Corona Renderer 5 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog

[maru]

*You can always get the newest build at the usual location [link]*

[Ryuu]

• New and improved features
  
  • Corona now uses an improved text rendering used in render stamp and unsupported materials
  • "Setup LightMix" button added to the multiple environment maps setup dialog
  • Added “Unpacking and installing” message to installer to notify that something is happening after NVIDIA AI denoiser or material library are downloaded
  • Copy to clipboard option added into CIE
  • Added a warning shown when there is a NaN (invalid pixel value) in the rendered image
  • Installer now detects when the selected unpack directory contains any files and asks the user whether to override them or cancel the action
  • [IR] tag was added to VFB title to show that image was rendered with IR
  • Caustics now respect the include/exclude list of lights
  • Changing render regions now resumes IR which was stopped by pass limit
• Optimizations
  
  • Improved performance of caustics solver in scenes with multiple light sources
  • Reduced memory used by the caustics solver by up to 30%
  • Faster IR restarts in scenes with sun(s)
  • Performance optimizations - around 7% gain in tested scenes
  • Optimized ColorCorrectTex evaluation
  • Switched to the latest Embree library. This brings speed improvement (8% for instances), memory reduction (up to 2x reduced for hair, 192 bytes lower consumption per each instance), improved intersection with hair (removes some artifacts)
  • Rewrite of geometry processing
    • There are significant memory savings, 25-85% of memory used by geometry. Measured e.g. 10GB less memory usage on real scene (from 60 to 50GB)
    • CGEO and standalone format changes slightly. New proxies cannot be opened in older versions. New versions will open all proxies
    • Parsing of scenes should be faster
• Bugfixes
  
  • Fixed installer reporting incomplete size (e.g. “218.9 MB / 220 MB”) after successfully downloading NVIDIA AI denoiser or material library
  • Fixed toggleable button wrong color
  • Fixed Proxy animation option “Hide out of range” hiding the proxy too early
  • Fixed crashes when loading malformed proxy files
  • Fixed crash when NVIDIA AI libraries cannot be loaded
  • Fixed Corona to seek Licensing Server on all network interfaces
  • The "Activate license..." button in System tab in Render Setup now does not need to be clicked multiple times to get the activation
  • The System tab in Render Setup no longer claims that there is no license when it has been acquired from Licensing server

[Ryuu]

• Fixed Sky map not working correctly with multiple Suns in the scene
• Optimized computation of mesh normals, also lowers peak memory consumption during scene parsing
• Fixed some crashes in scenes with caustics which were introduced in last daily build

[Ryuu]

NOTE: In case you use the pre-downloaded NvidiaAiDenoiser pack file instead of letting the installer download it itself, you need to download the new version of this file from dropbox.

• Added option to disable the "startup scripts enabled" warning in the 3ds Max
• Updated Intel CPU AI denoiser to version 1.0
  • Fixed the denoiser adding ghosts of objects which are not visible in the scene due to lack of lighting
  • Lowered memory consumption for higher resolutions (2k+)
• Updated NVIDIA GPU AI denoiser to the latest version
  • Better compatibility with other plugins also using NVIDIA CUDA and OptiX frameworks
  • Improved performance with Turing GPUs
  • Better error reporting
  • Requires NVIDIA GPU driver version 418.81 or later
• Bloom&Glare progress bar is now shown in CIE as well
• High quality image filtering is now one of the selectable filter types (used as the default one) instead of being enabled by a separate checkbox.
• Bugfixes
  • Fixed license activation not working in some cases when running Corona on the same machine as licensing server.
  • Newly saved CXR contain information about camera (VR, type), so CIE can compute Bloom&Glare correctly for different camera types
  • Fixed crash when switching CoronaLight on/off during IR
  • Fixed normal maps rendering incorrectly
  • Fixed .conf file parsing error on opening Render Settings (or starting rendering) after certain values are saved as defaults in Render Settings (e.g. when Image Filter Type is set to Symmetric Tent by default).
  • Fixed not being able to load back .conf file saved from CIE in some cases (e.g. when NVIDIA or Intel AI denoisers are selected)

[Ryuu]

• Fixed 3ds Max sometimes crashing during parsing when point cache modifier is used
• Fixed normals that were computed wrongly in some cases
• Fixed falloff map in camera space not reacting to camera movement
• Reduced memory usage by 4 bytes per pixel, slightly optimized rendering of nearly-empty scenes
• Fixed Corona Camera tilt and shift not updated on scene open
• Fixed VFB stopping updating after drag & dropping lightmix colors

[Ryuu]

• Fixed caustics disappearing with more passes in some scenes
• Fixed SSS material rendered wrong inside glass with refraction gloss <1 + caustics
• Fixed Corona toolbar to preserve its state between sessions in 3ds Max 2018 and newer
• Fixed normals that were computed wrongly in some other cases

