Solidify Modifier, Subsurface Scattering, and the Principled Shader I've read/heard elsewhere that the Subsurface Scattering in the Principled BSDF Shader only works if a Solidify Modifier is present. Is this correct?

If I create a flat Mesh Plane e.g. it would make sense that I need to apply a Solidify Modifier for Subsurface Scattering via the Principled BSDF to have an effect.

However, If I created a Mesh Sphere -- or Cube or any non 2D or non-flat object -- do I also need to add the Solidify Modifier for the Subsurface Scattering via the Principled Shader to have any effect?

No, i dont think you will need it for a solid object. if you apply a solidify modifier, you will see that all it does is just add another layer of faces to create a closed mesh, which you already have with a sphere.

You can also just try applying a subsurface scattering material to a sphere and see what happens.


How can I make a realistic collision bounds in BGE? I have a planet and I want it to have some terrain, like mountains where the character can explore. I need the planet to have realistic collision bounds, but triangle mesh makes it act like a "No Collision" object, and also it makes the game extremely slow. How can I make realistic collision bounds without slowing the game down?

I have found that if I were to have a mesh with a tri count of greater than about 1.5 million (at least on my machine, could be different for you due to differing PC specs on your end) set to triangle mesh it would produce the same results.  Lower the poly count and try it again to see if that is the issue.


What is a python command to create a node group or shader node tree from the nodes in the currently active material? Essentially what I am trying to do is create a script that can make nodes into groups or shader node trees (unsure exactly what the difference is) based on which nodes are told to be selected at the time. Imagine someone has their current object with it's material, ideally this would take the respectable nodes needed to make that material/shader and turn it into a custom node group so that it can be called in later. Much like Ctrl-G does to the selected nodes except "bpy.ops.node.group_make()" gives me an error claiming I don't have the right context/operator poll error. Is there a more appropriate way to call operator node.group_make to assure it has the right context? I do want this to be able to happen whether or not the operations are happening in the 3D viewport or the Node editor but not limited to only if there is a node editor open.

When you run a script from the Text Editor you use its bpy.context. The Text Editor does not have a node tree related API.
To run your script in a right context you can:

Pass a context to an API function as an argument.
Run an operator with your script in the editor using search menu.

To be able to find the operator in the search menu Developer Extras should be enabled.

Create a button in that editor to run your script.

Your code should be in the execute() function.
import bpy

class TEST_OT_poll():
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        if context.space_data.type == 'NODE_EDITOR' and context.space_data.tree_type == 'ShaderNodeTree':
            return True
        else:
            return False

class TEST_OT_make_group(bpy.types.Operator, TEST_OT_poll):
    bl_idname = "node.test_make_group"
    bl_label = "Make Group"
    bl_description = ""
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):

        bpy.ops.node.group_make()
        bpy.ops.node.group_edit(exit=True)

        return {'FINISHED'}

class TEST_PT_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "TEST_PT_panel"
    bl_label = "Make group"
    bl_space_type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "Tool"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        if context.space_data.tree_type == 'ShaderNodeTree':
            return True
        else:
            return False

    def draw(self, context):

        layout = self.layout
        column = layout.column()
        column.operator("node.test_make_group", text = "Make Group")

classes = (
    TEST_PT_panel,
    TEST_OT_make_group,
)

def register():
    for c in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(c)

def unregister():
    for c in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(c)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Change the editor in the script with changing it back at the end.

But in this case, it may not update the UI correctly, and you have to use an unrecommended force update.
import bpy

try:
    initial_area_type = bpy.context.area.type
    bpy.context.area.type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
    bpy.context.area.ui_type = 'ShaderNodeTree'
    bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN', iterations=1)

    bpy.ops.node.group_make()
    bpy.ops.node.group_edit(exit=True)

except Exception as e:
    print(e)
finally:
    bpy.context.area.type = initial_area_type


BGE: KX_GameObject Attribute description unclear Here in this documentation: http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_75_3/bge.types.KX_GameObject.html
it says for the attribute orientation:
"[...]On write: local orientation, on read: world orientation."

What does that mean exactly?

Also it says that the attribute is deprecated since version use localOrientation and worldOrientation. Which ones do I use now?

It is deprecated since ages, but nobody dares to remove it from the API. Simply do not use it (and do not use position).

The world reference describes changes along the scene's coordinate system (scene space).

The local reference describes changes along the object's origin (object space).


How do I flip normals of duplicated faces? I'm trying to write a blender script which duplicate and flip faces if X material is found. Right now the script only can duplicate the faces but I need to flip their normals. (Only duplicated faces not the original faces)
The code I have so far:
for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if ob.type == 'MESH':
        tbh_slots = [id for id, mat in enumerate(ob.data.materials) if mat == mat_tbh]

        faces_mat_tbh = []
        bm = bmesh.new()
        bm.from_mesh(ob.data)

        for face in bm.faces:
            if face.material_index in tbh_slots:

                faces_mat_tbh.append(face)

        bmesh.ops.duplicate(bm, geom=faces_mat_tbh)

        bmesh.ops.reverse_faces(bm, faces=faces_mat_tbh, flip_multires=False) #Trying to flip normals, but it does it to every face that applies to the condition, for obvious reasons.
        bm.to_mesh(ob.data)
        bm.free()

    else:
        ob.select_set(state=True)

Bmesh operators return resulting geometry.

Most likely only want to process a mesh once, a hundred selected
objects could all share one mesh. Hence have made a set.

Materials can be OBJECT linked. Have stuck with mesh linked
(Mesh.materials) but in general often a better option to iterate
over the object's material slots.

Make one bmesh, populate it, do stuff, write back, then clear and
repeat, then free.

The duplicate operator returns a number of items in a dictionary
regarding the result, consult the docs bmesh.ops.duplicate or
check it out in the console.
>>> bmesh.ops.duplicate(
duplicate()
BMeshOpFunc bmesh.ops.duplicate(bmesh, geom=[], dest=None, use_select_history=False, use_edge_flip_from_face=False)
-> dict(geom_orig=[], geom=[], vert_map={}, edge_map={}, face_map={}, boundary_map={}, isovert_map={})

we can get the new faces by checking for instances of
bmesh.types.BMFace in the "geom" key or instead I have made a list
of the values of the "face_map" (which is a handy dictionary with
originals as keys, and newbies as values)
It is also more often than not the case that the newly added faces are
 bm.faces[-len(faces_mat_tbh):]

the last n faces where n is the length of the to dupe list.

Changes.
import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy import context
# no need to do same on linked meshes.

mat_tbh = bpy.data.materials.get("Material")

meshes = set(
        ob.data for ob in context.selected_objects
        if ob.type == 'MESH'
        )

bm = bmesh.new()
for me in meshes:
    tbh_slots = [id for id, mat
            in enumerate(me.materials)
            if mat
            and mat is mat_tbh]
    if not tbh_slots:
        continue
    bm.from_mesh(me)
    new_faces = bmesh.ops.duplicate(
            bm,
            geom=[
                f for f in bm.faces
                if f.material_index in tbh_slots
                ]
            )["face_map"]

    bmesh.ops.reverse_faces(
            bm,
            faces=list(new_faces.values()),
            flip_multires=False,
            )
    bm.to_mesh(me)
    bm.clear()

bm.free()


Can't get smooth surface when subdividing selected faces of an object I am new to blender and 3d design in general. I have a model which has smooth curved surface but the edges are not round. So I like to subdivide the faces to get a smooth shape.

When I select the faces and use Subdivide smooth I lose the smooth surface. I have tried any options I could see such as smoothing the vertexes, smoothing the faces and etc under the Shading tools, recalculating normals and almost all the uv mapping options with no luck.

What is interesting to me is that if I create a new Ico Sphere and make the faces smooth under shading and then select some faces and subdivide in the same fashion, the surface remains nice and smooth.

I also read about using subdivision surface modifier, but that one seems to only do whole object and not just selected faces in my case.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

In the edit mode with the vertex selected go to vertex panel at right hand and uncheck auto smooth

With the vertex selected go to tools panel under mesh tool click smooth vertex

Then convert the tris to quad go to Mesh > faces > Tris to Quads (Alt+J)


Cycles Texture looks odd on the normal side I have a texture added to some planes (cube with four sides deleted) and there's an odd problem.
some of the planes seems to have the texture on the wrong side of the normal and catch the light in a different way as you can see in this image
on the left side of image everything looks right all walls catch the light in the same way but on the right side the wall won't show the light on it unless I flip the normal so the normal points to the inside
they are built with a copy of the same block and all of the normals point in the same direction.
is it possible to apply the same material inside out to another object?

looks like I forgot to mark this one as solved, to solution was choosing non color data for normal image in material / node editor


How can i create a shortcut that will hide an object from viewport and render? Apparently ctrl+h used to do that but this is mapped to hide collection since 2.8. Basically when i press h to hide an object, i want it to hide from render as well so that i don't have to do it in the outliner. Please help, this is annoying me more than it should.

You are right, Ctrl+H is now used for Collections.

So i wrote a little add-on that does what you asked for, as it's not possible to set the H key to do more then one function without.

Here the code, you can just copy, paste it in a text editor (blender has one too) and save it as "hide-unhide.py" and afterwards install it in Blender from the "Preferences" "Add-on" section.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Hide selected/hide not selected and unhide from View&Render",
    "author": "Xylvier",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Hides selected/not selected and unhides objects from view and render at the same time",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "operator",
}

import bpy

class HideselectedSet(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Hides selected objects from render&viewport"""
    bl_idname = "object.hide_set"
    bl_label = "Hide selected Objects from render&viewport"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.selected_objects is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        for ob in context.selected_objects:
            ob.hide_viewport = True
            ob.hide_render = True
        return {'FINISHED'}

class HidenotselectedSet(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Hides not selected objects from render&viewport"""
    bl_idname = "object.invhide_set"
    bl_label = "Hide not selected Objects from render&viewport"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.selected_objects is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        for obj in bpy.data.objects:
            if obj not in context.selected_objects:
                obj.hide_viewport = True
                obj.hide_render = True
        return {'FINISHED'}

class UnhideSet(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Unhides selected objects from render&viewport"""
    bl_idname = "object.unhide_set"
    bl_label = "Unhide Objects from render&viewport"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.hide_render_clear_all()
        for obj in bpy.data.objects:
            obj.hide_viewport = False
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(HideselectedSet)
    bpy.utils.register_class(UnhideSet)
    bpy.utils.register_class(HidenotselectedSet)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HideselectedSet)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(UnhideSet)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HidenotselectedSet)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

That said, you will have to adjust 3 keybindings in the keymap.

