kwhitt

Here are a couple more comparisons between X12 and X13 from the same project.

Hey Chop - not sure what's going on with the shadows. I could always get quick, decent results with the standard renderer - now not the case. I suspect the ambient occlusion is not working. That would go a long way to improving the images. I'm tempted to stick with X12 for now, but there are so many cool new features in X13. I am blown away by the control I have over cabinet door and drawer reveals, but I much prefer the results I was getting from X12. We do a lot of cabinetry!

I forgot to mention that the ambient occlusion is maxed out at 100%. It's as if there is no ambient occlusion at all.

I realize there will be differences between X12 and X13 when it comes to the rendering engine; however, the standard renderer in X13 looks awful compared to the results I got in X12. The new standard render looks completely washed out even when I decrease material brightness. I've also played around with ambient settings. It appears the shadows aren't dark enough and I don't see where I have any control over the darkness/brightness of shadows. There's also something strange happening with the cast shadows in the image below. The first image is X12 and the second is X13. Are there plans to improve this or is the focus solely only PBR with real-time raytracing? If so, that's unfortunate as the standard renderer was great at turning out a quick image.

It would be redundant as Dermot has already stated they are working on it. From Dermot in response to the original poster: "Regarding the missing lines for cabinet hardware, I believe that this is the result of a bug in X13. Upgrading your computer is very unlikely to have any affect on this. We are currently working on a fix for this and hope to have it available in the next update. For now, if you turn off color and then find you have some missing lines, they should come back if you use the Rebuild 3D tool. You should always report these kinds of problems to our technical support team if and when you run into them."

Thanks Mick. I tried several different searches all to no avail.

Tech support told me nothing. I read it somewhere on this forum. It is my understanding from the thread that it has been reported. I am not the one who found the bug.

I know this has been reported, but I can't find the post with the solution. Would someone mind commenting or pointing me to the correct thread? Thanks, Kevin

You are correct!

Chad - I've been dealing with pugentsystems.com. They are currently 4 weeks out, but the customer service is great. Their prices are in line when I've compared. Geno is my contact there.

Yep, it's here this morning...

I have run into that, but it usually clears up when I make it one large custom countertop. It is happening to me when the cabinet countertops are segmented. You might try ticking "global mapping" under the texture tab in the materials dialog box.

Mick - I don't see your uploaded images, but thanks for confirming. Now that I've spent the whole day on this, what does it mean? Nothing really as I've spent hours trying to put what I've learned into practical use in my bathroom scene. I've removed the wall and substituted for p-solids as the shower glass, drawn the p-solids in positive and negative directions in case the normals got flipped, removed the windows, changed my camera view to outside the shower tile volume, made the shower part of a larger room, tried various material adjustments, turned the p-solids into surfaces, etc., etc.... I can't recreate this simple setup into a practical application for a real scene. Aside from all of this, I am excited to see the direction taken by Chief as pertains to their rendering engine. I'm finished! I think I'll pass on the new computer and turn off refraction for now. It's still much better than anyone else is able to do in this market and the customer just won't notice there's no refraction. Thanks for all the help today. Hope I didn't wear you out! Kevin

It's definitely showing up. Here's a shot of a cylinder reflected in the mirror on the camera side of the refractive glass. I'd be curious to see what you get. I posted the file again in my latest post so as not to confuse with the others.

Mick - I think you misunderstood my method. The wall is red intentionally, so that it unmistakably shows up in the mirror reflection. Here is the same scene with a funky damask wallpaper and the pattern shows up in the reflection through reflective glass on the left mirror which is the shiny metal material hack. The right mirror is the standard material set to mirror under properties and shows no reflection. This cannot be mistaken for an aberrant red hue. The engine, it seems, is capable of showing reflections through glass under certain circumstances. Now only to find out what those circumstances might be... Attached is the file for confirmation. I think Chief's new engine is robust, but it now needs physically correct materials to complete it. Reflections Behind Glass02.plan

Thanks Christina for confirming the export works fine on your machine.

Thanks again Mark. I've decided to render the whole thing without refraction and call it done. I will most likely not be buying the new machine if it provides no advantage. I just don't understand how it is working as I would it expect it to in the last scene file I posted while not at all in others. Reflections Behind Glass.plan

Hi Christina - thanks for running the test on the RTX3090. The second image looks to me like it is the standard render (not PBR) or did I misunderstand something? Kevin

Thanks Mick. The mirror material I used was from the library and I altered the settings from mirror to shiny metal. It was a new material. Would you mind rendering my scene using the saved camera right out of the box with no changes? It works for me every time - just tested again...

@Kbird1 @MarkMc @Renerabbitt I know that the normal direction on the surface of the symbol in other render engines determines whether or not refraction will work within a volume. There doesn't seem to be a way in Chief to reverse the normals short of making a symbol out of your glass model and reserving within the symbol DBX. I thought this might account for when it sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. I tried this experiment and it failed too.

Yes, I am still trying to figure out if it works or not. The simple file I uploaded earlier (attached again) seems to work when the mirror is a shiny metal. The glass is refractive and refraction is ticked on in the PBR DBX. Mick - would you mind taking a look to confirm? Reflections Behind Glass.plan

Mark - do you have the scene you posted earlier? I'd like to try rendering that on my RTX5000. If successful, I won't purchase the new machine. Kevin

Mark - thanks for the reply. It sounds like you are saying that Chief is capable of reflections through refractive glass. I tested your theory about the reflective objects inside a symbol and it didn't seem to make any difference. I deleted the tile shower symbol and moved the mirrors outside of the wall cabinet framing and the results were the same. It takes about 35 seconds to export CAM04 on my machine. I've had no problem. If it's true that Chief can do what I want, it sure would be nice if someone could render my scene on the recommended graphics card. That said, it looks as though Mick has already done that and got the same results as me... Thanks again for the time, Kevin

Sorry for being dense, but that's a "NO" to my original question and tech support is incorrect? @MarkMc - Mark - in your sample file, you had refractions disabled? Thanks all, Kevin

Rene - thanks for the reply. I am still not sure what I am looking at here. Does the glass you show in the image above have refraction enabled or is this your general material hack? Or have you disabled refractions in the PBR DBX? I still don't feel like I've got an answer to my original question. Is Chief capable of showing reflection behind refractive glass if I have the right graphics card? Nathan in tech support told me yesterday that it was possible. @MarkMc shows it in his sample file. I don't have the recommended card, so cannot test. If not possible to do what I want, I doubt I'll spend thousands on another machine when I just bought one in September 2020. Thanks again for your help with this matter, Kevin. You are probably right about the textures being too high res. I come from a background where we would render 4k plus images and the higher res textures are necessary. In fact, I have an entire library of texture maps some of which go up to 8k. I agree it is overkill for a less than 2k JPG image out of Chief. I didn't bother lowering them as my machine can handle it.