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  • Jynxia
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    Jynxia polycounter lvl 9
    Hey guys, I've come across a strange problem. I've joined half of a UV sphere (using ctrl + J) to my mesh and after merging the verts these weird puckering points and lines show up between the boarders of the two meshes. I've merged them completely, checked for duplicate verts or extra faces and found nothing and deleted and reapplyed modifiers. I've also tried going into sculpting mode and using the smooth tool on them but that didnt work. The only thing I can think of is that if I were using 3DS max, I would check the smoothing groups between the two objects but I'm not sure if blender has something similar. 

    TLDR: Does anyone know how to get rid of these weird puckered bits? 

    Any help would be appreciated, thanks!



  • Jynxia
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    Jynxia polycounter lvl 9
    I figured it out- my normals were flipped on the UV sphere! :) no worries
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    pior said:
    Well, as far as I am concerned the issue is still happening in 2.93 alpha. @Kanga, are you certain that you are using exactly what ...

    Hi pior. Yup using the one in yr pic. Been retopoing and using tweak most of the time now.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Ha, so that would mean that the weird behavior some of us are seeing must be coming from some other setting then - perhaps multiple monitors causing an offset, and so on. It's a bummer as that sounds like a tricky one to pin point.
  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator
    Has anyone tested blender for sculpting with 16gb of ram vs 32gb if it has too much difference, I have 16 and thinking about upgrade.

    BTW 2.92 seems to be a bit faster for sculpting, also there was a bug that would reset your brush settings with CTRL Z even remove textures on the brush, it's fixed now. The decimate modifier still super slow though.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hello all -
    Blender has that great feature allowing to ctrl-c ctrl-v contents from one scene/session to another (using its own copy buffer, which I assume consists of writing out a temporary blend file or something similar).

    Is there any way to trick it into doing just that, but across different (yet compatible) versions ? I find myself needing to pass models from 2.91 to a custom 2.8 build and back, and being able to do it at one single press of a button would be great (as opposed to saving out/reopening, or appending from file). Any ideas ?
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    is there any way to copy the input from one modifier into another modifier so that it updates on both ?
    say i have an array modifier with Fit Type: Fit Curve and a Curve modifier.
    i only want to select my curve once and have it input into both modifiers.
  • FrankPolygon
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    FrankPolygon grand marshal polycounter
    @pior Manual copy and paste operations work for moving objects (plus most of their assigned data elements) between different versions from 2.9x all the way back down to 2.79. Not sure if or how it could be automated but the basic functionality is there.

    The only drawback is some of the newer data flags (like mesh display settings) may be stripped if the destination version is too old. Most of this can be fixed by going into mesh mode and just re-enabling anything important that was turned off. For closer versions like 2.9x to 2.9x it's mostly seamless but there may be edge cases where certain data elements don't transfer.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    @FrankPolygon just to be clear : are you saying that on your end, you can ctrl-c an object from, say, a running 2.91 session, and have it ctrl-v successfully in a session of another version, like 2.80 ? If yes I am very curious about that because I don't think I've ever been able to do so, at least since the days after 2.79.

    I can definitely copy/paste between two sessions of a given version, even weeks apart (which confirms that the copy buffer is actually a file stored somewhere on disk) ; and I can also open any 2.8+ file with any 2.8+ version, either going up or going down, and the same goes with append. But ctrl-c ctrl-v always pastes in the last ctrl-c-ed object from the version currently active, even if the copied object is weeks old.

    Would you mind clarifying ? Maybe we're on different systems (I'm on Win64).


    [Edit] Nevermind ! The error was between the chair and the keyboard. I had different temp folder paths in the two versions.
    https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/140407/unable-to-copy-objects-between-versions
  • FrankPolygon
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    FrankPolygon grand marshal polycounter
    @pior Correct. On my system (Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit) it's possible to open multiple versions of Blender, select object(s) from any of them then copy and paste them into other versions. Just tested this functionality again to confirm with all the versions that are currently installed on this system. All the Blender installs are 64 bit and some of them are portable installs.

    2.79 to 2.8 works as expected.
    2.8 to 2.81A works as expected.
    2.81A to 2.82A works as as expected.
    2.82A to 2.83 works as expected.
    2.83 to 2.90 works as expected.
    2.90 to 2.91 works as expected.
    2.91 to 2.79 works as expected.

