Chaos Corona Forum
Chaos Corona for 3ds Max => [Max] General Discussion => Topic started by: fellazb on 2014-07-18, 08:26:35
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Hi there,
I'm thinking of purchasing the walls & tiles plugin from Vizpark, but am a bit unsure about the compatibility with Corona. Has anyone succesfully adapted this plugin within a Corona environment. Or is there anyone here willing to share his findings on this plugin?
Thanks in advance.
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yes, it should be fine: https://corona-renderer.com/wiki/3rdparty
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Yes I saw it was listed on the wiki, but I'd like to hear some findings from actual users. From your reply I'm not sure if you tested it for yourself on a regular base :)
They now offer it temporarily at a nice discount price, so any more feedback would be kindly appreciated.
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Hi,
I´ve created a specific Corona material version of Walls & Tiles to support Corona Renderer directly. The plugin is not installed
by default but it can be easily copied into the plugins folder after general installation. The version has been tested, but not thoroughly, I must admit.
Nevertheless, the Standard material version works with Corona as well, so I can say that Walls & Tiles is definitely compatible.
Let me know if you have any further questions on this.
Best,
Martin
VIZPARK - www.vizpark.com
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Hi,
why did you do a separate version?
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I´ve created a Walls & Tiles version based on a Corona Material, because I thought it would be better integrated with Corona Renderer.
If the Corona material is not different from the standard 3ds max material, this doesn´t make sense of course. But maybe I don´t really
interpret the question correctly ?
Best,
Martin
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Hi,
I´ve created a specific Corona material version of Walls & Tiles to support Corona Renderer directly. The plugin is not installed
by default but it can be easily copied into the plugins folder after general installation. The version has been tested, but not thoroughly, I must admit.
Nevertheless, the Standard material version works with Corona as well, so I can say that Walls & Tiles is definitely compatible.
Let me know if you have any further questions on this.
Best,
Martin
VIZPARK - www.vizpark.com
But where are these special Corona files??? I can't find them on my download, and I can't find it on your web-site either?? I have bought the Plugins Complete bundle, are there any other of the plugins with customized programfiles that need to be installed manually?
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Hi, sorry that the installation is unclear.
You need to copy the corona version manually to the plugins folder. I´ve not included an automated installation in the installer, simply because the plugin would throw out a maxscript error if Corona is not installed (and I did not manage to detect if Corona is installed with the installer). You can find the plugin file in the plugins folder of each product installation folder. Just navigate from the windows startmenu to VIZPARK then to the product (e.g. Walls & Tiles) and then to the plugins folder. There copy the file "Walls and Tiles (corona).mse" to your 3Ds Max plugins folder. The same applies for Mosaic accordingly.
I will try to fix this in the next releases.
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To see if corona is installed look for Corona[max version number].dlr in /plugins/ folder
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That would only work if plugins are installed locally, all people who are using shared plugins on a network drive are not part of this condition.
I know, of course, that those people are more likely to install the corona version by hand on a network location anyways, but why not just using 1 script? I don't see the benefit of maintaining a corona and non-corona version. Why not simply make a maxscript condition if the CoronaRenderer class exists right at the beginning of your script?
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Thanks, Keymaster and DeadClown. I´ll see what I can do, both in terms for an installer and the script itself. The idea of including the different material versions in one script is a good one and I´ll surely think about this for a future version.
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So I've been trying W&T out, but the bump map channel is continuously becoming unchecked when I switch to another material node or go into a submap within the material itself. Any reason for that?
Also, any way to enhance the displacement? The brick isn't really popping out the way I want, or the way I feel it should. I've tried increasing the max subdiv per poly in the Corona settings also, but it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. Perhaps its something in the displace map setup that can be tweaked?
Been testing this out on the CML model.
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Is it possible that the bump channel does not contain any bitmaps ? The script checks if Crossmap within the bump
layer has bitmaps loaded and if not, turns off the channel entirely. I should probably change this in the script if it
causes problems.
