Unable to see, select or edit new objects I was working on a project in 2.79 with avastar, when I was suddenly unable to see, select, or edit newly added objects in object mode. I can add objects just fine in edit mode, but not in object mode. the objects appear in my outliner, but they will not appear in the 3d viewer. This includes curves and every other type of object. None work.

I've tried:

disabling all add-ons, saving user settings then rebooting blender
restarting my PC
deleting everything out of the scene
opening a fresh startup scene, then opening the project file with "load UI" option UN-ticked

When I load the startup scene, everything works just fine. But my project file seems to be affected.

How do I fix this?

You may need to look a little harder at the outliner objects.

If the little eyeball next to the hidden objects is off, then the object will be hidden in the viewport.

If this is the case then with your mouse cursor over your 3D viewport, Alt+H will turn this back on for these objects.

Also you may need to check if you are currently using the scene's active layer...

If your 'Lock camera and layers' button looks like the following, you will want to click it to toggle the lock.

Related to the last comment, you may need to hit ` (Backtick) to toggle all of your layers on.

Otherwise the only other thing that I can think of is viewport clipping.

If you are having trouble getting to this panel, with your mouse cursor over the 3D viewport hit the N key to toggle.

Then try increasing your clip distance.

You may also have to do the same for your camera for rendering, but that setting will be found in the properties panel >> Object Data >> Clipping


Place objects on mesh using snap with Python script I'd like to place objects on a mesh using snap with a python script in Blender 2.79, preferably on places where the gradient (steepness) of the mesh (terrain) is not too steep.
From the snap documentation and the API documentation for the transform I couldn't figure out how to do it in a script. The output of manually doing this in the info window (bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(121.057, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True, use_accurate=False)) also didn't help.
One of the code snippets I tried:
cube = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(4,1,1))
x,y,z = -100,-100,100
# Hoping that this line would place the object on a nearby surface of this point (It doesn't)
bpy.ops.transform.translate(snap=True, snap_target='ACTIVE', snap_align=True, snap_point=(x,y,z))
# Settings for the tool like doing it manually
bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.use_snap_align_rotation = True
bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.use_snap = True
bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.snap_target = 'ACTIVE'
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(121.057, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True, use_accurate=False)

Thanks in advance for any help, hints and other ways to place the objects on the mesh with proper orientation!
Image shows how I would like my objects to be placed:

Make a shrinkwrap footing.

Oops just saw the 2.79.. see edit below.

Demonstrate the setup, the red dot foot is shrinkwrapped to grid. The wireframe cube is parented to it.

Similarly to how a tyre rig would be made, can make a 2d mesh footing and projection shrinkwrap to the landscape.

The "block" can then be placed in relation to the shrinkwrapped footing.

In the example below have used a simple circle as the footing and 3 vertices as a parent.

Setting the matrix world of "block" to a copy taken before removing footing places the "blocks".  Set remove_block to False to keep the footing.

The script below sets random x, y locations in range -20, 20 to test.  GIF became too large to demo,.. can arbitrarily rotate footing in z.

Result of running 20 times with subsurfed upscaled 10x10 grid with texture displace

Object mode. Select grid, run script. Resets the grid to context so can repeat.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
context = bpy.context

from random import uniform # random 20x20 to test
x, y = uniform(-20, 20), uniform(-20, 20)
remove_foot = True

target_surface = context.object

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0, 0, 0))
#make the origin the pottom of cube
cube = context.object
me = cube.data
me.transform(Matrix.Translation((0, 0, 1)))
cube.scale = (4, 1, 1)

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(
        location=(x, y, 0),
        fill_type='TRIFAN')
foot = context.object
sw = foot.modifiers.new(name="SW", type='SHRINKWRAP')
sw.target = target_surface
sw.wrap_method = 'PROJECT'
sw.use_positive_direction = True
sw.use_negative_direction = True
sw.use_project_z = True

### set the relation to foot
cube.parent = foot
cube.parent_type = 'VERTEX_3'
n = len(foot.data.vertices)
cube.parent_vertices = range(1, n, n // 3)

if remove_foot:
    dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
    mw = cube.evaluated_get(dg).matrix_world.copy()
    bpy.data.objects.remove(foot)
    cube.matrix_world = mw
context.view_layer.objects.active = target_surface

Notes:

Could also look at the vertex coords and normals of the evaluated footing

Here the "block" is located at the middle circle (footing) vert and rotated such that vert normal is z up.  For the default circle, vert 0 is the centre, vert 1 is at (0, 1, 0).

### set the relation to foot
dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
me_inst = foot.evaluated_get(dg).to_mesh(depsgraph=dg)
v = me_inst.vertices[0]

cube.location = foot.matrix_world @ v.co.copy()
q = v.normal.to_track_quat()
cube.rotation_euler = q.to_euler()
if remove_foot:
    bpy.data.objects.remove(foot)
context.view_layer.objects.active = target_surface

The angle between the vertex normal and z axis will give the grade, and could be tested so as to not add above a certain slope.

z_axis = Vector((0, 0, 1)
if v.normal.angle(z_axis) > radians(45):
    # don't put it there

Another way would be to add vertex groups to the footing and transform the block to it via constraints.  eg copy location and a track to constraint targeting different vert groups.

Recommend making a more apt footing shape. Perhaps a poked plane matching bottom block face.

To do for many would use Object.copy()

EDIT 2.79 version of script above.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
context = bpy.context

from random import uniform # random 20x20 to test
x, y = uniform(-20, 20), uniform(-20, 20)
remove_foot = True

scene = context.scene
target_surface = context.object

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0, 0, 0))
#make the origin the pottom of cube
cube = context.object
me = cube.data
me.transform(Matrix.Translation((0, 0, 1)))
cube.scale = (4, 1, 1)

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(
        location=(x, y, 0),
        fill_type='TRIFAN')
foot = context.object
sw = foot.modifiers.new(name="SW", type='SHRINKWRAP')
sw.target = target_surface
sw.wrap_method = 'PROJECT'
sw.use_positive_direction = True
sw.use_negative_direction = True
sw.use_project_z = True

### set the relation to foot
cube.parent = foot
cube.parent_type = 'VERTEX_3'
n = len(foot.data.vertices)
cube.parent_vertices = range(1, n, n // 3)

if remove_foot:
    scene.update()
    cube.update_tag(refresh={'OBJECT'})
    mw = cube.matrix_world.copy()
    bpy.data.objects.remove(foot)
    cube.matrix_world = mw
scene.objects.active = target_surface


Why do my renders look Flat? I am unfamiliar with this version so it might be a setting error but when I try to render my test model it goes from 3D to flat.  Is there something wrong with my shading?

It would be helpful to see your node setup, to know which rendering engine you're using (Eevee, Cycles, or Blender Render if you're using 2.79 or earlier) and which version of Blender you are using.

However, I attempted to reproduce your issue using an approximately similar shape and this is what I found:

A rough approximation of your flat rendered shape.

A jury-rigged version of your shading here.

Node setup for this shading.

If this is what your node setup looks like, this is incorrect. You should add a Shader node first, connect it to the Surface input of the Material Output node, and add your to that Shader node, as shown below.

Result of above node setup.

I hope that this helps, but more details will help illuminate the problem!


Why do vertices move when trying to box select? I accidentally hit some buttons and got stuck in some kind of different edit mode. I can't box select anymore, when I try to, the selected vertices will move. I can still select by single-clicking.

