Chaos Corona Forum

Chaos Corona for 3ds Max => [Max] General Discussion => Topic started by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 01:59:40

Title: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 01:59:40
Dear friends. It will be long read on bad english...
Everything IMHO.

I have a lot of conversation with 3D users which begin from "sorry for stupid question". By the way I have a lot of stupid questions by myself.

The best answer to question "Why Corona and not VRay?" was "Because Corona is much more simpler. Just pick render button".
But it was before... Let's remember that your main client is not 3d Guru, but 20 years old boy with 5 month of experience, which works in arch. office and must to give quick result.
Let's remember that the best vray version was 1.09. It was simple, fast engine which gave great "milky" renders. Now vray much more programmers geek and not user friendly program.

I tried to understand your RGB - sRGB connections (picker, CoronaMix texture, CoronaColor, etc.). We need a really solid base to understand this.

I sure 90% of users don't understand which color space to use and why, and when.... And more... 80% of users don't know about existence of different color spaces. Just pick color in photoshop and go on..
I understand that this is only way to get right color in max, but most of users didn't know about this problem. And you don't explain it

I think it's a time to give to community a simple user guide in terms of brighter-darker (even not reflectivity, glossiness, LUT and so on). Something like "for getting same color as in photoshop pick color in photoshop - check sRGB button - put numbers into" and so on. For users it's not interesting why, it's interesting what to do... 

All of you speak same Corona language. But we are not. To begin to google the answers is a good reason for suicide. Everyone names same things in his own way. A lot of charts, a lot of physics...
Damn, I don't need to know why I need to separate color channels in output for metals. Just tell me how to separate and I'll do it.

My feature request - to make things simpler. As Corona Converter. Even simpler.  I think the best way is to take a girl with pink bows to write this user guide. Only thing- she must not to be a programmer, or 3d artist or so on.. And with pictures of pink pony in different light conditions. ;)

PS. You have a lot of blending modes (there is not Color :( blending mode) in ColorMix Material. You have more modes then Photoshop has. Why? Because you can. Did you check if somebody somewhere sometimes used vivid light or pin light?

PPS. I'm in 3D business 22 years (from second version of 3D Studio for DOS). I made about 8000 arch. projects.  Do you know that 90% of clients sure that glass in building must be blue and don't interesting in IOR, fresnel etc.?

PPPS. I want to back to the times with pony pictures in this forum.

Sorry for longread...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jadefox on 2016-10-27, 08:43:13
Spot on! I am at a stage where I don't want to ask anything because it seems to be the same questions over and over. What is lumence? What is colour space? I am at a stage where I think to first completely leave rendering and first take on photoshop courses and photographic courses and light courses. Yes there is advanced users and I don't expect Dubcat to tell me what is a LUT. But yes Corona team should make video that preceeds actual rendering. Why? Because everybody's work would improve and Corona's reputation will sky rocket. Well at least imho. What exactly happens in a render engine. I have no idea why something would reflect in a manner because of light and then the fresnel reacts and remember the albedo ( I thought it was a diffuse) arrrggghhh. :)

Then again maybe someone can point me to a course that addresses these issues.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 09:56:13
I like Corona being simple. I don't like ponies. I hate general tendency for programs (and everything else basically) to become dumber and dumber.

(http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/b0/b07fb3fccfebfbb6c292b444c6ae4d22f2adce17332db6a74e4a4b2b986523e2.jpg)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: NicolasC on 2016-10-27, 10:12:20
I hate general tendency for programs (and everything else basically) to become dumber and dumber.
+1 on this one.
This general vulgarization tendency makes me sick. Corona is probably the simplest (or let's say, one of the simplest) engine to use, and yet very powerful. That doesn't mean rookies don't need to learn anything, come on ... "oh f**k, it's too complicated, simplify it for me so that I don't have much to learn", that's it ? CG requires learning of many concepts, just like any technical job. I won't expatiate on the subject, there would be too much to say. In a nutshell, I'm fully against the current "leveling down" occurring here and there, that's definitely not the way to go IMHO.

My 2 cents.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jadefox on 2016-10-27, 10:19:24
I agree on that Romullus

I don't want it easier as such, There are certain fundamental basics that you guys were fortunate enough to pick up in a studio environment
Many people on here actually went to varsity to study this in depth
So again all I ask is for tutorials that precede what is posted currently. The basics of materials is only basics if you understand how light
interacts with an object. What you have forgotten we still have to learn ,but there was indeed a stage in your life where you asked, what is a diffuse ?

Again I agree Corona is straightforward , I never want anything easy is life , just guide me into a direction as to spent even months on training to
understand the very fundamentals of colour and  how light reacts to this.

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Frood on 2016-10-27, 11:13:38
I don't want to ask anything because it seems to be the same questions over and over.

Maybe it makes you feel a bit better when I tell you that at least myself like especially your questions in the forums because we cannot expect that all that partially 20 year old stuff that can be googled is still valid and the best way to go. It´s allways time to reconsider certain aspects and things are changing rapidly.

Good Luck

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ondra on 2016-10-27, 11:31:04
Basically this:
(https://i.imgur.com/1SKlwFW.jpg)

2/3 of people who I meet and talk about corona have the same feedback: "there is too many controls, and there are 3 controls that are missing"


What can we do about it?
Please don't just say "keep corona simple", implying less powerful - then this thread would quickly descend into a flamerwar with people who need more control.
Only specific thing I can think of is: list any specific control which is not clear to you (either it is missing tooltip, or the tooltip does not explain it well), and we will fix that - that goes for everybody who is reading this ;). We go over all controls before every release, but it is hundreds of items and it is easy to overlook something.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: racoonart on 2016-10-27, 11:40:58
You can only make stuff "that" easy. There is a limit to everything. If you do not implement a certain amount of more "in-depth" features you will have a renderer that is not usable for serious production. You cannot make everything automatic and give the user only one button. There's enough stuff a user has to decide - and decisions need to be based on the requirements and thus technical limits.
The tendency in rendering and cg in common is that it actually gets easier to get into and make awesome stuff. But there's a huge amount of research and tool development behind it - someone has to do the homework. If you want to make "decent" stuff and only press the render button, then Corona probably already is the perfect renderer. Everything above that requires some amount of additional learning and technical background, simple as that. Corona has pretty great defaults, so even inexperienced users can handle it and learn more on the way.
I do not disagree with the idea of making stuff as simple as possible. That has been the whole philosophy behind Corona anyways. But you may question the idea about expecting a 5 months experienced artist to be as successful as someone who spend years on refining his skills.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: NicolasC on 2016-10-27, 11:57:43
But you may question the idea about expecting a 5 months experienced artist to be as successful as someone who spend years on refining his skills.
Nice summary, Deadclown ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 12:12:39
Dear friends. It will be long read on bad english...
Everything IMHO.

I have a lot of conversation with 3D users which begin from "sorry for stupid question". By the way I have a lot of stupid questions by myself.

The best answer to question "Why Corona and not VRay?" was "Because Corona is much more simpler. Just pick render button".
But it was before... Let's remember that your main client is not 3d Guru, but 20 years old boy with 5 month of experience, which works in arch. office and must to give quick result.
Let's remember that the best vray version was 1.09. It was simple, fast engine which gave great "milky" renders. Now vray much more programmers geek and not user friendly program.

I tried to understand your RGB - sRGB connections (picker, CoronaMix texture, CoronaColor, etc.). We need a really solid base to understand this.

I sure 90% of users don't understand which color space to use and why, and when.... And more... 80% of users don't know about existence of different color spaces. Just pick color in photoshop and go on..
I understand that this is only way to get right color in max, but most of users didn't know about this problem. And you don't explain it

I think it's a time to give to community a simple user guide in terms of brighter-darker (even not reflectivity, glossiness, LUT and so on). Something like "for getting same color as in photoshop pick color in photoshop - check sRGB button - put numbers into" and so on. For users it's not interesting why, it's interesting what to do... 

All of you speak same Corona language. But we are not. To begin to google the answers is a good reason for suicide. Everyone names same things in his own way. A lot of charts, a lot of physics...
Damn, I don't need to know why I need to separate color channels in output for metals. Just tell me how to separate and I'll do it.

My feature request - to make things simpler. As Corona Converter. Even simpler.  I think the best way is to take a girl with pink bows to write this user guide. Only thing- she must not to be a programmer, or 3d artist or so on.. And with pictures of pink pony in different light conditions. ;)

PS. You have a lot of blending modes (there is not Color :( blending mode) in ColorMix Material. You have more modes then Photoshop has. Why? Because you can. Did you check if somebody somewhere sometimes used vivid light or pin light?

PPS. I'm in 3D business 22 years (from second version of 3D Studio for DOS). I made about 8000 arch. projects.  Do you know that 90% of clients sure that glass in building must be blue and don't interesting in IOR, fresnel etc.?

PPPS. I want to back to the times with pony pictures in this forum.

Sorry for longread...

Personally Corona is one of the simplest render engines out there. Out of the box, just hit render and you can go with it.

As for some more technical functions inside the engine, these are elements which a PRO 3D artist should have learned in the past and should know already! This is your profession and job and as all the jobs and professions around the globe, if you want to be called a PRO then study and learn all the tricks & tips and physically based workflows. Learn to use the types of maps and their combinations, light setups, color rules, photography, ecc. This is why you would like to call yourself a PRO and ask to your clients a good amount of money for what you're able to produce. Cause if you manage to work with all the above, then you'll make the difference...

If not, just set up your scene as you know and hit render.

Corona is a perfect combination of simple setup or who wants a PRO setup and all the technical things we're talking in this forum I think are not only Corona related but can be applied to all the rendering engines in general. So Corona must not get simpler than it is, cause if it does, I personally won't use it...

 
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ondra on 2016-10-27, 12:31:36
lets not turn this thread into a "corona is simple and great and hurr and durr" circlejerk.

Is corona fairly simple for most users? Yes

Is corona too complicated for others? Yes

How to make corona simpler while retaining the power? What controls are "bad"? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear yours!
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: sprayer on 2016-10-27, 13:01:15
it just like some driver software for example for mechanical keyboards with rgb light, you can see most of them have the same features but not all are user friendly, compare for example steelseries engine for all device and tesoro software for each separately.

