Have you guys seen this addon? I haven't tried it yet, but from the video it seems like it could be a pretty nice time saver for hard-surface modeling in Blender.
Yup, Hardops was already mentioned in this thread. You can download an Alpha version of it on their YouTube channel for free... I tried it, I'll be honest it isn't revolutionary in any way. It doesn't create new topology or anything, it simply creates bevels and smoothing groups so the appearance looks high-poly. I suppose it would be useful for sci-fi scenes but for actual high-poly work it isn't that useful.
I always stand by EWOC-Tools - they're the best modelling tools I've found for Blender to date.
Uuuh..uh oh..Have I found a new limitation from the software? I wanted to experiment with a low poly asset and wanted to paint my object with using vertex colors instead of texture as I usually do in Maya. Maya offers a wide panl of options concerning vertex painting and there are some even slick addons for even more flexibiliy.
However, I noticed the V paintings tools in Blender are quite limited. I'm looking for a way to paint the ''alpha'' value into vertex color data but I can't seem to find a way. I sincerely hope this is possible...
Also, I know how to select faces Vertex painting mode, but theres no ''fill brush'' (or no alternative brush at all)!
Maya even offered the option to paint specularity on your mesh using vertex color...am I missing something here?
You can't paint vertex alpha but you can paint a vertex group and use that as an alpha. It's a known limitation and I hope they get rid of it but it shouldn't keep you from doing anything especially if you're using any render system that makes use of nodes where you can get any vertex group weight you want.
@ Blond : Shift+K to fill color. There's blending modes available in the brush panel. Palettes are available as Texture painting mode. To paint specular, you have to go trough the material node editor.
I recomand to quickly set up a vertex color material to see vertex color without viewport shading as well.
Painting RGB channel is not really easy though (even with Add and Substract) but I guess with a small script that transfer vertex weight group to vertex color, it could be easier. If vertex painting is still too clunky to you, there's still possible to bake texture to vertex color.
Last time I had to deal with vertex alpha Blender did not support it. I doubt that it changed. The CryBlend exporter for example converts a certain vertex colour setup to alpha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la37bPt9wiE
@Yadoob - thanks, i've got softbody bones now (NSFW). [spoiler] [/spoiler] the problem with softbodies though is that i can't seem to clear their frame before an animation starts at certain frames as my single action must have all the different animation sequences, so like between crouchwalking and walking it would really warp. and i can't seem to make them sag together when bent over as far as i've tried with the softbody options. I do have a more appropriate character to try it on later however
it's a very cool trick though! I had trouble with the bezier curve and parenting though, the bone chain kept imploding if I parented the first bone. so I had to parent the bezier to the bone instead. Also to get the bones to move at all i'd have to have a layer shown with the hooks visible.
I'm not sure I fully understand your issue but for differents animations I usually use the action editor in the dopesheet then separate actions (walking,jumping,etc.) so every animation has his own timeline (and a start frame at 0): it's more conveniant to tweak length of a specific animation.
It wont change anything at your problem but try to keep a Blender version up to date, there's really cool little features added at each release that will save your life
Thanks for the shoutout! I hope hard ops makes hard surface modelling in blender stand above the rest while offering a different perspective on hard surface.
I'm yet to dive in Blender substantially so can someone explain me what the hell is happening here https://youtu.be/WNAm7TKfdD8?t=606 is it a round edge shader? is it bakeable?
it seems like it was made with the kit from the previous post. If so it seems to put Modo's round edge shader to shame because it looks much cleaner at 90 degrees angles.
It's a bevel modifier that gets put in the modifier stack (you can control the width of the bevel in the modifier). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-h371F6T3U If you apply the modifier (or export with 'apply modifiers' ticked) the bevels will be part of the geometry you export. I bought hardops last night and played around with it and had fun using it. It's certainly going to make me try this workflow.
Also you can set the bevel weight manually from the Ctrl E menu, which makes it easy to have certain edges beveled by the modifier if you have it use those weights.
Thanks for the shoutout! I hope hard ops makes hard surface modelling in blender stand above the rest while offering a different perspective on hard surface.
With the bevel weight you can even blend smoothly between different strength.
I don't like how the values are adjusted rather than set when selecting edges with different values. Example: I select an edge with 0.2 and one with 0.3 and want to set both to 0.5, I need set them to 0 first and then to 0.5. Anyone knows if there is a better way, like inputting an absolute value?
Besides using Ctrl-E you can set the weight in the N-Panel.
