@oraeles77 the easiest way might be to use the Follow Path constraint on each carriage object, with all constraints pointing to the same Bézier curve object, but with an offset on each constraint so that the carriages form a chain, with one in front of the other (otherwise they will pile up at the exact same point).
Then you animate the path time of the Bézier curve and this will cause all carriages to travel along the curve.
The carriages cannot be parented to anything else, since the constraint takes over the transform of the object. If you need to, add another constraint below the Follow Path one, so that this other constraint works on top of the result of the Follow Path.
This is related to rigging, so if you need more help with this you could discuss it on the BlenderArtists rigging forum. Great people over there, I guarantee you'll get help.
@oraeles77 the easiest way might be to use the Follow Path constraint on each carriage object, with all constraints pointing to the same Bézier curve object, but with an offset on each constraint so that the carriages form a chain, with one in front of the other (otherwise they will pile up at the exact same point).
Then you animate the path time of the Bézier curve and this will cause all carriages to travel along the curve.
The carriages cannot be parented to anything else, since the constraint takes over the transform of the object. If you need to, add another constraint below the Follow Path one, so that this other constraint works on top of the result of the Follow Path.
This is related to rigging, so if you need more help with this you could discuss it on the BlenderArtists rigging forum. Great people over there, I guarantee you'll get help.
Is there an easy way to rotate a component around the pivot point? Meaning, I'd like to move the pivot point of an object somewhere, go to edge mode, select an edge. Now I'd like the pivot not to center on the selected edge (as it always does in my tests), but to stay where the pivot point is. So I can rotate the selected edges around the pivot point of the object.
I'd like to avoid having to first move the 3D cursor to the location of the pivot each time if possible.
How do I do it? If it requires some addon, thats ok.
Well to be fair if your set of steps involves "moving the pivot point of an object somewhere" first, then the total amount of steps is the exact same as if you were placing the cursor there and using it as your center of rotation.
But anyways, besides that your options are basically :
Meaning that if you absolutely need to use the object "center"/"pivot" as your point of reference, then you'd need to create a little script or PME macro to placing the cursor there and setting rotation to cursor all in one click or button press. Might even want to create an empty at that location too for later reference too.
@bob3636 In Blender you can use the Snap To... set to Face, and it will snap the element selected to all visible surfaces There's also the Vertex & Edge Slide tools, but those only move things along the edges. AFAIK though there isn't something exactly the same as Maya's surface constraint yet, sorry.
Is there an easy way to rotate a component around the pivot point? Meaning, I'd like to move the pivot point of an object somewhere, go to edge mode, select an edge. Now I'd like the pivot not to center on the selected edge (as it always does in my tests), but to stay where the pivot point is. So I can rotate the selected edges around the pivot point of the object.
I'd like to avoid having to first move the 3D cursor to the location of the pivot each time if possible.
How do I do it? If it requires some addon, thats ok.
Perhaps it will be quite convenient for you to use the 3D cursor with hotkeys and snaps?
Is that pie menu coming from the actual addon or its something else entirely?
It comes with ReBevel as second addon called "Loop Ring Select". ReBevel depend depends a lot on edge rings selection so I made LR Select - to quickly grow/shrink ring/loops.
Does anyone know how to set texture resolution display for eevee viewport? My textures are looking low res. I am aware of changing the image node from linear to closest but this would be time consuming if u have a lot of materials set up.
Does anyone know how to set texture resolution display for eevee viewport? My textures are looking low res. I am aware of changing the image node from linear to closest but this would be time consuming if u have a lot of materials set up.
In the Preferences -> Viewport -> Textures are some settings, have a look there.
Halp ! After some add-on cleanup I've seemingly disabled/removed a feature that I found pretty useful : the ability to instantly apply a Solidify modifier and controlling it's thickness with mouse input in the viewport. IIRC the shortcut was something along the lines of ctrl shift V. Any ideas as to which addon this was from ?
