Plasticity Blender Bridge | How To Set Up and Use the Blender Bridge Add-on with Plasticity 1.4

[@iKaGe01]

I personally use it to showcase what I'm doing with bevel shaders and better lighting than I can in Plasticity itself. Almost finished a model I'm working on so the other features demonstrated will help a lot! Thanks

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks for sharing!

[@untitled795]

This is so cool, Live link in real time sounds amazing! Will definitely check this out

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Have fun!

[@mohameddawood1720]

Amazing , keep those plasticity tutorials coming ❤❤

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thank you! Will do!

[@AD-Dom]

Finally! Been waiting for it.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Me Too :)

[@k_DEDb07]

hello. so you can have it live update from plasticity. but it doesn't have any feature where the changes in Blender are carried back over to Plasticity at all? thanks

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Right it is one direction. Only from Plasticity to Blender and not the other way around.

[@Equilion]

Can one go also the other way around and get something from Blender over to Plasticity via the Blender Bridge? Guess not, hm?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

No unfortunately the Blender Bridge is one way from Plasticity to Blender. You can export from Blender and import an stl or obj into Plasticity, but it isn't "linked" like it is with the blender bridge. In most cases with the workflow here Blender would be the final step (or at least the next step). Very few cases would you go back the other way.

[@overseastom]

You give good tutorial, mate.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thank You!

[@lanzsantos_]

Hows the UV situation?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I did a follow up video to this on the uV options here kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoGnknVtnJigaas there are 2 variations of the blender bridge add-on i think. One is the official one and another has some additional development/options.

[@GiiyomCG]

So with the Bridge, you can't export at the maximum density right? It's always the default one?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Once you have the object in Blender on the Plasticity tool menu you can click "Refacet". This will redo the mesh. there is a tri and nGon option. If you take a cylinder for example you could refacet as quads(except for the top face) or Tris on the fly as much as you want.

[@GiiyomCG]

⁠​⁠@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Yes but the Density itself, it can’t be set at the maximum with the Bridge

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@GiiyomCG When I export a cylinder as an STL from Plasticity with 100% density, that is the same thing i get in blender when using the Bridge. I don't know if its specifically using the same numbers but that is what I get. With the Bridge you can save presets as well if you want to have your own low/med/him refacet. Maybe I am missing something here. The density slider in the Export in Plasticity is just tweaking the various tolerance values to arrive at the result.

[@GiiyomCG]

​@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Hi - Thanks again for the reply Yes I actually figured it out - to control the Density with the bridge you have to change the 'Face Plane Tolerance' and the 'Face Angle Tolerance' and Refacet it What's confusing is they went for different names from what you have on the Plasticity exporter options - and indeed understanding that the Density slider is only tweaking the values shown below - but there's a limit - in Plasticity you can crank the density really high (0.00001) but with the bridge theres a limitation Cheers

[@xxphantom93xx61]

There is the possibility to have a quad retopo in blender?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I did a follow up video talking more about some of the options here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoGnknVtnJigaas There is the official blender bridge and there are some offshoots of it. I think as it matures the tools will get better and better. The Advanced section if you expand it allows you to try and retopo it but to get a true quad like you would model in Blender I think is something that would be a bit far off.

[@ByteRide_40496]

Hey is it possible to do this workflow in reverse? For example I want to use blender for the surface modeling of a car, then I want to export the model to plasticity to cut my shutlines into the body like the doors, hood etc. After that I want to export the car back to blender for further modeling. Would this be possible? I don’t have plasticity so I’m not able to try this by myself. And I think after importing the model from blender to plasticity and back to blender again, the polygon topology would be gone.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

At this point in time no. The Blender Bridge works one way. You can import a mesh into Plasticity but currently you can't use it. I know there are plans to be able to model to it (pull to a surface), but not sure at what point that functionality will be released.

