chippwalters

Progress on Simple Sketch Pro

Still working on it. Completely changed it from previous release to be even easier to use-- and added a few features including presets and transparency modes. This is a quick video I did for beta testers. If you want to beta test this latest version, hit me up at http://cw1.me/discord

A quick little project..

Here's something I spent the last 2 days on. I recently purchased this grinder attachment for sharpening knives (Work Sharp MK2 belt sharpener) The problem with it is that you need to switch out belts a bunch, over and over and over.

The original unit (version 1) of this device kept the belt path open and made it significantly faster/easier to swap belts.2025-01-17 08:19:44 +0000 UTC View Post

SIMPLE SKETCH PRO (free beta)

Hey folks,

I'm working on a new commercial addon that only works in Blender 4.3+ with the new rewrite of grease pencil. It's based on a combination of a few of my older products: Smart Sketch and Simple Sketch. It's like Smart Sketch in that it renders in EEVEE or Cycles and has the ability to do line and material overrides. It's like Smart Sketch in that it now use grease pencil line art and not freestyle (deprecated and no longer supported much) so it renders faster and works in the ...

Material Switcher Addon

Hey folks,

Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. I sure did. Spent time with the wife and daughter. Started working with leather and am enjoying that quite a bit. Using my laser cutter to cut out my designs (created in Inkscape<-- wonderful tool) and saddle stitch them myself. We did some nice Christmas ornaments and a few wallets and leather bags. Fun stuff!

So, I'm working on the replacement addon for Simple Sketch as Blender 4.3 broke it completely-- and it need a 100% re...

Understanding the difference between CAD and surface modelers.

In a recent Blender Bros free newsletter by Josh Gambrell, key points about topology were discussed. He emphasized the use of different types of topology for various use cases. For example, in 3D printing, the primary concern is that the model is watertight or manifold and has sufficient polygon resolution for smooth surface transitions. In contrast, game development focuses on limiting face count due to resource constraints.

Reflecting on my experience in 3D since the early 1980s, I r...

Understanding the Weld Modifier

Hey gang,

Here's a quick video updating the NITROX3D course (you can get it free here) and understanding how to best use the weld modifier.

Here's the link to the free NITROX3D course:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/1000-patrons-and-71175420

and here's a video preview of NITROX3D:

https://youtu.be/hwxP0bkI2Io...

Editing the thumbnail scene for KIT OPS

A very quick tutorial that shows you how to quickly edit the thumbnail scene for KIT OPS 3 Pro.

Using Shapers to create interesting forms

A user asked a question about KIT OPS Shaper INSERTS and I thought I'd create a really quick video. Simple and short.

Here's the file in case anyone wants a look.

New KIT OPS 3 Pro launched

Rebuilt. Faster, More features, New KPACKS, new Extra Utilities addon.

Works in all versions >3.6+

Free is also available.

Man, this one was a tough launch-- been at it since April. We rewrote the engine so it doesn't use depsgraph to steal cycles from Blender any more. Now it's much much faster and has the added benefit of working better with addons that do use the depsgraph feature.

Lot's of testing went into it-- new documentation, new video manual, many ...

SIMPLE SKETCH and a Blender 4.2 bugfix you should know about

I created SIMPLE SKETCH a while back as Blender was deprecating Freestyle and so my SmartSketch addon quit working. SIMPLE SKETCH has always been in beta, but mostly due to the fact I haven't written the documentation nor have I created a proper video.

It's a great little addon that can render (from the camera view) 2 levels of line work. You can quickly adjust the shadow and line widths as well as other features.

I recently had users let me know it wouldn't work in 4.2. So, I tri...

Automatic Icons for KPACKS

In an ongoing effort to help optimize KPACK selection, here's a small addon that allows you to automate creating icons for all KPACKS in a given Masterfolder. It makes and installs a k_icon.png and uses the first letter of the KPACK name on a colored background. You can change the font, colors and positioning. Hope you enjoy.

New simple material works surprisingly well

Hey guys and gals,

I've been meaning to create this material for awhile now. It's super simple but add the necessary realism to many sci-fi objects and scenes-- and is very memory efficient and GPU friendly.

As always, just drop the thumbnail and blend file into an existing KPACK folder and refresh. Hope you like it :-)

Quick use of HERO material

A user today was asking how to quickly add scratches and dirt to an existing material they had already created and I created this quick video to show how you can use one of the special EEVEE + CYCLES Material System mats to accomplish this quickly.

Below is a link to the HERO material I used: (You already have this if you have EEVEE + CYCLES Material System

2024-07-07 21:25:49 +0000 UTC View Post

Had my Rabbit for a day-- and here are my thoughts

My thoughts on the Rabbit R1 and the cool kids reviewing it

There's a trend among the influencers to critique AI gadgets harshly—it's become the latest fad. These influencers are this era's version of movie critics, presenting a skewed view of reality with a narrow understanding of history. They are captivated by brand names, much like their critic predecessors, impressed by big names and enthralling narratives, and they often move in influential social circles.

Take for insta...

Using an HDRI to create a room

There's this great video that goes into the basics. The goal for this is to create a stage I can reuse over and over. The issue is that most HDRI Interiors don't work that well as they have stuff sitting inside the room and it doesn't map. Here's how I fixed it for me.

1. Grab a suitable 8K HDRI from PolyHaven
2. Watch this video on how to map it : 2024-04-23 03:52:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Just released SLICE-IT BEND-IT with 25% off for first 2 weeks

Hope everyone is well. Anthony and I have been working for several months on a pretty neat addon I think you'll find interesting. And if you've been following recent posts, you probably already know about it.

