Round Edge shaders in render engines (is MODO the only good one?)

OccultMonk

Is Modo the only good renderer with rounded edges. Is it the only viable renderer that allows the Technique that Torfrick uses? Both for Highpoly rendering and optionally also lowpoly baking.

Other render engines also have rounded corner shaders, but they all seem to have shading problems. Corona has dark edges and the result is not very good. Octane and Keyshot also have problems because they seem to be geometry based. Octane update 3.1 is said to have a better implementation but is not released yet. Does anyone know which render engine has the best/useable rounded edge shader? (Preferably for 3dsmax)

Example of Corona 1.7 RC8 rounded corner shader 


Modo


Modo Torfrick 


Torfrick Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhPzuWui0ro&t=16109s 

pior

Blender 2.79b / Cycles : 

https://i.imgur.com/4gCWzGj.png
https://i.imgur.com/cWZZNOl.png

See this build here :
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2570285/#Comment_2570285

OccultMonk

pior said:

Blender 2.79b / Cycles : 

See this build here :
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2570285/#Comment_2570285

Thanks, but I forgot to mention need something that works in 3dsmax :-p

throttlekitty

Here's Redshift, the cubes are as simple as they can get here, and using a conservative roundedness value. You're always going to get some amount of goofy looking shading the higher you take it. It's akin to baking a normal map from a super round corner cube to a simple one. Comparing Tor's render to yours, you've used a high value on a low frequency area, he's using a much smaller value with higher frequency model to get the nice separation of edges.

OccultMonk

throttlekitty said:

Here's Redshift, the cubes are as simple as they can get here, and using a conservative roundedness value. You're always going to get some amount of goofy looking shading the higher you take it. It's akin to baking a normal map from a super round corner cube to a simple one. Comparing Tor's render to yours, you've used a high value on a low frequency area, he's using a much smaller value with higher frequency model to get the nice separation of edges.

If you compare Corona to Modo, then Corona is almost unusable due to the dark edge shader problems. Of course, mode also has shader issues, but it's a lot better.

OccultMonk

Does Arnold support rounded edges?

Axi5

OccultMonk said:

Does Arnold support rounded edges?

Not from what I've seen. I went to the Arnold 5 launch, there was beer so I'm not sure but I think I asked and they said they were taking a look at it, while they're doing this whole shader revamp.

igi

afaik 3dsmax already have this feature. Even modo's solution is far from perfect. Assumption with this technique is quickly getting round edges around the corner,  then errors blends into the normal map by resolution or when looking from a reasonable distance.

http://polycount.com/discussion/71995/tip-zero-effort-beveling-for-normal-maps#latest
http://polycount.com/discussion/146280/smooth-edge-shading-legitimate-technique/p2

OccultMonk

Corona results:

musashidan

Incidentally I was just messing about with Corona today. Still not perfect, but has improved somewhat. Blending between intersecting meshes seems arbitrary(or at least only blends perpendicular?) MentalRay was the first to do it. Now gone from Max, although the Autodesk Material(not A&D material) is still there and it also has a rounded edges feature(which is useless without MR) Vray has it too, but I don't think it blends surfaces.

Hopefully soon we will see this effect as an OSL shader in Max. Blender has an OSL shader to do this since 2014. I left the code for it on a recent thread at Adesk forums for Mads. He was already playing around with a first attempt at setting up this effect in Arnold using a curvature mix map. Here is the thread: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-shading-lighting-and/round-corners-don-t-render/m-p/7955926/highlight/false#M31159


Blender 2.8 has it natively and it looks to be the best implementation so far. It bakes down nicely in comparison to Modo. With Modo suffering from terrible shading issues when rendered(which are obviously baked to the NM too) I extensively tested baking down in Modo a few weeks back and found those horrible 90degree shading splits to be so bad as to give up on it.

Here's a good comparison video of a Modo Vs Blender rounded edges shader bakeoff. It's in Russian(I'm sure) but the results speak for themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D5ga2f1Gqo&t=1s&index=1&list=LLc7Tx06aR3stTnx_bR91Npg


Another option I recently tested was using this custom Chamfer node in substance designer. The results weren't too bad and it is easy to set up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V3IRKya-AQ&t=4s

Land

musashidan said:

Here's a good comparison video of a Modo Vs Blender rounded edges shader bakeoff. It's in Russian(I'm sure) but the results speak for themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D5ga2f1Gqo&t=1s&index=1&list=LLc7Tx06aR3stTnx_bR91Npg

It's my video comparison. If you are interested I can try translate it into English or add English subtitles

musashidan

@land cheers mate. I did watch the whole video even though it's not my language and it's easy to follow, but an English version(subtitles even) would be much appreciated.

Bumblebee

i want something quick and easy to use in max just like modo has.

musashidan

@OccultMonk Mads replied on the other thread. He's amended and recompiled the shader for Max. Waiting to hear back.....

OccultMonk

@Musashidan What thread are you referring too? The one about the OSL shaders? I see no recompiled shader there? Or do you mean a OSL shader for rounded edges?

musashidan

@OccultMonk Yes, the thread I linked. Mads recompiled the blender .OSL for Max. He posted a link to try out. I also have some pretty exciting news. I had a brief chat with him about MikkT in Max, and sent him links to the open-source code. He's looking into it as we speak!

OccultMonk

@musashidan Unfortunately I don't yet have 2019 Installed. Could be a while yet, but OSL seems like a great addition! Does that Blender rounded corner shader also work in Corona? And a better curvature shader with OSL would be awesome...

musashidan

Yes, OSL shaders are not render dependent. That's why Mads could just take the code and do a very quick recompile for Max. Open Shading Language is a really powerful feature added to 2019.

IxenonI

Any news on this?

pasha_sevez

VRay in Maya (I think in Max as well) can easily bake round edge shading into normal map. Also no pole artifacts.

IxenonI

@pasha_sevez
Gonna give Vray for Maya a try. Can you point me to some documentation / tutorials for baking the rounded edge shader to a texture with Vray?

pasha_sevez

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Round+Edges

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Texture+Baking

IxenonI

Thank you!

Justo

@IxenonI Blender's has the best results, I think. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm really eager to.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2641630/#Comment_2641630



I just wish Max added this, now with their OSL stuff...

OccultMonk

musashidan said:

@OccultMonk Yes, the thread I linked. Mads recompiled the blender .OSL for Max. He posted a link to try out. I also have some pretty exciting news. I had a brief chat with him about MikkT in Max, and sent him links to the open-source code. He's looking into it as we speak!

@musashidan Any update on this working with OSL in 3Ds Max?

musashidan

OccultMonk said:

@musashidan Any update on this working with OSL in 3Ds Max?

Sadly not in over 6 months. There was a lengthy discussion on the beta forums. There was a rudimentary OSL map, but it had issues and wasn't pursued any further.(note that this wasn't official)The main problem seems to be patent related. Nvidia still own the patent for the Rounded Edge/Corner. It's so weird because at this stage Corona/Vray/Octane/Modo/Arnold/Blender all have the shader feature.

The ironic thing is that 3dsmax's Shading guru Master Zap is the one who wrote the original Rounded Edge bump effect for MentalRay a long time ago.

Have you updated to Max 2019 yet. Arnold now has a Rounded Corners map.