Seamless integration

[GeorgeR]

I didn't know what else to call this, but a big plus of some of the renderers out there is that they dont require a conversion to use. That is, they can interpret A&D materials, etc. It would be fantastic if Corona could do this, so it could read/convert vray cameras, materials, etc. on the fly rather than having to convert them. Yes, people will convert them later on, but significant time and investment has gone into producing current assets and workflows, and the easier a new renderers makes the transition - the better, particularly when convincing the people with the money that its a good buy :)

[Ludvik Koutny]

While support of other renderer's materials is usually a good thing, it has nothing to do with integration. We are integrating Corona into 3ds Max, not other renderers. Only renderer i know of that supports other renderer's material is Vray, and it supports them in a very poor way, meaning they never look nearly as good as native VrayMTL. That's what we would like to avoid here too... if we support other renderer's material some part of userbase might end up using it not even knowing about CoronaMTL, it's possibilities, and could also get limited/inferior results due to the unoptimal translation of material data.

[superrune]

Brazil is also like that, and I've always been curious as to how some renderers are able to be 99% compliant with the host package - whilst others (such as Mental Ray) needs custom support. The nice thing about VRay and Brazil is that you can be sure all of the atmospheric stuff works as it should - hair plugins, afterburn, fumefx and so on. Also, whenever there's a cool material or texture on maxplugins, you can just plug it in and play in your renderer. It's annoying to have to wait for official support by your render engine whenever there's a new plugin out.

[Javadevil]

The problem with Mental ray is it has its own shader language, with most shaders for 3dsmax they are just written in C++, you don't need to learn another language to do it.
So materials like bercon maps etc.. need to be re-written for Mental ray.

As for supporting other materials like Arch&Design, Vray, etc.. I use to think it was a good time saving idea, only if they are done spot on, otherwise I end up converting them all over.
Just like Rawalanche said the Vray Arch&Design is pretty poor, doesn't support cutouts and others.
I know converting big libraries over can be time consuming, but I normally convert them as each project comes along and the convert scripts that Deadclown wrote work pretty well.

I prefer Keymaster spends his time on new features :)

[dschaga]

To be honest - at the moment i don't see much difference in the UI between Corona material and MR A&D Material. ..nearly the same names for the parameters and only a slightly different layout.
How much work can it be, to convert the MR A&D material parameters on the fly?

If someone really need special MR shader then MR is still a good choice - but it's clear that Corona can't use such shaders easily.

[Paul Jones]

finalrender will render adesk a & D shaders, it's very handy meaning I can jump around with minimal interruption between mr, iray and fr would love it if corona could render these also - or maybe a conversion script with a revert feature

[Chakib]

I'm with Javadevil when he said that he prefers that Keymaster spends his time on new features :)