@RN thanks for looking that up in the code even, much appreciated!
I have to say that is one special panel though. I managed to dig it up in 2.79 only when the internal renderer was chosen but I confess to having no idea how to produce it in 2.8. What needs to be selected in which mode to show these settings? My renderer is set to Eevee (I'm trying to prevent my texture from being eaten by mip-mapping in the viewport).
For Q1 2019 (April) it is Blender 2.8 stable (remember that Blender will drop FBX's supports for glTF, I don't know if they will do that at the stable release)
The projects started for Q2:
Overrides and asset management
Better support for large scenes or complex environments
Modifier nodes
Physics & real-time mode (for designing simulation and baking)
@thomasp I spoke too soon... that panel is only for managing brush textures, not Cycles / Eevee image textures:
So what you are saying: no settings in a datablock defined in the texture tab magically relate to image textures linked up in the node editor, meaning there is currently no way to toggle mip mapping for Eevee viewport display?
Because that is my understanding of the whole affair so far. I admit since picking up Blender I have never even bothered with getting into (offline) renderer setup, so I'm out of my comfort zone.
I've been playing around with the Blender codebase and made a mini feature yay!
Either Corner, Center or no pixel snapping when UV'ing. If other people think it is useful compared to the old `Snap to Pixels`, I can submit it as a diff !
@MACHIN3 Hey mate, Machin3Tools(latest v.3.4) is broken in very latest 2.80 build. Just downloaded both today. Blender is just not the same without it.
EDIT: it's also broken now if I rollback both Blender and MT.
@MACHIN3 Hey mate, Machin3Tools(latest v.3.4) is broken in very latest 2.80 build. Just downloaded both today. Blender is just not the same without it.
EDIT: it's also broken now if I rollback both Blender and MT.
Need more info. Just tested on 4dd0a90f4213, works fine for me.
What build are are getting the errors for. What are the errors?
@MACHIN3 I'm on the latest 4d795cee4938 and MT .3.4
Strangely enough, I just activated MT from addons again and it's working now. I think it was a problem with MT .3.1b and 4d795cee4938, but when I restarted and reinstalled/activated MT .3.4 the errors were cleared and everything is fine.
Hi guys, I'm testing here the 2.8 version and I'm finding difficult to tweak the UVs. How can I relax the UVs and make them straight? The UVs are indicated below.
In Maya I would just use the Bonus Tools to help me on this and on Blender 2.79 I'm able to use the Sculpt UV tool which would somewhat help me a little on this. But on this new version I'm really lost.
We have just released BATCH OPERATIONS™ 2 smart data-management for Blender 2.8
This add-on is a highly sophisticated data manager which can outline/arrange/control all your modifiers, materials, collections in the currently opened file, scene or visible objects efficently and fast. Select, Add, Remove modifiers, materials and collections or filter, search through with custom user settings. It's idealy suited for the large scenes and management of multiple objects at once.
Supports modifiers, materials, collections and many other data…
Add, remove, apply, copy, paste, apply multiple operations at once
Dedicated addon tab, a floating panel, pie menu or right click context menu support
Version 2 was completely redesigned and rewritten for the Blender 2.8
unfortunately you cant have collision between splines, but if the end result doesn't need to be animated then you can use a strip of polys with a cloth-sim pres alt c to convert to a mesh (this bakes the current frame of the animation to the mesh) then delete one side of the strip and convert to a spline.
or if you want the wire to be animated, you can create a vertex group for one side of the strip and use that in a mask modifier (this removes one side of the strip non-destructively) then add a skin modifier and a sub-surf modifier.
there's probably a few other ways of doing this but this is the simplest I could think of at the moment.
I was in a discussion about the booltool on blenderartists, the guy said that the addon was now built in and it should appear on a fresh install of blender 2.8 saying that needed to be updated, but i don't have any booltool on my addons tab, can someone confirm that it is there on a fresh install of 2.8?
So I'm making a move onto using Blender (2.8), and I am trying to work my way through the UV ...system... and it's a bit jank.
Everything is insanely manual and fiddly; which I am just trying to ... get used to. However I am running into annoying issues with how Blender selects edges in particular.
Firstly I have to drag a box around the entire edge to select it, which is an absolute arseache, is there anyway to enable a sort of... partial selection like 3ds max? Or is there a decent edge loop select option?
Secondly, when I try and select a group of edges on an island to attempt to straighten them, the program automatically selects all the damn edges/verts on the islands that sit near it. So I can't straighten an edge on one island without affecting other islands. It is frustrating as fuck. Can anyone give me some guidance?
