What next with Indigo?

[benn]

Ill put together a new survey for the Indigo community - but I thought I'd give an overview of what we're working on and then ask you all what you would like to see us concentrate on.

Current tasks:

* Documentation for all the plugins
* Releasing 2.0 as a stable

Future:

What do you think we're missing / what would make Indigo more useful to you or easier to approach for new users?

[Godzilla]

Less scripting based things, more visual (button) based-things.

A real-time material editor. (It re-starts rendering the small preview whenever you change one of the material's parameters)

I'll think of more later.

[Zom-B]

You could simply search for [REQ] for a lot of ideas that where lost in the forum
over the time...

My list:

- speed speed speed
- fixing hybrid mode
- make Extra Atmospheric mode usable/faster
- fix and re-add polarisation simulation
- a one mesh Skin material with layers for endo-/epidermis
- a virtual layer system for materials with thickness (carpaint, ceramic, plastic etc.)
- On the fly selection of a region to focus rays to
- More Tonemapping methods (There are a lot tech papers about new methodes each year!) link
- more workshops and tutorials for ISL
- Network optimizations and fatures
- External Shader code

[Godzilla]

What about GPU support? If Indigo could utilize the power of one's Graphics card, render times could be cut to a fraction of what they would be if rendered with the CPU. I'm not sure if it's at all possible (as I'm sure that other renderers would have already done it....) but If it was implemented into Indigo, Indigo would be without a doubt the best renderer on the market.

[benn]

I'm asking more from a non-indigo-core perspective. We have an infinitely long list of things to do on the core - it's what we can do outside of it to make indigo better for everyone.

[remus]

A material editor thats well integrated with the exporters would be top of my list.

[Stinkie]

Depth maps!

[Polinalkrimizei]

A decent material editor.
People who are not programmers just aren't that used to fiddling with text editors.
The matDb is very good, but if you want to change just one little detail in a downloaded mat, you have to download the source, modify it in a text editor, import it as an external mat with your exporter, do a lot of testrenders cause preview doesn't work (at least in blendigo).
That is a terrible workflow for anybody, not just graphic designers.
Indigo materials are great and give great possibilities. But some things just seem unfinished and a bit nonprofessional...

[fused]

you should consider switching to c4d

just kidding

[PureSpider]

- fix and re-add polarisation simulation

And thin film coating...

[pixie]

you should consider switching to c4d

just kidding

He might as well download the demo and use it as a material editor

[fused]

And thin film coating...

+1

[Polinalkrimizei]

you should consider switching to c4d

just kidding

He might as well download the demo and use it as a material editor

I actually started with C4D on my Amiga years ago...
I'll have a look into the demo + exporter. But again: Indigo materials need an editor, if it is an exporter issue then it needs to be standarized (?!). I don't really care where to find it, I just need an efficient way to edit materials.
Oh and I would love virtual layers for the mats too!

EDIT: I also would love to play with bloom and glare again. You just need some bloom if the lightsource is directly visible, think of a lightbulb. Luxrender has a nice implementation of this...

[Godzilla]

Chromatic abberation / fisheye lens effect.

[Doug Armand]

I don't really care where to find it, I just need an efficient way to edit materials.

EDIT: I also would love to play with bloom and glare again. You just need some bloom if the lightsource is directly visible, think of a lightbulb. Luxrender has a nice implementation of this...

Agree with both of these.

#1: Bloom and other photographic effects/abberations

#2: A material editor that allows us mere mortals the ability to use the ISL? Indigo shader language. A while back Ono posted some fantastic examples for things like scratches in metal, etc. But the math was so way above my head I couldn't use the info he gave.

Some of us end users are 'just' artists - we know how to start the motor but have no idea of what goes on in the engine