Bones getting left behind in mesh transform enter link description hereI have just taken the plunge into bones animation and having all sorts of problems.
I want to animate 3 seperate folds on each side of a sheet, without using a mirror modifier.
The first fold of the white triangle on each side of the sheet is not a problem. However when I try to fold the "half_full_R" bone, the bone "wing_R" gets left behind. Also I am not sure which vertice to assign to the "half_part_R" bone or whether there is any specific parenting or other settings to do to make this work.
I have attached a final render showing the result of the folds.
Any help with this would be appreciated.
Link to blend file below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/avkv9ls51q4x9e5/sheet%20fold%201.blend?dl=0

So what you could do is:

First, to clean a bit, remove the current armature and the object Armature modifier.

Also, delete all the existing vertex groups.

Prepare the right side of the armature, each bone must be the child of another one, the main one is the root bone. Put their head on the paper fold so that it will fold correctly. Give them some logical names fold Wing1_R, etc... Once you're good, select them all and in the header menu select Armature > Symmetrize, it will mirror your bones (as long as they have the R or L suffix).

Parent the paper to the armature With Empty Groups, which means some vertex groups will be created within the object, they will have the name of the bones, but they won't be affected to any bone yet. It's the best way to parent as your object is not organic.

Now select some vertices and in the Vertex Groups list, assign them to the group to which there are supposed to be part of, meaning which have the name of the bone that is supposed to influence them.

Blend file here:


How can I achieve more realism in this given scene? I've been working on this project in Cycles for quite some time now and it's probably my first project I created and rendered in blender (besides creating some simple shapes before but not rendering them). I've been trying to tweak different settings, materials, lighting and use the filmic colors from blenderguru's video to achieve somewhat realistic effect but those renders still look fairly "artificial" and as if someone pulled them from a game, instead of looking photo-realistic. Something just seems "off" in this renders.
I'm running out of ideas on how to make these scenes look more photo-like. I'd be thankful if someone could look at it from a "fresh eye" perspective and hopefully point out what I could've missed or forgot to do while creating them.

Render of the car washing station with a blur and slight colour correction in GIMP

Render of the car washing station without the blur

Render of the car washing station during night, with some lights (emission nodes)

Work on the details and imperfections(cracks,  scratches, etc.).
Add more assets as you can.  I believe there is no car wash that is sitting alone in a parkway. From simple things like debris and trash cans to more complex scenery like cars and humans will make your scene complete.

Try to reduce low-quality textures for the building and try to model it yourself using procedural materials. 90% of realism is focused on lighting, materials, and scaling.

And I don't think StackExchange is a good place for critics and specific requests, try Blender Artists instead.


Script access to tangent and bitangent, per face: how? Suppose you have a mesh; you go into Edit mode,
set Transform Orientation to Normal,
show 3D manipulator widget,
Pivot Point = Active Element,
face select mode, and then you select any one face:
immediately you will see a blue arrow representing the face normal,
and also a red and a green arrow representing the face's tangent and bitangent.

What is the most straightforward way to refer
to said tangent and bitangent vectors from a Python script?
The API documentation confuses me with loops and uv's, yet, clearly,
Blender assigns a tangent and bitangent to each face without hesitation!

You access tangents and bitangents from MeshLoops:

import bpy
me = bpy.context.active_object.data

# tangents have to be pre-calculated
# this will also calculate loop normal
me.calc_tangents()

# loop faces
for face in me.polygons:
    # loop over face loop
    for vert in [me.loops[i] for i in face.loop_indices]:
        tangent = vert.tangent
        normal = vert.normal
        bitangent = vert.bitangent_sign * normal.cross(tangent)

To get tangent and bitangent of some face you need to average tangents and bitangents of every vertex in that face loop.


Trying to export rigged model to FBX. But it keeps spitting out weird errors I'm trying to export a low poly mesh and its rig as an FBX file. But when I hit export it spits out this error:
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\__init__.py", line 634, in execute
    return export_fbx_bin.save(self, context, **keywords)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3198, in save
    ret = save_single(operator, context.scene, depsgraph, filepath, **kwargs_mod)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3094, in save_single
    fbx_objects_elements(root, scene_data)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 2894, in fbx_objects_elements
    fbx_data_mesh_elements(objects, me_obj, scene_data, done_meshes)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 1174, in fbx_data_mesh_elements
    elem_data_single_int32_array(lay_uv, b"UVIndex", (uv2idx[uv_id] for uv_id in _uvtuples_gen(t_luv, t_lvidx)))
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\fbx_utils.py", line 504, in elem_data_single_int32_array
    return _elem_data_single(elem, name, value, "add_int32_array")
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\fbx_utils.py", line 451, in _elem_data_single
    getattr(sub_elem, func_name)(value)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\encode_bin.py", line 161, in add_int32_array
    data = array.array(data_types.ARRAY_INT32, data)
  File "E:\Blender\2.83\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 1174, in <genexpr>
    elem_data_single_int32_array(lay_uv, b"UVIndex", (uv2idx[uv_id] for uv_id in _uvtuples_gen(t_luv, t_lvidx)))
KeyError: ((nan, nan), 43)

location: <unknown location>:-1

I have tried reinstalling Blender

<genexpr>
    elem_data_single_int32_array(lay_uv, b"UVIndex", (uv2idx[uv_id] for uv_id in _uvtuples_gen(t_luv, t_lvidx)))
KeyError: ((nan, nan), 43)

The first (bottom) error suggests there are errors in the UV map. Try recreating the UV map. The FBX export module requires a valid UV unwrapping for all vertices in the model. Go into the UV Unwrap tab and re-unwrap your model(s).


is it possible to get this texture in cycles? hello, im newish to blender and want to this texture for something very similar but dont know how. Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

I did what christopher did but got a different result and dont know why.

So I spent a good amount of time studying the original image by Alec Tear. From what I've gathered from his website and behance projects he uses Illustrator to "handshade" his lettering to get this metallic grainy texture effect. He really knows how to draw light flowing on curved surfaces and I think this is key to get this effect : understanding light.
I tried multiple approaches to attempt to recreate the effect with shaders but in the end this is what worked best for me : a semi-rough semi-metallic shader with grain and lots of lights and good positioning. There is probably a better way, but I'm no blender pro. I also added some bloom.

This is what the final render looks like (Eevee).

In my render the darks aren't as dark, the lights not as light because I don't really master lighting and shaders yet. I wasn't able to recreate the light flowing along the edges because I'm pretty sure the shading in the original image is handmade and not generated.
In Alec Tear's work the lighting isn't as real as you would expect, and I think that's what gives it its charm, attractiveness and retro feel.
Hope this helps. I've learned a lot doing this.


'Follow Active Quads" not working? I need to texture the mesh trying to add a UV map to it first. Clicking "Follow active Quads" has no effect whatsoever in the UV/image editor. Using Blender v2.71 and cannot figure out the problem here I tried many times and made new files but nothing is giving a response in the UV editor.
 I did everything exactly as in this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVh2KG01Qtk

EDIT

Just tried again, similar results. I opened a new file, deleted the cube, added a plane, added a nurbs curve added array modifier and curve modifier to plane, applied modifiers, this time resulting in a white plane after selecting follow active quads:

EDIT

If you are using an array modifier the mesh of your object is sill only one plane that is repeated along a curve. The follow active quads will not work until you apply the modifier: only then your mesh will be a sereis of connected planes.

Once you do that then you can do proper unwrapping.

First select just one face.

Select then all of the faces (press A).

You'll see that the face you had selected first is marked as active (with a dotted pattern)

Then do unwrap (U) Follow Active Quads.


Roughness broken in Eevee? I can't get comparable results between Eevee and Substance. The texture maps always look way too shiny.

I've used the Principled Shader quite a bit and know all its nuances (non-color data for the channels that need it, ect.)

Here are some screenshots of my issue. I'd love to know why I can't get this to work. Any help here would be much appreciated! Thanks.

For anyone else that comes across this, I don't think PNGs are the culprit. Instead, if you change the interpolation from Linear (default) to Closest, it should look about as close as it can to Cycles.


I've created extruded objects and they don't seem to behave correctly I've just started picking up blender for some projects at work, and am hitting a stumbling block. I'm building a fairly mechanical object and as such have been creating it in layers, using extrusions from paths. All this seems to have worked fine however when I'm now trying to use a boolean to "cut" holes into them, it leaves open holes into the object. Attached are some images to try and illustrate what I mean.

My overall Object/project
Here you can see me selecting my boolean modifier
Here we have the result. Weirdly, it seems to add it
So I go ahead and delete the extra faces, and I've got holes aplenty

You can see on the front of the first image a boolean that I used to cut away a cruve from a block that worked fine, so I'm stumped.

I wonder if it has something to do with my objects being blue rather than grey, but I don't know if this even means anything.

Okay, I managed to figure it out. Basically all the faces were facing the wrong way on these extruded objects. So, opening them in edit mode, selecting all the faces then hitting Ctrl-N cleared it up, and the booleans are now working properly!


Is it possible to produce a model for this shadow-play character? From all the tutorial videos I have seen so far, we will need at least a front view and a side view to properly model a character. For example, like shown in this tutorial (please fast forward to 12:43ish):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QT1GNMevfc

What I want to achieve is:

Model a character that is from a traditional Chinese shadow-play. A character like this one shown below:

Technically, those models are almost two-dimensional. If I model those shadow-play characters in 2D, it will not be possible to have this kind of turning effect (please refer to the following video, please freeze it at exactly 0:33).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcYdgudn83M

I am thinking:

is it possible to model those shadow-play characters as if they are made of thick papers, e.g. almost 2D but there is a bit thickness in them. Then this turning effect can be achieved.

Please feel free to suggest otherwise.

Create the model flat (so as a 2D model), then apply the Solidify Modifier to give it thickness. That'll make it easy to have a uniform thickness without having to extrude all surfaces manually.


