I would greatly appreciate it if you can read my post objectively next time.
I was pretty specific in giving the opinion that I do not feel he is reliably consistent with how development funds are used. There is no "speculation or guessing", just an opinion.
So please, before you respond next time, keep your own spin out of it and respond objectively. Supporting Blender doesnt mean having blind loyalty to the inconsistent individual who runs the foundation. Sharing such concerns should not cause such a negative knee-jerk reaction.
And I would appreciate if you'd stop defame Ton as "inconsistent individual" and accuse him with stuff like
He has been far more interested in putting his film making career first and using funds for those purposes in the name of "blender development
Because that is not an opinion. It's a blatant lie, based on speculation.
Fact is Blender got a lot game related features in the last half year, thanks to the dev fund.
And refer to Blenderartists because there are people that have your viewpoint makes you not right dude.
Regardless of how funds may have been allocated, the past 6-months or so have been a rather substantial improvement for Game Dev. Mont29 and Dfelinto in particular have been working on several long standing issues.
Even if not every nickle gets allocated specifically to Game Dev tools, just having funding from sources other than Open Movies seems to be broadening the focus of Blender development quite a bit.
And I would appreciate if you'd stop defame Ton as "inconsistent individual" and accuse him with stuff like
Because that is not an opinion. It's a blatant lie, based on speculation.
Fact is Blender got a lot game related features in the last half year, thanks to the dev fund.
And refer to Blenderartists because there are people that have your viewpoint makes you not right dude.
Not withstanding the last 12 months or thereabouts, what Dataday said is neither a lie, speculation nor a (false) accusation; Ton has been on record saying that he is (was) more interested in pushing the VFX/film aspect of Blender's development to the extent that (he is again on record saying this) 'game developers can make it themselves because Blender is open source' (to paraphrase).
Having said that, and to reiterate, the last twelve months or so have seen marked improvement with respect to this but only because there has been increased push-back and pseudo specific funding for it (donations can be spent as the Foundation see's fit, because they are donations and not grants for specific purposes). So whilst Dataday's comments stand on their own merit, it is changing, slowly, and only because the game development community is requesting it and stepping up to the plate/ball to make it happen.
Does anyone have a workaround to disable backfacing when baking an ambient occlusion map with cycles, with high poly floaters to avoid those nasty occlusions under them?
Thanks for the tip, ProperSquid. That seemed to work. (; I'm a bit noob when it comes to rendering with nodes. Cycles and Max's slate material editor are something I haven't got used to.
Since watching this I love bringing my sculpts into blender to create beautiful presentations. So a big thank you to Kfir
What's unclear in the Fiend of Chaos video description is if the model itself was sculpted in blender. I very much doubt so. Just bringing in my sculpts tanks performance tremendously.
imho it depends on you graphics card
as far as i know there are models that run perfectly fine, i´ve seen people work on models with more than 20million triangles without problems
What's unclear in the Fiend of Chaos video description is if the model itself was sculpted in blender. I very much doubt so. Just bringing in my sculpts tanks performance tremendously.
He claims "Created and rendered in realtime using Blender (no post production)"
I speak with him regularly online though, so I'll confirm to be sure and get back to you.
I read that, the ambiguity is in whether he is speaking on just the presentation, or the entire process. He's awesome either way, but if it's true, he's double awesome.
imho it depends on you graphics card
as far as i know there are models that run perfectly fine, i´ve seen people work on models with more than 20million triangles without problems
Yeah Contours and Polystrips looks awesome. But in many cases it would be far faster to select edge loops & partial edge loops and generate a polystrip aligned to it, like when you were trying to align the polystrips to the sharpest angle part of the lip and around the eyes.
"Of course this is all Blender! and the rendering is again the same realtime glsl" -Kfir
Not sure how much of it is all blender, but he just entered it into the Allegorithmic Titan contest claiming it was painted Substance Painter. I'm not even sure it was meant to be for the contest, but all the more power to them if such opportunities open up.
