Q&A Thread 🤔 BlenderToday #110

hello pablo! theres been significant people through the week acknowledging blender's animation issues and my question is

do any of the main devs have any plans on checking these kinds of criticism around ui and tools that might be useful?

(you dont need to see these if you want)

This is a tutorial about deleting animations and how un-intuitive (and clutered) the action editor is while also giving an idea and advice about it youtu.be/fJQ2eVtNwX8

and this is a maya and blender comparison from a professional animator who worked at Dreamworks perspective (very long and very good check on him) youtu.be/L-vLraYGir8

The YouTuber Sir Wade Neistadt (a longtime Maya user) has recently been making videos comparing Blender and Maya. His most recent video goes over the differences between the animation tools in both pieces of software and he makes a lot of very good suggestions about how to improve Blender's animation tool-set.

Overall Blender's animation tools aren't bad, but they're clunky and unintuitive enough to drive away a lot of animators who have worked with other animation software. What are the Blender team's plans for improving the animation tool-set to bring it in line with these other animation software packages?

Here are a few of the suggestions that Sir Wade made in his video along with some of my suggestions:

• A lattice tool in the graph editor to make editing multiple keys more efficient.
• The ability to toggle the visibility of only one transform channel in the graph editor with a single click ("soloing" the channel) instead of turning off the visibility of all other channels one-by-one.
• Ability to select the curve itself in the graph editor, not individual keys.
• More intuitive movement controls when editing a key in the graph editor (i.e. holding a modifier key to constrain the key on the y-axis instead of having to press "g, y").
• Better animation layer support, the NLA in Blender works but it's clunky.
• More in-depth breakdowner tool that allows for overshoot.
• Better theming defaults for things like curve visibility in the graph editor, thicker lines for armature shapes, and clearer visibility on what object/curve is currently selected.
• Switching "normalize" view in the graph editor on and off automatically resizes the view so you don't have to manually press the "home" key every time.
• And of course better performance. Blender has been making amazing progress on this recently, but something that I think would take it to the next level is support for automatic animation caching or baking.

Hi Pablo I just wanted to give a massive shout out to Howard Trickey and his continued dedication to the Boolean modifier redesign developer.blender.org/T67744 Fingers crossed this gets sorted soon it will literally break the internet!

Godot has recently added SDFGI (signed distance field global illumination) and has made it open source for other engines to use. Can Blender implement something like this for Eevee? godotengine.org/storage/app/media/4.0/leak_free_gi.mp4

{attachment Untitled-1jpg} was just playing CS-GO when this idea struck me...

One thing I forgot to mention, are the developers open to looking outside of Blender to see how other softwares handle things? I think Blender is in need of diverse viewpoints on how to get things done, not just the "Blender way"

you guys are doing amazing jobs. also, I know that you guys are working on collection modifiers. but Are there any chances of having the option to move, rotate, and scale collection.

Are there any plans to add GPU acceleration for cloth simulation and cloth brushes in Blender? I imagine due to the nature of cloth simulation GPU acceleration could speed it up significantly.

Hi Pablo, Could you describe the plans for the Compositor in 2.9? Specifically, "Compositing Performance" and "Tracking & Mask Pipeline" on this roadmap: Thanks for all you do.

NOT a question but I just want you guys to know There is a Maya Professional Artist who compared Blender and Maya to see which Blender lacks. Here is the link so the developers can improve and add features for animation tools to make it a bit easier for artists. youtube.com/watch

Are there any chances of node outputs like pointiness, random per island(both from geometry), getting support in eevee?

Any chance of seeing radial and grid array options in the foreseeable future?

I know that 'Modifiers that Instance Geometry' topic exists in Antifeatures list but having something native would be so much better than current humiliating juggling with Empties to create a simple radial array

Hello, love the show!

Have you heard anyone whispering about the sculpting layers? That feature would be so great! Also shapekey support for the multires? Is that planned? Its helpful for realistic characters.

Thanks Pablo! I will now enjoy the rest of the show!

The 3D Cursor moves even when hidden. Is there a way we can disable this so it is not accidentally moved while hidden?

