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  • wazou
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    wazou polycounter lvl 5
    with 2.8 and eevee, we will be able to have something really great!
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    @pior: nice!

    Here is mine. Its Maya inspired because I prefer when its more matte 


  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    Having at least one frontal lamp like in Maya gives a nice Fresnel effect. The other lamps can give some more nuance.

    I wanted to change the light direction based on rotation (instead of mouse-dragging the sphere widget), so I wrote this:
    import bpy<br>import math<br>from mathutils import Vector, Euler<br><br># Usage: set the values of the upper-case variables and run this script.<br># =============================================<br># Set the index of one of the three lamps to change.<br>LIGHT = 0 # Use 0, 1 or 2.<br><br># Set the X and Y rotation of the light in DEGREES.<br>ROTATION_X = 0<br>ROTATION_Y = -90<br># =============================================<br><br>vec = Vector( ( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 ) )<br>vec.rotate( Euler( ( math.radians( ROTATION_X ), math.radians( ROTATION_Y ), 0.0 ) ) )<br>bpy.context.user_preferences.system.solid_lights[ LIGHT ].direction = vec.normalized()
    If you open a Text view in Blender, click New (to create a blank text object) and paste the above and press the Run Script button, it changes the direction of the viewport light that you specified on the script based on a XY rotation, with angles in degrees.

    If you set X = 0 and Y = 0, you get plain a frontal lamp. If you use X = 0 and Y = -90, you get light coming in perfectly from the left.
    X pitches the light up and down (depending on a negative or positive angle). Y yaws the light left and right (also negative or positive).
    You need to test it with slight changes to get a feeling of what angle sign makes the light go in the direction you want.

    Once you get something you like, save your user preferences. There's also this addon here with some presets.
  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLnOBPVpG6c

    3 DataTransfer mods. 1 for turning chamfers into fake flllets, 1 for hard edges(you can skip this one if you dont want hard egdes) and one for the surface fix. There's 2 source meshes one for the fake fillets and one for the uncut, undisturbed surface. DataTransfers are masked by vertex groups.

    There's a few more vids on twitter:  and  and 

    Suprisingly simple stuff. To make this into a killer tool you'd have to find a good way to manage and maintain various surface source meshes(they can be unlinked from the scene, so as to keep it all clean). Or maybe just repeatedly applying the DataTransfer, could also work.  Doing the vertex group masking could possibly also be automated. Both would ideally be integrated into a boolean tool.

    For now, personally, I just use it as a final step to clean up unwanted shading on my lowpoly geo.

  • yursiv
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    yursiv polycounter lvl 10
    I am improving my subd modeling skills, and only now notice that it is something wrong with Blender bevel.
    And i'm wonder, what more experienced people that i'am thinking about this
    (Here is proposal for devs: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/10bbbc/bevel-edges-options)
    Here is blender bevel: 


    This kind of corners obviously beveled wrong way.
    Here is maya bevel with some options(looking good with "Radial" and "Auto"/"None" "mitering" option):

  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    Been a while since I posted on polycount. I have been playing with blender in the last 3 months and scripting in Blender.

    As mentioned by someone else I started a TexTools Addon for Blender, the main thread at the moment is on belnderartists. Source, documentaion and download are available on the bitbucket GIT page
    https://bitbucket.org/renderhjs/textools-blender/

    Today I worked on Anti Aliasing for the baking in Blender as well as some freeze selection mode to tweak meshes while baking, e.g. cages.



    There is also already some selection and transform tools. It is still an early version and I haven't put any Undo commands in the code or safe checked a lot of odd cases (e.g. UV sync mode, active object not in selection,...). But it's getting some nice progress.


  • Eepox
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    Eepox polycounter lvl 7
    Peris said:
    Hey guys, here's a little baking UI I put together. Makes it fast and easy to bake maps and iterate. Hope you find it useful!

    https://github.com/leukbaars/BRM-BakeUI



    Thanks @Peris I'll try this out!
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    Renderhjs. i'm excited to see that you are working on scripting for Blender. You have always made pro tools. I loved textools. Are you going to sale your script?
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    Sage said:
    Renderhjs. i'm excited to see that you are working on scripting for Blender. You have always made pro tools. I loved textools. Are you going to sale your script?
    No it is free but there is an option to donate via paypal. Some people believe that Blender needs a commercial pillar to mature, e.g. professional addons maintained by paid developers, and I am fine with that. But personally I have a different philosophy.  TexTools is free to use, copy the code or learn from. 