GUI  should be intuitive for simplicity all. In corona same here, some parameters for example then in study corona i am spend much time to find self illumination in advance parameters, compare to others render engine there its at basic parameters. Some parameter like shadow catcher shadow amount have gradation 0.1-10 why 10? not 100 like in most parameters it will make more understandable for common users. Tools for VFB look complicate now, in 1.3 it was fine. Not clever idea to make changeable parameters in VFB like denoise but to enable go to another menu.

Corona will add more features and will be more complicate to understanding. In speedtree many parameters but in one rollout, if you remember brazil r\s was the same pretty simple render engine also have one rollout without tabs what i always switch to find what i want - can't remember it -_-
It just my thoughts.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 13:13:42
lets not turn this thread into a "corona is simple and great and hurr and durr" circlejerk.

Is corona fairly simple for most users? Yes

Is corona too complicated for others? Yes

How to make corona simpler while retaining the power? What controls are "bad"? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear yours!

Do you really guys think Corona has some difficult controls over there? I mean, yes, some things can get better but why simpler? Is making it simpler than it is, going to kill productivity for us 3D artists?
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ondra on 2016-10-27, 13:17:29

Do you really guys think Corona has some difficult controls over there? I mean, yes, some things can get better but why simpler? Is making it simpler than it is, going to kill productivity for us 3D artists?

(https://i.imgur.com/1SKlwFW.jpg)

You are a hard place. Some users are rocks, and I actually meet a lot of them at conferences etc.

We would like to make corona simpler without removing flexibility. It is just pretty hard to do. So... ideas? ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-27, 13:49:27
In my mind all this problems does not apply to the renderer itself/
Render Engine it is mainly more or less comfortable environment only for simple pressing button /Render/:)
90% of the whole work, this is softwares, in which the work is done /Cinema, 3d max, Photoshop, Maya and etc./
Placement of the light source in the scene, which HDR to put in environment slot, selection and editing of textures and materials, modeling /which renderer to do has nothing to do/,
It is not determined by the renderer, but determined with the taste, talent and technical skills in this software , by the current User///
In other words, For "Pink Pony" will have explain to first the basis of work in current 3d
software, Modeling, Compositing Software and etc, and finally to show where the button "RENDER" exist:)
This well-known problem for today, when everyone to knows how to download full ready models of chairs from internet and beautifully their spread,---- by clicking on button, suggests that to get good results///
Nothing to do///
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-27, 13:50:25
possible of course add to each menu button tab:
Noob/Professional/Genius
same in Vray, which will greatly facilitate the task of finding the right tick and solves all problems  :)))
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: GabaCGStudio on 2016-10-27, 14:27:06
I don't like ponies.

i don't like this:
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=13636.0;attach=54015;image)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: vhector on 2016-10-27, 14:58:24
Simple,.... go use the ac6 version if you think the new features ar to complecated...... And it's free..

Because, I don't want to go back... interactive lightmixure and stuff... Me lika play.....
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: sebastian___ on 2016-10-27, 15:16:07
I think Corona user interface elements are simple enough. I know there is a help article explaining with pics what LSM and GI vs AA is, but is there a video tutorial too with some practical examples and maybe rare cases when you would want to increase/decrease LSM ?
Perhaps for faster preview purposes, when you don't care about AA, but care for the overall picture quality.

Or you could just make the interface like this :

Perhaps with a little mario like character or mr clippy, running and slapping the mouse cursor if you touch something you shouldn't.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/Bryce5screenshot.jpg)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: TomG on 2016-10-27, 15:29:16
Splitting off some things as actionable items, let us know about which parameters or tooltips you find hardest to understand. Feel free to keep the general conversation here going of course, but nice to have specific information distilled out in one place, in this case to help with tooltip improvements or see where new tutorials might be beneficial.

https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,13645.msg87896

Thanks!
  Tom
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Sintel on 2016-10-27, 15:54:19
I don't like ponies.

i don't like this:
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=13636.0;attach=54015;image)

Same mind here
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: aldola on 2016-10-27, 16:17:05
i remember the days of learning advanced irrandiance map parameters to avoid splotches, antialiasing settings, and all kind of optimizations to not have huge render times..

now with corona this is gone..  sincerely i don´t understand people that want it simpler than it is
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 16:37:25
There is one very common misconception that flexibility always equals to complexity. I remember it especially from my Mental Ray days, when whenever I would mention that something in Mental Ray is unnecessarily complicated, a mob of die hard users would storm me with arguments like "But look how flexible it is, it needs to have all these controls and wonky workflows because in the real production you often need to supersample the quantum waveform subsampler!"

In reality, settings can be easily divided into three groups: Visual (Scene look), Performance and Utility (System) and you can see how Corona render settings UI follows this division philosophy. While Corona team works at adding more Visual and Performance settings to make sure Corona can withstand all sorts of production requirements, they at the same time keep working on the smarter mechanism that allows them to remove Performance settings, and handle them automatically under the hood, to lift the burden of tweaking from users' backs.

If you need to render hair and skin, and Corona does not support hair and skin, then there is no question that hair and skin should sooner or later be added, because it becomes a matter of "I can vs I can not do the task with my renderer". Where as performance settings usually only balance output between speed or quality, they do not affect your image in artistic way. You never say "I want to keep my displacement less detailed because it looks better" or "I want to keep my render noisy/flickering because I like that style". So those can be removed without issues.

Then there is an issue of the amount of artistic settings. You will have to face the truth here, and realize you can't have your own renderer with exact feature set cut out just for you. If you do archviz, and don't use shadowcatcher or rayswitcher or hair or skin, that doesn't mean those things should be absent. On the contrary, they may save you migration to different renderer one day, when some more unexpected requirement comes from your client.

Now, it doesn't mean Corona will have to become as complex as V-Ray for example in order to become fully featured renderer. If you compare main features of Corona to for example V-Ray, you will realize there's not really that much more catching up to do. In general, it's just Hair, Skin shader and 3D volumetrics. Hair will be in form of a modifier and one new material, skin shader will be another new material, and 3D volumetric will be atmospheric effects. None of these need to have a single knob in render settings. If you are archviz user and will never use these, they will be out of your way.

Again, to clarify, the preconception that if Corona catches up with V-Ray, it will be equally as complicated is simply wrong. Corona team is already 80% there, and if anything, they are actually cleaning the UI up. You can see the effort for example in the clean up of several settings inside of the separate system-wide settings window, where settings that are not often accessed got out of your way.

Now, there is a proposal on the table to do even bigger cleanup in one of the future version. Basically, right now, render settings acts as a centralized dashboard of the entire scene, while there are other renderers that adopted arguably better solution of putting most of the settings into appropriate scene elements. This is how it would look in practice:
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=13636.0;attach=54020)

And this is how render settings could potentially look after the cleanup.
(https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=13636.0;attach=54022)

If everything went well, we could eventually achieve a state where you would need to open render settings only in some rare cases, where you would need to do advanced things, such as setup material override, distributed rendering, etc... but if you were just after look development and scene building, you could stay completely away from them.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 16:45:57
Quote
Simple,.... go use the ac6 version if you think the new features ar to complecated...... And it's free..

Because, I don't want to go back... interactive lightmixure and stuff... Me lika play.....

As I understand this type of users - they sure that they are pretty familar with current options.

Try to explain me why in color picker with sRGB "on" I have RGB values in sRGB and HSB in RGB.

The reason for this post was announced PBR and compatibility with Megascans. I spent 2 days in trying to use this and can't.

You need to use Glossy in linear space but albedo and specularity map in sRGB.
I made a standart material with this maps and converted it into Corona.
If you use specular map in specular map slot in standart - Corona just dismiss it.
If you use specular map in specular level slot - Corona translate it as reflection.
But if you use it in sRGB mode you get reflectivity 4%.
And so on.

Dear user. Are you sure that you understand differents between specularity in megascans terms and reflectivity in Corona terms? And how to translate one to another. I don't.

I vote for all new Corona options. But explain please when and how to use them.

If you give Pinlight blending mode - explain what is use case? Even in Photoshop it's not cleare ;)
If you announce Megascans - explain please how to translate it.

Videotutorials - it's great but take a lot of time for you to prepare them. And take in mind that they are more for beginers. Other way you spend a lot of time to listen for all this things, that you always know in hope to find what you are really need. 

Simple help file will be great here:
1. Choose map...
2. Change Gamma override to 1.
3. Put in reflection glossy slot ...
and so on...


When we talk about PBR - explain please how to use all this that it will be PBR.

 
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Frood on 2016-10-27, 17:17:29
It is just pretty hard to do. So... ideas? ;)

Without showing up with the large scale concept but almost only reading comments about showing/hiding stuff (UI discussion) here´s a small mixed snack. Meanwhile Rawa posted the maximum thinkable UI cleanup and there are overlaps, posting it anyway as is.

A) Adaptivity/Noise level/stop condition handling

- try to establish noise level to generally control image quality and as primary stop condition, hide passes/pass limit (-> dev stuff)
- make recalc interval TIME dependend and/or
- make adaptivity working on slaves again, while their results contribute to the calculated noise level and recalc interval just like rendering a pass locally

B) Camera handling / override confusion

- try to remove Camera tab completely from render setup, call it "Post" as in cVFB, remove all DOF/photographic stuff from there to lower those camera override confusions, then:

- split cCameraMod into cCameraMod ("Basic Settings", "Camera Projection", add motion blur overrides here and finally change DOF force off to real DOF override there, see mantis issue #1360) and another mod called maybe "cPostMod" with "Tone Mapping", "Bloom and Glare", "Vignette", add "LUT opacity" and "Denoise amount" there with potential to get extended.

