b3d – Page 3 – Oded Maoz Erell's CG Log

Cycles render – Using the Normal Blue channel for top side effects

Posted on October 9, 2019October 18, 2019 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.8 | Cycles Render

The shading normal‘s Z component can be easily used as a ready-to-use procedural mask for ‘covering effects’ like dust, snow, and if baked, also as a base for particle effects like debris and vegetation.

This simple shading flow example the shading normal‘s Z component, that represents how much the surface is facing upwards is separated , mixed (multiplied) with a noise textured and than fed into a ColorRamp Converter node for fine tuning the resulting mask:

This is the full shading flow of the snow effect in the image above:

Customizable Photo-realistic Car-paint shader for Cycles

Posted on September 30, 2019December 14, 2019 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.8 | Cycles Render

CGL Car Paint Presets Pack 1.0 is a highly customizable photo-realistic car-paint shader I developed for Blender & the Cycles render engine.
The shader has built-in realistic effects like color blending, metallic flakes, clear-coat etc.
And ships with 32 ready-to-use real world car paint material presets.

CGL Car Paint Presets Pack 1.0 is available on Blender Market:
https://www.blendermarket.com/products/cg-lion-car-paint-presets-pack-1

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V-Ray Next’s PBR’ness

Posted on December 23, 2018July 21, 2020 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
3ds max 2019 | V-Ray Next

A quick test of V-Ray Next‘s PBR* workflow,
Namely designing materials while previewing them using V-Ray,
Defining the material properties using the new (to V-Ray) Metalness attribute, and using Roughness rather than Glossiness, shows good results IMO.

* It should be noted that although we got used to referring to the base-color / metallness / Specular material interface as “PBR”, it is actually a principled material interface developed by Disney animations studios.

Results are generally consistent through Blender & Cycles, Maya & Arnold, and UE4.

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Blender – Checker Deselect

Posted on December 7, 2018December 7, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

Fast way to select every other element is to select a sequence like an edge loop or ring and than choose:

Select > Checker Deselect

This can be very helpful when needing to reduce the resolution of parts within a mesh.

Blender Python – Make an unselectable object local so it can be selected..

Posted on November 21, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

If you happen to link an external object that was made unselectable in the original blend file, You will have no interactive way to make it selectable again, or local, or even delete it from the current blend file.

The good news is that it can easily be done by a very short Python script:

import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['the_untouchable_object']
obj.make_local()

It should also be very easy script a loop that will find all those linked objects,
I will post an example when I’ll have a minute to breathe… 😀

Blender – Select Pattern

Posted on November 7, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

Use the Select Pattern tool to select multiple objects with name similarities.

In the 3D View in Object mode choose Select > Select Pattern…
In the Select Pattern dialog, type a part of a name with an Asterisk to define wild cards.
For example *car* will select all objects who’s names contain the string ‘car’,
And car* will select all objects who’s names begin with the string ‘car’.

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Blender – Remove multiple objects from all groups

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

To remove all the selected objects from all Groups:
Press Shift + Ctrl + Alt + G

Blender – Bake NLA animation

Posted on October 24, 2018October 24, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

When you wish to bake your NLA animation mix into one Action,
The Bake option in the Animation tab will not work.
The way to do this is to:

Select the object in Object Mode.
Press Space and type ‘bake‘
Choose Nla: Bake Action
In the Bake dialog, select Pose, deselect Only Selected, and press OK.
After the process, the Armature will have a new action that is the baked animation.

Blender – Make all linked objects local

Posted on October 14, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

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

Posted on October 9, 2018May 17, 2020 by Oded Maoz Erell

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:

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