[Bf-committers] Texture assignment workflow is confusing

[Roger Wickes]

ok, so i read about other packages and their shading/texture/materials
workflow, thought about my workflow and what we miss/need, what I 
hate about the 2.49, and compiled the latest svn. With that in mind, please 
consider these ideas as a way to move forward and simplify/standardize/best
practice the whole mat-tex workflow, while providing a good foundation for
the future as well as bridging users and files forward.

The first problem I ran into was getting a high-level view of what was 
actually already defined and in-use in the blend file, and how it connects. 
The tool best for that is the datablock/outliner. In Maya, the datablock 
viewer is called the HyperGraph, and our outliner is like theirs, just for comparison.
Disregarding the datablock viewer for the moment,
I set about thinking how to present the "Who uses What"
query and what is needed to be known by the artist and best visualized. 

The first use case is "What is already defined?" and the second is "Who uses
a given Material?" and the third is "Who uses a given texture?"

http://www.rogerwickes.com/images/blender/Mat-Tex%20Outliner.jpg
presents a UI mockup of a new Outliner display mode, Shading, that lists
existing Materials and Textures. For each Material, it lists the active
Properties of the Material (in the Properties window, these are the panels).
If a property, like Diffuse Color, uses a Texture, it is also indicated indented.
Since many objects can share the same material, each object that uses that
material is also indicated. 
Selecting a Material will change any current Node editor window in Material node
mode to display the noodle for that Material. 
Selecting an Object will change any existing Properties window type set 
to Material context to show that active material/object.

The next outline section lists Textures. In this example there are three. The
first image texture is not used by anything, but has been loaded. 
The Cloudy texture is used by the MatGrass material, which in turn is in use
by the same two objects indicated above. It is also used to cloud a Lamp.
The third texture is a world texture.
Selecting a texture will change any current Node editor window in Texture node
mode to display the noodle for that Texture. 

A proposed desktop window layout (Screen) possibly called Shading is shown in
http://www.rogerwickes.com/images/blender/Mat-Tex%20Desktop.jpg but, I 
think it is remiss without an image browser and image editor window. 

Note that the node editor handles, through the Geometry node, how the texture is
mapped to the material through the Mapping node. 
so I think all the Map Input and Texture stack mixing modes can be accommodated.
The Map To (Color, Nor, etc) can be handled with the material noodle as well; this 
cloudy texture is mapped to the diffuse color for the MatGrass material. 
I could re-use this texture with another material, and map it to that material differently.
Inspecting this cloudy texture is as simple as changing node editor display modes.

Thus, I dont think we lose any existing functionality, and all pre-2.5 files could be 
converted to use this. The old map input and map to and stack go away. 

ps - do we need an object location Geometry selection to place decals?