- create a live link from/to cVFB to cCameraMod/physicalCamera

C) Defaults that work fine usually but need to be in users grasp

- move MSI, ray depth, LSM and GI/AA and Image Filter (maybe not including highlight clamping) to dev stuff sandbox (which is de facto the "advanced users menu" for parameters which may stay or will get automated)


Good Luck



Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: burnin on 2016-10-27, 17:33:26
It is OK to be sorry for being ignorant. I personally appreciate modesty VS arrogance.
As it just looks like many have skipped learning in school. Really, something so common for 70-80% of population.
With sources nowadays available all over... you could employ yourself to learn or find another who already knows his shit & consult with.
Any way you look at it, it takes time, effort, resources - it is complex & that's why quality and well balanced works are rare and valued accordingly. But as ignorant ppl are being ignorant, everything to them is simple magic = lazy cheap.
So please, don't complain for being careless or negligent.
Remember (if there's some knowledge, experience within you to memorize from), the house is built from the ground up, so base your foundations well. 
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 17:39:36
2 Rawalanche.

This is a very good example.
You show a lot of settings and we are really need all of them.
But!  You are absolutely right in your conception only if I would understand your logic and your language. I mean Corona language.
How will I know where to look for that moved settings without help file? To search in forum?
You spent a lot of time with programmers and 3d Guru - so you don't meet somebody that doesn't know about sRGB or translucency. Help him.

Imagine for a second a new user which downloaded the trial version. He doesn't know your Corona language. Rayswitch and CoronaVolume is clear for you, but not for him.
He is ready to learn but where? There is a lot information now comparing to alpha version.

I know how much work you need to do for keep things clear.
When I bought 3dsMax version 3, I got 3 books of user guide about 1000 pages everyone. But I had no question.
With Corona I have only not-friendly Q&A, not friendly search in this forum and sometimes answers of other users, that 70% of them are just wrong.
That's a problem.

Here is my point: I sure that for your business (all of us just need that your business will be good) good documentation at this point much more important then Hair-Fur and moving settings from one window to another.

And yes, I really respect your work with or without pony. And yes, I like this yellow smile at the bottom...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: burnin on 2016-10-27, 17:55:46
So you rather go to the mcdonald's restaurant instead of a good local one or even better buy locally grown and make your own dish.
In such case sickness serves you right.

Another point is what you see & feel now, momentarily as simple is then again complex for another, inexperienced you.
Be reasonable, contemplate on many different perspectives. Even 2D has two sides at least.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 17:58:52
2 Rawalanche.

This is a very good example.
You show a lot of settings and we are really need all of them.
But!  You are absolutely right in your conception only if I would understand your logic and your language. I mean Corona language.
How will I know where to look for that moved settings without help file? To search in forum?
You spent a lot of time with programmers and 3d Guru - so you don't meet somebody that doesn't know about sRGB or translucency. Help him.

Imagine for a second a new user which downloaded the trial version. He doesn't know your Corona language. Rayswitch and CoronaVolume is clear for you, but not for him.
He is ready to learn but where? There is a lot information now comparing to alpha version.

I know how much work you need to do for keep things clear.
When I bought 3dsMax version 3, I got 3 books of user guide about 1000 pages everyone. But I had no question.
With Corona I have only not-friendly Q&A, not friendly search in this forum and sometimes answers of other users, that 70% of them are just wrong.
That's a problem.

Here is my point: I sure that for your business (all of us just need that your business will be good) good documentation at this point much more important then Hair-Fur and moving settings from one window to another.

And yes, I really respect your work with or without pony. And yes, I like this yellow smile at the bottom...

Well, renderer should always suit the majority, but it will never suit everyone. You are one of the very few people who feel they do not understand Corona and who require manual. For majority of the users, Corona is so simple they can get around with just tooltips.

As for the rayswitcher, it actually seems not that many people use environment overrides, so those few who use them for advanced stuff would probably not have too much of a hard time switching to new workflow.

Although here's what I find confusing:

You said you bought Max 3, that you have read through all the manuals, and that you have 22 years of 3D experience. The thing is color management (sRGB vs Linear) is 3ds Max standard, not a Corona standard, Corona just honors 3ds Max standards, as pretty much every other renderer plugin for 3ds Max, including the most used one: V-Ray.

3ds Max comes with Mental Ray as default renderer. Mental Ray uses rayswitcher workflow for environment overrides, so that could be considered 3ds Max standard. Volume effects of all native 3ds Max renderers reside in Environment and Effects window. Not only in native renderers, but also most of the plugin renderers, again including the most used one: V-Ray. So if a V-Ray user or user of one of the native 3ds Max renderers comes to Corona with intention to setup global atmospheric volume, he would have it a lot easier if Corona had global volumes where they belong. In this case, Corona actually doesn't honor 3ds Max standards.

So you describe yourself as oldschool 3ds Max user with 22 years of experience, yet you seem struggle with basics of general computer graphics knowledge. Understanding what translucency is by no means requires "spending time with programmers" and can even be explained to a person with 0 CG knowledge in a few minutes.

Moreover, you struggle to differ which parts are Corona's responsibility and which parts are 3ds Max's responsibility. General color management (sRGB, etc...) is usually handled by DCC software, 3ds Max in this case, not a renderer. Yes, renderer can facilitate some of it from its side, but should never go too hard against convention of its host application.

There is not that much of a Corona language in Corona. There's mainly 3ds Max language, and there are general renderer conventions. Some renderers honor them more, such as Corona, V-Ray, Mental Ray, ART, etc... while others less, such as Fstorm, Indigo, Octane, and so on...

In General, CG will always require at least some level of expertise and skill, no matter how simple rendering tools get. That's why our salaries are not at janitor level...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 17:59:06
It is OK to be sorry for being ignorant. I personally appreciate modesty VS arrogance.
As it just looks like many have skipped learning in school. Really, something so common for 70-80% of population.
With sources nowadays available all over... you could employ yourself to learn or find another who already knows his shit & consult with.
Any way you look at it, it takes time, effort, resources - it is complex & that's why quality and well balanced works are rare and valued accordingly. But as ignorant ppl are being ignorant, everything to them is simple magic = lazy cheap.
So please, don't complain for being careless or negligent.
Remember (if there's some knowledge, experience within you to memorize from), the house is built from the ground up, so base your foundations well.

I don't talk personally about you, but this is common and biggest mistake.
Never google. Never. Only documentation.
There is so much different concepts. Every devloper and every user has his own.
And main problem:
1. Somebody, who knows to work, is working. He hasn't time.
2. Somebody, who doesn't know to work, goes to teach.
3. Somebody who doesn't know to teach, goes to teach how to teach.

There was a large contest at evermotion. 1-st - 3-rd places was for free downloading.
All of them made a basic mistakes, like water IOR=2.0 and so on, but renders was great. Do you know how much people learned from this and how much holly wars were after this?!
Never learn from internet, 0nly documentation.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Fluss on 2016-10-27, 18:24:09

Personally Corona is one of the simplest render engines out there. Out of the box, just hit render and you can go with it.

As for some more technical functions inside the engine, these are elements which a PRO 3D artist should have learned in the past and should know already! This is your profession and job and as all the jobs and professions around the globe, if you want to be called a PRO then study and learn all the tricks & tips and physically based workflows. Learn to use the types of maps and their combinations, light setups, color rules, photography, ecc. This is why you would like to call yourself a PRO and ask to your clients a good amount of money for what you're able to produce. Cause if you manage to work with all the above, then you'll make the difference...

If not, just set up your scene as you know and hit render.

Corona is a perfect combination of simple setup or who wants a PRO setup and all the technical things we're talking in this forum I think are not only Corona related but can be applied to all the rendering engines in general. So Corona must not get simpler than it is, cause if it does, I personally won't use it...

You said everything. Corona is already simple. Push the render button and you get a beautifull render... when you know how to build your scene. It is a renderer, not a scene maker. Asking people to write guides is a pure lack of interest to me. Corona needs a good documentation which mention what it does and how he does it. You have to understand what you do to do it better... So the learning phase is essential to me.

Quote
We need a really solid base to understand this
That's why pros are pros

Quote
I sure 90% of users don't understand which color space to use and why, and when
That's why pros are pros

etc... etc...

Quote
All of you speak same Corona language. But we are not.
So learn it !

Quote
Let's remember that your main client is not 3d Guru, but 20 years old boy with 5 month of experience, which works in arch. office and must to give quick result.
Not sure about this..

But we (pros) need versatility. And we needs some controls you (unwarned users) don't understand. So don't use these or improve your knowledge to do so. We can leave professionnally because of that knowledge...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: GabaCGStudio on 2016-10-27, 18:37:44
Never learn from internet.

well ... you can use renderman :))
or Arnold :D
or v-ray with GI Flicker ... :]
or MR with very GI Flicker !! :0
or FinalRender :|
or etc ... :\
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 18:50:04
2 Rawalanche

Last thing which I have in mind is to make here holly war.

I really never opened Mental. They made it a part of 3d max some years ago. I didn't need it.
sRGB wasn't 3d max standart always. 12 years ago nobody listen about gamma 2.2. Today it's hard to believe, I know. :)

And yes, I don't know what Corona standard and where is Max responsibility.

For programmer may be it's a shame, for user - no. Even if I know what is translucency ;)

This dialog is best example of misunderstanding between user and programmer.

My goal - to have more clients, your goal to have more users I think. I am not a guru 3d artist and I am OK with it. But I have about 40 projects per month, it's not bad for our small country. So some things I do right, I think.

Only thing which I want to say you: If you want more users, don't believe in intuitivite UI, feelings and googling... Believe in documentation. With good help file it's not matter where you put the settings. We'll find them.

Without help file you'll find a lot of confused users, and it's not what I wish you.

PS. As I see you don't believe that I have some experience... It's sad...  I am 3dcenter.ru user from 2002 ...  There are links to render which I made in about 1997 without gamma 2.2, without GI and without windows at all. It was DOS. It was comp 486, with 8 MB of RAM.
http://as90.com/gallery/com_hotel/her_2a.jpg
http://as90.com/com_hotel.html
So don't tell me about Mental standarts. As user I don't need this information... 
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 19:07:58
I never said I do not believe your experience. I just said I find it strange that after so many years of experience, you express yourself in a way that makes it seem as if you still had trouble understanding basic rendering concepts.

Also, I think the UI that is so intuitive you rarely need documentation is actually one of the main reason people like to use Corona, so saying "If you want more users, don't believe in intuitivite UI, feelings and googling... Believe in documentation." is quite off IMHO

Yeah... The "You don't need intuitive UI as long as you have deep enough documentation" argument doesn't hold really well... actually... it does not hold at all :)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 19:09:15
2 Rawalanche
Nevermind what we wright here, be sure in my full respect.

