VRAYforC4D_official material sharing site_BETA testing

[stefan]

dear Users,

i am happy to announce the start of the public beta testing of the VRAYforC4D BRDF Material sharing site.

http://vrayforc4d.com/materials/

please try and test all, we will be happy for feedback.
you can also upload any material you want to share.
please make sure that you do not upload any copyrighted materials or textures. read carefully the instructions and manual.

if you have questions or find problems in the site please post this in this thread.

have fun and best greetings
stefan

p.s.: a big thank you to raydale, who made this site:-)

p.s.s please really all comment here in this thread, not per email or pm, otherwise this gets to confusing to collect all feedback..thanks!:-)

[Rich_Art]

wow looks cool Stefan. I just created an account but I got an error that the E-mail could not be send.

Peace,
Rich_Art. :wink:

[jamez_031]

awsome...cant wait...thx

[machmirdenlukas]

hey cooool . thanks guys!
most of my favourite materials are with lwf. are there plans for providing an official lwf-material-scene.... maybe a mirrored scene?
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5716/20090414233713312a.th.jpg (http://img12.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20090414233713312a.jpg)

cheerz rob

[prayas]

This is looking very nice so far.
Do we need new accounts for it? Just asking because my userdata is allready written in th elogin field but it tells me worng password.

P..:

[stefan]

hi, as the lwf will be one button in next version with no need for changing the materials, i thought it is better to have only one normal scene.

when 1.2 is ready i will update the scene to render in lwf.
i want to prevent newer users to get too confused with the lwf concept

nice conrete materials:-)

cheers
stefan

[3dkobi]

Thanks for the site, It looks great :)

Peace
Kobi

[choppir]

thanks guys, looks fantastic!!

[stefan]

please try again, emails should work now?

cheers
stefan

[prayas]

Ok. Ignore my earlier post on this subject. It was early in the morning. ;)

Very nice site. Some small critics or ideas.
Does the site need this background image? In my opinion this is a shortliving design element just for the sake of having an element there. A simple color or even a gradient would do.
The images are very well presented but could be even larger. I think most Vray / C4D users or graphic / design artist do have large screens to work on. The popup image can be simply bigger so the user can see if the material fits the needs. I did often download a material just to see it's not working in my case because it's not working let's say for a closeup.
If i upload a 1024 image is the popup image going to be large?

I like the colors and the contrast very much. Some might say it looks to grey but it keeps the viewer very focused. Very nice.

I will test the upload for now.

Very solid lookiing site.
Thanks a lot for making this.

P..:

[machmirdenlukas]

hi, as the lwf will be one button in next version with no need for changing the materials, i thought it is better to have only one normal scene.

when 1.2 is ready i will update the scene to render in lwf.
i want to prevent newer users to get too confused with the lwf concept

nice conrete materials:-)

cheers
stefan

thanks for your respond.
looking forward to 1.2. also working in the viewport will be more comfortable...
cheerz

[Tong]

prayas what size of images (thumb and big ) you think enough ?

[prayas]

Hi Tong,

the thumbnail image is fine. I think the popup image can be larger.
Right now it's 450x450px. I think when it is a popup overlay you can do with 600px or even more?
Don't know what people prefer in screensize these days but i have had 1600x1200px (x2) on my desk for years now and i think in this working sector some people do even like it larger than this.

One other thing talking about usability - the link view material details is to small. At first i nearly missed it.


P..:

[STRAT]

This is looking very nice so far.
Do we need new accounts for it? Just asking because my userdata is allready written in th elogin field but it tells me worng password.

P..:

yes. how do we log in?

do we need new accounts?

[Tong]

do we need new accounts?

yes

[stefan]

please read the instructions there. all should be explained i think(hope):-)

yes people need to register there, if you want you can use same name as here, but the 2 sites are not directly connected.

cheers
stefan

[artdude12]

I think everything looks really good so far.

Crits:

It's not as responsive as the material section on the other vrayc4d site (Tong's). I'm guessing Flash vs. JS-HTML. This is not a big deal.

