L3DT Users' Community

Before I start you must understand that I am an efficiency crazed person and most of what I say is just my general laziness for EXTRA steps.

Man, Ive told you b4 I think that you are a genius, I absolutely love l3dt and I have remained silent about a few things up until tonight when I went ahead and downloaded 2.5c...and turned it on....

Why don't you give the ability to manage my materials from the climate editor, maybe a link or a button? I really like the material manager for quickly adding materials that I like and such, but as far as it goes, I would really appreciate the ability to look at and change my textures from the climate editor too. Maybe if I change a file it saves it under a different name in the material manager?
The reason why i liked it that way is because I could quickly reference the parameters for each group of textures, if I went in to edit the temperate climate and I was deciding on what textures for grass based on the defined settings for that attribute, say Water : 50, I knew it was a more lush area and I could apply different diffuse textures to that particular setting quickly, maybe a quick change.. A more green one or a different green etc.
I know you can do that with the materials and all, but if I want to make one quick change, say I didn't like how it turned out on the map in that particular area, with the particular settings, I could change the one layer in the one setting... Not the whole material. Feel me?
I personally think the material manager should be for adding those layers to your climate parameter quickly, IE Like how you have in 2.5b, STEEP GRASS = Grass1, Grass1, Grass1, detail map and their locations and settings. If I create 4 or 5 different steep grasses in my climate, the material manager would be great for quickly loading them, NOT be the sole provider for the textures, more like an info database, and not a resource. Feel Me?

Which leads me to this.FEATURE REQUEST. Man o Man, could you PLEASE PLEASE make it a MIX of 2.5b and 2.5c? PLEASE PLEASE that would work just as well but be a little more flexible.

Which leads me to THIS FEATURE REQUEST.. QUADRUPLE PLEASE can you make it so we can preview what our material will look like after we mix the textures! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!! SAVE FROM HAVING TO RENDER THE WHOLE THING JUST TO SEE WHAT THEY WILL END UP AS!

Thanks again for a kick butt program..
Terry

Hi Nickadimos,

Thanks for your feedback. How would this updated land type editor go with you?



I've added 'edit', 'copy' and 'manager' buttons so that you can edit the selected material, create a copy of the selected material and edit that, or open the material manager.

This update will be included in the next developmental build.

QUADRUPLE PLEASE can you make it so we can preview what our material will look like after we mix the textures!

Yes, that's on the to-do list already.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Hi Nickadimos,

The next dev build will also have the 'preview' button in the material editor enabled. When you click on this button, L3DT will generate a preview of the material's texture and bump-map, such as these:

'std_cliffs' material:


'std_grass_lush' material:


Please note the texture in the material preview is not shaded by any light-mapping, so it will look like the sun was directly overhead.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Man, you ARE the MAN!!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

For that, as soon as im finished, ill give you all my super sweet updated climate im making! Based off of yours..

Do you think for the Gradient and the Curvature settings you could have it change the gradients over to specific degrees and the curvature to convex or concave?--- regardless.. is that how they work?

Higher gradient = larger angle?

Higher curvature = more convex or concave?

Thanks
Again

Will it show what it will look like mixed? Ie I have Grass-dry and graas-lush on the same land type will it show what they will look like in the final how-you-doin (excluding light map)

Thanks
Terry

p.s. or is that the mix there?

Hi Terry,

Yes, that is the blended texture for the material, including all the layer components. In a future update I'll include some more knobs and dials in the preview generation, but at the moment it's hard-coded to use a texture resolution of 16x for L3DT Pro and 4x for L3DT Standard.

If you'd like to try out the new options, I have updated the installers for L3DT release 2.5c to include these changes (in addition to a critical bugfix).

Best regards,
Aaron.

THIS IS A VIRTUAL HUG FOR YOU!!!!!!!!



::HUG::

Thanks again
Terry

That will definitely speed things up!