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  • sinhead
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    sinhead polycounter lvl 6
    .

    Thanks. Yes the mesh was imported and scaled. But Applying transforms should have sorted things out.
    Right now I tried in a new file on a new cylinder,  got the same result.  Maybe its a bug.
    Posting the file here, in case anyone wants to take a look.


  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    @RN : well that does look pretty damn neat !
    And yeah @Michael Knubben , I thought so too at first :)

  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    @sinhead The thing is, this material uses Object space coordinates. I just tried your file and you can easily use the "Brake Disc" material, if you apply the scale to the "brake Disk" Object and then scale the Mesh (in edit mode) slightly down.
    Texture coordinates in the Object space scale with the object.

    Overall theory:
    And the spherical Gradient Texture does not simply draw a circle on UV coordinates as you might be used to from other tools such as Substance. Texture generators in Blender are actually 3D. To demonstrate, take your cylinder in that scene, go into edit mode and move the mesh along the y-axis towards the brake disks and you will see what I mean.
    I also recommend having a look at this fantastic talk, which explains a lot about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAUmLcXhUj0

  • Michael Knubben
    @RN aside from it being in the (let's be honest: overcrowded and awful) sidepanel, yeah that looks pretty cool!
    I could probably move it to the viewport header with Pie Menu Editor, but I'd prefer to be given the option in the addon :D
  • sinhead
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    sinhead polycounter lvl 6
    @f1r3w4rr10r

    Thanks a lot!  This solves the problem.   So to use the same material on a larger (pasted) brake disc, I scaled it down in Edit mode, until the texture fitted. And then in Object mode, scaled it up (in the "dimensions"),  back to its original larger size.
    In the talk he uses multiply node etc for scaling, which I'll  try later.
    The talk is great too. Blender conferences have a lot of hidden gems.

  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    @sinhead just be careful because the recent updates to nodes (especially the additional dimensions for the noise texture) broke the wood grain setup he shows in the talk. I use that myself and I am still in the process of fixing it.
  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    When I batch-rename meshes in the view layer list (ALT + Return), everything works most of the time. Sometimes though (no idea why exactly) when I try to attach the suffix '_low' to meshes (intended for import into Substance Painter), Blender will attach '_low.001' to the mesh names instead.
    I need to then remove the '.001' for each object manually.
    Any ideas why this is happening? Some setting I might have set incorrectly, duplicate objects hidden somewhere in the scene (why does manual renaming work then though?), or a bug in Blender?
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    yesssss custom build is done and the select-through feature is working! so happeeeeeehhhh


  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    Personally I find selecting through mesh like that weird, because I've used Blender for so long. It's like making 100% sense that I'm selecting only what I see and need. I've always used wireframe mode to select things through on purpose if I need to select things from behind too. Because in wireframe mode you can see the rest of the things you can select. That GIF above feels like a bug to me, lol. Like "Oh damn, it also selected the ones from behind I didn't want to... guess I have to deselect these by hand then".

    Tbh, I select only the visible portion like 90% of the time, and selecting through the rest 10%.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Well I strongly disagree good sir! That's the standard I've come to get used to by using Maya and Max, and I would rather keep it like that so that switching between apps at work (which I need to do) is even more seamless. I could concede that it's just my own preference making me biased, but I also think that in most cases this deals to less clicks & smarter thinking on how to select everything you need in one go. 
     I've always used wireframe mode to select things through on purpose if I need to select things from behind too.
    While this sounds reasonable, even though I would prefer not to have to switch to another mode simply to select things, there is one other problem to this. It's the fact that doing that in vanilla Blender (since 2.8 only i think?) forces you to select based on face-centers, which is completely unreasonable. It changes your mind on how to approach selections, and having to switch between face-modes, Xrays or wireframes, is unneeded tasks the brain needs to keep track of. 

    Art is art though. Who cares how you make it obviously. Except if it's select through. Fuck em.
  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    Dont fight children. :D As long as it is an option everyone can toggle to their liking, everything is dandy. And that is pretty much what they are planning to do, if read it right.

    Apart from that, having to select faces by their center has always been a thing in Blender wireframe as long as I remember.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    haha yeah, all I wanted is the option to do this. Forcing anyone to a certain behaviour doesn't seem right, and enabling us to choose whichever we prefer seems like a very good idea.
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool

    Okay, I put it in a Gumroad:
    https://gum.co/collection_grid
    (I ended up charging for it because it was tougher to debug than I expected...)
  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    Yo, latest ep of the city WIP is up
    Jump to 9:10 for official Evangelion Art sauce.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD6ZJgfkgMA
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    Justo said:
    yesssss custom build is done and the select-through feature is working! so happeeeeeehhhh


    I have to admit this is really helpful. Often I just need to select a whole section of <something> to move it slightly and this always forces me to toggle view modes. Way less often I just need to border select the visible stuff only. And for this an "ignore backfaces" mode will do the trick.  

