How to check how much GPU memory is used by object? I wonder if there is any way to determine how much memory object or group of objects is going to use while rendering.

I was trying to follow some of recent Blender Guru's tutorials but it seems like I have complex object (trees) which even if set alone on separate layer, take too much RAM.

Is there any alternative?

Trying to simplify object?
Is it possible to render part of scene on GPU and part on CPU?

Objects like trees or toothbrushes take up much memory.
For trees, even games use object instancing. While copying the tree, use Alt + D. This will keep you from editing the trees individually but will keep the memory requirement low, you can also have a few trees and create an illusion by rotating them, (fake it!)

Too many leafs will unevitably result in high memory need. I strongly recommend you to take a look to this cycles instancing test.

If you don't want to lower the details, you can try caching the required files on your computer(cycles only). To do this, you need to use the (Cache BVH) checkbox under the "performance" section of render tab.
User preferences also let you to adjuct the available RAM to use.


Center object's mesh around its pivot In Blender, after resizing a box - ie you could make it very flat like a square tile, the pivot point of the object will likely be outside. How do I move the mesh and/or the pivot so that the pivot will be located exactly in the center of the mesh?

Shift-Ctrl-Alt-C>origin to geometry. You can also use the 3D cursor as a pivot point, by hitting . on your keyboard.


How can I rotate an object smoothly using sin or cos? I have an object in the center that "points" to objects around it. I wish to be able to click left or right buttons on the keyboard and have the object rotate (visibly, slowly, and smoothly) exactly 36 degrees using python.

How can I do this? I've seen stuff with sine or cosine and elapsed time but nothing that I can understand well enough to adapt to my needs.

I had this working using Action Actuators and since I want to be able to rotate clockwise and counterclockwise to point to 10 different objects, there were 21 different actuators. I would like to learn to do this with python instead.

Thank you,
Zach

Following solution might work for you (if I understand the requirement correctly) ...

Create a maxRot (int) property on the object.
Create an always sensor on the object that points to following python code

import bge
from bge import logic

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

if (own['maxRot']>0):
    own.applyRotation ((0, 0, 0.0174533), True)
    own['maxRot'] -= 1

Create an keyboard sensor (right arrow) on the object that points to following python code ...

import bge
from bge import logic

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
own['maxRot'] += 36

Run play and click the right arrow.

[0.0174533 = 1 deg in radians]


Is there a way to see thumbnails of all the materials in a scene? As someone who comes from a Maya background, I got quite used to being able to open Maya's Hypershade window and see all the materials in my scene at a glance. However, in Blender it seems that the materials tab only shows materials that are assigned to the active object. Is there a way to display a material preview for all materials in a scene?

Currently, the only place I can find the materials added to my scene is in the outliner in datablocks mode, which shows me that there are materials in my scene, but I can't see previews of them or easily check if the textures have loaded correctly.

What you really want is an old todo item. In two ways things already possible though.

Browse the materials in memory for linking (menu button to left of button where you can change material name). It shows icon-size previews. Blender already supports popups with larger previews (used for matcaps, brushes). Something similar could be coded to be used here too.
You can inspect materials (with previews) inside any other .blend file with using the File->Append browser, it allows to go into a file and see materials. Set file browser to view thumbnails. This type of browsing could be used for linked large collections of materials, textures or images too.


How to make several objects free fall at different keyframes? Im strugling at simulating free fall physics interaction. What i want to achieve is resumed in this steps:
1)object 1 falls from certain height
2)object 1 is set to passive at frame (lets say frame=50). When i consider.
3)object 2 is added into scene at frame 50, it free falls and collides with object 1.
3)Repeat
I got everything settled except simulating interaction. I can't make objects fall at certain keyframe and make active/passive transformations at that specific key frame.
I must do it via script, I need to automate the process.
Any ideas?
Thanks so much.

Use the bpy.data.objects[“Obj Name”].rigid_body.dynamic or …rigid_body.enabled property


Can't always view object within a transparent box I have a transparent box with a few objects within it.  Depending on the view, the objects inside are visible and sometimes not.  I'm running Blender v2.82a.  Figure 1 shows the objects visible.  Figure 2 shows one not visible.  The objects inside are also transparent.  Objects outside of the cube seem to always be visible regardless of the view (the red cylinder).  The images suddenly disappear and just as suddenly reappear depending on the viewing angle.

Here the tube on the right is invisible.

The Shading panel for the box is in Figure 3.

The Materials panel for the box is in Figure 4.  It has the Blend Mode set to Alpha Blend.  The Shadow Mode setting doesn't seem to matter.

This is a technical limitation in Eevee called Alpha Sorting.

Unlike Cycles, which uses ray tracing, Eevee is a rasterization engine, which means each triangle that's visible to the camera is transformed into screen space and "rasterized" into a pixel buffer.

(Image from learnopengl.com)

When a rasterization engine renders objects with transparency, it has to render triangles furthest from the camera first, and progressively render things that are closer. If closer triangles were rendered first, any transparent objects rendered behind it later would be discarded by the depth test, which means the engine would think the object is occluded because there's something in front of it. If depth of transparent objects is ignored (an approach some engines use), it can alter the final color, which is also not ideal. The process of determining the order in which triangles need to be rendered is called Alpha Sorting.

According to the Blender Manual:

  As of now Eevee does not support per-fragment (pixel) sorting or per-triangle sorting. Only per-object sorting is available and is automatically done on all transparent surfaces based on object origin.

What's happening in your case is that the alpha sorting is incorrectly ordering the objects at different angles, causing some to be occluded and thus not render.

As for the fix, start by enabling Show Backface in the material settings. It can resolve a lot of these alpha sorting problems.

If that doesn't work, try messing with the Backface Culling setting too, as that can make a difference in certain cases.

You can always switch to Cycles, it doesn't suffer from these limitations.


Manipulator missing for some reason I was just creating a little roblox GFX for someone. I was halfway done, and I logged off for the day, but then the manipulator was gone, I am not sure why. Here is a picture.
Picture
https://gyazo.com/dcc4148edc2fe26bf2639fb6ecac4e2b
Note: I grouped things using shift G, if that has anything to do about it, thanks for helping!


Is it possible to use different object interaction display modes on different objects in the same scene? I have a scene consisting of multiple objects, some of which are objects incorporated in the scene. The other objects are not incorporated in the scene, for example, the lamps, the cameras and certain objects I call "helper geometry". Examples of helper geometry include plane objects onto which a reference image is textured, and cube objects of defined size to use as a quick aid to setting exact sizes of other objects.

I'd like to be able to have the object(s) upon which I am actively working in edit mode, wireframe view, other objects which are useful as references in solid view, and the reference geometry objects--especially those textured with reference images--in textured view. How can this be achieved?

In the "Display" tab of the properties panel you can choose, for each object, the maximum draw Type: textured, solid, wireframe.
This can help.


Falloff object/collection instancing (Animation nodes) I am trying to instance collection instances on a spline with a falloff so that I have a different collection instance from a certain point.
With regular objects everything works totally fine, but I can't get it to work using collection instances.
I want to avoid joining meshes, rearranging origins and applying modifier in the main file, because that would cause problems.
Could someone help me out?
I attached the blend file.

You can instance collection instances using empties.
Generate empties using Object Instancer and set its instance_type to COLLECTION. Then set collection instances as instance_collection values.


Point light in Blender 2.90.1 not working My point light is not working. I edit all the options and it is not showing in my model.
The model is imported from SketchUp (in case this is important), also I have extreme amateur knowledge of 3D programs.

Here's the Blender File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybeimexele5xwu3/Exterior.blend?dl=0

Your radius is too big, using something like 1 or 2 works, also make sure you light color is not too dark


Can Blender VSE sync the video and audio with VFR strips? After done editing, I exported only to see that audio and video do not sync. I know what the problem is - the project's video strips have a variable frame rate. But is there a way to make Blender sync them despite that? I don't want to encode every clip that I have with a CFR.

Blender does not allow you to decode variable frame rates. Sorry, this is because Blender is only aware of one frame at a time and expects to play 1 frame per frame. In other words it is temporaly blind (can't look ahead) and doesn't understand that you may want to hold the current frame for a period of time. You'll have to transcode to a compatible Codec to use the VSE in sync with audio.


Subdivision surface not working properly I don't know if this is a bug or something else but when I use Subdivision surface my "View" tab is controlling both "View" and "Render". It's like I don't need "Render" option. By setting "Render" value to 4 and my "View" value is 1-2 on rendered model it will show me the value of "View" and not my "Render" value. If I change "View" value on 4 and "Render" value on "what ever number" it will show me the value of "View". I didn't try other modifiers. Is this something that is fixable or do I have to change my "View" to render stuff on the value I want?

in the Subdivision Surface modifier, the Render value is for the definitive render, the one you get when you press the Render button in the Properties panel > Render > Render, it is not for the Rendered display option you have on the dropdown menu of the horizontal menu bar of the 3D View, this one takes the View value into account. It's a bit confusing, yes.

Also, in Properties panel > Render > Sampling > Samples, you choose the final Render sampling value and the 3D view Preview sampling value. You generally don't work your 3D view with a value as high as the Render value because it would take too much time. But in Blender 2.8 you'll have Eevee which is quite fast.


Transparency removes glow effect Hi I am trying to render my Picture with glow on a transparent Background. I dont get why it does not work. If i set up any background the glow effects works, if i make the Background transparent it does not work.

To know why this is happening, first you have to understand how alpha works. A transparent image(image with 0 alpha) doesn't mean it doesn't have any color(rgb values).

For example: A pixel can have red value of 255, green value of 100, blue value of 0 and alpha value of 0 (RGBA=(255,100,0,0))

In the both of your image, the RGB value is the same, but they have different alpha values.

