Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: Is there a way outside of the CIE to read lightmix layer data?

« on: 2025-09-04, 10:31:37 »

You can use python to get this information. Please find a simple script attached and a video showing how you can get the info out of a CXR+Conf file.

I hope this is what you were looking for. You will need to install python in your system to be able to run the script. If I mis understood you, let me know, I will try to get more info from our devs for you.

The solution i gave before will not work out of the box. I will try to find more about from our devs and update you.

Meanwhile, you can add your feature request here: https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas

I ended up using python to extract the data with the openexr library anyway but thank you! I have added an idea already about including lightmix layer names in the config files.

2

[Max] I need help! / Is there a way outside of the CIE to read lightmix layer data?

« on: 2025-09-03, 12:34:28 »

Im looking to write a photoshop script to use when bringing EXR(CXR) into photoshop to automate the setup of lightmix layers to match what we see in the CIE. This is so that people downstream in the pipeline are able to just open the exr and have it match what we were seeing by running the script. I want to be able to read the lightmix layer data such as intensity, tint and state. I know this is contained within the cxr files but im not sure how.
This is more a 'for the devs' question but are there any tools out there that can read this data from the file?

I thought it could be done just using a plain old conf file but they dont contain the layer name and when importing the exr into photoshop the layers revert to alphabetical order instead of the order from the lightmix panel.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Cryptomatte layers all grey instead of pure white

« on: 2025-09-03, 12:29:48 »

Ive not got anything enabled out of the standard workflow, but perhaps i need to. Ill do some tests when i have some time!

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Any scene debugging tools/scripts out there?

« on: 2025-09-01, 17:57:14 »

Ideally there would be a full scene memory report available from corona like the texture memory useage csv, but for materials and geometry.

Thats a good idea.

In the mean time I suppose the only thing I can think of is the old 50/50 way (remove 50%, hit render), do it again until the speed jumps up significantly, then you know which chunk to investigate.

Another idea which could give you more info (for geometry, and other info too), export one of those chunks as fbx (ascii not binary), then open the fbx with notepad. This will give you a tonne of info about the objects and its data but you would probably need a custom parser to get the data you want sufficiently, unless you dont mind scrolling though millions float values lol.

Hmm that is an interesting idea. Sounds like something an ai might be able to code quite well too.

But yes the whole 50/50 approach is what ive ended up having to do.

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[Max] I need help! / Cryptomatte layers all grey instead of pure white

« on: 2025-09-01, 17:22:58 »

Im having a really weird issue with cryptomatte in photoshop from a CXR and the EXR.io plugin.
Every single mask layer is greyscale instead of pure white meaning whe used as masks, the resulting layer is semi transparent.
I have no idea whats causing this.

Any ideas? Im completely stuck without it.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Bloom/Glare in CIE doesnt work with lightmix?

« on: 2025-09-01, 17:14:40 »

Ok thanks, Seems a little misleading to name the pass 'Bloom & Glare interactive'

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[Max] I need help! / Bloom/Glare in CIE doesnt work with lightmix?

« on: 2025-09-01, 13:14:11 »

Im trying to save out a bloom and glare interactive pass from the CIE.
I have made some adjustments in the lightmix panel with intensity/tint. However it doesnt appear to affect the 'Bloom and glare interactive' pass as expected. Everything seems to stay at full intensity and its original color.

How can i get a bloom and glare pass from the CIE with the correct intensities and colours of the adjusted image?

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Any scene debugging tools/scripts out there?

« on: 2025-08-30, 00:23:31 »

Yeah ive tried forensic, its a great tool but not really what i need for this. Im getting really high parsing times all of a sudden on a live project and so far ive not managed to track down why. Ideally there would be a full scene memory report available from corona like the texture memory useage csv, but for materials and geometry.

9

[Max] I need help! / Any scene debugging tools/scripts out there?

« on: 2025-08-29, 18:05:29 »

Ive been having problems recently with some larger scenes and spending hours and hours debugging them to find a specific object thats causing the issue seems to be really inefficient.
Vray seems to have some great reporting tools whereby you can see a memory breakdown of your scene on a per object basis, stage by stage.
I know we have some amount of this in the error reporter currently but i was wondering if there are any maxscripts or debug/dev tools within corona that can give a more comprehensive breakdown of whats going on under the hood?