Also, where the hell do I go to add padding to my islands when packing? All the tuts I can find are outdated by 2.8, which I am using now.
@Jarvgrimr Ha, and I happen to love Blender's UV tools, lol.
Selecting edge loops/continuous edges is by holding Alt and selecting. When a shared edge of the seam get selected from multiple UV islands, you're having "sync mode" on. Turn it off and then you can select shared edges individually. The disadvantage with sync off, is that you'll have to select all the polygons from the viewport you want to see UV islands from in the UV editor in order to work with them.
Selecting a whole UV island can be done with L-key, and Shift + L adds to the selection. In sync mode L-key selection works only with face (polygon) selection though.
I've got used to fiddling with turning on and off sync mode and working with both ways, but yeah... that whole system could be just seeing all the UVs no matter if something is selected or not.
EDIT: I haven't used 2.8 almost at all, only 2.79b, so I'm not 100% sure if they've changed thed sync mode button's place.
@Jarvgrimr Ha, and I happen to love Blender's UV tools, lol.
Selecting edge loops/continuous edges is by holding Alt and selecting. When a shared edge of the seam get selected from multiple UV islands, you're having "sync mode" on. Turn it off and then you can select shared edges individually. The disadvantage with sync off, is that you'll have to select all the polygons from the viewport you want to see UV islands from in the UV editor in order to work with them.
Selecting a whole UV island can be done with L-key, and Shift + L adds to the selection. In sync mode L-key selection works only with face (polygon) selection though.
I've got used to fiddling with turning on and off sync mode and working with both ways, but yeah... that whole system could be just seeing all the UVs no matter if something is selected or not.
EDIT: I haven't used 2.8 almost at all, only 2.79b, so I'm not 100% sure if they've changed thed sync mode button's place.
Hi @FourtyNights, thanks for the swift response mate! I'm hoping I can get used to the Blender UV tools soon, I think I just need to wrap my head around the more stepped/staggered nature of most actions I do in Blender. I'll adapt I'm sure... but it just doesn't seem very... good. So many more clicks are involved in doing really basic things like selection & moving.
Yup, turning off sync mode worked a charm. It's a curious system, but only because I am so used to having the "stack" in Max.
I am currently searching for some UV tutorials that aren't focused on just the most basic functions, as I keep running into tools that seemingly do nothing, or don't behave as expected, and have no options to control them... so... I dunno wtf to do with them. Where most tutorials are just showing me how to draw seams and uv unwrap and auto pack.
The way Transform isn't able to drag select, but can broadly select individual vertices/edges/faces when clicking on empty space is frustrating as hell, as it forces me to jump between two tools that require at least 3 button presses to move between, just to do a tiny adjustment on areas that are more than 1 vertex/edge/face.
Straightening islands rotations, and edges seems to be an insanely manual task, no quick multi edgeloop selections and straightening options.
Stitching doesn't work at all as expected, there doesn't seem to be a logic to how it chooses to stitch one thing to another, I can't select an island and make another island stitch onto it. There isn't a decent way to relax a part of an island; the UV sculpt tools do literally nothing, relaxing a portion of an island seems to do nothing as well... it' just...
Blender's UV tools is all I've known for 5+ years using Blender. To be honest, the beauty of Blender's algorithm to lay out UV islands based on the seams I've set manually, is that those UV islands are 80% of the time perfect without needing that much adjusting. That's basically guaranteed out of th box good UVs for hard surface objects... if you have placed UV seams smartly, that is. Straightening out cylidrical shapes works with either "UV Squares" addon, or TexTool's "Rectify" among with its other tools. Both do the same thing.
For organic stuff, I like using vertex pinning with "Live Unwrap" toggled on. It's real fun to adjust UVs that way. Made a short video-ish GIF explaining the workflow. (Damn, it was so huge gif [60mb or so, lol], so I had to put it in my Google Drive). You can also add more pins as control points while you've already modified your UV island with original pins.
I never really had to use, but Blender has many great addons loaded with UV tools, most of them are free. I know there are addons which will straighten edge or face loops for example. for example: https://www.blendernation.com/2018/02/18/magic-uv-v5-0-released/
I'm holding off on unwrapping altogether until Textools is ported to 2.80. I'm still in the early stages of learning Blender, but the native UV tools are a bit ropey. It's going to take a lot to get me out of Max to unwrap.
This might seem an obvious one, but is there an openGL/DirectX swizzle flip checkbox anywhere in Blender for this simple task? I've tried seperating the channels with an separate RGB node>invert Y>combine, but the results are f**ked. Surely this is simple?
