Comments and requests to RailClone 6

[Lars Egerrup / LKE Design]

In continuation to the livestream showing new features on the  RailClone 6 release, I have some comments and requests. Some were mentioned at the livestream - some where not caught at that moment, and I just want to repeat them here, - others are refelctions that came after the livestream.

First and foremost, the iToo development team has made tremendous work with this update, and RC has become a much better tool after this release, however there is always room for improvements. Below I have some comments and wishes that I hope that iToo will take into consideration.


The RC Slice modifier is GREAT!! It saves so much time and hassle and makes the generation of segment objects for RC a bliss. I have some improvement wishes however.
It would be cool if you could have a segment and then a bunch of output nodes that you connected to the segment to draw out the various sub elements that build up the object. it would be very easy to change to another RC Slicer as you just change it in the segment node.

I saw however at the presentation that it is possible to select multiple segments that share the same RC Slicer and choose another RC Slicer in one go - and it will update the whole setup. This kinda omits the need for the above. 


One thing that I find odd is that the default and the evenly slicer  is made with a beginning positioning slicer to the left and a distance slicer to the right. Often you want these - or at least the evenly to be symmetrically around some part - fx.a  molding. So I think there should be an option to make a symmetric slicer around a positioner, at least as an option.


The Always on Top function is another great and missed addition. It makes the workflow so much faster  - especially if you work with large setups, that can take a decade to load. However it can be confusing when you select another RC object and the Editor doesn’t follow. I fully understand the reason why, but it is easy to forget, in instance you work with it. Especially if you work with multiple setups where the only difference is the segment sources  - or some few settings.

It would be nice to have some kind of visual indication that you look at one RC setup, but have selected another in your scene. Could be that all the nodes went gray in the editor.

Big applause for the “copy and paste to macro” function that now swaps all segments, splines and numeric notes to inputs  - that is how it should have been from the start

In that connection it would be helpful if you could swap between Numeric and constant in the editor with all settings intact. I often use constant fields instead of Numeric while I “compose” the RC setup (so I don’t have to go to the command panel to change values). It would be such a timesaver to be able to swap them to Numeric’s.


Password option on Macros. Its a huge wish from my side - as it would make it possible to make engines and not only fixed object setups. You said that it was due to some complications because of the way macros were saved, - as a text file. But to my knowledge it is possible to get text encryption add-on to most programming languages, and I suppose that would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?


Could you guys have a talk with Pulze and maybe implement some parameters to be supported in their SceneManager. I know that you can do it by MaxScript, but it would be nice if you could have some kind of integration with Pulze Scene Manager from the start.
As I understand, you can right now connect to a parameter in Max Script via the order it has in the parameter list,  so kind of an array. That is however a very fragile way of connecting to parameters. Wouldn’t it be possible to add an ID to the parameter, so that the whole setup wouldn’t collapse if the order would be changed?


Why is the rcObjects disappearing when the Corona Real Time render is on. I know it differs due to the way you show the rcObject Mesh / Quick Mesh / Boxes / Adaptive / PointCloud - it is however very annoying that it disappears, as it can complicate navigation in the scene.


Is that possible to change?


Thanks, Lars

[Michal Karmazín]

Hi Lars,

Big thanks for all your kind words and the detailed feedback - it's very important for us. We’re just looking at these suggestions and we'll see what can be done in future versions.

Best regards,

[iToo]

Hi, thanks for your feeedback. I would like to reply in detail to each point:

One thing that I find odd is that the default and the evenly slicer  is made with a beginning positioning slicer to the left and a distance slicer to the right. Often you want these - or at least the evenly to be symmetrically around some part - fx.a  molding. So I think there should be an option to make a symmetric slicer around a positioner, at least as an option.

Agreed. Added to the wishlist.

The Always on Top function is another great and missed addition.
[...]
It would be nice to have some kind of visual indication that you look at one RC setup, but have selected another in your scene. Could be that all the nodes went gray in the editor.

I think changing color nodes may be a bit disturbing, and confuse for some users. For example if you want to modify RC Style while editing other objects (as segments).
We'll think some alternative, for example some color change in the toolbar or similar.

In that connection it would be helpful if you could swap between Numeric and constant in the editor with all settings intact.

Not possible, sorry. Constant/Numeric are very different nodes, and it's not possible to switch them easily.

Password option on Macros. Its a huge wish from my side - as it would make it possible to make engines and not only fixed object setups. You said that it was due to some complications because of the way macros were saved, - as a text file. But to my knowledge it is possible to get text encryption add-on to most programming languages, and I suppose that would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?

That's it. This was requested while the beta, but requires to use encrypted files. That's a bit more complex than style password, and we had not time for RC6.
It's in the wishlist for next updates, anyway.

Could you guys have a talk with Pulze and maybe implement some parameters to be supported in their SceneManager. I know that you can do it by MaxScript, but it would be nice if you could have some kind of integration with Pulze Scene Manager from the start.
As I understand, you can right now connect to a parameter in Max Script via the order it has in the parameter list,  so kind of an array. That is however a very fragile way of connecting to parameters. Wouldn’t it be possible to add an ID to the parameter, so that the whole setup wouldn’t collapse if the order would be changed?

We have not used Scene Manager in depth. We'll take a look to it.
Anyway, i see a potential problem: only exported parameters are exposed to Max, and all of them are stored in an unique array (because Max doesn't allow to add parameters dinamically).

Why is the rcObjects disappearing when the Corona Real Time render is on. I know it differs due to the way you show the rcObject Mesh / Quick Mesh / Boxes / Adaptive / PointCloud - it is however very annoying that it disappears, as it can complicate navigation in the scene.

We know this limitation, but is a tricky issue:

RC only can be at one state at time: render or viewport. But interactive renderers forces Max to use both modes simultaneously (not exactly, but i'm simplifying), causing a lot of issues.
We solved that in FP computing a separate "viewport" mode, but that causes some side effects (performance and others). And RC is much more complex than FP regarding this.

Please note these type of renderers are not natively supported by Max. They used a trick, not locking the viewport while rendering.

While this may work fine for simple objects that just return a mesh... FP / RC use instanced items, different viewport modes, etc.
We had to implement workarounds over other workarounds, just to keep the whole stable and not cause crashes.

Regards,

[Lars Egerrup / LKE Design]

Thanks a lot Carlos, Great replies and I understand very well that not all is as simple as it looks from the user perspective.
I'm aware that you guys need to alot of acrobatiques to make MAX do what you want it to.
RailClone is a GREAT  and invaluable addon to MAX - and I use it daily with big pleasure  - thanks for your efforts!!

All the best, Lars