A week ago or so, sb ask if he can do the following with MESHmachine and yes he can, it's what the Refuse tool is for, which basically just Unfuses and Fuses again.
For me it was important to have this, so I can work with object space texturing after using the mirror mods. Also due to the reliance on custom normals by various tools in MESHmachine, not being able to use the mirror mod, was not acceptable.
It also means, imported geometry from Fusion or MOI3D can be mirrored now.
@MACHIN3 awesome work, will test with 2.75a which due too my system specs a build that's rock solid stable and by the way I've always had trouble with bevelling, well optimising to a minimum at least via the modifier stack
@MACHIN3 awesome work, will test with 2.75a which due too my system specs a build that's rock solid stable and by the way I've always had trouble with bevelling, well optimising to a minimum at least via the modifier stack
That's from before I was using Blender. I doubt it will work.
Hello fellow blender users! I am pretty new to CG - I was learning CG for about half a year and learned maya. But I think about to switch to blender when 2.8 will come out. I was just wondering about - will the new 2.8 version support old addons? And what addons for blender are essential?
Sorry for offtipic thou, I saw some pretty pixelized style piuctures on artstation where some person used PyxelEdit program - is it worth it?
Thank very one for answers in advance!
Hi @cjpeg 2.8 will have some API changes (Blender API = the coding libraries and rules that developers use to make add-ons for it), so almost all add-ons for 2.79b will need to pass through some kind of porting in order to work with 2.8 when it's released as stable.
Many quirks and workflows will still be the same as in 2.79, so you can speed up your adoption by learning 2.79 right now and waiting for 2.8 to be ready for production (i.e ready to be used professionally. It's still under dev. and it crashes often).
Essential add-ons... it depends on what you want to do with it? There are add-ons for everything, free and commercial, that improve usability or add new features altogether. If you find out what subjects you're interested in, it'll be easier to search for them.
On the reoccurring topic of 2.8 : I would actually highly recommend anyone with a recent interest in Blender to *not* get into it.
Sure, there are downloads available for beta testing but there is zero point for a new user to get into that. Even some of the viewport modes are currently missing (or at least they were last time I had a peak), and for a reason - it's all still in development.
Just pick up one of the recent, rock solid releases and enjoy buttery smooth workflow and operation (I am on 2.78 myself and it is fantastic ! No crashes and great performance).
And even when 2.8 gets eventually released there would be no point getting into it for at least a couple months. Blender devs are fantastic, but they are not more immune to making mistakes than Microsoft or Autodesk employees. Just be patient and enjoy a fantastic tool as it currently is
@pior I'm enjoying any chance I get to have a mess about in Blender, but the one thing that's really putting me off is the smoothing groups workflow.
In object mode you have smooth shading for the entire mesh and an Autosmooth checkbox. And then there are 3 options to shade faces/edges/verts in Edit mode. Then you have a Smooth option in the W(special) menu. Then you can mark edges as well.
I don't know, the whole set up seems a bit messy. I'm used to just selecting groups of faces in Max and hitting my Autosmooth hotkey.
I realise that the fault is that I haven't figured out the proper way to do it, but searching for this just produces endless results of 'just use subsurf' - which is obviously nothing to do with the issue - or to use some edgesplit modifier - which seems like a hack.
Set object shading to smooth, set autosmooth to the highest value, and mark edges as sharp in the edge menu. That's it (not saying that it is easy to find or intuitive - but once you know about it, it's pretty straightforward.)
@pior Thanks. I had figured out how to do it, but I was just wondering why you have to set up the Autosmooth at object level and then go into Edit mode and do it again? And then you have all those other options I mentioned in 3 or 4 different locations.
The reason I suppose this was frustrating me is that I was testing out the 'Bake Bevel' feature of TexTools and no matter how I set it up there were NM errors. If Blender natively uses MikkT then it should be a simple case of set the object to smooth and bake averaged. But for whatever reason if I do this then the map bakes blank. If I use hard edge/uv split method the map bakes and looks good.
