Messages

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Problem; 3ds max Crashing on opening the compact material editor

« on: 2025-04-04, 11:09:10 »

Not sure if you ever shared a minidump with the team but when the mat-ed crashed for me, the minidump contained detailed info on which component/map led to the crash. I could isolate the map, replace it and continue working with the scene. Sharing the minidump might be a good step towards a solution.

2

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-24, 14:35:50 »

Oh sorry - missed that it needs to be approved first.

Will post the node map idea once it's approved and reference it so it's clear it's a follow up and a generalization of that reqeust.

Thanks Maru, much appreciated!

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[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-24, 12:09:36 »

I have logged the "anisotropy by reference node" option as a feature request here: https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-155
Feel free to vote for it and/or comment. Note that it will be invisible for some time, until approved by Tom.

Great, thanks! However the link doesn't work for me - it says 'record not found'.

Maybe even it would make sense to have an 'object space reference map' node where any nested map/maptree would inherit the picked object's local space?
A more generalized solution wouldn't be bad since this is useful for more properties than in this case with anisotropy.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: C4D's VFB responsiveness

« on: 2025-03-20, 20:59:31 »

It looks like C4D's VFB is redrawing the UI (or something else that causes the flickering of the render buttons) and more stats are updated than in Max. Could this be a reason?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Nesting Multi/Sub-Object materials is not supported in corona Layer material

« on: 2025-03-17, 08:48:37 »

I wonder if you can use a Blend material for this.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Color accuracy

« on: 2025-03-14, 22:45:12 »

Corona did as best as it could to support ACES (whatever users had in mind saying it) in the meantime, on the go.

First it was the limitation of the host app (no proper color management), then it was its half baked state.

Corona had wide gamut for rendering since the very early days. Even with 3ds Max being just gamma managed, we added ACEScg as internal rendering space some time ago (maybe Corona 10 or older, cannot quite remember). This would give slight differences in color, the most significant being in colored medium. See this comparison. Overall, the differences between Wide RGB and ACEScg are very subtle, and this shows that Corona's internal rendering color space was very robust even before ACES was "cool".

Then we also implemented ACES OT operator. This specifically brought better highlight (including colored) handling. See this comparison.

It might have left unnoticed because, in my opinion, archviz is not a branch that would had seen significant boost from it. It just became a better standard, and render engines tried to adopt it as good as possible.

If you want to help archviz, Corona should finally support ICC profiles in the VFB as final color transform. For all the PS guys, Aces might be nice for it tonemapping, but as far as color management is concerned, it's not helping much.

We went slightly off topic though, OP asked for shortcomings of sRGB and workflows for proper material/surface capturing.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Color accuracy

« on: 2025-03-14, 11:54:04 »

This post warms my heart - really, good to read it drives others mad, too.

Two in-depth articles from a longtime Max user about PBR and some of its assumptions and pitfalls, and practical solutions:
https://www.racoon-artworks.de/blog_PBRfromrulestomeasurements.php
https://www.racoon-artworks.de/blog_PBRshootingandcalibrating.php

Getting the right material properties is hard without a proper device. A colorimeter will only give you a reflected color value without any other info about reflectance and its behavior. The there's the materials surface which will affect all incoming/outgoing light and will produce different results for lighting and viewing angles.

Then there's the renderer - you can't really be sure how realistic it'll model the reflectance behavior when it comes to surface structure, how bump maps work in renderers is generally very simplified and will not reproduce real life accurately, and with texture filtering you can not really tell what it'll do). Rough diffuse materials are really a topic on its own with hardly any renderer caring about it.

As for sRGB, it's only getting worse from here. I'd say the range of colors in RAL and Pantone that can't be reproduced in sRGB may even be about 50%, maybe even more. I have not once come across a site that will tell you which space of RGB they assume for the values, and I'm pretty sure it's because they know it's impossible and just tell you a number close enough. Some vendors will give you LAB colors which is another can of worms because the scientific LAB space is not the LAB you'll find in Photoshop.

