Blender - Some Awesome New Features

[efflux]

This is what you should see when UVing.

The top window is the 3D view. Hit 7 on the numeric keyboard to get top down view and make sure it's Edit Mode. Keyboard command A will select or deselect all polys. You want them selected. The poly arrangment here is immaterial. You might have more polys or less. It depends on how you're subdividing to see the terrain. None of that is important here. It could be one poly at this stage. The bottom window is the UV/Image Editor. Where it says Image on the bar at the bottom, click to create a new image. You'll see various options. You want it 32 bit. Width and Height is up to you except the terrain is obviously a square so make it so in here as well. 2048 is a decent size. After you've done this, move the mouse to the 3d view and key command U. You'll get that menu and select  Project from View (Bounds). That will set up the UV to be filling your Square texture.

Next you need to go to the render properties on the right. Near the bottom you will see Bake. Bake Mode has lots of options. You can choose texture although there are in fact a few ways to do this. Displacement didn't seem to work for me. I'll look into why but I think maybe it has to be projected in a certain way from real displacement. That's OK for Cycles but not for Internal. Hit bake and it will render the texture to UV.

Then back in the UV/Image window under Image menu you can save the image to a file. Once you open the next window you'll see options on the left to save as exr which is what we want. That's it.

Some of this stuff I'm new to because I was using a much more complex baking technique with Cycles. You have to do it a different way with Cycles.

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/8149/i099.jpg

[efflux]

Here's the sculpting mode. Don't expect ZBrush or 3D Coat. Speed problems could largely depend on your graphics card. Blender doesn't handle huge poly counts but there are ways. It's dynamic and you can decimate the mesh. The point is, no other sculpting app allows you to paint with procedures as awesome as this. Also, this shows why I tend to keep my basic textures in collections on the sphere. I can open Blender, bring in the sphere to test textures then create a plane (or whatever else I'm doing) and bring the textures into say sculpt. They also benefit from being tidied into a non used object when you use the displacement modifier. So basically here, you can actually build node graphs to create your brush!

Bear in mind that you can rough out basic shapes or make small things then bring into a proper sculpting app for mega detailing or expanding out the terrain. Also, you could simply paint flat textures or bake stuff out for brushes.

If Blender ever gets enough power to handle huge poly counts for sculpting it will be absolutely awesome.

[efflux]

I've just come up with another way. You can paint into a vaste res UV. Sure, you can't totally see what you're doing but you can hit real time render view every so often to see how it looks. You can bake out a general terrain then work in the detail with paint on UV. So this way you can paint on huge res with procedural node brushes.

However, the real clicher will be when I get 3D Coat into this workflow.

[TheBadger]

Dune was looking for a free sculptor that can export vectors. I couldn't find one. Sculptris would be perfect, but no vectors. I thought you said blender cant do vectors. Is that still the case? If it can't, thats a little sad. There should be one free or cheap option someplace.

[Dune]

You asked what I was just about to ask. Can you make Vector Displacement maps from this? It would only need quite simple shapes, the rest can be done in TG.

[efflux]

You asked what I was just about to ask. Can you make Vector Displacement maps from this? It would only need quite simple shapes, the rest can be done in TG.

No. Blender can't do vector displacement. I know this was being discussed in the other thread and I mentioned this there. I haven't visited that thread since last posting because I'm working in Blender at the moment. It's logical that Blender isn't going to get this soon because displacement has always been weak in Blender. They have to improve standard displacment first. Micro shader displacement at render time has only just been experimentally added with Cycles.

The Blender terrains could be moved as mesh to another app and vector displacement maps made there. Vector displacement is failry new so i'ts understandable that not all apps have it.

[efflux]

I found this. Blender can use vector displacment pretty much the same way as Terragen can but I don't see how it can bake them. Maybe there is a way.

http://outdated-hardware.deviantart.com/art/rgb-displacement-test-124574109

[efflux]

I wouldn't go by that comment in that image about Blender not being able to bake out vector displacements. There might be way. Especially in Cycles nodes. You do have full node network control of vectors. I was told Cycles couldn't bake out anything. That's BS. It's just there isn't a button that says bake.

The problem in Blender is that it might be possible to bake out something that is vector from Cycles but I don't think there will be an easy way to really see what you are doing. I'm going to see if Cycles can do vector displacement but that's really pushing it. It's only just got standard displacement. The displacement modifier for mesh does vectors as that that image shows but you can't properly create vector displacment that way. You can't access nodes. You can simply import a vector displacement.

[efflux]

Just another point here. All the physics side of Blender can come into play. You can bake anything out even if it's a bunch of separate objects. This leads to another thing. You can drape planes over things for cloth simulation. Could that be like eroded terrain? Bear in mind that this "plane" can be any form. It can already be rock shaped. I think you come up with some very interesting stuff by all sorts of means.

[masonspappy]

You can drape planes over things for cloth simulation

That's how I made the tablecloth in this image:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16324.0;attach=44031;image

[efflux]

I'm just wondering if anybody has tried that to create terrains. I can't see any evidence of it on the net but it might work quite well.

There's got to be some use of this for terrain.

http://vankata.deviantart.com/art/Cloth-Simulation-107671386

[efflux]

I've posted a decent Blender terrain render in the image sharing. I've got the levels right now so hat it sits nicely on the planet surface. You just have to play around with values in Blender to get that right.

[efflux]

Here's that Blender terrain that I used in the image sharing post but in Modo. This is the real time view in the modeller. As you can see I can add models on the foreground and see exactly what I'm doing. Modo can handle terrains as big a Terragen in terms of heightfields. I've tested it. I can use four of those Blender terrains just as I did in the image sharing picture and I can see it faster in real time than Terragen even although Modo doesn't even use the GPU. Then Modo has a mass of procedurals. A fantastic curve graph. It has some limits because the shader tree isn't nodal but large landscapes aren't limited to Terragen anymore.

[efflux]

Here's that Blender terrain with a Modo material applied. Took about 30 seconds to create it. Render time under a minute. Awesome curve graph to control colour gradients via slope. This is not some small scale stage set. It can be vaste and I wouldn't even use this all over displacement. The terrain needs to be mesh which can be sculpted in 3D Coat. Vector displacements not a problem. I can even do tiled modelling in 3D Coat. Stones can all be real geometry into the billions. Trees populations easy as pie and I'm in a full animation and modelling program. Only main trouble is clouds but than can be done. Procedurals are way beyond Terragen despite the non nodal limits of the shader treee but the shader tree is very powerful. Nodes will come because the users want it.

[efflux]

So the point is, I've now learnt to get what I need out of Blender because Blender can do stuff in terms of terrains and rocks etc via fractals that other apps can't do. Now it's over to Modo because Modo can handle the vast data and has a ton of surfacing procedurals and very fast renderer.