How do i Snap an vertex just where it touches and edge following it´s own axis? I want to slide this vertex, along it´s own axis, till it touches the next edge, and snap to it. I can´t seem to use the snap tool to snap on an edge, following a weird axis that is not X, Y or Z.

That can be easily done in Sketchup, but in Blender I feel like I'm in hell.

Blender has very limited precision modelling or CAD-like features, this is not natively supported at the moment.

You may look into third party addons to help you achieve this, some are commercial some are free:

You can try Blender TinyCAD addon (which I believe is shipped with Blender by default) that has a few intersection options. It doesn't directly provide snapping options, but can extend an existing edge until it reaches another one.
If you don't mind spending a little money, there is a payed addon Snap Utilities that provides a Sketchup-like workflow, with a pencil tool. (I am not in any way affiliated or associated with the addon creator, although I did purchase it).
There is also a free version of the above Snap Utilities, with some limitations in functionality


Objects being moved with each other inside an area I have accidentally enabled a mode which creates a kind of smooth brush whenever I move an object. And when I drag it across the axis everything inside the circle gets moved as well. How do I stop this and what is the keyboard shortcut?

 - This is the difference in the tool bar, in other .blends without the problem there is no (Smooth).

 - This is the circle in which everything in it also gets moved, this can be re sized but not removed. And even if I re size it until it is almost gone, it still creates problems.

If someone could help me figure out this problem it would be much appreciated.

Available Shortcuts for Proportional Edit tool:

O to enable/disable Regular mode;
AltO to enable/disable Connected mode;
ShiftO to switch among the Falloff types.


How to create shape keys from posing armature? I have one character with his face rigged and I want create shape keys from posing bones of his face, I'm trying to do this with the armature modifier but when I make clic in Apply as shape key, this create the shape key but my armature unlink of my mesh, so I copied the modifier before apply as shape key, but the pose doesnt back to original pose. Is there another method to do this or what I'm doing wrong?

If I understand your will, you should:
- 1) set the pose you want
- 2) In the armature modifier apply as shape key
- 3) in pose mode select all bones and reset all transforms (Alt G, Alt R, Alt S)
- 4) add an armature modifier to your mesh
- 5) select the mesh as "object" of the new armature modifier

In this way you will have the mesh controlled by the armature and a shape key which will reflect the pose you set in point 1)


Can I render a MOV with Jpeg2000 Codec with Blender? Apparently, Blender has support for this codec. But I can not get my way across it. On a Mac, there are no options to select JPEG 2000, neither for images nor movie. On Windows, I did render image sequence with JPEG 2000 with Blender 2.67, But quicktime container did not have the codec. I want to render mov files with Alpha channel - thus JPEG 2000 (Animation and PNG were giving very large file sizes, and these files are to be made available for download.

Any pointers would be very helpful - horribly stuck.

On OS-X you can render to PNG then open the files in preview and select export files to jpeg2000.

If it should be unclear, you can export multiple files at once by having them selected in the preview sidebar (CommandA).

I just hope it does take the alpha channel into account, haven't tested that yet.


Why my "Render" viewport shading just looks like Material preview??? even I add the Light point? Why my "Render" viewport shading just looks like Material preview??? even I add the Light point? everything don't like render preview?
I have made sure that Scene Lights and Scene World are checked, so that isn't the problem:

You may have "Scene Lights" and "Scene World" unchecked. If unchecked, the Material Preview lighting and reflections appear in your Render Preview:

This can also happen if you connect your materials directly to the material output without a shader, as seen below. If done this way, the material is considered "unshaded" and is thus unaffected by scene lights.


Replace duplicate textures with exisiting one in Python I have two objects with different shaders on it, but with the same texture piped in.
I need to replace the texture with the .006 with the original one by code.
How do I do that?

It supposed to look like this, you see that they share the same texture because of the small 2 next to the textfield.

My code so far:
import bpy

for material in bpy.data.materials:
    if material.node_tree:
        for x in material.node_tree.nodes:
            if x.type == 'TEX_IMAGE':
                xSplit = x.image.name.split('.')
                imageName = xSplit[0]
                if xSplit[-1].isdigit():
                    originalName = xSplit[0] + '.' + xSplit[1]
                    print(originalName)
                    #This does not work:
                    x.image.name = 'static_deckchair_plastic_BaseColor.jpg'

Try this
import bpy, re

def get_original_name(name):
    """When name looks like 'X.001', return 'X'. Otherwise None."""
    i = name.rfind('.')
    if i != -1:
        suf = name[i+1:]
        if len(suf) == 3 and suf.isdigit():
            return name[:i]
    return None

for material in bpy.data.materials:
    if material.node_tree is None:
        continue
    for node in material.node_tree.nodes:
        if node.type != 'TEX_IMAGE':
            continue
        if node.image is None:
            continue
        original_name = get_original_name(node.image.name)
        if original_name is None:
            continue
        if original_name in bpy.data.images:
            node.image = bpy.data.images[original_name]


How to rig a Seatbelt? (Buckle passing through seatbelt) I am having some trouble with rigging a seatbelt. I want to create a rig where the seatbelt reacts to the movement of the seatbelt buckle. As the buckle would move (Up and down for example), the seatbelt should move with it and pass through the buckle attribute accordingly.
I really couldn't find any info on especially objects/rigs sliding or passing eachother.
See blend. file which I included.
https://pasteall.org/blend/246862150d814f40b4509414c372ff1a
Thank you so much in advance!
Cheers,
Sander

You could do it with Lattice:

Bring back your belt to a flat plane:

Create a lattice,  in the Properties panel > Object Data choose its Resolution (here 2/1/5), in Object mode, scale it down, rotate it so that it frames the area that you need to tweak. Give your belt a Lattice modifier and choose the lattice as Object.

In Edit mode, move the vertices of the lattice so that it tweaks the belt the way you want. Parent the lattice to the buckle so that when you'll move the buckle, the lattice will follow and tweak the belt:


Horizontal only texture blur? I have a texture image that I wanted to place on the outside of an object (boolean intersection between spherical shell and angular wedge).  Unfortunately, when I do this, I get blurring only in the horizontal direction and nothing in the vertical direction.  It is possible this could be from a UV mapping issue.  I am very new to this and thought that I had UV kind of figured out but I could be wrong.  Here is an image of the poor result:

I have tried to use the information contained in the following post:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10544/48234

The following are my shader setups for the ring:

Full Shader

Just Image Blur Node

As an aside, for some reason, the image blurring fails to work at all when I pack the image.  Any help on that would be great as well.  Below are the blend file and the necessary image.

Edit

After I used the pack all to blend file from the 'File' menu, I think the images got correctly packed so that the blurring still works, but it is still incorrect.  The updated blend file is below:

The problem is mostly a result of aspect ratio of the zodiac image - ie, being much wider than it is tall.

Image Texture coordinates run from 0.0 - 1.0 in both the horizontal and vertical direction, regardless of the actual resolution of the image. Since the 'blur' acts on these image texture coordinates this means that the effect of the blur in one direction is much more pronounced than that in the other direction. To address this, you need to scale the texture coordinates before the 'blur' (in this case by a factor of 12) and 'un-scale' them after. This can be easily achieved by using Mapping nodes with the X-scale set to '12' and '1/12' respectively.

I also simplified the blur node as the original seemed to also introduce an offset.

This produces the following result :

Note that for this I also changed your mesh lights into Area Lamps. These produce better lighting and allow the number of samples to be considerably reduced with the same resultant quality.


Create proper UV islands without removing vertex doubles Currently I'm creating a very low-poly model where there needs to be a high contrast between different Surfaces, so the normals of each surface must be equal to the perpendicular of the surface.

When I try to smart UV unwrap my model, without changing the model, no UV's are connected. If I want to create a nice unwrap with proper UV islands, I remove all vertex doubles and afterwards smart unwrap the model.

The problem with this method, is that now the normals are automatically smoothed, which destroys the preferred  look of the model.

Is there a way to properly smart UV unwrap a model without removing the vertex doubles? Or might there be a way to get normals perpendicular to the surface after removing the doubles?

Select the edges you want to be sharp, press Ctrl + E, mark sharp. Add modifier: Edge Split. Check Edge Angle to do it automatically. Check Sharp Edges to do it manually. Check both for a combination.

You can later also select all edges you marked sharp (use the space search function, I don't know what menu it's under), then mark them as seams if you want. Seams tell blender where to separate geometry. Usually, this is where sharp edges are, in order to hide seams on textures.


How can I setup a Material in Cycles for Z-Transparency? After converting to nodes in order to render using Cycles I've no idea where to enable the z-transparency. I guess the image textures alpha channel needs to be pluged somewhere but I've no idea which node would be suitable.

The question is how could I correctly setup the nodes to have the same effect as when using z-transparency in BI?

The materials original settings for BI are:

Which renders like:

I had no luck with DarenWs suggestion:

Use a Mix shader as the last node before the Material Output.   feeding it the hair material (diffuse shader or whatever) in the lower input, a Transparency shader in the upper, and the image texture's alpha into the Mix's "fac" input.


Dynamic Reaction Control System Animation I'm attempting to create a node tree using the Animation Nodes addon to have automatically scaling "Reaction Control System" plumes on any arbitrary mesh.

Essentially, I am hoping to create a single "RCS Plume" object (in my test case, a simple cone), which is then instanced via the object instancer node to occur once per face, with its local z axis facing along the normal of each face. After that, I run the object list of each "plume" through a loop that is supposed to scale each plume depending on the acceleration (currently only rotational, to make things simpler in my test cases), using ClockMender's My-AN-Nodes Object Speed & Acceleration node.

