Okay so I've done a few tests with the plugin so far and I have quite a number of thoughts, request and suggestions, so I decided to group them all in one thread instead of splitting into separate threads.
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Hi, thank you very much for your thoughs!
- Cameras
- Two-point perspective: This seems to be a bug. I quickly tested it in my ARCHICAD and when the two-point perspective is active, Corona correctly renders a two-point perspective, but the field of view is wrong.
- Image size: you can specify the exact image size in the Corona Render dialog. Unfortunately, it would be technically challenging to synchronize these settings with the ARCHICAD render settings in the PhotoRendering dialog, so you have to copy the values manually at the moment.
As to the aspect ratio, the rendered image is automatically resized to fill the VFB window during interactive rendering. I will add an option to use the same aspect ratio as in the Corona Render dialog. - Hiding objects: Generally, adding Corona-specific properties to arbitrary elements in the project is hard. For example, Maxwell solves this problem by using a custom palette that you can use to edit Maxwell-specific properties of elements, but Corona doesn't have such palette at the moment. But it is a good idea! As a temporary solution, you can use ARCHICAD layers to hide elements from rendering.
- Lights
- IES files: this is simply not yet implemented, we will definitely support IES in CoronaLight in the future. In the meantime, the IES light from ARCHICAD library should work fine.
- Light radius: you can use the intensity parameter to control the intensity of the light. The "radius" parameter does not have clear physical meaning.
- Portals: I will add an option to mark materials as portals. It should help when lighting interior scenes.
- Grouping lights: you can add multiple lights to a single LightSelect render element. However, due to technical obstacles, the user interface for selecting the lights is very hard to use now.
- Materials
- Copy/paste: you can already copy/paste textures and colors by right-clicking them, and numbers can be copied in the usual way. Copying the whole tab is not possible now. I'm not sure how this could be added to the user interface of the editor; do you have an idea?
- Ambient occlusion, wire/edge texture: both AO and wireshading textures are already implemented in Corona, I will add them to the ARCHICAD plugin.
- Material wizard: we call this "material presets", something like this or Corona material library will be added to the plugin.
- General settings
- Batch mode: this is a good idea, we will see how this could be added.
- Proxies: you can use .obj and .cproxy files as proxies (.cproxy files can be exported from Corona Proxy in 3ds Max).
Thank you again for your time and your valuable suggestions!