Daily Builds 1.0 - 1.4

[PROH]

What a speed :) Thanks!

[racoonart]

Temporary conversion script for converting all normal bitmaptexture maps to the new CoronaBitmap ones. Only bitmaps with supported filetype will be converted (jpg, png, gif, bmp, exr, tif, tga). Realworld texture mapping is currently not supported, those maps are also skipped.
I'll implement this one in the converter later.

There is no UI, simply run the script :)

[Ludvik Koutny]

You should get interesting speed ups mainly if you use it in environment slot to load your environment map :)

[Ludvik Koutny]

BTW Ondra forgot to add in the changelog that pFlow now again does true instancing. Means that shape instance operator instances the geometry, sort of like VrayInstancer but without VrayInstancer :]

[lacilaci]

omg.. I was just about to go to sleep :D.. not anymore I guess...

[pokoy]

Nice additions, great work! Would it be a problem to add HDR format to the new Bitmap loader?

[Ondra]

Nice additions, great work! Would it be a problem to add HDR format to the new Bitmap loader?

planned for next week

[cecofuli]

CoronaBitmap initial implementation - faster, easier, and better quality bitmap

In real production, Ondra, what the real differences? Do you have some example? 20% speed-up?
When you talk about "better quality", what do you mean? And why is CoronaBmp "easier"?

[juang3d]

20% speed up where?

In general? So if I have a frame that takes 100 minutes, will it take 80minutes with the new bitmap map?

If that is the case this is awesome!

Cheers

[Ondra]

I observed 15% speedup of total render time on one real interior scene I have, and 23% on another one. Yes, it means running the script by Deadclown before rendering will cut 100 minutes rendertime to 80 minutes. Of course result depends on how much you favor bitmaps to procedural maps, how complex are your shaders and your geometry. When there are no bitmaps, the difference will be of course 0%. But in some synthetic cases we had 120% speedup.

Cecofuli: better quality - there is an option to use bicubic filtering instead of bilinear. It helps when the map does not have sufficient resolution - for example here:

We are also working on anisotropic filtering to further improve quality.

Easier: no need to manually set gamma in older 3dsmax versions. No need to switch the map between environment and texture modes - it is determined automatically during rendering. The UI is/will be generally cleaner and more intuitive, as is rest of Corona.

[antanas]

Witcher 3 can wait a little longer tonight - this is far more interesting ))) One question though I'm a little bit concerned about bicubic filtering and memory consumption - how will it be in comparison with default one - the same, less or more, hope not the latter as you know how it is with summed area one - yeah, it does look far better but it is real ram hog too - in some cases I've been getting some really troublesome ram consumption growths - about 12gb's or even more on some heavy exterior scene after I set all used maps to use that type of filtering by some script (probably mmzorb) thus making that scene almost unrenderable as it was already chewing something round 45gig of ram before it - I know that's some extreme case but I've encountered it and am a little more than just paranoid after that ))) .

[Ondra]

our mipmaps cost 33% extra memory on top of the base size. We are not sure how 3dsmax textures are implemented, so we dont know how it will compare. If memory turns out to be a problem we will do out of core or lossy/loseless compression

[antanas]

 Yeah did some simple tests and +- noticed that 33% memory difference already, well at least in my case it can be quite problematic when some scenes as I described before are involved and probably some memory reducing out of core operations you've mentioned could be really necessary and some on\off memory conserving\speed options too and maybe not in the map itself but rather in corona's render settings for easier control when some over 1k materials are involved - yet maybe that's just my case and my stupid way of doing incredibly overweighed/badly optimized/content rich scenes so addition of those options needs some other users opinions I think.

 For CoronaBitmap's supported file formats may I suggest adding .dds support if that's possible ?

 Other than that, that map that is surely a great boon for some texture rich interior scenes and small exterior ones too not just because of the speed increase but for bicubic filtering too.

[juang3d]

That is awesome Ondra.

I'm going to install it in all the farm right away!

I'll do some tests with some scenes I'm working on right now.

Cheers!

[Alessandro]

I know it's very too early to tell something, but these are my first impressions about corona bitmap:
-absolutely faster than max bitmap, as diffuse/bump map and as environment map, good work!;
-need preview in viewport....
-need (as fast as you can ;) ) Real-world scale
-used as env, it is horizontal flipped respect max map, it's not practical...
-need rotation on axis, most of all Z
-if map path name is too long, you can't read map name
-I often use right mouse click on bitmap preview in mat editor to edit it with photoshop, but maybe I'm the only one...
-have I already said that we need real world scale? ;P

regards