load .x3d scene into a group I have a .x3d file containing several meshes. When I load them into Blender, they are loaded into separate objects; I'd like all of them to be loaded into one group so I can manipulate them (e.g., rotate them) together.

To emphasize, I know how to group objects once they are loaded, however there are a lot of them, so being able to load them directly to a group would be more convenient. Is there a way to do it?

While the .x3d specifies a Group tag, as of (May 2015) it doesn't appear that the blender .x3d importer does anything special with the tag
It might not be possible to avoid a bit of scripting..

The .x3d importer currently prepends the name 'Shape' to all objects it generates. A simple way to select all objects with that prefix is

import bpy

D = bpy.data
for obj in D.objects:
    if obj.name.startswith("ShapeCylinder"):
        obj.select = True

or also generate the Empty and parent them all in one go.

import bpy

objects = bpy.data.objects

# makes the Empty, adds to scene
MT = objects.new('Empty_Grouper', None)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(MT)

# parent every new object to MT
for obj in objects:
    if obj.name.startswith("ShapeCylinder"):
        obj.parent = MT

These scripts can be executed from inside Blender's Text Editor. An alternative is to write a thin wrapper around the .x3d importer, something like:

wrapped_importer_x3d.py

In essence what the code below does is:

it loads the existing x3d importer code.
Before triggering it, it stores the list of existing object names
after the import is complete it figures out the names of the objects that have been added
then parents those to an Empty.

You could save this, and stick it into /scripts/addons/wrapped_importer_x3d.py, enable it so:

Then it will be located in Import -> Import x3d parented

# ##### BEGIN GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
#  as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
#  of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
#  Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#
# ##### END GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####

# <pep8-80 compliant>

bl_info = {
    "name": "x3d wrapped importer Parents",
    "author": "alias",
    "version": (0, 0, 1),
    "blender": (2, 7, 4),
    "category": "Import-Export",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "tracker_url": ""
}

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator
from bpy.props import (
    BoolProperty,
    EnumProperty,
    FloatProperty,
    StringProperty)

from bpy_extras.io_utils import (
    ImportHelper,
    orientation_helper_factory,
    axis_conversion,
    path_reference_mode)

from io_scene_x3d import import_x3d

IOX3DOrientationHelper = orientation_helper_factory(
    "IOX3DOrientationHelper",
    axis_forward='Z',
    axis_up='Y')

class ImportX3DBETA(Operator, ImportHelper, IOX3DOrientationHelper):
    """Import an X3D or VRML2 file"""
    bl_idname = "import_scene.x3d_grouped"
    bl_label = "Import X3D/VRML2 Grouped"
    bl_options = {'PRESET', 'UNDO'}

    filename_ext = ".x3d"
    filter_glob = StringProperty(default="*.x3d;*.wrl", options={'HIDDEN'})

    def parent_new_objects(self, object_names):
        objects = bpy.data.objects
        MT = objects.new('Empty_Grouper', None)
        bpy.context.scene.objects.link(MT)

        # for every object in the scene which matches the start of the string
        # parent it to MT
        for obj in (o for o in objects if o.name in object_names):
            obj.parent = MT

    def execute(self, context):

        keywords = self.as_keywords(ignore=("axis_forward",
                                            "axis_up",
                                            "filter_glob",
                                            ))
        global_matrix = axis_conversion(from_forward=self.axis_forward,
                                        from_up=self.axis_up,
                                        ).to_4x4()
        keywords["global_matrix"] = global_matrix

        before = {obj.name for obj in bpy.data.objects}

        response = import_x3d.load(self, context, **keywords)
        if response == {'FINISHED'}:
            after = {obj.name for obj in bpy.data.objects}
            new_names = after ^ before
            self.parent_new_objects(new_names)

        return {'FINISHED'}

# Only needed if you want to add into a dynamic menu
def menu_func_import(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(ImportX3DBETA.bl_idname, text="Import x3d parented")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ImportX3DBETA)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.append(menu_func_import)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_import.remove(menu_func_import)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ImportX3DBETA)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    # bpy.ops.import_scene.x3d_grouped('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


Animating z surface math functions I would like to use the z-math-surface add-on to animate a function with a free parameter like sin(x+a) where the effect of different values of "a" should become clear to the viewer.

I am quite new to blender and have read that it is not possible to change the function once the mesh is created. So I was thinking that maybe I could create a seperate function/mesh for every value of "a", copy all the vertices into the first object and create shape keys for the different values.

Is that possible?

Animate using shape keys and drivers.
Example script using z function surface addon.  Default equation 1 - (a * x**2 + y**2) for a = [0..9].  Create a shape for each using bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_z_function_surface(...) (the operator from the addon) passing the substituted a to the operator as the equation property. (eg for a=3 equation="1 - (3 * x**2 + y**2)" .)
The separate objects are joined using bpy.ops.object.join_shapes()
import bpy
context = bpy.context
# 10 shapes over 101 frames

scene = context.scene
vl = context.view_layer
shapes = 10
obs = []

for i in range(shapes):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_z_function_surface(
                    equation="1 - (%d * x**2 + y**2)" % i,
                    div_x=16,
                    div_y=16,
                    size_x=2,
                    size_y=2)

    ob = context.object
    ob.name = "a=%d" % i

    obs.append(ob)

shape = obs.pop(0)
vl.objects.active = shape

for ob in obs:
    ob.select_set(True)

bpy.ops.object.join_shapes()
for ob in obs:
    bpy.data.objects.remove(ob)

# add a discrete driver animation (10 frames of each)
keys = shape.data.shape_keys.key_blocks

for i in range(1, shapes):
    shape = keys.get("a=%d" % i)
    d = shape.driver_add("value")
    d.driver.expression = "frame // 10 == %d" % i

Note the animation uses drivers.  Make sure autorun is enabled
Make sure the Add Mesh : Extra Objects addon is enabled too


How to change the hdri background I have a simple model and i have used hdri environment image in cycles. I have uncheck the option in camera to hide the environment image. When i press shit+z to render i get the black background. I want that black color to be change to white or other color.How can i change the color.

these are the settings you need to change


Large scale volume lights I'm setting up a large scale space scene, and trying to get some volumetric lights - like god rays. However when scaling up the volume cube, to sizes like 10,000 units the god rays disapear. I can only see either black volume, completely opaque or nothing, depending on the density. My light strength is already set to infinity.

I have a setup, with a spotlight, which works fine with cube of around 100 units size, but it's not working when scaled up ever 10x.

Any ideas ?

Thanks,
Lukas

An enlarged object set with volume scatter will seem denser, as the camera rays will need to traverse a larger space.
Make the lights brighter or bring down the density of the volume scatter and/or volume absorption.

As alternative use the world volume as domain instead of large volumes.

Another think to keep in mind is the camera clipping distance.  It is possible that if your lights fall outside the camera's clip distance they might have no effect at all.


What triggers a 'TWEAK' event? In a modal operator's modal() definition, the code below:

if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
print ("MOUSEMOVE")

will fire off and print the result whenever the mouse moves. But this code:

if event.type == 'EVT_TWEAK_L':
print ("EVENT_TWEAK")

is never triggered whether I'm moving the mouse while the LMB is pressed down or not.

What is required to get a modal operator to receive a tweak event?

I was able to get 'EVT_TWEAK_L' to print the message from within the operator by changing the keymap.

I changed the way the operator was called in the keymap from:

  Mouse> Any Left Mouse

to

  Tweak> Left> Any

I assumed that since a modal operator called by a LMB click could also catch a bunch of other events such as 'RIGHTMOUSE', 'MOUSEMOVE', 'ESC', alt, ctrl, etc etc, that it would also be able to catch tweak events, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'll update the answer if I find another way to do it.


I would like to apply high mesh details such as wrinkles and pores. Should I apply to the base sculpt or to a lower poly retopology? If I'm to apply to a low poly, do I need to use the multiresolution modifier?

You could duplicate your object, sculpt on the copy with Dyntopo, then bake the result on the original object.

Another method is to use the Multiresolution modifier then bake the result on the same object as explained here by PIXXO 3D. It works fine with 2.79, not with my version of 2.8 but it may have improved since.

Subdivide your object a bit. Shade Smooth it. Unwrap it (Smart UV Project for example).

Give it a Multiresolution modifier, click Subdivide 2 or 3 times, sculpt the object.

Create a blank picture, prepare your node setup, make sure that the Image Texture is set to Non-Color Data.

Bake the normals.

Deactivate the Multires modifier. Check the result.


How to build surface from lists? I have lists of lists as those of the image

and to graph them in other software I get a surface like the following one,

the problem is that the image is very little defined and I would like to render it in blender, the doubt that I have is: can to represent this surface in blender from the lists I have ?. I have not found something similar on the web so encourage me to ask. Any help is welcome, thanks in advance.

Simple bmesh script to create z grid from list of lists..

From what I can see assume: The data is n lists of m members, which can be layed out in an (n - 1) x (m - 1) grid.

Simple test script, paste into blank text, and "run script". Note made no effort to scale this, can be done after running from dimensions / scale properties.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
context = bpy.context
me = bpy.data.meshes.new("Surface")
bm = bmesh.new()

# rows x cols list of lists.
data = [[1, 2, 3, 3],
        [0, 1, 2, 3],
        [0, 0, 1, 2],
        [0, 0, 0, 1]]

rows = len(data)
cols = len(data[0])
# make a grid for easy skinning
bmesh.ops.create_grid(bm,
        x_segments = cols,
        y_segments = rows)
# assign list coords to grid.
bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()
for row in range(rows):
    i = row * rows
    for col in range(cols):
        index = i + col
        vert = bm.verts[index]
        vert.co = Vector((row, col, data[row][col]))
bm.to_mesh(me)
# add an object to the scene.
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Surface", me)
scene = context.scene
scene.objects.link(ob)
scene.objects.active = ob


Modelling Top Surface I'm modelling a bottle shape. And when I add the subdivision modifier the top and rear of the bottle has its surface seem pinched non smooth (although I have added shade smooth). So I delete the top face, select the vertices and do a grid fill which can be seen in the image attached. But when I increase the viewport quality in my subdivision modifier the top of the bottle seems more square than circle.

