Chaos Corona Forum
Chaos Corona for 3ds Max => [Max] General Discussion => Topic started by: madcat117 on 2020-06-05, 01:47:40
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Caustics enabled takes 4 times to render even with 3970x and only 1080p resolution can you guess speed it up for final 6 release?
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also i noticed it produces extra fireflies on shiny metal and such so that can be improved too
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Please send us more details about the issues you are reporting. Things such as viewport screenshots and example renders would be great, and scenes where those issues can be easily reproduced would be perfect. Please see this guide for basic information how to report issues to us: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000524006
If you are not willing to share your images or scenes publicly, you can contact us at support@corona-renderer.com or using this form: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new
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So far the latest daily build of corona 6 renderer for 3ds max is fantastic but the caustic solver is terrible slow and still produces much fireflies its the only thing bad with corona right now hopefully dev team is working on this for final version 6
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No changes planned to the caustics for Corona 6 (if there were, they would be on the roadmap). As Marcin mentioned, seeing the scene and results you are getting would help us know if this is just a scene setup problem, a bug, or something that is working but could be made better. Right now though, we are in the dark about any of that.
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Please send us more details about the issues you are reporting. Things such as viewport screenshots and example renders would be great, and scenes where those issues can be easily reproduced would be perfect. Please see this guide for basic information how to report issues to us: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000524006
If you are not willing to share your images or scenes publicly, you can contact us at support@corona-renderer.com or using this form: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new
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No changes planned to the caustics for Corona 6 (if there were, they would be on the roadmap). As Marcin mentioned, seeing the scene and results you are getting would help us know if this is just a scene setup problem, a bug, or something that is working but could be made better. Right now though, we are in the dark about any of that.
Bummer because right now I would have to buy a 3990x which is 4,000 dollars just to get decent render times with caustics enabled at 1080p resolution, This needs to be added to roadmap as fix for dev caustics solver with half the time!
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Third time's the charm?
Please send us more details about the issues you are reporting. Things such as viewport screenshots and example renders would be great, and scenes where those issues can be easily reproduced would be perfect. Please see this guide for basic information how to report issues to us: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000524006
If you are not willing to share your images or scenes publicly, you can contact us at support@corona-renderer.com or using this form: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new
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110 samples total with caustics enabled and generate from environment map and max sample intensity at 10 and light samples multiplier 1 and gi vs AA at 8 caustics produces splotches that never go away and take 3 times the render time vs non caustics enabled basically you need 500 samples which requires a super cluster to do any animations with caustics enabled to get rid of noise on top of a ai denoiser which is not cool for users without millions of dollars in budgets.
(https://i.ibb.co/c1BWbNb/1.jpg) (https://ibb.co/bP04HrH)
scene can be purchased here: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/classic-interior-3d-model/1141353
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@madcat117 - do you know any renderer that can do what you want? Otherwise it sounds like: Bummer, why won't you make my Ferrari drive 100km pr liter. I need it!
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caustics are especially bad on curved surfaces with shiny properties. Corona is working great for my final scene animation but caustics will have to be disabled as they take too long even on my 3970x too bad I don't have a pixar render farm oh well
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First of all, why do you need caustics at all in this specific scene, and in this specific place?
Maybe you can just get rid of them in the unwanted areas using the rayswitch material or some other workarounds?
Check this out: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000066318
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Just ran some more scenes and you have to use 500 passes to get clean caustics which is fine for still renders but animation sequences are not feasible unless you have super cluster of networked computers
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Just ran some more scenes and you have to use 500 passes to get clean caustics which is fine for still renders but animation sequences are not feasible unless you have super cluster of networked computers
Just a note, it all depends on your scene, so saying you "have to use" is not true. For example I am rendering a scene (pretty simple, just gemstones on a plane, but lots of gemstones) and it only takes 40 or so passes - while it is a much simpler scene, it illustrates that what you "have to use" depends entirely on what you are rendering).
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Your current caustics solver does not work for production scenes it only works with like you said simple scenes that only demonstrate the caustics in ideal situations that are super easy for caustic solver to calculate with simple geometry and one light perhaps. When you use your current caustics solver on actual complex rooms with many materials and high res geometry and many lights it totally ruins the entire scene producing fireflies that never go away on shiny curved surfaces and other areas unless you run a insane number of passes 500 plus which is totally unacceptable for users doing animations on a high end home computer with one cpu with multi cores. I have a 3970x a very powerful new high end cpu and it takes way to long even at 1080p resolution to get to 500 passes plus in order to clean up the caustics to do any type of animation sequence unless i wait 3 years on a 30 second video. So in short the caustics solver needs major work and also please make it so it takes half the time to render it should not take 2 to 3 times longer if i just want caustics in my scene. The way you guys are implementing the caustics solver is very inefficient and only works in ideal simple circumstances that are not complex scenes which is cool for show off purposes but not actual real world animations which is what everybody wants the caustics solver to perform well under. You guys need a new algorithm cause unless you have many high end machines networked together you cannot do caustics and animations on production scenes such as mine and countless others unless you want to do the classic one ground plane and one shiny metal or glass ball and one light with simple materials with no SSS and such then caustics is working with low passes but who cares about that any other render can do that you guys want to stand out from the crowd and become the Amazon of render software or maybe not Muahahahhaa!
