Messages

1

Hardware / old threadrippers and win11 upgrade?

« on: Yesterday at 14:03:00 »

We have a couple of 3990x workstations at the office, and IT wants us to change them as they do not meet requirements to update to win11. Primarily due to not supporting TPM 2.0 protocol (what ever that is).

I googled a bit and found a way to enable this in the BIOS. So in theory, there should no longer be an issue in "upgrading" to win 11. I'd rather stay with win 10, but due to company policy we have to update one way or the other.

Now to my question: Has anyone of you guys been in a similar situation and are now running win11 without issues on older threadripper CPUs?

2

Hardware / Re: how much difference does the ram speed do?

« on: 2025-02-06, 09:05:25 »

how are you enjoying your new build all in all? And what was your old one? I'm thinking about a new workstation with the 9950x too :)

3

General CG Discussion / Re: Hosting VR tours

« on: 2024-12-02, 15:03:24 »

You can host virtual tours via Chaos Cloud Collaboration, which is in the current RCs and dailies. See https://docs.chaos.com/display/VCLOUD/Virtual+Tours

You'll need to manually set up the hotspots once the images are uploaded (a future update will have automatic hotspot generation), but that's easy enough. Also if your aspect ratio is 2:1 (twice as wide as tall) they will automatically be set to panorama mode. You can upload manually (any Corona version), or from the VFB2 (Corona 12 Update 1 - note not HF 1, but Update 1 :) ).

This is super cool Tom, but I just tried this out really crude and wanted to test what happened if I send the link to a colleague. He was still prompted to login to a Chaos account? Is it not possible to share the tour to people without them having to login?

4

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Rendering Black in Animation

« on: 2024-11-26, 10:28:36 »

thanks Aram, I think a script like that would be great and also a good supplement to the helpdesk article you have on the issue. The current script offered on helpdesk does "fix" the problem, but in my case it changed a lot of other materials that had no issue, so the render was far different than original render and couldn't be used.

Agree on it to mostly being user error, the problem is when we import a model from a 3rd party (like the tram model that had that material in this case). I don't manually go through all materials on imported models (unless they render wrongly), and in this case the issue only happened when camera was below the model in Z axis. So probably not something people have issues with every day - but very likely when doing metro/subway animations ;)

5

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Rendering Black in Animation

« on: 2024-11-20, 09:11:58 »

Writing again for better visibility:

This issue mostly happens when there is a object with volumetrics enabled material above the camera, which is not enclosed (has borders) - in theory this is not supported, as volumetric materials should have an enclosed volume, to be calculated based on.
Corona uses material based medium resolving, and this causes to misinterpret the medium. Possible workaround may be to turn off material based medium resolving in development/experimental settings, correct the mesh or disable volumetric settings in the material.

Please check if this was the case, again, for you and confirm. Feel free to share if the workarounds work as well.

I'm pretty sure the issue was with the glass material on the windows of the tram model. Windows were just 1 plane (no thickness or maybe some xform/scale issue). While I appreciate the explanation of the technicalities, I think for a user perspective, it would be amazing if some warning of this was implemented, in Corona, to notify the user if a material or object had this issue when rendering started.

Kind of like the warning we get if a normal map is using wrong settings. Maybe it was possible for Corona to point to object/material name of the object that has the issue, so we can much faster troubleshoot and edit it ourselves. Unless that means it has to run a check on all objects in the scene to check for if it has a thickness, if not, check if a material with any Media Options is enabled. That might take a while on big scenes no? Then maybe it could be a script in the corona converter. OR maybe I'm overreacting as not that many people have had this issue? :)

6

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Rendering Black in Animation

« on: 2024-11-14, 13:17:24 »

I tried the script available here: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4528592571537-Corona-renders-black-screen-3ds-Max

While it fixes the black frame issue, sadly it also changes the look of a lot of other materials and reflections and to a degree that you can clearly see the difference. I made a ticket as I have an urgent deadline on this animation in a few hours. Hope for quick help there.

**i was lucky to find the culprit, so all good. It was a tram model located directly above the camera (moving in a metro under ground). If the tram model is put on a hidden layer, it renders that frame fine once again. I do think this must be reported as a bug though and a fix be offered other than the script that changes the look of more than just the problematic material/model. Hope to have time to provide you with scene and a bug report at some point.**

7

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Rendering Black in Animation

« on: 2024-11-14, 10:37:31 »

The issue has been resolved in the ticket.

Little specific update here:

The issue is most probably not because of the boolean/bad geometry, but that the mentioned object had volumetric scattering (CoronLegacyMtl with volume absorption).
As the object was not an enclosed mesh, Corona interpreted it as an infinite medium and rendered black.

The solution is either to enclose the mesh, either disable the volumetric absorption (it was a solid non refractive object IIRC). I would suggest doing both :)

I'm having this issue too at 1 specific frame out of 2500. Camera doesn't pass through anything, but renders black in everything except normals render element. If I do a material override, it renders fine. How can I check my scene for that troubled object/material? Any script? I don't dare convert the whole scene in case I mess something else up.

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Node to rotate a texture?

« on: 2024-11-11, 16:07:05 »

Let me try and give an example:

We have an archviz scene: A new office building on a busy street.

Two images are needed of this building. One street view, and one from the courtyard behind the building. Client wants weather to be the same for consistency.

I start with the street view. I set up the scene with a corona bitmap and load and HDRI as primary light source, sky background and to get some reflection in the glass of the facade. I rotate the bitmap on the bitmap properties to get the effect I want.

