Sale Madness!

 I've been struck by sale madness. An affliction that can drive the wealthy into a state of destitution without timely intervention.

So what's the damage?

I'll list out the spoils because, honestly, if I don't I'll have forgotten what I bought by Monday.

Lens Sim

https://blendermarket.com/products/lens-sim  

That amazing add-on that Mr Creative Shrimp showed off. It's on a 40% off. It would be rude not to.
Early testing showed promise, but I accidentally enabled some kind of camera focus ring. Ehk!?

Never test three things at once! If something goes wrong, finding a fix becomes cubic...

Plantica

https://blendermarket.com/products/plantica---high-quality-plants

Another spiffing asset library that's full of plants. You can't have too many. You can't. You just can't!

A small sample of the small plants

So if I'm buying plants, what about those better trees. Same argument about trees. Just can't have too many. Especially when the trees are considered some of the best. True scene heroes!

Forestation

https://blendermarket.com/products/forestation

Forestation is from Bproduction, the people who bring you other amazing plants, clouds, mountains. All the nice things.

Big Plants from Forestation

Post-Pro

https://blendermarket.com/products/postpro

A Blender course and add-on for getting to grips with Post Processing Blender work. I've touched the surface, but I know I have much to learn. This looks like a solid introduction, plus it comes with a nice add-on that lets you enable effects through the N-panel rather than getting your hands dirty in the compositor itself.

Light-Wrangler

https://blendermarket.com/products/light-wrangler


This is highly regarded as an upgrade to Blender's native lighting control. It looks very nice. There is so much to learn now.

Stone Column Generator

https://blendermarket.com/products/stone-column-generator-for-bagapie

Geometry-node-based ancient columns. An addition to my Bagapie collections.

A scene that falls together

I'd put the bare bones of the scene together to illustrate a True Terrain tip. After capturing the necessary screen captures, I decided to trim the scene with some scatters. <Scattering intensified> 

Photographer 5 gives you very fine control over your camera. 

I'd removed the new Blender Add-on, Photographer 5 because there was a possibility that it was causing instability on Wednesday evening's testing. I put it back in place to see if I got crashes again. I did not, which is great because Photographer 5 feels like a...no, I won't say it. <GAME CHANGER>.

Wider view

I'll put that Blender tip together today.

Having just purchased Photographer 5, of course a brilliant looking add-on is just released that looks to work in the same area.

While Photographer 5 provides an all-round camera and lighting control setup, this Lens Sim places amazing focus on simulating the world's favourite cameras. Blender Legend and Creative  Shrimp cofounder Gleb Alexandrov gives a two-thumbs endorsement through this detailed tutorial. 


Meanwhile, I'm getting to grips with Photographer 5's expansive feature set.

snap!

Blender rollercoaster

 Yesterday, there were some ups and some downs. I was invited to help test a patch release for True-Terrain 5. Richard suggests that there are some issues with the latest Blender release. They've been seeing memory leaks and crashes. I agree. Weirdly, as soon as True-VFX posted a warning about the need for a patch, I started to get crashes. Apparently, these are the Blender crashes.

About dinnertime, we got the patch to test, along with test steps:

1. Install the patch, restart
2. Create a terrain
3. Create a scatter system
4. Add a preset. The "Bushy Forest" was specified.
5. Save the scene
6. Render the scene.

If the steps don't result in a crash, then the issue if fixed.

I got mixed results. Some test renders crashed, and sometimes, it was okay. This suggests that the Blender 4.3 issue is still going to be there.

Test 6 of "A series of unfortunate crashes"

Just as serious as the crashes, this scatter caused my system to become extremely unresponsive. It really did feel like my Blender installed had been borked by the new build of the add-on. When the scatter, which is relatively small, was enabled in viewport, it would crush my GPU, which would go straight to 100% utilisation and freeze my system up.

In the end, the test build was judged a success. The patch should be released today.

Further testing

To ensure that everything was actually running okay, I did a couple more test scenes.

A tree too far...

I dropped a tree in from my "Nature Assets" library. This is a collection of very high-detail plant models that I got before there were asset libraries and complex scatter tools. It was from a site that specialised in supplying the Arcvis industry. Anyway, the tree I dropped in (that turned out to be a massive file) caused my 24GB VRAM to get swallowed up whole. I restarted and added a small scatter from True-Terrain 5. It worked! It even worked with grass scatters using Geoscatter.

Last thing last night

There was brief speculation that my recently added Photographer 5 add-on was causing my instability, so I removed it. After testing, I wanted to see if there were any issues I could qualify with my own testing. I built a quick scene and used Photographer 5 features to make the renders look more punchy.

The good news is that Photographer 5 doesn't appear to have issues. The scene was stable!
I absolutely must watch tutorials for Photographer 5. It looks great; it looks like a "where the hell have you been all my life" level of great.

This morning

I played with sculpting for the first time in a zillion years. Weird thing:

Weird crawly thing...

A long chat with True-VFX's founder

 I identified a bug with True-Terrain relating to how geometry changes don't update in the viewport. Richard, True-VFX's founder, interested in my reporting offered to jump on a call through their Discord to talk through it. The issue is a side-effect of the node-baking process that keeps things performant. I'd triggered the freeze of terrain modifications earlier in the geo-node stack, which was causing things to not update until I entered the Shader stack.

