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I've been having a similar issue with my wireless keyboard and mouse, sometimes the mouse will respond and sometimes it wont and same with the keyboard when I press a shortcut key. I've only had them about 5 months or so and this started happening maybe a month and a half ago in the 2.77 blender version. Sometimes they don't respond properly in DS too so I am wondering if the USB connection is faulty it's not the batteries as I checked them already.
I run into the same thing with my Wacom tablet mouse and pen sometimes it works sometimes it don't depending on the program
Has real bad habit of only working part time in Daz Studio
I had the same problem. I ended up going to Best Buy and getting an $8 wired mouse to use just for Blender.
I haven't had a problem with wireless mouse/keyboard or wacom myself but any number of things can cause problems and it can be hard to track down. One thing that often causes problems is to plug the wireless transceiver into a hub instead of directly into a computer port.
It used to work fine with my old mouse, but then the old mouse stopped scrolling so I bought a new one. The new one comes with the middle mouse button set to Instant viewer. When you click on the middle buttone or click on shift-middle button, it causes that instant viewer to be invoked. It shows you thumbnails of all you active programs. You are suppose to be able to add programs and customize the mouse to have a different behavior when that program invokes the middle mouse button. I did that and I thought it was working, but then I noticed that the view would only rotate sometimes. Other times I would press the middle button and try to rotate and nothing would happen. I would try it half a dozen times and nothing would happen and then it would rotate again. I finally set the default action for the middle button to be mouse click. But it still didn't help. But maybe now that I have rebooted, maybe it will be OK. I had the same issue with 3D coat and it seems to be working now.
If not, then I may try what @knittingmommy suggests. Thanks @knittingmommy!
I'm not sure what instant viewer is such a big deal. If I want to switch between apps, I just click on the icons at the bottom of my screen. But I think it has something to do with the problem. I've searched the web and I have found other people with the same issue.
Anyway, I'm only a beginner with Blender and I like it so far. The interface doesn't bother me and it really seems very powerful. I'm very impressed with all that you have done with it.
From what I've read, Instant Viewer seems to be a "feature" of the MS Intellimouse software. Sounds idiotic to me. So many programs utilise middle mouse...
If changing the settings to middle click doesn't work reliably in the mouse software, you can (less ideally) rebind all the middle mouse controls in Blender (I completely changed all the mouse controls ages ago and it made my life so much easier) or I guess buy a mouse that doesn't screw with users' vital functions with their terrible software :/
I'm not on a Windows machine; haven't had trouble with my trackpad on my MacBook Pro (it's set to emulate 3 button mouse) or my Wacom Intuos Pro.
I avoid installing the driver software that comes with any basic mouse and have had no problems with them working.
I don't have whatever the instant viewer is or, at least, I don't know that I have it. My problem is just that the middle mouse button doesn't want to work properly consistently. I have a slightly older wireless keyboard and mouse and the mouse worked immediately in Blender as it should, just that the middle mouse button doesn't work all the time or reliably hence going with the wired mouse with the scroll wheel. That works. I do wish I could use my wireless, but at least the cheap wired one I got was shaped almost like my other mouse so they feel similar. I have smaller hands and I dislike having the bigger mouse that seems to be so popular.
Wow very nice. Blender addons are getting hotter. What's the render time like?
Great speed modeling with texturing of a Pioneer CDJ-200nxs by Zach Hixson. If you like watching speed modeling (they are great for learning technique) I have a board specifically listing Blender speed modeling and sculpting on my Pinterest boards.
Playing around with Cycles & Light Portals
Adjusted textures in the last image, reduced samples from 1500 to 600 and render time still went up from 11min to 20min. Just goes to show how tweaks in shaders can have a dramatic impact on render time. This is with any render engine, Cycles or IRay. Btw, I do know the vase appears to be floating a little, but the bottom is atually rounded slightly. I should probably flatten it more to get ride of the float appearance but wasn't worried too much as it's just an exercise. ;)
I find them useful for discovering new functions, but not learning how to use them. :)
Yes, It's mostly good for seeing someone else's workflow. If I'm trying to sort out how someone did a specific technique, I often have to slow down the playback speed to see what exactly they are doing. Having said that, seeing other workflows, what techniques people use to be more efficient is a big help and one that is often overlooked in the learning process. Many tutorials use a 'long way' of doing something, using basic box modeling when modifiers, curves, etc... would be much more efficient.
Yup curves are often overlooked. And modifiers are incredibly useful.
I find the lattice so awesome; being able to model something, keeping it flat/aligned to the global settings, then rotate and reshape with the lattice is a great time saver.
The array is another favourite; and sometimes with Daz products, making a low poly version with the decimate modifier.
Something that might interest some here, I'm using a Seiki 39" 4k TV for my main monitor. The refresh rate is ony 30hz so gamers wouldn't want it probably, but it works well for me since the colors & detail is rich and I have a lot of screen real estate for working with. It's available for around $200ish (I paid $130 + $30 for a 3 year replacement warranty for a refurbished one from Microcenter.) My notebook onboard video card runs the monitor so it leaves my dedicated (960m 4gb Nvidia) card for rendering. I have used it for gaming and it works ok for me, but I do get the occasional tear and I'm a casual (3D/MMO) gamer.
