[REQ] procedural edge rounding/beveling

[dmn]

Since we have procedural surfaces to make modelling easier and polycount lower, I think it seems somewhat obvious that some sort of automatic edge softening would also be a time/poly saver...
It would be a setting to round or bevel the edges of a mesh or material as far as the end user is concerned.
Example image.

[Polinalkrimizei]

That would be SO COOL!

[zeitmeister]

Really cool. But I don't think that it's able to scale, for example in an animation, is it?
But anyway, proper beveling of meshes costs really nerves and time... on the other side, it forces you to learn how to build a proper, subdividive mesh.

[CTZn]

Yes, simple clean shapes can be subdivided by Indigo, the feature is independent from displacement:

[SaphireS]

That would be great, the round-corners-shader in mental ray is great, I would love to have something like that available in Indigo.

[PureSpider]

The request is not about making models smooth but the rough edges of them
Like one 90° angle to two 45° ones... you know?

[dmn]

Ctzn I understand the process of subdivision. As purespider suggests my interest is not the smoothness but the facetted edges, that your lower cube's wireframe has.

[OnoSendai]

I think this is something your modelling program should do, not Indigo.

[suvakas]

I think this is something your modelling program should do, not Indigo.

Here's an example of FinalRender Fillet shader that can round edges.
http://cebas.com/products/feature.php?U ... 36&FID=556

Also a similar shader is present in Mentalray I think. The whole idea actually is to take away the "pain" of manual beveling of edges inside a modelling program.

[PureSpider]

Same thing for C4D

[Pibuz]

I think this could really enhance Indigo generated images' overall realism.
But I know this has to be considered a side-aim, if compared to some other requests.

[CTZn]

PureSpider and dmn: I understand my entry was a bit off the request

Do you want it for shading only or as a MPD effect ? I vote for micro polygons, with an option for flat/round edges (added to the radius or offset option obviously)

To answer zeitmeister below, I'm talking about extending the "shading" effect into a "displacement" effect, wich is straight forward and of the highest desired quality. That is not a shading effect anymore.

[zeitmeister]

ChamferMaker for C4D is NOT the thing you are looking for, because it chamfers the mesh by modeling.
You want a shader which override-phongs the edges.

[suvakas]

To answer zeitmeister below, I'm talking about extending the "shading" effect into a "displacement" effect, wich is straight forward and of the highest desired quality. That is not a shading effect anymore.

Displacement needs a lot of memory. At least the current implementation does. You don't want to have a real geometry if this can be created with normal shaders. My vote goes to the shader. You could then use it for the entire scene. Displacement sounds like a messy solution to me.

But something tells me this is not going to appen anyway.. so we may speculate whatever we want.

[zeitmeister]

I think suvakas is absolutely right, CTZn: Why do you want to subpoly-displace something which might be achieved by simple shading?
I am really excited about a concrete developing of this idea in Indigo.