railclone random materials not supported

[romullus]

So i've downloaded RC Lite 2.6.0 and gave it a try. Unless i'm doing something wrong (i have very little experience with RailClone), i don't think materials ID's randomization works with instance engine. Attaching screenshots. Would be more than happy if someone prooves me wrong.

NOT RESOLVED.

[clemens_at]

just tried it does not work here either :(

[maru]

Yes, sorry for the confusion. The limitation is that instancing engine must be turned off, although sometimes it may appear that all is fine. Here are some parts of my conversation with iToo support:

I can confirm, that the Corona Multi Texmap should be working with the latest RailClone release without any troubles with the limitation mentioned below (the Use Instancing Engine should be switched-off). Attaching a quick test image.

As mentioned in one of replies in that thread and as you can double check on following Feature Compatibility table, to get the Material Operator working with Corona Renderer, it needs to be enabled by turning off the instancing engine.

Please feel free to check more detailed information about this topic and examples in the "4 - How to Control Material IDs" chapter of our "Next Steps with RailClone" guide. Also, you might find useful following How-To: Using Bercon Gradient and MultTexture article as the way how Corona Multi Texmap can be used is very similar - in the Material ID mode.

Let me add, that the RailClone object doesn't automatically inherit any of materials used by its Segments and the user is responsible of creating a material and applying it to the Railclone object. If there are different materials applied to the source geometry, user needs to create its own multi-sub material, assigning a different material ID to each element and applying it to the whole RailClone object.

".. it works fine with "use instancing engine" on ..."

In some specific cases it may look so, because of adapting Segments to RC conditions it might result to unique parts and no instancing is used. Feel free to disable Deform - Bend & Slice options for your Segment(s), which will lead to better instancing and you'll notice that's not fully compatible with the Use Instancing Engine mode.

As mentioned previously, the Use Instancing Engine option should be switched-off.

Links mentioned in these messages:
http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/RAILCLONE/Requirements
http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/RAILCLONE/Display+Settings#DisplaySettings-Toenable/disabletheInstancingEngine
http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/RAILCLONE/4+-+How+to+Control+Matrial+IDs
http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/RAILCLONE/Next+Steps+with+RailClone
http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/RAILCLONE/Using+Bercon+Gradient+and+MultTexture

btw their support is really great so if you have trouble achieving something, I am sure they will help

[romullus]

I don't get what's fixed then, because with instancing engine turned off, material randomisation worked in RC Lite 2.4.x too. Having to turn off instancing engine, makes whole thing pretty much useless. I would like to know if it's possible in the future to have full feature set support for Corona as like Vray does?

[stevenchman]

I know this topic is old, but I've just had the same problem and found a fix for it should people still have the same issue.

For me, turning off the instancing engine did not work, and to be honest I'd rather not turn it off since the scene I'm working on is huge.  So instead, I added a MaterialByElement modifier on top of the railclone, set the random distribution to a high number and voila, it works! 

Adding the modifier does prevent the point cloud display from working though, but that's a small sacrifice since displaying as boxes work just fine.

Hope this helps.

[MarkoHorngacher]

Hi guys,

I work with RailClone 2.7.4 and Corona 1.5 and unfortunately non of the discribed
solutions are helping.
I made a Chevron Parquet and neither Corona MultiMap nor MultiTexture is working in my case...
I also tried the "materialID by element" solution....nothing helps.
Any solutions?

Thanks Marko

[maru]

Sorry for the late reply. We should have a "by element" option in Corona MultiMap in 1.6*, which should help in cases like this.
There are also some issues with Corona and MultiTexture, and MultiTexture devs are aware of them and working on a fix for some time.

*moved to 1.7
https://trello.com/b/EfPE4kPx/corona-road-map-3ds-max

[Neil Cross]

RailClone Lite 2.6.0, Corona 1.4 RC5, Max2016. Looks like it works fine - correct me if I'm wrong, I am not really familiar with RailClone.
In the IR - left is editable poly, right is the RailCloned version.
Update: instancing engine mus be off. See next page.

Thank you maru!!

[rombo]

I've noticed that the latest RC 3 is acting up with the UV Mapping Randomization provided by RC's Instancing Engine - I thought that Corona 1.7 was bringing a modifier for this functionality, so I suppose Railclone's UV mapping randomization could start working properly while supporting instancing.

Anyone knows about this? Are we going to have it all this time? :)
This would be awesome!

[-Ben-Battler-]

Well I tried using Corona's UVWRandomizer in conjunction with RailClone but according to my observations the limitation stays the same since you can't randomize the UV's by Element.
I'm really longing for that option for both CoronaMultiMap and CoronaUVWRandomizer.

[romullus]

Really, are you saying that railclone's instances are treated as elements? That would be rather strange.

[-Ben-Battler-]

Hmm only if it's a single element per RailClone segment.
On more complex segments if they were treated as seperate instances that would help already, then you could randomize by instance. But for cases like a wooden floor the randomization by element ID should work already, right?

[Ankerite]

Corona 1.7 + RailClone Lite 3.0.8
I left instance engine on, added material random in RailClone and used MaterialByElement with CoronaUvwRandomizer - it worked, but only on horizontal surfaces :(
Any idea what could be tweaked to get vertical parts working as well?

[maru]

The main issue here - "When instancing is enabled in Railclone, randomizing cannot be used, for example using Corona Multi Map" - is fixed, and this should also fix some further related issues.
The fix will be included in the upcoming V6 and its daily builds.