[Bf-funboard] Sky Generator

[Chris Burt]

DetectiveThorn,

First of all let me be the first to ask when you're "coming back" to the 
Blender development process. I see you posting to the mailing lists and 
I have to say that I don't think I'm the only one that misses your help.

Secondly, this idea is wonderful and I think that JesterKing has already 
begun work with an SQL system that would work perfectly with it even 
_remotely_. This would mean that your library of materials could be 
accessible via a remote server, and you could actually save your 
information directly the net. (not to mention the possibilities of using 
Verse for data being access by multiple users on multiple clients) Since 
many web hosts do daily data backups, this could be the perfect way to 
store and retrieve frequently reused elements of blend files without 
working about backing them up to DVD. My mind is dizzy with ideas now 
and I hope you attend a Sunday meeting soon to bring some more of this 
into light. I'm already very excited just thinking about it.

I could go on and on with ideas about how great this would be, but I 
know nobody wants to read that ;) I hope to hear from you soon!

/Chris Burt/

Robert Wenzlaff wrote:
> On Sunday 07 November 2004 02:12, Mag. Karl Kühberger wrote:
> 
>>you won't believe it, but i just wanted to ask the same question!
>>a sky generator (as a texture type) would be very usefull
>>(there is a cloud texture type, but more often we need partly clouded
>>sky or the typical dark-clouded sky before a thunderstorm).
>>something like terragen would be fantastic, of course, but maybe
>>to complicated.
>>
>>other texture types i miss in blender are:
>>
>>- various bricks
>>- various stones
>>- various woods
>>- water (i.e. surface of the sea)
>>- various metalls
>>- various floors (i.e. asphalt, grass, soil, ...)
> 
> 
> Unless there is a need for data that is not available to the plug-in system, I 
> suggest that these be done as plug-ins (many probably are already available).
> 
> There is already work underway to make scripts and plugins automatically 
> appear as native functions of Blender, so you can organize the ones you use 
> the way you like.  This way Blender doesn't become a bloated 30MB download.
> 
> The feature along these lines that I would like to see is the Library features 
> work both ways.  Instead of just being able to append a material _from_ 
> another .blend, you should be able to specify a default Library that you can 
> save a feature of your current .blend _to_.    
> 
> ie; you're working on a file and hit the "perfect" gold.  You can push a copy 
> of this material into .blender/lib/material.blend (or whatever) and next time 
> you need gold,it will be there.  Now, you either have to remember what .blend 
> every material you ever created is in (all my .blends can no longer be backed 
> up to even a DVD w/o zipping...) or take a the time to update a library after 
> every .blend hoping you remember what all the names of every texture was.
> 
> Part of the library "push" should look for blender default names 
> (Material.001, etc) and prompt for real ones....  If a name is duplicated in 
> a lib, then a "replace, number (.001), cancel" dialog should appear.
> 
> The above would of course work for meshes, textures, and everything else 
> equally well.
> 
>