Corona Renderer 8 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog

[maru]

*You can always get the newest build at the usual location [link]*


EDIT: We now distribute the daily builds through gdrive, the folders can be found here Daily Builds!

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-07-28.exe
Note: all changes in this build will be released in a v7 hotfix, so this is more of a hotfix preview than actual v8 daily build.

• General
• Fixed occasional crash when light intersects with other geometry
• Fixed crashes caused by Wind Binding modifier
• Fixed display/input/output gamma values not being properly rounded to 2 decimal places when being written to max log file
• Added proper error message when trying to use a UHD cache file generated from an older Corona version (note that this scenario is not supported and a new UHD file will be generated)
• CoronaDisplacementMod - fixed the “displacement quality” and “subdivision quality” radio buttons being treated as a single group (i.e. only one of the 4 could be selected at any given time)
• CoronaPhysicalMtl - Fixed incorrect TAB order in advanced rollout
• Warning message about VRayHDRI/VRayBitmap now correctly uses either name according to the currently installed version of V-Ray (the VRayHDRI map has been renamed to VRayBitmap in latest V-Ray version)
• CoronaNormal - fixed the text “Add gamma to input” text being clipped a bit from the right
• CoronaSky - fixed the model tooltip incorrectly stating that the PRG Clear Sky model does not support turbidity
• CoronaRoundEdges  - Added tooltip for the samples parameter

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-08-10.exe
Note: all changes in this build will be released in a v7 hotfix, so this is more of a hotfix preview than actual v8 daily build.

• General
• Fixed crashes with ForestPack 5
• Fixed some DLLs not being properly removed when uninstalling v7 that was previously installed over an older version
• Fixed Corona Converter not working properly with V-Ray version 3 installed
• Fixed Corona Converter firing asserts when converting V-Ray materials
• Fixed -h and --help parameters not working when running the installer from the command line
• Fixed displacement modifier ignoring the global displacement switch

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-09-06.exe

• New
• PhysicalMtl - added tail parameter, controlling the strength of reflection outside of the reflection peak
  
  
• The image comparison below shows the difference between using Roughness and using Tail to adjust reflections - visually, with Roughness, the entire reflection becomes blurred, while with Tail there is less blurring of the overall reflections while highlights remain affected.
  https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/uq3FfO
  For this example, the Roughness was set to 0.16 in that example (with a Tail of 0), and a Tail of 0.87 in that example (with Roughness 0). For comparison, here is the render with neither Roughness nor Tail used:
  
• Added new randomization mode to UVW randomizer and Multimap - polygons. These separate the mesh into individual polygons based on visible edges.
• Note that this changes seed of UVW randomizer/Multimap mesh element mode.
• CoronaBitmap has new option to control environment map rotation (and potential dome mapping origin) with any picked scene node
• CoronaBitmap now supports loading .tx files
• Note that this we currently ignore the mipmap levels stored in the .tx file
• EDIT Also note that it is currently not displayed in the file open dialog as a supported type, this is due to us using the 3ds Max file open dialog.
  Currently you are unable to load .tx files through this dialog due to a 3ds Max limitation, you will need to drag and drop the image into an already created CBitmap and it will load the file.
• Added right click menu to Triplanar map's node picker with "Clear" and "Select in Scene" options
• Added new button to batch load maps into SelectTex
• Changes
• Changed the default order of Corona Scatter rollouts to be more intuitive.
• Object lists in Corona Scatter show full name of each object in a tooltip, if the name is too long to fit into the list.
• Unified names of newly created Corona objects to Corona[space]ObjectName
• Fixes
• Fixed constant IR restarts in V-Ray GPU caused by Corona Scatter scattering objects with animated modifiers.
• Fixed crash when loading some uncommon HDR files

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-09-21.exe

• General
• Improved the way intersecting media are combined
  
  • All combinations of intersecting media should now be resolved correctly
  • Intersecting media are added together if and only if their containers are transparent (so VolumeMtl, VolumeGrid, PhoenixFD are always combined together).
• Fixed issues with environment overrides, such as increased amount of noise and incorrect results
• https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/4SbnHT
• https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/bjNcfz
• Fixed bugs with some textures having alpha higher than 1 either when loaded from disk or as a result of mipmap computation
• Fixed loading of some uncommon .hdr textures
• Fixed TAB order in CoronaBitmap (got broken in previous daily build)
• Corona Proxy Exporter - When exporting non-grouped objects, the exporter now suggests a default output name based on the object names to be exported
• Adaptive solver checkbox moved from the Performance rollout to the Development rollout

