CoronaPattern playground!

[alexyork]

Hey devs. I see you've touched on PatternMod in today's daily build. Are you able to speak to that in more detail , and to any of the requests in my list at all, or an indication if any of them are on the roadmap? Thanks.

[TomG]

The changes in the daily are pretty much it for the 12 release, the primary one being the ability to access both the pattern's and the base geometry's UV maps. Direction indicator should be handy too.

The caps may be useful, but these only work on holes created by the Crop Box, so if for example your source mesh already has a hole at the edge of the crop box, this will not be capped by this functionality (you have to cap the source geometry), nor will holes created by having partial tiling such as 1.2 rather than 1, just to help guide anyone doing testing on there.

The plans and answers to things on the list you posted will have to wait until 12 is out and we look ahead to future plans, as we're entering into the final run up to release in just over a month, making it all hands on deck focused on the 12 stuff only. We do have all these ideas tucked away to look over when we get there, though!

[alexyork]

Thanks Tom. Excited to see improvements coming into it hopefully soonish.

[maru]

Update:

Corona Pattern improvements in Corona 12 (https://www.chaos.com/corona/download):
- Normal direction indicator for the cropbox
- You can use both the pattern and the base object UVWs
- Automatic caps (with optional real-world map scale)
- Using custom object for defining the cropbox dimensions
- Texture-driven visibility of the pattern (as in "applying a global opacity map to the pattern, not "Scatter Surface Color map for CPattern")

Articles covering the new features + mini tutorials:
- Help Center - tutorials/guides/troubleshooting + examples - https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/7713194687633
- Technical Documentation + examples - https://docs.chaos.com/display/CRMAX/Corona+Pattern+Modifier


As to the rest:

can we please get map-driven everything? Especially Pattern height / offset, and ideally the surface itself (beyond limiting to matID as currently). It would be awesome to load in for example a greyscale map that would determine where the pattern appears, and another one that determines how high it appears.

Sadly, map-driven height/offset/rotation appears to be impossible to do.
Determining where the pattern appears is possible now with the on/off map (but it does not work like the Scatter Surface Color map, so it will not affect whole pattern modules, but the whole pattern). This can be also done with an opacity texture with the new pattern vs object UVWs.

is it possible to get PatternMod to respect opacity of an object? Currently when using patternmod on something like a leaf which is a square with a leaf-shaped opacity map on it, it scatters all over the base object rather than only where it ought to be.

As above - the on/off map or mapping opacity.

- Can we please get randomisation controls for Pattern Height?

Not possible.

- Will it be possible one day to have the source object not be trimmed/clipped? In this way, if you do for example 0.5 shifting you will still see the entirety of the source object, allowing you to get a much more randomised and natural "scattering" effect (when this is desired - for example when making carpets/rugs).

You mean that the patterns modules would overlap with each other? Unfortunately that is not possible.

- Can you update us on if it will ever be possible to enable PatternMod to be used on top of an object already using rendertime displacement?

We have this logged as (Report ID=CMAX-316) and it has not been canceled for a long time, so there is hope. :)

- Can you please consider making it possible to multiple-stack CoronaPatternMod modifiers on a single object? This would be helpful for certain complex randomisations etc. (until we can get real randomisation/offsetting controls).

I will make sure this is logged.

Note: repeating this ad nauseam, but some effects may be easier to achieve with Scatter and actually we have some really nice updates in V12 including:
- multiple speedups / fixes to lags and loading times
- viewport adaptive previz (instances turn to simple geometry when manipulating scene = faster feedback)
- viewport mesh optimization controlled by polygon limit
- instance brush / eraser

[RecentSpacesSam]

Hey Maru, looking forward to the updates although it's a shame a few things aren't possible.

As an alternative can there be any improvements made to scenarios where two or more CPattern objects overlap each other?
A common workflow we're using to avoid less gridded appearances is to copy the base object and apply a pattern mod that is offset a little bit (e.g. by 50%)

The downside to this is that while still faster than Scatter, it's still much noisier than just one CPatternMod.