What's the best modelling tip so the top of the surface doesnt make that pinched surface?

Thank you.

The idea is to isolate areas of topology where the interpolation of normals (used by smooth shading) might screw the illusion of a smooth surface from parts of the model where it matters - from places where curvature has to be kept even.

Either:

I inset the flat top region, and
CtrlR cut a loop around the neck and slide it
up towards the rim

Or:

CtrlB Bevel the rim with (e.g.) 2 Segments and
a Profile of 1,which has the same effect.

Now the thin triangular faces are in a flat area, all have the same normals, so no interpolation

Or....

... you could do the bevel with a Bevel modifier, targeted by angle .. or edge Bevel Weight, so you can adjust the bevel later.. you could split the normals for shading alone without adding any geometry or subdivision, by going to the Data tab and checking 'Autosmooth' .. or..


Ring on a necklace model I have a cloth string covered with a skin to replicate a necklace.
Now I want to add a pendant. I am using a torus only to try and simulate the interactions first.
I have added a rigid body to both the skin object and torus, and added a rigid constraint to both and associated each object to each other, but they pass through.
Any advice?
Please see attached blend file
I have changed the parameters to try and make this more simple - made 2 soft body interactions, but cant make them seem or act in a solid fashion - any tips or advice? See second blend file.
Okay update - used cloth and collision for both objects and they interact better - but the torus is still soft, rather than hard - how to I make an object retain its shape when it interacts with a cloth object? See 3rd blend file
4th Update
Got a torus to interact with a serious of rigid body chains, however they are not movable - See 4th blend file

I found this link helpful.

I got rid of the Rigid Body Constraints.  They were doing nothing.
I set Torus.013 (center link) RB to active, mass of 0.5kg, margin 0.5m
Torus.026 (pendant) margin to 1m.

I believe that is all.   Here is the modified file, far from perfect:


EEVEE is showing screen space reflections in the viewport, but not in the final render I put an object (a puddle) in my scene and I used a Principled BDRF with Metallic set to 1.0 to have screen space reflections. I enabled them in the render configuration and I can actually see them in the (rendered) viewport.  However, when I render the project (F12) I cannot see the reflections (only the environment map reflection, not objects reflections).
Should I enable them somewhere else?

sorry if this dose not usefull for you because i used google translate.
so first you have to do...(like imagine)
before

after

second

and i hope this help you.


under what circumstances will a single vertex split into multiple when UV unwrapping? I'm unwrapping a model, and a single vertex on the model is being represented as three (two joining onto one, are you can see in the screenshot) in the unwrapped view.

This is just one of four identical sections, and this is the only one that this happens to. So what could possibly cause this?

It can be caused by a seam on the edge marked with green:

You can mark and remove seams in edit mode by select edges and going to Mesh > Edges > Mark Seam or Clear Seam:

You can also call the functions from Edges menu - ctrl+e in the 3d viewport.


UV Wrap or Bake Normals first? I wanted to texture paint this high poly object (left).  I've created a low poly version (right).  My question is; do I have to UV unwrap it first then bake the normals... and if so do I unwrap the high poly or low poly version?

Been searching for a while on the best way to do this so any tutorials would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

You must unwrap the low poly version first. That is how your bake will have coordinates to match up from low poly to high poly. If you tried to bake normals first, you would get an error because the program would not know where to put them in your image.


Issues with the Boolean Modifier on Blender 2.83 I'm trying to make a window on a wall, and i choose the boolean mod, my window (cube) doesn't appear when i try to choose it in the Objects, to i use the copy tool next to where you choose the object, and i tap on my window cube, and it says "failed to set Value" The value is currently at Default (0.000001) any tips? Also I just stared Blender 2 days ago, so a bit of a Newbie, have been following video tutorials but none of them explain any issues like this.

It might just need to be applied, the changes you have done before using boolean. this sometimes makes it happy, some times not!! Command or control A Keys.


Number of vertices and edges report no changes after adding boolean intersect modifier I am trying to check if a cube and a cone with 7 vertices (python will show 8) intersect or not. To do so, I am using a boolean intersect modifier and check how many vertices are there, after adding the modifier.  If it is non-zero then they are intersecting otherwise not.  I am running the following codes.
# read the objects and print number of vertices and faces
cube = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
cone = bpy.data.objects['Cone']

print (len(cone.data.vertices),len(cube.data.vertices),len(cone.data.polygons),len(cube.data.polygons))
>> 8, 8, 8, 6

# select the cube and add intersect boolean modifier

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
cube.select_set(True)
intra = cube.modifiers.new(type="BOOLEAN", name="intersctn")
intra.object = cone
intra.operation = 'INTERSECT'

# check the number of vertices now
print (len(cone.data.vertices),len(cube.data.vertices),len(cone.data.polygons),len(cube.data.polygons))
>> 8, 8, 8, 6

The issue is, whether they are intersecting or not - the number of vertices or faces returns the same as the original cube. I can clearly see that number of vertices and faces has increased after adding the boolean modifier but the python giving me the wrong result. When they are not intersected, the faces and vertices supposed to be 0, but I am still getting 8 and 6. Is this a common issue with the intersect boolean modifier or do I have to update something?

Use the evaluated object
Modifiers don't alter the mesh, they "Modify, Generate, Deform or Physics" the mesh result ... using the mesh as input.  Think of it like a method in mathematics sin(x) doesn't alter x it returns a result using x as input.
The result is available in newer versions of blender as the evaluated object.
How do I get a mesh data-block with modifiers and shape keys applied in Blender 2.8?
This is the result of all modifiers applied. It in no way applies the result to the mesh.  As with most modifiers they are often not easily reversible if applied, and is not required to simply test if geom would be changed.
Test script looks at difference between edge count of cube unmodified and with all modifiers.
import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

cube = scene.objects.get("Cube")
cone = scene.objects.get("Cone")
if cube and cone:
    print(len(cube.data.edges))
    bm = cube.modifiers.new(name="Foo", type='BOOLEAN')
    bm.operation = 'INTERSECT'
    bm.object = cone
    dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
    eval_cube = cube.evaluated_get(dg)
    print(len(eval_cube.data.edges))

A better option would be to look at the evaluated object both before or after to see the change in evaluated meshes. (eg the cube could already have a stack of modifiers)
import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

cube = scene.objects.get("Cube")
cone = scene.objects.get("Cone")
if cube and cone:
    cube.evaluated_get(context.evaluated_depsgraph_get())
    print(len(eval_cube.data.edges))
    bm = cube.modifiers.new(name="Foo", type='BOOLEAN')
    bm.operation = 'INTERSECT'
    bm.object = cone

    eval_cube = cube.evaluated_get(context.evaluated_depsgraph_get())
    print(len(eval_cube.data.edges))
    cube.modifiers.remove(bm)

If the mesh has no modifiers of shapekeys prior to adding could check for this to avoid an unrequired evaluation.
prior_cube = (
    cube.evaluated_get(context.evaluated_depsgraph_get())
    if (
        cube.data.shape_keys
        or cube.modifiers
        )
    else
        cube
    )

Test run, default cube on RHS has subsurf modifier. Results (before, after) are 12, 64 and 92, 192
An interesting technique to test for intersection.  Could be on the slowish side.  Looping over objects getting data and adding modifiers, then looping again would require only evaluating  the context depsgraph twice instead of twice for each object.


Why do I have no 'Shader' category when trying to add nodes? I am a complete beginner. So, I might be dumb - sorry!
I made a 3D model. Now, I want to work on its surface - which lead me to materials and shaders. So, I added a material and then opened the Node Editor. I pressed Shift+A to add a shader and I got the following:

There is no Shader in the list. So, could you please tell me how to get it?
The Blender version I am using is 2.79b

First, make sure you are using cycles.

On the info window

select cycles as the render engine

Then go to the node editor.
Without any addons, the Node Editor can be used in three different modes:

You are looking at the compositor nodes.

Click on the materials button in the Node Editor header.

Also make sure the Use nodes box is checked.


Make animation so that there is no transformation in between keyframes? I created an with these cubes. Every 10th key frame, the cube is duplicated and moved over. However, in the time in between each key frame it shows the cube sliding into the next slot. I don't want this, I just want the cube to appear in the next slot. Is there any way I can make it so there's no sliding animation? Thanks!
What I'd like it to look like (except slower):

What it looks like right now:

As you can see, the cubes in the second image (my animation,) are sliding instead of appearing in place like in the first animation. How do I get rid of this sliding? Thanks!

That can be a driver

If many cubes, certainly you don't want to animate them all, so use a driver:

Using the selected cube in the image above, add a driver to its "show in viewports" (and when all is good do the same for "show in renders").
The driver uses some other object's location (an empty) and uses the formula on its x location (named e for empty):

e <= (self.location.x + self.location.y * 5 + self.location.z * 20)

The empty is animated along X axis from 0 to the amount of cube (multiplied by the size of the cubes).
When the empty moves, we want to change the cube visibility from false to true (so hide_viewport from true to false).
If you want to go along X, then Y, then Z, the formula takes the empty X position and test it over the cube location.

e <= (self.location.x + self.location.y * 5 + self.location.z * 20)

is to:

change over X
every y * 5 locations because 5 cubes along x when x changes
and every z * 20 locations because 5 * 4 cubes along z when z changes

Pragmatically:
Set this driver for the first cube, the one at (0, 0, 0),
then select all the cubes and use CtrlL and "animation data".

this will copy the driver to all other cubes and make the animation.


Ignore parent rotation I'm currently playing around with small projects using different functions and effects to improve my skills in the software, however, I've run into a challenge in my current project that I can't seem to solve.

I have a coin (I've given it a colorful texture in the picture, in order to make it more visible to you). This coin spins into the view, and when it stops, et tips backward on one of the sites.

I have 3 light sources in the scene. Two lights are tracking the position of the coin so they keep rotating in the direction of the coin, but they stay in the same position at all times.

