Right-Click Select This is a read-only archive
← All ideas
  • Published 5 Dec 2018

Weighted Normal with Face Maps

We often use weighted normals on mid-poly asset for games to ensure proper shading without baking normal maps. Few games that used that method really often:

  • Alien Isolation
  • Star Citizen

Since there is a new Weighted Normals modifier idea is simple: It would be super amazing to add Face Map feature inside new Weighted Normal modifier rather than using Vertex Groups. It could help in non-destructive workflow. It could help also bring more people to new Blender 2.8 - for now you need to do that manualy, which increase work time on assets like this, but we could lower it down by adding that simply feature.

9c36fdf5b622293c31c5ac143d8971fc99e798e5.jpeg

100%

Development Status: Open

Upvote 32 Downvote 0
veezen
5 Dec 2018

13 Comments

Ozo

Nice idea, and cool use of the new face map blender function. It would be nice to have this option in version 2.80.

2
daniellapalme

@Ozo: I didn't realize we got face maps as a new feature. Sorry to bother you, but could you explain how that is different from vertex groups?

EDIT: Never mind, found a decent explanation on developer blender. Mostly an animation/rigging thing.

veezen Author

@daniellapalme:

Well ...

  • Vertex groups holds your vertex information inside group that you created.
  • Face map holds your face (tris/quad) information inside face group that you created.

Differences are simply to understand:

  • Vertices that aren't in vertex groups or vertices are near to each other in vertex groups are often affected (image shows that problem)
  • Face map doesn't have that problem at all.

Thanks to that you can control chamfer of mesh to set Weighted Normal without big problems. That also brings big posibilites for many things like addons etc.

Image

2
veezen Author

@daniellapalme:

"Mostly an animation/rigging thing." Mostly for now. Having this feature limited only for animation is a waste of development time. It could be very usable in many other areas.

pintorfj

You can still add face influence values exactly like YAVNE does in 2.8. Check out the gif I posted in this BA thread blenderartists.org/t/addon-yet-another-vertex-normal-editor-y-a-v-n-e/662705/98

1
veezen Author

@pintorfj:

I didn't know that. Looks cool! Thanks showing this. It looks ok but the process to achieve this seems to be long.

pintorfj

@veezen: Easily fixable if you own pie menu editor, I recreated the same pie I was using with YAVNE and now it's all a single click away.

fgosselin

I second this thread.

idelgado2294

What is the difference with Y.A.V.N.E. addon?

FalconCreates

Great idea!

koloved

I don't see a difference between .. bevel modify by weight can do it, someone can me explain a difference?

veezen Author

@Sergey Ivanov:

You are wrong. The difference is really huge. Sure, bevel modifier can do that, but how often do you use bevel modifier? I rarely use that because it limits my possibility. When I modeling mid-poly object i often do chamfers by hand using typical Ctrl+B shortcuts and then iterate width by hand if I need to.

Keep in mind that this is still additional ability/feature for modeling mid-poly model and for giving chamfers avarage normals. If there is other solution for that doesn't matter that we can't have something much better, something that gives you much more control for individual chamfers. I use mid-poly modelling for about a year and I believe that this could be helpful. In Blender 2.79 there is a popular addon which is called Y.A.V.N.E - it's really popular for that workflow, but since we have Face Maps in 2.8 we could use that for similar things.

3
koloved

@veezen: wow, i got it, its for normals and shading, not for beveling, then i upvoted! =)

2