Showing the Shear Legacy command from Blender. (Kinda Underrated) Most advanced users may already know, but it's worth showcasing a real life example you may need to use it. Cheers!
@Prime8 : Oh, this is fantastic, thanks ! As a matter of fact I was unaware of this Space command - and even though it doesn't do any form smoothing per se, the mere fact that it perfectly evens out edges along a form does pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Very nice.
This is actually really interesting - I assumed that I needed some sort of form interpolation, whereas what I really needed was perfectly even edges, from which a smooth form almost always follows. Carefully and selectively applying it over important loops of a model gives a really nice, almost parametric look. Thanks again !
I have created a stylized shader for Blender 2.8 that you can use as a base texture, you just have to tweak the sliders for the amount of pointiness, top lighting, AO, SSS, etc. and to tweak the analagous gradient colors (the color values are kept) and a 2k texture is plugged ready to be painted.
Great Work man, I'm trying to replicate this in Eevee, but the pointness doesnt seem to work yet. The Bevel shader is also a Cycles exclusive.
Hey guys, with all the goodness showing up in the blender 2.8 alpha I've finally decided to make the leap and get round to learning it. I'm sticking to 2.79 for now though.
I've run into a bit of a hurdle regarding snapping. In Maya with multiple components selected, I can choose to maintain or disregard component spacing, see gif below :
In Blender, I seem to be stuck with maintaining the spacial relationship between components. If there's a way to emulate Maya's "keep spacing (off)" style snapping, I haven't found it. I know you can align verts or edges before the snap, but it feels like an unwanted extra step for an action I use a lot. Any help would be appreciated. Here's the Blender snap below :
I have made a tutorial on how to generate pre-rendered sprites (like Donkey Kong Country) with Blender Cycles and Shadow Catcher and then play those animations in Godot Engine depending on the key input pressed (script included): https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/117394/23134
The result:
Kenub: yes the pointiness doesn't work and I hope it will because it is quick to calculate. The AO node doesn't work too in real time. For the Bevel it's too heavy in calculation it can't be in a real time engine.
Alternatively we have the SSAO to preview the AO and the Screen Space Curvature is coming, you can't bake it but it will allow to preview the curvature while painting (the pointiness looks almost the same with an high polycount). It generates a normal map from the current viewport angle. It has been already implemented in a custom build by Lukas Stockner, it should be officially implemented soon: https://developer.blender.org/D3617
You will have the option to adjust the pixel width for higher screen resolutions. Currently the curvature system in the viewport uses the SSAO and an inverted SSAO for the convex shapes.
A test by Bartosz Moniewski of the Screen Space Curvature in a custom build of Blender 2.8:
CheeseOnToast: the "extra step" to align your vertices is just typing S then the axis name then 0 it is as fast as opening the Maya marking menu to disable "Keep Spacing".
I usually have spacing off in Maya by default. Three hotkeys then action is not as fast as just the action alone. I can live with it, but I was hoping that there was just a setting I'd missed somewhere.
@CheeseOnToast : indeed and as Wazou stated there are definitely some deep-rooted differences in behavior there.
However ! Maybe there is some optimization you could do about the initial flattening step. For instance, some users might do it by doing Scale hotkey > axis hotkey > typing 0. But it is also possible to get the same result faster by doing Scale hotkey > grabbing the desired manipulator handle + ctrl > flattening to a specific vert.
Basically what I am getting at is that even though the overall manipulation takes longer than the Maya one, there might still be some room for optimization in the way you are currently performing it.
@pior Happy to hear that. I use LoopTools a lot, especially Space. In case the result is not smooth enough I try to Relax first, but as you said, just spacing gives a smooth result in most cases already.
On a side note, I really wish addon-on developpers could stop adding anything to the Specials menu. It's really inelegant since that means that if a user decides to not use this menu in the first place (or even flat out unbind Specials altogether, since by default it only holds redundant shortcuts to features accessible through other default menus), then there is no way to intuitively find any custom tool placed there. I personally never ever use Specials since I have my own optimized ways to access to everything I need, and because of that I never ran into Space - even though I *do* have Looptools turned on for another, unrelated need.
This stuff really grind my gears, especially since the Looptools help states that it is accessible through "W" ... but it really isn't (W is just the default shortcut for Specials, and LoopTools just so happens to be arbitrarily placed there for no good reason whatsoever).
@Pior : Good tip, thank you. Having tried it though, the 3 hotkey combo is easier for me
@Wazou: Sure, there's always going to be differences between tools. I'm just trying to make sure I'm not doing things "the hard way".
