Easy Read
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Is it possible to have specular available for opengl lights in cycles viewport for sculpting.
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When we set “display” options in (N) panel to “only render” , can we still display the viewport gradient if we have it enabled it in preferences > themes.
Long read
I had a very brief discussion in dyntopo thread.
However, I just wanted to bring it up here. I hope a Dev can take a look.
I’ve only been using Blender just over a year, so I never really messed with BI and went straight to Cycles. When sculpting under Cycles Viewport using opengl lights, the spec is unavailable. I’m sure there’s a reason for this, probably because BI spec doesn’t represent cycles glossy.
However, if you are a prolific sculptor, and you use cycles viewport primarily. You would have come across the problem of “losing detail” in your cycles render, simply because you haven’t sculpted “deep” enough. Your sculpt looks lovely in the viewport, but the GI in cycles means all that detail becomes lost.
Recently, I started using BI viewport. I’ve discovered, that with the use of spec, I’ve actually had to do significantly less messing about with my sculpt when looking at cycles previews. Specular allows you to get a better approximation of how deep you have sculpted on a mesh. When going to a cycles preview render, it will be closer to how it looked in the viewport. I’m talking about forms here.
Most of us are using the “quick prefs” addon. I think its far superior to matcaps, as you move the light around etc.
so spec is a actually a great aid to sculpting.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]273262[/ATTACH]
In this second image, I can also locate “ugly” areas of my sculpt that weren’t so obvious to me using the cycles viewport.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]273263[/ATTACH]
So my proposal, under cycles viewport, is to simply add a “use BI spec” checkbox in the N panel, this can become available when entering sculpt mode only.
My second proposal is about the “gradient viewport” I like to sculpt with “render only” on, so I don’t have to look at the 3dcursor, or hide other objects (like the lamp) when sculpting.
However when you turn render only on, the gradient viewport is no long available, so I was hoping perhaps and option to use gradient with render only on, could also be available. Its a just a nice visual thing that makes our work area look less mundane. I’ve been told how to do this under BI. However I’m talking about cycles viewport.
WHY?
Well for those of us that use Cycles primarily, its a lil annoying to have to switch between BI and cycles simply to use spec, and the switch back to cycles to render previews etc.
i’m sure some sculptors will agree, anyway, thoughts?