Crap, nevermind. There's reasons that plugin was never officially released. I'm getting crashes from it. I can easily recreate one by turning preselect on, beveling a face, then hitting Undo.
@Grimwolf : I hope I am not going to sound like one of these guys that one can run into on Apple forums, but ... are you sure you actually need pre-selection highlighting ?
Now don't get me wrong, I can totally see how such a feature can be useful in Maya for instance, since Maya is all kinds of awful when it comes to component selection. But Blender is actually really clever in that regard once one figures out the way selection priority works (there is basically a clever screen-space (and depth?) ray casting/distance check going on, making selection operations very predictable, even when clicking quite far from the component intended to be selected). Now of course you might need preselection for other reasons, in which case my remark would be irrelevant. But if you feel like you need it because of past frustration with other apps, then it might be worth exploring the very clever way Blender does things in that regard.
It isn't necessary, just convenient. Makes things go just a little bit faster when you don't have to make the wrong selection and hit undo then try again. Edge loops are particularly bad with that, since you need to have the camera at the right angle. They can add up over time. Other software doesn't give you preselection highlighting with edge loops either, but it gives you direct control over the direction of the loop in most cases, and Blender does not. The camera angle controls it, but that is obviously an inexact approach prone to a certain amount of user error. Also, even normal selections can become problematic when you have multiple components very close to each other.
I totally see what you mean. As said I personally don't run into these issues, but I can totally understand that there might be situations when things are ambiguous. It's just like a bug in any program - the fact that a given user doesn't run into it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, so I am with you.
So from there I think one good way to look at it would be to precisely document the cases when the current selection system (raycast distance on click, depth fetching on double/triple click) doesn't work as intended, and file precise bug reports about it. I tend to believe that the strength of the program is the very strong personal vision behind it (as opposed to the way AutoDesk relies on design by committee/votes to drive feature implementation) ; so if Ton is not into pre-selection highlighting (which is something I personally happen to agree with, but again everyone is different) then the next best thing would be to leverage your experience to contribute to the current design philosophy and make it even better.
are you doing npr materials in cycles? Blender internal renderer is way more suited for tasks like that, and you can even render pretty much 1:1 results in openGL in real time.
1- If you put a geometry modifier, it will update (you just have to find the one that doesn't deform the mesh such as a triangulate or decimate with factor 1) Probably a bug though.
2- BI does that quite well with its Light node, for cycles I don't know, last time I checked it wasn't possible
Also a blender 2.79 is on the way with cool stuff such as PBVH based vertex and weight painting (more info here) (model by pachupp) and maybe more GSOC project like bezier curve.
Hey all, in order not to clutter this thread with random workflow questions (and get much aggro in the process!), I was wondering if you knew of threads, links, place, etc. focusing on switching to Blender for Max users. I'm not hoping to completely replicate my Max workflow in Blender and I'm aware of some of Blender's distinctive advantage such as instant type-in for translation/rotation/scaling, superior cut tool, etc.
However the inability to perform some basic, basic operation in an efficient way is really driving me nut, e.g setting pivot, welding verts, deleting without confirm, etc... and I'm looking for the appropriate spot to ask those questions.
I notice that many of the prominent artists posting on this thread that came from commercial packages as Max seem to be focusing on character art and may not be bothered by the same things as a more classic environment artist. Surely there must be enviro artists that are doing professional work with Blender, but they're hard to find...
Mant1kore, I can't point you in the direction of any places specifically made for that, but you could always drop by the Polycount Slack and bother the resident Blenderheads. Quite a few of us actually come from Max, and we're certainly not all character artists. Either apply through the form, or pm me your email, and we'll get you set up. Additionally, I know @pior got some good results from posting on blenderartists.org with his questions, although depending on who replies, it can be a quite toxic community.
Woah @Yadoob, this looks great ! And especially that bit :
The new vertex and weight brushes don't do this anymore.
Now, we use the brush location in 3D space to paint vertices.
This doesn't sound like much, but that basically means that weight painting will now behave in a much more predictable manner. Good stuff !
@manticore : all these tools are there, or a small script away. As @MightyPea mentioned you can get all these answers on Blenderartists. You simply have to be prepared to ask your questions very precisely, because only a fraction of the community there will understand what you mean. People are very enthusiastic over there, but in a bit of a reddit kind of way (as in, replying just for the sake of it even if they don't have anything to add) so be prepared to have to filter this out.
the new vertex painting stuff looks great! i do hope however, there is an option to toggle a simple 'ignore backfaces' because for some applications you just want to paint through every overlapping element without fiddling. i had someone hack that into a custom build for my current version.