Would decal machine have a feature for generating stairs-edge decal geometry according to you? (I think I'll get it anyway it looks super convenient already..)
Assuming steps and wall are different elements
Maybe I'd select the edge and run twice the decal feature in different directions?
Thanks for keeping this thread so active! Learnt so much in it recently.. I took it one at a step and after a few month, I can see myself not reinstalling my previous modeling software(s). Before I would have said except maybe little exceptions but I can't find little exceptions anymore..(or ok very little but they always end up having a work-around and/or update!.)
@m00k : hey, thank you so much for the suggestions ! Oddly enough it seems like it was neither of these - as in : I can confirm that both HardOps and Speedflow have the feature, but none seems to act like the version I was using in terms of behavior and UI. Although maybe this is just a case of me using an older version of hardops previously ... I'll have to dig further. Or maybe I'll just make my own macro, heh. The HardOps one is pretty good though that's for sure, just one extra step to reach it I suppose. As for Speedflow, it has it too but I just couldn't get into this add-on it as it just doesn't feel responsive despite how good it seems to be on paper. The inputs and confirmation UX is just way to convoluted and non-responsive imho.
Unrelated : any Quadremesher users around here ? The tool is fantastic but the way it hides the source mesh is extremely annoying and flow-breaking imho : it's not making undoing any better, and I'd rather make my own copy and process that as opposed to filling up the scene with hidden leftover models. Anyone knows how to change that ? I'd usually ask for support on such things in the appropriate places (forum threads or support email) but the author doesn't seem to be active/reachable.
@pior I'm only looking at the trial here, but line 396 of /quad_remesher/qr_operators.py hides the input object. You can comment that line and add other post-processing steps at the end of that function. When you save the script you then need to disable & enable the add-on on Preferences for it to be reloaded with the changes.
Something I still don't quite understand how to do - make specific bevels across edges with varying widths? Wide on one end, and pinching close towards the other?
I've seen people use MeshMachine to do something similar, but afaik it wouldn't quite work with this shape: they would first use the UnF*ck tool to set the different widths, and then Fuse the faces in between. This would destroy my object's shape though.
@m00k That is a solution that is applied to the entire bevel - what I mean is, in a bevel that goes from point A to point B (in other words, not a closed/looping bevel), have its width change linearly along the way, while still retaining the shape of all the perpendicular elements crossing in its way. Let me know if you don't understand what I'm talking about.
I've seen people use MeshMachine to do something similar, but afaik it wouldn't quite work with this shape: they would first use the UnF*ck tool to set the different widths, and then Fuse the faces in between. This would destroy my object's shape though.
It works just fine. https://blenderartists.org/t/meshmachine/1102529/641 I think you miunderstand what Unfuck does, or how it would be applied here (hint: across the chamfer or bevel, not along with propagate enabled).
@m00k It's difficult for me to understand if the technique you use in the gif would apply to what I'm talking about, since the change in width appears to happen only at the top, instead of all throughout the loop, incrementally.
@Cirno Thank you for sharing this - this is indeed what I wanted to get at. Where are you tweaking that Limit Method & Width Method? I'm running an outdated 2.82 build (it has some custom features the final release doesn't which I heavily rely on atm), so it may be my Blender is not up to date. In the Bevel operation I don't see any of those two as you show in your interface; I can only find Limit Method in the Bevel modifier.
@MACHIN3 Yeah this is it - thank you for the detailed screenshot and even video haha. First chamfer, then fuse. Got it. This is the fastest method that I know of how to do this operation too, in any app actually.
How did you get from the second shape to the third, altering that chamfer width?
If it's isolated enough I could use Proportional Editing, but in this case it would move other vertices (yeah you can hide mesh elements and these won't be affected by the proportional editing, but i'd rather modify things when everything is visible).
I could also just eyeball every segment and scale each edge individually to create this widening effect. Would rather avoid this with anything more than 4-5 segments if possible...
