An Issue with Normals and SubDivison A visible seam is observable during SubD operations on a boolean cut.
Prior to applying the Boolean I created supporting edge loops which are not approximately* in line, they are exactly* in line, ie. mesh topology looks so good it brings a tear to the eye.
Despite this, for the past 2 weeks this issue persists. Weighted normals and proximity loops help the overall shape, but only minimize this particular effect. A blend file should be attached. Picture illustrates issues.

Is anyone able to identify this issue, and what the solution is?

Merge by distance M>B and change the threshold until you've removed enough vertices to minimize the seam.
Then add an edge loop to support the geometry in front of that area.
See the gif below for a visual:

Note that this will fix the issue for now, but in the future, you should consider better topology, and not strictly rely on booleans for modeling.
topology guides is a good resource to begin with, and there are many questions here on the site that will lead in the right direction also.


How to tile textures in Blender 2.8? I'm using Blender 2.8, and the way to make materials that with tiling seems to have been changed? When I resize the UV map, everything outside the image gets black. Is this a bug or a new, smart feature...?

Ah, solved it myself. :)

(Note: Why is this set to "Clip" and not "Repeat" by default in 2.8?)


Align internal parts of several meshes to the exact same "height", for 3d printing My plan is to 3d print a giant scaled up version of the bones of a hand, complete with ligaments, tendons, and magnetic attachments.
Lets say I've embedded "holes" for magnets inside of the meshes I would like to print, and lets say I've finished positioning them where they should be in the bones, etc.. etc..  like so:

Now, when I go to 3d print it, I'm hopefully going to print several bones at the same time, and when the printer gets to a certain height where I can access the holes to put magnets in, it will pause and wait for me to put in the magnets.  Because of that, ideally all of the holes are at the exact same height (from the build tray, so the same z height in blender I guess), so I only have to pause once.  Is there a way I can select all of the "holes" from several of the bones and snap them all to some imaginary z plane?  This would rotate each bone in a different way so that the "holes" all ended up at the same plane.  Does that make sense?
Not perfect because I did it manually and eyeballed it, but this is kinda what I have in mind:

It's certainly an awkward task, but doable if I understand the situation correctly.
In short I would develop an alignment mechanism with an armature:

Snapping the head and tail of corresponding armature bones to each hole of a bone model.
Parent each bone model to it's respective armature bone.
Duplicate another armature bone per existing armature bone to serve as a target for a damped track bone constraint.
Enable "affect only locations" in the viewport and scale all of your bones in Pose mode to zero in the z-axis.

Here's a brief video of the process.


Navigate through an animation with a single key I'm using the game engine of blender and I would like to be able to use the same key to incrementally trigger different animation part. For example, pressing the right arrow one time should play frame 1 to 60 for a given object animation and if pressed a second time it should play frame 61 to 120... (And so on) Any Idea how I could achieve that ?

Thanks

Philip

Here is the code I made to solve my problem. I'm using two keyboard sensors (could have used only one set to all keys but I'm n00b in Python and Blender so...) and a game property "counter".

import bge, GameLogic
cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
scene = GameLogic.getCurrentScene()
#slideNumberDisplay=scene.objects['Text']
obj = cont.owner
nextAction = cont.sensors['Next']
previousAction = cont.sensors['Previous']

def navigate( direction ):
    if direction == 'next':
        startFrame = (obj['counter'] * 40) + 1
        obj['counter'] = obj['counter'] + 1
        endFrame = obj['counter'] * 40
    elif direction == 'previous':
        endFrame = ((obj['counter'] - 1) * 40) + 1
        startFrame = obj['counter'] * 40
        obj['counter'] = obj['counter'] - 1
    #slideNumberDisplay['Text'] = obj['counter']
    obj.playAction("PresentationAction", startFrame, endFrame, 0, 1, 1.0, bge.logic.KX_ACTION_MODE_PLAY, 0.0, 0, 1.0)
    return;

if nextAction.positive:
    print(nextAction.key)
    navigate('next')

elif previousAction.positive:
    print(previousAction.key)
    navigate('previous')

This can be done relatively easily with a logic setup similar to this:

Here the only game property we will need is an Integer property. It is named Animation, but you could name it anything you want.
The Actuator sensors are triggered when a certain action is being executed, by inverting the output, it will only activate when the action has finished extincting. This means that, after you press ➔ and Animation is equal to 1, frames 0-60 of your animation will play. When the animation has played up to frame 60, the first actuator sensor will trigger, increasing Animation by one, so the next time you press ➔, the next animation will play. The same thing will happen for frames 61-120, and frames 121-180, Except that, on frame 180, Animation is assigned increased from 3 to 4, and the set to 1 again so the animation can loop again. You could have as many Play actuators as you want before you loop the animation, but it was easiest to do three for this example.
(we need to test it)

It Works - YaY!!
of course, if you don't feel like re making that yourself, you can always take apart/play with/modify the blend file. :-)


Can textures be rotated? I'm using textures in the compositor. Is it possible to rotate these textures?

The rotate node doesn't work, due to cropping of the corners. What I actually need is to rotate the whole coordinate space.

Seems like the boundaries of the texture are determined by the render dimensions.  A work around is playing with the Texture Scale for the texture along with the Scale on a Transform node.


How to Make Multi User Objects Single User? I duplicated a few objects with Alt+D and now I want to apply some modifiers to them, however I can't, because they are multi-user objects.

I tried U > Objects but I still can't apply the modifier.

How to make multi user objects single user?

Press U > Objects and Data. Then apply your modifier. Using just Object will make the object a new, separate datablock for the mesh (but will ignore modifiers). However, using Object and Data will make both the objects mesh and it's modifiers a new, separate datablock.


Control speed on track path with locked track I have this scene with a camera moving on a bezier curve (Track path), maintaining a lock on an object (locked track), and it works pretty well!

Now the problem is, the camera starts and stopd abruptly, always mainting the same speed, I want to change this by adding some keyframe and doing some curves on the speed values.

No luck at all! Is there a way I can modify it's speed and acceleration values?

I have tried instead of parenting the track path, creating a constraint like this:

But everything seems to break for some reason. And even if it wouldn't break, I am not sure if this way I would be able to modify it's speed/acceleration values!

Trully appreciate some help here!

Ok so this was quite simple, to create keyframes in the track path parent, as the error stated, I had to remove the F modifier.

Creating the constraint kept breaking everything for me, no idea how to fix that, but I got this working now... Happy times!


Applying the weight to the mesh, but it shrinks when I rotate up It looks perfect right now.  But when I rotate it, it shrinks. Am I applying to much weight to the previous bone when I link them up for the hair to shrink?  the bones are not fallowing the mesh when I applied the weight. Only slightly. Why?

Looks like the hair vertices (which i suppose correctly weighted to the two rotated hair bones) are weighted also to some body bones.
To remove thoose unwanted weights enter edit mode, select all hair vertices, select all the body vertex groups (one by one) and click "remove" after every selection.

If this doesn't solver the problem, please upload your file.


Real depth of field in blender, without post processing Last time I checked, blender could only render depth of field effects in a post process pass, using the "Defocus Node", which seemed to get it quite wrong.

Is there now a way to include rays across a lens during tracing and produce a more realistic depth of field?

With the Cycles Renderer, DoF is supported natively. Select the camera, switch to the Camera properties panel, and set up DoF.


Remesh modifier with keyed physics So I'm trying to morph between three objects: Object A, Object B, Object C. Object is a UV sphere while B and C are meshes created from text. The animation is supposed to start from sphere to Object B. So I've applied keyed physics on Object B which starts from the sphere to Object B. The second morph is from object B to C so I've applied keyed physics on C so that as B disappears C appears from C. The issue B is not seen since it immediately starts morphing to C. Changing the lifetime of the particles doesn't work because it also affects the duration of movement from A to C. When I tried to use the timing settings in the keyed panel, it doesn't affect the remesh modifier on the text. Both object B and C have the explode modifier so that text breaks nicely as they morph. Is there any way to add duration to object so that object stays for a while before it starts breaking into C?

particles for B:
start : 215
stop: 265
lifetime: 100

particles for C:
start : 315
stop: 365
lifetime: 100

Modifiers for B: Remesh, explode (alive checked)
Modifiers for C: Remesh, explode (alive, dead checked)

So i figured out how to do it. The keyed physics has a checkbox marked use timing. Once that is checked to sliders are enabled. Adjusting the time slider sets how long the particles will move. By setting it to a value of around, the particles move for 40 frames leaving 60 frames for the display of the object. So in my situation. I had to set the time for object B and it worked.
For a more detailed explanation check this tutorial.


Python: is it possible to import another text block? Is import another_blender_text_block possible in Blender with Python?

Yes it is possible. Name your text block (with .py on the end, otherwise you can't import it). You can import a text block using the text block's name without it's extension:

import mypythonfile

Then to run a function use:

mypythonfile.functionname()


cant select any object in blender (not even in a new file) I don't remember everything I did, but I do remember trying to delete my lamp and I couldn't select it. I tried moving an object around on the map but I couldn't even select it. the A key still select everything. I can still move things around when an object is already selected. so what I did is I gave up on that project and created a new one. I deleted the cube and added a plane. I went to edit mode and tried deleting the vertices. I couldn't even select it. does anyone know what I did or whats going on? I'm using Vr. 2.78.

sounds like a strange keybind or something.  Maybe restore to defaults and try again w/ a new project?


Read the contents of a Text Datablock Writing into a text datablock can be done with the script

text = bpy.data.texts[name]
text.write(something)

However, when I used the script text.read, an error appeared.

Question: How do I read the content in a text datablock with a script?

I have never needed to work with text blocks so I have no idea yet. Let's find out.

If you press Tab after writing something in the Python Console, you can see all the available options from auto complete like this:

We can see that it is possible to access lines text.lines so if we want to read the 4th line for example we carry on with auto complete:

and see that it has body, that's probably the thing we need here then:

It's a string. That's it.


