@melviso - Thanks! There is a way to make a plane and a circle with it, just shift + right click when you're dragging the plane out (first part of the box), or you could also do an alt + right click when doing the Z axis and it will stop the modal and revert it back to a plane or circle depending on which modal you where using. There's a lot more that you can do with it rather than just creating the primitives how they are like changing centering or making the sides even, you can check the read me file on the github, or if you're using the most recent version of the addon you can see all the hotkeys at the bottom of the screen like the other tools in blender, for example the bevel tool. I don't know if that works for you or not but I don't really want to do a separate modal for a plane object because I don't think it would add any functionality that doesn't already exist, but if what I said above doesn't work for you and you can think of something that a separate plane modal would add then I would happily make one.
I have suggested for Blender a Stylized BSDF shader that generates a Blizzard like diffuse texture in real time on your high poly without UVs. Everything can be baked in one texture and projected on the low poly from the opacity settings you have set. This could be even more interesting once Eevee will support the Pointiness effect to sculpt while having the base diffuse texture displayed, to unzoom, see where there is too much details, if the opacity of some effects and the colors looks good, etc. This way we could have the Principled BSDF for PBR games and Stylized BSDF for stylized games and because NPR shaders are planned for Eevee I found that this one would be useful for stylized game artists.
@Linko : as usual, my suggestion would be for you to greatly simplify the way you present your tools, and this one is no exception. Based on this screenshot the look seems interesting, but the description goes to great lengths to make things waaaaaaaay more complicated than they need to be.
In short :
What is the input ? What is the output ?
That's all the user needs to know.
The assumptions about the way a given studio does things, or the way you consider some user workflows to be inefficient are largely irrelevant. I am personally right in your target audience (worked at the studio you reference, Blender user, have made highpoly and lowpoly assets both handpainted and PBR and everything in between) ... but still,I have no idea what you are talking about in this description.
Any idea of how to get that shape without that bump shading? i tried with screw modifier, and it en up with a better shading, but wouldn't bend/deform that well.
beacuse you poked the faces. subdivisions doesn't really matters.
Hello you lovely Blender users out there! I have a question regarding animation baking: So, I retargeted a mocap animation using AutoRig Pro (fantastic Addon - much recommended!), cleaned it a little and used Additive keyer (Addon) to make some tweaks. Know my problem is to merge the additive tweaks with the mocap (via baking?). when I try to bake the additive and the mocap NLA strip, the mesh and rig gets destroyed... I will attach pictures below. My only goal is to export the altered animation to UE4, but when I import/export without the bake, it'll export the unmodified mocap animation and the tweaks seperatly, while the "tweaks" cause the mesh to blow up in the animation. Any clues on what is happening and how to avoid that? Help is much apprechiated! The action setting of the "Tweak" was on "hold" for the bake. "Nothing" did... well nothing. This is the nightmarish result (in engine I get multiple distorted Anims like this and the unedited mocap):
@RN No, haven't tried yet. But it actually does import one proper animation with the additive animation applied to UE, along with a ton of other distorted animations. I just had to disable the "only export humanoid animations" in the AutoRigPro exporter. So my workflow now, is to import like that and then delete the useless anims. Not fancy, but it works And I can't imagine to fix the mocap animations without additive keyer. Maybe motionbuilder?
@Waffenwalter glad you found a way. It was more to rule out the keyer addon having something to do with it, you take away every accessory until you get the expected result, then start adding stuff back in until you find what's causing it. It's a testing strategy.
@Rawz - Hmm I've never tried it on a mac, but I don't see any reason that it wouldn't work. Just to be clear you are downloading the zip file from git hub, then in the addons doing an install from file and installing directly from the downloaded Zip correct?
@Rawz - at the top right on the GitHub there should be a green button that says Clone or download, click that then click Download ZIP, then use that to install, Tell me if that works.
I've set mine up so that ctrl-mousewheel grows loops, ctrl-alt-mousewheel grows rings, and alt-mousewheel does 'select next active', which makes it possible to select patterns, or just grow your loop on one side. A selection like for instance: Results in this:
@Michael Knubben / MightyPea The Zaloopok script is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!
