Hi Guys, For 3d Modelling only - for a new Blender 2.8 user, does it make sense to use Blender 2.8 default keymap or industry compatible keymap.
I have used Maya. I dont mind learning the new shortcuts etc if they make modelling in Blender faster than Maya.
When i follow Blender 2.8 tutorials, simple tasks like - edge-slide along a particular axis/ direction leave me confused if I use the "industry compatible keymap", because the Tutorial guys are using Blender 2.8 default keymap and shortcuts.
I'd say if you don't mind learning Blender's keyboard shortcuts, go for it. Since most of the tutorial material out there is based on those keyboard shotcuts anyway, so it's faster to learn new tips and tricks.
I'm an old-school Blender user (since 2012 with 2.65), so I'm using the 2.79 shortcuts, and the transition from 2.79 to 2.8 was smooth for me.
It seems to me that industry compatible keymap are designed for people who work in several programs at the same time, since switching between several hotkey logics is very unpleasant.
For example, I use standard keyboard shortcuts, but I changed the viewport navigation to Maya navigation shortcuts (alt+lmb, mmb, rmb). Because many programs use navigation as in Maya, and using different hotkeys to rotate the viewport is very confusing for me
@So3Datel One thing that's great about Blender is that you can quickly switch to those default presets any time you want So when you hear people tell "oh you do that by pressing this..." without saying what it actually does (it is kind of frustrating imo, even though they are helping), you can always go back to the default hotkeys, and check by Key Binding what does the shortcut they're talking about do.
Right now my entire keyboard is set up very differently to any of the default ones, so I do this constantly!
Really enjoying 2.8 release, and currently working on an environment peice (a race track for Assetto Corsa) and something I take for granted in Max, I can't find in Blender, which is to know the U and V co-ordinates for a vertex. I want to get my track surface UVs exact on the u and v co-ords so there are not seams but I haven't found the means of doing this.
I'm trying to figure out what to do exactly with the subdiv modifier on my models in blender. I've read that you can essentially merge a low poly (no modifier) version and a high poly version (Modifier applied) together in substance painter, then export this mesh. I've tried to find tutorials with clarification on how to do this but maybe I'm wrong. I've also noticed, when I import my low poly mesh into Zbrush - immediately unwrap - duplicate - make one high poly and leave one low poly, I can merge the two, no problem. But occasionally I run into this error in Zbrush that says that there are closed shells in your UVw... That should mean I haven't fully unwrapped the model and it causes problems... No matter what I do, once that error shows up, I cannot get it to go away. How can I just use the modifier in blender instead of normals to smooth out my model?
at the 3:00 - about sync selection in the outliner. Isn't it like that already? If I select multiple objects in my outliner, it is selecting the respective objects in the viewport.
At least from what I tried it seems that it deals with intersecting geo nicely, so you can give it shit geo with shit topology and it does wonders. Then smooth and decimate a little to keep polycount managed. Boom you've got the high poly!
I recently switched to 2.80 and it's been rather nice so far. However, is it possible to disable lighting when weight painting or vertex painting? There used to be an option for that in 2.79 but I can't seem to find it anymore.
At least from what I tried it seems that it deals with intersecting geo nicely, so you can give it shit geo with shit topology and it does wonders. Then smooth and decimate a little to keep polycount managed. Boom you've got the high poly!
I haven't started using blender for sculpting as Zbrush is still my go to but it may be worthwhile in some other form or for quick edits that don't require me to go to zbrush.
I recently switched to 2.80 and it's been rather nice so far. However, is it possible to disable lighting when weight painting or vertex painting? There used to be an option for that in 2.79 but I can't seem to find it anymore.
I know what you're talking about, it makes it easier to see nuances in weights.
In 2.79 it was key Z by default, which toggled between solid and wireframe viewport display (and wireframe mode in Weight Paint is actually solid+shadeless).
In 2.80 key Z brings up a pie menu for all display modes, do any of them help with that? In case they don't, you can try making an emissive material (equivalent to the "shadeless" option from 2.79): https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/142820
Indeed, although the display modes didn't have what I was searching for, on the other hand an emissive material or, alternatively, directly binding an RGB color set to white to the output do the trick fine. Thank you very much!
For weight painting in Blender, I recommend his tools. I bought them, and I love the visualization for weights with color gradients per bone (a.k.a. in the style of Softimage): https://gumroad.com/l/weight_paint_tools
Haven't used them in 2.8 yet, will see later with one of my projects.
@VertexPainter thanks for that tip, it's way simpler than using a material.
