Blender?

its like any other 3d package.
as for results there are some artists and companies using it and its in constant development and ultimately its completely free

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>>496294
>its like any other 3d package.

>>496286
>runs on a fucking tablet without getting it warm.
>free
>literally fuckign free
>simple.
>new shit done fast
>skripts and plugins

using it for modeling all time. im fucking tiered to pay thousands for shit which melts our 3 month old computers and need a fucking programmer team just to achieve basics. fuck autodesk.

OP here, I am rendering an explosion in cycles now, will post on an already existing WIP thread when done. Also, what are your opinions on sheep it?

>>496300
Its on >>495318

>>496286
Nothing wrong with it other than it doesn't get support like the proprietary software does.

Also dump Cycles and download either Luxrender, Mitsuba, or Nox renderer.

>>496286
I do fairly simple texturing and low-poly modeling for games. It's great.

Blender is fucking great for modeling. You can also easily write your own addons with Python. It has a lot of rough edges though. But for modeling I love it.

>>496295
Name features it's missing.

>>496306
Why wouldn't you use Renderman if you're going to use not-Cycles?

>>496315
MeshFusion, procedural nodal stuff in Houdini, good particle system, good hair rendering.

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Op here. No comments on the image i posted on the other board and want some constructive criticism. So I'll post it here

>>496322

What is it supposed to be? An orange monster with smoke penis arms and bad sample rate shadows?

>>496323
Well... thanks for that "constructive* criticism. And no, it's supposed to be a mid explosion, and it's my first attempt, i don't suppose that changes your opinion though.

>>496328
Watch real explosions, show me one that looks like that.

>>496334
Look, this is my first try, and this wasn't exactly my idea of constructive criticism, it's criticism, but it's no where near constructive

>>496318
What if you decide to make money off of it?

Also for unbiased rendering.

>>496339

What do you want from me?

Your explosion is wrong, use real life reference.

Also your shadow samples are too low.

>>496341
How do i turn them up? I would love to make them higher if that would improve quality, and next time i will be sure to use a real life reference, to make it better.

>>496286
There's a reason it's free
because it's absolute trash
only NEETs use it.

Any professional will laugh at you for using blender; blender is completely unprofessional.

>>496347
Ahem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ

>>496319
>good particle system, good hair rendering.

in works
personally i didn't have problems with it
did you even try it?

>>496348
I wonder if they will ever re render it in Cycles.

>>496348
>made in blender
was it rendered in cycles
were the characters made in blender

>>496353
>was it rendered in cycles
It was rendered in the internal engine.

>>496355
lol

>>496356
But it was.

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What Blender lacks is good artists, most of the people involved in it are programmers. This guy makes really good shit using Cycles.

http://www.creativeshrimp.com/gallery

>>496374
>http://www.creativeshrimp.com/gallery
Wanna know why that stuff actually looks good? Because he heavily composites it in Photoshop and manually touches up all the crap Cycles spits out.

Fact of the matter is, if you're using Blender, you're much better off using LuxRender. It is a more mature and fully featured renderer.

>>496376
This. Lux is a much better renderer.

My only gripe about it is Luxcore does not have tiled rendering except for biased. Everything is progressive based.

>>496376
>>496378

You're quite wrong, watch his videos and tutorials. He's shown rendering pretty much that result you're looking at using Cycles. And everyone does post processing after rendering, even people using Vray/Arnold renderers.

http://www.creativeshrimp.com/amazingly-complex-lighting-tutorial-book-14.html


Watch this specially to see the raw render and how he photo retouches it, just adding color gradient and saturating it less for that film-ish look.

http://www.creativeshrimp.com/post-processing-tutorial-in-12-simple-steps.html

>>496379
The point of >>496376 post is that this guy has to spend time taking his results and heavily photoshoping them. Things like brightening and dimming different light sources, giving a filmish look, vignetting, etc. Luxrender can do those within its GUI. With Luxrender you can completely change the lighting of a scene on the fly with Lightgroups. Can give it that "film-ish" look with its film response options. And can add different lens effects all without having to open up a separate program. Now I know more complex post processing you would need to use Photoshop but that would be more for a stylized look rather than a photo real look. Luxrender has it all in one GUI.

Actually, I'm not even sure if any other renderer has something like Lightgroups. Can someone tell me if others have something like that?

>>496380
Did you even watch the video? He achieves most of the look inside Blender using the film emulation profiles, and just uses Photoshop to add lens dust, a slight glow, etc. Stop being stuck in 2011, Cycles is much more advanced now, the only thing that lacks is good caustics rendering without having to wait hours.

>>496380
Adding vignette and other post effects in a renderer is insanity. You have much more control and flexibility doing it in literal post.

>>496381
>He achieves most of the look inside Blender using the film emulation profiles
Again, Lux's film response.

>uses Photoshop to add lens dust, a slight glow, etc
>Lens dust
The only thing that would need some shoping.

>Slight glow
Right in the GUI

>Stop being stuck in 2011, Cycles is much more advanced now, the only thing that lacks is good caustics rendering without having to wait hours.
Because cycles is babby's first renderer and can't into MLT.

And for the most part Lux's materials are far simpler to use. No having to mess with light path nodes or and shit. In fact that goes for pretty much any more developed renderer.

>>496383
True but only is you are going to some crazy, high detailed vignette or something. It works with just a simple vignette. I know that more complex compositing will always need a dedicated compositor but for the simple things Luxrender gets the job done.

>>496384
>>496380
If you're seriously adding post effects in the raw render instead of an actual compositor you're a fucking idiot. NO ONE does this. It's smarter to render the sequence as raw as possible and tweak it later to avoid using destructive workflows.

>>496386
See
>>496385

>>496388
See what? Your stupidity? Lux can have all the blows and whistles you want when it comes to pseudo compositing but it's a moot point because no one in their right mind would ever use them. Adding vignette to the raw render, get the fuck out of here you fucking degenerate.

>>496388
You're still fucking wrong. You are making bad decisions which will massively haunt you down the line. Don't intentionally follow bad work flows when you fucking know better.

>>496390
>>496391
What I'm saying is if you need more compositing, then don't do it.

But if all that is in the GUI is all you need then how exactly is it a bad thing? Especially when you can simply turn it all off and still have your raw render.

>>496393
Fine. Enjoy.

>>496394
Look, I understand taking it into a dedicated compositor it superior, but what I want to know is why it is so bad if a vignette and a little bloom is all you need?

>>496396
Nope. Done.

>>496398
Well I'm glad you came around to seeing it my way.

>>496286
>What does /3/ think of Blender?
most of /3/ hates it because it outperforms their $4k progs.

dey be buttblasted dat dey spent skrilla on bullshit.

Last I used it was back in 2.49b. I remember it was a pretty good program but exporting to lesser known game engines was a pain and some of the interface can be a bit odd. In my opinion, the way modelling is set up in Blender and Maya is better than Max but that's just preference. Also, my first 4chan post.

>>496453
Seems like a decent program. Too bad most of the people here are trying to justify their overly expensive 3d modelling software rather than explaining the pros and cons of each.

