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  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    thomasp said:
    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'.

    Yep, it does the trick! Thanks a lot!

    @Tiles
    Thank you! Now I get a bit better understanding of how real-time rendering engines operate.
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    Glad it got be sorted out :)
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    Oh and thanks for the hint that this is done per texture. You never stop learning.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Tiles said:
    Oh and thanks for the hint that this is done per texture. You never stop learning.
    This is one of the cool little things about 2.8+. Everywhere else I am aware of you either get no option to turn off filtering or there's a global switch (like in 2.79 and earlier) that renders every texture in view razor sharp looking in a headache-inducing way.

  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth
    A global mip mapping setting would nevertheless not hurt :)
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    2.8 and above proportional edit set connected after every stroke sucks! Is there another way to fix this? I'm doing hair strands at the moment and I miss this feature.
  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    I've possibly found a potential goldmine for future non-destructive layer/layer mask weight painting system for Blender in here:

    Anyone technically smarter than me, it'd be useful to chime in, and spark some inspiration for the dev of this addon - where us - the character artists with intentions of rigging and skinning their characters (properly), could tremendously ease our workflow for weight painting without worrying the usual horrors and micromanaging of weights in general. :D
  • newb
    Hi, I came across a small problem, which I believe it has a simple solution, but I am new into Blender and into sculping and still learning the basics. I tried joining two meshes together with activating the Bool tool add on in preferences, selecting the objects and pressing shift+ctrl+Num+(direct union). But the neck now looks like it`s sewed on the torso, there is this line that  I cant get rid off no matter how much clay strips I add, when I smooth it still appears. Is there any way how I can fix this? 
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Assuming that the merging itsself went well, then it might just be some custom vertex normals data that needs to be cleared (near the bottom of the Object Data Properties panel / "green triangle").
  • newb
    pior said:
    Assuming that the merging itsself went well, then it might just be some custom vertex normals data that needs to be cleared (near the bottom of the Object Data Properties panel / "green triangle").
    I tried your advice, but it doesn't seem to be the issue. I will leave it how it is for now, it was only for practise anyway. 
  • Zablorg
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    Zablorg polycounter lvl 6

    Does anyone know if the sculpting performance improvements described here last year have been implemented yet? I wasn't able to find release notes that would suggest so.


  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    Zablorg said:

    Does anyone know if the sculpting performance improvements described here last year have been implemented yet? I wasn't able to find release notes that would suggest so.


    I'm on 3.0 Alpha,
    Apparently it's not implemented yet, did the same test here and it's still lagging behind at 4.2M verts



    Pablo took a break from Blender dev, let's pray for him to get back some day
  • garciiia
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    garciiia polycounter lvl 3
    Any idea why blender crashes when following this tutorial? it happens when i switch from 3D to 4D Noise texture. MSI Afterburner showed that my gpu goes up to 1800Mhz and full Memory. Got a RTX 3080 Ti - doesn't matter if i use stock profile oder undervolted.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCvP917Z8uc
  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    is there a blender equivalent of polyStein /PlugIt / MeshBlend ?
  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator
    is there a blender equivalent of polyStein /PlugIt / MeshBlend ?
    The closest thing I ever saw in blender is the ''plug'' option from mesh machine, but it's not designed for subdiv. MESHmachine - Plug preview 3 - YouTube
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    is there a blender equivalent of polyStein /PlugIt / MeshBlend ?
    I guess KIT OPS is something similar.
     https://www.kit-ops.com/
  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    thanks guys. I checked out both of them just now. MESHmachine seems to just project the mesh on top. and Kitops deals with booleans. Both addons are amazing, dont get me wrong. but its not what im looking for. Im surprised that blender doesn't really have a direct equivalent.
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Hi. Can somebody explain to me please why I start seeing sharp edges when I scale the top face of the cylinder? Shading set to Smooth and auto smooth with 30° is enabled.

    It is perfectly smooth when it's just a cylinder. Then I scale down the top face and here is what I get:


    I can fix it by adding many edge loops on the sides that suppose to be smooth or by adding Subdivision Surface modifier. But I just want to know why it happens 🙂
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Hi. Can somebody explain to me please why I start seeing sharp edges when I scale the top face of the cylinder? Shading set to Smooth and auto smooth with 30° is enabled.
    ...
    That is normal for long/thin triangles on bend surfaces, happens not only with Blender.
    You found the solution already, you need to add loops.
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Prime8 said:
    That is normal for long/thin triangles on bend surfaces, happens not only with Blender.
    You found the solution already, you need to add loops.
    Thank you. Looks like I already managed to figure it out myself.

