Messages

16

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-05, 22:59:30 »

I bet there is no one more motivated than the corona team to get tone mapping out. It really looks like they are taking it seriously and trying to do something exceptional, witch often means things taking much longer than expected.

I’m personally disappointed as a user. I would love the software to get better, specially in ways that we don’t need to guess weather they are better or not, as other renderers have implemented them and people love them. 

People arguing that tone mapping is not needed or important are missing the point, people are upset because the corona team has promised that feature for a long time, just a few days ago, someone asked if tonemapping was still in the works for v7 and they said it was actively being worked on.

Unless something unexpected and huge happened in the past 2 days, the corona team probably knew it would not make it to v7 for a reasonably long time, and knowing it is something people really want, it was a shitty move to just move it to v8 in trello and say nothing about it.

I bet the reason for moving it is good, I bet it’s going to be worth it, just treat your fans with respect and love and spend a little time communicating this to them. Maybe post a quick video explaining the thought process... and do it in a timely manner, if you pull the feature out so late into the release cycle, it is reasonable to expect people getting angry, as everything made it seem like the feature was going to be included in v7 and it was going to be great.

I hope this helps you guys, looking forward to v8 :)

17

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-04-11, 17:32:36 »

I believe “noise level” is not a fundamentally objective measurable thing. Every time there is a significant change in the engine, they need to re-define how noise level is estimated and reported. If you run the same render for the same amount of time does it look cleaner in Corona 7? The changes they make are most of the time designed to speed up the render, so that should be the case.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-04-11, 00:20:00 »

Default setting is IR using all but one of your cores. Depending on your processor that can make a noticeable difference. That can be changed but not recommended as it makes max unusable while IR

19

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-02-23, 19:28:46 »

Not sure if this is related to V7, but I've never seen this before.

Imported a STEP mesh from Solidworks, Used planar UVW map to project a wood texture.

Displacement is messed up in the round corners.




Normal Bump works as expected, so this is clearly a Displacement issue.



Any known workarounds?  Thanks!

20

[Max] I need help! / Volume Material with reflective caustics.

« on: 2021-02-09, 20:59:03 »

I'm trying to visualize the path that light takes after hitting a reflective surface.

I'm trying to use a volume material to see how light travels through space.

Volume material seems to work with refractive caustics, but not reflective.

Caustics is enabled, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks.

ps. Alternatively, If someone knows a good workflow for visualizing light paths... The work I'm doing is similar to what a car light designer would do, so there must be a good solution for it, preferably inside MAX.

21

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2021-01-23, 00:05:49 »

Of course, Andrey has no incentive to make Corona look as good as possible. And in all fairness, Fstorm default looks more realistic than Corona default. No discussion about that.

However, improving corona in this particular scenario only takes a few seconds.

setting the saturation to -0.03 as discussed in this thread, gives a very natural and comparable result.

Let's hope the new tonemapping makes this even easier so we don't have to set even 1 parameter.

22

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2021-01-13, 21:38:50 »

@Juraj

Got my Ice Giant yesterday. I didn't have time to run a lot of comparison tests but did ran a couple before switching.

These results are with the 3990x

First I configured the fans at a constant speed to what I considered acceptable, not completely silent but something I can live with, I ran all other tests trying to match DB to that initial configuration.

Noctua with 2 fans: 68 degrees after 10 minute render.
Noctua with 1 fan: 69 degrees after 10 minute render.
Ice Giant with 4 fans ( At same DB levels as the other tests above) 59 degrees after 10 minute render.

In my previous configuration, running PBO profile, the processor reached 92-95 degrees which is the thermal throtlling limit.
Using the Ice Giant, I get stable 85 degrees using PBO profile.

Of course there are many variables and I didn't spend enough time controlling for other factors and repeating results for this to be reliable. But at least it looks like it does work better than the noctua for my case/airflow etc.

