Edge map to work with Chaos scatter

[romullus]

It would be really nice if Corona edge map could work with Chaos scatter. Currently it does nothing when assigned as density or transformational map.

[maru]

We can surely log this as a feature request, but if you could share a specific use case, that would be awesome. :)

[romullus]

I can't provide any visual examples at the moment, but think about scattered systems where you want to have more control along borders, like more distressed lawn, or less dense forest and more bushes instead of trees. Sure, you can use Corona distance for that, but edge map would allow to keep completely non-destructive workflow.

[d4l1]

Sorry for changing the topic a little bit, but I did try to use Corona Distance as a Surface Scattering mask with Chaos Scatter yesterday and somehow failed to. Now that you mentioned it would be already possible with Corona Distance (instead of Corona Edge Mask) I'm a little bit curious. :) My current status is, that it only works with Transformation, Rotation or Scale mask but not with the Surface Scattering itself. And even the three working things don't behave always 100% logical. Is there any chance you may could provide a small setup that I could try? I'm working with C4D, but I guess or at least hope that it is working for 3DS the same way as with C4D. No problem if there is no time for that ... that post alone gave me some motivation to make more tests / different setups.

[romullus]

Sorry, i have no idea why it's not working for you, maybe it's C4D implementation thing? In 3ds Max the distance map (shader) works flawlessly in all mappable slots of Chaos scatter and its result can be seen in the viewport instantly. I thought that bad or missing distribution mesh UVs might be the issue, but it doesn't seem the case - even when i completely erased UVs, the distance doesn't give a damn about it.

My current status is, that it only works with Transformation, Rotation or Scale mask but not with the Surface Scattering itself. And even the three working things don't behave always 100% logical.

Maybe the reason for seemingly illogical behaviour is the fact that the scatter's transformations has mapping modes and you forgot to take that into account? Try to change the modes and see if behaviour becomes more logical in your mind. Again, just tested this in 3ds Max and everything here works as expected.

[d4l1]

A fresh setup did the trick. And somehow, if the Distance Shader range has no noise / textures linked, the viewport update is immediate. If there is a noise texture linked, the viewport refreshes after I've disabled and enabled the Scatter. Thanks for your input!

[romullus]

A fresh setup did the trick. And somehow, if the Distance Shader range has no noise / textures linked, the viewport update is immediate. If there is a noise texture linked, the viewport refreshes after I've disabled and enabled the Scatter. Thanks for your input!

If you can reliably reproduce this behaviour, then consider reporting it as a bug. https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?board=55.0

[maru]

Edge Map + Scatter is now reported as a feature request.

(Report ID=CMAX-928)

[d4l1]

A fresh setup did the trick. And somehow, if the Distance Shader range has no noise / textures linked, the viewport update is immediate. If there is a noise texture linked, the viewport refreshes after I've disabled and enabled the Scatter. Thanks for your input!

If you can reliably reproduce this behaviour, then consider reporting it as a bug. https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?board=55.0

Tried to reproduce the behaviour in a new scene and will start a bug-thread, but within the C4D section :) It wasn't the noise that caused the bug. It was because of some 'nested' polygon objects that are used for Distance tracing. Thanks!