RhinoCycles reflection glitch?

Serengeti (Rhino WIP) Rendering WIP
1

Hi @nathanletwory,
it’s been a while since I tried RhinoCycles and there seems to be quite something moving foreward here!
Thanks a lot for your work!

As someone also familiar with Blender I’m very much looking forward to building individual material setups within Rhino and more settings being accessible (even if hidden behind a rather difficult/basic UI) - but I understand that that’s nothing of high priority… unfortunately…
Still, wanted to stress that :slightly_smiling:

While playing around I noticed a strange behaviour when using Cycles Glass Material - it isn’t reflected anywhere… Tried to alter Rendering Options (Glossy Bounces) - nothing changed. Not sure if it’s just me doing something wrong though :slightly_smiling:

Glass_01.jpg779×468 23 KB

Glass_01.3dm (138.2 KB)

When trying to rebuild a glassy material with the use of Custom Material another strange thing is happening:
With Fresnel reflectivity active, Reflection and Transparency 100% and Color white I get something like a glass mat. As soon as I change Color, it gets opaque and looks strange…

And lastly: Within a Custom Material, Glossiness doesn’t seem to change anything yet - or am I doing something wrong?

Sorry for bringing up all those issues together but I’m trying to collect stuff I come across while playing around. Please tell me if there’s a better way of reporting those glitches…

Is there some kind of a roadmap for RhinoCycles for users to know which parts should work already and where to look for issues without reporting stuff which is already known for not working correctly yet?

Sorry for this wall of text, thanks again for your amazing work!
Best, Romuald

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Hi @romio82,

I’m glad you’re liking the improvements. Advanced control like ray visibility, shader creation, etc. are indeed not top priority. Essentially I’m working on a ‘Make Beautiful’ button that is as easy to use as we possibly can make it.

At some point I’ll be able to work on advanced controls though, but you’ll have to be patient for that :slightly_smiling:

The glass material isn’t the only problematic material, metals are not reflecting properly either, when the reflecting material is (internally) a custom material. I am aware of the problem, I have already created an issue for this some weeks ago. Custom material conversion does some tricks to simulate the original Rhino Render results as closely as possible, but since Rhino Render is less physically accurate that’s posing some problems.

Glossiness isn’t even implemented yet. Or rather, I haven’t attempted in simulating it with the current available Cycles nodes. I could use mix in a separate glossy bsdf with the color set in the Glossiness channel, but that doesn’t behave in the same way as Rhino Render. The glossiness concept is something that doesn’t really fit into physically based rendering, at least not the type that exists in the custom material definition and how it is rendered by Rhino Render. That said, I have a patch where I introduce ‘tinted’ BSDFs into RhinoCycles, essentially just a way to set specular color, a very early test render:

This above render is from a scene with objects that have a white diffuse BSDF, there’s a gray background functioning as skylight and a sun with white light. The green you see is the tinted specular highlight, set separately on my modified BSDF. This work is still very experimental, and lives only on my machine for now :slight_smile:

I’ve been quite the hermit the past few weeks regarding communication with you users, or almost few months actually. But I indeed should create again some progress video and list of what works, what doesn’t, and where we’re headed.

I’ll be posting in Serengeti/Rendering WIP when I’ve got something like that done.

Thanks for your continued interest!

/Nathan

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Hi Nathan,

thank you for that insight!

Didn’t intend to put you under pressure, just wanted to point out something I came across while testing :wink:
It was great to see your progress videos, good to stay updated on what’s happening.

Saw your twitter on Cycles shaders in Grasshopper! That looks amazing!
Can you already anticipate when we can try out such things by ourselves?
No pressure… Just enthusiasm! :slightly_smiling:

Thank you!
Best,
Romuald

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Hi Romuald,

I literally just made a new topic about that in this forum :smiley:

I can’t tell you when that tool will be available. For now it is for my own use to be able to create and test shader definitions much faster. I make it now so it suits my needs so that I can fix shader troubles like the one you reported in here :slight_smile:

There’s still some open issues that needs to be addressed before cool things like my Grasshopper shader graph plug-in becomes an item for the public. But be sure to keep poking me! :wink:

Cheers,

/Nathan

5

Wow Nathan,

just watched yor video and I am quite blown away!!
Render and input speed looks amazing, shadow only plane dito!
Cant wait to try that. Will this be in the next WIP already?

And this Grasshopper setup with integrated material preview is just insane! I want to have that!
You will be poked about this for sure! :smile:

Amazing progress! Great!

Best,
Romuald