Good Day Dear BJS fellow Contributors,
Hope yours are all well. I have been long asking myself what I should be doing with my project initiated mid-february 2021, first called ’ Project Chair - Sketching a 3D commerce XP in 60h '.
The first thing I can say towards this exercise is that I’ve both failed and/or succeeded in this. It all depends on your definition of ‘sketching’ and ‘experience’, I believe 
In short: Yes, it’s possible to make good use of BJS to sketch both a visual and a process/system XP in short time and budget (in ~2-3 weeks / ~3-5k )
Second learning was (turned into a question): What have we learned from the previous decade? What did we learn from Unity, from Unreal or more generally, from creating all these experiences in 3D (and/or AR,VR, XR)? Well, I personally have only one thing in mind of major importance. One that keeps me wondering and worrying about the ‘sustainability’ in 2021-2025 of a 3D product catalogue. Very simply put, my question would be : Where is my digital product?…Where is my digital version of the product, provided by product design and under management of ‘#products’, that should be delivered in the so-called DAM (or previously media-center) the ‘faen’ sources/resources/data I need to feature this ‘digital product’ from your company in a digital product catalogue?
And then, apart from spending time thinking of product design and integration (in a workflow), I also did spend some time to nurture my designer’s need for a better understanding of how ‘basic’ materials work in BJS. How I could use them and then, eventually, tweak or twist them.
Since there are a number of topics in this forum (incl. lately) regarding things such as #glass, #reflection, #alpha, #metal, #pbr, #shadows, #post-process and since all these topics took an importance in my reflection and sketching of ‘Project Chair’, I thought why not give you access to the debug/inspector and try twist and tweak some of these materials yourself in my scene.
It should be easy for everyone to jump in and start compare and adjust the parameters (or upload your own textures) to try achieve the result you want. I used explicit (plain english) code and I believe explicit names pretty much everywhere. On the very top of the nodes hierarchy, you’ll find an _plane that you can make visible and use to try materials on. Later, if there’s an interest, I could add a cube and a sphere (i.e.).
Here is the link:
‘Project Chair Alpha’
Things you may want to try and explore:
- PBR vs Standard Textures: In this scenario, I did pretty much everything the opposite way than considered as ‘normal’ or ‘recommended’. Cushions/textile and some rubber parts materials use PBR. Metallic and the table glass texture use standard textures. To view the difference, add or compare an object or change its material with a different type and next cycle through the environments using ‘Q’ or ‘E’.
-
Reflections using either HDR, .dds or a simple Equirectangular (or cube) texture:
I could have called this a ‘7 errors game’. Find the different scenarios/materials where the texture for reflection or refraction uses A) an inappropriate projection mode B) An inappropriate texture C) An inappropriate level C) An inappropriate UV D) An inappropriate bump or normal map.
- Glass material: If there is an interest (please ask) I will certainly add at least 2 more types of base glass material for yours to play with. A pbr and a mirror mat. For now, the featured glass uses a standard material. It might be interesting to notice how on my glass table, I made use of my setup of a 3 points lights (all coming from above) to use my glass refraction texture as a way to give it more ‘density’ (or realism). The refraction texture is a noise/smoke type texture (actually, the same as my rubbers, lazy me;) that simulates the traces left when you clean a glass surface (I mean when I clean it, else it would be clean;). This effect can best seen from below, because where the light hits (from above) the reflection texture absorbes most (but not all) of the effect.
- Post-processing: The entire scene (including the GUI, currently) takes on post-processing with a high default level of exposure (1.6) and contrast (1.4). You can adjust these also from the GUI in the lower right corner. Twist and tune post-processing to see how this impacts differently your materials (PBR vs STANDARD) and textures (HDR vs STD). Also notice how the GUI is affected by these changes.
Well, I guess no need to say more at this point. I will gladly receive your comments, questions or requests. Else, have fun exploring and tweaking the scene:)
Edit: Forgot to mention that at this moment only 2 table models are available. To import a table, switch to the category ‘tables’ and select the second or third in category. The first one is not done yet and will in fine likely be a round table. Note that this is all WIP and straight from the oven;)
,
, I’m also essentially an Art & Creative Director, Digital project manager and owner of a communication agency and, over the past 2 decades, mostly worked in the marketing area as a provider and consultant for a number of premium intl brands.
I’ll take a look at that new feature when I get back to my desktop (as it’s not allowed on the mobile). That would be great if you wouldn’t mind but no worries if you are busy too