I don't really want to reload because I haven't saved the upper torso yet. It's not that much work but I rather don't do it again.

Can someone tell me the magic hotkey to get out (ctrl + z did not work)? And what this mode is?

You've pressed W. This is mapped to the selection tool and will cycle through the different selection methods if the select tool is already highlighted.

Either press W until you're back to box select, or click and hold the Selection button in the toolbar below.


Offset Animation (Animation Nodes 2.0) Shift animation.
How to copy an animation from one object to another, and make a shift for each animation?

You can get the Fcurves from the source object, and evaluate them with some frame offset fro some object. You can get the fcurves using the FCurves From Object Node, to identify what fcurve belong to what property, FCurve Info Node can be used where, for instance, the data path will be location for objects' location fcurve and the Array Index will be 0, 1, 2 for x, y, z respectively. Having identified the fcurves for the properties you want, for instance, locations. We can go ahead and evaluate them while setting some offset:

By viewing the results, we see that the object Cube.001 lags behind the source object Cube by 5 frames (The offset we set):

We can put that inside a loop to perform it for multiple object, where the offset will be a multiple of the index of the iteration:

Which results in:


Cannot properly align textures I'm making a cube. The half of the cube is green, the bottom is gray. It's supposed to be a precise split, but no matter what I do, it looks like this (image is of an edge of the cube):

One side is above the halfway point, the other side is below the halfway point. If I add a single pixel to the left side, it goes below the halfway point. Similarly, if I add a single pixel to the right side, it goes over the halfway point.

How do I precisely split the cube into green and brown, with the dividing line being exactly halfway between top and bottom?

This question is related: Exported UV map is blurry and doesn't line up with UV mapper(editor) but it has no answers. I suspect I may have a similar problem, or at least I could fix my problem if I knew how to fix that other problem.

I'm sure that this isn't the simplest answer but you could split your cube in two pieces and make one piece green and the other brown. Than you could join (in the menu, object, join) the two pieces to one cube again.
(You can assign different colors to objects or to a part of an object in edit mode)


How do I prevent the brush color using a gradient in the weights? Good day. I cannot figure out how to draw weight without gradient. In the example below, you can see that the brush only paints red, while mine always paints with a gradient. How can I do applying weights without gradient? Is this a specific setting of the stroke method ?
example

my brush

So from what I see, since 2.8, there's a difference in the way the weight painting gradient is displayed. In 2.79, if you have a vertex that has a weight of 1 and the next one that has a weight of 0, there will be a red to blue gradient (here with a simple non-subdivided cube):

Since 2.8 you have a red to blue gradient but with all the yellow and green nuances. But it doesn't change anything, the weight of the vertex on the left is still 1 and the weight of the vertex on the right is still 0:


Can I mirror animations on bones? I have a model of a dragon. It's mesh was made by mirroring and also was it's bones. I want to animate a wing, but want to make the other wing to animate equally, but mirrored. Is it possible?
I'm new to blender, so I need a bit more detailed explanation.

Try copying the pose, then pasting x-mirrored= shift+Ctrl+V.

You can copy the pose in the pose menu, right next to the mode changing button.

See the one that says Pose?

Once you copy a pose (Copy Pose) you can either paste pose or paste x-flipped pose.


How to instance/copy smoke sim? I made a smoke sim on hanging pot in Sponza scene. Now, I want to make instances of this sim.
I also tried saving Final openvdb baking but when I import it, it give error like failed to load: density_0000.vdb not found.

Got it.
First bake the sim in your specified folder as final.
Then duplicate the object, give it a new smoke quick effect.
In new domain, set as final and direct it to the specified folder.
Now adjust the domain size to match previuos simulated domain or as you see fit.


How do I export as an .x file, without being saved as a text file? How do I export as an .x file, without being saved as a text file?.

.x is a depreciated format. Blender 2.8+ does not have any plug-in support, as .fbx is now the preferred format.There is an add-on for 2.70 you can enable (called DirectX X Format exporter I think) that should allow you to export to .x.


multiple copys of character with rig linked in the same file This question has been asked before, here: Link blend multiple times

But the question is almost a year old, and there is no answer. How do I link multiple copies of the same character in a scene und make their armatures local ("make proxy"), without double influences?

I added the character using link -> character group. Then I make the rig local by "make proxy" -> character rig group.

Maybe this is worth a seperate question, but I will add it here too (it might be a related issue):
The micropolygon displacement is also not working on the linked meshes. I really would like that to work, too.

This is something Blender can't help you with yet.

Solution is to have duplicates for each instance you wish to link:

objects can share mesh data, so update to one mesh changes all
armatures have to be independent objects

It is smart to have scripts to update all other armatures or modifiers when you do changes to one of those so it's not that time consuming.


Create an interface which is similar to the material list box How can I make a Interface which is similar to the Material-Interface within Blender via Python?

It should look like these. Could you guide me to the right direction? I don't think it's in bpy.ops, right?

Thank you very much!

The example given is called UIList. The following code is based on the Modifier UIList of this answer. Once registered, scene objects can be added, removed, printed or selected via UI Elements.

custom_uilist.py

import bpy

from bpy.props import (IntProperty,
                       BoolProperty,
                       StringProperty,
                       CollectionProperty)

from bpy.types import (Operator,
                       Panel,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       UIList)

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Operators
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_OT_actions(Operator):
    """Move items up and down, add and remove"""
    bl_idname = "custom.list_action"
    bl_label = "List Actions"
    bl_description = "Move items up and down, add and remove"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    action = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(
            ('UP', "Up", ""),
            ('DOWN', "Down", ""),
            ('REMOVE', "Remove", ""),
            ('ADD', "Add", "")))

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        scn = context.scene
        idx = scn.custom_index

        try:
            item = scn.custom[idx]
        except IndexError:
            pass
        else:
            if self.action == 'DOWN' and idx < len(scn.custom) - 1:
                item_next = scn.custom[idx+1].name
                scn.custom.move(idx, idx+1)
                scn.custom_index += 1
                info = 'Item "%s" moved to position %d' % (item.name, scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'UP' and idx >= 1:
                item_prev = scn.custom[idx-1].name
                scn.custom.move(idx, idx-1)
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                info = 'Item "%s" moved to position %d' % (item.name, scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'REMOVE':
                info = 'Item "%s" removed from list' % (scn.custom[idx].name)
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                scn.custom.remove(idx)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

        if self.action == 'ADD':
            if context.object:
                item = scn.custom.add()
                item.name = context.object.name
                item.obj_type = context.object.type
                item.obj_id = len(scn.custom)
                scn.custom_index = len(scn.custom)-1
                info = '"%s" added to list' % (item.name)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)
            else:
                self.report({'INFO'}, "Nothing selected in the Viewport")
        return {"FINISHED"}

class CUSTOM_OT_printItems(Operator):
    """Print all items and their properties to the console"""
    bl_idname = "custom.print_items"
    bl_label = "Print Items to Console"
    bl_description = "Print all items and their properties to the console"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    reverse_order = BoolProperty(
        default=False,
        name="Reverse Order")

