MaterialX

[Njen]

Hey devs, do you have any thoughts on MaterialX, and would you consider a Corona implementation?

[Ondra]

well, it just came out ;) - so no opinion yet. We will watch it and see what happens.

[alexyork]

Is this a straight alternative to Substance? If so that's interesting. Competition is good, but when trying to establish a standard, it's important that the community agrees upon that standard relatively quickly, otherwise we just end up back at the start again.

[Ondra]

definitely not, substance is a way to generate data, this is a way to transmit data. If there is reasonable way to write shaders in it, we will be interested as it could solve a lot of our problems (standalone rendering, cinema4D vs. 3dsmax interop, ...)

[alexyork]

definitely not, substance is a way to generate data, this is a way to transmit data. If there is reasonable way to write shaders in it, we will be interested as it could solve a lot of our problems (standalone rendering, cinema4D vs. 3dsmax interop, ...)

Cool. Sounds good...

[dgiambattistelli]

Well some years has passed and still no MaterialX implementation?

[TomG]

Correct, nothing on the plan at the moment. For now Material X remains more for the movie / VFX industry than for archviz. We'll keep watching on how things develop there, of course. Thanks!

[pokoy]

Correct, nothing on the plan at the moment. For now Material X remains more for the movie / VFX industry than for archviz. We'll keep watching on how things develop there, of course. Thanks!

A nice side effect would be that it would mean easier material exchange between apps and renderers, same for USD. I have no idea where it stands technically right now but since it's based around physically plausible materials it fits the architectural market quite nicely, too (and Corona's own ideology).

Out of interest, what's the distinction between Archviz and VFX in your view? Would love to know how Corona developers/support look at it because from a user standpoint there really isn't one, even if I think really hard. The only thing I could think of that makes sense (and probably specifically for this thread) would be to manage user expectations :D

[TomG]

Mostly the difference comes from pipelines, and the need to be able to change and adjust many many things in post (that is, VFX is dependent on pipelines, passing things from one team to another who may all use different software, and who are blending this character with that explosion with this spaceship model and this real footage of a park and this real actor filmed in the studio against this rendered backdrop of a city - archviz does not in most cases have separate teams using separate software, nor the need to mix-and-match so many elements together).

If MatX or USD or OpenPBR become useful as interchange between, say, Corona in Max and C4D, or V-Ray in Maya to Corona in Max, we may look into it :) As of today though, there would be a small benefit for a small number of users, so it's not in the plans.