Messages

16

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Time to ditch sRGB/Linear as default (?)

« on: 2018-05-17, 23:46:31 »

I've been on a nearly 4 month FStorm vacation and liked the results it gave me. Haven't been paying attention to Corona during the time and have a lot of catching up to do, so first I wanted to ask if this discussion has been picked up by the devs?

17

Gallery / Re: Garverigränd 7

« on: 2018-01-11, 10:38:24 »

Sorry, only the 1st image used HDRI PG1735 New Sun :) a side note I never combine HDRI with Corona Sun

Very nice materials! The lighting too, obviously.

I always found the PG HDRI colors to be kind of too candid and saturated, with low contrast - I know he has since revisited the HDRIs (at least part of them?) to increase the actual dynamic range but I'm still curious if you use them straight out of the box of do you color correct them, like take half the saturation off? If so, using color correction or something similar in Max or do you take them in to a 32bit image editor and save a corrected version?

18

[Max] General Discussion / Re: corona and forest pro

« on: 2017-12-09, 08:45:41 »

Hi,

I am having a bit of memory problems with corona. I am doing arch viz scene that has lot's of trees scattered with forest pro. I have previously used vray and had no problems with forest pro. Now that I am using forest pro with corona I am running out of memory in scenes that I could easily render with vray. Are there any tips to decrease memory foot print when dealing with forest pro. I have 32 gigs of memory and my scene takes 8 gigs of memory. Still I run out of memory. That seems a bit odd.

Why Corona does not support forest color? I have used it alot with vray and it's a shame I can't use it anymore.

Not saying that Corona wouldn't benefit of memory optimizations but 32 gigs isn't much or sufficient in many cases by todays standards. And yes Forest Color (as well as Forest Edge) work just fine.

This is a far stretch as you specifically focus on memory, but have you checked bitmap paging (and proxies or whatever that second one is) is turned off?

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Gallery / Re: Glass House / Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture

« on: 2017-10-17, 22:24:38 »

Very nice, especially like the colors and fog in the 1st pic, even if the fog has a bit too "blunt" edges :) Nice work, and inspired me to do some tests as well.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-10-17, 22:07:40 »

Having problems with a 32 core Xeon as well and of course the scenes are such that I can't share them.

Maybe there is a chance to share a scene, or at least a part of it, where the problem would be present? If so, please upload it using https://corona-renderer.com/upload
It will not be shared anywhere, and it will be used only for debugging.
We have also received some other reports about Xeon issues, and the first build with some improvements included should be out soon.

Thanks for the reply maru, I'll do my best but hngh these deadlines - won't be today, that's for sure. I'll try to strip a scene down tomorrow if I get an hour. Anyways good to hear it's been noticed but would be more than happy to help hasten search for a solution :)

Also, maybe it's just me but I just seem to find the images are more.. blurry? lately. I'm using pretty much standard settings, only displacement precision changed to 1. Also tried with adaptivity on/off, no difference. 2 light layers, sun and sky. Haven't touched the  reduce noise filtering, either.

Yes, it's not only you. I just noticed that as well. Also the reflective noise issue is becoming unbearable:( Problem is, denoiser doesn't seem to clear these fireflies as well as it did before. Something changed in this regard?

thanks

Well thanks for confirming - I guess.. On one hand maybe it's not just me going crazy but on the other, blurrier renders.. that's a bit troublesome, too :D

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Daily Builds 1.7

« on: 2017-10-16, 18:33:57 »

Having problems with a 32 core Xeon as well and of course the scenes are such that I can't share them. Maybe I get the time to reproduce the problem on spare time but the issue is, sometimes the first pass renders for like 30 minutes. Also it slows down during the estimated time remaining. Exterior scenes using some forest objects and displacement, I have 128 GB RAM on the machine and plenty of space on all drives, Corona using about 20 GB IIRC, so it shouldn't be a memoery issue. But no matter what I do only one core is rendering while the others stand idle.

Also, maybe it's just me but I just seem to find the images are more.. blurry? lately. I'm using pretty much standard settings, only displacement precision changed to 1. Also tried with adaptivity on/off, no difference. 2 light layers, sun and sky. Haven't touched the  reduce noise filtering, either.

Is this something you're about to nail down, maybe? :P I'll be sure to send a scene if I get to reproduce it on spare time, once I have time and enough energy to just play with everything until the rendering process begins to fail.

22

[Max] I need help! / Re: Migrating lightmix interactiveness to HTML5 or the like.. ?

« on: 2017-09-22, 06:09:53 »

Wow, appreaciate the input everyone! :O As Ondra pointed out, there's the issue with 8-bit jpgs or however you want to put it. But it's all good advice and we'll definitely keep and eye out on these. Coming from a Vray background I'm aware of some of the tricky parts of changing object color, taking in account the reflective parts.. all the "filter" layers it would need. Thanks for the advice, even though it's not an easy subject it won't go to waste :)

23

[Max] I need help! / Migrating lightmix interactiveness to HTML5 or the like.. ?

