Topics

76

[C4D] I need help! / Reduce Quality of Distant Objects/Matierals

« on: 2020-12-18, 00:37:44 »

I can't remember if C4D has a feature like this or not. Say you have a Cloner set to Grid Array and a complex model. Is there a way to tell C4D or Corona, at render time, to reduce the resolution of the most distant meshes to reduce render times? I don't know if Corona itself has anything like that. For my situation, I have a bunch of car models outside, in a large dealer parking lot. When some of the cars are in the distance, clearly, I don't need crazy detail in the mesh or in materials such as displacement.

--Alex

77

[C4D] Daily Builds / Impressed with v7 Stability

« on: 2020-12-10, 16:58:04 »

So far, I'm happy to say v7 latest daily build has been very stable for me. Even better is the performance of the Interactive Rendering feature. Even on this old Trashcan™ Mac Pro, I'm able to navigate my scene with pretty snappy updates in the IR window.

Now let's fix or add those features that have been lingering for ages so you can honestly call this a "new" version. Oh yeah, and the sample library and a full help system, and... Just trying to motivate. ;-)

______________

Mac OS 10.15.7 Calatina, 2013 Mac "Pro", Cinema 4D r20

78

[C4D] I need help! / Interactive Viewport Different

« on: 2020-12-09, 16:30:13 »

What could be the cause of the Interactive Viewport rendering darker than the VFB or the final render? I'm using an HDRI in the Corona Sky Object. Sometimes, not all the time, the interactive viewport, which I love to use, will simply render much darker than the other forms of rendering in Corona. I've tried turning on and off Photographic Exposure, I've tried matching the Corona Camera settings to the camera settings in the C4D render settings. Any idea where to look for a fix?

79

[C4D] Bug Reporting / Corona Crashes in Team Render on Windows

« on: 2020-11-11, 18:42:26 »

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I'm getting fairly regular crashes with Team Render Client on Windows 10. Overall, it's working well, but I will almost always get a crash. The renders are being controlled/launched from my Mac. I have two dedicated render boxes running the latest Windows 10 (not sure of the pack). A window will come up with something like "Corona plugin has crashed." I've attached the Bug Report. Seems to happen with different scenes as well.

80

[C4D] General Discussion / Another Shadow Catcher Question

« on: 2020-10-31, 00:28:05 »

Since the help system is still mostly non-existent, I figure I'd post the question here. I'm rendering some cars with a shadow catcher set to "For Compositing." I like being able to get a car with the shadow included in the Alpha Channel. The only problem is, the shadows always seems a little too dark. I see the option of "Shadow Amount" but it doesn't seem to do anything. I'd love to be able to render as one file sometimes, but I can't seem to adjust the shadow. Anything I can do or this feature not fully implemented?

81

[C4D] General Discussion / Backplate Composting Question

« on: 2020-10-15, 19:01:34 »

So when adding an object to an image using the Shadow Catcher for shadows, I'm currently using some free HDRs in the Corona Sky object for lighting which are in the equirectangular format I presume. Now, the compositing effect works great, but the image is distorted since it's using the spherical projection. This is good for lighting and reflections, but not good for the final output since it's warped and often very soft and not sharp. What's the workflow to use the HDR for lighting and reflections, but use a proper, undistorted backplate image for compositing?

--Alex

82

[C4D] General Discussion / Corona v6 New Features

« on: 2020-08-31, 18:33:19 »

I just saw that C4Dcafe.com posted the new features videos for v6 which is nice. I have one question though, can someone explain what "Propagate Masks in Reflection and Refraction" actually does? The video is unclear to me. Thanks.

83

[C4D] General Discussion / *** SOLVED *** Motion Blur and Alpha Channel

« on: 2020-07-08, 00:47:50 »

I hope all is well in the Corona Renderer world. I'm not sure if this is a still-broken feature or a feature that hasn't been added yet, as I have had this problem before. I have an object that is moving, and I have a slight motion blur turned on. When I bring the PNG files into AE, there is a noticeable white halo around my object. I can't fix it. If use a matte choker, I lose a lot of detail in transparent areas. I've tried rendering as separate passes, but with the same results. In this case, I could render without motion blur, but of course, it looks better with it.

Is there a solution that I missed?

Thanks.

84

[C4D] General Discussion / Normal Map for AE?

« on: 2019-12-05, 01:38:30 »

What I want to do is render a pass with the normals of a material and use an AE plugin (like Normality) to change the reflections on a surface, i.e. change the reflections from trees to a city street. I can get normal maps out of Corona, but they are yellow to pink instead of the typical purple-to-pin-to-green. Is this possible?

Thanks.

--Alex

85

[C4D] I need help! / More Team Render Woes

« on: 2019-10-16, 23:57:27 »

So for some reason, we started getting this strange error when using Team Render. We were rendering a still frame at 4k, with some Depth of Field effect. Previously, we tried an 8k still and could not get it to work at all. Not sure if it has anything to do with Maximum size of packets settings or not, but I've never fully understood those numbers. Although, after we changed to to Interval to 1 and Packet Size to 30, it seems to work better. I just revisited an old thread where TomG talked about large size images and manually setting those numbers to 20s and 256MB.

