New material naming

[•Martin]

When creating a new material have default naming be the name in the library rather than "Material 1, Material 2, etc." 

[Tech]

Could you help me to understand what you mean by "have default naming be the name?" What should the name default to instead in your opinion?

[•Martin]

If you look at the image below, I just created a new project material by dragging "Brick 8" from the library onto the materials palette. As soon as I did that I would like the material name to automatically update to "Brick 8" rather than remain as "Material 6."

[Shibui Design]

+1 to this. Never understood why it behaves the way it does.

[allanjl]

Agree, having it carry the material name carry to the material palette would be very handy.

Edited July 18, 2019 by allanjl

[Hugo]

1+

[ZTEK]

+1

and...

I really would like to see that FZ maintains the size of Materials, generics or textured, and not apply the default size when you copy and paste to a New Project or from one project to an other or when you import through Add To Project, etc...

Thanks for listening!... and thank you ADS for this such great tool!

[Justin Montoya]

FormZ 6 and earlier did this...  It would always rename the  material from the name in the Material Library!

[FZnoob]

I have always wanted a 3D program that would be able to import the maps with the name I already assigned them in Photoshop.

This would be a real time saver when I have an object with multiple maps.

For example a carton with; DCD1234 Drill front, DCD1234 Drill back, DCD1234 Drill top, DCD1234 Drill bottom, DCD1234 Drill left side, DCD1234 Drill right side

Right now I tend to use copy and paste but having the maps come in already named would be terrific.

[Des]

Temporary workaround for that is to use your maps as billboards, the image names come in exactly in the materials palette..

Then delete the billboards and edit the imported materials to suit.

Des

[Justin Montoya]

FZnoob -

We have an awesome FormZ user, Chris Lund, who wrote a nifty script called MIMI (Multi Image Map Importer) that will import your selected image files and name the new materials after the File names!  Check it out - 

We could probably use an updated version that works better with Shaded and VRay, but this is still a huge help and Chris deserves some respect for giving us his time to create such a useful script.  Hopefully when V9 comes out, we can finally get an updated SDK that Chris and others can use to help bring these sort of add-ons to FormZ.

 

[¢hris £und]

Justin,

Thank you for the Props!  Though, truth be told, I mostly write things to make my life easier.  Beyond that, it is no skin off my back to give them away.

I fully intend to update MIMI as well as some of my other scripts (ones that haven't been supplanted by better options) when the SDK is available.  As I understand, will come with V9.  Though scripting may come later, not sure.  I put in for the Beta, so hopefully I will be able to get on this soon.  I do not use VRAY, so don't know what I can do to integrate it better there.  Once I get the base script running, I could ask for a temp license. ?  Capabilities will also depend on what the SDK offers.  I suspect and hope that it won't be less than the previous SDK. Should this be the case, exciting times to come.

Am no longer using fZ professionally, though I still use it for my personal projects and internal design projects for our manufacturing business.  I do more programming now than ever, so I am excited to add to fZ for the mere fun of it.  

If there are other ideas that I can add to MIMI or my other scripts or for that matter, new scripts should they be small/easy ones, I am open for.   Too, should an idea have value to me, I will attempt those as well.

 

Cheers!

¢£

[dpwr]

I love MIMI. I still use it, every week.

What does it say that it is worth the effort to launch FormZ 6.73 and import 20+ image maps vs. doing them individually in 8.6.5?

I import using MIMI, then draw a plane featuring each material, and save. Then I open that file in FormZ 8.6.5, and copy paste the planes into my project to access the many image maps.

In future versions of MIMI, I would love to be able to set material parameters once, and then import the maps I want those applied to. For instance, if I wanted all my maps to be constant reflection or a certain percentage of "simple transparency".

Thanks, Chris. Great to see you're still here.

Edited October 21, 2019 by dpwr

[¢hris £und]

dpwr,

Thanks!   Though, the script still works in 8.6... mostly.  Not sure if the hiccups are worth trudging through, or backing into 6.x is better.

Agreed, the plan is to select a "base" material.  then all the settings but the image map itself will be what the base is.  This way, you could set up multiple base materials, then pre sort all your image maps into folders that the base would apply to.  I could have the first image applied to the base as an option.