On another note, your tools look great. Speedflow looks like a certain purchase for me once I'm a bit more familiar with the program. I followed along with some of your solidify / bevel / boolean examples and it really opened my eyes to modifier-based workflow. Coming from Maya / Silo, it's not been an option for me. Now we just need a Maya-style mitred bevel, which I think is being worked on as we speak.
I usually have spacing off in Maya by default. Three hotkeys then action is not as fast as just the action alone. I can live with it, but I was hoping that there was just a setting I'd missed somewhere.
There is a tool inside the "3D Viewport Pie Menus" addon called "Edit Align Pie" that can make those snaps a breeze, unfortunately, the tool is really slow with high poly meshes, I did recreate the tool functionality by macroing scale to 0 to active element inside "Pie Menu Editor" and works much better.
I keep getting the "no active image found" error when I try to bake a diffuse map in Blender Cycles, despite implementing the typically-given fix of adding a texture node referencing the file I want to bake to in each material, and having no empty material slots. Are there any other typical causes of this problem?
I'm still having troubles with this- I fixed it with one project, but it's unclear how. I'm still bumping into it with new things.
All the materials that I'm using have the texture referenced in an Image Texture node, and there aren't any empty material slots involved. I'm using TexTools but I don't think that's the source of the issue.
Link to the project is here. Anyone feel like poking around and seeing what they can find? I'd really appreciate it- it's slowing me down tremendously.
I keep getting the "no active image found" error when I try to bake a diffuse map in Blender Cycles, despite implementing the typically-given fix of adding a texture node referencing the file I want to bake to in each material, and having no empty material slots. Are there any other typical causes of this problem?
I'm still having troubles with this- I fixed it with one project, but it's unclear how. I'm still bumping into it with new things.
All the materials that I'm using have the texture referenced in an Image Texture node, and there aren't any empty material slots involved. I'm using TexTools but I don't think that's the source of the issue.
Link to the project is here. Anyone feel like poking around and seeing what they can find? I'd really appreciate it- it's slowing me down tremendously.
Make sure you leave the node that you want to bake to (image node) "selected" while you hit the Bake Button. It's a minor thing no one actually notices and poorly sinalized over documentation. You can have as many material slots each with thousands of texture nodes included on them, it will only bake into the image node you leave selected at that moment.
I keep getting the "no active image found" error when I try to bake a diffuse map in Blender Cycles, despite implementing the typically-given fix of adding a texture node referencing the file I want to bake to in each material, and having no empty material slots. Are there any other typical causes of this problem?
I'm still having troubles with this- I fixed it with one project, but it's unclear how. I'm still bumping into it with new things.
All the materials that I'm using have the texture referenced in an Image Texture node, and there aren't any empty material slots involved. I'm using TexTools but I don't think that's the source of the issue.
Link to the project is here. Anyone feel like poking around and seeing what they can find? I'd really appreciate it- it's slowing me down tremendously.
Make sure you leave the node that you want to bake to (image node) "selected" while you hit the Bake Button. It's a minor thing no one actually notices and poorly sinalized over documentation. You can have as many material slots each with thousands of texture nodes included on them, it will only bake into the image node you leave selected at that moment.
Thank you so much! That's the worst thing I've ever heard!
I keep getting the "no active image found" error when I try to bake a diffuse map in Blender Cycles, despite implementing the typically-given fix of adding a texture node referencing the file I want to bake to in each material, and having no empty material slots. Are there any other typical causes of this problem?
I'm still having troubles with this- I fixed it with one project, but it's unclear how. I'm still bumping into it with new things.
All the materials that I'm using have the texture referenced in an Image Texture node, and there aren't any empty material slots involved. I'm using TexTools but I don't think that's the source of the issue.
Link to the project is here. Anyone feel like poking around and seeing what they can find? I'd really appreciate it- it's slowing me down tremendously.
Make sure you leave the node that you want to bake to (image node) "selected" while you hit the Bake Button. It's a minor thing no one actually notices and poorly sinalized over documentation. You can have as many material slots each with thousands of texture nodes included on them, it will only bake into the image node you leave selected at that moment.
Unfortunately I seem to already be selecting the image node in all the materials.
Unfortunately I seem to already be selecting the image node in all the materials.
You forgot turning Selected to Active Checkbox and setting the ray distance to at least 1. And the material was assigned to the High poly mesh, not the plane. It should be the other way around.
The samples were set to only 1 as well. (I dont know if thats on purpose) Good Job on the tiling though. Here, I did one for you.
Some time ago I asked if it was possible to move an object's vertices along its custom normal, as opposed to the fatten operation which uses derived normals.
People didn't seem to know of any existing method, and one person actually went out of their way to create a rudimentary Python script that did it, which was very nice.
In case anyone is curious, I've recently discovered that the Displace modifier is capable of it: simply select "Custom Normal" in the Direction field. I hope this info is useful to people when it comes to creating cages!