Problem with bézier curve changing to mesh I tried to make a pawn from a reference image with the bézier curve and when I converted it to a mesh object and spun it, there is this unwanted edge running down the middle.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

When you spin 360°, start and end point do not get joined automatically. So what you have are two sets of vertices sitting pretty exactly on top of each other. That won't show with solid shading (without a subsurf), but as you see, with smooth shading, it does.

The left cylinder is clean and you can see the highlighted edges on both sides while the right cylinder shows problems by only having the right half of the edges selected.

The remedy is to select the doubled verts (or all of your mesh if there are no necessary doubles somewhere) and hit W4, remove doubles. All the verts that are closer than the tool's threshold will get merged into one.

On occasion it's also necessary to recalculate the normals by selecting everything and hitting CTRLN.


Second image is cropping the backplate! Hello my fellow blenders.
I was playing around with adding decals with the shader editor/nodes but I stumbled upon a problem where the mask of the 2. image is also masking everything outside the image. How can I change that?

The tagged texture is alpha and black if outside the texture, using clipping in the image texture node.
You can use this alpha channel this way so that the fac value stays 0 when outside of the texture:


How to get the image textures around for eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows when exporting a human model from MakeHuman I have been struggling with this simple but naughty problem since a while now. I can do good things in Blender, but I miss simple knowledge, so I'm sure someone can help easily.

Once I have exported a .mhx model from MakeHuman into blender, the textures are not ready for cycles. I can quite easily add the skin by just following these simple steps:

In Object Mode, select the body, go in Material > Surface and click "Use Nodes"
Replace "Color" with "Image Texture"
Select "Young_light...diffuse.png" or whatever the default image is.

Everything works and goes on as planned:

But when I repeat the same steps for the eyebrows, eyes, and eyelashes, everything turns black instead of using the image texture. Arrg! I tried Ctrl + N to invert the normals, but that doesn't fix anything. The same problem persists in Cycles view. Would anyone please help me here? Thx!

I had the same problem for a while but solved all 3... I hope the following helps you...

as you can see this is the end result...

The first thing to do is to select each object and make sure the UV's are aligned correctly...

To do this, split the 3D view (I assume you know how to do this) and change the new panel into a UV/image editor, then, select the eyes and with your mouse cursor over the 3D view port, tab into edit mode and press "A" to select all verts...

If you don't see them appear in the UV window then you need to unwrap them (You can find the Unwrap command in the tool shelf of the 3D view port).

I tend to unwrap them anyway just to make sure blender registers the UV maps.

If you do this then I found you will need to re-align the UV's manually so keep that in mind.

You should see them appear in the UV/image editor.

Once you have them aligned go to the UV/image editor panel, look at the bottom edge, just passed the menu options you should see a place to load or link an image.

Click the small page with an image icon to link existing images or load the image texture from wherever it is saved on the disk.

It should already be aligned. Tab out of edit mode and you should be done with the eyes.

Do the same for the eyelashes and eyebrows.

Okay so that's step one out of the way, onto step two...

the same nodes work for all 3 Objects(eyes, brows and lashes), they are as follows;

All you need to do is change the textures it uses for each one...

Please vote this up if it helped because it would lift some of the restrictions I have, so I can help others out...

Thank you everyone!

P.S. I have only got this to work with cycles renderer, as of yet I have not got this working with the Blender render engine but am determined and am working hard at it!


Track cause of slow render I've started using the branched path tracing and like the results, however I'm unable to figure out what the proper settings should be that result in a compromise between a faster render and good results.

Is there any way to track, on a given render, how long each type of sample is taking? (diffuse, glossy, transmission, AO, etc...) If I knew this information I could dial settings down until I find what seems to be a good compromise.

I feel like I'm using higher samples than necessary but every scene is different and will have different "optimal" settings and thus some way (other than trial and error) seems warranted.

Thanks!

So I figured out how to make it myself and folks can find the script here:

Code on pastebin

If you have a very simple scene then you might get some wonky results, as this calculates based on render duration and every single time you render a frame (even the same frame), you'll get different times. The best use for this is on a semi-complex scene so that the various samples (diffuse, transmission, etc.) really get to take effect and modify the total render time.


What does {'INTERFACE'} mean when returned from `invoke`, `modal` or `execute`? In version 2.72 a new return value for invoke, modal and execute got introduced: {'INTERFACE'}- It is documented as

  INTERFACE Interface, Handled but not executed (popup menus).

What does this actually mean when comparing the Operator's control flow to that of returning one of the other values?

The 'INTERFACE' operator return value is used to indicate where an operator has successfully completed by opening a menu or other UI component.

The comment in the source code for the operator return types states that it is:

/* "used for operators that act indirectly (eg. popup menu)" */
/* "note: this isn't great design (using operators to trigger UI) avoid where possible." */

  Source: source/blender/makesdna/DNA_windowmanager_types.h

This new return type was added during Commit - Fix T41041: "'Delete keyframe' removes markers too"

Reason for commit update was:

  "Operators that trigger UI events (but nothing else)
  were using 'CANCELLED' making it impossible to tell if an invoke
  function failed, or opened a menu."


move / reorder UIList items don't work I'm using the template of UIList in this answer

but the code to move up or down the items in the UIList don't work... do you know the reason?

# ui list item actions
class Uilist_actions(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "custom.list_action"
    bl_label = "List Action"

    action = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(
            ('UP', "Up", ""),
            ('DOWN', "Down", ""),
            ('REMOVE', "Remove", ""),
            ('ADD', "Add", ""),
        )
    )

    def invoke(self, context, event):

        scn = context.scene
        idx = scn.custom_index

        try:
            item = scn.custom[idx]
        except IndexError:
            pass

        else:
            if self.action == 'DOWN' and idx < len(scn.custom) - 1:
                item_next = scn.custom[idx+1].name
                scn.custom_index += 1
                info = 'Item %d selected' % (scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'UP' and idx >= 1:
                item_prev = scn.custom[idx-1].name
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                info = 'Item %d selected' % (scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'REMOVE':
                info = 'Item %s removed from list' % (scn.custom[scn.custom_index].name)
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)
                scn.custom.remove(idx)

        if self.action == 'ADD':
            item = scn.custom.add()
            item.id = len(scn.custom)
            item.name = get_activeSceneObject() # assign name of selected object
            scn.custom_index = (len(scn.custom)-1)
            info = '%s added to list' % (item.name)
            self.report({'INFO'}, info)

        return {"FINISHED"}

Use CollectionProperty.move()

The code to move the collection property items is missing. scene.custom.move(0, 1) will swap items with indices 0 and 1.

        if self.action == 'DOWN' and idx < len(scn.custom) - 1:
            item_next = scn.custom[idx+1].name
            scn.custom.move(idx, idx + 1)
            scn.custom_index += 1
            info = 'Item %d selected' % (scn.custom_index + 1)
            self.report({'INFO'}, info)

        elif self.action == 'UP' and idx >= 1:
            item_prev = scn.custom[idx-1].name
            scn.custom.move(idx, idx-1)
            scn.custom_index -= 1
            info = 'Item %d selected' % (scn.custom_index + 1)
            self.report({'INFO'}, info)


How to transfer shaders? I have downloaded a metal node setup from Chocofur.com and when I open their blend file, I can access all their nodes. However when I try to copy paste them into my file, it does not work. How can I get their node setup to mine?

One way is to assign the material to an object (i.e. the default cube), then save the origin file, open the new file and choose "file - append - choose the chocofur file, object (not "mesh"), cube: the cube will be imported with all its attributes, with its material node tree.

Another is select all the nodes, Ctrl G make group, rename the group, save, open the new file and append the node group.


How to have a clean flat surface after boolean modifier for adding materials I've got a cylinder that I've cut up into different sections from using a boolean modifier, when I go into edit mode to add my textures/ UV images onto the surfaces I have lines/ edges going across the surfaces.

So if I try getting rid of them it affects the surface of the shape and then it is no longer flat, it completely morphs the shape. Is there any way of going about this differently?

You can select some or all faces, then X > Limited Dissolve, to make ngons, so that flat surfaces will get merged/simplified.

Additional options such as Max Angle can be set by pressing F6.


Retopologize mesh to achieve uniform face size I am trying to use Blender to remesh a vtk/stl file to create uniform face size- I have failed using paraview, meshlab and MIRTK tools- all result in substantial errors on remeshing!

I am very new to Blender, and the answer may be obvious. Is there a way to achieve a uniform remeshing?mesh of left atrium

Detail flood fill

An useful tool for lower the difference in faces resolution along a surface (expecially if you are working with tris) could be the Detail Flood Fill options available in Constant detail  mode whyle you are sculpting with Dynotopo enabled.

From the manual's page:

  When using Constant Detail mode, this option is made available, allowing you to fill the entire object with a uniform detail, based on the detail size.

With the eyedropper you can pick the target resolution (something between high and low in the image sequence above), then the operator will decimate the areas that are more subdivided and subdivide the areas with lower face resolution while tying to keep the overall surface profile untouched.


I need help organizing and setting up textures and shaders on my mesh, how do I know which texture map is which? I am new to blender and texturing, basically new at everything. I have been trying to understand these concepts in a practical way. So I downloaded a head mesh and its texture maps but I really don't understand how to use each map and identifying which is which.
I tried to plug the shaders as best as I could but I still think there is something wrong.

Blender file with textures packed in
I would greatly appreciate your help!
The reason I separated the second texture map into RBG is because I read it was channel packed and I didn´t know how to use it any other way. I still don't know where to plug the other texture maps

Here, try a setup like this. I think this is closer to what you're looking for (although I don't know what the end result is supposed to look like).