(Complete Console text attached)

2019/10/16 17:26:55  [Corona4D]

Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:26:56  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error 2019/10/16 17:26:57  [Corona4D] Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:26:57  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error 2019/10/16 17:26:59  [Corona4D] Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:26:59  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error 2019/10/16 17:27:00  [Corona4D] Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:27:00  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error 2019/10/16 17:27:02  [Corona4D] Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:27:02  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error 2019/10/16 17:27:03  [Corona4D] Sending chunk 26/30 to the server 2019/10/16 17:27:04  [Corona4D] Frame synchronization failed: Communication Error Then the clients start dropping off the render job. Didn't matter if we launched the render from the Mac Pro or the iMac. We have a couple of Windows 10 clients too, but only render clients. Full-speed non-debug version Build timestamp: Sep 26 2019 12:25:41 Version: 4 hotfix 3 (core 4 (Hotfix 3)) Cinema version: R20.059 CINEMA 4D Studio (single-license) MacOS 10.12.4 (16E195) Mac Pro (late 2013)

86

[C4D] Bug Reporting / Corona Flickering Problem

« on: 2019-10-11, 22:10:08 »

MacOS 10.12.4
Version: 4 hotfix 3 (core 4 (Hotfix 3))
Cinema version: R20.059 CINEMA 4D Studio (single-license)

OK so this has always been a problem with Corona whenever there are very reflective materials. The first time for me was a chrome material. After posting the scene, the devs said my settings for the chome were "crazy." So ever since, we've been using the formula the devs suggested. For reference, I uploaded this scene to the private uploader yesterday concerning crashing issues. Please see the file:  Crash_SceneFiles.zip

Here's the test that's behind this almost black image. This is a single frame of an animation. Rendered twice on the same machine. I stacked them in Photoshop and told the upper layer to use the mode Difference. This will show only the pixels that are different from each frame. In a perfect world this would be solid black as they are the exact same scene, at the exact same time, rendered on the exact same PC. This example is using 30 passes full denoise. WHY are these two frames different? Do the rays being shot into my scene equate to a simulation, where each moment in time could be different each time I render?

I'm also attaching an animated GIF that I hope you can see the flickering well enough. There is a little dancing noise, but it's those bright pixels that appear and disappear randomly and the denoiser doesn't touch them. This animated example was rendered with 100 passes. This reduced some of the flicker, but still way too much for an animation. These cars will slowly rotate so it will be easy to see the flaws.

Also, this Vimeo link show my first render attempt. Maybe only 16 passes, you it really shows the flickering. (can never get Vimeo links to work on these forums for some reason)
vimeo-dot-com  /362894380

87

[C4D] Bug Reporting / C4D Crashing Frequently Lately

« on: 2019-10-09, 22:08:15 »

C4D crashes a lot lately, something I'm not used to dealing with the Cinema. Usually the most stable program I've ever used, and I've used a lot since 1989 (hello Digital Darkroom on floppy disk). Today I was looking at a non-Corona scene with TopCoat material to see how they are built in the reflectance channel. Crash. I then had a Corona scene that's somewhat complex. Also crash. I've uploaded a ZIP file with both scenes and all the crash reports.

When I search the text file, the word Corona is all over it and Tom's name too. I have also removed all other plugins from my system to help avoid these crashes, but obviously that didn't work. I've also tried the latest v5 daily builds with the same results.

Here's some system info:

Full-speed non-debug version
Build timestamp: Sep 26 2019 12:25:41
Version: 4 hotfix 3 (core 4 (Hotfix 3))
Cinema version: R20.059 CINEMA 4D Studio (single-license)
Plugin status: Plugin successfully loaded

MacOS 10.12.4 (16E195)
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
3 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5
32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3

88

[C4D] I need help! / Looking for Advice for Volumetric Effect

« on: 2019-10-04, 20:27:06 »

This effect with the lights in the background could very well be made in Photoshop, but I was trying to recreate it, at least most of the effect in 3D. The second image is my closest attempt. I cut holes out of a plane, but then added some geometry in each hole to help create more streaks in the light. It's in the right direction, but not quite. I have tried many things such as using a material on a light, having non-lighted discs with a light above to create the cone effect, etc.

I know I can use actual geometry with volume material, that is my next test. Just wondered if anyone had any fresh ideas in the 3D world.

89

[C4D] General Discussion / Save Animation as CXR?

« on: 2019-09-25, 23:58:00 »

I'm running Corona on a Mac, OS 10.12.4.
Build timestamp: Aug 30 2019 18:32:59
Version: 5.0 daily Aug 30 2019 (core 5 (DailyBuild Aug 30 2019))
Cinema version: R20.059 CINEMA 4D Studio

I wanted to render an animation and use the Gather Data for Later feature of the Denoiser so we can experiment with the looks. This feature only works if you save an image as a .CXR file which I can do if the Save button is held down in the VFB. I see the option to "Automatic save on render end" setting, but there isn't an option for the format of that save. As far as I know, I would need that .CXR format.

Is this possible in the current state of Corona?

90

[C4D] General Discussion / Licensing Server

« on: 2019-09-12, 00:26:09 »

Can anyone enlighten me on the LicensingServerLogin.txt process for Macs? This is for Team Render use and one Mac just won't see my Licensing Server or the text file. I only see instructions for Windows users. I put this file in the app directory, but it doesn't see it. In fact, I've put this file in several places to no avail. I have not run out of render nodes if you're wondering. Thanks for any help on this.

P.S. Not sure if this is a problem or not, but after a while, the Licensing Server window where you type in your login info turns completely blank, as in just a white box where the login fields used to be. Maybe just a screen issue, but thought I'd mention it. Doesn't seem to affect most machines however.