Messages

1

General CG Discussion / Re: Realistic Outdoor

« on: 2025-03-12, 16:46:23 »

Those parallaxx shaders are pretty amazing. One note though, unless you are rendering your shot in low light or even at night, you will not be able to see inside the windows.

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Hardware / Re: New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-12, 16:40:23 »

Wait? You know we can't WAIT! ha. I know, but I like to wonder if things live up to the hype, not that Apple over-hypes anything (wink, wink). Seems that if anyone is in the market for one of these, and in particular coming from a much older machine, that the M4 Max would be the best bang for the buck. The M3 Ultra is two Max chips connected together, but their performance does not simply double because there are two CPUs. Back in the G5 days, two CPUs meant twice the speed.

I keep seeing that the M3 Ultra Studio can have an obscene amount of unified RAM and cores and large language model A.i. applications would benefit. I'm sure the extra cores would help 3D CPU rendering, but at such a crazy extra cost, not for me.

Solitaire will run at 240 fps so that will be nice too.

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: ***SOLVED*** License Problem

« on: 2025-03-12, 16:26:50 »

Support was able to clear my issues up. Many thanks.

4

[C4D] I need help! / Re: License Problem

« on: 2025-03-10, 18:46:27 »

12 hours and nothing. Somehow I am now able to render, but on my older system that has been rendering at 25% speed if I'm lucky. I have a faster computer sitting idle because I can't get the license to work.

5

[C4D] I need help! / Re: NO LICENCE AVAILABLE!

« on: 2025-03-10, 13:51:24 »

I also submitted a ticket, but did not see the 3-4 day delay. Unacceptable with a license problem.

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[C4D] I need help! / ***SOLVED*** License Problem

« on: 2025-03-10, 13:46:58 »

Not related to the other user's post, but I'm sure I'm just as frustrated. I have a ticket Request #354956 in the system, but it's 7 hours with no reply and I'm getting desperate. This online system is infuriating to say the least. In my late night attempts to get Corona running on a new system, I tried the borrow license thing. That's was also frustrating. All the help says to do these steps, download the .crt file (or whatever it's called). I was never able to find where to get it. When you're done with the borrow thing, just click the release button. I was never able to find that button. ARRRRRGGH!

I'm going to have to call my client soon

7

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Happy Birthday Corona!

« on: 2025-03-07, 23:27:07 »

I also wanted to put in a request for Tom to fire up one or more of those guitars sitting behind you in all your videos. Perhaps a birthday tune of some sort?
Studded outfit? Big hair? Women swooning perhaps?

8

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Chaos Scans in Corona for C4D

« on: 2025-03-07, 23:23:16 »

Plus, Corona added a Scanned Material preset quite some time ago. The main difference is that you needed to download them from the Chaos web site. When you do import one, they are saved to your computer in a folder called "Chaos Scanned Materials", but you can move them anywhere and load them from a remote drive like I have set up.

You can do basic appearance changes to the material once you have imported it, such as the color and reflectivity for examples. Those materials also are designed to work with a proper UVW setup. I suck at that, so many times I switch to Cube and scale as needed. Works for me.

Tom what do you mean by Premium?

9

Hardware / Re: New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-07, 23:11:12 »

Whoops, didn't realize there was a hardware section.

I have read and seen more about these new Macs. Looking more and more like I would be better off with the cheaper M4 Max. Apparently, the M3 Ultra is said to be a great chip to get if you are heavily into A.i. setups or maybe even crypto mining. The only other thing I've seen is everyone keeps saying the Geekbench tests are flawed in that they don't do well above 16 cores, so take the results with a grain or two of salt.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Moving water surface of a pool

« on: 2025-03-07, 19:16:10 »

I searched this phrase "pool ripples displacement map" and saw a bunch of what you're looking for from various stock image sites. If nothing else, it will give you a visual to what you need to make if you go that route. Also normal maps too.

One mistake I see people make though, it showing a pool with no people in it, but has lots of ripples. Maybe it its very windy you might get some, but usually pools are glassy smooth without swimmers.

11

Hardware / New Mac Studios Coming

« on: 2025-03-07, 19:08:50 »

I might be in the market for a new Mac. I'm in deep in the Apple ecosystem, so let's not go there. ha.

Anyway, there are two new Mac Studios coming out next week. Since I do video editing, motion graphics, lots of Photoshop work and of course, Corona rendering, seems like the M3 Ultra SHOULD be the better choice. No benchmarks yet between the two to see if the the speed difference is worth the extra cost.

I found a Geekbench test that shows the M4 Max 16-core multicore score at around 25,913, while the M3 Ultra 32-core at 27,749 multicore. Not a massive difference to be honest. If I save 2 min. on a render that would be nice, but maybe not $2,000 USD nice. I'd have to have 20 render per day to save any significant time. ha.

The theory is that they are saving the M4 Ultra or maybe even a new M5 chip for the Mac Pro tower so they are trying to get more difference between the Studio and the insane cost of the tower. I used to live for getting the towers, but don't really need it so much anymore. Right now, the Studio outperforms it. Question is, how much better is the slightly older M3 vs. the newer M4 in real-world rendering tasks?

If anyone finds a real-world comparison out there, feel free to post it here.

12

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Multiplied alpha

« on: 2025-03-03, 17:41:22 »

The only other thing that comes to mind, and it's a C4D thing, is if you're using a Sky Object and saving with alpha channel. Put a Corona Compositing Tag on the Sky and UNcheck Seen by Camera.

13

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Guidance

« on: 2025-03-03, 07:33:06 »

Try and think like a photographer would, I'm hoping you might have some photography knowledge which comes in very handy in 3D rendering. Look at the attached image. Imaging building something like that in C4D. The softbox on the right is your Key light (main) and the light opposite it the Fill light (usually much dimmer) so you can control the shadows a bit and light up the dark side of your objects. If your objects will have a matte finish like in your example, then something like this might suffice. Might even be able to add a Sky Object set to Simple to add some ambient soft light.

If your objects will have glossy materials, then you will need to consider WHAT is around your objects to add interest in your reflection. It might be better to build white walls all around and on top too. You could also add a Sky Object here and use an HDR image to add some light. Just find one that is a studio envrionment

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: scene blocked

« on: 2025-02-24, 16:19:28 »

Oh great. There are many more knowledgeable people around here, at least for Corona, but I have been using C4D for a long time and have probably made every mistake possible. Yeah, you can bake simulations to a file which is loaded on render so eliminating all that calculation. You can also scrub the timeline and see dynamics in mostly real-time. Looking forward to seeing the end result.

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: scene blocked

« on: 2025-02-20, 06:35:54 »

First of all, Corona does not use the GPU to render your scene, so that can't be the issue.

Is there a possibility of anything in your scene that has a Cache feature to store any simulation (hair?) or other things you're doing? This will still take time, but you'll be able to adjust lighting and materials without the other stuff slowing it down.

Also, if you suspect you may have some corruption in your scene, I would delete HALF of all objects and maybe delete UNUSED MATERIALS. Save as a new named file. Render and see what happens. If it renders as expected, then your corruption is in the half you deleted. If it does not render as expected, then the issue may be in the remaining half. At that point, delete half of the remaining half and repeat the tests. Similar to what you said, but much faster since you eliminate large chunks at a time.


P.S. I love that sample render you posted. Very cool vibe to it.