    The mesh object was able to make a full cycle through all those versions with edits made in each version. Going forward though the versions there shouldn't be any major issues. Any data flags that reference newer features tend to be removed or ignored so going backwards can cause minor issues below 2.8x.

    Copy and paste functions work as expected regardless of whether or not the source instance is running. However when running two versions side by side on different monitors the destination window needs to be active (click anywhere in the viewport) otherwise it will just paste the object(s) back into the other version if it's still the active window.

    Blender writes a "copybuffer.blend" file to the temp folder whenever object(s) are copied. This information can be pasted into another instance provided they're both using the same temp folder. If each version is referencing a different temp folder location they cannot share the data in file. Here's a couple links that document issues related to changes in the defualt temp locations.


    Blender's auto save function also dumps incremental saves into the temp folder based on time intervals and program exits. So if you close something without saving do not open the program again, just go to the temp folder and grab the latest "quit.blend" or "filename_autosave.blend" file.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Absolutely ! Thank you for taking the time to test things out and write it down. I've got it all up and running now, going back and forth without a hitch.
    Lesson learned : editing the default temp path is not the wisest thing to do :D
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Hey guys - trying to get into procedural texturing with Cycles for character presentation. Do you know any resources that go over the node and light setup for relatively simple (afaik) clean looks like this? 

    image

    I think I have the basics down, in regards to where to click to make things happen, but I was researching other artists to find tips they picked up to save time, look out for some pitfalls, etc. 
  • IxenonI
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    IxenonI interpolator
    Made a tutorial on creating a 3 layer blendshader in Blender. This will allow you to replicate the material blending workflow from Unreal, so it might be useful for some of you. More images on my artstation, tutorial video below. All textures by Quixel.

    https://youtu.be/2dy9p_QWNWw
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hello all -

    Is there any non-manual, non-tedious way of converting face sets from Sculpt Mode to some other face attribute ? I don't really have any preference as to which, as long as it allows to select the resulting regions, somehow. It could be randomly assigned materials, automatically assigned vertex sets, all face sets split as respective parts, or even border edges marked as sharp ...

    https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/Sxgbbc/

    Of course I am aware that one can hide/unhide face sets, switch to Edit Mode, and select visible faces from there. But that's precisely what I want to avoid  as it gets very tedious very, very fast. One should be able to process dozens of face sets in one go - doesn't matter if the end result is a single object with some face attributes, or multiple split objects ...

    FWIW at this time the most user-friendly and fastest way of doing so I've found consists using Face Sets > Extract Face Sets, one by one, which requires to switch in and out of Sculpt Mode each time. And then recombining the resulting objects into one single object, and removing the solidify modifier.

    I suppose that it may be possible to do something similar automatically, hiding all Face Sets except one (there has to be some kind of index somewhere ?), going to Edit mode, Select All, and separate selection - then repeat for all face sets ?

    (To be absolutely clear ... the only reason why I am even using Face Sets in the first place is because of the awesome smooth border feature, which is truly a great way of cleanly defining areas on a model, even at medium density. Really great stuff - it's just that this clean area information is really tedious to extract and work with outside of sculpt mode).
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    (Also FWIW ... the above approaches (exploiting the Extract tool, and/or hiding and splitting) can be made just a little bit faster by doing so by non-adjacent Face sets ; and then splitting up by loose parts once in Edit mode. It makes the whole thing about 2x faster)
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    in 3ds max there is a way to update your mesh below the skin modifier stack, then have the deformed  mesh update clicking 'always deform' on and off - kind of like a resset xform.

    HasBlender got something similar? I basically modelled my characters legs a little bit bowed, so straightened them out by editing the verts, but they are still bowed when the armature is active
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hey there Ruz - as a matter of fact this should be the behavior by default as skin weighting in Blender is just stored directly as vertex groups values. It's a bit alien at first because of how simple and "straight to the metal" it is, but it is actually very powerful as it allows for all kinds of non-linear editing tricks that would be hard to pull off in max/maya.

