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  • MACHIN3
  • realeyez
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    realeyez polycounter lvl 11
    Do you have that open/save pie menu with world settings anywhere online? 
  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    Not yet, it's currently referencing a hard coded blend path + materlal names + world name. I'll need to somehow make that customizeable if I want to release it.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    I have been working for a while now on an upcomming tool called Pin & Relax for TexTools which is started to mature recently to something rather usable.



    It unfolds and Pins selected edge loops into straight lines and relaxes the rest of the UV island. Similar to Headus UV layout with its edge constraints. It does not re-scale the edge distance but instead maintains it. 



    There is also support for selected multiple edge loop sets where it straightens and relaxes them largest to smallest but this mode is not yet fully fool proof.
  • JoseConseco
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    JoseConseco greentooth
    @renderhjs - does it take into account uneven spacing between points - or is it always making spacing in uv space  equal? Nice tool, may be usefull for straightening uvs on character cloth seams 
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    @renderhjs - does it take into account uneven spacing between points - or is it always making spacing in uv space  equal? 
    Keeps the original distance of all uv uv edges, no normalizing etc, no rescaling as well
  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    Great stuff @renderhjs ! Almost makes me want to unwrap things.. almost :)

    MESHmachine 0.5.13
    Boolean Cleanup, Chamfer, Offset, LoopTools wrappers and Conform tool, more here.


  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i have some work coming up where I'd like to model using booleans. what's considered the preferable add-on/solution for that these days?

    in the past i played around with bool tool, fast carve, probably others - but it's not normally my field so just looking for some options.

  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    I don't think there is one that clearly stands out, they all do the same, in essence (apply a boolean mod).
    I like to use the booleans in HOps because of their integration in it. Also box cutter for certain kinds of cuts.

    The question to me is more, what do you do after the boolean?
    I'm pretty biased, but I think MESHmachine offers some cool things in that regard, that no other tool does, see my latest video posted above.
  • anaho
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    anaho polycounter lvl 8
    I havent used Blender in quite some while but is there a way to enable semi-transparency just in edit mode?
    When I apply a halftransparent material I can no longer check shading in object mode without reapplying a diffuse material and that is slow ofc.
  • RaphaelBarros
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    RaphaelBarros polycounter lvl 2
    thomasp said:
    i have some work coming up where I'd like to model using booleans. what's considered the preferable add-on/solution for that these days?

    in the past i played around with bool tool, fast carve, probably others - but it's not normally my field so just looking for some options.

    I've heard some people suggesting using MESHmachine coupled with Bevel after Boolean addon: https://blenderartists.org/t/add-on-wip-bevel-after-boolean/693072/477

    They seem to compliment eachother nicely.

  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    MACHIN3 said:
    The question to me is more, what do you do after the boolean?
    I'm pretty biased, but I think MESHmachine offers some cool things in that regard, that no other tool does, see my latest video posted above.
    rest assured, I know of your addons and if I was doing hard surface work the choice would be a no brainer. :)
    in my case it's for parts of an outfit made from soft materials. i'm not concerned about very clean bevels for this one and will export the model to zbrush to give it a more organic look in the end.

    i was just looking for the most convenient interface to do the boolean part in.

  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    thomasp said:

    in my case it's for parts of an outfit made from soft materials. i'm not concerned about very clean bevels for this one and will export the model to zbrush to give it a more organic look in the end.

    i was just looking for the most convenient interface to do the boolean part in.

    I see, in that case, BoolTools alone is probably sufficient and is quite convenient, if you have a numpad. It's default mappings are CTRL combined with +, -, * and /.
  • RaphaelBarros
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    RaphaelBarros polycounter lvl 2
    Daniel Bystedt once again raised the bar with this animation done in Eevee:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxrwx7nmS5A


  • jpthrash
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    jpthrash polycounter lvl 7
    I made this tiny proposal for 2.8, speaking with one of the devs it seems they are thinking of trying a similar solution so if you find it useful maybe give it a thumbs up, in the contrary a thumbs down :smile:
    https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/VCbbbc/pinning-detaching-and-layout-improvements-for-popo
  • yursiv
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    yursiv polycounter lvl 10
    Slowly moving forward to make things work.
    Short demo with some features(drawing strokes with polyedges and creating face patches similar to NURBS, with ability to edit subdivisions)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1zdnbsyJbA
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    @RaphaelBarros great to know that animated armature deformation is now supported in 2.8's Eevee!
  • RaphaelBarros
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    RaphaelBarros polycounter lvl 2
    RN said:
    @RaphaelBarros great to know that animated armature deformation is now supported in 2.8's Eevee!
    Yep, and it's even greater to see there's not much a drop of performance by doing it directly in Eevee.
    Also, one extra update, better hair in Eevee!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHs9u3P_X1I

  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    I don't want to spam my videos here, so only posting the latest of the plug videos:

    Great work @yursiv, looking forward to see where you take this!

