Hi.
I am making Blender tutorials for the Second Life comunity.
Recently i was doing a video about optimizing mesh models.
After reviewing the final video, i stumbled over a couple of odditites,
which may be bugs, or just odd behaviour, or i miss some knowledge.
So i made this “report” hoping to get some feedback from you,
which might help me to decide if i found bugs, bad behaviour, or
just missing knowledge about available functionality :o
Here is the video as reference for the descriptions below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBtVsC0lfZs
And here is the description of all the odd issues plus some proposals for improvement :
For each topic i added a time in “Minute:Second” where you can actually see in the video what i mean.
Thank you for any answer, hint, help !
- At 3:16 adding materials
- I have to create the material slots.
- Then i have to select each slot
- Finally i have to select the material.
Proposal: When selecting a material do NOT update the currently selected material slot instantly. Instead make the material draggable. Then we could proceed as follows:
- Select a material
- Drag the selected material into the material list of the object. Dragging it on an empty location (e.g. between 2 existing slots, or below the last one) adds it as a new slot. Dragging the material over an existing slot replaces the material in that slot.
- additional: When selecting a slot in the list, then the currently selected material is switched to the material in the slot.
One additional plus for this change is that you can inspect materials without changing the material setings in the slot list.
- At 4:18 selecting collapsed vertices
When i want to select a bunch of vertices which are very close together, then i MUST disable “Limit selection to visible”. Otherwise the bbox selector tool only grabs just a few vertices. As you can see in the video, it would be much more convenient when the bbox selector would just select all vertices around a certain distance. maybe the depth buffer can be adjusted ? Is there a setting for that in the preferences ?
- At 4:32 deleting face loops
I have to select the face loops one by one.
It would be realy cool if it where possible to select a bunch of face loops at once, then delete them all at once.
It would be acceptable if that would only work in edge select mode.
- At 4:38 edited edges and vertices hidden by material settings
The material of parts of the object is very dark. Hence the black lines and vertex points can not be seen any longer.
It would be cool to have another view port shading mode which is similar to “Solid” but does not display the material colors.
- At 6:06 manually slicing edge loops
I was missing a “smooth vertex only in z” option here.
Or something like selecting a set of edge loops, then “make equidistant redistribution of the selected loops”
- At 6:43 Seams get removed when adjacent edge loops are deleted
It often happens that a seam gets partially destroyed when i remove an edge loop which is adjacent to a seam.
then i have to redefine the seams.
It would be cool if the seam information is kept unchanged. I guess this is a bug ?
- At 7:55 Seam crossings
I want to create a seam which cuts one part of the object vertically.
A few minutes before i have already marked 2 horizontal edge loops
as seams. The additional seam runs vertically starting at one of the
horizontal seams and ending at the other horizontal seam.
the easiest way to select the edges is to hide parts of the object,
then select the vertical edge loop and mark as seam.
Finally unhide again.
It would be cool if i could select edge loop “up to a seams crossing”
- At 8:15 unwrap cylinder projection
The unwrap places all faces along the inner side of the kettle on top
of faces along the outer side. This may be wanted but i always found
it annoying for my own unwraps ( i am not an expert, so i may realy
miss something here). Later in the video i have to correct the layout
because i get issues when baking a texture (see below)
It would be cool to get a “unwrap cylinder from projection (no overlap)”
- At 8:45 Using multiple textures on one object is a headache
I never found out how exactly i have to proceed when i want different
parts of my UV-layout to map to different texture images. I use a combination
of pinning the image, selecting the verts moving them, pin unpin and
what not.
Also the behaviour of Blender during baking is very complicated for me.
For example when i select a pinned image while the baker is baking,
then i found that sometimes i simply can not switch to the
“currently baked texture”. I have to wait until
the baker has done its job.
And when i inspect the textures after baking my settings often get broken
and the next bake places all parts on one image again.
Proposal:
- Add a function “assign selected verts to (current) image”
- Add a function “Show verts assigned to current image”
- Add a function “Show texture image assigned to current selection”
The last function might be problematic as i can select verts which are assigned to different images
- At 9:50 baking several textures
In the video i mention that i already have one image texture ready to use.
I needed it only to adjust the UV-layout. Now when i bake, then my texture
gets replaced by the bake result.
So i have to add a new image where the baker dumps its bake result, although i
dont use it at all.
It would be cool to tell a material “Dont bake me”
