For make game assets Blender has already one of the best ore even the best tool sets on the market, can you be more specific?
Not the person you were addressing but I would really like to see the addition of a bakeable rounded edge shader.
I'd also like a good automatic UV packing solution. Apparently Maya recently implemented something on par with IPackThat but works much faster, I know this was originally the goal of SaphireS's GSOC project but I'm not sure how far they got with it.
I'm quite happy with every update. There are always at least a few small things I can benefit from. It's for sure not an easy task for them to priorities changes. I don't see "lack of professional direction" here.
2.8 viewport changes sound awesome.
Hard to tell what kind of change I would personally like to see the most, viewport is already on the plan, an asset management would be great.
I was thinking of 2.8. mmaxxe accidentally referred to it as that, and I got mixed up. As a smaller update, it does have a reasonable number of useful changes. I'm disappointed by it, but I can see how others would be happy. Mostly VFX Animators, and not game artists.
my bad For make game assets Blender has already one of the best ore even the best tool sets on the market, can you be more specific?
Stock pie menu setup. Bevel vertex. Contextual tools/hotkeys. Improved edge loop selection. Inset/Extrude segments. Selection type hotkeys (vert/edge/face). Improved vertex normal shading. True local transformations (IE; selecting 3 faces and extruding each along their respective normals). Improved symmetry (deleting half the mesh is a real hassle, and prevents you from flipping it on or off. It's all or nothing). And other stuff I can't think of at the moment.
I agree with some of those. But what is wrong/missing with the edge loop selection?
As the simplest example, go to the base cube primitive, and try selecting an edge loop. It won't do anything. In Modo, and I think Maya if I recall correctly, it'll loop around one of the faces. There are a lot of fringe situations where it will just fail to detect a loop.
Stock pie menu setup. Bevel vertex. Contextual tools/hotkeys. Improved edge loop selection. Inset/Extrude segments. Selection type hotkeys (vert/edge/face). Improved vertex normal shading. True local transformations (IE; selecting 3 faces and extruding each along their respective normals). Improved symmetry (deleting half the mesh is a real hassle, and prevents you from flipping it on or off. It's all or nothing). And other stuff I can't think of at the moment.
I think I can help you with some of these issues:
bevel vertex: select the vertex > ctrl+shift+b
true local transformation: select the faces > alt+e > region vertex normals
....
Stock pie menu setup. Bevel vertex. Contextual tools/hotkeys. Improved edge loop selection. Inset/Extrude segments. Selection type hotkeys (vert/edge/face). Improved vertex normal shading. True local transformations (IE; selecting 3 faces and extruding each along their respective normals). Improved symmetry (deleting half the mesh is a real hassle, and prevents you from flipping it on or off. It's all or nothing). And other stuff I can't think of at the moment.
Not sure if I understand all of your issues correctly.
- bevel vertex: As lorenzo wrote and the modifier can be set to vertex as well. Or is there is problem with the result you are getting? - Contextual hotkey + Selection type: Ctrl-Tab in Edit mode - "true" local transformation (what does that mean actually?): From your description I think inset (0 thickness, x depth) will produce the result you are looking for, slightly different from Alt+E
...
As the simplest example, go to the base cube primitive, and try selecting an edge loop. It won't do anything. In Modo, and I think Maya if I recall correctly, it'll loop around one of the faces. There are a lot of fringe situations where it will just fail to detect a loop.
A base cube primitive doesn't have any edge loops, nothing to select. I cannot remember any situation in which Blender failed to select an edge loop, do you have another example? Maybe "Select Border Loop" will help you, at least in case of that cube.
I'm using this, added to the 3D View -> Mesh category in the Input window of user preferences. In edit mode I press 1, 2 or 3 to switch the selection type:
You add the same for the edge and face selection types, with numbers 2 and 3 obviously.
I'm not sure if any other commands already use these keys by default (if there were, I must've turned them off), you should search at the top of that window by "Key-Binding" to find out, so there's no conflicts. If you don't know how to create a new key-binding you can see here (for another operator, but the process is the same): http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/148/29992
I'm using this, added to the 3D View -> Mesh category in the Input window of user preferences. In edit mode I press 1, 2 or 3 to switch the selection type:
You add the same for the edge and face selection types, with numbers 2 and 3 obviously.
I'm not sure if any other commands already use these keys by default (if there were, I must've turned them off), you should search at the top of that window by "Key-Binding" to find out, so there's no conflicts. If you don't know how to create a new key-binding you can see here (for another operator, but the process is the same): http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/148/29992
This is my exact setup too, however I have a major problem with this which is that I cannot get it to work correctly in the UV Editor.