@stilobique No what I was talking about is a bit different. Basically, after doing a checker deselect to an edge ring, I want to be able to expand the edge selection a certain amount to create a series of partial loops, like such:
Thankfully Michael posted a script above that can grow loops. It's a little more limited then Max since you can't choose the direction they grow, but it's close enough for my purposes.
this is my very first post to this forum. Someone recommended to post my script here so i just give it a try ... please tell me if it is unappropriate or if something's not right ...
i created this addon (called PBR Texture Bakery) for Blender to improve my personal PBR texture-creation and
UV-optimization workflow in Blender. It allows you to bake complex
Cycles-materials to PBR textures and - if needed - onto a specific, new
UV-layout (nice if you want to transfer from one UV-layout onto another
one). It can bake these textures:
Actual features:
Albedo
Normal-Map (Tangent space)
Roughness
Metallic
Alpha-mask
Refraction-mask
Subsurface-scattering-mask
Planned features:
Blender 2.8 support
Bake emission - textures
Texture export templates (Unity, UE4 etc...)
Highpoly to lowpoly Normal-Map baking using cages
The resulting textures can directly be put into a PBR render-engine like
UE, Unity or simply the Principled BSDF of Blender etc. It also enables
you to join multiple objects into one objects and bake all textures
onto one bigger texture-atlas. This is really usefull when it comes to
realtime-rendering optimization...
anybody have any luck with the curve draw functionality in blender - the one pimped in videos about a year ago as an addon for 2.78?
in 2.79 where it's now built-in, trying to draw on top of poly surfaces sometimes works, sometimes the stroke lifts off the surface in places and goes haywire, making the whole exercise rather pointless. i also don't see much of an offset from the surface, even if i max the setting. in order to really see curves along with my mesh i have to render them as geometry, trying to then overlap strokes gives unusable results since their geo is now being taken into account. also, if i switch to wireframe curve draw ignores the surface completely when drawing...
scene is set to metric, unit size 1.0, mesh is closed and does not have any transforms applied.
is this thing just a bit broken? is there another addon with more predictable behaviour?
Is it possible to scale vertices along their custom (i.e. auto-smoothed) normals? The only "scale-along-normals" option I'm aware of just uses the default calculated normals, which is not good for making bake cages for a mesh with custom normals.
A vertex can only have one normal. Whenever auto-smooth wants to make a sharp edge, it duplicates a vert so you can have two different normals at the same point, making it look sharp (a crease in shading). If you want to "commit" this duplication so the sharp edges are permanently split for you to extrude them, use the Edge Split modifier and apply it: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/87972
A vertex can only have one normal. Whenever auto-smooth wants to make a sharp edge, it duplicates a vert so you can have two different normals at the same point, making it look sharp (a crease in shading). If you want to "commit" this duplication so the sharp edges are permanently split for you to extrude them, use the Edge Split modifier and apply it: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/87972
I may not have been clear- I don't necessarily want to make sharp edges, but I am setting custom normals using the Y.A.V.N.E add-on.
This add-on (as well as anything which claims to edit vertex normals) seems to impact "vertex-per-face" normals. With the auto-smooth option in the Data tab ticked, this results in smooth edges, but ones where the smoothness is still defined by the normals I set.
(The option which allows the view of custom normals)
(Above is the adjusted vertex-per-face normals, used here to apply proper, smooth shading to a bevel)
I would simply like to move the vertices in the direction of these custom normals. Unless I'm misunderstanding something about how these work, I'm not trying to make any edges sharp.
I have been working for a while on a rewrite of a FBX exporter I use for my blender projects. The thing I absolutely can not live without is bundling selected objects into FBX files and previewing file names. I used to write similar addons for Max at my previous work.
Here is a demo GIF bundling objects by shared name or shared space
Part of this addon is to 'fence' bundles in the scene, so when creating assets I can arrange them nicely in a master scene. For this I create a wireframe font that I initially used for meshes but switched to grease pencil instead Here is the current character set (including missing ones as '?') The characters themselves are just 3x3 grid based line instructions
Once ready the addon is supposed to fix all of the Blender -> Unity scale and Rotation issues + make my life easier by quickly exporting assets without having to worry. Addon to be open sourced when ready
I would simply like to move the vertices in the direction of these custom normals. Unless I'm misunderstanding something about how these work, I'm not trying to make any edges sharp.
@Zablorg No, I misunderstood, I thought you were using auto-smooth to get sharp edges on your mesh, and wanted to use those to displace. The Shrink\Fatten operation was what I was going to suggest to you, but according to the source code it uses the default vertex normals and not the custom ones that you want.
The extrude-along-normals operation uses shrink\fatten internally, so it's also no good.
You'd have to use a custom modal operator (a Python script) to move verts along their custom normals. It seems possible to do.
@MACHIN3 Hey, am I seeing that this addon of yours is adding average (or even calculated) curvature to added loops? Like in 3ds Max's "Flow Connect", which is described as:
"Connects selected edges across one or more edge rings and adjusts the
new loop position to fit the shape of the surrounding mesh."
I've seen this feature in Max for few years, and hoping to have it in Blender.
