Corona Renderer 4 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog

[maru]

*You can always get the newest build at the usual location [link]*

[Ryuu]

• New & Improved
  • Preserving materials from overriding now works also for multi/sub materials.
  • Added PhoenixFDOceanTex and PhoenixFDGridTex to the list of maps compatible with Corona
  • CoronaBitmap will now automatically open file dialog when it is plugged into any bitmap slot in render settings
  • TextShader no longer glows in GI and it is also independent on the colormapping (used at the start of the rendering)
  • The new light solver is now on by default
  • Improved autosave:
    • Limitation of the number of kept files now works also when render stamps are used in autosave file name.
    • The file counter is resumed from its last value even after restarting Corona.
    • In case of final render autosave the file name suffix is now "end_<counter>" instead of "end<counter>".
  • Added checkbox enabling/disabling denoised image blending to VFB. It is enabled by default (if denoising is turned on).
  • “Export” and “Export+Render” buttons in render settings now remember the last used export path
  • LightSelect element can be now set to contain all the unassigned light sources
  • Corona color picker now supports alpha value (where applicable)
• Fixed
  • Corona now warns that Color Correct map is not supported in standalone. Falloff is no longer swapping submaterials in standalone.
  • Fixed incorrect shading result of screen-mapped OSL maps
  • Fixed VFB spinners not behaving correctly when dragging the mouse across the top/bottom of the monitor.
  • Fixed occasional flickering of CoronaVolumeGrid when using velocity-based motion mblur
  • More than one light mix element can be displayed in vfb (all light mix elements use the same light mix settings)
  • Fixed bug, where volumetric shaders gave wrong result on the first render, but worked on the second render
  • Fixed different result of region render saved to file, compared to VFB content
  • Fixed 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier not rendered with "render selected"
  • Fixed DR issue where some assets were not updated after they have been modified
  • Fixed blurring & sharpening producing different result in VFB and in saved images
  • If the motion blur is disabled, IR is no longer restarted when shutter speed of CoronaCamera changes
  • If the depth of field is disabled, IR is no longer restarted when F-stop of CoronaCamera changes

[Ryuu]

• CoronaCamera - changing shutter representation (i.e. switching between speed/angle/duration) when motion blur is disabled no longer restarts IR
• Changing global f-stop now restarts IR if DOF is enabled
• Changing global shutter speed no longer causes scene reparsing in IR when motion blur is disabled

[Ryuu]

• Alpha channel is no longer lost when saving LightMix and/or light select render elements in CIE.
• Bloom & Glare progress bar added to VFB
• Added option to devel/experimental rollout to disable CoronaBitmap auto-reloads when the loaded file is modified on disk. You may consider disabling this feature when the UI performance is degraded as a result of having high amount of CoronaBitmap maps or when the files are stored on slow/networked storage. This is just a temporary measure and will be removed once the CoronaBitmap auto-reload feature is optimized.
• Added option to save/load .conf files in CoronaCamera, same as in VFB
• Fixed tint in CoronaCamera being applied differently from VFB

[Ryuu]

• Added denoising checkbox to CIE
• Fixed memory leak when using hair
• Added object/focus picker to the VFB
  • Available through toggling the new “Pick” mode button in the VFB
  • Left click in VFB select the clicked object (supports the same +SHIFT, +ALT and +CTRL selection modifiers as 3ds Max)
  • Right click launches popup menu allowing to set current camera focus distance to the clicked point (available only for perspective cameras)
  • There is currently a limitation that you cannot pick objects/focus in render regions
  • The current UI is just temporary and we’ll be reworking it in following builds
• Slightly reworked the docked VFB UI
  • Left click now selects the clicked object (again with the usual +SHIFT, … modifiers)
  • The menu button replaced with “Switch viewport” button allowing to replace the docked VFB with any other 3ds Max viewport view
  • Right click anywhere in VFB launches popup menu with options previously available through the menu button (copy to clipboard, ...)
  • Right click on rendered object also allows to set camera focus distance through the popup menu
• Optimized cancel time (up to 80% faster)
• Fixed export to .scn asking about overwriting render output files
• Fixed lightmix with environment lightselect in IR (it was increasing its brightness with each restart)
• Fixed installer not running on older versions of Windows

