Messages

1

[Max] Bug Reporting / Blackbody.osl crash

« on: 2021-05-26, 18:03:38 »

Hi,
recently I experienced three occasions of new kind of 3ds Max giving up on me. During render few pop-up windows titled "Unhandled Exceptions" with blank content pop up. They cannot be closed and from that point on, both Max and corona render window are uncontrollable (doesnt react to anything, clicking, shortcuts) and freezes. According to Task Manager, consumes resources, as if render continues though. Only way forward is to kill the 3dsmax process in Task manager. On next start of any 3dsmax instance,warning pop-up shows up (sadly, I havent got printscreen) telling me, that the last time, MAX crashed while trying to intialize "Blackbody.osl" shader and the pop-up gives me multiple options: 1) Continue anyway 2) Start without this shader initalized 3)Delete this shader

The scene was quite heavy (for my rig anyway), 4K resolution, displacement in place, region render only. The unsifficent RAM warning poped-up (workstation upgrade is coming soon). It happened three times, but on many other occasions (on same render scene) it has not. It happened after different amount of time (last time after 3,5 hours, before that after half an hour). The dump file hasn't been created, nor the autodesk bug report showed up. I've just read about the "Process Explorer" app that can create dump file, so I shall utilize it in next such unfortunate event. Corona build 6. Also I'm contractualy obliged not to share this particular scene, so that's no help neither.

Is this something I can atribute to the insuficient RAM, or is there something I can do to prevent this? No idea what blackbody.osl does. To my knowledge, I do not directly use any OSL shaders, apart from recently purchased wParallax interiors.

2

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2021-02-26, 16:48:22 »

Hello gentlemen,
I'm set to get myself a new wokrstation. It's now 5+ years since I got the current one and I've lost all track of a progress in hardware world (i'm aware of a last years big releases of 3xxx graphic cards and 3xxx amd cpus but thats about it).
I intend to educate myself before making any purchase, but i'd like to ask you for some starting points. Where to look at with cca 4000EUR budget, used primarily for archviz in 3dsMax + corona. For some time now i'm hitting the maximum capabilities of my current machine, most visibly (corona warning popups during render) in RAM department (currently 32GB). Additionaly, more GPU-wise, i'd like to delve in the near future into Unreal engine and Lumion and explore their options in animated archviz and VR. My current setup has Quadro K2200, and that was, in retrospect, a dumb move that prevented me from any playing with gpu-based engines.

Again, the primary goal is to have minimal performance limitations during creation of the scene in cpu based Corona though. One of you mentioned few pages back having no HW bottleneck even with quick 8K previews since the release of last generetion of CPUs and that sounds heavenly to me. Thank You for any advice.

3

General CG Discussion / Local vs. Network setting for rendering

« on: 2020-08-03, 12:08:40 »

Hello everyone,
what is in your learned opinion better for studio of 2-3 people who want to share library of their assets (textures, 3D objects, etc, used via Connecter or Project Manager) - CLOUD (e.g. dropbox) or own SERVER machine?
We were almost ready to buy some NAS server, but then it occured to me (and please correct me if i'm wrong), the files sync'ed via dropbox on my workstation are faster option for rendering, than detached files on some other machine, where network bandwith comes to play. I have only supericial understanding of network data exchange, so i'm not sure how factors like "100Mbit or 1Gbit adapter/modem/router", coaxial cable quality, etc would manifest themselves during for instance real time rendering (where i assume is any potential delay caused by slower loading of textures visible the most). Am i missing something? We work primarily in 3dsMax with Corona.
There are articles on NAS vs Cloud subject, but it is the connection with everyday rendering use, that interests me here. Thanks anyone for helpful comments.

4

[Max] I need help! / The Quest for HDRI managment

« on: 2020-01-13, 17:27:33 »

Hi,
I'd like to ask all of you how do you handle your HDRIs when testing lightning for your shot and desire to try quickly many many different hdri maps. I am doing it manually so far - reloading different maps to bitmap plugged into CoronaColorCorrect plugged into Environment slot. And when I want to try many HDRIs and focus on "artistic" side of the work, constant reloading and tweaking gamma and exposure is becoming bothersome.

Is there any sort of plugin capable of cataloging one's .HDR and .EXR maps and at the same time:
- ables to switch between these maps during IR
- is able to control rotation of this map
- is able to control gamma of that specific map (as through CoronaColorCorrect) (and ideally Exposure too (also like CoronaColorCorrect)

I've recently tested Pulze's scene manager which, to some level, is capable of doing this, except the last one - gamma. And I find that I need to tweak gamma quite often (thinking of sending them a humble request)
I also had oportunity to see SiNi software's Illumi first hand, which instead of gamma adjusts RGB Output and didnt seem at this occasion very fast.

I've also experimented without any added software and tried to use power of material manager itself: I've stacked loads of HDRI maps to CoronaSelect > thus I can quickly change the maps during IR. I plugged this CoronaSelect to CoronaColorCorrect > can control gamma and exposure of curently selected map. At this point I'm gonna say I'm willing to sacrifice day or two, go through all HDRIs I own and set their gamma and EV in CoronaColorCorrect individually (and so switch the order of wiring, plug these to CoronaSelect, adjusted), so I wouldn't have even need to touch the tonemapping EV during quick light testing. What prevented me from doing this so far is rotation issue. If I'd be trying lets say 15 different HDRIs, here I have to set 15 times the angle I'm aiming for. Then I'd like slightly different angles => every change done x15. I tried to connect the bitmaps with Linear Float controller plugged into their "u angle", thus control rotation for all bitmaps at once. However there seems to be bug, perhaps. The number on other bitmaps changes correctly, but in render (both IR and regular) the angle remains original (until I manually overwrite it in that bitmap, meaning linear floater doesnt help me). The whole concept is on screenshot attached.


Is there any way I am missing? Some good software? Script? Thank You.

5

Gallery / Re: Incredible Landscape Project at Trabzon

« on: 2019-01-16, 18:23:54 »

Awesome! May I ask, the greenery - especially the bushes on hilltop on second image caught my eye - can it be bought somewhere, or is it of your own making? Thank you.