Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-25, 19:12:14 »

No worries man, i didn't take your message as critique. I realize that my previous message probably sounded too defensive, but that wasn't my intention at all. I just wanted to explain reasons behind my setup and make it clear that my way of doing it is not the only correct method. If your method works for you better, then it means it si correct for you, but it never hurts to learn alternative workflows and have them in mind for situations where you might struggle with your usual setup.

Hi Romullus. I don't know that I have found a technique that I could call "my own", or that I can say comfortably "works for me", as I am still learning. But thanks. :)

Regarding tutorials, i don't think that Corona struggles in that regard, there are tons and tons of learning material out there, you just need to be able to distinguish more serious stuff from usual fluff. Most of what's been discussed in this topic has little to do with Corona anyway, but is more broad knowledge of 3ds Max and 3D in general. Learning material about this is widely available in all shapes and forms. Albeit it's not necessary directly connected with Corona, but it shouldn't be hard to translate the concepts between different renderers.

In my opinion, many of the issues I have faced, both in regards to this issue and others, has been in figuring out how and when to use the various specific maps that Corona offers in a way that will give me the final results I am looking for in my product renders. I have looked far and wide for tutorials that explain using Corona render for this purpose and have yet to come up with many at all. Almost all of the Corona render tutorials I have seen are to do with Archvis. There are some basic tutorials that try to explain some of the individual materials, nodes, etc., but with no real application for product rendering. If you know of some that you can recommend, I would be very appreciative if you could let me know.

As for the manual, it does try to explain the technical details, but I have found that the explanations are more technical in nature and many of the examples provided are directed to those in Archvis. There are very few examples, if any, on how to use Corona for product rendering. But I know Corona was never really intended for that use case, even though I am sure there are people using it for product rendering.

Thanks again for all your help. It is very much appreciated. :)

2

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-24, 21:05:04 »

Well of course you can author your textures in photoshop or wherever else and if you find it to be a lot easier and more flexible, then go for it. I see the situation completely opposite from you, for me procedural building of texture in 3ds Max is way more flexible and very often much faster too. If i need to adjust something, most of the time it's just a matter of moving a slider or two, or entering different numeric value instead of rebuilding texture from scratch in photoshop. And let's not forget memory savings - according to Corona report your bespoke texture takes 110 MB of RAM and my tiling texture is taking just a 770 kB (in fact i could've easily replace it with gradient ramp, so my memory footprint could have been zero). One more thing - if you would need to use this texture on different size or shape bottle, you most likely would have to rebuilt it from scratch, while with my approach, it's just a matter of adjusting some parameters and tiling, which all can be done with Corona IR running and having clear visual guidance.

I'm not forcing you to adopt my workflows, if you're more comfortable with your way of doing things, then by all means do it the way you like it and ignore my setup. After all there's many ways of doing the same thing in 3ds Max and everyone is free to chose what works for them ;]

Hi Romullus,

Thanks again for your feedback. I apologize if my previous message came across as critical of your approach.  My intention was simply to highlight that similar effects could potentially be achieved using Photoshop as well. It was more of an observation than a critique.

I completely agree that your method offers advantages.  As someone new to Corona, the technical aspects –  understanding how different tools (maps, textures, nodes, etc.) function and when to use them –  present a significant learning curve.  Unfortunately, I have found good tutorials are hard to find, and the Corona manual itself leaves much to be desired.  While the basics might suffice for architectural visualization work, Corona's learning curve steepens considerably for advanced tasks like product rendering. It's not a program you can master quickly, at least in my opinion. Corona could definitely improve onboarding for new users and include more learning resources for those engaging in areas outside of archvis.

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-24, 03:08:44 »

It's combination of material ID and Corona multi-map. Polygons of the bottle has two different material IDs assigned to them - ID1 for polygons that should have knurling and ID2 for polygons that shouldn't have it. On material side, it's Corona multi-map that's defining which ID will have knurling and which will have 0 displacement. Hope that makes sense.

Hey Romullus. I was able to figure it out based on your description. Thank you once again from your very detailed help. I have learned a lot from you in this project. One thing I am realizing is that some of the effects you created using Corona nodes could also be done just in Photoshop. For example, you used gradient ramps to hide parts of the displacement texture. I think I could do the same thing just using photoshop and hiding the areas that I don't want to be displaced by covering those areas of the displacement texture with black in Photoshop. I wonder if just using photoshop for these effects might be a lot easier to achieve and allow for greater flexibility?

4

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-23, 23:41:04 »

Hi Romullus. I am still going over your material setup - there is a lot of things in there to digest!. I was wondering how were you able to stop the black label from reflecting in the liquid object and also how you were able to make the displacement only affect the outside of the glass?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-23, 06:37:47 »

I'm glad to hear that you find my effort useful :]

There is, at the moment, one thing I don't understand in your setup. In the modifier panel, there is something called "transform gold text" and "transform cut-out". what are these doing exactly? Also if I search for that modifier in the modifier list, I cannot find it. Is it a 3rd party plugin? If so, where can I get it?

