Messages

31

Gallery / Re: Scandinavian Apartment

« on: 2023-12-17, 15:54:19 »

Incredible per usual.

You need to get more credit for your design eye in addition to your rendering skills. You have a real knack for how to layout furniture in a room with an appropriate amount of decor. This is something I struggle with often.

32

[Max] General Discussion / Re: is this UI sluggishness normal?

« on: 2023-12-14, 16:03:40 »

UPD: installed Corona 10 HF3:
- when performing alt+W to see all my viewports, max freezes for 1-2 sec (as usual) and overall viewport performance does not drop. So I can continue to work with ~50 FPS[/b]

So the issue would be related to Corona 11? I don't have any particular problem when I display all viewports with Alt+W under Corona 10HF2.

Hi,

I have corrected my original message to be more clear.
With relatively large scenes, it is common to experience a one-time 1-2 second freeze when performing ALT+W, so I described this as normal behavior. With Corona 10HF3, I have no problems with viewport performance at all. After one-time 1-2 second freeze I have my 50 FPS again. With Corona 11 I have 1-3 FPS.

Best Regards

The same goes for me. I didn't have any lingering issues with C10. I'd have a 1-2 second lag on occasion, but nothing persistent like I'm experiencing with C11.

With C11, the only way to fix it is to restart Max completely. I've even disabled Alt+W for the time being so I don't unintentionally show all viewports.

33

[Max] General Discussion / Re: is this UI sluggishness normal?

« on: 2023-12-13, 14:37:45 »

I've had 3dsMax get sluggish on me after I do an alt+W to see all my viewports. Before I do that, 3dsMax operates smoothly, even with a complex file. But after I do that, anything I do leads to a 1-2 second lag.

Same here!

I experience an instant and significant performance drop when using "show all viewports." I mainly skipped Corona 10 and installed Corona 11 a few days ago. Yesterday, I opened a relatively simple scene created with Corona 9, then pressed ALT+W (show all viewports). The viewport performance dropped dramatically, in my case, from 50 to 1-3 FPS (CPU usage when rotating viewport goes up to 28%). I tested this on 3ds Max 2022 and 2024 with fresh ENU folders and default viewport texture resolutions.

I took some actions to understand where the problem lies:
-Changing the viewport from perspective to other views in a single window (left top corner) does not result in a performance drop.
-Changing viewport settings and texture resolutions does not help. Even with bounding box mode, I still experience 1-3 FPS.
-Importing the scene into a new one doesn't change the result. The scene is laggy from the beginning.

Currently, I don't have time for further investigations and tests, so I need to revert to the previous version (I will try Corona 10HF3 first) and finish the project.

Best Regards

UPD: installed Corona 10 HF3:
- when performing alt+W to see all my viewports, max freezes for 1-2 sec (as usual) and overall viewport performance does not drop. So I can continue to work with ~50 FPS

Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

34

[Max] General Discussion / Re: is this UI sluggishness normal?

« on: 2023-12-12, 20:01:45 »

I've had 3dsMax get sluggish on me after I do an alt+W to see all my viewports. Before I do that, 3dsMax operates smoothly, even with a complex file. But after I do that, anything I do leads to a 1-2 second lag.

35

[Max] I need help! / Re: I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-05, 02:08:11 »

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

Yep, that's how I did it. I had to apply an XForm reset on some pieces. When it comes to scaling and rotating textures in Triplanar, do you know if it uses the center pivot as the scaling and rotation point, or does it use the texture's 0,0 point?

The texture is placed relative to the pivot point, so all the transformation should happen relative to it too.
Just test it out to be sure.

Sidenote: if I understand what you are trying to achieve correctly, the 3ds Max advanced wood can be just exactly what you need (in the sense of having correctly transforming grains). I would advise giving it a try and using the existing textures in combination with it. I have a feeling you will like it.

Thank you, I haven't played around with that. I got Arroway's Design Craft Vol. 4 for BF, and I'm trying to find the best way to work their textures into my workflow.

36

[Max] I need help! / Re: I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-04, 15:04:54 »

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

Yep, that's how I did it. I had to apply an XForm reset on some pieces. When it comes to scaling and rotating textures in Triplanar, do you know if it uses the center pivot as the scaling and rotation point, or does it use the texture's 0,0 point?

