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1

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Reflections not respecting normals? Should it?

« on: 2015-04-03, 09:20:21 »

I thought I noticed something a while back, and it's definitely become a thing for me. I noticed it first on car headlight lenses during the beta...their reflection seemed VERY bright and I had to artificially knock them down and just keep moving. But I've looped back around and tested this out again and it seems odd.

What I made here is just a simple geosphere inside another geosphere to simulate a thin wall like glass, or lenses. The inner sphere's normals are flipped so that the outside points out, the inside points in.

Rendered on the left is Corona. If you notice on the bottom of the Corona render, there are two reflections of the single square light in the scene...the inside sphere, and the outer facing sphere.
On the right is a Vray render of the same scene with roughly the same material. No doubled up reflection, I'm assuming because the second reflection faces outward.

Did I miss a setting somewhere or is this a bug or is this physically correct? This cant be right...objects don't reflect an outer facing surface this way. Riiiiight?  8-)
Someone is not right here...the question is who.

2

Work in Progress/Tests / My Random Corona Fun Tests...

« on: 2015-01-14, 20:16:41 »

In the spirit of throwing out things that are made just for 'kicking the Corona tires'... here's some things I've played with. None of this in any way reflects any finished work, just fun stuff as I feel out what Corona can do. I've enjoyed looking at other people's experiments, so maybe some people will enjoy mine.

1)  Trying my hand at the SSS shader and tons of DOF. Fun and creepy! The model is the 'Faith' model from the 'Mirror's Edge' game which you can find out there.




2) This conglomeration of crap was put together while kicking around the interactive renderer, then letting it run completely unbiased for a chunk of time. I had some thoughts on the IR, which I dropped into the scene as an object.  8-)
Napoleon came from here... http://lincoln3dscans.co.uk/




3) Shader development under the same lighting conditions. I like to switch out lighting conditions to make sure everyone is behaving. Works nicely.




4) Here's an experiment with a fake 'ring flash' attached to the camera. I didn't let this one run as long and resolve, but it's kind of fun. There's a quick liquid sim in there to add interest. If I let it run longer and could think of a good pretentious 'artist's statement' for this mess, I could start selling prints.   ;-)




So, those are some of fun experiments I've done as I play around with Corona. I love it and really enjoy just playing with it. Which is saying something for a renderer.

3

Gallery / New 2016 Ford GT Announcement

« on: 2015-01-12, 22:06:37 »

Hi All-

I'd like to show off a project I just completed using Corona that was unveiled today.
All of the vehicle CG for the new Ford GT press event today at the Detroit North American International Auto Show was done over the last six weeks using Max and Corona exclusively. Developed under the code  name 'Project Phoenix', this LeMan's bound super car has been in development for just over a year. See below for more information...it's cool.





The Corona rendered GT starts up around the :50

I started off using my usual workflow of Max and Vray, but I was having problems truly 'nailing' the paint. It's a completely custom formulation from PPG with some really interesting properties. It's a rather subjective paint, and people seem to see it differently. I've been playing with Corona off and on for the last year and had wanted to try it out on a real project. When I put a shader together in Corona, we were happy very quickly and representatives from Ford came by with a sample and approved it.

As the project developed, we did some tests of Corona on our render farm, and barring a couple little issues, Corona was solid. So before the holiday I took the gamble and decided to stay with Corona for the project with a set of Vray shaders in my back pocket just in case we hit something that could not be solved. I figured that in about half a day I could do the switch to Vray. I never had to pull out the Vray shaders.
I developed a parallel set of Corona shaders both by hand and by using Martin's material converter.

The inclusion of the mask render element in Corona allowed us to use the standard 'Detroit workflow' of LOTS of G-buffer channels to allow plenty of after the fact changes and tweaks. But, Corona did such a nice job that most of the changes were small and largely atmospheric.

The resolution for this show was 7600x1200...massive by any one's estimation. But Corona chewed through most frames in between 1.5 hours to 4 hours depending on the frame and the machine's specs. I experienced NO 'whacked out' frames that needed rerendering...which I found amazing.

All in all, I'm very happy with the way that Corona handled this project, and Ford executives were thrilled by the final product. They had very few changes and simply said things like 'wow' and 'amazing'. I've been using Vray for a long time so it can be odd to get out of your comfort zone, but Corona got me to what I wanted much quicker than usual. It was fun to be part of such an interesting product announcement.

Thanks for looking.
A


http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-detroit-auto-show-ford-gt-raptor-mustang-gt350r-20150112-story.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/01/12/ford-performance-cars-gt-raptor-mustang-350r/21629997/

http://jalopnik.com/ford-gt-this-is-it-1678893649

4

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Rendering, Uncheck Auto Key, Stop Rendering, Still in Auto Key Mode.

« on: 2015-01-04, 00:19:03 »

So here's an interesting one...

While rendering a test frame, I was in 'Auto Key' mode.

I unchecked 'Auto Key', turning off the mode and the Red indication went away.

Cancelled the rendering.

Came back to Max, change a parameter of an object, it set a key as if 'Auto Key' was on. Even though it indicated it wasn't.

I needed to toggle the button again to get it to take.


This actually explains some issues I've been having over the last few days.

5

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Progressive Amounts not Sticking/Being Respected

« on: 2014-05-29, 04:02:28 »

I think I've found a bit of a bug in the progressive rendering limit.

When set initially, it will work to make rendering move on when it reaches those samples, but when I cancel a rendering and try and lower it, it doesn't respect the new number. If I close and open the file, the number can even be arbitrary...the attached screen cap that says '89' is a good example. I've never put 89 in as a progressive limit.

This is consistent with the scene file I have here.

(Loving Corona so far...quite a lot actually. Keep up the great work! Thanks!)

6

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Mappable Lights (HDRs and such)

« on: 2014-05-20, 08:44:24 »

We use a lot of softbox and umbrella HDRs when we light scenes, it'd be great to be able to do this in Corona.

Right now I'm using a light material on a piece of geometry, but I'm assuming the light primitive would be faster and/or more accurate.  Maybe that's not true...hmmm.