I've used (extensively) I think, all major 3D packages, namely:
- 3DSMax
- Maya
- ZBrush
- Modo
- Rhino
- Sketchup and other simple tools
- Wings
- and a few others I can't remember.

Blender blows everything out of the water. Honest opinion, not a fanboy. I don't want to get too much into details, but in a nutshell:

- There's nothing I want to do in any of the others I can't do in Blender (save for good nurbs in Rhino)
- There's nothing I want to render in the others I can't render in Blender
- It uses 10% of my PC resources when compared with the others
- It's free
- the interface gets a while to get used to, but once you do, you wish every other software on the planet worked like it
- It can even replace compositing software like After Effects, to a degree.

Cons:
- If you're looking for a job and show at your employer and display Blender knowledge, most will go "uh?". Which is stupid, because 3D knowledge is easily transferable from one software to the other, but industries are always stupid.

>>496464
Justify?


AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH

>>496471
This has to be the most constructive comment I've seen all year. Can I take it and frame it?

>>496472

Do you honestly think people have all paid for their software and that's why they defend the industry standard software?

>>496473
I'm not the guy that said that, I'm the guy from >>496469.I just get pissed of at comments that do nothing to advance a conversation.

Anyway to answer the question, no, obviously not. But you can't either remove the Sunken Fallacy component (or whatever that bias is named), that brings people to defend a choice they've already made. People generally either:
a) Have paid for their software, and as such are emotionally invested in it
or
b) Have learned something in school, then used it in studios, and are also emotionally invested in it.

On top of that, people have a tendency to dismiss free as being less good.

I have used all packages in my post for modelling, detailing, texturing, animating, both high-res renders/architectural renders or gaming assets. When I say I think Blender is equal/superior, I talk from a knowledgeable (I hope) point of view. I doubt most people arguing here have tried Blender for more than a few hours. It's a hard program to get into.

As a proof of this phenomena, I'll point you to the Adobe aficionados. I have been doing 3D for the last 10 years, but I've been working in photoshop and illustrator since I'm a kid. I affirm without an inch of a doubt that free software is completely superior to the Adobe suit (as far as drawing/sketching) is concerned. Yet artists using photoshop will laugh when you say that and go "yeah right".

>>496477
Your adobe comparison is a strawman argument at best.

Photoshop is not designed to be a sketching/painting program, of course others do it better, neither is illustrator.

I don't really give a shit about what your anecdotal memories of people have said about it.

Besides, Blender isn't better either. It's just a different tool.

>>496493
Regardless of what Photoshop is, it's the go-to tool of the industry for painting (that, or Painter).

It's not a strawman argument. It's a parallel, which exists show there's context and precedents to the argument "People get attached to what they use and are refractory to try something new".

It's not my "anecdotal memories" either. It's all over the net, every tutorial, every magazine, every advice on what to use. Photoshop, or Painter.

For every open-source, free tool that exists, you will have a plethora of people arguing their paid-for tool is better. Sometimes with some validity (Mac people), sometimes not at all (cuteFTP, WinRar, Kaspersky,...). People are just attached to what they use, what they found first, what they learned. The more they'll use it, the more invested they'll be in it, and the more they'll be likely to defend it without actually trying the other options.

But all this is a deviation from the main conversation. Fact is, I didn't say Blender was the best without reason.

I said (>>496469) that I could do with Blender everything I could do with other tools. On top of that, it's lighter on my resources (which allows me to use it both on my powerhouse and my crappy laptop), and it's free.

Similar to others + lighter + free = better.

Your rebuttal was:
- "your analogy to show people might be close-minded about this because in a similar situation other people are similarly close minded is a strawman argument" -- it's not
- "Photoshop is not a painting program" -- it is, proof is all the PAINTING brushes, and the million of PAINTING tutorials, both official and unofficial, that advise to use it.
- insult assuming I'm referring to my anecdotal memories when I'm actually referring to the industry consensus
- "Blender is not better, it's different"...Yes, how?

4 lines, and not a single argument about the subject at all.

If you care to actually say something worthwhile, one of us could learn something today.

Bumpity bump

>>496493
What bugs me is that in the whole of >>496469 and >>496477, you've decided to attack the last paragraph, without tackling any of the arguments that actually matter to the thread.

Even if you were right in your rebuttal, it hardly matters in a discussion about "is Blender a valid tool for pro 3D"...But somehow I'm the one having a strawman argument.

You know what I think? Here's my theory:

I think you're wounded in your pride of Maya/3DS/Houdini/WhateverTheCrap3D-user but have nothing to actually answer me and contribute, because you haven't tried Blender, for exactly the reasons I stated above.

But your pride prevents you from going "yeah, maybe I should try it", and, having nothing to answer me, not because I am right, but because you don't know if I am, you decide to attack the only part that seemed possible to attack, and thus pathetically salvaging your convictions.

So now, even more wounded and angry, you'll resolve to never try Blender, and instead of learning something new, and having a real position on which software you prefer and why, you'll stay close-minded, stopped in your expansion by your pride and insecurity. Because clinging to something you know, defining yourself by what you use, and defending it without facts is actually insecurity.

Whereas if you were secure and confident in your abilities and your capacity to learn, you wouldn't care. If you give me enough arguments showing me that clara.io is way better than Blender, I'll happily test it. I may stay with Blender because I am a proponent of open source and free, but I'll be clear about my reasons. I'll say "Yeah, Modo is better, but I like my open source, and I'm cheap".

That sort of insecurity is poison at every level of life, work, ethics, relationships, everything. If I'm right about my assessment, I hope you'll have the clarity to realize it. If I'm not, then sorry for the whole lecture, and I'll believe you if you say you've actually tried Blender and have a real opinion.

>>496558
Bloody hell, why are you so angry? You need to project less and lighten up. It's not the end of the world if people don't try Blender. Many products have come and gone even if they were technically better. Everything is going to be alright.

As long as we have tools that work for us, who cares? I certainly don't mind a price I never pay and a slightly higher overhead I never notice in a program that my experience with allows me to make ends meet.

Just let people be, buddy.

Stop worrying about the world's great injustices, you can't fix them all.

>>496569
I really ain't angry. I just spent a long sleepless night of work and so I tend to write a lot.
But yeah, you're right, I completely strayed off.

I'm mainly pissed that no one's posting anything worthwhile, people are just going "blender, yeah" or "blender, bleh", without adding anything to the convo.

>asking 4chan for opinion

nothing good comes out of this and you know it

>>496506
Could you recommend some open source alternatives to photoshop?

By the way, I like the way you think. You are very articulate. Do you have a blog or something?

>>496286
Every single computer in the entire CG industry has Blender installed. Just saying.

>>496576
Thanks, I try to be. English is not my main language, so I struggle a bit.

I don't have a blog, no...I've been thinking about writing one.

Alternatives to Photoshop...It depends what you want to do.

- For something almost exactly similar to Photoshop, use Gimp. I hate it. It sucks balls. It has a horrible interface. But it does almost everything Photoshop does, save for two (important) things:
- CMYK: available through a plugin, but it's a chore
- Magic filling tool: that super-stamp thingy that automatically fills skies? Nope. I've heard there are plugins, but I didn't test them.

Now, if you want to do painting/sketching, you're in luck. There's a plethora of good software.

