@Samino This is a start but not the full solution. There are many other node groups to scale in order to make the materials work properly. Besides this multiplier technic only works if you do not apply the scale and do not parent the object (unless parent scale is set to 1.0).

Materials are also instanced, therefore you cannot have objects with different scales sharing the same material.

These are some of the reasons why I do not recommend scaling as it will most certainly break user models which will be translated into complaints.

The best solution is to set the blend file unit properly to work in mm which is the Mecabricks unit. However Blender is not great at handling the unit scale. For example, DoF doesn't use the Unit Scale multiplier and you shall apply it yourself when you enter the F-Stop value...

True. There are a bunch of factors that keep this from being simple for the users of the add-on. Maybe with the new material overhaul update incoming you should try adding a scale slider (you could probably create a script/driver for that) for the material so the user can control the scale value of the shaders. I've done that with my shader, and it works perfectly.

Lego Salamandre Noire (Lego PBR Shader) by -Samino-, on Flickr

Not if you want even beginners to be able to use it. Drivers do not solve all cases.
It is likely that there will be a scale input in the next version. However, I will not advertise it and people will use it at their own risk. For optimization and to make it work with Eevee, each material will be built from multiple inputs during import. There won't be a library of base shaders like it is the case right now (e.g. mb_solid, etc).

So, there goes the replace the MB shader with your own shaders option. 😦 It won't be possible to replace the materials.blend file with your own custom shaders in the next version I am guessing?

Not as simple as what it is now.

So, would it still be possible to customize the materials (or the individual node groups)? The add-on makes it much easier on adding ones custom Lego shaders to the Mecabricks models instead of doing it manually.

When will the next update for the addon be? Cant wait 😄

Super noob question, and I hope it may not have been answered elsewhere, but does the High Resolution Minifigure automatically rig a minifigure exported from Mecabricks?

Ex, can I make a minifigure in Mecabricks, and then import that Mecabricks file into blender, with the figure already rigged & ready for animation.

Otherwise I may just have to rig things myself. 😄

Thanks for any help!

@LegoPepper No. You can combine the Advanced Add-on and the HD Minifigure, but only the high resolution version of the parts will be imported, not any rig.

Got it. Thanks!

Is the addon compatible with the newest 2.81 Blender version?

Cycles based on RTX Nvidia cards seems awesome !

There is no reason why it shall not but I didn’t try yet. Keep in mind that Optix is only a development version and that not all shaders work. For instance the bevel node which is a core feature needed in my set up doesn’t so there is no point using Optix right now.

Strangely it failed last time I tried, reinstalling the addon from zip file again, importing a model and no crash this time.

Scrubs and community,
Is there a way to keep the folder structure when exporting to Blender using ZMBX?
Why I want to keep .zmbx is to maintain the size ratio in the scene.. MecaFigs etc and Mecabricks files share the same size.

Max

Do you mean the groups from the Mecabricks workshop?
If it is what you are thinking of, it is currently not possible. However it will come in a future update for the advanced add-on only.

Hi guys. I have a few issues that are probably easy workarounds. It mentions in the advanced pack that theirs settings for milky materials to allow glow in dark etc. But I don't see anything? I've imported the harry potter scene that's in the photo's on the blender advanced purchase page. My materials for the spiders just show up brown, no colouring or glow in dark or nothing.

Second is probably something to do with blender that I'm yet to understand. But SSS, I don't see any subsurface scattering at all, no lights glow through materials or nothing.

Third and final is. The rendering times are extremely slow with some scenes. I can usually render out scenes pretty fast. But most of them take 40 mins plus blender starts to run fairly slow. Is this an issue with the plugin itself?

TIA.

@peakman505
a) That's probably due to the spiders being brown for the official set; you need to set them to milky yourself. You can tweak the emission value in the Shader editor.
b) The material has SSS included; you can verify this by having a look at the base material node group. Chance is that if you can't see subsurface scattering, either your parts/lights/environments that are emissive aren't bright enough or being looked at at an angle that isn't emphasizing SSS, or you're using a denoiser that is filtering out faint traces of subsurface scattering.
c) It's not an issue; depending on scene complexity, samples and hardware, 40 minutes for a shot with a LEGO® model taking up most of the view are pretty normal, given that Cycles is a path-/raytracer and that the MB material uses these features a lot to get the best looking results (e.g. subsurface scattering) which will add up to the render times. And since Blender is using as much computing power as it can get during rendering, your PC can be very slow, and I'd recommend not doing any other work on your PC while it's rendering.
If you could provide us with hardware info, the set/MOC you were rendering and your sample count, it would be easier to find out whether your render times are within the norm or unusual.

Yeah I gathered eventually with the help of someone from a discord server, Although I'm yet to get the spiders looking as good as the actual ones in the scene lol.

Yeah turns out I was using too much lighting which fainted the SSS which makes sense.

This was just a dumb moment from myself. I had forgotten that they are sized up to an extreme amount. which I'm aware makes things slower.

Thank you for your reply!

No much more to add to NGCHunter.
Make sure that you change the spider material to 329. In Blender, you can change the emission value.

SSS is most visible under certain conditions. But I can assure you that it is well set up. See the orange light going through the white piece

Add-on has been updated to support Eevee. This renderer is still young and obviously not as powerful as Cycles so I had to simplify somehow the materials to make it work. But don't worry, Cycles output and options remain untouched.
Remember that LEGO scenes require a lot of resources. So if you want to display large models in your viewport with Eevee, you'd better have a very decent graphic card in your workstation.