Chaos Corona for 3ds Max > [Max] Bug Reporting

Corona Distance material render/include hidden objects.

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TomG:
That makes it clearer, ty! So if I understand, you have groups of objects driving an animation, and want them all in the include list for the distance map and then have them affect or not affect the distance map via animating some other feature of the groups (where you have chosen hiding the groups as that other effect).

You COULD put it under a feature request to have some checkbox (it's not a bug, though), not sure that it would get accepted but you can ask.

As a note there are definitely other things you can do. So if I want Group A of objects to affect the animation from 0 to 89, then Group B that gives a different result from 90 to 179, I'd just animate the positions of Group A and Group B. For the first 90 frames, Group A is "in position" to affect the animation, and Group B is "way far away to not affect the scene", then between 89 and 90 I would just keyframe group A from being "in position" at 89 to "way far away" at 90, and group B doing the opposite, KF'ed to "way far away" and 89 and then "in position" at 90. There are probably other ways to do this too, though :)

Ink Visual:
Your case is very specific, I think majority of situations the current behaviour is as most users would expect it to work.
Rather than hiding/unhiding objects, can you plug in Corona Select map into the light intensity slot? With Corona select you ill be choosing between Corona Distance map (when distance map is to control the intensity) and some white/black solid colour map when you want your light to be simply disabled/enabled. You can easily animate Corona Select Slots (which one is active in what timeframes)

JoachimArt:

--- Quote from: TomG on 2023-03-27, 13:07:41 ---That makes it clearer, ty! So if I understand, you have groups of objects driving an animation, and want them all in the include list for the distance map and then have them affect or not affect the distance map via animating some other feature of the groups (where you have chosen hiding the groups as that other effect).

You COULD put it under a feature request to have some checkbox (it's not a bug, though), not sure that it would get accepted but you can ask.

As a note there are definitely other things you can do. So if I want Group A of objects to affect the animation from 0 to 89, then Group B that gives a different result from 90 to 179, I'd just animate the positions of Group A and Group B. For the first 90 frames, Group A is "in position" to affect the animation, and Group B is "way far away to not affect the scene", then between 89 and 90 I would just keyframe group A from being "in position" at 89 to "way far away" at 90, and group B doing the opposite, KF'ed to "way far away" and 89 and then "in position" at 90. There are probably other ways to do this too, though :)

--- End quote ---

Yes, you understood correctly now :) The reason why I thought it was a bug is that i'm just used to 3ds max treating all hidden objects as not active and everything else you do through the object properties of the object, like renderable, visible to camera etc etc - which is why I never hidden distance map objects before, just turned them into wireboxes....But I guess it makes sense in most cases for it to be as it currently is - just not in this case :D
ANyway, I split it up so that each box animation has its own timeline and are keyframes to a different location while not being active. So it works ok, just had to make a workaround.

maru:
I agree that an option for the Corona Distance map to ignore hidden objects makes sense.

At the same time I think the current setup you are using is not optimal, it's probably too complicated. If you could show some renders or describe better what you are doing, perhaps others could come up with some other solutions.

If you are controlling the appearance of something (e.g. lights) using some geometry (e.g. boxes) and a CDistance map, then why instead of hiding objects you cannot just move them away? On one frame of animation move the object super far away so that it stops influencing anything. How is this different than hiding it?

JoachimArt:
Hi, yeah moving them away works, it's what I did. The reason it is different is that Im using a render manager and render the scene multiple times with different objects visible, and therefor it would have been easier to just set up everything in one timeline. That's why I had to make the different render passes happening on different areas of the timeline, because I could not hide the distance maps, only move them away.

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