However, I've only been able to get all the plumes to scale the same amounts simultaneously, or to not scale at all. Is this something that's possible with Animation Nodes and Blender?

My attempts so far are:

The uppermost nodes, creating the instances of the cones.

The nodes being used to calculate the scale when provided the value of one axis on the current, previous, and previous previous frames.

The loop itself, and where I suspect the issue lies.

Specifically, I'm unsure as to why all three object transform inputs are providing the exact same value from their rotation output, given that each should be giving a different frame. (The "Use Current Transforms" option on the two using offsets is unchecked). If instead of giving the loop a object list of each plume, I instead give it the single object that the plumes are being created on, the rotation values are different, as expected. However, this results in the same scaling occurring to each plume regardless of position, as mentioned above.

Finally, a view of my test setup:

The cube is the object that the cones are being created on, and the selected objects are the cones, currently stuck at a local z scale of 0.

My desired result would consist of each cone only scaling when it is tangent (this may be the incorrect term, apologies) to some component of the rotation, and not on the half of the object that is in the direction of motion. Additionally, the scaling would be in proportion to the acceleration, up to cap. Effectively, I would like it to appear as if the cones "firing" are the cause of the rotation, and eventually translation.

Edit 2018-03-11 13:59 EDT:
To better explain the effect I'm looking for I've created a small animation manually doing what I'm hoping to do automatically. In the dynamic version I would want a cone to scale to "slow down" the cube on the appropriate/opposite side, rather than it stopping itself.

Edit2 2018-03-13 00:28 EDT:

I've come up with a partial solution, which doesn't fulfill all of my initial requirements, but does come fairly close, and most importantly, looks decent. For reference to anyone looking to implement a RCS animation in blender with animation nodes in the future, who are looking for a (potentially useful) starting point, I've uploaded the file to Blend-Exchange:  (Look at NodeTree.001, I forgot to rename it before uploading)

This solution seems computationally heavy, in addition to not being completely physically accurate. It requires each object being instanced to become an RCS plume to have fcurves for translation and rotation. This is accomplished via Animation Nodes' Set Keyframes node, inside a loop.

The RCS effect only fires appropriately for rotation, but if translating and rotating, it will take the translation into account. This can be removed by removing the translational acceleration frame in the nodegroup.

The key to getting only one side to fire, instead of the opposite firing at the same time, was to multiply the scales for each plume by the normals of each face of the base mesh. I've absolutely no idea why this seems to mostly work.

Again, this is not physically accurate, and doesn't take relative position on the base object into account, but hopefully may be useful to someone in the future.

I believe that I've solved the issue. The solution isn't 100% physically correct, but it appears reasonably close with a few caveats:

Use Animation Nodes 2.1, no My-AN-Nodes required (this could probably be redone on 2.0)
You must also instantiate empties on each location you want a plume, then use the animation nodes Set Keyframes node set to record rotational keyframes for every frame, running entirely through your animation at least once to get that data. (This can be temperamental on Ctrl+Zs, sometimes requiring one to re-keyframe them again)
The object/cage you want to have RCS plumes must be reasonably symmetrical for the effect to look good, and be able to have some portion of it (usually all the sections below its center of rotation) covered by an invisible mesh, which determines which half of the object should have the RCS plumes fire in the opposite direction.
You must be willing to run a small bit of python code to calculate the acceleration.
You may need to tweak the values in Map Range node, depending on the speed and scale of your animation.
At this point, this node tree only handles rotational acceleration, not translational acceleration, though it is possible it could be adapted.
I am not a mathematician, and may be using any number of these nodes incorrect or only accidentally correct ways.

To start with, you'll want to create 4 objects, an object to be the RCS "plume" (I'd recommend a cone), an empty to calculate individual acceleration on, a "cage" to place the RCS on, and finally, another "cage" to mark which parts of the mesh are the "bottom" half.

Once you've positioned the second cage appropriately, parent it to the RCS cage (or whatever you've parented the RCS cage to). Next, animate the RCS cage in whatever pattern you want. Keep in mind that if you change the animation at all at a later time you'll need to re-keyframe the empties!

At this point, you're ready to create the NodeTree.

Start with the generic support nodes, including the script node to calculate acceleration. The python script is as follows:

# Mostly borrowed from https://github.com/Clockmender/My-AN-Nodes/blob/master/speed_acc.py

fps = bpy.context.scene.render.fps

dec_n = DecimalPlaces

if Minus0 == 0 and Minus1 == 0 and Minus2 == 0:
    spd_u = 0
    acc_u = 0
    acc_g = 0
else:
    spd_c = abs(Minus0 - Minus1) * fps
    spd_o = abs(Minus1 - Minus2) * fps
    acc_u = round((spd_c - spd_o) * fps,dec_n)
    spd_u = round(spd_c,dec_n)
    acc_g = round(acc_u / 9.81,dec_n)

Next, create the loop that'll calculate X, Y, and Z rotational acceleration based on the empties' keyframes.

Make sure that the the frame offsets are set on the Evaluate FCurve nodes!

Initialize all the objects and empties.

Note that the "Copy Full Object" option for the object instancer for the RCS Cone is likely only necessary if you've fiddled with the object's settings, such as their Cycles Settings.

Next, we grab the BVH tree of the Bottom Cage and check what RCS Cone objects are inside of it.

We feed this into the List Boolean subprogram we created earlier, as the Boolean Switch node is not vectorized that I can tell. This list of either -1 or 1 gets fed into a Combine Vector node, though I suspect a Vector from Value node would work as well, which is then sent into a scale Compose Matrix, which then feeds into the overall scale calculation.

I don't fully understand why the Vector Math Cross operation (of the polygon normals of the RCS Cage, and the acceleration vectors) works in keeping the scaling on "one side" of the mesh, but it does. Next that list of vectors is fed into another support subprogram that uses the Transform Vector node on each pair of vectors and matrices. Next, we separate the vector, add its components, and multiply them by 100 (to get less fractional numbers). The Map Range node determines how far each plume can scale, based on the input (set the input min to 0, and input max to whatever seems a reasonable value based on a viewer node), and the output (set the output min to 0, and the output max to however long you want the maximum length of the plumes to be). Finally, combine that value into a vector and feed it into a Object Transforms Output node with only the Z axis selected, also being fed the list of RCS Cone/Plume objects.

This next part is more cosmetic and QoL than necessity, but it will keep plume objects with a Z scale of 0 from being visible (which can cause z-fighting).

Additionally, the Keep Layer subprogram will make sure that your plumes stay on whatever layer you've selected in the subprogram's body.

For people who'd prefer to have an existent blend file to work with, here's a link:

As mentioned above, you'll need Animation Nodes 2.1

If you've made it this far, congratulations! Here's a 4 second video of the nodetree in action. (The spaceship is not included in the above blend file)


decrease number of vertices I modeled a snowmobile in blender. It is for a map in another program and this program (hammer) just allows 10.000 vertices. Is there any way, to get less vertices with not deleting any objects? I want to decrease the number of vertices on the tubes in the back and the metal spring on the front! Do I have to model them again or is there another way? I think I heard of a modifier. Thanks for the answers!

Look at your model.

The places where you can only see black are the densest, and that is where you want to focus on reducing the poly count. In your image that would be the front springs, and some of the pipes in the track assembly. All the rest of the model looks fairly low poly and balanced.

I am going to go in an manually reduce the poly count.  Don't worry about selecting all  the edges, it is quick and easy to reduce the poly count in a cylindrical object like a spring.

I will do the spring, but the exact same process works for the pipes.

Start by selecting every other edge loop around the spring.

Select the edge rings along the length of the spring. You can do that with CtrlAltRMB

Run Checker Deselect on that selection. From the 3D view header Select > Checker Deselect. If you have a very dense mesh increase the Skip amount in the operator properties section of the tool shelf.
From the 3D view header Select > Edge Loops.
Press X > Edge Loops to remove all those edges.

Now we must do the loops along the length of the spring. Select this in the exact same way as we did before.

An animated gif showing the whole process.


Can I run bpy scripts without all of blender in background I need to run a blender script server side and would like to know if there is a way to run just some of blender libraries for server optimization purposes .
My script is just importing a heavy glb file and exporting it to glb again ( because blender cleans the file by itself i chose it as part of the pipeline .)

Generally the answer is "no", blender cant run as a standalone module except if you build it on your own (never tried that to be honest).
Blender python : where is bpy module located in windows 10
A working guidance for building blender as bpy python module?
What I would suggest instead, is to run Blender on the background and load your scripts and your 3d mesh, do all the processing and export your file as needed.
Here you may find all the possible and useful args for your commandline
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/arguments.html
it will take some more tweaking in order to set your custom scripts either on the blender startup or as additonal arguments on the commandline before the execution.


How do I export an object from blender and import in Maya? I need a way to export a specific model from my Blender scene (for example a textured table) and import it in an already created scene in Maya.

Example case to be more specific:

I created a classroom in Maya and a bedroom in Blender. I want to export the desk I created in Blender and import it as a desk in Maya. How can that be achieved?

The easiest way would be to select the object (desk) you want to export in Blender and export it as .obj file one of these ways:

click File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj) OR
press space and type "export" -> click Export Scene: Export OBJ

Make sure to check Selection Only in the Export OBJ section, otherwise you would export the whole scene.

In Maya simply click

File -> Import...

and select the exported file.


Dividing square columns into triangular prisms How do I bisect square-faced columns along their diagonals, so that each square column becomes 4 triangular columns (prisms), thus making each square face into 4 right triangles?

Easiest way is to go back a little and erase part of what you have done f you really want them as separate prisms.

