Set rotation values without applying them Is it possible to set some rotation values to Blender GUI corresponding object fields (or any other like location or scale) without actually applying them to the object itself, like some sort of "offset"?

I mean I have script that set some objects to scene, rotate them right but writes its values as (0,0,0) instead of their real rotation values (but I know those real values myself so I could set them BUT without changing object actual rotation)...like let's say object rotation value is 0 but I want to be represented and set visually in Blender rotation fields as 90 - is something like this possible, please?

P.S.: I NEED SCRIPT BASED ANSWERS ONLY

Here's a script which does this, comments inline.

import bpy
import math

#target rotation:
target_rotation = [90, 90, 90]
#object to operate on (active object):
ob = bpy.context.active_object

#this assumes you are starting at 0 rotaton, so you pobably want to apply rotation before doing anything:
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=False) #apply rotation
#get inverse of rotation we want:
t_rot = (math.radians(target_rotation[0]*-1),
         math.radians(target_rotation[1]*-1),
         math.radians(target_rotation[2]*-1))
#we need to apply the rotations in reverse order, so unsure that we are in zyx:
ob.rotation_mode = 'ZYX'
ob.rotation_euler = (t_rot) #set rotation to inverse
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=False) #apply rotation

t_rot = (math.radians(target_rotation[0]),
         math.radians(target_rotation[1]),
         math.radians(target_rotation[2]))
ob.rotation_mode = 'XYZ' #set rotation mode back (was zyx, so we want xyz)
ob.rotation_euler = (t_rot) #set rotation

Pardon my probably poor python ;)


EEVEE bake indirect lighting for an animation I am rendering an animation in EEVEE and I want the indirect lighting to be baked for every frame. This is because I want the scene to be lit up during the animation, and not preset.

The first frame:

I want the animation to start so, and the last frame:

In both of these screenshots, I have baked the indirect lighting individually. One overwrites the other.
Is there any wayto transition from one lighting condition to another, as shown below?

If it was me I would render twice with the baked lighting different each render and then do some kind of fade or dissolve between the two. Should approximate a light change.


How do I get even lighting across a model? Blender 2.82 I want to texture bake, but the lighting causes the final product of the bake to be affected with dark areas. How do I get even lighting across the model or fix the problem in general?

Turn up the value of the world's color.

Say we start with some object that I have a few lights on, but in an otherwise empty scene;

I turn off my collection of lights, then make the color of the world shader pure white;

Result;


Blender 2.8 startup function working in addon I want the addon search bar to be filled on startup:

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def addon_search(scene):
    bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].addon_search = "editor"

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(addon_search)

This works but can I just check that this isn't looping or dangerous?
Do I need to remove the load_post handler after it has loaded?

Also why does it not work in an addon, it adds the handler but never runs.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Test",
    "author": "Test",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "description": "Auto-fills addon search field",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def addon_search(scene):
    bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].addon_search = "editor"
    return None

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(addon_search)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.load_post.remove(addon_search)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Ok figured it out, addons get loaded after the startup.blend is loaded, so load_post wouldn't work. Also in 2.8 scene_update_post has been replaced with depsgraph_update_post. (Which is much better imo) So i run the search and then delete the handler:

bl_info = {
    "name": "test",
    "author": "test",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "description": "Auto-fills addon search field",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def addon_search(scene):
    bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].addon_search = "editor"
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.remove(addon_search)

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(addon_search)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.remove(addon_search)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Blender black screen render I made a model of Harry Potter. but when  I render the model it's just a black screen.Duplication is on none. Seams to be nothing wrong with the node setup and render icon is checked on all the objects except the hair which I don't need to render. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please help.

link to the file

You have 2 mistakes.

1) You Muted Render layer In Node editor.

So go in Node editor, Compositing mode, select Render Layers Node and unmute it using M

2) You hide all objects in render. Click on camera icon to make them visible in render:


program your own particles I'm not completely happy with the way particles work in blender for my particular needs and I have previously programmed particle simulations from ground up in Grasshopper and have some basic knowledge of python, so in theory, I should be able to write my own addon the way I'd like it to behave, I'm fairly new to blender though, so I don't have an estimate of how much you can access using the api.
Would it be possible to use python to add another type of particle sim to the already existing emitter and hair types using an addon, or would this require a change to blender's source code?
Thanks in advance.

I don't believe you can use python to add a new particle simulation type. While you can use python to access the particle system data such as particle location, I don't think you will have any luck altering the particle positions.

Before you start coding yourself I would suggest looking at sverchok and animation nodes. There is an introduction to animation nodes here and you will find blendersushi has many videos of experimenting with both addons. If they can't accomplish what you want to do, they may be a starting point for your own project or maybe you could contribute your own custom node to one of them.


How to change Parents in my Sliding Menu but I want to know how to change the order of Parent to slide 3 different menus from the left side to the right

Description: my menu does this currently
when you press the History Mode button it makes the empty slide the left menu to the right and when you press the back button that is at the bottom of the right menu, it makes you return to the start menu by sliding the left menu to the right
Note: each menu must be in a different layer

time I want to reconfigure the menu so that my inventory is the right menu, and from the left side slide 2 menus, slide 1 menu called Hystory, and 1 menu called Goals, these menus should slide each one with its left side button in the menu Inventory.

NOTE: both menus must comply with this condition, when you click on the hystory button you must slide the Inventory menu to the left to hide it and to the right to show it

try a form but the error that my design has is that it opens both menus on the right side, or does not open them according to the settings I've tried

If something is not understood about my question, I will venerate and tell myself before I am badly qualified and discouraged from participating in this community.

IMPORTANT: I did this in logic bricks and I would like to first exhaust the possibilities of continuing to do it this way, until I learn python properly

No need to use Python. This is more a question of organization.

I'm not sure if I understand your setup correctly. So I want to rephrase it a bit. That way it might help you to find out how to get what you want.

History menu

  ... when you press the History Mode button it makes the empty slide the left menu to the right

Initial the history menu is located left of the screen (collapsed position).
On a "show history" request - the history menu moves from collapsed position to the expand position at the left side of the screen showing as "left menu"

  when you press the back button that is at the bottom of the right menu, it makes you return to the start menu by sliding the left menu to the right

On a "hide history" request - the history menu moves from expand position to collapsed position (where the request is coming from does not matter at that stage)

Implementation option:

play a "showing history menu" action in flipper mode

Now you can play the action by switching the property:

Hint: you see I do not relate on key press here. This allows me to map any event to a request (keyboard button, screen button, joystick button, or even programmatic created event). You will need that later.

Inventory menu

  inventory is the right menu

This can use the same method to be presented:

Initial the inventory menu is located right of the screen (collapsed position).
On a "show inventory" request - the inventory menu moves from collapsed position to the expand position at the right side of the screen showing as "right menu"
On a "hide inventory" request - the inventory menu moves from expand position to collapsed position (where the request is coming from does not matter at that stage)

Implementation option:

play a "showing inventory menu" action in flipper mode
The logic is all the same as of the history menu, just the requests (events) and the action are different.

Goals menu

The same again.

"show goals": move from collapsed position to expand position
"hide goals": move from expanded position to collapsed position

Consolidation

As you want both the history menu as well as the goals menu to use the same collapse and expand position you could use the same action. I suggest to rename it to "showing left menu" or similar.

According to that I suggest to rename the action of the inventory menu to "showing right menu".

This abstracts the specific menu positions from "history, inventory, goals" to "left and right" positions.

Exclusive menus

As you have two left menus (history and goals) right now, you have the wish to show only one of them at the time. This creates a dependency between the menus of the left menu.

So lets analyse this a little bit deeper. What different situations can we think of with left menu?

left menu is collapsed
left menu is expanded and shows history menu
left menu is expanded and shows goals menu

(Note: the left menu never shows goals menu and history menu at the same time.)

Nested menus

Here I suggest to introduce a left menu.

The left menu can have three different states:

collapsed
history
goals

To switch between the different modes you need different requests:

"hide left menu"
"show history in left menu"
"show goals in left menu"

As the single menus already know how to expand and collapse you can trigger that:

on "hide left menu"

request "hide history menu"
request "hide goals menu"

on "show history in left menu"

request "show history menu"
request "hide goals menu"

on "show goals in left menu"

request "hide history menu"
request "show goals menu"

It would be helpful when you "request" by message rather than by keyboard sensor as there is no logic brick that presses keys.

Implementation suggestion

One object acts as left menu and deals with the left menu requests.

Just for completeness here is my implementation of a keyboard UI. I'm sure your will make use of your on screen buttons.

Remarks:

There are several other options to implement such a behavior. This is just one of them.


Is it possible to simulate Brownian motion in Blender? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Translational_motion.gif

I want to simulate some molecular dynamics. For that I want some area to fill up with some lipids. All these lipids would be considered as a cylinder object standing vertical in a space. In the best case, all objects should be hanging in the defined area and are wobbling (inner dynamics: like atomic motion) and are colliding with other residues like in the link above.

Any hints or suggestions. Particle physics provide collision but they are not holding objects in the space.

You can use particles to control your object's vertices, and induce Brownian motion in these particles:

Download blendfile here

To achieve this, you need to make sure every vertex of your particle controlled object is assigned a particle. These are the settings I've used for the example above:

You also need to turn off gravity in the Scene tab in the tools panel:

Then, once you have a particle per vertex, you need to run this code to make sure the vertices coordinates are linked to the particle locations:

import bpy

def update_particles( scene ):
    ''' This function runs before every frame change, and it updates the cube's
        vertices' coordiantes with the location values of its particles
    '''

    cube = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
    for vert, particle in zip( cube.data.vertices, cube.particle_systems[0].particles ):
        vert.co = particle.location

# Add vertex --> particle function to frame change app handlers
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append( update_particles )

This example isn't a direct solution for what you're aiming for, but rather a direction. To adapt it to your needs, you actually need to manipulate the lipid through some mesh skeleton (or you can rig it and control the pose bones' locations the same way I've manipulated the vertices). This would be easiest and most directly translatable if your lipids are actually simple wireframes with a Skin modifier (you'll need to make sure the Skin modifier is below the particle system modifier though).

