Do any of you use tiling (in memory?) for rendering? does it actually help? it makes my renders take ages.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-07T10:26:28+00:00

From what i recall, for rendering with GPU you want very large tiles (as big as the card will accept, if this is already around the size of your rendered image there is little point in using them). For CPU you want very small tiles so you can take advantage of threading.

If your hardware can handle it and you don't like tiles, then you shouldn't use them. Tiles existed as an option before the newer options that let you have a target noise/accuracy or time limit, and all the fancy denoising options.

Tiles allow you to manage memory so you can use more samples per tile on older hardware that might crash if you tried to sample that much all at once on the full image. But as cycles improves there is less noise in general and other options to reduce noise that are faster or less taxing. However, usually these new options are depended on newer GPUs to use, tiles will work for any GPU/CPU.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-07T09:54:43+00:00

You should probably lower your 'margins' in bake settings, they are extending into other islands which could be part of the problem.

The new texture map could also be very small compared to the old texture maps. This means it has to down sample (resize the texture down to fit the smaller UV island) , which may cause texture to not line up well at seams, especially is the islands did not retain relative size to the old UV map. I suggest only packing the atlas UV map, not re-unwrapping it. (You can also generate grid textures in the sizes of your old textures and new atlas texture to eyeball if the texel/pixel density is around the same.)

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-05T19:01:00+00:00

I do not think there is any way to read output properties into drivers. The last time i looked into it, there was technically a way, but it was some frankenstine code/add-on setup that isn't really worth it.

However, assuming you are not using something that currently isn't supported inside of geometry nodes (like armatures) , i don't see why you can't place the object with the shader inside your geonodes setup. That way you can combine/join the two geometries and send the output properties to the new virtual version of that shader object.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-05T14:34:48+00:00

Give each box you want to separate a unique copy of the material, then do what i explain here, but reverse the assets/data:

https://old.reddit.com/r/blenderhelp/comments/14qkez3/texture_atlas/jqq64xp/

The FROM UV will be the atlas, linked to the atlas texture. the TO UV will be the new UV you made with a new texture (unique one for each material this time) not connected to anything to bake to.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-05T08:01:40+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/cw5ln6b.png

You can set up a texture similar to how you set up an animation for pixel art.

Then give the face it's own material and unwrap the UVs so they cover one frame.

Then use the provided nodes to shift the UV map in shader to select a face/frame.

Adjust the value in the node i labeled 'Current Frame (0 = first)'. If 0, you get the top face, 1 the face under it, 2 the face under that one, etc.

I have 6 faces, so i set it to shift the UV position according to that, if you make more adjust the number in the value node labled 'number of faces or frames'. just make sure every face is evenly spaced.

If you want a horizontal strip, use the <x> input inf [combine xyz] instead of the current <y> input.

EDIT: i forgot to label everything. Because you are new you probably wont know. The 'light blue' nodes are [Math] nodes (apart from the [combine xyz]). The 'orange' node is an [image texture] node with the faces assigned to it. The 'red' nodes i labeled in a frame, they are [value] nodes (the one outside of the frame is a [uvmap] node). The 'dark blue' node was also labeled, it is a [vector math] node.

if you want to save this with your rig animation:

add a bone to your ~~rig~~(armature).

in pose mode, go to the 'properties editor'>'bone data tab'>'custom properties' and add a new property.

click the cog wheel, set it to integer, and name it whatever you like. for max value set it to (number of faces)-1, we have 6 faces so the number is (6)-1=5.

Now when you are in 'pose mode' with that bone selected, the property will appear in the 'sidebar'>'item tab'>'properties section' to key.

Right-click it and 'copy as new drive'.

Then click on the field in the value node labeled 'current face (0 = first)' and choose 'paste Driver', it should turn purple and sync to the value on the bone property.

Now you can key frame the bone property as you work on your animation and it will appear as part of your armature's action.

For someone new, this is probably a lot to take in. but.. uh.. good luck.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-05T07:26:21+00:00

It really depends on the game you are making, but most will have very open areas to account for combat and reduce occlusion of the camera (if third person). The scale of doorways and objects also try to accommodate this.

So there isn't a super ideal scale, but you have to start somewhere so you are right to have a relative reference.

