some things that would nice additions to blender

[danielHinton]

CLiff,

For your second point, you may like to have a look at either softbody or rigid body dynamics. used in conjunction, they can produce the cloth effect you're looking for.

Your first point - have you tried using a boolean operation to remove parts of the mesh that overlap?

Dan

[shoujoboy]

Eh for me it'd be Face,Edge and Vertice hot keys but other than that, I'm good.

[ScotchTapeWorm3D]

Eh for me it'd be Face,Edge and Vertice hot keys but other than that, I'm good.

They do. Press Ctrl Tab

[joshex]

CLiff,

For your second point, you may like to have a look at either softbody or rigid body dynamics. used in conjunction, they can produce the cloth effect you're looking for.

Your first point - have you tried using a boolean operation to remove parts of the mesh that overlap?

Dan

on your response to my first point; removing parts of a mesh would do for a non-amnimated scene,

but for something like a video game where you have an odd shaped eyeball for a character, sometimes you might want to rotate it with out it protruding through the face of the character, as for lattices, they deform the pupil in certain shaped eyes when rotated, thats why I suggested a "cage" it would force the eye stay within the originating bounds so no matter how you rotate it, it won't deform the pupil, a much easier application...

on your response to my second point; I've never used soft or rigid body dynamics so I can't say they won't work. but I will say that it's not likely, as I havn't heard of blender having that capabillity in either it's object mode or it's GE.

thats why I suggested it, so you can have a model that automatically deforms any impacting faces (which I've seen countless people's models fail at doing when animated)

again it was not just for cloth, but any pysical interaction between models, or parts of models for that matter, for example with said option you could create realistic impact of a "punch" from one character to another, or could have a tentacle squeeze a character without the tentacle disappearing partially into the character...

again these option's are for animated sequences and game sequences, not freeze frames.

please ignor these replies if what you talked about is capable of these things...

and as for others who might have a "known not to be included" operation in blender such as for example: a register for emit values in the GE, or a register for reflectivity in the GE. (just examples, though they aren't included and could be good additions as well...) please feel free to chime in as I see some already have.

also for other options try to explain out in "basic" programing terms how it works, they don't have to be actual programing terms just a base of how it operates... it makes for less work for the person programing...(like I did above)

[fktt]

on your response to my first point; removing parts of a mesh would do for a non-amnimated scene,

but for something like a video game where you have an odd shaped eyeball for a character, sometimes you might want to rotate it with out it protruding through the face of the character, as for lattices, they deform the pupil in certain shaped eyes when rotated, thats why I suggested a "cage" it would force the eye stay within the originating bounds so no matter how you rotate it, it won't deform the pupil, a much easier application... lattice + good normal map.


on your response to my second point; I've never used soft or rigid body dynamics so I can't say they won't work. but I will say that it's not likely, as I havn't heard of blender having that capabillity in either it's object mode or it's GE.
not sure about the soft body, but the rigid-body dynamics actually are part of the game engine, you'll have to use the ge dynamics for even the baked ipo's, iirc.


again it was not just for cloth, but any pysical interaction between models, or parts of models for that matter, for example with said option you could create realistic impact of a "punch" from one character to another, or could have a tentacle squeeze a character without the tentacle disappearing partially into the character...

again these option's are for animated sequences and game sequences, not freeze frames.

please ignore these replies if what you talked about is capable of these things...

and as for others who might have a "known not to be included" operation in blender such as for example: a register for emit values in the GE, or a register for reflectivity in the GE. (just examples, though they aren't included and could be good additions as well...) please feel free to chime in as I see some already have.

also for other options try to explain out in "basic" programing terms how it works, they don't have to be actual programing terms just a base of how it operates... it makes for less work for the person programing...(like I did above)

[CGIPadawan]

In XSI, when a user adds lamps the effect of lighting in a reduced manner can be seen in real-time on the models in the workspace.

In Blender, you add lamps and you can't see what the lamp does without doing a preview or a render.

It would improve Blender if there was a facility for seeing immediately what the lights do even if it is not "beauty render" quality.

Also when clicking the "Show Textured" mode, Blender sometimes chooses to just make the mesh black unless you go into UV Image Edit. This needs to be improved.

[Michael-Williamson]

CGI Padawan, what you describe is in the "apricot" branch right now with the new GLSL functionality

[CGIPadawan]

CGI Padawan, what you describe is in the "apricot" branch right now with the new GLSL functionality

So... This will be in Blender 2.47 because of the contribution by Apricot?
If so, then that's great.

When I tried XSI for the challenge, that was one of the things that sprung out at me was that you could "see" the end result quite quickly.

It made a difference in being able to save time.

[Michael-Williamson]

2.47 is primarily a bugfix release of 2.46 so it won't be in yet...
don't know if they'll do a "formal" release, but they'll certainly need to put this branch on the apricot DVD which isn't far off...

you can always compile your own or get a build from Graphicall... it's pretty stable!

[ScotchTapeWorm3D]

In XSI, when a user adds lamps the effect of lighting in a reduced manner can be seen in real-time on the models in the workspace.

In Blender, you add lamps and you can't see what the lamp does without doing a preview or a render.

