@Brandon.LaFrance Oh wow, I think when I started switching to blender I didn't grasp what the live unwrap/pin actually does so I discarded it and found an addon that applies the unwrap algorithm only to the selection... essentially the reverse of what live unwrap does.. Makes me feel dumb. I'm the one learning from this after all, It does look more efficient and feels more "free flowing" from the short time I've been testing it since your comment.
@Defunct It's part of an addon that applies the same algorithm from the unwrap option but only to the selection and not the whole uv island.
@Oaken Hah, don't be too hard on yourself, we all have our blind spots. Not doubt there are a million things in my workflow that are "suboptimal" to say the least. I just don't know about them because I'm too scared to go out on a limb and post stuff like you did. Just glad I could help you out. Keep up the good work, and keep sharing your knowledge!
@Oaken would love to learn the name of that addon if you dont mind. That workflow of unwrap only selected part of the uv is very handy in maya. Sounds like this addon allow blender to do the same.
The addon as other features which I've never used, the unwrap selected was the only thing I wanted. The hotkey should be Shift+E by default and It doesn't work with UV sync activated
Yeah, it's a time saving thingy, the bevels controlled by custom attributes. The devs are located in Russia and Ukraine, so any little contribution / donation really helps them right now
hi :) Can't seem to find the quad-remesh function in current Blender 3.1.2 (I think it was "Quadriflow"? It's mentioned here in the docu ). I vaguely remember using it in a previous build. Was it removed? If anyone knows anything or has any suggestions, happy to hear it! Saw there is a paid addon "Quad Remesher".
Yes, but i fear this will not make it in a nearer future release. This all first needs to be developed. And this is open ended in features and time frame.
Well, the links I posted shows he has already been developing stuff. Several of his patches are already in for the 3.2 release. Plus, Project Heist aims to improve pbr/texture paint/baking workflows. So I would imagine improved UV editing is related to that.
Hi everybody! I'm a newbie here! I do know a couple things about Blender, though. So, thought, maybe I should share here a tutorial I made about using Blender and about making your first project in it. I know somebody out there might need something like this. Especially if they are a complete beginner and don't know much about Blender but want to learn a new skill fast and create something very cool. Enjoy and let me know what you think.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASMSu-LPuCI
Hey guys I have a question regarding baking. Basically, I have this cauldron here which I sculpted a small detail into as a test and was confused as to where to go from here to achieve the low poly from this model. Do I duplicate and decrease the multi-res?
The Multiresolution Modifier in Blender has so to speak it's lowpoly "already included" and the bake function has a Bake from Multires option. But i have never seen a Solidify Modifier after a Mutires..
The old tools are one trick tools. After activation and usage they are deactivated. But the paradigm for the new tool system in the tool shelf is that such a tool stays active as long as you don't switch to another tool. So you have to switch it actively.
I have a really strange problem with Blender 2.9: I can't access the Particle Edit tool options, like brush size ect, because they are hidden behind the menu (see screenshot). The menu UI is actually on top of the tool options, covering it (you can see it in the gaps between buttons).
I can simply flip the tool options to the bottom of the UI, but I'd like to know whats going on here and how to fix it. Thanks!
@wilson66 Strange stuff! Works fine for me on 2.93.3 at least. Perhaps try with a new tab/resized window and create a new startup scene?
Question for the group: anybody know what's going on with Pie Menu Editor addon? I noticed updates were really lagging for a while now where in the past the author was all over the thread on Blenderartists and super quick with updates. Now it looks like it's not even properly 3.2-compatible.
Wanted to dip my toes into the new version - but can't use Blender without that... 😩
For the overlapping menu in Blender.. i'm not sure if i remember this correctly but if your workspace is acting weird just try to add a new Layout (or in you case Modeling) workspace which may don't have this problem (you can delete the old and rename the new and reorder if this works).
Is there a clever add-on out there (or perhaps a default way ?) to create a simple material (say, Principled BRDF or even just Diffuse) as well as a plain white or grey texture connected to the diffuse input of said material, all in one single action ? All this without having to interact with the material tab and the node editor. In other words I'd like to be able to paint right away on any model that has UVs without any interruption. I find myself having to do that a lot, and the lengthy process of creating a new material and texture each time is seriously getting in the way, to the point that I end up using other ways (grease pencil, sculpt vcols ...) even though painting a good old texture would without a doubt be best.
