Topics

16

General CG Discussion / SSS pathtracing: maps or "bones"

« on: 2018-02-07, 14:14:15 »

Path traced SSS is becoming more dominant these days.
I'm wondering if it's not better to switch to "bones", eg. stretched primitives or low-poly geometry with low albedo, than creating maps.
If the object's just a head, then there's not much geometry that has to be added.

What's your opinion on it?

Unnecessary (yet)?
Would it render slower?
More or less work than painting a transmission map?

17

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / C4D Lumas shader only works within volumes

« on: 2018-02-03, 19:31:45 »

I've noticed that the lumas shader, which can be used for multiple specular layers or
as a mask for light/unlit areas (for example, clearing wrong AO on lit sides)
doesn't work properly in Corona. I just noticed it when I was doing something that didn't have a volume around it.

Below are the examples.
1. AR: how it should work-unlit side is illuminated
2. CRN: without volume
3. CRN: with volume
4. usage examples (night side is lit)

Easy to reproduce, scene file provided.

Win 10, latest updates (everywhere)
R 19 latest, latest Corona build

18

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Xpresso+Materials=Sad

« on: 2018-01-24, 22:51:29 »

Separate thread!
Short: Materials, not just layered ones that are controlled by Xpresso don't update in the IR.(They did in B1 RC1)

file with the single material in attachment, layered example here.

19

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Corona Distance map

« on: 2018-01-24, 19:17:15 »

I didn't see it on the Roadmap.
The current c4d proximal shader could do a similar job but it is EXTREMELY slow in Corona, so it would be nice if we could get that too.

ON/OFF

20

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / AI Denoiser

« on: 2018-01-22, 18:31:32 »

We describe a machine learning technique for reconstructing image sequences rendered using Monte Carlo methods. Our primary focus is on reconstruction of global illumination with extremely low sampling budgets at interactive rates. Motivated by recent advances in image restoration with deep convolutional networks, we propose a variant of these networks better suited to the class of noise present in Monte Carlo rendering. We allow for much larger pixel neighborhoods to be taken into account, while also improving execution speed by an order of magnitude. Our primary contribution is the addition of recurrent connections to the network in order to drastically improve temporal stability for sequences of sparsely sampled input images. Our method also has the desirable property of automatically modeling relationships based on auxiliary per-pixel input channels, such as depth and normals. We show significantly higher quality results compared to existing methods that run at comparable speeds, and furthermore argue a clear path for making our method run at realtime rates in the near future

http://research.nvidia.com/publication/interactive-reconstruction-monte-carlo-image-sequences-using-recurrent-denoising

Octane & Redshift are already implementing it into their experimental builds.

I think it would be an excellent addition to Corona. The Denoiser seems to be a very favorized feature and it could be greatly enhanced through this.
You say that it might become a CPU/GPU hybrid and I think this could be the gpu part.

21

[Max] Resolved Feature Requests / Tessellation Displacement preview in the viewport

« on: 2018-01-17, 04:27:01 »

It would be neat if CRN mats supported viewport displacements.
We could get a much better preview of how the displacement would look like in Corona as noises are often rendered differently and also get a good preview on the water level.
I think that it might work even better with the way Corona offers displacements. The px/unit size of Corona and the viewports tessellation option for projected or whole scale divisions are similar.

And finally,  we wouldn't need to create a  native material that we have to switch to see the preview.

22

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Layered Shader & rayswitch don't update in IR

« on: 2018-01-13, 10:27:48 »

Mentioned it already. Just making sure it's noticed.
Previous version (first beta) worked fine, now it just refreshes IR.

23

[C4D] General Discussion / Shade yourself (a self help group)

« on: 2017-12-29, 04:18:19 »

In CG, many limitations can be circumvented and there's at least one way to do it. Even more according to my experience.
We have a lot of bright minds in this forum who can help with all sorts of problems.

This thread is dedicated to solving, circumventing problems and creating useful contributions to the community.
There are a lot of features to come but some can't wait. Let's help to keep the community productive and provide them with some useful creations until things like the Hair shader etc. are implemented and reduce the stress on the developers.

Can't start without a contribution, so here's my attempt at a car "shader". A layered shader, driven by xpresso.
I tried to keep everything procedural and not too slow to compute while giving the user an easy to use menu.
Looked at other engine's shaders for inspiration.
Since we can't mix materials in the layer shader with only certain channels active, the diffuse channel was copied, so it wouldn't appear black
I used the tiles shader(random - Voronoi like appearance) for the flakes with some light "normal" looking colors and some filters and expressions to control everything from outside the material.
It sure can be improved and I'd love to hear suggestions on how to make it better. (I have no clue about programming, so I used what I know)
It's more of an artistic material but with the right settings, there should be some nice results. (Latest Beta build)

Known problems:
-Objects in the viewport becoming invisible -fix: recalculate materials
-Material sometimes not updating in IR -fix: Restart IR (previous build worked fine, now needs restart to refresh materials)

My next attempt will be a hair shader for flat and rounded geometry(a switch)
 

I hope you like it and I 'd love to see your contributions!

24

[C4D] Resolved Feature Requests / Please invert-Y on normal maps

« on: 2017-11-10, 20:12:18 »

Could this be please changed to work finally work the same as all other renderers.
The default settings are fit for DX maps but OpenGL maps still have to be inverted.
It can be quite tedious to have to invert them manually when using many maps.
It would also decrease the (small degree but still relevant) amount of threads/posts of people saying that their bump/normals are broken.

25

[C4D] Resolved Feature Requests / Render sampling mask

« on: 2017-10-08, 05:08:26 »

The render region thread inspired me.

Would be nice to have the option to import a grayscale bitmap mask for areas that need additional samples. Or by selecting objects/properties from the multipass menu.
It could be set in a Corona camera, that would show an overlay preview and have an opacity slider.
Now I know that Corona has an adaptive system, but having the option to predefine areas of importance is always useful.

26

[C4D] Resolved Feature Requests / A bunch of shaders, e.g. (stochastic) flakes, specular normal etc.

« on: 2017-09-15, 21:48:58 »

I would like to see quite a few things but I try to keep it brief.

- Flakes: Now with the merger with Chaos Group, there might be a way to get those stochastic flakes. A normal flake shader would be fine too with irregularity, density, rim fall-off etc.

- Normal map in the specular/reflection channel: This ties a bit into the flakes topic but it would be generally useful to be able to break up specularity through a normal map's directions.

-Shadow-Side Shader: Everything that lies in the shadow. It would be nice to have a simple shader to be used as a mask. I really like creating planets and Sci-Fi stuff and currently, I have to rely on c4d's lumas shader in a colorizer in a layer as a mask. AO doesn't do the job.

- Emission map channel for volumes: Ties in well with the above

- Fade-out Radius in mm/cm/m for Volumes : The fresnel shader has to be readjusted if the perspective is changed. Also, a curve would be excellent to control it.

- Diffuse Roughness Slider

- Ptex Support