What is branched path tracing and how is it useful? I noticed recently that there is a new option in Cycles for "branched path tracing", can someone explain what this does in easy to understand terms?  Should we expect faster render times or less samples etc?

Can you give examples of best uses?

The Branched path integrator is not new, it was renamed from the Non-Progressive integrator in 2.69.
From the manual:

  The branched path tracing integrator (formerly called non-progressive
  integrator) is similar, but at the first hit it will split the path
  for different surface components and will take all lights into account
  for shading instead of just one. This makes each sample slower, but
  will reduce noise, especially in scenes dominated by direct or
  one-bounce lighting. To get the same number of diffuse samples as in
  the path tracing integrator, note that e.g. 250 path tracing samples =
  10 AA samples x 25 diffuse samples. The Sampling panel shows this
  total number of samples.

To visualize how this works, the Progressive integrator simulates one path (or ray) per sample:

The Branched path integrator splits the ray, sampling multiple directions as well as multiple components of the material (e.g. glossy, diffuse, etc) in one sample:

This is helpful because it takes into account light from multiple directions as opposed to only one, as well as giving more control over how different shaders are sampled. (this also helps reduce fireflies, see What is the Reason Cycles Creates Incorrectly Colored/Firefly Artifact Pixels?)

There is also a nice guide to using the Branched Path integrator with some comparisons written by Tomas Dinges.


Tracking second object to a pose I have a human mesh with armature I have imported from Makehuman.  I want to put an arrow through the human to illustrate a bullet path.  I then want to pose the human mesh to illustrate how the bullet path would change as the orientation of the body changes (e.g. standing straight versus bent over), e.g.:

versus

I did the above by posing the human and then manually repositioning the arrow, but I'd prefer to just pose the human mesh and have the arrow follow.
The human consists of three meshes, one for the head and arms, one for the shirt and pants, and one for the feet and shoes.
I have tried:

Making the arrow a "child of" the shirt and pants mesh.  This works for moving the human mesh as a whole, but does not affect anything when I change pose.

Doing a boolean union with the mesh of the shirt and pants.  This causes a couple of vertices from the shirt to stick with the arrow when the body is reposed, but does not move the arrow.  I have tried doing the boolean both before and after the armature constraint application.

Any pointers to tutorials or information on how to do this would be appreciated.
Thanks!
billo

OK, for anybody interested, I figured out what I was doing wrong.  Clearly a newbie mistake.
My mistake was to try to make the arrow mesh the child of the body mesh.  Instead, I needed to make the arrow mesh the child of an individual bone in the armature. The trick was to choose the right bone, since in my case the spine had a few of them. Nonetheless, once I chose the right bone, it worked great.
The other thing that misled me a little was that my human is an export from Makehuman, and the naming of the parts was a little confusing.  When I first tried to add constraints I couldn't find the armature to try it, but on review, it was there.  In my case Export: was the mesh, and "Export" itself was the armatureds and the human in general.
So, here you see me making the arrow a child of the left clavicle of the "Exports" armature (and also note that everything seems to be labeled "Exports").  Also note that I did not include Scale in the parenting.

Now I go into pose mode with the human, and move any of the bones, and the arrow follows the clavicle like it should:

So, it turns out that it was easy (once I spent a few hours working on it...)


Simplifying specific faces On the picture bellow there's a model i've been working on. At first, the mesh was pretty clean and optimized, with just enough vertices as it needed, but that was before i used the Subdivision Modifier. The mesh itself looks good after the modifier was applied, but in edit mode, the topology got pretty cluttered and hard to work with. The pill shaped cutout you see on the picture is something i want to extrude and then bevel, but the topology screws it up and i end up getting a deformed mesh. Here's the picture:

What i want, is to "simplify" those strange shapes and make them like the rest of the topology; quads with no triangles or god forbid N-gons.
Using dissolve makes n-gons and manually fixing the topology is going to be longer than the project itself.

It looks like you're trying to cut holes in a quarter sphere (well, kind of). Maybe beginning with a UV Sphere (i.e. concentric circles) is not the best way. Here is a try, beginning with a cube:


Images as Planes - Error/Blank - Blender 2.8 Whenever I add images as plane to Blender 2.8, it comes up as grey/blank like this.

I want to use as a reference image to start modelling, but I cannot see the actual image.

If I drag the image in, as normal - not as plane. I can see the picture fine.

Press 'z' and choose LookDev or change viewport shading to Lighting: Studio/Flat and Color: Texture.


fSpy starting problems 2.8+? I have downloaded and installed fSpy for linux and installed the add-on but there is very little detail on how to run and use fspy as an app to import to linux as there is no proper tutorial or support data on this issue.

Does anyone have help for running this app for blender 2.8 onwards as I have 2.82?  Trying to do a tutorial and without it I can't do it.

Don't... download the entire repository.

Download the latest fspy binary from here: github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy/releases
And the latest add-on for blender from here: github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases.

For Linux (AppImage): Right-click (RMB) the Binary > Permissions > Allow executing file, which should work for all distros.
Further reading: How to download and install an add-on hosted on github properly?


sparkling shadow, sun glass shader reflects the plane attached please find an example. thank you for Support in advance. And thanks to members Rivera and Cegato. How can I remove the SPARKLING orange shadow (Plane remove reflecting?)

Please find the nodetree which solved the problem. I don`t know why it exactly works because try a lot and finally I removed the cast shadow of sun and the fireflies are gone. Sorry, for not more knowledge answer as beginner. Thanks a lot and have a great time


How to open all fonts at once? I want to make all of the files in the windows/font/ folder open all at once in blender instead of needing to add each one in the folder individually.
I need all of the fonts to be pre loaded or open so they display in this menu here:

Use python.

from bpy import ops
from glob import glob
from os import chdir, path

directory = "C:\\Windows\\Fonts"

chdir(directory)
for file in glob("*.ttf") + glob("*.otf"):
    ops.font.open(filepath = path.join(directory, file), relative_path=False)

Replace the directory variable with the folder path, which contains your font files. Escape \ with \.

Paste the script in the text editor and press Run Script.


Delete Mesh by Material Is it possible to delete a part of a mesh by its material? And how?
For example, I have a tree that I want to add snow to. But it comes with cards for foliage. This will not work with 3DM Snow or Real Snow with any desired results.

Though on a side note, if you know how 3DM/Real Snow could work with cards and look pleasing I'd be interested too but from my logic I don't think it would ever look nice.

To delete a part of a mesh by its material, you have at least two options.
For both to work you'll have to first enter edit mode (press Tab).
First option is to select by material. Here you can see where to find this command:

After running this command, you can press Del key, and select delete faces from popup menu.
Another option is to use separate by material. You can find it here (or press P in edit mode):

When you have separated part of your mesh into another object, you can do whatever you want to it, like delete it.


color strip or picture unfolding from one side to another in video editor Here is the issue with the video editor:
The effect i am trying to achieve is by using color strips:
1st thing displayed, a color strip (green) covering all screen:
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Than a red strip appears in the scene, unfolding from left to right:
Moment 2:
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green RED    Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Moment 2:
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green RED    RED     Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Moment 3:
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green RED     RED      RED     Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Moment 4:
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green RED     RED      RED     RED      Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
Green Green Green Green Green Green
I did not find this kind of effect built in among transition effects in Blender..
How to get it right?

Step 1 - Transition
If you mean something like flipping cards transition - Video Sequencer doesn't have this kind of transitions. You would have to render this kind of transition as black and white animation (or image sequence) and use as a mask in video editor.
If you need to keep 3D effect of rotated parts of images you will have to create material for Front/Back side and in 3D editor.
... with Animation Nodes
To create transition like this you can try to use Animation Nodes add-on to create a node tree like here:

Node-tree for 2.92

Step by step tutorial is a bit outdated, but it is well explaned.
... with Constraints
Another option can be to use Object Constraints with a help of BlenderSushi script for Blender 2.79 to handle tedious tasks.

Add a Grid mesh like 6x4 segments
in Edit mode select all search for Split Edges
Add another Grid mesh, but with -1 segment on each axis (here 5x3 segments) and rename it to "Template"
Select first Grid and run script Alt+P from Script editor.
Script will generate Empty object for each face with Transformation Constraint - target to Template transforming location to rotation.
script should set also rotation Max 180°, that is not happening for me so just after script when all generated empties are selected go to Constraints tab and set value 180. WIth right click choose Copy to Selected.
Now you can add Displace Modifier to Template mesh and set any texture to control flipping. Cloud type for random animation, Blend type Linear or Diagonal for transition from side to side.

Step 2 - Video Sequencer
If you create some animation render this sequence in Black&White ...

Add this animation (or image sequence) as a strip into Video Sequencer (you can even hide this strip)
Add two images or colors strips you want to mix
Select top one and under Strip Properties N > Modifiers tab > add Mask modifier and set your B&W transition strip.

If you are interest to go by this way I can extend answer  how to create a BW mask for Video editor or use a Scene strip, but you are probably looking to easier solution. SO try to search for already done some BW transition or you would have to use other app for that.
Or closer specificities behaviour of transition so there can be other solution for you.


How to deform a "plane" I really can't form this question, lol. So i'll post two images.

So first is the mesh. Second is somewhat what i want to do, but simple grab makes it wrong. Of course i need faces to rotate accordingly. Like taking a carton and bending it in hands.

How can i achieve this?

I would start with a flat plane in “Top View”. Cut it in half and add a “Mirror Modifier”. Select the edge where you want the bend to take place then press “Shift” + “S” and select “Cursor to Selected” from the drop down menu.

Then change the “Pivot Center” to the 3D Cursor.

Then select the part of the plane you want to rotate and rotate around the 3D Cursor constrained to the “Y” axis. Press “R” + “Y” to accomplish this.