I managed to hotkey vertex/edge/face, but it goes out the window as soon as you use UV Sync and I have no idea how to fix it. The console doesn't even show anything happening when you switch between selection modes with UV sync enabled so god only knows what it is doing...
... I'm not sure if any other commands already use these keys by default (if there were, I must've turned them off)...
you change the layers with number keys, even in edit mode. Not sure why someone would want to do that... It's a good idea to map selection modes there, I'll try that myself.
Just realised I'm missing the possibility to select by vertex colour, something like "select similar" would be sufficient.
Classy. Comments like that are the reason Blender users have such a bad reputation in discussions. To everyone else, thanks for the information on how to fix most of those issues.
Maya doesn't select an edge loop that goes past a pole on a cube either. IMO Blender does it right and Modo does it wrong. Say I want to select the edge loop that includes this edge:
What makes this selection:
any more correct than this one?:
Terminating edge loops at poles even when there's just one edge involved makes edge loop selection unambiguous and more reliable.
This is my exact setup too, however I have a major problem with this which is that I cannot get it to work correctly in the UV Editor.
I managed to hotkey vertex/edge/face, but it goes out the window as soon as you use UV Sync and I have no idea how to fix it. The console doesn't even show anything happening when you switch between selection modes with UV sync enabled so god only knows what it is doing...
For it to work in UV Sync mode I added that same key binding (mesh.select_mode, like in that image I posted) to the Image -> UV Editor input category. So that's the synced mode.
I tried to set up the same for non-synced UV editing, but then if you make both bindings with the same key combination it will only use one of them. It will work fine if you choose different key combinations. For the non-synced UV mode you need to use those enumeration values, you add one binding for each of 'VERTEX', 'EDGE', 'FACE' and 'ISLAND' (with the single quotes).
you change the layers with number keys, even in edit mode. Not sure why someone would want to do that... It's a good idea to map selection modes there, I'll try that myself.
Oh yeah that's right. I think the only reason why these selection type hotkeys are working is because, in edit mode, those hotkeys take precedence over the layer switching hotkeys. So outside of edit mode the layer switching is used.
About selecting by vertex colours, I can't find anything built-in. There's the scripted way: - http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/2166/29992 - https://gist.github.com/tamask/2590850 You can then make these into an addon that can be bindable to a hotkey or appears as a menu item in the interface, but if you need help doing that let me know.
... About selecting by vertex colours, I can't find anything built-in. There's the scripted way: - http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/2166/29992 - https://gist.github.com/tamask/2590850 You can then make these into an addon that can be bindable to a hotkey or appears as a menu item in the interface, but if you need help doing that let me know.
Thank you! I know that one, but didn't make use of it yet. My thinking was that this is a function worth implementing permanently. Sound so simple to do
Don't know if it is common knowledge, I just figured out that it is possible to bake normal maps from normal maps in BI. That could come in handy e.g. baking from decals.
Maya doesn't select an edge loop that goes past a pole on a cube either. IMO Blender does it right and Modo does it wrong. Say I want to select the edge loop that includes this edge:
What makes this selection:
any more correct than this one?:
Terminating edge loops at poles even when there's just one edge involved makes edge loop selection unambiguous and more reliable.
They are all doing it wrong.
The standard Vertex, Edge and Face selection is quite slow, even if you add shortcuts to them, I'm using flat-D (0rAngE) method, that let you switch through them without being in Edit Mode.
User Preferences | Input | 3D View | 3D View (Global)
EDIT: If someone (who?) was wondering why these strings were not working, that's something I've discovered just now (after spending some days trying to find the origin of a Blender hard crash I had if you disable some Add-ons). To make it work you need the "Wazou_Pie_Menus.py" file you'll find inside the 0rAngE's 2.78 folder, otherwise you'll recall that CLASS_OT_XXX which is a custom class, and Blender won't know what to do with it, hence the crashes.
I leave it unmapped by default and if I'm planning to click something a lot (like Mark Seam or Merge at Center) I right click the action in the spacebar menu or the toolbox and add Q as the shortcut for it.