Speaking of weight painting I wish they would properly document the weight mirroring operation ('Mirror Vertex Group'), found in the Specials pop-up menu of the Vertex Groups panel. The option names are confusing and the tooltips unhelpful. The tooltip for the 'Flip Group Names' option is "Flip vertex group names", which to me is unclear.
Then you understand what it does, which is more like "Mirror and copy weights into the vertex group named opposite to the active one", i.e. it mirrors and copies the weights from group 'shoulder.L' to group 'shoulder.R'.
BTW for those curious about Vertex Colors, this is the node setup needed to display them in the Cycles viewport (and this allows you to edit them directly in this viewport mode too) :
BTW for those curious about Vertex Colors, this is the node setup needed to display them in the Cycles viewport (and this allows you to work with them directly in this viewport mode too) :
Very handy for rendering polypainted stuff sent over from ZBrush with GoB And one can slap in color correction nodes and adjust roughness and so on if the paintjob isn't looking exactly as intended in the render.
stickadtroja, Mant1k0re and anyone not being able to digest Blender default interaction. These are a few alternate configs to look into. They all work with any version of blender including buildbots (https://builder.blender.org/download/).
Thank you FlatD Jimpaw was kind enough to show me around a bit and introduce me to some useful scripts already.
I'm back here because I think extrude/scale along normal is broken in the latest Blender version. I've looked it up online and followed all tips and tricks I have found to no avail, I was wondering if anyone else had the same issue?
Below is my test mesh, I'm trying to extrude the roof border along face normals, I've tried both via Alt+E > Vertex Normal and Extrude > Alt+S, both give me this ugly, ugly result.
In Max I wouldn't get a perfect result without using a script like Extend Border but it wouldn't look nearly as bad out of the box. What am I doing wrong here?
3dsMax will give you the exact same result, it's due to the geometry you trying to extrude. Here what I would do (probably someone have a better solution thoug) :
The fact that you can't access the custom orientation inside the extrude tool is quite annoying
that might be the case with Max too, honestly I've been using Extend Border for so long for this kind of operation that I forgot what the default behavior was like, I will give it a shot tonight. Thanks for the solution but damn, that's really cumbersome. I do this kind of operation all the time when I model, there's got to be a faster way to do it
As I said, it's mainly due to what you want to extrude. Most of the case are fine with extrude region. For exemple that one would give good result (G+G+alt to extend an edge):
As far as I can see, Extend Border in Blender would be "Ctrl+E/Offset Edges/Extrude" but could you show how you resolve that situation in 3dsMax ? It could help us understand what tool do you need and maybe give ideas to dev to improve blender's toolset
Yes, I will give it a shot tonight a post my findings here. Noob question but how do you create a animated gif like the one you posted above? Ideally I should be posting the same thing
You are right, same behavior by default in Max, and actually the solution was thinking backward.
You can see here how the Extend Border script works in Max, it's pretty convenient because it extrudes equally on all sides with precise type-ins for distance and angles. I think you gave me a couple pointers to replicate the same behavior manually in Blender though...
Yes it looks like a good and efficient workflow. The offset edge tool should give you a solid alternative (be sure to check "Follow Face" in F6 menu), the only odd thing is that it's not a modal which is not very coherent to Blender's tools behavior.
If you want to do that, just use solidify. Not the modifier, just search solidify when you are in edit mode. Then clean up afterwards (it preserves solidified faces)
If you want to do that, just use solidify. Not the modifier, just search solidify when you are in edit mode. Then clean up afterwards (it preserves solidified faces)
Thanks for the tip, yes it works too, I gave it a shot
as a big fan of OSX i don't think the new macbook pro is a particularly good choice for anyone really. price and performance do not seem to correlate at all. i also have my opinions on the new even flatter keyboards.
for rendering you generally want to avoid laptops as they can run really hot (and in the medium term cook themselves) or they start to throttle like mad. they also sound like jet engines while doing so.
i'm using blender on OSX and am not sure what the problem might be? certainly not run into anything that differs from the windows build over here.
