Messages

1

[C4D] Daily Builds / Re: Not everyone reads the news, so a reminder - Chaos Licensing Server update

« on: 2025-01-17, 18:07:27 »

So long as you have Corona 12 Update 1 or later installed (and the dailies since 12 U 1 would count as "later") then no action is needed :) TY for asking! Always good to be sure in cases like this, so ask away with any questions!

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[C4D] I need help! / Not everyone reads the news, so a reminder - Chaos Licensing Server update

« on: 2025-01-17, 13:15:35 »

In case anyone doesn't check the News section of the forum, posting this in a few other places as we don't want anyone to suddenly find themselves with licenses not working on Jan 28th.

"
We wish to share this important update to Chaos Licensing as the server certificate will expire on January 28, 2025.

To ensure uninterrupted access to your licenses, you must update your Chaos License Server by January 28, 2025. Failure to do so will result in the loss of access to your licenses.
"

Please see https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=44052 for full details.

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[Max] I need help! / Not everyone reads the news, so a reminder - Chaos Licensing Server update

« on: 2025-01-17, 13:15:11 »

In case anyone doesn't check the News section of the forum, posting this in a few other places as we don't want anyone to suddenly find themselves with licenses not working on Jan 28th.

"
We wish to share this important update to Chaos Licensing as the server certificate will expire on January 28, 2025.

To ensure uninterrupted access to your licenses, you must update your Chaos License Server by January 28, 2025. Failure to do so will result in the loss of access to your licenses.
"

Please see https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=44052 for full details.

4

[C4D] Daily Builds / Not everyone reads the news, so a reminder - Chaos Licensing Server update

« on: 2025-01-17, 13:14:31 »

In case anyone doesn't check the News section of the forum, posting this in a few other places as we don't want anyone to suddenly find themselves with licenses not working on Jan 28th.

"
We wish to share this important update to Chaos Licensing as the server certificate will expire on January 28, 2025.

To ensure uninterrupted access to your licenses, you must update your Chaos License Server by January 28, 2025. Failure to do so will result in the loss of access to your licenses.
"

Please see https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=44052 for full details.

5

[Max] Daily Builds / Not everyone reads the news, so a reminder - Chaos Licensing Server update

« on: 2025-01-17, 13:13:59 »

In case anyone doesn't check the News section of the forum, posting this in a few other places as we don't want anyone to suddenly find themselves with licenses not working on Jan 28th.

"
We wish to share this important update to Chaos Licensing as the server certificate will expire on January 28, 2025.

To ensure uninterrupted access to your licenses, you must update your Chaos License Server by January 28, 2025. Failure to do so will result in the loss of access to your licenses.
"

Please see https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=44052 for full details.

6

[Max] General Discussion / Re: license acquisition

« on: 2025-01-16, 13:20:10 »

Sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue. Since the team here doesn't have access to the website, sales, or licensing operations, please send in a ticket via https://support.chaos.com/requests/new .

7

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Lights through glass displaying black

« on: 2025-01-15, 22:15:18 »

Well, it can't be branched off into a different code branch, and everyone else continues to do their work while one person tries to fix this (since this will change whatever they are working on) is what I mean by the above. So that means that for one release cycle, or possible two (that is 6 months, or a year), there would be no improvements, no bug fixes, nothing other than this one thing, and then some other things that used to work may not work, or could work very differently, and all existing scenes would likely be completely broken.

Finding the time to completely pause Corona development like that would be very hard, and in many ways more detrimental to users and to Corona itself than the benefit of this one issue being fixed - this only happens in specific situations, when the light has directionality, and there is a workaround which does take a bit of extra set up but is not impossibly hard to do.

So it comes down to that we know the issue is there, we know the impact it has on users, and we would like to fix it - and if we decide to work on this particular issue to the exclusion of all else, we will for sure let everyone know. And yes, like any issue, that may be "never" as it is not possible to do all the things, sorry. That also means if anyone asks again, we will have the same answer, and we'll be transparent and honest about it as always.

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[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Lights through glass displaying black

« on: 2025-01-15, 21:33:59 »

A curious kind of question. It's not one of those things that can be "attempted" - you either do it, or don't, and it would be in its entirety not done a bit at a time. The cause of it in a sense is known, we know why it happens in the general principles of the algorithms Corona is built upon, so we know what it would take to fix it (in broad terms) and we know how complex and long that would be.