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"Your current caustics solver does not work for production scenes" again depends on your scene and what you are looking for. Recent Spaces use it in production scenes a lot these days https://www.recentspaces.com/lathampools and those are not simple scenes :)
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I use caustics only for stills. I also have huge amount of fireflies from pool caustics but I use caustics channel and edit it in ps. But it would be nice to know how to use caustics in anims or how to get clean caustics as in link provided by TOMG.
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Throwing caustics into a random interior scene will *most probably* never work. There is always some manual optimization needed. I am pretty sure it's the same with all other render engines which feature caustics. And it isn't like that only with caustics. You often have to be careful with reflections, lights, etc. You can't just enable all the cool-sounding stuff and call it a day.
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@madcat117 - as I already asked once: please give an example of one of those "other renderer" that does caustic faster and better.
Otherwise I'll consider you a troll.
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Throwing caustics into a random interior scene will *most probably* never work. There is always some manual optimization needed. I am pretty sure it's the same with all other render engines which feature caustics.
GOTCHA! ;D
(https://i.ibb.co/d5RpBxs/cau.jpg)
(https://i.ibb.co/3mMGdQx/cau2.jpg)
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Look just because caustics solver is terrible dosent mean corona is bad its just the caustics solver is terrible Lolololllol and that outdoor pool scene is super simple and not even close to production scene with complex nature and to do any animations you need a super cluster of computers cause clean caustics take forever in Corona
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I’m starting to notice that people want corona to compensate their lack of abilities/talent/effort
Not sure I’ve seen that elsewhere.
Corona is just a tool, I bet if they could make caustics an order of magnitude better, they would have already. If you don’t like something as fundamental and you believe it’s a crucial ingredient to realistic renders, the smartest thing to do would be to use other render that does offer what you want.
Please post your renders that are so complex and absolutely need caustics, that bathroom picture is bad for many reasons other than caustics.
Btw. You should buy the 3990x because it will make everything in your live better, not just caustics.
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its just the caustics solver is terrible Lolololllol
You've had your chance.
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As much as the OP has gone about making their point in the wrong way, they do have a point. Caustics is slow in my experience (and I have a 3990x, paired with a i9 and some xeons).
Some of the response to the OP have been 'user error/rarely works out of the box/needs tweaking/use a different render engine then/that image is shit so caustics are the least of your worries' which as Marchik has pointed out, is the exact opposite of how it was sold to us as a 'new feature'. If we're told it works out of the box and is a 'one click solution' then why would we expect anything different?
Also questioning why you'd want caustics in certain scenes seems a bit odd to me, if your goal is to achieve ultimate realism, the scene in reality would have caustics and the tools you're using have a 'one click' caustic solution then why wouldn't you want caustics, no matter how small the effect on the scene? Sat at my desk just now and there are multiple examples of reflective/refractive caustics going on around me.
I saw Recent Spaces mentioned as a valid reference point for caustics working in production renders. Their work is great and the caustics look great, but following them on various social media channels it's evident that they've had to put a lot of R&D in to get it to that point, which suggest it really isn't as simple as made out. And to be fair, in terms of caustics, they are all still relatively simple scenes, outdoor, pool, single sunlight. I don't see any caustics on the dusk ones which would be the complex scenes in terms of lighting. They even say this themselves in your interview with them here - https://corona-renderer.com/blog/recent-spaces-test-out-caustics-in-production-scenes/ "They’re now an essential part of making water look real, at least in daytime shots with strong direct light." And that statement pretty much backs up the only time it works as described in your marketing material - simple and fast-ish.
As already mentioned, it's great in simple scenarios, there's a reason why all tutorials/examples/demos for caustics are simple outdoor pools or a single glass with water in a studio environment, anything beyond this really does start to take forever. The demo scenes aren't your typical production jobs.
So far in this thread, I've seen 'send us your examples that you're having difficulty with' - I think the reason you've had no response to this is because there aren't any, people have cancelled renders before getting something worth showing.
I've tried to use caustics on a number of occassions and ended up giving up because what I was seeing wasn't worth the massive increase in rendertime. The difference in time between having/not having caustics is too great if you aren't equipped with a huge render farm and/or you're on a tight production schedule (which is a lot of the time). The example I tried was an open plan interior with some glassware/water on a dining table, a few highly reflective elements dotted around the scene and otherwise normal materials - the interior takes a couple of hours to render without caustics at 5k, turning on caustics more than doubles the render time. I don't think that's a particularly unusual scenario for a production job and it's one that in reality would definitely have and benefit from visible caustics adding to the realism. This project has some shots that I think would take a considerable amount of time to render - https://www.archdaily.com/225678/shaw-house-patkau-architects and even then, they're still relatively simple scenes. Here's another not so typical example, that I wouldn't even attempt :) https://www.archiproducts.com/en/news/raytrace-by-benjamin-hubert_70297
So while these features are great in theory, they're usage is probably limited to the larger studios in a production environment for the time being. And although the OP had an interesting approach to making their point - it's not broke, but the point is still valid and when taking into account the 'marketing blurb' for caustics I think the responses are a bit 'off'.