Then add a “Solidify Modifier”


How can I place multiple objects on the mesh? I am trying to make similar shoes and I don't know how to make those extruding objects on the shoe strap/ on its sides (I've thought of particles, but my output is faaaaar from what I want, I don't know how to set the orientation axis so the placement is not off like in my blend file..)

my blend file is here:

You can also use Face snapping for this.

Enable Face snapping > Median (to snap with origin point)
Check ✓ Allow Rotation to Target (to match face orientation)
Position the rivets


Blender 2.83 object selection not working correctly I just downloaded version 2.83 and am following a tutorial, but things aren't working like how the tutorial is. When I select an object it doesn't highlight completely like in the tute; only the outline does. When in Edit Mode, I can't see the edges or the faces, but can see the vertices for some reason. I played around in the Overlay box, but it hasn't helped. I'm sure it's probably just some quick setting somewhere. Thank you to anyone who can help me.

when you are in the edit mode press 1 for vertex selection, 2 for edge selection or 3 for the face selection. Try to press alt+H in edit mode it will unhide everything. If it does not help please provide me with the sreenshot


Recommended settings for the magic unicorn primitive? I'm having trouble to figure out meaningful parameter settings for the unicorn primitive operator.

It's mainly about the hoofs:

should I make them two-toed or four?
Is a head-to-toe ratio of 3:1 realistic?
there is no option to add nail polish, can anyone share a node setup for pink glitter, but also a decent subsurface scattering?

Bonus question: How many horn spins do you like the most?

Here is a nail polish shader you can use. I am no make-up artist but I believe it should looks something like this. It does not use SSS but it does render on the GPU.

Node Setup


Why is nothing appearing when using the 'Face Set' feature in Sculpt mode? Learning Blender with Blender Guru. He used a Face Set feature in Sculpt Mode to define different zones on the sofa. When I use the command nothing appears. When I click on my object there is no colour appearing it stays grey. When I select Face Set by UV Seams nothing changes either.
Is there a setting I am missing. Display Face Set setting or something?

I can see facesets and use the tools but only in Layout mode, then select 'Sculpt Mode' from the top left. If I'm in the sculpt workspace I can't see the facesets. Blender Guru mentioned there is a bug where your cant see the facesets if you have modifiers (subsurface modifier) but this was not the case for me.

You have to go the the modifiers tab and then click the small monitor icon. This will hide (not delete) the subdivision surface modifier. This will then show you the UV Face Sets


How to fix mirror modifier doing weird things? I had my mesh mirrored correctly at first but then I decided to work on the hand in a different layer (Two) and then copy past it back to layer 1. I then selected both meshes and pressed Ctrl+J to merge the 2 into 1 in object mode. However I forgot to apply the mirror modifier before merging the 2 (not that I thought that would matter) and the mirror modifier disappeared so I go on to connect the hand to the arm in edit mode change back to object mode select all and add another mirror modifier.

Y axis:

Top view of when morring Y axis:

I've tried all Axis and they all seem to be mirroring weirdly in a diagonal fashion.

Things I've tried already

I've selected all vertices that run along the center from top to bottom on the Z axis then Pressed Shift+S and selected "Cursor To Selected" followed by Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C selected "Origin to 3D Cursor" and still have the same results.

Is very likely that you have the object rotated in one or more axis. You can do 2 things (as far as I know):

Apply the rotation (keeping the current visual orientation): press, while in object mode, Ctrl+A and then select rotation.

Set the rotation values to 0 (this will rotate the object to a different orientation): in the object properties menu, in the transform tab set all the rotation values to 0.


Do you animate a character with clothing or do you add clothing after? Im doing my first character animation. Ive made all clothing, accessories etc. Im wondering, Is it best to rig and animate the head/body separately and then add the clothing or should it be done together?

I would add clothing before and animate it together because then the clothes will stay on the character. You can then add cloth physics and the animating wont effect it.


Is this an animation workspace bug in 2.8? When in Animation Workspace and I get out of Camera view everything disappears. This isn't happening in other files, but I can't find anything I've added that would make it do this. I've removed most everything but the lights and it still does this in this file. It's not clipping. It's not Show in Viewports checked off. This only happens in the Animation Workspace. All other workspaces including Layout are working fine.

I haven't seen this cause what you're seeing there, but your clip settings are pretty extreme, and I know that having Clip End too large, or Clip Start too small, can cause viewport problems. Your End is too large, and Start is too small!

Try End at 500, and start at 1.0. When you get into the perspective view, hit the home key to frame up the scene. Maybe that will work.


Can't zoom in or move around Everything was fine a week ago but when I openend my project turns out I can't zoom in closely. Like, I can zoom but not into the body or close to it, I also can't move around with shift mousewheel anymore, can anyone help?

Depending on the situation, which is sadly not possible to see here (it could help if you attach a picture of your view), i would recommend to press Numpad Decimal or go in the "View" Menu and click on "Frame Selected".

If you zoom in enough on a small detail, the amount of movement with the mouse seems to get drastically reduced.

Once you use "Frame Selected" Numpad Decimal or even "Frame all" with Home, you should have a normal responsiveness of your mouse navigation in the 3D Viewport.


Move the camera with the mouse? I have a camera and I want to move it with the mouse and also move a character, but when I try to move the character it moves to another. I don't know how to explain better. XD. Please help. Thanks.

Right click on an object to select it. If you want to select more than one object Shift + Click the additional objects. Pressing G will allow you to then move the object(s). If you want to constrain the movement to an axis press the X, Y or Z key after pressing G.


how to make forest with different types of trees I want to create a forest. I have already created a few types of trees and now I want them to "grow" out of a plane. I would use a particle system, but I have a few issues: firstly, the trees can't decide whether to stand or lie, I tried to change this using the duplicate object settings, but it was changing randomly without being afected by the settings. Secondly, I could not think of any way, how to make the two different trees not overlap each other (although I found here how to do that with only one type) and lastly, for some reason when I added the second particle system it generated only one tree instead of 1000 which is defalut.
I am not familiar with using python with blender. the trees are realy simple and low poly models, without any sofisticated details.

Mask system's density and Render Groups

To avoid interaction between two particle system you should somehow mask their density in a complementary way, so where one is the other isn't.

Let's start from creating a simple forest with two type of trees and only one particle system:

After modeling the tree types, you should assigning your sample trees objects to a group (select and Ctrl+G):

Then add to your surface a particle system with these two characteristics:

Hair particles initial orientation on Global Z with random phase as well described in this answer to get trees pointin straight up and with some random rotation around the Z axis
Render option set to Group (pointing to the previously created group)
with Rotation (rotate your object towart the X axis as in the picture) and Pick random

The last mentioned option will pick a random object from the target group, resulting in an assorted forest.

To get full control, you can use the Count option instead which would let you choose in wich proportion each tree type is present in the forest

Above you can see a fores made by 90% of pines and 10% of Betullae.

Now add a second particle system, this time made by 20% Pines and 80% Betullaes:

Go to weight paint, create a new vertex group layers and start paining red the places where the Pines (90%) will be. Then duplicate the vertex group (Copy vertex grup from the menue), Invert the weight, paint some 0 weight areas (where you don't want anty tree) and rename the vertex group to Pines 20%.

Assign to each particle system the appropriate vertex weight group and you'll have a two-tree-type forest:

Apart from vertex weight, you can mask the two particles system even with textures, or splitting the surface in many different objects... it depends on what your project's workflow is.

To avoid intersection between particles you should keep an eye on this related question. Sadly there is not a exaustive answer yet.


How to use "bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges" on selected edges I need to cut an edge into equal parts via script.
Using the standart subdivide is out of question because i will need more then 100 cuts (und using subdivide several times to achieve this is not possible with certain numbers.. e.g. prime numbers).
bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges has no max for the number of cuts but i have problems finding out how to use it only with selected edges. (I am only able to use it an all edges at once)
The only workaround i coul imagine would be to extrude a vertex many times (i am not sure if floating point precision would become an issue tho). I feel lost (and the 100 cut cap of subdivide feels a bit like a bad joke).

Hope somebody can help.

I assume you are doing edit operations

Make sure you are using bmesh.from_edit _mesh to get the selected edge information. When doing from_mesh all edges will be selected.

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(my_mesh)
selected_edges = [edge for edge in bm.edges if edge.select]
bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges(bm, edges=selected_edges, cuts=100)
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(my_mesh)

Note that .faces has an .active helper property what does this for faces. A similar API for edges is not available, hence you need to use the list comprehension.


My GPU makes a loud noise only when I use Eevee I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and just a few hours ago, while working, it started making a weird, pretty loud, sound.
This happens while using eevee in rendered mode and navigating the viewport, but not in developer mode nor with Cycles.

I'm worried about my card, and I can't work like this.

The sound also does not appear while doing benchmarks or playing games, it seems to be connected to Eevee rendered mode only. Turning off certain things like bloom, bumps and so on changes nothing.

Any ideas why this might happen?

My guess is that you get to very high temperatures while working with EEVEE. This results in coolers working more intensely. I believe - I had a similar problem - one of the coolers might not be in a correct position. This way he touches parts of the plastic it is embedded in.
What you could do yourself on your own risk: Grab an app that shows the temperature and the coolers (Like this one). Look if what I said above is true (Temperature goes up, cooling needs be turned up). You can even try the Powermax app from the link I posted. This tests your cpu/gpu coolers rpm at different loads. If you go to high load you know that my theory is true.
Open the PC and take a look at the coolers. All the coolers, also cpu. Try to get the right cooler in its place. Do it carefully. Try different angles. Or take the pc to the closest shop. It's your call  ;)

Hope it helped. Had a similar issue once.


Set origin to geometry center I would like to center the origin on the geometry. How can I do that ?
I've tried with 'Origin to Geometry' but it doesn't seems to work correctly. Indeed, on the screenshot, we can see the origin is not exactly centered along the Z axis.

Thank you in advance.

