Indigo Renderer Forum

How do we get downloaded materials into Indigo or Blender? There seems to be no material library to browse other than the one online, and then no instructions (at least in the online manual) on how to preview them, or assign them to objects. Do I need to be a programmer to use this product? (pulling my hair out here).

Thanks,
Mark

The preview is in the material database itself so I don't know what the issue is here, as for using them in Blender all you have to do is choose the "External" material type and point it to the *.igs/*.pigs file you've downloaded from the database.

Thanks for the answer, but when I do that I get a message that the PIGM file is invalid.

Where should the material database be located? No previews of any materials show up through Indigo. Is there a default library for Indigo that should be part of the installation?

Mark

Here is the error message I get when attempting to open a downloaded material.

Error: Unpack error: Failed to open zip file at 'C:/Users/mmatthews/Desktop/Drop Off/Brushed_metal_by_Michal_Timko.pigm'.

Indigo 3.2.5 64bit on Win7

http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/

Well you can download them from here. As for where it should be located well, you can put them pretty much anywhere you want really since you'll be providing the paths to the files (but do avoid C:/Program Files on Windows Vista/7 as permissions may cause troubles).

So, let me get this straight: there is no bundled library of materials that should have been part of the Indigo installation; there is no information in the online manual about how to load materials into Indigo; and since I can't seem to be able to open any materials in Indigo I'm stuck having to create all my materials from scratch.

Don't get me wrong Borg, I know you didn't write the software; but I'm getting no response from any developers here and support has not answered the first e-mail I've sent them. I'm thinking this package is not ready for us.

Well the material database would be quite large to download in it's entirety so bundling it with the software itself would be, in my opinion, a bad idea. Most people use only a fraction of the materials in the database anyway.

As for you not being able to load the material inside Indigo I find that very odd. I'm not completely up to date on the blender script and indigo versions but I don't remember having these kinds of issues in quite a while.

Hi Mark,

That specific material you reported is indeed an invalid file (0 Bytes), I experienced the same error than you did. This material should therefore be updated or removed from the material library, thank you for the pointer.

Does the error persist with another material ? There are several brushed metals available ('scratch' might be another keyword of choice):

http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials ... &q=brushed

here, I made this clickable:


Circular_plate_metal_soft

Let us know wether it works for you or not.

Thanks for the suggestion of a new material; but I have no idea what to do with that download. There is nothing in the zip file that shows any extension that Indigo looks like it would import. I and no one in my studio is a python programmer. The documentation for learning the package is totally lacking in depth. While the users here are very knowledgeable and are certainly willing to help, it's an incredibly long process to ask basic questions and wait for answers.

All of the other rendering packages we have used in the past have libraries of materials bundled with the software that can be tweaked and saved as custom materials. The learning curve here is just to big to justify for our studio. I was directed to Indigo by a thread in another forum extolling the wonderful interior shots Indigo is capable of; and looking at the gallery here I have to agree; stunning.

The workflow to get these results for us is not going to be justifiable. We create our geometry in SolidWorks for downstream engineering reasons and is a core client deliverable. Since there is no direct way to translate that geometry into Indigo the process to do that is too cumbersome. Maybe in the future that process will be streamlined. For now, this is not going to work for us.

You don't need to unpack the downloaded material file. It should be a .igm or .pigm file.

Inside Blender, to apply it to an object:
1. Select the object
2. Go to the Materials panel
3. Create a new material
4. Change the material type to "External"
5. Select the .igm or .pigm file in the file slot. Blendigo should confirm the name of the material contained in the file.

The downloaded material is now 'attached' to the object and will be shown when rendering, although not in the viewport. Blendigo does not 'load' the external materials as such (it only references them for export), you should use the Indigo material editor to make changes to the .igm/.pigm type materials.

dougal2,

The material that CTZn posted for download contains no files with Indigo extensions and cannot be used in Blender like you describe. Other Indigo materials that I've tried to use in Blender give me an error message (see my earlier posts in this thread). Something is broken between Blender and Indigo, and something in Indigo itself is broken for me as NO MATERIAL will open in Indigo. (see the previous thread entries).

I just downloaded CTZn's .pigm file, and it opened directly with indigo and started rendering See attached image. Downloading and rendering like this has nothing to do with Blender or Blendigo. What did you do exactly after you clicked CTZn's link? Which file did you download?
Also, which versions of Indigo, Blendigo and Blender are you using?

CTZn's clickable file was a .zip file. In it are a bunch of folders that contain what look like python scripts. Nothing in the folders contain a pgim extension.

http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials ... 2/download

This is the direct link to the file CTZn posted and it is a .pigm...