ldconfig.ldr - need magnet material

[Steffen]

Analogous to metal and rubber,
we IMHO need a special material in ldconfig.ldr for the train magnet's material, e.g.:

http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...499c01.dat

I'll send Scott a note... :-)

[Scott Wardlaw]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I've given this quite a bit of thought, and even though I'm both a big train fan and enjoy high quality renders, I don't think that I can support this addition. I don't want to clutter up ldconfig with colors that are no longer made and were only used for one part. Otherwise, there would be a lot of colors that we would need to add.

If anyone has a different opinion, please speak up.

On a side note, when I get the 2012 Color Chart from LEGO, I plan on releasing an update to ldconfig. For now, Lavender is the only new color since the last update; along with a few minor tweaks to color edges and color values. If anyone feels that a current edge or color value is "way off", please let me know.

Thanks,
Scott W.

[Steffen]

Hello Scott,

I'm of course not too happy with these counterarguments.

I appreciate that you do not want to clutter ldconfig.ldr, but I do not as well.

I also cannot follow your counter-arguments,
please let me ask some questions against the points you make:

(1) > I don't want to clutter up ldconfig with colors that are no longer made.

Why should this be an argument against introducing a magnet material?
We model parts ranging from the very beginnings, even including Mursten, up to today.
We also have a color for "milky white" e.g. for the historic antenna. That's nice!
So if magnets were present in the 80's, why not add this material?
It is needed to properly model the parts, currently we substitute the magnets with dark grey plastic
material, but that is logically wrong and just a workaround. That it looks bad in renders is just an additional oddity.
The magnet material simply has been forgotten when creating the materials for rubber and metal.
It is just a missing one.

(2) >> and were only used for one part.

That is not true. Example parts using this material are:
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/73092
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x799
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/735
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x547
You can see also from peeron that this material was present in lots of sets.
When playing with these sets in LDRAW - which I do - the absence of that material becomes
simply just evident.

(3) >> Otherwise, there would be a lot of colors that we would need to add.

Could you be more specific here? I cannot imagine more missing materials. I would be happy if you could name them.
Ah, while thinking, just one, maybe: "black thread" (for hooks etc.)
But besides that? LEGO consists of 99% ABS plastic, and the addition of "foreign" materials is minimal:
just some metal variants, some rubber for tyres etc., and, well, this very magnet material.
What other materials are you anticipating?
I'm not asking for 100 new materials. Just 1. A single line in ldconfig.ldr, which would allow correct logical
modeling of the materials, and would allow to easily assign a material to this when raytracing.
Using the grey plastic substitute has as consequence that you manually have to edit each file
before you can ray-trace it properly. You have to tediously look up the parts where the "substitution grey plastic"
color is used, and change that to magnet material.
Why force the users to do that, when this can easily be avoided by adding a single line in ldconfig.ldr?

...

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm with Steffen on this one. The are lots of models that use magnets. I think a magnet material would be value added.

[Chris Dee]

I agree. I think the benefits to the LDraw user community far out-weigh the overhead of an additional line in LDConfig.

[Scott Wardlaw]

OK, I'm willing to make an exception based on the majority. For the record, it is still just a single part; though it has many forms.

If we add a new material...

We should probably allow some wiggle room. Instead of calling the material Magnet, it might be better to call it Porous_Metal. We already have Metal as a material (which can be assumed to be polished).

Thoughts on this?

Also, any thoughts on defining the properties (reflection, refraction, specular, roughness, etc.) of each of these materials, so that there is a common way to show them? Could that information be added to ldconfig without causing any programs to crash?

Thanks,
Scott W.

[Steffen]

thanks for the compromise, happy to hear that!

the primary goal for me here is getting a unique color code.
that will allow me to fine-tune the appearance in renders.
for ldconfig.ldr, a rough first approximation would be sufficient IMHO,
as we can improve this easily in later iterations.
I'm not requesting a syntax extension of ldconfig.ldr here, just a color code.

having that color code will allow us to let these
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...499c01.dat
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...959c01.dat
leave the PT finally.

also, the official file s\735s01.dat will use that new color code.

