Messages

1

[C4D] I need help! / Re: HDR vs Physical SKY

« on: Today at 11:33:04 »

In my experience and broadly speaking the procedural sun & sky set up will be faster to render out than an HDRI. That said I personally do like to use HDRIs for certain interiors because they can get you really nice subtle details in the lighting - for example you get some greens from the ground, some nice orange from the brick building thats in the HDRI etc etc.

That said the procedural setup is awesome because you have total control over the actual light sources - sure you might need to model some of the environment to get those HDRI like subtleties (that are typically hard to notice anyway) but it tends to render faster. And again, you really can set up the lighting any way you please.

As far as cutting down on render times, you can try the usual GI vs AA balance tweaking but that in my experience gets you minuscule improvements. Corona is optimized as is. You do want to switch the UHD cache to the animation preset though and if you don't mind sacrificing realism then lowering the MSI to 1 might help you clean the noise faster (but the lighting will be darker and some materials less "intense").

Other than that personally I just let it render :)

2

Hardware / Re: Help with building a new computer

« on: Today at 11:22:30 »

Sorry for the late reply, totally missed this thread.

The build seems fine to me to be honest - I'd check if the memory is on the motherboard's QVL list (typically listed under the support web page of the product) but that is about it.

For the cooler I'd also go with a Noctua. AIOs are fine but there's always that extra worry about a leak or a pump failing imho.

As for the CPU, the 14900k is a top performer no doubt but personally I'd go with the 7950x or a 7950x3d. Not because "AYMDEEH" but plainly because they are a lot more efficient power wise so whether you'd like to save a few bucks every month or consume less electricity because Earth. Performance wise they are kind of similar enough I'd say though.

Hope this helps :)

3

Hardware / Re: Another PC build

« on: 2024-05-10, 12:37:07 »

Howdy! The build looks pretty cool to me although I'm a bit unsure about the memory - those look like RDIMMs to me and if they are then I'd probably switch them out with regular sticks. I keep forgetting if ECC is supported on the consumer platform these days but for Corona you don't really gain anything with RDIMMs. I'd use the saved up money to go with something thats on the motherboard's QVL list and does 5600-6000MT in terms of speed.

Motherboard wise, if you're interested, I think the b650 Pro Art from ASUS might be interesting - it imho has a better PCIE slot layout although you do lose one of the gen5 m2 slots because it changes to gen4 (Pro Art has 1x gen5 and 2x gen4 whereas your choice has 2x gen5 and 1x gen4). This is totally subjective though, I just like the layout on the Pro Art better in case I'd want to run something bandwidth intensive in both the first and second PCIE slots because Pro Art does x8 / x8 whereas the ROG Strix you've chosen does x16 / x4 (because it is via chipset). Again, totally subjective, if you don't think you'll ever run anything like that the one you've chosen is plenty awesome imho.

Oh and the Pro Art has 1x 2.5Gbe and 1x 1Gbe ports built in - if you're running a local render farm or whatever that might be handy depending on how you approach that (I've got my WS connected to the internet via one port and the other port goes to the local network only where the render nodes live :) ).

NVME wise I've recently started using WDs sn770 and sn850xs as they are (to me) quite nicely priced but apparently also amongst the fastest gen4 drives you can get. Compared to your Corsair Core XT choice the sn770 is 40€ cheaper and seemingly faster.
Don't quite me on that but maybe if you look at a couple of reviews and check out your local prices there might be an opportunity so save a couple of pounds there.

Hope any of the above is useful and do note, its nit picking. I quite like your build myself and the only "real" question mark would be that memory.

4

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2024-04-18, 13:14:00 »

...

I was waiting for the "I need moar sleep" comment when you broke then news :) We just got a dog recently and while it is clearly not the same as having a child boy did I not sleep for a week or two. Still recovering lol.

Yeah the CPUs I meant are the Epyc ones and lately we are really putting in a lot of focus on making sure the performance with these system is as it should be.

Still, I don't quite understand why the top of the line chips seem to be discounted by roughly 50% at most stores I'm looking at. Great time to buy though lol.

As for your 7980x, dang, that looks sweet! I'm currently contemplating getting one so all your feedback here is super duper useful. Thank you!

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[C4D] Corona Goodies - User Contributions / Re: Quixel Bridge Importer for Corona Renderer (C4D)

« on: 2024-04-16, 09:24:01 »

I'll be getting this! Thank you so much for working on it!

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: Volumetrics in Physical Material cuts out reflect underneath

« on: 2024-04-15, 08:38:41 »

Thank you for making this available to everyone, I too can't wait to play around with it :)

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Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2024-04-15, 08:34:54 »

I'm in the US, but I would buy a 96 core at 50% off.  Where did you find that? I saw people on eBay selling 7980X for like 3,500... But I'm a little sus about that. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, just had a new baby, and it's my first so it's a learning experience. But I got some really good updates on the 7980X. Pulling over a 39k on Corona bench and staying under 80c. I'll post results when I get home.

Oh duuude, congratulations!! That's quite the news! May the learning experience be a linear curve :)

US you say? Well Newegg has one listed for below 5k. Here is the link:
https://www.newegg.com/p/14U-00ZT-031U5

I'm looking at a chart that Supermicro provides and they've been discounted like this since basically the first week of this year. I have no idea why and even though these are clearly still expensive products they are also almost comically cheap at the same time lol.

