Topics

16

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / CScatter is awesome! Can we have more generator types?

« on: 2015-06-06, 14:19:50 »

I really like CScatter, and I hope it gets expanded with future updates. A suggestion is to add a not-so-random-generator to it too. Hear me out! When I make grass, I start by making, say ten different blades, then I use those blades along with CScatter to make six patches of grass with different settings, using the Halton generator or whatever. Then I convert those six patches of grass into max geometry and use another CScatter object to scatter them on a plane.

Thing is, the scatter algorithm overlaps these six patches of grass too much in some places, and leaves bare patches on other. It would be great to have some sort of "grid size" generator option that randomly picks instanced objects, randomly rotates and scales them, but "evenly" places them on some sort of (hex based?) grid so that the density is sort of uniform all over the object I scatter on.

17

Work in Progress/Tests / My lawn

« on: 2015-06-03, 08:52:27 »

I want to stop the unhealthy body images portrayed in the media to young lawns, so I thought I'd present my own lawn as a good example. You don't need to be mowed and perfectly flat to be beautiful!

Rendered overnight which resulted in a ridiculous amount of passes this morning. What do you think?

18

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / More diagnosis render passes?

« on: 2015-06-02, 14:00:12 »

I know that I can use Albedo to find out if Corona is doing an unnecessary amount of work in blown-out areas.
V-ray has a pass called "Sample intensity" or something similar, in bucket mode, which generates a heatmap that you can use for diagnosis of your scene. It is very helpful and gives artists a visual feedback of what might be wrong in a scene.

I know that Corona is different and that you obviously can use the different lighting passes to check where the processing power goes, but are there more passes "behind the scenes" that we can use to see what might be taxing the renderer unnecessarily? I don't know what it might be, but it would be cool to have more render pass options. =)

19

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Lights block selection of occluded objects

« on: 2015-06-02, 13:55:53 »

Hey! If I have a light between me and an object I can't select the object. I know that The Other Renderer only has the selection on the edges of the wireframe for lights if in wireframe mode. Could we have the same thing in Corona?

It is a bit annoying to have to use another viewport to select your objects if there is a wireframed light between the camera and the objects in the scene. Especially if the wireframed light totally obscures the scene and you start to question your own sanity before realising what is "wrong".

Thanks for an awesome renderer.

20

[Max] I need help! / Displacement behaving oddly

« on: 2015-05-22, 07:42:45 »

I have a scene where displacement simply does not work!
I load up a fresh scene with the standard settings, apply a noise to a box, press render and it works fine.
However, in my scene the displacement seems to be simply turned off. I've tried new materials, new bitmaps, noises, the max subtivs is 100, the screen size in px is 2,0.  Nothing! Is there some other way that displacement could be turned off in my settings?

I've tried importing the object into a new scene, and it works fine then, but here's the thing: When I went into the settings to check the new scene, and then turned off the rendering, just the half second before the VFB shut down, the rendering restarted without displacement! When I open the VFB again the displacement is gone, and when I start the interactive renderer it is still gone.

21

[Max] General Discussion / Tips on working with body objects from a STEP file

« on: 2015-05-18, 22:34:12 »

Hey! I'm getting pretty nice models from a customer. However they are in STEP format from some CAD software. Has anyone got any tips on working with the resulting body objects? Should I just convert them to editable meshes and try to quadify them or can you just use them right away? The results look pretty good at first glance when I use the "fine" preset in the viewport display settings but I have no idea how they will act with more advanced materials..

I started writing a max-script to convert them to polygons with proper resolution, but the results are pretty nasty, the topology is predictably messy..

22

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Random crashing when moving lights.

« on: 2015-05-08, 10:29:50 »

I have four rectangle lights with a VRAY HDRI softbox in them in a scene. When I move the light Max sometimes crashes, but not always. Is this a common problem? I seem to encounter it often. When I change to a regular bitmap loader with the HDRI the program seems to behave..

2x e52670 win7 max 2015 corona 1.00.02

23

[Max] I need help! / Flickering lights in animation

« on: 2015-04-30, 07:54:35 »

Jeez, I have a thing that is due soon to a client, and Corona has proved awesome for still frames, but I'm getting a bit worried here about the flickering in animations.

