Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

General News and accouncements regarding the Indigo render engine
User avatar
Zom-B
1st Place 100
Posts: 4700
Joined: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:18 pm
Location: ´'`\_(ò_Ó)_/´'`
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by Zom-B » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:47 am

OnoSendai wrote:Ah, I see. the C4d mat editor is more useful to you because it's integrated in C4d and is part of your existing workflow. Correct?
Exactifuckinglutley!

User avatar
fused
Developer
Posts: 3648
Joined: Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:19 am
Location: Berlin, Germany
3D Software: Cinema 4D

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by fused » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:55 am

Phoenix wrote:
fused wrote:go nag Maxon for using Quicktime for png loading...
But not any longer.

As far as I know, since the new R11.5 it's native!
doesn't make it faster for R9-R11 :)

neo0.
Posts: 1784
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:11 am
Location: the US of A

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by neo0. » Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:38 am

Nice. Skindigo isn't up to date but I can still play with the material editor :) No automatic previewing? :( It would be nice to atleast have be able to enable it in the options menu. It would also be nice to enable automatic saving as well as automatic rewriting (whenever it saves the next version of your preview, it would rewrite the previous version.) It should update your saved file every time it updates the image though (there probabaly wouldn't be enough difference), but when it does do so (once every few minutes (there should be a sublte notification of it in the lower right hand corner. If the resulting image is very big, maybe even overlay a progress bar with this notification. Another idea I had was to be able to right click or left click the material preview window itself to save the render to an image. Maybe have 3 little "jpeg", "gif", and "bmp" buttons overlayed to save to the respective format? How about having "pase/resume" buttons that fade in when you mouse over the upere right or uper left hand corner of the render preview window?

I think what's confususing many people is the lack of familiarity. There are the little things like the under lined materials that sort of make things look a little intimidating. I think the main thing is that, with most material editors, the properties for each material attribute are readily available and here you have to "open up" each attribute to gain access to their properties. The problem with this is that, once you do this, the amount of information you are faced with can be a little overwhelming. There seems to be alot of unused space too, and the concentric boxes that are used to seperate parts of the hierarchy are pretty distracting too imho. All in all, I think the material editors left hand pane is what is confusing most people and is it's biggest weak spot imo.

Also, the color of each property should be at the top of each section imho. Also, it would be nice if we could choose between inputting the values a RGB, HSV, etc.

Notice how in the attached shot of the silo editor ("material 2"), the set of currently created of materials is represented visually, as opposed to having a list of materials. Why not represent each one with a small icon, and have a Windows vista style bar where you can click and drag to increase the scale of the icons?
Attachments
material2.jpg
material2.jpg (21.83 KiB) Viewed 3616 times
material.jpg
material.jpg (56.24 KiB) Viewed 3620 times

User avatar
benn
Posts: 1046
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:47 pm
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by benn » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:10 am

No one is uploading materials to the database? It doesn't work for you?

:?:

User avatar
benn
Posts: 1046
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:47 pm
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by benn » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:17 am

As a more ordered way of giving feedback on the material editor, can you each create one of these materials, upload it to the database and keep a list of the annoying things you encountered while creating the material - step by step.

* Different colored carpets - http://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelrilloraza/507719378/

* Leather fabric cover - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kicey/162544709/

* Couch textile fabric:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paige-pics/1545031668/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72dpi/124522763/

Then take your notes like:

* couldn't find material editor in start menu
* couldnt rename by double clicking material name
* didnt understand that albedo meant the color channel
* right hand column wasnt wide enough and scrolled horizontally
* and so on...

User avatar
benn
Posts: 1046
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:47 pm
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by benn » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:33 am

My notes:

* Preview rendering should be low priority, it eats up my computer too much
* Update image and restart image shouldnt be the same button
* If I make a bug in the ISL, the material editor shows an error, then pretends to keep rendering (disable stop and pause)
* Light layer shouldnt be in the indigo material editor, it doesn't make sense
* First time I uploaded the material, I got redirected to the forum instead of entering metadata about the material

Other notes:

* General workflow works pretty well.
* I'm pretty awful at making materials. ;D
http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/165

User avatar
benn
Posts: 1046
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:47 pm
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by benn » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:35 am

Another bug:

* No way to specify the subdivision level of the model when rendering previews (for when using displacement mapping).

User avatar
Godzilla
Indigo 100
Posts: 985
Joined: Sat Jun 06, 2009 11:33 am

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by Godzilla » Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:16 am

benn wrote: * I'm pretty awful at making materials. ;D
http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/165

What the hell is that?

User avatar
fused
Developer
Posts: 3648
Joined: Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:19 am
Location: Berlin, Germany
3D Software: Cinema 4D

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by fused » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:08 am

benn wrote: * I'm pretty awful at making materials. ;D
http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/165
:lol:

neo0.
Posts: 1784
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:11 am
Location: the US of A

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by neo0. » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:30 pm

I just got back from work, all tired out and I gotta admit that that material totally made my day haha.

User avatar
OnoSendai
Developer
Posts: 6241
Joined: Sat May 20, 2006 6:16 pm
Location: Wellington, NZ
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by OnoSendai » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:18 pm

Hi Guys, thanks for the feedback so far.
Here's my current changelog for stuff I've done so far:

2.2.3:
* Mat Editor: Changed unit of bump and displacement from m to mm.
* Mat Editor: Sub-type controls created on the fly to speed up GUI.
* Mat Editor: Gave shader controls simple default shaders.
* Mat Editor: Made more user-friendly names for material types and parameters.
* Mat Editor: Hidden light layer controls.
* Mat Editor: Combined Render and Restart Render actions.
* Mat Editor: Settings saved (for limited time at least) when changing material types.
* Mat Editor: Added texture preview image in texture control.
* Mat Editor: Stopping render if scene error encountered.

And partial TODO:
TODO: write the name of the material we're currently rendering on the GUI somewhere.
TODO: do error pass with error dialog.
TODO: fix fatal error when using textures in base_emission.
TODO: add preferences dialog to set options like auto-update
TODO: custom RGB control for absorption coefficient.

More feedback would be good, let me know if there's anything more you would like to see!

neo0.
Posts: 1784
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:11 am
Location: the US of A

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by neo0. » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:33 pm

I realize my feedback was a little on the lengthy side, but you saw it, right? :)

User avatar
OnoSendai
Developer
Posts: 6241
Joined: Sat May 20, 2006 6:16 pm
Location: Wellington, NZ
Contact:

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by OnoSendai » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:41 pm

neo0. wrote:I realize my feedback was a little on the lengthy side, but you saw it, right? :)
Yup, saw it, and noted it. Most of your suggestions are more on the advanced side, stuff I will get to when I've got the basics covered.

User avatar
Doug Armand
Indigo 100
Posts: 1038
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 5:49 pm
Location: London UK

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by Doug Armand » Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:35 pm

Setting either 'regular' or 'irregular' in the 'absorption_coefficient_spectrum' of a media gives the following error:
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (38.9 KiB) Viewed 3474 times

User avatar
Doug Armand
Indigo 100
Posts: 1038
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 5:49 pm
Location: London UK

Re: Indigo 2.2.2 Beta with new material editor

Post by Doug Armand » Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:16 pm

Just a simple end-user annoyance.

It would be nice if the last file location used is saved when using textures.

I tend to keep all the textures used on a current project/image in one place.

It's a bit annoying having the file dialog not using the last file location that I used and having to constantly drill down back to where I keep my stuff.

Post Reply
62 posts

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 33 guests