Hi all, Is there a way to stop blender from creating an "Armature" root upon exporting an fbx with animations?
I am trying to use the same avatar in unity with custom animations and animations from mixamo. This is not possible if blender adds this root.
The megathread is very mega, so excuse me if this has already been answerred - cant seem to find it. How do you do big soft deformations, like what an FFD3x3 would accomplish in Max? I use this ALL the time, and simply cant figure out how to do nice, smooth deformations like this in Blender. The falloff (proportional editing) option doesnt look very good, and doesnt work like expected. For example, setting it to linear and scaling components, doesnt actually give a linear falloff.
So, I downloaded Maxivs Interactive tools, which has a lattice 3x3 in it, but the falloff is linear, which is the opposite of what I want.
Does anyone know how to make it work like the FFD in Max? Or, how would you model eg an axehead in 6 seconds? I feel like im missing something very obvious here
As for deform there is no such thing in stock Blender to my knowledge. However, I would just stick to the lowpoly and use a Subdiv modifier on the mesh. You can preview the result even while in edit mode. That way you can model smooth shapes with just a bit of control geometry.
I'm going to try to bake down a few assets using Blender's Bevel Shader. Is there a way to separate object baking by mesh name, so as to not have to explode the pieces intersecting?
For a reference, I'm looking for something that works like Substance's bake by mesh name feature.
Tweaking and adjusting shaders -> eg. adjusting Carpaint, adjusting Flakes, changing Noise values etc. Are these tasks are handled by the CPU or GPU? I mean the changes/ updates that we see in the viewport while making these adjustments - will these be faster when using a good graphics card? (Viewport Shading > Rendered view, Render = Cycles )
I know - For a final Rendered Still Image, a good graphics card is much faster.
@Justo as far as I tried, if Mesh pieces are in separate Objects, they don't have bevels on intersecting geo with the bevel shader.
@sinhead It depends on which view shading you use and what you set in your settings. If you have GPU enabled, then Cycles and Evee are using the GPU both on actual render and in the viewport.
@99499 I would go with roughly laid out around the character. You know, as if You would put on a piece of clothing, then blow a lot of air into it. Once that is done, have it simulate falling into place. That is roughly the process Marvelous Designer follows.
Another, more stylized way is to just model stuff normaly/sculpt it on the character and just use the simulation where you need/want it. Mostly on loose parts of the clothes I would wager.
@Justo as far as I tried, if Mesh pieces are in separate Objects, they don't have bevels on intersecting geo with the bevel shader.
Got it, thanks!
Working on an asset with the bevel shader, currently I'm trying to make viewport previewing faster. Using a 1070, it takes 5-6 seconds when you change parameters or rotate in the viewport to see things properly, and I'm not being too demanding afaik - in the viewport, I have a light HDRI (6MB) loaded in, plus 1 point light. I'm trying to see if there's anywhere some setting that will detect if pixels are unchanged in a new render pass, so that it doesn't render it again. This would at least help when iterating the right bevel width for all edges, without moving the viewport around...
Any tips to make things render faster in Cycles. anyone?
Thanks, I didn't know about this one - it seems that it requires RTX cards though, so my GTX1070 won't be able to use this feature. Neat to know when I upgrade though
When using "loop cut" tool, how to make the next loop-cut with the same value as earlier?
eg. using Loop-cut on a Plane. I make a cut with value 0.8 (near the left side). Then I want to make a loop-cut with the same value 0.8, towards the right side of the Plane. Can this be done without having to enter the value 0.8 again. ? i.e I just click and it automatically takes the last or stored value.
Thanks, I didn't know about this one - it seems that it requires RTX cards though, so my GTX1070 won't be able to use this feature. Neat to know when I upgrade though
Hello all - Is there any build out there (or some clever trick) allowing to sculpt using Multires at any intermediate level ? In 2.83 there seems to be no options to edit any other level than the highest, which pretty much defeats a good half of the purpose of the modifier ...