Erase all but the bottom faces, search for the operator Poke Faces Alt+P and it will automatically break them into triangles.

If you need each triangle extruded as a separate prism you need an additional step before extrusion.

Select all diagonals, using the Select Similar Shift+G operator > Direction option and then rip the edges with the Rip operator V. Do the same for the opposite direction and the square subdivisions if you had not done so before yet.

Then just extrude them back up to create the prisms


Texture appears in render but not in game engine It renders like this, but when I play the game it has no texture. Why doesn't the texture show up in the game engine?

Here is the file:
http://filedropper.com/textured

It seems that you haven't unwrapped the mesh.
Change to Edit Mode in the 3D-View and select all A press U for unwrap.

In the texures settings select UV for Coordinates and UVMap as Map, Projection should be Flat by default.

Set the Viewport Shading to Texture

After that the texture should be shown in the Game Engine.

EDIT:

Examining your .blend shows that the texture wasn't included in the file. I replaced it with another one, the issue that the texture isn't rendered in the BGE could be fixed either by moving it into the first slot:

Alternatively you could set Shading to GLSL in Properties Panel N in the 3D-View in Object Mode:


How can I make a Bullet Tracer in BGE? I was watching a thing on this MMoG that some German kids made and noticed they had really nice shooting actions. every time one of them shot, a bright white line would appear. How would I recreate this for my game? I don't want to use thousands of textured planes cause my machine isn't that great and I  don't want to blow it up: happened before.

NOTE: I don't really know if that effect is called a tracer, so if someone knows the real name, I'd be happy!

You can do this by having your gun, in addition to firing your bullet, also fire a no-colision plane. this plane scales from 0 to 100 in 100 frames. the gun also shoots a bullet that travels one frame every logic tick. when the animation of your laser is running at one frame for every logic tick, the end result will be a no-colision plane filling the space between the gun and the bullet before impact. In the demo below, I have the bullet invisible. All you can see is the scaling plane.

To make your plane scale to get it elongating at a rate of one Blender unit per Logic Tick, use this logic setup.

You need to start with a plane, and move the origin to one edge. then move the edge opposite the origin in to make it One blender unit by Two blender units.

Then set the timeline to frame 100, and in object mode press S to start the scale, press X to constrain the scale along the X axis. Press 100 and then press Enter this will set the scale so that the demotions will be 100 blender units by 2 blender units. press I to set a keyframe, and select Scale

this will set a keyframe with the scale on frame 100.

Now do the same thing at frame 0, only this time we need to set the scale along the X axis to 0.

Set the timeline to frame 0, press S to start the scale, press X to constrain the scale along the X axis. Press 0 and then press Enter this will set the scale so that the demotions will be 0 blender units by 2 blender units. press I to set a keyframe, and select Scale

Now we have the scale animated from frame 0 to frame 100.

However, if we move the timeline, we can see that the animation is not quite right.

We can fix this by going into the graph editor and changing the curve type to linear

Now when we test it, we can see that every frame makes the plane scal one blender unit longer.


Set background color without effecting scene colors When changing the background from it's default value to gray (0.5,0.5,0.5) I saw that the other object colors were effected (been brighter).
I must say that I didn't use nodes to change the background color.
What is the way to do it using python script?
I want the background and the plane to have the same color this way the scene will look like endless horizon but without effecting the colors of the current objects.

As mentioned by @rjg, you will need to add the color in compositor. The reason, why the colors of other objects change, when you change background color is beacause the way light works. (And the fact that background is not just a color).

Now the way how to achieve what @rjg has mentioned is following.

Go to Propetries panel > Render > Film and tick the Transparent box.

Go to Compositor (Compositing workspace), tick Use nodes, add a Mix node and route RenderLayers Image output into the bottom Image input of Mix node and Alpha otput of RenderLayers into Fac input of Mix node. Set the desired color of the background on the first Image input of Mix node and finally route the output of Mix node to Image input of Composite node.

You can precisely set the color of the background by checking the color of a rendered image (right click on rendered image to see RGB values), or kind-of automatically (below).

You will notice the border line, where the plane ends, which is probably undesired and can be fixed by further utilization of the Compositor.

In the compositor you will need to apply a Feather (Dilatate/Erode - mode: Feather) filter to the alpha channel, before plugging it into the Mix node.

Feel free to adjust the Distance value (Note that it can be both positive and negative).

Here is a visualisation of what the Feather filter does to the alpha channel:

And the result:

Now each time you render, the background will be this color. Note however that the color of the plane might change if you add a light source or even an object (again due to the way light works).

Now for the last question, how to do this in python (I assume to automate this).
You could actually do this in python so that python script sets the color.

You would need to look at the rendered image, the way is described here, and determine what the background color is, then set the color on the Mix node to that value.

You can get very close to this behavior without using Python with this node setup:

You basically use the Translate node to move the pixel of the image, that you want to grab the background color from, to the middle of the screen. Then you scale the image by large amount (so that the whole image is made up of this one pixel) and you plug that into the first Image input of the Mix node.

Now the background color will adjust automatically.

Edit:
I found a way to setup the whole thing with Python and was eager to try it out, so here is the code.

import bpy

#select the point in pixels from which the background color will be selected
#note that it is not necessarily exact so it may be about +-4px (too lazy to do the math correctly)
target_x = 20
target_y = 50

render_p = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_percentage/100.0
render_w = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_x * render_p
render_h = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y * render_p

bpy.context.scene.render.film_transparent = True

#bpy.ops.node.add_node(type="CompositorNodeMixRGB", use_transform=True)
#bpy.ops.node.translate_attach_remove_on_cancel(TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(-121.875, 273.423, 0), "orient_type":'GLOBAL', "orient_matrix":((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), "orient_matrix_type":'GLOBAL', "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "mirror":True, "use_proportional_edit":False, "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "use_proportional_connected":False, "use_proportional_projected":False, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "cursor_transform":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":True, "release_confirm":True, "use_accurate":False}, NODE_OT_attach={}, NODE_OT_insert_offset={})

# switch on nodes and get reference
bpy.context.scene.use_nodes = True
tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree

# clear default nodes
for node in tree.nodes:
    tree.nodes.remove(node)

# create input image node
in_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeRLayers')
in_node.location = -400,0

#create mix node
mix_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeMixRGB')
mix_node.location = 400,0

#create alpha filter node
af_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeDilateErode')
af_node.mode = 'FEATHER'
af_node.distance = -50
af_node.location = 0,-200

#create translate node
t_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeTranslate')
t_node.inputs[1].default_value = render_w/2 - target_x
t_node.inputs[2].default_value = render_h/2 - target_y
t_node.location = 0,200

#create viewer
v_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeViewer')
v_node.location = 200,400

#create scale node
s_node = tree.nodes.new(type='CompositorNodeScale')
s_node.inputs[1].default_value = render_w
s_node.inputs[2].default_value = render_h
s_node.location = 200,200

# create output node
out_node = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeComposite')
out_node.location = 800,0

# link nodes
tree.links.new(in_node.outputs[0], mix_node.inputs[2])
tree.links.new(mix_node.outputs[0], out_node.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(in_node.outputs[1], af_node.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(af_node.outputs[0], mix_node.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(in_node.outputs[0], t_node.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(t_node.outputs[0], s_node.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(s_node.outputs[0], mix_node.inputs[1])
tree.links.new(t_node.outputs[0], v_node.inputs[0])

target_x and target_y is used to select the pixel from which a color for the background is picked. It isn't necessarily pixel precise so choose a general area.

I have also added a Viewer node. If you click it in the Compositor (and you have backdrop enabled and you have rendered the image already) you will see a cross on the screen, pointing to the selected pixel in the backdrop. At this moment, you can adjust the Translate parameters manually to select a different pixel (Alt+V and V to zoom the backdrop in and out).

So just paste the script into Blender and run it.

A tip: If you are having a problem with anything, it never hurts to try things on a new blank file and get a feel for how a thing behaves. When you encounter problem in your file then, you will notice the moment when it went wrong with more ease and find solutions faster.


Set active vertex through python I am having a problem trying to set the active vertex in blender. I have a list of vertices but I cannot set the active vertex. I am able to retrieve the active vertex through select_history of the bmesh, but I cannot set it, says its not writable

#get bmesh
bm=bmesh.from_edit_mesh(bpy.context.active_object.data)

#print active vert
print(bm.select_history.active)

#if I do something like this, error not writable
bm.select_history.active = bm.verts[5]

You can add elements to the bmesh history. The last added element is automatically set as active element. Here is a small code example:

import bpy
import bmesh

me = bpy.context.edit_object.data

#get bmesh (Object needs to be in Edit mode)
bm=bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

bm.select_history.add(bm.verts[5])

#print active vert:
print(bm.select_history.active)


Blender freezes when rendering,building the last samples Out of sudden the Blender freezes when rendering on Cycles.Always at the same moment.When the image is almost done,that is to say Path tracing title is done 135/135 and it's building up samples,at the last point it stops working.I made all the updates to mac OS and using the last 2.78a version,even though it started on 2.77

I thought it was the project's problem so I opened different project and it does the same thing.I'm completely stuck and unable to render anything.Sometimes it renders one frame but the following gets stuck again.
Is anyone else experiencing this? I have no idea what it could be?
Thanks so much for any help.

For laptop users:

On any render, my computer (the whole screen) would freeze about 5 seconds, and after some seconds it would freeze again.

To fix, I had to go to File -> User Preferences -> System and on the bottom-left side I picked CUDA for the "Cycles Compute Device", and this fixed the problem.

It seems very noob-ish because it actually is! And it worked for me since I am a beginner, I hope this helps another beginner searching this on Google.