    All I want is a really good addon that is accessible. I have been a game and tool developer for many years now and having worked with Mac & Windows teams as well as artists with different art package experiences thought me one thing: If you want to push technology and ideas with tools: make them cross platform, easy to install and accessible. 

    I put great effort into packaging each module into it's own python package so that others can quicker find code they need or want to modify. The python files reflect the tool names. I tried the same with TexTools for 3dsMax back then, also for myself to dig back into the code again.

    As for my time: I create TexTools because I use it myself at work and teach friends and co workers on how to use them or these days introduce them to Blender. It often benefits me in a secondary way, as I am often the guy at work who builds pipe lines, guide artists on technical stuff etc.


    As for the latest Version

    TexTools Blender 0.7.1 is out:

    Changes:

    Undo
    Added Undo registers for most operators

    Anti Aliasing
    Select from None, 2x, 4x. When you enable Anti Aliasing the bake render is rendered at a scaled resulution and afterwards down scaled. Anti Aliasing works on any baking mode.

    Single
    I changed this behavior slightly: With multiple objects selected enable this when you want all items to be baked into a single texture as opposed to multiple. It uses the name or ID from the first item in the bake set list. This is great for multi part objects or exploded bake setups.

    Lock Selection
    Lock or unlock the current bake selection. When locked scene selection changes won't affect the baking list. This is great for tweaking meshes, cages or other settings while baking.

    UI improvements
    Mostly ghosting elements that are not available or ignored in the 'Single' mode. Also displays now the number of texture bakes on the bake button. This should make it easier for new users.

    Currently working on some bake explode tools which creates key frames for object pairs and moves them apart for baking, or exporting to other baking tools.

  • Peris
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    Peris polycounter lvl 17
    @renderhjs thank you so much for making this! I had a little time today to try it out and I will definitely be using it! I love the UV editing tools, really useful and powerful! I'd advise against adding default hotkeys to certain tools (like the align tool - believe it or not I had already assigned alt+arrow keys to stuff). There's a lot of blender plugins that do this and it can be annoying. 

    align edge and select similar, can't believe I lived without it <3

    I really like how you organized the UI, though I think you should consider making the baking and UV editing parts as separate plugins maybe? I'd love to see the bake tool more fleshed out as a separate UI :)

    I had some problems trying to bake, but I am using one of the overnight 2.79 builds so that might have something to do with it. Not sure how I feel about having to name objects _high and _low, I think it would be preferable not to have to rename things for baking if you are working with certain scene organisations or game assets. It's probably a good workflow for more complex baking setups though.

    Anyways, it's awesome, stoked to see you making tools for blender!


  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    Does anybody know if the 2.79a release brings any new features or is this "only" a bug fix? 
    I am curious about the rounded edge shader and if it will be implemented in this release or is a feature which shud be expected in 2.8

    Rounded edge + renderhjs great baking add-on, such a dream team for game prob creation.
  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator
    hypronost said:
    Gave the bevel shader a try with some booleans. friggin love it!
    Excuse me for the lowbie question, but how you cut those holes, with booleans? i don't get it
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    Yamanote said:
    thomasp said:
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)

    Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
    And the nice bevel around the holes was probably done with the "bevel shader". Its a feature that is implement it the 2.79 Daily Build
    Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaraOkqt04
    And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803

    Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    ... sorry for the big video in my previous post. The link was changed into an embedded video ^^

    Does anybody know if there is a feature in Blender where I can see all my UV island from all the objects in the scene at the same time in the image-editor as overlays without joining them into a single mesh?

    Here is an example how it looks like Modo:

    The white highlighted island is my current active object.



  • kio
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    kio polycounter lvl 15
    not for all objects - which would be stupid in my opinion, but from all selected objects:
     uv editor > View > Draw other Objects
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Yamanote said:
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)


    you must be what they call the glass-half-full type. i'm... the other type. ;)

    a mandatory 2.79 parallel install during the new viewport's early years would seem like a good bet.
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    kio said:
    not for all objects - which would be stupid in my opinion, but from all selected objects:
     uv editor > View > Draw other Objects
    Thank you but how can I see the UVs in Object mode? Or what do you mean by selected?
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    he means, you select different object in object mode and then switch to edit mode
    while only the last object will be in edit mode, you will still see all other objects you previously selected in the uv editor, slightly greyed out
    you still can only edit the uvs of the last selected object
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    he means, you select different object in object mode and then switch to edit mode
    while only the last object will be in edit mode, you will still see all other objects you previously selected in the uv editor, slightly greyed out
    you still can only edit the uvs of the last selected object
    That's what I have tried but somehow it won't work. Cant see anything besides my actual selected mesh.I have also checked another theme because of the colors scheme but still nothing. 
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow
    hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do.
    works for me without any problems
    maybe the wirecolor
    which version of blender are you using ?



