Messages

31

Hardware / Re: New Build options - mobility vs. utility

« on: 2024-02-11, 16:02:31 »

Just my 2c, I've been using laptops exclusively for the past 6 years and these days you can get some pretty powerful options. If mobility is important to you then just get a laptop. I use an Asus ROG Strix Scar 17", the top end Lonovo's are great too. Get a minimum of 16" since the extra room/airflow helps when rendering. While I do prefer the larger 17" when on an aeroplane they are just too large and I end up just reading a book since its a bother. On long train rides its fine. I would love a Zephyrus but the issue is they max 48GB + soldered ram and not great for Corona, you really need a minimum of 64GB.

When I'm in my office everything just plugs in via usb-c to a dock, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc like a normal workstation. Then when I hit the road for a few months at a time I just unplug the laptop and take it with me, best of both worlds to be honest.

In regards to your questions about hardware specific, the CPU's aren't that slow on a laptop, the GPU is definitely a bit slower but if you are rendering with Corona then its not that noticeable for the trade off of mobility. Ive worked months on end doing rendering projects and I dont even consider the need for a workstation these days, I'm happy to stay mobile for the time being. If you do lots of rendering then sure buy some render node workstations for the office and you can even remotely que your jobs to render finals on them while you are mobile. Lots of options depending on your needs.

32

[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max vs Cinema 4d Comparison

« on: 2024-02-11, 15:45:40 »

if you're proficient user in all the programs that you're comparing, you should be able to get virtually indistinguishable result.

Yeah my first thought is the normal/bump value might be 0.3 in 3dsmax compared to 1.0 but its just a wild guess if it was converted from Vray. Without seeing the material setup and matched settings/lighting etc its a bit hard to tell at this point.

33

[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max vs Cinema 4d Comparison

« on: 2024-02-11, 14:35:58 »

These are just preview images of the library, I mean can you show the material settings, bump strength, material values etc. Since you are using Cosmos assets then that might be an issue that the Corona team can investigate since I use my own libraries.

34

[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max vs Cinema 4d Comparison

« on: 2024-02-11, 14:22:05 »

Can you share screenshots of your material setup in 3dsmax and c4d?

35

[Max] General Discussion / Re: 3ds Max vs Cinema 4d Comparison

« on: 2024-02-11, 14:16:48 »

I use both 3dsmax and C4D, I haven't seen any difference at all when the scenes are setup 1:1.

Your cameras, lighting and tone mapping don't match. What are you comparing?

36

[Max] I need help! / Re: Confusion about albedo in color and textures - Keeping consistency

« on: 2024-02-08, 21:22:29 »

FYI that's part 2, read part 1 first. To be honest if you have never read it before its a lot to take in. It took me probably reading both articles 10 times to sink in, plus 3 months solid of building every component from scratch to really get my head into it - I think I might be a slower learner :D You can follow my journey down the rabbit hole here :D (This was before Corona Physical Material)

I'm not sure of your final goal, you should be more specific of exactly your workflow and outcome. For example "I want to make photo-real images using Corona, and I dont need to export to other formats or other software, ill stay in 3dsmax". More specifics the better since while the pbr guide is useful, and literally any information helps in the long run (ive found) it might not solve your initial question. That may extend to Vantage in future but I don't have a crystal ball to tell me how that works, but I'm sure Ill get around to that too at some point.

I build and sell 3D content, so I want to make sure my customers can use it for vray/corona/blender/c4d/real-time. I also have different ambitions to when I was an archviz artist since I now also build automation scripts for 3dsmax users and understanding the nuance is useful. It all depends on your goals and what you need. If you are more specific as to why you need these things then I and others here can offer you other solutions that may be of more benefit to you since I found usually I dont need to know stuff until I need to know stuff, then it makes an impact and ill remember it.

PBR might not be entirely useful for your end goal, I mean its certainly worth knowing as a 3D artist but its all about priority in my opinion.

edit:
I would say at least the basics of PBR are useful, such as knowing how to plug in each texture to the right material slot with the correct gamma settings at a minimum.

37

[Max] I need help! / Re: Confusion about albedo in color and textures - Keeping consistency

« on: 2024-02-08, 20:39:38 »

That was me too! LOL.
I still think it would be useful.

lol so you want a default of 0.7 and a +1.0, you sir are the dev's nightmare :D

So in other words, here is where the art vs science limit is. If it looks good, it's good.
I'll do some thorough testing and see what looks best on a certain scene I guess.

Kinda... my point is we already have standards, lots of those things change slightly over time keeping things at a somewhat base level (1.0) keeps things consistent, which I think you mentioned 'consistency' in your subject heading as a priority.

So for example a 'recommendation' would be use 0.7 level IF your textures are already hitting 255 white AND you want to achieve "this effect"... That's a lot of IFs and ANDs (so, very specific to a users workflow). This also assumes ALL the textures you are using do not conform to any current standard, so some legacy standard. So if you clamp your white values to the 'recommendation' your image should not change much but the output of where its used will benefit from this clamped value (the output could be a real-time engine, some particular look you are going for, some company recommendation as they might have other use cases where the value needs to be clamped).