Do you know if the Blender MikkT implementation can work as expected with a fully averaged mesh?
Edit: I can actually see now that the Autosmooth at object level is just like having a Smooth modifier at the top of the stack in Max.
@musashidan Even as a long time Blender user, I also find that Blender has a couple of "double" or "triple" settings to achieve same result, and it's a bit weird, but once you get used to it, all makes sense, eventually. Just check what they do individually and if there's some differences, choose whatever works you the best. I usually do these steps for my low poly before I start unwrapping UVs:
1. Set the whole mesh smooth either from A. Tools panel (T-panel because of the hotkey T) > Shading: Smooth (or Flat), or B. in the edit mode by pressing W to access Special menu and choosing "Shade Smooth" or C. still in the edit mode by pressing Ctrl + F and choosing the same "Shade Smooth", which is just a menu specifically for "Faces". For vertices it's Ctrl + V and for edges it's Ctrl + E.
2. Removing possible double vertices which aren't connected but they'll share the same location by pressing W to access that Specials menu again, and choosing "Remove Doubles". It merges them together to a single vertex.
3. Recalculating face normals by pressing Ctrl + N in the edit mode. Actually it's called "Make Normals Consistent" to be more precise, at least what the operator is calling it, haha. Can be accessed from the Tools menu too, but I've got used to the hotkey a lot.
4. Back in the object mode I apply the object's transformations (location 0,0,0 - rotation 0,0,0 - and scale 1,1,1). It's basically "Reset XForm" in Max.
5. Once UVs are done, I'll put a "Triangulate" modifier for the low poly and export it for external baking in Marmoset. But I'm also interested to test out that bevel baking in Blender someday if I have a model that could use it.
The auto smooth is for quick automatic hard edge calculation, but setting the angle of smoothing to 180 degrees gives you the full control of adding your own sharp edges, like hard edges in Maya.
If you wish to adjust your custom cages for baking inside Blender, duplicate your triangulated low poly and inflate it in the edit mode by pressing Alt + S to "Shrink/Fatten" or you can use a "Displace" modifer to do it non-destructively and play with the "Midlevel" value to adjust.
Another thing for the operators you do for your models, you'll get those settings to appear in the Tools menu once they're executed, but you can also bring a floating menu to the 3D viewport by pressing F6. Also, while performing an operation such as beveling by Ctrl + B, you'll see quick settings just below the viewport to perform with hotkeys on the fly if you wish.
Just noticed that when doing a bevel in the edit mode, there's no way to know that you can also slow down the "speed" of the values changing while adjusting the size of the bevel by holding Shift. Holding shift also works in other things, like moving objects, verts, edges, faces etc. So, that's kind of a "hidden" feature... and that's just one of them that I just remembered.
Speaking of "Edge Split" modifer. Never use that, since it physically splits the vertices and not just the shading. It's a nightmare, especially when inflating cages, holy hell. Nope.
I'd have so many other tips for using Blender too, but anyway, happy blending, musashidan!
@thomasp For sorting multiple UV channels, I think it's now possible with TexTools, and copy/paste UVs works with "Magic UV" addon (as long as the mesh shares the same topology... and same vertex order if I'm right, not sure though, but you should test it out anyhow), which is officially shipped on the latest Blender 2.79b, but it's disabled by default, so you'll need to just enable it from the addons and save user settings. ^^
@FourtyNights thanks for the detailed description mate.
This is my main frustration and is from the post of mine above:
The reason I suppose this was frustrating me is that I was testing
out the 'Bake Bevel' feature of TexTools and no matter how I set it up
there were NM errors. If Blender natively uses MikkT then it should be a
simple case of set the object to smooth and bake averaged. But for
whatever reason if I do this then the map bakes blank. If I use hard
edge/uv split method the map bakes and looks good.
Do you know if the Blender MikkT implementation can work as expected with a fully averaged mesh?
