LOD for Human models from the Cosmos Browser

[RichardDobell]

Is there a LOD (Level of detail) setting that I'm missing within my Corona Settings. When I import models of Humans from the Cosmos Library, the renders that are further away look really blurry and muddy.

I've looked through as many of the menus that I can see but can't see a way to resolve it.

Attached are a few screen shots showing what I mean

[Cinemike]

It is hard to say what might be the reason without knowing your scene and settings, but the issue looks like a combination of too strong denoising and bad Cosmos browser materials.

Some Cosmos browser models come with, let's say questionalbe material settings that may stem from an automatic conversion of the materials from Vray to Corona. Often you will find an IOR of 1 and a glossiness of 100. So, checking if a material makes sense is helpful.

What denoising settings are you using, btw?

Michael

[RichardDobell]

Thanks for the reply, render settings are nothing fancy, attached screen shot.

It does it on all scenes - other screen shot attached.

Must a LOD thing, but scant see any references to how to change it

[Cinemike]

Even the white dots on the blue dress disappear.
I cannot reproduce it here in my own scene.

Do you have, by any chance, DOF active?
Or strong image filtering?
Blurring with a non-default radius?
Or could you even share the scene with just the three models from above?

[RichardDobell]

Try this...

I've removed the HDRI file from the .zip to keep it smaller...

[Cinemike]

Who'd have thunk ;)

The only difference between your scene and mine was the scene scale.
Yours in mm makes a blurry result.
Converted to cm (and scaled back to real-world coordinates) unblurs it. (Steps: Project Scale from mm to cm, Scale Project from 1 cm to 0.1 cm to keep the model at 180 cm height).

Why? I have no idea ...

[RichardDobell]

well that's just stupid - but it works.

Not too sure I can do that to every model i open from now.

Hopefully someone from Chaos will look at this tomorrow and seen if it's a known bug...

Thanks for all your help!

[Cinemike]

Glad I could help.
When I work in cm right from the start, I never had issues with imported models from Cosmos. Maybe you can make this work for you, too.

CU
Michael

[frv]

I believe a similar topic was discussed before:
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=37817.msg203312#msg203312

Not sure if the blur setting of -100% (bug) is now resolved or is still a problem for textures at a certain distance.

[Beanzvision]

I also think it is a project scale issue and related to this: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=40533.0

[frv]

I just did a project and had the same problem with bark textures on trees. I set the blur scale to -100% in the bark textures and the trees looked much better in the distance. I wonder if this setting can be done globally instead of having to adjust all textures that show up at a distance.

[Beanzvision]

I just did a project and had the same problem with bark textures on trees. I set the blur scale to -100% in the bark textures and the trees looked much better in the distance. I wonder if this setting can be done globally instead of having to adjust all textures that show up at a distance.

In another case I had a user was also having blurry bark textures in their scene. After checking the scene and adding a figure primitive, I could see that their scale was way off. ;)

[frv]

Scale can indeed be a problem. I usually set scale to mm but I went back to keep using cm with C4D.

[ASIMO]

Hello

I can confirm that almost every object from the Chaos Browser, using a Bitmap set to 0% Blur Scale basically renders blurry. You might not notice it, but textures start to blur out when you move them approximately 50 to 100 m from the camera. This should not be the case. As long as I am using no DOF everything should stay perfectly sharp. My scene is set to cm and works perfectly in terms of camera and imported objects.

I attached two examples showing the issue. It is the same figure. The distance to the camera of the person in the foreground is about 5m. The second person in the background is in 120m in distance and just scaled 10 times to appear larger. Both should definitely display perfectly sharp. Only when setting the Blur Scale to -100% it appears correct. You can see in the second image.

I better not check all images and far objects I rendered in the past 1-2 years ...

Why is it even set like this as default ? It really is a quality issue.

Best – A

[ASIMO]

I just did a project and had the same problem with bark textures on trees. I set the blur scale to -100% in the bark textures and the trees looked much better in the distance. I wonder if this setting can be done globally instead of having to adjust all textures that show up at a distance.