This might seem an obvious one, but is there an openGL/DirectX swizzle flip checkbox anywhere in Blender for this simple task? I've tried seperating the channels with an separate RGB node>invert Y>combine, but the results are f**ked. Surely this is simple?
In Blender 2.8 you have the swizzle options for the normal map baking.
Also I have asked if the UV Layout tools of TexTool could be added in the GUI of Blender 2.8 on Twitter, I will post if this is approved.
@Linko Thanks, I already know about that, but that is for baking. I'm wondering about swizzle flipping existing normal maps. Every renderer I've ever used can do this in the normal map node/channel. Surely Blender can too?
@Linko Thanks, I already know about that, but that is for baking. I'm wondering about swizzle flipping existing normal maps. Every renderer I've ever used can do this in the normal map node/channel. Surely Blender can too?
Would like to see that switch on the normal map node as well, but I guess they have lots of other things to implement for 2.8 first. You can still fix this using a RGB Curve and invert the G graph, no need for separating the channels.
@Linko Thanks, I already know about that, but that is for baking. I'm wondering about swizzle flipping existing normal maps. Every renderer I've ever used can do this in the normal map node/channel. Surely Blender can too?
Blender works in sRGB with higher gamma, the normal map is in Linear, you must convert it to sRGB by changing the gamma, then you invert the green channel and you convert it back to Linear:
Thanks @linko I'll save this node tree as a function into my startup file that I can call at any time. I'm a Max user so this gamma 1.0 override can be set on texture import for linear maps and the normal map RGB channels are exposed.
What do you mean by 'Blender works in higher gamma'? Max gamma is 2.2 as well.
@Linko Thanks, I already know about that, but that is for baking. I'm wondering about swizzle flipping existing normal maps. Every renderer I've ever used can do this in the normal map node/channel. Surely Blender can too?
Blender works in sRGB with higher gamma, the normal map is in Linear, you must convert it to sRGB by changing the gamma, then you invert the green channel and you convert it back to Linear:
That is unnecessarily complicated, I guess you somehow missed the color space setting, switch to "Non-Color Data" for linear maps (normal, roughness etc.) See minimum node setup below.
If only Blender had also a correct way to blend detail normal maps with baked ones, like what UE4 can do. (The top left normal map is simply flat, needed for this to work, did this with someone's guide if I remember right). But @Prime8, thanks for the simpler solution with the Y+ and Y- situations.
There's been few node setups for Blender to achieve at least blending two or multiple normal maps together, but none of them have been working exactly right. Not to mention masking...
So how does smoothing/sharp edges work in Blender? For example, I'm attempting to sharpen edges where my UV islands are, to support my hard surface geo; but Blender seems to only be able to smooth EVERYTHING or flatten/harden every face & edge. A previous mesh I worked on, in Blender, I was able to mark edges as sharp, and Blender would then smooth all the faces but keep the marked edges sharp... but now it refuses to do anything of the sort (see attached image).
So this is a shotgun model I am finally finishing; the body (marked in blue) is keeping the hard edges and smoothing the faces between them, the barrel and other components, seem to be ignoring the hard edges I have put in, and are just... smoothing everything, ignoring the marked sharp edges.
Is there a way to make UV islands dictate "smoothing groups" or hard edges?
Also have a gif to show how the edges and smoothing are working OK on one mesh, but not the other. Most of the hard edges are where I have split the UVs so they don't show the light blue, only the edge of the UV seam, but they are all marked with hard edges.
Yes, you'll need to turn "Auto Smooth" on and set the angle to 180 degrees, so that it doesn't set any other edges other than your custom sharp edges. It's in the "Object Data" tab.
EDIT: Setting meshes smooth or flat in edit mode without sharp edges is confusing, so it's best to smooth everything every time, and set those sharp edges by yourself anyway. Also, if you wish to set sharp edges based on your UV seams, go to edit mode with an edge selection and use Shift + G to bring up "Select Similar" menu. This is and old image I posted earlier for a different contex. But for example, you can select all of your custom sharp edges with "Sharpness" and set them to UV seams and vice versa with "Seam" to set your UV seams to sharp edges.
Yes, you'll need to turn "Auto Smooth" on and set the angle to 180 degrees, so that it doesn't set any other edges other than your custom sharp edges. It's in the "Object Data" tab.
Oh wow! What a derp moment. I must have done that on the previous mesh and totally forgotten that I had to add that for each mesh. Thanks mate
Hey guys, I updated my Bake panel for Blender 2.8 I've been using it as my main baking setup for the past year, it's saved me a whole lot of clicks, so I hope someone gets some use out of it as well!
example screenshot, baking down Occlusion, Color and Roughness from node setup:
explanation of all the functions:
I plan to add more map types as well, as soon as they come online. I'd really like to have metalness in there as well for a proper PBR workflow for example.
