Been a while since I posted on polycount. I have been playing with blender in the last 3 months and scripting in Blender.
As mentioned by someone else I started a TexTools Addon for Blender, the main thread at the moment is on belnderartists. Source, documentaion and download are available on the bitbucket GIT page https://bitbucket.org/renderhjs/textools-blender/
Today I worked on Anti Aliasing for the baking in Blender as well as some freeze selection mode to tweak meshes while baking, e.g. cages.
There is also already some selection and transform tools. It is still an early version and I haven't put any Undo commands in the code or safe checked a lot of odd cases (e.g. UV sync mode, active object not in selection,...). But it's getting some nice progress.
Renderhjs. i'm excited to see that you are working on scripting for Blender. You have always made pro tools. I loved textools. Are you going to sale your script?
Renderhjs. i'm excited to see that you are working on scripting for Blender. You have always made pro tools. I loved textools. Are you going to sale your script?
No it is free but there is an option to donate via paypal. Some people believe that Blender needs a commercial pillar to mature, e.g. professional addons maintained by paid developers, and I am fine with that. But personally I have a different philosophy. TexTools is free to use, copy the code or learn from.
All I want is a really good addon that is accessible. I have been a game and tool developer for many years now and having worked with Mac & Windows teams as well as artists with different art package experiences thought me one thing: If you want to push technology and ideas with tools: make them cross platform, easy to install and accessible.
I put great effort into packaging each module into it's own python package so that others can quicker find code they need or want to modify. The python files reflect the tool names. I tried the same with TexTools for 3dsMax back then, also for myself to dig back into the code again.
As for my time: I create TexTools because I use it myself at work and teach friends and co workers on how to use them or these days introduce them to Blender. It often benefits me in a secondary way, as I am often the guy at work who builds pipe lines, guide artists on technical stuff etc.
Select from None, 2x, 4x. When you enable Anti Aliasing the bake render is rendered at a scaled resulution and afterwards down scaled. Anti Aliasing works on any baking mode.
Single
I changed this behavior slightly: With multiple objects selected enable this when you want all items to be baked into a single texture as opposed to multiple. It uses the name or ID from the first item in the bake set list. This is great for multi part objects or exploded bake setups.
Lock Selection
Lock or unlock the current bake selection. When locked scene selection changes won't affect the baking list. This is great for tweaking meshes, cages or other settings while baking.
UI improvements
Mostly ghosting elements that are not available or ignored in the 'Single' mode. Also displays now the number of texture bakes on the bake button. This should make it easier for new users.
Currently working on some bake explode tools which creates key frames for object pairs and moves them apart for baking, or exporting to other baking tools.
@renderhjs thank you so much for making this! I had a little time today to try it out and I will definitely be using it! I love the UV editing tools, really useful and powerful! I'd advise against adding default hotkeys to certain tools (like the align tool - believe it or not I had already assigned alt+arrow keys to stuff). There's a lot of blender plugins that do this and it can be annoying.
align edge and select similar, can't believe I lived without it
I really like how you organized the UI, though I think you should consider making the baking and UV editing parts as separate plugins maybe? I'd love to see the bake tool more fleshed out as a separate UI .
I had some problems trying to bake, but I am using one of the overnight 2.79 builds so that might have something to do with it. Not sure how I feel about having to name objects _high and _low, I think it would be preferable not to have to rename things for baking if you are working with certain scene organisations or game assets. It's probably a good workflow for more complex baking setups though.
Anyways, it's awesome, stoked to see you making tools for blender!
Does anybody know if the 2.79a release brings any new features or is this "only" a bug fix? I am curious about the rounded edge shader and if it will be implemented in this release or is a feature which shud be expected in 2.8
Rounded edge + renderhjs great baking add-on, such a dream team for game prob creation.
I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
... sorry for the big video in my previous post. The link was changed into an embedded video ^^
Does anybody know if there is a feature in Blender where I can see all my UV island from all the objects in the scene at the same time in the image-editor as overlays without joining them into a single mesh?