  • Alemja
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    Alemja quad damage
    @renderhjs This is just in time for my new years resolution to give Blender an honest try (after I finish my current project) Thank you so much for Textools! I still use it in Max to this day and really excited to see it come to Blender, definitely makes me excited to switch!
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow
    hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do.
    works for me without any problems
    maybe the wirecolor
    which version of blender are you using ? 
    No need to upload it because somehow I got it to work but thank you very much for the help. I am using 2.79. It seems a little bit like a bug.
    I was testing it with the same scene set up like yours, just two cubes unwrapped with smart UV p. If I am selecting the first object then shift select the second one and switch to edit mode the only UVs that I can see are the from the last selected.  But if I clear the selection with "a" and then select a single face suddenly the other UVs appears. Don't know what is causing this problem, maybe another add-on. Don't know. But now it seems to work.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    Thanks, as mentioned on twitter I literally started studying your script which was a great start e.g. figuring out how to add active image nodes in cycles. So thanks a lot for your script.

    regarding:
    • hotkeys: Yes thinking about that, its a good point. I was thinking of having toggles in the preferences to enable or disable packaged shortcuts
    • Bake issues: Yes the 2.79 builds have issues with baking normals or so I have read. Waiting for the 2.79a public release myself with the bevel shader
    • Seperate plugins: I actually split the tools into 3 panels within the 'TexTools' tab. This makes it much easier to extend the baking and UV layout area in the future.


    Can't wait for 2.79a or 2.8 myself

    Thank you, its a bit frustrating at first but modeling is most defenitely faster than 3dsMax, I have used max for 16+ years but once I learned blender and its shortcuts it is just so much faster. Blender is at a golden age right now, lots of good developments happening and some great addons in the works.


    I updated TexTools a few days ago to Version 0.7.2

    Download
    GIT: https://bitbucket.org/renderhjs/textools-blender

    Changes from 0.7.2
    • Bake sets are sorted by name
    • New warn icons for objects that don't have UV's, don't have low poly objects or a miss match for low poly and cage object count.

    • Fixed the target normal in baking (was baking object space before)

    • Exclude Objects from Bake: Ignores all objects that are not part of the bake set selection from the Bake process, e.g. AO maps.

  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    A few days ago I asked for some bake example blend files, Alexander Latsuk aka so3Datel was kind enough to share a gun model with high and low poly objects with me.

    So I started with a script to declutter object names by matching high and low poly objects by their bounding box location and size. Only high poly objects are renamed to match the low poly names.


    Next I added selection tools for bake sets: Bake sets can be selected individually. Or by all warning items, low poly, high poly or cage models. Once bake sets are locked, view port selections can be independent.


    And finally I have been working on a explode tool: It moves all detected bake pairs apart into 6 directions. Offsets are based on bounding boxes and offsets to the center of all objects. Margins are a 35% of the average bounding box side. Keyframes are added to the timeline to switch back and forth.


    A new update will be out soon
  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
  • SnowInChina
  • Michael Knubben
    up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow
    hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do.
    works for me without any problems
    maybe the wirecolor
    which version of blender are you using ? 
    No need to upload it because somehow I got it to work but thank you very much for the help. I am using 2.79. It seems a little bit like a bug.
    I was testing it with the same scene set up like yours, just two cubes unwrapped with smart UV p. If I am selecting the first object then shift select the second one and switch to edit mode the only UVs that I can see are the from the last selected.  But if I clear the selection with "a" and then select a single face suddenly the other UVs appears. Don't know what is causing this problem, maybe another add-on. Don't know. But now it seems to work.
    This is something I seem to remember being up for discussion between the developers, but currently this only works for models that share the same texture. Could that have been the issue?
    This could also explain why you'd need to select a face, as textures can be applied per-face in the UV editor.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool

    Version 0.8.0 is up

    Download

    Changes

    UI Rollouts
    New structure for tool locations. Bake tools now have their own section.

    Organise
    Declutters your selected object names by matching high and low poly objects by their bounding box location and size. Only high poly objects are renamed to match the low poly names with the ' high' suffix.

