@StormyBA Hey, i don't know about the gizmo but i want to preach a litte about not using gizmo, maybe you already know that. but what if i told you that you can use blender without gizmo?. and is not even hard to grasp it, you would need learn G,S,R hotkeys and shift to constrain, in 1 - 2 days max you would be pretty confortable with it.
Once you go no gizmo you never go back.
Hay Fella, Problem is I'm interested in using blender as a secondary with Maya, unity and a big host of other apps that are using a very standard Gizmo setup. Its a bit of a brain breaker switching between them all as it is and I've done it for so many years now that its just how I work!
I don't know how to setup the gizmo the way you want it. Probably same as most people here, I'm working with a couple of different programs too, but I never had a problem switching to hotkeys when using Blender, it's not as brain breaking as you think. Though I'm not a "no gizmo"-user, I use it in a few specific cases to tweak shapes, translation with normal orientation for example.
I also made the switch from maya to blender and I use a mixed config to be confortable with both. I use the standard G, S, R setup that I like a lot but I remapped the W key to have the move tool like maya. Double click W brings the select box, ctrl+W is the rotate tool and shift+W the scale tool.
I also use the pie menu from machin3 to change components selection and I remapped it to the right click like in maya.
It helps me to switch easily between these two programs and it doesn't break anything even when using hard ops and other add-ons.
@Prime8 '' I use it in a few specific cases to tweak shapes, translation with normal orientation for example.''
Edit: I can't find any instance where i would need to use the gizmo, if you change the orientation to normal then the hotkeys change the orientation too.
@Prime8 '' I use it in a few specific cases to tweak shapes, translation with normal orientation for example.''
Edit: I can't find any instance where i would need to use the gizmo, if you change the orientation to normal then the hotkeys change the orientation too.
I think you have to tap the axis key to cycle to your selected transform orientation. So for example:
Set transform orientation to "normal", G to move, Z to constrain to Global Z axis, Z again to constrain to Normal Z axis, Z again to cycle back to unconstrained move.
@Prime8 '' I use it in a few specific cases to tweak shapes, translation with normal orientation for example.''
Edit: I can't find any instance where i would need to use the gizmo, if you change the orientation to normal then the hotkeys change the orientation too.
I think you have to tap the axis key to cycle to your selected transform orientation. So for example:
Set transform orientation to "normal", G to move, Z to constrain to Global Z axis, Z again to constrain to Normal Z axis, Z again to cycle back to unconstrained move.
I know, I use the hotkeys too, probably 99%, I just made an example where I sometimes want to use the gizmo and not think about the translation axis.
It's worth noting that, if you like to leave the gizmo on as a pivot/orientation display, you can remap gizmo interactions to something that'll prevent accidental tweaks (alt+click, etc). You have to search the keymap for "gizmo tweak" (filter by name, obviously), as it's a pain to hunt down otherwise, but it's an easy adjustment to make.
Spent all day yesterday trying to get good at low poly hand painting on blender and i kept running into a bunch of glitches and thought i was doing it wrong, but realized that after I updated 2.80 everything worked perfectly and i feel like a real fecking dipstick. Speaking of glitches does anyone have a list of common glitches to look out for so I may better avert CTDs?
While everyone's talking about working gizmo-less , just wondering if anyone knows where I can change the shortcut behaviour in the keymap? I'm exclusively using 2.8 just now. Hitting G Z Z always puts me into local translate mode rather than translate along normal which would be a lot more useful for me. Is this a hard coded thing, or is it hidden in a modal somewhere? I can't find it anywhere.
While everyone's talking about working gizmo-less , just wondering if anyone knows where I can change the shortcut behaviour in the keymap? I'm exclusively using 2.8 just now. Hitting G Z Z always puts me into local translate mode rather than translate along normal which would be a lot more useful for me. Is this a hard coded thing, or is it hidden in a modal somewhere? I can't find it anywhere.
I cannot find that in the key mapping settings either. Pressing axis or plane key twice puts you in global instead of selected orientation.
I'm the opposite. I'm using Max for over 10 years and Blender's hotkey translation is so liberating. Plus you can use mmb to constrain to axis.
A great example is if you're zoomed right in in Max the gizmo might need to be set as it's off screen. Hotkey translation does away with the fiddling and precision sometimes required with grabbing the wrong part of the axis.
