The big Blender Sculpt Mode thread (Part 1)

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
8639

Is there a way to create a mask by ao, cavity, etc like in the Z program? If not is there anything planned?

Oh and how about a “noise maker” equivalent, is there any new feature or an existing function?#

edit: Oh and is there a feature like the color spray stroke method planned foir the painting feature in the sculpt mode? The feature from the ZProgram where each stroke gets a hue variation.
Or like the color dynamics feature in Photoshop.

All of the above are such basic functions - i really wonder why we don’t have them in Blender.

8640

the closest thing was this dead patch…

dunno about the rest…

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8641

That makes me sad!

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8642

well its stopped because it wouldnt make sense. Its waiting for the performance and dyntopo improvments and its not dead.

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8643

I guess we can call this patch dead if it has to wait for “the” performance and dyntopo improvements.
I’m really loosing patience with Blenders sculpt mode.

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8644

Hmmm… Looks pretty dead to me…
There was no performance/dyntopo improvements happening back then, iirc… even brecht said it was okay to add the feature…

Now, if the devs are always going to wait for the perfect bug-free blender infrastructure to start adding features, then things will hardly move forward as it should… There must be a balance… :wink:

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8645

For the mask there’s this option but it’s limited IMO

image
image551×509 40.2 KB

The noise maker equivalent is still missing as mentioned, and the hue variation was/is also planned I think…? Pablo showed something like this in one of his many demos but can’t remember which one it was tbh.

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8646

Joseph is neck deep in Dyntopo algorithms right now.
rBbaa24243a53b (blender.org)

Apparently, the math he is doing right now is crazy enough that he considered writing a paper. Considering the work he is doing, I am not sure when the new Dyntopo will officially be in master, to properly implement everything into the new core is not easy stuff.

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8647

yes i need 300 millons in dynotopo without lag :slight_smile:

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8648

turns out the dyntopo branch (temp_bmesh_multires) has a “mask by cavity” brush setting, and it’s in the form of an automasking… so we can’t see/manipulate the resulting mask in the viewport, unfortunately… :frowning:

image

8649

Cool stuff from the dyntopo dev… :sunglasses:

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8650

Nobody touched sculpt or paint code for years at a time. The foundation only recently acquired just enough money to hire ONE person with just enough skill to do SOME stuff in those areas. Nobody from the community submitted good patches (except for the few who did but the Blender devs never got around to them for whatever is the most disgraceful reason you can think of to paint the devs in a negative light)

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8651

If you look at Blender modules as a whole, it’s apparent that sculpt & paint is exactly in right place in terms of allocated resources from BF.

Render & Cycles module got 4 fulltime BF devs, by far most out of any other module. Is it too much? Not really.
- First, there are definitely more people using Cycles than sculpting. And well, if you’re sculpting good chance you’ll render your work anyway.
- Second, there are a lot of 3rd party help. AMD, NVIDIA, Facebook all allocate their own resouces to contribute.

Geometry Nodes got 3 fulltime people (well, Dalai is not coding much lately, but design decisions is very important right now). Is it too much? No.
- First, it is very young development. Opening up lots of opportunities, hence bring a lot of value. So temporary allocating more devs is fine for now.
- Second, it’s very clear people are interested in it because there are a lot of contributed code by volunteers. We can’t say there is industry support but “industry” is only part of Blender userbase, not a whole. So to match supply of code and feedback there must be enough core devs to review code and such.

Animation & Rigging got 1 developer from BF maintaining it. Not much, but (hopefully) with Animation 2022 project it’ll change to 2 developers.
This module gets lots of industry support too, in terms of code or close feedback.

You get the idea.

And what entire Sculpt, Paint & Texture module got? One fulltime dev, one volunteer who doesn’t want to pay for other software. Before there was Jeroen who managed module, or BF allocated Sergey to help with multires.
Is it enough? Yes. Those are people who know what to do and how to do it. They’ll do it - eventually. But allocating more resources from BF - well, it’s not a waste, but you can find more pressing issues so that your investment will bring more value (for example, hire person for developer community coordination).

And while there are a lot of passionate people who love to use sculpt and such, if there is no 3rd party direct support, or industry support, or people motivated enough to contribute code (again, for now it’s one person) - then there really is no justification for BF to conclude there must be more support from their side.

So my conclusion is this: from BF perspective at the moment Sculpt, Paint & Texture module is small enough to only need one fulltime developer and big enough to demand at least one. Whoever think it deserves more have freedom to contribute any way you think is fit.

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8652

Am I missing something, why is it being referred to as the Z program?

Is there some sort of potential legal issue?

8653

Why use full name when You can just use single abused letter :D.

normalZ
normalZ654×549 374 KB

But seriously i dont know. Screenshots from other programs are prohibited from official blender channels for real legal concerns, but this is not official blender forum.

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8654

This is all assuming you don’t care about the Paint & Texture part of the module at all, yeah? :stuck_out_tongue:

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8655

Does someone got the “Scene Project” Brush working? It sounds interesting, but I do not have a clue how to get it working.

In the same Blend file I have a 2nd scene with just a cone. I try to project that cone onto a sculpt-sphere. (If this is the purpose of this brush?)

8656

Just pointing this in case somebody doesn’t realize it: as a gamedev, I don’t really need or use Cycles. What I would need is a good UV, PBR baking etc. Areas where there hasn’t been a lot of development in a while.

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8657

Cavity Masking been in Texture Paint for awhile now, good to know that they thought to apply it to sculpt - though I had hoped they would give us a visual feedback of the masking similar to what they have in Mari or at least an overlay like when we toggle view of texture mask etc.

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8658

I don’t quite understand what my opinion of a module have anything to do with what I wrote, but if you need to know, strictly speaking the answer is yes, as much as any other areas of Blender I don’t use.

Voicing your opinion on what and how much you need in your area of work is good way of bringing attention to BF about how they can better utilize what they have. :slightly_smiling_face:
After all, some of them do read those topics even if it’s not official channel.