As a amateur film photographer for many years I find this amazing. And, I still remember attempting to dodge and burn color negatives below a enlarger. And, yes the chemicals for color were truly a bitch.
But, my point is presets will come to 3d graphics. Adobe is not somehow a brain trust. Within five years a node tree will be a thing of the past. And, I don’t view that as the dumbing down of Blender. But, simply making a program more intuitive for artist. Ton has repeatedly said over the years that is his vision.
I agree with presets coming to 3D, actually they are already here and it is called model, texture and material libraries. But node trees aren’t going anywhere because people who need or want full control over what they do aren’t going to magically disappear in 5 years.
A few years back it seemed like colorists will all be jobless because anyone can throw a bunch of LUTs on any footage and magically turn s*hit into bread. Turned out to not be so easy. Same thing with cameras. DSLRs were “killing” digital cinema cameras, every other movie will be made with an iPhone and so on. It went the other wsy around with even people with no idea what they were doing were shooting raw dng sequences using elaborate camera rigs, lens kits and whatnot. Any recent movie in cinemas shot on a DSLR?
Presets are a helping hand for people who don’t have the time, interest or need to pull all the strings. For anything more than tiny professional work scrolling through kilometers of presets that do what you can do in a few seconds is a mindnumbing act with little value. Anyone can already create presets, nodegroups and whatnot to recall procedures etc that are often used or more timeconsuming to set up, but this fact won’t and hasn’t thrown the actual work out of the window.
Intuitivity is a product of knowledge and previous experience. For a compositor who is used to node based logic for example, scrolling through endless lists of presets instead of arranging 1-3 nodes with very precise control over what, where and how is happening, is hardly intuitive. For an average joe who opened up Lightroom the first time to touch up his cat photos, it is the best thing since sliced bread. But cat photos aren’t going to replace professional photographers any time soon.
Well said! Cat photos seem to benefit the most from these. But I think a few presets as starting points for common workflows would not hurt Blender. Just for one example: how many times have you seen a niewbie not konowing how to set up HDRI lighting in Cycles or rotate the HDR texture? There could be a preset in form of a python script that sets up a few basic nodes to start with or a nodegroup. That shouldn’t take too much space to include with Blender. Well it’s true you can make those yourself, but a huge percent of Blender users would use presets if they came with Blender, so why not?..
Well, Lightroom presets only cover a very small part of professional grade photoediting in many areas. I like to think of it as choosing the film emulsion and development process in analouge photography. There is still a lot of manual work to be done. The actual retouching is hard to automate or effeciantly dumb down once you want to accomplish a certain quality. Things that can be automated are very dependent on the individual workflow. But there will always be a need for classic dodge and burn and/or similar things and the possibility do adopt to any situation which inherits the need of keeping basically any tiny tool alive.
I think it’s the very same with CGI. There are parts of workflows that can be dumbed down or automated but a lot of it is still a very individual thing like having node combinations you often use already saved and ready to use in node groups or render presets or… And that’s fine, why should you work harder then you need to. Many people will be happy with the results they get from only applying some presets or downloading models and that’s fine too. But I hold up to the believe that there will always be people wanting to go all the way and tweak every tiny little bit and those are the people who will stick to using nodes and keep them alive.
Seriously? lsscpp, are you seriously offering PAID addons? You missed my point completely! I know you can achieve whatever you want in Blender. I am saying it would be nice to have simple things by default. I think it would make life easier for many users. For example mixing diffuse with glossy using Fresnel node is very common, why not have a preset, that inserts those nodes with a single operation and then you can adjust them further. I can script things like that in python for myself and I do and it makes my life a lot easier but many users and artists do not use python. It would be helpful for them. More presets and more suggestions of good methods to achieve results would be nice to new users and would not interfere with all the usual functionality needed for experienced users.
Within five years a node tree will be a thing of the past.
Nope, quite the opposite. In five years post 2.8 release the “nodification of everything” probably has begun or if we are lucky is completed. I think Ton has even used that quote in tweets and blog posts.
It doesn’t exclude presets, my guess it will work just as Brecht did when he integrated Cycles with Blender back in the day. We will have both a node tree for everything.
