Indigo Renderer 3.6.0 Beta Release

[bioman666]

Hi guys,

It's always nice to see you're so active !

I'm giving my 2 cents here, as a reflection on where Indigo is heading :

Indigo is developing in the "more features" way (new materials, new tweaking possibilities...) but hardly in the "better usability" way. It looks -- IMO -- that Indigo can do so much already, but hell it requires so much learning !

I have a few examples in mind to illustrate my point :

1. On the rather well known "exponent" parameter. Indigo UI provides the most direct way to change it, but one HAS to run through the manual, or do some personal experiments to figure out if he needs a high or a low value. Not a tricky thing, admittedly, but those things add up and get in the way of falling in love with Indigo.

2. On the ISL. Indigo provide an AMAZING tool to create procedural materials, and I've seen some pretty fantastic ones on the forum. But why the fuck one is supposed to line-code write it ? I'm no math-phobic or code-phobic (my Physics PhD dissertation involved some matlab and I've enjoyed it a lot), but hell there must be an easier way ! It feels like writing HTML code on notepad and desperately hope for a dreamweaver to be released....
Are all your target-customers coders ? Have you ever watched a graphist/designer struggle with a pre-existing procedural material just to change the depth of some scratches ?

3. There are quite too few materials available on the website... Compared to Maxwell, it's almost ridiculous. Indigo is actually hardly usable out of the box, and i guess that this long learning period before one can render a decent image out of deter many enthusiastic new users to settle down.

Again, it's only my opinion... I'm not bitching against the need to learn something, I know you don't get nice things without hassle. I'm saying Glare is likely loosing customers as they might find Indigo too hard to handle.

[OnoSendai]

Hi bioman666,
Thanks for the feedback.
We are always trying to make Indigo more user-friendly. As well as working on new materials etc.. for 3.6, we are also doing some work on the UI and usability, for example making it so that you can drag and drop materials from the material browser directly onto objects in the scene.
Maybe we need to concentrate more on usability though

In response to your points:

1. It's true that there is absolutely no indication what Exponent is. I'm not sure how we would communicate that to the user. A tooltip might help but it's not very visual. Any suggestions?

2. About ISL, the general plan is that 'super-users' (Etienne, CTZn etc..) can make shaders, with shader parameters, which are visible as sliders. Then normal users can can just tweak the sliders:

This is already working and available, just not all shaders use parameters.


3. Well we would like more materials as well. Perhaps it's time for a new material competition

We're always happy to take suggestions on how to improve the Indigo UI, so if you have any things that annoy you, let us know!

[William]

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1. It's true that there is absolutely no indication what Exponent is. I'm not sure how we would communicate that to the user. A tooltip might help but it's not very visual. Any suggestions?

What about something super simple "Reflection Glossiness" 0-100% as opposed to a range of 0 to bazillion, maybe this range is linear or not, who knows.
It would also be easier to work with, otherwise we have to count and remember how many 0's we needed to achieve that glossiness. Although I am indigo noob and don't know what is exponent and why it's used for glossiness anyway.

[bioman666]

1. It's true that there is absolutely no indication what Exponent is. I'm not sure how we would communicate that to the user. A tooltip might help but it's not very visual. Any suggestions?

You're tickling my sense of creativity... challenge accepted. I don't know when I can come up with something (hopefully) good, but I'll come up with something !

2. About ISL, the general plan is that 'super-users' (Etienne, CTZn etc..) can make shaders, with shader parameters, which are visible as sliders. Then normal users can can just tweak the sliders:
This is already working and available, just not all shaders use parameters.

Great ! It's a very relevant way to make it usable, It might just not be that public, as I never came across any of those... Have you an example material so I can make up my mind about it ?

3. Well we would like more materials as well. Perhaps it's time for a new material competition :)

I think there are already quite a few great materials hiding in the forum, they just haven't been uploaded to the material database... It might just take you to ask for their author the permission to do so.

But a material competition might be good too, I'm just afraid it will lead to fancy complex materials (making use of the latest Indigo additions, such as coating, etc...)....

[bioman666]

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1. It's true that there is absolutely no indication what Exponent is. I'm not sure how we would communicate that to the user. A tooltip might help but it's not very visual. Any suggestions?

