Messages

1

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Targa 32bit

« on: 2015-09-16, 04:32:53 »

Ok, after a couple of days, with laser-like awareness, I noticed a sticky thread called Mantis Bug Tracking System right above this thread. Laser. Like. ;-)

I'll move this there.

https://corona-renderer.com/bugs/view.php?id=1302

2

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Targa 32bit

« on: 2015-09-15, 21:06:22 »

Ok, so this is a CoronaBitmap bug. Is it already reported on Mantis, or only here?

No idea about Mantis so only here. Is there a bug report form you want me to use? If so let me know where and I'll copy this info over.

3

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Targa 32bit

« on: 2015-09-15, 05:04:03 »

Sure, would have said so with first message but I assumed it was something I was doing.

1. 3DS MAX 2015/Win 7 64.
2. Corona version: 1.2.1, Maxsdk version: 2015
3. This shows up loading files in the material editor, in viewports, and rendering. I have not tried saving output as TGA.
4. See below, it's only the CoronaBitmap map type - default 3DS Bitmap maps do not show this behavior. Same source for both.
5. Material in question is about as simple as a Corona material gets, nothing but level and glossiness changed and diffuse map added.

Let me know if there's any more information that would be helpful.

(Sorry for large images, need to be able to read the text)

4

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Targa 32bit

« on: 2015-09-13, 03:31:33 »

Mods, if it's a real issue with targa 32 bit textures is it known? If not maybe move this to bug reports?

5

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Targa 32bit

« on: 2015-09-11, 04:08:27 »

Looked in Google and see no mention of issues with targa files, but my 32 bit textures show up like this:



Looks like the green channel is out of place. With no mention in google there's no way I've discovered a general problem, so must be my files or I'm not doing something correctly. I couldn't figure a way around it, resaved texures as PNG to get them to render correctly in Corona. Any suggestions?

6

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona Alpha4 Benchmark scene

« on: 2015-09-09, 08:59:49 »

No, actually the point was this is more of a gaming rig than modeling rig, cards are gaming. I'm glad in this case that I went for what was real close to max CPU available at that time. I was scrolling through and saw my 5930 seems to be winning, please tell me somebody else has run that faster? I got this seven months ago and because Corona is especially lethal to my processor it's only overclocked from 3.7 to 4GHz, which is going to be rock stable unless you got a very bad chip. That's a long time to be near the top of the heap in desktops. I didn't see anyone else with a 5930, and that also surprised me considering Corona is a processor renderer. I guess for today's professionals they use a farm so local horsepower doesn't matter as much? Been over 15 years now since I had a job in modeling, which is like pre-cambrian rendering, so I really have no clue how modern studios operate.

7

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Corona Alpha4 Benchmark scene

« on: 2015-09-08, 02:07:49 »

Corona Renderer Alpha 4 benchmark scene
 Living room 100 passes
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5930K CPU @ 3.50GHz
Time: 0:3:15, Rays/s: 6,490,877

Except it was running at 4.0GHz, not sure why Corona doesn't see that. Also have 2 x GTX970s in SLI and 2 x 500Gb SSDs.

8

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: System Crash

« on: 2015-09-08, 01:43:28 »

Cranking it back to 4.0Ghz got me past 100 passes on the file that was crashing. CPU topped out at 83 degrees C.

So yes, it appears that Corona 1) demands more of the CPU than anything else I am aware of (including a series of rendering engines), and 2) it demands more than CPU stability utilities do :)

In short, if you have your CPU overclocked best to watch temp the first few times it's rendering something difficult and abort it if the temp gets high. Better than having entire system hard crash. You can then adjust the overclocking until you get it near max stable temp while under Corona load.

9

[Max] Resolved Bugs / System Crash

« on: 2015-09-08, 00:00:01 »

Twice in last couple days have had entire OS crash with a blue screen while rendering in Corona. Appears to me to be my processor crashing (text on the blue screen disappears to quickly to read), but that's odd as before I settled on this overclocking - it's an Intel i7-5930K overclocked from 3.7Ghz to 4.2Ghz with water cooling - I ran the system through really brutal CPU and video stability tests for extended periods, like many hours. And haven't had it crash like this since initial overclocking experimentation back in December, and have played a bunch of intensive games and have been working in Photoshop and MAX.

Also strange that I was playing with Corona for several days and then twice in last 24 hours it's crashed like this.

So mentioning it in case there's an issue in Corona or at least you know Corona is capable of pushing CPUs even harder than CPU stability tests, so overclockers beware. If you want info about my machine let me know, but like I said looks to me like processor couldn't handle what Corona was asking of it at this overclocking. So going to step it down for Corona, I can change it on the fly. I'll let you know if that doesn't make it go away.

10

[Max] I need help! / Re: Reflection question

« on: 2015-09-05, 09:14:58 »

Ok... Sorry but I just can't imagine how this could work in any renderer.
Also, are you getting crashes when drag-and-dropping this file into viewport? Tried with max15 and 16.

I just tried it, no crash. I always work with a single maxed viewport, if that makes a difference.

