Network Effect Animation Nodes Any idea how can effect like this can be done with Animation Nodes:

EXAMPLE CLIP

Is this done with particles? How do I make them to change directions with timing.
Or how do I use the vectors?
I used initial position change method as per Docs, but I'm still not able to change the direction. I was thinking adding another vector list, the vector which would be followed by the original one. But didn't figure out how to make it follow another one. Or how to use Rotation to Direction? I know im missing something, but just can not figure it out.
Much appreciate your assistance in advance.
Cheers, David

This effect can be achieved by creating a random walk using a loop as you suggested. It is important to make sure the random walk satisfy certain conditions:

The step direction has to be parallel to one of the three fundamental axis, or else the perpendicularity of the network won't be achieved. This is achieved by defining the step as a unit vector with two zeros components.
Each step should not be parallel to the previous step, or else the network will have edges of non uniform length and overlapping edges. This is achieved by making sure the non zero component of the step vector is not the same as the previous step, that is, a different component should be the non zero.

The implementation is rather advanced, so it might not make much sense for novice. First, we add a vector parameter representing the starting point of the random walk, at each iteration, this parameter is reassigned to itself plus the step vector. Then, we add a constant integer list parameter Range containing (0, 1, 2), those integers represent the possible indices of the component that will have a non zero value. An integer parameter Last Axis that represents the index of the component that was non zero in the previous iteration is added and reassigned to the index of the non zero component chosen at the current iteration. The index of the non zero component is chosen randomly from the Range list after removing the Last Axis integer from it. We now know which component will have a nonzero value, to construct such vector, we add a constant float list parameter filled with three zeros (0, 0, 0) and set the component of the chosen index to one or negative one based on the sign of a signed random number. Then this float list is converted to a vector generating the required step vector. The seed of the random generators shall be equal to an input integer parameter multiplied by the number of iterations plus the index of the current iteration, making sure the seed is unique for every input integer for every iteration. Note that the zeros and range lists have to enforce copying because they are mutable object that are being edited multiple times. So, the node tree becomes as follows:

Another loop is constructed to generate multiple splines based on multiple random walkers. A random starting point is chosen per iteration:

Lastly, the output splines are trimmed to have the animation effect:


How to create an image with transparency I have a script to create an image but i want it to be created with transparency:

import bpy

bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024)

It depends on what you are actually asking:

If you need ot create an RGBA image, so an image that also has the Alpha Channel. (So a RGBA type instead of the normal RGB). Just Check ALPHA when you create it via UI or in code:

bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024, alpha = True)
If you want the default color to be instead of black any other color so even one with some transparency, this is the fastest way I found:

im = bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024, alpha = True)
im.generated_color = (1,0,0,0.5)

This code actually generates a Red image half transparent.


How to detect if a modifier key is pressed when the value of a custom property is changed? I would like to detect the state of some keys (shift, ctrl...) when the user is changing the value of a property in my addon in order to perform different actions. This would allow me to considerably extend the features available in the UI while keeping a limited set of graphic components.

My current use case is this: I have a FloatProperty exposed on my addon to control the start time of an event in the scene. When the user changes its value the event starts earlier or later, at the frame corresponding to this value.
I would like to check if the Ctrl button is pressed when the user changes the value, and if it is the case I would like to force this value to be the current time (by using a set function for this property).

All I can find so far is related to the use of a modal operator and an Event. In my case here I strongly doubt I need to set the operator as modal.

Do you know how the state of the keyboard keys can be detected (in the Invoke or Execute function of my operator very likely)?

Oki, I eventually found how to get the modifier keys status and how to use the Event structure in a non-modal operator, this thanks to this post:
Python: Ctrl+Click for buttons (capture invocation event)

The answer is pretty straightforward and easy to use once we know it: the invoke function of an operator has an even argument that can easily be queried.

Quick example from the above link:

def invoke(self, context, event):
    wm = context.window_manager

    ev = []
    if event.ctrl:
        ev.append("Ctrl")
    if event.shift:
        ev.append("Shift")
    if event.alt:
        ev.append("Alt")
    if event.oskey:
        ev.append("OS")
    ev.append("Click")

    self.report({'INFO'}, "+".join(ev))

    return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)


Can I use cycles renderer for a game? I'm currently working on a project with Unity 3D, and my plan is to design everything with Blender. But I didn't know until today that Cycles renderer is meant for animations and HD images.

Can I use Cycles for a game in Unity as well?

I've heard about baking, but I don't know how it works, other than creating a UV image with light impact to the mesh of an object. But would this mean that moving an object around the scene will make it look like the light is till glued to the object?

This doesn't sound that good if objects in a game are supposed to move around.

Yes and no:

see this for "what is baking"

and this for "how to bake in cycles"

I say "yes and no" because no, you cannot use a complicated raytracing render engine realtime in a game (unless you have like, some sort of super computer :D)
But yes cycles can improve your games visuals and even make them appear like they were rendered in cycles if you do it right.

Also yes the light will look "glued" to the object, but no, with specular maps and only baking a diffuse pass it does not have to be, and can be 100% dynamic.

Since I know next to nothing about Unity (game engine or otherwise), we will discuss this in terms of blender.

First of all, you want to only bake certain passes for a game texture.

I only use "Diffuse Direct" and "Ambient Occlusion"
you can change the pass in the little box "Bake type"

This will ensure that no reflections/lights will be baked into your object, especially if you only use Ambient occlusion

If you want to get really fancy, you can bake out or paint a specular map, which will make your object only reflective on certain parts, and usually makes games look better. :D


How to model a ridged dial or gear shape Having a difficult time finding the correct name for this, but I have some photos.

I'm specifically trying to model a sniper scope, and some of the circular rings on it have ridges on them, but I'm not sure how to model the ridges/grooves.

Like this:

Or these google searches might show what I'm trying to explain better:

Sniper scope: http://tinyurl.com/qxyzwoc

Camera Dial: http://tinyurl.com/ndmzawr

Essentially a ring with ridges on it, I'm not sure how to model it.

The poke tool is definitely not working for me, and I cannot add loop cuts to everything. What's the best method for going about modeling this?

There are at least three methods for accomplishing this. Each is worth familiarizing yourself with.

The Cylinder Method

1. Create a cylinder

ShiftA

Add > Mesh > Cylinder

Adjust the proportions and vertex count to your liking.

2. In Edit Mode Select Edge Rings

Set your selection mode to Edge Select.
Select an edge, then while pressing CtrlAlt select the edge next to it. Alternatively you can use the menu: Select > Edge Rings.

3. Bevel the edge rings

CtrlB

Use cursor distance to adjust bevel width, then left click to accept.

4. Extrude the faces

Set your Pivot Point to "Individual Origins".

Press E to Extrude to your desired length.

5. Scale as needed

While still using "Individual Origins" as the Pivot Point, press S then ShiftZ to Scale the angle of the teeth. Scale the height using S, Z.

The Add-On Method

1. Enable the Extra Objects Mesh add-on.

There are two add-ons for Extra Objects, one for curves and one for meshes. The one that applies in this case is the one for meshes. Go to Blender's Preferences, search "extra", and click the check box to enable it.

2. Add a Gear

Press ShiftA and find a new option in your Add > Mesh menu: "Gears". Add one.

3. Tweak the gear parameters

The add-on provides many parameters for fine-tuning the shape of your gear. Play with it!

The Circular Array Method

1. Add a plane and model it into the shape of a gear tooth

ShiftA Add > Mesh > Plane

The plane is just a starter shape.

Model the shape of a single gear tooth in Edit Mode.

Make sure the Object's Origin Point is where you want the center of your gear to be.

2. Add and rotate an Empty

ShiftA Add > Empty > Plain Axes

From Object Mode, press R and type in 15 to rotate it 15 degrees. We can change this value later, it's just an example.

3. Add an Array Modifier to your gear tooth object

Modifier settings:

Uncheck "Relative Offset". Instead, check "Object Offset" and point it to your Empty.

Since we rotated the tooth 15° in this example, set the Count to 24 to start. The dimensions of your gear tooth object also come into play here, so you'll need to do some adjusting of these three factors: tooth count, rotation angle, and tooth geometry.

Check "Merge" and "First Last" so that you won't need to remove doubles later. This option merges the doubled-up vertices for you.

4. Close the loop

Set your snapping method to Vertex Snapping.

On the modifier, adjust the edit cage to the modifier result so the array geometry can be snapped to. In simple English: click the fourth button.

You can now extrude another vertex and snap it to the next tooth in the array. Fill in a face between this and the vertex in the center of the gear. The circle is now complete.

Here is a screen shot to further illustrate how one segment is used to create the entire gear:

5. Add some thickness

Finally, add a Solidify Modifier and give your gear some Thickness.


2 animations on same model problem I am using latest version of Blender (2.75a) and I'm having a problem with animation.

I have one animation in the Dope Sheet and it's working as it should, but I am unable to make another one on the same model. I did save it in the Action Editor, but when I return to Dope Sheet and delete all of keyframes, then insert new ones, the first animation doesn't work. I also tried with Blender (2.71) and it didn't worked, but I did the same thing with another model a few months back in 2.71 and it worked just fine

If anyone knows how to fix it I would be really grateful.

SOLVED:

I removed ALL empties and IK's I had in my mesh and I enabled Auto-IK and Auto Keyframing

I made an Action1 in Action Editor and went back to Dope Sheet where I placed my keyframes for the first action.When I was done with that I went to Action Editor and created Action2 and again went back to Dope Sheet where I placed keyframes for second animation

Everything works as it should and no problems whatsoever

To add a Second animation you have to change first to Action Editor at the bottom from Dope Sheet

and then press the New button at the bottom:

And now you can Animate and switching between your animations

EDIT: After you created an Animatin you should press the "x" Button next to it and then press new:

and then press the new button:

It should work


Multiple materials on subdivided face resulting in displacement I subdivided a face to apply multiple materials to it. However after assigning them, they look displaced in edit and object mode, as well as in the rendered picture. What did I do wrong?
I tested multiple materials and all of them show the same behavior.

