Zookeeper: Zookeeper as a schematic material editor

The Zookeeper concept is very interesting, Unifying all in one schematic view. But on the other hand Zookeeper can sometimes show too much information. That of course depends on what you need/want. For example sometimes I would like to use Zookeeper as a schematic material editor. As an alternative to Slate (NodeJoe). But as it is now Zookeeper isn't really suitable for that, because it either shows you too much, or it doesn't show you exactly what you need. When you drag or add a material, I think the schematic material editor would have to show you all the maps and submaterials. Right now you can click "expand node hierarchy inputs" but doing that will expand to many nodes which you will probably never use. Also the maps are expanded and will show you bitmap parameters, which of course can be good sometimes. But I think the main purpose of a schematic editor is to show you very complex arrangements with many nodes. And for that they need to be small and show you only what you need / will use. Maybe the best way would be a possibility for everyone to set for themselves in detail, the default behavior for nodes and the schematic editor. Or maybe even better, some presets which will define how Zookeeper will behave. For example now I wanna do mainly materials and maps - so I will choose the "Material Editor Mode" preset Next time I want to see all parameters expanded so I will choose the "Technical Super Advanced" mode which will show everything expanded by default. Also as a request - the option to use a single click instead of double click for synchronizing the Material Editor with Zookeeper. Hmm I just tested this and it seems sometimes you have to press just one click and the Material Editor will switch to the node pressed.
4 February 2011 #2642
Michael McCarthy	Hi Sebastian, Good suggestions about preset layouts. This is something we have been talking about and will be looking into for future releases. I use ZK for materials on a daily bases. Any sugesstions to make that better are very welcome. Here are a couple things that might improve your workflow. CTRL click the + sign on a node to quickly expand all its inputs. I use this for materials and maps all the time. In preferences you can set how many nodes this will expand out to. This way if you only want one or 2 levels for maps you will not get additional controllers etc. Use the show inputs only mode. This will only show connected inputs so the view has very few rollouts and parameters. If you then drag and output from a texture to say a material only the accepted inputs will automatically become visable. You can explore setting up custom UI layouts for nodes you use very often. This way they will always show up with the rollouts you use 98% of the time only. Hope that helps. Thanks so much Michael McCarthy
23 July 2011 #2797
sebastian___	I'm not using zookeeper for current projects, but I will definitely use it in the future, and I made these tests with an older demo so apologies if things are different with the current version. A material as large as in the next picture is pretty common and even more. Setting in preferences to how many nodes this will expand would not solve the problem. Ideal would be the moment you drag a material in Zookeeper, you would see all the maps expanded, but not the extra nodes. http://img814.imageshack.us/img814/1870/image3wg.png Request - to be able to drag and drop a material in zookeeper The "show inputs only mode" is helpful, but the ability to hide all those fields (in the next pic) you will never use like : Parameters, Coordinates, Extended Parameters, Sub-Animatables, Custom Attributes and so on would be very good also. And since this is an advanced schematic node editor it would be interesting to have features seen in other node editors like The Foundry Nuke and others. For example keep a key pressed like ALT and drag a node and the node will detach or reattach somewhere else. Or again with a key pressed (maybe the same key) move a node and touch the other node and a wire will be created. Maybe the last one is more difficult. And the last two things are totally unimportant. As you can see in the last pic the aliasing could be better and nicer and also I noticed you can't change the wires colors into a solid color.
3 December 2011 #2841
EPHERE	Hi Sebastian, Sorry for the (very) late reply. Just wanted to let you know that this thread wasn't forgotten and we're looking into this kinda stuff. Cheers Marsel Khadiyev (Software Developer, EPHERE Inc.)
3 December 2011 #2846
sebastian___	Hey, thanks for answer. I wanna clarify when I mentioned antialiasing I was talking about the interface / the UI. Not the material rendered sphere. I'm not sure how much I care for that sort of thing, since it doesn't have a direct impact on my final renders, but I think most people care about things like that. One of the problems I had with the Slate schematic editor - you can't have the old material editor and Slate open at the same time. Which is weird since you could do that with the old Node Joe beta. I hope the future iterations of Zookeeper won't eliminate that.

Posted by:		sebastian___
Data created:	4 February 2011