Blender 2.80 Release Candidate 2 is enabled for downloading on the official Blender site.
Hipsterzanne
Constants
There are three mathematical constants in Blender which you can enter in any field and immediately get its numeric value.
They are:
- pi – “Pi” number = 3.1415…
- e – Euler number = 2,7182…
- tau – “Tau” number = 6.2831…
Node displacement in Blender 2.8
In Blender 2.8, the displacement node in Cycles render-engine was changed from scalar to vector. If you simply connect a black and white height map to the Displace input of the material output node, like in Blender 2.7, it will not give the desired result.
To make the correct node displacement in Blender 2.8 add “CombineXYZ” and “VectorDisplacement” nodes to the material node tree. Connect the height map to the “Y” input of the “CombineXYZ” node and its “Vector” output to the “Vector” input of the “VectorDisplacement” node. After that, connect the “Displacement” output of the “VectorDisplacement” node to the “Displacement” input of the material output node.
Release Candidate of Blender 2.8
Blender 2.80 Release Candidate is enabled for downloading on the official Blender site.
Suzanne for breakfast
Blender add-on: BIS v. 1.7.0.
BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) updated to v.1.7.0.
- In experimental mode added the ability to store external textures to the BIS storage. The total size of the stored textures should not exceed 25 Mb.
But BIS still accenting on procedural materials.
Decorators for node tree updation delay
When we create a field on the add-on interface panel, the value of which changes something in the node tree, each time the user changes the field value the node tree recompiles. If the user changes the value in that field by holding and moving the mouse, too frequent node tree recompilation will cause Blender to hangs.
This problem can be solved using decorators for deferred updating of the node tree.
Code by Skarn.
Metal Devizanne
Class for creating nodes by type
Class for quick node creation by their type.
Code by Skarn.
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class NodeTreeBuilder: def __init__( self , node_tree : bpy.types.NodeTree , x : float = -200 , y : float = -200 , delimeter : float = 300 ): self._x = x self._y = y self.tree = node_tree self.delimeter = delimeter self.purge_tree() def purge_tree(self): for node in self.tree.nodes: self.tree.nodes.remove(node) def add_node( self , node_type : str , node_name : str , column : int , row : int , node_descr : str = "" ): node = self.tree.nodes.new(node_type) node.name = node_name node.label = node_descr if node_descr else node_name node.location = (self.delimeter * column + self._x, -self.delimeter * row + self._y) return node |
Texture pixelization
The simplest way to pixelate texture, procedural or not – get the color from the single pixel and fill the region with required width and height (resolution) with this color.
Here is the gradient texture with red – green – blue colors:
To pixelate it with the first step of resolution we can make some vectors manipulations.
Blender 2.80 release-candidate announced on 11 of July
In the official Blender twitter the release-candidate 2.80 version announced on 11 of July.
With additional info about the final release 2.80 version following one or two weeks later.
Quick Instance Add-on: grouping-like workflow
This add-on for Blender 2.8 creates a grouping workflow using Blender 2.7 group style. Add-on doesn’t “brokes” the scene, so you can properly work with groups made with this add-on having no add-on installation.
By Michael Soluyanov.
- ctrl+g – group selected objects
- f9 – manage the group name and origin
- tab – enter/exit group edit mode in separate space
Video with an add-on demonstration:
You can get this add-on at:
Blender Market: https://blendermarket.com/products/quick-instance
Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/l/qinstance
How to protect your add-on from downloading through aggregators
With the Blender popularity growing, the number of add-ons created for it by third-party developers is growing too. A lot of high-quality professional add-ons are written for Blender now. Over time, the number of add-ons is becoming more and more. And on this wave aggregators appeared – programs and services independently searching for add-ons and allowing Blender users to install add-ons quickly, many at once, and bypassing add-on distribution channels selected by their authors. What caused a negative reaction of add-on developers.
Continue reading “How to protect your add-on from downloading through aggregators”
Cartoon torch fire
How to detect if Local View is on in 3D View window
The following command returns the 3D View areas list with enabled Local View mode:
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[area for area in bpy.context.screen.areas if area.type =='VIEW_3D' and area.spaces[0].local_view] # [bpy.data.screens['Layout']...Area] |
Where are the icons for managing objects visibility in the Outliner window in Blender 2.8
In the latest Blender 2.80 builds, the visibility control icons are disappeared from the Outliner window.
They were not removed, they are just hidden from the interface by default. To return them to their usual place click the button with the funnel image and mark the icons you need to display.
After closing the dialog box, the icons will appear in their places.
Changing objects visibility in the viewport and while rendering
The easiest way to hide and show rendering objects is to assign animation keys to them. To do this, move the cursor over the eye icon (visibility in the viewport) or camera (visibility when rendering) in the Outliner window, press the “i” key and then manage the created condition in the Graph Editor like the ordinary animation keys.
But this method is not always available. For example, we cannot assign visibility animation keys for collections, Blender will generate errors like:
“hide_viewport” property cannot be animated
or
“hide_render” property can not be animated
However, using the Blender Python API, we can control the visibility of such objects.
Continue reading “Changing objects visibility in the viewport and while rendering”
“Old Concept” theme for Blender 2.8
The “Old Concept” theme added to Blender 2.80 themes collection:
By Airat Mukhameddinov.
Where did the Remove Doubles in Blender 2.80 disappear
The convenient Blender 2.7 feature to remove duplicated vertices “Remove Doubles” has disappeared from the Blender 2.80 menu. In 2.8 it was renamed to “By Distance” and moved to the Vertex – Merge Vertices menu.
BIS – 400
The BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) library already has over 400 open public materials available for users.
Blender add-on: Select-UP
“Select – UP” – Blender add-on for convenient selection complex objects packed to collections.
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Buy on Gumroad |
Blender add-on: BIS v. 1.6.5.
BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) updated to v.1.6.5.
- Added the “Help” button with some useful tips.
Architectural Debris – DUST
A small spring release from the Architectural Debris series!
Architectural Debris – DUST
The theme of various interior art objects (vases, figurines, candlesticks, mathematical figures) is very popular in the field of interior design, so an attempt was made to create a universal classification of such things in order to get a single semantic rating scale.
Blender add-on: BIS v. 1.6.4.
BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) updated to v.1.6.4.
- Two new modes were introduced to work separately, one for materials (easier to use) and the second – for node groups (for advanced shader making). In the “Material” mode, the entire material is stored and loaded. In the “NodeGroups” mode, everything works without changes, a separate node group is saved and loaded for the convinient creating complex shaders.
- In the “NodeGroup” mode uploaded node group adds to the current open node group instead of the node tree root as before.
- Experimental mode can be enabled/disabled in the add-on preferences.
