Daily Builds 1.5

[PROH]

Hi. Thanks for such a great daily :) The light mixer keeps getting more and more awesome, with a potential to be a real game changer, but there's still some minor bugs to get rid of.

When using more than one light mixers (render elements), any change of parameters in mixer number two will cause a shift to mixer one, making both mixers settings identical. Since we can load more light mixer render element, we should also be able adjust them independent in VFB.

Keep up the glorious work :)

[Juraj]

Is anyone getting dark splotches / errors when using DR in the latest daily build 23rd? 

I'm trying to figure out it if it's machine specific but so far it has felt really random.  Everything renders fine until the passes from the nodes gets added, sometimes it will add once or twice before suddenly having dark triangles random places. 

Just curious if anyone else has noticed something.

Hi, I did DR all night, on bunch of scenes. Didn't encounter such behavior.

What I encounter though....is the damn DR takes 10 minutes to join. It hangs at "transforming vertices" for 8 minutes. The same scene on master host, take 5 seconds on that stage.
But this isn't particular to this daily :- )

[antanas]

Hi. Thanks for such a great daily :) The light mixer keeps getting more and more awesome, with a potential to be a real game changer, but there's still some minor bugs to get rid of.

When using more than one light mixers (render elements), any change of parameters in mixer number two will cause a shift to mixer one, making both mixers settings identical. Since we can load more light mixer render element, we should also be able adjust them independent in VFB.

Keep up the glorious work :)

Totally agree ) + independent and re-adjustable post settings tied to each of the light mixers is a must too, well I keep repeating myself about that, but, oh well, wouldn't be the first time ))

[antanas]

Is it something wrong on my side or do the lightmixer elements containing exr dumps saved from latest dailies cannot be opened by photoshop anymore ? even with Arionfx with it's proExr like plugin installed ...

Edit: not only Photoshop cannot open them but any other 32 bit hdr\openExr capable app (tried Picturenaut and some others) cannot open them as well.

[blank...]

Guys, Corona PBR is not unique to other PBR shaders. Just google it :- ) There are whole wikipedias written on it (on Polycount for example) by now for artists.

Yeah, but all of them deal with fresnel, IOR, energy conversation... and all of these Mental ray, Vray, Corona (and all others) have built in. Even "The Comprehensive PBR Guide" which can be downloaded from polycount is basically the same article as in Max help about creating Arch&Design materials that master Zap wrote years ago (which is actually even more comprehensive).
I, and I believe most users, will need a ELI5 on this Coronas "PBR" mode and correct workflow.

[Juraj]

Select IOR of choice ( 1.52 for 95perc. of materials, 1.333 for liquids and other stuff), pure white specular. Deal done. For metals keep doing what what you were doing (selecting color and no IOR/random high IOR, or SigerFresnel,etc..).

[blank...]

Select IOR of choice ( 1.52 for 95perc. of materials, 1.333 for liquids and other stuff), pure white specular. Deal done. For metals keep doing what what you were doing (selecting color and no IOR/random high IOR, or SigerFresnel,etc..).

Soooo, keep doing everything exactly the same? :D
At least in my case, I never used reflection maps (which is what I'm guessing you refer to as "specular" maps?).

[Juraj]

Select IOR of choice ( 1.52 for 95perc. of materials, 1.333 for liquids and other stuff), pure white specular. Deal done. For metals keep doing what what you were doing (selecting color and no IOR/random high IOR, or SigerFresnel,etc..).

Soooo, keep doing everything exactly the same? :D
At least in my case, I never used reflection maps (which is what I'm guessing you refer to as "specular" maps?).

Yes exactly. I dunno what kind of hocus-science people expect now to do. The whole point was to do LESS work. Creating non-metals now require almost zero-work. The default material needs albedo and glossy value. Done, physically plausible material right there.

