Rendering for configurator

[ale.castano]

Hi guys,
I was wondering if it's possible to create an HDRI map from a scene. I need to create the HDRI from an interior scene. I remember this was possible in Vray setting up a spherical cam and FOV to 360.
Is it possible in Corona too? Thank you for your much appreciated help.

[ale.castano]

Well, to be honest it's slightly more difficult than that, just realized..
Let me explain in depth what I am aiming to achieve. I need to create a configurator for furniture. Please find attached an example.
I want to create a room. The user must have the possibility to change walls, floor and the object in it (in the attached example you can only change walls).
I will need to export PNGs with transparecy for all the pieces that should be changed, maintaing the shadows and lights.
The object should be affected by the enviromental lights and should cast shadows accordingly.
I was thinking about Shadow Catcher for the furniture piece, but overall I'm missing many steps to actually make it work correctly..
If someone could share some hints about what is the best way to approch this, I'd be very grateful.
Thank you all.

[ale.castano]

No one have a tip to share? I'm starting to believe this is more complex than expected..

[wilbertvandenbroek]

Sounds to me like you need to render a lot of different images to get the result you want. We did a configurator where our programmers created a script to import the objects (obj) and assign correct materials and lighting per type, then automaticly kick of the render. A lot of work to setup, but in configurator land this is the way to go.
I think this kind of setups are to difficult to just give a few tips. Most is custom per project, at least at my company.

[ale.castano]

Hi thanks for replying.
I kinda found a way, but'it not clean as I wish. And yes, it involves various renders to achieve.
Biggest problem for me is managing the ShadowCatcher in an interior scene keeping all lights and occlusions...

[romullus]

I'm not sure if you really need shadow catcher in this situation. I think render selected would be more suited to your needs.

[ale.castano]

Hi romullus,
What I need is to render a single object in the room with alpha and alpha shadows. Clearly the object must have correct lights/shadows from the environment. Also I was thinking about creating an HDRI directly from the scene, but I can't find a proper way to do it in max. Any halp on this too?

[romullus]

I was going with asumption that you will only need to change walls and floors, like in the example from the first post, but if there will also be some changing object inside the room, then yes, use of shadow catcher is a good idea.

Also I was thinking about creating an HDRI directly from the scene, but I can't find a proper way to do it in max. Any halp on this too?

This one is super simple. Add corona camera at the center of the enviroment, set its rotation to 0,0,0, set its projection mode to spherical, set render output aspect to 2:1, render the image and save it to HDR format.

[ale.castano]

Thank you so much romullus for the tip. I remember doing this in Vray but could not find anything about Corona. To be honest the way of doing this is pretty similar.
Back to the point, what I cannot figure out is getting a clean result. Let me explain the best solution I found:
- I render the single object with selective render, so I get the object and slpha channel.
- then I apply shadowcatcher material to the walls so I can get the shadows of the object in environment
- finally in PS I do some cleanup to the base layer (the shadowcatcheer one) and then merge it with the selective render with alpha.

This one I get what I need but I wish I could simplyfy the workflow...

[romullus]

If i understand it correctly, you shouldn't need the first step. Rendering with shadowcatcher, should already give you what you need. Could you show what you get from each pass? maybe i don't understand something, or maybe indeed there's a room for improvement in your workflow.

[ale.castano]

or maybe indeed there's a room for improvement in your workflow.

That's for sure! Overall I find it quite complicated even to explain. Attached are some examples from a quick test scene:
1 - The final image that should be on the configurator
2 - The render with shadowcatcher: there is the problem. The objects get wird when rendered, textures get kinda bleached and  cannot understand why. Here comes the need for the selective render first.

To be honest I didn't create the HDRI of the room and attached it to Shadowcatcher: now thanks to you I can try this way, maybe the lack of the HDRI causes problems.

[sprayer]

I think you need to have empty room render image and use it as background, and the same room model with shadowcatcher for composing mode, but shadows maybe wrong because it will save in linear gamma so need to adjust levels a bit of alpha in Photoshop. Also you may need to use rayswitch with shadowcatcher because it may cast white color, what you mention it

[ale.castano]

Also you may need to use rayswitch with shadowcatcher because it may cast white color, what you mention it

Yes, that's my major problem. Can you please explain to me how to do this? About the rest I do exactly what you said. Thank you so so much for your help.

[ale.castano]

Nevermind, find the tutorial..lazy me...

[ale.castano]

I believe I'm missing something, I fear I'd need to ask for your kind support again.
I used the RaySwitch on the sofa materials, but this is what I get. Still no textures, all white when I try to render..
What am I doing wrong?