I expected something like this:

What did I do wrong? Thank you!

The Bevel modifier is subdividing the mesh again creating new face which are assigned to a certain material depending on there creation method , changing the number of segments to an even number will get you the desired result


How can I create a snapshot of a curve in the Graph Editor (like Buffer Curve Snapshot feature in Maya)? Maya has something called Buffer Curve Snapshot in its graph editor which allows to temporarily save a snapshot of a curve and then use it as reference when doing further changes to the curve. You can also use it to try to preserve the curve after simplifying it to fewer keyframes. Does Blender have similar feature and if so how does one access it?

Yes it is called Create Ghost Curves

It will create a snapshot in dotted lines of the selected curve(s). That lime can then be used as reference.

For 2.8 Use the icon at the top of the curve editor.

To clear the ghost curve it just click on the X icon again on the same place where you created the curve.

For older versions of blender select the curve, press the space bar to acces the search menu and type ghost curves. Then you can enable or disable the function.


How to get the updated rotation of an object during soft body physics simulation? I am trying to get the updated rotation of an object during simulation in Blender 2.92. However, I am not able to get what I want. I appreciate if someone can help me with this.
As you may know, you will always get the original object's location and rotation if you do bpy.context.object.rotation_euler or bpy.context.object.location for each frame. However, you can get the object location if you make a vertex group from the original object vertices and add an empty object to it. This has allowed me to track the object and get its updated location. However, this trick does not seem to work for getting the updated rotation of the object for each frame. Even the empty's rotation does not match with the original object rotation before I start the simulation. For each frame of the simulation also I get more or less completely random rotation vectors from the empty if I print its rotation.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
vertices_to_add = []
for vertex in bpy.data.objects['Cube'].vertices:
    vertices_to_add.append(vertex.index)

# add vertices to vertex group
group = self.obj.vertex_groups.new(name='Group')
group.add(vertices_to_add, 1.0, "ADD")

# create an empty
bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='PLAIN_AXES')
bpy.context.object.rotation_euler =  bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler

bpy.ops.object.constraint_add(type='COPY_LOCATION')
bpy.context.object.constraints["Copy Location"].target = self.obj
bpy.context.object.constraints["Copy Location"].subtarget = "Group"

bpy.ops.object.constraint_add(type='COPY_ROTATION')
bpy.context.object.constraints["Copy Rotation"].target = self.obj
bpy.context.object.constraints["Copy Rotation"].subtarget = "Group"

# Later on I do the followings to print the current rotation of the Empty
for frame in range(1, num_frames+1):
   bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame)
   print(bpy.data.objects['Empty'].rotation_euler) # this always prints the original object rotation
   print(bpy.data.objects["Empty"].matrix_world.to_euler('XYZ')) # This gives me completely random rotation vectors

Issue with all vert coords in vg summing to zero.
Made a quick demo to have a squiz,
Using 2.91 ran into this issue
Default Cube set up to drop on plane using physics. An all vertex group "Group" is added, and two constraints, as demonstrated with code above.
All constraints use default values unless otherwise stated.
Obvservations:
For copy rotation constraint.
Using no subtarget --> Empty same rotation as cube.
When using all vert vg "Group" as a subtarget  --> Resulted in Identity (zero) rotation.
Using a group with only 3 vertices --> Empty rotates, but is aligned to normal of 3 verts plane.
Editing the cube by moving one corner such that it is no longer symmetrical also sees rotation when all verts used as subtarget.
Similarly if both constraints are replaced with one copy transform constraint, in which case "Group"  makes the empty disappear (scale to zero). Despite there being only unit scale on all objects involved
Didn't try but the other similar constraint would be parent to.
Conclusion.
Either don't use a subtarget, or make sure the sum of all vert coords  in  subtarget group do not sum to zero,  for constraints that involve rotation.
Really  only need the subtarget if also deforming the mesh.
Perhaps someone can elaborate whether this behaviour re using all verts vg as a subgroup not rotating is by design, or a bug of sorts, when caused by the sum of all cube verts being zero a zero vector...
With one of the working options selected, used script below to add an empty at each tenth frame with same matrix world as constrained empty.
import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene
fs, fe = scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end
tg = bpy.data.objects["Empty"]

for frame in range(fs, fe):
   scene.frame_set(frame)
   print(frame, tg.matrix_world.to_euler('XYZ')) # This gives me completely random rotation vectors
   if not frame % 10:
       bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
       mt = bpy.context.object
       mt.matrix_world = tg.matrix_world
       mt.name = f"frame_{frame}"
       mt.show_name = True

With the physics baked, ran it and the added empties align with the constrained empty at their respective frame.
PS can make an all vert group with
group.add(range(len(mesh.vertices)), 1.0, "ADD")


What details should show in sculpting I was sculpting a head and wondering what details could i add on the face. The common details i have seen are wrinkles and some imperfection depending on the reference image. For skin pores, i am wondering is it better to do it in sculpting or texture painting? Below is my reference image.

From what i see, the details except for skin pores is just the wrinkles on the lips. May i know what are the details i could add based on this reference image, and what are the others common details that is usually achieved by sculpting?

Thank You so much for helping.

You can add detail until you get to a point where its so small your computer struggles, or you'd rather just let a texture handle it. Maybe large wrinkles or veins I'd sculpt, and the rest I do with a brush template or while texturing. Certainly around the eye I'd sculpt wrinkles and detail, as no way that can be simply covered by a brush or texture. Basically get the form as much as you can with bone structure, then past that its simply up to how much you need/want to do.


How to remove triangular edges that appear after subdivision I’m new at blender, and I decided to model a magic lamp as a start. I started by modeling the base of the lamp. I made it disk shaped. when I made the loop circular and used a subdivision modifier, those strange triangular edges appeared. How can I remove them? thank you, and sorry for bad english :slight_smile:

Edit: after removing n-gons, triangles disappeared! but edges became sharp.

Start with a lowpoly geometry and try to keep the mesh as regular as possible.

We don't know the final shape you want to obtain, but what I'd do is starting from a circle with few (8) vertices and extrude it along Z and scaling these extrusions.

Here is the geometry (in edit mode below with the starting circle selected), and above the same with a subdivision surface set to 1.

The main part is done simply extruding and scaling the base circle.

Then, when the shape looks ok for you, You can make the 'nose' part by selecting faces on the side and extrude them along X.

The hole (where the genius will come from) is done selecting top faces of the previous extrusion and insetting these faces using I and delete this inset.


Blender 2.65 .blend file is not loading correctly in Blender 2.76b I've just recently moving to Blender 2.76b from Blender 2.65. One of my .blend files made in 2.65 is not loading correctly when opened in 2.76b. When opened, one of the mesh is strange.

When viewed in Edit mode > wireframe display:
1. Mesh lines are in different color and they seems broken (like unclear fax machine image).
2. Edge selection (only edge selection) gives no change of color which indicates that the edge is being selected, but it was selected.

When in viewed in Edit mode > solid display:
1. Mesh lines are normal but the whole mesh is in different color.
2. Vertex, edge, and face selection is normal (they give different color when selected).
3. When using GLSL shading, the mesh does not display any texture, even though UVMapping is already done correctly (strangely, when in Object mode, the texture is displayed correctly).

When in viewed in Edit mode > texture display:
1. When using GLSL shading, the mesh does not display any texture, even though UVMapping is already done correctly (strangely, when in Object mode, the texture is displayed correctly).
2. Mesh lines are normal but the whole mesh is in different color.
3. Vertex, edge, and face selection is normal (they give different color when selected).

Any explanation why this happens? Thank you.

That's to be expected. Blender 2.7 has broken some backwards compatibility (which is part of the reason why it took so long to be released).

  For 2.7x projects we will allow forward and (minor) backward compatibility breakage. That means that by default, the 2.7x .blend files don”t have to read reliably in 2.6x or older. Backward compatibility stays crucial though, and should only be acceptable for big and important improvements.

From the Blender Roadmap for version 2.7.

If it is essential to be able to open this file, I recommend using version 2.69.


How can I rotate a mesh about another object using animation node in blender How can I rotate a mesh about another object using animation node in blender

My thoughts were to have the circle/triangle mesh node pivot point be the same as the cube piviot point
I was following along using a video but it uses a matrix instead of a mesh.
https://youtu.be/EWkK11PQG_Y?t=3m23s

I also tried using the offset node I thought I could use the Global Axis - Global Pivot node but had some issues with converting the nodes from mesh to matrices https://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_guide/nodes/matrix/offset_matrices.html

I 'm using Ubuntu 18.04 64bit, Python 3.6.5, numpy 1.15.0, blender 2.79b, Animation Node addon 2.1.2 Beta.

You can use the Transform Mesh Node where the matrix is a multiplication of three matrices, translation such that the target object becomes at the origin, rotation then translating back.


Timers and animation frame rate The following image represents a timer with minutes and seconds that I created:

What is the correct value of the "skip" option in the always sensor if I want it to activate every 1 second?
Also, what is the connection, if any, with the "animation frame rate" under the "display" section in the "render" toolbar?
And at last, is there any connection between one of the above values and the fps of my game? Will those values be affected by the fps of my game somehow or the other way around?

Thanks

The default (logic) frame rate is 60 frames/sec. Therefore 60 is a good value for your purpose.

There are more frame rates:

Animation frame rate (usually 24 frames/sec) used to play actions.
Physics frame rate (usually matching the logic frame rate) to calculate the physics influence to a scene. Be aware it can be even finer with so called-substeps. More sub steps increase the precision of the physics calculation (but costs more processing time).
Render frame rate (usually matching the logic frame rate) which tells how many images are rendered. If a frame lasts too long (exceeds the 1/60 time available) the BGE starts skipping the render trying to meet the frame rate. This can happen up to 5 times in a row. After that there is a forced render ignoring the time limit. The render frame rate is never higher than the logic frame rate as it is assumed there is no change to the scene and the output would be the same.