In another case I had a user was also having blurry bark textures in their scene. After checking the scene and adding a figure primitive, I could see that their scale was way off. ;)

Hello

It is not a scale/units problem. It is easy to test. Setting my scene to mm, cm or m does not change anything. All objects are correctly scaled and still the issue appears the same way.

Best – A

[Beanzvision]

Are the proxy units set to auto or something else? If I change the scale of my project, the following happens with different units on each proxy. Some of which are blurred. ;)

[ASIMO]

Are the proxy units set to auto or something else? If I change the scale of my project, the following happens with different units on each proxy. Some of which are blurred. ;)

Hello

It might have nothing to do with settings in the Proxy at all, as this problem seems based on the texture-settings itself. It was already pointed out that changing the Blur-Scale affects this issue. Even if I duplicate the proxy to a mesh the problem stays the same. No difference in mm, cm, m. See screenshot.

I even just tested the same texture on a simple cube. Same behavior !

Or speaking the other way : What setting in C4D (scale, units) is correct so that the textures would always appear sharp ? I am curious.

A

[Beanzvision]

Thanks for your tests, it appreciated. Are you able to share one of these simple scenes with me?

[ASIMO]

Thanks for your tests, it appreciated. Are you able to share one of these simple scenes with me?

Yes – I am happy to share it.

Please find attached the scene with different folders. 1 - With a direct Proxy of a figure scaled. 2 - With the Proxy of a figure converted to Mesh and scaled. And also the scene with a simple cube and the texture applied. Once using 0% Blur scale (default setting) and once with Blur scale set to -100%.

One can see, that only when using -100% Blur scale in the settings it renders sharp and clear. This only happens when using Corona Bitmap ! A Corona default material with a texture in the texture slot always renders "correct" or sharp.

Thank you for your effort. A

[Beanzvision]

Thanks for the scene, it's a great help. I can also confirm it here. Will report it asap.

[lollolo]

Did a quick test too. Simple scene. Two cubes close to the camera, and two cubes around 200m away.
Left side using C4D bitmaps and right side Corona bitmaps.

The only thing that changes is the focal length of the camera. With a focal length of 35, the texture is blurry. With a focal length of 235, both have the same sharpness.

[ASIMO]

Did a quick test too. Simple scene. Two cubes close to the camera, and two cubes around 200m away.
Left side using C4D bitmaps and right side Corona bitmaps.

The only thing that changes is the focal length of the camera. With a focal length of 35, the texture is blurry. With a focal length of 235, both have the same sharpness.

Hi

Interesting. So also blurry with Corona Bitmap. You are not using any DOF in the camera settings, right ?

So this could mean it is somehow connected with the focal length in general ?

A

[lollolo]

What do you mean with “also blurry with Corona Bitmap”? Only Corona Bitmap is blurry, native C4D bitmap is sharp. (Keep in mind, there is a bit jpg compression visible)

And I think this issue is only with Corona bitmaps, I haven't seen this with C4D bitmaps...


/// EDIT

I made a better scene. Left side is native C4D bitmap. Right side is Corona bitmap. Again, please keep in mind that there is jpg compression, and my texture is not perfectly sharp.
Focal length is 15, 36, and 80mm.

[Beanzvision]

Are these IR or viewport previews or are they final renders in the VFB?

[lollolo]

These are final renders in VFB. But it's the same in IR. (didn't check viewport rendering)

[ASIMO]

What do you mean with “also blurry with Corona Bitmap”? Only Corona Bitmap is blurry, native C4D bitmap is sharp. (Keep in mind, there is a bit jpg compression visible)

And I think this issue is only with Corona bitmaps, I haven't seen this with C4D bitmaps...


/// EDIT

I made a better scene. Left side is native C4D bitmap. Right side is Corona bitmap. Again, please keep in mind that there is jpg compression, and my texture is not perfectly sharp.
Focal length is 15, 36, and 80mm.