In the picture below, both of the green areas have the same rgb value, the only different is that the right one doesn't have an alpha value. Which makes it seems like the glow effect didn't work, but in truth, the glow is just transparent, you could verify this by unchecking use alpha in the composite node, and you will see the glow (unless you have premul on, but that's another thing).

And for the particles on the flower, the reason why the glow effect is visible there is because the flower is completely opaque. It forces the pixels around the particle to have an alpha value of 1.

More information on alpha: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/glossary/index.html#term-alpha-channel

Edit: You can still do it but you may need to add a little more nodes.

In the picture below, I added the alpha values of the unblurred image and the alpha values of the blurred image together, then set it as the alpha of the final image using the set alpha node.


2.83: Snapping to edge not working correctly In the above image, these two planes are same mesh. I want to stick both with snap to edge at the red line in the below image.

However, when I tried to choose the vertical one in edit mode and put G key to do that, it failed like the below image.

So, will someone teach me how to snap correctly? Thanks.

Is the setting properlly?

It will snap to edge, all length of edge. It shouldn't align it for you since not all edge are in same length
So Snap it to the corner

And if you give additional axis constraints, (eg. lock to x-y plane), it might be more buggy to align on. Not sure it's intentionally designed or just a bug.


Polygon divided to Triangles (Cycles) How can I achieve flat poly surfaces without the render dividing it into triangles?

In Object Mode and Eevee it looks ok, but not when rendered in Cycles.

You can use shade smooth to get a similar effect in cycles:
Select the polygon-face, and do Face -> shade smooth


Why does Blender crash when I select Skin for my 3D model? When I try to add a Skin modifier to my 3D model, the program crashes. The program doesn't close when it crashes. What can I do to avoid this? The 3D model is 4 000 quads/ 8 000 tris. We've tried on both Windows and Mac on the same scene.

Blender version:
Version 2.73 (2.73, 2015-Jan-07, Blender Foundation)

Antonio Buch: Thank you very much! This was actually what I was looking for, unfortunately I don't have enough reputation to mark your answer as correct.

I think you might not know the purpose of the Skin Modifier. With it, any vertex is kind of a tubular node connected to the other ones. It's for making quick base model like the image below:

Applied to a complex model, would take several minutes to process it. And the results are not pretty good though. Here you can see a cube and a Suzzane with the Skin Modifier. Suzzane completely freezed the aplication for 2 minutes.

The use of the Skin Modifier is covered in its wiki page.

At this point, I think this is not what you want to accomplish. As you have animation and rigging tags in your question, I think you need the Armature Modifier for make your character rig. Armature Modifier is named Skin in 3ds Max, maybe that's why you made this mistake (if you did).

It looks that I haven't clarify that enough: in this case, you need to create an Armature (a rig in Blender) and use the Armature Modifier (like Skin in 3ds Max) in your character's mesh.


Select edge ring in UV mode? Is it possible? [Edit: apart from manually, edge by edge!]

I'm going through a tutorial. The example UV I'm working on is an unwrapped strip from a ball.

Selecting the strip rings (e.g. to straighten them by scaling) proves incredibly challenging! Here's what I tried and didn't work:

1) the select ring function from the 3d view (CtrlAltRMB) doesn't work in UV window

2) using "sync UV with model" gets you the selection from the 3d view but: it'll disappear as soon as you disable sync or it will scale the model you can't scale on "individual origins" if you scale UV edges with sync enabled

3) the Circle or Border selection tools (in UV) do not select in "crossing" mode - i.e. you can't select rings only by drawing a flat narrow selection (you can only select rings AND loops by fatfingering it)

4) the Circle or Border selection tools - if you decide to subract the loops and leave the rings - now, weirdly, will work in "crossing" mode thus subtracting a loop and all your rings from your selection

OK, so it seems fair to answer this - since the question was about selecting edge ring in UV editor.

The way to do this is by:

enabling "keep UVs and edit mode mesh selection in sync" (button in the header of UV editor)
just Ctrl+Alt+RMB an edge in 3D editor (a derived UV selection will show up in UV editor)

Were the question about straightening the resulting selection, it would seem there is no way to do this for now (version 2.67b).

[Thanks to Mr Zak for clearing the confusion.]


How to reduce noise in really dark scene So I've been working on this one scene for a while now and I just can't get the look that I want. It is supposed to be a bar and therefore pretty dark. For some reason, nothing I do seems to reduce the noise. I can't figure out if I need to increase the number of samples (I have it at 2000 right now) or what but nothing seems to be working. I really don't want to add more light to the scene because it has the kind of feel that want but I need to remove the noise somehow. Also, I need some advice on how to make it look more realistic. I am using Filmic Blender but it only goes so far. I'm using bump maps among other things to add realism but it isn't really working. Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Unfortunately, there's not a way to get the render less noisy other than increasing the number of samples.  One of the reasons for this is that most of the light in the dark areas is coming from indirect bounces.  There are a few ways to clean it up though.

First, you can use Render Passes:

This allows you to edit individual passes such as Diffuse Indirect to try to blur the noise.  This is pretty effective but it can also smear some detail if you're not careful.  The main problem with this approach is the amount of "noding" you must do to recombine the passes.  The good thing is that you can use Node Groups to make it look nicer [ Can I make a custom node from a group and have that available in other projects? ]

Here's the node tree for this.  It's a lot simpler than it looks.  Basically you just add the direct and indirect pass for each shader and then multiply it by the color pass for that shader.  I made this node tree into a group:

The only purpose of this node group is to combine all the passes into the final image.

Use the Depth and Normal passes to create your Determinator for the Bilateral Blur node like so and feed them into the Node Group above:

At a minimum I usually use one Bilateral Blur node for the Diffuse and Glossy Indirect passes.  This method gives that most control over denoising.

However, in the 2.79 Beta version, there's a new Denoising filter included with Blender that is quite effective: [ https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/Cycles ]

It can use your GPU to calculate the denoising of tiles, too.  The problem with this method is that it's processed as it renders.  So if you don't like the options you've chosen, you have to render the entire scene again.  That can get old really fast, especially if you have to wait ten minutes per render.  It also adds significant time to your render but not as much as a comparable amount of samples.  There can also be some artifacting in glossy shaders.  I've found that in really noisy scenes (like the one below) that it can look splotchy.  This can probably be improved with fiddling with the settings.

Here's a quick comparison of these two methods with a piece of a scene I've been working on.  It has bump mapped walls and it's very dark, so it can be really noisy.  In my opinion the Render Pass version looks the best and is much more versatile.  But the Denoiser is easier to use.  This scene was rendered at 800 samples.  I've increased the brightness manually so you can see the noise better:


How to I change the Interpolation Type in the Map Range node like the documentation says? According to the documentation, you should be able to change the Interpolation Type of a Map Range node. I am on 2.91.2 and don't see it. Is this a new feature that I don't yet have access to?

Secondly, is it possible to create my own interpolation curve using math nodes instead? I am trying to remap a value that doesn't progress from 0-1 linearly so that it does follow a more linear range in implementation.
Keep in mind this is all in the shader editor, not compositor.
Gracious thanks for any help at all.

Make sure you are on the shader editor. In 2.9.12  the interpolation options are there:


Armature completely destroys model upon moving bone Good day.
I'm completely new to Blender. And I really want to get along with it, but... it's quite more complex than I thought.

Let a example talk for me.

I made this model. A rather simple model. And I'm trying to give it an armature. I added the bones, and whatnot. However, when I set the mesh parent to the armature, and move it with Pose Mode, the armature completely obliterates the mesh.

What am I doing wrong? Could you guys please explain this to me?
I'm still quite new to Blender, but this issue happens constantly.

Update:
This is the .blend file of my model.

It is because automatic weights not always works good. Sometimes, especially if you have multi-part mesh you need to edit vertex groups manually:

until more suitable result


How to programatically emulate bookmark selection? I have created a button within the "fileselect" panel when selected goes off and allows the user to select a file in the "cloud" via another application. When the user selects the file in the cloud it is copy to their local system in a predefined location and the file's path is returned to Blender.

What I would like to do is now update the panel file path and name to point to the drive, path and file similar to what happens when a user selects a bookmark. Here is my code so far:

class SchedulePLM(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "object.schedule_plm"
bl_label = "PLM..."

def invoke(self, context, event):
    # create path to app location
    ypsApp = gtlngstring.GetLanguageDir() + "ypsApp.exe"
    # build the args
    args = [ypsApp,"-f"]
    imagefile = subprocess.check_output(args)
    # print("imagefile: ", imagefile)
    if len(imagefile) != 0:
        dirname = os.path.dirname(imagefile)
        basename = os.path.basename(imagefile)
        # print("dir: ", dirname)
        # print("file: ", basename)
# update file path and file name in panel
    return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

bpy.utils.register_class(SchedulePLM)

I did not see the "answer my own question" so here it goes. I found the following to work.

bpy.ops.file.select_bookmark(dir=dirname.decode())

This gets me to the folder where the file was saved. I would like to update the file name also but for now this works for me.


What 3d file format should I use to import low poly shapes? I'm a metal artist and think I can learn blender enough so I can create my sculpture ideas, render them and submit them to sculpture jobs.
Hoping I can shave off some time by importing 3d files that I can then modify and shape to fulfill my design ideas.
What 3d file should I be looking for if it's possible to import?
Will an .obj file work?

Blender offers a wide range of popular file formats (e.g. OBJ, FBX, 3DS, PLY, STL, etc.) that can be used to import and export.  Please note that many of the import/export features are enabled by the use of addons.  See the import/export addons section of the manual for details.


Shock absorber linkage design Noob help request please to carry this the last 2 yards to the goal line!
I'm trying to rig 2 objects who move up and down Z independently, and a 3rd point that tracks them horizontally, at the same distance, in the Y axis as the 2 in Z move together and apart. Please see the attached Blend file.

