What is the keybind for the toggle workspaces? When you press ctrl+ --> you change from 3d view to compositing, to code workspace, to video editor, to tracking, to UV layout, etc..

Where are those keybinds to toggle workspaces? They don't appear in the keymapping on Input tab on user preferences.

I need to find and assig "UV layout workspace" to ctrl+shift+F10". It has to be a 3 combination keymap including functions keys.

Please help. Thanks.

In user preferences  input look for "set screen" (there are two of them):

you can change to what you said, as shown below:

Just click where there's the current key combination, and use the new combination) - save preferences if you need it to be permanent...


How to compare colour values in Blender using Python? I have scripted materials on some objects, now I want to make a simple if/else-comparison like this for only (1,1,1)-white material:

if (mat1.diffuse_color == (1,1,1)):
  # do something
else:
  # do something other

printing the color to the console gives me:

<Color (r=0.0000, g=0.0000, b=2.5000)>

I tried several ways but nothing worked, as you can see in my screenshot I must detect the white cubes by comparison their material-colour to white.

Thanks for any help on this!

Edit:
I read the API

Basically it's only possible to compare equal data types. By using python's built-in type() method on Material.diffuse_color the console yields it's an instance of the class Color:

>>> type(bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material").diffuse_color)
>>> <class 'Color'>

Probably the simplest way is to access its 'components' by class attribute Material.diffuse_color.r or index operator Material.diffuse_color[0] and compare the values:

# Check if the red component is 1.0 via equal operator
>>> bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material").diffuse_color.r == 1
>>> True
>>> bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material").diffuse_color[0] == 1
>>> True

However, you can also compare two class instances:

>>> mat1_diff = bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material-I").diffuse_color
>>> mat2_diff = bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material-II").diffuse_color
>>> mat1_diff == mat2_diff
>>> True

Means that you can create a custom color (class instance) via mathutils module to compare with:

>>> import mathutils
>>> my_red_color = mathutils.Color((1.0, 0.0, 0.0))
>>> type (my_red_color)
>>> <class 'Color'>
>>> isinstance(my_red_color, Color)
>>> True
# Compare color instance with diffuse color
>>> bpy.data.materials.get("Red-Material").diffuse_color == my_red_color
>>> True


How do I link constraint data between objects? Normally if I have a material and want to put that material on say, 50 different objects, then I would select one object with that material, and then select the rest of the objects, hit Ctrl + L, and the material data would be copied to all the objects.

I have the exact situation I described above, except that I want to copy an object constraint from one object to all the other objects. Unfortunately the Ctrl + L menu doesn't have a "Constraints" button.

How do I copy this constraint to all the other objects?

Select object/-s without constraint/-s first, object with them last, in Object > Constraints menu choose Copy Constraints To Selected Objects.


2.74 not using all CPU cores when baking rigid body physics I noticed during baking physics (with 2,500 rigid bodies in a solidified cylinder) that, instead of using all 8 cores on my AMD FX-8150 CPU, it maxes one out at 100%, but then passes the baton onto another one, which goes at 100%, etc. but never seems to use them synchronously.

Baking takes a while with that many rigid bodies; is there a way to configure Blender to use all 100% of CPU when baking physics?

(Running Blender 2.74 x64 on Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 x64)

It looks like this is a known limitation of Blender (both the past 2.74 version and the current 2.76, at this time). The Cycles engine just doesn't (yet) have multithreading capability for baking rigid body physics. (Possibly soft body physics, also, though I haven't tested.)


Odd behaviour when moving mesh objects I'm fairly new to Blender, running 2.80 and trying to learn some hotkeys so i think i may have mashed a key, turning on a feature or option in one of my scenes that's now driving me crazy.

Imagine i have a scene with a cube and a plane.  The whole cube is above the plane.  If i go to top view and try to move the cube in X or Y axis (via G >> X or Y), the cube appears to move as expected in the top view, but when i go to side or front view the cube has dropped so the the centre of the cube (which is the origin) is now at the level of the plane (i.e. half the cube is above the plane, half below).

Also, if i'm viewing the scene from an angle and try to move the cube in Z (via G >> Z), the cube actually appears to slide along the plane in X or Y before reaching the edge of the plane, and then it starts to move in Z.  Deleting the plane allows the cube to start moving in Z correctly, but as soon as i add a new plane the same thing happens.

As you can imagine, this is making it very difficult to position objects! Any ideas what i've done and how to stop it?

Sounds like you have some kind of snap setting on. Look at the snap (magnet) icon in the top,center of your 3D view. Make sure it is off.


Tube Deformation Animation with Pill Passing Through I'm making a medical video featuring a robotic pill passing through the human digestive tract. The animation features the pill sliding down a cross-section of the esophagus and small intestine. I'm wondering if anyone has an idea of how I would create the deformation effect of the pill pressing against the wall of the tube. For example, the pill is larger than the diameter of the tube, when when the tube is relaxed, but when the pill passes through, the tube stretches to fit the pill as it slides through the tube. I'm trying to find a more procedural way of going about this to avoid shape-keying the whole thing. Any ideas?

I looked up the Dynamic Paint approach that @vklidu cited and it worked very well. Blender 2.8+ changed a few things, which actually made this task easier. There's a displacement option directly in the canvas settings for the object, and when everything's set up right, it works great, and procedurally, is flawless.


How do you activate Text Editor in v2.78? How can I activate the text field in the Text Editor? Video tutorials show more options than I see on my Text Editor ( v2.78 ).

Problem solved. I was in Sensei format, a plugin created by the person who created Zbrush. It Changes the interface to something more appealing to nubies like me. I won't use it again because It makes it difficult to follow Tutorials. Text edit works as expected when Sensei is disabled.


Apply shader color based on distance to mesh surface (Sculpted Mesh) I have an asymmetrical Mesh with sculpted bubbles on it (edit: and a Multires Modifier). I would like to use a procedural shader and color the elevated bubbly parts differently from the rest.

This is an example of what it could look like:

As the bubbles can have different heights and are not equally positioned along any axis or the objects origin, using a Gradient Texture or Geometry Node with Separate Z axis like for these examples does not work of course:

I would need a condition based on the actual distance from the Mesh surface > 0. I found the Math Vector Node in Distance Mode which sounds promising, but I don't now how/if I could use it in my case.

Any ideas howto address the elevated areas? Can it be done by using only procedural nodes?

[using Blender 2.82]

This is rather easy to do with an object that has a MultiResolution modifier as you mentioned. Such a mesh offers the possibility to bake the displacement from the base mesh to the subdivided one into a 32bit displacement map, and re-use that input for color ramps to drive the material color. Such a workflow also allows you to clearly distinguish between indentations and elevations as a bonus.

First, create your mesh as usual, and make sure there is a proper UV map to it. This UV map is critical for baking, so the better the layout, the better the displacement quality. Sculpt your detail into the MultiResolution modifier.

Next, create a texture of a reasonable size (I chose a 2K image in this example), and make sure it uses 32bit Float. This will make sure that there is enough image depth available to avoid banding artefacts in the texture, making it perfectly smooth:

Now create a material on the object, and use the image in the node tree, connecting it with the UV map. It doesn't matter yet where you connect the texture to, but you can already pipe it into a color ramp and the result of that into the Shader:

Now make sure that the image texture node in the Shader Node Tree is the active node (white highlight frame around it):

You are now ready to bake the displacement. The mode we will use records the difference between the Preview level of the modifier and the highest sculpt level, so in general you will set the preview level to 0 before baking:

Go to the Render Properties tab in the Properties Editor, and open the Bake Panel. Set the options as follows to bake the Multires Displacement data into a map:

By now, your object should look like this:

And after re-enabling the Preview subdivision levels to the max, like this:


Applying camera track to external clips I have two clips:

One is background footage (shaky cam) that I have tracked and solved, set up scene in Blender, etc.
The other is a .exr effect sequence rendered from Houdini

I would like to layer these on top of each other, but I want to use the camera track on the EXR sequence, so the Houdini effect follows the scene. I tried adding the sequence as a plane, but Blender rendered the EXR files with a black background, even though they showed up with alpha in the image viewer.

Any way to layer these two clips so that the effect follows the main shot using the camera track data?

If you simply want it to follow one of the tracks, what you're looking for is the 'Track Position' node (in the Input section of the compositor node list).  Just give it the video clip and a track that's the same depth as the effect you're adding.  Excuse the lack of actual files in this example, but in the compositor, create the following (vector blur is optional):

You may need to add another transform node to just the EXR sequence so it lines up correctly.

Just to cover my bases, if you need a more 3D layering, you'll add the sequence to the Blender scene projected onto a mesh, plane or otherwise.  To include alpha as part of the plane, you just need to use the alpha as a factor of a mix shader:


Game Engine: Disable/Enable Keyboard/Mouse input Is it possible to disable and enable the mouse/keyboard input in blender that every sensor doesn't recognize any input while it's disabled? Thanks!

There is no settings that disables all sensors, or all sensors of a certain kind (at least I do not know). You can disable sensors individually when you use blender (not when your game session is running):


Slice surface mesh with polygon I would like to cut a shape out of a surface mesh using a polygon.

The "Knife Project" function isn't working for me, as it changes the size of the polygon.  When it projects the polygon down onto the surface mesh, it increases the size of the polygon by some amount, depending on how far away my viewpoint is.

In this example, I want to project the polygon directly downwards, such that the polygon that is cut is exactly the same as the polygon that I started with.

I would also like to discard the outside of the cut, not the inside.  I.e. I'm not trying to cut a hole, I'm trying to trim off edges.

The surface mesh is a topography, and I want to trim off the edges according to a polygon that defines where the edges should be.

The reason why your polygon cut is larger than that of the original polygon is that you are performing the Knife Projection in perspective view. To make sure it maintains its scale, switch to orthographic view.

