Well. I've decided not to be scared of these modeling programs ... and am plunging into tutorials and getting comfortable with the interface. Well ... I got in very deep ...

I've been trying to install the "matlib" add-on to Blender and it's a struggle to get it to work. I know that it has amazing cycles mat files and I want to have access to them.

I went into the admin. command prompt (I sort of remember DOS 6.0) as per instructions from one site ... but the "git" command isn't recognized. I tried coping and pasting the file "matlib" to the add-on folder using my regular file explorer, but that uses my user path. AND then it said there was a conflict of 2 matlib files when I launched Blender. deleted that ... and still haven't gotten this into Blender.

Any help with this and suggestions for other add-ons would be appreciated. I get a bit overwhelmed at the Blender community sites.

Welcome to the world of Blender Boni.

In answer to your question, MatLib comes with Blender 2.79b. I did check my Blender 2.78a, and it's not there, so I would have to download it. Since you're getting the error message that there's 2 MatLib files, that's most likely because it already existed in your 2.79b installation.

What you need to do is go to File > User Preferences > Add-ons (see the top menu), and then on the left side choose "Materials". What you'll see is 2 Material add-ons, and all you need to do is click on the small checkbox next to the Material: Material Library (top of the list), Save User Settings, and you'll be all set. You need to do this whenever you want to initiate an Add-on, and you might want to check out the list (which IS huge), to see if there's any others you want to play with. Just choose a group of Add-ons to look through, because you'll be scrolling forever if you look at "All" of them at once.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of my Blender 2.79b User Preferences so you can see what I'm talking about.

OH, ok ... so ... where is it? I've looked in materials ... and these wonderful mat settings are nowhere to be found ... I"m so lost.

I think I may have to reinstall Blender, I messed something up and now I don't have access to the cycles nodes, they are all greyed out.

Ahhh, that may do the trick. Reinstall and then see if you have the MatLib Add-on in the list of your User Preferences.

Hi Boni So happy to see you taking the plunge into the wonderful world of Blender As to the material Library once you have the add-on turned on you will find what you are looking for on the material tab and then scroll down to the bottom and you will see the add-on also make sure your renderer is set to cycles this does not happen by default if not set to cycles any materials or nodes will either not be visible or might appear grayed out. Hope the screen shot below helps

Thanks for the screenshot Lobo, as I haven't played with it since I'm still doing most of my work in 2.78. It wasn't until I checked earlier, that I realized it was included in the 2.79 installation.

Reason I remembered someone else asked me about this about a week ago at one point it was extra add on that you could add in 2.78 but if I am not mistaken it went by another name or was a separate different type of add-on with similar functionality. I tend to only use the add-ons that come built into Blender except for a minor few that I have purchased

BTW Boni, I have a large on-going list of Blender Help, Forums and Tutorials over at HiveWire you might want to check out. It's in the Using 3D Software > Blender forum, and I try to update it every now and then when I come across something interesting.

Wow, guys, this is great! I've had Blender for years but was intimidated until this week ... then the light bulb went off and I get it now. I will follow your suggestions.

Well, as I said above, welcome to the world of Blender.

I've been playing with Blender since version 2.45, when it's UI was a slapped together bunch of palettes along the bottom, and the workspace all the way across the top. It was hard to get anything done, but when they came out with the new version 2.5x UI, things started to come together. Even when I model in Silo, I still do UV Mapping in Blender. Once you get used to using the UV Editor, you'll like it unless, of course, you already have a favorite UV software you've been using a long time.

Interesting ... I had been using UV mapper ... the free one for years ... I would like to use a better one ... I suspect Substance Painter is even better ... but I have to reconfigure part of my registry settings to use it. So I am concentrating on learning Blender and ZBrush and Blender just clicked for me ... so I am getting the hang of it right now. I like it a lot more than I expected to.

If you like 2.79xx, you're going to love 2.8. It's a complete redesign, not quite on a magnitude equal to going from 2.49x to 2.5 -> 2.6 -> 2.7, although some say it is. There's heaps of videos on YouTube about what's coming

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.8+preview

... and all of it is looking great, including eeVee... some mourn the passing of Blender (Internal) render and the Game Engine, but time marches on and those two saw so little use by most users that they hardly make a blip on most folks' radar.

You will do just fine Boni and our community here will always jump in and help as you see

RobynsVeil posted at 1:12PM Sun, 17 June 2018 - #4331871

If you like 2.79xx, you're going to love 2.8.

I didn't know 2.8 was available yet, or is it just available in nightly builds at this point?

You can get nighly versions but not completely stable to try Miss B I also heard they will be making some changes to short cut keys to make them more logical

I have been reading about that ... 2.8, any idea when it will be released as a full build? Also ... what do you think of the idea that I build base scenes to create more complex scenes and images from? Landscape, seascape, day, night, interior ... I did that with Poser and it saved hours of work. I asked at the Blender artists forum as well. Oh, and any tips and helpfull addons or freebie model starters for scenes ... I would really appreciate it.

