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« Return to Thread: Assigning and Editing Materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport
Re: Assigning and Editing Materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport
by Joe Crawford
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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
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
« Return to Thread: Assigning and Editing Materials via right-click on object in 3d viewport
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