As to the shape of the rendered sample object I think the one Gianluca Macerola first posted would be good, especially if it incorporated a rectangular shape as Dave’s Maxwell link showed.  If the CMYK color strip appeared on the inside of the shape, then you could get a better idea of distortion, and color shift.

The idea of tagging the materials small, medium, large, etc.  in the forum makes sense to me, especially if that tag somehow moves where the material goes.  If you have a lot of textures on your hard drive, It would be nice to know right away the scale.

Yon

Just for clarification about materials and measurement units: I think it is very important for there to be some correlation to real world size.
Granger units are “whatever”. Most architects and industrial designers and even character animators need things “in scale"- meaning that a granger unit represents some real world measurement (it would relate directly to the scale of the imported models). Without some real world unit it would be very difficult to scale any texture either up or down to an appropriate size. Basically, the scale of the texture without a model scale for reference is meaningless.

I think deciding on some “standard” units of measurement is important. What those units are is up for debate, I made some suggestions, but we should hear from everyone which units are most often used.
(maybe we can start a poll to find the most popular?)

Perhaps there is also some cue in the material preview as to scale. perhaps different perspective angles, (for the “small” size, looking down, for “large” an exaggerated perspective, maybe more eye level so the object looks like it is 3 meters tall instead of 3 inches). Maybe that is too much?

Black Box - 28 March 2007 12:54 PM

As to the shape of the rendered sample object I think the one Gianluca Macerola first posted would be good, especially if it incorporated a rectangular shape as Dave’s Maxwell link showed.  If the CMYK color strip appeared on the inside of the shape, then you could get a better idea of distortion, and color shift.

The idea of tagging the materials small, medium, large, etc.  in the forum makes sense to me, especially if that tag somehow moves where the material goes.  If you have a lot of textures on your hard drive, It would be nice to know right away the scale.

Yon

very good suggestions!
I like the idea of some harder edges on the sample model (like a window cutout or similar detail)

Gianluca Macerola - 28 March 2007 10:24 AM

Very good idea Dave.
If you want finish the grid, subgrid, scale, units and color ramp in CMYK and RGB.
When you have a finish project send me it and I want to insert it in my work-project.
Thank you for your support.

Let me work on this a little bit.
I’ll post something for everyone to look at.

I agree that a standard scale is required, I’m just not sure there is a constant as long as the EI unit is in fact what ever the user makes it.  If you put a mm scale on the image floor, as the Maxwell preview shows, that has no meaning to someone who is working in feet and not meters for the EI unit.  If you use EI units, then you at lest know relative to what you are doing what the effect will be.  the grid can be subdivisions of the EI unit.

Maybe one day we will be able to scale the textures from one material dialogue box, and this won’t be an issue.

Thanks for all the input on this.  Some more energy invested and something could happen here.

Ian, what does the council of elders say… do we get a spot to post materials?

Yon

Black Box - 28 March 2007 02:43 PM

Maybe one day we will be able to scale the textures from one material dialogue box, and this won’t be an issue.


Ian, what does the council of elders say… do we get a spot to post materials?

Yon

Wouldn’t THAT be nice? I think this feature request has been made numerous times- a “master” scale value that would scale an entire material up or down easily!

I think we are saying the same thing about the units, sory about the confusion. I just thought there might be multiple versions of the preview as well that showed the material at differing scales (mm, inch, meter, kilometer, mile, or lightyear, just not “whatever").

Yes Ian, is it possible to get WIKI space setup? This could be HUGE!

Yeap, a global scale value would be very useful for swapping textures.

Scale is a tricky issue, I don’t mind how we play this, but we should be allowed to submit just one scale as not to discourage people from uploading materials.

So, send me a texture file and a rendering and I’ll create a material bank on the Wiki…

What should we call this page?
Ian

Ian - 29 March 2007 02:14 AM

Yeap, a global scale value would be very useful for swapping textures.

Scale is a tricky issue, I don’t mind how we play this, but we should be allowed to submit just one scale as not to discourage people from uploading materials.

So, send me a texture file and a rendering and I’ll create a material bank on the Wiki…

What should we call this page?
Ian

Users should be able to submit a material at a single scale, and the community as a whole could work to create the multiple scale versions.

I would suggest there be a page set up on the Wiki for EIAS “assets”, then have subcategories for materials, models, Xp scripts, Projects for “merging”, etc.


Anyone else want to chime in on this?

