Topics

16

[Max] I need help! / Scanning or photographing long planks

« on: 2019-04-29, 05:13:47 »

Hi all,

We have a project that requires the representation of some specific wood planks for use with floorgenerator script and Corona.  The manufacturer sent us ~50 SF of samples consisting of 6’ long planks.  We tried photographing with a dSLR in ‘one shot’ with a wide angle lens but didn’t get enough resolution.  We tried multiple shots but that creates a tricky merge situation with exposure and grain being tricky to match precisely.

I was curious if anyone had any thoughts?  It’s almost like an iPhone app would do the job...we don’t need a ton of data since they won’t be close to the camera and the grain is not raised so I don’t think something like Dabarti capture is necessary either.  Just looking for a smart way to get reasonable resolution and continuity without resorting to a specialty scanner.

Apologies in advance if this doesn’t fit in ‘General.’

Thanks!
Daniel

17

[Max] I need help! / Boosting GI per object

« on: 2018-10-17, 22:50:36 »

Hello - I'm working on a desert rendering where, due to the sharp light and dense foliage on some of the acacia trees, I'm ending up with the leaves reading darker than I'd like\expect.  I remember on a Boundary UK post on Instagram that someone asked them if the GI was boosted in their plants on this one rendering and they said, yes, by 250%.  I've looked around a fair bit but haven't found a way to 'boost GI' on a per object basis.  Is this probably done in post or is there an object property I'm missing?

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf3-V-vArAO/?taken-by=the_boundaryuk

Cheers for any pointers.  I could always fake it or tweak the opacity\translucency but just thought I'd ask.
Thanks,
Daniel

18

General CG Discussion / Worth upgrading beyond Max 2016?

« on: 2018-10-07, 21:47:18 »

Hi all - I've had a perpetual license of Max 2016 for a while now and, due to a variety of factors, am considering getting a subscription license (in addition.)  My question is basically: is there any compelling reason to move beyond 2016?  2017 seems like it was much maligned but I never heard anything bad (or good, either) about 2018.  I know little of 2019 except I've seen some threads with people having issues with having to double-click certain toolbars...?

Anyway, would love to hear feedback from other Corona users.  Happy to stick with 2016 with my new seat but am always curious about 'newer and better.'  I think the main issue I have with 2016 is the undo is REALLY slow when you start instancing things, but I doubt 2019 is suddenly multi-threaded\faster on that.

Cheers,
Daniel

19

[Max] I need help! / Low CPU usage due to map

« on: 2018-10-03, 19:09:25 »

Hi all - There's some map or material in my scene causing low CPU usage during IR (like 50%) in the last official stable build.  It's also crashing the latest daily.

I'm on a deadline today, any ideas for what map to look for?  Some weird falloff map?  Or maybe a light material?  I don't have any 3ds Max Photometric lights in my scene, although I do have some converted Evermotion VRay stuff.

Thanks for any tips, otherwise I'm gonna go material by material...and the scene is huge :/

Daniel

EDIT:  Some other notes.  I'm not using the new light solver.  It also happens with\without path tracing forced on in IR.  Displacement doesn't affect it.  Material override solves it.

EDIT 2:  I might have figured it out...

EDIT 3:  GOT IT!!!!  I don't know what was crashing the scene in the latest daily build, but when I rolled back to the latest official build the problem was caused by the presence of the new UVW Randomiz by Mesh feature, I think.  It was only used on one wooden element and when I swapped that material CPU usage shot to 100%.  W00t!

20

[Max] I need help! / IOR for unfinished wood?

« on: 2018-08-16, 18:23:02 »

Hello,

I often have to do raw, unfinished wood exteriors.  I find with an IOR of 1.52, even with a low reflection glossiness and bump, I get a bit of a plastic look.  I remember hearing that unfinished wood is a 'lambertion' and didn't have reflectivity in the same way.  Would it be physically correct to set the IOR to 1.0?  Or is that crazy talk?

Thanks,
Daniel

21

[Max] Bug Reporting / IR restarts on first zoom in VFB

« on: 2018-08-01, 19:49:10 »

I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this, but I often find that IR restarts\recalculates when I zoom in with the scroll wheel on my mouse in the VFB the first time.  Subsequent zooms in or out don't do this until the next time I stop and then start IR.  It's not a huge deal, but on big scenes it can be kind of annoying.

It's not scene dependent so I don't think there's any use in uploading a scene.  I'm using Win 10, Max 2016, and the latest Daily (but it's been happening for a while.)

Thanks,
Daniel

22

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / De-noise Unassigned Lightmix

« on: 2018-07-27, 17:40:54 »

This has probably been requested before, but it would be so great if there were an option to 'De-noise Unassigned Lightmix' lights.  All too often I only care about Lightmixing one or two lights.  So then I have to assign the other lights to a lightmix object, and if one slips by (or I add another light and forget to assign it) I end up with noise that isn't de-noised at the end of the render, leaving me to hunt for the last unassigned light.

Thanks!
Dan

23

[Max] I need help! / Invertebrates

« on: 2018-06-14, 02:19:43 »

Hi All - Not a totally Corona specific post, but I'm tasked with creating an interior view of a university laboratory\show room.  One of the walls holds a 2 storey display of invertebrates in glass mason jars suspended in solution.  I guess I just have some modeling ahead of me, but I also thought someone out there might have a cool idea of how to 'fake' showing something in a liquid solution inside a jar.  Perhaps I could do something with bitmaps and a falloff shader?  And for what it's worth, I don't know OSL :)

I always like to think up something more creative than just brute force modeling or mediocre photoshop, but this time I'm stumped!