But:

I suggest to avoid this method to measure time. The BGE will try to keep the given frame rate as much as possible, but there is no guaranty.

I recommend to use a timer property. It counts the seconds. I think that is what you really want.

Then you have several ways to show the time. I think you want to format it to minutes:seconds. You can use this little script timeToText:

import bge
from datetime import datetime

textObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
time = datetime.fromtimestamp(textObject["time"])
textObject.text = '{:%M:%S}'.format(time)

It expects a property time to provide the seconds and should be applied to an text object.

You can indeed refresh the display each 60 frames. But you will not know when the seconds changed. Therefore I suggest to run it constantly.

Hint: If you want to show microseconds too, use this format: {:%M:%S.%f}


How to remove this black spots in texture I have made the model and textured it. I did not get where im getting this black spots on it. I have attach my model.

You UV mapping is mapping a transparent part of your texture.

You can shift it a bit or map it a different way. You can also use another texture for that part of the mesh. There are lot of options to fix it.


Problem with paths in my script, relative to local python file I'm trying to import data stored as a JSON. It works fine in stand-alone python, but I am having problems in Blender python console.

I have a folder Applications/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.74/scripts/addons/uhoh and in it I have wowtest.py, a blank __init__.py, and test_data.txt which contains the JSON.

This is wowtest.py

def wowtest(fname):

    import json

    print('hmmm.... will this work?')

    with open(fname, 'r') as infile:
        xdic = json.load(infile)

    return xdic

And this is what happens in Blender's python console:

>> import uhoh.wowtest as wow
>>> wow.wowtest('test_data.txt')
hmmm.... will this work?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Applications/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.74/scripts/addons/uhoh/wowtest.py", line 9, in wowtest
    with open(fname, 'r') as infile:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'test_data.txt'

I have put a second copy of test_data' up one level (in/addons`) just in case, but this doesn't help. What am I missing?

NOTE: I will run this from a script next. If there are differences, please let me know.

The current file's location is obtained using __file__

import os
current_file_path = __file__
current_file_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)

to access a file in the same directory as this python file you do

other_file_path = os.path.join(current_file_dir, "other_file.ext")
with open(other_file_path) as f:
   ...

if there's a directory on the same path as the main python file you can get that by doing

other_file_path = os.path.join(current_file_dir, "directory", "other_file.ext")
with open(other_file_path) as f:
   ...


Why are two collections of identical rigid bodies simulated differently? I have 2 identical collections of rigid bodies with identical settings. They are on different collision collections yet they are acting different when dropped from identical location. I need for them to be simulated in the exact same way as the previous collection. Why is this happening?
EDIT: The effect I want to achieve is a smoke simulation from shards of a cell fractured object and later hide them and replace with identical shards that liquify:

Unfortunately the rigid bodies do not behave the same way when duplicated.
I did however found a workaround by creating 2 blend files - one for smoke sim and other for liquid sim. Tho in the future I might look into baking physics as some of you pointed out.

In general, rigid body simulations are not perfectly deterministic. The more complex they are, the more influence the small but unavoidable numerical imprecisions have. You might be able to duplicate simple simulations somewhat reliably, but increasing complexity will mean increasing difference in results between simulation runs.
Therefore, if you want perfectly identical behavior, you will need to bake the dynamics (quite possibly it would be best to bake to keyframes in this circumstances) before duplicating the bodies.


Texture got dark gradient at one edge I just started blender this month. When I put texture to my objects, they got some weird dark gradient. Btw I tried to recalculate normal, apply transformation. Nothing's worked. Here's the screenshot in render mode.

This is caused by using smooth shading on an object with sharp corners. Blender is trying to make a 90 degree corner look like it's smooth. This leads to various shading issues as seen in the image. Setting the shading to flat is the best solution, but using split normals, an Edge Split modifier, or using the Auto Smooth normals option all work too.


Cut a hole with Boolean Modifier is not working I can not cut a hole in an object with both Boolean modifier or Carver tool.
Hole needs to be here.

The reason the modifier is not working is because the hook is made from a curve and not a mesh. Curves are defined by specific control points and sometimes modifiers can be added to them to give the appearance of a solid object. However, in order to use constructive modifies (ie. a boolean modifier), your object needs to be a mesh.
I did try converting your curve to a mesh, but due to its complexity, there is some weird topology that results in the boolean modifier not working as it should.
The best thing to do would be to redesign the hook as a mesh and then the boolean modifier should work fine. Having it as a mesh will also make it easier to work with UVs, textures, and physics if those are needed in the future.


highlighting intersections I'm not sure the best way to explain this, but I want a material to mix into an emission shader along the edge where it intersects with another object. This video is a good example:link

edit: I want to do be able to do this in realtime (eevee), thought I'd add it here rather than just having it in the tags.

edit:

edit: I also want to be able to achieve this in eevee with this same method. this is done in cycles:

and this is eevee:

I just followed the method in that link:

you can use add shader in the end but results were not good so I used a mix of 50/50
you can use a light path node with out put of is camera ray to get rid of shadows.

works in eevee too but you should enable ambient occlusion + make the shader show transparency + adjust the color ramp. if adjusting color ramp is hard add a math node with power before it.

eevee setup


Change color of edge Length Marking in Blender 2.83 I messed around with the preferences and changed various visual parameters in the 3D view port.  Unfortunately I changed the color for the edge lengths and now I can't figure out which preference setting that was and I have made it difficult to see the value on the screen.  I'm not interested in doing a factory reset as I have other options enabled and changed settings.  You can see in the attached picture the edge length is purple and very difficult to read.

Per Mr Zak who provided the answer to me in the comments above, I'm posting the problem and the solution I found via his help.
Problem: I had previously changed the colors of various elements in the 3D view port, because I wanted to print the model with the dimensions as I was going to physically build the model (At the time, I did not know I could simply change the theme to print friendly which would have been the best option).  Sometime later I opened the file again to do additional work and found that I had changed the Edge Length Text to a deep purple which was not visible with the dark gray background.
Answer: Mr Zak provided two answers, which led me to how I could correct the problem.

He suggested I install Measurelt an add on in the Blender program.  I used the search function in the add on and typed in Measurelt, which returned zero results.  Had I taken the time to type more slowly I would have seen that it popped up until the entire word was typed at which point it became zero results. Measurelt is actually located in the 3D View: Measurelt section.  You don't even need to type anything in the search because it is located near the top.

Changing the default colors.  There are so many options that can be changed, that to the novice it is overwhelming.  It was great of Mr Zak to steer me directly to the point where I needed to look "User Prefs > Themes tab > 3D ViewPort > Edge Length Text". There are two sections dealing with Edge.  This option is in the second section so you have to scroll further down to see it.

A much better option to use if you don't like the colors or if you need it to be printer friendly, is to select from the preset options located at the top of the Theme Options window .  It is easy to switch back and forth between themes.


How to copy keyframes from one action to other I would like to know how to copy keyframes from one armature to another. The thing is, I have the same object, the same armature - the same everything - but in diferent blend files. I want to have all the animation in a single blend file. Can any one explain how to do that?

this script will copy the animation data from the active Object to the selected object:

import bpy

active_obj = bpy.context.object
ad = bpy.context.object.animation_data

properties = [p.identifier for p in ad.bl_rna.properties if not p.is_readonly]
objects = [o for o in bpy.context.selected_objects if o.type == active_obj.type]
objects.remove(active_obj)

for obj in objects :
    if obj.animation_data == None :
        obj.animation_data_create()
    ad2 = obj.animation_data

    for prop in properties:
        setattr(ad2, prop, getattr(ad, prop))

here is test run :


Vertex coordinate monitoring during Transform Is it possible, for example, to monitor the coordinates of a vertex while rotating the mesh? (monitored vertex is moving in a circular fashion, providing it's not on the global/local rotation axis)

I'm looking into this as a possible solution to a snapping problem

If you want to bring a vertex of one mesh to a particular vertex of another mesh do this:

select the first object, switch to edit mode, deselect all vertices and select the one to which you want to bring the other vertex.
Switch to object mode
Similarly select the other object and repeat the above steps to selecting the node you want to be moved
Execute the following script replacing the name 'Cube1' with the reference object and 'Cube2' with the object whose vertex you want to move:

import bpy
obj1 = bpy.data.objects['Cube1']
obj2 = bpy.data.objects['Cube2']
co = obj1.matrix_world * [v for v in obj1.data.vertices if v.select == True][0].co
[v for v in obj2.data.vertices if v.select == True][0].co = obj2.matrix_world.inverted() * co


How to keep video and audio together in the Video Sequence Editor When I import video footage in the Video Sequence Editor, it separates into a video strip and an audio strip. Fine.

But it's also possible, even accidentally, to afterward move these strips separately from each other. I don't want that to happen. I can't even think of a reason why the voice of the person speaking in the video should ever be out of sync with the person talking.

So, how can I block the video strip and audio strip of moving separately from one another?

To keep video and audio in sync, use the parenting function in the VSEQF add-on:
https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF


Material glitches in my renders Does anyone know what might be causing this to happen with my renders? It's like part of the material doesn't want to show but I'm using a very basic setup.

It looks even worse with cycles:

My rock looks perfectly fine though on the viewport.

Here are the files for it rock zip

You have an object that is hidden in the viewport but not in render, so make it invisible in render too:


how to array objects along mesh in blender and make it deform along mesh normals? does any one know how to array objects along mesh in blender and make it deform along mesh normals  same as this picture ??