I can best describe the requirements using our hands: Place your hands palms-together in front of you, (like praying). Obviously the dist between your wrists and your finger tips are fixed. Now, move either of your wrists, singularly, or together, away from each other in a horizontally straight line, while keeping your finger tips together. Notice how your hands eventually flatten out horizontally, palms down at the point where your hand size restricts any further wrist movement without moving your fingers apart.

That's what I'm trying to get to -- that V-shaped movement with the fingers as the linked pivot. I've got there most of the way. Please see the blend file attached. My rig gets the central finger touch-point to track the wrist movement very well as they draw together/closer, but it's the point where the wrists move apart is where the rig breaks down -- the pivot will not go/align itself to a vertical position in the Z, as I'd expect.

What am I doing incorrectly or missing please?
Mark

You could do this with drivers and a bit of Pythagoras.

Construct your bars and linkage in the fully extended position:

The origins of both bars, Bar_L, Bar_R are at the centers of their sliding pivots,
the centers of the large circles
The central Link (pink) is at World 0
All parented to an Empty,(the square) so all coordinates can be measured in the Empty's space, and everything transformed as a group.

Both bars are given a Locked Track constraint, aiming their X / -X at the link object:

To set up a driver, right-click in the X location field of one of the bars in the 3D View > N Properties region > 'Item' tab, and select 'Add Driver'. You have the option to open a Driver Editor on the selected object.

You can also set any split-off pane in the interface to be a Driver Editor with the Editor Type dropdown in its header.

There will be other ways of doing this, I'm sure. This way is prone to a bit of numerical error, but maybe it's good enough?

EDIT in response to query..

If, say, you wanted the left bar tip to slide along X while the right remains stationary, then you could drive the Empty to translate the whole rig to compensate for the inward/outward movement of the right tip. For instance, the Empty could be driven to be halfway between whatever other parts were squeezing the joint open and closed. Is that what you'd like?

.. This can be done with an IK chain, see other answer.


Exporting FBX to unreal engine deforms my mesh the question is pretty straight, i'm exporting my rigged mesh and the armature to fbx, then i import it from unreal engine and the result is what is shown on the right image, i made some animations in blender and the rig itself is pretty clean, what is causing this issue and how can i solve it?
(The blend file from when i'm exporting the FBX does not have an animation)

The issue was having shape keys on the mesh, i made a new shape key from mix, set it as the basis and then deleted every shape key, deleting the new shape key as last and that fixed it.


blender 2.8 - objects are scaling weirdly when i try to scale my objects on blender, they scale weirdly. the reason may have been because i applied rotation & scale to it (shift+a), but i'm not sure. i've tried redoing whatever i did wrong (changing pivot point and origin), but nothing seemed to do the trick.

before, i was able to scale the object on the video below as if it was one object (didn't scale weirdly)

i hope i was able to express myself correctly. thank you!

video of what's happening: https://imgur.com/a/ASu06Gv

You must have enabled the Only Origins option, which allows to move the objects apart from each others.


Accidentally set shortcut for vertex select to left mouse. How do I undo this? I was trying to set it to one of my programmable keys on my keyboard but I messed up and made this happen...

Can I undo?

If you didn't after saved user preferences, it's not permanent, just close and reopen blender.

If you did it, open user preferences, then switch to "input" panel.

Then open "3d view" > "mesh" and at the bottom of the expanded list find "select mode" with "mouse" listbox value and "left mouse" setting shown.

Click on the "x" button. Done (save now the user preferences).


Offset all keyframes to reposition animation I have two mocap animations on a skeleton which are pointing in different directions, and their root bones are centered at different locations. For example, my walking-in-place animation is facing X+ and is at location [10,50,0] while my run-in-place animation is facing Y- and is at location [30, 10, 0].

I want both animations to face Y+ and be at location [0,0,0].

I cannot simply reposition and rotate the root bone, because the root bone also has keyframe data that would be lost.

What I can do is to turn on 'Automatic keyframe insertion', and then manually offset the root bone rotation and location by the relative amount on the appropriate axis. However, this is impractical as my animation has over 100 keyframes, and if I were to do this manually it'd take a really long time.

It should be relatively straightforward to write a script that does this automatically. For example, for the walking-in-place animation, I'd just tell the script to subtract vector [10,50,0] from the root bones location for every single keyframe, and then subtract [90] from it's Z axis.

However, I want to know if this functionality already exists either within Blender or in an addon. Seems like an issue that should be relatively common.

Why can't you just use the Graph editor to re-position the keyframes?

Select the keyframes you want to offset, grab, and move in the X direction:

You can also type in the exact number of frames you want to offset the keyframes by... positive or negative amounts.


Revolve Curve 360 degrees how can I make this tree shape revolve 360 degrees around the curve object axis using bevel from bject data properties?

You could just take a straight curve, right up the middle of your tree, bevel it,  and AltS edit the radius of the curve up its length. Or use half of your profile as a 'Taper' curve for another curve's bevel. (Both handy for bendy trees)
But the easiest move from your profile to its surface of revolution is to take half of it, (with its origin on the axis of rotation,) and give it a Screw modifier:


How can i model a propeller like the one in the image? The first image is the propeller i want to model in the back.
The second image is my model i started to make and i want to be able to put the propeller in the back of my one. The propeller should have a ring so it will fit on the smaller cylinder in the back.

Apparently there are many different shaped airplane propellers. After some Google searching I found this Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication reference image of a simple two blade propeller.

   Add the reference image as a background image in Front View.
   Add a default UV Sphere Shift + A > UV Sphere. Tab into Edit Mode, then press Z to go into      wireframe display.
   Press S and scale the Sphere to fit the propellers cone.
   Then delete the bottom half of the Sphere.
Tab into Object Mode, and rotate the Sphere 90’ around the x axis by pressing A to select all then press R + X+ 90.

Tab back into Edit Mode and select the middle vertex.
Press 7 to go into Top View.
Press O and Enable Proportional Editing > Connected and choose a Falloff type. I choose Linear.
Press Press G + Press Y to grab it on only the y axis. Control the number of vertices affected using       the mouse wheel.
Disable Proportional Editing by pressing O.

Delete one half of the Sphere.
Add a Mirror Modifier and check the box next to Clipping.
Add a Subsurf Modifier and set the view to 2.
Tab into Object Mode and set the shading to Smooth. *The Smooth Shading option is only          available in Object Mode. (Pressing  T toggles the Tools panel on/off).

Tab back into Edit Mode. Press 3 to go into Side View.
Press Z to enter wireframe view and also click the “Eye” icon in the Subsurf Modifier to disable it temporarily.

Select the following four faces.
Press 1 to go into Front View.
Press E +  X to Extrude along the x axis only. Left Mouse Click to confirm extrusion.
Press  S +  X to flatten the end vertices on the x axis.

Ctrl +  R to add several Loop Cuts. I added 10. (Change the number of Loop Cuts with the mouse wheel) Left Click to confirm then Right Click to set in place.
Align the vertices on the outer edge of the mesh with the edges in the reference image. I used  Shift +  Y to avoid moving them in them on the y axis.
Add one more Edge Loop close to the cone and then move the bottom vertices up.

Tab into Object Mode.
Apply the Mirror Modifier.
Tab into Edit Mode.
Press  Z” to go back into Solid View and click the “Eye” icon in the Subsurf Modifier to turn it     back on.
Enable Proportional Editing.
Select the vertices at the end of the right propeller blade.
Press  R +  X to limit the rotation to the x axis. Type in the number of degrees you want it to rotate. I used 60’.
Repeat for the other blade in the opposite direction.


Setting Up Smoke Domain Material in Cycles I am trying to understand how to make fire in Blender. I bumped into this blog and downloaded the attached blend file.

In this blend file the Smoke Domain Material is constructed using two textures of the Voxel Data type. These two texture are called Flame and Smoke Density.

After the helpful answer of Josh I understand now that the way the Smoke Domain Material has been set up in this blend file is very Blender Internal (which I don't understand). Would somebody like to have a look at this blend file and reconstruct this Blender Internal Material into a Cycles Material ??

In the Blend file a plane is the Flow Object. The flow type is set to "Fire". This suggests that there is no smoke emitter ...but I think there is a smoke emitter.

Here is an image of the animation at frame 150 with Flow Type = Fire

And here is an image of the animation at frame 150 with Flow Type = Smoke + Fire

As you can see there is only a tiny bit more smoke when using the Flow Type = Smoke + Fire. So it seems that there is a smoke emitter in this blend file (when set at Flow Type = fire). By the way, also the manual says:

  Fire Emit only fire. Note that the domain will automatically create
  some smoke to simulate smoke left by burnt fuel.

So I guess in the set up of the smoke domain material both voxel data Flame and Smoke Density should be used.

P.S I have studied the manual, I have seen the tutorial of Blender Guru. But this file produces a lovely fire and I want to understand this specific Smoke Domain Material set up. Maybe the quality of the fire is not only a result of the material set up but first things first.

To convert a BI fire simulation volume shader to cycles, you don't need to change the simulation itself (domain physics settings). Just change the engine from BI to Cycles. Then Change the domain material to nodes, using the same color ramp (position, hue, saturation, value, alpha) for color. I doubled the emission (5 in BI, 10 in cycles). Don't forget to convert the light to nodes (there is a point light that has an effect on smoke)

This is the fire+smoke cycles material, with some tweaks (frame 81).

The B&W flame color ramp uses the alpha from color as value.
The "density" is used for smoke density (voxel data) and "flame" for fire density.
The color attribute is not used here (white volume shaders) because the simulation uses only 1 smoke color. This attribute controls the smoke color and is useful when you have 2 or more smoke emitters with different color to get the color mix in the simulation.

Here is the .blend file :


How to round a plane to a sphere surface I'm going to make the top face of cylinder to a sphere like curved surface, like a cap on top of the cylinder, I've searched a lot but everything I found is round an edge rather than round a surface
From this

To this kind of shape

Thanks.