    Explode
    Moves all selected bake pairs apart into 6 directions. Offsets are based on bounding boxes and offset to the center of the whole group. Margins are a 35% of the average side of all bounding boxes. Animation keyframes are added at 0 and 50 of each selected object to transition between the 2 states. Keyframes can be removed afterwards if not desired.

    Select by type
    Select from the baking sets all objects that match a critera such as 'Warning', 'Low', 'High' or 'Cage' objects.
    Tip: When bake sets are locked you can select scene objects here independently of the bake sets.


    Align Edge
    Align edge now supports multiple islands by selecting edges on for each uv island.

  • Jakro
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    Jakro greentooth
    @renderhjs This looks fantastic! Is there any chance of a tool that would automatically orient islands so that their rotation was correctly aligned for textures? For example 
  • rexo12
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    rexo12 interpolator
    Yamanote said:
    thomasp said:
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)

    Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
    And the nice bevel around the holes was probably done with the "bevel shader". Its a feature that is implement it the 2.79 Daily Build
    Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaraOkqt04
    And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803

    Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
    Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?

    I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
  • Zimlorog
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    Zimlorog polycounter lvl 7
    rexo12 said:
    Yamanote said:
    thomasp said:
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)

    Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
    And the nice bevel around the holes was probably done with the "bevel shader". Its a feature that is implement it the 2.79 Daily Build
    Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaraOkqt04
    And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803

    Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
    Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?

    I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
    The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.

    *Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    Jakro said:
    @renderhjs This looks fantastic! Is there any chance of a tool that would automatically orient islands so that their rotation was correctly aligned for textures? For example...
    Funny that you say that, its on my list of new tools that I wanted to explore. Like a a tool that aligns all UV islands to world topology from a readable perspective. E.g. UV island in 3D space is mostly flat, align to top XY view. Or when sideways follow along horizontal axis and z for UV up.
    Very common issue I face often myself when unwrapping and only realize when already texturing that faces are flipped or rotated 90 or 180 degrees off.


    I worked today on a UV channel dropdown menu to quickly access UV channels of a mesh. It just labels them as UV channel ID's instead of full names. Also shows warning if no UV available.


  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    that looks awesome.
  • Jakro
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    Jakro greentooth
    @renderhjs That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it! Loving the look of that drop down. Would be great if user could reorganise channels too. I have this set up in my blender using a script I found. Link

  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    Jakro said:
    @renderhjs That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it! Loving the look of that drop down. Would be great if user could reorganise channels too. I have this set up in my blender using a script I found. Link
    Thats awesome, yes i have already a UX idea on how to integrate it. Thanks.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    The UV channel swapping is now implemented. When there is no UV channel it shows a button to quickly generate a UV via smart projection.

    Jakro: I managed to actually reduce the code to 1 operator (handles up or down) with 60 lines of code. See source code



  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    fantastic work with textools for blender
    one bug i noticed, if you create a standard cube and do a quick smart uv project and bake a gradient map, one side gets baked upside down.
    if i create my own cube from a plane, this does not happen



  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    @SnowInChina
    I have not yet been able to reproduce that even with a plain cube model and smart UVs projected. The shader used for baking uses the object space as opposed to UV space to generate the gradient direction (so independent of UV layout). Will investigate a bit more tomorrow 

    Resize Area
    I added today the 'Resize Area' (canvas resize in TexTools for 3dsMax). It works similar to Photoshop's resize canvas to extend or shrink the UV area. It supports square and non square aspect ratios. 
    When there is a background image in the UV editor it will resize that image as well so that the correct aspect ratio is show. When no background image is shown a TexTools internal image is generated with the Theme's background color but slightly brighter.



    Works great when working with texel densities or having to combine UV's of different models. Will release an update when I have a few other issues fixed as well.
  • SnowInChina
  • realeyez
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    realeyez polycounter lvl 11
    Zimlorog said:
    rexo12 said:
    Yamanote said:
    thomasp said:
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)

    Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
    And the nice bevel around the holes was probably done with the "bevel shader". Its a feature that is implement it the 2.79 Daily Build
    Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaraOkqt04
    And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803

    Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
    Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?

    I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
    The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.

    *Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
    This is the idea. It saves an absolute ton of time in Modo in both the high and low poly to be able to work with bevels and booleans and just crash geo together and have it bake out as if it was modeled together. It's also good for concept work and rendering.

    Blenders implementation works great for rendering in Cycles, but has really bad normal issues and pixel artifacts when baking to a normal map for a game res workflow. Sadly I'm not sure if it's a priority for the devs, because the original feature request was mainly for a Cycles rendering feature. I'd love to be wrong though! 