Proportional Editing and Laptop Problem I am using blender 2.7 and the laptop mandates the "Emulated Numpad." Upon attempting to use "Proportional Editing" in a "Bound" within the UV Editor while using projection process, I cannot use "Proportional Editing" while the attempt to grab with G. The attempt simply moves the entire "Bound." The only way I have been able to even move a vertex of the bound is to disable proportional editing. Any ideas? I have tried every imaginable hotkey combination.

Proportional editing effects all items within a sphere of influence. If the sphere is very large then everything appears to move the same amount.

The two standard methods of adjusting this size are mouse scroll wheel and page up/page down. For a laptop there is also a trackpad pan setup, I believe apple trackpads do panning with a two finger swipe.

If you still have trouble you can modify this shortcut yourself, you can find it by going to the user preferences->Input, down the bottom of the list there is a group called 'Transform Modal Map' expand that and you will find Increase Proportional Influence and Decrease Proportional Influence for both keyboard and mouse, you can change these to any key combination that works for you.


Typing animation in 2.81 I have looked everywhere around the internet and for some reason for something as simple as this, I have not found a satisfactory answer.

So my question is simple; how do I make text appear like someone is typing it?

I tried transparency with color ramps but the keyframes don't appear on the timeline or dope sheet so I instantly gave up on that.

There was a typewriter addon or something but it's outdated, and I'm using Blender 2.81, Eevee.

The build modifier would work if it didn't start building at the end of the sentence. Made me consider looking for fonts that were reversed.

Would help me greatly if anyone could give me a solution. Thanks.

Update: Have tried answers below, the typewriter addon works perfectly but nothing appears in the render, and the animation nodes crash Blender mid-render. Nothing still works.

If anyone is still looking for a simple way to do this without going full animation nodes, I've updated the typewriter addon and fixed the invisible text when render bug. Currently tested and working on 2.83.


How to add audio to Blender 2D animation? All the tutorials I have seen for adding audio to a 2D animation in Blender involved using the video editor. Is there any way where you can just directly import audio to your animation?

In the top row you should have

2D Animation | 2D Full Canvas | Compositing | Rendering | +

Click the "+" in the sub-menu of Video Editing click Video Editing.
In the Video Editing tab navigate to your sound file.
Drag and drop the sound file anywhere into the sequencer.

The sound file is directly in your animation.

Go back to the 2D Animation tab and play your animation to see.


instances of the same object : any obvious way to "mark" them as such in the outliner? I use Blender 2.8 and I know how to create several instances of the same object (alt+D).
But, once created, all these instances are just listed as single objects in the outliner and need to be selected in edit mode to become "obvious".

Is there another way to know this without selecting any of them in the viewport ?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Since there is still no obvious way to Mark Instances & having to manually identify them is a bit messy. Maybe it would be good for future updates to consider adding this somehow.
My suggestion. Look at the way Modo 3d from the Foundry does this. It's simple and effective.
The Instance in the Item List (Outliner), is coloured pale pink and has it's name shown in italics. However, if you don't have the outliner visible, you still need a way to discern the Instances.
In the 3d Viewport of Modo, the Instances are shown as wireframes of the same pink shade when unselected. When they are selected, they conforms to normal object shading, the same as the source object.


Is there a dynamesh feature (to sculpt) avaivable like in zbrush? In zbrush there is a feature called dynamesh, it recalculates the mesh based on your model. So that you can sculpt with it, just like clay.

Is there a similar tool/function in blender?

There is a different functionality (Dyntopo) but not quite like Dynamesh though.

Dynamesh will provide a nice quad topology, while Dyntopo will leave a nasty triangulated topology with many vertices having more than 4 edges - it will create triangle fans.

Triangle fans are big problem for Blender sculpting, because the smooth brush cannot smooth them perfectly (also in Zbrush there is an alternate smoothing method that can do that).

Dynamesh can also perform volumetric (and non-manifold) booleans on sculpted mesh. There isn't such functionality in Blender.


Material not showing in material mode Blender cycles material is suddenly not showing in material mode.  but renders fine and is fine in rendered mode.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vcaq7rfndrk5ncd/priest_rigissues.blend?dl=0

I tried to look up the question elsewhere and only found it in peopel using blender internal or game engine.  thank you.

You need to set the maximum draw type for the character to be 'Textured', currently it is being limited to 'Solid'


How do I temporaily turn off a driver? I need to turn of 1 driver for testing as more than one driver affects the same shape key. There's a shape key getting a 1 value when it is suppose to be 0 in rest pose mode so I need to debug.

I try the clicking on the eye, only hides the graph details.
I try to click on the speaker, nothing changes.
I try >Toggle >Mute, nothing changes.

All I can do is turn disable the shape key but it doesn't help my situation.

The speaker icon in the Driver list allows the driver to be muted.

When the driver is enabled (unmuted) it will affect the property as normal. When it is disabled (muted) it will no longer execute.

When muted it is possible to adjust the driven value manually. Keying into the driven field will override the scripted expression of the driver (eg, entering '0.45' will change the Scripted Expression to 0.45) - losing the old driver expression. However, in the case of shape keys you can drag left and right on the Value property to adjust its value and, providing the driver is 'muted', the new value will take effect.

An alternative option is to use keyframes to adjust the value - since if the driver is muted the property will revert to the value of the f-curve. Note, however, that the f-curve value will only be re-applied on change of frame or if you adjust the f-curve directly.

To achieve this, simply move the mouse over the Value and press I to insert the keyframe; the colour of the property should change to yellow to indicate the keyframe.

You can now adjust the keyed value via the Graph Editor window. Select the Value channel (it should be represented by a horizontal line since it's a constant), press G to Grab, and move it up and down to adjust the value. With the driver enabled the change in the graph editor should not affect the shape key. With the driver disabled, the graph editor value should affect the shape key.


Can Grease Pencil 2.8 support transparent background I try to export grease pencil 2.8 animation by using FFmpeg Video with Quicktime Container, and try out all Video Codec. But still doesnt work. (I already set Render Property-Film with Transparent). Can someone help?

I solve the problem by using OT Animation Video Codec, then import to Photoshop with transparent background. But there is still another problem, I have set the display and hide some fields in grease pencil, but the video cannot display properly.


My camera is lost in my workspace and I cant find it I have some how lost my blender model, I know its thwart because I press Numpad+0 and my camera setup shows my model but when I return to the regular camera all i see is the grid lines. I have tried Shift+C and it does nothing

Select your camera in the outliner then put your mouse inside any 3d view and press Numpad . (period key on the number keypad).


How to obtain selected UV pairs on same edge in Python? I have a problem about Python scripting in Blender.
I want to get selected UV pairs on same edge and write below code.

obj = context.active_object
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()
sel_faces = [f for f in bm.faces if f.select]

# get selected UV lists in UV/Image Editor
cand_loops = []
for f in sel_faces:
    for l in f.loops:
        if l[uv_layer].select:
            cand_loops.append(l)

# get UV pairs which two UVs on the edge are selected in UV/Image Editor
selected_uv_pairs = []
for l in cand_loops:
    le = l.edge
    # two UVs are selected (This if-statement **DOES NOT** work correctly)
    if le.link_loops[0][uv_layer].select and le.link_loops[1][uv_layer].select:
        selected_uv_pairs.append(le)

But above code does not work correctly.
Please tell me the idea to obtain selected UV pairs on same edge.

Thanks

You're almost there. I've taken the liberty to remove the construction of unnecessary lists, and used generators in their place.

The most important change is indeed in that if statement. Instead of using the link_loops list (which can be of arbitrary length), it's better to only use link_loop_next. Since you loop over all selected edges anyway, it's enough to look at the 'next' edge only.

import bpy, bmesh

obj = bpy.context.active_object
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()
sel_faces = (f for f in bm.faces if f.select)

def find_loops():
    """Generator, yields loops of selected mesh faces"""

    for f in sel_faces:
        for l in f.loops:
            yield l

def find_selected_loops():
    """Generator, yields loops that are selected in UV editor"""

    for l in find_loops():
        if l[uv_layer].select and l.link_loop_next[uv_layer].select:
            yield l

# Show the coordinates of selected loops. Note that loops are printed
# twice, once for the (A -> B) edge, and once for the (B -> A) edge.
print()
for l in find_selected_loops():
    print(l.vert.co, ' -> ', l.link_loop_next.vert.co)

If you want to remove the distinction between (A -> B) and (B -> A) loops, you could extend the find_selected_loops() generator so that it stores the tuples (l.vert, l.link_loop_next.vert) in a set, and only yield those edges whose (l.link_loop_next.vert, l.vert) are not in that set.


Making a Trypophobia-triggering image In Blender Trypophobia is an aversion to the sight of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps

Is there an easy way, such as a modifier, to make a "trypophobic" mesh?

Tissue addon

Another possibilty would be to use the Tissue add-on.
You basically define a "component", in this case a little hole with a protruberance (the one outlined in orange) and spread it on the faces of a base mesh (suzanne, outllined in light orange).

Run the Tessellate option with the objects selected in this order, enable the merging option and then run the subsurf modifier on the result to smooth the "component".

The cool thing is that you can use whatever shape as input component.


How to apply compositing after stopped rendering? It's often the case that it's not known how many samples are needed to render a picture. So I usually set a higher value and when the result already suits me I stop rendering. But if you applied compositing to picture, it doesn't apply when you stop rendering. So how do so that compositing apply when I want to stop rendering before it reached max samples?

You can save the result of progressive rendering as an image file (exr for maximum information) then do the compositing in an external .blend-file.
See also: What advantages in using progressive rendering?


