Cycles - (Shader) Nodes - inputs outputs - What are the exact data types? I'm currently "hacking" Cycles to fully understand how it works (right down to the source_code), so I can fully maximize its awesome rendering potential for my own future blender projects. Here's how I am currently progressing and where I get stuck.

Fig 1 - Default Blender Scene, (1 cube, sunlight, camera and wood-texture (jpg-file) on the Cube via the Cycles Node Editor)

In Fig.1 - Here you can literally see a visualization of what the yellow type of "Color" (input/output) information.

In order to fully understand which type of (internal) Shader data streams Cycles uses I've have analyzed all existing Cycles Nodes, their inputs and outputs and their data-stream types or "Shader sockets".

Fig. 2 - Color (yellow) data Input/output streams.

Fig. 3 - Shader (green) data Input/output streams.

Fig. 4 - Vector ?? (purple) data Input/output streams.

Fig 5 - ?? (grey ) data Input/output streams.

Why do I do this?
- To understand which type-of-datastream/shader-socket is generated by any Cycles Node output.
- To understand which type-of-datastream/shader-socket can be accepted by a given Cycles Node input.
- What type of data a stream acutally holds (bits, bytes, floats, vectors, pixels, shader-data)

Where am I getting stuck and why?
So far the official
- Blender Wiki
- Blender online end-user manual
- Developer-level documentation over Cycles
all fail to mention the different type of data which is contained in/ carried the Cycles Shader sockets.

So I went a step further and downloaded the entire Blender (2.79a) Source code package and started looking for the exact definition of those Cycles Shader data types ... and found this information (os far):

Fig 6 - Blender Shader sockets information, located in various source code-files

So now my question is:
Where must I look (further) to find the exact documentation / definitions of the Shader sockets, when it is not documented in any official Blender (developer, manual) source and its own source-code-files?

Thanks in advance for your hints, tips, and tricks to get me closer to demistifying the Cycles Sockets data_types.

Light Green sockets represent Closures. They don't hold any particular value, and they serve to instruct the render how the rays should be treated. Closures can be added, and mixed (which is an Add operation where the closure colors are mixed). Closures are functions that determine the amount of reflected light from the surroundings to the incoming vector direction, and they are normally multiplied by a color. They can also be converted into strings using OSL.

Purple sockets represent Vectors. They have three components, for X, Y and Z. They can be used as vectors, points, normals, or any type of data that can be represented by 3 components (they can even represent colors).

Yellow sockets represent Colors. They are similar to Purple sockets, has they also have 3 components (Red, Green and Blue), but they are treated as colors and normally, conversions are done in color space. For example, when plugging a color into a value socket the color is transformed into greyscale, and used as a single value (val=R*0.2989 + G*0.5870 + B*0.1140); but this value will be different if instead of a color we plug a vector with the same values (val= (X + Y + Z)/3).

Light Grey sockets represent single values. Just like 0.0, 1.0, 0.5, -5.5, 3.1415, etc.

Dark Green sockets represent integers (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2,...)

White (or dark grey in new versions) sockets, while not common, normally represent Strings. They are not common and can only be used with OSL.

Except for Closures, Integers and Strings, all other sockets components are Floating Point values (even integers are converted to floating point values, as the SVM only uses these).

Now, sockets represent inputs/ouputs of information. How one uses this information is far beyond what is possible to give in one simple answer, as each value can have a different meaning depending on the context they are used. For example, the value 0.8 can mean anything (a roughness value, an IOR value, an angle, etc). Is up to the user to give these values a context.

Another point is: Don't think that values are really passing from one socket to another.. The node tree is analyzed after any change, and the SVM compiles the working version behind the scenes. What you have in nodes is just an interface.


Ocean modifier with volume How can I use the Ocean modifier to only deform one axis of an object to create something like this:

How can I achieve this?

From Haunt's trick bag:

  Since the Ocean modifier doesn't use vertex groups, one solution is to get help from a modifier that does. The Ocean modifier (gray) uses an ordinary plane. The block of water is a mesh where the upper surface is highly subdivided and the bottom contains just 4 verts. It has a Vertex Group which excludes the four bottom verts.

  The trick is a Shrinkwrap Modifier which is projecting the surface on the Ocean Modifier mesh. There the Vertex Group helps to leave the bottom verts in peace.

  Rendering of the Ocean Modifier is prevented in the outliner by clicking the camera symbol.


How do I export items from Blender to Tinkercad Is there a way I can create a design in blender and then open it in tinkercad. I am doing this for a school class and this will help get me into college.

Short answer: Yes, you can. But first you have to decide what format you want your design to be in. But it will export both 3D objects (which I believe TinkerCAD does accept) and .svg files, which, as far as I know, are intended for curve/vector data.


Add noise to mask texture I am trying to recreate in Blender some space scene like the one of this image

So far, I wanted to create some "clouds/nebulae" that they are somehow "circular" in a given region of the space (Environment texture), so I am using a mask for that like this (so the noise texture is only applied here)

However, I would like to add some "noise" to the edge of that texture so its not that sharp and it adds some randomness to it. Basically, I would like to get something like this (done in photoshop)

How could I get something similar using Nodes in Blender?

If as mentioned in the question this is for an environment texture, we need to have a way to tune where the disk/shape will be displayed in the sky:

A possibility is to calculate the length from 2 coordinates (here X and Z), transform it eventually (square root for instance, optional) and filter using a color ramp. The length from (X,Z) is easier to tune/place than a gradient texture.
The shape orientation in the sky can be defined using a mapping node and its rotations.
The perturbation is given by a musgrave/noise combination (for instance) which displaces a bit the input coordinates.

Playing with it a bit (three settings of this kind) and mixing colors (still as world node tree):


Blender crash while rendering image after building BVH Once render is started, the building BVH value goes to 100% and then the whole Blender program gets closed !
What could be the reason ?

I've had the same problem. In my scene I used completely overloaded particle settings. Rducing children from 300 to 100 (before Mem. 3,97 GB, after Mem.1,97) fixed it and redering worked. Good luck


Export transparent material in GLTF in blender 2.8 I am trying to export a glass material in gltf. Here is the material principled shader, notice I have transmission set to 1.0:

this gives me this result in cycles (the glasses have the glass material):

However when I export this to gltf, and view it in the gltf viewer or load it in my webgl application, this is the result:

How do I export glass?

I already have this in my render options:

I am using blender 2.8 beta, all the other questions I could find all refer to an older version of blender.

EDIT: I don't even have the Blend Mode dropdown in my shader settings:

Transmission (of light, such as glass and water)
UPDATE: Blender 2.91 and above support exporting transmission directly as shown in the original post above, using glTF's KHR_materials_transmission extension.  Not all renderers support this yet (and notably, ThreeJS requires alpha-blending to be enabled for the material, which deviates from the transmission specification).  Adobe Dimension, Microsoft's BabylonJS, and Google Filament are among the rendering engines known to support transmission in glTF.
Alpha Blending
glTF 2.0 has always had an alpha blending mode available, but it's intent is just to be "coverage" (like medical gauze tape), not a physically correct optical translucency (as the latter was considered too high a target for the initial release of 2.0).  Basically this means that low alpha values will dissolve the entire material, including specular reflections.  Even so, the mode is often used to emulate clear materials like glass, particularly for situations where real transmission support is not available.
To control the blend mode, look for a settings panel near the bottom of the material properties set of panels.  Blender offers many choices here.  glTF supports three of them: Opaque, Alpha Blend, and Alpha Clip (along with the "Clip Threshold" value in that case).

NOTE: Eevee must be the selected rendering engine, to reveal this blend mode setting.  The user's selection will be remembered and used by the glTF exporter even when other engines such as Cycles are selected.

The alpha values come from the "Alpha" input on the Principled BSDF node, and when exporting to glTF, they are stored in the alpha channel of the base color texture.


Sketchup to Blender - Material not visible So I have created a 3d model in sketchup and I have added material and texture to it..Now when I export it as .obj and open it in Blender, I can see the model but it is "naked"..I dont see any of my materials applied to it but I can still see the materials in the Materials tab..How to apply the materials on my model?

You can install the add-on called Blendup. There are two versions: free and paid ($35). The free version is limited to SketchUp models with less than 1000 faces.

Just install the add-on. Select your model in File> Blendup, select the settings you need and click export. Then open the blend file which you have exported from Sketchup and switch to Material or Render mode and you will see your material.

For more details watch this video


OS X Sidecar & Blender? Will Blender work in sidecar? The idea of Sculpting in Blender with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil sounds Amazing!

Cheers!

I tested - grease pencil in blender 2.8 currently supports Sidecar with pressure sensitivity. It is a bit quirky at times - but it definitely works!