Its all well and good having a support system to upload problematic scenes to but it would be much more helpful if there were better reporting tools out there to help us debug scenes.

Thanks

10

[Max] Previews (Daily Builds) / Re: Toon + Outline Mtl Playground!

« on: 2025-07-25, 14:40:25 »

Is it just me, or does the outline material not work with camera clipping? i.e. it will still render the clipped geometry.

Also it doesnt appear to respect the visibility of xrefs. If i have xrefs loaded but not visible, the outline material still renders them. If i have them loaded but not enabled, it still renders them. I have to fully unload the xrefs for it to stop rendering them.

11

[Max] I need help! / Geometry parsing issue

« on: 2025-07-24, 18:14:40 »

Sometimes i get a problematic object in a scene that causes parsing times to skyrocket. When this happens and i see its taking several minutes to parse I click stop. When i click stop it will take several minutes for the render window to respond, the stop button remains highlighted and the whole thing just freezes. Its becoming a real obstacle because it makes troubleshooting scenes a huge struggle. Im not getting any RAM warnings to suggest its an out-of-ram issue. Disabling displacement also has no effect.

Has anyone else had anything similar?

It seems to be railclone causing the problem. Ive tried the FAQ fix of converting it to a mesh but the issue doesnt go away and using embedded proxies for some reason causes half of the objects to not render.
Strangely, the railclone object will render fine on its own as will the scene its going into. But combining them has caused this excessive parsing time issue to surface with times in the tens of minutes sometimes. Its a simple railing.

12

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Batch image editor stops after 33 frames.

« on: 2025-07-21, 12:13:56 »

There are two issues here:
1 - The path to CIE is wrong in the script - this will be fixed and the file will be updated in the Help Center
2 - The 33 files limit. I tried it and got a 59 files limit. After consulting with ChatGPT, it turns out there is a limit of characters that can be ran as a single command, and the current .bat script used to hit that limit. The exact number of processed files would depend on your filenames length. After torturing ChatGPT for some more time, I got a working PowerShell script which overcomes the character limit. Simply run the .bat file from the attached archive. It will think for a while and then spit out all the processed files. It may seems slow at first, but I don't think it is.

Ah brilliant troubleshooting, thanks Maru. I racked my brain as to why it could be limited. I would have never thought it was a fundamental character limit!
Perhaps it is time something was integrated to the CIE instead but thank you for your script.

13

[Max] General Discussion / RichDirt has ceased trading. Corona should step up.

« on: 2025-07-17, 14:29:40 »

I noticed recently that RichDirt has ceased sales.
https://www.enrichpro.com/en/richdirt/buy.html

If i recall, many years ago the team was in touch with the developer in some capacity. It seems that corona support was worked on but sales were low.

I had no idea that it even supported corona as theres no information on the site regarding what renderers are supported. The site is from a bygone era.

Anyway, i wanted to make the case that this should be kept alive by corona/chaos given its tight integration with archviz.

The nice thing to do would be to purchase it outright from the developer.
But i understand there are corporate policies and hurdles and technical practicalities that might make that impossible.

A native solution has been requested so often on these forums over the years and if theres even the slightest opportunity to integrate this solution it would be a huge time saver.
Yes there are methods with curvature and ao etc but nothing has ever come close to the ease of use of richdirt and richscene in my opinion.

Im highlighting the cessation of trading here, this isnt a feature request.
But i have made one so if you support the idea of a native dirt solution please do lend your vote!

https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-206

14

[Max] I need help! / Re: LED Strip and noise levels

« on: 2025-07-16, 17:12:28 »

Depends where the noise is coming from. Is it from direct lighting? Or some bounced light? Maybe there is a reflective surface somewhere close to the lights?

The noise is coming directly from the LED light. The reflection on the floor is very noisy. The floor has some high frequency detail in the bump but isnt very glossy.
After 100 passes the noise is still prevalent sitting at around 12% in the VFB.

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: LED Strip and noise levels

« on: 2025-07-16, 16:55:14 »

Hmm ok my mistake. My second question then would be whether there are any under the hood changes that could help with the noise in this setup?