Texture paint without affecting other object with same texture/material i edit my post maybe will better understand it now :)

Edit: so i create a gun created from many mesh,
so i want to paint lets say CUBE A but result is show in CUBE B,C,etc
i use same material(i named it BLACK METAL) for each mesh

so i want to know how to paint only CUBE A without making new image file or new material

so i dont want to create new material (black steel barrel,black steel gun body,etc) for every mesh i think i'ts unproductive

GIF info:look i select CUBE A then i select CUBE C then B then i try texture paint on CUBE A but it show on CUBE B too then i try again to paint CUBE A then CUBE C and B get painted too

if still not clear sorry not good explainer :(

Select 'Face Selection Masking' from the icon on the view header just to the left of the layer dialogue and that will limit by selection in the Texture Paint mode. You can make use of Vertex Groups here to go back and forth with selections, or you can use the 'L' key to select linked mesh while still in texture paint mode.

edit: If the image area falls under the same as another part, then the shared pixels will show no matter what. Your uv map has to give separate space for all mesh parts similar to Smart Unwrap in order to keep from painting two areas at once in the mapping.


Can We Make Blender's Island Packing More Space-Efficient When Unwrapping? Here is the object I am working on. I have finished marking seams so I want to proceed to texturing, but this is the result when unwrapping:

That's quite a bit of empty space! It seems like blender draws an invisible box around each island and sorts them that way, but this leads to large areas of empty space, especially when dealing with complex islands. Is there any way to automatically pack them closer together without lots of manual placement afterwards?

The "UVPackmaster" addon do what you asked for. It's good for automatic optimization of the shells in the UV space.
Here is the link: https://gumroad.com/l/uvpackmaster


Fluid simulation stays in its own space? I am trying to make a fluid simulation in a very simple dam. I have read tons of documentation, videos and forum posts however I am not able to resolve my problem perhaps because I don't know exactly what to call this phenomenon.

As you can see the fluid is not falling down and is instead in some sort of cube that is non existent. I have messed with tons of settings but I just have no idea what is causing this.
I did use a sphere at first where the same thing happened but after a while the fluid did fall down. However it fell through the effector collision despite having a thickness. That's another problem that might or might not get resolved after this gets resolved.
Is this issue related to the domain? Some folks on reddit already told me to apply transformations to the domain and reset its Origin to Geometry. However both of those didn't do anything.

The domain

ISSUE - your Effector object uses under Settings > Surface Thickness 10.
It make the distance from liquid.
SOLUTION - reset to default value (with right click) or type zero (or something smaller).

What can be enhanced

Your Domain is very large = wasted divisions for nothing, and long calculation time
Effector topology necessarely complicated = heavier calculation
"Tube" from one container to another container very thin = you will have to increase divisions much higher to get enough details to let flow liquid through this thin part if you imagine grid divisions than will be used in this part.
Inflow is very small = take a lot of time to fill container before liquid starts flow into another container
Cache set only up to 250 frames = it is not enough frames to get result

Recommendations

Create Effector object with clean topology, one sided
Let recalculate Normals Shift+N inside (you can re-check with Face Orientation overlay

Use Solidify modifier if needed to protect from leaking liquid (Solidify has to be before Fluid modifier) or set some low value for Surface Thickness or set some sub-step, but this increase calculation time
Scale Domain as small as possible (just reminder - number of divisions set for domain is represented by small cube in a corner and means how many times is divided the longest edge of domain)

Inflow make bigger or increase Initial Velocity

Before you are not sure about elementary functionality disable Meshing feature that consume computation time as well (to see if liquid goes in right directions, fills what is needed to be filled in given time, and is not leaking in any part ... the coloured particles are more than enough in Replay mode).

What bothers me is cache that should refresh any time some parametr is changed, but that is not happening. What I do is to change divisions about a step back and forth.


How do I make a model resemble one with low poly count? I want to make a model look like a low poly count, very detail lacking figure such as like this:

Very much resembling mid to late nineties 3-D polygonal model formats that were run in games on consoles like PS1, N64.

If you could have a look and entail, what steps should I take to design a model similar to those?

Or like this, for a better overview:

It would seem you want to create low-poly art. The best way to do this is to actually model these objects to achieve this look and quality and then texture them.

No amount of modifiers or tricks will get the same unique look. Also using modifiers can make animating, texturing or rigging very difficult and also destroy your mesh topology something that is key in lowpoly style characters/objects.

The Decimate modifier might be of some help though, it can reduce mesh geometry but it is not very flexible and generally unpredictable in how it does this when used on complex objects.

Also as bummzack points out below, alot of the detail say you see on low-poly models is mostly from the texture(s).


Create videos with loops and breaks I would like to create a video that will be used in place of a usual powerpoint presentation. For this I need that the video automatically stops a some predefined points or that some regions are looped until I press "play" on the player.
With the DVD format this can be done in a very contrived way (correct me if I'm wrong).
Is there a way to produce those videos with Blender? Are there other formats that support these features?

Thank you

No, Blender's VSE can only output a single linear video file. Any stop points, or looped sections would need to be provided during playback with the whatever player or app is consuming the video file.


VSE: How to crop specific segment of a video? I'm dealing with a 1080p workspace and 1080p video footage.
I need a segment where I crop the segment of a specific strip so its just of the girl in the picture below.

So going from picture one...

...To Picture 2 (assume the background is transparent).

How do I do this in the VSE for a video? Using 'crop' in the strip menue scales the image rather than cuts parts out of it. And the transform effect strip doesn't have any options other than zoom in (I don't want to zoom in...I want to crop the video and display it in the 1080p workspace like the 2nd image is, then I'd put other images to the side of it etc).

To Date I've been placing colour strips overtop to make it cropped the way I want (would be 2 white strips in this case if I did id that way), but this is alot of micromanagement when I need to do alot of this stuff in 1 frame.

The VSE_Transform_Tools addon does just what you're looking for.

The in-house method is to enable "Image Offset" and adjust the values in the "Image Crop" section, then reposition the cropped image using the values in the image offset area:


Array Modifier - Equal space between all duplicates (Loops) I know this has been asked already, but the answers, despite giving a certain degree of improvement give no satisfying solution for those who want extreme accuracy.

When using the array modifier for a loop/circuit as the path, is there any way to have ALL spaces (Including the one between first and last duplicate) to be the same distance apart, so that there isn't the typical inaccurately spaced gap/distance that occurs between the first and last duplicate?

For example if I was using a plain circle as a path, couldn't I click a theoretical option for example, lets call it "Consistent Spacing" that would divide into equally spaced sections as I increase the duplicate count, so if I have 3 pieces the path would be divided into 3 and the duplicates placed appropriately?

The only reason this matters so much is because of some very irregular paths that I need to have spaced accurately. One easier example would be accurately spaced tank tracks.

Perhaps there is an easier way, or I'm underestimating/getting something wrong. If manual math is the only solution, are there any direct resources for this?

Thank you in advance.

Consider an [Array Modifier] followed by a [Curve modifier]

In the above image you see some distortion of angles between faces.
Consider a script which calculates [x constant offset] of the array modifier.  Note the warning.

Consider a [spline constraint ] where each track has a one-to-one correspondence with a single bone.


How can I execute a function from a separate script? I have two objects and two python scripts: each object has a python script. Both python scripts contain a basic function that is different from the other script's function. This is all simple. However, since I have the two functions in separate python scripts, I cannot execute them as I do not know how to do so.

I have tried using the messaging mechanic from the Game Engine itself, but that is too slow, as it takes at least one tick. I would like a faster way, if possible.

How can I do this?

You can just import the second file from the first and then call it's functions.

Imagine you have two scripts, foo and bar, stored in foo.py and bar.py, respectively; the script bar has a function which you want to call from the script foo. All you need to dois import bar at the start of foo and then call it's function, as in this example:

#File bar.py
def test():
    print("Hello, World!")

#File foo.py
import bar

bar.test() #Outputs "Hello, World!" to the console


Model weirdly stretches and deforms after rigging I have a rigging problem. Whenever I rotate the bones after finished rigging, the weird model errors start appearing. Please help me out or link me to the tutorial that would teach me how to fix it. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Check if the face orientation is right. Press Alt + V and check Face Orientation.
The outer surface should be blue. It could also be a scaling problem. Your model and rig should have the scale value 1.000. To do this press Ctrl + A when object is selected and click on Scale.


Edge Marking not rendering Posted this on another forum already, but at this point I'm trying to get as much help as possible. I've also already gone through a handful of other forums trying to fix freestyle edge rendering since it will not show up at all. I'm trying to recreate the edge effects in the photo on the right to get my model even more accurate.

I think your problem is in Freestyle's logic of inclusion and exclusion.

In any one Line Set, the relation between 'Select By' Methods is logical AND.

Here's an example cube with extrusions:

The inner cube's edges are marked Freestyle. The extrusions' outer faces are marked Freestyle.

If you 'Select By' Edge Type, (Inclusive, OR, Marked Edges) you get this:

If you 'Select By' Face Mark (Inclusive, One Face) you get this:

So far, so good.. but if you combine both 'Select By' criteria in the same Line Set, you get this:

.. because there are no edges that satisfy both criteria.

So the rule of thumb, to keep life simple, unless you need to make peculiar selections, is to restrict yourself to one 'Select By' method plus 'Visibility' per Line Set. If you need to select by two different methods, it will usually be a good idea to put them in different Line Sets:


How do I stop my tablet eraser from entering a grease pancil sketch session? Whenever I use the eraser on my tablet pen e.g. in sculpt mode, it enters a sketch session and erases my grease pencil work.

There are several options, depending on what you end up doing more often.

Option 1 - Disable the eraser keymapping:
* Pros: If you're doing a lot of sculpting and using the eraser when doing that, and using the Grease Pencil eraser less in comparison, then this will be a good option.
* Cons: You lose the ability to use the eraser to quickly erase GP strokes, and this is something you'll either have to save to your userprefs (or you're going to have to set it again on each session)

Option 2 - Lock the GP layers:
* Pros: If you don't want the layers to be modified accidentally, just lock them. Then the eraser won't do anything to them.
* Cons: It also means though that you can't easily draw quick new strokes on those layers anymore though. You'll have to remember to go in and unlock some layers to continue.


