For v-ray to be a true mass succes

V-Ray V-Ray for Rhino Requests
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… you guys would have to work on the interface, much more than the features. After a few days of experimenting I would say that the lighting UI is passable, but the material editor is really the bottleneck. Modifying simple parameters like amount of reflection, transparency and highlight characteristics are utterly mindboggling.

Don’t get me wrong, the results can be awesome, but I would be afraid to recommend the programm because of the above. Consider having a simple, but concise interface for material editing next to an advanced one for the ‘nerds’.

Good luck, Michiel

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Re: for v-ray to be a true mass succes

The UI thing is definitely on our radar, and we are working towards having a UI that is easy to work with, simple, and helps people use are product rather than being the thing that prevents them from doing so. Its good to hear users voice their opinion about what they would like to be changed with the UI. That will only help us make things better for everyone.

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I’ll chime in, then. Instead of those confusing “m” and "M"s, why not have something expandable? If I want to figure out what bitmap is assigned to a material, I have to go to the editor, click diffuse, click M, click M again… too many clicks.
And when a diffuse M is clicked, the color box to its left should disappear. A beginner has no way of knowing that an M (as opposed to m) overrides the box.
I’m for expandable windows. If I have a simple diffuse color material, the window should be very simple. If it has a reflection layer, the window is bigger. If that layer uses fresnels, bigger. But too many things are hidden away.

That said, I know you guys are working on it. Your product is 1 in results, and that’s what counts. No good having an easy to use, spiffy interface that yields lame results.

Cheers,
Craig

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We’ve realized that the little m, Big M thing doesn’t really work that well. How about a little black and white checker thing for an unmapped option and a nice and colorful checker thing for a mapped option for something thats mapped. That way colors automatically equal mapped. Does that seam like it would be better??

What do you mean exactly by expandable windows?? Do you mean that the options should only take up as much space as needed, or is every layer (or material) its own window??

Keep ideas coming. Its better for us to know what you (the users) want to see rather than us trying to figure it all out on our own. So if you would like to see something different then whats there now, then post it.

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From my daily experience I can say for me, the interface is not so much a problem, it can be learned, but other problems can not be solved with knowledge.

- missing option “affect reflection/specular” of arealights (invisible arealights dosn’t show reflection - very bad)
- VFB channel “reflection” (without reflection layer a full composite is inpossible) / Unclamped color / channel that show a separate color per object (I forget the name, but very needful for post work - my design clients could fine adjust colors of the rendering)
- material option “invisible for camera” and “invisible for shadows”
- temporary disable maps per flag like at the material maps bump/displacement…
- DOF per physical camera
- a way to copy a texture setup from one environment to an other (often, if I look for a good HDRI effect, than I must change the texture at GI and background again and again) or a link like at my wish list thread
- multiselection of materials (mat editor) could help to delete or duplicate a set of materials
- map control for the reflection options anisotropy and rotation
- diffuse layer in Oren-Nayar mode (important for rough materials like cloth, clay, rust … without this feature the standard diffuse looks like non glossy plastic)
- a power intensity of rectangular lights independent from the size of the light. Example: if I create an interior, than I know that lamp A has 500W, lamp B 100 and lamp C 40W independent from the size of the light
- extra control against sun reflection arefacts (only reflection/ only heighleight / no refl&highl / reflection bounce limit)
- universal method with IM and no artefact problem

Also, some UI could be more compact and help to avoid extensiv scrolling. For example the save/load GI caches need so much space. Or the GI modes LC and IM. Or the caustic options.

Other workflow suggestions are:
- read GI cache option “use from memory”
- a full HDRI environment
- a general transparency option that works for all layers of a material
- background image match the rendered view
- frontal camera projection of textures

… and a bug free mapping tool from the McNeel team.

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Re: for v-ray to be a true mass succes

Bug free mapping- what a world that would be, Micha!

But not to get off topic- we were discussing UI.
Yes Damien, I think it would be great if I hit “add material” and was presented with a simple slate showing diffuse, reflection, refraction, etc. Radio buttons.
Not totally unlike what you have now, but if I check out a material, I don’t know whether it’s using refraction unless I expand refraction. (I guess I can tell by the + symbol, but it doesn’t tell me what’s going on.) And I don’t know what bitmap is being used in diffuse until I expand diffuse, expand M, expand M.

Also, I can render without closing the mat. editor if I change the diffuse color. But to change a texture I have to open a window, open change the texture, close, then render.

I agree with Micha that once you know what you’re doing, you can figure things out. But I still think I have to do too much clicking, and I hate wondering if a setting is actually “active.” New users will waste time trying to tweak some setting to see what it does, only eventually to find that it is being overridden by something else.