  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    Justo said:
    haha yeah, all I wanted is the option to do this. Forcing anyone to a certain behaviour doesn't seem right, and enabling us to choose whichever we prefer seems like a very good idea.

    Yeah, it's cool for people who need it. As long as it's a toggleable setting on something, it's more than fine.

    EDIT: Come to think of it, it's like the Show X-Ray in 2.8, but a "Hidden X-Ray". Because with that setting on, you can also select through the mesh without going to the wireframe mode.
  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    Yeah and that's why I never missed it. I just press the toggle x-ray key, select what I want and press the key again. I rather do that instead of flying blind with selections. ^^

    Edit: For completeness' sake, on default keymap:
    Shift+Z: toggle between solid and wireframe
    Alt+Z: toggle X-Ray for the current view mode

    The above means, that you can have separate X-Ray toggle states for each of those two modes. By default it is off for solid and on for wireframe.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Justo said:
    haha yeah, all I wanted is the option to do this. Forcing anyone to a certain behaviour doesn't seem right, and enabling us to choose whichever we prefer seems like a very good idea.

    Yeah, it's cool for people who need it. As long as it's a toggleable setting on something, it's more than fine.

    EDIT: Come to think of it, it's like the Show X-Ray in 2.8, but a "Hidden X-Ray". Because with that setting on, you can also select through the mesh without going to the wireframe mode.
    In theory it should be, but the Xray thing switches the selection scheme too (area-based selection becomes face-centers-based selection), which changes how you would go about selecting things. 

    There's a bigger thread here with people that have had more time with Blender than me talking about this in more detail:
    https://devtalk.blender.org/t/decoupling-x-ray-and-limit-selection-to-visible/3498
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Personally I find selecting through mesh like that weird, because I've used Blender for so long. It's like making 100% sense that I'm selecting only what I see and need. I've always used wireframe mode to select things through on purpose if I need to select things from behind too. Because in wireframe mode you can see the rest of the things you can select. That GIF above feels like a bug to me, lol. Like "Oh damn, it also selected the ones from behind I didn't want to... guess I have to deselect these by hand then".

    Tbh, I select only the visible portion like 90% of the time, and selecting through the rest 10%.
    same for me, I want to see what I select, if something is occluded, I switch to wireframe or xray.
    It is always good to have it optional of course.

    I often use Select Linked (L or Ctrl-L) as well.
  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    Seems to me like one of the main problems with this functionality is not how to implement it, but how to put in the UI. I can say from experience, UI design is not easy and you have to consider quite a lot. Otherwise you end up with something like whatever ZBrush's UI is. :P
  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    If the development of Blender's sculpt mode is constantly this awesome pretty much every week, I'll might consider selling ZBrush in a year or two:


  • Amiminoru
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    Amiminoru polycounter lvl 8
    Justo said:
    yesssss custom build is done and the select-through feature is working! so happeeeeeehhhh



     That's great! Where can I download this build?
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Setting up 2.8 here and am wondering if it's possible to set a color and default size for the curve normals display? Can't seem to find anything in the preferences.


  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Amiminoru said:

     That's great! Where can I download this build?
    It's not available to download as a build - currently you have to make it yourself.

    I could upload it somewhere though, if it's just about uploading the root folder containing the executable. Is that all that's needed?
  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    Justo said:
    Amiminoru said:

     That's great! Where can I download this build?
    It's not available to download as a build - currently you have to make it yourself.

    I could upload it somewhere though, if it's just about uploading the root folder containing the executable. Is that all that's needed?
    Oh, it was @Kio / Benjamin who implemented that one. So yeah, can guarantee you its well backed up on productivity. Lol
    But yeah, I'm eager to test this as well since I'm tired of xray switch.
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    thomasp said:
    Setting up 2.8 here and am wondering if it's possible to set a color and default size for the curve normals display? Can't seem to find anything in the preferences.
    For the size you can set it to what you like then go to File > Defaults > Save Startup File. Just make sure that the scene / viewport etc. is in a state that you want to see every time you start the program. 
    As for the normals overlay, I'm afraid it's hardcoded to use the same color as the body of the curve (the theme's "wire edit" color): https://github.com/sobotka/blender/blob/d21a8dcae295154c71b8c5c6d480d877af5c0b2a/source/blender/draw/engines/overlay/overlay_edit_curve.c#L48-L49
    Justo said:
    I could upload it somewhere though, if it's just about uploading the root folder containing the executable. Is that all that's needed?
    I think you just need "blender.exe", you can name it "blender custom 02.exe" and put it together with the original one, in the same installation folder (you'll need admin rights to do that if you're on Windows).
  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Justo said:
    yesssss custom build is done and the select-through feature is working! so happeeeeeehhhh


    should be done like in Modo in my opinion:

    left-click drag -> select only front vertices
    middle-click drag -> select through.