[Ryuu]

• Added hue shift to CoronaColorCorrect map
• CoronaLights are now drawn in viewport with axis-aligned CoolLines(TM), satisfying the OCD of customers
• Fixed various bugs where different media containers overlap (e.g. multiple VDB grids, scattered geometry containing medium, ...) - example and another
• Added support for motion blur for Ornatrix hair

[Ryuu]

• Fixed some cases of render element data being incorrectly mixed together when using resume from file and DR
• Fixed crashes/freezes at the end of render when bloom & glare is enabled

[Ryuu]

• A bit more readable messages and tooltips related to the legacy switch for new media and refraction behavior
• Added Intel Open Image Denoise to Corona - comparison with NVIDIA denoiser single pass, 50 passes

[Ryuu]

• Added Intel AI denoiser support to CIE - the scene needs to be rendered with the Intel AI denoiser in the first place for this to work
• Fixed crash in IR when using Corona Distance map and some other maps combined with specific 3ds Max maps
• Fixed estimated remaining time being displayed as large negative number at the beginning of render or denoising

[Ryuu]

• Fixed animated IFL texture not updating in IR when frame is changed
• Fixed crash if material editor is rendering preview with animated IFL texture when frame is changed

[Ryuu]

• Fixed the “learn more” link in the media/refraction warning message when a pre-v4 scene is opened leading to wrong page
• Fixed crash when using CoronaFractal in interactive rendering

[Ryuu]

• Reworked VFB render region UI
  • The region button is now sticky. This is a first step in transforming VFB to using separate function modes. VFB stays in this mode until you deselect the region button or select a different mode (e.g. pick)
  • Regions are now editable only in the region mode and in this mode the regions are drawn more thick
  • When multiple smoothed region boundaries (the green boxes) overlap, only the outline is drawn now
  • Regions are now drawn half-transparent outside of the region edit mode
• Changed the way installer installs components.
  • All components that do not require additional downloads (i.e. everything except for Material Library and NVIDIA denoiser) are now always reinstalled even if you're installing the version that is already installed.
  • Material Library and NVIDIA denoiser are still downloaded & reinstalled only if the installed version is different from the one that would be downloaded or if some of their files are missing on the hard drive.
• Other changes
  • Added CoronaSelect map and CoronaSelectMtl material, allowing to quickly iterate through different variations of the scene by select which map/material renders from a list using a radio button
  • Added support for 3ds Max 2020
  • Corona Bitmap automatically reloads modified texture without the need to constantly check it on hard drive
  • Added spinners for color temperature and green-magenta tint to CoronaColorCorrect map
  • Switched scale maps in Corona Scatter to just one map but interpreted in RGB. Its red component affects scale for X axis, green component for Y axis, and blue component for Z axis. Introduced 2 new modes how the map can be interpreted. Legacy scenes get adjusted automatically, whenever possible - https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000055675
  • LightSelect elements now have denoising enabled by default (though this is applied only when the denoising is enabled in general)
  • Added more robust inside detection for Corona distance texmap - this mode is now the default
• Bugfixes
  • Fixed crash of Ornatrix hair with motion blur
  • Fixed dialog for creating animated CProxy incorrectly remembering the selected option
  • Fixed 3ds Max crash when using the CoronaUvwRandomizer and the V-Ray renderer.
  • Fixed freezes of CFractal in some situations
  • Fixed inconsistent render quality/performance of CFractal
  • Render stamp help dialog now can be closed with “X”
  • Fixed some rare crashes in displacement with incorrect geometry

[Ryuu]

• Fixed crash when scene is reset or closed while bloom & glare is being recomputed

[Ryuu]

• Added high quality image sample filtering, which clears the noise much faster, also resulting in better anti-aliasing, motion blur and depth of field.
  • This mode is enabled by default for new scenes. For older scenes it is disabled so that they render the same, but you can enable it in the system tab of render settings.
  • There are two limitations at the moment though: the new mode does not work correctly with AI denoisers (both NVIDIA and Intel) and the calculated noise level is sometimes bit higher than with the new filter disabled even when the actual noise in the image is much lower.
  • https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000056115
  • Examples:
    • general
    • lights
    • depth of field