Here is an example of an array following a curve, so you'd look to extract an (interior) edge (of the object to follow) into a curve to array and curve the objects along.

hmmm... how to attach the blend file....??


image texture stretched please anyone can help me.
as shown at the attached picture the left part is the modeled bottle, when i applied the image texture, it's stretched as you see, but what i need it to be as the flat design on the right part.
please how can i fix this issue .

thanks in advance,

ever tried to resize/re-adjust the unwrapped mesh over the image in the uv-editor?
Works best when watching the render preview simultaneously.
Best regards,
Andal


Objects are disappearing during a boolean subtraction Because of a lack of features, or ignorance on my part, and/or even my inability to google real good, I find myself at a point where I'm trying to "cut" cylinder ends at 45 degree angles and then snap and join them together to create pipe joints.

The knife tool doesn't seem to have any feature other than freehanding it, which causes lines to come out only on one side and they're never straight, and even then I can't get those lines to "confirm" or whatever the terminology is. I can't get them to stay is my point. I do the cut and anything else I do seems to cancel the cut, making that tool useless to me.

THEN I tried to go into edit mode, snap the 3d cursor to the vertex I want, add a plane that automatically gets insterted at that vertex (glad something's going my way for once), angle it, and then use a boolean operation to subtract that plan from the original object, which results in a cut at 45 degrees that I had originally wanted to do with the pain in the butt knife tool. I then delete the vertices, fix the weirdly missing faces that disappear for no reason, and voila. Angled pipe cut. Rinse and repeat on another object, then set the 3d cursor again to the point I want, use that to change the original, reset the 3d cursor to the vertex on the other object and use that to snap the first one there. Join parts, remove duplicates and boom, jointed pipe.

An extremely overly complicated process but whatever. At this point I've stopped trying to solve my problems and instead do whatever it takes to get around them.

HOWEVER... something is going wrong now. I inserted a boolean modifier into my object and when I used the tool to select the plane as the thing to subtract from the model, the model freaking disappears entirely, leaving a plane oval where the cut was supposed to be. Almost as if the software was like "hey, I'm gonna do the opposite of what he wants because F this guy"

I did a google as best as I could and the only results that made any sense was to recalculate normals. So I did. Didn't fix it.

Which leaves me at a stalemate.

Update - Thought I had a solution with the plane extrusion into a cube, didn't fix it. Just fixed it for that one boolean operation. Problem persists.

As Dale Cieslak explains, the Shear tool is very convenient. But you can force a 45° with the knife tool. Press K to activate it, press Z to cut through the mesh, and press C to cut orthogonally and 45°. So now go orthogonal top view and use it.

After that, delete, dulicate, mirror, snap with merge vertices, etc.


Major visual issue with cycles rendering Im rendering a scene using cycles which looks absolutely perfect when rendering in view port mode as you can see in the first image
But when I finally render it, it looks like this
I'm using 2.79 and i tried it on 2.78 with the same result.
any help is appreciated.comment below if you need more information

I have fixed the issue,

most of the objects had suddenly had invisibility checked, uncheck these and it will appear fine


Backdrop not available in Nodes In Node Editor, I have selected Compositing, Use Nodes, and Backdrop. In the tutorial I'm using, the object image shows up on the Render Layers Node, but it doesn't on mine and I can't get the backdrop. Can someone tell me what I might have done wrong? This is v2.76, Blender Render.

Edit: Here is the tutorial, Simple Energy Effect. Node work begins at 9:25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnrsoSagIU8

As soon as he clicks 'Use Nodes', the left box has the image that will be on the backdrop when he clicks that button. My Node box has no image in it.

The small preview displayed in the render layers node is only visible after you have first rendered your scene. The preview can also be hidden by clicking the little material circle at the top of the nodes.

The image displayed as the backdrop in the node editor comes from the viewer node. This is also not available until the scene has first been rendered.


Clone brush isn't included in Blender I went to use the clone brush for the first time after viewing a tutorial on texturing. However, Blender (v2.65) texture painting only has one brush. I was wondering:

How can I get all the brushes that should be included, or
how can I create a clone brush that works. I tried to create one, but all it did was paint a solid color over the model.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Okay I started a new blender project and went immediately into texture paint. All the brushes are there. However when I open my project only one of the brushes is there. Does anyone know of any settings that could be responsible for this?

If you are getting this problem in only one project, I suggest creating a new file, and appending all of the objects, materials, actions, etc in the existing project, then, if you get the result you want, save over the project.


Encoder Timebase is not set - audio duplication error, FPS problem I understand this question has been asked but I cannot find a solution to my particular problem.

When I try to animate my video project I get the error 'The Encoder Timebase is not set' - through this forum I found out that when I imported my video Blender changed it from 60fps down to 59.96fps.

Before animating I changed the fps back to 60 which allowed the animation process to begin. When my video had rendered I found that the audio tracks seem to have multiplied and overlayed each other. I also found that my Movie sequencer had lots of extra audio in it. In addition to this I found my outputted video had severely dropped in quality from the original 1080p.

Please see here for examples of what I am referring to -

Thank you so much for any help, total beginner here having a meltdown!

Paul

As suggested elsewhere I managed to export the audio as a .wav and then remove the audio track, set to 60fps and then overlay exported .wav file. I’m just animating at a higher quality than last time so I will know if this worked soon :)


Blender Fluid Baking taking so long I am trying to make a little coastal scene, very basic just the odd wave and clash with a rock or two.

The fluid sim bake is 771mb, why does it take 2-3 hours to bake that?

My computer has these components;
CPU - Ryzen 5 1600X @ 4.0 GHz
GPU - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM - 16GB DDR4 @ 2400 MHz

I’ve got the preferences for the CPU and GPU turned on in CUDA.
Nothing else is up on my computer other than Blender.

I have been working in Eevee but I’ve realised to render I’ll have to use Cycles because of a material I have made won’t show up in Eevee.

With a complex, i.e. demanding, fluid sim as it is in your case (the hardware needs to calculate the wave hitting the rocks, turbulences etc as well!) it's best to use both CPU and GPU. Especially if the sim has several hundred frames, which means their number should be reduced. And, apart from the above, try the ca. 200 resolution. It's the max res I used and water didn't look awful.


when is it necessary to have a continuous mesh over separate pieces? Everywhere I look people say that animated models need to be one continuous mesh with quads. A lot of tutorials of people who are doing hard surface modeling via poly modeling vs sculpting often model there final object with several different pieces. Like if it was a helmet with rivets they'll model the rivets separate and just leave them on top. If you want to animated the helmet on a figures head do you have to join all of it into a solid mesh? if you do that do you re-topology it the same approach as a sculpt?

I ask in reference to a medieval great helm I'm modeling. it would be easier to model the rivets, and the cross (separate pieces that is riveted around the eyes and seams. I want to be able to 3d print it and but it on a character to be animated. Does the entire helmet need to be one solid mesh? I don't want to sculpt it.

To be clear: First you say

  Everywhere I look people say that animated models need to be one continuous mesh with quads.

Then you say

  A lot of tutorials of people who are doing hard surface modeling via poly modeling vs sculpting often model there final object with several different pieces.

Simply understand that it's not necessarily a contradiction for people to be saying these two different things, because not all modeling projects have the same goal. I suspect that many of those you've been hearing are simply making assumptions about what other people are going to be doing with their models, and so maybe they are not entirely clear about their own goals when explaining their methods, so that others will understand what those methods are best suited to accomplish. Sometimes we take too much for granted.

Hard surface modeling can use various separated parts, just as you say--and even boolean them together without worry--because the end result will not need deformations. When you hear people say that models need to be one continuous mesh with quads, they are likely assuming the goal of organic modeling, such as for characters.

Once this is understood, the course becomes rather clear, and there's no need for concern. For a helmet, you could probably do whatever you wanted. The only real issue I can foresee might arise from the fact that you want this model for 3D printing. That is going to require you to take more care than might otherwise be necessary, but I can't say in exactly what way, as I am not an expert on modeling for printing purposes. It might be a good idea to research this topic specifically, since the cost of physical material is at stake.


BGUI modify text_input widget I would like to tweak the BGUI, so the text_input widget would swap the color from highlighted to inactive after it has been deactivated by the mouse.

I realized that the color changes to inactive after pressing the enter key, but not after klicking with the mouse somewhere else on the screen.

Could you help me with that, please?

Thanks in advance.
Eugene

I couldn't fix the BGUI to solve the problem, but I found a workaround for this.

Set a Left Mouse Button Sensor and connect it to a python controller that activates a callback function.

if not own['sys'].layout.input._active == 1:
        own['sys'].layout.input.text = own['sys'].layout.input.text


Just installed for the first time. Blender closes instantly upon starting up I apologize if this is a common issue, but I cannot for the life of me understand how to startup the program. I just finished installing for the first time, yet Blender will not even run. I had to do a fast 'print screen' capture of what happens when I execute "Blender.exe". The command prompt will briefly flash with the message "found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\python", and the main screen will appear before disappearing and closing altogether less than half a second later.

So far I have done a clean install of Blender, repaired it, made sure I had Microsoft C++ package 2013 installed, updated my drivers, and even reinstalled python. Nothing has worked. Is there any solution to starting it up for me without it suddenly crashing/closing immediately afterwards?

As for PC specs, I use Windows 10 Operating system, and my G-card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. I have an i7 intel processor and 16 GB of Ram installed. Please let me know if you need any more information!

I have had a problem similar to yours when I first started out with Blender.

Firstly, I would recommend first running a debug on the program to identify what exactly could be the error. You can do this from the Command Prompt on a Windows machine. To do this, open up the Prompt (Win+R, type 'cmd' and then hit enter) and you'll want to navigate to where your Blender executable file is located. The easy way is to right-click on the Blender shortcut on your desktop (if you set for one to appear at installation), select 'Properties', and the copy the Target folder, then return to the Command Prompt and type 'cd' and paste the destination folder (cd C:/…/Blender).

Once that's done, simply type 'blender --debug'. Blender should run now, and if it instantly closes you'll now be able to see why.