I do a lot of quick renders, so making changes on the fly in as few steps as possible is important to me- maybe not everyone.

Cheers,
Craig

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My personal wish thread is full of workflow hints, but one I want bring to attention here agin too - a material UI wish:

589×160 6.04 KB

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An other problem I see with the reflection layer. All other layer use a transparency option, only not the reflection layer, here it is called “reflection”. Also is this “transparency/reflection” placed at the beginning of the line and not at the end like at all other layers.

A client ask me for training and it could be so simple, if I could say, each layer support a transparency option placed at the same place.

Attached an example of a for me more coherent UI. The intensity option must not be, but could be everywhere (like the Acolor multiplier).

An other problem is: the diffuse layer get his texture independent from the transparency map, but the reflection texture is the transparency texture also.
Example: I can set a diffuse texture and a cutout transparency texture of the diffuse layer, but it’s not possible, to set a reflection intensity and transparency map for cutouts.

Next problem: for what I need the refraction IOR at the reflection layer? Confusing. I would prefer a “fresnel” option with IOR (and maybe + the two fresnel colors) like the example from spot3d.

For what can be used the filter color? I’m not sure. But I suppose so, we could get the same image effects with the reflection layer only.

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…this remind me an old thread: link

One of the best material editor i’ve seen is the last version of Maxwell for Rhino: http://www.maxwellrender.com/manual/rhinohelp/gui/materialmanager.htm

The interesting things are:
Tabbed panel to switch from browser to scene materials to mat editor
Texture editor in the same panel of mat editor
Drag&Drop for textures and colors
Drag material directly to object to apply the shader
Easy mode to select what texture is shown in the viewport
All is very compact and easy to understand…

I really hope to see something like this in VfR.

:wink:

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First off, this is meant to be a UI discussion, so Micha lets keep it to that (besides you have your own wishlist ;)) cause if we don’t this gets way out of hand. That being said, I’m going to try to make a quick tally of things just to keep them organized.

-Better visualization of whats going on in the material without having to click on things or dig for them (I’ll take this as being for not only the material outline, but for the texture editor as well)

-The ability to have access to things with out having them be 4-5 clicks away

-The ability to add materials with specific layers enabled (ie diffuse and reflection, diffuse and emissive, reflection and refraction…) as well as the ability to add preconfigured material settings (ie metal, glass, or wax)

-Better transparency management (either consolidation of transparency to a global setting, or easily set for each layer)

-Drag and Drop support both within the editor and the scene(this is a no brainer)

Are there any thoughts out there about things being more graphically motivated. In other words, right now most of our UI is the equivilent of looking at a text document. Any thoughts on what elements you would like to see more graphical or how you would like them represented?

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I agree with Alto on this,it is also the best I have seen and the easiest to understand,
Would be great to have something similar here.Why reinvent the wheel ?

Renee

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I like Maxwell’s material UI as well - my only issue is that it is very scientific which isn’t necessarily the easiest to understand for all users. Aside from that I like it though.

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I understand what you guys are saying with the material editor, and we’ve already taken a look at how a number of other platforms are doing things. Eventhough I see the maxwell material editor as being much better than ours, I still don’t think its perfect. There’s alot of room for improvement(sliders, clearer labeling mostly, maybe ommission of afew of the more technical settings) and we’re not going to just copy something and be okay with it. V-Ray users are different then maxwell users and their work evironment should reflect that. In the end we’ll do the best we can, and we are definitely taking the time to really fine tune our UI.

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What I like about it is the look,everything is on the same panel.Also the fact that slider goes from 0-100 instead of 0-255,makes it easier to go to 78% opacity for example.

Renee

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If you like everything being within the same panel, then I think you’ll like where we intend to go with things. I don’t think that the editor actual has sliders, but just a text box with a scroller on the side of it. It is good that they go from 0-100, but why not just use a slider. They’re much more visual and much easily understood. Visual clues can go along way and be much more intuitive to new users than numbers. Even for myself, whenever I try using a different render engine, the first parameter that usually throws me for a loop is the transparency. It always seams to be a crap shoot as to whether 100 means transparent or opaque…the ones with sliders always seam to be clearer.

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Maybe next to the transparency slider have an icon that shows a sphere being obscured as you slide.
And a reflection highlight that adjusts in real time, too.

But this could all be condensed into a material preview that updates in real time. Isn’t there a way to get a faster preview?

Everything on the same page is what I was thinking- and the page is very small for a simple diffuse material, and gets larger as you start adding layers, bitmaps, etc.

0-100 is always better than 0-255. Even worse is using a color to adjust transparency. “How transparent is it? It’s red transparent.” That just doesn’t make sense. 78%- okay, I understand.