And same is not the same. The idea of self-dimming Fresnel was discussed here to death. Previously if you made material 50perc. glossy, you had to lower the specular reflectance value ( "reflection" ) to match it, and it would still look wrong at grazing angle. Now you don't have to do anything. You decide by eye how rough the material is supposed to look (and we now have the whole range, from completely rough, to fully mirror, previously it was clamped) and voila. You have it.

The whole point of simplified PBR is for artists not do use potato values out of their ass and tinker with material until it looks correct, but never being quite sure if it is. Idiotic values like IOR 2.0 and specular level 0.6 are gone-by. Wood ? 1.52  1.0(255). Plastic ? 1.52 1.0 .  Mirror plastic ? Same. Matte plastic ? Same. People no longer need to have Bertrand-Benoit like eyes to judge if material looks correct. Now even my grandmother could make them.

[Majeranek]

The whole point of simplified PBR is for artists not do use potato values out of their ass and tinker with material until it looks correct, but never being quite sure if it is. Idiotic values like IOR 2.0 and specular level 0.6 are gone-by. Wood ? 1.52  1.0(255). Plastic ? 1.52 1.0 .  Mirror plastic ? Same. Matte plastic ? Same. People no longer need to have Bertrand-Benoit like eyes to judge if material looks correct. Now even my grandmother could make them.

Great explanation :)
Juraj what about fabric shaders? I assume that we still need to use falloff trick with really low value of glossiness?

[Juraj]

The whole point of simplified PBR is for artists not do use potato values out of their ass and tinker with material until it looks correct, but never being quite sure if it is. Idiotic values like IOR 2.0 and specular level 0.6 are gone-by. Wood ? 1.52  1.0(255). Plastic ? 1.52 1.0 .  Mirror plastic ? Same. Matte plastic ? Same. People no longer need to have Bertrand-Benoit like eyes to judge if material looks correct. Now even my grandmother could make them.

Great explanation :)
Juraj what about fabric shaders? I assume that we still need to use falloff trick with really low value of glossiness?

I think the diffuse falloff is still the best approach for them. I've seen them created like that even with shaders that support "sheen" (introduced retrograzing reflection like we had previously on all materials), like Unreal4 and RenderMan PrxSurface.

Getting off-topic ;- )

[blank...]

Mirror plastic ? Same. Matte plastic ? Same. People no longer need to have Bertrand-Benoit like eyes to judge if material looks correct. Now even my grandmother could make them.

And now we wait for another "it's the end of the industry" wave :D

[Juraj]

Mirror plastic ? Same. Matte plastic ? Same. People no longer need to have Bertrand-Benoit like eyes to judge if material looks correct. Now even my grandmother could make them.

And now we wait for another "it's the end of the industry" wave :D

:- ) This would the best reaction it could get though. I do fear for lot of old-time professionals it will look like unnecessary nerdy stuff, something "real artists" don't need. I've seen that sentiment often, particularly against Corona.

[antanas]

 Yeah - those "REAL PROS" "can do beautiful renders even with scanline not to tell when using a "pinnacle of creation" vray which is "all" a "real pro" needs if he "KNOWS" how to do it "RIGHT" - hell, am I tired of hearing that crap too, especially when it's coming from a seemingly reasonable people.
 Of course they are right to a degree but the simple truth is - there's no "pinnacle of creation", no perfection anywhere (at least the last time I checked there were none)) and especially nowhere near softwares and the workflows tied to their current generation - more or less, everything is crap\workarounds and that's the point cause perfection is unachievable and being unachievable, perfection has no point, thus there are no perfect workflows or tools\software too, only the subjectively best ones for the current technological timeframe and Corona is surely one of those for the current one ))

[Ondra]

If I use the Color inside option in CoronaDistance with a map in the Distance Scale Texmap, I get unexpected results if that Distance Scale Texmap includes pure black. This clears up if there is no black and 1,1,1 is used instead (or if Color inside is unchecked, then the effect also disappears even if there is pure black in the Distance Scale Texmap). Expected, or a bug?

fixed

[TomG]

TY :)