Topics

1

Hardware / 9950x3d in a "silent" build? Case choices

« on: 2025-03-17, 12:35:05 »

I want to replace my old xeon machine at home with a 9950x or 9950x3d (the price difference doesn't bother me, I just want the fastest one and the 3x version seems to perform better in corona render benchmarks I've found + single core speeds seem to be same too.

I found a reddit guy who managed to run 192gb ram with the 9950x and a msi tomahawk x870 board stable at good speed (6000mhz). So that's what I think to copy.

Now, usually I'd just stick with my good old noctua NH-DH15 cooler, but after seeing some tests and reviews (including the new G2 noctua cooler), I'm blown away that coolers 1/3rd of the Noctua price is actually performing almost just as nice.

Now, I have most of the hardware lined up on my list, but the case is a tough one. Ideally I just want a simple black box, no fancy rgb etc. I couldn't care less. But I want it to have some sound dampening qualities and maybe have space for a new big GPU sometime in the future.

Many of the "silent" cases will however restrict airflow and there seems to be a consensus online that it's better to go with a case focused on airflow and then get good fans that can run slower.

I don't want to OC or anything, just have a fast stable rig with as little noise as possible. Will reuse my 4060ti gpu.

Any recommendations?

2

[Max] I need help! / .rcs pointcloud and corona?

« on: 2025-03-13, 16:41:25 »

Gotten some .rcs pointclouds for a project. Opens nicely in max via Create->pointcloud and then loading the files. But it doesn't seem like Corona can render this type of object? Tried some searching in the forum and saw it was added as a feature request in 2017, but I guess still not possible?

Have anyone found a work around?

3

Hardware / old threadrippers and win11 upgrade?

« on: 2025-02-17, 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?

4

[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.

5

[Max] I need help! / animating mat ID on path deform?

« on: 2024-05-21, 12:55:44 »

so, I've got a spline on to which I've put a box with path deform. So the spline is kind of drawn/animated as the animation plays.
What I want to do is have the spline change material on different sections of the spline. i.e. from a full stroke line to a dashed line and then back to full stroke again etc. Normally with a sweep modifier it's easy with just changing mat ID on sections of the spline, but this doesn't work with path deform object. And due to reasons, I have to stick with the path deform.

So is there a way to control mat ID timing on the path deform object on specific parts of the spline?

I tried keyframing a corona select mat, but the issue with that is, it will change the "already drawn" part of the spline/path deform object for the remainder of the animation.

6

[Max] I need help! / script help and where to find documentation?

« on: 2024-04-04, 11:12:39 »

Hi, i just installed max 2024 and some scripts aren't working anymore. I wanted to try and use chatgpt to help me create scripts, but it struggles with the coronabitmap and physmaterial. Has something changed in regards to maxscript in corona v11 and where can I find documentation for what the different things are called in maxscript?

I have tried enabling macro recorder and running stuff in max that should do things with coronabitmaps (like the converter), but sadly it doesn't show anything. Also tried google and chaos doc here, but it's not as complete as I had hoped: https://docs.chaos.com/display/CRMAX/MAXScript

Wanted a script like the image plane maker / plane plus scripts, but with some tweaks and having it work in 2024 (none of them does for me, but worked fine in 2023). So I tried this, but it gives errors regarding the coronabitmap and coronaphys material:

-- Function to create a plane from a bitmap's dimensions
fn createPlaneFromBitmap bitmap_file =
(
    -- Load the bitmap to get its dimensions
    local theBitmap = openBitmap bitmap_file

    -- Create a new plane with exact dimensions as the bitmap
    local newPlane = Plane width:theBitmap.width length:theBitmap.height name:(getFilenameFile bitmap_file) position:[0,0,0] isSelected:true

    -- Segmentation of the plane - You may comment out or delete these lines if you don't need segments
    newPlane.widthsegs = 1  -- No segmentation based on your requirement
    newPlane.lengthsegs = 1

    -- Setup Corona Physical Material with the bitmap as a diffuse map
    local coronaPhysicalMtl = CoronaPhysicalMtl()
    local correBitmap = CoronaBitmap texmap:theBitmap.filename realWorldMapSize:true
    coronaPhysicalMtl.diffusemap = correBitmap

    -- Close the bitmap as we no longer need it open
    close theBitmap

    -- Assign material to the plane
    newPlane.material = coronaPhysicalMtl

    -- Select only the newly created plane
    select newPlane

    -- Zoom Extents Selected in active viewport
    actionMan.executeAction 0 "40021"

    newPlane -- return the plane object
)

-- Function to prompt the user to select a bitmap file and create a plane
fn loadBitmapAndCreatePlane =
(
    local bitmapFilePath = getOpenFileName caption:"Load Bitmap File" types:"Image Files|*.bmp;*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.png;*.tif;*.tiff;*.gif|All Files|*.*||"

    if bitmapFilePath != undefined do
    (
        createPlaneFromBitmap bitmapFilePath
    )
)

-- Run the function to load bitmap and create plane
loadBitmapAndCreatePlane()

7

[Max] Bug Reporting / object replacer bug

« on: 2024-04-03, 16:18:29 »

Hi

I just noticed a "bug" with the object replacer function that came in corona 11. I'm using max 2024.1 on win10.

