BagaPie Assets!

 I bought a thing. Turns out its actually lots and lots of things:

BagaPie assets! Quite expensive, but pretty excellent value for money.

The BagaPie add-on provides a geometry node-based scattering system, which supports the integration of an asset library that contains a lot of nature assets like grasses, plants, trees, rocks, and more.

I am seeing a quirk. The render window doesn't perfectly match the render output. I am wondering if scaling of the target plane is causing some slight displacement issues. I don't know. I'll watch the tutorials and look through the documentation.

Today's playtime

 Just playing around tonight:

Fluent 2 practice. Love this tool

BagaPie 8 practice.

I'm planning on getting a new PC when the Nvidia 40-series GPUs are released, next month. BagaPie should work a little more smoothly on a new machine. It's not that the add-on performs poorly, it's just at its best when its putting a massively number of scatter instances into a scene.

Blending add-ons

 I love how so many Blender add-ons work seamlessly together. 

Bagapie assets/Terrain-Mixer/True Terrain (for the water), PSA for the sky

Bagapie assets/Terrain-Mixer/True Sky/True Terrain (for the water)

I bought MESHtools. Looks great but it might have displaced my Fluent Powertools keyboard shortcuts.

More TT5 testing and cool new stuff

 I've delved deeper into the mud and rock of True Terrain 5. I've had some crashes, mostly random, but the overall experience has been very positive. Good performance, mostly.

The terrain editing is really flexible, although World Creator 2023 makes it easier to generate complex natural-looking erosion and landforms. That said, most of these examples incorporate some TT5 noise-based elements.

Physical Open Waters!

A brilliant new add-on from Physical Addons, the people who brought us Atmosphere and Planets.
https://blendermarket.com/products/physical-open-waters

This looks up to the same very high standard. Physically based for great realism.

BagaStreet

A second brilliant add-on. This one from antoine-bagattini, the creator of Bagapie. It's a big library of street furniture. Perfect for any arch vis work, integrated into Bagapie's tool kit for great scatter and placement tools.

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! 

Geo-Scatter

Yes, I know. I need to stop buying add-ons. But not today.

I've been thinking about investing in Geo-Scatter for a while. As True Assets have helped me organise a good asset library, I've started to try my hand at natural scenes. Bagapie is an amazing free tool but I just couldn't get its affector system to do any clever scattering.

I watched a couple of hands-on videos and decided, yes, I will spend all my money on add-ons.

I installed the plugin. I installed "scat-packs" to make biomes available. In fact, Bagapie Assets has a great scat-pack and it was the first one I that I tried out.

I loaded a dry biome. It took a shockingly long time to load. Minutes! Several! My system suddenly got very slow and I started to worry that I'd made a terrible buying decision.

I turned off all but three of the scatter systems. Still chuggy but not on the verge of lock-up. I then worked out how to enable camera-culling for all the layers. Still a bit chuggy, mind you.

Set up a lighting environment

Select the flat plane and use the quick displacement system

Render...

Oh boy, this is amazing for a scene that literally was created in seconds. Although the view port is chuggy the render took less than a minute.

Happy!

Maisonette progress

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.

Blender 5.2 Release Candidate

The release of a new major Blender release is a good time to complete a fresh installation of all your add-ons. 

Start with mission-critical things. Check it's all working okay before going the whole hog, especially if, like me, you have a dizzying number of add-ons in your stack.

Mission Critical Changes:

Copy Attributes Menu -- an addon that lets you copy and paste attributes, which is really useful for matching stuff like modifiers. (see Docs)

Enable Node Wrangler -- nuff said!

LoopTools -- old stalwart, now added as an extension.

Bagapie -- Archvis toolset 

Sanctus Library -- The amazing procedural material library

Creative Flow ---

Random Flow --- 

Clean Panels Pro ---

Engon ---

Geo-Scatter ---

[Edit] I came back to complete the add-on installation in the evening, but found that Blender 5.2 would crash to the desktop when started. I removed the AppData Roaming directory, after which Blender would start up again. To me, this suggests that one or more of the above add-ons is breaking the installation. Clean install of Blender 5.2 starting again, tomorrow.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Some play

 

Testing asset plates

Local flats -basic layout

Bagapie camera culling

Cheating

 

I wanted to show off all the lovely assets that come with Bagapie Assets. However, this will probably set even my super powerful new PC on fire.

The answer of course is to create the image out of several passes, so that no more than two rows of grasses are rendered in a single scene.

For example... an actual render

New Add-on versions!

Starting with some beef! Blender is amazing. Blender's ever-growing add-on ecosystem is brilliant. Lots of great stuff, lots of it is constantly being improved. However. How to keep up-to-date?! Maybe Blender Marketplace needs a feature that alerts you when a new version of an add-on that you've downloaded has been updated.

Just a thought!

So, I caught news on Facebook that BagaPie modifier has received an update. Yay! It looks like the key improvement is the extensive rewrite and improvement of the Ivy system. 

I installed the new version, then checked out Sanctus Library of super procedural materials - low and behold, it also had a new version, which includes some great new materials. They can get computationally very expensive -- because look at the details! 

In fact, I'm going to contact Blender Market to suggest the feature, after I check the other 20 or so add-ons that I regularly use, to see if they have updates.


Other stuff

Messing with Human Generator

Playing with Depth of Field. Not quite getting the level of control that I'd like. Maybe I'll read the user manual...

Lets go on a journey; a purge and reinstallation journey

 The Blender stability problems I've recently experienced could be due to multiple factors. The most likely three causes are:  

• Blender 5.0 bugs 
• Addon incompatibility
• New bleeding-edge tech like True SKY 3 (which we forgive because early access status is a developer's way of coming clean about a product not being "perfected".)

They could also be caused by my too-expensive-to-replace machine rapidly going Kaput... let's not dwell on that idea...


Note: It's 13 months since my last deep-clean. See this November 2024 post.

It might have been okay to see how Blender 5.0.1 works out before doing this massive and potentially painful task, but cleaning up is good practice. I was running with a lot of addons that are just clutter. I should only install the things I need day-to-day and then install other stuff as and when I need them. 

So for future purges, let's make a "shopping list" and some per-addon tips. 

Key Settings changes:

Default renderer: Cycles using GPU, Optix and Vulkan

Narrator: Although these settings were applied, he didn't select GPU in the Render tab and spent several minutes staring in disbelief as his fastest-GPU-in-the-galaxy appeared to crawl like an arthritic tortoise. Proper settings soon applied, thankfully.

Basic Workspaces: A new one for my version of tri-view, plus one dedicated to scatters, and one for asset management.

Mission Critical Addons

• Node Wrangler
• Copy Attribute Menu
• CleanPanels
• Loop Tools
• F2 Make Edge/Face
• MACHIN3 Tools 
• Grid Modeller
• Geo-Scatter
• True-Vault
• True-Assets
• True Terrain 3.1
• True SKY 3
• Cableator
• Bagapie
• Photographer

Nice to have:

• HardOPS
• Box Cutter
• Fluent Materializer
• Arborea
• Render Raw
• UV Flow
• G-Scatter

I had to remove:

• Engon
• Lens Sim
• Light Wrangler (proven to have an issue with True SKY 3, but now apparently a fix was just released.)

Both were causing errors in the logging that might be nothing, but could be related to the problems. I want both back; Engon is required for interacting with some assets. Lens Sim offers the best approach to real-world lens work.


Very not critical: Chocolate background #3D393AFF
I like the idea of Blender 5.0 being colour-coded so that I instantly know that I'm using it. This is important when you are trying to use an earlier LTS version of Blender for the film project.

Back to work

Testing for the stability issue soon revealed that it is still present. Possibly even worse. I could get a render error without even using scatters.

True TERRAIN down the drain :-(

I proved that running with Geo-Scatter and True-Sky 3 is not working for me, but I need to prove that running without True SKY 3 does work. To this end, I've set up a scene that uses an HDRI for lighting.

Blank out the HDRI output from the background 

I'm now down a rabbit hole of creating a half-decent scatter that renders OK, which I can then switch to True SKY 3 to prove it causes the render to fail.

It's a mess, so I'm having another try...or three.

I need to read more about how to scatter grasses and small plants.

Before I finish this, a new beta of True SKY 3 might drop, which fixes the issue. There's a new version of True Terrain due in the new year, too. 

Did some mapping (Sort of a Blender break)

 

Missile Silo map for a table-top role play adventure I'm writing. I used Blender to block out the basic shape, although I ended up not needing to use the model as a guide because the shap was really simple.

True Terrain scenes kept simple

True Sky

Bagapie play

True Terrain and True Sky

The truth is that while I really love True Terrain and True Sky, they are super unstable for me. I get a lot of crashes, even for what I consider to be simple scenes. I'm starting to look into the crash logs to see if there's anything helpful they can reveal. I'd like to think this is a driver or software issue that fixes itself through a few upgrades. We'll see.

A training course! Blender Strategies for Modeling and Texturing
It's a beginners course but did pick up some useful things just from the first lesson. I have so many big gaps in my knowledge.

                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Trees - Asset Catalog

 Yesterday, I struggled to find the specific tree types I needed for the biome I'm designing. There's little point in having a vast library of assets if you don't know what you have or where to look for it. So here's the first instalment of a pictorial asset catalogue.

Trees

Bagapie Assets

The first asset library that I purchased. Oh how this became a crutch. It's still a fab collection because it's got such a wide range of trees and other assets.

More progress (Luna Lander)

 I did some rebuilding, cleaning up and material assignment. 

And then I installed Bagapie V9. Some head-scratching ensued as the pie-menu asset selector has been removed in favour of using Blender's native asset browser. This is a shame, but It only took me a few minutes to adjust to it.

But then I got another blue-screen-of-death. That really sucks and its the second in a week or so. Blender is running but the crash happens randomly, not triggered by an obvious action, such as rendering.

Pagapie 6.0

 

Oh my word. The new version of Bagapie (Blender 3.0, 3.1 only) has some seriously good improvements. So much to play with!

See https://abaga.gumroad.com/l/BbGVh

Catchup

 

The desert of Blender instability

Weird Bagapie test scene

Space Station - rebuild

Smaller with more details - spin habitat