[gmenzel]

There are some things in the UI of the plugin that have bugged me for ages. If maybe some of these could be fixed/improved in the future, it would be greatly appreciated (not just by me, I think)!

File selection:
- Filename display inside file buttons should be aligned to the right, so that filenames remain readable even with long paths.
- When opening the ‘Open Maxwell file texture’ dialog for a file button that already has a file associated, the file path of that file should be set as the initial dialog folder and the filename should be assigned to the filename field (common practice for windows applications).

Preview rendering:
- Scene selection as in MXED would be nice. Or at least use the ‘sample type’ setting of the material editor (sphere, cylinder, cube)
- Better render quality. The blurry low-res preview is not very useful at the moment.

Better bitmap modification:
- Having just basic brightness and contrast control makes it difficult to adjust maps. A histogram based level or curve control could be so much more powerful for complex materials (especially for roughness and weight maps).

Map instancing:
- While it is currently possible to use map instances within a MaxwellMaterial, all these references are unfortunately lost when saving/loading .mxm files or when editing with MXED.

Bitmap preview window:
- Zoom buttons should be better readable (also, minus should be on the left)
- It needs faster mouse-centered zoom via wheel zoom
- Display of current mouse coordinates and color value in status bar would be nice
- BUG: RGB channels are shifted slightly for gray scale images, creating color fringes (especially apparent on vertical black/white edges)

[Mihnea Balta]

Hi,

- Filename display inside file buttons should be aligned to the right, so that filenames remain readable even with long paths.
- When opening the ‘Open Maxwell file texture’ dialog for a file button that already has a file associated, the file path of that file should be set as the initial dialog folder and the filename should be assigned to the filename field (common practice for windows applications).

Ok, I've added these on the todo list.

- Scene selection as in MXED would be nice. Or at least use the ‘sample type’ setting of the material editor (sphere, cylinder, cube)

You can already do this in the plug-in preferences (customize -> preferences -> maxwell tab -> preview scene).

- Better render quality. The blurry low-res preview is not very useful at the moment.

In the same settings panel you can adjust the target sampling level and maximum render time for material previews. There's also a quality level setting, which controls the resolution of the preview (100% means same resolution as the preview slot).

- Having just basic brightness and contrast control makes it difficult to adjust maps. A histogram based level or curve control could be so much more powerful for complex materials (especially for roughness and weight maps).

This would have to be implemented in the engine, it cannot be done on the plug-in side. However, we are planning to improve the support for procedural nodes and integrate them in the plug-ins, and then it will be possible to do this.

- While it is currently possible to use map instances within a MaxwellMaterial, all these references are unfortunately lost when saving/loading .mxm files or when editing with MXED.

We cannot tell MXED which maps were instances. The most we can do is to gather maps with identical settings when we reload the MXM file and make a single instance for each set of values. However, if you had map instances shared between materials, this process would not see that. We would have to look for maps with identical settings inside the entire scene, which could be a lengthy process. Also, if you had two maps which identical settings but which were not instances originally, this process wouldn't be able to tell and would always produce instances.

Bitmap preview window:
- Zoom buttons should be better readable (also, minus should be on the left)
- It needs faster mouse-centered zoom via wheel zoom
- Display of current mouse coordinates and color value in status bar would be nice

I've added all these on the list, although I cannot say when we'll be able to work on them, since there's lots of higher-priority stuff to be done first.

- BUG: RGB channels are shifted slightly for gray scale images, creating color fringes (especially apparent on vertical black/white edges)

[/quote]

We'll look into this.


I

[gmenzel]

Thanks for your reply!

Hi,
You can already do this in the plug-in preferences (customize -> preferences -> maxwell tab -> preview scene).

It is indeed possible to change the default preview scene, as well as the target SL. What I'd like to have in addition to this would be a scene selection dropdown box WITHIN the material settings. This way you could select the most appropriate scene for each material. A SL spinedit would also be nice to have.

But more important to me would be better image quality of the preview display itself. At the moment, when clicking 'Preview', the preview is refreshed and looks alright. But as soon as I switch to another material slot, the image gets blurred somehow:

Hi,
This would have to be implemented in the engine, it cannot be done on the plug-in side. However, we are planning to improve the support for procedural nodes and integrate them in the plug-ins, and then it will be possible to do this.

Really looking forward to this...

We cannot tell MXED which maps were instances. The most we can do is to gather maps with identical settings when we reload the MXM file and make a single instance for each set of values. However, if you had map instances shared between materials, this process would not see that. We would have to look for maps with identical settings inside the entire scene, which could be a lengthy process. Also, if you had two maps which identical settings but which were not instances originally, this process wouldn't be able to tell and would always produce instances.

Maybe at least instances within a material could be preserved somehow...

Well, it might be easier to introduce the concept of map instances to MXED instead.

I've added all these on the list, although I cannot say when we'll be able to work on them, since there's lots of higher-priority stuff to be done first.

I appreciate that.