Anyone have a pointer to either a tool or addon that simply stacks identical UV islands? I know about Remove Doubles UV - that requires the extra step of having to move an island closely on top of another one. I'm looking for functionality ideally as simple/straightforward as this script for Maya:
Classy. Comments like that are the reason Blender users have such a bad reputation in discussions. To everyone else, thanks for the information on how to fix most of those issues.
the problem isnt so much that you did not know how to do things, but the fact that you stated "blender isnt good for gamedev because it lacks x y z" while clearly the "facts" were not true
a better aproach would have been to inform yourself on the subject before posting
also all blender users i encountered on polycount seem rather calm and open to discussion without all the fanboy attitude you would encounter somewhere else, because most of them are artists using a tool, not some kind of cultists and fanatics defending some kind of software
I also presently have Q mapped to HardOps, but I'm in the process of overhauling my hotkeys/pies with the pie menu editor which I just got (and looks awesome btw).
@Kip : In that particular case (both isand have the same orientation and scale), a simple snap with vertex is enough : But I would also to love if there's some add-ons that do it with rotation or to match an island slighty deformed.
I leave it unmapped by default and if I'm planning to click something a lot (like Mark Seam or Merge at Center) I right click the action in the spacebar menu or the toolbox and add Q as the shortcut for it.
Ah, good idea. I might start doing that now. Maybe I could try and figure out how to make a pie menu that sets Q to things that I use a lot.
Classy. Comments like that are the reason Blender users have such a bad reputation in discussions. To everyone else, thanks for the information on how to fix most of those issues.
the problem isnt so much that you did not know how to do things, but the fact that you stated "blender isnt good for gamedev because it lacks x y z" while clearly the "facts" were not true
a better aproach would have been to inform yourself on the subject before posting
also all blender users i encountered on polycount seem rather calm and open to discussion without all the fanboy attitude you would encounter somewhere else, because most of them are artists using a tool, not some kind of cultists and fanatics defending some kind of software
I said there were other things I would have preferred from the update. He asked me for specifics, and I listed them. That is literally all that happened. You're both trying to create an issue where there is none, and that's the problem here that I was commenting on.
Thanks Yadoob, that's on the right track. Am I correct that vertex snap only works by a) selecting a vert b) selecting linked and c) dragging the selected island to the corresponding vert on another island? And am I correct that that technique would only work one island at a time? The script I showed above can actually stack multiple islands (i.e. more than two, but I demoed with just two) by just selecting all their UVs at once then clicking the button.
Hm ok, for that I don't have the "one button" solution, what I usualy do is : Shift+S cursor to selected on the island I want to snap to, Shift+S selectod to cursor (offset) on one other, then Shift+R on each of the others (to repeat last in history).
I guess the Shift+R on each islands can be automatized by Python without too much trouble... I will look into that
Oh that works quite well Yadoob, thanks! Going to look into automating it myself for multiple islands at once (although I'm a python moron )
edit: trying to snap multiple additional islands to cursor (after snapping cursor to first island) - when I do this additional islands snap to cursor, but all with original offset (i.e. still separated as opposed having the origin of each snap to the cursor)
Classy. Comments like that are the reason Blender users have such a bad reputation in discussions. To everyone else, thanks for the information on how to fix most of those issues.
the problem isnt so much that you did not know how to do things, but the fact that you stated "blender isnt good for gamedev because it lacks x y z" while clearly the "facts" were not true
a better aproach would have been to inform yourself on the subject before posting
also all blender users i encountered on polycount seem rather calm and open to discussion without all the fanboy attitude you would encounter somewhere else, because most of them are artists using a tool, not some kind of cultists and fanatics defending some kind of software
I said there were other things I would have preferred from the update. He asked me for specifics, and I listed them. That is literally all that happened. You're both trying to create an issue where there is none, and that's the problem here that I was commenting on.
then maybe i misunderstood you but its not really a secret that blender is more directed towards movies than games, and that the developer, trying to improve gamedev functions, having a hard time at least thats how it was some time ago
but overall it is getting better and better and iam pretty happy with the toolset
Oh that works quite well Yadoob, thanks! Going to look into automating it myself for multiple islands at once (although I'm a python moron )
edit: trying to snap multiple additional islands to cursor (after snapping cursor to first island) - when I do this additional islands snap to cursor, but all with original offset (i.e. still separated as opposed having the origin of each snap to the cursor)
You need to select the islands one at a time. I'm not immediately sure how best to do that in a script.
I also wonder if there's a way to easily match the rotation of some islands.
xrg - thanks, I also found that addon. Have you managed to install/activate it? I'm on Windows ver 2.78, and when I check the box beside the addon I get a multi-line error message including ImportError: No module named 'networkx' . Is there a 'correct' way to install this on Windows? seems I need to install something called PIP for Blender but instructions seem to be for Linux?
I'm a Linux user, so not entirely sure how you go about installing PIP in Windows. I used the older zip on the first page, and it didn't need pip/networkx. It's probably not as feature-full but it does what you need as far as I can tell.
