Messages

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Outline Material and Noise Threshold

« on: 2025-08-18, 17:15:34 »

Hi,

The issue is most probably because you have a very little outline thickness - AA and image filter fight to figure out if it is outline or surface.

First, the case is not usual, so feel free to lower the Gi vs AA balance - you need more AA here. Try changing image filter type and width - the effect will be little here though.
But most importantly, try making the outline wider and maybe brighter a bit to compensate for the effect. You can as well render at higher resolution and then downsample - it is a good known way of keeping patterns sharp(er) while reducing AA noise.

That screenshot was from a 6k render.  Yes the outline is minimal but it needs to be so that I don't get huge black splodges towards to the back of the image on things like railings.  It's all good, I can just reduce the noise threshold for clay renders, it's still pretty quick.  I tested a small region as advised by Tom.  Seems to work ok

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Outline Material and Noise Threshold

« on: 2025-08-13, 19:47:35 »

As such Outline was NOT meant to be simply a more refined Wires

Without sounding incredibly ungrateful, that's kind of all we were asking for

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Outline Material and Noise Threshold

« on: 2025-08-13, 16:09:34 »

That's really counterintuitive though.  As you said, the rest of the image is noiseless, I'm not prepared to dramatically increase render times for some preview renders, just so I can use the Outline material.  Noise limit is the only rendering method that guarantees no quality without wasting any extra render time.  It's a measurable target.  Pass Limit and Time Limit are complete guesswork that you end up overestimating because nobody knows no doubt resulting in extra render time and resource usage that probably wasn't necessary. 

Also for what it's worth.  Corona Wires didn't suffer this problem.  Outline was simply meant to be a more refined Corona Wires, not a more regressed one.  A wire shader that didn't detect every edge or require a hack/workaround to achieve that

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[Max] I need help! / Outline Material and Noise Threshold

« on: 2025-08-13, 13:59:50 »

I can't seem to get a clean render using the outline material as an override when using noise threshold ....

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Help with Studio Lighting Setup and Workflow for Product Rendering

« on: 2025-07-18, 07:27:47 »

Well in reality, products of different sizes probably wouldn't be shot under the same generalized studio conditions.  They might all start under similar conditions with similar principals but then the photographers would move lights, adjust the intensities etc etc until the product looked as they wanted it. So there is no one size fits all in terms of light positions/settings, and it's more a case of one set of principles (key, fill, backlight) works for all

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Outline as a Render Element

« on: 2025-07-16, 15:42:29 »

It would be useful as an input for control nets in stable diffusion too.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Path Tracing always as Secondary GI Solver

« on: 2025-07-09, 08:24:12 »

Speaking about bias, how about MSI? I was quite shocked another day to find how much light it could prevent to reach the areas that doesn't even seem that much occluded. Attached are comparison of default MSI 20 vs MSI 0 (off). Of course i would not recommend to turn MSI off in your scenes, because you'll surely get a ton of fireflies and much longer render times, but it might be useful to try adjust it in some darker interiors and see if you like what you see. Does anyone remember the old MSI 200 rule? :]

By the way, new firefly filter does pretty amazing job at removing excessive fireflies caused by turned off MSI (see the last attached example).

Really interesting test, MSI - 0 really brings out the translucency of the leaves, yet it seems the firefly filter knocks that back again despite there not really being many fireflies on the leaves

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

« on: 2025-06-26, 14:47:39 »

What's going on here, I didn't post this ....

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

« on: 2025-06-26, 13:05:39 »

Somehow it just missed us, this knowledge! Been using the default Corona HQ denoising + HQ filtering since... forever. One naturally assumes that anything native/Corona and "high quality" and which is also the default must be the best, for day-to-day use, and of course we've never had any issues with it, therefore no incentive/reason to try anything else. It's just this recent vid that caught our attention recently which caused us to change. But yes, the difference really is night-and-day. I wonder if the corona method simply needs to be improved if it's to remain the default... or just make Intel+Tent the default if better?

That's what I was repeatedly told when questioning it too, in that thread I posted you can see the other response were convinced with comments like "I rarely sharpen now with Corona defaults".  Intel + Tent is my default in my Maxstart file, i like the freedom of Tent too as you can adjust the Width(Px) to your liking, higher values softer, lower values crispier

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

« on: 2025-06-26, 11:35:13 »

Not to derail the topic about the AI thing, but that video about the intel denoiser used with tent really changed the game.

May i ask, what filter and denoising combo you were using before? I always set Intel denoiser and tent filter as default after each new version install since it doesn't work with HQ filter and i find it quite amusing that apparently it's a new discovery. Oh, and i completely agree with you about that rage about 2X scale - i did some short tests and my findings was that out of 3 very different scenes it kinda worked ok'ish in one of them, but the other two were clearly inferior to just simple rendering at native rez.

Glad I wasn't going mad back in 2021 https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=32584.msg182506#msg182506 it was around this time I made my defaults Intel/Tent and never looked back

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[Max] I need help! / Unreal Users ...

« on: 2025-06-24, 14:23:40 »

Finally looking into Unreal Engine properly as I have some time on my hands - i'm still making my way through the various learning paths.  Do we have any power users here that are still using Corona?  I'm currently wrapping my head around the materials side of things and workflows?

Has anyone successfully ported across the CoronaPhysicalMaterial to an Unreal Master material mimicking all the same behaviours/capabilities.  As far as I know, Physical Materials don't directly translate well into Unreal, although that may have changed since the Yotuube videos that i'm watching were made.

If you are still using both, what's the workflow with regards materials?  Especially CoronaPhysicalMaterials?  Everything I've seen so far suggests either using Legacy Materials or Recreating Materials in Unreal?  Seems a little counterintuative?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Rug rendering

« on: 2025-06-20, 09:07:50 »

I don't use Chaos scatter but you want to be looking for a Scale option in particular the Z axis

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Rug rendering

« on: 2025-06-16, 20:19:19 »

Forest Pack (or Corona Scatter) using a map to drive the height?

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

« on: 2025-06-13, 15:41:12 »

Interface feels very sluggish on the official 13 release with IR running.  Feels like when 12 was first released.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Finding right white stucco color exterior

« on: 2025-06-08, 22:21:04 »

I think it looks relatively natural.  There are things that need work for sure but it's getting there