Topics

16

[Max] I need help! / Network render 'elements only'

« on: 2016-05-15, 23:13:40 »

Really loving the 'Render only elements' function, I do a quick render of these with a  'source color' pass as well and I can start working on the technical part of a comp while the pretty pictures render on the farm.

But I have multiple shot and I don't see a way to batch or network rendering them? any clues?

17

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Shapemap doesn't do anything when used as densitymap in cScatter

« on: 2016-04-20, 14:19:46 »

Title says it all.  I was trying to use a spline to drive a shape map to drive cScatter placement density, works fine with checker and bitmpas etc but shape map has no effect.  This would be great to have working since it would allow for some nice interactive control of it all.

18

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Pre-render events not being triggered

« on: 2016-04-06, 20:20:50 »

I'm using Corona to render some fluid meshes from PhoenixFD and noticed that it works fine when I render individual frames manually but the fluid mesh fails to update when rendering a frame range.

So I thought I'd force an update using the #preRenderEval  event but that doesn't get triggerd at all.

In then end I manged to make it work using this, forcing and update by setting the slidertime to current render time.

Code: [Select]

fn forceUpdate=
(
 slidertime = currentTime
)

callbacks.removeScripts #preRenderFrame  id:#fu
callbacks.addScript #preRenderFrame "forceUpdate()" id:#fu

So I'm not sure what the problem is but something fishy is going on with the pre render events making PhoenixFD not update the mesh..

Max 2016 sp3/ext2 
Corona version: 1.3
Full-speed, Non-debug, MaxSDK 2016
Build timestamp: Nov  3 2015 13:07:13
Defines: Wide RGB

19

[Max] Resolved Bugs / CScatter playback performance slowdown

« on: 2016-02-25, 13:11:50 »

Playback/scrubbing is severely slowed down by scatter object even when not visible and nothing animated.

0) create plane+ teapot and scrub timeline, playback / scrubing timeline is fast.
1) create scene with 100k instanced teapots on a plane
2) Set scatter's diplaymode to 'none' and make sure nothing is animated
3) observe how navigating the scene is very fast but.. is has very slow playback/scrubbing
4) Set scatter's enable to false and observe playback is fast again.

So look like CScatter is internally updating things on everyframe when it's not required?

As a temp work around use this in pre/post render scripts:

pre-render:
for obj in objects where classof obj == Cscatter do obj.enable=true

post render:
for obj in objects where classof obj == Cscatter do obj.enable=false



 

20

Gallery / 360 photograph combined with CGI

« on: 2016-02-13, 16:30:07 »

Here's a nice 360 project I did utilizing a lot of Corona Scatter, each flower and blade of grass are all geometry. This is not setup as a glossy arch-viz-as-good-as-it-gets render but simply setup for a quick turn around time and to provide a realistic impression to inform the occupants of the surrounding area about the new design.

The 360 render of 13kx6k pixels took 1.5 hours, You can switch between the current situation and the new design using the bottom menu.

http://www.zoetermeer.eu/ceciliagang/ceciliagang/

21

[Archive] Corona Scatter 2.0 / CoronaScatter On selelected faces only

« on: 2016-02-02, 16:51:37 »

Take  face selection into account for scattering, I think it could have two modes:

• Fixed count,  so selecting less faces makes it more crowded on the selected ones.
• Fixed density, internally all faces are used for distribution, but the items on non selected faces are discarded.

Mode 2 would give a stable scatter even if you animate the face selection using a volume select modifier for example.  And when using soft-selection values  to multiply the scale values it would allow for some really cool massive mograph visuals.

A practical application would be to grow trees on a mountain, using some selection tools, or an MCG graph, only the +-horizontal polygons below a certain altitude are selected, then scatter grows trees only on those. Changing the topology automatically adjusts the trees then, Soft-selection could make the trees smaller near the treeline. Procedural all the way!

22

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Wrong geometry on a Reset Transform in interactive mode.

« on: 2016-01-12, 00:58:02 »

While in interactive mode, applying a 'reset transform' (from utilities panel) on a scaled object results in a geometry mismatch between the viewport and interactive VFB, the latter has wrong scaling.