How do I make the f curve 'non-existent', and have simple on/off motions? I animated a bunch of blinking LED lights, and put key frames on the spots where I want the LED on and off. The LED lights have an f curve to them, currently it's on the more logarithmic curve. I am aware of how to turn the f curves into linear slopes, or how to manually edit an individual curve into a shape I want. What I want is to have the curves non-existent - once it hits the key frame that says "on" it holds this level until it reaches the key frame that says "off". For onstance:

Frame 100: on
106: off
112: on

I have twenty LED lights, almost two hundred frames and key frame changes every quarter second. Please tell me there is an easy way to do this:(

Also, is there a way to copy key frames and paste them later on in the dope sheet? Every 48 frames my animation resets, so copying 48 frames four times is easier than doing 192 frames.

What you're looking for is the 'Constant' interpolation type for F-curves.

In the Graph Editor, select the F-curve that you don't want to have 'linear' interpolation by selecting the curve points and then choose Key> Interpolation Mode> Constant:


Export objects rotation animation to textfile I've read this post about grabbing the position of an object and exporting to a text file Exporting rotations of selected objects to a text file

I understand what it is doing but I'm looking to save the objects rotation values for the entire animation.

How do I get the rotation of an object over time? Not just keyframes, I'm looking to export a rotation value for every frame.

Using the example in the page you mentioned, it would be something like:

# import the necessary modules we need
# in our case, blender's python API and python's os module
import bpy, os
from math import degrees

# get the current selection
selection = bpy.context.selected_objects
scene = bpy.context.scene
startFrame = scene.frame_start
endFrame = scene.frame_end
currentFrame = scene.frame_current

# get path to render output (usually /tmp\)
tempFolder = os.path.abspath (bpy.context.scene.render.filepath)
# make a filename
filename = os.path.join (tempFolder, "newfile.txt")
# open a file to write to
file = open(filename, "w")

# iterate through the selected objects
for sel in selection:
    #cycle trough all the animated frames
    for i in range(endFrame-startFrame+1):
        #get true frame number
        frame = i + startFrame
        #set frame and get the object's rotation
        scene.frame_set(frame)
        rot = sel.rotation_euler
        file.write("%s - frame %d - X:%f Y:%f Z:%f \n" % (sel.name, frame, degrees(rot.x), degrees(rot.y), degrees(rot.z)))

# close the file
file.close()

#restore original frame (not necessary)
scene.frame_set(currentFrame)

NOTE: there are more reliable ways to do it (like using fcurve data, etc...), but for simple uses this method is perfect.

NOTE 2: if you want to write this data to a .txt you probably want to read it too, so I would advise you to plan how to write your variables, based on the language you want to use to read it (if you need to read it in python I would write them with file.write("%s;%d;%f;%f;%f; \n" % (sel.name, frame, degrees(rot.x), degrees(rot.y), degrees(rot.z))) so that you can use the split(";") function).
Also, it would be a good idea to write the object name only once before the first frame to save space


BGE: How to create a countdown timer without using debug or python? Is it possible to create a timer in the Blender game engine without using DeBug or python? I can create point systems using dynamic text, but just can't figure out how to create a timer.

You can add a game property to an object, of type "Timer". For my BGE project, I created an Empty named "Clock", just for this purpose. It has one game property "GAME_TIME", as shown on this screenshot:

You can use this property to keep track of time, as it'll increase as long as the game is running. You can also set it to 0.0 to restart the timer.


Render what camera sees and not first frame Sorry for the noob question, I just can't find the answer anywhere.
I've just setup a few key frames of animation and I happy with it.
However, after the render I noticed that there were a few glitches with some of the cloth physics.
All I want to do now is to move the camera and render what the camera sees in order for me to troubleshoot the scene.  However, each time I press render, it insists on rendering the first frame of the animation key frames.
Surely there's a way I can still render what the camera see and not forcing me to scrub through the key frames to get the camera where I want it?
Regards,
Val

No need to scrub every time from the beginning. You can adjust the range of frames to start rendering (and playing) from however you want. Look in the Properties Panel for the Output Settings tab, and adjust the range for the frames you want rendered. Your file is likely starting from the beginning because the start frame is 1 by default. Change this setting to something later in the timeline.

You can alternatively change this same range setting in the Timeline Editor window, which can be found at the bottom of the screen while using the Animation Workspace. Changing it in either location changes it in the other.


Redish weapon wood [eevee] I am making an rpg-7, but can't get the wood material right
This is what i want:

This is what i was able to make:

Node setup:

How can i improve, and also add this shiny look to it

You could begin with this setup, a Noise plugged into a ColorRamp, glossiness, and a bit of Bump:


How do you solve the issue with an object with subdivision and multiple materials on it? I was making a charger and I have given it some subdivision as usual. Now one side of the charger has a bit different texture (less glossier to be specific) so I tried that in blender, but that material looks shrunk.

I have faced this problem earlier also but that was an object with higher geometry. So I used inset and extrude tools to solve that. But here I cannot do that as it is only 1 large face.

This is what my geometry looks like, with the face selected that I want to edit.

Any solutions?

I guess you have two solutions:

create 4 additional edge loops close to your first edges so that it forces your texture to stick to these edges

or

unwrap your object and use a black square as a factor in a mix shader


File browser filter not working correctly I'm writing a python script which can open multiple files and I want to filter certain file extensions.

This code is working perfectly fine:

filter_glob = bpy.props.StringProperty(
    default='*.pmx;*.pmd;*.xps;*.mesh;*.ascii;*.smd;*.qc;*.vta;*.dmx;*.fbx',
    options={'HIDDEN'}
)

But as soon as I add ".dae" as another file extension like that:

filter_glob = bpy.props.StringProperty(
    default='*.pmx;*.pmd;*.xps;*.mesh;*.ascii;*.smd;*.qc;*.vta;*.dmx;*.fbx;*.dae',
    options={'HIDDEN'}
)

the filtering stops working entirely and every file is shown. I have no idea why this happens and it looks like a totally random issue to me.

Does anybody know what happens here or how I can fix it? Is this a bug in Blender maybe? Thanks!

I reported it and it turns out that it is indeed a bug. It will be fixed in Blender 2.8.

Link: https://developer.blender.org/T55503


How to make the cube follow the nurbs path I am newbie to blender. I have modified the default cube and added a NURBS path and slightly changed its curve. Now I would like the cube to follow along the NURBS path. For this I used the Curve modifier. But no matter what I tried, the cube does not follow along the curve!

I saw the following post but it did not help!

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Deforming_Meshes_using_the_Curve_Modifier
 -

How to get a flexible tube to follow a curved path?

Screenshot

Also attached is the .Blend file.

The Curve modifier requires some more detailed geometry to curve the cube - otherwise you still only have 8 vertices and 6 faces to spread over the cube. Fron your screenshot you do appear to have a Subdivision Surface modifier but it is after the curve - click the ‘up arrow’ in the top-right of the Subdivision Surface modifier panel to move it above the curve. You’ll then need to increase the View number of subdivisions - set it the same as Render (ie, 2). This will affect the shape of your cube as it will cause corners to be rounded off - so click Simple (which divides without affecting the overall shape) rather than Catmull-Clark (which divides and blends faces and edges into each other).

Increase the number of subdivisions (View and Render) for more detail along the curve.


Exporting (bullet) collision shapes I'm writing a scene exporter from blender to a format to be used by a game. I need to be able to export physics information the game needs, mainly the collision shape of every object (either the one set in Blender Render or Blender Game but the latter is better).

I cannot seem to find anywhere that the collision shape is available to python. I've seen references to PhysicsConstraints.exportBulletFile() but this appears to be under the bge module, which as far as I can tell, is not accessible by exporter scripts. Is there any way to determine the details of a shape (rotation and scale, width, height, depth for box or radius and height for cylinder, vertices for convex hull, etc...)?

Finding the parameters necessary to generate such a shape should be possible with python.

From the wiki:

  The Shape setting determines the collision shape of the object. The
  following shapes are available:

  Primitive shapes - these are best in terms of memory/performance but don't necessarily reflect the actual shape of the object. They're
  calculated based on the object's bounding box. The center of gravity
  is always in the middle for now.

  Box: The size per axis is calculated from the bounding box
  Sphere: The radius is the largest axis of the bounding box
  Capsule: This points up the Z-Axis.
  Cylinder: This points up the Z-Axis. The height is taken from the z-axis, while the radius is the larger of the x/y-axes.
  Cone: This points up the Z-Axis. The height is taken from the z-axis, while the radius is the larger of the x/y-axes.

  'Mesh based shapes' - these are calculated based on the geometry
  of the object so they are a better representation of the object. The
  center of gravity for these shapes is the object origin.

  Convex Hull: Convex approximation of the object, has good performance and stability.
  Mesh: Allows to simulate concave objects, but is rather slow and unstable.

To build these shapes using the UI:

Box:

Select the target object and press CtrlShiftAltC > Origin to goemetry, and then press F6 and select bounds center.
With the target object selected, press ShiftS> Cursor to selected to move the cursor to the objects origin.
Add a cube to be the bounding box. It will automatically be centered at the 3D cursor, which is snapped to the target object's origin point.
Copy the Dimension and Rotation values from the target object to the bounding cube. These values are located on the Properties region (N in the 3D view):

You can quickly copy and paste values by hovering over the number field and pressing CtrlC/CtrlV accordingly.