Also, to have it be recursively applied to a selected folder. This way it will walk through sub folders and sub folders etc... grabbing any valid image file.

Still waiting on the SDK though.  Hoping it will come in the next beta release.

 

Cheers!  ¢£

[FZnoob]

I had a few minutes to test this and it works. The only issue I am having is I can't see the map on the object until I render it. 

I tried using the "drag and drop"  as well as the "paintbucket" methods of applying the map to a surface while holding down the command key

See screenshot. Is there a workaround for this, or am I just doing something wrong?

 

[¢hris £und]

Change the Mapping from "Color Map" to something else, then back again.

As noted, it isn't 100%

 

¢£

[FZnoob]

Ok, Thanks for your answer and for the script itself.

[Justin Montoya]

On 11/1/2019 at 4:10 PM, Chris lund said:

Change the Mapping from "Color Map" to something else, then back again.

As noted, it isn't 100%

 

¢£

THIS.

A quick workaround for a material update bug.  Let's see if we can't get this one squashed in v9.  

[¢hris £und]

Will do what I can on my end.  Even if I have to perform that workaround in code.

 

Have you noticed this issue in other places than the MIMI Script?

 

¢£

Edited November 4, 2019 by Chris lund

[snow]

1 hour ago, Justin Montoya said:

THIS.

A quick workaround for a material update bug.  Let's see if we can't get this one squashed in v9.  

I experience this DAILY (without the MIMI script).  

[¢hris £und]

Might be able to create a little hack to help if the bug isn't fixed.

Something like run through the list of materials, if it is set to an  image map, do the work around, then move on.

¢£

Edited November 6, 2019 by Chris lund

[setz]

Hi Chris,

I have an idea for a plugin that I thought you may be able to create if you were interested, (the last time I did any coding myself was in Pascal back in 1984).  It would be a Quantize Tool.  Select an object, set a quantize increment in the options, fire the tool.  It would move each point in the object to a point in 3D space that was nearest to a location on the increment defined in the options.  I often get models and drafting docs from people who model without using snaps.  It's maddening to have things very slightly out of line and not square, it wreaks havoc when using the Reshape tool.  A quantize tool would either straighten things out or make them more obvious; by making them more visibly skewed.  While it would be very useful on facetted objects, I don't think the results would work on many smooth objects, but might in some cases.  Let me know what you think.  Cheers. (sorry to bomb in on this discussion but figured this was the best place to get your attention)

Edited November 14, 2019 by setz

[¢hris £und]

Setz,

I do intend on some other direct point manipulation tools.  This would be a good addition to them.

such as arranging in geometric shapes.  with different planes as options.  (topo selection level would be points.)   Circle, square...   Maybe have a second selection that the points could align too...

Shift to nearest neighbor or average (within a tolerance setting option)  option to Join/Stitch when possible.

Now Quantize,  I can definitely see a tool like this making wrong choices, but as you said, maybe make them more obvious.   It may be possible to leave some kind of marker behind where the points that were shifted so you can go back and verify correct placements.      thinking: creating a new layer and adding circles or spheres where the points go moved to, or from.   both?

Any way, yea, consider it considered.

 

cheers!

 

¢£

[setz]

Wow, that would be a supercool, supertool plug-in.  Cheers!  👏

[setz]

One suggestion re adding circles to identify moved points, perhaps just a segment between the two point's locations who's direction points from the location of the old point to the new point, these segments could all be joined into one object making it easier to delete from the objects list later and preventing some ungodly number of single segment objects from being created.

Could be created on a new layer as well.

And the old object could also be retained as in: Keep, Ghost, Delete.

Also also, points could be identified when their adjoining segments don't comprise of a defined angle increment, say 30% is selected, all points whose adjacent segment's angles don't measure 30,60,90,120,150,180,210,240,270,300,330 would be identified, or if 90% is selected, all points whose adjacent segment's angles don't measure 90,180,270 would be identified.  And segments with angles of 0 would be identified as well.

Just musing...Cheers!