    The one thing that can get in the way of that is morph targets - they too are also very powerful, but their UI is a bit error prone as one can end up modifying a morph as opposed to modifying the base model without realizing it and that can be frustrating :) Maybe that's what's going on in your case ?
  • Tin Can™
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    Tin Can™ polycounter lvl 3
    Hello, I'm very very new at rendering images and animations with Blender, but I'm running into an unwanted effect while trying to use cheap fog created via the volumetric scatter shader node, using Eevee - I have a point light in the center of the scene with a very low intensity to subtly enhance the darker areas so I don't need to have the entire world lit uniformly using the background shader node, thus loosing out on convincing shadows.

    The problem I have is the ambient point light doesn't play nicely with the fog, and shows up as an ugly glare/lens flare kind of effect, as demonstrated here: 
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    Hey Pior, thanks for the response, confused now as it still seems to be not resetting itself. will take another look today
    I have no morphs on the body at the present, but might have something active that is affecting it
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Sure thing, feel free to send over a file if needed. It's also possible that you may have a rest pose different from the pose the model is actually in.
  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    (EDIT: After further reading the documentation I'm not sure this is possible atm with the current feature set + attributes)

    Anyone familiar with the new Attribute transfer node in geometry nodes, how can I transfer my custom normals pre-boolean to my after boolean geo? (All procedurally) 




    Its not working because it has artifacts here, the idea is to have your original primitive normals to always be preserved, keeping all booleans within nodes.
    I created a vertex group "Vert1", but I'm having problems in understanding how to properly set the system.



    All the best,
  • another caveman
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    another caveman greentooth
    (@LuisCherubini) Is your geometry a single element? If you give it a seam you don't find your desired normals? 

    https://ubisoft-mixer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
    Has anyone given this a try?
    Any feedback? Any collaborative 3d tool to recommend other?
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hello all -

    Does anyone know how to edit the shades of white (!) of the text from the NLA editor ? The very subtle variation in text color is the only way to distinguish the currently selected object, hence I'd like to make it stand out way more.


  • Shadowstep
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    Shadowstep polycounter lvl 9
    pior said:
    Hello all -

    Does anyone know how to edit the shades of white (!) of the text from the NLA editor ? The very subtle variation in text color is the only way to distinguish the currently selected object, hence I'd like to make it stand out way more.



    In the preferences: Themes -> NLA Animation -> Theme Space List (scroll down, it's at the bottom)
  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    (@LuisCherubini) Is your geometry a single element? If you give it a seam you don't find your desired normals? 

    https://ubisoft-mixer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
    Has anyone given this a try?
    Any feedback? Any collaborative 3d tool to recommend other?
    Its using booleans realtime yes, the challenge is to find how to transfer normals within geometry nodes 
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    Hi
    Anyone know where the vertex weight panel is in 2.93? Weights not groups.
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    In the sidebar in the Item tab. You need to have vertices selected though. And the mesh needs to have a weighting applied. Or this panel will not show.
    It shows in edit mode and in weight paint mode. In Weight paint mode you need to be in vertex selection mode and have a vertice selected. It will not show with face select mode. To select a vertice in weight paint mode hold down ctrl and click.


  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    Thanx @Tiles
    That fixed its little red wagon!
  • Camille_Meehan
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    Camille_Meehan polycounter lvl 3
    Is there any obvious flaw with my topology that would cause these ugly warpings? This is the back of a seat that needs to be flat. I've flattened out components, lining them up with the same axis. I also ran a cleanup to remove stray components. I'm new to Blender and any help is appreciated. 



    Below, the highlighted blue edge is the surface with the warps in it.

    This is unsmoothed and without subdivisions. Both of those reduce, but don't do away with the wonky shading issues.

  • FrankPolygon
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    FrankPolygon grand marshal polycounter
    @Camille_Meehan Looks like inconsistencies in the mesh shading properties. Try recalculating the normals, marking the faces with shade smooth, clearing sharp edges and setting the per-object auto smooth value to something above 45°.

    Below are some links to the official documentation that covers each operation:
    https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.80/modeling/meshes/editing/edges.html#mark-sharp-and-clear-sharp
    https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/structure.html#properties
  • Camille_Meehan
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    Camille_Meehan polycounter lvl 3
    @Camille_Meehan Looks like inconsistencies in the mesh shading properties. Try recalculating the normals, marking the faces with shade smooth, clearing sharp edges and setting the per-object auto smooth value to something above 45°.

