Improvements that need to be discussed in my opinion

[hansolocambo]

1- Path to textures needs to be relative to the scene, something like ../maps.
Example : My scene is in C:\Render and the associated maps in C:\Render\Maps.
If I move the .bip to D:\Work and the maps to D:\Work\Maps then Keyshot is lost and all the scene opens white... That's really annoying. Nothing should change as the maps folder is still where the .bip is and its name didn't change.
Saving package resolves that but it's not a solution when the content of "Maps" has to be changed or updated.
EDIT : I forgot to mention that when I move a .bip and its "Maps" folder (created by the export of a .obj from a 3D software) and I reopen the bip, weirdly enough some textures are there and others are missing. Textures name didn't change, obj is the same. So it definitely feels like a bug.

2- When one drags and drops an alpha (opacity) texture in Project/Material/Textures/Opactity it's usually because the object has UVs right ? By default, after a drag and drop of a texture, the Mapping Type should change to UV Coordinates or UV (now it sets by default to Box which makes no sense when the object has coordinate mapping) and the Width and Height should set themselves to 1. When you work on big scenes with tons of textures this is a real pain

3- When working on objects with UVs and multiple textures (Diffuse, Spec, Bump, etc), it would feel logical after a double click on an object to end up in Project/Material/Textures straight away. As it is now, every time we double click on an object with UVs, Keyshot takes us to Project/Material/Properties. When updating/reassigning lots of textures in a scene, this extra click really takes time. An option in the Preferences that would let us decide where Keyshot takes us in the Projects Window after having selected an object could really save time.
Or maybe in Project/Material should we be able to slide the 3 Tabs Properties/Textures/Labels, in order to define which one we need to see in the first position. Depending on what we're working on.

I had others in mind but can't quiet remember them right now. I might come back to add some other things.

Thanks for considering this if it sounds like worth coding improvements 

[mattjgerard]

1- Yes, I've had this issue as well, since I backup all my stuff to a network share, if I have to go back and make a tweak or change, instead of copying it back to my internal drive I'll just open the project from the network and bam, texture paths go wonky. And yes, some do survive, but most don't. Last time I had to relink 300 instances of the one texture. I posted a request about a better material manager, and Dries stated that it is in the works! Happy day!

2) There is a preference in there to default textures to UV instead of box, its under the Advanced tab of the preferences.

3) I would also add a request to make it possible to double click on a material or object to edit the material and have the MatGraph open by default. And scale itself properly to the same size/position the last time it was opened. Just having the window remember where it was  and what the display was the last time it was invoked would be nice.

Anyway, good thoughts, and its nice to see that I'm not the only crazy one that thinks of this stuff.

[hansolocambo]

"2) There is a preference in there to default textures to UV instead of box, its under the Advanced tab of the preferences. "
Holly Molly. That's HUGE How the f... could I miss that ! Great news \

"Anyway, good thoughts, and its nice to see that I'm not the only crazy one that thinks of this stuff."
Well it's not so much about thinking about it than about having to face it everyday, 300 times a day. Then it becomes obvious I have to produce close to 150 images for a kinesitherapeut. And because it involves many different human characters (Adults, elderlies, teenagers, toddlers, etc,) and I don't have 5 year to do it, well I ended up using a "3D" crappy app : DAZ Studios. And if it's a life saver for such a contract, it's also a nightmare when making the renders in Keyshot : Each Daz character has around 20 textures. Having to update manually alphas, their width and height, their mapping type, etc again and again and again just  because Keyshot lacks some basics, it sure is a pain
But it's still the best around (fastest at least) and it's improving fast so I have good hope.

[hansolocambo]

mattjgerard, if you ever come back here, To avoid this issue you seemed to also have about some textures being there when you reopen a file and others going missing, I just figured out how to make it work :
1/ avoid saving as .bip. Just save as .ksp
2/ big bug : often I just unmark the diffuse texture, then mark it again and bam ! texture is back...
3/ but if you save as .bip, the solution (that still doesn't explain why some textures appear and others don't) is to save the textures and the .bip all in the same folder. I've got my habits and always put textures in a ..\map or ..\texures folder. And when I do this Keyshot just can't find them, or some of them, when reopening a .bip. But if it's all in the same place, all works fine

[mattjgerard]

I'm on here more than I should be , and my first stop is always to click the  Show unread posts since last visit link.

Thanks for following up on this, and yes, your solutions is part of what I do. I save paackages all the time for our archive system. Its about the only way to reliably gather files attached to the project.

My main beef is exactly yours too, is unpacking the ksp files, it dumps all the files into one folder, and I HATE having to sift through all that cruft to find the keyshot file. I want all the textures in a "tex" folder, and all the keyshot working docs easily visible.

I will try the checking/unchecking trick and see if it works. Texture management in KS is a bit of a challenege right now, but I've been assured they are working on it. Pretty much any video eiditing app out there will auto-locate all files associated with a project if they are all in a certain folder, and you just have to point it to the first file, and it finds the rest by quickly looking up  and down the folder tree. Should be the same here.

Cheers!