Messages

4021

[Max] I need help! / Re: Exclude object from motion blur

« on: 2016-06-02, 21:53:04 »

This should work on deforming objects, if you disable Multithreaded parsing (with Multithreaded on, and geometry motion blur enabled, Max will freeze - also if you add a Velocity render element too)

https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000516180-known-bugs-and-limitations

"
Using Skin or Skin wrap modifiers may lead to crashes in certain circumstances - for example when using motion blur.
Solution: disable "Multithreaded parsing" in Render Setup > Performance > Development/Experimental stuff
"

Let me know if that gets the motion blur working in your scene!

4022

Gallery / Re: Baltic Sea Summer Apartments

« on: 2016-06-02, 20:33:50 »

Interesting approach, and it worked really well I would say. Mosquito bites add a whole new hazard to this kind of work :)

4023

General CG Discussion / Contests

« on: 2016-06-02, 20:31:01 »

Hi all,

I am always interested to know about anyone who enters a contest using Corona, so give me a shout if you have entered any. Some of the contests running at present are:

CGTalk's Thrust Challenge
It's about spaceships (don't go thinking anything else from the title!) Deadline is July 19th.
http://www.phantomworks.xyz/page/rules/

Talenthouse's Ready Player One
Get an avatar selected for use in the upcoming Ready Player One movie. Deadline is June 23rd.
https://www.talenthouse.com/i/create-a-3d-avatar-for-ready-player-one?ref=CGs

CGarchitect's 2016 Awards
Deadline is June 6th
http://www.cgarchitect.com/2016/04/2016-cgarchitect-3d-awards---call-for-entries

Project Sloane
Free model of the Sir John Sloane's Bank of England, and then you create renders of it. Deadline June 6th/
http://www.projectsoane.com/

If you enter any, let me know - and best of luck! Also if you know of any other contests that folks might want to enter, post them here too.

   Tom

4024

Gallery / Re: Recent Spaces CONSTRUCT animation

« on: 2016-06-02, 19:20:31 »

Can't speak for how it was done here, but I have used the object visibility parameter frequently in my animations, and Max works as expected. Could also be done by animating a material, but harder work that way.

4025

Gallery / Re: Recent Spaces CONSTRUCT animation

« on: 2016-06-02, 18:40:50 »

Genius!

4026

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Creating a render farm

« on: 2016-06-02, 17:51:33 »

Blade servers could be interesting, but I got cold feet when looking into the option as I wasn't sure of the technical aspects involved in setting that up.

For the i7 solution, just my take. I find that the i7s would be great if you are using the machine for something else too, so as a workstation and then a render node in its downtime. If the machine is only to be used for rendering, I suspect the dual Xeons are the way to go.

As a 'for example' my 3 year old workstation is an i7 3930K overclocked from 3.2 to 4.2, pricing on that processor still seems to be around $500 to $700 on its own (not looked into systems). I bought an older refurbished dual Xeon system (X5650s)for that price, about $550, and it is 1.5 times faster at rendering. Not sure if the same holds up on more recent i7s and Xeons, but I suspect so - a dual Xeon system if it is just a render node is most likely going to give better price / performance ratio.

Hope this helps some!

4027

[Max] I need help! / Re: Getting color from current position

« on: 2016-06-02, 17:43:31 »

My first thought would be to apply the same UV map to all objects, so that they would all be coloured in the same way. Without scatter, I've done this just by selecting all the objects and applying a UV Map modifier, but can't speak to the workflow using scatter.

4028

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Creating a render farm

« on: 2016-06-02, 16:28:19 »

Never tried it myself - you would of course then have no access to any plugins that you used in Max for one thing. Beyond that, not sure what the difference would be. Harmless enough installing Max, and it is intended to be used that way by Autodesk (which is why they include Backburner with Max) so I never looked into any alternative approaches myself. Maybe someone else can add more on that.

EDIT - someone else has added more info just as I was posted, brilliant!

4029

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Creating a render farm

« on: 2016-06-02, 16:01:21 »

Just run the installer and there you go. If you run it, it will ask to be activated, but you never need to run it.

