Interactive viewport textures; Falloff curves; Material Preview; RT

[liquidstudio]

Hi,

1. I know that Blender's 3d viewport is far from perfect ( 2.8 looks promising though ), but is it possible to make texture preview interactive? What i mean is to make textures NODE-related not OBJECT-related. Double-cklicking a texture node is a temporary solution right now and it works on single oblects well. But having to change 15 wall panels or floor boards is a real slow down. Are there any advancements/plans to make it work like in Cycles ( changing texture in node changes viewport preview for all objects )? Texture applies to an entire object as well - what about multi-material meshes ?
2. Falloff Curves - it would be really nice to have an additional control on Falloff node. Just Bezier curve like in 3dsmax.
3. Un-checking "Re-export meshes" disables material preview. I think it is a good idea to keep it independent from this checkbox.

4. RT ?? It is what makes Cycles so good for interior visualizations. Live material adjustment can save a LOT of time when it comes to interior design. It's woth more for me than any new Xeon or Ryzen Seriously, i didn't think it would be such a massive drawback when i switched from Cycles.

Anyway i'm a fan of Your hard work! Having V-Ray in Blender is an old dream that came true

Best Regards,
Marcin Mirkowicz.

[andybot_cg]

1. Not sure what you mean - right now no vray information is applied in the viewport. There seems to be some issues displaying textures in the viewport in certain modes, there have been some other reports already.
2. You can add curves, what's the layout you are looking for?
3. I guess the preview is relying on the exporter as well. Not sure why you would have re-export meshes disabled.
4. Yes, we're all waiting for interactive

[liquidstudio]

Thank You for a quick reply.
1. Maybe a little example will clear out what i mean. If you switch renderer to Cycles, unwrap a plane and apply a material with texture node you would see a textured plane in viewport ( in texture mode ). Now if you copy this plane several times and change a texture in texture node, every single copied plane would update its texture in viewport automatically. Without double clicking or any other tricks. With V-Ray its not that simple. You need to select an object, double click a texture node and repeat this process for other objects even when they share the same material. It is very time consuming in complicated scenes and things can get messy really quickly.
2. I would appreciate any help with that. I've tried to apply curve on Falloff texture node but without success. It is useful for velvet-like materials.
3. Sometimes i un-check re-exporting meshes, because it works a lot faster when i adjust hue or glossiness ( almost like RT ;] ). And what's the point for exporting same heavy scene over and over again just to check material changes on a table or a lamp. Just my thought

[andybot_cg]

1. I think I get what you mean. The texture is not connected to the vray material. I guess it's been that way so long, I've just gotten used to ignoring the textured view in Blender, I usually use solid shading. It would be nice to have this connected.
2. Curve seems to be broken in the current builds. I'll have to submit a bug report. You can use remap for the time being. I'll post an example as soon as I have a chance.
3. Ah, I see what you mean. For me, I just disable some of the heavier things like displacement and particles while I am tweaking things. The exporter then is generally really fast, just a few seconds at most. I use a lot of vray proxies too.

[poseidon4o]

Material preview with "Re-Export Meshes" off, will start working from next nightly. If you can upload a simple scene that reproduces curve problem it will be great.

[JuhaW]

poseidon4o: Is there any Pythonic way to create same result than double clicking image file texture ? 3dviewport showing uv-wrapped object. Before it was possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7S8Q06yEwQ

[andybot_cg]

If you can upload a simple scene that reproduces curve problem it will be great.

Here's a scene, the same rendered in a 3.0 build, and then the 3.5 build.

@liquidstudio, I added in a remap node example as well. (pink suzanne in 3rd image - it's in the blender file attached.)

[poseidon4o]

Thank you for the scene - should start working with next nightly.

[liquidstudio]

@andybot_cg
Thank You Very Much !

[andybot_cg]

Thank you for the scene - should start working with next nightly.

Are these minor fixes being updated on github, or has the exporter sort of fallen by the wayside? Just wondering if I can use the exporter update function instead of grabbing a new 200MB build each time.

@andybot_cg
Thank You Very Much !

You're welcome!

[poseidon4o]

Those fixes were in the c++ part of the code (which is also on github), so a new build is needed. The python part of the exporter is still used though.

[andybot_cg]

Those fixes were in the c++ part of the code (which is also on github), so a new build is needed. The python part of the exporter is still used though.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Thanks again for the quick updates!