I think the best method would be using 2 lattices, one for each side of the chamfer? Is there any faster way of doing this?
And this is wishful thinking from myself Machine, but it would be pretty rad if you could do some black magic and have your Bevel tool take us from the first shape to the last without having to create chamfers and fusing them As it is though, it is a very good approach nonetheless.
Where are you tweaking that Limit Method & Width Method? I'm running an outdated 2.82 build (it has some custom features the final release doesn't which I heavily rely on atm), so it may be my Blender is not up to date. In the Bevel operation I don't see any of those two as you show in your interface; I can only find Limit Method in the Bevel modifier.
That screenshot is from 2.81a. In 2.82 you can find Limit Method & Width Method here
it would be pretty rad if you could do some black magic and have your Bevel tool take us from the first shape to the last without having to create chamfers and fusing them As it is though, it is a very good approach nonetheless.
I mean, the entire concept of my fillet toolset is to break things down to chamfers, manipulate them, as that's easy to do, then create fillets from them, as they contain all the important information necessary (flow/direction and witdh).
So a single tool is the opposite of what I wanted to achieve.
Although, once broken down, the techniques I use can be chained, as done by the Refuse and Unbevel tools.
Maybe post-0.7, when I hope to introduce gizmos, a single chained tool will be possible. There needs to be a way to selectively affect the width in exactly the areas you want after all, and so I need gizmos.
How did you get from the second shape to the third, altering that chamfer width?
Change width. I've also done a few manual vert slides and also unfused the horizontal bevel, and then refused it, although that's not strictly necessary.
No @MACHIN3 , I usually jump straight into your YT videos - the fact that your docs page pretty much links them too for further explanations tells me you also think this is the way to go And well, since I am still getting used to your tools and how they force you to think about modeling in different ways, I will often forget that one feature in that one tool.
So the Change Width tool has a Taper feature. That's friggin' great! Huge time saver
Maybe post-0.7, when I hope to introduce gizmos, a single chained tool will be possible. There needs to be a way to selectively affect the width in exactly the areas you want after all, and so I need gizmos.
Sure. You have probably given this idea a lot more thought than I. If it comes and it's faster than what you already made for us, great. If not, it's cool. I at least don't know how to do this faster/semi-non-destructively in Max or Maya anyway.
Hello @RN - thank you so much for the help ! That's all it took to make the tool much more enjoyable to work with as far as I am concerned. I do understand the original intent of hiding the source but in practice it truly is one of those "bad good ideas" imho. All fixed now - so thanks again !
@Justo The percentage settings places the segments in the percentage length of every individual edge that it is iterating over. So if you have say an edge of 4 length and an edge of 2 length and a percentage of 50 it will place the new verts at 2 and 1 respectively. But I see you already figured it out so good on ya.
Here's another one I don't get about Blender's rotations and pivots.
I rotate an object and can scale it across one axis just fine with the Transform Orientations set to Local.
But if I freeze transformations (killing its local transforms), and create a Custom Pivot mimicking it's previous local transformation, scaling this object across one axis is no longer possible:
Why does this happen?
But for some reason, entering Edit Mode and selecting all the faces does allow you to do this:
Why does this work?
This becomes a problem to account for when you're modeling things in a rotated position or with its transforms frozen (which is usually the case if you want other modifiers like symmetry to mirror things in world space). Thanks for any info that you could throw my way as to why this happens
PD: Also Blender 3 & LTS announcement! Exciting stuff, specially for plugin creators who will hopefully not have to worry as much as before with keeping their addons up to date (though if they wish to stay always up to date with the incremental releases, I don't think this would make a difference). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4b6DM6f1OQ
Your custom pivot is actually a null/cube called 'Custom Pivot' and you clicked here or is it something I don't have in my version maybe?
