What is Blender missing that other software has?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
21

It lacks support for different coordinate systems. Texture map node supports spherical and blended box coordinates, but lacks support for spherical, disk, cylinder, box, pyramid, cone as a simple node texture space conversion. I’ve made some of these using math nodes, but it tends to get too complicated.

They could even be “unified” (using a representative primitive similar to the current parallel map “box” object) allowing even more exotic coordinates I would find hard to use, but still:

  • Parallel (currently the only one), box, blended box, pyramid.
  • Spherical (currently available only in texture node), elliptical, parabolic, hyperbolic, cone, disk, cylinder. Some very exotic, others very useful.
  • Compound. Some above are only 2D coordinates with remaining 3D coordinate copied from one of the 3D parallel coordinate channels. Then you could use a sharp compound (similar to box) or blended compound (similar to blended box) of two mapping systems. Typical example might be a capped cylinder where circumference of cylinder mapped with cylinder mapping and the two disk faces mapped with disk mapping.
  • Mesh UV. Think of it as projection perpendicular to the mesh UV to an intersecting point on your object.

The texture generators are also very basic.

22

I am working on a mobile game now with blender and unreal on my spare time, and swapped from blender -> unity to blender -> unreal engine.

  • SM_ static meshes works, scale is correct. (at least for me, using metric and scale 1.000 and in export scale is 1.000 and that toggle box is checked that takes care for scale conversion)
  • SK_ skeletal meshes, or armatures from blender works. All my animations have been scaled correct.
  • MAT, materials can’t be exported. this is in my opinion the only downside. for ex. a collague or two of them are using MODO and it has a material exporter -> XML, and an importer plugin for UE4 that can read the XML and setup the material from MODO as it is in Unreal and it looks pretty similar. It will always be an approximation.

Hopefully with the viewport overhaul, higher OpenGL version, then we could maybe create a PBR material in blender that mimics the material in UE4 as close as possible visually. And the next step would be to have an output file that we could import in UE4 to create all necessary texture connections.

I guess more fancier materials in UE4, would maybe impossible but at least the majority of the asset creation would go much smoother.

  • Texturing, I think, and heard from others using MODO for ex. is better in Blender, or easier. for hi-res or next gen stuff it might fall behind apps like mari and substance painter, but for low-poly or more stylized art work I think blender has a pretty neat advantage.

One example is that MODO doesn’t have pixel snapping. if you’re doing pixel art style 3d.

23
  • Ability to deal with huge scenes
  • 2D Plugins for compositing effects (2D filters like the ones you can use in Photoshop, AE, Nuke…)
  • 3D Plugins for specific tasks (crowd simulations, etc…)
  • A crowd simulation system, I really miss this feature.
24

I think it needs a good texture library/manager and better texturepaint tools. So I began developing them.

Screen Shot 2016-07-21 at 2.09.42 AM.jpg1392×662 188 KB

25

hi john5220,
there is a version of blender with icons- http://www.reinerstilesets.de/bforartists-0-3-1-released/ (i have not used it).

26

Support for other GPUs

27

Is there anything in blender that could give me a similar result as quad chamfer? Maybe a secret addon that I have not been able to find through my extensive googling? If not, does anyone know if there is somebody working on something like that?
:eyebrowlift2:

28

Old thread I know, but one thing I do sorely miss from Lightwave is interactive falloff when applying bend / shear et al.
These pics show what I mean, would LOVE this in Blender.

Attachments

LW_shear.png1244×925 50.8 KB

LW_Taper.png1194×926 46.6 KB

LW_Bend.png1269×923 55.9 KB

29

@ Ukkis, fdfxd wrote it. 3dsmax Quad Chamfer = Blender Bevel

Blender can model any shape like most of 3D modeling software. What is different is the way to use to obtain that result.
I agree that knowing how empty will behave with each modifier is not immediate step.
But if Bend of Simple Deform modifier is really limited to third case shown by Colkai.
It is easy to obtain the others by using hooks falloff.

Attachments


30

Maybe a FLIP solver for fluids etc, as in houdini, would be a massive addition. It would mean Blender is well on the way to an all-in-one 3D package. With that I could say goodbye to Realflow, and happily dontate a fair chunk of my savings to the Foundation!