Since your scene probably has a lot of molecules, it will likely be more feasible to write a script that automates the generation and setup of particle systems. You'll also need to include all these objects in the frame change handler function.

Not a trivial project, but not unattainable :)


Why is my model reflecting light like this? I was doing simple model but when i extruded some parts they started to reflect light very  strangely. Any ideas why?

This issue must have occurred due to shade smooth. This issue is quite common. All you have to do is go into object properties -> Normals -> AutoSmooth


Hide backface with xray and object wire mode? I'm doing retopology and find it convenient to turn on xray for the object I am building. However, I now see ngons facing away from me as well. It's hard to navigate.

I would also like to set the display type to wire (like in image below). This way the original mesh isn't hidden and I can easily create new geometry around eyes, nose and mouth without hiding them.

I guess a mirror modifier could help along the x-axis since I can eliminate that half of the mesh. But I would like it even better if I didn't see the back of the skull when working on the face.

I found out that I missed the latest release and that this feature was in it.

For future reference, here is how to do it:

Turn on X-Ray, located under under Display in the Object panel.
In the 3D view > properties-panel (N), under Shading, check hidden wire.


"Adjust edit cage to modifier result " what does this do (with Mirror Modifier)? I've been following a tut in Modelling and all of a sudden the instructor turns on this feature  "Adjust edit cage to modifier result " without explaining what it does. The instructor couldn't give me a proper answer. So far didn't find an answer online which explains this feature clearly.

WRT to Mirror modifier in 2.8 beta

In modelling I was using this feature with respect to the "MIRROR" modifier. Turning on "adjust edit cage to modifier result" basically Makes vertices and edges appear on the other side(instead of a plane surface) and also turns on the Selected part on the Mirroring side as well . Eg: If you select a vertex on the right side of the Symmetry, this feature will also highlight the Vertex on the Mirroring side.


Is it possible to make translation and scaling accumulate? Is it possible for Blender to automatically add every translation or scale that I performed, no matter what I performed it on and then display it?

For example, if I moved a point on the X axis by 1 unit, deselected and reselected and  moved it again by 1 unit, it would display that I moved a total of 2 units (same thing if I scaled). It doesn't matter if I selected something else instead, what matters is that it adds the translations or scales together and displays them.

If not, is there an add-on that does this? I tried looking for it but I couldn't find it.

You could write your own simple script.
To accumulate ALL the objects transformations you can do something as simple as that:
 myMat = bpy.context.object.matrix_world myMat will now store a pointer to the transformation matrix of your object, so if you move it about, myMat will change accordingly...

Then you can simply say: accumMat *= myMat and that will create this new matrix called accumMat (accumulation matrix) which gets set to whatever it is, times the current transformation matrix.

Run that last line of code after you register a new transformation and you will have the accumulated transformation of the object on accumMat!

Now if you just want the scale and translation (no rotation) than you want to extract only this information from the transformation matrix, so you can say:
myScale = bpy.context.object.matrix_world.to_scale()
and
myTranslate = bpy.context.object.matrix_world.to_translation()
which would give you back 2 vec4's containing the current scale and translation, then simply accumulate the new values into the accumMat appropriately.
You could do so by adding the translations and multiplying the scales. (I am not sure what you are actually trying to do, but that is what makes sense).

Just keep in mind that bpy is column major so your traslation vector would be at:
Vector((accumMat[0][3], accumMat[1][3], accumMat[2][3], accumMat[3][3]
Take care with the last one because it is w coordinate, and you probably want to keep it at 1.0! So don't accumulate it.
The scale would be respectively at:
Vector((accumMat[0][0], accumMat[1][1], accumMat[2][2], accumMat[3][3]
Again be cautious with the w coordinate.


Blender Internal. How do I add a texture for part of the object, while keeping the rest of the texture Can someone tell me how to overlay the texture for the eyes? If I go to texture, the outfit isn't there. I have the same problem with other textures as well.

One way you could do this is the following:

Add a new material for your object.
Assign the new material to the eyes.
Create a new texture.
In the Shading workspace, add your texture to the new material you created using a Image Texture node.

If you want more in-depth instructions, let me know.


How do I extrude inwards instead of outwards? How do I extrude something inwards instead of extruding it outwards?

First of all, you select the faces you want to extrude, then press E to extrude and simply drag inward, if you want to inset instead (second picture) press I and then scale by dragging with your mouse. Remember that instead of dragging, in both cases you can type a number so that you tell blender the "amount" of that action that you want.
See the pictures below for the differences.

Extruding inwards:

Insetting:


Joining objects that have displacement modifiers I have a problem with joining three objects together. On the model of a dinosaur I have a displacement map with a texture on it:

When I try to join the eye, teeth and the model together (Ctrl+J) it comes up like this:

......I think its because of the displacement modifier, it applies to the two other objects and creates this weird thing... Does anyone know what to do with this? Thanks a lot :)

So apparently, you need to assign all the verts of the dinosaur mesh to a new vertex group and select that group in modifier's settings. This will make it affect only on those vertices.


How to show (only) portions of Wireframe modifier? (Version 2.8) I’ve modeled a group of rays emerging from a single point by using the Wireframe modifier, then cutting off the ring on the bottom via a Boolean Difference.

But how can I show just some of the rays, and hide others?  Trying to come up with an object for a Difference would be tricky, and not handle the common point well.  Plus I then want to animate that, showing one ray at a time to form the complete circle.

Any idea how to accomplish that?

How about, instead of using the wireframe modifier:

Deleting all but one of the radial edges of your cone, cut to the right length
Alt C convert it to a curve
In the curve's data panel set its full bevel to your liking
Make an empty at center of the cone (its original origin) rotated in Z by 360/32
Make an array of your curve, count 32, Object Offset, the empty as target.

Now you can keyframe the visibility of the original curve (if you want a complete disappearance). For the rest, you can keyframe the Count of the Array modifier.


Gray-scale operation on nodes While I was  playing with nodes I wanted to check which gray-scale algorithm blender use. And i came up with this node system:

But I got this strange result. Where did i make mistake?

The luminance weights are intended to be summed. That is, for any given colourspace, multiply each light by its luminance position, and sum the result with the other two. You will end up with equal values across all three channels.

For REC.709 lights, which are the lights that define the sRGB specification, the formula would be:

Y = 0.2126*R + 0.7152*G + 0.0722*B


Mirrored geometry does not receive the same material? Node editor is just as below:

I mirror the eye with an empty.
How do I get the same mirrored object?

Suggestion

Apply the mirror, separate the eyes, transform origin to geometry, uv map, and apply a circular texture.

I do not think attempting to apply the same texture space of [Object] to both eyes in an easy or flexible idea.  If the eyes rotate you may find trouble.  I do not know your animation style.

Secondary Information , Not a suggestion

Here is deprecated texture mapping without uv with typical sticky style ... it is biased to the vector indicated

If you choose to have bad frozen eyes with a slippery texture this is a bad deprecated node image.

Both images above rely on the spherical shape and have no uv map required.


UV unwrapping is incorrect? I UV unwrapped this wood texture onto the handle, and rotated it in the UV editor to make the grain vertical. Can anyone tell me why in the world 3/4 of the handle rotated properly but that single strip down the left side remained horizontal? I UV Unwrapped the entire handle so I'm confused... Thank you!

Blender decided to rotate it this way, you just have to select this face in the 3D view, then rotate it 90° in the UVImage Editor.


Is there a way to use a separate texture for object reflections? I've been experimenting with using the default matcap textures in render mode (using Normal or Reflection mapping), and it looks pretty good. However, I'd like to use them as a "reflection map," so that objects with mirror properties use the texture rather than the actual world. Is there a way to do that easily?

EDIT: Probably should've specified that I'm using Blender Render rather than Cycles.

In short: take any good HDR texture and put it in Environment node for your glossy shader.

For Internal:


Boolean does not slice correctly using difference I have an oval I am trying to slice two sides from. I select the oval, I add boolean, I select the cube, I select difference and it slices the opposite of what I want leaving me 2 skinny strips and NOT the sliced oval. I've used boolean many times with correct results.. except this time!!

First select both of the objects you are going to use to cut, and join them as a single object (CtrlJ:

Then set the boolean to intersect:

To see the results you can move the cutting object to a separate layer or hide it.

Just for fun, here are the other possible booleans with these two objects:


Transparent Background in Lower Third for Export to Different Program I'm trying to do a lower third in Blender VSE for my husband.  I use blender, but he uses Adobe Premiere.  We're having difficulty exporting and making the background (everything but the lower third) transparent so that we can see the video in the background.  I was able to figure everything else out about animating the lower third by myself via tutorials.  Could someone please give me some direction?

Try setting your output to ffmpeg + Quicktime + PNG:

In the Sequencer View menu select Sequence Render Animation:


Why does my text object look weird along its edge? I am new to blender, and after I created a text object, I found it had a black material along its edge.

Here is view display and render display, which shows the problem. I don't know understand what is causing this. It looks unrealistic and bad—is there any way to beautify it?

Sadly it's because of default Smooth shading (Normals) on extruded part of Text object.

You can fix that by adding Edge Split modifier.

