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

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.

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.

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

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

@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.