Messages

1

[Max] General Discussion / phoenix fd compatibility

« on: 2022-05-04, 17:04:38 »

For an upcoming project we need to have animated ocean splash and foam and thought of using phoenix fd.
Now i have seen corona renders of phoenix simulations, but i wanted to get some more info if there are any
drawbacks or restrictions using corona as a renderer in that regard. I imagine motion blur could be an issue for example?
Its also worth mentioning that we are still running corona 6.

2

Learner’s Corner / Re: Lack of realism

« on: 2021-11-25, 19:07:09 »

I am on team fix lighting first :).
While materials do need work, the most accurate model of a real material looks fake in a lighting situation that doesnt follow certain rules.
A change of camera angle and composition or storytelling will make for a better image, but do not help for a photorealistic render.
In the real world a porsche can park in front of a cheap motel and a photographer can take weird angles and framings of that. The photo he takes will look real anyways.

As in any simulation scale does matter. Lighting has scale too. the relationship in light intensity between different lightsources is of utmost importance.
To get a feel for that the best exercise one can do is to go out and take photos with a camera in full manual mode.

3

News / Re: Corona in 2022: new features, visuals, licensing, and more!

« on: 2021-11-18, 20:47:42 »

Thank you for that clarification! Keeping the conditions the same for the forseeable future of course is a great thing.

I somehow assumed something like any running subscription will continue as is until its date of renewal and after that be converted to the new model if we so wish.

But in the end everything is awesome...
as always with you guys...

4

News / Re: Corona in 2022: new features, visuals, licensing, and more!

« on: 2021-11-18, 16:47:49 »

I'd still like some further clarification to the licensing changes. Please correct me if any of the following statements is wrong.

So if I understand correctly a "standard" yearly corona subscription will always include one gui AND one Render license which is floating to whereever it is needed within the same network.
In other words there is no GUI only license that i need to subscribe to in addition to a render only license. right?

So if we are a Company of 10 Artists with a Renderfarm of 5 Computers we need 10 corona subsriptions and 5 render only licenses so that everyone can render simultaneously on their workstations as well as on the farm?

Furthermore it was stated that no running subscription will change as long as we keep it active. But I don't assume this continuation to be indefinite or is it?

5

Hardware / Re: Threadripper 2990WX

« on: 2018-08-13, 16:47:15 »

It was tested using one threadripper at factory settings. So I guess the 4 stands for the dies within.
You can read the corresponding article here (they submitted the corona bench afterwards).
https://www.computerbase.de/2018-08/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2990wx-2950x-test/

The result is really good and can compete even with the Xeon 8180.
But the question is how the CPU will perforn on memory intense scenes, since the memory intertface has severe problems.

6

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona 1.3 Benchmark

« on: 2018-08-06, 15:40:48 »

Every now and then, when new processors get released i consult the benchmark results page to see if updating our rendernodes with these new CPUs would be a good choice.

Now with the Benchmark fixed on corona core 1.3 I just wonder if the performance diffenrence between two systems still accurately transfers to the newest release of corona. And if the answer is no: will there be a corona benchmark using a newer render core in the future?

7

General CG Discussion / DR: why no renderengine does it like mental ray?

« on: 2018-03-19, 14:52:46 »

Right now noone in our company is using DR for production so I am asking just out of curiosity:

Back in the days when I used mental ray I learned to love that mentalraysat service.
The moment you hit render all assigned nodes began to work for you.
No scene loading just immediate rendering with immediate feedback on the host machine.

Now I wonder what they did so differrently and why no other renderengine (i know of) works like this.
Maybe someone could explain without going too much into details.

8

Gallery / Re: VERANTES FILM

« on: 2018-02-21, 17:56:10 »

Really nice work work there! The overall image quality is very good! There are only minor things I could criticise about that.
But of course we all know theres a budget and a deadline to hit, and nobody is perfect.