2 Other kind users which begin to teach me.

Your best answer would be to try to explain me this issues.


Try to explain me why in color picker with sRGB "on" I have RGB values in sRGB and HSB in RGB.

The reason for this post was announced PBR and compatibility with Megascans. I spent 2 days in trying to use this and can't.

You need to use Glossy in linear space but albedo and specularity map in sRGB.
I made a standart material with this maps and converted it into Corona.
If you use specular map in specular map slot in standart - Corona just dismiss it.
If you use specular map in specular level slot - Corona translate it as reflection.
But if you use it in sRGB mode you get reflectivity 4%.
And so on.

When we talk about PBR - explain please how to use all this that it will be PBR.

Ah, you didn't test it... You don't understand what I am about.... ok, ok... sorry.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 19:09:29
2 Rawalanche

Last thing which I have in mind is to make here holly war.

I really never opened Mental. They made it a part of 3d max some years ago. I didn't need it.
sRGB wasn't 3d max standart always. 12 years ago nobody listen about gamma 2.2. Today it's hard to believe, I know. :)

And yes, I don't know what Corona standard and where is Max responsibility.

For programmer may be it's a shame, for user - no. Even if I know what is translucency ;)

This dialog is best example of misunderstanding between user and programmer.

My goal - to have more clients, your goal to have more users I think. I am not a guru 3d artist and I am OK with it. But I have about 40 projects per month, it's not bad for our small country. So some things I do right, I think.

Only thing which I want to say you: If you want more users, don't believe in intuitivite UI, feelings and googling... Believe in documentation. With good help file it's not matter where you put the settings. We'll find them.

Without help file you'll find a lot of confused users, and it's not what I wish you.

PS. As I see you don't believe that I have some experience... It's sad...  I am 3dcenter.ru user from 2002 ...  There are links to render which I made in about 1997 without gamma 2.2, without GI and without windows at all. It was DOS. It was comp 486, with 8 MB of RAM.
http://as90.com/gallery/com_hotel/her_2a.jpg
http://as90.com/com_hotel.html
So don't tell me about Mental standarts. As user I don't need this information...

40 projects per month?!? O.o

I am doing visualization since 1994 and from my experience, more talented you're less projects you are able to get. High quality renders take a very long time to prepare and to tweak so is hard to keep up with a lot of work in the same time. One month has 20 working days, I am impressed you can get 40 projects in the same time... That means quality is not your target, hi budget is not your target, "complicated" render engines are not your target. Now I understand why you want to simplify Corona, settings, ecc...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 19:18:29
And i thought that only new genertion is so ignorant...

As for the rayswitcher, it actually seems not that many people use environment overrides, so those few who use them for advanced stuff would probably not have too much of a hard time switching to new workflow.

I'm one of those few? people. I use enviroment overrides for about 80-90% of my renderings and i don't use it for advanced stuff. Frankly, i don't understand what this new forkflow will be. Will i have to plug rayswitch map to three thousand materials or what?
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 19:20:38
Alright, those are actually quite easy to explain:

You need to use Glossy in linear space but albedo and specularity map in sRGB.
This is because 3ds Max's bitmap load dialog handles input color space, and it handles them based on file format. If your map is for example jpg, 3ds Max knows most of the jpg maps are sRGB, so it loads them as such. 3ds Max doesn't have artificial intelligence to know if you are loading diffuse map, specular map or glossiness, It's up to you to specify. Corona can't automatically modify gamma of the incoming map based on which slot it is plugged in, because not every pipeline is the same. Some softwares and studio pipelines save glosiness maps as linear, others as sRGB, there's no such thing as one standard. There are different conventions, some more reasonable, other less, but if Corona did modify color space internally in CoronaMTL, that would cause a lot more problems than benefits, because it would be against 3ds Max standards and expectations of pretty much all existing users.

I made a standart material with this maps and converted it into Corona.
If you use specular map in specular map slot in standart - Corona just dismiss it.
If you use specular map in specular level slot - Corona translate it as reflection.
But if you use it in sRGB mode you get reflectivity 4%.


Standard material is 3ds Max scanline renderer material, it is not Corona material. It has only very basic rudimentary support. And because it renders fake highlights without reflections, a feature which would be pointless and problematic to implement into physically based path tracer such as corona, only diffuse is supported, and specularity is "somewhat" translated to glossy reflection. But if you use standard materials with Corona, you use material of a different renderer. It's same as with V-Ray, which partially supports Mental Ray's Arch&Design material, but no one in their right mind would start shading their V-Ray scene with Mental Ray materials. The rudimentary support of the other renderer material is there only for rare cases so that unsupported material doesn't render completely black.



Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 19:23:28
I'm one of those few? people. I use enviroment overrides for about 80-90% of my renderings and i don't use it for advanced stuff. Frankly, i don't understand what this new forkflow will be. Will i have to plug rayswitch map to three thousand materials or what?

Hehe, no, definitely not. You would just plug rayswitcher into environment slot, and plug your reflection environment into reflection slot, etc... But it's still up for the discussion... This one in particular is not clear benefit, but more of an exchange - it will mean cleaner UI, but slightly less convenient environment override workflow, so the question here really is if there's enough frequent users of environment overrides for it to be worth having them in form of render settings panel rather than rayswitch map that goes into environment slot :)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: PROH on 2016-10-27, 19:37:05
Well I for one uses the environment override slots almost daily, so I would definitely NOT wote for this exchange :)

This is actually one of the "easy" things I like about Corona.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 19:52:57
2 Rawalanche My problem that I know more then one basic rendering concept. Sorry if I didn't explain good the issue.

I take some textures of Megascans after your announcement. My goal was to get physically correct material (they talk that textures are correct)
They have albedo, specularity and glossy for our workflow.
Albedo in sRGB and glossy linear it's ok (I hope their glossy and corona glossy are the same.)
How to manage specularity map? It looks to dark. I used standart map because it has specularity slots, to check where it goes after conversion. I check that specularity map ignored by convertor, but specularity level goes to reflection. I think so by myself but always good to check. It's only reason for standart material using.

When I put it in reflection slot in sRGB I got reflectivity about 4%. Even in linear mode I get only 20% for simplest material (water). Other materials as mud, rocks, sand much less. But they ask to use specularity in sRGB mode. So only 4%.
So question was how to get right reflection and if their specularity is really our reflection. I didn't get the answer at this forum, didn't find believable answer in internet. Some internet guru talk a lot of stupid things. And all this including a hundreds of tests took 2 days from me. It's bad.

I thank that if Corona team announced PBR and Megascans, it's possible to get PB material.
Some times ago Juraj talk about his problem with stucco from Megascans. But by myself I tested it only now.

After this I wrote in future requests about help file. I still sure it may help alot to users which try to work and not to teach....



2 Dionysios.TS . You are absolutely right. Here we may close this dispute. I have 7 people in two offices and 5 freelancers, but all finishes I make by myself. And once more, we are small 7 Mln. people country. May be something wrong in your quality-time-price chain? But it's your business. I am going to learn 3D kitchen. Great soft. Regards.


Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 20:18:14
Hehe, no, definitely not. You would just plug rayswitcher into environment slot, and plug your reflection environment into reflection slot, etc... But it's still up for the discussion... This one in particular is not clear benefit, but more of an exchange - it will mean cleaner UI, but slightly less convenient environment override workflow, so the question here really is if there's enough frequent users of environment overrides for it to be worth having them in form of render settings panel rather than rayswitch map that goes into environment slot :)

Ok, that's sounds better. I would like that overrides would stay where they are too, but it won't be the end of the world if it moves to enviroment. The resonings are doubtful, but whatever... as long as we won't be forced to spam material editor with hundreds rayswitch maps :]
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-27, 20:49:48
2 Rawalanche My problem that I know more then one basic rendering concept. Sorry if I didn't explain good the issue.

I take some textures of Megascans after your announcement. My goal was to get physically correct material (they talk that textures are correct)
They have albedo, specularity and glossy for our workflow.
Albedo in sRGB and glossy linear it's ok (I hope their glossy and corona glossy are the same.)
How to manage specularity map? It looks to dark. I used standart map because it has specularity slots, to check where it goes after conversion. I check that specularity map ignored by convertor, but specularity level goes to reflection. I think so by myself but always good to check. It's only reason for standart material using.

When I put it in reflection slot in sRGB I got reflectivity about 4%. Even in linear mode I get only 20% for simplest material (water). Other materials as mud, rocks, sand much less. But they ask to use specularity in sRGB mode. So only 4%.
So question was how to get right reflection and if their specularity is really our reflection. I didn't get the answer at this forum, didn't find believable answer in internet. Some internet guru talk a lot of stupid things. And all this including a hundreds of tests took 2 days from me. It's bad.

I thank that if Corona team announced PBR and Megascans, it's possible to get PB material.
Some times ago Juraj talk about his problem with stucco from Megascans. But by myself I tested it only now.

After this I wrote in future requests about help file. I still sure it may help alot to users which try to work and not to teach....



2 Dionysios.TS . You are absolutely right. Here we may close this dispute. I have 7 people in two offices and 5 freelancers, but all finishes I make by myself. And once more, we are small 7 Mln. people country. May be something wrong in your quality-time-price chain? But it's your business. I am going to learn 3D kitchen. Great soft. Regards.

It is something I do not understand but for what such insane difficulty---/first to work with a standard material and than to convent this via script to Corona material /Why not start right away with Corona mat,
if still going to render whole scene with Corona render:)
And usually do not happen such a thing,/----------- to take something
from the material or model library, that it was not necessary to change something for current situation of scene and lighting.
Each material and geometry is usually always have to further customize.
For Example:
all the old scenes from Archmodels library generally made in Gamma 1.0-1.8, and this not a fault of Corona render :)

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 20:57:22
The major thing in PBR (theoretically) that you don't need to customize. It's physically correct.

As photocorrection from Den Margulis possible for colorblinds.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: racoonart on 2016-10-27, 21:08:39
Never learn from internet, 0nly documentation.
I would recommend not to try learning maxscript.