Thank you for the tests. These are great examples !

It would be interesting if there are changes in render-times as well between rendering all with Native-Bitmaps, Corona-Bitmaps or Corona-Bitmaps with -100% Blur-Scale.

Best

A

[jojorender]

Not sure why there is a long discussion about scene scale, cm/ mm, -100 blur-scale.. etc
The corona team knows about this problem for a long time and didn’t forget about it!
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=30968.msg176403#msg176403
It’s one of many corona bitmap issues and the only solution for now: Use native c4d bitmap.
-100 blur-scale is brutal and NOT the solution!
I wouldn’t normally care, but the fact that most cosmos assets use corona bitmap makes cosmos "unusable".

[ASIMO]

Not sure why there is a long discussion about scene scale, cm/ mm, -100 blur-scale.. etc
The corona team knows about this problem for a long time and didn’t forget about it!
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=30968.msg176403#msg176403
It’s one of many corona bitmap issues and the only solution for now: Use native c4d bitmap.
-100 blur-scale is brutal and NOT the solution!
I wouldn’t normally care, but the fact that most cosmos assets use corona bitmap makes cosmos "unusable".

Hello

Thank you for making us aware !

You are completely right. Totally agree with you. This obviously remains the exact same problem since about three years.

I do care a lot, as the Bitmap-topic seems connected with the recent rendertime-issue using Apple M-systems.

Best

A

[Stefan-L]

i just tested and if the texture is far away the bitmap is really extremely unusable, like super strong dof on the surface!

this is really bad i must say. i hope 11 brings a fix for that(i read some in max forum in 11 daily  that could be related to that)

it not happens if objects are near, but if the scene scale is big the mip mapping goes completely wrong in corona bitmap.
if the corona team wants an extreme example i can forward you one(a wood floor texture, in corona bitmap you see not even the lines anymore)

manually editing all bitmaps to blur scale -100% isnt a workflow thats possible in complex scenes. the corona team should at least set the default to what blurscale -100% does. nobody ever needs such blurry textures, in so scene case i can imagine that to be ok(even if this means a speed loss)

to me it seems like something is wrong with scale by a factor of 100x or even 1000% in regard of blur and blur offset.
-100% is what i consider 0%, the blur offset value is unusable as even at 1 or 0.1% it completely blurs the surface to one solid color, starting at 0.001 it does what is expected(adding a minimal blur in far away party).

so i think maybe the corona bitmap takes the c4d units by a wrong factor multiplied? or it doesnt take the c4d document settings into account(scene scale from small to huge etc)

[Stefan-L]

after testing i found the setting blur -100% AND the blur offset of 0.002% does give a nice result, similar to c4d bitmap but actually even a bit better for me (not getting artifacts as the bluroffset 0). this even more let me thing corona bitmap interprets the scene scale wrong

[luis.lab]

Just a suggestion, as the problem has already been 3 years, and if it is not possible to resolve It soon... Maybe the Corona team could add in the new Lister a tab for the Corona bitmaps so they all can be changed in one go.
Not a perfect solution but would be great already as a walkaround soon.

Best
L.

[Beanzvision]

Just a suggestion, as the problem has already been 3 years, and if it is not possible to resolve It soon... Maybe the Corona team could add in the new Lister a tab for the Corona bitmaps so they all can be changed in one go.
Not a perfect solution but would be great already as a walkaround soon.

Best
L.

We have addressed the issue :)

[Beanzvision]

This has been resolved in the last daily build. If you have a moment to test it and let us know, that would be great! :)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AMdDmYkftsDZelYVFHRTF84oVgEhs9ny

[ASIMO]

Hello

As far as I can tell it works with the latest build. Great job ! Thx.

Asimo

[Beanzvision]

Hello

As far as I can tell it works with the latest build. Great job ! Thx.

Asimo

That's great, thanks for testing and letting us know :)