Blender 2.8 released!

I may be missing something here, but there's no good reason not to be rendering to individual frames.

 

Well, considering that I'm referring to around the year 2000-2001, and I had a college computer that I had built myself and was on a college student's budget, space was very much at a premium. So yes, there was a reason not to render to individual frames. The most I could have hoped for at the time in terms of compression would have been to render to JPEGs. And at close to 30 frames per second, that would have eaten up a whole lot of hard drive space in not very much time. A video file was more efficient in terms of storage.

And of course, back then you had a lot fewer options when it came to stitching a series of images into a complete video file. Also, re-assembling a rendered image sequence would have taken extra time as well, time I did not always have for specific art projects.

 

Yeah, Ive been managing student rendering projects since around 1999, so I know the issues. However, when the choice is between losing all of dozens (or hundreds) of hours of rendering because the output video file corrupted, or the software crashed, versus managing single frames, its not ever a worthwhile tradoff IMO. And since its still relevant (we've even had students think they can network render multiple machines to the same videofile) I think its still germane advice to give for those who might not have thought about it.

 

In this day and age, yes, you are correct. And if I were tackling a similar project today, I would absolutely follow the methodology you are describing. Modern students should definitely try long-term rendering on a frame-by-frame basis, in order to avoid software crashes and being able to pick up rendering where it left off in case of failure. Modern computers frequently measure their hard-drive sizes in Terabytes.

The hard drive I was having to use back in the day was 20 Gigs. And it was fairly sizable for the time I had it. But space disappears REAL fast when you're rendering video. These days, I typically carry a 256 Gig flash drive around with me. For a fraction of what I spent on that 20 Gig drive, I can now conveniently keep more than 10 times the space on my person. Space is thankfully no longer as much of a limiting factor.

I spent a little time last night poking through the new 2.8 Blender. I can see why so many people are excited. The big interface innovation is relatively simple. They basically just gave users a set of pre-defined "workspaces." All of this was possible in previous versions, they just didn't have default pre-sets for them baked into the software. Not actually all that much of a change, but it will likely make a lot of the interface nay-sayers happy.

I was able to dig into my beloved modeling tools quickly and easy, with vertex groups and shape keys immediately accessible. I was even able to use the sculpting interface to perform editing on my shape keys, so I'm a happy modeler.

 

I just noticed this too. I'm glad they still support the "drag the corner to create a new editor window" feature, but it's hidden now. It's not a visible tab. A little annoying, but it definitely makes the UI more slick.

 

Coming from Maya user, Blender 2.8 is great.
Here are some of my Japanese classroom scene made in Blender 2.8.

 

Noice! Did you know blender has an archipack plugin too!

https://blender-archipack.org/

 

I used it to make these I suspect eevee should render even faster than unity baked with irradiance volumes.

Spoiler: spoiler

 

Woah there chief, you think I'm a game dev wanting to make money, I'm not mad ya know, this is just for fun!

 

I've used blender 2.79b for a while now, making demons, vampires, bottles, walls . . It's got what I want, solid box-modelling, easy texture painting and, I can spray-paint quick-image decals and, get the look I want . . I know it can bake normals maps but, I haven't done that yet . . I've bought a cheap 3D scanner but, have ordered the Intel d415 Depth camera this month, because it's faster and, potentially more accurate . .

Retopology is easy in Blender and, you get perfectly passable results, I don't see my-self needing any-thing except Blender for many years to come and, if I need advanced features, I can ask the Blender devs for it, and, they may make it . .

Blender is stable and, fun . . And, there are great tutorials online so, you get help finding the right buttons, I've watched a few but, prefer dabbling on my own . . The sculpting tools in Blender are also top-of-the-line, they never crashed for me and, exporting and, UV mapping is also intuitive and, quickly learned . .

As I see it, Blender is good enough for beginning to medium-level Game designers, so I'm happy . ..

