Is the Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Hi,

15. Are you talking about the material preview or the material map preview. The material map preview just shows the affect of the map as if it was applied as a diffuse with no other settings so you can see a picture of what your image/procedural will look like. Do you have your occlusion procedure associated with the diffuse map or the finish map ? I can see the effect of occlusion on the finish map.

16. I dont understand what you are saying here. What specifically is not correct ?

17. The normal map will be applied to the material preview and the material map preview will just show the result of the texture/procedure you apply as if it were diffuse shaded

18. Are you refering to "Transparent Background" when talking about alpha channel control ? You mention the alpha blend mode, this would be the way to go. We support the legacy "Transparent background" using a stencil in luxology. The alpha blend mode is a more powerful scheme.

19. Yes when using "Displacement As Bump" we should disable the bump map as the displacement map will also be used for the bump here.

20. Just use grey scale colours as your inputs for these procedures. Luxology implemented the procedures in their renderer from the original microstation implementation. The high low values are disabled for all procedural textures. You can layer a constant colour with a difference blend to create a negative offset.

21. In what way is the marble procedure not responding as you expect ? In my testing with it adjusting the colours affects the displacement.

22. Yes, you have a good point here.

23. I havent seen this but I dont run microstation with the toolsettings docked. We will investigate this.

Regards

Paul

Hi Paul,

@15: It was indeed in the material map preview. I am unable to reproduce this myself at the moment. It seems fine. Sorry about that! I will report again if i "succeed" in making it fail.

@16: Some procedural maps like cellular or whatever is used in an effects channel like Displace, it accepts values for input and not colors. These values can be  outside the range of 0-100, or simply inversed to 100-0 instead. But regardless of what values are actually entered and used by the procedural map, the channel map preview displays the map using a black to white gradient only - Even if the values entered is actually 100 - 0 - which i translate to white to black - This is especially a problem when layering lots of procedures.

@17: I ment the normal map preview. It is hard to see what effect you have going with all the red/blue stuff. But seing the normal map you work on applied as a normal map would be much easier. I am not sure if that is what you said in your previous post, but I hope so?

Unknown said:

I will also fix the normal map to display colours for the luxology procedural textures.

@18: No, the transparency from the occlusion is a smooth transition, that reveals the map below/before nicely.

@19: Not entirely sure what you ment. But let me clarify that it is inconsistent to have the bump mapping visible to the gradient procedures but not to the linking, or perhaps I am missing something about the linking? Infact I am not sure the linking is any good now that we have the gradients? IMHO use displacement as bump should be a per-material setting rather than a renderer setting (same goes for the gamma adjust, but that's another story) I would prefer to be able to perhaps be able to add stuff to the bump map channel but be able to use the displacement map channel also.

@20: A workaround - nice. Same technique can be used to lower the height of normalmaps btw. Sadly they are a b%&ch to blend :)

@21: The displacement map preview shows the change in color, but when rendering the displacement is always in the same direction and height - regardless of the colors.

And now onto todays findings..

24. Colorpicking gizmo. In RGB mode it is near impossible to see the choosen color in the colorspectrum window. Trust me there is a crosshair there, but it looks like it is 99% transparent for some reason. Coloring it black or white depending on perceieved lightness of the color would be very easy. But since you have choosen to have the blacks seperated, simply having the crosshair be all black would be enough.

25. When using the Windows "show desktop" button on the toolbar (default bottom right) the Luxology Window does not restore when microStation is restored into view. The only option is to close the renderwindow trough the windows toolbar. BUT that is not even enough! When the Luxology window is opened again inside microStation it has the absolute minimum size (only showing the top right buttons for minimize and close and such). This window then needs manual resize in order to show anything. BUT that is STILL not even enough. The Luxology image controls are gone! To get those back, the Luxology render window must be closed again - and when reopened - it is all back to where it should have been the whole time..

And if that was not bad enough, sometimes if the material editor was left open it is not possible to restore and microStation has to be completely rebooted!
How.. bad.. can.. it.. get!

Sorry, this next one is a tiny tiny one about the Environment control.

26. When sliding the rotation of an HDRi sphere environment, the value displayed while moving the slider is in the interval 0 - 2 PI, but the value showing after completing the drag - and the value we have to enter manually - is in the interval 0-360 degrees ;). With that said, let me add that a preview in the environment adjust window would be SO nice! It could be something as "simple" as projecting the material onto the inside of a sphere, cylinder or whatever the option is. Especially nice because some of the mapping modes are hard to guess.

