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Blender Mega Thread

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  • Frankie
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    Frankie polycounter lvl 20
    someone make sure this video about marking menus and radial menus is shown to the guy !(linked from another thread on pc)

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtH9GdFSQaw"]Demo of Marking Menus - YouTube[/ame]
  • Serapth
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    Serapth polycounter lvl 6
    I searched for tutorials, it seems like there is a large amount of bad video tutorials out there for Blender. I didn't even get to the painting part, I just wanted to apply a material. I ended up purchasing 3Dcoat after giving the demo a try.

    So, this tutorial isn't actually meant to demonstrate texturing, it's actually about exporting a fully texture model into PlayStation Suite, but the texture process still describes ( and in the video, shows ), the process of creating a texture in Blender.

    It's a bit convoluted to wrap your head around initially, but in the end, it's not really any more involved than other 3D apps.

    On a semi related note, the linked tutorial does cover the extreme basics of exporting from Blender to a game engine. It is in two parts, part one described above covers just the Blender bits. Part two covers the PlayStation Suite SDK specific bits, including code to display a model if anyone is interested in Vita development.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    I think that's one way the BGE can still remain relevant in this age of UDK and Unity. Being able to export games to the Vita or 3DS would be very cool. But I guess Nintendo didn't release their SDK.
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    Polyhertz that thread looks really hopefull indeed.

    I lol'd at this
    \At the beginning, blender was only designed for pro users. That's why we now have a very fast workflow comparing to other apps (which all use weak "standard" to allow new users to understand the basis quickly).
    I'm not against facilitate new users experience, but not to the detriment of professional users.
    Should we get an option in user pref "hobbyist and inneficient workflow"? stick-out-tongue.gif
  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    that quote is funny as hell, i really don't get why so many think just having widgetless transformations means it's all of a sudden a hundred times more efficient than other packages.

    i started on blender, so know all the important keys, and know my way around and the app, and still find maya, and modo to be much more efficient and faster to use than blender.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    passerby wrote: »
    i really don't get why so many think just having widgetless transformations means it's all of a sudden a hundred times more efficient than other packages


    Many Blender users treat it as something to be 'protected' from the demon that is standardization. B-Mesh got a lot of hate from Blender loyalists too. Imo the community has stunted its growth by constantly being on the offensive against such changes.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Yeah the fanbase can be completely ridiculous at times. No matter how much sense a criticism you have makes, they'll flame the shite out of you.
  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    Many Blender users treat it as something to be 'protected' from the demon that is standardization. B-Mesh got a lot of hate from Blender loyalists too. Imo the community has stunted its growth by constantly being on the offensive against such changes.

    they usually also blame all problems on the gpl, and at the same time troll you for trying to autodesk stuff with blender, which is a bitch, if you want your normals, intact and want to use fbx or any formate that can get animations and bones back and forward.

    the app has some great things to it, but my gawd, the community can troll the hell out of you for asking simple questions like why it cant do x etc.

    and i swear somethings are there just to be different, instead of hard and soft edges, and normals that can be edited, you got this stupid edge spilt thing that they all claim as being better.
  • Overlord
  • planaria
    passerby wrote: »
    they usually also blame all problems on the gpl, and at the same time troll you for trying to autodesk stuff with blender, which is a bitch, if you want your normals, intact and want to use fbx or any formate that can get animations and bones back and forward.

    the app has some great things to it, but my gawd, the community can troll the hell out of you for asking simple questions like why it cant do x etc.

    and i swear somethings are there just to be different, instead of hard and soft edges, and normals that can be edited, you got this stupid edge spilt thing that they all claim as being better.


    heres an idea, get a bunch of max / maya / whatever users who are interested in feature X .. say for instance max like smoothing groups to be implemented into blender and get them to all invest 50 dollars into it, 100 people = 5k. thats 5 grand to whoever wants to code it. now make a post on http://elsyiun.com and watch the developers roll in.

    i only mention this because when bge users (myself included) wanted level streaming implemented into the bge we infact put up a bounty for it and paid for it to be coded.( i mention 50 because thats what i threw in for the cause)

    i dont know how you managed to run into so many trolls, im sorry about that but there is really so much online help for blender its silly.
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    Humans are just creatures of habit. Current Blender users don't want to relearn their own application anymore than users from other applications want to learn Blender's now. Breaking habits is hard, so resistance is pretty normal. It does get a bit silly with claiming that RMB select avoids carpal tunnel and things though.

