Material Editor Issue

[derei]

I think that on Material Editor, it should be one more option, not just Solid Color and Texture. The third option should be somethink like Texture from Sketchup or, under Texture,to have the possibility to use Texture from Sketchup's Material, instead of Browse.
Why? Because, if you have a material with texture in Sketchup, then change to Solid Color, you can not revert that. The only way is to export the texture from SketchUp material, then browse it in the computer and reload in twilight. I find this very uncomfortable.

Also it would be nice to have the possibility to quick edit the Color texture for Bump Mapping (desaturate, contrast, light).

Is there a way to save materials for future use? I see there is a Library, but if I make my own set of materials, I would like to have them saved. And more, some kind of auto-material conversion. Like Auto-MXM in Maxwell Render. So, if my SketchUp material have same name with materials from my previous saved library, to replace itself automatically, prior rendering.

Thank you for taking this into your attention.

[Chris]

Have you read the manual? One of the basic uses of the material editor is to "lock" a channel to the SU material. So if the material uses a texture, the Twilight material uses that same texture. You don't have to export anything. And if you are going to change the Twilight material and don't want to change the SU material, just unlock it first.

And why would a bump map ever be a color?

[derei]

Have you read the manual?

Yes I did.

if the material uses a texture, the Twilight material uses that same texture. You don't have to export anything. And if you are going to change the Twilight material and don't want to change the SU material, just unlock it first.

I noticed that. But have you noticed that if you change from Texture to Solid Color and forget to unlock the channel you loose the texture from sektchup material, and THEN, if you revert back to Texture, it raises the Open Image dialog? So, how can I revert back to Sketchup texture? As I see, the only way is to have that texture image saved on my hdd.
What I wanted to say is that the user must be allowed to change his mind, to go back and forward. Or, at least, to raise an alert, or something that says "unlock the channel, or you will loose your Sketchup texture". It's uncomfortable to keep in mind all buttons and operations, to avoid such mistakes.

And why would a bump map ever be a color?

I don't mean to be a color, but if I want to use same texture as "Color" channel, I would like to change its contrast "in place".
And, in my point of view, that 50% gray for no-bump is a little hard to "feel" by human eye. Wouldn't be more intuitive for a human, that 100%black=0%bump and 100%white=100%bump ? I am sure that you wanted to make this available both for positive and negative bump, but as it's just bump-mapping, not normal-mapping nor displacement-mapping, I think it's more important that user to be able to "measure" the bumpmap just looking at it. I want to be able to say "well, now it's a good bump map" without loading it into GIMP or Photoshop and measuring its gray values in certain places.

I'm just putting here my feedback after using it a little.
I like Twilight, I really do. And spherical projection is awesome. I just did some quick renders for fun and shared with my friends. And this is why I think that it's important to share what I think that can be improved to make it more intuitive, easy, user-friendly.

Thank you.

[Chris]

Ahhh, ok. That makes sense.

You are right that if you forget to unlock the channel, you will loose your texture. But you can use SketchUp's Undo/Redo to restore it if it was accidental (you might want to close and reopen the material editor; it doesn't automatically update when you undo). And like any application, at some point the user is responsible for their actions, just like deleting text in a word processing app. Providing a warning is a good idea though.

Providing a gray-scale, contrast, or other modifiers to the bump map (or other channels) is a good idea too. I think it's on the wishlist.

[derei]

at some point the user is responsible for their actions

I totally agree with you. But as Sketchup is so simple, so flexible, so user-friendly, it's to be expected that the best dedicated rendering engine to be equally intuitive and user-friendly.
This is the reason why I gave up to AutoCAD and SolidWorks in the first place.
You can put on the wishlist material saving and automatic material conversion also.
I think you could encourage suggestions for Twilight from all users. This doesn't means to do what every user wants, but it would help you see what users need, what they would appreciate to have in Twilight. Starting from new making the workflow easier up to new features...

Since I have tried it I could not wait until I got my license I was happy like a child (though I am not a child)