Messages

1

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Huge slowdown when using corona distance

« on: 2021-08-31, 14:49:20 »

Was anything discovered regarding this? I'm having the exact same issue. Corona distance maps in a corona layered material results in a perfomance drop from around 20mil rays to 5-6mil.

Did some tests (see screenshots) and it's clearly the distance maps causing these huge drops in performance.

A big sinner is also having a refractive material (I'm projecting lakes on the terrain via a water material and distance map).

Sum-up:
no bitmap white base only : 31mil rays total
no bitmap white base layered with mix of 3 standard max maps (noise, cellular and falloff): 19mill
4k bitmap as base layered with mix of 3 standard max maps: 17mill
4k bitmap as base layered with 1 white base mat and 1 distance map: 15mill
4k bitmap as base layered with 1 white base mat 1 water material and 2 distance map: 7.7mill

For each extra (non refractive) material and distance map, performance seems to drop 2mill rays.

2

[Max] I need help! / Shadowcatcher not working with layered material?

« on: 2021-08-31, 11:31:44 »

Hi guys, I'm doing a birdseye view were I have an aerial photo mapped via the coronashadowcatcher material on the terrain.

I'm trying to use extruded splines and the coronadistance map to project new roads/paths onto the terrain, but it's not working correctly in the beauty pass with the shadowcatcher as the base material. If I use a normal corona material it works great (see white+black screenshot).

Is there something obvious I should enable/disable?

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona converter does nothing with sketchup import?

« on: 2021-08-18, 13:41:41 »

ah okay, sorry for the "double post". I tried searching first on "corona converter", but only found some topics where it either didn't open or something regarding vray4 needed to be installed :)

4

[Max] I need help! / Corona converter does nothing with sketchup import?

« on: 2021-08-18, 13:20:45 »

Hi guys

I've tried running the convert in both max 2020 and 2022 with corona 7 hotfix1. I have imported a sketchup file with textures. When i click convert scene it seems to run and the script lister states:

Successfully converted 0 / 121 maps.
Attempted to convert 0 lights.
Conversion finished.
Successfully converted 0 / 2064 materials.
Conversion finished.

Which I find kind of funny to "succesfully" convert "0" things :D

Anyway, no materials has been converted. When I colorpick an object material it's the standard max physical mat.

I do not have vray installed, but this shouldn't be needed when importing a sketchup file (no vray things in it) right?

5

General CG Discussion / Re: Models

« on: 2021-08-09, 12:41:37 »

Design Connected is the only site I know that consistently includes 'Previews' in their downloads, everywhere else is hit and miss so I always make sure I save the preview from the website when I do the download

Same thing here. If you save the preview from the website you downloaded the model from and just save it as the same name and location as the 3D model file, connecter can assign that preview file to the 3d model automatically if you go to the "Tools" menu and choose " Auto-assign previews".

6

General CG Discussion / Re: Object library ?

« on: 2021-08-09, 12:38:55 »

I usually go to https://3dsky.org/ when I need something specific. Think it's around 6€ pr model. Quality is usually pretty high.

7

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-07-07, 16:28:28 »

Hi, I'm not able to submit bug report via web. Captcha fails for some reason, so posting here:

I'm running a brand new install on a laptop. I've installed daily build 7 rc3 and now I just installed vray adv 510003 to convert a vray model (attached via private uploader) I need in my scene.

Bug happens both when I merge this model into my current scene, but also if I just open the model file directly and try from there.

Steps to reproduce (for me):

Open scene. Select entire model. Run corona converter on seletec objects. Open material editor (slate). Now bug happens. Keyboard stops working. Soon after max crashes without any error. I couldn't even find the .dmp file?

Can you reproduce this?

Hmm okay, so it's actually not that file. It's on every max scene I open now after having installed vray! I have had some similar bugs on my main workstation like this too some time ago and had to install pre v.5 of vray in order to have it be stable.

8

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-07-07, 16:07:23 »

Hi, I'm not able to submit bug report via web. Captcha fails for some reason, so posting here:

I'm running a brand new install on a laptop. I've installed daily build 7 rc3 and now I just installed vray adv 510003 to convert a vray model (attached via private uploader) I need in my scene.

Bug happens both when I merge this model into my current scene, but also if I just open the model file directly and try from there.

Steps to reproduce (for me):

Open scene. Select entire model. Run corona converter on seletec objects. Open material editor (slate). Now bug happens. Keyboard stops working. Soon after max crashes without any error. I couldn't even find the .dmp file?

Can you reproduce this?