I would just ad that there should be sub-catagories in the material section: Glass, Metal, cloth, etc.

It would be very helpful if a preview rendering were part of the category outline, so you got a name and a picture.

I suppose we should also point out the version of EIAS the texture works in.

Once we have the standardized render sample project, I am still more than willing to render out all of the existing EIAS textures. 

Thanks for working on this Ian, I think it will prove very valuable to the community.

Yon

So, how would you like to see this organised?

Main page with links to sub-catagories
Sub-catagory page with full-size previews (200x200?), download link and additional info.

Or
Main page with links to sub-catagories
Sub-catagory page with quarter-size previews (50x50?).
Click on a material to go to the material page which contains a full-sized preview, download link and additional info.

...
Ian

Ian - 30 March 2007 05:32 AM

So, how would you like to see this organised?

Main page with links to sub-catagories
Sub-catagory page with full-size previews (200x200?), download link and additional info.

Or
Main page with links to sub-catagories
Sub-catagory page with quarter-size previews (50x50?).
Click on a material to go to the material page which contains a full-sized preview, download link and additional info.

…
Ian

my vote is for:
Main page with links to sub-catagories
Sub-catagory page with quarter-size previews.
Click on a material to go to the material page which contains a full-sized preview, download link and additional info.

I would suggest 96x96 for small thumbnails, and a secondary 256x256 for the large size.
Really small (50x50) might not show enough detail to be useful.

I don’t know the limitations of the Wiki format, but....

Is it possible for the Wiki to show “Newest”, “Most Popular” etc. based on user upoads and downloads?
What about “top 10”? Could this be shown on the main page with small thumbnails?

Can each material have a rating system (1 to 5 stars) that users can vote for the “best”?

These would be good additions to the basic categories.

Third party shaders should have thier own sections (mforge, Mondo, etc.)

My simple idea

Gianluca Macerola - 30 March 2007 06:09 AM

My simple idea

Really nice and clean layout.

Would it also be possible to do searches from the Wiki based on these attributes?
As an example- find all materials that use “wood.shd”

That might be a useful feature.

Ahh, it seems like you’re asking for features the Wiki can not provide… I’ll ask Brad and get back to you on that one…

Doing this on the wiki would literally be a list of textures, no ratings or rankings… Though you can do searches on the wiki…

One more thing… Why 96x96? Why not 100x100? We’re so used to computers that we all count in hex these days! 

Ian

New Grid Design

See the attached images and let me know what you think.

This shows updated grid style, color reference, and scale reference.
I don’t have Gianluca’s sample objects so that portion of the preview is simplified.
The object is the same in both scenes, but the scale of the material is re-interpreted, as shown on the preview scale indicator.

Also included is a transparent object to see effect of reflection/refraction.

Comments and critiques are welcome to improve the design!

My vote for the layout would be a page with names and thumbnails, that link to a page with the larger version and description.  Gianluca’s preview example is great.  It would be nice if the linked page could house multiple renderings.  If someone designed a material that works well as plate glass (or hair for that matter) they may want to show an image of it on a scaled, and contextual object.  Some materials will not make sense on the preview object.

I also think the nomenclature for the sorting should be something like:  Material>Wood>Plank>Pine1(6.6)
The (6.6) would indicate that it is vetted for that version of EIAS.  Maybe the suggested preview would suffice for that issue.

For the preview I very much like the object Gianluca has.  It adds a bit of sophistication to the interface.  It would be nice if both the characteristics of the planer object and the curved where in one object.  The Evermotion preview (attached) does the best job I’ve scene of incorporating everything into one object.  If the surrounding ‘cage’ had squared edges on the outside, as opposed to the smoothed edges, I think this one has it all.  It has the frame inside to show how transparency and refraction work, and it gives an idea of how the material works with various thicknesses and surfaces.

Dave’s grid makes a lot of sense to me. The physical scale part I’m just not sure about, as we really have no standard.  And I can see how It could work.  I like the idea of having the color grid both as a reflection and a refraction.  I wonder if a checker board as Evermotion made makes more sense?  Still using the CMYK idea… That way objects that distort heavily may still pick up some part of the pattern.

Finally I wonder if a reflection grid wouldn’t be useful.  A grid that would finish of the square, as a cube.  The square Dave has the preview object sitting on.  The grid would be a reflection object only, and would show how the material reflection deforms.

I’ve attached as well the maxwell preview mentioned earlier, so it’s all here.

My 2 cents.

Yon