Author Topic: Material Editor Suggestions  (Read 79979 times)

2015-12-11, 13:45:59

Ryuu

  • Former Corona Team Member
  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 654
  • Michal
    • View Profile
It seems that the time to start implementing some basic material editor may come soon (no promises though). The plan is to have support for almost all of the Corona features, but that may take some time. I want to start small and then add few more features on each release. To better prioritize, I'd like to ask for your opinion. Please share your thoughts on what features you would like to see in the material editor (and categorize them as "need to have" / "nice to have" if you can).

Although we're still in closed beta stage, everybody is welcome to share his opinion, not just the current beta testers.


2015-12-11, 18:18:22
Reply #1

caecarvalho

  • Users
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
My list would be:

Need to have:
-Nice material preview - Probably like the one in max, with resizable window, so we can see a bigger preview if we need. This one is a must have for me. I have V-ray and Thea for SU. Vray 2.0 for SU has a very small preview for maps and for materials and you can hardly see some subtle effects... Thea render has the option to choose from 2 different resolutions. It's better but if we could have a resizable window would be the best!
-Nice map preview - A resizable window with immediate feedback of the changes - Like if we apply a color correction or any other effect from the material editor. Thea render has a separate map editor wich is nice.
-Complete interaction with interactive render - I know it will take some time to achieve but would be nice to be able to see all the changes made in the material editor immediately show in the IR.Including the changes made in maps. Without having to confirm this changes with a button. Thea render has a nice material editor, but you have to confirm the changes and close the editor in order to see the changes in IR. V-ray has immediate feedback in IR for the main material features but when you're inside the map slots you still have to confirm the changes in order to see the IR update.
-Most of the materials supported in max, like corona material, emissive, material for thin surfaces like leaves (2 sided material)
-GGX


Good to have:
-SSS
-Material library or some presets like metal, plastic, etc...

I'd like to elaborate more, but that's what came to my mind at the moment...

Keep up the good work!

Cheers


2015-12-11, 19:36:33
Reply #2

spadestick

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 186
    • View Profile
thanks ryuu,

I would say keep it simple and all within one small window / dialog box and work with the sketchup native paint bucket material system instead of completely trying to replace it, which would mean retexturing everything again without being able to see the textures. In max or c4d, materials are represented by colours and not flat representations of textures like Sketchup, which brings me great difficulty when I compose a scene together as I can't visualise by weird colour representations.

So loosely tying the materials editor to the paint bucket materials native function would be great as the textures are updated on the spot visually shown with the model. the two main things that are shown directly on the model are material mapping  size and position (perfect for tiling textures), and transparency.

one of the best materials editor I have used is the extremely simple one from Podium. It has only a few settings. eg, diffuse, reflectivity, transparency (tied to native), base color (tied to native), it is only a single texture, bump, emmisivity, and alpha. I have always wished for displacement, SSS, and a rendered material preview . all textures reside in the skp file and not a separate JPEG file for each  texture  residing all over the place. Good place to start.

I would highly suggest not to have confirm or cancel settings, but rather immediate effect when sliders are moved like Mac. too many clicks spoil the soup.
« Last Edit: 2015-12-11, 19:41:32 by spadestick »

2015-12-12, 07:48:13
Reply #3

spadestick

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 186
    • View Profile
what i really like about another material editor from twilight is that it contains approximate real world equivalents to materials that make sense : for example, in emissivity sliders, shifting the sliders over segments of the range will give an indication of light power output eg. glowworm, naked flame, fluorescent, incandescent 40W, halogen 50w, halogen 100w, halogen 200W, sodium street lamp, 400W flood lamp, lighthouse lamp, and colour temperture in terms of Kelvins. of course, LEDs are messing up the equations with their different power ratings... but should be left out as they havent come to a proper consensus yet even within the lighting industry.

2015-12-12, 08:11:21
Reply #4

spadestick

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 186
    • View Profile
i think that the 3D max material system is simply terrible, tying one material to another, linking this to that, redundant duplicate materials, paths to textures all over and tying to animation, it is overly complicated and unnecessary with too many cryptic boxes to fill out, leading you to the twilight zone.

Don't get me wrong, there should be multi mixed and mapped materials, I just think there should be a much better and simpler way of doing it, and not the Max way. I heard that Modo has a good system... but I am not sure.
« Last Edit: 2015-12-12, 08:25:45 by spadestick »

2015-12-12, 08:37:49
Reply #5

spadestick

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 186
    • View Profile
Need to have :
Simplicity, all in one box. less is more.
Alpha is automatic with PNG textures.
Displacement Mapping
Volumetric material : Plasma, cloud, fog (there is actually a Fog function in Sketchup, would be good to work with it).
Material Preview

Nice to Have :
Skatter Mapping through assigned textures... eg... grass texture, equivalent becomes skattered real displaced grass or fur.
Real World descriptions instead of just vague numbered values.

examples of real world descriptions for reflectivity :
0% <- dull(raw, hewn), satin (brushed, honed, flat), semi-gloss (lacquer), gloss (polished), chrome, mirror -> 100%

examples of real world descriptions for bump / displacement level :
working with the units : ie. nm, mm, cm, m.
invert tick box.

examples of real world descriptions for opacity (affects opacity in Sketchup's native levels) : 0% <- air, clear water (bump map required), clear glass, tinted glass, frosted glass (entering into SSS territory), wax, skin, full opaque  -> 100%

IOR / refraction : Thin glass (windows), thick glass, water, plastic, diamond.