Shameless plug of an additional weight painting tool for troubling areas where it's easier to use a selection rather than painting: https://gum.co/adjust_vertex_weights
Aha! That's more like it! I'm still at the point where I am getting comfy with the basic modelling tools and textools have been useful too, but now it's time to start learning how to step up further and get as good as I was in max
Also for any old school modellers out there who need vertex animation for their project, anim-all has been updated for 2.8. Just wish I'd bookmarked the thread I found it on...
You're welcome. Like @musashidan I recommend the add-on. It's yields the smoothest OpenVDB results within Blender at the moment. The Sculpt Mode Features branch also offers OpenVDB, in the shape of a Remesh function and an enhanced Remesh modifier, but currently they both show very visible Moiré / interference artifacts.
@musashidan ooh thanks for sharing, haven't seen this one yet. Sure the Blender's remesh isn't dynamesh's quality but it's still a good step in the right direction and I think it's just good enough for a lot of use cases, especially if you're baking stuff down later down the road.
Thanks guys! (FourtyNights, So3Datel) . I have decided to use the defaults for now. To follow tutorials properly and I am already getting comfprtable. Will adjust hotkeys , UI navigation later on.
I am following a car modelling tutorial. I dont understand the logic behing this "Guide Mesh" workflow. A guide mesh is made, then a another mesh which is wrapped or shrink wrapped on the guidemesh.
Maybe not the focus of this forum, but if anyone needs a (free) Build of blender with great Cycle speed up features, such as:
"Cycles:
Light Groups passes
Dithered Sobol
Scramble Distance
Adaptive sampling (that can be used with the two previous features, it was not possible before)
Auto Tile: a little feature we implemented following the course from
BliBluBli (Mathieu), I recommend to enable it in case you are rendering
just with GPU or just with CPU, disable it for GPu+CPU and configure
yoru tile sizes to 16x16, and configure the render order with "From
bottom to top"
Modifiers:
Two new options inside the Remesher modifier:
Voxel: based on OpenVDB, it includes also OpenVDB boolean operations, it includes an option to mesh particles.
Metaball: based on Metaballs, ability to mesh both meshes/vertices
and particles, a bit slower than Voxel in some cases, but it also
carries Motion Blur information for fluids."
Practice model of today and a few questions that I wasnt able to find an answer to while making this:
1-Is it possible to import an image plane mesh and be able to see it in the Solid Display mode? If I use the default addon to do this the resulting plane looks gray and can only be seen in LookDev and Render modes... 2-How to move a cluster of subelements along their individual normals? If I select isolated elements (Orientation: Normal & Pivot Point: Individual Origins) Blender respects the individual normal directions. But if the elements are connected to each other, it averages it all to one direction. Being more specific, for example moving the highlighted edges along their individual normals: 3-How would you quickly obtain a face selection like this? 4-Lastly, how would you achieve the bended text as shown in the concept image above, in that middle section of the bullet?
Has anyone heard about plans to add pre-selection highlighting? All I've found are very old user discussions on it. Using Houdini, I've recently discovered how awesome Shortest Path selection can be for UV mapping, which I believe Blender has, but it's useless without pre-selection highlighting as well.
#1 Using the Add > Image > (Reference or Background) both remain visible in all view modes. If you're talking about importing an actual mesh object and using it as the image background then you'll need to go to Solid display mode and change the settings Color > Texture. For this to work you will also need to load the image into the object's material as a texture.
#2 If you're moving a single edge loop then Edge Slide will work. It will also work with multiple edge loops selected but you can't have any perpendicular edges selected between the active loops.
#3 In edge mode, select one of the horizontal edge loops. Run Checker Deselect. Select a vertical edge loop and run Edge Rings selection. Face mode Checker Deselect wouldn't work in your case because of the edge loop that's dividing the faces.
#4 If the text can be flat I would add it into the texture or onto a decal with transparency. If the text had to be embossed into the surface of the model: I would use the curve modifier to deform a text object, convert it to mesh and boolean that geometry into the model.
#1 Using the Add > Image > (Reference or Background) both remain visible in all view modes. If you're talking about importing an actual mesh object and using it as the image background then you'll need to go to Solid display mode and change the settings Color > Texture. For this to work you will also need to load the image into the object's material as a texture.
Ahh, Color>Texture. That did it - thank you!
#2 If you're moving a single edge loop then Edge Slide will work. It will also work with multiple edge loops selected but you can't have any perpendicular edges selected between the active loops.
Perhaps you misunderstood? I don't want to slide vertices or edges. I want to move them along their normals. AFAIK the Slide Tool doesnt have any option that allows this, unless its not in the docs page i just visited.
#3 In edge mode, select one of the horizontal edge loops. Run Checker Deselect. Select a vertical edge loop and run Edge Rings selection. Face mode Checker Deselect wouldn't work in your case because of the edge loop that's dividing the faces.
