They are the only things I've made I can actually recommend but if you want to try the other stuff theres a much more complicated version of that scrubber here with tools built into modal hotkeys(you need to read the script to find out what they are) https://github.com/FrankieHobbins/Modal-Anim-Scrubber then a wip random tool bar that pops up in the T menu while in pose mode https://github.com/FrankieHobbins/Anim-Tool-Panel warning may crash or not work or ruin your animations
Mmm Thomas, not sure how I can go about that. Then again customizing shortcuts can be a little bit of a pain in Blender (took me about an hour to figure out how to map vertex, edge and face modes to shortcut last week). Are you doing this directly in User Preferences > Input? I can't seem to figure it out.
yes, input panel and then add this and assign a key that isn't otherwise used in 'mesh' mode:
Hi guys, currently im switching from Blender to 3Ds Max and I run into problems with smoothing groups. I had the feeling, the normal informations in combination with smoothing groups are hard baked into the model and there is no way to remove them in 3DS Max to apply new ones. However how often you press the smooth button in Max, nothing happens.
What is the trick here? I tried several formats, but no one really works
@gestoryscht This thread will mainly have Blender users. If you have questions about other programs feel free to make a new thread. But to answer your question, you can reset normals with the Edit Normals modifier, or by simply adding an Edit Poly mod. Then the smoothing groups should work in Max.
If it doesn't work, make sure the verts are welded. Some export options split verts at hard edges / smoothing groups.
Hi, I appreciate your answer, but wasnt it a Blender questions in terms of export settings? Well, anyway. It worked and this is all I wanted. Thanks a lot!
So i'm trying to model some embedded screws into a cylinder, and it's turning out to be an ordeal because working on a curved surface is sort of beyond me. The topology gets screwed and it shows up when you subdivide. Should I look into hard ops, or is there another tool within blender that would make this easier?
I've tried, but getting the beveled hole to match the angle of the curve seems too difficult. Unless you settle for a sharp edge, which I don't want. But moreover I'd like to be able to model stuff like this, if there is a way, for hi-poly renders and such. edit: nevermind, I was looking at some hard ops videos and discovered he was using Shift-Ctrl-B on a single vertex, and then loop tools > circle. Which more or less did it for me.
I wanted to set a hotkey to toggle the visibility of the current Shape Key -- to use when sculpting shape keys to quickly compare with the neutral shape, the basis. Like turning the shape key on and off with the eye icon, but with the keyboard.
I added the hotkey to the 3D View (Global) category, so it should work in any mode (edit, sculpt, object etc.).
To add a new hotkey for this go to User Preferences (Ctrl Alt U) -> Input -> then open the 3D View and then the 3D View (Global) categories. At the bottom of the 3D View (Global) list of hotkeys, click the Add New button to add a new blank hotkey. Open it to see the fields. Use this as the command:
In the first field: wm.context_toggle In the bottom right field: object.active_shape_key.mute
Is there a way to prevent new add-ons from adding shortcuts to Blender when first loaded? It would be a nice toggle to have if the UI could prevent it from happening. Otherwise since they show up on top of the regular shortcuts it's pretty easy to just zoom through them and delete them one by one.
Btw, In 2.77.1 I'm noticing some cool things I didn't see before, like the Normals sub-menu under the Object Data tab.
On another note, is there a benefit in having the 'seams from uv islands' button still, instead of it being the normal behavior of the uv editor? Edit: Ok, I just thought of this some more lol. It's seems like 'seams (no pun intended) from uv islands' was intended to deal with imported objects with their own uv's. So would it make more sense to have it be a toggle within the obj or fbx etc import dialog as well as inside the uv editor just to save a step?
nope, at the moment there is no way, and I don't like it either. after importing an object you can enter in edit mode e in the uv window there is this option to mask seams based on the current uv layout.
However due to not owning Zbrush I haven't been able to try it. That's until I saw McGavish suggesting a modifier stack (Remesh + Corrective Smoothing) in Blender that works quite well. A year ago I attempted to write a script that did this exactly. I ended up using Remesh + Shrink wrap which didn't work well at all. Upon seeing this I figured it might be worth modifying my old script and update to use this stack instead.
