Material Editor Improvements

[SolarPortal]

Hi Everyone,
Thought i would post a few images of an Rx8 that was used for testing and developing the material editor further(which is to be released in 0.5.4).
The car has many sub entities and materials, some that reference the same material. Many jobs required to be done .

• The material editor needed to only write the material once, instead of 4 or 5 times. [SOLVED]
  
• When you edit another sub entity material of the same name it would have overwrote the settings, now it sets all materials of the same name to the material settings used which means when saving the material, it writes the correct data out. [SOLVED]
  
• When the rx8 was brought back into the scene, the data needed to be returned, but kept setting back to the default settings which meant complicated materials couldnt be worked on. [SOLVED]

Some extra post processing was used to achieve the results.

[ant0N]

look how it's done guys from the S2 Engine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyzV2vg4UI4
PS. start looking from 08:25

[SolarPortal]

thanks Anton for the video link , we have already been discussing the idea of painting another texture on top to create a dirt map and is already on the feature requests list. We are just planning how to tackle it. Thanks for giving us your thoughts

[iamcheeseontoast]

I have indie licenced S2 engine and the mat editor etc is terrible. Been waiting around 4 or 5 months now for a new version. There was lots that wasnt user friendly or working right.

[ant0N]

[quote="iamcheeseontoast"]I have indie licenced S2 engine and the mat editor etc is terrible. Been waiting around 4 or 5 months now for a new version. There was lots that wasnt user friendly or working right. [/quote]
I do not ask you to do the same MatEditor, I want to be able to draw a texture on top of the other textures. How this is done in S2, only easier.

[iamcheeseontoast]

Like "Decals". Think this is already on request list m8..

[SolarPortal]

yes there is going to be a decal system which is a seperate mesh that deforms to its surroundings, this is useful for leaf patches or bullet holes. We will use the meshes for decals as using too many passes per material is not efficient. There will be a second texture map in which skyline would control to blend the dirt map on the material, this is done in the shader, to give the artist more control. e.g. paint dirt at the bottom of a building