[@manfrombkk]

I'm using a MacBook Pro M1 and Blender 4.2 LTS and the trial version of Plasticity. I enabled the local host it Plasticity (Local host and port 8980) . On the Blender side, I installed the plug in, and it shows up in the side panel menu. I have an object in Plasticity and it is running, and when I hit Connect on the Blender side, nothing happens. Is this latest trial version of Plasticity still not supporting this process ? Also, I think by default, port 8980 is not something that is configured by default in Mac OS ( Sonoma 14.8.1) . Could someone be so kind to give me some guidance here. Thank you

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I would try Blender 4.0. I just tried it on 4.2LTS and it doesn't work, but works fine for me on 4.0. If it works on 4.0 for you then we know its not a mac/port issue. Digging a little deeper i see that others have it work on 4.2 and say that the version they downloaded from Github is having problems but downloaded from the plasticity page its fine. doc.plasticity.xyz/blender/install-blender-addon I personally didn't get it to work that way but just an FYI. Nick thinks its an issue with 4.2LTS and not the addin.

[@manfrombkk]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I have installed 4.1. So I guess I would need to install 4.0. Right. I will try that. So the trial version now supports the bridge, right

[@manfrombkk]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign side question, do you know what country Plasticity the company is based in. I’m thinking about purchasing their product but I see in the checkout process they would charge me VAT here in Thailand. Normally that never happens with purchasing software here online

[@TheShift1313]

@@manfrombkk I am not 100% certain on that since i don't have a trial version. I would imagine if you have the local host/port settings in preferences that it should work. If it doesn't work in 4.0 then maybe not. But i did check discord and saw lots of comments about it not working on 4.2lts.

[@TheShift1313]

@@manfrombkk I am not 100% sure but i want to say france or italy maybe? I believe the creator is american but i think he lives abroad.

[@sabongdotnet356]

What port number do I use? the default localhost:8980 does not do anything. When I click the "Connect" nothing happens. Thank you.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

is it enabled on both ends? the port number 8980 should work as that is default on the blender add-on side and plasticity. what version of Blender are you using? I haven't tried it on the most recent one yet. that could also be the issue.

[@sabongdotnet356]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign How to enable on both ends? I'm using 4.1 Thank you.

[@TheShift1313]

@@sabongdotnet356 kzbin.info/www/bejne/qKvGoWegd6qMg80si=5H56OB7SUKGqsauz&t=126 you have to enable that part in Plasticity first. did you do that part?

[@zozoolaroxmusic]

Powerfull tool

[@edypixel]

Tks

[@timothynwanwene4378]

Ooooh I am actually longing to see what animation in Plasticity will be like. As a CAD user I long to do dynamic physics-mechanical parts assembly and fluid simulation in Plasticity some day in the future. With that I can say goodbye to Fusion360. Plasticity modeling already beat Fusion360.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

i doubt you will ever see animation or rendering in Plasticity. Because of how its paired with Blender there would be no reason to reinvent that. My suggestion would be to spend a bit of time learning Blender for animation and rendering. It has some cool features you would never get with a CAD renderer such as the ability to deform bodies.

[@imacmill]

I sure wish the Plasticity folks would fix their Linux file management systems. All file open/import/'save as' dialogs pop up behind the main window and you have to bring them to the foreground by clicking them in the task bar, and none of the dialogs remember the last directory you accessed, so if, like me, your files are stored deep in a network path, you have to click down to those folders every single time you load/save. Crazy-frustrating. I've reported it on their Discord several months ago, still not fixed.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

yeah that sounds very frustrating!

[@cr4723]

Nice. But what's the point? You can export/import an Obj. Where's the difference? (And who the hell wants to use Blender? ;) )

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Most people using Plasticity its the first part in their workflow. Blender is generally part of that and exporting and OBJ is a one time thing. With blender bridge you have a direct connection meaning you can edit the model in plasticity and have it update in blender. You can also remesh it with Ngons and tweak the settings in Blender. It can also auto highlight edges/seams based on how something was modeled in Plasticity.

[@nickzucc]

Blender is free, and you can get nice renders quickly. Exporting/importing multiple obs is not exactly fun. Blender has a GoB add on that allows fast connection to ZBrush. So today I tried kicking out a multi part model from plasticity to blender then passed the meshes onto ZBrush. Seems like a nice workflow so far. Thanks for the tutorial, great content you are making, my one wish right now is that blender would respect the materials I set up in Plasticity.

[@cr4723]

@BangZoel3D All? Ah, yes millions! Do you know what a religion is? When you no longer notice anything outside of your bubble.

[@tehtebag5511]

For me I find it easier to to model on plasticity than blender but blender has a lot more things I need to build a actual game