I really wish I could select a single edge and be able to convert it to its connected faces, but your method is solid. Thanks for sharing. (And mushashi too).
#4 If the text can be flat I would add it into the texture or onto a decal with transparency. If the text had to be embossed into the surface of the model: I would use the curve modifier to deform a text object, convert it to mesh and boolean that geometry into the model.
Yeah I wouldnt model this kinf od things either but I want to learn how to do so for the skillset. I'll have to look into the curve modifier, thanks for the tip.
Hey, i've finally taken the plunge into 2.80 and I'm really enjoying it so far - Eevee is... absolutely stunning.
I was wondering if there was any way to change the solid mode viewport to better reflect inverted faces, akin to the viewport in 2.79. The face orientation overlay does it's job, but i'd rather be able to see the status of faces as I work.
Re-reading question #2 it sounds like the expected behavior is for the move tool to do something like this?
In Blender I had to use the Shrink / Flatten tool and while that works for this I can see use cases where it wouldn't work because it will scale the selected mesh components. For those edge cases I think Solidify or Inset with depth offset only would work. For more complex movement it won't work. I could be wrong but it seems like the short answer is no? Blender's move tool treats connected geometry as connected when moving along the normals and using individual origins. But I can see why it shouldn't... If I'm still not getting it: seeing the desired result in another program would provide more context.
I was wondering if there was any way to change the solid mode viewport to better reflect inverted faces, akin to the viewport in 2.79. The face orientation overlay does it's job, but i'd rather be able to see the status of faces as I work.
...
I use the Backface Culling option under the Viewport Shading tab top right of the Modeling viewport. Is that what you mean?
Is there a good new or updated plugin which can show animation paths / trajectories which do automatically update to changed keyframes and animation range?
Is possible to set the auto smooth to be 180° by default instead of 30°?
I was able to do this with the Pie Menu Editor Addon (might be some similar way to do it with vanilla Blender). I have a custom pie menu with an Auto Smooth item. I put in the following command:
@FrankPolygon mega thumbs up! The Shrink/Flatten is indeed the tool I was needing Thank you!
To anyone who has worked with ZBrush, Keyshot and Blender: I was curious to know if you thought Blender was a viable replacement for Keyshot as a character sculpt renderer, and its GoB flexibility. I'm not looking to make something very complex materials-wise. The one thing I want to be able to do is import ZBrush models in Blender, create some simple mats in Blender and apply them to the individual mesh elements, and then be able to constantly reimport my ZBrush model into Blender, meshes constantly updating while keeping the materials I created and applied in Blender intact, so that i dont need to reassign things each re-import. Cant believe its 2019 and Pixologic hasnt dealt with this yet in their KSBridge feature...
that culls backfacing poygons, I meant something more like this:
Where the backfacing polys have inverted shading - which is probably a quirk of the way shading was handled but I found it useful. Matcap in 2.80 does a similar thing, but I was just wondering if there was a way to do it for the "studio" lighting.
To anyone who has worked with ZBrush, Keyshot and Blender: I was curious to know if you thought Blender was a viable replacement for Keyshot as a character sculpt renderer, and its GoB flexibility. I'm not looking to make something very complex materials-wise. The one thing I want to be able to do is import ZBrush models in Blender, create some simple mats in Blender and apply them to the individual mesh elements, and then be able to constantly reimport my ZBrush model into Blender, meshes constantly updating while keeping the materials I created and applied in Blender intact, so that i dont need to reassign things each re-import. Cant believe its 2019 and Pixologic hasnt dealt with this yet in their KSBridge feature...
Ummmm materials arnt that much of a problem in KS if you reimport the zB model into the same KS scene. The materials are still there. I dont remember if you have to reapply them. Its been a while. You can get a heavy hipoly from zB into KS without much effort. Anyhow materials and decals are pretty super in KS and the quick transfer between the apps is kinda painless. KS is perfect for product presentation and also for development. You can also move spotlights at the hotspot location on the model.
Going between zB and Blender is a bit hinky atm. With the current GoB there is no position info transfer as far as I know. Models come into Blender at the origin, which means working with the figure at origin height, not standing on the grid. Unless there is a GoB addon update I missed. Also fbx export differs a great deal with GoB sizes. Depending on the res of your zB model mostly you would have to decimate a copy of the figure to work on it in Blender as well.
Yup, you do. And depending on how many pieces your model has, this can become quite the time-consuming endeavor. That is precisely what I was looking to avoid by switching to Blender.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts - it seems that Blender still has some issues to deal with to be at the same level as KS is with Zbrush integration. I'll probably finish my current personal piece in KS, then put it in Blender to see how it fares.