Thanks for any inspiration,
Daniel

24

Hardware / Xeons as alternatives to Threadripper

« on: 2018-06-08, 10:47:00 »

Hello all,

I was just curious if there are any Xeons out there that are a reasonable (I realize that's a vague word) alternative to Threadrippers?  I currently have an old dual Xeon build, a fairly new Threadripper build and am looking to spec out something a bit more robust for future work.  Does anyone have any recommendations for roughly doubling a 1950X Threadripper's performance?  Would one have to spend $4,000 for that?  Far more? 

I apologize for the uneducated question, I'm just looking for rough order of magnitude pricing.  Truth be told, I have a hard time understanding the Xeon product line.  I've also seen threads mentioning extreme thermal throttling with Xeons which scares me off a bit...

Thanks for any leads,
Daniel

25

[Max] I need help! / VR fine-tuning questions

« on: 2018-06-06, 18:21:39 »

Hello all,

I'm working on a set of 360s for a client.  I usually do stills for them, but this time around they've asked for panos for their Oculus Go.

I recently got a headset myself to test before sending, and so far the results have been decent. I'm just looking to improve things as I head towards the final renderings.  I have of course watched the very helpful Corona VR tutorial video and browsed around online quite a bit.

In no particular order I'm wondering:

-Spherical vs Cube (both stereo) preferences?
-If I go Cube I'm assuming I disable image filtering?  Would I also disable de-noising and bloom and glare?  Or no?  Disable sharpening\blurring in VFB?
-Recommended max rendering size for each...I'm guessing about 18k x 1.5k for stereo cube and....8k x 8k for stereo spherical? Or are those still too low?

Anyway, any thoughts or feedback on the above would be appreciated.  I'm going to give stereo cube a shot today, see if I like it any better than stereo spherical.

Thanks all!
Daniel

EDIT:  Oh, I'm also getting kind of a 'sparkle' effect on some materials that might be a little noisy.  I almost think it's the difference between left eye and right eye noise.  I'm trying to optimize my scene but wondering if that's something avoidable?

EDIT 2:  I'm discovering that the latest 360s app doesn't like the way that Corona\VRay exports cubemaps....https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/51935/new-version-oculus-360-photos-doesnt-support-cubemap-and-subfolders-anymore

26

Hardware / VR headsets

« on: 2018-05-28, 07:17:49 »

Hello,

I was contacted by a longtime client asking whether we could produce some stereo panoramas.  We’ve toyed with this a bit but have yet to commit to VR hardware.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice?  The Oculus Go seems appealing, but there’s no way to directly connect it to the PC for streaming?  Is this even an advantage?  With higher end headsets can you view IR real-time so as to adjust settings and camera location?  I could imagine the process of adjusting, rendering, and uploading being quite slow...

Thanks for any input!
Daniel

27

General CG Discussion / Pay when Paid?

« on: 2018-04-03, 01:46:37 »

About 10% of our clients stick rigorously to this 'We pay you when we get paid' policy.  We've never NOT been paid because of this, but it always seems a bit sketchy to me.  I understand it with structural engineers, landscape, etc.  Those consultants are in on a group effort to get the thing built.  But if you want a pretty picture of a project that seems like it's on you to pay.

Has anyone else run into this?  Do you make provisions in your contract?  And if so, do you actually enforce with a 'good' client?

Cheers and thanks for any input,
Daniel

28

[Max] I need help! / Phoenix FD - Assign materials?

« on: 2018-03-13, 04:14:28 »

Hello,

I'm working on a pretty basic arch viz scene that involves a beach\ocean.  I thought it might be fun to try out the Phoenix FD ocean tex, which worked quite well.  But then I got cocky and thought I'd try an actual sim with foam, etc. using the trial. 

Unfortunately I can't figure out how to assign specific materials to foam, water, etc.  I realize this is a super basic\stupid question but if anyone has any pointers it would be much appreciated.  Happy to try it out on the latest daily builds, too as I know this is getting rolled in day by day.

Cheers and thanks for any pointers!
Daniel

29

Hardware / Motherboard recommendations for Threadripper?

« on: 2017-12-01, 18:32:56 »

Hi all - I'm looking into building a threadripper 1950x system.  Was just curious if anyone had any positive or negative experiences with motherboards?  Seems like they can be good or else a bit of an achilles heel...and a lot of the reviews are from super early, so I'm assuming some of the issues were fixed.

The Asrock Taichi looks good but is always sold out.

Cheers and thanks for any feedback!
Daniel

30

[Max] I need help! / Unreliable Motion Blur

« on: 2017-11-29, 09:35:23 »

Hello - I've recently started to use lights + motion blur to generate headlight streaks (archviz) in the occasional render.  Unfortunately I'm finding it a little unpredictable when it comes to results.  With keyframed lights that should blur past the camera I often get no result at all (black VFB).  I have to turn on and off motion blur, start and stop the render, move the keyframe around, and then 'bam' it renders as it should.  Then I move the keyframe slider or some other minor variable and the lights disappear altogether (i'm rendering them isolated with a direct viz override of black, so I can composite the beauty pass right on my base render.)  If I change the value back to where it was, they still are gone.  It then takes more fiddling to get it to reappear.  It really seems a little random.

Any ideas?  Would love to use this technique more in the future, it's just not proving reliable.  Probably user error.

Thanks!
Daniel