Go in the preferences, under keymap and open 3D View > Object Mode > Object Mode(Global).

Scroll down to find these 3:
"Show Hidden Objects"
"Hide Objects"
"Hide Objects"

Deselect them, no need to delete, like in the picture, after deselecting the 3 keymappings, we need to create 3 new ones to keep the functionality:

object.unhide_set for Alt+H
object.hide_set for H
object.invhide_set for Shift+H

Those keybindings will work only if the add-on is installed and activated though, as the operators called by the keymappings are the 3 operators registered in the add-on.
With that you have the same functionality as before, just that it affects viewport and render. BUT read below.

Word of caution:
While this works for objects, as was asked, be aware that the deeper functionality of blenders base hide and unhide as well as the inverse hide work for everything. Vertices, edges and faces and uv meshes. To incorporate all that as well would be a bit bigger task. So i mentioned that it's better to not delete the default keymaps, but instead deselect them.


How to create a spiral block in blender Hi I am trying to create the following structure in blender. I tried to create a plane and then loop cut it into several pieces. Then used the simple deform on it to bend it around a circle and extruce in z but it is not giving the desired output. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

I also tried to create a circle and poke faces in edit mode. Then extruded in z direction but not working.

Edit: I am able to get it and I used the freestyle option to render the edges but it is showing some extra edges like below, how to get rid of the extra edges?

Start with a single edge from the center to the side.

Add a screw modifier with a positive screw value.

Fill F the created n-gon (1) and add a triangle (2), connecting the first point and the last segment.

Select the border edge loop ⎇ Alt RMB and extrude it downwards E > Z  LMB. Scale the extruded edgeloop to 0 along the Z-axis. SZ0
I added an edge split modifier to sharp the sharp edges.


Blur specific area in compositor Why this node composition doesn't blur the Material.018? What am I missing?

What's wrong is that for the Image input on the Blur node, you are supposed to plug in the ID Mask, Not your render image.  You will have to add your image in with a Mix Node (set to Add).  Hope that helps!


Different start and end frame for each action I have 2 actions, walk and idle.  The idle animation is much longer than the walk.  Each time I want to check my animations, I have to adjust the timeline ending frame, right now that's not too bad, as I only have 2 animations, but could be a pain when I want to go through more animations.

So the question is; Is there a way to set a start / end frame for each action?

No you can't set a start/end frame for each action as the start and end frame is a setting that is global for the current scene.
Pressing Ctrl + End while your cursor is over the timeline will set the end frame to the current frame. A quick click at the last keyframe and a keystroke is easier than manually entering the end frame number. You can also press Ctrl + Home to set the start frame. This only works when the cursor is atop the timeline panel.
There is also a preview frame range setting, this allows you to adjust the start and end frames while animating without changing the frames that are used when rendering. This is useful when you only want to play a section of the animation that you are concentrating on.
The preview range leads to a shortcut that makes changing the frame range even easier while animating, press P and drag from the start to end frame to set the preview range. This works in any of the time based editors - timeline, dopesheet, graph editor, NLA editor, video sequencer.


Can I vertex paint with an image? I am vertex painting using Cycles, & I have set up nodes to plug the vertex colors into a shader & it paints on & works fine, renders etc, looks as expected. But vertex painting gives a brush color choice only - Question - is it possible to use an image bitmap instead of the brush colors? Or - is vertex painting only for colors? I made a material with an image, unwrapped my object's surface, but so far I can't find a way to use this image as the color source (apart from just putting this material onto the selected surface area).

Under the brush settings, in Texture, click New. In the properties panel, in Texture/Image click Open, then locate your picture file. You can now use the picture as a brush.


Why isn't my shader showing? (Im somewhat new to blender)Why cant i see the brass material anywhere?

You simply have to tell the Viewport to actually display textures/materials. Currently it's rendering "solid" which is often the best option to model (Some prefer MatCap)

To solve this, select Texture or Material in the highlighted dropdown:


Jagged lines around objects I have this problem with jagged lines around objects in the 3D-viewport in blender 2.8.
It looks like the problem only occurs on objects in front of the reference images (see picture).
Anyone have the same issue or know how to solve this?

It looks like you have "Outline" turned on in the Viewport Shading settings.


Forcing randomized quads to stay coplanar? I have a lot of quads on a grid, which will get displaced by a Displace modifier with a noise texture. This is my current result:

As you can see, quads aren't deformed in a way that will make them stay coplanar.

Is there any way to solve this, either with modifiers or a script?

Thanks in advance!

As @batFINGER said, you can use dupli-face.

Create a plane and parent it to your displaced mesh (the one you shown in picture).

In the object properties of your displaced mesh, go to the duplication panel and select "Faces" (the blue button on the bottom part of the picture).

And.... that's all...

On the left, the "tri deformed original mesh", on the right "only planar quads"

(again, thanks to @batFINGER comment)


Local View with background images in2.8? I am following a tutorial (the tutor using 2.79) I am using 2.8

He can go to local view without losing the reference images. I can not do that. I am aware that if I select them I can actually bring them to local view too, but I find it a little bit tedious.

Is it possible to make my background image/references always visible regardless if I jump in to local view or not?

Thanks a lot.

As of today, there are no ways to do that.

I posted a request on the Empty Images topic, asking the devs to add an option for that.
Hopefully, this will be done, in which case I'll update my answer accordingly.


Why are objects appearing as a "ghostly" image after rendering? I'm fairly new to Blender, but I hope there's a simple solution to this issue.

In Cycles I'm trying to make a composite of (soon-to-be) animated objects and video footage.

I've used nodes to apply transparent and translucent shaders to the four circle meshes (UV unwrapped with textures) and put in a simple cube for comparison's sake. (An emission shader has also been applied to the largest, yellow circle.)

This is the 3D view set to solid shading, with a background image.

Here's the rendered view:

Why is everything so "ghostly" and pale? No shader has been applied to the cube, and the circles appear much dimmer than I need.

Is there a way to fix this? How can I make the circles appear more "solid" without losing the transparency and translucency I need? It would be ideal if it could look more like the preview in the viewport shading,

but I hear the viewport shading result and the final render result are never the same...

Any thoughts?

cycles material

compositor nodes

Try using an Alpha over node instead of an add node:

The add node literally adds the pixel values of one image to the other image. This means that not only will you have both images visible at once, but you could end up with pixels brighter than 1.


Working with large images and transform in the VSE I'm trying to work with an image in the VSE that is larger than the rendered screen and the VSE always cuts them off. So either they are stretched to fit the screen or (when using "image offset") they are cut and cropped. in the specific example I want to use a map over which I want to pan and zoom in, but not use the default camera-setup because I don't do anything in it anyway, just use VSE and strip modifiers.
So how do I get blender to use the WHOLE image instead of just a cropped 1920x1080 selection of blank ocean?

Currently not possible to do that without some image quality loss.

If this is allowed then do the following:

Option 1

Add your image as a strip.
With the strip selected add Effect Strip -> Transform.
In Transform strip properties choose Bilinear for interpolation (or try with the other options to your liking).
Now scale the image. Assuming you are using 1920x1080 for render dimensions - type the expression (with numbers) in Scale - for X - [your_image_width]/1920; for Y - [your_image_height]/1080. This will set upscale factors for the image which will restore its original dimensions and also here the image quality loss occurs.
Now you can pan or zoom in the Transform strip using Position and Scale respectively. For Scale from now on always multiply X and Y with the same scale factor. For example if you want to scale the image down in half multiply the values by 0.5. If you want to scale up twice - multiply both values by 2.

Option 2

You can always import the image in the 3D view as plane. For that you can use the plug-in

Import -> Images as Planes (if not there, enable it in User Preferences)

Make the camera orthographic and orient it so it looks directly towards the image plane.
Set the 3D view to Textured. Scale and move the plane from Camera view to your liking.
In VSEditor add the Scene where the image is as a strip. In Sequencer Image View properties choose Scene Preview/Render to be Textured.
You can open 3D View window and animate the scale and position of the plane. To see the updated plane, Refresh the sequencer or change frames in the timeline.

Option 2 has better image quality than Option 1 but requires you to work in the 3D space.


How to modify the application header? I work at a relatively high application scaling, due to which I cannot see the current vertex/face/tri counts in the application header. At the same time I find myself never quite needing the Layout or Scene selectors. Is there a way to remove these, so I can have what I need and lose what I do not?

Press ⎇ AltF10, this is the shortcut for Toggle Fullscreen Area, which can be found in the View menu. As you loose the menus in this mode you either need to use ⎇ AltF10 or ⎈ Ctrl - ← Left arrow or → Right arrow to get everything back. This differs from maximise area as it also removes the info editor and headers.

If you also use ⎇ AltF11 to go into fullscreen mode you also loose the window border and get nothing but the 3dview on your monitor.

An older answer provides an addon that displays mesh component counts. A small adjustment will enable it to display in the properties region so that you can see it while in full screen mode, using N to show/hide it.

Find class Properties_meshinfo(bpy.types.Panel): and change the following lines to place it in the 3d view.

class Properties_meshinfo(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Mesh Information"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"


How to set specular intensity and hardness in Blender Internal nodes I am learning how to build shaders out of nodes in Blender Internal and I am confused about setting specular intensity and hardness.

