Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: Computer completely freezes during rendering

« on: 2024-07-08, 15:41:40 »

Thank you for your suggestions.
I think I've found the cause - fingers crossed...
It must've been a CPU overheating issue, as some cores reached a temperature above 100 degrees, before the fans kicked in.
What I did (and it works so far) is to disable "turbo" mode for the CPUs in BIOS. I lose a small amount of CPU power, but at least I got no freezes so far.

2

[Max] I need help! / Computer completely freezes during rendering

« on: 2024-07-04, 11:31:57 »

Hi everyone,
The past weeks my computer often freezes during rendering or during IR. Windows becomes totally unresponsive and the only thing to do is to push the power button for a forced shut down. This happens usually within the first minutes of rendering, if I get past the threshold of the first 5 minutes then it doesn't crash. Not sure if it's a Corona-related problem, I just updated to Corona 12 and it happened again. Any ideas to work this around? Any help would be much appreciated. I use 3ds Max 2024.2 with Corona 12 (previously Corona 11 hotfix 2). Computer specs are listed below.

HP Z8 G4, 2xXeon Gold 6150, 128GB RAM, RTX A2000 12GB, Windows 11 Pro for Workstations 23H2

Thanks!

3

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Discrepancy between Corona 9 and 10

« on: 2023-07-20, 08:56:31 »

I just noticed this discrepancy in one of my scenes and was just about to report it when I found this thread.
Attaching a comparison image for reference. The string fix seems to work, but a quick hotfix is certainly needed.

4

Hardware / Re: Dual Monitor

« on: 2023-04-04, 18:30:34 »

Thanks for your input, really helpful.
However, since 4K monitors are more expensive than "regular" ones, I remain a bit skeptical about the reasoning behind getting a high DPI monitor and then scaling it up because the icons, buttons and menus are too small to use. Smoother text, crisper movies and images are welcome of course, I just wonder if it's worth the extra $$ of a 4K monitor.
Maybe I'm just an old dog who's mistrustful about new tricks :)

5

Hardware / Re: Dual Monitor

« on: 2023-04-04, 16:28:55 »

Interesting topic, I am also looking for a replacement of my current dual monitor setup.
I agree that for professional work I wouldn't risk buying Asus or LG models. Currently I have two Dell monitors at 1920x1200 which have proved very reliable over the years. I used to have an Eizo monitor some ages ago (which is still working impressively well). BenQ seems to have good credibility as well.

The Dell U2723QE has very good specs but, coming from a screen resolution of just 94 PPI, I am concerned that 4K at 27" (which is a pixel density of 163 PPI) would make everything so small that would make presbyopia glasses inevitable for me. I suppose that you could use windows scaling to compensate, but I don't feel so comfortable about it...

I was also looking at this new monitor from Dell which has just been announced. A bit pricey I guess, but has good specs and gets rid of the annoying central division of dual monitors setup:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-49-curved-usb-c-hub-monitor-u4924dw/apd/210-bgtz/monitors-monitor-accessories#tabs_section
Does anyone have any hands-on experience with such curved ultra-wide monitors for archviz work?

6

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Flicker in animation caused by physical glass material

« on: 2022-02-04, 08:30:23 »

I came across the same issue a few weeks ago, when sending animation frames to render farm:
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=35314.msg193881#msg193881
I ended up using the same workaround (replacing the glass material with a legacy one).

GeorgeK, when you say it's already addressed, what do you mean? Will it be fixed in the next Corona release?

7

[Max] I need help! / Re: Animation in render farm flickering

« on: 2022-01-14, 16:30:47 »

I just wanted to provide an update on this issue with the solution, in case someone found it useful in the future:

After extensive testing and troubleshooting with two render farms (rebus and ranch), it turned out that the problem was in the glass material of the windows!!

Initially the windows had a CoronaPhysicalMtl, with the "glass" preset. For some strange reason, whereas the frames in my workstation were rendered fine, the frames rendered on the render farm nodes came out with flawed GI and caused flickering. This happened with both a pre-calculated UHD and with UHD calculated from scratch for each frame. However, it did not occur when PT+PT was used for the GI.

After changing the glass material to a CoronaLegacyMtl with "standard" glass settings, the Pt+UHD setting for the GI produced correct results on the nodes of both render farms. The same happened when I used a CoronaRaySwitchMtl for the glass, with CoronaPhysicalMtl on all nodes except GI (which was left blank).

Maybe this is some kind of bug for the CoronaPhysicalMtl?

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Animation in render farm flickering

« on: 2022-01-12, 13:21:58 »

Thank you for the tips.
I can't share the file with you, because I'm under an NDA for this project.
I tried submitting some test frames to the farm using PT+PT for the GI and it came out fine, so I guess it must be a problem with the UHD - I must have done something wrong in the first calculation.
Re-calculating the UHD now and will run some more tests.

A weird thing I noticed in the UHD pre-calculation: I have it set to render every 30th frame, but I noticed that the file size of the resulting .uhd file (as saved to disk) gradually decreases slightly - it started from around 7MB, dropped to 5MB and now being 6MB. Shouldn't that file be increasing as the frames progress, since new information from the new frames is added up?

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Animation in render farm flickering

« on: 2022-01-11, 17:10:56 »

Forgot to mention my settings:
All general settings to default.
UHD cache is set to animation (flicker-free).
Noise limit is set to 4.5 and denoising is set to 0.8 (corona high quality). No pass limit or time limit.
This results to about 30 passes being computed in the brighter, sun-lit parts of the video.

10

[Max] I need help! / Animation in render farm flickering

« on: 2022-01-11, 17:00:50 »

Hello all,
I have an animation project with camera move only - interior scene.
The scene is lit with an HDRI and some recessed spots (2D disks with corona light material applied).
I have rendered 30 frames as a test in my workstation, with pre-calculated UHD and everything looks fine.
When I send the very same frames to a render farm, each frame comes out with slightly different lighting! I have tried two render farms and this occurs to both (although it was slightly less visible in the second farm). I have also tried sending without pre-calculated GI and the result is the same. When the farm frames are compiled to video, some flickering is visible...
Any ideas why this occurs? It is driving me nuts! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately I can't share images or video because it's a confidential project.

Thank you for your help!

11

[Max] Feature Requests / Re: Include/Exclude for HDRI Lighting

« on: 2022-01-03, 10:39:25 »

We already have a feature request like this logged. If you could provide us with a use case when exactly something like this would be useful, that would be perfect.

(Internal ID=436869814)

I also often wish I had this feature available. It would be useful in an instance where you have an interior scene with a backdrop image for the view out of the windows, and you want the backdrop image to be excluded from environment lighting and be lit from a light of its own.

12

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Physical Material Error - & corona converter

« on: 2021-09-27, 10:38:08 »

I have the same issue with the current material converter, which mis-understands the metalness on some materials.
The script provides a workaround, but I think there should be an option at the converter to override metalness on demand.

13

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Re: Motion blur and animated textures

« on: 2021-08-18, 10:09:14 »

I see what you mean, thanks for your response.

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[Max] Resolved Bugs / [solved] Motion blur and animated textures

« on: 2021-08-17, 11:45:32 »

Hi,
I have a scene using an animated texture as displacement map and I noticed that motion blur doesn't work with this map. I suppose it's a bug? Any way it could be fixed?
Thank you.

15

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona 4 and absorption color

« on: 2019-06-13, 16:30:32 »

Thank you romullus and maru for your input, I appreciate it.
I wonder if there will ever come a day when CG software won't need these "cheats" anymore... (sigh)