Material editor ineffective?

Share your materials, models, and resources for Twilight
sauronblue
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:11 pm
OS: Win7
SketchUp: 2013

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by sauronblue » Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:47 pm

Chris wrote:Do you mean you expect the color of the material in the SU view to change? It does not. Twilight Render does not make assumptions like that. You can explicitly change the color from the TW Material Editor, but changing the template will not change the SU material automatically. This is intentional.



Correct, I'm looking for the color of the material to update in SU. If that's not the case, then how do you know what you're working with before you start rendering? You could think you've got all your materials right, but because there's not an accurate representation in the SU view, you could miss some surfaces and not notice until after wasting hours rendering a scene that has errors due to not realizing some materials have not changed. This seems like a very confusing action to be intentional. Can you please explain what the benefit of the materials not visually updating can have? Also, why have I seen some materials change in SU, while others do not? If this is global behavior, shouldn't it act the same all the times? Even though I got an error message, the preview still updated, so if you're saying this is exactly what I should see, then that means there is no problem, and no reason to disable or install anything. I was able to do a quick test on a different model than the one I'm working to fix, but it did act as you say, where there was only a change in the preview, but it did render correctly. More when I get home...

Fletch
Posts: 12897
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:41 pm
OS: PC 64bit
SketchUp: 2016-2023
Contact:

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by Fletch » Fri Jan 17, 2014 9:07 pm

sauronblue wrote:If I change aluminum to copper, I expect the representation of that to change on the SU model from silver to gold color, but there is no change made when using TL at times.

The difference between the Template>Metal>Silver and Template>Metal>Copper
is the reflection color changes. It doesn't automatically change the diffuse color, because Twilight Presumes you have painted it a color inside of the SketchUp view and prefer to keep it that way.

If you want it now to be copper colored instead of silver, changing the DIFFUSE color in the Twilight Material Editor dialog Diffuse channel, it WILL UPDATE THE COLOR in the SketchUP dialog.
You can test this by typing any name for a color in the DIFFUSE CHANNEL of the Twilight Render dialog after you have applied Template>Metal>Silver or some other template.
Type the name "Red" replacing the RGB color you should see listed there, and the metal will now be using the Silver template, but will turn red, also the SU view will update to show the face as RED. Same for Gray, Black, White, etc.

The same for textures, if I load a texture file now into the DIFFUSE channel, then that texture will also load into the SU view.

This feature is controlled with the little 3 chain link icon next to the Diffuse Channel in the Twilight Material Editor Dialog.
If you click it, it will break the link, now if you make a change in the Diffuse color or texture, you will NOT see it update in the SU view.
Now, if you click this icon next to the Reflection or Bump channel, it is linking the SketchUp color/texture to the input of that channel. So if you want the Reflection Color to change inside the SU view, first you must LINK it to that channel with the icon. Then if you change it after that, it will change in the SU view.

This is explained clearly in this video tutorial:
Intermediate Materials Tutorial

sauronblue
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:11 pm
OS: Win7
SketchUp: 2013

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by sauronblue » Tue Jan 21, 2014 7:55 pm

Fletch wrote:It doesn't automatically change the diffuse color, because Twilight Presumes you have painted it a color inside of the SketchUp view and prefer to keep it that way.

If you want it now to be copper colored instead of silver, changing the DIFFUSE color in the Twilight Material Editor dialog Diffuse channel, it WILL UPDATE THE COLOR in the SketchUP dialog.
You can test this by typing any name for a color in the DIFFUSE CHANNEL of the Twilight Render dialog after you have applied Template>Metal>Silver or some other template.
Type the name "Red" replacing the RGB color you should see listed there, and the metal will now be using the Silver template, but will turn red, also the SU view will update to show the face as RED. Same for Gray, Black, White, etc.

The same for textures, if I load a texture file now into the DIFFUSE channel, then that texture will also load into the SU view.

This feature is controlled with the little 3 chain link icon next to the Diffuse Channel in the Twilight Material Editor Dialog.
If you click it, it will break the link, now if you make a change in the Diffuse color or texture, you will NOT see it update in the SU view.
Now, if you click this icon next to the Reflection or Bump channel, it is linking the SketchUp color/texture to the input of that channel. So if you want the Reflection Color to change inside the SU view, first you must LINK it to that channel with the icon. Then if you change it after that, it will change in the SU view.

