Blendigo 3.8.25.0

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Headroom
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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:01 am

While that check box is present when "normal" materials are selected I won't be able to add it at this time to the external material type. Adding the "base emission" to the External material was possible, because External materials only contain material properties.
Emission scale, however, while it shows up in Blendigo amongst the material settings, in Indigo it's an object or better a <model> </model> property when exported into the objects.igs file by Blendigo.

That means there is no chance for overlap or a double definition.

The best way to handle external materials in Blendigo IMHO would be to parse them and create a regular Blendigo material based on this. That would open the ability to save external material directly from Blender. There are just not enough hours in the day ;-)

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Oscar J
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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Oscar J » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:45 am

Headroom wrote: The best way to handle external materials in Blendigo IMHO would be to parse them and create a regular Blendigo material based on this. That would open the ability to save external material directly from Blender. There are just not enough hours in the day ;-)
This.

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by FakeShamus » Fri Jul 10, 2015 7:28 am

just chipping in with what limited skills I have, I added indigo's null material as an option with emission

edit:
what's the best way to share / submit these kinds of additions to the script?
Attachments
im1436469906 copy.jpg
null_mat_blendigo.jpg

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Fri Jul 10, 2015 8:20 am

Doug Hammond hosted it on https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/blendigo/src.
I personally would prefer GitHub simply because I have an account.

Before I post it on GitHub I'll ask for permission from Glare Technologies though ;-)
Perhaps it would be best for them to post it on GitHub accompanied by all documentation the might have regression test files etc. and we submit pull requests to get the changes in.

Thanks for adding the Null material. I had not even noticed that this was missing.
At this time you could just post the python files her and I'll modify my version to add these things.

If there are other things that are missing please add them to this thread.

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by FakeShamus » Fri Jul 10, 2015 8:39 am

cool, here's my version with the whole indigo addons folder together, to keep things organized.
forgive me if that's unnecessary, I think all you need is Base.py, Null.py from export>materials, and the 2 material.py files from panels and properties. (I'm sure you know this better than I do)
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FS_Blendigo_20150709.zip
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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by OnoSendai » Fri Jul 10, 2015 12:23 pm


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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Fri Jul 10, 2015 12:55 pm

@Fakeshamus
I've integrated the null material into my version. Thanks for the contribution!

@Ono
Thanks for sharing the link to the original repo.

Attached is a version with the changes discussed above:
  • Added Advanced Render Settings
  • Added Emission Scale to External Material
  • Added Null Material to Material Types
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Blendigo3.zip
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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Polinalkrimizei » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:41 pm

You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for your efforts to revive Blendigo!!!

I happened to bump into a small, really minor exporter issue yesterday as I was not able to export the "c" parameter (it's "offset" in Indigo, right?) of a texture.
Really not a big one, and I don't want to take your time, as I am happy you spend it on implementing cool stuff to my favorite exporter.
Just wanted to mention it somewhere...

Keep up the good work!!

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:25 pm

Polinalkrimizei wrote:You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for your efforts to revive Blendigo!!!

I happened to bump into a small, really minor exporter issue yesterday as I was not able to export the "c" parameter (it's "offset" in Indigo, right?) of a texture.
Really not a big one, and I don't want to take your time, as I am happy you spend it on implementing cool stuff to my favorite exporter.
Just wanted to mention it somewhere...

Keep up the good work!!
Could you post a screenshot of the panel where you set that "c" parameter ?

Edit: Oh, and please do post any glitches . It's better to get these fixed as soon as possible and it increases our knowledge of how the code actually works. And don't hold back with Ideas for improvements either !

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by OnoSendai » Sat Jul 11, 2015 12:37 am

Since Google code is going to be unsupported, maybe we will move the code over to Github. Then we can accept pull requests as well.

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Sat Jul 11, 2015 2:51 am

OnoSendai wrote:Since Google code is going to be unsupported, maybe we will move the code over to Github. Then we can accept pull requests as well.
Yes, that would be great!

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Mon Jul 13, 2015 2:19 pm

Now that i've spent some time looking through the code and playing around with the light layers in Blendigo I must say that the idea behind its implementation is rather clever. It just leaves to be desired for certain light sources HDRI (Hemi) IES and Sun light sources.

