Topics

1

[Max] I need help! / Question about Shadows on Background (Shadow Catcher)

« on: 2022-03-19, 12:00:10 »

I wonder if there is a way to match the darkness of the shadows of the 3D objects and the background image? (In the 3D software- not in post)

2

[Max] I need help! / Motion Blur on Objects with Changing Topology

« on: 2021-10-10, 10:52:43 »

Hi,

There is a warning about motion blur on objects with changing topology which is pretty much acceptable. The message also says   those objects will be excluded from motion blur calculations, which is what I want but it doesn't seem to work this way. Objects with changing topology are not excluded and create artifacts. I've had these artifacts on an object with animated Slice modifier and an animated Symmetry modifier. I need to turn off motion blur for these objects. Standard Max motion blur switches on the Object Properties dialog don't help. Should I completely disable moblur on geometry from Camera settings?

3

[C4D] General Discussion / Separate Displacements on Separate Layers of Layered Material

« on: 2021-09-30, 13:28:05 »

I need two displacement maps on two separate materials of a Corona layered material.

In the image I have a base material of a human body and two different layers of scar tissue applied by radial gradient masks. Diffuse maps seem to combine well with masks but I can't manage to assign a displacement map along with other maps.

Is there a limitation or an I missing something?

4

[Max] I need help! / Gradually Hiding (Fade Out) Objects with Certain Materials

« on: 2021-09-17, 12:30:08 »

I need to fade out a Shadow Catcher floor plane and I've tried lowering the visibility or blending the material with some transparent material. None of them seems to work. (Shadows disappear instantly) Is it not possible within 3ds Max with Corona Renderer?

5

[Max] Feature Requests / Rendering a Set of Scene Objects Individually with Shadows, Reflections etc.

« on: 2021-08-29, 10:10:22 »

This is an old feature I used to benefit a lot with Mental Ray, named as "Render Subset of Scene/Masking"

There are times we need to add people, plants or other objects after an animation rendering is completed. The Render Selected feature can be used to render objects separately with alpha, but this way you can't have shadows, reflections, GI effects of the object in relation to the existing surrounding objects. Adding Shadow Catcher Material to the rest of the objects can help render shadows but it requires extra work and poses a risk of saving the scene with Shadow Catcher Materials assigned, unless you save it with another name.

I'd be more than happy to have this feature at hand.

6

[Max] Bug Reporting / UHD Cache File Performance Degradation by Rendering Progression

« on: 2021-07-13, 07:33:21 »

While I use UHD Cache as secondary algorithm, with,

Animation (Flicker Free)
Try to Load +Append
Save to File

options,

rendering time is improved compared to when each frame is rendered from scratch.
The file size normally increases by time but the rendering time, first decreases gradually but increases as the rendering progresses without any noticaeble quality difference compared to the same frame rendered with a new UHD Cache file.
In a current scene I left the machine to render during the night and after about 200 frames, the rendering time was 2.09 at frame 2048.
I chose a new cache file and restarted. After the first frame is complete, rendering time is 1.07. Almost a minute of performance gain doubling the previous.
Normally rendering from the new UHD Cache file presents a very slight difference in overall image brightness but luckily it is not noticeable in my current scene and I moved on with the new cache file.

Previously it was reported that rendering would take about ten hours (which was stretching towards a clean 11-12 hours. It is now 6.30 hours left.

I believe there is no resource problem in the machine rendering this scene. With a totally fresh 2 TB's of SSD drive and a total of 128 GB's of RAM.

I would love to draw a performance/time graph by but I'm kind of busy right now. It seems to go down a soft slope.

ps. The Captcha window in the ticketing system has a problem in my browser (Chrome) its vertical size is limited to the Captcha area. You have to move a slider to see the blocks. It doesn't verify anyway.


Best regards.

7

[Max] I need help! / Urgent Help Needed on a Scene Crashing at Every Few Frames

« on: 2021-07-02, 08:20:48 »

I've been trying to find a way to render a 1750 frame medical animation which is crashing during render, sometimes after rendering 5 frames and sometimes not even a single frame. I have tried literally everything, and consumed all options.

Is it possible to send over a link to my Max 2022 archive scene file in private? It is about 60 mbytes.


Edit: I'm still trying to find a workaround. May be speaking early, too, but as a last resort, I turned of motion blur and depth of field on the Corona Camera object. DOF F-Stop parameter was animated. No crash yet after 4 frames. If it is related to an animated F-Stop parameter, what can be done as a workaround? DOF adds realism to medical scenes.

Thank you

8

[Max] I need help! / Help on Illuminating the Interior of a Blood Vessel

« on: 2021-04-13, 21:25:06 »

I'm working on a medical animation consisting of a camera travelling inside the human vessel, while several particles are passing by. Furthermore, this is a 360 degrees panoramic animation.

Wherever I put the light, there is always a harsh light explosion on the particles passing close by. Highlight compress helps to some extent but still not enough- plus the image looses contrast.
I need the Light exclude function to exclude the particles but illuminate only the vein walls from the center of the vein (which is possible), while with separate light objects, illuminate the blood particles from outside the vein, which is not possible.

I need a soft illumination without harsh hotspots. Any recommendations?

9

[Max] I need help! / Aligning a Target Reticle Plane Towards Pflow Particles in 360 Panorama

« on: 2021-04-10, 10:53:16 »

As you might have guessed, I need to align a target reticle plane one by one to a number of particles.