    Simple as that. No better way to do it. No UI buttons you need to click or checkboxes to activate, and then need to de-activate again. That takes too long.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    @wilson66 so long as the user has the power to decide what click-drag thing does what, that would be for the best. I think there's a ticket speaking about that particular modo feature in the blender RCS forum.  
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    wilson66 said:
    Justo said:
    yesssss custom build is done and the select-through feature is working! so happeeeeeehhhh


    should be done like in Modo in my opinion:

    left-click drag -> select only front vertices
    middle-click drag -> select through.

    Simple as that. No better way to do it. No UI buttons you need to click or checkboxes to activate, and then need to de-activate again. That takes too long.
    Imho middle mouse button is for navigation, I wouldn't like to have tool functions on that.
    Clicking a checkbox would be inconvenient of course, I would rather have something like left-click drag + Alt.

  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Prime8 Imho middle mouse button is for navigation, I wouldn't like to have tool functions on that.
    I have assigned the functionality 'select linked' to the middle mouse/pen button in Blender, works flawlessly, and its fast. I see no reason not to do that.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    RN said:
    As for the normals overlay, I'm afraid it's hardcoded to use the same color as the body of the curve (the theme's "wire edit" color): https://github.com/sobotka/blender/blob/d21a8dcae295154c71b8c5c6d480d877af5c0b2a/source/blender/draw/engines/overlay/overlay_edit_curve.c#L48-L49
    That figures. :) It seems I have a real talent for always stumbling over this kind of edge case stuff. Thanks for looking that up!

  • Cirno
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    Cirno polycounter lvl 5
    I toggle XRay on and off automatically upon dragging selection with addon. Also it temporary disable solidify (as Solidify clutter xray view when object mode edge wires enabled) and mirror modifier. So it works like this:

    I can share addon if someone need it.

  • eltarbos
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    eltarbos polycounter lvl 7
    Cirno said:

    I can share addon if someone need it.

    Would be interested to try it.

  • Cirno
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    Cirno polycounter lvl 5
    @eltarbos By default it set on rmb drag. Change keys here (EVT_TWEAK_L - lmb, EVT_TWEAK_M - mmb):
    or here:

    There is also a button on the toolbar:




  • eltarbos
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    eltarbos polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks a lot Cirno!
    It works as expected.
    The center face selection is still annoying but it's a first step and it will help me.
  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Will test that xray addon, thank you!

    Something else I noticed: its really hard to quickly distinguish visually whats a button and whats a slider/ input field e.g. in the properties of modifiers. Might be a good idea to make this more distinguishable. If I e.g. add a bevel modifier, and am looking for the angle limit or something, it sometimes takes several seconds to find it. It looks slick and all to put the label of the sliders into the actual slider itself, but it makes the slider/ input field look exactly like a button, and thus harder to find what I am looking for.

    Just a thought. Might just be me.
  • Cirno
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    Cirno polycounter lvl 5
    Looks like it depends on a theme. On some themes the difference between buttons and sliders is more obvious




  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    What @Cirno said. Though changing anything more substantial than that will most likely involve changes in the UI widget system. Also if you want to make suggestions, you should really open a ticket for that. Chances of a Blender dev finding this here are slim.

    One rule of thumb that should be true for all themes:
    - buttons have their text centered
    - sliders have their label left aligned and value right aligned (and sliders actually have a value, buttons don't)
    - sliders behave differently when hovering over them
  • Michael Knubben
    thomasp said:
    RN said:
    As for the normals overlay, I'm afraid it's hardcoded to use the same color as the body of the curve (the theme's "wire edit" color): https://github.com/sobotka/blender/blob/d21a8dcae295154c71b8c5c6d480d877af5c0b2a/source/blender/draw/engines/overlay/overlay_edit_curve.c#L48-L49
    That figures. :) It seems I have a real talent for always stumbling over this kind of edge case stuff. Thanks for looking that up!
    This addon has some custom colouring stuff, maybe it works for you? And if it doesn't contain coloured normals, you could request it, the guy's really receptive to feedback!



