First post here . I've been working on a cloud modeling/rendering engine for Blender, and I thought I'd start sharing the first proper test renders.
Modeling is node based, and nodes are used to control the displacement, density, advection and other related things. Base mesh can be sculpted, which is internally converted into a distance field. Particle systems may also be utilized to create velocity fields or induce density.
Here's a couple of shots from the setting. Scene construction for this particular image:
The node approach provides tons of possibilities. Getting the look right can be a bit tough due to slow rendering evaluation. For example, advection still needs better parameters for more variety and realism.
Fellow polycounter @kaptainkernals made this script at my request, and it's really sped up my workflow a lot. Essentially, it allows you to setup a separate hotkey to rotate/scale using the 3d Cursor or Active
Element as Pivot, but it resets to your pivot settings as they were when
you're done.
Addon above looks very similar to my addon PivotPro, exept you have way better UI . But I have ability to translate pivot/cursor itself (so I can snap 3d cursor/pivot to vert/edge/face and then move pivot eg. 2 units in z axis).
Purchased it the other day, it's fantastic. I have an unrelated question though: How are you cutting straight edges into your mesh without angle constrain? (Example at 16:15 in your video)
Hey guys I'm trying to find an addon that I saw posted either here or on BlenderArtists and for the life of me I cannot remember where or what it was called.
It was similar to slideknit for 3DS Max, I remember seeing a youtube video of it posted somewhere and iirc it used the UVs of the target mesh to project another mesh onto it, letting you easily do good projections on curved surfaces. Anyone happen to know what this was?
Edit: Took a while but I found it, addon is called Projection Ops for anyone who cares.
Grimwolf's complaints seemed to get so many useful responses, it might be worth it to mention the features I'd like to see in case I'm wrong and you just need to hit tab-alt-tab-ctrl-shift-q in the info window, properties shelf, and 3D view respectively.
Curves support: Branches. Mitering of unaligned handles. Creation of support loops for unaligned handles. Weight painting for curves. Interpolation between multiple cross-sections. Loop Tools support.
Weight painting: Vertex selection tools that already exist in edit mode, so you don't have to switch back and forth just to get a new edge loop or shrink your selection. Or at least, keep track of vertex groups in a single place rather than per-mode, so that switching modes doesn't lead to painting in the wrong group. Something to prevent the rampant resetting of paint settings that occurs, for which I haven't yet isolated the cause. A normalization option to ignore the influence of locked groups (and so normalize to >1).
UV: Improved switching between linked mode and unlinked mode, which resets all selection and is a bit irritating. Separation of operator panel from 3D view so that numeric rotations (e.g.) can be applied to the UV without being applied to the mesh (I'm sure there's a solution to that one, even if I haven't yet found it). There's no reason to disallow select linked in mesh-linked mode; it should just select UV island or mesh linkage based on window in which it's called. 3D view indication of selected UV coordinate, even in unlinked mode, would sure be handy.
Anything that uses an axis should accept a pair of vertices instead. Anything that uses a plane should accept 3 vertices instead. Anything that uses a frustrum should accept a deformed cube instead.
(Hi Polycount, you guys seem cool so I registered. Please forgive me if there's any etiquette I missed.)
Oh, I almost forgot: per-mode display with user-definable GLSL shaders. I'd rather see exactly how the model is going to look in something like object mode, and if I could customize display in other modes, all the better.
SpeedSculpt goes too fast, I don't have enough time to test it
I've been playing recently with the new Grease Pencil v2.0 (Blender 2,78) and it's really a fun and easy tool to play with, here's a presentation of the workflow I'm currently using :
Hey guys, random q - more an aesthetic thing than anything, is there a way to set Blender's save dialog to use Native OS and open/save files using Windows instead of the default save dialog? Cheers
Hello! Can i change the type of standard material object ?, it is very unsightly and it blends into the background, although I tried to change the background, also tried different matcaps, but as it is not comme il faut, of all the programs I've used, the type of material in Modo seems the best IMHO, it would be desirable that the close as in the screenshot.
With a slightly modified version of the Softblend preset, you can get a result similar to MODO.
You need the Quick Preferences Add-on to manage your presets, you can however change it manually the User Preferences---> System---> Solid OpenGL lights
@Fuiosg For the near future I don't think so. Maybe after the 2.8 porting wich is basically a refresh of the Blender deep code, such has wieport, data management etc..
With a slightly modified version of the Softblend preset, you can get a result similar to MODO.
You need the Quick Preferences Add-on to manage your presets, you can however change it manually the User Preferences---> System---> Solid OpenGL lights
Thnx dude! I couldn't find this add on, and did manually, looks better))
@Hut in that Blender wiki page that SonicBlue linked to there's this part "Current version download", it's a .PY file that you can right-click and "Save Link As..." to somewhere in your computer.
