Collected manual notes, requests for documentation

[tngreene]

I have received many useful e-mails from one of our users @arb65912

Here is a summery of requests

Materials

• [ ] What will be exported (diffuse color, intensity, specular intensity, emit value)
  • [x] Covered implicitly in materials section (only these ones)
  • [ ] should explicitly say "These things have changed"
• [x] Use of Draw setting in material
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [x] No example for its purpose
• [ ] Draped setting
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Example needed?
• [ ] Manipulators
  • [ ] Need examples for a few manipulators
  • [ ] Link to cleaned developer blog post?
• [ ] Override specularity
  • [ ] Applications for PBR
• [ ] Use alpha cutoff
  • [ ] Needs Examples
• [ ] Surface type
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Need explanation between visual (what it looks like) and what this does
• [ ] Camera collision
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Example of how to use it
• [ ] Override light level
  • [x] covered as setting
  • [ ] Include example with glowing buttons?
• [x] Night texture preview
  • [x] Covered description
• [ ] Tint
  • [ ] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Need explaination and definition of words like albedo, emissiveness
• [ ] Part Of Cockpit Panel
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Need connection between these and plane maker
• [ ] Custom Properties
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Example of how this will get used in X-Plane
  • [ ] Understanding of what "reset" is and why it is important to OBJ
• [ ] Weight
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Needs understanding of how it gets written in OBJ and how that affects X-Plane 11
• [ ] Conditions
  • [x] Covered as setting
  • [ ] Needs better explanation and example of use
• [ ] How does the material-per-layer vs material-per-object work? (hint this is a misconception. Don't look at this bug and assume this is a thing future onlookers. Okay?)

[tngreene]

Textures

• [ ] Need basic tutorial for how to set the basic 3 textures, Default, Night, Normal/Specular
  • [ ] Glossary For these words
  • [ ] How they affect PBR
• [ ] Getting a live preview for in-game textures
  • [ ] What is the state of this feature, and its future?
• [ ] How does textures-per-material-per-layer work vs textures per-material-per-object work? (hint this is a misconception. Don't look at this bug and assume this is a thing future onlookers. Okay?)
• [ ] Better guide to render baking

[tngreene]

OBJ/Exporter Questions

• [ ] How, in broad terms, does the OBJ file spec work?
• [ ] What are relative paths?
  • [ ] Covered briefly with layer names
• [ ] Where are log files?
• [ ] How do you find text errors?
• [ ] Better explanation of how datarefs are used to interpolate between two values, since that is a common theme in the exporter and in X-Plane

Layers

• [x] Will Optimize Change geometry?
  • [x] Covered in Settings description
• [ ] LODs
  • [ ] Covered in settings, missing less than, greater than information correctly explained
  • [ ] Explanation for why you would want 4 LOD bins and how that would work

[tngreene]

Animations

• [ ] Detailed explanation of dataref driven development (see above)
• [x] Remove all references to loc/rot/locrot
• [ ] Bone animation needs major explaination
• [ ] Resolve "rotations along an arbitrary axis can look flipped" section in previous manual. What was it talking about?
• [ ] Details about show/hide
• [ ] Some animations example, such as an animated rudder (thanks #119 )

[tngreene]

• [ ] Should also mention that it may appear Blender is frozen or your OS is not even responding, but exporting lots of verticies just takes time.