Regarding the enviroment override: For me this is a bit too simplified. It may be true that mental ray did it and you can see it as a standard, but I find that a lot more complicated and annoying to use. You can't edit it in place but have to drag and drop the map to a material editor slot, and you can't see which overrides are active right away.
Well, and be prepared for a bunch of people complaining about it for months ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-27, 21:12:10
The major thing in PBR (theoretically) that you don't need to customize. It's physically correct.

As photocorrection from Den Margulis possible for colorblinds.

physically correct -----------It is not the first time I hear this wonderful phrase:)
for which situation is "correct"-(day,night, Corona sky or Vray sky or HDR, interior or exterior/
it does not matter if the render
in a dark room with no light:)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 21:13:46
2 Rawalanche My problem that I know more then one basic rendering concept. Sorry if I didn't explain good the issue.

I take some textures of Megascans after your announcement. My goal was to get physically correct material (they talk that textures are correct)
They have albedo, specularity and glossy for our workflow.
Albedo in sRGB and glossy linear it's ok (I hope their glossy and corona glossy are the same.)
How to manage specularity map? It looks to dark. I used standart map because it has specularity slots, to check where it goes after conversion. I check that specularity map ignored by convertor, but specularity level goes to reflection. I think so by myself but always good to check. It's only reason for standart material using.

When I put it in reflection slot in sRGB I got reflectivity about 4%. Even in linear mode I get only 20% for simplest material (water). Other materials as mud, rocks, sand much less. But they ask to use specularity in sRGB mode. So only 4%.
So question was how to get right reflection and if their specularity is really our reflection. I didn't get the answer at this forum, didn't find believable answer in internet. Some internet guru talk a lot of stupid things. And all this including a hundreds of tests took 2 days from me. It's bad.

I thank that if Corona team announced PBR and Megascans, it's possible to get PB material.
Some times ago Juraj talk about his problem with stucco from Megascans. But by myself I tested it only now.

After this I wrote in future requests about help file. I still sure it may help alot to users which try to work and not to teach....



2 Dionysios.TS . You are absolutely right. Here we may close this dispute. I have 7 people in two offices and 5 freelancers, but all finishes I make by myself. And once more, we are small 7 Mln. people country. May be something wrong in your quality-time-price chain? But it's your business. I am going to learn 3D kitchen. Great soft. Regards.

Personally I have no intention to hurt anybody but from what I read today by your post you're asking to simplify an already simple engine for your needs. I can't immagine how some things can be more simplified, the risk we could get is to make a small render engine toy instead of an easy use professional one.

I worked for 16 years with my brand and I chose from the very beginning the road of high quality and high price level and this was and is my business and my choice. From the other hand, even if you're 7 + freelancers is obvious that you prefer more quantity than quality and of course this is your business and I am not judging this.

What is strange to me is your request to make this engine much simpler than it is with the high risk to cut off all the PRO options it has.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: PROH on 2016-10-27, 21:16:34
Totally agree with Deadclown regarding environment override - exept one thing: it won't be "month" but YEARS people will complain for such a huge step down in usability. Mental Rays solution was never intuitive nor easy. And not in any way easy to grasp for beginners.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 21:35:14
2 denisgo22

Yes. It's the main problems of all libraries. Their bitmaps just not correct. Diffuse is oversaturated usually, Reflect map is overbright usually. Glossy - is the same as reflect, just brighter. Why? They don't need to correspond at all.
Of course you may to color correct maps every time but why?
Megascans gives us corrected textures (as they say). I just want to check.

2 Dionysios.TS

You missed the point. I don't ask simplicity from engine or less options. I ask for help file, where I may find all answers by myself. If option was announced - add this to help, how to use it. In simple not-programmer not-guru language. That's all.

I gave an example with Megascans using. May be I'm a bad artist, may be I need to learn concept, but, put attention, nobody (and you) answer me. So we have a great engine which we can't use for it's 100% possibilities. Why? Because we don't know how.

Once more. Without help documentation. How to use specularity map from Megascans in reflection slot? We apologize that Megascans gives physically correct textures. Regards.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-27, 21:46:05
Well, it's actually good people mention just the environment override. If it stays the same, then it won't be big of a deal. So does this mean that the rest of the proposal looks good to you?
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 21:54:01
@astudio, did you see this? https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12945.0.html
Everything is written in full details many times over, you just need to search.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 22:04:47
So does this mean that the rest of the proposal looks good to you?

Movement displacement controls into displacement mod, i would certainly meet with a round of applause.

As for the rest of UI, well, i not really like a picture of deserted render settings, but i don't think that it would seriously affect my workflow. I guess i would adapt quite painlessly.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 22:09:08
2 denisgo22

Yes. It's the main problems of all libraries. Their bitmaps just not correct. Diffuse is oversaturated usually, Reflect map is overbright usually. Glossy - is the same as reflect, just brighter. Why? They don't need to correspond at all.
Of course you may to color correct maps every time but why?
Megascans gives us corrected textures (as they say). I just want to check.

2 Dionysios.TS

You missed the point. I don't ask simplicity from engine or less options. I ask for help file, where I may find all answers by myself. If option was announced - add this to help, how to use it. In simple not-programmer not-guru language. That's all.

I gave an example with Megascans using. May be I'm a bad artist, may be I need to learn concept, but, put attention, nobody (and you) answer me. So we have a great engine which we can't use for it's 100% possibilities. Why? Because we don't know how.

Once more. Without help documentation. How to use specularity map from Megascans in reflection slot? We apologize that Megascans gives physically correct textures. Regards.

I got your point of view now but excuse me, from your very first post it seems you were looking for other things here.

I agree for the Megascans questions and worries you have and didn't got an answer from me cause I never used them yet. On this matter you're right. Is a bit confusing all this stuff but remember, Corona is the engine and Megascans are libraries where the engine itself has nothing to do. The marvelous PBR option was created in Corona not for the Megascans compatibility (it wasn't the main reason) but to bring the glossiness values and effect to a more correct result if compared to other engines and the team did a great job on this. I don't know if Corona has the obligation to include officially the workflow of how to use the Megascans library as it is a very specific thing. Romullus post a link a while ago which is all the stuff we collected here for this.

I would like to close the previous subject peacefully, I didn't said you're a bad artist; you're an artist as all of us here and is correct to ask help as all we did and we do continuously. I misunderstood the reason of your fist post. I am sorry.

Dionysios -
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-27, 22:34:16
Hi Romullus.

First of all thank you very much.  I missed it in search.

2nd. It's look like faking PBR, cause I don't understand this IOR map games. May be it works, but for sure it's not physically correct. So PBR still the dream :(
I wonder why they use IOR map and not some LUT for reflection map. As I know IOR is function of material and must be constant for same material. Anyway thank you. I'll learn it in deep.

3rd. I still think that the way, which I got the answer is wrong. It must be a help document. I may miss a search, you may miss the thread.

Once more thank you.

2 Dionysios.TS
It's OK. I don't understand my english by myself.
And I never call me an artist. I respect every artist and every programmer. MBut I'm not. My keyword is efficiency. In Vray workflow I never do tests, cause I know result before render. May be it's not the best result, but my clients like it. Today I left vray and working in corona only.  I really look for PBR. And my goal is the same. I make hundreds test today for not to do them tomorrow at all. It's a secret of 40 projects per month. And suddenly, that I can get more, but can't manage more ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: pokoy on 2016-10-27, 22:51:39
Do we need another random UI layout? Absolutely!! It's been only a few months since it was changed!
Do we need environment overrides moved to a place a random mind finds more reasonable? By all means, yes! I completely agree they're not hidden enough!
Do we need more thoughts on how to simplify controls? You bet! - we constantly need to hide stuff away so we have to click way more in the long run to find the controls we need!
Do we really need to learn things the hard way and to educate ourselves in order to master what we do for a living? Hell, no! That's what tooltips and tutorials are for - right?!

Right, guys?!?!
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 22:51:53
Hi Romullus.

First of all thank you very much.  I missed it in search.

2nd. It's look like faking PBR, cause I don't understand this IOR map games. May be it works, but for sure it's not physically correct. So PBR still the dream :(
I wonder why they use IOR map and not some LUT for reflection map. As I know IOR is function of material and must be constant for same material. Anyway thank you. I'll learn it in deep.

3rd. I still think that the way, which I got the answer is wrong. It must be a help document. I may miss a search, you may miss the thread.

Once more thank you.

2 Dionysios.TS
It's OK. I don't understand my english by myself.
And I never call me an artist. I respect every artist and every programmer. MBut I'm not. My keyword is efficiency. In Vray workflow I never do tests, cause I know result before render. May be it's not the best result, but my clients like it. Today I left vray and working in corona only.  I really look for PBR. And my goal is the same. I make hundreds test today for not to do them tomorrow at all. It's a secret of 40 projects per month. And suddenly, that I can get more, but can't manage more ;)

Where are you from???

Your workflow is incredible!!! O.o
If you found a solution for your workflow the way you do, well, I am extremely happy for you! I am at the other side of the river. For me every scene is different and some materials they never have the same effect when used here and there. I always have to tweak and make tests everytime... Did you found the PBR useful? Me a lot, it simplified extremely a lot of things here.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-27, 22:52:59
Do we need another random UI layout? Absolutely!! It's been only a few months since it was changed!
Do we need environment overrides moved to a place a random mind finds more reasonable? By all means, yes! I completely agree they're not hidden enough!
Do we need more thoughts on how to simplify controls? You bet! - we constantly need to hide stuff away so we have to click way more in the long run to find the controls we need!
Do we really need to learn things the hard way and to educate ourselves in order to master what we do for a living? Hell, no! That's what tooltips and tutorials are for - right?! RIGHT?!?!

:D :D :D
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Fluss on 2016-10-27, 23:10:02
I have to admit that this simplification approach scares me a bit.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-27, 23:47:16
The easier program is to use for casual user, the harder it is to use for advanced user. And vice versa. So far Corona balanced between those two groups of users pretty wel IMHO, let's hope that scales won't tip to one side too much.

