Software:
Blender 2.79
When you need to make all externally linked Data-Blocks local to your Blend file in one click:
Option A:
From the 3D View Object menu select Make Local > All
Option B:
In the 3D View, Press L and select All
Blender – Bake rigid body physics to Keyframes
Software:
Blender 2.82
- I always forget this, try to do it through the regular animation baking option and get frustrated that it doesn’t work…
When you want to bake an object’s Rigid Body physics simulation to regular Keyframes:
- Select the wanted objects.
- Press F3 to open the command search floater,
Begin typing: bake to keyframes to Locate the command:
Rigid Body: Bake To Keyframes and select it.
Note:
The command will appear only if objects with rigid body physics properties are selected.
- Set a frame range for the bake and press OK:
- The physically simulated motion is recorded to keyframes:
Related:
Complex Fresnel texture for Cycles
Software:
Blender 2.79 | Cycles Renderer
The most realistic way to create real world metal shaders is to use Complex Fresnel reflection.
Cycles has a general implementation of a Complex Fresnel reflection in its Principled shader (when Metallic is set to 1.0), but this implementation doesn’t allow using real world physical numeric Complex IOR values in order to accurately render physical metals.
You can use a Complex IOR OSL shader such as this one from Chaos Group,
But there are some limitations with it:
1) It isn’t supported in GPU rendering.
2) For some reason I don’t know I couldn’t get it to work with Cycles..
Seeing these limitations I decided to develop a Complex Fresnel/IOR texture for Cycles that will work on GPU, and your welcome to download it here on my studio’s website:
https://cg-lion.com/2018/07/08/free-complex-fresnel-texture-for-blender/
The blend file itself contains a text with some Complex IOR preset values for metals,
And you can get more physical IOR data from refractiveindex.info
Enjoy! 🙂
Related:
- Fresnel Reflections
- Metallic shading in V-Ray Next
- Create rich metal in UE4Â
- Customizable Photo-realistic Car-paint shader for Cycles
Windows 10 – Getting the convenient automatic folder navigation tree expansion back.
Software:
Microsoft Windows 10
- In the folder toolbar, Click the View tab.
- Click the Navigator pane drop-down on the left,
And enable Expand to open folder.
Related:
Get a file’s folder path
Maya – Setting the V-Ray Sun direction according to location, date and time
Software:
Maya 2018 | V-Ray 3.6
To set the VRaySun photometric light source diretion according to the location in the world, the date and the time:
- Select the VRaySun parent node – ‘VRayGeoSun1Transform‘ and rotate it so its Z axis points to the architectural plan’s south.
- Select the VRaySun node – ‘VRayGeoSun1‘ and in its attributes un-check Manual Position.
This will make the location / date / time parameters accessible. - Set the GMT zone of you architectural project’s location in the world, the Date and time.
* haven’t found how to set daylight saving time….
Related:
V-Ray for Maya Physical Camera
V-Ray for Maya White Balance
Daylight system addon for Blender
Arnold for Maya – Transmission Scattering (Ray Traced SSS)
Software:
Maya 2018 | Arnold 5
The Arnold Standard Surface Shader’s Transmission Scattering options can be used for simulating highly realistic volumetrically ray-traced sub-surface-scattering suitable for materials like wax, soap, milk etc.
While the Transmission Depth attribute controls volumetric light absorption within the object (fog), the Scatter attribute controls what percentage of the light will be scattered instead of absorbed, effectively creating the murky effect of semi-transparent materials.
Note that for the scattering effect to work Scatter must have a dominant percentage value, and the Depth attribute must generally be much lower (shallower) than what would create coloring without scattering, otherwise the object will continue to look transparent and lacking the internal substance that we want to simulate.
Also note that the Opaque attribute must be unchecked in the Arnold attributes of the object’s shape node for the light to be able to pass into the mesh and illuminate the volume.
*This is actually a “cheat”, because physical semi-transparency has to be simulated by indirect light calculation or caustics, but for dense volumes like wax it’s very effective and the loss of realism is insignificant.
You can simulate the effect more accurately by rendering caustics,
In that case the Opaque attribute in the Arnold attributes of the object’s shape node must be checked and more steps must be taken allow refractive caustics to be ray-traced.
Note that simulating the effect using caustics will be very demanding in Transmission samples and Ray Depth.
Related:
> Understanding Transparency Render Settings
> Arnold Translucency
> Arnold Refractive Caustics
Using Arnold’s Ambient Occlusion node to create an eroding paint shader effect
Software:
Maya 2018 | Arnold 5
Arnold’s Ambient Occlusion (dirt) node can be used as a procedural mask to create interesting material effects like in this example of paint that is eroded at the model’s bulging areas to reveal metal beneath it.
In this shader’s case the Ambient Occlusion node is connected to the Mix property of an Arnold Mix shader, that blends between two different Arnold Standard Surface shaders, one simulating the underlying tin metal, and the other simulating the red paint that covers it.
Note that in the Ambient Occlusion node the Invert Normals property is checked, so that the effect will create a mask for the bulges and not for the creases,
And also that the Self Only property is checked so that the node will behave as a fixed object mask disregarding the proximity of other objects.
In this example the output of the Ambient Occlusion node is also process using a Remap Value node to increase it’s contrast so it will define borders between the areas.
Blender – Turn deformations and shape keys to mesh
Software:
Blender 2.79
To apply shape key or modifier deformations to the mesh:
Either:
- Press Ctrl + A to open the Apply commands menu.
- Choose Apply Visual Geometry to Mesh.
Or:
- Press Alt + C.
- Choose Mesh From Curve/Meta/Surf/Text.
Blender Cloth animation to Shape Keys
Software:
Blender 2.79
Steps for creating Shape Keys from cloth simulation:Â
- Create an object with Cloth simulation.
- Give the Cloth Cache a name.
- Set Cloth cache to Disk Cache.
- Bake the Cloth animation.
- Move the time slider to wanted cloth state.
- Press the ‘Apply as Shape Key’ button on the Cloth modifier.
* The cloth modifier will be deleted from the object.
- Apply new cloth settings to the object.
- Set Pinning to be the same Vertex Group if necessary.
- Give Cloth Cache the same name as before.
- Set Cloth cache to Disk Cache.
- Play the animation timeline so that the cache frames on disk will be loaded again.
- Repeat from step 5 for each cloth pose you want to turn to a shape key.
Maya Python scripting – Getting an object’s transform matrix relative to another object’s coordinates
Software:
Maya 2018
How to get an object transformation matrix relative to another object’s coordinates:
* The following script requires selecting 2 objects, the function will return the transform matrix of the first object relative to the transform matrix of the second.
from maya.api.OpenMaya import MVector, MMatrix, MPoint
import maya.cmds as cmds
def get_relative_transform (node,coordinate_space_node):
node_matrix = MMatrix(cmds.xform(node, q=True, matrix=True, ws=True))
parent_matrix = MMatrix(cmds.xform(coordinate_space_node, q=True, matrix=True, ws=True))
return (node_matrix * parent_matrix.inverse())
node_a = (cmds.ls(sl=1,sn=True))[0]
node_b = (cmds.ls(sl=1,sn=True))[1]
print (get_relative_transform(node_a,node_b))