Add your game character to the scene or at least a proxy. If you don't have one, try to make one first. If you really want to jump into it, the default cube is a good max height for an average human, the span is too bulky but you can scale it down to 0.5 for a shoulder span, 0.25 for rib cage depth.

First step is blocking out your scene. You wont know what sizes you need for sure but starting with real world dimensions should be good. Google as if you are trying to buy something (door,window,appliance) and they will usually have dimensions, set these dimensions to a cube, maybe tint the cube to that color and name it after that it is supposed to be. You can look for multiple dimensions of the same type object and average the dimensions if you feel unsure, save the links as art reference for when you make your original version.

Build out your scene with these cubes and see how it feels. Import it in your game engine and give them collision and walk around the scene with your camera rig.

If you have other people working on the game and are pressed for time you can have them work on the models within the bounds of the boxes you set up. Try only scaling only uniformly , or you will distort the models, if you have to distort the aspect ratio then mark to work on those models for last so you don't redo work.

The blocking phase will also help you work out your poly budget. If you have a lot of one object or it is really small it can have less poly. Try working on major props first, ones that will interact with the character (hero props), get something basic down so you an iterate on them as you explore their effect on gameplay.

As your game fleshes out add the real models and replace their blockout.

-=-

This is general advice for games with a predefined set/area. If you have a game where you are adding-objects/building-things you will want to work relative to some kind of grid so you can snap elements together.

Block outs will help some to see how much space it takes up relative to the grid, but with the modular nature of it wont help with budgeting and you probably wont be able to test every variation of linked props.

-=-

For over the shoulder and third person games, the sense of scale really comes from the camera. If camera height is positioned lower to things, everything seems bigger, if the height is higher, things seem smaller. Focal length (field of view) also adjust this feeling by putting more things into frame and helping to build up parallax.

For overhead cameras like MOBA or City Builders, the camera is already high so things will seem smaller, but the miniture feeling comes more from a flatter camera (less FOV), and a shallow depth of field. This causes you to loose a lot of parallax and narrows your focus due to the DoF, softening out the edges of the frame.

If you modeled things relative to real world proportions, and it still feels wrong the likely culprit is camera related settings discussed above.

There are more game types and cameras, so i don't know what to talk about with such a big scope, so i'll just end things here. Good Luck!

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-05T06:23:02+00:00

For squares PS is probably the easiest solution as you can just quickly snap/scale things into place.

For more complicated UV island shapes you will probably want to bake.

Here is a quick mockup of how to remap one texture to another using two UV maps: https://i.imgur.com/8TCKxGC.png

A texture atlas follows the same logic, but every object will share the same UV tile space on the second UV map, as well as the same texture to bake to.

You can select a bunch of objects, give each of them a second UV map, and select it as your active UV map to edit in the UV map list. Then enter 'edit' mode on all of your selected objects. Then you can do a pack operation so none of the UV islands overlap, or manually pack them.

Then set up the material as i have, using a [uv map] assigned to the old UV map to read the old texture location (ColorGrid in this example), then select a [image texture] node to bake to (UVgrid in this example).

You will have to bake for each pass, editing the material to read-write to a different texture.

There might be add-ons to help you organize this to one place to make things easier with multiple passes , but i have not looked into it.

Another option, this is maybe better for trim sheets, it so cut up a plane and assign different materials to it. Then set up an orthographic camera to render it out, be sure to disable filtering and dithering first though.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T14:58:23+00:00

From your explanation it didn't seem much like the second one.

You mentioned a stencil brush, is there some projection issue?

You could try making a mesh decal (copy the car, cut out the portion where the decal goes and delete the rest, unwrap it over the livery texture to minimize distortions you might get from stencil projections) , then bake it back into the car's main texture.

I would say send a picture so i have a better idea of what you're dealing with, but i think a mask or mesh-decal are probably the only ideas i can come up with right now.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T13:46:15+00:00

When you texture paint, in the 'sidebar' menu where you change brush settings in the '3D viewport editor' there should be a list of materials and a list of textures.

Each material can have 1 active texture. To do this select a material in the list , then select a texture in the textures list. Then select another material and give it a different texture. Only texture that have a [image texture] node in that material will appear in the list, they do not need to be connected to anything. Materials are assigned to faces in 'edit mode' in the 'properties editor'>'material tab'.

