Topics

16

[Max] Resolved Bugs / CPU powers drops

« on: 2023-09-02, 08:35:27 »

Hi,

I have an issue on a very simple scene made of a few walls and a ceiling, timber floor and a coffee table.
It is lit by a Corona Sky environment map. Every objects are assigned a simple plain grey CoronaPhysicalMtl.

When I hit render (production renderer), everything works as expected: the cpu runs at 100%.

But as soon as I apply the 'White Paint' material to an object, the cpu usage drops to around 40%.

If I get of this material and I apply back the grey neutral material, the cpu usage hits 100% again.

The same problem arises if I use the IR.

I can send you the scene if needed (3ds Max 2023.3.3, Corona 10 hotfix 1)


Thanks for the help.

17

[Max] I need help! / Motion Blur in animations

« on: 2023-08-27, 08:42:37 »

Hi,

I'm rendering a short, simple animation: a camera slowly moving over a kitchen benchtop, showing some pieces of food and the cooktop.
The issue is, eventhough the movement of the camera is pretty slow, how to make sure the overall movement in the resulting video will be smooth, and not jerky? In other words how to implement a soft, nice motion blur?

Of course I could enable motion blur in the camera settings, but I don't want to do that in order to keep rendering times as short as possible.
I guess there must be a way to do that in post-production? I use After Effects.

It's worth mentioning there's not any moving objects in my scene, nor moving lights. The only moving thing is the camera.

What's your usual workflow?


Thanks for your advice.

18

[Max] General Discussion / TX image format?

« on: 2023-08-16, 03:04:57 »

Hi,

I recently used a Chaos Cosmos asset in one of my scene and, after I put the material in the SME, I saw all textures used in the proxy model were .TX files.

I never used this format so far and I was wondering what are the advantages of using them?
Also, I tried to open such images in PS and it doesn't work so I was wondering how to create them?

I stumbled upon these articles:
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-convert-bitmap-textures-to-TX-format-for-rendering-with-Arnold-in-3ds-Max.html

and

https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_for_3ds_max_arnold_3dsmax_html#Textures-ManuallyGenerate.txTextures

which tend to let me think .TX files are more a Arnold thing, so why are they being used by my Cosmos proxy model?

Sorry for my newbie question, but it's a bit confusing.

Thanks in advance for your help guys,

19

[Max] Bug Reporting / Corona Light Material not showing up on Corona Lister

« on: 2023-07-26, 14:15:47 »

Hi,

I noticed that CoronaLightMtl aren't listed in Corona Lister when they are part of a CoronaLayeredMtl.
It would be great to have a fix for this so that all CoronaLightMtl of the scene appear in the list.

Thanks

20

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Reordering of the Lister tabs?

« on: 2023-07-14, 04:56:48 »

Hi,

I love the new lister of Corona 10, but it'd be nice to be able to reorder its tabs, as most of the time I deal with the 'Lights' tab but the first accessible one is the 'Cameras' one, so it adds up one click to my workflow to access this particular tab (it may sound picky, but it'd definitely help).

Thanks!

21

[Max] Bug Reporting / Environment lighting discrepancy between Corona 9 and 10

« on: 2023-07-03, 08:57:57 »

Hi,

I rendered the same scene with Corona 9 and Corona 10 and saw a massive difference in the render in term of lighting.
The scene is lit by an HDRI and there's a real difference in the rendering of the shadows: they are sharp in Corona 9, and blurred in Corona 10. So basically all the lighting rendering changed from Corona 9 to Corona 10. It's as if there was a Gamma correction applied to the map in Corona 10.

Here are some crop renders showing you the issue, and the HDRI settings:

22

[Max] I need help! / How to optimize my scene to render faster?

« on: 2023-06-28, 08:39:47 »

Hi,

I render a simple scene, a small bathroom, which is basically a box with only one tiny window.
The lighting is made of a Corona Sun + Sky, and I added a rectangular Corona light in front of the window to help light coming in.

The render takes so long to clean the noise, which is understandable as I guess Corona has hard times cleaning all these rays bouncing in the room: there is very little direct illumination involved here, mostly indirect illumination.

Materials are pretty straight forward: basic stone tiles on the wall and the ground, with an average reflection.

It takes around 250 passes and 17 hours to render in 6000 x 5800 pixels on my Threadripper 3990X cpu with a noise threshold of 3%. It is really long: most images render in around 1 to 2 hours even in 6K.

I was wondering what can I do to speed up the rendering?

All advice and comments are welcome, thanks.

23

[Max] Bug Reporting / n internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure.

« on: 2023-05-29, 03:52:09 »

Hi,

I was rendering an image with Corona 9 Hotfix 1, 3ds Max 2023.3.3 Security Fix - 25.0 - 25.3.3.6012, when I noticed the following lines in Corona Error Message(s) window:

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occurred: wxWidgets assertion failure. Please, report this problem to us.
File: C:\CI\0\tmp\conan-windows\.conan\data\wxwidgets\3.1.5\legion\20221108\build\1a7ac7acb7e9c03781d9f84df91c9e49ad1f27e8\src\src\common\wincmn.cpp(3346)
Function: wxWindowBase::CaptureMouse
Condition: !wxMouseCapture::IsInCaptureStack(this)
Message: Recapturing the mouse in the same window?

