Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Auto Adjustment Baking causes crashing

« on: 2025-01-28, 13:57:55 »

Hi guys,

We're having a problem with the auto adjustments baking causing Corona (and 3ds Max) to crash.

Has anyone else had this issue?
We are running Corona 12 Hotfix 1 Update 1 on Max 2024.

Many thanks in advance,
Michael

2

[Max] I need help! / Animation Flickering

« on: 2024-11-15, 11:02:39 »

Hi there,
We're having an issue with a simulation that involves water coming out of a faucet.
The water simulation causes flickering and we've tried numerous things that have not solved it. I've attached a clip of the animation here.
UHD is set to Animation (Flicker free) but as you can see, we have an abundance of it!
We've attempted to move the entire scene into a new fresh scene and try that way but it still continues to happen. One thing we have noticed is that the flickering starts at different frames every time we render - on occasion it'll start flickering on the 15th frame, and then the 20th frame and then we'll make adjustments and it'll begin flickering on the 12th frame.
We initially created a UHD cache to save on pre-computation and thought that was causing it - we redone the cache, still flickering. We then removed the cache altogether and still an issue.

We've also posted this to the Chaos Phoenix forums but I thought it would be good getting a wider range of eyes on this.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,

3

Hardware / Re: In-house Render Farm

« on: 2024-10-14, 11:44:13 »

Hope this wall of text is at least a little bit helpful.

Thank you so much for such a great answer, there is a lot here to digest and to consider!

We're currently looking at getting threadrippers and as we have a dedicated IT company looking into the matter too, they've also sugested putting some of the budget into storage too.

I'll keep you updated on the progress of this intervention! :D

4

Hardware / In-house Render Farm

« on: 2024-09-19, 14:07:38 »

Hey Guys,

I'm looking into creating some sort of renderfarm to speed up our process in our studio.

We are a team of 3 based in the UK with one collegue working remotely overseas in Europe - we all have very capable machines.
We're finding ourselves doing more animation and are currently relying on outsourcing the rendering workload to an external renderfarm, but I would like to know what the cost would likely be if we where to build one in house.
We use 3ds Max and Corona and would most likely use Pulzes Render managment system to send jobs out. I'm now not sure if it's better to just add 2 more machines to the mix with Threadrippers and 128gb each or go down the server side of things.

Any help would be much appreciated!

5

[Max] I need help! / Re: Time limit Glitching

« on: 2024-05-28, 11:12:48 »

Hey Maru,

Yes very strange but the update did indeed solve the issue!
Thanks you!

6

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Time limit Glitching

« on: 2024-05-24, 17:45:02 »

Has anyone run into this before?

My Render Time limits is acting very strangely - when I'm trying to use Pulze the values are not respected, in Pulze OR Max's Native Render Setup window.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Michael

7

[Max] I need help! / Re: Switching VFB Script?

« on: 2024-04-12, 13:42:14 »

Thank you very much Frood!
This worked a treat - I owe you a coffee!

8

[Max] I need help! / Switching VFB Script?

« on: 2024-04-12, 11:30:35 »

Hi guys,
Hopefully this is a quick one!
 
Does anyone know of a way to create a script that switches the VFB from the Native 3DS Max VFB to Coronas? We're using Connecter to produce preview images but when we do, it switches to the Native VFB for some reason. To switch back we need to go to Render Settings > Switch tab > System Settings > Native to Corona. I would like to create a button with this script to save us from having to do this.

Would be greatly appreciated!

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Error 198 - All Licences are in us (2) but we have purchased 3

« on: 2023-05-24, 17:04:10 »

Thank you Maru! - I've put the ticket number below for you:
#119990

10

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Error 198 - All Licences are in use (2) but we have purchased 3

« on: 2023-05-24, 12:39:07 »

Hi there,
We're having an issue with our licences at the moment.
We currently have 3 active products, all of them being "Corona Premium Annual" - the problem we have is that only two of us can be signed in at a time because as soon as the third does, it either prevents them from signing in (gives us the error message that all users are signed in) or kicks one of us out. I've attached an image of our Active Products as well as the licences - notice that it also only says that there are 2, when there should be 3.

What seems to be the problem here?

Many thanks for your help in advance!
Michael

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Phoenix 5 Candle Sim Issue

« on: 2023-04-28, 22:22:19 »

Maru, you're a legend!

This is fantastic, thanks so much for also providing a video on this too, really appreciate it! I'll give it a go now!

Thanks again!

12

[Max] I need help! / Re: Phoenix 5 Candle Sim Issue

« on: 2023-04-28, 11:27:49 »

Thanks for the speedy feedback guys!

Beanzvision - you have impressive inference skills! ;)

Thank you Maru, I'll create a ticket now!

Edit:Ticket number is #110557

Appreciate the help.

13

[Max] I need help! / Phoenix 5 Candle Sim Issue

« on: 2023-04-27, 23:50:18 »

Hi everyone,

We seem to be running into an issue here with all of our candle simulations in Phoenix 5 using Corona. We're are simply trying to add a candle simulation to our scene but whenever we render it, either the flame gets cut off or it is being stretched. We've tried increasing the adaptive grid and adjusting a few other values but whatever we do, it still remains distorted - even with default values using the "setup a candle sim for the selected object" option.

I've attached a link to some images that shows what I mean - you can see that in the viewport the candle appears normal but when you render it, the flame is extremely stretched:
https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Issue-with-Phoenix-Candle-Sim--B3NiL9yJoDTir3bfzCPe7zTQAQ-dNUizxZuBh1iglJVciStV

Does anyone else have this issue?

Many thanks in advance for you help,
Michael

14

[Max] I need help! / Re: Geometry smoothing issues

« on: 2023-01-09, 00:45:08 »

Oddly enough, the issue turns to be in the terminator handling that Corona uses to combat shadow terminator issue. If you turn terminator handling off, this will fix your shading issue completely. You can find terminator settings in render settings, dev/debug rollout. Mind you, that if you chose to turn this setting off, you will need to watch your scene for unwanted shadow terminator artifacts.

Alternatively, you can improve your mesh topology by adding more geometry where the artifacts shows. I did this with the chamfer modifier and got significantly improved results with only marginal increase in polycount. Attaching some pictures for comparison and the scene with the fix. Notice that fixed mesh looks arguably better than original with 3 iterations of turbosmooth, which adds over 5 million triangles to the scene. Bear in mind that the lighting is deliberately set up to show artifacts as bad as possible. With more normal lighting setup, the issue should be almost completely invisible.

Very useful information! Never come across this "Terminator Handling" before, very interesting to know.
Yes, adding a chamfer to the edge certainly helps.

Thank you very much to everyone who offered thier solution; I learnt a fair bit :)

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: Geometry smoothing issues

« on: 2023-01-07, 00:36:06 »

The problem is the slight shadowing or the black edges on the smaller geometry?
If your problem is that adding a Turbosmooth mod produces those black edges, what happens if you check on/off 'explicit normals' in the modifier? Is it looking better when using a Meshsmooth modifier instead of Turbosmooth?

Its the strange shadow looking lines on the edge of some detail. Looks slightly better with mesh smooth I guess but not much more to warrant good enough.

I've tried turning on/off explicit normals too but to no avail. I've attached the file above, feel free to have a go at it. 

Cheers