Hola! When Eevee will get textures support for light sources? It's a huge loss since Blender internal :((

Hellloooooooo Pabloooooo... (i know ur gonna read as it is) may god give all you guys peaceful minds...

there is possibility for a shortcut to make a new camera from view (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+0) why...

1. we have to add a camera
2. we have to make it active
3. check - lock camera to view for minor adjustment...
4. then place it...

it helps us in multi cam setup for motion graphics... and also a shortcut to just select any camera and make it active... (which i generally do from outliner)

Hi Pablo, what are the requirements for add-ons such as rigify to be integral part of Blender? I am responsible for the add-on Rig On The Fly and would love to see it's core principles be integrated to Blender by actual programmers.

The core principles being; light, simple and flexible rig that can change to fit the animator's needs as he/she animates, with visually understandable FCurves and limtited/no custom properties to animate, only LocRotScale keys needed.

Please check it out here: gitlab.com/dypsloom/rigonthefly/-/blob/master/README.md

Hi there, wanted to thank the whole blender team for the awesome work and pulling off such an amazing project like Blender. My question:

Is Blender thinking about implementing/extending the sequence editor to something similar found in the Unreal Engine?

A real time nonlinear editing solution / camera manager would be an amazing tool for filmmakers and would open up tons of possibilities for studios and especially the early creation phase of films.

I have uploaded a proposal on rightclickselect:

blender.community/c/rightclickselect/PJfbbc/

Is blender considering to adopt as vanilla some plugins like boxcutter/hardOps?

PD: I always watch your videos pablo! Love your work you are doing!, saludos desde Argentina!

I feel silly asking this but is there a way to swap the short cut for active tools to just select the tool? Example make G = Move tool and Alt+G = Active Move? same for Scale and Rotation?

Hello Pablo! How are you doing? So, Do you have any good news or prediction about key mesh or other features that could help us to animate a 3D character without a character rig? and Is there a possibility to see a kind of pose brush on grease pencil as well? Thats would be nicer!

Hi Pablo, Thank you for what you and the whole team are doing for Blender. Are there any plans for improvements in texture painting?

Any talk on the asset manager? Haven't heard anything for a while.

Hello Pablo! Are there plans for virtually unlimited polygon interaction in viewport? Such as Clarisse's viewport or Unreal Engine 5 Nanite where you move through a scene with billions of polygons in realtime?

will the pixilate node be redesigned, its not very intuitive?

Can you add the import dropdown to the shift+a menu I think it makes sense and is fast too.

And also add an onion skin tool to help in 3D animation

Just wanted to know if there is a way to prefetch during video editing like in VFX

Also could you do something to accelerate AMD gpu's

please don't remove VFX or video editing like you removed the game engine. (⊙_⊙;)

Thanks for reading this.

Hello, I have asked about this in the LAST(pun intended) blender today about nodes for procedural texturing and you asked for what kind of nodes would I like. So here is a list. You don't have to see everything it's really long. Sorry.

Noise

Dirt

Scratches

Grunge

Fibers

Others

Patterns

OTHER NODES:

*Brick pattern: More options and control

*Color Mode: Color or grayscale(to save memory?)

*Blur Node: in X and Y, different methods Anisotropic Blur Non-Uniform Blur Radial blur Slope Blur *Sharpen Node

*Emboss Node: Height map from input Intensity Angle highlight color(optional) Shadow color(optional)

*Particle Node/Distributer Node/Scatter Node Distribute a pattern over and over again ( docs.substance3d.com/sddoc/files/172825212/180193068/1/1558329556607/image2015-9-10%2B17_28_32.png ) *Levels Node??? Similar to Color Ramp or Curves

*Normal map Node: for exporting normal maps as an image if generated internally

*Text Nodes: to input texts directly as textures

*Edge Detect Node

Hi everyone! will EEvEE get some raytraced shadows(like in game with RTX on) like everything is rendered with EEvEE and the shadows use cycles. Many thanks!{attachment TombeRaiderjpg}{attachment RTX_Coffee_Breakjfif}

Can the loop cut feature get additional feature support, say like loop cut on selected edge rings in multi places, rather then manually etc.