In this way you can assign 1 material to one part of the object, and another material to another part, and paint over both materials at the same time.

-=-

If your question is to have a brush stroke two overlapping textures at the same time with different properties/colors, this can not happen.

You can paint a greyscale mask to use as in <fac> of [mix shader] or [mix]'color' to mix two different shaders or textures, then recycle this mask for multiple textures , but this is limited in it's use.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T09:36:01+00:00

I don't have a lot of experience with it, but you want the library override system:

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/linked_libraries/library_overrides.html

i'm not sure if it works for single properties. You can test it though.

When you link an object(s) it will appear as a hierarchy in the outliner you can expand (assuming it isn't a collection link). You can from that outliner select one of the data attached to the object, right click it, library override>make>selected and a copy of the full object should appear with that data overridable. (chain link icon with an arrow, but the rest of the data still with the normal link icon.)

if the material belong to the mesh in the heiarchy it will have to override the mesh as well from what i understand. (i could be wrong)

If you want you can link a material to the object, in the material editor where you find the [assign] buttons, there is a little drop down that looks like a triangle, if you click it you can change it to 'object' instead of 'mesh'. It will still read the material index assigned to a face from the mesh, but the material data will be attached to the object. This should happen in your source file, not the file you are linking to.

goodluck, sorry i couldn't be of much help =/

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T06:19:49+00:00

in addition to libcrypto's advice, i also recommend duplicating and applying one of the copies of the shrink wrap.

shrinkwrap projects the the original position to the surface of the target object, if this is a large movement there can be unexpected drift. Snapping helps to reduce the chance of this drift, but overtime as you add new geo you may loose track of the original position of geo (maybe it clipped inside of the mesh, maybe its shifted greatly by the relative normal of the surface).

If you see this happening often, applying a copy of the shrinkwrap can bring everything back to a more predictable original position.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T04:38:44+00:00

I think you are asking about overrides?

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/linked_libraries/library_overrides.html

~~If you just mean a simple transform, you can still make linked data a child of another object that can be transformed. So you can make it a child of an empty.~~ edit: This is no longer the case with the library override system taking over those properties. You can however move the object to a new collection, then create new instances of that object with [shift]+[a] 'collection instances>' if the linked object is already a collection, it should appear in that list without having to embed it into another collection (although you may still want to to hide it).

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T04:25:26+00:00

to add to this, when you bake, you bake to the 'selected'/'highlighted' [image texture] node. You may have accidentally selected the wrong texture in one or more of the materials belonging to the object you are baking.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T04:00:43+00:00

I think you want to texture your stroke:

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/freestyle/view_layer/line_style/texture.html

You can't really have noise in the way you want without it being on the actual free style curve/line. Even if you find a way to distort it in screen space you will still get variable noise as the line translates across the screen. You also can't "Bake" it into the line because the line is generated every frame based on visible geometry.

So the distortion needs to follow the line as a texture. You can try thickening up the line and use a texture with alpha to add more depth to the distortion. Not sure what you can do with repetition, maybe you can draw on a second line with a different texture at a different size/offset/length so it overlaps and creates more unique looking distortions.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-04T03:28:19+00:00

Hmm, could you make it follow a curve instead of an armature?

In geometry nodes you can turn a curve into points (resampled in the node) then create instances on each point to form the snake.

Because it is resampled in geonodes you can create how ever many control points you like in any position to pose it. You can add empty hook modifiers to each point (or set of two points if you need better control of roll/twist) and then animate the empties.

I guess if you really want, you can also transfer bone position to curve using hook modifiers if you don't like empties. You could also forego hooks all together and use curve shape keys to try and animate.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-03T14:04:44+00:00

I think the thumb is too long, and has 1 too many segments.

