Messages

16

[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?

17

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.

18

[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.

19

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.

20

[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.

21

[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

22

[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.

23

[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.

24

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

« on: 2025-02-20, 06:25:00 »

Happy Birthday indeed!

I'm in the advertising world and not the usual archvis person that uses Corona. I did a deep dive on render engines a few years back. Being on a Mac, I didn't have a lot of choices for a CPU engine. C4D's Physical engine wasn't good enough any more and their failed Pro Render was soooooo slow. Corona blew it away. The only one that came close to Corona in ease of use and quality was Arnold, only one render node though. Boo. Corona was faster to set up and much faster to render. Plus I could run it on almost any machine without having to worry about a massive GPU card. So I jumped in with Corona Alpha and haven't looked back since. I don't use it as often as I'd like, but love it when I do and I only use a fraction of it's power. It has become very stable for me. I especially enjoy working in Real Time Viewport mode so I can just click on an object to adjust, all in one window. Keep the improvements coming!

About the contest, can you enter more than once with a different render for each?

25

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Any Way to Catch Reflections?

« on: 2025-02-01, 00:09:22 »

Thanks for that info. So I need to make sure the project is set to Linear color space instead of sRGB? Also, would I need to save as a higher-bit file like PSD or maybe EXR? I don't have much experience with Linear workflows to be honest, so if you can elaborate, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

26

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Any Way to Catch Reflections?

« on: 2025-01-31, 20:29:33 »

Apparently I AM missing something. ha. Or maybe that feature was broken in the past and I never went back to it. Not sure. Anyway, in this shot, the top is a typical way I had used Shadow Catcher. The below is the same thing, but Reflection is turned on. It's close, but how can I have just the car in the reflection so it looks more like the top example?

27

[C4D] General Discussion / Any Way to Catch Reflections?

« on: 2025-01-31, 02:10:43 »

The shadow catcher material is great and has many ways to utilize it. The way I'm using it right now is to render my object with its shadow baked in, which makes it cleaner to just have the on object with the shadow already there so you don't have to export a separate layer.
 
What would be even better is to also have the object's reflection captured also. In my case, I have a flat floor, but it is pretty reflective, like polished marble. Having the shadow with the object allows the flexibility to make small adjustments it the object's position or size in compositing. Since I don't know how to capture the reflection, I've had to resort to baking the shadow into the floor and have the object on its own layer. This is to allow other objects and people to be placed behind the object. And by rendering the shadwo into the floor, it also has the reflection of the object, but this almost eliminates the ability to make adjustments later.

Anyway, it would be nice if we could have an option for a Reflection Catcher material. ha.

28

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Multiplied alpha

« on: 2025-01-27, 20:30:41 »

The first thing I see is the package is not sitting on the plane below it. It is floating. Second, when dealing with pixels, there are some angles of edges that need more passes and anti-aliasing. First, drop that package down to actually sit on the plane and render that.

29

[C4D] I need help! / Re: More fireflies in video render

« on: 2025-01-25, 00:39:13 »

I'd focus on the materials in that area rather than denoising, but I'm no doctor. Maybe duplicate your camera, move it close to that box, and render with that closeup just to see better.

30

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Speed of different Versions

« on: 2025-01-23, 01:25:01 »

Maybe we're hitting the coding version of Moore's Law. As fast as it can go without melting. Or running Microsoft Word on a 64-core Threadripper vs. a 96-core Threadripper. Still fast, but as Scotty used to say in Star Trek, "Aye Captain, without new dylithium crystals, she's going as fast as she can."