COSMOS assets materials mostly wrong.

[jojorender]

Hi all,
Is it just me or are many COSMOS materials still wrong? It’s mostly random IOR values, or (Maxtree’s) leaves with self illumination ticked on, etc.
I can never use assets out of the box, always have to check everything.

[masterzone]

IMHO A big part of Cosmos Material requires careful attention from who upload it into the library. I don't know if there someone who care the Quality Control. There many trees with IOR set to value 2 or similar.
I know that the library must be useful for Corona and Vray but there a lot of work to do into the material side...

[runx]

https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=42843.0

[bnji]

Hello everyone,
Thanks for reporting things like this.
I'll forward this to a dedicated team so that they can further investigate this and improve the overall workflow.

[bnji]

Hello @jojorender


Could you please try the following:
-Make sure your Cosmos Browser is up-to-date
-Try one more time importing the asset and see if the issue persists
Note: If there's a pending update for the material, please make sure to update it before importing it into your scene.
Additionally, you can try deleting the downloaded asset first, then downloading it again and importing it to your scene.
Please let me know if the issue persists.
Cheers!

[jojorender]

Your screenshot shows the same issue.
Why is the IOR value 1.0? This is obviously wrong.

[jojorender]

I checked other “new assets” (sorted by date) and their materials are also a mess.
Why does a tree trunk have the same IOR as air? Leaves with self illumination?
Given that we're paying for a subscription to access these assets, we expect them to be of high quality and free from such errors.
What steps are you taking to ensure that future assets are accurate and reliable?

[davetwo]

+1

I guess many are automatically converted from V-ray. But its pretty shoddy IMHO. It wouldn't take that long to check them properly for the Corona versions.

Many less experienced users will leave them as default. Or even use them as 'official' examples of how they should build their own materials. Both are poor outcomes.

[brr]

Hi all,
Is it just me or are many COSMOS materials still wrong? It’s mostly random IOR values, or (Maxtree’s) leaves with self illumination ticked on, etc.
I can never use assets out of the box, always have to check everything.

Many Chaos Cosmos assets (especially old evermotion) are simply outdated and have old shader setups: completely strange IOR values, no reflections, oversaturated, ultra-bright, or ultra-dark textures, etc. Just my opinion. You can check this by opening them using vray.

[frv]

I noticed that exports from Vectorworks to C4D also have very low IOR values when I convert these VW/Cinema materials. I need to manually change those. Maybe something in the Corona convertor is mixed up.

[mlon]

Agree, i have the same experience. Outdated assets and wrong values.
Also the colors in viewport and material previews are incorrect.

[TomG]

Please can you give specific names of models that are importing incorrectly, so that we can look into those - you don't have to list every example that you've seen a problem with, but one or two would be useful. As a note, Cosmos stores materials in its own unique format, so we need the examples to see if this is a problem in writing the Cosmos materials, or a problem with Corona reading from those Cosmos materials and creating the Corona settings. We don't want to second-guess which ones you are having problems with, so having the names of those in Cosmos will make sure we are on the right track! Thanks!

[frv]

For example these two. Look at the incorrect r-values. Often the glossiness is off as well at 100% without a map.

The usual manual corrections I have to do are incorrect glossiness, incorrect r-value and too saturated colours  in case of people. These I correct with a gamma adjustment of 1.2. I have a feeling that the convertor is faulty. The CR scene convertor produces very low r-values I noticed.

[TomG]

Thanks for the examples! I'm taking a look into it :)

[TomG]

And I've taken a look, into the examples given which were the Mountain Alder 005 model (focusing on its Bark material) and the material on the 1964 Bill Standing model. The imports into Corona are correct based on the original source of the materials. If you import into V-Ray you may see a higher IOR, BUT V-Ray also uses a Reflection intensity value (a color) and any such Reflection value lowers the IOR in Corona because we do not have a Reflection value (we're more physically correct ;) ).

So, Bill is IOR 1.6 in V-Ray (the Reflection IOR is locked to the Refraction IOR, so the 1.6 value can be found in the Refraction IOR in the V-Ray Mat, even though refraction is not used), BUT it has a Reflection of black; that is, zero. The equivalent in Corona of "no reflection at all" is IOR of 1, which is how it imports.

The tree bark has an IOR of 1.52, but a Reflection of RGB 96, 96, 96, which is quite a dark grey and so lowers the reflection significantly. The IOR when loaded from Corona is 1.06, which reflects (pun intended) the low reflectivity that the material is meant to have.

Both materials render and look "okay" in Corona (and in V-Ray) - they are not the most fantastically detailed, accurate and realistic materials, but that is not a flaw in the conversion either when moving the model onto Cosmos nor when loading it into V-Ray or Corona; it is simply how the original materials are - fairly straightforward and basic. You may want to adjust them to give a look that you want, but on import those are not unusable or broken in any way.

Hope this helps!