The model is under NDA, but imagine three floors with shipping containers, imported from CAD software, so crappy geometry.
The front walls are cut away from the containers, and there are lights (invisible) in each of the three the containers. There are three lights outside the containers.
Materials are super ultra simple, with an AO on the container metal, that is 200 white, and some tech-stuff inside the containers blue. No reflections, no glossiness, no translucency.
The camera orbits counter-clockwise around the building, no DOF, no motion blur, photographic exposure.
PNG sequence, I've tried between 30 and 25 passes per frame, takes just over two minutes per frame at 25 passes at 1080p.
Path tracing, UHD cache, GI vs AA is 16, Light samples multiplier is 2,0, max sample intensity is 20, max ray depth is 25. Standard stuff.
UHD is still frame (I tried animation flicker free too, no difference, at least I think I did.. Let this be a lesson to you all otherwise to write down your settings..) I calculate the precomp from scratch and discard it. Precision is 1,0 and previz is on.

The lights flicker noticeably.

I'll try to re-render part of the sequence with animation on right away and update this post when I have the results.

24

[Max] I need help! / Halt! Exception time! suspiciously often

« on: 2015-04-08, 09:24:40 »

I have a machine with 48 gb memory. My Corona .02 crashes with the "Bad allocation" and "Halt! Exception time!" a little too often.
It seems like I hit a total memory roof around 31 Gb and then the render crashes. 3ds max uses only about 22 gb when I get back to see the crash. Maybe it peaks before that? I haven't been able to babysit the Task Manager to see if it fills my entire memory.
The render is 6667px * 4000px. I know I have rendered a LOT larger renders on That Other Renderer. Is Corona more memory intensive? The scene is a simple gaming keyboard with very few polygons, around 300k before subdivision. I do use the OpenSubdiv modifier on some things though, can that be a problem? I have noticed that OpenSubdiv lags incredibly in 3ds max 2015.
Incredibly compressed pic attached.

25

Gallery / Kitchen appliance launch image

« on: 2015-04-01, 15:51:50 »

This is a picture that I made in one afternoon out of models from a previous v-ray scene.
Project lead decided to change the original image solution (which I will not be showing, too embarassed!) and I had to quickly make a new version. 4k*4k render in 1,5 hours. A bit noisy still, but deadlines were wooshing. The final crop will be much tighter around the appliances.

Corona saved the day!

Constructive feedback? Hints? Derision? Hateful ramblings?

26

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / 4k support for the Corona VFB?

« on: 2015-03-30, 19:45:29 »

The stats and some settings are pretty much unreadable in 4k. Not a major thing, but somewhat annoying. :)

27

[Max] I need help! / Visibility track seems to not work for corona proxies

« on: 2015-03-30, 17:43:10 »

I have a scene with a huge submarine environment, that I don't want in the scene before plunging underwater, I have the rocks and seaweed as the awesome corona proxy, scattered with the even more awesome corona scatter. It seems though that I can't hide the proxies with an animated visibility track in 3ds max. Am I making some huge newbie mistake or should this be under the bug section? =)

28

[Max] Resolved Bugs / LOL: HALT! Exception time! on DR render slave. Out of memory?

« on: 2015-03-19, 11:56:19 »

I laughed when I got the "halt, exception time"-message on one of my 32 core DR slaves. It said to report here.
I'm doing a 2667*4000px render, nothing special. 8 other slaves in the render, working just fine (albeit using just HALF of the processor capacity it seems...). I have only 16gb of ram on the DR server that halts, and 8 is used by another naughty user leaving PS, chrome, bridge, outlook etc open.

Also a suggestion: Is it possible to show the computer names in the DR tab of the VFB in a future release? The IP tells me almost nothing.

Edit: Running 1.00.00, maxsdk 2015 sp2 by the way.

29

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Displacement behaving interestingly

« on: 2015-03-18, 09:00:36 »

I have a scene (NDA stuff, can't share, can try to replicate) of a huge seascape, a couple of km across. I have clouds over it, with a corona material as per the instructions in the excellent FAQ. These clouds are displaced with a cell map, between two and five meters. Now, when I change the size of the cell map, only just a little bit, the displacement seemingly goes away. How can this be?

30

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Max number of lights in corona?

« on: 2015-03-05, 15:09:01 »

Hello!
I have a scene with 440+ lights in it. It is a christmas decoration for flagpoles.
When I render it looks like the attached picture. Is there a max number of lights in corona? When I load the interactive renderer it just removes the lights from the scene, and then adds them again when I cancel the interactive renderer.

OR is there a workaround? Can I use a light texture instead? I'll try now, but I wanted to check and see if Corona had a max number of light sources as this could be good to know.

This is a wonderful renderer by the way. I'll buy it ASAP.