Everything works well when I use the cursor as transform orientation scale in single axis still possible - now I get it can be annoying as you ant to work on more than a thing at a time right
What is your go to setup when you want to just or boolean something? Or FFD? I notice you have to spawn the lattice / box / plane each time and am trying to automate this with the nodal addon Sorcar.
Thing is it doesn't let you get Dimensions/BoundingBox, so I'm looking for a work around through the nodes/modifiers we have..
Or FFD? I notice you have to spawn the lattice / box / plane each time and am trying to automate this with the nodal addon Sorcar.
Thing is it doesn't let you get Dimensions/BoundingBox, so I'm looking for a work around through the nodes/modifiers we have..
is there an easier way?
Ofc there is. We have a few addons that do this for you. What dcc did you use before blender? If 3ds Max you can try "modifier list" addon https://blenderartists.org/t/modifier-list-1-5-1/1147752 it tries to mimic Max modifier stack "look and feel" and it has nice automated lattice setup. If you don't want to change the way modifier stack is looking in blender right now you can try to google some addons. I don't use them so i can't tell, but i remember we had a few.
It looks like some vertex extrusion with shrinkwrap and solidify but ... not quite. Seems like he is jumping straight from thin edge/strokes to thick strips. Probably just some clever stacking of modifiers of course. Any ideas ?
@pior pretty sure you already figured it out. looks like hes just modeling planes with a shrinkwrap, solidify and subD in preview mode. (In that order)
I guess you're right - maybe it's just the timelapse making it look fluid Or maybe it's just the somewhat carefree approach that makes it look a bit more precise that what it really is. Good stuff but nothing special indeed (explained a bit more detail in an other video - wOjPUiDIAG8). Just need to macro it to make a bit less steps-heavy.
[Edit] Oh ! Just noticed that a Bevel modifier with a value of 50ish seems to detect borders nicely - hence allowing for sharp edges without any marking or manual placement of double edges at the border. Now that's useful for some nice clean procedural straps !
@way Thanks will check this out ! Sounds perfect. Vershok also allows crafting them nodally and could be the best pick right now for those interested in blendini (kind of).
@pior love the video. very good showcase of the tools potential and nice artwork!
Replies
thank you!
I'd like to avoid having to first move the 3D cursor to the location of the pivot each time if possible.
How do I do it? If it requires some addon, thats ok.
But anyways, besides that your options are basically :
Meaning that if you absolutely need to use the object "center"/"pivot" as your point of reference, then you'd need to create a little script or PME macro to placing the cursor there and setting rotation to cursor all in one click or button press. Might even want to create an empty at that location too for later reference too.
Hey guys, ProFlow is available on
Gumroad and blendermarket for Blender 2.82!
https://gumroad.com/l/proflow
https://blendermarket.com/products/proflow
This is how the edgedecals look in engine;
This is how I currently author them in max;
Ho wdo i activate surface slide in blender?
or something similar? plsss
AFAIK though there isn't something exactly the same as Maya's surface constraint yet, sorry.
Snap to face doesn't work because snaps to the faces in the back, it's a mess
Cant show because I'm poopin and I was just reminded of it and thought I'd enquire.
Anyone else have the same issue?
It's something simple that both max and maya have,
i've seen that machine tools had it but not in the new version of blender (https://twitter.com/machin3io/status/885961118014898178)
After some add-on cleanup I've seemingly disabled/removed a feature that I found pretty useful : the ability to instantly apply a Solidify modifier and controlling it's thickness with mouse input in the viewport. IIRC the shortcut was something along the lines of ctrl shift V. Any ideas as to which addon this was from ?
Hardops?
Or maybe speedflow?
Unrelated : any Quadremesher users around here ? The tool is fantastic but the way it hides the source mesh is extremely annoying and flow-breaking imho : it's not making undoing any better, and I'd rather make my own copy and process that as opposed to filling up the scene with hidden leftover models. Anyone knows how to change that ? I'd usually ask for support on such things in the appropriate places (forum threads or support email) but the author doesn't seem to be active/reachable.
