Messages

76

[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?

77

News / Re: Corona 1.3 for 3ds Max

« on: 2015-11-04, 09:05:08 »

Awesome release guys, great job!

78

[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. 

79

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Multiple lic servers?

« on: 2015-09-01, 13:36:24 »

I removed the posts starting with Maru's response as it was badly worded, sorry for that, I talked to Maru. See PM ;)

Ahh I didn't spot the PM, thanks for clarifying, makes sense!

80

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Multiple lic servers?

« on: 2015-09-01, 13:30:04 »

Why was  my post here removed? (the one about activating cloned EC2  instances and keeping activated license count in check)

81

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Multiple lic servers?

« on: 2015-08-31, 21:29:49 »

Alright got it all working, the only 'problem' is that I have now 8 instances rendering happily all with an assigned lic while I got the WS+5 render nodes package. Is this the safety measure allowing for some temporary wiggle room or something else?

(screenshot shows only 7 but I've successfully started another one after taking that one)

82

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Multiple lic servers?

« on: 2015-08-31, 16:51:24 »

1) running 2 licensing servers is fine, no problems here.
2) do not worry about this situation, there are safety measures built in the licensing system for these kinds of situations

Great! :)

83

[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?

84

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Raybrush / sample density map

« on: 2015-05-12, 08:38:24 »

Yep, i proposed this some time ago as well, but i think we will see a good adaptivity implementation sooner than this, and maybe it will make this requested feature obsolete.

I'm new here so sorry if I misses all the previously request :)  If the automatically adaptive sampling takes care of this without user intervention all the better, I added my vote in the pole to that one.  A manual raybrush could still come in handy as a sort of interactive render region.

Anyways, seriously impressed by what I've been able to do with Corona in such a short time! Next project i can use it for I'll take the plunge!

85

[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.