Render on more than one computer? Is there a way to use other computers that are sitting idle on my network to render my images?

From google, I've found this project, however it appears that is designed to let everyone use your hardware, in exchange for using theirs. Also, there is no guarantee to how soon your project will start rendering.

I have a bunch of servers sitting around that were bit coin mining. Is there a way to use them for blender?

You could use Sheep it it provides services for collaborative rendering.

You machines will render your own projects first.

When your machines render frames from other projects you earn credits, more credits increase the priority of your projects.

The service only accepts projects up to 500MB (including packed caches in a zip file).

the client-software can be run from a browser as Java-Applet (I had problems with the latest Java), therefore I would recommend to use the alternative to download a standalone client.

FAQ

If want to try it and would like to have working scripts to start the client, leave a message and I will add them here.
Network Render
Blender has an addon for Network Rendering in order to use it you can enable it in the User Preferences:

Manual
Web Interface
Video, tutorials


I don't know when I should use texture properties tab All of a sudden, I wondered when I should use texture properties tab.
If I want wrap a object with a texture, I can achieve purpose in shade editor or material properties tab.

In other words, the texture properties tab is unnecessary when texturing  a object.
So I wondered why it is there.
I search in blender manual about 'texture properties' and found nothing.
I looked it up on YouTube, but the results were the same.
I just want to know the example it's actually used.
I need your help.

The textures tab is almost a holdover from before 2.8, when it was used for Blender Render textures.  In modern versions, it's still used for creating textures for use with some modifiers (like a displace) and for defining brushes for use with texture painting or sculpting.  It's not used for any materials.


python - How to color accurately convert from rgb 0-255 format to values in 0.0f-1.0f The color accuracy is completely wrong when you convert from byte rgb to float.
13/255.0, 105/255.0, 171/255.0 =
R: 0.050980, G: 0.411764, B: 0.67058

While if you were to convert the byte rgb to hex and insert that into blender where you change the base color of the material, you would get these values.
R: 0.004025, G: 0.141263, B: 0.40724

I first thought that the inaccuracy might happen because of floating division accuracy but that isn't the case and its most likely some sort of gamma correction happening within blender.
The problem is that you can not create materials by giving diffuse_color hex values let alone byte values since it only accepts floating numbers.
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Material.html#bpy.types.Material.diffuse_color
Is there some sort of way to do the gamma correction which blender does but apply it when converting from byte rgb to floats?

Hex colors are in sRGB. You need linear colors. The conversion is (from here)
def color_srgb_to_scene_linear(c):
    if c < 0.04045:
        return 0.0 if c < 0.0 else c * (1.0 / 12.92)
    else:
        return ((c + 0.055) * (1.0 / 1.055)) ** 2.4

print(color_srgb_to_scene_linear(13/255))  # => 0.00402
print(color_srgb_to_scene_linear(105/255)) # => 0.14126
print(color_srgb_to_scene_linear(171/255)) # => 0.40724


Scritping: rename while using bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type='MATERIAL') I'm not much into scripting nor fit in the blender API, so I don't know how bpy.ops.mesh.separate(type='MATERIAL') behaves, What I need for my script is to rename the separated parts as the material they have been separated by, but this should be done in a for loop in the function separate() and I don't know how to access it.

Someone knows how to rename by material in this API function? Or how to edit temporarily the function so that it works in the script?

This script will rename all separated objects according to the material applied to each. It assumes the object you want to split and rename is selected and active.

import bpy

bpy.ops.object.mode_set( mode = 'EDIT' )
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all( action = 'SELECT' )
bpy.ops.mesh.separate( type = 'MATERIAL' )    # Separate by material
bpy.ops.object.mode_set( mode = 'OBJECT' )

# After separating, all pieces are selected
for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    # Rename object by the material applied to it
    o.name = o.active_material.name


How do I select all coplanar vertices? I'm trying to use a Wireframe modifier on a Geodesic Dome shape made of hexagons. When I added the shape, it included vertices in the centers of all the hexagons, which don't show up in Object mode because they're coplanar with the surrounding vertices.

They are affecting the Wireframe modifier, though. How can I easily select them all so I can dissolve them?

Apparently you can just use Limited Dissolve for this (removing them, not selecting them).


UV Unwrapping Woes - Extra Faces? I'm new to 3D modeling and especially to getting my UVs unwrapped.  Currently, as seen in the screenshot below, I appear to have a whole slew of faces (54, I believe) that cannot be seen, nor do I want them to be seen.  I'd like to get rid of those faces, but I can't seem to find them to select - as if they were inside the geometry.  Is there are easy way (or heck, a complicated way) to find and remove these faces?

I'm also not sure what those long triangles are that are on the front and rear surface of the coin. The edges are uneven purposefully - the edges were extruded some to give it a very uneven feel.  When I select a face on the UV window, no part of it looks particularly strange.

EDIT:

Issue area:

The shape changed, but now I have these two rings (I have them lying atop one another currently while I was trying to figure it out) that don't seem to be visible faces, but increase the face count by more than double.  I believe I should have 34 total faces.  So this and trying to figure out why my UV unwrapping doesn't seem to go into the export file.  Oy!

First of all lets start by pointing out what's not ok with your mesh.

It seems that you have there not one coin but three of them. As pointed by @Matt you can select loose parts by hovering over them and pressing L. Remove both of them.
After deleting them Select All (A) then W > Remove Doubles.
If you want to select UV Island in UV Image Editor and see it in 3D view as well, you need to check Keep UV and Edit Mode selection in sync option (marked on the screenshot). Remember to be in Face Select mode if you want to use Island Selection (L).

Consider filling top and bottom faces with Triangle Fan or Grid Fill (based on mesh purpose) as ngons could not be the best choice for texturing.

At the end don't forget to Recalculate Normals > Ctrl+N.

Blend file:


How to rig a character where every element is separated? I made a character where every element is separated as their own objects. (clothes, hair, eyes, tongue teeth, hands...) Should I join them to be one big mesh or keep them separated? How do I rig this and make weight paintings? I think automatic weights do not work probably. I have experiences that with autoweights I get for example jacket buttons behave in a weird way. Also, my knowledge of riggin is something in  these lines "Parent your object to bones with automatic weights and fix with weight paint". After that when I am able to pose my charcter with a very basic ways, I am thinking that the rig is "good enough".

You can for example parent any mesh object to bones with 'Empty groups' option and then in weight paint mode paint the weights for that empty vertex group


How do i create Palette UI object I am trying to create a type bpy.types.UILayout.template_palette in my bpy.type.Panel.

In my bpy.type.Panel I am unsure what object I need to pass to the first argument called data.

I think it needs an object with a property of type bpy.types.Palette. I am unsure what is a valid object that can be passed as AnyType and have a bpy.types.Palette property.

I have figured out how to make a bpy.types.Palette using
bpy.ops.palette.new().

I cant find a bpy.props function for adding a bpy.types.Palette property

To use the UILayout.template_palette you need data that has a property of type bpy.types.Palette

Here is a small test to add a new custom palette, assign it a couple of colors, yellow and red, set red as active.

The image paint tool settings palette property is assigned the new palette.

The palette is displayed in the image editor toolbar under the "misc" tab.

import bpy

class PaletteDemoPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the tool panel of image editor"""
    bl_label = "Palette Demo"
    bl_idname = "IMAGE_PT_palette"
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        ts = context.tool_settings
        if ts.image_paint.palette:
            layout.template_palette(ts.image_paint, "palette", color=True)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(PaletteDemoPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PaletteDemoPanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # put some test code here to create palette etc
    # add a new pallete
    pal = bpy.data.palettes.get("CustomPalette")
    if pal is None:
        pal = bpy.data.palettes.new("CustomPalette")
        # add a color to that palette
        yellow = pal.colors.new()
        yellow.color = (1, 1, 0)
        yellow.weight = 1.0

        red = pal.colors.new()
        red.color = (1, 0, 0)

        # make red active
        pal.colors.active = red

    ts = bpy.context.tool_settings
    ts.image_paint.palette = pal


How can I manipulate several hair strands instead of the whole hair? I am diving into the hair particle system, but am a big noob so yeah..
What I want to achieve is basically this:

However, whenever I manipulate my hair-system with the children's kink the the whole hair itself gets manipulated instead of several strands. Does someone know what I am doing wrong? An answer would be very generous :)

If you want to use different kink settings for the hair then you need several Particle Settings. The settings always affect all strands made with a particular setting. So the trick is to use several settings and assign them to different areas.
In Weight Paint mode you can define Vertex Groups. (Use the + button to create a new group.) The in the Particle Settings you can assign these groups. The Density group restricts the area for the hair strands.
In the following example, there are two weight painted groups "Curl" and "Radial", and there are two hair particle settings (2 slots). The groups are assigned to the respective particle settings. The areas can even overlap if you want.


How do I create a realistic translucent material? I have been trying to make a material similar to the one in the following photo but didn't get any result that was close enough.

I tried using a combination of the glass shader and translucent shader but it didn't give a believable result. Anyone has any idea how could I make this procedurally?

If you're just looking for the frosted glass effect, try something like this. Basically it's just a high transmission value (for transparency/translucency) and a mid-level(ish) roughness (to make it more opaque - "frosted"). I added a bit of subsurface as well, but it's probably not needed. The "Bump Map" setup is optional too, but I just wanted to give some "micro-bumps" on the surface:

If you want more transparency (see through it more), you can try this setup. You can control the "frostiness" and transparency/translucency using the IOR of both the Fresnel and the Refraction BSDF, as well as changing the Roughness on the Glass BSDF.


Texture mapped incorrectly in render? When rendering my mesh, I noticed that not all the textures for the body are the same as they are in the 3D view. In my body mesh, there are two textures- one for the head, and one for the rest of the body. The head texture shows up fine during rendering, but the body texture appears to have its UVs somehow warped.

