Messages

1

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Chaos Corona 13 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2025-06-10, 16:42:58 »

This might by the wrong place to ask but... what happens with the image once it's uploaded? Is there anything a user might want/need to know, especially when it's a commissioned job and in probably all cases carrying some form of copyright, either by the artist or the client?

2

[Max] I need help! / Re: Odd Shading

« on: 2025-06-05, 09:17:54 »

Lol, turbosmooth the ultimate bandaid.

3

General CG Discussion / Re: Panel tool?

« on: 2025-06-04, 11:04:40 »

Just realized you could have meant this one here, featured recently over at cgpress:
https://cgpress.org/archives/pattern-engine-1-4-plugin-released-for-3ds-max.html

4

General CG Discussion / Re: Panel tool?

« on: 2025-06-03, 15:47:56 »

Is it this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a95fd5cWFs

There were several other doing the same, this one seems to be free.

5

[Max] I need help! / Re: Odd Shading

« on: 2025-06-02, 14:20:13 »

This could be a geometry issue, but it could also be a side effect of how geometry vs lighting normals are handled in Corona, one can be smoothed (similar to smoothing groups) while the other can't. It's why an improved shadow terminator handling was introduced way back but it's not fixable 100% iirc.

Also, this effect will be more visible whenever you use extreme values for bump/normal maps or SSS/volumetric effects in the material, in that case either remove or decrease those.
What also helps is to increase mesh resolution/subdivisions until the stepping is not noticeable anymore, but this might not be applicable in some cases.

If it's a exporting/importing issue, a quick fix would be to use an 'Edit normals' modifier on the mesh, and while in selection mode pressing ctrl+A to select all normals, then click the 'Reset' button in the modifier, this will reset all normals. Now use either a Smooth or Weighted Normals modifier and see if one of them helps with the effect. Still, it's possible that the effect will just be weaker but still noticeable.

6

[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Chaos Corona 13 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2025-05-26, 10:58:23 »

Out of curiosity, what do you guys plan to use thin film for?

I'll just add this - for studio lighting environments it can really help to attenuate reflections on dark surfaces and make them more interesting. Also, I have to show metals that have some sort of heat treatment and it helps a lot since the coloring of the effect is realistic out of the box without having to tweak gradients to death.

Here's my +100 for a mapping that's more controllable and consistent, and I'd even support going a step further and suggest real thickness units. It's just so much more convenient and practical to know 'mapping 450-650 nm looked good in my last project, let's just use those values and work from there' than some greyscale map that you plug into a CC node, tweaking levels/gamma until you get the right nm range without ever knowing what the mapped final value is.

7

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Help activating Render Node please

« on: 2025-05-01, 19:05:13 »

Not sure if it applies in your case, but I can use Corona's DR on a node with a Max non-GUI version (that I'm using for backburner, too). Should be working with a Corona render node license I suppose. Max 2021 and Corona 9 hf1 in my case. However I'm on active subscription for Corona, not perpetual.

8

Off-Topic / Re: good anti virus

« on: 2025-04-24, 16:30:06 »

If you ask IT guys, many will tell you that antivirus apps are just another potential threat as they disable OS security stuff and offer system-level access. They will tell you to just trust the OS built-in threat detection and avoid browsing questionable sites (and always use ad blockers, ads are being used to inject trojans and no one's stopping it because of profit) or open stuff that you aren't sure about.
I'm using ESET and all the warnings I got so far were false positives. One threat that was probably serious was blocked by Windows before ESET could get to it.

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Problem; 3ds max Crashing on opening the compact material editor

« on: 2025-04-04, 11:09:10 »

Not sure if you ever shared a minidump with the team but when the mat-ed crashed for me, the minidump contained detailed info on which component/map led to the crash. I could isolate the map, replace it and continue working with the scene. Sharing the minidump might be a good step towards a solution.

10

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-24, 14:35:50 »

Oh sorry - missed that it needs to be approved first.