    @RaphaelBarros Hair looks great, I wonder if they can do something about the aliasing, also in relation to AO  .


  • OldSalty
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    OldSalty polycounter lvl 4
    @MACHIN3 This is looking awesome, I have already bought mesh machine and have been playing around it, and can't wait for these new features in the next release. I just had a thought that might might be impossible or might be a good idea I'll let you decide. Anyway it's if you own mesh machine and decal machine it would be great to be able to have these objects as both polystein plugs and decals. If in the future it's possible to create a doodad and save it as a decal and plug at the same time that would be awesome. 
  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    OldSalty said:
    @MACHIN3 This is looking awesome, I have already bought mesh machine and have been playing around it, and can't wait for these new features in the next release. I just had a thought that might might be impossible or might be a good idea I'll let you decide. Anyway it's if you own mesh machine and decal machine it would be great to be able to have these objects as both polystein plugs and decals. If in the future it's possible to create a doodad and save it as a decal and plug at the same time that would be awesome. 
    Yes, great point. I've been thinking about it as well :) Thanks for your support!
    Maybe you could also turn projected decals into embedded plugs and - less likely but probably not impossible - turn embedded plugs into projected decals.
    I'll start thinking about these things some more after the MM 0.6 and the DM 1.5 release.
  • Kip McSkipster
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    Kip McSkipster polycounter lvl 13
    Anyone know of an addon/quick way that allows you to offset selected UV islands out of the 0:1 space e.g. +1 X then later on I can move them back again -1 X (i.e. so they return to their original position)?
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Kip : by default, 1UV space is 256units (when no textures are assigned). So, simply grab > x > 256
  • Kip McSkipster
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    Kip McSkipster polycounter lvl 13
    Oh nice, thanks pior! So safe to assume that that number will change if I add a non-256 texture?
  • OldSalty
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    OldSalty polycounter lvl 4
    Yes it will change, if you create 1024 texture the uv space will be 1024. If you are doing this with unwrapping and object to have multiple UDIMs  a good trick is that you can multiply this number to move the UV. If you type G X * 256*2 it will move 512 across on X and so on for other multiples. You can see how far you are moving it in the corner. 
  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator
    If you check the normalized insede the uv editor you can use 1/-1 to move the uvs too. 
  • Shadowstep
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    Shadowstep polycounter lvl 9
    This weekend, Nintendo tweeted a gif of Peach face animations:

    I've seen clips of rigs like this in the past, but always in Maya. Has anyone here done a rig like this in Blender?
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    This weekend, Nintendo tweeted a gif of Peach face animations [...]
    Has anyone here done a rig like this in Blender?
    The traditional way to do that in Blender is by making those widgets \ controls as actual bones in your armature. You can create them in a 'control' armature that moves a separate 'deform' armature (by means of Copy Transforms or other constraints), or use custom shapes directly in the deform armature if you just need something quick for yourself.



    1) You create a bone that's going to control other bones or be used as a driver.
    2) Set its custom shape to a mesh you created. Optionally, you create a child bone to that control bone and use the "At" option on the bone Display panel to set the child bone as the origin of the custom shape (so you can use the child bone to place and orient the mesh shape where you want it, but still let the shape refer to and select the control bone and not the child).
    3) Create a driver for something (like facial shape keys), and add a variable from some transform channel of the control bone like its position, rotation or scale (usually in Local Space).
    4) If you want a more intuitive rig you can add Restrict Location\Rotation\Scale constraints on the control bone so it has physical limits where you can move it, like a finite range of movement. You can also lock its unused transform channels on the interface, so pressing something like G will only move it on one axis (without you having to additionally press X, Y or Z to do that).

    EDIT: and obviously, in that GIF the facial controls are beside the mesh, but most rigs I've seen prefer to place each control near the areas that they control. Maybe they did it like that in that GIF so it looked more appealing (so you could see the character mesh without the rig in front of it).
  • POFFINGTON
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    POFFINGTON polycounter lvl 11
    Has anybody tried to use Ktools in 2.8? The paint selection is my default selecting type, I can't seem to get it to deselect properly like in 2.79.

    http://www.kjartantysdal.com/scripts/


  • JoseConseco
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    JoseConseco greentooth
    I have been working on smoothing algorithms for meshes in blender. You can define sharp edges as rails that will be used by verts to slide on.
    Volume is more or less preserved.
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool

    Use this to show a list of vertex groups from your mesh and pick one to make it active.
    Useful if you like weight painting on fullscreen area mode (Ctrl + Up).