Lobo3433 posted at 9:23PM Sun, 17 June 2018 - #4331920

You can get nighly versions but not completely stable to try Miss B I also heard they will be making some changes to short cut keys to make them more logical

OK, that's what I thought. I'm not one for nightly builds on any software. I prefer to wait for the first official full release version.

To answer your question Boni I in the long run I want to get into building scenes as well characters is out of my league. I did send you a copy of the project I am working on Miss B is also aware of it as well and I mention a few add-ons that I think are must that should be turned on by default also I would add to that list the Archimesh addon that comes with Blender but there is addition tool that adds to archimesh call Archipack which is a seperate download https://github.com/s-leger/archipack/wiki measuerit is another useful add-on you may also want to look at ANT Landscape think this one is loaded by default but needs to be turned on in User pref.

And I agree with you Miss B I am not a big user of nightly builds usually a bit to unstable for my taste.

I have tried running nightly builds on both the Mac and Linux: both spat the dummy. I guess I should try a Windows flavour, but as my desktop systems are all in various stages of disrepair (an old i3 being repurposed as a NAS, the other still having bits Frankensteining into it as I can afford them, I sort-of don't have anything WIndows-ish to run 2.8 on.

Oh well... lots of other projects are vying for my attention, mostly video production, which sadly has to stay on the Mac because Blender sort-of doesn't handle 1280p real well, yet, so I'm stuck using FCPX. I even got all excited (frenzied, even) with Blender Frenzy's videos... he's got great ideas, but he uses a Handicam or something like that, which is 720p, I think, so doing what he does is possible given that resolution. My video just freezes on the first frame.

Maybe 2.8 will address that: would be amazing!

I hadn't realized that a redesign was planned. Does this mean they're finally going to make the GUI more sensible? In any case, here's something that new (and some experienced) users should look at,

https://www.bforartists.de/

It's a Blender but with a new dress. As much as I love Blender, I don't use it often enough to keep the shortcuts fresh in my memory. This fork simply puts a new GUI on it which is much more conventional and menu driven, vice relying on memorized shortcuts. The shortcuts are still there, you just don't need them. I find it much easier and faster to use.

SheikhalMaktoum posted at 10:03AM Mon, 25 June 2018 - #4332310

I hadn't realized that a redesign was planned. Does this mean they're finally going to make the GUI more sensible? In any case, here's something that new (and some experienced) users should look at,

https://www.bforartists.de/

It's a Blender but with a new dress. As much as I love Blender, I don't use it often enough to keep the shortcuts fresh in my memory. This fork simply puts a new GUI on it which is much more conventional and menu driven, vice relying on memorized shortcuts. The shortcuts are still there, you just don't need them. I find it much easier and faster to use.

Hello SheikhalMaktoum

I tried bforartists and not that there was anything wrong with it but I could not get it maybe because I have gotten so use to the hotkeys and such but the new UI that Blender is coming out with I feel will be more user friendly for new user and might bring more people back to giving Blender a second or third chance. Currently with the prices of all 3D modeling software becoming more and more out of reach I personally feel Blender is truly the only worth while software for hobbyist but that is my personal opinion.

Absolutely agree with Lobo, here. I also use Blender only on occasion, doing more with video-editing these days in FCPX ( not really a career move, but hope springs eternal ) but like Lobo, once the hotkeys stick, the software as is (out-of the-box) becomes yours. Oh, and don't like the hotkey assignments? they're infinitely configureable. After about 10 minutes back in Blender, muscle-memory kicks in and it all comes back.

But yeah, I get your point, Sheikal. Blender doesn't behave like 99% of other software. Of course, neither does ZBrush, or maya or GIMP or RawTherapee ... you get where I'm going with this. Of course, GIMP and RawTherapee are free, maya and ZBrush aren't, but they're all specialised software that have a very active user base, and antagonising that user base (which, in the case of Blender, is substantial and growing) just to make it more Windows-software like in order to possibly attract the odd artist-on-the-fence doesn't balance out.

I use Linux and Mac 99% of the time, Windows only at work: I'm grateful Blender isn't Windows-centric. But that's just me.

I know I have Blender on my Windows PC and I reformatted and made my old Vista laptop a Linux laptop with Linux Mint and except for a few driver quirks with the laptop I have no issue using Blender in either OS which I do like as is since I only use the laptop mainly for modeling when I am away from my PC and with the Blender Cloud sync even that makes transferring between both pretty easy. I do not think there are many softwares that can say that out of the box

Well, I'm looking into switch to Linux with my next laptop, mainly because I've had it with Windows. I will never upgrade to Win10, and my Win7 Pro is getting long in the tooth.

The one thing I've always liked about Linux is, just about every flavor/distro of Linux comes with Blender as part of the setup. That, and the fact they specifically have versions for whatever OS you desire. For most software, it's either Windows or Mac. I like that Blender is set up to be used in whatever OS you prefer. Wish I could say the same about a lot of other software I use.