Since this process of copying and pasting the values of each channel can be a bit tedious, you can use a quick bit of python to do this for you:

import bpy

active = bpy.context.active_object
selected = bpy.context.selected_objects

for obj in selected:
    obj.dimensions = active.dimensions

This copies the dimensions from the active object to the selected objects.
Parent the bounding box to the target object so the relative location, rotation, and scale is kept the same. You can also set the bounding cube's Draw type to Wire in Properties > Object > Display > Maximum Draw Type.

Sphere

Do steps 1 to 3  from the Box instructions, adding a sphere instead of a cube.
Copy only the largest dimension value from the target into all three dimensions of the sphere.
Do step 3 of the instructions for Box (Parent the bounding mesh and set the draw type to wire)

Cylinder

Do steps 1 to 3  from the Box instructions, adding a cylinder instead of a cube.
Copy the largest dimension value of the target excluding the Z axis, so the value of either X or Y into both the X and Y dimensions of the Cylinder.
Copy the Z dimension value of the target to the Cylinder.
Do step 3 of the instructions for Box (Parent the bounding mesh and set the draw type to wire).

Cone

Do the same as for Sphere.

Convex Hull

This is more complex. you could try to generate your own using python, or you could try one of these existing options:

The Convex Hull operator built into blender.

Duplicate target object (ShiftD)
With the duplicate selected, enter edit mode (Tab) and select all (A)
Run the convex hull operator (Space> Search > Convex Hull)

This Convex Hull generator written in python.

Existing addons

I also found a couple existing scripts/addons from a quick google search:

One for exporting to YAML
Niftools Wiki - Blender 2.49 nif import/export - Collisions
Niftools - Blender 2.6x nif export collision code


How do I do a clean boolean? I build a primitive pool table model with holes where the pockets would be but cutting the holes via the Boolean modifier left me with really bad looking lines in the table surface.

I could very well take the time to smooth them out but I'd like to prevent them in the first place. How would I go about this?

The short answer:
To get nice results with booleans on polygons you have to make the two entities have a similar level of division. If you can align the geometry for both entities then you will get mostly clean topology too.

The realistic answer:
If you can get away with avoiding the boolean operations then you will learn a lot more about modelling, and you will work faster (have more control, and be capable of fixing issues). The idea of a boolean operation is more based in maths than in practical polygon modelling, but it is possible and can look good. Here is a quick youtube search for this topic

Booleans have become really quite nice in Blender 2.5+ onwards after implementing the CARVE library. But don't expect the convenience of a solid modeller like SolidWorks or other CAD packages that represent geometry internally as mathematical equations.

The time spent trying to line up two entities for a clean boolean might be better spent modelling by hand (in this case). Using a few circle polygons and a mirror modifier you'd be surprised how much easier this is to model - plus the added bonus that you can quickly change the geometry without having to individually boolean the whole thing.

example image

the geometry here isn't optimal if you want to bevel the sharp edges, that requires a bit of planning - and beyond the scope of this answer,

example .blend  (shows all the steps to get the basic idea) At least when you do it by hand you can take into account that you might want to bevel a few edges and create the extra guiding geometry to do that.

Try doing a bevel on booleaned geometry, it's a world of pain.


Archimesh installing problems The Archimesh add-ons don't appear in the add-ons list after installing them. I got this message: 'One or more addons do not have UTF-8 encoding!

seems like this has been solved on the thread

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?315980-Archimesh-Architecture-elements-%28rooms-doors-columns-stairs-tile-roofs%29/page2

when you go to the github link https://github.com/Antonioya/blender/tree/master/archimesh

you need to click on the zip file then select raw and it will download correctly.


Keep Voronoi texture look during Cell Fracture Say I have a UV sphere with a simple Voronoi texture

Now I run the Cell fracture add-on, and I get

We see that the old texture is applied individually for each cell, so the end result does not look like a fractured version of the old sphere. Is there any way to preserve the texture into each cell so that it globally looks like the old texture? Some approaches that come to mind are

For example, a possibility would be to remove the shader from the cells, and then "project" the material from the original sphere (by scaling it up a little, perhaps). Is this doable?

Another option would be e.g. to join the cells (in which case the original pattern is recovered, because the texture is applied to the joined object, which is essentially identical to the original sphere). Can we separate the cells again, this time preserving the texture?

The easiest solution is to use UV coordinates.
After fracturing the UV map is separated for each 'shard' and the texture stays in place.

The main downside are 'seams' along the edges of the original UV map.

For seamless look:
Use an empty to  control the Voronoi texture :).

Add an Empty in the same place as your sphere
Change the Texture coordinates to Object > Empty
Now fracture your sphere, and the texture will stay the same

Now bake the result for each individual shard.

One solid sphere. One fractured sphere. Each has it's own empty, textures look the same


How can i fix the resolution with texture painting? When i try to paint my model with texture painting, the texture (if low resolution or high) looks blurry and pixelated, not even close to the base 'picture', how can i fix this?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: i made new UVs (project by bounds) and added another image (512p) and it works kind of better, but now it seems that what i want to achieve is that the image/tile size is smaller, so i can paint those 'rocks' smaller' taking less part of the map.

Edit 2: I changed the values of 'Size X, Y and Z' on the 'context' options, to 0.1, the 'brush' paints bigger, if i add more numbers it paint smaller, but i need it to be smaller than that.

Edit 3: I added a checker texture and it seems to work fine about the proportions i need, now the problem is that it looks blurry...

I don't know If I understand you correctly BUT if you paint on a low image res you will get low res texture quality!
Here is a pattern I made painted on a 4098x4098 vs 256x256 texture:

My pattern is high res but when you project it on a low res texture you will get exactly that. if you want to get variable texture res on your painting I suggest you to check material painting in blender. You could bake it after that painting it to your desired resolution.


How do I deselect one object between other objects? I often have a problem with deselecting objects in the scene, for this I use the shift+leftclick key. For example, I have two objects selected, and below them a third object, I try to deselect one of the objects,but instead it attaches to them a third object, which is located below them.

Screenshots are attached.

Surely this will not be so easy if many objects are in selection conflict, but, ShiftAltClick (the click button here may depend on your configuration), brings a menu that allows to choose the wanted object:

PS: was in hope the object order in the menu was relative to the ray cast distance, but this is not the case.


How can i create the same smoke and light effects as in this Bob Ross canvas ? (see image) For my first big project, i plan to made a 3D version of "Campfire", a painting by Bob Ross.
The project is progressing in a good way, but i still can't figure out how to recreate the "smoke" that we can see behind the fire.
How should i approach it ? a tweaked smoke+fire simulation perhaps ?
Here you can see the reference image, and my latest render:

note that the background is a placeholder, just to have an idea of the atmosphere and the global color.

thanks a lot

Go in to blender. Go to "scene" on your right menues bar. Go to color management and under "view" select: "Filmic Log Encoding Base", then the image will turn ugly, but below exposure and gamma, there is a drop-down menu that says "None" right now. Select that and select the look you want to use. (usually I use medium_high Contrast, but it depends on the scene and how you want it to look.

You would need to add some "volume Scatter" in the scene, and a big smoke simulator to the scene aswell. I think the the smoke in the bob ross image is pretty dense, and would require som work to get it right. But the Volume scatter would add some fog effect to the background without having to use a awful lot of simulated smoke to the scene. The volume scatter is in the "world" tap, where you apply the effect under Volume. Then set the color to all white, and the density to like 0.001.

The "Filmic Log Encoding Base" makes the light react natural, instead of you inserting 1 million lights into the scene, so you get what you want.
Hope this helped a bit. :)


Too big addon list, what should I do? How expand names and keep it all? There are many addons. Do you know how show it in two cloumns?

Do you really need all those addons?
That seems neither productive nor beneficial for performance. Having many addons may eventually have a significant toll on responsiveness and available resources.
Features are often grouped for certain steps or stages of a project. You may notice you only need certain addons for certain tasks or worflows, maybe even use a few of them simultaneously in groups, but not at the same time as some other.
If that is the case you can set up workspaces dedicated to certain tasks where you will pick a few addons you generally use in tandem relevant for that task (say modeling, animating, shading etc.).
Once created you can take advantage per workspace addon filters. In the 3D View Toolshelf, (expand it with the N key) go to the Tools tab, Workspace panel, activate Filter Addons.
There you can pick which addons are active for that specific workspace. Choose only the relevant ones for those particular tasks you generally do in that workspace.

Also see related Addon to customize tabs


What can I do to get rid of ugly triangles I have a problem with baking textures and ambient occlusion. Weird triangles and artifacts appear at end of process. I have tried (i think) everything on internet like soldify, triangulate faces, recalculate, reinport from .obj format. I'm beginner with blender, so please, could someone find solution to this? All I can add: Corupted Meshes have been made new from plane surface like all others and I join them in to single object.

https://goo.gl/photos/h9463isytcmiqUyq7

I think problem is with mesh. Because when I import mesh with other program where I can bake AO too, same problem happend.