[Rhodesy]

Is there any further info on the new fit in custom object space feature? I am hoping it now allows us to do an offset pattern like a stretcher bond plank floor that interlocks rather than always having to be a square shape and cutting geometry which messes up texture randomisers. I cant seem to get it to do much though on first go.

[TomG]

The helper is still a square shape, sorry. The intent is to make creating the right sized crop box easier, rather than to add new kinds of patterns.

[Rhodesy]

Thanks Tom. That's a shame. Is there any possibility this feature will come to pattern? Essentially allowing an interlocking non square source shape. It would need to offset alternate rows by 50%. I cant seem to get the randomiser to do this even with stepping, unless Im missing something?

[lupaz]

Thanks Tom. That's a shame. Is there any possibility this feature will come to pattern? Essentially allowing an interlocking non square source shape. It would need to offset alternate rows by 50%. I cant seem to get the randomiser to do this even with stepping, unless Im missing something?

+1

[marchik]

- Will it be possible one day to have the source object not be trimmed/clipped? In this way, if you do for example 0.5 shifting you will still see the entirety of the source object, allowing you to get a much more randomised and natural "scattering" effect (when this is desired - for example when making carpets/rugs).

You mean that the patterns modules would overlap with each other? Unfortunately that is not possible.

Excuse me one more time please, is it physically impossible to implement or is it just very time-consuming? I don’t really understand how without the overlapping feature (or scale + overlapping) we can achieve a seamless look for close-up angles if we use something rather “random” and not fitting into a perfect rectangle as a pattern.



At this thread, I described a use case for such a feature, which could be very helpful

[TomG]

At some point, too time consuming becomes the same thing as impossible, which is what we have here - it can be taken as physically impossible. As a note for some offsets, you can use two patterns, especially now that there is the mapping for making a pattern visible or invisible, just have them set up with an offset and one pattern visible on one row, then another on the next.

Hope this helps!

[romullus]

If you modify your pattern tile so that its edges become symmetrical, then it's possible to get seamless result from Corona pattern. The process of setting it up is more labor intensive, but if you absolutely need to use Corona pattern and have seamless tiling, it might be worth to try it. The downside is that you loose an option to use transformational randomization and your color randomization options shrink down to material ID only.

[marchik]

At some point, too time consuming becomes the same thing as impossible, which is what we have here - it can be taken as physically impossible. As a note for some offsets, you can use two patterns, especially now that there is the mapping for making a pattern visible or invisible, just have them set up with an offset and one pattern visible on one row, then another on the next.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the clarification Tom, got it. Sometimes you have to put up with cruel reality and accept its blows with dignity :D

It's funny, but when I wrote the very first request about this, it seemed to me that of all the requested features, this was the easiest thing to implement, “just multiply the coords by a scalar and that's it”

If you modify your pattern tile so that its edges become symmetrical, then it's possible to get seamless result from Corona pattern. The process of setting it up is more labor intensive, but if you absolutely need to use Corona pattern and have seamless tiling, it might be worth to try it. The downside is that you loose an option to use transformational randomization and your color randomization options shrink down to material ID only.

Thanks, Romullus, yeah, i come up with something like your approach

[smadiswelem]

It will be nice to have patterns library or some pre made ones for the fabrics)))

[Jens]

Is there a way to alternate "flip" the coronapattern on an object? I.e. the way floorgenerator plugin works where it can flip boards randomly. So every now and then, my panel would flip on x or y axis to give more randomization?

I found the rotate function and set increments, but it doesn't give the result i'm after. I'm trying to do something like these facade panels (attached). Could probably get the effect I want by dividing the object and flip the UV mapping in some areas, but it would be very tedious and loose the flexibility coronapattern offers.

Also, I can't seem to get the "auto-gen caps" function to do anything (example attached).

And I'm having issues with seems. The object it's "scattered on" is fully welded in the corner, but I still get this result (attached)