Good practices

Corona Corona for 3ds Max Help Required
1

Hi all,

I have recently updated to Win 10 and 3ds Max 2018. Ever since updated run through many issues, all of them software related.
To be honest I am bit disappointed the direction software development is going - so many bugs, so many incompatibilities, so many new versions, so much RAM consumption… and we optimize even more than used to do it.

With latest updates to versions it is harder than ever to track problems, which and why are caused. Being in the industry for already almost 10 years, have developed some habits which have helped me throughout time. Sadly have reached a moment when none of them help me anymore, and I star to feel so stupid for not managing to tackle an issue that literally want to give up 3d…

With latest Corona updates, 1.7+ , Forest pack and Railclone have become a nightmare to work with, especially when one hits render button - parsing times skyrockets. Opening a scene takes forever. Interactive rendering - slow. 3ds max 2018 is so unstabble- viruses, flashing screens, lag in UI, and so on. Windows Defender on its end, decides to join the “party” and brings some additional problems.
All these forced me to think of the so-called good practices, or how to handle a project, bigger than 4 walls, with many parametric and scatter objects.

And to be honest - for the last year I have personally not experienced a boost in the workflow, due to speed in render engines. Even the contrary - the compatibility issues brought have hindered process.( speaking of archviz realted projects)

It is so cool and tempting to try the most recent versions of renderers, or scatters, aiming to squeeze few minutes here and there, and dedicate more time on other much more important life activities. Sadly once one updates, mislead by the “slogans” of saving time, he/she becomes part of the vicious circle.
For this specific reason a special forum thread should be dedicated to real known bugs and limitations between software plugins, so that not only it becomes apparent when people to update, but also to developers from different plugins where to look for issues. Some forums are still alive, and way busier the others.

Currently my workflow towards software solutions, across forums —>
1.Investigate scene myself - 2-4 hrs. Merge into new scene - 1 hr, Scripts, layers, deleting objects, converting to proxies, etc.
2. If does not work —> forums—> Corona, Vray. Lookup for solution there 2-4 hrs. Then move on to Itoo–> 5 min, since their forum does not seem to be much updated when issues arise
3. If this does not work —> Autodesk forum - 1-2 hrs
4. Win 10 related forums

In this confined forum lookup an archviz artist can easily lose up to 10 hrs, until find a proper solution, or the right solution. Investigating of the scenes does not work properly- it takes time, especially with big and complex scenes and does not help when deadlines knock on the door.

As an “poweruser” strongly encourage both Chaos group and Corona forums to make a dedicated threads with list of known bugs/limitations between render engines and other third party autodesk/maxon plugins.

2

Hi,
we have this: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000516180-known-bugs-and-limitations

3

Maybe your issues are caused by the 3ds Max “virus”? As far as I know it makes 3ds Max slow and freezy. Personally I am not doing much “archviz” or “production” scenes, but I often need to create some examples or check scenes sent by the users, and so far I am pretty happy about using 3ds Max 2018/19 and Windows 10. I would definitely advise to keep all software up to date (Max, Corona, other plugins, Windows)

If you are experiencing some specific issues with iToo plugins, please report them to us at support@corona-renderer.com . We will then contact iToo and will do our best to at least find the culprit ASAP, and if possible, fix it. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that from receiving the report to providing a solution it will take less than 10 hours, or even 10 days. Some of those issues are very complex and require both teams to cooperate, and we are also dealing with many other reports.

4

I will send a scene of the current project, if team have the time to investigate. Just need to complete the project first .

Have already checked the thread couple of times, and for some reason never happened to be across the limitations. Bugs are bugs, obviously solved by next versions or one finds a way to revolve around them. I am not IT guy, nor know how to script, but intuition has always helped in the past years to narrow down the possible solutions and it has worked great so far.

The issues am about to mention are not only related to Corona, nor to version 1.7, but they are present for couple of years.

Currently experiencing several issues with a scene, which is bit bigger - the above mentioned which will send later to team. The problems appear at certain stage at almost every exterior project which have started during the past 6 months - the bigger the scale and the more the scatter’ss/railclone’s, the worse:

  1. Flashing 3ds max screens when hit “stop” while rendering. Afterwards can not save the scene or wait for 10+ min until 3ds max somehow recovers. The problem seemed to be at higher scale, since it happened in vray. After dealing with Win Defender settings, managed to fix it in Vray, but when render complex scene in Corona at higher res, the problem appears back. Solutions suggest reinstalling some Microsoft programs, reinstall all 3ds max related software and plugins.
  2. Railclone, Forest pack… ah where to start. Parsing, vertices, not working multitextures…Most of these seem listed in both plugins. Also encountered that when there are multiple Railclone objects across the scene with mixed visibility settings active (point cloud, adaptive, box, mesh), could not even render the scene- parsing either freezes or takes 20 + min. Forest pack edge mode - major problem. The biggest speedup in my personal workflow is due to using Railclone, thus leaving more work to experiment.
  3. Opening the same scene takes 5+ minutes. Few textures missing, which is not the case. Tried merging in new scene, cleaning the scene, deleting the wide variety of objects, which project insist using, and narrowing down the variations of proxies to no more than 30. Same slow opening, long parsing, unstable rendering, and lag in 3ds max viewport. Material editor - super slow and unsatble, picking object materials can provoke 3ds max crash. Tried testing 3ds max for viruses - it returns false.
  4. Just got message from Corona that current scene takes 90GB virtual ram. Deleted even more objects, railclone ones as well, proxies, cleaned up scene even more. Hit render - 50 GB on loading, and RAm consumption decreases down to 18-20 when rendering for around 30 min. I was aware of the the RAM issues in the past, but managed to squeeze similar and bigger projects in the past within 32 GB ram, like 2 years ago.