Or you can search Convert to Mesh and enable under Data Properties > Normals > Auto Smooth. But you would not be able to retype your text.


Motion Tracking for Still Image I'm well aware of motion tracking, being able to put three-dimesional objects in video (or video effects/CGI) but what if I want to put it in a single image? I tried doing motion tracking with my still image but, it didn't work. All I want to do is make it look like there's text in the scene. BTW I'm using Cycles (but I'm okay if it works better in blender-internal.)

I tried adding a reference image, but I can't seem to get the rotation and location right of the object, it doesn't look like it's part of the picture.
So how do I get the object to look like it's part of the scene?

Here's the image I'm trying to add text to:
(it's to large to upload)
https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-grass-field-113723/

Motion tracking will not work on a still image you need some difference in a sequence of images called parallax for blender to re-create 3D information. For still images you have a couple of choices:

1- Use the image you want to match as a background image and then try to match the perspective manually. Set the viewport to camera view Numpad 0, then lock camera to view and position the camera. The grid may be very helpful to visualize the ground should be.

The tricky part here is trying to match the lens used for the original image.

For more details read: How do I align my grid to background footage?

2- Use an addon like Blam.

From the Blam users manual:

  BLAM is a camera calibration add-on for Blender and is meant to facilitate modeling based on photos or synthetic images rendered with a perspective projection camera.

Blam uses the grease pencil to help you determine and match the perspective of an image and match a blender scene to it.

UPDATE: Blam is no longer mantained and has been replaced by fspy:

https://fspy.io/

Read: How can I recreate geometry using a photograph?


Bridging multiple edges at a time I try to create a face between two edges, but it always gets a strange looking result.
I worked for years with another cad application called "Vector". In this App if you select edges, the software orders the edges from 0 to n by selection and shows the order. Blender doesn't do this, but I found an extension called "space_view3d_index_visualiser_bmesh.py", no it works fine.

The internal blender order seems quite confused, so I reordered it with "Sort Mesh Elements".

After pressing F to create a face between the edges, this is the result:

I think this is an edge order problem. If I Select each corresponding edge separately (0-1, F, 2-3 F .... etc) it works fine, but this is boring work with large Objects. Is there any solution?

F in blender creates one face. So when you have many edges selected at once you are creating one large Ngon, not what you want to do.

You are looking for blender's bridge edge loops tool. In edit mode from the 3D view header Mesh > Edges > Bridge Edge Loops. Or quicker through keyboard shortcuts CtrlE L.

After running the bridge edge loops tool you will get more options in the operator part of the tool shelf.

One of the most important is the Twist, if you get edges that are crossing over each other like in the image below, then just change the number till the offset is correct.


Mirrored object not perfect aligned after adding mirror modifier I'm trying to mirror my character but the alignment is not perfect. First of all I have configured the origin point doing the following steps :

1) in edit mode I have placed the cursor at the bottom of the character with Shift+S and then I did Cursor to selected

2) in to Object mode I did Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C > Origin to 3D Cursor to update or change the object origin to the location of the 3D cursor

But it didn't work, as you can see from the attached picture, the alignment is not good. Why?

If the vertices at the edge of your model are not aligned with mirror axis you'll have gaps.
To align the vetices do thei:

Deselect all the edges and select only the ones that form the edge of the model (Alt+RMB), and then scale those vertices to 0 (press SX0).


should the polygons of a model be squares/rectangles? I don't really know how to ask this question, I googled, but I couldn't explain myself in a very short line in the google search bar, so I didn't get any result, so I thought it would be better to ask it here.

I'm new in 3D and I'm teaching myself, and whenever I make a 3d object and compare it to a good model that has been made by a professional 3d artist, I always notice that the vers that I have in my model look terrible compare to them. by that, I mean that the verts I put in my model are not even, whereas all of the faces(i don't know if I'm saying it right or not) that a professional make, always looks like a square and have only 4 verts. they always fill 4 verts into a plane and make keep it look like a square or a squarish rectangle(if you will) but mine are not like that.
some times in my models I have a plane that has 7 verts, and it's not square, not even a rectangle.

I know it's difficult for you to understand what I'm saying, I'm just trying my best to explain.

Please take a look at these pictures, they will help you understand what I'm trying to say.

This is a model that I found in google.

If you take a quick look, the faces are almost in the same size, and they fade into smaller ones.
and they're all even and looking squarish.
(Yes I know it's in edge select mode which doesn't show verts) but I think you get what I mean, I have seen many models in vertex select mode and they're like that.

This is my model, one side of a bus

polygons are not even at all, sizes are totally random, and some of the polygons have more than 4 verts.

My questions are, Is it important? if yes, should I fix them one by one or is there a better way or an addon to do the job?

in addition to that, I'd like to kindly ask you to please, explain to me a bit more about these polygons. triangle polygons vs square polygons, or things like that, if there's any tip or important thing that I need to know about polygons, faces, verts when modeling.

and one last thing, I really thought about a good title for my question, but I couldn't find anything that can explain my problem, hope I'm not getting downvotes.

Best regards,

Amirreza

The term you are looking for is "quads".  Tris have 3 vertices and n-gons have more than 4.

Quads are better in general for modelling in Blender, particularly if you are planning to animate.

Quads allow for clean straight lines.  This is SUPER important.  Loop cuts can easily be introduced, selection is easier, UV unwrapping is easier, beveling can be done.

The list goes on and on.

You will learn how to create quad based topology.  It's worth the effort and a great foundation for learning Blender.  So good for you!  You are learning one of the most important early lessons in modeling.


Blender 2.8 Crashed and cannot reopen the project anymore Was simply sculpting, hid the object to start building an eye. Crashed when I showed the object back. When I tried to reopen the files, blender hangs then crashes.
When I try to reopen the file, Blender Hangs then crashed, If I try to append the only object in the mesh sub. I only see a cube.
Still, the file is more than 22 mb so it's a bit on the heavy side for 8 vertices.

Anyone got through this?
Thanks
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BLcD8bU083yNJcufL7OrRJLIt3ekldKB
UPDATE: Thanks to Brenticus I'm able to continue this little sculpt, here's an update:

Thanks!

While I can't tell you what happened exactly, I did find a way to recover your sculpt.

What seems to have happened is that somehow the object got removed, but the mesh data still stayed (I believe the technical term here would be Orphan Data). How that happened I'm not sure, but I tried appending the mesh again, and switched to the Data API view in the outliner and noticed it said 0 objects but 1 mesh.

The way to recover your object is to add another mesh object, go to the Mesh Data tab of the properties panel, and right at the top where it says the name of the object, on the left you can select different mesh data. Select the name of the object you're trying to recover and whatever mesh data the object you added had will now be replaced by the sculpted object.


Can't get my CPU or GPU in the system preference I have finally manage to buy myself a new laptop a Dell Inspiron i7 Second Gen. I have installed my favorite Linux Distribution "LinuxMint", and have all my hardware installed properly. I have Blender 2.79b and all is good. But when I go to my User Preference -> System, I cannot select any compute device!

If I check my OS info, I get the CPU info and my Intel Graphics car info, but not my GPU;

I have check at the command line that my GPU is well installed, when I run the command "lshw -c video" I can see my Radeon R5 listed:

Now I understand that not all GPU are supported, but I would thought that I can at least select my CPU! If anyone could help with this issue. I have looked at the CUDA driver but cuda supports only NVIDIA if I am not mistaken. Any other help will be welcome?

My Apologies if my question is in the wrong thread.
Thank you kindly

From the manual

When set to None or when the only option is None: the CPU will be used as the computing device for the Cycles Renderer.


Random faces appeared on object I'll start with pictures:

These are not vertices... they are faces, but I don't know how they got "duplicated" or what. As you can see down, in the 3D Viewport's footer, I'm in face selection mode.

How do i fix this without deleting that edge or face? Because if I delete it, I'll have to redo it all again...

You have probably started an Extrusion (E) and then "accepted" it without moving the vertices, effectively creating a zero-width rim.

Problems like this are easily fixed by selecting all your vertices and doing W > "Remove Doubles" ("remove double vertices" since Blender 2.8)


set random active face in python without toggle mode In python how can I set random active Face in edit mode without toggle the Object/Edit Mode ?

For example re code in this answer can you also automatically set an active face again from the script to loop the option ?

Random active face

Please heed the advice given in comments above.  One of the (IMO) dopier rules on bse is the inability of new users to comment.

Noticed your deleted post here re Deselect Neighbours Faces

Here is a test script using method outlined in https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/81425/15543  Sets a random face active, and selects it.

import bpy
import bmesh
from random import randint

def random_face(bm):
    bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()
    return bm.faces[randint(0, len(bm.faces) - 1)]

context = bpy.context
ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
print("before", bm.faces.active)
bm.faces.active = random_face(bm)
bm.faces.active.select = True
print("after", bm.faces.active)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

To also make the face the active select history

bm.select_history.add(bm.faces.active)
print(bm.select_history.active is bm.faces.active)


how to force blender freestyle engine to redraw the same frame different anwesered I have been trying to make a freestyle line changing each frame even though it's the same. I've been wanting a sketchy look for a while and cant find anything
help?

You need to add freestyle modifiers on your lineSet and animate differents settings with a driver depending on the current frame. The only one acting like you want by default is the spatial noise in the geometry tab.

The is an exemple of what you can achieve by mixing and animating differents setting like thickness noise and texture offset


Modelling and rendering an "impossible object" I'm trying to make an object in blender that look like this:

I want to make the final render turn out 3D. Is this possible to do in Blender?
Is there some trick to making these objects?
This would be similar to what I would want.

