[Bf-committers] Texture assignment workflow is confusing

[Doug Ollivier]

On 26/04/2010 11:07 p.m., Damir Prebeg wrote:
> On 26 April 2010 10:34, 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.
>>      

Just to chime in here since this topic raised my eyebrows.
Blender can drop the texture-influence panel by opting for a "texture 
socket" type system, where the texture is plugged into a value at the 
location of influence/use.
This would be a nice clean departure from Blender 2.x series layout, but 
is semantically and intuitively more logical than the existing.

Imagine a way to plug either a BW/A or RGB/A image into any value or 
colour socket at any location

http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=2989

Note: The example only shows the button where you click to choose or 
activate a texture, and does not show the options around using this 
texture which would need to expand out at time of use.

Advantages
** Many people will only apply a texture to a single value, this system 
handles that scenario significantly faster than the existing and can 
also handle applying the same texture to values all over the place.... 
with different overlay values (i.e. add, subtract would then be a per 
channel change.
** This system gives a very good visual, and intuitive pipe through to 
the textures panel from the materials panel.
** It will also bring the Standard texturing tools more in line with the 
nodes editing tools without pushing the user into a new interface.  in 
fact full nodes structures can then be derived from these socket links 
for an alternate method of editing the same/more complex setups display
** this concept is in line with the idea of being able to animate ANY 
value in the interface, as it now allows a texture or node input into 
any 2D/3D value in the interface.

Cheers

-- 
Doug Ollivier

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