MaCrea - Material Creation Tool for Sculptris

[jimb]

Thanks, but...uhm...I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean they can be so large that they creep into their labels? If so, that's just something I conveniently ignored, as I didn't see any reason to prohibit it for cosmetic reasons.

Yes that was it, just me being picky. ;D

[taron]

Ah, excellent, then I might continue to conveniently ignore this "issue" at this time and see that I move on to implementing even more risky features!
...oh, if everything goes well, you will get some wild stuff to be picky about! ;D

THANKS, again!

[pxl666]

alternative way - blender related bensimonds.com/2010/07/30/matcap-generator/

[taron]

That's ok, pxl666, I'm still having fun with mine.

I've just added fresnel, spherical reflection image support and recalculating the diffuse lighting based on a reflection image. It's nothing compared to using any 3d software, except that it's realtime, easy to use (still) and accidentally unique as I make this nonsense up for the most part. Thank god I'm making it for fun and the exercise.

Thanks for the information, pxl666.
...odd, I somehow feel like moving on to something else now. Kinda sad how ridiculously oversensitive I can be at times. Ah well, I'm sure one or two of you secretly are having some fun with my gimmik here.

[aueoaueoa]

I'm one of those secretly having fun with it. I like it more than the .blend since this is realtime and easier to experiment with. I would say: keep up the good work (if you want to).

[jimb]

I'm another thats having fun besides what would I beta test without it,looking forward to more.
Thanks

[h2o]

1 or 2... pfft, more than that, I think it's an excellent side by side. Next increment? "fresnel, spherical reflection image support and recalculating the diffuse lighting based on a reflection image" - Hit it off, Taron, ...

[taron]

Ah, thanks h2o, jimb and aueoaueoa (ouch?) ...I really, appreciate it a lot! I'm currently working on a better solution for my relighting concept based on reflection images. Once I have it I will release a new version and you've given me great pleasure to do so! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

[qwerty]

Cool Little application you have here Taron. Have you thought about importing meshes for your app? Basically it would be like real time material creation on you model. Would be probably harder to code but more fun.

[3dioot]

This is awesome! I dont know why i waited so long before trying it.

Its great to create materials in realtime. It took me a little while to figure out how dragging on the numbers worked (blame lack of sleep) but now that ive figured it out its very sweet indeed.

Ive been thinking of creating a painting primer for sculptris (long overdue some may say) and it would be great to include your "little" app in it!

Show users how to create their own materials and show them how to create sets so they can paint, for example, with varying sets of specularity while the lighting stays consistent.

Since it seems you like feedback (and a challenge) brace yourself.

I (personally, as in really my own humble opinion) really dislike this colorpicker. The way hue, saturation and lightness are all tossed together makes me cringe. Sorry, cant help it. Always feel like its too "sensitive" and the color i want is always a pixel next to where i click. The bar at the bottom only deals with saturation. Id love to have a separate lightness bar and have the color wheel "reduced" in complexity by only dealing with hue and lightness (or even just hue). (or in reverse, have a hue ring with a square inside which shows lightness and saturation; i love that setup also)

Im also a little confused on how specularity works. The second half is that a multiplier of some sort? Perhaps this is my lack of shading knowledge coming through but is that roughly comparable to say the roughness value of an oren nayar's shader or something?

Id love to see some different light types. Like direct lights? Or perhaps (gasp; dont kill me) area lights? Area lights would be a great addition. Right now im having some "trouble" reducing the visible borders of lights (where the light terminates on the surface). With area lights it would be easier to create a more "blended" light environment where it doesnt feel like three spots pointed at a sphere. (plus the specs would be nicer)

Well i think thats more then enough comments for you!

Would you be ok with me including this tool in a vid on painting in sculptris or would you rather keep it out of the light and into the semidark where you can keep playing with it without everybody but a select few watching on your fingers?