You can't
The 3D shape of a impossible object (this one is called a Penrose square) isn't defined, so you will have a hard time recreating the mesh representation (i.e. exact vertex location and connectivity) of something that can't be described in the 3D space.
... but there are tricks
However, you can do the same thing that people do when photographing such objects: creating an object that looks like the Penrose drawing, but only from an angle. // Edit >> Note: this is more easily done with an ortographic camera, as MrTheRich's answer suggests! If you need/want to go perspective (for example, to composite it on a photo background), a higher focal length is advisable.
For example navigate this or this model on sketchfab: you will see that some of the edges that "look" connected, are actually separated.
There are also ways to use curved shapes that only look straight when seen from the camera. This allows to retain the connectivity.
Shadeless?
You may notice that people who have tried that have often used shadeless scenes.
This is because the shadows introduce an extra complication, since the light "sees" the scene from a point of view that isn't tricked (the trick only works in the direction of the camera), so it tends to give the trick away! You can use a very soft light, close to the camera. It will probably look alright.
One possible shading, that requires using the "invisible curve" trick, which keeps the edges' proximity, is Ambient Occlusion: it only needs to be realistic around the edges.

Edit Nov 6 2020 – There is a wonderful example and write-up on the process in today's blog post on sketchfab


Fade a render layer to transparent Instead of editing the alpha for each material, it would be quicker for me in this case to be able to fade out the entire render layer in the node compositor.

The "SetAlpha" node seems perfect for this, but it adds black to the alpha channel that I don't want. The background needs to remain transparent, and not be black.

Here is my simple setup (without the SetAlpha node). How can I fade the "bearing" render layer to zero opacity, leaving only the "freestyle" layer on screen?

Also, I should note that I can't just switch the inputs on the Alpha Over node and use the "factor" to fade out the "bearing" layer, because the "freestyle" layer needs to remain over the top of the "bearing" layer.

Probably the most effective way to fade in alpha is to use the alpha over node.

In the image below, the top color socket is set to completely transparent (I'll explain how to do this further down), and the image is put into the bottom color socket. The factor (the highlighted input) controls the opacity. 0 is 100% transparent, 1 is 100% opaque.

It's the other way around if you switch the color inputs to make this image go in the top and the transparency in the bottom.

To make the color input completely transparent, just use the alpha slider in the color picker drop down. Make sure it's set to 0:


How to generate spherical gradient volume I have an object which represents an atom.
I want to show a spherical gradient where the cloud is intense in the centre. It fades away to the edge.

I tried emission but not getting the desired output.

Volumetric Emmision

add Emmision shader plugged into volume socket of material Output
add Transparent
add Mix shader - with Emmision up
add Gradient texture > Spherical as factor

Volumetric Absorption

Instead of Emmision use Volume Absorption node.

3D Illusion

In some cases it's quite efficient to fake it by simple circle object with Spherical Gradient texture assigned to alpha. Circle orientation Tracked to Camera, so moving object is always facing to camera that make in illusion of 3d object.

(In case you don't care about shadows.)


Filling a hole in a face with loop cuts forming a 2-way intersection? I have a mesh that forms a plane with loop cuts running in both directions. Part of this area is cut out and I need to fill it back up, maintaining the loop cuts in both directions. Is there an automated way of doing this? If not, what's the easiest method?

Because the number of vertices are matching on opposite sides you can do Ctrl+F> Grid Fill:

Also found in Mesh> Faces> Grid Fill from the header menu in the 3D view.


Pivot point changes location between Edit and Object mode I am trying to animate rotating arcs in different directions, around the center of the sphere they were once part of, but the pivot point, while in the right place while in Object mode, goes to another place in Edit mode.

In the GIF below, you can see the smallest arc rotating outside of the larger one while it should stay inside, and then in Object mode both arcs rotate at the same time / in the same direction, but but this time around the correct pivot point.

I tried snapping the pivot point to the right position, but it didn't work.

The issue is that you are using the Median Point as the Pivot Point to to rotate. Select 3D Cursor:

Here are some of the differences using different pivot points:


Can I permanently add add a method to the driver namespace? I have a method x which I can add to the driver namespace like this:

bpy.app.driver_namespace["x"] = x

but the namespace is reset everytime I restart Blender, which then messes up my drivers. Is there a way to permanently add it to the namespace or auto-execute this script when starting Blender?

Put this code into a Python file and place it into ~/.config/blender/2.78/scrips/startup/my_driver_stuff.py (replace ~/config/blender with %APPDATA%/Blender Foundation/Blender on Windows, and something along those lines on MacOS).

import bpy

@bpy.app.handlers.persistent
def setup_driver(*args):
    bpy.app.driver_namespace["x"] = x
bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(setup_driver)
setup_driver()


RTX Support for Blender 2.79b I've recently purchased an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super GPU as an upgrade to my AMD Radeon GPU(Yes, pity me.). But I was slightly heartbroken when I realized you can't use an RTX card with Blender 2.79b. Yes, I know you can use it in Blender 2.83, but that version ruined the UI, and my character rigs won't work. Anyone have an addon, fix, patch, or even a link to a sketchy website that'll give me the version of Blender I want if I give my credit card number into return? I mainly use the cycles render engine. I know it would be easy to update Blender and just get a new character rig, but I'd really like to stay with Blender 2.79.

To be able to use RTX cards with 2.79 you can use one of the 'nightly' builds of 2.79 that came between the latest release of 2.79 and 2.8.
From the 'Previous Versions' page (found by clicking the 'Blender 2.7' link from here):

You can also download the experimental nightly build from July 2019
which basically looks like 2.7 plus additional bug fixes and some new
features that later became part of 2.80.

Following that link takes you to here which is where the downloads reside. This allows you to download 2.79.7, which is compatible with RTX cards.
Note: These versions of Blender are the portable versions which run from the folder they are extracted to instead of coming with an installer.


Why does baking the armature (as an object) stop the bones from moving? I want to get rid of the Follow Path Constraint without while keeping the animation of the armature as a whole or as an object. In Object Mode, I baked it by going to Object menu > Animation > Bake Action

It works and now I can delete the Bezier Curve without loosing the animation of the armature. BUT the animation of each individual bone stops! How can I solve this?

Example: Try to bake the armature in the attached file.
Download Blend File

In order to bake the bones actions, you have to be in pose mode. From there you can make a bake of visual keying of bones AND object transforms (just shift select both pose and object in the bake tab).


Python Triangle Function Crashes Blender I am running Blender 2.76b on a 64bit Windows 10 machine, with Python 3.4.2 installed (Blender also is running the same version of Python). I recently downloaded a python package called triangle (which is used to generate a triangular mesh for given a set of points). This function required me to download Visual C++ 2010 for windows which I did and was working fine outside Blender. But when I included that in a Python code which I am running as a Blender script, Blender is crashing. I tried troubleshooting this, it basically is crashing when it is calling a function called core.triang() in the triangle package, and this I'm guessing is inside core.pyd which I can't access. Can someone help with solving this problem? Thanks!

Edit 1: Here is a representative code:

import triangle
import triangle.plot
from numpy import *

A = {}

A['vertices'] = array(((0,0), (1,0), (1, 1), (0, 1)))

B = triangle.triangulate(A, 'qa0.5')

I think you're calling triangulate() incorrectly.

From the Manual:

  triangle.triangulate(tri, opts='')
  Perform triangulation on the input data 'tri'. 'tri' must be a dictionary that contains the following keys:

  vertices - 2-D array that stores the xy position of each vertex
  segments - optional 2-D array that stores segments. Segments are edges whose presence in the triangulation is enforced (although each segment may be subdivided into smaller edges). Each segment is specified by listing the indices of its two endpoints.
  holes - optional 2-D array that stores holes. Holes are specified by identifying a point inside each hole. After the triangulation is formed, Triangle creates holes by eating triangles, spreading out from each hole point until its progress is blocked by PSLG segments; you must be careful to enclose each hole in segments, or your whole triangulation might be eaten away. If the two triangles abutting a segment are eaten, the segment itself is also eaten. Do not place a hole directly on a segment; if you do, Triangle will choose one side of the segment arbitrarily.
  regions - optional 2-D array that stores region attributes and areas.

It looks like triangulate cannot take a simple array, it has to be a dictionary.

Take this example from the Manual:

A = dict(vertices=array(((0,0), (1,0), (1, 1), (0, 1))))
B = triangle.triangulate(A)
triangle.plot.compare(plt, A, B)
plt.show()


How do I texture an object in Cycles This question has probably been asked before, but all of the answers I have found have been for vastly different versions, and it seems like the UI has changed a lot.
How can I set up a material to use so that it displays in the Materials viewport shading mode? I'm fairly new to Blender, and I've managed to accidentally enable "Nodes only" somehow in the Materials tab.
The texture is already set up and the object is UV unwrapped - I just need it to display now.
Here's what I'm looking at now:

Cycles works with shaders.

Shaders determine how the light is transformed upon hitting a surface.

The error on your case is that you created a node in blender internal and not in cycles. You can use nodes in blender internal as well, but they are not compatible.

NOtice how the nodes are completely different in Blender Internal:

Materials are not interchangeable between the two rendering systems. You need to delete the material and make a new one within cycles.