    Here I wrote an illustrated explanation on another forum where I asked the same question: https://blenderartists.org/t/issue-with-shading-on-a-surface-that-suppose-to-be-smooth-why-it-happens/1332556/3?u=yevhen_kutishchev
    Hope it's not against the rules to post links to other forums 🙂
    Maybe it will be useful for someone like me to better understand how things work.
  • another caveman
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    another caveman greentooth
    Hi! In Max you have the "Channel Info" tab to display how much weighs you model, your UVs, your vertex color/alpha, and other infos.
    Is there a built in option for this in Blender? Else, an addon you'd recommend?
    Thanks!

    edit:
    this one
    image 
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hello all -
    A little while back, wasn't there an addon which allowed to display the currently worked on UVs as an overlay in the corner of the 3d viewport ? This strikes me as being potentially very useful if implemented well, even if only to display the current UV channel. I might be completely mistaken though. Does that ring a bell ?

    @another caveman : I would say that for this kind of things it might be best to ask about the one specific thing you want to retrieve, as it is rather unlikely that everything will be in the same place.
  • Oaken
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    Oaken polycounter lvl 10
    @pior I definitely remember seeing it but I don't remember what it is, I was thinking hardops ,meshmachine or one of these but I can't find it in the wiki and I don't own them so... 
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Hi, how do I perform "Pixel Edge Padding" in Blender?
    • 256 = 2px
    • 512 = 4px
    • 1024 = 8px
    • 2048 = 16px
  • another caveman
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    another caveman greentooth
    Hi, how to I do Pixel Edge Padding in Blender?
    • 256 = 2px
    • 512 = 4px
    • 1024 = 8px
    • 2048 = 16px
    Out of the box, I don't know
    Addon answer here are two that offer it:
    UV-Packer
    UVPackMaster2


    @pior
    Visualizing the weight of UVs for instance I found interesting. So you know if your UVs are snapped on a grid or not as they would be more heavy with random values

  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Hi, how to I do Pixel Edge Padding in Blender?
    UPD: looks like everything I wrote below is wrong, so please ignore it 🙂

     Hi.

    After you do UV → Unwrap in Adjust Last Operation popup (press F9 to show this popup) you will see the Margin option. This is basically what you need. It will control the margin (or "padding" if you like).



    The value of 0.01 means padding will be 1% of texture size. That is if you use 512px textures 1% padding will be 5.12 px. If you need to calculate what padding to specify you need to divide padding size by texture size. For example if you use 1024px textures and want to have 8px padding you need 8 / 1024 = 0.0078125. So you need to set 0.0078125 in the Margin field. In that way you will get 8px paddings.

    • 256 = 2px
    • 512 = 4px
    • 1024 = 8px
    • 2048 = 16px
    For all of these cases margin should be 0.0078125. but you can round it to 0.8.
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    @littleclaude you don't need to use plugins to achieve what I wrote above. It's done out of the box in Blender.
    Tell me if you need further assistance.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    @another caveman : interesting ! I have no idea if this specific bit of information is accessible by default, but it sure would be handy to have when working with some ultra low-end tilesets and atlases. If that is of any help there is something similar available for vertex group weights : 



    @littleclaude : your question is way too unclear - what do you *actually* mean, in simple straightforward terms ?

    It could mean that you want the unwrap tool to space out islands by a certain distance, or it could mean that you want baked textures to a have certain amount of bleed, or it could mean that you want a packing tool that takes such distances into account, and so on.

    @Oaken : the plot thickens ! I am getting a bit of a Mandela effect vibe with this thing now :D 
  • Oaken
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    Oaken polycounter lvl 10
    @pior I found it!
    https://youtu.be/aSdNAKLSrBk?t=774
    It was in hardops after all
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Ha, good find ! HardOps "UV display" indeed. It certainly has potential, it's just a bit of a shame that it isn't quite realtime, only works on a selection of components, and also fades away after a few seconds ... I'll definitely be playing around with it to see if it is helpful, still. Thank you for the fruitful investigation !
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    @littleclaude
    Hi, please ignore my explanation of how to calculate padding size. It is not correct.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Hi, pior said:

    @littleclaude : your question is way too unclear - what do you *actually* mean, in simple straightforward terms ?

    No problem, Edge padding  - http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding

    When a game model uses a single texture sheet (Texture atlas) the image will have areas that are used for the textures and blank areas between them. The used areas are often called UV shells, and the blank areas are often called gutters.

    When a game engine renders a scene it uses Texture filtering to smoothly render the texture, in a process called downsampling. If the gutters have colors that are significantly different from the colors inside the shells, then those colors can "bleed" creating seams on the model. The same thing happens when neighboring shells have different colors; as the texture is downsampled eventually those colors start to mix.

    To avoid this, edge padding should be added in the gutters between each UV shell. Edge padding duplicates the pixels along the inside of the UV edge and spreads those colors outward, forming a skirt of similar colors.

    When the UV layout is created, the spacing between the shells should be done with edge padding in mind. If the gutters between the UV shells aren't wide enough, there won't be enough edge padding to prevent bleeding.


  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    The reason I ask is that I've entered the Artstation Contest and I am trying my best to stay inside Blender and not use native 3D packages.

    This is what it looks like in Maya FYI

    Danger, the edge padding and UV shells are way to close which will cause baking issues.



    Solution 

  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    @littleclaude
    I found this video where the dude calculates the math behind the Margin field in Blender:
    https://youtu.be/eh3pNZ9RpBw?t=1992
    I didn't check myself if his math is correct. Here is his explanation in textual form: https://blenderartists.org/t/i-might-have-found-a-great-way-to-determine-the-margin-value-for-uvs-pixel-padding/1156290
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    @littleclaude Hehe yes, I know what edge padding means, thanks :D What I mean is, what do *you* actually want to know ? How to space out the islands of a given value ? How to generate the pixel bleed ? Something else ?

    Overall it really isn't rocket science - you start from a loosely estimated distance on a test UV layout, (whichever way works best for you, either in % of UV space or in pixels), use some strongly contrasting color for the background on a test texture, see how it behaves when mipping aggressively in your target environment, and adjust accordingly. That's all there is to it.

    What is a "native 3d package" ?
  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    Hi!
    I've developed a new free animation addon for Blender!
    It's a global killer, a tool to transfer animation from a root to its children and clear the animation on said root bone. Or you can just transfer the animation onto an empty or any bone(s) you select
    Often used in animation and game studios I thought it would be helpful! :)

    Grab it here



  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    pior said:
    @littleclaude Hehe yes, I know what edge padding means, thanks :D What I mean is, what do *you* actually want to know ? How to space out the islands of a given value ? How to generate the pixel bleed ? Something else ?

    Overall it really isn't rocket science - you start from a loosely estimated distance on a test UV layout, (whichever way works best for you, either in % of UV space or in pixels), use some strongly contrasting color for the background on a test texture, see how it behaves when mipping aggressively in your target environment, and adjust accordingly. That's all there is to it.

    What is a "native 3d package" ?
    Hi

    What I asking for, in Blender how do I select 8pixel distance or 16, 32 and so on depending on the size of the texture.
    • 1024 = 8px
    • 2048 = 16px
    • 4096 = 32px
    And what I mean by native 3D package, is what you normally use for 3d creation,  Max, Rhino, Modo, Maya, Houdini and so on.

    If you where to transition to Houdini for example and you got stuck on an issue the temptation would be to fix it in Blender quickly rather the research or ask people on forums.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    @littleclaude
    I found this video where the dude calculates the math behind the Margin field in Blender:
    https://youtu.be/eh3pNZ9RpBw?t=1992
    I didn't check myself if his math is correct. Here is his explanation in textual form: https://blenderartists.org/t/i-might-have-found-a-great-way-to-determine-the-margin-value-for-uvs-pixel-padding/1156290
    Hi, thank you I will look into it, I am trying to stick to vanilla Blender as much as possible due to teaching issues.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Heya,

    There is a distance setting in the Blender UV tools that I assume you've found already (obviously), as it is right there in the options for UV>Unwrap and UV>Pack Islands. It goes from 0 to 1, with the value being (I think) linked to the averaged size of all current islands. There is probably a clever way to convert this value to an absolute distance but there is no way to input that by default.

    But anyways, it would still be best for you to *actually* explain what you are trying to do in practical terms. Are you trying to unwrap a whole model at once from seams ? Are you trying to pack already unfolded islands ? And so on.

    And regardless I do stand by the remark that even if there was a way to input a desired absolute distance in UV space for the spacing of islands during UV>Unwrap for instance, it would still not be a guarantee that your unwrap will mip elegantly in your target environment, hence it would *still* be necessary to test out the mipping by hand using a dark background. The values you are mentioning are loose guidelines at best, but not something to take as a definite formula.

    Now of course I am not saying that being able to input a minimum distance as an absolute UV space value or as pixel value in relation to the currently displayed image wouldn't be useful - it sure would be. All I am saying is that if you want to get closer to a solution to your actual problem, you might start by explaining what you are actually trying to do as opposed to mentioning broad concepts ...

    Regarding "native" packages : this is a rather odd take imho, as Blender has already been making some of these apps obsolete in quite a few aspects.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Hi, apologies for another Blender nooby question, have you got any tips on the best settings to get rid of edges in the weighted normal modifier, I am finding it hard to get rid of some normals and I am trying to stick to Blender and not export back to Maya/3DMax to fix little issues. :)

    Any tips would be appreciated, you can see the issue in the last image compared to Maya in the first image. I will check to see if there is any difference in UE4 as maybe I am over thinking this. 