This can be explained as follows. If one want to Kinfe Project a circle onto a plane, the perspective projection of the circle is related to the field angle or focal length and the position of the camera as shown in the figure below. On the other hand, orthogonal projection is performed regardless of the position of the camera or any other property, also shown in the figure below. So, the scale of the perspective projection is directly proportional to the field angle while it is always constant in orthogonal projection.


How can I add letters on cube? It should look like the image shown here:

I tried adding text but that is not so clean.The image shown above has a texture.

How can I add a texture such that I have letters on the faces of cube?
What should I do to add different letters on each of the faces of the cube?

Make a new window and change it to UV/Image editor
In the 3D view go to edit mode and select the face u want fix the texture and press U and select Unwrap
Go to the Properties panel next to material there is texture layout
Below in type change to image or movie
And in the Image open the image as shown in .gif
Now in the UV Editor Select the image u want to focus from drop down.
And in the 3D change from solid to texture.


Crash when rendering? Machine and Software Specifics:

Desktop with i7 CPU AMD Radeon HD 6670 video card (DVI)
8 gigs RAM
500 gig hard drive
Windows 10

This machine only crashes when I render, which I do from a command prompt. Sometimes it works just fine, usually it does not.

Are there any settings that I should check to stop this from happening?

Thank you

Looks like a bad BIOS setting. SATA drive RAID Mode was "IDE" not "RAID".
 Reinstalled "Winders 10". Everything much more stable.


How to apply gradient color change in an animation How to apply color gradient change on a fluid such as in the following figure? The method should be capable to apply to all frames in the animation automatically. Consider it as simulation of being heated gradually in some specified locations.

Update:
Here is our result based on accepted answer: using procedural texture. Indeed, the answer is perfect for this question.

One side comment is that as also mentioned in the answer, the color is not attached to the fluid so as you see the color of drop is changing as it moves. This could be our other question in other post.

If you want the color to stay in one place, you could use a Procedural gradient texture.

From the wiki on procedural textures:

  Procedural textures are textures that are defined mathematically. They
  are generally relatively simple to use, because they don't need to be
  mapped in a special way - which doesn't mean that procedural textures
  can't become very complex.

This works for fluid simulations because the procedural texture exists in 3D space, so UV unwrapping is unnecessary.

Cycles:

Here is a node setup for cycles which uses a Gradient texture node to mix the colors used by the shader.

You can scale and translate the texture with the Mapping node. Note that it may be more intuitive to use the Texture option (added in 2.69). This will apply transforms directly to the texture:

Result:

Blender Internal:

To do this in BI, create a new material and set the type to blend, then set the mapping coordinates to Global.

The texture can be scaled and translated with the Offset  and Size settings in Texture > Mapping (Note that these values control the mapping of the texture, and not the position texture itself. One way to think of it is setting the size of the mesh to match the texture.

An alternative to using the mapping node or the offset and size settings is adjusting the texture space in Object Data > Texture space (ShiftT). Note that you will need to use a Texture coordinate vector for this to affect anything.

If you want the texture to move with the animation you can use either animate the mapping or texture space coordinates, or use an empty object to define the texture space.

Note that if you want the color to be attached to the liquid, using procedural gradient may be too limiting.


How do I make a single face of an object a particle emitter? I have an object which has a particle emitter at the bottom. The entire bottom of it is currently the emitter but I would like to make the middle face the emitter. How would I go about doing this?

You can make Vertex Group out of bottom face (create Group, select Face and hit Assign, without painting)...

...and use it to control Density under Particle System > Vertex Group.


objects not showing up in render 2.9 I have a render scene in blender that is meant to look like this:

however the render looks like this (its abit hard to see but the only thing in that image is the stickman drawring and the background is transparent?:

However its not transparent in the world film options so I have no idea what has happened. I had a similar issue like this in my younger blender days of 2.79 however you cant do "W" "clear all restrict render" anymore... Please help. Also the visibility in the layer settings is all set so it should be seen in render...
Also if you still cant see the stickman this may help you (youll need to enlargen the image potentially to see it and the background has that transparent checker texture as well. Also the compositing has nothing to do with it.:

Sorry - I've overlooked which version of Blender you're using. I'll leave the answer here in case any of it still applies.

You haven't accidentally clicked on those camera icons in the Outliner, and made the objects unrenderable?  If so, click again on the camera icon.
Or made the lights unrenderable? If so, click again on the camera icon. Another possibility with lighting is the lamps could be too far away. Or they could be in another layer to the objects and you might have accidentally clicked "this layer only" on the lights.
Or put materials on the objects while in Blender Render, and then tried to render in Cycles?  If so, stick to Blender Render, or assign materials in Cycles if you want to render in that.


How to scale unconnected edges using individual origins in python? I want to scale each selected edge individually along it. To do it I first duplicate each selected edge and then try to scale it using bmesh.ops.scale. Unfortunately it scales using origin/median pivot point. How to do it in python so that edges are scaled using individual origins? How can I use different pivot types from python?
Here is my script:
import bpy
import bmesh

def getDupliEdges(edges):
    dupEdges = []
    for e in edges:
        retOneEdge = bmesh.ops.duplicate(
                bm,
                geom=[e])

        dupGeom = retOneEdge["geom"]
        dupEdge = [ ele for ele in dupGeom if isinstance(ele, bmesh.types.BMEdge)]
        dupEdges.append(dupEdge[0])
    return dupEdges

def scaleEdges(dupEdges,factor):
    for e in dupEdges:
        verts = e.verts
        bmesh.ops.scale(
            bm,
            vec = factor,
            verts = verts)

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
mesh = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)
bm.faces.active = None

edges = [e for e in bm.edges if e.select == True]

view3dList = [ele for ele in bpy.context.screen.areas if isinstance(ele.spaces[0],bpy.types.SpaceView3D)]
view3d = view3dList[0]
view3d.spaces[0].pivot_point='INDIVIDUAL_ORIGINS'

dupEdges = getDupliEdges(edges)

scaleEdges(dupEdges, [2.0, 2.0, 2.0])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh, True)

Here is an image to illustrate the question.
On the left - initial selection - 3 edges;
In the middle - effect of my script;
On the right - how I would like it to work.

Thanks for any tips on that :)

You might do something like:

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)

# current selection
edges = [e for e in bm.edges if e.select]

for e in edges:
    v1 = e.verts[0].co
    v2 = e.verts[1].co
    origin = (v1+v2) * 0.5  # edge origin
    bmv1 = bm.verts.new(((v1-origin) * 2) + origin)
    bmv2 = bm.verts.new(((v2-origin) * 2) + origin)
    bme = bm.edges.new([bmv1, bmv2])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(obj.data, True)

I may be mistaken but I don't think at present the pivot point has any influence on bmesh.ops. So a slight modification of your original code gives a matrix to each new edge to scale: https://gist.github.com/zeffii/71862f5b1cad1bf1d2c1


2 curve 2 different results I have 2 curves name Top curve and Bottom curve and bevel with name bevel pipe. In the curve bevel i have given both the curve same bevel but the result to the top is thick (yellow color) and the bottom curve is thin (grey color). Any solution

Edit:

Select your curve
go into edit mode
with all Points selected press "w" and select "Set Curve Radius"
Change the curve radius in the operator panel

to reset the curve radius divide 1 by the scaling factor, in this case the scaling factor is 2.048


Imported Obj and MTL files do not display correctly I am a bit of a noob at blender.
I have an Obj file and a Mtl file, which Windows' default model viewer can put the two together with no issue, so I know they're linked.
When I import the Obj file, they both import in the list, but the model appears black with 0 light source, and white with one. I've tried fiddling with the diffuse, but no avail. The block-white colour does change if I change the light source.
I've done my best to try and sort the issue by looking at the forums, but now I've come unstuck despite my best efforts.

If you're importing MTLs for your OBJs you need to make sure both the MTL and supporting UV texture JPGs/PNGs are selected during upload
Otherwise your model will be missing textures ,
 another noob here , just read this in a chat though, hope it helps


Cloth Simulation with Mesh Deform Modifier causes parts of mesh to stick? I'm using a Mesh Deform Modifier to animate a complex belt model with a simpler mesh. I animated the location of the deform mesh so that the cloth simulation would have some movement to work with, but certain parts of my complex belt mesh are "sticking" in place and deforming the rest of the mesh. What is the reason for this?

Blend file: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=49483

I found the reason: It was because the mesh i used as the deform cage wasn't completely surrounding my complex mesh before i clicked bind. The vertices i left out were the ones that were sticking.


I cannot pose my humanoid, even though it is rigged and parented I have a mesh based humanoid with texture.
I added and adjusted the metarig.
I click body, then shift-click metarig.
I right click and do parent -> Armature Deform -> With Automatic Weights.

I try then to pose the model but the metarig is the only thing that moves. Seems like the mesh and the rig are not bound, despite looking like it in my scene collection pane, within the metarig's tree. (Body is inside the metarig's collection).
About to self-destruct.

while in object mode, select your object shift select (add select) your bone armature, then hit ctrl + p, with automatic wheigths.
But before you do this apply scale (ctrl+a) for both mesh and bones, people often forget it and that gives a lot of problems


Problem with BMesh Vertex Location Precision I'm writing an add-on that imports vertex locations and builds a BMesh by placing vertices at those locations. I'm running into precision issues, since the imported data can be large floating point values with several digits after the decimal point.

The image below shows the values imported and the locations of the vertices as stored in the BMesh:

So I know the problem (floating point precision) but I need to know how best to handle it.

My add-on currently creates the mesh with the vertices stored using the values imported from the data, then shifts all the verts to place the mesh close to the center of the scene. It also, optionally, scales the mesh down if it's particularly enormous.

But it appears that I can't do it this way, as I can't store the verts with the required precision.