After looking at your file the problem is very obvious.

You have a situation where your UV are laying on top of one another. For baking purposes you should never have your UVs position over one another. All islands must have their own space.

Imagine the renderer using those UV information you gave. First it renders A_island_uv portion of the mesh then render B_island_uv portion of the mesh over the previously rendered A_island_uv and no wonder it's a mess.

Check out the UVs after I corrected them the strange triangles are now gone.

FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
All you need to do, for this scenario is to enter edit mode. Select a vertice on the UV island you want to move .. Hit L and that will select the whole island. Hit G to grab and move the island. Scale them up or down if need be and you are done.


How to texture paint only one part (normal map)? Ok, Ive baked normals and there are some I want to get rid of completely - meaning go back to the purple color so they dont show up black. I dont need them and want them gone, but need them on other parts of the model. Right now I have my normal map fed into my material nodes, and I can see on my model where I want to remove normal "bumps" (where it isn't purple):

Trying to find where each "bump" is in photoshop isn't working. How can I mask OR paint over these "bumps" with texture paint? I tried painting over but they persisted. Is this possible?

At the bottom of the viewport next to the pivot options is a toggle for face select masking in Texture Paint mode. Turn that on, and either in Edit mode select the faces that are the offenders here, or in Texture Paint use the rmb to select the faces. You can sample the color from the normal map with the S key, and then paint it in masked by the face selection.


Blender does not play audio track after restart I try to use Blender as a video editor.
I dropped 1 video, 1 mp3 and everything was ok - video plays, audio plays.
As soon as I restart Blender and go to last session video track is ok, but audio track has no sound.  Rendering also will have no sound.

What is it?

PS: if I render just after I dropped mp3 - there is sound in rendered video (as it is in preview window).

This was only when I pressed to recover last session.
If I open .blend file - everything was fine.
I noticed Blender was trying to open some file in /tmp dir. And it couldn't.


Animation Loop "stops" I have an idle animation for a character. I made sure, that the start frame (0) and end frame (60) are the same, so it can smoothly loop.

But for some reason the animation just stops at the end for a short time and starts from a new:

Here the graph of the rotation animation (It eases in and out on the start and end frame):

Am I missing something?

Thanks in avdance!

As Rob said, you should stop your loop at frame 59 so that the same pose is not repeated twice, but you should also copy your frame 15 pose and paste it at 45, because as you see it's not the same right now, so from frame 30 to 60 the movement is very slow and it may participate to what annoys you.


Viewport render gives the desired result but the actual render shows a black screen The blender file
The viewport render is correct but the actual rendered image is a black screen.
This happened to me before and i even posted a question regarding that and the problem was a hidden object. But this time I made sure there was no hidden object in my project but it still doesn't work.
I tried the to unhide all the objects and nothing came out which could disrupt the camera view.
Your help is much appreciated. Thank you

The problem is really simple. Actually you have gone to the compositor and deleted the render output which will stop anything from being rendered. Either add these two nodes back in the compositor:
Or either just uncheck the compositing and sequencer boxes so they don't affect your render:
After doing this the render works at my end.


How to use video preview as video output? I currently have a problem with the video output file that Blender creates when rendering. Rendering the animation in a video file or in images files creates something different from the preview in the video sequence editor and from the temporarily rendered preview images. This leads to problems like that the rendered audio and scene are out-of-sync with the rendered video, whereas this looked fine in the preview.

How do I make sure the image/video preview is accurate to the final video output, or could I also use the preview as video output instead?

I have tried turning AV-Sync on and off, using speed controls for each imported clip, and even changing the framerate of the video output, but nothing seems to be really accurate to the preview.

This may not be exactly what you're asking but have you tried rendering
from the Drop down menu at the top left of the 3D window.  It's called "render" strangely enough and gives you access to the "OPenGL Render."

I use this almost always and find it outputs (usually) what I see in the 3D window, or through the camera.  On the few occasions it doesn't, the problem is always a setting or two, (or three, to almost infinity)

A large factor in it's favour is it's rendering speed.


equal vertices spacing when using displacement modifier Why is the space between these vertices getting bigger, the further they are apart from the original mesh? How can they be spaced equally across the y axis?

When converting a color (RGB) value to a scalar (just one value), you want to set all three channels of the RGB trio to the same value. Here, I think you changed the Value of the HSV trio describing the color. the exact conversion equation may vary from software to software, but here it should work like that.
For instance, a color of (R:0.2,G:0.2,B:0.2) can also be noted as (H:0,S:0,V:0.485). So the value is not linearly correlated to the mean of the RGB values.

The displacement using levels of 0.2 on the RGB channels instead of HSV :

How to convert rgb to hsv :

Source


Can I set key to only the key attribute that I move the bone along with? For example: I grab the Z axis and  move the bone upward, then I want to have only the Z axis location keyed, not the whole three axis xyz location nor other attributes.

Yes.  If you right-click on the Z value in the N panel you get a menu, and one of the options is Insert Single Keyframe


How do I make the mesh more jagged in sculpt mode? I'm using pinch, crease, draw and flatten brush to achieve the objective but it still allows some bumpy look. I want to make the mesh have a sharp edge like a square.

I haven't used sculpt mode much but I would imagine you might be able to do it using a flatten brush if you turn up the strength but set it to a really small radius. If it doesn't work I apologize for wasting your time.


Giant Pixels on Rendering So I made a small scene, when I click the render button this is what I get:

Now that's not how its supposed to render I didn't make large pixels.

This is how its supposed to turn out:

Plus while rendering I'm getting the transparent image texture in the Camera, I've added a new camera with all the default settings and its still the same.

Kindly let me know if you guys have a solution.

The percentage entered below the render resolution is a factor that allows you to quickly decrease the output resolution, e.g. to render a smaller preview.

You accidentally set this setting to one percent which means the final image has a resolution of 19 by 10 pixels instead of 1920 by 1080.


Rendering applies weird squares over my model When I do the final render its all good until 99% and when it reaches 100% then it shows out of nowhere this random square.

How can i fix this? this square doen't exist in my collection. also i have tried CPU and GPU and same problem with booth of them.
UPDATE; i moved my camera away and this happened![
]1

You have this in your compositor;

It's showing up at the end because it's the last thing to be rendered and composited in.


Add AVI to Blender Animation I have an AVI file rendered from an animation. I would like to play it on a "TV" in a different animation. I have added it as an image texture on the "TV" and if I step through the frames I see the animation. But when I run the animation (Alt+A) there is no animation on the "TV", only the first frame. If I stop the run (Alt+A again) the "TV" shows the correct AVI frame.  I haven't tried a full-up render of the new animation because each frame takes about 8 min.
The question: how can I get the AVI "movie" to play on the "TV" in my "living room" scene?

as @DuarteFarrajotaRamos said in comments (and his answer to the linked question) it's a current limit in viewport implementation, and it should work when rendered.
While the animation, though the video will not be updated in the 3d viewport, you can click on the viewport (anywhere) to see the "current" frame. Not so useful, but it shows at least what is shown at that frame...
But there's a (silly) temporary workaround if you need to see that video really playing in the viewport: start playing the animation with the shortcut (ALTA) while hovering the mouse cursor in the right-side texture preview panel, like shown here (note: my screen capturing tool doesn't show the cursor, just the clicks):

so, if you need to see something, at least you have some way to go...


How do I prevent soft body balloons from crumpling when they hit walls? In the last homework project for my Blender class, I had to make a balloon bounce across a ceiling as a soft body driven by wind. I fiddled with the constraints but it always crumpled on impact with the ceiling. Adjusting the constraints so that it retained it shape resulted in it not reacting to the wind. Why is this and how do I prevent it?

With Blender 2.66 or later, you can use a combination of rigid body physics and softbody on the same object. This should help you achieve the effect you want.

Also, increase the goal value and goal stiffness in softbody settings will help you retain the shape of a mesh.

Take a look at this sample scene


UV Map Distorts when I add bevel to model's edges This is driving me crazy. I am relatively new in Blender (2.8), but I've been working with 3D app (Houdini) a lot of years.
I am trying to model a simple cigarretes packs. I modeled it and UV it without issues, but when I added bevel to some edges, UV map going nuts and distorts:

The left one is the basic UV cube. Note the cut when box opens.
I've tried everything that I've found in forums: Inset faces, adding loopcuts, subdividing faces, separates every faces of the model, adding seams in all edges, and nothing. Distortion appears anyways.

Any clue? Thanks in advance.

When you change the topology of your object with the bevel, it changes its UV. I don't know how it works with Houdini but in Blender you need to make sure that the seams are still ok, unwrap again, and align again with the image texture in the UV editor.