When I click on the material name to download, I'm getting a page full of code.
Right clicking (Save Link As) solves the problem. Firefox is giving me a valid
c4d extension, Safari is adding a dms extension.

[stefan]

hi, we look into this, i think this is becuase the examples are by accident .c4d files. they should be all .szip files in final version.

the site is not flash by the way, also not tongs i am quite sure. it is html (drupal).

cheers
stefan

[Tong]

stefan needs "autozipping" ;-) of files when they uploading.

[stefan]

yes that would be good, i ask ray if he can add;-)
cheers
stefan

[Tong]

it is html (drupal).
for the record ;-) drupal it`s php ;-)

[stefan]

i havent said its php;-)

the page is in html, the system behind drupal. i dont know drupal myself, but ray asuured it is very good for such things.
in detail raydale can answer all this things, he is the master of this site:-)

(i or better said my programmers here in vienna normally work with django)

cheers
stefan

[Rich_Art]

I've made an announcement on our site as well Stefan.

LINK (http://www.c4dlounge.eu/forum/showthread.php?t=264)

Peace,
Rich_Art. :wink:

[raydale]

Hi Guys,

I am the person behind the materials website.

Thanks for the comments so far I have read with interest some of the opinions here.

I have taken the site into maintenance mode for 24 hours or so. I am going to reconstruct the user contributed materials section to allow for more flexibility with how the files are uploaded.

There are also updates available for the content management system being used. So I think it would be better to spend some time getting things right whilst the site is still in Beta.

I will post back here when everything is available again.

BTW - Prayas, i will make sure that the material you have uploaded is kept :D

[Rich_Art]

Hi Raydale,

Thanks for the nice new material site. It looks great..

Peace,
Rich_Art. :wink:

[raydale]

Thanks Rich_Art.

By the way - I am very interested in hearing more opinions from people. Feature requests are welcome. I am not saying that everything is possible, but it would be good to find out what people want and to deliver more functionality around that.

[raydale]

One last post before I get on with things today.

Yes, the CMS used for the materials website is Drupal. I know both Joomla and Drupal well and Drupal was chosen for this task because of its superior security, permissions model, flexibility and specific content type creation capabilities for the task in hand.

As with 3D software, I often hear very biased opinions from people as to which CMS is better. However, these opinions usually only come from a person who only knows one of the CMS's - NOT both. So, before any of this starts - the answer is neither is better than the other. Just for specific tasks each may have advantages for those particular tasks. Both systems are open source, are very competent, have great communities and are developing rapidly.

This is early days for the Materials website and more features are planned over the next few weeks and months. First is first though, and that is to produce a stable and focused experience for users before rolling out more features.

[raydale]

Okay,

I have updated the site and it is back live now. I have updated to the latest cms upgrades and and configured some things behind the scenes to make the site a bit more efficient. I have also updated all of the existing material download files to be zip files.

One change worth mentioning is that only .zip files are accepted as the download format now. This is because there is no way to guarantee how each browser will interpret other files like the .c4d type (some browsers will try and open this file type and display it as a text file). I can enable other download types like .rar files later if people wish. Let me know.

Also, I have enabled the preview popup to display the original image uploaded. This means that a maximum of 1024x1024 image can be uploaded and displayed (thanks for the request Prayas)..

Finally, it is worth mentioning that all user contributed materials have to go through a process of admin approval before they are allowed to be published (this is explained in the Instructions (http://vrayforc4d.com/materials/content/instructions)).

[raydale]

I think everything looks really good so far.

Crits:

It's not as responsive as the material section on the other vrayc4d site (Tong's). I'm guessing Flash vs. JS-HTML. This is not a big deal.

When I click on the material name to download, I'm getting a page full of code.
Right clicking (Save Link As) solves the problem. Firefox is giving me a valid
c4d extension, Safari is adding a dms extension.

This is because of the browser not knowing what file type that is and guessing it is a text file (obviously incorrectly) which it then attempts to display. I have ensured that now only .zip files (currently) can be uploaded therefore bypassing this problem. Zip files are a far better way to allow files anyway for various reasons.