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def execute(self, context):
        scn = context.scene
        if self.reverse_order:
            for i in range(scn.custom_index, -1, -1):
                item = scn.custom[i]
                print ("Name:", item.name,"-",item.obj_type,item.obj_id)
        else:
            for item in scn.custom:
                print ("Name:", item.name,"-",item.obj_type,item.obj_id)
        return{'FINISHED'}

class CUSTOM_OT_clearList(Operator):
    """Clear all items of the list"""
    bl_idname = "custom.clear_list"
    bl_label = "Clear List"
    bl_description = "Clear all items of the list"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_confirm(self, event)

    def execute(self, context):
        if bool(context.scene.custom):
            context.scene.custom.clear()
            self.report({'INFO'}, "All items removed")
        else:
            self.report({'INFO'}, "Nothing to remove")
        return{'FINISHED'}

class CUSTOM_OT_removeDuplicates(Operator):
    """Remove all duplicates"""
    bl_idname = "custom.remove_duplicates"
    bl_label = "Remove Duplicates"
    bl_description = "Remove all duplicates"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    def find_duplicates(self, context):
        """find all duplicates by name"""
        name_lookup = {}
        for c, i in enumerate(context.scene.custom):
            name_lookup.setdefault(i.name, []).append(c)
        duplicates = set()
        for name, indices in name_lookup.items():
            for i in indices[1:]:
                duplicates.add(i)
        return sorted(list(duplicates))

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def execute(self, context):
        scn = context.scene
        removed_items = []
        # Reverse the list before removing the items
        for i in self.find_duplicates(context)[::-1]:
            scn.custom.remove(i)
            removed_items.append(i)
        if removed_items:
            scn.custom_index = len(scn.custom)-1
            info = ', '.join(map(str, removed_items))
            self.report({'INFO'}, "Removed indices: %s" % (info))
        else:
            self.report({'INFO'}, "No duplicates")
        return{'FINISHED'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_confirm(self, event)

class CUSTOM_OT_selectItems(Operator):
    """Select Items in the Viewport"""
    bl_idname = "custom.select_items"
    bl_label = "Select Item(s) in Viewport"
    bl_description = "Select Items in the Viewport"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    select_all = BoolProperty(
        default=False,
        name="Select all Items of List",
        options={'SKIP_SAVE'})

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def execute(self, context):
        scn = context.scene
        idx = scn.custom_index

        try:
            item = scn.custom[idx]
        except IndexError:
            self.report({'INFO'}, "Nothing selected in the list")
            return{'CANCELLED'}

        obj_error = False
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        if not self.select_all:
            obj = scn.objects.get(scn.custom[idx].name, None)
            if not obj:
                obj_error = True
            else:
                obj.select = True
                info = '"%s" selected in Viewport' % (obj.name)
        else:
            selected_items = []
            unique_objs = set([i.name for i in scn.custom])
            for i in unique_objs:
                obj = scn.objects.get(i, None)
                if obj:
                    obj.select = True
                    selected_items.append(obj.name)

            if not selected_items:
                obj_error = True
            else:
                missing_items = unique_objs.difference(selected_items)
                if not missing_items:
                    info = '"%s" selected in Viewport' \
                        % (', '.join(map(str, selected_items)))
                else:
                    info = 'Missing items: "%s"' \
                        % (', '.join(map(str, missing_items)))
        if obj_error:
            info = "Nothing to select, object removed from scene"
        self.report({'INFO'}, info)
        return{'FINISHED'}

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Drawing
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_UL_items(UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname, index):
        split = layout.split(0.3)
        split.label("Index: %d" % (index))
        custom_icon = "OUTLINER_OB_%s" % item.obj_type
        #split.prop(item, "name", text="", emboss=False, translate=False, icon=custom_icon)
        split.label(item.name, icon=custom_icon) # avoids renaming the item by accident

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        pass

class CUSTOM_PT_objectList(Panel):
    """Adds a custom panel to the TEXT_EDITOR"""
    bl_idname = 'TEXT_PT_my_panel'
    bl_space_type = "TEXT_EDITOR"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "Custom Object List Demo"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scn = bpy.context.scene

        rows = 2
        row = layout.row()
        row.template_list("CUSTOM_UL_items", "", scn, "custom", scn, "custom_index", rows=rows)

        col = row.column(align=True)
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='ZOOMIN', text="").action = 'ADD'
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='ZOOMOUT', text="").action = 'REMOVE'
        col.separator()
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='TRIA_UP', text="").action = 'UP'
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='TRIA_DOWN', text="").action = 'DOWN'

        row = layout.row()
        col = row.column(align=True)
        row = col.row(align=True)
        row.operator("custom.print_items", icon="LINENUMBERS_ON") #LINENUMBERS_OFF, ANIM
        row = col.row(align=True)
        row.operator("custom.select_items", icon="VIEW3D", text="Select Item")
        row.operator("custom.select_items", icon="GROUP", text="Select all Items").select_all = True
        row = col.row(align=True)
        row.operator("custom.clear_list", icon="X")
        row.operator("custom.remove_duplicates", icon="GHOST")

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Collection
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_objectCollection(PropertyGroup):
    #name = StringProperty() -> Instantiated by default
    obj_type = StringProperty()
    obj_id = IntProperty()

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Register & Unregister
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

classes = (
    CUSTOM_OT_actions,
    CUSTOM_OT_printItems,
    CUSTOM_OT_clearList,
    CUSTOM_OT_removeDuplicates,
    CUSTOM_OT_selectItems,
    CUSTOM_UL_items,
    CUSTOM_PT_objectList,
    CUSTOM_objectCollection,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)

    # Custom scene properties
    bpy.types.Scene.custom = CollectionProperty(type=CUSTOM_objectCollection)
    bpy.types.Scene.custom_index = IntProperty()

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)

    del bpy.types.Scene.custom
    del bpy.types.Scene.custom_index

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Updated for Blender 2.8x: https://gist.github.com/p2or/d6dfd47366b2f14816f57d2067dcb6a9

As of 2.79 we can have real references to objects per ID by using a PointerProperty, which basically allows to display the actual data, access and edit the attributes on the fly.

Following funky example is a simple demo on how to create a custom UIList of materials. You can create new materials, display and edit their properties (name, color etc.) directly within the list.

material_uilist.py

import bpy

from bpy.props import (IntProperty,
                       BoolProperty,
                       StringProperty,
                       CollectionProperty,
                       PointerProperty)

from bpy.types import (Operator,
                       Panel,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       UIList)

def random_color():
    from mathutils import Color
    from random import random
    return Color((random(), random(), random()))

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Operators
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_OT_actions(Operator):
    """Move items up and down, add and remove"""
    bl_idname = "custom.list_action"
    bl_label = "List Actions"
    bl_description = "Move items up and down, add and remove"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    action = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        items=(
            ('UP', "Up", ""),
            ('DOWN', "Down", ""),
            ('REMOVE', "Remove", ""),
            ('ADD', "Add", "")))