396of/quad_remesher/qr_operators.pyhides the input object. You can comment that line and add other post-processing steps at the end of that function. When you save the script you then need to disable & enable the add-on on Preferences for it to be reloaded with the changes.I'll look into it for 2.1.
It's just UVs, no export capability needed, other then default mesh export.
I've seen people use MeshMachine to do something similar, but afaik it wouldn't quite work with this shape: they would first use the UnF*ck tool to set the different widths, and then Fuse the faces in between. This would destroy my object's shape though.
Is the percent setting in the bevel what you're looking for?
This is what you show in the picture no?
I think you miunderstand what Unfuck does, or how it would be applied here (hint: across the chamfer or bevel, not along with propagate enabled).
@m00k
It's difficult for me to understand if the technique you use in the gif would apply to what I'm talking about, since the change in width appears to happen only at the top, instead of all throughout the loop, incrementally.
@Cirno Thank you for sharing this - this is indeed what I wanted to get at. Where are you tweaking that Limit Method & Width Method? I'm running an outdated 2.82 build (it has some custom features the final release doesn't which I heavily rely on atm), so it may be my Blender is not up to date. In the Bevel operation I don't see any of those two as you show in your interface; I can only find Limit Method in the Bevel modifier.
@MACHIN3 Yeah this is it - thank you for the detailed screenshot and even video haha. First chamfer, then fuse. Got it. This is the fastest method that I know of how to do this operation too, in any app actually.
How did you get from the second shape to the third, altering that chamfer width?
- If it's isolated enough I could use Proportional Editing, but in this case it would move other vertices (yeah you can hide mesh elements and these won't be affected by the proportional editing, but i'd rather modify things when everything is visible).
- I could also just eyeball every segment and scale each edge individually to create this widening effect. Would rather avoid this with anything more than 4-5 segments if possible...
- I think the best method would be using 2 lattices, one for each side of the chamfer? Is there any faster way of doing this?
And this is wishful thinking from myself Machine, but it would be pretty rad if you could do some black magic and have your Bevel tool take us from the first shape to the last without having to create chamfers and fusing themSo the Change Width tool has a Taper feature. That's friggin' great! Huge time saver
The percentage settings places the segments in the percentage length of every individual edge that it is iterating over. So if you have say an edge of 4 length and an edge of 2 length and a percentage of 50 it will place the new verts at 2 and 1 respectively.
But I see you already figured it out so good on ya.
I rotate an object and can scale it across one axis just fine with the Transform Orientations set to Local.
But if I freeze transformations (killing its local transforms), and create a Custom Pivot mimicking it's previous local transformation, scaling this object across one axis is no longer possible:
Why does this happen?
But for some reason, entering Edit Mode and selecting all the faces does allow you to do this:
Why does this work?
This becomes a problem to account for when you're modeling things in a rotated position or with its transforms frozen (which is usually the case if you want other modifiers like symmetry to mirror things in world space). Thanks for any info that you could throw my way as to why this happens
PD: Also Blender 3 & LTS announcement! Exciting stuff, specially for plugin creators who will hopefully not have to worry as much as before with keeping their addons up to date (though if they wish to stay always up to date with the incremental releases, I don't think this would make a difference). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4b6DM6f1OQ
it tries to mimic Max modifier stack "look and feel" and it has nice automated lattice setup. If you don't want to change the way modifier stack is looking in blender right now you can try to google some addons. I don't use them so i can't tell, but i remember we had a few.
It looks like some vertex extrusion with shrinkwrap and solidify but ... not quite. Seems like he is jumping straight from thin edge/strokes to thick strips. Probably just some clever stacking of modifiers of course. Any ideas ?
[Edit] Oh ! Just noticed that a Bevel modifier with a value of 50ish seems to detect borders nicely - hence allowing for sharp edges without any marking or manual placement of double edges at the border. Now that's useful for some nice clean procedural straps !