Blender Render is Retiring

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Blender Render is Retiring

Postby Robitron » Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:22 pm

From what I've gathered in the blender support channel, Blender Render will be replaced by eevee in the next upgrade. My concern is that since MakeHuman imports into Blender best using Blender Render, what will happen when eevee takes its place? Will MakeHuman import as eevee or cycles?

I've noticed that I can import into cycles as is but everything looks very plastic. Here is an example of how it imports and how it should import:

0001.png
This is how it imports now into Blender


0002.png
This is more like how it should import into Blender


I've achieved the desired result by setting the glossy node's roughness value to 1.0 rather than the default 0.20. So there is a fix but that has to be manually changed in every material exported from MakeHuman.
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby jujube » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:09 pm

My worry, the last time I tried 2.8, was the removal of basic features like not having to have a rendered viewport all the time, and being confused if it's really gone or I'm too dumb to find it. And I read the threads about it recently on blender artists but I found them lacking. Either they were like "accept change! It's the way of the future" and I'm thinking, sorry dude but I think wireframe mode^ is a pretty darn basic feature for a 3D modeling package to have!! Either that, or they're telling people "don't be so hard on the mods, it's a work in progress of course things are broken!!" Which felt equally tone deaf esp the first group of people are implying that old features will be removed and no forward-thinking person would miss them.... But I just want to know if the plain viewport is coming back!!

I have a powerful laptop and the real time cycles was great, at least for an hdri + a single sphere. No idea how it would perform on large scenes, or with posing/animation. And the "way of the future" mindset also assumes everyone is getting the latest and greatest technology bc why wouldn't you lol /s.

(It's like when people say that touchscreens can/will/should totally replace mouse and keyboard, which would be ridiculous given the things that touchscreen can't to. Or unfair, in the event that such a change is forced on us.)

...seriously though, imagine trying to comb hair particles or whatever in the awful mandatory rendering thing! Does anyone know if the normal view is coming or had come back in 2.8, or was always there in a secret location? Because I want to use the faster cycles rendering in 2.8 but the thought of losing the must fundamental feature of not having to have it on all the time infuriates me!!! Until find the answer, I'm sticking with 2.79

As for blender internal, won't miss it for the most part; for me it's advantage was faster rendering, but 2.8 will have that anyway. But I like how you can preview lighting in the unrendered view when BI is on. Wait actually that was annoying most of the time bc the models would be dark. But BI had outlines which I never figured out how to do in cycles. And I believe BI's toon shader looked better too.

*which I remember 2.8 not having when I tried it months ago
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby jujube » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:12 pm

Oh and as for the makehuman export issues, I'm pessimistically going to say it will never be fixed because there aren't enough staff left, and the people who wrote makehuman are gone so now nobody understands the code...
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby joepal » Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:57 am

jujube wrote:Oh and as for the makehuman export issues, I'm pessimistically going to say it will never be fixed because there aren't enough staff left, and the people who wrote makehuman are gone so now nobody understands the code...


While there is a large core of truth in this, it isn't as if we're in a complete stand-still. We're prioritizing the core code now and have a largely finished port to python3 and qt5 (source can be found here https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman, and a demo build can be found here http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman ... -win32.exe). While this is decidedly unsexy work since it really doesn't bring any user-visible changes, it was also crucial to do since qt4 has already reached end of life and python2 is rapidly approaching it.

The big thing we're working with now is refactoring the OpenGL code since this too has passed all forms of end-of-life and has a tendency to crash on a lot of graphics cards. The code refactoring branch is here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/m ... tor_opengl.

Being able to support blender 2.8 is obviously important, but as it hasn't even reached public beta yet, making sure that the core code is viable in modern environments is a bigger priority.
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby jujube » Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:25 pm

Yeah you're right joepal.

(Still hoping someone here can help me comprehend blender 2.8 though... :shock: )
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby RobBaer » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:20 pm

Robitron wrote:I've noticed that I can import into cycles as is but everything looks very plastic. Here is an example of how it imports and how it should import:

I've achieved the desired result by setting the glossy node's roughness value to 1.0 rather than the default 0.20. So there is a fix but that has to be manually changed in every material exported from MakeHuman.


Just a minor typo. The proposed code fix has been on the mhx2 bugtracker for some time, but I think Thomas doesn't check too often anymore. Maybe ssomeone should submit it as a pull request?
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx ... or-instead
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby Robitron » Mon Apr 16, 2018 3:10 pm

joepal wrote:While there is a large core of truth in this, it isn't as if we're in a complete stand-still. We're prioritizing the core code now and have a largely finished port to python3 and qt5 (source can be found here https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman, and a demo build can be found here http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman ... -win32.exe). While this is decidedly unsexy work since it really doesn't bring any user-visible changes, it was also crucial to do since qt4 has already reached end of life and python2 is rapidly approaching it. The big thing we're working with now is refactoring the OpenGL code since this too has passed all forms of end-of-life and has a tendency to crash on a lot of graphics cards. The code refactoring branch is here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/m ... tor_opengl.Being able to support blender 2.8 is obviously important, but as it hasn't even reached public beta yet, making sure that the core code is viable in modern environments is a bigger priority.