Like I said, I could rant on a lot about this topic since I've been delving deep into materials and stuff for the last few years and changing defaults like that would be an absolute nightmare to deal with since there's a few factors involved.
1. Current standards work with other software (important!)
2. Users can easily create pipelines that work best for them and their team based on particular values and nodes
3. Legacy standards are easy to interpret and conform to new standards. Since 1.0 = 100%, I dont need to interpret new values with a 30% offset JUST for Corona. This also relates to point 1.
4. My point about IFs and ANDS earlier - Keep in mind since workflows do change over time that also means that lots of artists are in the progress of updating or creating new content that already coheres to the PBR standard (turbosquid/cgtrader/evermotion etc), so if they produce a texture at 30/240 values for you and you clamp the values to 0.7 you are actually reducing the final bitmap texture to 30/168, thus you are losing all the values the artist intended your texture to appear as at 1.0 or 100% and it will be 30% darker than it should be. You should always use a value of 1.0 since this always relates to the current main workflow, and if you need to change it then do so knowing that this can bite you in the future as standards are updated.

Point 4 is really driving the point home about why 1.0 is standard, but feel free to discuss why you think otherwise. I'm keen on other peoples opinions since the bubble I live in often needs a good poking.

38

[Max] I need help! / Re: Confusion about albedo in color and textures - Keeping consistency

« on: 2024-02-08, 19:50:10 »

If the texture looks as you intend it to do then its fine, leave it as it is.

Its only a recommendation, for example when creating Albedo textures from scratch as per the pbr guide (which is well worth a read), the highest values are 240 (white) and lowest is 30 (black). This is a guide for building textures/assets for the pbr pipeline, especially useful if you intend on taking your models/materials into real-time or future proofing etc.

Most people converting scenes from previous projects or vray would be a little angry to say the least if by default it clamped your values to the 'recommended values' since not only would all your previous scenes not match your new ones, it would create lots of tickets for people who are not getting their desired results. This would also be the case for people who switch between different software/render engines like I do and I can easily replicate the same lighting/material values between c4d/3dsmax/blender, vray/corona/cycles since there is less variables to deal with when I know my texture at level 1.0 = the same in another software (which is also the default value for those render engines and software).

There's probably more I could rant on about but these things alone would create a huge problem, not to mention some people have requested they can increase the level beyond 1.0 in Corona, so there is other use cases as well where people want the complete opposite.

If it works for you, then set up a template material or however you build your pipeline and use it. A good use case would be an output node for your bitmaps that does the 'required range' for you every time you import a new bitmap, if that suits you.

39

General CG Discussion / Re: ai corona renderer

« on: 2024-02-06, 16:28:52 »

my favorite thing about AI so far is:

user: Write me a maxscript that creates a cube:
AI: const geometry = new THREE.BoxGeometry();

user: thats javascript, i need it in maxscript
AI: Oh Im sorry, its box{}

user: we dont use curly braces in maxscript to create an object, we use ()
AI: Oh Im sorry, its box{}

user: really?....

40

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Metal Material Import

« on: 2024-02-04, 19:55:01 »

thanks for your answer. Do I need to change that gamma value?

Follow this guide for which textures Poliigon require gamma 2.2 (srgb) and gamma 1.0 (linear)

I tried downloading the same texture once with metal workflow and once with specular. With the metal workflow I get a good result. With the specular one not. The material is almost completely black.

Use the metal workflow in my opinion. Corona Physical Material works well with this.

I was told by someone to put the Reflection map in the IOR slot. That why i did it.

Nope, don't do that. That's incredibly bad advice.

If you want to know more about IOR and reflectance (not reflection!) You can read more about it in an article I wrote some time ago (now outdated for Corona but the concept is still relevant for fresnel IOR). Reflectance (at f0) and reflection textures are quite different to each other and if you are using the metal workflow, don't bother with IOR, leave it at the default values (unless you have some understanding of how IOR works).

41

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Metal Material Import

« on: 2024-02-04, 08:13:08 »

From what I see you have a few issues here.

- First you are using gamma 2.2 for your linear textures.
- You are also using Metal workflow for Specular textures
- You have a texture in your IOR slot, I dont see an IOR texture in that list.
- These will all compound if you are unsure of what you are doing for this texture set.

You can use the Poliigon C4D tool and do a bit of reading on their website regarding the Specular workflow/textures:
Poliigon Material Converter Addon for Cinema 4D
Technical Asset Information & FAQ

42

[Max] I need help! / Re: 3ds max Viewport Problem

« on: 2024-02-03, 14:19:29 »

Thank you very much. It would be even better if friends with more knowledge could also comment.

The list from Avi seems comprehensive to me. My advice is once you have done all those things on the list if you are still having issues then reply to this post with things that are still slowing you down.

43

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Material Library / Management

« on: 2024-02-02, 08:16:11 »

Yes. It just looks so...uninviting. But I'll try that first. Thanks James.

Hah yeah, its not very pretty compared to the competition :D

44

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Material Library / Management

« on: 2024-02-01, 20:20:16 »

Yes, while I agree with Siger, Project Manager and Connecter being great options. Don't forget the built in .mat library can also load .max files as well. Which means you can actually load your libraries from previous projects which use the same material names, and replace them using your favorites/previous authored materials from an existing 3dsmax scene, or just populate the .mat with that .max file. Its more powerful than you might take it granted for since there's not many tutorials on the matter and whatnot, but its actually very powerful with lots of useful functions and from what I've seen over the years not used to its potential.

Attached is an example of loading a 3dsmax file with my favorite velvet, chrome, rubber materials etc. I can just re-use them from that project and then save them to my favorite .mat library if I choose to.

Another example is you can just right click on the chrome material > replace all "chrome" materials with this preset for example.

45

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Material Library / Management

« on: 2024-01-31, 15:41:21 »

We use Project Manager here, there is also a stripped down version called Material Manager. K-Studios.
Pretty good.

I used to use this too, also quite good I have to agree. One thing I like about Project Manager is that you can build scripts with it easily to automate/batch tasks.

All depends on your pipeline, how you intend to use your libraries, how many licenses you need etc.