Where is the Displacement node in Blender? I know how to achieve displacement in Blender, but lately I read Blender documentation and found this page: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/materials/displacement.html.

My question: Is there anything like "Displacement" node? If so, where is it? - cause there is no example or tutorial of using it beside this documentation page. If there is no such thing why it is described on official documentation pages?

The Displacement node is an upcoming feature - this is an example of the documentation being ahead of the official Blender release.

You’ll note that in the example image from the documentation the Material Output Displacement socket is a Vector type (it’s blue). At all ‘current’ releases of Blender the Displacement socket is a Scalar value (grey) and would act as displacement along the surface normal.

The Displacement node effectively allows you to generate the Vector displacement from a Scalar value to effectively mimic the displacement available at 2.79 of Blender. The new Vector displacement will be an exciting new feature (for me, at least) and should hopefully be a point where the experimental ‘true’ displacement becomes standard supported functionality (rather than ‘experimental’ and subject to change - as it has here!).


animation not working I followed this tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuUWxUitJos
 and I made two poses and locked those pose and played the animation but I couldnot see the animation.

On your Timeline, you've enabled Scaling in the Active Keying Set Used to Create/Delete Keyframe field, so whatever you do with your bones, except scaling, it won't be recorded. So choose LocRotScale, or even disable this option and use i to insert keyframes manually.


How can I use pencil style strokes in frestyle? How do I render in pencil strokes like in Freestyle? I have Img 1 and I want it to render like Img 2. Here is another image.

Line Style Texture

That effect is achieved by overlaying a texture to the freestyle stroke.
Since 2.71 version of Blender, there is an option that let you easily control this aspect of the rendering whitout relying on composting. You can find further information in the Blender 2.71: Freestyle NPR Rendering release notes page.

Basically you should go to the Render Layer tab and enable the Use Texture option in the Freestyle Line Style

Then go to the Texture tab and edit the relative Linestyle Texture.

A better example is provided in the notes themselves: you can dowload it here. In this case you'll see an example of usage of a charcoal texture that led to results very similar to the ones you mentioned:


How to animate the creation of a straight line? Is there a simpler way to animate a straight line being created with out the huge overheads of thousands of polygons of dupli-objects in a particle system? Something like the con-trails of a jet plane. I'm exploring how to animate the creation of geometric solids in 3D space. I tried animating the extrusion of a single vertex but I don't think that can be done (is that right?).

I don't have much time here but I think I can help. First make your line, I'm guessing a rectangular prism type shape. You can animate the scaling of it in one direction to show it growing, just make sure you set the origin to the side you don't want to move. (Select the face you want to stay put, then Shift-S and set cursor to selected, then go to object mode and set the origin to the cursor.

I would give a video for reference or something but I'm still figuring this site out, hopefully that was clear enough.


How to check in a "for" cycle if an object is linked (User I would like to bypass the linked objects in a "for" loop, but I wouldn't know what condition to use.
I'd write something like this:

for o in bpy.context.scene:
    if o is ###"single user":
        print(o.name)

Linked object example:

Object.data.users returns the number of data-block users. Proof using the Console:

>>> for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects:
...     print ("Object name:", ob.name, "- Users:", ob.data.users)

Object name: Cube - Users: 1
Object name: Light - Users: 1
Object name: Camera - Users: 1


Using dynamic paint images for displacement I have been having a lot of trouble getting this to work, and I'm hoping someone might be able to help me.

I have a dynamic paint canvas (ground) on which I want to animate the tracks of a vehicle moving across it (animated).

Both ground and vehicle are rigid bodies. I cannot use Vertex displacement, as the required vert density is too high to manage (the ground plane is large).

So I'm baking an image sequence, Displace type as shown here:

I have to use the depth type of image, as using a displace type only gives a 100% grey image. Using Depth I get small white paint marks where the tracks are touching the ground plane.

So I think I have a usable image, but I cannot get it to actually do anything. Even when using a single image, I cannot get any visible tracks on the ground. I've tried plugging the image into the displacement material output, I've tried adding it as a texture in a new displacement modifier, and I have even tried to use it as a Bump map. In all cases I've tried to multiply and/or invert the image, but nothing is visible at all.

Any suggestions as to how I actually get the below baked depth image or sequence of images to give some visible displacement? I know it just looks black, but there are actually very faint white marks on it... hope that makes sense.

Zoom in if needed to see the marks.

This is an "answer" only because i wanted to attach an image.  To ask a basic question, have you tried manually editing your depth image so the contrast is more pronounced?  A quick and dirty version of that is below.  I am guessing you are not going to see noticeable results from many of the methods you describe if the color differences are too subtle.

If that fixes the problem, then I guess there are several ways you might increase the contrast in your images, some within blender and some external.  It sort of depends on how you're using it, for example if you're using a bump map you might try a brightness/contrast node.


"Internal error setting the array" during FBX export I am trying to export a 3D model from blender 2.81 to an FBX file.  After clicking 'Export FBX', I receive the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\_init_.py", line 634, in execute
    return export_fbx_bin.save(self, context, **keywords)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3198, in save
    ret = save_single(operator, context.scene, depsgraph, filepath, **kwargs_mod)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3094, in save_single
    fbx_objects_elements(root, scene_data)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 2894, in fbx_objects_elements
    fbx_data_mesh_elements(objects, me_obj, scene_data, done_meshes)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 1163, in fbx_data_mesh_elements
    uvlayer.data.foreach_get("uv", t_luv)
RuntimeError: internal error setting the array

location: <unknown location>:-1

This is a .blend file I got from someone else.  The only change  made was to separate part of one of the meshes into its own mesh.  Initially, it exported to FBX with no problem.  When I went back and separated another mesh, saved, and tried to export to FBX, it started giving me this error.

I'm new to 3D modeling and blender, I have no idea what any of this code stuff means.  I've tried googling this error and I'm seeing a lot of "nevermind, fixed it" type responses without explaining what they did to fix it.  Thanks in advance!

The only advice that I can give is to make sure everything is UV unwrapped.  If you need to flip normals on a surface you likely need to unwrap again.


How to see bundles and back projecting points of different colors? According to the wiki:

  Bundles makes sense after solving the movie clip, and it works in the following way: the solved position of each track gets projected
  back to the movie clip and displayed as a small point. The color of
  the point depends on the distance between the projected coordinate and
  the original coordinate: if they are close enough, the point is green,
  otherwise it'll be red. This helps to find tracks which weren't solved
  nicely and need to be tweaked.

I am solving the scene and see nothing similar to what's described:

Points are displayed not as points, but as squares, blue means before in time, red means after in time. Yellow or white means selected point.

Where is something green?

Those red and green colored points are available only after you have successfully solved the scene.
To make them visible, enable the overlay in clip display > Marker Display > 3D markers

(for 2.79  enable 3D Markers on the Marker Display Tab.)

The dots show the difference between the tracker and where blender is actually laying the points in 3D space. It is a visual reference to help you identify problems and further refine your track to get a better camera solve. The colors reflect to the "reprojection error" If the rerpojected points are close to the original tracker they will show green,

Otherwise they will be red. Notice how the dots are away from where the tracker is.

Sometimes you can make the reprojected points fall closer to the original trackers by moving the optical center on the camera presets .

But if your reprojection errors are too high you might be dealing with errors on the focal lenght, the optical center or the radial distortion coefficients. So solve the scene again using those options in the refine section.
For more info on the last step see:
How to determine lens undistortion values for motion tracking?


AttributeError: 'SCA_PythonController' object has no attribute 'getOwner' I'm using v2.69 and I get this error in my terminal:

  AttributeError: 'SCA_PythonController' object has no attribute 'getOwner'

I'm using Linux.

The error in the line 21. Is the problem in my code or the version?

from GameLogic import *
import GameLogic as GameLogic
#START THIS SETUP ONE TIME AS A SERVER AND ONE TIME AS A CLIENT

#BEVORE YOU START THIS SETUP AS A CLIENT REPLACE THE * IN THE
#LINE BELOW WITH THE SERVER IP
#(FOR EXAMPLE: GameLogic.IP = "192.123.100.1")

GameLogic.IP = "192.168.1.1"

#THE CODE BELOW SETS UP IF YOU PLAY THE CLIENT OR THE SERVER
#TO START THE SERVER PRESS F1 TO START THE CLIENT F2

cont = GameLogic.getCurrentController()
obj = cont.getOwner()
scene = getCurrentScene()
Server = cont.getSensor("F1")
Client = cont.getSensor("F2")

if Server.isPositive():
    Server = scene.getObjectList()["OBServer"]
    Server.Activ = 1
if Client.isPositive():
    Client = scene.getObjectList()["OBClient"]
    Client.Activ = 1

This is Python code written for BGE 2.49 and earlier.

You need to convert it to BGE 2.5+. This includes API changes and upgrade to Python 3.0.

To make it short:

.getOwner()      -> .owner
.getSensor("F1") -> .sensors["F1"]
.getObjectList() -> .objects
["OBServer"]     -> ["Server"]
Server.Activ     -> Server["Activ"]

It looks like this is just a fragment of more logic.


Unable to link 2 nodes to mixshader at once (python) Somehow this code is unable to bind two nodes(Emission and BsdfTransparent) to mixshader input at once. I'm able to do it in the node selector view and get the result i want. Anyone know whats wrong ?