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        scn = context.scene
        idx = scn.custom_index

        try:
            item = scn.custom[idx]
        except IndexError:
            pass
        else:
            if self.action == 'DOWN' and idx < len(scn.custom) - 1:
                item_next = scn.custom[idx+1].name
                scn.custom.move(idx, idx+1)
                scn.custom_index += 1
                info = 'Item "%s" moved to position %d' % (item.name, scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'UP' and idx >= 1:
                item_prev = scn.custom[idx-1].name
                scn.custom.move(idx, idx-1)
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                info = 'Item "%s" moved to position %d' % (item.name, scn.custom_index + 1)
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

            elif self.action == 'REMOVE':
                item = scn.custom[scn.custom_index]
                item_name = item.material.name
                mat = item.material
                mat_obj = bpy.data.materials.get(mat.name, None)
                if mat_obj:
                    bpy.data.materials.remove(mat_obj, True)
                info = 'Item %s removed from scene' % (item_name)
                scn.custom.remove(idx)
                scn.custom_index -= 1
                self.report({'INFO'}, info)

        if self.action == 'ADD':
            item = scn.custom.add()
            item.id = len(scn.custom)
            item.material = bpy.data.materials.new(name="Material")
            item.name = item.material.name
            item.material.diffuse_color = random_color()
            scn.custom_index = (len(scn.custom)-1)
            info = '%s added to list' % (item.name)
            self.report({'INFO'}, info)
        return {"FINISHED"}

class CUSTOM_OT_printItems(Operator):
    """Print all items and their properties to the console"""
    bl_idname = "custom.print_items"
    bl_label = "Print Items to Console"
    bl_description = "Print all items and their properties to the console"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    reverse_order = BoolProperty(
        default=False,
        name="Reverse Order")

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def execute(self, context):
        scn = context.scene
        if self.reverse_order:
            for i in range(scn.custom_index, -1, -1):
                mat = scn.custom[i].material
                print ("Material:", mat,"-",mat.name, mat.diffuse_color)
        else:
            for item in scn.custom:
                mat = item.material
                print ("Material:", mat,"-",mat.name, mat.diffuse_color)
        return{'FINISHED'}

class CUSTOM_OT_clearList(Operator):
    """Clear all items of the list and remove from scene"""
    bl_idname = "custom.clear_list"
    bl_label = "Clear List and Remove Materials"
    bl_description = "Clear all items of the list and remove from scene"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return bool(context.scene.custom)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_confirm(self, event)

    def execute(self, context):

        if bool(context.scene.custom):
            # Remove materials from scene
            for i in context.scene.custom:
                name = i.material.name
                mat_obj = bpy.data.materials.get(name, None)
                if mat_obj:
                    bpy.data.materials.remove(mat_obj, True)
                info = 'Item %s removed from scene' % (name)

            # Clear the list
            context.scene.custom.clear()
            self.report({'INFO'}, "All materials removed from scene")
        else:
            self.report({'INFO'}, "Nothing to remove")
        return{'FINISHED'}

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Drawing
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_UL_items(UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname, index):
        mat = item.material
        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:
            split = layout.split(0.3)
            split.label("Index: %d" % (index))
            # static method UILayout.icon returns the integer value of the icon ID
            # "computed" for the given RNA object.
            split.prop(mat, "name", text="", emboss=False, icon_value=layout.icon(mat))

        elif self.layout_type in {'GRID'}:
            layout.alignment = 'CENTER'
            layout.label(text="", icon_value=layout.icon(mat))

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        pass

class CUSTOM_PT_objectList(Panel):
    """Adds a custom panel to the TEXT_EDITOR"""
    bl_idname = 'TEXT_PT_my_panel'
    bl_space_type = "TEXT_EDITOR"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "Custom Material List Demo"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scn = bpy.context.scene

        rows = 2
        row = layout.row()
        row.template_list("CUSTOM_UL_items", "custom_def_list", scn, "custom",
            scn, "custom_index", rows=rows)

        col = row.column(align=True)
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='ZOOMIN', text="").action = 'ADD'
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='ZOOMOUT', text="").action = 'REMOVE'
        col.separator()
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='TRIA_UP', text="").action = 'UP'
        col.operator("custom.list_action", icon='TRIA_DOWN', text="").action = 'DOWN'

        row = layout.row()
        row.template_list("CUSTOM_UL_items", "custom_grid_list", scn, "custom",
            scn, "custom_index", rows=2, type='GRID')

        row = layout.row()
        col = row.column(align=True)
        row = col.row(align=True)
        row.operator("custom.print_items", icon="LINENUMBERS_ON")
        row = col.row(align=True)
        row.operator("custom.clear_list", icon="X")

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Collection
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

class CUSTOM_objectCollection(PropertyGroup):
    #name = StringProperty() -> Instantiated by default
    material = PointerProperty(
        name="Material",
        type=bpy.types.Material)

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#   Register & Unregister
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

classes = (
    CUSTOM_OT_actions,
    CUSTOM_OT_printItems,
    CUSTOM_OT_clearList,
    CUSTOM_UL_items,
    CUSTOM_PT_objectList,
    CUSTOM_objectCollection,
)

def register():
    from bpy.utils import register_class
    for cls in classes:
        register_class(cls)

    # Custom scene properties
    bpy.types.Scene.custom = CollectionProperty(type=CUSTOM_objectCollection)
    bpy.types.Scene.custom_index = IntProperty()

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in reversed(classes):
        unregister_class(cls)

    del bpy.types.Scene.custom
    del bpy.types.Scene.custom_index

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Updated for Blender 2.8x: https://gist.github.com/p2or/30b8b30c89871b8ae5c97803107fd494

Same principle applies to all other types. Using the PointerProperty for e.g. objects in the scene, makes it pretty comfortable to edit, add and remove them safely without any additional checks.


Moving One Vertex Also Moves The Other How would I move only one vertex in "texturing"?

Result:

And it doesn't matter what Selection mode am using, it happens to all of these:

You have use_uv_select_sync on. You're moving both UVs because they're the same vertex on the mesh. Click the toggle to the left of the selection mode buttons in your picture.


How can I add control points to a NURBS surface How can I add control points to the default 16 control points of a NURBS surface?

"Extrude Curve and Move" or "Subdivide"

You can add control points to a NURB surface object by running the command Extrude that you can find in the modeling section of the Tool bar in the Tool shelf and then move le vertex away with grab. Or you can do all at once with the operator of the title (shortcut E).

The operation is very similar to the one you can perform with meshes, but this is for surfaces only (UV coordinates only).

If you want to increase the resolution while keeping a similar shape of the grid, you can use the Subdivide operator (you can find it in the Toolshelf too). Subdivision cannot break the NURBS's laws, so you should select a whole U (or V, or both) stripe to make it work.

Remember that NURBS modeling tools in Blender are not currently (2.76) as advanced as the Mesh counterparts, so some functionalities you expect may be missing.


Retopology: Are self intersecting edge loops legal When creating a topology mesh, are self intersecting loops a problem ?

If it is problematic, you can use "Paint" to communicate and mark how that edge should have been made with a simple stroke.

Image: The edge loop forms a fish shape on eyes.

The answer was given by Leander in the comments section:

You cant use Self Intersecting loops, that's a novice mistake.
Instead use "Mask Topology".


Texture Paint doesn't work I'm new to Blender and I was painting the texture of my model but I accidentally clicked on F mask brush and now I can't paint anymore. I do not know how to remove this I tried to restart Blender but it doesn't work.

Also when I start a new file it said that "Missing Data" something about texture slots.

edit: I have this brush selected.

edit2: the first three are of the brush I want to paint, the other three are of the F Mask brush

In that first image, you do not show what tool you are using - cannot see the error here, other than you need to be sure you are using the correct paint tool.

Second image, you have to assign a new image texture to get a slot before you can paint - simply add one and you can begin painting so long as your canvas object has UVs.


