Topics

1

Off-Topic / Multi-machine install help?

« on: 2021-09-22, 14:39:22 »

Hello smart people,

I'm all about saving time, and recently with my heavy workload I've been using a lot of DR rendering (sort of, I'm using Pulze Render Manager - highly recommend) on multiple machines.

However, I'm losing a lot of time manually installing updates (to Corona Dailies, latest Pulze release etc etc) on each machine.

Is there a process or some soft of software that people are aware of that somehow manages this for me? I tell it to install X update on all machines?

Thanks for any tips!

2

[Max] Bug Reporting / Distance texture with opacity is a bit buggy

« on: 2021-08-26, 15:10:21 »

Hi,

Hopefully the screenshot is clear enough: when I have an opacity map plugged in via a coronadistance node it works fine, but if the object that should be invisible intersects with another glass-like object, it is visible in the glass....

Not the outcome I wanted, but not sure how to deal with this now?

Is this expected behavior, or a minor bug?

Corona 8, daily July 28

Thanks!

3

[Max] Bug Reporting / Possible bug when using "Render Selected"

« on: 2021-08-23, 17:14:12 »

Hi,

The following set-up is buggy (however, I'm doing this in a very complicated scene that's had it's fair share of errors - so it is possible that this is scene related)

 - Render selected mode set to "include/exclude list". I have 2 (very large) objects selected.
 - One of these selected objects above has "cast shadows" disabled.
 - I'm using Corona Sun+Sky for environment lighting
 - But using 'direct visibility override" set to a HDRI bitmap (connected through a colour-correction then CoronaSelectMtl.)

With this set-up the background renders black. This is the bug.

As soon as I disable the 'render selected' the background bitmap reappears.

I know this is kind of niche, but hopefully this can be replicated.

Max 2021 / Corona 8 daily build Jul 28.

Good luck and thanks!

4

[Max] General Discussion / How to handle backplates?

« on: 2021-08-18, 14:42:29 »

So, please bare with me here while I explain the conundrum Corona render users find ourselves in...

The situation: I want a image (let's say a city skyline) in the back of my render.

Option a) I can either set my 'direct visibility' override to use this bitmap texture.
or
Option b) I can put the bitmap texture on a plane (corona light mtl) and place the plane in my scene behind my geometry.

Problems with option A:
If I want this city skyline visible through glass I must also set the 'refraction' (and probably 'reflection') overrides. This is problematic as it creates the noisy bright spots all over the image. Not ideal. I know corona devs are aware of this problem, but I'm pretty sure it's not fixed yet, correct?

Problems with option B:
I must set 'visible in reflection/refraction' if I want to see this backplate skyline through glass. This causes the other error of weird sun shadow artifacts on walls. I can turn off 'visible in reflection' (leaving only 'refracton' ticked) and the error disappears, but I now have incorrect reflections (ie; the skyline isn't reflected).

So... basically we have no bug-free solution to put a backplate in the scene.

What am I missing? What am I to do?

Hope this is clear. Thanks!

5

[Max] Feature Requests / 'Add gamma to input' default

« on: 2021-07-02, 09:02:32 »

This is a little picky, but...

Could we please have 'Add gamma to input' in the Corona Normal node set to active by default?

It seems I have to tick this for 99% of my normal maps anyway... and I don't see why any other user would be different. It'd just shave a few seconds off every material creation. (Multiplied over hundreds of materials per scene, over multiple scenes per week...)

And also set it to default for Corona conversion too, maybe?

Food for thought. Thanks!

6

[Max] I need help! / "Brightness and Contrast" incompatible

« on: 2021-06-30, 07:28:43 »

Hi all,

I had a strange error appear once. I dismissed it, it's never come back but the problem persists.

I must have imported a strange texture node from a purchased model. I can't seem to find it...

The error said something like: Render effect "Brightness and Contrast" is incompatible with the bitmap selected for rendering

Now, this hasn't been an issue per se... BUT I'm using a third-party program (Pulze Render Manager) to batch out my renders. Pulze can't render because of this error. If I render in 3DSMax the error doesn't seem to be a problem at all. Like I said, the error only appeared once, I dismissed it and it doesn't appear any more.

My query: how can I find this texture/bitmap? I have many materials in my scene and can't go through them one-by-one.

Anyone know what is going on here?

7

General CG Discussion / 'Interpolate' frames?

« on: 2021-06-25, 14:41:34 »

Off topic I know, but I reckon Corona Users are the smartest Max users, so I figure someone will be able to help me out here...

I want to know if there is a good solution to a small problem I'm having:

I rendered an animation, 100 frames. Everything is fine.

However, I now decided that the speed of the camera is too fast. Can I somehow render every 'in-between' position of the camera? So the half way point which was at frame 50 will now be after 100 frames (50 old frames + 50 new 'in-between' frames)

So I'll then have 200 frame total. Does this make sense? I think it will it slow down the apparent camera movement?

How can I somehow tell Max to interpolate the camera position to render the in-betweens? Is it as simple as re-scaling the time to 200 frames and rendering every Nth frame?