I guess the easiest way is to extrude and bevel. You can tweak the shape in the Operator box, or scale later on the Z axis:

You can also customize the profile of the bevel in the Operator box:

To illustrate John Eason solution, you can inset your top face (i):

Then bevel (CtrlB) to create additional edges:

Enable Proportional Editing (Sphere mode) and move up the central face:

Tweak the parameters in the Operator box if necessary:


Why do my background images not align across the views? I'm trying to do a BMW car model, but I have a problem with the blueprints in the views.

This is the problem:

I expected that the two images were equal, but when I fix one of the views, with the cube cover all the top blueprint, the right view blueprint has problems, because the right view is not filled by the cube.

Unfortunately your images do not show the value for the scale on both images. Make sure they are using the same value in each of the views (top, front and right).


How can I make the width/height of particles randomly? I know, how to control and randomize the size, position and color of the particles in a ParticleSystem:

But is it possible to randomize the width and height of the particles too, so that there are rectangles that have different sizes in this example?

Yes, you can have the different height and width of each other. By using Random Size.


How Do I Change Which Key Is Used To Focus on An Object? I can't find the key binding to focus on an object it is currently NumPad . I want to change it to mouse 4. Where is the binding?

Open User Preferences then Input and then search for "View Selected" as shown below then assign the key you want instead of numpad


How to import a SVG file and scale it using latest version of Blender I am a newbie with Blender (Version 2.83) on Windows 10. I want to do one simple job: import a SVG file and scale it in Blender.
I downloaded a football image in SVG file format, its name is like: C:\Temp\Football.svg
Now, I open Blender 2.83 and delete the default image, then I import the football SVG file, but I can't see it from Blender.
So I think it is small, maybe I can scale it to a little bigger.
I can type "Ctrl+A" and I can see Scale with number of 9.
But how I can scale it to something bigger?  For example, if I want to scale it to twice as bigger as now, which keys/mouse I have to use?
I have only 2-button mouse.
Please advice.

To scale you need to select the object and press S. Then you can move the mouse to size the object.
Some useful shortcut are:

S, then a number (for example: 3) --> you increase the object * 3 (you can also use non integer number, like 0.5)
S, Z (or X or Y) --> you increase the object only in Z (or X or Y) axis
S, SHIFT+Z (or SHIFT+X, SHIFT+Y) --> you increase the object in all directions but Z


I have an issue where the vertices on my project glitch and create spikes any time I move another vertice I have an issue where certain vertices that are moved trigger another vertice to spike away from the object and move out of place. Once it has spiked, it mimics the moment of the vertice I original was trying to move.If I try to put back the spiked vertice, it moves another vertice. Sometimes selecting proportional editing puts the spiked vertice back in place, but it will move again on the next adjustment.

This can happen when you use Mirror Editing with non-uniform rotation.

Disable Mirror Editing (up in the toolbar) and make sure you have rotation applied before you use it.
Object > Apply > Rotation


How to take away shadows where I don't want them? i only want to have the shadow of the rope showing, but as you can see somehow shadows are being cast onto the layers which doesn't look good. I'm pretty new to blender and tried to mess with the lamp settings but can't get it to work for the life of me. it seems to look okay in rendered view (with the layers only showing the shadows ofcourse) but when i render it always turns out like that no matter what i do.

You can turn the wall into a shadow catcher by looking at the Cycles Settings in the Object Panel.

In this case, select the wall object and enable Shadow Catcher. You might have to adjust the diffuse color of the wall to white in order to make the wall completely transparent.


How to make curve cylinder? How to make curve cylinder? Now I have a static ones, but I would like to make them curve. Is it possible to change them somehow?

Here are 3 solutions: Curve modifier, bezier curve, and Bridge Edge Loop:

You can also create 2 or more circles, press CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops:

Then tweak the settings (particularly Number of Cuts and Smoothness) in the Operator box:


Another boolean modifier problem Blender 2.78. i have a model that as best i can tell has all of these for every object on every layer:

all normals correct
no doubles
no internal faces
no loose geometry
fully manifold

the three cutouts for objects are to be applied using boolean ops to carve away affected geometry; lift guide, glue plugs, and lift nuts. the first two apply properly. when the boolean op for lift nuts is added, the window clip disappears.

i've browsed page after page of boolean op problems here and elsewhere and gone over my model intently. i don't think i've missed something so then i'm left considering that i'm naive to some aspect of this.

From my experience it seams, that when using boolean you should always make ends of hole cutting mesh, stick out of the mesh, that is being cut. So in this instance you have to go to edit mod and raise up top vertices of bolts, above surface of window clip and lower bottom vertices of bolts below surface of window clip. This will solve the problem.
p.s.
By bolts I mean cutouts, lift nuts and cutouts, glue plugs


What is wrong with my repel player script? Based off of another tutorial, I'm trying to put together a script for an object that will apply a force to anything near it, essentially repelling it when the "near" logic brick is triggered.

from bge import logic

def _getForceMagnitude(distance, max_force, max_range):
    return (distance * (-max_force/max_range)) + max_force

def repel():

    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    cont = logic.getCurrentController()
    shield = cont.owner

    for obj in scene.objects:
        vec = obj.worldPosition - shield.worldPosition
        vec.magnitude = _getForceMagnitude(vec.magnitude, 10, 4)
        vec.applyForce(vec)

I reworked the whole script from bottom up and came up with the solution that I needed. With this script, any object that triggers the near sensor will be pushed from the origin of the object with the near sensor. The from bge import render and render.drawLine(shieldLoc, objLoc, [0, 0, 255]) is just there to visually see the script when it triggers.

from bge import render
from bge import logic
from mathutils import Vector

def _getForceMagnitude(distance, max_force, max_range):
    return (distance * (-max_force/max_range)) + max_force

def main():
    cont = logic.getCurrentController()
    own = cont.owner
    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    #sensor and sensor location
    trigger = cont.sensors["Near"]
    shieldLoc = own.worldPosition

if trigger.positive:
    #iterate through all objects in range
    obj = trigger.hitObjectList
    for objList in obj:
        #location of each object and vecter
        objLoc = objList.worldPosition
        dist = own.getDistanceTo(objLoc)
        vec = objLoc - shieldLoc
        #applying vecter
        vec.magnitude = _getForceMagnitude(dist, 50, 25)
        objList.applyForce(vec)
        render.drawLine(shieldLoc, objLoc, [0, 0, 255])
main()


Create terrazzo material/pattern with the standard textures is it possible to create this kind of material with the standard textures? The Voronoi texture (set to cells) is coming close but I don’t know if it is possible to a) set the single cells apart from each other and b) to give them seperate colors.

Just switch a Voronoi texture to Cells coloring, and drive it through a Color Ramp node set to Constant interpolation mode.

Adjust the Color Ramp stops to the desired color ratio so that the amount of colored flakes is close to the reference image.

You would generally want narrow black, orange and green strips, over a broader white background, so adjust proportions accordingly.

Speckle size can be adjusted from texture scale parameter. Changing size may also require adjusting color stop positions.


How do I shatter rigid bodies on edges So, I'm creating a rigid body that I am going to throw and I was wondering, is there any way to make the rigid bodies break apart on impact (Similar to the cell frac add-on) except on the edges?

There are a bunch of very good fracture add-ons out there. Some of them only support fracturing the entire object at one time, while others actually let you control the places that the object fractures. You may want to consider this add-on as it lets you do that kind of thing with objects. I am positive that there is no way to automatically generate fractured edges based off of the rigid-body simulation, but this add-on should help a lot.


Speeding up cloth simulation Is there any ways to speed up cloth simulation? I have fiddled with multi-threading count but maybe I am missing an obvious option. Is GPU cloth simulation a thing?

You can transfer lower-poly simulation into high-poly mesh with Surface Deform modifier. Lower-poly or mid-poly sim is also easier to control and weight-paint.


How to see vertex alpha transparency? How can I see vertex alpha as I paint it in Vertex Paint mode in 2.8? I get how to see vertex colors, via the node system, in LookDev, but I can't seem to figure how to see vertex alpha as I go to add and erase it...

It's often wise to set up your material and open up a material or rendered preview viewport.  You can have multiple viewports open.

You can paint in either window.  For alpha in a material preview, you'll need to set an appropriate alpha blend mode for your material, and to set that, you'll have to temporarily switch to the Eevee renderer-- material preview is just an Eevee render.


in sculpt mode the circle disappears when brushing the circle i'm talking about is this blue circle

whenever i starts brushing with any brush in sculpt mode the circle disappears
but i need it to be revealed. is there any way to keep it revealed

i'm using blender 2.82a

As of July 2020, there does not seem to be an option in Blender to display the sculpting circle cursor during a stroke.
This seems like a huge oversight and workflow regression in my opinion. Sculpting with pressure-dependent radius feels like I'm trying to paint using an invisible brush.
However, there is a code contribution on developer.blender.org that adds this functionality back in:
⚙ D6324 Sculpt: Sculpt plane cursor preview (https://developer.blender.org/D6324)
It appears to be in need of work. They want some code changes, as well as explanations of why it's a positive change.
If you'd like to see this feature added, and you know how to code or just have time to spare, maybe consider leaving a thoughtful comment or helping with the maintenance on the linked code.

As a workaround, I've been enabling "Falloff Opacity" under "Cursor" in the brush settings. Running this line in a Python Console view will do it for all brushes: [[setattr(b, 'use_cursor_overlay', True), setattr(b, 'cursor_overlay_alpha', 5)] for b in bpy.data.brushes.values()].


Is it possible to save CMYK renders from Blender? Is it possible to render to a CMYK image format without any intermediate conversion steps?

Asked on behalf of this questioner:

https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2016-April/047214.html
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?100475-Blender-in-Print-CMYK(also related)

CMYK is a device-dependent color model. This means essentially that if we don't know the device where color will be reproduced, the values expressed in this model are meanlingless, as they aren't enough to provide any colour accuracy.

RGB is also a device-dependent color model.