The texture you're using for your "normal map" seems to have most of (if not all) the useful information in the red channel, thus that's what I used. The data contained isn't sufficient for the use of a Normal Map node, but the B&W data can be used for a Bump Node.  I don't think I need the RGB to BW node, but I wanted to be sure for the bump to be as accurate as possible. As you can see, I had to soften it greatly by mixing it with white before it became anywhere close to realistic (unless the person in the model has really bad skin).
I took the same channel and inverted it to form the basis for the roughness, but had to mix it slightly with white to "even it out" - otherwise the face had distinct "oily-looking patches" that didn't quite match the sheen of a real face. Oh, and a face has no need for metallic values (unless there are piercings, glasses frames, chains, earrings, shrapnel, etc...), so I removed the input.
Lastly, I plugged the BaseColor (minus the Ambient Occlusion) into the Subsurface Color, and increased the strength a bit to make the model look less plastic. On the topic of Ambient Occlusion, don't forget you have to turn it on by checking the box in the render properties panel first, for it to have the proper effect.
This may not be perfect, but I hope it at least gets you closer.
NOTE - upon further inspection, the green channel of the second image texture seems to be an Ambient Occlusion map. You can either use it as color the input for the Ambient Occlusion Node, or just use the one we created from the heightmap (they are both very similar). The Blue channel contains pure black, so I assume it was meant for the Metallic input (0 value). You can connect it or just leave the input blank with the value at 0.


Translate area mouse coordinates to the the Node Editor's blackboard coordinates? I'm trying to to add a node from a custom made panel which pops from a pie menu. And I want the node to appear at my mouse's location (see bpy.context.active_node.location below).
The problem is that 'mouse_region_x' and 'mouse_region_y' give me the x and y mouse coordinates according to the area's size. And as its size may vary, this would give me, each time, a different offset from the cursor when the node is placed. I want my mouse's coordinates of the Node Editor area to be translated to the Node Editor's "internal" blackboard coordinates.
    e = get_event()

    if context.material != None:
        bpy.ops.node.add_node(
            type="ShaderNodeGroup",
            use_transform=True,
            settings=[{"name":"node_tree", "value": "bpy.data.node_groups[\"%s\"]" % node_group_datablock_name}]
            )
        bpy.context.active_node.location = Vector((e.mouse_region_x, e.mouse_region_y)) # Need the coordinates here.

Any idea how to achieve this?
Thanks.

this'll solve it for you:
def invoke(self, context, event):
    region = context.region.view2d
    ui_scale = context.preferences.system.ui_scale
    x, y = region.region_to_view(event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y)
    self.x,self.y = x /ui_scale,y/ui_scale
    return self.execute(context)

Then when you want to use it:
def execute(self,context):
    new_node.location.x = self.x
    new_node.location.y = self.y

    return {'FINISHED'}


How to texture specific faces/objects I'm modelling a courtroom for an assignment, and I'm happy with it so far, although I feel like adding textures to finish it off.
The problem is - I have no idea how to texture the thing. I have alot of things, tables, chairs, walls, etc.
The issue is that when I apply the material to something (like a table), it ends up appearing all over the room, on everything. How can I give a table a wood texture, chairs a different one, walls a different one, one for carpet, etc?

Seems like a basic question but I'll give it a go.

Is the classroom one big object? In the top-right corner, there is a hierarchy. It currently reads "Lamp, Lamp001, Lamp006..." Is the geometry in this scene represented by one entry? If not, go to the next paragraph. If so, it should first be split into multiple objects. Each desk, table, etc. should be its own object. To split up the mesh one object at a time: select the faces belonging to an object, press p (no ctrl or shift) to bring up the separate menu, then choose "selection." It should now be its own object. You will have to repeat this for every individual object.

Some objects will need multiple textures. For example, a desk might have a plastic back but metal legs. To do this, go to edit mode and look at the materials tab. There should be an "assign" button. Clicking it will assign the currently selected material in the materials tab (there can be multiple, click the plus sign on the side to add another) to all selected faces in the viewport or 3d view. This way, an object can have multiple materials each with its own texture.


Scripting Grease Pencil and choosing data layer to be linked I like how gpencil lets me draw shapes and link the data to specific objects or the scene. I have a trigonometry script which generates shapes, but I can't seem to select which 'Data to be linked' from a script.

The following script is a reduced version of what i'm doing, but it shows that the layer and data creation is easy enough.

import math
import bpy

def get_layer(gdata_owner, layer_name):

    grease_data = bpy.data.grease_pencil
    if gdata_owner not in grease_data:
        gp = grease_data.new(gdata_owner)
    else:
        gp = grease_data[gdata_owner]

    # get grease pencil layer
    if not (layer_name in gp.layers):
        layer = gp.layers.new(layer_name)
        layer.frames.new(1)
        layer.line_width = 1
    else:
        layer = gp.layers[layer_name]
        layer.frames[0].clear()

    return layer

def generate_gp3d_stroke(layer):
    layer.show_points = True
    layer.color = (0.2, 0.90, .2)
    s = layer.frames[0].strokes.new()
    s.draw_mode = '3DSPACE'

    chain = []
    num_verts = 10
    r = 2.2
    gamma = 2 * math.pi / num_verts
    for i in range(num_verts+1):
        theta = gamma * i
        world_point = (math.sin(theta) * r, math.cos(theta) * r, 1.2)
        chain.append(world_point)

    s.points.add(len(chain))
    for idx, p in enumerate(chain):
        s.points[idx].co = p

class TrigGenerator(bpy.types.Operator):

    bl_idname = 'mesh.trig_generator'
    bl_label = 'generated trig with gpencil'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):
        obj = bpy.context.object
        data_name = 'stack_data'
        layer_name = "stack layer"
        layer = get_layer(data_name, layer_name)
        generate_gp3d_stroke(layer)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

it's probably simple, but it eludes me.

update:

the one line fix is the last line of execute:

def execute(self, context):
    obj = bpy.context.object
    data_name = 'stack_data'
    layer_name = "stack layer"
    layer = get_layer(data_name, layer_name)
    generate_gp3d_stroke(layer)
    context.scene.grease_pencil = bpy.data.grease_pencil[data_name]
    return {'FINISHED'}

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for but:

bpy.context.scene.grease_pencil = bpy.data.grease_pencil['GPencil']

will set the scene's active grease pencil datablock to be 'GPencil'.

I found this by using autocomplete in the Python Console to see properties of the Scene.

As with other datablocks in blender you can also set scene.grease_pencil to be None to have no active grease pencil datablock.


Can I undo overwritten files? I accidentally overwrote a blend file. I was making a small thing and instead of opening something else I saved new small unimportant file over one of my biggest projects. Can someone help me please?

I already know the awnser! You just go to files to open one. Then by the filters you check the one next to the blender logo. then you click the .blend1 version of your file. save it as the file how it was before and you're done!


Use Cycles baking for Blenders internal renderer I started modeling a house that I want to use in a game. I really like the workflow of nodes if it comes to materials. So I decided to use the cycles renderer in 'material view' for modeling, texturing and baking.
I created some normal and spec maps but did not see the effect in 'material view' as if I use the BI renderer. Ok that makes sense somehow.. Cycles must be calculating the effects based on rays and rays are only traced in 'render view'?!
Do I have to change all my node based materials and switch to BI materials now to see my normalmaps applied in realtime? I still would like to use Cycles for baking.. so I still need the node based materials. Can I set up a material for every renderer and switch between them?

to be organized , save the models in one blend file with no material , in a separate blend file you link the models in and set up their materials. this will guarantee no material mixup happens and your blend file project will be cleaner.

you could also make a separate scene for each renderer (e.g a cycles scene and internal scene , a bake scene)


Blender Internal: How do I add motion blur? just wondering where to enable motion blur in the blender internal render engine.

It's supposed to be in the render settings called "sampled motion blur" but I can't find it.
I am using Blender 2.74

Download demo-file here.

Sampled motion blur is not available in Blender internal when the Full Sample option is enabled in Anti-Aliasing.

The solution is to turn off Full Sample.


Problem with my model when I change the shading from flat to smooth I have an issue with my model whenever I hit smooth.
Basically the model looks better when flat than when it's smooth shaded.
I dont know how to make it look good like the reference image.

In a case like this you want the best of both worlds. To achieve this you can use the Auto Smooth option in the Mesh Context.

I'm on mobile right now, so I can't take screen shots of Blender, but I've found some example images on the web.

Notice how the model on the right has both flat and smooth shading?

Here's where to find that feature:

This last one is actually from another Blender Stack Exchange answer. It would probably help you to take a look at it.

The Angle slider determines at what angle the meshes shading will switch from flat to smooth. Play with this.


Sculpting brush - low poly with normal map? I start again (it became a mess).

Simply put, I'd like to sculpt with a custom brush on this level.

Problem is, it will be too high poly.

So what I'd like, is the following shape DECIMATED, with the normal map baked on it, and use that as a sculpting brush, and sculpt that details on the level in picture 1.

Just like a texture, but low poly AND with normal map on it.

But I just can sculpt the texture, in high poly, or just paint with the normal map, in 2D.
I'd like both of the informations combined : lowpoly + its' normal map, in one sculpt brush.

Any other solution welcome.

Edit :

I followed your instructions, but it leaves me with a simple normal map that will sculpt high details.

In fact, I want to sculpt low details (decimated) but have a superposition of normal map that will give the high detail, without poly counts. All of this in a sculpt brush. It seems it's not possible then.

(htt ps://i.stack.imgur.com/ExyMo.png)

(htt ps://i.stack.imgur.com/RGni7.png)

You got a very interesting problem to solve. You could bake normal map from high poly,sculpted chunk of terrain to a texture,and then use this texture as a brush in texture painting mode to paint onto a terrain texture and save it as a normal map for the terrain.

To to that, You have to have new image texture active in material of a UV mapped plane. Place this plane above high poly terrain, turn on Selected to active in Bake options panel, select first high poly terrain, and then the plane and hit Bake - that's all you have to in general do. But here is more detailed tutorial on the topic


What does 'Clear Origin' (Alt-O) do in the 3d view? What does 'Clear Origin' (AltO) do? Someone mentioned it on our general chat.