This sounds relatively straightforward to script, but there has to be some handy little add-on out there doing just that - perhaps with the option to set the color of the texture and resolution for instance ?
Hello - I don't believe so, as it would only take care of the creation of the materials, but not that of the blank textures. I'd have to double check though.
you can in the UV Editing workpace/viewport click the Checker Map creation button and instantly switch into Texture Painting workspace/vieport and paint onto your object.. Maybe using one additional click for choosing the size.. (and maybe one for new material.. 😅) (Dont' forget to save the image additionally to saving the blend file). The material setup will use a Principlaed BSDF shader with image node with no texture coordinate and vector mapping node like with the node warngler (Ctrl-T in Shader Editor ; uv is used by standard even without this).
With Boxcutter gradually becoming more and more bloated, is there a good alternative out there that goes back to the basics of cutting a model with polylines/cubes/cylinders without any fuss, just like BC originally did in the 2.7x days ? Blender does ship with Carver, but it too is awkward and convoluted to use. Any suggestion is welcome !
Sometimes when working on mesh that are not native to blender it will messe up the shading and you have to "reset vectors" to fix it, but it can happen again. Is there a way to make it permant?
SO i was having a terrible problem with the mist pass in that you get a lot of white noise from any items that use alpha like tree leaves, windows etc
I think I kind of have fixed it by bumping up the samples for transparency to 128 i think also denoising the mist pass in composite should fix it further. It seems that the white bits are from lack of samples and the more samples you use, the less noise you get from the alpha( like tree leaves , windows etc)
Now its just case of finding the minimum amount of samples I can get away with.
I used minimum light bounce of 3 and minimum transparent bounces of 3 with 128 samples for the max transparency bounces. looks ok, just a few left over noisy bits but not totally white and looks ok in the final comp
if you zoom in you can see there is still a bit of noise, but less horrendous and it just about works in the final comp.Maybe a bit of blur or denoise can fix it further
The zebra crossing is alpha, as are the tree leaves - On the rest I used transmission which looks fine in the mist pass
The Eeevee version so much cleaner, so i guess it is technically a bug, but I finally found a way to make it work for me
Is there a way (or a clever workaround ...) to convert a Face Set from sculpt mode to a sculpt mask ? (This is something I've been hoping to be able to do ever since face sets got introduced but this wasn't possible back then). Any workaround is welcome as long as it doesn't rely on extracting geo. And of course I am aware that brushes can be made aware of face sets for some useful tricks, but that's not what I am looking for - I just want a regular black mask.
(I suppose that what I am looking for is some automated way to convert face sets to vertex groups, and then somehow being able to convert a given vertex group to a mask)
Hi @MrNinjutsu - well, it's only tangentially related but I can definitely see some interesting uses for this - so, thanks !
(although in an ideal world there really should be more seamless ways to convert back and forth between edit mode selections, sculpt mode masks, and sculpt mode face sets).
@Ruz try to run the "Denoising Depth" pass through a "Map Range" Node in the Compositor, I bet you will get much better result. No need to adjust the samples and bounces this way and you can easily adjust the range inside the compositor.
@Prime8 yeah i have been through and tried most of the fixes, but it actually worse than that as the mist pass itself actually fights with the transparency( leaves, windows, billboards etc and there are areas where my tree leave alpha is just cut off completely, this is an issue aside from the noise
re the depth pass, its not anti aliased? nice jaggy edges whicb is a shame as it works pretty good otherwise
Works perfect in eevee though, but since mine is a vr scene i can't borrow eevees mist pass
EDIT In the image above a I used a color ramp to get rid of the crossing and constrained the mist to the far distance, which was my aim in the first place. its a bit of a hack really, but its ok for now
@Ruz the standard depth path is not anti aliased, the "Denoising Depth" is. Be aware, it always considers your world background as transparent, ignoring the film setting, depending on your scene you need to handle with that in the compositor.
I haven't used it in Eevee, but your goal is using Cycles anyway right?
