Hi,
Just posting a few grievances I have with some of the basic interactions with the material editor.
1. Unlock Finish. When we want to set the Finish on a material that has no Specular set, we cannot do that. But the Finish value is needed to control the Reflect regardless of the faked specular is being used or not.
2. Unlock Reflect. If Specular is set to 0, Reflect is locked. But we actually need Reflections when not using faked specular from point lights.
3. Unlock Fresnel. We cannot modify Fresnel if Reflect is set to zero, BUT if fresnel is set to a value, that value is being used even if Reflect is set to zero! Giving the false impression that it isn't used!
4. Unlock Blur Reflections. Just like Fresnel, Blur Reflections is infact being used even if Reflect is set to zero!
5. When I want to add a map to a material, I don't need to see the filebrowser before I decide on using a bitmap.
I am just going to keep adding to this post whenever I find something odd. Feel free to join in!
Thanks for your time.
You are right we should unlock this by default but you should not have a high finish value without some specular component. We can make this change for next version.
All can I tell you here is that to create a physically correct material you absolutely must have some specular value above zero in order for a material to be reflective.
To be physically correct a material that produces a Fresnel effect should have some reflective component and for that matter to be reflective as I already mentioned you need a bit if specular component as well. Yes once you have a reflect value you can unlock these and make reflect zero while still having a Fresnel component not that it is right but we let you do it. This being said Fresnel applies to both specular and reflect and this is why reflect can be zero and Fresnel could be high, doing this produces a specular Fresnel.
4. Unlock Blur Reflections. Just like Fresnel, Blur Reflections is in fact being used even if Reflect is set to zero!
Yes we blur the Fresnel reflections if you turn on blur reflections that is by design if we did not you could imagine how that might look having high Fresnel value and seemly sharp reflections on top of the blurred ones.
5. When I want to add a map to a material, I don't need to see the file browser before I decide on using a bitmap.
You are correct you may be using a procedure instead of an image so we have already made this change for next version of MicroStation.
Cheers,
Jerry
13. When copying the Procedural shaderbit Marble, the values are changed so that Complexity and Vein tightness are reversed.
System: Win7 64bit 16GB Ram - microStation V8i SS3 08.11.09.578. + PoinTools CONNECT. - Intel i7-4800MQ CPU@2.70GHz, 4 core / 8 Logic proc.
@13: Happens with most procedurals it seems, and not just Marble.
14. When making a displacement map, the preview is not reflecting the changes to the depth values. Regardless of the values set in procedural textures (could be cell value and filler value in the cellular procedure) the preview of the texture is drawn using white to black and thus quite useless.
Unknown said: 2. Unlock Reflect. If Specular is set to 0, Reflect is locked. But we actually need Reflections when not using faked specular from point lights. All can I tell you here is that to create a physically correct material you absolutely must have some specular value above zero in order for a material to be reflective. 3. Unlock Fresnel. We cannot modify Fresnel if Reflect is set to zero, BUT if fresnel is set to a value, that value is being used even if Reflect is set to zero! Giving the false impression that it isn't used! To be physically correct a material that produces a Fresnel effect should have some reflective component and for that matter to be reflective as I already mentioned you need a bit if specular component as well. Yes once you have a reflect value you can unlock these and make reflect zero while still having a Fresnel component not that it is right but we let you do it. This being said Fresnel applies to both specular and reflect and this is why reflect can be zero and Fresnel could be high, doing this produces a specular Fresnel. 4. Unlock Blur Reflections. Just like Fresnel, Blur Reflections is in fact being used even if Reflect is set to zero! Yes we blur the Fresnel reflections if you turn on blur reflections that is by design if we did not you could imagine how that might look having high Fresnel value and seemly sharp reflections on top of the blurred ones. Cheers, Jerry
Hi Jerry, and thanks for your time!
Allow me to clarify a little.
I am discussing the GUI experience. The materials themselves is a way to big issue for one post. Some issues is likely to be issues because I don't know it all. Short story: Discussing if the interface is needlessly complicated and infact plain wrong in some cases.
@2: To my knowledge Specular is used to fake highlights on materials from point lights as those have no way of causing a proper reflection (they are points). If we don't need those faked reflections because we have moved on to glowing materials and environment lighting, the specular value is not doing anything to the materials anymore and could be removed from the calculations completely?
@3: I don't like that the fresnel is being applied even if the slider is greyed out! Either remove the fresnel from the materials or let the GUI give me the proper hint that it is being applied.
@4: Same as 3 really. If something is being used I have to know that it is. I cannot go guessing that some greyed items are being applied, and some are not.
Just adding todays findings..
15. Material Preview for Finish mapping is not showing the finish map. At least when I have an occlusion procedure, I see PARTS of my diffuse setup only, but the actual finish map is not showing at all - not even in greyscale. Same goes for reflection. And others.. Might be related to the occlusion procedure as other procedures semi-correctly display a black/white map?
16. Semi-correct preview display of the procedural maps that are showing as black and white. The values can be outside 0-100, and is treated as such when rendered but not when previewed as a simple black and white bitmap.
17. (More of a wish really) It would be nice if the material Preview for the normal map was actually shown as a normal map. But I am sure someone more into reading the reds and blues disagree? The same kinda goes for the rest of the specialized previews, but mostly the normal map.
Sort of blurring the line between discussing the GUI and discussing materials in these next two.. sorry about that.
18. When Occlusion is used as mapping for the diffuse it allows for alpha-channel control. That makes it possible to blend underlaying layers. But when occlusion is used as finish alpha is not controllable. We only get to set values and there is no way to reveal the underlaying layers without using blendmodes? Don’t get me wrong I like the values as they can be set outside the range of 0-100 which black-white couldn’t do, and that is probably why we miss the alpha-channel control, right?
19. Even with “use displacement as bump” checked, the bumpmap material channel is in effect empty to other channels when linking. It is only accesible through the gradient?
20. When the Procedure Brick is being used as displacement one must pick colors and not values even though most other procedures only takes values as input. This makes it needlessly difficult to control the displacement into the surface. When using procedures the Low/High values are greyed out, so those cannot be used to make the procedure displace negative. My guess is this brick procedure is some in-bentley-house production and not out of the marvelous Luxology toolbox?
The colors do nothing for the displacement, so why are they present in the GUI?. Neither does the variation options. The noise and mortar width are working.The Procedure Brick is being treated as a 0-100 Displacement regardless of the options presented in this oh-so-lacking GUI! (I apologize for that. I had feelings)
The luxology preview in the material editor shows the correct mapping but it does not reflect when rendering, so this might be a Luxology issue, or an issue of sending the proper data to Modo?
21. The procedure Marble when used as displacement does not respond to changing the Color and Vein Color. It displaces like it is fixed to a value from -50 to 50 (or something like that)? Perhaps all the procedures that only accept color inputs are bad?!
22. Since most procedures have a really hard time tiling, shouldn’t the default settings when adding a new procedure to a channel have the repeat set to off?
23. When querying/assigning materials using the tool for that, the modo preview image in that tool often gets left behind when the use of said tool is done. If the next tool is the default “element selection” window, the modo preview is visible in the background behind the buttons. Perhaps this is only when the tool is docked? It makes no harm, but makes the whole experience feel unstable and crashprone. In fact with this latest update everything feels slower and more unstable with wrong draws lots of places. Sigh.. I just fear I’ll be the last person stuck having to make my viz in uStation while all others are able to flee ship.
Well, that's all for today.
10, 13 will be fixed in the next major release of Microstation. I will also fix the normal map to display colours for the luxology procedural textures.
Regards
Paul