 

Some stuff I made, in Blender > >





In Blender, you just make a model, unwrap it so you get the UV coordinates, then you start painting on the UV image directly on 3D character And, You get Great results - --

 

That's cool I want to test texture painting in blender but think

https://armorpaint.org/index.html

is better if you have a decent gpu.

 

This quick tutorial explains it, it's so easy - - You can create any-thing, ASAP > >

 

Here is another video, you can do a lot of stuff in Blender > > Like, painting bump maps directly on the model and, create the corresponding height map automatically, seeing in Real-time what's happening - -

 

Basically, you can create any-thing in Blender and, export it in a matter of a few minutes or, may-be 20 minutes - -

 

I think everyone can appreciate @jbb1979's enthusiasm.

I can't speak for 3ds Max or Maya about texture painting, but I definitely enjoy Blender texture painting as well. This was the first video I saw that convinced me that Blender texture painting is actually a usable feature, and not just thrown together like something in GIMP.

 

Do you know the page Quixel, where they have texture generating software, that makes 2048x2048 high quality textures, in a cool app - -

Well, in Blender you can take those Physically Based rendering ( PBR ) textures - - meaning Diffuse, Normal and, displacement and, Paint them on, in Blender and, sort of Quick transfer very good textures and, normal maps, to any objects, it takes like 5 minutes to paint a professional looking asset, in Blender - -

That's crazy, we can compete with the big game studios, in terms of Graphical fidelity - -

I just go into Texture painting, pick a stencil and, load the diffuse Quixel texture, and paint it directly on the model, with simple texture painting, then I just add a separate map, for the normal map and, load the normal map into the texture stencil slot and, add all the normal attributes - - Result, every object looks with Quixel quality - -

I don't know if you know what I mean, but by using a ' stencil ' brush, one loads a texture, like a diffuse or, normal image, from Quixel, and paint that on, and the Program even automatically sets up diffuse, normal and, specular, in Blender, just use a simple menu - -

You can spray-paint Quixel textures, the Whole PBR Texture, on any surface, you can find, in Blender, it's Crazy - -

Do you know what Quixel is ? It's like a super - good texture / asset page - -

Any-way, it's Super awe-some - --

 

Here's a quick video that explains Quixel, it's free for about 50 textures and, the software is also free, while it's in trial and, it works super - well >

ps. I've already seen that video, I found it super - cool, I'm no great artist so, being able to paint directly, basically spray-painting stencil textures on a model, after unwrapping it, so there's no seams or, tiling, is great - -

 

i'd be interested to know how is the workflow for CAD models in blender?
optimize (reduce polygons, combine by material, ..), and automatic unwrapping?

 

Blender is not a CAD software but, there are videos on youtube that will explain how it can be used - -

Here's a video, that explains but, I'm not a CAD user, I don't care, Personally - -

I'd google ' Best free CAD ' software, Blender is more for movies and, games . .$

Blender has been used to make Top - quality 2D animations, it has tools for that, they've made Disney quality Short - movies and, it's been used in Top Hollywood movies, for Visual effects

I've seen some CAD videos, but I think people working there should go to Autodesk, that's their forte - -

For video-games, Stick With blender - --

 

i mean to work with CAD files, to use in unity. (usually need to use 3ds max since it can import most formats)

 

CAD and 3DS formats require licencing. So that is major limitation for in blender use.
Hence best option, is download / convert to more common format like OBJ, or FBX and work from there.
Sure not ideal solution, but not bad either. I just to convert and import robotic manipulators to blender, did some important changes in it and then import to Unity.

 

Greetings to all. All the way from Cameroon. I’m leaving 3ds Max to Blender since a couple of days.
So, please tell me, my Blender 2.80 is crashing every time I intend to use eevee and shading modes. Please, tell me what the problem could be?

 

Hi. You didn't told us any details. But you should however, post Blender issues on blender forum (not Unity), or search web for similar issues.

 

There have been CAD plugins for blender for years so you can actually open CAD files really easily in blender.