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-09-30.exe

• New
• Added include/exclude list to specify which object should (not) receive caustics. You can find it in the performance tab of render settings
• https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/CGCGN8
• Added OIDN feature pre-denoising (OIDN 1.4.0 new feature)
• https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/GTGm2s
• Added partial support for vrmesh proxy files
• Please note that the current implementation of our vrmesh loader is limited in a way that it can load only proxies containing a single mesh. This will be extended with full support later.
• Fixes
• Fixed bug when rendering gets extremely slow and memory consumption gets very high in some special cases by adding limit to the number of splits per path
• Fixed dark spots when lights are invisible to reflection
• https://corona-renderer.com/comparer/vdpiFx

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-10-12.exe

• New
• Added cdecal object - projects a selected texture on any geometry
• 
• Fixes/General
• Optimized creating texture lights
• Fixed CTD in some scenes, when Light Samples Multiplier parameter is set to very high values.
• Replaced "offending X" with "X with the problem" in Corona error messages

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-10-15.exe

• Fixes/General
• [REGRESSION] Fixed light leaks in UHD and 4K caches.
• [REGRESSION] Fixed Corona Image Editor crashing when opening some CXR files.
• Fix issue where displacement+decals may result in part of the decal not getting the decal material (since the surface is displaced above the decal)

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-11-05.exe

• General
• Added blend and additive displacement handling into LayeredMtl
• Added option to drag&drop Bitmap, CoronaBitmap, or a bitmap file from windows explorer onto the "Fit to Bitmap" button of DecalObject. This triggers the sizing, same as if user clicked the button and selected the same texture.
• Added the option to drop bitmaps from Windows explorer directly into our material slots
• Physical material - fixed specular values not working properly below 0.5
• From now on, the "Legacy behavior" checkbox is not visible in newly created CoronaRoundEdges maps. For already created CoronaRoundEdges maps it remains visible if already checked
• Removed Disable Displacement Maps button from Corona Converter - it is much better to globally disable displacement through the render setup menu
• Decals
• Added support for decal motion blur
• Added continuous "max angle" parameter to limit the projection only to certain angle, instead of boolean switch (front facing/everything)
• Added max angle blur parameter
• Added decal tooltips
• Added optional "holding CTRL key" creation mode for Rectangle CoronaLight and CoronaDecal, that causes the object to be created with square proportion and centered on the first click, as opposed to arbitrary rectangular proportions and created from corner when not holding CTRL key
• Added option to enable/disable the material preview for decals in 3ds Max viewport
• Added parameter for depth offset to move the decal forward/backward in Z axis
• Improved triplanar support for decals - the triplanar map now takes the local orientation from the decal, not the intersecting object
• Decals no longer have their pivots slightly offset when creating them, because the "Pivot offset" parameter does that instead
• Fixed artifacts sometimes happening when a decal with backface projection OFF was applied to a surface exactly perpendicular to it
• Fixed applying decal to object with displacement. Now there is a choice between replacing the original displacement, or adding the decal displacement on top of the original
• Fixed crash when applying decal to sphere light
• Tweaked UI - fixed clipped exclude list text
• 

[rowmanns]

Note: We now distribute daily builds via gDrive and not dropbox! corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-12-06.exe

• New!
• Added slicer material
• 
• Chaos Scatter!
• Corona Scatter has been deprecated in favor of more advanced and standalone Chaos Scatter. Chaos Scatter is automatically installed alongside Corona. You can find it in Chaos -> ChaosScatter after installing
• If possible, Corona Scatter button has been removed from the toolbar because Chaos Scatter now has its own toolbar.
• Legacy Corona Scatter scenes get automatically converted on scene open, the randomisation may change in this case, if you need to maintain the same scattering we advise to open and render the scene in Corona v7
• General
• Fixed massive slowdowns that happened in some types of scenes in interactive rendering. IR and regular rendering should now always have roughly the same performance. As a result, some scenes now render up to 20x faster in interactive!
• Optimized reading of hdr textures, now they load ~2 times faster than before
• Enabled creating CoronaCamera from orthographic view
• Decals
• Now works with Chaos Scatter, including interactive rendering
• Fixed the issue where material on scattered decals is not updated in IR
• Fixed decal not being applied on grazing angles / terminators when using around 90deg angle limit
• Fit to bitmap button now accepts materials and external bitmaps
• Added "Create Corona Decal" to 3ds max "x" command menu
• Added "fit to current material" button to decals
• Added snapping to CoronaDecal and CoronaLight (virtual) geometries in 3ds Max viewport

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-01-04.exe

• Caustics
• Added the following options to caustic render element
• Include direct - includes directly visible caustics in render element
• Include reflected - includes caustics visible through reflection (and then possible following reflection/refractions)
• Include refracted - includes caustics visible through refraction (and then possible following reflection/refractions)
• Include GI - includes caustics visible through GI
• General
• Decal's "fit to bitmap" button now accepts VRay maps
• Added option to preserve base layer's bump mapping for a decal
• Note that this is currently not working properly when multiple decals are stacked on top of each other
• Added warning when light material is included inside slicer material
• Fixed issue where NANs could appear when using black enviro override

• Scatter
• Include/Exclude splines are now considered even if only the near-far falloff intersects with the target (distribute-on) surface. E.g. this might help in animations when sliding the spline over the surface.
• There is also up to 50% measured speed-up of the Include/Exclude evaluation in real-world use cases.
• Added possibility to select object(s) in scene through object lists (with double click, or right-click popup menu). One can also select all through right-click popup menu on the Plus button for adding objects.
• Surface Color map is now available in SME also when the renderer is switched to V-Ray.
• Fixed conversion of XRef'd legacy Corona Scatter objects not to crash in 3ds Max 2022.
• Fixed Corona's action creating a legacy scatter to actually create a new Chaos Scatter.

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-01-14.exe

• General
• Fixed "replace displacement" doing nothing when the decal does not have active displacement
• Fixed: "Some objects in attached scene disappear in IR when moved (Regression)"
• VolumeGrid - Fixed issue where scaling of the grid could lead to a change of the density
• PhysicalMtl - Self illumination level is correctly reset when setting preset.
• SlicerMtl - Improved capping avoiding artifacts
• SlicerMtl - Shows warning when a material with displacement is included in the slicer
• UVW randomizer and multimap can now use multiple randomization methods at the same time, instead of selecting just a single one. Note: The randomization seed has changed so scenes may render differently than in previous versions
• EDIT: Fixed a bug where BerconTile was ignored when being a part of specific shading network of Corona and non-Corona nodes.

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-01-26.exe

• New
• Added initial implementation of Corona Curvature map
• Added initial support for tyFlow.
• Note limitations: it cannot scatter lights, per-instance time variation is not supported yet, using vertex velocity might give slightly incorrect vertices/normals in some situations.

• General
• NormalTex - Removed gamma correction when no map is used
• Fixed volume resolution when slicing through volume grid with slicer material
• Note: Slicer should not break anymore when slicing through the volume grid. However, note that slicer only removes surfaces and thus in order to remove the volume, creating caps must be selected and using cap material disabled - so the volume ending is generated.
• Fixed CDecal - Backface projection disappears when scaling the decal object.
• Fixed CDecal - Displacement water level in decals not working correctly
• Fixed occasional NaNs caused by lights
• Fixed occasional NaNs caused by scatter
• Fixed CProxy being unnecessarily reloaded multiple times due to spurious 3ds Max notifications
• Corona converter - fixed 3ds Max bitmaps referencing .tx files not being converted into Corona bitmaps
• Corona converter - Fixed issue where converting from Corona Bitmap to Bitmap broke connections.

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-02-02.exe

• New
• Added cryptomatte render element
• Added Chaos Cosmos support
• Currently we support only importing meshes, materials and lights
• Importing HDRIs will come soon
• The only way to open the cosmos browser is using the “Open Cosmos Browser” option in the X key menu. The toolbar icon will come soon.
• Most of the imported meshes trigger a warning that the proxy file has corrupted normals. We’re looking into a way to prevent this.
• Drag and dropping assets is currently not supported. To import a cosmos asset you must use the green import arrow. Otherwise the asset will be imported as a v-ray proxy.