[Ryuu]

• Added support for fast rendering of caustics
  • all you need for reflective caustics is to enable the caustics rendering in the performance tab of render settings
  • for refractive caustics you also need to enable the refractive caustics in the material
  • https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/DHcjnQ
  • https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000056738-how-to-render-caustics-with-the-new-caustics-solver-
• Fixed occasional NaNs in skin shader
• Fixed CoronaDistanceMap swapping the inside and outside of mirrored meshes
• Optimized CoronaDistanceMap - mesh is reparsed only when rendering (outside of Material Editor). This makes viewport manipulation of related meshes MUCH faster.
• Optimized opening render settings dialog - more noticeable in newer versions of 3ds Max
• Fixed VFB stop & start buttons blinking when IR is restarted

[sevecek]

• DR server no longer complains about backburner not being installed for 3ds Max 2019+ (these versions don’t need backburner installed for DR)
• Images stored in render history are now always displayed with their original postprocessing parameters instead of using the current VFB parameters, so the render history can be used to compare different versions of tone mapping, denoising etc.
• CoronaColorCorrect map:
  
  • Added an option to use controls of different map, allowing to use the same color correction on multiple input maps.
  • Fixed histogram in the curve editor not updating when input map is added or removed
  • Histogram controls in curve editor are now disabled when no input map is connected
• When resizing the VFB by double clicking the rendered image, the maximum size of the VFB is now limited by the resolution of the monitor which is currently displaying the VFB
• Fixed wrongly evaluated view-dependent maps when plugged into slots in Corona Scatter
• Added a checkbox for turning on memory optimizations of geometry (at a cost of rendering perfomance) to performance rollout; it was previously in development/experimental rollout.

[Ryuu]

• Fixed saturation -1 not resulting in grayscale color (both in VFB and ColorCorrectTex)
• Fixed error when loading LightMix CONF files

[Ryuu]

Build 2019-05-09 (sorry, it took us a bit longer than expected to test this build)

• Fixes and improvements of the fast caustics solver
  
  • Fixed issue when caustics disappear after adding new light sources
  • Fixed issue when caustics disappear after adding large geometry
  • Caustics are now influenced by bump mapping
  • Caustics now work with rayswitch material
• Added fisheye projection type to CoronaCamera

[Ryuu]

• Added option to use multiple environment maps and suns at the same time
  
  • Multiple suns in a single scene are now supported
  • In Scene tab of render settings, you can now choose advanced setup mode of scene environment to set multiple environment maps
  • Environment direct visibility, reflections and refractions overrides were moved to the new advanced setup mode
  • For each LightSelect element you can choose which of the multiple environment maps (if any) will be included
  • The automatic "Setup LightMix" button creates a separate LightSelect element for each sun and for each environment map
• Corona Proxy has lower consumption of memory when keep in RAM is disabled
  
  • Disabling “keep in RAM” option also disables full mesh visualization
• Lowered memory usage during displacement computation (especially when input geometry has high polycount)

[Ryuu]

• New & improved:
  • CoronaCamera fisheye projection in orthographic and stereographic modes now limits FOV angle to 180 and 359 degrees respectively since higher angles are ignored by these modes.
  • Added new spinner allowing to set upscaling factor of image rendered during IR. It is located in the System settings window and might be useful to tweak when using a High-DPI display.
  • Improved refresh rate when running IR in Corona VFB
  • The “Show VFB” button in render settings now opens the Corona VFB with correct resolution and render regions even before first render was started
• Bugfixes:
  • Fixed the button opening environment setup dialog in LightSelect element rollout not being greyed out when disabled.
  • Fixed some rare cases of crash when modifying CoronaCamera FOV or focal length
  • Fixed instances scattered by Corona Scatter not to pop out when rendering them with DR/Backburner while Temporal consistency is enabled.
  • Fixed NANs occuring when using environment which is mostly black (but not completely)
  • Fixed NaNs and crashes when scrubbing timeline while IR is running with the new light solver enabled
  • Fixed Wirebox display mode in Corona Scatter not to be slow and stuck Max's UI anymore.
  • Fixed crash when resolution is changed while doing A/B comparison in VFB with IR running