If your brain breaks over something like this then maybe 3d isn't for you.
It's amazing how our brains adapt. I can jump between Max/Maya/Blender/UE/Substance and even right click navigation in Zbrush and not miss a beat.... be like me...
.. In global mode, pressing two times puts you in local mode. ...
Oh I didn't realise that. The 2.8 implementation is already a lot better than the previous, where single and double tab the axis key acted the other way around. Switching between plane and axis still changes the orientation but much more predictable now.
anyhow - what is the gain of this? i mean you still have to tweak two values (radius and distance) - while most of the time chosing a number which is divideable by many numbers is much prefered.
Thank you! I tried piemenus editor to create modal operator. I cant use curve circle, cause the U only power of 2, i need odd number of vertices too. Is there way to update bmesh, with same loc rot scale
I've been doing some procedural rock formation in Blender yesterday, I'm pretty blown a way at how easy you can get results with this type of workflow. Check out this video if it interests you! Its awesome i can recommend it greatly.
I created a base shape for my cliff or rock and then set dynotopo to a high detail to have around 500k tris and did some quick sculpt to give it more shape and then smooth everything out. Then I started applying the displacements on top of each other.
I've found out that if you set the Displacement texture mapping to Empty Object, You can move, scale and rotate the displaced mesh and it will keep changing because the displacement texture is mapped to "world coordinates" in way.
Here are some examples of my work, all these were made completely with the displacement just by dragging around and playing with variations
@Chuwakcz23 I think you accidentally posted twice.
I made a new 8min video showcasing some parallax window shader similar to the one used in Robo Recall from Epic Games, but this time in Blender 2.8 eevee!
Hey, I'm currently trying to switch over to Blender (2.8) for all future personal/freelance work. I've hit a bit block though. The UV tools seem....pretty inadequate for Environment art. UVing modular assets and getting everything precise and on the grid seems very difficult.
What are others experiences with environment/modular kits and UVs? Surely I am just missing something here.
Specific things:
Snapping uv islands to the grid, based on specific vert
preserve UV's - extending a trim thats using a tiling texture
Hey, I'm currently trying to switch over to Blender (2.8) for all future personal/freelance work. I've hit a bit block though. The UV tools seem....pretty inadequate for Environment art. UVing modular assets and getting everything precise and on the grid seems very difficult.
What are others experiences with environment/modular kits and UVs? Surely I am just missing something here.
Specific things:
Snapping uv islands to the grid, based on specific vert
preserve UV's - extending a trim thats using a tiling texture
it has a few additional tools that should make working with UV's a lot easier. In your case you might like:
1 click checker maps
Texel density tools (pick, set, unify,..)
Rectify
Align
Sort
Select Similar
It does not run in 2.8 atm. but you could for example copy and paste objects between 2.79 and 2.8 via clipboard back and forth (just Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V in the 3D view object mode).
It does not run in 2.8 atm. but you could for example copy and paste objects between 2.79 and 2.8 via clipboard back and forth (just Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V in the 3D view object mode).
I didnt know you could do that!
Thanks for that, I'm a massive fan on Textools so I'm waiting eagerly for the 2.8 update! It should go a good way in improving doing UV's, but still...how is there not even a grid snap in blender by default?
Thanks for that, I'm a massive fan on Textools so I'm waiting eagerly for the 2.8 update! It should go a good way in improving doing UV's, but still...how is there not even a grid snap in blender by default?
G to grab element and hold ctrl to snap.You can toggle between increment(grid) and vertex in the dropdown by the magnet in the uv window.
In the loopcut options-press "T" to add the toolbar interface then ctrl r to add a loop and in the loopcut options on the bottom there' s a preserve uv checkbox to keep your uvs on edge sliding,not sure that's what your looking for though.
It does not run in 2.8 atm. but you could for example copy and paste objects between 2.79 and 2.8 via clipboard back and forth (just Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V in the 3D view object mode).
I didnt know you could do that!
Thanks for that, I'm a massive fan on Textools so I'm waiting eagerly for the 2.8 update! It should go a good way in improving doing UV's, but still...how is there not even a grid snap in blender by default?
