what exactly does it mean when you say Materials ready?

[Tenly]

In the same place I used to put a texture, the box now says materials. and just reading chics post about 8 sided and materials...Im even more confused.

Would that be that you add a texture, and then define it as stone or metal or plastic, for example, and using a simple 8 sided object as an example, each of those faces could have a different texture.material? so one face can be shiny metal and have a metal texture, and another could be set as diamond texture and select for something shiny. sorry do not have the viewer open so dont recall all the options.

YES I read the SL notes about materials ready but I didnt see how it differed other than simply renaming the word "texture" to "materials" and selecting the type of material. And Ive tried on so called "materials ready" items and "not materials ready" and didnt see a single difference between the object. In this case it was hair that I was considering purchasing.

[Cerise Sorbet]

For Second Life it's only going to mean that you can add normal and specular maps. Any object with modify permission is going to be "materials ready", for no-mod objects it's going to mean that the maker included such maps, or offered some scripted way to get them on there.

 

[arton Rotaru]

Just in case....

In order to see the effects on an object which has normal/gloss and specular/environment maps applied, you will have to turn on Hardware Skinning and Advanced Light Model in the viewer. Or the object will just render the diffuse texture only.

These texture maps (Material_Data) are not to confuse with the Materials we can set as prim properties.

[Chic Aeon]

yes, it is confusing.

 

BLENDER uses the term "materials" when it defines a group of faces that will be treated the same in your end model. So yes, on your eight sided question.  So each face of a six sided cube could have a different texture as well as other choices like tranparency, glow, specular or normal maps, etc. Each face would need to be defined as a separate material. 

 

"Materials Ready" was a term used a lot when specular and normal maps were enabled in Second Life. Lots of folks then (and some now certainly) could not see the specual or normal maps because their computers weren't powerful enough. And when normal and specular maps were FIRST introduced, only those with the official Linden viewer could see. Now more folks use the advanced lighting choice and many creators don't add that text to their vendors any longer.

 

Some (including me) have decided that baked textures (using Cycles in Blender for me) do a better job than normal maps which can sometimes look very bad depending on Windlight settings and use them sparingly.

 

So EASY to be confused and many to most of the folks on this forum use Blender and so oftentimes we are talking about the term in the software, not normal or specular mapping and advanced lighting.

[Tenly]

Thanks for the info everyone. I understand specular maps and to a certain extent normal maps as many of the templates Ive purchased over the years have these included. And I see them in the PSD files when I create my own textures for the products. Though I normaly just leave the purple maps off...I think those are the "normal" maps? Im doing blender from step one with blender sensei so Ill probably learn a bit more of that down the road. At least now, thanks you you guys Ill understand what Im looking at.

Im super visual...which is why learning for me can be harder...i.e I read books like an insane person...but when it comes to learning hands on is always better than reading. So videos help a lot though you cant ask a video a question when you get lost or stumped or push the wrong key. 

So, appreciate all your help very much.