Need to test it further on a proper asset, but so far its looking promising. It works really well with bool tool, box cutter and hard ops inserts. You can even do booleans on the mesh and have it update the smoothing after a few seconds.
Has anyone come across a script similar to this? Just wondering, because it seems quite good and I would be surprised if no one else has done this before. I know of hard ops, but that is about it.
Literally have been seeing this all week on the Blender Tests board. No idea it had been released. Thanks! I had discussed with Wazou in the thread whether it would work with hard surface, he said it wouldn't really.
EDIT: Testing it now and it seems that might be true. Edges aren't quite as crisp as what I want. That said for sculpting it is very handy.
Would anyone know of a way to create an edge selection from all the angle-defined hard edges of a model (as in, the edges that appear hard when setting the smoothing angle of a mesh to 30) as well as edges explicitly set to hard ?
In other words, I am looking for an idiot-proof, one button way to select all the visually hard edges of a model, regardless of what caused them to be hard in the first place.
This would considerably speed up the rather tedious selection process seen in at 1:03:40 in Wazou's video for instance, and would have all kinds of useful applications when modeling hard surface models :
@GhostDetector Yeah, this kindof works for the implicit angle-based hard edges, but it does require some fiddling around with the tolerance slider and does not take into account the explicitly set hard edges ...
(not a huge deal for sure, since this is nothing that a little bit of manual selection can't handle. Would be nice to have though !)
That, combined with 'select by sharpness' would probably do it. You can probably easily set up a script to do both after eachother, would that work for you?
It can be installed like a third-party addon through User Preferences. It should add a "Select All Sharp" menu item to the (edit mode) Select menu and to the Edges menu.
@RN : it works flawlessly !! Very cool, thanks. This is going to be VERY useful when it comes to adding bevels to a quickly built lowpoly model (and then it's just a matter of running a face-weighted normals script to get everything to shade nicely).
@MightyPea : problem solved @MmAaXx : By shift g I suppose you mean "select similar" ? This works to an extent but not in all cases, and it requires to mess around with a threshold value which doesn't really make sense to me, since sharpness is an "on or off" thing ...
Here is RN's script in action (selecting all visually hard edges), followed by a bevel and a face-weighting operation on the normals :
Snow : yes, but this would not select "implicit" hard edges (= the ones coming from the global Auto smooth angle). My goal was to be able to select *both* implicit and explicit hard edges in one operations, and RN's script does exactly that
Hm... The only important information I could glean from that is Autodesk may open up the source for FBX, removing all compatibility issues with it in Blender.
SpeedSculpt allows you to create fast characters for Dyntopo sculpts. You can also manage your sculpts with tools to cut several objects, to extracts mask, to optimise Dyntopo with Decimate mask, booleans etc. This is really simple to use and really powerfull.
Some news : 2.78 is close with a looot of features including Bendy Bones, Alembic I/O, Grease Pencil 2, freehand curves, texture painting performance boost, cycles micro displacement, improvement of GLSL viewport, Carver and Bool tool as default add-ons and more https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.78
When you install a version of Blender that's never been on your computer you get a "Copy Preferences" option on the splash screen, when you run it. You can then click that to keep using your previous user preferences (hotkeys, custom addons etc.) http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1920/29992
EDIT: Installing from the .MSI and then starting Blender gave this "Can't find SDL2.dll" error, and running the .MSI again and choosing "Repair" seemed to fix it, in case someone else has this as well. Repair idea taken from this.
not being very experienced yet with the way blender updates roll out - can we expect subsequent 'official' builds in the next weeks that tackle any issues resulting from the new features?
anyway, time to look at addon compatibility now. it's like a pre-flight check list here
"a" and b" version are quit common in order to fix the bugs that are not been reported during Release Candidate. And since the goal is to do a stable release to wait the 2.8 I think they will take extra care about that.
A lot of those changes are surprisingly disappointing. Not the quality, but what they chose to update. I think the lack of professional direction is showing itself in this update. Especially since they've been on this update for nearly two years, haven't they?
