A live action blender mess, a cry for help, and a little of what I have learned.

Hello community!
I’m Greg. I make videos in blender. My YouTube is DNDIY.

Here are some questions, rants, and advice I’ve learned. Feel free to chime in, give me advice, or set me straight.

1.When working in the node editor, if you cut the noodle going to the viewer node your renders will speed up considerably.
Am I the only one who as noticed this?

  1. When making a video I usually have 30+ blend files for each project and and a “master” blend file that manages all the rendered videos in the VSE. I have never quite figured out if there is a better way to do this. There is this drop down scenes menu on the top, but when I’ve tried to utilize this in the past things get ugly fast.

  2. No matter what I do, the VSE playback frames per second are too slow, setting up a proxy doesn’t seem to help, and I really wish files were automatically proxided anyway because no one has time to proxy each individual file. I have resorted to rendering out the entire video file every time I need to preview my work. Only a crazy person would do this. I must be crazy.
    Ubuntu 17.10, 12 gig ram, nvidia geforce 940mx. Don’t laugh. I’m poor.

  3. It took me forever to figure out how to import node setups so I can repeat reuse them on different blend files.
    Here is how I do it: In the node editor press ‘t’ then go to the ‘group’ tab then make a node group and save the blend file. When you need to copy a node setup on a new blend file, go to ‘file’, then ‘append’ and go to the blend file and find ‘node tree’ then the node group you made, then you “shift a” then “group” and find your node group, drop it in the node editor, then press ‘t’ and go to the node tab, and click ungroup.
    Someone should make a tutorial about this. It would be very helpful.

  4. I’d really like to be able to import a 2d object and convert it into a flat mesh with vertices. Right now I ‘control shift click’ in edit mode tracing the object.

I watched your latest video: Dndiy West. Looks like a lot goes on in your videos and you have fun with the medium. You definitely have a passion for it. Hang in there, you’ll do well.

Its processing it twice. Rendering via commandline automatically doesnt process it twice. (plus has other optimizations to render faster)… not sure if its compatible with eevee yet.

  1. Gah! Why do you crash on me so often eevee? I love you.
    Also, you don’t seem to support alpha channels yet and the vector mapping node doesn’t work with environment textures.

Eevee is not production ready, you should not be using it for a major project.

  1. When making a video I usually have 30+ blend files for each project and and a “master” blend file that manages all the rendered videos in the VSE. I have never quite figured out if there is a better way to do this. There is this drop down scenes menu on the top, but when I’ve tried to utilize this in the past things get ugly fast.

We have our 3D scene render files… and a sequencer file which references image sequence renders (or playblasts) of the 3d scene file. Highly recommend this workflow over having everything in one big file.

  1. No matter what I do, the VSE playback frames per second are too slow, setting up a proxy doesn’t seem to help, and I really wish files were automatically proxided anyway because no one has time to proxy each individual file. I have resorted to rendering out the entire video file every time I need to preview my work. Only a crazy person would do this. I must be crazy.
    Ubuntu 17.10, 12 gig ram, nvidia geforce 940mx. Don’t laugh. I’m poor.

Are you playing back a movie clip, image clip or previewing scenes? Highly recommend rendering to image sequences and using them in the VSE

  1. It took me forever to figure out how to import node setups so I can repeat reuse them on different blend files.
    Here is how I do it: In the node editor press ‘t’ then go to the ‘group’ tab then make a node group and save the blend file. When you need to copy a node setup on a new blend file, go to ‘file’, then ‘append’ and go to the blend file and find ‘node tree’ then the node group you made, then you “shift a” then “group” and find your node group, drop it in the node editor, then press ‘t’ and go to the node tab, and click ungroup.
    Someone should make a tutorial about this. It would be very helpful.

Plenty of reference out there already on how to do this.

  1. I’d really like to be able to import a 2d object and convert it into a flat mesh with vertices. Right now I ‘control shift click’ in edit mode tracing the object.

You can. You can import SVG files natively. JPG / PNG there is no way apart from creating a vert for every pixel and giving it a vert colour. They are not vector, they are raster.

  1. I know you all have your own projects, and your time is valuable, but if any of you want to collaborate on a project, I’d love the experience. Either you help me get better, or I help you, or both. I have an audience, and I hear cross promotion is all the rage these days. I am on YouTube, and Portland Or public access Tv (400k households). I submit to film festivals, and have been posted on the adult swim website. I’ve been rejected a lot too. I have thick skin. I secretly cry myself to sleep every night.

if you need any tips let me know. i have been working with blender for about 9 or so years now so know my way around it quite well.

Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Compositing and Post Processing”

  1. Normal ungrouped nodes can be copied with ctrl+C and pasted in another file with ctrl+V. Doesn’t need two files open simultaneously because it uses a buffer file.

  2. https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?301569-modeling-a-puzzle-piece&p=2430010&viewfull=1#post2430010 https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?375557-Help-modeling-a-specific-shape&p=2899758&viewfull=1#post2899758

  3. “it doesn’t work”. VSE can be slow, but without support files there’s nothing to comment on either

I usually only answer when I have something to contribute. I skip most support threads because the users don’t provide tools to help troubleshooting and replying. That means using full interface screenshots for explaining and showing the feedback from the interface, and providing an example .blend of the problem. The same as Blender bug tracker requires.

Problem description is not enough. If the user is a beginner, usually there are too many possible causes and would have to either guess, or list every setting and scenario that could cause it, which would be a big waste of time. If it’s an experienced user, one can be pretty certain the answer isn’t anything obvious, and there’s no chance of finding the cause without support files. Case in point.

Tutorial on posting https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?322623-How-to-ask-questions-effectively-on-blenderartists-org-support-forum&p=2547191&viewfull=1#post2547191

For fast proxy view try OpenGL view in the VSE preview window instead of rendred view.