We just released the brand new version of the SLICE-IT BEND-IT addon. It's a free update for those who already own the SLICE-IT addon. We have a great new WYSIWG interface for bending meshes.. check it out in this video. You can find it at: 

2024-04-18 03:04:06 +0000 UTC View Post

A quick heads up

Anthony and I will soon be releasing an update to SLICE-IT it that we're calling SLICE-IT BEND-IT.

It will be more expensive than the current SLICE-IT it on Blender Market. Updates for existing users will be free. As you recall, I offered a beta version of it here on Patreon but only Blender Market versions qualify for free updates. So you might want to check and make sure if you're using it that you're using a paid version.

The new BEND-IT product makes bending objects really ...

Why Vision Pro is Apple's next Newton

Some of you are probably too young to remember that Apple introduced one of the first PDAs shortly after Steve Jobs was kicked out of the company. It was called Newton and it was full of really cool technology .

Of course I bought one. And I used it for a month or so. But it was soon eclipsed with better functioning devices with less technology like the Palm Pilot. Newton ended up an impressive novelty bookshelf item.

The problem was, there wasn't really a good use case for it. ...

Update to Remap Material Images addon

Worked with Anthony today to add some new functionality. The remap material images addon now reports how many dupe images it finds and it has another button to automatically delete them as well. Just install as a zip as you would any other addon but

FIRST REMOVE OLD ADDON (at root directory of your addons folder called cw-remap.py

2024-04-07 22:40:16 +0000 UTC View Post

A couple nifty addons you might find helpful

Hey folks,

I've been meaning to write these two for sometime now.

Many times, after working on a scene for a number of hours or days, I find that I've ended up with multiple materials, with each having the same image textures. For instance, in EEVEE+CYCLES Materials, I use this scratched png to help create a realistic texture on some metals. And it can also be used on glass as well. So...now I have 2 versions of the same texture taking up memory in my scene.

So, the first ad...

Final Installment of GITS concept

Finally finished this tutorial.



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Had a good time with this one. So for those of you wondering what this is all about, my goal was to share a new displacement workflow where you can kitbash existing objects to create high definition displacement maps and then quickly apply them to all sort...

Advanced Trim Sheets (and Normal Maps)

Here's Part 4 in the Ghost in the Shell series. Unlisted for now. This episode is the first time I've ever seen anyone create a Trim sheet using ktibash techniques. Which makes for a very fast and multi-varied workflow.

Interesting note regarding the cube model demo used at the end. I ended up subdividing it into 50M+ triangles. It was extremely smooth (it's the right cube in this image):

Part 3: Create Trim Sheets (using FLEX)

Here's an early view for the GITS tutorial series part 3. This one focuses on creating Trim sheets that can then be used with displacement to create themed sci-fi geometry.

The next one should be available in a day or so.

Created this CYBORG using the FLEX Displacement material

This was a fun project. I'll try and upload the video of me creating it, but thought I'd share it. I used the basic ERGO figure (uploaded here in the past) and worked on the displacement a bit. Here's the file if anyone wants to take a look (drop the files into any KPACK folder).

To download CYBORG-ERGO:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u6...

Midjourney to Blender: GHOST IN THE SHELL Part 2

UNLISTED PREVIEW VIDEO

Available early without ads for Patreon subscribers


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Part 2 focuses on setting up the basic lighting.

PS I used the displacement maps posted here earlier to update the Ergo guy to a cy...

Midjourney to Blender: GHOST IN THE SHELL Part 1

UNLISTED PREVIEW VIDEO

Available early without ads for Patreon subscribers


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Hey folks,

I've been working on a video series which walks through creating ...

BEND-IT Beta

Anthony and I have been at it again with a new addon called BEND-IT. It will be a paid upgrade from SLICE-IT (so if you don't have SLICE-IT yet, you should purchase it before we release). I'm posting the beta of SLICE-IT/BEND-IT here so you can test it if you like. 

As many of you know, bending stuff in Blender is really difficult for a variety of reasons. We focused on providing an easy-to-learn and use interface, that makes a copy of your model, applies all modifiers and transfor...

AI: the eminent danger today.

Having recently watched a video on the new and upcoming video creation AIs that will generate 30 minute documentaries from a single prompt, I thought it time I write about it.

This is a personal essay which may tell you more about who I am but also about my current thinking on the very real issues we are now facing. I believe this recent Gemini Google issue may be seen as a watershed moment for AI. Only time will tell.

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Many years ago, a few years after the begi...

Winter sale in full swing and here's a 100% off coupon.

Hey folks just want to let you know that the winter sale where it's 25% off of most products at Blender Market is now in full swing.

I have a tutorial on using EEVEE for interior rendering that I did a while back and I think most of it is still pretty applicable.

If you're interested at looking at it here's a coupon for 100% off. I set a limited number of uses so if you run into problems shoot me a message.

Best,

Chipp

Coupon for
2024-02-20 19:26:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Here are trim maps you can use to create killer SCIFI

Check out the video above for a complete tutorial on how to use the trim maps listed below. I've also included a sample scene as well which has a couple variations on the one material in it. The maps are in panel-tech-01.zip. There are two diffuse maps, one with ambient lighting, and the other without. If you only want to use a s a bump map and no displacement, use the one with ambient lighting. 

The next and hopefully last video in this series will be about how to create your own ...