Global Textures - Blender Render Legacy

Support Materials and Textures
1

So - after digging into using the Compositor for texture modification and then trying to expedite setups, I realized something that users are not aware of for the most part.

Textures USED to be in the Textures tab of the Properties tab, under a main heading of Textures with subheadings of Brush and Brush Mask after GSOC paint project. These textures were from Blender Render, the old renderer that was chunked awhile back. We got Cycles and then Eevee, so it made sense things would change.

So the Texture Paint Tool is being upgraded to an Asset in 4.3, and that brings paint back in the spotlight for sharing ideas. Live Compositor is also a go already in 4.2, and is really cool to work with. What’s my problem? These two areas are still using the Blender Render textures that are holdovers, and even the Displacement modifier shares this set of legacy textures and appears in the Texture Properties Panel.

Why is that a problem? Well, my good friends, Eevee and Cycles use a newer set of textures that fit in the kernel and keep things neat, and the Compositor is supposed to be working with those renderers so you would think that if you set up a dummy object with some textures you’ve worked out that you could reference them in the Compositor - but no, the Compositor is using brush textures from the texture node editor or the direct brush texture from the Texture properties panel.

Okay, work out some cool math in the Texture Node editor and then bring that to the compositor - yeah, except it is only showing if it is in the active brush texture, that tree disappears once the brush texture is changed. That editor is also holdover and not very stable.

Whether sooner or later, the Blender Render textures really need to be gotten rid of and replaced with the same set that is used in the render engines so that Blender can have a Global Texture Editor. Compositor work should be able to be gotten on quickly and not have to go looking to figure out where to get the texture from - of course, if you have opened an image texture in the Image Editor or in a Shader, that is accessible just fine in the Compositor by adding an Image node where you will see all the choices of images in the dropdown.

I know that the devs will address it eventually, but I feel like the users need to be aware of this. I am a big user of procedurals in brushes, so it might seem weird that I am saying to ditch a very useful set in favor of another, but I honestly want a Global texture solution so there is no disconnect to displacement or texturing or compositing.

2

I get what you mean, the old texture system is still needed for brushes and things like displacement modifier because they are calculated before render, for shader nodes to be calculated you have to render them first. They are sort of opposite philosophy. The old system is more like seamless images opposed to procedural generation.

As for the compositor using modern shader node textures it would mean rendering them, you could also bake the nodes to an image and use that but it would mean that you did “pre-render” it.

I agree that this is something to be addressed one day but with my little knowledge of how code works I presume it is not so easy, hence it has been left aside and the old system still exists for certain tasks due to lack of a valid alternative.

I can imagine that one main problem would be efficiency re-rendering brushes and textures in the background 24/7. Theoretically you can do infinite calculations but in practice they all add up and hardware can only do so much in a given time.

These are just my thoughts from a non coding background.

Not sure, maybe the direction would be to revamp and modernize the old texture system a bit and give it a bit of love after leaving it in the dark all these years. Ie keep them separate but give per-defined textures a bit of love.

Disclaimer;
I could be totally wrong :rofl:

3

They were kind enough to post a fix for now that will enable us to access the blender render textures in the texture node of the compositor. I’ll have to wait for a build to try.

Problem is that the procedurals are always live until sent to render and as you adjust brush or shader they update. Main issue I have is access across blender overall. Try a displace texture and that updates as you change the texture same as for a brush. I’m just sure that eventually we will see a more unified system overall.

1 Like
4

Please keep us informed when it gets in
:grinning:

5

new texture connection to properties from composite node
new texture connection to properties from composite node1632Ă—609 368 KB

So I finally am not so sick and I got a build of 4.3 today and voila, thanks to Blender devs we have access to the textures in the Properties Editor from the Texture Node in the Compositor.

I am very happy they could make this small change for now, as that makes it much easier to work with the Compositor.

The Texture Node on the left is as you add it, press the New Texture and you will get the new connection as you do in the Displace Modifier and pressing that will open the texture in the Texture Properties Panel to choose what texture and arrange details. Too cool!

2 Likes
6

Oh great, I just checked and yes it works! The texture node has now got a “new texture” button.
:grinning:

Well done!

PS,
I still had to use a brush to get the texture into the texture node editor though.

1 Like
7

Funny, my daily 4.3 build doesn’t - it subtitles the category as Texture and doesn’t auto-link to the active brush as happens in 4.2 and previous. No worries, they’ll keep improving things. I’m just glad the computer issues I had yesterday turned out to be mouse failure so I should be able to start porting brushes to assets next week for 4.3.

new texture connection to properties from composite node2
new texture connection to properties from composite node21920Ă—1001 1.04 MB

1 Like
8

Yes that is what mine does too, adds a texture not tied to a brush.

I did not work out a way to get that new texture into the texture node editor as it is not a brush, world or line texture. There is no use nodes button.

If you want to use the texture node editor you still have to create a “brush” texture and select brush in the node editor. (you can then use the “brush” texture in the compositor.

Yes I have faith they will now that they are working on brush assets etc

Still nice to be able to create a new texture inside the compositor :smiley:

9

Yes, I am hopeful that later we can see a more universal Texture Editor with the options from Compositor and from Shader as well as Geometry Nodes to fully edit a texture and then push it to anything in Blender.

Great days for blender users, really awesome stuff. I mean, compared to what we had with 2.49 so long ago :smiley:

2 Likes
10

:rofl:

Yes, I started with 2.4’s too and am amazed at how things have got on.

11

Well, tbh, I was on 2.26 when I found Blender, but that was only because early google searches were weird and 2.32 or something also was floating around - I wasn’t all in til Project Orange and opened ManCandy for my first time playing with a rigged 3d character. Along that time frame I also started watching Jonathan’s face modeling tutorial.

I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do, but I tried almost everything. The addition of nodal materials and nodal compositing was amazing. Now we have some serious power all in one program.

1 Like