Select a child object of a parent, and press AltO (that is the letter O). It will move the child to the parent, while still keeping the parent relationship intact. The name Blender uses is "clear its origin".


hole or not hole in prepared mesh for 3d printing? I´m looking at many tutorials on preparing things to send as .STL to a printer, but I keep on having the same doubt:

All the tutorials say that, in order to save money, you have to make a hole in the mesh so that the program interprets it as hollow, but at the same time the program wants you to have a totally closed mesh, so it is "manifold".

I really don´t understand how can I do a manifold mesh and leave a hole in it at the same time to be interpreted as hollow.

How is it done? If any of you know any tutorial where they explain it well, it would be a good answer also.

As someone working in 3D printing, I can tell you that those tutorials are wrong, and making a hole inside a mesh to make it 'empty' inside is only going to create troubles.

Basically, to 3D print, your STL file goes through a program called a 'slicer', which will analyse and slice the mesh in layers before sending it to the printer for the actual printing layer by layer.

When the slicer analyses the mesh, it will identify the skin/walls of the mesh, determine what is outside and inside, which will also help it determine if supports are needed or not.

If, for example, you want to print a cube, making the mesh hollow inside means that the slicer will add support for the internal roof of the cube, support that you'll never be able to take out because it's a cube, and you cannot reach inside unless you break the cube open.

Plus, having mesh with 'holes' inside can sometimes confuse the slicer, especially if the walls of the mesh are thin, and prevent it from correctly interpreting what is inside and outside, or mess with the layers.

Besides, making a mesh empty is useless because all slicers have a setting called 'Infill' which determine the shape and percentage of the internal structure. Depending on your mesh, and how confident you are in the material being used, you can set it to 0%, meaning the printer will only print the walls of your mesh, up to 100% if you want to print a solid block.

So, to sum it up, making a hole inside a mesh is a bad idea, it will create problems, it won't really save you money nor time, especially since there is a setting in the slicer that does the same while ensuring proper printing.


how to transfer rig from one model to another? I have a rig on a model thats skinned, and I have another model not similar that I wanted to take that rig and transfer from the skinned model and connect it to the unskinned model.

As does Script AutoBiped (Remplace Mixiamo Rig with Biped Rig)

How can I do that automatically, any script or method to do this?

There is no way to do it automatically in vanilla blender, not that I know of. I recommend copying and pasting it, then parenting the mesh to the rig. That's not too long to do and you don't have to search for any scripts


No module named Error when importing from another file in an addon So I have an error which is when I try to import my entire add on as a zip file and enable it, it gives me an error saying there is no module named "save_shader_map".
I know this isn't true because I have structured my add on as a folder. In the folder there are three files, init.py, load_shader_map.py and save_shader_map.py and I can see there is a file called save_shader_map.py in the same folder.
Where I am trying to import the save_shader_map python file is in another file in my addon named load_shader_map.py and the relevant code is here:
#import all libraries including re needed for regex matching
#import Path library to search recursively for files
import bpy, re
import glob
from pathlib import Path

import os

#import from other files required functions and classes
import sys

sys.path.append(".")
#import classes
from save_shader_map import SHADER_PRESETS_UL_items, ShowMessageOperator
#import functions
from save_shader_map import get_preferences, get_selected_folder_presets, json_to_nodes_dict

Now I think the problem is with the sys.path.append("."), because the line where the error of no module found occurs is this line:
from save_shader_map import SHADER_PRESETS_UL_items, ShowMessageOperator

I have tried instead replacing the sys.path.append with the following code which still says there is no module named save_shader_map, so I believe I am importing it incorrectly.

from . import save_shader_map

#import classes
from save_shader_map import SHADER_PRESETS_UL_items, ShowMessageOperator
#import functions
from save_shader_map import get_preferences, get_selected_folder_presets, json_to_nodes_dict

My _init file looks like this:
from . import save_shader_map
from . import load_shader_map
import time
import bpy

bl_info = {
    "name": "UE Shader Map Setups",
    "author": "Anime Nyan",
    "version": (1, 0, 2),
    "blender": (2, 92, 0),
    "location": "TO BE ADDED",
    "description": "",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "https://github.com/AnimNyan/UEShaderScript/wiki",
    "category": "Material",
    "tracker_url": "https://github.com/AnimNyan/UEShaderScript"
}

"""
Version': '1.0.2' written by Anime Nyan

Adds two panels one in the Shader Editor View to save different preset shader maps and one in the 3D View to load shader maps
"""

def register():
    save_shader_map.register()
    load_shader_map.register()
    try:
        save_shader_map.import_default_json()
    except Exception as e:
        print("import_default_json() exception because blender is not ready yet. :", e)

def unregister():
    save_shader_map.unregister()
    load_shader_map.unregister()

print("(*) UE Shader Script add-on loaded")

I also know that my add on works with the Visual Studio code Blender Plugin when I use Ctrl + P > Blender Start, but think that might start Blender differently.
As a precaution I have also added a pastebin of my whole load_shader_map.py file: https://pastebin.com/Xx18vrKz and save_shader_map.py file:https://pastebin.com/grfCCQSq however I am aware they are extremely long, only the top and perhaps the bottom of registering the classes is important.

Actually I found the solution thanks to the help of someone else:
My problem was I wasn't using relative imports, don't use sys.append
instead use relative imports like this and it worked:
#import classes
from .save_shader_map import SHADER_PRESETS_UL_items, ShowMessageOperator
#import functions
from .save_shader_map import get_preferences, get_selected_folder_presets, json_to_nodes_dict


Baked metal material looks different than material preview I have tried a lot of different settings, but I'm not sure how to make the material preview to bake the same. I've tried mixed shaders in world settings with diffuse and glossy, but they all turn out pretty dark.
Thank you in advance !
It's a metal material, and I have so far 5 lights.

This is what it looks like in material preview:

Rendered view:

Current Bake settings:

Current World settings:

First of all, the difference between your Material Preview and the Rendered View: the preview uses HDRI images to artificially light up your scene by default, this HDRI can also be seen in reflections. You can change the settings in the dropdown menu, choose a different HDRI or change the strength etc. You can also choose to display the current Scene Lights and Scene World instead of the generated lighting.

If you switch to Scene Lights and Scene World the preview would look much more like the final render. Now the problem with your render... I don't know about your bake settings and if you want/need to bake a texture, but this is definitely not necessary just for rendering an image. And if you're just baking the Color information of the Glossy channel, you only get the color, no reflections etc.
But your object and world materials have several issues. For the object, you've plugged a Color Ramp into the Roughness. Usually the Color Ramp is used to convert some input into a color distribution, where the input values from 0 to 1 reflect the positions on the range, and a slider at 0.2 means, convert the grey value 0.2 into the color which the slider is set to. IF you have no input for the Color Ramp, it's output is the medium value which is found at the position 0.5, and since your black slider is past 0.5, the output is black or 0, which means you have an overall Roughness of 0 which makes the Color Ramp obsolete.
Also the Metallic value: to get more realistic results (a material in reality is either metallic or non-metallic) you should only use 0 or 1, all values inbetween are for artistic reasons but not realistic.
If you would have set it to 1, than your object would look worse, because than it would not only be dark grey but completely black with just some bright spots maybe where your lights are reflected. Because your completely shiny metallic surface would only reflect a black environment.
Which brings me to the issue with your world material: you've put a Glossy BSDF in there. But this doesn't emit any light which means your sky is pitch black. Usually there should be a Background shader plugged in. This has a Strength to determine how much light it will emit from the color or image texture or whatever there is. For example, just using a white color makes it less pitch black:

But of course there is still not much to reflect because it's just a plain color. If you're looking for something that's more like the preview, better use an Environment Texture instead of a color in which you load an HDRI image. You can get many for free on HDRI Haven for example. Usually HDRIs are used to generate more realistic scene lighting and create reflections when you don't have a real environment that could be reflected from your object. Since the HDRI is lighting your scene, you don't have to necessarily put extra lights in there as long as you don't need them for special reasons.

If you don't want the HDRI environment to show up behind your object like in Material Preview, go to Render Settings > Film > Transparent and enable it. By the way, you can set the the Rendered View to show what is seen in Material Preview by disabling Scene Light and Scene World in the options, but beware that an actual rendering of the camera image will show the real world settings, not the preview settings.


How to make a comic in blender? I'm new on blender, I'm not animator or anything like that. I like comics and I was searching a different way to make them. I used blender years ago just for fun, to make a character walk, but, I never did more than that. I saw this on the blender:

I didn't know that blender could do that. I like the mix between 3d and 2d, I'm thinking about trying a comic with that and maybe if I can learn more, a entire short movie or animation. But first the comic.
So how should I start? Can someone recommend me some books or videos tutorial to make that kind of things, put 2d over 3d  (I already know the basic to modeling and texturing.

This is not something I am focused on but I would just watch / read some tutorials on Grease Pencil, especially these lessons should be useful for you:
https://vimeo.com/channels/greasepenciltuts

Also read the Blender's documentation on this topic:
https://www.blender.org/manual/interface/grease_pencil/introduction.html


How do i add mist to a cube spelling something I am working on a project and need help adding mist or smoke to a text made out of cubes i need hhelp i will post my blender project below

You could use something like this. The magic ingredient here is the volume scatter node. I used a Noise Texture and a ColorRamp to give the smoke a more realistic look, and connected the volume scatter to the volume input only (no surface input). You can see on the right, the quality of the fog is determined largely by the Tile Size and number of Samples, but the Start and End range have an effect as well (making the gap smaller will improve the quality) - just remember that this gap determines the viewable distance of the volume, so keep it in a range where your camera will be. I darkened the world background in the image to make it stand out more, and I had to brighten the light to make the volume stand out (it's visibility is affected by the light it receives). I also gave the light a purple glow just to add effect. As you can see, however, some shapes help to constrain the smoke more than others. Try it out for yourself:


how to write API code to render background image in blender 2.8 I am new to blender and can't find any resources online that provides a snippet of python code that shows how to render background image in blender 2.8.
Can show one help please.
Thanks.