  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Ok, thanks. 

    Another quick question: is there some way to bevel only hardened edges? Meaning, I can mark edges as sharp (select edge -> right-click -> Mark Sharp), useful when creating smoothing groups.

    Can I assign a bevel modifier that only bevels the edges I have marked as sharp? If I can, whats the settings I have to adjust?
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    wilson66 said:
    Ok, thanks. 

    Another quick question: is there some way to bevel only hardened edges? Meaning, I can mark edges as sharp (select edge -> right-click -> Mark Sharp), useful when creating smoothing groups.

    Can I assign a bevel modifier that only bevels the edges I have marked as sharp? If I can, whats the settings I have to adjust?
    You can set a bevel weight per edge and then need to switch the bevel modifier limit methode to "weight".
  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks. How do I 'set a bevel weight per edge' though? Sorry, newbie in this area. Can I somehow convert already hardened edges, or do I need to re-select the edges and apply a bevel weight to them?

    EDIT: have found out already that I need to adjust the 'mean bevel weight' for the edges. Question remains though, can I somehow convert/ automatically select all hardened edges in a model so I can apply bevel weight without having to re-select them manually?

    Maybe some list where bevel weights ect are stored and where I can convert weights to a selection?
  • Cirno
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    Cirno polycounter lvl 5
    wilson66 You can select one sharp edge, then press shift+g > sharpness to select all others. Then you can apply bevel weight to them.

  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks! Just found that out. Can be found in the 'Select -> Select Similar -> Sharpness' menu. Select an edge, then click that menu entry. Very nice.
  • eltarbos
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    eltarbos polycounter lvl 7
    wilson66 said:
    Thanks! Just found that out. Can be found in the 'Select -> Select Similar -> Sharpness' menu. Select an edge, then click that menu entry. Very nice.

    You can also buy HardOps for an easier way of marking edges.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    To dig a little deeper into what @Prime8 mentions, there are a couple ways to go at it.

    • If you create your hard edges fully procedurally by angle threshold (for instance by setting autosmooth to 30deg), then you can use the same angle threshold in the bevel modifier and naturally the same edges will get beveled.

    • As mentioned, you can also set the bevel value manually. Select all your hard edges (either by hand, or by select similar>hard), and set them as a full marked bevel. Then use the weight options in the Bevel modifier.

    • Considering all of the above, you can also use something like PieMenuEditor to convert from "marked as hard" to "marked as beveled" in one macro. Thus basically creating a workaround for the Bevel modifier not having the option to natively operate on hard edges only.
  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    It seems to me that the Bevel modifier not having a limit to hard edges function is a deliberate design choice. I mean when you think about it, in a shaded smooth mesh, hard edges and bevel are oftentimes the opposite result in terms of smoothing.

    (And holy hell, is it just me or is this forum text editor really bad, especially on mobile?)
  • wilson66
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    wilson66 polycounter lvl 8
    If I use the scale tool, I need to move the cursor towards the center of the object to scale the object down (all axis simultaneously). If I move the cursor past the center of the object, it will actually scale the model up again. This is especially fiddly because the little circle in the middle of the scale widget naturally is at the center of the object already.

    This behavior feels really, really odd to me. Is there some way to adjust this behavior? What could be the reason having to move the cursor towards the center of the object to scale it down? This decreases precision extremely the more I scale it down, it makes exact scaling with that tool impossible.

    EDIT:

    Wait, I can use the white circle around the tool widget to scale it more precisely, you can actually click anywhere within that circle and drag. I should try first before posting on this forum too quickly. Sorry about that.

    And I actually have Hardops installed by the way, I will have to actually look into the details now...
  • f1r3w4rr10r
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    f1r3w4rr10r polycounter lvl 9
    @wilson66 I think that might also be a remnant of when there were no dedicated widgets. Without widgets you would just press the scale tool hotkey (S by default) and move your mouse from anywhere in the viewport.
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    wilson66 said:
    If I use the scale tool, I need to move the cursor towards the center of the object to scale the object down (all 
    Wait, I can use the white circle around the tool widget to scale it more precisely, you can actually click anywhere within that circle and drag. I should try first before posting on this forum too quickly. Sorry about that.

    And I actually have Hardops installed by the way, I will have to actually look into the details now...
    While you have the scale tool active you can also use Shift to scale in a much smaller increment or Ctrl to snap scale to the grid.
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