Hi Avi and team- can I please check, is it really necessary for us to post one-by-one each max/corona feature that we’re discovering isn’t compatible with Vantage? I’ve found several today having tested it for the first time, but posting each of those separately feels unintuitive to say the least. Is there a better way? I’d imagine/expect Chaos to be aware of the various max/Corona features that aren’t currently supported by Vantage as it’s very obvious when you fire up any test scenes. For example:
composite material (max) - just displays black
maps driving IOR e.g. fresnel maps, but literally any map in the IOR slot breaks the material
colourcorrect (max or corona) doesn’t quite work the same, but does function
running an environment map (e.g. coronasky) through a colourcorrect - doesn’t work at all, displays black
it won’t read your AGX/tone mapping by default but you can easily load it in manually into vantage
I don’t think SliceMtl is currently supported
Vantage is REALLY impressive having briefly tested it (max 2026, corona 14, vantage 3.0.3), and the link (live or otherwise) with Corona is looking super promising, so I’m keen to get these features working so we have 1:1 parity with corona within 3ds max as soon as possible, as it will make all the difference to pipelines/feasibility.
In an ideal world we could keep a thread like this open to general bug-hunting/incompatibilities with Corona and users could update it as we go, instead of a piece-by-piece report system (as much as I know you guys love to track that stuff).
Some kind of real progress bar/percentage/objects-remaining for Export Scene > Vantage would be super handy. At the moment the Export just sits there and gives you a time spent value which isn’t all that helpful.
Yes, basically. I would hope for a 1:1 experience going from Corona in max > Vantage, so that means whether you have 1 or more LUTS loaded into your camera/global stack. In our case we use AGX so that requires (currently) 2 x LUTS to work. But only 1 of them can be used at a time in Vantage. I would ideally also propose that any custom LUTS being used in Corona are automatically saved and loaded into Vantage. At the moment I believe they need to be manually added to Vantage first, but I might be wrong on that.
I couldn’t reproduce the camera clipping issue. If you have a scene (preferably simple) where this can be replicated, please contact us.
It may be related to the tilt correction not working as expected with Vantage, which we have logged as (Report ID=CMAX-1719).
I see a new version of Vantage is out. Is there a simple changelog or perhaps a list of any of our flagged issues that have been fixed? Would be great to know what’s left on the list.
Another one we need to test properly but I believe is not yet compatible is refractive caustics, is that right? Wondering if the new “fast caustics” Vray feature might make it to Vantage (and Corona!) any time soon?
“Wondering if the new “fast caustics” V-ray feature might make it to Vantage (and Corona!) any time soon?”
Not soon, sorry. Earliest that this could possibly be will be Corona 16 which is set for November-ish, but planning for 16 hasn’t started so that might change (unfortunately if it changed it would most likely mean Corona 17).
PS we have yet to take a look at how this works in V-Ray to see if it is possible / practical in Corona, too.
Thanks, all. Will check more on Vantage’s changelogs.
A little sad to hear fast caustics will be so far down the road, at best, in Corona, considering what an obvious win it will be for everyone. No chance of bringing it into 15 as an optional experimental feature through the dev mode perhaps?
No sorry, everything already chock-a-block in terms of what we have to work on with no time for any other development 15 is a little over a month away at present.
Also bear in mind fast caustics have the tradeoff of not being “realistic caustics” - they are a fake / cheat So not sure how useful that is for Corona users overall where realism usually takes priority But you tell us! Especially if anyone gives it a go in V-Ray to see how well it matches your needs.
I can count on one hand fingers how many times i have used caustics in Corona. There were many more times when i wanted to add caustics to my scene, but quickly dismissed the idea, because how difficult is to set-up them and how much render times balloons. I would take fake but fast caustics any day of the week, just bring em up.
That is unfortunate indeed. Even more sad on the development of the issues I flagged, considering they’re from 4-5 x months ago, and moreso if they’re not on any kind of next-up roadmap. I would regard that kind of compatibility as a top priority for parity, otherwise it’s just more barriers to entry for Vantage.
On caustics - we use them almost every single day in various projects. There would be a huge, huge benefit to being able to use these looser/approximated “fast caustics” for a lot of real use cases. Especially for stills where ultimate realism is more flexible as you can fix stuff in post if necessary.
I just would expect that any new Vray features like that which the community get rightly excited about would automatically be pushed as a priority into Corona since surely the bulk of the work is already done? As an experimental feature, sure, as I mentioned. Reality is that our ability to use DBs in production is more or less zero at this stage, we rely on final builds, so if we’re locked out of something great like that for many months that’s a shame.
It’s worth noting that, so far, it looks like Chaos are the slowest partners to get max 2027 support going. Is there a plan to bring out a hotfix for Corona 14 to allow for 2027 support?
15 is a little over a month away at present.
So not sure how useful that is for Corona users overall where realism usually takes priority 
But you tell us! Especially if anyone gives it a go in V-Ray to see how well it matches your needs.