    Below are some links to the official documentation that covers each operation:
    https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.80/modeling/meshes/editing/edges.html#mark-sharp-and-clear-sharp
    https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/structure.html#properties
    Thank you. I'll take a look, that's very helpful.
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator

    on imported models you might want to clear custom split normals


  • Camille_Meehan
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    Camille_Meehan polycounter lvl 3

    on imported models you might want to clear custom split normals


    Yes! This solved the issue after all the troubleshooting. I was about to remake the mesh. Thank you SnowInChina.


  • Mad_Llama
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    Mad_Llama polycounter lvl 6
    Hey! I think you guys may find this useful for lightmapping scenes:
    https://gum.co/Batch_UV_Operations_Blender

    This adds 3 simple operations for multiple object UVing. It lets you sync / set / create the active UV map, delete and set as active render map. 

    Hope you guys find this useful! it's free

  • zinetx
    pior said:
    Heya -
    That's not my point. By wondering about facebook posts by random people and also by not linking to the actual source of the statement, you are greatly increasing the chances of confusion on the topic. It's now easier than ever to get access to information, so why not making the small effort of contacting the BF to get *actual* clarification on what you are wondering about ? Also who knows if by "Blender Add-ons" they mean the ones shipping with the app by default, or third-party ones.

    My point overall is that by just "discussing" things (posting on FB, forum threads, and so on) without any solid statement from the actual source, no one really gets any wiser since everything can lead to misinterpretation. So why not go to the source instead, and *then* share your findings ?

    "Everything you share and bundle with Blender scripts has to be GPL compliant. If you have copyrighted parts, these should be sold and shared separately. Everyone has the right to share such Blender script (like Blender itself), that is not piracy." 

     Ton Roosendaal, Twitter.

    You can not distribute or bundle it together. The Blender Python script has to be made available as GNU GPL.
     Ton Roosendaal, Twitter.



  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    Now that the 3D industry is constantly developing their tools to work with non-destructive workflows (Substance Painter being the excellent example of that)... the weight painting workflow is still VERY destructive and mistake-sensitive in native tools of Blender, Maya, Max etc.. It saddens me that ngSkinTools are probably the best solution to that... except it's only for Maya, and there's no equivalent for Blender.

    I even asked the developer of ngSkinTools, if he's ever going work on a Blender version, and the answer was just a firm "No."
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    Do you really wonder? The GPL is simply quite a hurdle. Just watch one post above. You run into the problem that too much people might give away your work for free. And that competitors can simply grab the code from your addon or fork and use it for his own addon or fork. Just look at E-Cycles and K-Cycles, and what a heated discussion came up then. That's quite a problem when your goal is to earn money with your hard work. And this problems will remain since this is the very nature of GPL and copyleft. Forking and developing at the base of the previous code is what it was made for.

    The curious part is that half of the addons at Blender Market doesn't mind about breaking this license. And nobody cares. As stated above, bundling images and documentation with the addon would mean to put them under GPL. Yet, nearly every addon claims copyright on the documentation and images. Some of them even at the code.

    And then there is the GPL itself, where just one thing is clear: that nothing is clear. There are not enough court cases to make clear if a GPL rule is wishful thinking or really law. Bundling non GPL content like documentation is such a thing. The one says yes, the other says no. Another reason why you usually keep your fingers away from everything GPL ...
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    It also might just be that the developer is entirely unfamiliar with Blender and/or does not want to support another software. :)

  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Hi everybody. I'm learning to make UVs and bake and I facing the problem when I see visible seams on planar surfaces.
    I'm trying different ways to unwrap chamfered meshes. I've created a cube with chamfers (1 segment bevel) and baked beveled cube (with 9 segment bevels) on it. To make UV map denser I split every cube's face like this:



    When I look in LookDev mode the shading of the baked model looks completedly fine, but when I start to zoom out I start seeing shading artifacts on planar faces:



    Here are my bake settings:



    Is it something wrong with my bake? Will I have the same artifacts in game engines?

    The model is in the attachment in case you want to check it.