The remaining light - the one selected in the picture - is parented to the coin. I want this light to move along the coin at all times, but when the coin tips on its side at the end, I don't want the light to rotate along with it, but instead keep staying exactly above the coins pivot point.

I've tried locking all transformations of the light before the coin tips, and then when the coin has tipped, I move the light back in the position I want it to be in, and then I lock all transformations again, but the moment I drag across the timeline, it doesn't save the new position I have assigned.

How can I make this work? Can I somehow parent the light to the coins location while ignoring the rotation?

You can use the copy location constraint. Give the spot light a copy location constraint and set the coin as the target and check the offset option so the spot light won't be exactly at the location of the coin but above it.

More info on manual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/transform/copy_location.html


Is there a shortcut to open the 3D view? Is there a shortcut to go to 3D view when you are in another view, such the UV/Image editor or the Node Editor?

I can't find it.

Shift + F1 - F12 keys

F5 for 3D view.

F3 = Node Editor

F4 = Console

F5 = 3D View

F6 = Curve editor

F7 = Properties

F8 = VSE

F9 = Outliner

F10 = Image/Uv editor

F11 = Text Editor

F12 = Dopesheet editor

Don't know where timeline went.


Is it possible to apply modifiers to multiple objects at once? You can copy modifiers from one object to other objects with CtrlL> Make links > Modifiers, or the Copy attributes addon.

However, is it possible to apply modifiers to many objects at once?

You can select all of the object you wish to apply the modifiers to, then press AltC> convert to mesh:

Note:

Some modifiers have different values for View and Render.
This will apply the View settings.


How do I scale only one side? The switch is too small, but if I try to scale it, it will end up with a side clipping through the outer box, which is something I do not want at all.

If anyone can help me here, I would really appreciate if.

you can scale with restriction on the axis.
press S and then an axis on keyboard(x,y or z) to scale only on that axis.
and press S and then shift + axis to restrict the scaling on that axis.


Anisotropic shader not working with new file so I tried following this (somewhat dated) tutorial to create an anisotropic material.
Unfortunately no matter what I do, the objects don't look anisotropic at all.
Here's my attempt at following the tutorial:

Even if I just open a plain new file, add a geometry, an HDR map as the background and set the Anisotropic shader, it doesnt work:

The only way I could see any anisotropy, was by downloading the example blender file from the docs.
What could be missing from a plain new file, that the example file has? The cycles nodes look exactly the same.

Sorry for the confusion, it looks like new file now (Blender 2.9) sets the new file render engine to Eevee and eevee doesn't seem to do anisotropic. 2h of life-time I'm never going to get back


How to render in square proportion I want to render in square proportion. When i go to setting and adjust it never set in square. Always go in rectangle direction. How can i set my camera in square so that it render fast in that area only. Any suggestion or help or what setting i can use to set in a square.

Go to Properties>>Render>>Dimensions>>Resolution.  Make sure the X and Y are set to the same value.  Also make sure that the aspect ratio for both X and Y is set to 1:

As @cegaton mentioned: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/23409/38953


Adding outlines to hair particles? I'm trying to reach a flat cartoony look for my character but when I use any sort of option for cel shading it will never outline the hair particles, is it even possible? Could I somehow make a special shader to achieve that? The shadows are part of the texture.

For silhouette outline is usually used Freestyle, but it is not working with Hairs. Since Freestyle is post process effect anyway, there is even probably faster to use Compositor to calculate this effect.

You can try some node tree based on object separation - like Index OB or Cryptomatte and create outline with Sobel, InPaint, Dilate-Erode kind nodes.
Option 01
For few objects you can arrange it with Index OB node and Sobel node to generate outline.

Option 02
For more complex scene Cryptomatte works better, since you can generate outlines for all objects at once from Pick output directly. You don't need to select them one by one ... just reuse random colors of Pick output.

Note: Sometimes Filter node (like Sobel, Perwitt, ... type) generates from Cryptomatte's white color filled place, Increasing Fac over 1 fix that. I would say it is because Cryptomatte's Pick colors represents more dynamic range than Filter node can handle. Using this socket directly is not proper way of using it, it is more a hack so that is why I had to use Math (Greater Than) node because direct use handled white color in a wrong way again. Greater Than node clamps high values.


How to copy BGE logic from one object to another using script? How to copy BGE logic from one object to another using script?

I use the following code (coppied from an addon) to create a duplicate of an object ...

def copyObject(scene, name, copyobj, location ):

  # Create new mesh
  mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)

  # Create a new object.
  ob_new = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)
  ob_new.data = copyobj.data.copy()
  ob_new.scale = copyobj.scale
  ob_new.location = location
  scene.objects.link(ob_new)

  return ob_new

But this does not copy the game logic from the original object.

Thanks!

To copy game logic from one object to one or many others:

Select the other object (or multiples using shift) first (object you would like to copy game logic nodes to)

Select the object you want to copy from (using shift to select)

Click Object->Game->Copy Logic Bricks

( or script as bpy.ops.object.logic_bricks_copy() )

Can be done for Properties as well as Physics properties.

Is this the type of copy you are looking for?


Why does the 3D Viewport's Start Clip have no effect in Ortho view? Why does adjusting the 3D Viewport's Start Clip setting not effect the 3D Viewport view when in Orthographic mode? The End Clip setting works, but the Start doesn't seem to...is this a bug?

The reason is "when perspective is disabled only the far Clip-End is used":

  A large clipping range will allow you to see both near and far objects, but reduces the depth precision.
  To avoid this...

  increase the near clipping when working on large scenes.
  decrease the far clipping when objects are not viewed at a distance.

  When perspective is disabled only the far Clip-End is used, very high values can still give artifacts.

  This is not specific to blender, all OpenGL/DirectX graphics applications have these same limitations.

(Source: Blender Manual via Campbell Barton)


How do I model this cockpit? I tried subsurf then booleans, but they create N gons and shading issues no matter what. Any other solution?

From making cockpits before, I can tell you that they are tricky. I would advise you to use subsurf, and turn on autosmooth under Object Data > Auto Smooth.

Autosmooth should be default, as it is far more useful than smooth shading alone. I just got used to turning it on after a while.

A shape like this one can be obtained quite simply using that technique, and won't contain shading errors.

Making the cockpit first, then using it as a boolean is probably a good solution. If quads are an issue, it's always possible to triangulate later. Also look into Voxel Remesh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9dEqM3H31g&t=1322s


STL empty on export (Python API) When I export manually I get the full STL but when I try using the Python API I get 1k (ie empty) files.

The code is quite complex (which I'm not a liberty to share at the moment) but its final piece is called Boundary

I execute the following lines of code to export the STL,

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = Boundary
bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filepath="C:/Users/User/Documents/Pyticle/Volume Blender/Bob.stl")

I saw some previous questions asking this but they all suggested that the geometry was not selected which is not the case here. That is unless I'm not selecting it properly?

(An aside, a decent NURBS interpreter, that is all)

It’s going to be hard to answer with so few info… STL exporter by default export all (geometry) object in active scene (only exporting selected ones is an option, disabled by default).

That said, here are some ideas to check:

Active is not selected, those two states are different and you may have an active but non-selected object (so you should also ensure you do Boundary.select = True in case you export only selected).
Your object must be linked in the active scene (context.scene.objects.link(Boundary)), otherwise you can select it or even (try to!) make it active, it won’t work.


Where is the "Local Coordinates" option for Inflow Object? I want to use an animated object to determine where liquid pours out from, but I cannot for the life of me find the option that dictates this...
Previously this option was in Blender 2.79
So far, after several days of looking, my search efforts have gone in vain. Hopefully this question isn't too redundant!

Since you can use Source and Normal settings, Local Coordinates are a bit useless.
Inflow usually emits fluid only from one direction, there is no specific reason to use whole surface of object as inflow.
It means you can use a disk with same efficiency.

Originally taken from https://blenderartists.org/t/lets-talk-about-mantaflow/644346/908?u=vklidu


Why are the unwrapped UV faces different sizes and proportions to my model's faces? Hey so I'm fairly new to Blender and am having issues with some of my UV unwraps. The lines in the UV Image Editor are making completely different shapes. I've tried multiple things trying to get them to be more uniform with their model but it still isn't working. Not sure if it's how I'm doing my seams or something else. Let me know what you think.

You can try to use a front orthographic view, select some faces and choose U - project from view. Then change the view and go on with other faces, until you unwrap the whole model.

The classic UV algorithm gets confused by your convex Ngons, a clear topology, with only not convex quads, would avoid the problems.


How can i append a material from a blend file using python script I wan't a script that could append a particular material only from a particular blend file so that i can just run the script and the material is there

This links a number of named materials from materiallibrary.blend

import bpy
# Load materials
bpy.ops.wm.link(filepath="materiallibrary.blend/Material/LL_WireTrans", directory="materiallibrary.blend/Material/", filename="LL_WireTrans", files=[{"name":"LL_Clay", "name":"LL_Clay"}, {"name":"LL_Glass", "name":"LL_Glass"}, {"name":"LL_WireHold", "name":"LL_WireHold"}, {"name":"LL_WireTrans", "name":"LL_WireTrans"}], relative_path=True)

I did not write the above, Blender created it for me. Run blender.exe --debug-all and manually link your required materials, then in the console will be the python code generated, similar to the above.

Because of the --debug-all you will will also get a ton of other stuff that you will need to sort through.

Link to the project I use this in
Camera-track-endevour


Entered weird mode, tab switch between "Edit" and "Edit Strokes" I did something I am not sure, but now Tab key switch between "Edit" and "Edit Strokes" mode without going out to the object mode. When I click the mode it says "Object Mode" but that's actually an edit mode. Also, all the armatures displayed in X-Ray are all gone. And edit mode does not show editable vertexes like it should be.