I'm a Linux user, so not entirely sure how you go about installing PIP in Windows. I used the older zip on the first page, and it didn't need pip/networkx. It's probably not as feature-full but it does what you need as far as I can tell.
You can install pip on Windows by installing Python.
Go to the Python download section and download either the 3.x or 2.x. Whichever you need depends on the package but most packages are cross compatible so I would try 3.x first.
During install there will be an option to add Python and it's scripts folder to your PATH, make sure to enable that. Otherwise all you have to do is add it to your PATH after.
For example for Python 2.x you would add your C:\Python27 and C:\Python27\Scripts folders to your path. I'm sure it's similar for 3.x.
You can install pip on Windows by installing Python.
Go to the Python download section and download either the 3.x or 2.x. Whichever you need depends on the package but most packages are cross compatible so I would try 3.x first.
During install there will be an option to add Python and it's scripts folder to your PATH, make sure to enable that. Otherwise all you have to do is add it to your PATH after.
For example for Python 2.x you would add your C:\Python27 and C:\Python27\Scripts folders to your path. I'm sure it's similar for 3.x.
Does it work the same for installing pip for Blender's bundled Python? Specifically, the instructions here. This is a link to the current github page for the add-on.
Yes and no. Looking at it blender uses Python 3.5 so there is not a reason you couldn't make it work but it might be difficult. So I'd recommend against it. I'm not willing to destroy my local Python install to figure it out.
Navigate to your blender python directory, mine is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\bin
Paste the file you just downloaded there, requires admin permission.
Now using Windows cmd (as Admin) or similar navigate to C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\bin and execute : python get-pip.py
You now have a new folder at C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\Scripts that includes pip
If you don't have any other version of python installed, you can just add C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\bin and C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\Scripts to your PATH.
If you have another version of Python installed or don't want to add it to your path, you can just navigate (as admin) to C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\Scripts and execute the next command.
If someone is interested, I've updated this post, with the correct procedure to use the strings, huge time saver, but they can mess your Blender if you don't know which file they refer to
If I understand what this is about, it's a plugin for making real-time content within Blender, and then publishing that as an "app" for web or desktop (like a game, presentation etc.). So you'd be using Blender like a scene editor. It's still under development.
Don't suppose if anyone knows if there is a way to scale a group of vertices along their individual vertex normals? Like using the push modifier in max, but only on the selected vertices?
I tried setting a vertex group and assigning it to a displace modifier, but the vertex group field didn't appear to do anything. Not really sure what it is for.
Edit: Nevermind, not 2 seconds after posting I realized I only created the vertex group, didn't actually assign any vertices to it.... ignore this =__________=
Replies
It's for sure not an easy task for them to priorities changes.
I don't see "lack of professional direction" here.
2.8 viewport changes sound awesome.
Hard to tell what kind of change I would personally like to see the most, viewport is already on the plan, an asset management would be great.
And other stuff I can't think of at the moment.
- bevel vertex: As lorenzo wrote and the modifier can be set to vertex as well. Or is there is problem with the result you are getting?
- Contextual hotkey + Selection type: Ctrl-Tab in Edit mode
- "true" local transformation (what does that mean actually?): From your description I think inset (0 thickness, x depth) will produce the result you are looking for, slightly different from Alt+E
A base cube primitive doesn't have any edge loops, nothing to select.
I cannot remember any situation in which Blender failed to select an edge loop, do you have another example?
Maybe "Select Border Loop" will help you, at least in case of that cube.
In edit mode I press 1, 2 or 3 to switch the selection type:
You add the same for the edge and face selection types, with numbers 2 and 3 obviously.
I'm not sure if any other commands already use these keys by default (if there were, I must've turned them off), you should search at the top of that window by "Key-Binding" to find out, so there's no conflicts.
If you don't know how to create a new key-binding you can see here (for another operator, but the process is the same):
http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/148/29992
ah okey, it was just a rant...
For most of what you wrote I guess you don't know Blender very well.
I managed to hotkey vertex/edge/face, but it goes out the window as soon as you use UV Sync and I have no idea how to fix it. The console doesn't even show anything happening when you switch between selection modes with UV sync enabled so god only knows what it is doing...
Just realised I'm missing the possibility to select by vertex colour, something like "select similar" would be sufficient.
To everyone else, thanks for the information on how to fix most of those issues.
What makes this selection:
any more correct than this one?:
Terminating edge loops at poles even when there's just one edge involved makes edge loop selection unambiguous and more reliable.
