[REQ] Little request collection

[okazaky]

Hi,

I have collected some feature requests while I was testing indigo 0.8 stable.
Maybe that I missed some features that are already included, but here are my suggestions:

- Textured mesh lights (for example to create TV's, Screens...)
- Normal smoothing angle limit (Normals often look very strange when they are smoothed in indigo. The possibility to set a degree-limit for every mesh would be very useful)
- Polygon-selections (One mesh with multiple selections; every selection could be assigned with a different material and different mapping coordinates)
- Displacement / Sub Polygon Displacement (Microdisplacement)
- Dirt Shader
- Render passes (Z-Depth & Alpha)
- A real Glow effect for Violet (The actual glow doesn't look like a physical correct glow, i think)
- Textures for Specular & Glossy transparent materials
- A layer-based material system
- Compositing settings (for example: visible to camera Y/N, cast shadows Y/N and so on...)

And now (Yeah, I know, it's possible that some users will totaly freak out at this point, but here's some inspiration from

maxwell )

- Real Camera simulation (Shutter Speed, and so on...)
- An integration of Violet into Indigo's main GUI
- Some kind of multilight implementation

I know, that's a lot of requests but that's what comes to my mind when I'm thinking about possible indigo features.
Would be cool if you could use some of them for future releases of indigo


Best regards (and please keep up the superb work ono!)

okazaky

[suvakas]

*Polygon-selections - already supported.
*Dirt shader - is this really something a render engine should do? I think not.
*Real Camera simulation - as far as i know, then it's in the making
*Compositing settings - yep, that would be usefull !!

I think other items are already requested. Some are discussed a lot. Check the forum.

[carbon]

- Compositing settings (for example: visible to camera Y/N, cast shadows Y/N and so on...)
- Render passes (Z-Depth & Alpha)

sounds very biased for me..

[Zom-B]

my 2 cent:

- Dirt Shader
- Render passes (Z-Depth & Alpha)

This is something you could do with your main 3D App using multipass rendering,
and postprocess for your needs is Photoshop or Gimp...
There is really no need for this features (better use coding time for unique stuff!)...

- An integration of Violet into Indigo's main GUI

Extra work for poor Ono to give use some unneeded Luxus...

The other stuff could be quite usefull...
but we learned from history that Ono is mostly integrating stuff that nobody expect ^^

[Kram1032]

Real camera isn't the thing, Indigo has, right now.
It has a flat-lens-model...
Realcamera models are different camera types, that are slightly more real, but need more compute time...
therefore, you can include stuff, like fisheye and simmilar

I don't know, if that's the best way, to show the difference, as I don't really know, absolutely, but I think, that it's like this:

Real Camera = a full cameramodel primitive (where all the parts are out of null xD - you can't see it, even in a mirror)

Flat lens = a simple plane (also null), some things aren't really supported: I think, correct chromatic dispersion, I.e. The glass lenses in a realcam modell give that effect.

Some of the stuff sounds nice, but others...
NO real object, that can be seen, by our eyes at all, DON'T cause shadows...
Alpha can be done by alphamapping Z-depth is, as far, as I know, (correct me) just a biased Version of, what indigo does automatically, based on physical laws, to get, in example, the DoF. It's different, to the biased method, though...

[okazaky]

Ok, some points are only gimmicks that are not necessary. But for example the normal smoothing angle limit would be awesome

@suvakas:
Is there a little "how to" about polygon selections?! I didn't notice them

[suvakas]

Well..the actual "how to" depends on your main 3D app i guess.
Also i think the exporter has to support it.
3ds and obj do not support multiple uv channels, but exporting geometry directly to xml/igs does.
All the formats are supporting multi-materials (or like you call it - polygon selections)

[edit]
When exporting to 3ds or obj, then all the materials you have applied to different polys of one model have to be defined in igs file. That's it i think.
When exporting to xml/igs format, then materials for different polygon groups are defined under tris section.