For whatever reason if I fully smooth the mesh(which is what should be done for a fully averaged MikkT bake) TexTools baker just bakes a blank map. But maybe that's a TexTools issue I should cross post on that thread. Here's a quick example of the TexTools bevel baker I did as a test:
A little while ago I spent a lot of time trying to get decent baked results from the Round Edge Shader in Modo. The results were basically unusable. The artifacting is terrible. The good news id that Blender's bevel shader suffers from none of the issues that Modo has.
@thomasp You're looking for the UVWarp modifier. It compares the transformations of two dummy objects and applies the difference to your UVs. For example, cubeA and cubeB have the same base UVs here, but cubeA's are being modified by the difference between planeA and planeC, and cubeB's are being modified by the difference between planeA and planeB.
I wish there were a way to do it without the dummy objects, but I don't know of any.
@pixelb Set the UV-warped object itself as one of the operands, so you only need 1 extra object to control the warping. The other object can be something like an empty or a bone in an armature.
@musashidan I've been monkeying around with the bevel stuff also, are you baking with 2 objects (one with the bevel applied, one without) or are you just using 1 object to bake the bevels out?
I have been a Maya LT for over a year now and most of my work has been in low poly modeling, uv texturing, and building shader graphs. Now I am slowly learning blender 2.79 to prepare for the eventual 2.8 release, and to move away from Maya LT.
One thing I do miss: custom shelf. I know 2.8 is going to add that. But for now, is there any good recommendation if my shelf is really mostly basic tool like this?
(I know, an advanced user is suppose to use marking menu but I am not there yet)
Also, beyond changing default input to Maya preset, is there anything else you would recommend to make my life easier?
(Preferably, I want to make my Blender 2.79 experience closer to what Maya LT is, or what Blender 2.8 might be, so Blender eventually become my main tool)
i had a look at the current state of 2.8 the other week and it looks like quite a lot is changing. i'd question the benefit of really diving into 2.79 now (and configuring it to act more like another app!) because quite a bit of what needs reconfiguring to bring the app closer to what i'd call common-sense 3d app behaviour appears to be obsolete in 2.8. i'm certainly prepared to revamp my entire configuration - it already looks like quite a few workarounds can go out the window and for good.
but if you really must jump in now: you could probably replicate a (fixed) tool shelf as a pie menu to be called up when needed. it could be made to act like the hotbox in maya basically. that would pretty much require the use of the commercial addon Pie Menu Editor.
other than that the fork bforartists has a tool shelf of sorts.
that would pretty much require the use of the commercial addon Pie Menu Editor.
It really only requires a text editor and an understanding how pies in blender are laid out in python, which you can learn from the supplied template scripts.
Learning some of blender 2.79 now will give you a head start with 2.80. Yeah, some things have changed and some more will change, but blender 2.80 is still blender.
UI-wise, 2.8 just feel more natural to me: it's a bit Modo-ish, the main tools are now big buttons which is good for beginners like me. Space opens context menu. Tab can even bring out pie menus.
So I have tried both 2.8 and 2.79, both look pretty promising with recently Principled BSDF integration. I do find myself spending much more time on learning 2.79 control.
For example:
- Blender 2.79 offers "Maya" and "3DS Max" key binding preset and yet none of them work like they should.
- Worse still, I soon realize using them make my experience much worse because they arbitrarily change shortcut combination, "Shift + S" snapping menu in "Maya preset" is "Shift + Ctrl + S", so none of the tutorial work.
- This problem exists for many tools, there is no "Bevel" item for the "Maya preset" at all, so good luck rebinding them.
Lessons:
- Only use Blender default preset, and create your custom key map out of it, anything else is waste of time.
- Blender 2.8 is going to make it a lot easier to learn, why? you don't have to use keyboard shortcut at first, main tools are highly visible buttons, not inside a 3-level hierarchy menu.
I've been using Maya nav in both 2.79 and 2.8 with no problems. The trick is to not set it to Maya from the user prefs but set it up according to a this tutorial https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12fqTUyDts0
I've been using Maya nav in both 2.79 and 2.8 with no problems. The trick is to not set it to Maya from the user prefs but set it up according to a this tutorial https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12fqTUyDts0
Cheers, that's how I set it up after trying to do this with existing "maya" preset. Those non-default presets are super outdated and shouldn't be used.
