Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / CoronaPhysical Mtl & Physical Mtl Questions

« on: Yesterday at 17:21:21 »

Recently ive been confused by a few things in the the Corona that over the years ive learned to live with.
couple of questions; For the attached example, Physical material is on the left and corona on the right.

1. Why does inverting a map in the bitmap node result in a different output than if i invert it within a corona colour correct node?

2. Why do the same PBR maps connected to both a corona physical material and an autodesk physical material render differently to each other?  Ive attached an example compariso_galv.jpg. On the left is a physical material, the right is a corona material. Both seem slightly different colours and also seem to be reflecting differently. It seems corona assumes metals have an IOR of 2-3 because i had to set the physical material to 2.5 to get a close match. Is it just down to a different implementation of metalness?

3. It appears to me that physical materials render much faster and clean up much quicker with the gpu denoiser. At least during this testing thats what i saw. For instance in the attached comparison, the corona material on the right is far more blurry than the physical on the left which has cleared up in the same number of passes.

Not a huge difference but im looking at the viability of using physical materials instead of corona for better compatibility with our pipeline at work and just noticed a few subtle differences.

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Better implementation of corona maps in Nitrous viewport

« on: Yesterday at 16:33:08 »

@Jpjapers by saying "more complex material graphs in viewport", what exactly do you mean? What would you like to be added?

Great question! Currently as far as i can tell, corona materials will only display the diffuse channel and the viewport does not reflect (no pun intended) any of the gloss/roughness maps or bump/normal either. Ive attached images below showing the difference in coronaPhysical vs PhysicalMaterial with the same maps and settings. Corona of course on the right.

I should have phrased my request differently as it was less about more complex graphs and just a more complete interpretation of the material.

3

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Remote DR

« on: 2024-04-15, 17:24:40 »

Hi Jpjapers, similar topics were discussed on the forum many times. You can search for stuff like "DR backburner" and it will show you various posts and solutions.

Basically, the idea of DR is literally distributed rendering. So you distribute a single rendering between 2 or more machines.
In case of submitting a rendering from one machine (which is not rendering) for rendering on another single machine, distributed rendering is irrelevant. It requires at least 2 rendering computers.

What you can try instead is:
- Submitting the rendering to Backburner (you submit from computer A and the rendering takes place on computer B)
- Using Backburner with Corona DR (only in case of 1 computer you are submitting from and 2 or more rendering computers) - while this scenario is not officially supported (we can't guarantee it would work), some users were able to use it - https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=27657.msg162920#msg162920
- Using 3rd party apps to submit the rendering on computer A and execute on computer B - for example Pulze or Deadline. I *think* they have free licenses for rendering on 1-2 computers.

Backburner makes me shudder but for now its the best solution it seems! It would be nice to have this feature within DR even though by its very nature it isnt distributed. Just the ease of use of DR and how tightly integrated its settings are makes it incredibly appealing to me as a means to render on other machines.

4

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: romullus wips

« on: 2024-04-08, 16:25:27 »

Really nice! Is there something funky going on with the glass? The rear window looks unusual.

5

[Max] Feature Requests / Remote DR

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:52:55 »

It would be fantastic if we could offload rendering to another machine on my network through DR without having to render on the host PC itself too.
I work on my work-supplied laptop but also have a personal workstation that is much more powerful. I often use them in tandem to render but sometimes id much prefer if i could just submit to render on my main workstation without needing to manually transfer all of the textures, open it on my workstation, relink the files and then render.

Im sure there are other requests for similar features but just a checkbox for 'include this machine' on DR would be great. I don't even mind if the host machine still just assembles the sent passes in a vfb. I just dont want it rendering and locking up my machine when i could be working on other stuff during the render. Yes i could set up deadline or similar but it feels like a potential easy win for those only rendering on one or two machines.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: script help and where to find documentation?

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:25:52 »

Nice! Amazing enough what you got from the bot.

Ive been using chatgpt to make some maxscripts recently and it takes some time but its generally pretty good. I used it today to write a little script that organises revit imports into layers by whatever BIM property the user selects from a dropdown and it works great. I find that if you manage to get it working you can then feed the script back into chatgpt and ask it to look at code practices, efficiencies and commenting and it tends to clean things up quite nicely. Sometimes you need to prompt it with pages from the maxscript help. It also doesnt get the 'If, Then Else' structure and keeps trying 'If, Do, Else'.

I also used it to write myself a custom map node that loads colour libraries from csv files and then used it to scrape various paint manufacturers sites for all of the paint hex codes, then parse the hex, name and rgb values into the format i need for the script. Works an absolute dream! I did however manage to break it and now cant figure out how to fix it. More chatGPT maybe!