In this Edit Mode I can only try to right click around the area that I remembered there is an armature, the yellow name at bottom left would change accordingly without any other visual indication. I can press G to grab the invisible armature and move them. (I know this because it is showing Dx Dy Dz text)

One way I found to exit from this state is to load other workspace preset. But if I come back to this preset it still stuck in this state. What exactly is this?

this link might help

https://docs.blender.org/manual/de/dev/interface/grease_pencil/stroke_edit.html

if you want to get out of stroke edit mode try pressing d-tab


Model from Sketchup to Blender A collegue of mine has created a model with SketchUp and I want to import it into blender now. He created several formats from the model(*.3ds, *.dae, *.obj) which I can import. However, I always do not seem to get the correct dimensions for the objects after the import. Also, depending on which format I choose to import, the dimensions are different.

So, there are two options now. Either, the dimensions get broken when he does his export. Or Blender fails to import correctly.

How can I rule out the second option? How do I import respecting the dimensions of the object from either *.3ds, *.dae or *.obj?

The current situation when importing from *.ds looks like this:
One of the models should have dimensions of about 2,10m length and 1,10m width. In Blender's object mode:

In edit mode with edge length enabled:

Why are the dimensions so different? Even the ratio of the sides is off in object mode.

edit: When I import from *.dae the dimensions in edit mode are correct but not the ones shown in object mode. What is the difference between the two in the first place?

I just did an experiment:

Created a 2 meter cube in Sketchup Make 2017.

Exported as a.dae file.

Imported to Blender.

After Applying the scale in Object mode the dimensions were correct.

I have no idea why the imported cube was scaled to 0.025 but maybe something similar is happening with your imports.

If the scale is not 1.0 in the X, Y and or Z then try applying Scale.

In Object mode: with object selected, Ctrl + A  to open Apply menu.

If you do some maths on the edge lengths of 78.74 shown in edit mode of the "2x2x2m cube" (before applying Scale) (see second image in previous post) you will notice:

78.74 / 2 = 39.37   (Divide by 2 to find length for 1 meter)

39.37 x 0.025 = 0.98125    ( multiplied by 0.025 because that is the scale showing in Object mode.  See the first image in my previous post. This is very close to 1 meter.

The Scale of 0.025 reminded me of the number you get when converting inches to metric. 1 inch = 0.0254 meters.

I know almost nothing about collada files but do know you can open them in a text editor and have a look inside.

This is what the first few lines of the 2 meter cube exported from Sketchup look like.

And this is the first few lines of the collada.dae file of a 2 meter cube created and exported from Blender as a Collada.dae file:

Perhaps you need to find some setting in the Sketchup exporter setup to correct this?

Or maybe you could try editing the unit line in the Collada file so that it reads the same as the the Collada file exported from Blender.

No I am not a sketchup user, I just had it on my computer because a a while ago i wanted to see how it works.

I noticed that in the Blender Collada Import menu there is an Inport Units option.


Weight painting models with loose parts I have an awful lot of models to rig, and most of them have lots of loose parts in each mesh that function as hairs when used with a toon shader. My issue is that when I apply an automatic weight paint the geometry is painted very erratically, almost at random. If they were slightly off they could be tweaked, but most are paired to completely wrong bones on the other side of the armature.

Does anybody know of a better process? Or a way I can get the auto-painter to recognise the loose geometry as part of the whole mesh?

Automatic weighting gets confused when a mesh is not continuous, non-manifold, with intersections and so on ...

You could separate all your loose parts (P, in edit mode), do the automatic weights on the base mesh, then manually parent the loose parts with their respective bones, then join all the meshes, selecting the base mesh as last (Active) and pressing Ctrl J.


Text in Blender won't render So, I just started using Blender about a week or so ago, so forgive me if the answer to this is literally right in front of me.

But I was editing a channel banner for one of my friends and added text behind it:

But.. As you can see here, when I go to render it the text doesn't show up.

At first I thought it was just because the background was transparent or something, but that didn't seem to be the case. How do I fix this?

EDIT: Here are the material settings

In Material Tab change Volume to Surface.


Tips and tricks for posing / overlaying correctly a 3D character over an image mapped on a 2D plane I'm trying to make the posing of a 3D character so that it covers perfectly the actor's body behind that's mapped on a 2d plane :

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OZVXQaCqQhPZs21rXybUKElY1MeGlTFN

as you can see I haven't been able to cover it perfectly. It seems easy but it isn't. I would like to know about a set of tips and tricks to do it better and faster.

For example,is there a way to make the mesh transparent ? It maybe easier to match the mesh borders with the actor's body borders. Infact if I put the mesh in wireframe mode,the texture of the plan behind it goes away. How can I keep it displayed ?

Instead of using an image on a plane use the image as background and composite later using the compositor.
Put the background image in Front and set the opacity to a value where you can see the image and your object.

Consider a few more things: The settings for the camera in blender will make a difference. If you are trying to match the placement of 3D elements on an image, the point where things match reality will only be valid for a single point in space. If the camera is a bit higher or lower or has a different perspective, then everything you do will be off. In other words the camera settings (field of view, height and rotation) should also match those of the original camera.
Use Blam or similar tools to determine the settings and placement of the camera in blender.
Create very basic proxy auxiliary objects that might guide you (like the couch) and help you visualize things when you are not looking through the camera view.

NOTE: Blam is no longer mantained and has been replaced by Fspy: https://fspy.io/, but there is no importer for blender 2.79 or previous versions.
For a detailed post on how to use blam and Fspy read: How can I recreate geometry using a photograph?


Is it possible to calculate the volume of a object as its collision bounds? Is it possible to calculate the volume of a object as its collision bounds
rather then the physical mesh? In the following scene, I have a stick of dynamite falling onto a field of cubes. It should destroy all cubes within the blast, but it is only destroying the ones touching the physical mesh.

Can this be done without changing the collision bound type from
Triangle Mesh to Convex hull or one of the other ones?

(Question stated again in blend file)

Since your object is sphere you can use the sphere collusion bound with the appropriate radius :

Here is the WIKI entry about collusion bonds with example files


Scripting: How to correctly group objects How can I correctly group multiple objects and have them behave as a unit. I tried the following

sceptre = bpy.data.objects['sceptre']
ring = bpy.data.objects['ring']
Group(sceptre,'wizards')
Group(ring,'wizards')

WITH

def Group(obj0,groupName):
    if not groupName in bpy.data.groups:
        bpy.ops.group.create(name=groupName)
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj0
    bpy.ops.object.group_link(group=groupName)

AND

def Group(obj0,groupName):
    if not groupName in bpy.data.groups:
        group = bpy.data.groups.new(groupName)
    else:
        group = bpy.data.groups[groupName]
    if not obj0.name in group.objects:
        group.objects.link(obj0)

The object property pane shows the new group name for each object under the Add to Group tab with the last object outlined in green after running the script but the objects do not move as a unit when I select and drag either of them like it does when manually grouped with Ctrl +  G.

I finally realised I was the one making the mistake, called a blender guru and realised grouped objects didn't move together with the keyboard shortcut so it was just the selection I used to group the objects I was misinterpreting as the group behaviour after I moved the objects together afterwards.

After surfing the web I realised it was either the parenting property or I simply press a keyboard shortcut which brings a dropdown list to choose group and select all objects in it so I can translate at once.


Parenting Objects to Animation Node Object Instances I am trying to animate this city scene so the tiles filp over and reveal a house or a building on the other side. I was able to get the tiles in the correct location and flip over and I was able to have the house objects and trees follow it by parenting it to the tile. It worked great, however after I loaded the file again all of the parenting was removed. Is there a way to keep the parent information after re-loading the file? I am using Blender 2.8 and Animation Nodes 2.14. Thanks.

The Object Instancer node dynamically add and remove objects on demand. So anything you do on the object is not persistent. The obvious solution here is create the the parent objects manually and do the parenting as you did. Then add those parents to a collection, get the collection's objects, get their transformation matrices, and offset them based on the target falloff just as you did.


SHIFT + ` or SHIFT + ~ No longer works to controll camera with WASD? So normally I manage my camera animations by pressing SHIFT + ` and this usually works fine but I cannot get it to work can anyone help

Under Preferences -> Keymap search for Fly Mode and click in the Field where it Says Shift' and rebind it to whatever you like to press.
call me oldscool... but for me Shift F for Flymode .. like it used to be works great


Playback in camera view is flickering I'm having trouble finding an answer to this, as all my searches come up with people suggesting ways to make a camera shudder effect!

My problem is that in Blender Game mode, when I switch to camera view and play the game, the background outside of the camera view jitters/ flickers very fast.

If I start the game in user/ortho view, it doesn't happen, and when I move to the next level, the camera view is perfect.  It's only when I start the game in camera view.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Is this a known problem?

Thanks!

This seems to be a mac issue - the solution is to change the Window Draw Method in User Preferences/System - from no multisample to Multisample 2 at least.


Cycles Render on GT750 GPU (MacBook Pro) 2GB Graphics - 2.79 Blender I have a GT750 Graphics Chip in my MacBook Pro, it has 2GB of dedicated VRAM, I would like to use this to render rather than the CPU.

The MacBook also has a Quad Core i7 2.6GHz and is able to render using the cycles engine perfectly, however looking at benchmarks even though the GT750 is not a hugely powerful chip, it should still perform better than the CPU.

I have gone onto NVIDIAs site and downloaded and installed the latest CUDA Drivers, and then restarted my Mac. I then went into 'User Preferences -> System' and only OpenCL is available, there is not a option for CUDA. Please see the screenshot.

If I go ahead and use GPU / cycles rendering on OpenCL the application just quits without any errors shown.

This is using Blender 2.79

Thank you for any help

OpenCL does not work (yet?) for Blender on MBP with NVidia. It worked with CUDA for me on mid 2014 MBP with GT750M 2GB Nvidia but I had to install the latest NVidia drivers and CUDA, however the result was extremely disappointing, pretty much the equivalent of single core CPU rendering instead of 8-core! Don't waste your time with this with the GT750M.

Since the NVidia GEForce drivers are not stamped by Apple, they are hard to find even on the NVidia website. I used this site as source of the NVidia link! https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/graphics.13/

At the time of this post, the latest drivers are http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/130460/en-us

... which also includes the link to download CUDA...


