I’ve decided I’ll try to provide feedback on the Editor every Friday or so based on the past week of working in it. The Max Simultaneous Light count and Light gizmo added in beta.3 work great! This week I focused on giving feedback primarily on the interface, with a couple notes on materials as well. I’ve organized them into the two drop down lists below.
Interface
Pressing F points the camera at the focused object, it would be nice if it moved over to that object as well.
Objects with the “Is Pickable” checkbox unchecked are still pickable and highlight red.
Clicking in the Inspector, with a nested object selected, minimizes the hierarchy in which the object is nested inside.
A “Solo” or “Isolate” button that hides all but the selected object could be nice for debugging assets.
A Gizmo for cameras could be useful for positioning cameras not controlled by the user. This is similar to my previous feedback on light gizmos.
Ability to organize assets in the Graph. Clicking and dragging assets creates a blue line that gives the impression you are reorganizing the assets; however, releasing the click does not move the asset.
On that note, “Graph” is used for both the library of assets in the scene, as well as the visual scripting tool. This is sometimes confusing.
Measurements rounded to the hundredths or thousandths in the inspector would be helpful. The values still apply accurately, but text boxes display either whole numbers or one decimal point. Two or three more decimals should be good for most cases.
Undo functionality is sometimes inconsistent. Especially when deleting objects, and then trying to undo the deletion.
Materials
Gamma Space checkbox for textures doesn’t appear to change anything. I assumed changing that parameter on my ORM textures would noticeably change the material’s appearance, but maybe I’m using it incorrectly?
Ability to change normal map intensity would be nice.
Sheen parameter in the Editor. I know this has already been discussed on a few posts, but I thought I’d include my excitement for that feature making it into the Editor here as well.
Lastly, and this one didn’t fit nicely into either category, I’ve noticed that image files get their file type appended to the end of their name if there are repeat imports. These files were all exported using the Maya exporter as glb files.
Thanks in advance for any assistance with this. I appreciate it!
@tbunker thanks a lot for all these feedbacks!!
It’s time to sleep now but I’m coming back with more answers and informations. I’m focusing on these feedbacks
Hey @tbunker!
I’m working on these feedbacks and already fixed:
The bugged minimization of the hierarchy in the scene graph
Added missing features in PBR (just added Sheen, Clear Coat and Anisotropy)
I renamed that “Graphs” tab in assets to “Visual Scripts”. Maybe you can find a cool name for them like Unreal did with “Blueprints”
Change normal map strength. Today you can do that by modifying the “level” property of the bump map. Anyway I added the property directly in the material’s inspector tool
My question:
For the point 2.: the “is pickable” property means “In production mode, this mesh is not pickable to save performances if my game/3d application is using picking”. I think what you are looking for is “Locking this mesh”, like a freeze. Am I right?
For the camera gizmos: the Editor is using the built-in gizmos of Babylon.JS (position, rotation, scale, light). Can you create a feature request on the forum to ask support of camera gizmo ? I agree that it would help a lot for placing and view the camera’s direction etc.
For the ORM texture, let’s ask @sebavan if the PBR material takes care of the “Gamme Space” property for the metallic texture as I’m not sure of the answer
For the request that require more time, I created issues:
For the repeated extensions, I’m looking for but it looks like it is automatically added by the GLTF/GLB serializer. I’m checking if it can be added only and only if the extension doesn’t exists.
The fixes are available on the branch “release/4.0.0” and maybe @jkeys can’t create a build for you
@Drigax, is there a way to check that the extension already exists before appending?
This is not only an Editor problem, all users using the serializer will have these extensions being repeated each time they serialize (see the orignal post’s screenshot).
According to the extensions I see in the code, not only “.jpeg” and “.png” should exist. If the serializer checks the extension, it should take care of the “.jpg” extension as well.
Just wanted to say @julien-moreau this looks outstanding! I came here to ask about a problem I was having with the graph editor on V3, and learned of V4. Even though in beta–the graph editor looks awesome. Amazing stuff and excited to see what comes next.
After seeing how many other questions and documentation there were around it with the previous name, I kind of regret suggesting the name change. I’m fine with either, but I don’t want to cause more confusion later down the road because of my previous feedback. Sorry for that.
In addition, I’m having difficulty adding graphs to objects. I looked through the 3rd Person With Graphs template to see how they were connected there, and couldn’t find the “Add New Graph” feature mentioned here.
I made a simple graph, and saw it was added in the Scenes > graphs folder; but I couldn’t find or add it as a script in the Inspector. The graph works when playing it through the Graph Editor, but not through the Editor.
Hey @tbunker no problems for the name, the documentation you are mentionning is the documentation of the Editor v3.
Now we are in V4 and we are open to breaking changes as the V4 is here to be the “revolution” of the v3.
For the graphs, I invite you to read this post: Add Graph Editor · Issue #190 · BabylonJS/Editor · GitHub it explains that graphs are executed globally and not attached to objects in scene (at the moment, this can be discussed). But I can see that you understood the way to use it.
Graphs, once saved (using CTRL+S in the graph editor window) generate a TypeScript file for you. In other words, graphs are translated to code (TypeScript language).
That means you have to build the game each time to modify a graph. You can follow this section in the documentation: Editor/doc.md at release/4.0.0 · BabylonJS/Editor · GitHub Just open the preferences window and active the “Watch Project With Webpack” and then click the “Apply” button. This will compile the project each time a TypeScript file changed.
Note: webpack can take a while until it compiles the game, be patient ^^
Also, the graph editor is not yet finished and the Editor has to prevent more the user’s actions. For example, in your graph, having 2 “action nodes” connected may have undesired results (which node should we execute first? Mesh Transform or Log ?).
I suggest that you keep it straight forward like this (so you are sure of the order):