@astudio, it seems that you got wrong impression about whole PBR thing. Corona always was Physically Based Renderer and most likely always will. Offline renderers had PBR materials long before their real time rivals. That all PBR terminology has got really messy. Unfortunatelly, Corona only adds to this confusion with that badly named PBR checkbox. Long story short, basically there are two PBR workflows: specular(reflectivity)-glossiness and metallness-roughness. The former is traditionally adopted by off-line renderers, the latter has gained popularity amongst real time renderers. And no, Corona didn't get ability to render metallness-roughness based materials directly with 1.5 release. What's get named PBR in Corona, it means that Corona material was adopted to industry standart specular-glossiness workflow. You still need to convert maps that are meant to be rendered with metallness-roughness in mind.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 00:25:36
@romullus
I know this.

I never tweak materials for every scene. I try to keep right material in my library, which I may use in all light conditions. I just check, if I may believe to Megascans textures.
The way "nevermind that my tree is dark, I'll give more sun" is not my way.

A lot of libraries give us the wrong textures  (arroway wood or concrete for example) And the main problem usually reflection map. Usually it overbright and overcontrast. So it's good for interiors but bad for exteriors with strong sun.
From AXYZ metropoly collection, which I purchased recently, only one model is good for all conditions. And very hard to change the maps. In renderpeople collection I changed absolutely all textures.

I don't know if it will be a good deal to subscribe to Megascans. Is it possible to use their textures as it?

For test I'll made pure water in Megascans. I'll try to use dubcat's method with IOR map. If I'll get IOR 1.33 - it's ok and I'll subscribe. If not - not. Only thing I need to convert bitmap to IOR number. Do you know the way? May be I'll just create the Rock or Sand material and will compare IOR maps luminosity. Ok, it's need to think about the way.

Something tell me that I'll not get the correct result. But I'll check.

So I really believe in PB materials. And this issue is not about corona. It's about Megascans.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-10-28, 00:48:38
The easier program is to use for casual user, the harder it is to use for advanced user. And vice versa.

This is actually almost completely false.

There's actually simpler and more accurate way to put it: The easier program is to use, the easier it is to use, and the harder program is to use, the harder is to use :)

That's about it... If in near or far future manage to weed out all the technical settings that can be automatized, mostly those in performance tab, then it all comes down to just making art. And camera settings being in camera itself makes it actually more convenient, or having postprocessing in VFB exclusively, because you can't really tweak most of those things without seeing what you are doing on actual picture anyway.

It just requires a bit of mindset change. Same mindset change was required before for people who were used to the idea that IBL is actual dome light present in your scene, and not just direct sampling of the environment. It took a while, but people do not request domelight anymore and oppose it mostly.

It may take some adaptation time for current users but it won't make workflow any slower or harder. Things will just be on more convenient places and newbies to 3D will generally have easier time adapting because they will find those things on those convenient places. But please take this as general speech, do not convolute it around the environment override case. I already said enviro overrides will probably stay the way they are now for a while.

I drifted a little too far away from the point I was trying to make. There's not that much difference between what beginner and pro user needs. In general, if things are easy to use for newbie, they will be easy to use for pro user as well, and vice versa. The less of a renderer wall there is standing between you and the art you are trying to create, the better.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Fluss on 2016-10-28, 00:57:45
@romullus
I know this.

I never tweak materials for every scene. I try to keep right material in my library, which I may use in all light conditions. I just check, if I may believe to Megascans textures.
The way "nevermind that my tree is dark, I'll give more sun" is not my way.

A lot of libraries give us the wrong textures  (arroway wood or concrete for example) And the main problem usually reflection map. Usually it overbright and overcontrast. So it's good for interiors but bad for exteriors with strong sun.
From AXYZ metropoly collection, which I purchased recently, only one model is good for all conditions. And very hard to change the maps. In renderpeople collection I changed absolutely all textures.

I don't know if it will be a good deal to subscribe to Megascans. Is it possible to use their textures as it?

For test I'll made pure water in Megascans. I'll try to use dubcat's method with IOR map. If I'll get IOR 1.33 - it's ok and I'll subscribe. If not - not. Only thing I need to convert bitmap to IOR number. Do you know the way? May be I'll just create the Rock or Sand material and will compare IOR maps luminosity. Ok, it's need to think about the way.

Something tell me that I'll not get the correct result. But I'll check.

So I really believe in PB materials. And this issue is not about corona. It's about Megascans.

In fact, there is no issue. Dubcat's method is good and you should be able to use materials set up this way, in all lighting conditions. He just converted specular map to IOR (with LUT). Open your specular map in photoshop,16 bit color depth, apply the LUT (provided on his google drive : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B10mLXqqmNkiTFpqaVloNEJzVGM) and save your IOR map. Make it once and you'll be ok with the shader. It's math, not magic. Corona does not handle specular maps, that's why there is a workaround.

All maps have to be loaded with gamma 1.0 except diffuse and translucency. That's it, everything is explained indepth in the tutorial, you really should read it closely :

https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12945.0.html

edit: quote
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 01:03:40
Quote
In general, if things are easy to use for newbie, they will be easy to use for pro user as well, and vice versa

Not vice versa. It's like tree. You have a lot of ways to go up and only one way to go down.

There are a lot of things to think about (and where to look for environment override ;) ) for new user. The Pro knows exactly what he really needs. Most important - he knows, what he doesn't. ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 01:11:39
@Fluss
Quote
All maps have to be loaded with gamma 1.0 except diffuse and translucency. That's it, everything is explained indepth in the tutorial, you really should read it closely :

:)

Only different that I tested it, read the Megascans and Marmoset sites, and you not. Last thing that I may think about is to change IOR along the leaf surface. But I'll test it anyway ;)
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Fluss on 2016-10-28, 01:24:53
IOR map is just used to fake depth. If you don't want to, just leave it and set the ior value you want.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 01:40:45
what about reflection slot?
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: PROH on 2016-10-28, 01:47:11
Leave the reflection slot empty, set color to pure white (for non metals) and level to 1. For metals you'll need to set a color that matches the metal color.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 01:51:04
Oh. It's a good example why I want a help documentation insteed googling.

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: PROH on 2016-10-28, 02:02:49
It's all mentioned several places in Dubcats and Jurays threads about PBR and Megascans. This is just one way to use the BPR material. Other ways could be used with other texture assets. The Corona mat offers you the ability to adapt different workflows and methods depending on your routines, preferences and "render religion".

A specific "Megascans for Corona tut" should probably be made by Megascans (if Dubcats isn't enough for you).
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Fluss on 2016-10-28, 02:07:52
Oh. It's a good example why I want a help documentation insteed googling.

Yep but that's mat theory, it as nothing to do with the renderer itself...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 02:18:31
PB materials means physically based. RROH proposes me to use 100% reflectivity and manage it with IOR. Fluss proposes to leave IOR at all.
What about "physically based"?
I never use 100% reflectivity ex. chrom or mirror. And never change IOR inside one material. Even for fake. IOR map for Megascan surfaces - I can imagine. But inside one object? Sorry. Same with 100% reflectivity.

There are two ways for me - Corona documentation and logic.

We haven't documentation and it's against logic. But may me something wrong with my logic...

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: PROH on 2016-10-28, 02:30:28
Yeah, I didn't do that either (set reflection to full), but with the new PBR all is done with the gloss map and a valid IOR value. I've set up the free Megascan mats this way and it works.

You can do exactly as you like, but please don't ask for answers, and then misread them and throw them away with arrogance. That's not the way to get help.

And BTW - if you read the before mentioned threads carefully, then you'll find the logic. This isn't the good old standard mat...

Good luck with you 40+ monthly projects.

Over and out
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 03:29:21
@PROH.

OK. I read the mentioned threads carefully.
Nice geek, good to know and time to forget. Respect to Dubcat, it was a peace of work.
As for me there is no reason to change the workflow and "manage everything with glossy".
After all IMHO reflection level is not should be used as an opacity slider for IOR. I'll wait for reflection map from Megascans. Or I'll use something else from old school. Standard material for example. ;)

PS. Just interesting that only thing which you put attention in this thread is my 40+ monthly projects. ;) Make things simpler and you'll have 50+. Regards.

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: burnin on 2016-10-28, 04:51:50
astudio
please, stop acting as an arrogant brat
Loosen up a bit, observe surroundings and mimic, do photography as much as you can. If you wanna replicate the feel of the camera, camera you must become. Easy as that.
Understand the physics of light, the mechanics of eye and mind. It what vision really is.
No values are absolute truth...
Why you see masters & pros 'making' mistakes (ie. IOR 2) - it is their art, eye, vision and skill to reproduce with style, emotion, story... this is what you see and can observe (if able). There is no mistake ;)

Otherwise get Keyshot, Visual Desginer... easy & simple. You have many options.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-28, 05:03:01
Ok,ok... I'll try to observe and understand what vision really is.  Let's stop this dispute till I learn Visual Designer. :)

2 PROH and Fluss.

I'm sorry. I didn't put attention that we have refl.glossy map insteed of glossy map. My mistake. May be it's possible "to manage everything with glossy". It's really new render concept for me. Must test.

There was no bright announcement for it, only that glossiness was changed "to offer the full glossiness range". You are not looking for it if you are don't know about it.

And what is clear for Corona developers - was not clear for me.

But I'm wonder how new user will feel with it without help documents.

Just interesting how much users have license without being forum users. And how much users of the forum know about using of refl.glossy map....

Once more. in five pages thread nobody say a word "refl.glossiness map".  So may be a help file is not so bad idea?

And yes, let's close this discussion, I am tired.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Benny on 2016-10-29, 04:58:46
This thread was interesting (in the beginning) as it displays the same two sides of the coin that I used to read in Vray threads. One category of users wants more control as they experiment more and is more personally invested in and interested in the technology. They may be pros going for cutting edge realism, or they are just very interested in this part of the process. The other category is more focused on generating the result, the compositing and the actual content. They want to spend time on the design of the image.

This whole thing is a little like the old days when some photographers loved the development part and spending time in the darkroom, tweaking the picture. Others loved the photography and the camera and dreaded the darkroom work, trying to get consistent results with as little effort as possible.