I have added shortcuts like "double-click to select edge loop" too, this is where Blender shines, if I can find it then I can customized it.
I am also slowly converting from Maya's mouse-oriented shortcut to Blender's keyboard-oriented shortcut, it took a bit of time to setup but I think it will end up speeding up my process.
And UI adjustment, IMO they are much more usable this way:
Good stuff @bitinn , make it your own! You can also save your different UI setups and name them (at the top where there's a + and x button next to "Default") I usually make one for modelling, and a different one for UV editing. I can see you're using Rtheme - if you like blue themes, there's Flatty Dark too, https://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/78129 (I removed the gradient from the background though)
I was disappointed to learn that 2.8 will not change the object smoothing workflow. There is zero reason for the smooth/flat button to exist when the auto-smooth functionality is there. Overall, I think they have done a good job overhauling the UI in the face of die-hard Blender users who don't like change, so I still have hope that some day they will eliminate it.
Quick question : is there a way to duplicate the same particle emitter on the same object? I know you can duplicate the emitter itself but it's not what I'm looking for.
Quick question : is there a way to duplicate the same particle emitter on the same object? I know you can duplicate the emitter itself but it's not what I'm looking for.
Not sure if this is what you need but I hope so anyway. Click the arrow pointing down next to your list of particle systems and choose duplicate
Alternatively you can just press the + button and then change the "Settings:" bit to the original particle system
One of my favorite things are whitish matcaps , because you can mix them with a color, to either match your theme or mix with material colors. Just wonderful.
A quick question: it seem when I import DAE (collada) files, the material's shader is always empty? Even after I have setup everything in Blender, and then export to DAE with extra material information.
I would understand if DAE simply can't hold blender specific material information, could Blender setup the basic diffuse texture automatically? instead of me going in and re-wiring the trivial shader graph?
I believe Blender always does this for OBJ import. But I don't think OBJ provides more info than DAE?
(I don't have anything against OBJ, just wondering, as both DAE and OBJ are open format.)
did i get that right: question 16 is about wireframe color per object ala 3ds max? that would be much appreciated for sure (there's also a custom build out there that does it).
and number 19: what could be more important than that???
two things that for sure would be handy to have is backface culling per object - as opposed to viewport-wide - and the hidden line display mode made availabe in object mode. last time i looked at 2.8 i think it had neither of these.
That retopo stuff looks great. I'm glad I bought it, even though I dont use it much. Finally made vide about shape transfer addon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tsn7Qbyv1o
Replies
2.8 will have some API changes (Blender API = the coding libraries and rules that developers use to make add-ons for it), so almost all add-ons for 2.79b will need to pass through some kind of porting in order to work with 2.8 when it's released as stable.
Many quirks and workflows will still be the same as in 2.79, so you can speed up your adoption by learning 2.79 right now and waiting for 2.8 to be ready for production (i.e ready to be used professionally. It's still under dev. and it crashes often).
Essential add-ons... it depends on what you want to do with it? There are add-ons for everything, free and commercial, that improve usability or add new features altogether. If you find out what subjects you're interested in, it'll be easier to search for them.
@MACHIN3 ah...right thanks and yes correct doesn't work on my system. I guess now is a good time to seriously think about a total upgrade.
Cheers.
Sure, there are downloads available for beta testing but there is zero point for a new user to get into that. Even some of the viewport modes are currently missing (or at least they were last time I had a peak), and for a reason - it's all still in development.
Just pick up one of the recent, rock solid releases and enjoy buttery smooth workflow and operation (I am on 2.78 myself and it is fantastic ! No crashes and great performance).
And even when 2.8 gets eventually released there would be no point getting into it for at least a couple months. Blender devs are fantastic, but they are not more immune to making mistakes than Microsoft or Autodesk employees. Just be patient and enjoy a fantastic tool as it currently is
pretty helpful if you need to adjust existing UV coordinates in a non-destructive way - e.g. for engine export (shift or rotate a UV tile).
also, any way to sort multiple UV channels and copy and paste between them on a mesh?