Totally random, but I only learned yesterday that you can disolve (ctrl x) stuff rather than having to slide edges into each other and remove doubles or whatever other way you wanted to get rid of a specific bit of geometry. I've been doing it manually this whole time >.> When there are so many options and abilities, surprising blindspots open up.
Yes disolve works great. :)
In the above pictures, the trim is simply a box with 2 bevel modifiers and the vase is a box with bevel, proportional scaling and a thickness modifier. In all, it's 4 boxes with some modifiers, shaders and lights.
hitting x brings up a number of great delete options, including dissolve.
Hmm Gedd, I wonder if you've noticed this; when creating morphs in Blender, even with all aspects zeroed before exporting from Daz, I'm getting slight movement on the morph everywhere on G3F.
I tested on a figure I didn't alter in Blender; I imported it, then immediately exported. I get the same.
No, my point was I know how to delete... I just didn't know that dissolve existed, if that makes sense. If I wanted to lets say change two tris into a square, I'd delete the edge between them and then select the four verts or edges and then hit f to remake it, rather than knowing that dissolve meant that I could make it do the whole thing in one button press. I was using the subd modifier to make bevelled edges for ages before I found out there was a bevel tool too >.>
Ok, here are some of what I would call 'must know' shortcut keys. Besides the g(rab,) s(cale,) and r(otate) keys, the w (specials menu,) ctl+tab (switches between verts, faces and edges in edit mode,) ctl+v (verts menu,) ctl+e (edge menu,) ctl+f (faces menu.) are all much fundamental and one should get used to what is on each menu. A lot of what we want to do is right there as far as modeling. There are a number of other shortcut keys that are helpful such as snap, proportional editing, etc... but the previous ones give so much bang for the buck that they are pretty much a must.
The snap menu is pretty important but unfortunately I think there needs to be a redesign on how Blender handles origin points, snapping and the 3D cursor as it's too convoluted and often a big issue for people using Blender from what I've seen. I'm not new to Blender but I still have issues at times remembering how to do tasks related to these at times if I've stepped away from the program for a good amount of time. That shouldn't happen for something so central. It means that the process is not intuitive.
My goal is to do my own menu system with a limited and more optimized shortcut key setup that pulls up menus for various functions in a much more intuitive manner. If I had unlimited time, it would be done already.
A note: I do find myself using the spacebar menu much more lately but for new people it's not as helpful as some people think since they don't know what a function is even called often.
Quick Blender question. Is there an easy way to do symmetry in edit mode without using a mirror modifier? In Hexagon, I can just click on a button to turn on symmetry for which ever axis I want and anything I do to one side automatically gets done to the other side. This is really handy to using on clothing and I like that I can turn in on or off quickly as needed. In Blender, however, all I've been able to find is a mirror modifier which totally messes up the UV for clothing or symmetry in sculpt mode which isn't what I need. Why is there an easy way in sculpt mode, but not edit mode? Am I missing something? Help!
Is this along the lines of what you were thinking? Mesh Mirroring
I'm pretty good with snapping etc. although I wish there were easier ways to align things at times.. like "align all selected vertices to last selected vert along X" if that makes sense. Getting it into my head that there was a difference between objectmode location and editmode moving things took awhile, and I spent forever trying to resize things to specific sizes like say you had an edge, wanting to type in 5 to be able to make it 5cm long, but I've yet to find a function that does that.
With the shortcut keys the biggest thing I learned was that everything that has a shortcut key is in the menu. When I started using Blender all I saw were tutorials saying press D X ctrl S pick this up up down down F which makes sense when you know the program but is insane to expect a beginner to understand. Once I stuck to just the few main ones like grab etc. the others started to get added in naturally. Oh and gg is one of my favourites that I discovered completely by accident.
Yes, gg (grab grab) = edge slide and it is very useful. I use it all the time. :)
One of the problems I have with the menu system is that I (and many others) find it disorienting at times. Now I actually have a good handle on what should be where so it's not too bad, but it does slow me down at times trying to find a particular button in the tools bar for instance. I prefer context sensitive menus myself, ones that with a common sense control key (such as the ctl+v for verts menu.) I do think Blender has too many random shortcut keys that could be better optimized on context sensitive menus.
In the DOS days, one could do a function very quickly in a program by typing out a letter for a menu, a letter for a submenu, and a letter for the function, 2, 3 or 4 letter words basically. Whatever was used often was quick, one could basicallly ignore the menus and key in the commands. If not familiar, the menus automatically popped up so one could root around in them and eventually find what was needed. Unfortunately, the current setup has menus at the bottom (or top) of windows, in panels, etc... and finding one's way around takes more effort (and screen real estate) then it should.
I'm looking forward to Blender 3.x which is supposed to come with a system to make customizing the interface much easier since different people work/think differentlly and have different needs so being able to reskin easily should be helpful to many. I know I would like to be able to without having to do extensive python scripting.
Btw, I'm looking for resources for converting Blender shaders into IRay shaders so if anyone knows of particularly good documentation it would be helpful. I haven't gotten up to speed with doing IRay shaders other then the basics. I would like to make custom shaders without having to write out the mdl's by hand. I am not fond of uber shaders, so just saving presets isn't my preferred option.