Background image means any jpg or png file to be used as background. Let's say I have an object in the scene with an jpg as a background image. How can my render output contains both the object and the scene?


Missing Noise Texture Node in Material View Apologies in advance if this is a duplicate. I have checked similar posts and their alleged duplicates, but have not seen/understood any answers (EG: Noise texture node is not available).

I am following a tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2XjdzzWCqI @ 11:54) and it would appear that I am missing a vanilla node called Noise Texture, used to add "random" colour variety into textures.
I have pressed Shift+A to bring up the node search menu and not found a Noise Texture. I have selected the Materials button, so that alone cannot be the issue.

This is in Blender 2.79b.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

You need to press A (Add) to have access to the node Search option, not Spacebar. Anyway, to create a Noise Texture, press A > Texture > Noise Texture.


Game engine flight animations, controlled by contact with floor, not keys I have an issue with this file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32354

I would like that fancy jet-pack action that he does to only activate when the foot control leaves the ground, and all the other actions to cease to exist while he is airborne, even if I'm not pressing spacebar.

thanks for your help.

This calls for States!

Basically, States let you setup completely different logic brick behaviours for walk and fly and transition between these conditions.

Click on the (+) icon on top of the controllers list to show the all the State slots. Notice how all the logic are on the 1st state right now. We'll change that. We'll assign all the walk logic to the 1st state, and all the flying one to the second.
Let's setup a detector to figure out when the robot is off the ground using a ray sensor, and have it transition to the 'Fly' state.

Finally, let's go to the 'Fly' state and setup the logic bricks so that it will transition back to the walk state.

The rest should be pretty straight forward.


object.hide_render Crashes Blender Before Starting to Bake I am working on an addon which bakes onto multiple meshes. Everything worked fine until I wanted to implement Ambient Occlusion baking.

To do this I need to hide all objects that have nothing to do with the bake from rendering.

Here is a pseudo code of what I am doing in the execute function:

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    obj.hide_render = True
    obj.hide_viewport = False
bpy.data.objects['high'].hide_render = False
bpy.data.objects['high'].hide_viewport = False

for obj in bpy.data.collections[context.scene.lowpoly_bake_obj].all_objects:
    bpy.data.objects['low'].hide_render = False

    # some setup work...

    bpy.data.objects['high'].select_set(True)
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['low']

    # baking from active to selected...

    bpy.data.objects['low'].hide_render = True

Since I have introduced those hide_render and hide_viewport parts, Blender randomly crashes. But even after hours of debugging I just can't find the issue.

Here is the full source code if you want to try it out: https://github.com/flolu/blender-batch-baking/tree/0dc4bcfd17d57df49514fa6ed712e99015776c80

(especially this function here: https://github.com/flolu/blender-batch-baking/blob/0dc4bcfd17d57df49514fa6ed712e99015776c80/bake.py#L16)

Update

As suggested by Robert Gützkow, I've now tried to build Blender from source to get a stack trace when it crashes:

Maybe this helps to find out what the actual problem is?

Update 2

Here is an example file, which reliably crashes when you click the "Bake" button:

The addon can be installed from here: https://github.com/flolu/blender-batch-baking/tree/0dc4bcfd17d57df49514fa6ed712e99015776c80

Changing the visibility of an object (hide_render, hide_select, hide_viewport, etc.) triggers the rebuild of collection caches. Since this modifies the collection you're iterating over (Collection.all_objects), it may result in a crash. Since Blender is implemented in C and C++ you're causing undefined behavior through the Python API. Therefore it's just a (un-)lucky coincidence that it didn't crash on Windows.

This limitation is documented in Blender's Python API manual on the very important Gotcha page in the section Unforunate Corner Cases.

  Unfortunate Corner Cases

  Besides all expected cases listed above, there are a few others that
  should not be an issue but, due to internal implementation details,
  currently are:

  Object.hide_viewport, Object.hide_select and Object.hide_render: Setting any of those booleans will trigger a
  rebuild of Collection caches, hence breaking any current iteration
  over Collection.all_objects.

The best solution is to create a list of all objects' names from the object references that are given by Collection.all_objects and then use these unique names to access the actual objects in the loop. This is the generally recommended approach that avoids many of the potential problems described in "Help! My script is crashing".

  TL;DR: Do not keep direct references to Blender data (of any kind)
  when modifying the container of that data, and/or when some undo/redo
  may happen (e.g. during modal operators execution…). Instead, use
  indices (or other data always stored by value in Python, like string
  keys…), that allow you to get access to the desired data.

While you can create copies of the object references, there is no guarantee that these references remain valid. This could only be done when knowing exactly how Blender manages the underlying data structures. Since the internal implementation may change and doesn't have to be consistent across all versions of Blender, that approach would be considered a bad practice.

The following code shows the required modifications to avoid the crash.

Before

low_objects = bpy.data.collections[context.scene.lowpoly_bake_obj].all_objects
for obj in low_objects:
    self.bootstrap_bake(obj.name)

After

low_objects_names = [obj.name for obj in bpy.data.collections[context.scene.lowpoly_bake_obj].all_objects]
for obj_name in low_objects_names:
    self.bootstrap_bake(obj_name)

In general you would have to perform a lookup of the objects by name instead of using it directly from the collection. If you join, rename or delete objects in the loop you may also want to check that the object still exists before accessing it.

import bpy

obj_names = [obj.name for obj in bpy.data.objects]
for obj_name in obj_names:
    obj = bpy.data.objects.get(obj_name)
    if obj is not None:
        # Perform your operations with the object here

This issue was previously reported on the bug tracker in T62406.


What happened to OpenGL render? Why has EEVEE been so slow at files? I just spent days rendering something in 2.80, and it's got some problems, so I'll need to re-render. The thing is I don't even need anything but OpenGL rendering for this, but OpenGL along with the ability to render with it seems gone from 2.80. EEVEE seems fast enough in the viewport, but when rendering to PNG files at 50% of 1920*1080, it has taken three or four seconds to render/save the image. Sometimes I've suspected it is re-working whatever preliminary work it does on the scene (IE: the delay when switching to rendered view that only happens on the initial switch) for every frame. I deeply miss OpenGL render. I'm not sure how to state this all as one question, unfortunately.

This confused me for awhile. You can still get the viewport render, it is just not located where it used to be. Go To 3D Space > View and Select "Render Sequence Animation". It operates like the old OGL used to, and can be good for playblasts and what not.


create a full featured product in blender using only the python language Modeling polygons in blender using mouse and keyboard is relatively easy, but it takes a a lot of time. I would like to know if I can sculpt/model/texture/paint/move/animate objects in blender using only the python language with a lower interaction with the mouse. Do you have some kind of how to and tutorials? Thanks.

You will have to be more specific because the tools in blender should be sufficient without having to know python.

That being said there is nothing you cannot do in blender using python.

If you drag down the top bar of blender (the line slightly below "File", "Render" etc), you will notice it reveals a window.

Do some actions in blender, and you will see their equivalent python commands. Use these to get started. Good luck!


Hair emitted outside vertex group I am seeing hair emitted from faces outside the vertex group. I created a simple UV sphere, a vertex group (colored), a hair particle system using the vertex group as the density, no children. You can see below hair growing out of faces adjacent to the vertex group and I don't know why. Anyone?

Mr Zak has the right answer. The outer edge loop of my vertex group is weighted and allows some hairs to be emitted.

One workaround is to duplicate the faces in the mesh, assign them to a new vertex group and use that for the particle system:


How Reconstruction tools works? i have this scene tracked. The "camera solve error" appear to be not bad (0.5).

My question is: How the "reconstruction tools" works?

To set the FLOOR it ask only two trackers when normally we need minimum 3 points to have a plane. To set an AXIS it ask only one tracker when from what i know we need minimum 2 points to have a line. In fact, when i try to define one axis in the tracked scene selecting one tracker it changes anytime the result without an apparent logic behind. Now in this scene the trackers are moving nice and following their spots in a good way but the final perspective of the camera is not good as you can see.

(The settings of camera and lens are correct.)

I apologize for my bad English.

Dont use the reconstruction tool for that type of tracking, use the solve camera motion. Then use one tracker as a origin, three trackers as a plane and two as axis.


Everything has disappeared in the viewport When I opened the render window, it was empty even though the camera was pointing at the object and all the objects were set to be visible in viewport and in render

Thinking a restart would help, I restarted blender and now blender does not even show the objects in the viewport

The file is uploaded here : blend file

Thanks in advance for the help!

The scale of the armature is too small. Also the rotation was modified.

Select the armature in Outliner. Then press alts, altr.
Also clear the location If you need.


I locked one axis in edit mode and don't know how to unlock I just have a simple plane and I can't move it in z axis.
even if I rotate it, it just shrinks onto its self. Rotates normal in object mode
and the weird lock seams to follow the objects orientation from object mode
I must have hit some shortcut by accident but I can't figure it out.
plis help

Omg it was scaled to 0 on its flat surface... and I could not see it
My bad XD


How do I make this model of a digital camera? I want to make a Black Magic pocket cinema camera model in Blender

but I am unable to make the portion shown in picture. My picture looks like this

It looks nowhere near what I intend to do, can anyone tell me how to make this model?

Personally, I would start with a cube. Make the cube the approximate dimensions of the camera, then start subdividing, adding loops, moving faces, until you have the shape, then go and add the smaller details.

Starting from an extruded shape as you have there will not make it easy to get a nice smooth end result, and you will find adding the details is more difficult.


Controlling particle size via texture with particle physics disabled? I want to be able to control the sizes of particles with a texture, but as I want the particles to be used as terrain, I want to disable Newtonian physics so that the particles remain stationary.

However, particle size seems to be unchangeable with particle physics set to "No":

Is there a way to get particle textures to work properly without Newtonian physics enabled?

