2.50 proposal - including default materials and meshes

[LetterRip]

This is a proposal I've discussed with Ton and a few other developers and would like furhter feedback from the community, there is already some feedback in the main 2.50 thread



http://blenderartists.org/forum/show...26#post1486226

but it was suggested more/other people might respond in a seperate thread.

LetterRip

Hi all, I'd like to propose for 2.50 that we include a default material library and default meshes. I'd recommend for the default meshes that we include two styles; those with quad topology of uniform quad sizes for sculpting (ie such as those included in Mudbox) and meshes that are modelled with good joint deformation topology and that are prerigged. Each of the meshes should have a default UV layout, but without any textures or materials (if there is interest they could be provided as seperate downloads). The heads should have default morph target sets - probably corresponding with those suggested in stop staring. It might also be worthwhile to have a default set of extreme poses so if mesh changes are made, checking the new skin weights can be checked easily. I would recommend we have the following meshes a generic bust for sculpting full humanoid generic body for sculpting full quadruped generic body for sculpting generic vehicle for sculpting (this is assuming we add some 'hard edge sculpting' features for the sculpt tools, which I'm fairly sure we will with the sculpting update) For rigged meshes a female bust with good deformation topology a full human male with good deformation topology a horse rig with good deformation topology a dog/wolf rig with good deformation topology For a material library I'd propose we have two versions of each material - one for a fast material shader that can be used for animation; and one that is a more complex shader that gives higher quality results, and have a naming scheme to append a _fast and _quality (or alternatively _f and _q). I'd suggest only procedural materials and textures be included in the default library in order to keep download size small. For organization I propose the following categories Fabrics Glass Metal Plastic/Rubber Paint Ceramic/Tile Wood Brick/Stone Crystal Greenery Liquids Terrain Patterns Atmospheric Energetic Floors Walls Character Creature Food Ton and Brecht and the Durian team, during 2.47 we were looking at adding the tiling and pattern patch https://projects.blender.org/tracker..._id=9&atid=127 Ton reviewed it and apparently it still had a few problems - particularly it doesn't do antialiasing. My question is, will patterns in clothing, metal, fabric, etc be used enough in Durian that it might be worth doing the remaining bits of it - from the tracker the author didn't do the AA because he doesn't know how. LetterRip

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/b...er/024674.html

[Ace Dragon]

I find the interest in the old tiles texture very good news, it would be nice if Wizard's work could be completed and put into 2.5 for Durian.

Just make sure this library is a seperate download from the release.

[LetterRip]

The whole point is to have a library as part of the release.

LetterRip

[uvwxyz]

Seems like a good idea to me.

[M@dcow]

Just make sure this library is a seperate download from the release.

If everything is procedural give me one good reason why it should be separate.

LetterRip:

This is something I'll definitely be participating in, as I have quite a large collection of materials already. One thing that springs to mind is that it would be immensely valuable to hard code some of the external texture plugins directly into blender. For example, if you intend to have a Brick/Stone category, it would be useful to have something like T-bricks hard coded into Blender. There is very little you can do with stucci and cloud textures when it comes to walls.

Another amazing tex plugin is water0.23. You can create a large number of things with this one, including rain effects, boat wakes and spiral galaxies.....it's an incredibly diverse plugin.

Just throwin' that out there

[Jeepster]

i'd love to see a pre-set library of well made materials, it'd be a great addition to blender
I just hope that these materials and meshes are top quality - only the best of the best
maybe the durian artists could do it?

[mikasaari]

Hi,

This is extremely great idea.

-Mika

[RickyBlender]

don't know if this can fit with this feature

but we already have a good lib at blender material repository

any chance of having some of theses included as mat in one or several file
so ic an be easily to add or append new mat on object ?

there are some good wood , stone and metal mat textures in this lib
and if there was a faster way to get to theses it would be a nicer easier way to use blender
to set texture and most of theses are procedurals !


Thanks
Happy blendering

[Agus3D]

+10! I think that is quite selfish from us treat a beginners like a advanced user. When beginners catch blender for first time they wants to add a model, material and render it as fast as their patient and prejudge allows them.

We must accept some bad human conditions and build a bridge as a short cut where the new users can see quickly the power of the Blender.
Also it is very useful for advenced too, obviously.
I Even recommend put a sun with Sky like in the default scene.

[ThatHaze]

+1

I like the idea of adding in default materials, but not so much the meshes. Maybe there could be scripts added in the release that generate these meshes or rigs, it could give the user more control over how the meshes look (height, weight, etc.). Of course there would be default setting for beginners.

[LetterRip]

I didn't provide details on the selection process, but Ton has 'volunteered'/nominated some of our top artists to determine which materials are 'good enough', so there shouldn't be any concerns about quality issues. I'm sure some material presets from past and current movie projects will be included. I seriously doubt that it would be a good idea to have the Durian team focus on this, but of course while they are working on materials if they create one of usage for this project I'm sure it would be submitted.

RickyBlender,

I'm sure contributions from existing librarys and repositories will be welcomed - as noted though I won't be making the decisions for what is accepted.

LetterRip

[LetterRip]

The meshes serve two seperate purposes,

1) To provide users something to immediately start sculpting on/with and for using retopologize tools - similar to zbrush, modo, silo, mudbox, and 3D-coat.

2) To provide rigged characters to practice animation, lighting, materials/texturing - similar to maya, 3ds max, animation master, etc.

LetterRip

[LetterRip]

Also it was propsed via irc that we add some 'lighting rigs' also. Ie add > lights > 3pt light setup.

LetterRip

[Ace Dragon]

Originally Posted by M@dcow If everything is procedural give me one good reason why it should be separate.

The mesh objects could significantly increase filesize, I just want to download Blender and not have perhaps 50 megabytes of meshes come with it.

For beginners this library would be good and why there should be a way to get something like that.

[M@dcow]

The mesh objects could significantly increase filesize, I just want to download Blender and not have perhaps 50 megabytes of meshes come with it. For beginners this library would be good and why there should be a way to get something like that.

Well, I don't think all of the models mentioned are actually necessary....surely all you need is one low poly head, and one low poly full body mesh for sculpting.

[RickyBlender]

new mat texture with nodes

over time i collected some very nice mat texture
and some are using nodes and not always easy to find

Ex: some apple texture for different type of apples using nodes
this is the type of procedural texture very userfull for apple but might be good for other things too

so is there a place where we can have theses evaluated and may included in new lib of materials?

may be this should require another thread to psot theses new text with nodes or not !




Thanks
happy blendering

[Uncle Entity]

I propose including a preview image of the material/texture and a script that shows these thumbnails and downloads the (python pickled?) material on demand from a server.

Shouldn't be too hard to come up with that script.

Still think it's easy enough to provide a link to models on blender.org so the download size doesn't 'bloom' to 100mb or whatever the Packed Blender is up to these days.

[JustinBarrett]

I think all the points have pretty much been made at this point. Maybe you should add a poll to the thread...yes they are semi useless, but in this case I think it makes sense.
anyway, I vote for the embedded stuff, as in procedural stuff, like materials, any textures/models should be a separate download. I have decent connection so it make no difference to me.
the other option is to start splitting the download files into small chunks that can be re-assembled on a local machine..and bundle it all together along with some wiki(or video, interface or something) tutorials etc...

[LetterRip]

For those concerned about size of meshes - I just did an experiment and it would add between .25 and 1.0 MB to the total zipped blend size for ALL meshes that I propose adding.

LetterRip

[LetterRip]

Regarding procedural material size - those should have no size virtually at all -these are procedural - the large size of downloadable libraries is that they are using image textures.

LetterRip