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Blender “Everything Nodes” in development
Blender Code Quest has shared a video announcing the Jacques Lucke, the developer of the popular Add-On Animation Nodes has joined the development team at Blender to work on the “Everything Nodes” initiative. The idea to unify everything under a common node-based interface is not new, but until now there hasn’t been a developer assigned to take control of the task.
The video demonstrates a promising looking prototype (created with python) showing a node-based particle system, including interactive functionality. A timescale isn’t explicitly stated, but it is suggested that we’ll start seeing the results of this announcement introduced during the 2.8.x phase.
Watch the announcement on YouTube.
Source: 1pepe, Juang3d
Now Im getting really interested!
🙂
I supported the code quest, but now I’m thinking of just donating monthly to the dev fund. It’s so impressive what there guys are doing and I don’t even use Blender (yet!).
Yeah it is, I do that via Blender Cloud instead of the dev fund, but the dev fund is better for accelerate development 🙂
3dsMax’s pflow in Blender.! ’nuff said!
No, it’s not that 🙂
At least it’s not ONLY that, this initiative aims to create an All Nodes system, more similar to Houdini concept than to Particle Flow.
Particles is a place to start, but many things are yet to be defined 🙂
I am not so optimistic about this change. They haven’t managed for years to implement some default settings for just the Cycles materials. Which is a massive slowdown in workflow since you have to do every material from scratch again and again. Let’s see how it turns out when everyhting is nodes now 🙂
I mean, if what you are looking for are libraries, yo can have them and even have them in your default scene everytime you open it.
What default settings you refer to?
Right now we have the principled shader wich is an uber shader similar to Corona Material, Vray Material, etc… and we have also Principled Volume, you don´t have to do the materials manually since around a year ago, in fact since much more because it was available in daily builds some time earlier.
Particles and everything nodes was not worked on because they had no developer interested in working in such a complex part, Jacques Luke has a pretty wide and big experience and a pretty successful result like Animation Nodes, and they hired him so… I´m pretty excited.
I think you are a bit outdated with Blender because there has been a lot of changes from a year to now.
Cheers!
You don’t even know what default settings is? I mean default settings as in definition. A default metal material for example. Or a default wood material. The things that comes with Materials Library VX.
Disagreeing with somebody who is not willing nor able to see the real consequences of a feature does not mean to be outdated my friend. And being excited should not make you blind to reality.
I see “all nodes” also as a benefit, and look forward to it. But i see also the downsides. And it makes me especially concerned when i look at the history of Blender. Blender Foundation very often manages to implement great features half arsed and in a weird “we do it our way” method, and then leave it alone.
And that is what i see as a possible future here with “all nodes”. I simply fear that in the next years we will now struggle to create for example our physics nodes from scratch, again and again.
And it is a valid concern, since we did exactly this with the Cycles materials before. Material library VX gots introduced with Blender 2.79. Material Nodes were introduced with 2.5, in 2009. So more than eight years long there was just the way to create every material from scratch. That’s fact.
By the way, Principled is also just a shader node. And does not take away the need to create your material. Don’t mix apples with bananas here.
Cheers!
Arunderan, Be the change you want to see, join the development and contribute in any way you can then.
That’s not how it works. To develop Blender is the job of the Blender developers. They are responsible for their work.
And some valid concerns should be allowed 🙂
Arunderan: You can create all the materials you want in a single blend file, just enable “fake user” in each material. Then later you can use this file as a library, “append” any material from it into any other project. Organize and name files properly, and you have your professional grade material library! This is an ancient feature, and the reason why a preset library wasn’t created “in-house”. They left it to other users, who used this exact feature and some python magic to create all sorts of preset libraries, with easier access. Behold!
https://cgpress.org/archives/pro-lighting-skies-1-1-is-out.html
https://cgpress.org/archives/pro-lighting-studio-is-out.html
https://blendermarket.com/products/cycles-material-vault-volume-1
https://gumroad.com/l/krWDF
https://blendermarket.com/products/the-rock-essentials
I find this “you disagree, you cannot have a clue” behaviour that you show here extremely disrespectful. I know all that. And more.
But fact is you had and have to do this so called “professional Library” by yourself first. There were no inbuilt presets for wood or glass or metal. And this means that you first have to learn how to do this materials. This is something that a beginner is simply not able to.
What should be one click with a good basic material library becomes quickly a odyssey straight through the internet. And now imagine you not only have to do this for materials, but all other things too, since it is now all node based.
