Alpha 7 tests

[JeffPatton]

Here's my first A7 test exploring the new shadow catcher. 


Nice update to Corona!  I will upload more images as I continue to explore the new build.

7-3-14 - Added another render.  This was a conversion of an older VRay scene.  Render time was 40 minutes @ 4800x3200 (90 passes).


7-3-14 v2 - Added updated render with correct ShadowCatcher reflections.

8-7-14:  Added crystals test (Bidir/VCM)


8-9-14:  Added restaurant scene test (old mental ray scene converted to Corona).


12-14-14:  Added noEmotion01.jpg

[cecofuli]

Very nice test, Jeff!! Do you like the new shadow catcher? What don't you like of it?

[JeffPatton]

Overall it seems to work well (shadow catcher).  I haven't tested it in many different scenarios yet though.  At this point if I were to add anything it would be the ability of adding a bump map and glossiness map to break up the reflections when needed.

Another thing that kind of goes hand-in-hand with a shadow catcher is a hemispherical dome environment option ex: http://wolfsoull.com/tutorial/tutorial-to-enable-the-hemisphere-iray/ 
I'll often use the hemispherical environment in VRay and iray for previs work and on occasion even final images. 

NOTE:  It may be doing this already (or similar) with the projection mode options but I haven't learned my way around it completely yet.

[Ludvik Koutny]

If there is anything specific you are not sure about, just ask ahead.

And i am really sorry we weren't able to get mappable reflection amount, reflection glossiness and bump out in this release. I will try to push it up the priority list as AFAIK it should not be hard or take long time to implement ;)

Here are also some tutorials https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,3995.0.html

My spoken English is still a bit clumsy, but it should make things at least little bit more clear.

[JeffPatton]

Excellent, thanks for the links!

[artmaknev]

Beautiful work!

[Ondra]

I guess Jaguar is now the official car manufacturer of Corona ;)

[AdamHotovy]

I guess Jaguar is now the official car manufacturer of Corona ;)

YES!

Excellent work Jeff and thanks for the suggestions.

[foxid]

Great work and beautifull F! Can i get it on my wallpaper?

[zzubnik]

Excellent work, and great to see you using Corona, Jeff!
The only thing that lets it down is the fuzzy backplate.

[rockin]

Paint shader is absolutely amazing, refelections and color are spot on. I love the lighting as well. Indeed, the background suffers from the fact that you can't map reflections on the shadow catcher.

[Hdiab]

Hey jeff,
what do you think about Corona?
I know u are a king at mentalray and iray, now i see u here so can we have a brief comparison between lets say iray vs corona or mental ray vs corona?

[JeffPatton]

Added another test image (motion blur & vray conversion this time).  Both worked really well.  Only needed some minor adjustments to the materials from the conversion.

The more I dig into Corona, the more I like it.  Many common sense features like the CoronaLightMaterial having the various visibility options & exclusions built in all make it super easy to get started with and use.  For what I do (automotive renderings) just about any render engine handles that scenario pretty well.  With that in mind I need to spend more time with Corona to explore how it works under different scenarios other than what I typically do before comparing it to other engines though.  So far though it seems fairly bad@ss. :)

[racoonart]

Added another test image (motion blur & vray conversion this time).  Both worked really well.  Only needed some minor adjustments to the materials from the conversion.

So you were using the converter script? If so, let me know if there's something that can be done to make it better ;)

[Ludvik Koutny]

I would like to warn you about one ugly shadow catcher bug. It seems that use environment for off-screen rays feature is broken, and returns wierd distorted version of the environment map, so the geometry with ShadowCatcherMTL will show up weird things on places that are outside of camera's field of view. Those things then show up in the car reflections as well. :( I have suspicion that's what's happening on your recent render (which kicks ass btw!).

It will be fixed very soon, probably in a day or two, so i will let you know once build with the fix is available. For the time being, i use cut tool to precisely cut away all the off-screen parts of the ShadowCatcher plane.

Here's what i mean. Observe the reflection on the ground in that mirror box:


BTW it only happens if using HDRI + backplate workflow. Should not happen with HDRI only workflow.