And I did get a decent result in MR. Overall I like Corona's version much better, but I can probably fiddle with the MR scene and then import the asset meshes and switch out a single bitmap for each skin. But it did give me an opportunity to really fiddle around with Corona, and I like it. Strongly considering getting a license.

Yes, converting to editable poly breaks normals immediately. That's no-go of course. Checked your file and it looks that MR treats those normals a lot better than Corona. Curious how Vray would stand?

I don't know, don't have VRay :) Beginning to think Romullus is using this as a survey of current low-poly rendering capability ;-) Ok, what about iRay? Ok, maybe we should try it in Final Render. OK, but what does it look like in Octane? I did grab the Octane demo but the output limitation is so small and the images so obscured with watermarking that I'm not sure what the point is. Corona's demo method is the way for companies to go.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Reflection question

« on: 2015-09-04, 11:16:34 »

How can it not be about Corona when you see MR images above where this faceting artifact doesn't exist and there are smooth environment reflections all the way across the mesh with no changes to geometry or smoothing groups?

Looking at your file, you changed it to editable poly and broke it into separate objects. These game assets can't be either of those and the question at the beginning was can I get better results than this faceting WITHOUT changing anything about the model because if I did have to make changes, it would defeat the purpose, which was can I do nice renders of a bunch of game assets without doing surgery to each of them.

I can think of several ways to fix this problem if I'm willing to make changes to the geometry. Also, clearly it's an issue that's only going to be noticeable on a low-poly editable mesh, which makes it an edge case to begin with.

As I said, I'm mostly just curious to see if there's a way around that problem with no changes to the model just because I'm curious at this point and it's a good excuse to poke at Corona, trying to solve a problem is a good and quick way to play with everything and see how it works.

Anyway, Romullus and Maru, unless you're also curious about it, I don't think there's enough value to keep pursuing it - very few people are ever going to run into this issue. Corona is a high quality rendering engine for high quality models, not insanely low poly editable meshes designed for very old game engines.

12

[Max] I need help! / Re: Reflection question

« on: 2015-09-04, 10:03:00 »

That was one of the original questions, whether Corona simply doesn't like low poly counts, I've always been sure I could tessellate or subdivide the mesh and get perfectly fine results. The question has been whether there's any way to get rid of the faceting on very low poly models without raising the poly count. And actually it's a hardly critical question, I'm just curious at this point and it's providing a good excuse to poke around with MR and Corona and learn something.

13

[Max] I need help! / Re: Reflection question

« on: 2015-09-04, 09:21:30 »

Can you share this model? Just a mesh without textures.

Attached. I just spent some more time with it in Corona and can't find a way around that faceting despite my success in MR. It facets everything, HDRI or no HDRI, including solid objects in the scene. I have no idea how Maru is getting the smooth reflections he's getting.

14

[Max] I need help! / Re: Reflection question

« on: 2015-09-04, 08:13:19 »

Ok Rommullus, not sure we can say it's just raytracing. Since I just found a way around it for MR, at least.

I decided to try HDRI lighting, but instead of putting it in the environment map slot I created a standard skylight and then used the HDRI in the skylight map slot. For some reason MR didn't seem to want to render reflections from that, so I set a .jpg version in the environment map slot, and that reflects fine. I'll put two versions, one more or less realistic after fiddling, another with the material reflectance cranked up to like .8. I also had to use blur and blur offset in the .jpg's mapping parameters, they were unrealistically crisp.

This is the "nice" version. Even unenhanced, you can see no faceting in the reflections of the .jpg environment map.



This is with reflectance cranked up to .9. Very weird how MR is handling the transition from ground plane reflection to environment reflection, and the sky reflection is more saturated than my eye says is right. Also very weird reflection on rear of trailer.




In both cases, no faceting on the reflection, so it can't be just raytracing. Actually now I'm wondering if it's HDRI images in the environment slot being reflected, not a raytracing issue. Going to try that now. In any case, if I can get around it on MR that suggests we should be able to find a way around it on Corona. Maru, how much you want to bet you weren't using an HDRI image in the environment slot?

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: Interactive viewport and how to activate

« on: 2015-09-04, 07:03:04 »

Not sure I understand your question since the title says interactive viewport but the text question says interactive renderer.

If you mean renderer, and that you can fiddle settings in Corona while rendering, well you click on Rendering>Render Setup, Common tab, scroll down to Assign Renderer, and select Corona as the Production renderer. Click on Rendering>Render. And while it's rendering, you can fiddle various controls. Most useful for me is the exposure settings in Rendering > Environment and Exposure Settings. Other people here can tell you much more about what can be changed interactively and what can't.

If you want a Corona viewport, now that you have your renderer set to Corona, go to top left in viewport, and click on rendering style, it's probably set to wireframe right now. Click on Realistic. Now that it says Realistic, click on it again, then go to Lighting and Shadows and select Illuminate with Scene Lights. Then click on Realistic AGAIN, and go down to Materials and click on Realistic Materials With Maps. If your textures are still not showing, go to the material editor and select the bitmap(s) and click on the button that says Show Shaded Material In Viewport.