Hi Pablo! You do a great job! Do you have any news about Pablo Dobarro's Blueprint Tool? Same for the move tool (selection of the object then a starting point A and a destination B (as in Sketchup))?

Hello Pablo. There is a lot of Ideas in the chat for animations and YouTuber Sir Wade Neistadt . I would like ask for a few .

1. Loop-able Key-frame Jumps. In Blender it goes to either end of key-frames and stops.
2. Keying Multiple controls / Objects at same time.
3. Cycle modifier works only one channel of an object, if this is multiple objects or channels will be good.
4. Graph Editor curves , editing multiple Keys / Time Values .

For Gizmos , I use the "Tilde" key pie menu. So the shift + Spacebar can be used for Views [Kind of my pref] . But one key [..it can be any key ..] to switch between manipulators is far better :)

There is a lot of Features I love in blender, like using different Pivot points while animating on the flow , Cycle Aware Keying and Shift key for smoother transition's . They are Super Cool.

Thank you

Hello Pablo and maybe Dalai!

Edit: Nevermind it just got reviewed! Don't know how to delete this question.

Any chance you can poke some devs for a review of this patch developer.blender.org/D6935 The Blender NPR community would appreciate it!

Hi Pablo, I was wondering if equirectangular cameras will be implemented in eevee? Since eevee renders so much faster I tought it could be a cool way to make 360 animations

hello i'm here to ask help because my Blender doesn't work what i don't know what to do ? {attachment Annotation_2020-07-03_172317png}

Hi dear Pablo! Thank you so much for Q&A Thread. Do you know what happened to the Blender Network site ‌‌and BFCT(Blender Foundation Certified Trainer) applications? I have "fingers crossed" from 22 December 2019, and nothing updated yet.

hey Pablo any chance of getting Sir Wade or the Blender Guru on blender today show?

also whats the plans for animation layers? is the plan to make a new animation layer system or to improve the layout/UI of the NLA editor?

Hello and thank you for the show Pablo and the guests!

Two questions if I may:

1. Is it possible to snap a grease pencil stroke to another grease pencil stroke? That would be useful for any tech drawing and architectural plans.

2. Is everything still quiet on the nurbs development front?

Thank you.

is there any improvement in animation and rigging ? blender 2.90

hello pablo! i love your live streams..watched everything from episode 50 . my question (rigging) i have currently finished my character facial rig . Action based workflow same as set keyframe from maya. Action constraint is awesome. but when stacked around 30 to 40 constraints i couldn't use more than one rotation in one axis. i think this patch solves that problem developer.blender.org/D7547 . but there are no reviewers specified. is it planned for master?. thank you

Hi Pablo! I'm glad you're still doing live streams! Wish I someday we all could do it in a real life. Sitting in a bar, having a beer and chat about Life, Blender, and everything!

Anyway! My questions are:

1. Could we expect "Particle Nodes" in 2.90 at least as an experimental feature?
2. Are there any plans on implementing "Voxel Booleans" as you might have seen in Bones Studio builds?

Thanks a lot!

[SOLVED] Hi Pablo! Is this "Object Scatter"-Tool in 2.90.0 under development? or will it be removed? because there is nothing to execute in F3 search. {attachment object_scatter_290_blender_todayjpg}

Hi Pablo, I wanted to know when fast mouse/pen movement will be fixed in paint, sculpt mode. Right now when you paint fast you get jaggy lines and increasing input samples will lag. There is a developer thread here explaining but seems like it's not fixing and it has been from the beginning . I force to paint on other applications. here is the thread: developer.blender.org/T70765

Hey, Pablo! Have you watched the new Sir Wade Neistadt video about Blender, Maya and Premo (the Dreamworks animation software) where he compares their workflows? He gives there some really awesome ideas of what could be implemented in Blender - straight from a point of view of an artist that worked on Dreamworks. He also made some really good feature requests also, such as selecting an f-curve with the box select (without having to select any keyframe, just the curve) and some viewport color scheme adjustments for more visual clarity.