[Ryuu]

• Corona ColorPicker now uses Corona icon in its title bar
• The error message indicating that a NaN pixel was encountered in the rendered image now includes link to a helpdesk “create bug report” page.
• Autosave path - added help button to explain which special tokens can be used (similar to render stamp)
• Optimized geometry processing time and IR restarts in scenes with larger numbers of instances. In some extreme cases this speeds up geometry processing time by up to 30%
• Changed the directory structure of installed Corona
  • We no longer install various DLLs into 3ds Max root folder. These are now installed into Program Files
• Added new 2.5D displacement mode
  • Much more memory efficient than the original displacement, allowing much finer displacement (smaller screen/world size) while using less memory.
  • Controlled by new checkbox in performance tab of render settings
  • Enabled by default for new scenes, but disabled for older scenes for backwards compatibility.

[Ryuu]

corona-5-3dsmax-daily-2019-10-03.exe

• Fixed crash when unhiding an object with LightMtl applied while using the old light solvers
• Optimized Corona Distance Map when Corona Scatter is plugged as distance-from object. Brings up to 30% speed up in extreme cases.
• Fixed readme file for the installer unpack option to reflect changes in the directory structure.
• 2.5D displacement
  • Number of primitives generated by displacement is now included in the primitive count displayed in VFB stats tab
  • Optimized geometry processing time - up to 3-4x faster on average, more than 20x faster in some extreme cases
  • Optimized rendering speed - few percent increase on average, but up to 3x faster in scenes with heavy displacement
  • Optimized memory usage - roughly 2x less memory on average, more than 10x less memory in some extreme cases
  • Fixed rendering artifacts occurring in some scenes
  • Fixed recomputing displacement in IR when the displaced object is moved. It's now recomputed only when the displacement settings change, just like the old displacement.
• Optimized scene parsing time for scenes with high amount of instances. More than 2x faster parsing for scenes with ~5M instances.

[Ryuu]

• Bloom and glare computation is now 10% faster and uses 20% less memory
• Fixed installer leaving some old and unused files on disk when updating from older installations
• 2.5D displacement
  • Added automatic bump map extraction from the displacement map, improving image quality for the same displacement size
  • Changed default displacement screen size to 2 pixels to achieve best compromise of quality vs RAM usage
• When material with RaySwitch in diffuse slot is shown in viewport, the direct visibility override map is now displayed, instead of the GI override
• Fixed radio buttons disappearing from different sections in Corona Camera

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 1

• Added support for SiNi Scatter
• Fixed rendering a scene with the render engine "Simple Path Tracing" causing an instant crash
• 2.5D displacement
  • Saved 4 bytes per original pre-displacement triangle in case the whole object uses the same displacement map.
  • Added an error message when both 2.5D displacement and round edges map fast mode is applied to the same object. These two features are unfortunately not compatible at this moment and in this case the round edges map will fall back to using the precise mode. This will be fixed in the future.

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 2

• Fixed LayeredMtl layers affecting displacement
• Fixed crash when old displacement with water level is applied on an object with unusual geometry
• When LightMix is recreated using the LightMix setup dialog, the LightMix configuration (colors and enables) will be reset to defaults
• Fixed crash when opening some scenes using CoronaCamera auto tilt
• Fixed using saturation -1 not resulting in completely grayscale image
• Fixed crash when rendering volume light in atmosphere effects
• Fixed autosave saving material editor renders
• Fixed appearance of unwanted hard edges when rendering overlapping scattering media
• Updated Visual Studio redistributables in installer
• Fixed pan & zoom rendering wrong offset when zooming in

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 3

• Fixed .scn and .cxr file extension associations stopped working when the installation path to Corona Standalone or Corona Image Editor was changed from previous installation.
• Fixed rare crash when rendering an isolated object
• Fixed rare crash in the 2.5D displacement
• Fixed IR freezing when using ProBoolean
• Fixed artifacts when using dark environment map
• Material library update
  • Fixed tiling size of normal maps in Oak Honey Floor and Oak Northland Floor materials
  • Added 17 new Basic Hair materials
  • Added 10 new Skin materials
  • Fixed inconsistent tiling size - Stone / Cobblestone Herringbone

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 4

• Added warning informing that LightMtl applied to a 2.5D displaced object does not work correctly.
• Fixed Corona Scatter not to ignore manual updates when automatic updates are disabled.
• Fixed result being automatically saved to render history when the render is cancelled
• Corona improved color picker now updates the color as soon as you start modifying the hexadecimal color representation.
• Fixed random crashes when (de)selecting Corona objects, maps and materials
• Fixed different results of Corona Scatter in some scenes compared to Corona v4.