Chaos Corona Forum
Chaos Corona for Cinema 4D => [C4D] Daily Builds => Topic started by: Oxocan London on 2023-05-05, 08:55:56
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I am sure someone already raised this issue in the past, but here it is once small.
When I use a Chaos Material, I sometimes make small adjustments to it and wish to save it for future use so that I do not have to always make the same changes. However, for some reason I cannot see the material preview as it appears black in my browser. I attached an image that shows this.
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you.
Ian
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Hi there,
Are you using macOS at all? ;) I tried here on a Windows PC and all was fine. If so, it might be related to the Corona bitmap material. If that's what it is, can you please try replacing it with a C4D bitmap shader to see if it helps?
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39971.0;attach=182825;image)
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H,
Yes, I am on a Mac. Replacing the authentic Corona Bitmap with a C4D bitmap is not the solution. I think that Corona materials should be able to generate its own material previews without having to replace them with other formats.
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Of course, but there were some issue with it and previews in the past, hence why I asked. Are you able to share the scene with us? Also, what build of Corona do you have running? Thx!
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Thank you for your prompt reply. I understand regarding issues, hence I thought maybe there is a little quick fix I was not aware of. I do not have a specific scene that I should share as this is a software issue and no matter what chaos material I play with, they all have this preview issue.
As to the version of Corona, I am using the latest daily build released at the start of April, (Daily Build 2023-04-03)
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I understand regarding issues, hence I thought maybe there is a little quick fix I was not aware of.
As it's happened before, this was generally the workaround. But if it happens to every version you use it may be something else. ie: macOS related. In any case, we will look into it.
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I also wanted to ask, what happens if you use a smaller preview size such as 1024x1024? Or if you pop out the preview window and manually scale it in size? Is it still black for you? Finally, regardless of the preview, do the material render as expected?
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39971.0;attach=182833;image)
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It's still black as are the material previews....
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Are these textures still linked? Can you check it for me?
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39971.0;attach=182852;image)
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For some reason mine are blank!
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Can you try to relink the textures at all? If so, are they still black?
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You got it, so when you first upload the texture from the Chaos browser to C4D, the textures are NOT linked. After clicking on re-link textures, you get the green tick. HOWEVER, although the textures seem to be green, the material preview goes back to black!
If you are available tomorrow morning I can log in with you and show you exactly what is happening on my mac.
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Hi Ian, thanks for checking. And is this the latest Cosmos you have running?
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yes, absolutely the latest!
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Ok, here is a step-by-step process I go through before the issue takes place.
1. The first image shows the material is imported from Chaos browser and the textures have NO GREEN TICK next to them. For the textures to be reloaded I actually have to press RELOAD TEXTURES.
2. The second image shows the green ticks as I hit the reload all textures.
3. The third image shows what the material looks like once I saved it in my personal library/folder and imported out again to my materials list. As you can see they are all blacked out.
4. The fourth image is where I am trying to hit "reload all textures" but nothing happens and the green ticks do not appear.
The issue seems to be that on a mac at least, when you import a material form the chaos library, the assets do not import with it, or at least their previews. There is a loss of data between the Cinema 4d default library and the chaos transfer process.
I hope this clarifies a little better.
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So, if I understood correctly, you've first saved the material to the C4D's Asset Browser and then moved it back to the scene project?
Is this workflow correct?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Yes that is correct. I first imported the material from the chaos browser, did some edits then saved it to my personal asset browser, however it saves as a black material. When I exported the material from my asset browser to reuse it, it no longer works.
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I was also able to reproduce this even without making any changes to the materials. Simply load a mat from Cosmos and store it in the asset browser. Initially, the thumbnail looks good but once the other maps populate, it goes black. It does load back into the material editor though with a preview. One suggestion I could make to get the preview back is to quickly render the material in the viewport then save it as a jpg or copy to clipboard, then in the asset browser right-click on the main thumbnail , go to ''show details'' then right-click again on the larger preview and choose ''Update preview from file or from clipboard''.
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39971.0;attach=183006;image)
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thank you for that! hopefully, they will update and fix this issue.
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FWIW I had the same issue with Vray. Materials previews are a mess on C4D and Mac. Don't work at all when I'm using Redshift.