Getting the last object created Is the last object to be created always the last element of the bpy.data.objects list?
This wouldn't be necessary if all operators which create objects returned the object(s) created...
Right, so bpy.context.object doesn't seem to reliably work:
import bpy
o = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
# clear the selection
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for i in [0,1,2]:
    #select the Cube
    o.select_set(True)
    # duplicate it
    bpy.ops.object.duplicate()
    # this should be the new object (but it isn't)
    temp = bpy.context.object
    #bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
    #bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    # register what we've got
    print('temp:', temp)
    # delete the new object
    bpy.data.objects.remove(temp, do_unlink=True)
    # clear the selection
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

The first time through the loop, temp is an object.  The second time, it's None.
I am aware that I can get a list of all the objects in the scene before and after creation of new objects, and compare them to find out what's new, but this is essentially giving up and saying that blender can't tell me what was just created, in addition to being inefficient.
Additionally, if I try to enter edit mode immediately after the duplication, it's not possible for some reason.  In the context where I am doing this, it is necessary to enter edit mode to modify the created object, but perhaps that deserves a second topic.

For duplicate operator use context.selected_objects for result

Is the last object to be created always the last element of the
bpy.data.objects list?

Lets run a very simple little test in python console to see: add an empty to the default scene
>>> D.objects[:]
[bpy.data.objects['Camera'], bpy.data.objects['Cube'], bpy.data.objects['Lamp']]

>>> bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
{'FINISHED'}

>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Empty']

>>> D.objects[:]
[bpy.data.objects['Camera'], bpy.data.objects['Cube'], bpy.data.objects['Empty'], bpy.data.objects['Lamp']]

The property list appears to be sorted alphabetically.
Use the context

This wouldn't be necessary if all operators which create objects
returned the object(s) created...

In the context - operator paradigm, an operator only returns a status (eg success) by using and altering context. The result is gleened after running from the context.  It is always the case that directly after running a create object operator, the new object is context.object eg.
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
cube = context.object

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cone_add()
cone = context.object

print(cube.name, cone.name)

Your new question.
Firstly recommend never using bpy.data.objects["Cube"] since there is no assurance that it exists in which case it throws a keyerror or is linked to the context scene. The None state mentioned in question alludes to ob = context.object would be better, or by name scene.objects.get(name)
The question script example in question is creating states as discussed in
Is the active object and zeroth selected object always the same?
For the case of the duplicate operator it returns result in context.selected_objects  If the context.object is None or not selected it is not duplicated, else it becomes the new context object (first time thru loop)
First time thru loop, (ob is  context object to begin) have context object and is only selected after deselect all.
Have new context object "temp" (and selected) after dupe.
Then you remove it. context object -> None.  It does not magically revert to some default object, if you remove the context object context.object is None
End of loop status No context object and none selected... what is the expected result???

The first time through the loop, temp is an object. The second time,
it's None.

Yep, exactly as expected. (if printing context object) Takes a while to grasp the concept of context.
Options.
The duplicate operator takes the selected objects, dupes them and returns as selected, simply
temp = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

Overide
bpy.ops.object.duplicate(
        {"selected_objects" : [ob]}
        )

temp = context.selected_objects[0]

or
Since interested in one object can  set as the context object at loop start. (as demonstrated in ideasman42's answer) (or end) with
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob

and
temp = context.object
#or
temp = context.selected_objects[0]

a case when context object and zeroth are the same.
Having no context object can affect how other operators, eg entering edit mode funtion. Depending on the script functionality is often good practice to leave context how we found it. eg reinstating the context object and selection.
API
There are more regular low level API methods, which return the object reference, eg adding an empty to context collection.
mt = bpy.data.objects.new("MT", None)
context.collection.objects.link(mt)

for the "CtGP's" duplicate case
for i in range(3):
    temp = ob.copy()

Subscribe to msgbus
Have left this in as, was my understanding of first incarnation of question, re finding the last object created with an add primitive object.
If the user has added an object with the UI and we wish to know  the last one :
Similarly to Origins to the down of the object by default and Auto Normals by default  look for the active object changing and check the active operator.
It is the case that most operators that add an object have a bl_idname that ends in "_add"
Finding other objects created by addon operators that do not adhere to this, or added via other scripting technigues is going to be tricky, without constantly keeping track of scene.objects and notifying on change. (Will look for link as have answered in this regard before too)
Here is a test script that sets scene.last_object_created to the object last created using one of blenders add object operators.
import bpy
from bpy.props import PointerProperty

handle = object()

# Triggers when an object is made active
subscribe_to = bpy.types.LayerObjects, "active" #

def notify_test(context):
    if (getattr(context.active_operator, "bl_idname", "").endswith("_add")
            ):
        if context.object in context.scene.objects:
            context.scene.last_object_created = context.object

bpy.msgbus.subscribe_rna(
    key=subscribe_to,
    owner=handle,
    args=(bpy.context,),
    notify=notify_test,
)

bpy.msgbus.publish_rna(key=subscribe_to)

bpy.types.Scene.last_object_created = PointerProperty(
        type=bpy.types.Object,
        )

Test in py console after adding text object.
>>> C.active_operator
<bpy_struct, Operator("OBJECT_OT_text_add") at 0x7fb73cc7ccc8>

>>> C.scene.last_object_created
bpy.data.objects['Text']

Another idea would be to make a collection of pointer properties to store more than 1 in some order.
Please also note that any use of context is referring to bpy.context


Is it common/good practice to scale down faces in the UV Editor to fit into 1 pixel to have a normal diffuse? First of all, apologies if my question seems too basic to you, I'm a programmer working on a mobile game who's learning how to use Blender and would like to do it correctly.

Basically I'm making a low poly game and I'm using a 32x32 texture for my model which I use as a colour palette. I'm doing so by unwrapping the object and assigning the faces to a single pixel by scaling them down on the colour I want those faces to be. I was wondering, is this the right way of assigning a single colour to some faces? Can scaling down to 1 pixel affect performance on more complex models? And if I'm doing things incorrectly, what's the best practice for this?

Screenshot below to give you a better idea of how I'm doing this at the moment.

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply,

Simone

Your approach is fine. If it works in tests, stick to it.

Changing (scaling down) the uv coordinates, won't affect your performance at all. If you can update the palette easily, your method has many advantages.

Make sure, you disable interpolation of the texture in your game engine. You want to keep it sharp. In Blender internal renderer (as an example), these filter setting are required, to keep the texture pixelated.

The usual is to assign different materials, with different colors to their respective faces. In Blender this is done by creating new material slots in the material properties panel and then assigning them by selecting the mesh's faces in edit mode and pressing assign with the material slot selected.This will export to most formats and engines.


What is the panel that appears after Scale operation and what is the command to display it independently? After selecting a face and scaling it with an S operation, a panel appears on the lower left hand side:

The panel is labelled Resize and shows the results of the scaling operation (in this case a scale value of 1.1 for all three axes).

What is this panel and how can I display it on command?

The panel is called "Redo Last"

It's always in the tool shelf T of the 3D-Editor or accessible as a popup with F6.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/interface/undo_redo.html


How to extrude as a round shape in concentrated areas? I hope that I'm explaining my question right as I'm new to blender but I really am at a loss here. I've been stuck for a couple days now of what to do with this.

So, I'm trying to make a side table, this one specifically: here. Everything was going good until I came to the point where I needed to extract round shapes (sorry, I don't know how to explain this), which I've watched many tutorials and thought I could do it also, but I couldn't. I've added more loop cuts, did the bevel action (which created a totally weird shape in diff directions), etc. Either I'm doing those things wrong (possibly since I'm new) or I just have to re-do what I did to make it so I can do these actions correctly.

Let me show you some photos to help explain what I mean (top is what my whole thing looks like, bottom w/paint done on it to show what I need it look like):

So in the first photo I did bevel it because I thought that was what could help me make it round but I could only do the sides of each face to get it round. I have had no idea how to do make the whole thing extend round. I also have no idea how to then make all of them the same size etc so I ran into that as well.

I'm sorry if this makes no sense. I have no idea how to correctly term things but I hope someone could help me or point me in the right direction on how to do this.

Here's how I would go about it.

lets say we have our initial shape (mine is slightly different):

I extrude a rectangle out of each one (Alt + E , extrude along normals):

Now, I select only the long edges (this can be done quickly using the box select in x-ray):

Then, I just bevel the edges to create a circle:

Final Result:

If you want yours to be more circular, just extrude out a larger square initially.


Constructing and bevelling a pie-slice The picture shows what I'm trying to make.
I'm planning to use 12 of these rotated to make a 12-petal circle.

I've done this by starting with a pancake-like cylinder, than creating a triangular wedge, extruding that also, using boolean AND modifier. This gives a sector, like a slice of pizza. Then I do boolean EXCLUDE with a small cylinder to cut out the hole at the tip.

Finally I bevel the edges.
But the bevelling is not working:

I can't figure out how to do this cleanly.

Maybe I could start with a cone with MIN_RADIUS, MAX_RADIUS and depth 0, to create an anulus.  Then I could BOOLEAN AND it with a wedge.

Or even better, manually link up a subset of the generated vertices, to produce the shape.

Then extrude, and bevel.

Can anyone see a better way? And how to gain control over the bevelling process? Does anyone have a suitable link they could post?

Is BEVEL the best way to round the edges?

Finally, is there some way I could emboss the edges, if that's the right word?  Bring them out to give definitions of the object?  This may look better than bevelling.

I guess that the Boolean operations created some geometry that the Bevel Modifier can't handle as you expect.

If you create the mesh starting with a plane like so:

and use the Spin Tool Alt-R while in Edit Mode
(Note that the position of the 3D cursor and selected view (Top/Ortho) is important.)

The Bevel modifier works fine:


It is possible to render a geometry as a blurry object? I was making an scene and thanks to the help of the people here, i managed to make a volumetric light..but now that i think the 'borders' are too sharp, and this light (seen on the picture) is nothing more than a deformed cube, so i need to know, it is possible to for example just select this single geometry and make it look blurry? actually what i need is to make the borders more blurry (like a light), but it could also help me in the future for references. (Oh, and I'm also using Cycles)

If anyone know how to do this, please let me know.

change the object index and use this node setup in the compositor

the id mask will create a mask from the object and  the erode will give it smooth edges


How modify sphere mesh in an animation with shape keys I would like to start from a sphere/ellipse, move its vertices in order to obtain an irregular body.
The problem is that I want to create an animation of the vertices movement.
The starting model and final one are shown in the following figure

You could simply use a Displace Modifier and apply it as a shapekey.