Overlapping faces in mirror modifier causing z-fighting I am using the Mirror Modifier to try to make a cinder block mesh. It is composed of some curves converted to meshes and some manually assembled faces.

It appears to be having trouble with overlapping faces, although I cannot see a reason for that to be happening. I have tried extruding the face that is having the most problem and it fixes it a bit but not entirely. And I am really unsure about the inside lines on the inside of the mesh.

You can fix this by going into edit mode of your object, pressing A (select all), or only select the faces in question manually. Press W to open this menu
select remove doubles

you can change the distance of the vertices being merged together by using this input
field after pressing remove doubles


UV Islands stuck together I've been working on unwrapping a lego minifigure I've modeled and when reaching the hand I've got a problem with the inner part of the hand and the side of the hand's island becoming stuck together. There is a seam completely surrounding the inner hand, so it should be on its own, but the islands don't separate. I've been unwrapping and then hitting "follow active quads" on even, and it's worked so far. Thoughts?

Solved it! I had to toggle "keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync" off and select one of the islands and move it, then when I turned it back on the islands were separated. Don't know why that worked, but I'm glad it did!


How to handle image creation, search and deletion properly? Tides are changing and so is the Blender Python API. I would like to know how to properly create, search for and delete an image as my own experiments show confusing results.

At the moment, I have troubles finishing my script for spritesheet generation. It renders animation frames, saves them, loads to actually have access to the pixels, inserts those pixels into a new pool of pixels which will finally be assigned as pixels of the spritesheet. This works fabulously, however, I have problems creating the spritesheet image from scratch while only maintaining one image of that name (older ones might exist from previous script runs for example).

In my version of Blender (2.72) bpy.ops.image.new does not return the image object but a rather useless finilization-message. This means, I have have to grab the image from bpy.data.images by name if I don't want iterate over all of them to check for more matching attributes beside the name. There is the catch: Blender automatically iterated the name of already existing image names and seemingly does this differently from time to time. How am I suposed to know exactly the way, the automatic names are numbered? And even if I know that, why must I iterate over all images with a similar name until I identify the one with the highes number behind it? This seems inpractical.

Ok, what if I check if an image of that name already exists and delete it accordingly? This mus free the desired name, though it bears some risks in complex working environments. I will have to clear its users as well as delete it completely to get it out off the system for good. And this is what I tried to do in my spritesheet generator (code snippet):

if spriteSheetName in bpy.data.images:
    # delete previous spritesheet radically
    spriteSheet = bpy.data.images[spriteSheetName]
    if spriteSheet != None:
        spriteSheet.user_clear()
        bpy.data.images.remove(spriteSheet)
# create new one
bpy.ops.image.new(name = spriteSheetName,
    width = shPxWidth, height = shPxHeight,
    color = [1, 1, 1, 0], alpha = True)
spriteSheet = bpy.data.images[spriteSheetName]
spriteSheet.filepath = imgDirectory + "\\" + spriteSheetName + "." + imgType
spriteSheet.file_format = imgType.upper()

This results in errors taking place in the Blender Python Api itself:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_image.py", line 414, in draw
    MASK_MT_editor_menus.draw_collapsible(context, layout)
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\modules\bpy_types.py", line 770, in draw_collapsible
    cls.draw_menus(layout, context)
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_image.py", line 497, in draw_menus
    if ima and ima.is_dirty:
AttributeError: 'ID' object has no attribute 'is_dirty'

location: <unknown location>:-1

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_image.py", line 414, in draw
    MASK_MT_editor_menus.draw_collapsible(context, layout)
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\modules\bpy_types.py", line 770, in draw_collapsible
    cls.draw_menus(layout, context)
  File "B:\Programs\Blender Foundation\blender-2.72b-windows64\2.72\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_image.py", line 497, in draw_menus
    if ima and ima.is_dirty:
AttributeError: 'ID' object has no attribute 'is_dirty'

location: <unknown location>:-1

So, I am asking you if you know proper image handling via the Blender Python API.

Thanks you in advance!

This:     bpy.data.images.new(name, width, height, alpha=False, float_buffer=False, stereo3d=False) returns the image created.

bpy.data.images.remove(image) removes the image.


Stop object from being displayed on multiple layers? I accidentally clicked something, and now my object is on multiple layers. How can I fix this?

Press M and select the layer you want it to be on.

Chances are, what you did, was press M and selected multiple layers by holding down Shift


One Object won't Show up in Final Render even though it shows up in the Preview Render I have a model of a building with a sidewalk around it.  Both show up when I switch to rendering mode in both Blender Render and Cycles Render mode.  But:  when I hit F12 for a final proper render, the building shows up -- but the sidewalk doesn't.

I've checked the normals and I thought the normals seemed pointed in the right direction.  I've set the Clipping on the Camera to a high number.  I removed all the materials from the sidewalk and added a new material-- the problem persists.  I've exported the blend as an FBX file and the Sidewalk shows up fine in Unity.  Just in final renders, it doesn't show up.

Here is a blend file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35247.  I tried to destroy everything unrelated to the issue and label things in a clear way.

Thanks.

Look at the camera icons on the outliner.
Click on the funnel icon on the top right and enable different filters.
When the camera icons are disabled, the object is disabled from rendering. To make it active click on the camera icon.

These icons are switches:
The Eye icon is to toggle object visibility on the 3D viewport.
The Arrow Icon toggles selectability.
The Camera Icon toggles rendering.
The Monitor icon disables the object in all viewports.
For more info refer to the blender manual
In older versions (2.79 or previous) the outliner the switches are here:


When was the Cycles renderer introduced? I am wondering when did the Cycles renderer introduced to Blender, 2010 or 2011? And how stable is it?

It was in 2011 (Summer).
Today, it's just more stable (6 years, it's pretty long), and more complete.


Control a property with no socket (color ramp swatch, etc) from a Group Node input? Sometimes I create Material Groups to be used as appendable reusable assets. Unfortunately sometimes parameters I want to control using a Group Node's slider are not available for routing to a Group Node's input socket. Some examples of these are the Color Ramp and the Mapping Node.

So here's what I want to do:

Can this be done? If so, how?

Thanks!

As far as I know, I don't think it is possible to drive a Color Ramp or Mapping nodes from another socket (but I am not super experienced in drivers).  However I have managed to re-create the color ramp and mapping node with math nodes, which you can plug inputs into directly.

Color Ramp

Unfortunately there is no way to create a group node exactly like the Color Ramp, with addable and removable color swatches.  To get around this I have created a node with two movable swatches, you can then combine multiple of these nodes together to have the functionality of multiple swatches.

The theory:

The two input colors are plugged directly into a Mix RGB node.  The two Pos inputs need to be sent through a function and plugged into the mix factor.  The position of the first swatch needs to be mapped to $0$ to get just the first color out of the mix node.  The position of the second swatch needs to be mapped to $1$ to get just the second color out of the mix node.

The math:

Here's a graph to visualize what we are trying to do, on the x-axis is the input factor of the color ramp, on the y-axis is the desired output, $a$ and $b$ are the positions of the two swatches.

With some simple algebra we can find the equation of the line to be:

$$
y = \frac{1}{b-a}x + \frac{a}{a-b}
$$

The math nodes below are simply replicating this equation.  The final Add node also has Clamp checked to clamp the output to the interval $[0,1]$, which is what the mix node accepts.

Mapping node

The mapping node has three functions it can Translate (move), Rotate, and Scale the texture.  Since often not all of these are needed I will create separate group nodes for each of these functions.

If you don't have a decent understanding about how texture coordinates work you may want to read my answer here.  The basic theory of manipulation texture coordinates is to separate the components of the vector with a Separate XYZ node, manipulate the components individually, then combine them back into a vector with a Combine XYZ node.

Mapping Node - Translation

Translation is easy, to translate $V$ to $V^\prime$ just add the desired amounts to each of the components of $V$.

In the above node setup I actually used Subtract nodes instead of Add so positive values will move the texture to the right instead of left.

Mapping Node - Scaling

Scaling is the same as translating, just multiply the individual coordinates by the scale factor instead of adding.

Mapping Node - Rotation

Rotation is a little more complicated and I won't take the time to derive the equations here, but they are pretty standard pre-calc formulas.  Here are the formulas for rotation.

Around the x-axis

$$
\begin{aligned}
x^\prime &= x\\
y^\prime &= y\cos{\theta} - z\sin{\theta}\\
z^\prime &= y\sin{\theta} + z\cos{\theta}
\end{aligned}
$$

Around the y-axis

$$
\begin{aligned}
x^\prime &= x\cos{\theta} - z\sin{\theta}\\
y^\prime &= y\\
z^\prime &= x\sin{\theta} + z\cos{\theta}
\end{aligned}
$$

Around the z-axis
$$
\begin{aligned}
x^\prime &= x\cos{\theta} - y\sin{\theta}\\
y^\prime &= x\sin{\theta} + y\cos{\theta}\\
z^\prime &= z
\end{aligned}
$$

Note: the first two nodes in each of the rotation setups convert the degree input to radians, which is what the trig math nodes want.

And finally, here's a .blend file with all the above node groups.


No shadow after render I'm new to blender and have only spent about two hours on it.

I drew an animation and it went out just fine in preview, however after I rendered it, all shadows are gone (shadows below the object & shadow of the object) which made my animation of the block flat
I only set the background plane orange but the whole output seems to be filled with some orange atmosphere

What am I doing wrong?

Blender 2.8 on MacOS

I seems that your light source is just your world. It wont give you much shadow. Try to set your world in darker and add some lamps. Or you can also change your world to an HDRI.


