Corona Renderer 8 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog

[maru]

You can always get the newest build at the usual location [
[/b][/s]

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

](https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000570015)

[rowan_manns]

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

[rowan_manns]

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

[rowan_manns]

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.
  Tail (left) vs Roughness (right) | Corona Renderer
  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 CoronaObjectName
• 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

[rowan_manns]

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 - New vs Old overridden environment maps | Corona Renderer
    • override v8 vs v7 | Corona Renderer
  • 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

[rowan_manns]

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 - new caustics excludes - on vs off | Corona Renderer
  • Added OIDN feature pre-denoising (OIDN 1.4.0 new feature) - Intel Denoiser - V7 vs Daily Build | Corona Renderer
  • 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 - New ray type handling vs old (incorrect result) | Corona Renderer

[rowan_manns]

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

[rowan_manns]

• corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2021-10-15.exe - Fixes/General - Fixed light leaks in UHD and 4K caches.
  • 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)

[rowan_manns]

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
  • 

[rowan_manns]

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

[rowan_manns]

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.

[rowan_manns]

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.

[rowan_manns]

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.

[rowan_manns]

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 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.

[rowan_manns]

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/ Chaos Licensing Feedback/Help 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 Randomize by decals | Corona Renderer

  • 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

vrlclient.xml (224 Bytes)

[Ryuu_1]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-02-18.exe

Added configurable tone mapping pipeline

• The tonemapping pipeline is no longer fixed and is composed of multiple independent operators which can be added/removed/reordered in the VFB UI. Any operator can be added multiple times if needed/wanted (e.g. to apply multiple LUTs at the same time, or to save 3 LUTS in one set up to easily turn them on and off for different looks).
• The default pipeline in new scenes now contains only the most essential operators.
• Note that the operators are applied from top to bottom, the topmost operator is the first one to be applied to produce the tonemapped image.
• Added 3 new operators: - Advanced Filmic operator - Similar to the legacy Filmic operator, but with more parameters for greated flexibility.
  • Tone curve operator - enhances or suppresses colors based on their intensity (e.g. enhance shadows).
  • ACES RRT (Reference Rendering Transform) operator - suppresses red colors and modifies glow and saturation to make the image a bit more film-like. The RRT operation is normally fixed in the ACES specification, but we have made it configurable for greater flexibility.
• There are also few presets to show how the tonemapping pipeline can be used to get some interesting results. Few examples of these are attached.
• Camera overrides are now replaced by the possibility for the camera to have a completely separate tonemapping pipeline. When rendering from a camera that has its own pipeline, the controls in the VFB can be used to modify the camera tonemapping pipeline (previously camera-overriden parts of the tonemapping were just locked-out in VFB).
• This change makes the tonemapping much more flexible for you as the users as well as internally for us as programmers. This will allow us to easily add more different operators in future releases. Some functionality like bloom & glare or blurring/sharpening remains fixed for now, but will also be moved into the configurable pipeline as additional operators in the future.
• In legacy tonemapping when the tonemapping was disabled, the exposure was still applied. In the new tonemapping pipeline, the exposure operator is not special in any way, so if the tonemapping is disabled, the exposure will not be applied.

Other changes

• Added new buttons to the render settings that open license server, my chaos webpage and external utility for setting alternate licensing server addresses and ports.
• Fixed Corona viewport display filters. There are now both Corona and Non-Corona filters (Command panel → Display → Hide by Category)

[rowan_manns]

corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-02-23.exe

Note: Remember that we are using the Chaos licensing now, here is how to activate: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/ Corona Renderer 8 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog #msg194990

Cryptomatte

• Added warning about using cryptomatte render element in Max to the Cryptomatte render element “Warning: This element displays only a preview in the VFB, for proper use the whole frame needs to be saved in CXR format and then loaded in a cryptomatte-enabled external application as EXR”
• Removed propagation through reflection/refraction - it did not work previously and there is no clear way how this should work.