Broad topic, and then there are clients who will view your results on an uncalibrated display one day and tell you it's too dark, and the next they'll look at it on their mobile and tell you it's too bright and could be less saturated :D

I have worked in pre-press for some years and looking back I wish people in all places of the production chain (software vendors, too) would care about this today as people did 20 years ago when they printed stuff on paper.

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Creating a terrain with Corona displace modifier - viewport view

« on: 2025-03-11, 11:25:32 »

You can keep using one mesh - with the standard Displace modifier for the mesh in the viewport and CoronaDisplacementMod for rendering.
When you right-click on the Displace modifier (and the Turbosmooth mod if you wish), you can set it to 'Off in Renderer', and set the Corona modifier to 'Off in Viewport' the same way.
That way, each one will be passed to either viewport or renderer, making it possible to keep working with one mesh.

Not sure this is what you're asking, but it sounds like it is.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Chaos corona livense not found

« on: 2025-03-10, 14:13:49 »

Working again, thank you.

It's probably time to learn from this issue (and so many before) and improve the licensing system, some suggestions:
- I had ISP connectivity issues in the past and every time my license was wonky for a few days. A licensing system that checks the license and then stores its status for a day or two would already help a lot
- let us work on materials even with the system not being able to retrieve a valid license

Really, anything that actually pays respect to the fact that we're paying upfront for 1 year of undisturbed usage of your software. I'm sure others have own thoughts to add.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Chaos corona livense not found

« on: 2025-03-10, 13:31:14 »

Mine is #355195

Going by the number of users posting about the same problem at he same time it's a problem on your end. Asking us to submit a ticket is just not the way to go about this and, no matter the way you look at it, won't help to solve it.

And really, this shitty licensing system (in the past and now again) leads to all kinds of issues, no way the usual text block answers will do this time.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Chaos corona livense not found

« on: 2025-03-10, 13:13:10 »

Yes, same here. I could access Corona normally until 12.45, then no license.
Online portal reports everything's fine so... yeah doesn't seem so.

Thanks, Chaos, good job. We're paying upfront, don't we?

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[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-04, 16:04:41 »

Please don't rest in peace yet! :D

Glad it was helpful.

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[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-03, 16:56:14 »

Try this - (in a temp scene or copied objects of ocurse):
- in 'advanced options' tab of the material, change 'anisotropy orientation' from local axis to UVW
- now apply a UVW mod in box mode to *all* affected objects so they share the same UV space
- make sure to use the same UV channel for both the anisotropy orientation and UVW modifier.

If the problem goes away, it means the objects have been modeled in different local axes. This happens when you start modeling one wall in the left view, another one in front/top etc. The local axis of these objects will be different and since anisotropy treats each one differently each object will reflect differently.
By using UVs as anisotropy orientation *and* making sure all objects have their UVs defined the same way by using a UVW modifier, it should render the same for all objects.

A good addition for the physical material would be to have a user 'reference node' for anisotropy orientation, that way users wouldn't have to worry, the specified reference node would then be used as axis reference for all objects using that material.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Different Colors Between Corona VFB and Saved Image

« on: 2025-03-03, 13:30:55 »

Lol, I've been asking for this in some other places, too. Some time around Corona 1.4 or 2 I just gave up because I realized the team just didn't *understand* the need. For some reason, dealing with support requests, confuse users for years only to still offer nothing seemed like the better way to go about it.

Just so you know, since piotrus3333 linked to my post, it took Rotem literally a weekend to implement this in VFB+, and most of the time he spent on dealing with RGB to CMYK conversion, which we wouldn't need, let's just do RGB. And 2015?!? 10 years...

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[Max] I need help! / Re: STANDARD SURFACE material to CORONA MATERIAL

« on: 2025-03-03, 12:28:28 »

No, Standard Surface is Arnold's own physical material, it's not the (old) default Scanline Standard. It's pretty wide spread in the Maya world but not very common for 3dsmax (mostly because Max got Arnold so late and has much less users than in Maya).