If so though it wouldnt entirely be in Blender. Still, its a surprising good sculpt coming out of Blender if true.
Not sure how much of it is all blender, but he just entered it into the Allegorithmic Titan contest claiming it was painted Substance Painter. I'm not even sure it was meant to be for the contest, but all the more power to them if such opportunities open up.
If so though it wouldnt entirely be in Blender. Still, its a surprising good sculpt coming out of Blender if true.
He joined the Allegortihmic contest on my suggestion(I got suggestion from other guy in the thread, and noodged him on it). Up to the point shown in the BA thread it is 100% blender. He is doing zretopo to drop the polycount for final assets for the contest - which is an afterthought. Additionally, he is using substance painter in order to use some Allegorthmic software for the Allegorthimic contest. He had not heard of it till I showed it to him yesterday.
So yes, version that is in Allegorthimic contest is not 100% blender. Version posted above is.
He joined the Allegortihmic contest on my suggestion(I got suggestion from other guy in the thread, and noodged him on it). Up to the point shown in the BA thread it is 100% blender. He is doing zretopo to drop the polycount for final assets for the contest - which is an afterthought. Additionally, he is using substance painter in order to use some Allegorthmic software for the Allegorthimic contest. He had not heard of it till I showed it to him yesterday.
So yes, version that is in Allegorthimic contest is not 100% blender. Version posted above is.
Gotcha, but when you put it that way, I feel bad for the people who actually intended to create assets for the contest rather than submit an existing piece because someone "noodged" them into it. Kind of doesnt sit right, but whatever floats your boat. The only thing I can advise, if that were the case, is to show the extent in which the substance software has been used.
Bit off-topic, but would it be hard for blender to color code UV wireframes in the UV editor-- based off the color of their material? I've been doing mechanical stuff lately and keep forgetting which piece is which.
Bit off-topic, but would it be hard for blender to color code UV wireframes in the UV editor-- based off the color of their material? I've been doing mechanical stuff lately and keep forgetting which piece is which.
There was a color wireframe patch not long ago and it was shot down by the head of the blender foundation. He didnt believe in color wireframes, at least initially. It might be awhile before something similar gets put into blender.
@Flight & Volantk, you need to enable Auto Smooth on the object, which you can find in the edit panel (to the right of the modifiers panel).
And no, I'm not shading flat, that's just because I'm using the normals from a plane pointing up
With autosmooth:
Without autosmooth:
(Don't worry about the vertex group, I was playing around with the normal modifier - works great)
PS, I'm sure you noticed I was in multitexture mode in my viewport, it works in GLSL and multitexture, I was experimenting to see which shading modes it worked in when i took the screenshots.
I have been messing around with blender and its really nice, after you get past the slightly strange interface and hidden features. I use the maya keyboard/mouse preset which fixes the weird navigation controls. I actually cant see any reason to use max or maya now. Blender does everything they can do and usually much better. Plus all the extras like sculpting, texture painting, and compositing.
I feel like it could also do something really similar to substance designer with texture backing. I want to try something like that.
Mont29: I'm a little bit confused as to what the custom split normals feature is for. Is it for a planned feature with individually tweakable normals? I can't seem to get it to do anything at the moment.
It would also be nice if the modified normals would be displayed when you tell Blender to draw vertex normals in the viewport, but surely whatever other features you've got planned take precedence.
The modifier seems to be pretty fast. It could be interesting to get a benchmark to see if it's faster than Slide Normal Thief, but I don't have Max.
Regarding 'Auto Smooth' button, I probably have to rename it to something like 'Use Split Normals' or so, current name is too much limitative now…
JedTheKrampus “I'm a little bit confused as to what the custom split normals feature is for” - I’m a little bit confused by that question! :P If you are referring to the 'big button' below autosmooth, custom split normals are a data layer, like e.g. vgroups, vcol, etc. This allows e.g. to import clnors from FBX (and later obj too, at least), or apply modifier, and store that data. And yes, in future we will probably be able to tweak clnors in Edit Mode too.