First add a Subdivision Surface Modifier followed by the Displace Modifier and then a second Subdivision Surface Modifier.
Your modifier stack should look like the image below:

The texture can be anything grayscale, but for this example I used the below:

Once you are happy with the result of the texture you choose, apply the first Subdivision Surface Modifier, and apply the Displace Modifier as a shape key.

The remaining Subdivision Surface Modifier will not be able to be applied, and shouldn't be anyway.


objects not showing up in outliner It's probably a problem of settings but I cannot figure out what I did.
Each time I add a new object in my scene, it shows up on the scene and it is rendered but it doesn't show up on the outliner list.
Which is a bit annoying, I like to keep things tidy.
If I reset to factory setting, and duplicate the starting cube, I finally have two cubes in my outliner. But even after reseting the setting, the problem is still here when loading my original scene.
Any hints?

Edit:
I added a screenshot, in the outliner menu, only the cylinder is displayed.

You have only one object in this scene, and all these shapes are part of that same object. You probably added each new mesh in Edit Mode, instead of Object Mode.

When you add a new mesh primitive while in edit mode, the new primitive is added into the same object you are in the process of editing.

Since the name of the object is "Cylinder", I assume you created the cylinder first, then added the other shapes while editing the cylinder.

You can see that this has happened since all 3 meshes are editable when you are in edit mode. Normally, when meshes are separated into different objects, you can only edit one at a time:


How can you increase the number of octaves for the Musgrave Texture in cycles? I'm trying to use a musgrave texture (fBM), but there doesn't seem to be a setting to increase the number of octaves.

Does anyone have a node setup which can add more octaves to the musgrave texture?

Looking at the source code here the musgrave nodes detail value is kept between 0 and 16 and passed as the octave value for the noise function.


Grab/Move by distance is inaccurate I have a problem with Blender 2.76 running on Ubuntu 15.10 (and probably other systems, too.)
When I move an object in Object Mode or a vertex in Edit Mode using the Grab key G and enter a distance (e.g. 50cm on Z), the object or vertex will almost always move by a distance slightly different. Attached is a screenshot with GZ 50cm and the resulting distance of 49.9998cm.

Why does this happen and how is it possible to move an object or vertex exactly 50cm, 1 Blender unit, 1µm etc.? Entering 50.00000 or other values does not seem to work either.
Edit: While, as brasshat said, the error is insignificant, a value of for example 49.9998cm is aesthetically unpleasing and makes reading and editing of such values very hard.
When more complex values like 32.275 become 32.27487  (this really happens), this interferes with the workflow, especially when tight tolerances are required (CAD, 3D printing, etc.).

Since you don't provide information on your system, (e.g., processor, &c.,) it is possible that there is another explanation, but I have noticed the same behavior you're experiencing, and consider it to be because of the the way Blender, or C / C++ (the language in which Blender is written) handles floating point numbers. I have noticed similar discrepancies in numerical values at very low precision levels (the fourth or fifth significant digit from the far left, including those both to the left and to the right of the decimal point). This applies to all previous versions of Blender as well.

In most cases the difference between the observed and expected values to be so small that it could be ignored; a difference of .0002 in 50.0000 is four ten-thousandths of a percent, (or about two and a half inches in a mile) and in most cases is below the threshold of being noticeable.


How to cut walls along the pitches of the roof I have a problem I have been tied up all the day with and I haven't solved yet.
I am trying to cut the walls of this house along the inclined pitches of this house.
Any ideas? I have tried almost all, add-ons, boolean operations etc.
I think that the best way in this case would be to cut the vertical walls along the intersection between the roof and the walls themselves (pic. 1). Another option would be to extend the walls up underneath the pitches, but as you can see there are different heights and there are no snapping points to use and this is so annoying ;)
Please be quite clear because, in spite of my age, I am a newbee.
Thanks.

In this case, there should be no difficulty using Knife Project.

Select the roof, then the building
Put the (active) building into Edit Mode.
In an Orthographic view, looking straight down the roof ridge, hit 'Knife Project' in the Tool Region, Tools tab, Add section.
In the Knife Project tool's own panel, check 'Cut through'.
V Rip the newly created edges
Hovering over the unwanted faces, L select all linked, and delete them.


Rigify generate error Hi im having a mayor problem in rigify
When I generate a rig with rigify from "Human (Meta-Rig)" I get the message

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "...\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\rigify\ui.py" , line 286, in execute generate.generate_rig(context, context.object)

File "...\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\rigify\generate.py", line 141, in generate_rig bone_gen = obj.data.bones[bone.name]

KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "hips" not found'

location: :-1

What shall i do ???

It appears that your meta rig does not have a bone named hips, which the script expects.

check that you haven't renamed any bones in your metarig. If you do, you will have to revert the corresponding bones back to their original names. You may want to create a new metarig to compare to in order to do this.


How can I use hooks for cloth simulation? I have attempted to hook the corners of a square piece of cloth at the 4 corners so that they can be moved. Below, the images show the vertex groups. "v1" to "v4" corresponds to each of the corners (proportionally weight painted) which are hooked to 4 empties. "pin" corresponds to the 4 corner vertices alone which are pinned as a group. When sim is played, the 4 corner vertices deform disproportionately as in figure. What am I doing wrong? Also if I attempt to move one of the hooks while actually running the sim, then when the next loop plays the sim repeats itself irrespective of any hook motion.
1 ]2

Ok I think Nathan has solved the problem. Here are 2 other methods:
First an alternative with empties:

Select each corner vertex and hook it to an empty (CtrlH > Hook To New Object).
Select the 4 corner vertices and create a group that will be the pin group of the cloth simulation:

Don' forget to put the Cloth modifier on the bottom of the modifiers stack, under the 4 Hook. Keyframe the empties, play the animation, bake if necessary:

Or you can use bones:

Create an armature made of 4 bones, parent the cloth object With Empty Groups, select the armature, shift select the cloth object, switch to Weight Paint mode, paint a small surface on each corner for each bone:

Create a new vertex group for the cloth pin, assign it the 4 corners:

Keyframe the bones in Pose mode, play the animation, bake it if necessary:

file:


The "Info" bar on top disappeared and the mouse pointer is misaligned I have a problem with Blenders UI. The "Info" bar on top disappeared and the mouse pointer is misaligned. I reinstalled Blender 2 times, deleted every leftover files  but it still does the same thing. This is in v2.78c. The weird thing is that on the bottom everything works fine. Here are some images:

Consider this solved. It is a driver problem (Intel HD 530 version 15.45.19.4678 doesn't work properly)


How to append text to the end of a Text datablock with Python To add text to a Text datablock, you use the script text.write("Text"). This puts the text wherever the cursor is. I want to put the text at the end of the Text datablock (in other words, append). Is there a way to do this with Python?

Write nothing first

Yes it writes at the cursor location, but will notice then seeks to file end. As mentioned in doc string

>>> t = D.texts['Text']
>>> t.write(
write()
Text.write(text)
write text at the cursor location and advance to the end of the text block

Simply write nothing to seek to EOF

t.write("")

Alternatively can set the cursor, as an example have used ints greater than existing lines and character length to make sure the cursor is at EOF.

 t.cursor_set(44444444, character=44444444)

in both cases may require writing a new blank line.

t.write("\n")


Why aren't my clothes assigned weights? Why can't I assign loose geometry to a bone? I'm currently rigging a clothed character model, but I've encountered some issues. The character and the clothing are all one object. However, with automatic weight pairing, the clothing seems to be ignored.

Also, when I select loose mesh to assign to a bone, blender simply won't do it.

I'll hit "Assign", but the selected faces won't actually get assigned to the bone I've selected.

What's causing this?

i am in the same hussle, even if you have a bone and a vertex group you hit assign and nothing happends. So frustating, a solution to me is isolate the mesh to an OBJECT (i dont want to do this but...) and select armature, then bone, then object and then parent to bone.
I KNOW that it should work as you explain but i dont know IT dosent, and it is from various version. It is a bug?


Is there something similar to curves' tilt for skin modifier? I want to create shoelaces with skin modifier. I use Ctrl-A Y to flatten cross-section, and all looks good, but when I start to move vertices the angle of flattened part gets distorted and it does not confirm to the shoe surface. For curves I would use Tilt to solve this problem, but I do not know if something like this is possible for skin modifier as well.

Is there a 'tilt-like' way to control skin modifier? Am I better off to use curves in this situation?

From the very nature of the Skin modifier, this is not possible. Vertices do not have any rotational data, only location data. Because of this, it would be impossible to "tilt" the Skin modifier result, as it uses vertices to interpolate the resulting mesh.

Most of the examples I have seen the modeller is using curves. By using extrusion and bevel you can make great flat laces, and round ones are even easier. They also are completely editable at all times.

I would strongly recommend using curves for this.

There is one example here that you can see. There is also a solution for one of the issues you might run into.


Is there any way to simulate connected solid objects using cloth physics or similar I've been talking to some people who use Maya and they said that this (video) was possible in Maya... Is this possible in blender using cloth physics or hair physics? In the video I have it animated.

https://youtu.be/c_UvMqTWTaE

Thanks!
Ekrcoaster

This can be achieved with Cloth physics or Soft Body physics.

