Smoothing Groups Not Working?

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

Hi All,

First time poster here.  I'm setting up a material and I'm having a problem with the preview screen not correctly shading the sphere.  Looks like the smoothing groups are not working.

Same thing on my teapot test.  The AO Pass however is perfectly smooth?!

Using a blend material with 2 concrete sub materials.  And a corona sun setup in the scene.  I've checked the teapot and it does have smoothing groups set.  Any ideas? 

Second Question; how do you adjust the settings for the preview sphere?  Would like to get it less grainy.

Thanks,

[romullus]

Hi,
Corona definitely respects smoothing groups. From pictures it looks like there is problems with material settings. It can be due to missing or incorrectly setup normal map or excessive use of sub-surface scattering. Can you post screenshot of your material settings?

As for preview quality, there's a spinner in render settings>system>system settings - custom preview quality, set it to higher value for a less noisy matball preview. Keep in mind that it will take longer time to update material editor slots.

[maru]

I think the smoothing problem is due to very high bump value.

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

Corona 1.3.  Just Installed yesterday.

For the material, all i did was use the "Conrete_Rough" from the Basic Materials sets by Ludvic, changed the maps and changed the bump value to 30.  There are two of these materials using different maps, then combined into a blend material (using a noise map for the mask).

I think Maru got it.  My bump value was at 30 (thinking that the max is 100).  But now I lowered it to 2 (like the original setting).New Screenshot attached.  However, you can still see slightly see the unsmoothed geometry, albeit much less, at a new setting of 2. (what is the max setting for this?)

The teapot however... Still shows the unsmoothed geometry at the shadow plane excessively.

Thank you both for your help.  Will probably have a delayed reply bc will be on holiday the next 3 days. 

Thanks for providing a great product, and with a preferential option for the poor! :)

[maru]

https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,10392.msg66310/topicseen.html#new :)

You should simply use the bump value which looks good. There is no rule like "5 is high, 2 is low".

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

The links are helpful and self explanatory.  One last question:  is this issue on the fix list for an upcoming release?  For me it is the difference between doing the monthly fair Saas versus getting the box license + subscription. (Which I had planned on purchasing this January).