I did a bit of testing, and came across at least one error where the addon breaks when it tries to calculate tension for an object in an edit mode. I just posted a 1.3 update that suspends an object’s tension calculation when it’s not in object mode.
I’m not sure if this would necessarily account for your particular error causing it to go all white, but as a troubleshooting step, try restarting blender and see if tension works again - if it does, its likely another erroring out state that i need to catch.
Whilst i can’t be completely sure if your recent update fixed something. I think the problem i was facing maybe was just the bias being too high without me realizing it. Can’t be completely sure though ofc.
Also this is unrelated. But i’d suggest adding, either a button or similar to add the tension shapekeys and vertexcolor. Or atleast just info that it’s missing, or should be added.
I don’t think there’s any way to tell without reading it from this thread here
hmm… they should be auto created by the addon if they don’t exist. if they’re not, any example file that you can share demonstrating the issue would be helpful in tracking down the issue!
Some of my findings while testing this add-on in a production environment:
It only works in Blender 2.81+
The tension map automatically updates each frame (as it’s supposed to), but only for a while. After playing around with it enough to get it to where you want it, it will sometimes just lock the vertex colors in place and won’t automatically adjust it every frame based on the deformations.
The ability to ignore certain modifiers with “SKIPTENSION” is great. But it would be nice to have this for shapekeys as well. (In my case, I need the add-on to only supply tension maps for armature deformations, and only some (not all) of my shapekeys).
For some reason, at render time, the add-on turns off all modifiers. This makes the add-on completely unusable.
I’m really excited for the prospects of tension maps in Blender for the future, but unfortunately, it’s not quite there yet.
Huge shoutout to Shteeve for even attempting to get something working. Great job so far! I’d love to see if you can push this thing even further.
Quite frankly though, you shouldn’t have to be doing this. This should be something built-in to Blender already, handled by the Blender devs.
Tension maps are a vital component to creating realistic VFX and it’s disheartening to not see it in Blender.
I have great faith in Blender and the Blender devs though, as we’ve come leaps and bounds from where we used to be. Blender’s growing more and more each day, so I have high hopes that we’ll get tension maps one day.
Is unfortunately a requirement for frame-update add-ons to work properly at render time.
And 4. both sound like bugs. In the most recent version I’d addressed at least one case that can cause tension updates to freeze, so if you can provide an example that reproduces it I can try to fix that. Likewise with the modifiers getting turned off, it’s likely a result of something breaking the tension update before it can complete (which involves evaluating modifiers on and off). An example is always helpful in hunting down these bugs!
Awesome and thank you Shteeve! I would love to see Blender officially support Tension maps. I will be working with a client who wants this type of realism only tension maps can provide and I hope to utilize this.
i can try to take a look at it, but to focus my efforts, what issue in particular are you seeing? if you come manage an example scenario that can reproduce the issue its always helpful!
I’m mostly just having general performance issues. I switch the addon on, turn on “always update”, and suddenly everything is unilaterally slower. With multi-second delays between clicking editor buttons and their actual execution. Much less being able to see real-time feedback in my proxy mesh.
It’s probably the fault of my character setup, but I also don’t think I’m doing anything too insane as far as demanding assets go. I’m not comfortable sharing a .blend here in the forums, PM me and I’ll pack something up for you to check out.
Ah I get the idea from your video, thanks! It does iterate through mesh edges with python to calculate tension, which can probably add up on some assets.
Question, Is head and body geo separate or combined? One thought I had was to look into adding a vertex group option to limit the calculations to help with performance. Also trying to think if there’s any elegant way of calculating tension on a simpler proxy and mesh transferring colours.
Ah yeah, the head and body are one big mesh. A mask modifier culls out everything but the hands and head, but i imagine that doesn’t really change anything, or would it?
Ill separate the head and bod when i get back home and see how it do.
The proxy mesh idea sounds incredible for things like cloth! I wonder if you could straight up use a data transfer modifier.
Update 1: further attempts, I cannot separate the head from the body. Too much stuff is going on in the mesh. Tons of shape keys. Groomed hair. It just either breaks the mesh or crashes blender. I’m gonna try some data transfer stuff next.
Update 2: So data transfer doesn’t seem to work either. The actual transfer of the vertex group does work, but because of the complexity of the object I’m remapping to, I’m getting the same ol performance issues.
soooo yeah that vertex mask would really help drive this whole addon home
