Something is happening, something is gonna cause many industry-standard software users to switch to Blender and the numbers of those people will only go up with time, BUT there are small very minor little things that are sort of missing in Blender (sort of because there are workarounds but it could get tedious in the long run) and probably the biggest one which is actually pretty small compared to super-advanced stuffs like Geo nodes or Eevee or sculpting, It’s grouping and
Blender Bob made a complete detailed video (
youtu.be/DXX0U4mkIhM
) explaining and comparing groups with industry-standard software and also showed some workarounds.
TLDR/TLDW - Groups and collections are not the same thing and please don’t turn collections into groups. Groups are more or less basically parenting objects to an empty but it has less steps and parenting doesn’t do everything in Blender that grouping does - like being able to see all the objects in a group when you just select the group-empty and then being able to copy them in the viewport without selecting the whole hierarchy from the outliner etc. (everything have been explained with side by side comparison) and you can do most of them already, but there are often 2-5 extra steps required and some stuffs are missing and that's literally it.
4
s
slowk1d
I agree with all the points in the video and yes is a very much-needed functionality, but I also absolutely agree with Pablo that having both a new grouping system and collections is confusing and overwhelming. I know that Blender collections have different functions and purposes than regular grouping, but I feel more like adding new features to them (maybe having also options in the preferences to change some collections features in favor of "group" features), rather than having these 2 systems and choosing either one or the other. I mean, collections to me are literally waiting to become a robust grouping system. I still upvote your comment since is a very important feature!
1
X
XanzulsCGAuthor
Groups and Collections aren't the same things, collections are basically layers in Maya, groups are nothing but parenting to an empty but more automatic way and has a bit more features going on, nothing is overwhelming when you see how much easy it's gonna make things in people's life when using Blender. Currently, the parenting workflow is simply a workaround, and there are many drawbacks of turning collections into groups, Blender bob described in the video, groups are such a small thing compared to the awesome features, game-changing stuff that the devs are adding with every version and if you just watch one video of someone using groups in other software, it's gonna feel like an absolute necessity in Blender you'd need in Blender, trust me bro.
s
slowk1d
"if you just watch one video of someone using groups in other software, it's gonna feel like an absolute necessity in Blender you'd need in Blender"
I think exactly the same coming also from other software, I'm just not familiar with maya layers to see the difference, and also probably I don't use all the collections features to see how much could be bad to add grouping functionalities to them. Regardless, we need this so much
1
l
leehallett
Totally agree.
Yet disagree (in terminology)
I came through the Softimage->XSI route in 3D, and groups are very powerful for selecting, manipulating and adding all sorts of overrides and options to a bunch of disparate elements across the scene.
It's a different concept/level to collections. These are just groups of 'stuff' that you can affect. Simplistic applications below, but you can utilise them in much deeper ways too.
You can split a bunch of lights into couple of groups and control (relatively or absolutely) their attributes, and contribution to the scene. They are modified by the group settings as long as they are in the group. Remove them, and the modification goes.
Another obvious one is you can use a group to override the material on a bunch of objects/polygons (or anything that takes a material input) - again, as that material was only overridden, removing an object from the group, or deleting the group, means the original material gets rendered - and this could be overrides that work on a per- render-pass basis.
It is also an extremely good overlay for managing what the renderer gets - what objects, lights, magic/voodoo can and can't contribute to the renderer on a per pass basis.
I'll crank open the Softimage coffin and do some videos one day!
I like those groups!
2
X
XanzulsCGAuthor
The layers in Maya and collections in Blender are the same thing, the only thing Blender is missing is grouping or anything like that, and grouping is more or less parenting to an empty and it happens very flawlessly, don't take my words, take words from people who work in movies and make transformers -
youtube.com/watch
b
brigazvi148
Hi Pablo! Love what you do to the blender community!
I would like to hear your thoughts about comparison I did between the denoisers in terms of quality. I used a method that popular in analyzing video compression quality.
blender.community/c/today/7Awy/
1
A
Aria
Hola Pablo
Can we get a search in the Add Modifier list?
1
s
slowk1d
Hans Goudey did a patch for this last year
developer.blender.org/D8927
, but I don't why the acceptance of the patch just stopped...
c
colincampbellrae
Hi Pablo
Is It possible to have the EEVEE output in a separate window (effectively without clicking render) and without any GUI so it can be captured by OBS studio, or it's like, in real-time.