Now that you mentioned it, it is a bit weird. 3D viewport itself has an option for absolute grid snapping for snapping in general, but in the UV editor it's just basic.
I've never had a situation where I'd need a grid perfect snapping for UVs. Maybe because I'm a character artist, and not an environment artist, haha. But I agree that the snapping could have more options in the UV editor too.
EDIT: One workaround could be having an unwrapped extra square/plane in your object's mesh level, and use it as a snapping guide, where vertex snapping with an active mode could work (last selected vertex is the active one and can be snapped to other vertices). Or the guide mesh can be as small as a triangle too. Remember to keep the initial UVs of the guide mesh on the grid without moving it freely.
Nice portfolio btw, desktoppirate/Bryn. I bow to you, since you're a true pro. ;D I'm planning onto doing an environment for one of my characters, so we'll see how I can manage an environment.
@desktoppirate You can snap uv to pixel center and corners, it works really well with the Color Grid since you can see the pixels whetever size you create it.. Of course is not as ''streamline'' as uv grid would be but it does the job.
EDIT: Just realized that it distort the uvs, i guess didn't notice before using high res images.
When is the 2.8 beta ending by the way? As a non-Blender user it's pretty frustrating seeing new builds come out like every day. Waiting for that stable universal release that everyone will be using...unless that's just not how Blender works and everyone will always have their own unique build?
When is the 2.8 beta ending by the way? As a non-Blender user it's pretty frustrating seeing new builds come out like every day. Waiting for that stable universal release that everyone will be using...unless that's just not how Blender works and everyone will always have their own unique build?
The current version is pretty stable, but there's a LOT still to be optimized. I guess it's ok to be used with personal projects or gigs where you don't need multiple people using the exact same version (even though the short "Spring" was done like that).
And no, Blender doesn't work like that. We're just used to getting daily builds, but you (and your team) can always use the stable release.
Thanks for the responses everyone. I'm slowly getting to better grips with it now! Have to say, so impressed with how stable its been so far. This project I'm doing is all in a single blend file and I've had 2 crashes in the past month, over 4-5 a day if I was using Max.
Nice portfolio btw, desktoppirate/Bryn. I bow to you, since you're a true pro. ;D I'm planning onto doing an environment for one of my characters, so we'll see how I can manage an environment.
Making me blush rn :* Good luck with your project!
How does it work if I want to use it on game ready assets. Is it possible to bake those informations on a lowPoly mesh?
Last time I tried to bake something with cycles, it was very slow and there were no anti-aliasing so it makes the process almost useless for me. Is there another way to do it?
It's good to know you're going to focus on meshmachine now. It's one of the best add-on I've bought but I don't use it anymore as I've made the switch to 2.8 some times ago.
How does it work if I want to use it on game ready assets. Is it possible to bake those informations on a lowPoly mesh?
Last time I tried to bake something with cycles, it was very slow and there were no anti-aliasing so it makes the process almost useless for me. Is there another way to do it?
There are no tools to bake down or export decals in 1.8 yet, they will come back in 1.9 and 2.0.
1.8 is a completely new code base.
Explort and Atlasing needs to be redone as well, taking advantage of the
new internals in DM, which will make the experience simpler and much
more robusts.
With Blender still being beta and introducing show stopper
bugs regularly, I decided it's better to first release without
exporting and instead make sure all the other things are working as intended.
Cycles still has no AA for baking, which is why I'm super-sampling for AA when baking for decal creation. It's slow, yes.
Blender also doens't have height and curvature bakes. I did some shader trickery to get height bakes by high-jacking a position bake. For curvature I'm converting the normal map.
I really hope cycles bakes is something that's going to be expanded on in future.
Glad to hear you have enjoyed MESHmachine! The port should be relatively quick, as it's not a rewrite like DM was.
I've been trying to use the new Poly Build tool for retopology. Does anyone know if there's a way for it to snap/merge vertices you draw out with existing vertices? I can't find a way to do that, but it would be a hell of an oversight if it isn't capable of that much.
yeah its not great but you can enable vertex snap and face snapping (use shift) with project onto self enabled - then also enable auto merge (top bar to the right -> options, also crank up the merge distance) and it should be somewhat close to what you expect it to do.. but that tool needs some love.