You don't have to use the Type 'Emitter', choose 'Hair' instead, where the particles rest on their places.
I assume you regulated the size of the particles like it is described here
Is it possible to use a texture to control the size of particles?
I tried it and it worked (I used a Marble-texture). Here is the screenshot:


Strange mesh behavior with proportional edit I have a simple mesh which behaves like it has a "rip" when using proportional edit.

This mesh has no vertex groups, constraints, modifiers, but moving a vertex with proportional editing highlights the problem - not all vertices "follow their orders". Only each separate half of the mesh reacts to proportional edit independently, depending on initial selection.

When I isolate this mesh to another file, the problem comes along with it. Here is the file https://www.dropbox.com/s/bc4etnzfg7knwg0/OddMesh.blend?dl=0

LukeD was right, following his tips the "rip" seemed to happen along the local Y axis of the object, moving the mesh in Edit Mode along the X axis so it would no longer overlap the Y=0 axis, would alleviate the problem.

The problem it seems is the Mirror X option that was active in the object editing options. In the 3D View Tools shelf > Options Tab > Mesh Options disable X Mirror option.

There did seem to be some sort of symmetry in the works, I searched for the setting but could not find it anywhere myself, this video however helped shed some light on the issue.


Is 2000 materials a lot? Is there a better way? I'll have about 1000 cubes, with the color of each top face, and the color of the other five faces of each cube set by an algorithm in a script, basically two NumPy arrays. Right now I just create two diffuse materials in script attached to each cube, and continuously update the values with statements something like this_cube.data.materials[5].diffuse_color = (r, g, b)

My question is, is there an even more primitive way I can pass an RGB value directly to a face of each cube, or are dedicated materials the only (or recommended) gateway. I'm using cycles.

So far I haven't actually had a problem using materials, but I want to check if I'm missing a better method when I scale to larger problems.

The NumPy arrays can be pre-calculated and saved to disk if necessary. They change as the animation (simulation) progresses, but this is just one more dimension in the arrays top_color[nframe, nx, ny, 3] and other_color[nframe, nx, ny, 3].

Is 2000 materials a lot? It's a big number, but Blender can handle it. The real question is; is there a more manageable way. Maybe a way that lets you define one material, and use some property of the individual objects as a source for the color?

Yes there is. There's two parts to this answer.

Step 1 : Vertex Colors (layer)

Using a obj.data.vertex_colors on the Object's Mesh to set the RGB of the faces. This is per vertex per face, the code is very simple.

import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
mesh = obj.data
polygons = mesh.polygons
vcols = mesh.vertex_colors

if len(vcols) == 0:
    vcols.new()

color_layer = vcols["Col"]

r, g, b = 0.3, 0.2, 0.9

for face in polygons:
    for v_idx in polygons[face.index].loop_indices:
        color_layer.data[v_idx].color = r, g, b

Step 2 : Shader Tree 'Attribute Node'

This Node has a text field where you can specify the vertex_colors layer by name, by default it's 'Col', but you can name it what you like.

To see the effect of the vertex_color layer in the 3d viewport (without rendering) Swith to Vertex Paint mode

Assigning one material to mutiple Objects

Once you have a material configured and want to share it over all objects in question, you can iterate over all these objects and do:

common_material = bpy.data.materials[some_named_material]
for obj in objects_in_question:
    obj.active_material = common_material

Things to consider

You raised another question about whether it might be easier to create the cubes as part of one object. That's totally doable if you keep track of the vertices and indices of the individual cubes ( at that point they are disjoint submeshes ) and when you know the face indices of each cube setting the vertex_color layer information is easy enough.

Doing it all as one object means you will need only 1 vertex color layer, and 1 material.
You could even use the foreach_set construct, it's perfect for meshes with uniform vertex-per-face counts (ie, all Tris, all Quads.. all N-gons)

 # flattened_list = [r,g,b,r,g,b,r,g,b,r,g,b,.....]
 obj.data.vertex_colors[0].data.foreach_set("color", flattened_list)

https://gist.github.com/zeffii/1a7d6800559f9ee902f8 shows how to do it for an Icosphere

import bpy

# default 80 faces, all Tris
obj = bpy.data.objects['Icosphere']

# note the range is 80 * 3
flattened_list = []
[flattened_list.extend([0.5, 0.3, 0.7]) for i in range(80*3)]

obj.data.vertex_colors[0].data.foreach_set("color", flattened_list)
obj.data.update()

Keeping the objects separate means you must use a vertex_color layer for each object, but you can share the common material.
Using thousands of materials for thousands of objects is certainly OK too.

Which of these options is the best depends on your scenario.

Code simplicity vs Efficiency
Efficiency vs 'How important is Efficiency'

How important is Efficiency: Is a High real-time framerate a requirement or is it being rendered and is the efficiency of your method not a real concern.


Mirror texture paint on selected faces of an object? I'm a complete noob at Blender. My character is not completely symmetrical, so when I texture paint, Blender mirrors on the arms, legs, hands and her horns (the symmetrical parts) but not the face even though it is symmetrical too.

I want to know if there is a way to mirror the face by maybe selecting the faces of the face?

Here's my blender file too:

SOLVED

I just had to turn on X symmetry in the texture paint tool pane.


How to selectively blur specific objects without affecting others? I have have 2 objects emitting different colors of light.  I want to give a blur effect only for Object-1.  But when I composite, blur is applied to both of the objects. So, would anybody here mind telling me how to add filters for particular object in same scene and same layer?

Thanks in advance.

If you have objects on one render layer, there is only one useful method: using Object ID or Material ID.

Set a number more than 0 in material settings:

or in object data:

And on object Index/material Index pass in render layer:

You can use this pass by ID mask node. Index in node settings must by equal to number entered before in object or material settings.


Objects dissapear when rendering I am trying my hand at making the millennium falcon. However, when I go to render, several objects that I had separated from the main mesh didn't render.

Everything is set to render in the outliner, so I'm not sure what's going wrong.

Here it is in the 3d View:

All objects show up in the 3d veiwport when rendering mode is turned on.

Here it is rendered:

Here is my blend file:

For starters, it is only showing up in local view, not global view (notice the lack of layers shown in the 3d view ribbon bar).

The problem is that those object(s) are not applied to any layers.

To fix this, select each object and assign one of the rendered layers to it.

By the way, to switch between global and local view, hit Numpad / or go to View > View Global/Local.


Unwrap produces utter randomness even with marked seams, while smart UV project kinda works I'm making an aircraft model for a game, but I'm having trouble with Unwrap on subsurf'ed parts that have had boolean cuts applied to them. I meticulously plan out nice seams using the Mark Seam function:

But it seems like the Unwrap functionality just generates a random jumbled mess of vertices without any structure:

UV smart project does kinda make sense of the unwrap, but it puts extra seams where I don't want them:

I suspect there's either a bug in Unwrap somewhere, or what I'm doing is making no sense. When I hit "Unwrap" after UV smart project, it partly redoes the UV mapping of some vertices, but stops part way through, so the UV unwrap now looks like a hybrid of the UV smart project output and the random jumbled mess of Unwrap:

Might the booleans have somehow messed up my object? I noticed it does tend to product a whole bunch of redundant and doubled vertices, but I've tried to "Remove doubles" on this already: doesn't help. "Recalculate outside" for normals: doesn't help. "Apply scale & rotation": doesn't help. Basically once I get an object into this state, nothing seems to help it anymore except to use UV smart project from this point forward and accept the imperfect UV mappings it products.

The issue is unclean geometry left from boolean - specifically this area:

There is very thin long face running alongside the wing's trailing edge that is causing the problems. Only the top surface of the wing does not unwrap correctly, if I select other parts separately, they unwrap individually fine, so the problem is localized to that area only.

If you clean up that geometry, the model will unwrap correctly. Unfortunately removing doubles or recalculating normals won't help, it looks like some nasty leftovers from ngons.


Why won't Difference subtract the geometry of this mesh? I am trying to subtract the big ring (highlighted in light orange) from the smaller ring (highlighted in dark orange) so that there is a slot down the middle of the smaller ring.

I have tried every combination of Boolean modifiers, and they do not work. In the past, Difference sometimes worked to subtract geometry, but not always.

This is what happens when I apply a Difference modifier to the smaller ring and target the larger ring:

As you can see, almost all of the ring is removed, except for a few tiny bits on the sides. I have no idea why this happens.

This is not the first time Difference has failed me, for seemingly-indecipherable reasons. Is there a way to force Difference to work logically, or, failing that, to subtract geometry another way?

Please consider

Adding loop rings to the circular form.
Select the middle faces.  Extrude -  No Movement Accept. Shrink Fatten. You may Shrink Fatten to create a cut out slot.


Reducing vert/triangle/whatever else count before exporting into Unity? Question is basically in the title, what should I do to remove everything what basically can't be seen and etc without reducing quality of the outside of the mesh - what will be seen?

Do I have to be smart and make mesh "optimized" on my own right from the start or can I reduce those counts in some ways in case I didn't think about it at all(especially when I don't even know what in meshes causes lag)?

In my experience you should not pay too much account on the number of vertices  in a mesh. What really slows down unity is the number of draw calls caused by using too many materials in a scene.

When you have more than 10K vertices of an object you might want to consider creating less detailed objects and use them with level of detail.


Bones with python: emulate armature with constraints I have an old 3d model format which defines a mesh and a skeleton. I want to write an import/export script for this model format.

A bone of the skeleton is defined just as a coordinate space. Most bones have parents.

The location of a bone is defined by its parent location + some extra offset value for each frame.

The rotation of a bone is entirely decoupled from that. You can rotate a bone and it will not affect the child bones positions (unlike blender). The rotation values are defined per frame of course.

There is an additional fixed distance from a parent to its child and this distance value is the same across all frames.

EDIT cutting this down so it wont be too much to read.