There are obviously concepts in Corona that requires understanding, just as all art. However, something like video editing in order to tell a story is extremely straight forward compared to even the simplest 3D tools. There are of course those working with special effects, but these individuals are interested in the technology and the effects themselves, pushing boundaries. For some reason the video editor and the sfx artist have very different tools and accept this, but the pragmatic viz artist that just wants to develop his picture always have to defend himself towards the more feature focused artist. A guy that produces 40 jobs a month is not seem as professional enough because he hasn't had time to learn all the complex intricacies and possibilities of Corona? That is absurd. For every new generation of 3D tools like Corona, a new generation of creators will enter, simply because it is now worth their time. You really shouldn't have to be a technician, an argument many find very healthy about Corona, but there is certainly a long way to go before it is a question of just pressing a button.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-29, 05:53:13
Thank you, Benny, it was a great speech.

There is no label "For great artists only" on my Corona licenses. I am really not from a team, which may make tweaks glossy for hours and days. Super result after 2 weeks of work just bad result for me.  To be poor but proud is not a best thing in the world, I think.

I know to work with numbers and get result good enough for my clients in two hours. If there will be a new concept, I'll learn it. I do it for 20 years. Only thing, I'm looking for effective way. 

I have respect to artists absolutely. But they usually don't understand the word "efficiency". I met this a lot in my 20 years of experience.

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: philippelamoureux on 2016-10-29, 06:45:38
Man I've learned rendering with vray 2.0, back when there was so many god damn buttons and things to tweak everywhere. I'm just happy with where corona is. Not too hard but enough control to do what I need to do in arch-viz.

I spend more time with unreal and even though there is a pretty well done documentation available on their website, most people will not read it. They go on the forums and ask questions or watch a YouTube tutorial. I have to include myself in that category too but I'm trying to change that.

If I compare unreal with vray 2.0, it's day and night how freaking more intuitive unreal is (and corona). No guess work and trying to figure out what settings will affect what other settings, etc. And all that happened in like what, 2-3 years...

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Dionysios.TS on 2016-10-29, 09:00:37
Thank you, Benny, it was a great speech.

There is no label "For great artists only" on my Corona licenses. I am really not from a team, which may make tweaks glossy for hours and days. Super result after 2 weeks of work just bad result for me.  To be poor but proud is not a best thing in the world, I think.

I know to work with numbers and get result good enough for my clients in two hours. If there will be a new concept, I'll learn it. I do it for 20 years. Only thing, I'm looking for effective way. 

I have respect to artists absolutely. But they usually don't understand the word "efficiency". I met this a lot in my 20 years of experience.

I understand your efficiency matter and respect it. My clients came to me cause they searched and loved the results I produce after hours of tweaking and research and the goal is to achieve always emotions and realism. I got paid for this in the past and I get paid for this where I work now.

If you want a Ferrari, you get a Ferrari, if you want a Fiat Panda you get a Fiat Panda. At the end you get what you're paying for.

I personally prefer less jobs, be proud of my creation and more incomes than get crazy with 40+ projects per month and probably less incomes and craziness with the 40+ project's owners.

Nothing personal here, is just different point of view.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-29, 13:51:34
I really respect this. 1. Not everyone able to make Ferrari. 2. 40 Fiats Panda probably will give me more income then one Ferrari. 3. After crisis of 2004 and 2008 I prefer to produce Panda and to bye Ferrari ;) . It's just another business model. I'd like that Corona will be good for both.

Only thing that I looked for - To put diffuse from library, to take LRV from catalog, to put it in reflection slot and to manage glossy independently as it was in the past. It's good for Panda.

As I understand Corona today will be mostly Ferrari instrument. Changing in glossy will lead to changes in reflection.
And my client ask for reflection from catalog. For example they want compare stucco which reflect 55% of light with stucco which reflect 47%. So I just looking for a way. It's not for battles.

PS. My clients doesn't interesting in true lighting model, in mood and emotions. He want only to sell his property. And if he wants blue windows and oversaturated sky (very common case) - I'll give him.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-10-29, 14:23:37
As i understand it, Corona is a different way of looking at rendering that has never really been seen before. Simply because its so user driven and the team listens to the devoted community it has and the daily builds and trials are so accessible to everyone.
I love that the interface is stripped back and i can rely on the solid maths behind the engine to take care of 80% of the stuff that i dont need to touch that is spread all over the interface in MR & Vray. I get that for some users it can be intimidating because it doesnt often work like other engines, especially if they have migrated from never having used anything other than Vray and it can be hard to relinquish the 'control' that alot of the other renderers have but in my opinion alot of the controls in their interfaces are there because of hangovers from when rendering something progressively wasnt possible because of hardware limitations and you had to cut corners and fake stuff. Now we dont need to do that, theres no need for all the extra bullshit. Trust the algorithm xD
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-10-29, 15:24:54

This whole thing is a little like the old days when some photographers loved the development part and spending time in the darkroom, tweaking the picture. Others loved the photography and the camera and dreaded the darkroom work, trying to get consistent results with as little effort as possible.


IKEA Have their own HUUUUGE 3d department of about 250 people modelling everything across their entire range. I saw a talk from one of their team leaders and he mentioned something that i found quite interesting thats somewhat akin to this. He said that when they merged their 3d and photography teams, the Photographers trained as 3d artists for a year and the 3d artists trained as photographers for a year so that they could work better together and understand why one team did something one way and why the other team worked in a different way. Offtopic but a great little anecdote!

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Christa Noel on 2016-10-29, 15:30:46
Very interesting post, it has new things to learn and old new thing to burn in some people call it flamewar :D
He want only to sell his property. And if he wants blue windows and oversaturated sky (very common case) - I'll give him.
That is a pure businessman's sight. The more we can work faster and faster The more money we can get.. who doesnt want more for money? Me too :D
...and the goal is to achieve always emotions and realism...
... less jobs, be proud of my creation and more incomes than get crazy with 40+ projects per month...
That is an artist sight. Because life need a little bit of fun and art is fun. Artists needs the balance of money and satisfying things. Who doesnt need combination of both things? Me too :D

Ok, on-topic now. So, what is the conclusion? The real topic is so blurred now...
Do we (pro and rookie) will get more complete documentation..?
Or more video tutorials for each features?
Or hardcore simplification of UI?

To Rawalance, it would be nicer if there is a separated thread to discuss more in depth about the next simplified render setup UI..
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-29, 15:35:59
@jpjapers
It's not offtopic at all. 250 modelers = 250 licenses. And only few of them are really Artists.

@Christa Noel
Absolutely
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Christa Noel on 2016-10-29, 15:47:17
IKEA Have their own HUUUUGE 3d department of about 250 people modelling everything across their entire range. I saw a talk from one of their team leaders and he mentioned something that i found quite interesting thats somewhat akin to this. He said that when they merged their 3d and photography teams, the Photographers trained as 3d artists for a year and the 3d artists trained as photographers for a year so that they could work better together and understand why one team did something one way and why the other team worked in a different way. Offtopic but a great little anecdote!
Yes I heard that a long time ago. I have seen in many cases that many people out there cannot improve their feel and skill because of lack of photography knowledges.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Noah45 on 2016-10-29, 16:54:26
Understanding photography principles good, understanding art concepts better.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-10-29, 17:52:59
Understanding photography principles good, understanding art concepts better.

Thats interesting. Do you not think it depends on your end goal. Also ive just noticed youre a retail designer and visualiser. Me too!
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Noah45 on 2016-10-29, 18:26:50
Understanding photography principles good, understanding art concepts better.

Thats interesting. Do you not think it depends on your end goal. Also ive just noticed youre a retail designer and visualiser. Me too!

yep, retail, 40 renderings a day :) sometimes, but mostly Flagship primo stuff.

But understanding academic Art basic concepts would benefit all.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-10-29, 18:32:49
Understanding photography principles good, understanding art concepts better.

Thats interesting. Do you not think it depends on your end goal. Also ive just noticed youre a retail designer and visualiser. Me too!

yep, retail, 40 renderings a day :) sometimes, but mostly Flagship primo stuff.

But understanding academic Art basic concepts would benefit all.

I know your pain!
I Suppose youre right. Things like colour theory and things like that definitely stretch into various disciplines.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Noah45 on 2016-10-29, 19:04:08
Principles of Two-Dimensional Design by Wucius Wong and the Munsell Color System was taught @ my Art school. It's benefited me ($$) many times.

Corona is a natural for this- non-tech guy.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: sebastian___ on 2016-10-29, 20:29:14
And my client ask for reflection from catalog. For example they want compare stucco which reflect 55% of light with stucco which reflect 47%. So I just looking for a way. It's not for battles.

PS. My clients doesn't interesting in true lighting model, in mood and emotions. He want only to sell his property. And if he wants blue windows and oversaturated sky (very common case) - I'll give him.

But corona doesn't prevent you to achieve that. You can achieve anything with corona. Just like with the default old school material. I don't even use corona, and I still know how to get stuff from the new shading model, just by watching a few youtube videos.
 You can of course control the reflection level, and in fact the new model is more intuitive and similar somewhat to how the materials act in reality.
Why is sometimes a surface more reflective while some other times is matte ?
Why are some surfaces more glossy while some have a mirror finish ?
Hint : all of these are related.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-29, 20:45:17
PS. My clients doesn't interesting in true lighting model, in mood and emotions. He want only to sell his property. And if he wants blue windows and oversaturated sky (very common case) - I'll give him.

For these fakes do not need Physical Based material render, because this not photorealistic concept at all:)
In this case, no matter what renderer to use--- Vray or Corona, the result will be the same :(
I very well know that from my own experience, because I do 5 projects per day too, without testing, for same kind of client's, but in Vray.
The same foliage,materials,models, people on balconies and bright happy daylight :)))Everyone Happy///
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corona i use only for private long time job's/
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-29, 23:36:12
Yes. It's my case.

I began to work with corona, because it was much more friendly, and worked better with HDRI. There was a lot of splotches in vray from strong HDRI. I used only biosed setup for the speed.

I began with corona for interiors only, but after 1.4.1 make exterior too. Main thing for me, that with denoise I may stop it in 10 minutes, if my client needs render urgently... 