Why it is impossible to drag an image into UV/Image Editor and Node Editor? A strange thing happened.
On my best computer (Windows 8.1, CPU i7 with 32 GB RAM and 3 GTX770 onboard) it is impossible to drag an image into UV/Image Editor and Node Editor. The mouse pointer is a denied symbol...
On my iMac this works.
I tried to reinstall and set as Default Settings but nothing...
Can you help me?
Thank you.

Andrea

I do not believe it is. You will need to add an "image texture" node, then select "open image". From there, locate your image. If it is a video, add a "movie clip" node and do the same. Hope this helps!


how do I import functions from a file in the same directory as the file that is the source of the current text buffer? I have a text buffer that is loaded from an external file.  In that same text buffer I need to write code that imports some functions from another file in the same directory as the one in the text buffer.

Hardcoding that path in the source is unsuitable because the file may live in different directories on different users' machines.
Command-line arguments seem like a a horrid Rube Goldberg kludge and a horrible user experience.
a file selection dialog is also poor user experience.

Java has a mechanism similar to what I want using class.getResource(relPath) (imagine if tomcat gave you a file selection dialog box when it needed to load the Spanish translations for localized string resources)

What is the best python technique to accomplish this?

You can add the text file's folder to the system path, which will enable you to import from that path.

I'd also suggest to extract the folder path via os.path.dirname.

Short example to clarify:

import sys
from os.path import dirname
textFilePath = "/home/me/somewhere/textfiles/text1"
textFileFolder = dirname( textFilePath ) # = "/home/me/somewhere/textfiles"

sys.path.append(textFileFolder)

import someFileThatExistsInTextFolder


Menu in the node editor is different than the one on the tutorial I'm trying to follow I'm trying to reproduce this tutorial on my Blender 2.79 in Linux machine from this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3CwKkiJZN0. But the problem is somewhere in this video, instructor switches to node editor and his screen looks like this:

I just draw a red circle over that option that I don't see in my Blender when I switch to node tree. In fact, my Blender looks like this:

As you can see, I don't have that option in my node editor and unfortunately, instructor does not say anything about that option (e.g. how to load it up). I will be very grateful to let me know how I can add that option in my node tree in order to be able to reproduce this tutorial. I really appreciate any comment, suggestion, or recommendation.

Update:

I downloaded v2.0 of animation nodes add on and I enabled it like this:

What you are seeing is an addon called "animation nodes"

https://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_guide/install/install.html

It is not installed by default. You would need to download it (do not Unzip the file) and install it using "Install from File"


How to change 'pose' of mesh without rigging? I have a clothing that i want to fit onto my rigged character base mesh. Here is the sleeve, that i need to match the arm:

I've tried rotating it in Edit mode with Proportional Edit - kinda worked, but now it's stretched in some places, because it's not like rotating a bone. I guess the best solution will be to "pose" this sleeve to fit the arm, but is it possible without rigging whole clothing? The only thing i can think of is to create a single 'temporary' bone, rig the sleeve to it and then rotate & delete the bone... But maybe there is a better way to do it?

I think that rigging with two bones is the easiest and fastest (adjustable) method to get the job done. Be sure to rig also all the vertices that need to nearly stay in place (they need to be assigned to two bones - one fixed and one moving -: one bone only would lead you to bad elbow joints!)


Polygon edges on the smooth object I have a problem rendering a label.
I shaded planes smooth, but somehow in render I see the edges. What's the possible solution to the problem?

Try using the subdivision surface modifier. I don’t know if shade smooth works in render. Or just in the viewport.


How do I make my camera in my main scene move using buttons in an overlay UI scene? My logic bricks for the camera in the main scene are set up as follows:

And the logic bricks for the buttons in the interface are:

I'm not sure what is wrong with these, but this wont move the camera at all in the main scene.

GUI

Get rid of the "moving" logic (not needed with the below method)

Replace all property actuators with message actuators. Choose meaningful subject names, such as "move forward".

Enable True Level Triggering at the according sensors to send the messages as long as the operation is requested (-> the key is pressed).

Camera

Replace all property sensors with message sensors e.g. listening on "move forward".

Remarks:

Interobject connections are not needed.
You can have as many object serving as UI as you want
UI objects can reside in any active scene.

I hope it helps


materials won't properly add to faces in blender 2.81 Adding material to a face causes the face to disappear and something comes pointing out.

Try it in an older version of blender. This could happen because the graphic card might not have supported the new version of the blender.

Update of driver might work.


"Copy from active" doesn't work as expected I am trying to apply Physics effects to cubes I have created by using the "copy from Active" command.

So this cube has Collision, Soft Body and Rigid Body settings:

I selected my target objects (all the cubes except the ones on the front row) with Border Select (B) in Object Mode, then my source object via (Shift+LMB):

Then "copy from active":

And then I think it doesn't work, because when I click on just one of these cubes, they only have Rigid Body enabled, not Collision or Soft Body:

And indeed, they behave very differently than the front row:

So, I'm trying to understand why "Copy from Active" didn't copy everything from active - if that's normal or if I did something wrong.

The command Copy from Active belongs to the Rigid Body Tools panel, which is a subcategory of the Physics Tab:

As stated by the Hint, Copy from active is just referring to the

  Rigid Body settings

and not to the whole physics settings. Rigid body physics is treated in a different way.

You can copy the other physics settings from the active object of the selection by Making Links (Ctrl+L) and choosing the Modifiers option.


Particles don't "bend" with displacement I have a soil particle system applied to a subdivided plane. This has displacement modifiers on it to make it look more bumpy and realistic.

As you can see, the particles just stay flat and as such there are some horrible empty patches. I would like the particles to sit on the surface of the bendy plane.

Several things might come into account. The main two I can think of are:

Wrong modifier order

If you pout your displace modifier after the particles modifier, then it means that the particles are added when the mesh is flat, and only then the mesh is displaced. The right thing to do is first displace, then put the particles on it. Modifiers order matters.

Use Modifier Stack

If you use a subdivision modifier, you might check that in the particle's emission pannel.


Stretch to constraint using wrong axis I am trying to make a laser beam (glowing cylinder) that stretches to a target empty. My problem is that the stretch to constraint stretches in my local Y-Axis instead of my local Z-Axis (how i need it). How can i tell the constraint to use this axis?

download the blender file

Yeah, the stretch-to constraint doesn't let you pick.

There are two solutions here.  The easier is to change your mesh so that its local Y axis is what you want to change.  Select the object and snap the cursor to its location.  Open it up in edit mode and change the pivot point to the cursor.  Select all and 'r' 'x' '-90' to rotate it.  Now what was your local Z axis is your local Y axis.

The other way to do this is to use a driver to control the scale, and constraints only to "clean up" afterwards.  Drive the scale of the object using the distance between self and target object.  Then you can add a damped track constraint in any axis you want, and possibly a preserve volume constraint to alter the scale in other axes.


How do you apply a gloss and spec map on one cycles material? I have never seen anyone apply a gloss and a spec. map in cycles and I would be very interested to see how this is done so I can start using the gloss textures I have from gametextures.com. Some also have a height map which I assume I am supposed to just use on a displacement modifier.

I used the 4 images on their pricing page in my demo.

Click for full size

The Albedo Map goes in to the Diffuse node as the base color.
The Specular Map goes in to the Glossy node as the specular color. (metals are one of the few materials that have a colored specular highlight.)
The Gloss Map is used as the mix factor in the Mix Shader node between the diffuse and the glossy.
The Normal Map get plugged in to a Normal Map node then connected to both the diffuse and the glossy nodes.


Is it possible to hide the instancer and only show instanced objects in render? I have a question for you. I need to duplicate an object along a curve without deformation. Therefore I instance a plane along the curve. I made the cube a child of the plane and checked "Face" on the plane instancing setting. If I render the scene there is still the plane and I can't just hide the parent object and not the child. Do you know if their is a solution to hide the plane and not the cube?

Ps : I don't want to apply the instance because I want to animate the curve to move all the elements along it.

Thank's for all !

Select the plane, switch to the object tab (as already shown in your screenshot) and disable Render Instancer. This will hide the plane object in your render. If you also want to hide it in the viewport, you can disable Display Instancer.


How to modify each current's material of a twirl I need to change this:

to this:

The twirled tunnel was sophistically crafted
from multiple properties, now I need to apply a unique coloured marshmallow material to each current (will reduce to 5 currents)
File download:

You can use a ColorRamp to create the pattern.
The Modulo and Divide nodes control the number of Color segments (5 in this example).
Note: You can only use up to 10 segments (you're limited by the Array modifier).


how do i rig and animate a tree in blender without using "Sapling" addon ? I don't what to use "Sapling" add on to generate my tree, i created a tree by modeling and using particle (i found this way is giving more freedom in creation), but how can i rig and animate the tree

Shift A: add an Armature (new bone). Then, in edit mode E extrude all the bones you need and move their junctions following the shape of the tree (in the properties panel you can enable the "X rays" view to see your bones also if they are inside the tree).
If you want precision bones placement: select an edge loop, Shift S "Cursor to selected", select the bones junction, Shift S "selection to cursor".

Then in object mode select the tree, shift select the armature, Ctrl P parent "with automatic weights".

Select the armature, switch to pose mode and animate.
In the modifier stack set the subsurf modifier after the armature modifier.


How to add a material output node? Yesterday I was following a couch making tutorial and when I clicked on "Use Nodes" in the Node Editor there was a node called "Material Output". Today I am trying to achieve the same thing with a sphere, but no "Material Output" node pops up just some "Output" node.  Thanks in advance!

You need to switch the render engine you are using:

The nodes are very different between Cycles and Blender Intrenal materials, so you will notice a lot of incompatibilities if you are in the wrong one.