Those are standard 3ds Max UVW xform modifiers, i just renamed them to inform you what's their purpose (it didn't help though ;]). They're there so you could procedurally adjust size and location of label and its graphics. I think i also instanced one of them to the bottle object, so if you adjust the label, bottle's displacement should follow along. P.S. you can rename any modifier in the stack by right clicking on it - sometimes it's useful to help you keep track in a bigger scene, especially if you know that you'll have to come back to it sometime in the future.

Label mesh uses live boolean, so be careful if you'll want to move the bottle in your scene, make sure to also move hidden "cutter" object, or better yet just collapse boolean modifier - it's not needed for your scene, i added it just to show how the scene can be made a bit more procedural.

Couple things i forgot to mention in my previous message - i noticed that your bottle's walls are unrealistically thin. I'd suggest to make them thicker if you want to get more realistic result. Also for glass with varying thickness you almost always want to use absorption. It's turned on in the new glass material, you can turn it on and off and observe how it changes the look. And don't be afraid to experiment with absorption colour and thickness - i just entered quite random values, i'm sure you'll be able to achieve even better results by experimenting with those two values.

And finally - your liquid was open mesh, that's a big no no for any material that has non zero refraction or volumetrics. I fixed this, but try to keep this in mind for the future.

Hey Romullus. Thank you for that extra feedback and info. I really appreciate it. I wil definitely look into your suggestions. Cheers. :)

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-21, 22:56:11 »

So i had some spare time to mess with your scene. I moved my edits to separate layer, so you can switch it on and off and see how it compares to the original. I tried to add the names to the changes i've made, so that it would be easier for you to understand everything. You'll notice that the look has changed significantly, this is mostly due to the fact that i removed knurling where it technically shouldn't be. If you prefer the old look, you can go to the bottle's edit poly modifier and change material IDs for the inside of the bottle from 1 to 2 (or vice versa, i can't remember now what is what :]).

BTW, the issue with not displaying textures was with your viewport setup and the issue with the label opacity texture not working was in Corona bitmap - for some reason it does not handle correctly images with alpha. I would recommend to refrain from using textures with alpha, unless you really need it and you know what you're doing.

Hi Romullus. I have to say WOW! Thank you so much for all that work you put into this. I would never have thought about many of the things you added (composite maps, gradient ramps, etc.) But your results are suburb! I will need to take some time and thoroughly study what you did and why, but I so appreciate all that you have done.

There is, at the moment, one thing I don't understand in your setup. In the modifier panel, there is something called "transform gold text" and "transform cut-out". what are these doing exactly? Also if I search for that modifier in the modifier list, I cannot find it. Is it a 3rd party plugin? If so, where can I get it?

Thanks again. You really went above and beyond what I was hoping for in your efforts to help me out with this.

I really wish there were more tutorials available online that covered this kind of work. I know corona is mainly used for Archvis, but surely there are others using it for Product Visualization. I am hoping the team at Corona, and others,  will begin to include these kind of use cases in the future.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-19, 21:20:19 »

Hey Romullus. I am able to see the maps in the viewport now. I had to turn on "Show shaded materials in viewport" in the material editor once again (initially, I assumed it was still on, but when I checked it again, it was turned off).

But one thing I am noticing is when I activate "Show shaded materials in viewport" in the material editor, for a specific material (by selecting the material and clicking the button), then select another material, and then go back to the first material, the button has switched back to off! It seems like it doesn't stay enabled after I click on something else. Is this normal behavior, or is there a way to keep it on?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-19, 20:28:00 »

I think you might be confusing map channels with material IDs. They are not the same! I think you're not seeing anything in the viewport because your bottle has no map 2 channel. Simply add another UVW map modifier and set its channel to 2, then you start seeing something and adjust things as you need.

Hey Romullus. Thanks for clarifying that. I added another UVW map and set the Map channel to 2, but I am still not seeing any materials in the viewport. I have attached a screenshot....

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-19, 19:52:26 »

Sorry, i don't have much time to decipher your scene at the moment, i just took brief glimpse at it and noticed that your label mask is set to 2nd map channel, but your bottle has only one map channel, so the label is unmapped and can't work correctly. You need either set the texture to the channel that exists (channel 1 in your case), or create 2nd map channel on the bottle. Hope that helps.

Hey Romullus. I completely understand that you have little time to devout to my situation, but I so appreciate any time you are able to provide. Thank you so very much! :)

Thanks for letting me know about the map channels. I did not know about that. So I think what you are saying I need to do, is to select the polygons on the bottle where the label is to be located and assign them a map channel of 2. I tried to do that, but for some reason, I cannot see the displacement mapping in the 3ds max viewport. I need to see the material in the viewport to be able to select the correct polygons for the label. I have tried to turn on both "Shaded materials with maps" and Realistic Materials with Maps" but neither of these show anything at all. I also have turned on "Show shaded materials in viewport" in the material editor but that didn't help either. I don't know if this is a 3ds Max problem or a Corona problem.

If you have any thoughts about this, I would greatly appreciate your help once again.