So this is my first question. I might lack knowledge here, but does blender support such a bone system?

My second question is related to how you would emulate such a bone system?

My current approach is with constraints. I am currently working with "child of" and "limit distance" constraints. The child of constraint lets me model parent child relationship. because i cant simply set parent-child relationship in blender (the normal way). The "limit distance" constraint i cant seem to get to work. I want to achieve with that that when i rotate the bone, it will affect its child positions and there will be one distance of the bone to its child across all frames.

The core problem seems to be that this old format and blenders bone format seems to be incompatible (blender is a kinematic chain, the other is not?). From what i can tell from my own research is that the old format seems to have more degrees of freedom than blenders bone fromat (the one i know, might lack knowledge here about blender). I come to this conclusion by seen that you can rotate a bone and affect its connected vertices, but the child bones positions stay the same. Blender can't do that. So in a sense the old format is more "powerful". Also there is this restriction in blender that the tail of a bone needs to always point into the direction of its child. Any tips welcome here.

I have imported a first version of the format for now, but i cant achieve same distance of parent to child on each frame (distance constraint), and cant achieve that when you rotate a bone it will affect its childs locations.

Below a picture which shows how it currently looks.

Any questions, please shoot or write me a pm.

In short, no, Blender does not support a bone system like that. Blender uses the common approach where a bone's entire transformation matrix defines the coordinate system for their children. What I would suggest is to dive into the math required and rewrite the bone transformations from your system to a matrix that Blender would understand. I think this approach would be easier and saner than trying to emulate your bone system in Blender.

TL;DR: convert your data to Blender's model, rather than trying to force Blender to mimick your model.

  Also there is this restriction in blender that the tail of a bone needs to always point into the direction of its child.

That statement is only true if you keep the "Connected" property of the bone at its default value True. Just uncheck that checkbox and you can move the bone without affecting its parent orientation.


Getting os.system to work in Python Console? I do this in the Python Console in Blender 2.64 on Ubuntu 11.04:

>>> import os
>>> os.system('ls')
0

>>> os.system('ls /')
0

>>> os.system('echo aa')
0

If that 0 is return status, it implies the command should have executed successfully - yet nothing is printed to the terminal? However, if I do:

>>> os.system('echo aa > /tmp/test.txt')
0

... then there is a /tmp/test.txt file created, with the expected contents ?!

So, the problem is apparently getting the stdout of the system shell routed to the Python console. Is there any way to get this done, so I can see the output of, say, ls or echo in the Python console?

Ok, it seems subprocess can be used instead; note here you have to specify the shell explicitly, e.g. try pasting this script in Python Console:

import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['bash', '-c', 'echo AAaa'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
print(out, err)

The output to that is:

>>> ...
>>> print(out, err)
b'AAaa\n' b''

Note that if you intend to do "piping" bash commands, things get a tad bit more complicated (see Python - How to call bash commands with pipe? - Stack Overflow); so for instance, to call echo BBbb | xsel -b and actually have it succeed (that is, have the string end up on clipboard), you should split the two processes, and establish the pipe via Python:

import subprocess
import shlex
p1 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("echo BBbb"), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("xsel -b"), stdin=p1.stdout)
out, err = p2.communicate()
print(out, err)

The output to this looks like:

>>> ...
>>> print(out, err)
None None

... but the string BBbb does end up on clipboard, as intended.


What's the use of tool, 'Sort Elements'? Because I'm not good at English, no matter how hard I read Blender manual, I don't understand the precise meaning of the tool, 'sort elements'.

What's that tool?

There's no tutorial about that tool in Youtube, so I didn't know When I should use it.

Please show me a example in which 'sort elements' must be used.

For almost all operations, there is no need to resort the geometry.

In a blender mesh, every vertex has index. The indices are usually set in the order, in which the vertices have been created.

I have created the vertices in this figure in this order.

Executing a short python script, we can confirm find out, that the actual indexed order is different. (When executing the following python scripts, toggle at least once into object mode to update the vertices property.)

import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object

# get x coordinates for every vertex
x = [v.co.x for v in ob.data.vertices]

print(x)
# >>> [0.0, 2.0, -1.0, 1.0, -2.0]

This is the indexed order of the vertices.

However, when we select the vertices and execute Mesh > Sort Elements ... > View X Axis, the order has changed and the vertices are sorted.

>>> [-2.0, -1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2.0]

All operations (internal or scripted addons), which are dependant on the index, are affected when resorting the indices.

For example, I executed W > Randomize Vertices on two meshes. The right mesh has been sorted prior. The results are different.

Here is a gif to reproduce the example.


Objects not shown in sculpt mode Blender 2.80

I have a strange effect. In my blend files I have multipe objects. All objects have been sculpted in the past.

Now all are visible as objects, can be selected, textured etc. But in sculpt workspace only one object (the last I worked on) can be shown and changed.

Searching for any reason it became worse. Now the last object is not shown in sculpt mode as well.

I had the same issue. Above the 3D view port where the layout tabs are (layout shading animation... etc) just delete the sculpt tab where you have the problem and add a new sculpt tab with the + icon. Minor bug hopefully will be fixed


How to tilt the edges to a particular angle Hi, can anybody help me to fulfill my requirement.
I want to move the arms a bit down if you see the man sculpture then it seems that angle of arms with body's side portion is somewhat 90deg but I want to the arms a bit down so that they make angle around 60deg. I tried the Rotation but it is rotating the complete arms.

I did it by using rotation so I rotated the arms along Y-axis then it looked weird as the arms were rotated as so far from the body, then I used the provided axes to set the position of arms back to the position relative to body.
Now it looks correct as I wanted:


What is the shortcut for attribute node? In Cycles Render, also.. (see below) I need to know the call shortcut for the attribute node in cycles render please :)

I don't see the property box that one of the people answered...

If you are in the node editor,use Shift+A to add a new node, followed by I then A (Add>input>attribute).

From the properties panel you will add it under the normal rollout of your material.


How to Combine Textures in Cycles that have been Projected from Different angles? I'm looking for the texturing method in Cycles, similar to the texturing method in Blender Internal Render. So i have two questions about this process:

1)How do I combine textures in Cycles that have been Project from View-ed from different angles?
2)Is it possible to "draw" the overlap area of the the textures through the Texture Paint in Cycles? How to draw an alpha-channel for the textures or how to clone one texture over the other in Cycles?

If I understand you correctly, you're trying to figure out how to use different UV maps in Cycles. This question has already been answered very well over here. But I'll try to give you the basics, here.

In BI, using multiple UV maps is pretty easy. In Cycles, it's also easy but not very clear. All you have to do is give names to the multiple UV maps that you make (or use the defaults), and then reference them with an Attribute node. So, add an Attribute node in Cycles, and in the text field just type the name of the UV map you want to use, and connect the noodle from the "Vector" output, to whatever other node needs the UVs.

Hope that helps!


How to close an open manifold? I made a 3D scan of one of my wife's sculptures, but I'm having trouble closing off the open ends. I want something sculptural (positive curvature in some places, negative in others), but how to close the shape for further digital sculpting?

You could select the edges on the border using AltRMB  in Edit Mode. Press space to show the popup menu and type Grid Fill.

If you want the filled area flat you can scale the z-axis SZ0.

In order to edit a high poly mesh in Blender created by sculpting or importing 3D-scans usually retopology is required.

Related:

How should I handle a split in a retopology?
Is there a way to "rescue" mesh that has very bad topology?


object particle system not transfering with object i have an object(tree) that uses a particle system (leaves). but when i try to spread the trees with another particle system on a plane, the leaves don't carry over with the tree

You have to use a special modifier called "Particle Instance" in order to use nested particles. I'll link the blender docs :

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/simulate/particle_instance.html

And an up-to-date tutorial on Youtube :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpvNJvsq-FU&


Is there a way to use a WORLD MATERIAL for lighting, and have another WORLD MATERIAL for visuals? I just can't get the scene to work properly with a single HDR texture.
Spent 3 days on this, playing with the material, curves, input, photshop, etc.
No way to obtain what I want from a single material.
The background is always off in respect to the illumination.
In example, if the sky is correctly rendered, like this:

Then the lighting in the scene is far too low.
If the sky is wrongfully rendered, like this:

Then the scene is lighted correctly, but the sky looks like s**t.
I tried to multiply using FACTOR, the curves, etc. No way. The power coming from the sun (if it's "small" in the sky) is always far less than what I want, and linking the image to FACTOR also changes its visual appearance.
My solution
Use one material to show the surroundings EXACTLY as one wants, and another material to light the scene so to match the visuals.
I am too much noob to get how to do this without spending another week on it, so I'm asking here.
My fastest, dirty solution would be:

Make the WORLD MATERIAL with the LIGHTING texture to light the scene the correct way.
Cover the world texture by adding a 1 km sphere with the VISUAL texture mapped on it, making it unshaded (i.e.: just render the exact texture color without any other interaction with the ligthing, exactly like the WORLD MATERIAL does), and disabling casting shadows and any other interaction with the scene.

But I am sure there's some cleaner method to do it, probably all inside the SHADER EDITOR.
Edit
For anyone interested, the additional sphere solution works perfectly.
Here below you can see an image from inside the room, and you can see the outside green textured plane blends quite well with the world sphere:

And I have some decent shadows coming in from the windows, as expected. Not perfect, but I still need to work a bit on the lighting texture, that has a too widespread emissive area.
Here you can see that the sky looks quite well, almost exactly as I want it:

And this below is the actual WORLD MATERIAL, that gives the lighting to the scene (I just disabled the sphere visibility for this):

And here below is the material used for the sphere:

Don't forget to align the sphere with the world material, and you will probably also need to scale it to -1 on the Y axis, if you keep the default UV.
You also need to set the object render options like this:

You can achieve this by mixing your 2 backgrounds (lighting and visuals) using the "Is Camera Ray" output of a Light Path Node. For your situation, plug the same image into both backgrounds, and alter the individual strengths of the Background Nodes (Hard to show what it's doing in an image, so I used red as one background instead for the example):

Though it's really hard to tell what the lighting's supposed to look like, I did my best to show which one is too bright and which one is too dark (for the example). Regardless, your setup should look something like this. Adjust the respective strengths to your liking:


Colorful Hypnotic Swirl in Animation Nodes How could one create such a hypnotic swirl in animation-nodes?