### create nodes
emission_ = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeEmission')
output = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeOutputMaterial')
tex_coord = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexCoord')
image_texture = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexImage')
#for adding alpha channel to shaders
mix = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeMixShader')
trans = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeBsdfTransparent')

### linking nodes
genMat.node_tree.links.new(tex_coord.outputs['Generated'],image_texture.inputs['Vector'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'],emission_.inputs['Color'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Alpha'],mix.inputs['Fac'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(emission_.outputs['Emission'],mix.inputs['Shader'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(mix.outputs['Shader'],output.inputs['Surface'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(trans.outputs['BSDF'],mix.inputs['Shader'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'],emission_.inputs['Color'])

When a node has two inputs with the same name, for instance 2 color inputs, then you should pass the index instead of the input name.

# both inputs are called 'Color', so it's not enough
links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'], emission_.inputs[0])
links.new(image_texture_2.outputs['Color'], emission_.inputs[1])

The shader mix node has 3 inputs, two are called 'Shader'. You'll need to use indices to distinguish each.

# The mix.inputs[0] is the factor, indexing starts at zero
links.new(emission_.outputs['Emission'], mix.inputs[1])   # shader 1
links.new(trans.outputs['BSDF'], mix.inputs[2])           # shader 2


Set GPU using python script no longer working We have our own render queue manager at work, and i use a python script to set the compute device of each worker to GPU.
However, with 2.79 the script no longer works.

Here is the script i use:

import bpy
bpy.context.user_preferences.system.compute_device_type = 'CUDA'
bpy.context.user_preferences.system.compute_device = 'CUDA_MULTI_2'

Pretty simple right?
But in 2.79 i get the following error:

AttributeError: 'UserPerferencesSystem' object has no attribute 'compute_device_type'

Anyone knows what changed in 2.79 that causes this error?

Changes have been made in the Blender API.
You can retrieve 'compute_device_type' and 'devices' via the cycles addon preferences

prefs = bpy.context.user_preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
print(prefs.compute_device_type)

for d in prefs.devices:
    print(d.name)


How to create a UV layout image? I want to export my texture and i want to display on it also the UV layout
(Like on this image ) :

How can i do that ? I can do this in blender or this can be done only in an image editor software ?

You can export the UV map

and then overlay it onto the image texture in an image editor


HDR problem while viewing the camera This happens only when I look from the Camera view while using a HDR.


Why does the material show black in preview? I created a scene and imported an fbx object, but the material shows as black. I  expected the materials not to be imported correctly, so I tried to add again the right png diffuse texture, but for some reason it still shows as black even in the material preview, which I don't think is normal.

Here are the relevant files:

.blend file

fbx and textures

The material shows up as black in render because it has the Reflectivity factor set to 1.000, which means it reflects the world (which is set to very dark color) in 100%.

Try to decrease the Reflectivity of the material.

The object displays no textures, because the file has no packed files (image textures) within. Add your own texture using a Texture panel.


Blender 2.91.0 Broken Material in Material Mode and Render Mode? thanks for checking in.
So I was making this in Blender 2.91.0
But when I go to Material Mode, it becomes like this:
If I rotate the camera while in Material Mode, it becomes this, the background leak into the model or something:
The material is the default material. I made a new one but it's still the same. Changing the properties don't do anything. And this is how it looks like in Render Mode:
And the render result:
I'm using AMD Radeon RX 570 for VGA with driver version 20.12.1, does that mean anything?
I haven't use Blender for texturing since I got this computer, so I don't know when was the last time it worked. Before I changed computer though, it work just fine.
I've tried reinstalling Blender, redownloading, repairing, nothing fix it.
Anyone know what's wrong?
Thank you.
u.u

The problem is the VGA driver.
I rolled back to version 20.11.1 and it worked.
I downloaded here:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/previous-drivers/graphics/radeon-500-series/radeon-rx-500-series/radeon-rx-570


How to increase/even polygon count on stretched areas When I make a humanoid head shape, and then I try to make two horns come out of it, polygons are stretched and they create bad shapes. My question is simple:

How do I make so that I increase the polygon count in the stretched horns to the number of polygons that I have in the head-shape?

I am asking this because essentially it happens to me a lot when I try to make a nose, or ears, or anything else, the low poly count makes it difficult to work with and I can't mould properly and certain parts cease to be malleable.

I don't want to use subdivision as it affects everything. I just want to make my 'poly count' on the stretched parts even to the rest of the mesh/shape.

Here is a video for reference (watch only from minute 12:25 to 12:40):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ixOZMDOhc

Enable Dyntopo (dynamic topology) in your brush options:

This will locally adapt the mesh detail when you touch the area with your brush.

Note: this will likely break some kind of object data (vertex groups, shape keys, UV maps) so it should be used only when doing the initial sculpting of your model. More from the manual.


How to create a material of horizontal black and white lines I am trying to reproduce it by my own but I can not understand how to switch off vertical edges in render options inside of freestyle svg exporter? Any thoughts?  Many thanks in advance!
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.79/render/freestyle/export_svg.html

Just a 'Texture Coordinate' node and plug it into a 'Mapping' node. Now you are able to split the output vectors with a 'Separate XYZ' node. If you plug b.e. the 'z'-Value of the 'Separate XYZ' node in the vector of a 'Checker Texture' node, you will get strips along the z-axis, same for the x, y.. with some vector math you can easily manipulate the result


Move loopcut without distorting UV map I have a brick wall that I am trying to add a door to. I have already UV mapped it, so when I move the loop cut to the right height, it distorts my UV map. How can I avoid having to unwrap it again?

Press G, G or Ctrl E > Edge Slide to move the loop cut. Then in the bottom of the Tool Shelf or by pressing F6 turn on Correct UVs.

In Blender 2.9 it's now called Correct Face Attributes


Sound (and occasionally video) disappears in VSE newbie here.

I was editing together some clips in the VSE. All was apparently well, but coming back it this evening, I find that only two strips are audible and only a few visible. I can't think what I might have done by accident to cause such a thing. If it helps, the audible strips are soundtrack strips which I added last. No apparent rhyme or reason to the invisible video strips. I am running Blender 2.77 on Linux.

Help would be much appreciated if you have any thoughts. Can you think what I might check to fix the problem?

When you can't see/hear strips content any more it's usually due to moved footage location. When Blender can't access the originally imported footage anymore it will just show black/play nothing even the strips remain in place and will work again once the footage is back in its original location or once you refreshed each affected single strips source.


How to smooth a mesh for 3D printing (subdivide introduces ugly ripples and kinks) so I've done a few days of research and tried a bunch of things and I'm at a loss.
I'm trying to fix up this mesh for 3D printing:

In Blender, the highlighted mesh on her body looks smooth. But once exported to STL and in the slicer, the edges are sharp along the mesh edges. So I want to smooth it out. I looked up online, and people say to subdivide with (smooth: 1.0). I tried that, from subdividing once to 10 times.

Some others say to use alt-J and then subdivide the quad mesh. I did that and got similar results, except the ripples/kinks are now along quad edges.
Does anyone know how I could preserve the shape and make it smooth? When you hide the mesh in object mode, the character looks pretty smooth without these artifacts.

Ok I figured it out!

Alt-J to make your mesh Quad
Instead of using "subdivide", use the modifier "subdivision surface"!

This is pretty basic but this was really confusing to a beginner like me. Hope it helps!


how affect all children or parent of object? i making plataform game and want  to make a basic script that will be used to every enemy ,that look like this

if conlisionSensor.positive:   #detect player atack
    timer['time'] = 0
    own.color = [10,m,m,1]     #make the enemy red
    own['hp'] += -1            #receive damage

elif time%0.15==0:
    own.color = [1,1,1,1]      #return color to normal
if hp < 1 :
    cont.activate(destroy)

I want to make all children to  change colors when the  owner receive damage without call each one of then because i want the script to run for each of enemys without modification.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but you do not need separate code for each object that has the same behavior. You can use the same sensor/controller configuration at each of the objects.

When the enemies are all copies of the same object(s) you can assign them a group and add group instances to the scene.

This way you just configure the original in Blender and all instances receive the changes. This even works with add object when running the game.


Fake DOF in the Compositor You see, I had a very long render of about 5 hours. And in the end I found out that I totally forgot to add depth of field. So now I am thinking of a way to do that: either outside blender or in blender. I should probably be able to do something in compositor.

Does anybody know if there is a way I can fake depth of field in compositor?

(p.s. I have no object passes)

In order to get realistic Depth of Field a 2d Depth Map is always required:

I'd recommend duplicating the scene, enable the 'Z pass' (Scene > Passes) and rerender the scene via Material Override. Use a simple material, set the Samples to 1 and follow the instructions of this answers: How can I get a Depth of field render pass?


How do I make the domain bake the fluid object? I'm following Blender Guru's guide for Introduction to Blender's Fluid Simulator and I have everything all set up, a cup with an object inside of it and a cube. The cup is set as an obstacle, the object inside the cup is set as fluid and the cube is of course set as the domain. The cube is surrounding both objects as well.

When I go to bake the domain cube the fluid that shows up is outside of the cup (As shown by the rectangle in the picture below) and nowhere close to the same shape of the object that I have set to fluid. The confusing part is, I did the exact same steps as the video tutorial and in the video it works but mine doesn't. So how do I get the fluid to be in the cup when I press bake? Not sure if I'm just an idiot, but any help as to how to get the fluid in the proper shape and spot would be great!

This is because of the fluid quality.
Working with higher resolutions and some other settings that I will explain can help you enjoy a much smoother and more realistic fluid simulation with Blender's fluid simulator.
Here are a few tricks:

1) Use subdividing on the domain AFTER baking the simulation. This will smooth out your simulation and fake the look of a high quality simulation on quality 120. It will not entirely work without-

2) Using surface smoothing. Adding a high level of surface smoothing actually improves your simulation by a ton when combined with a little bit of subdividing. Settings for this here:

Do not use the subdivision setting here or else baking will really be a time problem.

3) Setting fluid viscosity. Adjusting the viscosity of water just a very tiny bit will actually improve the simulation if you set it to be slightly more fluid-like.

