General Settings and tips to ease the workflow in Blender.

[Ryno917]

Just reviving this thread for a quick question: What should all of the scene settings be for a proper .FBX export?

Started building a track with the scene in meters, but it exports 100x too large. I can export it at 0.01 scale when I spit out the FBX, but this setting reverts every time Blender is closed. I'd like to fix my scene settings so I don't have to change the FBX Settings when I export if possible. Any tips?

 

[Please Stop This]

he Ryno, me again
open blender, dont do anything, just export current scene (ok you should have at least one object)
then save as .fbx as you would with 0.01 scale set, just to set this setting
then go preferences and do a "Save Preferences"
(mh now if i think about it - not sure this will work)

 

[Ryno917]

he Ryno, me again
open blender, dont do anything, just export current scene (ok you should have at least one object)
then save as .fbx as you would with 0.01 scale set, just to set this setting
then go preferences and do a "Save Preferences"
(mh now if i think about it - not sure this will work)

For the time being I've just set an .FBX export preset.

 

[Ghoults]

Just reviving this thread for a quick question: What should all of the scene settings be for a proper .FBX export?

Started building a track with the scene in meters, but it exports 100x too large. I can export it at 0.01 scale when I spit out the FBX, but this setting reverts every time Blender is closed. I'd like to fix my scene settings so I don't have to change the FBX Settings when I export if possible. Any tips?

Don't use 0.01 scaling. It is just unnecessary.

First in blender set units to metric (I don't know about how imperial units work). In the menu under the outliner Context>Units>Unit system metric. Then in fbx export set scale to 1.00 and the anchor to blue next to it. Then Apply Scalings seto to FBX All. Forward is -Z and Y Up. I'd also tick selected objects above. On geometries apply modifiers on, the rest can be whatever. This works both in 2.80 and 2.79

 

[Ryno917]

Don't use 0.01 scaling. It is just unnecessary.

First in blender set units to metric (I don't know about how imperial units work). In the menu under the outliner Context>Units>Unit system metric. Then in fbx export set scale to 1.00 and the anchor to blue next to it. Then Apply Scalings seto to FBX All. Forward is -Z and Y Up. I'd also tick selected objects above. On geometries apply modifiers on, the rest can be whatever. This works both in 2.80 and 2.79

Thanks! I'll give it a try tomorrow. Trying to get the rough landscape and walls in place now

 

[LilSki]

Don't use 0.01 scaling. It is just unnecessary.

First in blender set units to metric (I don't know about how imperial units work). In the menu under the outliner Context>Units>Unit system metric. Then in fbx export set scale to 1.00 and the anchor to blue next to it. Then Apply Scalings seto to FBX All. Forward is -Z and Y Up. I'd also tick selected objects above. On geometries apply modifiers on, the rest can be whatever. This works both in 2.80 and 2.79

Doesn't matter what method you use. Whether you change those options and use 1.0 or just use 0.1 it doesn't matter. I personally am using 0.1. also blender units don't change anything either. So work in metric or imperial, whatever you prefer.

 

[Ryno917]

Struggling to find some methods for creating the terrain; any tips on search terms so I can find some info? Ideally I'd like something that will react to the main loft if I change it.

Also, same for the walls. I've got 2D curves all set up, but the array+curve modifier doesn't react to a curve's shrinkwrap modifier. Any tips on that front?


Sorry for the super, super rudimentary questions.

 

[Ghoults]

The shrinkwrap modifier for the curves needs the "apply on spline" turned on. It is the fourth button in the shrinkwrap modifier in the modifiers menu. Also in the curve's object data you want to change the twist method to Z-up and then adjust your resolution to be higher to avoid staircasis.

 

[Ryno917]

The shrinkwrap modifier for the curves needs the "apply on spline" turned on. It is the fourth button in the shrinkwrap modifier in the modifiers menu. Also in the curve's object data you want to change the twist method to Z-up and then adjust your resolution to be higher to avoid staircasis.

Amazing, thanks! Everything I was finding basically just said it didn't work that way. Awesome, that's a big help!

 

[Ryno917]

Alright, me again. Trying to bake an AO map for a trackside vehicle. I have a high detail mesh baking down to a low res mesh. It looks super blown out, though, and the detail is pretty much all gone from the sides and top. There's only a couple spots with any real shadow visible. Any tips? I'm doing this in 2.8.

 

[Ghoults]

Could be that you have more than two meshes there. Simply hiding unnecessary objects from viewport with h is not enough. You need to turn the camera icon off for other objects as well. Best is probably to create a collection just for baking which has only stuff like your objects and maybe a flat ground plane and have all other collections un-camera-ed.

Other option is that you have cranked up your world light too high and it blows out the shadows. In World / Surface you have strength and default is 1. If these don't work then post picture of your setup.

 

[Ryno917]

Could be that you have more than two meshes there. Simply hiding unnecessary objects from viewport with h is not enough. You need to turn the camera icon off for other objects as well. Best is probably to create a collection just for baking which has only stuff like your objects and maybe a flat ground plane and have all other collections un-camera-ed.

Other option is that you have cranked up your world light too high and it blows out the shadows. In World / Surface you have strength and default is 1. If these don't work then post picture of your setup.

Thanks - I've had a look at the world settings and changing strength there didn't change anything. There's no other objects in the scene, aside from the wheels, so it's not the renderable setting.

Here's a screenshot showing the current setup/settings:

You can see the AO bake in the bottom left of the fullscreen image. It's basically white, with a grey truck bed. For reference, here's what the high res mesh looks like, so you can see the surfacing I need to capture in the AO for the low res model's texture:

Thanks for the help!

 

[Ghoults]

You could try adding ground plane. Have you played with the ray distance? Do the high and low res models share the same material? I don't think having the same material for both is an issue but you could make them both separate. Sometimes you don't really get well defined ao if your shape is very planar. You could try increasing the sample value (maybe switch to gpu rendering).

 

[Ryno917]

You could try adding ground plane. Have you played with the ray distance? Do the high and low res models share the same material? I don't think having the same material for both is an issue but you could make them both separate. Sometimes you don't really get well defined ao if your shape is very planar. You could try increasing the sample value (maybe switch to gpu rendering).

For the ground plane, is it as simple as just throwing a large plane down or does it need a particular material or other setup? I'll give that a shot.

For ray distance, do you mean in the AO bake options? I have it set at about the only value that doesn't leave artifacts where the two models intersect; I have tried wildly different values just to see the effect on the shading, though, and those values don't seem to have any effect on the total bleachout of the sides, either. I'll try bumping the samples up a bunch and see if that gets me anywhere.

The two models do not share the same material, no. I tried adding an AO node to the high res model for the colour input and baking a combined pass with that but it was even worse. Using a colour ramp on it was also tried, but that just darkened/lightened what was already there, didn't bring out more detail.

I'm at a loss at this point. If I can't get this AO bake working right I'm not really sure what else to do. This is a fictional design so I can't really build the shading up with reference photos and I'm not good enough to draw it by hand. There's a couple other vehicles I want to do, as well, so I need to figure out a suitable workflow.

Thanks for the help so far!


[EDIT] Throwing in the ground plane has worked quite well, thanks! It's a bit grainy but I'll up the samples and bake at a higher res again. Thanks again for the help!

 

[Ghoults]

Also good idea to export the ao image as 16 bit png instead of 8 bit png so you get the best image quality out of blender even if the colors die a small death during the eventual dds conversion.