Replies
Right now my entire keyboard is set up very differently to any of the default ones, so I do this constantly!
Any advice would be much appreciated!
I'm trying to figure out what to do exactly with the subdiv modifier on my models in blender. I've read that you can essentially merge a low poly (no modifier) version and a high poly version (Modifier applied) together in substance painter, then export this mesh. I've tried to find tutorials with clarification on how to do this but maybe I'm wrong. I've also noticed, when I import my low poly mesh into Zbrush - immediately unwrap - duplicate - make one high poly and leave one low poly, I can merge the two, no problem. But occasionally I run into this error in Zbrush that says that there are closed shells in your UVw... That should mean I haven't fully unwrapped the model and it causes problems... No matter what I do, once that error shows up, I cannot get it to go away. How can I just use the modifier in blender instead of normals to smooth out my model?
I appreciate the help!
Thanks
You mean this? It's in the N-panel
https://polycount.com/discussion/168610/3ds-max-zbrush-proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1
At least from what I tried it seems that it deals with intersecting geo nicely, so you can give it shit geo with shit topology and it does wonders. Then smooth and decimate a little to keep polycount managed. Boom you've got the high poly!
@FourtyNights I'll have a look at it then
Thank you all for your help!
Also for any old school modellers out there who need vertex animation for their project, anim-all has been updated for 2.8. Just wish I'd bookmarked the thread I found it on...
Where can I find the VDM addon? Would love to take a look at it.
Thank you!
I am following a car modelling tutorial. I dont understand the logic behing this "Guide Mesh" workflow. A guide mesh is made, then a another mesh which is wrapped or shrink wrapped on the guidemesh.
"Cycles:
Modifiers:
- Two new options inside the Remesher modifier:
- Voxel: based on OpenVDB, it includes also OpenVDB boolean operations, it includes an option to mesh particles.
- Metaball: based on Metaballs, ability to mesh both meshes/vertices
and particles, a bit slower than Voxel in some cases, but it also
carries Motion Blur information for fluids."
Here's a build from Bone-Studio:https://blender.community/c/graphicall/kdbbbc/
1-Is it possible to import an image plane mesh and be able to see it in the Solid Display mode? If I use the default addon to do this the resulting plane looks gray and can only be seen in LookDev and Render modes...
2-How to move a cluster of subelements along their individual normals? If I select isolated elements (Orientation: Normal & Pivot Point: Individual Origins) Blender respects the individual normal directions. But if the elements are connected to each other, it averages it all to one direction. Being more specific, for example moving the highlighted edges along their individual normals:
3-How would you quickly obtain a face selection like this?
4-Lastly, how would you achieve the bended text as shown in the concept image above, in that middle section of the bullet?
For 4 I don't know what you mean.
All I've found are very old user discussions on it.
Using Houdini, I've recently discovered how awesome Shortest Path selection can be for UV mapping, which I believe Blender has, but it's useless without pre-selection highlighting as well.
(Source: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/motion_paths.html)
There where already some interesting approaches but nothing for 2.8 so far I can say
E.g. I can't find a copy of this and it would need to be ported to 2.8 i guess:
https://www.blendernation.com/2011/03/07/motion-trail-script-add-on/
https://sites.google.com/site/bartiuscrouch/scripts/motion_trail#TOC-Download
https://developer.blender.org/T26374
I'm thinking about writing a small auto-update addon which would utilize blender's Mothion Path functionality (https://docs.blender.org/api/2.80/bpy.ops.pose.html)
bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth(); C.object.data.use_auto_smooth = True; C.object.data.auto_smooth_angle = 3.14159
To anyone who has worked with ZBrush, Keyshot and Blender: I was curious to know if you thought Blender was a viable replacement for Keyshot as a character sculpt renderer, and its GoB flexibility. I'm not looking to make something very complex materials-wise. The one thing I want to be able to do is import ZBrush models in Blender, create some simple mats in Blender and apply them to the individual mesh elements, and then be able to constantly reimport my ZBrush model into Blender, meshes constantly updating while keeping the materials I created and applied in Blender intact, so that i dont need to reassign things each re-import. Cant believe its 2019 and Pixologic hasnt dealt with this yet in their KSBridge feature...
Going between zB and Blender is a bit hinky atm. With the current GoB there is no position info transfer as far as I know. Models come into Blender at the origin, which means working with the figure at origin height, not standing on the grid. Unless there is a GoB addon update I missed. Also fbx export differs a great deal with GoB sizes. Depending on the res of your zB model mostly you would have to decimate a copy of the figure to work on it in Blender as well.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts - it seems that Blender still has some issues to deal with to be at the same level as KS is with Zbrush integration. I'll probably finish my current personal piece in KS, then put it in Blender to see how it fares.