For sketching, look no further than MyPaint. Just no other software comes as close to the feeling of drawing on paper. I totally forget I'm using a wacom. It's just so fucking responsive. It lacks a lot of tools though (no selection, no fill, etc). But it's by design. If you want to scale something up, redraw it. It's a good habit to take, makes the drawings better.

If you want something to do more heavy painting, but that can also be used for sketching, and that is almost on par with Photoshop/Gimp in terms of photo retouching, you have Krita. Krita is a jewel of a software. It runs fast, it runs well, it does all that's needed, it's in heavy development and new features are added all the time.
The next version, due soon, will even have full-fledged animation shit, onion skin, replay, timing, and so on. That's apart from all the other improvements (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-free-paint-app-lets-make-it-faster-than-phot).

Finally, if you want to do vector stuff, please invest some time in Inkscape. It looks like a cheap software, it looks limited, but once you get really used to it, you will feel like you're in a shithole when you have to get back to Illustrator. It simply blows it out of the water, and it's not yet at version 1.

>>496579
>- For something almost exactly similar to Photoshop, use Gimp. I hate it. It sucks balls. It has a horrible interface. But it does almost everything Photoshop does

Funny that sounds like biased and unjustified hate towards a free alternative to an expensive and power intensive application. Maybe you should take the time to learn it properly and not hate on it.

I wonder where that parallel becomes relevant...?

>>496595
I suppose trolling, but since I haven't slept in two days, just in case:

So someone says:

> For something almost exactly similar to Photoshop

And

> use Gimp

And

> it does almost everything Photoshop does

And you have the gall to say "unjustified hate"? It's not like I didn't recognize the software's qualities.

For fuck's sake, I'm ADVISING PEOPLE TO USE IT!

I've used Gimp 1h a day on average for the last 5 years. I said I hate it, I didn't say one shouldn't use it.

I've switched my whole workflow for my whole studio to open source a few years back.

Gimp, Krita, MyPaint, Inkscape, Blender are part of my daily life, as were the Adobe Suit and 3DS/Maya for the ten preceeding years.

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. You can get anything done with Gimp, but it's far from pleasant to use. Still does most of what Photoshop does, and is free, so as far as I'm concerned, preferable to Photoshop, even though I curse every time I need to open it.

>>496599
Get some sleep, friend.

>>496599
> I said I hate it, I didn't say one shouldn't use it.

That is what I see most people say about Blender.

>>496602
Maybe. What I've seen is more along the lines of "Blender? What a joke!".

If people hate it, they can. The interface is really opinionated. I think it's great, but I understand some people would abhor it.

>>496604

Where have you seen that though? Here or on non-anonymous and proper channels of communication? Many people here are full of shit either intentionally or because of lack of experience.

>>496579
Thank you very much. Very detailed explanations. Your english is good, don`t worry.

I`ll try MyPaint and Krita, they look neat. And, one last question. I`m interested in learning blender and all that 3D modelling thing. Do you think it`s a good practice just watching tutorial videos and copying what is being shown, or should I use a book to learn it?

>>496609

I'm not sure what's best. One of the problems of Blender is that it changes very fast, so tutorials still work, but the buttons are elsewhere, and sometimes even the names of stuff has changed. It sucks.

I advise going through the official help, which is maintained. There are little tutorials and exercises for most features, and you'll learn the basics. Then, if a tutorial tells you to click X tool in Y tab, you'll know it's actually in the Z tab now, instead of being completely lost.

Videos are helpful mainly to study the logic of modelling, rigging, etc. In the end, 3D modelling isn't rocket surgery: you push vertices around. The technique is easy. What's hard is understanding the logic, and for that, any video for any 3D package will be useful. You don't have to look for Blender videos. Once you know the shortcuts and you know the main tools, extrude is extrude, whatever software you may be using.

As for books, I've never tried any, so I wouldn't know.

Blender forums and Q&A sites are pretty friendly. I've yet to get a single answer on the IRC channel, but you can try that too.

>>496609

Everyone learns differently, we have no idea how you learn. Only you do.

Some people learn by reading about something and understanding it.
Some people learn by seeing someone else do it.
And some people (like me) learn by doing. I'll get the gist of things and then go off and figure it out on my own and it stays forever.

>>496613
Ok, got it. Thanks for your help! I`m actually learning to draw, paint and all that stuff, but I think learning 3d modelling could help me learn art faster.

>>496657

Nothing can make you learn art faster other than practicing more. Stop looking for shortcuts.

>>496322
That picture looks like a catgirl head emerging from a puff of smoke in the thumbnail.

I started out using max and Photoshop... I've been doing 3d work for about 10 years now and maybe 5 years ago I made the switch to blender and gimp. Yes, there's a challenge getting use to the different interfaces but I wouldn't ever go back at this point. Every program out there has pros and cons, just find one that works for you and stick to it.

>>496286
I think that it's neither great nor terrible.

>>499963
That's not really a useful answer

both blender and cycles are perfectly fine, and you can do absolutely amazing things with it. Check out e.g. cosmos laundromat, the latest project from the blender foundation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-rmzh0PI3c

Of course blender is not the most common tool in various fields, so the standard caveats apply; if you work together in a team of people who only use maya, interaction would become harder etc, so then you would switch to maya. That being said, the 3D modelling industry is not really as uniform as e.g. the graphic design scene where it's basically 100% adobe products; people use 3DSM, softimage xsi, maya, blender, modo, proprietary in-house tools like presto (disney/pixar), ... so people will not really tend you give you shit for not having used the tools they are using compared to e.g. people in graphic design who will laugh at you if you can't use photoshop/illustrator/indesign. In game-design and advertising blender also has a really strong presence.

Cycles also doesn't support metropolis & micropolygon rendering yet, but many/most commercial renderers don't do either, so overall it's pretty competitive. It doesn't render much slower than vray et al either. Blender also didn't used to support ptex, but I believe recent versions have gotten support for that.

So overall it's a good deal and investment of your time.

>>496319
the cycles renderer (which comes with blender) has procedural nodal stuff, it has a great particle system, and the hair rendering is on par with other renderers.

check http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/render-engine-comparison-cycles-vs-giants/ for a comparison.

I have not used MeshFusion, but from a quick look at it, its main feature seems to be live boolean operations combined with subdivision modifiers; blender supports this as well.

Regardless, even if it did not have any of those, listing two features that are specific to a single 3D package does not make any argument for why blender is not like "any other 3D package", since none of the "any other 3D packages" will have those features either. Does 3DSMax have MeshFusion? Does SoftImage have the procedural nodal stuff Houdini has?

>>497827
why would you use gimp, krita is just as free and superior in almost every way. It also supports interoperating with blender through EXR files, exchanging OpenColorIO tables, file/render layers (images blender renders automatically appear as layers inside krita, so you can apply effects/filters to them in krita, re-render in blender and your krita document will automatically apply all your filters to the changed render result), 16 & 32-bit color-depth, ...

>>500954
Not the anon you have replied to, but krita for me has been very unstable lately. Gimp gets the simple jobs done, and I switch to krita if necessary.

