Migration Pains

#1 
      Okay, I'm not whining ... just observing that things work differently in Blender. The challenge is good. 
      
      So, I successfully ported a character made in Max to Blender and all UV mappings seem to be working as before (thanks to CyberusC. see [this thread](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=91&t=890925) . Here is what I have:
       [img]http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/8472/blenderprime.png[/img]


      [b]My accessment? [/b]
      First, the base of the plaited hair is looking wrong. I  have different images for the alpha, specular, and diffuse all assigned.  I am wondering why I'm getting shadows at the bases.  Is there a way to prevent certain objects from casting shadows?
      
      Second, (not showing) I'm missing the list controllers in MAX. Its nice to be able to freeze transforms on a bone and manage further changes using an added controller.  I can't seem to find a similar feature.  I see a script constraint ... Is that like a script controller and where can I find a documentation on that?
#2

Enable transparent shadows on the receiving material (the head) - by default it doesn’t shade materials when shadow casting for performance reasons. It’s an awkward way of enabling this, hopefully cleared up in future material system redesign.

As for controllers, you’re probably better off describing what you actually want to do than the feature names in max, since not many people here will be familiar with the terminology, and there might be different ways of achieving similar things in Blender.

#3

The material on the head is set to receive shadows (transparent inclusive). Observing closely, I see that there are no transparencies on the hair! Blender is not observing the alpha map (on material slot 2, with diffuse alpha enabled). I have tried different image formats (jpg, tif). — or is blender layering those on top of another material (the one casting the shadows)? If so, how do I access it?

#4

If you already have set up your alpha map then perhaps
try setting the materials alpha/transparency value to 0,
and off course make sure transparency is enabled on the material. :wip:

#5

I’m afraid that is not working too. I have transparency enabled on the material. Setting Alpha to 0 (on material level) makes the hair disappear on the 3D-view … but, the hair shows up in the render.

Under "Influence"for the texture map (its blender 2.5, by the way), I have alpha set to 0 too. I still get a render. Nothing changed in the output.

#6

Perhaps it would be easiest if you post your blend so we can see exactly how you have it set up.

#7

First make sure those are shadows by disabling shadows at all and rendering.

#8 
    Done. Yes, ...  definitely shadows.  take a look at the excerpt below

  [left][img]http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/7710/hairnoshadows.jpg[/img]

[/left]

Hmm, the image further confirms that something is wrong with the alpha mapping (hair bases) … as the overlaps are very obvious.

#9

If shadows u use are raytraced then I don’t know how to help u, but if they are buffered then u could try to make them softer or increase bias, or … both.

#10

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I have prepared a mockup of the same situation. See the attachments for the blend file and the maps.

#11

To me seems like a bug…

But first is first…

You have a texture and a alpha map, the thing is that the alpha map is not black and white only: also have some variations… I don’t know if this have something to do with some problems you have…

Second: in your mockup the alpha is not enabled. In Blender 2.5 you need to tell Blender that the mask is going to be alpha… this is done disabling alpha in “image sampling” section of the texture settings, and in the “influence” section, set the alpha to 1

And third, the bug (??):

The thing is that the black painting in the hair object is surrounded by a gray edge in all limits with transparency… Maybe has something to do with the fact that the mask are not black and white only?? (Any Blender dev (Letterip, Broken) can verify??)

I’m attaching the blend file of the above image to study.

Regards

#12

[b]

[/b]
“Disabling alpha in image sampling section”? What happens when its enabled? Might be worth knowing what all the UI elements do - “alpha” appears in many UI sections. Knowing which to adjust is so important. I did the above and had no joy.

However, the attachment (mockhead_v2) was illuminating - I learnt other things as well. The mistake is more at the material level than it is at the texture level. I had transparency ticked, but alpha set to 1 (instead of 0). So the material was using its alpha - making everything very opaque. Okay, now … I have a better looking hair:

I see your point with the gray areas. It’s odd. I thought blender can handle alpha maps with gradients. I may have to adjust the map to a pure black and white image for now.

#13

Investigating a little, i discovered that indeed is a bug… or at least should be treated as a bug, Blender indeed support gradient alpha masks…

The problem is a bug with the color setting in the influence section of the texture tab. If you disable it, the gray edge disappears, but this also means the UV image is no longer respected. I didn’t see that, since har was black color in the UV also.

And add to this the plane that should be fully transparent, isn’t… something funny is happening here.

I think i’ll file a bug report.

Best regards

J.
P.S. If somebody cares, i’ll post the blend file for reference… is located here (is a link to pasteall, i can’t attach files from here)

#14

Okay, back to the second part of the question, here is a sample scenario:
Imagine a box object at the origin (0,0,0), that I move to a new location, say 5 units along X, 8 along Y, and 2 along Z … that’s=(5,8,2). if I apply this transformation in Blender with Ctrl+A (location), I get a box that is visually at 5,8,2 but globally at 0,0,0 (as if the centre of mass, or handle … or whatever one may call it … is at the origin).

Attempting a rotation with R, Blender uses the (0,0,0) origin as the centre of rotation. This is not what I want. Changing the pivot centre to “Individual Origins” at this point does nothing. Is there a way to zero the original transform without loosing it entirely … I mean, have Blender store the old transform on a stack, and present the user with Zeros for new transformation (where those zeros (0,0,0) refer to the object’s centre). MAX achieves this with a List Controller.

The first slot bears the first transforms (5,8,2 … etc), the next bears the deltas from the previous transform. One could then move the object again, 1 unit along X, 2 units along Y by feeding (1,2,0) to the list controller which in global coordinate, is really (6,10,2). In MAX, one can still access the original transforms by going back to the first slot/stack in the list. In Blender, the newbie is lost … he doesn’t know if the information about the first transformation is stored somewhere. He just notices that the object has a zero origin that is far away from the object.

I hope I have explained this dilemma well enough for the Blender gurus to come in. Its really all about how Blender interprets and stores transformations. Being able to zero a transform (also called freezing in MAX) is helpful because, once its applied, you don’t have to type coordinates with reference to world (global) origin. The software adds the deltas for you.

#15

As far as i know, there’s no such functionality in Blender. When you apply the location/rotation/scale in Blender this means that the object will have everything reset to zero.

But the origin of the object can be positioned anywhere you want. You can change anytime without moving the object, in object mode (In edit mode you can’t move the origin of the object, but you can move the object whatever you need). This can be done with the cursor in Blender: Just position the cursor with the mouse or in the transform panel (by default the “n” key brings the panel on) in the view section (“3D cursor location”) and in the lower menu select “Object” -> “Transform” -> “Origin to Cursor” and you are set.

There are other transform options there (origin to geometry, geometry to origin) so you can try and experiment.

Also if you need to put the origin aligned with a edge (center) or a face (center) or a vertex, you can go to edit mode, select one vertex/edge/face and pressing (by default) CTRL+S you can position the 3D cursor, then exit edit mode and do the transform in object mode.

Hope it helps.

#16

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