Blender has Normal Mapping. Why not have Parallax or even Parallax Occlusion Mapping? With shadows and some AO. If you look at a Bump texture only lit by the AO you don´t see any roughness. This is only visible with specularity or directional light. So AO for Bump maps would help.
Also Shadow would be visible.

Like this:
http://www.crysis-online.com/images/news/CryEngine2/crytek_parallax_occlusion_m apping_enhanced.jpg
http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/compare.jpg

I don´t think i have to explain why Parallax Mapping would look better.

Do you know this? You have an object and e.g. "MA: metal" assigned to it. You have a few polygons that should have the eg. "MA: mirror" material assigned, which you already created. Now you add another material, "MA: metal.001" is created automatically.

Why not only leaving it empty, for the user to asign a material, like when you delete a material with "delete link to this datablock". There is still an unassigned material in the editing buttons (F9) "Link and Materials".

i use a plane to be reflected by a car, why should that plane be visible for the camera?

or if you have a dark background only, but want the object to reflect something like a bright plane, which should not be visible.

Can I move an idea to another category? There have been new categories implemented now.

For example:

X-Y-View: You select a vertex and move it (along x-y) close to another vertex that might propably have a different z-position. If you get close, your selected vertex snaps to the vertex beneathe (copies the x-y-coordinates, but ignores the z-position).

and so on.

Check this out:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=nGH1SnN0ri4&feature=related

When Blender finally gets its true volumetrics it might be possible to use it for such a tool, like the Blender Fluid simulation, for fire.

Reflections should be dependent to the translucency. If there is something very bright behind the object (e.g. a glowing display behind a window) it should be visible through the window - rather than something dark.

The reflection should be more visible the darker the background and the brighter the reflection.

The opacity should decrease the brighter the background.


Maybe an Alphachannel-system would do the trick without having to use some physical rendering.

Blenders Halo System for Flares is bad.

I want to create car lights. But the halo-flares are 3dimensionally located. They penetrate faces instead of being rendered in front of everything unless their center is covered.

The visibility should decrease:
- the further the camera gets aside the flare-"cone" - which should be defined by local restraints (like with bones).
- the closer another mesh in front of the flare-creating-object is to the center of it.
- the more opaque a translucent material in front is.

You should be able to control whether and how a flare keeps its size on the screen. For instance if it gets smaller at all while moving away.

You should be able to use custom images for the halo, maybe even several.

The shadows could be blurred, controlled per value, which uses the Z-buffer from the lamps "view". The further the casting from the receiving object the softer.

This uses only ONE single sample instead of up to twenty to get good realistic results. Also it would be more flexible.

Blurred reflections look very grainy if you don´t have many samples. There could be away to get this better - faster.

Either if you are able to blur the grainy reflection, according to its Z, so that only the meant-to-be-blurred-part will be blurred,

or:
The material reflects parts, maybe picking the bright parts rather than dark parts, and interpolates in between. Less parts the further the reflected part from the surface.

There should be a tool for chains etc. where you can choose points, that are connected to "object" and have physical properties like usual softbodies.
A softbody unfortunatly causes the chain to become very flat if it lies on the ground for example.

You should be able to let it keep the volume or to define, that ring shall keep its shape(the edges relative to each other).
You should be able to kind of define the Segments. And every segment has some collision if you want it to. Different styles of collisions from approximate to accurate or something.

To add wires yet is VERY complicated.
And it slows down the computer more than it is necessary.

IK chains tend to bend in one direction only...or am I wrong?
Why must we use them at all? There should be a way to restrain every bone. For every motion. Not only rotating, not only moving, but for everything.

You should be able to grab a chain in the middle. It should behave in the only logical way, it should bend and the ends should be pulled, as far as you defined (e.g. 6 connected segments).

A Blur node for materials would be nice for fake blur-transparency and reflecions, as well as a Z-Node for reflections.

Ambient Occlusion yet is very noisy. You almost can´t get it "clean". Also it doesn´t get really dark sometimes...?

Why the heck does Blender STILL not work with my Ati HD 3870?!
Do I have to wait until they support OpenGL again? Or do I honestly have to buy a new nVidia card?! My Computer is totally new and I can´t use it -.-
At least with Blender, which is VERY UNPLEASANT since i bought it after my old PC stopped working with Blender, with the same Problems by the way...

So PLEASE, is there any way to make this work again??

http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm self explaining i think. :)

Select-Link in Steps. like:

selected Vertex -->(1) linked Vertex -->(2) linked to linked Vertex -->(3) linked to linked to linked Vertex

would be "Select linked --> lvl: 3"

If you look at glass for example you might notice the dependence on how bright the reflected objects actually are. Imagine a room. if it is dark inside and bright outside you wont see much of any reflection in the window, but if it is the other way round, like at night when you have a light turned on, you will see all the reflections, rather than being able to look outside the window.

"the brighter the more visible" as a factor to set (from 0 to 1 = fully depending on light).