You may have noticed the RC channel Blue Steel is running the server side of the Materials System update. While there is no Project Viewer available yet, this suggests that it is getting close. What more confidently suggests the nearing release are these screen shots of Materials in use.
Materials System in Action – Normal & Specular – Enlarge
The above image shows an interesting surface. I think that is a simple cube with a normal map. Continue reading
Maestro says server side support for Materials is very close to going to RC status. It might make it into an RC channel next week. But, don’t get too excited. The viewer side has to complete and make it through QA before we can test it.
The server side is already running in ADITI for testing.
An Early Look at Materials
As there is no public version of the Materials Project Viewer, there is currently no way to test the new feature. Geenz Spad the primary programmer for the update said at Wednesday’s Open Source meeting, “I don’t have any particularly specific updates outside of we’re inching closer to something people can use. To be perfectly honest, I’ve largely been focusing my efforts on the rendering side of things and a few Mac related odds and ends.”
There isn’t any new information, so I won’t call this an update. But, there is probably some information you have not seen.
Geenz Spad, a developer of the Materials System, has a web site with information about the Materials System. See: Geenzo.com. The article outlines the process that started in February 2012 and went public about July or August 2012. It is worth reading if you have something you wanted added to the viewer or Second Life™ or have any other proposal for Linden Lab to consider.
In the article the features environment intensity and specular exponent are mentioned. We hear little about these in most discussions. Without the features in the viewer to demonstrate them it is harder to explain them. I’ve linked to a couple of page I hope will help.
I’ve mentioned that Maestro Linden spoke of the server side of the project being in testing on ADITI. There once was a code repository where people could pull and compile a viewer with the latest viewer side version of the project. That seems to have disappeared from public view.
We have no ETA on when the project will go into open Beta, meaning when we get a project viewer.
This Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group is not completely dead… they are having meetings. Still Tuesdays at 3 PM in Hippotropolis.
The subject of glass materials with refractive properties came up. It is confirmed that there will NOT be any glass or refraction in the first release of a Materials System and likely not until the third stage of the Materials System. One has to wonder how long that will take.
Normal Map
I had forgotten that currently normal maps are used with water surfaces. In the Environment Settings you can add a normal map for the water surface.
It seems there are two flavors of normal maps; OpenGL and DirectX, which I didn’t know. There is more than two ways to do ‘bump’ on surfaces but, we will only get the tangent space normal maps style in the SL Materials System. The difference is in how the maps are created and used.
OpenGL uses -Z and DirectX uses +Z… or visa-versa… doesn’t really matter. By ‘-Z’ I mean the values are taken as a negative direction. That means dark is either up or down. The different types just reverse the way color values are used… sort of like a negative image that was common with old film cameras. In Photoshop press Ctrl-Shift-I to invert an image’s colors and get the negative or inverted colors.
These meetings are getting smaller. There were about 8 to 10 people and this one had 2 griefer idiots at this one. Blocking took care of clowns that eventually wondered off. I’m pretty sure User Interface design is not a popular subject in SL.
Blender 2.63 Normal Map Controls
Oz Linden was at the meeting asking about control layouts for the Materials System. The problem is how to handle those controls. Oz explained and asked:
For the Normal and Specular maps, our goal has been to allow the texture and each of the two maps to have their own set of positioning controls; offset, rotation, repeat, mapping mode… if you want to line them up, you can, if you don’t, you don’t have to.
Suppose that those controls were tabbed such that you could look at one of the three images with its controls, then flip tabs to see the next one, etc…
The alternative may be to make a huge build floater, but for smaller screens that can get bad fast.
Inara Pey asked, You’re talking sub-tabs within the texture tab, Oz?
Oz answered, something like that, Inara, or possibly a separate floater that has its own tabs… not sure. The essential question is whether or not those parameters need to be seen together, I think.
[…] I’m trying to get a sense of what the relationships are between the controls needed for Materials right now.
Not much new news so far this week. We did learn a bit more about how the Materials System may be implemented.
Content & Mesh Meeting Aug 2012
Q: Will there be any veiwer settings requirements to see materials? such as lighting and shadows on. ac14 Hutson
A: I suppose Hutsom is asking will there be any visual settings dependencies. For instance having to have Lighting & Shadows on before you can turn on Sun/Moon shadows is a dependency.
A: Geenz Spad: Lighting & Shadows will be required, *however* you can disable the shadows part by setting that setting to “None”.
Nyx Linden considers the new Materials System a topic for discussion in this user group. Geenz Spad was there so we had someone to answer Materials System questions.
Content & Mesh UG
Check the thread: Normal & Specular Maps. A good question came up. How will Full Bright affect the Specular Map light effect?
We got a bit more information on the Materials system this morning in the Open Source meeting.
Oz Linden created a JIRA for the development process and bug reporting. See: STORM-1905 – Add support for Normal & Specular Maps.
The STORM Project is closed to creation of new items except by Lindens. Residents can add to existing items. If you are wanting to create a new item, like a feature request, create it in the VWR or VIEWER project.
Oz says feature requests will probably do better in the Building & Texturing section of the Creation section of the forum. It is unlikely that any features will be considered for Phase I or the first pass at the Materials System. The Third Party Developers (TPD) and Lab have their hands full getting Materials implemented and working out coordination between TPD’s and the Lab.