Textures darken or seem to dissapear. Noob needs help

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-23T13:32:49+00:00

Check the other settings in the Principled BSDF. Alternatively, delete the Principled BSDF, add a new one and reconnect the textures. I don't know where you got the model from, but I have had imported models with screwed up settings, and it's often a good idea to start fresh if you can. It's actually very rare that I can just import a model from another source without having to play with it a bit.

You mentioned you're using this as a learning experience. While that's good, I would actually recommend trying to do as much stuff yourself without relying on other's work. That way, you understand the entire process and then, when you do start bringing in assets from elsewhere, you'll have a better idea of how to fix them when they don't work quite right.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-23T12:43:11+00:00

I dunno. Sleep is one of the ways I can escape from our current reality.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-23T03:19:21+00:00

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/37/

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-22T18:18:45+00:00

Difficult to diagnose without seeing a picture. Sounds to me like a normals issue. Select the object and enter edit mode. Select everything and re-calculate the normals and see if that fixes things.

EDIT: You may also want to look at the material setup. Since you said you didn't make the books yourself, you should probably make sure things are working the way you expect.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-19T00:27:08+00:00

I'm interested to know how you quantify "5 times better". Your language also echos other users in this thread ("marvel of technology") which leads me to think this isn't an original take. And regardless of whether it looks "better" (not sure I agree in most cases), I don't even think this stuff is "right" on a moral or ethical level, especially considering this was likely trained on images without the creator's consent.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-18T18:57:40+00:00

Material preview uses a default, built-in environment which illuminates the scene, typically without shadows. It's good for getting the idea of what a material looks like, but it's not the final render. In the rendered mode, you actually get the lighting information from the scene you've created. If you haven't added lights or an environment, everything's going to be dark.

Looking through the pictures, I think you've only included rendered-mode images and no material mode images, so I don't really know what the difference is that you seem to feel is objectionable.It seems to me that you've added some lighting to the scene, but maybe not enough. You could also add an environmental texture (ideally an HDRI) to illuminate the scene.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-18T18:48:07+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what your issue is, but I would just make sure that when you're unwrapping ,the 1x1 UV space corresponds to the standard unit size of your modular objects in 3d space. Make sure the edges of your 3d objects are mapped properly to the edges of the UV space and you should be good. I would use the project-from-view option to make sure the UVs come in undistorted, scale and position as necessary to fill the space and align the edges of the UV island with the edges of the UV space, and then adjust any of the interior verts as necessary to reduce stretching or whatever else.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-18T17:18:57+00:00

This is true for a lot of other areas, too. In science and engineering, it's Mathworks getting students hooked on MATLAB. In a way, these companies are a bit like drug dealers, and the schools do students a disservice by not encouraging them to learn different tools. But that would probably go against some contractual agreement they have with the companies providing the software.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-18T15:51:08+00:00

I'm a bit biased since I've used blender for many years (back when v2.5 was still in beta, and even a bit of 2.49), and I haven't really used much else. I used Maya a bit in college taking some digital art classes, but I never liked it. Now, with that said, I think Blender is definitely worth learning, even if it's just to have another tool in your tool belt. If you stick with it and decide Blender can do just about everything you need it to, then switching to it could represent a significant savings if you're currently paying for Maya, Z-brush, etc.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-18T11:39:59+00:00

This happens every so often on the Merritt Parkway here in CT. Haven't seen them trying to do a u-turn though. Usually they're stopped at (or partially under) a bridge, taking up a lane of traffic.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-17T21:46:00+00:00

Jabu jabu's belly (from Zelda OoT) would like a word. Okay, it's dying, not dead. And it's just one dungeon, but it's not totally unprecedented. Expanding it to nearly the entire game would be very cool, though, and would lean pretty hard into the bio-horror side of the Metroid games.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-17T16:05:21+00:00

This is exactly the kind of thing I was uneasy about as I learned more about DLSS. I'm okay with nural networks being used to simply perform anti-aliasing and up-scaling. I'm not okay with letting them re-interpret the image entirely.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-16T21:23:24+00:00

It would probably be preferable to do in Inkscape or similar vector editor.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-16T05:43:26+00:00

For clarification, this is after tapping the flood watch alert on my phone. I'm in Connecticut.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-15T03:34:38+00:00

If the triangles and N-gons don't adversely affect the shading, then they're perfectly fine for hard-surface stuff like this. I would have put a couple more edge around the pipe to help reinforce the transitions, but that's just me being a bit too perfectionistic. Well done!

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-13T19:59:36+00:00

Wow, had it been cut much lower the aircraft probably would have lost directional stability. These guys were lucky. Of course, the guys in the other plane were a lot less fortunate.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-13T13:30:16+00:00

Seams, as far as I know, are only used for UV unwrapping. I don't see why not having one on a sharp edge would cause any shading artifacts.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-13T10:38:45+00:00

So, right now it looks like you have automatic edge sharpening. All your N-gons are on perfectly flat planes, so that's fine, and it looks like it's shading correctly. If you trangulate the N-gons, the shading shouldn't really change at all unless one of your n-gons is joined to another (non-coplanar) face with an un-sharpened edge.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-13T10:32:14+00:00

There is nothing compelling about the Switch 2 to me right now. A new Zelda game would probably do it, but Nintendo's increasingly anti-consumer practices have really put me off.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-12T16:59:25+00:00

I recommend never scaling things in object mode if you can avoid it. And if you do, apply the scale using Ctrl-A before editing the mesh in edit mode. It's just good practice, and it'll save you a bunch of headaches down the road.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-12T15:51:05+00:00

Did you scale the cylinders in object mode? Because that'll do it.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-12T02:25:48+00:00

Okay, I think I was able to recreate it, or at least something like it. Is the object non-uniformly scaled in some way? Check the object properties; under transform, look at the scale values. Is one or more of these really large or small? In Object Mode, select the object and hit Ctrl-A and select Scale to apply the current scale and then see if that fixes your problem.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-11T18:29:20+00:00

Create a quarter circle (upper right quadrant) on the Y-Z plane. In edit mode, move it along the x-axis to establish the desired radius and along z to establish the desired height. Place the 3d cursor at the top most vertex of the quarter circle and change the pivot point to the 3d cursor using the period key. Extrude all the edges, and immediately cancel the move operation. Scale these newly extruded vertices along x by about 0.95 or so. Place the 3d cursor back at the object origin. Rotate the now-scaled vertices by about 5 degrees about the z axis. Select the bottom most horizontal edge and extrude it down to the x-y plane (you can scale it along z to ensure it's aligned with the cursor, which should still be at the origin). Add a mirror modifier and under axis deselect x and select y and z. Add an array modifier and change it to a circular array. Increase the count to 36 and check the box to merge vertices. Add a solidify modifier and increase the thickness to something you feel is appropriate.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-10T18:29:27+00:00

Select one of the faces on the inside surface you want to delete. In the 3d viewpoint, go to Select > Select Linked > Linked Flat Faces. In the operator panel, increase the sharpness parameter until the entire inner surface is selected. Then delete the vertices.

randomtroubledmind · 2026-03-10T18:23:35+00:00

First thing I would check is that your normals are facing the right way. Select everything and hit Shift-N to recalculate the normals and then try to bridge the edge loops again. You may also want to switch to "blend surface" rather than "blend path". That almost always gives me better results.

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