Here is an example how it looks like Modo:
The white highlighted island is my current active object.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
you must be what they call the glass-half-full type. i'm... the other type.
a mandatory 2.79 parallel install during the new viewport's early years would seem like a good bet.
he means, you select different object in object mode and then switch to edit mode while only the last object will be in edit mode, you will still see all other objects you previously selected in the uv editor, slightly greyed out you still can only edit the uvs of the last selected object
he means, you select different object in object mode and then switch to edit mode while only the last object will be in edit mode, you will still see all other objects you previously selected in the uv editor, slightly greyed out you still can only edit the uvs of the last selected object
That's what I have tried but somehow it won't work. Cant see anything besides my actual selected mesh.I have also checked another theme because of the colors scheme but still nothing.
up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do. works for me without any problems maybe the wirecolor which version of blender are you using ?
@renderhjs This is just in time for my new years resolution to give Blender an honest try (after I finish my current project) Thank you so much for Textools! I still use it in Max to this day and really excited to see it come to Blender, definitely makes me excited to switch!
up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do. works for me without any problems maybe the wirecolor which version of blender are you using ?
No need to upload it because somehow I got it to work but thank you very much for the help. I am using 2.79. It seems a little bit like a bug. I was testing it with the same scene set up like yours, just two cubes unwrapped with smart UV p. If I am selecting the first object then shift select the second one and switch to edit mode the only UVs that I can see are the from the last selected. But if I clear the selection with "a" and then select a single face suddenly the other UVs appears. Don't know what is causing this problem, maybe another add-on. Don't know. But now it seems to work.
Thanks, as mentioned on twitter I literally started studying your script which was a great start e.g. figuring out how to add active image nodes in cycles. So thanks a lot for your script.
regarding:
hotkeys: Yes thinking about that, its a good point. I was thinking of having toggles in the preferences to enable or disable packaged shortcuts
Bake issues: Yes the 2.79 builds have issues with baking normals or so I have read. Waiting for the 2.79a public release myself with the bevel shader
Seperate plugins: I actually split the tools into 3 panels within the 'TexTools' tab. This makes it much easier to extend the baking and UV layout area in the future.
Thank you, its a bit frustrating at first but modeling is most defenitely faster than 3dsMax, I have used max for 16+ years but once I learned blender and its shortcuts it is just so much faster. Blender is at a golden age right now, lots of good developments happening and some great addons in the works.
I updated TexTools a few days ago to Version 0.7.2
A few days ago I asked for some bake example blend files, Alexander Latsuk aka so3Datel was kind enough to share a gun model with high and low poly objects with me.
So I started with a script to declutter object names by matching high and low poly objects by their bounding box location and size. Only high poly objects are renamed to match the low poly names.
Next I added selection tools for bake sets: Bake sets can be selected individually. Or by all warning items, low poly, high poly or cage models. Once bake sets are locked, view port selections can be independent.
And finally I have been working on a explode tool: It moves all detected bake pairs apart into 6 directions. Offsets are based on bounding boxes and offsets to the center of all objects. Margins are a 35% of the average bounding box side. Keyframes are added to the timeline to switch back and forth.
up load your blend file if possible, i can take a look at it tomorrow hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do. works for me without any problems maybe the wirecolor which version of blender are you using ?
No need to upload it because somehow I got it to work but thank you very much for the help. I am using 2.79. It seems a little bit like a bug. I was testing it with the same scene set up like yours, just two cubes unwrapped with smart UV p. If I am selecting the first object then shift select the second one and switch to edit mode the only UVs that I can see are the from the last selected. But if I clear the selection with "a" and then select a single face suddenly the other UVs appears. Don't know what is causing this problem, maybe another add-on. Don't know. But now it seems to work.
This is something I seem to remember being up for discussion between the developers, but currently this only works for models that share the same texture. Could that have been the issue? This could also explain why you'd need to select a face, as textures can be applied per-face in the UV editor.
New structure for tool locations. Bake tools now have their own section.
Organise
Declutters your selected object names by matching high and low poly objects by their bounding box location and size. Only high poly objects are renamed to match the low poly names with the ' high' suffix.
Explode
Moves all selected bake pairs apart into 6 directions. Offsets are based on bounding boxes and offset to the center of the whole group. Margins are a 35% of the average side of all bounding boxes. Animation keyframes are added at 0 and 50 of each selected object to transition between the 2 states. Keyframes can be removed afterwards if not desired.