@Peris , this is brilliant, thanks. Will do very nicely while I wait for Textools to be ported to 2.80. Does it bake hidden highpoly? Does it bake based on naming convention in collections? Like 'match by mesh name' in Substance Painter with a 'meshname_low' and 'meshname_high' suffix.
I plan to add more map types as well, as soon as they come online. I'd really like to have metalness in there as well for a proper PBR workflow for example.
Have they talked about map types they plan to add to the baker? I could really use proper curvature bakes myself.
@musashidan yup it will bake hidden highpoly so you can keep it hidden while tweaking stuff on your low. Does not use naming conventions, I personally don't like having to keep track of what every single object is named. Collections in 2.8 work great and make it very easy to group a bunch of meshes so I'm using that instead.
@MACHIN3 not that I know of, some got added to 2.8 it looks like (like roughness? Unless that was already there?). I'd love to have every input of the principled baker available!
@peris Naming conventions are a necessary pipeline evil. That, and I'm ocd with naming everything on my computer!
So how does the Collections system flag paired low/high for baking? Is it using bounding box? I have no interest in physically explode-baking in this day and age.
Edit: just got a chance to do a test bake. This tool UI is a perfect example of 'by artists, for artists'. So simple, yet it does everything that should be expected and as straightforward as possible. Thanks again for this.
Edit 2: testing baking collections. Crashes Blender every time. I'm on the 31/12/18 build.
If only Blender had also a correct way to blend detail normal maps with baked ones, like what UE4 can do. (The top left normal map is simply flat, needed for this to work, did this with someone's guide if I remember right). ...
There's been few node setups for Blender to achieve at least blending two or multiple normal maps together, but none of them have been working exactly right. Not to mention masking...
In cycles? I found a few node setups in the past as well, but wasn't very happy with them either. I just use a vector math average node to combine the normals, it's not 100% accurate but a very simple setup and you can control the blending strength and mask if needed. Will post example later.
@Prime8 Well yeah, Cycles too. But most importantly Eevee, since it's real-time as UE4 is (still both Cycles and Eevee share nodes in 2.8, so both of them should be working with the same node setup). Also for masking detail normal map from unwanted areas, would be cool to know as an additional node setup with the normal map blending as well. Like what Marmoset's "detail weight map" does, for example.
Didn't try Eevee yet, here is a quick example for Cycles. The cube has a normal map with a strong gradient on purpose to make shading issues more obvious, on a regular model they are not so visible. Blending 2 normal maps on top, controlled by the strength value, which has to be doubled (strength 1 results in 0.5 of the original strength). The baked base normal map needs a fix strength of 2 and averaged with all additional normal maps, in this case twice.
Other example, two maps on a flat surface with checker as mask
Is it possible to disable face highlighting when selecting groups of verts/edges? It is really annoying. If I want to select faces I'll go into face sub-object mode.
Here's the error I'm getting now, mate. It only happens with collections. I can't send you the .Blend, sorry. It's work-related. I'm testing now on simple collections of primitives, so if I repro I'll send the .blend.
Also, it deletes all of the objects in the 'high_poly' collection from the scene and seems to randomly duplicate some of the objects in the 'low_poly' collection.
Replies
https://docs.blender.org/api/blender2.8/bpy.types.ImageTexture.html?#bpy.types.ImageTexture.use_mipmap
Either Corner, Center or no pixel snapping when UV'ing. If other people think it is useful compared to the old `Snap to Pixels`, I can submit it as a diff
It is possible to use collision between splines?
blenfile http://drive.google.com/open?id=1c0rNAmYpl32Sx2Qj90r9cLSKfeqBBsrY
In Maya I would just use the Bonus Tools to help me on this and on Blender 2.79 I'm able to use the Sculpt UV tool which would somewhat help me a little on this. But on this new version I'm really lost.
Thanks all and have a nice 2019!!
We have just released BATCH OPERATIONS™ 2 smart data-management for Blender 2.8
This add-on is a highly sophisticated data manager which can outline/arrange/control all your modifiers, materials, collections in the currently opened file, scene or visible objects efficently and fast. Select, Add, Remove modifiers, materials and collections or filter, search through with custom user settings. It's idealy suited for the large scenes and management of multiple objects at once.
- Supports modifiers, materials, collections and many other data…
- Add, remove, apply, copy, paste, apply multiple operations at once
- Dedicated addon tab, a floating panel, pie menu or right click context menu support
- Version 2 was completely redesigned and rewritten for the Blender 2.8
- Free future updates
- Full online documentation: batchops.moth3r.com
Avalaible from: store.moth3r.comBe sure to check out Batch Ops™2 video review by masterxeon1001 as well
Everything is insanely manual and fiddly; which I am just trying to ... get used to. However I am running into annoying issues with how Blender selects edges in particular.