>>497560
Holy shit i totally see it

>>496579
>Finally, if you want to do vector stuff, please invest some time in Inkscape. It looks like a cheap software, it looks limited, but once you get really used to it, you will feel like you're in a shithole when you have to get back to Illustrator. It simply blows it out of the water, and it's not yet at version 1.
As heavy as Illustrator is, Inkscape always ran like way more shit on all my systems
I haven't used it for a year or so, but from hours of frustration I'm thoroughly turned off

>>502218
>>496579
forgot to say, I totally agree with you on GIMP though
I used it for the longest time, and while I still like photoshop better and now use it because I got a legitamite free copy, GIMP still gets it done for free give or take some things

>>496286

Blender is a great jack-of-all-trades when it comes to features, but it's not superior in any, that said neither are most other 3d programs and they charge you an arm and a leg, it's quite incredible that Blender is free given what it offers.

So if you are interested in 3d, Blender is a great starting point, it has good poly modeling, good animation, good sculpting, good texturing abilities, good render options.

However if you want to focus on something specific, like sculpturing then ZBrush is number one by far, if you are in to animation then Maya is the industry standard, etc.

If you are a professional you will typically focus on one aspect of 3d graphics, and choose the best software for that specific area, this is why Blender is seldom used professionally, none of it's features are 'best in class', they're just overall good.

>>496286
The documentation ranges from atrocious to nonexistent. Good luck figuring out how to use it. Not that Autodesk is much better, they've got dead links everywhere in their Maya docs but at least what's there is up to date.

I absolutely despise the way blender works but I'm stuck with it because I don't have 5000 dollars to buy Maya with and I need to make models for commercial reasons

What are the best ways to make it function more like maya? I've already fixed the wer buttons and view camera rotation

>>502395
box modeling - blender
rigging - blender optional with rigify
retopology - either in blender or download custom plugin
UV mapping - blender
sculpting - external
painting - external
rendering - render plugin or external

>>496341
>>496339
>>496334
>>496323
stop being an irritable cunt
this is why no one talks to you IRL

>>502395
Maya isn't $5000. It's $1470 a year if you pay annually, or $185 a month, that provides you with full technical support and always the latest updates.

Alternatively, you could just get Maya LT, since it has everything you need. It's only $240 a year ($20 a month), or $30 a month if you go month by month... It's even on Steam.

But, why are you not using the free 3 year Educational license? You don't need to be enrolled in school to use it.

>>502438

That's exactly what I have been using for the past two years, however since I'm now using it for things I plan on selling I don't find it worth risking getting caught

The fact I'm already accustomed to how maya works just makes blender seem so illogical and counterintuitive

>>496296
thank you.

Have a quick question for you guys. Is blender a good tool for creating characters and animate them? I know how to use Cinema 4D but I'm not sure if it is worth it buying the commercial version as I use the student version.

>>504190
its not recommended to make characters outside zbrush

>>504200
wut.

zbrush is usually just used for sculpting, 90% of the time spent "making the character" (cleanup, retopo, texturing/painting, rigging, animating, ...) normally happens outside zbrush.

>>504213
>90% of the time spent "making the character"
Lmao no. First of all, rigging and animating aren't a part of "character modeling", so don't know why you're bringing those up.

Retopo takes minutes, that's the point of doing sculpt-first. The texturing also shouldn't take you anywhere near as much time as it took your to develop/sculpt the character in ZBrush. You auto-generate some textures and use them to quickly aid you in texturing. Quixel and Substance have greatly increased speeds for this too.

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>>504218
>Retopo takes minutes, that's the point of doing sculpt-first.
>The texturing also shouldn't take you anywhere near as much time as it took your to develop/sculpt the character in ZBrush. You auto-generate some textures and use them to quickly aid you in texturing.
>Quixel and Substance

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Im trying to make a face cut on the line where the Yellow arrow is pointing but it keeps going through the entire thing where the red X's are
How can I get it to only cut where the yellow line is?

>>504226
Knife tool (K) and press ctrl.

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Well, there are some videos/tutorials on YouTube.
You can do a lot with this help:

What about making animated shorts?

Isn't maya better for that than blender?

>>504440
Absolutely.

>>504441
Because of those rigging circle things that let you puppet easily? blender doesn't have those kind of animating tools?

Anyone here switch from Wings3D to Blender? I'm having a hard time getting acclimated to the UI. Wings was so intuitive.

>>504442
I think blender has the curves and normal rigging tools as well, but maya has other great features like the trax editor or human IK. I'm not sure if blender has animation layers.

Also maya can be connected to motionbuilder, which could be by far the best tool to animate, since it makes it so much easier to do stuff.

>>504443
i think ur wrong, blender modeling is so much faster if you do everything with keyboard

maya >>> blender

>>504482
The mouse control feels weird to me. I must be doing something wrong I'll give it another try this weekend.

>>504443
I switched from blender to wings for modeling. shit is cash. Everything is right there in the right-click menu or up top. Now I only use blender for unwrapping.

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I'm not particularly good at blender.... or unity... my models need work to say the least.

>>504537
As long as you keep trying you'll get better.

The only thing I don't like about Blender is the fucking 3d cursor. It annoys the living shit out of me. I wish there was a way to use Blender without it.

>>504532
>The mouse control feels weird to me.
it is, blender in general feels weird that's why i use the searchbox sometimes. what bothers me the most is the viewport splitting, they have to do something with this shit.

>>504663
just shift+ctrl to reset it and new objects will always be placed in the center of the grid

>>496286
my 3d teacher said that i should try maya because it's better for animation, but just downloading it is such a hassle that i already feel demotivated.

>>504674
try this

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/rigging-minutes-blenders-rigify-addon/

>>504674
They make it so god damn easy dude... Are you trying to download a pirated version?

http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya

>Create Account
>Download

sooo hard.

Your teacher is giving you good advise, follow it, it will greatly help your chances getting into the industry.

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>>504679
>>504682

i don't really have a PROBLEM with animation, to me Blenders does just fine.
i just want an argument besides "industry standard" to learn a new software to do something that i already do.

pic related, i did this in blender

File: umaru4.blend.png (360KB, 1904x1002px) Image search: [Google]

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I've never used 3D software before and I only learned to use Blender 2 weeks ago. The first thing I attempted was Umaru. Is she kawaii? I don't know if I'm doing anything wrong yet.

>>504807
That head reminds me of an ocarina flute, learn proper topology for one.
Hair looks like a drape, don't use that many subdivisions while you are only creating the basic shape. Also don't stretch them so far and keep to square faces.
Keep your faces evenly distributed and only add additional detail where needed such as the face and at joints. Too many faces in places where they aren't needed such as her cloak below the chin.
Cloak isn't even smooth and why is it even attached to the hair and body.
Don't even consider using lambert shading when there is a default toon shader.

Don't get me started on the horrible deformations you'll get when trying to animate. Creating different facial expressions will be a near impossible when not using textures.

0/10 wouldn't even punch

>>504808
I have no idea what you're saying. But I'll keep practicing I guess.
So subdividing is bad? There's only 1 level modifier on it and I only did that cause I thought everything was finished and was moving on to rigging.