[edit] Ha, found it - the Reshape feature does what I need. Basically just a matter of duplicating the current model, applying down the modifier at the desired level of edits, sculpting the desired changes, and using Reshape to ... reshape the current level of detail accordingly. Powerful stuff ...
How do I remove individual vertices from a shape key? Meaning, I have created a shape key, certain vertices are deformed by that key, but there are some vertices in that shape key that should not be deformed, they were deformed accidentally upon creation of the shape key. I'd like to remove them from the shape key.
How do I remove individual vertices from a shape key? Meaning, I have created a shape key, certain vertices are deformed by that key, but there are some vertices in that shape key that should not be deformed, they were deformed accidentally upon creation of the shape key. I'd like to remove them from the shape key.
With the shape key to be modified active and the target vertices selected in Edit Mode, execute Blend From Shape. Uncheck Add in the operator dialog and leave the source as "Basis" and Blend weight as "1.000".
@wilson66 A different but way more complicated method than what @birb said, is to invert the selection so those vertices are unselected, add the selected vertices to a new vertex group, plug that group to the shape key as a mask (so the undesired vertices get masked off), then in the dropdown menu in the Shape Keys panel (the little downwards arrow button) choose "New Shape From Mix". Then you delete the old shape key and keep this new one.
About baking normal maps using the Bevel Shader in Blender...
TL;DR: Is there a way to bake to the lowpoly the details from a highpoly mesh using the Bevel Shader, PLUS the effects of modified normals?
Testing my gun bakes, I noticed the following piece was coming out with a gradient: This is in Marmoset, using a 4k PNG normal map baked in Blender, saved as 16bit and converted to 8bit in Photoshop to correct banding. I said "I guess the problem is due to vertex normals needing to be split at the flat areas, and currently they are not".
So I added support loops to the low and highpoly in the same places (where the bevel end and flat geo starts), and baked again. The problem was fixed:
This totally is a working solution, but I was wondering if there was a way I could get this result somehow, without using the support loops. Obviously I could cut the flat areas into its own separate UV shell and turn those border edges to Hard, but that would almost always have the same costs as adding support loops: in an engine, this normal split would mean twice the verts. Sometimes in production we won't have the luxury of adding support loops everywhere, so I challenged myself with this thought. The solution I came up with in my head was "I will simply tweak vertex normals in my HP so that these are baked down to the LP, and this way I will eliminate the need for support loops". I did this using meshMachine's Normal>Flatten tool, but I think you can get the same result using Blender's Set Normals From Faces tool.
The results though were poor, giving me artifacts across the flat surface I wasn't able to figure out how to get rid of:
Do you think I am doing anything wrong with this setup? I'm attaching a simple blend scene containing the LP & HP
About baking normal maps using the Bevel Shader in Blender...
TL;DR: Is there a way to bake to the lowpoly the details from a highpoly mesh using the Bevel Shader, PLUS the effects of modified normals?
Testing my gun bakes, I noticed the following piece was coming out with a gradient:
This is in Marmoset, using a 4k PNG normal map baked in Blender, saved as 16bit and converted to 8bit in Photoshop to correct banding. I said "I guess the problem is due to vertex normals needing to be split at the flat areas, and currently they are not".
So I added support loops to the low and highpoly in the same places (where the bevel end and flat geo starts), and baked again. The problem was fixed:
This totally is a working solution, but I was wondering if there was a way I could get this result somehow, without using the support loops. Obviously I could cut the flat areas into its own separate UV shell and turn those border edges to Hard, but that would almost always have the same costs as adding support loops: in an engine, this normal split would mean twice the verts. Sometimes in production we won't have the luxury of adding support loops everywhere, so I challenged myself with this thought. The solution I came up with in my head was "I will simply tweak vertex normals in my HP so that these are baked down to the LP, and this way I will eliminate the need for support loops". I did this using meshMachine's Normal>Flatten tool, but I think you can get the same result using Blender's Set Normals From Faces tool.