What helped me when I had that problem was that I checked with two different programs to see if my drivers were updated. I know you said you have already updated them all, but there are some outdated drivers that one piece of software will not pick up, or it is not in the program's list of drivers to check (i.e. Intel driver checkers seem to only check Intel drivers and not exactly all of them), so it might be a good idea to look for a reliable software to check your drivers with. I use DriverEasy combined with the Intel Driver and Support Assistant to make sure all of my drivers can get updates, even ones outside of the ones IDSA looks at. We often thing our drivers are updated, but there's always some that are missed that are crucial to some program function.

Hope it helped! Good luck and happy Blending!


How can i animate the spin property for curves (extruding while rotating) I'm trying to make a video explaining "Solids of revolutions" in calculus; i need to animate the "spin" tool, i have looked it up, and all what i found talks about rotations, which is not what i'm looking for, by spinning i mean using this command line

bpy.ops.mesh.spin(steps = 90,angle = 2 *math.pi, center=(0, 0, 0), axis = (1, 0, 0))

Perhaps you can use the screw modifier and animate the angle property.

Here is my mesh that is curved and only an edge. I apply the Screw modifier and set Angle to 0. Then I hover over the Angle box and hit i. This adds a key frame to that property. Go to the frame where you want it to be fully spun and set degrees to 360 and hit i again over the green box. It should turn yellow.

Now, it should be animated! Here is a still mid animation.


Follow path constraint deforming mesh I have rigged a mesh and then I've added a curved path I'd like it to follow. Next, I've added a path constraint to the armature and everything works fine except for one thing: when the mesh rotates to follow the path's curve it is heavily distorted towards the curve's direction.

Does anyone know how I could fix this?

Thank you.

enabling Follow curve option  in the follow path constraint force the mesh to deform according to the path "like a curve Modifier does" :

to follow the curve without a distortion :

add an empty with a follow path constraint on the same path
adjust the offset of the follow curve of the object  " 1.00 or according to your path"
add a locked track constraint to the object and set the target to the Empty object
keep adjusting the offset till you get a nice result


Weird behaviour when using a normal map with a glossy node I tried to add a normal map on a glossy node but it gives a weird result.

Here are some pictures to better explain the problem

Does anyone know any fixes?

Your normal map is just too strong. Turn down the strength:


Flat surface sculpts along length, not evenly So I have run into this issue when learning to create a base mesh of a head. In the following picture I have created a basic nose.

I enter sculpt mode and press ctrl + r to remesh the object, and smooth it out a bit

Here is a view from the bottom up where I try to start the nostrils.

Why is the draw brush drawing ovals instead of circles?
First time poster here. If there is any additional information I can provide I would be happy to.

try appllying scale by hitting ctrl-A apply scale  blender works weird when scale of object is not 1


how to go back to a previous grease pencil frame? so when using grease pencil it gives the option to add a frame, however once a Frame has been added how do I go back to the previous frame? EG; on frame 1 I drew some vertical lines, then selected new frame and drew some horizontal lines but how do I get back to the vertical ones?
difficult to explain but I hope u understand the question and can give me an answer XO

Just click on the timeline frame 1.This is the most simplest method. Hope it helps!


key frames with physics simulations im creating a scene where i have a cloth simulation and a smoke simulation at at the same time

it is for a still image (with scope to animate it in the future).
my problem is this, with both simulations  start from a neutral position in the when the time line is at at frame #0

in the cloth simulation its a neck tie but But completely flat before the wind dynamics start to toss it around

and in the fire (smoke) simulation the flames are yet to be spawned from the emission object

if I liked a particular frame because of way the tie was flapping in the wind
and in a seperate instance how the fire looked (for example further along the timeline when the flames have finnished bursting up and out and have 'settled')

is there a way if isolating the 'pose' both the tie (cloth sim) and fire (smoke sim) like with a key frame to alow the two posess to exist in the same image at the same time

this might also be helpfull when I come to animate the scene for the tie(cloth sim) to already be blowing in the wind and fire(smoke sim) to already be roaring and potentialy be on a short loop (not too worried about seamlessness) of a few frames just enough to give both things a bit of life while not requiring lots frames of processing heavy simulation (especialy the smoke sim i've noticed)

cheers,

Billy

For still images, this is fairly easy, cloth simulation is a modifier, and like any modifier it can be applied. This will apply the simulated shape at the current frame to the mesh, thus allowing you to then change the frame to the one with your preferred smoke simulation state.

If you want to make it look like the cloth is being blown by the smoke, you might want to look into a wind force field.


How to export object list to text ordered by name? Alright so blender can output an objectlist with this:

`for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:`
 blenderCipher.write('\n'+obj.name+'\n')

The issue is the order that blender sets this in. I want it to be based off of the number the object is named to. For example, Model_01, Model_02, Model_03, Model_04, ect.

Blender would instead order it at random like model_05, model_04, model_01, model_03 ect.

bpy.context.selected_objects is a list of objects, it is not guaranteed to be in any specific order, to get the list in order you need to sort it yourself.

Python has the builtin function sorted() to sort lists. As it can't sort objects directly you need to specify a key function that can provide a sortable key. Using the example from pythons Sorting How-To you can use attrgetter() to get the objects name attribute to use for sorting.

import bpy
from operator import attrgetter

for obj in sorted(bpy.context.selected_objects, key=attrgetter('name')):
    print(obj.name)


Wrong shape with proportional editing So I'm currently trying to bend this plane around a corner:

I turned on Proportional Editing and moved the rightmost vertex on the Y-axis:

This creates a problem. The arc that is created goes in the wrong direction. I want it to confine to the correct arc that I drew:

This looks like the kind of shape I want (taken from a UV Sphere):

I've already tried manually dragging the individual parts of the arc to the correct places, but it makes the arc look really artificial and rough (which is not ideal, considering that the model I'm making is supposed to be organic and natural-looking). I have tried different falloffs, but those did not work either. I also tried moving the center of the arc to the correct place with Proportional Editing turned on, but it also results in a very weird looking shape.

How would I go about solving this? I would prefer it if the solution used Proportional Editing, but I do not mind if there is a more efficient solution that does not use Proportional Editing.

You need to use the Sharp profile.
It's the only one that bends 'inwards'.


Do you have to download a special version of Blender to use experimental features? I seem to be having problems enabling experimental features in Blender 2.78. I have tried using regular Blender and the experimental "developers only" version, but they both do the same thing. There is a warning icon with an exclamation mark next to the "Experimental" option in the Render panel, and the Displacement option does not appear in the Data panel. I want to enable true displacement for Cycles materials. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 with an AMD 64-bit processor. I have not found any detailed instructions for enabling experimental features. The official documentation doesn't explain what the exclamation mark means.

No, you don't need a special version of Blender. They come with Blender. You can enable them in various places in Blender.

For example, the experimental rendering features:

Another example - add-ons:

For your specific case, enable the experimental rendering features like you mentioned, then switch displacement type in the material settings (this will work with something attached to the displacement input of the material output node).

For setting up displacement, you will likely want to use a subsurf modifier with the "adaptive" setting enabled.

Here is the example .blend:

Note: The viewport doesn't properly reload yet, so you have to keep switching between solid and rendered view.


Background image isn't visible in the viewport Is the problem with the picture or something else?
I'm trying to put a image to Blender's viewport but its not showing. I tried pressing Ctrl and Numpad1 but it just made the default shape rounder.
I'm using blender 2.78.

Use the Numpad 1 to enter preset ortho view. Ctrl+1 from the top of your keyboard adds a Subdivision Surface modifier.


How to change shapekey vertex position through python I need to change vertex position in a shapekey through python. Is it possible to do?

Right now i can only get vertices coordinates. But how to change the vertex coordinate of shapekey?

import bpy

obj1 = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
for vert in obj1.data.vertices:
    print(vert.co)  # this is a vertex coord of the mesh

For example i want to change avertex coordinates of a ShapeKey "Key1".
http://i.imgur.com/erM03j9.png

Shape key coordinates live in a bmesh "layer"

I have included a copy of http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/explore-shape-keys.html here:

import bpy
import bmesh

def dump(mesh):

    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(mesh)

    for key in bm.verts.layers.shape.keys():
        val = bm.verts.layers.shape.get(key)
        print("%s = %s" % (key,val) )
        sk=mesh.shape_keys.key_blocks[key]
        print("v=%f, f=%f" % ( sk.value, sk.frame))
        for i in range(len(bm.verts)):
            v = bm.verts[i]
            delta = v[val] - v.co
            if (delta.length > 0):
                print ( "v[%d]+%s" % ( i,delta) )

dump(bpy.context.active_object.data)

Code for creating and populating shape keys can be found at http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/shape-key-fin.html and I have extracted the most interesting bit here:

def addShapeKey(obj, i, nKeys, z1, z2, dTheta, thetaLag):
    kn = "phase %d"%i
    sk = obj.shape_key_add(kn)
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(obj.data)
    sl = bm.verts.layers.shape.get(kn)

    for u in range( math.floor(len(bm.verts) / 3)):
        t = math.pi*2*i/nKeys
        bm.verts[u*3][sl] = vert1For(u, t)
        bm.verts[u*3+1][sl] = vert2For(u, t, dTheta, z1)
        bm.verts[u*3+2][sl] = vert3For(u, t, dTheta, z2, thetaLag)

    bm.to_mesh(obj.data)


Edge Loop is discontinuous, doesn't go over a face Why the edge loop won't go over a face? It ends before that face and becouse of that face, it doesn't continue over the whole model.

The edge loop stops because the next face has 6 vertices.
Edge loops ONLY travel through faces with exactly 4 vertices (aka quads).
You can connect the two vertices in the middle vertically by selecting both and pressing J. Then the loop will travel all the way through.


