@thomasp If you're still on 2.79, the problem is that most of Jose's tool, including the hair tool is out of date, since he's only updating his addons to 2.80 and onwards. Same with other addon developers in these days. 2.79 is still great, I admit that, and I use it from time to time. Mostly finishing some older projects with it at the moment.
Still I've adapted 2.80 pretty smoothly... after configuring it to resemble 2.79 all the way from the shortcuts though.
Hi, I need a suggestion for addons for Boolean and for Remesh or quick Retopo for hard surface models (blender 2.8). Not for sci-fi modelling or modelling for games, but mainly for automotive modelling -> quick visualisation and to see some design elements eg - various versions of holes/slats on a fender, gills, some interesting bumper holes etc and then to create a clean mesh.
To create these holes (in the image) I used Bool-Tools. If I want to try various options for these holes - the number of holes, orientation, 2 Rows of holes etc, Will an addon like Box-cutter be faster. Any other free addons I could consider?
I was considering box-cutter. But I see that Fluent has 2 features - 1)
a grid on which we can draw a shape. 2) adding support loops around the
boolen/ hole. Box cutter doesn’t have these features i think. But it has been
around for long so I assume overall it works smoothly and has less bugs.
For Clean mesh - I used Quad-Remesh trial version. Works well but it is expensive for me right now. I'll need a suggestion for this too.
Does Blender have a way u can use the clone brush to sample a part of a pbr material and paint on another area of a mesh? Not texture.
Usually you do not draw materials. You would just assign the same material to the faces where you want to have it. Go into edit mode for the mesh and open the Material context in the Properties editor. Then select the faces where you want to have the material applied, select the material you want in the material list in the properties editor and then click Assign below the list.
I have imported a FBX file into Blender (exported from Maya). All objects in the scene are parented to a null object (locator, empty object), the null is rotated 90 degrees in X and scaled down to a factor of 0.02 (probably to compensate the fact that in Maya Y is up, and in Blender Z is up).
I'd like to unparent all the objects from that null, while retaining the correct scale and orientation (should just stay as is in the Blender viewport). When I drag-and-drop all items into a new collection outside of the null, the items stay as they are, but the object names parented to the null are grayed out in the item list. When I delete the null object, the entire scene scales way up (from factor 0.02 to 1 probably), and rotates 90 degrees in X.
What steps do I need to take to unparent the objects from the null, but have the objects stay in place exactly as they were before unparenting them?
@wilson66 Don't use the outliner for parenting operations. Instead select the objects you want to unparent and then press Alt+P. Then select Unparent and keep Transform.
@wilson66 Don't use the outliner for parenting operations. Instead select the objects you want to unparent and then press Alt+P. Then select Unparent and keep Transform.
Thanks! Shortcut didn't work (probably because I use 'Industry Compatible' keymap), but I found the option in the menu (Object -> Parent -> Clear and keep Transformation).
New question (sorry!). In that same FBX I imported I can see an image in the reflections of materials. This must be an environment map defined somewhere obviously, but I cannot find the location where this is actually loaded in. An environment map can be imported in the 'World Properties' -> Color slot, but no map is defined there, and if I load a different one into that slot, nothing changes in the reflections in the viewport.
Is there a different location where an environment map could be loaded in?
@wilson66 that depends on where you see it. If you see it in rendered view, then it is the one in the world settings. If you see it in lookdev, then you can change it with the viewport settings. Click on the shading drop-down arrow in the top right of your viewport and then on the cog next to the HDRi sphere.
I scaled up, the car to real world dimensions, and I get these artifacts on the mesh. These are not there if the model is scaled down and the size is kept small. (I changed the xyz Dimensions in the n-panel, This was a mesh imported as fbx )
@sinhead I think those are related to the Z-Buffer of the viewport camera. I get those as well, if clip start of the view is really small. (< 1mm). You check/change that in the right hand shelf of the viewport. (N)
Edit: Actually I am not 100% sure if it's just a small clip start or a large range of start to end.
As a long time Blender user (about 15 years) the move to 2.8 has been difficult for me - quite a sea-change - but I've been having great fun with the Grease Pencil tools and I'm loving the ease and speed of view-port rendering with Eevee.
Stupid question. I am looking for a keyboard shortcut for Select -> Select More/ Less -> Next Active. I use this functionality quite a lot (coming from Modo). I can select a single polygon, then select the one next to it, then press 'next active', and it will just select each subsequent polygon each time I press the shortcut. Nice to select patterns also.
I am unable to find a keyboard shortcut for that in the Preferences though. Is there one? There is a shortcut for Mesh -> 'Select More' which just expands the selection in all directions (up arrow), but I'd like to define a shortcut for 'next active'.
