Max Nitrous Viewport Clay in Blender?

Daf57

One thing I miss about Max, having transitioned to Blender last year, is the viewport clay mode. I believe that had something to do with a nitrous driver that Max uses? Is this something that can be implemented in Blender? Or maybe a future feature? I like the matcaps in Blender, I just really like the old Max clay.

Thanks

Daf

birb

Eh, I'm reasonably familiar with Blender's interface but know nothing about Max's. A visual example would be helpful.

Is this what you want?



If yes I've been using Eevee to achieve something similar to great effect. The downside is that it's not a matcap, it's a material, and as far as I know Eevee still doesn't have an Override material toggle so that needs to be assigned manually.



Material setup:



You need to switch to Eevee for a second to turn Ambient Occlusion on for this to to work. You can switch to Cycles once you do it and use the material preview as you clay viewport then; that's my preferred sculpting setup in Blender.

Eevee's handling of the AO node is different than in Cycles. It's nothing but a mask output of the the scene's AO influence on the object, making it quite fast. You'll see that messing with the settings like I did won't affect it, but it does take the normal map input into account which I really like.

Daf57

Hey, that's pretty darn close, birb! Thanks for the tutorial. Is there a way, in Blender, to save a material so you don't have to construct it each time?

I don't know enough about the "nitrous" driver to know if Blender will ever be able to use it.

Thanks again!

birb

Glad to help! The usual way is to save the material in the startup file, but it won't exist in older files and I don't like the clutter, so I use the NodeCustomBuilder add-on for these cases.

You'll still have to add and name the material before loading the node tree, but extending it to fully generate a same name material in one click shouldn't be too hard if you happen to know Blender's API and a little python.

Daf57

Awesome! Thanks again!

Daf57

Hey @birb - update ...   With 4.2.1 they've remove the Ambient Occlusion option for Eevee (or moved it, killing the effect) and this no longer works as well.  Bummer!

kanga

Daf57 said:

Hey @birb - update ...   With 4.2.1 they've remove the Ambient Occlusion option for Eevee (or moved it, killing the effect) and this no longer works as well.  Bummer!

Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/1e6t59p/where_ambient_occlusion_in_blender/

Eevee just got a huge overhaul in blender version 4.2 and they got rid of the ambient occlusion and bloom options. In this case you can turn on the raytracing option, it's different compared to the ambient occlusion option, but it looks miles better!

Daf57

Hi kanga,

I'm aware, unfortunately the raytracing option does not have the same effect in regard to the subject of this post.

Thanks!

okidoki

Since you originally mentioned (some days ago  ) the matcaps of blender.. if this :



..is not what you want.. (i forgot th mark the left-right-arrow under the cogwheel to change the light)..

 Ever thought of just using a sphere with the max clay and render you own matcap ?? And installing using Blender -> Preferences -> Lights -> MatCaps -> Instal.. ) ??

Daf57

Ever thought of just using a sphere with the max clay and render you own matcap?

Hi okidoki - Yes, I've actually been playing around with creating my own matcaps. That's a good idea using Max clay. I'll give that a try.

I don't know why I'm so picky about the material - just am.