In addition to the below content, see also: Corona Slicer Material at Chaos Documentation Portal
With the Corona Slicer Material, you can use any object in your scene to cut away parts of another object where they intersect. This is a render-time effect so it will not change the actual geometry.
You can slice through all of your scene objects, or only through some of them.
Creating Corona Slicer Material:
We can create a Corona Slicer Material in the 3ds Max Material Editor:
Right-click In the 3ds Max Slate Material Editor and go to Materials > Corona > CoronaSlicerMtl
Corona Slicer Material Parameters:
The user interface of the Corona Slicer Material
| Option | Description |
| Cap Sliced Geometry | This enables or disables generating caps for the sliced geometry. |
| Override cap material | In this slot, you can define the material for the capped surface. It can be enabled or disabled using the "Use Override cap material" checkbox. |
| Include/exclude list | Use this list to include or exclude scene objects that will be affected by the slicing geometry. If the mode is set to Exclude and the list is empty, the Slicer material will slice any object intersecting with it. |
Using Corona Slicer Material:
After applying a Corona Slicer Material to an object (we can refer to it as the "slicer geometry"), you can place it so that it intersects with other objects in your scene. The intersecting parts will be sliced off.
Steps:
1. Create the "slicer geometry": create any geometry and make sure it is intersecting with one or more objects in your scene.
2. Create a Corona Slicer Material and assign it to the "slicer geometry".
3. Now, at render time, the parts of the objects that are intersecting with the slicer geometry will be sliced off and only the remaining parts will be rendered.
Examples of Different Slicer Material Settings:
Simple examples demonstrating the usage of different Slicer Material settings:
Here we created a simple teapot and a box and placed them so that they intersect, then assigned the Corona Slicer Material to the box:
1. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option disabled: in this case, the mesh of the teapot will be sliced-off, the sliced mesh will remain open and will not be capped:
Material Setup:
2. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, Override cap material slot empty, and "Use override cap material" option enabled: in this case, the teapot will be sliced, the resulting hole will be capped, and the object color of the slicer mesh will be assigned to the cap surface:
Material Setup:
3. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, a Cap material assigned, and "Use override cap material" option enabled: in this case, the teapot will be sliced-off, the resulting hole will be capped, and the material from the Override Cap Material slot will be assigned to the capped surface:
Material Setup:
4. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled and "Override cap material" disabled: in this case, the teapot will be sliced-off, the resulting hole will be capped, and the material of the teapot will be assigned to the capped surface:
Material Setup:
Using the include/exclude option in the Slicer Material:
In this case, the Corona Slicer Material will ignore the excluded objects. In the below example, we excluded the bottom magazines so they are not being affected by the Corona Slicer Material:
Material Setup:
Using the Slicer Material to cut through objects in an internet scene:
1. Corona Slicer Material with the "Cap sliced geometry" option disabled: in this case, we created a box with Corona Slicer Material assigned to it. The intersecting objects will be sliced off but the sliced surface will remain open:
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
2. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, a Cap material assigned, and "Use override cap material" option enabled: in this case, we created a box with Corona Slicer Material assigned to it. The objects will be sliced off but the sliced surface will be capped and material used as the Override Cap Material will be assigned to the capped surface:
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
3. Corona Slicer Material with the "Cap sliced geometry" option disabled: In this case, we use a box as the slicer mesh and use it to slice only the plant pot. The pot will be sliced-off but the sliced meshed will remain open:
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
4. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, empty Cap material slot, and "Use override cap material" option enabled: in this case, we use a box as the slicer mesh and use it to slice only the plant pot. The pot will be sliced-off, the sliced meshed will be capped, and the object color will be used on the capped surface.
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
5. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, empty Cap material slot, and "Use override cap material" option enabled: in this case, we are using the box as the slicer mesh and we are using it to slice only the plant pot.
We also used a Corona Physical Material with a Corona Wire map as its base color in Render Setup > Scene > Material Override, and excluded the slicer object from the override.
As a result, the pot will be sliced off, the sliced mesh will be capped, and the object color will be used on the capped surface:
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
6. Corona Slicer Material with the "Cap sliced geometry" option disabled: in this case, we created a box with Corona Slicer Material assigned to it. The intersecting objects will be sliced off, but the sliced surface will remain open.
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Material Setup:
7. Corona Slicer Material with "Cap sliced geometry" option enabled, "Override cap material" option disabled, and used with Corona Ray Switcher Material: here we assigned a Corona Ray Switcher Material to the slicer mesh and in the Corona Ray Switcher Material we assigned the Corona Slicer Material with ‘"Cap sliced geometry" option enabled and "Override cap material" option disabled.
As a result, the objects are sliced-off and the sliced mesh is capped, and the material of the original objects is assigned to the capped surface. Thanks to the Corona Ray Switcher Material, the interior lighting will not be affected regardless of the slicing.
Scene Setup:
Render Result:
Note that most of the walls are cut-off, but thanks to the Rayswitch Material the interior lighting is not affected, as if the walls were still there.
Material Setup:
8. Using Corona Slicer to cut away Corona Proxy, Chaos Scatter, and XRef objects:
Note that the Corona Slicer Material will cut through any geometry in your scene - be it editable polys, proxies, scatter systems, XRef objects, etc.
9. Using Corona slicer with Corona RoundEdges Map
The sliced off geometry was capped using Corona Slicer Material and the edges in the capped area are rounded because of using the Corona Round Edges map in the base bump slot of both of the materials (the base object material and the slicer material).
Render Result:
Scene Setup:
Material Setup:
Note that you need to plug Corona RoundEdges Map in the bump slot of both materials to chamfer the outer and inner edges similarly.
See also: