Topics

1

General CG Discussion / Midjourney V5

« on: 2023-03-21, 12:24:49 »

Just wondered if anyone had played around with much success with MJv5 for creating seamless textures?

I just had a quick play by adding "--tile" to the end of the prompt, which apparently turns your prompt into a seamless tile.

The only downside I can see currently is the max resolution being 2048 (hopefully I'm wrong on that)

But even so, there's nothing to stop these being used on smaller assets that aren't too close to the camera imo.

Anyone else tried it.  Pro's and Con's?

2

General CG Discussion / Client Review/Collaboration Tools

« on: 2023-01-16, 20:19:48 »

Does anybody use any client review/collaboration tools that have improved your workflow when it comes to client feedback on drafts etc?

We currently just issue drafts via email to the relevant parties and request feedback is provided by a given date, or we arrange a zoom meeting and everyone loads the images and we run through comments and changes that way.

Ideally I want this process to be much more centralized and collaborative and cloud based, so feedback is consolidated and not coming in waves from the different parties involved.

I've seen things like Ftrack and Filestage and Drawboard, but just wondered if anyone had any experience with any of these or anything similar that they would recommend.

3

[Max] I need help! / Megascans Plants

« on: 2023-01-07, 14:46:37 »

So I've just downloaded some plants from Megascans, nice to see them setup with the Physical Material - but I've spotted something that goes against everything I thought I knew so far.

I was always under the impression, from multiple sources, that leaves generally had quite a dark albedo, and then a much brighter translucency colour.  However, the first asset I've checked is the opposite.  The translucency is much darker than the albedo ...

Does anyone know why this would be?  Could it just be that this asset just so happens to be like that in reality?  Could it be wrong (I don't know how realiable megascans is with regards accuracy)?  Does anyone have better knowledge than me on how plants work in reality that can shed some light (clue: I have zero knowledge)?

4

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / VFB Right Click - More Info

« on: 2023-01-05, 02:15:59 »

Random one, and it's more for my own experiments than anything else.  But it could be useful for others.

I'd love the ability to marquee some pixels in the VFB and then get an average sRGB (or RGB) value for that selection.  Very similar to Photoshops Filter>Blur>Average and then colour sampling the resulting swatch.

So draw a marquee in IR, then right click inside the marquee and the VFB gives you all of the usual info, but also an average for the pixels inside the marquee.  It's be even better if we had the option for ellipitical marquee selections too

5

[Max] I need help! / RAM Issues

« on: 2022-12-13, 14:30:40 »

Hi

I'm getting RAM issues as per usual, but the weird thing is Corona tells me that 'Render Elements are using 3.3GB'.

I don't have any render elements in this scene.  Surely the alpha doesn't require 3.3GB

6

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Adaptive Light Solver

« on: 2022-12-05, 01:11:45 »

Apparently this article was updated 5 days ago, but it's outdated ... https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/4528466192273-What-is-the-Adaptive-light-solver-New-light-solver-option-

Why was the Adaptive Light Solver moved from 'Performance' to hidden in the 'Devel/Debug Mode'.

And should it be on or off by default?

7

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Regions and DR

« on: 2022-12-03, 10:06:13 »

Hi

Let's say I've just rendered my image, I then notice a small mistake and want to render a small region to fix it.

I uncheck 'Clear VFB' then draw my region and press render again.

The region renders fine, but the rest of the render outside of the region does this as you can see in the attachment.  Using DR

This happens every time I render a region on top of an existing render, which makes unchecking 'Clear VFB' kinda useless.

8

[Max] I need help! / UVW Randomizer Issue

« on: 2022-09-25, 14:11:35 »

See screenshot.  These 3 objects (close up of banquet seating) have the exact same material on them, except the furthermost left one.  The only difference with that one, is the jpeg used for maps are also plugged into UVW Randomizers.

It looks to me as if the normal map is being inverted when plugged through the UVW Randomizer.  Which in turn is making it "shinier".  I've no idea if thats because of the inverted normal map or if it's also inverting any of the other maps i.e. bump, gloss etc.

Max 2021 Corona 8 HF1

9

[Max] I need help! / Understanding Disney Specular

« on: 2022-09-20, 22:26:49 »

Bear with me.

Various vendors (old and new) supply texture sets with 'Reflection' maps.  When using these with the Legacy Material, it was relatively logical.  The values in the reflection maps ranged from 0-1, which directly correlated with the reflection level spinner.

To use those same textures in the physical material, my understanding is that we need to specify Disney specular, then under the hood Corona is converting the values in the texture to IOR values?  Is that right?

If so, then is it also correct that any 0 values in the texture are being 'remapped' to IOR 1, and any 1 values are being remapped to IOR 1.8, and all the other grey values somewhere inbetween?

If I'm still on track, that makes our old reflection maps pretty useless for the physical material without reworking the maps in PS or something first so they fall within a range of 0 and 0.5 and thus behave in the same/similar way as they would with the legacy material??

10

[Max] Feature Requests / CoronaCam 'Flip' View

« on: 2022-07-07, 20:35:38 »

It would be nice if the CoronaCam had the ability to 'flip' horizontally what it displays.  Much the same as photoshops flip horizontal does.

11

[Max] I need help! / Anodized Aluminium

« on: 2022-05-31, 11:30:57 »

Something that's always confused me in terms of material creation is Anodised Aluminium.

In terms of the physical material - is it a metal or not?

I appreciate it's not raw metal in it's original form but as it's not a separate coating such as powder coat, or applied such as paint, does that mean it's still a metal?  Is it simply enough to create an aluminium material using metalness workflow and increase the roughness to give the appearance of the anodised finish?

12

[Max] Bug Reporting / Multimap and Randomzer Bugs

« on: 2022-05-30, 23:41:48 »

If I open an old scene created in C7, C8 doesn't seem to respect the older UVW Randomizer or Multimap Settings.

For example in C7 I had everything set to 'Mesh Element', I've just opened the scene in C8 and the Multimap is set to 'Face Material ID' and the UVW Randomizer is set to 'Instance'?

13

[Max] I need help! / Boulder Retaining Wall

« on: 2022-05-12, 13:15:42 »

While not strictly Corona, i'm looking for some ideas as to how best to achieve a boulder based retaining wall like this?

Boulders from Megascans and Tyflow?

The walls follow a specific path/volume

14

[Max] I need help! / Tone Mapping Reset

« on: 2022-05-04, 03:18:14 »

Hi

I've had to do a full reinstall of Windows tonight, after getting back up and running, I've just opened a scene that was saved before in Corona 8 before the full reinstall and all of the tone mapping settings have reverted back to how I had it setup in Corona 7 before ever installing Corona 8?.

Where are the tonemapping settings saved for the scene files?  Did I delete them when reinstalling windows?

15

[Max] Bug Reporting / LightMix Issue

« on: 2022-05-03, 17:01:34 »

Having an issue with LightMix where I often have to turn one of checkboxes off and on for the frame buffer to recognise that I'm on the LightMix element.

This happens when rendering a region, or sometimes just restarting IR.

Hard to explain, but I've got the lightmix element selected in the frame buffer but it doesn't show the results of lightmix until I tinker with something.  As if it defaults back to Beauty if the render is restarted or a region is rendered.

Official Corona 8 release (Max 2021)