This is explained clearly in this video tutorial:
Intermediate Materials Tutorial


Sorry to take so long getting back, but I've got quite a bit going on personally right now.

I appreciate your help, but I still don't get it.
1) Why does twilight assume I want to keep a color in my scene that will not be there upon rendering? You still haven't said what, if any, benefit this will have to offset the possible confusion it would cause. Why would anyone want their surface to show up green, then render as red?
2) I'm guessing the DIFFUSE color is the first one? You say it is all clearly explained, but I watched all 4 of those "videos" before, and even after watching this training again, I still can't figure out what you're talking about. Sometimes explanations seem clear to ppl that already know, but confusing to the uninitiated. I do see that if I change the color to the right of the "color" box, that it does make a change to the SU display, but using a template still has no effect what so ever. In your video tutorial example, they make a note of how changing the glass ball's material with the template changed that object in the SU display. This seems to contradict what you're telling me, that I should expect no change.
As you can see in the pic, I have the top lock activated, but changing things with templates means that I have to render the image every time I want to check if I have all my materials correct. How can this possibly be right? I have a display to show me what I'm working on, but I gotta stop and wait 20 min to render the scene to be sure my materials are all painted on the right places, then repeat from every possible angle? Can someone please tell me what part of that process is helpful or user-friendly?

Is there no way to see a change in my SU display by altering a material with a template? Even if (for example) copper is represented as brown, and not a metallic, reflective surface, why would I want the copper surface to show up as anything other than the closest (simple) representation of that material?

EDIT: When I mentioned that I changed the color next to the "color" box, well, I didn't take note of what color it was before, now it keeps that color as a base under the metal, ruining the result in render. I've tried un-linking the "lock" with the color, re-doing the template operation (which re-locks the lock every time), changing the color to white; no matter what, it seems that now I have to choose the exact hue of my copper, rather than having the template select the right option. I feel that I'm going backwards quickly here, and seeing no solutions in sight
Attachments
material editor
material editor
mated.jpg (52.99 KiB) Viewed 14005 times
Last edited by sauronblue on Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

sauronblue
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:11 pm
OS: Win7
SketchUp: 2013

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by sauronblue » Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:35 pm

This is my scene in Su, with glass panels in a copper frame with plastic moulding holding the windows in:
SU.jpg
SU.jpg (111.41 KiB) Viewed 14002 times
This is a Medium+ rendering of that scene:
TL.jpg
TL.jpg (67.55 KiB) Viewed 14002 times
I honestly feel that the SU display is leaps and bounds above the render, there's gotta be something wrong going on here? Not trying to be argumentative, but it's getting ridiculous how every program I try starts out just okay, then becomes practically unusable as I try to get better results or edit my model. This is also after taking advice from one of your posts about a blue hue on objects (which was driving me crazy on the reflective roof) being caused by an overly colorful sky, and changing my physical sky to "sky color" light grey. There's no shininess, no reflection, no realism, the faces are broken up, I mean you gotta admit that looks pretty bad, and could never be used to present a concept to a professor or an investor.There's 3 different colors painted on the same faces somehow, What is going on here?


I just wanna be able to make my simple scene anywhere near the realism of this skipjack from another site
cotty_skipjack_1_690.jpg
cotty_skipjack_1_690.jpg (329.02 KiB) Viewed 13998 times

Chris
Posts: 5344
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:00 am
OS: Win10
SketchUp: 2016

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by Chris » Wed Jan 22, 2014 2:57 pm

Twilight Render is a tool, and just like other tools your results are dependent on using it correctly. If you look at the WIP and Gallery forums, you can see that realistic results can be achieved.

Have you read through the user manual? You said you went through the video tutorials but there are some basic concepts you seem to be overlooking.

First, TW uses the SketchUp color or texture as the base color in all it's templates. This is very advantageous because it addresses the exact point you made, that you want your render to look like your SketchUp model. Again, this is the basic behavior for all TW materials and by default they act this way. The only way your render will use a different color is if you intentionally make that change.

