Here is a list of some bugs and some feature requests for Blendigo.
BUGS / ISSUES:
- Emitters in group instances: emitters become way too bright (seems like efficacy scale or any other power setting is ignored) when in a Group instance.
- Linking / appending a Blend material doesn't link or append its sub-materials (not really a bug, but would be useful).
- Texture panel doesn't allow any options beyond loading Indigo images. This should be combined with the Image texture type anyway to make it consistent and so that the rest of the Texture options are still there for things like texture painting, displacement, etc.
- Blendigo doesn't check for existing UV coordinates on objects which attempt to use textured materials. A bit annoying when you export a whole scene only to have Indigo catch an object without UVs.
- Trying to use Script instead of Texture in a material sometimes crashes Blender.
- Absorption Layer options are missing for Specular materials.
FEATURE REQUESTS:
Lamps: exporting the various lamp types as meshes / Indigo objects with attached emissive materials.
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Point lamp: exported as a sphere, dimensions defined by Size value, attached emission material defined by Power / Color settings, etc.
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Spot lamp: exported as a plane or circle with a dynamically written .IES file to control the angle and softness of the cone (it works!), and a Size parameter to control the size of the emitter for softer / sharper shadows.
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Sun lamp: as is.
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Hemi lamp: as is.
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Area lamp: exported as a plane with emissive material, defined by Area Lamp dimensions.
- (Would be cool to eventually have some lamp presets appear in the 'Add Lamp' menu, or in the Lamp settings).
Camera / Rendering: setting up naming and render queues
- Adding an option to name the exported scene with parameters (%c = active camera, %f = frame number, %n = Blender scene name, etc.), e.g. '%n_draft_%c-%f.igs' = 'AwesomeScene_draft_cam1-0001.igs'
- Adding an option to export .pigs files directly without packing them through Indigo (useful for animations, queues)
- Similarly, adding a list of cameras to queue. Maybe this would have to be combined with Animation / Single Image rendering somehow, as in having 3 modes: Single Image, Animation, Render Queue; where Animation queues up the active camera across however many frames, and Render Queue lets you define a list of different cameras in the scene, just to keep things tidy.
- Adding layer toggles for each camera in queue, perhaps even light layer settings. This would allow you to queue up a whole set of lighting conditions / variations in one go.
- Defining a Section Plane with either an empty or a mesh (option in Object settings, perhaps? Uses the object's orientation to define the Plane?)
- Orthographic camera support (converting Blender settings to Indigo settings, which are pretty well identical)
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Materials:
- Node support.
- Scripting presets, eventually mimicking some of the procedural textures in Blender with ISL.
- Custom materials / textures based on 'installed' ISL scripts? A bit like the ISL materials work with sliders and such.
That's all for now, will update if I think of anything more! Overall, working fantastically. Export speed could always be faster
