Material Tweaker - Ideas Please

[MoonDoggie]

Hey VRay-ers,
I had an idea today and I wanted to see if there was any interest in me pursuing it. I made a quick mockup for the script's interface and wanted feedback.

The idea is simple: with the material editor open you use the script to do common tweaks for the selected material, watching it update in real-time on the shaderball.

I'm pretty sure the buttons are self-explanatory, but if you wanted to increase how much reflectivity the object has (ie. pull the Reflective color closer to white), you could do it quickly by just pressing a button "+Ref" or decrease it with "-Ref". I wanted the UI to be clean and new-user friendly as well. We do a lot of precision color work at Teague where small tweaks like warming a gray up or adding a touch of cyan is a daily task, so you'll find simple controls for doing that.

It'll have advanced customisable options for setting the increments the script uses to increase values independently of others, so you could have the "+-Ref" buttons increase it by a small magnitude, and the blurring options a large magnitude if you like.

I am not after advanced controls on materials that are very sparingly used ("Reflect on backside", "Max Depth", etc). Because I don't want to re-create the material editor in full. I just want to give everyone a simple way to navigate and interact with their materials for 90% of their use-cases.

Is this a good idea? Would anyone be interested in using something like this?

If Yes, what additional functionality would you like to see?
If No, what would keep you from using this for 90% of your material tweaks?



Did I miss something you use or do a lot to materials? Let me know.

Thanks for your input,
Colin

[MoonDoggie]

UI Update

[MoonDoggie]

Icons make sense? I'm really no good at all at UI design (thus I stick with grays) If anyone wants to submit any replacement icons that better convey ideas I'll put them in or make them more clear in their application.

[DPS]

If the settings will allow you to specify increments, could you not adopt more of a list for your interface. And have a space to enter the increments next to each parameter?

A simple math parameter would be good to degamma swatches for example.

[MoonDoggie]

The idea is you can easily click "warmer" a couple times to greatly warm up your diffuse map, where if you want to specify larger increments for "+Blur" or "-Blur" if you like. Implementing a de-gamma thing is probably just work for another script, but your input is much appreciated . I'll get on the LWF thing soon.

[squintnic]

i dont really get it to be honest...
seems like it would be easier to use the material editor if you allready have it open

[MoonDoggie]

To warm up diffuse image I usually open the mat editor and load the material

1. Nest the diffuse map in a "Color Correction" node, hit "Keep old map as sub-map?"
2. Click "Hue tint"
3. Pick an orange color
4. Adjust the strength slider

--- Alternately you can add red and subtract some blue from the image as well, which requires output levels tweaking.

I just figured easy automation of simple tasks like these would be a more pleasurable artist-centric approach.

Increasing the visual contrast of a diffuse map is as cumbersome and even moreso because you can use the color correction map or increase the values of the levels in the output tab of the bitmap.

Do you agree or still feel like it's a waste?

[squintnic]

no i understand now

[grantwarwick]

I think it's a great start and the idea is pure, but sliders left to right would be more user friendly!

You could keep the buttons (albeit a little smaller) and maybe have the sliders in between them?

Just me 2 cents, I'm not great at UI design either though.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I think every one would be very happy to see " Fix my texture Gamma settings"...

Also an value under the button that we can adjust to have more detail controls would be better.

Another thing (which I already did for maya) is to create a multimterial controler. So I can select 10 materials and then using this1 editor control all the settings at the same time. I know that helped me a lot in maya when I had to generate some complicated passes...

[MoonDoggie]

DADAL, you mean adjusting all of the multimaterial's submaterials reflection properties at the same time?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Yes. So If I want to select 10 materials and make them all chrome. I can just do that. In Maya I did that for different render layers to have different passes. In max u cant really do the overrides unless state sets allow you ? Not sure. But that would allow more complex workflows to enter max.

[MoonDoggie]

There is no maxscript access to the gamma of a loaded bitmap . This has bothered everyone for years now. Autodesk has finally taken this to heart and (hopefully) fixed this issue by using a new #auto gamma for LUT settings for bitmaps in Max2014. I haven't tested it much but when you save an exr or a jpg, the image is automatically corrected to 1.0 or 2.2 respectively.

I wish I could do more frankly in regards to making this easier for everyone, but prior to 2014, there's just no way to do it. From the man who wrote maxscript itself

The quote from the help applies to MAXScript Bitmap Values, not to the Open Bitmap dialog's override gamma settings which are, AFAIK, NOT accessible to MAXScript.
Even if you would save a new bitmap with a new gamma setting saved with the file, the open bitmap dialog is currently set to "Override" and not "Use Bitmap's Own Gamma", so it would change nothing.
This file picker was written before there was MAXScript to worry about and I am afraid none of its options are scriptable
Of course, I could be wrong.

Bobo

As someone who works regularly with LWF and nonLWF, I'll be keeping my eyes open for opportunities to deal with these issues.