Blend file

As you can see from the body texture on render, the body texture IS being used to texture the body since the blue on the arm is present (not found in the face). However, it would appear that the UVs are different on render than in the 3D view. Any ideas?

It is necesary to have two materials and assign the respective faces to them according to texture they should be using. One material for the head and one for the body. Each using it's own texture.

How it's done:

Add new material to the object in Properties by pressing the light grey button on the right with a white + in it.

Name the old material "Head" and disable the Body texture in the Texture tab.

Name the new material "Body".

Select the "Head" material and press the dark grey button with the black arrow pointing down and choose "Copy Material" and then select the Body material and click this arrow again and press "Paste Mateiral".

Then go into edit mode, select one face which should be using the body texture and press Shift+G and choose "Image". This selects all faces that have the same texture mapped.

Now while having the faces selected click on the Body material and press the "Assign" button to assign selected faces to the material.

Then go into the Texture tab and uncheck the Head texture.

It should work now!

One tip: always name your materials, naming objects is also good, but materials are more important because they get reused often.

Fixed blend file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/29840


Foreign text in Blender isn't processed correctly Blender has issues when dealing with non-English characters.

I can't enter Russian text in 3D objects.
Blender displays folder and file names incorrectly if they are in Russian.

Is there a solution to these text-encoding problems?

UPDATE

Demonstration of impossibility of entering letters

Demonstration of only Bfont available:

Interface
The wiki page on Blender Internationalization shows how to set your preferred language

3D

You can enter foreign languages with alternative symbols (like a cyrillic alphabet). You must pick a font that supports the extended character set. The default Bfont does not have many extended characters, that's why you aren't seeing them. You can read more about support for fonts on the Modeling/Text wiki page

3D using the Text Editor


Why is the Displace modifier moving my mesh instead of moving the geometry? When I am using the Displace modifier, my whole mesh moves up or down on the Z axis, but the mesh isn't actually displaced.

I am trying to use an image to displace the geometry of the mesh. But the geometry is staying flat. What am I not seeing?

Blend:

Go to your textures tab, select the drop down called "Image Texture" and select under Modifiers "Displace"

In the new tab select the button called "Open" under image and select your desired image.

There, should be fine now.


Copied scene needs a user? From the default startup, if you run
bpy.context.scene.copy()
you get a copy of your scene that has 0 user and gets added to the orphan data.
In reality, if you save and revert the file, your scene will still be there, even though any other orphan data would get removed if you did that.
However, for the users of my add-on, seeing an orphan scene would be confusing and worrying.
I could add a fake user but I find it unsatisfactory and still confusing, as you may wonder what would happen when trying to delete the scene, not to mention the unnecessary "F" in the scene's name.
So how can I make that scene not orphan without adding a fake user?
So far the only hacky workaround I found is to run some operator and then run the undo operator, which I assume does the trick because it reloads many components of the file including the scene's user (whatever it is), but of course this is far from an ideal solution.

Use the operator
For the time being whilst using Scene.copy() produces a zero user scene, using the operator instead, does not
bpy.ops.scene.new(type='FULL_COPY')

A new scene created via newscene = scene.copy() does not pick up  the window using it (as a user) when context.window.scene = newscene nor does the one being unset lose a user.   I imagine this will be fixed sometime soon.


Why is my object in blender bigger by approximately a factor 10 than in my CAD program? I export my CAD models, which I create on Creo 2.0 (originally called Wildfire 5.0) as STL files, and import them into blender.

But when I compare their sizes, the objects shown in blender are usually bigger than the objects shown on my CAD program by approximately a factor 10.

Did blender confuses the unit? Because when I exported the object as an STL file, it didn't give me an option to set the unit. Is there a default unit for STL files?

The units I usually work with on Creo 2.0 are mm.

Blender's default unit system is None, so it uses its own "Blender Units" (BU). But if you switch it to Metric in the Scene tab (Properties Editor), you'll notice that nothing changed. And 1 BU will now be 1m.

With Metric enabled, there will be a property available called scene Scale. You can set it to 0.1 to correct the scaling problem (granted, it's really 1:10). But I worry not all exporters will respect it.

So it might be better so Select All objects (A) and scale everything down (S, type 0.1, Enter). Make sure the scaling center is the scene origin (0,0,0), e.g. reset the 3D Cursor (N-sidebar, right-click on one of the 3 value fields and click Reset All to Default Values, or press ShiftC) and use it as Pivot Point (press .).


Camera in Blender 2.8 only rendering the background I am currently modelling a kitchen bench and sink, and I went to make a test render, but it just showed up as the background color. no matter how I aligned the camera the render stayed the same.

I am currently in rendered view.

Any help would be appriciated, and if you need me to clarify anything I would be glad to.

Your collection is disabled for render:

Hit this camera icon to enable it:

Also check render state for individual objects


Unexpected color flattening I am fresh to Blender and am making a futuristic-ish flying vehicle network. There are rows of rectangle groups all moving in different directions while the camera pans the scene.

In an arbitrary frame (which is around the middle of the animation, but NOT always the same frame), all objects are suddenly de-colorized and turn white for no apparent reason! Some seconds later, it returns to normal. This happens ONLY in camera perspective!

I've deleted the camera and re-added it to no avail. This is exactly how it looks:

Normal (with colors) in render view:

Problematic (white flattened) in render view

Any ideas????

You need to turn up your "saturation" and "value", otherwise it's mostly white glass and light. Add that to the extra emission from lamps and other objects and the cars just appear white at times.


Duplicating a mesh object I would like to duplicate a mesh object, but on a particular object. Right now this is working:

import bpy

for i in range (0,5):
    bpy.ops.object.duplicate(linked=0,mode='TRANSLATION')
    bpy.data.objects['cube.001'].animation_data_clear()

The way I want it to do it though is that the script should only duplicate a particular object in the scene that I enter through as a string name. ATM its just duplicating the 1st object and duplicating the duplicates of the duplicates.

The operator bpy.ops.object.duplicate() will duplicate the selected objects and then make the new duplicate objects selected while de-selecting the original objects. The operator is designed for user interaction which actually leaves the user moving the new duplicates when it is done (when started through the gui).
A better way to create a copy of an object by script is to use the copy() method available to most datablocks and then link it to a collection using CollectionObjects.link() in Blender 2.8x or to the scene using scene.objects.link() in Blender 2.7x. Note that the new object will use the same mesh datablock as the original, you can duplicate that as well while you are creating copies, you may also want to consider other data such as particle systems and materials. Instead of starting with the active object you can also specify an exact object with src_obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
Blender 2.8x
import bpy

C = bpy.context
src_obj = bpy.context.active_object

for i in range (0,5):
    new_obj = src_obj.copy()
    new_obj.data = src_obj.data.copy()
    new_obj.animation_data_clear()
    C.collection.objects.link(new_obj)

Blender 2.7x
import bpy

scn = bpy.context.scene
src_obj = bpy.context.active_object

for i in range (0,5):
    new_obj = src_obj.copy()
    new_obj.data = src_obj.data.copy()
    new_obj.animation_data_clear()
    scn.objects.link(new_obj)


Blender drivers work differently on frame stepping than frame selecting I created a driver to move an edge as a constant size hypotenuse of an animated right angle triangle.

import bpy
import math as m

def rigthAngleTransform(rot, length):
    locY = length-(m.cos(rot)*length)-length
    return locY

bpy.app.driver_namespace["rigthAngleTransform"] = rigthAngleTransform

The representation of these values:

This screenshot is not at the start frame! At the start frame the pivot is from "length" distance from the X axis and rot is 0d

Where rot is animated from 0d to 90d (the script uses radians!), while the pivot Y location coordinate is decreasing according to the following function:

locY = length-(cos(rot)*length)-length

The fun part it works perfectly as it should by math if I choose a frame with the mouse cursor. however if I play the animation or change the frames with the arrow keys it will deviate like this:

The end point at the x axis should not deviate from it

A good clue if I change the direction of the animation playback the direction of the deviation will be the opposite (hypotenuse will go under the x axis)

If my perception is correct, during animation the driver has a 1 frame latency.

Update:

My perception was correct I modified the script to use the z rotation value of the next frame, by adding 90/45d to the z rotation. Now it works perfectly during animation, if the interpolation is linear, and it will generate a deviation if I select a frame by clicking.

updated script:

import bpy
import math as m

def rigthAngleTransform(rot, length):
    locY = length-(m.cos(rot+m.radians(90/45))*length)-length
    return locY

bpy.app.driver_namespace["rigthAngleTransform"] = rigthAngleTransform

Well I found a very easy solution to the problem.

I use an empty proxy object to drive the rotation and location of my edge.

So I copy this z rotation with a simple driver, and my original script gets the z rotation input from this proxy. Now it works perfectly regardless of the interpolation.

It is important to note: That the one frame latency occurred, because in the question the driver and driven properties belonged to the same object. In a case when these porps reside on different object it should not occur.

I experimented further this issue, and the problem also shows itself if two objects mutually drive themselves.


Backround image scaling I have a couple of reference images that I'm trying to set up correctly

There are two views:
front 263x490
side  766x490

I am using the background images function, however it seems that they are being scaled differently.
It looks to me like the side view is scaled based off the width of the front view.
Is there a way to change this?
,
.

My solution was to increase the canvas size of the front view image such that its dimensions matched those of the side view.
i.e. 263x490 becomes 766x490, to match the right side view resolution.

It seems to be that blender attributes the largest side of the first background image 10 blender units and goes from there, throwing things out of whack if your images are cropped.


