Topics

1

[Max] General Discussion / DR Speed Question

« on: 2022-03-18, 11:11:56 »

I was using Corona DR for the first time and have a quick question about the speed gain when using DR.

Here is the setup & test:
Workstation-Aurora rendered the scene in 10:33 min
Workstation-Zeus rendered the same scene in 20:25 min

Using DR, Aurora as the master and Zeus as the slave, the scene rendered in 10:02 min while Zeus was only contributing 7 passes in those 10 minutes.
There is quite a difference when it comes to rendering power between those two machines but i was expecting a bit more gain out of it. Saving 31 seconds wont justify powering up another workstation.
So i did another rendering on Zeus and checked how many passes the single rendering was able to do within 10 minutes -> it got to 14 passes which is double from what i got in the same timeframe when using DR.
Since setting up DR is pretty much fail save i dont think i did something wrong on this end, so my question is, is that expected behavior? (Maybe because of the power difference?)  I know that the 2nd workstation will start a bit later with the rendering but getting only half of the passes in the same amount of time when using DR seems off to me....

2

[Max] I need help! / Cloud letters - Any pointers?

« on: 2021-08-18, 18:02:12 »

For a client i need to do several words where each letter is supposed to be looking like its made out of clouds - see attached example i stole of the internet.
Any pointers how to tackle this? I did some tests using the Volumetric Material inside a simple box and the results were pretty underwhelming and was rendering for ages. Tried some noisse or smoke maps as a Absorption map but it was far away from getting those nice rough uneven edges and depth of the example. Any ideas or examples?

3

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Visibility Track

« on: 2019-12-09, 15:54:44 »

Hello,
is it a known problem that somehow corona doenst take the visibility track into account? I have an object which visibilty is animated, basically its set to 0 most of the time and then jumps to 1 in one frame. The problem is that the object is still visibile the whole time its set to 0...
Found a similar problem which was solved unfortunatly it had something to do with SSS and transculency which i dont use (index.php?topic=21309), its a rather simple material.

material of the object: http://prntscr.com/q8cw3a

screengrab of the curve editor and IR: http://prntscr.com/q8cthf

any pointers whats wrong?

4

[Max] I need help! / frosted glass and alpha

« on: 2019-08-26, 16:57:30 »

Well, i need your help again, its a very simple problem but i cant seem to get this right. Background is that i need to render a couple of windows with frosted and "dirty" glass and the client wants to be able to change the background images by himself, so i thought, not a big deal, i just render out the windows with an alpha channel and the client can simply change the background in photoshop.

But, it seems that i cant get the "frosted" effect to show up in my alpha channel, its pure black which makes it not usable. So my question would be, is there any way to render frosted glass on a transparent/black background with an alpha channel that is not pure black? What am i am missing here?

here is a render test with a bg image, this is basically how i want it too look but be able to change the background:
http://prntscr.com/oxpdq7 and this is the alpha: http://prntscr.com/oxpe2f

5

[Max] I need help! / Trees in Animation - noise/flickering

« on: 2018-11-30, 11:18:50 »

Good Day!
I could need some pointers on how to tackle noise/flickering in trees. I have a low poly city and of course quite a few trees in it. Most of the scene is rendering fine using the standard settings (UHD Chache is set to Animation) and a noise threshold of 2.5, rendertimes are quite high which was unexpected but it renders almost without any hassle. (frames without lots of trees are taking 10-15 minutes, frames with quite a few trees in it up to 1 hour). Unfortunatly there is still some noise/flickering in the trees. I cant really lower the noise threshold, rendertimes will explode, so is there any other setting i could adjust to get them quite noise free?

Attached is a small clip, i know its hard to see in the preview and short clip. Hope it helps anyway.

6

[Max] Resolved Bugs / LightMtl & Texture Mapping

« on: 2018-09-27, 15:48:13 »

I am not sure if its a bug but it doesnt seem right.
If i use a normal CoronaMtl and plug in a gradient ramp and map it onto a spline using real world scale everthing looks as expected.
If i use a CoronaLightMtl and plug in the same gradient ramp in the texture slot the mapping gets messed up and its not rendering correct. I attached two images to illustrate the problem, one with the normal CoronaMtl and the other on with a LightMtl. Nothing has changed except the material. Some parts are ok others are stretched...

7

Off-Topic / 3D printing service

« on: 2018-07-03, 15:56:43 »

Could anyone recommend a good 3d printing service who can do full color prints? Sandstone or something similar would be perfect. We tried shapeways and in the past they did a good job but the last jobs were a mess with lots of stress on our side. Any other option would be much aprreciated.