A lot of those changes are surprisingly disappointing. Not the quality, but what they chose to update. I think the lack of professional direction is showing itself in this update. Especially since they've been on this update for nearly two years, haven't they?
Have they? It hasn't even been two years since 2.76...
A lot of those changes are surprisingly disappointing. Not the quality, but what they chose to update. I think the lack of professional direction is showing itself in this update. Especially since they've been on this update for nearly two years, haven't they?
Have they? It hasn't even been two years since 2.76...
You sure you're not thinking of 2.8?
I was thinking of 2.8. mmaxxe accidentally referred to it as that, and I got mixed up. As a smaller update, it does have a reasonable number of useful changes. I'm disappointed by it, but I can see how others would be happy. Mostly VFX Animators, and not game artists.
I was thinking of 2.8. mmaxxe accidentally referred to it as that, and I got mixed up. As a smaller update, it does have a reasonable number of useful changes. I'm disappointed by it, but I can see how others would be happy. Mostly VFX Animators, and not game artists.
my bad For make game assets Blender has already one of the best ore even the best tool sets on the market, can you be more specific?
Replies
press ALT left click and move mouse in 3d view to change time. Will loop at end frame
example of it working, see how it loops round from start/finish to finish/start
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1693140/scrubwithmouse.gif
also
https://github.com/FrankieHobbins/Blender_Grapheditor_Channel_Hider
to add shortcuts to use 123 in the graph editor to hide and show loc rotation and scale
They are the only things I've made I can actually recommend but if you want to try the other stuff theres a much more complicated version of that scrubber here with tools built into modal hotkeys(you need to read the script to find out what they are)
https://github.com/FrankieHobbins/Modal-Anim-Scrubber
then a wip random tool bar that pops up in the T menu while in pose mode
https://github.com/FrankieHobbins/Anim-Tool-Panel
warning may crash or not work or ruin your animations
currently im switching from Blender to 3Ds Max and I run into problems with smoothing groups.
I had the feeling, the normal informations in combination with smoothing groups are hard baked into the model and there is no way to remove them in 3DS Max to apply new ones. However how often you press the smooth button in Max, nothing happens.
What is the trick here? I tried several formats, but no one really works
Anyone had this problem in other programs, too?
If it doesn't work, make sure the verts are welded. Some export options split verts at hard edges / smoothing groups.
Well, anyway. It worked and this is all I wanted. Thanks a lot!
edit: nevermind, I was looking at some hard ops videos and discovered he was using Shift-Ctrl-B on a single vertex, and then loop tools > circle. Which more or less did it for me.
I added the hotkey to the 3D View (Global) category, so it should work in any mode (edit, sculpt, object etc.).
To add a new hotkey for this go to User Preferences (Ctrl Alt U) -> Input -> then open the 3D View and then the 3D View (Global) categories. At the bottom of the 3D View (Global) list of hotkeys, click the Add New button to add a new blank hotkey. Open it to see the fields.
Use this as the command:
But if you can't do it, send me a message.
It would be a nice toggle to have if the UI could prevent it from happening. Otherwise since they show up on top of the regular shortcuts it's pretty easy to just zoom through them and delete them one by one.
Btw, In 2.77.1 I'm noticing some cool things I didn't see before, like the Normals sub-menu under the Object Data tab.
On another note, is there a benefit in having the 'seams from uv islands' button still, instead of it being the normal behavior of the uv editor?
Edit: Ok, I just thought of this some more lol. It's seems like 'seams (no pun intended) from uv islands' was intended to deal with imported objects with their own uv's. So would it make more sense to have it be a toggle within the obj or fbx etc import dialog as well as inside the uv editor just to save a step?
nope, at the moment there is no way, and I don't like it either.
after importing an object you can enter in edit mode e in the uv window there is this option to mask seams based on the current uv layout.
Could it be automated? would be nice.
https://gumroad.com/l/lQVzQ
AMD annouced in SIGGRAPH that they will support Mike Erwin to develop full time until the end of the year the new viewport project ! https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/Viewport/Reports
However due to not owning Zbrush I haven't been able to try it. That's until I saw McGavish suggesting a modifier stack (Remesh + Corrective Smoothing) in Blender that works quite well. A year ago I attempted to write a script that did this exactly. I ended up using Remesh + Shrink wrap which didn't work well at all. Upon seeing this I figured it might be worth modifying my old script and update to use this stack instead.
