Messages

16

[Max] I need help! / Re: EXR Output with Network Rendering

« on: 2025-04-17, 15:43:38 »

Their are related ideas on the Ideas Portal (https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ ) where one solution could be writing our own save routines (mostly things to do with EXR or network rendering, and applies under C4D as much as Max), but you could start an explicit one that is for the writing of our save routines and removing reliance on the DCC. This is something on my mind already, perhaps for 14 later this year, so user votes could help indicate how many would like to see such a thing which could play into the prioritization of what is quite a bit of work. Thanks!

17

About this Forum / Re: Is the forum slower this days?

« on: 2025-04-15, 00:58:08 »

The web team uncovered a bottleneck someplace in a database, so that now has maintenance and a resource increase scheduled sometime this week. I'll let you know when done (though it should be pretty self obvious, if it does what it is meant to do, lol!)

18

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Cryptomatte + Nuke, what's the ideal workflow?

« on: 2025-04-14, 19:48:50 »

TY! Understood on that, it  would indeed be very tedious. I just wanted to check that I wasn't missing something else in the way the files are set up on the inside.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: ForestPack Masking

« on: 2025-04-14, 18:57:54 »

https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ - add, or vote. TY! :)

20

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Cryptomatte + Nuke, what's the ideal workflow?

« on: 2025-04-14, 18:55:48 »

If I remember right, this is because we save through the DCC save routines, and are limited in what we can do there by what the DCC exposes and allows. CXR is the only one we control entirely by ourselves :) V-Ray totally re-wrote the save routines to use their own for all file formats - and we're considering the same thing for a variety of reasons. Previously though it was a "don't re-invent the wheel, and focus on developing things that if we don't develop them, the engine won't be able to do it, so let's just use the existing save routines in the DCCs".

BTW, I personally haven't seen the difference between opening an EXR from V-Ray and a renamed-to-EXR from Corona (because CXR is compliant to EXR format, just it has extra metadata we need), but this was just in Photoshop using IO-EXR. What is the difference if loaded into Nuke after renaming?

21

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Problems Rendering Animation!

« on: 2025-04-14, 13:31:23 »

Yep, exactly what Marcin meant by "We would like to at least detect this situation and inform the user. We have an internal task for this." :) If the rendering effects aren't avoidable, a warning or some information would be nice, and it's on our list.

22

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Problems Rendering Animation!

« on: 2025-04-12, 01:12:17 »

As the article explains, the camera doesn't need to go into the bit that you think is the model - the problem is if it is not closed, then it "extends infinitely" as far as Corona is concerned, and if it passes into that zone then Corona believes the camera is inside the volume. So anything with any sort of volume effect needs to be closed geometry, otherwise when the camera "passes in front of a hole" no matter how far away it is from the model, the camera will be treated as being inside the volume.

EDIT, PS - think of it this way, in order to calculate how far through a surface a ray has gone to see just how much it is affected by absorption and scattering, it must both intersect the material for the first time, AND exit the material, so that there is an "actual distance traveled through the volume". Otherwise the distance it has traveled is infinite, it never left the volume. So geometrically, there must be a face on both sides, the geometry must be closed. This is true whenever rendering volumes, just that now that Corona can process cameras inside volumes, it can now affect cameras as well :)

23

[Max] I need help! / Re: rendering in the sea

« on: 2025-04-12, 01:09:30 »

Those beams of light are exactly the scenario covered by Volumetric Caustics introduced in Corona 12 Update 1, something that few render engines handle (and so they need to fake it). See https://www.chaos.com/blog/corona-12-update-1. A big benefit of not having to fake it is they can animate (realistically), see

t=333s for some examples.

24

About this Forum / Re: Is the forum slower this days?

« on: 2025-04-12, 01:03:36 »

This was mentioned in another post (or maybe it was on social media), but yep it is slower, and we have a ticket in for the web team to take a look into what is going on (and yes, that does mean we follow the same process we ask of you, to submit a ticket to report an issue ;) ). Cheers!

25

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: How to get a nice glass sphere render?

« on: 2025-04-11, 13:49:40 »

To avoid distortion due to refraction, set IOR to 1, and then to get reflections still, use a Clear Coat with any IOR you like.

26

News / Chaos Corona 12 Update 2 (Release Candidate 1) is out now for 3ds Max!

« on: 2025-04-10, 19:27:42 »

Chaos Corona 12 Update 2 (Release Candidate 1) is out now for 3ds Max!
Everyone with an active license has access.

Download Instructions and Change logs:
3ds Max

A Release Candidate is close to being the final release, but we need your feedback to catch any remaining bugs or other issues from real-world testing.

Some of the major features in Corona 12 Update 2:
Corona 12 Update 2 is a technical release, to take care of some back-end changes that need to be done. While features were not the main consideration this time around, several items being worked on for Corona 13 later this year just happen to be finished and tested and are useful on their own, so we've included them in this release!

• Support for 3ds Max 2026
• You won't need to wait for the entire scene to reparse when scrubbing on the timeline with IR running (a feature that is required for the upcoming render via Vantage using the Live Link in Corona 13; as a note, Cinema 4D does not need this improvement)
• Start and Stop the Live Link to Vantage from the Corona toolbar, and verify progress via the new progress bar
• Let Chaos Collaboration generate the hotspots for your Virtual Tours, so that they are even easier to set up
• Textures seen through refraction are now sharper (under conditions when they should be sharper ;) ) thanks to Ray Differential Filtering (a feature that is required for the upcoming Toon Shading in Corona 13)
• Each camera can now have its own independent Global Volume Material assigned
• The Depth of Field Highlight Solver has had further improvements, working with reflected highlights and some refracted highlights
• Chaos Scans are moving to Cosmos - this release will support that as soon as the Scans materials are migrated

Please test as much as possible and report your findings to us, this will help us make Corona 12 Update 2 ready for release as quickly as we can!
You can share your feedback with the links below:

3ds Max
Post your feedback in this thread: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=43296

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max 2026 Install problem

« on: 2025-04-10, 18:09:53 »

You're welcome!

28

[Max] I need help! / Re: Chaos Cosmos slow to open

« on: 2025-04-10, 14:43:17 »

The forum will be an unrelated issue :) We've noticed the forum being slow internally too, so I will raise a ticket about it (yep, we do the same thing internally as we ask y'all to do lol!)

29

[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max 2026 Install problem

« on: 2025-04-08, 21:35:39 »

2026 support is only coming out in Corona 12 Update 2 (since it's due for release in a couple of weeks, it didn't make sense to do a hotfix). It is in the daily build for testing though, so you can use that in the meantime (which will be necessary to confirm 2026 is working without problems), see https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=43295.msg232441#msg232441

30

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: multipass

« on: 2025-04-07, 18:09:41 »

Can you share the steps you are following as I am not clear what it is you are trying? You have an animation that has rendered all frames, and they all have multipass elements as expected, but now you are rendering "details" - does that mean you are rendering a single frame in isolation now? Or using render regions? Or something else? I am not sure what "parameters" you are increasing to make the render take longer, is that noise target, passes, time target, number of render elements, something else? When you say "before" it wasn't a problem, do you mean with an earlier version of Corona, if so which one? And which version is giving you problems? Also, which version of C4D are you using?

See https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4648898278545-How-to-report-issues-C4D for the guide on what info to include in a problem report, so that we can get on to diagnosing rather than waiting to ask you for more information, thanks!