Messages

1

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Caustics playground!

« on: 2019-04-24, 18:44:31 »

Hi guys,

just experimenting with the new caustics solver.

Same glass material is working in an empty scene but not in the scene file where it's from.

I would expect some caustics because of the strong sunlight. Am I wrong or doing it wrong?

Thanks for your feedback in advance.

Belle

Is the other scene by any chance lit by sunny HDRI instead of CoronaSun?

2

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: High quality image filtering playground!

« on: 2019-04-11, 14:35:08 »

And you also should not render so clean images. Sure it's good to test how the new image filter contributes to final quality image, but it will be harder for human eye to spot the differences. I'd do one more test, again with the same amount of passes, but lower amount of them (let's say a half) so you can spot the differences better.

From the current test, it appears that the HQ image filter mainly helps to resolve very small highlights/glints.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: High quality image filtering playground!

« on: 2019-04-06, 10:23:33 »

Supposedly the new filtering can change the adaptive noise level, so if you have used noise level to stop your rendering, then that could explain such a big difference. Other than that, I think you've rendered your images way too clean to spot a difference. The best way to compare results is to set a time limit, not a noise limit or pass limit. You want to see how different the images look after the exact same duration of rendering.

4

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 3

« on: 2018-08-27, 19:57:43 »

AI denoiser is not meant for final frame denoising. Corona denoiser will always be much better at that. AI denoiser is low quality but fast denoiser mean for interactive rendering. I am not very happy about the way it was introduced in daily builds, because it can be used to denoise also non interactive rendering. Because of that, there will be some people nagging about the idea of it being removed and available only as IR denoiser, but at the same time, if it would not be removed and available also as final frame denoiser, then it will create huge amount of confusion because many newbies will think it's better denoiser than Corona and incorrectly use it.

5

General CG Discussion / Re: !Attention! - Virus in 3ds Max Stocks models!! Read article!!!

« on: 2018-06-29, 12:45:49 »

Does anyone else also have the problem of a super slow scene after using Prune Scene to remove the virus?
It takes up to 5mins to open a file that used to be infected. Same with the Corona Interactve - it takes much longer to start now.

You could try this: https://www.sinisoftware.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12&Itemid=195

Generally, what you describe happens if there's a high number of certain items 3ds Max often tends to create for no reason, such as retimers.

6

Chaos Corona for Blender / Re: Blender 2.80 or Corona 2.0?

« on: 2018-06-28, 10:21:41 »

2.8 definitely

2.8 will attract a lot more users to Blender, and likely, many of them will be looking for something better than Cycles, at least for achviz. Therefore it makes a lot more sense :)

By the way thank you very much for all the effort put into the exporter! :)

7

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: The most wanted feature?

« on: 2018-06-23, 07:46:45 »

PBR will only change workflow, not really output quality. There is nothing that *looks* better with PBR, it just makes good looking things a bit easier to set up if your input is PBR set of maps. But talking about just a raw material, anything an average PBR material, such as Disney PBR, can do, can be replicated using CoronaMTL.

If we are talking about Principled material, then it's really just a workflow difference, not quality difference. Of course, I am not implying we should not have it. I am just saying that it won't make anything look magically better.

8

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 2

« on: 2018-06-12, 18:04:57 »

is there a way to get those corona toolbar actions as "keyboard scripts" so i can assign hotkeys to them?

Hi, AFAIK this is not possible right now. Will record it as a feature request.

It's been reported as a request already 3 months ago, sitting on mantis since then :)

https://corona-renderer.com/bugs/view.php?id=2998

9

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 2

« on: 2018-05-25, 10:37:52 »

I'm using daily build May15, the render time is 2 times higher than 1.7, does anyone have same issue?

I do, see my test on page 35.

And also please see my request to send the scene for internal performance testing on page 36 ;)

I've tried to archive my file, but I am getting IO errors on a number of cproxy objects. When I temporarily move the offending file (thinking that I can manually add it after the process), it trips up on another cproxy file. I tried this about 6 times before I stopped, because I was almost forgetting where they all went back to, and I have a couple hundred cproxy objects in my scene.

Have you experienced any issues with the archive feature not working because of cproxy objects? I guess I could do a test with just one of the offending objects in an empty scene and see what happens.