23

[Max] Resolved Bugs / CoronaBitmap fails when setting filename using MXS

« on: 2016-01-11, 16:29:55 »

obj=teapot();
mat=CoronaMtl()
mat.texmapDiffuse = CoronaBitmap()
mat.texmapDiffuse.filename = "test.jpg"
obj.material = mat

Adjust test.jpg  to some existing texture file, run it and sample the material from the teapot into the material editor.

Notice the CoronaBitmap shows a "Could not load texture file: test.jpg Reason: Unsupported image format." message.

Then pressing "load map" -> "ok"  does load it correctly.

[Corona version: 1.3
Full-speed, Non-debug, MaxSDK 2016
Build timestamp: Nov  3 2015 13:07:13
Defines: Wide RGB ]

24

[Max] Feature Requests / Advanced matte material

« on: 2015-11-18, 13:46:47 »

Shadow catcher is a nice start but it does only that, a lot of work dealing with adding CGI to real imagery requires a more advanced matte material. For example if you want existing real objects from the real footage to cast shadows on CGI objects you need matte objects that cast a shadow but do not appear in the rendered image themselves, basically with a force alpha=0. But if you add a non environment 3d light source it should be possible to have that illuminate the matte objects and so real object are brighter. With some ray-switching and a few other hoops to jump through  it can come close but it's not really artist friendly.

Not really sure what the best approach is and what it should do exactly but there is definitely a bit of a workflow hole in the feature set for when mixing cgi and real footage.

(btw, iray does a nice trick where you can just assign any material to matte objects and just flag them as matte object. This way the matte objects have a  ver definable material so they can mimick the light interaction of the real objects that they are matte-ing.  )

25

[Max] I need help! / Matte/shadow catcher issue

« on: 2015-11-18, 10:11:06 »

I'm adding some 3d to a 360 panoramic photograph and I'm having trouble with the matte objects.

These object are there to generate the shadow that falls onto the CGI and maybe to bounce some light back onto the pavement and only that.  But I'm having a hard time making the matte objects themselves invisible, they seem to catch some light and I need them out of the equation with alpha=0. I could generate a mask render element but I'm hoping for a more elegant solution..

See attached images for problem and some relevant settings, any clues?

26

[Max] General Discussion / ec2 economics vs license model

« on: 2015-09-18, 10:19:32 »

See attached image..

The best bang/buck EC2 instance for CPU is ironically a GPU instance..  it's cost/performance = 0.42  while the most powerful 36 core machine is about 3 times as expensive at a 1.2 ratio.

Since corona is limited on node count I'm forced to pick the 36 core machine to render it quickly.  But if I would be able to launch 5x that amount of GPU instances it would take about the same amount of time but I would have to pay amazon only a 1/3 of the price.

I'm not asking to change the pricing model right away but when you guys are rethinking pricing options please take this into account :)

edit:  'ECU' in the screenshot below is the relative CPU performance index of an instance type. 

27

[Max] General Discussion / Multiple lic servers?

« on: 2015-08-31, 16:39:56 »

I finally took the plunge and going full corona, updating the farm and pipeline right now.

One issue I'd like to get some advise on is the following, I've got 2 farms, a small one in my studio (3pc) and the heavy projects I renders on EC2 where I've got a nice scalable setup in a VPC which is connected to my LAN via a VPN.

the problem is that there isn't a single  machine that all these slaves can reach.. my workstation is the lic server for the in-house farm which work fine, and the 'manager' node on the cloud is dealing with the lics for the cloud instances. (the cloud slaves can only see the manager node). Besides that the cloud render slaves come and go (spot), and the the manager is a dedicated instance.  (see attached sketch)

So my questions are:
-Does running 2 lic servers work fine or should I find a solution where there is only one such server
-If a cloud slave goes down is that lic immediate available again for a new node? (I don't see any notification about lics being free'ed up in the logs)

Any other issues I might run into?

28

[Max] Feature Requests / Raybrush / sample density map

« on: 2015-05-09, 08:07:23 »

A ray brush which can be used to make Corona focus it's sample distribution on problematic areas would be nice. And/or a grayscale bitmap which can be used to hint where to put more samples. (maybe the raybrush can paint the bitmap as wel so it will repeat itself on the next render)

I think this can help resolve images faster by getting rid of those last few noisy areas quicker.