Messages

46

[Max] General Discussion / Emissive VDB grids not visible to camera not working?

« on: 2020-02-09, 04:41:40 »

Just checking if this is currently expected behaviour, or if it's a bug that could be fixed. And if it is currently expected behaviour, could this be added to the list of fixes for the next version.

If I have a VDB grid that has an emissive portion, then set that grid to not be visible to camera, then the grid doesn't cast any light on other objects in the scene. I would assume like any other self illuminated object, light or object light material, then it should still be able to cast light when not visible to camera.

47

[Max] I need help! / Re: 3D Studio Max - macro recording

« on: 2020-02-09, 04:32:50 »

But if you don't already have the material you need in a material slot, you can collect all the materials in an array, search for the material by name, then put it into a slot. Then you can do what ever you want with it.

Code: [Select]

allMats = #()
matToGet = "NAME_OF_MATERIAL"
for mat in scenematerials do
(
    allMats = append allMats mat.name
)

selMat = findItem allMats matToGet
foundMat = scenematerials[selMat]
meditMaterials[1] = foundMat

48

[Max] I need help! / Re: 3D Studio Max - macro recording

« on: 2020-02-09, 04:06:40 »

meditMaterials[1].levelTranslucency = 0.25

49

[Max] I need help! / Re: OpenVDB within a global volume material

« on: 2020-01-28, 19:16:06 »

Is this still a thing in Corona 5 ? Asking because I've setup a new scene with a few vdb's and a global volume.
Still showing a bounding box.

When will this be fixed or am I missing something?

Make sure your camera is outside the bounding box of all vdb grids.

50

[Max] I need help! / Re: General guidelines to rendering an animation

« on: 2020-01-25, 03:13:37 »

Oh, and make sure 'Lock Sampling Pattern' is turned off.

51

[Max] I need help! / Re: General guidelines to rendering an animation

« on: 2020-01-25, 03:02:00 »

If you are using multiple computers to render an animation, the only reliable method for consistency of quality is to use noise level as your render quality metric. Different computers have different specs and will render the same scene in different times and passes, so Noise Level is the only way to go.

You can generally get away with more noise when rendering an animation. I hover around 6% - 8% with Corona's noise reduction set to the default values. I then do another light pass at reducing a little more noise in comp.

You should never render to jpg format, even for still images. Jpg is a lossy format, and you can never get back any detail you might have lossed due to compression. My preferred format is exr, but that is because I work in VFX. But even if you do not work in VFX, exr is the superior image file format in my opinion.

Comping is always best done in a dedicated program. I prefer Nuke, but AE can stand in well enough.

52

[Max] I need help! / Re: Color correction + light balance

« on: 2020-01-23, 00:44:06 »

I haven't had a look at the Max file, but after looking at the screenshot of the material, the colour being used in the diffuse slot looks awfully bright. Are you sure it's less that 0.85? 0.85 is an albedo for fresh white snow, one of the whites substances known, so no colour should be whiter than this.

For a white satin wall paint, I'd recommend somewhere in the range of 0.77 to 0.81. Any brighter than that and you will start to break the relationship with a physically accurate material.

53

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Mask Texture in Cmasking Element

« on: 2020-01-16, 19:36:51 »

I am afraid CTexmap can only use a map for it's slot not materials (f.e. Corona LayeredMtl), maybe this is something worth looking into.

Based on what the OP wrote, I was under the impression that he wanted to a mask texture, not a mask material (I'm not even sure what that is).

54

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Mask Texture in Cmasking Element

« on: 2020-01-16, 03:26:53 »

Why not just use a CTexmap render element and just put the mask texture in that?

55

[Max] I need help! / Re: Alembic cache

« on: 2019-12-17, 21:38:09 »

Export an animated alembic. Max can load them just fine.

56

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona and Mip-map

« on: 2019-12-17, 03:56:39 »

Hi,  i just saw the mention about textures and the power of 2 (Optimized memory storage of textures )
Is corona bitmap using less ram with these kind of textures right now?

FYI, you are incorrectly associating mip-mapping with the new feature in the daily build, when in fact the feature has nothing to do with mip-mapping. All that new feature does is improve the memory footprint of texture sizes that do not resemble the following sequence of resolution:
512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096, etc.

57

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: AMD vs INTEL Far Bump Calculation

« on: 2019-12-14, 03:19:43 »

At Siggraph 2018 I attended a Pixar talk where they introduced in Renderman their solution to what they called 'bump to roughness' when rendering the fine detail of cloth at different distances to camera. The results were night and day.

58

[Max] I need help! / Re: Alembic cache

« on: 2019-12-14, 03:13:51 »

You can import Alembics using Max's standard importer.

59

[Max] I need help! / Re: DOF and Chromatic Abberation on backplate

« on: 2019-12-06, 20:02:03 »

Sounds great.

You'll probably want to hear of use cases to justify the dev time... For me, it was something I'd loved to have on every job when rendering against a real world photo plate. Especially in product renders, or mockups where you get a background with visible DOF. Using postproduction to compose the render over the original backplate is viable only if the rendered content is sharp everywhere. As soon as it gets blurred from DOF you'll have the problem that your rendered image will still have some info of the double-DOF in non-black alpha areas which can be problematic in post, up to the point where you can't get a good result depending on how extreme the Bokeh is.

If you know in advance that you will comp the image, then the image should always be rendered over black (environment primary rays not visible to camera). Then there is always no problems with anti-aliased pixels, no matter how much DoF or motion blur there is.

Personally I never understand why anyone renders over anything else but black, as the minutes it takes to put image A over image B in comp far outweighs the hours of re-rendering because you forgot something, or you needed to colour correct something a little.

I'd rather see that dev time go to towards actual limiting bugs in Corona.

60

[Max] General Discussion / Corona 5 and 'RAM Creep' when using net work rendering...

« on: 2019-11-08, 10:46:22 »

I installed Corona 5, and I've seen a what I call 'RAM Creep' when network rendering (using Deadline), where each consecutive task that a slave renders sees a little increase in RAM until it hits maximum and then the machine starts to use swap. I requeue the slaves manually, and the RAM goes back to normal for the first task, then starts to creep up again. In the attached image of one of my Deadline jobs,  I have three slaves, and all of them saw increases in RAM (last column) until I manually requeued them, and the same thing happened again.

I'd be happy to upload a scene if you need it.