Obviously I can just set set the intensity and hardness in the properties panel, but I would like to wire them up into my node network.  I've tried both the "Material" node and the "Extended Material" node but as far as I can tell they don't have any inputs our outputs for specular intensity or hardness.  What am I doing wrong?

Try this:

For the inputs on the Material node

Add >> Input >> RGB (String RGB Color Output to Color Input)
Add >> Input >> Value (String Value Output to Spec Input)
Add >> Input >> Value (String Value Output to DiffuseIntensity)

The combinations of these three can mimic and exceed the capabilities of the property sliders.

To Start with Set RGB to R:0.8,G:0.8, B:0.8

For Spec set the value to: 0.8

For DiffuseIntesity set the value to: 0.8

These values should get you pretty close (if not exact to the default material).

Specular Intensity

Without Nodes: Specular Intensity Controls the main "Light" bounce (Size/Intensity).

With Nodes: The Value of Spec correlates to "Specular Intensity"

To demonstrate this: with use nodes disabled, set Specular Intensity to 0.8.

Now toggle (enable / disable) use nodes to see the difference.

Now in the node editor change the Spec value to 1.5, now toggle again.

Hardness

With use node disabled set Hardness to 40.

With use nodes enabled in the node editor

Do the following:

Set color (R:0.55,G:0.55,B:0.55)
Set Spec: 1.8
Set DiffuseIntensity: 0.7

Now Toggle

This isn't perfect but it will be close.

The whole reason for going through the exercise is to show how NON-Intuituve these parameters are to set on their own.

You can get there, but there are parameters to consider that the property sliders just make way easy for the user.


Blender Render: Python material How do I use python to set keyframes for the diffuse colour of materials in blender render. This is what I got, but it doesn't work.

mat = bpy.data.materials("Abc")
mat.diffuse_color = (1.0,0.0,0.0)
mat.keyframe_insert("default_value", frame=scene.frame_current)

I have an existing material that I want to set keyframes for, but I don't know how to do it. I tried searching it up and only saw python scripts for cycles materials.

I found out what I did wrong. The documentation of materials on the blender api page did not mention "get", but the bpy_struct said you can use "get" in the function, so:

mat = bpy.data.materials("Abc")

Should be:

mat = bpy.data.materials.get("Abc")

Also I have to define what scene of scene.frame_current is.
That means at the beginning, I need to import bpy.

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene

Also default_value is nonsense to be placed there. Being the diffuse color that's had its keyframe changed, it should be:

mat.keyframe_insert(data_path="diffuse_color", frame=scene.frame_current)

In conclusion, it should look like this:

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene

mat = bpy.data.materials.get("Abc")
mat.diffuse_color = (1.0,0.0,0.0)
mat.keyframe_insert(data_path="diffuse_color", frame=scene.frame_current)


Animating a Bezier Curve to Music I'm trying to animate a bezier curve to music to create an visual equaliser type effect. I am not an experienced blender user, but I have some experience with python.

So far I have managed to put the below together which creates a curve with 64 segments, what I would like to be able to now do is to bake an fcurve for each of the segments based upon a frequency range for each. As I see it I need to create the fcurve for each of the sections and apply it to the y of the relevant bezier point. I have no idea how to do this and I can't find much in the way of information. Is it possible?

import bpy

# Create a curve with 64 divisions.
bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_curve_add(enter_editmode=True)
bpy.ops.curve.subdivide(number_cuts=64)

# Cache a reference to the curve.
curve = bpy.context.active_object

obj_data = bpy.context.active_object.data

# Which parts of the curve to extrude ['HALF', 'FRONT', 'BACK', 'FULL'].
obj_data.fill_mode = 'FULL'

# Breadth of extrusion.
obj_data.extrude = 0.125

# Depth of extrusion.
# Which parts of the curve to extrude ['HALF', 'FRONT', 'BACK', 'FULL'].
obj_data.fill_mode = 'FULL'

# Breadth of extrusion.
obj_data.extrude = 0.125

# Depth of extrusion.
obj_data.bevel_depth = 0.125

# Smoothness of the segments on the curve.
obj_data.resolution_u = 20
obj_data.render_resolution_u = 32
obj_data.bevel_depth = 0.125

# Smoothness of the segments on the curve.
obj_data.resolution_u = 20
obj_data.render_resolution_u = 32

# Locate the array of bezier points.
bez_points = curve.data.splines[0].bezier_points

for i in range(0,64):
    bez_points[i].handle_left_type = 'ALIGNED'
    bez_points[i].handle_right_type =  'ALIGNED'

    bez_points[i].co.z = 0
    bez_points[i].co.x = (i**2)+20

    bez_points[i].co.y = 0

    xl = (i**2)
    xr = (i**2)+40

    bez_points[i].handle_left = (xl,y,0)
    bez_points[i].handle_right =  (xr,y,0)

    #Expression to determine the frequency range of the bars
    l = i**2 + 20
    h = (i+1)**2 + 20

# Return to object mode.
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Convert from a curve to a mesh.
bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH')

# Append modifiers.

subsurf_mod = bpy.curve.modifiers.new(name='Subsurf', type='SUBSURF')
stretch_mod = bpy.curve.modifiers.new(name='SimpleDeform', type='SIMPLE_DEFORM')

# Adjust modifier options.
skin_mod.use_smooth_shade = True
subsurf_mod.levels = 3
subsurf_mod.render_levels = 3
stretch_mod.deform_method = 'STRETCH'
stretch_mod.factor = 0.5

Sorry if my terminology is incorrect its all rather new to me! If someone can give me a little help or point me in the right direction, I'm struggling to piece it together from the API docs.

You can easily achieve this with the animation nodes add-on for blender (it's basically like coding but with nodes)
There's even a tutorial on YouTube for exactly what you are looking for!
:)


Duplication following a path not rendering I have two sets of object duplicated along a path (speed checkbox unchecked) and they are not rendering (though they used to do before) either in viewport or in real render.

It's driving me crazy. What I've checked:
— Little camera in outliner selected
— Layers are selected in the render
— Visibility to camera not unchecked in object
— Material visible (works when not following a path)
And a few other techniques seen on the web.

Can someone please have a look at it?
Here is the link to the file

Thank you so so soooo much.

You need to make the duplicates real. Go to Object > Apply > Make Duplicates Real (...or Shift+Ctrl+A)


Material isn't showing in viewport or render I want a mirror sphere for a cool animation or something. I made a new texture using Glossy BSDF with 0.00 Roughness and the Preview for the material is perfect. The sphere however in the view port and rendered image is only reflecting the point light and not the environment. Any fix?

I think you are doing this in eevee and for eevee you need to add Light probes for the reflections of the surrounding things so just press shift + a > Light probes > reflection cubemap
add this on sphere and then go to indirect lighting menu in properties panel and bake the cubemap

and for more info on light probes just go to youtube and search for lightprobes and you will get tons of tutorials on it


How does one unlink multiple objects? If i have 10 linked (instanced) objects, how do i make 5 of them local (non-instanced)...

The result would be two sets of 5 objects. Each set of 5 would be linked respectively.

I'm coming from 3ds max so my terminology might be off.

If you are using 2.79 you select the objects and hit U this will bring a menu for unlinking objects with options like object, data, animation, materials etc. If you are using 2.8 you can find under the menu "Object" in 3D view


Rotating UV with precision I keep running into a problem: How can I rotate an UV island by exactly 90 or 180 degrees? The same applies for scaling it to double in size, etc.

With the part of the UV map selected that you want to rotate, hit R to enter rotation mode, then type the number of degrees with the numpad, for example 90 to rotate it 90°. Then hit Enter or Return to apply it, or just left click.

You can also scale the selection with S and then entering a numerical value, for example 2 to make it twice as large, or .5 to make it half the size.

You can also move the selection along the X or Y axis by hitting G to grab it, then constraining it to the X or Y axis with X or Y, then entering the number of units you want it to move.

This also works in the 3D viewport. If you look at the bottom of the current viewport while doing a resize, scale, or movement operation, you can see the values you have entered in the bar beneath the viewport.


Cycles imported whiskey glass not transparant I've just imported a whiskey glass from a file on Blendswap. When rendering it it just works fine, and looks like glass. When I import it to another scene, it's black untransparant glass? It's been a while since I've been "Blender-ing" so my Cycles experience isn't enough to know where the problem lies... Anyone with a lot of Cycles experience wanna take a look at it?

Just increase the number of total bounces in the scene (the other values are subdivisions of this main values).


In the viewport I see the back part of the model instead of the front I wanted to weight paint the grass and when I noticed I couldn't paint I switched to viewport and saw this. Render still looks fine. Not working in 2.83 either, hoping I just accidentally activated some stupid setting. Recalculating and flipping normals didn't work either
EDIT: my description was very vague so here we go again, my problem is that I see the back part of the model instead of the front (if that makes sense).

[FIX as of jan 2021] after having this problem again I was able to pinpoint the Problem to be only in orthogrraphic view, the fix for this was then changing the clip end, I've also read that changing the clip start can also fix this
[FIX as of 2020] I have no clue why but here's how I fixed this.

Go into Material preview (press z in the viewport)
Press the Arrow in the top right corner and activated these two settings

Deactivate them again and it worked for me. The problem was probably just that the viewport had an error and just needed to update the lighting, which is what this did. Hope this helps anyone in the future


why do i get a deformed mesh in weight paint mode and object mode but in Edit mode, the mesh appears the way it should? I came a long way modelling this character until i reached the weight painting step. In edit mode, my mesh seems okay though when i swich to weight paint mode or object mode, it gets deformed along the thighs...perhaps i could have grabbed some vertices unknowingly bt how to i get them back to their original position? I tried deleting the vertices assigned to the thigh-bone but still the overall result is the same..Please help.

I have had a problem like this before. If you have not been able to fall X the mesh by deleting the weight groups then try the following. 1.Go into edit mode. 2. Select all the mesh 3. Press "Shift"+"d" to duplicate the mesh 4. Press "p" and separate mesh by selection.
This will leave you with a new undeformed mesh as a separate object. And the original mesh if you decide to come back to it.


