[sidenimjay]

jep i agree having only one way to do things is a pain (maya vs houdini . . .oops) . . .

however. im either stupid or way to complicated an individual to just use the given nodes for things. i gotta have my procedural noise . . . there is no way to conveniently have multiple levels of adding, multiplying, subtacting noise patterns based on curvature of surface and dot and cross and double cross products with a nodal based system, besides i have seen some of jeps composite files and i would have an easier time finding my way back to the states if i were dropped in the middle of south america with a blindfold on, than i would trying to make sense of that size o tree. lol

i am totally for node based gui's, just look at houdini . . . i have developed many many wonderfully complex networks. Alot of kudos go out to the sidefx guys for giving us some great tools to manage those complicated interwoven networks of excitement . . .

if we are simply taking a diffuse shader and plastic and a metal shader and layering them together with a map or alpha channel or even a simple procedural noise function, would be stupid to use some sort of text editor. but when we have the various noise functions from perlin, worley, voronoi to gardner, we wont want to have to wire a hundred different paramaters and attributes into some mess of nodes to determine if the curvature of the surface is greater than ten times the value of 3 times the arc tangent of the inverse square of the dot of the normal of the surface to the camera, if and only if the dot product of the double cross product of the normal of the surface and the direction to the light source is one half the distance from shading point a to shading point b, foreach time i encounter an attribute on the shaded point called fooattr that is equal to 1 . . .

obviously not working code, just a overly complex example idea for some wacky displacements that protrude from cracks on a surface . . . .

perhaps one could just model some sort of event like that, but if there are 10,000 of these types of occurrences in a scene . . . . .well

anyone ever used shadetree . . . .wonder why its not still around?

[smeggy]

I want flexibility but heading straight down a path of overt complexity seems jarring next to Maxwells overall simplicity. Nodal systems are very flexible but also confusing as hell for many, I'd hate to see Maxwell become another confusing mish-mash of parameters and settings. I hope the team can concoct a system which is both flexible and easy to understand and use.

You have to remember, many people have never used nodal systems, so easing people into it would be a good thing. KISS applies here i think. Dumb-ass that I am, my first introduction to nodes was a disaster

[jep]

hahaha - that's not the case anymore but the guy does have a point!

I have no problems implementing the expressions in an expression node and directing the outputs based on the outcome... but I came out of a compositing background originally so that doesn't phase me - if anything it points out differences in the ways people choose to work and to argue that my way is better than someone else's really won't get us anywhere but it does help to lbring up the good points and bad points of various methods in efforts to flush out better ideas - all part of the process.

and to say that Maya only does things one way is pointless - there are many ways to achieve the same thing in Maya - don't let your personal software preference cloud your ability to keep an open mind and learn more about the one you are tied to... like a pair of cement shoes... you'll get your Houdini plug-in , and, as I've said earlier - I look forward to the day when you do.

Smeggy, are you suggesting that writing them by hand (text based) would be better? If you don't like nodal, what would you like?

[smeggy]

Hell, no. Not text based

I'm saying nodal is ok as long as it's not implemented in an overly complex way. Show a complex shader tree to someone who hasn't seen one before and they'll run screaming from the building. The interface should be anything but intimidating for new users. People like to be able to jump in and get some nice results quickly. Throw them in at the deep end with a confusing setup and you have an instant recipe for abandoned software, written off as overly complicated. Not everyone here is a TD with a background in compositing. Artists like things they can jump into and use. I'm not saying that all artists are stupid, but as a rule we tend to work visually, not technically.

[sidenimjay]

jep its all good, the comment about your comping trees, is just a tribute to the massive amounts of work you have to do to make my elements look good . . . (only cause we dont use maxwell here at work)

i agree the maya bash was a little harsh, theres at least two ways to do everything in maya depending if you use the space bar menus or choose from the menu, ha . . . . . but enough with that . . .

tis good to flush out ideas and give the NL guys more of an idea of what artists want to be able to do with shaders, as i doubt they can come up with all the intricate uses the combination of all our animated minds will.

most of the node issues may not exist if we are not writing shaders akin to renderman. if the materials in the editor are pre-existing, as they are now,simply layering shaders and displacement maps in a node based system wouldnt be an overwhelming or confusing thing . . . even if you have 50 materials layered together in an interesting manner . . .

guess we'll just have to wait and see what kind of abilities we will have when we get the avdvanced editor, then our minds can really go wild . . . .

[jep]

I agree with you all: in the vein of Maxwell - keep it simple. we are editing materials based on BSDF curves, so hopefully alot of the tweeks we're used to doing will no longer be needed, for instance no need to add fresnel to the shader - it already does it. I see that Sid is mostly talking about procedural modeling with displacement - that can get crazy, I agree. I think we all want the same thing - an extremely simple and intuitive interface that delivers seemingly complex results!

Work Smarter, not Harder - leave the heavy lifting to Maxwell!

[smeggy]

I'm happy we kind of agree on some of this stuff, it was starting to sound similar to the whole V-ray/brazil render panel complexity thing which we mostly agreed wasn't a good road to head down. I feel the shader interface should be similarly pleasing to the 'I just want to get it done and looking good without frying my few remaining brain cells' people like me.

Personally I really hate excess complexity in what should be an intuitive and visual medium. But that may just be me.

[cyberjuls]

xsi as a node base system, but on the highest solution of xsi you also have a kind of layer system. Seems that it work like layers in photoshop, you just choose if you want you layer to affect transparency or displacement. And yeah you can go back to node system afterward and vice versa.

That would be good. Specially beginners with the layer system won't make people running and screaming away.

[Duncan]

Yep I like the XSI render tree, coming from a max background the rendertree rocks. I also like the look of Messiahs material editor.
Its a cross between XSI and Max shader balls.
Heres and image.
http://www.projectmessiah.com/x2/images ... enshot.jpg

[Mihai]

Personally I have zero use for shader balls and material previews. Doesn't mean anything unless I can see it in the scene context. You ALWAYS have to do a check to see how it looks in the scene. Plus if Maxwell will provide us with material presets which have real reflectance values, it becomes even more unnecessary. Just want them to spend time on things that matter first that's all

I think that for those who want absolute control (coding level) over their shader trees, a simple expression node could be made, were a user can write their lines of code and plug that into the tree.

[cyberjuls]

Messiah one looks good,

I agree that those small ball are always far away from what you should get in reality. anyway it can just act as an icon for your material. in softimage you can assign a render region to the icon for the material, that's really usefull, because then you're looking what you have already done. For tweaking we have render region on XSI, but as far as i played with maxwell (waiting for the standalone ) you don't really need to tweak anything, i am pratically always happy with my settings

a+

[Brett Morgan]

some good ideas guys, I like the hypershade, but xsi and shake have a sexier look, anyone know if we are gonna be able to change emitter material colours in the next release or will that be in the standalone?

Brett

[lllab]

for the cinema plugin, what do you mean with very close?

i remember it was said its close some time ago?

is it one week more, within march, april, may....?

my 3dmax demo expired, so at the moment i am no very happy maxwell user:-(

it would be excellent to have some more info at least. great to hear maxwell is doing fine in development though!

thanks & cheers

stefan

[jep]

projerct messiah, huh? wow! you guys really are going to great lengths... I'm impressed! Normally I'll bring up Messiah and people just have a blank stare... I really like the diverse contributions here - they make me rethink my own opinions in favor of some better idea - and that's always exciting. keep it up!

[Duncan]

I the only reason I find shader balls usefull are for icons, if you have to hunt down a certian material thats in a material library or scene library that has 20 odd materials its easier to look at a shader ball then going through all the names.