Okay, let’s make nails with heads, and collect what already exists versus what we want to add.
Current main categories in the addon:
Blender Internal,
Cycles Templates
Cycles Materials
V_Ray
Blender Internal will vanish with 2.8, so we shouldn’t even bother to change anything here. V-Ray. Well, it comes with the official Blender version. But V-Ray does not come with Bforartists nor Blender. So no point to keep this materials. That’s already two categories that we could remove from the addon.
I have yet to find out the difference between Cycles Templates and Cycles Materials. The templates are in the end materials too. So i would vote to make the Templates a sub category of the Cycles Materials.
That way we have just sub categories for Cycles. Ledt’s keep Blender Internal as long as we have the 2.7x line, and we have shrinked the main categories from 4 to 2.
You mentioned essentials and extended. So that could split the Cycles materials into two big categories again.
Anyways. We can do this at a later point. First let’s sort the existing Cycles sub categories. That’s the first thing that we need to fix i guess. Proper material categories. I made a few comments already.
Templates – the main category that we want to be a sub category. Should contain more complicated templates. See Essential category below.
Car Paint – Should not be a main category. Where could this fit?
Organic – This one could include stuff like skin, fur and leaf shaders
Glass
Textile – Rename to Fabric and leather
Groups – A single entry with Node groups. This one is a template
Utils – Two entries.This one is a template
Metal
Lights
Ceramic
Plastic
Earth – Could become procedural. Or go into the marble category below.
Wood
All
The categories that we want to add here is so far this:
Essential – Simple templates with Texture, Normalmap, etc. . The kind of stuff that you usually start with when you make your own setup, and where you again and again spend a dozen clicks at.
Bricks – maybe this one could be part of the wall main group. We don’t need more than two or three bricks examples.
Wall
Rock
Liquids – Water, orange juice, etc.
Marble
Paint
Paper
Ground
More ideas? Suggestions ? 