What I mean with clever requires of course some explanation.

Lets assume we have a scene with several light sources somewhat coarsely defined in Blender/Blendigo but definitely in need of tuning. Once the render button is clicked the export starts and Indigo begins to render. The user determines quickly that this lighting setup does not work. The render is stopped, Indigo closed and gain is adjusted in Blendigo. Another render is started.....and on...and on....
That is a somewhat tedious workflow and unacceptable for more complex scenes with more "stuff" to export.

But of course Indigo offers adjustability of the light layers in its own UI. So the user decides to forego the back-and-forth between Blender und Indigo and comfortably adjusts the light layer gain to his satisfaction in Indigo.
IIRC, increasing the light layer gain does not increase/decrease the output power of a light source. As such when the gain of a previously dim light source ( which due its lower light output was not sampled so often by Indigo ) is increased, the noise that is still present in that light layer is equally amplified.

In order to achieve a more noise free rendering a user now has to manually calculate/scale the output power of all the light sources in the scene proportionally to the light layer gain settings in Indigo. That is an equally tedious undertaking and can be a real PITA if the individual light layers contain more than one light source.

This is where Bendigo's implementation of light layer gain comes in extremely handy!
As was explained earlier in this thread Blendigo manipulates the output power of the light sources directly according to the layer gain setting in Blendigo. Once the light layer gain is adjusted in Indigo, all a user has to do now is transfer the gain values from Indigo to the Blendigo light layer gain setting and voilà on export Blendigo scales all the light source output power settings according to the light layer settings.
The "Merge Light Layers" check box also on export actually moves all the correctly scaled light sources to the default layer 0 . The original settings in Blendigo are not manipulated.

The idea behind this is obvious, Blendigo and Indigo are to be understood as complimentary tools. That allows for a very nice workflow to quickly get to a final render! Ingenious!

This could be made much better integrated if Indigo could render interactively in Blenders viewport but for now - and of course with the exception of the previously named light sources Hemi, IES and Sun - I find that the way it is currently implemented should possibly be left untouched or perhaps it can be extended for Emission Scale.

Also what is thinkable is to treat these three special light sources well, special in the sense that only these would receive the "normal" indigo light layer treatment.

Please provide feedback if all this makes sense ;-)

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Oscar J » Mon Jul 20, 2015 10:16 pm

Thanks for the explanation - however, I am not convinced. More often than not, I find myself having to overpower many light sources to make them less noisy, and therefore having to reduce the light layer gain afterwards. The other day I found myself having to boost certain light sources to 10^10, and then setting their respective light layers to ridiculous numbers like 0.000001. Having to do this every damn time in Indigo, for every little test render, in order to see how your scene looks, is something I wouldn't wish upon anyone. This is a very serious issue that severely reduces my productivity at work right now. Being able to set those 0.000001 numbers in Blendigo directly, is at least a workaround until Indigo gets smarter with sampling priority (long overdue?).

My suggestion then, since I can see your point as well Headroom, is a simple "Apply light layer gain to object/material gain"-checkbox. Is that something that could be arranged?

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by Headroom » Mon Jul 20, 2015 10:20 pm

I fully agree with what you say. More control is needed and it should be possible to combine the two things. Unfortunately my Python knowledge is not up to snuff and I need to delve a little deeper into that over the coming months.

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Re: Blendigo 3.8.25.0

Post by zurkdahool » Sun Sep 20, 2015 10:08 am

puuuh... i have read the entire thread ;-)

some words from my side what i am thinking:
Apply light layer gain to object/material gain"-checkbox. Is that something that could be arranged?
Yes
This could be made much better integrated if Indigo could render interactively in Blenders viewport
Agree... integration into Blender viewport would be great. Also for material preview... I think it is possible with access to Indigo API (C/C++) Could be done with boost.python.... But maybe there is a licence reason why this is not already done... i don't know.

Some suggestions:

- cleaning code and update documentation
- Material database: Same online search inside blender as in indigo (easy possible with python xmlrpc call's to indigorenderer.com ) including preview icons and button to download/copy over to current scene. Also maybe upload?!
- re-design of lightlayers
- UI improvements
- 'Override every material expect glass with clay-material'-button
- ...

So much exciting stuff to code! :-)

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