I'm manipulating blender things in 3D via MIDI and this would make real-time output capture for digital puppeteering
a
azeler
Hello, Pablo! Is there any project to "embellish" the geometry nodes modifier? (Like using a checkbox for boolean inputs, separating/grouping inputs, dropdowns...) That would make geometry nodes assets more readable, like others modifiers.
j
joel12
where can i really Learn blender?
D
Delta
Hello Pablo,
I'm sure that such a weekly show is a lot of work so thank you for putting all the time into it!
My question is about random crashes on blender:
Is there any crash-log that is auto created on crash?
Would there even be a use in sharing such a crash-log since I may would not be able to describe the bug very well if I could describe it at all
Should such random crashes even be reported if it can not be reproduced? I would say no here, but on the other hand every crash is bad and it can ruin a lot of work...
Have a nice week!
p
popsfreshenmeyer
Defaults: Are the restriction toggles in the Outliner still deactivated by default?
If so, switch these to ON! For instance they are key, when opening pre 2.8 files as object layer status would influence their outliner settings in 2.8 and up.
Anyway these are very important toggles and should be visible by default imo.
s
scopelma
Hey Pablo! First of all, thank you for your work, it has become a thing I look forward to every Monday afternoon.
I have a question about Parallax Occlusion Mapping support in Blender, and more specifically Eevee. Some months ago, there was some discussions and even a build for it:
devtalk.blender.org/t/parallax-occlusion-mapping/15774
By any chance, have you heard anything about it recently?
There is Vertex group and face map but why not having edge groups which are very used.
s
slowk1d
Or empty, like grease pencil
d
docbadwrench
Hi Pablo! I use a Windows File Explorer replacement and tool (Directory Opus and Listary) that allows me to navigate my folders with great speed. One of the keys is that it communicates with any open 'File Open' or 'File Save' dialog box and pre-navigates to any file-location that is copied to clipboard (or when I swap over to my Explorer window and then back). This works with virtually all my software.
Except for Blender. Blender's FIle Open window behaves more like a standard window and never inherits any of this information. Is this something that could be improved in the future without affecting Blender's excellent ability to have multiple windows open without throttling all user input through one?
I hope I have adequately explained this. Thanks for all you - and the team - do for us.
d
docbadwrench
Update: Not Open-Source, but I will actually post this to the company. They maybe need to do it if Blender is this nonstandard. Thanks!
1
m
mrajendra2150
Add "Single vertices" inside mesh menu so it can be the starting of any geometry node creation starting point.
Hola pablo! :)
It would be nice to see some updates do
opendata.blender.org
. For example, some Nivida GPU are mentioned twice in the fastest GPUs list. And for some reason some CPUs don't show up on the fastest CPUs list, like AMD EPYC CPUs, which are a lot faster for rendering than some on the list, and they've been used in benchmarks.
i
ivek.burek
for which blender open films were the extensions used to make?
T
Tim
Hi Pablo! I hope your Monday is going well.
Regarding geometry nodes, I noticed that everyone wants to differentiate the noodles that go through "geometry" inputs/outs and "fields" inputs/outputs. People have suggested using dashed lines or even different colors, but I'm still trying to understand why it's necessary.
In the different node editors of Blender, like the shader editor, any time I connect two nodes with incompatible input/outputs, the noodle turns red. Why does geometry nodes need to be any different?
Thanks,
Tim
p
printerkiller
Hi Pablo, thanks for the stream!
Will there be a fourth chapter of Caminandes, like "Llama 4EVER"?
p
paul3
Hi Pablo ,
I s there any news on the Hairdynamics front?
H
HiveMindO
Hallo Pablo,
Every Monday I look forward to the show.
This Friday we put together a Blender meetup. should you be near Ghent, you are certainly welcome. We would like to get to know more Blender users.
a
alan.zirpoli
Hi Pablo, thanks for work!
I have 2 questions:
Why is blender so small in terms of mb? Aside from being made by great coders, most cg software are so much more heavy.
How can I have more information about an experimental branch? It's hard to find relevant information. For example yesterday I found the "geometry nodes set level" branch and I have no idea what is that.
Thanks again,
have a good day
C
CookItOff
Edit: You talked about it in the notes. :) Thanks!
Morning Pablo!
If you haven't already covered it in the notes, can you talk a little about the speed increase for Keyframe drawing in Blender, and what it means for animators using Blender?
Jeroen Bakker mentioned it gives a 4X speed up for animation playback.
Thanks,
Tim
c
christsdude
Hey Pablo, hope you're doing well!
