question

Michael Powers avatar image
Michael Powers asked ·

Layer RGBA Tutorial or even a decent user manual page - and other gripes

I am sick of the poor or missing support for MaxToA. How about more tutorials related to MAX? I don't want to see Maya or C4D tutorials - which use different interfaces and sometimes methods. I certainly don't want the explanation on the user manual to say the blending modes "emulate all of Nuke and Photoshop's modes" - FYI if I am using 3ds MAX, a reference to Nuke is most likely useless.

https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Layer+RGBA is one of the worst help pages I have ever read for helping someone unfamiliar with how something functions. How about attaching some real-world shader tree examples and explanations, maybe even a tutorial???

After 2 hours of searching I found something helpful, but of course Solid Angle had nothing to do with it:

https://youtu.be/0utXpKHRYFo

Does Autodesk really own you? If so, why is the MaxToA support so poor? You are hindering the adoption of Arnold by MAX users. To network render noice.exe denoising, I had to write my own python to segmented batch file script. I bet one your coders could have written and published it in 3-4 hours. And your licensing process...


Sincerely,

Annoyed


supportmap
1 comment
10 |600 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 5 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 2.0 MiB each and 9.8 MiB total.

Stephen Blair avatar image Stephen Blair ♦♦ ·

@

I've removed your Covid comment and the "OMFG", both of which were inappropriate. Please keep it civil and professional.


1 Like 1 · ·

1 Answer

· Write an Answer
Stephen Blair avatar image
Stephen Blair answered ·

Yes, we can improve the layer shader docs. Something more like this would be good:

Also, the order of the layers should be clarified, and we're looking at that now. We just added an example render tree to help, on the 3ds Max Layer RGBA page:


We reference Nuke and Photoshop because we didn't invent these blending modes, we provide modes common in other popular applications, like Nuke and Photoshop.

Many of the blend modes are also covered on wikipedia:

2 comments Share
10 |600 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 5 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 2.0 MiB each and 9.8 MiB total.

Max Tarpini avatar image Max Tarpini ·

But you even provide formulas and results .. not sure any docs will ever be completely idiot proof :))

1 Like 1 · ·
Ciro Cardoso avatar image Ciro Cardoso Max Tarpini ·

For me the Arnold Docs is one of the best. Similar to the Vray ones. Translating the knowledge from Maya to Max is basically seamless, at least for me.

1 Like 1 · ·

Write an Answer

Hint: Notify or tag a user in this post by typing @username.

Up to 5 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 2.0 MiB each and 9.8 MiB total.

Welcome to the Arnold Answers community.

This is the place for Arnold renderer users everywhere to ask and answer rendering questions, and share knowledge about using Arnold, Arnold plugins, workflows and developing tools with Arnold.

If you are a new user to Arnold Answers, please first check out our FAQ and User Guide for more information.

When posting questions, please be sure to select the appropriate Space for your Arnold plugin and include the plugin version you are using.

Please include images, scene and log files whenever possible as this helps the community answer your questions.

Instructions for generating full verbosity log files are available for MtoA, MaxtoA, C4DtoA, HtoA, KtoA, and Kick.

If you are looking for Arnold Documentation and Support please visit the Arnold Support site.

To try Arnold please visit the Arnold Trial page.

Bottom No panel present for this section.