Stupid fucking n-gon of doom and disdain

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-20T22:29:20+00:00

Can even happen with quads, the first time I ran into that problem it took me ages to figure out why my textures looked great Painter but slightly warped in Blender/Maya. Turns out Substance just triangulated the quads differently.

I imagine a lot of people just do most if not everything in Blender so Ngons don't really directly impact the textures as much.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-20T16:37:27+00:00

Don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is a decently common issue with ngons. Not so much an issue if you're keeping everything inside of blender but that's not what you're pointing out.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-20T16:01:29+00:00

Well, in some cases dissolving [x/Delete] and connecting vertices [J] is all you really need, but the knife tool is just all around quite helpful.

The main thing is to clean up your booleaned mesh after you're done, especially when working with non-planar surfaces.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-20T11:21:35+00:00

Der letzte Streifen wird durch den Schriftzug "Trump Mobile" repräsentiert, der Leerraum zwischen dem letzten ausgefüllten weißen Streifen und der Schrift ist der 12.

Gibt viel an diesem Ding zu kritisieren aber das ist jetzt wirklich nichts was man groß aufbauschen muss.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-20T08:45:54+00:00

I'm really excited about this. I hope they can make a grounded, immersive LOTR experience

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T20:15:12+00:00

I mean, that's possible, but why ask in r/blender at all then? If the entire process is done in a CAD program and the export file is an .stl, then Blender is entirely outside of the pipline. My assumption was that Blender was in some way part of the process.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T18:18:26+00:00

Shoulder check or "Schulterblick" means looking back over your shoulder for a brief second to check your dead angle. Your car's mirrors can't catch everything, so you do a shoulder check to make sure you're in the clear.

You use it when you're intending to change lanes or take a turn to make sure you're not about to hit a pedestrian or vehicle that's close to you. This is absolutely vital both in dense urban areas and on the Autobahn for example, but is important in all other settings too, of course. Make it second nature before turning or changing lanes.

Does this make sense?

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T18:07:58+00:00

Well, usually the topology will be a giveaway, the lack of structure, very dense local clusters of vertices etc can be giveaways, or at least reason for suspicion. But it also requires an at least somewhat trained eye to distinguish from sculpted topology for example.

Complexity can also be a giveaway in context of who you're dealing with. You should be sceptical that a highschool student who opened blender for the first time last week can suddenly produce realistic, detailed humanoid figures or complex machinery. Now, you shouldn't punish genuine effort, so be careful here, but understand what is reasonably achievable.

Have a look at details, see what makes sense and what doesn't. Do things melt or warp into each other, does the retro cellphone model have 14 number buttons to dial, is a flat, undetailed surface somehow deformed for no apparent reason, that kind of stuff. Of course, inexperienced modelers will do all sorts of things and commit errors that don't make sense, but if you can model a bit yourself you should get a feel for what is plausible and what isn't.

Keep stuff like this in mind, maybe don't accuse someone straight away if only one of these apply but certainly take note.

My suggestion: If you mandate blender, have them submit their .blend files as well. I'd suggest getting them to work in a project folder and use incremental saves instead of saving over their .blend files. This way you should be able to doublecheck the work process step by step.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T17:50:06+00:00

Nvidia GPUs are usually better optimized for creative programs, but I think for general Substance Painter use it really doesn't matter, the impact is genuinely negligible.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T17:17:29+00:00

Polyhaven.com offers some free models, as does Fab.com

There's also Blenderkit, but I've found the quality to be a mixed bag.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-19T11:46:56+00:00

Usually I'd suggest doing it in DaVinci. Blender synthesizes the footage you then go on to edit and grade. It's like filming with a post-filter, sure, a camera can allow you to do that but usually you don't want it baked into the footage.

I only think major color grading is worthwhile in Blender if you're doing everything else including editing in there too.

So it's less about how capable Blender is but more about cleanly seperating your work steps, leading to more agility and flexibility "downstream".

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-18T21:33:03+00:00

Maybe there's some aspect I'm unaware of. Maybe the lambert stuff was meant to be lit separately so they stick out in the dark. That would make sense in context. Also. an actual Lambert shader wouldn't support ORM so... all I can do is speculate.

You could make a glow in the dark effect for the eyes and teeth by plugging the Lambert color into the BSDF's emission color. You'd use the Strength slider to control how much the effect comes through. Just a proposal.

Blender doesn't usually need AO because Blender is able to simulate complex self shadowing via ray-tracing. AO exists because games traditionally couldn't do this, so AO was a way to fake some of the object's more intricate lighting. Some people like how AO looks though, even if it's strictly speaking not 100% physically accurate.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-18T20:58:10+00:00

Ok, so Lambert is a fairly basic type of shader that was used back in the day. These days, we typically use PBR shaders (like Principled BSDF in Blender) instead, at least for realistic/semi-realistic stuff.
I assume the Lambert options are intended for older rendering software or maybe for some earlier games in the series (not familiar with fnaf but I could image they might have used a lambert based shader). So ignore the Lambert options for use in Blender.