With Blender 3.00 entering bcon2 soon, is it too late to reasonably hope that light linking will make it into Cycles X for 3.00? Of course it could just as well be added later, but the start of the new series feels like it would be such an appropriate time for such a game-changing feature.
30 Comments
Hey Pablo,
Something is happening, something is gonna cause many industry-standard software users to switch to Blender and the numbers of those people will only go up with time, BUT there are small very minor little things that are sort of missing in Blender (sort of because there are workarounds but it could get tedious in the long run) and probably the biggest one which is actually pretty small compared to super-advanced stuffs like Geo nodes or Eevee or sculpting, It’s grouping and Blender Bob made a complete detailed video ( youtu.be/DXX0U4mkIhM ) explaining and comparing groups with industry-standard software and also showed some workarounds.
TLDR/TLDW - Groups and collections are not the same thing and please don’t turn collections into groups. Groups are more or less basically parenting objects to an empty but it has less steps and parenting doesn’t do everything in Blender that grouping does - like being able to see all the objects in a group when you just select the group-empty and then being able to copy them in the viewport without selecting the whole hierarchy from the outliner etc. (everything have been explained with side by side comparison) and you can do most of them already, but there are often 2-5 extra steps required and some stuffs are missing and that's literally it.
I agree with all the points in the video and yes is a very much-needed functionality, but I also absolutely agree with Pablo that having both a new grouping system and collections is confusing and overwhelming. I know that Blender collections have different functions and purposes than regular grouping, but I feel more like adding new features to them (maybe having also options in the preferences to change some collections features in favor of "group" features), rather than having these 2 systems and choosing either one or the other. I mean, collections to me are literally waiting to become a robust grouping system. I still upvote your comment since is a very important feature!
Groups and Collections aren't the same things, collections are basically layers in Maya, groups are nothing but parenting to an empty but more automatic way and has a bit more features going on, nothing is overwhelming when you see how much easy it's gonna make things in people's life when using Blender. Currently, the parenting workflow is simply a workaround, and there are many drawbacks of turning collections into groups, Blender bob described in the video, groups are such a small thing compared to the awesome features, game-changing stuff that the devs are adding with every version and if you just watch one video of someone using groups in other software, it's gonna feel like an absolute necessity in Blender you'd need in Blender, trust me bro.
"if you just watch one video of someone using groups in other software, it's gonna feel like an absolute necessity in Blender you'd need in Blender"
I think exactly the same coming also from other software, I'm just not familiar with maya layers to see the difference, and also probably I don't use all the collections features to see how much could be bad to add grouping functionalities to them. Regardless, we need this so much
Totally agree.
Yet disagree (in terminology)
I came through the Softimage->XSI route in 3D, and groups are very powerful for selecting, manipulating and adding all sorts of overrides and options to a bunch of disparate elements across the scene.
It's a different concept/level to collections. These are just groups of 'stuff' that you can affect. Simplistic applications below, but you can utilise them in much deeper ways too.
You can split a bunch of lights into couple of groups and control (relatively or absolutely) their attributes, and contribution to the scene. They are modified by the group settings as long as they are in the group. Remove them, and the modification goes.
Another obvious one is you can use a group to override the material on a bunch of objects/polygons (or anything that takes a material input) - again, as that material was only overridden, removing an object from the group, or deleting the group, means the original material gets rendered - and this could be overrides that work on a per- render-pass basis.
It is also an extremely good overlay for managing what the renderer gets - what objects, lights, magic/voodoo can and can't contribute to the renderer on a per pass basis.
I'll crank open the Softimage coffin and do some videos one day!
I like those groups!
The layers in Maya and collections in Blender are the same thing, the only thing Blender is missing is grouping or anything like that, and grouping is more or less parenting to an empty and it happens very flawlessly, don't take my words, take words from people who work in movies and make transformers - youtube.com/watch
Hi Pablo! Love what you do to the blender community! I would like to hear your thoughts about comparison I did between the denoisers in terms of quality. I used a method that popular in analyzing video compression quality. blender.community/c/today/7Awy/
Hola Pablo
Can we get a search in the Add Modifier list?
Hans Goudey did a patch for this last year developer.blender.org/D8927 , but I don't why the acceptance of the patch just stopped...
Hi Pablo Is It possible to have the EEVEE output in a separate window (effectively without clicking render) and without any GUI so it can be captured by OBS studio, or it's like, in real-time.