Starting with Soft Body (since it's more versatile), the first step is to create the mesh - effectively two joined cubes. So starting with the default cube, select it and use Ctrl+D to duplicate it and position it in the desired location. Select both cubes (select one, hold Shift while clicking the other) and press CtrlJ to join them into a single object. NOTE : You should select the 'child' cube first (the one you want to have dragged about by the other), followed by the 'parent' - this way the origin of the combined mesh will be at the centre of the 'parent' cube.

We could use Soft Body options to keep the cubes from being distorted. However, this will interfere with the bending motion we want to produce. Therefore, we'll add 'struts' to the mesh to give it rigidity.

Go into Edit mode (Tab) and select wireframe view (Z). Select two opposing corners of a face and press F to create an edge between them.

Repeat this for every face on each cube - this will make each cube rigid without having to use the Soft Body 'Stiff Quads' or 'Bending' options, leaving them to be adjusted for controlling the bendiness between the cubes.

To join the cubes together, select each nearby pair of vertices in turn and again press F to create an edge between each.

Whilst still in Edit mode, select all the vertices of the 'parent' cube, create a new Vertex Group (named 'pin') and click 'Assign' to assign those vertices to the group.

Now swap back to Object mode (Tab) and in the Physics panel add Soft Body. In the Soft Body Goal settings set the Default Strength and Stiffness to their maximum and set the Vertex Group to the 'pin' group created earlier. In Soft Body Edges set the Pull and Push springs up to their maximum - this will force the edges to be a fixed length, locking the shape of the cube due to the 'struts' that were added earlier.

Now animate the mesh as desired - you should get the 'child' cube following and adjust the Bending Stiffness spring in the Soft Body Edges to get the desired stiffness of the joint. Switch off gravity (set the Soft Body Field Weight to zero) and enable Soft Body Self Collision if required. Optionally adjust the Soft Body Solver settings (eg, increase Min Step) if necessary. You can also adjust the Friction (on the main Soft Body properties) to calm down the bounciness if required.

This can produce the following result :

Cloth physics is fairly similar but needs a minor tweak to the mesh - since the cloth uses the presence of faces rather than edges to determine how the mesh behaves. So using the same mesh (ie, two cubes with added 'struts'), in Edit mode, select the 4 vertices between the two cubes and press F to create a  face.

Instead of Soft Body (remove it if using the same model), add Cloth. On the main Cloth properties panel, enable Pinning and use the same 'pin' vertex group as used for the Soft Body version. Disable Gravity in the Cloth Field Weights and enable Self Collision in the Cloth Collision panel.

You can use the Cloth panel to adjust the behaviour of the simulation. It's not as tunable as the Soft Body simulation but you should be able to get reasonable results - although you might still get some distortion of the cubes at high speed.

Blend files included :

Soft Body

Cloth


How to increase performance for GPU rendered interface parts? I just got myself a new graphics card that is able to handle workflow. I still got really bad playback performance of the 3D view combined with animation by armature. I usually get displayed 0.83 FPS though my graphics card is only at 11% usage. I always thought that my old one was the reason for horribly bad playback but the problem still is consistent and I have no idea why. My CPU is at 22% usage by Blender and also RAM is there as much Blender would need, it does not increase in performance/take the ressources. I know this question is very much technical, but I need help finding out why it does not work so smoothly as I had expected. The new module is working without any problems with graphics intense games, and other applications. What could be the reason that it still does not work fine though I barely go any objects included in the current file and even bounding box vision with the armature alone makes Blender work so horribly slow?
And if this really does not belong here, please tell me where to ask for help at least...

Playback in the viewport is completely dependent on the CPU, unless you're in rendered mode. The CPU is used to calculate stuff like where your meshes are and how the armatures make them move.

The graphics card is only used for rendering related tasks like calculating light bounces, shading, and colors. If you're in the solid mode of the viewport your graphics card only has to figure out what shade of grey the faces on your mesh are, which is a trivial task even for very weak GPUs.

Going back to CPUs, it's important to know that Blender's viewport is single-threaded. This means that if you have a quad-core CPU, the viewport can only use one of the four cores. If you look at the usage for individual cores rather than overall usage, you'll probably see one is maxed out and the rest are idle (in Windows task manager, right-click the CPU graph then select logical cores).

Here are a few ways that you might be able to increase your single-core performance besides upgrading your CPU:

1) Turn off Hyperthreading if your CPU has it. Hyperthreading is where your computer sees each physical CPU core as two (or more, but usually two) cores. This provides better performance for multi-threaded tasks like video editing, but effectively halves performance for single-threaded stuff like Blender's viewport. The option to turn it off is probably somewhere in your BIOS, which is unique to your computer so probably Google it. Some laptops (including mine >:( ) don't have the option to turn it off, so that stinks.

2) Clean out all the dust in your computer. When your computer gets too hot, it will automatically decrease performance so it doesn't overheat. This is called thermal throttling. If you clean out the dust with some compressed air, the heat sinks and fan will get better airflow and be able to keep your computer cool at higher speeds. This method is mostly aimed at laptops, since desktops tend to have much better cooling systems and don't really suffer from this.

3) Replace the thermal compound between your CPU and heatsink. Same idea as the last one, if your CPU can conduct heat more efficiently onto the heatsink, it'll throttle less and run faster. Stock thermal compounds tend to be pretty bad and can wear out. I'd suggest Arctic Silver 5.

4) Use Linux!! Linux handles the CPU much more efficiently than Windows, and you can get a pretty good performance increase just from switching over. For awhile I thought this was just Linux fanboys telling tall tales, but I recently switched my mega project over to Linux for RAM related reasons and I really felt the performance increase.

5) (edited in, somehow I forgot this on the original post)
Overclock if your PC supports it (but use caution).

Hope this helps :)


Cycles not producing alpha transparency color change I'm very new to Blender Cycles Render and I'm trying to have my character's irises have a white background where the image texture is transparent.

So far, I've come up with this

When displayed in material mode, it seems to be working, but when rendered, it's not.

Any ideas why this isn't working?

Similarly, for my character's hair, I've done the same thing and the result is somewhat different.

Could these problems possibly be related?

So I fixed my problem, turns out using a diffuse BSDF rather than a transparent one works


PBR Textures; can I mix them with basic MS.Paint images? I've been having a go at some PBR textures. Nothing too complex at all, rather just following this simple and easy to do tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8uSR8V8olw
Now, being a total beginner to PBR textures, and overall having a pretty basic understanding of textures in general, for example, as of now I'm making textures in Paint.Net or MS.Paint, and adding an image texture to the Principled BDSF. This sometimes can sometimes give the textures a rather plastic looking result.
Finally getting to the point; Is there, and what is the way I can mix my PBR textures and MS Paint textures together? In short, I'd like to mix a metal PBR texture with one of my MS Paint images.
Thank you to those who offer a helping hand in this query.

There are a couple of ways you can mix them. The way I would suggest is to keep your PBR material setup connected to the Principled BSDF, and then run your MSPAINT image through a Diffuse BSDF and mix the two using a Mix Shader.

As you can see from the image, I mixed them using a converted Black and White version of the original image as a mix factor. This is in the case you don't have a mask for your MSPAINT image (if needed), you can create one using a RGB to BW node and a ColorRamp.

Another way you can do this (which is handy if you only want to mix BaseColors, but have the rest of the PBR properties "apply" to your mixed image) is to mix the BaseColor texture of your PBR set with your MSPAINT image (using the same mix factor methodd, if desired) using a MixRGB node:


No show weights option available? It doesn't appear to be available in adds ons either.. I know I've checked it off before, so I'm confused where it went.

You must be in edit mode, with a mesh selected.


How can I animate colors spreading over an object? I created a map that shows segments of it turning into a single bright color you can see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIlvZ55-NW8&feature=youtu.be

I created this by separating each color section into it's own object and then animating a color on top of the map texture.  Is there a way to do this where I can animate the colors spreading across the surface and blend with each other instead of simply raising the opacity?  Or a way where I can just keep the one object?

BTW this is a 360 video for a VR project I'm working on, hence the equirectangular perspective.

Here's an example of what I am looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvFl6UBZLv4

I was hoping to use the Texture Paint brush but I can't seem to animate it.

Thank you!

I set up a quick test and the way I would do it is to use the Build modifier.

Create a 3D mesh of the area to be coloured, remove any vertices to make it 2D. If you do not do it like that I have found the Remesh modifier either does not work or produces strange results.

Apply a Remesh modifier set to create blocks. This creates a "pixelated" mesh but you can tweak the Octree depth to de-pixelate it. Apply this modifier, as we need direct access to the new geometry.

Tab into Edit mode and select all ('a') then position the cursor at the location you want the colour to spread from. From the Mesh menu select "Sort Elements" and select "Cursor Distance".

Tab out of Edit mode and add a Build modifier, set the duration and hit play.

The mesh will build itself one face at a time spreading from your sorted start location.

If that solution does not produce a neat enough solution then I would suggest a black & white animation as a factor mask in Nodes. Or you could use Dynamic paint and "paint" the colour with another object.


Bake textures including light / shadows from camera's perspective EDIT: blend file available at https://pasteall.org/blend/00e3748a22ec43a4825ad76bc6357b85
I am pre-baking textures for a model used in a game, where games art style allows for static lighting. I'm currently facing problem where I don't see any light baked onto my texture, I assume it's due to following

First of all, this is how my scene looks from cameras perspective, note how there are sun reflections on the road

I then proceed to bake my texture by setting up image texture in shader graph and baking

Once bake is finished, I am left with following texture and look, note how there is absolutely no sun on the road and whole model looks like it didn't receive any sunlight at all, shadows are off as well

I was trying to play with a renderer and see if I can figure out how to bake these textures from cameras point of view to preserve shadows and lighting, but wasn't able to find a solution, so will appreciate any ideas.

