Some general questions

[DeadAlive]

hello, i have some questions regarding blender.

1. is there a way to achieve version control with blender or external website? like programmers do with github and gitlab.
2. what is the best way to use materials for Assets we make. Like 1. selecting material in blender(shading). 2. using color palette with UV
   if palette what kind of palette and where to get them?

[FedPete]

• Blender saves by default a previous version of your project. You can change this in the preferences to have for example 10?
• If you give a versionumber in your file name, you can increase this easily while save the files a next time (file save have a +/- button)
• Some use GitLab, GitHub - But it’s not so handy.
• In de beginning of learning Blender I had the same needs (version Control), but it’s not so handy after all (my opinion). Because in the future you have 10 files of a project, but which one has the correct object, mesh and or material. I try to make Objects reusable by default (and one version) and change them into an asset (one place to maintain the object).
• The need for different versions will be less if you have learned how to fix (undo) mistakes. And yes sometimes I make a copy before I do destructive things or experimenting.
• For pallets you can use a bitmap with a set of colors, can be using in Blender and other drawing tools

[Dwayne]

For version control you have saving different versions. This can be done with shift+ctrl+s then press numpad plus. Shift+Ctrl+S is save as. Use numpad plus to increment the last number in the file name or if there is no number blender will add one. Shift+numpad plus will increment by 10 and ctrl+numpad plus will increment by 100. In blender 4.0 or newer you can incrementing by 1 without having to go into the file browser editor by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S. Again Blender will only increment the last number in a file name. So if the file is named Rig1char3V9.blend when you press ctrl+alt+s it will save it as Rig1char3V10.blend.

Then there’s the save version that @FedPete mentioned. This will create a version every time you save(Ctrl+S). By default it is set to 1. Lets say you set it to 3. When you save if there is a filename.blend3 then it gets deleted. Filename.blend2 becomes Filename.blend3. Filename.blend1 becomes Filename.blend2. The last save becomes Filename.blend1. Then your current save becomes Filename.blend.

If you are looking for true version control. SVN(Apache Subversion) is the most common one I’ve seen in the Blender community. Blender studio use to use it. I’m not sure if they still do. There are many programs that utilize SVN and I don’t have enough knowledge to help beyond this.

As for material assets, you can build an asset library inside of a blend file. Then you have the option of

• linking - New blend file points to the blend with the material.
• Appending - Make a copy of the material from the blend file into the new blend file.
• Appending with reuse data - Like append, but blender tries to keep from having multiple version of the same material in the new blend file. This option is only available thru the Asset Browser.

Linking and appending can be done thru File menu or F4 menu. Once you start this it will go to the file browser editor. go to the blend file with the asset. Like a material or color palette for example. Click the blend file. Then select the folder of the type of asset you are looking for. Like object for a model, material for a material, palette for a color palette, etc. Then select the asset(s)[Yes you can select multiple]. Then click link/append at the bottom or press enter.

You can also setup an asset library to use linking or appending. Appending with reuse data is the default import type used for asset library. First, setting up an asset Library. You will need dedicated folder. You will need to assign your assets in the blend file and save the blend file or copy it to the dedicated folder. You can use subfolders. Blender will search all subfolders under the dedicated folder. The catalog file will be located in the dedicated folder. So create your folder or use the default one that blender setup. Open blender, press F4->preferences or click edit menu->preferences or for 4.0 or newer press ctrl+comma. Then click file paths on the left hand side. To see where the default folder is you can look under Asset Libraries. User Library should be highlighted. if it isn’t then click it to see where the folder is located. You can click the plus sign to add a new library folder. Then click the folder below the library list and navigate to the dedicated folder. You can change the Library name by double clicking on it. To mark object as an asset you can either right click them in outliner(you can also do collection as well) can click mark as asset or in 3D Viewport you can click object menu->asset->mark as asset. You can also do in the object tab of the properties editor by right clicking on the object name and clicking mark as asset. For material use the material tab of the properties editor and right click on the material name->Mark as asset. If you have a lot of materials on different objects then in the outliner change it from View Layer mode to Blend file mode. Go to materials and expand then you can select multiple and right click->mark as asset. Save that blend file in the dedicated library folder. Then switch to the asset library editor. Add categories and thru n-panel you can add Author and tags and even load a custom icon for the asset.

Second, Once you have an asset library with assets in it you can start a new blend file and open the asset browser and drag and drop the asset from the asset browser to the new blend file. For objects and collection drag and drop into the 3D Viewport. For material drag and drop on an object that can have a material. Same with geometry nodes. Shader groups need to be dropped in the shader editor.

[NP5]

Moved to talk section. No real specific answer likely and it will stay open without getting bumped automatically.

[DeadAlive]

thank you for your replies, and sorry for responding late.
i understood the version control part, but i was thinking like this:

1. saving topology as v1.
2. saving same topology with bones v2.
3. saving same topology with bones and materials.
   Also what about saving a copy of your finished work?
   for example you made animal pack, but it can be deleted from your hard drive somehow (data corruption) or something like that, do you recommend saving it in external drive or somewhere in cloud?

Also i think you guys didn’t understand my second question, i was asking which is the preferred and best way to add materials to objects, like i have 5 animals and i selected 5 different materials(colors) for them, or just use a single color palette which will have all colors in one place, which method will work better with game engines like unity?

[Dwayne]

So there are different folders between environments, props, characters, and set dressing. Each studio has their way of doing it, but what I’ve seen with characters is character name dash the BASE with version number for the modeling. Character name dash then MAT for material then version. Character name dash RIG for rigging. Then the version number. Some do final, some just use the latest RIG version. The most common I’ve seen is just character name all cap for final. If you’re using sculpting pipeline then there is usually a dash SCULPT or dash SCPT.

[Dwayne]

As for materials, if it’s just straight colors then using a color atlas(the color palette image) is the better way. For more detailed textures you are going to want multiple materials and even in some cases multiple colored textures using UDMI

[FedPete]

The mesh is an asset, the armature is an asset, the animation on a armature for a object is a asset. Even a material is is an asset. Combine assets into a new scene and or project.
Make it reusable!