@MACHIN3 Hey, am I seeing that this addon of yours is adding average (or even calculated) curvature to added loops? Like in 3ds Max's "Flow Connect", which is described as:
"Connects selected edges across one or more edge rings and adjusts the
new loop position to fit the shape of the surrounding mesh."
I've seen this feature in Max for few years, and hoping to have it in Blender.
It's more than that and it's smarter than that I'd love to see how Flow Connect behaves in a case like I posted in my latest gif however. Don't have access to Max, so can't test myself. Anyone?
Your addon already sounds cool that it's "more than that and smarter than that".
Thanks for the link, but as I said, I'd like to see it on more complex geo, especially where the top face is an ngon, without a continuity of edge loops.
I recorded this video, sorry that without a sound.
3ds max Flow Connect ...
and Set Flow, this tool works same like Flow Connect but not create geometry, but work with existing geometry.
... sorry for my english
Super cool, thanks for doing this! Looks solid. I might do an edge based tool as well, seems like it could be very useful for placing individual edges/edgeloops.
Great opportunity to compare loop cut smoothness with my Fuse tool The smoothness parameter works okay-ish, but theres no continuity in edge flow at the boundary., which seams to really limit how useful it is on anything but primitive geo.
Set Flow and Flow Connect working not only with "normal direction", but with mesh contours. See previous video. Max tools can smooth mesh and contours, and work "faster", because it need only one click or hotkay. https://youtu.be/TbkK3-qpECQ MACHIN3 your Fuse tool and max tools don't distort faces https://youtu.be/_0tqhFddkVc and i'm not professional max user. Earlier i'm worked in max, like 5 years ago for freelance, but now forgot all max tools. and I hawe access to the old max v2014 sorry for my english
Very cool stuff @MACHIN3 - these tools look like a breath of fresh air really !
If I understand the GIFs correctly it seems like you are going for something allowing for non-linear, semi-non-destructive editing of curvature and fillets ?
Very cool stuff @MACHIN3 - these tools look like a breath of fresh air really !
If I understand the GIFs correctly it seems like you are going for something allowing for non-linear, semi-non-destructive editing of curvature and fillets ?
If so ... well, that's pretty damn great
Yes, that sums it up very nicely
I was frustrated that you couldn't easily go from block mesh to more refined mesh, when you use chamfers or low res bevels to approximate curvature early on. It all went from there and is now basically a workflow that among other things allows you to go from chamfer to (rounded) bevel and back.
Replies
Thanks
This way we could have the Principled BSDF for PBR games and Stylized BSDF for stylized games and because NPR shaders are planned for Eevee I found that this one would be useful for stylized game artists.
Post: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/93bbbc/stylized-bsdf-shader
In short :
What is the input ?
What is the output ?
That's all the user needs to know.
The assumptions about the way a given studio does things, or the way you consider some user workflows to be inefficient are largely irrelevant. I am personally right in your target audience (worked at the studio you reference, Blender user, have made highpoly and lowpoly assets both handpainted and PBR and everything in between) ... but still, I have no idea what you are talking about in this description.
beacuse you poked the faces. subdivisions doesn't really matters.
The action setting of the "Tweak" was on "hold" for the bake. "Nothing" did... well nothing.
This is the nightmarish result (in engine I get multiple distorted Anims like this and the unedited mocap):
It was more to rule out the keyer addon having something to do with it, you take away every accessory until you get the expected result, then start adding stuff back in until you find what's causing it. It's a testing strategy.
For Max users, I'm talking about the arrow buttons here:
The "Select More/Less" menu in Blender unfortunately doesn't have an equivalent.
@PolyHertz https://sourceforge.net/p/blenderbitsbobs/wiki/Zaloopok/
I believe I used to use Ktools for it, so that's another option.
I've set mine up so that ctrl-mousewheel grows loops, ctrl-alt-mousewheel grows rings, and alt-mousewheel does 'select next active', which makes it possible to select patterns, or just grow your loop on one side.
A selection like for instance:
Results in this:
@stilobique No what I was talking about is a bit different. Basically, after doing a checker deselect to an edge ring, I want to be able to expand the edge selection a certain amount to create a series of partial loops, like such:
Thankfully Michael posted a script above that can grow loops. It's a little more limited then Max since you can't choose the direction they grow, but it's close enough for my purposes.
A little workaround, but not as good as what you want.
