Messages

1

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Backplate + Sun causing shadow bug

« on: 2025-02-06, 18:36:21 »

Hi everyone.

Wanted to picked this back up again please.

We are currently working on a big project with a house and a skyline blackplate.

The backplate is sitting on a light material, with emit light unchecked, The scene is lit with sun and sky,

The backplate is semi blocking the sun shadows, if we unhide it to just see the corona sky the shadows are great. I have read the above post and for a work around I have unticked "visable in reflections"

Im getting a better result, but I assume there hasn't been any further developments on getting this fixed? Its a real shame because we are loosing alot of reflectivity in the glass of the builiding.

Maybe you can get around that by using the backplate image in the 'Direct Visivility Override' slot in Corona's render dialog (and in the Refractions override if needed, too). That way you wouldn't need any plane with a LightMtl, maybe it helps in your case. (Of course, it doesn't solve the original problem discussed in the thread...)

2

[Max] I need help! / Re: Volumetric optimisations

« on: 2025-02-03, 21:59:30 »

Unfortunately, no. And make sure it doesn't mess with alpha and masks, too. It's not supposed to but it might.

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: Volumetric optimisations

« on: 2025-02-03, 16:52:43 »

From my tests, step size has the biggest effect on speed. Interpolation has some effect too, but it's not as noticeable.
Another way to save time is using less bounces but that may affect the look of the volumes too much.

If you're rendering volumes in a separate pass and compose them in post, have a look at Arnold, it's built in and can be a lot faster with volumes. Too many GI samples will make it slow, too, but you have more control over the final look and maybe can compensate low GI through some shader wizardry.

4

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Chaos Corona 13 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2025-01-24, 11:39:03 »

Does that mean you are working on it? That would be finally a good reason to upgrade for me.

5

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Chaos Corona 13 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2025-01-23, 22:44:38 »

definitely an improvement with the latest HOTFIX - well done team :)  More of that please :)

Thought - seeing as though the only thing that is still bad and i dont think its all corona related - is the material editor.  It would be great if corona had its very own material editor, outside of autodesk with the hope that the UI is completely in the hands of the Corona team.  the material editor in Max has forever been laggy.  I did write a post on this with a supporting video.
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=43406.15

have a great weekend all.

That would be the old Qt story... vote for it here:
https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-23

6

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona 12 Update 1

« on: 2025-01-23, 14:34:10 »

There's a hardly a reason to visit the website. The info could've been displayed on the forums main page, as it was the case on the Chaos forums where it was displayed prominently on top.
No e-mail in December here, only one a few days ago saying one week left to update.

7

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Amazon AWS Render Nodes. Has anyone done this?

« on: 2025-01-15, 18:10:38 »

I'd contact Chaos licensing team directly, chances are they have answers for AWS, you probably are not the first to try/ask.

Please share whatever you learn, would like to know what the situation is, too.

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Image is looking nice in vfb but not in PS.

« on: 2025-01-15, 14:12:24 »

Check you monitor profile is set to sRGB in the windows display settings.
Save to EXR from the VFB then load into PS.
Assign your sRGB profile and when saving to whatever format you want ensure you embed the profile in the save dialog.

Id struggled with this for ages and the part i had missed was ensuring my monitor profile was set to sRGB.

If you have a profile coming with your display or it's calibrated and using a profile from the calibration, you probably don't want to go with limited sRGB and the display uses a different profile - in that case the above post ytr_bolanda is the way to go.

9

Gallery / Re: Laurel.

« on: 2025-01-03, 20:46:37 »

Really great shading and... everything, and it really conveys the 'feel' of the place.

10

Learner’s Corner / Re: The lights look unreal

« on: 2025-01-03, 14:31:23 »

I'd make sure natural vs artificial lighting has the right temperature, they both seem to be neutral right now (or too similar), in reality they're really different.

11

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona auto-renewing and billed without notification

« on: 2025-01-03, 10:56:27 »

If there was no information prior to downloading/installing the demo about 'automatic' purchase of the product without further notice after the demo runs out, they have no valid contract with you and it's illegal. Chaos is now registered in Germany afaik, they'd even have to accept your withdrawal from the sub within 2 weeks without any explanation from your side. What are they smoking?

12

General CG Discussion / Re: Viewing/editing HDRI files

« on: 2024-12-18, 19:04:54 »

Good question, I'd love to hear some opinions, too. I have a lot of panoramas that need tripod/shadow removal and would love to know which apps that offers spherical display + retouching (or some losless on-the-fly conversion between cube/equirectangular) and retains all HDR data. It's a bit tedious to go forth and back between different apps for this.
Photoshop cripples 32f HDRs and will only open/save 16f (and actually uses 15 bits internally if I'm not mistaken...). 16 bits are good enough for most cases, but there's definitely a difference in sun intensity with 32 vs 16 bits in some of my panos. Looking forward to hear what others use.

13

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Tonemapping Order/Behaviour

« on: 2024-12-17, 14:24:06 »

Oh sorry missed the answer, thanks Juraj for bumping this one.

I've sent an example to Maru a (good) while ago, the discussion around the saturation operator has been around for some time now. In that specific case, a saturation value of 0.02 introduced a pinkish hue to an slightly warm white in clouds on a HDR texture. This was absolutely counter-intuitive and only one of the examples provided. We've been here before, and from the question to provide examples I can only assume whatever I sent and was discussed is lost...?

For what and how - may I simply suggest to try out, compare to other packages and make it behave reasonably. If it's not clear to support or developers within 10 seconds, no example I could send will make a difference.

Oh and the ideas portal - various users have requested a thousand things in the past and we were assured these are on the backlog, it's somewhat strange to ask us to a) re-submit as if we never did and b) expect that everything worthy of an update is going to get enough upvotes. Not everyone will understand the importance of certain requests but everyone will be happy when it's in. For some improvements/features I would expect the team to realize the importance themselves.

14

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona 12 Update 1

« on: 2024-12-13, 11:42:57 »

Guessing based on the process name, when you google it, you'll find it's a Qt-related library ('A QWidget-based Web View Component Integrated with CEF').
Maybe related to the new VFB, or other parts of Corona which uses it for Qt-based UI components.

15

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona 12 Update 1

« on: 2024-12-12, 17:00:42 »

I'm stuck in the past on both Max and Corona but judging from the posts here I think you should be adding info on which Max versions you are using, too. It looks like Max is not getting the QA that it needs/deserves and there could be issues with Max' internal notification system (there were some in the past) that could interfere with how a renderer accesses the API. For example, a seemingly simple thing like hardware hit testing in the viewports for example could slow down IR quite a lot.