Here it is: youtu.be/L-vLraYGir8

The Sir Wade's videos about Blender brings me back in mind the old Andrew Price video about a new Blender UI Proposal btw lol. He's doing a good job with his videos.

Hi Pablo, Greetings from the Philippines. Thanks for your hard work in blender and all the Devs. My question is:

Will Blender (or Pablo dobbaro) have a roadmap/plan to improve the texture painting section in blender? I mean like close to substance painter? I'm new to painting and I only like to practice texture painting in blender because It's free and awesome.

what is easy ?sculpting or modeling. Is low poly modeling are good for learning blender in less time?

Am planning to use blender for video projection mapping for Christmas & Halloween Displays as alternative to After Effects. Can anyone make a show from start to end how to create this show/display using blender? Tnx

Heya Pablo!

I'm a little late to the party, hope you're still keeping track of this: do the Blender developers have plans on improving the UV-editor by default?

I have made a post a long time ago, explaining crucial features that currently seem to lack in default Blender: topic link However it didn't get as much attention as I was hoping it would, and I'm hoping you could answer the concerns here. :D

FYI: I know Blender and Autodesk are (and should not be) not identical, which is fine. All I ask is for original, Blenderified ways to improve the UV-editor. :D

I'm at a loss with Blender It is new to me. I'm following Blender Guru and Blender for Dummies. Both seem to be using different versions of software. I cannot find menus indicated and my shortcut keys do not always work. I try to find alternatives by checking through various venues. At the moment I'm stuck and do not know how to proceed

Hi Pablo, My question is simple: Where is the advance of Newboolean/Trimming tool ?

When launching a script, when I change from modes, the script does not continue to run when I go from object to edit mode regarding selecting parts of a mesh and changing it. Will this be fixed anytime soon? This is not exclusive to mine.

Will Eevee support realtime raytracing ?

Why is my denoise node missing in the compositor

how to render ur animations faster on a low end pc with a old version of blender and my computer supports only open gl 1.4 and direct x 9 PLS HELP WITH THIS HI HIGHLY REQUEST U TO TELL HOW TO DO IT ,I WILL APPRECIATE IF U HELP ME OUT And One more thing when i add quick smoke it turns out black why that is happening .BLENDER VERSION 2.76.THANKING U VERY MUCH IF U HELP ME OUT WITH THIS AS I CANT FIND ANY TUTORIAL ON THIS.

Hey! short question, when will motion blur be implemented in eevee

Hey Pablo. I would like to know: Are there plans to improve GPU device support for Linux users using open-source video drivers (nouveau / amdgpu with Mesa)? Although we should theoretically have OpenCL support via the Clover library, my AMD card is still not detected as a GPU compute device in the settings. We're limited to CPU rendering when using Cycles which remains a major limitation.

What's Blender's status with Pixar's Renderman? Did you guys support it now or you're planning to support it?

Hello! Thank you for this engagement with the community and sharing insight and information about Blender and your continued development of it. Can I please ask if there are any plans to add functionality for importing CAD models into Blender? Particularly, .STP CAD models? I understand that they would need to be converted to meshes upon import. Something similar to Unreal Engine's Datasmith feature? Thank you!

Hi, Carsten here (yes that old fart). Why can't we have python errors and dbugging output in the console instead of the old "DOS" Window?

Hi Pablo! Not sure if this was asked already, but are there any changes/updates going to be made to make animation layers more accessible? Or updates to the UI?

Need a material manager like quixel bridge! I always struggle with getting materials back and forth between projects.

Hi Pablo :)

I would like to ask for improving Surface / Curves editor so that we can work on surfaces in a way similar to Rhino / Alias (G1, G2 Continuity, surface trimming)

Surface modeling just with better UI n more features :)

Hi, first I want to just say thank you for this amazing software and community. This is one of the few communities I truly enjoy and learn from.

I would like to ask, what would it take to host my own blender-exclusive art competition? I have wanted to do one for a while now and I am not too sure on how to start. Are there any approval notices I need to get, or can I just start it on my own?

I have another question it is related to editing, can blender be used for color correction ? Also i have heard that blender's compositor for vfx is still not that good and i would like to know more about what kinds of things are possible with blenders compositor and what are not yet.

