Hi Marsel,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly - I'm pleased you are looking into my suggestions (its actually Sean at Jtronix - I work with Jon and have been doing the testing at the moment). I'll certainly keep my feedback going if it is helpful to you.

The issue where the selected object appears underneath the filter icons I can show you with a screenshot when im at work tomorrow - I would imagine it is a bug, as the object text appears directly behind the icons (i should have said behind rather than underneath before) - so that the icons appear over ghosted text.

Cheers

Sean.

Hi Ive got a couple of pics here to illustrate the probs - hopefully I this will clarify a couple of the points.

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Attached Files:

Hi Marsel,

Horizontal scroll bar - yep, that'll do it. As for the filters, I don't think they need to auto hide or be transparent - I think it'd be best if the list started below them, rather than behind.

Hope you don't hate me for this, but ive come up with more issues:

My 3ds max is now occasionally crashing when loading the Autodesk.Max.Wrappers.dlu which I believe is to do with Zookeeper.

(using zookeeper in a material creation workflow)

-The SSS materials are set out a little strange with the main properties tucked away a few trees down. Also i cannot link bitmaps or procedurals to the nodes without an Unhandled Exception error.

-I think it would be very useful to have a 'put to material editor' option. This is because there are some options that you can not adjust effectively in zookeeper at the moment such as the curves of an output and also gradient ramps seem too difficult to manipulate in zookeeper. This would also be handy if you make a material from scratch in zk before appling it to an object - and you need to adjust things you can't do in zk - otherwise you have to make a dummy object, apply the mat you created in zk, open mat editor, pick the mat off the dummy and then delete the dummy - just to adjust your curve in your falloff map.

-The right click node link and select 'replace with map' brings up the dialog to select a new map - but the schematic and material isn't updated. This means you have to manually delete the link, then the node and create a new node to replace a map - which seems a long way round. Also, with this option could it ask if you want to keep the replaced map as submap, like in the mat editor?

-Implementing something like blur studio's solid color map would great so that I could plug a colour into multiple inputs. (or I could just use blurs solid color i guess :)

-Is it possible to colour code which nodes accept which inputs so that the maps and parameters sections are clearer. Would it even be possible to split the node to a double input thing? For example, take a noise map. Under parameters it has color 1 and color 2 with boxes to change the color value, and next to this it has an input. I would guess this is a texture map input, but it is a controller input. To plug in a map I have to put it in the maps section. Could colour 1 for example have the two input nodes for the map and the controller next to each other? Sorry if this sounds picky but it is fine to plug maps in different area's of a simple noise, but a larger texture like SSS skin or arch and design becomes very difficult to manage.

-minor thing - if i change noise type for two different noises (normal and fractal) - i can put one of them out of range so it has no noise type. It would be good if this parameter was absolute across all selections - so that i could change multiple different noise types to the same type (rather than a +1 noise type scenario which is going on here).

-question - is it possible to highlight multiple values and slide to adjust them respectively. e.g could i highlight noise size on one node, and cellular size on another and drag to adjust?
-I tried wiring up a bezier float through an expression into 2 nodes to attempt the above scenario, and this crashes zookeeper with loads of unhandle exeps. It also seems that if i put a controller into multiple nodes, and drag the value - i get all crashed up.

Quick thing on renaming - It would be great to have an 'add prefix' and 'add suffix' to the dialog as I use this all the time on my current renaming utility.


I hope this is all helpful to you and I can elaborate on any of this if you need - or conversely i'll shut up if this is giving you too much grief.

Sean.

Hi,

Just found how to look at a node in the mat editor by double clicking the bar at the bottom of the icon - excellent feature! Should have learned how to use it before suggesting you implement it - sorry.

Sean.

Hi Marsel, Heres a little more info on the max.wrappers crash. It happens fairly frequently when loading 3ds max - 1 in 6 roughly. Ive attached two pictures in sequence showing the crash. I can view the report details which has a minidump.dmp, dmpuserinfo.xml and dumpdata.zip in a temp folder, so I guess i could save these out and send them if its any use.

The other issue of changes multiple values on different nodes is still troubling. I can change 2 values that are definately the same for example noise size on one node and noise size on another. But not a cellular size and a noise size for example. It would be really great to be able to highlight values with something like a ctrl+shift click and adjust them all at the same time. The other method of putting a controller into two values creates a crash - steps to reproduce - create an arch and design mat in the schematic window, pull out the diffuse roughness node and create a bezier float, select use control value, plug this into the reflection glossiness aswell, drag the value in the bezier float (should crash).

I think being able to wire these parameter together, or even just adjust the values at the same time would give massive potential to create very powerful materials. For example i could create a metal with a rustiness slider which would change bump strength, noise amount (even use an expression to bring thresholds in), specularity all in relation to each other. Or if i could change the values at the same time I could wire up these parameters through a composite node and select all these parameter and adjust.

Cheers

Sean.

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Hi Marsel,

Found a bug where (what seems like) which material editor renderer you choose will crash a material in a schematic if you start pluging maps into the nodes. When picking mental ray as my mat editor renderer I can't use the schematic to create materials without crashes.

Cheers, Sean.

Hi Marsel,

I'm afraid you are missing one step:

6. Drag out "Bump" slot, type "noise" to create a noise texture.

(It always crashes when you put more than one map into any map node.)

Cheers, Sean.

Hi Marsel,

Sorry - I shouldve been more clear -You need to do what you did in the gif with an arch and design mat. It should crash when you plug a second node in. The reason I said its a material editor issue is that you can use an arch and design mat properly if your mat editor renderer is on scanline.

Cheers, Sean.

Ah, seems fine on yours - only difference is that looks like max2010, however I expect it could well be related to my other crashing problem/problems.

The main issue is that I can't troubleshoot the other problem properly as its so random - a few uninstalls reinstalls of zookeeper hasn't fixed it, and as im starting production very soon - I can't spend much more time working it out. I could install zk at home and test my crashes at work vs home machine so as not to waste any more of your time trying to fix issues with my wonky install of zk...if i get the same at home - then ill post it.

Cheers, Sean.

A debug version sounds fine - im grateful you are trying so hard to help! I could try to do a capture of whats happening - but id have to do it in my own time. I may also need some tips on how you capture and pop out a little gif like that - could be handy for me to be able to do that.

I guess part of the problem could be that my 3ds max install has been current for a long time, in use everyday with countless plugins and scripts being installed and uninstalled all the time. My home machine on the other hand has a fresh install of win7 and max2010, so ill try and duplicate issues on that.

Thanks, Sean.