Topics

16

[Max] I need help! / Exclude from motion blur

« on: 2023-09-10, 11:04:53 »

Hi all.

I have geometry motion blur turned on in my camera.  However I have a spherical star map (on a sphere)  linked to my animated sun which when shows up during the night time phase - the sphere rotates with the sun.

I'm doing an animated day cycle across 1000 frames and this means the stars are getting motion blur, which is correct but I want to either reduce the effect or turn it off.

Any ideas?

I can always render the background on a separate pass but I'd ideally like to keep it all in 1 render.

Thanks

17

[Max] General Discussion / Corona Premium - What happens if we lose internet

« on: 2023-09-08, 14:05:16 »

Hi all,

We're new to Corona 10 - previously on C7.

We now have Corona Premium (11 systems)

If the internet goes in the office does anything happen to Corona etc?

If for example, we're rendering over the weekend.... Or I'm doing a simulation with Phoenix etc etc etc

Thanks

18

[Max] I need help! / Converting Vray Materials & Missing Mtl

« on: 2023-09-07, 16:40:23 »

Hi all

We've just installed Max 24 & Corona 10. We're having 'Missing Mtl' issues on Vray objects.

Corona Converter also can't convert them. This is obviously because we don't have Vray installed.

We used to have a Vray license but don't anymore. 

When updating the office I didn't bother to install Vray.

Should I have? 

If so, do we need to sign into it or anything?  In the past I'd put our account details in.

Any tips?

Thanks

19

[Max] I need help! / Adaptive Light Solver in Corona 10

« on: 2023-09-06, 18:32:08 »

Hi all

We've just updated from C7 to C10.

I've just noticed that adaptive light solver isn't in performance.

I've used this in the past if I've had issues with animations.  Turning it off often fixed the issue.

I know we've been 3x versions out of date but has it been moved or removed completely since C7?

If it's been removed, has anything else taken its place for scenes that have needed it in the past?

Thanks,

Sean

20

[Max] General Discussion / Corona Render Nodes

« on: 2023-09-04, 15:04:32 »

Hi all

We're updating to Max 2024 & Corona 10,

We have a few systems we don't use as workstations, only for rendering animations.

We've bought 1x 5 Render Nodes.

We can see that we have the render nodes in our Chaos account.

Is it a case of installing Corona as usual (by signing into Chaos etc) and when rendering over the network (without Max open), the render node will be picked up?

Thanks,

Sean

21

[Max] General Discussion / Upgrading Max & Corona

« on: 2023-08-31, 21:16:38 »

Hi all,

After long last we're finally upgrading from Corona 7 (hotfix 1) to Corona 10 tomorrow.

We're getting Corona premium so it'll come with Phoenix etc

We're also updating to Max 23 or 24 - I think it'll be 24 but we updated from 2019 to 2022 years ago when 2022 was semi-new and we've had no end of issues.

Annnyway:

Can we simply install C10 or do you suggest we uninstall C7 first?

I suppose, as we're updating Max it won't be an issue because C7 won't be installed in the new Max folder.

What about Phoenix, we have Phoenix 5 - should that be uninstalled first or just update?

Thanks

22

[Max] General Discussion / Windows 11 & Corona/Max

« on: 2023-07-25, 16:21:55 »

Hi all.

We're still using Windows 10 in the office and was wondering if it's ok to upgrade to Win11.

Has anyone had any issues doing this with Max and/or Corona.

We can't afford to update only to revert back.

However, we're also sick and tired of that 'Upgrade to Win 11' screen

Thanks

23

Chaos Corona for Blender / Corona for Blender

« on: 2023-01-24, 21:20:37 »

Hi,  I think the lack of a Blender category on the forum has answered my question ( :D )  but what is the situation with Corona support for Blender?

I can find something about Corona 3.0 but assume this isn't officially supported and that also Chaos wouldn't bother as Blender etc is open source.  I assume that'd open a can of worms.

The reason I'm asking is my boss wants us to get off Max because of the cost and wants us to go to Blender asap.

Other than the obvious loss of Forest Pack, Railclone etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc, Corona will be another loss at the company.

Thanks

24

[Max] General Discussion / Scaling Lights

« on: 2023-01-23, 13:03:42 »

Hi all.

A quick question about lights.