Does anyone know why when you merge various objects together, some of them are prone to having their normals flipped? I've been trying to figure out why when I import my high poly into Substance Painter for baking, various parts of the mesh will have inverted normals, and I think this is why?
for rendering you generally want to avoid laptops as they can run really hot (and in the medium term cook themselves) or they start to throttle like mad. they also sound like jet engines while doing so.
I want to second this because I have a reasonably decent notebook and literally the only reason why I avoid Cycles is because when the GPU goes at 100% the fans work at maximum and it sounds horrible, like it's taking flight. I hope it doesn't cause damage like you said, the manufacturers probably stress tested these things.
If you really have to use Cycles, in the render tab you can put it on CPU mode and limit threads to 1 (so a quad core CPU will operate at 25% usage), which makes the heat more manageable but takes way longer to render than using the GPU, unfortunately. Or use any of the online render farm services.
i have an older generation macbook pro and a mini here. i'm also not running sierra yet and generally shut down stuff like gatekeeper if i can (which seems to be the culprit in the issue you linked to).
personally i am contemplating to upgrade my MBP this year to the 2015 model they are still selling: http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MJLQ2LL/A&step=config - but that's just me and my main motivation is to be able to keep using the platform for a few more years this way, SD card slot and magsafe included . i think apple's current hardware is pretty hopeless otherwise, not sure how the imac compares either. with any new machine i think connectivity will be a major headache, too with their radical moves in terms of USB ports. i'd be looking elsewhere if OSX is not the priority.
at any rate if you go with the macbook pro be aware that it gets noisy really fast if you use the dedicated GPU. i have restricted mine to intel only and it's pleasantly silent and cool to the touch this way. else, even for rather simple jobs like playing back a video it will rev up the fans rather quickly.
@RN laptops cooking themselves is not such a rare phenomenon, i'd be careful with running it hot for longer periods. i don't think manufacturers consider long term effects on the hardware that much tbh.
i'm on mavericks here just because i did not see the need to upgrade (i prefer to just keep using the OS that came with the machine till it's replaced - OSX is fine already for my needs, i do download the updates though, in case i need them) so i might just have missed some more recent issues.
the mini is simply my backup machine, all my personal data is on OSX and i had my laptop fail on me once (cooked the GPU) so i wanted to be sure i would not have to migrate back to windows. the GPU failure is also why i definitely do not want a dedicated GPU in such a slim machine anymore - and especially not another model from AMD. but that's just my preference, burned once (literally...) and all. the 2015 model has other advantages for me too: speed is competitive with the 2016 model if you choose the big CPU option, still has all the ports (i use SD cards a lot), comes with the fast multi-lane SSDs already and it's cheaper to boot.
perhaps for your case getting a standalone render box really would be best if your laptop is sufficient already for interactive work. you could probably go for multi GPU rendering over CPU if cycles works well with that.
my laptop is faster (i7) than the mini (i5) so i have never looked into turning it into a processing slave but it would be an interesting experiment indeed.
Not really contrast, but using Cycles you can use different shaders for rays that go through that visor into the camera by using a Mix node and controlling the mix factor with a couple of outputs from a Light Path node. So every object that you want to light up when seen through the visor needs the stuff in the "Method" frame to have this effect:
You can make that "Method" frame into a node group and reuse the same group for all objects that you want this effect. It's easier to manage.
The big sphere (your visor) has a material with a 'mix' of Glossy BSDF and Transparent BSDF shaders.
Hi, i'm working on blender addon, Substance Bridge. It's a simple way to send your job into Substance Painter ; it's WIP but functional. You can download this addon on my Github.
Hello guys, How are you? Any of you know an Addon for Blender similar to 3Ds Max script's textools where I can Control the texel density for my models? Thanks!!
Hi, can anyone help me with a bit of a work flow niggle I'm experiencing in Blender? I've been unable to find anything about it by googling. When I'm in edit mode, using ctrl to do a shortest path selection of edges, verts or faces, sometimes another obect in the scene gets selected instead of the element I was trying to click on. Does anyone know why Blender does this and if I can disable it? My attempted work-around of putting things on different layers and restricting their viewport selection is a bit frustrating for something so simple.
Replies
I can easily recreate one by turning preselect on, beveling a face, then hitting Undo.
Edit: Nevermind, you're right
Now don't get me wrong, I can totally see how such a feature can be useful in Maya for instance, since Maya is all kinds of awful when it comes to component selection. But Blender is actually really clever in that regard once one figures out the way selection priority works (there is basically a clever screen-space (and depth?) ray casting/distance check going on, making selection operations very predictable, even when clicking quite far from the component intended to be selected). Now of course you might need preselection for other reasons, in which case my remark would be irrelevant. But if you feel like you need it because of past frustration with other apps, then it might be worth exploring the very clever way Blender does things in that regard.