Why can I not select vertices located behind others? When I use B only the front vertex is selected and not the one behind as well. I have tried turning on and off the Limit Selection to Visible and there is no change at all. I have tried all the tricks people have suggested and its still not working.

I appreciate any help.

Instead of moving the vertices or just changing the view you can change to Wireframe view with the Z button (by default). Then you can select all vertices hidden by faces, edges or other vertices. I use the Z key a lot since sometimes two vertices are in the exact same position.


What image file do I use for dynamic text? I've had a lot of problems with dynamic texts and I've been looking for a solution. I've just been wondering, for dynamic texts in the BGE, can I use .png files or not? What would I use? Thanks!

There are two methods to show dynamic text with the BGE.

Textobjects

They are easy to setup. You add the textobject, set the text in edit mode and start the game. Changing the text in game can be done via setting the attribute "text" in Python:

import bge
textObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
textObject.text = "my new text"

or if configured by setting a property called "Text":

The faces of the resulting object consists of several quads. The texture is rendered from an font while the game is running. You do no have access to the quads nor the textures.

Bitmaptext

This was the method before introducing the text objects (see above). A bitmap text object is a plain plane object.

You need a specific material setting Game Settings/enable Text:

Addional you need a special image as texture. It has meta informations regarding each single character encoded in the top line of the texture.

These data should never ever be changed. This also means you need an image format with lossless data compression such as .png or .tga (never jpg).

The UV mapping of the quad should fit the first character in the texture which is an @ character. This is the maximal bounding of an character. The BGE will derive the size of all other characters from this setting.

You can generate such textures with a tool called "FTBlender" from fonts of your OS. Alternative you can search the internet for bitmap text images.

This method allows you to manipulate the image of each single letter as long as you leave the metadata unchanged. This way you can get very artistic and colored characters.

I hope it helps

PS: here is a sample image- baloon.png:


Rip and scale Blender I have a problem. I need to rip and scale all of them. It suppose to be like this.

But I can't do that with the last one. It becomes no longer symmetrical.

You have probably activated Proportional Editing. Hitting O should revert the behaviour.


How can i merge these two meshes without non manifold edges? I am trying to merge these two patterns into one, for a ring project i am working on, but whenever I merge them, i end up with tons of non manifold edges. When i merge them to a seperate object and then merge them, it occasionally works. I have tried recalculating the normals first but it just doesn't seem to work. Does anybody have a short answer as of why, or a quick workaround for merging two objects without ending up with non manifold edges? I use Booltron union to merge them normally, and it works for 99% of my other projects without issues.
Any help appreciated.
Thank you.

There are several ways you can go about doing this. If the two patterns must be part of one mesh for your purposes, the use the second two options, but if they don't need to be merged into one, then first option will probably work better in the long run and is nondestructive.
Parenting the Meshes
First, if you don't need the objects to actually be a part of the same mesh, you can parent one to the other. This will allow them to be transformed, keyframed, and animated as one object, but won't cause the problems of non-manifold geometry. This approach may also make texturing easier. You can parent them by selecting one mesh, hold shift and select the other. Then press ctrl+P and set parent to object.
Merge and Manual Editing
If the objects need to be part of one mesh, you can join them by selecting one mesh, hold shift and select the other. Then press ⌘+J to join the meshes. Once complete, you can go into Edit mode, ensure you have Vertex Select enables, and go to Select > Select All by Trait > Non Manifold. This will identify any Non Manifold geometry in you mesh and you may be able to fix it by hand.
Merge and Remeshing
You can also try remeshing the object once merged. Go to the Sculpting window and locate the Remesh option near the top. You can adjust the size of the new faces from here (based on Voxel Size). The smaller the Voxel Size, the more detailed the new mesh will be, but it will also take longer and create and object with many more vertices. This approach may also cause unwanted geometry between the two objects.
As mentioned previously, the first approach will most likely yield the most desirable results.


Selections in texture paint mode Is there a way to paint with selections?  I don't see any features with rectangle, circle or lasso tool selection in texture paint mode, so I guess there is an alternative. Is it possible though?

Select what you want in edit mode, then switch to texture paint mode and enable this little button.


Move camera after ctrl alt Numpad 0 I've seen tutorials about setting the camera view with ctrl alt Numpad 0 but many times, after setting the camera and while still in Camera Set View mode some are still able to adjust the camera position. If i click MB it gets me out of Camera Set View mode. How do i do that?
thanks

One option is to select the camera (you will see the yellow selection on the border) and use G  to move or R  to rotate the camera.
another option is to lock the camera view by pressing N  on the viewport to open the sidebar> View > Lock Camera to view


how to clear parent inverse without actually moving the object In Blender, a parent-child relationship stores the relationship between the 2 objects created when parenting.

This is normally OK, but in some cases its useful to have a reset loc/rot/scale, align the child exactly with its parent.

I need to reset those extra matrices in blender object - I have an object that is perfectly aligned with it's parent, but the euler rotations values say something very different. I need a script to have this object's rotation at 0,0,0 (or, potentially other value, which expresses the real rotation offset to it's parent)

You can reset the parent inverse matrix, then apply the relationship between the original matrix and the parents onto the child object.

This script assumes you have the child selected.

import bpy
ob = bpy.context.object

# Store a copy of the objects final transformation
# so we can read from it later.
ob_matrix_orig = ob.matrix_world.copy()

# Reset parent inverse matrix.
# (relationship created when parenting)
ob.matrix_parent_inverse.identity()

# Re-apply the difference between parent/child
# (this writes directly into the loc/scale/rot) via a matrix.
ob.matrix_basis = ob.parent.matrix_world.inverted() @ ob_matrix_orig

Note, if the child has any shearing because of rotation and the parents non-uniform scaling, that will be removed, since loc/scale/rot can't represent shearing.


There is no button in image (compositing). Button called mist When I rendered animation (450 frames), I would like to composite it and add mist.
I closed Blender and than reopened it again. But when I go to the compositing and add image node with image in it, I didn't see mist button.
What can I do? I rendered animation for 4 days, so re-rendering isn't my option.

Short answer. Re-rendering is your only option.
PNG will not save the mist pass, or any other passes. It will only save color and alpha by default.
If you need to save multiple layers use OpenEXR multilayer.

When you import the rendered image back it will have the corresponding sockets for the layers you saved.


Blender will not start on Ubuntu 16.04 To preface, I have used Blender downloaded from blender.org on my setup quite well for a while now. I have installed it in /opt within the home location to steer around superuser constraints. OK.

Last night, I downloaded one of the recent 2.8 test builds and while figuring out the interface Blender completely locked up. Not only did Blender lock up, the computer locked up, too. There was no signs of the CPU taking on any additional stress. Fans not spinning up or anything like that.

After a hard reset, the computer runs fine, but Blender will no longer start. This includes the 2.79 build that's installed. No errors, Taskmanager listing, no response. Attempting to uninstall Blender gives errors that all the files are write-locked. After going into superuser levels, I could get it removed and reinstalled, but no improvements.

In short, I don't know how I broke it but I'm hoping someone has advice to help me get this working again.

Thanks all!

Alrighty! Looks like somewhere the amdgpu-pro drivers were breaking. I uninstalled them, ran 'apt-get autoremove' then rebooted the system. Blender's working again on the built-in drivers.


Passive rigid body physics not working with screw modifier I'm making a rolling ball animation where the ball will roll around a set of pipes, planes and other objects. I created a spring using the screw modifier and then made a second slightly smaller spring inside it to create a track like effect for my ball to roll on.
When I add the passive object to them, they still will not hold up my ball. The ball falls straight through them.

You need to change the Source and the Shape of the rigid body collisions.
In the physics tab of the properties panel, change the Source from "Deform" to "Final".
Only "Final" takes the modifiers in to consideration, hence your trouble.

The other setting you need to change is the rigid body collision Shape, set it to "Mesh".


Box with double bevel edges Im trying to model the box of the amp shown. I bevel the edges of the box

When I try to cut the hole, I bevel again the edges to get the round curve marked as "painfull zone". And no way to get a decent result.

When I smooth the box, geometry gets ugly. Tried applying some faces flat, but never get the correct result.

Here is my mesh:

Can somebody point me the right way to get the correct result?

Thank you so much in advance.

Try to keep your topology as quads. Using Ngons is only going to give you trouble when you want to subdivide.

Start with a cube.

Inset the top face.

Extrude the center face and bring it down on the Z axis to get the basic shape of the box.

Select the outer loop edge (press and hold Alt and Right Click with the mouse) and bevel it (CtrlB)

Do the same with the inner edge loop.

Then select the inner edges and bevel them as well.


What is the purpose of apply scale option? I know why we have to apply scale but what purpose does it serve ? Why not keep object scale to always 1  ?
Thank you.

Scaling in object mode can be used for animation and other purposes. Sometimes you might change it by mistake instead of changing it in edit mode, so that's the purpose of applying scale.


Python - Render object with transparent background I want to render an object with transparent background with blender-python script, but I don't know how to get the transparent background.

My script is:

context = bpy.context
bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.render.filepath = 'my_render.png'
bpy.ops.render.render("EXEC_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

Thanks

You need to enable the Transparent option that you would normally activate in the Film panel which can be found in the Render tab, if you where using the GUI.

bpy.context.scene.render.film_transparent = True

Also make sure that the file format stores the alpha channel.

bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.color_mode = 'RGBA'


Solidify modifier material Index offset not working So I read in the blender manual and watched some tutorials where it is explained that the material index offset is used to choose a different material for the new geometry. Alright this is the screen shot and what I'm trying to do is making a spaceship that glows from the inside and I cannot figure out how to change the inside color with solidify modifier, and I'm new to blender so sorry if this question is a stupid one.

Here is the screen shot:

No stupid question. The answer to it is just obvious, if you know it. I struggled with it myself.  :)

Just add another material to your object. In your screenshot it's not visible, if you did this already. The index for Material Index Offset inside your Solidify modifier points to the position of your material in the material list.

