CompuServe Thread

The following list was compiled during the writing and development of "Inside Studio" by its authors Steven Elliott & Phillip Miller. 3DS4 Wish List III: SURFACES, MATERIALS, MAPPING, & INDIVIDUAL COMMANDS Materials Include SOME ability SOME WHERE that allows a mesh/material to have a "hairy/fuzzy/grassy/bumpy" profile. The one aspect that currently signals `PC-Computer Animation' are flat edged materials that should have a profile texture (grass, hair, fuzz, bumps, bricks, etc.). Including such an ability would go a LONG way in competing with the SGI boys. Perhaps the above wish is a "Dent Map" that would allow the distortion of a mesh's profile (perhaps this is an IPAS-only ability?). Include REFRACTION capabilities for transparent materials – could be a strength slider or even a new "Refraction Map" within the material definition. Include an "ON-EDGE Illumination" ability for transparent meshes – thus allowing meshes (such as light beams and tubular plastic) to be illuminated from a light positioned at their edge (a very possible ability in the real world). This would also allow projector lights to cast color streaks of their image down the length of light beams/cones. Include a "Solid Materials" option – the ability for a material to cast itself through the enclosed boundry of a mesh. This would be ideal for situations when the camera moves through smoke, light beams, water, etc.(perhaps an IPAS-only ability?). Include an "Additive" option for masks which would ADD rather than subtract their effect to the parent map. Provide a strength slider for the effect of Additive Transparency. Include the "New Subtractive Transparency" as a parameter OPTION within the material definition. Provide the ability to anti-alias bump maps in SOME manner (at least allow summed-area filtering) – increasing blur is a poor fix and just doesn't cut it. Include a BUMP2 Map (similar to Texture 1&2) to allow a random bump map to have an additional, interjected bump. Typical examples include a basketball (for the dot-bumps and then the grooves) and ceiling tile (for the fissure texture and then the grid lines). Allow reflection masks to use SXP's. 3DE Mapping Allow mapping to be acquired from the face (or AT LEAST the element) level. The current inability to do this is extremely frustrating and curtails the usefulness of lofted mapping coordinates and combining objects. If this is TOO mush of an overhead, then PLEASE allow detached elements to have their mapping coordinates retrievable. Allow bump maps to respect face normals, thus always facing their effect "out" rather than from the mapping projection. Filter the Material/Show material list to show only what is assigned to unhidden objects (as Smoothing/Show does so well) – perhaps this is an option button/parameter. Allow the current mapping icon to be displayed once leaving the Mapping branch (this would be especially useful for Modify command adjustments & alignments). The Bitmap Fit ability is also needed for accurate cylindrical mapping. Include a "Bitmap Fit/Acquire" option which would display the face's material, that material's bitmaps, and then allow selecting of one of them for the Bitmap Fit. Smoothing Include the ability to adjust the "strength" of the smoothing effect on a mesh by mesh basis. The idea is that a spherical representation is not always appropriate. The often needed, slightly rounded, "eased- edge" on right angled objects is a classic case where a low-strength smoothing effect would be ideal. Perhaps this could be a slider with 100 being spherical (default). Create a smoothing strength slider that could be applied to selected faces. A setting of 100 is full smoothing as we have now, down to 0 which represents no smoothing. This allows the creation of eased edges without modeling intermediate faces. Allow R3's current assigning of smoothing groups to every coplanar face (regardless of smoothing angle) to be an OPTIONAL PERAMETER in the 3DS.SET file. This constant assignment of smoothing groups is NOT always desired (especially in rectilinear/architectural modeling) and its inclusion has reduced the usefulness of selecting via smoothing groups dramatically. Reflections The algorithm used to calculate Flat Mirror reflection colors NEEDS to be adjusted to allow for ACCURATE color reflections within reflective materials that are other than black. Currently, non-black materials with automatic reflections will always ADD their color to the reflection in a very odd, unrealistic manner (reflected geometry is always lighter than it is). For example: a reflective grey surface will reflect a red object as pink and a black object as grey, while a reflective green surface would reflect the red as orange and the black as dark green – both are additive and both are very wrong when compared to the world around us. Perhaps this could be adjusted with a slider/value in the Reflection Map slot. Backgrounds Restructure the memory usage so Background Bitmaps come from the same "pool" as the material bitmaps (so one pays in memory only once if the background image is used as say a reflection map). Provide the same manipulation parameters for Background Bitmaps as for texture maps (especially useful would be scale, rotate and offset) Allow Background Bitmaps & Colors to be reflected in all automatic mirror materials (possibly as an optional parameter/option if there is a significant performance hit). Allow gradient color swatches to be dragged and dropped between the three. See Background Allocate a separate memory buffer for stored/rescaled See-Background images to aid in speed and memory consumption. Allow at least 8-bit color viewing capability. Additional Command/Section Specific Issues: Video POST Provide a transparency slider option for bitmap entries (the equivalent of using a a traditional theater "skim"). Allow the tiling of bitmap entries. Provide the same manipulation parameters for bitmap entries as for texture maps. IPAS Programming Allow the ability to use stand-in objects to represent fractally- generated meshes at render time. This would go a LONG way in making manageable mesh sizes for organic models. Include the ability to generate fractal/animated backgrounds (great for perspectively correct skies and clouds). Array Command(s) Provide array abilities in the Shaper (for polygons) and in the Keyframer (for instances). 3DE & Shaper Boolean Operations Allow Boolean operations on SELECTION SETS of objects/polygons. Allow Shift/Clone of Boolean operations for new objects/polygons. Shaper Outline Allow Shift/Clone of the resulting polygons, maintaining the original polygon. Shaper & 3DE Mirror Command Provide a Two-Point pick option, thus allowing angled and more- accurate mirrors. 3DE Align Command Provide a "Face to Face" alignment option. 3DE Taper and Skew Include 3D Dimensional versions of these commands that act upon the bounding volume, not just the bounding box. 3DE Tessellate Provide the Edge option at the face and element level. 3DE Explode Eliminate the current possibility of creating duplicate named objects after an explode. 3DE Create/Spheres Include the ability to create odd-sized LSpheres. Include the ability to create true geodesic dome GSpheres (an IPAS routine similar to GRID?). 3DE User View When using User View/Show make the display automatic if only one User View is active, bypassing the Choose step.