Messages

1

Gallery / Re: Selected | Office CGIs

« on: Yesterday at 11:27:58 »

And yes, that sofa is amazing. If you'd be willing to share more info (or even sell the model/technique) I'd be extremely appreciative.

These are about 6-7 variants of "wisps" created with Ornatrix, they look like a semicircle, just multiplied and slightly fluffed up. And 3 Forest Pack scatters, 1 for small wisps that fill the entire surface, 2 for large wisps, there are slightly fewer of them, but both the first and second scatters use the Full distribution mode to form a grid pattern. The 3rd Forest Pack is for individual hairs made from splines. Thats all basically.

2

Hardware / Re: AMD 9950x

« on: 2024-08-20, 02:45:07 »

I'm going to upgrade as soon as it will be available.
According to various available benchmarks, the maximum performance is about ~15% higher compared to the previous 7950x, but I wouldn't expect miracles.
If you're not 100% sure, I'd suggest waiting 2-3 months for the first user reviews to appear and any "raw" nuances to emerge, if any.

3

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

« on: 2024-08-05, 00:03:03 »

I still ask once again to make a separate button for IR, the fact that in the drop-down list this option is the second, and the first item duplicates the neighboring button makes my designer background nervous every time I see this :D I do not believe that we must wait for the release of version 13 to fix this, thanks!

4

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

« on: 2024-08-01, 06:30:56 »

now, apart from the noise of the fans, it is difficult to understand whether the interactive is running. (Play/stop indicators are made in b&w gamma, which does not have a very good effect on readability)

Psssst...

throw this into any scripts\startup directory (or execute manually). If you want to play around, type "ccri.help()" in the maxscript listener ;)


Good Luck

:D works just fine, big thanks!

5

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: The most wanted feature?

« on: 2024-07-29, 21:11:34 »

I want to have composition and resolution lock in vray camera

+1

Adding composite grids as an overlay to the camera is a must-have, unfortunately the imagecomphelper script only works in the active viewport and at the moment it is not possible to have the grid in the camera viewport  and move the camera with another viewport.

I tried to solve the problem with scripting, but as far as I understand this is a very difficult feature to implement with standard tools. So I vote for this with both hands.

6

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Caustics playground!

« on: 2024-07-25, 00:19:04 »

Weighing in here briefly with some thoughts that I know I've already passed to the Corona devs over the years.

I kind of disagree that getting caustics to work reliably is almost impossible in complex scenes, that's maybe an overstatement - we're making it work regularly in very complex scenes - but I do totally support the sentiment - it's way, way too fiddly currently. And this is principally due to caustics having very basic optimisation/adaptivity in response to the scene - you often end up with poor looking noisy results and having to brute-force across the entire scene to get something decent, and almost always relying on some kind of post-processing fudging. This results in enormous wasted R&D time, rendering time and costs.

Yes, by “reliably” I just meant no wasting time on R&D: you have experience and remember how to set everything up - you press a button and get the result that you imagined in your head.

At the moment, if I have a scene with caustics in my work, I budget at least an extra one or two working days just to get everything working properly and do test renders.

In general, this was not a complaint to the developers, I was quite resigned to the current state of affairs, but a little optimization would not have hurt.

7

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Caustics playground!

« on: 2024-07-23, 21:31:13 »

@all
Unfortunately, it cuts the caustics shape on the right side of the image, and it does not artistically look good. I can definitely change the angle (but mess the shadow) and use exclude or clean bad zones via separate layer in post. But to better understand the possibilities, are there any techniques to improve the density of photons for such cases?

I understand you perfectly, getting caustics to work reliably now in more or less complex scenes is an almost impossible task. In such cases, I usually render a separate pass at a lower resolution (0.7 - 0.5x and using Nvidia denoising with a value of 1.0, and combine them in post-processing. This makes it more pronounced and soft, and all the fireflies will be “smeared.” In your case, you don’t have refractive surfaces like pool water and this should help.

You can also try the approach of “baking” caustics into IES using the method described in this topic. But I don't know if it currently works with current versions of corona.

8

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Caustics playground!

« on: 2024-07-20, 22:56:30 »

Hello Corona Renderer Team,

I was not sure where to post my observations, hopefully, this is the right topic.

It's been a long time since I've played with caustics, and I tried them in v11 HF2 with default settings. However, I noticed that whatever I do, I always see separate photons on the floor and ceiling (secondary areas).

Of course, I can render caustics in a separate channel and then erase these areas. But maybe there is another way to improve the caustics result?

I tried playing with the settings in the Caustics Solver settings and sometimes got better results with smaller photons, but the density stays always low and it looks like photon-fireflies-noise effect. Primary areas are completely okay—the results on the blue wall look good to me; only the ceiling and the floor are a problem.

I also noticed that when I add my three objects to the caustic solver, it works only when they are in the exclude list. I thought they must be in the include list?

What do you recommend?

-Only CoronaPhysical materials have been used.
-No texture or procedural maps in the scene (except for people).
-Corona 11 HF2.

Many thanks in advance.

Please look at my attachment

As far as I know, the include/exclude list is for objects that will receive caustics, so all you need to do is exclude the floor surface.