How can I build a mesh that represents the vertices with the required precision?

The problem is caused by the fact that vertex locations are stored using 32-bit float numbers. This means that there are only 6 significant figures stored, so accuracy takes a dive with large (or very small) coordinate values.

Originally, I had been storing the actual locations of the vertices in the mesh and then moving them all toward the origin of the Blender scene in one go. I had to re-work things so that the localization (bringing closer to xyz=0,0,0) has to happen before the vertex locations are stored in the mesh.


Using noise texture of one object to effect another object I have made the ground look wet by using a noise texture to control a glossy node. I am looking to add several parking lines to the ground, my thinking was to uv unwrap the lines onto planes and shrinkwrap them to the ground below. The image below shows the result.

Is it possible to have the parking lines effected by the glossy noise nodes from the ground below? Or is there a better process than the one I have described?

The simplest way to do it is first to create your lines and join them to your plane. Use a Texture Coordinate node (Object output) that you plug into the Texture node you've chosen. The noise will affect both the ground and the lines, with no discontinuity.


How can I deactivate all the materials before rendering in Cycles? I made a scene which I now need to render, for testing purposes; is it possible for me to deactivate all the materials without having to loose them? As in hiding them in the render.

You can assign a single material to the whole layer. The original materials will remain assigned to your objects but will be ignored at render time and will be replaced by the material specified on this setting.


how to separate mesh with armature I'm trying to separate a mesh with armature animation into two by selecting vertices and press P in edit mode. But the separate mesh is all messed up and does not animate accordingly.

Is there any better and cleaner way to achieve that?

I got it after few tries. Do as the following:

Select your object and goto Edit Mode.
Select vertices or faces you want to split.
Press P and select "By Selection".

The mesh messed up in my case is due to changing action after splitting mesh into 2 objects. Strangely, if you change action while selecting a 3D object, the mesh will go hay-wired. To solve that, be sure you select armature/bones when changing action.


How can I select top and bottom vertices at the same time in top view? I start with a cube, then go into top view. I'd like to change its shape into something else but when I press G, only the top vertex is grabbed, and it changes my square into some weird triangle. I'd like to know if there is a way, without leaving top view, to grab both the top and bottom vertices of the square. It seems like a common problem and I can't figure it out. Should I instead be starting with a plane then adding thickness later?

Either you go into wireframe mode Z or you click this little button:

This will set the limit selection to invisible too. Then select your vertices with B and drag. But: Be aware of these methods will select ALL vertices inside your selection (e.g. if you´ve a more complex mesh).


How do I make a face between the inside of an outer mesh with the outside of an inner mesh? I have a racetrack in the middle of a bounding area.  I would like to join the two meshes and make faces between the square bounding area and the outside of the racetrack.

I have the relevant vertices of the racetrack saved as a vertex group.

Here is my blend file if it is required...

blend file

Or perhaps there is a better approach.  My ultimate goal is to have a plane outside the racetrack that will anchor objects for scenery in a video game.

Thanks for any help.

I was able to do it by selecting the vertex group with the outer 4 vertices of the bounding box and then Mesh -> Faces -> Fill or Alt F to "Fill a selected edge loop with faces".  I'm still open to a solution that is more correct.


How can I adjust the (yellow line) length of the light in Blender? How can I adjust the (yellow line) length of the light in Blender? Can we make it shorter?
I think yellow lines that from the lamps are too long when comparing to the object scene.
Thank you.

You are using an Area light.

For area and spot type lights, the line visualizes the Custom Distance > Distance, regard of wether Custom Distance is active. You can change it with the Distance property.

If you would like to remove the yellow tracking blob "Look At", uncheck Look At in the viewports Gizmo settings.

If you are using cycles (or another render engine), this Distance propetry is not accessible, although it is represented in the viewport. Briefly switch to the EEVEE render engine, change the distance value until the viewport looks good, the switch back to your actual render engine.


star-like patterns formed by arrays of cubes in viewport I noticed these patterns:

The mesh you see is just the base cube duplicated 1000 times in x and y directions using an array modifier, spacing is 1.2.
This is no problem, I am just curious what causes this. Would I see this in real world as well, if I had 1000000 little cubes evenly spaced in front of me, or is this the result of the computing. I tried rendering this view, to see if this remains in the render as well, and it does, but the effect is way more subtle.
I know this question is kind of off topic, but I am really curious...

Yes, you would.  Those are known as "Moire patterns" and they occur in real life.  The wikipedia page goes into great detail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

You can even see it in this photo of a normal striped shirt!


Vertex Groups Density working in opposite way I'm learning how to add hair with this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bo3wmQ5qLU

I've followed the path slowly and I got to the point of assigning density = my group of selected area almost the same way it is explained here

However, the result I get is the opposite of what I want.

You have clicked the inverse button , just click it again and it will go back to normal :


How can ı save render green chanel? I want to save my render's green chanel. How can do that?
Look at this image: https://prnt.sc/jftw5m

@Serge L's answer is true.. Separate RBG is Answer.


Consistent triangulation when exporting shape keys I am attempting to export objects from blender into .obj format for use in an opengl program I am writing.  Currently, I am attempting to create shape keys in blender, then export them, then interpolate between them as my program runs.

Below is the python command that I use to export the .obj file.

bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(
    filepath = temp.name,
    use_selection = True,
    use_edges = False,
    use_normals = True,
    use_uvs = True,
    use_materials = False,
    use_triangles = True,
    keep_vertex_order = True)

Both the initial and final steps of the animation look as expected, with the shape key either applied entirely, or not applied at all.  However, in the interpolation between the two shape keys, there are graphical issues as shown below.

This seems to be caused by inconsistent triangulation between the two different shape keys, since the diagonal between the corners of the rectangles goes in the opposite direction at the two ends of the animation.  I would not have expected this, since I had passed the keep_vertex_order flag to the exporter.  Am I understanding the issue correctly, and is there a way to keep consistent triangulation?

You could add a Triangulate Modifier, with either Fixed or Fixed Alternate as the Quad Method. Make sure to Apply modifier in the .obj exporter with:

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if not 'Triangulate' in obj.modifiers:
        tri_mod = obj.modifiers.new(name='Triangulate', type = 'TRIANGULATE')
        tri_mod.quad_method = 'FIXED'

bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(
    filepath = temp.name,
    use_selection = True,
    use_edges = False,
    use_normals = True,
    use_uvs = True,
    use_materials = False,
    use_triangles = True,
    keep_vertex_order = True
    use_mesh_modifiers = True)


What is the difference between adding a custom property via the Object Data tab vs the Properties Shelf? In Blender 2.82a, on Ubuntu Studio 19.10, there would appear to be a place to add custom properties other than under the Object Data tab of the Properties Panel. Under the Tools tab of the Properties Shelf (N-Panel), there is seemingly another place to add them:

I am not clear on what adding them using this other method actually does, because I have found that, for any object currently selected which has had custom properties added via the Object Data tab, those custom properties cease being displayed in the Properties Panel as soon as that object is no longer selected (as one would expect, since the context has changed).

When custom properties are added via the Tools tab of the Properties Shelf, then unselecting the relevant object does not stop the custom properties from being displayed in the corresponding location of the Properties Shelf. Instead they remain visible. I am wondering why this is.

It would appear that adding the custom properties in these two ways is doing something different, and that these two approaches are not merely two different ways to do the same thing.

Custom properties are always associated with a data block they belong to.
The place you add them from determines which datablock they are associated with.

Adding custom properties through the Properties Window will make them associated with the datablock of the currently selected tab.

You can add properties to Objects, so selecting a different one make them "disappear", but you can also add them to Object Data so several instances of the object sharing that data will have the same property.

You can also add them to Materials or Scene, Textures, Particles, among others, regardless of the object they are applied to.

Likewise custom properties added through the Tool tab are associated with another type of datablock, in this case not dependent on selected object, but the current Workspace.
Workspaces are represented by the tabs at the top, an are themselves datablocks that can be linked to or appended, and can bear their own custom properties.


Rigging and bone orientation So, this is more of a practice and method question rather than a technical one; I've found some information on the subject, but I'm not sure I understand the system. To give you a quick background, I've exported the default character model from Unreal Engine 4 and am creating a rig for it in blender so I can do my animations there.

As I was mucking with bone orientation and pole targets and such, I realized I didn't know the philosophy behind this question: how should I orient my bones?

In this example, the bones which form the spine have their Z axis pointing towards the front of the character. This changes for the highlighted head bone, which has a Z axis in line with the global Z. As I was setting all this up I realized I didn't know if every axis should be facing uniformly, if they should all try and orient globally, if some should face some way and others should face differently, and so on.

Phrased specifically - what systems or rules of thumb can I adhere to when adjusting bone orientation in a rig, or where can I find more information on this subject?

Any help is appreciated, thanks everyone :)

P.S. This is all hopefully headed back into UE4. I don't know if the destination software of the animations has to do with how I should handle all this, but that's my plan in case it does.

There was some good input from Nathan Vegdahl on this exact subject in the bf-animsys mailing list last year. This is all subjective, of course, but it makes it easiest for animators if the axes throughout your rig are consistent first and foremost. This is a copy/paste from his email(s) to the list:

  The main rules-of-thumb that I try to follow are:
  - The x-axis should be the "primary" axis of rotation for any given control.
  - Rotation in the "primary" direction on the x-axis should result in a
  positive rotation angle (meaning that if it were euler, the x component of
  the rotation would be positive).
  - For bones that are free-floating and/or don't have any particular
  relationship to other controls (the root control is a good example), align
  all of their axes with the world axes.

  In the first two rules, "primary" is often subjective or ambiguous,
  depending on the control, so you just have to use your best judgement and
  experiment what it feels like to use it as an animator.

