Daily Builds 1.0 - 1.4

[fobus]

The scene was originally created in 2014. Trying to open in 2015 leads to crash. But it opens in 2013 with Sun animation stored well, but... But wired sky was unwired so trying to move new Sun do nothing with Environment texture (wired to sun rotation of old Sun).

[Ondra]

ok, I tried 2015 and same result. The problem is that I cannot open debug symbols for your minidump. Do you have all service packs installed?

[pokoy]

DailyBuild Jul 17 2015 - max 2016

It seems like this daily build messes up the 'legacy mode' switch in materials. Scenes where I have set this to 'off' now load with it enabled.
It was either not saving correctly in the earlier build, or this specific build fails to load them correctly.

Can anyone confirm?

[romullus]

Yep, just checked and i can confirm it... with 95% confidence :]

[pokoy]

It seems all these newer builds load the switch with 'on' state:

2015-07-17
2015-07-21
2015-07-22

I'll test now which of dailies manages to load them correctly, or if it wasn't just saving with the file. Will post when I know more.

This is a huge mess. I'll need to roll back all the files from the last days where I've already used the new sun.

[Ondra]

when new options are added, the switch gets enabled again for the new options, but it should not re-enable the old options (such as non-GGX BRDF). Overall the material appearance should not change when opening old scene in new build. Can you test that?

[pokoy]

Not sure what you mean... I wasn't aware there's another change in materials and we need to set 'legacy mode' to off again with the newer builds. Or did I misunderstand?

FYI, daily '2015-06-20 1.1 legacy hotfix' loads these in 'off' state, just like they were saved back then.

Also, saving a file with the latest daily and re-opening it warns me about 'Obsolete data format found...' as if the file was saved in an earlier version of max. Where does that come from?

[pokoy]

The legacy switch does change the appearance, see attached image.

So what exactly is the reason the legacy switch is set to 'on' now again? Changes to the BRDF?

[Ondra]

probably the bump strength and opacity mono/color changes.

Does the legacy switch change appearance when comparing the old build vs. new build (where you leave it on)?

[pokoy]

Sorry, I have no time to check that right now.

Also, without knowing the exact changes (like what the legacy switch does now as opposed to what it did weeks ago) it's hard to know what to look for. In one case 'legacy' means non-GGX BRDF, on another case the same switch means different handling of bump and opacity - this is a nightmare for testing and documenting bugs. I'd say get rid of the legacy switch completely, it's really only confusing users.

[Ondra]

meaning of the switch is simple: it will preserve the shading model used when you last saved the scene.

Legacy mode ON = no change when rendering in old/new build
Legacy mode OFF = using the latest shading model

[pokoy]

meaning of the switch is simple: it will preserve the shading model used when you last saved the scene.

Does that mean I can have a scene with materials with different legacy switch behavior in ON state based on which build they have been created in?

Also, for those who like to keep rendering with the latest shading model it means they will have to touch their files every time the BRDF changes. Since this can get very tedious, can we have a global checkbox (in the dev/debug section probably) where we can set legacy=off globally?

[pokoy]

Also, since you were suggesting the 'new' legacy switch would only switch between new and old bump and opacity behaviour: even without any bump and opacity, the switch has quite some effect on low glossiness reflectivity.

Scratching my head here, I think it's best you make some thorough tests for yourself, there may be something unintended going on.

[romullus]

Also, for those who like to keep rendering with the latest shading model it means they will have to touch their files every time the BRDF changes. Since this can get very tedious, can we have a global checkbox (in the dev/debug section probably) where we can set legacy=off globally?

You can use older material converter version for that. For some reason such option was removed in newer ones, though.

[racoonart]

You can still switch the lagacy mode OFF in newer converter versions, you just can't turn it ON again (which is possible with maxscript, but it doesn't do anything, it will be ignored by corona - on purpose)