I totally agree that the core must be first priority. I hadn't realized that so many coders had left. :'( As for EEVEE, yes, it is yet to be brought into fruition but I was just wondering how MakeHuman would deal with the change since it's right around the corner.

It's available for user beta testing so it's not going to be much longer, I'd say.

by the way, how does MakeHuman recruit coders? Is it only on the Makehuman site?

jujube wrote:My worry, the last time I tried 2.8, was the removal of basic features like not having to have a rendered viewport all the time, and being confused if it's really gone or I'm too dumb to find it. And I read the threads about it recently on blender artists but I found them lacking. Either they were like "accept change! It's the way of the future" and I'm thinking, sorry dude but I think wireframe mode^ is a pretty darn basic feature for a 3D modeling package to have!! Either that, or they're telling people "don't be so hard on the mods, it's a work in progress of course things are broken!!" Which felt equally tone deaf esp the first group of people are implying that old features will be removed and no forward-thinking person would miss them.... But I just want to know if the plain viewport is coming back!!

I have a powerful laptop and the real time cycles was great, at least for an hdri + a single sphere. No idea how it would perform on large scenes, or with posing/animation. And the "way of the future" mindset also assumes everyone is getting the latest and greatest technology bc why wouldn't you lol /s.

(It's like when people say that touchscreens can/will/should totally replace mouse and keyboard, which would be ridiculous given the things that touchscreen can't to. Or unfair, in the event that such a change is forced on us.)

...seriously though, imagine trying to comb hair particles or whatever in the awful mandatory rendering thing! Does anyone know if the normal view is coming or had come back in 2.8, or was always there in a secret location? Because I want to use the faster cycles rendering in 2.8 but the thought of losing the must fundamental feature of not having to have it on all the time infuriates me!!! Until find the answer, I'm sticking with 2.79

As for blender internal, won't miss it for the most part; for me it's advantage was faster rendering, but 2.8 will have that anyway. But I like how you can preview lighting in the unrendered view when BI is on. Wait actually that was annoying most of the time bc the models would be dark. But BI had outlines which I never figured out how to do in cycles. And I believe BI's toon shader looked better too.

*which I remember 2.8 not having when I tried it months ago


Have you gone to the #blendercoders and expressed your concerns? I think you'd probably get better understood results there than on here since this is MakeHuman and thus, a separate entity.

RobBaer wrote:Just a minor typo. The proposed code fix has been on the mhx2 bugtracker for some time, but I think Thomas doesn't check too often anymore. Maybe ssomeone should submit it as a pull request?https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx ... or-instead


So am I to download MH from there and use that one instead of the official one on the MH site?
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby RobBaer » Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:16 am

Robitron wrote:So am I to download MH from there and use that one instead of the official one on the MH site?


My understanding is that you were having trouble with accurate cycles material imports into Blender. This is MHX2 plugin-related and not MH-related. That particular issue happens on the Blender import side of things. Thomas Larsson wrote and maintains this plugin independently of MH. A few typos are in the MHX2 code for specular hardness and specular color import into cycles, but it is Thomas who has the power to fix them. I added a "pull request" over the weekend to encourage the fix, but in the end it is his call. When he fixes these, you will need to update your MHX2.

BTW: Your yellow fonts are almost unreadable for those of us who use the prosilver theme to read the forum. :ugeek:
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby Robitron » Tue Apr 17, 2018 11:07 am

Sorry for the yellow text, I was trying to better distinguish between the quotes and my responses. Next time, I will use bold instead. :)

And yes, that is my issue. I hadn't checked that link you posted. I just did. Thanks for that. :) I really should check the links before asking follow up questions. lol
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Re: Blender Render is Retiring

Postby Aranuvir » Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:17 am

Well I just downloaded a recent preview build of Blender 2.8. To me, there was a great improvement in stability compared to a test about one or to month ago... But, we should consider it is still alpha. There are still things that look weird, at least on my system, e.g. when it comes to modifier preview.
Some (very) quick tests showed me, that cycles and eevee seem to use the same node setup. Replacing the node setup in mhx2 probably isn't the hardest thing to do. Porting the whole code to the new Blender API is what worries me most. I'd suggest to replace the current node setup with a principled bsdf setup. Though, it still will have a hard coded glossiness, if there is no specular map, which can already be used with the recent version of mhx (from what I can tell from the code), though I didn't test it, yet.
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