4)Set the time on the fluid simulation accurately. Having correct timing and speed is a big factor in realistic fluid animations because without the correct time starting and stopping your simulation will be slower than real water. To correctly set this you must set the start time to zero, or if you want to start your simulation at frame 48 you must set it to 48/the framerate of your animation. Now set the end time to the length (in frames) divided by the framerate.

5) If you decide to make a very high quality fluid simulation (and have the hardware to do so), uncheck the remove air bubbles box. This will add a more real look to the simulation by adding small bubbles near the edges of the fluid, and where the inflow adds fluid. Here's a pic:

I hope these settings help you!


Select objects through uv island I am an Autodesk 3d Max user and am now working with Blender 2.9 for quite some time... I have a bit of a problem. Can I select objects through UV islands ?
Actually, there is a character and there are thousands of hair cards... All the hair cards have the same geometry. I want to tweak the position of  some cards according to the UV tile.... But it is very difficult to select cards manually.

Yes, you can. Click on the double diagonal arrows on the top left of the UV editor and then you can select using UV editor.


Blender 2.8: Texture doesn't show up in Shading tab / UV Unwrap I have the problem that my texture is showing in Lookdev in the UV Unwrap tab but as soon as I switch to the Shading tab (still in Lookdev) it is gone.

Testing it with a new created box works.
Switching to edit mode shows the texture as well.

I attached a image explaining the problem with visuals:

Thank you in advance,
Lino

Take a look at your image, below:
the first one is in UV Editor and the second one is in Image Editor, that's why the second one doesn't have the UV's, check out the red arrows.
Hope that helps.

Good Luck


How to sculpt along a specific axis? I have faced a problem in sculpting: When trying to grab, sculpt result ends up traveling along the X or Y axis while trying to be pulled down Z axis.

Is there I can set Blender to sculpt along the Z axis, or another single axis, so that I can sculpt better?

Some brushes have this option in their properties panel, but the grab brush doesn't seem to follow its instructions, and it seems to be always view-related.


How to place duplicated objects at various locations/rotations in a scene? I've got a model that I'd like to duplicate at a variety of locations; at the rectangles here:

I wondered if I could create a parent mesh, with a vertex at each place I want a duplicate:

The problem with this is that there doesn't seem to be a way to customize the rotations at each of the duplicates.

Is there a way to duplicate an object (and its children) at various places, without simply duplicating the object a bunch of times?

This sounds like an XY problem. If you're trying to make an animation and move them all together, it's probably easier to just duplicate them a bunch of times and then parent the objects to a common empty.

Duplicate and move them. You can do the  rotation by putting the 3D cursor where you want the center and setting the Pivot Center to '3D Cursor'.
Add an Empty object at the center point. If you used the 3D cursor rotation method, it will be added at the correct point to start!
Select all the objects you want to move together, and then the Empty you just added. Press Ctrl+P to parent them.

Now when you move the  Empty around (or rotate it), the other objects will follow it.


How do I resize an armature without ruining its poses? I have an armature that I need to resize. When I scale it and apply the scale changes, all of the armature's associated poses/animations are ruined, because the position data for bones in the poses wasn't scaled with it. The way I understand it, poses work by storing data about a bone relative to the "rest pose" position of the bone's parent. It's this position data that doesn't change when the armature's size is changed, resulting in the pose being rendered unusable. If I scale the armature and don't apply the scale changes, everything works correctly; the armature is uniformly resized and all the poses/animations are preserved. But as soon as I control + a and apply the new scale, I end up with a crushed mess.

The armature, posed:

The armature, after having been scaled, but without the scale applied:

After applying the scale:

Is there some way to make the pose data scale along with the armature (so that when a size change would be applied nothing would appear to change)? It seems like a very important thing, and that there should be some sort of "scale poses with armatures" option.

TL;DR: How do you scale an armature along with its associated poses/animations?

You will have to scale the pose data's F-curves (you don't need to scale the armature and apply the scale then..):

You need to have keys for scale and location for every bone
Hide rotation f-curves for every bone (don't want to alter rotations)
Set pivot to 2D Cursor and position the cursor so the Y is 0 and X is any frame:

Select all visible (A). S+Y to scale animations/poses in pose space. Tadaa!


How to customize a material without duplicating it? I know how to share a material among different objects, customizing it by using the ObjectInfo node. I want do something similar but replacing the ObjectInfo node with a custom property (different for each object, and animated with an F-Curve) that the material can automatically read as input.

How could I do this? Adding a custom property to the object? How would I access it from nodes? Could the ObjectInfo node be enhanced to support this custom property (as well as random, object index, location, material index)?

There are not that many options how to input unique data of each object into a shader node tree.

There are vertex colors, hacking UV coordinates as numerical input, and outputs of Object Info node. There is also an option of scripting a custom Cycles node.

Because you need float in range <0, 1>, using the Object Index seems feasible. It's an integer with max value of 32767, which scaled into 0-1 range gives you 1/32767 of precision (0.00003), which is not bad. This is how you'd use it inside your material:

This is the property to animate for each object:

Just multiply your value with 32767 and round it.


Some objects remain white when rendered I'm a rookie in blender and did the shape of a house. I imported some objects in the interior and they all come with nice colors. Even the exterior. Not the imported car port and the olive trees.
What am I missing to show the colors on all the objects?
I tried fbx and obj. Both remain white. Whereas other objects come with colour immediately. I must be a little thing I don't understand.
Any clue?

Thanks heaps.
Here is the shader tree of the olive tree.

And this is what the olive tree looks rendered. https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/exterior/landscape/set-of-6-olive-trees

This is where the color of the material is set. If the trees came with an image texture, add it as an Image Texture node and connect it here. If not, set this color to something besides white.


My renders keep coming out all black despite having lights I am trying to render a scene using cycles inside of a cave model. I have the camera and the lights set up (I believe it is done correctly?). I have also tried rendering with global illumination, and still, I just get a black square.

To be clear, I want to render the inside, and there are already two point lights inside, near the camera that I believe are configured correctly.

Try increasing your lamp strength a lot (click use nodes).


Understanding the gradient texture node I don't quite understand the gradient texture node. In the manual it says that with texture coordinates it outputs texture color (color output) or texture intensity (fac output). I made a simple node tree

And this is the object rendered.

I do know gradients in Photoshop, but I see not much "gradient" here. What is the Gradient Texture exactly doing and does this mean for the color/fac output ?

The background of my question is that I want to apply this node for a sphere (planet earth).

The gradient sphere, linear and others are convenience textures delivered in grayscale.

Above gradient sphere colored with color ramp.

Above is a flat plane with UV Unwrap Projected View Bounds.  Cycles Rendered.
The Mapping node moved the uv coordinates to the position needed to illustrate the idea for this question. I think the flat plane allows easier explanation than a 3D mesh sphere. First Image uses color, second image uses fac.  The resulting renders appears the same.  Color has the 3 components. Fac is a single number representing the grey scale.  So for this simple example the grey scale appearance is the same.  The first image was colored with fac and color ramp.

Note the light is coming only from the texture with the emission surface.  So I may have not achieved highest possible contrast. Contrast nodes were not used. Transparent background. The light is not coming from a curved surface.  I am not claiming these are high quality comparisons.

If you already have a 3D mesh sphere and use lighting then the sphere gradient may not be particulary useful.

Above image with smaller scale in Mapping node.

In response to the comment about gradual lighting.

In the above image is the sphere gradient and material node group where intensity is based on distance from center.  So I do not see a not of difference between the internal and the custom nodes.  So perhaps the desired color gradient is not met by this method.

In the image above we see more difference with the quadratic sphere.  I do not want to dwell on the fine points of color here because it may be off the main topic and require much attention.

These gradient textures including sphere can be also seen in Blender Internal Render texture pane.  You could create a similar sphere texture with a sphere and sun light.


Automatic weighing deforms my character when rigged The rigify armature was adjusted so the whole armature was inside the character mesh and when it came to weighing part it deformed any help on how to avoid this?

I believe you should first adjust the meta-rig armature to fit your character. Then generate the rig with Rigify and finally assign weights. Bad things usually happen if you scale the rig after its been generated.


Trying to create a rig from scratch - My mesh "handles" flip and scale I have been creating a rig from scratch because the rigify add-on gives me trouble when I remove parts of the foot. I also wanted to learn to make one myself.

The issue I'm having, is that every time I replace a bone with a mesh I created from a curve, it flips, it scales and changes its location.
I make sure not to make changes to the rig handles unless in Edit Mode.
I have also attempted to adjust the Global position once the replacement bone is set by clicking Ctrl + A (apply then scale and rotation) but often times it only scales it so that it can be big enough to see.
I've also tried to fix the bone itself so that there is no unnecessary rotation.

So I find myself tweaking this for hours and the final rig ends up being imperfect. What are the steps for doing this professionally, please?

Make your mesh & bone structure then do the following:

1st - Download and install "orient_custom_shape_V2.py"
from: https://developer.blender.org/F207430

in Blender at Top:
File > User Preferences > Add-ons > Rigging > check the box for "Rigging

Orient Custom Shape"

2nd - Import Illustrator splines or draw curves directly in Blender
3rd - Ctrl + j to join all curves in your object (two at a time)
4th - Select objects then Alt + C (convert to mesh)
5th - Set each object to size and position then Select each then Ctrl + A

to apply roation and scale and location
6th - Name each bone then name each new object you created
7th - Select Armature (bones) then go into "Pose Mode" select a bone then

in the bone tab on the right scroll down to find "Custom Shape" dialogue

box & write in the name of object to change for (Remember to click the

"Wireframe" box just at the left)
8th - Under the "Custom Shape" you'll see "At" box in which you give the

name of the bone
9th - Finally just click on "Orient Custom Shape"

Now in "Object Mode" you can click on your character mesh, then Shift +
click your rig


Can I start panning after orbiting without re-pressing the middle mouse button? Is there an addon or setting, that allows for smooth transition between zoom/pan/orbit?