How to Model a Keyboard key? Keyboard keys sound easy but their particular shape is really weird, and keeps tripping me up. Specifically my keyboard keys, but I'm pretty sure they are similar to other keyboard keys.

A few photos for reference:

The corners are rounded and the top is sloped inward.

But we can't forget that the top (that is already slopped inward) is also slopped downhill.

I've tried starting with the rounded corners, but I can't add the slopped top without some horrible triangle topology. I've also tried starting with the slopped top, but then I have no idea how to add the corners.

In short, start from a cube. (in the gif I have a mirror modifier to save time)
Delete the bottom face.
Add loop cuts for the rounded top.
Position the top correctly, by simply G grabing, and R rotating and S sclaing the top geometry.
Use proportional editing O to create the dip in the top.
CtrlB to bevel the vertical sides.
(optional) Remove the Ngons in the top, that beveling the sides created.
Bevel the top ridge to make it smother and more realistic.


How to clean up mesh after using Knife Project on a curved surface How can I clean up this Knife Project operation so the bad shading disappears?

The edges created by the Knife Project operation will be used to create a hole in the mesh using the Inset operation.

try to make a strait line as on the pictur it shuld atleast look better.

if you whant to kep the shape add a new edge close to it and work whith it insted.

the last thing I whant to say is if you combinde the subsurfes and mirror modefiers. Put the mirror modefier firs if you don't whant a sharp edge on the mirror point.


Blender Preferences Window Size Is there a way to remember and keep size of the Blender Preferences window?
It's too small and I have to adjust it each time I start Blender.

You may want to setup your own layout configuration.

I'd suggest:

Open Blender
Make necessary changes you want to the windows so that you'd get to the exact screen you want every time you open the Blender.
Press Ctrl + U {or go to top-left corner and click on File > Save Startup File > Save
Startup File (confirmation)}
Now, close the Blender application window and try to re start the application. You'll see the applied changes to your interface.

Something like this:

You can learn ways to setup the configuration reading the documentation here:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/window_system/screens.html

There are tons of videos on customizing the layouts/ start-screen. One that I can recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqPJJGzqrQk

Hope that helps!


Edit Image Externally When I render an image, the "Image" menu has an option to "Edit Externally" but I can't get it to work. Would love to render, then edit in Photoshop. Can anyone help? I've tried setting the  "image editor" in user preferences.

Thanks!

You have to set the associated image editing program in User preferences > File first. Next, make sure that the image is saved to disk (you can use F3) and it should work.

When saving, use Save As Image and untick Save as Render and Copy but keep Relative Path.


Objects/textures not showing when using command line render (Blender 2.5x) I have a scene that renders differently when rendering from the command line and using the GUI.

Specifically, objects go missing from the render when using the command line.

I use the following command (tested in OS-X terminal):

/Applications/blender-2.5x/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender -b GzContrejour.blend -o bl_out/render.png -F JPEG -x 1 -f 1

The problem was that I created the scenes using blender 2.66, but invoked Blender 2.58 on the command line; there are backwards compatibility issues involved here although I forgot exactly what it was (something to do with ngons I believe). Regardless the end result is that precious few object types created in 2.66 will load in 2.58 so the real surprise here was that anything was displayed at all.

Thanks for everybody who kindly tried helping with this. Took me a while to track the issue as I usually need to keep several versions of blender installed so I guess this 'issue' wouldn't affect many people.


What is this yellow line with a dot at the end? I think I have entered a sequence of commands as a mistake and now a yellow line appears in top of my selection.
I don't know what it is for or how to enable/disable it.

I have tried closing the editor but it keeps appearing.

You've simply activated a tool from the toolbox on the left. You can see wich tool you have selected by the blue background on it.
If you don't see that toolbox, simply hit T while your cursor is hovering over your 3D viewport, or drag the little arrow on the top-left part of the viewport.

The default tool is Rectangle Selection (the top-most one), click it.


Where are the Blender program files in Ubuntu 14.04? Can anyone tell me where the .blender directory is in Ubuntu 14.04?

I cannot find the .blender directory in my Ubuntu 14.04 system.

I need to know this location so I can put the MakeHuman add on sub-directories there.

By default: see the doc about directory layout

# LOCAL
./2.74/

# USER
$HOME/.config/blender/2.74/

# SYSTEM
/usr/share/blender/2.74/


Where does Blender 2.8 store theme files on Mac OS? Blender 2.8 seems not to store custom theme files in scripts/presets/interface_theme anymore. Only the default-themes that ship with Blender by default show up there. I searched my system for the name of my theme but that does not yield any results. So: where does Blender 2.8 store theme files on Mac OS?

You can use this utility file to get the theme file

blender-build/blender/source/tools/utils/blender_theme_as_c.py

  Generates 'userdef_default_theme.c' from a 'userpref.blend' file.

  Pass your user preferenes blend file to this script to update the C source file.

  eg:

./source/tools/utils/blender_theme_as_c.py ~/.config/blender/2.80/config/userpref.blend


Find vertices in .obj File which were marked in Blender I am searching for a way to somehow be able to select specific vertices of an object in Blender and I want to find the same vertices in the exported .obj file. I would like to group those vertices in the .obj file.

Are there any ideas how I could do that? Maybe over a material definition for the selected vertices? Or is there a possibility to group vertices in Blender and exporting those group information into the obj file?

I imagine you've decided against separating those vertices so you only export each part separately, i.e. two individual obj files?

(Delete the section(s) you don't want to include in the first obj file, export what's left, then reload the Blender file, delete the other section and export that for the second obj file.

When both are imported their scaling and relative positions should still match so it's easy to recombine/join them (CTL-J) when imported back into Blender)


Drawing surfaces with BSurface, get many wrinkles and stripy texture I am creating a surface using BSurface plugin (great plugin!!), my surface is very large (10 km2) and the result is a very "stripy" looking surface.   I have applied auto smooth, smooth shading, subdivision surface modifier, decimate surface, laplacian smooth modifier, corrective smooth and smooth modifiers and still have a unnatural stripy surface.

I suspect this stripy texture is because the surface is drawn between two curves and is interpolated along a straight line.  However, I still get a stripy look when i use many lines to interpolate my surface (see image of surface drawn with 10 lines) . Has anyone figured a way around this? For example, can you draw a surface, then changes its shape by drawing a 3rd grease pencil line? What is the best way to remove these wrinkles?

Yes there is an align verts with grease pencil tool. You should be able to use this to line your vertices up, and get rid of that weird affect. You may have to download an addon though...


Randomize particle rotation on only one axis Is there any way to randomly rotate particles in hair particle system? I'm trying to create foliage, and I'd like to rotate each plant by a random amount, but only on one axis. If there's a better solution to distribute plants, I'm open to that too.

Enable "advanced".
Enable "rotation".
Choose the axis you want to be up (Y of the model will be along the choosen axis).
And "randomize" the phase.


Blender 2.8 - texture does not appear on extruded circle In Blender 2.8, working from a new file, I have created a mesh circle and extruded it into a cylinder.  I then attempt to apply a texture using settings that work on cubes and cylinders.  But in the case of the extruded circle, the texture does not appear (in Render mode).

My question:  what do I need to do to get the texture to appear on the extruded circle?

You need to UV Map the extruded cylinder. The reason why textures appear on a cylinder (and cube) created from the Add menu is because those are basic shapes that are used a lot, so they are already set up (which means UV mapped) for using textures, but since you extruded your cylinder from a circle, it doesn't have a UV map yet. I suggest looking up tutorials on the internet on how to learn to UV map models, because it is a very important thing to know.

UV mapping a cylinder is trivial, any basic tutorial will do.


Equivalent of the old beauty button for subdivide? I'd like to subdivide a mesh, but only cut the long edges of the quads. So, with all faces selected, I want to halve the quads instead of quartering them

Beauty and short were settings for the subdivide tool. They did that wonderfully. Seems the functionality has been replaced or removed.
Look under options and you know what I mean.

To illustrate it further:

The top mesh is the base, the middle mesh is the result of an ordinary subdivide and the lower mesh has only it's long edges cut. Imagine thousands of long faces that need more topology.

Why don't I want to do it manually? Becaus or cases like this one:

What's today's way of doing that?

You can select an Edge Ring (sort of the opposite of an Edge Loop) with Ctrl+Alt+Right Click and subdivide that.

Also remember there's Subdivide Smooth as well, which is nice for interpolating the curvature of the model (though it cannot do this on a flat 2D surface like this example).

Unfortunately it won't really help in that Icosphere case though.


How to set the origin point of each bone differently? I've been changing stuff while i was rigging, after i finished adding stuff i noticed that the single bone wasn't rotating like it was doing before, now every bone have one common origin point and if i try to change it for every single bone it changes for every other bone.

As you can see in the picture the arm bone have the origin in the main bone.
How do i fix this?

OK, There is only one object origin because it's the origin of your object. It's the 0,0,0 point of reference for all bones inside the armature. All bones share this one origin. It's the ball joint that connects the invisible shoebox with the outside world. In that invisible shoebox lies the armature.