Guys I made 2 new vids, 1st is a uncut recording of actual work that I go along when dealing with relatively complex shapes, and the 2nd is a brief talk about workflow and baking down bevels in cycles to be imported into Substance Painter. Remember kids, to avoid Tangent Space Normal artifacts in Cycles using the Bevel node your low poly assets always needs a Edge Split modifier! Cheers
Hey @Kerub , that's looking great ! Loving this kind of approach - basically a healthy technical compromise, while also favoring bold shapes. Very cool.
Do you happen to have a Viewer/Sketchfab scene of this Robot ? Curious to see how some parts hold up.
Hey @Kerub , that's looking great ! Loving this kind of approach - basically a healthy technical compromise, while also favoring bold shapes. Very cool.
Do you happen to have a Viewer/Sketchfab scene of this Robot ? Curious to see how some parts hold up.
Oh neat ! Well done, it certainly does look convincing - and if anything, even if some stuff suffers a bit from the resolution, the hard edge nature of the base without a doubt allows it to hold up nicely at a distance too. Very cool.
Guys I made 2 new vids, 1st is a uncut recording of actual work that I go along when dealing with relatively complex shapes, and the 2nd is a brief talk about workflow and baking down bevels in cycles to be imported into Substance Painter. Remember kids, to avoid Tangent Space Normal artifacts in Cycles using the Bevel node your low poly assets always needs a Edge Split modifier! Cheers
Interesting, I haven't used the Edge Split modifier for a long time, now it has a purpose again, thanks. Usually I would have duplicated the mesh and bake from one (with bevel shader) to the other.
If you don't want to keep the Edge Split modifier, you can get rid of it after baking and use auto smooth. Figured out that it is possible to bake custom normals the same way, not sure what use that might have though...
Would be great to have a way to control the bevel shader radius via bevel weight, but afaik that's not possible still.
I never understood why this wasn't added like years ago. If I remember it was something they kept saying they would add but gets pushed back everytime. I am wondering if this won't get pushed back again till say 2 years later.
I don't think they will push it back again. They kept lots of patches out of the code because they knew that a lot of the structure how blender is programmed will be changed from 2.79 to 2.8x. After the initial release of the stable version of 2.80 I guess it moves quickly. From what I (think) I've heard, the patch of the UDIMS is done and they only need to implement it. Adaptive sampling for cycles for example is also on the way. Can't wait for the first release candidate, UDIMs and all those other features are needed for sure. And Redshift is coming to Blender also. Gotta be a cool year for Blender users
Hey, @TheFlow - Do you know anything regarding blender redshift development? Couldn't find any useful information since redshift devs asked for help/support ( i think it was at blender-artist ). Hope they didn't get demotivated based on the comments under Andrews twitter post.
I've recently decided to give blender a go with the release of 2.8 but being a user of other packages for a long ass time there are a a couple of things holding me back from really enjoying it and I'm curious if there are many quick fixes!
Is it possible to default move, rotate and scale tool gizmo to be more Classic Maya and then use the Default as a secondary, in essence flipping the current setup? I kinda get it but it feels like a bit of a barrier to entry right now.
Realise this is going back over a month but I've been in the exact same predicament - 2.8 finally has an interface I want to use, but Blender's non-standard keybinds and behaviour is putting me off. However, I did manage to get around this particular quirk.
I found the quick tool buttons to the left of the viewport have the correct behaviour (pressing the move tool brings up a gizmo) and hovering over it says that it's shortcut is G. But when you press G, you actually get different behaviour (gizmo-less). IMO this is a bit of a design flaw because G is not the shortcut for the move tool you select from the interface.
You can fix it by right clicking and "Assign Shortcut" - set it to whatever you want, I used the standard W/E/R - and it should then work. Pressing W will bring up the gizmo for the current object or element you have selected. You have to do this for both Object and Edit mode, though.
Recent builds should ship with the "Industry Compatible" keymap. Might be easier for some people here. Generally speaking, they're still tweaking a lot of UI/UX stuff.
Replies
Probably same as most people here, I'm working with a couple of different programs too, but I never had a problem switching to hotkeys when using Blender, it's not as brain breaking as you think.
Though I'm not a "no gizmo"-user, I use it in a few specific cases to tweak shapes, translation with normal orientation for example.