How to make the Grid floor Axes (X and Y) visible with plane on Z height 0? I have using blender on and off for years but never did it on regular routine. Now while I'm following Blenderguru aka Andrew Prices Donut Blender Beginner Tutorial, I noticed that in Andrews Viewport one can see the green and red Grid Line Axes (X and Y) in the viewport while the plane is resting exactly on the floor (Z height 0):

I tried to solve the Problem in the Viewport via the Viewport Overlays section, however, I could not make it work. I assume it has something to do with the Blender version Andrew is using (since I'm using the newest Blender version (2.92.2).
At first I didn't care about the visibility of the Grid Line Axes, however I find it to be useful to always see the Grid Line Axes when the plane lies on the floor. It makes it easer to have an orientation to always know where I'm in the room/perspective while working on objects (that are resting on the floor plane).

So if you want to work with even numbers and later transfer that to more complex scenes that are supposed to lie on a plane, I don't find that a very elegant solution. My main concern is that these colored axes (X and Y) should always be visible when several objects in a scene lie on a plane, which is simply more helpful for orientation and faster when working in three-dimensional space.
I remember when I first started this tutorial series a few months ago (the 2.8 version at the time), I didn't have this problem, I found it clear when I was in the viewport and could see very quickly in the camera view exactly where I was in space (solid mode). Maybe this has been changed in the latest version (probably for UI reasons).


Weight paint subtraction yields strange results While weight painting armatures on the face of a character, I shift back and forth from bone to bone. I am having two strange problems with one more strange than the other.

The first problem is that if I had, for example, painted the entire head of the character for the head bone and then shifted to a lip bone and painted it then shifted back to the head bone, the part of the lip I painted would be unpainted.

The other problem I'm having is stranger. When I select face bones, random portions of the face have been painted by what I presume to be auto weighting. When I use subtraction to deselect those areas everything works, however, if I do more subtraction for other bones and then go back to a previous one, there is more random weight painting linked to it in a place I never painted before so I can never paint any bones without them being effected by this unintentional "ghost painting."

Weight painting on one vertex group will affect others vertex groups only if the "auto normalize" and/or "Multi-paint" buttons are checked.

The first option makes sure that the sum of all weights of every vertex is 1.0 (normalization); this operation takes over anyway, when Blender calculates the deformations, so it is unnecessary to activate it, it's useful only to have a visual rappresentation of the influences that weights will have on the mesh (i.e. if a vertex has weight 0.1 to one bone and 0.4 to another, when animating they are automatically treated as if they were 0.2 and 0.8; the auto-normalize function lets you have a visual rappresenattion of this behaviour, but it can be misleading during the painting process, as it has happened to you).

The second option works when two or more bones are selected, and lets you altre the weights values leaving the proportions between the selected bones unaltered.

In my opinion both options should be unchecked unless you really need them.


IS there a short cut to add a material and assign it? I'm working on a little project, that requires a large flat mesh object divided into separate faces, each face needs to be a different material as seen here:

Creating and assigning these materials, setting colours so I can tell them apart, and renaming them is a slow a tedious process, I was wondering if there were any shortcuts that create a material and immediate assign it to the selected faces, or something similar that might speed this sort of process up?

A new material can be created with bpy.data.materials.new(). You assign a material to a face by setting it's material_index, which is the material's index from it's location in object.material_slots, we need to use the length of material_slots to know the index of the material we just added to the list.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
obj.data.materials.clear()

for f in obj.data.polygons:
    m = bpy.data.materials.new('FaceMat' + str(f.index))
    # for 2.79 remove the ,1.0 at the end
    m.diffuse_color = (0.01*f.index,0.02*f.index,0.03*f.index, 1.0)
    obj.data.materials.append(m)
    f.material_index = len(obj.data.materials)-1

This is a simple example that sets the diffuse colour used by BI which is also used by cycles for the viewport colour. To create a cycles material you will want to create nodes as well.

You could also do it in two parts, one loop to create materials and another to assign a material based on the material name. This way you could create 10 materials and distribute them across the object.

obj.data.materials.append(bpy.data.materials[mat_name])


Cloth interacting with other cloth Hey guys I'm trying to make a tree simulation using cloth physics.
I want to know is it possible to connect one cloth to another cloth and have them influence each others movements?

It is possible. It can be done in a variety of ways, such as using a pinning vertex group to a bone, and then have the bone constrained to another cloth piece.

However, Blender's cloth sim is not the most robust, so I'll warn you that while it is possible, it probably will not produce very good quality results. You may want to look into other rigging options.


How do I unjoin text? I'm messing around with 2.79b and I combined some text for this animation or whatever, and now I have to unjoin them for a few frames. I've tried everything I can think of but nothing is letting me unjoin them. Pressing P isn't working, unlinking them isn't working. Does anyone have any ideas?

Pressing P should work for this sort of task. If it is something you want to animate by joining and separating, isn't it best to use shape keys instead.


Bone constraints not applied correctly I have a cube which is not rotated. And I have a bone that I want to add a copy rotation constraints where the target will be the cube. The problem is that when I add this constraint the bone is rotated in a wrong direction, as normally it should point to the x-direction but when I I make the copy rotation it points to the y-direction. If anyone could please advise why this is happening. I added screenshots below.

Before copy rotation

Cube properties showing there is no rotation

after copy rotation

copy rotation constraint

Edit:

After applying rotation -90 in x-direction the axis was good in edit mode, but once switching to pose mode the axis is wrong

After applying -90 in x-direction in edit mode:

After applying -90 in x-direction in pose mode:

And this is after adding the copy rotation constraint:

This behavior is normal. The copy rotation in world space will align the rotation axis of the bone with the cube (X with X, Y with Y, Z with Z). If you don't want the bone to rotate 90deg when you add the copy rotation you will have to rotate the bone in edit mode, making sure it aligns with the rotation of the cube (in your example, in edit mode, rotate the bone -90deg in X axis).

The rotation in edit mode has an impact on how the bone is oriented in pose mode (in pose mode the Y axis of the bone is the one going from the head to the tail of the bone).

Then when you add your constraint to the bone, it shouldn't rotate.

Hopes this makes sens.


Can I paint and sculpt with the same stroke? Dynamic paint is very close to what I want.

"Impasto painting" this is my goal.

Maybe there is an addon?

The short answer (unfortunately) is "no."

The slightly longer answer is that you might be able to do it with normal maps and textures, but not with a brush-like interface. Dynamic Paint is baked, not live, so you could theoretically make a brush, but you'd have to animate it rather than use it interactively.

Normal maps and displacement maps might create the effect you want, but also not really interactively.

Sculpting is the interaction you want, but there's nothing yet that lets you sculpt and paint at the same time.

Incidentally, you should check out the non-Blender tool Verve Painter by Timur Baysal. It uses a GPU fluid sim to make digital painting a bit more realistic, and a lot more awesome. And it does some impasto stuff like you're thinking of.


Insert face equal thickness I am inserting face on a rectangle. I want to create a picture frame and I want equal thikness for all "the outer faces" (not like my print screen)[![enter image description here]

What you can do is:

Enter edit mode
Select the face you want
click I to inset

this should do.


Opening a file from Version 2.83 in Version 2.49 I am attempting to make a mod for the game Fallout New Vegas... To do that, I need to make a model in Blender, then export it as a .NIF file, but this only seems to work in version 2.49, but I have no idea how to use that version, only version 2.83... When I make something in 2.83 and attempt to open it in 2.49 so I can export it as a .NIF, I simply end up with a blank screen... Is it possible to open a file made in 2.83 in 2.49?
So far I've managed to export a file as a .OBJ and successfully open it in the older version, but it would be far easier if I could just open the .blend file itself, that way I wouldn't need to learn how to add textures and materials in the older version since in my texting, I cannot transfer textures or UVs and such if I use my current solution of transferring .OBJs

Version 2.8 is not backwards compatible with previous versions.
Even if you could bring the meshes, none of the materials would work in 2.49
You might want to try using 2.79 and the internal blender render with simple materials. No nodes. Maybe those would work on 2.49


Why won't these faces UV unwrap? I'm trying to unwrap some new faces after fixing some topology on a model that is already textured (in particular at the edge of the mouth).

For some reason a number of faces just won't seem to unwrap or show up in the UV editor after I select and unwrap them. I've tried pinning vertices around them, messing with seams, and checked the normals, but no luck.

In the viewport, they seem to take the texture. But the faces/verts just aren't showing in the UV editor, so I can't get them in the right place.

The picture shows the gap in the UV where the new faces need to be and on the right are the faces I'm trying to unwrap.

blend file

Looks like the problem was that I had 'UV local' view selected, in the UV view options. Not sure what that means yet, but fixed the issue for me.


The "period key" next to the zero not there on a laptop A great key, but how to strike it without a number keypad on a laptop. An external number keypad not an option.

Not sure what the key is called- maybe the Accent key?  Followed by #3.  See below.


Glowing Light Trail - Eevee Trying to make this effect in eevee:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629004850
I'm looking to make a glowing trail of light, in eevee, which starts of bright but tapers away into darkness. It needs to be able to be locked to follow the motion of another object.

[solution]:

I have a stream of particles following the eye: newtonian physics, 0 gravity, 0 velocity. They fade from bright to nothing using the process @atomicbezierslinger gave.
While the particles do follow the path as hoped for, they don't 'connect up' yet. The easy fix (in the above image) is just to have a high 'Number' (2500 for each eye in this case).
I had an issue where the particle appeared in 'clumps' every frame. This was because it was parented to an animated object which moved only on every frame. Baking the motion and removing the emitter's parent fixed the problem.
I'll try the process @RichSedman linked later. It may well be a better solution.
Thank you for the advice.

Size and other attributes can be controlled by percent of life expired with a texture associated with the particle system. Blend texture horizontal and color ramp.  Strand Particle Coordinates. Below size is decreased as particles age.
Please click on images to see them larger.

Materials can use [particle info node] to calculate percent of life expired.