I'd also be nice to make edge selections more visible. Selected edges are barely noticable at all. As I have read though nothing seems to be planned in that direction unfortunately...
Ok, thanks. Having this kind of functionality in a sub-menu only doesn't make a whole lot of sense obviously, this calls for a shortcut that can be pressed in quick succession. Lets hope it will be fixed.
@wilson66 why do you mean submenu and "fixed"? It's a feature that just doesn't exist yet and is suggested to be included. The suggestion even lists keyboard shortcuts. Or do you mean the plug-in that was linked for 2.7X in the comments?
The feature itself exists (in the newest Alpha I am using), it is usable via sub-menu with Select -> Select More/Less -> Next Active. It works by clicking this menu-item. There just isn't a shortcut for this listed in the Preferences, or I was unable to find it. It might just be missing due to the fact its still an alpha version of course.
It doesn't make sense to click this sub-menu each time to select the next polygon. It works, but it'd be faster to just select the polygons manually right now, especially because the menu closes each time I click it. I would like to be able to define a shortcut, then press that shortcut to select the rows of polygons faster.
@f1r3w4rr10r guten tag good sir. What feature do you mean? I checked both requests and didn't notice any change, unless I'm reading it wrong or not aware of something else posted elsewhere.
@Justo I just mean that the expand selection along edge feature already exists in Blender. Granted it only expands in one direction where the feature request expands in both and you have to select two edges along the ring/loop beforehand, but I think that is already fairly usable.
@wilson66 - the shortcut mentioned by flr3w4 is working for me too - Blender 2.81 latest build.
Shortcuts don't work for me because I use the 'Industry Standard' keymap (Maya style navigation ect). It changes the shortcuts.
Another quick question: I have textured a couple of assets with Substance Painter, and assembled a fairly large scene in Blender using those assets (and a lot of Collection instances).
I have plugged all the maps exported from Painter (basecolor, metallic, normal, roughness) myself (Principled BSDF).
The textures show up ok in the viewport (Eevee), the only problem is that metallic materials don't look metallic at all (completely dull, no reflectivity at all). Maps for the metallic attribute of the shader seem ok. What do I need to do to have metallic materials where the metallic attribute is controlled by a black-and-white image map actually be displayed like metal in the viewport?
@wilson66 That's why I also described the path where you can find the entries in the keybind menu.
And my bet for the maps is, that your roughness is too high. At least it sounds like it, if you are actually looking at it in Look Dev or Rendered mode.
Ifyou are looking at it in Solid mode, then you have to change the appearance in the Viewport Display settings of the material properties.
Any way to quickly invert a grayscale image (roughness image) in the Shader Editor? There is an invert node, but it seems to output color.
Anyhow, there seems to be something awry here (with my simple shader setup). It doesn't work if I just invert the roughness in Photoshop.
If I plug the metallic map into the shader, the entire asset simply displays as metallic. It ignores the areas defined on the map. Not sure what I might be doing wrong here.
@wilson66 On the topic of Eevee/principled shader not displaying pbr content correctly : if I am not mistaken, merely plugging the maps into the default slots will not work - or at best things will be plugged, but with the wrong settings. However if you go into the node editor and set things up correctly there (non-color data for metalness and roughness, and so on) things will behave as expected, with good parity with Toolbag and UE.
This behavior led me to believe that the principled shader was unfinished for the longest time, even though everything seems to be there and functioning.
Curiously I never had that kind of problem. Usually you can do quite some mangling with the node editor data types. I do some vector maths here and there with nodes that usually want a float and stuff like that.
I'm sort of curious, and I wasn't sure if this was the place to post it, or outside of this thread, but I was wondering, what place does Blender have in my workflow? I tend to make game art, but most of what Blender does seems to stay within Blender. Sculpt, Model, Retop, UV, Render, Texture, Materials, etc...it all seems to be done in here.
If I'm doing a rigged model, I hop into Maya instead.
I'm going to graduate soon and lose access to Autodesk products. I've never been able to use them commercially anyways. I was wondering, where exactly does Blender fit into my workflow? It would technically be replacing Max, and only Max. It can't compete with Maya yet, and it's missing a ton of stuff that you need for game art. It's good for just basic models, but that's all I've been able to use it for. Am I missing parts of Blender that could help me? I've heard lots about Eevee, but it seems like a hassle, since I'll just be texturing externally anyway.
I have pretty much same workflow as you, with the exception of Blender replacing both 3ds Max and RizomUV. Since I do all the hard surface HP and LP modeling, or organic LP retopology, and UV unwrapping in Blender.
