Sorry if this already been ask, but is it possible to do such that converter would not leave old materials in slate view after conversion?
Sorry, for the late answer, I missed that post =/
I'm not using slate, so this is a new bug to me. Scripting capabilities in slate are extremely limited (I hate it so much!), so I can't promise anything - but I'll have a look :)
Well, while converting some materials in an already populated scene one selects "Clamp bitmap blur to" function it changes/clamps that blur value not only on some other renderer's materials but on already present/converted/fine-tuned corona materials too
hmm.. yes, it's a "known" bug. Originally it was meant to be a temporary tool for having a workaround for bitmap blur which was kinda broken in old Corona builds. I never really expected people were still using it after it got fixed :D . So, yes it is always clamping all blurs (it's a very simple implementation) and I'm tempted to remove it completely. The converter should convert materials and maps and not do all sorts of other very specific things ("Make 1 tool, but make it good" philosophy ;) ).
1. I think it would be a good idea to make some tickable option to skip corona's materials entirely but to have that ability if desired + it would be even better if you could bring back conversion modes to avoid such or similar converter/user behavior in the future to make it somewhat more foolproof and versatile so to say.
Currently I do not have any plans to re-implement conversion modes. These never worked the way a lot of people seem to have thought, and the problem about whether or not to break instancing between selected and non-selected objects still remains, even If I'd plan to redo those modes in a better way. I see that there are use-cases where you'd like to have this functionality (where there are no instances to break) but I don't see a clever way right now to implement it without confusing lots of users which are then using it, don't know what they do and report bugs about shitty conversion results (that happened quite often and was the reason why I decided to deactivate them) ;)
2. What if those blur amount conversions could be made to work both ways (up and down I mean) - in conjunction with presumably brought back conversion modes it would be quite a welcome thing.
3. What If it could change filter type during initial conversion or during material fine tuning - let's say if script could have some options for blur type conversion, like :
unchanged/original - default if no other options selected,
force - to pyramidal,
force to summed area
force to none
That imho would be quite welcome and the converter could become even better and more complete solution so one could say goodbye (for daily use at least) to some monstrous gui/interface scripts like the Modifier Modifier Zorb for example
4. Plus if script could change blur values in Multitexture maps it would be quite welcome too - zorb can do that, yet in it's rather unwieldy manner
Well, that's exactly the problem, scripts like the zorb tools are a bit clunky but can do a huge amount of things. If I implement a "little" version for just clamping blur or some other mass change functionality it's always very very limited and can only do exactly what I had in mind people would want. You are now requesting new features which (if I implemented these) would make my tools a little bit more useful for some people but are basically still very limited and are just more complicated to implement and generate more bugs (as I'm just adding more stuff on top but the underlaying framework was never written to be that flexible, so I have to do ugly workarounds) . As written above, make 1 tool but make it good.
5. Maybe those and similar functions that you decide or people might want to implement in the future may require some sort of simple/advanced switch in the converters gui to hide away all those nuts and bolts until they are needed and those are needed quite often might I add- it would be good to have those functions in one place.
Yes, that's what I'm currently thinking about - adding a completely separate toolset for all sorts of "little things" I don't want to implement in the converter but have proven to be useful for some people. Normally that's stuff I'm doing with one or two lines of code for myself while working.
Hope I am not too greedy and those things are not too hard to implement and even more, not too unnecessary for everyone except me, yet then I found out that bug/unintended behavior it got me thinking of what could be improved further and so I decided to make this chaotic long-post :)
No, you are very welcome to make suggestions and I really appreciate every feedback! It's all of your feedback that made this converter so successful :) Most of the time the problem with feature requests is not that I wouldn't want to implement it but that I'm not sure how to do it in a really good way. Some developers just throw in everything people "may" want to have one day or another and what comes out it a totally messed up interface like Vray3 now has. I prefer to make everything as simple as possible, ideally a 1-click solution without any pitfalls (pretty much how corona is meant to be). I could add lots of fine-tuning settings and stuff that is helpful in very specific cases but that would also mean less users are able to use the converter right away. In the end it's all a matter of balance between features and usability.
« Last Edit: 2014-12-03, 14:53:42 by DeadClown »
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