Topics

1

[Max] General Discussion / Reflection color in PhysicalMtl?

« on: 2024-02-19, 00:53:13 »

Hi,

Since Corona switched from LegacyMtl to PhysicalMtl, I've learned to use PhysicalMtl and I'm generally happy with it, especially because it adds features that used to require the use of LayeredMtl for example. However, what I regret is the impossibility, as far as I know, to modify the color of a material's reflection because this option has simply disappeared.

Sometimes I want to assign a particular color to the reflection slot, which is possible with LegacyMtl but not with PhysicalMtl anymore. I know it's not a PBR approach, but from an artistic point of view, it's sometimes desirable.

Is there any way to alter the reflection color of a PhysicaMtl without altering the diffuse color as well?

Thanks,

2

[Max] General Discussion / Camera Film width setting

« on: 2024-02-16, 01:52:38 »

Hi,

In the CoronaCamera settings, there's one called 'Film width [mm]'. By default, it is set to 36mm, which makes sense since it's the standard width value of old film rolls in analog photography. However, what significance does this have in a digital camera like the Corona camera?

More generally, what's the purpose of this setting, which seems to have a similar influence to the focal length?

Why keep this setting in the CoronaCamera UI if it's redundant?

And if it has a purpose and you use it, in what situations do you use it?

Many thanks,

3

General CG Discussion / Upscaling animation frames with AI?

« on: 2023-12-18, 12:14:27 »

Hi,

I have to produce a 1080p animation with 3ds Max/Corona.

Has anyone tried to render frames in a lower resolution and then upscale them using an AI software like Topaz Gigapixel for instance?

Thanks for your insight guys,

4

[Max] I need help! / Hoirizon line not showing up

« on: 2023-09-12, 13:46:43 »

Hi,

I've setup a very simple scene with one object and one Corona camera.
When I click "Horizon line" it doesn't show up in the viewport. Can you help?

Thanks,

5

[Max] Resolved Bugs / CPU powers drops

« on: 2023-09-02, 08:35:27 »

Hi,

I have an issue on a very simple scene made of a few walls and a ceiling, timber floor and a coffee table.
It is lit by a Corona Sky environment map. Every objects are assigned a simple plain grey CoronaPhysicalMtl.

When I hit render (production renderer), everything works as expected: the cpu runs at 100%.

But as soon as I apply the 'White Paint' material to an object, the cpu usage drops to around 40%.

If I get of this material and I apply back the grey neutral material, the cpu usage hits 100% again.

The same problem arises if I use the IR.

I can send you the scene if needed (3ds Max 2023.3.3, Corona 10 hotfix 1)


Thanks for the help.

6

[Max] I need help! / Motion Blur in animations

« on: 2023-08-27, 08:42:37 »

Hi,

I'm rendering a short, simple animation: a camera slowly moving over a kitchen benchtop, showing some pieces of food and the cooktop.
The issue is, eventhough the movement of the camera is pretty slow, how to make sure the overall movement in the resulting video will be smooth, and not jerky? In other words how to implement a soft, nice motion blur?

Of course I could enable motion blur in the camera settings, but I don't want to do that in order to keep rendering times as short as possible.
I guess there must be a way to do that in post-production? I use After Effects.

It's worth mentioning there's not any moving objects in my scene, nor moving lights. The only moving thing is the camera.

What's your usual workflow?


Thanks for your advice.

7

[Max] General Discussion / TX image format?

« on: 2023-08-16, 03:04:57 »

Hi,

I recently used a Chaos Cosmos asset in one of my scene and, after I put the material in the SME, I saw all textures used in the proxy model were .TX files.

I never used this format so far and I was wondering what are the advantages of using them?
Also, I tried to open such images in PS and it doesn't work so I was wondering how to create them?

I stumbled upon these articles:
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-convert-bitmap-textures-to-TX-format-for-rendering-with-Arnold-in-3ds-Max.html

and

https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_for_3ds_max_arnold_3dsmax_html#Textures-ManuallyGenerate.txTextures

which tend to let me think .TX files are more a Arnold thing, so why are they being used by my Cosmos proxy model?

Sorry for my newbie question, but it's a bit confusing.

