.34 Buglist

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- Greyscale jpgs are red (when plugged into diffuse channel of CoronaSurface)
- render doesn't match camera's film gate
- place2D node doesn't seem to support translate frame options?
- swatches are tinted blueish color now, also they are a little "blown out", especially when approaching .8 value in diffuse. 50% grey in the color swatch doesn't show a 50% grey material swatch in the Hypershade
- deleting a file node that is connected to a coronaSurface, deletes the file node as well as the coronaSurface material
- When connecting an ies file, the "file filter type" is wrong - I have to select show all types to find ies filetype, by default it is choosing image files
- manually loading of an image into the framebuffer beforehand (file open image) is erased when rendering...mental/vray/maya sw all keep this.
- Upon opening a new scene in Maya, corona will reuse the render from previous scene
- crash when changing test resolution (easiest to reproduce crash when changing resolution when opening a new scene before doing a render)
- Cameras in render settings should maybe be shape node name - ie perspShape should perhaps be instead persp. Maybe a bit subjective though this one. Not a big deal.

Other things i noticed was that lighting in Corona seem to be very arbitrary and not so straight forward. One factor when switching over from mental ray to V-Ray back in 2009 for me was the ability to setup a sun + sky and have the camera and lights work in real world units. This would make things very easy in rendering an interior because I could put IES files in and not have to worry about light levels, as I could work in lumens. It makes it easier and cuts down time spent on test renders.

At least to me, unfortunately it seems Corona is operating on multipliers and arbitrary numbers (sun, sky and artificial lights) - but I'm not sure if this is corona itself or if it is on the "to do list for Maya". In any case, having lumens or some similar for of light units would be very helpful.

I also think that IES solution in .34 is not as ideal as it could be. I think it would be very useful to have it's own gizmo like in V-Ray or 3DS Max where the gizmo changes to match the IES shape. It is a bit hard to work with current solution but I understand if it is perhaps only a temporary solution.

Overall thanks Haggi and Keymaster - from where this was a couple of months ago, I wouldn't be surprised to switch over to Corona for production interior renders in the coming months. It's actually pretty stable and it is very rare to come across a fatal crash. It's SO much easier, cleaner, solid and logical and artist friendly than any other renderer I've used. Great work.

[haggi]

Thanks a lot for this list. I'll check the topics. The sunlight problem is more a mayaToCorona problem. I modified the translation process and now it should work a bit better.
Can you give me please an example scene for a non matching camera film gate?
I think the whole lighting system is more a mayaToCorona problem instead of a Corona problem. I'll have a look how V-Ray handles IES lights.

[haggi]

Concerning the render view: Keeping the image is not possible if you load an image. The problem is that I have no access to the image data in the renderview. So I have no information about what's currently in the renderview. Corona always updates the whole image. I'll check again, but I fear it is impossible to modify this behaviour.

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Can you give me please an example scene for a non matching camera film gate?

See attached. (render through the persp camera)

The problem is that I have no access to the image data in the renderview. So I have no information about what's currently in the renderview.

I understand. Although I'm positive V-Ray RT is able to do this somehow - it is not important I guess, just something I noticed. :)


Here are a few more;

- Adding "<camera>" (without quotes) in the file name prefix of CoronaCommonGlobals is ignored. Instead it uses the scene name which means it will overwrite renders where scenes have multiple cameras.
- on maya standard lights, "illuminates by default" checkbox has no effect.
- color gain attribute (when plugged into Background color of the environment tab) has no effect
- escape key doesn't work when used during scene translation (on large scenes, you can reproduce this by pressing the esc key as soon as you press render). Corona or Maya cannot be interrupted then until the render finishes. I think you already logged this one though.

[haggi]

Light linking is not yet implemented, so "illuminate by default" isn't either.
At the moment, the image in environment background is not created with OSL, so none of the shading network or attributes work, that's a Corona limitation at the moment.
Thanks for detailing the esc key description, I wasn't aware of this specific behaviour.

[haggi]

Concerning IES gizmos. In vray, there is only a box with a circle which changes in size if I load different IES files. Is this size change needed? If yes, I'll have to create my own locator node, if not, then an area light would be sufficient with the appropriate attributes.

[haggi]

Ah, okay I see the problem of the camera. It is set to fit resolution gate to vertical and this is not translated correctly. I've added the but to the bug list. Thanks for reporting.

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Is this size change needed?

Yes, it is very useful to get accurate placement of lights when the gizmo represents the light shape.

Because sometimes IES files are in the shape of downlights and other times they are massive industrial lights, long fluorescent tubes etc.. which makes it important to be able to place it into a scene accurately.

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I get this also when doing a render region (with render globals open)

# Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2015/scripts/AETemplates/AEcameraTemplateCommon.mel line 569: TypeError: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\mayaToCorona_2015\scripts\Renderer\commonGlobals.py line 142: 'builtin_function_or_method' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

Corona will render regardless. When the Render Settings window is closed, the error eventually goes away.

[haggi]

Yes, that's already fixed in the next version.

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- CoronaLight appears to render images wrong way when using planar mapping and rotate uv on the filenode.

[haggi]

The problem is that I have no access to the image data in the renderview. So I have no information about what's currently in the renderview.

I understand. Although I'm positive V-Ray RT is able to do this somehow - it is not important I guess, just something I noticed. :)

Just to keep you informed. I got an answer from Autodesk Support. There is no way to catch the image from the renderview. So if vray can do it, they use some non standard way.

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Thanks haggi, maybe they dump the render view in a temp file somewhere and load it each time? I'm not sure but for stills, it is very handy to load in an old render and "patch" it with a render region to update only a part of the render instead of rendering the whole thing again. I hope that makes sense.

I think I found another bug, using physical sky or hdr - there seems to be a massive discrepancy in reflections when using Simple Exposure and Camera exposure.

Simple exposure works okay, but when camera exposure  is used (and matched to be same brightness) all scene reflections disappear.

[haggi]

Thanks haggi, maybe they dump the render view in a temp file somewhere and load it each time? I'm not sure but for stills, it is very handy to load in an old render and "patch" it with a render region to update only a part of the render instead of rendering the whole thing again. I hope that makes sense.

Yes of course. I just got an idea, let me try it. Maybe I approached the problem from the wrong side ;)

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Another bug;

Render region can sometimes crash maya although this is VERY difficult to reproduce.
It seems to happen when doing a render region, then using "Keep Image" in Maya's render view, then as quickly as possible doing another render region. It may have to be a heavy scene for it to crash though.