    Download:
    https://gum.com/popup_vertex_group_list (0+)

    Install the PY file and access from View3D (Weight Paint) > Weights > Popup Vertex Group List or create a shortcut to operator paint.popup_vertex_group_list.
  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator
    Does anyone know if it's possible to set the grid columns to a fixed amount?. Like 64x64
  • Linko
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Hey guys. I just published my rigid body simulation bake addon on blendermarket, cubebrush and gumroad
    to bake and use rigid body simulations in realtime applications such as UE4, Unity, etc.

    Here's generated armature in Blender


    And here's exported result in UE4

  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
    I'm looking for people who are interested in creating plug libraries for MESHmachine. You can sell these, I want you to, but it's your decision of course.

    Get in touch via mesh@machin3.io You will receive a pre-release version of MESHmachine and docs about plug creation.

  • ant1fact
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    ant1fact polycounter lvl 9
    @JoseConseco just bought your smoothing addon today, it's freakin' incredible!! :D<3
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool

    Sup!
    I added a couple more features to that popup vertex group list addon:

    - "Relevant Groups" submenu: shows only the groups that have weights for the current vertex selection. If you select one or more vertices, that menu will show all the groups that have weights for them.
    - Adjustable multicolumn layout (in the addon preferences): set the number of items per column that you want, for a more convenient popup size.
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Loooong-time Max user starting to gradually dip my toes into Blender. I have the UI and Nav nicely setup(I found a way to have Maya nav without f$$king up the default hotkeys) One thing that is bothering me is the way the viewport keeps jumping out of ortho mode into perspective mode if I use Alt+RMB. If I use the MMB scroll wheel it doesn't happen. Could this be a side effect of my Maya nav setup?(please, please, please say no!) Or is there some setting I'm missing? I thought it might be the 'Auto Perspective' setting in preferences, but that seems to have its own issue:(and does nothing for my problem)

    I'm using 2.8 and have front ortho added to my favourites menu. Now if I enable Auto Perspective my front ortho quicksave works as expected and jumps me to an ortho front view. However, if I disable Auto Perspective my quicksave no longer jumps to an ortho front view, it jumps to a perspective front view?

    Cheers. This thread is pretty mindblowing! The sheer amount of addons that seem to do EVERYTHING I might want if I made a full switch from Max is making my head spin. :)
  • MACHIN3
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    MACHIN3 sublime tool
     I thought it might be the 'Auto Perspective' setting in preferences, but that seems to have its own issue:(and does nothing for my problem)
    I'm pretty sure this should be the solution.

    I'm using 2.8
    However I suspect,  this may be the reason it doesn't work. Could you try on 2.79?


  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    @musashidan, a few notes FWIW : 

    - "Auto perspective" can be useful, but regardless : I can confirm that it is not related to your issue.
    - I can also confirm that it is 100% possible to have a Maya-style navigation without the alt-RMB conflict you are running into. I personally set mine up by first following this guide, and then made a a few more tweaks (zoom instead of dolly, IIRC): 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12fqTUyDts0&amp;ab_channel=Marcotronic
    What you should do is to get fully familiar with the Input tab of User Preferences, and debug from there.

    Set the filter to Key-Binding and type in "alt right mouse". It will filter out all the commands called by this input for all contexts. If you have everything set up properly you'll find your manually defined, Maya-style Zoom View command and input within the "3D View" category :



    You'll also be able to find the other conflicting input (the one that makes you jump out of perspective mode) somewhere in the filtered list too. Once you find it, do not delete it altogether (that is to say : do not press the X button next to it on the right) - just disable it by unticking the box on the left. That way it will still be in your keymap, just commented out.

    To put things differently : If you are at the point when you are wanting to change any input setting away from its default, you should take a little bit of time to get fully familiar with the Input tab. Its behavior can be confusing at times (for instance, if you create a new entry while a filter is active, this new entry will seemingly disappear instantly, because ... it will naturally be filtered out :D ) but it is extremely powerful, probably because it doesn't attempt to hide anything from the user.