Will post the node map idea once it's approved and reference it so it's clear it's a follow up and a generalization of that reqeust.

Thanks Maru, much appreciated!

11

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Corona renders different shading with anisotropy

« on: 2025-03-24, 12:09:36 »

I have logged the "anisotropy by reference node" option as a feature request here: https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-155
Feel free to vote for it and/or comment. Note that it will be invisible for some time, until approved by Tom.

Great, thanks! However the link doesn't work for me - it says 'record not found'.

Maybe even it would make sense to have an 'object space reference map' node where any nested map/maptree would inherit the picked object's local space?
A more generalized solution wouldn't be bad since this is useful for more properties than in this case with anisotropy.

12

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: C4D's VFB responsiveness

« on: 2025-03-20, 20:59:31 »

It looks like C4D's VFB is redrawing the UI (or something else that causes the flickering of the render buttons) and more stats are updated than in Max. Could this be a reason?

13

[Max] I need help! / Re: Nesting Multi/Sub-Object materials is not supported in corona Layer material

« on: 2025-03-17, 08:48:37 »

I wonder if you can use a Blend material for this.

14

[Max] I need help! / Re: Color accuracy

« on: 2025-03-14, 22:45:12 »

Corona did as best as it could to support ACES (whatever users had in mind saying it) in the meantime, on the go.

First it was the limitation of the host app (no proper color management), then it was its half baked state.

Corona had wide gamut for rendering since the very early days. Even with 3ds Max being just gamma managed, we added ACEScg as internal rendering space some time ago (maybe Corona 10 or older, cannot quite remember). This would give slight differences in color, the most significant being in colored medium. See this comparison. Overall, the differences between Wide RGB and ACEScg are very subtle, and this shows that Corona's internal rendering color space was very robust even before ACES was "cool".

Then we also implemented ACES OT operator. This specifically brought better highlight (including colored) handling. See this comparison.

It might have left unnoticed because, in my opinion, archviz is not a branch that would had seen significant boost from it. It just became a better standard, and render engines tried to adopt it as good as possible.

If you want to help archviz, Corona should finally support ICC profiles in the VFB as final color transform. For all the PS guys, Aces might be nice for it tonemapping, but as far as color management is concerned, it's not helping much.

We went slightly off topic though, OP asked for shortcomings of sRGB and workflows for proper material/surface capturing.

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: Color accuracy

« on: 2025-03-14, 11:54:04 »

This post warms my heart - really, good to read it drives others mad, too.

Two in-depth articles from a longtime Max user about PBR and some of its assumptions and pitfalls, and practical solutions:
https://www.racoon-artworks.de/blog_PBRfromrulestomeasurements.php
https://www.racoon-artworks.de/blog_PBRshootingandcalibrating.php

Getting the right material properties is hard without a proper device. A colorimeter will only give you a reflected color value without any other info about reflectance and its behavior. The there's the materials surface which will affect all incoming/outgoing light and will produce different results for lighting and viewing angles.

Then there's the renderer - you can't really be sure how realistic it'll model the reflectance behavior when it comes to surface structure, how bump maps work in renderers is generally very simplified and will not reproduce real life accurately, and with texture filtering you can not really tell what it'll do). Rough diffuse materials are really a topic on its own with hardly any renderer caring about it.

As for sRGB, it's only getting worse from here. I'd say the range of colors in RAL and Pantone that can't be reproduced in sRGB may even be about 50%, maybe even more. I have not once come across a site that will tell you which space of RGB they assume for the values, and I'm pretty sure it's because they know it's impossible and just tell you a number close enough. Some vendors will give you LAB colors which is another can of worms because the scientific LAB space is not the LAB you'll find in Photoshop.

Broad topic, and then there are clients who will view your results on an uncalibrated display one day and tell you it's too dark, and the next they'll look at it on their mobile and tell you it's too bright and could be less saturated :D

I have worked in pre-press for some years and looking back I wish people in all places of the production chain (software vendors, too) would care about this today as people did 20 years ago when they printed stuff on paper.