It would improve Blender if there was a facility for seeing immediately what the lights do even if it is not "beauty render" quality.

Also when clicking the "Show Textured" mode, Blender sometimes chooses to just make the mesh black unless you go into UV Image Edit. This needs to be improved.

Lights show up when you click shaded.

[joshex]

lattice + good normal map.


not sure about the soft body, but the rigid-body dynamics actually are part of the game engine, you'll have to use the ge dynamics for even the baked ipo's, iirc.

before I respond to that I'd like to make another note of things missing: double armature posing, Ex: my latest model has two legs and when I select both shins in pose mode and try to "move" them both on for example the z axis, they rotate instead of move... I mean it's fine for now to do things individually but it does make things more of a fuss...

sorry if I'm not completely fluent in blender terminology, but whats a "map" is that just the build? or is it part of the rigging, if so a tutorial would be appreciated! ;)

from what I see soft body, really only has particle effects, and water effects, everything else is almost off limits, as for rigid body, I now understand what they both mean, and rigid body has severe limitations so far as keeping faces from going through each other, but I understand it's pressence in the GE for basic impact. so pretty much I'd ask for improvements in the soft and rigid body dynamics... complete with percent of "soft/hard" and central percent placement editing, as described above. as for both rigid and soft body dynamics; I'd like to see implementation on specific parts of a mesh like vertexgroups.

[fktt]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Atexture+map&btnG=Google+Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_map

[joshex]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Atexture+map&btnG=Google+Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_map

ah thankyou kind sir! I understand now.

though I don't know how to implement those things in blender yet....

as for it's use for an eye, that could work but it might be rough and cause some deforming of the pupil...or maybe I just need a better explanation (view) of how to use the normal mapping in this instance...

for example heres the face model I'm working with (I hope it uploads properly I had to zip it to make sure all the files were included, as well as the base pictures I was working from) :

[fktt]

ah thankyou kind sir! I understand now.

though I don't know how to implement those things in blender yet....

as for it's use for an eye, that could work but it might be rough and cause some deforming of the pupil...or maybe I just need a better explanation (view) of how to use the normal mapping in this instance...


Well, I've already thrown this link at 'ya before in another thread,
but maybe its little more clearer and helpful for ya:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=128144

The model there isn't a game model but it should give you the basic idea, hopefully.

Essentially, you apply a normal map that's just round, like a smooth ball,
and yes, this is a bit(well, very) stylistic there, and most of the helpful info is in post 9.

[joshex]

Well, I've already thrown this link at 'ya before in another thread,
but maybe its little more clearer and helpful for ya:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=128144

The model there isn't a game model but it should give you the basic idea, hopefully.

Essentially, you apply a normal map that's just round, like a smooth ball,
and yes, this is a bit(well, very) stylistic there, and most of the helpful info is in post 9.

hmm, interesting, how did I miss that link!?

alrigth time to learn some new lessons...(and stop complaining! :D )

thanks!

[joshex]

sorry about the double post, but I just ran into a bit of a problem, image output;

I had made an animation of one of my most recent models, the problem is that the only noteable video output is AVI, why not allow .gif ? the avi ended up being over 500MB... so I scraped it... a gif might not have been as bad on the MB scale...

so thats what I'm posting as a "nice addition" animation export as ".gif"

not only that but I can't currently use any sound on my computer or kaffiene for that matter as my sound controller is bust... and without sound kaffiene wont allow avi's to be opened... so for out put I really have no other choice... if it were a gif picture I could optimize it for gif in the gimp, which would reduce that loadage as well, though it does have over 400 frames...

oh well, I guess for the mean time I'll have to figure something out...

edit: yep I figured it out!, I set the export to .jpeg at 100 percent, then set the output folder to a new folder, made a new 800x600 image in the gimp, and opened allt he frames at once as new layers, then reversed them as they were backwards... then I optimized and the outcome was a 9.9MB ".gif" for the first part of the 4 part animation.

[shoujoboy]

They do. Press Ctrl Tab
thanks !!! A new short cut never heard oh that one it should speed me up nicely !!!

[joshex]

allong with my last response about an export format of ".gif" how about an import format of ".gif" as well for motion texture support.

pretty much it would work like this; if a .gif is used as a texture blender will check how many frames it has (and any optimization notations.."replace or combine"), and how quick/long of an interval it is between frames, it will then check how many times the .gif is set to repeat it self before stopping it's motion on the last frame.. (if infinate, it will repeat it for as many frames as the scene is programmed into the timeline/action editor) for example if you didn't set an end it will keep playing over and over again until frame 250 which is the default... or it will play to what ever frame you ended the performance at,

it will also be able to be started from any frame, though this should be optional, in the case where (say you stated your animation at frame 5), blender would goto the corresponding frame of the animation (if it's set to the same frame rate as blender it would be frame 5 of the animation) other wise it could be set to display frame 1 of the .gif on every frame before frame five, then start it's animation on said frame..

[hyenaman]

Hi,

I would say one of the things that seem minor enough but will do a world of good is a better layers manager.
where u can name and organize layers etc.
as usual im sure its being worked on as we speak:P hope it is.

Thanks

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