Need to test it further on a proper asset, but so far its looking promising. It works really well with bool tool, box cutter and hard ops inserts. You can even do booleans on the mesh and have it update the smoothing after a few seconds.
Has anyone come across a script similar to this? Just wondering, because it seems quite good and I would be surprised if no one else has done this before. I know of hard ops, but that is about it.
You can try boolean sculpt.
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?402842-Addon-Booleans-Sculpt
Would anyone know of a way to create an edge selection from all the angle-defined hard edges of a model (as in, the edges that appear hard when setting the smoothing angle of a mesh to 30) as well as edges explicitly set to hard ?
In other words, I am looking for an idiot-proof, one button way to select all the visually hard edges of a model, regardless of what caused them to be hard in the first place.
This would considerably speed up the rather tedious selection process seen in at 1:03:40 in Wazou's video for instance, and would have all kinds of useful applications when modeling hard surface models :
Thanks !
Maybe use "select similar".
Select edge > Select by trait (shift + G), Face angles. > Then adjust the options.
Yeah, this kindof works for the implicit angle-based hard edges, but it does require some fiddling around with the tolerance slider and does not take into account the explicitly set hard edges ...
(not a huge deal for sure, since this is nothing that a little bit of manual selection can't handle. Would be nice to have though !)
It can be installed like a third-party addon through User Preferences.
It should add a "Select All Sharp" menu item to the (edit mode) Select menu and to the Edges menu.
@MightyPea : problem solved
@MmAaXx : By shift g I suppose you mean "select similar" ? This works to an extent but not in all cases, and it requires to mess around with a threshold value which doesn't really make sense to me, since sharpness is an "on or off" thing ...
Here is RN's script in action (selecting all visually hard edges), followed by a bevel and a face-weighting operation on the normals :
it will actually select all edges that are marked as sharp
(you need to be in edgeselect modus)
https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/siggraph-2016-report/
https://gumroad.com/l/kANV
https://gumroad.com/l/SpeedSculpt
SpeedSculpt allows you to create fast characters for Dyntopo sculpts.
You can also manage your sculpts with tools to cut several objects, to extracts mask, to optimise Dyntopo with Decimate mask, booleans etc.
This is really simple to use and really powerfull.
You can follow this video in french to see the addon in situation.
The addon is in early acces with preferential price.
You can see the BA post to see gifs of the addon.
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?405035-Addon-SpeedSculpt
Have fun
Maybe you could do a full package with all the add-ons you are currently using ? (carver, asset management, pie menus, speed sculpt and so on...)
On the other hand, the GSOC has ended, the sum up ( with mirror vertex painting, better UV packing, improved bezier curve editing, experiment of new layer management) : https://code.blender.org/2016/08/summer-of-code-2016-results/
Noice!
When you install a version of Blender that's never been on your computer you get a "Copy Preferences" option on the splash screen, when you run it. You can then click that to keep using your previous user preferences (hotkeys, custom addons etc.)
http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1920/29992
EDIT: Installing from the .MSI and then starting Blender gave this "Can't find SDL2.dll" error, and running the .MSI again and choosing "Repair" seemed to fix it, in case someone else has this as well. Repair idea taken from this.
not being very experienced yet with the way blender updates roll out - can we expect subsequent 'official' builds in the next weeks that tackle any issues resulting from the new features?
anyway, time to look at addon compatibility now. it's like a pre-flight check list here
Speaking about 2.8, here's the dev plan to upgrade the viewport :https://code.blender.org/2016/09/blender-2-8-viewport-development/
You sure you're not thinking of 2.8?
I'm disappointed by it, but I can see how others would be happy. Mostly VFX Animators, and not game artists.
To add more precision 2.8 begun one year ago (mostly design discussion and plans for now) and 2.78 6 month ago
Box cutter and carver have some features, round vertex for box cutter and profiles for carver for example.
For make game assets Blender has already one of the best ore even the best tool sets on the market, can you be more specific?