The Distribute Matrix node have a built-in spiral type:


Joining Rigid Body objects after baking to shorten BVH building time I want to render a rigid body simulation with ~20k objects.
Because of that, Cycles needs about 5 minutes / frame to build only the BVH data of those 20k objects (and I have a powerful machine). Is there any way to join the objects to one single object while maintaining its individual movements? I tried baking the simulation to keyframes, but when I join the objects, their individual transformations merge as well.

Btw, I only tested this with a smaller simulation, because baking 20k objects to keyframes takes like ages (hasn't even finished yet...) So maybe there is another way to avoid the long BVH building time?
Thanks in advance for any help! :)

If you link the objects with ⎈ CtrlL > Object data, one copy of the mesh data will be shared between all 20k objects (as opposed to 20k copies of the same data).

While not as efficient as whole-object instances (e.g. dupli objects), AFAIK this is about as close as you can get while still keeping the rigid body sim.


Rigging problem with a Telescope I have modeled a telescope and I want to rig it to rotate and pan it as needed in the final scene.
I have grouped the parts that I want to rotate and pan seperately, added two bones for both the actions and then parented the groups to bones. Now the problem is that the telescope contains some parts which rotate and the same parts + some other which pan it around but I can only parent an object to one bone. So how would you rig it to create both movements?

Edit: Also, I would like to constrain the Rotation of panning to Global Z axis and Rotation to Global Y axis.

Edit: This is what I want.

Rotating:

Panning:

Why are you using a rig and bones at all, a telescope is is a hard object, you can use parenting and constraints, then use the transforms to do any animation of it you need. There isn't a need to use bones at all for it.


Where can I find a website that provides free textures I am looking for a website that provides texture 'images' bump and specular maps included. High resolution would be appreciated.

http://www.textures.com/
You just need to create an acount, and you will be able to download 15 free textures per day


Learning how to model a person What is the best platform/website/youtube channel to learn how to animate a pixar style 3d animated human character (useing mesh not sch

Please go through this video for the types of modeling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CvkAm9CYA

To start straight away with character Darenlile video is a good source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QT1GNMevfc


When rendering fire and smoke the camera will not render the smoke/fire effect, but the viewport will I have been working on making an explosion in the cycles render and have made the smoke and fire renderable through appropriate volume and attribute nodes, but for some reason it will render through the viewport in render mode, but not when I look through the camera.
When looking at it without the camera it appears as it should (Left)
However through the camera on the same frame it only appears as the original objects and no smoke or fire (Right)

Also, here is my Node setup

Does anyone know a fix?

I can’t believe nobody answered you more quickly.

Cycles doesn’t support smoke/fire with GPU. You can only use CPU. I know, what a bummer. I tried to do a tutorial the other day and it takes hours to render one frame with my 8 thread system…too slow and I can’t afford to by a 28 thread processor. I also tried render farms which are quick and work but one 10 second animation in 2k would have cost $16.

Of course once its in HD you see all sorts of stuff you don’t like so you’ll end up rendering it 5x to get what you want so that would have been $80. Not bad if you have a paying gig, you can factor it into the overall cost of the project.

If you are like me and just dipping your toe into the water, you’ll have to be patient and wait for the blender devs to create GPU support. If you have a real project that pays you can buy hardware (lots of CPU’s) or pay a render farm.

Good Luck.


“LMB-drag anywhere” in Blender 2.9 defaults to select Total beginner here using Blender 2.9 and trying to follow the fundamentals videos for 2.80. Videos keep referencing the ability to choose a tool in edit mode, select the object/face and “left click drag anywhere in the viewport” to use the tool. Except when I “left click drag anywhere in the viewport” it just goes back to Box Select and does absolutely nothing with the selected tool (like Move or Bevel or whatever). Is this something that was changed in 2.9? I can always use the yellow tool handle that appears after choosing a tool and the face to be altered, but it’s frustrating having the uncustomized software not acting like it’s shown in the videos. What’s going on here?

This one took me a while to find as well. With a tool selected (like the inset faces tool, for instance) open the Tool menu and change the drag mode from Tweak to Active Tool


Cycles: image rendered with zero light, why pixel value is 11 instead of 0? I am fairly new to Blender, trying to do some simulations of a camera system using Cycles.
I have a simple scene with a plane, a camera and a point light. With a Python script, I vary the light intensity from 0 to a lot of Watts, I render a small image and I look at the numerical value of the central pixel.
When I save the output as EXR, I obtain a linear relationship between the lamp power and the pixel value (which, by the way, seems to be radiance in W/(m2*sr), see EXR output units). The result is illustrated in the following picture:

Notice how 0-intensity light produces a small non-zero value. The exact value is 0.0438.
Also, if I save the output as a PNG file, I manage to obtain an almost linear response, by setting the following Color Management properties:

'Display device' to 'None'.
'Look' to 'None'.
'Gamma' to 1.
'Sequencer' to 'Raw'.

(Note: with other values, in particular for 'display device' and 'sequencer', I get a nonlinear response, as if gamma compression was being applied).
The result is the following:

As expected, values saturate to 255 for high light power, but for 0W power we get a pixel value of 11, even though the EXR radiance value is 0:

So, the question is: what could be the cause of this and how to get a linear response, that is, constant slope and pixel value equal to 0 for 0 light power?
A possibility I thought of is that there is somehow another source of light, but I have only put one light in the scene.

It can be hard to spot, if you don't know, but Blender's factory settings give the World a default color of (0.051,0.051,0.051), with an emissive strength of 1.
So you're right: there is "Somehow, another source of light" in your scene.


Adding several deform points in one circular object (belt) I am trying to go to the "next level" of modeling, and trying to sculpt the CGTrader challenge.
So far I was handling it good but, wanting to achieve realism, I got stuck at the point of how to make a smooth deform along all the rivets/buttons of this stool belt (as the attached picture).
I want to make the "pressure" deform effect using either array modifier or using the button-objects themselves.   I have not found anything related to it, since it is very specific effect.
Which would be the quickest way to select all the deform points quickly, without having to do them individually.
Thank you all for this fantastic community.

I might try attaching the buttons to a flat, heavily subdivided belt, and then selecting all the buttons, and scaling down with proportional edit turned on.


I want to model guns, but how do I model stuff like THIS? On a lot of handguns, there are grooves on the slide to improve your grip when charging the handle. (racking the slide back to load a bullet into the chamber)

But how do I recreate these grooves? Do you just spam loop cuts?

You can do it with Bevel and Array modifiers:

Or, as suggested by Lukasz-40sth, you can do it with an arrayed cube, and at the end, same, use tris to finish the topology:


Best way to make smooth UV sphere with hole through it keep in mind that I am a blender beginner. How would I go about making this sphere hole smoother.
After applying subdivision I get a distorted ring. My goal is to make this circle as smooth as possible. I tried adding loop cuts to smooth it out, but it just still inst what I want it to be.

I can think of three ways to make this shape, not using a boolean.
Using a UV sphere (this is the best way), scaling a torus, or modeling it from a cylinder.
I'm not going to show the cylinder, because the other two methods are better, and after seeing them you will already know all the techniques used to model it off of the cylinder.
I'll start with the UV sphere.
With a default UV sphere, Tab into edit mode. Select both the top and bottom vertices at the polls of the sphere. Press CtrlNumPad + once, to enlarge the selection. Delete those selected vertices X > Vertices.
Select the inner edge loop on both the top and bottom, AltRMB to select an edge loop.

Now with that selected bridge the edge loops. W > Bridge Edge Loops.
Add one to the Number of Cuts while the bridge edge loops operator is still active.
Select the only edge loop in the middle of the new bridged part, and press CtrlB to bevel it. Move the edges until they are closer to the corner (this will make the subdivision surface look better).
A gif of all that:

Scaling a Torus
Add a torus, and change the Minor Radius so that the "hole" is smaller.
Now what I like to do is add a sphere in the same spot as the torus, it will only act as a guide.

With the whole torus selected, scale it to make it fatter (with the default rotation that would be along the Z axis).
Now select the bottom and top edge loops, and scale them along the Z until they about line up with the sphere guide in the background, this makes it look more round and less torus like.
Do the same for the first pare of edge loops on the inside of the "hole". At this point it looks like a sphere with a hole, not a torus.
Only thing left to do is straighten the inside of the hole. I did this by dissolving the middle three edge loops into one, then just scaling it to the same size as the top and bottom.
Again an nice gif of the above process:


Transparent character I was testing out different solutions I had found but for 2.8 how do u get a image textured character to be transparent like he's a ghost or a out of body experience kind of thing. It shows that the dude is there but he's invisible to everyone but the viewer.

It's like this

You can clearly see Casper but u can also see through his body. Like the candles and the picture frame.

I guess you are referring to a material setup called HOLOGRAM

Try this material setup in the image

It will make your ghost blueish and transparent, and it will give a Fresnel effect which talks about the angle of view


normal baking, low poly to high poly. Sub surface corners not correct I have a simple cube that I duplicated. I unwrapped the low poly. Applied sub surf modifier to high poly. Added some edge loops to get the edges smooth.

However when I bake from high to low poly the corners of the low poly seem to be poking through the high poly normals.

Here's my blender file:

I just checked your file and after baking everything looks pretty good. I can see that you added one more edgeloop to the high poly object and that seems to have fixed the issue. I only managed to replicate your image when the edgeloop was removed. When baking you still want to keep the objects as close as possible. There are some things that just aren't possible, like making a cube look like a sphere. Without that last edgeloop the cubes are just too different to get a good bake.