I am always excited when it comes time to announce a new release. And this one is no exception. It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of

Hard Ops 0098 : Californium

As usual Proxe and AR were monumental in this release and I am forever indebted to them for their endless tolerance of me and my madness. This 2.8 era has had us working tirelessly on release after release but in a way it’s the best moment of our developmental era because the avenues of exploration are wide open.

Without further ado lets go over some of the changes!

Bevel Helper

Pressing ctrl + shift + B brings up the bevel helper. This is a helper designed for making bevel management easier.

In the helper you can adjust every bevel present on a model.

As you can see the presets / full properties are also available.

We hope users find it useful in controlling the multiple levels of bevels you are able to create on the fly!

 

Menu / Icon Update

Menus have been updated to be more clear and visible and welcoming to new users.

All options should have icons now.

Redesigned (shift + Q) Pie Menu

The pie menu has been redesigned for support of what comes next.

KitOps Popup Update

The kitops popup can now allow for sort modifiers to be turned off. This is essential for non destructive workflows. Sorting will mess up all the work you have done.

Here you can see sorting making inserting a mess.

Without sorting I am able to continue working non destructively without sorting making the stack turn inside out which can be a nightmare if you have 60+ mods!

KitOps is currently the official insert management system of HardOps and we plan to expand on this immensely in the future.

 

Extended Modifier Support

More modifiers are now supported via modal for usage when modelling procedurally.

Many additional operators and modals have been added for quick addition while modelling. Ctrl + clicking functionality for adding has also been added to make stacking modifiers more fun than ever!

This is our first level of implementation but we plan to add a progression system for predictable procedural workflows assisting with hard surface modelling. Smart apply is useful for moving onward to csharp / cstep type workflows as well.

 

HOPS Helper Redesign (ctrl + ~)

The HOPS helper was recreated with 2.8 in mind. Now the hops helper supports any object and will provide options making your life easier if the properties window is out of sight due to working fullscreen.

An immense amount of work went into the helper and we hope you find the improvements to your liking. There are still a few bugs to iron out and behaviors to refine but this should provide even more functionality to a classic and bring it into the 2.8 era.

 

Grease Pencil Support

In addition to having the helper fully support materials and modifiers for grease pencil we also added a couple of new operators.

In the Q menu the following have been added.

Copy / Move – just makes a copy and moves the object during draw. Comes in handy for making quick variants in a row.

Surface Offset – allows for drawing on the surfaces of objects easier.

Mirror Gizmo – everyone’s favorite mirror tool has gotten support for grease pencil as well. Press alt + X to mirror. (symmetry not supported yet)

Modifier Scroll

When working non-destructively you will need a scroll to show everyone how you started from something simple like a plane.

 

Curve Taper Cancel

If you use Q on a curve you can taper it. But right clicking will now return it to a neutral state in case you don’t want bevel depth.

Collection Fixes

Boolean objects will be put in a collection called “Cutters” similar to boxcutter.

Machine Bevel Fix

Machin3 is also a continued auxiliary source of awesomeness when we least expect it.

BoolScroll / Object Scroll

Boolscroll is back and better than ever. Previously it had compatibility issues that took it out for a few releases.

Object Scroll – allows for cycling of boolean shapes that remain live on a model via boolean modifier object fields.

Cycle Booleans – allows for cycling of each boolean modifier present on a model individually. It also support restacking certain modifiers.

Additive Scroll – allows for replay of boolean history on a model using the modifier stack.

Toggle Modifiers

There are now options to toggle all the modifiers on an object off an on. This is in multiple locations to ease user experience. It can be enjoyable taking an object down to it’s simplest form and make modifications.

Cstep Improvements

We have began to make improvements for the cstep workflow in 2.8 and now have non destructive support.

In order to truly be able to work in non-destructive alot of systems had to be rethought so we plan to further refine this aspect in future releases as well as provide systems to transition into destructive workflows for complete control and finishing.

 

Smart Apply

Smart apply was an idea I had for making it easier to apply models and move on with different workflows and export. Right now it’s simple but we hope to improve it immensely in the future and make it the one stop shop for applying modifiers and converting to mesh within Hard Ops.

If the mesh is csharp: it applies only booleans.

If the mesh is undefined: it converts it to mesh.

Our goal with this release was to free users to explore other workflows outside of Csharp/Ssharp and dissect it for themselves and literally go off the reservation.

Sometimes in Csharp you just wanna apply booleans and with smart apply that is now possible with csharpening.

OnScreen UI Improvements

We intend to unveil a new drawing system down the line for the 2.8 era but in the meantime the drawing has been updated with options to allow users to make text more legible. There has also been an accent added to allow individuality.

 

CSlash Improvements

Cslash has received improvements from boxcutter’s yellow box. It should not only be faster but support non destructive workflows better.

 

Bwidth Modifications

Pressing 1 during bwidth will change autosmooth from 60 to 30 which can be helpful for addressing shading issues. We plan to expand this in the future with a shading subsystem that takes over during all modals to ensure smooth shading all throughout the process.

Bwidth Multiple Bevel Support

To support the nondestructive aims of this release Bwidth has been improved to support multiple bevels at once.

Shift scroll to change through bevel levels if multiple ones exist.

This is our first implementation but we do plan to improve this in the future to be more visually conveying of relevant information.

 

Helper Border Toggle

If you want the helper to have an OK button or the bevel helper which can help it stay on screen there is a toggle in prefs for it.

 

In Closing

We hope that this release of Hard Ops opens new avenues for users to explore. I can’t wait to show how we intend for all this to work in conjunction with Boxcutter. I am sure I missed a few features but I was eager to get this release out before we dove into the next endeavor.

I have been making so many non destructive assets lately that I forget about csharp sometimes but we plan to bring all this together and even make a more expansive add modifier system for users to keep working without UI.

HOPS is back and this time we’re going all out! I can’t wait to see you next time!