Connect vertical edge to angled edge How do I connect the vertical part of my railing to the angled part?  I was wondering if there was a way to do this without just eyeballing it.  They are both part of the same object.

You may use the knife project tool. Duplicate the top face of the vertical cube (Shift+D), place it between two cubes, then separate the face (P). In Object Mode select the newly created plane, then the angled cube and press Tab to enter the its Edit Mode. Go to the bottom view, press Spacebar and type Knife Project. Delete the plane. Join objects with Ctrl+J. Join meshes in Edit Mode using Bridge Edge Loops operation. Finally dissolve the horizontal edge with X-->Dissolve Edges.


Why are objects visible when set not to be? I have no idea why this is happening, I revised everything I made (all the logic) to make sure nothing was "odd." I have a simple prop ("active"), all it does is the following: if it is true, the object is visible, if it is false, the object is invisible. Works, right? No, it does not work! I have no idea why. It always used to work, but suddenly it stopped. I have another object (weapon) with the exact same logic, and that one works. Can anyone tell me why this possibly is happening? Also, when I start the scene and the object is visible when the property is false, it can be fixed by toggling the prop to false, then back to true. The problem with this is that I need the object to be invisible at the start and not after I toggle the prop on and off till it works.

EDIT: Here is what I think the problem really is: at the very start of the game engine (as soon as I hit "P", it is visible when it is not supposed to be unless I toggle the property a couple of times. In other words, why is it visible at the very start rather than when it is supposed to be?

For anyone that had this issue, I just made our prop "active" set to true by default. I do not know why this is the case, but it is.


Extrude Python for mouse pos 2d I want to implement an extrude functionality like the one in Blender, but with vertices I draw in a draw handler.

I have the 2d position of the mouse at which the extrusion of my vertices starts and the current mouse position. I also know the direction as 3d normalized vector in which to extrude.

I tried to calculate the 3d locations for mouse positions to get the extrusion length like this

dir = self.get_dir()
mouse_3d = region_2d_to_location_3d(self._view_context.region, self._view_context, mouse_pos_2d, dir)
ext_3d = region_2d_to_location_3d(self._view_context.region, self._view_context, self._extrude_pos, dir)

diff_vec = (ext_3d - mouse_3d)

self._extrusion = diff_vec.length

self.extrude_vertices(context)

# Extrusion of vertices
def extrude_vertices(self, context):

    dir = self.get_dir() * self._extrusion
    for index, vertex3d in enumerate(self._vertices):
         self._vertices_extruded[index] = vertex3d + dir

Problems:

I cant extrude negative direction, it's always positive
I want to include the direction of the extrusion into the extrusion amount (like the extrude in Blender: When the mouse is moved along the direction it extrudes more, if not (e.g. perpendicular to extrude direction) we get less extrusion.

So what is needed is to find the amount of extrusion for the direction vector d.

Any help is appreciated.

Update:

I added this, I guess it must have something to do with the dot product:

diff_vec = (ext_3d - mouse_3d)
dot_prod = diff_vec.dot(dir.orthogonal())
self._extrusion = dot_prod

But the amount is not correct.

The code for the addon can be found here:
https://github.com/jayanam/jmesh-tools

The last commit is version 1.0.1.4 to which I added the extrude with the mouse cursor for primitives.

The logic is like this:

The primitive mode is a modal operator (fc_primitive_mode_op.py) in which a shape that is painted to the surface can be extruded when the "E" key is pressed. Then the 2d start pos (current mouse pos) is stored in the types/shape.py class as member self._extrude_pos
Now when the mouse is moved the method handle_mouse_move of the shape.py is called, the mouse 2d position is passed as parameter.

I want to use the extrude start 2d pos and current mouse 2d pos difference to set the extrusion length for the vertices. All the logic for this is in the types/shape.py class. The goal is to implement an extrude functionality just like the one in Blender for meshes. Thx for your help.

def extrude_vertices(self, context):

    dir = self._extrusion * self.get_dir()

    for index, vertex3d in enumerate(self._vertices):
        if not self._is_extruded:
            self._vertices_extruded.append(vertex3d + dir)
        else:
            self._vertices_extruded[index] = vertex3d + dir

    self._is_extruded = True

def handle_mouse_move(self, mouse_pos_2d, mouse_pos_3d, event, context):

    if mouse_pos_2d and self.is_extruding():
        dir = self.get_dir()
        mouse_3d = region_2d_to_location_3d(self._view_context.region, self._view_context, mouse_pos_2d, dir)
        ext_3d = region_2d_to_location_3d(self._view_context.region, self._view_context, self._extrude_pos, dir)

        diff_vec = (ext_3d - mouse_3d)

        dot_prod = diff_vec.dot(dir.orthogonal())

        self._extrusion = dot_prod

        self.extrude_vertices(context)
        return True


Create a zoomable starfield Background
Almost all stars are so distant that they cannot be optically resolved, and instead appear as point sources. (Here's the short list of exceptions.)
This means that if you look up at a spot in the night sky with your naked eyes, and then look at the same spot with binoculars or a telescope, most stars will not appear larger, only more discrete (because the apparent distances between them will be magnified) and brighter.
Problem
I would like to create a space scene (in Cycles) where the same object is shown zoomed in and zoomed out (i.e. with different focal lengths) against a background of stars.
How can I create a star field where each star will appear as a point source, and not change in apparent size when zooming?
For examples of the approximate effect I'm looking for, see this Expanse S5E7 clip, particularly the zoom shots at 0:42 and 0:57.
Environment textures wouldn't work because they're just pixels, and when the camera zooms in, the pixels would be magnified. I think that generated particles would have the same problem, though perhaps I could animate the particle sizes to shrink them down as the camera zooms in.

From the experience with my camera at home, zooming in on a starry sky from 28mm up to 400mm the stars definitely become bigger, too - there are still no observable details, but zooming in makes the "blotches" larger. And another thing, zoomed in you will see more stars than zoomed out, because the much smaller ones are magnified as well. Of course this is also depending on how fast your lens is, if it doesn't get enough light zooming in results in darker, less visible stars. But the size definitely changes.
So if you zoom in on an object that's further away instead of moving towards it, the relative position of the starry background doesn't change much, so you're right that you'd see fewer stars (of the bright ones you're seeing zoomed out, but more darker ones might appear).
To avoid having pixelated stars I'm not using an Environment Texture for this, I'm creating a fully procedural background with muktiple Voronoi Textures at different scales. Plugging the Distance output into a Color Ramp you get very small circles if you set the ramp's left slider to white, the right one to black and bring it very close to the left. I multiply the ramps' outputs with different values so that the larger stars are brighter than the smaller stars.
The best is to decide how large you make the different star sizes when zoomed in. If they become invisible when zoomed out, you might make them brighter by multiplying with a higher value or compromise by tweaking the size a little bit. Here is a typical setup I use:

Of course you can add even more Voronoi Textures with varying sizes or even colorize the stars with this. That's one of the reasons I'm using 4D instead of 3D in the voronoi settings. If I like to have different colored stars but at the same size, I duplicate the node and change the W value.


Importing a material from blender to unity I made a low poly tree model that doesn't use textures and instead uses 2 colors and i imported it into unity 5.3.4 and the tree model imports itself without the colors. What i want to know is how to import the colors or how to get those colors that i have in blender to unity or if i have to make a texture has just those colors. I use cycles render and to import my models i save the .blend file in the assets folder in unity.

Thanks in advance.

Cycles rendering isn't used for realtime objects (games/apps/etc). Those types of object rely on uv textures, diffuse colors, specular colors, etc.

The biggest difference is that realtime objects are calculated using 1 bounce of light. It's fast enough to render in engines like unity. Cycles uses multiple light bounces. It makes it look more realistic, but isn't fast enough for those engines.

To answer your question, switch to Blender Internal if you're using the object for games. Test a quick render to make sure you have all materials correctly attached, as switching from cycles may call for some extra work. If it works in the render, exporting to .obj or .fbx should work.

Also note that if you export to .fbx, the textures won't automatically be on the model, you'll need to relink them to the model in Unity.


Join NLA actions from multiple objects I have 4 animations (one of each leg and arm of my lego man).  I want to be able to loop these animations multiple times throughout the scene to make the man walk.
Currently in the NLA Editor it has a separate track and action for each object (so 4 actions).   This is a bit of pain as every time i want to add another walk loop i have to duplicate all 4 actions.
I'd like to be able to merge, or link all 4 actions together into one "walk" action, so that I can just duplicate that 1 action to have the man do another walk cycle.
Is it possible?  And if so how?  See example of my NLA editor below:

I dont think there is an option for that.
Action is per object. So to have them in a single action you will need to parent them to Armature (each object to a single bone) and animate.
Select Object > Select Armature > Switch to Pose mode Ctrl+Tab > Parent to Bone Ctrl+P

In a current situation the only one thing that can help you a bit is increase Repeat option in NLA Properties > Strip tab > Action Clip panel for selected strip.

Note - In a case you will have more tracks for one object you can search for Bake Action to merge them by step 10 here.


When I apply a texture to my mesh some parts aren't well rendered When I apply a texture to my mesh some parts aren't well rendered. I dont know why :

Thanks !

It appears that you unwrapped your cube initially, and then procceeded to model some more but never unwrapped the modified object. Now your UVmap is that of the original cube, and that does not match the current state of the object, so your texture looks a bit of a mess.
Example:
Default Cube:

Slightly Modified, not unwrapped again:

Simply reset your UVmap, U >reset R then unwrap again. U follow active quads (with the last selected quad face active) is usually my go to, but use whichever method that gives the result you require for your needs.
For instance, this is my modified cube with a new UVmap:


logic editor: delay sensor activates too soon I am trying to make a target disappear one second after hitting enter.  However, I am running into a major problem.  The delay sensor starts counting down as soon as the game starts and I need it to count down after I press enter.  I've been all over the internet and I've found no solution to this seemingly novice problem.  Attached is what I see in blender.

