[Bf-committers] Texture assignment workflow is confusing

[Knapp]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Colby Klein <shakesoda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a particular problem with just making a switch in the texture panel itself to go between world and materials?
>
> I think that's better than duplicating anything and it's much less obscure than changing based on the previous panel.
>
> -- Colby

I wish I had a good idea to fix all this. I have been using 2.5 for a
few months now and I have to say that the materials and textures flow
is much more clunky that in 2.4. I really agree that 2.4 was strange
and fully understand the complaints about it but in 2.5 the work flow
is worse and needs some work.

I think part of the problem is that we have 2 panels. One for
materials and one for textures but in the modeling flow you really
have 4 ways of thinking about it. You are first making textures, then
you combine those textures and then you combine that with material
setting that you then use to "paint" the different faces of your
object. There is a mixing in 2.5 between the ideas of making texture
or a material and the ideas of making a finished "color" to paint the
object with and the ideas of OOPing.

2.5 texturing and materials gives me the same feeling I get when I
have been writing a program for to long and it is a ball of twisted
logic that needs to be cut up into separate subroutines, cleaned up
and simplified. It would seem separating it all out would make it the
most understandable and logical but I think it also might be the worst
thing for the work flow.

The worst bit about 2.4 was that map to and map input should have been
in the textures panel not the materials panel. Or everything under the
texture button should have been place right in the group of subpanels
with map to and map input. Really I think this last idea is the most
logical and easy to understand and might be the path to fixing 2.5.

As it stands 2.5 is slow to use and hard to understand. I thought this
would go away with usage and that I was just being stuck in 2.4
thinking but at this point I see that it really is not a good way to
go. It is hard and slow to use and harder than 2.4 to understand and I
say that as a user/artist and a person that seen the programming OOP
ideas under that lead to it.

Texturing is a huge part of getting good end results and making that
easy to use is critical to getting there. I hate sounding down on a
great work of programming but like the last few Star Wars movies,
someone needs to stand up and say, "rewrite", before it is to late.
Wonderful try but lets please get 2.5 to actually be as wonderful as
2.5 promises to be.

-- 
Douglas E Knapp

Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/