Basically it will not replace the selected objects if you have the selected objects isolated (without also having the replacer objects included in the viewport when going in to isolate). It will instead replace all selected items with blank objects.

8

[Max] Feature Requests / tile map on decals?

« on: 2024-03-20, 16:24:57 »

Hi

Would love a feature on a decal equal to when I apply a UVW Xform modifier to an object. Or just a simple "tile" button.

Now I have to do it per map in the material editor and it doesn't always behave nicely + is cumbersome :)

9

[Max] I need help! / BUG? reflection gone on certain objects in X amount of frames?

« on: 2023-11-28, 14:05:49 »

Hi

I'm having an issue where the reflection suddenly is completely black on certain objects in an animation i'm doing. Corona 10 hotfix2, 3ds max 2023. This is the first time I see it happen and it's been around 5000 frames rendered so far. I've checked if the object, object materials or lights had any accidental animated settings in them for this frame number, but all looks good.

Restarted the PC. Tried rendering in perspective mode instead of camera. Nothing changes the fact that for exactly these 4 frames, reflection is missing on certain objects!

Have tried deleting corona lights and making new ones. Still bug in these 4 frames no matter where in the scene I click "render". Be it with the corona camera or just in perspective

Ran sini forensic and deleted anim layers. No effect.

Am I missing something?

10

[Max] General Discussion / using VDB clouds as environment fog? parsing+camera clipping issues

« on: 2022-10-11, 11:05:58 »

Hi guys

I'm currently experimenting with corona vol objects (cloud vdb's scaled up many times) to get to a specific mood/look with great effect, but scene performance and scene parsing quickly becomes horrible (even on a threadripper 3990X). While increasing step size of the volumes and overall tweaking help on render performance, I still get 30-50sec of scene parsing per frame. Is it still only the saving of 4k/uhd cache that can speed this up for the final animation?

Also, is there anything in the works that would allow cameras to be placed in or pass through vol objects? It's very limiting doing animations and not have the camera touch the vol objects as it will then just disappear + i still see some "boxing/edges" of volumes overlapping (daily v9 RC2).

11

[Max] General Discussion / Archive project + corona proxies not always working?

« on: 2022-09-21, 10:00:05 »

Hi guys

Anyone else having issues when archiving projects and the scene has corona proxies?

I've tried both the Sini tools archive function and with 3ds max native one. More often than not, it will either completely skip some of the corona proxies in the scene or it will keep the position and just leave an empty corona proxy that we then have to relink manually - not always easy because of the auto naming when making a proxy and we don't rename then ;)

This happens to us in different projects, different proxies (max 2020, max 2022, max 2023, corona 8 and corona 9 dailies). Mostly it's proxies that are linked locally on the workstation.

12

General CG Discussion / omniverse and USD usecase for arch viz?

« on: 2022-04-06, 12:49:34 »

I was wondering if anyone has had a go at Nvidia's omniverse and the USD format in a production setup?

Been trying to read up on things and watching their stuff on youtube, but I'm still not sure what it would benefint us. I can see the USD format and use of omniverse to maybe be relevant cross software suites. I.e. people sitting with a revit model, could share and visualize the exact same images as people with 3ds max, sketchup, rhino etc. Maybe also all could use the same asset library? Is this the gist of it or am I missing something? Else I can't see the benefit of it vs corona or any other renderer really.

13

[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?

14

[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?

15

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

« on: 2021-03-24, 16:34:46 »

Hi guys

I'm doing a very large scale project of an artificial island in a stormy sea. There will be several fly over animations and so far I'm doing okay with using a trial of phoenix fd and the ocean tex shader in corona. But I can't post on their forum regarding help since it's only a trial. Hence I post here hoping there's some experts who can give me a few pointers :) This is the first time I try Phoenix, so it's a bit overwhelming.

Basically when I get close to the island in the animation I want waves crashing against the concrete walls. Waves out here are huge and the walls around the island range from 20-30m high. Whole island is around 700m x 700m. So creating one big phoenix sim is not really possible (or is it?).

I finally found an okay setup after many trials (and crashes), but then the sim is "only" a 100x300x30m container. That's fine for 1/8th of the walls (island is octagon shape). So my thinking is, if it's possible to copy this sim container as an instance all around the island walls and have them maybe offset a little in frames so they blend?

Or how would you approach this so they blend okay together and also with the surrounding sea? I tried with "pure ocean" turned on and adaptive grid size, but there still seems to be an obvious "cut-off".

Bonus question: I'm doing the wave sim in a separate instance of max, is there any thing to be aware of in regards to xref'ing that into the main scene?