Thanks in advance for your help guys,

8

[Max] Bug Reporting / Corona Light Material not showing up on Corona Lister

« on: 2023-07-26, 14:15:47 »

Hi,

I noticed that CoronaLightMtl aren't listed in Corona Lister when they are part of a CoronaLayeredMtl.
It would be great to have a fix for this so that all CoronaLightMtl of the scene appear in the list.

Thanks

9

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Reordering of the Lister tabs?

« on: 2023-07-14, 04:56:48 »

Hi,

I love the new lister of Corona 10, but it'd be nice to be able to reorder its tabs, as most of the time I deal with the 'Lights' tab but the first accessible one is the 'Cameras' one, so it adds up one click to my workflow to access this particular tab (it may sound picky, but it'd definitely help).

Thanks!

10

[Max] Bug Reporting / Environment lighting discrepancy between Corona 9 and 10

« on: 2023-07-03, 08:57:57 »

Hi,

I rendered the same scene with Corona 9 and Corona 10 and saw a massive difference in the render in term of lighting.
The scene is lit by an HDRI and there's a real difference in the rendering of the shadows: they are sharp in Corona 9, and blurred in Corona 10. So basically all the lighting rendering changed from Corona 9 to Corona 10. It's as if there was a Gamma correction applied to the map in Corona 10.

Here are some crop renders showing you the issue, and the HDRI settings:

11

[Max] I need help! / How to optimize my scene to render faster?

« on: 2023-06-28, 08:39:47 »

Hi,

I render a simple scene, a small bathroom, which is basically a box with only one tiny window.
The lighting is made of a Corona Sun + Sky, and I added a rectangular Corona light in front of the window to help light coming in.

The render takes so long to clean the noise, which is understandable as I guess Corona has hard times cleaning all these rays bouncing in the room: there is very little direct illumination involved here, mostly indirect illumination.

Materials are pretty straight forward: basic stone tiles on the wall and the ground, with an average reflection.

It takes around 250 passes and 17 hours to render in 6000 x 5800 pixels on my Threadripper 3990X cpu with a noise threshold of 3%. It is really long: most images render in around 1 to 2 hours even in 6K.

I was wondering what can I do to speed up the rendering?

All advice and comments are welcome, thanks.

12

[Max] Bug Reporting / n internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure.

« on: 2023-05-29, 03:52:09 »

Hi,

I was rendering an image with Corona 9 Hotfix 1, 3ds Max 2023.3.3 Security Fix - 25.0 - 25.3.3.6012, when I noticed the following lines in Corona Error Message(s) window:

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

13

[Max] General Discussion / 3ds Max stuck at startup when copying ChaosGroup ConversionScripts

« on: 2023-04-30, 14:31:32 »

Hi,

 

Today I'm unable to launch 3ds Max 2023: it starts as usual, and then in the bottom of the UI I have the following message: copy /Y "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2023\SceneConverter\ConversionScripts\ChaosGroup_To_*.ms" "C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\Scene Converter\ConversionScripts"

And it freezes.

 

I tried to delete the ENU located in C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2023 - 64bit but it doesn't work. A new ENU folder is created instead.

 

Thanks for your help I need my machine up and running asap.

14

[Max] I need help! / Issue with UV tiling scanned material

« on: 2023-04-09, 08:35:06 »

Hi,

I applied a Corona scanned material to a car paint, then I hit the "Adjust UV tiling to an object", selected the car body and then I receive the following message: "uv and v directions are not orthogonal (the measured angle is 82.3745193 degrees) so the scaling may not be precise. Would you like to continue?"

If I say Yes I can see Coordinates > Tiling values are now populated with non zero values, which seems good at first sight, but looking at the rendering I see the material is still wrong:  material flakes are huge and look unrealistic.
And then if I change U, V tiling values it doesn't change anything in the rendering. So I can't seem to find a way of having this scanned car paint material working fine.

Can you help ?

Thanks a lot guys,

15

[Max] I need help! / Toon shader?

« on: 2023-04-08, 08:02:59 »

Hi everyone,

I'd like to render an architectural scene with a simple plain grey material + a toon effect, just like the toon effect I used in VRay which was located in the Envrionment and Effects dialog box if I'm not wrong.

Of course I can use a CoronaWire map in the diffuse map but it highlights all the edges and I want the effect to be visible only on the outline of the objects.

How can I reproduce such an effect with Corona?

Thank you in advance for your help,