Always take out variables that are not affected by changing inputs. I don’t know what the IOR within a fresnel reflection does, anyway. (If it does something, fine, but if it doesn’t affect anything, get rid of it.)

Glad to see that the UI is getting attention. Can I ask about how many seats of VfR are out there? I see 11,000 members of this forum. I was impressed when we hit 1000.

Cheers,
Craig

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Before any kind of graphic approach is better to define how the “layered shader” should work.
I mean at the moment in Max or Maya, Vray works different than in Rhino or SketchUp, this is strange for some reason and i hope to see something more similar between all applications.

Maybe having Diffuse and Reflection always linked is more physically correct than the actual layer structure, Refraction could stay separated like now. Emissive layer is totally different from others, so if selected it could replace other properties, someting like this:

Layer 01
-Emissive

Layer 02
-Basic (Diffuse+Reflection)
-Refraction (if needed)

Layer 03
…

(hope this make sense!) ::slight_smile:

Then a guideline for a nice Material Editor could be:

-Reduce number of windows (maybe only 1 with tabs)
-Compact Dimensions (smaller fonts can help to reduce windows size)
-Add Material Browser and Texture Browser
-Replace simple updown controls with spinners
-Add Drag&Drop (and or Copy/Paste) with reference option for ALL values
-Add possibility to choose from different preview scenes (more fast preview if possible)
-Better texture editor with bigger image preview and more options
-Add a material wizard (and/or some presets materials)

About sliders i think they are nice for optimized settings but not for all values, you already know my opinion: LINK
The advanced interface with all parameters editable and the basic interface with some hidden values and some useful sliders, if this is possible i think could be really great!

PS: if this is an official discussion about the MatEd UI, i think it should be better to invite here also SketchUp users… :wink:

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I installed Maxwell and must say, the material editor looks to scientific for me. I like the layer structure of VfR. It’s logical for me. My suggestion is, to place the emitter behind the reflection layer. For example good for glass bulbs like at the current ASGvis webpage. I’m not a friend of sliders, because much UI space is needed. I would careful implement sliders.

The guideline looks good. “Reduce number of windows” - most important for textured fresnel reflection.

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@Craig
-Realtime update while a slider is adjusted…maybe we can find a way to fit that in on some important ones. The thing about that is that it takes up space and a label works just as good

-We are looking into making the material preview a progressive render, which would continually update changes and continually refine itself. This should allow us to get passed the hurdle of the manual update

-Discarding seemingly meaningless settings is not a bad idea, it will clear up some space and confusion (Refraction IOR within Fresnel reflections thats different then refraction IOR?!?..everytime I have to explain it to someone I confuse myself)

@Alto
In preparation for all of the UI work that we are trying to do I’ve gone back and read through that thread several more times. Chances are pretty good that we are going to try to implement some sort of predefined UI components for things like wax, glass, plastic and whatnot.

As far as the layered shader idea, I’m not really sure thats going to be the main direction we are going to take. We are going to allow for a flexible layer order (ie diffuse above reflection). Having certain layers linked to others doesn’t really help the situation. Like if your trying to do a decal on top of a reflection layer (like here) having the diffuse and reflection layers linked is not going to help that task (maybe I’m miss understanding the layer system that your suggesting??). Either way, once the layer order issue is freed up, the I think the whole issue with layers will be fine. We may add a special material in which whole materials could be layered, but thats really far down the road.

Most of your guidelines is where we are looking to go.

PS: if this is an official discussion about the MatEd UI, i think it should be better to invite here also SketchUp users… Wink
SketchUp users are welcome to join the discussion (I guess we can move the thread to a “neutral location” if deemed necessary ;)). However, right now vfSU has a few different issues that vfR…Mainly how to handle the creation mapping channels/UV information (see thread here). Besides, I don’t think that anything that we’re discussing wouldn’t be welcomed by the SketchUp users, but if they want to chime in they are welcome to do so.

@Micha
I agree that the Maxwell editor looks scientific (all that IOR stuff seems worthless, give a value and call it a day). As far as I’m concerned (as I said above)once we free up the layer order, I think the layer thing will be come a non-issue. After that the only thing that needs to be resolved (layer-wise) is the transparency handling. We are going to try to implement the sliders in a number of places where they will be much more useful then a color or a number. We’ll keep space considerations in mind, and try to keep the total real estate used to a minimum. In total, it hopefully won’t be any bigger than our current UI, but much clearer and easier/more efficient to use. The number of windows will most certainly be reduced.

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it would also be nice if each layer could have is own settings,like bump map,displacement,emissive,(just like transparency)those are global and sometimes I would really have use for multiple bump map.

Renee