Blender - Some Awesome New Features

[efflux]

Matt, I get this all the time. An app has massive potential, I spend ages learning then a major stumbling block arrives. It didn't take me 13 hours to learn Blender. I've been working for weeks on it and on and off for years. It just took me thirteen hours to find the two stumbling blocks. One of which is a new change. I've noted on the development forum that removing part of the Blender Cycles procedural power is a crazy regression but who knows what they will do. Interesting that I find hardly anyone complaining about this. On Blenderartists.org most people even didn't seem to know that I was on about. I had to provide screenshots to show it. This is hard core Blender users and I was describing how the app works.

I find this kind of thing crops up a lot with open source software. They strip something out that if it was a commercial app they'd lose serious money. It would be like if Planetside removed the GI or something and brought it back next year. I'm not actually ditching Blender because it does do a few interesting things. It has a compositor which seems to work OK. It has various interesting ways of turning mesh to bitmapping textures and vice versa. The new dynamic topology is in fact very cool but doesn't interest me a huge amount. I prefer 3D Coat's voxel sculpting. The new renderer is very cool. Very nice results but then If I'm going to use Modo that doesn't really matter.

Wings3d is one app I learn't that I can totally stand by. Great modeller. Whatever I said about I don't take back.

I haven't used Modo in a while. I see a lot of features I didn't know it. had. I thought it lacked procedural texturing. It used to. Not now!

As for learning Modo. This won't be a few days that's for sure. For a laugh, here's the gradient editor:

http://docs.luxology.com/modo/701/help/pages/modointerface/viewports/GradientEditor.html

[efflux]

Leaving aside the ludicrous ditching of the basis functions in Cycles fractal node. Here's the showstopper that destroys Blender's potential to build fantastic terrains. You can still build terrains with displacement but the displacement modifier for mesh allows you to see it in real time and edit it manually. I had assumed I could use nodes which is vital to build up fancy networks:

http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=498&aid=32759&group_id=9

[efflux]

Here's where my Blender experiments ended. This isn't rendered in Cycles. It's rendered in the old internal. Cycles would be more realistic like Terragen. You get can all the atmosphere light interaction but at present that stuff is early days in Blender. I think it's hassle to set up but everyone will want it so developers will concentrate on it. Particle systems created the rocks. They are real geometry and you can create millions of them and even use physics systems to control where they are or where they move to (animation is dead easy and render times are fast). The whole ground could be covered in varieties of rock. The tree could also be replicated, probably into hundreds, maybe thousands. This is where an app like Blender is heaven compared to Terragen because it's easy to edit all this kind of stuff. The terrain is full geometry. You can move around it. The cloud was my first experiment at creating volumetrics. This could be taken way further for better results but obviously a weakness in non dedicated landscape app. For example, you have to use mesh to control it but that doesn't mean it has to look as solid as in this render. It's not that different from if you had to contain clouds in Terragen. The surfaces on the rocks and tree are (were) Blender's huge strength along with terrain shapes because Blender had massive fractal power. This gets into where it flops now. If I moved this to Cycles, none of those mats can be recreated. I only have some kind of noise basis, maybe perlin. I don't even know. None of all the voronoi basis. That's all gone.  One of the massive advantages over Terragen is killed. The terrain editing in realtime viewable geometry falls down because I wanted to make complex terrain graphs and that terrain could be used in TG2. The nodes for displacment modifier textures don't work. That was potentially a fantastic feature.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2271/xyto.jpg

Next step is to move everything I learnt in Blender to Modo.

[efflux]

Blender has now settled into the workflow. Nothing tops Blender for shaping rocks because of the displacement modifier and the fractals to do this. This image here is from an animation in Blender. I haven't shaped the rocks here yet. To do that I'd subdivide the voronoi shapes then apply a modifier. They are a cube that I smashed apart into voronoi distance type lumps then created a particle system out of the results and then these particles collapse with gravity. Its actually a liquid type physics. The flow around once hitting the ground. The objects are controlled with physics. It's similar to stuff you'd do in Houdini but for free. The rocks land naturally even roll down that slope. They are simply geometry but that will change. Modo will handle the particle physics not Blender. In Modo I can create vaste clouds of all sorts and heavily micropoly displaced as well. The ground here could be a Terragen heightfield. Modo handles that kind of thing better though because this truly could be a vast Terragen heightfield with millions of small rocks raining down. This stuff is cool to work with because you can get rocks to roll and land in natural piles. That could be very useful to import into TG2. It goes much further than that though, especially when I get more into Modo.