What I mean is that if you push the middle mouse button you can orbit, but in order to pan you have to let loose of the middle mousebutton, press shift and press middle mouse button again, same for ctrl to zoom.

Is there an addon or setting that detects a shift keypress while in orbit mode and allows you to switch to pan without you having to let go of the middle mousebutton and goes back to orbit if you let loose of the shift key or switch to the ctrl key for zoom?

I am new to blender, and this would go a long way of healing my nose after the crash against the rightclicking edit mode wall.

Thanks!

Sorry for necro-ing an old post. But it came up top in my google search of "blender pan mid orbit" so I thought I would share for others.
I come from Sketchup and is very used to not releasing the middle mouse button while switching between pan and orbit.
@Gerald's answer pointed me towards the right direction.

In rotate view, add a shortcut to switch to move on left shift
In pan view, add a shortcut to switch to rotate on release of left shift


How to change font for text objects? Is there a way to select a typeface (I have 15,000 fonts) for a text object, or must I set type in AI and save as SVG, then import into Blender?

You can change the font used for a text object under the Object Data properties panel.

Here you can specify different fonts for standard, bold, and italics; as well as various other typesetting parameters.  You can also define a set of objects as a custom font by naming them something like fontName_a, fontName_b, etc. and use fontName_ as the Object Font.

In order to find fonts easily I have bookmarked my system's fonts folder (C:\Windows\Fonts\ on Windows, /Library/Fonts on macOS) in Blender's file browser so I can quickly add new fonts.  Note: as Chebhou explains in his answer you can also set the default directory for when browsing for fonts in the user preferences.

Note that as of Blender 2.76, you the file browser's thumbnail display mode now works for previewing fonts.


Grab tool not working All my sculpting tools are working but not the grab tool. I dont see the circle of the tool.Meaming i cant grabamd pull or push with the vrab tol somce i cant see the circle. I will appreciate if someone can help.

Thank you

Ulujm

I had this problem and in my case it was because my mesh was originally huge and I scaled it down by 1000 times.  Then when trying to move vertices, they were moving very slowly.  Once I applied the scaling, then the movement was normal again.


2.8 Cycle Render Mode ignore Local view mode When I try to preview an Object in Local View with Cycles, all my objects are rendered together. It seems that Cycles ignores Local View.
Is it a bug or is there another method/shortcut for it?

This is a bug. As brecht as confirmed:

  It will be fixed for the next release.


Drag background images in 3D view? Is there some way to set the location and scale of background images in the 3D view by dragging or using the mouse/3D cursor to align it, similar to AltMMB in Composite nodes?

Setting the location with the X and Y sliders can be quite difficult, especially since Shift seems to have no effect on those values.

To the best of my knowledge, such functionality is not available out of the box. However, one other way would be to use an Empty with the Display type set to Image. Advantages are that you can move it just as you would any other object and adjust the opacity etc. Another advantage is that it displays in both Orthographic and Perspective view.

If you find it hindering you.. you can always just disable Viewport selection from the Outliner by clicking the arrow.


Wheel Rotation Driver Hi everyone I'm still a beginner at blender and I'm trying to make a simple wheel rotation using empty and drivers, the wheel rotates fine when I move the empty on local Y-axis but the problem is when I try to turn the empty on local Z-axis the wheel also rotates in place, this is not what I want and I don't know what's wrong, anybody has a solution? thank you very much

This set-up is only good if you are going in a straight line. You have not said anything about parenting or driver settings. By looking at your gifs, I can assume you have the wheel parented to the Empty, and your driving the wheels 'X' rotation with the Emptys 'Y' location in 'Local' space, Am I correct so far ?? Even if you change the drivers space to 'World' or 'Transform' - you will still have a 'Coordinance' issue. So then you start thinking , I will use an armature bone(s) - well you will run into the same 'Coordinance' issue again. This issue has been highly debated over at BA for many years, we refer to it as 'the tank track issue', it is a shame that something so basic is so troublesome. So clockmender wrote an animation node to overcome this issue, but if A/N is not your thing, then this is my solution I use; I create 3 actions for the wheel, (1) START (2) TRAVEL (3) STOP -- You can combine these into one action, but I find this way more flexible. You assemble those actions in the NLA, then all you have to worry about is animating the steering. Hope this helps in some way.


Line Paths Alternative? Is there an easier to work with way of moving an object around a scene than with line paths or normal keyframes?

I’ve been having lots of trouble with line paths as I can’t figure out how to make objects continue on doing other animation once they’ve completed the line paths.

Also regular keyframes are hard to nail the proper speed and is also difficult making a curved turn.

Any suggestions?

Instead of parenting your object to the path, you can use a "follow path" constraint.

Set the offset value to the frame number you want your object to follow the path and in the same frame set a keyframe to put the object in the 0,0,0 location. Push the button animate path in the constraint tab, and set the timing of the path in the curve's property panel, "path animation" tab.

A the end of the animation set some keyframes to animate the influence of the follow path constraint, so you will be able to freely animate your object.


What's the most effective way to create a convincing horizon in the game engine? I would like to have an outdoor area in my game, however, my sky and horizon look like they're definitely a skybox, which they are. this is not due to bad unwrapping.

I just want to know if there is a convincing way to create a sky by changing the colors of Blenders natural 'sky' default gray.

I don't need to have clouds or any of that jargon, just want the light and colors, like in this picture by gandalf3

That's the effect I need.

Try enabling Mist in world settings:

Result:

Example .blend


Having trouble making an indent using the Boolean modifier I am very new to blender, and I was wondering if there was a way to fix this issue that I have been having. For my Gameboy model that I have been trying to make I need to create an indent where the button would extrude from. I found the the Boolean modifier would probably suit this task, but I am not sure how to simplify it or get rid of all of the pinching. Thanks in advance.

You can use boolean, but as you want to end up with only quads you should use less vertices so that it will be easier to correct the topology.

Here are 2 tries, one with a circle printed with Knife Project tool then correcting the topology with some vertices merge, additional edges, the other using W > LoopTools > Circle.


How do I make an object flicker at specific times? I want to make an specific object flicker at specific times. Can I do this by using a driver? If not how?

E.g. I am creating the word "earth". If I start the animation in x time I need to make the 1st letter glow in exactly x+9 seconds, then the 2nd letter should glow in x+9+9 seconds.

So let say you've created your object. Give it an Emission shader, create at least 1 keyframe at frame 1 with a value of 1 for example.

Open the Graph Editor (to switch from the Dope Sheet just press CtrlTab). Press N to open the right panel, click on the Modifiers tab and create a Noise modifier. Play with the parameters (Scale, Strength...). If you want the modifier to happen at a precise frame click on the Restrict Frame Range and set the Start and End values.


Is there a conflict between GPU rendering and the Firefox Browser in 2.8? So I've noticed this strange behavior where Blender will toggle between taking 6 minutes to render a frame and 1.5 hours for the same frame. I had posted about it here but the moderators took it down.

I finally worked this out. If the Firefox browser is open on my computer, the GPU render time increases from 6 minutes to 1.5 hours per frame. The solution is to close that browser and then the render times drop again. Don't even have to restart Blender. And once the render is running, I can open up Firefox again although it does seem to add about a minute to the render time.


Shrinking tube or bending a cone I would like to make curved cone (I'm making 3D model of this dialog bubbles and I want to use curved cones to make line between the bubble and speaker.

During my research I found, that I can either make cone and then curve it according to a bezier curve, or I can make path, use circle as its bevel object and then shrink it using taper object as described in this video.

Both approaches have problems. With the first approach it is extremely hard to bend the cone the way I want and I can't get proper results. The other approach is works well, when the path is straight. If the path is curved, then after the taper object the tube disappears.

What would be the good way to do that? I would very much prefer the path and bevel objects approach, because it does almost exactly what I need.

EDIT

To create a bent conical object. Start with a Curve and a Bezier Circle (Add Curve->Circle) as Bevel object:

Then change the Radius for the control points of the curve:

Other Ideas:

Do the whole object as a curve:

then fill it as a 2D

Then add a bevel:

If you add a Curve->Circle as a bevel Object you can so something like this:


Can anyone give me some tips on Lighting in Cycles? I am using the Cycles render engine. I love the ability to use my GPU for rendering, and I have achieved some nice results texture-wise, but I am having a hard time with lighting.

One problem in particular I've noticed is Hemi and Spot lights don't seem to work.

I also don't know what is the most professional way to setup lighting in Blender. I have heard some people say to use planes with an emitter texture for lighting. Does that work better than lamps?

Lamp Strength

One thing that might be confusing in the beginning when learning lighting is how the Strength value effects different light sources. For example, when you add a new spot lamp, the default Strength is 1.0. However, this is so weak of a Strength that when rendered, it will produce almost no noticeable result, which might make you think the light is "not working":

In order to get a noticeable result in your render, you might need to set the Strength to a value in the hundreds, or perhaps even in the thousands (if your light source is very far away from the desired target):

However, the Size of the lamp can also greatly effect how it lights your scene. Notice the difference between a Spot lamp different sizes:

Size of 0.100 & Strength of 1000

Size of 10.0 & Strength of 1000

Increasing the size makes it darker because it simulates increasing the area the light is coming from i.e. Same power over larger area spreads light thinner.

Also, if you are using a plane with an Emission Shader, depending on the size of the plane, you might need to use different strength settings:

Here, notice how if the emission plane is much smaller, a strength of 300 produces much less light in the scene:

So, experiment with the size and strength settings of your lights to achieve the desired result.

Visibility of Lamps vs. Emission Shader Objects

One of the biggest differences between lighting you scene with a lamp and a mesh with an Emission Shader is that a lamp will provide light in you scene, but the light source itself (the lamp) will NOT be visible in your render. For example, in the scene below, you can see the spotlight lamp in the 3D Viewport, but on the right, when the scene is rendered, you can see the lamp's light in the scene, but the lamp itself is not visible at all:

However, if if you use an object (such as a plane) with an Emission Shader added to it as your light source, both the light emitted by the object AND the object will be visible in your render:

Professional or Not?