"It can't compete with Maya yet, and it's missing a ton of stuff that you
need for game art. It's good for just basic models, but that's all I've
been able to use it for."
In my opinion, you got it all wrong, mate. Blender is capable of doing the whole pipeline of creating a game asset. Even sculpting, especially in newly released 2.81, which has very ZBrush-esque sculpting tools built-in. You can do hard surface and organic modeling and/or sculpting, UVs, baking, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating and rendering.
But as I mentioned I have pretty much same workflow as you, I do baking in Marmoset and texturing in Substance Painter, since those are so exceptionally amazing tools for those purposes. Still, you can do all the modeling and UVs in Blender if you wish to make a switch. Just saying.
@Elarionus it will fit in your 3ds Max place. BUT, Blender is very basic, and it will need a few add-ons, mostly paid add-ons in order to "shine" in modelling like 3ds Max. Give it a try, it's free and you don't lose anything.
I have pretty much same workflow as you, with the exception of Blender replacing both 3ds Max and RizomUV. Since I do all the hard surface HP and LP modeling, or organic LP retopology, and UV unwrapping in Blender.
"It can't compete with Maya yet, and it's missing a ton of stuff that you
need for game art. It's good for just basic models, but that's all I've
been able to use it for."
In my opinion, you got it all wrong, mate. Blender is capable of doing the whole pipeline of creating a game asset. Even sculpting, especially in newly released 2.81, which has very ZBrush-esque sculpting tools built-in. You can do hard surface and organic modeling and/or sculpting, UVs, baking, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating and rendering.
But as I mentioned I have pretty much same workflow as you, I do baking in Marmoset and texturing in Substance Painter, since those are so exceptionally amazing tools for those purposes. Still, you can do all the modeling and UVs in Blender if you wish to make a switch. Just saying.
The main thing I really need for proper game art is true smoothing groups. The hard edges are not the same thing. And it could really use some real rigging and weighting tools too....
Not to bash any software or prize one over the other, but why do you need smoothing groups? They are just an abstraction of what hard edges do and more limited while doing so.
Rigging and weight painting is also there in plain Blender.
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaa 2.81 is here! Spent a good amount of time today adding the new stuff I liked to my setup. If next updates focus on quality-of-life improvements like what happened with the Outliner, File Browser, Transform Tools and Snapping modes, I'll be a happy guy.
I think you will find that Hair Tool solves that issue and saves you the roundtrip and probably then some. Then again I have never looked at xGen at all, wouldn't know how it compares. In Blender you have orientation and 'scale' on the CV level and at least as a former longtime Max user (does that answer your question @Justo ?)
Non monsieur. I imagine you are doing character work these days, and not just fully committed to making hair. Do you need jumping to Max (or whatever other DCC app) during the creation of your characters nowadays, for any small or big task in particular? (Retopology, UVs...)
Is it going to be a smooth transition, if I want to keep my setup, UI, etc. from 2.80 ? Will all my addons be broken right away or somehow still be compatible.?
There shouldn't be any problem upgrading. But if there is, you can always grab the old version again from the archive (they should all be portable and not even require installation).
Once installed, in the welcome screen, you have an option to use 2.80 config. I copied all my add-ons to the 2.81 scripts folder (users/roaming) and they work fine.
Eevee is much better, but i will need to wait for 2.82. Blender is still not an option for subdivision modelling.
Is it going to be a smooth transition, if I want to keep my setup, UI, etc. from 2.80 ? Will all my addons be broken right away or somehow still be compatible.?
Like it was said above, you can copy your config from 2.8. However as for keyboard shortcuts, if you were running a custom setup, the newly added features are not automatically added to your keyboard setup, so it seems you need to manually add them one by one in the keyboard shortcut editor, or redo your setup again starting from a 2.81 setup.
Best case scenario would be for the shortcut editor to be reworked so as to show overlapping shortcuts & future updates to be able to add newly added features to your old config. This way, hopefully you'd be able to quickly add everything and be able to see any of the new additions that are causing conflict with your keymappings.
For some reason I can no longer rotate my viewport at all in Blender, doesn't matter which save I load, which is very weird since any setting I screwed up would be save independent. It just shows this "axis snap" icon in the bottom left corner when I try to rotate, the viewport doesn't move at all but it does cancel directional orthographic view like it normally would.
EDIT:Found the fix, for anyone having the same problem. Somehow the sensitivity in my orbit settings got knocked all the way down to 0. Just change it to a non-zero number and it works again.
Replies
To create these holes (in the image) I used Bool-Tools. If I want to try various options for these holes - the number of holes, orientation, 2 Rows of holes etc, Will an addon like Box-cutter be faster. Any other free addons I could consider?