[Ryuu]

• Fixed bad VCM/bidir renderer memory usage, general slowness, when used in scenes with refraction/media
• Added green-magenta tint to VFB and CoronaCamera
• Fixed denoising being run for other render engines than progressive even though it should be disabled
• Fixed a bug causing VFB to move to the second monitor when double-clicked
• Installer icon reverted back to the classic Corona icon
• Fixed high quality denoiser blurring hair primitives with non-hair material assigned too much
• Fixed random crashes with 3ds Max native lights
• Fixed reaching target noise level taking much longer time when high quality denoising is enabled
• Fixed crash when editing shape map with CoronaTriplanar while running IR

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 1

• Changed the way CProxy visualization method interacts with the "keep in memory" checkbox - All the visualization methods are now always available and when the method is set to full mesh, the "keep in memory" checkbox is disabled because we need the proxy data in memory to display full mesh
• Fixed caustics solver causing fireflies when glossiness of reflection or refraction is lower than 1
• Fixed CoronaDistance map not working in displace modifier
• Environment overrides have been moved from environment dialog back to render settings.
• Added checkboxes enabling generation of caustics to Sun, Light, LightMtl and Environment (this one is located in the caustics rollout in the render settings)
• Fixed some some scenes rendering much slower when both adaptivity and high quality filtering were enabled at the same time
• Fixed high quality filtering sometimes producing NaNs (producing completely black VFB with bloom & glare enabled)
• High quality filtering is now auto-disabled in IR when the IR preview denoiser is enabled
• Added checkbox to VFB history tab for switching between using the current or the stored postprocessing settings
• Updated Intel AI denoiser to version 0.9.0
  • Up to 38% lower memory consumption
  • The denoiser now displays its progress and can be cancelled
  • Few bugfixes

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 2

• Fixed caustics not working with subsurface scattering
• Fixed Bloom and Glare progress bar disappearing after closing and reopening the VFB
• Fixed slow closing of curve dialog in CoronaColorCorrect map
• Fixed crash when using distance map with displace modifier on 3ds Max 2016 and older
• Fixed crash when using the “Show VFB” button after stopping IR render in docked VFB
• Small UI tweaks

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 3

• Fixed crash when editing render regions shortly after render is (re)started
• Fixed Corona Scatter to support maps using Object XYZ mapping.
• Fixed CoronaTriplanar “rotation” being labeled as “offset” in additional parameters in slate material editor
• In Corona Scatter the plus button for Instanced objects can now add CVolumeGrid objects.

[Ryuu]

Release Candidate 4

• VFB history tab - renamed the checkbox switching between current and stored VFB settings being used for comparison to make its functionality more clear
• Fixed VFB “Pick” button not being grayed out when it’s disabled
• Fixed issue, where Volume Grid scattered by Corona Scatter was duplicated when running IR
• Default number of maps in multiple environment maps mode changed to 2
• Added warning when a LightSelect element is set to include non-existing environment map.
• Fixed being able to create a new region while VFB regions are disabled, which resulted in deleting all existing regions
• Added "close button" to environment multimap dialog
• Changed the way environment light select elements are named using the “Setup LightMix” button so that they are usable as filenames when saving the scene
• Minor performance optimizations
• When the VFB history item name is clicked, the whole name text is preselected so that you can easily overwrite it
• Fixed Corona 4 uninstaller not correctly uninstalling some files from previous Corona 3 installation
• Improved performance of Corona Scatter when using Density map and Max limit of instances. Scattering in older scenes is not affected unless the Legacy checkbox gets disabled.
• Fixed Corona Scatter when using maps (foremost animated maps) not to slow down viewport.
• Fixed crash when a network adapter with no address exists in the system
• Fixed crash with newer versions of FumeFX

[maru]

Corona Renderer 4 for 3ds Max has been released: https://corona-renderer.com/blog/corona-renderer-4-for-3ds-max-released/
Closing this!