Then go to User Preferences -> Add-ons. You can install the .PY file you downloaded as a third-party addon with that "Install from File..." button, like explained in this part of the documentation: https://www.blender.org/manual/preferences/addons.html#header
hi people, so im trying to learn blender. im coming from some years of using max, and thought it would be easiest to change everything that i can to function like it does in max. but that doesnt work that well. selection for one thing, sometimes i can select with left, sometimes with right mousebutton. and every time i need to look up a keybinding its always wrong since i dont have the defaults.
so can someone recommend me the best way to approach this? is the default setup in blender good in the long run, worth getting used to? or is there any better setup of keybindings and viewport navigation that i should adapt to?
im aware that this is affected a lot by personal preferences, but since im the beginning of learning it all anyway, i would be happy to get a recommendation of some sort
By default Blender breaks up selection and action into two buttons, meaning you would use right click to select an object, then you would use left click to use the transform gizmo. Personally my biggest problem with the default setup is that you have to use a hotkey to enable box selection which I really hated.
I came from 3DS Max, I use the rSelection addon. Unfortunately it has a bug where I have to reenable it every time I launch but I would still recommend it to pretty much everybody who is coming from a standard 3d modeling background. It adds some additional hotkeys but most importantly it adds box selection by holding lmb and dragging, and it creates a rmb menu so it feels much more like the industry standard.
Most of my hotkeys are defaults with some exceptions, but I mainly do everything via custom pie menus I built with Pie Menu Editor and I also use Speedflow. Blender also has its own Pie Menus which I was using before I got PME, they come with Blender you just have to enable them in the addons section.
I'd at least set it to LMB select. Occasionally, you'll get something that still needs RMB but most stuff will consistently be on LMB.
2.8 is supposed to simplify the controls (the guy that did that rSelection add-on is on the team). It's probably at least a year away, though. So hard to say whether or not learning the current default is worth it or not.
NimbleCollective has a Blender series with some configuration advice as well as other things that may help the transition.
Lots of stuff will be reworked such as input manager, theme, workspace, windows merging, simplification of the keyboard sortcuts, override of values, new data system and gizmos eeverywhere
Maya controls are built explicitly to be used with a tablet. Personally I prefer Maya navigation to ZBrush navigation, and it's very easy to set up Maya-style navigation in Blender. That's how I have it.
hmm the default hotkeys dont seem very good. just switching manipulators isnt possible without a mouse click.
this gives me a lot of frustration as i now have two choices it seems.
1. custimize blender so it works for me. but this is super hard since i dont know the program yet, basically i need to custimize it before i learn it, which is retarded. it like having learn using a new tool, asking "what does this do" and the reply is "what do you WANT it to do?".
2. custimize blender so close i can to 3ds max. its tons of work and is also retarded, since like why did i leave 3ds max then?
atticusmars and xrg, thanks, i checked that nimble collective link, but that just gave me choice 1, custimize it by myself. it said that i should have a excel document so i can keep consistent hotkeys. like come on, i just want to learn the program
am i exaggerating how hard this is? cuz it feels like im basically designing my own 3d app, putting all this effort into hotkeys and stuff, before i can actually learn the program.
anybody has any suggestion? it would be pretty sweet if someone said "hey use this setup of hotkeys, i have used it for years and it works really well!"
Stick : Customize the navigation to fit your needs , but leave everything else as default for at least a good month. In other words : do NOT use the Maya/Max presets presented at startup as they change both navigation and shortcuts.
Max-style shouldn't be much harder to configure. But while you are at it you might as well adopt Maya style navigation, as it is quite objectively better in my opinion and also pretty much a standard now.
Then once you are comfortable with the app you can go ahead and tweak things as per your desires. One thing to keep in mind : there is a bit of an echo chamber effect going on amongst Blender users, who love to claim that the app is "shortcut centric". It is not. Besides a very small number of exceptions, everything can be accessed through menus, meaning that you can explore the app like any other app out there. The issue comes from the users referring to some tools by their default shortcuts names as opposed to the actual menu location. But as said, after a month or so you'll be able to decipher all that. The program in general is *very* cleverly designed, but some of the defaults settings are indeed odd or even plain backwards.
A friend who came from max started to customise a lot blender. Now, he work with the default preferences and it's easier for him. You should learn how works blender and then if you want, customize it.
Anyone know of a good way to get preselection highlighting? I haven't found it listed as a future addition, and I've only been able to find two third-party additions of this feature; an unfinished and long-abandoned plugin, and what appears to be a full-on branch of Blender (way too intense for a single feature).
