@The_M Did you copy the settings from the picture I have included? Actually I did not adjust the settings in this case and just posted the picture to show where the settings are. That was simply a file which I have used to play around with rigging and animating… I did not render it. Probably this are the standard settings which will result in a picture as you have posted it.
Or have you tried this settings mentioned further up?
Btw. you have to have a light source, otherwise render doesn’t make too much sense. If the upper settings do not work keep them and try different light sources. Play also around with the related settings which come with the light source.
I actually managed to fix it finally, turns out it wasn’t anything to do with the lighting or the material settings it was the world settings that were all set to white so I darkened them and it fixed the issue though I’m still getting weird white vertical lines and in some places black horizontal lines not sure why, maybe something to do with the actual model rather than any settings.
@The_M This issue is probably caused by some settings in Qubicle which you can change while you are exporting your model. If I remember right it was “Draw Outlines To Texture”…
… @The_M can you post a screenshot with your export-settings from Qubicle? I have had this issue at the beginning, but do not remember what I have adjusted to get rid of it (which you can for sure).
Can you try to change “Pixels Per Color” to 1 and un-check the box “Padding”. I need really to guess as I cannot reproduce this anymore . Maybe one of them does the trick.
It hopefully won’t be a problem but for safety reasons I would suggest that you have the scale factor at 1. I haven’t tried it but I’m guessing the scale factor changes the actual size of the cubes in the model, not just put a scaling on them.
Since we’re exporting and importing the model and animations separately and in several programs it’s enough that one of them don’t handle scale as you expect it to and you might have to do a lot of extra work.
If you think the model gets too big to work with in Blender if the scale factor is 1 then it’s better to scale it down in Blender (preferably by scaling the root object in you animation rig). That way, if you need to scale it up to 1 to make the export/import work as it should the animation will scale as well.
If the original size of the cubes are smaller than 1 and you need to scale them up by selecting the vertices and scale them then the animations and relative positions of parts won’t be affected and therefore be too small.
I’m not saying that you should redo models and animations that you have done before we know for sure that it’s a problem. It hopefully won’t be. But you might want to keep it in mind the next time.
@Agon I have just started to work on an importer / exporter for Blender. There are even some more issues which have to be solved in this regards. Another one is rotation and alignment which Stonehearth expects (otherwise your animation might just work in the wrong direction). It seems to me like if you export an object from Qubicle and import it into Blender it ends up with a 90° rotation on the x-Axis. Another one is the origin of your objects which can be of importance for animations.
So there is quite a bit to sort out to turn Blender into our open source tool of choice in regarding of modding Stonehearth…
Unfortunately I seem to be having yet more problems with the renders I create in blender that maybe someone can help me with. After managing to fix the initial problems that I had with the render being too bright and then fixing the white and black line issue I have come across another issue. It seems that when I set qubicle to export with only 1 pixel per colour this fixes the white line issues I had however, when I then render the image in blender all of the colours look paler than they should most noticeably with dark colours and this only happens when I export it with 1 colour per pixel so right now I have a choice between white lines across the model or paler colours. This also only happens when I render the image the model looks fine. Example below.
As you can see in the rendered image the blacks of his eyes are now grey and the green moss is darker, the mud on his feet is now barely visible, also the tree bark looks almost grey. Nothing I do in blender seems to improve this and when I compare my renders with others people have uploaded, mine definitely don’t look as good. So does anyone have any suggestions does any who has created their own renders do anything special or adjust any settings.
Maybe someone who is really working with the render-function can answer this one… @Froggy / @Pandemic?
I did not dive into the details and probably will not (as I want to use Blender for Stonehearth and this does not require rendering). There are a lot of settings in Blender which are influencing the way how light and color is reflected in the rendering process (light source, settings in scene, world, material or texture). The best way to learn about it is probably to look for some tutorials on YouTube (there are quite some).
However @The_M, you can try to go to the “texture”-settings and further down to a section called “colors”. If you adjust the values for “brightness” (e.g. to 0.9) and “contrast” (e.g. to 1.3), this should improve the rendering-result. But as mentioned, probably our pros can help here much more informed.
Once again @voxel_pirate you have fixed my problem, where would I be without you. I don’t know how I managed to miss these settings guess I must have been so fixed on the idea that it was a lighting or render settings issue that I just didn’t think to look at the textures. It seems changing the brightness to 0.85 and the contrast to 1.1 and then increasing the light energy to 2.0 to compensate makes it look much more like the original model, I’m sure with more tweaking I can get it to look just right. Once again thanks. If @Froggy or @Pandemic have any other tips though I would still be happy to hear those.
So, I also noticed this and I’ve found that messing with the material settings can fix this. My set up is that I have a moderately flat material selection and I continue to balance it out with lighting. 1 thing to keep in mind is that I am working from a cinematic point of view, so if you are working on a mod you won’t actually see how it turns out until it is in the game.
Switching up your rendering engine might help as well, keep in mind this will significantly change how your model renders out. If you go to the top bar to the button that says “Blender Render” switch it to “Cycles”. Blender is slowly moving away from the Blender render engine as the Cycles one has a lot more potential and options to choose from, so I’d advise you to get ahead of the curve and learn the new one instead of sticking to the default.
As far as the contrast settings go, I never needed to mess around with them. If you need help with the texture setting and such there is a very good channel that has helped me understand the program called Blender Cookie. @voxel_pirate’s channel along with this one has helped me extremely and it may help you a lot as well.
Also keep in mind, tutorials and help from others isn’t as good of a learning agent then experience. Mess around with settings and other things until you get wait you need it to look like.
If you need assistance or any other help, don’t hesitate to PM me here.
@The_M you are more than welcome. Great that this one worked out for you. As mentioned there are many settings influencing the rendering and there are for sure others - like Pandemic shows - which will do the work maybe even better. If you really want to dive deeper into this topic just listen to Pandemic’s advise .
@SteveAdamo somehow this does not fit into another thread. The tips and tricks are more for Qubicle and this is kind of not 100% related to Stonehearth as rendering will not be relevant… apart from showing off own creations.
I will create a short video on YouTube summarizing some of the points out of this discussion in the next day or so and link it here as unofficial “Step 6”.
This is a short video related to rendering in Blender which takes some of the items from our discussions above into account. You will see the settings in Qubicle to avoid the “white lines” and get a brief overview of where to find relevant color settings. Also you will be pointed to 4 settings which will instantly change the outcome of your renders to something more desirable.
Please see this only as an entry point. There is much more about rendering in Blender and if you want to get the best out of your renders… please start digging deeper into this topic .
. Maybe one of them does the trick.
