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Files & Tools

Visualization (Chapter 1-4): Value Graph

9th July 2020

info License: CC-BY
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Published by

Simon Thommes

3D Graph to analyze the value of texture maps Introduced in Chapter 1.4

Let me give you a quick breakdown of how the file works:

If you go into solid view, you can see that the scene consists of a whole bunch of intersecting planes.

img1.png

Those have a shader that samples the texture's value from the XY-coordinates and mixes between transparency and emission by comparing the Z-coordinate to the value of the texture.

img5.png

So a single one of these planes shows a simple line of the profile at the plane's position.

img2.png

All together they create the whole graph by using a grid of planes.

img3.png
img4.png

15 Comments

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Jonathan Walsh

20th August 2020 - 15:42

Mate...this is the real in depth Blender learning, great stuff, many thanks.

Johnny "Brain Blast" Quasar

30th September 2020 - 01:24

Super thanks to you Simon! Visuals that let you see "behind the scenes", so to speak, definitely helps me understand an otherwise complex system.

Riccardo Gagliarducci

7th December 2020 - 00:53

I think this tools should be a standard debug tools in Blender! Not being able to visualize the output of a node is like programming without error codes or others utilities.

Huân Lê-Vương

17th August 2020 - 05:19

i used this file for better understanding the workflow example 1. very helpful!

Simon Thommes

17th August 2020 - 10:55

*@Huân Lê-Vương* Perfect, that's what I made it for as well! I'm glad it helps :)

Leslie Solorzano

31st October 2020 - 16:09

Super smart! This is very useful to visualize how textures that say 3D and 4D work in a more intuitive way

papertripping

19th July 2020 - 07:51

Hey Simon- Could you please show us how you made this .blend file? I think it'll help me better understand this course. Thanks! :)

Simon Thommes

21st July 2020 - 12:11

*@papertripping* Hey, to be honest, I don't think it adds a lot if I would make a separate video about this. But I added a quick breakdown to the description :)

Huân Lê-Vương

8th August 2020 - 04:50

*@papertripping* the node trees look intimidating :V it was easier in C4D for me with the clone system but i will have to adapt to the shading in blender.

Simon Thommes

8th August 2020 - 10:35

*@Huân Lê-Vương* I made this file a while back when the nodes were much more limited and I had to use a ton more.

Now the noding system is more convenient to use

fpowerm

14th January 2021 - 00:52

is there a way to save this tab as a default I can pull up whenever i need? I love these visualizations but have no idea how to setup the perspective in other projects Excellent work btw Simon just going through these again

Simon Thommes

14th January 2021 - 15:42

@fpowerm You can technically add it as a new workspace and scene to your startup file, then every file you create will have it as an option to switch to.

steve kacenjar

10th August 2021 - 01:38

This is moving a bit fast for me.  I tried to reconstruct your first example with noise texture but nothing showed up on my plane. It remained white.  I did notice that you have a ghost-like set of nodes behind the foreground nodes.  I don't know what they do or how to produce them.  Maybe I need to start a more basic course.  This is cool stuff but for me it is going too fast without filling in the spaces.  I might come back to this later after I go through more basic  tutorials.

Domas Astrauskas

14th September 2021 - 22:00

@steve kacenjar there are some lectures where you have to use prepared blend files and those files are not easily reproducable (as a programmer I think it is custom blend files)

Gary Brimer

2nd July 2022 - 20:29

Just a note as I start into this, all of the example files come up with Risky Connection and Virus warnings from McAfee. Might be something to look into.