Author Topic: With all due respect to the Corona team  (Read 46705 times)

2016-10-27, 01:59:40

astudio

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Dear friends. It will be long read on bad english...
Everything IMHO.

I have a lot of conversation with 3D users which begin from "sorry for stupid question". By the way I have a lot of stupid questions by myself.

The best answer to question "Why Corona and not VRay?" was "Because Corona is much more simpler. Just pick render button".
But it was before... Let's remember that your main client is not 3d Guru, but 20 years old boy with 5 month of experience, which works in arch. office and must to give quick result.
Let's remember that the best vray version was 1.09. It was simple, fast engine which gave great "milky" renders. Now vray much more programmers geek and not user friendly program.

I tried to understand your RGB - sRGB connections (picker, CoronaMix texture, CoronaColor, etc.). We need a really solid base to understand this.

I sure 90% of users don't understand which color space to use and why, and when.... And more... 80% of users don't know about existence of different color spaces. Just pick color in photoshop and go on..
I understand that this is only way to get right color in max, but most of users didn't know about this problem. And you don't explain it

I think it's a time to give to community a simple user guide in terms of brighter-darker (even not reflectivity, glossiness, LUT and so on). Something like "for getting same color as in photoshop pick color in photoshop - check sRGB button - put numbers into" and so on. For users it's not interesting why, it's interesting what to do... 

All of you speak same Corona language. But we are not. To begin to google the answers is a good reason for suicide. Everyone names same things in his own way. A lot of charts, a lot of physics...
Damn, I don't need to know why I need to separate color channels in output for metals. Just tell me how to separate and I'll do it.

My feature request - to make things simpler. As Corona Converter. Even simpler.  I think the best way is to take a girl with pink bows to write this user guide. Only thing- she must not to be a programmer, or 3d artist or so on.. And with pictures of pink pony in different light conditions. ;)

PS. You have a lot of blending modes (there is not Color :( blending mode) in ColorMix Material. You have more modes then Photoshop has. Why? Because you can. Did you check if somebody somewhere sometimes used vivid light or pin light?

PPS. I'm in 3D business 22 years (from second version of 3D Studio for DOS). I made about 8000 arch. projects.  Do you know that 90% of clients sure that glass in building must be blue and don't interesting in IOR, fresnel etc.?

PPPS. I want to back to the times with pony pictures in this forum.

Sorry for longread...
« Last Edit: 2016-10-27, 02:18:37 by astudio »

2016-10-27, 08:43:13
Reply #1

Jadefox

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Spot on! I am at a stage where I don't want to ask anything because it seems to be the same questions over and over. What is lumence? What is colour space? I am at a stage where I think to first completely leave rendering and first take on photoshop courses and photographic courses and light courses. Yes there is advanced users and I don't expect Dubcat to tell me what is a LUT. But yes Corona team should make video that preceeds actual rendering. Why? Because everybody's work would improve and Corona's reputation will sky rocket. Well at least imho. What exactly happens in a render engine. I have no idea why something would reflect in a manner because of light and then the fresnel reacts and remember the albedo ( I thought it was a diffuse) arrrggghhh. :)

Then again maybe someone can point me to a course that addresses these issues.

2016-10-27, 09:56:13
Reply #2

romullus

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I like Corona being simple. I don't like ponies. I hate general tendency for programs (and everything else basically) to become dumber and dumber.

I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
My Models | My Videos | My Pictures

2016-10-27, 10:12:20
Reply #3

NicolasC

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I hate general tendency for programs (and everything else basically) to become dumber and dumber.
+1 on this one.
This general vulgarization tendency makes me sick. Corona is probably the simplest (or let's say, one of the simplest) engine to use, and yet very powerful. That doesn't mean rookies don't need to learn anything, come on ... "oh f**k, it's too complicated, simplify it for me so that I don't have much to learn", that's it ? CG requires learning of many concepts, just like any technical job. I won't expatiate on the subject, there would be too much to say. In a nutshell, I'm fully against the current "leveling down" occurring here and there, that's definitely not the way to go IMHO.

My 2 cents.
Nicolas Caplat
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2016-10-27, 10:19:24
Reply #4

Jadefox

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I agree on that Romullus

I don't want it easier as such, There are certain fundamental basics that you guys were fortunate enough to pick up in a studio environment
Many people on here actually went to varsity to study this in depth
So again all I ask is for tutorials that precede what is posted currently. The basics of materials is only basics if you understand how light
interacts with an object. What you have forgotten we still have to learn ,but there was indeed a stage in your life where you asked, what is a diffuse ?

