Geenz Spad was at the Content and Mesh meeting today. We got a bit more information on the Materials System that is rolling out.

Materials Example – Geenz Spad Image

We’ve had one update to the the Materials Project Viewer and Geenz is expecting to get another out this week. Some say the viewer is stable and they are using it for their main viewer. We’ve been warned that may not be a good idea. That is because of how the viewer handles, or doesn’t, the textures on existing objects and it may not be consistent, meaning the viewer could mess up existing items.

The project viewers do not get good release notes. So, it is hard to know what has changed or been added. However, the code repository is here: Viewer-Materials. You can read the commits to get an idea of what is changing.

Geens says, “[I] actually just got normal maps working on alpha blended objects, and [I’m] trying to get everything else working on them as well.”

If you are looking for documentation, there isn’t much. But Geenz has started a docs page: Content Creator’s Guide. This is just a beginning. But, it is something. I will say that so far, this seems to be pretty much an industry standard implementation of the features. So, any tutorial on the net should help you understand how to use normal and specular maps.

He is working on the alpha blending to get normal and specular maps working with it. So, we’ll see more of that aspect of materials starting to work with each viewer release.

Also, if you listened to Metareality and are wondering about how long the project took… or is taking, look in Geenz’s blog here: SL Materials – History.