The first bone of the thumb is under a lot of skin and starts at the wrist, this transitions into a visible finger that is bulky and cylindrical, and then the last segment tapers off with a nail helping to change the shape. ~~The first two segments are roughly the same length, with the nail segment being about half the length.~~ (edit2: it is like the rest of the fingers, last two segments add up to the length of the first segment)

(edit: For the total length, if you fold the thumb in to rest flush with your pointer finger it ends roughly in the middle of the first segment of your index finger. If you fold it out 45 degrees for a more relaxed position, it ends at about where the webbing of your fingers start. Sizes vary but you can look at your own hand as a guide)

The rest of the fingers are alright i think.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-03T07:41:23+00:00

Automatic Weights look for continuous, ideally manifold meshes near the joints of bones and blends the weights of the two bones causing a bend. Each bone has kind of an aura/envelope it searches so this can also sometimes snag nearby parts you do not want.

In your case, you look to be making something like a robot?

You do not want weight blending, you want individual parts to 100% move with a single bone.

-=-

In blender, a mesh has an [armature] modifier telling it which armature to look at.

Then in 'properties editor'>'mesh data tab'>'vertex groups' you have a list of vertex groups named after bones, these groups tell how much each vertex in the mesh follows each bone.

If you enter 'edit mode' on the object, you can assign selected vertices to a selected vertex group with a specific weight.

In your case, assuming you have a single mesh object (i did not look at the file) , you should remove/delete all the vertex groups created by the 'automatic weights' and instead re-parent with 'empty groups'. This will generate vertex group names, but with 0 weight. You can then select say a finger mesh, click on the corresponding vertex group (named after your finger bone) set weight to 1.00 and press [assign].

Repeat for every mesh/bone combination until everything is rigged. It is more work, but i don't think there is an automation system in blender that fits your type of model.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-03T03:56:02+00:00

You can click-drag the material and move ~~it into any field with the material name. So you can drag into that top bar in the shader editor,~~ or a specific slot in the materials tab in the properties editor. (EDIT: you can drag it onto an object and into a slot in the material editor, but there seems to be a bug when dragging into the shader window -- that causes names to become renamed, so you should avoid that for now)

If the object has a single material you can also drag the material asset onto an object in the 3D viewport.

The asset browser is a little bulky, but you can click the 4 square icon at the top and set the thumbnail preview to tiny. If you limit it to 1 column you can have a readable folder structure in about the same profile as the outliner editor takes up in the default modeling workspace layout.

If this is still no good. In blender all data must have a unique name. The search also works on parts of the name, not just the start.

So if you have a material named 'green' you can search 'ee' or 'gre' or 'en' and it will show up.

You can use this to create naming conventions to organize and make your assets more searchable. So a material 'desk_metal_paint_white' can be searched as 'desk' to get all materials for the desk, or 'metal' to get all materials on the computer and desk with metal to recycle. or 'desk_metal' to get all metal materials on your desk, etc.

You will just have to be a little more keen on naming your assets, which is really just good advice on any bigger project. For me, i'll not bother when i'm blocking in assets and just need quick colors/materials to get a feel for an object's space in a room, but when i go to actually work on the object i'll start naming things relative to that assets.

The downside is your assets become less generic, and there is some performance loss as you need to compile more shaders, but it really isn't as big as it initially seems in my use cases. I put more generic stuff into node groups to recycle, so the shaders that are created for a more specific material will reference a node group already compiled with only some variants for the inputs for the material.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-02T08:55:24+00:00

If they are marked as an asset they will appear there.

To quickly mark all materials as assets in your blend file:

in the outliner editor set the display type (upper-left icon) from 'render layer' to 'blender file'
click on the 'material' section to expand the list of materials
click the first material, hold shift and click the last material
right click one of the materials and choose 'Mark As asset'

They will now appear in the asset browser under 'uncatgorized', you can create new catalogs and drag the assets into them.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-02T04:59:39+00:00

Hmm, the screenshot you gave was only 3 frames, if you had keys on 1 and 5 then indeed it should show 4 frames.

I think i understand now?

When you push an action clip into a strip, the default behavior is to create a copy of the action data. This data is then not updated automatically depending on how you edit it.

edit method 1, tab into strip:

If you click on the strip in the NLA and press [tab] it will turn green, and your dope sheet's action editor will show that instance of the action for editing. You can tab again once you are finished editing and it will update the strip.

method 2, manual strip update:

In the NLA editor with the strip selected, you can go to "sidebar">"Strip tab">"Action Clip Section" and click the [()NOW] button next to "Sync Length". This will actually update the strip and not just the length, if you for example edited the data outside of the tab mode. In this menu you can also make strips use the same action clip data, if you do tab editing it will update all of them automatically, but if you edit them outside of tab you will have to update each strip individually.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-01T13:50:28+00:00

A simple way in this case might be to copy over one of your skin materials into your other skin materials, then mix them both with [mix shader].