Thank you!

John

Delay is like a timed trigger. Think of it as an Always sensor, with a delay in frames. The Delay and Duration Settings, are like the ping-pong counts.  Ping -> true for sixty frames, pong false for 60 frames.

If Duration is set to 0, then it's just Ping, Ping, Ping every 60 frames, from the moment you hit Go!

Probably the easiest way to deal with this, without getting into Python, is to use the Logic States.

In your first state, set up your sensor for keyboard, and use 'State Actuator' to set game to second state.

In your second state use the Delay Sensor. The Delay won't start running until we enter the new state. So, you will have 60 frames from that point before the object disappears.

Things that you want to pay attention to:

Controllers link directly to states. So, make sure you have the correct State selected before adding your Controller.
Make sure that you Keyboard Sensor is in the 'Inital' State. Otherwise it won't get triggered.
It is possible to have Sensors and Actuators linked to multiple States. This way you don't have to rebuild your logic for each State.

hope this helps.


2.80 Cycles Render Devices Tab empty Just installed the latest release 2.80, July 30 2019, under System the tab Cycles render devices is visible, but empty. So Cycles is not available.

Win10 64, GTX1050ti and onboard GPU, latest drivers.

I tried the installer and the zip-file, same. In 2.80rc is no problem.

What is wrong?

Go to Add-on and write "device" on search space.

You'll see the option Render: Cycles Render Engine. Select this and you will see the options you want!


Weird color on texture painting with brush I'm new to Blender and was hoping someone could help me with this. I was watching a tutorial on youtube to learn texture painting in version 2.79 (as you can clearly see by incredibly amateur work, LoL) when all of a sudden the white color turned pinkish. I tried reloading a previous save, restarting blender, but unfortunately it didn't work. I checked if I'd changed the sliders by mistake, but no. Everything was as it supposed to be. I even went as far as reinstalling my gpu drivers. I've posted a picture. I hope you can see the slight difference. I know, it probably sounds like nitpicking on my side, but I can clearly see the difference in color. I'd appreciate any help. Thx in advance.  .

I think you tapped it. I've been trying to recreate the pink and RED is the direction any change in Saturation goes. As I approach .03, the pink begins to stand out if I see all your other settings correctly.

I'm not sure about creating palettes and how much protection that affords from changing colors. In my opinion you took the right steps by restarting and opening a saved version. I almost want to point some blame toward the alpha but that seems pretty locked in.

Triple check that color swatch and don't get fancy with any button shortcuts while painting in case one of them toggled some setting we're not thinking of. Checking Accumulate and Add for the Blend mode might also restore white where you need it if things are still rosy.


Can't get Auto Smooth to work on extruded spiral This should be super simple but somehow I can't get it to work

Create a spiral
Give it some extra turns
convert to mesh
extrude a little on the x-axis (so it looks like a roll of paper)
tick auto smooth

But it still looks like this:

I've also tried the Smooth Modifier but no difference there either .... ?

To create the spiral enable the Add Curve: Extra Objects plugin.

Then do Add->Curve->Spirals

For a smooth curve, don't convert your spiral into a mesh, keep it as curve and extrude it on the geometry section:

To add thickness use a solidify modifier:


Set the world_matrix of a bone I need to copy the world matrix of a bone and assign it to another bone. Both have different parents. Pretty much what the copy transforms constraint does, but for a single frame without dependencies, because I need it to be set in a certain frame and then put a loc/rot keyframe there.
I am fine with either a script or manual solution (like cursor to selected -> selection to cursor, but for rotations as well)

I found this: Global Pose/Rotation of a bone
But that script gives me an error, that the expected matrix would need to be 3x3, if I put mat.to_3x3() behind it, nothing happens at all. Also since both bones in that script share a branch in the hierarchy I'm not sure if it would suit me in the first place.
I don't care about scale at all.
Thanks

The link batFINGER provider is the correct answer, just in case someone is wondering: The reason why my bone was expecting a matrix 3x3 is that I used

bone = C.active_bone

the correct way to get the bone is

bone = my_armature.pose.bones['my_bone']


Base mesh is rendered differently between viewport and final render with animation The "body" mesh stays in edit mode when it's supposed to be animation along the mesh, like in the viewport. Rigging is properly done and i don't know why the results are different.

Here is the viewport screen and the render screen.

Blend file is uploaded for more understanding.

Thank you

Paladin

I tested it with Blender 2.79 and it works well. As you could see on the image below the possible problem could be the inactive Armature Modifier for the render circled in red.

On the other hand, I opened Your .blend file, load my custom HDRI map to light-up the scene, just render and everything is matching for me (even with that modifier turned off) as you could also check on the picture. Does this helps?

Sincerely, Jan


How can I add a checkbox in the tools UI? So I want to add a checkbox to the UV/Image Editor tools UI

This is currently my code, You can see where I have commented "#Checkbox Here" and later on in the UpdateOperator I want to check whether the box is ticked or not.

import bpy

class UpdatePanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_category = "EasyFX"
    bl_label = "Update"
    bl_idname = "Update"
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column(align=True)
        row = col.row(align = True)
        row.operator('object.update_operator', text = "Update")

class FilterPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_category = "EasyFX"
    bl_label = "Filter"
    bl_idname = "Filter"
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column(align=True)
        row = col.row(align=True)

        #Checkbox Here

class UpdateOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    '''Update'''
    bl_idname = "object.update_operator"
    bl_label = "Update Nodes Operator"

    def execute(self, context):

        #if checkbox == True:
        #    bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].use_nodes = True

        pass
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(UpdatePanel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(UpdateOperator)
    bpy.utils.register_class(FilterPanel)
def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(FilterPanel)
if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

For a 'checkbox' you have to provide a BoolProperty:

my_bool : BoolProperty(
    name="Enable or Disable",
    description="A simple bool property",
    default = True)

I assume you've got more than 1 property at the end, thus I would also suggest create a 'settings class' for your addon by using a PropertyGroup:

class MySettings(PropertyGroup):

    my_bool : BoolProperty()
    my_int : IntProperty()
    my_float : FloatProperty()
    ...

Following example appends a custom panel to the Tool Shelf of the UV/Image Editor (for more options see bl_space_type) and prints the 'current state' of the BoolProperty to the console:

bl_info = {
    "name": "tester",
    "description": "",
    "author": "poor",
    "version": (0, 0, 1),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "UV/Image Editor > Tool Shelf (T)",
    "warning": "", # used for warning icon and text in addons panel
    "wiki_url": "",
    "tracker_url": "",
    "category": "Test"
}

import bpy

from bpy.props import (StringProperty,
                       BoolProperty,
                       IntProperty,
                       FloatProperty,
                       FloatVectorProperty,
                       EnumProperty,
                       PointerProperty,
                       )
from bpy.types import (Panel,
                       Operator,
                       AddonPreferences,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       )

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
#    Store properties in the active scene
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------

class MySettings(PropertyGroup):

    my_bool : BoolProperty(
        name="Enable or Disable",
        description="A bool property",
        default = False
        )

    my_int : IntProperty(
        name = "Set a value",
        description="A integer property",
        default = 23,
        min = 10,
        max = 100
        )

    my_float : FloatProperty(
        name = "Set a value",
        description = "A float property",
        default = 23.7,
        min = 0.01,
        max = 30.0
        )

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
#    My Tool in the image editor
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------

class UV_PT_my_panel(Panel):
    bl_idname = "UV_PT_my_panel"
    bl_label = "My Tool"
    bl_category = "My Category"
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        mytool = scene.my_tool

        # display the properties
        layout.prop(mytool, "my_bool", text="Bool Property")
        layout.prop(mytool, "my_int", text="Integer Property")
        layout.prop(mytool, "my_float", text="Float Property")

        # check if bool property is enabled
        if (mytool.my_bool == True):
            print ("Property Enabled")
        else:
            print ("Property Disabled")

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
#     Registration
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------

classes = (
    MySettings,
    UV_PT_my_panel,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)

    bpy.types.Scene.my_tool = PointerProperty(type=MySettings)

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)

    del bpy.types.Scene.my_tool

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Note: For demonstration purposes I've also added an Int- and a FloatProperty.

Further reading: How to create a custom UI?


How is the Internal render engine different from Cycles when it comes to Normal map? How are they different?

When I see these examples, I can see that in Blender Internal the map is much cleaner. It looks like another model with X Ray enabled. But, in cycles the normal map is a little messy. How is the map different from Internal and cycles and how can I get the normal map results in cycles as in Internal?

Edit: There is the file -
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/29913

Note - The scene in blender internal is on the first layer and the scene for cycles in on another layer.

Here is the texture -

Unwrap the model with Smart UV Project so that it fits the normal map texture or you can bake one of your own.

Edit: Node set-up -

Edit: I tried user2926289's upproach but for some reason its still not as good as in blender internal. Any other ideas?

Blender Internal -

user2926289's approach in cycles -

There is an error in your node setup:
Yours:

Correct:

Note that the normal value gets plugged into the normal option on the shader node, not into the displacement.


I'm new to blender, Help me! I want to learn Blender, Unity and Unreal, and I’m about to purchase new laptop.
The question is do I need touch screen or touch tablet for blender?
Do I need to be artist to use Blender?
Also, did I need high end gpu like (gtx 1070,1060)?
Thank you

I’ve been using Blender for a long time now and I’ve always been working on a MacBookPro Mid 2014. Depending on what you do, you will have to know what graphics card you use. I wouldn’t suggest you using NVIDIA because they have graphic cards specialized for gaming and not 3D rendering and video editing.