Thanks!

8

Off-Topic / Help me find a retail parallex plugin

« on: 2021-05-05, 09:51:11 »

Hi all,

I'm not sure where I saw this, but sometime in the past 1-2 months I saw a cool looking plug-in for 3DSMax (no idea if it's Corona compatible or not) that basically generated 'fake' 3d retail interior scenes using (i think?) some sort of Parallex projection effect. If memory serves, it was created from a single plan and changed the 'interior view' depending on the angle of the camera...

Anyone here know what I'm talking about and where I can find it?

Many, many thanks!

9

[Max] I need help! / Animation flickering through glass

« on: 2021-04-17, 10:17:21 »

Please see the attached video - I'm rendering interior scene with about 33% of the camera looking view through glass. Terrible flickering in the scene behind the glass.

I'm using 4K cache, no pre-comp saving/loading, flicker-free option set.

Standard corona glass material.

Any tips on how to improve the quality so it doesn't flicker?

10

[Max] I need help! / Random bitmap texture

« on: 2021-04-15, 18:24:04 »

Ok, so bare with me here, this might get a bit messy...

I want to know if it's possible to use multiple bitmaps when tiling. I know the multi-map node exists, as well as the UVW randomiser, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get a random selection of the multiple bitmaps tiling across a texture.

I don't want the randomness per primitive, or per instance, but when the tiling is happening...hopefully the video explains my situation best.

Thanks!

11

[Max] I need help! / Rotate a texture/Bitmap?

« on: 2021-04-08, 12:35:45 »

I'm wondering if I can somehow rotate a bitmap texture in a node other than the Bitmap node?

The reason I want to do this is that I set-up multiple HDRI's textures and plug them into a CoronaSelect to quickly browse through many scene lighting variations... but if I want to rotate the HDRi I must go back into the bitmap node and edit it there.

But it would be easier if my CoronaSelect (see attachment) could plug into another node where I can control the rotation... is this understandable? Is this somehow possible?

12

[Max] Daily Builds / Material Converter unusable

« on: 2021-04-06, 08:12:02 »

The latest daily build for Max really f**ks up the scene materials when using the corona converter. It's basically unusable now whereas previously it worked perfectly...

I figure it's got something to do with the converter being a bit confused about when to apply metal/non-metal to legacy materials.

I can show some example if you wish, but hopefully this has already been discussed or discovered?

13

General CG Discussion / Dumb question...

« on: 2021-03-11, 08:26:53 »

This might seem like a bit of a newbie question, but it's always had me a little confused:

Why do I often see so many 3D render breakdowns (stills and animation) add a reflection (and/or refraction etc) pass on top of the beauty pass?

Ie; why is the artist adding more reflections on top of the presumably already physically accurate render? Is this purely an artistic decision? Is there some trick I'm unaware of? Is this a common must-do in 3D art? Or is the artist just trying to improve the way the reflections look, as they didn't quite nail them in the original render?

I see so many break-downs that add this, and in all honestly it doesn't seem to add much to the image as a whole... an example from today:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vincent-filhine-tr%C3%A9sarrieu-13654a78_3dsmax-coronarenderer-nuke-ugcPost-6775112713996668928-_nZ2

Much obliged for any enlightenment!

14

[Max] General Discussion / Animation - UHD Preset

« on: 2021-03-04, 15:37:38 »

I'm attempting an animated interior with Corona.

I noticed that when I have my UHD preset to 'Still frame' the precomp is pretty fast (23seconds - good) and the render time is OK, approx 5 mins.

However, when I set the UHD preset to Animation (as I was getting unwanted flickering) the precomp goes up much higher (as expected) but the render time more than doubles to 12 minutes.

Why? My understanding is that only the pre-comp should go higher...Or am I mistaken?

15

[Max] I need help! / Post-process background, with overrides?

« on: 2021-03-03, 13:26:56 »

I'm sure this has been discussed to death... it's at least bugged me for many, many years, but I'm still unable to figure out any good solution...

The problem; I want a Corona sky to illuminate my interior scene. BUT I want a custom (site-specific) 360 panorama to be visible in the background.

Obviously I can set the Corona Sky as my background, and the HDRI as overrides.

First problem; the weird Corona bug with noisy renders when reflect environment override is in use. Is this fixed yet? Is it close to being fixed? This seems like a pretty major problem...

Problem #2: If I want to 'edit' the background once the render is complete, I run into problems. Obviously I can save my render as *.cxr and export out the image as PNG with alpha background on. This allows me to put a custom background pic into the image in photoshop behind my big glass windows. The problem is that I lose a lot of detail in the reflections of the glass. I get matting on the sides of the window frames (and other objects that are infront of the glass windows). So I can't easily 'paste' in a background.

So, my only option left is to render in the background plates for clean, custom views out of my window. But this solution, of course, allows for no flexibility in editing my background after rendering.

Is this clear? Do others experience this paradox? Is there a solution I'm unaware of?

Many thanks for any input...