Small Blender Things: vertex paint

Showing posts with label vertex paint. Show all posts

IDMapper add-on for Blender is now free

In a previous article I mentioned that I stopped publishing add-ons on blender market because basically I was done with it it: I didn't earn enough to warrant the amount of effort that goes into maintaining and supporting add-ons.

However, there is still quite some interest in some of the add-ons, and so I decided to open source some of the add-ons and make them available for free. The first one was Snap! then it was Weightlifters turn, my very first add-on published on BlenderMarket (now Superhive), back in 2014 (!), and now IDMapper.

Technically IDMapper already was open source, at least the source code was, but now I'm also open sourcing the manual, and that means that you can download the source from this GitHub repository (the releases section), and the manual is available too.

This repository is still a work in progress, but the code will run on 4.4. For now, simply download weightlifter.py and use the install from filesystem in the add-ons section. Then read the manual!

To give you some idea of its capabilities, there is a video on YouTube.

Weightlifter add-on for Blender is now free

Weightlifter

However, there is still quite some interest in some of the add-ons, and so I decided to open source some of the add-ons and make them available for free. The first one was Snap! but now it is Weightlifters turn, my very first add-on published on BlenderMarket (now Superhive), back in 2014 (!)

Weightlifter is the Swiss army knife of recording mesh attributes to vertex weights or -colors. Anything from whether a vertex is visible from the camera to its slope or curvature can be converted to weight maps or vertex colors, and much more.

Technically Weightlifter already was open source, at least the source code was, but now I'm also open sourcing the manual, and that means that you can download both the source and the manual from this GitHub repository.

This repository is still a work in progress and the manual hasn't been updated for Blender 4.x yet, but the code is and will run on 4.4. For now, simple download weightlifter.py and use the install from filesystem in the add-ons section. Then read the manual!

To give you some idea of its capabilities, there is a video playlist on YouTube (but they show old versions of Blender).

New release of IDMapper

A new release of IDMapper is currently available on BlenderMarket

This new version is a bugfix release that besides minor fixes also fixes an error that might occur when trying to assign colors based on material ids. Furthermore the manual has been updated to reflect Blender 2.8x layouts and the add-on has been tested against Blender 2.81-beta.

IDMapper ported to Blender 2.80

IDMapper has now been ported to Blender 2.80 and is available from BlenderMarket.

There were a fair number of bumps along the road with regard to some parts of the Python API so be aware that Blender 2.80 is still in beta and you might still encounter some difficulties!

WeightLifter ported to Blender 2.80

WeightLifter has now been ported to Blender 2.80 and is available from BlenderMarket.
Porting this add-on was a bit more work than porting NodeSet Pro, so be aware that Blender 2.80 is still in beta and you might still encounter some difficulties!

New version of WeightLifter introduces baking and animation

A new version of WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket.

WeightLifter is an add-on that can calculate all sorts of information and store this into vertex groups or vertex color layers. It can for example determine the visibility of vertices for a certain camera or the distance to some light source and much more, information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems.

New features

The newest version introduces some new modes like calculating a flow map or the mesh deformation but the most exiting new feature is the ability to bake any weight map for each frame in an animation. This way can quickly regenerate a vertex group for each frame while rendering, effectively animating a weight map, something which is not possible otherwise.

To illustrate how to do this, I have created a short video that shows the workflow for creating an animated density map that lets the proximity to a lamp drive the emission of particles.

IDMapper - a complete walkthrough

uploaded a complete walkthrough video to showcase the use of IDMapper.
IDMapper is available on Blender Market.

IDMapper - create ID-maps the easy way

it's always exiting to announce a new product on Blender Market and today I am pleased to announce IDMapper.

IDMapper is a Blender add-on that lets you create a vertex color layer that can be used as an ID-map by texture paint tools like Substance Painter.

When creating textures for models you often want to reduce the actual number of textures, for example because your GPU can only handle a limited number of textures or maybe simply because juggling a large number of textures for a single model is such a hassle.

Whatever your motivation, texture painting software lets you apply different materials to a texture with ease but you still need to identify areas. An ID-map makes it very simple to apply a material to faces that have a certain color, often by letting you pick a color from the ID-map with an eye-dropper tool.

