Feature Discussion: Material Editor

[VanishedOne]

1 hour ago, OrbWeaver said:

I'd also have all of the colour options in the Basic interface (rgb, colored, vertexColor) etc, along with probably alphaTest. I think the masks, depth hack, private polygon offset can go in the advanced section (although maybe mappers are using these more than I assume).

maskColor and maskAlpha are reasonably common when working with alpha masks: textures/darkmod/glass/clear for example. I've never seen a use for maskDepth though. Polygon offsets would probably be used more if they didn't break light interaction (one learns the hard way why setting DECAL_MACRO can be a bad idea); I basically associate privatePolygonOffset with D3-esque burnaway effects. Isn't the depth hack a particle thing from before sort particles?

I have the impression that vertexColor is fairly rare because it needs a mesh with vertex colour data, and it's mainly used with inverseVertexColor for vertex blended meshes, although you can also use it for baked AO and the like. (The ET:QW wiki suggests using vertex colours to fade out the edges on water meshes, but I think https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18036-messing-with-sea-water/ has been the focus of TDM experiments on soft water edges...)

 

[kingsal]

@greebo Very excited about this.! If I can get it set up I can start playing with it as soon as its ready and hit you with some feedback. Very cool.

[OrbWeaver]

I guess that's the disadvantage of splitting the interface into Basic and Advanced — everybody has slightly different ideas of what features need to be in the Basic mode.

14 hours ago, VanishedOne said:

maskColor and maskAlpha are reasonably common when working with alpha masks: textures/darkmod/glass/clear for example.

That's my understanding too, but how many mappers are creating custom transparent materials? I can't imagine they would have more than one or two in a mission, whereas they might have hundreds of custom brick or stone textures.

Using one stage to write to particular channels which then control the behaviour of a subsequent stage definitely feels like "advanced" functionality to me.

14 hours ago, VanishedOne said:

I have the impression that vertexColor is fairly rare because it needs a mesh with vertex colour data, and it's mainly used with inverseVertexColor for vertex blended meshes, although you can also use it for baked AO and the like.

It's also useful for tinting parts of models, e.g. to give the impression of rust or corrosion which darkens the texture. But yes, it is only useful for models, and will never be used for somebody just making a texture to slap on a brush, so this probably justifies leaving it out of Basic mode.

[VanishedOne]

6 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

That's my understanding too, but how many mappers are creating custom transparent materials? I can't imagine they would have more than one or two in a mission, whereas they might have hundreds of custom brick or stone textures.

Using one stage to write to particular channels which then control the behaviour of a subsequent stage definitely feels like "advanced" functionality to me.

It isn't limited to transparent materials - see e.g. textures/darkmod/stone/flat/smooth/alabaster_opaque - but your second point is well made.

[Zerg Rush]

Maybe this page with a lot of models and textures 3D can help

https://www.3dxo.com

Also the Smithsonian Museum has a lot of free 3D content for download

https://3d.si.edu/explore

[OrbWeaver]

3 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

Maybe this page with a lot of models and textures 3D can help

Help with what? This is a thread about the proposed DarkRadiant material editor. I'm not sure how online 3D asset libraries are relevant.

[greebo]

I got a pre-release build to share, in case somebody wants to tinker with the current state a bit. I probably won't be able to work on it for a few days, so I might as well get some feedback in the meantime. Don't use this for your productive mapping work, it's probably full of glitches and crashes.

The Material Editor can be found in the "Entity" menu for the moment being.

DarkRadiant 2.12.0pre1 portable x64: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Q9d1N7iuv1g8EquSb7IlF5zhCpYn6j9/view?usp=sharing