Chaos Corona for 3ds Max > [Max] Daily Builds

The new Corona Converter feedback thread

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maru:


One of the major features of the upcoming Corona Renderer 7 is the new Corona Physical Material. With the introduction of this new material, we also had to update our Corona Converter script.
This thread is intended for collecting feedback on everything related to the new Converter script (its functionality, features, issues, what you like about it and what you don't like).

More about the Corona Physical Material:
https://blog.corona-renderer.com/behind-the-scenes-the-physical-material/
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=31802

What you need:
- Corona Renderer 6 (to see what the render looked like before the conversion) - https://corona-renderer.com/download
- Newest Corona Renderer 7 daily build (to convert the scene and check the conversion results) - the link to download the newest version is at the top of the newest post at https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=30876.0
- If you just install Corona 7, the converter script will be available under the right-click quad menu as usual. If you are using some alternative installation method (i.e. you do not copy any files into your 3ds Max installation directory), then you can find the new converter script in \Corona Renderer\Autodesk\3ds Max 202X\scripts\CoronaRenderer.
- Before testing, make sure that you are using the converter script version 1.51 or newer! (it is printed in the title bar of the converter window)
NOTE: When using daily builds, the usual precautions apply! Backup your scenes!


What we are especially interested in:
Corona Legacy Material to Corona Physical Material conversion. This is the most important thing for us.
- How similar are the conversion results?
- How complex are the resulting shading networks in the material editor?
The easiest way to test both those things is opening a scene created in Corona 6 in Corona 7, converting it, and rerendering it.

What else is important:
- We improved the conversion of VRay2SidedMtl to CoronaPhysicalMtl. If you have a scene where you used the VRay2SidedMtl, please test this, and let us know if anything does not look or work as expected.
- Please check that all buttons in the "Tools" section of the Corona Converter work as expected. While this may sound like something our internal tests should take care of, there are always some edge cases which we might have missed, so we appreciate testing even very basic features like this.

Known issues and limitations:
- We know that the shading networks created by the Corona Converter might be quite complex in some cases (especially when many texture maps are used). If you have some ideas how to simplify such cases once you encounter them, please let us know.
- The newly created CoronaPhysicalMtl will only use those parameters, which were also available in the original material - i.e. if the original material did not feature sheen or clearcoat (which is the case for CoronaLegacyMtl), the converted CoronaPhysicalMtl will not use neither sheen nor clearcoat parameters (you can, of course, enable these parameters manually).
- It is possible that we changed some MAXScript function names which our users may want to use (i.e. broke the MAXScript API described here: https://www.racoon-artworks.de/CoronaConverter/mxsDocumentation.html ). The reason for this is that we used our coding conventions during the last rewrites of Corona Converter and therefore we changed some function names which weren't conforming to these conventions / weren't descriptive enough. If this proves to be a significant and commonly encountered problem,  we may revert some of these changes.
- We are planning to remove some legacy options / buttons from the Converter. If you rely on the removed functionality, we will consider reverting some of these changes.
- We do not support conversion to CoronaLegacyMtl anymore. The materials are always converted to CoronaPhysicalMtl.

Additional notes:
- Vray Mtl to Corona Physical Mtl conversion may currently not be working perfectly, but big improvements are coming!
- Specular to IOR conversion is a work in progress


If you have any other notes / remarks / complains - please do let us know.
Thank you in advance for your feedback!

JG_monomiru:
I run into issues when working with projects, where i want to keep materials in legacy "mode" as it might happen, that these objects will be rendered in corona 6 or before.
So converting materials of selected objects only converts them into physical objects... would be great to have an option to convert them into legacy instead of physical.
its a bit forced into physical, while even lots of scripts doesn't even support physical material yet.

maru:

--- Quote from: JG_pictures on 2021-05-18, 12:25:16 ---I run into issues when working with projects, where i want to keep materials in legacy "mode" as it might happen, that these objects will be rendered in corona 6 or before.
So converting materials of selected objects only converts them into physical objects... would be great to have an option to convert them into legacy instead of physical.
its a bit forced into physical, while even lots of scripts doesn't even support physical material yet.

--- End quote ---

Sorry, but this is listed as one of the limitations in my original post, and it's something we do not want to change. Only conversion to the new Physical material is possible.
Also, you mentioned converting objects and then using them in Corona 6 again. Please note that this is an unsupported scenario and it is not expected to work at all. If something is saved in a newer version of Corona, it must never be loaded back into an older version of Corona.

maru:
I just noticed that my previous message could have sounded a bit underwhelming, sorry for that, I didn't intend it. So just to avoid any misunderstandings: the reason why we are not planning to reintroduce conversion to the Corona Legacy Material is because we believe that the Physical Material offers many advantages over the Legacy one. It's easier to set up, the workflow is more in-line with the leading material creation software, and most importantly the end result that you get is more realistic. We treat the Physical Material as the new standard, and the Legacy Material as, well, legacy. :)

Also please note that the Legacy Material will work just fine in Corona 7, there is no need to convert it if you don't want to.

JG_monomiru:
maru.. all is ok, so far.

I wasn't following all recent Infos in detail - i just tried to figure out a way to work with current releases of scripts and plugin - as they not always support those changes made in corona 7 yet.
So i will work with the previous v6 corona-converter for now.


... mainly i use corona converter... if merging objects from various 3d-model sites into my scenes. when they were provided with vray material or other - and for now, when working in an environment, where some coworkers do not want to go the step to corona7 ... its best to work with legacy materials. That might change in future times...maybe

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