When a scene renders, it does render indeed quickly, clean… But wondering how much time an artist should waste on waiting for interactive view to refresh, scene to load or parse to do a job. How much time is necessary to always test and keep track of the compatible elements between plugins, to devote time to test, to put a list of all issues which each and every software used in workflow brings and play the game of “true” and " false" when fighting with problems when deadlines are out there.

The point is that whole workflow somehow became quick but “bulky” during the past years - obviously updating to most recent versions still causes trouble. Downgrading works, but involves to keep a list and try every single new version in the past so that one knows which is the exact version and we shall not forget Microsoft, who obviously tend to put a lot of pressure on software and hardware developers, people using it and eventually clients. Every now and then we need just stable versions, who just work seamlessly. Speed is nothing, if we do not have compatibility and stability…

The questions which put on the table are the following:

If a certain scene does not work with most recent versions, what is the chance of finding the culprit- by looking at the forums of each software?
Having all software developers stating mostly the advantages of using their latest software, how one can be sure, that the problems are due to one specific tool - win, or autodesk, or itoo software, or Corona/Chaos group? Send a scene we will investigate - just does not work for our clients. :smiley:
If there is indeed a problem with one of above - mentioned or any other, which version should one always revert to - if not render fast, at least do the job? I do not seem to easily find a list of most used archviz autodesk related plugins with a map of their development throughout time with compatibility between each other.

5

Reading posts like this always confirms that I stay in Windows 7 for as long as possible, because I know how exactly to tweak it to get the most out of it. I’m actually considering buying one or two more licenses from a local reseller before they all run out in case I build a new computer in the next couple of years.

6

All works after update to win 10… just not right where it should be, even though all positive trends in terms of software and hardware development. And I am not completely sure if Microsoft is always the one we should blame for, although nobody likes them. Autodesk - with every next version - more unstable. Same with Vray. Whole Vray 3 path was random shots, not real concept of a roadmap - so many revisions, fixing bugs from one another. Now Itoo released 3ds max 2019 version support from day one. I do not even dare to try within the year. Once a software get is X.Y.Z version, it becomes apparent that there is something completely wrong with the concept.

Facts, are facts - Win 7 +3ds max 2016+ Corona 1.5/1.6+ Corresponding supported versions of Railclone/Forest pack - almost no issues.

Win 10, 3ds max 2018 SP4, Corona 1.7 + Corresponding Itoo software - few to no issues on small scale projects- especially interiors. Once artist decide to spice things up , purchase and use some “high” end libraries - vegetation for instance or people - TADA , flashing screens, crashing scenes, huge memory consumption… which are typical issues, but at least back in the days there were solutions floating around within years. Nowadays with so many models, software versions, plugins, go find it… Railclone used to be quite stable. Currently one more plugin to worry about, although everything is so simplified, hardware is packed with what market can offer. Obviously the times where there is a place for small companies are about to be gone forever… Sadly Microsoft forces some vendors to use/support win 10 only. Latest win 7 “Monthly Quality Roundup’s” - blue screens. Budget-based laptops - support nothing but win 10…

Will take the time to investigate the scene myself and strip it down to the real culprit - it is probably me, not knowing what latest versions do differently. Will send to team to investigate the the scene used to be, since most of the time 3-day-work is insufficient time-span to delve into compatibility , optimizing aspects of work.

7

Quick test on dual xeon 2680v4 , wih 64 GB

Scene Parcing all objects - 5 min.
Scene parcing without FP - 35 sec ( 6 FP, with bunch of painted areas, few object and spline exclusions) FP has been used at quite big object 1km by 1km - and confined used splines and painted areas
Scene parsing without RC objects - 8 sec ( 36 Rc objects, all at point clouds, some have instancing disabled so that can use multitexture over them) There are several nested railclones. Still not such a major slowdown. Scene still behaves strange after deleting them - lag in UI and sudden freeze when rotating viewport.

Scene merged into new 3ds max, no RC, no FP - parsing 2 sec, no lag.

Conclusion - need to dedicate several days to iToo software and check different types of objects used, since obviously they are the culprit and major reason to looong parsing and slow saving. In conjunction with being scattered on bigger scale,and having the collisions active, it probably takes quite a while to generate the geometry properly.
Luckily project is still images only. What happens when animation is involved though - another scene, simplified…

8

I’m gonna blame Corona’s RAM usage. It’s terrible. It’s the most RAM hungry application I’ve ever used. It’s 2018 and I’m having to optimize more than I did 10 years ago. Hopefully now the VRay guys are on boards, we’ll get some much needed RAM optimizations. But as far as I’m concerned, as it stands currently 64GB RAM still isn’t a guarantee with Corona, and when you start using DR it gets even more crazy because your DR nodes will use nearly twice as much RAM while rendering the same scene.

9

No doubt the devs will correct me, but I believe that Corona lacks an ‘Out of Core’ feature that would enable less RAM to be used on the fly by path tracing renderers. According to Corona’s Trello page, it seems that feature has been archived.

10

I’m pretty sure you see this because there is plenty enough RAM available on those slaves while the master is quite filled?

A scene taking 12GB on a 64GB WS (with still lot of free RAM) would for example use just 6.5GB on a 16BG slave, while on a 32GB slave the same job takes also 12GB.

However you could force the max job on the 64GB node to use less memory if you fill it’s ram if you like :smiley: I don’t know exactly what happens and who releases ram/does garbage collection (max/corona) but need to discuss this one day.

Good Luck