@BTolputt, to be honest, I think you’re letting your passion for one (though not insignificant) example cloud your vision on what’s been said in the general case. Of course money is not the determining factor. There isn’t a the.
However, the success rate of patches is quite a bit higher than that of empty suggestions. And when the module owner is consulted ahead of time, the success rate goes up further.
In any case, a patch requires code and code requires someone to write it. If a person doesn’t have the time or inclination to write that code, one very viable recourse is to pay another person who does have the time and inclination. Stripped away from all the pretense and prickly affronts, that’s all that’s being said… and I’m reasonably sure you understand that.
Of course it doesn’t work all the time. And to be frank, it probably shouldn’t. But there are more examples of this working than of it failing.
I think good ideas here might be things that would ease editing, think of the modifiers we already have and how handy they are; for example mirror modifier, shrink wrap, etc. So any new ideas might be welcome, and make blender nicer to work with. Before asking really complex things there might be easier to catch fruits on a low hanging tree.
We should also think of modifier that save us time, because time is money too on the user side (joking)
So how about a NEAR modifier - to be used in object mode - to place things near each other.
That requires at least 2 objects, the active (last selected object), will be placed as close as possible onto the other object. So we don’t want physics falling here. This only about placement.
The direction of how they get together would initially be based on directions of their centers of mass or gravity direction. But the objects are not rotated with this moving NEAR, and only the active objects is moved.
However if the active object is moved or rotated later, it would again be based upon how the meshes touch eachother.
==
It would be close to snapping, however if later the active object is rotated or mesh modified, it would adjust again to fit close to the (non active) object(s). As it would be based on actual mesh collision detect; one doesn’t need to apply scale/rotation as with snapping. Another difference would be that with snapping one needs a cursor on the (non active) which acts as the border for the ‘wall’ of the active boundaries. But with mesh collision detect a wall cursor isn’t needed, and the object could still be put close together a possible.
New behaviours as if the object is moved sideways, or is rotated; let me explain:
Think of a car hitting a wall with snapping, the snap cursor must be on the wall so the car can only be put in front of the wall. now just rotate the car 30 degrees or so.
Ad move the front of the car beyond the end of the wall but not the whole car.
The closest “near” would now be the passenger door against the wall.
If we would rotate the car on Z axis, then the car will be parallel to the wall.
Turning it more then the back-trunk of the car will hit the wall.
If we would mesh-edit the car (making it longer or so), the positions would after edit be recalculated.
If we like the place of the object, we would simply apply the modifier.
A “Mimic channel” F-curve modifier that allows the animator to set an F-curve to mimic the shape of another f-curve.
some options:
-Mimic which channel - Input the name of the channel you want the target channel to mimic in shape. This can be done with a search/autocomplete input text box that looks into all the available channels of the Action that you are currently working on.
- flip on Y - inverts the action of the movement of that curve. So when you mimic movement of left arm onto right arm, you can flip some of the rotations when needed.
-offset on X - when you have a walk cycle for example and your curves are set to infinitely repeat, you would usually need to offset the timing of animation of the mimicking arm/leg by 50% in order to make it work in the walk cycle.
This would allow to non destructively apply animation of one half of the body onto the other- without the need to manually copy and paste keyframes. The other advantage is that if set with a modifier that constantly mimics a curve, you no longer need to manually update any changes you do on the left half of the body onto the right half. You work on one half- the software does the rest 
BTolputt, you’re unbearable to talk to. I clearly didn’t say that latter thing either, though it’s closer to what I actually said. You keep arguing against strawman-after-strawman, just so you can be right. Finally you accuse me of trolling, and put me on ignore. It’s pathetic.
Fact: The community expressing their desire to see the UI changed to better match other applications in the pipeline resulted in a change of management methods in BF & instigated development of what will be the new keymap.
Fact: Andrew Price got this ball rolling, he put a lot of effort into his videos and it’s not unreasonable to expect that he was going to be funding development in that direction. It was not a result of people writing random opinions into forum threads.
(Another Fact: Very little actual development has taken place in this area still)
Fact: Campbell started developing the coloured wireframes in response to the community expressing their desire for that feature. He has stated multiple times it was not something he needed or was passionate for himself.
(Basic) Colored Wireframes are trivial, but as you keep railing on about: The reason we don’t have them is politics. How long did it take for a patch to get written to provide them and how long have been people requesting this? We’re talking about years!
If people had offered good money for such a patch, it could’ve been written immediately.
Most of the features people casually mention here are not trivial, and you do need a unicorn developer to implement them for free. I’m not saying it’s impossible for that to happen, just extremely unlikely. And again: Doesn’t it bother people that they’re essentially ask for free work, or do they just not see it that way? It’s just not a very dignified way to go about things.
Fact: I have no “grudge” based on money I’ve paid developers. Try that little projection tactic elsewhere, I’m not interested.
You keep mentioning how you paid “well over 50$” for some feature, didn’t get it merged, and now you show up in almost every related thread criticizing the BF management. Maybe this has nothing to do with the money, in that case, don’t project that statement onto yourself, it is a general statement for a reason.
Is it at all possible, to create own system to convert jpg-textures to png in blender.
@marksto, post #30: Sure it is: Import Image as Plane, material set as shadeless, set render size to original image size and render png. Well, orient camera probably… If this is not “professional looking” enough solution install python, Pillow image manipulation library to it and copy some 3 python lines from here. I suspect you could copy Pillow site package to Blender’s python folder and could use this in Blender addon even. There might be some version incompatibility problems though and the rest of the potential users would need Pillow installed too.
Grow modifier or something that could automate this process
@Zomzilla, post #12: Btrace addon does this already. Should be under Testing category, Addons.