A good way to render objects on a photo background that works also with focus-blurred margins I'm trying to render with Cycles on a photo background using Blender Guru's compositor nodes:

[ Here, the foreground objects are obId=1 and are on layer 1 (rendered in RenderLayer); reconstructed background objects are obId=2 and are on both layer 1 and 2. Layer 2 is rendered as "ground". ]

However, in the current frame the main subject is supposed to be out of focus. As a result, both the ObIndex=1 pass (foreground) and the ObIndex=2 pass (reconstructed background objects, i.e. shadow catchers) are blurry. See the first two panels below:

As you can see, the blurriness doesn't consist in a smooth ramp of fractional intensities; it is instead a random cloud of blacks and whites, which will give an unusable result in terms of foreground/background separation (see the third panel).

I guess this is because the ObIndex pass only contains one integer per pixel, that can be either one of the "Pass Index" values assigned to the objects in the scene, but not anything in between.

So, my question: is there a better way to blend a rendered foreground onto a photo background that works well with blurred objects?

Here's a blend file with the scene described above.

As 3dpointedit pointed out, there is a limitation of the current ID mask system:

Is Z-Render Pass accuracy dependent on sample count? Are others like object id? (Cycles)

As such, these layers are unusable for any post-processing workflow. You need to obtain these layers differently, or build the pipeline in another way.

The correct way of compositing onto a background is detailed here:

Cycles: Shadeless "Shadow-catcher" Material for Rendering onto Footage

In short, you need to put your objects in layer 1, your shadow catchers in layer 2, and the lights in both layers. The render layers will be "object only" (include: 1), "shadows" (include: 2), and "clean background" (include: 2, exclude: 1). Render with transparent background.

This will give you these layers:

"shadows"

"clean background"

Dividing the former with the latter you get the shadow:

You multiply this shadow with your backdrop, and you alpha-over the object into your backdrop. You have to render the scene 3 times though.

You can also use the new Shadow catcher feature of Blender 2.79, but it will only produce black shadows.


Adding a Glow Effect to a Specific Material I have looked at many different things including THIS which is the exact question I want, but even that didn't work. I'm trying to render a lightsaber. I've made a green emission material bright enough that it looks white in the middle but in order for it to look like a lightsaber, it needs to be hitting something.

Obviously I don't want to animate a Jedi holding a lightsaber with a plane behind it the entire time. I would like to know how to render the light that hits an object without rendering said object. Thanks in advance!

Luke D - I have watched many lightsaber blender tutorials. That's what got me this far. All of them have been for a still image not animation. Can you not make an object invisble but let light hit it?

In Cycles you could create a material using an Add shader to add Transparent and Diffuse - so that you get the Diffuse effect from the plane added to the view through the plane as if it wasn't there. This could produce the following effect :

Here the 'blade' has an emission strength of 2 and there is a plane behind it (with the above material) between it and the 'background' cube and suzanne. The light bounces off the plane as well as the whole scene behind it being visible.

However, you would be better not going down that route as it's dependent on there only being 1 light source (the light saber) - otherwise the other sources of light would also appear on the plane (unless you hid them behind the plane or moved them to a different render layer). It's also bad practice since it's not physically accurate.

The other option would be to encase the 'blade' in a volumetric scatter material so that it scattered the light - but that would also cause complications as the volumetrics would scatter any light in the scene, not just that from the blade. Also it would be horrendously inefficient.

This is all far too complicated - much simpler to achieve this in the compositor using a Glare node set to Fog Glow. See here and here.


How do you scroll the amount of loopcuts/bevel segments in edit mode without having to change the middle button to scroll? I had a question regarding how you scroll loop cuts and bevel segments with a graphics tablet, specifically a Wacom in this case.
My buttons are set to middle click and right click but to scroll the amount of loop cut and bevel segments, I have to change my middle click to scroll to make it work.
Changing to scroll also loses my middle click functionality however which is crucial to navigating in my scene.
When I have it set to middle click, I can only move where my loopcut is going to come, it doesn't activate any functions when holding the button.
To keep the question specific: How do you scroll the amount of loop cut in edit mode without having to change the middle button to scroll or purchasing a 3 buttoned pen for a tablet?

After pressing Ctrl+R, you can use PgUp to increase and PgDn to reduce the number of loop cuts. Using this you can adjust the amount to fit your needs dynamically, while entering a number can be faster if the amount of cuts needed is known.
Updated:
The Num + and Num - as @moonboots mentioned and the above mentioned PgUp and PgDn work for me in Blender version 2.83.3, which should be the version* used if you do not work with the experimental ones.

*version used currently as it's the stable and also LTS version at the time of this post.


glove: proper way to create/apply It to an hand? I made a particular kind of glove for this hand, I archived this using a shrinkwarp and solidify modifier

But this works well if the glove goes not on the "fingers" part of the hand!

as a shrinkwarp modifier, It does what It is suppoused to, so It refers to the mesh Itself and not the form "finger" or "palm"

Am I building these gloves in the wrong way? suggestions?

It works sufficiently well only when the hand is open but I get these kinda bad points:

Attack the blend file, It's a little a mess and middle italian/english but e.thing is in the armature parent ^^

problem solved applying the modifiers in advice!

Cool looking model.  I'd just apply the subsurf + shrinkwrap modifier and maybe delete the hand mesh that's underneath the glove.  Unless you plan on having the character unwrap the glove in a scene.


Fire not showing up in render For brevity, here's the blend. Using 2.76, internal renderer. Simulates just fine.

Things I've done: volumetric material - density 0, texture - file format smoke, domain object set, mapping generated, checked density, emission and emission color under influence, type set to voxel data, and probably several other things. Figure'd it'd be best just to include the blend.

All u need to do is to enable rendered in the outliner:


v2.81 Rock generator Where would the Rock Generator be in the official 2.81 release?

It used to be in the Testing category in v2.81 alpha/beta (blender-2.81-c25a910e4ec0-windows64 anyway)

There's nothing in the testing category now.

So where have all those items gone? it's not all moved, just gone.

The only difference is this is the installation rather than standalone zip archive.

The answer below is obsolete since the Rock Generator is now part of Extra Objects add-on since commit rBA7347930a0fa14e752929e28c9b48adf74597b018. The separate Rock Generator add-on has been removed from the add-ons contrib repository by commit rBAC70b649775eeeebedb02c1c7b7aa996a7f6294177.

The release versions only contain the official add-ons. Anything that is from the Blender Add-ons Contrib repository isn't included.

You can either clone the repository if you're familiar with git or you can download a .tar.gz archive of the latest commit of the contribution add-ons using the following link. Extract and copy the files into ./2.81/scripts/addons_contrib/ and you should be able to activate them.


Lock camera on an axis? How do I lock the camera on an axis in Blender? For example I want the camera to not rotate at all, but only slide perfectly parallel to X or Y axis. This way I can check if one of my objects is centred or not to the parent object.

To align the viewport to a specific axis you can use the Numpad:

Y axis - Numpad 1
X axis - Numpad 3
Z axis - Numpad 7

You can use the Ctrl key in conjunction with these keys to invert the direction you are looking along the axis. To move along a certain axis while preserving your viewport orientation:

To move along the Z axis - hold Shift while scrolling.
To move along the X or Y axis - hold Ctrl while scrolling.
To zoom along the X or Y axis - scroll.


What value does the Displacement input of the Cycles Material Output node expect? The Blender implementation of Cycles displacement is still experimental in version 2.79, and there are some gaps in the documentation. The manual advises the use of the Vector>Displacement node or the Vector>Vector Displacement node for the 'displacement' input of the Material Output node.
In my build, I haven't found these nodes.

In a recent answer to a BSE question about masking a displacement texture, Anton S used a node tree which (if I've read it correctly,) resulted in a vector in the range (0,0,-0.5)->(0,0,0.5) being used as the 'displacement' input.

A lot of other tutorials / answers seem to shove in a value in the range 0->1. Are they wrong? What space is Anton's vector in? Can the range be changed? I'd lke to take the guesswork / trial and error out of using displacement.

The confusion is probably stemming from the fact that this output was changed post-2.79. More confusingly, the later builds are still officially labeled as a form of 2.79 due to how Blender versioning works. For clarity, the rest of this answer will use "2.79" to refer to the stable release and previous versions, and the term "nightlies" to refer to the post-2.79 versions available in the buildbot. So:

In 2.79 and earlier, the displacement output was a float output (gray socket). The values expressed a displacement along the normal in decimeters. Yes, 1/10th of a meter. I don't know why this particular scale was chosen, maybe it was considered more artist friendly? In any case, this system was always a little unfinished and many people (myself included) have warned that it may change behavior in a later release.

Well, in the latest development trees those changes are here. The displacement socket has been replaced with a vector3 (purple) output. It now describes a world space transformation from one location to another, rather than along the normal. If you do need to simply displace along the existing normal, the new Vector>Displacement node you linked will do that. It takes a scalar heightfield and calculates a position along the normal based on the values. It outputs a world-space vector of the new mesh shape which you can feed to the displacement output. This works similar to the old displacement, but the scale is now in meters. So a value of 1 results in 1 meter of displacement instead of 0.1 meters.

There is also a Vector>Vector Displacement node. Since the new displacement is just a world-space position, it is now possible to describe more complicated shapes, such as baked down sculpts. The input itself only supports world space vectors. The Vector>Vector Displacement node can convert other formats, such as a tangent space, into the world space format needed for the output.


Are the Toolshelf icons accessible anywhere? Are T Tool icons accessible like the other icons?
Why are there duplicate icons in the table?

As stated at developer.blender.org task toolbar icons are generated from a icon_geom.blend blend file and stored as actual 3D meshes. These are then rasterized into binary .dat icon files at compilation time and presented by the UI.

They are not part of the vector SVG icons created by jendrzych.

Duplicate icons are probably for use at different places in the UI. Either they were different before recent UI redesign and unified, or we might at some point in the future want to use different icons in different situations.


