Assigning and Editing Materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport

[Daniel Scott Matthews]

Joe, what is the best way of allowing a user to assign and edit
materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport?

I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that says
Material which has two sub menus, Edit and Choose. Edit would display
the material properties in the Node Properties panel and the Choose
option would let you navigate a tree menu containing a library of
categorized presets.

Can you suggest any extra or better ways of of speeding up material handling?

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[Timothy M. Shead]

Daniel Scott Matthews wrote:

> Joe, what is the best way of allowing a user to assign and edit
> materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport?
>
> I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that says
> Material which has two sub menus, Edit and Choose. Edit would display
> the material properties in the Node Properties panel and the Choose
> option would let you navigate a tree menu containing a library of
> categorized presets.
>
> Can you suggest any extra or better ways of of speeding up material handling?

As background for those following-along, most current geometry sources
have a "Material" property that assigns an initial property to
newly-created geometry, plus there is a "SetMaterial" modifier that can
be used to override the material with a fine level of granularity.
Dan's suggestion is another good example where we just need to layer
some friendlier UI over existing capabilities.

Cheers,
Tim

[tshead.vcf]

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fn:Timothy Shead
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[Joe Crawford]

Regarding the assignment of materials, and viewing their properties:

I do agree that a context menu entry to reach material properties is
important.  However, from a more fundamental standpoint, I think its
important that any context menu item always appears somewhere in the
main menus, and that reaching it via the context menu is only a
shortcut.  This is a general truth of all context menus in gui design.

In any case, as per your original suggestions, these three items would
be important:

Edit Material
Assign New Material
Assign Existing Material


Maya is an example of a program with these 3 options.  Now, although
these are useful to have as a starting place, they unfortunately
aren't a very complete/robust solution.

The problems, and possible solutions, are:

1) What if the selection contains multiple materials? Which one gets
edited? (A very simple solution is to edit the material of the last
selected item. Also, if there are components selected, that should be
respected, since a single object might have more than one material on
different components.

2) When there are many, many materials in a scene, it becomes
impractical to choose them from a list.  Thus, its important to have
another option in the material editor (or anywhere else where one can
select materials, to assign them to a selection.  For example, in XSI,
Maya, and 3dsmax, a user can put the mouse over a material, right
click, and choose assign material to selection.  In scenes with lots
of materials, this is the method that will get used.  (Many users
still use the simpler RMB method in the 3D viewport to apply materials
in existing scenes.)


Sincerely,

Joe Crawford
___________________________________
Owner - Celestine Studios   and   Joetainment Enterprises
Cell: 604-866-3050
Email: joetainment@...
Web: http://celestinestudios.com



On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 8:07 AM, Timothy M. Shead<tshead@...> wrote:

> Daniel Scott Matthews wrote:
>> Joe, what is the best way of allowing a user to assign and edit
>> materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport?
>>
>> I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that says
>> Material which has two sub menus, Edit and Choose. Edit would display
>> the material properties in the Node Properties panel and the Choose
>> option would let you navigate a tree menu containing a library of
>> categorized presets.
>>
>> Can you suggest any extra or better ways of of speeding up material handling?
>
> As background for those following-along, most current geometry sources
> have a "Material" property that assigns an initial property to
> newly-created geometry, plus there is a "SetMaterial" modifier that can
> be used to override the material with a fine level of granularity.
> Dan's suggestion is another good example where we just need to layer
> some friendlier UI over existing capabilities.
>
> Cheers,
> Tim
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
> looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
> innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
> enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
> Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
> _______________________________________________
> K3d-development mailing list
> K3d-development@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/k3d-development
>
>

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[Esben Stien]

Daniel Scott Matthews <dsmatthews@...> writes:

> I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that
> says Material which has two sub menus

I think this is bad. If everything is going into a context menu, it'd
be clutter.

It's more ideal to have a separate material application connected to
the server, which would display the material of the currently selected
object.

This would also increase efficiency.

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[Daniel Scott Matthews]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Esben Stien<b0ef@...> wrote:
> Daniel Scott Matthews <dsmatthews@...> writes:
>
>> I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that
>> says Material which has two sub menus
>
> I think this is bad. If everything is going into a context menu, it'd
> be clutter.

I think I have been misunderstood, I never suggested that it be there
exclusively, that is not logical.
I suggested that it should be in the context menu, but you can put it
anywhere else, including having a menu in the menu bar that has all
the context items on it.

This is exactly what I asked

"what is the best way of allowing a user to assign and edit
materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport?

I'd find it convenient to right click and see a menu option that says
Material which has two sub menus, Edit and Choose. Edit would display
the material properties in the Node Properties panel and the Choose
option would let you navigate a tree menu containing a library of
categorized presets.

Can you suggest any extra or better ways of of speeding up material handling?"


The key points are, the convenience of such additional functionality,
and the question of what other way we can make material handling
faster.

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