Yeah, I think I wanted to show my modifier stack to show what I was doing with the Subdivision, and then Decimate in order to get the smoothing without the addition of more geometry.
Anyway, trying to get points to line up when using Subdivision is very difficult, and I didn’t start with same number of subdivisions.
Yes, I often forget I’m not working in Lightwave and try to move those windows out of the way. I really wish they were floating windows.
I figured that out finally. I had added a Bevel shader and forgot I had done that. It overrode all other settings.
Yes, me too…some don´t like the floating windows but I do, I constantly get irritated of having to scale windows in blender instead of just minimize or tab hide the windows.
The things I would complain about for the windows in Lightwave…that is of course the lack of scalability when needed, and named tabs that are shortened, and no docking function.
Though I think that could be a matter of override with some additional windows tools, but I am not fond of having to use that either, and the payed UI tool is something I never would invest in.
If you use the NEW WINDOW feature you can get a separate window that you can dedicate to whatever function you like. Some workflows won’t work between the two (I don’t recall which, something to do with Selection) but most DO. So if you want to have a properties window floating around, you could try that. --I’ve never tried to generate more than one NEW WINDOW, so there’s new territory to explore.
One thing I’m not loving about Blender is there seems to be whole fields of things, like Render and “Layers” (are they even a thing in 2.83?) that seem totally obscure. Kind of like in PShop there’s whole sections you can just ignore.
LW may be clunky, but it seems fairly simple compared to B.
If you don’t need a feature you don’t need use it, but if you need it its nice that its exist. Render layers and view layers are super nice and handy, LW don’t have that functionality, see it as render passes.
Right. Compositing is an integrated module more or less. I guess is another way to put it.
So these are here because anything you are doing is a part of compositing. So by default you just render to the default layer. As soon as you start using composite nodes these layers are now accessible as nodes you can use to do some interesting and creative stuff that you would otherwise have to do in post in Fusion or Nuke. Maybe not as powerful but very useful.
Yeah the floating window option in Blender is a bit of a hack at best. I am hoping they start listening to feedback on this and upgrade Blender’s interface to a more “standard” docking interface.
I like how in Maya I can tear off any menu as well. Softimage also had this.
The floating panels never really bothered me too much in LightWave. But many people find this annoying. But I would say in all apps I use, if it is an option, I always have some kind of editor floating about that I can drag where I want it.
No more than the same thing in Photoshop, or most Adobe apps. It’s a bit of housekeeping that one does, and then ignores once you get a setup that works for you.
The LW issue of windows opening (apparently) BEHIND other windows was much more annoying than just the usual window shuffle. But, I sent them (virtual) reams of UI stuff they shrugged off, so that’s that.
If Blender.dev fixed just a few of the issues with NEW WINDOW (and really, I can only think of the one Selection issue), it’d be gre… well, adequate.
Displacement frustration.
Lets say I create a basic mesh rock pillar, which I often simply use a box and bevel up in Lightwave, then subdivide and in layout use displacement on it.
Now .In lightwave it´s quite easy to directly just use a little falloff, and position change of the fractal used for displacement, to allow the displacement only taking place at the top part of the pillar (using surface displacement and the ability to see it fully deformed in openGL.
To my frustration when trying to acheive this in blender, it´s not clicking with me, the displacement modifier seem to be incapable to correct that, and using nodal displacement with the help of the material itself is not capable of showing the deformation in openGL, only when cycle interactive render is active.
Is there no way of seeing the displacement in the openGL viewport for surface/nodal displacement in blender?
Displacement and bump is active in surface setting, but I suspect it is due to the micropolygon implmented displacement in blender that can only be seen in cycles interactive render and not in openGL…right?
So if that is not possible in openGL, isn´t there a displacement modifier that has access to nodal displacement?
Other displacement frustrations in blender is that I have no automatic sizing, and the fractal noise doesn´t show true dimension settings such as mm or meters.
And scaling fractal noise up usually means a suspected larger scale of the fractal…that is how Lightwave processes fractals, while blender does the other way around …larger value, lower scale of the fractal which actually makes no sense to me.
The limitation is Eevee at the moment it seems:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/128130/true-displacement-in-eevee
So just use Cycles. You can turn your display samples down to 0 to get it set up and occasionally render at a higher sample rate.
The other stuff is, just the way it is. Just get used to it being the opposite.
Here is a quick set up with 0 Samples. No delay in feedback.
512 Samples
In general I think you will be more happy controlling gradients and so on in nodes.
You can use a vertex group and and a proximity modifier to make a falloff for the displacement modifier.
Nice trick!
Any chance you could post that blend file? Be nice to deconstruct, my old eyes can’t make out what’s going on. 
I didn’t save it, but I can do a new one, just for you. 
Edit: Ok, made a new scene to examine, enjoy!
Displace_falloff.blend (589.5 KB)
Many thanks dude!
I know I can uses cycles …but as I said, it requires the system to constantly render, and not being seen in openGL, I want openGL performance and not system resources like rendering while tweaking.
I know I could use weight maps, but haven´t tried with proximity modifier…but will have a look at it, it will however not solve that I have to use cycles in active render mode to get the displacement.
Or does it work with the displacement modifier? if not…I could just use the nodal displacement with vector transform anyway right?
In just this example, I think it demonstrates some of the flexible fractal and displacement power Lightwave has…at least for openGL display and control of the textures…on top of that so easy to overlay each texture with various fractals and blending modes, gradients.
EDIT…just noticed that you used the displacement modifier, so that may be the solution, thanks Mikael.
Got it. Yeah. Hopefully this will come to Eevee soon.
You can always go full nodal with animation nodes and then you can combine both old blender internal procedurals with newer cycles ones and blend them how ever you want. Nodes are great!