Switch to Edit Mode, select all elements, make sure the current Pivot Point type is set to Bounding Box Center, or simply press , (comma), ShiftS > Cursor to Selected;
Switch back to Object Mode,ShiftCtrlAltC > Object to 3D Cursor.


Automatic weights deforming my character I'm having problems when I want to set the mesh as the armature parent. Once I press Ctrl+P to open the menu and select "With automatic weights" it deforms the mesh.

Select your mesh
Delete the armature modifier it has and delete it's parent and delete all vertex groups
Select your armature
Switch to Pose mode
Select all bones
Press Space Bar and write

Apply Pose as Rest Pose
Select mesh then armature then Ctrl+P and choose with automatic weighting


How do I make a cloth cape for LEGO? I am trying to make a cloth cape for a LEGO Character, but the flow is always strange. It won't go down and won't stay still.
What am I doing wrong?

ok, i made a "quick and dirty" example, how to do it.
Result:

add a plane on ground -> passive, collision (gray)
add a rigid body (active) on it (green)
add a plane, which does NOT collide with other meshes when you place it
3b) at lots of subdivision surface to plane, but not too much, else your computer explodes
add cloth modifier to plane, fix it with a vertex - pin group
raise qualitiy collisions to 20
add solidify modifier to plane with thickness -> apply
check object- and self collision
increase your outer thickness of your rigid body
let the other settings of cloth as they are -> little changes in the properties change a lot for the simulation

here is my blend file to check it out:


Mesh deformed after changing pose I've rigged a model and why I try to change the pose, the mesh deforms badly on the legs.

The model has a mirror modifier (on X and has Vertex Groups option checked) and the armature has X-Axis Mirror. Automatic weights was used and after that I've cleaned a bit the vertex groups (mainly in the head and arms).

But I cannot find what's happening with the legs.

This is a classic weight issue. The vertices that aren't moving correctly are either weighted to the wrong bone, aren't weighted to a bone at all, or aren't weighted enough to the right bone.

Vertices follow the movement of the bone they're assigned to, but they can be assigned to only follow a percentage of a given bone's movement. For example, if you assign a vertex to a bone at 50% (or 0.5) and then rotate the bone 90 degrees, the vertex will only follow half of that movement... 45 degrees. Furthermore, you can assign a vertex to more than one bone. For example, you might assign a vertex on the knee to 50% on the lower leg and 50% on the upper leg so that smooths between both of them.

It looks to me like you have a handful of vertices on the (left?) leg that are not assigned to the bone going back to the left. Consequently, the bone moves to the left, but the vertices don't follow. A similar thing is probably happening with the ones on the right. Note: "not assigned to" might also mean "assigned to a different bone."

Interesting note: it's possible (depending on your Blender settings) to have a vertex with more than 100% total influence. Unless you have "normalize all" turned on, all the weights will get added together and do weird things.


Getting global axis value of the vertex with the lowest value In Python, Is there an operator that selects the vertex (or vertices if applies) that has the lowest value on a global axis (let's say Z).
I have an object that I need to select it's bottom vertex/vertices (the ones with the lowest Z global value) using Python, in order to move it's origin to the Median point among these vertices later.

I'm a noob when it comes to python but won't this do the job?

import bpy
import bmesh

object = bpy.data.scenes[0].objects["Cube"].data
vcount = len(object.vertices)
cube = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(object)

if (vcount > 0):
    lowest = cube.verts[0]
    for i in range(vcount):
        if (lowest.co.z > cube.verts[i].co.z):
            lowest = cube.verts[i]

    for v in cube.verts:
        if (v.co.z == lowest.co.z):
            v.select = True
        else:
            v.select = False
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(object, True)


python drivers don't work anymore after reloading file I am using python drivers to set the position of a number of bones, using a script to register custom functions in the driver namespace, so that I can reference them in the expressions (bpy.app.driver_namespace['calcPosition'] = calcPosition).
that works fine, but as soon as I reload the file, it does not work anymore. yes, I made sure to reload trusted, and I re-ran the script (do I have to do that?), but it simply won't work until I re-enter each and every expression and hit enter.

is this expected behavior?

is there a way to make things just work, right after opening a file?

you need to make sure that the Register checkbox is checked to avoid pressing Run Script every time you want your driver to execute.

and as mentioned in the checkbox tool tip, your script name should end with ".py"


Blender rendering automation (build script) I would like to automate the proccess of rendering images (sprites).
What I want to do is to render an image of the same model with different textures, ideally the texture filename would be passed as a command line parameter.

However, I am totally unfamiliar with blender scripting or blender command line. Can somebody please share some ideas of how this could be done?

For starter, there's already quite a bit of discussion about command-line rendering in this forum, like for this question. You do need scripting for such automation. Here's a script containing just the basics, elaborated below:

Script:

# Run as: blender -b <filename> -P <this_script> -- <image_path>
import bpy, sys, os

# Assume the last argument is image path
imagePath = sys.argv[-1]

if os.path.exists(imagePath):
    # Assume object, material and texture name (and settings) are valid
    charObj = bpy.data.objects['Char01']
    charMat = charObj.material_slots['Char01Mat'].material
    charTex = charMat.texture_slots['Char01Tex'].texture
    charTex.image.filepath = imagePath

    # Render to separate file, identified by texture file
    imageBaseName = bpy.path.basename(imagePath)
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath += '-' + imageBaseName

    # Render still image, automatically write to output path
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)
else:
    print("Missing Image:", imagePath)

Invocation:

There are several arguments you need to pass, to make scripts like this work:

-b <fileName.blend> to load specified .blend file without UI,
-P <scriptName.py> to load and execute specified Python script,
-- prevents Blender from processing subsequent arguments,
<imagePath> will specify texture image file, to be read by the script.

For this discussion, let's say you save the script as render_script.py, and execute it like this:

blender -b char01.blend -P render_script.py -- tex01.png

Description:

The script itself just reads image file path, assigning it to appropriate texture, tweak some render settings, and then rendering the image.

Command-line arguments can be accessed in sys.argv, and by passing -1 index, we access the rightmost argument. In the example above, it's tex01.png.

After verifying that the path is valid, using os.path.exists(), the filename is passed as texture image path. This part assumes that the object exist, with material and texture already set, and names as specified.

The third step is to modify render output filepath, so that each render with different texture will be written to separate files. So if output is already set as //sprite, this particular render will be written as sprite-tex01.png.

Finally it just executes render() (making it automatically write still image), then exits quietly.

This script contains only the gist of what needs to be done, so I really suggest you to modify it to suit your need.


Noiseless single sample cycles renders I'm building a blender render farm as a hobby project that renders tiles on seperate computers. My plan was to have an opengl render as background for the unrendered tiles in the preview but blender in background mode doesn't support opengl renders. Now I'm trying to render a noiseless image with cycles.

I use python to remove all materials and lamps from the scene and set ambiant occlusion to 100%. In the rendering settings the samples are the lowest possible and no bounces.

I thought that without materials and bounces that I wouldn't get noise if I render a single sample since the only lighting is ambient occlusion but I still get a lot of noise. Why?

What I get:

What I want (this is 10 samples):

For some reason the single sample render is only 3 graylevels

Is there something I forgot to tweak?

Cycles still is a approximation based path tracer. this means everything you see in the rendering is getting calculated by randomly shooting rays. per path blender is only shooting one ray per pixel (correct me if im wrong). this information contains "is this pixel getting light, or not". If yes, the pixel gets white, if not, it is getting black. this is why you only have black and white pixel at 1 rendered sample. If you shoot another ray, your information (light, yes/no) is getting mixed, so that a grayscale is calculated. the more sample pathes, the more accurate your image.

10 Samples is a good amount of samples and there is little you can do to even improve this number.

Only thing you can try is the upcoming denoiser for blender (download a WIP build here http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?395313-Experimental-2-77-Cycles-Denoising-build). But i dont think you can go under 5 samples.


Denoise is missing in 2.79 I just downloaded the official release of 2.79, and I'm missing the Denoise feature in my Render properties.  Is there some step I'm missing in order to activate it?

The denoising controls for the Cycles render engine are in the Scene Panel:

Denoising is not available for blender internal

Just in case, for 2.8 the denoiser is in the view layer section of the dat properties editor:


Rounded corners and shading issues Here's what i am trying to do: a beveled cube, inside of it a rectangular hole with rounded corners. First i made a cube with the hole, then added a plane with beveled vertices for the rounded corners; merged both and bridged the edge loops and added a edge split modifier. It worked, but there are still shading issues from certain angles. Is there a better way to do this?

Edit: .blend-file:

One method:

Add a Plane and scale on the "X" axis to form your rectangle.

TAB into Edit Mode and add four Loop Cuts (CTRL + R) positioned where you want your hole to be.

Select all by pressing "A". Extrude by pressing "E" + "Z" to constrain on the z axis.

Scale in by pressing "S" + SHIFT "Z" to constrain to the x and y axis.

Select the inner top face and press "X" and "Only Faces" from the drop down menu to delete it.

Add a Subdivision Surface Modifier (View and Render set to two.

Tab into Object Mode and set shading to Smooth. Tab back into Edit Mode and add Loop cuts to tighten up you corners.

Repeat for all your corners.


Keyframe animation is lost at FBX export I have a short keyframe stop motion animation with a couple of objects. Some have a parent-child relation.
In Blender it plays just fine, but when I export it to FBX, (and reimport it to Blender) some animations are missing and the parent's animation is duplicated to the child objects animations, so the child anims are lost.
I didn't use any bones, since the animations are all just rotations on local and custom transformation orientations.

Any help is appreciated!

Cheers

OK, I've realized I have to bake the animations, so that solved.
But now I have the children of the parent object all over the place in FBX.