The results though were poor, giving me artifacts across the flat surface I wasn't able to figure out how to get rid of:
Do you think I am doing anything wrong with this setup? I'm attaching a simple blend scene containing the LP & HP
I had a look at your file and got the result I would expect after I changed a few things. - OSL bevel shader to vanilla Blender bevel shader - render samples from 1 to 512 - activated cage in the baking settings I didn't have a look at it in Marmoset though.
Alright, I'm considering this one as solved, unless there are better solutions. @kio was right - adding those modifiers seemed to fix it for me, albeit partially.
If I only added those mods to the HP, the resulting bake had strong gradients that result in unavoidable artifacts:
If I add those mods to BOTH HP & LP, the resulting bake looks much better. If you zoom in close, there will be artifacts too, but I'm supposing these imperfections will be unavoidable with these sorts of weighted normal hacks:
So apparently the LP needs to also have its normals modified, if such tricks are imperative. Thanks for the help I do wonder though, if this modified LP would actually be lighter than one with support loops in terms of vertices to a game engine. I'll check that some other time.
@Prime8 I tried that except for using a cage mesh in bake settings (this would only affect ray projection accuracy afaik, nothing to do with altering the unwanted errors). The resulting bake looked identical to the first image I posted in the original writeup - did you try putting a very glossy material to the object to check for these artifacts?
@Justo There were some slight shading issues, but imo not as strong as in your screenshot, however this shading is already in the lowpoly and highpoly mesh an not added by the baked normal. Is your actual goal to achieve the shading of the highpoly in the file or a more flat result, like shown in the 2nd screenshot? Will post screenshots later.
@Prime8 Correct, the goal would be the second image from my first post. Afaik the only way to get as perfect a result as that is to add more loops/cut new UV shells dividing the flat areas.
@Justo : if the question is still "TL;DR: Is there a way to bake to the lowpoly the details from a highpoly mesh using the Bevel Shader, PLUS the effects of modified normals? " then the answer is definitely yes.
Now wether or not it is 100% accurate I don't know. I would say that in the example above the "low" cube could have benefited from some hard edges to relax the shading just a bit.
Question : does anyone know of a way to fix these insufferable, microscopic scrollbars ? Specifically the ones from the left brush panel in sculpt mode, and maybe also the ones from the keymap editor. The way they are just a few pixels wide and only appear on mousehover is incredibly annoying, especially when using a stylus. Not to mention the fact they their hotspot is not centered ...
Ideally I'd also love to reorder the sculpting brushes from that panel, as their order and color coding is more confusing than helpful. Is this panel editable somehow ?
I don't think it is editable, but for scrolling; if you emulate a middle mouse click with your stylus, you can always click and drag with that on any scrollable view in blender. You don't have to use the scroll bars.
@Prime8 Correct, the goal would be the second image from my first post. Afaik the only way to get as perfect a result as that is to add more loops/cut new UV shells dividing the flat areas.
I wasn't sure when looking at the file, but you figured it out already anyway.
@f1r3w4rr10r - ha that's great thanks ! Definitely a good workaround, this will make things more bearable. Still crossing fingers that the app will eventually get regular, non disappearing, thick scrollbars at some point.
Unrelated : I see that 2.9 now has the fully working Multires Unsubdivide (= reconstruct subd) feature and it's rock solid. Is there any 2.83x build out there with it too ?
Yeah there will only be backports of bug fixes For the LTS versions. That is their entire point and the definition of "stable", that you don't change the functionality of an application all the time.
there are some plans to add some sort of node based geometry generation - which will probably support such a behaviour... but this will take a while until it materializes...
@f1r3w4rr10r thanks! I like that idea of long-term-support, that the program internals can change all they want (bug fixes, optimizations etc.) but the program behavior/output must be guaranteed to be the same.
Now wether or not it is 100% accurate I don't know. I would say that in the example above the "low" cube could have benefited from some hard edges to relax the shading just a bit.
The answer is - pretty damn accurate!
