Hi guys,
Would be great if we can define the shadow density not just as an absolute value, but as a fraction of the draw density - often we need to tweak the density a lot and manually recompute the shadow density, to keep the consistency.
Thanks!
This is of course only a UI level change, so it should be easy… except it isn’t. 
I started working on it and here is the issue: Let’s say we have a checkbutton that switches the Lighting Pass Density to a % value. Say you have Final Pass Density of 5.0 E-1, and a Lighting Pass Density of 2.5 E-3. Switching to Relative mode produces a % value of 0.5. This is because 5.0/2.5=0.5 (50%), and then there is an Exponent difference of -2, so times 10^-2 produces 0.005, which is 0.5%.
So far, so good. But, Max has a limited decimal precision in its spinners (albeit somewhat customizable). So if you have an extreme case of FPD of 1.0 E 5 and LPD of 1.0 E-10, the difference between the two values is 15 orders of magnitude (10^-15). Max cannot show this, so the % spinner would actually show 0.0% which is bad.
The obvious solution would be to once again express the Percentage value (or Factor value, if we don’t want to use %) as Exponent. But then it becomes less usable because A) it LOOKS exactly like the Absolute Lighting Pass Density at first glance and will probably cause a lot of errors and B) it is much harder to read than a % value like 50% or 0.1% or 1000%.
A third solution would be to only DISPLAY the ratio between the Lighting and Final Pass Density in a text field showing a formatted value (thus having nearly infinite precision), but NOT allowing you to enter the % value in a spinner. So the workflow would be: In Absolute mode, you dial in your Absolute Lighting and Final Pass Densities, check the “Relative” option and you SEE the factor, but cannot change it. Now you can tweak the Final Pass Density and the Lighting Pass Density will always keep the original fraction, but the only way to change that fraction would be to disengage the Relative mode, dial in a new Absolute value, and reengage the Relative mode…
Thoughts?
What about a ‘relative’ toggle - when it’s on, the base and exp of the shadow pass density are a multiplier of the draw density, and when it’s off - they are absolute?
Will try and see how it feels…
Cool