Chaos Corona 13 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

[TomG]

I can quote Alex's really good suggestion of running internally downresed input so the user can have the primary image be native high-res and AI enhancement up-resed.

I still miss the internal AA down-resing from Corona Alpha :- )

Oh the internal AA down resing, that was before my time - is it at all similar to what is shown in this recent video?

(basically, render to 2x resolution, then downscale to final image size). This is an idea I am considering putting on the cards for development, basically skipping the Photoshop step of downsizing, so am interested to hear thoughts.

[pokoy]

I tested this and yes the result is better than the original. AA of finer details and highlights and bitmap filtering are obviously sharper due to downsampling.

There are limitations though which aren't obvious:
- Complicated shader trees tend to resolve detail (bump, procedural details in noise maps etc) at a later stage in the render progress. With only a few passes the result will be less surface details.
- Some of Corona's sampling-based maps like AO and Curvature will also refine at later stages. I got some heavy differences between the two images where AO was much less pronounced and detailed in the downsampled image (with less passes). If you're using those kind of maps, it's best to still allow more samples.
- Refraction details also tend to take a bit longer, so you trade sharper details (implying more detail) for less actual detail and accuracy.

However on simple scenes and simpler shader trees the workflow results in surprisingly more detail when compared 1:1.

Interestingly, in the first days of Corona there were no image pixel filters and this was exactly the way Corona did it - by rendering twice the resolution internally and displaying the downscaled image in the VFB. EDIT - Oh wait, this was already mentioned above...

[lupaz]

Or just focus on the ideas with the most votes?
I know that the ai effort is Chaos-wide, but there are many other things on the list and these features are very much replaceable with other existing and better products out there.
I don't mean to tell you how to do your product. This is just my two cents.

Just a note on this that no-one on the Corona team spends any dev time at all on the AI itself. All we do is the UI and hooks to get an image sent up to Chaos Cloud (well, and created a very easy new render element, which is basically just three other render elements combined). So you are seeing a feature that is as close to "free" as it gets in terms of development time, so much so that not adding it wouldn't make any sense :)

Got it. Thanks for the note. Nice perk of the merger.

[Okmijun]

I can quote Alex's really good suggestion of running internally downresed input so the user can have the primary image be native high-res and AI enhancement up-resed.

I still miss the internal AA down-resing from Corona Alpha :- )

Oh the internal AA down resing, that was before my time - is it at all similar to what is shown in this recent video?

(basically, render to 2x resolution, then downscale to final image size). This is an idea I am considering putting on the cards for development, basically skipping the Photoshop step of downsizing, so am interested to hear thoughts.

I've learned this trick from Juraj, back in the early days of corona, and yes, I think this could be easily incorporated into daily builds.
some like "render 2/3x bigger and downscale it" option, for final output.
+1
So, basically corona will become 5-10x faster within one single click, with 2-5% loss of details, maybe not even closer.
My advice is HURRY UP, as you slightly loosing the speed battle against GPU renders...
With this little improvement/ hack you are in the game againa...

[lupaz]

I can quote Alex's really good suggestion of running internally downresed input so the user can have the primary image be native high-res and AI enhancement up-resed.

I still miss the internal AA down-resing from Corona Alpha :- )

Oh the internal AA down resing, that was before my time - is it at all similar to what is shown in this recent video?

(basically, render to 2x resolution, then downscale to final image size). This is an idea I am considering putting on the cards for development, basically skipping the Photoshop step of downsizing, so am interested to hear thoughts.

I always hated denoising but this sounds pretty amazing. It would be great to have it done under the hood with just one click...As an option I'm guessing.

EDIT: And to me this is a much proper use of AI for a Rendering engine than improving the look of 3D people. I think it would be best if Chaos has a separate application for that kind of work (the AI enhancer), and not integrated into a rendering engine.