9

[Max] Feature Requests / CoronaNormal+CoronaMappingRandomizer ignore incorrect gamma warning

« on: 2024-07-19, 15:07:28 »

if we use the Corona Normal map together with the Corona Mapping Randomizer map with additional outputs, then a situation may arise in which the corona normal map will endlessly issue warnings about the wrong gamma. And even in the case of selecting the “ignore similar” option when you reload the scene, the warning will still appear.

I propose to add an “ignore” checkbox to the interface of the CoronaNormal map itself, next to the field where the warning is displayed, so that this annoying pop-up warning can be removed for selected maps.

In addition, there were cases in my work when I really needed to load a normal map, which was considered by Corona as a map with the wrong gamma, and I had no way to get rid of the warnings.

10

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: CoronaPattern playground!

« on: 2024-07-16, 14:05:41 »

At some point, too time consuming becomes the same thing as impossible, which is what we have here - it can be taken as physically impossible. As a note for some offsets, you can use two patterns, especially now that there is the mapping for making a pattern visible or invisible, just have them set up with an offset and one pattern visible on one row, then another on the next.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the clarification Tom, got it. Sometimes you have to put up with cruel reality and accept its blows with dignity :D

It's funny, but when I wrote the very first request about this, it seemed to me that of all the requested features, this was the easiest thing to implement, “just multiply the coords by a scalar and that's it”

If you modify your pattern tile so that its edges become symmetrical, then it's possible to get seamless result from Corona pattern. The process of setting it up is more labor intensive, but if you absolutely need to use Corona pattern and have seamless tiling, it might be worth to try it. The downside is that you loose an option to use transformational randomization and your color randomization options shrink down to material ID only.

Thanks, Romullus, yeah, i come up with something like your approach

11

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: CoronaPattern playground!

« on: 2024-07-15, 16:40:04 »

- Will it be possible one day to have the source object not be trimmed/clipped? In this way, if you do for example 0.5 shifting you will still see the entirety of the source object, allowing you to get a much more randomised and natural "scattering" effect (when this is desired - for example when making carpets/rugs).

You mean that the patterns modules would overlap with each other? Unfortunately that is not possible.

Excuse me one more time please, is it physically impossible to implement or is it just very time-consuming? I don’t really understand how without the overlapping feature (or scale + overlapping) we can achieve a seamless look for close-up angles if we use something rather “random” and not fitting into a perfect rectangle as a pattern.



At this thread, I described a use case for such a feature, which could be very helpful

12

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona 12 VFB UI

« on: 2024-07-09, 08:12:14 »

Totally agree with the bad layout of the Ui, too much wasted space..

I wish it to be possible to dock a VFB2 window, as it can now be done with the Material Editor after max 2024, then we would get rid of the need to run IR in the viewport via "extended viewports"

13

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

« on: 2024-07-07, 16:19:51 »

I found another "bug" in VFB2
If you start the IR and zoom in on the image in the framebuffer using the mouse wheel, then when you make changes to the scene, the zoom is automatically reset to 100%. This is a very undesirable behavior, I sometimes need to correct small details pixel by pixel, and the size of the monitor does not allow me to use 100% zoom for comfortable viewing.
Please return the previous behavior of this function if possible.

14

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

« on: 2024-07-05, 01:40:46 »

I tested the new VFB a little, I really like it so far, there are a couple of comments that I would be glad to see at the release stage.

• return the spinning emoticon, firstly, it has already become canonical, and secondly, it clearly shows that rendering is in progress - now, apart from the noise of the fans, it is difficult to understand whether the interactive is running. (Play/stop indicators are made in b&w gamma, which does not have a very good effect on readability)
• add a button to enable and disable interactive denoising (and, maybe make a drop-down list with a choice of its type), now I use a script and a hotkey for this, but a button would be a great addition
• make a smoother step when zooming, this is still sorely missing
• make "Start IR" as a separate button, and not from a drop-down list - this function is obviously used even more often than launching a regular render, so aiming at the small arrow every time is not the best solution.
• detachable Curve window
• maybe you can integrate switchable "image upscaling factor" parameter right into VFB, like x1/x2/x3 buttons. Personally, when using 4K monitors, I often tweak this parameter, finding a balance between detail and performance. This point also includes the ability to enable 2d pan zoom / real zoom in VFB

I know that most of this has already been logged, I’m just sharing my impressions, thanks!

I’ll probably add one more item to my list, I really miss the Refresh button, which would restart the interactive render; for some reason, with the addition of VFB2, I had a situation several times where the content of the interactive render “stuck” and did not update the geometry/xRef scenes/Forest Pack objects and instead of trying to figure out what’s going on, it would be more convenient for me to just press the button. The same applies to the moment when, during an interactive render from a perspective camera, you want to update the displacement display without going into its parameters.   

This button can literally stop the IR render and start it again, without any tricks, because now for this you need
1) find and click on the Stop button
2) click on the small drop-down list button
3) hold the button to expand the list
4) click on the IR start button
I think this approach is not very rational for UI design, given that this function still has to be used.

In the old VFB it was there, but it performed a completely different function, why not add it now by redoing the functionality. Now there is so much empty space in VFB2 that is not being used.

15

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

« on: 2024-06-21, 01:32:09 »

+1 !

Thanks!
To be honest - what I miss most is smooth stepless zooming, for some reason I was sure that we would see it after rewriting VFB :D but well, let's hope for the best