March 11, 2020
With Corona Renderer v6 we’ll have the ability to keep refractive and mirror-like materials visible when we create masks.

For now, the Render Elements that allow us to do it are CMasking_ID, CMasking_Mask, CMasking_Wirecolor.

Let’s analyze the scene we created for this example:

In this image, we have two mirrors creating an infinite reflection effect and a glass vase. If we create masks with the classic workflow we get something like this, CMasking_ID, CMasking_Wirecolor, CMasking_Mask with IDTool.

To be able to propagate the masks also through refractive and reflective materials we need to set the property in the respective materials.

In the CoronaMtl there is a new drop-down menu, in the Advanced options section, called Propagate Maks, where we can choose between:

– Never, the default setting.
– Through reflection, masks of objects will be visible in the reflection of this material.
– Through refraction, masks of objects will be visible through the refraction of this material.
– Always, will propagate both reflection and refraction (quite useful for glass objects).

In the scene used above the settings used are:

– Mirror material: Propagate masks through reflection
– Vase and Water material: Propagate masks always

and we get this result:

Once we have all the elements we can move to Photoshop to work with post-production. The workflow is the same as always: we use the color selection (r,g,b) to mask the element in the render. As an example here we can select the chairs by creating a mask from the Green channel from one of the render elements:

And in a few clicks, we can completely change the final image:

NOTE: once the Propagate masks option is used, you lose the ability to create a mask for the object as the material will be propagated in the render elements.

You can start testing this new feature by downloading the Daily Build from Corona website.
And let’s wait for May for the official release.

We remind you that our next Corona Renderer class is scheduled from June 8th to 12th. Book your seat!

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