Talk:TXMT/Introduction-Analogy
[under construction/ work in progress/ still underdevelopped]
(As we found out that there are several methods and concepts with advantages/disadvantages I post in here several trials - Pixelhate, your input needed, others are welcome =) Khaibit)
Introduction to the Material Definion (TXMT)
What is it good for - an analogy for fundamental understanding
Imagine you live in a futuristic hightech house which is totally computer-controlled. You can adjust so many settings that you need to know the owner's manual first before you can use your house, live in there. Some of these settings affect others, they interact with each other while other settings are only adjustable when you enabled the main setting for this area and others don't need further choices as they can only be turned on or off.
When you decide you want your house to dye the window glass when the sun shines you enable this option so now you have to adjust additional parameters for it. Do you want to dye the glass only around noon, to protect sensitive plants (only in a certain room?) and how do you want the colour of the dyed glass to behave? Shall it change - when, why and how? When the window glass is dyed do you maybe want the house to turn the light on automatically when you enter a certain room because the glass even decreased it's transparency? Do you want to have plate glass outside while it's matt inside?
Probably you noticed that this 'window glass example' was about Transparency and Reflectivity, even Animation and ordinary texture changes caused by Lightning parameters. That is not all yet: The wall and floor coverings, the surface of your furniture, decoration, your personal stuff, the stories you can read in books, what you can see in your TV set, the texture of your plants inside and in your garden, your clothes and even your texture, the color of your skin, everything is managed by the Material Definition (in this futuristic high tech house anyway). The Material Definition manages in single Resources and their materials and parameters the complete behavior of the appearance of every kind of texture applied to the mesh!
Of course the Material Definition offers tons of possibilities so you can adjust/ tune and of course add these window-setting parameters and many more to your personal wishlish of "hightech house behaviour", though in the Material Definition you only can choose texture relating parameters. Some of them are independent while other choices need further fine tuning. If you decide to switch one of the hightech house behaviour parametes off it will automatically turn off its adjustment- subparameters if there were some. Some parameter are interrelated in a way that changes in one parameter immediately affect the other, related one, others are stand alone parameters and depending on the way you mix your parameter- bundle your windows will behave, look and even work in different ways - to adjust them easily you will understand how to handle the tool for changes like this, the Material Definition, correctly, easily and even in a more efficient way than you probably did before.