What about something super simple "Reflection Glossiness" 0-100% as opposed to a range of 0 to bazillion, maybe this range is linear or not, who knows.
It would also be easier to work with, otherwise we have to count and remember how many 0's we needed to achieve that glossiness. Although I am indigo noob and don't know what is exponent and why it's used for glossiness anyway.

It's a pretty decent start.

[StompinTom]

I agree that the tools should be clear and understandable, though I have to also make the point as well that every tool comes with a learning curve and set of terms that just need to be learned. I'm a bit wary of the "designers / artists need simple descriptions and terms" argument as I believe that there is also a high technical responsibility that comes with being a designer / artist as well - understanding your tools and their operation is crucial.

The term 'Exponent' has become quite common among rendering engines similar to Indigo and is not the most obscure parameter out there. Once you understand what it is - 'shinyness' on a non-linear scale - it becomes very simple to use.

My point is that I would just caution against oversimplifying terminology for the wrong reasons.

[Zom-B]

I'm a bit wary of the "designers / artists need simple descriptions and terms" argument as I believe that there is also a high technical responsibility that comes with being a designer / artist as well - understanding your tools and their operation is crucial.

Soooooo true!
If ya wanna play in the big league you also should DO something for it, nowadays (young) people prefer to start asking in Forums rather the give it a second try or read a manual, putting workload on experienced users.
"learning-by-doing" still works great, and also "mistakes" are good to learn about materials (limits) a lot!
Wanna be a doctor? Then you need to learn Latin, and don't bitch around why stuff isn't named all in English ;)

The term 'Exponent' has become quite common among rendering engines similar to Indigo and is not the most obscure parameter out there. Once you understand what it is - 'shinyness' on a non-linear scale - it becomes very simple to use.

And because of that non-linear scale a 0% to 100% slider is quite unusable here!

[William]

And because of that non-linear scale a 0% to 100% slider is quite unusable here!

Because of a non linear scale the parameter becomes guesswork unless you have built 100 materials and know the exponent of a similar material by memory. Does something simple like glossiness really need to be like that? Also what happens when we input a texture for this parameter, more guesswork to how that behaves.
Just seems unnecessarily technical to me... like directly inputting wavelength(without a colour guide) instead of RGB colour pickers to define colour blue.

Sure you can say "if you want to adjust glossiness, spend a whole day tweaking exponent to figure out how it behaves, then remember for next time". But perhaps there are better ways, without losing anything.

Of course render engines take a lot of time to master but I don't understand why simple parameters like this need to be made over-complicated.
It's almost as if "we use exponent to look fancy and you can use some material data sheet if you ever happen to come across one"


I understand you guys are using exponent parameter for a long time and naturally you will be used to it and possibly partial to it.
I know I am used to setting a glossiness factor 0-100%, I will be partial to that.. but it always felt natural, right from the start, as opposed to feeling foreign, manufactured or detached from human perception.

[OnoSendai]

I have wanted to change exponent to roughness for a while now.
Roughness 0 corresponds to a large exponent (1000000 or so), roughness 1 to a small exponent of 10 or so. (at a guess)
The tricky thing is ensuring backwards compatibility - we want to be able to load all the old materials that use exponent.

[Zom-B]

And because of that non-linear scale a 0% to 100% slider is quite unusable here!

Because of a non linear scale the parameter becomes guesswork unless you have built 100 materials and know the exponent of a similar material by memory.

Try to work in simple steps doubling from 8, that way you end up with a simple but easy to understand scaling.
For Exponent the most interesting values are under 256, since everything above looks quite fancy reflective.
I create materials like cr_32, cr_128 etc. and need only 3-4 for a complex scene ("cr_128" name reads: Chrome with exponent of 128).

Does something simple like glossiness really need to be like that? Also what happens when we input a texture for this parameter, more guesswork to how that behaves.

Seems you don't understand the way textures controle values at all mate!
pure white pixel is pure B value of the exponent map. pure black is 0.
So a Exponent texture with a RGB value of 128 (neutral grey) for example with B exponent of 1024 would have a exponent value of 512 for that pixel.
If measured in % of roughness or in Exponent value, the basic way a texture controls the value is the same!

