'Sync Textures' Node, and falloff profile parameters

[Ryan Day]

Two things I'd love to see (unless there's already a workaround I haven't found):

1. "Sync Textures" node for the material graph. A utility node that you can use to link several texture parameters. Right now it seems that textures that have nodes between them don't sync together properly (for instance, if a roughness map is attached to a 'colour to number' node it doesn't seem to stay synced with the diffuse map). Similarly, sometimes different textures seem to sync with textures you wouldn't expect them to; the other day I edited the scale of a procedural and it modified a diffuse map (texture map) despite the two having vastly different size/location parameters already.

It would be handy if you could have multiple of these utility nodes for different texture 'sets' in one material, too. Just plop down the node and connect to it every texture you want synced with eachother (like a diffuse, bump and roughness map for a label), and then a second node for a different set of textures you want synced (like a bump and roughness map for a dusty detail), for example. This gives an instant, visual, way to identify what textures are synced at any one time with absolutely no guesswork.

As an alternative, maybe a colour-coded (with custom colours for any colour blind users) or symbol-based system to 'tag' different textures for syncing. For example, throwing a red "tag" on four textures would sync those four textures, throwing a blue "tag" on three other textures would sync them, etc. Might be easier/better than a utility node?

2. Falloff profile parameters. Right now several procedurals have a "falloff" parameter in them, which is great. Trouble is that these falloffs are all straight. I experimented with using the spots procedural to produce the displacement map for some condensation this weekend and all of the bubbles come out pointy as a result. Being able to modify the falloff 'shape' we could use these procedurals in an even more advanced way. Along with this feature, some preset profiles would also be handy; possibly with the ability to draw the curve itself right in the texture settings or something similar.

If either of these features, or something similar, is already in there and I haven't found it yet please do let me know!

[INNEO_MWo]

interesting thoughts and wishes!


Wouldn't "word-tags" instead of color tags work for you - if you use the on node description?


Cheers
Marco

[Ryan Day]

interesting thoughts and wishes!


Wouldn't "word-tags" instead of color tags work for you - if you use the on node description?


Cheers
Marco

Thanks Marco! A Word tag could also work. Anything that is easily visible at a glance would be welcome. If I can just look at my material graph and instantly identify that, say, 3 texture maps are synced together would be hugely welcome. At this point if I need to modify the mapping of something that has a few associated texture maps I just delete the others, duplicate the one with the modified position and swap out the selected image file. Far easier than guessing if the 'sync' feature is working properly and/or manually copying values between the textures. It's still a blip in the process, though, and being able to explicitly tell Keyshot that 'these three specific texture nodes should be synced' would be great.

As a further wish, it would also be nice if we could get relative syncing. For instance, maybe I've got a texture that is a different pixel dimension than some others its intended to match with, but I'd still like it to scale/move as I update other textures to keep the same relative size and position. Not as handy, possibly, but could be useful in some scenarios.

[Eugen Fetsch]

+1 for the (lets name it) "Texture Coordinates" node. Where you can chose the mapping type, scale, rotation and UV shift of the texture. It would make the node flow much more readable and handy.

[mattjgerard]

+1 for the (lets name it) "Texture Coordinates" node. Where you can chose the mapping type, scale, rotation and UV shift of the texture. It would make the node flow much more readable and handy.

Wow, this would be magic for labels......