Light Align tool ( LightPaint feature as in HDRI Light Studio ) Theres a way to click a face, edge or vertex and align a light

(just as in HDRI Light Studio native align light tool)?
(Thats how you align a light hovering an object surface):

Its called LightPaint.

https://gcs-vimeo.akamaized.net/exp=1510774932~acl=%2A%2F801377317.mp4%2A~hmac=e0f62e9b2fbae5529b6b69f7e225fe524825da41f6129eec1761bd7aad94f180/vimeo-prod-skyfire-std-us/01/548/9/227744549/801377317.mp4

Any similar feature in Blender?

The Add-on Blender Light Studio - https://leomoon.com/downloads/plugins/blender-light-studio/ - offers that functionality via a modal operator. Activate the Add-on and add a light profile in the Toolbar on the left. After that, add a light via the interface too. Now, when a light is active, you can enable the interactive placement mode, called 3D Edit, like this:

Basically, you click on a face of the model, and the Add-on calculates the light position for you. Once you're happy, hit the Esc key to exit the interactive placement mode.


Can CGI elements emit light when in real video? Blender super noob here.

Is it feasible to have, lets say, a neon sign made in Blender, emit light onto its surroundings when placed in a real life video?

You would camera project parts of your video to objects within the Blender scene and those objects catch the surrounding light. Than you would comp it over your footage.

here is a small YT Video that shows the process with an Image but you can also use Video or Image Frames - but be aware that you have a good tracking or you will get sliding effects

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9IfDeNU8K0

ohhh and for sure
BlenderGuru's Camera Mapping tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9r9tKX5olY

if you set up your scene like this, you can have your NeonSign lighten Up the surrounding Areas.


Combining two manifold objects creates a non-manifold with issues I'm trying to combine these objects to be non-manifold for 3D printing but I'm not sure why it keeps saying the edge loop has issues.
Both objects are non-manifold and were joined to make one object.

I used the Bridge Edge loops command to join them

When I join them they become Non-manifold
How can I make this manifold?  Or how should I join the objects together so they become Non-manifold?

When I try to delete the internal face / zero face of the Bolt as recommend that just makes the M8 Bolt Non-manifold

PS:
I'm making a 3D printed adapter that has a M8 bolt on the end of it (the M8 bolt head was created using the Bolt factory Blender addon.
I've also attached the blend file.

Firstly I think you have your terminology backwards. non manifold is bad, manifold is good.
It looks to me that you are trying to attach a bolt head to a cylinder. The problem with using bridge edge loops to do this is that the cylinder has empty space on the inside while the nut does not. this means that you are asking the printer to print faces with 0 thickness, which is impossible so the slicer ignores it or bugs out.
In order to make that a manifold print I would recommend doing 2 things.
Firstly select the bottom face of your bolt and hit I to create an extra perimeter.

now that you have 2 perimeters you can bridge both the inside and outside of the cylinder.
make sure you remember to fill the hole that this creates in the bottom of the nut.

Finally go inside and delete any faces edges or vertices that you would consider to be inside the final 3d printed item.

That should give you a manifold model.


Quad faces along the curve or grease pencil Is it possible to generate quad faces along the curve ?

Is it possible to generate quad faces along the grease pencil ?

For example, I set up some bezier curve and on this curve Blender generate connected quad faces uniformely.

I know that grease pencil can do that  for mesh reopology. Is is possible to do that without the mesh?

Black is curve or grease pencil, blue are faces only I want them to be regular (same size) and connected.

Yes. Since at least Blender version 2.65, the grease pencil has included a "convert" button, one of the options of which was to convert the grease pencil work to a bezier curve. Selecting the bezier curve, and applying the command ALT-C permits the conversion of the bezier curve to a mesh object. From there it's just a matter of applying standard modeling techniques to convert the edges to quad faces. The following image exemplifying this technique was made by adding a bezier curve to a scene in top orthographic view, selecting all vertices, witching to front orthographic view, and extruding along the z axis.

[

At some point, changes to the grease pencil made the process easier, since version 2.78 gives as one of the options of the convert button in the grease pencil tool panel, direct conversion from the grease pencil to a "polygon curve". However, I have no direct experience with trying to make that conversion.


Joining animated model to a quick fire effect I have been trying to join a quickfire effect sphere in evee with a model I finally found a way to animate but each time the model moves the flame does not follow it.
Is there a way to join the sphere (which is the fire mesh) and the smoke domain to the main model and make them follow the animation?
Also, will the fire domain box still keep showing when I render?

select fire object

go to object constraints in properties panel

add copy location constraint

select target object


How do I find User Preferences in 2.8? The manual for V. 2.80 says:
 "To open the User Preferences editor go To File ‣ User Preferences. "

User Preference does not exist under File.
I want to make paths to folders with filepaths
Where do I find it?

User preferences for 2.8 are now under the Edit > Preferences menu, to the right of File menu.

Saving and loading of settings has been moved into the Preferences window and is now done from a dedicated popup dialog, at the bottom left of the panel.

Autosave is on by default, meaning that any changes should be saved automatically on (gracious) exit. If Auto Save is disabled, a save button is made visible and settings are only saved at user discretion (good for testing with keymaps and other hard to reverse or critical settings).


physics type to No collision using python How to set the physics type to No collision in bge using python?

I need a script to change the physics type to No_collision in game, please help me

You can't change the physics type.

You can replace the object with another one, that is of the desired physics type. Do not forget to copy all necessary attributes from the previous object (such as linear and angular velocity).


Advise on UV unwrapping I'm making a building for Unreal engine. This building has many small parts, and when merging all the UVs i noticed how small certain UV's get. In substance painter, these small UV's become a problem. What is your suggestion for something like this?

I would rather not break it up into multiple objects, and have to piece the building together in Unreal... but is that the best route for complex objects?

This last image is the problem I've been getting with the smaller UV'd objects.

There are several things going on here.

In general, to unwrap for lightmaps, the recommendation is not to make very big meshes, meaning meshes with many individual parts like your building. The only way to get decent lighting in such a scenario is to make huge lightmaps (ie 2048x2048 or even higher). Your build times in Unreal, as well as in-game memory use, will suffer.

A second thing to keep note of, is that you should always try to unwrap keeping as many parts together as possible. You seem to have created seams on all edges - this is a terrible idea for lightmaps: In the game engine, there needs to be a gap between every island (to make sure no light leaks from one island to the other). That gap will will shrink when you use higher resolution lightmaps, but it will create bad results:

you will see a seam on the surface where the edge is
with many individual islands, there will be much unused space in between the islands
with many individual islands, often they don't fit on the lightmap unless you make it very high resolution

A third thing, looking at your unwrapped image, is that it seems not everything is unwrapping properly. But it's difficult to see with so many elements on one object. Are you unwrapping with U->Unwrap?

What I would try first in this case is to unwrap with U->Smart UV Project, and set the 'island margin' to 0.5. This often gets decent results, if you're not unwrapping rounded objects (since it splits the faces based on the angle they share).

When I would consider splitting the object into smaller parts. How many, depends a lot on your scenario: will you create this house 100 times in one map? Or only once? If you're splitting the object, try to do so along the separation of materials. Separate out the roof and the road, for example. This way you don't create additional draw calls as a result of your split (the engine doesn't have to look up the roof material twice etc).

When preparing for painting, accurate unwrapping gets more important. You might have to spend time manually unwrapping the whole thing, to keep as many parts together as possible. The biggest difference with the lightmap scenario above, is that lightmaps don't suffer from seams on sharp angles, while for painting you might want to keep individual parts together - but the only way to do that I know is manually selecting edges and creating seams. Anyhow, for a complicated mesh such as yours, accurate unwrapping becomes one of the biggest headaches.