And everything node based, can be presented in the UI Panels. Just as Cycles does it. And it’s perfect. Presets belongs in drop down menus in the UI Panels in Properties view.
Albeit I get what @MartinZ is saying, maybe they can generate more nodes. For example,
Clicking on Color input and selecting a Texture, only generates a texture node. It’s logical, but for beginner or intermediate users it might be better if it added more nodes such as the node wrangler add-on does.
It adds both a Mapping and Texture Coords node, which can help new users get the grip of what’s possible.
Hey, I’m not offering anything, and I myself didn’t buy any of those too. I was just pointing that It can be done. I couldn’t know you were aware and even can already do it yourself. Good for you. Share!
I cannot wait for the “Nodes everything”! I also think more presets would be great. One more example: You can do a lot of procedural stuff with math only and it would be nice to have more(and more advanced) procedural textures in Blender, but nobody would want unnecessary stuff in the precious GPU memory while rendering so adding native texture nodes is a bit touchy subject. I think node tree presets might be a possible solution. I don’t know. Everything is pretty good as it is as well and it’s getting even better, so I can’t complain. It’s just that presets are useful and they seem to be a bit neglected in Blender when you think about it. theoldghost could have used words a bit more carefully - it’s probably not the brightest idea to start talking about taking nodes away in here in any context - we can probably all agree on that :D… You don’t need to take anything away to add presets.
I try to share stuff. But some of the scripts I make for myself will be hard to use for somebody else I think - I am not a programmer. But it’s a good point I will try to shere those as well when I have some time to tidy them up a bit. I have one that makes all the nodes to output ID masks to PNGs for every material in the scene exept the ones that have ‘noindex’ in the name. That one saves me a lot of time so it might be usefull for others, but I would like to at least put some comments there so it’s readable, or maybe make it a plugin so it’s in an operator…
While Cycles does have a fully functioning Uber shader now, I don’t think node-trees are suddenly going to go away (especially with them actually becoming a lot more common in the past decade). More likely, things will become easier to use with the expansion of node-group functionality (more customizable interfaces, more widgets, logic gates, boolean nodes, ect…) and a selection of them coming with the app. itself (and in the case of the Principled shader, it’s possible that some will see everything hardcoded and you can’t even open it up).
In Blender, this can also apply to the compositor and to everything else that will see the beginnings of node-based functionality.
Presets are great and get you to the goal faster however that doesn’t get rid of how they got there (nodes). Substance Designer nodes into Substance Painter, lots of presets. It wasn’t until I started using Substance Painter did I even think to create a preset material node for blender cycles. Good move.
MartinZ, without a doubt the theoldghost could have used words a bit more carefully. But, let me assure you that was ignorance. Now that we have that cleared up.
I once had Blender set up with PBR shaders which I could simply control in the Properties Panel. Much like some other render engines. Then i had to reload OpenSuse gnome and lost that. Regardless, I care not one wit what nodes are doing in the background. To me controlling shaders in the Properties Panel is intuitive and the way a render engine should be.
That was the presets I had in mind. However, occasionally I would have to visit NodesVille for a material. So actually I wasn’t talking about presets at all I suppose. Since I could adjust perimeters in the panel.
I do believe 3d graphics will get more artist friendly in the next several years. Not that my work establishes me as such. But, you might see a day where the actual art is discussed instead of the program. Vicki where are you now women in case I need someone to cover my back.
I’ve seen comments on this forum where that thought seemed to be resented. As if Blender was meant for nerds. The developers do their thing and god bless them. Hell, even thinking about that vapor locks my mind. But, the end user are artist and blender will reflect that more in the future.
Other programs are moving there and so will Ton. The best box modeler known to man in a pod cast said more studios are moving to artistic types using sculpture. I guess the optimal phase would be; ‘…artistic types’ This as programs try to make retopo a mouse click. What the hell was his name. He once box modeled a ear live at the blender conference. Yeah, Jonathan. So when he makes that statement it carries some weight. Hell, he is saying the programs are now setting his considerable skills aside for many scenes.
It might be worth it to pause for a moment here and take a deep breath.