Help with add-on to auto save image when I save .blend I'm trying to write a script that when I save the file (Ctrl + S) save the images on file too.

    bl_info = {
    "name": "Auto-save images",
    "author": "mcunha98",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Auto save images datablocks after save .blend",
    "warning": "Works only with external images",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Paint"}

import bpy

def save_external_images(dummy):
    for img in bpy.data.images:
        img.save()

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.save_pre.append(save_external_images)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.save_pre.remove(save_external_images)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I saw [this thread][1] as reference , but in fact the image not save when I save the file, someone can help me to understand why ?

I don't have any kind of warning or output on console window warning about erros, simply the image file not was save

The problem is that the handler isn't persistent, so it will be registered when you first register the add-on, but as soon as you open a file it'll be gone again. Annotate it like this to make it work:

@bpy.app.handlers.persistent
def save_external_images(dummy):
    for img in bpy.data.images:
        print('Saving', img.name)
        img.save()

For more info, see the Blender API documentation.


Hair particles unaffected by mist? In Blender 2.69 I can't figure out why hair particles are unaffected by mist.
I'm using tangent shading if that makes a difference.

Does anyone know how to fix this? (see image)
Thanks!

UPDATE: Ok, I think I figured it out somewhat. And yes, I am using blender render, not cycles, sorry about that.

If I turn off 'Strand render' in the particle settings it works!

But the hairs, or needles in this case, don't render quite as well as with strand render on...

If someone knows a way around this, that would be great to know. But I'm content with the way it looks either way. Thanks again!

Make sure you had the "Use mist" option on the particles material. You could post some file showing the problem. The image had some post process?


Enter UV coordinates position How can I manually type in the coordinates for my UVs?

Currently I am seeing these buttons:

But these simply adjust according to mouse movements.

The reason for this is my model is simply 2 quads with their UVs overlaid. I would like to snap these UVs is certain tiles on my texture map - much like a tile map.

Perhaps there is a better way to do this than manually entering the coordinates?

In the UV editor press N to display the Information panel on the right.  At the top is the UV Vertex section where you can type the values directly.

Based on what you've said, it might also be useful to enable "Snap to Pixels" in the UVs menu.


How to start out in blender? I am new to this amazing world of 3D modeling. I wanted to know how can I start 3D modeling from scratch? I am very new to this,I googled up and found that blender is a nice software for 3D modeling and its free too, so I decided to work onto this.

I wanna know is there any background required for learning 3D modeling or anyone(having some prior interest) can start up with this.

well I have some programming experience in C, C++, C#, and python, so am I set with that to learn 3D modeling or do i need to gather some more knowledge or experience in any other field.

From where should I start?

You could go to Blender Guru for some tutorials; Also there's CG Cookie.


Is it possible to render 180º equirectangular with eevee engine? I'd like to make the switch to eevee as it is more suitable for my needs, but the panoramic fov lens in eevee only goes up to 173º. In cycles I use a panoramic lens with equirectangular projection at +/- 90º for both longitude and latitude to create 180º renders.

The equirectangular camera settings are essential to create renders for virtual reality.

It appears that this isn’t possible at present - but has been asked before and is expected to be a planned feature - see https://blenderartists.org/t/will-eevee-support-vr-equirectangular-rendering/699631 in particular :

  At last blender conference, there was a talk about the benefits of using Grease pencil + VR to create a scene.
  There are devs dedicated to VR. I don’t doubt that VR support for EEVEE is a goal they want to achieve.


Edit keyframe values from graph or dopesheet using Python For short I want to make an addon which would allow to select keyframes from the graph editor (and eventually also from the dope sheet) and change their value at once using an input popup. And more complex options like incremental inputs and other stuff, but that's for later.

I did a flow chart of what I aim for the v1, if it can help you:

I'm struggling with the core action:
Set a value to the selected keyframes, from the graph editor.

My first tries were to basically edit some keyframe values in the graph editor and work from what pops up in the info editor as I usually do:

bpy.context.object.co[1] = 1

Which doesn't work on its own and returns:
AttributeError: 'Object' object has no attribute 'co'.

I also noticed this in the Python Tooltips:

I tried at least to just get a working line like
bpy.context.selected_visible_fcurves.Keyframe.co[1] = 1
bpy.context.active_object.animation_data.action.fcurves.Keyframe.co[1] = 1

But with no success.

I also tried to see how other people did on Internet and tried stuff like these:

def execute(self, context):
    for b in bpy.context.selected_visible_fcurves:
        b.types.Keyframe.co[1] = 6
    return{'FINISHED'}

Or :

def execute(self, context):
    for b in bpy.context.selected_visible_fcurves:
        b.types.Keyframe.co[1] = 6
    return{'FINISHED'}

I also saw lots of people actually replacing their existing keyframes by new ones with new values, but to me it seems to be a lot of instructions for very few effects, and I guess it will not perform correctly on large scale operations.

I may also indicate a few needs:

this should work on any kind of curve, no matter if it's a loc/rot/scale curve, a custom curve, ... So I cannot use any transform-specific code like I've seen several times.
ideally it should work on any selected keyframe, no matter if its a different curve, a different object, ... As long as it's in the graph editor and I can select some keys, it should work.

Thanks for any help!

Edit

Thanks to brockmann's answer I now can go further in my script.

I just have a couple more wonders:

Set the pop-up value from the active keyframe's value

Right now, the default value of the popup is 0 at first start, and then it keeps the last value used everytime it pops again. I would like it so that each time I call the popup, it shows the active keyframe's value.

So as far as my python skills can go, it means to find a way with blender's api to get the xy coordinates of the active keyframe and assign the Y to my-float_y, and put this procedure at the very start of the operator, right?
I tried this but it doesn't output anything I want:

    def kval(self, context):
        k_val = 0
        for v in context.active_editable_fcurve:
            for kv in v.keyframe_points:
                if kv.select_control_point:
                    x, y = keyframe.co
                    print("y key value is", y)
                    my_float_y = y
        return {'VALUED'}

How to change the UI

Right now it looks like this:

The cons are that it takes lots of screen-space just for a value, and it requires to set the value, press enter and then click the OK button.
I can kind of make it simpler by reducing the width because the value always overlays the text, but that's not enough:
It would be more efficient if it was a more direct interaction like i.e. the samples inputs:

Ideally I would want just something small and simple like this (but with a float):

When editing the value of the keyframe you have to set both handles as well. Example on how to set the value based on our famous Operator Simple template (should work for the dope sheet too):

import bpy

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    my_float_y : bpy.props.FloatProperty()

    def cpoints(self, context):
        ctrl_pts = []
        for c in context.selected_visible_fcurves:
            for k in c.keyframe_points:
                if k.select_control_point:
                    ctrl_pts.append(k)
        return ctrl_pts

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        areas = ('DOPESHEET_EDITOR', 'GRAPH_EDITOR', 'TIMELINE')
        if context.area.type in areas:
            return True
        else:
            return False

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self, width=450)

    def execute(self, context):
        sel = self.cpoints(context)

        for k in sel:
            k.co = (k.co.x, self.my_float_y)
            k.handle_left = (k.handle_left.x, self.my_float_y)
            k.handle_right = (k.handle_left.y, self.my_float_y)
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        lay = self.layout
        lay.row().prop(self, "my_float_y")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    #bpy.ops.object.simple_operator()

Alternatively you can use an invoke_props_popup:

See: How do I get invoke_props_popup to work?


how does one add accessories to a sculpted mesh? i am a novice modeler who i looking for some a modeling advice.

here is an image of a creature that i would like to model, (IMAGE BY ALEX CHEN, found on creature spot dot com)

this is my sculpted progress so far,

i just can't figure out how to add the wings and the armor like material for the chest and arms. As you can see from my mesh i tried to use and array modifier, along with shrink wrap, and subdivision surface modifiers but so far i am not getting the results that i want.

Your (the viewer reading this question) answer can really help us novice modeler in the long run. What is the best approach to adding accessories to sculpted mesh?

This process will work for parts that are attached permanently to the creature only. You only see gear/armor swapping in game design, because it is streamlined to be that way. If you want to be able to switch out gear quickly, you're working with the wrong program.

But you can change the materials and look of the parts easily, as I will show you here.

Make sure you are in Cycles and have created a UV for your model. In your node creation create three materials, one for the creature, one for the armor, and one for the wings. Put all the node groups into one material, link them together via a mix shader governed by a black and white texture. Make sure the texture is high resolution to avoid ambiguity in the border between the materials.

You can later come back and tweak the materials without having done any destructive editing.

Note: if you will share the .blend I can give you more specific instructions.


Volumetric Light not working on Cycles (but good in preview) The volumetric Light shows pretty well in viewport preview, but doesn't render at all in Cycles.

4 point lights - Strength: 1000

A cube with a Volume Scatter / Density: 0.2 / Anisotrop: 0

I've made simple scenes for testing and it works, I don't know what is happening here, maybe someone has an idea of what could be wrong here?

Thanks!

The problem was that the volume object wasn't set to render on its properties.


interface mess (again) blender is amazing i have to say to begin with!!! but some of the ux design is like whaaaaatt:)

so once again my interface got messed up and i cant get it to how it was before..

how can i get rid of all the tabs/windows/duplicates there is no "close" option anywhere no matter where or how i click. (well i have to admit i didnt try every possible pixel on the screen)

can blender pleeeeeease add standard/recogniceable buttons for moving these tabs around/closing them?

thanks!

The way I like to use to close windows is right click the little border between two, and then press Join. You will know when you can right click as you hover over the border and your mouse becomes a partition. Then click one of the two windows that you want to join and they both become one.

The window you click will turn into part of the one you didn't click, merging into one.

In my opinion, this is much better because it allows you to preserve the state of one window.

If you want to open a window again, just move your mouse to a corner until it becomes a crosshair, and drag it to the correct size. Hope this helps!


Change UserPreferencesFilePaths using Python Does anyone know how to change the script directory in the user preferences using Python from command line?

