To wrap it up. My reasons for rejecting other matcaps (again, talking about sculpting only):
matcap2 - Too bright, flatten forms.
matcap3, matcap4 - Too bright and very strong light terminator.
skintone- Lighting skews forms on sides.
Studio_Clay - Bottom light.
Skin - Rotated lighting, lit bottom.
skin_matcap- Too flat, rotated bottom shadow, bit skewed.
Skin(2)- Not that bad but bottom is too bright, matcap is quite flat. Can be fixed.
soft_clay- Too much light on bottom and sides. Lack of proper specular highlight.
BrownClay5 - Worse version of BrownClay.
muddy - Lighting is very skewed. Especially on outer parts.
Matcap_DefaultWax- Oversaturated, uneasy for eyes.
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Ok, good to know. But wouldn’t be better to have those hdris still available in blender until they get replaced, instead of nothing? Feels a bit weird to enter the lookdev mode and have nothing in there.
In your best 3 I prefer the second one (TRWP_Sculpt). As you said, it’s really fantastic, and actually it’s my favorite matcap on this thread.
The first one is waaaay too dark for my taste, and probably will not please many people as for example the second one.
Still I would like to see those 3 matcaps included, but if I had to choose one, the TRWP_Sculpt is my choice.
Now, looking at the preliminary list, if we wanted to include those 3, which ones would you remove?
And btw, now that you talked about contrast and stuff, that would be a nice feature to add to the matcaps panel, among other stuff like rotation, scale(u/v) etc… 
now that you talked about contrast and stuff, that would be a nice feature to add to the matcaps panel, among other stuff like rotation, scale(u/v) etc…
Yeah i’d really like to see contrast, saturation and full rotation added, i was thinking about it the other day when testing MatCaps.
2.7 also had a nice amount of MatCaps (24) and it would be good if 2.8 has around the same. I know it’s much easier to add MatCaps now and i know you can do a lot more with them, but even so it’s nice to have a decent selection for fresh installs and i think a lot of people still wont go searching for MatCaps and will just stick to the defaults. If something like contrast/saturation and rotation sliders are added you also get way more options out of the default MatCaps.
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Moniewski: Thanks for helping out testing.
I’ve updated the list. It includes all the ones you labeled ‘best’ for sculpting. I now have 22 default matcaps. It’s a bit confusing, because i renamed many of them to fit together better.
Changes:
- Added TRWP_Sculpt (Basic_2)
- Added Matcap5 (Basic_1)
- Added DarkRimLight (Check_rim_light)
- Added Jade
- Added Skin.exr
- Removed Clay_Soft - was similar to Matcap5, but with no real highlight definition
- Removed Ocean - was too specific, replaced with DarkRimLight
- Removed Skin Smooth & Skin Diffuse. Replaced with superior skin.exr
- Removed Clay_rim
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As of today, Blender 2.8 now has the updated list included by default.
Here’s the commit log: https://developer.blender.org/rB6a493e44302588c35a269ed34a3e679c7912074b
Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed, also the ones we didn’t pick. There were many great submissions, and was hard to pick the best set.
Now that we have them in by default, we can continue to test them out over the coming weeks, and then, if necessary, make adjustments or further improvements.
Blender 2.8 will also retain the ability to load custom matcaps, if your personal favourite or project-specific matcap isn’t included in the default list.
Cheers
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Why not let them have their original names? That’s how this is done in zbrush for example, and it’s a lot easier to remember their names, instead of generic names.
Because the original names were not consistent, would not sort properly (we use alphabetical sorting), and were often times not descriptive, ie ‘matcap1.exr’
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As an user of other 3d apps too, honestly I have no problem with the sorting etc. It’s just that we are used to see and use matcaps/materials with meaningful names on other apps, even though they are sorted alphabetically as well. And overall I think it’s better to have meaningful names. But it’s not a big issue.
Well certainly I agree the names should be meaningful. How would you change any of the current names to be more meaningful?
I think most of their original names were unique and meaningful enough from the start. (I was already used to some of the names actually) Perhaps only those with too generic names should be renamed?
The original names could not be used, because they were not consistent. They used different naming schemes, and sometimes the name of the author. For built-in Blender features, we don’t name them after authors, which also quickly becomes impossible as many people collaborate. Instead, features should be given descriptive names so that users can understand their purpose as easily as possible.
Using the original names also would break correct sorting, so that groups of similar matcaps would not be placed together. The sorting is more important than the names themselves, because the sort order is what you see in the UI picker inside Blender itself.
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I disagree with you.
#4 is probably the best matcap for scuplting on that list and you are asking for the removal? Are you serious?
In your eyes some matcaps might look similar but they are not, they are different and behave differently when sculpting/rendering.
So no, no removal of those matcaps. So if you want to add your matcap, the best you can do is ask to increase the number of matcaps to 24 again, maybe they will consider adding yours.
Okay then. 
…
my two cents here, respect the list looks nice, i would remove the third, because its really similar to the first one (not sure if the amount of matcaps its fixed for some reason). Naming wise is something like the list it self, thanks to one of the coolest features in the new 2.8 its not that important really, because now we can !add our own mat caps!!!, but if the set its named under a convention like numbers or inicials or __ or – its easier to find any matcap that we want to add later.
Contributors info could be add into a README file, (sorry for the caps but usually its writen like that 
)
As is the list right now covers a nice range of use case, from normal sculpt to diagnose and presentation .
Custom matcaps are one of the coolest additions in 2.8 (this is NOT an entry just a comment)
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Here is the video about the current selection! Thanks to everyone involved!
Remember nothing is set in stone. From now on we can continue improving the existing ones if we find issues, maybe swapping some, or just contributing new ones, but I think the current selection is a good starting point and a huge step forward from 2.7. Thanks again everyone, you’re awesome.
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@billrey It seems to me that “basic_1” and “basic_2” are quite similar to each other, with the latter being more clear and useful imo.
So what about only keeping a desaturated version of “basic_2” instead? It could then be called “basic_bright” since there is also a “basic_dark” one.
Left: basic_2 , right: basic_1
left: basic_2 , right: basic_2 desaturated
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I personally prefer the way basic_2 color looks by default, it’s easy on the eyes and nice to work for hours. Imo, personal variations of it should be done by the users themselves.
Hi Erstus. Your matcap seems nice too, though we already included one similar skin matcap by default - do you have some examples that demonstrates if it is superior to the included skin.exr?
1 Like