  It's important also to note the reason for doing any of this at all.  In
  all 3d animation software, keeping bones aligned well helps keep the rig
  better organized for the rigger.  It's also important for animators when
  e.g. working in the f-curved editor.  But in Blender it's particularly
  important for animators, because one of the major interaction models for
  tranforms is via hotkeys, using the x, y, and z keys to specify axes.

  Oh, I should also say: the choice of x vs z axis as the "primary" rotation
  axis is arbitrary.  I choose x because it's the first letter in "xyz".  But
  z is just as good.  What matters is consistency within the rig (or within
  the project if it's a larger project).

I generally follow Nathan's conventions when I rig in blender, although the same principles follow in any software I use. Again, this is all subjective, so your mileage may vary and you might find a better convention for your particular rig. It is also important to take into account your rotation orders on your controls. XYZ might be better suited for a primary axis of Z+ in your rig, whereas an order of YZX might be better suited with X+ as primary axis.

bf-animsys January 2014


height map brings weird result I have a height map (grayscale mode).

It looks nice but it gives very bad result when i plug in it in displacement either bump node.

Actually i can zoom out and i won't see this but i need to bake normals with this displacement...

Any suggestions?

This occurs because of two things:

Your image is a highly compressed JPG, creating banding issues and artifacts which get amplified by using it as a bump map.
I would suggest using a PNG with a higher bitrate.
You set the bump strength to 3, which makes the color data clip. 0-1 is the safe margin if you have 100% black in your image (which you do). I suggest working with the distance value instead if you want to have a more pronounced depth effect.


How to stop smoke simulation from rising? I have a smoke simulation. How do I get it to not float up?


How do I create array of objects of alternating color? I want to create a chain that alternates between two colors every x chain link.
This is what I want to model:

The best I could do was use the wave texture node, but then I get chain links that are half orange half black:

Of course, I could just apply the array modifier and change the texture of every x set of chain links, but I want to have the option of later varying the chain length.
Thanks!

Array modifier has a UV offset option. If you shift each instance by one in U in the modifier:

then, you can use this information in the shader:

In this example, the step value is 5.
We divide X from the UV by five, take the floor of the division then modulo it by two to alternate the colors.
So that:


pinned vertices do no stay pinned when animating a cloth I have created a cape and pinned the vertices I wanted to stay stationery however when I go to animate it they unpin and repel themselves from the armor they are supposed to be near. I turned down the repel and collision distance down as far as possible and it still occurs. Any ideas?

The cloth simulator actually uses vertex weights (1 = pinned and 0 = unpinned).

Your vertex group has been assigned with 0 weight, as can be seen by entering weight paint mode (blue = 0 weight):

Reassign your vertex group with the weight slider on 1 (or paint some weights in weight paint mode):

Now the vertex group will have a weight of 1 and should stay pinned.

In the cloth modifiers physics settings enable pinning and select the cape vertex group.


How to make elements of mini cooper (door, hood, fender, bumpers, side panel) and their transitions smooth? I'm making a mini cooper at the moment, and the modeling goes pretty ok. I model the mini cooper by using front, back, side and over view and match the mesh to these images and make elements of the car individually. But realistically these elements (door, hood, fender, bumpers, side panel) are aerodynamic and align each other. So how can I make the elements smooth (without modifying the general shape) and align them to make it look realistic, since right after modeling these elements and the transitions of the elements are not very smooth.

What I try to do after the modeling:
Join adjacent elements, set 3d cursor in the gap between the elements, select vertices that are next to each other with respect to the gap (so transition of the elements), and scale to 0 on the axis that is normal to the gap. But I think there is a more efficient method. So how can I make the elements smooth (without modifying the general shape) and align them to make it look realistic, since right after modeling these elements and the transitions of the elements are not very smooth. :)

Without material cannot be seen directly:

But with Glossy shader it can be seen the fender and door are not aligned nicely:

And the side panel at back is not smooth:

The images with Glossy shader can be reproduced with this blend file (by using the camera's in the scene)
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/37591

I examined the screen shots, and then examined the blend file, and found immediately what the problem is. The geometry does not match across the joints in the body. I opened your blend file, combined the front fender, door, and rear fender into the same object using CTRL - J, and with the side view selected, switched into edit mode. Here is a screen shot:

Note that in the front fender, you have five segments, and in the rear fender you have seven, but in the door you only have four. To have the meshes line up on either side of the joints, you need to have exactly the same geometry on either side of the joint, so you'll need to add two more segments on the front fender, and three more on the door, and the x and z values of each pair of vertices on either side of a joint along the front and rear door edges will have to be identical, with the only difference being a small variance in the x value of the vertices in each pair. The same will be true of the joints between the fenders and the hood, and between the rear fenders and the rear door.

If I were doing this model, I'd likely make the door, and two side fenders a single object, and when I had the whole side to my liking, go back, and add a couple of loop cuts to define the front and rear edges of the door.


How to continue bake fluid simulation in blender 2.80 I have baked a fluid simulation which baked till 151th frame out of 240 frames, Now I want to continue the bake from 151th frame. Can we do that in 2.80 Blender

If you have baked it, just go to physics properties tab and tap on 'Resume'.


How to cut the end of this cylinder flat? I want to generate a cylinder (which I apply some modifiers to) which goes to the centre of the mirror (which I then bool difference to get rid of the intersecting part), and then generate another cylinder from the centre of that mirrror that extends outwards. What's the quickest/neatest way to do it without having to manually drag the cylinders into alignment?
I have ended up extruding the same cylinder instead of generating another one.
I want to generate a cylinder at the centre of the mirror's position (OK, if the cursor is there):

Extrude a face of that cylinder so that it goes to the centre of the mirrors position (just send the cylinder there by setting the cursor to the centre of the mirror):

This is now the incoming beam:

I bool difference this with the mirror to give me this face which I can extrude along X/Y/Z, giving me the desired result:

I'd now like to make the end of this beam, 'flat' and not angled. How can I do this?
I'd also like the option to break the cylinder into multiple objects after it's reflected. Is this possible?

I don't know what is purpose of the final model, but I think you can start with Curve object, type 2D. By adding Depth you can get tube shape ... easy to model and readjust laser ray direction, angle to hit surface.

You don't even need to create real "contact" face since tip of beam is hidden in "mirror" object.


How Do You Apply Microdisplacements For Exporting I've learned how to use microdisplacements and I think that they are very handy. However, I would like to use them in Unity Game Engine, so I would like to the microdisplacements to actually add new vertices and change the shape so that I can export it as a .fbx. If you can't, please tell me!

The displacement input in the materials is for rendering inside of blender only. In order to get the effect in a game engine, you need to create the geometry by using a displacement modifier on the mesh.


Python scripting - append frame directly to video I have a script that modifies position and rotation of some objects as well as individual verticies. For each frame I render PNG and then I insert them to video sequence to render the final video. The problem is that I have 6000 frames and the individual image files are quite large. Is there a way to append the frames as they are created in the for loop to single video file? As I understand it I can't keyframe individual verticies and therefore can't create only keyframes in the for loop and render the video afterwards
Here is the code:
import bpy
import csv

FILE = 'Data/20200712.csv'
OUTPUT = 'Other/Output/'

#
fp = bpy.context.scene.render.filepath # get existing output path
bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG' # set output format to .png

arrow = bpy.data.objects['Arrow']
target = bpy.data.objects['Target']

#find which vertex of pyramid is moving
bottom = bpy.data.objects['Cover']
for i, vert in enumerate(bottom.data.vertices):
    if vert.co[2]>0.5:
        ind = i

with open(filename, newline='') as data:
    reader = csv.DictReader(data)
    counter = 0
    for row in reader:
        if row['A'] is not None:
            frame_num = int(row['SampleTime'])

            x = float(row['hB'])            #load value saved as hB

            y = float(row['hA'])            #load value saved as hA

            arrow.rotation_euler = (-y/3, x/3, 0)

            target.location = (row['gestTarget0'], row['gestTarget1'], 0.9)

            bottom.data.vertices[ind].co[0] = x/5
            bottom.data.vertices[ind].co[1] = y/5

            bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame_num)
            #arrow.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=frame_num)
            arrow.keyframe_insert(data_path='rotation_euler', frame=frame_num)

            target.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=frame_num)

            bpy.context.scene.frame_current = frame_num
            bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = OUTPUT + str(frame_num)
            bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True) # render still