Let me know. ;D

3dioot

[h2o]

3dioot, lol. easy there, champ, lol.

a Big +1 for a Paint Primer! I literally just did some paint testing in Sculptris about 5 mins ago, and it would be nice to have someone (with a voice, lol) do a run through. Not that I can't paint, I know what the tools do to some extent (and I've watched Taron's vid), I just feel a little lost in terms of the process (as well some of the resolution issues).

PS - MaCrea is to me an extension of Sculptris and it's really easy, imo. No beefs there, but I', looking forward to the aforementioned update

[taron]

(almost forgot to mention:) THE BAR BENEATH THE COLOR PALLET:
- it's NOT a desaturation band, but a color->50%gray band. The reason is Sculptris' paint use of materials. 50%gray is the neutral color for a material, basically acting like a white canvas. Everything above gets a different blending to suggest highlights. Everything below shades down the color.
In the beginning I wanted to keep it extra simple by making the sphere white and control the light strength through its color. It's still a very useful tool to adjust how far your chosen color deviates away from the "paint white" so to say. I'm thinking about building in a function to "post process" the final lighting for a differenciation between reflections and diffuse shading as it will be used within Sculptris. Tricky thing as it might look a little strange, but it could end up being fantastically helpful.

Ahahaha, AAAHHHHH....3dioot, that's beautifully passionate. I love the pallet, while it's only a portion of my first implementation in a little 2d animation tool I wrote a while ago. There you had saturation and tinting sliders around it, which made it highly intuitive and quite unique. I'm personally not as gifted as you are when it comes to percise determination of my desired color. I just pick a direction and go from there. But I might eventually offer some alternatives, why not.

Light types are part of the plan, while I was planning to go far further than just that. Currently, by the way, you can successfully simulate area lights by making use of the subsurface extension of the lighting. You can finetune the color (*or roughly pick on in the neighborhood of what you could imagine to work <lol>), by selecting subsurface above the color picker. If you choose white or neutral, it will look like an extension or rather enlargement of your lightsource.

Oh, the new version has a fresnel for the lights build in so far, which can help to create really wild effects, actually. I'm afraid for THAT I'll have to make a little primer myself, hahahaha, but it's great fun.
Once I'm through with my relighting solution it'll be 10x the fun. However, I currently have a version that allows you to use a reflection image (preferably a sphere right now), adjust its gain, bias and strength (reflection) and gives you a separate blur option, which will create a copy of the reflection image, which you then can fade in by itself. I'll hook fresnel to that as well.

It's tricky, because the more functions sneak into the mix, the harder it gets to keep it simple and elegant. A challenge Tomas (DrPetter) mastered quite beautifully, but I'm still a bit scared there.

If you like, I could prepare a little inbetween release, because I just know it'll take a bit more time for the hardcore relighting fun. I will have a hidden feature in there, that does my first experiment, which works amazingly well, but is just a bit too slow for my taste.

h2o, you make me happy!

[taron]

MaCrea Version 0.07

It's just an inbetween release, but it should already be some fun to play with. See the first post in this thread for some more details. I'm a little tired right now, but should continue later today.
Some of your old materials may look a bit different. Hold down "A" and adjust the brightness with the right mouse button. This should get you closer to how it used to look.

Little tip for your exploration: Use fresnel and its gain to create NPR comic shading outlines and Lightsource "^" (bias) to adjust the falloff of the light.

I havn't tested it for ATI and don't know, if I messed anything up again, but please let me know, if it won't run on your ATI!!! :-\

[fixor]

Hi Taron! Thanks for sharing your app ! Is it supposed to be a grey background when i launch it? I got an ATI card btw.

Long live to Sculptris (and the forum)!

[taron]

nope, it ain't...
Try downloading the previous version and see if it works ( Version 0.06b )
...I'll see, if I can figure out what's the issue now. Oh, how I loath ATi.

...oh, I just also updated 0.07 again. I think I might have found an issue. Try it again, too, please!