There really is no one correct answer for "what is the most professional way of lighting". If you are actually using Blender professionally to produce a finished product for an employer or a client, then the best way to light a scene is the way that pleases them. If you are trying to produce something for yourself only, then the best lighting arrangement is the one you find most pleasing.

For example, if the goal is to create an anime-style scene with Blender, then you will need a lighting arrangement that achieves this goal:

If you want to create a more realistic looking, yet still somewhat cartoon-looking image, you will need a different lighting style:

If you want to create a photo-realistic result, you will need a photo-realistic lighting arrangement:

Lighting Tutorials

Study and practice will help you learn which style of lighting is best for achieving your goals. In this regard, searching Google for tutorials on lighting can help you find information on lighting in all different kinds of formats -- books, websites, videos, etc.

However, since Blender changes so rapidly from version to version, books tend to get outdated quickly. Therefore, YouTube video tutorials are one very good source of up-to-date information. If you search YouTube for "Blender tutorials lighting", you will find many useful tutorials. In fact, you can search for "Blender tutorials" and find excellent information on all aspects of Blender and you can learn quite a lot from them.


Name a group of faces / hide the group / call the Name later and un-hide that group I've been working on a human model for a bit now. It's my first.

I want to select a group of faces in the nostrils (or any part of the character like an ear or the lips to work on the tongue or teeth etc), name the group of faces I have selected, hide that named group so that I can un-hide them later and work on them if needed.

An inverse select would come in handy too. I took a break on this project and forgot quite a few shortcuts.

So I guess, what is the best way to accomplish this? Or how can I name a portion of mesh to work on in detail without seeing anything else. Does it involve layers, moving pieces of mesh to another layer, and if so how to do it that way as well?

Thanks!

You can create vertex groups.

Select the vertices you want to group. Then using the plus sign create a new group and assign the selected vertices to that group.
Once a group has been created you can select it or unselect it easily.

To hide selected vertices press  H , to unhide press AltH


Speed Graph In Graph Editor? I have a camera moving along a path. The camera position is controlled by an animated Offset value in the Follow Path modifier.

By setting keyframes for the Offset in Graph Editor I can change the camera offset in different sections of the curve, but what I really would like to do is control its speed (the first derivative of the offset). Is it possible to add a speed graph in the Graph Editor?

The animation speed is a property of the path, called "Evaluation time". You can find it in the curve's properties. When you animate the path in the constrait menu Blender creates a curve modifier for it in the graph editor. After you delete it you can animate the property as any others, or you can also modify the generator modifier.


Particles render in a different size I have set the blend texture for particles so their size changes over time. The animation is baked.

In viewport everything works as it should. However, render shows always vanilla size of the sphere. This happens both in Eevee and Cycles. Am I doing something wrong?

I have found the issue, it seems to be a bug, I reduceed the particle ammount to 2000 from 20000 and it all worked out. As you intended.

I tried to figure out how many the maximum ammount of particles there can be, by gradually increasing the particle ammount, 19999 is fine, then at 20000 it gliches out and is normal at 20001 again, I have absolutely no clue how this is possible and why this can happen but my guess is it being a bug.


Automatic reuse same-property materials I have many objects created by importing some .wrl files and joining several meshes toghether. The result is a set of blender objects, each with a long list of materials from its submeshes. However, these - nearly a thousand - materials are only ten different colors or so...

I know that I can manually create ten "master materials" and assign each mesh to the proper color (following the manual: reusing-existing-materials), but it is really annoying...

Is there a way to automatically "skim" the materials to ends up with a small list of colors reused by all the submeshes of the objects?

I mean something like this:

list_of_unique_materials = []
for material in bpy.data.materials:
    if material.users:
        if not **material in list_of_unique_materials**:
            list_of_unique_materials.append(material)
        else:
            **reuse the same material in the list**

where I'm not really sure about how to implement the code inside the asterisks...

Many thanks!

EDIT: Example

What I have now (len(bpy.data.materials) >> 805):

Object1

Mesh.001: Material.001
Mesh.002: Material.002
Mesh.003: Material.003 (same as Material.001)
Mesh.004: Material.004
...

Object2

Mesh.101: Material.101 (same as Material.001)
Mesh.102: Material.102 (same as Material.002)
Mesh.103: Material.103 (same as Material.002)
Mesh.104: Material.104 (same as Material.004)
...

...

What I would like (len(bpy.data.materials) >> 12):

Object1

Mesh.001: Material.001
Mesh.002: Material.002
Mesh.003: Material.001
Mesh.004: Material.004
...

Object2

Mesh.101: Material.001
Mesh.102: Material.002
Mesh.103: Material.002
Mesh.104: Material.004
...

...

This is due to the .wrl importer which has named with a new identifier every single color of the meshes that I have imported (and the total number of distinct colors in the meshes is no more than 12).

I've made up this workaround:

import bpy

def find_material(material, list):
    for elem in list:
        if material.diffuse_color == elem.diffuse_color and \
           material.specular_color == elem.specular_color:
            return elem
    return False

# creates a list of unique materials
list_of_unique_materials = []
for material in bpy.data.materials:
    if material.users and not find_material(material, list_of_unique_materials):
        list_of_unique_materials.append(material)

# updates materials of each mesh
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    for mat in obj.material_slots:
        mat.material = find_material(mat.material, list_of_unique_materials)

# removes unused materials
for material in bpy.data.materials:
    if not material.users:
        bpy.data.materials.remove(material)


Where is "Align with view" for new objects in Blender 2.8 I'm trying to follow a short video.

In this video, the user creates a new plane and then checks "Align with view" in the "Add" panel:

I don't see this "Add panel" in Blender 2.8.

How could I achieve the same in Blender 2.8?

Thank you!

In 2.8 the last operation box is in the bottom left of the 3D View, open it and select View in the Align dropdown menu.


Is there a way to tell blender which images do not differ within an animation to render them just once? Question

I wonder if it is possible to tell blender to not explicitly render images in a given time range when they are not changing. So to say, if I make an animation and within the animation there are time intervals with nothing changing. E.g. with a keyframe at time 1 and the same keyframe settings at time 2 theoretically the image could be copied a number of times equal to the number of frames of the interval and does not have to be rendered each time.

Manual solution

Of course this could be done manually, but is some work to do with copying the images certain times, renaming the following images to consecutive numbers and continuing the rendering at the end of the interval.

Details

I save the images as png-files and would create a movie afterwards myself. I do have more constant intervals which are marked in the dope sheet by grey bars. I've simply made two keyframes with the same settings for the start and end of the constant interval.

This is not a straightforward process, but there is a recently released addon to do just this. The auther describes the details and provides a download on the link.
The gist of it is that it renders a tiny version of each frame and compares it with the others to determine duplicates before rendering full size versions.

http://creativityhacker.ca/2017/08/08/dopplerender-a-turbo-boost-for-blender-animation-rendering/


My blender file will not print; any suggestions? I have a 3D printer and after learning of blender (and rebuilding my computer to handle it properly) I delved into 3D design for table top mini's.  I'm using Blender 2.90 currently.  The object in question does fit on the printer bed that I'm using (a monoprice III v.2).

I've created an image that will function as the base of a tower I'm designing but for the life of me I cannot get it to print.  That means either a, the 3D print software I'm using is in error, or the more likely b, I've done something with the file that is causing problems.
When I load the file as a STL the print software doesn't show it with levels.
Here's a link to the file if anyone wishes to take a crack at it.
Any help would be appreciated.

It's a curious model. I have 2.83 and the file opened fine, no obvious problems. Export to STL appeared to go well. Meshmixer is also happy with the structure.
The model appears to export at 0.11 mm diameter. My first move was to increase scale to 2540, a common number for inches to millimeter or the reverse, I can't recall. Still too tiny, but when using a scale factor of 25400, the model becomes 29 mm in diameter and 5 mm high.


Profile a blender file to optimize render speed and quality I know the gaming world has tools to optimize performance for their target devices... Do we have something like that in the Blender realm?

I would love to understand my blend files better with an eye toward wringing as much out of them as possible at render without breaking the bank or melting a CPU -- how to stay under GPU memory, where and how mesh densities are killing times, how and where trade-offs exist between skin sizes and render speeds.... Is anything like this available?

I suspect this question also entails stuff I do not know to ask or look for -- when skin sizes could be higher/lower in a scene, using LoD more effectively than I do... and more, as I have only an experience-based sense for when adding or subtracting "weight" helps... and that's not really scientific.

We (try to) do high-realism scenes with natural environmental components -- lighting, volumetrics, particles, water... and optimizing for hardware rendering is proving to be an important issue, especially as me move to 4K stuff.

I know (some) tricks to optimize scene weights: We use scrims, layer passes, post processing of volumetrics and more... but if I could analyze a live file to see where render demands are spiking, that would be cool. So this is less a question about render optimizing approaches in general and more about understanding the guts of render demands on a per-file basis.

The Cycles Roadmap mentions the following goal:

  Statistics: for power users to investigate why rendering performance is slow, why memory usage is high, which objects or materials to optimize, etc. This would be a log generated that could be shown in Blender or as a HTML report, and possibly also debugging AOVs.

However, this goal currently (December 2016) is not scheduled to happen soon, it is in the

  things we think are very important, but that no one at the meeting planned to work on within a specific time frame.

category.


360 Video Environment I am making an animation in which I need to have a 360 video in the background as the environment texture in World panel instead of an HDRi. Is there any way to so this?
Thanks.

Yep. Just convert the video into an image sequence and load it into an Environment Texture node as usual. Make sure you have 'Auto Refresh' enabled.