Now I am a little beet confused with new materials and need to prepare new libraries. Old materials are not working now. I used CoronaMix a lot, now it mixes in sRGB and all my materials oversaturated now. So all my same trees and same people need to be changed. I prepared them for 1.4.1 only some monthes ago. :(

As I understand, today I can't take material from my library, adjust glossy and forget about it.  I'll need tweaking, testing... OK, we'll look ...
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-30, 02:34:46
If somebody interesting in.
I try to compensate brightening of the material from interaction with glossy by darkening of diffuse.
(Artist will be against this, less-artist will understand me.
May be ask from Corona team a "compensation button"?)
 
I keep my refl.glossy constant. When I increase output of diffuse map - everything as expected, material in render brighter.
But when I decrease it - material brightens too. With output=0.1 my concrete map almost black, but in render it's brighter, then with output=1.0

I think there is some explanation, which I don't know, but interesting anyway. With RGB level everything works as expected.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-10-30, 07:41:38
If somebody interesting in.
I try to compensate brightening of the material from interaction with glossy by darkening of diffuse.
(Artist will be against this, less-artist will understand me.
May be ask from Corona team a "compensation button"?)
 
I keep my refl.glossy constant. When I increase output of diffuse map - everything as expected, material in render brighter.
But when I decrease it - material brightens too. With output=0.1 my concrete map almost black, but in render it's brighter, then with output=1.0

I think there is some explanation, which I don't know, but interesting anyway. With RGB level everything works as expected.

May be you have darkening of reflection value /etc. set reflection to 0.5 or 0.2/ instead 1.0
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: romullus on 2016-10-30, 10:43:33
@astudio, can you make more mess out of this thread than it already is? Please try not to act as moderator's nightmare, if you have question unrelated to topic, please post it as separate thread in appropriate board, preferably this one: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/board,29.0.html


I keep my refl.glossy constant. When I increase output of diffuse map - everything as expected, material in render brighter.
But when I decrease it - material brightens too. With output=0.1 my concrete map almost black, but in render it's brighter, then with output=1.0

I think there is some explanation, which I don't know, but interesting anyway. With RGB level everything works as expected.

Yes, there is simple explanation. When you lower output amount of any map, it does what it's supposed to do - lowers output (influence) of that map to shader tree. If you plug map directly to material's diffuse slot and lower map's output amount, then material's diffuse colour will start to show trough. You can easily see it by yourself - change materials diffuse colour to some bright saturated value (screanimg red for example), lower map's output amount and watch what happens.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-10-30, 13:06:43
@densgo22
It's what I usually used to do before. As I understood from other users PRB materials work in different way.

@romullus
Thank you for explanation. Really simple.
And I'm sorry for nightmare. This thread about simplicity of managing new concept. I don't want to confuse other users with other point of few.

I'm looking for non-artistic way (means catalogs, reference books and so on). Something simple like add 10% to glossy >> reduce 10% from diffuse lightness.
It's hard to explain to artist, but it's clear enough for non-artist. (Just two different ways of thinking).

After all, my goal is to follow to client's requirements.
I used a lot reflectance values from catalogs but they are out of game now, as I understand. So I need another simple way to manage materials without "go to photoshop and change your glossy map with this simle LUT" for every material in the scene. It's just impossible in real workflow.

And yes, I haven't standard help documentation. And usually I'm out of forum, I just haven't time. So I may miss things.

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: TomEnokR on 2016-11-07, 04:20:46
I think this thread has gotten WAY off topic.

The initial post wasn't about making Corona easier. It was helping some of us understand the basic 101's of rendering, color picking, different color selection choices, etc.  and the "how" and "why"  these things hang together.

Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough."

I'm a technologist by trade. I've architected elegant solutions that were complex in design, but fairly simple to explain to the board of directors who were PAYING for it. 80% of corona users aren't that technically savvy but they're still paying customer and want to become better.

When I read the INITIAL thread that started this post, I saw a messages saying "Pretend that the average Corona user is a guy who doesn't understand all of this stuff by default, but still does (or wants to do) alot of 3D work." Then he went on to say that if the average user can understand some basic fundamentals, the quality of their renders would skyrocket and would better help promote Corona. I saw NOTHING in there that said he wanted CORONA simpler. He want's to UNDERSTAND fundamental concepts THAT MOST OF YOU ALREADY KNOW BY EXPERIENCE, more simply.

The biggest problem (from his perspective) and I happen to agree... is that all you brilliant animators and programmers and artists take for granted how much you know about the basics that you're flying 50,000 feet over the head of the average user who doesn't even know where to begin to look to understand this.

His post, to me, wasn't a request to simplify corona. It was a request to explain some of the more simple concepts that so many of you assume we all know. And, like him, many of us have no idea where to even start to look to find it.


Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-11-07, 12:27:13
I somewhat agree^ It would be useful to know the how and why we use sRGB colour space and things like that but i dont think its for the corona team to have to do. The information is out there online im sure and its somewhat of a prerequisite to professional rendering i think.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: TomEnokR on 2016-11-07, 16:39:14
I just finished a 60 second animated commercial for a solar company. It's GORGEOUS.

But I have NO FREAKING CLUE how I got the lighting right. And some of it, frankly, I didn't.

I couldn't figure out how to get some of the opacities to render correctly, so I cheated.

I enjoyed playing with the material editor; plugging all the cool different options into all the cool different other options. But at the end of the day, if I ended up with something usable, I was awestruck.

This is NOT my day job. It's just something I do around my investing and international travel. It's a wonderful hobby that can pay pretty well if you hit the right clientele.

-I'm a professional level photographer; so I understand ISO and parallax and f-stops.

-I'm a technologist so I understand optimizing render times and the such.

-I taught photoshop in University, so I know the Adobe suite and post production.

-I'm a early adopter of 3D animation (I owned Crystal Graphics before 3D Studio was launched and got the very first version when it first came out) but have since taken an 20 year hiatus and have just returned to animation. So I understand rigging and keyframes...

So I'm no slouch. And certainly don't want stuff easy and cheap. But I DO want to learn and strengthen my deficiencies, and GOOGLE SEARCH doesn't do it.

So, if it's not the job of the Corona team (and I'm not sure it is either, but it's still a gaping hole in connecting their product to quality renders from the masses), then I'm simply asking for direction.

Where can we find some of this stuff? What IS a good repository for all things animation that would apply specifically to 3D Studio max and Corona?

Are there good books? Websites? Suggestions?

Cuz like this other guy,aside from a few youtube tutorials by various artists (and some are terrible at best), I'm not finding a really good cohesive resource for some of this stuff.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Noah45 on 2016-11-07, 16:49:52
-I'm a early adopter of 3D animation (I owned Crystal Graphics before 3D Studio was launched and got the very first version when it first came out) but have since taken an 20 year hiatus and have just returned to animation. So I understand rigging and keyframes...

^ And T.I.P.S was our paint program, on a Targa 32 board back then?

Love the new Youtube Corona PBR video, would like to see more. Especially complex metals.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: Jpjapers on 2016-11-07, 16:59:31
I just finished a 60 second animated commercial for a solar company. It's GORGEOUS.

[SNIP]


Dont get me wrong i completely agree there needs to be more in depth documentation and tutorials.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-11-07, 18:38:38
@ TomEnokR  Thank you. Nice explanation of the problem. I really can't find simple and trusted information. There is a lot of opinions but 90% of users don't understand what they are talking about.
Sometimes I haven't experience to solve the problems, but I have enough to distinguish stupid answers.

Just a simple example from my everyday work.
First revision - my client asks "more light in balconies area."
For sure I may fake it (just paint balconies floors in white or redraw HDRI).
But what will be a right way to increase reflected light "without touch the reflection"? Increase IOR and glossy? I never played with IOR before for this needs. I want to understand a way, it will take less time then a lot of tests.

It's not offtopic. I tried to explain why I want verified help documentation so much. Or any kind of another verified practical information.

PS. For BigArtists. Here is not final render, just model in early stage.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: pokoy on 2016-11-07, 19:11:24
If the material on the balconys' ground is reflective - disable reflections, so more light can bounce off from the diffuse part of the shader.
If the material on the balconys' ground is grey or black - make it as bright as possible so more light can bounce off (dark materials absorb more incoming light than bright materials)
If this doesn't produce enough 'light', consider making the material on the ground slightly self-illuminating/emissive.

That's about the level of control you have if you want to keep the lighting as it is now.

You're not alone with this, similar requests surface everywhere in any industry, not only in archviz. I guess the trick is to take care of as much as possible before you send it out to the client. If you find the perfect lighting yourself and take care of the things in the first place that you know your client may want to improve then you'll probably save yourself a lot of time. Or get used to the fact that you need to retouch your renders in PS or render in different versions and compose later, which is what almost everybody has to do because you really can't cheat some things.
Then again, clients sometimes have unrealistic expectations and you may have to say that it's not possible. It's the hardest thing to learn, but it's absolutely professional in some situations and something you'll have to do every now and then.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: denisgo22 on 2016-11-07, 19:22:56


Just a simple example from my everyday work.
First revision - my client asks "more light in balconies area."
For sure I may fake it (just paint balconies floors in white or redraw HDRI).
But what will be a right way to increase reflected light "without touch the reflection"? Increase IOR and glossy? I never played with IOR before for this needs. I want to understand a way, it will take less time then a lot of tests.



Then again, clients sometimes have unrealistic expectations and you may have to say that it's not possible. It's the hardest thing to learn, but it's absolutely professional in some situations and something you'll have to do every now and then.
Exist only two ways///
To choose from those clients,  the clients who understand what this "Physical base render and material",
or making fakes:)))

Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-11-07, 19:25:12
@pokoy

You're right. I always need to fake something. What I try to say, that if I know how it is working - I know how to fake things.

BTW the new PBR tutorials of CoronaTeam is very understandable, but doesn't help in my particular case. I think that with new level of renders we'll have options to fake less and less. :)

"If the material on the balconys' ground is reflective - disable reflections, so more light can bounce off from the diffuse part of the shader." -  Must to test this. Never thank this way :(

Edit: I tested it. With dark materials no different, with bright - reflection adds more light in surrounding. As it must be by logic.
Title: Re: With all due respect to the Corona team
Post by: astudio on 2016-11-07, 19:27:30

Exist only two ways///
To choose from those clients who understand what this "Physical base render and material",
or making fakes:)))

With first one you'll stay without clients. :)