Again I agree Corona is straightforward , I never want anything easy is life , just guide me into a direction as to spent even months on training to
understand the very fundamentals of colour and  how light reacts to this.


2016-10-27, 11:13:38
Reply #5

Frood

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I don't want to ask anything because it seems to be the same questions over and over.

Maybe it makes you feel a bit better when I tell you that at least myself like especially your questions in the forums because we cannot expect that all that partially 20 year old stuff that can be googled is still valid and the best way to go. It´s allways time to reconsider certain aspects and things are changing rapidly.

Good Luck

Never underestimate the power of a well placed level one spell.

2016-10-27, 11:31:04
Reply #6

Ondra

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Basically this:


2/3 of people who I meet and talk about corona have the same feedback: "there is too many controls, and there are 3 controls that are missing"


What can we do about it?
  • Simple/advanced UI: many have tried this and it had almost never worked. Everybody critisizes such step, plus there is twice the amount of work afterwards
  • Hide advanced controls: works well in render settings UI, but there is no place to hide sRGB checkbox in the color picker.
  • Make good tooltips/help, explaining controls, and trust that user will actually listen when it says "there is no need to touch this unless...": we are trying to do this, but so far it seems people are just not capable to do this :/
  • any other ideas?
Please don't just say "keep corona simple", implying less powerful - then this thread would quickly descend into a flamerwar with people who need more control.
Only specific thing I can think of is: list any specific control which is not clear to you (either it is missing tooltip, or the tooltip does not explain it well), and we will fix that - that goes for everybody who is reading this ;). We go over all controls before every release, but it is hundreds of items and it is easy to overlook something.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2016-10-27, 11:40:58
Reply #7

racoonart

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You can only make stuff "that" easy. There is a limit to everything. If you do not implement a certain amount of more "in-depth" features you will have a renderer that is not usable for serious production. You cannot make everything automatic and give the user only one button. There's enough stuff a user has to decide - and decisions need to be based on the requirements and thus technical limits.
The tendency in rendering and cg in common is that it actually gets easier to get into and make awesome stuff. But there's a huge amount of research and tool development behind it - someone has to do the homework. If you want to make "decent" stuff and only press the render button, then Corona probably already is the perfect renderer. Everything above that requires some amount of additional learning and technical background, simple as that. Corona has pretty great defaults, so even inexperienced users can handle it and learn more on the way.
I do not disagree with the idea of making stuff as simple as possible. That has been the whole philosophy behind Corona anyways. But you may question the idea about expecting a 5 months experienced artist to be as successful as someone who spend years on refining his skills.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2016-10-27, 11:57:43
Reply #8

NicolasC

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But you may question the idea about expecting a 5 months experienced artist to be as successful as someone who spend years on refining his skills.
Nice summary, Deadclown ;)
Nicolas Caplat
CG supervisor / teacher / artist

2016-10-27, 12:12:39
Reply #9

Dionysios.TS

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Dear friends. It will be long read on bad english...
Everything IMHO.

I have a lot of conversation with 3D users which begin from "sorry for stupid question". By the way I have a lot of stupid questions by myself.

The best answer to question "Why Corona and not VRay?" was "Because Corona is much more simpler. Just pick render button".
But it was before... Let's remember that your main client is not 3d Guru, but 20 years old boy with 5 month of experience, which works in arch. office and must to give quick result.
Let's remember that the best vray version was 1.09. It was simple, fast engine which gave great "milky" renders. Now vray much more programmers geek and not user friendly program.

I tried to understand your RGB - sRGB connections (picker, CoronaMix texture, CoronaColor, etc.). We need a really solid base to understand this.

I sure 90% of users don't understand which color space to use and why, and when.... And more... 80% of users don't know about existence of different color spaces. Just pick color in photoshop and go on..
I understand that this is only way to get right color in max, but most of users didn't know about this problem. And you don't explain it

I think it's a time to give to community a simple user guide in terms of brighter-darker (even not reflectivity, glossiness, LUT and so on). Something like "for getting same color as in photoshop pick color in photoshop - check sRGB button - put numbers into" and so on. For users it's not interesting why, it's interesting what to do... 

All of you speak same Corona language. But we are not. To begin to google the answers is a good reason for suicide. Everyone names same things in his own way. A lot of charts, a lot of physics...
Damn, I don't need to know why I need to separate color channels in output for metals. Just tell me how to separate and I'll do it.