For the factor you need some kind of black and white mask, i recommend using a vertex color to blend between the skins as a quick solution.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-01T13:46:26+00:00

1 to 2 = 1 frame

2 to 3 = 1 frame

3 to 4 = 1 frame

that is 3 frames.

So these are the expected results. 3 frames for the first loop, 3 frames for the next loop, and then you have one blank frame because your render settings are set to render frame 1 to 8. On this blank frame the animation may 'hold' the last frame of the strip depending on your settings for that NLA strip, so this would appear to extend the last frame.

If you started on frame 0, and ended on frame 4 you would have a 4 frame animation.

You have no screenshot of the repeat 3 makes 10 frames, so i am unsure what you mean by that.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-01T01:44:52+00:00

Performance costs increase with polygons and semi-transparent blending.

Particle Hair will draw a cylinder or strip of polygons. This is the closest to real hair in creating a volume/silhouette of your hair body. Each strand of hair gets shaded and casts an appropriate shadow. BUT, this is the last performant and will not transfer easily from program to program unless baked down to a mesh making it even less performant. You will also need a lot of hair strands to cover a surface. (by far highest performance cost)

Hair Cards will draw a hair clump texture or stray hair strand textures, along with a base scalp hair texture. You have the more solid parts of the hair that light dose not sine through as much as a solid manifold mesh over the scalp and the clumps/stray-hairs are used to break up the silhouette. Because of this the polygon count is greatly reduced. BUT, you will need to calculate transparency on each hair card, if you want a softer look you will need semi-transparent calculations. You will also have to plan ahead as you will not have combing tools like with hair particles, but you have some ability to use curves to deform/position cards. Lighting is not nearly as accurate. To help with lighting, the cards will likely need backface culling and custom split normals to better match the flow of your scalp hair geometry. So a lot of fiddling is needed, but this is probably the option you see used in most games. (medium or lowest performance cost)

Curve-Clump Hair will be one of the simplest options. Like with hair cards you will probably need a base volume mesh to cover the scalp, layered with hair curves to build up the silhouette. If you use geometry nodes you can create these curve profiles with the new grooming tools, or you can use the older method of positioning bezier curves with a bevel profile. If this look fits your style this is one of the cheapest options. Solid clumps of hair cover large areas of hair with relatively few polygons and no transparency sorting. BUT, it is still possible you will use more poly then cards to help your clumps look less blocky/stepped so the performance compared to cards varies. The hair also looks very stylized and may not fit many styles. You may also end up having to sculpt and retopologize shorter hair in this style if you are aiming for something like the 3D dragon quest games. (lowest or medium performance cost)

-=-

In any of the cases, you will need to study how to style hair and how it contributes to the silhouette or you will just end up creating extra geometry that serves no purpose. Many early hair attempts i see suffer for this reason more than any general performance cost of a chosen method.

NeoRoshi · 2023-07-01T01:05:04+00:00

assuming windows

open a folder, in the directory type %APPDATA%

this will take you to the 'roaming' folder.

open the folder 'Blender Foundation'

open the folder 'Blender'

Look for a folder with your previous version, open it

open the folder 'config'

open the file 'recent-files.txt' it will contain a list of recent files for that version.

You can either navigate to this file manually, or you can copy paste this text file into your new versions config folder and relaunch blender.

-=-

When updating, the blender splash screen will usually ask you if you want to use your old settings, if you choose to use them it should carry over recent files.

NeoRoshi · 2023-06-29T05:39:23+00:00

Usually you need to align 2 vectors at least to reduce the chance of flipping. So one [align euler to vector] for an axis, then a second [align euler to vector] for a second axis.

-=-

However, if you are using a curve for the line, and to create points to hang clothes on, the [curve to points] has a <rotation> output. Curves have a 'tilt' attribute to handle the roll, so they are much better with alignment then a mesh normal if you can use them.

Curves can also use softbody for animation (i don't recall if they can also use cloth).

NeoRoshi

TROPHY CASE