The big Blender Sculpt Mode thread (Part 1)

Scary stuff… :fearful:

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That sound like a huge milestep, its great that they do not ask anyone’s opinion. Im sure it will be amazing.

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I’m not so sure tbh. I hope for the best though.

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Sorry but I can’t agree wiith that… :wink:

and I’m sure it will be overcomplicated hehehe… but hey, we shall see, we shall see…

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Well there was talk a few months back about a redesign of various workflows with the new asset browser in mind.

Which makes sense, as oftentimes it may not be desired for that beautiful sculpt of yours (which took days to create) to be used in just one image or animation. Appending the model might work, but it is limited compared to grabbing it from the new asset browser.

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Sculpt dyntopo: Smooth improvements and bug fixes

https://developer.blender.org/rBbde54e127eace4bc865044673beb21e9034bad60

Seems to add a Weighted area smooth option which is similar to Pablo’s detail aware smoothing sort of

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https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1437530873402957826

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good for Pablo , but it makes me really sad :frowning:
Seems now sculpt mode will be forgotten again.
My only hope now is Joseph, maybe blender foundation can hire him fulltime to replace Pablo.

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Crap… This makes me sad…

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Can’t blame him. Hopefully one day he’ll come back

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I think this is accually good. Pablo’s development pace is neck-breaking and that level of commitment can drain mental stamina very quickly. I don’t think he is leaving for good.
Also longer breaks can be helpful with gaining some perspective on things and projects in development process.

That would be great!

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I knew this is in the coming after all that drama but hopefully Autodesk won’t snatch him before he comes back.

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I believe Joseph being hired would be the best thing for sculpt mode as of now.

Pablo was great in producing an expansive suite of new brush tools and improvements, but he does not have the engineering experience needed to modernize and optimize the cores of both Multires and Dyntopo. That work is where Joseph comes in, sculpt mode right now is not so much in need of an artist as it is in need of an engineer.

We have the tools, but not the performance to allow them to be utilized fully, or the UI overhaul we need. Those other issues could very well be making Pablo’s work harder then it needs to be at this point.

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It would be nice if he could merge all of his patches into the sculpt dev branch before leaving… :wink:

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Sad news, not only for Blender, this is bad for entire art community. Pablo is more visionary, dude with great imagination and capable to think out of box, than ordinary developer… Yap, he is not “real programmer” but real programmers don’t have his ‘mojo’. This is like you compare midnight sammich “with all” to ordinary military meal… which have proper nutrition’s value, vitamins, minerals, but somehow don’t taste and look as midnight fantasy :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

PS. I don’t believe that Autodesk will ever ‘snatch’ Pablo, they neglect Mudbox for years… Also it’s very unlikely that Pixo will try something. Although I think that Pixologic are much more relax, friendly work environment than Autodesk… they still are ‘serious’ company where developers have schedule, duties and supervisors which care that developers work according to plan. IN BF Pablo have freedom to unchain his creativity without usual limitation.
I hope that he will be back, but this time maybe BF can put one developer ( with technical knowledge ) to work with him… to test and implement Pablo’s stuff.

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Now i cant wait for his anime art.

Remarkable news, although I kind of expected this already, as Pablo’s talent clearly isn’t limited to coding, and since his coding efforts caused a lot of stir, both positively and negatively, I can fully understand why focusing on creating artwork (and receiving praise for that) is more rewarding.

Pablo, many thanks for improving Blender’s Sculpt Mode. I wish you the best of luck in developing your art career, and hope you will return to Blender development as well.

In the light of Pablo’s announcement I’ve taken the liberty of renaming this thread, to turn it into a general Sculpt Mode discussion, hoping that Sculpt Mode developer @joeedh will remain part of it. I also hope Pablo’s decision will lead to the Sculpt Mode builds (Sculpt Dev and BMesh / Multires) being merged into one, to uncomplicate development and ease testing.

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On a first level this news is worrying, because I suspect that a great lot of the funding the Blender Foundation has been getting was from the expectation of future improvements to the sculpting feature, and now it’s unclear if it will be in “maintenance mode” or if performance, feature and technical improvements will continue at a similar pace.

On the other hand, it would be healthier if passionate, technically competent programmers could continue and improve upon’s Pablo’s work based on the input from professional sculpting artists and I think the BF can now afford that. The main problem up to relatively recently was that there weren’t really many people willing to improve this area of Blender. It took an actual 3D artist (whether you like his art style, Pablo Dobarro is definitely above amateur-level at sculpting) to step up and try that.

I can understand Pablo wanting to focus on art. Whether he is a better artist than a programmer, I cannot judge, but I can say that it’s very difficult to be good artist and a good programmer at the same time; both fields are antithetical to each other and to professionally excel you have to put all of your time and efforts in one thing only. Because of this, I don’t think he will return back to Blender coding to any serious extent.

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Fantastic news imo - now is the perfect time to hire someone who tackles the essentials Blender (sculpt, painting) is lacking at the moment. Pablo did a really good job here and there so i’m thankful but it’s clear he isn’t the perfect fit sculpt mode needs right now.

Performance, sculpt Layers, polypainting, multires… (you name it)
We need more than just fancy brushes and tools which benefit just a handful of people (and or only Pablo). No hate just my feelings about the development recently.

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Oh man… Sad news, I was hoping in a powerful combo with Pablo and Joseph working together…

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