There's a quick fix - actively manage the freezing process.

Option on the True-Terrain 5 Add-on Configuration panel

I'd not noticed this recent UI addition: Freeze, then thaw.

It was great to get a brief  "insider's view" of the incredible effort that's gone into developing True-Terrain, it really is one of the Seven Wonders of the Blender world.

Now that True-Terrain 5 has reached the full release milestone, I will commit to at least twenty tips that I'll publish here and in the True-VFX Discord.

True-Terrain Tip #1  Quickly grasp your scene's scale

The first thing I do when I set up a terrain is to place down a mannequin object. Initially, I'd use the 3D cursor to place a default cube. I then built a low-poly mannequin because it gave me an instant fix on the scale. You don't need to keep it for your finished scene; it can help visualise how scatter systems will work. There's something about putting a human form in a scene that makes me think more clearly about composition and field of view.

These ladies helped me quickly determine whether a dense grass scatter would result in a hang.

Cool, but how big is it? Put a reference in!

Blender setup - the road goes ever on

 So, we are a couple of days into Blender 4.3, and things seem a bit more stable. Yesterday, we finally saw the official release of True Terrain 5. Whoo-hoo! <party blower sound>

True Terrain is one of my favourite Blender add-ons. Unlike Fluent Power Tools, Machin3 Tools, and HardOps, which are fundamental modelling toolsets, or True-Sky and PSA, which are natural lighting solutions, True Terrain is a very specific one-trick pony: it makes landscapes. I'm very drawn to creating big environments, although I need a lot more training to do it properly. I have some bad habits and some unrealistic expectations.

First play with True-Terrain 5.00 

World-Creator heightmaps + True-Terrain = Top Terrains

A small bump in the True-Terrain road

It was clear that TT5's material library was not installed correctly, as some map files were missing. I spent a good hour trying to sort it out before raising the issue through their Discord. Richard and his team found the issue—an edge base between Blender and their packaging system—which was fixed and made available by the end of the day. Sorted! You don't see that level of support very often.

I also found an issue while expanding my asset libraries through True-Assets (also created by the same team). That issue is still being investigated, but I have confidence that they'll have it fixed soon.

Bump! True-Sky

It looks like there's an issue with True-Sky. Also created by the same True-VFX! They make amazing add-ons! Clouds and sky elements are broken, presumably a late change in Blender 4.3's node system. I expect a fix is coming within a day or two. The sun still lights a scene, it just doesn't let you apply haze or fill the sky with amazing clouds.

Blender Shortcut nightmare

There is something that Blender needs to improve. Keyboard shortcuts are the normal method of making things happen in Blender. That's a good thing! However, the system has been expanded and extended in both core functions and within the countless available add-ons to the point where there aren't enough keys on a keyboard to support all the shortcuts. Whenever I install, several add-ons try to use the same bare keys, resulting in conflict. For example, "F" is used by Machin3Tools for Focus, but Fluent Power Tools wants to use it to bring up its menu. What to do!? What a mess!

I have an expensive keyboard with additional Function-style keys along the left side. I've installed software that lets me program these "G" keys for some common Blender tools, which helps to handle the shortcut conflicts. I will leave it to the Blender Foundation to work out how to bring sanity to the hundreds of shortcuts.

The G keys I've set up are as follows:

G1 Creative Flow
G2 Fluent Power Tools
G3 RanTools
G4 Bagapie 
G5 MeshMachines
G6 Engon Asset Browser

I stopped using Creative Flow because I couldn't figure out where the menu kept going. Now that it has a dedicated function key, I will learn how to use its super-modelling powers.

RanTools is a massive bag of mucho-excellento tools. Again, I just didn't use it because there is so much there, but much of it is now duplicated in other tools.

It's the same story with Bagapie, which is focused on doing Archvis-style scenes. It provides a quick fix for scattering and organising and includes some nice geo-node-based building assets.

BlenderBase

It's considered good practice to run with a few Blender installations. This means that you can quickly identify where add-on compatibility problems occur. You can run an installation with a subset of your add-ons if you're concerned about interoperability. Blender Launcher stopped being supported, and although it is now back, another Blender utility is available: Blenderbase from the Physical add-ons team. It looks great!

Turn add-ons on and off via this panel. Launch different versions of Blender with ease.

Next

I'm going to take this opportunity to learn and revise some lost workflows and familiarise myself with advanced tools that could have improved my life and made my modelling results more professional.

I'll install and play with some of the add-ons I got in a huge Blender Market Best of 2024 bundle , but I never actually got around to installing them. I must remember that these are standalone products that won't get updated for free. 

Including:

Shaders Plus v4 - https://blendermarket.com/products/shadersplus

Advanced caustics rendering! I don't need it often, but it is useful to have in your toolbag.

Gobo Plus - https://blendermarket.com/products/gobos-plus---procedural--4k-gobos-for-cycles--eevee

Complex environmental shadows make scenes look more real.