General

• tyFlow now always renders with instancing, even when its “Enable Particle Interface” is turned off
• The error message shown when the Cosmos browser cannot be open now includes a link to a help page with more information.
• Fixed mismatch in naming of single-channel float render elements stored in CXR in Corona and their parsing in CIE which previously caused “LEGION STOP” errors
• Updated visuals in the Corona installer
• Added new log file, CoronaMax20xx_geometry_parsing.txt, which logs events and objects that took too long (over 3 seconds) to prepare for rendering, parse, displace, etc.
• Added new button in devel/debug render settings rollout, that shows the memory usage breakdown of Corona, including the objects that take the most RAM in Corona, if currently rendering.
• Fixed random colors being sometimes produced from grayscale colors by increasing saturation in tonemapping.
• Fixed IR restarting when tonemapping pipeline is reordered or when operators are added/removed

Scatter

• Fixed animatable parameters to correctly show in 3ds Max’s Track View dialog
• Reviewed&unified parameters in MAXScript. It breaks backward script compatibility so your scripts will need to be updated for this. This is part of transition from Corona Scatter to Chaos Scatter and is the best time to do so because the transition is not backward compatible anyway.

[rowan_manns]

Please check this article covering the risks of using daily builds: Daily Builds FAQ
If you are familiar with the daily builds and know how to use them, download the newest one here: corona-8-3dsmax-daily-2022-03-03.exe

Note: Remember that we are using the Chaos licensing now, here is how to activate: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/ Corona Renderer 8 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Changelog #msg194990

Cosmos

• Added drag&drop support
• Fixed crash when importing certain objects from Cosmos (e.g. Lounger 001)
• Meshes imported from Cosmos no longer have scaling transformation applied

General

• DR server no longer consumes a render license when waiting for render
• Fixed DR server not releasing license after finishing the render
• Fixed DR slowdowns which sometimes caused DR to be slower than rendering on a single machine
• Fixed crash caused by plugging slicer into direct visibility override of RaySwitch
• Fixed crash when curves editor is open in ColorCorrect map

[Ryuu_1]

corona-8-3dsmax-rc1.exe

Chaos Scatter

• Added 5 scatter presets into Chaos Cosmos platform (into 3D Models > Presets, or search for ‘scatter’), 2 for spline scattering and 3 for surface scattering.
  • Can be drag & dropped on target (distribute-on) object or into an empty space (target object gets created then) in the scene.
  • Can be also imported with the Import button, when having the target object selected in the scene.
  • Must be downloaded first, like other assets in the Chaos Cosmos browser.
• Added camera clipping (optimization) feature supporting various camera types (native, Corona, V-Ray, perspective, orthogonal, fisheye) and also viewport views.
  • Provides 2 modes - Active render camera and Selected camera.
  • In our real-world test scenes, Camera clipping on average lowered parsing time by 25% and reduced Corona memory usage by 17%. Renders cleared faster for the same amount of passes.
• Added instance editing feature - individual instances can be moved, rotated, scaled, or deleted using a sub-object mode. There is new button for that in Scatter UI too. Should be used for final scatter touches.
• Removed blank parameters from Track View. Can break backward compatibility.

Corona Converter

• LegacyMtl->PhysicalMtl conversion is now optional
• It is now possible to force all converted materials to be either metal or non-metal, instead of relying on the autodetection.

Material library

• Added 13 new Glass materials
• Added 33 new Nature materials
• Added 9 new Plastics materials

Toolbar

• Toolbar will now reset to an official state once in a while when we make any changes to it. The previous system where we tried to keep the custom user changes by merging them with the official changes unfortunately never worked properly and cost too much to maintain and constantly bugfix, for the little benefit that it actually brought.
• Added decal icon.
• Added Cosmos browser icon.

Licensing improvements

• Implemented trial license activation
• When no active license is found, we now replace the Corona controls in render settings with a “no license” info text, instead of just hiding them without explanation.
• Fixed issue where switching tabs in render settings without an active license may take a few seconds.
• Added more info to the messages in the licensing dialog which pops up on any licensing problem.

Miscellaneous Improvements

• Added viewport display for triplanar map in both Standard viewport mode (first submap is displayed) and “High Quality” (accurate preview of the shader is used). Unfortunately the “High Quality” mode currently does not work with Corona materials, only standard Autodesk ones. We will fix this in future release
• Replaced the old Corona color picker with the new one everywhere (e.g. light lister, light mix, etc.)
• Added saturation randomization to MultiMap
• Max Improved error message: “unknown/internal error”
• Make undo / redo work when importing assets from Chaos Cosmos.