Also nobody really uses .CAD format in the industry, but usually STL, DWG, DXF etc etc which can all be opened in blender either natively or using plugins (same like no-one uses .3ds in industry, then send files as an interchange format like FBX etc)

We are using it in production at work in simvis industry and we use CAD formats all the time, no problems using 2.8 for this so far

 

Can you recommend one that opens .igs and .step files?

 

I would normally just open it in FreeCAD and then export to STL which retains everything, then import that into blender (which is natively supported).

https://www.freecadweb.org/

 

ok take that back emissive materials look great when bloom and SSR is enabled.

Spoiler: spoiler

 

Can't seem to get hair particles working in eevee though cycles ref below:

Spoiler: cycles

 

zdfjlwerouwioerowkdsf this is really insane, I can't believe fire and volumes look this good inside eevee and it only took 1 sec to render.

Spoiler: spoiler

 

Oh man I could play with this all day. Gotta stop now.

Spoiler: spoiler

 

Yeah, I think there were some major backend improvements to Blender's fluid sim at some point. It's wild that stuff that used to take me maybe 6 hours in FumeFX can be done in a matter of minutes in Blender.

 

Looks great I got Graswald, but want to use hdri skies and hard ops though.

And Grove
https://www.thegrove3d.com/buy/

https://blendermarket.com/products/graswald

Spoiler: spoiler

 

You can make A and, AA Games with Blender, May-be not AAA ? <3

 

Tell that to Ubisoft. Having a major studio switch to Blender means that it's considered capable of AAA.

 

I read it as "their animation studio" uses it now, so technically they're still not making games with it (although they absolutely could in combination with good texturing tools like the Substance toolset):
https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund/

 

You can absolutely make AAA games with Blender and I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.

 

Ah man thegrove3d is pretty amazing.

https://www.thegrove3d.com/

Shame open world games for indies is a non starter, I suppose you could make forest simulator.

 

If anyone is thinking of doing spaceships etc I would highly recommend this hard ops plugin.

https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-surface-modeling-in-blender

 

Dang greebles look great inside eevee, DOF works nicely too! OK seriously gotta stop now.

Spoiler: spoiler

 

how those trees would look like in unity? (if you have, or know some good examples)

 

I am making this demon, it's in Blender 2.79b but, I have the new one on my new HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop Amazing - -



It's for one of the levels, in my game, it's about a monk who gets to Visit hell, to Describe it, and his only weapon is a Little crucifix and, a Bible - - All the Enemies look the Same and, I will buy the Modular assets from Quixel - -

Any-way, it's very easy to retopologize in Blender 2.79b and, it looks even easier, in 2.80 . .. I'm using Blender and, I can do Basically every-thing I want to, so I'm very Happy - - My Demon will only be seen far away and, Close-up details won't matter - -

I think Blender is Well suited For diablo - style games <3 <3

Blender is very user-friendly and, if one asks, Devs there might even make New features from their forum, especially if you support with maybe 50 $$ Each year

 

Dunno, I've uninstalled unity to free up space just now, but I'd imagine with the hdrp package etc, it should look similar to the book of the dead demo. I'm restricting testing as I'm prob frying my cpu. Internal gpu on mac suck.

 

Ah man I hate retop'ing but looks like you're doing a good job there!

 

Batmobile anyone?

Spoiler: spoiler

Snow test

Spoiler

alien egg

Spoiler

 

it Looks so good, Natural, Adding more Details won't make it better, Now we Need to Focus on getting the Animations in games Just right . . The Batmobile and, alien egg is Hollywood style - -$

 

Heh, I was playing around with Blender, just seeing what I could pull off as a kind of tech demo. And I was able to successfully get render-to-texture working using multiple scenes and the cycles renderer. And I was able to confirm that it will even work with animations. I'll be able to pull off some pretty sweet effects with this one.

 

Sounds cool! Does it render the different texture passes like normal, albedo, roughness, etc.? Would be interesting to see or read how you set that up.

 

Back on it again . . .

Aliens (eevee engine) mu ha ha [click to enlarge]

Spoiler

 

T.roll LOTR anyone?

Spoiler