Give 2.8 an equivalent to Blender Render's "Textured Solid" texture preview
2.79 gave users the option to preview textures on models without ever giving them materials. This was extremely handy if you weren't going to make your object's final materials in Blender, ie if you were exporting the model to a game engine (say, Unity) and would handle materials there.
My suggestion is simply a toggle in the Lookdev render mode that allows you to see objects' textures without giving them proper materials first. That's it!
Here's my full reasoning behind this feature...
The old pipeline to see a texture on a model, assuming your default file had the right settings:
- Import an image.
- Unwrap the model.
The new pipeline:
- Import an image.
- Unwrap the model.
- Go to the Materials tab and click "new material."
- Change "Base Color" to "Image Texture."
- Select the correct texture from the dropdown.
Now not only is this adding several more steps, but you're adding more materials to the scene, which are all going to auto-import to Unity when saved. If you're handling materials solely in Unity, this is just more to deal with every time you re-import. It's a 30-60 second hoop to jump through every time I make a new object or use a new texture, and it's totally unnecessary.
It seems like a small hangup, but I'm finding it a big enough slowdown to my workflow that I'll be going back to 2.79 until there's a way around this. As gorgeous as 2.8 is, if it's slower than 2.79, it's not worth making the swap.
6 Comments
Cannot agree more, I can't use 2.8 as a result of this roadblock; it feels like such a small hangup but 2.79's ability to immediately preview a textured unwrap is essential to quickly iterating on a model for me, and 2.8's new pipeline adds a lot of unnecessary clutter to the whole process. Please consider this change.
this is already possible in the latest builds.. pablo even talked about it on Blender Today this week: youtu.be/YshDHmriRco
* @testure * That's actually not what Pablo showed there! He was demonstrating that if you HAVE a material with a texture already assigned, then being in matcap mode lets you use matcaps with object's textures. It does NOT work if you do not have a material assigned, which is what I'm requesting.
* @johndaguerra *
This is not proper material, but it will work with texture mode and it will allow to select texture from panel. {attachment 7522427jpg} {attachment 7531229jpg}
Make such preview-material for your startup file and use it.
I can create an addon that will automate the extra steps in 2.80
* @Eitan * Are you sure, we need addon for it? Because now there is addom command recorder, that can execute list of commands as macros. May be macro will do?