I do find it a bit less necessary to have it compared to other apps, though. Blender always picks the closest component to your mouse, including things that are quite far away compared to e.g. Maya, and if you make sure that the geometry is not too dense and overlapping on the screen, you should have an easy enough time selecting things.
To be fair, 95+% of the time Ton is extremely flexible and very hands-off. There is just this very small list of specific (weird) things that he seems unwilling to compromise on. Which would probably be fine, except he never communicates clearly why he is resistant.
This is the response he gave to me several years ago on preselection highlighting. I'm fine with how Blender selects things, I just would like visual feedback of what it plans on selecting before I click. I'd estimate that ~80% of my undos are selections I didn't intend. There are various 3rd party attempts to do it so the problem doesn't seem to be a technical one. I really have no fucking clue what his beef with it is.
Interested in two important points for me: 1. This is how i can save my own theme in xml format? each time i reinstall or reset the settings I had to change everything manually, which is not comme Il faut. Google did not give any fixed results, I have osx, I checked all the hidden folders(Show package), but never found my magic xml, there are only preset themes. 2. The second is it is possible to save the configuration file and then it load and restore custom settings? I want to remind that this is all on OSX. Cheers.
I'm having a crazy time figuring out how to install that linked code, @wazou Do you know where I can find some sort of guide? Pasting it into the console is deeeefinitely not going well.
Replies
The node approach provides tons of possibilities. Getting the look right can be a bit tough due to slow rendering evaluation. For example, advection still needs better parameters for more variety and realism.
Viewport:
thanks for sharing, shose clouds already looks cool!
Essentially, it allows you to setup a separate hotkey to rotate/scale using the 3d Cursor or Active Element as Pivot, but it resets to your pivot settings as they were when you're done.
https://github.com/kaptainkernals/transforms_on_cursor
Here's a gif showcasing the behaviour (it works in edit and object mode):
The 3D Cursor behaviour you see is part of the Enhanced 3D Cursor addon, which is fantastic. Although as I understand it, this addon is meant to replace it, I just haven't had a chance to really investigate:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/BatchTransforms
That's the 'Snap Utilities Line' addon, which is a free (and great!) version of a larger CAD-tools addon.
https://github.com/Mano-Wii/Addon-Snap-Utilities-Line/wiki
It crash blender some times.
I'm working on an update right now
Edit: Took a while but I found it, addon is called Projection Ops for anyone who cares.
Curves support: Branches. Mitering of unaligned handles. Creation of support loops for unaligned handles. Weight painting for curves. Interpolation between multiple cross-sections. Loop Tools support.
Weight painting: Vertex selection tools that already exist in edit mode, so you don't have to switch back and forth just to get a new edge loop or shrink your selection. Or at least, keep track of vertex groups in a single place rather than per-mode, so that switching modes doesn't lead to painting in the wrong group. Something to prevent the rampant resetting of paint settings that occurs, for which I haven't yet isolated the cause. A normalization option to ignore the influence of locked groups (and so normalize to >1).
UV: Improved switching between linked mode and unlinked mode, which resets all selection and is a bit irritating. Separation of operator panel from 3D view so that numeric rotations (e.g.) can be applied to the UV without being applied to the mesh (I'm sure there's a solution to that one, even if I haven't yet found it). There's no reason to disallow select linked in mesh-linked mode; it should just select UV island or mesh linkage based on window in which it's called. 3D view indication of selected UV coordinate, even in unlinked mode, would sure be handy.
Anything that uses an axis should accept a pair of vertices instead. Anything that uses a plane should accept 3 vertices instead. Anything that uses a frustrum should accept a deformed cube instead.
(Hi Polycount, you guys seem cool so I registered. Please forgive me if there's any etiquette I missed.)
Oh, I almost forgot: per-mode display with user-definable GLSL shaders. I'd rather see exactly how the model is going to look in something like object mode, and if I could customize display in other modes, all the better.
I've been playing recently with the new Grease Pencil v2.0 (Blender 2,78) and it's really a fun and easy tool to play with, here's a presentation of the workflow I'm currently using :
EDIT : woops here's the good presentation link
Can i change the type of standard material object ?, it is very unsightly and it blends into the background, although I tried to change the background, also tried different matcaps, but as it is not comme il faut, of all the programs I've used, the type of material in Modo seems the best IMHO, it would be desirable that the close as in the screenshot.
You need the Quick Preferences Add-on to manage your presets, you can however change it manually the User Preferences---> System---> Solid OpenGL lights
For the near future I don't think so. Maybe after the 2.8 porting wich is basically a refresh of the Blender deep code, such has wieport, data management etc..
Then go to User Preferences -> Add-ons.