Please experiment and improve the information provided.  You can do a better job.
There is also Bloom.  Highlight Blurring.  Cycles may be preferable for transparency.  There are may videos on the site with the names that rhymes with noonoob and here at BSE.  The Blender compositor can select the highlight and blur.
value = [Current age] / [lifetime] with a math node.
So a material can become transparent or change color for a particular particle over time.  I have chosen to change color for a quick answer which you can improve.
This work with practice will take less than 15 minutes for a rough approximation.
The older particles can be more transparent and smaller and less bright in the four combinations.


How does the compositor interact with the 3d viewer? (Chroma keying movies as planes) I am still new to Blender. I included movies with green screen on planes and am trying to chroma key them so they aren't green boxes moving around in 3d viewer. I know how to chroma key in compositor but I can't find a way to bring the texture from 3d viewer into the compositor and then take the output back into 3d viewer. Are 3d viewer and compositor even interactive with each other? Thanks!

The 3D Viewport is the place where you can manipulate your models, and modify the way they look. You can use different shading techniques to see how your objects react in different scenarios.
It has a few "views" :

Wireframe mode - Where you can see only the edges of your mesh, and can see through the faces
Solid mode - The shading is simplified to help you focus on the geometry for example
Lookdev mode - Where you can see an approximation of the final textured result thanks to the real-time render engine Eeevee
Rendered mode - Where you see the scene as it will be rendered when you choose to output an image out of it. It is supposed to be slower so it is not recommended to use this mode when modifying your geometry

When you are happy with your rendered look, you can choose to render an image or a video of your scene. You need to add a camera and position it so that the parts you want to be in the final images are inside its field of view. You can see what will be rendered by pressing  numpad 0 . When you are content with it, you then can render the image by pressing  F12  for a still image or CTRL  +  F12  for an animation (or go the render menu on top of the blender window).

Then the image is rendered, and you can add post-processing compositing effects, for example changing certain colors, adding flares or adding a vignette effect. This is a one-way process and can only be applied to rendered images. It cannot be used to then be applied back into the 3D viewport.

If you want a real-time chroma key you will have to build a custom shader for that, because the compositor will only affect the output of your rendered images.


How to control the direction for the Build modifier? I'm practicing with the Build modifier. I understand its basic functionality but I can not figure out, why it starts revealing one section of the mesh from the top, and the next section on the bottom and finally starts to build up the model.

Q: Is there a way just to get the modifier to build up from one direction?

The Build Modifier will use the vertices index number to determine their apparition order. These indices are determined by their order of creation. In your case, if the Build modifier displays the top, then the bottom, then the rest, it's probably because you've created the horizontal edge loops with a bevel operation. With successive extrusions the order will have gone from top to bottom.
To display the Indices option in 2.9, enable Preferences > Interface > Developer Extras, then go in Edit Mode, select the vertices and enable the Indices option in the  Viewport Overlays panel.
To sort the vertices the way you want, go in Edit Mode, put the 3D Cursor where you want, it will determine the last numbers, select all, in Mesh > Sort Elements > Cursor Distance, then in the Operator box click on the Face button.
For more complicated objects than simple vertical/horizontal ones there must be some addons or python codes that allow to sort the vertices index numbers.
You can play with the Build modifier Start value, if you want the object to appear in the other direction, click on Reversed.


Principled BSDF (and other shaders) do not render textures with the Eevee engine I'm trying to render a texture that uses a Principled BSDF shader using Eevee, however nothing is shown on the render output
This is what I'm getting:

I initially thought this might have something to do with my texture, so I used an RGB input and got exactly the same problem:

If I remove the Principled BSDF and link the picture direct to the Material Output it works fine:

This also applies to RGB inputs as well.
I've tried other shaders, and I'm having the exact same problems.
Oddly if I use the Cycles engine, the Principled BSDF (as well as all the other shaders) works fine:

What I've done to try and solve the problem:

loaded factory settings
selected the "repair" option on the Blender installer
reinstalled Blender
upgraded Blender to the latest version
updated Windows and all my drivers to the latest version (including the GPU)
tampered around with some of the settings (admittedly I don't know what I'm doing with most of them, so I could easily have missed it)

Could anyone please offer some help? It's been a few days and I'm getting a bit desparate.

OK I eventually fixed it.
I ran debug mode and got the exact same error as on this thread posted this morning:
https://developer.blender.org/T83272
This is what they said:

Next time, please follow the submission template and attach the debug
log and system info as file.
Please try to install a previous version of the graphics driver prior
to Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.11.2 Optional, 27.20.14501.18003 and
report back if this resolves the issue.

I downgraded my graphics to 20.11.1 and it worked fine.


Armature Deform with sharp limits I have a requirement to rotate part of an object, leaving other area intact, so have created a bone and defined the vertices belonging to the bone. Since the part to be rotated is very sharply delineated I am using manual vertex assignment. However, when the the part is deformed some portion of another part of the object is also getting deformed, which is not desired. I tried setting the paints in the weight paint mode, but here also the brush either includes the unwanted portion or subtracts from the part itself.
A related query is: I have seen highlighted lines extending from vertices to neighboring vertices, that seem to be indicating weights (or influences? not sure...  I am new to blender). What's the logic of applying these weights and is there a way to change them? They are sometimes seemingly arbitrary. In the attached figure for example, A influences B and F but not C. Why? And how, if at all, to change this influencing?

I found a workaround:
1) In edit mode, select the vertex group assigned to the bone and hit P to separate the selection from the main object
2) remove the vertices from the main object that belong to the bone (there's actually just one in this case)
3) In object mode select the main object and the separated one and hit ctrl-J in order to join them. Now if I select the vertex at the tip of the part to be moved, there is no influence shown to the main part vertices. Maybe there is a double vertex at that position, but that doesn't create any problem for me for now.


How to create a floating blob? I was wondering how would i get a UV Sphere to act like the floating blob in the image?
As well as

⬅
(I realised too late that this is annoyingly slow. It can be easily fixed by speeding up the Empty's animation and by increasing the number of emitted particles per unit time)
Wobbliness

Add an Empty to your scene, and animate it in some ways using only rotation al location keyframes. You will use this empty to drive the coordinate space for the ripples on the blob's surface.

On your UV sphere, add a "Displace" modifier:

Set the Texture coordinates to "Object" and the Object to your Empty. Reduce the strength to around 0.4. Select "New texture" in the modifier, then go on the "texture" tab and select Type = "Clouds" and Size = 5.

The empty and the Displace texture, combined, will give a result similar to this:

Bubbles

Create another UV sphere and place it on a different Layer.

Select your main sphere, and add a Particle System. Apart from the default values, use Emission Number = 20; Use Modifier Stack = Yes; Render type "Object"; Dupli Object = ; Size = 0.500; Random Size = 0.600; Field Weights Gravity = -1

Bake the Particle cache and this is the result:

For enhanced smoothness
The two spheres can be Metaballs instead of UV spheres, but achieving the wobbliness would become more difficult


Fade to Black Effect in Video Sequence editor? Is it possible to get fade to black effect (just like in Windows Movie Maker) in the Video Sequence editor?
If so, how?

Fading to black is slightly more complicated than it has to be. The trick is to use the cross effect.

Add your video clip
Add a color strip (under Effect Strip > Color), the default is black, so leave it at that. Position the color strip at the end of the video clip.
Select your video strip then the color strip (Make sure to do it in that order. The cross effect will fade to whichever clip is selected last)
Add a cross effect
Play the animation.


Snapping points of a roughly spherical mesh exactly onto a sphere I have a mesh whose points ought to lie on a sphere.  They don't, but are roughly close.  Is there a convenient way to nudge them all along their radii to "snap" each to some fixed R?

I've been nudging each vertex by hand, for a simple demo model, but this isn't practical when I get to more elaborate cases.  I tries extrude-scaling the mesh toward the center point, then using a boolean intersection with a sphere, but that cut off all the intricate surface topology, leaving hollow shapes like oddly tapered cookie cutters.

To sphere:

You could try AltShiftS>To Sphere:

From the wiki:

  The To Sphere transformation will give the selection spherical qualities.

Example:

Shrinkwrap:

Or using the Shrinkwrap modifier to shrink your mesh to a sphere object.

From the wiki:

  The Shrinkwrap modifier allows an object to “shrink” to the surface of another object. It moves each vertex of the object being modified to the closest position on the surface of the given mesh (using one of the three methods available).

You could add a shrinkwrap modifier to your mesh and set the Target to a sphere:


How to know if the system console is open? Can we know, with python, if the system console of blender is open? I know that we can open or close it with this function:

bpy.ops.wm.console_toggle()

But it doesn't return the 'state' of the system console like open or closed (True,False).

I want to be sure that the console is open when i execute one of my script.

Short Answer: You cannot

First, bpy.ops.wm.console_toggle() is available only on Windows. And I admit, it is a work around. Other OSs run without a console. If you want a console, you must start blender from a terminal on Linux and Mac.

The I/O steam redirect blender.exe > out.txt should work. (but I haven't test it)

If you realy want to communicate with user, you should use a dialog box:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Py/Scripts/Cookbook/Code_snippets/Interface

error message or save it in a log file. Those methods should work on any system.

P.S.

On C code side, the function returns the current status, and you can query the status.


How to use Rigid Body Physics after following path constraint? First of all, I know that this question has asked here before, but the answer brings more problems and doesn't fix mine. That method causes the object to fall through my plane after the influence is reduced to 0. I have tried adding a LocRot keyframe before and after the influence keyframe to keep it in the right spot, but then my object just stays in place once the influence is set to 0.

Some more about my project:

I am trying to animate a small shield rolling down a hill. To do this, I am trying to use a combination of a Follow Path Constraint tracked to a bezier curve, and at the end have the object use Rigid Body Physics to naturally fall and bounce.