If you are doing basic modeling you don’t have know art and all that stuff. If you are aiming to do sculpting and texture painting it’s basically essential. I hope that concludes everything


make soft bodies stay inside another soft body I have a cube, with a transparent surface, and make it a soft body and drop it.  It's transparent because in it are some red balls.  How do I set it up so that the red balls inside the cube bounce around from the cube's bouncing and stay inside the cube and not travel outside of the cube?

For example, how did they get the red balls to stay inside the cube in this video?

https://youtu.be/qdusMZlBbQ4?t=33

This is an interesting problem. On the face of it, embedding one Soft Body object within another should be quite straightforward, but the Soft Body simulations don't interact in quite the correct way to get the desired effect. Also, there is only limited scope for adjusting the interaction and it is very difficult to prevent the objects from intersecting and passing through one another so that the internal objects escape from the 'parent' object.

To solve this we can separate the soft bodies so that there are two separate simulations - one for the cube and another for the embedded spheres. As they are separate simulations, this prevents the spheres from distorting the container when they interact with the sides of the container. To achieve this, the 'container' soft body will control the shape of a Rigid Body mesh and this will be used to contain the sphere soft bodies.

Firstly, create the container and set up the Soft Body simulation. This can be as simple as enabling the Soft Body in the Physics tab, disabling Soft Body Goal to allow it to interact with the scene, and enabling Stiff Quads in the Soft Body Edges panel.

Create  a plane to act as the ground, Add Rigid Body physics and set to Passive and enable Collision. Rotate and position the cube so it hits the ground at an interesting angle.

Running the simulation should produce something like the following :

Sub-dividing the cube will produce more pleasing distortion and bending when the cube impacts the ground (bear in mind that the more complicated the mesh the longer it will take to simulate) - although you'll need to tweak additional soft-body parameters (such as increasing the Bending setting in the Soft Body Edges properties). You might also want to add an Edge Split modifier and set the mesh to Smooth shading so that the bending of the faces is kept smooth while still having sharp edges to the cube (as a precaution, disable the Edge Split 'Edge Angle' and use Sharp Edges (and mark those edges as 'Sharp' manually) - this way the sharp edges won't change dynamically and break the Mesh Deform mentioned below!).

Next we need to create the mesh to act as the Rigid Body container for the spheres. For this you can simply Duplicate (D) the soft body mesh (be sure to do this on the first frame of the animation so it's in its original position) then scale it slightly smaller than the original mesh (so the spheres will not get too close to the edges). At this point it might be worth going into Wireframe mode (Z) so you can see what you're doing.

Remove the Soft Body from this copy of the mesh (click the cross on the Soft Body button in the Physics properties), and add a Mesh Deform modifier. Select the Soft Body container mesh as the deform object. Click 'Bind' (this might take a while to complete). Deformation of the Soft Body container should now result in the copied mesh being similarly deformed. Add Rigid Body physics, set to Passive and enable Collision.

Now with the duplicated (Mesh Deformed) mesh selected, press M, hold Shift and click a second layer so that the object resides in two layers. This second layer will be for the second Soft Body world.

Swap to that second layer and run the animation - you should see just the Rigid Body mesh visible and this should follow the motion of the 'actual' soft body mesh on the first layer.

Select the Rigid Body container mesh and go into Edit mode (Tab), press Space and Flip Normals. This is necessary for the object collision as the soft bodies within the mesh will now behave as if they are inside the box and rebound back inside the box rather than passing through to the 'outside'. Create the Soft Bodies within the box (you might want to set Soft Body Edges Bending to, say, 1.000 so that the Icospheres retain their shape) and run the animation :

Add Collision to each of the spheres (so they bounce off of each other) and Bake the animation. If any of the spheres break out of the container (depending on how and when they collide you might find that they force each other through the boundary) you can change the Soft Body Solver properties to refine the simulation (reduce Error Limit, increase Min/Max Step, etc.). Finally, add some materials (and set the Ridid Body bounding box to not render) and render the result.

Blend file attached.


Export VSE edits to Avidemux After editing some video in blender VSE (just splitting and cutting), I found out I could use Avidemux for direct stream copy which would save me hours of rendering time while keeping the original video quality.
It there a way to save the project editing history into an Avidemux command script, or into any other tool that can do direct stream copy?

There is no "out of the box"-solution for this right now in Blender.

However, you could use some Python scripting to export the cuts. Don't forget, that depending on your Frame distribution (IBP-Frames) and GOP you might not be able to cut frame-precise with Avidemux.

There are some related questions where you can get some help of how to access the frame ranges:

How can I drive the Switch nodes True/False value?
Why is "Copy Data Path" path different from the tooltip's path?
How to replace an orphaned external file by an existing one? (all instances)
How to snap the right edge of a strip to the playhead instead of the left in video editor


Inactive Fluid flat glitch I am animating a fluid simulation that's supposed to be used for an animated simulation of 'the floor is Lava', the details are unimportant.
What is important is that to ensure the items that fall into the lava impact I'm using a domain that extends into the room, so I set it to stop filling after a certain point. I also abruptly slow down the speed of the simulation, from 60 to 20 seconds. This is all well and good but when It reaches the key frame point the fluid becomes, well:
Before

After

I don't know what's causing it so I need help, is there A a fix to this or B another way to achieve stopping the inflow.
To clarify I stopped it by key framing the 'enabled' modifier.

I've found my own answer.
I had an obstacle representing the room the lava will be beneath, when I cut the inflow I moved the obstacle all the way out of the domain, It appears that this is what caused the glitch, and moving it only slightly seems to have worked.


Is there a way to mimic the 'inherit rotation' of a bone? I need a child bone to 'inherit rotation' but in limited fashion.
I just need it to inherit the rotation of its parent when:

it turns left and right.
So if the knee turn in certain angle, the foot will follow.
But if the knee goes up and down, the foot need to stay unaffected

If I tick off the 'inherit rotation'. It fullfil the second requirement, but not the first.
If I tick off the 'inherit rotation'. It fullfil the first requirement, but not the second

Copy rotation constraint doesn't work, because the parent bone is straight up, while the child is 45 degree shifted.
Locked track doesn't work, because the child can only rotate in its local coordinate.
Transformation constraint doesn't work either.
I need to use the rig as is, meaning I can't change the foot bone orientation origin to as the same as the knee bone. Due to a certain condition.
Any ideas?

I'm assuming this is an IK chain, because if not the foot will always follow the knee rotation. In IK chains generally this behaviour is obtained by making the knee pole target child of the foot, so that you rotate the foot and the knee rot follows (while you're trying to do the inverse).
If you really need this inversion you can create a bone in the loc of the knee with the same orientation of the foot bone; make it child of the knee bone; set a copy rot constraints on the foot bone following only the rot axis needed (in my example Z axis).


Why are my Verticies/Edges/Faces locked from moving up and down? I'm trying to simply move any vertex/edge/face up or down but visually it does not move. I see values changing when i'm moving them but ultimately nothing occurs visually. Additionally, if I try rotating a face so that one edge goes up and the other goes down they just pinch together instead (Imgur link shows what happens when the red rotate ring is moved). I can move the entire object normally up and down outside object mode. Using Blender with Maya config (I used Maya years ago for about 3 years.)

https://imgur.com/dYwmGux

Any help appreciated, thanks.

The scale of the object in "object mode" is set to 0. While scaling the z-axis with 0 in edit mode is great to get a flat surface, in object mode, this leads to this expected but explainable behavior.

Set the scale in z-direction to 1 while in object mode and it will work again.

On another note I would be VERY CAREFUL to have an object SCALED IN OBJECT MODE, if you are trying to model a real world floor plan with REAL WORLD UNITS.

I never use scale/rotation in object mode unless I'm compositing multiple objects together.

In this case I would suggest to apply apply scale in object mode and then select all and scale in edit mode.


bpy.ops.object.location_clear() Does not clear locations for keyframe'd objects I'm trying to get all the meshes in a scene to their identity transform to export them so I can use their matrix_world to position them properly for animations/instancing/etc. I set them all back to their identity transform by clearing location/rotation/scale with bpy.ops.object.(location|rotation|scale)_clear(). However in the case of animated objects with keyframes their position doesn't get cleared, so they're exported incorrectly.

What's odd is that just doing ALT-(G|R|S) to clear them manually does clear the position properly. Is there something extra I need to do to properly clear the positions from Python?

My script is essentially just:

# Select all the objects we want to export and save
# their matrix_world so we can restore it after exporting

# Clear positions for exporting everything at its identity transform
bpy.ops.object.location_clear()
bpy.ops.object.rotation_clear()
bpy.ops.object.scale_clear()

# Export meshes to OBJ
bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(...)

# Restore transformations by setting matrix_world back to what we saved earlier

Thanks to zeffii on the #blenderpython IRC channel on freenode I've got this sorted out. The issue is that the keyframes take precedence over the plain matrix_world so clearing it has no effect from the script. The solution is to mute the animation before clearing the transform, then un-mute it to restore the animation to how it was previously.