Turns out I didn't know about Mesh>Normals>Set Face Strength>Strong. Using @kio 's method of applying a weighted normals modifier gave me the results I showed in my second post's last image, which still had some artifacts, but manually setting the normals to Strong in those faces fixed it completely. Perhaps that's what Kio meant from the start though and I didn't catch the full meaning.
I've been baking since then and encountered another type of error that I wasn't able to solve:
Though the picture may not show it entirely, moving the lights and viewing angle will reveal that all across the circle there are these triangulation artifacts. It's strange due to the fact I'm baking with triangulated meshes precisely to avoid any errors, and both LP & HP have the same triangulation applied. Applying the weighted normals solution did nothing, nor did dividing this area of the mesh into a separate shell and applying hard edges just to see if anything changed.
EDIT: Apparently baking this in a full 4k 32 bit image resolves this. Then later when exported a PNG in 8 bits is fine.
Results with Blender's bevel shader sure are awesome, but they also take their sweet time in debugging apparently.
Is there a way to avoid the pinching seen in images below? The object
was created with curve circle, subdivided 2 points and deleted segment -
then extruded to form the straight bit. Then added bevel for thickness.
Less bevel will help but I need the larger value.
I did find that I can convert to mesh and do some topo tweaks but
wondering if there is something to be done in the curve mode. Or maybe another method to get same result?
@Daf57 which pinching are you talking about exactly? The one on the inside of the small curve? Bevel always generates full rings around a curve, so there is no way to tell it to not do that in single spots to my knowledge. Either covert it and retopo, like you already said or make the radius of the curve larger in relation to the bevel radius.
Is there a way to avoid the pinching seen in images below? The object
was created with curve circle, subdivided 2 points and deleted segment -
then extruded to form the straight bit. Then added bevel for thickness.
Less bevel will help but I need the larger value.
I did find that I can convert to mesh and do some topo tweaks but
wondering if there is something to be done in the curve mode. Or maybe another method to get same result?
Thanks!
Daf
I use skin modifier over just edges instead of curves. Together with subdivide it's more controllable Imo
Replies
The megathread is very mega, so excuse me if this has already been answerred - cant seem to find it.
How do you do big soft deformations, like what an FFD3x3 would accomplish in Max? I use this ALL the time, and simply cant figure out how to do nice, smooth deformations like this in Blender. The falloff (proportional editing) option doesnt look very good, and doesnt work like expected. For example, setting it to linear and scaling components, doesnt actually give a linear falloff.
So, I downloaded Maxivs Interactive tools, which has a lattice 3x3 in it, but the falloff is linear, which is the opposite of what I want.
Does anyone know how to make it work like the FFD in Max?
Or, how would you model eg an axehead in 6 seconds?
I feel like im missing something very obvious here
Thanks a lot, Justo!
For a reference, I'm looking for something that works like Substance's bake by mesh name feature.
(Viewport Shading > Rendered view, Render = Cycles )
I know - For a final Rendered Still Image, a good graphics card is much faster.
Working on an asset with the bevel shader, currently I'm trying to make viewport previewing faster. Using a 1070, it takes 5-6 seconds when you change parameters or rotate in the viewport to see things properly, and I'm not being too demanding afaik - in the viewport, I have a light HDRI (6MB) loaded in, plus 1 point light.
I'm trying to see if there's anywhere some setting that will detect if pixels are unchanged in a new render pass, so that it doesn't render it again. This would at least help when iterating the right bevel width for all edges, without moving the viewport around...
Any tips to make things render faster in Cycles. anyone?
eg. using Loop-cut on a Plane. I make a cut with value 0.8 (near the left side).
Then I want to make a loop-cut with the same value 0.8, towards the right side of the Plane. Can this be done without having to enter the value 0.8 again. ? i.e I just click and it automatically takes the last or stored value.
Is there any build out there (or some clever trick) allowing to sculpt using Multires at any intermediate level ? In 2.83 there seems to be no options to edit any other level than the highest, which pretty much defeats a good half of the purpose of the modifier ...