Greetings! I have a question as well: Will Blender 2.90 bring any of the features present in Cycles but still missing for Eevee? Notable ones include the procedural sky for the world background, nodes in light object outputs, and other features that currently only work in Cycles. Thank you.

Thank you for all the work you do at blender! edit: question was answered

will you bring back bge.

I have a question related to intel embree, I Have a Intel Hd Graphics inbuilt in my laptop so will i be able to benefit from this intel embree thingy or will my inbuilt graphics not support that ??

Hi Pablo, is there any plans to do something with booleans with curves, something like how max deals with shape booleans? Here is the Right Click select Link blender.community/c/rightclickselect/7Pfbbc/

Is there better support planned for new AMD cards for a faster workflow and rendering?

Hello Pablo! As a video editor that uses Adobe After Effects CC 2020, I am fairly new to Blender.

In short: I use eevee most of the time, but the textures do not match 100% all the time.

I hope this improves!

Will blender ever have more optimised sculpting? Will it ever be able to handle large amount of verticesnlike zbrush

Hola Pablo, I've been trying to get good bakes for awhile now and I always fail, I've tried the trial of marmorset but I fail I tried once in blender and got a satisfying result altough it was kinda unituative to do so in blender,I'm trying xnormal next. My question is will the baking oppurtunities improve and can one use blender only for all the maps needed before exporting to a software like substance or some other texture software or should I do that within another software?

I was wondering if Blender has any plans to allow for massive scenes. In my case I am trying to work out how to do a starship in orbit around a planet. As you can imagine the difference in scale between the two objects is pretty significant. The problem is that if the planet is located at the 0,0,0 point of the scene and represented at nearly full scale the starship will not hold together because of it being so far from the center coordinates. If the center coordinates are next to the planet, the ship begins to shake apart as it moves around the planet due to the distance involved. I’ve tried for several years to make it work and so far I’m stumped. I did have more success back in Blender 2.7X dealing with these scale issues. Is there any chance of developing more coordinate calculations in a future update?

what ever happened to the stress map? Useful for wrinkles around eyes etc.

Will blender add "in depth" VDB tutorials to blender cloud?

nevermind

How to import BVH motion into my character?

Is there any time soon all the studio or at least the main ones replace or work with blender full time and how much time will it take?

Hey Pablo, long time watcher first time asker, do you think that AI would have a significant impact on the blender community, and maybe some AI based features such as the denoiser

Hi Pablo! Can I talk a little about lighting in cycles?

brother, How to import BVH motion into my character?

Is there any way to Bevel Only 2 Opposite Edges of a Rectangle Face of a shape like Default Cube ( 90° angles) With ONE BevelModifier

What happened to Everything Nodes?

Hi everyone! I'd like to know if blender will have a "substance painter" like alternative. It's probably one of the few things missing. I've saw this workaround ( youtube.com/watch ), and it seems that blender could actually "compete" with Substance, if someone works in it.

New fish out of water. Trying to help my daughter find answer As she within this week started trying to use Blender. She wants to use Blender to do Minecraft animations. We have to use the older version of Blender- 2.7- “Where is the Eevee rendering/renderer? Did Eevee come only with the intro of 2.8?” She was following Black Plasma Studios tutorial and ran into an issue with her characters skin being black clothed except for top layer and changing it. Having trouble locating tutorials prior to 2.8 release. Thank you

Will Blender ever have a true pass system like Softimage, Maya or Cinema 4D? I'm not talking about AOVs like reflection, diffuse, etc. I mean the ability to make sub scenes inside a scene with partitions to override settings ion various objects.

Blender Attract looks very useful for productions. There isn't much about it available. I read that it's part of Blender Cloud but I don't see how to implement it. Is it still a thing? Has it been replaced?

Hello Pablo, Whenever I delete the first default keyframe in Dopesheet, the Lines and Fills Layer also disappear from Dopesheet and I was unable to bring it back even from the Outliner. So, how can I bring the Lines and Fills layer back in the Dopesheet again?

