I’m starting to get back into Blender development after a (very long) hiatus.
What tools, workflow issues, etc. do you feel are most pressing.
My personal goals are
Get completed features from previous GSoC sculpt, UV, and paint that I mentored into head.
Fix issues with current brushes (falloff, settings) so they work more intuitive
Add more brush presets since nearly every (95% or so) brush available in Mudbox, Sculptris and ZBrush can be done in Blender with the available settings but for whatever reason artists haven’t figured out how to do so…
Address some workflow issues and bugs
What I don’t plan to do (at least not in the near term) are big new features (ie a layer system for multires sculpting)
So what I’d like from you are
a) list of stuff available in GSoC/old blender builds that you would like to have in Blender Head (should be predominantly the GSoCs I mentored, though I might be willing to port other features if they aren’t complicated)
b) broken python scripts related to sculpt/paint/UV workflow you’d like to have working again
c) workflow frustrations and issues
d) brush presets that you have created and think might be useful additions to head
e) list of useful sculpt/paint/UV scripts and tools (so I don’t reinvent the wheel )
No promises to address every issue raised - and will mostly focus on what I find to be funnest or most frustrating for my own sculpting and painting.
So far here are the ideas list - no promises for any of them in particular …
UI
On Surface Brush
Way to load brushes independentally from Blends (‘assets folder’)
Sculpt/Paint Stroke
Adaptive spacing from GSoC 2011 that was accidentally dropped during merge
General Brushes
Antialiasing for brush textures
Sculpt Brushes
Connected Geometry for Grab Brush
More brush default combinations for common workflows (Polish Brushes, Trim Brushes)
Sampling radius for brushes from GSoC 2011 that was accidentally dropped during merge
Silhouette Brush
Clip/Cut Brushes
Improved defaults for current brushes (especially grab)
Insert Brush
Curve Brush
Fill Area Brush
Paint Brushes
Splash prevention feature from vertex paint GSoC
Projection Painting
Improved workflow (autodisable common settings - *patch ready)
Sculpt Mode
Transparency for sculpted mesh so you can use reference images behind the mesh
Masking
Extract mesh based on mask
Vertex groups from mask
Blur mask flood fill
Sharpen mask flood fill
Cavity masking available in sculpt
AO masking available in sculpt
Pose Tool
Vertex Groups
Autocolorization of vertex groups visible in sculpt mode
Using vertex grouping for masking and hiding
Multiresolution Modifier
Layers
Interpolate higher resolution data instead of copy/delete when inserting/deleting loops
Hard edge support
Better Automated/Guided Remeshing
UV Tools
Nudge Sculpt Brush for UVs (*patch ready)
Iso formula for UV unwrapping (onion branch - incomplete though)
The PBVH acceleration from the GSoC branch should definitely be worked on (as vertex and weight painting are incredibly slow on complex meshes, especially if subsurf is involved).
Another thing would be that branch’s splash prevention feature (it looks to be quite useful).
On that, it’s always nice to see a longtime pillar of the community return (even better if they also played an important role in development). Welcome back
Hi LetterRip,
this sounds very good. Even tough i am pretty new into sculpting, i found that compared with zbrush two additional issues to the ones you’ve mentioned above should be taken into account:
Sculpting layers
Dynamesh (as it is named in zBrush)
togehter with a higher amount of default brushes, it would be way more usefull than it is today.
Always nice to see old developers coming back to Blender dev. All of the areas you mentioned could use some love, so I´m just here to show appreciation
PBVH work was useful. Was the GSOC 2016 UV editing stuff ever merged into master? I trust others to know where work needs to be done
EDIT: in the early blocking stages dyntopo is better IMHO than dynamesh and more optimal.
BUT as primary forms near final and i want an even mesh subdivison like dynamesh:
you can already have a dynamesh like workflow in blender:
add remesh modifier
set mode to smooth.
increase octree level until appropriate detail is met
apply modifier
optionally set object to smooth shading
continue sculpting!
i know that 4 steps instead of ctrl dragging the background can be a pain but in zbrush it takes a while for the calculation to go at higher res meshes. EDIT: so dyntopo in early stages and use aboveworkflow a bit later! it’s irritating in zbrush to accidentally trigger dynamesh and sit there for it to calculate!
this method won’t remove internal geometry but otherwise is pretty much dynamesh,
it would be fairly trivial to make a python script that has the octree level set (like resolution in zbrush) and make this a one button operation. Maybe Tom has some ideas that could improve this?