Added some more features to blender garment maker thing. It's mostly finished except, blender 2.8 still do not have BGL drawing, so there is no ability to preview, edit stitches in blender 2.8 .
Added some more features to blender garment maker thing. It's mostly finished except, blender 2.8 still do not have BGL drawing, so there is no ability to preview, edit stitches in blender 2.8 .
Looks great!
Yeah, we'll have to wait for some clarity on bgl. I've started a thread about it the other day to collect what we know.
I was forced to split the node group because we can't plug a ColorRamp that hasn't the grayscale as an Input of it.
There is a first node group to generate your base grayscale with the Pointiness and AO, it is connected to a Color Ramp, then there is another node group with Top Lighting, Vertical Gradient, Relief (Inverted AO to highlight parts), SSS, fake ground GI and finally a Saturation setting that is only applied on bright values.
You won't need ID Masks because you just have to apply multiple materials with different ColorRamps. You will just have to bake one single texture to get your Diffuse map, no compositing is needed.
To bake the texture use the Emissive mode. It will be used in AssetGen for Blender 2.8.
Model source, it has been textured only by moving the sliders of the Stylized shader, it has no UVs:
This addon exports object selections into file bundles. File names and their objects are previewed in realtime. New export modifiers : Rename, Offset, Copy Modifiers, Merge Meshes, Collider, LOD, Vertex AO speed up the export process for game assets.
@Zablorg omg of course, and then you use vertex groups to modify the thickness of the cage! Why did I ever make cages any other way?
Question: is there a way to automatically mark edges you cut with the knife tool as seams? I feel like I saw this once but I can't find anything on it.
I'm trying to learn about the Skin modifier- you can press a button to get a vertex to act as a root, but is there a button to reverse this? Is a given vertex just going to be a root forever?
I'm trying to learn about the Skin modifier- you can press a button to get a vertex to act as a root, but is there a button to reverse this? Is a given vertex just going to be a root forever?
So I've found that there's only ever one root and marking a vertex as a root removes the previous root.
However, I now have a new problem, in that marking/clearing a vertex as loose doesn't seem to do anything at all. Anyone have any idea why that might be?
Nope, it's not the same. No need of Speedflow, it's blender primitives, the addon allows to edit and create them easily. Wondermesh is great but is you scale your primitive, you cannot change the settings, the primitive will be reset. It's more limited.
I have made a node setup to improve the curvature map generation.
What you get by default:
The improved curvature uses the bevel node, as opposed to the Pointiness which is per vertex position, the bevel is per edge angle so it is more accurate but it doesn't detect if the shape is concave or convex. To fix that it uses the pointiness as difference to check the variation of values. Then I have overlayed the image itself to contrast it but the best method is to normalize the values in the compositor.
The complete node setup to generate a grayscale with AO, Top Lighting, Vertical Gradient and Reliefs:
Heya @Linko - I think there is again a clarity issue with this post. The end result/screenshot certainly looks great and useful, but nowhere in your post do you explain :
- The input(s) required : is this working from a high poly model ? Or from a low with just a normalmap ? Or, a low with a whole set of maps (position, curvature, and so on) like in Substance Painter/Designer ?
- The outputs generated : Is this generating vertex colors baked to the high ? Or a single texture pass baked to lowpoly UVs ?
And so on.
Your work on these nodes setups has always been interesting, but it is always presented in the most cryptic way thus creating a needlessly high barrier to entry. Take the time to present things clearly (ELI5) and you will get a lot more feedback in return. Now of course you could say "well, people have to just download the file to check", but that's not how things work.
@wazou I'm confused, we've been over this on Wondermesh's issue tracker! Speedflow applies the scale when it performs certain actions, and that definitely seems to be the issue. I just tried it here, I can rotate, scale, add a bevel (as long as I don't use Speedflow)...
Forgot about this sorry ^^ Yes, need to keep the scale to one and play with other settings to edit the primitives. So, my bad, bad memory and I should use mode your addon but since not everybody has it, I don't show it on my videos. I'll show it next time!
I added the dynamic lines tool to Speedflow companion.
Ah nice, I've been waiting for that ever since the video!
And no worries, I really like using the screw modifier for a kind of editable primitives (It's what I used to do before I found Wondermesh!), I just wanted to make sure nobody missed out on it because they thought it was broken or something...
And you are right, my bad ^^ Don't know if you use my setup to edit or if you use the properties, but a popup with keymaps could be nice to edit on the fly.
Replies
This is actually really interesting - I assumed that I needed some sort of form interpolation, whereas what I really needed was perfectly even edges, from which a smooth form almost always follows. Carefully and selectively applying it over important loops of a model gives a really nice, almost parametric look. Thanks again !
