Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: Bitmap Render Mask

« on: 2017-03-03, 17:07:28 »

No there isn't, but there is such request already posted, as far as i recall.

Understood - thanks!

2

[Max] I need help! / Bitmap Render Mask

« on: 2017-03-03, 16:33:35 »

Hi All,

Is there a bitmap render mask feature in Corona? Which is to say that I can use a black and white bitmap to define which areas get rendered and which don't? I thought there was but I might be confusing it with VRay, which definitely does.

Thanks!
Dan

3

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: CoronaUtils2016.dlt failed to initialize on Windows Server 2012R2 - Corona 1.4

« on: 2016-05-17, 18:15:54 »

Yup, it's working fine now - how strange! I ran a full Windows update on it earlier :(

Ah well - thanks, Ondra!

4

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: CoronaUtils2016.dlt failed to initialize on Windows Server 2012R2 - Corona 1.4

« on: 2016-05-17, 17:52:54 »

Ok, I ran this for Windows Server 2012R2 and now the 1.3 benchmark works. I'll test shortly with 1.4...

Edit: An Amazon cr1.8xlarge machines gets the following Benchmark, btw, in case anyone's interested:

Corona 1.3 Benchmark Finished
BTR Scene 16 passes
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz (x2)
 Real CPU Frequency [GHz]: 2.6
Render Time: 0:01:46, Rays/sec: 4,580,370

5

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: CoronaUtils2016.dlt failed to initialize on Windows Server 2012R2 - Corona 1.4

« on: 2016-05-17, 17:49:13 »

Hi Ondra,

It doesn't!

apt-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing!

Thanks,
Dan

6

[Max] Resolved Bugs / CoronaUtils2016.dlt failed to initialize on Windows Server 2012R2 - Corona 1.4

« on: 2016-05-17, 17:23:37 »

Hi guys,

We just upgraded to Corona 1.4 and we're loving it so far! It's working perfectly on all our workstations which run everything between Windows 7 and Windows 10. Max 2016 SP1.

However, we also have some servers that use Windows Server 2012R2 and whilst 1.2.1 and 1.3 worked fine, 1.4 offers me the following error in the Backburner server window (I have no Max license on these nodes so I can't actually launch Max in UI mode):



The installation does the "installing additional magic" redistributable and offers no errors. I went to the Windows website and tried to update it manually but it said I already had it installed. I installed all the Windows updates I could and it runs (in a virtualised environment) Xeon E5-2670's.

I just uninstalled 1.4 and went back to 1.3 and that worked without problem.

Any thoughts?

7

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona renders randomly ending early on Backburner

« on: 2016-04-11, 15:08:29 »

There was a lot of DR fixing between 1.2 and 1.3. You should definitely try it.

We're not using any DR - unless some of those changes also impact network rendering?

I'm looking forward to use updating to 1.4 but unfortunately upgrading is a real pain for us - we have quite a lot of machines but more importantly the renders never quite look the same between versions. At any given time we have ~10 different projects in various stages of production and because we cannot install multiple versions at the same time, it can be troublesome to update - if a client has signed off a certain image and we go to render the high-resolution version only to find it now looks different (usually only subtly, but enough) then we have a real problem of trying to comp it back into how it looked before.

Eventually the extra features build up enough to warrant us going through this fairly painful process, but we tend to skip versions of software quite a lot for this reason.

----------

Edit: Afraid not Ondra, we're on the public build of 1.2.1.

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona renders randomly ending early on Backburner

« on: 2016-04-11, 13:50:30 »

I'm afraid not - we're actually using 1.2.1 on all our machines, Max 2016 SP1.

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona renders randomly ending early on Backburner

« on: 2016-04-11, 12:56:22 »

Hmm, this problem is continuing to happen on other jobs now.

Does anyone have any experience of this at all?

10

[Max] I need help! / Corona renders randomly ending early on Backburner

« on: 2016-04-06, 12:39:08 »

Hi Guys,

Not totally sure if this is a Corona problem or a Backburner problem but this is happening:

- I submit a 200 frame render
- It's rendering fine, using all machines, taking roughly 30 minutes to do 200 passes.
- One of the machines will appear to successfully finish a frame in 5 minutes.
- The output is correctly saved, including all passes. However, the quality is much lower - as you would expect for a render of only 5 minutes.
- This same machine will then usually go off and render something of higher priority (another 3D scene, a Nuke render etc)
- It'll will then re-join the original job, and continue rendering fine.

So it seems to cut out when a job of higher priority comes along. But this isn't supposed to be the case - it's meant to finish the frame as expected, then move on.