« on: 2017-09-17, 09:42:51 »

Hi all,

tried searching but came up with no results that would solve or answer my problem. Is there an existing solution to getting interactive renderings "converted" to a www-friendly format?

While my main question would be about the handling of lights since I'm not sure we have all the sufficient, filter kind of render elements to manually build an interactive light setup, I'd also need the possibility to change object color and other such simple tasks so I'm wondering, with the color changes etc, if everything is build up from scratch so to speak it'd pretty fast become bloated and frankly too complicated for me to handle, so if there's a way to easily migrate interactivity of the light mixer to another environment altogether, preferably as a HTML5 solution, I'd be interested in any ideas or references others might have in regards to such a system? This would still have to have the possibility to add other features like changing color based on mask or switching an object to another altogether so before I spend my time learning or pay someone to do research on an area I'm not an expert at, I'd like to know if there are shortcuts here to get a funky web-based thing going :)

Thanks, I'd really appreciate all and any ideas before I start to assemble some horrid piece of code that would ultimately not work at all!

Best regards,
Ville Kiuru

24

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Render Legion and Corona Join Forces with Chaos Group

« on: 2017-08-30, 23:13:19 »

I remember very well where I've started from, and I'm very grateful to everyone who was and is a part of our journey. [As a side note, I also remember how disappointed I was to see people that have used our software to make a living, and many of which I personally helped through a tough project, then turn around and spit sh*t about it. It's fine and I try not to take it personally.]

I paid a one time fee for my years with Vray (ok, I paid for Vray RT too, an investment which turned out a bit funny some time after the fact - but in grand scheme of things it wasn't a big deal and it was really cool tech to get to play with so early on). Got free support, updates and upgrades for a long time. What Vray cost me is nothing compared to what I got out of it. A great render engine and I think a lot of people can relate to that position of taking time to help someone only to later find the person/party to prove to be something not quite worth the time you spent with them. I learned my lesson pretty early but still, repeated enough times and there's a chance you turn bitter. I don't envy your position, as you kind of have to be open to offer help to certain extent.

Wish you the best of luck. Hopefully both parties find new energy and perspective from this and come up with some cool innovations!

EDIT: "That's the plan, yes.

Best regards,
Vlado"

Ok well there we go :D Nice!

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Render Legion and Corona Join Forces with Chaos Group

« on: 2017-08-30, 22:12:03 »

A lot of people really need to grow up. It's software, it's business not a sport team to follow!

ChaosGroup are good, Corona will be in good hands.

Quoted for truth :) some people go way overboard over this. Look around you, take a deep breath & maybe even take a walk, realise you're in a pretty good place in life if worst-case-scenario patterns over a rendering engine are a thing you stress over. Yes it's your renderer of choice but come on :P

Extremely curious if this would eventually mean an easy, straightforward access & workflow w/ Phoenix FD. I haven't gone through all the chit chat, maybe it's been covered already.

I used Vray daily, first as a hobbyist from 2003 (I think) to 2005 and then professionally every single day from early 2006 to summer of 2013 when Corona sank its hooks in me; haven't used Vray after that but still have my dongle. When the Vray licensing went through changes I heard the term "dongle" the first time I ever btw, and it was pretty funny :P

Ehh.. anyway, love the engine and Chaosgroup customer support - just needed fresh winds so as to not exhaust myself, and a promising new renderer is always a fun ride because the leaps in development are huge and interesting during the first years :)

I hope many great things to come out of this marriage. Congratulations Ondra, Vlado & co! :)

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona v1.3 vs 1.7

« on: 2017-08-06, 09:38:25 »

I just thought adaptivity would add more samples to areas where they were needed

No, you thought correctly. Adaptivity is Gold if you have the Enviroment texture visible. With no adaptivity you would be non stop sampling the enviroment, although it never actually needs to be sampled, thus wasting power. All in all it almost always worked great with what it did.

For me Adaptivity fails with being too sensitive sometimes. For instance here.
Although it's about caustics it still holds true for some interiors. Noise is most visible on non textured uniform surfaces - i.e. Walls. There Noise pops out very strongly. But technically the Noise is not "more" there. It just is very visisble compared to a blank solid wall.
For many interior scenes with glossy surfaces near windows, the reflection of the glossy surface gets over 10x the processing power compared to the wall.
But the reflection of the glossy surface is barely visible even though it may have high noise levels. But the Solid color wall with maybe only 3% noise is still apparently noisy, but won't clear out until 500passes, because that reflection of the glossy surface gets everything.

Yet still Adaptivity works fine in most other cases.