I'm manipulating blender things in 3D via MIDI and this would make real-time output capture for digital puppeteering
Hello, Pablo! Is there any project to "embellish" the geometry nodes modifier? (Like using a checkbox for boolean inputs, separating/grouping inputs, dropdowns...) That would make geometry nodes assets more readable, like others modifiers.
where can i really Learn blender?
Hello Pablo,
I'm sure that such a weekly show is a lot of work so thank you for putting all the time into it!
My question is about random crashes on blender:
Have a nice week!
Defaults: Are the restriction toggles in the Outliner still deactivated by default? If so, switch these to ON! For instance they are key, when opening pre 2.8 files as object layer status would influence their outliner settings in 2.8 and up. Anyway these are very important toggles and should be visible by default imo.
Hey Pablo! First of all, thank you for your work, it has become a thing I look forward to every Monday afternoon.
I have a question about Parallax Occlusion Mapping support in Blender, and more specifically Eevee. Some months ago, there was some discussions and even a build for it: devtalk.blender.org/t/parallax-occlusion-mapping/15774 By any chance, have you heard anything about it recently?
It's a fantastic trick which allows a very useful quasi-displacement effect like this with very little computational cost: devtalk.blender.org/t/parallax-occlusion-mapping/15774/65
A patch was contributed here, but I do not see much progress: developer.blender.org/D9792
Thanks a lot!
There is Vertex group and face map but why not having edge groups which are very used.
Or empty, like grease pencil
Hi Pablo! I use a Windows File Explorer replacement and tool (Directory Opus and Listary) that allows me to navigate my folders with great speed. One of the keys is that it communicates with any open 'File Open' or 'File Save' dialog box and pre-navigates to any file-location that is copied to clipboard (or when I swap over to my Explorer window and then back). This works with virtually all my software.
Except for Blender. Blender's FIle Open window behaves more like a standard window and never inherits any of this information. Is this something that could be improved in the future without affecting Blender's excellent ability to have multiple windows open without throttling all user input through one?
I hope I have adequately explained this. Thanks for all you - and the team - do for us.
Update: Not Open-Source, but I will actually post this to the company. They maybe need to do it if Blender is this nonstandard. Thanks!
Add "Single vertices" inside mesh menu so it can be the starting of any geometry node creation starting point.
Hello Pablo!
today I want to do a shout-out to a small feature/usability request regarding key-map search which I think could save a lot of time: blender.community/c/rightclickselect/Nkhbbc/
Thanks for your time!
Hola pablo! :) It would be nice to see some updates do opendata.blender.org . For example, some Nivida GPU are mentioned twice in the fastest GPUs list. And for some reason some CPUs don't show up on the fastest CPUs list, like AMD EPYC CPUs, which are a lot faster for rendering than some on the list, and they've been used in benchmarks.
for which blender open films were the extensions used to make?
Hi Pablo! I hope your Monday is going well.
Regarding geometry nodes, I noticed that everyone wants to differentiate the noodles that go through "geometry" inputs/outs and "fields" inputs/outputs. People have suggested using dashed lines or even different colors, but I'm still trying to understand why it's necessary.
In the different node editors of Blender, like the shader editor, any time I connect two nodes with incompatible input/outputs, the noodle turns red. Why does geometry nodes need to be any different?
Thanks, Tim
Hi Pablo, thanks for the stream! Will there be a fourth chapter of Caminandes, like "Llama 4EVER"?
Hi Pablo ,
I s there any news on the Hairdynamics front?
Hallo Pablo, Every Monday I look forward to the show. This Friday we put together a Blender meetup. should you be near Ghent, you are certainly welcome. We would like to get to know more Blender users.
Hi Pablo, thanks for work! I have 2 questions:
Why is blender so small in terms of mb? Aside from being made by great coders, most cg software are so much more heavy.
How can I have more information about an experimental branch? It's hard to find relevant information. For example yesterday I found the "geometry nodes set level" branch and I have no idea what is that.
Thanks again,
have a good day
Edit: You talked about it in the notes. :) Thanks!
Morning Pablo!
If you haven't already covered it in the notes, can you talk a little about the speed increase for Keyframe drawing in Blender, and what it means for animators using Blender?
Jeroen Bakker mentioned it gives a 4X speed up for animation playback.
Thanks, Tim
Hey Pablo, hope you're doing well!
With Blender 3.00 entering bcon2 soon, is it too late to reasonably hope that light linking will make it into Cycles X for 3.00? Of course it could just as well be added later, but the start of the new series feels like it would be such an appropriate time for such a game-changing feature.
Thanks for awesome show!