And of course : good luck with your experiments !
They can add up over time.
Other software doesn't give you preselection highlighting with edge loops either, but it gives you direct control over the direction of the loop in most cases, and Blender does not. The camera angle controls it, but that is obviously an inexact approach prone to a certain amount of user error.
Also, even normal selections can become problematic when you have multiple components very close to each other.
WHYYYYY
are you doing npr materials in cycles? Blender internal renderer is way more suited for tasks like that, and you can even render pretty much 1:1 results in openGL in real time.
2- BI does that quite well with its Light node, for cycles I don't know, last time I checked it wasn't possible
3- As for the hatch effect it will probably be more a mapping method rather than freestyle, I've tried some stuff for that, you can look here : http://yadoob.tumblr.com/post/149997297918/engraving-shader-in-blender-internal-and-insight
Thanks btw @MmAaXx looks great and the UVshape add-on seems interresting !
Also a blender 2.79 is on the way with cool stuff such as PBVH based vertex and weight painting (more info here) (model by pachupp) and maybe more GSOC project like bezier curve.
in order not to clutter this thread with random workflow questions (and get much aggro in the process!), I was wondering if you knew of threads, links, place, etc. focusing on switching to Blender for Max users. I'm not hoping to completely replicate my Max workflow in Blender and I'm aware of some of Blender's distinctive advantage such as instant type-in for translation/rotation/scaling, superior cut tool, etc.
However the inability to perform some basic, basic operation in an efficient way is really driving me nut, e.g setting pivot, welding verts, deleting without confirm, etc... and I'm looking for the appropriate spot to ask those questions.
I notice that many of the prominent artists posting on this thread that came from commercial packages as Max seem to be focusing on character art and may not be bothered by the same things as a more classic environment artist. Surely there must be enviro artists that are doing professional work with Blender, but they're hard to find...
Either apply through the form, or pm me your email, and we'll get you set up.
Additionally, I know @pior got some good results from posting on blenderartists.org with his questions, although depending on who replies, it can be a quite toxic community.
May want to check this out: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?306867-BMax-Tools-or-how-I-left-3ds-Max-)
You'll need a BlenderArtists account to see the screenshots
The new vertex and weight brushes don't do this anymore.
- Now, we use the brush location in 3D space to paint vertices.
This doesn't sound like much, but that basically means that weight painting will now behave in a much more predictable manner. Good stuff !@manticore : all these tools are there, or a small script away. As @MightyPea mentioned you can get all these answers on Blenderartists. You simply have to be prepared to ask your questions very precisely, because only a fraction of the community there will understand what you mean. People are very enthusiastic over there, but in a bit of a reddit kind of way (as in, replying just for the sake of it even if they don't have anything to add) so be prepared to have to filter this out.
The option names are confusing and the tooltips unhelpful. The tooltip for the 'Flip Group Names' option is "Flip vertex group names", which to me is unclear.
Then you understand what it does, which is more like "Mirror and copy weights into the vertex group named opposite to the active one", i.e. it mirrors and copies the weights from group 'shoulder.L' to group 'shoulder.R'.
Thank you all
https://vimeo.com/166291982
Also, do you know a uv packer for blender that respect the uv alignment to be the same of the faces in the mesh?
These are a few alternate configs to look into. They all work with any version of blender including buildbots (https://builder.blender.org/download/).
rSelection Addon
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?355841-Add-on-rSelection
Custom Blender Setup
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?352666-Input-Custom-Blender-Setup-Silo-Maya-esque
BMax Tools
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?306867-BMax-Tools-or-how-I-left-3ds-Max-)
And a very young addition to the list, Blender LW Modo Setup
http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?152579-Brent-s-Blender-LW-Modo-Setup
I'm back here because I think extrude/scale along normal is broken in the latest Blender version. I've looked it up online and followed all tips and tricks I have found to no avail, I was wondering if anyone else had the same issue?
Below is my test mesh, I'm trying to extrude the roof border along face normals, I've tried both via Alt+E > Vertex Normal and Extrude > Alt+S, both give me this ugly, ugly result.
In Max I wouldn't get a perfect result without using a script like Extend Border but it wouldn't look nearly as bad out of the box. What am I doing wrong here?
