Vertex coloring in preview window meshes default to black, makes preview useless #36757

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Adam Friesen · 2013-09-17T21:45:01+02:00

Adam Friesen commented

2013-09-17 21:45:01 +02:00

%%%This using Windows 7 Home Premium with an Ivy Bridge i7, an ATI card, and 16 Gigs of RAM

To find it, just open the .blend file and look at the preview.

The point here, if you use a vertex color channel to directly effect the color of the shader, you end up finding that either the meshes in the preview window do not have a proper Vcol channel at all or they do have vertex colors, but they are black by default (and what I mean is the window built into the material context panels).

What this means is the fact that if you're using vertex colors to drive the color of the shader (through the use of the color output of the 'attribute' node), than the preview window mesh will turn black and in turn make the preview window useless.

Now this is just an issue with the preview window meshes and not Cycles itself, because the shader in the rendered view and the F12 render works like it should.

Actually, I wonder if in the future, we start adding some interactive settings to the preview window so as to improve the ability to overview everything before we do the final render (like the window meshes automatically getting more vertex color channels as they are added which you can change the color of to test colors and mixes), but if you can fix the initial issue to where the preview window is at least usable with vertex colors as color information, that would be good.

Thanks.%%%

%%%This using Windows 7 Home Premium with an Ivy Bridge i7, an ATI card, and 16 Gigs of RAM To find it, just open the .blend file and look at the preview. The point here, if you use a vertex color channel to directly effect the color of the shader, you end up finding that either the meshes in the preview window do not have a proper Vcol channel at all or they do have vertex colors, but they are black by default (and what I mean is the window built into the material context panels). What this means is the fact that if you're using vertex colors to drive the color of the shader (through the use of the color output of the 'attribute' node), than the preview window mesh will turn black and in turn make the preview window useless. Now this is just an issue with the preview window meshes and not Cycles itself, because the shader in the rendered view and the F12 render works like it should. Actually, I wonder if in the future, we start adding some interactive settings to the preview window so as to improve the ability to overview everything before we do the final render (like the window meshes automatically getting more vertex color channels as they are added which you can change the color of to test colors and mixes), but if you can fix the initial issue to where the preview window is at least usable with vertex colors as color information, that would be good. Thanks.%%%

Adam Friesen commented

2013-09-17 21:45:01 +02:00

Changed status to: 'Open'

Adam Friesen commented

2013-09-17 21:46:47 +02:00

%%%Also, I forgot to mention this, but I don't think vertex colors as shader color information ever worked with the preview window meshes in any version of Blender, I tested this using one of the latest VC11 buildbot builds, but to my knowledge, this has been a preview mesh issue ever since they were introduced.%%%

Dalai Felinto commented

2013-09-17 22:14:37 +02:00

%%%Fix on rev. r60206, thanks for reporting.

" Adding 'Col' vertex color layer to preview cycles meshes

  
  The artist could simply disconnect the VCol node from the nodetree for
  the preview, but  it should be harmless to add this to the preview meshes.
  
  As long as the user stick to the default vertex color name (and is happy
  with seeing a all-white channel) it should be ok.

"

The material can be used by more than one mesh, thus we can't read the real object vcol. At least not for now.
I think it's a matter of workflow. But since the preview objects have an UV layer it should be fine to have Vcol too.

@brecht, if you think otherwise, please roll back the commit.%%%

%%%Fix on rev. r60206, thanks for reporting. " Adding 'Col' vertex color layer to preview cycles meshes ``` The artist could simply disconnect the VCol node from the nodetree for the preview, but it should be harmless to add this to the preview meshes. As long as the user stick to the default vertex color name (and is happy with seeing a all-white channel) it should be ok. ``` " The material can be used by more than one mesh, thus we can't read the real object vcol. At least not for now. I think it's a matter of workflow. But since the preview objects have an UV layer it should be fine to have Vcol too. @brecht, if you think otherwise, please roll back the commit.%%%

Dalai Felinto commented

2013-09-17 22:14:37 +02:00

Changed status from 'Open' to: 'Resolved'

Dalai Felinto closed this issue

2013-09-17 22:14:37 +02:00

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2013-09-17 22:19:39 +02:00

%%%The fix is fine with me, thanks. A preview render can only do so much, if you do more complex setups then viewport renders become a better option.%%%

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Vertex coloring in preview window meshes default to black, makes preview useless #36757