I think it would be really useful to update the Material Editor Preview window to allow for simple live orbiting around objects like the sphere/cube/cylinder for PBR materials.
Yes you can see the material live in a viewport, but that may mean destroying a carefully set up camera position. The preview should be there to help see how the material reacts to various lighting/environment solutions as you build/edit the material in real time rather than just be a thumbnail generator.
Regards
Robert
Robert Jones said:that may mean destroying a carefully set up camera position
I suggest creating a new Saved View of any view that is important to you.
You could also just open a different view window to preview your material changes as you edit the material.
Regards,Ron
Hi Ron,
Yes that is the current workflow, saved views and an alternate view-port. However I have seen plenty of users for whom managing view-ports is already a bit of a nightmare ;-)
My real problem with this workflow, is that the scene you are working on may not have "ideal" lighting to properly test a material's characteristics.The idea of the preview is it is a showcase environment that allows you to compare any material relative to known lighting solution without having to navigate out of your scene.
It would be great to have something a bit more interactive, not unlike the very dynamic Materialize interface (https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/) that allows you to orbit / zoom / etc. what missing on that particular interface is some sort of unit scale indicator. When creating materials for buildings it is useful to know if the pattern/tiling matches to real world units.