8

[Max] I need help! / Material - Semi frosted plastic help

« on: 2018-04-24, 18:19:06 »

Hello,
i could need some help creating a frosted plastic material. So far my trys havent been very successful so its much appreciated if anybody could give me some hints or pointers how to tackle this material.
Its a kind of frosted plastic material, looking at the side its quite frosted, looking from the front its still frosted but you can see through and the background color is changing, while on top its almost clean...
Attached is a real life image + a quick test render what i got so far.

thanks for any pointers in advance, regards
Olli

9

General CG Discussion / Modelling Question

« on: 2018-01-17, 16:00:00 »

Hello Corona community,
i could use some help/pointers. Lets say you have and character and the client wants you to create a wireframe model out of it but here is the deal, the grid he wants has to be the same thickness and distance and has to be created out of the character he delivered.
To better illustrate what i mean please take a look at the attachment, this was our first try how we would tackle this (just the chest). The answer was that its too organic and he is looking for a more "tech" look, and all the lines must have the same thickness and distance to the previous one....so basically i need to set up a grid that is evenly scattered over the mesh provided.
Any ideas how to do something like this?
The background is that he wants several objects 3d printed in a grid look, so i am not talking about a rendering, it has to be actual geometry.

EDIT: added another image i found online which pretty much looks like what we are after.

10

[Max] Feature Requests / CoronaBitmap - Time Request

« on: 2017-11-21, 12:16:09 »

Just noticed that the CoronaBitmap is missing the time parameters, would it be possible to include those in future releases? Background is that you need those to use an animated texture, unless i am missing something CoronaBitmap cant load an image sequence.

11

General CG Discussion / Animation - How to - Need pointers/ideas

« on: 2017-11-17, 15:45:46 »

I will have to do some engraving animation in the near future and i need some ideas or pointers on how to do something like this. The model part itself is not a problem, where i struggle is on how to animate the whole thing so it looks like a machine is engraving something. Here is  very simple video what i am after, unfortunatly the tutorial linked to it doesnt exist anymore.

And here is a real life video which shows what i am after:

So far i tried the slice modifier in combination with boolean - doesnt work because of the infinite slice plane which makes it impossible to animate the slice plane to go around corners. A Path deform in combination with boolean is not accurate enough....

Any other ideas?

regards and a nice weekend.

SC

12

[Max] I need help! / ShadowCatcher questions

« on: 2017-09-22, 17:25:06 »

I need some help again, please bare with me since we are not using corona on daily basis....yet ;)

[1] Is it normal behaviour that once you put a ShadowCatcherMtl in your scene the rendertimes increases quite a bit? In my tests it varies from more than 200% to even 3000% in some cases (somehow my simple test scene took way longer then the scene i am working with: without the shadowcatcher it took 5 sec. with the shadowcatcher applied to the groundplane it took up to 3:24 minutes. My working scene reached a noise threshold of 3.5% after 115 passes in 4:59 minutes, while the same scene with the shadowcatcher aplied to the ground took 580 passes to reach the noise threshold in 12:41 minutes.)

[2] I am also struggling with the shadow and reflection intensity when using the the ShadowCatcher, the shadow and reflection are way too strong when compositing the rendering on a  background oppse to my reference rendering. I am not sure what i am missing here to get a better match....to better illustrate what i am talking about see this screenshot: http://prntscr.com/godxd6

thanks in advance and have a nice weekend :)

13

General CG Discussion / 3dsmax2018 - select camera only

« on: 2017-09-18, 18:21:20 »

We recently upgraded to the latest 3dsmax version and the first thing i noticed is that you cant select only the camera anymore, if you click on the camera the target will also be selected. Anyone knows how to avoid it or turn it off? Right now i always have to deselct the target afterwards by a single click right on the target (cant do a marquee unselect because the camera will be deselected too) and then move the camera...

14

[Max] Bug Reporting / Script Error when starting max2018

« on: 2017-07-12, 10:52:03 »

Since today i get this error when i open 3dsmax2018, Corona 1.6 HF1:

https://prnt.sc/fuo7qs

I checked the script folder and it the scripts are there...i installed the forest pack update yesterday, that was the only change to the system but i doubt that it has something to do with it.

15

Off-Topic / Arno Silence Force - The Great Battle

« on: 2017-02-08, 11:30:21 »

Found this funny commercial, done with Corona by Zombie Studio:

Thought i share it with the community.