[edit] Ha, found it - the Reshape feature does what I need. Basically just a matter of duplicating the current model, applying down the modifier at the desired level of edits, sculpting the desired changes, and using Reshape to ... reshape the current level of detail accordingly. Powerful stuff ...
This render is a full 30 seconds faster on Linux than windows. cpu rendering - Blender 2.83
TL;DR: Is there a way to bake to the lowpoly the details from a highpoly mesh using the Bevel Shader, PLUS the effects of modified normals?
Testing my gun bakes, I noticed the following piece was coming out with a gradient:
This is in Marmoset, using a 4k PNG normal map baked in Blender, saved as 16bit and converted to 8bit in Photoshop to correct banding. I said "I guess the problem is due to vertex normals needing to be split at the flat areas, and currently they are not".
So I added support loops to the low and highpoly in the same places (where the bevel end and flat geo starts), and baked again. The problem was fixed:
This totally is a working solution, but I was wondering if there was a way I could get this result somehow, without using the support loops. Obviously I could cut the flat areas into its own separate UV shell and turn those border edges to Hard, but that would almost always have the same costs as adding support loops: in an engine, this normal split would mean twice the verts. Sometimes in production we won't have the luxury of adding support loops everywhere, so I challenged myself with this thought.
The solution I came up with in my head was "I will simply tweak vertex normals in my HP so that these are baked down to the LP, and this way I will eliminate the need for support loops". I did this using meshMachine's Normal>Flatten tool, but I think you can get the same result using Blender's Set Normals From Faces tool.
The results though were poor, giving me artifacts across the flat surface I wasn't able to figure out how to get rid of:
Do you think I am doing anything wrong with this setup? I'm attaching a simple blend scene containing the LP & HP
- OSL bevel shader to vanilla Blender bevel shader
- render samples from 1 to 512
- activated cage in the baking settings
I didn't have a look at it in Marmoset though.
If I only added those mods to the HP, the resulting bake had strong gradients that result in unavoidable artifacts:
If I add those mods to BOTH HP & LP, the resulting bake looks much better. If you zoom in close, there will be artifacts too, but I'm supposing these imperfections will be unavoidable with these sorts of weighted normal hacks:
So apparently the LP needs to also have its normals modified, if such tricks are imperative. Thanks for the help
@Prime8 I tried that except for using a cage mesh in bake settings (this would only affect ray projection accuracy afaik, nothing to do with altering the unwanted errors). The resulting bake looked identical to the first image I posted in the original writeup - did you try putting a very glossy material to the object to check for these artifacts?
There were some slight shading issues, but imo not as strong as in your screenshot, however this shading is already in the lowpoly and highpoly mesh an not added by the baked normal.
Is your actual goal to achieve the shading of the highpoly in the file or a more flat result, like shown in the 2nd screenshot?
Will post screenshots later.
Now wether or not it is 100% accurate I don't know. I would say that in the example above the "low" cube could have benefited from some hard edges to relax the shading just a bit.
Ideally I'd also love to reorder the sculpting brushes from that panel, as their order and color coding is more confusing than helpful. Is this panel editable somehow ?
Unrelated : I see that 2.9 now has the fully working Multires Unsubdivide (= reconstruct subd) feature and it's rock solid. Is there any 2.83x build out there with it too ?
I've been baking since then and encountered another type of error that I wasn't able to solve:
Though the picture may not show it entirely, moving the lights and viewing angle will reveal that all across the circle there are these triangulation artifacts. It's strange due to the fact I'm baking with triangulated meshes precisely to avoid any errors, and both LP & HP have the same triangulation applied. Applying the weighted normals solution did nothing, nor did dividing this area of the mesh into a separate shell and applying hard edges just to see if anything changed.
EDIT: Apparently baking this in a full 4k 32 bit image resolves this. Then later when exported a PNG in 8 bits is fine.
Results with Blender's bevel shader sure are awesome, but they also take their sweet time in debugging apparently.
Feature Showcase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbvTS1pmN0s
New features in 5 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M1UaDe0qsk
2.90 Release Notes:
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-90/