Vray Material Repository: Gathering of ideas

[mcvltd]

It would be a shame if it's only open for use by the 'elite', but I do agree that everything that's available should be checked to see if it's of sufficent quality. Don't want to wade through hundreds of bad materilas looking for a quality one.

As DaForce says, not only will it be a matls 'bank', but a great learning tool for us not-so-skilled guys!

[DaForce]

yes, certainly the materials that want to be added will have to be check first to make sure they are good enough

[instinct]

In the chaossquid planning we came to the conclusion that it should be open to all legit users (checkable via a signup thread on the board), and that there shouldnt be any restrictions like one download for one upload...leads only to a lot of work and a lot of junk beeing submitted that approvers have to wade thru :P

Thorsten

[plastic_]

i say, make it open to all. anonymous.
the website wont get very popular otherwise.
i even hesitate when i have to register freely somewhere.
annoying websites are doomed from the beginning, because the user has no patience interacting with the internet's excess supply of information, and right so.

i agree about quality control of the upload, of course, but warez user check through the vray forum is a big annoyance, and there is no benefit, except that some crack kids will be angry for a few seconds and then go away.

who cares about them, they are not relevant, even if they have the whole internet downloaded and stored on dvd-roms. there is no way to stop them, but they wont take over our jobs, with some shaders.

[Da_elf]

we would need to ask the forum mods to setup the repository that only registered users can see the section if your going to be able to stop the "free" users from seeing it.
btw. this topic should be renamed "discussion about setting up a material repository" seeing as how currently its only been discussions and no materials hehehe

[DaForce]

Well it would be a simple matter of people who want access to teh materials to post in the thread then they get PM'ed the link. No need to pester the chaosgroup guys.

As long as teh link is not posted in the thread itself there is no way the warez monkeys can get their hands on it.

Also the thread is labeled "gathering of ideas" which is exactly what we are doing

There will be a new thread when the materials start

[Neilg]

The link will get out though, do you honestly trust every single registered poster?
How did the 1.48/49 versions leak?


Something where you need to sign up to get access to it would work best, can even give people a number once they register but before they can use it needing to have themselves cleared by an admin, by getting that number back to them through a thread.

[DaForce]

yeah your right, but seems like ALOT of work. Especially involving the chaosgroup guys.

I dunno....

[instinct]

the plan for chaossquid was actually to have ppl post in a kind of "sign up thread" then they'd be pmed the link to the repository wich needs you to register, but registration is disabled. So you post in the thread and a repository mod adds the user and pm's him the details. So in order to leak it ppl would have to leak their personal accounts, and then abuse would be rather easy to spot in the logs (multiple downloads of the same assests all the time, IPs from different countries etc etc)

Thorsten

[DaForce]

Yep thats basically what i was talkig about... but slightly more advance.

IMO thats the best way to go.. or something similar anyway.

[Da_elf]

ip's can be hidden or re-directed sometime if people know what they are doing. basically though it does all come down to trust. a person can make a model. sell it on turbosquid then someone can buy it then turn around and give it away for free.

[Paul Oblomov]

Hm. Why do we need this hard way to register ? Somebody will download all the stuff and then share it as one pack - and no one can tell who that were.

[CCS]

...Random Thoughts...


I like all the idea about privacy and everything, but in practice none of them will work. Some of the reasons have already been mentioned.

Also, in the long run, administering such a system would be a LOT of work.

With all that in consideration, my vote would be to keep it wide open. Any person should be able to explore the site (and I do mean WWW, not FTP). I'd say for people to have UL/DL rights they should have to register (using one of those image reading dealies that block bots) and then get an email to verify a real address, then respond to a link in the email for verification. Sure, there are ways around it, but for the most part we will rule out bots and anonymous leeches.

Another possibility would be to charge everyone a one-time $5 fee at registration. This would cover domain reg, hosting fees, and programming costs, etc. It would be more than reasonable, and would help rule out drive-by leeches.

What about on the UL side?

Idea#1
Any person from the mod group could check each mat that is submitted. Make sure it looks like it was created by someone who has at least decent knowledge of vray. (reasonable settings, no 255 values, etc.) They would also verify that any required bitmaps are included. They could also make a brief post stating what plugins are required Also, it would be handy if they could check the appropriate boxes to identify whether it is an LWF mat, whether it uses opacity maps, whether it uses caustics, etc. (Things that make the mats 'heavier'.)

Idea#2
Let the free market handle it. People can UL without restriction, and people can DL also. Materials that are crap, or slow, or missing files, or whatever will get low ratings and therefore go to the bottom of the list.

Another topic. How do we rank materials? A few ideas there too....
#1
The typical way. Tell people to rank materials that they've tried. It's easy, but people will also rank multiple times, give high ranks to themselves, give low ranks out of spite, or more likely just DL like crazy and never rank.

#2
Joe downloads a material He is only permitted to DL one at a time. Every time he DLs one, he gets an email. The email is a reminder that he must try this material and rank it within a week. If he doesn't rank it, his account is suspended until he does. This forces people to rank, but it doesn't eliminate spite rankings.

#3
Have a group of mods each rank every material. Then you see the average of what a number of higher-level users think of each material (appearance, settings, speed, etc.)

[Gijs]

Just studied the guide that is provided with the maxwell scene. I think that the model they made looks nice and for most materials it will suffice, but it certainly won't cover all materials. Suppose that you want to test cloth material for example, or materials that are supposed to be back-lit: the subsurface bars are nice, but don't give complete information about how a SSS material will behave when back-lit.

Also attenuation of colored glass is very difficult to judge with that model.

I think the strongest point of the scene is not the model itself, but rather the fact that a calibrated environment was created. Maybe material-dependant models/scenes are a safer way to go:
- one for opaque materials
- one for SSS materials
- one for transparent materials
- one for cloth materials

As a sidenote, I think it is wise to wait until most people are running the 1.5 release version.

[Frances]

...
#2
Joe downloads a material He is only permitted to DL one at a time. Every time he DLs one, he gets an email. The email is a reminder that he must try this material and rank it within a week. If he doesn't rank it, his account is suspended until he does. This forces people to rank, but it doesn't eliminate spite rankings.

I can't imagine who wouldn't be annoyed by this scenario.

Generally speaking:
As for representative scenes, materials are so dependent on scene scale, settings and lighting, that it is very likely that the material may not render as expected. But this is stuff that people have generously shared. I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth. It takes a second to download and a few minutes to see if it suits my needs. Even if it doesn't suit an immediate need, it will probably suit one sooner or later.

The Vray community has always been extremely generous and supportive to fellow members. It's like a hallmark. As a Maxwell user also, I have the benefit of making good use of the MXM site. I appreciate it's organization and ease of use and also the fact that it is sponsored, moderated, and supported by Next Limit. In spite of all that, it is no stretch for the Vray community to have something just as serviceable and yet unique. I don't think that many of the caviats and preventative measures I've seen discussed here are the kind of uniqueness that you really want or that will make such a site distinguished in a good way.