Select by type
Select from the baking sets all objects that match a critera such as 'Warning', 'Low', 'High' or 'Cage' objects.
Tip: When bake sets are locked you can select scene objects here independently of the bake sets.
Align Edge
Align edge now supports multiple islands by selecting edges on for each uv island.
@renderhjs This looks fantastic! Is there any chance of a tool that would automatically orient islands so that their rotation was correctly aligned for textures? For example
I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?
I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?
I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.
*Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
@renderhjs This looks fantastic! Is there any chance of a tool that would automatically orient islands so that their rotation was correctly aligned for textures? For example...
Funny that you say that, its on my list of new tools that I wanted to explore. Like a a tool that aligns all UV islands to world topology from a readable perspective. E.g. UV island in 3D space is mostly flat, align to top XY view. Or when sideways follow along horizontal axis and z for UV up. Very common issue I face often myself when unwrapping and only realize when already texturing that faces are flipped or rotated 90 or 180 degrees off.
I worked today on a UV channel dropdown menu to quickly access UV channels of a mesh. It just labels them as UV channel ID's instead of full names. Also shows warning if no UV available.
@renderhjs That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it! Loving the look of that drop down. Would be great if user could reorganise channels too. I have this set up in my blender using a script I found. Link
@renderhjs That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it! Loving the look of that drop down. Would be great if user could reorganise channels too. I have this set up in my blender using a script I found. Link
Thats awesome, yes i have already a UX idea on how to integrate it. Thanks.
fantastic work with textools for blender one bug i noticed, if you create a standard cube and do a quick smart uv project and bake a gradient map, one side gets baked upside down. if i create my own cube from a plane, this does not happen
@SnowInChina I have not yet been able to reproduce that even with a plain cube model and smart UVs projected. The shader used for baking uses the object space as opposed to UV space to generate the gradient direction (so independent of UV layout). Will investigate a bit more tomorrow
Resize Area I added today the 'Resize Area' (canvas resize in TexTools for 3dsMax). It works similar to Photoshop's resize canvas to extend or shrink the UV area. It supports square and non square aspect ratios. When there is a background image in the UV editor it will resize that image as well so that the correct aspect ratio is show. When no background image is shown a TexTools internal image is generated with the Theme's background color but slightly brighter.
Works great when working with texel densities or having to combine UV's of different models. Will release an update when I have a few other issues fixed as well.
I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?
I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.
*Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
This is the idea. It saves an absolute ton of time in Modo in both the high and low poly to be able to work with bevels and booleans and just crash geo together and have it bake out as if it was modeled together. It's also good for concept work and rendering.
Blenders implementation works great for rendering in Cycles, but has really bad normal issues and pixel artifacts when baking to a normal map for a game res workflow. Sadly I'm not sure if it's a priority for the devs, because the original feature request was mainly for a Cycles rendering feature. I'd love to be wrong though!
For those that have tried Eevee (the PBR viewport of 2.8), have you noticed getting a different result on screen than the demos that are around? There's these demo scenes: https://www.blender.org/2-8/#try-it-yourself
If I load the "Race Spaceship" scene it looks very different from the pictures, with the scene almost all black, and the only light type that seems to work for me is Sun. I used the 2.8 build from January 14. I'm curious if someone else had a similar experience so I can rule out that my GPU (nvidia 960m) doesn't support a needed feature or something like that.
I am uncertain as to how much this has to do with the current state of 2.8 development, and how much can be chalked up to simple hardware performance bottlenecks.
for what it's worth i tested 2.8 just a few weeks ago on a 4ghz i7 + GTX1070 windows desktop and found the interaction in the majority of the demo scenes in fancy viewport mode to be rather unbearably slow and in the few that weren't the lag was still noticeable.
That's reassuring (or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps not?). I'll retain a semblance of hope that things will improve for us both as development progresses
Dchani: I believe it is done via boolean operations. Select source mesh, then target mesh and press Ctrl + B to engage the Boolean menu (with BoolTool enabled in addons). Then you select what sort of operation you want to do (union, difference intersection, etc).
Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
Probably a nooby question, but I don't really understand why the bevel shader is a big deal. Will you be able to bake the bevels into a normal map for game engines, and what is the difference between it and your standard bevel modifier?
I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
The benefit, as far as I'm aware from other programs that have a similar shader, is that you can just go buck-wild with booleans, and have them look nice and contiguous, without worrying about your topology.
*Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
This is the idea. It saves an absolute ton of time in Modo in both the high and low poly to be able to work with bevels and booleans and just crash geo together and have it bake out as if it was modeled together. It's also good for concept work and rendering.
Blenders implementation works great for rendering in Cycles, but has really bad normal issues and pixel artifacts when baking to a normal map for a game res workflow. Sadly I'm not sure if it's a priority for the devs, because the original feature request was mainly for a Cycles rendering feature. I'd love to be wrong though!
Keeping it condensed was challenging, but I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully most of it is self explanatory. I'm thinking about adding custom icons to it now as well after seeing @renderhjs ' textools .
I hope someone finds it useful! If you have some feedback let me know
SnowInChina Thanks I will have a look at the file this week to investigate.
Today I have been working on the 'Texel Density' tools as well as rewriting the Checkermap tool for TexTools
Texel Density can be applied in 2 different modes: scale UV's as a whole or individually per UV Island. The ratio is very simple to read, it is esentially pixels per 1 unit/ meter. The script finds textures assigned in materials or to the UV faces per object and uses that to calculate the texel sizes.
Objects are scale dependent and don't have to be reset in scale, this also works just fine with non square textures and UV layouts, which is why I see this and the 'Resize' tools as great companions for level assets.
I will push out an update later this week with all the recent new features and bug fixes
Texel Density can be applied in 2 different modes: scale UV's as a whole or individually per UV Island. The ratio is very simple to read, it is esentially pixels per 1 unit/ meter. The script finds textures assigned in materials or to the UV faces per object and uses that to calculate the texel sizes.
that's really awesome one suggestion, where i am not too sure how easy it is to implement could you implement presets the user could save, so whatever you are working on, you could have the same texel density project wide, without loading a model with the right density and picking from it ?
renderhjs: hmmm... Yesterday I thought: I need to ask renderhjs if it would be hard to implement some kind of a "texel density tool kit"... Yeah !!! Thanks... but somehow creepy.
I updated my dolly-zoom addon with a new feature that lets you change the camera lens shift while keeping the cursor in place on screen. You can get it at the same gumroad address: https://gum.co/zxZtr
@renderhjs TexTools is looking great! It's awesome that you're using custom icons etc., I was reading through your code and got super inspired by your structure and style! So thanks for sharing! And I couldn't really wrap my head around working with icons, even though it seems fairly simple now.
I noticed you're using dirty vertex as a mask for part of the cavity map bake. I was wondering if there would be a noticeable difference if you initially bake an AO map and use that as mask instead? Not sure whether it'll make much of a difference, and it has a cost in time obviously.
@SnowInChina: regarding template units for texel desnity: not hard to implement but not sure if i want to sacrifice real estate in the ui for that yet. I was thinking maybe a history dropdown with the last say 10 applied texel density values. But i am jot a fan of configuration UI's, hence why my baking interface is so different.
@derphouse: Thanks i have put some effort into making the code easier to discover and to read, e.g. each operator its own python module. The key when working with multiple files for your addon e.g. icons is to use a custom script path in the user preferences and to use external code editors such as sublime for python. It makes it so much easier. As for the dirty vertex colors: i actually combine them with the pointiness nide in cycles to get the best of the 2. The cost of time is relative when you consider that it only takes a single click to bake, i want fast results by cutting complex ui and laborious clicks to just setup baking or common vake materials.
Get and set Texel density With 2 scale modes: by individual islands or as a whole
Resize UV Extends or shrinks the UV canvas
UV channel inspector and swap uv channels
There is also a new bake object type detection: geometry floaters Its more of a edge case right now but when baking AO from a floater geonetry by separating it from the highpoly and tagging it as a floating object it will prevent baking shadows.