The modified normals are visible in Edit mode, provided you enable the 'Edit Cage' button in modifier's header.
The modifier may be pretty fast, but clnors ops remain rather heavy, I’d say lag becomes noticeable above a few 10k of tris, and it becomes really painful above something like 100k.
Regarding 'Auto Smooth' button, I probably have to rename it to something like 'Use Split Normals' or so, current name is too much limitative now
That sounds like a great idea. I am a long-time Blender user, but as I couldn't find any way to turn on split normals I just assumed it had not been implemented yet, so in my opinion it needs to be a lot more obvious than it currently is.
Also could auto-smooth (or whatever it'll be renamed to) also be enabled by default when you create a new mesh? With the current default value of 180 degree angle smoothing splits I can't see any reason not to auto enable it and it would make the process of creating game models a little smoother. Otherwise if you were to make a model with many loose parts (like a gun or a vehicle) it could very be tedious to turn on for all the mesh parts (you could script it but you shouldn't need to IMO).
All these updates look fantastic. But I can't get comfortable with Blender.
I think I've asked this before, but do you guys really hit G key and then X, Y or Z keys to move stuff in viewport? Can't believe it! It is so unintuitive and just cruel to my left hand.
Replies
And I would appreciate if you'd stop defame Ton as "inconsistent individual" and accuse him with stuff like Because that is not an opinion. It's a blatant lie, based on speculation.
Fact is Blender got a lot game related features in the last half year, thanks to the dev fund.
And refer to Blenderartists because there are people that have your viewpoint makes you not right dude.
Even if not every nickle gets allocated specifically to Game Dev tools, just having funding from sources other than Open Movies seems to be broadening the focus of Blender development quite a bit.
Having said that, and to reiterate, the last twelve months or so have seen marked improvement with respect to this but only because there has been increased push-back and pseudo specific funding for it (donations can be spent as the Foundation see's fit, because they are donations and not grants for specific purposes). So whilst Dataday's comments stand on their own merit, it is changing, slowly, and only because the game development community is requesting it and stepping up to the plate/ball to make it happen.
Kfir Merlaub pushing Blender into zBrush territory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtOCdXeAY38
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2014/06/17/realtime-glsl-lighting-shading/
Since watching this I love bringing my sculpts into blender to create beautiful presentations. So a big thank you to Kfir
What's unclear in the Fiend of Chaos video description is if the model itself was sculpted in blender. I very much doubt so. Just bringing in my sculpts tanks performance tremendously.
as far as i know there are models that run perfectly fine, i´ve seen people work on models with more than 20million triangles without problems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT_hkSbK8Iw#t=20
I speak with him regularly online though, so I'll confirm to be sure and get back to you.
"Of course this is all Blender! and the rendering is again the same realtime glsl" -Kfir
And his specs:
Windows 7
Quad Core 3.4ghz AMD
Nvidia 650ti
16gigs Ram
Yup. Blender performance boosted significantly since past few years.
Now it runs better at 6,000,000 polygons (That's how far I can push it on my low-mid end PC) than it did before at 500,000.
Isn't Ram more important (than graphics card) for "Zbrush" sculpting?
Yes. But Blender doesn't seem to use much GPU too.
The build in that video achieved high polycount with way too old Graphics card for such performance (those 8GB of ram on the other hand...).
Multiresolution sculpting test:
Dynamic topology sculpting test:
Neither one seems to mainly use GPU.
Do you have VBO's Setting on in user prefs?
Yes.
We've just got a new Blender retopology add-on into alpha testing. It's call Polystrips and is designed to work alongside Contours.
It's intended to make mapping out complex topology must easier and faster during a retopology workflow.