You will still need to create the vertex color layer that can be used as an ID-map and that's where IDMapper can help.

The first thing it offers are powerful heuristics to assign a unique vertex color to regions consisting of related faces. What is considered related can be tweaked interactively and any resulting distinct regions with very similar geometry can still be assign the same vertex color, simplifying for example the assignment of colors in hard-ops modelling in situations where your mesh contains repeated features like handles or bolts.

The second feature is an operator that acts like a new face paint mode. Instead of applying blended colors to vertices in a painterly manner as with Blender's vertex paint mode, this operator keeps colors uniform across a face, something often desirable when assign materials to mesh parts. It also lets you assign new colors to colored regions and resize or smooth these regions interactively.

And finally it offers some convenience functions to combine different vertex color layers and copy vertex color layers from one mesh to another, probably more high poly, mesh.

A short video showcasing the main features is available on Youtube:

IDMapper is available in my Blender Market shop

WeightLifter add-on: new features

A new version of the WeightLifter add-on (available on BlenderMarket) adds some functionality based on user feedback. Besides some bug fixes you can now:

use an arbitrary reference axis in Height en Slope modes,
restrict the range of calculated values interactively, and
control the size of the patches when assigning random values to faces.

A tutorial showing this new functionality is available on YouTube:

WeightLifter add-on: new feature release

Version 20150501170240 adds two new modes: one that assigns values based on the average area of the faces sharing a vertex and another mode that assigns values based on the variance of the lengths of edges that share a vertex. The first one I find useful in creating materials on organic shapes that vary in a subtle but correlated manner while the latter offers a complement to the curvature mode, highlighting certain vertices in a different way. Of course you might find a completely different use for it, that's why I include it in the add-on :-)

The new version is of course available free of charge to people who have already purchased the add-on. Check the BlenderMarket page for more details.

Transfer vertex weights to vertex colors and vice versa

In a previous article I mentioned that my WeightLifter addon was updated and could now (besides many other things) transfer vertex weights to vertex colors and vice versa. Because this might be of use to many people I decided to split off this specific functionality into a separate addon and provide it for free.

After installing the addon in the usual manner you get two new menu options: one in the Weights menu in Weight Paint mode called VertexColorsToWeights and a corresponding one in the Paint menu in Vertex Paint mode.

Weight paint mode

In weight paint mode clicking on Weights -> VertexColorToWeight will transfer a color from the active vertex color layer to the active vertex group. If there is no vertex color layer present a will cretae a new one. You have an option to choose which color channel to use as weight or to combine all colors.

Vertex paint mode

In vertex paint mode clicking on Paint -> WeightToVertexColor will transfer the weights from the active vertex group to the active vertex color layer. if there is no veretx group present it will create a new one. You have again an option to transfer the weights to a single color channel or to all color channels.

Code Availability

The code can be downloaded from my GitHub repository.

WeightLifter add-on: user feedback release

Version 20150222 incorporates a lot of features based on user feedback, including an invert option, a new mode (that measures distances to selected vertices), auto update of particles systems that use a a vertex group and extra operators/menu options to transfer values between vertex groups and vertex color layers. The new version is available free of charge to people who have already purchased the add-on. Check the BlenderMarket page for more details.

Distance to selected verts

The new mode Distance to selected verts lets you for example create vertex groups that might be used to control the distribution of particle systems based on the distance to a wall:

Auto update of particle systems

If a vertex group is updated by WeightLifter it now takes care to trigger an update on any associated particle system that uses the vertex group. This way you can get immediat efeedback on the effects of your WeightLifter actions.

Transfer weights to vertex colors (and vice versa)

Sometimes it might be useful to transfer the weights of vertex group to a vertex color layer or the other way around. This might be useful in other contexts beside WeightLifter too, so this functionality is implemented as two separate operators that are available from the Weights menu in vertex weight mode and from the Paint menu in vertex color mode. There are installed automatically with WeightLifter/

Using vertex colors to color hair in Cycles

I got a question related to my WeightLifter Addon asking whether is was possible to use the addon to control hair particles. The addon itself does of course not control any particles but the vertex groups and vertex colors it creates can be used by any particle system to control the distribution and coloring of the the particles or hairs strands as shown in this example:

For this image WeightLifter was used to create a vertex group with more weight on horizontal surface:

Then this vertex group was used to control the distribution of the hairs by selecting the gruop in the particle system settings:

In the same manner WeightLifter was used to create vertex colors that change colors from left to right:

A Cycles material was then created to use these vertex colors (via the Attribute node) to color the hairs

WeightLifter - Vertex Group Tool, bugfix release

Recently I published my first commercial addon on BlenderMarket and I am very pleased with the reactions I got so far. A big thank you to all those people who purchased the addon!

