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idea #370: material editor



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Written by Prodeous the 12 Nov 08 at 02:28. Category: Material System. Status: New
Description
Current implementation shows only the material that is applied to object that I have selected.

However when I want to create a file that contains only materials, I have to create object to assign them to so that Blender will save them.

And there is no one view that will show me all the materials in the scene. Most applications have the ability to create and view all materials without even applying them to objects.

Having a window view that would show all materials using thumbnails would help.

Additionally the ability to see which object is assigned to given material. Currently this is complicated if not borderline impossible. Sometimes during creation of meshes, i create a few materials.001 and i don't recollect which object has that material. So i have to go through a bunch of objects (and also look through objects that have various materials assigned) to identify where it is to correct the assignment.


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Comments
Handoko wrote on the 9 May 08 at 12:46
Nice!

It should be easy to manage. I mean support drag n drop, copy/paste, can use arrow key to select item (you know sometimes using key up/down to select and check item one by one is easier then use mouse click).

It should be informative, like telling us how many object/polygon using the material.

musk wrote on the 9 May 08 at 13:34
Not really a comment against this idea cause I think it would be cool to select materials that are not associated with an object from somewhere. But you can make materials sticky by using the f option. Select the material and press F this will keep the materialdata even when there is no object linking to it.

My suggestion would be to use either the outliner to select the material and then edit it in the standard way.
I think the OOS view of the outliner is allready capable of showing all materials so making that one fully editable and selectable could be the way to go. (there is an idea floaing around about that but I can't seem to find it at the moment)

emu wrote on the 20 May 08 at 23:00
When there are 60+ materials in the scene, there comes a material selector window (with Ctrl it opens even in a Image Browser). I think that's what you want. So the only missing thing is to enable it also for scenes with only one material, possibly when you click the selector button with Ctrl.

The function to select all object the material is assigned to sounds pretty useful. Also it would be great to add a way of setting a material to more objects at a time (at least accesible through Ctrl+C menu)

motionblur wrote on the 5 Jun 08 at 11:22
I don't know if this is related to a material editor per se but I'd also like to add that maybe a somehow more visual aproach to the specular of a material could be useful.

I'm thinking of the likes of Cinema4D or 3DS Max where you can see the graph according to the specular. I always found the slides of the Blender interface to be very cryptic.
Yes - I know if you get used to it surely isn't as cryptic any more but still ...

Somehow I also never understood why everything in Blender is really well managed yet the render and material settings seem to me somehow cluttered.

Eclectiel wrote on the 4 Jul 08 at 12:37
I like this idea. If anyone interested, here is a video proposal including a material editor for Blender:

Streaming video version at Vimeo:
http://www.vimeo.com/1258177


.Blend version (bigger and smoother, and with a PNG explaining the different areas of that window):
http://www.driveway.com/o6m2b7q0l2
(needs Blender 2.46)


It is Blenderstorm Idea #532


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