[Plugin] Blackout

thomthom · 16 Jan 2009, 11:04

This plugin was made on request from Free Agent which wanted a script that turned all materials black so he could then make one material white and render out a material mask for post processing. Hence the name.

I later added another function that picked the material of a selected and turned that white and the rest black, just to make it a little bit more quicker to set it up.

[flash=600,338:1rfif4p5]http://www.youtube.com/v/VWs3zHMmX8Y[/flash:1rfif4p5]

NOTE! Run this script on a backup file!!!
This script removes all textures, and opacity and modifies the colour. While the operation is undoable it's all to easy to accidentally save the file. (I press Ctrl+S regularly as a habit.)

Plugin is operated from the Plugin menu. "Blackout" and "Mask Material"

Tested against SU6 & 7

Update 1.2.0:
Free Agent had a got idea: use the current material instead of the selected object's material. Added this new function.

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Stinkie · 16 Jan 2009, 11:17

Thanks alot!

CadFather · 16 Jan 2009, 11:48

ThomThom you're rolling now!

Thanks!

free agent · 16 Jan 2009, 12:19

plot-paris · 16 Jan 2009, 12:36

sounds cool and useful

immediately the 'Greyscale' by Jim Foltz springs to my mind.
the script turns all colours to greyscale. then you can one or several textures to be changed back to colour to make them stand out more clearly. somehow Jim managed to preserve all the colour information, the script lets you toggle between 'Greyscale-' and 'Colour-mode'.
that would be the perfect thing to take your script to the next step - make the changes undoable...

thomthom · 16 Jan 2009, 12:45

The original colour could be stored in an attribute dictionary. But I'm not sure about textures. I didn't find a way to turn them off. Only remove them. Will have a look at Jim's script and see if he handles textures. I've not spent much time on this. Just quickly whipped it together while working on some other stuff.

kwistenbiebel · 16 Jan 2009, 12:55

Cool script thomthom!
Very useful. Thank you.

bianhai · 16 Jan 2009, 17:12

Thank you thomthom.

Gaieus · 16 Jan 2009, 18:44

Tom,

In SU you can undo an operation after saving, too. Does it not work in this case?

thomthom · 16 Jan 2009, 18:48

I suppose so. But I make the warning just in case as there isn't any built in restore in the function. Also, with V-Ray for SketchUp I've experienced that it can some times interfere with the undo operations of scripts. Especially if it manipulates materials.
It's a better safe than sorry warning.

sepo · 17 Jan 2009, 13:05

This is useful. Thanks.

JClements · 18 Jan 2009, 22:13

ThomThom:

I think this might have been discussed a year or two ago.

I make masks for postprocessing by turning all my layer colors to black and turn on Color By Layer in the Layer Manager. This eliminates messing with the material colors directly. I hardly ever organize my layers via a color scheme so this method is relatively fast to do and doesn't screw up the model. Also, SU shadows are exported with their greyscale value which can be interpreted in post processing as semi-transparent.

I often create a style for Color by Layer in my model and assign it Scene named "MASK" which only remembers style parameters. I can then use this scene to on toggle Color by Layer for any of the other scenes.

My workflow would be to click on any Camera view or Scene and select the "MASK" Scene, and export the current view as your mask for post processing.

Now IF Ruby can remember and store a model's existing Layer Colors and later restore them, then a script to temporarily change the model's layer colors to black, turn on Color by Layer, queue the File > Export > 2D Graphic dialog and then restore the layer colors after printing, might be pretty quick and handy.

thomthom · 19 Jan 2009, 11:22

Interesting.
I made this script very very quickly. I might revise it and implement some more stuff suggested. Appears that there was more use for this than I thought. And there's some good ideas here.

MALAISE · 24 Jan 2009, 07:58

THanks Thomthom

Back to the forum after a while and discovering new rubies

MALAISE

me3mar · 1 Feb 2009, 12:58

can you please show some pics on how to use, and what for ?
that would be great
thanks in advance

sepo · 26 Jun 2009, 15:57

Would it be possible to include transparency of .png . Give you an example. If you for instance have a .png tree in front of the material than tree should go black instead of rectangle. It would make life much easieer if possible.
Thanks

thomthom · 26 Jun 2009, 16:34

Nope. Can't read transparency info. If I had access to the V-Ray maps I could have replaced the texture with the alpha texture - but I don't have access to that either.

sepo · 26 Jun 2009, 22:02

Thanks for the reply.

xiombarg · 19 Mar 2014, 04:36

This is actually another really good plugin for character and product design and a standard feature of high end modelling programs. Animation modelling programs implement this feature to help the designer get a better idea of a characters posture and demeanor which subtly reflects their personality. Product designers also use it for similar purposes.

Probably is a good idea to do a quick save before using it though, just in case.

onzki · 4 Aug 2023, 06:08

Hi I know it's an old thread. Is there a way to customize the color, instead of black maybe something else, like red or any RBG code? Thanks!