Messages

1

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Triplanar Normal maps

« on: 2024-10-01, 14:53:20 »

So having the triplanar node before the normal one will cause incorrect results? If so I need to let the developer of the script know.

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[Max] General Discussion / Triplanar Normal maps

« on: 2024-10-01, 13:21:22 »

I've found this page which details what to do when using the mapping randomizer, in terms of order of operation, but I'm wandering what's the deal if we're not using the mapping randomizer, i.e. with normal maps into a triplanar? Does it matter which order things are done in? I have a script which has automatically inserted triplanar nodes, will this work correctly as pictured below?

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: changing CXR file extension to EXR loses post settings

« on: 2024-09-02, 11:38:26 »

ok, so batch processing seems a bit broken. stops after 67 frames and duplicates frames in random places.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: changing CXR file extension to EXR loses post settings

« on: 2024-09-01, 17:55:33 »

Ok so I think I'm just going to batch the CXRs to PNG for the purposes of this project under the principle of KISS, but here are my problems/observations summised after having done a few animations in V-Ray via EXR. I think Corona has room for improvement:

Cryptomatte doesn't work when rendering directly to EXR

No option as far as I can see to bake bloom and glare into the beauty pass and B&G pass didn't appear in the channels when I changed the extension to EXR despite having B&G render element active. I wonder if this is something to do with rendering on back burner and the B&G not generating properly at render end. It does show up when I open the CXR in CIE.

Batch processing is much less user friendly than V-Ray with no UI as such, and documentation pretty scant.

Batch processing script stalls after a certain number of frames and requires CXRs to be deleted to proceed with the rest.

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Work in Progress/Tests / Re: dubcats secret little hideout

« on: 2024-08-31, 22:54:13 »

Hi, wondering if you can help. I'm trying to match my frame buffer setting in After Effects, working on an EXR sequence (16bit), but the LUT (yours I beleieve, has a different effect to in the VFB. Does it need to be applied in a specific gamma curve/colour space?

Thanks.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: changing CXR file extension to EXR loses post settings

« on: 2024-08-31, 18:32:22 »

Ok, so batch converting to PNG works to a certain degree... but, the process stops at 134 frames out of 176 (the sequence is actually every other frame, but that doesn't seem to affect things until this point.

Secondly this seem slightly less preferential to using multichannel EXRs, as it's going to create a lot of PNGs if I want to start using render elements in post, and possibly take up more disc space overall.

Lastly, does anyone know if it's possible to just do the tonemapping in After Effects? I'm guessing it would have to be done in a Linear sRGB colour space with 2.2 gamma transform at the end? Can't for the life of me work out how to do this in AE now, it doesn't seem possible to turn off colour managment.

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[Max] General Discussion / changing CXR file extension to EXR loses post settings

« on: 2024-08-31, 01:10:17 »

Happy to see Cryptomatte by material included in Corona since upgrading to 12, but I'm having some trouble with the workflow.

Docs say to render to CXR and convert to EXR, and indeed that seems to be the only method that works, but doing so produces a Beauty channel with no tonemapping.

I'm going to render to CXR for now and hopefully use the batch script to create PNGs of the Beauty, but can anyone tell me if there's a way to 'burn in' the tonemapping to the EXRs? This would negate the need to generate additional PNGs for me.

Obviously rendering directly to EXR would work but then I lose the cryptomatte

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[Max] General Discussion / Corona scanned material - no triplanar option

« on: 2024-05-13, 13:41:06 »

I'm missing this option in the Corona scanned material, docs say it should be there. I'm on Corona 9 hotfix 3

Any ideas?

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Proxy internal pivot point

« on: 2024-03-14, 12:13:16 »

ok, that worked! Bit of a pain but it does work.

Thanks.

10

[Max] I need help! / Corona Proxy internal pivot point

« on: 2024-03-14, 11:04:40 »

I have created a single proxy from a bunch of geometry, when I create the proxy the version created in-scene seems fine, the pivot point is at the original (model on the left below)

However when I load the .cgeo file in to a new corona proxy object it appears to have been created in Y up and the pivot seems to be in an arbitrary position.

How is this [internal] pivot created and stored?

If I'm not mistaken, V-Ray will create a single object proxy as pivot at origin and Z up, so I Proxy created in-scene will have the same pivot point as one created by making a new Proxy object and loading the vrmesh file, this is what I was expecting

Obviously, for now, I can use the one created in-scene, copy across to my new scene and place, but I'm concerned that changes to the bounds of the object will cause a shift in this internal origin, if it's updated, and hence a shift in the referenced geometry in my target scene.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Thin glass - no light passing through at lancing angles.

« on: 2023-12-03, 22:44:19 »

yes it was the geo that was the issue, specifically I had edited the glass to that it was a single face rather than a water-tight, shelled plane. in the problematic areas the direction of the base spline on the railclone object meant we were seeing the back face of the glass. That's fine, I usually would shell glass anyway but in this case I have a bump making the glass ridged and didn't want to overcomplicate the look of this by having two ridged surfaces. In the end I added a front/back map so the bump only rendered on the face closest to the camera.

It does make me wonder though - if we use a thin glass, with shelled geometry, don't we effectively end up doubling up reflection? - i.e it's like having a double glazed window rather than a single pane of glass. Obviously this might be desirable in some cases, but in this case I'm trying to create a single glazed partition (or at least simplify the rendering/look to the greatest degree possible.

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[Max] I need help! / Thin glass - no light passing through at lancing angles.

« on: 2023-12-01, 10:30:36 »

I have a glazed partition with a thin glass material , the mesh is arrayed with railclone and the segment itself is just a single face - no thickness.

At glancing angles (less than about 30 degrees) there appears to be no light passing through the glass.

Is the single face approach correct when using thin glass material? Any ideas what's causing this problem?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: object attributes in Corona

« on: 2023-11-01, 17:49:44 »

Maybe you are just not aware of the fact that you need to restart interactive rendering when changing object properties to see the result. Because your example just works here :)

haha thanks, yes I realised this shortly after posting.

OSL named attribute

Ok, I stand corrected, it does work! I think it was the same issue, I wasn't refreshing the interactive render.

CoronaMutimap

Yeah I can't see how this works. Would be great if it did as you have the batch texture import there

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: ACES Color Space

« on: 2023-10-31, 23:25:05 »

When I've used it previously it's been too lightmix, control certain elements: reflections/shadows etc individually, and comp in photographic elements.

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[Max] I need help! / object attributes in Corona

« on: 2023-10-31, 18:32:01 »

I'm trying to create a master material for a range of fabrics. I've used this method before with Vray, but something isn't playing nicely now. My method then was to use a custom user attribute to pass on an index to an OSL 1ofN node which picks the appropriate map and passes it on to the material.

I just found this in the OSL documentation:

'OSL also allows the generic getattribute() function to get a named attribute from the scene. It is up to the renderer executing the OSL code to populate these named attributes, which means it is outside the control of the OSL Map itself to guarantee whether these attributes are defined.'

Does this mean that Corona can't get object attributes for shader level functions?

Any alternative mathods anyone would like to suggest? I am trying to use object ID as an alternative via a CoronaMultiMap, but it doesn't seem to be working currently.