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>>504807
you can achieve that with a simple sphere, learn about proportional editing, it can be helpful

>>504447
Blender also has "trax editor" in the action/NLA editor, it also has a very nice IK system, it has animation layers, if you mean layering/blending animations, yes it does. As for mocap, it's super easy to import mocap in blender, turn it into actions and use it as you want. The dopesheet helps with fixing mocap.

>>504532
Blender is a hard program to get into if you're used to button click. Blender's gui is in my opinion actually way better than most 3d programs. I come from a engineer background and blender feels nothing to any cad program. It feels like you're playing dota or warcraft with all it's shortcuts. If you wanna learn to use blender, because blender is way faster for modelling when you're using the keyboard, watch tutorials, just watch people model in it and watch the screencast and do the same thing and you'll learn fast.

>>504811
You're doing it wrong, so very fucking wrong.
Make a quad sphere and extrude outwards for the ears. Stop giving bad advice to people.

>>504862

I think you're the one who should stop giving bad advice. There's nothing wrong with that mesh.

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>>504880
Are you trolling or just entirely retarded? Why would you ever accept a fucking sphere pole, and such a drastic difference in poly density, as ok?
>pic related
Could have spaced the edges a little better near the top, but it's 1000x better than that other spherical trash.

>>504890
>make a quad sphere
yeah poles are evil, but its not gonna affect the normals if he won't deform them

>>504910
sphere poles will always cause shader pinching so they should really be avoided even on non deforming curvature. If the mesh isn't to be smoothed geospheric topology is the ultimate (all triangles, maximum curvature for polycount), for smoothing quadspheric is the way to go.

>>504910
>but its not gonna affect the normals if he won't deform them
Wrong. That's only true for FLAT surfaces dude. That's why you'll see that on the end caps of cylinders sometimes, because it's flat. If the surface has curvature, then that many edges leading to a pole is going to cause all kinds of fuckery with your normals and lead to a shitty normal map in the area too. Not to mention it's a higher polycount to do it that way versus what >>504890 did.

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>>504913
>only true on flat surfaces
then what am i seeing here? also you can control how many polygons the sphere consist
its just that blender don't have quaded sphere out of the box unless you take an icosphere and subdivide it

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>>504915
What you're seeing there is a wireframe happily obstructing your view of the shading issues.

>also you can control how many polygons the sphere consist
No shit sherlock, why would you feel the need to even say that? That controls how many polyons THE WHOLE sphere takes up. Notice how the polygon density becomes denser near the top because the edges are all leading to one point instead of terminating? If you use the quad approach, you cut out a lot of useless polygons at the top that aren't contributing anything to your model.

You have to learn about proper modeling practices. You have to learn about maintaining quad-flow. You have to learn about optimizing your poly-counts on a per-area base not just a slider for the polycount of a primitive object.

>>504890 's model will be able to be smoothed properly to have a normal map baked from a smoothed version to the low-poly version. Or if this is being used for animation, then you want your mesh to be able to smooth for render-time. Massive poles like that do not smooth properly, you need to maintain quads and reduce pole usage.

OP do your self a favor and learn max or maya along side it. Blender is a great tool, simple to pick up, yet very robust once you really know what you're doing. The problem is the UI is very different from other software packages. I'm an animator that has to use max for certain projects and one of my biggest hindrances just learning the other packages because it was so different from what I normally use, as such I still don't know how to do any kind of real modeling in max and have no clue how to rig, luckily I never have to.

>>504921
>You have to learn about proper modeling practices
lol we are just talking about if a sphere have poles or not,you are just assuming poles are bad but fact is poles and ngons exist in primitives and if they were such a big problem they would be terminated

Would blender be a good option for making character models for lower poly, ps2/xbox type graphics game?

>>504944
No, we weren't talking about just a sphere with poles, only you seem to be. We're talking about a hat that has all edges leading to a pole at the top, which is even worse.

The reason why there are poles on primitives of cyclinders and spheres is because there's no better way to create a base version of those objects, if you made it a quad sphere, it would look slightly lumpy unless you had a high number of vertex points determined by pi. Having edge-loops that run perfectly horizontal and vertical allows Catmull-Clark and OpenSubdiv to create a perfectly smooth curvature, except at the very tip, which is an acceptable compromise. In fact, when you smooth a sphere of this type, it becomes slightly oblong, as the circumference looses more volume than the poles due to lower poly-density.

In absolutely any other case than a 'perfect' sphere, you want a quad-surface.

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>>496347
No it's not faglord. It's a tool just like you.

>>496383
This

>>496386
This

>>496393
Too retarded. No sense explaining optimized work flow.

>>502395
Maybe the X Force will save you

File: Blender Quad Sphere.png (38KB, 345x316px) Image search: [Google]

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>>504921
If quad spheres are that important, it's not hard to make one in Blender.
>Subdivide a cube
>Shrinkwrap the cube blob over a sphere
Sure it's longer but I've never spent much time making spheres while modelling.
It is weird that it's not a default option, though. Or even an addon as far as I know.

>>496286
Sounds like you don't require much. Blender will easily handle what you've listed but it's UI takes longer to get used to compared to the competition.

>>504809
>I have no idea what you're saying.

He's saying good job Anon but you need to learn the fundamentals, keep studying and in a few weeks or months or whatever come back and re-do your model and you'll realize all the ways you can optimize it and improve it that are both better, faster to do, and will let you do more with the model.

Subdividing isn't bad, it's good, too many polygons is bad.

You should go ahead and rig it, you learn the most when things break; you'll understand what's wrong with your model as it fails to animate nicely. If you don't understand why, don't get frustrated, just do a proper rigging tutorial and then come back

>>504944
poles aren't inherently bad. it's sphere poles specifically that are bad. the more edges converging to one vert, the worse pinching becomes. A 7 edged pole is about the limit you would want to stop at for a non triangulated mesh.
What nobody else has seemed to realise is that it's worth spending the 10 seconds it takes to make a quaded sphere if for no other reason that it will keep your UVs clean.

in Maya , make a cube, centre it, apply a sculpt modifier, scale it up until the cubes corners are totally flattened to a sphere, smooth normals, delete history, freeze transforms.
That takes about 30 seconds if you need to use menus. about 10 seconds if you have most of those tools on your shelf. and 1 second if you have a script.

There is literally no good reason to model from a spherical base. All you're doing is trying justify why it isn't so bad. If someone offered you a ham sandwich or a shit sandwich, would you take the shit and try to justify it?

>>504972
Serious question: Is that different from just subdividing a cube?

This >>504890 resembles a cube that's been subdivided 3 times in Blender (I know it's not Blender in that pic, I think it's Maya based on the transform widget?)

I'd also like to know how to smoothly extrude the ears like that, proportional editing is okay but not great (it doesn't keep the quads uniform)

>in after lmao blendfags are THIIIIS stupid!!!

>>504979
asking reasonable questions is never stupid. Making assumptions and not looking up general questions yourself, is stupid.
>>504890
select some faces of the quad sphere, extrude outwards, add an edge loop to help taper the shape, scale the end of the ear inwards with soft selection enabled ( i think that's what proportional editing in Blender is), push/pull some verts until the shape is what you want.