Emmissivity : Lumens based on a certain average size of an emmissive material ie. 10mm x 10mm  <- glowworm, phosphorous strips, burning bbq coals, naked flame, fluorescent, incandescent 40W, halogen 50w, halogen 100w, halogen 200W, sodium street lamp, 400W flood lamp, lighthouse lamp, sunlight ->. and colour temperature in terms of Kelvins. adding a filter can affect the colour.

 





« Last Edit: 2015-12-12, 13:36:04 by spadestick »

2015-12-13, 23:28:58
Reply #6

Ang

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 48
    • View Profile
I agree with what spadestick says.
For me is very important work with the skectchup native paint bucket material system. I use it to  texturing and scale the materials, it´s very easy to use. Later when I have the textures on the faces of the objects y use to open the vray material menu and I apply reflections, bumps, displacements, etc. This is my workflow and earn me a lot of time.
I would like first to implement in the material editor, material preview, reflections, refraction, bump and displacement. And it´s important the channel alpha and the material ID like vray.
Cheers!



2 xeon 2658 / i7 5820K /i7 3770

2015-12-14, 15:12:38
Reply #7

cosbu

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 15
  • civil engineer
    • View Profile
Good luck with the plugin! As sketchup is more about architecture and simplicity, the material editor could focus on that. I suggest that the materials' UV maps should link with those from the parent materials (but an option to unlink should be useful too). For me it's important also the diffuse,bump, specular and all other maps to be easily linked so when you rescale diffuse, the others to follow. I'd also like displacement to be easily handled, like a bump map. That is because it can add a lot quality to an image with little effort and that's really great for architecture
civil engineer

2015-12-21, 15:11:50
Reply #8

henyaoi

  • Users
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
Hello, everybody. This is my first post here. I'm not a Corona user yet, but I model and render interiors a lot with SketchUp and SU Podium. And I'm very curious to try Corona for SketchUp:) So, here's the features I'd like to see in material settings.
Need to have: thick glass, thin (single sided) glass, thin (single sided) sss, bump map, normal map, reflectance map, reflection blur setting, metals, emissive materials and something for fabrics (like silk and velvet).
Nice to have: displacement, sss, layered materials, anisotropy and others.

2016-01-18, 18:43:53
Reply #9

Ithil

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 8
    • View Profile
I would like to be analogues of procedural textures 3D max

Composite, Vertex Color, Dirt. Mix, Noise, Splat...
I really like to use procedural textures.

And big minus v-ray in SketchUp - is not possible to copy texture from one slot to another. Each slot has to configure from scratch.


If the corona-renderer can copy the texture and setting it will be a huge blow to the v-ray.
If possible, add a node editor it would be really cool!

2016-01-25, 16:16:04
Reply #10

valerostudio

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 9
    • View Profile
Thea has a pretty nice approach as far as a material editor goes. You have 2 options, one is very basic with some presets that you choose (Plastic, Metal, Glass, Thin Glass, Car Paint, etc) with a couple of simple sliders for reflection and glossiness. If you want a more advanced tools, then you open the material in an external editor with all the bells and whistles. You can also load materials from a library this way.

I get about 80% of my SketchUp materials setup with these shortcuts. Auto-bump from the sketchup material is a huge time saver too, and something that VRay does not have currently. Most of the time, you can get away with using a grayscale image of your diffuse as a bump, just to add some texture. In Thea's material editor its a one click thing.


2016-02-02, 12:33:59
Reply #11

jiminy-billy-bob

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 22
    • View Profile
My dream would be to have a node-based editor, similar to what 3Dsmax has.



I know it's much more work than a simplier material editor, but it offers to the user so much more power and ease of use. In max, now I always use this, I never went back to the old editor.
The node interface allows to build very complex materials very easily. You can instantly see how a single map is used in different materials, what color correction is applied to it, etc.

Acutally, I had in mind to build a node-based material editor for Sketchup, that would be compatible with the major render engines. But each one has a very different approach, so I dropped the project. So now that you have the opportunity to start from scratch, please do this! Pretty please!

2016-02-02, 12:41:01
Reply #12

jiminy-billy-bob

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 22
    • View Profile
This would not be easily possible without the node editor (Bertrand Benoit) :




2016-02-04, 01:03:26
Reply #13

jKLman

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 65
    • View Profile
I would be great if corona materials can be integrated into Sketchup native material system by extending it with the
common corona material properties.

Sketchup material system is so simple and easy to use and perhaps if this can be extended will be great.
Most renderer have their own separate material editor linked to Sketchup material.

My idea is use the sketchup materials and extending it to the advantage of corona render engine.

"Jack of all trade, but messing up with 3D"
Blender 2.78 Corona Standalone 1.5 / 2016-10-24 Alpha
Win 10 64bit

2016-02-04, 10:54:23
Reply #14

jiminy-billy-bob

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 22
    • View Profile
The Sketchup API doesn't give developers any way to modify the existing dialogs. So that's not possible. (That's why every engine has its own material editor)