Replies
As mentioned by someone else I started a TexTools Addon for Blender, the main thread at the moment is on belnderartists. Source, documentaion and download are available on the bitbucket GIT page
https://bitbucket.org/renderhjs/textools-blender/
Today I worked on Anti Aliasing for the baking in Blender as well as some freeze selection mode to tweak meshes while baking, e.g. cages.
There is also already some selection and transform tools. It is still an early version and I haven't put any Undo commands in the code or safe checked a lot of odd cases (e.g. UV sync mode, active object not in selection,...). But it's getting some nice progress.
All I want is a really good addon that is accessible. I have been a game and tool developer for many years now and having worked with Mac & Windows teams as well as artists with different art package experiences thought me one thing: If you want to push technology and ideas with tools: make them cross platform, easy to install and accessible.
I put great effort into packaging each module into it's own python package so that others can quicker find code they need or want to modify. The python files reflect the tool names. I tried the same with TexTools for 3dsMax back then, also for myself to dig back into the code again.
As for my time: I create TexTools because I use it myself at work and teach friends and co workers on how to use them or these days introduce them to Blender. It often benefits me in a secondary way, as I am often the guy at work who builds pipe lines, guide artists on technical stuff etc.
As for the latest Version
TexTools Blender 0.7.1 is out:
Currently working on some bake explode tools which creates key frames for object pairs and moves them apart for baking, or exporting to other baking tools.
align edge and select similar, can't believe I lived without it
I really like how you organized the UI, though I think you should consider making the baking and UV editing parts as separate plugins maybe? I'd love to see the bake tool more fleshed out as a separate UI
I had some problems trying to bake, but I am using one of the overnight 2.79 builds so that might have something to do with it. Not sure how I feel about having to name objects _high and _low, I think it would be preferable not to have to rename things for baking if you are working with certain scene organisations or game assets. It's probably a good workflow for more complex baking setups though.
Anyways, it's awesome, stoked to see you making tools for blender!
I am curious about the rounded edge shader and if it will be implemented in this release or is a feature which shud be expected in 2.8
Rounded edge + renderhjs great baking add-on, such a dream team for game prob creation.
Here is a video from WAZOU where you can see it in action:
And info from the dev blog: https://developer.blender.org/D2803
Haven't tried it yet but if it's like the rounded edge shader in Modo then its gone be a big game changer for Blender ...again
Does anybody know if there is a feature in Blender where I can see all my UV island from all the objects in the scene at the same time in the image-editor as overlays without joining them into a single mesh?
Here is an example how it looks like Modo:
The white highlighted island is my current active object.
uv editor > View > Draw other Objects
a mandatory 2.79 parallel install during the new viewport's early years would seem like a good bet.
while only the last object will be in edit mode, you will still see all other objects you previously selected in the uv editor, slightly greyed out
you still can only edit the uvs of the last selected object
hard to say whats wrong without actually seeing what you do.
works for me without any problems
maybe the wirecolor
which version of blender are you using ?
I was testing it with the same scene set up like yours, just two cubes unwrapped with smart UV p. If I am selecting the first object then shift select the second one and switch to edit mode the only UVs that I can see are the from the last selected. But if I clear the selection with "a" and then select a single face suddenly the other UVs appears. Don't know what is causing this problem, maybe another add-on. Don't know. But now it seems to work.
Changes from 0.7.2
So I started with a script to declutter object names by matching high and low poly objects by their bounding box location and size. Only high poly objects are renamed to match the low poly names.
Next I added selection tools for bake sets: Bake sets can be selected individually. Or by all warning items, low poly, high poly or cage models. Once bake sets are locked, view port selections can be independent.
And finally I have been working on a explode tool: It moves all detected bake pairs apart into 6 directions. Offsets are based on bounding boxes and offsets to the center of all objects. Margins are a 35% of the average bounding box side. Keyframes are added to the timeline to switch back and forth.
A new update will be out soon
THANK YOU !!!
https://80.lv/articles/textools-for-blender-2/
This could also explain why you'd need to select a face, as textures can be applied per-face in the UV editor.
Version 0.8.0 is up
I'm assuming if it can be baked then it will be limited to Blender's baking engine too?
*Edit* - And yes, I believe you can bake them down into a normal map.