The key here is you don't just pull existing verts to create the shape you want; you create new verts/faces to create the shape you want (i.e extrude faces), while trying to maintain an even distribution of verts and keeping quads as close to square as possible.

I know in Maya when i create quad spheres with this>>504978 method, if they're somewhat low poly it doesn't always come out perfectly spherical, which may or may not matter. But this can be fixed by creating a sphere of roughly the same size, making it a live mesh, selecting all the verts of the quad sphere, and scaling so it snaps to the live surface. Or shrink wrap to the sphere, but from my experience shrink wrap sometimes does some weird shit so i avoid it when possible.

A couple of questions about duplifaces:
First, how do I take the child being duplicated out of the render without moving or hiding the duplications too?
Secondly, how can I apply a displace modifier to the duplications, rather than to the child being duplicated?
I'm wanting to do a particular procedural terrain technique that requires me to apply displacement after duplication, not before.

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how come this one material keeps showing up in viewport shading > solid mode when everything else is usually grey
all other materials show up as grey
i cant google it nor can i replicate it

>>504995
Changing diffuse colour changes display colour.

>>504998
oh it only works if i change the color before i hit the use nodes button
is there any way to do this after i have clicked the use nodes? since if i change the colors in nodes or in the material surface settings it doesnt change in solid mode and it keeps the old color i set up before hitting "use nodes"

>>505002
Are you using internal or Cycles?

>>505003
cycles

>>505004
Alright, it's probably a bug or limitation then.

>>505005
oh that sucks
thanks

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>>504995
I don't know if I understood your problem well enough, but you can change every material's viewport color in the material menu.

>>504990
Anyone?
I need the help of a Blender wizard!

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>>505057
>how do I take the child being duplicated out of the render without moving or hiding the duplications too?

Assuming I actually read that correctly.

Is it really that hard to look up "blender hide object from render"?

>>505060
It hides the duplications too.

>>496295
i know i know

it's quite an insult to blender to compare it to other 3d packages

>>505020
ah thanks

>>505060
Dude, I just tested it out with all 3 renders, internal, cycles and game. Turning off the render thing works even with objects that share the same data block.

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For one thing it imports .3ds files like shit

Literally every .3ds file I tried to import looks something like this

>>504972
In the default addon "Extra Objects" one of the objects is a "round cube".

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>>504976
>You should go ahead and rig it, you learn the most when things break

Boy, you said it.

>>505309
I'm really curious how you managed to do that, can you show me your armature? How did you weightpaint it, did you use automatic weight assignment when parenting it?

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>>505311
Automatic weights didn't work and I got this message.

I was just screwing around with the armature and the option that did work; envelope weights. I guess I'll have to learn how to manually weightpaint later.

>>505312
I have seen that error before, I had X-mirror on and by accident changed on of the bones without changing the mirrored one. Your armature most likely isn't perfectly symmetrical, make sure your arm and leg bone end in .l and .r otherwise it won't find the mirror bones.

In edit-mode of your armature, when duplicating (Shift+D) these bones snap your cursor on the center (Shift+S) and do Ctrl+M and mirror on the X-axis. Select the mirrored bones and under Armature below in your viewport click Flip Names.

I can create a simple tutorial if you need on topology and rigging.

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>>505313
I think it might be because I didn't add any bones to her stupid cloak and it's all one mesh. Then again I have no idea what I'm doing because I'm an idiot.

>>505315

>I think it might be because I didn't add any bones to her stupid cloak

Looking at it thats what I think too. Maybe you should also extend the cloak straight vertically backwards because right now it probably clips with the rest of the mesh or is too near other parts of the mesh and the automatic weight function gets confused . Rig it and in pose mode relax it back in a downwards horizontal position (you can set that as standard pose so when you clear the bone transformation it returns to her coat hanging down and not straight backwards like a strange boner on her backhead)

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>>505315
I don't really see any errors in the armature, though IK constraints sometimes do cause strange deformations when not properly setup.

You used the envelop deform, which can cause errors when the mesh is out of range for the bones, so it might be the cloak.

You should really be using automatic weights, doesn't it show up or does it also give errors?
Select Mesh > (Multi-)select Armature > Parent (Ctrl+P)

Not entirely related but are the rolls of the bones on each chain (arm, leg, body) the same? They should share the same orientation, including the mirrored bones, otherwise you'll get results such as pic related, which happens when mirroring bones and poses.

>>496341

Real life reference is for faggots with no creativity.

>>505425
wow page 2 without any backlash

also i hope youre kidding

>>505477

Visual appeal trumps realism.

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>>496579
The biggest thing missing for me from GIMP is the lack of adjustment layers with no plan in sight for the team to implement them. I've been trying to use it more but it's very cumbersome to use compared to how I do things in PS.

I'm working with Krita still, it's taking a while to learn but I think I'm starting to feel comfortable with shortcuts and behavior. Inkscape is perfectly fine as a vector editor for the basic things I've done with it.

>>504853
From an engineering background as well and I agree that Blender has a much nicer UI than the software I was used to using. Most of it feels like it was stuck in 1995 and it doesn't seem like that will be changing any time soon.

>>505507

Adjustment layers and other non-destructive editing will be the focus of 3.2, according to the GIMP roadmap. That's a ways away, though.

Right now they're working on replacing the entire image engine. It'll support OpenCL, higher bit depths, different colorspaces (think CMYK here), etc. - a lot of the things that GIMP has been behind on.

I imagine going to GIMP from Photoshop would suck, because I tried going the other way back in the day (around 2000) and found PS to be a huge pain in the ass. It's not that either interface is bad, they're just different enough to trip up people who aren't used to them. For instance, multimodal windows are great for Windows users, but fucking annoying for people like me who prefer the window manager to manage our windows.

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>>505542
>Adjustment layers and other non-destructive editing will be the focus of 3.2, according to the GIMP roadmap. That's a ways away, though.
well aware, and i don't trust the devs/maintainers to get that to us within the next 5 years.

The main drawbacks to me are the shortcuts and general workflow being incredibly sluggish. The tools work mostly as advertised when you find them but they aren't always implemented in a friendly way. Photoshop does a better job of getting out of your way and getting into "the zone" in my experience. Krita comes close to that too.

>>496348
I'm not the guy you're replying to.

It looks like shit, her fucking hair is clearly clipping right through her jacket at the start, it's poorly dubbed and the animation is trash. It doesn't look processional at all.

>>505507
That animation in the gif is 2-D giving off a 3-D effect.
May I ask what it is and what's it made in?

>>505842
maya

>>496296
>simple
nice meme

What is the best way to get nice renderings in Blender? It is so damn easy in C4D

>>506361
you have to learn cycles

>>505494
Who said anything about realism? Why spend time figuring out how things work on your own when you can look at what's right in front of you? Once you actually understand what you're going for, it's a lot easier to make it look good since you know what you're doing

>>506391
> Why spend time figuring out how things work on your own when you can look at what's right in front of you?

u wut?

>>506361
Use HDRI, (good) materials off blendswap, a 3 point light setup off blendswap, set the samples somewhere between 500 to 2000, make sure Multiple Importance is turned on for lights

>>506361
Don't use cycles and have a complex scene. Cycles lacks a material library and that kills it.
The easiest way to get a nice outside render in cycles is to add a sun, a sky texture and a few lights, whereas you need only a sun in most renderers.