#        counter += 1
#
#        if counter>200:
#            break

bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = fp #restore filepath
```

By default blender don't allow to animate in editmode(i.e keyframing vertices properties). So to over come this problem you need to enable AnimAll addon at "preference->addon -> AnimAll".
This creates a new tab in right side panel of "3d port view". Go-to this panel unmark select only check box and Mark points check box.
Hope this help you.


Objects from collection falloff I'd like to use falloff for every object, using any kind of falloffs, but my objects are not generated by matrix, but are taken from collection. The problem is whenever i start to change vector values, objects are "flying away". Is there a solution to set some kind of starting point of objects, to make them return there after animation?

You can use Object ID Keys to get the initial transform values of your objects. Put the node in a loop subgroup to get the Initial Position of your objects.

Look at the example usage.


Mesh not showing in game engine after lattice deform I'm trying to make a cube deform when pressing a button by using a lattice, so I've parented a simple cube to a lattice using the Lattice Deform option, but when I start the game engine it won't show anywhere.
The cube is new without any modifiers on it and the lattice surrounds it.
I've also tried to reinstall Blender but nothing changes, could someone please help me?

Lattice is not supported By the BGE.

Unsupported objects (curve, particle ,lattice ....) will not be converted to game objects when starting the game session. This means they will not present within the game.

Be aware children of unsupported objects will not appear as the parent is not present in the scene. I think this is your current situation.

I suggest to remove the lattice completely. At least unparent the cube from it.


Parenting with automatic weights generates empty vertex groups I created a character mesh using the manuel bastioni, and then wanted to use the rig created by rigify. I followed the steps as in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiAd_08-0k

When I parent the character mesh to the rig, there are a bunch of vertex groups created. But, when I click on any of them and click "select" in edit mode, no vertices are selected. This also means that the rig is not really skinned - no vertex moves along with the rig. I have looked online for other's having a similar issue, and none of those apply to this case (for e.g., scale transform is applied before parenting).

Here is a google drive to the blend file, saved right after I did the parenting. The metarig is present but hidden, in case you want try regenerating the rigify rig. What is going wrong?

My .blend file can be found Here

Hey I just got the same problem with the ManuelBastioniLAB Addon and what seems to work for me is the following:

So do you remember that you have to check your mesh, that had to be only close mesh with no additional objects like the eye balls and teeth... well after i spitted and isolated the body I deleted the double vertex by getting to edit mode, select all the vertices, press W+Remove double vertex BUT changing the "merge distance" to 0.0400 or any slightly higher value instead of the default one, for some reason double vertices used for the edge split to fix edges normals on a smooth surface are not as close as they have for the default "delete double vertex" function to do the job.

Hope that works for you! It took me a long time to find out!


What are face normals? I've seen the term Normal being used in many places, but I'm not quite sure what it is or what it's used for; what exactly are they?

Normals are vectors that are Orthogonal to the Tangent plane of a curved surface; Or simply orthogonal to a face.

The Normals are usually used to determine a surface's orientation toward a light source for shading. Most common examples:

Flat, Goraud, Phong shading

Fresnel, Refraction, Reflection effects
Bump, Normal, Displacement mapping

Normals are generally normalized to length 1 (in arbitrary units), otherwise calculation errors, and thus artifacts, may arise. Since they only point one way they are also used for back visibility culling (when double-sided is off).

That's why it is important for the normals to be consistent and coherent (i.e. point in the correct way - outwards of a model).


How to do a correct shoulder deformation? So, I’m rigging a character in Blender and I’m having a bit of trouble with the shoulder deformation. Namely the region under the arm as seen here:

I was trying to replicate this I saw here:

Shoulder deformations

But the instructions aren’t very clear and I can’t seem to download the file from BlendSwap as the site just keeps giving me an error every time I try to login.

So, I was hoping someone here with some rigging experience could help me out with this. I’m just scratching my head here at this point.

Blend:

If what's bothering you is what's happening on the armpit, switch to Weight Paint mode, select a Blend > Subtract brush, Strength 1, activate the 2D Falloff option in order to paint through, and paint.


Cycles displacement: banding despite full float .exr texture I get banding artifacts when using displacement (the output node one, not the modifier, and it is set to "Bump", not "True") in Cycles.

At first I used a 8-bit greyscale texture and I expected to get banding, but then I blurred the texture in the Compositor and saved the result as a full-float .exr file. I then replaced the 8-bit texture with the .exr file. So it should have more than enough information to avoid banding and the blurring should also have at least reduced the sharpness of the banding, if not completely removed it because the steps were pretty close together.

Note: I made a mistake creating the texture, which makes the question unnecessary. Sorry.

That doesn't happen though, and I'm wondering why that is and if anyone has a solution for this.
Here I found a similar problem, but there the question is how to save .exr-files. That's not my problem.

Also, this answer could be relevant but I don't find those settings for a texture that is used as a node inside of a cycles material. I also think the problem there is slightly different because the modifier behaves differently.

This is an example of what the result looks like:

Thanks for any help.

I'm pretty sure that all you did was save the noise with more precision.  I think if you blurred it enough to get rid of the noise then you will have nothing but a wavy cloud of a displacement.

Try to make your depth map using blender modeling/render tools, and then use that result for Displace.

Here's a set-up that I found on a BlenderArtists.org thread that should help you along.  If you have any questions please ask.  I'll update my answer tomorrow with a bit more detail on how this works.  I just thought I could get you started with this little bit for now.

Once you have the setup right, you can just do a camera render and save it as an .exr, that will be your high-precision displacement map.


IES lights in Blender 2.82 Since Blender 2.8 there is the built-in feature to use IES-files for realistic lighting. In 2.80 you could just select a point light source, click on "Use Nodes" and add an IES-texture node in the Shading tab.
In 2.82 I can't find the "Use Nodes" option anymore and when selecting a light source and going in the Shading tab, there are no nodes yet.

Does anyone know where to activate the "Use Nodes" option?

Make sure you're using the Cycles render engine.
It's not there when using Eevee :).


Is it possible to animate 2 folds on the same sheet? As can be seen on the screen shot, I want to animate first folding the top right triangle and then along the center line of the sheet using the 2nd bigger bone. and then a third fold of the left side triangle. However when I do my second fold the whole sheet scrambles up. Some of the vertices from the two assigned grouped overlap, so I am not sure if this is the problem for blender. What is the correct way to make this work, or maybe it is just not possible in Blender?

Assign only the needed vertices (tips) for each bone as follows:

And then you should fold it beautifully.


Lofting between edges zeffii recently provided a nice demonstration of using Sverchok to loft between edges (Sweep along a path through multiple cross-sections).

I was wondering whether it would be possible to extend this functionality to provide more control about how the loft interacts with each edge .

Here's an example of what I'm talking about...

Using a simple array of vertically-stacked, similar rectangles, I've constructed a series of loft objects (vases, I think), demonstrating some of the different ways the curve of the loft might meet each edge it comes across.

I trust the image is self explanatory, but I'm happy to (try to) elaborate if necessary.

A current "lazy" approach to this. might be:

I use a few VD nodes here to emphasize the original Quad outlines (light blue), and the resulting interpolated outer edge (red). Note that the Plane (Mesh) Object has a Vertex order which is [0, 1, 3, 2], and we need both Verts and Edges to order the vertices (using Vector Sort) for the "connected" algorithm to get [0, 1, 2, 3].

The Smooth Lines node offers "Weights" input. When using the slider all verts are treated the same, but you can pass it a list of values (ranging from 0 to 1) to effect vertices uniquely.

I feel perhaps that this does not provide a full solution to your question, but sometimes even a partial answer can be useful.


how to use compositer nodes on a render farm? When i use sheep it it only uses one of my layers, it will not add shadows or background videos. I have done some research and figured out that sheep it does not support using the compositing nodes. So i'm wondering if i have the render of one of the layers. Can i send another one of the layers through the render farm and then combine them somehow? Maybe? Let me know

At GarageFarm.NET we support compositor nodes in Blender. they should work the same way as on your end. If you have multiple layers to render in the scene, then all of them will render and will ve combined as you set it up in the compositor.
If you wish to save different layers from the compositor for later post-production, then you can use the File Output node to export it. All the File Outputls nodes are correctly saved on our end. You can also use multi-layer EXR for your output which will have all your passes.
I encourage you to test our render farm. We offer trial credits so in this way you can check if everything works as you expected without any costs.


Problem when reverse copying keyframe for walk cycle Whenever I try to flip the first keyframe of my walk cycle it turns the pose into a wonky mess instead. I did some reading and figured that its something to do with bone axis alignment but i cant figure out how to fix it. Thank you in advane for the help.

Alignement is set by "Roll" property. You can access it in Edit Mode on your armature, on property panel N, for each bone.

You can also change roll on multiple bones, using Ctrl + N

In order to use correctly Mirror copying, if your Left bone has a X° roll, your right bone must have a -X° roll.


Place colored line as texture I am trying to create a folded paper like object using Blender. This is something I've created. Now, I want to color edges of the paper and the creases of the fold. Like if the crease is downwards I want a green color line along that and if it is upwards the color should be red. Moreover, I want the edges to be colored as black line. Can anyone suggest any ideas about achieving this?
Actually I am creating thousands of random pages like this using a python script. So it's not possible to manually label each of those. I need to find out an automatic process using a script. For this one the page should have this kind of markings.

Any ideas for this would be great. Thanks in advance!

You can achieve this using freestyle:

In your render properties tab, at the very bottom, activate freestyle.
Then go to the render layers tab and scroll down to the freestyle settings.
For every line style you want to display, you have to create a separate line set. For every set you can set a number of options.
To color the outer border of the paper black, check "Silhouette" and "Border" and create a line style with black color underneath
For showing creases, adjust the angle settings of a line set.

