogrammetry. And I do a lot of photo matched architectural work, so I'm thinking this would allow me to not only nudge the camera after the fact, but also crop and cull unwanted things in the volume. A 3D photograph, that's what I want! :D

Output seems like not a problem already? Just time consuming to render a bazzilions views and process it, just as you would with photographs from the real world. Maybe its' possible to think of some more effective method. But I think input is more interesting.

Juraj: You sell high quality hdris of locations right? Imagine 3DGS with hdri support *drool*

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Image Editor writes (possibly) corrupt TIFF

« on: 2023-11-16, 10:24:21 »

Thanks for the suggestion but I'm sure I'm saving without alpha, but in 16-bit. Tried it again now to triple check, and I've been doing the same thing for months without trouble. It's just the resolution that I can think of that was different this time. PNG worked though. Been avoiding PNGs because transparency is annoying in Photoshop if there's an alpha, and many years ago I heard from someone that IKEA banned the use of PNGs internally because the PNG plugin in max was very slow or something. Not sure if that latter was true or if it's true today.

10

[Max] I need help! / Corona Image Editor writes (possibly) corrupt TIFF

« on: 2023-11-16, 08:50:38 »

Hello,

Is there any known limitation to resolution or file size when it comes to tiff?

I've rendered to CXR, and I save as TIFF from Corona image editor, and suddenly nothing will open the files. Saving as PNG works. The only thing I have changed in the setup, apart from geometry and materials is that I bumped the resolution from 11600x7733px to 12000x8000px. Either the output is corrupt or Photoshop can't read it. But photoshop can create, save and read a Tiff of that size so I don't think that's the problem.

11

General CG Discussion / Re: 3D Gaussian Splatting

« on: 2023-11-15, 08:12:53 »

In a browser:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Spline3D/comments/17v8ii1/update_we_are_adding_gaussian_splatting_to_spline/

Live demo: https://my.spline.design/girlstudio-8b6211e0b6ab456c8764297c6ff3ed45/

If a developer, or any one else who's knowledgeable enough, sees this: is combining splats with a pure ray/pathtracer a difficult scenario?

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General CG Discussion / Re: 3D Gaussian Splatting

« on: 2023-11-13, 15:14:14 »

Absolutely amazing tech. I want to use this for some construction help in family garden as quick sort of visualizing scanned pointcloud of environment :- ) As I've seen Unreal will be able to read/use this

Here's some inspiration in case you need to put smoke monsters in your family garden:

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General CG Discussion / Re: 3D Gaussian Splatting

« on: 2023-11-13, 13:40:33 »

I think it's shocking that this has no replies. I have no interest in turning my 3d scenes into 3DGS, but I have a huge interest in going out and capturing a location and turning it into a 3DGS. This is something fantastic for arch viz, which is Coronas main audience, right?
It's been oddly quiet on the autodesk, v-ray and corona front about this tech. The UE, Blender and Unity scene is all over it. Alteast from my biased internet bubble.
This is what's going to push me into doing an actual project in UE soon.

If any developer sees this, I would be really interested to hear if the ability to read and render 3DGS would be best implemented on the autodesk/Max side of things, or in the actual renderer. So I know who to nag ;)

14

[Max] I need help! / Re: filtering, bump and roughness

« on: 2023-10-10, 09:13:10 »

Thank you all for your replies!

I'm really glad to hear this is being worked on, and I was about to jump on the Corona 11 Build, but I have second thoughts now. I'm behind schedule anyway and I have zero time for unexpected results, and I might even need to use an external renderfarm so that would make using new plugins and stuff impossible.

And thanks, Pokoy, for the additional information. I'm using a plain old stupid noise map. It's nice with procedural textures for things like this so I don't have to retopo and unwrap super complex cad-objects. I'm thinking about trying tri-planar and a good normal map for the powder coat finish, but because of the shape of the most looked-at piece of this product, I think I will end up with smeary blends in critical places. Just think of a chamfered box with large radius chamers that everyone will stare straight at.

15

[Max] I need help! / filtering, bump and roughness

« on: 2023-10-09, 14:49:30 »

Hi!

I remember seeing threads about how Corona takes shortcuts with filtering so we can how our nice and quick renderings, and that this usually isn't a problem in most images/scanarios. I just lost my perfectly tweaked highlights in my powder coating when going from testrenders to rendering 11,6K. Test rendering at that size isn't realistic, hardly even with regions.

What should I do to make sure my highlights have the same roughness/bump no matter what render size? And how bad will the penalty be?