In terms of the Distance Map it would be great to have "inside separate, inside solid, outside separate, outside solid" like Vray. These can be quite handy so you can use the object as a boundary object to enclose a colour/texture as opposed to just setting the distance from the object on the outside.
It would also be great to have a button where you can add selected objects to the "node input", just easier to select objects in the view port and add these with a single click of a button.
Totally agree, I've mentioned those slots in a post on a previous page - when doing exteriors "inside separate, inside solid, outside separate, outside solid" for instance means doing some quick and easy to do background roads with inside textured with some seamless asphalt texture and falloff from object with some sand or gravel, or lakes and rivers with their sandy banks etc. not to mention use in displacement possibilities - well there are numerous usage scenarios for those slots for sure so, again, I totally agree we need those in Corona's Distance map.
As for add selected, I agree about it too - would be pretty nice to have that too.
What I like, and like very much is it's already present ability for Corona Distance to be used as pre render map (as Maru found out yesterday) - so Yay indeed for that ! Now it is possible to use it in a mix with some displacement texture and put it into regular displacement modifier - so one can get displaced ground and scattered grass\trees\rocks on top of it without the usual problems rendertime displacement causes in those situations - that would better illustrate what I mean
http://clip2net.com/s/3Blx7uK , the same Distance map drives some of terrain's material mask and rendertime displacement
http://c2n.me/3BlxxTm to produce somewhat ugly misaligned ugly road texture )) The cause of this misalignment with viewport preview (vertex colors baking and not updating perhaps ?) I'm investigating right now but it seems it just didn't update\recalculate after I changed a Distance map driving renderable spline's patch - and it doesn't update no matter what I do - so probably that's a bug or maybe some simple solution like adding recalculate\redraw viewport preview button in Distance map's interface could solve such issues.
Overall, to counterweight inevitable argument about Corona's philosophy of simplicity in advance - Distance texture is in no way fitting in that logic at all, as it it's pretty advanced stuff as far as workflow using it goes and I think it should be as customizable and feature rich as it can get. I think some beginner users will never ever find a use for a map like that in their workflow at all so why bother making it simple to understand and use for them at the expense of features ?
Some semi random thoughts - there is this pretty useful thingy
http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/gradientedge.htm - maybe some inspiration could be taken from it and put into Corona Distance map as well ? Like operation on same object's edges, smoothing groups and material id's ?
And yet another - Vertex color baking\transition from Corona Distance map to a mesh's vertex color channel - it might be tremendously useful in some situations I think.
All this could really benefit Corona for some serious and advanced workflows and would make it's implementation of DistanceTex really stand out from the rest and not be some +- simplified version of a Vray's one as it is right now, except for viewport operation possibility ))