More information can be found here:

Introduction to freestyle:
https://www.blender.org/manual/render/freestyle/introduction.html

Line set settings:
https://www.blender.org/manual/render/freestyle/parameter_editor/line_set.html

Modifiers - you can even color by crease angle:
https://www.blender.org/manual/render/freestyle/parameter_editor/line_style/index.html

Also take a look at this page - there are a number of dense, but very informational articles and infographics about freestyle:
http://blendernpr.org

If you save the line styles and sets in a blender file, you won't even have to script all this, just enable it and run your script.


No render output node in scene I am new to using blender and have been watching youtube videos on how to use it. I copied the steps of how to create cracks in a surface. I can see what it looks like if it gets rendered but then when I go to render it I get the message "no render output node in scene". It's not an animation, it's just a single image. Here is a screenshot of all my nodes and the error after trying to get it to render.

The issue is most likely that you removed the composite node accidentally in the composite node tree.

Select the composite node tree button (highlighted left).
At this point, we should take a step back, and make sure that what I think is happening, is happening.
There are two signs that I'm wrong:

Use Nodes isn't enabled
There is a composite node

If both of those aren't true, then continue.
Now there are two ways you could solve this.
#1
You could disable Use Nodes. When this is disabled, anything in the compositing node tree is ignored.
#2
Or you could add in a composite node, and attach it to the Render Layers node.
ShiftA output -> composite.

And then attaching the render layers node to it.


Adding simple details to a model symmetrically I'm creating a model which is intended to be mostly symmetrical. So far, I've simply gone about being careful to keep things even on both sides; most of what I've done so far has involved loop cuts and straight cuts along one or two faces, so doing it manually has been pretty easy.

I'm not even sure where to begin with this task though. I want to add some cylindrical dials to a face, but I have no idea how I'd go about doing that properly just once, let alone doing it symmetrically. The only way I could do this using what I currently know would be to hack and slash a circle out of the face with the knife tool and then extrude it, which would likely be messy and very difficult to replicate in a clean and symmetrical fashion.

I apologize if I'm asking a very basic question here, I've looked about for a while but I haven't found a solution for this yet.

In the 3D window, mesh menu, there is a "Symmetrize" function that you can activate. Another method is to delete half of the mesh, then add a mirror modifier (and eventually apply it) checking its "clipping" option to set a threshold in which central vertices will be merged.


Planetary system simulation with real orbital datas When making a planetary system, I'd like to respect the eccentiricity of orbits (elliptical orbits), using the facts supplied by astronomical data centers like here: http://www.icoproject.org/data.html ?

One of the focus of the ellipse can be set at the center of the planetary system; i.e.the center of the central star.

I have other parameters under control (e.g.speeds, orbits inclinations, period of rotation...).

Thanks in advance for your precious advices!

Orbital Eccentricity - Wikipedia
For elliptical orbits, a simple proof shows that arcsin(e)
yields the projection angle of a perfect circle
to an ellipse of eccentricity e. For example, to view the eccentricity
of the planet Mercury (e = 0.2056), one must simply calculate the
inverse sine to find the projection angle of 11.86 degrees. Next, tilt
any circular object (such as a coffee mug viewed from the top) by that
angle and the apparent ellipse projected to your eye will be of that
same eccentricity.

Via the UI, add a primitive circle mesh or curve, rotate about X RX 11.86, then scale in 0 in Z, S Z 0

Result of running test script
Quick test script, creates a circle, rotates by projection angle about X, projects onto XY plane by setting z to 0.
Could use bmesh, or make the projection matrix.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Matrix
from math import asin

def elliptic_orbit(name, e, context=bpy.context):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add()
    R = Matrix.Rotation(asin(e), 4, 'X')
    ob = context.object

    me = context.object.data
    ob.name = me.name = "%s_orbit" % name
    me.transform(R)
    for v in me.vertices:
        v.co.z = 0
    me.update()

elliptic_orbit("Earth", 0.017)
elliptic_orbit("Mercury", 0.2056).scale *= 0.387
elliptic_orbit("Venus", 0.007).scale *= 0.723
elliptic_orbit("Mars", 0.093).scale *= 1.524
elliptic_orbit("Jupiter", 0.048).scale *= 5.203
elliptic_orbit("Saturn", 0.056).scale *= 9.555

Alternatively orbit as a curve. Here I've used a scale matrix to scale z component to zero, could do same in mesh version.
def elliptic_orbit(name, e, context=bpy.context):
    bpy.ops.curve.primitive_nurbs_circle_add()
    S = Matrix.Scale(0, 4, (0, 0, 1))
    R = Matrix.Rotation(asin(e), 4, 'X')
    ob = context.object

    cu = context.object.data
    ob.name = cu.name = "%s_orbit" % name
    cu.transform(R)
    cu.transform(S)

    return ob

For compatability sakes I've applied the transforms sequentially.  For 2.5 K= verson < 2.8  could use cu.transform(R * S) and for 2.8 cu.transform(R @ S)
Ellipse foci

Ellipse - Wikipedia
shape parameters: a: semi-major axis, b: semi-minor axis c: linear eccentricity, p: semi-latus rectum.
By Ag2gaeh - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The semi-major axis will lie on the rotated axis X. c the linear eccentricity can be calculated thus
>>> ob = C.object
>>> ob.name
'Jupiter_orbit'

>>> ob.dimensions.xy.length
0.4994825301958152

The two foci are F1, F2 = (c, 0, 0), (-c, 0, 0)
May find the following post on barycentric orbits of interest.


Animating for interchangeable model parts? I've been trying to figure this out for a while and haven't been sure on what to search in order to find an answer to it.

I am creating a game in Unity whereby the player will be able to equip individual armour pieces (like chest/legs/gloves/boots/weapon/offhand etc).

I know how to animate an entire model with an armature, but I'm unsure of how to animate model parts in separate model files.

Upon inspection of a few other games, I have seen a few with a separated 'armature' file that I assume handles all the animating for all model files, but I'm not sure whether this is the direction I need to go, and I'm not even sure how I'd go about doing that.

In addition to this, some model parts may have unique bones related to them (for example: a shirt with a tie, and another shirt without a tie), would I put these bones on a single armature even though other connected models parts would not be using these bones?

I assume there's a simple way of doing this, as it'd be very inefficient to do a hundred or so animations for each individual armour set (with having to apply transformations, weighting and vertex groups to all of them).

Could someone please point me in the right direction?

My first instinct is to use a single armature, and have different meshes with an armature modifier pointing to the same armature.  In simple cases you could instead parent the mesh to one bone in the armature.  In more complicated cases you can use the armature modifier and vertex groups with weights to have the mesh modified by the appropriate subset of bones.

How exactly that translates to Unity, I am not sure.


How to move multiple objects to a single point? I don't really know if I am asking the question correctly. If you notice the picture, the objects are being pulled towards a single point (as seen by all those green lines). It doesn't look like they are using G, R, or S. I'm curious as to the method behind what this person is using.

This effect is what happens when you transform (move) several objects along one of their local axis. You can tell this because in the status bar in the screenshot it says 'along Local Y'.

Each object in that screenshot has been rotated so it's Y axis is pointing inwards or outwards:

Then the Transformation orientation in the 3D header has been set to Local, which means each object's local axis will be taken into account during the transformation:

With all the objects selected, pressing G,Y,Y or moving the 3D Manipulator will start a local transformation on each object's local axis (the green lines):


How to snap edge to axis/grid? I want to move the whole object up by snapping the edge (highlighted in white/orange) to the X axis (red axis). What is the best way to do it ?

I guess you need to:

In Edit mode, put the 3D cursor on the surface you want to snap.
Come back to Object mode and put the origin of the object to the 3D cursor.
Choose the Type of Element to Snap to Increment and enable the Absolute Grid Alignment option.
Now either enable the Snap option or press ctrl as a shortcut to enable it momentarily.


Problems in Joining two sculpted object I find a big problem in joining two different sculpted objects in one.
As you can see from the image below i sculpted the head and the body of a human figure and i tried to join their geometry together with the boolean modifier(union), but the result is definitely a mess.

As you can see it creates a kind of fracture due to the intersection of the two parts. You can see it better from the x-ray mode:

I don't understand why that happen, the boolean modifier always joyn two objects deleting the rest. Why it doesn't worked in this case?
The problem is also that it doesn't allow me to smooth the outer part with the brushes in order to fix at least the exterior problem.
In that condition i will be able to create a good retopology and after to project with the multiresolution modifier ?

You should use voxel remesh in blender 2.81, it is quite good for joining two separate object. First join the head and the body using Ctrl-J, then go to Object Data tab in the properties panel and under Remesh click Voxel Remesh.

More information:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/retopology.html


How to fix a hole in the mesh I am watching Blender Guru's tutorial on how to make a donut and he is making a cup of coffee but for whatever reason whenever he does CTRL R to fix the hole in the middle of the liquid it works for him but I have tried it many times and it doesn't do anything. Please help me.

I don’t think there is a hole - it looks to be refraction showing the inside of the cup. Try reducing the IOR of your shader and see if the problem goes away - that will show whether there actually is a hole. Also, check your normals as that is critical with refractive surfaces since flipped normals will also flip the refraction properties. Also check that you have a realistic IOR for the material being modelled (eg, typically in the range 1.0 for air to around 1.33).


Blender particles. Grid based emitter only allows maximum of 1000 particles. Any way to increase this? I have a particle emitter attached to a cube in my scene that is emitting ico-spheres from its volume.  I want it to Emit in the grid shape (as it currently is)

except for that I want it to contain a lot more than just 1000 particles.  when I select the grid emission however, the particle amount is automatically set to 1000, and the number value in the particle settings is grayed out
(see below).
No matter what number I set it too, the particles don't change at all.

does anyone know of any way to increase this number beyond 1000 while still keeping the grid formation?
Thanks!

The Resolution sets the density of the particles.
In your case you have a cube with a resolution of 10 - so 10x10x10 = 1000 particles.
For more particles simply increase the resolution.


Keyboard problems 2.8 Whenever i open 2.8 beta it will not let me use my keyboard. I cannot create any text or use hotkeys. I have tried a few versions but they all have this problem for me. Do you have any ideas what would cause this?

Re-download and extract the Blender zip file making sure everything is copied over.

When you downloaded Blender 2.8 Beta it should have been in a zip file. Extracting the zip file would have taken time and if not every part of the zip file was extracted then parts of blender don't work properly