@Prime8 yeah , I prefer cycles for most things. I will mess around with the Depth pass later, but it totally ignores any transparent textures( like my leaves), so maybe not working for this scene.
i got the mist pass working okayish so will rest on my laurels for now :)
I heard that depth pass is mainly for defocus node and the reason it is not anti aliased is that it messes up depth of field
this kind of works, but needs a few more tweaks. Turning down the IOR to 1.0 also gets rid of most of the remainaing white noise, though its not really desirable to do that
I blurred the mist pass slighty, though might try some kind of defocus efffect. leaves have gone a bit weird too
@Ruz The Denoising Depth pass completely ignores the transparent textures? Would you mind to show that? I assume your leaves use an alpha mask texture or are they semi-transparent?
In general the depth (Z) pass uses a threshold value for clipping the alpha, mist and denoising depth don't clip, they use the actual value.
Replies
@Brandon.LaFrance Oh wow, I think when I started switching to blender I didn't grasp what the live unwrap/pin actually does so I discarded it and found an addon that applies the unwrap algorithm only to the selection... essentially the reverse of what live unwrap does.. Makes me feel dumb. I'm the one learning from this after all, It does look more efficient and feels more "free flowing" from the short time I've been testing it since your comment.
@Defunct It's part of an addon that applies the same algorithm from the unwrap option but only to the selection and not the whole uv island.
@Oaken Hah, don't be too hard on yourself, we all have our blind spots. Not doubt there are a million things in my workflow that are "suboptimal" to say the least. I just don't know about them because I'm too scared to go out on a limb and post stuff like you did. Just glad I could help you out. Keep up the good work, and keep sharing your knowledge!
@Oaken would love to learn the name of that addon if you dont mind. That workflow of unwrap only selected part of the uv is very handy in maya. Sounds like this addon allow blender to do the same.
@quockhanhlk https://alexbel.gumroad.com/l/NbMya
The addon as other features which I've never used, the unwrap selected was the only thing I wanted. The hotkey should be Shift+E by default and It doesn't work with UV sync activated
Made a new video showcasing the new Zen BQQ (Build Bevels Quickly) addon for Blender :)
@LuisCherubini Thanks for sharing this here - I didn't have that zen plugin in my radar, and I'm glad I know of it now!
Yeah, it's a time saving thingy, the bevels controlled by custom attributes. The devs are located in Russia and Ukraine, so any little contribution / donation really helps them right now
hi :) Can't seem to find the quad-remesh function in current Blender 3.1.2 (I think it was "Quadriflow"? It's mentioned here in the docu ). I vaguely remember using it in a previous build. Was it removed? If anyone knows anything or has any suggestions, happy to hear it! Saw there is a paid addon "Quad Remesher".
You can find it here under object data properties/ remesh, there are both voxel remesher and quad(riflow) remesher.
The quad remesher addon is expensive, but works very well and worth it if you understand and know how to include it into your workflow.
Awesome, thanks 🙏
Have they fixed/updated the UV tools in the latest version of Blender?
Not that i know of. No significant changes in this area. https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.1
They just hired a guy to work on UV tools. I haven't seen anything about what is planned yet, but hopefully it gets some upgrades soon.
Phabricator activity: https://developer.blender.org/p/chrisbblend/
Weekly reports: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Chris_Blackbourn/WeeklyReports
Yes, but i fear this will not make it in a nearer future release. This all first needs to be developed. And this is open ended in features and time frame.
Well, the links I posted shows he has already been developing stuff. Several of his patches are already in for the 3.2 release. Plus, Project Heist aims to improve pbr/texture paint/baking workflows. So I would imagine improved UV editing is related to that.
Hi everybody! I'm a newbie here! I do know a couple things about Blender, though. So, thought, maybe I should share here a tutorial I made about using Blender and about making your first project in it. I know somebody out there might need something like this. Especially if they are a complete beginner and don't know much about Blender but want to learn a new skill fast and create something very cool. Enjoy and let me know what you think.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASMSu-LPuCI
Hey guys I have a question regarding baking. Basically, I have this cauldron here which I sculpted a small detail into as a test and was confused as to where to go from here to achieve the low poly from this model. Do I duplicate and decrease the multi-res?