Very common issue I face often myself when unwrapping and only realize when already texturing that faces are flipped or rotated 90 or 180 degrees off.
I worked today on a UV channel dropdown menu to quickly access UV channels of a mesh. It just labels them as UV channel ID's instead of full names. Also shows warning if no UV available.
Jakro: I managed to actually reduce the code to 1 operator (handles up or down) with 60 lines of code. See source code
one bug i noticed, if you create a standard cube and do a quick smart uv project and bake a gradient map, one side gets baked upside down.
if i create my own cube from a plane, this does not happen
I have not yet been able to reproduce that even with a plain cube model and smart UVs projected. The shader used for baking uses the object space as opposed to UV space to generate the gradient direction (so independent of UV layout). Will investigate a bit more tomorrow
Resize Area
I added today the 'Resize Area' (canvas resize in TexTools for 3dsMax). It works similar to Photoshop's resize canvas to extend or shrink the UV area. It supports square and non square aspect ratios.
When there is a background image in the UV editor it will resize that image as well so that the correct aspect ratio is show. When no background image is shown a TexTools internal image is generated with the Theme's background color but slightly brighter.
Works great when working with texel densities or having to combine UV's of different models. Will release an update when I have a few other issues fixed as well.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cA3-fLhY6zmGONgCnYUavw7vTmRYAAd_/view?usp=sharing
Blenders implementation works great for rendering in Cycles, but has really bad normal issues and pixel artifacts when baking to a normal map for a game res workflow. Sadly I'm not sure if it's a priority for the devs, because the original feature request was mainly for a Cycles rendering feature. I'd love to be wrong though!
You can see the problems it creates when baking in this BA thread: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?436279-V-ray-got-rounded-hard-edge-shader&p=3269112&viewfull=1#post3269112
If I load the "Race Spaceship" scene it looks very different from the pictures, with the scene almost all black, and the only light type that seems to work for me is Sun. I used the 2.8 build from January 14.
I'm curious if someone else had a similar experience so I can rule out that my GPU (nvidia 960m) doesn't support a needed feature or something like that.
Link: https://github.com/leukbaars/BRM-BakeUI
Here's what it looks like now:
Keeping it condensed was challenging, but I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully most of it is self explanatory. I'm thinking about adding custom icons to it now as well after seeing @renderhjs ' textools
I hope someone finds it useful! If you have some feedback let me know
Today I have been working on the 'Texel Density' tools as well as rewriting the Checkermap tool for TexTools
one suggestion, where i am not too sure how easy it is to implement
could you implement presets the user could save, so whatever you are working on, you could have the same texel density project wide, without loading a model with the right density and picking from it ?
I updated my dolly-zoom addon with a new feature that lets you change the camera lens shift while keeping the cursor in place on screen.
You can get it at the same gumroad address: https://gum.co/zxZtr
I noticed you're using dirty vertex as a mask for part of the cavity map bake. I was wondering if there would be a noticeable difference if you initially bake an AO map and use that as mask instead? Not sure whether it'll make much of a difference, and it has a cost in time obviously.
But i am jot a fan of configuration UI's, hence why my baking interface is so different.
@derphouse: Thanks i have put some effort into making the code easier to discover and to read, e.g. each operator its own python module.
The key when working with multiple files for your addon e.g. icons is to use a custom script path in the user preferences and to use external code editors such as sublime for python. It makes it so much easier.
As for the dirty vertex colors: i actually combine them with the pointiness nide in cycles to get the best of the 2.
The cost of time is relative when you consider that it only takes a single click to bake, i want fast results by cutting complex ui and laborious clicks to just setup baking or common vake materials.
You can download it from my new TexTools website
http://renderhjs.net/textools/
New features
Crop tool
Crops UVs to the selection
Get and set Texel density
With 2 scale modes: by individual islands or as a whole
Resize UV
Extends or shrinks the UV canvas
UV channel inspector and swap uv channels
There is also a new bake object type detection: geometry floaters
Its more of a edge case right now but when baking AO from a floater geonetry by separating it from the highpoly and tagging it as a floating object it will prevent baking shadows.
http://polycount.com/discussion/197226/textools-for-blender#latest