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

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

Paul Chater — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 10:33:10 GMT

Hi Danny,

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

Regards

Paul

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

dshaw — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 13:38:01 GMT

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)

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

Torben — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 08:52:45 GMT

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!?!

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

Torben — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 08:22:15 GMT

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..

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

Torben — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:49:58 GMT

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?

[quote user="Paul"]I will also fix the normal map to display colours for the luxology procedural textures.[/quote]

@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..

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

Paul Chater — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 16:25:23 GMT

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

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

Paul Chater — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:47:48 GMT

Hi,

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

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

Paul Chater — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:29:21 GMT

Hi,

Yes, these are both bugs 7,8. Thanks for reporting them.

Regards

Paul Chater

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

Torben — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 16:36:57 GMT

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.

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

Torben — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 09:12:22 GMT

[quote user="Jerry Flynn"]

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

[/quote]

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.

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

Torben — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:45:52 GMT

@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.

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

Torben — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 19:52:06 GMT

13. When copying the Procedural shaderbit Marble, the values are changed so that Complexity and Vein tightness are reversed.

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

Jerry Flynn — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 18:07:11 GMT

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.

4. Unlock Blur Reflections. Just like Fresnel, Blur Reflections is in fact 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 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

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Torben — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 20:51:34 GMT

Nice reading dshaw.

I am glad I am not the only one dissapointed. I was infact beginning to feel like I was just acting spoiled.

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

dshaw — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 18:26:27 GMT

Attached is a pdf I sent to Jerry during the SS3 beta period re viz improvements and fixes- posted here because it mentions some of the same things and also some other gui issues

Would also mention general inexplicable slow downs for seemingly no reason- often when just switching between materials ( and I have a fast machine with lots of memory and cores)

Would also like to see an option for mapping settings seperate from the map itself- more often than not all the mapping dimensions and settings are the same between say, diffuse, specular, and bump and all that is different is the bitmap file itself. At the moment I set my diffuse first then link other channels to the diffuse to copy the settings, then unlink and then change the bitmap- would be nice not to have to do this.

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Torben — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 17:39:40 GMT

11. When using a Gradient pattern that relies on Displacement Height, the Left side is actually where the displacement is highest, and the right side where the displacement is lowest. Shouldn't such a gradient be so that left to right = low to high?

My fault entirely. Forgot to check the surface normal..

12. Very often a gradient slider control gets falsely drawn in another map window.

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Torben — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:22:29 GMT

Thanks Robert :) Gonna count that as grievance #9 even if it's just slightly bending the scope of this thread which was actually more GUI grievances.

Don't get me started on the whole material/shader model. IMHO It's pretty much beyond all logic. There is no implicit logic to the order that all the shader-bits are being applied to the materials at all. And no control of said order whatsoever.. sadly.

Anyways..

10. Setting the Opaque map and NOT changing the Opacity value to anything below 100 causes the absorption Distance calculation to be ignored.
Shouldn't the mapping override/multiply the Opacity value?

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Robert Jones — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:50:50 GMT

Not to mention that currently the use of procedural maps in normal mapping is useless. Normal mapping needs red/blue mapping - not black/white mapping that the procedural maps push out.

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Torben — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:31:43 GMT

8. In Displacement mapping. If the Blend of the first (bottom) map is NOT set Normal, the entire map turns out completely black. And it is not possible to change the Blend of the first map (Should override to Normal I presume? Yet it doesn't)

Re: Material Editor dialog in dire need of a cleanup

Torben — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:00:49 GMT

6. Displacement can be linked to Displacement - How is that even possible? If Displacement is linked to Normal the icon indicating a map has been set is not working when revisiting the material.

7. Normal can be linked to normal.

WARNING! Do Not Link Displacement to Normal and Normal to displacement...

*yes, this is earth calling microStation.. please respond*