In Object Mode, the whole armature rotates around this.

In Pose Mode, every bone usually rotates around it's own root unless constrained in some way.

You are in Edit Mode where neither necessarily applies. There, stuff rotates around the pivot point. That can be, for example, the center of your selection or, if chosen: the 3D Cursor. It changes violently depending on your settings and your selection.

That also means you are often not merely rotating, you are rotating and moving bones.

Example: you select an entire bone (orange, Edit Mode) and it rotates around its middle. That's not a rotation, that's moving its tip and root in a circular motion. Tip and root will have changed their coordinates.

You select an entire bone (blue, Pose Mode) and it rotates around its root. This is a true rotation because only the direction in which the bone points has changed.

Tip: use CTRLF3 with 'Fullscreen' disabled to make screenshots. Without the header or the properties (N) it's hard to see what you are doing.

I think learning by doing is beginning to reach its limits for you. Flying blind can be tiring. You will run into lots of roadblocks if you keep using Blender without knowing it's fundamental concepts of how it organises its data and its hierarchies.

Make it a sport to read a few pages of documentation every day. Otherwise you keep having blind spots creeping up on you when you need it the least ( :


UV mapping - nothing shows in UV / Image Editor When I try to unwrap my mesh, nothing shows up in my UV/Image editor window.

I have tried simple and complex parts, imported and native mesh, all same result.
Nothing shows up when I hit unwrap.

When I have this problem, I simply just have to create a new image (named whatever you like) in the UV/Image editor window. After you've done so, try unwrapping your model again from the 3D view.

Also, selecting all of your model in edit mode (A key) helps to see the map reflected in the UV/Image workspace.


Why is my model not loading correctly? I attempted to make a simple cup for use in Tabletop Simulator.

When I load the .obj into the game, my model is missing an entire face (The bottom).

http://i.imgur.com/msNqasE.png

However I've uploaded the obj to the A360 viewer by Autodesk and it looks fine.

https://a360.autodesk.com/viewer/id/dXJuOmFkc2sub2JqZWN0czpvcy5vYmplY3Q6YTM2MHZpZXdlci90MTQ1OTIzMDk3MTkzMV8wOTc0NTM0Njk5NTExNjM1MS5vYmo%3D?designtype=obj

I just started using Blender today so theres a good chance I made a simple mistake.

The face is there but it faces the wrong direction. The autodesk viewer probably ignores the face normal and shows it on both sides.

What you have to do is to flip the normal of this face.

you can read more about this issue here:

How to make all faces flip to the right/consistent direction?


Blender 2.81: Add hierarchy to selection Organizing the objects under empties, I'm used to select the empties and all the objects under it by Ctrl+Shift+LeftMouse on the "Groups" I want to select.

With the release of 2.81 this no longer works: you can right-click on the empty and select all the objects under it ("Select Hierarchy"), but you can't add to the current selection this way (ie. select multiple hierarchies/groups).

Does anyone know about an easy way to select several empties and their underlying hierarchies?

Looks like it's gone, but you can still right click the parent object and hit "Select hierarchy"
But that won't work for de-selecting it :(

Edit: And it's quite impossible to select couple of parent object with their hierarchies.


Why there are black spot on the mesh I have tried Flip Normals ctrl+N and recalculate normals but the spots not going all the way. How to get the clean faces. Any suggestion

it looks perfect here, I have a smooth surface, no black spots...

but using 3d print analysis tools, there are at least a few non planar faces:


No Backdrop Button in node editor I'm having issues with the Node Editor. I have clicked render image button but I am unsure as to whether it has worked. No image actually comes up, and there is no backdrop button.

You have Shader or material nodes selected, what you want are Compositing nodes which is the button directly to the right of that.

If you want to see the output of your render in the compositor, you need a Viewer node connected to the render layer you are working with. So switch to compositing nodes, add a viewer node, tick backdrop and you should see your render.


Access view orientation from python? Is it possible to access the alignment of the view from python? (e.g 'TOP', 'FRONT', 'RIGHT', etc.)

I looked in the api docs, but the closest I could find was view_perspective.

Looking at the implementation of view3d.viewnumpad in view3d_edit.c, it's just switch-ing over FRONT, BACK, etc. enumerations and setting the view matrix accordingly. The only way I found is through deducing the orientation from view matrix in Python, in the following barebones example using either view_matrix:

import math

def get_view_orientation_from_matrix(view_matrix):
    r = lambda x: round(x, 2)
    view_rot = view_matrix.to_euler()

    orientation_dict = {(0.0, 0.0, 0.0) : 'TOP',
                        (r(math.pi), 0.0, 0.0) : 'BOTTOM',
                        (r(-math.pi/2), 0.0, 0.0) : 'FRONT',
                        (r(math.pi/2), 0.0, r(-math.pi)) : 'BACK',
                        (r(-math.pi/2), r(math.pi/2), 0.0) : 'LEFT',
                        (r(-math.pi/2), r(-math.pi/2), 0.0) : 'RIGHT'}

    return orientation_dict.get(tuple(map(r, view_rot)), 'UNDEFINED')

... or view_rotation as @WChargin suggested, seeing that it's normalized as stated in API docs:

def get_view_orientation_from_quaternion(view_quat):
    r = lambda x: round(x, 3)
    view_rot = view_quat.to_euler()

    orientation_dict = {(0.0, 0.0, 0.0) : 'TOP',
                        (r(math.pi), 0.0, 0.0) : 'BOTTOM',
                        (r(math.pi/2), 0.0, 0.0) : 'FRONT',
                        (r(math.pi/2), 0.0, r(math.pi)) : 'BACK',
                        (r(math.pi/2), 0.0, r(-math.pi/2)) : 'LEFT',
                        (r(math.pi/2), 0.0, r(math.pi/2)) : 'RIGHT'}

    return orientation_dict.get(tuple(map(r, view_rot)), 'UNDEFINED')

It currently ignores perspective/orthogonal and camera view, but that can be easily deduced from the region's other variables.


Can a curve be a parent of a bone? I would like to control multiple bones with a bezier curve but I don't want them to follow the path of the curve.

I want the heads of the bones to follow the curve without rotation. Is it possible ? Can their tails be fixed to a position and the heads still follow the curve ? And a last question can the heads ans the tails be attached to 2 different curves ?

I'm animating a dragon and i want the wings to follow the exact shape I want without moving every bones of the wings. It would be so easier and faster if blender could do it.

What you're asking for, and showing with your pic, sounds a lot like the behavior of bones with a clamp-to constraint.

These four bones, parented unconnected in a row, each have the same, copied clamp-to constraint that keeps them clamped to the curve, without affecting their rotation.

If I duplicate this structure, then add damped track constraints to the bones, I get this:

The heads of the bones are clamped to the bottom curve, while the tails point to the top curve.  Note that I have to specify where on the top curve they point, with the top four bones.  These four bones couldn't be parented directly to the bottom four bones, because that would involve a dependency loop, but both could be parented to the same (unpictured) bone, so that bone slid them along their respective curves from the same controls.

Note that the bottom bones don't reach the top curve, they only point at it.  In order to reach the top curve, you could add stretch-to constraints for the bottom four bones.

Finally, be aware that tails don't mean very much, not as much as they seem to.  The location of a tail has absolutely no effect on deformation-- any unconstrained bone will rotate, scale, and translate in the exact same ways, regardless of where its tail is located.  Tails are useful only for controlling local bone axes and for use with some constraints.


How to Export Cycles Rendered object for Three.js I have created a model that I want to use in my THREE.js web application. However, I can only get it work when I export the Blender file while using the Blender Renderer. Does anyone know how to successfully export with the Cycles Renderer to JSON for THREE.js?

The three.js exporter doesn't support Cycles nodes. You may want to try exporting to other formats that three.js supports. The best supported are currently FBX and glTF.


Distribute Points on instanced geometry I want to instance a leaf on my instanced stems. But it only shows the stems.
Is the geometry output of the Point Instance node not treated as full normal geometry?

I suggest you include the leaves inside the stem object. You can use the same technique twice. You should use a random seed on the leaves, otherwise all the stems have the same leaves. Distribute this stem-leave object on the floor. This should work.


Is it possible or desireable to allow a color to be assigned to vertex groups in edit mode Is it possible or desirable to assign vertex groups a color in edit mode.
It might make it easy to decifer the rats nest of a complicated model.
Thanks

Edit Mode. Show Weights. In the panel
Consider hiding vertices from the menu choices.
Consider hiding vertices with a Mask Modifier


Texture for a fireplace I`m trying to make this fireplace in blender and can˙t figure out how to make the texture in white.

Can anyone help?

Sounds like the job for a Voronoi texture. While not exactly the same you can approximate that pattern relatively closely.

You can either apply it at material level, as a Bump map or as material based displacement, or you can use it as geometry level with a Displacement Node.