I believe it has something to do with bpy.types.UserPreferencesFilePaths, but I'm not sure how to use it.

Please help, thanks!

import bpy
from bpy import context
path = "/somepath"
context.user_preferences.filepaths.script_directory = path


F-curve modifier animation - whole values only Is there a method to have the graph editor only use whole values between key frames? I've tried linear interpolation as to remove any ease in/out.
For example:
I have key frames at frame 1 and 100 that control a modifiers value (also 1-100). When animated at animation frame 50 one would think it should read 50 in the modifier value, but its 49.637 and frame 51 is value 50.963. I'd like the values to only be whole numbers to remove random effects.
So perhaps something that generates stepping in between frames?

In order to have the f-curve follow precice values (eg, to follow exactly to the frame number) you can use f-curve modifiers to generate the values mathematically.

To achieve this, you first need to add a keyframe to your property to create the f-curve and then view the properties in the Graph Editor (N).

In the Modifiers section, click Add Modifier and select Generator.

The Generator allows you to define an equation to assign a value for the f-curve (y) for each frame (x) as a polynomial equation. For a 'straight line' relationship you need a '1st order' polynomial - so set Poly Order to '1'.

For the value to always equal the frame number you need to define it as y = 0 + 1x (ie, `y=x') - so set the first parameter to '0.0' and the second to '1.0'.

By ensuring the parameters are integers the result will be an integer for any integer frame number.

You can use this same technique to generate values for more complicated scenarios - for example, to set only for a particular range of frames (enable 'Restrict Frame Range') or to jump multiple values per frame (eg, y = 0 + 5x would increment the value by '5' for each frame) or to use a higher-level polynomial for non-linear relationships.


Does Blender support any form of collaborative editing? I remember there was once a project called Verse, which allowed (or at least was supposed to) collaborative editing in Blender, even using Blender collaboratively with other applications.

Is anything along these lines (I.E. collaborative editing across a network) supported in the current version?

Blender does not provide a way for multiple uses to edit the same blend file at exactly the same time. *

However typically you can manage this by splitting your assets into separate blend files and linking from one file to another.
Blender supports recursive linking so a scene, node-groups, animation, models, materials etc can all have their own files.

Here is the documentation for the linking structure use by the open movie; Tears of Steel

Some projects do this more fine grained, where the material, armature, mesh, action are all stored in 4 separate blend files and they are combined in a 5th, and composited in a 6th. But inter-linking complexity needs to be managed or you have a mess too, where you load a blend file and 100's of megabytes are loaded because files are interlinking in situations that might be avoided.

I have found the best way to manage linking is to only go in one direction.
So for example:

Materials/Nodes -> Models/Rigs/Environments -> Animation -> Compositing

But never link an animation into a material file for eg.

This way its predictable and you can manage what loads in a more controlled way.

Update: since 2.78 its now possible to reload libraries without re-opening the file, see: Datablock and Library Management.

*Blender used to have Verse integration, but it was removed due to not being very practical to use for real projects.


Weight painting two unconnected meshes .blend file

I have two different meshes, one for the leg and one for the foot. They are joined but unconnected. They are both connected with a shin bone.

However, if I rotate that bone then the two meshes are not "synchronized" even though both meshes are red.

Can somebody help me to localize the problem?

Your screenshot is showing the weights relative to the shin bone only. Every vertex is affected by all weights assigned relative to all others bones (probably foot, in example): if you want all the vertices of the bottom ring of the leg to move exactly as the upper ring of the foot, all thoose vertices must be weighted in the exact same way relatively to all the bones in which you have some weight.

See this answer for more infos:

How can my animation animate if there is no vertex weights?


Nodes wont show up in 3D viewport I am trying to toon shade my model however nothing is showing up in the 3D view port. I have done everything the videos have told me to do to start a material with shading, and it can be seen on the shading tab, however you should be able to see the shading in the 3D veiwport as well which i dont have. I also cant find the cycles option either.

How can i get the nodes to show up in the 3D viewport?

You're not actually in rendered mode; you're still in solid mode. Press Z and a pie menu will show up. Click on rendered to show all your materials.


How to apply collision physics without destruction? The sphere rolls down a plane though I it falls through the tunnel. How can I apply Chris' answer without applying the modifiers?
Tried[0] as well

[0] Passive rigid body physics not working with screw modifier

As well as defining the Shape of the collision you can also define the 'source' :

Selecting 'Final' uses the state of the mesh after all modifiers have been applied - without having to actually apply them.


Reset nodes to their default values After playing with nodes it is sometimes easier to start from scratch...

Is there a shortcut to return the values of a node to their default values?

EDIT

Right clicking and choosing Reset Values works in some cases, but not in all nodes. For example in the mapping node it resets values to 0 and 1 for scale (indeed the default values). But on a noise texture node  the default values are not 0 but Scale=5 and detail=2, if you use reset value both of them get zeroed out... It would be great to be able to reset curves, gradients and color correction nodes...

The only solution I've found is creating a new node and plugging it back in place of the old...

UPDATE

  Good news! "node reset" functionality is now part of node wrangler and will "land" after the release of 2.78, means hopefully in 2.78a: https://developer.blender.org/D2129 If you are interested, download a preview here:

  Even it's now possible resetting multiple nodes. You can simply select the nodes you like to reset and hit backspace, which makes sense (thanks to Greg Zaal) since this is also the shortcut to reset a single node parameter.

Original text:

I almost hesitate to suggest this as an answer, as it seems like there should be a built-in way to do this for the standard Node Trees. But in the interest of experimentation here's an operator that resets the node by:

copying location / size / name / bl_idname of the active node
copying the links
deleting the original node
replacing it with a fresh one of the same type
reconnecting all links

code (rather inelegant, but seems to work for Node Groups too):

def store_replace(node):
    node_tree = node.id_data
    props_to_copy = 'bl_idname name location height width'.split(' ')

    reconnections = []
    mappings = itertools.chain.from_iterable([node.inputs, node.outputs])
    for i in (i for i in mappings if i.is_linked):
        for L in i.links:
            reconnections.append([L.from_socket.path_from_id(), L.to_socket.path_from_id()])

    props = {j: getattr(node, j) for j in props_to_copy}

    new_node = node_tree.nodes.new(props['bl_idname'])
    props_to_copy.pop(0)

    for prop in props_to_copy:
        setattr(new_node, prop, props[prop])

    nodes = node_tree.nodes
    nodes.remove(node)
    new_node.name = props['name']

    for str_from, str_to in reconnections:
        node_tree.links.new(eval(str_from), eval(str_to))

Add-on

https://gist.github.com/zeffii/010a108a612fd6071a4b

via search menu (Spacebar)

via node properties (N)


Tilted Dial Rotation Spinning Faucet Dials are easy in blender when the axes are in default 90 degree space, but I have a faucet with tilted dials and I need to rotate them for animation, but I can't figure out how to rotate them like you would expect them to without them getting all contorted. Can someone please fix my blend file so this works correctly.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vny3jqc03hbrs5q/Slanted%20Faucet%20Rotation.blend?dl=0

You need to change the movement type for the transform manipulators to "local" instead of  "Global". This changes the movement to correspond to the object's position/rotation. once you have done that and put the menipulator wigit to "rotation" it should be easy to rotate the faucet handles like you want.


Why are my leaves white when I render, but have the right color in Material view? I am trying to make leaves fall to the floor.

The leaves are transparent PNGs imported as images as planes, in which I modified the color of the non-transparent pixels (they were grey to begin with and I wanted to add some color) using this node setup:

The material view seems to interpret what I am trying to do:

but the render shows white leaves:

Not sure I understand why that's happening...

It's because in your node setup, you connected Diffuse shader output with Emission shader color input. This is wrong. You can't connect two shaders like that. If you want to control color value of Emission shader with other node, use RGB node for example.


Cycles GPU CUDA out of memory - How to identify the problem objects? Rendering a large environment scene (also with multiple smoke and physics simulations) in Blender causes my GTX 980ti to run out of CUDA memory. (I've baked all the simulations but am unsure if this makes a difference to memory in rendering)

Is there a way to identify which particular objects / materials / textures / simulations are using up the most amount of memory?

As far as I know, there's no automated tool to identify the resource hogs in your scene. You'll need to do most of it manually. But surely you'll have an idea on what object / element could be the cause? Like, high res textures, dense meshes (check subsurf and multires modifier render settings too!!), lots of copies instead of instances, or fur / hair.
One possibility is to put those objects on separate layers, and render just that layer with very low samples (1 should be enough). The memory consumption can then be read in the debug print line on top of the render view.
Important: Use final render (F12), as many modifiers (like the Subsurf by default) have higher settings for final render than for vieport render.

Edit
For rendering animations, it might also be beneficial for debugging this to have the memory usage in the test render frames directly. You can enable Stamp Output and check Memory to do so, if you have Blender 2.78 (or a current development build which was compiled after Jul 14, 2016):


3D Sound - no rolloff? I'm trying to use the rolloff effect in 3D sound, but am having trouble. I have a near sensor which is triggering properly, but no matter where the character stands in my scene, there is no rolloff to the sound -- it's either on or off. Here's the settings. I can't find any decent documentation on this, and the properties don't seem particularly intuitive.

These are my settings:

A more detailed documentation on the 3D sound options you find in the Wiki on Sound Actuator it illustrates the meaning of the cone and all the options.

A older post mentions that 3D sound only works with mono (WAV) files. if this still applies you could convert your sound with a tool like Audacity.

I edited the file from the post mentioned above and needed to adjust some values in order to hear anything and uploaded it here.


First time baker having issues with a normal map I just baked my first normal map (by following this tutorial from Grant Abbitt). It's supposed to be a flat cable ribbon. I baked the normals from a higher poly mesh of some stitched-together cylinders. After applying the baked normal map to the low poly mesh, it looks decent in Cycles (ignore the sloppy texturing painting):

But it looks terrible in Eevee:

And, as soon as I deform the mesh in Cycles (like with a cloth sim), it immediately looks flat, like it does in Eeevee.

