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Affinity Photo and Blender


retrograde

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Having fun with the new Photo 1.6 beta and Blender texture painting workflow. Liking the new light UI in Photo too.

 

I'm using the file path option in Blender's preferences (see screenshot) so it's a one click jump to Photo for painting.

 

Then just save in Photo, jump back to Blender and click reload image. Boom, couldn't be easier. :-)

 

Blender's internal texture painting is pretty good but not quite as dedicated yet as Photo is for this sort of stuff.

 

EDIT: sorry for the yuge screenshots...

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Sup Kevin,

I know LightWave & Modo, but for some reason Blender seems daunting. I'd love to give it a shot, I just have too much on my plate right now.

Can't wait for official release of AP 1.6—dying to give the Light UI a try.

 

The grain in the texture maps (in the render preview) isn't in the UVs. I'm guessing that's a low shading rate or something to do with Indirect Illumination?

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Hi James, it's funny in 3d, noise or grainyness is bad, in 2d noise or grainyness adds life...  ;-).

 

You're right that grainyness you mention is because it's a preview only of the render on a very low setting (20 samples). Attached here is a quick render with 150 samples and adjusted in Photo to brighten it up a bit. The texture is only 1k so it's not very big. I am just working out a couple of things with this basic model for a larger more complicated piece. The erie moon glow style colouring is coming from some coloured lights I have in the scene.

 

I used lightwave and modo a few years ago but they never took with me. Blender feels light and nimble and very keyboard shortcut based, once you get it, it's fast. ;-) 

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I know LightWave & Modo, but for some reason Blender seems daunting. I'd love to give it a shot, I just have too much on my plate right now.

I actually started modelling with an educational copy of Modo 401 (and okay, I'll admit I did some 5-finger internet discounting up to 601) back in the day before switching to Blender full time. I'd say the biggest hurdle I had to pass was teaching myself not to hammer the spacebar constantly. Once I got past that, and retrained my muscle memory to the new hotkeys, it really wasn't all that bad.

 

If there is one thing I did miss, it's that Modo generally feels a little more streamlined, the interface a little better thought out. But considering the differences in price, that sacrificed bit of user friendliness is pretty easy to endure, all things considered.

 

And Retrograde, if it's available on the Mac, I suggest using the Fatty Lights theme. It actually looks fairly similar to the new Light UI Affinity's now sporting.  

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And Retrograde, if it's available on the Mac, I suggest using the Fatty Lights theme. It actually looks fairly similar to the new Light UI Affinity's now sporting.  

 

Hehe funny, that actually is the theme I'm using. I do like it. I think it's called Flatty Light. ;-)

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3D is always interesting 

I found this video about how light is handled in blender and found it very interesting 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/33820-color-profiles-management-eg-srgb-adobergb/?p=180175

 

not sure if you already use this approach / if it helps in this case 

 

cheers 

 

Yep, I am actually using the Filmic Blender colour setup explained in Andrew Price's well explained video. I like it too. :-)

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Yep, I am actually using the Filmic Blender colour setup explained in Andrew Price's well explained video. I like it too. :-)

Nice :D

 

I was a bit irritated by the colours and could not really judge the realism of the light :D

 

If you someday feel like doing a tutorial about this, I'd be one of the first readers or watchers

 

Cheers

 

 

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Sounds like you got it installed okay.  

 

I just usually tweak the contrast settings and/or the curves to get something visually pleasing..

 

The gamma and exposure I generally leave alone but you can tweak them too.

 

Make sure your View and Color Space drop downs are both set to Filmic.

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Sorry, i should have been more explicit,

I was more concerned with the way of getting the ap file mapped onto the subject in blender.

 

In a year I'll have that blender thing figured out and write some stuff, probably :D

 

 

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That's the great thing about Blender, there are so many informative tutorials out there.

 

Here he's using Blender internal render. It would be handled a little differently with nodes in Cycles but basically 2 different sets of UV's, 2 textures etc...

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Hehe funny, that actually is the theme I'm using. I do like it. I think it's called Flatty Light. ;-)

 

Huh. So it is. Well, I'll keep calling it Fatty Lights, simply to save some face. :P

 

Though sortakinda an aside, if you reall want to get into texturing, one thing I recommend you do is check out some Substance Designer tutorials. Even if you don't ever plan on buying the program itself, the videos could serve to show you how to make decent looking textures from scratch, since a lot of the nodes (minus some of the noise and pattern nodes, obviously) could be construed as individual steps in Designer/Photo.

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Ok, who do I blame? I downloaded and installed Blender, imported the User Manual to GoodReader on iPad, and started watching Blender Essential Training by George Maestri on Lynda.com.  Problem is I don't really have time to learn a new 3D package, but I usually sink pretty deep when I tackle something new. I gotta yell at somebody.  :angry:

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Hey Kevin,

I'm only 9 videos in, but I also watched Jonathan Williamson's 6 introductory movies over at CGCookie, and I'm already finding a problem with navigation. Maybe it's my mouse or the middle click wheel. I'm on Mac as I know you are, may I Private Message you concerning Blender and input devices? I don't wanna hijack this forum with my Blender queries, and since you're the one to yell at, well...

:o

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Want an easy solution to your navigation problems? Go to File/User Preferences, hit up the Input tab, and check the box next to "Emulate 3 Button Mouse". Navigation will now work EXACTLY as it does in Modo, with LMB plus a combination of Ctrl/Alt/Shift (or Ctrl/Option/Shift/Cloverleaf Thingy on a Mac) for panning, rotating, and zooming.

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(or Ctrl/Option/Shift/Cloverleaf Thingy on a Mac)

 

LOL. As you probably know, the "Cloverleaf Thingy" or Unicode character U+2318  ('Place of Interest Sign') is the Cmd key.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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It might be worth your while to consider playing with the various options under the Interface and Input tabs, just to see what works most comfortably for you.

 

To get the best Modo-like feel out of it, I'd suggest checking out your various options under View Manipulation, particularly auto-depth, zoom to mouse cursor, and rotate around selection. Under input, set the zoom style to dolly, with horizontal manipulation.

 

YMMV, but I find this set up to the be the most comfortable. Also, consider turning on the pie menus. I have no idea why they're not active by default, but they make navigating through Blender so, so much more convenient.

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LOL. As you probably know, the "Cloverleaf Thingy" or Unicode character U+2318  ('Place of Interest Sign') is the Cmd key.

 

Eh, I prefer my terminology. Makes things more interesting. :P

 

"Yeah, just hold down Alternate 1985/Cloverleaf Thingy + F to bring up that menu..."

 

"...d'wuh?"

 

"Yeah. You heard me."

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