Link to my .Blend (Dynamic should be checked in RigidBody under Physics properties tab, I forgot to turn it back on before uploading. This did not fix my problem.

In all, I'd basically like to have my object follow the path then use rigid body to emulate it bouncing and falling on a plane.

Leave the Dynamic enabled, and keyframe Animated instead, on the same frames as you keyframe the Follow Path constraint. Keyframe it to on at the last frame where the constraint influence is 1.0 and to off on the frame after, where the influence is set to 0.0. Hover the mouse on the checkbox and press I to keyframe it.

I changed the Shape setting in the Rigid Body Collisions on the plane from Convex Hull to Mesh, but that isn't strictly necessary if you're ok with the buckler bouncing a little above the plane.

To bake the physics, go to the Scene window and click Bake or Bake All Dynamics in the Rigid Body Cache panel. And if you're only going to render 120 frames, as set in the blend file, you may as well change the end frame for the physics too. No use baking frames you're not going to render anyway.

Here's a short animated gif. I apologise for the quality. I used Blender's built-in screencast, and apparently it wasn't able to keep up with the speed at which the buckler was moving.


How to get a Sharp Render when mixing foreground and background ViewLayers in EEVEE? The text has to appear sharp when blended with the background in the EEVEE compositor.
However even on switching the text blend mode to Alpha blend,setting Mix node blend to "ADD" and connecting both the alpha and Z depth values of the text to it ,the output still appears faded.
How to blend separate viewlayers to get a sharper render ?

The Mix 'Add' mode is combining your renders without taking account of which of the two images is 'in-front' of the other. Blender needs to know how to combine the two images correctly.
Looking at your screenshot the Render Layers thumbnail shows you aren't using transparency in your renders (it's a solid background instead of checkered). The simplest solution is to enable Transparency :

Then once you have re-rendered your scene you should have an Alpha channel in your render results (the background should be transparent). You can then simply use the Alpha Over node instead of 'Mix' to produce the 'overlay' effect you want :

An alternative (if the depth information is consistent between your render layers) is to use the Z-Combine node to combine two images based on depth (this allows you to have different elements from multiple render layers overlapping each other) :


How to get rid of areas of depression between 2 beveled edges I have a plane having a bevel modifier to the vertices and then a solidify modifier to make it thick and then i have another bevel modifier limit method angle Angle and i get these results  , the are between the two edges shoes a depression-
How to get rid of this long running depression between the two beveled edges

The problem was solved when i stopped using Harden Normals option in bevel modifier that made the bevel stand out and make the depression


When I select an object, it does not show it as selected When I select an object, it does not show it as selected, same for faces and vertices. I tried updating blender to the latest version, but it seems that the problem is only in the project because it doesn't happen on other ones. Would anybody know how to fix it ? (in the picture, you can see on the right panel that a part is selected but it ain't shown)

You have disabled the Show Overlays option (or shortcut AltShiftW):


Rims for Camera Buttons right now I try to create little holes which are formed like these menu buttons so there is a little space between the body of the camera and the buttons. Unfortunately the Boolean doesn't work properly and creates no hole. Is there another way to solve this problem beside the boolean?

The Knife Project tool is an alternative to the boolean. You must constrain the 3D View to an orthographic camera angle in order to get it to work. Think of it as using a light beam which is aligned to your current viewing angle, which then casts a shadow of one object onto another object, to create cuts at all the points of intersection between the two objects. You could use an open-ended cylinder (must be open-ended, or else the projection will be blocked) to create a series of edges defining the button hole. Then you could simply select the all the faces contained within the newly created edges -- as they now form a circle on the surface of the camera -- and extrude them, delete them, or otherwise edit them as needed.
Steps:
Start by making sure you're in Object Mode. Select the cylinder first, then Shift + select the camera body to include it in the selection.

Then, with both selected, Tab into Edit Mode (both objects will remain selected in Edit Mode, which is important). Press whichever numpad key corresponds to the viewing angle that would be perpendicular to your camera's main surface (this is likely to be the Front view, which is accessed by Numpad 1, though Front may actually not be the correct view in your case. You'll have to check). Once the correct view is attained, look to the top of the 3D View for the Mesh Menu. Under it, you'll find Knife Project.

Once this option is chosen, you're done, but it won't look like anything happened. Go back to Object Mode to hide or delete the cylinder. It still won't look like anything happened. Go into Edit Mode, and you will see the new edges made by the cylinder on the surface of the camera body. Edit as needed.


Is it possible to paste in edit mode? Is there any way to use paste in edit mode, because in edit mode CtrlV is replaced by the vertices menu.

I can copy things fine but it is impossible to paste. Of course I could use ShiftD to duplicate but is there a way to copy?

You can invoke copy and paste using the Spacebar menu (it shows CtrlV as shortcut for paste, but as you said that doesn't work). Simply press Space and search for copy and paste and use the appropriate entries from the list.

  As pointed out by GiantCowFilms, the copy / paste functions work at object level. So even if you use them in edit mode, the whole object gets duplicated and not your selection!

Because you can use ShiftD to duplicate, there seems to be no need for copy and paste.


Is it possible to move parts of a model along the selected normals? For instance, if you have a object that lies flat on the ground plane, then you can select the edges, push G then Z and move those selected edges straight down, in this case it would be as if the selected components were moving along the normals like how the extrude tool behaves.

However, if the object is rotated about several axis then this method will not work, so my question is this. Is there a way to move selected elements along the normals in the same way that extruded elements move away from an object?

Any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

You can set the Transform orientation to Normal in 3D view > Header:

This will align the Z to the normal of the selected element. (Or in the case of multiple selected elements, the average of the normals of all selected elements):

Note that pressing GZ will still move the selection along the global coordinates, to move the selection along the orientation set with Transform Orientation you need to press the axis key twice (so GZZ).


Set the frame on an armature I've found the scene function frame_set to be very slow.
Is there any functions to set the frame only on an armature/object ?

This is for an exporter where I advance the animation frame by frame.

user preferences > Editing > Only insert needed enabled


blender 2.8 texture paint material mode not showing shaded object, just flat color is shown? blender 2.8 texture paint material mode not showing shaded object. IT just displays flat color for the object silhoutte. LookDev mode is enabled and it shows the flat color instead of the actual shading of the object with all the respective textures for normal, height etc applied.

Use the Overlays drop down and turn the Opacity of the Texture all the way down - then you should see the shadows while you paint.


Wrap spiral curve around complex object How can I get a spiral curve to wrap around an object in blender?
More importantly, an object with some degree of complexity.

I've been using the shrinkwrap modifier with varying degrees of success.
In the example, I can get a spiral to wrap around simple shapes pretty well.
But in the second example, as soon as introduce different angles to the wrapped object, the spiral messes up completely.
Also in the second example is the type of curve/spiral I'm using.
I've tried all three different types of spiral, but none gives any better result than the other.

Any ideas?

Use the Curve Modifier to slide your Spiral Curve along a Bezier Curve

With the Add Curve: Extra Objects add-on enabled, Add a spiral object by pressing ShiftACurve > Spirals.

In the Operator Panel customize the spiral's shape.

Set your Curve settings as you want them.

Add a Bezier Curve. (ShiftACurve > Bezier)

Use the Curve Modifier on the spiral object to make it follow the Bezier Curve object. Set the Axis correctly (usually it will be Z). Enable the third and fourth modifier options, to Display Modifier in Edit Mode (makes it easier to see what you're doing) and Apply on Spline (makes for a nicer curve shape).

Make sure their Object Origins are at the same point, and that both objects have the same rotation (to avoid confusion). If you need to slide the spirals position along the Bezier Curve, Select All (A) and Grab (G) the spiral object and move it in Edit Mode.

You can also scale the spiral along Z to stretch, or X,Y to fatten it.

Above: Scaling with the 3D Cursor as the Pivot Point, to fit the spiral to the Bezier Curve.


How can I get a volume to expand uniformily in all directions, like a nova? I would like to simulate a star exploding into a nova, ie

I have a quick smoke where the density is keyframed, emitting smoke from a sphere for few frames only. I need a force that pushes this smoke in every directions, uniformly. Vorticity, noise, texture, collisions, high definition smoke, etc will do the job of modelizing the shape as it goes and offer nice details. I do not want to use a mesh.

But it doesn't seem to exist any force field that acts like a sphere, attracting or repulsing everything from a single point and uniformly. This is very easy programmatically so I surely missed something and I hope someone will point me to the correct feature ! Otherwise I'll have to learn a bit of python I guess.

Wind only pushes smoke in a single direction. I can make it a cone-wind, with an angle of 90° and both 2 directions, I can only get :

(Direction says : both Z, by the way gravity is off and the domain density and temperature parameters are 0).

I can put it to sphere of course, this is another frame but same :

No idea why it raises upwards, same params as before, but anyway this is not even a sphere.

At last what approaches the most my needs is the "force" force field, in "sphere" mode, but it is absolutely not uniform :

I don't know why it acts more on the horizontal plane. I tried to modify the domain resolution since the voxels grid contributes to non-uniformity anyway but even big resolutions end this way.

I have to mention I also tried to expand an invisible sphere used as a collider, however I cannot use this then to get the vorticity, smoke effects precisely, that I am looking for.

Any idea ?

The smoke by default rises upwards from the emitter. To disable this, you need to set the Density and Temp. Diff. both to 0. Also disable the influence of gravity by setting Gravity under Smoke Field Weights to 0.

Here, I've also set Dissolve to 10 frames, to make the smoke disappear. I'm using a Force type force field, with Power set to 2*. This makes the effect falloff physically correct, by making the force proportional to inverse square of the distance from the source.

And this is the result I got.

As you can see, it doesn't spread exactly equally in all directions. However, the force, and most importantly the Vorticity of the smoke domain, are quite strong. The smoke will be calmer if you reduce the vorticity, and spread more slowly if you reduce the strength of the force.

*Have a look at the Blender Manual for an explanation of the Power and other settings.


I added the "Cross" Effect strip to two text strips and it's making the background image transparent I added the "Cross" effects strip to two text strips to create a fade-like transition. It worked but during the transition the background image becomes transparent.

before the effect

The scene you have as the background clip is set to have a transparent background and in the sequencer preview you have enabled the alpha view.

You can turn off the scene background transparency in the render settings under Shading.

To not see the background transparency in the preview you can change to colour only display in the header.

Another option is to add another strip to use as the background, this can be a simple colour effect strip to have a solid colour behind everything.


Particle on XY plane (Not Z)? How can this long straight strand be replicated over the entire plane at 'B', as shown at A ?

Note : The strand shall not be rotated about Z axis.

However, My ultimate goal is to model something like this

Image Link

Although I am not 100% sure which things you are envisioning going on which axes, one way to render a sort of "nest" using a strand object is to create curves (e.g. bezier curves) that define where the strands will lie.  Then create a mesh object that is a cross-section of the strand and give it your material.  Make sure to apply location and rotation (but not scale) to your curve objects.  Then, starting with the first curve:

create a duplicate of your cross-section object.
give it an Array modifier, check "Merge", Relative Offset X:1, Y:0, Z:0, fit type: Fit Curve, and specify the first curve object.
then give it a Curve modifier, again specifying the first curve object.

If all has gone according to plan, your curve is now "stroked" with your cross-section object.  Then repeat for each additional curve in your nest.

Nest with Vertical Strands:

Nest with Horizontal Strands:

It will be easier if you duplicate the last cross-section mesh you modified, because it will already have the modifiers applied, you just need to update the curve objects the modifiers are using.

The nice thing about this is you can modify your curves to create a "weave" effect, which can be considerably handier than trying to smoothly deform the meshes.

When things are to your liking, you can apply the modifiers (and remove doubles, there will be a LOT of doubles) and the resulting mesh objects can be further modified . . . for example you can join the strands into a single weave object deform it along a curve with another Curve modifier, which might come in handy in making something like the image you provided.

A different technique would be to simply bevel your curves with a curve that represents the cross-section of your strand.


RGB normals not summing up rightly. So I generated a normal map for a sphere in Blender, and it looks pretty good. However, in order to be sure that the normals were right, I decided to sum up the RGB channels in MATLAB, and it turns out that the R, G, B values squared do not sum up to 1 (which is what you would expect).

Does anyone have any input?

They should have a magnitude of (approximately) 1. I say approximately as precision could be an issue.

You need to make sure that you are mapping the rgb values correctly back into decimal values, each colour range should map to the decimal range -1 to 1 with 128 mapping to 0.

You mention in comments that you renormalise by dividing by 255, this is incorrect. You should divide by 128 and subtract 1.

Note that the z / blue channel has its sign flipped compared to the others, but this shouldn't be an issue checking the magnitude. Also some software also flips other channels.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping#How_it_works


Unable to import fbx files Having difficulty importing .FBX files into blender.
i select .fbx file and hit import and nothing appears in the editor/scene.
must be a pretty silly question but ive never had this difficulty before.
if anyone has any pointers they would be greatly appreciated.
thank you!

.FBX import is fine, just scale of the object is really small.

After import press S then type 1000.

You can alway check if something is on the scene in Outliner.


match two mesh curves I've got a situation where two objects meet and they both have curves.  I need to make the white portion on the left side match the curve of the gray portion on the left side.  The inside the white area isn't really a curve, its the gray portion showing through.

I've tried cutting, scaling, and just can't get it to look right.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gwfami

Sorry about the misunderstanding.  I ended up hand matching each portion so that the curves lined up properly.  I was looking for an easier, automated route instead of a manual labor intensive version.


Spawning Cube on Same Level I'm trying to learn how to use blender but everytime I try to model... it spawns on different levels! There is a big space and I dont know how to keep them on the same level

When adding a new mesh/object into Blender, it will be added where your 3D cursor is (looks like a red and white circle). You can move the location of the 3D cursor by left clicking. Also, if you want to move the objects so that they are the same level, change their position on the Z-axis. This can be done in multiple ways

The properties window: by default, the properties window will be on the right side, under Outliner tab. To move the 'level' of an object (where it is located on the Z-axis), click on the Object tab (looks like a cube) and change the Z value under location (1st is X-value, 2nd is y-value, 3rd is Z-value). To put all your objects on the same level, make sure all of their Z-values are the same.
The other properties tab: By pressing the key shortcut "N" or dragging the + (top right of your 3D view box) to the left, you can bring up the other properties tab. The Z-value of the objects location will be under 'Transform'.


Why are some of the faces on my mesh lit up? I'm relative new to blender, and I found myself working on some models for a game.

Recently I was modeling this door, but at some point I've noticed that some of the faces are lit up for some reason.

I tried some things I knew about but none of them worked yet.
Maybe someone knows how to fix this problem

I hope this image provides more info.
I've also tried to recalculate and flip the directions of the normals, but none of these are fixing it.
If I smooth the mesh it looks way more weirder than having it on flat shading.

The mesh keeps its lit faces inside the game engine too.

I'd reconsider making a totally new mesh, but I'm still curious about the faces acting this  way.

First off, you should check where your light is coming from.

If the light is close to the door, the dents of the doorframe might block light, only parts that are raised a bit will catch the light. You could easily check that by placing another light source in the scene.

Another thing you should check is if your normals are ok. You can tell blender to recalculate these when you go into Edit Mode, select the affected faces of the model (should be ok if you just select the entire model) and then press "Recalculate" in the left tab under "Shading/UVs". Flipped Normals can often cause lighting issues in the viewport as well.


Boolean trouble: union and intersect work, difference doesn't Newb here.  I'm going through Blender Guru's intermediate tutorial and have roughed out an anvil.  I've created a cylinder to subtract form the side of the anvil using a Boolean difference modifier.  The modifier is having no effect, though switching it to union or intersect causes it to do what it's supposed to.  I've confirmed that all normals are pointing out.  I'd attach the file but I don't see any way to do that (screenshot of what I'm looking at below).  Hopefully my description is enough for someone to point me in the right direction.  Thanks.

You have overlapping vertices that prevent the boolean, select your anvil, go in Edit mode, press Alt > M > Merge By Distance, and it will work.


Increasing size of uv map within blender How can I for example double size of my uv map? Just add 1 more empty "block" of space of the size of my original map? I tried just doubling image in other image editors, but then i can't line up "islands" perfectly.

As Mr Zak mentioned, the UV map represents points in Texture Space that range from 0.0 to 1.0 and this cannot be changed. However, from your question it appears that you have a UV mapping that relates to an existing image and you want to make some additional space - presumably to add additional faces.

If this is the case then you can resize the image in an external application (for example, in Gimp you could use the Canvas Size option to increase the canvas to 200% in each direction, leaving the original unchanged and some 'blank' space to the right, top and top-right.

When you re-import this image back into Blender the 'islands' obviously no longer match up - since they are still positioned in the original locations in the 0.0 to 1.0 UV texture space but the image is now twice as large (and so the relevant parts of the image are half the size in relating to the mapping).

To address this you simply need to accurately resize the UV mapping (rather than trying to line it up by hand) and you can use the editing tools to achieve this.

Select all faces in the 3D view in Edit mode (Tab). Then in the UV Editor window, select all with A. Open the Properties panel with N and set the Cursor Location to the corner of the UV map relating to where you've positioned your original image (eg, top-left (0.0,1.0), top-right (1.0,1.0), bottom-left (0.0,0.0), bottom-right (1.0,0.0)).

Next set the Rotation/Scaling pivot point (in the toolbar at the bottom of the UV Editor window) to 2d Cursor - this will make the scaling relative to the Cursor Location you have just set.

Next, to accurately rescale your UV map to your 200% rescaled image you need to resize it to 50% - so press S, type '0.5', press Enter.

Since the image was rescaled to 200% and the UV map coordinates are scaled to 50% the UV mapping and the image islands should match up - as they were before rescaling.


Alpha material not see through when overlapped I have a graduated background image set in camera properties and compositing nodes such that the linear gradient is always the same in any view.

I have 4 different materials (shown) with differing transparencies driven by factor. 0, 0.33, 0.66 and 1.0

Including Freestyle I have this render result.

I would like to achieve this (photoshop mockup) result.

Where am I missing which part of blender out?

Ok, the answer was in fact possible in Evee, so ignore the "use Cycles" answers.

Use an emission material with varying strength.
Here I have 0.0, 0.33, 0.66, 0.00 and 1.0 strengths from left to right as you view the planes.

Then use the Compositing in nodes to overlay the rendered image over the background image in the screen mode. This makes has the desired effect of making the 0.00 material transparent to the background but NOT show the objects behind it through the material.

The edges are drawn using the Freestyle tool sets.


How do I use Shrinkwrap Modifer with more control? This is the bust part of a onepiece from another model.
The character is also of a different model.
As shown that the character's bust is flat.
I am unable to simply wrap the entire bust unit on the character since the top edge of the bust part in the original model is left unwrap.

What steps shall I take to wrap the bust part of the onepiece dress so that it fits the bust of new character while remaining the edges. Or, is it possible to wrap only a face while the other part deforms accordingly, so that I can add another face inside the bust unit that covers the original character's bust and make only that face to wrap the new character while remaining the structure of the bust piece.

Shrink Wrap with Vertex Group Weights

By using vertex groups modified in weight paint you can exert more control.