For the displacement, I need to re-check if there is something different with the way the bump/displacement channel
is handled within Corona. I know that the bump channel is interpreted differently in different maps/ materials and renderers
and sometimes the bump is not recognized as bump or displacement. I´ll check this asap!
Best,
Martin
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Is it possible that the bump channel does not contain any bitmaps ? The script checks if Crossmap within the bump
layer has bitmaps loaded and if not, turns off the channel entirely. I should probably change this in the script if it
causes problems.
For the displacement, I need to re-check if there is something different with the way the bump/displacement channel
is handled within Corona. I know that the bump channel is interpreted differently in different maps/ materials and renderers
and sometimes the bump is not recognized as bump or displacement. I´ll check this asap!
Best,
Martin
Thanks Martin.
My mistake on the bump as the brick set I was using didn't contain any. I could have sworn it did.
I continued to play around with the displacement, increased the distance settings on the material, more increasing max subdiv, even the screen size, but still not getting it to where I'd like it to be. But displacement aside the plugin works very well. Seems like my firm will by it at some point.
We had a project with a custom brick design so I installed to tinker and was able to reproduce the pattern pretty well, but not 100% since there is one occasional soldier over two courses and the plugin only works with custom on a course to course level. Not sure how you would script in having a soldier brick in this case, but I found a work around. Tedious, but it works.
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White GEO plane + teapot + sun: 11.800.000 Rays =)
VIZ walls & tiles GEO plane + teapot + suns = 1.700.000 Rays =(
2K Texture from Walls & tiles (Render map option) GEO plane + teapot + sun: 8.800.000 Rays =)
Where is the problem?
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my guess is in VIZ walls & tiles...
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I think the same, Ondra. But, with this performance, it's impossible to use it!
Also, displacement doesn't work. The "parsing" and "Build acceleration" tasks are very slow when I use this plugin.
Right now, the best solution is render the 3 maps (Diffuse, S, B and D) and use a simple CoronaMTL.
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Yeah, displacement is still not working with this plugin, even with the Corona material version.
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Yeah, displacement is still not working with this plugin, even with the Corona material version.
Yes, I´m aware of this problem and I´m sorry about it. Somehow the displacement works fine when the displacement map (BerconTile together with Crossmap) is put into a normal Corona material, but it´s not working when the map is put into the scripted Walls & Tiles material (which is based on the CoronaMTL). So my guess is: while parsing the scripted material within corona, the displacement gets lost. It´s not even possible to use any other map within the displacement channel of the scripted material. There is nothing I can do about it I think, because this is happening directly within the renderer.
Ondra, do you know what could be the reason ?
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Yeah, displacement is still not working with this plugin, even with the Corona material version.
Yes, I´m aware of this problem and I´m sorry about it. Somehow the displacement works fine when the displacement map (BerconTile together with Crossmap) is put into a normal Corona material, but it´s not working when the map is put into the scripted Walls & Tiles material (which is based on the CoronaMTL). So my guess is: while parsing the scripted material within corona, the displacement gets lost. It´s not even possible to use any other map within the displacement channel of the scripted material. There is nothing I can do about it I think, because this is happening directly within the renderer.
Ondra, do you know what could be the reason ?
Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. Displacement aside the plugin works just fine for me. Trying to get my office to buy it at some point.
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I think the same, Ondra. But, with this performance, it's impossible to use it!
Also, displacement doesn't work. The "parsing" and "Build acceleration" tasks are very slow when I use this plugin.
Right now, the best solution is render the 3 maps (Diffuse, S, B and D) and use a simple CoronaMTL.