EDIT: of course even in zbrush dynamesh only gets you so far… you are still going to want to retopologize nicely before doing final detail sculpt! and yes, at that point you do miss sculpting layers!
As far as I know, the inability of Blender to have stuff like this is why Jason Wilkens decided to embark on the ambitious Viewport FX project for the next three GSoC seasons.
That didn’t go anywhere (so the outdated OpenGL code would still be a blocker for 2.79). It should be possible for 2.8 though.
Probably out of scope but the biggest workflow issue i have is if i create a set of custom brushes/alphas i want to be able to have them as defaults separate from blends. Ton changed user preferences a while back to have separate settings and default content. would be great to have settings, default scene and default tools (brushes, alphas, materials, node froups or whatever) without having to clunkily append or link this stuff… biggest bug bear! so annoying going back to an old file and realising the default weight paint brushes aren’t in that blend (it’s that old) and have to go through the whole appending assets into a new file to get your default setup!
else:
Zbrush has insert mesh… (or even insert multi mesh) it would be nice to be able to do this in sculpt mode especially when dynameshing rather than multi res-ing. not a big deal as i can just append or duplicate objects and then merge them… but many steps rather than having a custom tool (add , position, confirm)
zbrush curve brushes are lovely! you can easily create a tool with a start mesh, tiling centre mesh and end mesh and just scribble away…
it’s very fluid to edit the curve afterward (until your next curve is added).
the zbrush fluidity of lock start, end, taper profile and dynamically dragging you curve from any point is super nice!
this is all do-able in blender too but instead of create start middleand end polygroups: create curve brush, use curve brush (again and again) in blender you have to do soooo many more steps for each one… it’s very slow and clunky! think zippers, criss cross shoe laces, tentacles etc… just build a library of brushes in zbrush and you’re good to go! in blender it can be done but much harder and more bespoke and even if you build a library its still a pain to append and use!
multires breaks often… at least i can recover somewhat with brute force hi resmeshes, shrinkwrap modifier etc…
really like the trim tools in zbrush…
to be honest these days i use zbrush as a power tool more and blender if im doing lower res tweaks to morph targets or whatever…
Topological grab brush and trim curve as mentioned before would be very usefull.
One thing that I totally abuse in Zbrush and can’t do easily in Blender is using those whole mesh deformations and smart polishing. I think those could be modifiers in blender. Few modifiers dedicated to high density meshes - sculpts, 3dscans etc. with option to use masking.
Additionally,
maybe ability to change sculpt mask to vertex groups and masking tools simmilar to those:
And adding more brushes is of course always a good idea.
well there is a lot to do/fix actually… but since you clamped the scope Its hard to know what you will be willing to and capable to do in the given time frame… so might as well throw wishlists towards you, maybe you’ll find an idea which is reasonable… good luck.
Sculpting improvements for multi-res and general sculpting tools; multi-res needs an overhaul (refactor ?) ability add/disolve edge loops without breaking sculpt levels.
Sculpting layers
Ability to bake sculpt masks to textures and vice versa (this can be partially done with Vertex Weight edit modifier atm; this is the legit way to save masks for multi-res. This is also the same method used in specialized proprietary sculpt tools like Zbrush).
Create vertex group from mask vice versa (saving mesh state in dynatopo (Bmesh Vertex array) then projecting saved state to current sculpt mesh; bypassing changed vertex order problems which brake saved masks in dynatopo).
Brush evaluation from surface normal
Shadow box or similar tool (I think this is what “Silhouette tool” proposal was in GSOC)
Trim and Clip sculpt object using 2D curve or Line stroke
3D curve stroke type and snap 3D curve stroke to surface feature
Make spline object from selected 3D sculpt curve
Cavity masking + Edge Masking
Workflow related but not necessarily sculpt tools related -
Better boolean execution
Better automatic retopo (non sculpt related, but touches the workflow subject)
@LetterRip, One thing ive been wanting for years is to be able to use textures is sculpt either in direct paint or stencil mode but also have a set of images painted to individual layers. E.g I have a displace map for the sculpt stencil, But also Diffuse, Normal, Gloss etc, When i paint with the displace map in sculpt i would like it to also paint the other maps so they match the sculpt.
This would be incredibly difficult to do in a non-hacky way. The different painting and sculpting modes all use different projection methods and acceleration structures under the hood without any real way of sharing stroke information. It would really take a refactor of all of the existing “painting” tools to make this work in a coherent way.