9

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Convert vray to corona without vray installed

« on: 2021-06-28, 08:47:38 »

I still find it annoying I have to install vray to convert materials to corona. Would it be possible for the corona installer to provide the needed files for this now it's all the same company? Max UI is bloated enough as is, I don't need or want to see extra vray features on right click menus, modifiers etc. :)

10

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-30, 11:33:29 »

*just to ping you*

Georgi, is there a way to increase sub sampling of an plane with the oceantex map as vector displacement in Corona? In phoenix sim, you can do it under the rendering tab, but for one of my shots, I have to use just a normal plane and I'm getting some "glitches" in the ocean with suddenly a long wave appearing for 1 frame and then it goes away again. Happens every now and again. So I'm thinking it might be due to some setting in the oceantex as rest of animation is fine.

11

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-29, 20:00:16 »

ah sorry, yes:

Render is corona 6.0 hotfix 1 (latest stable), max 2020.
I have tried to render just a single still, a sequence, having the time slider set to frame 200, tried with setting the scene time frame to start from 200, motion blur not enabled. I'm 99% sure it's a vray thing again as I tried to load the same scene in max 2021. Same result, but when I uninstalled vray5 on max 2021 it renders without that crash.

After Easter I will try to setup scenes and reproduce these crashes if I have time. We are reinstalling everything from scratch in those days. My deadline is tomorrow, so I just wanted to hear if I maybe had missed a setting. For now I'm uploading to the 3rd party cloud farm we are using and I'm hoping it won't crash there (as it in some way works on max 2021 without vray5 so I just think something is corrupt on my end). Generally speaking having vray5 installed (not using it, but just having it installed as I thought it was needed for phoenix), has given a lot of weird bugs and crashes. Some I have posted last week via your helpdesk.

12

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-29, 18:00:09 »

I'm afraid that matching the waves in the simulator to the displacement outside is still not possible. It is in our to do list though, so will add your vote for it as well.

As for the different materials - what should happen at the border of the simulator, how would the two shaders blend?

hmm good question, I'm sure you have some amazing devs who can think of something :) Maybe along the lines of your cascade function or if one could maybe link two oceantex together, it could "know" where the sim grid ended, read the waveobject data/cache from that and somehow do a blend of those two? I have no idea what is possible.

I "solved" it by just rendering from a bit lower fixed angle, having the sim only output a cap mesh and the I placed a large plane behind the sim (towards the horizon) with it's own oceantex displacement that I tweaked to match the look of the stormy waves in the foreground.

I have simulated 600frames and I'm at 300gigs now, I probably only need the last 300-400frames, so I tried to remove frame cache 1-199 from the sim folder so I wouldn't have to upload it all to the farm, but if I do that, max crashes on render start. Should I or can I do it differently?

13

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-29, 09:41:56 »

I managed to get close to the result i wanted after a lot of trial and error (and a 12h sim). Man, I need more drive space for this stuff! :)

Georgi, is it possible to drive the phoenix ocean independently of the sim "grid" itself? Right now I have great "stormy waves" simulated in the grid in the foreground, but the surrounding ocean in the background looks rather calm. I tried making a specific oceantex map to drive the Waveobject and a different one for the displacement put under the "render" tab in the sim, but that last one will still affect the simmed stormy waves and mess that up. 

Would be great if I could have a different layered material for the background water (displacement driven by its own oceantex + foam with the foamtex) and then just a normal water shader for the simmed waves in foreground with foam driven by the sim splashes etc.

14

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-26, 15:20:01 »

Thanks a lot for the help, unfortunately we can't reproduce the crash on our side and the dump shows that the crash is somewhere outside the phoenix code.

It might be a hardware issue (a few of our users have reported crashes that turned out to be faulty RAM). If possible can you run a memory test on your machine so we can rule this out?

I tried with the windows built in memtest this morning (you could have warned me it would take many hours haha), but I worked on a different computer meanwhile. Interesting enough, I installed latest stable vray5 on that (the one released yesterday), and phoenix. Also on max2020. Simulator on that computer runs much better (it's an intel xeon). Only thing is, that if I opened the material editor, max would crash. It would happen even on an empty scene. This is first time it happens on that PC like that, so I suspected it was vray or phoenix. I uninstalled vray and voila, no crash anymore and phoenix would still run great - I thought I had to have vray5 installed for phoenix to work?

Anyway, last time I checked the memtest on the other computer it had reached 98% with no error found, so I switched back to my other PC (using same monitor). When I switched back later, the memtest screen was just black. I gave it a couple of hours, but still just black screen. So I rebooted it and tried to find the memtest log. I can only see a log of me starting the memtest, but no log of the result? Should I use a different method or does this in itself indicate mem failure on the last 2% of the test? (see screenshot)

15

General CG Discussion / Re: Phoenix wave splash against wall (huge scale)

« on: 2021-03-25, 18:01:35 »

ah, what a shame. Ok, I'll give memtest a try and report back asap.