Here’s what the Blender documentation on Render Baking says about the Combined bake mode:

Bakes all materials, textures, and lighting except specularity.

Emphasis mine. The disparity you are seeing in your baked textures is the lack of specular reflections.
This should not be surprising, because specular reflections cannot be baked. This is because they are fundamentally dependent on viewing angle, even with completely static lighting. If you were to bake specularity from the perspective of the camera, it would look quite bad whenever the view changes.
The purpose of the Combined bake mode is to bake everything that can be baked in a viewpoint-independent way. It is not, however, a replacement for all further shading. What you should probably do instead is combine the baked texture with a glossy shader to provide viewpoint-dependent specular reflections. For example, you can bake a Combined pass including everything except the Glossy layer, then combine the result with a Glossy BSDF to add specular reflections on top:

You would want to create a similar setup in whatever game engine you are using (making sure to replicate the same lighting!). This is a totally standard workflow, and it’s still relatively cheap to compute.


How can i find the python triggered by the GUI? I want to fully automatize some of my blender processes, an i run into a lot of problems not finding the correct commands, not using the correct args...

Can i just "see" in a log somewhere what were the commands blender ran ?

To be very precise, i want to load a gltf file, and export it to stl.

No problem through the gui, but i'm stuck with that bit of code :

import bpy
import sys
import os

file = open(r"C:\Users\theo1\Documents\GitHub\Hackathon2020\map&mapdata\mini.gltf")

bpy.ops.import_scene.gltf(file)
bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filePath=r"C:\Users\theo1\Documents\GitHub\Hackathon2020\map&mapdata\mini.stl")

Which gives me this :

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Users\theo1\Desktop\impExp.py", line 7, in <module>
    bpy.ops.import_scene.gltf(file)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 198, in __call__
    C_dict, C_exec, C_undo = BPyOpsSubModOp._parse_args(args)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 151, in _parse_args
    raise ValueError("1-3 args execution context is supported")
ValueError: 1-3 args execution context is supported

thanks.

The API documentation should be your primary reference when implementing Python scripts for Blender.

Additionally you can enable the Python Tooltips and Developer Extras in the preferences (Edit > Preferences > Interface > Display).

The Python Tooltips will be displayed when hovering over a UI element with your mouse and show what Python command would be executed when interacting with it. The Developer Extras add helpful options such as Edit Source or Online Python Reference to the context menu (RMB).

Using the references provided above it's fairly easy to see why your script doesn't work properly.

bpy.ops.import_scene.gltf() expects a file path as argument, not a file object. Therefore you shouldn't use open() at all. Instead pass the file path as named argument:

bpy.ops.import_scene.gltf(filepath="/path/to/your/file")


Loop Cut Coordination technique A while ago I following a tutorial which demonstrates how to position loop cuts in specific places using loop cut, Grab X-Y-Z and giving a specific numeric so the lop cut can relocate to the desired position.

I'm trying to use the same technique on this mesh, I have added one loop cut on one of the triangular faces. Which I then used the factor to designate the position. But when I try to use the technique as the instructor, instead of the loop cut moving, the whole face moves and deforms. In this case, should I just use the factor after doing a loop cut on each individual face, or am I complicating things trying to do what the video instructor is doing?

Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSR6bVFe5LM

In the tutorial, the side 'rails' down which the edge is moving are parallel, so a translation (GY, for example) is equivalent to a slide (GG). On a triangle, that's not the case.

You can make a numerical entry for the distance of a translation, because all affected components move by the same amount. But you can't, by distance, for a slide, because vertices in a sliding loop will move different distances, depending on the location of adjacent vertices on the rails.

Instead, a numerical entry for a slide represents the fraction of the distance to adjacent vertices, where 0 is the current position, and distances to adjacent vertices are mapped to  1 and -1.

You might be able to use that fraction, with a bit of mental arithmetic, but usually, for accuracy, I find myself G translating single vertices down edges using Custom Orientations derived from them where necessary, and as far as possible thinking like a carpenter.. finding ways to transfer measurements from one part of a model to another.


Where is Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Mouse Wheel discrete rotation in 2.8 I can't find this in 2.8 and it was really useful.

For instance in 2.79 you could Ctrl-Alt-Wheel to roll rotate the view based on your current. The only way I could do this in 2.8 was with the numpad 4,8,6 keys, which isn't nearly as handy.

i have the same problem, changing to 2.7x layout dose fix it but i want to keep the rest 2.8.  also in 2.8 controls it is listed,  holding down control + shift also says dolly on the bottom of the screen in both 2.8 and 2.7 layouts in blender 2.8 release candidate.

i have found the python files responsible for the shortcuts
exporting blender layout makes a .py calling for a different .py
exporting 2.7x layout makes a lot of changes to the same py as listed before

 also first time posting on stack

[]


Easy manipulation of transparency in BGE I'm making a video game from concept to finished piace (still a  big noob) where there's this holographic screen. I want to be able  to manipulate it as easy as I do it in cycles. It doesn't have to  be by using nodes, but once I have it one way in the game engine I don't want to recreate the hole screen  just because the text is too small, or too transparent. In cycles  I have control over everything. Here's an example -

Nodes - http://www.pasteall.org/pic/91298

The text is too big? - No problem, here's the mapping node. The  blur is too pronounced? - Here's the slider of the Mix Shader. I can also overlay other images or another text the same way the blur is on the screen and the text on the blur.

To what extend can I do all of this in the GE? as I  said, it doesn't has to be with nodes. Easy manipulation is the  problem.

Update: If alpha textures are the only way to go, Is it possible to control each element on the screen as a separate alpha texture. For example - if the text is too pronounced, I can make it more transparent, without effecting anything else. Is that possible?

I've found an interesting workarround - If you save a very low rez. image with part color and part transparency you can adjust the transparency by moving the texture -

Maybe will work for some cases because there is a transition between the color and the alpha which means there is no even distribution of color and transparency over the plane.


Is there a way to add outline/highlight your model? I have seen a few tutorials where you can add outline around your models, unfortunatley none of thoe tutroials gave me the results I was looking for! is there a way to do this?(#1) instead of ?(#2)
I would not like the lines to be visible inside the model( I am new to blender and to 3d art)

Render Properties tab: Enable Freestyle.
View Layer Properties tab: Make sure External Contour is the only edge type checked.


Any way to bake with Eevee? Cycles is tricky to bake, unecessary realism and I have better overall control of my scene with Eevee. Is there any add-on for it or is Blender ever gonna get it?

Baking in eevee is currently not possible
You can bake indirect lighting, but not textures. For further reading, I found this pretty interesting community post.
It may eventually get implemented one day.


Impressing a spiral on the surface of a cone I'm attempting to model a hybrid French-Turkish drop spindle and have most of it modeled out from a sketch and prototyping a simple Turkish style model first. The only difference I'm aiming for is a spiral impressed shaft top for the French addition.

Example of a French spindle top, this is my goal.

Example of the Turkish shaft and the cone base I'm using to create the French shaft.
I've tried using a boolean modifier to create the spiral using spiral bases I've found on Thingiverse (allowing for the CCs to do so of course), but this hasn't worked and frankly I don't like relying on someone else's work to accomplish my own, I'd rather have an understanding of how something is achieved.
I'm very new to 3d modeling and I suspect this problem may have a simple solution, but I lack the technical vocabulary to find what I need just searching online. If anyone can help me understand what functions would be useful in this case from a modeling perspective it would be deeply appreciated!

Since the example isn't linear, you could make a profile and bend it

Create the shaft profile as a flat plane. Subdivide it evenly using loopcuts.
Give it a Simple Deform Modifier > Bend and target an Empty 01
Add Simple Deform Modifier > Taper and target Empty 02

By moving Empty 01, change the diameter of the shaft.
By moving Empty 02, change the taper direction.
Then just apply the modifiers, fill the gap you're done.


How to remove a part of edge loop which deforms my object? I have just started off with blender, so please forgive me if I misuse the terminologies.

I have created an object by merging together a cylinder and a cube as shown in the screenshots below.
I created edge loops to sharpen the corners, which worked fine. It caused some deformities at the top face of the cylinder which I fixed by creating an inset.

But on the sides of the cylinder, it creates a pinched effect.

I tried for really long to remove the extra edge, but could not do so without introducing more complexities and deformations.

Is there a way to deal with this?
It seems that this must be a very common scenario.

Select the edge loop by pressing Ctrl+Shift+RMB
Then pressX or Delete button, right on the bottom you will find an Edge Loop option. That should do the trick.

Edit : Make sure you are on edge select mode.


Riggin my character deformes him Here is the File http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35751
My question is about rigging , Long story short, I'm new to blender and i finished my latest model and began to rigging it (First time doing so) Followed the tutorial to the letter and when I flip the armature (Left side of it) the elbows off, no problems with the leg, so I fix it,  but when I sent automatic weights the whole arm and shoulder part are F'ed up, No idea why.
Can anyone help?  Here is the File http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35751

Also I have an alienware computer and not a particularly cheap one, And I've never really had lagg issues in blender up until I connected the facial features to the face, now whenever I click on anything it take a good 10 seconds to register, Is this just me making models with bad topology or is there a way to maximize processing speed after the models done and you want to do things with it.

To fix the deformation when binding the mesh to armature you need to apply the pose to Rest position. Change to Pose Mode, then select all the bones and Ctrl+A shortcut and select Apply Pose as Rest Pose. Then Change to Object Mode, select your mesh then the armature and parent with Ctrl+P shortcut.