Second, you can change the SketchUp material color when making changes in the Twilight Render editor. Fletch explained this previously. When a channel (Color, Reflection, Bump) is 'locked', you see the chain icon next to it, changes you make to that channel change the SketchUp color directly. So if you have your window frame and you apply a Copper template to it, then you change the Color channel to use an orange color, you will see that change in your SketchUp model. This is the basic behavior for materials; all Twilight Render materials will, by default, act this way.
But changing the template will not change the color. For most templates, this is what you want. The only templates that have any kind of implied color are the metal templates. None of the others would you ever want to automatically change the color. And as Fletch said, the intent of the metal templates is to set the reflection color and the other reflective properties.

Now, as for the issues you have in the image you are showing. First and foremost, you are expecting a realistic reflection but it does not appear that you have actually provided anything for it to reflect. You can not get good looking reflections without a scene around it for it to reflect. Second, it appears you have front and back faces mixed together. When rendering reflective materials, this creates bad results (the faceted and multicolor appearance). There are a lot of posts on the forum about why this happens and the best ways to fix it. The most straightforward way is just to make sure you only have front faces showing. (TW can support front and back faces together, but only when you have directly painted the faces with a material; if you apply a material to a group or component, TW can't guess which face you meant to be seen.)

All new tools take time to learn. Chances are, someone has asked your exact same questions before here on the forum.

Chris
Posts: 5344
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:00 am
OS: Win10
SketchUp: 2016

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by Chris » Wed Jan 22, 2014 3:11 pm


Fletch
Posts: 12897
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:41 pm
OS: PC 64bit
SketchUp: 2016-2023
Contact:

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by Fletch » Wed Jan 22, 2014 4:42 pm

Hi Sauronblue,

It is frustrating to learn any new tool. It appears that you are completely new to rendering in any application.
You are right that what appears to be a reasonable explanation from one who "already knows" may be completely confusing to someone new to the subject.
Rendering is an art skill, closely related to photography. Rendering is not like assembling Ikea furniture, in rendering there are many right and many wrong ways to do things, and it takes practice.

That said, I agree 100 percent with Chris.

Simply put: your model in your example obviously has many faces that are reversed. Anyone starting to model in SketchUp (I did it when I started) does not care if the faces are reversed... however if you are rendering the model, it soon becomes very important. You must fix the model. To avoid trouble, do not paint groups or components with any material. Paint only front faces of your models. Be careful that your model does not have a copy of itself sharing 3D space with itself - I mean, it's easy to accidentally copy a door in place, and the 2 doors one on top of the other will render badly.

How can you expect your model to look like a toy in a photo studio lighting setup? You've rendered your model in a grey sphere. Your model is not built with faces in correct orientation. Etc.
Good Render means: Good Model, Good Lighting, Good Materials, Good Render Engine. You have a good engine... so the other three need to be brought up to the proper level.
Here's some equally good examples rendered with Twilight. No tricks!
Image
Image
see original thread for more:
Subject: PigBank and woodcandygummachine

For copper:
Subject: How to Create a Brass or Copper Material

Materials: Templates vs Libraries.
Templates are powerful, as they utilize the SketchUp information you already spent time giving by painting your SketchUp model with SU's paint bucket. But when they render, template materials will have multiple layers and complex qualities that can't be shown in SU, but that you can modify in infinite ways.
steps to use Templates are as follows:
Apply template, change color in "Color" channel, now the color WILL change in the SU view.
Apply template, unlink chain next to "color" channel, change color in "Color" channel. Now the color will NOT change in the SU view.

Libraries - they ignore what's in SU and just render what the library material definition tells it to render. They can not be modified or edited from within SU.

So, if you want Copper, and not to mess with any settings, use Copper from the NK Metals Library. End of story.