I was considering box-cutter. But I see that Fluent has 2 features - 1) a grid on which we can draw a shape. 2) adding support loops around the boolen/ hole. Box cutter doesn’t have these features i think. But it has been around for long so I assume overall it works smoothly and has less bugs.
For Clean mesh - I used Quad-Remesh trial version. Works well but it is expensive for me right now. I'll need a suggestion for this too.
I'd like to unparent all the objects from that null, while retaining the correct scale and orientation (should just stay as is in the Blender viewport). When I drag-and-drop all items into a new collection outside of the null, the items stay as they are, but the object names parented to the null are grayed out in the item list. When I delete the null object, the entire scene scales way up (from factor 0.02 to 1 probably), and rotates 90 degrees in X.
What steps do I need to take to unparent the objects from the null, but have the objects stay in place exactly as they were before unparenting them?
Thanks for your help!
Is there a different location where an environment map could be loaded in?
(I changed the xyz Dimensions in the n-panel, This was a mesh imported as fbx )
I am unable to find a keyboard shortcut for that in the Preferences though. Is there one? There is a shortcut for Mesh -> 'Select More' which just expands the selection in all directions (up arrow), but I'd like to define a shortcut for 'next active'.
I'd also be nice to make edge selections more visible. Selected edges are barely noticable at all. As I have read though nothing seems to be planned in that direction unfortunately...
It doesn't make sense to click this sub-menu each time to select the next polygon. It works, but it'd be faster to just select the polygons manually right now, especially because the menu closes each time I click it. I would like to be able to define a shortcut, then press that shortcut to select the rows of polygons faster.
Another quick question: I have textured a couple of assets with Substance Painter, and assembled a fairly large scene in Blender using those assets (and a lot of Collection instances).
I have plugged all the maps exported from Painter (basecolor, metallic, normal, roughness) myself (Principled BSDF).
The textures show up ok in the viewport (Eevee), the only problem is that metallic materials don't look metallic at all (completely dull, no reflectivity at all). Maps for the metallic attribute of the shader seem ok. What do I need to do to have metallic materials where the metallic attribute is controlled by a black-and-white image map actually be displayed like metal in the viewport?
And my bet for the maps is, that your roughness is too high. At least it sounds like it, if you are actually looking at it in Look Dev or Rendered mode.
Anyhow, there seems to be something awry here (with my simple shader setup). It doesn't work if I just invert the roughness in Photoshop.
If I plug the metallic map into the shader, the entire asset simply displays as metallic. It ignores the areas defined on the map. Not sure what I might be doing wrong here.
On the topic of Eevee/principled shader not displaying pbr content correctly : if I am not mistaken, merely plugging the maps into the default slots will not work - or at best things will be plugged, but with the wrong settings. However if you go into the node editor and set things up correctly there (non-color data for metalness and roughness, and so on) things will behave as expected, with good parity with Toolbag and UE.
This behavior led me to believe that the principled shader was unfinished for the longest time, even though everything seems to be there and functioning.
My normal workflow is:
ZBrush (if organic) > 3DS Max > Rizom UV > Marmoset (Bake) > Substance Painter >Marmoset (For a Render) > Unreal Engine.
If I'm doing a rigged model, I hop into Maya instead.
I'm going to graduate soon and lose access to Autodesk products. I've never been able to use them commercially anyways. I was wondering, where exactly does Blender fit into my workflow? It would technically be replacing Max, and only Max. It can't compete with Maya yet, and it's missing a ton of stuff that you need for game art. It's good for just basic models, but that's all I've been able to use it for. Am I missing parts of Blender that could help me? I've heard lots about Eevee, but it seems like a hassle, since I'll just be texturing externally anyway.
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/
Non monsieur. I imagine you are doing character work these days, and not just fully committed to making hair. Do you need jumping to Max (or whatever other DCC app) during the creation of your characters nowadays, for any small or big task in particular? (Retopology, UVs...)
Eevee is much better, but i will need to wait for 2.82. Blender is still not an option for subdivision modelling.
Like it was said above, you can copy your config from 2.8. However as for keyboard shortcuts, if you were running a custom setup, the newly added features are not automatically added to your keyboard setup, so it seems you need to manually add them one by one in the keyboard shortcut editor, or redo your setup again starting from a 2.81 setup.
Best case scenario would be for the shortcut editor to be reworked so as to show overlapping shortcuts & future updates to be able to add newly added features to your old config. This way, hopefully you'd be able to quickly add everything and be able to see any of the new additions that are causing conflict with your keymappings.