I was only vaguely aware of Tong's site. It's very nicely done. The Materials site is JS-HTML as has been mentioned. However, speed issues can be down to various things - such as server conditions and traffic rather than front end technology used - in fact that is often the least impactive resource on speed and performance.

[raydale]

stefan needs "autozipping" ;-) of files when they uploading.

Even if Drupal has a module for this I am not sure it is a good idea due to the resource load it places on the server. Not good for large files.

[prayas]

Hi Ray,

just make clear all files need to be in .zip format and all is fine.
No need to have another module working in the back (which can go wrong).
The site is looking very solid so far. What i am still thinking about is the structure in which you have the menu laid out but that comes down to what i prefer in website design.

Keep testing and hopefully start this site sometime soon.

P..:

[stefan]

i also think restriction to zip files is better. the server is fast but also has its limits. better not to stress its recources.

thanks ray for the fast updates:-)

cheers
stefan

[raydale]

Hi Ray,

just make clear all files need to be in .zip format and all is fine.
No need to have another module working in the back (which can go wrong).
The site is looking very solid so far. What i am still thinking about is the structure in which you have the menu laid out but that comes down to what i prefer in website design.

Keep testing and hopefully start this site sometime soon.

P..:

Feel free to say what you prefer Prayas. I can always justify the design as it is or take any ideas into account. No constructive input is bad input.

[prayas]

Hi Ray,
I made some small paintovers of what i think can work a little better and will be a little more usable.

first one is of the material preview popup.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_one.jpg

second of the main page.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_two.jpg

third is of the material site itself.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_three.jpg

What about having more than one image. Maybe post it on the detail page. I do have an internal database here in our studio and i use normally more than two images for one material.

sample images. just some ideas on how to make a clear preview of what i'm going to download.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample001.jpg
http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample002.jpg
http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample003.jpg

P..:

[stefan]

the preview will be the official preview i made for all materials.
the scenes you see at the momet are some old test scenes i made for liquids.

i also gave this tong already for his site, to keep consistency.
maybe the fluid scene could stay as a second. but actually the main scene is made to show almost all aspects for materials preview. lets see.

this is the test VRAYforC4D material scene i mean:

http://vrayforc4d.com/materials/sites/default/files/VRAYforC4D_MAT_Official_Scene_0.zip

more than one image will slow down the database quite so for now i think it is wise to fix it to one image per material.

cheers
stefan

[Tong]

and must be rule to image resolution, it must be one resolution

[raydale]

Hi Ray,
I made some small paintovers of what i think can work a little better and will be a little more usable.

first one is of the material preview popup.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_one.jpg

second of the main page.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_two.jpg

third is of the material site itself.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/paintover_three.jpg

What about having more than one image. Maybe post it on the detail page. I do have an internal database here in our studio and i use normally more than two images for one material.

sample images. just some ideas on how to make a clear preview of what i'm going to download.

http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample001.jpg
http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample002.jpg
http://www.prayorpanic.com/blogpost/mat_site/sample003.jpg

P..:

Thanks Prayas for taking the time over your detailed explanations. I shall try and respond in kind with a bit of detail:

I agree with Stefan regarding having 2 fairly high bandwidth images with each scene (even if only optional) although I do think it is a good idea. Let's see what sort of bandwidth bill Stefan has to pay :D and the performance hit the current site first.

Regarding the navigation structure: Your points are valid, however, I have taken some time over considering the current structure. Firstly, I am keen to avoid some pages have a really long left hand navigation when there are only 4 or 5 material previews showing for example. So the 3 column layout is a good way to structurally separate the navigation (even though it is a bit of a cliche now). I am keen to keep the user information separate from the selecting of categories which I think helps the site structurally and eases navigation for the user. Whichever way the user will have to scroll for either content or navigation at some point.

Good point about moving the Syndicate link: I had an original design as you point out (with the syndicate link in the top left of the primary nav). However, I moved this down to the left nav to allow for expansion beyond just an rss link (maybe including social bookmarking icons and other syndicate links in that block as well). Depending upon how this area develops over the next week or so I will probably revisit this.