Workflow for adding audio to scenes and combining them in the VSE I've been trying to experiment with a workflow for putting all animation, editing, and post-processing into one blender file:

0000_Master combines clips of all scenes' sequences and edits them together, along with background audio, VFX overlays, etc
0001, 0002, 0003, ... individual scenes with audio track(s) for lip-syncing added to the sequencer (needs to be in the sequencer to control starting/ending point of the audio)

Unfortunately, I'm running into this issue, where the VSE is unable to combine the Camera (video) and Sequencer (audio) of a particular scene into the VSE. Is there a clean/better way to do this? I'd really like to be able to use the embedded scenes this way, as it allows for quick renderings of previews without preparing different quality files/proxies to export/import per scene, and there's very little setup overall.
If there's a feature request/issue that I can track (if it exists), that would be great to have.

This is a bit silly, but you can create additional scenes and put the scene's camera output in 0001.Video, and then combine that with 0001's sequencer output in 0001.Comp. The latter can then be inserted into your master as one clip that's easy to edit. The render start/ends are a bit difficult to manage between the three of them, but if you overshoot them all (I'm not sure if render times are affected here) and just plan to edit them down in the master's VSE, it's a pretty usable workflow.
e: the 0001.Comp scene can be avoided by using meta clips, but that requires renaming the clip for clarity.


How to create a glowing object in a light background? I am creating an atom model and want a glowing nucleus in cycles render. Something like this.

My nucleus is a single sphere.
I need it to glow but I need a light background. Is it possible?

This is what I have.

You will need to have something dark in your image to make the glow work. It needs contrast or it will look washed out. You have made your rings black and you could try to make the nucleus light up those. That could make the nucleus appear to emit light.

Maybe something like this?

Here is the material node setup for the glowy thing in the middle.
It can be applied to any object larger than the falloff radius.
It controls how mush light that should be emitted by the volume by creating a gradient from the objects center and out.


How to edit a rotated mesh in pose mode I want to edit a mesh of a rotated object in pose mode.
But when I select a rotated object with edit mode, it is restored to its original condition.
I want to make an animation process of folding, so I could't press apply button after rotated armature.
Please give me an advice.

Select the armature, go to the Modifiers tab. I think you are looking for this:

Some operations (such as loop cut) may not work as expected on deformed edit mesh display, so, be careful when editing.


How to model a Dome with Cylinders? How can I model this, . I've only started to try, but im a newbie and feel like I'mma fail at making it look like a dome with the curvature. Any advice or comment would be much appreciated! :)
The "progress"

You can do this easily with face instancing.

Parent the Cylinder to the Dome
Select the Dome and go Object Tab > Instancing > Faces
Done


Animation Node and the Different Ways to Make Grids What are the differences between these two Grids? And why use Animation Node instead of the array modifier?

When using the Object Instancer node, you are basically duplicating the object while keeping the same mesh data block. When using the Replicate Mesh node, you are constructing a single mesh by replicating the source mesh along the input transformations.

The array modifier would be roughly equivalent to the replication method, however, it is very limited when it comes to the patterns that you can generate.


How to to split an element to make a rotation point to animate a follow path I am trying to animate a double bus, like this one:

Do I need to split the bus in the middle so that both bus parts can rotate individually over a path using the Follow Path constraint? I don't have enough experience in animating to know how to achieve this. Any suggestions? This is my bus so far:

Take two:

I looked into the Follow Path constraint a bit more, but could not come up with anything. I instead decided to rig the bus. Basically, I added a base bone with a Follow Path constraint and two bones on either end with Follow Path constraints and an Offset: value to make sure they stayed at the front and rear of the bus. I then added two bones for the two halves of the bus. They are following the base bone's movements (parented) and have a Track To constraint so they point towards the two end bones. I did all the weight painting myself, so it would take forever to write a lengthy tutorial. Instead, I explained what I did, and am including a second .blend file. Note that you may want to adjust the start and end values in the .blend file.


In cycles material how to get stencil effect similar to blender internal material I want to achieve fallowing stencil effect using cycles mix nodes in single cycles material

Images of eye shape and dot i have mentioned in the screen shot

With trial and error I got this result, which is what I was looking for. The two images are mixed based on the pupil image's alpha channel, overlaying it onto the eye image. Next the eyes are mixed with the background using the eye texture's alpha channel.


Gradient shader according to the polygons size If I create a (very basic) gradient shader it's applied to the whole object the same way. Even if exists a different material for the small rectangle but same nodes I get the same result:

But, is there an automatic way to copy that nodes to a new material (in this case the drawer) and get the gradient according to the size of the polygons similar to this image?

I had to change the color ramp in the drawer material manually, but if the gradient could adapt to the size of the polygons it would be great.
Thanks!

You're using generated texture coordinates.  Generated texture coordinates are generated by looking at the bounding box of your object (before any deforming modifiers, but after any generative modifiers).  They range from 0 at the bottom, left, front of your object to +1 at the top, right, back of your object.  Because your drawer has a different bounding box, this means they are different coordinates.
You can revise your existing material to use different coordinates, although this is going to require some other editing.  Probably simplest is to make all objects from the material use the object coordinates of the larger cube.  However, object coordinates range from -1 to +1 instead of 0 to 1-- or at least, for your purposes they will-- and so you'll probably need to map them a bit:


How to make a patchy cloud layer? I want to make a cloud layer like shown in this image (where parts of it are empty patches).

I tried doing this by applying a volume scatter shader to a cube and then controlling the density with a have texture but it outputted as such :

I need this to look realistic, how do I achieve it?
I tried applying the method of a tutorial by BlenderGuru, but could not get it to look patchy.

This is my setup:

You have to put a color ramp in front of the multiply node to crush the noise node input into something workable with a color mix.


Lines come up in rendering after adding hair I made a few color changes to this model and added hair. Now, there are some strange lines showing up in my render.

The material of the head is a mix of translucent BSDF, glossy BSDF and two subsurface scattering nodes. The hair is using the same material as the head. It is set for 1500 samples and took around two hours to reach 60%. At that point, the lines became a major concern for me and I starting searching for possible reasons though I have not found any yet. So, what are these lines and how can I get rid of them?

I am using CPU rendering but i don't think that could be the cause of it as the problem is with the hair Also I am using blender 2.77

.blend files:

node setup

before

Here is a picture after adding adding the hair

Try changing the dropdown menu in Hair BSDF from Reflection to Transmition. This helped when I downloaded the .blend file.

You could also try lowering the samples, as you said the problem only appeared when the count got up high. In the image rendering from the .blend file, noticable changes stop around 300-400 samples. More than 250, in general, just makes you feel better without actually changing anything.

Hope this helps and happy Blending!


How To Make a Radial Gradient Sky in Blender Internal? I am using Blender Internal. I am trying to achieve a sky like link in the  following picture, but I could only make a Linear Gradient.

You may do it using Blend texture with the Quadratic Sphere (or Spherical) progression type.

In World header set its type to Real Sky.

Then go to Texture header and set the texture type to World. Add a new texture and set it as Blend.

In Colors panel check the Ramp checkbox and set the colors transition using sliders. Set the colors interpolation type to Ease also. In Blend panel set the progression type to Quadratic Sphere (or Spherical). In Mapping panel set the coordinates type to AngMap. Experiment with settings below. Check the Horizon box in Influence panel also.

You may also try to set the colors interpolation type to B-Spline and add some sliders with slighty different hue to have a better control over colors transition.


How can I stop my rigid body scene with intersecting objects from exploding? I tried to look for an answer, but didnt find one.
Here's the situation:

I have a building consisting of many hundred objects.
It is "floating" and the mesh(es) are not connected, so its completely unstable. Meshes will fall directly down due to gravity.
As the building is made very roughly, meshes are sometimes overlapping, or intersect pretty often. Due to this, the meshes "explode" directly after frame 1.

I want to fire cannon-balls at this building to show destruction stages.
Is it possible to ignore the collision of themselves (so the meshes will just be effected by he cannonball, not themselves), and make them "float" from the beginning? I played around with "start deactivated", but it didn't work.

you can animate the "dynamic" attribute of an active rigid body to control during your timeline when an object become "physically active".
Objects will explode if they overlap.
Check these settings:


Constrain vertex positions to moving objects? I have a schematic of a mechanism on which I would like to superpose an animated 2-D line drawing (a simplified representation of the mechanism).

I'm struggling with a few things, including how to draw the 2-D lines without faces. For now, I've decided to draw a single polygon (which I can render as a wireframe with Freestyle or with the Wireframe modifier).

But to make this work, I need the vertices of the polygon to move with the joints of the underlying mechanism. The edges between the vertices would correspond to the parts connected through joints, and they would rotate and translate as the vertices move around.

All I know at this point is that I can move the (here polygonal) mesh origin to a vertex and constrain the mesh position to another object. But this leaves me with all the other vertices that I'd like to constrain in a similar manner. If I simply move the mesh origin to another vertex to constrain that to another object, the first constraint changes and I'm back to step 1.

Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give!

You can constrain each individual vertices of your polygon to the joints of your mechanism instead of moving the mesh origin. No need to move the mesh origin.

You can do it using the Hook modifier. Create one Vertex group for each vertices of your polygon, then, using the Hook modifier, constrain each of those group to one of the joint of your mechanism, using whatever mesh that makes up the joint that you think would show the best result.

Alternatively, you can use some Empty, constrain them to the center of the joints, then Hook each Vertex group to one of the Empty.


Removing Alpha Channel in Node Editor five month old newbie who's having some fun, here. I've been experimenting a bit, and got a problem. I was following this tutorial
from Zacharias Reinhardt on how to create massive background forests via alpha channels.
Seems to me to be the best method there is, if you're aiming for not too much processing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUS8QTsVZA

And then I got stuck in the node editor when removing the black alpha channel part of the png.
I'm 99% certain I did everything exactly like Zacharias showed in the tutorial,
but somehow, I'm getting a somewhat different result? And yes, RGBA was selected during export of the original file.