So, if you leave Material Index Offset at 0, the newly generated faces will use the same material as the original object - the topmost material in your list. Set it to 1, and all original faces will use original material, while all new faces will use the next material in your list. Same goes for the rim - give it an own material as needed.


Windshield Wiper Over An Airplane's Curved Windshield so I'm running into a small problem when trying to make the wiper move along the glass, but this one is curved. The windshield is pretty curved and the wiper doesn't really need a lot of detail (picture 1) because it is a big airplane.

But I think it would look nice that the wiper moved along the curved windshield. Also I cannot bend the wiper because the curvature of the glass is uneven, so the wiper gets stuck inside the glass in some parts.

Is there a way I can achieve this movement without modifying the wiper too much? Thanks :)

You can try bend Wiper by curve object and curve object shrinkwrap on Glass.
It depence on what wiper vertices you want to bend you can limited it by Vertex Group.

Quick example is not perfect "wiper" rotates on its Z axis. I will have to check it later.

Or Bendi Bones could work in similar way as well.

Add-on Wiper
for 2.79 (Luca Rood) https://gumroad.com/l/wiper


Unable to edit the meshes for shape keys Unable to edit any meshes when applying a shape key. Any sort of transformation is does not show any when I use the value slide the only thing which transforms is the scale . I've tried to follow tutorials but the mesh never changes for me when I am in edit mode and this only happens when I start using the Shape keys


Undo and redo not working after changing the hotkey I changed the undo and redo hotkeys from Ctrl+Z and Shift+Ctrl+Z to F1 and F2, and now they are not even working and I have checked multiple times in keymap to make sure the hotkeys are properly set. But still F1 and F2 don't work for undo and redo.

Well, I found out that that F1 key was already attached to "View Online Manual" and so i had to remove it first, which i did and it fixed the undo and simultaneously the f2/redo also worked ( since before there was nothing to redo).


Cycles - No compatible GPUs Blender 2.83
Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU(s): E5-2690 (2)
64GB RAM
GeForce GTX Titan Black
Nvidia Driver: 446.14

Any suggestions why I get the "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing" message when I chose CUDA for cycles?
The Titan Black is on the list (Compute 3.5).
Thanks in advance for any help.

In this other thread there is a possible explanation. I have the same problem and I'm trying to fix it. Apparently it's because blender does not support older GPU cards arquitecture.
no compatible gpus found for path tracing


Cycles render artifacts I have 2 surfaces moving away from each other, and when I render on the view panel I have some strange artifacts where the light is more strong (I don't care about it).
But the real issue is when I render to PNG I have a munch of artifacts, like the object is deforming.

I'm new to Blender and to the 3D animation, so if you need any more information just ask it.

Tks for your time.

Render Image Editor

Render to PNG

In the first image it seems like there is not enough samples and the light areas are really noisy.

In the second image it seems there are blurry spots all over the render, if I understand it correctly, that might be the result of very strong denoising with not enough samples.

My recommendation would be to try increasing the number of samples as well as adjusting the denoising settings for it not to be so strong if needed.


Why does my object change it appearance when moving camera I made a bookshelf and used 3 meshes for different books. The other two are looking fine though and i all seamed them the same way and made them out of cubes.

This one blue book though keeps acting weird. Each time i move the camera it doesnt show the front of the mesh.
What did i possibly do wrong here?

The normals are inverted and backface culling is enabled.

Recalculate the normal by going into edit mode Tab and pressing Ctrl+N.


Cannot insert keyframes; incomplete "Insert Keyframes" menu When I press I in the Action Editor (with a bone selected in Pose Mode and no keying set selected), the Insert Keyframes menu that appears does not contain all of the normal options like Location, Rotation, Scale, LocRot, etc. Instead it only contains 3 options: All Channels, Only Selected Channels, and In Active Groups. Selecting any of these options yields no results (not even an error message) other than the file size increasing slightly.

In the screenshot below, I've adjusted the rotation and scale of a bone and attempted to add a keyframe to the current action to illustrate what I'm talking about:

I've tried changing the keying set to rotation and scale but the results were exactly the same.

As a bonus, it would be nice if I could figure out what exactly was happening that increased the file's size when I clicked on those three options so that I can undo it!

I'm fairly new to Blender, but I've been able to animate a few characters now without running into this issue before. I'm not sure what I did differently this time, but hopefully I can avoid whatever mistake I made in the future!

I'm not sure about the file size but that is the correct menu for the dope sheet editor. For the full menu press "i" over the 3d view instead.


Where are the default matcap files located? Is there a directory or path that you need to follow to access the folder with all of Blender's default matcaps in? If so then is it possible throw in new matcaps?

I'm using Windows 10.

You can't add matcaps in blender 2.79 or lower, as in the release notes of Blender 2.66
(March 6th, 2013) it read:

Currently a set of 24 (GPL licensed) Matcaps have been compiled into Blender.
[...]
Loading own matcap image files will be added later. That needs design and code work to get it stable and memory-friendly.

6 June 2018: This option has been added to the development version of Blender 2.8 as shown in this youtube preview by the Blender Developers


Grainy Camera Filter Style Low poly works can look good with grainy rendering, but turning down the samples makes the shadows looks horrible.  How do I create a grainy effect to my render? It can be in blender or post processing (in photoshop). See work below:

I want that type of effect and a solution in blender cycles.

These effects are generally achieved in post production, they are mostly render engine independent, so they should work both for Cycles or any other engine without requiring that you  re-rendering you image. You can easily tweak the effects in a flexible non destructive way without ruining your work or having to wait for a long time.

These are done through compositing, check the Blender Manual about it.
You probably want to look into the Distort type of nodes or Filter nodes.

If non satisfy your particular needs perhaps look into making it in an image editing software like GIMP or Photoshop


Conflicting faces rendering as black In my blend file here, I'm trying to write a shader that uses a gradient to mix between transparency and the surface material.
So far, I've managed that. But when transparent, the object shows black faces in some areas, and only from certain angles.

It is important to note that these are not gradually black, or grey, faces. They are jet black and unshaded. This model was ripped via RenderDoc and was imported as a CSV.

Removing doubles does work, but it massively deteriorates my mesh, so unless I can select doubles, it's not an option.
It's nothing to do with the shaders themselves - setting the mesh to be exclusively a transparent shader still shows it.
Flipping/Recalculating normals has absolutely no effect.
Clearing custom split normal data does not have any effect.

I can only conclude that it's an issue with Z-Fighting.
Can anyone tell me how to absolve this? Or at least how to circumvent this and use a different method for gradually revealing / masking an object?

It's really easy to solve. There are just not enough transparency bounces in your settings.

Just crank up the max. number of Transparency Bounces to say 18 and the problem is gone. EDIT: 18 works for this view. From an other viewing angle you probably need a lot more. This might result in bad render times...

The problem occurs at places, where the ray has to bounce more. Because the max. number of bounces is to low, it draws an black pixel.

Transparency set to 18 or higher solves the issue


Downloaded Model Is Purple - Image Texturing So I downloaded a model from a website and when I imported it to blender it came out as purple. I do know that this means that Blender is telling me that something is missing but because it is a downloaded model I can't seem to figure it out. I also downloaded the images, but there are so many textures and bump-based images that it gets complicated. Nonetheless, I could just scratch it all and start making the textures and images myself, but I just want to know if there is a shortcut. Here is the image of the downloaded model:

And here is a link to the download page (it's free): https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/character/woman/unity-digital-human-hs015

As Jachym Michal already mentioned, the Blender-friendly textures are in HS015.fbm.zip. Just extract them into a folder. In Blender, use the menu entry File → External Data → Find Missing Files to get the correct path.
After this, you need to fix the transparency, and the Roughness and Specular values. They are a bit messed up.

Yes, the model comes with Shapekeys :-)
Transparency
The materials in the FBX file use the base (diffuse) color for the Alpha slot. That's wrong. The images have an Alpha mask. So just remove the wrong Image Texture node and plug in the Alpha output from the Image Texture into the Alpha slot of the Principled BSDF node.
In the Material Properties > Settings set Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed.
You need to do this for the cloth, the body, the eyes, the hair, the eyelashes, the tear line, the eye's fake AO (CC_Base_EyeOcclusion). Each eye has its own material slot.
Roughness and Specular
for most materials you can go with the default Specular value of 0.5 and adjust the Roughness value

use a low Roughness value 0.1 and default Specular value 0.5 for the eyes and tear line to give them a reflection
a little more Roughness 0.3 to 0.4 for teeth and the wet tongue for reflection
increase the Specular value for the hair a little (0.15) so there is some sheen in the light
for the skin, you can use the "MetallicAlpha" and "SpecMask" from the Textures.zip file and control with them the Roughness value. This way the nose holes are not shiny but black. Note: Use the Alpha output from the "MetallicAlpha" images. A Specular value of 0.3-0.4 is fine.

Subsurface Scattering
use a little for the skin to make it look more realistic and more "skinny". For testing, I use the "SSS" mask from Textures.zip. But I think you can use a plain color in Eevee. The body below the neck uses a plain SSS color, the arms are unchanged and have no SSS and no roughness (see the first image).


I made a lot of windows with the vertical split option I made many vertical splits when I was trying to join them. To collapse them I joined the split over the original copy. Is there a way for me to get back to the original window?

Option 1 (without closing your file)

On the Workspace bar click on + to add a new workspace
Optional: delete the old one

Option 2

Save File and close Blender
Than open Blender again
Click top left on File > Open
In the pop-up screen click top right on the Gear Icon
Uncheck Load UI (user interface)
Select your File to Open


Rendering an Image with a Specific Size I want to render an image that is, for example, 170 px by 180 px. How can this be done in blender? I'm using the cycles render. Is the process any different for an animation?

You can specify the render size in the dimensions section on the render panel just as you do for any other image rendering. To get the full resolution of the final image, also make sure that the Percentage scale for render resolution slider is set to 100%.