A the very flat square box begin as a cube Mesh. Subdivided as seen, High Vertex Density. I will call it a box. Left to Right parts of the image -->

For simple models you can consider texture painting.  I tend to think you do not want this.
On the left the box is showing weights in edit. Painting occurred in Weight Paint Mode.  You can see vertex group names.  A Mesh can have many vertex groups. All hidden vertices are zero weight.
Next the box with NO modifiers
Next the box with Shrink Wrap Modifier ..and vertex group specified ... Note the red weights allow the vertices to move the most. The top of the box is stable and does not move, this is the control weight paint efforts allow.  Lets call this [Context 1]
Next the box with Shrink Wrap Modifier ... No Vertex group .. it collapses to where many faces are close to each other .. lack of control
Next same as in [Context 1] but the inverse of the group has been selected.  Only the red paint area stays in it original place. Weight of Vertex X is now (1 - original weight)
Consider adding a second or more Shrink Wrap modifier your waist area.

Notes

A flexible fabric in daily life conforms to a body.  Stretch Fabric even more.
A bullet proof vest and bomb squad disposal suit might conform very little.
You must use your judgement.  Breaking a model in to flexible and inflexible parts should be considered one of your tools, along with others.
Practice simple cases of Weight Paint and ShrinkWrap.  Improve the example you see here.
Weight Paint mastery is an essential skill for Shrinkwrap.
Once you have control over the vertex group weights you can make more informed decisions.
Then see more advanced tutorials.
This is just a quick highlight. This topic requires further research.


Why do Meshes animate weird whenever I do a simple rotation? https://imgur.com/a/VoxEQ

if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I was having this issue earlier. Basically, you need to reset the rotation to zero when you put in the first keyframe. So at frame 0, select the mesh, hit ctrl+a and then select rotation. This is essentially like taring a weight scale. Now press "I" and add locRot. Then go to frame 160, rotate it, and hit "I" then locRot. That should fix it. Make sure you always "tare" the rotation and scale after changing it.

Happy Blendering!


Can't change number of vertices/segments on just created mesh I have a problem with changing segments of a newly created sphere. A window where I can change it is transparent and does not respond to any clicks. This problem is with any mesh I create. There is already another mesh in the project in which no problems were observed.

Every time I click this window just disappears. Thanks!

Maybe you need to reactivate the Global Undo option in the Preferences > System.


How do i change encoding settings with python import bpy
for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'H264'
    scene.format = 'QUICKTIME'
    scene.color_mode = 'RGB'
    scene.audio_codec = 'AAC'
    scene.audio_bitrate = 128
    scene.render.resolution_percentage = 100

I have no idea how to get this to work right

Try this:

import bpy
for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'H264'
    scene.render.ffmpeg.format = 'QUICKTIME'
    scene.render.image_settings.color_mode = 'RGB'
    scene.render.ffmpeg.audio_codec = 'AAC'
    scene.render.ffmpeg.audio_bitrate = 128
    scene.render.resolution_percentage = 100

Also see the API docs.


Modeling a car wheel arc: Move vertex to form an arc I'm really noob with Blender and 3D modelling in general. I started modelling a *very* low polly car, and I wasn't careful at all about the topology, little by little I started adding some more detail to some parts, and end up trying to fix the topology also. I'm having the impression that maybe this is not so easy as to start with a good topology from the beginning.

I'm currently trying to make the arc of the wheel resemble a semi-circle, right now is aproximated by eye.

--

But till now I'm clueless about how to reorder those vertex so I can make the flow of the mesh start from the arc of the wheels to the rest of the body, this kind of flow:

Some more views of the car if needed:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZwPqx.png

https://i.stack.imgur.com/RBIpe.png

https://i.stack.imgur.com/ypFV2.png

There are two tools that can help you achieve that.

1) Scale to sphere (Alt + Shift + S)

2) LoopTools Addon to space out vertices.

I recommend you proceed like this:

Scale to sphere

Set the 3D cursor to the center of your arc. We will use it as the pivot point for scaling the vertices.
press "." (NOT on the NumPad) to set the pivot point to the 3D cursor
select all the vertices you want to sit on the arc.
press Alt + Shift + S and move your mouse until the vertices align on an arc.

Space the vertices

Enable the LoopTools Addon in the User Preferences
with the vertices selected, press W and select LoopTools - Space


How do you export Shape Keys? I want to export the mesh made with shape keys as obj files. My attempts have resulted in exporting only the basis mesh. How can I export the deformed mesh?

When exporting shape keys for Poser morph targets in obj format I found the following to work:

• Export from Object view with key value = 1.

• Set export options to "Polygroups", "Keep vertex order" and "Apply Modifiers"

Note that the Poser import scale option must be set at 100% with all other options off.


Installing Blender 2.78.1 - Cycles Disney Brdf Recently I learned that there are several initiatives to make Physically-Based Shading available on Blender. One of these is the development of a Cycles Disney BRDF.

I have a couple of questions on installing this Blender development on my computer.

Is this Blender Branch Windows only ? I would like to install it on macOS.
As I have a Windows machine too .. how would I install such a branche on my Windows machine

Edit: after reading the answer of @aliasguru I understand that GraphicAll makes new developments available without having to compile code ?

If I push that download button what am I downloading and how do I install that as a experimental feature to my Blender 2.78 installation ? Is this possible for macOS ?

Tech Stuff first
As most Blender Branches, they are cross-platform and can be compiled for any supported operating system. Since support for compiling Blender is out of scope of BSE, I won't go into detail on how to do it. However, the documentation gives a very good starting point: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender
Note that for adding the Disney Shader, you'll need to checkout a branch with GIT that actually contains the code. One such branch is the Experimental one.
Easy solution for quick evaluation on Windows
Some people actually go for the extra effort and provide self made Blender Builds on a dedicated website called GraphicAll. You can search for keywords there, Disney will give you this page as a result: http://graphicall.org/1192
Just download and unzip it to your hard drive (this is a Windows Build), and run blender.exe from that folder directly. You'll find the Disney Shader in the Add section of the node editor, together with the Diffuse, Glossy, Anisotropic,...


Reading files of an addon I write an exporter, which exports PBR materials, mostly from the PrincipledBSDF shader.  Would like to add a small directory of generic environment textures in my zip file, in a format that Blender does not use.  Like a 2 umbrella studio environment texture, seen here as a reflection texture.

User could then also pick from a custom property list, in addition to a the .hdr in the world node.  The file would get copied to the export directory.

Problem is how do I know where the directory from the addon is, in a completely OS independent way?

This gets the root directory of the add-on from any file (or at least those in the same directory).  Can always do an os.path.join() if I need a sub-directory.

def getAddonPath():
    import os
    return os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))


Importing to UE4 without smoothing? I have a model I'd like to export to UE4 but I'm going for a low poly "look" and want to keep the jagged and blocky look it has. Is there a way for me to export it into UE4 without the smoothing effects?

Firstly, follow LuckyCOINNNN's suggestion (although I wouldn't recommend using the split edge modifier, as it will separate all your edge verts), or go to the data tab of the object and enable Auto Smooth with a value of 0 (if you are doing this method you must select all faces and set to shade smooth first), or you can select all faces/verts/edges and set to Shade Flat.

Secondly if you're using FBX to export to UE4, in the Geometry section of the exporter set Smooth to Edge (I think Face also works).


Merging vertices at the center point when using a mirror modifier? When modeling a 3d image using a set of 2d reference images, I use the mirror modifier to speed up modeling. When I work from the center to the outside edge, I'm fine.  When I work from the outside edge to the center, I either end up with a small gap right at the threshold of the mirror edge or I end up extruding the vertices until they overlap. I can't join or merge the vertices because while I'm using the mirror modifier, I can only select vertices on one side.  Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks,

Matt

On the modifier properties there is a checkbox called Clipping (shown as 1 in the image bellow), it will merge the vertex as it touch the edge (prevent vertices from going through the mirror during transform).

Note: If you're not seeing the vertex because it's hidden by faces and you can't select it, you can turn off the modifier visualization (the eye icon button from 2 in the image bellow), there's also a button with the "triangle vertex" that allow you edit from the reflection too. Also, at the bottom of 3D view in the vertex selection options, there is a button with a "wire cube" that allow you to see and edit vertex though the faces.


A problem with edges and vertex after smoothing Okay so I was practicing to model a human from scratch as a project to finish. Its not really a highly detailed one but I will be adding subsurf after. So this is what it looks like:

So I decided that before applying hair and texture, Is to smoothen the entire mesh. First is I decided to add the subsurface modifier or just smooth edges first.

So I decided to smooth edges first but then something happens:

There seems to be a problem with the edges on the upper lips and the side of the face that only happens on that area along with the rest of the edges connected to it which covers the entire side of the mesh:

This happens whenever I applied to subsurf modifier, and edge smooth option. Is there a specific problem which this is tied to? does this have to do with the vertex or the edges of the affected area?

I am wondering why those edges are hard in the first place. There could be double vertices there. I would make 2 suggestions. The first is to remove doubles in edit mode. Select>Alt M>Merge by distance and set 0.0005 to start with in the operator bottom left. Up the distance a little tiny bit if necessary. The second suggestion is to apply Smooth Shading to your model before you apply any subsurface modifier (right click the body in object mode>choose Shade Smooth) Doing so would have a couple of benefits at this stage. You might find you don't need the modifier and therefore keep it low poly. And, in this case, you would see any pinching or areas that need fixing as they will show up as bad shading.


How would I make a hair particle travel across a surface? I am trying to create a scene where several vehicles travel across an uneven surface. To get the effect I'm looking for I put the vehicles into a hair particle system, however I dont know how I would get them to travel across the surface in a decent manner without having to animate each one individually.

Pretty much all I want is for the vehicles to travel in a straight line forwards over the course of a few seconds.

Is there any way to make the particles travel across the surface in a decent manner?