Bugfixes

• Fixed crash when comparing two VFB history images with “Show with original postprocessing” enabled
• Fixed Advanced Filmic tonemapping operator changing the color even when it is disabled
• Fixed crash in tonemapping when an operator is dragged below the + button
• Fixed issue where a new color is set to different color slot, when opening another color picker
• Fixed anisotropy values being set incorrectly on materials imported from Cosmos
• Fixed issue where rendering material editor while running IR caused licensing problems, and the IR to stop rendering.
• Fixed NaNs being produced in some very specific cases.
• Fixed crash when clicking middle/right mouse button while dragging tone mapping operators
• Fixed IR being restarted when modifying CoronaCamera tonemapping pipeline
• Fixed tonemapping parameters being reset to their default values when ENTER is pressed while entering the value, when the pipeline was reset previously
• Fixed randomization of 2-Sided Materials imported from Chaos Cosmos
• BitmapTex - Fixed crash when adjusting crop parameters linked to linear float controllers
• Fixed issue where cosmos browser randomly opens up in loaded scenes

[rowan_manns]

Please check this article covering the risks of using daily builds: Daily Builds FAQ
If you are familiar with the daily builds and know how to use them, download the newest one here:
corona-8-3dsmax-RC2.exe

Chaos Scatter

• Fixed length-based parameters, like spline spacing in 1D scattering, to correctly handle scene units. Note scenes created/saved in RC1 remain unfixed, as values of those parameters are corrupted. We are sorry for that. You will need to download scatter presets in Comos browser again too.
• Fixed editing instances not to clear on changes of materials assigned to target (distribute-on) objects.
• Fixed the viewport icon being two times smaller during placing.
• Fixed Include/Exclude spline checkboxes to update properly in animations.
• Added help button to scatter toolbar.
• Changed default rotation in Z axis (only) to 360 degrees (in everyday use number of cases where randomized rotation in Z is required is vastly greater than number of cases when it needs to be fixed).

Corona Converter

• Fixed Corona Converter converting LegacyMtl with black refraction color and non-zero refraction amount into refractive PhysicalMtl

Tonemapping

• Improved post processing UI in Render Setup (removed Tone mapping group and left only the button there)
• Fixed issue where right-click during dragging of tonemapping spinner reset the value to the default value. Now it resets to the value before dragging started.
• Fixed tonemapping operators sometimes changing order when clicking the mouse around the VFB
• Fixed two LUT tonemapping operators swapping their paths when their positions are swapped
• Fixed tonemapping pipeline in VFB not being updated when switching cameras while IR is running
• Fixed tonemapping not being properly updated when a new camera with override is created while IR is running
• Remapped the glow parameter of the ACES RRT tonemapping operator to make it more linear in the UI
• Removed check for black tint
• Returned loading of exposure type from legacy scenes (cca 2015 and older)

Cosmos

• If you open the Cosmos browser while Corona is not set as the active renderer you will be prompted to switch the active renderer to Corona.
• Fixed Cosmos Browser complaining about unknown / invalid importer after update of Cosmos Service
• We now use HTTPS protocol when connecting to Cosmos Server from Cosmos Browser
• Fixed bug where triplanar was repeatedly applied and was using wrong scaling in real world scale

Bugfixes

• Fixed crash and asserts in lightsolver
• Fixed 3ds Max crashes after 2nd workspace change when Corona is installed
• 4KCache - Fixed rare issues with NANs
• CoronaBitmap - Fixed crash when UV tiling or offset were set to extremely high values.
• Fixed light exclusion not properly working for media
• Camera shutter controls are enabled even if motion blur is not used
• Fixed freeze after changing Corona Camera to perspective viewport during IR
• Fixed Corona proxy reporting number of vertices vs number of faces/polygons to 3ds Max statistics in reverse
• Fixed issue where zdepth render element could have NANs
• Removed normals fixing of Corona Proxy
• Fixed issue where installer did not remember non-selected components from previous custom installation.
• Fixed NaNs caused by certain object modifier combinations
• Fixed “non-corona” display filter hiding also targeted corona camera and light

Rebranding

• Changed application icons
• Changed logo in the about rollout of render settings
• Changed colors of various links
• Renamed “Corona Renderer” → “Chaos Corona”