How do you allow inertia in bones for animating in pose mode? Suppose you want bones to move more realistically where energy is not instantaneously dispersed throughout a character, like a person standing on a surfboard on the ocean. When the board moves upwards due to the wave, the entire person doesn't completely move up right away, their legs move up first, then their hips/chest, then their shoulders and neck. Or, suppose someone gets hit in the chest by something like a punch. Their chest moves backwards first while their arms, legs and head remain still due to inertia in the first moments, then as their chest moves back move it pulls on those arms and legs more and more until they speed up to the same speed as the rest of the person.

How can this cascading motion be efficiently animated for when animating keyframes in pose mode in variable circumstances? Or in other words, how can bones themselves in pose mode be made to simulate collisions as opposed to making an entire mesh a rigid or soft body?

The closest thing I've come up with is keyframing a delay in the influence of a child-of or inverse-kinematic relationship, but it seems like there should be a more automated way of accomplishing this and its very hard to manually animate this proportional to velocity.

What you want is currently not (simply) available as far as i know.
When animating on the right there is options, there you could enable AutoIk.
Together width that i would use helper empties. So you can set Bone constrains so that for example the feed take 100 height influence of the surfboard, and the hip takes 30%... but it might not realy look 'elastic movement' that way. This is currently still mostly the art of animating.

Perhaps if your handy with python script you could automate the movement or the influence of the helper empties a bit.

Tough yet alone using empty constrains on bones to set their position can reduce work time (if the autoIK bones wont bend wrongly (fix width more constrains)..). Animating by such empties usually does give a better result.


Rendered image showing grains So I've increased the resolution of my image. Yet it is still showing grains in some areas. In the picture you can see that there are parts where this white grains suddenly flood up certain areas. I can't get rid of them. What could be some possible solutions?

Changing the resolution of the image merely renders it bigger. In the image below, I've change it to 500%, and that would blow up both the X and Y dimensions five fold, i.e. making it 6400x3600 pixels rather than the 1280x720 entered in the X and Y boxes.

From your screenshot, I'm guessing that you're using Cycles, and grain/noise in Cycles usually means too few samples. Try increasing the Render value under samples. What you need exactly depends highly on your lighting and materials among other things, so I can't say specificly what you'll need.

Changing the Clamp values usually reduces noise as well, by clamping out very high intensities.

You can read more about it here.


STL exported object has hollow I am very new to Blender without any 3D design background. I am designing a solid object as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

However, when I export the object to STL file and view it by Preview in Mac OS, the object appears to have an unwanted hollow (Figure 3). Another object that I design in the same project has no problem

Therefore, could you please help me to solve this problem?
Thank you very much.

I guess your Mac Viewer shows only faces, oriented to camera, while Blender (by default) shows both sides
For viewing what is the back side and what is front, you should turn face orientation overlay

You can recalculate face orientations using Shift+N, but your object should be manifold.
You can also use Alt+N to flip orientation face by face


Focusing the graph editor area to a custom [frame, keyframe_value] range I'm writing to Space types with draw callbacks bgl & blf.  The area region.type == 'WINDOW' gives me the height and width correctly re 'UI', 'TOOLS' and 'CHANNELS' regions, but also includes the scrollbars.  Writing a 100% width box overwrites the scrollbars that determine what frame and value ranges are displayed.

Is there an API method available to focus in on a custom range, hopefully without needing to use the border select operator:

graph_area = context.screen.areas[4] # area.type = 'GRAPH_EDITOR'
graph_window_region = graph_area.regions[-1] # region.type = 'WINDOW'

c = context.copy()  # copy the context
c['area'] = graph_area
c['region'] = graph_window_region

# call ops with over-ridden context

bpy.ops.graph.view_all(c)
bpy.ops.graph.select_border(c, gesture_mode=3, xmax=lf, ymax=action_max)
bpy.ops.graph.view_selected(c)

The ops above focus the view to varying degrees of success, less so if there are envelope modifiers on the fcurves.

Here is an example of what I want to get to.

ie having the full frame range and the value range in the top half of the region, my soundvis in the lower half.

EDIT

Ok I can fudge the value axis  of the preview range by adding a dummy property and keying in bottom left and top right coords, selecting and calling bpy.ops.graph.view_selected(c) as shown below.  The issue now is the frames, and looking at the image it occurs to me the preview range is including the handles. More to come.

PS: @CoDEmanX, thanks re scrollbars. apologies for the late edit, happier with the title now, the previous was a bit of a late night afterthought on this.  I'm afraid tho you are quite right and there is no way to do this.

Scrollbars aren't exposed to Python, you can't check or change their scroll position in a script.


Blender keeps wanting to use my CPU instead of my assigned gpu So just to start off, I have checked that all the hardware I have is compatible with one another, and I have no problem running video games which use up my gpu and cpu in unison. However, when it comes to blender, even tho I set my device to GPU COMPUTE and i am on feature set: supported (ive tried experimental), whenever I render, I can see that my cpu sky rockets to 100% load! and zero gpu. I dont understand why this is happening. I have updated my drivers for my gpu and re-installed blender. I really dont know what to do! It keeps crashing after about 30 or so minutes but it isnt a continues crash. Sometimes, it renders completely...
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
Yokubo~

FIXED! I had to enable CUDA in my user preferences under |system| in "cycles compute device.
Thanks for answering tho! I would not have looked as closely if it was not for you.


Python Stop-Motion Insert Keyframe I'm creating a stop motion animation that requires to Insert Keyframes of visibility. I was attempting to work out a script to make this process faster for me, but being new to python this has evaded me. Any help would be appreciated.

My work flow goes as:

Select object (with mouse)
Insert key frame on both viewport and rendering visibility
Hide Viewport     bpy.context.object.hide = True
Hide Rendering    bpy.context.object.hide_render = True
Move Next Frame
Un-hide Viewport     bpy.context.object.hide = False
Un-hide Rendering    bpy.context.object.hide_render = False
Insert key frame on both viewport and rendering visibility

Update based on accepted answer

Other then the following comments, I can't find any other issues.

If you run the script multiple times It will continue to add buttons.
Also I agree with you on Just inserting a keyframe instead of hiding and adding a keyframe.
Is there any way to apply the Hide keyframes to multiple items at once? It seems only the last selected item receives the keyframe change.

Also once again a huge thanks, here is a frame of how it turned out!

This adds a button to the 3D View tool panel, Animation tab:

import bpy

class OBJECT_keyframe_insert_hide(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.keyframe_insert_hide"
    bl_label = "(Un)hide"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    hide = bpy.props.BoolProperty(name="Hide")

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.object
        ob.hide = self.hide
        ob.hide_render = self.hide
        ob.keyframe_insert("hide")
        ob.keyframe_insert("hide_render")
        return {'FINISHED'}

def draw_func(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    hidden = context.object.hide

    layout.label("Stop motion:")
    layout.operator(OBJECT_keyframe_insert_hide.bl_idname, text="Unhide" if hidden else "Hide", icon='KEY_HLT').hide = not hidden

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OBJECT_keyframe_insert_hide)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_tools_animation.append(draw_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(OBJECT_keyframe_insert_hide)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_tools_animation.remove(draw_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

It hides or unhides the active object and keyframes the .hide / .hide_render properties.


What is 'Linking' used for? I'm a Maya user, I'm trying to understand Link/Append functions in Blender because the reference function is very important for Maya animators.

In Maya, there's "reference editor", I can "add reference", "remove reference", "reload reference" there. I'm trying to figure out how to do these things in Blender. And apparently there's more functions in Blender so I'm also trying to figure them out.

I've read blender manual and watched some youtube tutorials but still not quite understand Link/Append in Blender.

What's "Link" usually used for?

First things first, I suggest you check the official Blender Manual on the Linked Libraries chapter

1. What's "Link" usually used for?

Like references in Maya. In fact here's what's writen in the manual:

  Link creates a reference to the data in the source file such that changes made there will be reflected in the referencing file the next
  time it is reloaded. But linked data is not editable (to some extent,
  see Proxies).

2. I think append is what we're using in maya as "reference"

No, that's what links do. Appends are more like a simple import, you fully copy-paste some data from one blend file to another. Once it's done, the files have no "link" whatsoever.

2.1. How can I know if something is appended? Is there a icon showing that?

For appended content, they are no different from any other data so there is nothing to sort them apart.
As for linked libraries, they have a chain-link icon in the outliner:

And if you set your outliner to "Blender file" display mode, all your linked libraries are displayed individually at the bottom of the list:

2.2 Collection should be a "group" in maya, but why can't I move/rotate/scale a collection? I have to move/rotate/scale and object on by one?

Because groups in Maya work like a container object which has an origin point, and with this little detail comes the possibility to have a position, a rotation and a scale.
While Blender's collections are nothing more than an abstract group. Like a folder containing your files on your disk.

That's why we keep a very formal object-based hierarchy on Blender, because for now there are only objects which can be moved/rotated/scaled. Or in one word: transformed.

2.3 What's the different between "unlink" (...)

It's not implemented yet, so for now it doesn't do what it should. For what I've understood, "delete" will only remove your object from the scene, while "unlink" will also get rid of the object's materials, textures, object data, ...

2.4 There's an answer said that I can reload a linked data in outliner, but I didn't saw any reload function in outliner.

Set the display mode to "Blender file", and then you will be able to right click any linked data and have the reload operator:

3. I know there's a function "make local", I think it's "import" in maya? (...) But after I make an object "local", I can still click "make local" function again and again and again... ... I don't understand what's the different after I make something local?

It's not really like an import. The result is the same, but you added so many extra steps. It's like walking all around the city just for getting to your postal box in front of your house. If you want to import, use append.

When you use the "make local" from the outliner, only the concerned object is made local. Not its materials, textures, and so on. So you basically made your object local, but not what comes with it so the menu is still available. It's nor intuitive at all but that's how it is for now.
If you want to make a full "make local", you can do this from the viewport's Object menu → Relations → Make Local → All.

4. I totally can't undertand what's "Proxy Objects" used for.

That's what will give you the ability to make some changes to a linked object. But only to some extend.
This is what will enable you to link a rigged character and animate it. First you link your character (but you can't edit because it's a link). Then you make a proxy which is animatable.