Good luck!


How can I limit scaling on one axis? When scaling or extruding a Gear's Edges, the edges  seem to scale down on the Z axis, in a way that is not level with the origin point of the edges:

Any other "default" Blender object will scale or extrude without scaling down on the Z axis:

How do I scale or extrude these edges without them moving to the center on the Z axis? I don't think it has to do with applying scale/location because all three GIFs in this question were produced at default size for each object.

The reason for this is because you have two edges selected, meaning your total selection has some height. Scaling by default will scale along each axis by the same percentage, thus it flattens some. To not scale on the Z axis, simply scale only on the X and Y axes. To do so, press S then Shift+Z to disable scaling on the z axis.


Make this effect in a glass shader, normal map or displacement? I want to make this kind of effect in a glass bottle of wine, but i dont know what would be the best approach for making this.

I would definitely go the displacement route. You can achieve what you're looking for rather easily by mixing a couple of Noise Textures - one "Large" and less detailed one for the warped shape of the bottle, and another "Smaller", more detailed one for the little surface bumps. I inverted the mix and darkened it a little to make the roughness of the Material as well. I mixed the result with white before the displacement to soften the effect and make it more realistic (default "contrast" is often too strong).

Result in Cycles (denoised):

If you're willing to subdivide your model quite a bit (using a subsurf modifier), you can enable true displacement to make the whole bottle warp (shown below with exaggerated effect - 0.4 displacement scale) - make sure to switch to "displacement and bump" or "displacement only" in the material settings (only works in Cycles):


How to prevent the intersection of mesh particles So I know this has been asked before, but the most recent article I could find was over a year ago so I am curious if this has been fixed.

I created the scene below by simply weight painting a subdivided plane and applying a collection of 3 objects as hair particles.

Can anyone recreate this scene WITHOUT any of these objects intersecting one another or is this still not possible to do in Blender?

Perhaps part of a solution.  On the far right a single mesh has many triangles.  In the middle the mesh has some randomness introduced by user actions.  On the left is a render of particle system with minimal overlap and some randomness.

Of course my views are focused on a top down view for explanation purposes.  Your views will have artistic intention.

A Bit quick and dirty because there are not scripts or externals tools.  Some user action is required.

The far left image of triangles can be created by multiple means.  One method is to place 4 triangles in a mesh, add two array modifiers, then apply the array modifiers.  The triangle faces were for legibility.

In the middle part of the image.  Edit Mode, Face Mode. [Select Random] of faces by 10%. Or you can select faces manually. Copy and Paste faces or not. Toss a coin, Delete the faces .. or not. Then a proportional edit with [individual centers] and [Proportional Edit Falloff] Random or not. Adjust influence sphere. Repeat as necessary. Try many quick experiments and maybe the GPU will burn out. The distortion of the triangles was not a goal.  Proportional edit minimizes some work since it can operate on large portions of the mesh.  Be careful or mistake will occur with crowding.

On the right is the particle system.  Random <= False, Emit from faces, Particle/Faces <= 1, No Physics. No Gravity influence. Emission frame interval [1,1].  The idea was the Blender User Can see the locations.  If the terrain is flat enough a shrink wrap can be performed.

Perhaps a script would be easier.


VRAY for blender hangs on Linked models I'm trying to render a scene with VRAY for blender. The scene I'm rendering is a character that has been linked into the file. My material is a simple black and white shader setup to override the entire scene.

When I render, blender freezes up. VRAY never opens, and my RAM fills up (32gb). It never recovers and I have to force quit blender. I have experimented with a variety of settings and nothing helps. It has no trouble rendering new objects that I create in the scene. And if I Make Local > All on my character, then it renders it just fine (making anything less than All local and the problem persists.)

I've looked through VRAY for blender's forums and bug tracker, and also general google searches, and I cannot find anybody else mentioning this issue.

Any ideas? I'll do further experiments to see if I can pin down more details of the issue and update, but I wanted to get the question up. I cannot share the exact scene as its for a client, but I will see about re-creating the problem.

You should probably report this as a bug to Chaos Group.

They wrote the exporter and created the Blender build.


Bake animation from complicated IK rig to simpler rig for export to Unity I made a character, gave it 8 animations that look great (as good as I could) in Blender and they break down in Unity. What else is new.
The problem has to do with the constraints "fighting" when the animations are baked. The rig involves IK constraints on the spine and both arms, Copy Scale constraints, and a Limit Scale constraint. By default, scaling a parent bone causes its children to scale uniformly as well. I changed this in the Relations settings for some bones to "Inherit Scale: None". I do not think this is acknowledged in Unity.
ANYWYAY!
In Unity, there is weird stretching in some animations. I can replicate these problems in Blender if I bake the animations and choose to apply the constraints. Again, this seems to do with Blender not knowing how to replicate the resultant transformations from the constraints.
What I would like to try is duplicating the rig I have, deleting the non-deformation bones, deleting all bone constraints, and baking all the resultant transformations from the original rig to this new rig, and using this new rig to animate. I saw a video that did this a while ago but I can't find it.
Is this solution going to work?
How can I set this up?
Here are 2 example animations, success/failure:
"Close" (success in Blender, no weird stretching):
https://www.deviantart.com/onewingedchronothing/art/ChimpInTheBox-Close-852627603
"Close" (failure in Unity):

"Sweep" (success in Blender, no weird stretching):
https://www.deviantart.com/onewingedchronothing/art/ChimpInTheBox-Sweep-852359442
"Sweep" (failure in Unity):

I succeeded in saving our character but the way I did it was hard-won. I hope this will be helpful to others who learn the hard way that their armature is not setup to be interpreted properly by Unity. Note that I have been advised by a professional that this is over-complicated compared to the minimum that really needed to be done to "save" the character, but the optimal solution apparently does involve a copy-transform rig.

I duplicated the armature I had and removed all the non-deformation bones from it.
Then I cleared all its ("Armature.001") bones' constraints, disconnected and de-parented all of them, and re-parented all of them to the root bone.
I put a "Copy Transform" constraint on the root with the other Armature as the target, but did not set the bone target.
Then I copied that constraint to all other bones at the same time.
One-by-one, I set the bone target to the bone with the same name in the other rig. This took about 10 minutes just to be thorough.
Now I was ready to re-create  the actions:
In the Action Editor, I set the active action for each armature to the same action.
With the new armature selected, I clicked the button to make a new action: "ActionName.001"
In pose mode, I selected all bones, set my Keying Set to "LocRotScale", and re-keyed every single frame.
(I did this for every Action).
Through trial-and-error, I determined that I needed to bake these actions one-at-a-time with the following options activated:

Only Selected (not required, probably)
Visual Keying (most important)
Clear Constraints (equally most important :) )
Overwrite Current Action (preference)

I was only able to remove the constraints ^ and have the new armature continue to respond to the keys when it was done this way. I also remembered to delete the channels belonging to the non-deformation bones that didn't exist anymore. I did this after baking just to make sure it wasn't causing problems.
After clearing constraints, the other actions break. I anticipated this, and every time I baked an action, I saved it in its own file.
Finally, from the file version before all this baking happens, I removed all the actions, deleted the original armature, and appended THE ONE BAKED ACTION from each new file I saved. DO NOT FORGET to append JUST THE ONE YOU BAKED from each file each time, otherwise you will think you messed up when you are just appending the wrong action from the wrong file. Obviously, I got very nervous for a second because I forgot!
When all the animations were appended, I was able to export.
Before I did, I de-parented all meshes and rotated everything about the X-axis by -90 degrees, applied that rotation, and rotated it back 90 degrees. This corrects the axis disparity between Blender and Unity.
Here is evidence of my success (sorry, it was too big to embed):
https://imgur.com/a/zv8MtqU


Blender live-action footage and Grease Pencil animation I have a bit of live-action footage that I would like to incorporate into a scene done with Grease Pencil to. Think of a newscaster talking about something and the live-action video is in a smaller window on the screen. Where the newscaster and set are done in Grease Pencil and the video they're talking about is live-action. I've brought the live-action footage into the video sequencer and I will be editing the live-action footage with pauses. The live-action footage will not fill the screen. it will only take up about 25% of one part of the screen.