The Multiresolution Modifier in Blender has so to speak it's lowpoly "already included" and the bake function has a Bake from Multires option. But i have never seen a Solidify Modifier after a Mutires..
Is there a way to use this tool and have it go back to the selection tool after you created the primitive?
Use hotkey W :)
The old tools are one trick tools. After activation and usage they are deactivated. But the paradigm for the new tool system in the tool shelf is that such a tool stays active as long as you don't switch to another tool. So you have to switch it actively.
That little white grid can be removed?
No, it's part of the widget.
Hi,
I have a really strange problem with Blender 2.9: I can't access the Particle Edit tool options, like brush size ect, because they are hidden behind the menu (see screenshot). The menu UI is actually on top of the tool options, covering it (you can see it in the gaps between buttons).
I can simply flip the tool options to the bottom of the UI, but I'd like to know whats going on here and how to fix it. Thanks!
@wilson66 Strange stuff! Works fine for me on 2.93.3 at least. Perhaps try with a new tab/resized window and create a new startup scene?
Question for the group: anybody know what's going on with Pie Menu Editor addon? I noticed updates were really lagging for a while now where in the past the author was all over the thread on Blenderartists and super quick with updates. Now it looks like it's not even properly 3.2-compatible.
Wanted to dip my toes into the new version - but can't use Blender without that... 😩
For the overlapping menu in Blender.. i'm not sure if i remember this correctly but if your workspace is acting weird just try to add a new Layout (or in you case Modeling) workspace which may don't have this problem (you can delete the old and rename the new and reorder if this works).
Hello all,
Is there a clever add-on out there (or perhaps a default way ?) to create a simple material (say, Principled BRDF or even just Diffuse) as well as a plain white or grey texture connected to the diffuse input of said material, all in one single action ? All this without having to interact with the material tab and the node editor. In other words I'd like to be able to paint right away on any model that has UVs without any interruption. I find myself having to do that a lot, and the lengthy process of creating a new material and texture each time is seriously getting in the way, to the point that I end up using other ways (grease pencil, sculpt vcols ...) even though painting a good old texture would without a doubt be best.
This sounds relatively straightforward to script, but there has to be some handy little add-on out there doing just that - perhaps with the option to set the color of the texture and resolution for instance ?
Thanks !
Hi pior, Would a Material Library do the trick?
Hello - I don't believe so, as it would only take care of the creation of the materials, but not that of the blank textures. I'd have to double check though.
Using Texture Tools for Blender :
you can in the UV Editing workpace/viewport click the Checker Map creation button and instantly switch into Texture Painting workspace/vieport and paint onto your object.. Maybe using one additional click for choosing the size.. (and maybe one for new material.. 😅) (Dont' forget to save the image additionally to saving the blend file). The material setup will use a Principlaed BSDF shader with image node with no texture coordinate and vector mapping node like with the node warngler (Ctrl-T in Shader Editor ; uv is used by standard even without this).
Hey @okidoki , that's pretty clever ! That totally works, and even better than expected actually. Much thanks :)
Sharing my latest finished #blender Project, "Scout Drone".
Its a reference from Roc H's concept art, You can find more renders at: luischerub.com
Enjoy!
Quick question, when opening Blender all my collections are expanded, is there a way to collapse them all in one click/key?
Pressing numpad-/numpad+ with the cursor over outliner collapses/expands collections for me.
Thank you!
Hello all,
With Boxcutter gradually becoming more and more bloated, is there a good alternative out there that goes back to the basics of cutting a model with polylines/cubes/cylinders without any fuss, just like BC originally did in the 2.7x days ? Blender does ship with Carver, but it too is awkward and convoluted to use. Any suggestion is welcome !
Shift+Left Click on the highest collection "Scene Collection".
You can try out Fluent (see BlenderMarket)
Ha, that Fluent addon does look good indeed ! I remember seeing it a while ago but didn't take the time to try it and forgot about it. Thanks :)
Sometimes when working on mesh that are not native to blender it will messe up the shading and you have to "reset vectors" to fix it, but it can happen again. Is there a way to make it permant?