Now, if history and trends tell us anything, it’s that many of our tools will indeed continue to become simpler over time. It also tells us that they will also, almost paradoxically, continue to become more complex over time. This is because change rarely happens linearly and it rarely happens in just one direction. It’s a two-way street.
The notion that artists are inherently non-technical is a farce. It’s demonstrably false. Just like a fine painter isn’t necessarily a great (or even mediocre) sculptor, the technical aptitudes of different artists have different focuses. Some artists jive well with node logic. Some have a great understanding of color models. Yet others have a firm grasp of kinetics and even physics. Art and science both have the core of their practice rooted in observation… understanding.
Any artist that describes themselves as non-technical is propagating a falsehood that’s doing a disservice to both their own work and the field that they work in.
Hm i think the only thing Blender needs is a library for node setups.
Something to be stored and searchable in a personal library.blend.
And then it would be easy to re-use effects, and easy to handle your textures.
Isscpp, you are absolutely right and with 2.8 I believe comes the Principled BSDF Shader which shows up in the Properties Panel laid out in a well thought out way it seems to me. At least it is to me since I’ve been using it from the Properties Panel and find it intuitive and fast. That along with the Material: PBR Materials add-on, which I think you are referring to, is all I need. Now Cycles is looking like some other render engines which some find easier to use.
Sorry if I offended anyone since obviously i can’t lay claim to being completely ignorant of any technical skills. Nor, did I intend to imply 3d programs were striving to that end. However, I did find Jonathan’s choice of words interesting; ‘…Artistic Types’ Even through we know a traditional sculptor is not going to fall up into any 3d program immediately turning out 1st class work it would be more intuitive then Box modeling. Which might have been his point.
This should not be an argument against usefulness of node systems. Nodes do not do anything in the background, code does. Nodes represent code, algorithms used for creating shaders. They simplify complex things and represent ideas easier. Nodes IS a more artist friendly way to do things. I think nothing has to be taken away, or to become thing of the past in order for something new and good to come. If I remember correctly a few(or maybe not so few) years back when zBrush was only becoming popular, they were saying that digital sculpting was the future and we would all soon forget moving vertices. Digital sculpting is amazing! You can do amazing stuff with it! But are we still moving vertices? Hell yeah, we are! We don’t throw away all the pencils because they invented color pens and nobody is taking all the charcoal away because you can paint in color now. Technology will continue to improve, it will continue to get easier and simpler as it is also happening right now. It’s so much easier to do just about anything with 3d than 10 years ago! Actual art IS discussed instead of the program all the time as well. The tools are more artist friendly than ever. I think it might just be that sometimes some artists get a little bit lazy to learn new things and new techniques, is it not so?
MartinZ, nor was it meant to be. Years ago we had a rather good nature discussion on this forum about slider folks and node folks. With myself and VickyM72 (DeviantVicky) taking the slider side. Vicky it seemed had worked in quite a few programs where sliders ruled and like me found it a more intuitive work flow.
Now it seems we will continue to have both in Blender where the new node shows up nicely in the Properties Panel. I was sitting here playing with it last night as the damn nodes were doing their thing in the background. To me it’s more natural and faster working from the panel. Now that doesn’t mean I never open the node editor but that’s a rare occurrence. So I’m a happy camper with respect to this node thing.
By the way my name is Bill. I would be that old (80) opinionated son’ a bitch who will occasionally roll up on the forum here with twelve or so beers in me. There should be a breathalyzer on keyboards. That aside nobody is suggesting that you won’t be moving verts in five years or twenty for that matter. I would say never but that statement has bit me in the ass way to often in this lifetime.
And, having started with 2.48 I believe it was I couldn’t agree more the tools are way more artist friendly than ever and will continue to get even more so. If that’s a current picture in your lifetime you might be telling youngsters about a day where we did indeed move something called verts around. And, there was something called retopo. Happy Blendering.
I also think more presets would be great. One more example: You can do a lot of procedural stuff with math only and it would be nice to have more(and more advanced) procedural textures in Blender, but nobody would want unnecessary stuff in the precious GPU memory while rendering so adding native texture nodes is a bit touchy subject. I think node tree presets might be a possible solution. I don’t know. Everything is pretty good as it is as well and it’s getting even better, so I can’t complain. 