I tried to set up the same for non-synced UV editing, but then if you make both bindings with the same key combination it will only use one of them.
It will work fine if you choose different key combinations.
For the non-synced UV mode you need to use those enumeration values, you add one binding for each of 'VERTEX', 'EDGE', 'FACE' and 'ISLAND' (with the single quotes).
Oh yeah that's right. I think the only reason why these selection type hotkeys are working is because, in edit mode, those hotkeys take precedence over the layer switching hotkeys. So outside of edit mode the layer switching is used.
About selecting by vertex colours, I can't find anything built-in. There's the scripted way:
- http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/2166/29992
- https://gist.github.com/tamask/2590850
You can then make these into an addon that can be bindable to a hotkey or appears as a menu item in the interface, but if you need help doing that let me know.
My thinking was that this is a function worth implementing permanently. Sound so simple to do
Don't know if it is common knowledge, I just figured out that it is possible to bake normal maps from normal maps in BI. That could come in handy e.g. baking from decals.
Oh I didn't even know that I have any reputation at all
But good to hear that you could have been helped.
They are all doing it wrong.
The standard Vertex, Edge and Face selection is quite slow, even if you add shortcuts to them, I'm using flat-D (0rAngE) method, that let you switch through them without being in Edit Mode.
User Preferences | Input | 3D View | 3D View (Global)
EDIT:
If someone (who?) was wondering why these strings were not working, that's something I've discovered just now (after spending some days trying to find the origin of a Blender hard crash I had if you disable some Add-ons). To make it work you need the "Wazou_Pie_Menus.py" file you'll find inside the 0rAngE's 2.78 folder, otherwise you'll recall that CLASS_OT_XXX which is a custom class, and Blender won't know what to do with it, hence the crashes.
shift q - merge at last
the problem isnt so much that you did not know how to do things, but the fact that you stated "blender isnt good for gamedev because it lacks x y z" while clearly the "facts" were not true
a better aproach would have been to inform yourself on the subject before posting
also all blender users i encountered on polycount seem rather calm and open to discussion without all the fanboy attitude you would encounter somewhere else, because most of them are artists using a tool, not some kind of cultists and fanatics defending some kind of software
But I would also to love if there's some add-ons that do it with rotation or to match an island slighty deformed.
Also a super impressive demoréel of animation nodes :
You're both trying to create an issue where there is none, and that's the problem here that I was commenting on.
Shift+S cursor to selected on the island I want to snap to,
Shift+S selectod to cursor (offset) on one other,
then Shift+R on each of the others (to repeat last in history).
I guess the Shift+R on each islands can be automatized by Python without too much trouble... I will look into that
edit: trying to snap multiple additional islands to cursor (after snapping cursor to first island) - when I do this additional islands snap to cursor, but all with original offset (i.e. still separated as opposed having the origin of each snap to the cursor)
but its not really a secret that blender is more directed towards movies than games, and that the developer, trying to improve gamedev functions, having a hard time
at least thats how it was some time ago
but overall it is getting better and better and iam pretty happy with the toolset
I also wonder if there's a way to easily match the rotation of some islands.
sure, ok, I see your point, sorry if I was rude.
peace!
ImportError: No module named 'networkx' . Is there a 'correct' way to install this on Windows? seems I need to install something called PIP for Blender but instructions seem to be for Linux?
Go to the Python download section and download either the 3.x or 2.x. Whichever you need depends on the package but most packages are cross compatible so I would try 3.x first.
During install there will be an option to add Python and it's scripts folder to your PATH, make sure to enable that. Otherwise all you have to do is add it to your PATH after.
For example for Python 2.x you would add your C:\Python27 and C:\Python27\Scripts folders to your path. I'm sure it's similar for 3.x.
Yes and no. Looking at it blender uses Python 3.5 so there is not a reason you couldn't make it work but it might be difficult. So I'd recommend against it. I'm not willing to destroy my local Python install to figure it out.
Anyways here's all you really have to do:
Hope that helps.
If I understand what this is about, it's a plugin for making real-time content within Blender, and then publishing that as an "app" for web or desktop (like a game, presentation etc.). So you'd be using Blender like a scene editor.
It's still under development.
I tried setting a vertex group and assigning it to a displace modifier, but the vertex group field didn't appear to do anything. Not really sure what it is for.
Edit: Nevermind, not 2 seconds after posting I realized I only created the vertex group, didn't actually assign any vertices to it.... ignore this =__________=
- The Shrink\Fatten operation (Alt + S in edit mode).
- The inflate brush ( " i " key in sculpt mode, for "inflate").
They all do the same.