You do know this: Object Data Properties -> Geometry Data -> Clear Custom Split Normlas Data ?
@okidoki I did not, thank you!
SO i was having a terrible problem with the mist pass in that you get a lot of white noise from any items that use alpha like tree leaves, windows etc
I think I kind of have fixed it by bumping up the samples for transparency to 128 i think also denoising the mist pass in composite should fix it further. It seems that the white bits are from lack of samples and the more samples you use, the less noise you get from the alpha( like tree leaves , windows etc)
Now its just case of finding the minimum amount of samples I can get away with.
I used minimum light bounce of 3 and minimum transparent bounces of 3 with 128 samples for the max transparency bounces. looks ok, just a few left over noisy bits but not totally white and looks ok in the final comp
if you zoom in you can see there is still a bit of noise, but less horrendous and it just about works in the final comp.Maybe a bit of blur or denoise can fix it further
The zebra crossing is alpha, as are the tree leaves - On the rest I used transmission which looks fine in the mist pass
The Eeevee version so much cleaner, so i guess it is technically a bug, but I finally found a way to make it work for me
Hello all,
Is there a way (or a clever workaround ...) to convert a Face Set from sculpt mode to a sculpt mask ? (This is something I've been hoping to be able to do ever since face sets got introduced but this wasn't possible back then). Any workaround is welcome as long as it doesn't rely on extracting geo. And of course I am aware that brushes can be made aware of face sets for some useful tricks, but that's not what I am looking for - I just want a regular black mask.
(I suppose that what I am looking for is some automated way to convert face sets to vertex groups, and then somehow being able to convert a given vertex group to a mask)
Some hint here : https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-turn-face-sets-from-sculpt-mode-into-vertex-groups/1235783
[edit] Ha, nevermind - one can simply isolate the current face set and then paint that easily with the mask brush. Solved !
I dont suppose this helps in anyway? Selection To Mask - Blender Market
Hi @MrNinjutsu - well, it's only tangentially related but I can definitely see some interesting uses for this - so, thanks !
(although in an ideal world there really should be more seamless ways to convert back and forth between edit mode selections, sculpt mode masks, and sculpt mode face sets).
@Ruz try to run the "Denoising Depth" pass through a "Map Range" Node in the Compositor, I bet you will get much better result. No need to adjust the samples and bounces this way and you can easily adjust the range inside the compositor.
@Prime8 yeah i have been through and tried most of the fixes, but it actually worse than that as the mist pass itself actually fights with the transparency( leaves, windows, billboards etc and there are areas where my tree leave alpha is just cut off completely, this is an issue aside from the noise
re the depth pass, its not anti aliased? nice jaggy edges whicb is a shame as it works pretty good otherwise
Works perfect in eevee though, but since mine is a vr scene i can't borrow eevees mist pass
EDIT In the image above a I used a color ramp to get rid of the crossing and constrained the mist to the far distance, which was my aim in the first place. its a bit of a hack really, but its ok for now
My issue with the nist pass is listed as a bug still, they really fix this as it's a complete showstopper
https://developer.blender.org/T97562
@Ruz the standard depth path is not anti aliased, the "Denoising Depth" is. Be aware, it always considers your world background as transparent, ignoring the film setting, depending on your scene you need to handle with that in the compositor.
I haven't used it in Eevee, but your goal is using Cycles anyway right?
@Prime8 yeah , I prefer cycles for most things. I will mess around with the Depth pass later, but it totally ignores any transparent textures( like my leaves), so maybe not working for this scene.
i got the mist pass working okayish so will rest on my laurels for now :)
I heard that depth pass is mainly for defocus node and the reason it is not anti aliased is that it messes up depth of field
this kind of works, but needs a few more tweaks. Turning down the IOR to 1.0 also gets rid of most of the remainaing white noise, though its not really desirable to do that
I blurred the mist pass slighty, though might try some kind of defocus efffect. leaves have gone a bit weird too
@Ruz The Denoising Depth pass completely ignores the transparent textures? Would you mind to show that? I assume your leaves use an alpha mask texture or are they semi-transparent?
In general the depth (Z) pass uses a threshold value for clipping the alpha, mist and denoising depth don't clip, they use the actual value.