- Wed Nov 24, 2010 12:56 pm
#333436
Hi all.
First of all a little something for you, Richard:
With this setting Off the Paint Bucket Tool won't open the Materials window.
This is only in the mac-version (I don't understand why the the pc and mac versions are so different!)
I guess this eliminates the need for an extra color-picker in the osx-version of the plugin...?
The more serious stuff (for you, JD):
I've found some errors and inefficient behaviors of the Material Editor.
- Numeric inputs do not work:
The Texture Editor's numeric inputs for scaling and tiling don't work on neither my pc nor mac version of the plugin. When clicking a number, the adjustment controls disappears shortly. If the mouse cursor is moved, the controls reappear. It is possible to type in something but it has no effect. After typing, the values reset. The grips for manual scaling and tiling usually works.
- Squared textures:
When using a texture in SketchUp, it is shown in the texture preview area in the plugin.
Here it is stretched out to fit the preview area's square shape. The square shape of the material in the preview has no influence on the materials scale or tiling in the rendering as long as you leave it be (strange - why is it stretched then?). But if the scale-handle is used a tiny bit, the texture will still look square in the preview and now it will turn out square in the render as well - out of proportions (unless you hold down shift while dragging the handle, which will reshape the texture into it's true proportions and keep the aspect during the scale).
If you load a texture into the Material Editor, by using the the "Use Specific Texture" feature, the texture also stretches out of proportions and into this square shape. If you then press the button "Set SketchUp Texture" to transfer the loaded texture into SketchUp, the texture will be out of proportions on the painted faces in SketchUp as well as in the rendering - forced into a square shape. Holding down shift while scaling won't help here.
So: Textures loaded into SketchUp will always be out of proportions (unless they are shaped as squares - which none of mine are).
Could the texture preview reshape to match the texture in use?
- Bump map without texture map:
When I create eg. a water material in SketchUp, I place my bump map on a face in SketchUp. My texture is transferred into the Maxwell Plugin. Nice. I don't want the bump as my texture map, so I try to turn off texture map by changing the setting "Link to application" into "Use Specific texture" to then remove the tick next to "Texture" (why not make a list with "Link to application", "Use Specific texture" and "NONE"?) . But now, the texture disappears in the Bump-slot as well! Only way to do this is by exporting the SketchUp-material and load it as the Bump map.
I like the linkage between texture and bump, but they should be possible to turn off individually.
- More color in materials:
I know we've been discussing the color and reflections of Maxwell materials automatically generated from textured and non-textured transparent materials in SketchUp.
After teaching a couple of courses in the new plugin, I feel the urge to repeat the need to control the color intensity of glass (AGS), whether it's generated automatically OR by choosing AGS and having some controls there.
See my example from older post here.
It would also be amazing to be able to control the transparency of objects whitout getting reflections as well.
You gave me a formula: IF (opacity < 100.0) AND (color.L >= 0.5 OR color.S < 0.1) THEN { make AGS }
Problem is, that the automatically generated textured materials only sometimes turn out the way I want. Textured materials that I make a little transparent in SketchUp usually turn out very reflective and dark in the rendering.
The "Liquid" material always has an attenuation of 10 meters and the "Glass" material has an attenuation of 30 centimeters.
My students have been asking me for a control of this - to create colored liquids in smaller scale (colored liquid in a glass or a shallow pool) and to control the intensity of the color in glass.
I love the "Automatic" mode, but with a few more controls in other modes, the Plugin's Material Editor would be perfect.
That'll be all for now. More comments to come.
All the best.
/ Stefan
First of all a little something for you, Richard:
With this setting Off the Paint Bucket Tool won't open the Materials window.
This is only in the mac-version (I don't understand why the the pc and mac versions are so different!)
I guess this eliminates the need for an extra color-picker in the osx-version of the plugin...?
The more serious stuff (for you, JD):
I've found some errors and inefficient behaviors of the Material Editor.
- Numeric inputs do not work:
The Texture Editor's numeric inputs for scaling and tiling don't work on neither my pc nor mac version of the plugin. When clicking a number, the adjustment controls disappears shortly. If the mouse cursor is moved, the controls reappear. It is possible to type in something but it has no effect. After typing, the values reset. The grips for manual scaling and tiling usually works.
- Squared textures:
When using a texture in SketchUp, it is shown in the texture preview area in the plugin.
Here it is stretched out to fit the preview area's square shape. The square shape of the material in the preview has no influence on the materials scale or tiling in the rendering as long as you leave it be (strange - why is it stretched then?). But if the scale-handle is used a tiny bit, the texture will still look square in the preview and now it will turn out square in the render as well - out of proportions (unless you hold down shift while dragging the handle, which will reshape the texture into it's true proportions and keep the aspect during the scale).
If you load a texture into the Material Editor, by using the the "Use Specific Texture" feature, the texture also stretches out of proportions and into this square shape. If you then press the button "Set SketchUp Texture" to transfer the loaded texture into SketchUp, the texture will be out of proportions on the painted faces in SketchUp as well as in the rendering - forced into a square shape. Holding down shift while scaling won't help here.
So: Textures loaded into SketchUp will always be out of proportions (unless they are shaped as squares - which none of mine are).
Could the texture preview reshape to match the texture in use?
- Bump map without texture map:
When I create eg. a water material in SketchUp, I place my bump map on a face in SketchUp. My texture is transferred into the Maxwell Plugin. Nice. I don't want the bump as my texture map, so I try to turn off texture map by changing the setting "Link to application" into "Use Specific texture" to then remove the tick next to "Texture" (why not make a list with "Link to application", "Use Specific texture" and "NONE"?) . But now, the texture disappears in the Bump-slot as well! Only way to do this is by exporting the SketchUp-material and load it as the Bump map.
I like the linkage between texture and bump, but they should be possible to turn off individually.
- More color in materials:
I know we've been discussing the color and reflections of Maxwell materials automatically generated from textured and non-textured transparent materials in SketchUp.
After teaching a couple of courses in the new plugin, I feel the urge to repeat the need to control the color intensity of glass (AGS), whether it's generated automatically OR by choosing AGS and having some controls there.
See my example from older post here.
It would also be amazing to be able to control the transparency of objects whitout getting reflections as well.
You gave me a formula: IF (opacity < 100.0) AND (color.L >= 0.5 OR color.S < 0.1) THEN { make AGS }
Problem is, that the automatically generated textured materials only sometimes turn out the way I want. Textured materials that I make a little transparent in SketchUp usually turn out very reflective and dark in the rendering.
The "Liquid" material always has an attenuation of 10 meters and the "Glass" material has an attenuation of 30 centimeters.
My students have been asking me for a control of this - to create colored liquids in smaller scale (colored liquid in a glass or a shallow pool) and to control the intensity of the color in glass.
I love the "Automatic" mode, but with a few more controls in other modes, the Plugin's Material Editor would be perfect.
That'll be all for now. More comments to come.
All the best.
/ Stefan
Last edited by stefan_kaplan on Wed Nov 24, 2010 10:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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