Is there a way to see the video from the video sequencer in the Grease Pencil view? It would be helpful to be able to see the video sequencer video while working on the character in Grease Pencil.

If not, is there a workflow that would help with this?

Thanks,
Jim

The grease pencil works only in the 3D viewport, you can't use it on the VSE or in the Movie Clip Editor.
Here are a couple of options:
1. Use video as background for the camera. Select the camera object and, in the camera option tab, check Background image -> Add image -> Movie, then select your video file there.
This way you will see the video through the camera view (Numpad 0 ).

Note that the background image will not render unless you use it in the compositor, and mix your render layer using Alpha over.
Make sure that Film is set to transparent and the view transform for color management is set to Standard.

Change the resolution in the Output tab for the project so that it matches the dimensions, and the frame rate of the original video. Also remember to render at 100% of the resolution.

2. Alternatively, use the video as texture on the world.
Set the color to use the image texture, and select the video there. Set the vector coordinates to Window. and the extrapolation to Clip
In this case you need to disable the film transparent settings to make the background renderable. No need to use the compositor in this case.
To view the background enable Scene World and Scene Lights


Linux kernel crashes corrupt my Blender files I have frequent kernel crashes (which I haven't solved, but that's another story) that absolutely destroy my Blender save files. If I have a file open in Blender, even if I'm not doing anything to it, it will be corrupted when I try to open it again after rebooting. I'll get the infamous "file format not supported" error and when I check the size of the .blend file, it's 0B.

I also have auto backups turned on, but when I went to check if they were any better, they were also 0B.

I'm not expecting to solve my kernel crashes, but is there a way to make sure these corruptions don't occur, outside of manually backing up my files every 5 minutes?

Have you tried using the File > Recover Last option? it automatically loads the latest blend file saved to the tmp folder.

By default Blender saves the scene every 2 minutes. You can change the Auto Save duration in User Preferences.


How to remove unintentional distortion from geometry? Maybe this question already has an answer, but I'm uncertain of how to ask this question in a good way, so here we go.
My geometry seen below is rendered quite funny with a distortion that seems to be added across the geometry that can't be removed by replacing old vertices with new ones. There are no vertices duplicates in the mesh and I have reset the normals (funny thing the distortion moves around whenever I reset normals).
Is there any way to remove this distortion that I have missed? I am using Blender 2.83.

So, this turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. It is all about flipped normals where some faces have their normal vectors pointing inside the mesh instead of outside. It can be shown in Edit mode (face mode) with face dots and face orientation enabled in the Overlays like this:

It turns out all you need to do is select all the faces on the mesh and recalculate the normals (you want blue facing outward; blue is facing toward you and red is facing away from you). Another way to see the direction of the face normals (instead of turning on Face Orientation) is by showing their vectors:

Big thanks to Chris Kohl (ckhol_art) over at https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-remove-unintentional-distortion-from-geometry/1241104/3 for providing me with this fantastic answer and explanation.


Shwinkwrap with evenly spaced face edges Is there a way to shrinkwrap a cylinder (without top & bottom faces) around an irregular/non-rotational solid and have the edges which are adjacent to faces distributed evenly?

In other words, if the cylinder were to be flattened out, I would like to get something like this:

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

instead of

| |    | |   | |    |  | | |     |

I don't care if the vertices are off on the axis parallel to the faces.

I want to dupliface the cylinder and the children objects have to be evenly spaced.

Thanks in advance :)

Ok guys, solved my problem.
What follows is a brief tutorial through the steps I used.
Simple example here, but a better possible implementation is decribed at the bottom.

-I started with a sphere I deformed a bit to get it to be irregular
-Went in edit mode and selected a loop ring (Alt+RMB)

-Duplicated the loop ring (Shift+D, Enter). Separated it from the original shape (P), moved it +2 on Z-axis

-I converted the loop ring from Mesh to Curve (Spacebar -> "Convert")
-Created a Plane and scaled it to the size I needed. Applied to it an array modifier and a curve modifier (along the loop ring)

-Applied the modifiers. Merged the two ends (select vertices in Edit Mode, Spacebar -> "Merge". Or Alt+M. At center)
-moved the plane -2 along Z-axis (G Z)

These planes are not "parallel" to the object's surface. I reckon you could repeat the process for two separate edge loops (the closest to the area you want to cover). Create two separate planes, or segments (?) and array them for the same number of times. Merge the "ring" ends you get. Only keep the inner edge loops, delete the rest (if you used planes). Join the two edge loops in one object. Bridge the two edge loops. This way you get trapezoidal planes, which give the right angle to child objects in case you want to dupliface the loop's faces. :)

Ask if you need any other help :)


Blender Game. My Game does not move when executing but it goes to the final position when I stop it I'm trying to create a simulation in blender of a person walking.
I did a program to advance one leg 1 degree (and return the other 1 deg) after pressing the space bar but I can't see the advance while the game is executing and instead of that, I see the movement until I stop the game. I think it could be because of the pose mode. But I'm not sure. No error is displayed in the console while executing.
I attach some pictures and the code:

Before running the game:

While running the game nothing moves.

When I stop it after pressing the Spacebar a few times and it leaves the executing screen it appears it what I think is the final position, but nothing happens while executing.

Logic Editor:

Code:

    import math
    import bpy
    import numpy as np
    import bge
    from bge import logic

    controller = logic.getCurrentController()
    own = controller.owner

    sensors=own.sensors

    #CODE PART 1. ROTATION
    ob = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ob
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

    rhip = ob.pose.bones['Thigh.R']
    rleg = ob.pose.bones['Leg.R']
    rfoot= ob.pose.bones['Foot.R']

    lhip = ob.pose.bones['Thigh.L']
    lleg = ob.pose.bones['Leg.L']
    lfoot= ob.pose.bones['Foot.L']

    # Set rotation mode to Euler XYZ, easier to understand
    # than default quaternions
    rhip.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    rleg.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    rfoot.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    lhip.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    lleg.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    lfoot.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'

    # select axis in ['X','Y','Z']  <--bone local
    axis = 'Z'
    actual_angle = [0,0,0,0,0,0]

    def refresh_angle():
        global actual_angle
        lecture=[1,1,1,-1,-1,-1]
        angle=np.array(lecture)-np.array(actual_angle)

        rhip.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[0]))
        rleg.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[1]))
        rfoot.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[2]))
        lhip.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[3]))
        lleg.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[4]))
        lfoot.rotation_euler.rotate_axis(axis, math.radians(angle[5]))

        actual_angle=angle

    if sensors["Spacebar"].positive:
         refresh_angle()

While in the related question i test channel.location.x += 0.1 and channel.location.x += 0.1 but none work all time print (0,0,0) (i try because i never has move a bone), so i read the armature documentation and location. Finally end up with this script.

from bge import logic

armature = logic.getCurrentController().owner
if not hasattr(logic, 'boneLocation'):
    logic.boneLocation = 0
else:
    logic.boneLocation += 0.5
    channel = armature.channels["moveBone.003"]
    channel.location = [logic.boneLocation, 0, 1]
    print(channel.location)
    logic.getCurrentController().owner.update()

Blender Game Engine Started
<Vector (0.5000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (1.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (1.5000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (2.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (2.5000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (3.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (3.5000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>
<Vector (4.0000, 0.0000, 1.0000)>


Subdivide a face by connecting opposite vertices Is there a way to subdivide a face like this? There is a lot of opposite vertices, it takes too much time to connect them manually.

