Any change in the material balls scene ?

[Naxos]

Hello there,
Since i've installed the 1.6.x, i found that the shaderball is not rendered as beautiful as it was before...
Here is an example : (those on the right are the same materials duplicated from those on the left)



another one, where the chrome one seams ok...



Any idea ?

[Naxos]

up...

[Christa Noel]

looks like they need highlight compression ..?

[maru]

I am not aware of any changes like this. Maybe your materials in 1.5 were using some "legacy" switch?
You can increase the quality of material editor previews in system > system settings, and there are also some string options to affect the lighting in the previews: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000518663-string-options

[Naxos]

I am not aware of any changes like this. Maybe your materials in 1.5 were using some "legacy" switch?
You can increase the quality of material editor previews in system > system settings, and there are also some string options to affect the lighting in the previews: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000518663-string-options

I will have a look, Maru, but to be clear : i've installed the 1.6.2, open a already setted scene, and just duplicated the shader...
So the new shader is the same, but the icon was re-rendered, with this difference...
The scene renders the same, just the shader-ball is affected...

[Luis.Goncalves]

Here in the office we've also noted that the preview became over bright with a version update

[omar.essam]

I'm suffering this too, overbright material editor slots.

looks like they need highlight compression ..?

.. Exactly.

[Noah45]

lemme pile on

[maru]

I am 99% it's because of the terminator fix introduced in 1.6. After disabling the fix (devel/debug), the renders are identical. Ignore the bright GI splotch, it's probably UHD Cache.
I would say this brightness difference is something we can live with, in exchange for the terminator fix.

[matsu]

I made another thread on this subject: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=16464.msg103485#msg103485

The fix I use is the values

float mtlEditor.lightsIntensity = 0.75
float mtlEditor.lightsSize = 1.25

in the dev/debug dialogue.

Would love to see this fixed permanently though, since these settings are sometimes lost (possibly when opening old files?).

[maru]

float mtlEditor.lightsIntensity = 0.75
float mtlEditor.lightsSize = 1.25

This will only affect the material editor slots, and scene objects will be still brighter than before, so I am not sure if it makes any sense.

[Ondra]

i disabled terminator handling for mtl preview, to get the scene looking same as 1.5

[maru]

Does it really make sense to make the material editor consistent across the two versions, but final rendering not? Or in other words, material preview different than the final rendering?

[Christa Noel]

for me its not comfortable if the mat preview looks different with what i used to see..
but imho simply add a checkbox "enable terminator in mat.editor" in devel/debug rollout would be a good solution :)

[romullus]

I can't remember when i last time have looked at the mat-ball for other purpose than to quickly find material in editor. Certainly not after Corona interactive became available :]

[Ondra]

the thing is, material editor ball is really low-poly, something you want to avoid either way in production, and that makes the terminator removal work harder and change the result too much

[Juraj]

the thing is, material editor ball is really low-poly, something you want to avoid either way in production, and that makes the terminator removal work harder and change the result too much

Is it not possible to subdivide it ?

[Ondra]

well then it would not match the 3dsmax original... disabling terminators is easier and better solution

[maru]

I still don't get it why we want to have different result in the mat editor than in the final rendering.

[Juraj]

well then it would not match the 3dsmax original...

But is that important for anyone :- ) ? The fact the ball is rendered makes it already a lot more different.

It would still be sphere.

[Christa Noel]

I still don't get it why we want to have different result in the mat editor than in the final rendering.

i have my own standard materials which the looks in mat preview sill stay the same for years.
but if now i see it brighter than what i used to see then i just simply feels something is going wrong with my material settings even though i know that everything is okay. :)
and its not about the different result we get in the final rendering because i believe we will never renders low poly sphere in actual production ever. ;)

[Naxos]

I still don't get it why we want to have different result in the mat editor than in the final rendering.

i have my own standard materials which the looks in mat preview sill stay the same for years.
but if now i see it brighter than what i used to see then i just simply feels something is going wrong with my material settings even though i know that everything is okay. :)
and its not about the different result we get in the final rendering because i believe we will never renders low poly sphere in actual production ever. ;)

plus, the lights in the main scene are not likelly the same that in the mat editor...
Personally i use the mat editor vignettes to see how the shader will look, keeping in mind that it will probably be different regardless of the scene's lighning... But i like to think that my shader is good because of the neutral-ness of the mat editor scene...
That is why i've started this post, because once 1.6.x installed, i've felt like it was no more the case...

Also, maybe it would be nice to get some extra scenes (not only 3dsmax's sphere / cube), like they do in Maxwell : some cloth, some floor, some SSS-ready scenes... Clever !