Select More > F6 > disable Face Step
this is my very first post to this forum. Someone recommended to post my script here so i just give it a try
i created this addon (called PBR Texture Bakery) for Blender to improve my personal PBR texture-creation and UV-optimization workflow in Blender. It allows you to bake complex Cycles-materials to PBR textures and - if needed - onto a specific, new UV-layout (nice if you want to transfer from one UV-layout onto another one). It can bake these textures:
Actual features:
Planned features:
The resulting textures can directly be put into a PBR render-engine like UE, Unity or simply the Principled BSDF of Blender etc. It also enables you to join multiple objects into one objects and bake all textures onto one bigger texture-atlas. This is really usefull when it comes to realtime-rendering optimization...
You might want to take a closer look into the documentation to find out further details:
https://www.blendermarket.com/produc...ery-for-cycles
Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/models/dff0f55...944fb1ef114116
Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/models/880c75c...abfd2b61ecbfb5
Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/models/cd14799...c73fa70fd7e53c
Baking result of object with multiple complex Cycles materials to one UV-map, respectively, one set of PBR textures:
Please leave me some oppinions about it. If people like it, i will add further features to improve this addon.
Thank you guys
in 2.79 where it's now built-in, trying to draw on top of poly surfaces sometimes works, sometimes the stroke lifts off the surface in places and goes haywire, making the whole exercise rather pointless. i also don't see much of an offset from the surface, even if i max the setting. in order to really see curves along with my mesh i have to render them as geometry, trying to then overlap strokes gives unusable results since their geo is now being taken into account. also, if i switch to wireframe curve draw ignores the surface completely when drawing...
scene is set to metric, unit size 1.0, mesh is closed and does not have any transforms applied.
is this thing just a bit broken? is there another addon with more predictable behaviour?
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2018-March/106021.html
Also Eevee is still eeveeing, code quest starts soon !
Whenever auto-smooth wants to make a sharp edge, it duplicates a vert so you can have two different normals at the same point, making it look sharp (a crease in shading).
If you want to "commit" this duplication so the sharp edges are permanently split for you to extrude them, use the Edge Split modifier and apply it:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/87972
This add-on (as well as anything which claims to edit vertex normals) seems to impact "vertex-per-face" normals. With the auto-smooth option in the Data tab ticked, this results in smooth edges, but ones where the smoothness is still defined by the normals I set.
(The option which allows the view of custom normals)
(Above is the adjusted vertex-per-face normals, used here to apply proper, smooth shading to a bevel)
I would simply like to move the vertices in the direction of these custom normals. Unless I'm misunderstanding something about how these work, I'm not trying to make any edges sharp.
Here is a demo GIF bundling objects by shared name or shared space
Part of this addon is to 'fence' bundles in the scene, so when creating assets I can arrange them nicely in a master scene. For this I create a wireframe font that I initially used for meshes but switched to grease pencil instead
Here is the current character set (including missing ones as '?')
The characters themselves are just 3x3 grid based line instructions
Once ready the addon is supposed to fix all of the Blender -> Unity scale and Rotation issues + make my life easier by quickly exporting assets without having to worry. Addon to be open sourced when ready
The Shrink\Fatten operation was what I was going to suggest to you, but according to the source code it uses the default vertex normals and not the custom ones that you want. The extrude-along-normals operation uses shrink\fatten internally, so it's also no good.
You'd have to use a custom modal operator (a Python script) to move verts along their custom normals. It seems possible to do.
more MESHmachine: Unfuse, change chamfer verts, Fuse, and Refuse. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy™
where can I get this addon?
"Connects selected edges across one or more edge rings and adjusts the new loop position to fit the shape of the surrounding mesh."
I've seen this feature in Max for few years, and hoping to have it in Blender.
I'd love to see how Flow Connect behaves in a case like I posted in my latest gif however. Don't have access to Max, so can't test myself. Anyone?
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/meshes/editing/subdividing/subdivide.html#options
Skip to 6:33 in the video.
Your addon already sounds cool that it's "more than that and smarter than that".
sorry for my english
Oddly it doens't save the smooth preset like the other tools but I guess with some python maagic we can make it smarter !
The smoothness parameter works okay-ish, but theres no continuity in edge flow at the boundary., which seams to really limit how useful it is on anything but primitive geo.
So3Datel Are you up for testing this situation?
MACHIN3 your Fuse tool and max tools don't distort faces
and i'm not professional max user. Earlier i'm worked in max, like 5 years ago for freelance, but now forgot all max tools.
and I hawe access to the old max v2014
sorry for my english
If I understand the GIFs correctly it seems like you are going for something allowing for non-linear, semi-non-destructive editing of curvature and fillets ?
If so ... well, that's pretty damn great
I was frustrated that you couldn't easily go from block mesh to more refined mesh, when you use chamfers or low res bevels to approximate curvature early on. It all went from there and is now basically a workflow that among other things allows you to go from chamfer to (rounded) bevel and back.