[wagurto]

I read somewhere that metal ray has a shader that smooth hard edges on corners to make them looks filleted. Do you have any ideas if something like that is possible with maxwell?
I'm doing arch viz and hard edges on the corners its a big issue. Filleting the corner its a huge task and will taxes the poly count greatly. Some shader like that would be a great tool, any ideas?
Thanks

[caryjames]

I think that Rhino has a tool in Beta stages or someone wrote a script, so depending on your plug in you may find something but Maxwell does not have an edge fillet tool built in. Sorry it would be nice to have though

[wagurto]

Cary thanks for the respons, but is not really a tool that modify your geometry. It is only a shade effect that eliminate the hard edge. I will search the web to show you what I ment. I was thinking some kind of maxwell material that wan give me that efect.
thanks

[Bubbaloo]

Maxwell looks much better rendering actual geometry, in the same way displacement usually looks better than bump. It's the nature of the render engine. But it would be a cool option for quick arch-vis type scenes where there tend to be a lot of sharp corners that need a small radius.

[wagurto]

Something like this is what I am talking about.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=243013

[oz42]

as people have said above it is more of a shader trick than actually altering geometry, see p.95 of the mental ray docs - http://www.mentalimages.com/fileadmin/u ... design.pdf so probably won;t work with Maxwell. Although if Maxwell can render non-physical geometry for displacement maps it may be possible?

[caryjames]

Hi Wagurto- sorry if I wasn't clear... I did understand your question, the Rhino tool does just that... it does not modify your geometry just tricks the render engine that the edges are filleted (at least from my understanding of it). I could be wrong but that was my understanding.

[wagurto]

I don't have the techical knowledge to see if this is something possible to do wiht a maxwell material or needs to be part of the render engene. I was hoping that can be achieve with a maxwell material, what do you think?

[jvanmetre]

caryjames-

I think you are referring to the "Edge Softening" rhp plugin for Rhino -- works quite well. Use it with the "extractsoftenedgemesh" command to get
your mesh.

Here's a link:
http://blog.rhino3d.com/2008/06/edge-so ... -labs.html

jvm

[kami]

it has been asked several times in the wish list board, already. and i agree, it really would be very helpful to have a shader or displacement-like solution without having to touch the acutal geometry.
working with filleted object usually causes a lot of inaccuracy for me

edit: btw, the edgesoftening tool for rhino works great. too bad, it's not x64 atm

[caryjames]

Thanks jvm - that is it! I have not bothered to try it out yet but think I should give it a revisit. Thanks for posting!

[cgbeige]

I really want something like this for Maxwell. It's one of the things I miss most from Mental Ray (aside from the tears and fist shaking). V-Ray has it as well.

It's a lot less work applying a round corner fake than bevelling tricky geometry.

[wagurto]

From what I understand, this is not posible to do with a simple maxwell material then. It has to be done with the render engine then.
Well to bad, I will add one more soul to the wish list.