@Yadoob - q3 engine works witha linear sequence with all the animations in one animation working with a framelist file dividing this. The softbody physics don't get along with the said pipeline
So I was a little sceptical about HardOps, but for what the developer is asking for I couldn't help myself. So just given it a buy and wow, the amount of content and resources he offers more than pays its weight in gold. The add-on itself hasn't posed any issues and it's really quite the charm for prototyping. Really hope to see more from this and I'll be following the developer... Closest thing you'll get to HardMesh on Blender peeps!
Just thought I'd give a vouch, don't usually pay for stuff like this, but in this instance I think it's well worth supporting this guy...
So I was a little sceptical about HardOps, but for what the developer is asking for I couldn't help myself. So just given it a buy and wow, the amount of content and resources he offers more than pays its weight in gold. The add-on itself hasn't posed any issues and it's really quite the charm for prototyping. Really hope to see more from this and I'll be following the developer... Closest thing you'll get to HardMesh on Blender peeps!
Just thought I'd give a vouch, don't usually pay for stuff like this, but in this instance I think it's well worth supporting this guy...
Indeed, good stuff. Also the offer of $5 is only until dec 12th and the developer said somewhere he won´t charge for upgrades I got it yesterday, and only had a little time to play around with it, but already $5 feels like a ridiculous bargain!
How do you hotkey Bevel Weight? According to the wiki the default hotkey is Ctrl Shift E, however when I look at my user prefs that hotkey is set to something else entirely and Bevel Weight is nowhere to be found.
I figured no big deal, I'll just make a new keymap for it. But when I mouseover the Bevel Weight slider in the properties panel there's no operator name listed so I don't know what exactly to put into the new keymap...
Or you can access the options for every mode by pressing : CTRL+E for edge, CTRL+V for vertex, CTRL+F for face. Bevel weight is there when you do CTRL+E.
Just started dabbling with Blender. Is it normal to have a hard time trying to close windows? (the three bars at the top that you drag) Its been very 50/50 on my success rate between closing a window and creating a new one. I end up with billions of windows open. I feel so silly strugging with this as it seems quite basic but then Blenders ui also feels very voodoo to me.
Also I hope this wasn't answered before but how customizable are blender's hotkeys? From my research blender seems very set on hotkeys and im quite particular on what/where my hotkeys are. If I change a lot of stuff will things break? Il do some tests later but would like to know others experiences.
- When collapsing a panel you need to drag its marked corner diagonally into the panel you want to collapse it into. The target panel should become dark, with an arrow indicating the direction of the collapse. If it doesn't, that means that you are dragging in a direction that cannot trigger the collapse (for instance, attempting to collapse into a panel that has already been divided won't work). If something goes wrong press escape then release the mouse button. This system is actually quite powerful, but it is near impossible to understand at first since there is no popup helper explaining it. Good luck !
- Hotkeys are fully customizable - claims that the default hotkeys should be left untouched simply come from users who have not used other programs before and thus embraced the defaults. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but that doensn't mean that things shouldn't be customized.
However !
Do not attempt to customize anything besides viewport navigation until you are fully familiar with the app, at least as far as modeling goes. This will allow you to follow guides and tutorials more easily (as these tend to rely on hotkeys rather than explaining where a function is located, which is completely backwards in my opinion). My advice would be to give it at least a month until diving deeper into customization.
Ah cheers Pior! esc works great. just another quick question which i should probably google. Can i "tear" out windows like in maya or photoshop?
And yeah I'll stick with the default for a while. Pretty excited to explore blender, as a Maya user i've only heard fable of a modifier stack. Hope it lives up to the legends ;p.
Replies
C:\Users\******\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender
about windows 10 I don't know, but I didn't see any complain on blenderartists so should be fine. xD
https://gumroad.com/l/hardops/#
I always stand by EWOC-Tools - they're the best modelling tools I've found for Blender to date.
Maya offers a wide panl of options concerning vertex painting and there are some even slick addons for even more flexibiliy.
However, I noticed the V paintings tools in Blender are quite limited. I'm looking for a way to paint the ''alpha'' value into vertex color data but I can't seem to find a way. I sincerely hope this is possible...
Also, I know how to select faces Vertex painting mode, but theres no ''fill brush'' (or no alternative brush at all)!
Maya even offered the option to paint specularity on your mesh using vertex color...am I missing something here?
maybe this helps you.. for painting vertex alpha but I am not sure, if it works with the latest Blender version.
To paint specular, you have to go trough the material node editor.
