[Polyxo]

[quote="Half Life"]BTW have you not noticed this?

http://www.allegorithmic.com/products/s ... s/overview

I can frankly not see anything which looks good there.

[Half Life]

Something which works based on subtle variation of large Bitmaps and offers a cool solution for currently hardly avoidable
pattern-repetion.

I know you are resistant to any external application being "pluged into a plugin" as you put how you see Maxwell -- but I think you are showing a distinct lack of imagination and vision in this matter (as well as HDR Light Studio)... time will tell if I'm right, but to turn a blind eye to the possibilities is to potentially allow for a competitive weakness in a very aggressively competitive market.

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

I know you are resistant to any external application being "pluged into a plugin" as you put how you see Maxwell -- but I think you are showing a distinct lack of imagination and vision in this matter (as well as HDR Light Studio)

Hehe...
That's of course your right...
Personally I find that the exact opposite makes more sense.
I seem to care a bit more about usability...
As both apps force undesirable compromises but cost a lot of money one shouldn't cram them into Maxwell.

[Half Life]

I agree they should not be forced on users -- where we seem to disagree is you seem to think that the option should not be made available to users who want it just because you won't use it... whereas I think the more options users have the better.

HDR Light Studio is the perfect example because the integration is almost completely invisible to the normal user and should not interfere with the use of Maxwell for those who do not want it.

Sooner or later one of these addons will really appeal to you

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

Sooner or later one of these addons will really appeal to you
Jason.

Chances will rise greatly when you show me the first non-tiling 4m*1.5m Tabletop in some vivid Wood - say Zebrano -created procedurally
which only comes half way close to an Arroway Texture.

Cheers! Holger

[Half Life]

Give it some time -- it will happen

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

I agree they should not be forced on users -- where we seem to disagree is you seem to think that the option should not be made available to users who want it just because you won't use it... whereas I think the more options users have the better.
Jason.

Seriously now:
My point is not that I don't want additional options.
Trust me - I want it all.

I'm just afraid that NextLimit ceases own development work in areas of which they think
they are well provided with some Plugin. So that they don't step on their Partners's shoes.
I of course want realtime Update on IBL-Changes!* But I want it a lot slicker as with HDR-Light-Studio.

The same with Procedurals.
I like anyone else am confronted with some constraints of Image-Based texturing.
There's Products out which seem to offer some kind of solution but also here I think that it doesn't quite cut it
- already concept-wise as the product is geared towards another Industry.



*I even bugged them via Email in this Matter

[Half Life]

There is certainly the danger of that -- but there is equally the danger that they will never implement the changes you (and I do too) would want due to lack of time and resources... at that point having a plugin is better than forever wishing.

To be clear I will always prefer an in-house solution for Maxwell -- but given that time and resources are limited I would prefer for them to spend their time/resources pimping out the engine that makes all the rest of these things worth anything rather than worrying about the periphery requests.

What I like about this way of doing things is it allows each company to put their full resources into what they do best instead of trying to be everything to everybody (which usually results in mediocre everything).

On the procedural textures quality issue:

The core of the perceived quality problem with these procedural textures is the interactivity -- it is easy to make a stunning image, they are just pixels after all and with good enough reference anything can be recreated... however once you start to become concerned with interactive qualities you must chose where you will make compromises for the sake of flexibility. Often the more flexible it is the less convincing it is...

The other issue is all of these material previews are coming from "real-time" biased gaming render engines -- no where near Maxwell quality... and what is worse is the maps have been made to cater to those engines so without some customization they will never be all that they could be in Maxwell. I hope to demonstrate this clearly over time but I am trying to slowly ease into it.

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

I understand your point of view but am just not as optimistic about the options of conventional approaches of Procedural Texturing.
The idea is highly fascinating, no question... But this stuff is now around for 15 years or longer and in my perception the output never even
got close to the quality of photographic textures.
One of the coolest CG-Imitations of Wood btw. was done by the also Berlin-based Artist Thomas Helzle already quite some years ago.
He's (like me) ist originally a Cabinet-Maker, I think that gets visible. One can move the Knots around and do about everything with them.
They are Attractors- the Texture changes interactively, of course in 3D. Thomas wrote a huge procedural Toolset both for Messiah and Softimage.
But even after spending years on that he says that one can't replace Bitmaps with Procedurals for a lot of stuff which gets close to the Camera.

[Half Life]

Yes I agree, I picked up the term "hero textures" from somebody a while back to describe things that are either close to the camera or focal points in a render... and these Substance textures are not very suitable for hero textures.

But I suppose that is not really the point -- there are already tools and options for those things, and generally they are not flexible or practical enough to be used for everything else... so that is the niche where Substances "fit-in". It's a complimentary technique, not a replacement.

Obviously they excel at man-made objects where manufacturing processes often require repeating patterns and simple surfaces.

To be honest I find the state of wood textures to be pretty sad -- I really would like to see some way developed to achieve the subtle iridescence that comes from seeing down into the anisotropy of the woodgrains... without that I'm afraid even the best textures look like little more than laminate "wood" to me, and I suppose they are made in exactly the same way -- stick a photo of wood over a opaque surface.

The CG world is rife with compromises -- at some point it becomes about what allows you to get your work done with the least amount of fuss, because perfect realism is still unattainable.

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

To be honest I find the state of wood textures to be pretty sad -- I really would like to see some way developed to achieve the subtle iridescence that comes from seeing down into the anisotropy of the woodgrains... without that I'm afraid even the best textures look like little more than laminate "wood" to me

I knew the Master Material-Maker would beat me here

[Half Life]

I think zdeno is right, we are all a little insane which is why we are Maxwell users

Best,
Jason.

[Asmithey]

Procedural textures would be great. Just adding a simple variable noise cloud texture does wonders for a material.

[Half Life]

I asked for this feature 4 years ago -- now Thea has it:

https://www.thearender.com/site/index.p ... erter.html

[gadzooks]

I would like too see this as well after seeing the power of substances. Very powerful tool!