Ah gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up and the info here is something that is good to know in future scenarios.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona v1.3 vs 1.7

« on: 2017-08-02, 08:07:37 »

No, adaptivity works the way it should. It's just not right to assume adaptivity means faster rendering. What adaptivity does is ensuring the rendered image converges more evenly.

You can see that on Cecofuli's second test. Compare 1.7 adaptivity on and adaptivity off columns. You can see that adaptivity off makes area around the door and chair cleaner, but area in DoF and area where the bronze sculpture touches the floor noisier. Adaptivity on makes noise level roughly the same across the entire image, so area around the door and white chair has about the same amount of noise as the area around the sculpture touching the floor and scultpure in DoF.

Practical way to think about it is following:

Previously, when Corona did not have adaptivity, you would render your image for 1 hour, and it would be quite clean, but there would be a few hotstops of noise, which would take many more passes to resolve, so to get completely and evenly clean image, you would need to wait 4 hours.

Now that Corona has adaptivity, after that 1 hour, you may get an image, that is more noisy on the areas where adaptivity off was cleaner, but less noisy on the areas where adaptivity off was a lot noisier, so instead of taking 3 more hours, it may now take just 1 hour to get completely clean image. Therefore, to achieve relatively noise-free image, without any hotspots of noise, it can now take just half of the rendertime. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but generally, it's significant improvement.

Well, that's what I thought. Just got a little confused with these comparisons against 1.3 i guess...

However, did a little "tweak" to Cecofuli's scene to exaggerate the adaptivity on/off difference by adding a complex object (Oats's Zygote) with close to a hundred 4K UDIM textures loaded through max's composite node. Throwing the balance of complexity on screen a bit more off...

The results are as expected, however I have to say it seems to me that the clarity on the creature doesn't seem that much better with adaptivity, while everything else is much more worse...

PS: off topic but is there a better way to load UDIMs?

Wait, so all this time adaptivity may have actually been making images noisier, overall? I guess it's my own fault for taking it for granted, and not reading more/doing tests but I just thought adaptivity would add more samples to areas where they were needed - but this tradeoff doesn't seem like a good deal at all if the comparison renders here are correct :O

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General CG Discussion / Re: This Site is really awesome, FREE realistic PBR material for Corona or other.

« on: 2017-08-02, 06:43:47 »

Like you said you can overlay the AO with diffuse to get some finer "shadows" to show up.. and the reflection map, pretty sure if you're doing things the PBR way, you should forget the whole map when working with Corona and leave reflection "strength" to be handled by the glossiness channel. So - reflection strength to 1 and channel to white (right?).

Although I don't really buy all of the fuzz about PBR workflow, maps, and how to use them "properly", be it Poliigon or Megascans. Just make materials that work for you. Overall or just for one specific angle.. take some freedom and excaggerate material properties if it makes things look better :)

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[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Wrong reflections in dome mode

« on: 2017-08-02, 06:34:50 »

Yeah before even reading your whole description on the matter I was gonna comment that due to visible lack of reflections taking the curving surface in to account it looks almost like it's just straight up projecting of semi-"refracting" the ground in some way :) Now I need to check my own scenes.. at least no-one's complained on anything so maybe no commercial stuff done where things would look this off.

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[Max] Tutorials & Guides / Re: Calling all Megascans + Corona experts

« on: 2017-01-04, 21:43:01 »

Thanks.. yes they are relatively fast with support and helped out as much as they could. The problem was, after all, clear from the beginning: our government taking progressive steps and making things like VAT approval difficult in some instances ;)

The core problem still lies there, though. It's a system completely beyond me. I don't think there's a limit to how much money you can deposit there but from what I've gathered there is no way to withdraw any money - which isn't relevant because if I've put it there I've put it there because I've found a reliable source for assets and it's nice to have balance. But should your credit card expire and dues to a freak accident the new one takes weeks to arrive, not only are you unable to use your own money anymore, but as I've understood it even after confirming it through email exchange there's a risk the whole balance and even the assets you've already bought, your account basically, gets wiped out. Their answer was it's a common system, Shutterstock does that.

Fine, Shutterstock does it. It sucks - why follow? Why is Designconnected.com or Turbosquid able to keep your models safe and accessible without what I'd call ransom money in a situation where you are forced to pay money every month even if new content doesn't interest you because maybe lava isn't common where you live.

I won't went about this any more but seeing how I have models worth thousands of dollars on many good internet stores and they are always accessible, if it's not considered inappropriate I will keep linking to this thread every time I see it relevant enough. Megascans.se is the best thing to happen in a very long time (to freshen things up) and they do reply within a business day but in my opinion they need to further improve this aspect of their system. I have contacted them and tried my best to explain how risky this makes things even if it's a slim chance but as long as the system is the way it is there's no harm in letting people know of the shortcomings, IMO.