>>496350
I'm a blender fanboy to the max, but the hair system in blender is an embarrassing mess. A lot of old features are currently broken, it's slow, the hair is hard control, and it can't be used in anything but blender, making it useless when exporting.

That and the cloth sim. It's slow as fuck and gives unpredictable results. These two systems should only be used for very simple simulations.

>>496461
Nobody ever responded to my first post
So here.
Faggot.

is changing smoothing groups suppose to add verts? if not blender edge split is a hack

>>505842
>

it's cellshading,

>>504221
Actually there's some kind of function in zbrush called zremesh or something, which can retopo pretty well in minutes(including placing guides, otherwise it's seconds).

>>506459
Cloth sim works fine for me.

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>>505842
It's a Japanese person who works with Blender but I think some of it is hand animated.

https://twitter.com/cii__

Cool account to follow
https://twitter.com/BlenderNPR

>>506928
Doesn't look hand-drawn. I wonder what is the problem, have they tried rendering in orthographic view?

>>507032
it doesn't need to look hand drawn

>>496572
>'m mainly pissed that no one's posting "anything worthwhile, people are just going "blender, yeah" or "blender, bleh", without adding anything to the convo."

I agree....this site would be infinitely greater if poster would debate intelligently but most of the time it turn into a pissing contest.

I've been thinking of picking up blender and then I remembered this board exists.

Are there any /3/ approved blender tutorial series for beginners?

I've randomly found some stuff like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6KPrc4uMw

or
https://cgcookie.com/flow/introduction-to-blender/

but I have no clue whether this shit's any good. For what it's worth I have no 3D experience other than a semester of CAD years ago which doesn't really help anything.

>>507032

One thing I read a while back about trying to replicate the anime look in 3D, is that when you are drawing anime/manga, the proportions don't have to be anatomically correct, they just have to look like are.

That's why when some people try to model anime faces using strictly 3D the end result is terrible. One way to get around that is to use a mixture of 2D/3D. I'm not 100% sure, but...
>>505507
>>506928
...look like mostly 3D with 2D(ish) eyes/facial features that they changed based on the angle you're viewing them at.

I could be totally wrong, but it looks like the face is being manipulated in the first one especially.

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Total noob here. Only thing I do good is push verts to create cubes.

Just getting into texture painting and texturing in general. Critique please.
Using blender of course.

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>>509251
Looks nice but there are a few issues, I would work on the blending of the textures into one another to not make them look like textured faces intersecting (blue circles). You could maybe try to make them flow into one another more smoothly to give less of an edge to them. The second thing, and it could just be the camera angle/lighting, is that a couple places seem to have the texture stretch a bit, circled in red. Good job on the arm and backrest detail though, I like it.

>>496319
>>Name features it's missing.
>MeshFusion, procedural nodal stuff in Houdini, good particle system, good hair rendering.

I love how every year, the excuses that get thrown up get more and more obscure and irrelevant

>>509298
I've been using blender for years and love it but the physics systems, especially hair, are atrocious.

>>508759
Debate intelligently? Where the fuck do you think you are? Stick around for ten more minutes and someone will start flinging their shit.

>>496469

Could you detail what makes the nurbs/tools in Rhino3D better? What's lacking in blender?

>>509599

Not the guy you're replying to, but the NURBS tools in Blender are almost worthless.

You can do basic stuff, but try finding a decent use for NURBS surfaces in Blender (protip: you can't).

The problem is that NURBS has always been a low priority among the Blender devs. Every now and again on the dev list someone will talk about trying to resurrect the improved NURBS branch, and maybe spout a few more emails and disappear.

The only way Blender is going to get good NURBS capability is for a) someone to step up and actually do the work (unlikely) or b) someone to step up and pay a developer to do it (also unlikely).

>>496286

If you want to move to Maya or something else when you get better then don't start with Blender. Blender has it's own way of doing things. I'm not going to get into whether or not it's better or worse but it is very, very different.

If you get used to doing things the Blender way you will find you struggle to use every other piece of 3D software out there. You will curse yourself for learning the Blender way to do things because it will make learning something else so difficult.

Just get the educational version of the software you think you're going to want to use eventually and start learning with that.

>>504955
Yes, even wings3d could do that

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>just discovered Project View in Blender
THIS SOLVES EVERYTHING

>>496322

The base and orange mushroom say "atom bomb," the little comets say "car bomb." It looks great in detail and motion, but without scale it's really confusing.

Maybe not the point of this 'draw, but effects like blurring might also help.

>>511438
Can't wait till you find snap to equal

>>510116
>but it is very, very different.

What? That just isn't true. I watch Maya tutorials and can extrapolate the steps into Blender, and I only spent a week or two with Maya

There might be slight differences, like having to Bevel (from the Specials menu) to achieve max's Chamfer but for the most part it's a handful of really tiny one-off hiccups (same as if you were doing something in Modo or Cine4D based on a Maya tutorial) that you can easily google

>>507032

It doesn't look hand drawn because the perspective is perfect, there's no orthographic effect and minimal black outline effect (is there a concise term for this? "cel-shading" implies toon shading + black outline)

Eso es juego maldito

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Fucking blender forums making me wait to ask a quick question in a thread.

I'm sure someone here can advise me without the hassle.

I'm following the game assets tutorial that blender org. put up; going through how to do normal baking - in this case from a hi poly mesh to a low poly mesh.

Thing is, the result looks like ass and I think I know why. The model consists of roughly10 or 11 seperate meshes. The tutorial has me putting the uv's for all these meshes together on the same 512x512 textures - normal map, ao, color etc.

The idea of doing this tutorial is to make a hat for TF2, which carries various restrictions on poly count and size etc. so I assume this is why it's all being kept to a single 512x512 texture.

So do I ignore what I'm being shown, and move a few of these meshes UVs to a second normal map texture? Is this practical for a model to be used in a game? Or am I doing something stupid like exponentially increasing the size of the models files when it comes to export time.

And no I'm not trying to make TF2 hats to sell. I just want to make my own models for my shit game project.

File: blender-app_2016-02-02_23-29-34.png (359KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511727
This is what my UV layout looks like with all the meshes selected. This is based on what the author of the tutorial is telling me to do.

Fucking Blender can't even bake alpha cutout objects. Why does everything have to be so goddamn difficult.

>>511727
IF that object is supposed to be hard surfaced, then you are just getting normals bleed, because you kept some faces connected.

4th view in that pic, showing UVs - can you see some pink pixels going over the orange edge? They are bleeding over. You could tweak the UVs but the better way would be to just separate those UVs and add some padding.

>>511768
The edges are supposed to look beveled/rounded like the high poly mesh, not sure if that makes it less a hard surface model?

I'll try separating them.

File: blender-app_2016-02-03_10-49-56.png (292KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511768
>>511774
I split up the UVs, still getting pinks but I think that's just the color of the UV map at that point.

Normals still look like shit on the model itself though, way too block to make it look smooth. I think I'm going to just scale up from 512x512

>>511744
That's what you don't have programmers paid full time to work on your software and improve it. Just amateur neets committing hacky code randomly.

