Messages

46

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Render Legion and Corona Join Forces with Chaos Group

« on: 2017-08-26, 21:18:45 »

The implication was made on the blog that users of corona and vray aren't the same, so the render engines are flexible(vray) and simple to use(corona)

Does this mean, that in the future a request of a feature (existing in vray) might come from corona users, and corona devs would simply say: well, there's vray for that..? Since, you might not want to compete...?

This is the big question! I would love to know what is the adjusted vision for both products, as there is no way they will stay in the same track as before (competing with one another).

What makes sense for me is that Vray would focus more and more in the VFX and production industry, people who spend all of their time rendering and would like a lot more control and flexibility, archviz users spend very little time rendering compared to VFX and they holdback the engine, Vray has to tailor to 2 audiences with very different expertise levels.  This market is also used to paying way more for software, so expect vray to become more expensive as it abandons "casual" users.

Corona on the other hand does not need to adapt to attract a single VFX user. They will probably stay where they are at and probably become simpler.  I imagine corona becoming a "virtual DSLR" focused 100% on capturing reality instead of faking it in any way.

Since corona is not even feature complete for archviz (hair, voumetrics, caustics, skin...)  the plans in the short and mid term will probably stay the same. 

But once corona feels complete for 80% of current users, it will probably start diverging more and more from vray.

For most corona users like mayself that are escaping the complexities of other engines, this is great news. For the small number of users that want corona to become something that it's not already, you are probably out of luck.


The one super exciting thing about this is compatibility between the two, get the best of both worlds without compromise. Except paying for 2 licenses of course ...

Actually, the days when VFX rendering meant faking a lot of things are now mostly gone. It took the somewhat cumbersome VFX industry a while to adapt new, simpler, physically based approaches, but they have been enjoying it for a while. So VFX renderer does not mean complicated renderer. VFX renderer, by today's standards simply means feature complete renderer, at least when it comes to major features.

Corona is just hair, skin and volumetrics effects away from becoming a VFX renderer, and hair is already present in dailies, skin is already implemented and being polished, and last time I checked, volumetrics were still on the roadmap. I am also pretty certain that all of these 3 last major features will be implemented in Corona fashion: fast, simple and convenient to use while flexible just enough to cover vast majority of requirements.

They also mentioned on several repeated occasions that there are no plans to limit development direction of Corona in any way, so even if some more requirements for VFX work arise in the future, there's nothing standing in the way of them being implemented into Corona.

47

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Render Legion and Corona Join Forces with Chaos Group

« on: 2017-08-25, 21:19:33 »

Was it Chaos group's fault guys, you think like that? Come on. I am waiting official announcement by Corona devs... But I am sad and i will post more about this.

There is already official announcement from Corona devs :)
https://corona-renderer.com/blog/new-horizons-plans-for-2017-and-beyond/

And if you read closely, you will actually find implications that it was Render Legion's decision to initiate this thing :)



If Corona guys are the ones who have set this into motion, do you think they would do that if they thought it was a bad thing? Also, they negotiated it for over a year, it's not like it was a decision made overnight :)

48

Gallery / Re: Porsche 911 GT3 RS - Corona Dome Case Study

« on: 2017-08-23, 16:07:16 »

You should use in-render motion blur next time. It won't add much to the rendertime, but it will look much better ;)

If you added some MB in post, then I am afraid it was not enough, as it looks it is completely missing it. Great thing about in-render MB is that you just set shutter to be half the frame, and you will know the MB length and intensity will be correct everywhere :)

49

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Re: Vray Hybrid rendering

« on: 2017-08-18, 15:13:33 »

From my experience, Vray RT GPU is significantly slower than Vray Adv on CPU of a price and release date similar to the GPU. Even Bertrand feels that way: http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/not-just-another-coffee-machine/

So you may arrive at a grotesque scenario, where you for example render a scene on GTX1080Ti + Ryzen 1800X on V-Ray GPU, and then realize it renders much faster on Vray Adv on CPU only :)

I would love to see some of your test results, not being a smart ass but just would like to see the other side of a comparison.  I have been using GPU renderers lately and I find them miles faster than CPU,  I have a 1080ti in one system which is $800, I can't imagine there is a cpu out there for that price that can match it.  I am about to get a Threadripper 1950x so I will see how that performs against the 1080ti, but I still don't expect it to beat it and it's a $1,000 cpu.  If it does beat it great! but the thing is that even if it can beat it by say even 5%, unlike the cpu I can put 3-4 more 1080ti's in the one system, the cost of building cpu systems to compare to that is astronomical. But I really am interested in your findings and that CPU vs GPU article.

Also Bertrand says it might be an issue with his system why the GPU was a lot slower, I have a feeling that was exactly the problem.

I am talking specifically about V-Ray GPU vs V-Ray Adv, not random GPU renderer X vs random CPU renderer X. So if you have V-Ray license, then just pick an average interior scene (something non-trivial) and compare let's say GTX 1080Ti to Threadripper 1920x (not 1950x). That should make the prices more or less match. And then see if your scene renders faster on V-Ray Adv (not Vray RT in CPU mode) with the Threadripper or on V-Ray RT GPU with the 1080ti. You will be surprised. GPU renderers tend to render teapots on planes really fast, but as scene complexity increases, scale starts to tilt the other way.