One HUGE advantage is that removing the top graphics card was a pain in the ass with the Noctua, in the Zenith Extreme II, the unlock latch was almost impossible to reach and I have to use a plastic ruler to unlock it.

With the Ice Giant, you have full access to the latch with your hand :)

But now my RAM is under the cooler... hehe, but somehow I switch my Graphics card more often than my RAM.

Anyway, I hope someone does proper testing to get a definitive answer, but I think I will leave the Ice Giant for now and see how it behaves long term.

23

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2020-12-02, 01:56:27 »

@juraj  did you order an Icegiant ProSiphon yet ? Ordered one to test as a potential upgrade for our TR systems. Looks super impressive. Seems like they have a large backlog so mine won't come for another 2 weeks or so, if you ordered one too, make sure to report results :)!

24

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: New rendering technology Ours (Biased)

« on: 2020-10-06, 23:50:16 »

I'm very curious. Since manifold exploration seems to be a sampling technique more than anything else, is it compatible with embree? And regardless if this is something valuable to explore or do... Is integrating this technique viable inside of corona on a technical level or does it require deep changes to the rendering core?

I remember not so long ago when someone was asking for "more better caustics" that the argument was... there is not much you can do to the algorithms to make caustics faster than say... 5 - 10%

Of course, I will not even pretend to understand how complex this subject is and I know that Corona already uses adaptive sampling for caustics that for all we know is already great... but its fun to think that a novel algorithm could make as much of a difference as it seems to in these papers.

25

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: The most wanted feature?

« on: 2020-08-31, 19:35:57 »

Might be a stupid question, but is there any possibility of having an "Interactive Lightmix" but for Textures? Like how we can change the intensity and temperature of lights without the  needing to be rendered. I think it would be great to change textures on the fly like ILM.

Added into the poll. Also all vote counts were reset to 0 as usual for each release. We noted the results of previous period voting, and are planning to address the TOP 2 items (PBR material and tone mapping) in the next release.

Glad to see this being planned :) although, a little disappointed the expected release is one year from now :(

Planned release: Q2 2021

26

Off-Topic / Selling Quadro RTX 5000

« on: 2020-08-24, 22:56:26 »

I'm guessing is ok to sell stuff in the off-topic? if it is not, please delete :)

Quadro RTX 5000. Never overclocked. I take good care of my hardware.

I could probably flip it in eBay but I'd rather deal with a trusted party.

Jurag?

I'm willing to sell at a fair price, accepting offers. Shipping from Mexico using preferred shipping method.

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: when will new caustics solver be done?

« on: 2020-08-07, 16:41:42 »

Romullus, you are right, it got to me. Done.

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: when will new caustics solver be done?

« on: 2020-08-07, 16:35:05 »

3 times longer than what?

I really hope your animation skills are better than your ability to answer simple questions.

Here they are again, made them shorter to help you out.

1. Which render engine has caustics that you like?

2. What kind of commercial render scenes would benefit the most from having caustics?

29

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2020-08-07, 14:37:39 »

Your cooler is insufficient. I should know, the first 2990x build I did, I used that same cooler and got the same results,  thankfully, I listened to juraj and ordered a noctua. The difference is night and day.

The issue is coverage. The is not a single of-the-shelf liquid cooler that offers 100% coverage for threadripper (except enermax, with terrible quality control and reports of leaks and rust, even for the latest revision)

If you want to water cool, you have to go custom loop. Otherwise Noctua

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: when will new caustics solver be done?

« on: 2020-08-07, 01:23:53 »

Answer 3 basic questions then:

1. Which render engine has a great caustic solver, that lives to your standard?

2. What kind of render scenes NEED caustics, otherwise they are not usable (for example, a pool without caustics is not usable. Jewelry render without caustics or dispersion is not usable)?

The best artists in the world are out there doing amazing renderings that I bet you can't match. And they are not complaining like a baby screaming and demanding features no one wants.

Caustics are not going to improve your renders.