Can anyone help me figure out why this is happening? I'm pretty new to Blender and this is my first bake, so ELI5, if you don't mind :)
Cheers!

Apply the scale of the low-poly object and it will work fine:


Blender 2.9 - UV Unwrap not appearing I'm really new to the program, and it may be that I'm just being stupid. I'm trying to make some pants for The Sims 4, and they're done and all that, now I just need to add texture - but when I click "Unwrap" (and yes I selected everything), nothing will appear in the UV window. I'm really confused. I've looked up several tutorials but none of them are helping because they're really complicated.
I've got the file here if anyone wants to take a look.
It'd be super appreciated if anyone helped me out, I've been ripping my hair out about this for a day now.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7HIfVexjJ3oocXDLqGHoGNrSLR3cJbG/view?usp=sharing

You've opened the Image Editor, not the UV Editor. If you want to see the UV in Image Editor, switch it to Paint mode, but you won't be able to edit the UV in this editor:

You probably want the UV Editor:


Use Console Entries to Drive Class Presets So above the ui in blender it shows a pulldown of all the operations performed while modelling. Is there any way to perform a bevel and then take the properties from the above bar and use that as a template for an operation.

The idea is to set up a bevel that can be repeated with the same parameters set by the user. Allowing equal bevelling. Maybe it would work better if there was a bevel that once done would set the preset for subsequent bevels.

You can look at the context.window_manager.operators collection.  The property settings are in the properties collection.  items(...) returns a list of key, value pairs

setattr(op, key, value)
# a key value pair of ("width", 3)
#equivalent of
op.width = 3

Put this in a draw method and it will list all operators by name, and if it's a bevel op expand on the call method as seen in the INFO panel and list the key value pairs.

    box = layout.box()
    for o in context.window_manager.operators:
        row = box.row()
        row.label(text=o.name)
        if o.name == 'Bevel':
            bbox = box.box()
            row = bbox.row()
            row.label(text="bpy.ops.mesh.bevel(%s)" % ", "
                     .join(["%s=%s" % (k, str(v))
                            for k, v in o.properties.items()]))
            for k, v in o.properties.items():
                row = bbox.row()
                row.label(text="%s = %s" % (k, str(v)))

Here is a modal timer operator that captures the bevel operator properties once it becomes context.active_operator to do something while it is happening.
(Test Code)

Put your mesh into edit mode, then run the operator, the operator will cancel when the user leaves edit mode, this can be changed.

Whenever a bevel operator is used it saves the settings to a dictionary on the operator, and while a bevel operator is context.active_operator prints the settings to the system console.

import bpy

class ModalTimerOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Operator which runs its self from a timer"""
    bl_idname = "wm.modal_timer_operator"
    bl_label = "Modal Timer Operator"

    _timer = None
    bevel_operators = {}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if context.mode != 'EDIT_MESH':
            self.cancel(context)
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        if event.type == 'TIMER':

            op = context.active_operator
            if op is None:
                return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

            if op.name == 'CSharpen':
                op.bevelwidth += 0.01
                if not op.run_modal:
                    #cancelled from CSharpen Operator update prop
                    self.cancel(context)
                    return {'CANCELLED'}

            elif op.name == "Bevel": # op.rna_type.identifier == "MESH_OT_bevel":
                key = hash(op)
                # save the operator props in a dictionary
                print("BEVEL", len(self.bevel_operators))
                print("bpy.ops.mesh.bevel(%s)" % " ,".join(["%s=%s" % (k, str(v)) for k, v in op.properties.items()]))
                self.bevel_operators.setdefault(key,
                                     {k:v for k,v in op.properties.items()})

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

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

    def cancel(self, context):
        print("Operator Cancelled")
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
        # perform pre cancel here
        # print out the bevel operator dic

        for h, bo in self.bevel_operators.items():
            print(h, bo)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.wm.modal_timer_operator()

from code I set up from another answer to you where this operator talks to that operator "Csharpen"


GLTF Export — get scene camera I am using the GLTF exporter to use the result with Three.js. Within the Scene I have defined two cameras and set one as the »scenes' camera« within the Scene Properties panel (see image below):

The result of the export contains a list of all cameras, but how can I figure out which one is the one attached to the scene?

glTF and three.js do not have Blender's concept of a Scene Camera, so you'll need to use another way to identify which camera you want. Object names are exported with cameras, and Custom Properties are exported as well (if you enable this in the export options). Those would both be available in three.js as camera.name and camera.userData.
Note that the camera may be parented to an empty for export, so you may need to check both camera.name and camera.parent.name for the original name.


Object not centering Have a problem with centering my object for sculpt mode. I have modeled my character with a mirror modifier and i have him centered at the Z axis. Now if i select my char and click cursor to selected and then set origin to 3d cursor, the center point is a bit to the right of the characters center. I had to fix this by manually placing the 3d cursor in the center of the grid to make sculpting possible. Does anybody know what has gone wrong here?

When you select a model and tell it to place the cursor at its center, the cursor does not take into account any modifiers (such as your mirror modifier), and therefore it goes to the center of the vertices you have selected, as seen here:

Then, if you place your origin at the cursor, your mirror modifier will use the origin as your axis point:

So, if your mirror modifier uses the origin as its mirror axis, then all you need to do is place the origin at the point you want to mirror from. This can be done several ways, but the most precise would be to select a single vertex where you want your mirror to occur, and set the cursor to that point (Set cursor to selected):

Then set this point as your origin, the same way as per usual, and your mirror modifier will then use it as the mirror axis:

It is a simple mistake to make, and thankfully an easy one to fix.
Hopefully that helps explain the issue you faced.


Fastest PBR Material Workflow for a beginner? So I've been messing around in Blender on an off for a few years and just recently started putting in the work to actually improve.

When messing with materials and texturing I've found the Poliigon add-on and free materials indispensable. It's super fast to throw PBR quality materials on meshes and be done with it.

However it has its limitations and I hate the pricing model for it.

I started looking into Substance Source/ Painter and it seems like the right way to go for better quality but the workflow of taking things in and out of each program, the back and forth seems very inefficient.

Am I missing something here that makes this process easier or faster than what Poliigon offers? Or why there aren't more options for Plug and Play material libraries out there?

Any tutorials or training path recommendations would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Here's an answer Reddit user Mcurt posted on the Blender sub:

"There are a lot of factors that determine what tool/workflow is the best for texturing. If you're mostly just using PBR texture maps online, there are a bunch of other sites besides Poliigon that offer free textures. I rarely use Poliigon anymore because they don't have free textures, or at least any at decent resolution. Here are some other sources.

https://texturehaven.com/textures/

https://beta.gametextures.com/shop?order=popular

https://www.textures.com/

https://cc0textures.com/tagged/all

https://www.cgbookcase.com/downloads/

If you enable the node wrangler addon, you can ctrl+shift+T on the Principled BSDF node and instantly add your whole PBR shader.

I find Substance Painter to be most useful for mixing multiple materials in a single texture using smart masks, etc. It is probably not quite as necessary for arch viz stuff.

Other than that, procedural materials created in Blender can be really useful too. This requires practice and a bit of studying the node trees of materials you find on the web. I don't know of many up-to-date sources for procedural cycles materials aside from the Cycles Material Vault, which I'd love to pick up some day."


Keyframe seconds doesnt fit the animation I have a running animation. I exported it from a very old game, but I have an issue with the animation. The markers don't fit the second. For this reason the animation is shaking little bit.
Can somebody help me?

Snap keyframes to frames
Imported animation seems to be scaled down in time, three keyframes in frame is not usual. So original was probably designed for higher FPS (frame per second).
First you need to scale keyframes up, but by default blender use Snap to Nearest Frame, that cause in your case deleting (merging) all keyframes in between frames.

To avoid that, change to No Auto-Snap

In Pose mode select all bones. Go to Dope Sheet, select all keyframes and scale S them up with Current frame at zero, in your case scale to 3.482 seems to fit most of the keyframes on frame position. (Hard to say why they are not set precisely.)

Now you can switch Snap to Nearest Frame back and with all selected press G to move, but you dont really want to move, just move a bit so keyframes jump on frame positions and hit enter. Now you should have all keyframes aligned to frames.

Run cycle duration 0.76666s
Your import in length of 19 frames fits approximately to 25 fps. If you want to scale keyframes to fit frames you would have to increase FPS (frame per second).
Scaling keyframes per frame gives 65 frames with first keyframe on frame 1 (that is common start for blender). Last keyframe generates jump in motion, so I delete them. Since you know you have like 64 frames that should takes 0.766666s you should change fps to (64/76.6666%*100%) 84 fps. I dont know if there are some standards for game cycles, but I expected 60 or 120 so it is a bit weird.

Note:
BTW I don't have any shake even with your blend. So if you are OK to keep 24 fps with just 19 frames that with merged all keyframes in between - just select all bones in pose mode and press G to move a bit with mouse over Dope Sheet and release, keyframes jumps to frame position.


How do I smooth out hair particles? See how the strands are linear and not curvy. How do make it so the strands are curvy and look more natural

You could also try to change the Steps.

Inside the particle system go to Display (2.79) or Viewport Display (2.8) >>

Good Luck.


Is it possible to use a video for image-based lighting? When I discovered the use of HDRI to light a scene in Blender, I was blown away by the difference it made to my scenes.
What I'd like to know is whether it is possible to use a video to light a scene in the same way.
For example, if I had footage of a sunrise, could I use it to light my own scenes?  I realise that the video would not have the same dynamic range, but it's the combination of light levels and colour that I would like to use to light a scene of a forest clearing.  It's for an animated, projected backdrop for a theatrical play so the resulting video doesn't have to be be that photo-realistic.