I moved the pivot of the reticle plane to the exact same position of my 360 degree panoramic camera. Assigned a look at controller to the plane with appropriate settings to look towards a SDeflector.

I moved the deflector one by one to each individual particle. I thought this would do the trick but particle positions change during rendering and I can't achieve targetting effect.

I know this may be due to several reasons related to the particle settings, but I did the alignment by moving the deflector into each particle, viewport displays %100 of particles.
I have attached the scene file, too.

Can you please help?

10

[Max] I need help! / What map is missing in this DBR session?

« on: 2021-03-26, 13:15:41 »

Hi,
I have a spare machine and thought it can contribute an animation render.
Communication seems ok but I get the following messages on slave node and master machine's Error Message(s) window.

I checked for the Map names but they don't correspond to any material maps in the scene.

I am rendering with Path Tracing+UHD cache, and enabled Load and Append UHD Map Option. Thought this could be the reason but tried even without GI. (And Cleared the UHD File name and saved the scene) - Still the same.

What is the problem here?

Edit: I tried to set the slave machine as master and  I 've got the errors on single machine rendering, too but this time Error Message(s) window presented options to select objects with missing maps. Missing Maps are from another renderer which is only installed on the first master machine.

This problem is solved but I still have a problem.

Two machines are not making the render faster. Instead two machines doubled the rendering time. There is this "collecting any extra data..." message which increases the rendering time with a long pause. What is that about?

11

[Max] I need help! / Face Mapping on Particles

« on: 2021-03-21, 23:53:05 »

Hi,

I'm trying to achive a spraying steam effect with a standard particle system. (I'm trying Parray) with a Radial Gradient Map assigned to the particle material's Opacity Slot. I need a single round gradient on each planar particle. (like in Standard Material/Face Map option)
I'm pretty sure I have done this previously, but I can't achieve the mapping. What am I missing?

edit: Pflow particle works as in the image but parray particle only displays correctly in the viewport- not the final render.

12

[Max] Feature Requests / Visibility Affecting All Material Attributes

« on: 2021-02-17, 10:24:42 »

Although it is possible to fade in and out objects in editing software, I often find 3d Studio Max's visibility option more efficient to hide and unhide objects as it is done in single step. The former option requires more planning and separate rendering passes and changes in seperate steps is often prone to making mistakes.

Coming to the point, visibility also works for Corona Renderer but not for the features accessed via the Volumetric and SSS rollout. If my material has volmetric scattering radius set to a value other than zero. 0 visibility doesn't mean invisible.

I'm pretty sure there might be many other material attributes that are not affected by visibility, because it like that for some Max material attributes.
For many projects I reduce the scatter radius with visibility at the same frames to achieve fade out effect, but as you can imagine, the more parameters involved in a single effect, the harder it is to control.

Currently I am re-rendering some portions of an animation, due to unintentionally setting the visibility keys with a linear tangent while at the same time setting the translucency key with an eased tangent.
I have to be cautious whenever I need a change with that.

13

[Max] I need help! / Corona Scatter Objects at the Edge Causing Blinking

« on: 2021-01-31, 10:42:45 »

I'm rendering a cell membrane like the one in the image. I'm using Corona Scatter, thanks to the creators of this renderer, Scatter is highly efficient and reliable.
You might guess my scatter objects --the blue balls with legs on them-- I also added animated noise to the scatter surface so that my cell membrane looks alive, always in slight motion. Enabled Temporal Consistency so that scattered copies move with the surface, but right at the edge of my scatter surface, some of the scattered objects disappear and re appear (Due to the noise movement for certain) Not only appear and disappear but as one disappears others appear due to the empty space - or so I think.

I must add one more detail, that my scene size might be causing trouble. This was a tiny portion of a very large eye object. The eye extents were about 240000 centimeters, and the tiniest atom object in the cell was 0.02 cms. This size difference is way large for 3dsmax to handle together. My tiny objects were indeed shaking during a straight motion.

That is why I have seperated the scenes. Brought the cell portion closer to the origin and deleted even the camera motion other than  the 50 frame close up and zoom out sequences, and the cell animation in between those.

I haven't rescaled the cell as the shaking movement of the straight moving objects are no longer noticable. Precision problem seems to be solved but this scatter problem.

Is is common for scatter objects to come and go arbitrarily at surface edges with noise modifier, or is this still related to the scene scale? As I look at the scattered copies far from the edges , I see not even a single one disappear. This is about the edge.
What do you recommend?

Edit 3: Limiting the noise to only to Z axis does not help. 



Any ideas?

14

[Max] I need help! / Nesting Multi-Sub Object Materials

« on: 2020-12-25, 11:02:26 »

Is there any possible way to blend (nest) multi-sub object materials with a second material to fade between each other?
Neither Blend nor Layered Material works as you know? Is it currently not possible?

15

[Max] I need help! / Fading Out Objects Help

« on: 2020-12-24, 16:26:33 »

I need to make objects with Corona Materials disappear at certain frames of the animation. Material has some Volumetric Scattering and translucency. 0 Invisibility turns the object into a reddish and still visible holo. Blend material is just the same, so is the 0 opacity. I have tried layered material as well. No way!

I haven't yet tried reducing all translucent parameters with opacity but I wish to have a single parameter control for easy fade in and out.

Is there any possible way in Corona?

edit: Decreasing Opacity seems to work when there is no volume scattering but a nice gradual fade effect is possible only if there is no scattering or the scattering distance increases while the opacity decreases.

another edit: Layered material actually works when the base material is set as the transparent and o layer material as the scatter material :D