Okay - I know this is just one of the new features in the recent 2.65 release but it’s one I’m really excited about as I’ve been waiting for this for a long time (literally, years).
The Blender 2.65 bevel allows for “segments 2” which pretty much gives a quad-based bevel. I don’t know who coded this but thank you for doing so. I’ve been holding out on speed modeling contests (cross-application) because I knew they were judged on toplology which hasn’t until now been speed-possible without this feature!
Anyone else who’s been waiting for it, the more proper Blender is finally here! (until I find bugs with it or something :D)
If you don’t manage to find any major bugs with 2.65, you’ll probably have much better luck once trunk is unfrozen and new features start to pour in which may include one or more of the remaining modeling tools developed during the GSoC period.
But yes, the bevel tool as of now is a lot better than the old addon, now I haven’t used the bevel tool in a couple of weeks as of now, but I think reading through the commits the tool should now be able to work in almost all possible cases.
If you search my username with title tag “bevel” you’ll find plenty of frustrating historic arguments about it. People were getting quite heated when I tried to raise the issues and were going on all kinds of tangents. It’s not a matter of “side by side”. Until now, there was simply no efficient way for Blender to do these kinds of “all quad bevel” topology:
Yes, pretty much that’s what has been fixed now. A brief history:
A very old bevel didn’t used to make tris, but the catch was it had to bevel the whole mesh. It worked something like a subdiv algorithm to make a fairly nice bevel, all quads, but at the cost of having to bevel the whole mesh.
Then, around 2008, a new improved bevel was introduced with the ability to bevel only selected edges. This was a great idea but the algorithm for that one pretty much always used tris on meeting poles and is probably the one you are thinking about with your question, “didn’t the old one make tris?” I started getting vocal about this at the time and various threads ensued, though nothing was resolved for a long time because the problem was seen as “when Bmesh comes” priority and of course when that eventually happened, the devs had all kinds of other things to work on.
So finally, now at the end of 2012, it seems the bevel has been given a serious once-over at last. A quick look over what we have in this latest 2.65 release and it seems to pass all the test cases I originally threw at Blender when complaining about the previous version (e.g. the “what Blender can’t do” image from an earlier gripe).
Been a while, but I am absolutely stoked that this has now been addressed. It is indeed very helpful for me in certain fundamental basics of my own preferred modelling workflow. I might even be able to enter certain “any 3D app” speed modelling contests now; I hadn’t been entering before because I knew the bevel tris would have but me at a significant disadvantage when edgeflow was rigorously judged (one example in context).
@Lancer I know how you feel I think I have been waiting for a good bevel tool for a long time now as well. Kept asking for on in the bmesh thread. Nice to see one that isn’t an addon and seems to work.
It is very good to see this in the new release. I think its very easy to underestimate how important little things like this and Bmesh are to Blender. Lack of bevel is a really hard thing to get around if your used to using other applications. It took me a while to adjust from my XSI workflow where I used it a great deal.
Things like this make Blender much easier to transition to. You can see already since Cycles and Bmesh a big shift towards Arch viz for Blender.
Its nice to see something added to Blender that most users will use, rather than ‘cool’ features like VFX tools 95% of users will never touch.
OK, so I’ve used the bevel round addon for a while, but still it’s nice to see these little things being cleared up. I hope Nurbs, curves, and splines get some attention soon.
I really dig the splash they picked out for this release, but they probably could have just had a viewport shot of a beveled cube given how long and bumpy the road has been getting it in there.
Holy cow! I almost forgot that the bevel exists. Last time I used it loooong time ago in 3d studio max. And it works pretty damn good if I may say so. Congratulations and a big thanks to people responsible for making this happen!
Bevel has significantly improved, that’s for sure.
I did find that whenever I’m beveling certain edges, the mouse was unresponsive in getting the bevel factor to increase. If i typed in a number, it would begin working.
Minor thing, but holy crap it’s a major improvement.
I think it’s just something with where your cursor is when you hit Ctrl+b. I have continuous grab turned on and sometimes my mouse has to wrap around before I see it bevel.
Yes, i think that’s it, as when your press W and mouse your mouse to “Bevel”, your mouse location when the function start may force you to make a big move to see the bevel starting, while when starting it directly with CTRL+B and still have the mouse location close to the edges you want to bevel, you don’t have to make any big moves before its influence is noticable.
Maybe something the devs will have to adjust, as it’s common if i do W -> Bevel to have to move my mouse for half of the screen before it starts influencing the actual beveling.
ng-material I don’t think it could be on the grounds that the user could bevel certain edges, then delete one of those edges after the bevel mod. This would make the modifier invalid as the selected edges it relies on would no longer be the same.
The previous bevel modifier is still up… would be good if they [optionally] followed the same algorithm the new [w]-key one uses, though in time I’m thinking this is likely. At least there is a way now bevel all quads.
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