In 2.83.1, when using the "Material Preview" all the textures get blurry while I move an object around. When I stop moving them, the textures are sharp again. Not only do they get blurry, they also shift around quite a bit (maybe a few pixels). Especially when the wireframes are turned on, this is very distracting and it looks as if the textures are floating a little. Turning off Viewport Anti-Aliasing and Filtering didn't change that behaviour.

Interestingly enough, in 2.90 it's the other way around (but overall much better). When I move an object, the textures are sharp (not anti-aliased?) and when the movement stops, the textured are slightly blurred (anti-aliased).

hello Pablo

Love your streams .Keep it up. The grease pencil is super awesome. I am trying to create character combining 2d and 3d (animal crossing new horizon style). especilly facial stuff using grease pencil. and combining 3d and 2d using lattice modifier and shrinkwraping it on mesh. but I have come across some issues. I think I am doing something wrong. Please help.

{attachment 2020-07-03_14-15-44mkv}

also it would be super awesome if some sort of riggify thing was available for 2d rig

hey Pablo, I have a big problem with the new blender experimental 2.9 alpha, and I think it's only in mac, so when I downloaded the newer version the older version merged with the new one and now it all messed up please go download the 2.9 alpha experimental version and try to fix it. all the UI and preferences are so messed up and cracked like it was glitching all the time, and I couldn't figure out what was the problem, please fix it asap, I love blender

Hallo Pablo! Could I ask if there are plans for Metal support on Blender? Mac users would really appreciate it being implemented. Also, saw "Blender" at WWDC. Anything special planned? question mark?

There's UV editing cited in the roadmap. What is planned for 2.91 and 2.92? Here are some suggestions that I think Blender would benefit from:

• There should be an operator for selecting flipped UVs. Plugins like Textools and UV packmaster have that, but I believe something like this should be included by default.

• A setting for specifying Texel density when averaging islands scale would be helpful for creating game assets.

• Pick shortest path for quickly marking seams in the UV editor, like it's possible in 3d view.

• An option for packing without rotating islands. This is important because we may want islands to stay aligned the way they were projected. Otherwise you have to manually realign the rotation after packing.

• Packing selection to a packing box area or around unselected UVs.

• Add operators and tools to align and arrange UV Islands similar to Maya.

• When UV sync is On, doing any transformation in faces rips them, it would be better if it behaved like in edge and vertex modes.

• When unwrapping through the uv editor, blender should only unwrap the selected islands. This currently only works this way if UV sync is on.

Hi guys,

do you have any data on how many Blender users could potentially support the Blender developer fund? How far away from this optimal value are you and what would change if the number of supporters doubled, for example?

smoke in 2.82 and .90 is harder to use than the old blender

Can Eevee be made to emulate light in cycles, or path tracers in general. Because you can use glossy shader as a mirror in cycles, or emission shader as a light source, but Eevee doesn't support that at all.

For example, glossy shader compared between cycles and eevee. Cycles:

Eevee:

Hey Pablo hope you are well :) I had a quick question about panels. After the addition of the new modifier stack and its use of panels you showed off the ability to ctrl-click in order to collapse all panels but the one you clicked on plus the addition made to this functionality. My question is, whether there is an option to assign different hotkeys for this functionality. Id, like to have this behaviour as default so when I click to open a panel the others close and holding control, will allow me to open multiple essentially flipping the way it works. I looked through the keymap editor and couldn't find an option to change this, am I just not seeing it or if not can this be added?

Also, sneaky 2 quick question, is there any news on the Asset manager for 2.9?

Thanks :)

hi pablo hope your having a great day!! I have some questions 1.are there any new nodes coming to shader editor 2.are there any new features in sky textures thanks you!! have a nice day. I also make blender tutorials link youtube.com/watch

Hi Pablo and others and blender, maybe later if I bought a computer will blender be able to work if I only get an integrated gpu inside a cpu I5 any Gen with 16 gb ram, maybe I will know when I get one?

What about fluid mantaflow issues? Problems with 2D objects as flow origin, domain issues when resizing or reshaping domain, normals issues.....

Can I Run The Last Version Of Blender With A ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Graphics Card?