10

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-18, 22:28:56 »

I have been doing some more work on this issue and thought I would post an update. I have been able to get the displacement and label graphics to work as I need, but still struggling with the black, textured background that is supposed to go directly behind the bottle graphics. It also needs to be slightly smaller in size so as to fit within the area without the displacement and leave a small margin of clear glass all around the label. I have attached a new 3ds Max scene file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-17, 01:13:31 »

Your setup is very similar to mine, with the exception of the label and glass roughness additions in the glass base roughness slot. I'm curious about their function – removing them doesn't seem to affect anything visually beyond making the black background darker. Would you be willing to share your thought process behind including them?

My aim was to alter your setup as little as possible, just enough to make label work with decal. To be honest i would setup everything completely differently, but i didn't want to mess up your workflow and also i don't have much time to invest for this. As for the purpose of the mix map, it's there to enable separate controls for glass and label roughness. I named Corona color nodes accordingly, you can adjust them if you want to change the roughness of said elements.

I will try to to answer your other questions tomorrow or sometime later, it's late night here and i'm desperately lacking good sleep.

Hi Romullus,

Thanks so much for your help so far, I truly appreciate your assistance. Initially, I went with Corona decals because they seemed like the simplest way to achieve the results I wanted. However, as you pointed out, there's likely a more effective approach.

If you have some spare time and wouldn't mind, I'd be incredibly grateful for detailed instructions on how you would tackle this project.

As a Corona beginner, this project has been quite the time-consuming and frustrating experience. There seems to be a scarcity of tutorials specific to this type of work, and I find the Corona documentation lacking in detailed, relevant examples. This has left me scouring YouTube and forums for answers. While the Corona forum community has been fantastic and helpful, finding solutions to specific learning hurdles has been extremely time consuming. There's a definite need for more tutorials and resources geared towards those new to product visualization with Corona.

Again, if your willing, I would be extremely grateful for any help you can provide (even if its just pointing me to a relevant tutorial).

Thanks again for your time and support.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-16, 20:35:36 »

Hmm, it looks like there are some issues with this setup indeed. Corona to this day have troubles with handling complex refractive materials, so it's best to keep it simple to avoid potential issues. I made your glass and label with single material and decal should be working correctly now. You will probably need to fix your UV mapping, or masks, since there are some spillovers here and there, but i think you should be able to handle that on your own.

Hi Romullus,

Thank you for taking the time to look into this. Yeah, Corona definitely has it quirks, especially when using it outside of the archviv space. Unfortunately, I have not found a lot of resources for people using Corona for product renders, and since Corona was mainly developed for archviz work, I am finding it difficult to use for projects like this.

That being said, I truly appreciate your effort and the solution you provided. Your setup is very similar to mine, with the exception of the label and glass roughness additions in the glass base roughness slot. I'm curious about their function – removing them doesn't seem to affect anything visually beyond making the black background darker. Would you be willing to share your thought process behind including them?

On another note, with this method, it seems there's no way to adjust the size of the black background itself. Ideally, I'd like it to be slightly smaller on all sides than the surrounding non-displaced glass, creating a thin border of clear glass around the black label. Is there a way to achieve this effect?

Also, I would like to add a texture to the black background label to give it a more realistic look. However, I suspect I'd need to use a completely different material, like a black paper texture bitmap, to replace the flat black I'm using now. But if I plug a texture like that into the refraction slot of the glass material (replacing the current bitmap), I'm unsure if the paper texture would actually show through in the render.  Any suggestions on how to achieve a textured black label?

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-16, 05:59:40 »

So, I changed the material a bit (see screenshot). I was able to finally get the gold color on the label that I was looking for. However, now, I am unsure about how to make the background immediate behind the label appear black instead of just clear. It should look like the image showing the black background but with nice gold graphics and text. Seems like I can only have one or the other (gold graphics and text with a clear background, or black background but no gold text). I am sure there is a way to do this, but I just can't seem to figure out is missing.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: mapping help

« on: 2024-04-16, 02:03:12 »

You can do all that without decals by combining several materials, or maps and use several mapping channels to control placement of different elements. It might not be as convenient to use as decals, but on the other hand it's much easier to export such asset to different applications.

I was able to figure out a way to do create the area of the glass that had the displacement removed without using decals. However, I still couldn't find a way to add the actual label graphic. So I am still using the decal object for this. However, I now have another issue. I cannot get the label to display correctly. The material color I am using on the decal object (gold) is not showing up on the label. It worked fine with my previous method and as far as I can see I am using the same settings as before. I have attached a screen shot. All the text and graphics in the label should be a gold color as this is what I am using on the decal object. You can see the letter "Y" does have some gold on it, but for some reason all the other letters are black. I am really confused as to why this is happening.

The other issue I am having is if I use a black background for the label, it reflects into the liquid object inside the glass bottle. How do I prevent this from happening?

I have also included an archive of the scene. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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[Max] Tutorials & Guides / Re: Corona - THE COMPLETE GUIDE - hardcopy book

« on: 2024-04-15, 23:50:12 »

Is there a new book for Corona 11?