Textures preview

[John_Do]

Ok, I am well aware that the problem comes more from Modo than V-ray, but I'll ask the question : is there any chance to see comes with V-ray a preview system for shaders and textures, particularly procedural textures ?
I'm currently doing a glass shader and it's really annoying to switch between diffuse color and others effects to efficiently see the procedural textures look, and finely mixing several of them.


The Modo help has a sample page for the procedural textures, it's sometimes really useful even if it doesn't replace a real-time preview. I did a similar thing for the V-ray procedural textures, maybe this could help someone.

[vladimir.nedev]

We had this suggestion come up before, but for materials. Instead of rendering the current scene, we can render a preset scene with the currently selected material/texture applied.
If a group mask is selected, we can use the part of the shader tree inside the group mask, may be.
If the selection is a texture though, what material property should it be applied to - diffuse color or maybe luminous color ?

I am not sure when we will be able to do this, but it is certainly something we are considering. So if you have suggestions in terms of how the UI for this will work, please let us know.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

This is not surprising, shader tree is a powerful tool to design materials by mixing multiples sources, but a clean neutral preview in Modo is truly a lack.

I think a simple render preset scene like 3ds max's version would be a good starting point, but I've heard about some limitations with the Modo interface ? Would it be possible to include a specific preview window, anywhere in the interface, like we can do for any element of the UI ?

Your suggestions are relevant, functions could be pretty basic, like an auto-update checkbox, and an update button if disabled. And the preview might change dynamically depending on the layer selected, so as to keep it simple. It's basic, but this would be really useful.

[vladimir.nedev]

I was thinking of the material/texture preview being shown in the VFB. We don't have a way to dock windows in the MODO UI or draw there. It might be possible with some hacks (similar to Maxwell render's Fire), but I haven't looked into that yet.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev