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  • MrNinjutsu
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter

    Hi @MrNinjutsu - well, it's only tangentially related but I can definitely see some interesting uses for this - so, thanks !

    (although in an ideal world there really should be more seamless ways to convert back and forth between edit mode selections, sculpt mode masks, and sculpt mode face sets).

  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    @Ruz try to run the "Denoising Depth" pass through a "Map Range" Node in the Compositor, I bet you will get much better result. No need to adjust the samples and bounces this way and you can easily adjust the range inside the compositor.

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    @Prime8 yeah i have been through and tried most of the fixes, but it actually worse than that as the mist pass itself actually fights with the transparency( leaves, windows, billboards etc and there are areas where my tree leave alpha is just cut off completely, this is an issue aside from the noise

    re the depth pass, its not anti aliased? nice jaggy edges whicb is a shame as it works pretty good otherwise


    Works perfect in eevee though, but since mine is a vr scene i can't borrow eevees mist pass


    EDIT In the image above a I used a color ramp to get rid of the crossing and constrained the mist to the far distance, which was my aim in the first place. its a bit of a hack really, but its ok for now

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    My issue with the nist pass is listed as a bug still, they really fix this as it's a complete showstopper

    https://developer.blender.org/T97562

  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    @Ruz the standard depth path is not anti aliased, the "Denoising Depth" is. Be aware, it always considers your world background as transparent, ignoring the film setting, depending on your scene you need to handle with that in the compositor.

    I haven't used it in Eevee, but your goal is using Cycles anyway right?

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    @Prime8 yeah , I prefer cycles for most things. I will mess around with the Depth pass later, but it totally ignores any transparent textures( like my leaves), so maybe not working for this scene.

    i got the mist pass working okayish so will rest on my laurels for now :)

    I heard that depth pass is mainly for defocus node and the reason it is not anti aliased is that it messes up depth of field

    this kind of works, but needs a few more tweaks. Turning down the IOR to 1.0 also gets rid of most of the remainaing white noise, though its not really desirable to do that

    I blurred the mist pass slighty, though might try some kind of defocus efffect. leaves have gone a bit weird too

  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    @Ruz The Denoising Depth pass completely ignores the transparent textures? Would you mind to show that? I assume your leaves use an alpha mask texture or are they semi-transparent?

    In general the depth (Z) pass uses a threshold value for clipping the alpha, mist and denoising depth don't clip, they use the actual value.

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    no, the depth pass ignores the alpha textures is what meant.

    TBH I have kind of got a good enough result using the mist pass now, quite suprised as I thought it was actually borked

    will post some more stuff later

    @Prime8 Confused now, the depth pass did render out the leaf alpha in another scene, and I just denoised the depth node iself, not sure how to set up the depth denoise?

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    so i am reasonably happy with this, the only thing is that didn't quite work were the hedge , where the mist pass is not quite dark enough, where the tree leaves were fine, but it's within a certain visual tolerance so i am ok with it, would be ncie to have some of the original sky showing through, that my next task


  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    My description was a bit wage I guess.

    To hopefully clear up the confusion, or adding more to it 😆

    The "Alpha Threshold" setting in the Passes - Data panel sets the value at which the depth pass treats alpha as completely opaque (above the threshold) or completely transparent (below the threshold). Standard value is 0.5, therefore unlikely that it is causing trouble with your leaf alpha in one scene but not the other, no idea what the actual cause could be.

    The "Denoising Depth" Pass in part of the denoising data passes. It shows up as an own pass in your compositor.


  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    thanks for that, will take another look today. You should write a tutorial on Denoising Depth, seems people can't find any documention on it :/

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    mmm, is not the denoise depth just a developers feature, i can't really seem to make it do anything useful

    seems the mist pass is the way to go?


    This came out spot on with no noise, almost as good as eevee, but I did use the mist pass with no denoising data, used the Noisy image node to denoise it



  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    this is less than ideal as it turns my leaf alphas in to alpha test, but If I add a bright contrast to the alpha in the shader node and bump up the contrast to a high number then all the noise is gone in the mist channel


    cycles not do alpha test by default but this is a bit of a hack which works fine( apart from not having smooth alpha)

    This is not an issue in Eevee, only cycles, not sure why

  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    @Ruz I don't know if Denoising Depth is a developer feature, it's not experimental at least, I don't see a reason not to use it. There is really not more to it to write a tutorial about.

    Here is a comparison with the settings at least.


  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    @Prime8 L ooks good - I was having trouble replicating that for some reason. Will investigate some more later, because it does seem like the best 'non hacky' solution - but for now I am happy enough with it ie there are no artefacts .

    But the bad thing is I seems to have fried my video card with all this rendering :)

    EDIT I simply can not get it work as you have it, none of the alpha works, its just shows the outline of the alpha cards

    I am using B;ender 3.2

    This is the raw depth pass render


  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator

    @Ruz That is caused by the pass treating the world background always as transparent black, no matter the film setting. Notice the leaves on the ground plane have no issues.

    You can deal with that by combining it with your alpha pass, if your film is set to transparent. Another easy solution is to envelope your scene in a transparent sphere or attaching a transparent plane to your camera far away to not interject with your scene.

  • daniellooartist
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    daniellooartist polycounter lvl 11

    Is there any way I can move an objects origin around independent of the object and snap to either vertex or grid on X Y or Z independently? In Maya you would just have to press insert and drag it by it's component handle.


    Setting the cursor to an active component first then going back to obj mode and setting the origin to the cursor is a far more limiting solution with a lot of extra busy work I simply do care for.

  • Fabi_G
  • daniellooartist
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    daniellooartist polycounter lvl 11

    One last thing. When I create an edgeloop, sometimes my "Factor" setting is set to 1 automatically and I have to change it back. Not all the time, but sometimes. Why does this happen and how can I avoid it. I would like it to be on 0 all the time unless I tell it otherwise.

  • daniellooartist
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    daniellooartist polycounter lvl 11

    Is this documentation inaccurate? I can tell you from experience (and many others can as well) that Ctrl+Period focuses the camera to the pivot point of the object. Not move the pivot point to a new location.

  • Fabi_G
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    Fabi_G insane polycounter

    @daniellooartist Curious, the shortcut works on my end. Accessing it via "Header: Sidebar ‣ Tool ‣ Options" works too

    Can't seem to reproduce the factor setting defaulting to 1.

  • daniellooartist
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    daniellooartist polycounter lvl 11

    The documentation is definitely inaccurate because it does not do what you described. I sincerely doubt pressing Ctrl+Period will work for you either. But I did what you said and I'm not getting the same results as you are. On top of that, I try to drag the axis to move it around but nothing is happening. Is there any way I can add you on discord so I can show you specifically what is happening. I don't think it's broken, I'm sure there's just some information I'm missing.



  • daniellooartist
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    daniellooartist polycounter lvl 11

    Wait, false alarm. It is not inaccurate. I have been pressing period on the number pad. Pressing period on it's intended location will provide different results. I also have to have the move tool active for it to work.

  • Udjani
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    Udjani interpolator

    Any suggestion on how can I set up these hotkeys using pen tablet, considering I don't use the ''scroll wheel'' function in any button



  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character

    I guess on the Intuos and similar Wacom models you could map this functionality to the touch ring or even touch gestures. Can't speak for how well that works though. I'd always just use the keyboard for it.

  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth

    Ctrl + Numpad + and Numpad - button does also increase / decrease selection.

  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666

    lol, what gives with Blender Stack Exchange, talk about forum Nazis, will stick with polycount thanks :)

  • Chrismartinartist
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    Chrismartinartist polycounter lvl 2

    Hello, sorry this has definitely been asked before, but not sure how to explain what I'm trying to do. It's a workflow question of sorts...


    I made an Axe in Blender and baked the high poly to a low poly. Within that model I want different parts of it to have different materials, for example in the handle there are bits that are glass, gold, steel and so on. I watched this video:


    And I want to use the techniques from it. But in his video he splits it with a simple black and white colour ramp. My axe has things like steel (grey) screws going through gold metal, in different places. How do I use the above (awesome) setup, but have it apply only to specific selections?

    I know you can add multiple materials to one object by assigning them in edit mode, but doing it this way they are not all in the same shader tree. I was hoping to do it all in one smart material so that I didn't have to set the above up 6-7 times for each different section.


    TL:DR

    How do I apply the above to selections within one model and one shader.

  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter

    You need to get familiar with the way the MixRGB node operates. In its default math mode (Mix), it allows you to lerp (linear interpolate) two image data inputs according to a greyscale mask. This is all you need to blend as many roughness/metalness/color inputs as you want within a single material tree.

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Question: given the shaded wireframe below, there is a way to select the vertex that are not visible (on the opposite side of the cylinder) with a box selection without having to rotate or enter X-Ray mode every time?


  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth

    Not in the vanilla Blender. There is a select through addon. And there is a experimental build with select through.

    https://blenderartists.org/t/x-ray-selection-tools/1212316

    https://devtalk.blender.org/t/x-ray-selection-experiments-build/24872/53

  • マルコ
  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth

    You're welcome :)

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    I have already two more questions 😂

    basically after I use the shortcut for Bevel or any other tool for which I might want to set parameters (like the % of the bevel etc...), I would like to stay focused on the area I'm working on and input the parameter there rather than having to move to the "Active Tool and Workspace" panel on the right side of the screen.

    So with the bevel I've noticed that, using the "Industry Compatible" keymaps, if I press the shortcut for Bevel and then middle mouse button I get the same window with settings but this time is coming up from bottom left side of the screen.

    So the first question is, would it be possible having that window spawning at the exact point where I press the middle mouse button? The closer to where I'm working on the screen, the better.

    Second question is, if I do the same thing with the Extrude tool thus Ctrl+E to select it and then middle mouse button, this again open that window in the bottom left but it also activates the tool and create an extrusion overlapping whatever is currently selected, which is not what happens with bevel, when I do the middle-mouse button with bevel the bevel command doesn't happen if I don't hold-drag the mouse.

    I don't like this much because is not consistent behavior so more chance for me to mess up without even realizing until much later when I find a bunch of edges stacked all over the place. So there is a way to have the extrude activate only on hold-drag like the bevel does, or maybe I'm using the wrong button and you're not supposed to hit middle-mouse just to bring up that parameters window?

  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth

    I don't get a menu in the IC map with mmb :(

    Do you by chance mean the adjust last operator panel / redo last panel down left? That's in the Blender keymap F9.

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Although the panel appear to be the same, the one I'm talking about opens on first use without requiring you having used the tool already (in the case of bevel, at least)

    Under the "Industry Compatible" keymaps this is called "3d View Tool: Edit Mesh, Bevel" and it has Middle Mouse assigned, same for the other 3d View Tools.

    But what you mention using the standard keys pressing F9 is very close to what I want, except I want that popup to appear right away as you start the bevel process without the need for an extra click.

    Well, now that I know F9 is a possibility, maybe that's enough and I simply need to remap it to something closer to my left hand, I need to try it a bit.

    The problem is, the "Redo Last" which you have in the standard keymap mapped to F9 is not present in the Industry Compatible keymaps, so I cannot use it nor assign a key to it x_x


    Edit: Nevermind the previous question, I've figured out how to add a mapping entry for an action that wasn't there by default

  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter

    Hi there again,

    To add to the above, you might actually want to consider avoiding this so-called "industry compatible" set of keybinds and instead start with the defaults, only modifying them to support your preferred (max-like or maya-like) navigation scheme first, and then later injecting your own preferred custom hotkeys for tools.

    (There's always been a sort of weird misconception going on with the folks in charge of these keymaps, assuming that someone coming from this or that program would want to have the exact same default hotkeys - whereas anyone with a lot of experience in any software would have developed their own shortcuts over time.)

    Also, this "IC" keymap is likely messing up some of the menus/pies.

    Of course I am not saying that one should use the default shortcuts, as that would be absurd ; but rather just saying that it might be best to start with the defaults and modify them gradually to fit ones needs, as opposed to starting with this so-called IC preset.

  • Tiles
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    Tiles greentooth

    Sadly you loose already functionality when you save your modifications as a new keymap ...

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Thanks for the tip, although since I think I've went over the major hurdles already (and changed several keys I haven't mentioned), might as well try working with this setup for a bit and see how it feels 🙂👍️

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Question: what is the equivalent of Target Weld from 3ds max? (weld a vertex to another one you select)

  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage

    "M" in my Blender 3.0. Can sometimes be Alt+M depending on your version. The hotkey brings up a menu but if you need to constantly repeat the action then Sft+R after use. To look it up use Merg. You can also find it under the Mesh menu in edit mode.

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    thanks, sorry for all the questions but I'm missing a lot of stuff I was used to use x_x

    Another one I've just noticed is, I would often select a bunch of edges or faces and then press ctrl+1 to convert the selection to vertex or ctrl+2 to convert the selection to edges etc..., how would you do that in blender?

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Nevermind my previous question, I've just noticed you can select for example faces, then pass to edge mode and the selection gets converted by default, nice :)

    But there is one more thing I'm not sure how to achieve...

    Say I have this selection here and I want to scale outward in the X/Y axis while having the vertex slide on those diagonal edges thus keeping proportional distance from the outer edges all around, how would you achieve that? Doesn't seems I can combine the Vertex Slide functionality with the Scale tool, there is a way?

    EDIT: nevermind, I've played long enough with it to figure it out myself 😂 So that's what Edge Slide is for, I see

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    There is still one more thing I would like to change:

    the colored squares letting you move on planes are kind of too small for my taste, requiring a bit too much precision to be used, would it be possible to enlarge those through settings?

    For reference of what I would like to have, something like in 3ds max where those square are bigger:


  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    Can somebody explain me how I ended up in the situation below where my model is kind of broken?

    With a Subdivision surface modifier you can see extremely sharp creases at the start of the video and when I delete two faces there is another face underneath welded on the backside of the model, how's that even possible?

    Even after removing those hidden faces it won't fix the model, which still keeps those sharp creases... how do I "unbreak" it?

    Here's the broken file also:


  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter

    By removing that one massive twisted Ngon you've somehow created inside the model :)

    (and yeah, Blender allows all kinds of geometry that would be considered illegal in other apps. This can lead to the above ... but also allows you to extrude single verts into thin edges, which happens to be very useful for so-called "strip modeling").

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3

    I'm afraid this will drive me insane because I'm sure it will happen again and I will still be oblivious to what caused it... x_x (maybe the two mirror modifiers?)

    I wish there was a way to tell it "don't create illegal geometry no matter what" (with illegal I mean inside faces)

    On a separate note, how can I get an object to bend like when you use the Bend modifier in 3ds max?

    In Blender I'm trying with a simple deform modifier set to Bend, but the problem with it is that it stretches the model in weird ways :\


  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter

    Well ... there was a solution before 2.8 ...

    https://blenderartists.org/t/looking-for-a-definitive-foolproof-way-of-bending-with-the-simple-deform-modifier/662429/61

    The TLDR is that the only sane way to bend things using the backwards, unfinished "Simple Deform" modifier is to orient the axis of your model accordingly, or have an Empty guide it - because the modifier can only bend properly as one would expect along only one of the 3 axis.

    Unfortunately the incredible power of the Max modifiers is not quite grasped by the Blender devs, I think. You will not find any concept of a EditPoly modifier stacked on top of other modifiers like Bend, Shell/Solidify to edit the model further non-destructuvely.

  • マルコ
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    マルコ polycounter lvl 3
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