Some tools will not be as good as maya but other will be better.
However ! Maybe there is some optimization you could do about the initial flattening step. For instance, some users might do it by doing Scale hotkey > axis hotkey > typing 0. But it is also possible to get the same result faster by doing Scale hotkey > grabbing the desired manipulator handle + ctrl > flattening to a specific vert.
Basically what I am getting at is that even though the overall manipulation takes longer than the Maya one, there might still be some room for optimization in the way you are currently performing it.
I hope this helps !
On a side note, I really wish addon-on developpers could stop adding anything to the Specials menu. It's really inelegant since that means that if a user decides to not use this menu in the first place (or even flat out unbind Specials altogether, since by default it only holds redundant shortcuts to features accessible through other default menus), then there is no way to intuitively find any custom tool placed there. I personally never ever use Specials since I have my own optimized ways to access to everything I need, and because of that I never ran into Space - even though I *do* have Looptools turned on for another, unrelated need.
This stuff really grind my gears, especially since the Looptools help states that it is accessible through "W" ... but it really isn't (W is just the default shortcut for Specials, and LoopTools just so happens to be arbitrarily placed there for no good reason whatsoever).
Anyways, /rant over
There is a tool inside the "3D Viewport Pie Menus" addon called "Edit Align Pie" that can make those snaps a breeze, unfortunately, the tool is really slow with high poly meshes, I did recreate the tool functionality by macroing scale to 0 to active element inside "Pie Menu Editor" and works much better.
All the materials that I'm using have the texture referenced in an Image Texture node, and there aren't any empty material slots involved. I'm using TexTools but I don't think that's the source of the issue.
Link to the project is here. Anyone feel like poking around and seeing what they can find? I'd really appreciate it- it's slowing me down tremendously.
What I mean is that I want to snap selection to vertex/edge using specific axis without destroying UV. Double G and move doesn't allow to snap.
Make sure you leave the node that you want to bake to (image node) "selected" while you hit the Bake Button. It's a minor thing no one actually notices and poorly sinalized over documentation. You can have as many material slots each with thousands of texture nodes included on them, it will only bake into the image node you leave selected at that moment.
You forgot turning Selected to Active Checkbox and setting the ray distance to at least 1. And the material was assigned to the High poly mesh, not the plane. It should be the other way around.
The samples were set to only 1 as well. (I dont know if thats on purpose)
Good Job on the tiling though. Here, I did one for you.
People didn't seem to know of any existing method, and one person actually went out of their way to create a rudimentary Python script that did it, which was very nice.
In case anyone is curious, I've recently discovered that the Displace modifier is capable of it: simply select "Custom Normal" in the Direction field. I hope this info is useful to people when it comes to creating cages!
https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/blender2.8/doc/python_api/examples/gpu.types.GPUOffScreen.py
FBX Bundle 1.5.0 is released
This addon exports object selections into file bundles. File names and their objects are previewed in realtime.New export modifiers : Rename, Offset, Copy Modifiers, Merge Meshes, Collider, LOD, Vertex AO speed up the export process for game assets.
Website & Download
http://renderhjs.net/fbxbundle/
Thread:
https://polycount.com/discussion/200292/blender-fbx-bundle-export-addon
Question: is there a way to automatically mark edges you cut with the knife tool as seams? I feel like I saw this once but I can't find anything on it.
However, I now have a new problem, in that marking/clearing a vertex as loose doesn't seem to do anything at all. Anyone have any idea why that might be?
Excellent workaround Cédric! Screw modifier is powerful.
No need of Speedflow, it's blender primitives, the addon allows to edit and create them easily.
Wondermesh is great but is you scale your primitive, you cannot change the settings, the primitive will be reset.
It's more limited.
It's nice to have both possibilities.
- The input(s) required : is this working from a high poly model ? Or from a low with just a normalmap ? Or, a low with a whole set of maps (position, curvature, and so on) like in Substance Painter/Designer ?
- The outputs generated : Is this generating vertex colors baked to the high ? Or a single texture pass baked to lowpoly UVs ?
And so on.
Your work on these nodes setups has always been interesting, but it is always presented in the most cryptic way thus creating a needlessly high barrier to entry. Take the time to present things clearly (ELI5) and you will get a lot more feedback in return. Now of course you could say "well, people have to just download the file to check", but that's not how things work.
I just tried it here, I can rotate, scale, add a bevel (as long as I don't use Speedflow)...
Yes, need to keep the scale to one and play with other settings to edit the primitives.
So, my bad, bad memory and I should use mode your addon but since not everybody has it, I don't show it on my videos.
I'll show it next time!
Don't know if you use my setup to edit or if you use the properties, but a popup with keymaps could be nice to edit on the fly.