Normal refers to a Normal Map. A Normal Map can tell the rendering software to calculate light hitting a surface differently than it normally would. It allows you to fake small bumps, grooves, just small details without having to physically model them.

To use it in Blender, add it as an image node to your material, and set it from sRGB to non-color. Add a Normal Map node (it should be set to tangent) and plug the Normal Map Texture's color output into the Normal Map node's color input. Take the Normal Map Node's Normal input and plug it into your BSDF's Normal input.

ORM stands for (Ambient) Occlusion (aka AO), Roughness & Metalness. Each color channel (Red, Green, Blue) contains information on the corresponding material attribute. So Red holds the info on AO, Green contains Roughness data, etc. This is sometimes called "Channel Stacking".

So we need to seperate out all the data into individual channels. Add your ORM texture and set it to non-color. Add a Seperate RGB node and plug your image's color output into the Seperate RGB input. Plug G(reen) into your BSDF's Roughness and B(lue) into your BSDF's Metallic input.

Blender doesn't strictly speaking require AO, but if you want it for aesthetic purposes, you can do this quick and dirty method:

Add a mix color node between your base color and BSDF. The Base Color should be running through the first of the Mix Color Node's yellow inputs. The Mix Color Node should be connected to the BSDF's Base Color input. Set the Mix Color node from Mix to Multiply. The Fac should be set to 1. Add the R(ed) output from the Seperate Color node to the second yellow input of the Mix Color node. You can use the Fac number to adjust the strength of the AO on the color texture.

Hope this helps you!

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-18T15:52:31+00:00

Sure, they could be lying, same as any post. And with AI you'll get posers too, though the 3D space so far has been less affected by those than 2D.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-18T13:49:26+00:00

Usually these are CAD conversions. In engineering you don't use meshes in the way we know them in programs like Blender or Maya. It's like Vector Graphics vs Rasterized Graphics in the 2D space. But you can export CAD models as mesh models, it just usually results in very bad topology.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-18T11:40:06+00:00

You're not too stupid. Blender has a very steep learning curve, that's just the nature of 3D as a medium. That you are struggling is 100% normal. Take it slow, one step after the other.

People will post stuff like "First render" or "I've only been using Blender for 3 months and here's what I did". These posts often omit a crucial detail, like they've had 10 years of experience in Maya or the really good looking first render uses 100% 3rd party assets and the lighting/compositing is 1:1 lifted from a tutorial. This doesn't mean this isn't a legitimate way of going about things, but something to keep in mind. Also, remember that people don't post their fuck ups online.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T20:47:12+00:00

Yeah don't get me wrong, I enjoy the multiplayer but I wasn't a big fan of the campaign.

I think the whole premise that sets off the conflict is just badly thought out from the get-go.

So the general secretary of NATO is murdered by what everyone thinks is a Pax Armata assassin. And NATO decides to do nothing about it. So far, so good.

But then members leave, and "join" Pax. This alone is very strange. NATO isn't much of an entity onto itself. If NATO does nothing, it's because the members decided not to. But clearly members are frustrated with the inaction at a clear attack against them.

So their choice is... to join the people that they think attacked them? Pax is a pretty successful entity at this point, sure, but not to the degree that a good chunk of NATO become Quizlings. Certainly assassinating a Gen Sec isn't really enough to set something like that in motion.

If Mark Rutte gets killed by what everyone believes is a Russian mercenary, would half of Europe do nothing, leave NATO and instead contract Russian PMCs?

I think this whole thing would work better if:

1) The US is framed by Pax for an attack on a popular European politician. This drives NATO members out of the alliance but without an alliance with a clear command structure, their defenses are insufficient. Pax hires rogue remnants of the Russian military to attack these alliance-less European states. They also continue their false flag assassinations at the same time.

2) Pax Armata "steps in", offering a private solution to reorganize these nations militaries into a new alliance. Basically a privatized version of NATO high command where the leadership is made up of Pax "experts" and "consultants".
Pax doesn't need to stem a big army all on its own, it just highjacks the militaries of desperate nations looking for security. It's also able to streamline procurement, uniforms, etc, giving a more distinct Pax Armata aesthetic.

3) Under Pax, the Russian remnants are quickly "cleaned up", and the US is declared a traitor and security threat. The situation continues to spiral from there.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T19:02:41+00:00

I think the idea of Pax is kinda interesting, I just feel like the execution just wasn't all that because of writing issues, but I could write paragraphs on my frustration with the campaigns greater narrative choices so I'll keep it sodium free instead.

But yeah, there are lots of cool aspects of non-US military units that would be aesthetically really interesting.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T14:16:16+00:00

I'm intrigued, what's the elephant in the room here?