Edit: I can't find any instance where i would need to use the gizmo, if you change the orientation to normal then the hotkeys change the orientation too.
Set transform orientation to "normal", G to move, Z to constrain to Global Z axis, Z again to constrain to Normal Z axis, Z again to cycle back to unconstrained move.
Pressing axis or plane key twice puts you in global instead of selected orientation.
The 2.8 implementation is already a lot better than the previous, where single and double tab the axis key acted the other way around. Switching between plane and axis still changes the orientation but much more predictable now.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/134386/change-circle-segment-depends-on-diameter
I created a base shape for my cliff or rock and then set dynotopo to a high detail to have around 500k tris and did some quick sculpt to give it more shape and then smooth everything out. Then I started applying the displacements on top of each other.
I've found out that if you set the Displacement texture mapping to Empty Object, You can move, scale and rotate the displaced mesh and it will keep changing because the displacement texture is mapped to "world coordinates" in way.
Here are some examples of my work, all these were made completely with the displacement just by dragging around and playing with variations
Video demonstration of the process
These small rocks are up to 300 triangles
These Bigger ones are up to 2k triangles, I can bring it down to 1k and it still looks pretty solid
I have made these cliffs with multiple Voroni noise variatons. The object is 5k tris but i can get it down to 1500 and it still looks good.
Here's a cool material variatons
What do you think about this stuff? I'm pretty satisfied that i can create similar stuff that Houdini artists make with Blender.
Follow my work on these
Instagram
Twitter
I made a new 8min video showcasing some parallax window shader similar to the one used in Robo Recall from Epic Games, but this time in Blender 2.8 eevee!
Enjoy!
http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/
it has a few additional tools that should make working with UV's a lot easier. In your case you might like:
1 click checker maps
Texel density tools (pick, set, unify,..)
Rectify
Align
Sort
Select Similar
It does not run in 2.8 atm. but you could for example copy and paste objects between 2.79 and 2.8 via clipboard back and forth (just Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V in the 3D view object mode).
EDIT: Just realized that it distort the uvs, i guess didn't notice before using high res images.
And no, Blender doesn't work like that. We're just used to getting daily builds, but you (and your team) can always use the stable release.
Have to say, so impressed with how stable its been so far. This project I'm doing is all in a single blend file and I've had 2 crashes in the past month, over 4-5 a day if I was using Max.
Making me blush rn :* Good luck with your project!
Using Blender grease pencil for animation.
I can't find a way to do that, but it would be a hell of an oversight if it isn't capable of that much.
1st is a uncut recording of actual work that I go along when dealing with relatively complex shapes, and the 2nd is a brief talk about workflow and baking down bevels in cycles to be imported into Substance Painter.
Remember kids, to avoid Tangent Space Normal artifacts in Cycles using the Bevel node your low poly assets always needs a Edge Split modifier! Cheers
Some great development going on, here's the thread: https://blenderartists.org/t/pablo-dobarro-reveals-his-master-plan-for-sculpting/1150731/1
Do you happen to have a Viewer/Sketchfab scene of this Robot ? Curious to see how some parts hold up.
@pior Sorry for the late reply, this week was packed.
Here it is! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/w8v6A6
(I'm having problems to embed the sketchfab viewer here)
Usually I would have duplicated the mesh and bake from one (with bevel shader) to the other.
If you don't want to keep the Edge Split modifier, you can get rid of it after baking and use auto smooth.
Figured out that it is possible to bake custom normals the same way, not sure what use that might have though...
Would be great to have a way to control the bevel shader radius via bevel weight, but afaik that's not possible still.
asked for help/support ( i think it was at blender-artist ). Hope they didn't get demotivated based on the comments under Andrews twitter post.
I found the quick tool buttons to the left of the viewport have the correct behaviour (pressing the move tool brings up a gizmo) and hovering over it says that it's shortcut is G. But when you press G, you actually get different behaviour (gizmo-less). IMO this is a bit of a design flaw because G is not the shortcut for the move tool you select from the interface.
You can fix it by right clicking and "Assign Shortcut" - set it to whatever you want, I used the standard W/E/R - and it should then work. Pressing W will bring up the gizmo for the current object or element you have selected. You have to do this for both Object and Edit mode, though.