Now, it's not always that you can get the light you want, the reflections in the glass of the sky AND the look of the directly visible sky you want. Sure you can change the directly visible sky in post etc. but thats not the point.

In order to achive control of the above, I would have to copy the HDRI bitmap node 2 times so I have a total of 3 of the same HDRI bitmap nodes. Now I can control environment rotation and output of each of them. One for environment lighting, one for reflection override and one for direct visibility override.

Now I want to reuse the same HDRI for camera angle 2 (the courtyard shot). However the HDRI used for the street scene doesn't give optimal light or might look wrong in reflections/direct visibility. If I just go in and rotate the HDRI directly, I lose the setup for the street view. Hence I would have to copy those 3 HDRI bitmap nodes again so I can adjust them as I want for the new camera angle. Ending up in a total of 6 copies of the same 1gig .exr file, just because I can't rotate it with nodes that I can hook into environtment/refl, refrac and direct override. Like in the way you could reuse a brick texture plugged in to different color correction nodes to reuse same file for different look.

What we want is to be able to do the above, but with only the same 1 HDRI bitmap node connected to any number of individual UV rotation nodes.

It keeps the max scene tidier, easier to control, less clutter/confusion/renaming in material editor and smaller max file size (i think).

Hope this helps :)

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Node to rotate a texture?

« on: 2024-11-08, 10:54:38 »

Well it can be, just leave all values at 0 (including blending and uncheck randomize tile) and put in a fixed interval in rotation like 45-45. Or am I missing something here?

It does, but I use Pulze scene manager for this. It works great, but I still find it a hassle and silly having to load in the same HDRI multiple times just to be able to rotate it on a per camera basis.

I've just posted it as a feature request btw.

10

[Max] I need help! / Re: Node to rotate a texture?

« on: 2024-11-08, 10:43:13 »

I would love for the uv randomizer node to be able to work on HDRI/envir bitmaps. I have the exact same issue as OP. Having to load multiple bitmap nodes of the same HDRI for different camera angles or reflection overrides feels like a waste. Just being able to drop a rotation node inbetween would be amazing. Just like we can do with color correction etc and reuse the same HDRI/bitmap.

If uv randomizer node had an "environment" checkbox so we could just do a fixed rotation, would be lovely :)

11

Hardware / Re: Setup ryzen 9 7950x

« on: 2024-10-22, 14:30:34 »

I would get more ram, minimum 96gb. Especially if you do exterior shots with lots of vegetation etc. You'll run out of ram fast also when you consider if you have a couple of psd files open or an extra instance of 3ds max, chrome etc.

12

[Max] I need help! / Converting imported revit light emitter

« on: 2024-10-21, 16:19:41 »

So I've imported a huge fbx, the lights came in as a "Free Rectangle". With some testing in regards to intensity and making the shadows to CoronaShadows, it works okay. But I miss the corona light controls, so I tried to convert the lights. The converter runs and in listener window it says: "Attempted to convert 313 lights. Conversion finished.". But they were not converted.

Is this a bug or just how it is? max 2024, corona 12 hotfix 1.

Any other way to do this? Ideally I'd like to avoid having to use a script that replaces an instance with something else etc as there are so many lights and they are already nicely instanced for different areas in the model.

13

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: CoronaPattern playground!

« on: 2024-09-09, 13:54:32 »

Is there a way to alternate "flip" the coronapattern on an object? I.e. the way floorgenerator plugin works where it can flip boards randomly. So every now and then, my panel would flip on x or y axis to give more randomization?

I found the rotate function and set increments, but it doesn't give the result i'm after. I'm trying to do something like these facade panels (attached). Could probably get the effect I want by dividing the object and flip the UV mapping in some areas, but it would be very tedious and loose the flexibility coronapattern offers.

Also, I can't seem to get the "auto-gen caps" function to do anything (example attached).

And I'm having issues with seems. The object it's "scattered on" is fully welded in the corner, but I still get this result (attached)

Hi,

Generating caps works just like as if you used slice, and then cap holes modifier. Maybe it is capping, but you have shell modifier and it caps just the shell/thickness part. If you have the patter as a volume (rather than as a sheet of metal), it should work.

For flow/integrity of the pattern - as probably you have different faces at the intersection, the "cut" at the corner is expected, unless you play around with the height and offset of pattern to make it invisible. Another option will be to make a little chamfer at the corner (to smooth the transition) and check the UVs of the chamfered part.

Hope this helps.

So it's recommended that the object we use pattern on, to have a thickness and not just be a single plane?

Good tip with chamfering the corner, will give that a go.

14

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: CoronaPattern playground!

« on: 2024-09-06, 08:57:49 »

Is there a way to alternate "flip" the coronapattern on an object? I.e. the way floorgenerator plugin works where it can flip boards randomly. So every now and then, my panel would flip on x or y axis to give more randomization?

I found the rotate function and set increments, but it doesn't give the result i'm after. I'm trying to do something like these facade panels (attached). Could probably get the effect I want by dividing the object and flip the UV mapping in some areas, but it would be very tedious and loose the flexibility coronapattern offers.

Also, I can't seem to get the "auto-gen caps" function to do anything (example attached).

And I'm having issues with seems. The object it's "scattered on" is fully welded in the corner, but I still get this result (attached)

15

General CG Discussion / Re: Need help in 3dsmax modelling

« on: 2024-09-02, 10:50:55 »

maybe you could devide the table surfaces into "strips" and then use this addon to floorgenerator and generate different angles to the "boards"?
https://hqdetails.com/shop/floorgen-tools