So the final script ends up basically like this:

# Select all the objects we want to export and save
# their matrix_world so we can restore it after exporting
# If the object is animated also mute keyframe animation so
# it doesn't block *_clear
for curve in obj.animation_data.action.fcurves:
    curve.mute = True

# Clear positions for exporting everything at its identity transform
bpy.ops.object.location_clear()
bpy.ops.object.rotation_clear()
bpy.ops.object.scale_clear()

# Export meshes to OBJ
bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(...)

# Restore transformations by setting matrix_world back to what we saved earlier
# If the object is animated also unmute keyframe animation to restore it
for curve in obj.animation_data.action.fcurves:
    curve.mute = False


Blender 2.8 sometime I can not open my blender file by OpenGL 3.3 Error Sometimes I can not open my blender file.
I save the blender file and then I can not open it in next time.
But I can open other blender file.
graphic driver is latest ver
Blender file is broken ? I can not open backup file also

Graphics drivers sometimes crash. Try restarting the PC and closing all other graphics intensive applications before opening the file. You may also try using older version of the driver. Sometimes there are bugs in the driver updates even though it's rare and probably unlikely. It might be that the file is just corrupt. This might happen if your storage device is malfunctioning or for other reasons like overclocked CPU failing during writing the file. Try appending stuff from it to a new file.


Symmetrize from +X to -X I'm using Blender 2.8 and want to symmetrize my sculpted model.
I've tried Modeling -> Mesh -> Symmetrize but this only offers to symmetrize from -X to +X. How can I symmetrize from +X to -X instead? I can't simply cut my model in half and use a Mirror Modifier due to the nature of the sculpted mesh (no clean line down the middle).

Once you've symmetrized, you have all the symmetrize options in the Operator box on the bottom left of the 3D View, and you can choose +X to -X.


big landscape and grid settings I can model fine from reference images but if I try to create a big scene I just get lost. I model in real world scale so my objects will look right.  for grid if Im trying to make a large landscape for camera animation how would I turn the grid into 1 mile?

and if I do this does the camera settings need to be adjusted or do I use regular default settings?  any info would be appreciated. I model in imperial using inches and feet.

1)You need to set the units

2)then you can adjust the scale of the grid.
If you need the grid to be exactly one mile long, you need to put in 330 (5280 feet divided into 16 sqares)

3)If you encounter problems with clipping you need to adjust clipping in the N panel, or/and in the camera settings


Baking of the diffuse map turns out partly black So, I've been baking Diffuse Maps for a while now (often had some trouble with it), but now a problem occured, that I cannot fix.
So, I set up everything for baking the map and it mostly works fine, but some faces of the mesh are just left out, when baking. They turn out black. It's as if no material is applied at all, although in reality it's the exact same material as the rest of the mesh, I am baking. (In total the mesh has two materials, but I am only baking one of them onto the map.) I checked the normals and everything is fine, when rendering the original material it's just as it's supposed to be.
Also I noticed, that the faces, which are not baking correctly, were joined to the other parts of the mesh last (first, they were seperate objects). Also the material was applied last, but actually this shouldn't have any impact.
And I still use 2.79 (so probably the problem wouldn't occur in 2.8)
I hope, I could make my problem clear, -I maybe wrote a bit messy (sorry for that). (Just ask for clarification)

I just found out myself, -so for anyone having the same problem: I just deleted the material, I'm not baking onto the map and it's working. I think, I wouldn't have to delete the material, but it's just easier in my situation and solves my problem.


Texture baking in cycles I checked blender Cycles todo and Blender road map but I can't find any word about this feature for cycles. Is there a plan for that in near future?

There's only few people who can handle Cycles code well, their time is spent mostly on keeping the system stable and well supported. New developers are being introduced now, but there's always need for more people here.

Another issue is priority & focus... Cycles main target is to be a "production rendering" environment. Rendering with baked lighting is not commonly regarded as a good workflow, for that development time can be better spent on advanced optimizing (caches etc). The main use case is for making light maps for game environments, which is very relevant but not on the first priority list for the current core devs.


Cycles render is making a part grey So when I renderized the image into cycles it got this grey thing that is very annoying
I think the problem is with the particle system
edit: Disabled particles and still there, disabled Subdivision and dissapeared

Here is before cycles

Here is after cycles

I found the answer!!
The problem was that the solidify was not enough strong, so the donut part was breaking through. For fixing I increased the thickness


Error in exported animation position/size. (Blender to Unreal) I exported an object and its animations to unreal.

All right:

I have problems when I work with its animations.

See how the size and base position change:

Skeletal Mesh (apparently all right):

Animation Sequence (see how it looks inside the floor):

In Blender (I put it above the floor):

In Blender (the parent bone is the bone circled in pink):

I think the parent bone is the cause of the position problem, or at least the way I exported the object makes the parent bone influence that aspect.
About the size, I do not know what is causing the problem because I exported/imported the animation along with the object.

Questions I looked at before asking my question:

Issue with Blender export to Unreal

blender to unreal

How to export pivot point from Blender to Unreal Engine?

Why is my animation being broken up into several files when i export it from blender and import into unreal engine 4?

A recommended link on one of the questions cited:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/38785-blender-digital-fbx-not-include-all-animations?67714-blender-digital-fbx-not-include-all-animations=

A setting I use at export time:

The parameters I use are taken from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENqvKrdFbZk&feature=youtu.be

The link I got by asking this question:

Animation is exported, but does not appear along with the mesh of the object

I would like to know how to make sure that the position (origin) of the object does not change when an animation is played/added/displayed.

By checking the option circled in pink in the image below, I solved the position and size problem:

Only thing to report is that the parent bone was distorted, as if it had been lengthened:

But I didn't notice any difference in the animation.


Blender Fluids - Start Time I'm having an issue getting fluids to calculate if i set the stat time anything other than 0. I have a situation where the calculations (base on an object track) need to start 4 seconds in and end 32 seconds later. I've tried a number of things all of which don't net the correct results.

1) Setting start-end frame ranges
 - Everything still simulates from frame 0 even if i set the frame ranges where i need them.
 - Have TIME on the domain set to 0 and 32. was assuming that it would use the start time based on the current frame range? Guessing not.

2) Setting the start time
 - Frame range is left to start at 0.
 - Domain is set to start of 4.0 and end of 36 (to include the offset of the 4 second start).
 - Upon doing this it never actually simulates. Just sits on a calculating to infinity.

So my first question is is it even possible to simulate MID portion of an animation or do i need to slide everything back to start where i want the action the begin?

And secondly, does the time offset for start work currently? I've read mixed results online.

Appreciate the help!

Not sure exactly what you want to do, but sure, it can be done.

Yes, things will start at frame 0 unless you change the Offset value in the Domain settings. You will want to set it to -(framerate times 4). So -96 or -100 I guess. By the way, the Offset value does not need being set before baking. You can change it anytime you want.

The Start value is something else. If you set it to 4, then the first 4 seconds won't show, so you won't see the beginning of the animation. It will still need to be calculated though, so there is no saving time. I don't know why it wouldn't bake at one time. I did some tests and experienced no problems.

In general, there is usually no need to change the Start value. Offset is what you need.


Decimate modifier is reducing faces, even though the set angle is smaller than the Angle Limit set The decimate planar reduces the number of faces depending on the angle.
But there's a 110-degree, but at 52 degrees, the face is reduced.
Why is the face decreasing when it's less than 110 degrees?
additional question.

180-129 = 51. So I see it flattened at 52 degrees.
But I have one more question.
Why is it decimated like the screen shot above?

Shouldn't the 52nd degree be straightened out?
Shouldn't it be straightened out like the red part?

It's less than 35 degrees, and it's getting decimate.

A test case:
From left to right: 90° then 30°.

If we go above 30° in the modifier the 30° angle is decimated:

Now we have a 105° angle:

which means the angle variation is 75° (180 - 105°) following the edge (or face) variation.
So if the modifier angle goes above 75°:

... the edge collapse again.
That means the modifier is "cumulative": it will decimate all parts where the angle variation is below the given angle in the modifier.


How to animate translucency of a material per object individually? I want to create a video with animated text in Blender 2.8 (beta). I have 3 words (individual text objects) of which the locations are animated with keyframes. They slide in next to each other. As part of that slide animation their opacity should fade from none to full.

I found out how to animate the material (surface: emission) color which unfortunately animates it globally for all objects using it. I need the opacity fading individually for each object. I would like to avoid creating individual materials because there will be a lot of text objects.

You can add a Transparent shader and mix to your diffuse.

Now you can animate the Mix shader factor (use the shortcut  I ).

See the image below:


Is there a low level alternative for bpy.ops.object.convert()? I am using bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH', keep_original= False) in a python function in blender to convert metaballs to a mesh. The script works fine when run from the text editor. However, the goal is to add the function to the render events via bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append() and bpy.app.handlers.render_post.append()
When the function using bpy.ops.object.convert is used in the handler, a polling error occurs. The typical recommendation is to either use overrides or low-level functions to eliminate the polling/context error. I would like to use low-level functions.
A code snippet in the Blender 2.75a low-level API for bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH', keep_original= False), where the selected object is a meatball, would be appreciated.

The to_mesh method

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

mball = bpy.data.objects.get("Mball")

if mball:
    me = mball.to_mesh(scene, False, 'PREVIEW')

    # add an object
    o = bpy.data.objects.new("MBallMesh", me)
    scene.objects.link(o)
    o.matrix_world = mball.matrix_world

    # not keep original
    scene.objects.unlink(mball)


No more previews in compositor In Node Editor (Compositing) there are no previews in the "Viewer" and "Composite" nodes. The Backdrop works and the "Render Layers" nodes also show their preview.

I found this question but this doesn't help.
I can do F12 as much as I like. There are no previews in compositor.

So it looks currently:

I want it to look that way (screenshot from a YouTube video):

Is there an option I could have disabled accidentally?

(I am using Blender Render engine, not Cycles.)

In the Compositor

Select Node First. Toggle Node Preview.

Make sure you click on a Viewer.  It should have a highlight.
Make sure Backdrop (Show Backdrop) is enabled.