My feature request - to make things simpler. As Corona Converter. Even simpler.  I think the best way is to take a girl with pink bows to write this user guide. Only thing- she must not to be a programmer, or 3d artist or so on.. And with pictures of pink pony in different light conditions. ;)

PS. You have a lot of blending modes (there is not Color :( blending mode) in ColorMix Material. You have more modes then Photoshop has. Why? Because you can. Did you check if somebody somewhere sometimes used vivid light or pin light?

PPS. I'm in 3D business 22 years (from second version of 3D Studio for DOS). I made about 8000 arch. projects.  Do you know that 90% of clients sure that glass in building must be blue and don't interesting in IOR, fresnel etc.?

PPPS. I want to back to the times with pony pictures in this forum.

Sorry for longread...

Personally Corona is one of the simplest render engines out there. Out of the box, just hit render and you can go with it.

As for some more technical functions inside the engine, these are elements which a PRO 3D artist should have learned in the past and should know already! This is your profession and job and as all the jobs and professions around the globe, if you want to be called a PRO then study and learn all the tricks & tips and physically based workflows. Learn to use the types of maps and their combinations, light setups, color rules, photography, ecc. This is why you would like to call yourself a PRO and ask to your clients a good amount of money for what you're able to produce. Cause if you manage to work with all the above, then you'll make the difference...

If not, just set up your scene as you know and hit render.

Corona is a perfect combination of simple setup or who wants a PRO setup and all the technical things we're talking in this forum I think are not only Corona related but can be applied to all the rendering engines in general. So Corona must not get simpler than it is, cause if it does, I personally won't use it...

 

2016-10-27, 12:31:36
Reply #10

Ondra

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lets not turn this thread into a "corona is simple and great and hurr and durr" circlejerk.

Is corona fairly simple for most users? Yes

Is corona too complicated for others? Yes

How to make corona simpler while retaining the power? What controls are "bad"? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear yours!
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2016-10-27, 13:01:15
Reply #11

sprayer

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it just like some driver software for example for mechanical keyboards with rgb light, you can see most of them have the same features but not all are user friendly, compare for example steelseries engine for all device and tesoro software for each separately.

GUI  should be intuitive for simplicity all. In corona same here, some parameters for example then in study corona i am spend much time to find self illumination in advance parameters, compare to others render engine there its at basic parameters. Some parameter like shadow catcher shadow amount have gradation 0.1-10 why 10? not 100 like in most parameters it will make more understandable for common users. Tools for VFB look complicate now, in 1.3 it was fine. Not clever idea to make changeable parameters in VFB like denoise but to enable go to another menu.

Corona will add more features and will be more complicate to understanding. In speedtree many parameters but in one rollout, if you remember brazil r\s was the same pretty simple render engine also have one rollout without tabs what i always switch to find what i want - can't remember it -_-
It just my thoughts.

2016-10-27, 13:13:42
Reply #12

Dionysios.TS

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lets not turn this thread into a "corona is simple and great and hurr and durr" circlejerk.

Is corona fairly simple for most users? Yes

Is corona too complicated for others? Yes

How to make corona simpler while retaining the power? What controls are "bad"? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear yours!

Do you really guys think Corona has some difficult controls over there? I mean, yes, some things can get better but why simpler? Is making it simpler than it is, going to kill productivity for us 3D artists?

2016-10-27, 13:17:29
Reply #13

Ondra

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Do you really guys think Corona has some difficult controls over there? I mean, yes, some things can get better but why simpler? Is making it simpler than it is, going to kill productivity for us 3D artists?



You are a hard place. Some users are rocks, and I actually meet a lot of them at conferences etc.

We would like to make corona simpler without removing flexibility. It is just pretty hard to do. So... ideas? ;)
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2016-10-27, 13:49:27
Reply #14

denisgo22

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In my mind all this problems does not apply to the renderer itself/
Render Engine it is mainly more or less comfortable environment only for simple pressing button /Render/:)
90% of the whole work, this is softwares, in which the work is done /Cinema, 3d max, Photoshop, Maya and etc./
Placement of the light source in the scene, which HDR to put in environment slot, selection and editing of textures and materials, modeling /which renderer to do has nothing to do/,
It is not determined by the renderer, but determined with the taste, talent and technical skills in this software , by the current User///
In other words, For "Pink Pony" will have explain to first the basis of work in current 3d
software, Modeling, Compositing Software and etc, and finally to show where the button "RENDER" exist:)
This well-known problem for today, when everyone to knows how to download full ready models of chairs from internet and beautifully their spread,---- by clicking on button, suggests that to get good results///
Nothing to do///
« Last Edit: 2016-10-27, 14:33:00 by denisgo22 »