[Reiner]

You could already include them into the addon if you want. The procedure is described above

[davis]

I am still counting on some other people to create some of the materials, that´s why it´s better to first produce everything, review and improve it and then finally put it all together in the library.

[Reiner]

I’ll create a handful i guess. But our community isn’t this big as you know. But yeah, no need to hurry

[davis]

I just checked out how to put all the materials into the library and it is actually much simpler than that. – All that has to be done is copy the .blend files into the library folder and all of the materials in the scene will show up in the material library. The name of the .blend file becomes the category name.

So all that will have to be done in the end is to clean out all unnessecary materials of the scenes and copy them. … We will have to see if we even keep the blender internal and other materials in there? – I would just go with a clean library, showing only the different material categories.

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Can you have a look if it is possible to alter the addon in a way, that the preview is automatically updated when the user clicks on one of the materials? – Right now the addon requires to always click the preview button, which is quite annoying. – An auto update would at least be a step in the direction of faster visual browsing the library here.

Also some bigger and more understandable icons on the sidebar of the addon would help usability.

EDIT: Would it be possible to call the material preview from BfA into the list of the addon? That way a dynamic list with previews could be generated. – Or else, would it be possible to include images in the list? Then we could prerender all of the materials to include a preview that way.

 

[Reiner]

Mh, yes, that’s one way of doing it. But i wanted to avoid to have single library files, since it clutters the workflow when you have to reload libs all the time. On the other hand … in the end i’m open to anything. But then we would need to grab the materials from the existing library, and put them into single files too. So that it is consistent.

I already had a look if we could implement a preview. Two things: we don’t maintain addons. And i was simply not able to manage it, sorry.

What we could do is to create a pdf with the previews

[Draise]

The brushes panel would be perfect for the materials. They can have icons and the UI would be consistent for selecting new things from a library… man I wish I was Hackerman. 

:dance:

[Reiner]

Time is the problem here. That’s why i don’t want to start with maintaining addons too …

[Reiner]

Manual is done. Now let’s have a look here.

Davis, are the libs from you ready to be included? Because then i would simply commit them

[Reiner]

The tracker issue can be found here: https://github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/issues/172

I have uploaded the currently three existing libraries to the tracker issue too.

[davis]

As far as I am concerned, those are done. Some improvements can still be done later when they are included in the library.

[Reiner]

Okay, then i’ll add them to the repository now

I will do as you have suggested, simply add the blend files besides the existing library. Easiest one

What do you think about documentation? Necessary? In which form?

[davis]

Yes, that will also be easiest to browse, there is a bit of lag when switching category, but it gives much more overview than having it all in one enormous list.

I gave dynamat a try again and this is really perfect. – It looks like blendermada also uses this. So I contacted the developer to see if we maybe can include it into BfA. – But no answer yet unfortunately.

[Reiner]

Mh, you have a few unnamed materials in the files. We should fix this first before including the libs.

EDIT says, this is the light setup, right? Hm, material libs should just contain the materials. Or what do you think here?

[Reiner]

Dynamat is nice. But has a few caveats. The preview image is nice. But you can’t add your own materials. So if even we would simply borrow some of the materials. The license seems to allow this.

[davis]

You can add your own, it’s very simple. Select the object with the material. Select the category it should go to, hit add material and it will create a preview image and save the material.

Edit:

Yes, those extra materials are the base plane and the lights I used for the scene setup, best just copy only the BfA material swatches to a new file and it should include only the necessary materials.

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