5. Can I append a .blend file directly without select "collection", "object"...etc. first?

Nope. Blend file contain lots of stuff you don't always want to link or import, really. It's a bit annoying but that's also what makes blender strong : you can import pretty mutch anything from a blend file.

Good to note that once you've linked/appended something from a blend file, the next time you want to link/append it will open up where you were.

6. Can I append a file which also have and append file in it

Yes, not sure you needed to ask this though, you could have tested it for yourself.


Is it possible to change Y-axes shortcut? Is it possible to change a key Y to C for making all keys of X/Y/Z axes nearby?

It's not so hard as looks like, you can set it in "User Preferences" ("Input" tab):

You need to find the drop-down list "Transform Modal Map" (it is near end of the list)
There isn't Y-axis in it, but you can add and setup it by pressing
"Add new" button.
Next, select "Orientation Y axis" and setup shortcut

  Hey, what about "Shift-Y" which stands for "transform along every axes
  BUT Y"?

For "Shift-Y" analog use Orientation Y plane. This is a final setup:


Colors Change To Music? I know how to bake sound to F-Curves and stuff but how do I do that with colors? Like, can I have a material that becomes lighter when the music changes?

You can keyframe colour values the same as any other value, the catch is it will only keyframe the rgb values, not hsv.

To keyframe a colour either press I with the cursor over the colour or right-click  RMB and select Insert Keyframe.

While you can then bake a sound into any of the keyed colour channels, it will be an erratic change, not a smooth fade that you most likely want, so you will want to manually key the fade that you want at the right time.


Drive shapekey based on activating a pose? I have a character with a rig that involves an armature with a pose library, and various shapekeys made from backed simulations. I want to make it so that when I load a specific pose, it also turns sets the influence of the associated shapekey to 1.

It seems that either I need to run a script that takes the name of the pose and shapekey and loads them, or I need a way to have it automatically activate the shape key when the pose is activated.

Are either of these options possible? Is there a better way?

You could try driving the shapekey and an action constraint from the same property or controller. Or control the action constraint's influence directly and have the influence drive the shapekey. This will require explicitly loading the pose though, you won't activate anything just freely posing the rig close to a given pose.

It is also possible to add a set of marker bones indicating the pose and then create drivers using 'Rotation Difference' variables between the marker bones an the actual bones and make it so the dirver is fully activated when the rotational difference is equal to zero. This may be vary complex to setup and tune for complex poses though, but does give the advantage of allowing free posing of the rig.


How to have retractable limbs I'm sure there are obvious tutorials for this but I didn't know how or what to google exactly so I'm asking here. How would I create and rig an object that has a limb or another piece of geometry that is normally hidden but that can extend from the object? I'd eventually like to have a perfect sphere most of the time but have the ability for the sphere to extrude hands and legs and have them function as a normal rig. I've attached a before and after cube, the after representing the arms and hands.

You could create your robot's basic armature, with all its limbs out. Parent the limbs bones to the body bone. When you'll parent the object to the armature, use the With Empty Groups mode then in Object Data > Vertex Groups assign each part of the mesh to the group it is supposed to be part of.

Then in the Pose Library save the basic pose and save a second pose that will be the contracted pose, here I've scaled my bones on the X axis. Click on the "+" button to save a pose:

Now whenever you want you can recall the contracted pose (select it and click on the magnifying glass icon of the Pose Library) and keyframe it in the Dope Sheet:


Trying to make a stone wall- Cycles has weird glitch where it doesn't "fill in" the image texture even though evee does Trying to make a stone wall..   essentially a blend of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGoOuVFJwc - using cell fracture and various displacement/subsurface modifiers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiBktrx_MdE   - then using this to get the stone texture.

it's so very close to being what i'm after apart from these annoying glitches.
Also, if anyone can add an easy node to lighten the stones that would be great.
Thanks all

Gaps are generated by Displacement node in your shader. Eevee doesn't because doesn't use displacement feature. Changing Scale value to zero in Cycles does the same what Eevee looks like.
I'm not sure, but I would say you can use only Bump Only Displacement type with combination of UV texture. Any edge of UV will generate gaps, because blender doesn't know how to stick these parts of images.

Also it seems quite enough disable Displacement and use only Normal Map node with Strength like 10.


Inverting Vertex Colors? I am using black & white vertex colors to drive some of the shading on a character model's surface material (cycles), and found that the colors were the opposite of what I needed.

I wound up just swapping the colors on the material's Color Mix node, but now I am wondering: is there any way in blender to invert a model's vertex colors?

EDIT: To clarify, I was wondering if there was any built-in method to directly modify vertex colors.  IE: without using python code or the invert node.

You can invert the colors of a vertex paint with python. The algorithm to invert the color is as follows:

new_color = 1.0 - current_color

Here is the code to invert the color of a vertex paint. Note that you should substitute the name Cube to the name of your mesh. Same goes for the vertex paint layer Col.

import bpy
import random

# get and store the object in object mode
obj = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
mesh = obj.data

# set active vertex paint layer
color_layer = mesh.vertex_colors["Col"]

v = 0  # current vertex in loop

# iterate over the verices and invert their color
for poly in mesh.polygons:
    for idx in poly.loop_indices:
        col = [(1 - color_layer.data[v].color[i]) for i in range(3)]
        color_layer.data[v].color = col
        v += 1

# We have to refresh Vertex Paint mode to see the changes
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='VERTEX_PAINT')

Final Result

The advantage of this method is that you do not have to constantly invert at rendertime.


Blender to Unity Workflow - Blender Render or Cycles I'm trying to streamline my workflow for modeling inside Blender and then exporting for use inside Unity. I just wanted to check on something.

If set to Cycles, Blender won't show me texturing on models until an appropriate material with 'image texture' source is setup.

If set to Blender Render, I can enable Textured Solid in the properties pane and import a image into the UV editor and instantly see results without the need to touch material setup.

To me it seems like Blender Render is therefore the fastest way to go for simple texturing and exporting for Unity. Am I right? Are there any advantages over Cycles that I'm overlooking?

Thanks.

In a 3D game developing workflow you should not worry about the render engine since you won't use it. Render engine is only used if you want to produce final pictures in blender. Since you only want to produce 3D models (even with shader, texture etc...) you have no use of Cycle and you better stick with blender render.
You should understand that the render engine that matter for you is the one of Unity.


Workflow for texturing in games (in Unity) I struggle to find information on this topic, which is more of a general question.
I currently strive to decide on which workflow is better for interiors texturing for my game (like a big house for example).
Considering performance optimization and quality, which of those seems the most professional to you? :

Group objects by Material, and use a seamless texture for all of them - this seems to save on performance because all is drawn in one draw call. But is it still true with 2K+ textures?
Also, those look odd because there is no details, everything looks perfectly matching together.
Texturing every object (1K-2K textures).
Using the laborious Atlas approach.

I was struggling a lot with this topic two weeks ago aswell. And I had the same issue finding info on this topic. And while I haven't found a golden rule of thumb, I have found a workflow that works for me.
For my character, I made a 2048x2048 image split up in grids of 1024*1024 with a hard pixel line for use as a reference when placing the UV's.
Then I baked a 2048x2048 Ambient occlusion for each of my gridslots, in my case : Character Skin, Shirt/Vest, Pants, Accesoires, in which in each of the images only 1/4 of the space will be filled. I then combine those 4 maps in the correct order in the original 2048*2048 image in an image editor, save that, and reimport that in blender for each of your 4 slots.
All UV's will still be correctly aligned, and this allows me to paint/texture directly on the atlas, making any change to the character very easy and fast! My entire character, consisting of multiple objects is now mapped to 1 texture for the basecolor.
In your case for interior objects, I would make a similar grid but with more slots, maybe 4048x4048 divided by 4, bake/paint each object as you go along, and then add them to the atlas after each object is done.
It's a bit time intensive, but it gives you a lot of control over the process. If there is a better/faster way to do it, I would very much like to learn it too!


How to fill holes in Mesh from Curve from SVG I am new to Blender but have been 3D printing for a while. I am trying to make my own model from an image to print a toy key for a piggy bank. I imported a SVG to get the shape of the key and converted the resulting curve to a mesh for depth. I now have holes from the bitmap tracing of the image that I am trying to fill. My plan for actually completing the project is to fix up the image and generate a new SVG, but I would like to know how to fix holes like this in the future.

You will have to fix the topology of this. This is quite a mess.

A good clean mesh based of quads is easier to fill. To close holes you can select the edges around the hole and press F

I have created this very basic key, by extruding faces from a plane using E with edges selected in top view. You can use the SVG as reference if you want it to match the lines of the model. I then selected all faces in face select mode by double tabbing A and extruded the model up along the Z axis by pressing E.

Then I selected the edges around the model and bevelled them using CTRL+B


Object keeps moving between frames even though theres no frames in between? I'm new to Blender and I had been having some problems with animating. I animated the door at the start and then I went forward about 30-40 frames I then started animating the door again. When I play the animation, there were movements between the start and the end of the both animation even though there were not any frames in between.

Look at the 'Door:Wood' section on the dope sheet and you can see there is blanks between the 4 frames and yet the door is moving during the blank space.

Even though you have no keyframes on frame 178, there are keyframes for LocRotScale before and after.

so frame 178 is in the middle of the interpolation between two keyframes with different values.

To have the door steady select the previous keyframe press T and set the interpolation to Constant.


How to make a cylinder smooth without smooth shading? I want to 3d print a .stl file of a cube with a cylinder coming from it, but blender's default cylinder isn't smooth, and smooth shading is just an optical illusion. I don't know if I should just use the sub surface modifier a lot, or something else?

You cannot technically do this in blender. However, you can increase the number of faces to the point where the printer’s resolution dot is bigger than the width of the faces. I think this is impractical however, and recommend you print it out a little rough, then do some sanding work.