  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage

    In Blender I seem to be having a problem straightening the vertex normals, this is what is causing my issues as you can see in the second image. Any ideas?


  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    Hi, apologies for another Blender nooby question, have you got any tips on the best settings to get rid of edges in the weighted normal modifier, I am finding it hard to get rid of some normals and I am trying to stick to Blender and not export back to Maya/3DMax to fix little issues. :)
    Hi. What is the reason you cranked up Threshold parameter in Weighted Normals modifier? Looks like it's causing the problem. When I put it from 10 to 0.01 (default value) shading issues disappear.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Hi. What is the reason you cranked up Threshold parameter in Weighted Normals modifier? Looks like it's causing the problem. When I put it from 10 to 0.01 (default value) shading issues disappear.
    Hi, I have tried everything, it's more to do with lining up the vertex normals. Blender does not seem to allow me to straighten them, as you can see here.

    Normally this is not an issue as you tent to split and harden edges on UV shells but for things with repeating textures like vehicles and spaceships like Star Citizen you need to have a weighted normal approach. As you can see below, there is clearly a normal issue due to it being averaged, I need to be able to control there direction. 


    I have asked over on Blender Artists, if there is a fix for “Weighted Normals” & “Pixel Edge Padding” I will be sure to post it back here if I get a solution.

    https://blenderartists.org/t/help-with-weighted-normals-pixel-edge-padding/1335624
  • Cake_Seller
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    Cake_Seller polygon
    @littleclaude
    Isn't this is what you trying to achieve? Or am I missing something?





    If you want to see the result of the Weighted Normal modifier in Edit mode make sure to toggle the button I've pointed on the screenshot above.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    @littleclaude
    Isn't this is what you trying to achieve? Or am I missing something?





    If you want to see the result of the Weighted Normal modifier in Edit mode make sure to toggle the button I've pointed on the screenshot above.
    Hi

    Thank you a 1000 times, so simple, it works perfecly. It's always that little check box. :)


  • Cake_Seller
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Can someone explain to this old grandpa what's the hype or reason to be excited for the amount of development and updates surrounding geometry nodes?  :# Is it something that'll benefit VFX artists a lot? From a videogame art perspective, I'm kinda scratching my head here on what its uses would be. Can things be done parametrically in Blender now and exported to game engines, like the Houdini tools that were used for The Ascent. or is something like that still very very far away still?
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Well, Anything parametric can save hours and hours of time, even for modeling.

    It's a bit of a lost art these days (as newer releases of Max seem very poorly put together, at least based on the demo I've recently installed), but basically max circa version 9 and 2009-ish had an incredibly robust workflow revolving around the Edit Poly modifier and the Modifier stack. The key point is that it allowed to select parts of a base model and apply parametric operations to that, non destructively, and with an excellent refresh rate.

    Imagine this : a base mesh, with a sbdivision modfier applied to it. Then being able to select some faces from that resulting subdivided geo, and delete them (non-destructively). Then instructing the mesh to be given thickness, with a parametric profile shape even. And at any time, adding a bend modifier (or even a shrinkwrap) to the base unsubdivided shape, without losing any of the added operations on top. Or even, going back to the base shape and editing it further at the polygon level, that too withoug losing anything.

    This workflow is extremely powerful, but as far as I am aware is only available in Max in such a fluid manner ... and the recent releases of Max are kinda awful. At the moment the Blender modifiers are not able to operate that way, but I believe that the push for nodes will likely introduce some new concepts which, eventually, would allow a fully non-destructive workflow close to oldschool Max.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    @pior I see, that does sound attractive for modelers. I just hope the Blender devs do have that as a goal, since most of what I'm seeing people do, and seems to be currently oriented for, is to do very abstract art.  :/
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Well, abstract stuff is actually a very good testbed I think. I would say that the first step would be to replicate all modifiers as nodes (which is probably achieved already) ; then add solid ways to select components from any node, even if just randomly ; and then add ways to select specific elements at any step in the chain. I suppose that this last part is probably quite complex because unlike Max Blender probably doesn't have the data stucture to fully allow that, and it certainly doesn't have the UX for it either.

    There's hope though : the Multires modifier already allows to merge/edit objects without breaking their respective levels, so i can only assume that someone somewhere is already thinking about all this and that the data structure is at least partially in place.

    If anything, if they manage to solve this, this will probably mean that Blender will also eventually get a stackable "Edit Poly" modifier (because as great as nodes may be, most of modeling needs can be achieved with a linear 1D stack anyways).
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