That's most likely 3ds Max issue. File->Save As->Archive feature will fail every single time resulting size of the archived zip file exceeds 2 gigabytes, since it uses some ancient zip from DOS days (And it will display confusing error message making it appear as if the error is due to some IO issue. I think the error message was something like "Nothing to do!"). mb Resource Collector script is a good replacement in this case.

10

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 2

« on: 2018-05-13, 21:57:59 »

Some tips on making density mapped bit faster:

1, Lower GI/AA - this seems to help a lot. You can go as low as 2, just not go to 1. There's some bug which causes weirdness when GI/AA is at 1.

2, Enable "single bounce only" whenever possible. This is very important. Multibounce just completely kills performance.

3, If you use "single bounce only", then increase Light Samples Multiplier to 4 or even 6. Since "single bounce only" causes volume to scatter only direct light, not indirect, then LSM is now the main driver of speed/quality balance for noise levels in volumes.

4, Step size actually needs to be increased to speed things up, not decreased. Larger values will make rendering faster, lower values will make rendering slower. Good rule of thumb is to start with really large value. For example if you have 10 meter wide cloud, then start with step size of 1 meter. If you see some raymarching artifacts (sort of sharp slices throughout the volume), start slowly decreasing step size until they are not visible anymore.

11

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 2

« on: 2018-05-08, 16:47:23 »

nice addition of the 3d volume ...but its super slow on the material editor also ....when changing to the "inside" mode, could the preview change to a simpler or 2D representation of the maps?? ..

This is probably an issue with scale of raymarching steps. In the old material editor, 3ds Max allows you to set size of the shaderball. If the raymarching step size is too small, it will to extreme amount of raymarching steps and will redraw material editor super slowly. Something should be done about that indeed.

12

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily builds version 2

« on: 2018-04-26, 19:32:38 »

Added an option to use 3D-mapped textures for absorption, scattering and emission to CoronaVolumeMtl

You guys must be somehow peaking into my task list for my short film. I was just starting to contemplate in which other software to produce good looking clouds, and then wondering how to get them reflected in my surfaces in my Corona render. Now, I might be able to get the look I want all in Corona.

Question: are we able to mix between 3D mapped textures based on the internal distance to a polygon? For example, I want the outer part of my cloud to be wispy, but the deeper you go inside the cloud, it becomes homogeneous.

That's actually how the example on that picture was made. There's an invisible plane at the top of the cloud box (made non renderable) which is picked in a CoronaDistance, so that it creates 3D gradient from the top to the bottom of the box. Then, Noise 3D texture goes into the distant far slot of the CoronaDistance map, and black color goes into the near color slot. Result of these maps is the compressed/clamped using output map to create that result. It renders quite slowly though, as 3ds Max procedurals are super slow in 3D space.

13

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Re: Emit light toggle for CoronaMaterials

« on: 2018-01-05, 16:50:28 »

Actually, what I do to simulate V-Ray's checkbox is to use RaySwitch map instead of RaySwitchMTL. That way it's even easier to set up. Just plug CoronaRaySwitch map into your material's self illumination slot, and set all colors to the color you want your self illumination to be, but set GI color to black :) If it needs to be animated, then use for example CoronaColor map plugged into all the slots except GI slot, so that you don't have to animate all these 3 color swatches individually.

14

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Please release a camera shift hotfix for 1.7

« on: 2017-12-11, 23:49:03 »

I am also a bit unhappy about fix not making it into a hotfix, since CoronaCamera is one of major 1.7 features, and at the same time, tilt/shift is so frequently used for ArchViz work. So the fact it does not work correctly pretty much removes CoronaCamera from 1.7 new features list for many ArchViz users as it can not be relied on yet. And its current state persisting until Corona 2 release will also probably make some users as skeptical about CoronaCamera the same way they currently are about 3ds Max Physical Camera.

Unfortunately, even the old Camera Correction modifier doesn't work with CoronaCamera.

15

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Ir very slow wiht CoronaCamera and Standard Camera

« on: 2017-12-05, 13:56:43 »

Yes, I am also observing that in 1.7, Corona's interactivity is worst it has ever been. However I am getting bad results also in perspective view, not just with cameras.