• General
• Fixed decals having holes when using angle limiting + displacement
• Fixed occasional crashes and NaNs caused by light sampling
• CProxy now supports submeshes of vrmesh proxy files. There is a new control listing the submeshes, allowing each one to be selected as visible or hidden (the list is empty if the loaded proxy file contains only a single submesh).
• CProxy - You can now group select/deselect submeshes by shift-clicking and checking/unchecking one of the checkboxes
• General speedup of rendering complex shader networks and fixing occasional incorrect results.
• Tweaks to curvature map:
• Added mappable maximum radius
• Decreased max default radius
• Made the map combine its inputs with BLEND instead of ADD operation, to be consistent with the rest of maps and provide more expected results

• Scatter
• Objects in object lists (models, targets, include/exclude splines) can be now replaced through right-click menu.
• Extended Include/Exclude splines to show enabling checkboxes.
• Changed default Near and Far falloffs for open Include/Exclude splines to 1.0, closed splines remain unchanged and have default zero falloffs.
• Changing any parameter now auto-disables object picking mode of any of the object lists.
• Fixed object lists to stop unselecting the scatter object when double/right clicking outside of any object in the list.
• Fixed crash when trying to select <deleted> object in scene from some object list.
• Fixed two features to correctly reflect animation when temporal consistency is ON - preservation of model rotation/scale when the model's rotation/scale is animated; spline-follow amount in 1D scattering when the amount is animated.
• Solved possible crashing during creation of new scatter object while changing time on the timeline right after that.
• During scatter creation all UI rollouts are now collapsed so the user is not intrigued to directly change parameters.
• Chaos Scatter is expected to work with Corona 6, 7, and 8.
• Corona Scatter objects are no longer converted to Chaos Scatter objects when running Corona 7 or older.
• Corona installer now unpacks Scatter DLLs during Unpack (not just its installer).
• Changed file format of Scatter's persistent settings. You may need to delete your Chaos Scatter toolbar in 3ds Max > Customize > Customize User Interface > Toolbars dialog.
• Unified versioning displayed in UI, installer details, etc.

[rowmanns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-02-08.exe

• Legacy Corona licensing replaced with Chaos licensing
• This is the same licensing mechanism that is used in V-Ray and other Chaos products
• The major difference from the legacy licensing is that you now always need to have the licensing server installed on at least one machine on your local network. Previously the Corona License Server was optional.
• The server can be installed either on every machine using Corona or a single licensing server can be shared by multiple machines (e.g. central licensing server in an office).
• When launching Corona you will be prompted to open the licensing server to log in. By default it will take you to http://127.0.0.1:30304/ if you want to connect to a central server please follow the instructions below.
• One limitation of this system is that there is no autodiscovery of the licensing server. Unfortunately this limitation will stay for the v8 release, but we’re working on addressing this for the v9 release.
• Current limitations that will be fixed before the release:
• If you previously did not have the legacy licensing server installed and are doing the “upgrade” option in the installer, the licensing server will not be installed. You need to use the “custom” option and manually select the licensing server for installation.
• If you want to use a central licensing server, there is currently no way to specify its address in Corona UI. Possible workarounds are:
• Specify the licensing server address through the V-Ray "Change V-Ray client license settings" application which can be run through the start menu(all Chaos products share the same configuration).
• Manually specify the licensing server hostname and port in file C:\Program Files\Common Files\ChaosGroup\vrlclient.xml on all nodes/clients. If this file does not exist, you will have to create one. There is an example file attached which will need to be placed in the above location.
• It is not currently possible to activate a demo license.
• Any questions please either post in the following forum thread https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=35591.0 or contact our great support team here: https://support.corona-renderer.com/hc/en-us

• General
• Multimap: Added option to randomize by decals. This makes different decals randomize into different submaps, and will make single decal preserve its random pick when it is applied to different objects http://corona-renderer.com/comparer/yCS3a8
• Corona Converter - Fixed numerical issues which occasionally caused the converted parameters to have incorrect values
• Added spread parameter to the Curvature map
• Fixed crash when creating a new connected map/material by dragging the map/material directly into the corresponding slot in the material editor while IR is running
• Fixed: overlapping decals sometimes having wrong order (especially during IR)
• Fixed UHD/4K Cache flickering when rendering glossy physical mtl glass
• Fixed issues with cubemap and spherical VR images when using the HQ filtering.
• Fixed extremely long time for saving snapshots into CoronaVFB history
• Fixed crash when multithreaded parsing is enabled in a scene with skin modifiers
• When z-depth element is propagated through reflections, the reflected objects no longer have the same depth as the mirror
• Fixed displacement modifier not being able to override displacement when the material has its displacement level set to 0
• Fixed issue where selecting "None" sub-meshes in proxy with hairs lead to crash
• Slicer - Fixed incorrect shading when slicer is used on SSS

• Cosmos
• Fixed ColorCorrect tint not being set properly in imported materials
• Added support for HDRI lights import
• Added support for real-world scaling of textures