I've added a screenshot of the section in the tutorial and a screenshot
of what I've got on my screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)

To help troubleshooting, add an emission node and set it as alpha channel viewer, because it looks like there is an uncorrect alpha channel.

An useful shortcut for this procedure is to enable the Node Wrangler Add-on and Shift Ctrl click on a node a couple of times to temporarily view its output values.

Also checking the image in a 2D app (Gimp, Photoshop) could help, because the Blender setup looks correct.


Beveling 4 edges of a cube to make a nut/bolt head I've done this before and it worked fine, now I don't know if I've hit a key by accident and changed something but it won't work now. This is done using CTRL+B after selecting the 4 edges around the cube.

What I'm trying to do:

What I'm getting in my model:

The 1st image is a bevel of the original starting cube in a new/seperate blender program. The 2nd is when I add a cube to the model I'm working on and try to bevel the 4 side edges. The bevel options are set exactly the same (offset-type, loop-slide, etc.)

I noticed when I did the bevel in the 1st image, that if I kept dragging the bevel out (to a higher offset?) it would start to look like the 2nd image. It's almost like I don't have the first bit of fine beveling (1st image) it just goes to the extreme (2nd image)

EDIT: It does seem to have fine movement at the beginning of the drag bevel, it just doesn't "cut" the corners. Instead, it pulls the edges in towards eachother then when they meet in the centre of the face, it starts to do what my 2nd image shows. I'd post a link to what I mean by this, but I can't post more than 2 links..

Any ideas??

There are two things that can be happening:

The object has probably been scaled in object mode, but the transformation was not applied (CtrlA in object Mode).

When the transformations are not applied, the scale for transformations in edit mode can get completely out of whack.

Read this related posts:

Why do the measurements of this object seem erroneous?

Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data?
(probably because of the reasons above) You are using a large bevel value, the transformations are being multiplied by the scale of your object giving you a value that is much larger than the object itself, creating errors.

The fix is applying your scale in object mode, or using Percent as the amount type for the bevel making the transformations, that will allow you to have more control and prevent you  from beveling past 100%.

(But even if you do that. Start getting into the habit of applying transformations in object mode.)


joining and empty with other object I want to join the camera with the empty using ctrl+j but this command is not working with the empty object.

reason to join is to change the local axis of the camera. I wanted to attach the file but I did not find attachment option here.

if it is not possible then any one can tell me that how to change the local axis of rotation without rotation the object in blender Thanks in advance

You can't "join" a camera with an empty, join (ctrlJ) is to make 1 object from several, what you probably want to do is parent: Select the child, then the parent, then ctrlP


View of my Blender file is completely messed up and I cannot seem to fix it It seems like I am only able to centre my zoom around the camera and no longer with the object I've made. I can't even really zoom in that far at all anymore either. This is my first time trying to make something on Blender so I am very unfamiliar with the program, but none of the suggestions for solutions I've found online have been of any help.

(Also I am on a MacBook)

Welcome to Blender!

Have you tried changing the camera lock settings? Press N to bring up the sidebar. On the right-hand side of the sidebar, press the View tab then expand the View Lock options.  Here, you can toggle locking to the 3D cursor, to View, or to an object.

If you would like your view to always rotate around the selected object, press, in the top left corner, press Edit > Preferences. Open the Navigation tab, and check Orbit around selection. Please note that your viewport will still rotate around the 3D cursor if that option is checked in the sidebar mentioned above.

PS: If you're looking for a good beginner's tutorial series, check out the Donut Tutorial series by BlenderGuru


BLENDER RIGIFY ERROR (Generation has thrown an exception: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "ear.L.004" not found') I'm trying to rig a character for a project of mine. I've never rigged in Blender before, only 3DSMax. I'm using rigify Add>Armature>Human (Meta-Rig) and all I've done is replace the bones to different locations and tried to generate a rig. I've gotten a few errors I've tackled so far, but currently an error I have no been able to hurdle tells me this when I try to generate "Generation has thrown an exception: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "ear.L.004" not found'"
I have moved the ears outside of the head because the head of this model is a bird with a mullet. I do not need ear bones but have found that rigify humans do not generate rigs if all of the facial bones are not present as they were spawned. I plan to delete them once the rig is created.
So all that said, why is my rig not generating? And what do I need to change to make it function?
Here are my pictures of the model/problem:
http://prntscr.com/ueg8m3
http://prntscr.com/ueg8wx
http://prntscr.com/ueg9mh
I'd upload the .blend if I knew how. Please help, greatly appreciated :)

I saw your file. The ear bone is there but it was not un-parented from the other bones for some reason
You have to parent

ear.L.004 to ear.L.003
ear.R.004 to ear.R.003

Parent with Connected.
Also your metarig has Scale that has not been applied so most likely you'll have to press CTRL+A > Scale (in Object Mode!)


My particles are vanishing after 250 frames, not sure whats going on. (Lifetime is set to 350) Not sure whats going on with my particles here, they are vanishing after 250 frames :

My particle settings:

Sadly google search results are a bit tough to filter through for anything blender. Hopefully one of you know what the deal is.

Did you modify any of the settings for the second time? Like did first you set lifetime to 250 and later to 350? It that's the case, you should set current frame to 0 and replay it with AltA

Another possibility is the clipping: set the End value of clipping to a higher value or start value to a lower value (you can tab the panel with shortcut N


How can I make a hole in this mesh and not mess it up? I'm a bit new in Blender and this strange problem came out and I can't solve it:

So, I have this mesh and I wanted to put some holes in it, like this:

I've used a lot of ways but everytime I do a hole, it appears complete messed up (in this case, I used a boolean modifier):

Hopefully, I can get some help!

This looks like a good candidate for Bezier curve objects.

It looks like you modeled you "blade" as a mesh object, there is nothing inherently wrong with it, but what you are trying to achieve may be a lot eaiser to do with Bezier Curve objects

They describe mathematical curves controlled by handles, instead of vertex, edges, and faces like meshes.

Since you don't have to actively worry about topology or "filling" in the faces they are very easy to use for opening holes like you want.

They will however require that you start to model from scratch using a diferent object.

Have in mind that they may not be useful depending on what you intend to use your object for later. If you plan on doing heavy texturing work involving unwrapping your mesh, shape animations, rigging, or plan to export this into a game engine; the topology produced by Bezier Curve Objects may not be adequate.

Otherwise you may also do this using meshes. Whether using Booleans (not recommended) or manually modelling it, but it will require lots of work and good understanding of proper topology.


how to "randomize the color "of arrayed object I was making the tutorial of the "easy environment design " of Ducky 3D.
I wanted to try to randomize the color of the arrayed cylinders' emission part.
by info object node and color ramp.
but I couldn't.
shall anyone helps me?
I made the changes that Dear lemon said. but It didn't help me. would you please let me know if there is anything that I have not done?

thanks alot.many many thanks.

A possible way to do it is to use UV offset from the array modifier (as mentioned by Gorgious, random per island is not implemented for Eevee).

From that we can use UV texture coordinates:

Get X (U from UV) value
Multiply it (just to tune randomness)
Get cell value to have one color per arch
Use Voronoi texture to have randomness (easier to tune than noise texture)
Eventually map range to tune the result
Plug it to a colorramp containing the colors you want


Import-Export:Import images as planes not working Blender 2.8 The extra option is not listed in Mesh-

I have checked the Add-on..
Then too this occurred.

It is under Images below the objects, putting it there with reference images as well

If you still can't find the option, make sure that the add-on is enabled. Open the preferences window and enable the images as planes add-on.


Can't Insert Keyframes while in Pose mode or pullup any menu with shortcut keys in 2.92? Like the title says I can't insert key frames or even any menu through shortcut keys while in pose mode, I don't know why, I've tried messing around but nothing. I installed a fresh copy, with a different path, and now I can but in the original I can't. So clearly it's an add-on or setting, but I don't know what could stop me from doing this cause this only happened recently. If anyone knows anything please help.
I'm in 2.92.
Edit: I looked into it and in my key binds, when I search "key" something called pose is missing in mine but not the fresh install. Does anyone know how to get them back?

Never mind I found it. When you go into key binds, don't search anything, just scroll down until you see 3d view. If restore is beside it then like the arrow to drop down menu. Scroll down until you see pose, and if restore is beside it, then press it. IDK how it got removed but whatever I guess.


32 bit iMac, will 64 bit run properly? I am ready to download Blender. I have and older iMac, 20", 32 bit. It has memory upgrade to 4GB and the latest Yosemite. I only see the option for 64bit for download. Is there still a 32 bit or does it not matter?

Blender dropped support for the 32bit versions of OSX in 2.72.
To your question about running a 64bit version on your 32bit system, I will direct you here.
If you find that you can not use any 64bit software, because of your CPU or some other reason; then you can still use 2.71 with no problem.
Download link for 2.71 32bit OSX on blender's server.


Head bone not moving with parent hip bone Not really sure how to word it, but I have an bone chain with a hip bone as the root and everything being a child of that.
When I move the hip it seems the tail of the head bone tries its best to stay in place, making it very difficult to translate the body as the head does some funky movements. Rotations work as expected, with the whole bone chain pivoting from the hip.
Very similar to this post, but it seems like it's not applicable to me.
The only thing I noticed is that the head bone goes orange when translating the hip and a constraint icon pops up in the hierarchy but disappears as soon as I release.
Deleting the head bone makes the same unwanted movement occur on the neck, so it seems like it's trying its best to keep the tail of the bone chain at its original position pre-translation.
I followed this video and playlist to model and rig the character, and it doesn't seem like he has the same problem.
How can I fix this so that the whole body follows the translation of the hip bone?
This image from left to right shows idle with hip bone selected, hip translated to the character's left, and hip translated to the character's right and up.

You have activated the Auto-IK option, it allows you to move a bone as if it had an IK constraint, so just deactivate it: