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Organizing Shader Mixer dials

meipemeipe Posts: 101
edited December 1969 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Hi there,

I'm not sure what strategy is best to organize the dials as they turn out in the Surface Editor, after building a Shader Mixer Shader. For what I understand, we can:
- group the dials under the same Path Brick on the 'Parameter Settings' panel in the Shader Mixer window;
- Hilight some importand dials setting them as 'Favorites', again under 'Parameter Settings'... a little heart will appear on the dial in the Surface Editor;
- Colour the dials, not in Shader Mixer. The mat must be applied on a object in the scene, dials coloured in Surface Editor, then the mat saved as a shader preset. If we want to edit the shader again in Shader Mixer, all informations about the colors will be lost... :(

Still, the result is messy...

Do anyone know some other tip we can use to bring some order in the dials? I noticed, when the mat is saved as a shader preset, the groups are sometimes moved around... argh.

The two things that are realy missing are:
- the possibility to order the dials in the groups;
- the possibility to order the groups.

Help would be apreciated, thanks! :)

Comments

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    meipe said:
    Hi there,

    I'm not sure what strategy is best to organize the dials as they turn out in the Surface Editor, after building a Shader Mixer Shader. For what I understand, we can:
    - group the dials under the same Path Brick on the 'Parameter Settings' panel in the Shader Mixer window;
    - Hilight some importand dials setting them as 'Favorites', again under 'Parameter Settings'... a little heart will appear on the dial in the Surface Editor;
    - Colour the dials, not in Shader Mixer. The mat must be applied on a object in the scene, dials coloured in Surface Editor, then the mat saved as a shader preset. If we want to edit the shader again in Shader Mixer, all informations about the colors will be lost... :(

    Still, the result is messy...

    Do anyone know some other tip we can use to bring some order in the dials? I noticed, when the mat is saved as a shader preset, the groups are sometimes moved around... argh.

    The two things that are realy missing are:
    - the possibility to order the dials in the groups;
    - the possibility to order the groups.

    Help would be apreciated, thanks! :)

    I think you left out only do certain connections/groupings during a waxing moon, when Saturn is in the fifth house...

    One other reason why SM is a royal pain.

    Other than lots of playing around and flipping back and forth, no, I haven't found any easier or better way.

  • meipemeipe Posts: 101
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:

    I think you left out only do certain connections/groupings during a waxing moon, when Saturn is in the fifth house...

    One other reason why SM is a royal pain.

    Other than lots of playing around and flipping back and forth, no, I haven't found any easier or better way.


    Saturn was probably in the 10th house when Shader Mixer 'Apply' button was created (disaster), so foolishly I tried to edit the .duf shader preset. In the last part of the file, under "studio_material_channels", are listed the channels, alias dials in the Surface Editor. Inside their group, we can copy and paste such channels in order to customize their order (trying not to mess the brackets logic). *BUT*:
    -if we open such shader in Shader Mixer, say adios to the hack;
    -if you re-save your shader, say adios to the hack. :(

  • meipemeipe Posts: 101
    edited December 1969

    ...another trick is to group the dials you want to see on the top of your shader to the root bricks.

  • meipemeipe Posts: 101
    edited December 1969

    So, on my shader, the first group to be ever loaded is 'Render Priority', the second is 'Following', third is 'Surface(xx), fourth is Displacement(xx). Parenting the dials to these (bricks?) give some control to what will be dispayed first. I'm running out of ideas now!

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited April 2015

    I don't have any more, either...all of those work to some degree, but even still it seems when editing SM wants to change things around, again and you'll need to reorganize.

    There doesn't seem to be a way to permanently 'freeze' them.

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,889
    edited December 1969

    Went through all of this myself with DS3, gave up bothering about it, now I rarely go into the surface tab when I'm working with the SM.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,950
    edited December 1969

    The current public beta, for DS 4.8, adds a User Parameter brick. You drag a connection from the top output to whatever you want as a user parameter and it adds a new control to the brick of the right type. Once you have a User Parameter brick only the controls you add to it will be shown, all other "loose ends" will be hidden. If you click on the hide/show widget to the right of the pane you can expand it to show a list of groups and properties, drag and drop to rearrange them (but I think they will always be alphabetical within their group). Right-click on the parameter, in the main list not the grouping section, to get at the change label command.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited April 2015

    Richard Haseltine said:
    The current public beta, for DS 4.8, adds a User Parameter brick. You drag a connection from the top output to whatever you want as a user parameter and it adds a new control to the brick of the right type. Once you have a User Parameter brick only the controls you add to it will be shown, all other "loose ends" will be hidden. If you click on the hide/show widget to the right of the pane you can expand it to show a list of groups and properties, drag and drop to rearrange them (but I think they will always be alphabetical within their group). Right-click on the parameter, in the main list not the grouping section, to get at the change label command.

    Which is one more reason I can't wait until 4.8 is out as a general release. That's a feature that probably should have been in SM from the start.

    I think it's numerical/alphabetical. At least, sometimes in the current version, I can get some items to 'behave' by prefixing the name with a number...like 001whatever, 002whatever...

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,950
    edited December 1969

    Yes, I meant alpha numeric rather than just alphabetic - sorry.

  • meipemeipe Posts: 101
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    The current public beta, for DS 4.8, adds a User Parameter brick. You drag a connection from the top output to whatever you want as a user parameter and it adds a new control to the brick of the right type. Once you have a User Parameter brick only the controls you add to it will be shown, all other "loose ends" will be hidden. If you click on the hide/show widget to the right of the pane you can expand it to show a list of groups and properties, drag and drop to rearrange them (but I think they will always be alphabetical within their group). Right-click on the parameter, in the main list not the grouping section, to get at the change label command.

    Sounds nice! :)

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,950
    edited December 1969

    Ah, there is a way to reorder the settings in the beta too - I'd missed it as I was working with too small a set. The right-click menu, along with the ability to change the label, has Move ... commands that will indeed move the setting up/down the list.

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