This setting is also for animations, and behaves exactly the same way.


Model of 2 joined mirrored objects is missing faces when importing into Unity? I am struggling here trying to create models for my Unity game in blender and finally succeeded creating a polygon shape by slicing off the corner of half a cube using a boolean modifier, then doing shift-D to duplicate the object, then mirror it across the x axis and join the 2 objects.

The 2 joined objects have slightly different colors for some reason but here is the object (with all its faces as it should be) in blender:

When I drag the .blend file into Unity it shows up however the side that is the mirrored object is missing some of its faces. This is a problem  -

Why is this happening? Can I fix this?

This sort of issues happens when the mirror modifier has the clipping option turned off and is not merging overlapping vertices.
the different color on those faces indicate that those faces are flipped.
it's a bit tricky to detect hidden geometry but your mesh looks like it's made of 12 faces when at the top you can see there are 14 (2 hidden inside the mesh).

delete the internal faces : turn on wireframe view mode to see them and dissolve them.
remove the doubles vertices : select all the geometry ,press  W and select remove doubles.
recalculate the normals : shortcut ctrlN


Liquid Dissolve Effect from Akira I am trying to recreate the effect in the below GIF, where blobs rise up off a surface. I've tried multiple approaches, but can't seem to find a solution. My main hope for the solution is that it be highly procedural, i.e could be applied to any kind of mesh object, and the number and density of blobs could be procedurally controlled.

1st Approach: Metaballs

The way Metaballs blend together is promising, and I think they would work well if their max influence could be 10x larger. Fiddling with all the settings didn't give me anything nearly long enough.

2nd Approach: Cast Modifier

The cast modifier offers a nice, procedural way of deforming a mesh to something spherical, but implementing this approach on a large scale seems tedious.

I'm open to solutions that use animation nodes or sverchock.

Use Cycles/Experimental option
Add the Subdiv Modifier with Adaptive option to your object
Have fun with Nodes and displacement (use the Displacement only mode in the material option)

Here animating the 3 value nodes controlling respectively the color ramp, voronoi blob and noise spike textures.


Scroll wheel zoom is unmanageble There seems to be no way to limit the speed of the zoom using the scroll wheel.  It behaved better after selecting 'auto depth' but after a restart even that had no effect.  The zoom function is a major navigational aspect and needs to be more refined.  Is there some setting or feature I'm missing here?

Had the same issue recently on Windows. I usually use Linux, but opened a file I'd been working on in Windows, and the scroll wheel zoom was WAY OFF!

Basically, with the panel in focus, hit the "Home" key. Found this answer HERE.


What is this dashed box and how can I turn it off? I was just getting back into using Blender a few days ago and I must have hit a couple of buttons. But now I cannot get these dashed lines to go away. Does anybody know how I can make them go away?

It looks like you pressed ShiftT which enables texture space display and translates/grabs it.

You can disable Texture space display in Properties > Object > Display:

In case you accidentally translated it, you may want to set it back to 0,0,0 in Properties > Object data > Texture space and re-enable Auto texture space:


Can Cycles use multiple UV layers? I'm trying to match Cycles to a Blender-Internal material setup and I didn't see a way for cycles to have an image reference more then one UV map.

Is it possible to have a node setup with 2 image textures, each using a different mesh UVLayer?

Yes, the different UVMaps can be selected by an attribute node and plugged into the vector input of an image texture node as well as into another image texture node vector input holding an alpha mask of the image referenced from the first texture node. This way multiple textures (and UVMaps) can be mixed for a single material output.

This technique is demonstrated in this tutorial.


Why does a bump/normal map change the look of a plane to which they're applied to, even if the plane only has 1 normal? From my understanding, a normal map makes the existing normals on a mesh to change the direction they point in, to fake the illusion of grooves/depth/scratches,etc. So the more polygons you have = more normals = the better the effect from the normal map
A bump map from my understanding takes the normals on a mesh and scale them, unlike normal maps which can only change the direction the normals point in
Yet I noted that when I did the below to create a procedural bump map,

A bumpy effect is created. How is this possible? There is only one normal on this plane so how do I get a bumpy effect all throughout the plane? (I also noted that after removing the bump map node from Principled BSDF, the normal of the plane flipped directions
And when I tried the below to create a procedural normal map,

Sure, no longer is there a bump effect, but a pattern-like color effect is present somehow
My question is, how is that in both these cases, bump and normal maps, maps that only affect the scale/direction of your normal, create a drastic bumpy effect/pattern-color effect on a mesh with only one single normal?

A normal can be thought of as the direction a face is pointing.  The face (usually) has one normal, it's just a vector pointing into space going outwards from the face.  For our purposes here, it defines the average angle of reflection of light rays.
When you modify it with a Normal Map, you're giving it additional instructions on how to handle light across the face.  For every evaluated pixel, the light is taking the face normal and your Normal Map information into account.
So it's not that it is creating more normals.  There is only one, with a little math being done for every pixel sampled.  Very easy for your processor/gpu.
From Wikipedia

To calculate the Lambertian (diffuse) lighting of a surface, the unit
vector from the shading point to the light source is dotted with the
unit vector normal to that surface, and the result is the intensity of
the light on that surface. Imagine a polygonal model of a sphere - you
can only approximate the shape of the surface. By using a 3-channel
bitmap textured across the model, more detailed normal vector
information can be encoded. Each channel in the bitmap corresponds to
a spatial dimension (X, Y and Z). This adds much more detail to the
surface of a model, especially in conjunction with advanced lighting
techniques.


How can I shift or move an entire animation to a different location? There is likely a very simple solution to this, but searching through the forum yields nothing.

I've create an animation with a very simple object (no rigging or bones). The location in 3D space where I started working with the object is far away from the world origin and I need to move it to that world origin in order to export it properly to UE4.

The obvious problem that I have is that each of my keyframes currently has a x,y,z keyframe, so if I just move the object, it's going to snap or jump back to its old location as soon as I press play.

So essentially, I want to move the object and all xyz points in one go. Is this possible?

To shift/move an animated object's origin point to any world location -

Blend file included which is set up  ready to play with.

There are two ways to move the object.  The first (for Newbies) won't adjust it's origin point but will allow you to move the object around and keep it's animations.

Make sure the timeline cursor is at frame 1.  ( CTL-SH-Down arrow)

Set the object's origin point to geometry or center of mass. (press T)

Set the cursor to that. (SH-S--> cursor to selected)

Add an Empty.  It should appear at the same point in your object.

Parent the object to the Empty.

Drag the object around by that empty. (use it as a handle)
It will animate from that new location.

-==================-

The 2nd method which does adjust the Location slots independantly of the keyframes -

This is done one axis at a time, X, Y, or Z.

Select the object.

Get into the Graph editor and organise a 3D window, e.g. at top right.  You'll need this to see what you're doing.

In the header strips at extreme left only your object should be seen.  Either way make sure to lock out (padlock) all other objects or active sections that are showing.  Leave the one to adjust unlocked.

It's also a good idea to only have your desired section/object highlited in the headers at left.
There are also 'eye' switches in the headers which will rid yourself of unwanted clutter.

Lock out (padlock) all but the axis you're about to adjust.
Note it's colour in the header.  This will also be the colour of it's graph line in the editor in the center window.

Press A to select all.  (only that object and axis keyframes will be highlited)

Press GY to grab the graph line and move it with the mouse (no buttons) to slide the line up/down.
You'll see the object also moving in the 3D view.  Take it to the center in that axis only.
Zooming up close both in the 3D view and graph editor will make it easier for fine adjustments.

When positioned, press a mouse button or keyboard key.  Watch it - there's a lot of hotkeys!

Do the same for the remaining axis (plural) that are involved with the animations.

The model will be sitting at your desired world location with animations intact and now orientated from that
location.  (0,0,0?)

Whether this works for export to external applications is a matter of experimentation.  I'm unable to investigate this but at least the export should have it's location set at 0,0,0 or close to it.


Why is one bone distorting my mesh? Only one vertex group? Ok, Just following this verbatim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7p5TIFFC0E&list=PL3GeP3YLZn5jOiHM8Js1_S0p_5HeS7TbY&index=1

And I have no idea why I have my head bone (deleted all face bones to make sure that wasn't problem) distorting the vertices of my head mesh when posed.

This is when normal (no pose and no distortion):

As you can see, when the head tiltes the nose and jaw get "dragged" out. Why is this? I went to vertex groups and deleted all the bones from the head except the big head block. Here is the weight paint

What am I doing wrong here?

I assume the OP has already done manually what the OP needs to do.
You might consider deleting all groups and parent again ... to Single Bone which was previously selected.  Consult a Tutorial Video, one or more.  I am trying to avoid writing a tutorial.

We assume rigid mechanical motion .. so only one bone should have influence.  What follows is a short explanation.  Edit Mode Show Weights is selected.  The bones are outside the mesh only for visibility and discussion purposes. Bones are typically near the mesh.

Below preparing to delete mistake groups.

When deleting you can delete one by one. You can also lock (the lock symbol in vertex groups) and then delete  all unlocked groups from the menu. Tutorial Slippery Slop ... I mean Slope.

Image Below a mistake needs to be corrected,

Correct bone group appears.  Mistake bone groups were deleted.

Image below.
All vertices were selected in edit and the weight 1.0 assigned in the Vertex Groups Panel by clicking the button [Assign]

There are videos on famous video websites that show many of the bone weighting features.  It serves you best to see those because its more entertaining for you and the features are quite numerous so video may be the best format.  There are multiple ways to get something done in Blender.  Single Bone Parent is possible.  Please consult a video. Scripts were not discussed.


How do I make grass match the base terrain? I have grass on my terrain.

The terrain is textured by a single Image texture which is simply dropped onto the terrain.
The grass is created using a hair particle system.
How do I make the grass take on the colour of the terrain below it? For example, where the terrain is white I'd like the grass to be white, where the terrain is green I'd like the grass to be green, etc.
Below is my terrain shader setup. As you see it's as simple as it gets.

