Texture based on files or external definition

[Julius Caesar]

Hello all,
one of the major problems with the textures in modeler is that you MUST assign them to an object and the parameters are SAVED with the model. Imagine that you can just specify a TEXTURE FILE (created with a tool or a appropriate tool) and then assign this file to a surface. In this way you can change the Texture file later (when you have more experience or may be because you find a wonderful tutorial on the net) without the need to reassign the texture and its parameters to all objects. This could sound a strange request, but think that I have created a huge roman town with almost 200 buildings with dozen of IDENTICAL textures (like windows, door, roof) etc. After 2 years I feel a bit more experienced and I would like to change several textures on my models. Now I need to re-open all objects and then re-apply the new textures. With the possibility to change only one file, the changes would be transparent...!!

Best regards

Julius Caesar

[Lamont]

I kinda don't understand what you're asking for.

You want to be able to modify the texture and have those changes go to all the objects it's applied to in seperate files?

Doesn't LW already do this? You modify the image, and it will be modified in anything that it was used in?:D :D

[Mylenium]

Hi there,

I have to say I think this is a real stupid request. Someone came up with it a while ago on the old forum, btw. Every good artist knows/ should know that depending on the lighting the look of materials can change drastically and there is no such thing as a perfect neutral setting. I suggest to use the presets shelf more often - once you have a good library you will be happy and only little tweaking will occur even though it cannot be fully eliminated.

Mylenium

[Julius Caesar]

Hello Lamont,
thank for your post.... You are right, image textures work already like this but I would extend the concept to the complete "surface" definition, not only to the images.. I was thinking to color, luminosity, diffusion level, bump, etc... Even the actual Save Surface feature could not help that much because you can save the file, right, but the model does not change its parameters if you modify of update your Surface File.

Even if this could sound a stupid idea, as Mylenium on the other post has clearly classified, it could be very useful is some situations, like the one I am experiencing with my 200 buildings. From the technical point of view this means only that when I load the model with a external surface file, it looks in the file texture all parameters that replace the correspondent defined in the model (uuhmm..., not bad, may be I will write a plug-in....). LW 6.5 introduced already a powerful Surface management with the possibility to assign different surfaces with the same name to different objects: this is already an excellent starting point to implement an Object Oriented Surface management tool (then imagine the plugins that will check every surface to modify a certain parameters, retrieve some value, does statistic, etc).
Just few ideas coming out from a specific need....

Best regards

Julius

[Lamont]

Open all the 200 files and you can modify surface parameters at once.

And there is a plug-in that will apply changes to all models in directory.

www.flay.com

http://www.flay.com/GetDetail.cfm?ID=1480