Indigo Renderer Forum

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a water material for a tutorial I'm writing for Sketchup Caustics - I thought it would be more elegant if I could just link to a material with all settings and textures packed rather than get users changing settings in sketchup individually. But I've fallen at the first hurdle!

I'm creating my material in sketchup as below:

In the SKIndigo editor, these are the material settings I want:
Material type: Specular
IOR: 1.33
Displace: (A texture I've picked)
Precedence: 9
Absorption: Sketchup

In the Sketchup materials window I have the following:
Use texture image ticked (using my texture)
Size set to 1500mmx1500mm
Opacity: 3

And that all renders just as I want it.

So I 'export' this material through the SKIndigo editor, pack it to a .pigm and its all saved.

However when I 'import' this texture to a new sketchup file to test it works, half of the settings are wrong. They have now changed (bold ones are the incorrect settings):

Material type: Specular
IOR: 1.4
Displace: (A texture I've picked)
Precedence: 2
Absorption: Constant

In the Sketchup materials window its all changed:
Use texture image no longer ticked
Size set to 100mmx100mm
Opacity: 50

If I try and open my .pigm or my .igm file in the Indigo material editor I get the following error:

Error:Error while loading materials: Found unexpected element 'absorption_coefficient'. (In element 'basic', around line 6, column 9)

Anyone able to shed any light on what I'm doing wrong? Why aren't my settings being correctly saved when I export the material?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Bosseye, my guess is that you need to download the latest Indigo beta from the news and announcements forum.

Older Indigo versions are expecting "absorption_coefficient_spectrum" instead.

You can figure this out by removing entirely the faulty tag from the IGS; Indigo should then complain about the actual missing tag name it is expecting.

Also, didn't you find a satisfying water material http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials ... ial+Search ?

The "Clear Water" from CoolColJ should do, and in general materials with tabulated data are to be trusted (hopefully).

CTZn wrote:Also, didn't you find a satisfying water material http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials ... ial+Search ?

The "Clear Water" from CoolColJ should do, and in general materials with tabulated data are to be trusted (hopefully).

I did, and its good - I just took this as an opportunity to make a simple material of my own with a displacement map and the specific settings I like etc, both to help me learn the materials editor a little and to make something specific for my tutorial.

I'll try the latest Indigo/SKIndigo, thanks.

Bosseye wrote:I just took this as an opportunity to make a simple material of my own with a displacement map and the specific settings I like etc, both to help me learn the materials editor a little and to make something specific for my tutorial.

That sounds absolutely right

Ok, so now I'm running Indigo 3.6.18 and SKIndigo 3.4.19 and the problem is partially resolved. As before in bold is the incorrect setting when I import my previously exported material to a new sketchup model:

Material type: Specular
IOR: 1.3
Displace: (A texture I've picked)
Precedence: 9
Absorption: Sketchup

So all ok in the SKIndigo material editor, but in the Sketchup materials window its still incorrect:
Use texture image no longer ticked
Size set to 100mmx100mm
Opacity: 2

No idea why it won't tag the texture to the material in sketchup and why the opacity settings are going awry Any thoughts? Theres no point in me making a material that still requires a large chunk of the set up process by the user!

I'm using version 8 sketchup and I'm loathe to upgrade to sketchup 2013, so hopefully the problem isn't to do with that.

Also still getting the 'absorption coefficient' error when I use the Indigo material editor - however I notice that the editor is saying its v2.4.13 and the latest Indigo download doesn't seem to have dumped a material editor.exe file anywhere in the C drive folder? I assume the latest material editor is higher than v2.4.13!

EDIT: I found a load of old Indigo stuff in the (x86) folders which I've ditched, uninstalled the latest beta 3.6.18 and then reinstalled it and definitely no material editor.exe in the latest file download?

No idea about the SU issues, but the material editor is totally obsolete. It is from a time when Indigo had no editing abilities itself (pre-3.0).

The standard material creation procedure with Indigo is now: start Indigo, File > New Material, then use the Property Editor for the material setup.

The material preview scene will load automatically when creating a new material that way.

During a render, one must use Scene > Add material or the related icon from the toolbar.

OK, thanks for all your help, it is much appreciated

But I still have problems! Here's some images, to hopefully make it clearer.

I set up the material in Sketchup so it works as I want it:
Then I export this material from SKIndigo and save it as a .pigm
I open this .pigm material in Indigo and it all renders fine, correct settings, texture present etc.
So I think its all working ok. But when I start a new sketchup file, create my new water material and then import my .pigm material, it all loads ok and the settings in SKIndigo are ok, but its the sketchup material properties that have all defaulted - the colour is wrong, the opacity is wrong, the texture is not attached and so on.
So I'm lost Are we thinking this is an issue with Sketchup, or am I missing a setting or a checkbox in the material editor? I've downloaded materials from the database that update all the Sketchup material property settings with PACKED_Textures etc when imported, so its certainly possible. I just can't seem to get it to work!

I might re-post this in the sketchup forum too, see if anyone can assist there.

Bump!