Trimflow: Non-destructive trim decals with curves
Trimflow is a Blender (3.5 - 4.1) add-on designed to add repeating patterns like ornaments or stitches to objects in a non-destructive way. It is very similar in approach to Substance Painter's Path tool, but utilizes trims instead of brushes.
By simply drawing a curve onto the surface of a mesh, it turns your trim textures into decals that can easily be adjusted, copied, or swapped for another. The integrated baking tool then turns trim decals into masks. These masks can then be used for material creation, either in Blender or in other applications such as Substance 3D or Marmoset Toolbag.
Or, with a little bit of shader magic, decals can also be blended with their target object's material. This is useful for rendering inside Blender without baking, keeping everything completely non-destructive.
Trims on steroids
Trimflow is able to utilize trims that have Head and Tail pieces at their ends with the seamless, tiling part in between. This optional feature greatly enhances the versatility of trims because they are not just cut off suddenly somewhere anymore. Several trim sheets are included and a guide on how to create your own patterns with Head and Tail can be found in the documentation. Conventional trims from your existing library or 3rd party asset packs can be used as well of course, or even adjusted to support the Head and Tail feature.
What's in the box?
Included with the add-on are the Sami Knife (incl. comments in the shader view) and the Shoe examples that are shown here with the used trim sheets and textures. Information on how things work can always be looked up in the online documentation.
We're thrilled to see how you utilize Trimflow – if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas on how to improve the add-on, let us hear about it! Join the Discord server, post in the thread on Blenderartists or send us a mail. These are the fastest and most reliable ways to receive help!
1.1.2 Release Notes:
New experimental features:
· Transfer Data in the Edit Trim Decals panel:
· Turn Trim Decal into Vertex Weights
· Turn Trim Decal into Sculpt Mask
Fixed:
· Creating decals: error if the used material doesn't have a Trim Image node
· Editing decals: using Apply Trim Decal removes the whole decal object when there is actually one other decal left in the stack
· Baking decals: error if the bake target has shape keys
· Baking decals: error if the bake target has an Armature modifier
· Baking decals: error if the bake target is disabled for rendering
· Baking decals: error if Blender's interface language is not set to English
· Resources: inconsistent background color in the TF_Stitches trim sheet
Tweaks and QoL changes:
· Editing decals: Hint when using Auto Tiling without Trim Image node in material
· Baking decals: Baking time displayed with two decimal places