A lot of frustration boils down to the marketing material and how things are sold - this https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000056738-how-to-render-caustics-with-the-new-caustics-solver- starts with "enabling effortless use of caustics in your scenes" and "Since the new caustics solver is a one-click solution, you do not have to worry about anything more than your materials in order to get plausible caustics effects." which are very enticing, so of course users will no doubt go and open a scene, enable caustics as described, only to then realise its actually pretty slow. Whereas had they scrolled to the very very bottom of the article they'd have found this tucked away "Do not enable caustics “just for the heck of it”. Rendering with caustics enabled is still slower than rendering without them and unless it’s absolutely necessary, keep caustics to the minimum."
TLDR the general vibe is that caustics are simple and relatively fast if you're rendering a pool, outside in direct sunlight. If you're not, it's probably not worth it unless you have plenty of time to kill.
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@dj_buckley
Let me hug you, bro :) exactly my thoughts, except that I dont have 3990x and I am the one who tries to kill all my time, achieving maximum realism
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Here's another way of looking at it. Rather than asking for scenes that demonstrate it doesn't work as expected. Let's ask for scenes where people have successfully used caustics on a live arch viz client commissioned production job (other than an outdoor sunlit pool or closeup of a glass/water). I don't think you'll find many - if any at all but I'll happily be proven wrong.
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We used caustics on an animation of a residence with a pool. It worked well after some experimentation, but we rendered out caustics as a seperate pass and masked it on in after effects. There were too many fireflies on the walls of the adjacent buildings, etc. This was on a 3990x machine and even rendering quite a few passes didn't solve it.
The two big things I see as improving caustics would be:
1 - Include\Exclude for either objects or materials for receiving caustics. That way if you have a wall that doesn't even 'need' caustics but is getting dancing fireflies you could just exclude it, much like how you can exclude certain lights from generating it.
2 - Playing better with forest pro elements. I find my caustics REALLY speed up when I start hiding grass and trees. Probably not really forest pro specific, maybe something to do with complex geometry or opacity maps.
The only other glitch I've run into is when I had kind of a low quality bump map on my water...but that was my fault and I fixed it :)
All this said, I have had much better luck with Corona caustics than I have had with VRay's over the years. So all this is just a matter of degrees, in my opinion.
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I can confirm after extensive testing that the caustics solver needs major improvements not only is it slow it is producing fireflies that won't go away even after crazy amounts of samples and even with high end cpus it takes too long to do animations. Also just by studying real world light around my house I find that caustics are quite stunning and in more places than I had thought even when using light amounts of sprayed of water that cause refraction with direct sunlight overhead and depending on the angle of the sun overhead it moves the location of the caustics. God's solver is much faster too and more beautiful hopefully the corona team steps up their game!
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Thanks everyone for your feedback. Especially dj_buckley for the exhaustive post. We will definitely take this forum thread into account when deciding about what to improve in our caustics solver and how to prioritize it.
I will just leave this short reply here, and will return later with some further info (or alternatively someone else from the team). It seems that there is a difference between the developer and user point of view here, and also our marketing/support materials do need some clarification.
(Internal ID=529569515)
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Hey Maru thanks for recognizing that Corona is a great renderer just the caustics solver needs some love :)
Also make sure to watch me caustics video in 1080p so it not blurry thanks :)
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Thanks everyone for your feedback. Especially dj_buckley for the exhaustive post. We will definitely take this forum thread into account when deciding about what to improve in our caustics solver and how to prioritize it.
I will just leave this short reply here, and will return later with some further info (or alternatively someone else from the team). It seems that there is a difference between the developer and user point of view here, and also our marketing/support materials do need some clarification.
(Internal ID=529569515)
this is exactly what we wanted to hear from you guys, thanks to Maru and the entire development team, corona is an excellent render engine, otherwise we would not write here) I hope you will surpass yourself again and we will get the best tool on the market to achieve the maximum photorealism, as always.
PS
if possible, I would like to learn from you about the possibility of introducing a calculation of caustics in volumes, how realistic is it in the foreseeable future, or is it better to forget about it)
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if the Corona team nails this new caustics solver I will never use another render program again everything else is so easy to use its like being a digital photographer of light and shadow!
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1. fix the random permanent fireflies that never go away especially in areas with shiny metal and curved surfaces
2. make sure caustics solver works in random complex interiors and exteriors that can be downloaded on turbo squid
3. make sure caustics solver takes at least half the time if not same time to solve as if it was not enabled if humanly possible :)
4. make caustics solver take less passes in complex scenes to clean up