So this question is rather like knowing that something arises due to the foundation of a building, and so knowing that to fix it would involve closing the building and tearing a lot of the building down and then having to build it differently, and then asking "Has any attempt been made to fix it?". No - because we'd have to close the building, tear a lot of it down, and rebuild it differently. This is not just a problem in an isolated part of the code, where you can try a rewrite or workaround or two, but is down on the foundations that everything else is then built upon.

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[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Lights through glass displaying black

« on: 2025-01-15, 16:45:21 »

Still no change, sorry. It would require some fundamental reworking of some things in Corona, which of course you already have heard, and with the potential for that to break so many other things, it hasn't found a place in the scheduling so far.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Interactive Render Problems

« on: 2025-01-15, 15:58:47 »

For crashes, please always attach a minidump, as detailed in https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4649117083409-How-to-report-issues-3ds-Max . Sometimes an example scene where it happens can be helpful. You can send those via ticket if you have any concerns about posting them on the public forum (https://support.chaos.com/requests/new ). You might be able to catch it during the freeze to force a dump as described in the page, if Max is otherwise just closing with no error message or minidump. Thanks!

11

[C4D] Daily Builds / Re: 100% cpu in IPR usage in daily?

« on: 2025-01-15, 15:56:35 »

Oh, not a stupid question, as it may still happen with the official release - but is worth running it juuuuuust to be sure :) Eliminates some small possibilities on the cause if we know for sure. Anyway, no question is ever a stupid question (except the unasked one, as then it never gets answered!). Keep on with the feedback and questions, please!

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Render Nodes with Backburner

« on: 2025-01-15, 15:52:22 »

After working with the team via ticket, should extra licenses be needed, remember that there are the Render Node licenses which are less expensive than full licenses. They allow a machine to render only (that is, no-one can "sit and use Corona in 3ds Max / C4D" using those licenses). https://www.chaos.com/corona#pricing look for the "Add more render power" link there in case you don't spot it ;)

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Embrace GPU rendering

« on: 2025-01-14, 20:51:10 »

TY for the feedback, and you are correct in why CPUs are better at this stuff when it comes to realism and accuracy. GPUs excel at "performing the same calculation loads of times, once per pixel" as it can then divide that up among all the cores on the GPU, and those cores don't need to talk to each other very much - the thing is, as light bounces around a scene, the calculations have to branch, meaning lots of different calculations have to be done, not just "the same thing loads of times". In the end, CPUs are architecturally built (physically) to handle just that sort of situation where each core may be doing something very different from the others and may need to exchange data and synch efficiently on doing that so there is little wasted idle time as logic branches, while GPUs are built (physically) in a way that is not so good at that.

So CPU rendering will be around for a long time to come, and we aim to keep Corona right up there as a top choice for realism in archviz on CPU :)

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Scatter + Distance map insanely slow

« on: 2025-01-14, 20:42:12 »

If I remember right, CoronaDistance uses ray tracing to find the nearest point on the surface of an object it is taking the distance from - so you are asking Corona to raytrace to determine how far a given surface point on the landscape is from every surface point of every tree, or something like that in terms of calculations. That is a lot of calculations :)

Not sure what difference it would make, but you might want to have one distance map per tree, that way it's only calculating distance to that tree and not all trees (you could then add these together and pass the result to scatter to place the small plants). Another option, perhaps along with the first, would be to split the landscape into separate parts, so that each part is only calculating distance to a particular tree/particular trees.

EDIT - the above would really require the trees baked to geometry. Though you could use the second approach and divide up the landscape and each part has its own Scatter, that might reduce the load on the Distance map too as it won't have to consider tracing to every point of every tree in the scene for every point on the landscape.

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General CG Discussion / Re: Corona render as a beginner

« on: 2025-01-14, 14:51:07 »

The good news is that GPU RAM doesn't matter, as Corona is a CPU engine :) The question then becomes what CPU and system RAM you have - more threads is better, more RAM is better, with 16GB being a very bare minimum, 32Gb being a workable minimum, 64Gb probably still the sweetspot, but 128Gb doesn't hurt if you can afford it.