    The rigging guy from Big Buck Bunny and Sintel is working on a new default keymap that is more standardized.
    passerby wrote: »
    they usually also blame all problems on the gpl, and at the same time troll you for trying to autodesk stuff with blender, which is a bitch, if you want your normals, intact and want to use fbx or any formate that can get animations and bones back and forward.

    The FBX SDK does have some incompatibilities with GPL in regards to redistribution (I'm not sure it's entirely by accident either). There is a GSoC project working on trying to get FBX support through other means though. It's just a problem with a non-trivial solution. Happens a lot with Open Source and closed formats.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    passerby wrote: »
    and i swear somethings are there just to be different, instead of hard and soft edges, and normals that can be edited, you got this stupid edge spilt thing that they all claim as being better.

    As much as I see your point on the blender community being backwards, edge-splitting had been quite a big default when it came to rendering things realtime, even maya uses that methodology.

    Max with its smoothingroups is just another unwieldy way of doing the very same thing.

    Several polygons might share the same vertex, this vertex will have one normal, if you want a sharp edge you split these polygons and create additional vertices with different normals.

    No matter how much you can edit this vertex and its normal it's still just one normal, you can't split an edge without having an edge split.
  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    @eld you missed my point, in blender it just physically splits the edge, and doesn't allow the vertex normals to be edited at all on the edge.

    In maya you can soften or harden the edges which more or less gives the verts on it 1 or 2 normals, and those normals can be edited too.

    wasnt referring to smoothing groups at all, since i hate them too.
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    planaria wrote: »
    i dont know how you managed to run into so many trolls, im sorry about that but there is really so much online help for blender its silly.

    its getting much better recently. a few years back it was far far worse.

    What always amused me about the 'ui' is for pros thing is no pro's have been using blender until recently.. when they updated the UI

    eld: it splits the mesh vertex's along with the normal and uv vertexs. its a shit hack.
  • respawnrt
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    respawnrt polycounter lvl 8
    Blender's LoopCut can now keep it's loops parallel.Rejoice :)
    jmNBB9q6nvQKf.png
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    r_fletch_r wrote: »
    eld: it splits the mesh vertex's along with the normal and uv vertexs. its a shit hack.
    Isn't this exactly what happens in the game engine anyway?
    I agree the ability to modify normals would be great though. The problem is that Blender automatically recalculates normals and afaik, its hard coded and therefore cant be scripted so that it doesnt happen :(
    The devs would need to change it in C , but they might do it if we ask enough :)
    respawnrt wrote: »
    Blender's LoopCut can now keep it's loops parallel.Rejoice :)
    w00t!
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    r_fletch_r wrote: »
    eld: it splits the mesh vertex's along with the normal and uv vertexs. its a shit hack.

    I know, and as metalliandy says, this is what happens in every real-time scenario.

    In blender the tools are right, the result is right, but the fact that the modifier actually already splits it up and that the exported data is actually split up models is a bit unwieldy.

    This step should happen when being rendered, not to the actual mesh itself, just edge-split information or custom normals for any application to interpret as they choose.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    xrg wrote: »
    The rigging guy from Big Buck Bunny and Sintel is working on a new default keymap that is more standardized.

    For anyone interested:
    http://search.gmane.org/?author=Nathan+Vegdahl&sort=date

    His main focus atm seems to be on changing it so that you can add/remove from the selection instead of the current toggle-only behavior.
  • Lazerus Reborn
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    Lazerus Reborn polycounter lvl 8
    Seems I'll need to learn blender for my inter-ship.
    Currently rolling with max 2012 (student), Any tip's on moving over?
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Isn't this exactly what happens in the game engine anyway?

    Yeah technically, draw calls wise, but the Blender method adds completely un-necessary tris. Once it gets to engine its all the same but if you want to be neat, or are making a portfolio piece, it can be annoying. You'd have to weld everything back up (I assume the normals would still stay the same?)

    Which reminds me. Is there a merge-verts system that operates on the distance between verts? Like in Max?
  • PolyHertz
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    For anyone interested:
    http://search.gmane.org/?author=Nathan+Vegdahl&sort=date

    His main focus atm seems to be on changing it so that you can add/remove from the selection instead of the current toggle-only behavior.