[maru]

I still don't get it why we want to have different result in the mat editor than in the final rendering.

i have my own standard materials which the looks in mat preview sill stay the same for years.
but if now i see it brighter than what i used to see then i just simply feels something is going wrong with my material settings even though i know that everything is okay. :)
and its not about the different result we get in the final rendering because i believe we will never renders low poly sphere in actual production ever. ;)

It's not only about low poly spheres. Check out the images from my post here: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=17230.msg108730#msg108730
Imagine an abstract situation where in a new version of Corona each render would come out a bit different - for example with a slight blue hue for some reason (let's assume there was an issue with white balance, whatever). What we have now is different output in the material editor (no blue hue), and different in the final rendering (blue hue). I cannot understand why we want to have different result in the material editor, than in the final rendering, even it it's consistent with what we could see in the material editor in older versions. Shouldn't consistency between the material editor and what is actually rendered be the priority??

[Naxos]

It's not only about low poly spheres. Check out the images from my post here: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=17230.msg108730#msg108730
Imagine an abstract situation where in a new version of Corona each render would come out a bit different - for example with a slight blue hue for some reason (let's assume there was an issue with white balance, whatever). What we have now is different output in the material editor (no blue hue), and different in the final rendering (blue hue). I cannot understand why we want to have different result in the material editor, than in the final rendering, even it it's consistent with what we could see in the material editor in older versions. Shouldn't consistency between the material editor and what is actually rendered be the priority??

You're right, Maru, but the fact is that the matEditor is no longer nice and pleasant to see...
I did not understaood why there is a difference, but i guess it is a way to render faster or something ?
I just hope old scenes will not render brighter now (i have customers that need to get consistant render over time)...

Vray did that kind of bad surprise to all of us several times, asking "do you want to render as before or as now"... or close to that...
VERY confusing...
With that customer, we have spent a lot of time to validate colors with vray 2.xx... and all was faulty when 3.0 came... we do had to re-validate all the stuff... And when 3.2 came out, all was again bad and we had to validate for the third time... as you may  guess, the customer was not happy and did not want to pay those extra time...

I'm about to ligrate 100% to Corona : this only one last customer left on Vray for now (as you think, he is the biggest of my customers), and i would not want to get some problems like that in the future...

So, maybe it would be good to get an optional parameter for "terminator fix" on / off, that would be included in the scene, so i can open old scene without any problem and render as it rendered before...

BTW, can you (shortly if you don't have time enough) explain wht is "terminator fix", and why it is needed and wanted... ?

Regrads

[pokoy]

The terminator fix was introduced to suppress visible artifacts where the shadow 'ends', you had to subdivide geometry to get rid of it before. The terminator fix will now more or less hide them by shifting the shadow slightly. Depending on your geometry and lighting setup this can result in noticeable differences between old and newer Corona versions. Most of the time you won't see it, however.
To disable, get the Development/Experimental Tab to display in Corona's System Settings, and look for the Shadow Shift parameter: 0 - terminator fix enabled, 1 - terminator fix disabled.

[Juraj]

Whoa, I can assure anyone I saw like zero difference in actual scenes with terminator fix. And it helped my life tremendously as I suffered from it on pretty much every single fabric and I use those a lot. Often, even subdividing meshes into hundred million (yes, for bed and stuff).
No need to panic because the mat editor shows weird behavior, the light setup is weird there anyway.

Terminator fix is the best thing that happened to Corona, no need to worry about anything, it's been months that I've been testing it.

[Naxos]

The terminator fix was introduced to suppress visible artifacts where the shadow 'ends', you had to subdivide geometry to get rid of it before. The terminator fix will now more or less hide them by shifting the shadow slightly. Depending on your geometry and lighting setup this can result in noticeable differences between old and newer Corona versions. Most of the time you won't see it, however.
To disable, get the Development/Experimental Tab to display in Corona's System Settings, and look for the Shadow Shift parameter: 0 - terminator fix enabled, 1 - terminator fix disabled.

Nice... Will it remains with the max scene file ?... So some older scenes are off and newer ones are on ?

[Naxos]

Whoa, I can assure anyone I saw like zero difference in actual scenes with terminator fix. And it helped my life tremendously as I suffered from it on pretty much every single fabric and I use those a lot. Often, even subdividing meshes into hundred million (yes, for bed and stuff).
No need to panic because the mat editor shows weird behavior, the light setup is weird there anyway.

Terminator fix is the best thing that happened to Corona, no need to worry about anything, it's been months that I've been testing it.

I want to believe ;-)
Just fix the material editor scene so it is nice again ;-)

[Juraj]

I think Ondra already "fixed" it by taking it to previous state (no terminator fix in mat editor), should be in current daily build. Should look exactly like it did.

[Ondra]

yes, it is fixed in new daily. As I said - the material editor sphere it waaaaay too low poly for production, so I disabled terminator handling for it, as it was kinda extreme

[Naxos]

yes, it is fixed in new daily. As I said - the material editor sphere it waaaaay too low poly for production, so I disabled terminator handling for it, as it was kinda extreme

So, maybe it is not a bad idea to let us choose between several matID scenes regardless of the need...
Don't know if 3dsmax let us do that, but maybe...