Carmine - Substance Editor (Indigo Material Editor) *Preview

Wedge · Post by **Wedge** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:15 pm

Hey,

First I want to say that I do not intend to cause any trouble or competition or any event similar to the one caused by my work on Blender Exporter. I have long wanted to use a material editor and have seen the one in this forum never end up finished. I have also saw the new topic about another material editor and said I would offer my help if it was GPL and written in Python (a language I already know a bit about). I do have the skills to write one myself and have started to do so. If there are any problems I can keep this editor to myself and pretend it never existed so that no drama is caused. Anyways, I also know a bit about VB and since I don't have much free time these days to learn new programming languages I thought I would write up an editor.

This is very simple to use and its features are not quite decided at the moment. Below is an image of it. Most of the GUI is messy and considered done for now. But after I finish up behind the scenes everything will be disabled except for the items which you will need to edit. (to help hide the messy, all in one place GUI)

It does not do the job all for you, since materials are defined in the mesh, you will have to set up your scene with placeholding materials (textures included so that UV coords export) and then set up the mats in Carmine with identical names. All Carmine will do is allow you to set up a material from scratch and export to a file where you can include or replace the mats from your main scenefile. At least placeholding mats would work in Blender, not sure about other 3D packages.

This is written with VB and I think you will need to have .NET framework 2.0 installed to get it running properly. At any rate if it is ok with me posting this (likely have a working version by next weekend) I will put up the setup package. An ok response from Ono would be ideal.

It would be provided as is, without any warranty.

Edit: Uploaded final picture.

Pinko5 · Post by **Pinko5** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:49 pm

Where I can find it Wedge???
Luca.

suvakas · Post by **suvakas** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:31 pm

Hmm..interesting.
One question though. Can you do it in a bit more dynamic way? Like a dropdown selection for material type and then the available parameters change acording to what is selected in the list.
At the moment there are too many parameters on the UI and it seems a bit confusing.

cpfresh · Post by **cpfresh** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:34 am

wedge your efforts are commendable! though it may be clunky right now, those type of aesthetics can always be ironed out at a later time. its the behind the scenes that matter. the only thing i spot as missing would be some kind of preview function and display -- or maybe its just lost in the jumble.

if you end up not pursuing this app as it is, perhaps you can hookup with the guys working on that other one you mentioned.

at any rate, looks AWESOME to me!

thanks

Wedge · Post by **Wedge** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:09 am

Suvakas, I would like to create a number of fixed or preset materials. These could actually be mats decided by the forum and cover a common range of materials. For the dynamic part, only the needed settings will be available to alter and the rest will be greyed out depending on the path you take.

cpfresh, there will not be a material preview feature. But a preset collection of materials from a forum thread like the one already existing, could be used. The materials would not include textures, but could have the settings in place and ready.

Edit: Uploaded a new picture to better show how the gui works. Sized it down so it fits forum better too.

Post by **OnoSendai** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:46 am

Hi Wedge,
looks cool, and feel free to post a setup package to the forums or whatever.

As far as languages + GUI toolkits go, I vote for wxPython (wxWidgets + Python). I've had a very brief look at it and it looks nice and relatively simple.

Also I agree with Suv, only the forms for the current material type should be visible

nik

Neobloodline · Post by **Neobloodline** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:32 pm

A material editor would be great, thanks in advance! Make sure you write a nice tutorial how to use it ! ( Carmine for dummies lol )

WytRaven · Post by **WytRaven** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:05 pm

And this will offer exactly what that say blendigo or any other exporter doesn't already offer?

Wedge · Post by **Wedge** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:26 am

Hey,

Some events have come up that I did not consider time for. Also at the last minute some construction work came up on Saturday that I was a part of.

A weekend release will not happen. My best guess for a release at this time is Tuesday or Wednesday of the coming week.

Thanks for the ok, Nick.

Update November 23: A final screenshot of Carmine has been posted. This is what the program will look like. It is all presented in one window sized at 1024x768. (with some space provided for the future)

There are more delays, when I was writing in error checking I was not happy at all with the code or the program so I took half of the gui apart and rewrote it. Now I am happy with it. At this point, I need to write in error checking again, saving of data to file (data is already being stored), and do some bug testing. I was going to release versions along the way but I decided to release a seemingly stable version instead. The 'seemingly stable' version will hopefully come this weekend.

It seems when I am not logged in I cannot see my attached picture. The posted version might have to be placed in another forum so people can download it without needing an account, although I am not sure which one. Is this a restriction on this sub forum?

Carmine - Substance Editor (Indigo Material Editor) *Preview

Carmine - Substance Editor (Indigo Material Editor) *Preview

Who is online