[Scott Wardlaw]

I have added this line under LDraw Internal Common Material Colours:

0 !COLOUR Magnet CODE 493 VALUE #656761 EDGE #595959 METAL

Please let me know if that meets your needs. I don't think METAL is an accurate material, but I think that the LSC has to issue a new enumeration for a new material. Anyone on the LSC want to speak to this, or recommend a name for the Magnet material? I still recommend POROUS_METAL.

Thanks,
Scott

[Travis Cobbs]

Are LEGO magnets porous metal, or are they ceramic? Visually, they look ceramic (like these) to me, so perhaps MATTE_CERAMIC is a better name for the material.

[Steffen]

thank you very much!
the most important thing for me is the defined color code.

where can I find the change? this file
http://www.ldraw.org/library/unofficial/ldconfig.ldr
seems to not yet contain it.

does the PT use that, so I can submit parts using the new color to the PT?

(locally, of course, I can manually edit the file)

[Michael Heidemann]

Just try to update my LDConfig.ldr, but there is no change so far for the new material. When will it be updated?

[Chris Dee]

When I receive a new version from Scott. He still has unanwered questions.

Anyone on the LSC want to speak to this, or recommend a name for the Magnet material? I still recommend POROUS_METAL.

[Steffen]

Hello Scott, to answer your questions from my non-LSC-side:

(a) The color code and value look good to me.

(b) Color number 493 sounds reasonable to me.

© Color name "Magnet" sounds good to me as well.

(d) Material type "POROUS_METAL" sounds good to me as well, because METAL would result in a too-high-polished look,
however: I think that we should postpone the introduction of this new syntax, because _all_ tools parsing ldconfig.ldr (including LDView) will have to be adjusted to understand that new syntax element. This could break many things for people. This is exactly what I did _not_ want to happen with the introduction of the new color. For me, just the new number 493 is sufficient. It allows the user to assign a specific material to this when rendering, and that's all I wanted. I suggest to not extend the syntax of ldconfig.ldr now, and instead simply use METAL for now.

[Travis Cobbs]

Nobody has answered my question about the magnets in question actually being ceramic. I'm pretty sure they're not metallic, and hence POROUS_METAL would be horrible. Having said that, Scott isn't allowed to add new materials; only the LSC can do that, since the !COLOUR spec lists the only valid materials.

[Steffen]

Yikes, you are right. Maybe it would be better if the enum wouldn't focus on the physical properties
but instead on the visual ones or the purpose. So simply "MAGNET" would also be OK.

However: this all gets too troublesome already. Introducing new keywords in the syntax of ldconfig.ldr
etc. will produce many problems for many people currently;
all I wanted was to get a unique number for the magnet ... :-|

[Scott Wardlaw]

I can't confirm, but I believe that you are right about LEGO magnets being made of a ceramic material. Does anyone have a suggestion for a generic material that will cover metal-like surfaces with a relatively rough surface? CERAMIC seams a bit too specific to me.

Thanks,
Scott W.

[Tim Gould]

Why not just go for SPECIAL? That would cover all parts that don't obey the standard rules. They're likely few enough that they can be handled separately anyway.

Tim

PS. I sent you an email yesterday. Could you let me know if you didn't receive it? (no rush if you did).

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Nobody has answered my question about the magnets in question actually being ceramic.

I cant confirm in any official capacity, but I chipped one once and it felt pretty ceramic to me.

[Steffen]

I have now updated all affected parts on the PT with the new color number 493:

http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...499c01.dat
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg.../u9044.dat
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...735s01.dat
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cg...959c01.dat

The last remaining thing now is to update ldconfig.ldr on the PT with the new color code line.

[Steffen]

that has happened now. see
http://www.ldraw.org/library/unofficial/ldconfig.ldr
http://www.ldraw.org/library/official/ldconfig.ldr

EDITED:
Sorry, the 2 links above seem to be outdated.
I know that the file is on the PT, because the rendered images already use the new colors.
What's the URL of that file?
What should happen to the 2 outdated (deprecated?) URLs above?

[Chris Dee]

These files should be deleted and have been.

The PT image generation uses http://www.ldraw.org/library/official/LDConfig.ldr