The Best Thread for following someone as they learn Twilight Render (INCLUDES PRACTICE SCENE!):
Subject: light and material study

Best Thread for learning how important lighting is to your rendering (same as photography)
Subject: Jewelry and Product Shots - the Right Light

ANY DOUBT THAT LEARNING/PRACTICE/PATIENCE IS IMPORTANT?
Here is a first render try by Kronox :lol:
Image
Here's Kronox's latest render:
Image

sauronblue
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:11 pm
OS: Win7
SketchUp: 2013

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by sauronblue » Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:12 pm

I'm sorry for being gone so long, and I really appreciate all of your efforts. I had managed to squeak by with the renderings I had, so I just gave up trying to get better, consistent results. I've now been asked to revisit this project and spice it up. I understand and agree with most of what you guys are saying, just a couple points I don't get. I still don't understand about the colors, we seem to be saying the same thing, but meaning different things somehow - maybe I'm just doing it wrong, idk. I have no idea how to tell if a face is reversed; I saw that somewhere in a forum, and started trying to reverse faces to see if it helped me, but couldn't see any difference, now I don't know what WAS reversed, what I reversed myself, or even how to tell the difference btw reversed and normal. I know that I am woefully under-trained to undertake such an ambitious task, but I've watched TONS of tutorials on everything out there, and I'm usually a quick study. I've done mechanical drawing and cadd, but I stumbled upon SU when looking for a free cadd program, so the whole world of modeling/rendering is new to me as of the start of this project. I've been an amateur photographer, so I have a $400 camera, but I've never taken a class. I have a basic understanding of lighting and scene composition, but there's no alpha channel and z-depth in real life (as far as I know), so many of the settings make no sense to me. I've dl'ed spherical bg's and still could not get good lighting on my building. I have a colored sky bc that was advice from one of the posts I read. ask a million ppl ,and you will get a million answers, and that is why I'm back here to ask you guys, rather than starting down a new rabbit-trail.
I can't copy the skipjack settings, bc I'm not trying to render a toy in a showroom, I'm trying to render a building in the sunlight. I want it to look like a bldg with sun pouring in, not a home-shopping-channel offering, but my point is, these images look REAL, not some cheesy cartoon version (which is all I can seem to produce). How can I make my scene look REAL? Where can I look for training? What settings do I need to focus on and learn? I'm not asking anyone to do the work for me, but please point me to the training I need, based on the mistakes I'm making. I'll research "reversed faces", and see what answers I can glean, but as far as; 1) setting lighting/alpha/z-depth and whatever I need to render an outdoor scene with lots of sunlight, reflective metals and transparency, 2) setting up a similar scene, but looking out from an indoor area that is essentially an outdoor area bc of all the windows and open roof.
Of all the lexicon of knowledge on the subject, I have to imagine that this is at most a couple chapters in the book of rendering, am I wrong? Is it so hard to learn how to make one kind of scene? I don't need to prepare to create any imaginable situation, and choose the right tool, just one kind of scene will get me thru this (at one point, I wanted to put the bldg in rain, snow and sun - day and night. I've given up on this dream). Searching on my own has led to many differing opinions, which pull me in opposite directions

Direct response to posts(in order since my last post):

I haven't read the manual, but I will start thu it today, I just dl'ed the 55 page pdf.

If I'm saying I have an aliminum surface, and I change the template to copper, yet there is no color change in SU, how is that realistic and desired? a grey/silver color does not indicate the copper color, so why would i NOT want the template to change the color when appropriate? If it just CAN'T, then fine, but you're telling me this is desired, and I don't understand why. I understand there are reflective colors, but a metal DOES have a base color, gold and silver are not just meatal with reflections, but colors on crayons, as well. they are very different from each other, so how can you say only the reflective layers matter?

I understand that the lighting may not be ideal, but a quarter in a dull environment will not suddenly look like a piece of green cloth. Even without anything in frame to reflect, a metal can still look metal. I know I'm horrible at this, but isn't there some base-line for reality? How is it that there are just hard edges leading into new colors on one face? No softening or blending, shading? Just switch from brown to green on a dime bc my lighting environment is not bright enough? Seems unrealistic to me, but I'm willing to learn if you can explain briefly why this is.