File: blender-app_2016-02-03_12-32-44.jpg (288KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511776
Well I put just the single mesh's UVs onto a 2048x2048 normal map.

Normals still look like ass. Why is it plateauing every pixel instead of smoothing between them?

>>511782
If you're baking in blender, when you create a new image check 32 bit float, that will make the normal map smoother.
If not then you might have set the interpoletion mode to point, or maybe it's something else.

File: blender-app_2016-02-03_13-06-30.jpg (269KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511782
I figured it out. Apparently setting the texture to be a Normal Map isn't enough, you also need to set the sampling as Normal Map too.

>>511785
So it looks smoother now instead of that plateauing mess from before. Normal still seems off along the edge of the faces though.

File: blender-app_2016-02-03_13-24-36.jpg (236KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511787
So I tried snapping my UVs to the pixel grid, and that shrank the weird normal edging but didn't eliminate it completely.

Is there some reason my normals aren't transitioning smoothly from one face to the next, causing what is the dark line in my screenshot?

That line matches up exactly with the edges of my mesh.

>>511787
>>511789
That's a common problem of hard surface baking, I don't remember how to fix it but if you search a bit you can find solutions for maya or 3ds max that can easily be translated to blender.

File: blender-app_2016-02-03_19-18-41.jpg (288KB, 1600x900px) Image search: [Google]

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>>511793
Well I got the normals to look decent finally - well atleast look like the high poly mesh the normals were baked from anyways.

So in the end what had to be done was: Snap the UVs to the pixel grid (UVs>Snap to Pixels)
Break up all hard edges from each other in the UVs (thus all the bottom-middle of the screenshot are 16px+ apart). Image sampling under the Texture menu needs to be turned on in addition to making the texture influence normals - not doing this causes the awful pixely plateau look.

I didn't notice much of a difference between having 32bit textures on or off though. Could be because what I'm doing is fairly low resolution though.

Thanks for the advice guys. I can finally move on from this.

>>504972
>Shrinkwrap the cube blob over a sphere

I know I'm slow-poking here a bit but,
>shift+alt+s in edit mode for "to sphere"
>Cast modifier, sphere, factor 1

>>511778
except they do have paid programmers work full-time on it, and it does support alpha cutouts.

I'm absolutely fed up with blender. I've been trying to bake a material the whole day, but not only it bakes away from UV it also bakes into a completely black color. Fcking software, I swear.

>>511727
In the texture settings, you need to check "Normal Map" (you can find it in the group "Image Sampling").
Yeah, it's a bit retarded that you have to check that and then also set the normal influence to 1.

>>511787
>>512307
well fuck, I'm too stupid to read.

>>511789
In case you still want to know why, you need something called "Edge Padding". It's explained here: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding

>>512306
Baking is cancer in Blender. Even when you've figured out how to do it, it a: makes no sense, b: you will not remember exactly how you did it.

For starters though, when you are in edit mode and all the polys that you want to bake to are selected, make sure that in the UV/Image Editor you have the image to want to bake to selected and that the UVs are on it. This is partly how where to bake to is handled. though maybe just for the internal renderer. In cycles though, you also need to have a texture node with your bake to image in it and selected when you go to bake. Just there. Not doing anything.

Also, don't forget lights in your scene if you are baking diffuse, etc. You'll end up with black if you aren't baking emissive materials without lights.

>>509611

The main reason is because most of the open source community are nerds who want to into amateur video game design, and so most of the suggestions the Blender devs end up getting asked for the most are thinks that help game developers. This is why Blenders unwrap, modeling, sculpting, and texture workflow work so well and why Blenders fbx and obj export works so well with UDK and Unity engines with almost no issues.

But the downside of course is things that non game developers need can get ignored. Cycles is still inferior to Lux/Vray/ect because game devs don't care, the final render happens in a game engine anyways. Then NURBS and MeshFusion get ignored because again, game models are best made either poly for poly, or by retopo of a sculpt.

File: valve_screencap.png (545KB, 740x666px) Image search: [Google]

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>>512341
This is the one problem I have with blender. I figured it out once and then forgot and then figured it out but it wouldn't bake the way I wanted.

So i just shoved it into Substance with the highpoly and lowpoly meshes and used that to bake the normal maps that I wanted.

Pic related

>>512306
>make another empty texture
>make sure its up on texture stack
>make sure its not selected (not ticked)
>make sure its highlighted
>make sure to open another viewport (UV)
>makes sure to go into edit mode and select all
>make sure to select the empty texture in the UV viewport

congrats now you baked a texture, however i have no idea on how to bake anything else and im not interested in finding out

>>512341
>Even when you've figured out how to do it, it a: makes no sense
This. Blender is my preferred software, but the baking workflow is ass-backwards and needlessly complicated. I refuse to deal with that and export everything to XNormal instead.

>>512380
I don't know what the fuck you all fags are crying about, blender doesn't need to be the best program in anything, you don't see fucking sculptfags crying about zbrush being better than blender. What it can do for being free is enough.

>>512384
>blender doesn't need to be the best program in anything
So I'm not allowed to point out things it doesn't do as well? Fuck off.

>>496339
fuck sake, autism overload.

>>512388
You are, but you're gathering into a "whining crowd", if you don't like something or think it's bugged, you can suggest in the blender forums/website etc. If you need blender to perform as you want it and can't wait pay a programmer do make you a plugin.

>>512402
or they can simply have bake texture(A) to empty texture instead of going through 10 steps

>>512402
>If you need blender to perform as you want it and can't wait pay a programmer do make you a plugin.
I already am doing just that whenever I need something in Blender.

>>512402
>>512420
Wait a second, you mean paying another guy to code shit for me? Nah, I do that myself.

>>496286
It's free, does everything you want, has plenty of tutorials, you aren't supposed to learn a tool but the process in general anywho.

Why the fuck does Andrew Price keep shilling such a bad render engine when there are so many better ones?

>>512749
idk, he mostly wants to improve it by showing other people the benefit of using blender overall

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>>496347

>Just learned grid fill

Jesus how did I not know this before.

>>514060
Next you're going to tell me you didn't know about Bsurfaces.

>>514072
Bsufaces a shit.

>>514072
No I didn't. And after researching it a little I still have no idea. Maybe I should learn Blender for more than a week before posting next time.

>>511471
>The base and orange mushroom say "atom bomb,"
rly anon? because that looks nothing like atom bomb

>>514083
So what's better for retopo?

File: retopodoe.jpg (495KB, 1901x1023px) Image search: [Google]

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>>514147
the snapping button

>>514181
>No, the old ways are best! the post

>>514184
>It's newer so it doesn't matter that it's clunky, awkward as fuck, buggy/dodgy as shit, sometimes to the point of resulting in an even slower process

I can play the greentext game too, anon.

>>496296
>simple.
everything is right except this

>>514143

No, it looks like a 3D rendering.

File: umarun.webm (586KB, 480x270px) Image search: [Google]

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Well, it's been almost 3 months but I managed to fix her cloak and 'successfully' weight paint.

I wonder how badly I can fuck up animating.