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[Max] Feature Requests / Better implementation of corona maps in Nitrous viewport

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:20:43 »

Often when people complain about the max viewport vs say the blender viewport capability its because most people arent using native renderers in max and therefore the viewport support isnt as complete as say the max physical material might be.
Id love to see greater compatibility between the max viewport and corona materials and maps. Probably not a priority item but it would benefit my workflow greatly being able to show more complex material graphs in viewport without needing to render or use IR for design reviews in real time.

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Corona compatibility with Chaos Cloud

« on: 2024-04-05, 17:17:41 »

There will be no support for Chaos Cloud Rendering (hence the archiving). There will be support for Chaos Cloud Collaboration, though - we have yet to see if that can be considered for 12 or not, depending on the progress of the work on the VFB.

That is very disappointing! Ive been waiting for the day i can have a reliable solution for render farming built directly into corona.
If anyone has any recommendations for alternative solutions id love to hear some that have transparent and easy to understand pricing structures.

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[Max] Feature Requests / Re: USD Support from Chaos?

« on: 2024-01-19, 19:05:42 »

I appreciate your candour Tom thanks.

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[Max] Feature Requests / USD Support from Chaos?

« on: 2024-01-19, 16:20:26 »

Now Chaos has signed up to the OpenUSD Alliance will we be seeing integration from the corona side?
Im hoping that we can see some support from the corona side because currently we are in a walled garden.
Material X support as well as integration with USD would allow greater compatibility when working in multidisciplinary teams.


I note that Vray already has export compatiblity with these features;

• V-Ray shaders (materials and textures)
• Animation of shader parameters
• V-Ray lights
• Animation of VRayLight parameters
• V-Ray Displacement
• VRayInstancer
• VRayProxy
• V-Ray Physical Camera
• User-Defined object attributes with textures such as VRayUserScalar and VRayUserColor
• Native MaterialX materials through maxUSD

I understand that things are different than they used to be with regards to PR and what the team can say but the canned response of 'check the trello if its not there then keep your eyes peeled' really isnt helpful. It feels like with Vray the users wouldnt need to ask if the feature is coming because its an industry standard piece of software, of course its coming. With Corona though i feel i can never be sure if the software is going to keep up with the industry requirements of its user base.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-19, 16:01:25 »

Insightful read.
A suggestion, if I may: Arnold. You are already getting it with 3dsMax subscription. CPU focused like Corona. Similar speed. Much more features. Just give it a try, dip a toe.

Ive been doing this recently but i really really miss lightmix.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-18, 13:25:10 »

Yikes, that was Corona 8, must admit, considering the next release is scheduled for May/June this year, it doesn't look very exciting at all as far as the roadmap is concerned ... New VFB skin and Cosmos/Mat Library updates.  For me the last really beneficial update was Corona 9.  With Clouds, Out of Core Textures and Pattern, but again nothing groundbreaking.  I'd call them improvements more than anything.  Clouds and Pattern already existed in VRay by that point.

Most of my work is interiors so clouds didnt make much difference for me personally so its sort of the push and pull of releases benefitting some more than others and i get that completely. But i remember when lightmix came to be and it was just an instant gamechanger for everybody.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-17, 00:24:05 »

I agree with the sentiments here. The prices go up and yet there seems to be very little focus on major new features and more focus on giving up asset 'freebies' or software we MIGHT have a use for. The last big update that made any kind of difference to my productivity was whenever decals came to be. Aside from that it feels very much like small incremental changes or changes to potentially unnecessary things that are clearly meant to add additional value to corona such as scatter and cosmos.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-11, 14:42:39 »

The more the price increases the more incentive i have to learn a realtime engine. So unless they can sort out good, seamless vantage integration soon to save me the hassle, i cant see there being a need for me to remain using an offline renderer for the majority of my work.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Can't cancel auto renewal? Now have to pay for another year?

« on: 2023-11-28, 18:49:56 »

It's a Chaos thing, not a Corona thing I feel.  When it comes to the business side of things, Corona and Chaos still feel like completely separate companies.  This whole price increase/annual subscriptions etc has been an abomination in terms of communication from the start.  Both external communication to customers and internal communication inside Chaos.  We've got the devs on here telling us one thing, Chaos support telling us another and then Chaos billing doing something completely different again.

Communication seems to relatively poor behind the scenes.  There's another live thread on here at the minute about Phoenix Memory leaks where the devs have said one thing, and support have said another.

I do feel sorry for the devs on here though because they're the ones who get it in the neck from us lot, and they're genereally excellent, but we have nowhere else to vent.  On the other hand, I guess they have to take the rough with the smooth, when you sell to the suits, you have to be prepared to take the inevitable backlash that comes with it.  Bigger leagues, bigger problems and all that.

Absolutely agree. The team here are always fantastic and have been since the start. Its only since the chaos takeover that things have started to go a bit sour.