Sure you can say "if you want to adjust glossiness, spend a whole day tweaking exponent to figure out how it behaves, then remember for next time". But perhaps there are better ways, without losing anything.

Your argumentation is getting silly here!

Of course render engines take a lot of time to master but I don't understand why simple parameters like this need to be made over-complicated.

Go and give Vray a try, you'll endup realizing how "simple" indigos setup is compared to that.

I know I am used to setting a glossiness factor 0-100%, I will be partial to that.. but it always felt natural, right from the start, as opposed to feeling foreign, manufactured or detached from human perception.

0-100% value control is way easier to handle for sure, and I don't fight that argument at all. Just telling that Exponent isn't the witchcraft you blame it to be!

[StompinTom]

I have wanted to change exponent to roughness for a while now.
Roughness 0 corresponds to a large exponent (1000000 or so), roughness 1 to a small exponent of 10 or so. (at a guess)
The tricky thing is ensuring backwards compatibility - we want to be able to load all the old materials that use exponent.

Maybe keep the exponent parameter as is, but make it a UI thing? 'Roughness' 0 equating 1 000 000 under the hood and 100% equating 1, as an exponential scale? This would keep things the same when editing materials / backwards compatibility but would also give new users a break when they're setting up materials in the UI.

Or have 'Roughness' right next to 'Exponent' and make it clear that they're linked so that you can edit either? Though that could start to clutter things...

[StompinTom]

2. On the ISL. Indigo provide an AMAZING tool to create procedural materials, and I've seen some pretty fantastic ones on the forum. But why the fuck one is supposed to line-code write it ? I'm no math-phobic or code-phobic (my Physics PhD dissertation involved some matlab and I've enjoyed it a lot), but hell there must be an easier way ! It feels like writing HTML code on notepad and desperately hope for a dreamweaver to be released....
Are all your target-customers coders ? Have you ever watched a graphist/designer struggle with a pre-existing procedural material just to change the depth of some scratches ?

Again, useful to understand the code, but you're right, it is quite a challenge to dive into it, especially for someone who has never coded before. There are some materials with parameters kicking around, have to dig them up though... I believe there were a couple in the Material DB already (scratched chrome or something...) but I can't find them this instant.

In the same vein (but specific to Blender in this case, though extendable to all platforms), support for material and texture nodes in the host program would be the next very useful step forward. Having the material nodes also supplemented by Indigo-specific math / ISL nodes would be the perfect situation (as in Grasshopper, ICE, etc.).

Any loose roadmaps for the Blender exporter?w

[bioman666]

Whaat has done something kinda like this in the SU exporter (see attached). You can switch from noob-friendly to full control by hitting the "UI" button. I think it's a good idea, yet the noob-friendly UI may feels a bit oversimplified... Can't tell if it's because I'm now used to the different parameters and material types.

Soooooo true!
If ya wanna play in the big league you also should DO something for it, nowadays (young) people prefer to start asking in Forums rather the give it a second try or read a manual, putting workload on experienced users.
"learning-by-doing" still works great, and also "mistakes" are good to learn about materials (limits) a lot!
Wanna be a doctor? Then you need to learn Latin, and don't bitch around why stuff isn't named all in English ;)

Well, it's not meant to save work for the lazy ones, but to attract new users to Indigo that may willing to spend their time on other rendering-related problems rather than testing each parameters and saving the results somewhere. If it's intuitive, then people remember it better, and use it more relevantly.

It's like you're defending the US measure system over the metric one. Yes, it's not THAT hard, but this complexity itself is not useful. And since we're talking with the ones that are making the tools here...

Finally, I'm not making it a casus belli, I can handle the current exponent parameter... It was just an illustration of the unnecessary complexity.

[Oscar J]

How about being able to choose either exponent or a 0 - 100 % scale in the preferences menu?

[jc4d]

Go and give Vray a try, you'll endup realizing how "simple" indigos setup is compared to that.

I guess the point here is the "scientific" terminology that Indigo use, this is what it have been keeping me away to give a real try and I bet for so many other possible customers as well.
We like it or not there is a standard settle already (caustics, crop, cut, paste, IOR, etc)

Cheers
JC