Nodes is a programmers solution. It is visual scripting. Extremely powerful. But extremely time consuming. And highly artistic unfriendly. And i fear that they forget about defaults, like they forgot about them when they made the cycles materials node based.
And that’s my concern. Not how to put a material into a blend file to reuse it. Because first you have to create it.
And since you have linked existing materials above, another point: Blender has become a cash cow since quite a while. Quite a few materials and libraries are payware nowadays.
Now imagine that important presets and defaults will never make it into the trunk since they are commercial packages at gumroad or blendermarket already. And this will happen and has happened already. Blender will for sure not cut itself the income away. Blender market is not this independand as they tell you.
This is highly subjective, I find nodes to be much much more approachable (houdini and nuke user here) in every aspect. Creative and technical.
Same can be said about presets. I doubt your wood preset works with my perception of what a wood preset should be.
All software comes with shortcomings, blender is no exception, but luckly blender provides a framework in which you can customize and tailor to YOUR needs. Its impossible for the developers to include high level stuff to fit everyone’s needs. It also isn’t the developers job to do this…
Guess what, its worth paying for quality content. That includes blender packs.
Totally agree with abbasman.
Ah… I´m sorry, you are right, you mean “default settings”, so you meant “presets”, because dafault settings are there already, and the principled shader is the by default connected shader now in 2.8, so it is, in fact, like a default material, you don´t have to go in the nodes to configure the material, and that principled shader has, in fact, some default settings, so in the end you meant “presets”, no settings, but ok, I understand you.
Now… yes, blender does not have any official default material library like max… coming from max I get used to avoid the default library of materials and I always configure my own materials, or instead work with Substance Painter and use their huge material library, so in my case, and maybe is just in my case, I don´t miss that, maybe you do, I don´t see a reason to have it.
Now I can see a reason to have a library of presets for the “official” animation nodes system, or the new particle nodes, or many other things, the cool thing here is that you can contribute, because Blender is developed by a group of official developers and a huge amount of developers, like Sebbas, the one working on Mantaflow, if you see a need to have an official material library, go ahead and make a proposal, and even prepare a library, before was something nearly impossible because everyone has it´s own view of how a material should be created, now with the principled shader there is a common base for everyone to work, so if you want you can create that library, make a proposal in the dev page, commit youself to maintain that library along the time so it goes with the evolution of Cycles and be happy because Blender has a default material library.
You can also propose to do that in a paid basis for the Blender Cloud if you prefer, if your work is good enough maybe they accept, but this won´t be free for anyone, at least at the start, because everything inside the blender cloud is CC0 or CCby so can be freely distributed.
Material Library VX is a non standard material library, not official, it´s just one of those addons included with Blender because the user that created it commited to maintain it., it´s created by Mackraken, I don´t know who this user is, but the addon is not in the official section, but in the community section.
Also that addon alows you to have your own libraries and that is good, but for Blender 2.8 there is a part that has not been shown yet, that is the asset management part, and will deal with all this kind of things… now the content… I´m not sure what content will come with it, but I´m sure it will be an optional download, not an included one.
As I said earlier, the principled shader is the default shader now in 2.8 and I think it is also in the master branch with cycles, I´m not sure about this last one, so it is in fact the default material because when you create a new material for an object you get that as the material, you are not forced to change the shader, the difference is that with blender you can go deep in the material and change it completely, making your own shader, something very useful for sure.
The concept of a material in Blender is different than in another programs, in fact I missed a lot the existance of something like an Ubershader, like the principled shader, but now… I don´t see the problem you refer to.
Now regarding the waiting time… you can always participate, Blender is not developed, as I said earlier, just by the core developers, and no, the Blender development model is not like Autodesk, were you have a group of developers and that´s it, it is being actively developed by a lot more people than just the core group, and you probably know it since you seem to know Blender since a lot of years, so I don´t understand your answer saying:
“That’s not how it works. To develop Blender is the job of the Blender developers. They are responsible for their work.
And some valid concerns should be allowed”
The concerns are not just allowed, but they are welcome, you can go to many places, from Blender.Chat to Blender Today or Right Click select or even developer.blender.org, and finally you can express your concerns in the IRC channels, where you can talk with ALL the Blender developers, not just the core ones.
Cheers.
there is a project to create a asset library that would came with the blender 2.8 download, but being blender so wide spectrum focused, it would be a huge file, so people are talking about diferent aproaches to keep it manageable.