24

[Max] General Discussion / 3ds Max stuck at startup when copying ChaosGroup ConversionScripts

« on: 2023-04-30, 14:31:32 »

Hi,

 

Today I'm unable to launch 3ds Max 2023: it starts as usual, and then in the bottom of the UI I have the following message: copy /Y "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2023\SceneConverter\ConversionScripts\ChaosGroup_To_*.ms" "C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\Scene Converter\ConversionScripts"

And it freezes.

 

I tried to delete the ENU located in C:\Users\myUserName\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2023 - 64bit but it doesn't work. A new ENU folder is created instead.

 

Thanks for your help I need my machine up and running asap.

25

[Max] I need help! / Issue with UV tiling scanned material

« on: 2023-04-09, 08:35:06 »

Hi,

I applied a Corona scanned material to a car paint, then I hit the "Adjust UV tiling to an object", selected the car body and then I receive the following message: "uv and v directions are not orthogonal (the measured angle is 82.3745193 degrees) so the scaling may not be precise. Would you like to continue?"

If I say Yes I can see Coordinates > Tiling values are now populated with non zero values, which seems good at first sight, but looking at the rendering I see the material is still wrong:  material flakes are huge and look unrealistic.
And then if I change U, V tiling values it doesn't change anything in the rendering. So I can't seem to find a way of having this scanned car paint material working fine.

Can you help ?

Thanks a lot guys,

26

[Max] I need help! / Toon shader?

« on: 2023-04-08, 08:02:59 »

Hi everyone,

I'd like to render an architectural scene with a simple plain grey material + a toon effect, just like the toon effect I used in VRay which was located in the Envrionment and Effects dialog box if I'm not wrong.

Of course I can use a CoronaWire map in the diffuse map but it highlights all the edges and I want the effect to be visible only on the outline of the objects.

How can I reproduce such an effect with Corona?

Thank you in advance for your help,

27

[Max] I need help! / Animated Sky with clouds issue

« on: 2023-02-02, 03:12:59 »

Hi,

I'm trying to animate a Corona Sky with clouds. I followed this tutorial:

but I don't get the same results.
I've animated Variety and Phase just like in the tutorial but it looks like clouds don't change over time. Their shape remains pretty much the same.
Also I've animated Offset X and Offset Y but clouds appear to move only on the Y axis (Offset X ranges from 0 to 3000m and Offset from 0 to -10000m).

Your help is appreciated.

28

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Animation stuck on "Transforming vertices..." stage

« on: 2022-12-03, 05:50:27 »

Hi,

I am rendering a short animation (336 frames) with 3ds Max 2022 up to date and Corona 9 Hotfix 1.
Few frames rendered fine but then calculation stopped at the "Transforming vertices..." stage.
I've noticed I have to click on this window and/or resize it to "awake" the calculation process so that calculation goes on again.
If I don't click inside and/or resize this window, things stay as is and calculation of remaining frames doesn't start again.

I've already reached out to Render Manager team for help: here is what they said: "This is a known issue with Corona and 3ds Max 2022. Unfortunately we are not able to help you with this because it is not a render manager problem. We had several similar tickets and we talked with the Corona support about this, to my best knowledge there is no fix for this. Last time the Corona support suggested to switch to the latest version of 3ds Max.
 
You could try to reach out to them, maybe there is fix. Or you could try Corona 9 with 3ds Max 2022."

Please note at the time they wrote this I was using Corona 8.1, so I switched to Corona 9.1 but it doesn't help.
And for 3ds Max I am reluctant to switch to 3ds Max 2023 as it's a pain to reinstall all the plugins and scripts from scratch.

Render Manager also told me to try to disable the Corona VFB: it does seem to work so far but it's not really convenient so I hope you guys know  how to fix this problem, that would be awesome.

Thank you,

29

[Max] I need help! / Flickering on interior animation

« on: 2022-12-01, 05:29:39 »

Hi,

Here is my problem: I render a short animation of an interior with no moving objects. Very simple scene with just a Corona Sun + Corona Sky entering through a window, lighting a floor lamp and a plaster wall. There is some flickering occuring on the plaster wall. I want to get rid of it.
The texture of the plaster wall has intricate details so the first thing I did was to simplify it a bit by adding a small blur on the plaster texture in Photoshop so that Corona has less work to do with the sampling. also note I use only CoronaBitmaps in this scene, with Filtering > Blur value of 1.0

I also reduced 'Progressive Rendering Limits > Noise level limit' from 7% to 5% (ideally I want the sequence to calculate as fast as possible).

But it's not enough visibly as there is still some noise.

Here are my settings:
_ Primary solver: Path Tracing
_ Secondary solver: UHD cache
_ Precomputation file: Load from file (initially calculated once)
_ Image filter: Tent (width 3.5px, Highlight clamping: 0)        Is this filter good for animation??
_ Progressive rendering limits: none, except 'Noise level limit': 5.0%

My guess is I must lower down the Noise level limit but before I calculate the whole sequence again I wanted to make sure there is no other important setting I miss.

Thank you so much,

30

[Max] General Discussion / Page file fills up while RAM is not full, why?

« on: 2022-06-20, 14:21:08 »

Hi,

I work on a scene that takes around 40Go of RAM while loaded in 3ds Max.
I have 128GB of RAM. After I've done few interactive renders, and worked a bit on the scene, by adding/modifying objects etc ... I can see that pagefile.sys on the system drive fills up to 10GB. When windows starts this file is only 0.8GB.

Why does pagefile.sys fills up whereas there is still a lot of RAM available? It does not seem very efficient. I would expect pagefile.sys increase only when there's no more RAM available.

Thank you for the help,