Blender 2.79B won't open I am getting this "AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead" when I'm trying to open blender now. Any help would be much appreciated

Added this dll to the directory with the opengl32.dll and it's working again.

https://download.blender.org/ftp/sergey/softwaregl/win64/


Any examples of a nice hand rig? Specially fingers I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I'd like to know if there are any good examples of a hand rig with good fingers deformations. I see many muscle deformation systems, but can't really apply them to the fingers. Some real-life examples:

What you are trying to achieve cannot be nicely made in blender yet. The problem is mesh intersecting. You need to simulate mesh self-collision to get the bulging result you want. This can be done with soft-bodies but would be unusable for animating.

The best you can do is to make ton of corrective shape keys for your mesh. If you are aiming for super-real you can also add some wrinkle displacement maps and drive them with bones.


How do I Inspect and Correct my bone weight painting? In weight paint mode, these bones do bear any influence on such areas (the areas are dark blue when the particular bones are selected) yet these parts deforms entirely or in part when the bone is posed. The model was done on Maya (and Zbrush) and both FBS and OBJ imports were tried with the same behavior. I rigged it using the Rigify metarig. The blend file is available here: https://goo.gl/MznE7J

Left Side Problem.  Right Side No Problem.

An example would be posing the upper arm bone which results in the glasses frame and eye deforming as well

Inspecting and Repairing Vertex Weights

Toss Rubbish and Start Fresh.  Delete armature modifier.  Get well planned rest pose. Add armature modifier a second time and see if that eliminates problems.  Assuming you have not expended hours of paint time.  Otherwise read on.
Examine the glasses. Select Glasses.

View Solid. No Materials or Textures.
Know that casual visual inspection of colors is not exact enough.  Slight color differences may be difficult to detect for the human viewer.  Clearly blender uses floating point numbers as the representation.
Know that some vertices are more difficult to see.  An exposed pinky is easier to see than an internal pink tongue.  Hair on Glasses makes the glasses difficult to see.
Local Mode. Numeric Keypad /. You should only see glasses.
Edit Mode
Press N to bring up the panel needed below.

Disable [Limit Selection to Visible]  Make sure you can see through Model.  See Yellow arrow above.  Float mouse to see tooltip.
Enable View Weights
Select Nothing. Blender will indicate 0 vertices of XXXX selected.
Select the problematic vertex group related to bone in the Vertex group panel. UpperArm.Right. Click the select Button in the panel to select all vertices in the group.
Note and record how many vertices are selected.  This number will not be zero.  This is an error for the glasses.
More inspection. You can Grab g Translate and Move Vertices as extra verification. Shake mouse like you mean it.  Escape to reject the grab and keep vertices in original location.
Locate Vertex Weights Panel.  It will appear because some vertices are selected.  It will disappear otherwise. Make mental note to include in screen capture.
Take screen snapshot and update your images in your original question.  Make sure selection and vertex groups are showing. Your image should convey all bullet points above.
Make one of the selected vertices the active vertex with multiple Shift Click
Read how many groups in which this vertex has membership.  Your probably only want one for glasses, the head bone. Facial Areas require more care.
Delete all other groups but the head bone. Only the head bone group remains. This group deletion may be easier for the glasses since we can assume for simple purposes that no stretching should be seen.  Delete can be done in the vertex group panel or in the info panel in 3D View.
Some of the inspection steps above are for education.

Next select the head and perform the same steps above. Use your judgement deleting groups. Skin is more pliable than plastic glasses.
Note in weight paint mode you can perform such tasks as making sure vertices have only the dominant one or two groups.  This can remove difficult mistakes and circumstances created by whomever.
As always there are alternative ways to clean up the weights.  Direct Bone Parenting for example. Different question.
See basic and advanced tutorials. Ask a new question.


Ultraviolet light material How could I make a black light material out of this one?

I've got some results using this method: emission + inverted ColorRamp.

Using Eevee + Bloom the result looks immediately better, but I still have to fine-tune it for cycles. Problem is that either the light emitted is too weak or the bulb gets too white. I've also tried Filmic Blender with similar results.


How do I make the Cycles world background a vertical gradient? Blender render has a nice vertical gradient for the background. I cannot find a vertical gradient background in the cycles render, only a horizontal gradient. How can I use a vertical gradient as the Cycles world background?

Cycles render horizontal gradient:

Vertical blender render gradient:

One way to make the world a vertical gradient in Cycles is to add a Gradient texture and color ramp for your color, and rotate the texture coordinates accordingly.
Here is the node setup and result of said nodes:


Searching For Text Objects By Their Content Are there any way (maybe using an add-on) to find and select the "text object" in Blender using the text it is containing?

Simple script

Here is a simple little bare bones script to select only text objects, and only text objects that contain the string as defined by

string = "Find this in text bodies"

Copy and paste this in text editor, edit string and hit run script.

import bpy

string = "Text"

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

def text_in_body(o, s):
    if o.type != 'FONT':
        return False
    return s in o.data.body

for o in scene.objects:
    o.select_set(text_in_body(o, string))

If using 2.7x or before change last line to

    o.select = text_in_body(o, string)


Removing creases with sub divison Im trying to create a cyclinder with the bottom and top rounded but when i use the Sub divison modifier it leaves these creases at both ends and if i use a loop cut to smooth it out it makes the object to flat at both ends and not rounded how can i fix this?

Those ugly creases are caused by the n-gon cap.  The Subsurf modifier works best with quads and doesn't work well at all with n-gons.

Here are two alternate methods of filling the cap which produce quads, and thus much better subdivision modeling.

The first example was made by selecting the n-gon face and then hitting E (exturde) and then S to scale the extrusion inward.  You could move the extruded part up to make the top less flat.
The second example was made by joining half the opposing vertices, making a quad fan.  This could also be done by using the Grid Fill option.  Again, the central vertex could be lifted up to make the top more round.


How to fix model after subdivision surface mod? 1) How do i fix those 4 holes after subdivision mod / loop cuts, edge split and bevel mod doesnt help either

2) And also how to fix whole model after this mod so it will look smooth and clean without deforms.

P.S Holes made with boolean mod

Try to avoid ngons because it will mess up your render, especially if you use Subdivision Surface as it will try to smooth the shape between the faces. Try to keep only tris and quads.

I kept all your vertices but you don't need so many, for example to make holes, 8 or even 6 would be enough. Here a nicer topology for a hole:


Hair coming through the mesh? Why the hair particles coming through the mesh. With the hair particles and object as a mesh. Why the particles coming through the mesh. The Ear is separate mesh still the mesh coming through. I weight paint the area. Any suggestion or help how to control it. Thanks

Particle System Settings:

Check "Advanced"
Check "Rotation"

Orientation Axis: Normal-Tangent

Children

Simple -> Interpolated

Render

Under "Object" check "Object Rotation"

Hair strand object:

Viewport Header Tool Settings

Options
Under "Affect Only" check "Origins"

Move the origin to the root of the hair strand object
Unset "Affect Only Origins"
Rotate the hair strand object with pressing : R Y 90


Cannot assign vertex group to eye bone in rigify rig I am new to Blender, but have worked with other 3D programs. I'm trying to rig a model in Blender 2.82 using the built-in human metarig and rigify. It's gone well so far, but I cannot weight the eye mesh to the eye bones. They simply will not move with it properly.

I have the armature modifier applied properly, as seen below...

And the vertex groups named after the appropriate bones as I understand it after further research.

The meshes are weighted 100% to the appropriate vertex groups. To my understanding this should work, but the eyes simply do not move properly. I've tried renaming the groups to other bones involved in eye movement, and tested them on their own with a different instance of this default rig, but can't get them to work.

The blend file can be found on this Blend-Exchange link, if it helps.

I'm stumped. Can anyone help with this issue?

Thank you.

You've disabled the bone's Deform option. Also don't forget to unlock its Transform options.


Why my extrude always scaled to 1 so i try to extrude some edge
but now if i try to extrude some faces or edges
it always scaled to 1
cant doing smooth extrude

this is capture of my error

You have some kind of snap turned on, click on this button to deactivate


Blender 2.9 Mantaflow - fluid weird behavior I am receiving very strange results with Blender 2.9 fluid simulation - even though I am only trying to achieve an effect of the cup falling on the side, the fluid flows in the air unnaturally, and too quickly. Can you help me figure out what I am missing? I'm already trying to figure it out second day in the row, have checked all possible guides on Mantaflow, and searched many pages looking for the answer without any success. I'd be really grateful for someone to point out where I am making a mistake.
Please consider I need this exact scale to be applied (as my scene is being created in regards to real dimensions).
Feel free to check the .blend file here.
Thank you for your help!

The "effector" object thickness has to be increased to prevent too fast collission with the fluid.


How to create a "linked copy" scene in Python without using ops? I'm trying to figure out how to create a new scene which is a "linked copy" from Python without relying on context/ops.

The ops version would involve setting the type to LINK_COPY e.g.:

bpy.ops.scene.new(type='LINK_COPY')

The non-ops interface bpy.data.scenes.new only offers to pass in the name of the new scene (see API docs of BlendDataScenes).

How can I turn a scene created by bpy.data.scenes.new into a linked copy?

As far as I can tell, bpy.data.scenes['your_scene'].copy() will give the exact same result as bpy.ops.scene.new(type='LINK_COPY') except for one detail: the new scene has 0 user and gets added to the orphan data.
This is not an intended feature and there's no python command to properly fix that. However, there's no need to worry, as the scene will actually not get deleted if you save and revert the file, contrary to any other orphan data.
Still, if it's uncomfortable for you, it's possible to give the scene 1 user by doing any of these:

adding a fake user: bpy.data.scenes['your_scene'].use_fake_user = True

or

saving and reloading the file

or

performing any operation and undoing it with Ctrl+Z (currently, the undo operator reloads many components of the file so I guess it works for the same reason reloading the file works too)

Side note:
You can also do the equivalent of bpy.ops.scene.new(type='EMPTY') (called "Copy Settings" in the interface) this way:
Sc = bpy.data.scenes['your_scene'].copy()
for col in Sc.collection.children:
    NewSc.collection.children.unlink(col)
for obj in Sc.collection.objects:
    NewSc.collection.objects.unlink(obj)