All about blender

[HMart]

I've been out of the loop for several Blender versions, but I really like the fact that you can now bake normal maps entirely within Blender itself, without having to worry about cumbersome external tools like Doom 3's "renderbump" command. You can use this either to bake a high-poly mesh into a low-poly UV map, or create a normal map for a flat tileable texture.

 

 

 

Really? I use Blender for mostly rigging and animation, so I don't know what it fully supports but normal map baking, is such a basic thing that was available in Modo at least since the Modo 501 days!

[Arcturus]

Normal map baking has has been in Blender since forever.

[chakkman]

Installed the 2.80 beta earlier. Time to learn Blender.

[OrbWeaver]

Normal map baking has has been in Blender since forever.

 

I'm not sure about "forever", since I distinctly recall trying to do it in the original Doom 3 days with Blender 2.3x or something, and you had to set up a complex material with various colour gradients in order to get the right normal map output.

 

But it's quite plausible that it has been in Blender since they first integrated Cycles, which was a long time ago. It's definitely not a new 2.80 feature by any means.

[Arcturus]

Ok, so not since forever. I started using Blender from version 2.48. According to this document baking was added in version 2.43 in 2007. Cycles was added in 2.61 in 2011.

[OrbWeaver]

Wow, even longer ago than I thought.

 

That's the great think about software like Blender — you can mess around it with it for years and not even scratch the surface of what it can do. I get the same feeling using REAPER; it's like the Blender for audio production. Software that has so much functionality that 90% of it can only be found through a search function, rather than appearing in menus.

[Arcturus]

My recent project. Made in Blender 2.80 beta. Link to Sketchfab. Cycles render:

 

[Arcturus]

Blender 2.80 release candidate is out.

 

[Arcturus]

Official stable version of Blender 2.80 is out.

 

 

[kano]

Shout out to the developers of Blender, it is one of the last few programs today that isn't out to trick me into things I don't want, Blender is not loaded with telemetry to be disabled in ten different places, and it doesn't install random extensions behind the scenes without my permission!

It's like, the way software should be designed! You might think that this is a dig at Microsoft, but it's not. Even popular FOSS applications today are shamelessly doing all of the above. https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass

Somehow Blender has managed to become big and successful while still respecting the user! Now, they're even getting big donations from big game development studios!

I myself am proud to have supported them by buying some material on disk!

Edited August 6, 2019 by kano

[chakkman]

Just wondering, but... is there any reason not to use the portable version? I know that some programs require a installation to do certain things, e.g. access installed codecs, set themselves up to be the standard app for certain file formats etc. I like portable apps though, so, i would prefer to use Blender that way.

[SeriousToni]

That's pretty cool, but - dumb question - can it still export animated TDM models? I know which problems I had back in the day when trying out 3ds Max for making an animated model - only statics worked.

[kano]

Cool.

 

https://github.com/vestan/skinmaker/

[OrbWeaver]

In case it helps anyone, I also have a Git repository which includes the latest ASE and LWO export scripts (tested and working in Blender 2.8x), as well as an application template that you can add into the New menu to create an empty scene with certain grid and viewport settings that might be more useful for Dark Mod modelling than the Blender defaults.

I'm open to suggestions for other things which would be useful to include in the template. I'm not much of a modeller so maybe there are certain additional settings that everybody needs to use which I haven't considered.

[Arcturus]

Blender 2.82 came out.

 

[Dragofer]

Oh nice texture painting onto a model, maybe I can finally start more regularly making my own textures with this.

[Arcturus]

35 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

Oh nice texture painting onto a model, maybe I can finally start more regularly making my own textures with this.

Texture painting isn't new. What's new is UDIM. It allows having multiple textures per one UV map, while retaining all the benefits of a one huge resolution image.

[peter_spy]

That's for movie/vfx and offline renders though, where software like Mari is widely used for this. For realtime engines this is too expensive most of the time.

[Arcturus]

This add-on could be useful:

 

[Arcturus]

Blender 2.83 is out. It's a long term support version, meaning it will be maintained for two years, even after newer versions come out.

 

[Arcturus]

Ian Hubert is an independent filmmaker, director of "Tears of steal" open movie. He makes short, funny tutorials. He developed a super effective workflow that allows him to make entire worlds practically on his own.

 

[Arcturus]

Blender 2.83 Long Term Support (LTS) has reached version number 5. Meanwhile Blender 2.90 finally came out.

 

 

[madtaffer]

How to export from Blender to DarkMod?

[Destined]

There is a whole thread about this topic:

 

[OrbWeaver]

You can download Blender 2.80 compatible versions of both LWO and ASE export scripts from the link in my signature. The older versions floating around in other forum threads will probably not work with Blender 2.80.