27. Never saw this before: Switched to a previous model in my DGN, began a render, aborted it, and now the allready rendered images in the Modo window (from the previous model) is scaled to the new view aspect ratio! By choosing a specific previous render instead of navigating back, it was fixed again. Have only seen this once, but have seen the resizing of the renders loose aspect and whatnot often. This just adds to that basic unstable and unprofessional feeling.

28. In the Material Editor If the Color/Pattern slider is set to 0, and the material has a diffuse pattern set to "ON", the Color is ignored and renders as pitch black regardless of the color set. At least that is what it does today.. on my PC..

29. No AA for procedurals.

30. Some procedurals. Eg. Grid, If used as diffuse pattern AND linked as a pattern somewhere else does not honor the Color/Value settings determined in the diffuse in the linked slot.

31. Some map slots (Eg. bump) uses the value as a multiplier of the pattern defined. Some slots do not, yet the value is not greyed out. Thus indicating the value are used (Eg. Reflect. The multiplier value is not used, only the value in the pattern is). This might be an error with procedurals, I don't know..

32. Environment settings. When using the "graphically adjust environment image" on the Indirect image, the Main image is the one being moved. It is not possible to "graphically adjust " the indirect image. Either remove the icon from the indirect tab, or make it work as expected. Or even better, make the two images link to each other.

33. Opening the luxology renderwindow takes AGES if there are previous renders not deleted. I had literally thousands and had to wait a pretty darn long time before I choose to simply delete them all.

34. Material Editor. When in need of copying and pasting a normal map to another material the "inversed" checkbox value is - ironically - inversed..

35. Material Editor. Copying a map or procedual texture between material slots is unnessesaryly hard - it is infact quite impossible unless that slot allready has a map defined.. which is what copying an existing map is all about!?!

Hi Torben,

I feel your pain... I have long been of the opinion that large swathes of the material editor just do not work properly for anything other than basic operations.

Try just adding a basic checker procedure on the reflection channel to a cube with some surrounding geometry to reflect- then try changing the color 1 and color 2 to try to modulate the reflection- nothing happens.

what I would expect to see here is:

1) instead of colors 1 and 2 these should be greyscale values. This map should be for modulating the amount of reflection not altering the color that is reflected (makes no difference anyway as changing the colours does not do anything)

2) if set to black and white for colors 1 and 2 respectively then swapping to white and black and all mapping values remaining the same, that the reflective checkers would swap to non reflective and vice versa. Nothing happens

now of course i could have just used the checker(luxology) procedural in the first place which does do these things- but the point is I should not have to be second guessing the software- if some things do not work on some channels then I should not be given the option of selecting them.

This might seem controversial but I do not think that Bentley are doing the Luxology engine justice (and from what i have seen of Vancouver this doesn't look like it will change). Reminds me a bit of the old particle trace days-there was magic locked away but no development to get at it.

I have Modo at home and the difference between the engine in Modo and the engine in Microstation is like chalk and cheese- its all the surrounding Bentley stuff that is letting it down

What I would prefer to see is a full copy of modo with every Bentley licence and an absolutely rock solid translation from one to the other- (how that would fit in with AECOsim is another matter- but for straight Microstation it would be so much better)

Hi Torben,

I feel your pain... I have long been of the opinion that large swathes of the material editor just do not work properly for anything other than basic operations.

Try just adding a basic checker procedure on the reflection channel to a cube with some surrounding geometry to reflect- then try changing the color 1 and color 2 to try to modulate the reflection- nothing happens.

what I would expect to see here is:

1) instead of colors 1 and 2 these should be greyscale values. This map should be for modulating the amount of reflection not altering the color that is reflected (makes no difference anyway as changing the colours does not do anything)

2) if set to black and white for colors 1 and 2 respectively then swapping to white and black and all mapping values remaining the same, that the reflective checkers would swap to non reflective and vice versa. Nothing happens

now of course i could have just used the checker(luxology) procedural in the first place which does do these things- but the point is I should not have to be second guessing the software- if some things do not work on some channels then I should not be given the option of selecting them.

This might seem controversial but I do not think that Bentley are doing the Luxology engine justice (and from what i have seen of Vancouver this doesn't look like it will change). Reminds me a bit of the old particle trace days-there was magic locked away but no development to get at it.

I have Modo at home and the difference between the engine in Modo and the engine in Microstation is like chalk and cheese- its all the surrounding Bentley stuff that is letting it down

What I would prefer to see is a full copy of modo with every Bentley licence and an absolutely rock solid translation from one to the other- (how that would fit in with AECOsim is another matter- but for straight Microstation it would be so much better)

Hi Danny,

The problem you are seeing with the checker procedural on reflect is a bug. I will contact luxology regarding it.

Regards

Paul