Blender questions
polycount lvl 666
Been trying out the latest version of Blender (2.66), and have a few questions I was hoping some of the Blender users around here might be able to answer:
-How do you use enable flat color (shadeless) for painting? I've tried messing around with the "N" menus shading types (GLSL, Multitexture, SingleTexture) and their options, plus viewport shading modes (texture and solid), but most of them dont seem to do anything. I'm sure I got this working before in previous versions but nothing's working now.
-The For some reason it doesn't seem to keep my UI layout, does that have a separate Save Settings dialog then the one in preferences? I also grabbed a graphicall build and it automatically used some of my settings which is weird because I didn't import them and they're saved to a different folder :shifty:
-Is there a more robust Raycast/Paint selection tool somewhere? The default one ("C") is sort of lousy as you can't navigate while using it or integrate it with basic selection (like Modo).
-How do you use enable flat color (shadeless) for painting? I've tried messing around with the "N" menus shading types (GLSL, Multitexture, SingleTexture) and their options, plus viewport shading modes (texture and solid), but most of them dont seem to do anything. I'm sure I got this working before in previous versions but nothing's working now.
-The For some reason it doesn't seem to keep my UI layout, does that have a separate Save Settings dialog then the one in preferences? I also grabbed a graphicall build and it automatically used some of my settings which is weird because I didn't import them and they're saved to a different folder :shifty:
-Is there a more robust Raycast/Paint selection tool somewhere? The default one ("C") is sort of lousy as you can't navigate while using it or integrate it with basic selection (like Modo).
Replies
a. Make sure I'm in the Blender Render mode.
b. Use the Texture Paint Layer Manager. (Hit N in the 3d view to see the layer manager.)
c. Be in GLSL shading mode.
This allows you to use the shader properties to get your shading information. So, you can set up lights how you want it, and just paint. Only drawback is that it defaults to 2k textures when you create them. Asides from that, you can set the material to shadeless and do your work.
2. UI should be saved every time you save your scene. If you want the UI to look a certain way by default, just go to File> Save Startup File. Be sure to do this from a new scene, otherwise you'll load up the current file you're working on at the time. As for the Graphicall builds, the settings for Blender is saved to your (Windows) C:/Users/<User Name>/AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender folder. config/ is your current Blender config, scripts/ is scripts that you have imported.
3. Not that I know of.
Another thing I'm wondering is how you scale multiple UV shells/elements based on their individual centers? In the regular Viewport there's a menu for changing the pivot point, but it doesn't seem to carry over to the UV window. The basic unwrap doesn't use any padding (and has no options for it afaik), so it seems and that would be any easy way to deal with it.
When you unwrap there should be a slider for margin in the panel that has all the options when you add a primitive and stuff. Alternatively, in the image editor you can go UV -> Pack Islands (or Ctrl+P) and then adjust it the same way.
You can also hit F6 to bring up that panel after an operation too.
Image:
I also just ran into a problem when unwrapping a basic cube where it appears to be ignoring the seams. Tried resetting the uvs, clearing and re-marking the seams, and a few other things to no avail: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4210886/boxUV.blend
Few new questions:
Is their a way to merge selected components to their center with a tolerance value? Remove Doubles give a tolerance slider but merges to the first component selected, and the Merge command lets you merge to the center but gives no tolerance.
In the UV view, how do you preview highlighting for components related to the selection? Like in Max, if you select a vert in the UVW Editor it will highlight any others that are broken off copies assigned to different UV shells/elements. Makes it really easy to know when your UVs are flipped or to find related shells when working with really broken up unwraps.
And also, is there a way around the issue Blender seems to have with creases and open edges? Maybe there's a better way to get hard edges on subdivided meshes without using extra loops?
Not that I'm aware of. Merging verts tends to be a tedious ordeal in Blender in my opinion.
If I follow correctly this button on the header will highlight all the shared vertices. The Color UV Grid you can generate when you make a texture works pretty good for finding flipped UVs.
Not currently, unfortunately. They're hoping to get OpenSubdiv included at some point, but OpenSubDiv's current license (Microsoft Public License) isn't GPL compatible. A bit ironic really that the only one excluded from an Open Source library is the Open Source 3d Package. :shifty:
For the UVs, that option actually selects all shared verts instead of just highlighting them which isn't really what I'm looking for. I'd just turn it on/off to see them if it could work that way, but doing that makes the unselected faces of the UV map disappear when it's turned back off because it deselects in the viewport at the same time
Speaking of selections, does Blender have a way to let you grow/shrink loops and rings? That's one of the selection features I really like in Max, along with gap loop (like: http://glender.hybird.org/#PATTERN_SELECT but its relatively old and doesn't work in newer versions of Blender).
Another thing I'm trying to figure out is how to place object instances on another mesh surface quickly. In Max you can simply paint instances to a mesh surface via a brush (like with Advanced Painter), which makes placing things like bolts on a curved surface very quick and easy. But in Blender the only thing I've found that seems similar is the Particle system brush when set to Hair...maybe it can be set to use custom meshs instead of hair somehow?