Theme Bbright Sample

for Blender Theme B Bright

Theme  made  especially to work with low brightness Screens (Like dimmed down @ Night).

Please give me feedback if something not good readable or is distracting you. Thanks.

Usability/Readability and Nice for Eyes is my intention.

to install open Blender, go to File – User Preferences – Themes – click Install Theme… on bottom and select files

Get it from here

FrameON/OFF (download)

Outputs 1 if current Frame in Range On/Off else 0.
Can be used to have a certain effect only for certain time.
Note: For large Node Setups you might want to use Node Layout – Switch with animated Switch. This would be faster to compute.

Inputs:

• On Frame

Set Start Frame

• Off Frame

Set End Frame

Note: On Frame MUST be lower than Off Frame. Otherwise it doens’t work.

How it works:

The Time Node, top left, outputs 0 on Start Frame and 1 on End Frame. For Blender standard Frame Range of 1 – 250 this means the Time Node outputs:

Frame:       Output:
1                   0
2                   0.004
3                   0.008
125               0.498
126               0.502
250               1

You see in each Frame the value rises by 0.004

Now we have two Inputs (for the Node Group FrameON/OFF),
On and Off. Let’s say we have:

On Frame 5
Off Frame 7

And remember we have Frame 1 – 250 as Range, or 0 – 1 as outputed by Time Node.
We now need the On 5 and Off 7 values mapped to 0-1 as well.
To do so we Devide 1 / 250 = 0.004
(Same as Step from Time node Output)

Now we multiply the two Values On and Off by it:

5 * 0.004 = 0.02
7 * 0.004 = 0.028

If you look inside the Node Group (Tab) this is what happens in Frames 0-1 Frame.

Now, what we want to do now is to make, while Time Node is raising from 0-1 by Value 0.004 each Frame, extract the Range from 0.02 to 0.028

To do so we use the Math Nodes Greather Than and Less Than.
The Function of those is simple, but effective. If set to greather than(>):

Value1:     Value2:     Output Value:
0                 2                 0
1                  2                 0
2                  2                 0
3                  2                 1
4                  2                 1

You see it Outputs 1 as soon as Value1 is Greather Than Value2 otherwise 0. (Like False/True)

Now Less than is just the opposite:

Value1:     Value2:     Output Value:
0                 2                 1
1                  2                 1
2                  2                 1
3                  2                 0
4                  2                 0

Let’s remember, We need to extract from Time 0-1 the Range from 0.02 – 0.028. So we use the Greather Than to output 1 if Time > 0.02 and the Less than to Output 1 if Time < 0.028

for Blender  Theme b gray contrast

b gray contrast is my default Theme.

Please give me feedback if something not good readable or distracting you. Thanks.

Usability/Readability and Nice for Eyes is my intention.

to install open Blender, go to File – User Preferences – Themes – click Install Theme… on bottom and select files

Download

Node Group for Blender Cycles to control a HDR (or Image) Background. Allows to Control strength and color individually for Lights and Environment.

Inside Node Group:

Access with: select Node Group, hit Tab. Two Nodes are Orange, Mapping and Environment Texture. In Mapping you can rotate the Background by editing Rotation – Z. In Environment Texture select the HDR or Image you want to use for Scene Background.

Inputs:

• Threshold

Set Limit for Light. Greater than this Value is considered as Light, Less than is considered Environment

• Environment

Set Strength for Environment

• Environment Color

Set adjustment Color for Environment

• Lights

Set Strength for Lights

• Lights Color

Set adjustment Color for Lights

• Background

Set Brightness of Visible Background

Output:

• Shader

Output Shader, connect this to World output – Surface

Download

Node Group for Blender Cycles to convert Wavelength Nanometer 390-790 to Color.

Inputs:

• Nanometer

Set NM from 390-790

• Manual 0-1

Maps 0=390, 1=790

NOTE: If use Manual o-1 set nanometer to 390!

Use Node Groups in your current Blender File:

You have found a nice Node Group you like to use in a .blend File you’re working on. How do you get this inside this .blend to use it?

1. Open the .blend File you want to use the Node Group in
2. Click on File – Append (Shift+F1)
3. Select the .blend File that contains that Node Group
4. You see the Folders inside this .blend file, click on NodeTree
5. select/click the Node Group you want (press Shift for multiple selection)
6. and hit Link/Append from Library on top right

• The Node Group is now usable in Node Editor – Add – Group
• depending if it is a Node Group for Cycles/Blender Internal or Compositor you might need to switch Node Editor to this type (three little icons on bottom of Node Editor Area)
• Node Group is saved only as long as it is used in this .blend file (If you don’t use it, save it and reopen the file, the Node Group is gone. Why is explained bellow)

Install Node Groups in your default Scene:

You may want to have Node Groups that you use all the time just right in Blender if you start it. For this we can use the startup.blend file that Blender uses to load your default Scene.

1. Open Blender and make sure your in your default Scene (File – New or Ctrl+N)
2. Follow Step 2-6 from above

Now we have the Node Group in your default Scene, but it’s not going to be saved if it’s not used. To change this we can add a Fake User to this Node Group, so it will be saved regardless if it is used or not. This works for anything, btw.

I’ll show you two Ways of how you can save the Node Groups:

1. In Node Editor add the Node Group (Add – Group – Name of Node group, might need to add Material/enable Nodes first). Then you see you Node group, and where it’s Name is right of it the F, click it. Now we have to save this as default Scene. To do so: click File – Save User Settings. Done.
2. Second Way is a bit more technical. Go/set Area to Outliner (The Area os Screen where your Objects are Listed), and set the Selector to Datablocks. Now find in there Node Groups, expand it by clicking on +, find the Node Group name, expand click + again, Find Fake User and click Checkbox to the right of it. Set Selector back from Datablocks to what you like. Now we have to save this as default Scene. To do so: click File – Save User Settings. Done. I showed you this cause the Datablock is sometimes a very useful tool, that at least i myself didn’t just stumble upon.

• Note that whatever Scene is loaded, if you Save User Setting, this Scene will be your default Scene. To revert this you can click File – Revert Factory Settings

Here grows my new Blender Blog…

About: Blender, Blender on Mac, open Source Renderer (for Mac), Blender Nodes – BI/Cycles/Compositor, Python Scripts/Scripting, Blender Quick Start/Versions, Camera Tracker, Compositing, My Gallery and Videos and probably more…

There will be a focus on Node Groups, both Cycles and Compositor, since i have made a lot of Node Groups i’d like to share with you.