[efflux]

This video shows you how this can be useful to create objects for Terragen:

http://vimeo.com/38221113#

Here's another one but this isn't the script I'm currently using:

http://vimeo.com/38219515#

Or this:

http://vimeo.com/38450564

[mhaze]

Thanks for those links. I'm going to learn the basics of blender and use that effect for something I've had in mind for years

[efflux]

I've been through a few apps and rocks are one of Blender's great strengths because you have various scripts for smashing objects apart then physics systems to arrange them. Obviously people want this for animation but the side product is that you're left with a bunch of broken up mesh. Then add in that Blender has this mesh modifier that displaces and it has fractals for that. This in in fact where Blender's terrain generation gets let down though because you can't use nodes for that modifier. It's fine or rocks but for terrain you'd want more functionality.

I'd recommend that people here get into particles and physics in other apps due to the way you can use things such as gravity to arrange objects. The output from this kind of thing would be really useful in Terragen. Houdini is the ultimate app for this but not needed. It's also really fun because it all animates. Doing stuff like firing a ball through a wall and smashing a hole. That's all great fun to learn and watch happening.

Further down the road, if you can do all these procedural animation type things in other apps with particles and such like, you then have things that can be composited in with Terragen animations. It's definitely very useful to learn this stuff.

I've mentioned this before but I don't see many people who are using these other apps diving into Terragen to create landscapes because of the massive learning curve to get decent results but Modo, Blender etc (the ones I've tried) that's much easier to learn than Terragen.

[mhaze]

I am surprised at how easy it is to learn the 2.6 version.  The old one was a nightmare but 5 mins in with the basic tutorial vids and you are away.  It is a very serious and stable app, well worth the effort learning it.

[efflux]

It's definitely worth learning now. A no brainer really. Even if you find limits and move to another app, you won't find that so difficult if you know Blender first and there are still always going to be uses for Blender. The Cycles renderer changes a lot. That has very nice realistic look.

I've found a lot of improvements. it has Bmesh now which allows ngons.

I also don't believe the poor UI arguments are valid anymore especially with Cycles. the last area of UI confusion tended to be in the way materials and textures were dealt with. In Cycles that is hugely cleaned up because you just work with nodes in a really easy way.

Another thing that used to be complained about is the key command centric nature. That's not so relevant anymore but once you realise the massive key command power you see why that is brilliant. For example, lets say you want to move an object 1m in Y direction. Key command G then Y then 1. That's it done.

[efflux]

Back messing in Blender. Latest release candidate. Cycles is about 25% faster. I'm testing Cycles displacements. This is an "experimental" feature but it actually seems to be working quite well. I have a new method that could create terrains from Blender without too much hassle. The terrains possibilities are in there due to Blenders great fractals and node editing power even in the more Limited Cycles. It's just finding the way to create them and actually see them as you edit.

I've been working in Modo. Just in that time Blender is already upgraded. Modo's UI is terrible. It always seems like you're dealing with an app that is massively more complex than Blender but it isn't. Blender UI is brilliant. These people who say it's bad are talking crap. I'm beginning to think there simply isn't any point in using any of these types of apps except Blender. No way is Modo worth £1000.

Blender Cycles displacements:

[efflux]

Ok here's my first test using pure displacement this time. This can be turned to mesh in Blender for further modification or exported. I want to work out how to create falls off to the edge. Blender's node network means great terrains are possible. The problem is finding the right method. TG2's node network is useless in comparison. Blender's is massively more powerful. I can also get terrains probably four of five sizes this detail into Modo but I'm not sure I want to do that. I think Blender is better now or use these terrains in TG2.

[efflux]

Here's another one. All sorts of terrain types can be created in seconds unlike the hell of the TG2 nodes. All fractal functions can be driven by other parameters. All positioning is controllabe. Masses of fractal forms and this is the "crippled" Cycles nodes. I've got the ball rolling on that though. We may get all the basis functions reinstated eventually. Then you have curve graphs and gradients. These are all essential and that's why TG2 is completely crippled.

[Dune]

Maybe Planetside can 'steal' some script from Blender, it's open source, right? 

[TheBadger]

Maybe Planetside can 'steal' some script from Blender, it's open source, right? 

I always was curious about that too. I am guessing the codes must be made compatible, and thats probably a ton of work? Maybe it just takes less time to build it all up by your self in an original way, than to try to make two different languages work together?

Otherwise, yeah! Planetside and everyone should be grabbing that stuff up! Then again, maybe there is some culture in the industry that makes doing that an undesirable behavior? OR just the pride of doing it all your self?

Its a great question Ulco, I'm really curious about it.

[Dune]

I really don't know how that 'works', what's feasible or ethical. But it would be great to have ONE SOFTWARE that has it all.