Video demo of the alpha version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTyzZkLrJXY&feature=youtu.be
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If you want to play around with it you can find the code here: https://github.com/CGCookie/retopology/tree/feature/jd_polystrips
Can't thank you guys enough for doing this.
Not sure how much of it is all blender, but he just entered it into the Allegorithmic Titan contest claiming it was painted Substance Painter. I'm not even sure it was meant to be for the contest, but all the more power to them if such opportunities open up.
If so though it wouldnt entirely be in Blender. Still, its a surprising good sculpt coming out of Blender if true.
So yes, version that is in Allegorthimic contest is not 100% blender. Version posted above is.
Gotcha, but when you put it that way, I feel bad for the people who actually intended to create assets for the contest rather than submit an existing piece because someone "noodged" them into it. Kind of doesnt sit right, but whatever floats your boat. The only thing I can advise, if that were the case, is to show the extent in which the substance software has been used.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?343278-GLSL-PBR-Shader-for-viewport
Man you weren't kidding, layers, mask support, fill, line strokes... looks like I won't need to have photoshop open anymore.
Any FBX experts that can weigh in on questions within?
Edit: Yeah, the windows build is really an OSX build...
There was a color wireframe patch not long ago and it was shot down by the head of the blender foundation. He didnt believe in color wireframes, at least initially. It might be awhile before something similar gets put into blender.
I left a comment on your blog.
Everything seems to works fine, here's an example.
gotta give this a try when i have some time to spare
Specs, if useful in any way: Windows 7, GTX 770.
And no, I'm not shading flat, that's just because I'm using the normals from a plane pointing up
With autosmooth:
Without autosmooth:
(Don't worry about the vertex group, I was playing around with the normal modifier - works great)
PS, I'm sure you noticed I was in multitexture mode in my viewport, it works in GLSL and multitexture, I was experimenting to see which shading modes it worked in when i took the screenshots.
I feel like it could also do something really similar to substance designer with texture backing. I want to try something like that.
Thanks, work like a charm.
@Mont29
Forgot to say, you're doing important work that has been overlooked for a long time, keep it up!
It would also be nice if the modified normals would be displayed when you tell Blender to draw vertex normals in the viewport, but surely whatever other features you've got planned take precedence.
The modifier seems to be pretty fast. It could be interesting to get a benchmark to see if it's faster than Slide Normal Thief, but I don't have Max.
Regarding 'Auto Smooth' button, I probably have to rename it to something like 'Use Split Normals' or so, current name is too much limitative now…
JedTheKrampus “I'm a little bit confused as to what the custom split normals feature is for” - I’m a little bit confused by that question! :P If you are referring to the 'big button' below autosmooth, custom split normals are a data layer, like e.g. vgroups, vcol, etc. This allows e.g. to import clnors from FBX (and later obj too, at least), or apply modifier, and store that data. And yes, in future we will probably be able to tweak clnors in Edit Mode too.
The modified normals are visible in Edit mode, provided you enable the 'Edit Cage' button in modifier's header.
The modifier may be pretty fast, but clnors ops remain rather heavy, I’d say lag becomes noticeable above a few 10k of tris, and it becomes really painful above something like 100k.
Also could auto-smooth (or whatever it'll be renamed to) also be enabled by default when you create a new mesh? With the current default value of 180 degree angle smoothing splits I can't see any reason not to auto enable it and it would make the process of creating game models a little smoother. Otherwise if you were to make a model with many loose parts (like a gun or a vehicle) it could very be tedious to turn on for all the mesh parts (you could script it but you shouldn't need to IMO).
Finally finally! Your work is awesome
Still WIP, have no illustration yet e.g.
Also, did change a bit UI (available from branch if you build yourself, won’t redo a testbuild just for cosmetic changes
I think I've asked this before, but do you guys really hit G key and then X, Y or Z keys to move stuff in viewport? Can't believe it! It is so unintuitive and just cruel to my left hand.