Of course, no serious piece of software is completely without bugs so I updated the addon a few hours ago. Version 20141018 contains a few small bugfixes and removes a limitation that could lead to crashes when assigning random weights to groups of connected vertices on large meshes (Thank you Wybren for reporting this).

WeightLifter - My first BlenderMarket addon

I am quite proud to announce my first addon that's available on BlenderMarket!

The addon combines a lot functionality in a single comprehensive addon. There's a tutorial online as well, demoing the most eyecatching features and I hope it will be useful to not just ArchViz people!

Update: there is now an update available that fixes a crash that could happen when assiging random weights to groups of connected vertices in large meshes.

Blender addon: Assign random vertex colors to connected vertices

Prompted by a request in this BlenderArtists thread I created a small add-on that assigns random vertex colors to regions with connected vertices.

The image shows a single object consisting of several cubes. within each cube all vertices are connected and therefore get the same (but random) color.

Code availability

All functionality of this add-on plus a lot more is now available as a convenient all-in-one add-on on BlenderMarket. It comes with an extensive PDF manual and your purchase will encourage me to develop new Blender add-ons.

The code for the functionality shown in this article is available on GitHub. use File -> User preferences ... -> Addons -> Install from file to install it and don't forget to enable the check box. It will then be available in the Paint menu in Vertex Paint mode.

For discussion you might want to check here

Slope to vertex weights, a Blender addon part II

The addon's functionality was enhanced with a mirror option, to treat 'negative slopes', like those on the underside of a sphere in the same manner as positive slopes. This makes it for example possible to grow stuff on flat parts on the underside of an object while still not growing anything on the steep side as shown in the image of Suzanne (Rock material by Rasmus Seerup). Note that the default Suzanne has a ninety degree rotated mesh, so I had to rotate her in edit mode to get the slope information I needed)

The vertex paint variant was enhanced with the option to map the calculated slope through the brush curve. This allows you the ultimate control of the weights assigned to the slope values. (Note that have to click Paint -> Slope everytime you alter the brush curve, I haven't found a way to give immediate feedback. Also the weight paint variant of this addon (which produces vertex weights instead of vertex colors and is available in weight paint mode from Weights -> Slope) does not offer this functionality itself because it is already possible to add a Bevel Weight Edit Modifier to modify vertex weights).

Code availability

The simple code shown in this article is available from GitHub snd discussed on this BlenderArtists thread. It is also followed in the Blender upload tracker. The brush curve functionality is only available for builds >= 60054 so you will have to wait for a new Blender release or build your own/download the daily build if you want to use it. The script checks for the release number so it won't crash if you have an older release.

Random Vertex Colors, a simple addon

In a previous article I presented an addon to generate a floor board with individual planks. Each individual plank was adorned with a random vertex color that can be used to create materials with random color variations for each face.

When working with the Ivy Generator recently I wanted this same feature and indeed my own space tree addon could benefit from this as well, because just like IvyGen it generates a single mesh object with a face. for each leaf. So I decided to separate this functionality from the floor board generator so it can be used in different situations.

Once the addon is installed it can be used on any mesh object when in vertex paint mode as shown below:

It will replace the vertex colors of the active vertex color layer with colors that are random but equal for each face. In Cycles vertex colors can be accessed with an attribute node, an example node setup can be found in the article on the floor board generator referred to at the start of this article.

Code availability

The simple code shown in this article is available for download at GitHub and is uploaded to the upload section of Blender extensions tracker so if you find bugs you may post them there as well.

[2016 Feb 7] The version currently in GitHub is much faster for large meshes because it uses Numpy. Check this article to see why.