Copy the shader you used for your terrain onto your grass, but use "object" texture mode instead
Final result:

Terrain shader:

Grass shader:

While you could choose to apply the terrain texture directly, I chose to multiply the original grass texture with the terrain texture. This way, the grass retained it's colour but would be lighter where the terrain is lighter and darker where the terrain is darker, as seen in the image above.
The best way to experiment is to make a plane and use your grass shader on the plane to check it matches up with your terrain. I had to tweak the texture coordinates quite a bit.
Before:

After:


FBX Blender Export to Unity - Textures will not stay with model (using blender render or cycles render) I've seen this issue come up several times in multiple forums and there doesn't appear to be a clear way to resolve (for my situation).

My Goal: Export the model (above) I created in blender with material to Unity for testing. Once the model is in Unity, I should be able to 'Extract Textures' on the model so Unity automatically maps the textures. Note: I'm very much a beginner, especially when it comes to this exporting exercise.
Summary of General Issues: I've attempted many FBX exports, tweaking properties each time and using both the cycles render and blender render. For some reason the model doesn't appear to be able to bake the textures correctly, so that when I import to unity I can simply 'Extract Textures...'
Other Background detail: Running Blender 2.79b (haven't learned 2.8 well enough yet :)), I have my model with one mesh and one material. I've already UV unwrapped the mesh, and the model looks great in the 3D view.
1st attempt to resolve - I've clicked 'File -> Export -> FBX' from blender, and I've switch the 'Path mode' to 'Copy' and select the 'Embed Textures in FBX binary file...' I've attempted this a few times and this seems to do nothing. I also did attempt this in 2.8, and no effect.
2nd attempt - I then read in a separate article that texture data does not simply stay with your model (despite the above which appeared to work for other users), and you need to be able to 'Bake' your textures. I started with cycles render, and every time I clicked 'Bake', my UV image disappeared and I saw a black silhouette replace the original image. I then had to reload the image and tweak some of the settings. The image appears to bake. However, after attempting to import to unity, no texture appears to have come with the object (as the option is still greyed out to 'Extract Textures' in Unity).

3rd attempt - Reading a separate thread, cycles render may not be the way to go. I read that baking only really succeeds with blender render, however after ensuring I had my UV Image, having only 1 model, maintaining only 1 material, and attempting to tweak the baking settings, the UV image disappears, and the material doesn't appear to bake.

4th attempt - I also read that ticking the 'selected to active' box was important, however when I check that box, the UV image disappears again, and this time I have a 'No Object or images found to bake to' error.

Several attempts later - I've attempted tweaking nodes and ensuring the diffuse shader is enabled. I added a bright light into blender to ensure the baking could occur as I've read that could cause the silhouette.
Does anyone know and can clearly explain to me how to proceed accomplishing the goal above? I feel close, just banging my head up against blender and reading the documentation, and I feel like I must be missing something silly.

Figured it out - The link from above got me about 75% of the way there. For some reason the texture was never showing after baking. Through a lot of trial and error, I found out I had to adjust the 'Shading' settings under the 'Material' property. For some reason, by clicking the box for 'Shadeless', the texture appeared. I exported using the steps explained in attempt #1 above, and then the 'Extract Textures' button was no longer greyed out in Unity! –


How do i change the grid floor? I'm making a small object and it is bit difficult to see what i'm doing.

Usally i just open the N-panel and change it under Display, but can't find that option in the new Blender 3.0 Beta.

I want to make the grid floor smaller.

I want to change the scale to 0.1


Weird shadows in render view only Good evening,

i have got weird shadows on my mesh. No matter what lighting i've got - problem is still there.

Clearly it has something to do with topology. But the topology is pretty good so it's strange..

It is possible to fix them in static character's posture, but when i animate the character - problem reappear since geometry changes again in those problematic places.

What's the magic button to fix all the problems? :D

Things i've tried:
* Recalculate normals
* Make planar faces
* Edge split modifier
* Remove doubles

Blend file: (somewhy doesn't show up well as it used to before)

Your model is huge, and that is causing lots of problems.

Specifically for those shadows Ambient Occlusion is to blame. The model is so huge that even with the insane values you have for ambient occlusion, it only affects small creases in the model, but with great intensity. If you disable ambient occlusion however you get another issue: everything is dark.

The way you have set up your background node does not affect your model, so no environment light exists. You could either remove the camera ray constraint from the world texture, use a nice neutral grey for background and use the compositor to set up a background color, or keep it and add some lights to your scene.

However adding lights does nothing, unless you crank up the intensity to hundreds of thousands, another issue with the size of your model.

I'd say just resize your model to a more manageable size (something like a real human): then both AO and lights will work as expected with sane values.


How do I expand the Preview or Render range in the VSE? I'm new to Blender and I want to know how to expand the Preview or Render range in the VSE?

You can set the Preview or Render range by using these functions in the View menu:

Or use these values in the Timeline header:

The button with the alarm clock will let you switch between Preview and Render range values.


How to render depth or surface Normal maps that properly reflect details of 3D shapes while respecting the nature of materials (transparency/glass)? I am trying to render depth maps and surface Normal maps of different 3D shapes using Cycles. What I care about the most is how much of the details of the 3D shapes are captured in the depth maps or surface Normals.
To obtain surface Normals I first do

bpy.context.scene.render.layers["RenderLayer"].use_pass_normal = True

or just click on Normal in RenderLayer settings and then render Normals.

I noticed that Blender's internal renderer is able to capture the details quite well as shown below (not for depth maps though). By details I mean the transparent materials such as glass are not affecting the Normals which is what I want.

However, a problem with the internal renderer is that the surface Normals depend on the camera angle which is not what I want. Even if there is a way to get camera view invariant surface Normal maps using Blender's internal rendering, this is still not going to be what I want due to some technical reasons. Here's the results:

Using Blender's internal renderer:

However, when I switch to Cycles I get the following rendering: here, although the surface Normals are invariant to the camera angle.

Although the Cycles materials also have properties such as transparency, the renderings do not capture any of the details that I am interested in. This is also the case when rendering depth maps as shown below.

RGB rendering using Cycles. As can be seen, the details shown here:

Rendering surface Normals using Cycles:

Depth map rendering using Cycles:

And here's the material nodes when using Cycles:

The headlamps are using a transparent material:

As you can see, all the details that I am interested in have not been captured in either the depth map or the surface Normal map when using Cycles. Does anyone know how can I create node trees (or through any other way) to enable Cycles capture detailed depth maps and surface Normals that reflect details of 3D shapes with respect to materials?

I also share the .blend file I used for getting these results:

I also upload the obj file used here with its corresponding .mtl file . Note that if you load the obj file in while Blender Render is activated, the material will only work for the Blender's internal renderer. So you may select Cycles and then import the obj file.

Download the obj file

Yes, if you make the transparent surfaces completely transparent they will not affect the normal and depth passes.

One way to accomplish this with your existing materials is by replacing the output with the "Alpha BSDF" Transparency node when the "Mix Color/Alpha" node is less than 1.

If you are doing this on many objects you may want to look into using node groups and python to automate things.

Also, you may want to add an edge split modifier to get rid of some of those artifacts near sharp edges.


How to make realistic old cabin walls? I'm trying to make a really rustic, non-uniform looking wood panel cabin.  The problem is all the textures I'm finding are too perfect.

Here's a sample render of what I have made so far:

But what I'm really looking for is a way to make this:

Would each panel have to be modeled individually and with a variety of textures?

Thanks

Try this tutorial, hope you have success https://youtu.be/DcfPH4psKX4


Camera view is broken Camera placed like this (settings can be found at right):

If I enter camera view, I see this:

If enable viewport render it shows ok:

Also render from this camera is also proper

Why is this happening to camera view in any other mode?

UPD

UPD2

video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV24sDP3spg&feature=youtu.be

We experienced the same issue here, though in our case the Viewport Render would not work either any more. However, we found out that it is linked to the Blender Screen Area, not the camera. We noticed this because we actually had more than one 3D View in our layout, and only one of them would show the described behavior. We checked again and again, and all properties were set correctly. They were indeed identical across the areas.

To fix it, switch another screen area to a 3D View. The camera should behave as it is supposed to there. Now collapse the broken one. You can also switch to a different screen layout using the Dropdown box in the header:


How to include normals in my obj export I was making a game in Java and lwjgl.This type of game development needs Vertex positions and normals to render a model , along with texture coordinates and indices. Now i exported a simple obj file from blender and opened it in Notepad++.The file has information for Vertex position , and Texture Coordinates but i don't have normal data which causes an error , so the question is How to export Normal data in OBJ file
PS : i have enables Write Normals in export settings , but there is no normal data in the file

I think the problem was i was using a very simple model , a cubelike model , which didnot have any normals but the 90 deg so i tried to export the monkey model and it worked


Join particles with parent surface I am new to Blender and learning by making a donut with sprinkles on icing. Sprinkles are generated on icing with Particle, and colors are random thank to ColorRamp node.
Then I try to merge all sprinkles with incing. I Convert the Particle Modifier, then press Ctrl+J to join all selected parts.
Problem is that I loose all random colors after it.
How to join all this parts to one object, by keeping textures that have been randomly generated ?

You can use the new "Random per Island" output from the "Geometry" node. This only works with Cycles Renderer.


Loading Image as background I am using blender 2.79b. I cannot see the image output even after i load an image. I used the properties panel to load the image. Under the 'Background Images' tab. I added an image file(i tried both ".png" & ".jpg" formats). Please guide me.

Background images only show up in cameras and the orthographic views. To get to the orthographic view, press numpad 1, 3 or 7 and then numpad 5, or press numpad 0 to go into the camera view


Transition from one background to another as object moves in front of camera I have a mesh object passing in front of a camera; the camera is locked in a fixed upward view.