I wish there were a way to do it without the dummy objects, but I don't know of any.
I have been a Maya LT for over a year now and most of my work has been in low poly modeling, uv texturing, and building shader graphs. Now I am slowly learning blender 2.79 to prepare for the eventual 2.8 release, and to move away from Maya LT.
One thing I do miss: custom shelf. I know 2.8 is going to add that. But for now, is there any good recommendation if my shelf is really mostly basic tool like this?
(I know, an advanced user is suppose to use marking menu but I am not there yet)
Also, beyond changing default input to Maya preset, is there anything else you would recommend to make my life easier?
(Preferably, I want to make my Blender 2.79 experience closer to what Maya LT is, or what Blender 2.8 might be, so Blender eventually become my main tool)
Thx in advance!
but if you really must jump in now: you could probably replicate a (fixed) tool shelf as a pie menu to be called up when needed. it could be made to act like the hotbox in maya basically. that would pretty much require the use of the commercial addon Pie Menu Editor.
other than that the fork bforartists has a tool shelf of sorts.
https://developer.blender.org/T54963
And if I am really honest, I would love this:
UI-wise, 2.8 just feel more natural to me: it's a bit Modo-ish, the main tools are now big buttons which is good for beginners like me. Space opens context menu. Tab can even bring out pie menus.
So, I don't know, I am more inclined to learn the new key/mouse maps, but AFAIK it's not entirely possible in 2.79
For example:
- Blender 2.79 offers "Maya" and "3DS Max" key binding preset and yet none of them work like they should.
- Worse still, I soon realize using them make my experience much worse because they arbitrarily change shortcut combination, "Shift + S" snapping menu in "Maya preset" is "Shift + Ctrl + S", so none of the tutorial work.
- Blender make it even more fun by having inconsistent naming: you want to use snap menu, the manual say, but there is no snap menu, it's actually, "call menu".
- This problem exists for many tools, there is no "Bevel" item for the "Maya preset" at all, so good luck rebinding them.
Lessons:
- Only use Blender default preset, and create your custom key map out of it, anything else is waste of time.
- Blender 2.8 is going to make it a lot easier to learn, why? you don't have to use keyboard shortcut at first, main tools are highly visible buttons, not inside a 3-level hierarchy menu.
I have added shortcuts like "double-click to select edge loop" too, this is where Blender shines, if I can find it then I can customized it.
I am also slowly converting from Maya's mouse-oriented shortcut to Blender's keyboard-oriented shortcut, it took a bit of time to setup but I think it will end up speeding up my process.
And UI adjustment, IMO they are much more usable this way:
Do let me know what you think.
Thread: https://polycount.com/discussion/203186/blender-keymap-for-maya-unity-substance-designer-users#latest
Source: https://gist.github.com/bitinn/22f6fefe026d8d9e83468864edb8f835
Alternatively you can just press the + button and then change the "Settings:" bit to the original particle system
A quick question: it seem when I import DAE (collada) files, the material's shader is always empty? Even after I have setup everything in Blender, and then export to DAE with extra material information.
I would understand if DAE simply can't hold blender specific material information, could Blender setup the basic diffuse texture automatically? instead of me going in and re-wiring the trivial shader graph?
I believe Blender always does this for OBJ import. But I don't think OBJ provides more info than DAE?
(I don't have anything against OBJ, just wondering, as both DAE and OBJ are open format.)
We asked questions to Clément about Eevee, English version at the bottom.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GL_F2bG3zVVG-sFfQmcVKAh1Y_GllHXBV6K2iekYxwM/edit?usp=sharing
did i get that right: question 16 is about wireframe color per object ala 3ds max? that would be much appreciated for sure (there's also a custom build out there that does it).
and number 19: what could be more important than that???
two things that for sure would be handy to have is backface culling per object - as opposed to viewport-wide - and the hidden line display mode made availabe in object mode. last time i looked at 2.8 i think it had neither of these.