Last option will produce actual geometry but most likely require very high levels of subdivision and hence very dense geometry.

Shader Bump Map

Material Displacement

Geometry displacement


Translucency amount control I have created a plant with leaves. I have used a leaf texture to with a translucent shader . But I want to be able to control the amount of translucency  . Which node can I use to achieve control of translucency?

In Cycles you need to add the Mix Shader and adjust its Factor value. When set to 0.5 (the default) it gives equal share to Translucent and Diffuse BSDF.


Snapping a vertex group to another Is it possible that the selected vertices of a mesh move at the position of the vertices of another like the image below? (the number of vertices is same.)

Thanks in advance

Destructive Method: Bridge

Duplicate the vertices of the left mesh X. Go to the target mesh, duplicate the target vertices (box select B and duplicate ⇧ ShiftD) and separate them P by selection. Join the target vertices with the original mesh.
Select the outer edges of the remaining target mesh, which are now unconnected (⎇ Alt RMB for edge loop selection). ⇧ Shift select the outer target vertices. Then bridge them with ⎈ CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops. Recalculate the normals of the target vertices. ⎈ CtrlN

Non-Destructive Method: Shapekeys

Select the vertices in question of the left original mesh. Assign them to a group ('Group'). Create the Basis shapekey and a new shapekey. In the new shapekey, move the original vertices close to the target mesh vertices. (As close as possible.)
Set the Shapekey influence value to 1.0. Add a Shrinkwrap modifier to the original object. Set the target object as Target and the Group as Vertex Group. Set the method to Nearest Vertex. The vertices now snap to the nearest vertex of the target mesh.
Apply the modifier as shapekey. You can delete the temporary shapekey.


Dynamic paint erase paint doesnt work? Ok, I am trying to achieve exactly what this person did with weight painting but with output to material - the circle of "intersection" depends on the proximity of the brush object to canvas, so gets smaller when goes away -

Cycles, shade based on proximity to another object's geometry

I followed the linked tutorial and it is working for material, however after I move the object away again the paint is still there -

I tried checking the Erase Paint option, but this did nothing -

How can I make it follow proximity AFTER it touches down? Im in cycles obviously

On the Canvas there should be Dynamic Paint Advanced options. This includes 'Dry' and 'Dissolve' settings. The 'Dry' allows your 'wetmap' to dry over time whereas the 'Dissolve' setting allows your paint to revert back to its initial colour over a series of framee - in my experience you should only enable one of these two options as the 'Dry' seems to disable 'Dissolve'.

Enable 'Dissolve' and set the number of frames to the number of frames you want the paint to remain - if you want it to instantly revert then set it to '1' and uncheck 'Slow'.

This should produce something like the following :

Note also that the dynamic paint treats timeline frame 1 as a special case where the paint is automatically reset and rendered. If you are on a different frame the dynamic paint will not automatically update in the viewport.


How to do "NumPad ." on a mac I'm trying to focus on a tiny object and the emulator as far I see doesn't do "NumPad ." actions on a Mac. Also the + and - don't zoom me into focusing on the object. I'm either too far away or I zoom in and get too close and can't see the object. What is the quick key for "NumPad ." or a drop down menu option for it if someone doesn't have a number-pad and the Blender emulator doesn't emulate number-pad actions that don't use a number? What are the alternative actions for number-pad (and something that isn't a number)?

I am not using mac, but I think I can help you.
First go to Edit->Preferences->Keymap.
And then select Key-Binding:

Now you can search for the shortcut that you want (in this case you will search for ".") and change it to whatever you want.
I hope it works for you.


How to scale multiple objects on a given axis? I made a simple model of a house (fig.1) .
Now, I want to copy the house and mirror it negative 1 on the Y-axis in global orientation.
It should give me an exact mirrored copy of the original but instead all of the different objects get flipped in unwanted directions (fig.2) .
The house contains multiple objects (roofing, windows, doors, etc.)

I've run into this problem once or twice in the past but did not find a solution or why this is happening, nor could I replicate it in a clean blendfile.

(I know about the transformation orientation settings as well as the different options to set the pivoting point of one or multiple objects.)

Does someone know why this is happening?

Parent the duplicates to an Empty and then scale that empty by -1 on one axis.


Is it possible to get the path of a .blend file from within OSL? I'm aware of how to do this with Python, that won't solve the issue in an ideal way for me. Introducing Python is uncomfortably outside of the scope of what I'm writing.
I'm attempting to use a texture lookup from within OSL, as part of a tutorial I'm creating; but the default working directory is the same as Blender's. That makes it very difficult to write portable code that will work on any other machine--I can't use relative paths. I'm really trying to ensure that the tutorial file will immediately work on 2.92, on any machine, out-of-the-box.
Is there a manner in which OSL can retrieve the path to the current .blend file internally?

OSL itself doesn't provide any facilities to access files relative to the .blend file.
However, when passing a 'string' into an OSL script node, Blender automatically assumes that the string represents a filename. As with other filenames in Blender, prefixing the filename with '//' will indicate a path relative to the saved .blend file.
Therefore, in order to get the filepath to the .blend in an OSL shader simply add a 'string' input and set its value (within the node field) to '//'.


Smooth Shading on Cube looks weird I am not that good with blender and I noticed whenever I create a cube and enable smooth shading, I get some very weird results.

As you can see, some very weird results appear. The lighting of the cube is light in some areas, and darker in other areas. Why is this occurring and can it be fixed?

The short answer is that your result is the expected from smooth shading. Forgive me if I cover info you already know here.

A normal vector is a vector that points directly away from a surface. They are used to determine which way a face is 'facing' in terms of how it interacts with light. In Blender, these normal vectors don't always actually point straight away from faces.

The leftmost cube has flat shading. What this effectively means is that each face is acting as though it is detached from the other faces. At each corner of the cube you see three normal vectors, each pointing directly away from the face they are a part of.

The middle cube is smooth shading. The normal vectors of the vertices at each corner are the average of the normals of each face at that point. The normals across the surface of the face are interpolated between these vertex normals. So you can imagine at the exact center of the face, the normal is pointing straight out, but the closer you get to one of the edges, the more the normals are pointing sideways. In terms of how blender is lighting the smooth cube, it looks like a sphere.

The rightmost cube also has smooth shading, but more geometry. The vertex normals are still the average of their surrounding faces, but because there is now geometry confined within each flat face, those internal vertices have normals pointing straight out, and the smooth shading is merely creating the illusion of rounded corners.


How to render surface divisions for subsurface modifier? I want to render the outline of faces as shown in the below image to show the divisions of panels. How to do this in Blender?

If you want small gaps in the tiles you can use the edge split modifier and the solidify modifier. make sure you set the offset to +1 on the solidify mod.

Another thing you can try if you want the mesh lines to be extruded outwards,you can duplicate the object that you want to see the subdivisions on and use the wireframe modifier on it.


Boolean Modifier difference operation not working I am trying to create a room using blender.
I am following this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or9bMxAuICc
I am trying to make this image:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AdEr5

Ok, so to make windows, i try the boolean modifier.i add a cube, place it in the place of window. i add a boolean modifier to the walls of the room.Then,I set the operation to difference and selected the cube. Next the cube starts clipping.
like this:

I moved the cube to another layer but it seemed that it did not go:

although the cube was on another layer:

I went out of the room and there i found a hole but it wasn't cutting through the wall (P.S. I do not have a solidify modifier on the room)
It was like this:

I investigated more and i found that the cuefdged theroomwith I really don"t know how to say it but here it is:

I have tried everything with the normals. Flipped them inside as well as outside. Recalculated them. Applied the scale. Nothing works.
Please help I'm stuck. This has never happened before.
I am also including the .blend file.

One and half year later ....

First issue - "Clipping" from your first image - viewport glittering of overlapping two coplanar faces. On that place is face of original cube and newly generated face in the wall by modifier.

Modifier takes cube only as a reference for operation, so you have to hide cube manually to see Boolean result (like you did it by moving into another layer, or you can uncheck visibility in Outlines Editor.

For the second issue - difference cube from outside, but not inside ... you need to set some thickness to the wall.

From blender view, you are like in a volume of the cube (room). You can noticed that by display face Normal orientation. They are faced to outside, that is outer side of object for blender. To get a hole by Boolean modifier you need also for interiér generate faces with normal faced into interier.

Simple way (but depends on your model) is to add Solidify modifier before Boolean operation.


How can i export my models without any offset I have a 3D model and I am trying to export each part of the model that makes it to an OBJ and JSON format, but I notice I get an offset as the models are not centered at their own origin after exporting. How do I export each of the at their own individually centered origin.

Try centering the object in the center of the world before export using ⎇ Alt G and if your model moves into a weird position, move the model to the center manually and use ⎈ Ctrl A to apply the location and export afterwards.


The shadows on Eevee are clippy? I don't know the proper term, but I'm a new blender user and I was trying to create a light and the shadows from it are very clipped, but only on Eevee. Works fine on cycles.