EDIT: After following the advice of Lemon I have something similar to what I was hoping for, however there are still a few small issues I need to resolve before its finished.

Sometimes the Vehicles will stop then disappear or disappear into the terrain.

Or float above it when the landscape dips downwards, as well many of the different particles spawn inside of eachother.

In addition i'm wondering if there is a way to have one of the vehicles to be less common while being in the same particle system or whether it would need to be in its own.

I'm unsure as to how to solve these issues, and am hoping there is a way to without having to have each vehicle be its own mesh.

In this approach :

The field in green does not emit particles but has a collision setting :

The emitter is a band along the field side :

The particles are driven straight forward by a curve set as curve guide field :

As we want the vehicles to stay above the terrain, their center is set at the bottom part of them :


Confirm a Modal Operator via Python? I have a modal operator that starts a timer when Right Mouse is pressed, and checks, when it's released, how long it's been held, and, if it's below a threshold, will open a context menu.
While the timer is running I also call view3d.walk navigation, the idea being to emulate Unreal Engine's navigation.
The issue that I'm running into is that I want to confirm the view3d.walk navigation before opening the context menu, but I can't seem to be able to do it via Python.
I'd like to call view3d.walk.confirm (or something) from within the cancel function of my modal operator, but I can't seem to be able to do it. I know I can set a key within the modal map in preferences, but I wanted it to be the same key that calls the cancel function (Right Mouse Release).
I put a comment in the cancel function with my imaginary solution.
import bpy

class UnrealRightClick(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Timer that decides whether to display a menu after Right Click"""
    bl_idname = "blui.unreal_right_click"
    bl_label = "Unreal Right Click"

    _timer = None
    _count = 0
    _threshold = 0.2

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if context.space_data.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            if context.mode == 'EDIT' or 'OBJECT':
                if event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE'}:
                    if event.value in {'RELEASE'}:
                        self.cancel(context)
                        return {'CANCELLED'}

                if event.type == 'TIMER':
                    self._count += 0.01
                return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.view3d.walk('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
        wm = context.window_manager
        self._timer = wm.event_timer_add(0.1, window=context.window)
        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def cancel(self, context):
        #bpy.ops.view3d.walk.confirm()
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
        if self._count < self._threshold:
            if context.mode == 'OBJECT':
                bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name="VIEW3D_MT_object_context_menu")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(UnrealRightClick)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(UnrealRightClick)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Thanks!

I found a hacky way around my issue using ctypes. It's not perfect, but it's something.
The magic line ended up being ctypes.windll.user32.mouse_event(self.MOUSE_RIGHTUP)
With the full code now reading:
import bpy, ctypes

class UnrealRightClick(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Timer that decides whether to display a menu after Right Click"""
    bl_idname = "blui.unreal_right_click"
    bl_label = "Unreal Right Click"

    _timer = None
    _count = 0
    _threshold = 0.2
    MOUSE_RIGHTUP = 0x0010

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if context.space_data.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            if context.mode == 'EDIT' or 'OBJECT':
                if event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE'}:
                    if event.value in {'RELEASE'}:
                        self.cancel(context)
                        return {'CANCELLED'}

                if event.type == 'TIMER':
                    self._count += 0.01
                return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.view3d.walk('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
        wm = context.window_manager
        self._timer = wm.event_timer_add(0.1, window=context.window)
        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def cancel(self, context):
        ctypes.windll.user32.mouse_event(self.MOUSE_RIGHTUP)
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
        if self._count < self._threshold:
            if context.mode == 'OBJECT':
                bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name="VIEW3D_MT_object_context_menu")
            # if context.mode == 'EDIT_MESH':
            #     if context.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = (True, True, True)
            #         bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name=”VIEW3D_MT_

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(UnrealRightClick)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(UnrealRightClick)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Hope this helps someone else, I'll update it if I can figure out a better solution for the new problem of mouse focus!


System freezes when trying to start Blender I recently upgraded to Linux Mint 20. Have not tried using Blender before, so not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Whenever I try to start Blender it freezes the whole system and I need to force the laptop to power off. I don't think it's related to the specs, as the hardware should meet the minimum requirements.
I experience the same issue when starting the game engine Unity. So it's probably not a bug in the software.
Can anybody help me?
Below are the specs. If anything else is needed, I'll add it to the post.
 System:
      Kernel: 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0
      Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: Linux Mint 20 Ulyana base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal
    Machine:
      Type: Laptop System: Acer product: TravelMate P2510-M v: V1.00
      serial: <filter>
      Mobo: KBL model: Aquila_KL v: V1.00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.00
      date: 08/24/2017
    CPU:
      Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-7200U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
      arch: Amber Lake rev: 9 L2 cache: 3072 KiB
      flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
      bogomips: 21599
      Speed: 901 MHz min/max: 400/3100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 901 2: 900
      3: 900 4: 901
    Graphics:
      Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 620 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915
      v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
      Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: intel resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
      OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.0.8
      direct render: Yes

Update:
blender-softwaregl seems to work without problems. So there has to be a problem when using the integrated GPU.

Sorry for people having a similar problem. But I just installed Linux Mint 20 from scratch and that solved my problem.


Shading / UVs panel not present I found a few answers to a question I had (regarding normals) that reference this panel 'Shading / UVs':

I do not have this panel in either object or edit mode. I have Blender 2.8 and my interface looks like this (in edit mode). How do I show this panel in Blender 2.8?

Since the 2.8 version, the interface has changed, now you can find all the normal functions in the header menu > Mesh > Normals (or AltN):

To see the faces orientation, open the Viewport Overlays panel and enable Face Orientation, the faces of the objects will appear blue or red, depending on their orientation:


Access only filtered/visible F-curves through python in graph editor I'm looking for a way to be sure a script affect only f-curves that are showing up to the user in the graph editor (post filtering) for WYSIWYG style control.

In details:
Currently I'm getting the actions from the objects directly after checking the properties of the graph editor (check if "show_only_selected" is on for exemple) in the graph editor, then try to get related actions from selected objects.

Problem is : With the filter show_only_selected toggled On in graph editor, In the case of armature selected, if some of it's bones are unselected there are hided in editor but still affected by the script (I get all the fcurves of the actions).
Other animated properties might be affected while being invisible to the user or on the contrary being not affected while being visible.

A way to directly iterate on filtered f-curves would be really nice (if not necessary) to apply some script on what the user see/isolate.

Even more details in this blender artist thread :

context.selected_editable_fcurves

New to blender 2.79.1 is context.selected_editable_fcurves  Test script.  Prepends a toggle button to graph editor header.  Runs update code on each toggle that will print the visible fcurves to console.

Edited to include all "visible" fcurves in the graph editor.

import bpy
from bpy.props import BoolProperty

def foo(self, context):
    selected = context.selected_editable_fcurves[:]
    bpy.ops.graph.select_all_toggle(invert=True)
    others = context.selected_editable_fcurves[:]
    others.extend(selected)
    others = set(others)
    print("-" * 72)
    print("%d selected of %d visible" % (len(selected), len(others)))
    for fc in others:
        fc.select = fc in selected
        print("action:", fc.id_data.name,
              "data_path:", fc.data_path,
              "{%d}" % fc.array_index,
              fc.select)

    return None

bpy.types.Scene.testfc = BoolProperty(update=foo)

def testfc(self, context):
    scene = context.scene
    self.layout.prop(scene, "testfc", toggle=True)

bpy.types.GRAPH_HT_header.prepend(testfc)

Even before this context attribute became available, the same thing could be done by deselecting all fcurves (using a.fcurves.foreach_set("select", [False] * len(a.fcurves))) in all actions, then selecting all with bpy.ops.graph.select_all_toggle, those selected will be the visible ones,  and reinstating to original selection.


Displaying vertex indices in Blender 2.8 using debug mode I'm trying to enable debug mode in blender 2.8 in order to see vertex indices in edit mode and from the instructions I'm following I'm supposed to execute bpy.app.debug = True but I still cannot see the indices. How do I do this in blender 2.8?

You need to enable Developer Extras in the Interface settings, then you can enable vertex indices in the Viewport Overlays panel from the 3D viewport. You don't need to set the bpy.app.debug flag. Also, make sure to be in the Edit Mode. Object Mode will not show any vertex-related options.


How can I create two eyes holes? I want to take for example a cylinder or other object and cut in it two holes but with eyes shape and make the object then flat. The idea is later to take the flat object with the two eye holes and use it with a camera from behind the eyes so in the end it will look like first person eyes.

Later I will want to animate the eyes and to control the eyes scaling. But first how can I make first person view eyes holes ? Can't find tutorials.

Here is a image example of first person eye. This is example of the idea of what I want to create. But two eyes and make it to be looks like more realistic eyes.

There are many tutorials how to make eyes in blender but not first person view.

You can always use a cutout shape or other abstract, but since

  There are many tutorials how to make eyes in blender

let's take advantage of that. I would simply take a head model which is closed at the bottom, so no light will enter from anywhere but the eyes. The blinking eyelids can be rigged in a standard fashion.

The camera may be place behind the object to get less distorsion. Therefore the near clipping distance has to be adjusted.

  make it to be looks like more realistic eyes

Then let's give it a fleshlike material with subsurface scattering. To create a more conving fadeout, you can remove the subsurface scattering of the outer edge loop inside the eye socket by painting it in dark vertex colors and using them to control the mix of the SSS BSDF.

I have highly exaggerated the effect, you can make the material much darker or control the edge with the vertex colors making the inside darker than the ledge of the eyelid.

low samples, defocus and denoising should be improved. Very creepy though.


Is there a way to export the uv layout png without aliased black lines? Is there anyway for uv export images not to have this aliasing feature? Like be able to get solid black lines only.
https://imgur.com/BgJAjah

In the UV exporter window you can choose svg format instead of png in the left side panel.