Topics

1

[Max] I need help! / Flickering with animated water

« on: 2018-06-26, 12:56:39 »

I'm trying to render a water tank filling with water and am having some problems with flickering.  For the water object, I've used a box with an animated boolean to show the tank filling up.  On top of the boolean in the modifier stack, the box has a subdivide and then a Houdini Ocean modifier to give the top surface some waves.  The animation works great, except for flickering in many places.  It almost looks like the front face of the water gets all garbled up and the refraction gets all messed up.  However, I'm not sure it's a geometry issue because if I switch the viewport from camera to perspective and move the camera just a tiny little bit, the frame renders fine.  I would think that if it was bad geometry at that frame, the refraction would be garbled even if the camera angle was slightly different.

The water material is modified from the water that comes with the Corona Material Library.  I made it green and gave it some volumetric scattering to make it look more like rainwater instead of a pristine pool.

It was rendered with Max 2019 with Corona 2 RC4.

Any ideas?

2

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Changing sun in Daylight System to Corona Sun creates a targeted sun object

« on: 2018-06-21, 14:20:14 »

When I create a Daylight System, then change the sun in that Daylight System from a mr sun (default) to a Corona Sun, the Corona Sun is created as a targeted object with the target locked to the origin.  If the Daylight System is not created at the origin, the apparent rendered time of day does not reflect the actual time selected in the Time/Date/Location setup in the Daylight System.  This is because the Corona Sun is looking at its target, which is at a different angle than the center of the Daylight System.  I now have to make sure the Daylight System is created (or moved to) the origin.  I previously did not need to do this.  The new behavior appears to be that the Corona Sun now has a target, which I don't think it did before.  I did not install RC1, but have noticed this in RC2 and RC3.

On a side note, is there a way to have the Daylight System automatically use a Corona Sun?

3

Hardware / Memory per core?

« on: 2017-11-13, 20:04:43 »

We're putting together our shopping list for our updated render nodes, and choked a little when we saw RAM prices these days.  Our lease cycle is three years and RAM prices were much more palatable back in 2014.

Anyways, we're looking at a dual Xeon Gold 6140 which is an 18 core chip.  That'd give us 36 cores / 72 threads.  Is 64GB of RAM going to be enough?  The scenes we're doing have been pushing 30GB or so during renders, so we've got plenty of overhead there.  But I've read here and there something about having 2GB per core.  What happens when you have less than 2GB per core?  Jumping up to 128GB of RAM is outside our budget.  I'd like to get as many cores as I can because I'll have this for 3 years, but don't want to shoot myself in the foot by not getting the right components.

Thanks!

4

Jobs / WRA is looking for a full time 3D visualization artist

« on: 2017-11-10, 21:24:55 »

Large Baltimore-based (Fells Point) architectural, engineering, and planning firm seeks a Graphic Artist/3D Visualization (5+ years’ experience) with an engineer’s attention to detail and an artist’s eye for composition, color, and storytelling to join the 3D visualization team in the Baltimore office.

Individual will be responsible for communicating design concepts through the visual development of 3D renderings and animations of architectural, engineering, and transportation projects for a wide variety of clients.

Primary responsibilities include:
•   Importing and optimizing design data from Revit, SketchUp, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Microstation, InRoads, and VISSIM.
•   Modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, and rendering in 3ds Max.
•   Post-production using Photoshop, After Effects, Syntheyes, and Premiere.

Skills and Qualifications:
•   Knowledge of 3ds Max (Corona rendering engine preferred), Photoshop, and SketchUp, After Effects, and Premiere required.
•   Ability to read and understand CAD drawings.
•   Photography experience desired.
•   Excellent time and file management.
•   Outstanding troubleshooting skills.
•   Ability to work independently and in a team environment.
•   VR development experience (Unreal Engine / Stingray) a plus.
•   FAA Part 107 certification not required, but a plus.

Only responses with a portfolio (PDF or web-based) will be considered.
U.S. Citizenship and Bachelor's degree required.

Equal Opportunity Employer

To apply, please visit:  https://www.wrallp.com/careers/apply-now and look under Marketing.

5

[Max] Resolved Bugs / [feedback] wxWidgest Assertion failure

« on: 2017-02-16, 17:57:21 »

Just got an error after I hit Stop while doing a DR.  Max did not crash.  Corona seems to function normally after the error message. 

I may have been clicking the Render Element dropdown selector in the Corona VFB when the error happened, but I'm not certain of the timing of that.

Here's the error:

===== Error(-11) =====
An internal error occured: wxWidgets Assertion failure. Please report this problem to us.
File: ..\..\src\msw\window.cpp(3564)
Function: wxAssociateWinWithHandle
Condition: "Assert failure"
Message: HWND 0000000001191AE8 already associated with another window (wxFrame)

6

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Light Intensity column value in Scene Explorer?

« on: 2015-03-12, 21:29:01 »

What unit is being reported to Scene Explorer for the Light Intensity column of CoronaLights?  PhotometricLights seem to be candelas, but I've no idea what value CoronaLights are.  It doesn't appear to be candelas.

7

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Corona light intensity maxed out by State Set change

« on: 2015-03-12, 19:22:27 »

Apologies if this is user error.  I'm trying to set up lighting passes with State Sets and CoronaLights (until Corona gets a VrayLightSelect equivalent render element... hint hint).  So I turned off all the lights in my scene, set up a state, set it to record while I turn some lights on.  Then I stop recording, make a new state and set it to record while I turn some other lights on.  When I reactivate the first state, the light intensity has been maxed out at 999999, which is not what I set it to.  I can reset it to the desired amount, but when I reactivate that state, it's back at 999999. Here's a screencast of the problem: http://screencast.com/t/2rxQJfd3xnvj.  This does not seem to occur when using regular Photometric lights.