What i would criticise is the storytelling.
It is weird, that you are starting close then take wide shot then going close again.
The viewer has no feeling where he is or how he got there. You could improve that just with a new shot order.
Camera movements could have some more "intention". Its hard to describe and thats just my
personal view but i get the feeling that nice shots are shown just because they are nice. But imho "form follows function"
should be the goal.

Also, and thats subjective too, I think the film is too long. Of course, if the client explicitly asks for that, you are bound to it
but if possible, for the next project you should focus on less scenes and improve the quality even more.

Please don't be discouraged in any way. This film IS real good work. Just think of what you can change next time.

9

[Max] Bug Reporting / DOF affects Cinfo_networkRenderDebugging

« on: 2018-02-19, 14:13:37 »

As the title states The Dof is visible in the Cinfo_NRDB which can make it unusable, especially when rendering in tiles on many machines.

the attachment shows a C_info_NRDB and the corresponding zdepth

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Exclude A Visible Object from Corna Alpha Element

« on: 2017-04-06, 17:17:29 »

Maybe this is helpful?
If "always black/white" is not what you are looking for you could also use a masking element and uncheck "visible in masks" for the specific object.
What is the purpose for this alpha anyway? Maybe there is another way.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Dark exr render

« on: 2017-02-14, 18:07:48 »

So you are saying you load in an EXR file in fusion and when you view the loader node you instantly see the right gamma displayed?

Even in the video on how to use the world position pass in the corona channel a gamut node was used to set the output to srgb.
Alternatively you can use a color corrector node and increase the gamma.

Anyhow I dont think this is a corona problem.

I just made a short test on this and rendered some boxes with corona and scanline and saved the output as exr.
The gamma issue in fusion remains and is somehow not present in After effects.

12

[Max] I need help! / Re: understanding UVWCoords RE

« on: 2017-02-13, 18:26:59 »

Yes i am using the cgeometry_uvwcoords RE and i did it exactly like you did in the 2nd example with the plane and an extra uvw map modifier.
but i dont think that an uneven map id is the cause since i first tested it on map id channel 10 for i thought there would be no other thing in the scene with a 10.
When the image came out and since i wasnt the one to build the scene i thought ill try some other extreme value that definitely would not be on any other object (67).

In both cases the images were not as expected

13

[Max] I need help! / Re: Dark exr render

« on: 2017-02-13, 13:32:08 »

Actually i can not tell you why, but that this is quite normal and also not a problem since all the information is still in the image.
Some programs for example XNView and Fusion will show the image darker. My educated guess is that there is no gamma value saved with it or just interpreted as 1.0 but you can manually lift the gamma to 2.2 and it should look the same as in the framebuffer. Other Programs like After Effects and Premiere will automatically guess the correct gamma and it shows up the way you expect it to be.

14

[Max] I need help! / understanding UVWCoords RE

« on: 2017-02-13, 13:24:44 »

So iI am trying to replace the texture of a plane in an animation in Post using the UVW Renderelement for the first time.
I was assuming in just need to set the UVW Map channel on the desired Object to the same value as in the renderelement and everything else would not show.

In the end some geometry showed up black some was shaded the way i was expecting my desired object to be and some had a solid color.
Whats even more confusing is that the picture completely changes when using a different channel ID in the renderelements although in the
scene nothing changed (except my desired object that was again matching the channel ID in the RE setting)

Do I have to render my plane isolated to get what i want or did i mess up the setup?

15

[Max] Feature Requests / Render only masks: do not write RE that requires shading

« on: 2017-01-23, 11:36:03 »

Its more a safty measure than a feature but if it could be done that would be nice:

Imagine you render an animation. After its finished you find out a mask wasn't correctly setup,
so you quickly fix that in the scene. You are in a hurry and just check the render only masks checkbox and hit render.
5 minutes later you realize what you did but its too late and 100 frames of renderelemetns that require shading are overwritten with black images.

So if those renderelements would automatically be disabled when checking the "render only masks" feature or just would not be written even if activated
this could save some trouble.