I learnt this by running Blender before everything had extracted.

Here is a photo of my Blender folder:

It has 72 items in it (including the '2.80' folder) and Blender runs fine.

My guess would be the part of the file which detects keyboard clicks is not there so re-download the .zip file and extract it making sure everything is copied.

I can't say for sure if this will work but hopefully it does. If it doesn't then I don't know what else to do and I am sorry.


Does Blender resume rendering after returning from hibernation in Windows 7? I have a Windows 7 machine and my Blender render takes about 8 hours or so. Sometimes the laptop goes to sleep or I have to hibernate it to travel to work. Does Blender resume the rendering to avi raw after it comes out of hibernation ?

I think the best way to find out is to try it yourself ;)

Alternatives:

Something you can do to ensure your render progress is not lost is to render to an image sequence instead of directly to a video file. See the docs:

  The Direct Approach—highly not recommended and not a standard
  practice—is where you set your output format to an AVI or MOV format,
  and click [render] ANIM to render your scene directly out to a movie file.
  Blender creates one file that holds all the frames of your animation.
  You can then use Blender's VSE to add an audio track to the animation
  and render out to an MPEG format to complete your movie.

  The Frame Sequence is a much more stable approach, where you set your
  output format to a still format (such as JPG, PNG or MultiLayer), and
  click [render] ANIM to render your scene out to a set of images, where each
  image is the frame in the sequence.

  Blender creates a file for each frame of the animation. You can then
  use Blender's compositor to perform any frame manipulation (post
  processing). You can then use Blender's VSE to load that final image
  sequence, add an audio track to the animation, and render out to an
  MPEG format to complete your movie. The Frame Sequence approach is a
  little more complicated and takes more disk space, but gives you more
  flexibility.

Set start frame:

This way if the render render stops you can easily resume it by setting the Start frame to the frame after the last frame rendered and starting the render again. Whereas if you are rendering directly to a video format, there is a high probability the file will be corrupted if the render is stopped partway through. Also see the Hints section:

  Unless your animation is really simple, and you expect it to render in half an hour or less, it is always a good idea to render the animation as separate image frames in a loss-less format (TGA, PNG, BMP) rather than as a movie file from the beginning. This allows you an easy recovery if there is a problem and you have to re-start the rendering, since the frames you have already rendered will still be in the Output directory. Just change the STArt frame number to the frame number where you want to pick up from, and click ANIM again.

E.g. If the render stops while rendering frame 30, the last saved image will be frame 29. All that needs to be rendered is frame 30 up to the end, so set the Start frame to 30 and render (CtrlF12):

Disable overwrite:

Another option (as mentioned by Greg Zaal) is to disable Overwrite in Properties > Render > Output. Disabling this will skip rendering the frame if an image file corresponding to that frame already exists.

Rendering an image sequence to a video file

When the render is complete you can render the image sequence to the desired file using the VSE:

Import your image sequence with ShiftA> Image (or Header > Add > Image). This will add a new strip with your animation. Make sure it is correctly lined up with the scene start and end frames.
Set the output format to the desired location and format, then press CtrlF12. This will render the sequencer to the specified output file quite quickly, as all it is doing is encoding the already rendered images into the correct format.

Also see the workflow outlined on the docs:

  Frame Sequence Workflow

  First prepare your animation.
  In the Dimensions panel, choose the render size, Pixel Aspect Ratio, and the Range of Frames to use, as well as the frame
  rate, which should already be set.
  In the Output panel set up your animation to be rendered out as as images, generally using a format that does not compromise any quality
  (I prefer PNG or MultiLayer because of their loss-less nature).
  Choose the output path and file type in the Output panel as well, for example //\render\my-anim-.
  Confirm the range of your animation frame Start and End.
  Save your .blend file.
  Press the big ''Animation'' button. Do a long task [like sleeping, playing a video game, or cleaning your driveway] while you wait for
  your computer to finish rendering the frames.
  Once the animation is finished, use your OS file explorer to navigate into the output folder (".\render in this example). You will see lots
  of images (.png or .exr, etc... depending on the format you chose to
  render) that have a sequence number attached to them ranging from 0000
  to a max of 9999. These are your single frames.
  In Blender, now go into the video sequence editor.
  Choose ''Add Image'' from the add menu. Select all the frames from your output folder that you want to include in your animation (Press A
  to Select All easily). They will be added as a strip to the sequence
  editor.
  Now you can edit the strip and add effects or simply leave it like it is. You can add other strips, like an audio strip.
  Scrub through the animation, checking that you have included all the frames.
  In the Scene Render buttons, in the Post Processing panel, activate Sequencer.
  In the Format panel, choose the container and codec you want (e.g. MPEG H.264) and configure it. The video codecs are described on the
  previous page: Output Options.
  Click the ANIMATION render button and Blender will render out the sequence editor output into your movie.


Animation Nodes - How to make text creep up? This is for future projects with motion graphics. I wish to mimic below with Animation Nodes.
Assistance appreciated. Thanks in advance.
.

This below example with little more bounce than the former.

Offset the scale of characters based on an inverse delay falloff as follows:

The little bounce can be achieved by changing the delay interpolation into a back one:


Get indices of vertices of triangulated faces in python I'm writing a python script to export triangulated meshes from Blender to an openGL application I am working on. I'm using text files, and I want to export my geometry data in the form of vertices, vertices attributes (normals, uv) and indices as in any openGL application.
For the vertices and normals, I am using this code:

myFloat = lambda x: '''{0: 0.4f}'''.format( x )
mesh_file = open(target_path+".map", "w")
    mesh_file.write("\n")
    for vert in mesh.data.vertices:
        mesh_file.write('*VERTEX ')
        for i in (0,1,2):
            mesh_file.write(myFloat(vert.co[i])+' ')
        mesh_file.write("\n")
    for vert in mesh.data.vertices:
        mesh_file.write('*NORMAL ')
        for i in (0,1,2):
            mesh_file.write(myFloat(vert.normal.co[i])+' ')
        mesh_file.write("\n")

How do I get the indices?

I waited before posting this in case a better answer came up.  Since no one posted anything, here is something.

I found the following code on http://davidejones.com.  It is definitely not 100% alright so far as OpenGL goes, but it does run so far as Blender is concerned. It may help you get started until someone who knows what they are doing shows up.

The problem I see right away, when I look at the output, is that this code is printing out all of the redundant normals and UV coords but not those of the vertices.  Since the stride of the different attributes does not match, you can't make a VBO from this code.

import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
mesh = obj.data

normals = []
indices = []
for face in mesh.polygons:
    indices.append(face.vertices[0])
    indices.append(face.vertices[1])
    indices.append(face.vertices[2])
    for i in range(len(face.vertices)):
        v = mesh.vertices[face.vertices[i]]
        normals.append([v.normal[0],v.normal[1],v.normal[2]])

verts = []
for vert in mesh.vertices:
    verts.append(vert.co.xyz)

uvs = []
for uv_layer in mesh.uv_layers:
    for x in range(len(uv_layer.data)):
        uvs.append(uv_layer.data[x].uv)

print(indices)
print(verts)
print(uvs)
print(normals)


Need more vertices for weight paint Beginner here so please explain like I'm 5.
I made a mesh, made a skeleton from bones, parented them with auto weights and am now trying to edit the areas that weren't sorted automatically.
My character has fingers but I wasn't able to paint where I wanted the knuckles to move. So I searched and it said I need more vertices as weight paint attaches to them, not faces.
So I subdivided a couple of times so more vertices appeared. It looks like I have way more than I need now. But the paint is still not appearing where I want it.

Have I missed a step? Am I supposed to assign the new vertices to something or parent them or what?!

enter image description here

There is a soduku of issues here and I don't know what to address specifically, so I'm going to skim all of them.

The steps to model and rig a hand are:

1) Model the hand.  You seem to be running into a topology issue here.  When people talk about "Topology" in terms of 3d modeling, they are talking about the layout and organization of the vertices and edges.  The rule of thumb is that each vertex and edge should be describe something unique about the model.  I could probably dissolve about 2/3rds of the verts in that hand and it would look functionally the same.  Additionally, there is isn't really topology describing how the fingers would bend.

The following wouldn't be considered good topology or even a good hand, but it is functional as far as animating is concerned.  Notice that even without a texture, you can tell where the fingers will bend and that it is a monster-y hand.

It is also only 500 verts and faces, which is far less than your hand right now.

2) Make the armature.  Rigging is an entire profession, so to keep it short: create an armature and add bones until you are satisfied you have enough control points. You seem to have done that, though I will add you seem to have extra bones in the palm.

3)Bind the armature to the Mesh.  In Blender you do that with the Armature modifier on the mesh.  Add the modifier to the mesh, then specify the Armature you want to use in the modifier.

You can also click the mesh, than the armature while holding shift, then press ctrl+P and choose the Armature Deform option of your liking, this does the same thing.

4) Tweak bone weights.  Now you get to specify how each bone affects each vertex in the mesh.  You will need to turn off "lock edit modes" in Blender 2.8x, as it prevents being in pose mode while weight painting.

Now: select your armature, and change to pose mode.  Then, select your mesh, and go into weight paint mode.  From here, you should be able to click on a bone to select it.  Click and drag on the mesh to apply your current tool. You can change your current tool by pressing N to bring up the toolshelf, going to the "tool" tab, and clicking the picture to change what brush you are using.  Adding to the mesh increases the proportion of the influence exerted, and the color will change from dark blue (no influence) -> green -> yellow -> red (full influence).  You can try moving the selected bone by pressing  R to test how it is working out.

There are plenty of online resources that can describe this in detail, but that is the gist.

Update
It appears that there are so many influences on these vertices that weight paint is giving up.  Four is pushing it, but many of these vertices have at least 7.

Completely blanking these influences allows weight paint to work again, but honestly, deleting and re-making the offending geometry will probably be easier and cleaner.  You do not need this many verts.


Jagged edges before subsurf, or rounded corners after I am making a boat Hull. And problem is with edges. I am trying to do as much undestructive modeling as possible (less Edge loops as possible). For easier face export lates - lasercut and bend sheet. I use modifiers instead:
When i apply subsurf, sharp edges become rounded, i want them straight. I want smooth overal sides, but I get these jagged corners. Anyway to fix it?