In theory, both RGB and CMYK images should be always tagged with their corresponding colorspace definitions (usually in the shape of icc profiles) to tell our software's color management whether a colorspace conversion is needed to ensure the proper color rendition.

For practical reasons and to a certain extent because images for the web need to be small, it is commonly assumed that an RGB image without an embedded profile is in the sRGB colorspace.
However, there isn't such assumption for CMYK files: They have to be tagged properly, otherwise you can't know the device where they are supposed to be printed.

To make things even worse, the "device" in this case doesn't only mean the machine where the piece will be printed, but also the type of paper, inks, setup, etc. that will be used for printing.
This means that there's no such thing as "CMYK" if you don't specify "which CMYK", so producing a proper CMYK file from any software requires to know a few things about how the image will be printed.

Failing to anticipate those things will most likely cause you and your printer a lot of troubles and cost you a lot of money, so it's not something you want to take lightly.

In desktop publishing ICC Color Management takes care of these aspects as long as files are tagged properly with ICC profiles. But Blender, as most of the 3D and VFX programs, doesn't support ICC profiles.

So first problem: Blender can't deal with ICCs, so the conversion has to be done externally.

Apart from that, producing CMYK colors from an RGB original is a destructive and irreversible process where a part of the RGB gamut (the non-printable colors) are lost irremediably. For that reason, CMYK is not a very good model for editing if preserving quality and color accuracy is your goal. Converting to CMYK is something you want to do at the very end of your creative process, when everything else is done.

It may feel tempting to skip a step and move to CMYK as soon as possible, but it ends up being a terrible idea as your files will be only good for a single printed output, they will be heavier in size and they will need to be converted back to RGB for any non-printed output, with the huge drawback of having lost a big chunk of their color latitude.

So yes, it is sort of possible to save CMYK right away from Blender with a script like the one proposed here, but it's not really a good idea.
It's more sensible to save your renders in the maximum quality and color fidelity possible (RGB from blender with no further conversions) and adopt a good workflow where the separation to CMYK is done properly with the right tools and at the right moment.
Imagemagick (the tool used for the addon proposed in the other answer) has the facilities for converting to CMYK properly, but it's advisable to perform the conversion on an already saved high quality RGB file taking care of all the parameters required for printed output (size and resolution, colorspace conversion and embedding, file format, etc.)


Is there a way to rotate after applying Separate XYZ? Apparently you can only rotate and move across the axis that is separated (for example [see image]: rotating the X axis and Y axis after having Z axis separated will result in having the Z axis move up and down instead of rotating the Y and X). Is there a way to rotate the those axes?
The reason to why I separated the Z axis is because I wanted to identify the Z axis of the object quickly instead of spending too much time tweaking the nodes to get the same desired result without using SeparateXYZ. If the answer to my question is ''No'' then is there any other way to identify the Z axis just as quickly as using SeparateXYZ but also still maintain the the ability to rotate the other axes?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

You can put another mapping node before the separation, and that will allow you to perform rotations:


Make ends of hair mesh sharp I made a 3D model of a girl from a game I play and I have the hair all set up, but it's flat on the ends and I don't know how to fix that.

BI

Reduce the value of Tip to in the hair material under Materials > Strand > Size:

Cycles

Again decrease the value of Tip, but in Particle Settings > Cycles Hair Rendering:


How to fill in/collapse an indented cylinder onto a face I'm new to blender so still figuring things out. I need to basically fill in the cylinder so that it no longer exists. I want to close up the half cylinder on the left, remove the edges in the center, then close up the wall on the right that's currently cut into with the half cylinder indent. I tried deleting vertices and edges, but it seems that no matter what I do it really messes with the design or destroys the face.

Also, are the edges connecting cutouts in my object necessary? Any way to remove them? They seem to complicate making faces.

Thanks!

Are you going to make this a super high resolution mesh later? You're going to want to clean up the faces that have 5 or more sides before you continue to progress. But that's an aside. The main thing you want to do at this point is get rid of that cylindrical shape. What you need to do about that is switch to face select mode, and alt + shift + right click the edge that flows with the shape of the round loop of the cylinder. This should select the entire cylinder. Delete these faces while still in face mode.

Now switch to vertex mode. Select the vertex where the floor of the object and the wall meet at the beginning of the remainder of the cylinder's curve. Make sure your 'pivot point for rotation and scaling' is still set to 'cursor'. Select the remaining vertex points that form the remainder of the cylinder on that side, and merge all of the points to one of the end points. Do the same thing on the other mirrored half of the mesh. Select the vertex.

If you need a more in depth explanation, lemme know.


How do I animate a person taking out a sword from his back? I would like to have a human taking out his sword from his back. The sword is meant to be somehow tied to its back, but it needs to be pulled out.

I already did the arm movement, then imported the character into Unity, put the sword, and tried to see what happens. Unfortunately, the hand literally passes through the sword, so I figured out I had to do a particular animation for the guy pulling out his sword. Any suggestions?

Should I have 2 separate objects in the same animation? Can i somehow put a bone into the sword or what would you guys suggest?

Edit: I need to mention 2 more things
1.I'm fairly new to Blender
2.I figured out I cannot attach the sword to his literal body, but I need to include it in the animation

Edit2: I read somewhere that by editing, I can put my post up again on the list, so here I am.. Sorry if I piss you guys off

Dude you need to use constraints to make your sword get attached with and follow your hand movement.I suggest you learn some concepts about how constraints work in blender.Apply constraints to your sword and set your hand as target to copy transformation.Then play around with the influence slider to get the desired result.You don't need a separate bone for your sword.See if it helps.


Modeling nose pads on glasses design I'm a beginner with Blender, and I'm designing sunglasses. Everything went pretty good so far, but I'm currently struggling with the nose pads part.
I started with an extrusion, but I cant find any way to transform it into the thin and smooth nose pads.
Any suggestions ?
Thank you !

EDIT : I manage to get to this point but it's not perfect.

Try the following........
1: Extrude out a couple of the faces.

2: Add a Subdivision modifier.

3: Select the upper edge loop and slide it up towards the next edge loop.
( G G to edge slide ). See screenshot below. Then    repeat for the other edge loop.

4: Select the middle 2 vertices and drag them out a little to form the  curve.

5: After setting all the faces to Smooth Shading, (select all, Face menu > Shade Smooth) enable the Auto Smooth option from the Object Data Properties tab.


How to duplicate the empty I have 3 object and group. Added an empty and parent to it. Holding the empty i can move the complete group. I can select the group and empty and press shit+D it duplicate. But how can i duplicate the complete group made with the empty in complex scene. When i select the empty i can just move complete group but when press shift+D it duplicate only the empty not the object which are parent to it. For example given below.

It is called Dupligroup. After assigning a group to an object/s, add an empty and go to the object properties. Under duplication you will find a group option, enable it and then select the group. Every object in the group (and others added later) will be duplicated around the empty.


How to separate the object to smaller units to give different materials to the different parts? I have been trying to create a closet in Blender 2.8 and giving materials to the frame, the doors and the handles, but whenever I try to assign a material for example to certain doors, the whole object got selected. My first idea was to use "Mark Seam" to use it as "boundary" of the different materials, but it didn't work, then I used key P to make separations in the object, but it - although separates the object by selection - still didn't work, it keeps using the whole obejct. Can anyone please help me? Thank you.

Materials are assigned on a per-face basis. You can think of assignment to an object as a convenience function: 'Assign to all faces in the object's mesh'.
Assign to individual faces in Edit Mode. Add slots using the '+' sign next to the material slots panel. Select or create materials to occupy the slots.

Select the slot. Select the faces. Hit 'Assign'.


How do I make settings in 1 scene affect other scene? I am making a game and I wanted to find out, how to make a settings in 1 scene to affect (example, volume) other scene. Is it possible to import data from python and set it to other scene? I need to import a property from 1 scene and paste it in other scene.

You can send a message to objects in other scenes.

You then use a message sensor to receive the message.


Cycles Color Problem I have a problem with colors in Cycles. Instead of yellow it renders pink, Anyone knows what to do?
https://pasteall.org/blend/67711b6e92f64b8baa804d282cd9fe7d

This might be a lighting problem. Do you have a colored light in your scene?
If none of your lights contain any Yellow, only the other colors will be reflected by the Material
EDIT:
I figured it out.
The part with the problem has multiple surfaces inside of each other.
I dragged them apart and apparently this part exists 8 times. With the pink material on 6 of the instances.

This sometimes happens unnoticed, when proportional editing is turned on, because it makes you move all the objects at once.
Proportional editing (for those who don't know) is this option:

Turn it off, point at the problematic part, hit L and then drag your selection away and you will see.
;)


Driver with random output between a range of values ( -1 to 1) I'm looking to make a driver that outputs a random value between a specific range (in this case -1 to 1) as a way to randomly change the factor value of the Simple Deform modifier. So that I can duplicate an object, and the factor is a random value, giving unique shapes for each, but within a range of acceptable values.
I've taken a look at other questions/answers, but I haven't found anything that pertains to my situation, or that I don't understand how it's being done.
I'm not looking for other workflows or other ways to go about what I'm doing with the modifiers. I'm specifically looking for a way to make a random driver that outputs numbers within a range. Nothing more.
I'm not interested in animation nodes either, not at the moment anyway, so that's not an acceptable answer either.
I'm not wanting to sound rude or anything.
Please just answer the question as it is in the topic.
Thanks.

Noise module is in the driver namespace
For our convenience the mathutils.noise module is  added to the driver namespace by default. As have all members of mathutils and most of math module.
>>> bpy.app.driver_namespace['noise']
<module 'mathutils.noise'>

There are a number of options for randoms, for a simple range (-1.0, 1.0) can type #2 * noise.random() - 1 directly into a non-driven field.  The hash # signifies make this a driver.

after, (good some random in range.

Click within the property can edit it directly (notice no hash since it is already a driver, signified by purple)

Note these values will change randomly for each frame. Remove the driver to "keep" a value.
Using self in drivers
Further to my comment re @Gorgious's answer can use self in drivers.

If the driver is on a modifier then self will be the modifier, self.id_data the object the modifier belongs to.
Simple test script, adds a method test to the driver namespace.  The object the driver is on is passed to the method.  The hash of the object's name is divided by some seed and the remainder returned.
Hash can be either positive or negative, so the values should fall within the range of (-1, 1)
import bpy
from bpy.app import driver_namespace as dns
from math import modf

seed = 203137

def test(ob):
    r = modf(hash(ob.id_data.name) / seed)[0]
    return r

dns["test"] = test


i don't know how to make smoke particles in blender render I'm trying to create an object that emits red smoke from it and i can't find a way to create colored smoke(or ANY smoke). I'm new to this so I don't know how to use Blender too well, can someone please help me? also I'm sorry if the tags are wrong or something (I'm new to this site too).

You click on the header bar then click on object(note: object, not object mode). Go to quick effects then quick smoke


Blender renders different from preview I have this wierd issue in blender 2.8,

im trying to render (with both cycles and eevee) this wolf

but when i try to render it does this.

I tried everything and i dont know what to do.
I dont have subdivision surface modifier.

Check your visibility options on each mesh supposed to be rendered. The render visibility toggle is hidden by default in the outliner, find it in the Filters:

For the main mesh, t looks like you unchecked the "Show Emitter" option in the render panel of your hair settings.

If neither of these is the issue, maybe check your materials.


(Placement of hair)Hair particles ignores Weight Paint and Vertex Groups I'm trying to add hair to my model in Blender, but when I try to make the hair emit from only one place by using the tools in "Object Data: Vertex Groups" or by using Weight Paint, the hair doesn't move to where I painted, but stays in the same place. I tried using both version 2.67 and 2.72. What am I doing wrong?

Assign the selected vertex group and name it.

Go to the 'Particles Menu' header and input the vertex group name in the Density window (located in 'Vertex Grops' panel).

Edited:
I've checked your model and found the solution. In your case you have to place the 'Particle system' modifiers over the 'Mirror' modifier. As you can see below, the beard and tail particles are now assigned to the right vertex groups.

I can advise you few more things. Before adding the hair particles to your model, make sure that:

it has a good topology
the double vertices are removed (in 'Edit Mode' press W--> Remove Doubles)
the normals are facing the right side (CTRL+N in 'Edit Mode')
the location, rotation and scale is applied (CTRL+A in 'Object Mode')
there are no ngons, non manifold elements, interior faces (you can check it very fast using a 'Mesh Lint' addon)
the 'Mirror Modifier is applied


How can I add a collection using Python? I'm new to Blender. Tutorial information as recent as January this year appears to be out of date and I can't figure out how to create a new collection and add an object to it. The most recent relevant question I could find suggests this:
bus_collection = ops.collection.new(name="BusRoutes")
context.scene.collection.children.link(bus_collection)

and apparently at least needs to be changed to this:
bus_collection = ops.collection.create(name="BusRoutes")
etc.

which throws the error:
TypeError: CollectionChildren.link(): error with argument 1, "child" -  Function.child expected a Collection type, not set

The API entry for Collection operators is beyond sparse, and I'm not even sure what Add the object to an object collection that contains the active object even means.
May I ask someone to give me a minimal Blender 2.83 Python example of how to create a named collection and add an object to it? Many thanks.

BlendDataCollections.new(name)
Recommend use the python console to figure out:
>>> D.collections.new(
new()
BlendDataCollections.new(name)
Add a new collection to the main database
...

>>> my_coll = D.collections.new("MyCollection")
>>> C.scene.collection.children.link(my_coll)

Demo on how to create a new collection and add the default cube using CollectionObjects.link(object):
import bpy

# New Collection
my_coll = bpy.data.collections.new("MyCollection")

# Add collection to scene collection
bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(my_coll)

# Get cube object
obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.get("Cube")

if obj:
    # Link the cube
    my_coll.objects.link(obj)


My armature isn't moving my mesh This is my first time using this program, and I have created a character model (I know it's bad), but when I set up an armature for it and went into pose mode, the mesh would not move with the armature. I have tried troubleshooting online and I couldn't find anything so I was hoping some of you can help.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8rxnlrcao3tujap/person%20model%20rig%20test.blend?dl=0
This is to download my .blend file

This missing piece to your model is the process of weight painting, which I started here:

Your model -- at least the one you uploaded for me to look at -- does not have weighting that assigns each bone to the mesh: The bluer the mesh is for a particular bone, the LESS it is attached/attracted by the bone. The redder the mesh is, the MORE it follows the bone.

The subject of weight painting is one that is covered here and in other online tuts very well... but the summary answer to your question is "because your model is not weight painted...."

Some resources here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/search?q=weight+painting

and here might be another place to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0VS0IVylzg

Please let me know if I missed the point of your question, though... I often do!

best
rg


How can I animate a mesh to be transparent without hiding the smoke that it emits also? I recently asked this related question about animating a solid mesh into smoke, and a solution that I might use is to shroud the mesh in smoke heavily whilst the mesh animates to zero opacity, which sounded simple, except there's a problem:

The mesh owns the smoke, and mixing it's material with a transparent shader hides both the mesh and the smoke.

How can I hide the mesh without hiding the smoke also?

One solution that I thought of could be to create a duplicate of the mesh to contain the smoke that is set not to show the smoke emitter, and then as I hide the mesh that is shown, the emitter will remain but the smoke will continue. This would work, but it's a work-around (noob-ish) way to handle it.

If I understand the question correctly... I think you are on the right track.
Simply disable the render-ability of the emitter object like so:

Then duplicate the emitter object and apply to it the shader which animates from opaque to transparent. (As described in this thread -> How can I animate an opaque material to being fully transparent in Cycles?)


Error: Object 'Sphere.022' has no mesh data to be used for ray casting I am getting above error when trying to obj.ray_cast() from a copy of an object:

obj = bpy.data.scenes[0].objects["Sphere"].copy()
is_hit, hit_loc, hit_normal, index = obj.ray_cast(localA, localB)

I figured out this was due to objects being linked. Making object data single user solved this issue. However, I need to keep it linked. Is there a way to keep objects in linked state and still use the ray_cast() function?

You need to link the object to the scene and update it for ray casting to work.

import bpy, mathutils

obj = bpy.data.scenes[0].objects["Cube"].copy()
# Insert your new object in the scene
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(obj)
# Update scene
bpy.context.scene.update()

is_hit, hit_loc, hit_normal, index = obj.ray_cast(mathutils.Vector(), mathutils.Vector([1,1,1]))

print(is_hit, hit_loc, hit_normal, index)

Prints:

True <Vector (1.0000, 1.0000, 1.0000)> <Vector (0.0000, 1.0000, 0.0000)> 5

You might need to delete the object after your operation

bpy.context.scene.objects.unlink(obj)
bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)
del obj


Is it possible to Link one or more layers from another .blend file? Is it possible to link all object on on layer, in another .blend file, into a scene?

I've read:

How can I reuse existing materials, objects, etc from an existing .blend?
How to get objects from different files into one file? [duplicate]
How to add an object from another scene? [duplicate]

But those all give the solution for linking individual objects.

I would like to continue modelling an 'composite object' that is composed of many objects (some of which are parented to other objects), operators (including boolean) and materials, etc. organized across different layers, in a separate blender file, but be able to (sometimes) render this 'composite object' placed within a scene in another .blend file.

How can I link this 'composite object' in one .blend file for use in another .blend file?

It will be easier to do that the other way around - link objects from the original scene into new one within one blend file.

In that case you have the freedom to select objects as you wish, including selecting objects by 3D layer, selecting all the children of the parent or vice versa via Select Grouped menu and so on.

Once objects are selected, in Object mode press Ctrl+L > Objects To Scene (additional scene should be already created). You can either render from that additional scene or link/append the scene into another blend via Append or Link and choosing Scene.


Blender motion blur too long I don't like how long the trail of this motion blur is. I know the curves can be manipulated, but I'm thinking I need something that just changes how long the blur lasts.

Question 1: Is this a situation where I should adjust the shutter, and if so, what would be the best value? Animation is set for 24fps.

Question 2: Should I avoid motion blur entirely, and what is the most appropriate setting for a slow motion glass shattering scene?

Thanks!

Edit: After lowering my shutter to the correct setting (thank you @cegaton), another issue occurred, as mentioned in comments.

Use a smaller shutter value.

A smaller number would give you less blur, freezing the action. Same effect as a faster shutter speed on a real camera, where the film or sensor is exposed less time to the light.

A larger value would result in more blur, the same way as using a longer exposure time on a real camera.

If you are curious of where the default value of 0.5 comes from, you can read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_disc_shutter. Motion picture cameras have a rotating shutter in the form of a semi-circle, half the time the film is held in place while is being exposed to the light, the other half of the time the shutter is closed while the film transport mechanism moves the film for the next frame to be exposed.


Rigify finger controls rotation not moving correctly I have a humanoid mesh and created a meta rig with rigify.  All goes according plan except after skinning the mesh the fingers don't behave as they should when scaling the finger controls (wanting to make a fist),  all the fingers go off in a wonky direction some bending upwards or sideways instead of down.  So...  I figured that I screwed up the rotation of the bones at some point.  Is there a good way to go back to the meta rig stage and adjust the rotation of the bones to line up with the mesh better.  I feel like I saw this somewhere but now cannot find it.

Edit:

I believe what I'm looking for is a way to automatically adjust the "Roll" of each finger bone to align with the hand.  Am I looking at this the correct way?

When rigging with rigify, most of the time bone roll will be correct, however on occasion if you have to adjust the metarig a lot, the rolls can get distorted. This is particularly common on the fingers as they have many segments and often require a bit of adjustment depending on the exact position that the hand is modeled. I find is always worth checking bone rolls in the hand when using rigify.