So my question is this: Does Corona support some sort of "finish early" request from Backburner that I've never seen before because no other renderers support it? We've been using Corona for well over a year now and I've not seen this behaviour before, but it happened with two separate machines on the same job, so I'm very curious to hear if anyone has experienced something similar.

For what it's worth, in the Backburner Server window on the node it said something like...

3dsmax adapter: Corona: Pass 28/200

3dsmax adapter: Corona: Pass 29/200

3dsmax adapter: Corona: Pass 30/200

3dsmax adapter: Corona: Saving + Cleaning Up

So it doesn't seem like it error'd.

Any ideas?!

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona + Backburner

« on: 2016-04-06, 11:52:22 »

You'll want to set a pass limit - otherwise you'll likely get different numbers of passes on different machines, even if they're the same hardware. In our farm we have some machines (dual 6-core xeon's) that are literally 3x faster at rendering than others (4-core i7) and if they both just rendered for 1 hour, you'd get vastly different frames.

12

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Subscription Terms - bit disappointing

« on: 2016-02-19, 12:03:11 »

For what it's worth, The Foundry have a system for their subscription wherein you can allow it to lapse but if you wish to re-new it later on (for example after a significant new release) you have to back-pay for the entire time since you first let it lapse. As such, it's no cheaper to do it that way but it's also no more expensive - meaning that if you never find another feature that you think is worth investing in, you never have to pay again. If you do, then you do. IMO this is a fair system to pay for the development.

13

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona GPU

« on: 2015-06-22, 19:59:00 »

Here is the answer to your question, Corona is brand new, built from the ground up with the latest and greatest.  Look at the speed and quiality of it's GI engine, plus it's simplicity, shader system, even though it takes longer to clean final render it's still very fast for what it is.  Imagine all of that running on the power of GPU or assisted on the GPU.  I believe Ondra has built a fantastic CPU renderer, and would love to see it be better. That's all...... and why not.

I think this is a moot point. We are all in search of the best overall rendering software, why not try to make Corona as good as it can possibly be? Most of us are here and have decided to part with our money because we find Corona better / more desirable than other rendering software as a whole. However the speed of a renderer is definitely a HUGE part of what makes it "good". Are you saying you wouldn't care if Corona could be 10x as fast as it is currently? 10 hours vs 1 hour - there is simply no arguing with that. Remember the early Maxwell days - quality, but day long renders! This was a big turn off for most people.

Because there are limitations to it. It's not simply a case of "Look, 10x quicker, for free!" My point re: Ondra's relative (to us) expertise was meant to demonstrate that; You (both) say that you want it to be as good as it can be whilst ignoring the guy who knows more about writing render engines than any of us when he says what that what he thinks is best for Corona is to not use GPU render. You (dfcorona) then accuse him of being defensive for saying as much. Obviously you're welcome to your opinion but I - and the company I worked for - moved to Corona because the, for want of a better term, vision that Ondra and the team has for Corona matches up to my own desires in a render engine. I'd always like it faster, but if I want fast I'll use Quicksilver. If I want uber high quality I'll use some unbiased 48-hours-per-frame renderer. Everything else fits somewhere in the middle. Speed isn't the main thing I want from a render engine. And if you look at VRay standard vs VRay RT and MentalRay vs IRay and look at the differences, you'll get some idea of the answer to your "and why not?" question.

14

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona GPU

« on: 2015-06-19, 18:40:31 »

I think you've done a great job with Corona Ondra, I am not trying to take anything away from you, but to look at now and the future of Gpu vs Cpu. I cannot see not implementing Gpu like everyone else.  What will Cpu's be like in 2016, maybe 10% increase in speed if we are lucky.  The Pascal video card in 2016 is suppose to be 10 TIMES faster than Titan X.

I don't mean to sound like a meany, but do you really think all this has passed Ondra by? I mean, I assume he has a lot more knowledge about the under-the-hood specifics of render engines than any of us, and he's said he's constantly observing changes in the GPU industry (so it's not a blanket "no"), and if there are engines out there that offer massive speed increases - as you seem to suggest there are - then why write a new render engine? Apparantly the market is already providing you with a render engine, no? If VRay RT is 10x faster than the CPU version (and I love Corona, but it's obviously not 10x faster than VRay generally) then... don't you already have your wish granted?

15

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2015-02-23, 17:29:57 »

I work at a mid office and with all the paper work and that idiotic stuff i will kindly ask for at last 1+ week after february in order to buy the corona licenses :)

Yup - this! Not to mention installing it on our machines + farm, etc.