31

What is Blender missing? A large, professional userbase.

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Custom normals. The Data Transfer modifier helps, though.

Also, everything-nodes, but that’s probably too much to ask for a while.

33

Old thread I know, but one thing I do sorely miss from Lightwave is interactive falloff when applying bend / shear et al.
These pics show what I mean, would LOVE this in Blender.

have you tried using miratools?

34

I could use a method that paints multiple texture channels with unique brushes per texture layer.

(like spec, normal, diff, reflect stencil, emission etc)

In 1 stroke*

35

I’ve got it installed, but you know, I’ve never really looked at it in depth, I just like the LW way of doing it, you draw the falloff with the RMB then use LMB to set it, with the numeric panel controlling curves etc. Will see if there is anything in MiraTools which is of use though.

EDIT: Just looked at the Github page for Miratools, okay, I’ve been shooting myself in the foot not using that Linear deformer. :stuck_out_tongue:

36

I just want to say that I have a small studio, we are Max\Maya centric, but I think this is our last year being that way, we are going to abandon all Autodesk software and we are going to use Blender as our unique 3d software.

After studying it I don’t think it misses anything needed for any studio in any field, not architecture, vr\realtime and\or character animation, since the implementation of Alembic it has everything we need to carry on with our work.

Of course it has missing features, but in the same way Max, Maya, Modo or C4D has missing features, this is something normal for a 3d package, but as a tool is a pretty complete and robust tool that for the first time since I started learning and using it I can say that we can replace max\maya with it, nothing really important is missing here IMHO.

if someone disagrees I respect that, and I will be grateful if is said here as a heads up, because the migration is not something that you go easy with, it’s important and a big change for a studio, because if we stop paying our subs we loose or licenses in the future, so I don’t want to look back when we do this completely.

And I agree, that one of the most key things Blender is missing is a large professional user base, but I think it’s growing, and I’m willing to educate in blender any person I hire in the field I need that person for.

Just my 2 cents to this :slight_smile:

Cheers!

37

Substance support (ability to use textures from sbsar files).

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  1. Simple and efficient UV mapping modifier (Planar/Box/Sphere with its own gizmo); having some kind of Edit Poly modifier would also be a great thing.
  2. ability to see overlapping faces in UV/Image Editor
  3. better packing solutions for UV islands
39

In terms of modeling for a game pipeline. Honetsly nothing much. Blender holds its own fairly well.

But it depends on your workflow. And the quality/styles of the models you want to make.

And then there is animation. That is another story.

I use a Maya MotionBuilder workflow for rigging animation and Mocap editing.

On the modeling side, I think if you are going to be doing a lot of sculpting and will need to retopo your models, that could introduce some issues. Blender has a retopo addon. But from my experience it is not good enough. At my studio we use Maya or Maya LT for retopo.

And for high quality sculpting we use Zbrush and there is no real good alternative to that.

But we are able to use Blender for everything else.

So the short list would be

Animation Pipeline:

Hand Animation: Blender is fine.
Mocap Data Blender is lacking. It does have some tools and it is not impossible.

Modeling/Texturing Pipeline

No Sculpting : Blender is more than adequate.
Sculpting: Definitely possible with a weakness in retopo tools.

Texturing specific:

Blender can hold its own with most apps as far as UV mapping and it is real good with baking maps for a Quixel pipeline and even other painting solution like Substance Designer/Painter

But for high poly bakes from a high poly model to low poly model I find we need to use Mudbox. Blender slows to a crawl with high-detail models.

You can also sculpt and paint in Blender. But the features are limited. And you will find you need to use an external app.

SUMMARY:

Again it all depends on what you are making.

All the tools are there in Blender end to end. With some limitations. Depends on what you can live with.

40

+1000

I would like to see UDIM support but that is a possibility from GSOC.Until then we have to workaround it.

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), create vertex group from mask vice versa, brush evaluation from surface normal, shadow box or similar tool, better automatic retopo, 3D brush curves + snap curve to surface, make spline object from selected 3D sculpt curve, cavity masking, better boolean execution. These are the essentials which come to mind.