Indigo Renderer Forum

We can already separate materials in another XML file for editing, but I'd like to take it one step further.
My idea would also work great for the "Materials DB" that does/will exist online here.


Allow the inclusion of a separate XML file for each material in a scene.

Then, we modify the exporters for our various applications (Blender, for example) to do the same thing they already do with the .nk files: if you name a material something.xml, no material is exported, and instead Indigo looks for something.xml (which would be linked from the generated scene file) for that material.

This would keep everyone from going, "Hey, how did you get x material! I'd like to try it!" - simply upload the xml (and textures, if needed)

Judging from your latest work (diffuse/phong masks), materials are already in nodes, so this wouldn't be too hard to do.

Also, allowing at least a few (or infinite) OTHER materials to be called from a material XML would be useful, especially in regards to what I just said.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

I hate to use the "M" word again (Maxwell), but being able to download and share materials rocks!

i think indigo can already do this, although i am not sure. i think in one of my scenes, the one with the glass dinosour likish things with metal balls, i had a link to a file with the glass and difuse materials, and a link to the file with the metal materials, although i dont quite remember if this is true. if this is true, its more of a matter of coding the scripts to export each material into a different file and import the links. however, i imagine having more links to different materials per file would cause indigo to load a scene slower.

however, i think it would be much more usefull to have the model to material links in the materials file for example, have each model(or material grouping) have a name, and have each material have what material group it links to inside of it. if find it quite annoying to have to search through a 800+ line file for the model i want to change the material grouping for. i suppose i could use the find function of the word processor, but its not as helpfull when you have one material linking to mulitple models or your materials as well as objects have vague names and such that you cant remember

it can be done with a file "include", such as is already used.
it's just a case (ha, is if it's an easy job ) of changing the way the exporter works.

I would also like to see a material db that is user supported.

Is it possible to have one large file containing many materials that you just call out when doing your render? (maybe this has already been answered in this topic I'm just dumb )

-Matt

I think it's like that
Anyway, you can make a file containing the materials and put the above code in the file insead of the materials.

e.g.
scene.xml -> using materials in -> scene_mat.xml

EDIT: you will be able to upload a .zip file containing all the material stuff for each material,
and a xml file with the code, not only on the DB site

I know that you can include a "materials" xml now; that is not what I am suggesting.

Having to go in and manually add text to xml files to try out materials is a no-no.

Okay, I'll make a flash based material editor with a pretty accurate material preview
Just give me some weeks
(Aslo with XML output)

Hehe

You mean a standalone, non application-dependent one ?

Okay !

Take your time