Hi, Scrubs! No problem, take your time. Have fun on your holidays.

Hi, Scrubs!

There's this thing about prints and marks that I've been wondering for a while, in some parts the come off very prominently, usually on transparent parts like so: https://i.imgur.com/8uAa1MJ.png

This is the snowglobe https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/01w2rKKoj8W imported to blender (All default mecabricks advanced settings.) and rendered in cycles.

I know I can just reduce this fingerprint effect in the add on, but I was curious if there's a problem in my workflow or if this is normal?

Also, have you got the chance to look into the parts that come in with all the low rez looking thing?

Thanks again! Hope you got a good holiday.

@feureau It is how it works in real life. Imperfections are always much more visible on transparent surfaces.

Ok thank you Scrubs

Hi all,

I am aware that this is a common issue but so far the existing fixes have not worked for me. When importing a .zmbx, the model is enormous. I do not want to scale each part and its respective texture. I first tried scaling up everything else which worked but meant that lighting had to be much more intense (inverse square law and such). I've now been playing with the units and the unit scale settings but no matter what I set them to, there is no change upon import. Are there other fixes I could try?

Thank you

@FinnRoberts. I'm dealing with the same thing. Looks like the only solution is the commonly prescribed solution: to set the unit and unit scale: https://i.imgur.com/gkio4YO.png and I set the overlay unit scale too: https://i.imgur.com/CDSMDf6.png

but for something that's supposed to be tiny, it does import in such a large scale. I wish there's a way to scale things down.

I see there's a scale node in the material though: https://i.imgur.com/CH4WCir.png and I played around with it for a bit and it seems to do what it says on the tin? (to a certain extent) but then again, you have to go through each material and change the multiplier. 😦

Hi,

Through few lines of Python code, you can quickly change the value of the Node "Scale" for each material. Open a "Python Console" window in Blender and copy / paste these few lines of code, then hit twice "Enter" (you can change the value for your own purpose).

for mat in D.materials:
     if mat.name.startswith("mb"):
         for node in mat.node_tree.nodes:
             if node.label == "Scale":
                 node.outputs[0].default_value = 0.1

Oh, that worked very well! Thank you Helo! You're a life saver! 😄

I wish this thing is configurable in mecabricks. (1) as a scale parameter for import and (2) for keyframeable parameter so we can animate it.

That would be awesome.

Thanks again!

The model is not enormous. This is all about units. All the Mecabricks internal tools are set this way and it works fine 😉
Mecabricks works with mm which makes sense for the LEGO scale but default setting for Blender is meter as it is the most common for modeling the world.

As mentioned in the product description, I do not fully support the scale input. I put it there but there is no guarantee that it will work properly. Hence there are no settings in the control panel.

The units idea makes the most sense but for some reason, I could not get it to work. Do I have to change the units in a completely blank file (no lights or camera) in order for it to affect the import? Because I tried every other combination with no success. The python script worked a treat (makes sense, python is awesome) but I can see why I should be careful with it. Depending on how the material picks up geometry, it may not translate.

On a separate topic, I note that groups are not carried over when exporting to blender. Is there a different way to keep those, such as by parenting to empties?

Thank you

Did you try to start your scene with the template file provided with the addon?
No, groups and empties currently do not export in the zmbx file. It will be an improvement in a future version of the advanced addon. For now the best you can do is to export your model in chunks but it is not great as there will be material duplicates.

Ah, I had not been using the template. I had created my own startup file that included a backdrop. For now, the scale node seems to work. The denoiser washes out surface details anyway so if there are slight imperfections, I don’t notice them. That’s an interesting note about duplicate materials. It actually ties into a separate topic that I just posted in another part of the forum. I think it is appropriate to put here though too so I will add it below /

I decided to model part 65617 myself for use in a model I want to render. I used the .zmbx files for parts 37352 and 6059 with the goal of recreating only the exterior of the part properly. I put both mecabricks parts in one .zmbx with color set to Light Bley (194). In blender, I managed to create a single part that looks proper but when I went to rendered view, the material showed dark lines following some of the edge loops.

I had assumed that the materials were basically all the same but with variations of color (for the solid colors at least) with texture coordinates used to manage the one material over many different parts. I imagine this is not the case and that the dark lines I see are the result of attempting to project a material meant for one part onto a different part? Is there any way to rectify this?

On a similar note, I found that every principle face of each part was separate. Was this intentional, or could it be a side-effect of exporting to .zmbx? Or is this the proper way to set up a part so that the dark lines are forced to the object's principle edges?

Colour is not the only parameter that is different hence the materials are per part type per colours. You cannot generally directly assign a material generated for one part type to another type. It is not that simple. You shall first understand how the mecabricks part definition works and how the Blender materials are built. Definitely not a simple topic and this is part of the add on magic 😉

Sharp edges are split edges in mecabricks. That is a design decision. In 3D you have mainly 2 solutions to represent sharp edges: have separate vertices or custom split normals. Split normals avoid redundant vertices but it also prevents from performing certain mesh processing which I need and are possible with edge splitting.

I see. The majority of my experience is with solid modeling in inventor, solidworks, and creo, so dealing with normals and edge modifications are not the first thing I think about. The part will not be a centerpiece from most angles—I assume it would be passable if I simply assign it a new material with appropriate gloss, roughness, and color. Not ideal, but it should do.

Yes, the materials in that add-on really are magic. I tried looking through them and I pretty quickly got lost. I can understand why the slope bricks with the rough face would require more complicated materials but I never expected more than just a bunch of gloss,etc settings. Kudos.

My background is also in parametric modeling mainly Solidworks. So I had to relearn a lot of things. Not bad anyway as under the hood it is the same principle.

The newer version of the materials is based on masks and multiple uv layers to pack multiple materials in one material, any combination of parametric roughness as well as mould details among other things. I would say that your best solution would be to import a version 1 non decorated element with the colour you need and reuse this material to your custom part. That shall do the trick.

Oh that would be excellent, I will try that out! I assume, version 1 refers to parts that do NOT have a “2” in their thumbnail in the parts menu? I.e. parts that are not able to be decorated?

Edit: That didn't work at first, but I split all sharp edges and redid all normals and then it worked like a treat! Thank you.

Hi everyone!
I discovered a pretty strange issue (?) when using the advanced add-on. When I import a model without changing the default settings, it looks good, but if I check the "Bevels" checkbox, the bricks of course look better, but the round parts become "low poly" round parts, which is pretty strange. They look better if I apply the "Shade smooth" setting on them, but I believe it isn't the proper solution for this. Is it an issue with the add-on, or there's a problem on my end? I tried it with Blender 2.83LTS and 2.91 (with the latest version of the add-on). Here is an example:

Probably an add-on bug. I guess it comes from the fact that I use my own custom split normals now. I shall remove them when the bevel tool is used. I will look at it in the new year when I am back.