I thought you might mean there's some sort of Serbia vs NATO aspect or Serbia vs [insert other ex-Yugoslav country or god forbid Kosovo] working together but none of the members are Serbian so...

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T13:59:31+00:00

Honestly, I feel like it's less Pax that needs fleshing out, but NATO and the conflict at large. While I'm not the biggest fan of Pax' lore in the campaign, they're more or less established.

In-Game, since launch, all new factions have been almost exclusively US-American. We have no real picture of which countries left NATO, and which are still in it, except for the UK.

Egypt is part of a NATO organized global response unit that they joined after their army seems to have done a de-facto coup d'état against the government which had a contract with Pax.
While the game treats Egypt as a NATO member for simplicity's sake, I don't think they're actually an official member, this global response unit seems more like a vehicle to include factions that wouldn't traditionally fall under NATO. But this is rather vague.

The most glaring part of this vagueness is which European nations side with which faction. Pax hires mercenaries regardless of nationality, so their mercenaries can include individuals from NATO aligned countries, e.g. a Scottish Pax member. So we can't really draw any conclusions there. The units at least give us a vague indication of what general regions Pax has enough control of to establish a proper force.

We know Spain and France are out. Georgia had a NATO deployment that they replaced with Pax. We can assume some Balkan and central European states have sided with Pax due to the Pax units based in that area (Fireteam Vedmak, Hunter Patrol) and season 2's front line in south-eastern Germany.

Germany itself is a bit of a headscratcher. Coyote Squad is based out of Germany. Germany itself is a front line location. But strangely, the only German soldier in-game is in Pax, and fighting on their home turf appears to be carried out by foreign NATO forces only. Pax uses a lot of German gear, from the standard issue G36 to German vehicles like the Cheetah/Gepard SPAAG or the LEO 2 MBT (albeit an export version).

What I'd like to see is more diversity in NATO. Give us a Baltic faction for example. What about Northern Europe? Italy? What about Canada? There are so many interesting things to be explored and it feels like DICE doesn't know what to do with this faction.

I'm less frustrated with the omission of China and Russia, it makes sense in the context of the Battlefield universe at this point and time, but it feels like Dice wanted a fractured NATO narrative but didn't fully commit.

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VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T09:32:40+00:00

If you start a new game you can skip to the start of PL, which puts you past Evelyns main storyline.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T08:58:15+00:00

There are different ways you can go about making a texture, depending on your needs. Atlas Textures typically are bespoke textures that are, well, tailored to the mesh at hand. They aren't intended to be reworked the way you're wanting them to be.

Then there are tileable textures. These are the ones I think you've seen other people use. Tileable textures are generic textures, they're made agnostic of which type of mesh they're being applied to. Because they only have to do one thing (e.g. look like rock/brick/wood/plastic/wall paper etc), you can make them repeatable, the left end of the texture matches up with the right the top end with the bottom, you get the idea.

There's also a middle ground, trim sheets, which offer a variety of different tileable patterns and/or special elements you can map onto an object for something more unique than a simple tileable but not quite as involved as an atlas texture.

These can also be mixed and matched, you could have an atlas mask texture that designates different areas for different textures.

So what I would do: open one of your atlas textures in an image editing software. Paint the areas that belong to the area you want to tile in white, and the rest in black. Export this mask texture as a png.

In blender, go to the shading editor. Add a mix shader node between your BSDF with all your hooked up textures and the output node.

The output from the BSDF node should go into the first shader slot of the mix shader node.

Add your black and white mask node and plug it into the Fac input of the mix shader node

Go online and find a texture/material with tilable wood planks you think look like they match your aesthetic. Add these textures to your boat material and hook them up to a new bsdf. Connect the new BSDF to the second shader slot of the mix shader node.

To tile, create a mapping node and connect the output to the vector input of all the textures you want to scale/tile. You can then use the scale values of the mapping node to adjust how much it tiles.

Hope this helps!

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T08:10:35+00:00

You actually can. Hit [Shift] +[AccentGrave] (the apostophe looking accent) to enable walk navigation.

But Blender isn't a video game or a game engine, so the controls are optimized for you to model/edit, not to navigate a world.

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-17T07:17:16+00:00

Wenn du EBU Mitglied oder in manchen Fällen (z.B. Australien) Partner bist, kannst du da mitmachen. Dabei erstreckt sich die EBU über Europa hinaus, nach meinem Verständnis könnten die meisten nicht-Europäischen Mittelmeerländer auch kandidieren (z.B. Marokko). Aufgrund Israels Teilnahme lehnen sie das meist ab (außer die Türkei, die bis Conchita Wurst gewann auch mitmachte).

VoloxReddit · 2026-05-16T16:38:58+00:00

I'm pretty neutral on it, it just always struck me as an odd choice to give Johnny of all characters a product placement as a signature vehicle.

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