  • kio
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    kio polycounter lvl 15
    this is probably one of the worst uvs ive seen for a cube but anyhow the problem youre having is that the uv shells are packed to tightly, and as soon as the mipmaps kick in you will start to see artifacts - see: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding

  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    kio said:
    this is probably one of the worst uvs ive seen for a cube but anyhow the problem youre having is that the uv shells are packed to tightly, and as soon as the mipmaps kick in you will start to see artifacts - see: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding

    Thank you for your feedback. How would you unwrap a cube like that? Why do you think that my UV is bad?
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    Because the gap between the uv patches is too small. Neighbour pixels bleeds into the uv patch. That's the bleeding part that kio is talking about. Leave at least two pixel space that is not covered by an edge between the UV patches. 

    And because every single face is mapped as a single UV patch. As much as necessary but as few as possible. When you can remove a seam without to run into distortions then you should do it.. Coplanar faces that doesn't distort should not be split into single UV patches. I could map this cube with one single UV patch. But would use six single uv patches here. Not more.

    This can be done with mark seams and then do an unwrap. I would suggest also to test the method conformal. It can give better results than angle based with geometric shapes, but no guarantee.


  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Tiles said:
    Because the gap between the uv patches is too small. Neighbour pixels bleeds into the uv patch. That's the bleeding part that kio is talking about. Leave at least two pixel space that is not covered by an edge between the UV patches. 
    In blend file I've attached above I'm using 4K texture, so there is more than 2 pixels space (actually there are at least 10 pixels between islands). So I suppose the problem is not in pixel bleed?
    I will double-check that.
    Tiles said:
    And because every single face is mapped as a single UV patch. As much as necessary but as few as possible.
    Actually not every face is mapped to it's own UV island. Here is a screenshot with bigger margins:



    I can pack it something like this:


    In this case UV islands occupy 65.4% of entire UV area. If a split every big face into 4 pieces then I can pack it like this:



    In this case UV islands occupy 83.4% of UV map area. In both cases margins between islands set to 1% of UV width.
    So I assume that the latter pack is better in terms of texel density. I understand that it will slightly increase polygons count but let's assume that I want to sacrifice polycount in favor of higher texel density. In that case does my UV layout make sense?

    Tiles said:
    This can be done with mark seams and then do an unwrap. I would suggest also to test the method conformal. It can give better results than angle based with geometric shapes, but no guarantee.
    this is exactly how I did it. And after that, I packed it with UVPackmaster 2.
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    I still think this could be a bleeding problem. But that's easy to test. Increase the margin and look if the problem goes away. 

    You use imho ways too much uv patches. As told, i woud not use more than six here. Three would also be enough. Image number two looks best to me. The empty UV space would not worry me too much. You could also use a single texture for every UV patch In case everything else fails.

    The problem here is, it looks like you can save some mapping space when you cut the faces into so much pieces. But you forget about the margin. You need to take this empty space into account too. And then the texture resolution that you win isn't this much anymore. And not to forget, more single patches means that you get more visible seams that you need to fix up.

    The rule remains: as much as needed, as few as possible.
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    Mh, another idea, this is a normalmap isn't it? What is the shading of the model? Smooth or flat?
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Tiles said:
    Mh, another idea, this is a normalmap isn't it? What is the shading of the model? Smooth or flat?
    Yep, it's normal map. Smooth, both low poly and high poly.
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Tiles said:
    I still think this could be a bleeding problem. But that's easy to test. Increase the margin and look if the problem goes away. 
    Yes looks like increasing margins indeed helps. When I increased them from 0.3% to 1% I have to zoom out more (that is model gets smaller on screen) to start noticing these artifacts. But it appears that this problem happens only in EEVEE. In Cycles there are no shading artifacts.
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    I think we get closer to the problem. Eevee is a realtime engine. This means i expect that it has some sort of mip mapping. Means when you zoom out then the texture resolution gets automatically lower. And then it starts of course to bleed since the distance between the edges goes below two pixels.

    Hm, i cannot find explicit mip mapping settings though. There are some textures settings in the preferences in the viewport tab. Anisotropic filter. Turn it off and have a look if this helps.

    I would nevertheless suggest to improve the mapping: No seams means no seam trouble :)
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    The problem goes back to 2018. There is an answer regarding mip mapping in this thread here https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2665620/#Comment_2665620
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Texture filtering can be set per texture in Blender (yay!). Go into node editor - select the texture node for the normal map and in the first dropdown that by default says 'Linear' instead pick 'Closest'.

    Also btw. for proper normal map display you'll want to make sure that color space is set to 'Non-Color', default is 'sRGB'.

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