[Bf-committers] Arbitrary materials for mesh display in viewport (solid view)

[Gustav Göransson]

It might make things clearer, but I think one have to take a step back
and see what is good from a user perspective

Right now blender shows textures assigned in the UV/image editor NOT
actual textures that are assigned to the material that will show up
when rendering. I think this behavior is a rather stupid and very
confusing. It gives you no feedback on how your material maps to your
object without actually hit render, unless you actually in edit mode
selects all faces of you object -> open the image/UV editor and open
the texture. It would be a lot nicer if you blender displayed the
textures of object's material instead. One could also add a display
color to all object which specify the color the object have in solid
mode. This would also solve malefico's problem.

Then we could have following viewport modes:
1. Texture + Shading: Mimic how the object would look like rendered
(basically what GLSL + textured mode does now)
2. Texture: Show textures of the material assign to object.
3  Solid: Show the display color of the objects.
4. Wireframe: Show wireframe.
5.Bounding box: Show Bounding box.

In addition to this you can have object specific settings and option
in Image/UV editor to override the viewport modes...

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 16:59, Roger Wickes <rogerwickes at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 1a. Textured Solid View
> 2a. Light direction and color setting in User Pref
>
> It seem to me we have Blender-level settings (User Prefs),
> then for each 3D View window a selectable view mode that builds on the blender-level,
> and then for each object in a 3D View window an override which modulates the above.
>
> This feels like a good hierarchy to me. My only ...blip... in this hierarchy is changing
> all the 3D views to be "consistent", but I understand the need to have like 3 of the windows
> in wireframe and only one sucking up CPU in solid mode (ah, the wonderful Pentium 3 days).
>
> What if we could agree that the User Prefs and 3D View toolbar/properties pull-out
> set up general rules for what and how things are displayed in general, and is set by the user
> based on their machine's power. A new feature in User Prefs would be a Lock all 3D Views to changes
> made in one 3D View with regard to display quality setting, which would set all the other 3D Views
> (with another option - across desktops) to use the new display quality setting (view mode).
>
> Then, with some future feature on a group basis, we can set the display level for a group that
> either uses the general setting, or over-rides the general setting for objects in that group as has been requested.
> For example, all "background" (or "matte") group objects would be in wireframe, "set dressing" in solid,
> and "foreground" in shaded view mode. this would allow the user to direct cpu resources to view/display those
> objects of most importance in the better quality.
>
> On an object-by-object basis, the Material properties Display panel could "Use default" or could override that
> and define how a specific object is displayed in 3D View. This would be a simple change to the
> Material Display panel to have a selector, much like the 3D View selector, with options to
>
> Use 3D View default
> Bounding Box
> Solid
> Solid Textured
> Shaded with GLSL
> Shaded Multitexture
> Shaded Textured
> Textured
>
> which i think mushes all the different modes into one list, roughly ascending by CPU drain. Right now
> it is sort of a radio button mush.
> Would be nice if the 3D view header display mode option, and the 3D View Properties panel used
> this same list for consistency.
>
> This would allow future possibility for us then to have some objects in wireframe and others
> textured in 3D view, which is what has beenrequested.
>
>
>
>  --Roger
>
>
> *Not the coder in this area so take all my suggestions with a grain of salt"
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Gustav Göransson <gustav.goransson at gmail.com>
> To: bf-blender developers <bf-committers at blender.org>
> Sent: Wed, June 2, 2010 8:10:04 AM
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Arbitrary materials for mesh display in viewport (solid view)
>
> The displaying of models/textures in the viewport might be the most
> confusing area in Blender (After five years of using blender I'm still
> not sure if I get it...).
>
> Right now we have:
>
> 1. Viewport Shading (Textured, Solid, Wire, Bounding Box).
> 2. Shading setting in the n-panel (GLSL, Multitexture, Textureface) +
> Texture solid.
> 3. Display settings for each object (Texture, solid ,xray etc.).
>
> To this add how blender shows texture loaded in Image/UV editor that
> PapaSmurf mentions... and not to mention procedural textures...
>
> In my opinion blender need to be a lot clearer on what are displayed
> in the viewport and which setting that overrides others before
> introducing more viewport features....
>
>
>
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