I am beyond tempted myself. A single 96 core can replace and possibly even outperform two Zen 3 64 core Epycs at a much lower power consumption. Sheesh.

8

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2024-04-14, 20:51:43 »

@dfcorona got any updates maybe? Totally curious to hear how the 7980x has been treating you.

By the way, I have just noticed that roughly since the start of the year the top of the line 96 core Zen 4 Genoa is being heavily discounted (and other CPUs too). A new 9654 is commonly available at below 6000€ and I even found stores that sell them for 2500€. They used to cost like 10.000€.

I mean it is still a lot of money but we are talking about 96 cores that seemingly go above 3ghz with all cores. These are now basically 50% off.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: any tool to diagnose why IR is taking long

« on: 2024-04-10, 09:43:47 »

I personally like the idea because especially in arch-viz scenes can get rather large which obviously has an effect on parsing times.

That said typically what increases scene parsing times is just loads and loads of geometry. It does help a ton of its instanced but even then it, from my understanding at least, isn't trivial to place all the geo in places. I would assume that if you turn a couple of those heaviest forest packs off things will get speedier but I already know you know that so this is kind of useless advice probably :)

If I may I'd suggest a +1 on RecentSpacesSam's feature suggestion thread there. That way we can keep better track of how many people are interested in this particular feature.

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[C4D] Feature Requests / Re: Features Request from 3DS Max to C4D

« on: 2024-03-25, 14:15:06 »

Hi Nejc,

- you can't change a pivot of corona proxy...
- it would be useful to have a command in tab/list format to replace assets like in 3dsmax (much faster) ... insert it into the already existing corona "Lister Tab"?
- I forgot about the c4d randomize tools, tnx!!! (Here too, giving it a crown tab look like in 3dsmax would be nice and useful) ... insert it into the already existing corona "Lister Tab"?

Good points! If I may I'd suggest posting those as separate feature suggestions (topics). That way it'll be easier for the team to monitor them and also ask any questions the devs might have :)

11

[C4D] Feature Requests / Re: Features Request from 3DS Max to C4D

« on: 2024-03-18, 14:09:23 »

Howdy! Here are some of my suggestions for the modeling / object placement features:

- Object Replacer -> "Replace with" under tools
- Transform randomizer -> "Dynamic placement tool" or the "Randomize" tool
- Pivot placer -> "Axis Center" tool

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[C4D] I need help! / Re: Tile Shader - Jagged Displacement and Bump

« on: 2024-03-11, 13:08:20 »

Yes indeed, this is currently a limitation with the Tile shader unfortunately :\

If use the Corona Tile shader directly for your bump effect (without anything plugged into into the Tile shader) then you need to be in UVW mode and you need the filter shader in between.

Here is a quick demo from the Tile tutorial if it helps any https://youtu.be/9WP7Oijes6s?t=1204

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Hardware / Re: Dual Epyc 9654 experience?

« on: 2024-03-11, 12:31:35 »

Hi, we have a single processor AMD epyc 9754 with a supermicro mobo and 384 GB memory DDR5, it is fast as hell BUT the geometry fase is 10x slower than my old pc (dual intel xeon E5-2699V4 arround 8 years old!!), we are still trying to figure out why, and we render a lot of animation so this phase comes back in every frame, we loose between 60 and 120 seconds per frame!

Hmm that really shouldn't be the case imho - yes the 2699v4 has a 500mhz higher boost clock but the IPC has come a long way in the 10 years since it was released.

Could you please double check what frequency is being reported (and core utilization) during scene parsing? Not all the cores should be busy but you should be close to at least 3ghz and that would indicate it is not the hardware at fault.

14

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2024-03-05, 08:57:56 »

@dfcorona, just thought of this. I used to have PBO enabled on my 3970x workstation but for whenever I wasn't behind the computer and it was doing over night renders I used a customized Windows power profile on it. I went into the balanced profile and changed the max CPU performance target to 99%. That effectively clocked it down to its base clocks which sure was slower than PBO boosting but hey, went from ~90c to 70c :)

Maybe worth trying out on your end as well?

15

Hardware / Re: Threadripper & Ryzen only builds (3rd Gen starts on page 50)

« on: 2024-03-04, 11:56:36 »

Here are some overclocks.  One at 6400MHZ RAM and also set temp max to 80c and pulling a 39k, but I would get a loud continuous beep from the motherboard. I then set from Expo I (DOCP I) to Manual and set just the RAM back to 4800MHZ and also set temp max to 70c and I get no continuous beep anymore and pull a 38k.  You can really hear the VRM fans ramping up. Not sure what the Beep is telling me, I'm not all that great at overclocking to be honest... never really overclocked before with my previous systems because there wasn't much to gain, but with the new 7000 series there are some really good gains. Not sure where I feel safe with the Temps yet, I know you just don't want to go over 95C. But for continuous rendering I don't want to be close to that either.

On my Zen 3 Epyc render node (Supermicro board) the continuous beep means VRMs are overheating :\