37

[Max] I need help! / Re: I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-02, 19:23:06 »

Result after figuring out all the parameter setups

38

[Max] I need help! / Re: I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-01, 22:14:51 »

Depends how you work but usually I would do this at the end, just do a poly select all those end faces and then just uvw map (box mode), scale or use realworld with tileable wood-end and done. Its all very specific I suppose but its an option.

I think I need to rework my practice in that my pieces of wood need to be individual poly's with their pivot at the center. This should cause TriPlanar to automatically alight the center of each object and therefore project the end grain texture right where I need it.

39

[Max] I need help! / Re: help organizing shader

« on: 2023-12-01, 21:09:23 »

I understand that...  the problem is that the texture i'm feeding on the addiontal bump slot has a different size than the texture on the normal map.  My "allways" solution is to modify de uv tile of the texture to be multiplied by the triplanar size... but want to know if there is a better setup.

That's how I would do it. Adjust the size of the Corona Bitmap before plugging it into the MappingRandomizer, then go into the Additional Bump input. I always size my Bitmaps only and don't rely on Tri-planar to do it. If I want some variation, I'll set my MappingRandomizer to increase or decrease the scale a little.

40

[Max] I need help! / Re: I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-01, 21:02:16 »

Can you just use UVW map instead and select Face?

Also crop the image for the section of the center of the wood end so you dont get overlaps

Face is great in that it will center the texture on the faces, but it also warps them to fit the face. I wish Face would work with real world map sizing

41

[Max] I need help! / Re: help organizing shader

« on: 2023-12-01, 18:54:50 »

I don't think you'd get the expected results when plugging the additional bump texture into a tri-planar then into the normal component's additional bump input, then into another tri-planar component downstream of all of that.

Can you eliminate the first tri-planar component and go directly from the Mapping Randomizer into the additional bump input?

42

[Max] I need help! / Re: What would be the best way to achieve these stains on a material?

« on: 2023-12-01, 18:48:15 »

In Corona 11 decals now can have real-world mapping enabled, so texture stretching is not an issue anymore. Assuming that your leakage texture is tiling horizontally, you can adjust decal's length as much as you want and the texture won't stretch, but instead will be tiled nicely. Decals can be problematic on highly curved surfaces, but on flat walls they work perfectly.

Hallelujah!

43

[Max] I need help! / I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

« on: 2023-12-01, 18:47:21 »

I typically use a lot of wood materials in my renderings, and I like to project end-grain textures where the end grain would be exposed. I will also tend to keep models of several pieces in one editable poly that all run the same direction, for instance, all boards that run vertically will be in one editable poly.

My challenge is, however, that I need to find a way to map an end-grain texture to be on-center with each face. I will project textures onto the pieces using the Triplanar component, which is great because I can feed it the end grain textures in the Z input, and it will project them onto the correct faces, but the texture will not be centered on the faces (some faces, you'll see a seam). I'm wondering if there is a way to do this besides a UVW Unwrap.

I've included a screenshot and file that illustrates my problem.

44

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Issues w/ CoronaAO upstream of Mapping Randomizer/TriPlanar

« on: 2023-07-24, 17:36:14 »

Before Corona 10, I seemed to be able to have CoronaAO components upstream or downstream of MappingRandomizers and Triplanars, but in 10, CoronaAO's are not behaving correctly for me when they are upstream. Is this expected behavior?

For example, this is the result when I have the following material setup...Checker map>CoronaAO (w/ a red occluded color)>Mapping Randomizer>CoronaTriplanar. Is the Mapping Randomizer acting on the upstream Corona AO component? If so, I don't think that was the case in previous versions.

edit: after a little more research, it looks like it behaves correctly in the CoronaAO is placed between the Mapping Randomizer and CoronaTriplanar...you just can't put it upstream of both.

45

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Chaos Scatter Edge Trimming Playground!

« on: 2023-06-26, 20:30:44 »

I've cheated this feature by using Corona Slicer material on instances that are being scattered.

That seems like a lot more work...

I just take the spline along the border, extrude it and shell it to create and cutting solid and set it to only cut the objects I want it to.