Background - Use for refraction/mirror reflection - Not Working

[vasile_bulgac1]

Hello again,

It is very sad that since the launch of Vantage 2.0, apart from the cumbersome and counterintuitive UI, it is plagued with different bugs (some serious ones)...

Recently I have discovered that the Background function when you select HDR or a different img. as background, the "Use for refraction/mirror reflection" function is broken, in 1.8.6 it worked perfectly.

I have attached three screenshots as proof and it can be easily reproduced.



The only way right now is to use the same intensity as the env. map.

Sadly the function is broken, but I hope it will get fixed ASAP because it is very immersion breaker.

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi vasile_bilgac1,

The Use for refraction/mirror reflections is working as expected on my end: https://imgsli.com/MjE2MTAw/0/2 Maybe the DlSS causes this strange halo effect? Can you share the scene so we can test it on our end? You can use the Chaos Help form with a link to the forum thread: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. Once we have something we will write back.

Best regards,
Alexander

[vasile_bulgac1]

Hi Atanasov,

First of all in your scene it's a basic glass sphere, in my case there's a girl's hair which include alpha maps. You know very well Vantage doesn't handle at all opacity maps well and therefore I was forced to use the infamous workaround. I use the alpha map with gamma 1.0 map (but inverted) on the "Refract" slot and I set the Refract IOR to 1, and therefore the Refraction is basically 1:1 to Opacity and Vantage can understand the gradients and render the hair or other materials properly, but now in 2.1.1 it can't.

Also, can be this DLSS be completely disabled? I'm asking because this can be the culprit.

The scene I can't send it to you because it's very complex and the textures have a lot of different paths. I will try to send you only the hair with the textures and test it in different environments with different HDR maps.

Seriously this DLSS is more game oriented and sometimes can do more harm than good, that's why I'm asking how it can be completely disabled and Vantage to work/render like in 1.8.6.

And now a side question, can you have installed two Vantages on the same PC? I mean 1.8.6 and 2.1.1, using different folders, of course.

Thanks

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi vasile_bilgac1,

Also, can be this DLSS be completely disabled?

DLSS can be controlled from Edit>Preferences>Render Defaults. From there select NVIDIA Optix AI as Primary (when moving): https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1qsw_...At-ln28kFRLSS6 This way you will have the behavior before the implementation of DLSS. However Optix will blur out a lot more on low samples where DLSS looks a lot more stable. You can set Primary as DLSS Ray Reconstruction and NVidia Optix Ai as Secondary and set after X amount of sample to switch: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1cGuH...ZSCcSdP1dnb6wD

can you have installed two Vantages on the same PC? I mean 1.8.6 and 2.1.1, using different folders, of course.

Yes, there is a hacky way you could have 2 instances of Vantage installed. You could copy the C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Vantage to a location of your choice and install the other version. However Chaos Cosmos browser may not work with the copied version.

Best regards,
Alexander

[vasile_bulgac1]

I think I might found the culprit here but still this doesn't solve the problem totally, because in 1.8.6 it worked well, even with this values.

I have attached screenshots with names and you can take a look at'em.




That's also proves DLSS isn't the cause here, it's something that has been changed in the render engine of the program.

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Refraction glossiness was skipped prior to 2.1 so now the refraction glossiness will actually render and make a difference. And since Use for refraction/mirror reflections is used only for pure (meaning 1.0 in value, anything below is glossy) reflections and with 2.1 refractions - it will use the environment map and not the background one. So this is not a bug, this is how it currently works until we improve the Use for refraction/mirror reflections option to work with glossy refractions/reflections(LAV-1650). Does the render match the 1.8.6 version with refraction glossiness set to 1?

Best regards,
Alexander

[vasile_bulgac1]

Refraction glossiness was skipped prior to 2.1 so now the refraction glossiness will actually render and make a difference. And since Use for refraction/mirror reflections is used only for pure (meaning 1.0 in value, anything below is glossy) reflections and with 2.1 refractions - it will use the environment map and not the background one. So this is not a bug, this is how it currently works until we improve the Use for refraction/mirror reflections option to work with glossy refractions/reflections. Does the render match the 1.8.6 version with refraction glossiness set to 1?

Best regards,
Alexander

Indeed the render match the 1.8.6 version with refraction glossiness set to 1 and the refraction color to be set to 0 0 0 (black).

The only issue right now is that I have to rework a ton of MTLs because they have this 0,98 value instead of 1.

But still the function needs to be improved, because how it currently works using only the environment map and not the background one, can cause lots of headaches, at least in my case...

Anyway I'll wait an update