Transparency versus geometry comparison

[romullus]

Did a little test to see what's the best method to make foliage in Corona. Results are self-explanatory.
Opacity texture used, was 8bit RGB tiff. Should i use grayscale image as opacity map, with method B i can get very similar render times to method C, so B is a clear winner for me. Of course, your mileage may vary ;]

[Ondra]

That makes sense. Embree can chew through any number of geometry, as long as it does not include many transparent surfaces. That involves switching over to texture evaluation, calling slow 3dsmax bitmaps, then switching back, etc.

[romullus]

Speaking about slow max's bitmaps, during this test i played a bit with filtering. I was shocked how rapidly performance is droping when one lowers blur parameter in coordinates rollout or add aditional bitmaps to material o_O

[Ondra]

lowers blur? Dont you mean increases?

[maru]

This is interesting, I would never expect such differences in rendering time.

[romullus]

lowers blur? Dont you mean increases?

No, i mean lowering. If i set texture bluring to 0.1 for diffuse, translucency and normal maps, i get about 66% performance in rays/s compare it to default bluring.

[Ondra]

omFg....

[maru]

And what if you disable filtering from Corona's ui? Does it make rendering faster or slower?

[romullus]

Strangely enough, it makes rendring slower than with filtering on and default (1.0) bluring of textures, but faster than filtering - on and bluring - 0.1
Oh my... must be my mistake somwhere.

[Juraj]

I keep the 'B' for my foliage. It's the best of both worlds, gives edge detail of mapped alpha, but still reasonable performance.

The filtering dillema, is just something I hate. Sometimes it gives of superior result, sometimes too shitty artifacts. It's odd how it affects performance.

[steyin]

So then the days of setting blur to default low value are to be gone? Interesting. I always followed Ludvik's advice on that one.

[maru]

I always disable filtering globally. :)

[Juraj]

So then the days of setting blur to default low value are to be gone? Interesting. I always followed Ludvik's advice on that one.

I always found interesting how differently people set this up.

For example:

Bertrand: Filtering OFF, but Blur kept default 1.0
Grant W: Filtering ON, but Blur adjusted to 0.01

Then there is of course, OFF + 0.01, which should in theory give the best result most close to original texture, but that often just produces artifacts, and downright doesn't work for sensitive maps (bump, glossy,etc..).

Now I am interested if this data is something handled purely by 3dsMax, or is it interpreted differently by renderers as this thread suggests ?

[Stan_But]

Bertrand: Filtering OFF, but Blur kept default 1.0
Grant W: Filtering ON, but Blur adjusted to 0.01

Interesting. But if Filtering OFF is not matter what mult. of texture blurring. Cause it is OFF

I use same setup as Maru - Filtering OFF.

[romullus]

Interesting. But if Filtering OFF is not matter what mult. of texture blurring. Cause it is OFF

I use same setup as Maru - Filtering OFF.

I am under the same impression as well.
I think, i gonna do some filtering tests soon and split the thread to separate topics.