The fact that you can't access the custom orientation inside the extrude tool is quite annoying
that might be the case with Max too, honestly I've been using Extend Border for so long for this kind of operation that I forgot what the default behavior was like, I will give it a shot tonight. Thanks for the solution but damn, that's really cumbersome. I do this kind of operation all the time when I model, there's got to be a faster way to do it
As far as I can see, Extend Border in Blender would be "Ctrl+E/Offset Edges/Extrude" but could you show how you resolve that situation in 3dsMax ? It could help us understand what tool do you need and maybe give ideas to dev to improve blender's toolset
Also here's the improvment made by Luca Rood, the new dev of cloth :
You are right, same behavior by default in Max, and actually the solution was thinking backward.
You can see here how the Extend Border script works in Max, it's pretty convenient because it extrudes equally on all sides with precise type-ins for distance and angles. I think you gave me a couple pointers to replicate the same behavior manually in Blender though...
GifCam is my favorite. Dead simple no extra features. Screen2Gif is more full featured. You can google that one.
for rendering you generally want to avoid laptops as they can run really hot (and in the medium term cook themselves) or they start to throttle like mad. they also sound like jet engines while doing so.
i'm using blender on OSX and am not sure what the problem might be? certainly not run into anything that differs from the windows build over here.
have you tried applying rotation & scale (ctrl + A) before extruding?
edit: nevermind I found the answer. It's because of unapplied scale, it can't be negative on any axis.
this fucks up a lot of things when working with modifiers
If you really have to use Cycles, in the render tab you can put it on CPU mode and limit threads to 1 (so a quad core CPU will operate at 25% usage), which makes the heat more manageable but takes way longer to render than using the GPU, unfortunately. Or use any of the online render farm services.
personally i am contemplating to upgrade my MBP this year to the 2015 model they are still selling: http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MJLQ2LL/A&step=config - but that's just me and my main motivation is to be able to keep using the platform for a few more years this way, SD card slot and magsafe included
at any rate if you go with the macbook pro be aware that it gets noisy really fast if you use the dedicated GPU. i have restricted mine to intel only and it's pleasantly silent and cool to the touch this way. else, even for rather simple jobs like playing back a video it will rev up the fans rather quickly.
@RN laptops cooking themselves is not such a rare phenomenon, i'd be careful with running it hot for longer periods. i don't think manufacturers consider long term effects on the hardware that much tbh.
i'm on mavericks here just because i did not see the need to upgrade (i prefer to just keep using the OS that came with the machine till it's replaced - OSX is fine already for my needs, i do download the updates though, in case i need them) so i might just have missed some more recent issues.
the mini is simply my backup machine, all my personal data is on OSX and i had my laptop fail on me once (cooked the GPU) so i wanted to be sure i would not have to migrate back to windows. the GPU failure is also why i definitely do not want a dedicated GPU in such a slim machine anymore - and especially not another model from AMD.
but that's just my preference, burned once (literally...) and all. the 2015 model has other advantages for me too: speed is competitive with the 2016 model if you choose the big CPU option, still has all the ports (i use SD cards a lot), comes with the fast multi-lane SSDs already and it's cheaper to boot.
perhaps for your case getting a standalone render box really would be best if your laptop is sufficient already for interactive work. you could probably go for multi GPU rendering over CPU if cycles works well with that.
my laptop is faster (i7) than the mini (i5) so i have never looked into turning it into a processing slave but it would be an interesting experiment indeed.
So every object that you want to light up when seen through the visor needs the stuff in the "Method" frame to have this effect:
You can make that "Method" frame into a node group and reuse the same group for all objects that you want this effect. It's easier to manage.
The big sphere (your visor) has a material with a 'mix' of Glossy BSDF and Transparent BSDF shaders.
i'm working on blender addon, Substance Bridge. It's a simple way to send your job into Substance Painter ; it's WIP but functional. You can download this addon on my Github.
To unterstand this use, i make a gif.
Any of you know an Addon for Blender similar to 3Ds Max script's textools where I can Control the texel density for my models? Thanks!!
When I'm in edit mode, using ctrl to do a shortest path selection of edges, verts or faces, sometimes another obect in the scene gets selected instead of the element I was trying to click on. Does anyone know why Blender does this and if I can disable it? My attempted work-around of putting things on different layers and restricting their viewport selection is a bit frustrating for something so simple.