I usually download the installer on my main machine, then just copy it over to the other machines, run it, never run Max, and presto!

4030

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Create a render farm

« on: 2016-06-02, 15:12:24 »

I'd suggest using some form of remote desktop to control the other PCs, then you don't need monitors and keyboards and can have access to them all from one central machine. "Pro" versions of Windows feature this built in if you enable it, but there are alternatives, e.g. Google has a free remote desktop system. You can move your one main monitor / keyboard / mouse to the machine for initial set up, then just leave it as a box on its own after that :)

For nodes, any hardware will do, personally I find refurbished dual Xeons to be good for price / performance, I went for older ones due to budget, but even a $500 machine can perform well. Graphics card is irrelevant, so you can go without if you get the option in the system you are buying, or go for the cheapest, as it has no role to play.

You will need Max installed on each node, but it doesn't have to be licensed - this means you can't run Max on the node (ie open it as a program and use it) but you won't need to. As noted, you will need an OS for each machine too of course.

Hope this helps!

4031

[Max] I need help! / Re: Bird Flight Exterior Lighting

« on: 2016-06-01, 20:47:11 »

PS - I preferred lighting in the first 2 images over the camera 6.

PPS - Do bear in mind that this is a public forum, so choose carefully what you share, as it is open to anyone to see it. For protected works, you could get in touch via email or private message to send things along that aren't seen by all.

4032

[Max] I need help! / Re: Bird Flight Exterior Lighting

« on: 2016-06-01, 20:35:35 »

Now bear in mind I am no render magician like some others on the forum :) But here are my thoughts

What lighting  set up do you have? I'd be going for just Corona sun and sky.

I think the trees look good here though, which perhaps points to texturing being a large part of the look of the other objects rather than the lighting being a problem. The walls, roofs, pathway and grass in particular look fairly flat and even in colour, whereas the trees have lots of detail to them so look good.

Some pronounced tiling on the roofs would be good, the pathway by the road could use either slabs or some variation in colour to give it some texture, the grass could have more of a bump (or at least a stronger variation in the colours that it has), the walls of the houses might be ok with those other changes, though some variation in colour there might be good, a bit of noise or bump.

I also think the pathways have edges that are too straight and prounced, same with the river (and there are some polygon edges visible back there where it curves). A bit of displacement or just modeling in some variation to the river bank would be good, some smoothing with opensubdiv or turbosmooth for the river banks. For the path edges, either some slight scattered objects for stray grass blades (could even be just planes with a transparency map rather than full geometry) - anything that would give a rougher edge there, something a little less "CGI perfect"

Same with the hedges too now I look, they look a bit too smooth and even.

Hope something here helps!

Just my thoughts on it!

4033

[Max] I need help! / Re: Bird Flight Exterior Lighting

« on: 2016-05-31, 22:37:49 »

Any chance you could share sample images? Or are they not shareable due to the terms of the project?

4034

[Max] I need help! / Re: Shadow Density

« on: 2016-05-31, 22:37:03 »

There's no equivalent setting, as this would be a non-physical approach (Corona works out how much light is hitting the surface based on physical laws). I'd say for this you'd go with adjusting Exposure, Contrast and similar in the VFB (or in post), or adjusting the lighting set-up to stop so much light getting into the shadows. Depending on what the scene is, you might add an AO pass to "fake" things. Hope this helps!

4035

[Max] General Discussion / Re: De-Noise of render elemnts

« on: 2016-05-31, 22:32:06 »

You can watch the progress here: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,11965.0.html and check the roadmap here https://trello.com/b/EfPE4kPx/corona-road-map-3ds-max

And of course with a FairSaaS or Box with Subscription license you can download the daily builds to try it out as it progresses, but do remember this is a use at your own risk scenario as this is in-development software, not a finished release! And yes, it does replace your current install, you can't have 1.4 release and 1.5 daily build running alongside each other (though you can do stuff like install 1.5 daily on Max 2016 and keep 2017 running with the 1.4 release for production work, or similar).