Material Pack for Beginners

[David-Everlasting-Media]

Describe the project you are working on

Would be amazing if Redot shipped with a basic material pack.
Metals, plastics, woods, water, maybe some ground cover / foliage textures so people can quickly get a project started. Placeholder materials.

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Any time a new Redot user starts a new project, the first thing they want to do is get some functionality going, and then they realize they are adding functions to blocks. There are some free addons to model/greybox in Godot, and Blender is also free, but the materials don't translate. There's an entire skillset to baking materials to texture required to even get basic objects into Godot.

A basic material pack for beginners would trim the barrier to entry for new Redot users who are just getting started on their gamedev journey. They can model some simple shapes in Blender or Redot, then apply materials from the material pack.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Having some primer materials, or "placeholder" materials will help new game devs scale the wall to getting started. Make a mesh, apply a material; instead of spending unknown hours learning whether Blender materials can even be converted to Redot compatible mats, (you don't even know what you don't even know when getting started). It can also be a teaching moment if we include some documentation about the materials and aim that at courses / docs for learning how to bake textures and model in Blender etc. It could be a powerful pivot point for a lot of neon-green devs.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

I would have new projects include the folder "Starter Pack" in every new project.
If a game dev decides they want to discard the entire folder, they can.
We could also include some basic geometries. Wall, floor, arch, doorway, stairs, simple geometries that are easy enough to make and use. "Starter Models".

-Starter Pack
-- Materials
-- Models

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

N/A Folder can be deleted without script.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

Because users would have to know about it in advance, if it's an asset.
Making this a part of every project will reach more new devs before they've had a chance to rabbithole and reach despair.

And if they know it's in the project already they know they can jump in, mock up a scene to convey their idea, and present it to their team, or just get started coding.

[shin0kaze]

Maybe make couple of game templates with basic assets and some code per genre, to make prototyping faster.