I can't find anything in the Blender manual that would suggest it's possible, so I'm hoping somebody has found a way.  Otherwise I'm going to have to come up with some way of making a realistic sunrise.

you can create a plane and give a material that has a emission shader and the color is plugged in to a image sequence.

Note: you might have to set the fourth drop down menu to movie, and make sure that you the the frames property on the image sequence.


Blender 2.8 render contains bad stripes? Trying to render an image, only to find the result contains bad stripes, both in Eevee and in Cycles. What is going on here? The viewport render looks okay, though...

Blend file: enter link description here

The problem is in Cloth and Subsurf being in the wrong order in the modifier stack: Cloth must come before the Subsurf. For some obscene reason, this doesn't show in the viewport, not even in the render preview in the viewport, but it does give  horrible results in the final render.


Color Ramp not recognizing textures Basically I am following a Ducky tutorial and for some reason when I try to use a Color Ramp with any texture connected to it, it doesn't recognize it and just acts as if there is no texture connected at all.

Ok false alarm, the fix was just adding a mapping and texture coordinate AND using the object option on the color coordinate


Blender 2.8 Won't Run I'm running a brand new installation of Windows 10 Pro on a Dell XPS 8930 on a 500 gb m2 drive. I install Blender 2.8 or 2.82a but when I run it it shows the command window briefly and then a blank window and then quits. I haven't tried earlier versions.

I reinstalled Windows 10 and now it works wonderfully.  Thanks everyone.

I found  solution.

@Carl
-check the driver-version of your graphicCard directly at the manufacturer's site. Surprisingly  he internal windows driverCheck via deviceManager lies saying all drivers are up2date!-continue with a fresh installation of the latest blender ... worked for me.


How can i edit both video and animation in blender 2.9? I have an intro saved as an mp4 and i want it to fade out and in the meanwhile fade in the animation i previously made in blender with a 3d model. How can i do it in fewest steps possible?

Open your model.
Add a new scene.
In the new scene open VSE, hit Shift+A and import your video.
Add a Scene strip using the name of the scene containing your model.
Make the two strips overlap where you want the crossfade.
Then add a crossfade.


When I Merge 2 Spheres together How do Get it to smooth all the combined edges? So I combined these 3 shapes together and you can see the edges are still there. how can I fix this? How can I smoothen all the edges in that one shape?

It's easier to model the junctions in highly symmetrical objects like this than it seems.

Note that the origin of the spheres object never moves from the World origin. All moves are on the mesh, in Edit Mode.

Starting with a 1/4 of a 16-segment, 8-ring sphere, aligned as
shown, and an empty at the origin
Assign a Mirror modifier in X, and an Array modifier, Count 3, with Object Offset based on the Empty, which is rotated in Z by 120 degrees. Check 'Merge' and 'First and Last' in the modifiers.

In Edit Mode, G X move the mesh until the overlap is right for you
Select all the entirely internal faces, (take a peek on the outside of the spheres, make sure there is no selection showing)

Working on the 'original',  delete the entirely internal faces
On the partially internal faces, slide the internal vertices (G G) down their edges, until they meet their counterparts in the modifier-generated mesh. (Everything's symmetrical, you only have to do this half a dozen times)

Once everything is neat and tidy, add a Z dimension to the Mirror modifier.

After making a copy, and applying the modifiers, perhaps tweak. Here, I X> dissolved a few edges to get all quads, and (CtrlV > Smooth Vertex) eased the triple junction
Throw on a Subdivision Surface modifier.


How to round edges on mesh I'm trying to get round edges on my mesh but using inset extrude or subdivision and bevel don't seem to do the trick this is what i have

and this is what i want

Your Mesh normals are reversed, press ctrl + N to fix them while all faces are selected. You can select the edges you want to bevel and ctrl + B them, or you can set a bevel modifier to work based on edge angle. If neither do the trick, try creasing and subdividing


Texture bake stuck at 100% Hi all first question here, I looked all over the internet but didn't see anything so I signed up here. Im baking a texture, at 400 samples and it took a day to get to 100%. Its been at the 100% done mark for about 6 hours now.Blender is still responding but my texture hasn't finished baking. Im afraid to touch anything. What should I do. The bar is there at 100% with the X. the image i was baking to is still black with the smart project laid out. I did a test bake which turned out fine and went for high quality next. I think blender is just being buggy. I don't know what to do besides hit the x and be disappointed I have to start over. I heard someone got stuck at 50%, reopened the file, and the bake appeared.Sounds to good to be true. Is there a cool recovery mode or save record of what has been done so I don't have to start over? Is there anything I can do besides start hitting x's and closing everything? WHY I was so close.

Uninstall and reinstall blender I did that and it worked!


How to attach mesh object to another mesh I'm still new to blender and I've been having trouble attaching meshes to another mesh. For example, I'm trying to attach this hairpiece accessory to this hair mesh and I can't quite seem to get it to stick.

The best I can do is have it joined together with the hair but it doesn't follow the armature when I pose it around like it wasn't even attached.

Parenting it to a hair bone also messes it up. I got no clue.

Is there a proper way to do this? Any help would be great!

You can use the "Vertex triangle" Parent object option, which will make your accessory follow the movement of the trhee vertices of the parent mesh (Hair) nearest to the child.

So select accessory, shift select hair, press Ctrl P and choose "vertex triangle".

After selecting the hair, if you tab into edit mode you can choose three vertices to act as leaders of the movement.


Rendering a 3D volume I'm playing around with ways to visualize an MRI image of my head. I've extracted my brain, so there are non-zero brain voxels in the center, and zeros to the edge of the image.

I'm imagining having a corner cut out of my brain to expose its interior voxels like this:

Additionally, I've also got voxel-wise statistical data that I'd like to use as a semi-transparent overlay on the anatomical.

Is this setup possible?

Here's my BI setup:

material:

textures:

The first texture is a nice dense whole brain object, almost making the voxel data appear like a surface. The second texture makes the voxel values affect reflection color, which is important for inside the object.

I used a simple boolean modified to cut away the corner chunk:


Isometric 30° seems to behave like dimetric 26.6° (Blender 2.8) Isometric video game graphics article on Wikipedia says:

  The projection commonly used in videogames deviates slightly from
  "true" isometric due to the limitations of raster graphics. Lines in
  the x and y directions would not follow a neat pixel pattern if drawn
  in the required 30° to the horizontal. While modern computers can
  eliminate this problem using anti-aliasing, earlier computer graphics
  did not support enough colors or possess enough CPU power to
  accomplish this. So instead, a 2:1 pixel pattern ratio would be used
  to draw the x and y axis lines, resulting in these axes following a
  26.565° ( arctan(0.5) ) angle to the horizontal.

I'm making a game and decided to create some assets in blender, with this typical use of pseudo-isometry, in order to be able to retouch my renders with "neat" (as Wikipedia puts it) lines, or to avoid changing viewing angle when switching from renders to fully drawn pixel art.

I've added a new camera with 0;0;0 rotations in the center, moved it up, parented it to an empty in the center and rotated that empty along X to 63.4 (which is 90 - 26.565, as I had to set the angle from the vertical and not the horizontal).

Then I parented that empty to another object in center, which I rotated along Z by 45°. You can see on the image, that a bounding box of a plane I use as a guide, is drawn in same, sharp style as in pixel art - except it has a jagged line:

This wouldn't be a problem, as I see it, the algorithm drawing these lines could be not optimized to draw them in a "neat" pixel art pattern, even if its angle allows for it. However, I started to have some fun with the interface, by fine-tuning the rotation of my empty until the lines became perfect:

I looked at the angle with which I achieved this result, and lo and behold, the angle was exactly 60° from the vertical (30° from the horizontal).

I don't understand what is happening here. Is Wikipedia wrong on the angle 26.565° producing "neat" lines? Does Blender introduce some magic algorithm, that somehow makes the "neat" lines possible on true isometric view? Does Blender lie about the angle, or does it apply some kind of a trick like slight vertical stretching/horizontal contracting in order to preserve 2:1 ratio for these lines?

I tried to see if it stays the same on renders, and it seems the effect is there too (I didn't know how to render crisp lines, but I measured pixel colors in 2 px to the side and 1 px down pattern and the render with real isometric setup was more consistent with the colors along edges than the one with pseudo-isometric setting).

As in title, I tested it on Blender 2.8.

I misunderstood the Wikipedia article. The angle 26.565° is the angle between projected non-vertical axes, and the horizontal line:

While the angle of the camera should indeed be 30° from the horizontal / 60° from the vertical:

To those, who want to achieve true Isometry in Blender, instead of the pseudo-isometry that I need, you actually have to set the angle of the camera to 35.264°.


Eevee bump and displacement modifiers are low resolution? I feel like I'm doing something wrong but I have found no answers online. For some reason in Blender 2.8, bump and displacement maps are always in low resolution. The antialiasing is bad, and when I zoom out from the object it just looks like a lump of pixels.

I've tried setting my antialiasing samples to 32, anisotropic filtering is 16x, multisampling is 16 and it still looks low quality, in viewport and even after it's rendered. I won't be able to use the default textures with a normal map. I've also seen a whole lot of people having high-quality bump and displacement even before Blender 2.8 officially released (Ducky 3D for example). Any fix for this?

It is caused by the library that EEVEE use:

Documentation

  Material

  Bump Mapping

  As of now, bump mapping is supported using OpenGL derivatives which are the same for each block of 2x2 pixels. This means the bump output value will appear pixelated. It is recommended to use normal mapping instead.

    Tips: If you absolutely need to render using Bump nodes, render at twice the target resolution and downscale the final output.

I try some approach to resolve this problem since about 10 month ago. But there isn't a plausible solution that can be easily done without changing bump map. And 2x resolution suit my application.