The size of the information in the popup area: indeed, I agree with this. I want to restyle the information area completely (keeping it consistent with the rest of the site), but I am finding it difficult to do with the cms currently. So this has been left to the back of the 'improvements' queue until I can work out a way of styling it without hacking the cms. I even want to restyle the buttons that appear here.

Material details page categories: (re:paintover_three.jpg - for clarity) Another good point, and you are right because this information is more related to the material name and description. I will have a think on this one. The problem is that the Materials site has been designed so that people can include their material in numerous categories. When there are lots of categories associated with each material this area gets extremely cluttered. So, I felt that I could separate the category links out and associate them with the 'print' and 'email' links at the bottom of the container. On reflection it could work either way I feel.

Keep the opinions and suggestions coming guys. I don't mind having to rationalise the design (as you can probably tell). Any feature requests are welcome. The worse that can happen is that we say 'NO' :D (joking)

[prayas]

Hi Ray,

just wanted to ssee if there is any progress regarding the material site?

P..:

[artdude12]

The Liquid Material page doesn't seem to be lined up with the other material pages.
When I click on another material page the whole page will shift to the right.
When I click on the Liquid page again, it will shift a bit back to the left.
All the other material pages seem to be lined up with each other OK.

I'm seeing this on Firefox 3.0.9 for Mac.
I will check things with Safari also.

[artdude12]

Safari has the same page shifting as Firefox (see previous post).

[Tong]

i guess someone forgot close Div ;-)

[prayas]

it does that here to but more down to the fact that the liquid page is allready filled with stuff and does have a scrollbar on the left. the other pages simply don't have any content yet.
if you're using a floating layout like this it does happen this shifting.

P..:

[stefan]

hi,all,

i see some already uploaded nice materials, - thanks a lot:-)

but please one thing, read the instructions, and use only the official material scene for the preview renderings.
(diabolo3d you uses some other scene p.e- i re-render the material and upload it, please use the right scene for next materials in case;-)

cheers
stefan

[stefan]

i updated the official material scene with 3 options now for testing semi translucent fabrics and fluids in additions to the 2 available options:

for now here, and soon also updated on the site:

https://vray-materials.s3.amazonaws.com/VRAYforC4D_MAT_Official_Scene.zip

cheers
stefan

[prayas]

cool stefan,

i was going to ask for this, because your fabric setup looked nice.

P..:

[bentreality]

nice site but one thing .....

way to long animation/transition on the preview (javascript plugin)...
quite annoying if you want to zap through the materials

anything else very nice :)

[stefan]

you can book mark the materials site direct.
no need to load the main site

the material site has no animated stuff by intention.

on the main site many stuff is loaded while it animates. so the animation hides the loading process a bit.

cheers
stefan

p.s ah, do you mean opening the preview window? that could be a bit faster, true...

[lindhe]

Looks cool and it's about time that a site like this was created. Just a small suggestion, why not add a category for Vray Dirt materials?

[stefan]

as said in other thread a new material site will open next days, direct on website.

see also infos on our facebook site (facebook.com/vrayforc4d)

it uses free tags so materials using dirt can be tagged with "dirt" so one can easy filter
stefan

[helluvapixel]

I've noticed that the site does not like Chrome. Access denied is returned when you click login link or register etc. I had to switch to Firefox to be able to retrieve a password as well.

http://cl.ly/3P1O1h1a2t0L0y2L411B/vraymatgoogle.png

[stefan]

i use chrome, no problems here, where exactly you get an error message.

register and login works fine here.

,maybe flush the browser cache, and make sure it has updated to latest version and see if that changes something for you.

cheers
stefan

[helluvapixel]

cleared the cache, latest Chrome, but when I click Login, I get Access Denied page immediately.

Odd.

[stefan]

hmm, i ask tong, he makes all that stuff

[helluvapixel]

Cool, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'm probably the only one or of extreme few. Cheers!

[stefan]

ha said he already found the reason maybe and will adapt,