First, your mirror modifier needs to be moved to the bottom of the modifier stack. If you subdivide it before mirroring, it will look like its separated, and it's very noticeable in the pictures you shared.
Making edges sharper is very easy. All you need to do is crease them. Just select any edges that need to be sharper/less smooth, and press ShiftE. You can then edit the crease value, a number between 0 and 1. It is 0 by default. 0 means that the subdivision surface will operate normally, and 1 means that it will not touch it at all and leave it completely sharp. The creased edges will also become purple, and this color will be lighter/darker depending on the crease value. Hope this helps!


What causes striped visual artifacts in models? I don't know the legitimate term for them, but I'm referring to the "shaded" or "stripy" regions that appear that can appear in your models (see the picture below)

Here is a contrived example deliberately created to reproduce the artifacts:

What are these artifacts called? I did a few google searches to learn more about this but came up short because I can only describe them as "visual artifacts" which is too broad.
What is causing these artifacts to appear? In both cases there are overlapping faces, but what causes Blender to show them in the way that it does? To approach from another angle: why could Blender not "simply" ignore overlapping faces?
Are there general strategies one would take to fixing these issues? If so, what?

Even a link to a resource that explains this would be appreciated.

Deepth coordinate during deepth testing made by graphic pipeline is the same.
1 has flipped normals + Z fighting.
2 is just Z fighting.
Here is more literature:
https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-OpenGL/Depth-testing
 Read "Z-fighting" in the middle of a page.


How to append an object and its material at once? I'd like to append an object and its material at the same time. When I try to append an object then the material is not applied to object.

How can I append both at once?

As first - assign materials to objects and when you append this objects to new scene, they will append with materials. If you append materials separately, Blender can't know which material assign to which object.


Denoising the frames of an animation I would like to use the new denoise node in Blender 2.81 to denoise an animation. I understand how to denoise (in compositing) individual frames but I do not know how to run the denoiser for all frames of the animation. Maybe this is a related question:

Denoising Animations

but I still do not understand how to denoise all the frames of animation. Thank you very much for your time.

As long as the denoiser in inserted in compositor between render layer and composite node, and "compositing" is checked in post processing tab (as default), every frame of the animation will be automatically processed.


Animation Nodes Loop Input performance issue with large 3d vectors numpy arrays I am working on scientific visualizations involving huge arrays of 3d vectors, sometimes 100k or sometimes even millions of vectors. I quickly ran into performance related issues, mostly when needing to iterate over arrays of vectors, or even values, using Loop Inputs.
Case in point, the attached blend file, that "spiralizes" a linear segment. I generate an 1D array of numpy values between a and b using:
interpolated_values = np.linspace(value_a,value_b,number_of_elements)
and I invoke that in a 3d vector combine node in x and rotate every vector in the array around it's Z-axis using a multiplied value of it's own index. In order to do that I have to iterate over the array using a Loop Input node. So far so good, it works, but the performance is a killer. Already by 1k iterations the scene lags like crazy on a quite powerful machine. Comparatively, if I do exactly the same in XSI's ICE, I can generate over 100k vectors before the scene starts lagging.
Is there a better way to achieve this than using Loop Input, which is the culprit here? Using a for loop in Python doesn't work of course, as the for loop is first executed in the script and then called in AN...
Here is the attached blend file https://we.tl/t-L8snsm1VOE

I think it is executing the script node every iteration so I added a float list parameter to the loop and put your script node outside of the loop. On my machine instead of about 350ms execution time I got about 50ms execution time with it outside. about 7 times improvement.


Why do all objects bend upon joining them? I made some meshes for a game I make in UE4 (two bended cubes that form a bended cross, and a ico sphere that has the cross on it). When I joined two cubes everything was displayed as I want it to be.

I then proceeded to copy that 3 times and put the crosses around the ico spehere, but when I now select all crosses and the ico sphere and join them with Ctrl + J the Ico sphere and the crosses bend to the top left corner of the screen.

Can someone tell me how to join objects without deforming them?

EDIT: I applied all the Simple Deform modifiers

When you join objects with Ctrl+J, only the modifiers of the Active object are kept. (Active = the last one you selected, appears in lighter orange).

What you can do is Apply all the modifiers before joining. Just click Apply under the name of the modifier, for each object.


Unwanted bone rotation around cursor I have an rig set up with a control armature, and a deform armature.
I have some control bones that I use for IK constraints.

When I try to rotate some of these control bones, instead of rotating around the head of the bone as the pivot point, they rotate around the cursor - changing not just the angle of the bone, but also the position - which I DO NOT want.

I have made more than one version of my rig, saved as I went along. In an older version the rig has several problems, but at least there, when I rotate the bones, they rotate around their own heads as the pivot points, not around the cursor.

I want to be able to rotate the bones to change their angles, but not their positions.

Does anyone know what setting I may have unintentionally altered that has lead to the bones rotating around the cursor instead of their positions?

(the bones are parented to other bones in both versions, with "keep offset" - I do not understand why in one file, they keep their position as parented to the parent bone, and rotate around the head, whilst in the other, they rotate around the cursor and change the distance from the parent bone.)

EDIT:
I found a solution to this myself when I compared my older file with my newer file.

I unchecked the "manipulate around centre points only" box (the one with the three small dots and the arrows in the image below), then clicked on the menu to the left of that, and changed the pivot point from "3d cursor" to "median point". This worked perfectly to solve this problem!


Bezier curve taper not working I am trying to make a wine glass, exploiting its axial symmetry.

I have a bezier curve spine (a line) which I have bevelled using another bezier curve bevel (a bezier circle).

I then applied a wine glass shaped bezier curve outer as taper to spine.

However, spine only reflects the bevelling and not the taper. (looks like a right cylinder)

What's wrong?

fig1: On left the bevel curve, in the middle the spine and on right the taper curve

I have tried rescaling bevel and repositioning outer to no avail.

Select the upright glass section then apply a Screw modifier and choose the Y axis in the properties.


How do you get a low poly exterior from a high poly model? I imported an obj model of a truck made by someone else in a different 3D program but it is outrageously huge; it exceeds 2 GB and none of the vertices are connected together so I can't use the 'L' key in edit mode to select connected vertices. I also tried using decimate and limited dissolve but both of them made the object unrecognizable and weird. Is there any way to just get the exterior of the truck (without using decimate/limited dissolve) without remaking it entirely? The other person made the file using Catia so I'm not sure how the export settings for that program would work. I tried manually removing and combining the vertices in edit mode, but it almost always crashes my program since it lags a lot.

i had models like that too before i was able to create my own projects... here's how i made most of them usable...
to connect the vertices, simply select the coplete object in edit mode. then hit OBJECT/VERTICES/REMOVE DOUBLE.
to reduce the size (# of vertices), switch to OBJECT MODE, go to MODIFIERS and select DECIMATE. there choose for UNSUBDIVIDE if the model is created mainly in quads. change the ITERATIONS value until the model still looks acceptable and hit APPLY.
if the model is created in tri's, choose for COLLAPSE and change the RATIO value (in OBJECT MODE) until the model still looks acceptable and hit APPLY.
hope this helps


Camera orbiting where ever i drag my mouse I want the camera to orbit the object after pressing Numbad . but it won't orbit the object instead it basically orbits where ever i drag my mouse.

You have probably checked the Auto Depth option in the preferences. Uncheck it and you should be fine.


How to get Blender 2.78c and Yafray to play nice...? I am trying to enable yafray in the latest blender release 2.78c. When I try to turn on the add-on I get the following...

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\modules\addon_utils.py", line 330, in enable
mod = __import__(module_name)
File "C:\Users\Professor Black\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\yafaray_v3\__init__.py", line 70, in   <module>
from . import io
File "C:\Users\Professor Black\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\yafaray_v3\io\__init__.py", line 21, in <module>
import yafaray_v3_interface
File "C:\Users\Professor Black\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\yafaray_v3\bin\yafaray_v3_interface.py", line 28, in <module>
_yafaray_v3_interface = swig_import_helper()
File "C:\Users\Professor Black\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\yafaray_v3\bin\yafaray_v3_interface.py", line 24, in swig_import_helper
_mod = imp.load_module('_yafaray_v3_interface', fp, pathname, description)
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\lib\imp.py", line 242, in load_module
return load_dynamic(name, filename, file)
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\python\lib\imp.py", line 342, in load_dynamic
return _load(spec)
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.

I am not sure how I go about addressing this error. I have looked around and it is not clear, to me at least, what Python package I should be using with yafray.

Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks in advance.
UPDATE

I uninstalled blender and reinstalled blender using blender-2.78c-windows64.msi

when i launch the program i get

AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender     Foundation\Blender\2.78\python

Then I downloaded yafaRay.v3.1.1-  beta.build.for.Blender.2.78.MinGW.Win7.Win8.1.Win10.64bit.zip
and installed from file as suggested, yielding

 reloading addon: yafaray_v3 1488561782.9271553 1489010961.1245487        C:\Users\Professor Black\AppData\Roaming\Blender    Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\yafaray_v3\__init__.py
Modules Installed from 'C:\\Users\\Professor   Black\\Downloads\\YafaRay.v3.1.1-  beta.build.for.Blender.2.78.MinGW.Win7.Win8.1.Win10.64bit.zip' into   'C:\\Users\\Professor Black\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender    Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\addons' ()

We can indeed enable or disable the addon only once per session (should be reported here: http://www.yafaray.org/development/bugtracker/yafaray).

Apart from that the Addon working fine on Windows (64 bit) :

First remove all the previous Add-ons and Versions of Yafaray, then download Yafaray 64bit from here, go to User Preferences, Addons, Install from File, select the zip file and enable the addon, done.

If the error message comes up restart blender and enable/disable the addon.


Python Scripting: (relative) Locations and Rotations of Objects under Empty The title says it all..

I'm looking for an easy way to get a list of the relative locations and rotation (Euler) and Mesh names of all Objects (meshes) under each Empty in my project.. But I'm not good with Python, let alone with loops inside Python.

Anyone willing to help?