Flip Fluids - https://blendermarket.com/products/flipfluids

Blender's best fluid simulation toolkit. Looks like it might make your computer catch fire.

Procedural Alleys - https://blendermarket.com/products/procedural-alleys

Geo-nodes magic for conjuring urban alleyways

And on and on!!

Too many to list here. Traffiq adds a vehicle library. Looks great! 

Forgotten configurations: Machin3 Tools

 I'd somehow missed one of the most essential add-ons in any self-respecting hard surface modellers toolset:

Machin3 Tools

This brilliant tool changes fundamental edit interactions, making for a faster workflow.

See:



The steps I had followed came from Blender Bros excellent training course:

Test Scene for Blender 4.3

 

Test scene

Blender 4.3 is very nice, although the major new features are in areas like sculpting and geometry nodes, which I don't use, at least not yet. I have been thinking about learning the basics of Geometry Nodes.

Blender 4.3 is 95% set up

 Yesterday's audit of add-ons was helpful as it gave me a list to work down. In the end, nothing seemed to obviously trip me up. I may be missing a scatter library or two, and there seems to be a glitch on True-Sky's UI, although it seems functional.

I even rediscovered a scatter library that I bought in 2021, which I had to manually turn into assets by loading, adjusting, and saving about thirty scene files.

I'm seeing some worrying stability issues, such as crashes while loading scenes where previous crashes only happened at the beginning of renders.

Time to do a test scene...

Add-ons and Extensions (November 2024)

Add-on Audit

As part of today's refresh, here is a list of the currently installed add-ons and extensions that will be re-added or not. Tier-3 add-ons won't be coming to 4.3. I may decide to drop others when I reflect further on stuff I don't use often but want to have ready versus stuff I don't use often and is very unlikely to get used.

Add-on	Version	Type	Use	Tier	Source
Alpha Trees Pro	2.3.1			1	Needs asset packs
Auto-Highlighter in Outliner	3.8.5			1
BagaPie Modifier	10.3.2		Yes	1	Needs asset packs
Bool Tool	1.1.1	Ext	Yes	1
BoxCutter	7.2	Add	Yes	2
BY-Gen	9.2.0	Add	Yes	2
Cablerator	NA	Add	Yes	1
CleanPanels	6.0.6	Add	Yes	1
ColorMate	1.3	Add	No	3
Copy Attribute Menu	NA	Ext	Yes	1
Copy Global Transform	NA	Ext	Yes	1
Creative Flow	1.7.2	Add	Yes	2
Curve Tools	0.4.6	Ext	Yes	2
DECALmachine	2.9.0	Add	Yes	2
Edit Mesh Tools	0.3.6	Ext	Yes	1
Engon	1.2.0	Add	Yes	1
Extra Curve Objects	0.1.8	Ext	Yes	2
Extra Mesh Objects	0.3.12	Ext	Yes	1
F2	1.8.4	Ext	Yes	1
FBX format	5.12.4	Built-in	Yes	1
Flared XT	1.9.54	Add	Yes	1
Fluent:Materializer	1.5.0	Add	Yes	1
Fluent:Power Trip	3.2	Ext	Yes	1
Geo-Scatter	5.4.2	Add	Yes	1
GeoSmim	1.4.0	Ext	Yes	2
GrassBlade	2.3	Add	Yes	1
Grid Modeler	1.37.1	Add	Yes	1	Gumroad
Hand Drawn Line Generator	2.8	Add	Yes	2
Hard Ops 9	0.9.88.5	Add	Yes	1
Human Generator 3D	4.0.17	Add	Yes	1
LoopTools	4.7.7	Ext	Yes	1
Machin3tools	1.9.0DeusEx	Add	Yes	1
MegaScans Plugin	3.7.0	Add	Yes	1	Investigate
MESHmachine	0.15.1	Add	Yes	1
Modifier Tools	0.2.6	Add	Yes	1
Node Wrangler	NA	Built-in	Yes	1
OCD-One Click Damage	1.8.2	Add	Yes	1
OmniStep	1.0.0	Ext	No	3
Panel Cutter	2.3.0	Add	Yes	2
Physical Celestial Objects	1.0.0	Add	Yes	1
Physical Open Water	1.2.0	Add	Yes	1
Physical Starlight and Atmo	1.8.1	Add	Yes	1
POPOTI Align Help	1.2.2	Ext	Yes	2	??
Random Flow	3.2.0	Ext	Yes	1
RanTools	3.3.5	Ext	Yes	2
Rigify	0.6.10	Ext	Yes	2
Rockify	1.3.0	Add	Yes	1
Sanctus	3.1.0	Add	Yes	1
TraceGenius Pro	3.1	Add	Yes	2
True Assets	4.5.10	Ext	Yes	1
True-Terrain | EARLY ACCESS	5.0.64	Add	Yes	1
True-Terrain ULTIMATE	4.4.4	Add	No	3	Superceded by 5.0
UV Layout	1.2.0	Add	Yes	1
UVToolkit	2.1.2	Add	Yes	1
World Creator Bridge	0.1.0	Add	Yes	2
Zen UV	4.4.2.2	Add	Yes	1