Firstly I have to drag a box around the entire edge to select it, which is an absolute arseache, is there anyway to enable a sort of... partial selection like 3ds max? Or is there a decent edge loop select option?
Secondly, when I try and select a group of edges on an island to attempt to straighten them, the program automatically selects all the damn edges/verts on the islands that sit near it. So I can't straighten an edge on one island without affecting other islands. It is frustrating as fuck. Can anyone give me some guidance?
Also, where the hell do I go to add padding to my islands when packing?
All the tuts I can find are outdated by 2.8, which I am using now.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Yup, turning off sync mode worked a charm. It's a curious system, but only because I am so used to having the "stack" in Max.
I am currently searching for some UV tutorials that aren't focused on just the most basic functions, as I keep running into tools that seemingly do nothing, or don't behave as expected, and have no options to control them... so... I dunno wtf to do with them. Where most tutorials are just showing me how to draw seams and uv unwrap and auto pack.
The way Transform isn't able to drag select, but can broadly select individual vertices/edges/faces when clicking on empty space is frustrating as hell, as it forces me to jump between two tools that require at least 3 button presses to move between, just to do a tiny adjustment on areas that are more than 1 vertex/edge/face.
Straightening islands rotations, and edges seems to be an insanely manual task, no quick multi edgeloop selections and straightening options.
Stitching doesn't work at all as expected, there doesn't seem to be a logic to how it chooses to stitch one thing to another, I can't select an island and make another island stitch onto it. There isn't a decent way to relax a part of an island; the UV sculpt tools do literally nothing, relaxing a portion of an island seems to do nothing as well... it' just...
for example:
https://www.blendernation.com/2018/02/18/magic-uv-v5-0-released/
See minimum node setup below.
For example, I'm attempting to sharpen edges where my UV islands are, to support my hard surface geo; but Blender seems to only be able to smooth EVERYTHING or flatten/harden every face & edge. A previous mesh I worked on, in Blender, I was able to mark edges as sharp, and Blender would then smooth all the faces but keep the marked edges sharp... but now it refuses to do anything of the sort (see attached image).
So this is a shotgun model I am finally finishing; the body (marked in blue) is keeping the hard edges and smoothing the faces between them, the barrel and other components, seem to be ignoring the hard edges I have put in, and are just... smoothing everything, ignoring the marked sharp edges.
Is there a way to make UV islands dictate "smoothing groups" or hard edges?
Also have a gif to show how the edges and smoothing are working OK on one mesh, but not the other. Most of the hard edges are where I have split the UVs so they don't show the light blue, only the edge of the UV seam, but they are all marked with hard edges.
Have I missed something here?
What a derp moment. I must have done that on the previous mesh and totally forgotten that I had to add that for each mesh. Thanks mate
I've been using it as my main baking setup for the past year, it's saved me a whole lot of clicks, so I hope someone gets some use out of it as well!
get it here:
https://github.com/leukbaars/BRM-BakeUI
example screenshot, baking down Occlusion, Color and Roughness from node setup:
explanation of all the functions:
I plan to add more map types as well, as soon as they come online. I'd really like to have metalness in there as well for a proper PBR workflow for example.
@MACHIN3 not that I know of, some got added to 2.8 it looks like (like roughness? Unless that was already there?). I'd love to have every input of the principled baker available!
So how does the Collections system flag paired low/high for baking? Is it using bounding box? I have no interest in physically explode-baking in this day and age.
Edit: just got a chance to do a test bake. This tool UI is a perfect example of 'by artists, for artists'. So simple, yet it does everything that should be expected and as straightforward as possible. Thanks again for this.
Edit 2: testing baking collections. Crashes Blender every time. I'm on the 31/12/18 build.
I just use a vector math average node to combine the normals, it's not 100% accurate but a very simple setup and you can control the blending strength and mask if needed. Will post example later.
The cube has a normal map with a strong gradient on purpose to make shading issues more obvious, on a regular model they are not so visible.
Blending 2 normal maps on top, controlled by the strength value, which has to be doubled (strength 1 results in 0.5 of the original strength). The baked base normal map needs a fix strength of 2 and averaged with all additional normal maps, in this case twice.
Other example, two maps on a flat surface with checker as mask
Also, it deletes all of the objects in the 'high_poly' collection from the scene and seems to randomly duplicate some of the objects in the 'low_poly' collection.