It is all about the Random: Advanced Array Modifier or anything that does the same to the sterile result we do have currently in Arrays.
That view of history is a bit revisionist don’t you think? You’re acting as if Campbell’s patch was the first one to implement colored wireframes. Not only have people been requesting it, developers have been wasting their time/money writing and submitting patches to implement it for more than a decade.
Receiving money to do work is certainly a motivator, however, spending money and getting nothing in return, for reasons that sometimes feel capricious, is also a motivator.
actually the mod manager edits the compiled engine, its not a scripting layer.
the moding community does not have access to the source.
and I have found a few patches that are incompattible, until someone releases
a compatiblity patch,
I’m aware of two patches on the tracker, one of which predates the patch by Campbell. The first patch is barely 20 lines of code. I’m not aware of any money being spent here. If the author of the patch didn’t need the feature for himself, then you can consider it a wasted effort - but not a huge effort by any margin.
I don’t think it’s fair make a big deal about this one example, just like every UI thread has to spend at least 10 pages on right-mouse-select. We have to be able to move on from it.
There was also one in 2010:
The earliest patch I’m aware of was in 2004:
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2004-September/007399.html
The author of that patch seems to have still been working on it 5 months later after getting feedback and apparently finding a design that was acceptable by Ton:
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2005-January/009143.html
I would say a disproportionately large amount of effort has been expended on this trivial feature by countless people over the years.
i would like to see a python modifier. i know python is slow but for prototyping this would be awesome.
and i would like to see a road modifier. you define a road grid with edges and it creates a road mesh. for building cities and racing tracks and such stuff. similar to the skin modifier but it would create roads instead of skins.
Thanks eppo, thank you veeery much from post 42!!!
… are you guys not aware that there is an “Save Image As” function, or am I missing something?
Even ignoring that… why use Blender for this at all?
Yes, it is. He does get one thing write in that quote though, and that is that the barrier is politics not money. Which means throwing $50 at the problem isn’t going to solve it.
FWIW, it is not “one” example that has led me (& others) to this opinion. After all, I had this opinion long before the example in question. I simply saw (& see) that this particular example could confirm whether or not the “Ton/BF veto” as a barrier to development was simply an overreaction or had a solid basis. Eleven months later, it’s hard not to argue that confirmation.
Absolutely. However, that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t express their “+1” desire on features when people mention them. They do have worth. After all, when someone is looking to do something for Blender, the least popular feature isn’t likely to be their first choice.
When enough of the community expresses an interest in (up to passion on) a feature or set of features, it does garner the attention of the developers.
The UI Team & their focus (including the upcoming new default keymap) didn’t come out of a vacuum. It came from a groundswell of community support for the change. Campbell didn’t implement coloured wireframes in Gooseberry because he was paid to, because he wanted it, or because it was requested by his employer - it was seeing how many people expressed support in these very forums for something he could develop. And so on. The community expressing their support through “+1”, favourites, likes, whatever does have value. It shouldn’t be discouraged.
With all due respect, Fweeb, Zalamander/BeerBaron’s words were “Oh wait, now I realize it: All your pluses and likes and favorites are completely worthless.” It is with that statement I disagree and said so. It is, after all, the one I explicitly responded to.
Not to mention the fact that some of those people who “+1” features mentioned in the forums do happen to “put their money where their mouth is”. Contrary to Zalamander/BeerBaron’s implication in that same post.
My 5 cents.
It would be nice to have:
1-full support for psd and layers in psd (like in bodypaint3d) for paint textures https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ySiQlTbLEXQ#t=268
2-support texture patches like in MARI in space more than 1:1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Jhcqgy9EyN4#t=495
3-support for up to 32k texture size and to have able paint them in blender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Geqfp0ZsU
4-distribute render in cycles for 1 picture across network nodes
5-BPDR and in general speed improwement fo cycles - if cycles can do speed as in https://corona-renderer.com/gallery/ then cycles will be one of the best existing renderers - with its flexibility and speed like in corona - it will №1
http://youtu.be/rPu4MbPPlBk?t=9m33s
6-nice to have somthing like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeiNQ-RoIJ0 or to have rotate orietation for 3d cursor to have ability more precise align
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioX81r9cCbI
7-as already mentioned above - nurbs have to go - “alias studio tool” and rhino is way to go - There’s a lot of what you can get in nurbs.
8-Sushi branch snapping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orx9lQLoqos https://www.blender3darchitect.com/2012/10/overview-of-the-new-precision-modeling-tools-in-blender-gsoc/
9-finally thrown off the whole community to work this man - that would get him the code in the form of something ready for integration into master
Blender image (texture) paint layers
http://ruesp83.com/
10-Well, a couple of videos for inspiration - there are so many nice pieces in other packages all have something to borrow.
BTolputt, this is embarrassing. You very well know that I’m talking about monetary worth here, otherwise how does the joke (which you didn’t quote) make sense?
“+1000000! How can you afford so many pluses? Oh, I realize it: Pluses are worthless!”
If you disagree that ‘+1’ don’t have monetary value, I have several pluses for sale:
+1 @ 1$
+100 @ 89$
+10000 @ 7999$ (best value)
I also have a special power-of-two ‘+128’ available to the highest bidder. (contact me in PM)
I’m making fun of the practice, I’m not telling you guys to not do it. Please continue undisturbed to write your wishes into the internet. Who knows, maybe Santa Claus keeps track of everything?
Texture or put materials on many meshes at a time.
unwrap the mesh in viewport, like zbrush does.
So we can than “mashdeforming” other complex shape on the original mesh.