I agree with you in regards to the speed. Yes, with Walls & Tiles, the performance is much slower than without it. This is natural I believe. If you use simple bitmaps, it´s of course much less calculation while rendering, but in Walls & Tiles we have a little bit more complex shader system. It´s not "very" complex, but the used shaders use up quite a bit cpu time. First there is a heavy composite map, then BerconTile and then Crossmap. Walls & Tiles uses (displacement), bump, reflection and diffuse almost all of them use these shaders. Because Walls & Tiles was made to be flexible with so many options to change the look of a material, the cost of this is performance. That said, it seems like the composite map does use up most of the computing power and it´s not always necessary to use it. I´m anyway thinking about a simplification of Walls & Tiles for some time now and will probably start to implement this soon. This would include a version of Walls & Tiles where a simpler network is used and the performance would be better.
I hope this helps. Please also feel free to email me personally via the support form or via email (on the VP website).
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Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. Displacement aside the plugin works just fine for me. Trying to get my office to buy it at some point.
Great! I hope that it can be solved soon.
Aside of this, have you looked at OmniTiles yet ? --> http://www.vizpark.com/shop/omnitiles/
Worth a look and maybe you want to sign up for the beta test ?
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Yes, because it's unbelievable to have 1/10 (11.000.000 vs 1.800.000 rays!) of the speed, just for a single shader.
I'm sorry, but right now, your nice script, it looks like unusable in real production (cause the slowdonw)
Maybe, it's an idea to make an external software and a bridge from this software to Max.
So, anyone can use your software to create a nice bitmap (Diffuse, S, B and Disp)
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Yes, because it's unbelievable to have 1/10 (11.000.000 vs 1.800.000 rays!) of the speed, just for a single shader.
I'm sorry, but right now, your nice script, it looks like unusable in real production (cause the slowdonw)
Maybe, it's an idea to make an external software and a bridge from this software to Max.
So, anyone can use your software to create a nice bitmap (Diffuse, S, B and Disp)
Well, I appreciate your honesty, but I disagree with your statement that Walls & Tiles is unusable in real productions. Hundreds of customers (I won't disclose the exact number) use it in real productions (mainly vray though) and create stunning renderings with it. In vray you´ll also notice a slowdown (I haven´t measured it though) and yet it´s very usable for many.
If you ever created a more complex shader with several nested maps, you will know that these shaders are slower to render in general. If you are used to only using simple bitmaps, of course it´s not slowing down the rendering as much, yet still considering a slowdown of 34% (referring your comparison of no bitmaps vs. loaded bitmaps).
I think you miss some benefits of Walls & Tiles if you suggest to use an external software to create the bitmaps and then use them inside of 3ds max: Walls & Tiles is made for flexibility. You wouldn´t have this flexibility, plus the possibility to save a lot of ram on high resolution textures, if you would use just a replacement of bitmaps with an external editor. Walls & Tiles is half-procedural (using bitmaps and random distribution), which means that it generates large scale textures on the fly while rendering, yet only using the RAM for the single loaded bitmaps. This is the real clue of the product and it wouldn´t be possible with the way you suggested.
Nevertheless, I understand your concern and I promise to think about this and look for optimization. No software is perfect, not even 3Ds Max as we all know ;)
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VIZPARK, this plug-in is very, very useful. I like it, easy and "fast" for create nice textures. But not in Corona.
1/10 in speed isn't acceptable =( This is why I wrote that, in Corona isn't usable in production.
I'm happy if in VRay the speed is the same ;-) And I'm sure, you'll find the solution also for Corona! Good luck! (^__^)'
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Also there is a bug. I'm using the LE version for max 2013.
"Crop original Edges" doesn't' work. I put 65 and 65, but nothing happens.
I think the problem is on VPX MAP. He doesn't recognize the Tiling input.
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Also there is a bug. I'm using the LE version for max 2013.
"Crop original Edges" doesn't' work. I put 65 and 65, but nothing happens.
I think the problem is on VPX MAP. He doesn't recognize the Tiling input.
This is a known issue and it´s related to the update of the preview. Please hit the rendering (F9) once and it should work then. Somehow the preview needs an update trigger first and after it should work fine. In the rendering it should work anyway. If not, it´s a new bug and I´ll note it and try to solve it.
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Thanks VIZPARK. It works now :)