Your pics of metals were very nice, but proved both of our points, imo. Yes, the most impressive images were where the metal was reflecting something, and I would love that effect, but even where there was nothing reflecting, all those materials looked like metal, not some abstract picasso painting. Look at the 1st image, where the silver or gold have either no light, and just look like their plain colors, or where only light is reflected (my scene may not have been extremely bright, but there was light, I've seen metals reflect, even on an overcast day or with minimal indoor light); Pic 3 showed similar qualities on the knife blades, whitch only had a modest amount of light to reflect; Images 5 and 6 had many spots where the texture of the gold or silver were quite dramatially representing the metallic qualities without reflecting anything of note, just light and shadow. I had problems with hdr bg's, natural sun, all of them. the reason I had that grey bg, as i clearly stated in the post with the pictures, was to try to remedy the problem of contantly having a blue hue in the copper reflection, so it didn't even look copper. gold will look like gold, even in green light or purple light, I see no reason why my copper was always blue just bc the sky was blue, but I followed a post on this forum to try to fix that problem, and THAT'S why my lighting was so dull. I've tried everything from car showroom hdr's with fluorescent lighting to sunny fields of bright sun, to adjusting every aspect of the internal sun and daytime settings, but nothing worked right.

I understand that this takes practice, but when I can produce decent results like:Image, and Image, and Image, but can't duplicate the success upon further attempts, even after hours and hours of practice and forum reading, I'm looking for a more focused area of study to just finish things off. Ikea would be nice, but I'd expect at least ready-to-assemble, with coherent directions. If I gotta chop down my own tree to build a birdhouse, then I don't see the benefit.

As I said, this was my first model, so I'll try to get help over there on how to get the model right, but I've had as much success there as I have here. I've dl'ed thom-thom's model checker tools, begged the forums there for help just as I have here, and tried to find/fix every irregularity, but every problem I tediously manage to solve seems to uncover a whole new LAYER of issues, somehow.

Actually, I have the engine and the materials, as the materials come mostly from twilight, right? I've got good materials, I can't vouch for the integrity of my model, but that leaves lighting. Seems like one issue should be pretty easy to fix, right? How to light one type of scene, so that I can make renders from a few different viewpoints within that scene. Can someone please help me with that? Just tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll see what I can do to improve the model, and I'll read the <gasp> whole user's manual.
Thanks for putting up with me. If my exes' opinions count at all, then I can be a tough guy to work with, so sorry :D

Fletch
Posts: 12897
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:41 pm
OS: PC 64bit
SketchUp: 2016-2023
Contact:

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by Fletch » Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:21 am

Simple question first, did you purchase a license for Twilight Render?
If so, we'd like to upgrade your forum access/account.
Subject: Red Carpet Forum access - upgrading user account - authorize

sauronblue
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 9:11 pm
OS: Win7
SketchUp: 2013

Re: Material editor ineffective?

Post by sauronblue » Tue Mar 25, 2014 7:38 pm

No, I'm just a lowly trial user - have I been getting too much assistance?

Well, I've read the whole manual, and taken much advise and suggestion. Figuring out how to tell what faces are reversed, and how to fix was a huge help, but all of the info was quite helpful. I can see that in some situations, you might put an aluminum template on a grey post, and it not change to bright silver, but I'm still a little unsure why you want 'orange plastic' from the library to not look orange in SU, when it renders pure orange - I guess I'll just let that one go, lol.
The crazy reflections on my roof that I was trying to fix by changing the sky, turned out to be reversed faces - now I can use the hdr spheres with good results. The dimness in my structure was from using double-paned glass, and using the wrong glass template. I've realized that the templates aren't necessarily there to change the texture (do that with libraries?), so much as the way the light bounces off the object, to increase the realism of the texture already applied. I figured out which settings are best for my sunny, outdoor scene (and used the same settings for my very open "indoor" area. I feel like I've gotten these steps down, and can even try to tackle some different settings, like night time, maybe even snow and rain?
I'm very happy to be able to spend more time agonizing over design issues, than agonizing over rendering issues lol. Seriously, though, not having to take forever taking the picture (the rendering step) means i have more time to figure out what to put in the picture instead of wasting time playing with the camera. I can get consistent results, and I don't need to go back and forth trying different rendering software. Things are more tight than I'd care to admit right now, but when we start to see some success from this endeavor, I will be looking to license my twilight to get those big, commercial images.

Here's a couple recent images out of the many I've been making, then adjusting the model repeatedly. I've toned down the sun a bit from the first one, and fixed the window trim (showing red) on the roof in the second. Gotta figure out how to texture those trees, but I'm well on my way!:
Attachments
nl15.jpg
nl15.jpg (447.58 KiB) Viewed 13821 times
nl16.jpg
nl16.jpg (449.43 KiB) Viewed 13821 times

Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests