Material panel has list view as text unabled (OSX)
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Hi,
I am on OSX, using a Mac.
As many know the material panel under OSX does not have the option to see a list of textures with their names. SInce I work with lots of materials and large models its rather difficult to see or assign the right material. Often there are various shades of white and grey hard to distinguish.The only way to do this on a Mac is to hoover over the colored/textured squares and wait for the names to show up. This is a slow process since the material does not show the names instantly. You have to keep hold of your mouse at each material and wait for the name. Now imagine that over dozens of materials each and every time you assign a texture.
Google should have solved this issue long ago but I have given up. Maybe someone can make a plug-in that shows the material list as used in the model with their names in a column. It would be great if the tools for assigning like the paint bucket would pick up from the names as well. It would also be great if you could click on geometry to highlight the material in the list.
Maybe someone else can explain this better but I need a material panel in some sort that works with the material names.
Any help is very appreciated and as I assume not only by me. Especially considering all those that render with third party app's and need a more sophisticated way to distinguish the materials other than having to guess by the images in panel.
FrancoisThis thread is being answered and discussed here as well, without a final solution though.. This is really Google's job to fix
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=23741&st=0&sk=t&sd=a -
Yea, there's good and bad to be had from using Apple's color panel, and this would be one of the bad ones. We'd have to re-engineer this to give you lists (doable, if enough people think it's a big deal and there's not a reasonable workaround).
But try this workaround: Close SketchUp Pro. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and type or copy / paste this line in (at your own risk, Earth will stop to rotate and we'll be sucked into a black hole, all disclaimers, etc, etc...):
defaults write com.google.sketchuppro7 NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 100
so it's now responding at 100 milliseconds. If you don't like that, you can delete the defaults or adjust the "100" number to something that works for you. To delete, quite SketchUp Pro, type:
defaults delete com.google.sketchuppro7 NSInitialToolTipDelay
Be careful to get ALL of that, because leaving off the "NSInitialToolTipDelay" will delete all of your preferences. Let me know if that helps.
b
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@bjanzen said:
Yea, there's good and bad to be had from using Apple's color panel, and this would be one of the bad ones. We'd have to re-engineer this to give you lists (doable, if enough people think it's a big deal and there's not a reasonable workaround).
I'm not a OSX user, but if I where I'd be chanting for a listview as well.
I use the listview (on PC) most of the time when I model. I use materials help organize my model as layers do. I often render my models - so I usually need to do more work to each material (add bumpmaps, reflection etc). So in order to save time it's really important keep the number of materials low and reuse existing materials.
I can have multiple materials that look the same in SU, but a greatly different when I render. So I can't just visually pick it out from the list. There's where the text listview comes it. I name each material on my model to match it's purpose.
But, I think that both the listview and thumbnail views could be improved.
The thumbnails would be easier to read if they had a label underneat then.
And the list view would be much easier to read if they had a little colour/texture indicator next to them. Combination of both text and image makes it easier to find and pick the correct material I'm looking for when the material list grows. -
so that does make things a lot more snappy as far as seeing the color/material names.. still not the same as having a list view but better..
thing is though, it makes all the tool tips pop up very quickly..
i think i'll just stick with the current setup but if you all make changes based around user opinion, then mark me down for 1 vote towards reworking SketchUpColorPicker.bundle
thanks -
If you do rework the material editor. Please, please, please make it stop opening up every time I activate the paintbucket. At least an option to do so. Even if it's a registry setting or other hidden tweak. Just let me not have to see that window pop up everytime.
...guess it's Material-editor rant time...
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Mark me down as well, for as many users as you can. I am sure most users have grown used to the clumsyness of the panel but for those who use SU daily for their work this one would be a major update, I would even call it SU 8. Thats how important it is for those who render. And there are a lot of users now who do...
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while we're on the topic of the material editor.
another issue I have is if I make some changes to a material and then undo - the focus shifts to the material editor.
This leads to two scenarios:-
If you want to keep on undoing I have to click on the SU window again to give it focus before continuing with the next undo command. If I have done multiple changes I want to undo I have to repeat this each time.
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After I undo a material change, and then hit a keyboard key to activate a new tool - I often don't notice the material window got the focus. So instead of activating the tool, I just typed something into one of the fields in the editor. This either causes me to add random characters to the material name, letters into the width, height field - which will throw an error - or sometimes affect the colour of the material itself.
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@frv said:
Thats how important it is for those who render. And there are a lot of users now who do...
that's the thing.. i've been using sketchup since v4 in my professional work but i didn't start seriously making rendered views until this year.. i never had a problem with the colorpicker before because if i wanted something black, i'd choose black.. easy.
but now, i might have a black diffuse material and a black phong which look identical in the color picker so i'm stuck with the hover and wait as well as the odd fashion to put names on the different colors/materials.. it's still workable but it's a bit of a headache.
if i'm being honest, i'd guess a very small percentage of total SU users see the current material browser as a problem so it's going to be hard to get a lot of steam behind the movement.. we can hope though.
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Maybe we're enough?
There seem to be quite a number of people posting in the gallery section that renders. What if you did a little survey? amongst users here and at forums for some of the render engines. ASGVis's forum for instance?
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Sigh....
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Maybe you could explain what a feature request really means ? Is it realistic to expect an improved material panel in the next 6 months for us pro-OSX users ?
Francois
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http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23534&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15
I think there are enough SU-OSX render-users who wish for a more "pro" material panel.
Francois
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If it is implemented, no doubt that it will be the same in the Pro and Free versions alike. So it's not a "Pro" feature request. As Thom is a Beta tester (andusing Mac, too), he may be bumping the idea in the official Feature Requests list (and yes, believe me, when they see that something is a major and reasonable requirement, they tend to listen - how on Earth do you think the back button came back in the component browser otherwise?)
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@thomthom said:
I'm not a OSX user
Thom, I'm a bit confused, as you list yourself as an OSX user (in your details avatar)!
This is a very wise idea btw, Google. I too am getting confused with my big colo(u)rs palette list. Please add me to the petition to fix this.
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@thomthom said:
If you do rework the material editor. Please, please, please make it stop opening up every time I activate the paintbucket. At least an option to do so. Even if it's a registry setting or other hidden tweak. Just let me not have to see that window pop up everytime.
...guess it's Material-editor rant time...
No, good point!
In fact can you engineer it so it behaves in the same way as the layers and component etc panels- ie a single click on the bar, closes the window- "Mac OS 9 windowshade", manner, just like the others (OS X and XP)? Because usually I have to pick the damn thing up and move it elsewhere, or simply just close it.
The other Tom (I was christened 'Thom' too!
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@tfdesign said:
@thomthom said:
I'm not a OSX user
Thom, I'm a bit confused, as you list yourself as an OSX user (in your details avatar)!
I have a old Mac Mini, from the first generation G4 type, which I use as a test machine for webdevelopment and ruby development. But I never use it for modelling work.
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Francois - no software company in their right mind will commit to saying "we will do x in six months", because, well, you know why (he says, with a lawyer's pen jammed to the back of his head) . We have lists of feature requests, that come from many sources. For example, many of you voted on feature requests recently using Googe Moderator. That was helpful, and we thank you for the feedback. We listen to it. I wont give you the exact process of how we work through these things, but there is one.
Even great ideas don't always get implemented for many reasons that may be very subtle. It's a very good suggestion for multiple reason and I personally like it, but there are no promises.
b
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Ok B, tx. I understand.
Thomthom , you might have a look at MXM reporter. He seems to have been able to make a panel rather easily.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=19850&st=0&sk=t&sd=aFrancois
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Yea, I just need to get a couple of other projects out of the way first.
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