    You can see the problems it creates when baking in this BA thread: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?436279-V-ray-got-rounded-hard-edge-shader&p=3269112&viewfull=1#post3269112
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    For those that have tried Eevee (the PBR viewport of 2.8), have you noticed getting a different result on screen than the demos that are around? There's these demo scenes: https://www.blender.org/2-8/#try-it-yourself

    If I load the "Race Spaceship" scene it looks very different from the pictures, with the scene almost all black, and the only light type that seems to work for me is Sun. I used the 2.8 build from January 14.
    I'm curious if someone else had a similar experience so I can rule out that my GPU (nvidia 960m) doesn't support a needed feature or something like that.
  • Peris
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    Peris polycounter lvl 17
    realeyez said:
    Zimlorog said:
    rexo12 said:
    Yamanote said:
    thomasp said:
    Yamanote said:
    I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
    for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
    That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses :)

    Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
    And the nice bevel around the holes was probably done with the "bevel shader". Its a feature that is implement it the 2.79 Daily Build
    Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaraOkqt04
    And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803

    Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
    Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?

    I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
    The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.

    *Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
    This is the idea. It saves an absolute ton of time in Modo in both the high and low poly to be able to work with bevels and booleans and just crash geo together and have it bake out as if it was modeled together. It's also good for concept work and rendering.

    Blenders implementation works great for rendering in Cycles, but has really bad normal issues and pixel artifacts when baking to a normal map for a game res workflow. Sadly I'm not sure if it's a priority for the devs, because the original feature request was mainly for a Cycles rendering feature. I'd love to be wrong though! 

    You can see the problems it creates when baking in this BA thread: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?436279-V-ray-got-rounded-hard-edge-shader&p=3269112&viewfull=1#post3269112
    The pixel artifacts got fixed a few days ago by Brecht: https://developer.blender.org/rB2dbcc17897f18090440ad0756fbc35210a01c9b8 

  • Mad_Llama
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    Mad_Llama polycounter lvl 6
    Holy crap I was waiting for so long for that pixel artifact fix >_< Still amazing work by Brecht!
  • realeyez
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    realeyez polycounter lvl 11
    Peris said:
    The pixel artifacts got fixed a few days ago by Brecht: https://developer.blender.org/rB2dbcc17897f18090440ad0756fbc35210a01c9b8 

    Fantastic news! SO glad that got addressed. 
  • Peris
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    Peris polycounter lvl 17
    I updated my baking panel, it now supports cages and lowpoly only baking. I also added some buttons to quickly change texture sizes.

    Link: https://github.com/leukbaars/BRM-BakeUI

    Here's what it looks like now: 


    Keeping it condensed was challenging, but I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully most of it is self explanatory. I'm thinking about adding custom icons to it now as well after seeing @renderhjs ' textools :D.

    I hope someone finds it useful! If you have some feedback let me know :)
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    SnowInChina Thanks I will have a look at the file this week to investigate.


    Today I have been working on the 'Texel Density' tools as well as rewriting the Checkermap tool for TexTools



    Texel Density can be applied in 2 different modes: scale UV's as a whole or individually per UV Island. The ratio is very simple to read, it is esentially pixels per 1 unit/ meter. The script finds textures assigned in materials or to the UV faces per object and uses that to calculate the texel sizes.
    Objects are scale dependent and don't have to be reset in scale, this also works just fine with non square textures and UV layouts, which is why I see this and the 'Resize' tools as great companions for level assets.

    I will push out an update later this week with all the recent new features and bug fixes

  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    renderhjs said:
    Texel Density can be applied in 2 different modes: scale UV's as a whole or individually per UV Island. The ratio is very simple to read, it is esentially pixels per 1 unit/ meter. The script finds textures assigned in materials or to the UV faces per object and uses that to calculate the texel sizes.

     that's really awesome
    one suggestion, where i am not too sure how easy it is to implement
    could you implement presets the user could save, so whatever you are working on, you could have the same texel density project wide, without loading a model with the right density and picking from it ?

  • Belzzebozz
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    Belzzebozz polycounter lvl 6
    renderhjs: hmmm... Yesterday I thought: I need to ask renderhjs if it would be hard to implement some kind of a "texel density tool kit"...  :D  Yeah !!! Thanks... but somehow creepy.

  • RN
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    RN sublime tool


    I updated my dolly-zoom addon with a new feature that lets you change the camera lens shift while keeping the cursor in place on screen.
    You can get it at the same gumroad address: https://gum.co/zxZtr
17273757778139
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