New material editor

[arno]

Hi all,

I have included the new material editor in the development release now. The main changes are:

• Material editor, mass texture editor and drawcall minimzer combined into one
• Properties of multiple materials can be edited at once
• Added material templates, this allow you to make your own recipe for material settings like chrome, specular reflection, etc
• Optimize option that helps you to compare similar materials and fix the difference, this can reduce the amount of drawcalls

I still have some smaller improvements on my wishlist, but I didn't want to wait longer with releasing this new editor. So in the next weeks I hope to extend the drawcall minimizer with some additional features (like giving information on the gain in drawcalls before you run the minimizer and better optimization of the texture size).

If there are comments or suggestions (or bugs) let me know!

This tutorial gives an overview of the new editor:

[youtube]ibzmEuPHEf0[/youtube]

 

[arno]

It seems I posted a little too quickly, the video is still being processed by Youtube, should be available in 15 minutes or so.

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

Thanks Arno, a great improvement, much more functional

 

[bob5568]

Very nice, Arno!

Thanks.

 

[Devinci]

Very good! Thanks

 

[jtanabodee]

Very good, Arno. It is truly a wonderful tool.

 

[ANRI]

Hi ARNO.
The New material editor we lose the opportunity to consider in detail textures.
In the old editor we can see texture in maximum resolution.
Request: make extra texture Viewer.
Thanks for the great results of your work!

 

[arno]

Hi,

That's a good point. I didn't consider that people who resize the window that much. But I think I can add a function that double clicking on the texture will show it in a separate preview window. Would that work for you?

 

[ANRI]

Hi,
Would that work for you?

Yes of course! Thank you.

 

[arno]

Hi,

If you get the next development release (online in around 40 minutes), I have added the new feature. If you double click on a material or texture in the material editor, the texture converter will open with that texture. This allows you to see the texture bigger.

 

[ANRI]

Many thanks to ARNO!
This is even more than what I wanted!

 

[robystar]

Hoi Arno,

Would you please send a link to your yourtube tutorial because I do not seem to be able to increase the size of the inserted screen and am therefore unable to see it clearly.

Roby

 

[arno]

Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibzmEuPHEf0

 

[robystar]

Thank you, Arno.

 

[tgibson]

Just used it for the first time. It works well and seems logical.

One thing I don't like is that the Texture tab creates too many new texture files. I right click and choose Rename, it creates a new file. I right click and choose Convert to, it creates a new file. I end up with an extra unneeded file in the folder. I do realize it has the advantage of making instant changes, so users cannot "lose" their pending changes vs the old version.

I liked the old checkboxes better, since all my changes could be customized in a single step. The addition of a checkbox to the left of each texture picture and an Update Texture button to the right of each texture line would fix most of that problem - use the right click menus to set the desired choices in the dialog box, and then press the button to actually create the new texture. This would be more flexible than even the old version.

However, it's not intuitive that you change a single texture by right clicking it (although that's not too bad). I think it would be better for each choice to be edited right in the main dialog box as the old version did (i.e. the name is a text box and the format and size are drop down boxes). Then the new Update Texture button would make the changes in the texture file itself. It would also be nice if I make any changes to a certain texture that the line (or perhaps just the button?) would turn red or something to indicate unsaved changes. MCX should also warn you if you try to close the Material Editor with unsaved changes.

Finally, the current Update Textures button is not clear in what it does - it should be called something like Update All Textures. I had a 256 color BMP texture that got changed to a DXT1 texture by mistake.

BTW, I double clicked a texture for the full size version, and then tried to Save the texture in a new format. It wasn't saved in the folder. Perhaps I don't know the proper procedure (it's not in the YouTube video). The main dialog box functions seem to work as described.

Hope this helps,

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

One thing I don't like is that the Texture tab creates too many new texture files. I right click and choose Rename, it creates a new file. I right click and choose Convert to, it creates a new file. I end up with an extra unneeded file in the folder. I do realize it has the advantage of making instant changes, so users cannot "lose" their pending changes vs the old version.

Let me see if I can improve that. There should be a balance between removed files that the user might still need and creating too much files. But I see that when renaming and converting you indeed end up with a mess of files.

I will try to do something with your suggestions for the user interface. But I also tried to make it more simple (like the update to a format only takes one button now, instead of selecting format per texture, etc). The idea is that 99.9% of the users wants to have all textures in the same format and does not need the choice. But I think for the rename I should come up with something better.

Finally, the current Update Textures button is not clear in what it does - it should be called something like Update All Textures. I had a 256 color BMP texture that got changed to a DXT1 texture by mistake.

Maybe I should add that word All indeed. That would help. It does update all textures to the format you select. If you click the dropdown arrow you get some options for it.

BTW, I double clicked a texture for the full size version, and then tried to Save the texture in a new format. It wasn't saved in the folder. Perhaps I don't know the proper procedure (it's not in the YouTube video). The main dialog box functions seem to work as described.

If you save from the texture converter, it will only save the texture, not update the model. So that is not really useful. I guess I should maybe open it as a viewer only when you double click. The texture converter is also in the special tools menu and then it can be used stand alone on a texture.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

 

[tgibson]

Hi,

You're welcome. I'm sure whatever you decide will be fine.

Yes I agree, there's no need to duplicate the conversion system in both the main dialog box *and* the full size image view. It could just be a view box.

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

I have been thinking about the texture renaming issue a bit. Maybe you can give me a bit more background about the renaming you are doing.

When import SketchUp objects or so, the update all textures button allows you to prefix the model name to all textures at once. That is what I normally use.

So in that case you would not have to rename many textures. Or do you prefer to give them better names yourself?

If I understand the workflow better, I can probably come up with a solution to make it easier

 

[tgibson]

The whole renaming thing is really not such a big deal anymore, since the later versions of Sketchup do not rename textures when exporting anymore. Thus, any texture name you use in Sketchup is the same name it will be when imported into MCX. I almost never rename my textures anymore.

I was just trying out every option to see what happens with the new version.

About the only time left for me is when the name of a texture from Sketchup happens to be the same name as a different texture already in my project. I can thus put up with one extra file in my folder, as long as I know where it came from.

Hope this helps,

 

[bob5568]

Hi Arno, just used your normal map converter for the first time. Very nice...does the job correctly. My only suggestion for improvement is the listing of the file size in pixels. It appears that the file size is not read from the file in the visible xy pixel boxes. And, it appears the actual file size of the original is not one of the options in the drop down box.

So, its a bit confusing. I assumed that I must have the pixel size of interest showing in the on screen xy boxes...and I couldn't achieve that cuz my files size of interest wasn't an option.

Does that make sense?
Bob