I recomand to quickly set up a vertex color material to see vertex color without viewport shading as well.
Painting RGB channel is not really easy though (even with Add and Substract) but I guess with a small script that transfer vertex weight group to vertex color, it could be easier.
If vertex painting is still too clunky to you, there's still possible to bake texture to vertex color.
Is it possible to bake alpha too or it's wishful thinking for now?
I know it seems stupid but for layout, I do like to use vertex coloring to quickly block colors into place without having to deal with textures..
The Caminandes short is in dev :
FaceMap uesd for easy selection and animation :
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CT4lb0IWIAARok8.mp4
And some smart VR integration inside Blender :
The CryBlend exporter for example converts a certain vertex colour setup to alpha.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/UV/Bake_Texture_to_Vertex_Colors
Also as part of the Tissue addon, there's a tool to convert vertex color to vertex groups. More info here:
https://sketchesofcode.wordpress.com/
http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?375378-tissue-by-Alessandro-Zomparelli
https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes
The results are much better than Blender's default remesher, and I guess the developers are in need of some good feedback
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
the problem with softbodies though is that i can't seem to clear their frame before an animation starts at certain frames as my single action must have all the different animation sequences, so like between crouchwalking and walking it would really warp. and i can't seem to make them sag together when bent over as far as i've tried with the softbody options. I do have a more appropriate character to try it on later however
it's a very cool trick though! I had trouble with the bezier curve and parenting though, the bone chain kept imploding if I parented the first bone. so I had to parent the bezier to the bone instead. Also to get the bones to move at all i'd have to have a layer shown with the hooks visible.
It wont change anything at your problem but try to keep a Blender version up to date, there's really cool little features added at each release that will save your life
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5ssR9OH2oLuZmJGWGhRZzNyX0U
youtube.com/watch?v=FVpcTnLQJ5s
Here is a link - Totally worth it
Thanks for the shoutout! I hope hard ops makes hard surface modelling in blender stand above the rest while offering a different perspective on hard surface.
https://gumroad.com/l/hardops/
is it a round edge shader? is it bakeable?
it seems like it was made with the kit from the previous post. If so it seems to put Modo's round edge shader to shame because it looks much cleaner at 90 degrees angles.
If you apply the modifier (or export with 'apply modifiers' ticked) the bevels will be part of the geometry you export.
I bought hardops last night and played around with it and had fun using it. It's certainly going to make me try this workflow.
I don't like how the values are adjusted rather than set when selecting edges with different values.
Example: I select an edge with 0.2 and one with 0.3 and want to set both to 0.5, I need set them to 0 first and then to 0.5.
Anyone knows if there is a better way, like inputting an absolute value?
Besides using Ctrl-E you can set the weight in the N-Panel.
Great work about hard ops Masterxeon1001, Pitiwazou made also some nice pie menus to go with :
And here's a nice timelapse using hard ops :
Just thought I'd give a vouch, don't usually pay for stuff like this, but in this instance I think it's well worth supporting this guy...
check comments
I figured no big deal, I'll just make a new keymap for it. But when I mouseover the Bevel Weight slider in the properties panel there's no operator name listed so I don't know what exactly to put into the new keymap...
Also I hope this wasn't answered before but how customizable are blender's hotkeys? From my research blender seems very set on hotkeys and im quite particular on what/where my hotkeys are. If I change a lot of stuff will things break? Il do some tests later but would like to know others experiences.
- When collapsing a panel you need to drag its marked corner diagonally into the panel you want to collapse it into. The target panel should become dark, with an arrow indicating the direction of the collapse. If it doesn't, that means that you are dragging in a direction that cannot trigger the collapse (for instance, attempting to collapse into a panel that has already been divided won't work). If something goes wrong press escape then release the mouse button. This system is actually quite powerful, but it is near impossible to understand at first since there is no popup helper explaining it. Good luck !
- Hotkeys are fully customizable - claims that the default hotkeys should be left untouched simply come from users who have not used other programs before and thus embraced the defaults. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but that doensn't mean that things shouldn't be customized.
However !
Do not attempt to customize anything besides viewport navigation until you are fully familiar with the app, at least as far as modeling goes. This will allow you to follow guides and tutorials more easily (as these tend to rely on hotkeys rather than explaining where a function is located, which is completely backwards in my opinion). My advice would be to give it at least a month until diving deeper into customization.
And yeah I'll stick with the default for a while. Pretty excited to explore blender, as a Maya user i've only heard fable of a modifier stack. Hope it lives up to the legends ;p.
Thanks