    Oops, I meant to link to more information about that. Heh I just kinda randomly mentioned it. Keymap is here if you want to give it a shot where it's at so far.

    Spacebar changes modes. Tab is search. W,E,R - scale, rotate, translate. 1,2,3 - vertex, edge, face select (hold shift to select multiple modes at once). Selection modes are more normal but seems to have a few quirks yet.

    Going to be a pain for me to relearn it but overall I like the way it's heading. :)
  • Lazerus Reborn
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    Lazerus Reborn polycounter lvl 8
    PolyHertz wrote: »

    Thank's !

    I was poking around the wiki for tips and the usual you-tube tutorials on the ui/functions ect.

    I'll hit all these before i meet the CEO ;')
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    Andreas wrote: »
    Yeah technically, draw calls wise, but the Blender method adds completely un-necessary tris. Once it gets to engine its all the same but if you want to be neat, or are making a portfolio piece, it can be annoying. You'd have to weld everything back up (I assume the normals would still stay the same?)

    Which reminds me. Is there a merge-verts system that operates on the distance between verts? Like in Max?

    I'm not sure if it's the same but you can turn on AutoMerge Editing by going to Mesh -> AutoMerge Editing in edit mode. Using snap tools it'll automerge things together. There is also remove doubles in the specials menu (w key).
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    xrg wrote: »
    Keymap is here if you want to give it a shot where it's at so far.

    This gives errors in the latest official release. Is there a specific version from GraphicAll that it should be run on?
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    Oh I didn't think about that. Try one from here, should work with those.
  • Michael Knubben
    PolyHertz: I suggest just getting a recent trunk build from GraphicAll. Generally they're roughly as stable as the last official build, unless you get a branch build (ie. a copy of the source in which they add stuff, with the intention of merging it into the main program later)
    You can also try the Skin modifier then, which I've been having a lot of fun with! The automatic rigging is super useful for sculpting.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Just tried it with the latest build on GraphicAll and one from the linked site, still getting errors. Maybe I'm doing this wrong? I'm going into user preferences > input > import key configuration... and loading up the .py file from my desktop (maybe it needs to be placed in a specific directory first?).
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Andreas wrote: »
    Yeah technically, draw calls wise, but the Blender method adds completely un-necessary tris. Once it gets to engine its all the same but if you want to be neat, or are making a portfolio piece, it can be annoying. You'd have to weld everything back up (I assume the normals would still stay the same?)
    I don't see how you are getting more tris, mate. The results should be 100% the same as smoothing groups in max, just with split geo, rather than split normals. It shouldn't add any more geo.
    The normals won't be the same if you weld them. they will revert back to smooth.
    Andreas wrote: »
    Which reminds me. Is there a merge-verts system that operates on the distance between verts? Like in Max?
    Yea, Specials menu (W)> Remove Doubles. You can set the distance in the Operator panel. :)
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Damn I meant extra edges and verts, not tris. Sorry. Thanks, didn't know bout that operator in the remove doubles tool! Will try it.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Andreas wrote: »
    Damn I meant extra edges and verts, not tris. Sorry. Thanks, didn't know bout that operator in the remove doubles tool! Will try it.
    No problem :)

    You shouldn't get extra edges, but yea, you get doubled verts. The vert count is no different to what you see in game though, AFAIK.
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    Just tried it with the latest build on GraphicAll and one from the linked site, still getting errors. Maybe I'm doing this wrong? I'm going into user preferences > input > import key configuration... and loading up the .py file from my desktop (maybe it needs to be placed in a specific directory first?).

    I'm not sure. I run Linux so typically just build from source and yank down the whole scripts svn and it's good to go. Seems import key configuration works fine for me too though.

    The folder it goes in is (inside the extracted download folder) 2.63 -> scripts -> presets -> keyconfig. It's probably not really worth as much trouble as you're having with it to be honest though. :/
  • MadnessImport
    Seems I'll need to learn blender for my inter-ship.
    Currently rolling with max 2012 (student), Any tip's on moving over?

    Also: http://cgcookie.com/blender/category/getting-started/
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Is there any way in Blender to use a tool multiple times without leaving it? Like in Max you can hit Apply instead of OK, or in Modo most tools use the mmb as apply without exiting.
  • Slum
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    Slum polycounter lvl 18
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    Is there any way in Blender to use a tool multiple times without leaving it? Like in Max you can hit Apply instead of OK, or in Modo most tools use the mmb as apply without exiting.

