Ok, will look at those again on monday.
I see a lot of nice entries, thanks, and I’ve voted for my favorites.
My favorite (sculpting) matcaps in ZBrush and Blender are usually the ones with:
• One horizontally centered highlight, vertically a bit higher than the center (about 45 degrees).
• No harshly dark shadow area.
• Smooth shading without disruptions, because those slight disruptions (such as grungy shading / subtle additional highlights) can seem like disruptions in the model’s surface.
2 Likes
Thanks to the latest version of 2.8, it now works in solid view. You never get to truly appreciate the sheer awesome factor that comes with it until you try it yourself. Going back to 2.7 is like going back to the 19th Century. Especially excellent work on that sexy cavity shader, no more AO renders, just OpenGL, smooth as a baby’s bum.
Anyways, I thought I’d show you my matcap on the waspbot.
1 Like
Here’s a dark MatCap with rim lighting, might be useful to @laudaris as well for things like oceans. I also have a similar one i submitted up here but the rim lighting isn’t as bright as the one below (looks great though).
This one should look good and extremely contrasted on a HDR display because the outer rim and spot brightness both exceed what a SDR display is capable of (at least in the future whenever Blender supports HDR displays in the viewport).
Download:
12 Likes
@pablovazquez @billrey
Any word on why the world hdris disappeared from the latests builds? Basically the look dev mode is dead, way back it used to have some hdris…
Im not sure why we need look dev in the first place when we can just use eevee in rendered mode
This bi-directional one is very useful, one directional only does not always pinpoint all problems. I hope this gets in!
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Yes, unless you use trackball rotation in the viewport it will show more detail. However, I feel that it is slightly less comfortable to look at than a conventional one.
Also, the selected reflection checker is not perfect; the stripes in the middle are wider in an attempt to make it seem less cluttered.
…though another idea is to add support for rotating the matcaps not just flopping flipping them.
I’ve spend entire day sculpting and testing 20 matcaps from this topic.
I made rough head base with dyntopo, created matcap shader and loaded all images. In first pass I sculpted nose and mouth, spend about 5 minutes per matcap. Rejected half of them. Then tweaked some matcaps using nodes and sculpted for few hours switching between them. Here are my thoughts. Mind that I tested them for sculpting purposes only.
BEST:
Matcap_DefaultWax_dark
This is the definition of boring matcap. 
It works wonders while sculpting anything from large forms to details. Definitely best one I’ve tested. Great for longer sessions. Bit to dark, especially on bottom. Can be easily adjusted in compositor for wider range.
TRWP_Sculpt
Another fantastic one. Good for larger forms. Bumping up contrast will make it better for medium forms.
BrownClay
Obviously default one, good replacement for red clay from 2.79. Its great but there is one problem, ball is slightly bumpy on bottom part, this should be fixed.
GOOD:
Mud
Good for medium forms and details. Sharp light terminator on bottom is an issue.
Matcap1
Bit too bright one but can be fixed in compositor. All around matcap.
Matcap5
Also too bright and easy to fix. Large and medium forms.
OK IF FIXED:
Smooth skin
Another very bright one. Needs stronger front facing specular highlight.
Sculpt
Frontal lighting works well but those lights in corners should be removed, especially bottom one. Bumping contrast should also help. Easy for eye, good for longer sessions.
7 Likes
When using EEVEE as a renderer, LookDev lets you turn on/off the lighting and swap the world background without actually changing your lights, World and render settings. It’s pretty useful to test your shaders in a different environment, especially seeing it lit by different HDRI that are saved in your preferences and can be used in across files to compare. Less pollute on your files just to test stuff.
When using Cycles as renderer, LookDev has all the benefits from when you’re using EEVEE. Plus, it is the fastest way to get the closest to a rendered version, preview materials, bump, lighting, etc using fast OpenGL instead of actually rendering with raytracing and loading everything in memory.
1 Like
They will be replaced with better ones, just like the MatCaps.
oh i wasn’t aware my bad
To wrap it up. My reasons for rejecting other matcaps (again, talking about sculpting only):
matcap2 - Too bright, flatten forms.
matcap3, matcap4 - Too bright and very strong light terminator.
skintone- Lighting skews forms on sides.
Studio_Clay - Bottom light.
Skin - Rotated lighting, lit bottom.
skin_matcap- Too flat, rotated bottom shadow, bit skewed.
Skin(2)- Not that bad but bottom is too bright, matcap is quite flat. Can be fixed.
soft_clay- Too much light on bottom and sides. Lack of proper specular highlight.
BrownClay5 - Worse version of BrownClay.
muddy - Lighting is very skewed. Especially on outer parts.
Matcap_DefaultWax- Oversaturated, uneasy for eyes.
3 Likes
Ok, good to know. But wouldn’t be better to have those hdris still available in blender until they get replaced, instead of nothing? Feels a bit weird to enter the lookdev mode and have nothing in there.
In your best 3 I prefer the second one (TRWP_Sculpt). As you said, it’s really fantastic, and actually it’s my favorite matcap on this thread.
The first one is waaaay too dark for my taste, and probably will not please many people as for example the second one.
Still I would like to see those 3 matcaps included, but if I had to choose one, the TRWP_Sculpt is my choice.
Now, looking at the preliminary list, if we wanted to include those 3, which ones would you remove?
And btw, now that you talked about contrast and stuff, that would be a nice feature to add to the matcaps panel, among other stuff like rotation, scale(u/v) etc…
now that you talked about contrast and stuff, that would be a nice feature to add to the matcaps panel, among other stuff like rotation, scale(u/v) etc…
Yeah i’d really like to see contrast, saturation and full rotation added, i was thinking about it the other day when testing MatCaps.
2.7 also had a nice amount of MatCaps (24) and it would be good if 2.8 has around the same. I know it’s much easier to add MatCaps now and i know you can do a lot more with them, but even so it’s nice to have a decent selection for fresh installs and i think a lot of people still wont go searching for MatCaps and will just stick to the defaults. If something like contrast/saturation and rotation sliders are added you also get way more options out of the default MatCaps.
3 Likes
Moniewski: Thanks for helping out testing.
I’ve updated the list. It includes all the ones you labeled ‘best’ for sculpting. I now have 22 default matcaps. It’s a bit confusing, because i renamed many of them to fit together better.
Changes:
- Added TRWP_Sculpt (Basic_2)
- Added Matcap5 (Basic_1)
- Added DarkRimLight (Check_rim_light)
- Added Jade
- Added Skin.exr
- Removed Clay_Soft - was similar to Matcap5, but with no real highlight definition
- Removed Ocean - was too specific, replaced with DarkRimLight
- Removed Skin Smooth & Skin Diffuse. Replaced with superior skin.exr
- Removed Clay_rim
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As of today, Blender 2.8 now has the updated list included by default.
Here’s the commit log: https://developer.blender.org/rB6a493e44302588c35a269ed34a3e679c7912074b
Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed, also the ones we didn’t pick. There were many great submissions, and was hard to pick the best set.
Now that we have them in by default, we can continue to test them out over the coming weeks, and then, if necessary, make adjustments or further improvements.
Blender 2.8 will also retain the ability to load custom matcaps, if your personal favourite or project-specific matcap isn’t included in the default list.
Cheers
4 Likes