I never scale lights with the scale gizmo because I was told in the past that it can cause issues and artifacts.

I've just loaded a scene and someone has scaled rectangle lights & not used the width/height in the light settings.

Also other lights are scaled in the minus or look like they've been mirrored or something.

Am I right to think that it's bad practice to scale lights like that?

Thanks

25

[Max] I need help! / Bloom and glare only on element

« on: 2023-01-21, 18:56:57 »

Hi all.

Is there any way to only have bloom and glare render as an element and not baked into final image?

We render as 16bit (with alpha) tiffs.

Thanks

26

[Max] I need help! / Selecting Objects with Physical Materials

« on: 2022-10-07, 17:32:13 »

Hi all

I need to bring a scene into Twin Motion.  I have a script that converts Corona Materials into Standard.  It seems to work but doesn't work on Physical Materials.

Can anyone give me a line of code or something to select objects with physical materials so we can work on those?

Or, even better, modify this script that I'm using to make it work with Physical :

https://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/corona-material-to-standard

Any help would be great.

Thanks,

Sean

27

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Scene not rendering over render manager

« on: 2022-09-05, 15:13:05 »

Hi.

This may be a Max issue but thought I'd ask for ideas here too.

We have a job where the shots have all been set up and added to our render manager..... but won't render

Gives errors like this:

04/09/2022 08:10:14: 04/09/2022 08:10:13;  Error rendering frame 2080: An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating.
04/09/2022 08:10:15: Chunk error: 04/09/2022 08:10:14;  Error occurred while rendering job. [ORION]

I tried recreating a shot in the render manager - same thing

I reduced a shot (deleted everything but a door mainly so it's quicker to test for errors) - same thing

Xreffed the reduced shot into a fresh scene - WORKS
Xreffed the full scene into a fresh scene - WORKS

----------

So, something to do with the scene itself.

If I can't find out the cause it'll mean doing a full settings set up again - including elements - render directories etc

Does anyone have any suggestions where I can look in the reduced scene so I can test.

Thanks

28

[Max] General Discussion / Advice for getting good all-round results with HDRI

« on: 2022-08-21, 11:03:56 »

Hi all.

We primarily use Corona Sun.  We haven't used HDRI for ages.

For a job I was on recently I wasn't liking the results with the sun so I tested an HDRI and after a bit of tweaking it looked so much better than the sun setup.

On Friday I was finishing up an old job and I thought I'd test it with HDRI -  I initially thought...... ooooooooh, this looks better, I'm getting a more realistic global lighting.

I then spent a while on a couple of shots tweaking materials and grass (it was coming out too washed out), because the materials had been made for the sun setup.

I put on test renders for the static shots and every 50th for the animation.  - Video below

What this resulted in was areas too dark..... areas too bright.... over saturated grass etc

I'm going to have to go back to my Corona Sun scene as time is short for this job but to fix the HDRI serup I'd have to tweak stuff per shot/area.... which'd then mean I have to tweak the areas I've tweaked cos my tweaks have affected my tweaks :D.

-------------

So, after that long winded explanation, does anyone have any advice for getting an all round good scene lighting setup?

Can anyone think of any good training/courses.  Lighting is where we're lacking as far as I'm concerned.... we put in a sun & done.  This does result in sometimes quite flat/cartoonish results.

So I'd really like to improve this aspect.

Thanks

29

[Max] I need help! / Caustics only working in IR or render select mode

« on: 2022-07-04, 01:42:22 »

Hi.

I've got some caustics for a pool looking quite good. 

I've just set the shot off to render and it's not working.

It only works in IR or when render selecting the pool objects. 

I've only got the pool water using caustics and have only got a sun specifically for caustics and have set the pool water to include so it only affects the water.

Any ideas?

Thanks

30

[Max] I need help! / BatchCam Render with Corona 7 (hotfix1) and Max22

« on: 2022-06-23, 10:45:28 »

Hi all.  Has anyone noticed this issue?

BatchCam hangs between most renders.  Which kind of defeats the point.    I've noticed this on 3 systems.

I have to move a window to wake it up.

The video shows me doing this..... but then when I looked up it had hung again when parsing scene.

Moving the box again then started the render

This has only started since moving to Max 22 (from 19).  'Updating' our systems hasn't gone as well as I hoped.

Any suggestions?

Thanks