    I'm not sure - but you can hit F6 to redo the last action + options.
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    There is repeat (shift+R) that will redo the last action, then you can tweak it with the operator panel after like Slum said. History is F3 too if that helps. Just to note, History is a little flaky with Undo so not super reliable.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Repeat isn't quite the same thing, as it takes your previous action and tries to duplicate it as opposed to re-enabling the tool itself.

    So say I wanted to use the 'Loop Cut and Slide' multiple times in a row; If I use shift+R or F3 it just takes the new loop and slides it based on the previous slide amount. Or if I wanted to use the Knife tool multiple times, it's completely unsupported because there's no logical way of repeating the kind of modification it does. Some things could use the Repeat (shift+R) + retroactive modify (F6) like extrude, but not in most cases.

    Assuming it's not just well hidden, for a program that claims to be very efficient this seems like a rather significant oversight.
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    I doubt it's an oversight and probably just something they haven't gotten to yet.

    You can set multiple loop cuts by using the scrollwheel or typing in the number of cuts you want if that helps any. AFAIK there isn't the apply functionality you're wanting though.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    I get what Hertz is saying. I miss this when I'm welding verts. Basically what I think he is asking is if he goes through the menus and selects 'Weld last selected', is there a shortcut to redoing that action without going back into the menus. Like 'G' in Maya, I believe. I would also love to see this. Could work as an addon I guess.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    So say I wanted to use the 'Loop Cut and Slide' multiple times in a row; If I use shift+R or F3 it just takes the new loop and slides it based on the previous slide amount.
    I made a script called fastloop which does something similar to this.
    It allows you to loopcut and slide just by left clicking and moving the mouse. To exit the script you need to press Esc x2

    http://metalliandy.com/html/extra_scripts.html
    http://www.metalliandy.com/downloads/scripts/fastloop_016.py

    It works with BMesh :)
  • Ben Apuna
    @Lazerus Reborn:

    There are more Blender tutorials and such over in the Blender - What to read up on... thread.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    This is sort of neat, it's like ZSPheres but flat areas and surface stretching between two points is actually possible without needing to tweak the mesh after its dropped:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GdT1-Ynmpc"]Blender 3d Skin modifier tutorial - YouTube[/ame]
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    That is badass! :O
  • Krypteia
    Anybody know what "Vertex Scaling" would be under in the User Preferences, or if it is? I run Blender with the Maya preset, with a slight edit to include Blender's scaling and such tools - didn't see "Vertex Scaling" when I searched, and Ctrl+A doesn't do it for me.
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    Does anyone know if there is a way to disable the vertex offset that blender does when you select verts? its really bugging me.
  • respawnrt
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    respawnrt polycounter lvl 8
    Isn't that more like a future, because it doesn't have rect sel by default so to make it easier to select ?
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    Krypteia wrote: »
    Anybody know what "Vertex Scaling" would be under in the User Preferences, or if it is? I run Blender with the Maya preset, with a slight edit to include Blender's scaling and such tools - didn't see "Vertex Scaling" when I searched, and Ctrl+A doesn't do it for me.

    Looks like it needs added to that keymap. Go to 3DView -> 3DView(Global) and at the bottom click add new. Paste transform.skin_resize in the little box and set the key combo to whatever you want.

    Image to illustrate:

    skin.png
  • Krypteia
    Thank you very much, xrg!
  • Dim
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    Dim polycounter lvl 10
    These could be helpful for folks starting out. There were a couple of things in there I hadn't heard about either.

    http://blairwillems.com/2012/05/30/blender-some-useful-default-settings/
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    I made a script called fastloop which does something similar to this.
    It allows you to loopcut and slide just by left clicking and moving the mouse. To exit the script you need to press Esc x2

    http://metalliandy.com/html/extra_scripts.html
    http://www.metalliandy.com/downloads/scripts/fastloop_016.py

    It works with BMesh :)

    Hey Andy,
    Any idea how to invoke the knife tool from python.
    i tried
    if bpy.ops.mesh.knife_tool.poll():
      bpy.ops.mesh.knife_tool(use_occlude_geometry=True, only_select=False)
    
    but it does nothing. if I try to run it directly without the poll check it says im in an incorrect context. any ideas?
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