Connect a loop of edges to a point I have N edges forming a loop, and the edges are not coplanar.  I want to fill this N-gon with a face, but that does not make sense (at least such a face will not be 3d-printable) since the points are not coplanar.  So selecting all N edges and then pressing F, though it seems to show a face in Blender, is not the solution for me.  So I'm content with simply choosing a new point that is roughly at the center of this loop, and then forming N triangular faces with the N edges.  This will succeed in closing the loop with a "face".  Can someone explain how this is done?

Of course, if someone can explain how I can nudge the N points to become exactly coplanar (they are almost coplanar right now, but not exactly), then of course filling the N-gon with a single face would be acceptable and a more clean solution.

You can do a couple of things:

In edit mode, select the Ngon, and triangulate it. (CtrlT )
Or Poke the face to create a fan (AltP)
Select all the faces you would like to flatten, for an average, or the one you would like the others to match, and create a new Transform Orientation (CtrlAltSpace). Perhaps give it a name. Then, making sure you're in your new orientation,  with the faces you want to be planar selected, scale them to 0 along your newly created Z-axis (SZZ0)


Generic Movie dissolve (sand effect) I search a way to dissolve a generic movie like sand effect. I animated my generic movie (down to up). But when a line come to the top of the screen I would like my text is dissolving like sand effect (wind force field left to right) and some particle take time to go to the right.

I work on Blender Render.

Currently, I am creating a Text object, convert it in a mesh and apply ParticleSystem. I add a wind force field. But when my animation start, all of my text is dissolving (Particle start at 1). Is it possible to put a force field in a tube not only the parameter, but in a cube for example and the wind work only in this cube ?

If I apply keyframe (keyframe on the particle start) on my text. When the text are near the wind the wind tube, it's works, each line dissolve. But if I change my text I need to restart all of the configuration, keyframes, etc.

I follow the tutorial from blender diplom web and some other example on web but I don't have the solution :
web link 1 and web link 2

Is it possible to have a text scrolling where each line is dissolving when this line is on the top of the screen with Blender (Rendre or Cycle).

Thanks a lot for the help.

I found a solution (the best way is playing with all parameters). I think it is a good way to do what I want :-).

Step 1 :

Add a cube
Add a wind force field
Add a plane (for particles)

Step 2 :

Subdivision Surface on the plane -> to have more Faces for particles.
Add ParticleSystem on the plane and just put the same Face number in Emission number.

Step 3 :

Put the wind Force Field in the cube
Rotate (R|Y|90) the wind
Add Physics Collision on the cube

-> Set Force Fields Absorption : 1.00 (maximum)
Wind Force Field

-> In Physics : Collision -> Check Absorption
-> In Physics : Change the Strength to see the particle movement

When the plane are not in the cube, with gravity, they fall on Z axis. Create an animation on the cube (with Wind) or on the plane. When the plane are in the cube, particles fall on Z axis with a movment on the right.

Now I can create my text and animate all :-).

Hope this solution is good and maybe can help someone else :-).


A way to export bezier curve with "bevel" (generated mesh) to a fbx mesh? Im trying to export a bezier curve to use in a game engine but it doesnt automatically convert the curve to a mesh and fails the export. At the moment I have to manually convert it to a mesh and then I lose the ability to rapidly test out different shapes on my curve.

Is there a way to automatically convert bezier curves to a meshes on export?

Make sure to enable "Other" in the export properties.


How to disable mipmaps in blender 2.7? I know I can go to User Preferences, System, OpenGL, and disable mipmaps, but it doesn't seem to work, because the texture stays blurry.

Is there another way of doing that?

It worked by disabling the generation of mipmaps with the GPU, in User Preferences


"'blender' is not recognized as an internal or external command" error when using blender from the command line How to render a scene using DOS in blender. Every time I try, an error occurs in the DOS window like the following;

C:\blender 2.9>blender
'blender' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

blender is probably not added as a command to the path in windows (see this link: https://superuser.com/questions/689333/how-to-add-installed-program-to-command-prompt-in-windows)

Or you can just open a command prompt in windows, navigate to the place where the blender executable file is installed (usually C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender), and invoke the program directly by typing blender.exe

Alternatively you can create a batch that starts the blender.exe command directly.

Copy this text, (replace the file name with the corresponding path and name).

@echo off
"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "path-to-the-file-you-want-to-render" -a
Echo Rendered all!
pause

Paste it on a new text file and save it as a file with a .bat extension.

Double click on the batch file to render.

If blender is not installed, just replace the path for blender so that it points to the folder where the executable file is stored.


Rig is moving other parts of my mesh for no reason! I've been following this tutorial to rig my blender character https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhQY2_gVoVg and no matter what I do, my rig moves other random parts of my model. If I move one leg, the other leg follows? Something's also wrong with the hands.  I've applied the mirror modifier, parented using automatic weights, I even removed the mirror modifier, duplicated the half of my model, mirrored it, then joined the two so there would be no need for a mirror modifier. No matter what I do, my rig seems to be acting up strangely. I even play around with the weight paints, but it still doesn't work! I'm assuming there's nothing wrong with my mesh and that it's something with the rig, but I don't know what. Please help!

In Object mode apply the rotation and scale of your object with ctrlA, then in Edit mode recalculate the normals with ctrlN.

Also maybe remove the doubles, put the Armature modifier above the Subsurf, enable the Preserve Volume of the Armature modifier, join the fingers to the hands, etc...

Anyway it will need some corrections in Weight Paint mode or with the Vertex Groups Assign button.


How important is distortion in a UV map being used for combined baking? Since an image texture for baked lighting is created by the render engine, is it better to set up the seams for the UV map so there is minimal distortion?

The scene has a number of objects in an enclosed space, some of which are rather complex shapes. None of them is going to have much texture, so I don't need to think about misaligned seams, really. My interest is realistic shadows and light.

UV Distortion in a static scene is less of a problem than it is when your models are used for movies and RT engines (that's imho, of course). You can always cover them up to some extend or rotate your model so that they are in less prominent areas.

However, you should consider the possibility that you might want to reuse your models someday. Since uv mapping in addition to modeling is still one of the most used and useful techniques in 3D modeling I highly recommend to start learning the basics as soon as possible.


Blender Shrink/Fatten Issue I have a mesh that I want to shrink but when I try to...it doesn't really go well (see GIF).
Someone has a fix for this?
https://imgur.com/a/452ticw

If you used the current version of Blender(2.83.4 at the time of writing) you would not have such an issue. In 2.79 this operation used to not work correctly with Individual Origins selected as pivot point for transform operations. Select another to fix this:


Nodes not in Shader Editor I am editing a leaf in shader editor, Nodes are not visible not even a material editor. How to create the nodes, or make them appear?

Without any screenshot is difficult to tell what's going on. Here some tips:

You don't have the shader panel visible:

You can split any area and choose what kind of editor show.
You can create a new Workspace based on templates (click on the + next to the top tabs and choose GENERAL > SHADER).

You don't have any nodes

Select you mesh and click on "New" from the shader view.
It's also possible that there are some nodes but are not in the actual view. So move the mouse on the shader editor, select all with A, and press . to center the view on nodes (otherwise you can zoom out till you see something)

Here a video showing how to split an area:
https://i.imgur.com/I9lYQYM.mp4


Extrapolation doesn't work in the Dope Sheet I can't understand why, in the Dope Sheet, when I try to extrapolate the rotation of my propeller (Channel > Extrapolation Mode > Linear Extrapolation, or ShiftE) it doesn't work. It works fine in the Graph Editor though. What am I missing?
The file is here.

As extrapolation works on a single channel basis, the procedure in dopesheet needs to have the object transform channels expanded and the Z euler channel selected. Then you can go to menu > Channel > extrapolation mode > Linear, or use shift E.


Accurate IndexOB and IndexMA passes I'm trying to get an accurate index pass for compositing. My geometry (a window in this case) consists of straight lines and it would be nice to have a perfect mask for color correction. As you can see Anti-Aliasing is enabled, but there are still some weird pixels:

Until now my workaround was to blur the image, but in this case straight lines are key to work with. How to achieve this? Is there a render setting to prevent the noise or make it less noisy?

You will have to render without DOF, and add it in during compositing in order to get clean IndexOB masks. Otherwise you'll probably have to separate via layers if you want in-camera DOF.

Alternatively, you could try this solution, which creates a second Scene, linked to your main scene with the camera DOF turned off. That way your second scene would have IndexOB masks with clean edges, and you can work with both scenes in the compositor. Would that solve your issue?

I'd be interested to know your final pipeline, I'm dubious that the clean masks would help you modify your DOF renders, but I would be interested to see more about it if it can.


Water simulation hangs over the surface of the collision object I created a water particles but they seems to hang over the surface, why is this happening?

Still the water hangs over the ground even with Collision Surface Thickness zero:

Here is a fluid simulation with a liquid Effector Collision Thickness of 3 vs a Thickness of 0

and here is a domain where collision distance is too large and particle radius is rather large (2.0):

In other words, try dropping your collision thickness to '0' and particle radius to < 1.0.


How to swap Y and Z axis on export to Collada I'm using Blender as a modeling app and I need to export its data to Collada format for being consumed by a game engine. The thing is that Blender uses Z-axis to be the up-axis and the game engine uses Y as the up-axis.

I haven't found any option to swap the axis on Collada export dialog but I did find the option in almost every other export option. Is there a plugin out-there or other solution to add this option to the Collada export menu?

PS: I know that rotating through X-axis is achieved the same effect but its annoying to do it every single time I need to export, so I don't want to do that. Instead, propose another solution, if there is any.

No. Blender's Collada exporter does not have a convenient way to do this. Your best option is to rotate the object as you mentioned.

Note that just rotating the object might be insufficient for some applications, e.g those which actually care about Collada's up-axis specification (which can be either Z_UP or Y_UP).

If you're working with one of those, you'll also need to manually edit the exported file.