Rolls can be adjusted with ctrl-R. For rigify fingers you should have the bone's Z axis pointing in the direction you want the finger to curl when you scale the control bone down. There is no automatic way of setting this as it depends on the mesh.

Re-running generate from the metarig will update the generated rig provided you have not renamed it.


Making disorganised structures I am new to both Blender and Python coding, so here is my question: Is it possible to make arrays of cylindrical structures of random heights and/or random interspace? Is it possible to code something like that?

Thanks a lot!

Yes.
It is possible to code tools for generating all kinds of geometry with Python and Blender's Python API.
You can simply script it in the text editor as you go something like that:
import bpy, random
from math import radians
from mathutils import Vector

amount = 20

for i in range(amount):
    l = Vector()
    r = Vector()
    d = Vector()
    for xyz in l:
        l.xyz = random.random()
    l.x +=i*1.5
    d = random.uniform(2,5)
    for xyz in r:
        r.xyz = radians(random.random()*360)
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(vertices=32,
                                        radius=1,
                                        depth=d,
                                        location=l,
                                        rotation=r,
                                        )

and then run the script:

Obviously, what exactly you do with objects(or you could also work with geometry) and how you manipulate them is up to you and this example is a very random choice of mine since you did not specify what exactly you are after. Possibilities here are pretty much infinite.


Is it possible to make a change that affects the whole animation but keeps the original animation relative to the change? (like 3ds Max) [Sorry for the long post, I tried to keep it short but that's the best I was able to do]
I tried to make the question as simple as I could but I think it will be clearer with an exemple (animators familiar with 3ds Max might find it easier to undersand because that's something Max does by default):
Imagine you have an object, a cube, and you animated the position (location) of that cube. So you have, for exemple, 4 keyframes:

Frame zero: 0,0,0
Frame five: 0,5,5
Frame ten: 5,10,5
Frame fifteen: 5,10,10

After you set the keyframes you realized you needed the cube to start not at 0,0,0, but some other location (like 100,100,100). But you still want the animation to play the same relative to the initial location, regardless of where that initial location is.
In 3ds Max, you just turn off auto-keyframing, and then you can simply move the cube to the new starting location and the animation will update relative to the change you made, without setting any new keyframes. So, with auto-keyframing turned off, you go to frame zero and move your cube to the desired starting location, for exemple 100,100,100.
Then the animation will be:

Frame zero: 100,100,100
Frame five: 100,105,105
Frame ten: 105,110,105
Frame fifteen: 105,110,110

The animation keeps exactly the same, but offset by the change you made when auto-keyframing was off.
As you all know, Blender doesn't work that way: if you try to move an animated object with auto-keyframing turned off and you don't set the keyframe, the change just doesn't 'take' and the object's location reverts back to where it was in the animation. If you set the keyframe, the location will be update only in that keyframe, but other keyframes won't be updated relative to this new location.
I know I can parent the cube to an empty and move the empty, and that works for a simple animation such as the one I described, but now imagine the cube is actually a bone in a complex bone chain, and you are animating the rotation instead of the location. It's already parented to other bones, and parenting it to something else will break the armature.
So that's the question: is there a way to make a single change that 'offsets' the values of all the keyframes in the animation?

Let's start with a simple animation.

With the Delta Transforms
I think this would be the preferred way to do it since it is pretty straightforward.
Head in to the object properties and expand the Delta Transforms panel. There you can add an additional transform that will be added to the animation.

Note the Delta Transforms can also be animated.
With the graph editor :
Hide all the channel you want don't want to offset. Select the channels you want to offset with A while hovering over the curves.

Now type G, Y, 100 and Enter to validate. This will grab (G) the curves, and move them uniformly along the Y axis (the actual transforms values) by 100 units.
Note that if you press G, X and a value this will offset the keyframes along the time axis.
You can also access the Grab tool by going Key > Transform > Move


How can i exclude rendering an enviroment texture in cycles but keeping all the other settings? How can i exclude rendering an enviroment texture in Cycles but keeping all the lighting and reflections that i get from it? like, rendering with the background, but make it black (not transparent)

Already tried to render it as PNG Transparent and then in After Effects add a black background, but what i want is to directly render it on JPEG format with black background to save render time.

Finally what it worked was:

Unchecking the 'Transparent' option before anything
Checking 'Use Enviroment' at the Scene Tab
Most importantly, in the World Tab, uncheck 'Camera'

So with those options the objects will be affected with the background but the background itself will not appear as part of the render.


Distorted UV unwrap issue I am trying to UV unwrap a model of a tank I am creating. I am having an issue trying to unwrap the tank body. It is basically a box with a curved front and back. I am trying to do a seamless texture all the way around, so I split the body in half so that I could unwrap it, then duplicate it and flip it so the UV coordinates are mirrored. When I press 'u' and select "Unwrap," I get the following result:

As you can see, it's a continuous row of quads with two open ends, so I see no reason why it shouldn't unwrap in a more straightforward fashion. I looked around for solutions already. I tried applying the scale, which made no difference. I tried resetting the UVs from the 'u' menu, then unwrapping again, but that still resulted in distortion. I already removed doubles. I would set up some seams, but given the shape I have I don't see how that would help at all. Maybe if I re-created the geometry it would work, but then I don't understand how it would get stuck in this state.

How can I unwrap this so that each face keeps the correct proportions and the edges are aligned to X and Y in the UV editor?

Here is the blender file if that helps: simple tank (unwrapped).blend

Thanks.

You have pinned vertices. Here are two images which describe how to fix the issue.


Seamless animation loop of procedural textures I have a Voronoi Texture node and I want to animate a seamless loop of it moving around the mesh (last frame connect seamless with the first frame).

I set a keyframe in the Location parameter of a Mapping Node at frame 1. Then I change and keyframe Z to 1 at frame 30. But the result isn't seamless.

How can I make this texture move so the end connects with the start?

A procedural texture can be made to appear continuous, repeating and seamless by blending with another section of itselfto hide the 'seam'.

Final result :

This can be achieved with the following nodes :

Note the nodes marked in Cyan which can be used to animate/adjust the texture to get pleasing results (to make the transition unnoticeable).

The first (Value) node allows the Z coordinate to be animated. The texture will be repeated every 1.0 unit (in this case it's using Generated texture coordinates and the blending occurs in the Z direction) by way of the Modulo function - use the Scale and an optional Mapping node to affect how big a section is repeated.

The Offset input node can be used to adjust which alternative section of Voronoi to use to blend over the seam - adjust this to choose a suitable section of texture that is as similar as possible to help hide the transition. The Scale of the Voronoi can be adjusted with the Scale input value.

The amount of blending between the textures can be adjusted via the Color Ramp node - moving the Black and White points closer or further apart will vary the sharpness of the blend between the textures.

Note that you can add a Mapping node immediately after the Texture Coordinate node and vary the scale to change the spacing of the repeat. Similarly, this same method would work with other textures such as Noise, Musgrave, Images, etc. - however, very regular textures (such as Brick, Checker, etc.) will likely produce noticable artifacts - this method works best with fairly 'organic' textures. Equally, you could use an Image Texture if desired.

Note also that since this is produced using standard nodes it will still be able to be rendered using GPU (not possible with OSL).

Blending between the textures occurs based on a Cosine function which is carefully scaled (note the Multiply nodes set to 2*pi) to be at a maximum (1.0) at the seam of one texture (at 0.0 and 1.0) and a minimum (0.0) at the seam of the other (which is offset so its seam occurs at 0.5). By mixing between the two textures in this way, the seam is always invisible.

Blend file included


How do I fix this irregular shading on my subsurf retopology attempt? So I am retopologizing an elbow on an arm mesh, but there is this strange vertex that just sticks out of the mesh whenever I use a 2-level subsurf modifier with smooth shading. Here are some photos:

Vertex is in dead center of elbow:

The mesh with the vertex highlighted:

Is there a quick way to make this stubborn vertex conform with the rest of the arm, or do I have to just sit and continue to rearrange my mesh?

you have nGons which tends to cause problems for both sub-division modifiers, animations and texture baking.

For hard-surface/mechanical type models, you can use tris/nGons on flat areas so long as the transitions to curved areas are all bordered with quad based geometry.  Note this will still make some of the selection tools less effective.

The following chart shows many ways of redirecting polygon flow so you can keep an all-quads mesh that has clean lines that will still work well with various modeling tools.

Credits: The authors name can be seen at the bottom of the image.

I have found half a dozen charts like this so you might want to do some more digging using keywords such as "polygon flow" "quad modeling" as the basis for an image search.


Making eyes in characters I am making an animal and I would to know if the eyes is in include in same object or is two objects that we have to parent it.

It doesn't matter either way. If they are parented to the same armature, they can either be left separate or you can join them to the main mesh. The eye vertices need to be weighted properly, only to the eye bones.


Slow Viewport in Big Scene I recently am working on a scene in Blender Cycles which has a relatively great number of objects. Some are more detailed and need more subdivide but the small objects are all just subdivided once.
So the problem is that my blender gets slow when I move the camera in the viewport.
In 3ds Max you can choose objects that you dont need to look at right now and select "Show them as box", which will let them be displayed as a wireframe box and therefore wont stress the scene that much.

My question is if there is a function like that in Blender? (exept hiding objects)

And do you have tips on working on bigger scenes in blender too keep it fast? For example I have a lot of chopsticks in my scene. Should I merge them together to 1 object instead of individual objects and then just give them different materials?

thanks in advance :)

you can change how your object is drawn by changing the "Draw Type" in Properties panel -> object -> display.

To my experience, less objects you have in your scene better blender run, so it's a good idea to merge them in 1 object.


How can I hide object only from one 3d view I am trying to hide object while animating it. But I have two view mode screen and I want one of them not be showing everyting including object. How can I do that?

Switch to local view in the view where you just want to show the current selected object. That way just the selected object is visible in this view. The item can be found in the View menu.


Why are lamps and mesh lights not illuminating anything? There are several techniques to do a 3 point lighting system.

How do you properly light a scene while using mesh planes as emission light sources?

I'm following this tutorial, however despite setting up planes to act a lighting sources, the scene is still very dark.

Actual Blender file here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/460997/clock%20copy.blend

In your file, Clamp direct  and Clamp indirect have both been set to .03 in Render settings > Sampling.

This is forcing all the samples to return a value less than or equal to .03, which results in the apparent lack of light.

Set them both to zero to disable clamping:

Then it should work as expected:


How do I change the frame rate when working in 2d animation? How do I change the frame rate when working in 2d animation?
I have a feeling there’s a simple solution to my problem.

The framerate for all projects in blender is set in the Properties window >  Output > Dimensions > Frame Rate


Subdivide vs subdivision modifier This is based on Grant Abbitt's beginner tutorials. One of the things I needed to do was inset a square to make a circle. So originally it had 8 vertices, but then after extruding it inwards, I face selected only the circle, and went under Edge->Subdivide.

Clearly, it looks wrong, and even after applying the subdivision modifer, it still has an uneven surface.

After that I followed the tutorial and did it the right way. Instead of applying subdivide over this circle, I used subdivision modifier on the whole object directly and obtained the right shape.

May I ask why? Is it because edge->subdivide is a simple subdivision(non catmull-clark)? So after I use the edge->subdivision on my original(wrong) circle, further use of the subdivision modifier wouldn't make the circle even. Because the simple edge subdivisions have already led to the wrong topology, so catmull-clark's interpolations will not help.
Just want to see if my understanding is correct.

When subdividing only the vertices inside the circle, you created N-Gons. That means that some of your faces had more (or maybe less) than 4 vertices.

As you have guessed, the catmull-clark interpolation for subidivison does not work well with n-gons and can produce a messy result.

There are multiple ways to locally add some finer details when using a subdivision surface modifier but the one you used will produce a bad shading if you do not retopologize the area to avoid n-gons.


Considerations for using .blend files between operating systems I'm creating a (fully packed) .blend file that contains textures, cycles materials, UV maps, multiple scenes, rigging, and fluid simulations. The OS I am working on to create it is Windows. However, I must send this file to Blender (same version, 2.66) on Linux. I plan to rebake the fluid on that machine. What considerations must I take with the names, content, etc of packed files and .blend data?

The only major one I think are path names, if you had anything linked into a non packed .blend, you would have to double check and make sure that the paths to files were relative (If they are in folders near or with the .blend that is).

You can do this simply by going to External Data > Make All Paths Relative

OR

This can be avoided by just packing the file.

Also, to further understand why this is important

A full path or absolute path is a path that points to the same location on one file system regardless of the working directory or combined paths. It is usually written in reference to a root directory.
A relative path is a path relative to the working directory of the user or application, so the full absolute path will not have to be given.

Update: thanks to jesterKing and ideasman42 in the comments for pointing these out.

Windows uses case-insensitive filenames, mostly this isnt a problem because blender will use the case from the filename you select, but if you rename a file or directory (and only change the case) after this is already referenced from blender, you could then run into the problem where windows will resolve the path but loading the project on Linux/OSX (any non windows system) will fail. You might be best off to avoid this by using all lowercase names.
For linked and non-packed blends, make sure you have as many of your relative paths preferably under your main .blend file. Especially for Windows users: don't put resources (textures, sound) on different drives compared to your .blend files.
Quicktime support isn't available on Windows or Linux, so these can't read image/video formats supported by Quicktime.


How to view the python command triggered when an action happens in 2.8? In Blender 2.7 you could drag down the info area and view all the python commands that are being executing when you run an action.

How can you do the same with Blender 2.8+?

Sure. Just go to any window (I use the timeline so long as I'm not animating), and select "info" as the editor type.

The information should appear as you expect.


Rotating texture in node mapping make texture gone after rotate more than 90° I am rather new on blender, in this case i was making an eyeball
i want to combine transparent and glossy shader and in the last step i need to rotate the texture to make the transparent side facing front/ the iris but whenever i try to rotate the texture using node mapping color ramp in y axis,
my texture gone when i rotate it after a certain degree its like having a wrong rotation pivot or something and make me unable to rotate the transparent side reaching the front
here is the screenshot :

blend file : http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52047

Thankyou and sorry if my explanation isnt clear enough

I think you should rather try with the Texture Coordinate "Object" output, it looks much more controllable than Generated. Here for the manual explanation. Also don't forget to apply the rotation and scale of your object if you want the object axis to be aligned on the global (ctrlA).


How to Update Blender I want to update to 2.8, and it looks like I just have to download that version. Will i have to delete my old version or will it automatically replace it?

Windows 7 here, and I use a desktop shortcut; You can download it, unzip to inside your "Blender Foundation" folder in Program Files, it shouldn't delete the other versions.  You will have to make a new shortcut on the desktop for the new version.  Then you can delete the Zip file, or keep it.


Selecting part of a object for the UV map I have selected the middle part of a sphere, as you can see in the picture. In the uv editor my result is now a beautiful square map.

I would like to keep this uv map result, and now select the whole sphere, without the uvmap changing, and use only that edited square uv map for the all selected sphere.

You can unwrap the selected portion, like you have in your image while leaving all the rest of the UVs untouched.

Starting with the UV layout you have in your bottom picture, in the UV editor, press P to pin the UVs. That will keep them in that layout, but only for the UV unwrap operation. All the other operations will ignore the pins if you have the entire sphere selected.

In this picture I first unwrapped the middle part of the sphere using Follow Active Quads (the pinned rectangular UVs), then one at a time selected the top and bottom and unwrapped with Project From View.

Thus what you can do is when you UV wrap the sphere only select the pieces you want want unwrapped, leaving all the previously unwrapped sections deselected.


Cycles render get overexposed last second I am rendering in view port and render is ok. but when i do final render it gets overexposed.

I am using image based lighting. I think there might be a node issue.

]1

Check out if you have the same setup or you have some extra nodes in there! i think those nodes are being processed after the render is done and changing your render


Rename selected collections and objects I would like to rename every collection and object I currently have selected.

Code:
import bpy

selection = bpy.context.selected_objects
for x in selection:
    x.name = 'test_' + x.name
    x.data.name = 'test_' + x.data.name

But the variable selection does not have any collections in it.

Only renames active collection and selected objects:
import bpy
def testFunction():
    selection = bpy.context.selected_objects
    for x in selection:
        x.name = 'test_' + x.name
        x.data.name = 'test_' + x.data.name
    collection = bpy.context.view_layer.active_layer_collection.collection
    if collection.name == 'Master Collection':
        return
    collection.name = 'test_' + collection.name

if __name__ == '__main__':
    testFunction()


Jittering location in animation I'm trying to jitter an object's location during an animation, and be able to control the strength of the hitter. I tried keyframing the strength of a noise f-curve modifier, which doesn't work:

Failed to resolve path to property, try manually specifying this using a Keying Set instead

Is there a good way to jitter the location of an object, and change the strength of the jitter throughout the animation?

In this test scene:

the empty has the original animation
the cube copies the empty animation and adds some random value
the amplitude of the random value is controlled by cube property :

this is the driver of the X_loc of the cube :

this is the animation while changing the cube property :


RIGGING in 2.79b ~ IK handles cause hands/feet to detatch from the body, alternatives? (Foot rigging) I've followed a couple of tutorials to learn how to rig my flying humanoid character.
Both of them tell me to unparent feet/hands bones and parent them to added bones that will work as IK handles.

GOOD: this allows me to rotate feet/hands freely while also driving legs/arms IK chains.

BAD: whenever I move the IK handles beyond legs/arms' maximum extension, the feet/hands' bones and mesh follow the IK handle resulting in a stretched mesh.
(See screenshot from one of the aforementioned tutorials)

This is unacceptable.

Alternatives?

Parent the foot to the IK controller (therefore now it's unparented from the lowerleg, as explained in your tutorials).

Give your lowerleg a IK constraint with the controller as Target:

Now to make sure that the foot sticks to the lowerleg, give the foot a Copy Location constraint, with the lowerleg as Target, a Head/Tail value of 1, and a Space setting > World Space / World Space.

file here:


What are the technical differences between F12 render and viewport preview? What are the technical differences between F12 render and viewport preview render, if any?

This is all the documentation I could find about Cycles viewport rendering:

  interactive rendering can be started by setting a 3D view editor to draw mode Rendered. The render will keep updating as material and object modifications are done.

The differences between render operator and viewport render are that the viewport render has:

Blender Internal

No motion blur (sampled)
No panorama camera mode
No anti-aliasing

Eevee

Uses the Viewport sampling setting
No Overscan (see Objects, shadows and reflections not rendering in EEVEE)
Unlike Cycles, motion blur is previewed (only in camera view)

Cycles

No motion blur
No tiled rendering.
Uses preview progressive samples setting.
Render layer settings will be ignored.
Pause and resume
Uses dynamic BVH by default.See Why is rendered viewport faster than rendering individual frames? and What does static/dynamic BVH do?

All

No compositing.
Modifiers and objects preview settings are used:

Object render/preview visibility options.
modifier render/preview visibility options.
subsurf preview/render resolution.
multires preview/render resolution.
curve/metaball preview/render resolution

Particle display percentage is used.
A preview can be made from any view-port, a render can only be made from a camera object.
No way to save output (except for a screenshot).

Note: I'm not sure if this list is complete, these may not be the only differences.


How to see python symbolic names of objects on cursor hover of menu items in Blender 2.8 in Blender 2.79 one could hover over a UI element and see the symbolic python name of said element. How would one accomplish the same with Blender >= 2.8?

Python Tooltips needs to be enabled in Edit > Preferences > Interface.