    Good Luck !
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    MACHIN3 said:
     I thought it might be the 'Auto Perspective' setting in preferences, but that seems to have its own issue:(and does nothing for my problem)
    I'm pretty sure this should be the solution.

    I'm using 2.8
    However I suspect,  this may be the reason it doesn't work. Could you try on 2.79?


    Thanks man, but no. This had no effect. I've also been using 2.79b with the same issue.

    @pior That's great, thanks. This has fixed it completely. I did actually use that same video originally to set this up and changing Dolly to Zoom, as you advised, was the solution. The only thing that concerned me was the fact that there are 9 entries for 'Zoom View' in the 3D views rollout. I just disabled them all and set the first one to Alt+RMB. Thanks again. Blender seems very user friendly in its customisation approach.

    Indidentally, the fact that you can natively snap to ortho views by just hitting Alt mid-orbit(exact same as Zbrush) is such a great feature. I have this through a script in Max and I find it hard to live without.
  • joebount
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    joebount polycounter lvl 12
    I am really enjoying blender but there's one thing that is really driving me nuts : smoothing groups.
    The way Blender handles smoothing is really poor, lots of weird shading issues etc. I have to resort to export my meshes to Maya in order to obtain correct basic smoothing...
    Do you guys have any tip how to deal with them?
  • Nosslak
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    Nosslak polycounter lvl 12
    @joebount there's a Blender version floating around with a weighted normals modifier, if that's what you're looking for. Hopefully it'll be integrated into 2.8 before it goes out, but right now you'll need a custom version of 2.79 to use it. Just search for 'weighted normals' on Blender Artists and you should be able to find it, the latest version is a bit buggy though.
  • joebount
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    joebount polycounter lvl 12
    Nosslak said:
    @joebount there's a Blender version floating around with a weighted normals modifier, if that's what you're looking for. Hopefully it'll be integrated into 2.8 before it goes out, but right now you'll need a custom version of 2.79 to use it. Just search for 'weighted normals' on Blender Artists and you should be able to find it, the latest version is a bit buggy though.
    Thank you, will do!
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Nosslak said:
    @joebount there's a Blender version floating around with a weighted normals modifier
    No, weighted normals is something different. Just regular smoothing groups(hard/soft edges) So for instance, in Max, there are 2 ways of doing it:
    1 - select edges and set them as either hard or soft.
    2 - select faces and assign a smoothing group(where smoothing groups change between faces the surface shading is 'hardened'. This can also be done globally by Auto-smoothing with a predetermined angle threshold.
  • xrg
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    xrg polycounter lvl 10
    Not sure if this is what you want or not.

    Set shading to smooth. (Left-side bar, or W menu in edit mode)
    Check Auto Smooth (image below).
    You can sharpen based on angle slider, or by marking edges as sharp (in Edit mode, select an edge, hit Ctrl+E and Mark Sharp).
     

    In this old tutorial, I set up smoothing at 19:00ish.
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    I think I read it from @FourtyNights, in order to use auto-smooth to manually set sharp edges you need to use a 180 angle in the slider, like your image shows.
    The reason we do that is so the entire object gets set as smooth (except where you manually marked those sharp edges).
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Yes, I saw that method, but it still seems a bit hacky. I thought there might have been an addon toolkit for this, similar to the vertex toolkit in Modo.
  • Mad_Llama
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    Mad_Llama polycounter lvl 6
    I think that all of 3ds max smoothing group actions can be pretty easily done in Blender too. 

    First of all there's select similar coplanar under your chosen angle, then you can select boundary edges and mark them as sharp.

    Let's say that you want to select a "smoothing group" you can do that pretty easily as well by selecting linked and under T menu options choosing limiting by sharp edges :) 

    Finally there's turbosmooth and subdividing according to smoothing groups. You do that by selecting all sharp edges in edit mode by select -> sharp edges and then assigning a crease value of 1.

    It sounds pretty complicated and it sure is but once you get used to it + have your own shortcuts it's just a couple of clicks really. 

    Tell me if there's something more, I don't usually use max much :) 
  • Nosslak
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    Nosslak polycounter lvl 12

    Yes, I saw that method, but it still seems a bit hacky. I thought there might have been an addon toolkit for this, similar to the vertex toolkit in Modo.

    Also, in case you don't know, you can select an edge with a sharp angle in Blender, hit CTRL+G for Select Similar, choose face angles and select most if not all of the edges you'd want hard via the slider in the toolbar. I usually just set Autosmooth to 60 or 70 and mark the rest of the edges manually, never really been much of a problem.
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