You can install the .PY file you downloaded as a third-party addon with that "Install from File..." button, like explained in this part of the documentation:
https://www.blender.org/manual/preferences/addons.html#header
so im trying to learn blender.
im coming from some years of using max, and thought it would be easiest to change everything that i can to function like it does in max. but that doesnt work that well. selection for one thing, sometimes i can select with left, sometimes with right mousebutton. and every time i need to look up a keybinding its always wrong since i dont have the defaults.
so can someone recommend me the best way to approach this? is the default setup in blender good in the long run, worth getting used to?
or is there any better setup of keybindings and viewport navigation that i should adapt to?
im aware that this is affected a lot by personal preferences, but since im the beginning of learning it all anyway, i would be happy to get a recommendation of some sort
I came from 3DS Max, I use the rSelection addon. Unfortunately it has a bug where I have to reenable it every time I launch but I would still recommend it to pretty much everybody who is coming from a standard 3d modeling background. It adds some additional hotkeys but most importantly it adds box selection by holding lmb and dragging, and it creates a rmb menu so it feels much more like the industry standard.
Most of my hotkeys are defaults with some exceptions, but I mainly do everything via custom pie menus I built with Pie Menu Editor and I also use Speedflow. Blender also has its own Pie Menus which I was using before I got PME, they come with Blender you just have to enable them in the addons section.
2.8 is supposed to simplify the controls (the guy that did that rSelection add-on is on the team). It's probably at least a year away, though. So hard to say whether or not learning the current default is worth it or not.
NimbleCollective has a Blender series with some configuration advice as well as other things that may help the transition.
Lots of stuff will be reworked such as input manager, theme, workspace, windows merging, simplification of the keyboard sortcuts, override of values, new data system and gizmos eeverywhere
Basically camera/selection controls geared specifically toward tablet use
this gives me a lot of frustration as i now have two choices it seems.
1. custimize blender so it works for me. but this is super hard since i dont know the program yet, basically i need to custimize it before i learn it, which is retarded. it like having learn using a new tool, asking "what does this do" and the reply is "what do you WANT it to do?".
2. custimize blender so close i can to 3ds max. its tons of work and is also retarded, since like why did i leave 3ds max then?
atticusmars and xrg, thanks, i checked that nimble collective link, but that just gave me choice 1, custimize it by myself. it said that i should have a excel document so i can keep consistent hotkeys. like come on, i just want to learn the program
am i exaggerating how hard this is? cuz it feels like im basically designing my own 3d app, putting all this effort into hotkeys and stuff, before i can actually learn the program.
anybody has any suggestion? it would be pretty sweet if someone said "hey use this setup of hotkeys, i have used it for years and it works really well!"
Here is how to manually set navigation to Maya-style :
Max-style shouldn't be much harder to configure. But while you are at it you might as well adopt Maya style navigation, as it is quite objectively better in my opinion and also pretty much a standard now.
Then once you are comfortable with the app you can go ahead and tweak things as per your desires. One thing to keep in mind : there is a bit of an echo chamber effect going on amongst Blender users, who love to claim that the app is "shortcut centric". It is not. Besides a very small number of exceptions, everything can be accessed through menus, meaning that you can explore the app like any other app out there. The issue comes from the users referring to some tools by their default shortcuts names as opposed to the actual menu location. But as said, after a month or so you'll be able to decipher all that. The program in general is *very* cleverly designed, but some of the defaults settings are indeed odd or even plain backwards.
Good luck !
Now, he work with the default preferences and it's easier for him.
You should learn how works blender and then if you want, customize it.
I do find it a bit less necessary to have it compared to other apps, though. Blender always picks the closest component to your mouse, including things that are quite far away compared to e.g. Maya, and if you make sure that the geometry is not too dense and overlapping on the screen, you should have an easy enough time selecting things.
This is the response he gave to me several years ago on preselection highlighting. I'm fine with how Blender selects things, I just would like visual feedback of what it plans on selecting before I click. I'd estimate that ~80% of my undos are selections I didn't intend. There are various 3rd party attempts to do it so the problem doesn't seem to be a technical one. I really have no fucking clue what his beef with it is.
https://github.com/pitiwazou/Scripts-Blender/blob/Older-Scripts/Preselection_faces
2. The second is it is possible to save the configuration file and then it load and restore custom settings? I want to remind that this is all on OSX.
Cheers.
Do you know where I can find some sort of guide? Pasting it into the console is deeeefinitely not going well.
Copy the whole thing to a text file and rename it to 3dview_edit_preselect.py then install it like you would any other addon.
Works for me, you have to enable "preselect faces" in the shading rollout on the right panel. And if you don't depth test it will highlight backfaces.