Try 'high bit depth' and / or 'soft shadows' in the render panel 'shadows' bit, or maybe the 'method' or 'cube size' / 'cascade size' (hover over tool-tip says what type of light they are for).

There's also the 'softness', 'bias', 'exponent' etc. settings in the light properties tab (when you've the light selected obviously), and more 'cascade shadow map' settings - if it's a 'sun' type light.


Boolean object won't disappear in render This boolean object appears when I render. I turned off the render and view option in the outliner but it still appears.

Please help! Thanks!

I tried turning off all the render and visible keyframing in the outliner, but I still get the same problem. Here is the before and after, 1st is render view and 2nd is the actual render result.

The boolean object that keeps appearing is used to hide the paper halfs, so there are no shredded papers revealed before the shredding machine, and no unshredded paper revealed after the shredding machine. Here is the result before I render below.

I get this "mask" result when I render it out, but in some parts of the animation that cube will show up. I checked my keyframe timeline and there are not keyframes near where the mask will randomly appear.

This is what i'm trying to achieve! But the boolean object keeps appearing in my render.

Finally found what was wrong.

I was using the "mask" object for 2 different boolean modifiers. I created a separate object for each boolean modifier and it rendered correctly.

Thanks for all your help!


Trying to bake an iridescent texture So I've followed this tutorial on youtube to get an iridescent kind of material, and I added an image texture node to bake it but when I do, it only bakes the base purple color, not the others. I'm not really all that well versed in using nodes, I just tend to follow the tutorial for whatever material I need on youtube.

I've read here that you can do this in Maya, but I don't have access to that program.

any help would be super appreciated, thank you in advance! :D

All you need to do is replace the Layer Weight node with a Normal Map node.
I played around with the normal color and strength to get a result I liked.
(The image texture I'm using is just an image of a gradient)


Importing X, Y, Z data with a know datum I am an archaeologist and I need help. I want to make a 3-D model of archaeological structures that I have x,y and Z data for. The xyz data are in CSV file format. I could also make a shapefile in ArcMap. I would like to try and load the coordinates in but I am not sure if there is a way. If I have to do it manually that is okay. Is there a quick way to do this?
Thanks
Jacque

Don't know if you need this anymore, but as another archaeologist who just went through this, I'm gonna answer it.

For importing a point list into blender, you're looking for this add-on: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?211735-A-Script-to-Import-a-CSV-File-and-Create-Meshes-(for-Blender-2-5x-or-later).  It has multiple options when importing, such as making a line from the sequence of points in the file or just importing the vertices without adding edges.

As it sounds like you're coming from geospatial data, you may need to re-project your data before bringing it into blender.  Blender (and other 3D programs like Unity3D and Meshlab) don't play well if your coordinates are over 1,000,000.  I work in a projected national grid that has eastings and northings that are all over 1 million and any time I forget to re-project into a local coordinate system before importing, things get VERY wonky.

Another concern you may need to address (that I'm still fiddling with) is the fact that geospatial data uses a right-handed z-up coordinate system while many 3D applications use a left-handed y-up coordinate system.  Depending on what you want to do with your models after blender, this may or may not be an issue.  It is for me, as I'm bringing each model individually into unity and need them to all match-up with one another.


Lock axis while rotating along path I'm trying to keep the z axis (Poles) of the sphere at a certain angle while the sphere travels along it's path.

I can't see an option to animate transform in a local orientation. It always animates in a world space.

I tried playing with different eulers and restraints. Limit rotations won't work and i have tried checking and unchecking the follow path option.

I have even tried the "copy rotation" restraint off an empty by transferring to local space. It seems to go all over the shop when I try this.

I am out of idea's, so any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

So I started over. Turns out actions have to be performed in a specific order: editing values afterwards does not seem to work well.

The issue I ran into must have been because I applied follow path before I animated the rotation.

Use ZYX Euler on object you want to apply the rotation too
Select local transformation
Animate object rotation first in local transformation
Apply follow path


Blender crashes on startup, why? Trying to use blender on ubuntu 18.04 and I get the following error:

libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

Followed by a sigsegv.  I have an Nvidia graphics card and the output of the crash file is:

# Blender 2.79 (sub 0), Unknown revision

# backtrace
blender(BLI_system_backtrace+0x33) [0x555bdc475e93]
blender(+0x1040453) [0x555bdb9ff453]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x3ef20) [0x7f5e92df9f20]
blender(GHOST_GetDPIHint+0) [0x555bdc493290]
blender(WM_window_set_dpi+0x12) [0x555bdba1f932]
blender(ED_screen_refresh+0xe9) [0x555bdbd171a9]
blender(ED_screens_initialize+0x2b) [0x555bdbd177eb]
blender(WM_check+0x68) [0x555bdb9fff58]
blender(wm_homefile_read+0x3c9) [0x555bdba0d5e9]
blender(WM_init+0x14b) [0x555bdba0fccb]
blender(main+0x241) [0x555bdb9bf0c1]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe7) [0x7f5e92ddcb97]
blender(_start+0x2a) [0x555bdb9fc09a]

How do you fix this.

I found a clue here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/834254/steam-libgl-error-no-matching-fbconfigs-or-visuals-found-libgl-error-failed-t but was not happy with their solution.

I ended up reinstalling the nvidia drivers which had been removed during an abortive cuda install/removal.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

The version you need will be based on your graphics card and you can figure out that version with this page https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us on the nvidia site.


How to move a selected mesh in to another collection in editmode? So right now i have a couple meshes in the 3d view that I want want to move into another collection. When I am in object mode and select it all the meshes are highlighted. So when pressing m and move it moves all meshes. How do I select only one mesh and move?

An object can be made of many connected or unconnected meshes. Creating a new mesh in edit mode will not make it a new object, but will be part of the Active Object

You need to separate those meshes into different objects before they can be part of different collections.

To separate parts of a mesh and turn them into a new independent objects (with their own unique name and pivot point), use the separate function (pressing P) and choose if you want to separate by selection, unconnected parts or materials.

Read: Why can't objects in Edit Mode have their own name?


move instanced objects relative to empty I'm trying to move [instanced] objects up when I move an empty beneath them. Picture a 10 x 10 array of spheres. I want it to look like something is moving below them pushing them up as it moves. I don't want to deform the spheres, just move them. I did this in Modo way back when, but want to try it in blender. Am I missing something obvious? ideas? Thanks!

Here is a way to do it:

Create a large plane, subdivide it, create a sphere, create a small plane that you put at the same location as your sphere, subdivide this small plane, select all its vertices and create a vertex group:

Give your small plane a Shrinkwrap modifier / Wrap Method > Project with the large plane as Target. Give your sphere a Copy Location constraint, with the small plane as Target and in Vertex Group select the vertex group you've created, enable the Z axis only.
Create 2 empties, one under the large plane, the other one above, parent the bottom empty to the top empty, give your large plane a Warp modifier, choose the 2 empties in Object From and Object To, play with the Strength and Radius values, it will warp the plane surface:

Select the sphere and the small plane, press AltD to duplicate along the X axis, press ShiftR to repeat the duplication. Do the same on the Y axis. Make the planes invisible, move the top empty to deform the plane and the spheres should follow:


Why can't I extrude a Nurbs curve along a nurbs path What is the protocol for extruding objects along paths.
I cannot find any user-friendly assistance in the manual.
I am not used to the CAD geometry approach as I have more experience with the older Finite Element packages, where the geometry was constructed then meshed. Extrusion, mirroring etc were intuitive.

Also, I constructed a nurbs path in the shape of a wheel section, and constructed what I thought was going to be a separate nurbs circle, perpendicular to the plane of the wheel section, running through one end of the section path.
When I tried to perform the extrusion, using E, and transform rotate, there appeared to be no control over the transformation re axis.
When I selected the nurbs circle, I found that it had merged with the wheel section.
1) How do I separate them, and
2) Can I perform the extrusion using this method?

I am using v2.76  on a fairly quick XP SP3 32bit 3.3GHz Pentium 2 core and a GeForce 6200, with adequate ram and hdd.

By saying extrude along a path, are you referring to 'Skinning'? If so, they have to be separate objects, then you use one as a 'Bevel' object to skin(bevel) the path. If you could post a screen shot and clarify this, it would help.


How to export model for use in Unity with correct UV map? I have model with proper (not beautiful) UV map. It looks like this. The texture is where it should be:

Then I export the model to .dae (and I tried all other export type, that Unity gets. I have the same problem at every file type).
In unity it looks like this:

I do not use mirror modifier or anything, yet it looks like the UV map in unity only applies on one half of the model. Where it goes wrong? What I am missing about Unity? (I just started to use it)

The .blend file:

So as it turned out in comments, while in Blender I can make the UV map bigger than the texture to make texture smaller on the model like this:

in Unity it simply checks for the UV map inside the texture. As you can see half of the boat was outside the texture (it was accidentally sized it like that) half of the texture was wrong in Unity.