The background to the scene is a sky full of moving procedural clouds. I believe the node setup is Andrew Price's.  As the scene progresses, the clouds constantly change shape and position, as suggested below:

I am creating a video which must loop... which is a pain against a background of moving clouds.

I would like to use the object passing in front of the camera as a wiper to transition from the current frame's clouds to an earlier frame, creating the loop. Here's a suggestion of the transition need:

The mesh is traveling from bottom to top. The portion below the mesh object reflects the earlier cloud position. Above the mesh is the current frame's clouds position.

I am open to compositor solutions or render-pass solutions, but have been unable to figure one out that uses the mesh as a key to a transition. Also, the use of Z-depth and mist makes artifacting a problem with foreground images rendered transparent and then composited onto the sky.

All that said, I would welcome recommendations. Although the wiper mesh object does go edge-to-edge, I cannot have it scaled so large as to be large enough to completely fill the frame, which would hide all of the clouds for a frame or two.

Imagine the mesh as an airplane: The wings -- which are irregularly shaped -- move across the scene, but at most points you can see quite a bit of cloud cover above and below the wing.

Compositor, render pass, Object ID.... I've fiddled with all and would welcome so best practices.

All ideas welcome!

EDIT: And, more generally, I went with this 'wiper' approach because it seemed to offer the most potential. There are seconds of the video during which nothing but clouds are visible -- but doing a fade between one series of clouds and another did not seem very elegant... As the opacity levels changed in the VSE between the 'new' clouds and 'old' clouds, it left a muddle of clouds that did not make for a pretty loop... but I am open to different approaches altogether.

The main thing is that the plane wing does not provide the full mask alpha that you require to do the transition. You need to create a second mask (either with an actual mask object in the compositor, or by rendering a second object on a separate render layer) that you can add to the alpha from the plane wing.

Please note I've made the "wing" object more irregular shaped so that the effect is more obvious.


My mesh freaks out when I rig it, i think because it's made of separate pieces I'm having a problem with the rigging in my mesh. I made it by adding cubes in edit mode to make the different body parts.

So anyways, when i made the armature for the mesh, an error popped up. It said "Bone heat weighting: failed to find a solution for one or more bones". I can't manage to make it work.

In this next picture, i rotated his left leg back 90 degrees and his right leg 45 degrees. The left leg moves both and the right one stretches the body. The head and arms stay where they are no matter what i do, also do the hair and cap

Any tips? I've been looking for answers but none of them seem to help with my particular issue

Did you check whether the mirror modifier is applied or not and if the armature modifier comes first in the modifiers tab of the object?

If there are any modifiers active except the armature modifier I would try to apply those first.

Also, you can change to weight painting mode and assign the bones manually to certain vertices. But you might know this already.


Is this a boolean, and if so how would I do this exactly? Never done 3d modelling before. Using Blender 2.8.
what I have is an outer wall (blue) with an inner room red), both with open doors. I want to add a floor (green) in the middle of the blue room without going outside the blue walls OR inside the red walls. This floor in not at the bottom but is a second floor some distance up. I gather this is done with two boolean modifiers but I cant manage to make it work the way I need.
Please give instructions assuming I am a total noob who has no idea what he's doing, because I am a total noob and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Thank you in advance. Looking forward to being a part of this community.

Boolean modifiers have three modes:

Intersect
Union
Difference

Which are pretty self-explanatory. Intersect only leaves the part of the mesh which is intersecting with the other, Union unites the two meshes and Difference only leaves the difference between them.

We're looking at using the "Difference" option here. The issue with this is that it subtracts volumes - this means that if you subtract a cube from another cube, you get something like this:

However if I use the "difference" option with a plane instead of a second cube I get this:

But that's still a cube! So what happened here? Well, let's take a look at it in edit mode, shall we?

There is our answer. It did subtract the plane! However a plane doesn't have any thickness to it, so it just cut our cube in half!

This is the issue you're facing at the moment with your walls. The inner and the outer wall both get subtracted, however they are both planes. This means that you get your floor cut properly, but it doesn't actually subtract the part you don't want to have. So to fix this you have to apply the modifier (I had to apply it as well, to show you what it did). Once you have done that you can go into edit mode and hover over the part you don't want. Blender has a nifty feature that allows you to select loose parts of a mesh, so hit "L" to select them. If you, in doing this, also select the part you want then that means that you haven't completely seperated them and they're still connected somehow.

This has one disadvantage tho. Booleans in general are great for non-destructive modeling, meaning that you can add them and never apply them. This allows you to keep your original mesh intact. You just hide all the things you subtract to get them out of the view.

This technique doesn't allow you to do that, unfortunately.

If you want to do it without booleans, here's an idea I have: Go into edit mode on one of the walls. Select only the lowest vertecies. Hit Shift + D to duplicated them, then hit P to put them into a new mesh (Press P -> "From Selection"). Enter edit mode on the new mesh, select all vertecies, and scale them down or up intul you meet the other wall.


Drivers don't see the final rotation of a constraint. How to get copied rotation instead of (0,0,0)? The Premise:
Say you have a driver on Bone A that makes it's rotation = 50% of the rotation of Bone B.
Bone B has a copy rotation constraint to copy Bone C's rotation.
My expectation would be that Bone A's rotation would be 50% of Bone C's rotation.
The problem:
Bone A does not rotate at all because the driving rotation property on Bone B still shows as 0, 0, 0 even though Bone B has visibly copied the rotation of Bone C.
How would I get a driver to see the final rotation of a bone after applying it's constraints?
EDIT: A tangential part of my problem was I was using the "RNA" "Single Property" for the driver, but by switching to "(x) Transform Channel" I can then specify local space and get the result I want.

Let's reproduce the issue: two cubes, one copying the rotation of the other using a constraint. Each cube has a Suzanne copying the rotation of the cube in front of it, using a driver.

the driver for "sleeping" Suzanne:

Changing its type to Scripted Expression, default variable type to  Transform Channel and the property type to the rotation axis of your interest:


Low Start Clipping Distance I have no idea what to do. How do i fix this eye sore?

Answer: The Problem was my start clipping distance was at the lowest setting. Increase the setting and everything will be good.

Check to see if you have double verts. If not, check if you have a duplicate Object in the same place where the artifacts occur. I can't think of anything else.


shortcut for running the simulation in Blender 2.8 instead of Alt+A? I'm following this tutorial, and at 1:40 it presses Alt+A to "run the simulation":

However, this keyboard shortcut does not work ib blender 2.8. I was wondering if you could help me know:

what is the right keyboard shortcut for doing the above step
how I can do this from the menus/toolbars? (if I forgot the shortcut)

If above are not possible then if there are specific tutorials replicating the above tutorial in 2.8?

The shortcut is SPACEBAR to play the animation, if you're using the default Blender 2.8 or Industry Compatible keymap. In case you have mapped Tools or Search to SPACEBAR, then it's SHIFT+SPACEBAR.

You can check what is mapped to your spacebar in the preferences (Edit > Preferences > Keymap).


Rigging technique for flexible cardboard packaging I am trying to mockup a packaging project of mine which looks something like this:
When the package is closed a little basket is enclosed by two outer cardboard flaps that come down to the sides when opened. The rigging of this fairly flexible outer part of the packaging is the issue at hand. Often packaging tutorials available online revolve around very easy "boxy" packages with flaps that are comparably easy to rig, e.g you just need to rotate a single bone to open and close a lid. Here the process to me appears harder. I have experimented but am not very happy with the outcomes. I am illustrating my approach below. I would be very happy about any feedback on how I could do things better or differently.
My strategy so far (also check the corresponding images

Create an armature with assigned vertex groups
inverse cinematics constraint on the upmost bone
Have some really small bones at the lower end of the flap so that it can bend more smoothly there (I found that as the paper folds at a very steep angle, without the small bones down there it would strongly distort the mesh)
Make bones bendy with three segments each
Later symmetrize the bones so both sides can be animated with the same movement for opening

Any help is greatly appreciated, so thanks in advance!
Here you can find the file in question:
or here: https://liuonline-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/jonfr654_student_liu_se/ETFOIt6rv-hCgdf29ISxs20BJmlOo-appmws9F2H0LyAgw?e=UqtCYg
I am unhappy with this setup for multiple reasons:

I am not able to symmetrize the bone structure so I can animate the identical movement on both side (when I symmetrize the bones they are duplicated and pasted at the same location instead of being mirrored by the axis)
The bending of the mesh by the bones seems to influence the surface structure (segmentized) , which you can see when you render.
If you look at it from the side, you can see that the curve created by the bones is not smooth but rather bumpy.
I feel I could have more control over the shape of the package. At the moment I'm just pulling around the upmost bone to somehow shape the armature to my satisfaction.

When using shade smooth I run into a problem: There seems to be an inner edge which is visible when selecting the object. Apparently blender is trying to shade smooth that edge, that should not be there

To make sure that the slot is sharp and to avoid unpleasant mesh folding, you need to rework the topology and bring a new bone that overlap the slot. Now parent With Automatic Weight again, give your object a Subdivision Surface modifier (with a Subdivision of 2), and right click and Shade Smooth:

The way you wanted to mirror your animation is not the right one, you need to create bones for the left part. Apply the rotation of your armature, create a root bone, change the name of your bones to bone1.R, bone2.R, etc, symmetrize your armature:

Delete the Armature modifier of your object, parent again, for example With Automatic Weight, switch to Weight Paint mode, set your brush correctly, give some corrections so that it works the way you want:

If you want the left bones to copy what happens to the other side, give them Copy Rotation constraints:

The blend file:


What is pin goal strength for Hair Dynamics? I thought for sure if I searched I'd see a description, but i don't see one so I thought i'd ask, for common answer vs a technical definition.  Thanks

The Blender Manual describes it as:

Spring stiffness of the vertex target position.

To my understanding, this is how much the hair wants to "spring" back into its initial/styled position. A lower value makes the hair looser and a higher value makes it stiffer.

This is something probably best understood by simply experimenting with the value and seeing how it affects the simulation (this description just comes from my own experience).