My personal findings are that I have GTX970 and i7 5930k. Both were released at the roughly same time and costed roughly same money, and while my GTX970 tends to render really trivial scenes faster in most of the GPU renderers, as soon as the scene get's at least reasonably complex, 5930k is significantly faster. However, when it comes to specifically V-Ray RT GPU vs V-Ray Adv, I have not yet seen a single case where the RT GPU with GTX970 would beat V-Ray Adv with 5930k, even in those very trivial scenes.

50

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-08-16, 20:19:54 »

My bad, it works as it should then, just maid some tests with Vray (behavior i was used to) and it works exactly the same way, I misinterpreted the results. Anyway, Vray offer the choice on shader level, so it can be set on a per object basis, that's what makes the real difference imho.

So does corona, as you can see a few posts above, where I posted a screenshot. Only difference is that V-Ray defaults to equivalent of Corona's "always white" alpha setting, while Corona defaults to equivalent of V-Ray's Color+Alpha setting.

I need to be more sedulous... So it works as intended, on every aspects. Does it work with matte elements as well ?

Unfortunately not yet. It's a feature that has been requested for at least 5 versions now...

51

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-08-16, 13:49:12 »

My bad, it works as it should then, just maid some tests with Vray (behavior i was used to) and it works exactly the same way, I misinterpreted the results. Anyway, Vray offer the choice on shader level, so it can be set on a per object basis, that's what makes the real difference imho.

So does corona, as you can see a few posts above, where I posted a screenshot. Only difference is that V-Ray defaults to equivalent of Corona's "always white" alpha setting, while Corona defaults to equivalent of V-Ray's Color+Alpha setting.

52

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-08-16, 11:19:11 »

alpha and refraction are NOT the same. Naeq example is good.

The real question is : is that usefull for compositing ? It's not. The composited background will not be affected by IOR so it's useless.

You seem to be unable to see further than the boundaries of your own workflows. There are quite a few compositing packages, such as fusion, which allow you to import geometry and put realtime GPU computed refraction on it, then use that to refract the background added on postprocessing and mask it out by alpha which takes refracted environment opacity into account. And there are some pipelines that rely on it.

The exact same thing that's happening here in Corona is happening also in V-Ray, when you set refraction to affect alpha channel. And V-Ray has been used for quite many feature films in quite many VFX pipelines, and they don't get people complaining about this behavior, because it works as intended.

I am not implying that everything V-Ray does is right, but in this particular case, it is.

53

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-08-15, 21:34:32 »

Come on guys, did you even read my post entirely? :)

In the advanced options rollout of CoronaMTL, there is an alpha mode dropdown, that allows you to override alpha of your glass to pure white (opaque alpha)

54

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-08-15, 15:55:50 »

Making refraction always produce opaque alpha would be devastating for some of the compositing workflows. What's on the picture is correct - there's environment being refracted, and environment has 0 alpha.

If you want to override it, just select your glass material, and in advanced options rollout, set alpha mode to always white.

55

Gallery / Re: NyLeve Falls Remake

« on: 2017-08-09, 11:01:38 »

That was fast :)

Thanks for the feedback ! UHD cache rendered every frames ?

Yup :)

56

Gallery / Re: NyLeve Falls Remake

« on: 2017-08-09, 10:42:34 »

@Rawalanche just a little question regarding render settings, PT+PT or PT+UHD ?

PT+UHD - Animation mode and precision at 2.0 :)

57

[Max] I need help! / Re: Color bleeding from HDRI doesn't seem enough

« on: 2017-08-03, 10:00:19 »

Looks correct to me, honestly :)

58

[Max] I need help! / Re: GI precomp stage is very long

« on: 2017-08-03, 09:58:39 »

There's a fair chance you've just ran out of RAM and Windows started to swap memory to the disk :)

Given the resolution of the screenshot you've posted, I assume you are working on some low to mid-end laptop. So my guess would be your machine indeed doesn't have much RAM to begin with.

59

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Re: flythrough dropped sampling frames and strong GI flicker

« on: 2017-07-31, 12:47:47 »

A few things that could help:

1, Stopping rendering by noise threshold instead of fixed passes count in Corona can lead to uneven noise amount from frame to frame. On next frame, some shading-heavy object can pop up, which was not present in previous frame, and adaptivity will focus all samples on it, resulting in more passes spent than on this frame than on previous one, and therefore amount of noise varying and flickering from frame to frame

To remove this problem out of equation, pick random frame from the animation which you think is most representative of average scene complexity, let it run with your desired noise level limit. Once limit is up and it stops rendering, note the amount of passes, set that amount of passes as pass limit and disable noise limit by setting it to 0.

2, Disabling "Lock sampling pattern" checkbox can result to extreme flickering if you use denoiser. Here is an example from Blender Cycles:

It is not Corona, but the basic point is the same, varying noise pattern from frame to frame will increase flickering significantly

3, If your scene has somehow complex lighting, default UHDcache precision of 1 may not be enough, even if UHDcache is set to animation mode. You may want to increase it to somewhere from 2 up to 4.

60

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Corona Render Elements with custom filetype per element.

« on: 2017-07-28, 16:00:31 »

I just double checked it, and when it comes to black and white mask, 16bit EXR is only slightly less than twice as large as 100% quality JPG, which is a good trade for having mask in lossless format I think.

When saving RGB mask (Having 3 masks in single file), the EXR was only 150% the size of JPG.

So the only explanation could be you are using 32bit EXR. That may indeed be overkill for archviz. It really makes sense mostly when you use world position pass and/or motion vectors.