The best way I found was triangulate (Ctrl-T) but it does only a half of job and requires a lot of manual edit.

If it is not possible to have done automatically, what would be the easiest method?

Thanks!

Delete the face, select the vertices around the hole, then Ctrl F > Grid Fill. Maybe you'll have to play with the parameters available on the bottom of the left menu (displayed with T) to correctly fulfill.


weird yellow and red grains on my renders I am working on a scene in blender related to Minecraft but for some reason my render image have small yellow and red spots sprinkled which are barely noticeable , is their a way to fix it. it might be a problem with cycles as it works fine with eevee.

These are often referred to as "fireflies," and they're a common artifact in Cycles renders. Because Cycles is a path tracing engine which uses pseudo-randomness, some samples will find light sources and illuminate pixels that would otherwise be fairly dim.
You can either increase your number of samples (although it may take a very large number and long render time to eliminate them entirely), or you can take a look  at Blender's relatively new built-in denoising options.


How to make things easier to tell they are selected? My issue with Blender is that sometimes it is very difficult to see what meshes have been selected. Blender outlines the mesh with a thin orange line, which is sometimes impossible to see when viewing the meshes.
How can this be changed to make it easier to see what has been selected?

In this view the plane is selected. As you can see, it is almost impossible to see that the plane has been selected in this view.

If you go to your user preferences and go to Theme, you will be able to customize how selected objects are show in your viewport. Two key values that can help with this are the Outline Width and the Active Object color.

Additionally, I find it easier to work against a dark background and use the Solid OpenGL lights to accentuate my objects against the background. Also it's not uncommon to find it hard to pick out objects that are close to each other at times, an easy way to tell this is to just change the viewport shading to Wireframe with Z.

The default theme has its shortcomings so my personal setup of many years is a bright diffuse lamp from the top left followed with some subtle darker colors to illuminate the other corners. I have a thick white outline to show my selected objects in both object and edit and a dark gradient background. You could also just use one of the default themes under Presets in the same theme tab.


Summary still there in animation dope sheet Probably a real noob question but started doing an animation. Made a mistake deleted the keyframes. But summary still remains. Seems i am unable to clear this. Even factory reset and open a new object and it is still there. Any ideas how to clear this please?

I don't believe it can be cleared. But it's of no consequence. The Summary is simply an expandable section which gives you a general, at-a-glance view of your keyframe data. It really has no purpose until you have keyframes. So maybe it shouldn't appear until you do. But it's always there regardless. In any case, once you have keyframes, they can all be collapsed under the Summary section. It seems to only exist in the Dope Sheet and the Timeline. If you're seeing it in the Dope Sheet, the top row of keyframes comes from the Summary section. It is very useful, because it lets you move every keyframe from a certain time location at once, irrespective of whatever channel any of those keyframes are actually found.


Apply mask/material by angle of an face Is there a way to apply a map, mask, or material by an angle threshold? I have done this in C4D years ago but unfortunately no reference to share.
For example, on a mountain, I want to apply snow on parts that are flatter while on steeper parts I want to apply the mountain texture.
Thanks,
Stefan
Quick test and result after I got the answer and exactly what I wanted!:

You could take the dot-product of the normal of the surface with the unit Z vector, as a measure of the angle with Z.
It's cos(the angle with Z), if you want to arccos it, for the actual angle, in radians.


Smoke Domains Overlapping? I need to have two smoke domains overlap each other due to the fire having different textures as well as one being affected by wind, rotating, etc. But for some reason they don't overlap right. This means that when I have the two domains overlapping each other, one domain covers the other and makes this bad effect. This is what the effect looks like:

Anyways to fix this? Thanks!

The Problem

Your problem is that you are currently determining material transparency with Z Transparency. This doesn't work, since Z Transparency calculates the alpha per-face. When your domains intersect, it doesn't recalculate the alpha.

If the Domains Move or Change Size/Shape

Change the Transparency method to Raytrace:

This will slow down your render a little bit, since it is calculating the transparency per pixel instead of per face, but it isn't too significant and definitely produces a cleaner render:

If the Domains Do Not Move

If your domains are static, instead of using the Raytrace method, you can fix this by cutting an outline at the intersecting parts of your domain (easier shown than said):

This way, the faces of the domain inside the other domain are calculated separately from the faces outside the other domain.


Compositing fire into footage with Davinci Resolve I made a fire simulation in Blender. Then I rendered it as a png sequence with transparent background.
Now I want to composite this fire into some real footage (the camera movement is already matched).
But I can't find out how I can make the fire shine a glow onto my actor in the footage.
I am using Davinci Resolve, and have already tried the Light rays effect. But my problem is that I can only give it one colour and I can't use the fire footage as the colour source.

I know that this is the Blendr site but I could find a better place to ask my question. If it is unappropriated over here please point that out.

Why did you give up on using EXR (I have tried to import EXR files to Davinci Resolve with the LUT's) and go to a useless format like PNG?
PNG cannot handle associated alpha channel, it cannot have pixels that are emissive and transparent at the same time.

Go back to EXRs and be happy.

As for the glow on other elements you have two choices: Create some geometry in blender that will be affected by the fire and use it to add luminance to the scene in the compositor of your choice (fusion can do that) or even as a video track over the original footage in davinci. Or use masks on the footage and selective color correction and try to recreate the effect on other elements of the scene.

In the world of movie-making, such scenes are shot with the special effect in mind, usually having lights that flicker and simulate the color and brightness of the fire. You will find out that it is hard to replicate after the fact. The intensity, direction and movement of the shadows to make a convincing effect will require a lot of work if it was not done in the original plate.


How to continuously increase a value with the mouse? I have an issue when I want to increase / decrease values on controls like these:

Clicking the arrow will only increase/decrease a notch. I'd like to see the value change as long as I keep the click down.

How do I change this behaviour ?

Hover over the field, hold Ctrl and scroll with the mouse wheel or drag these as you would a slider.


How to reduce the glossy noise? I am using a lamp with shader glossy, without the lamp the scene is good, but when I bring the lamp with the shader increases the amount of noise. what do I do?

You can render less noisy image increasing the render samples, you can also use set clamping to reduce fireflies (very bright pixels, getting brighter with more samples). If you have glossy / metallic surfaces don't set the clamping too low (below 1.5) because it makes the metallic surfaces dull.


Trouble dissolving edges I made a weapon model in blender, I can't remember exactly when or how I ended up with these edges because I made the model a few days ago, however I came back to the model to use it as something to learn how to UV map with. That's when I noticed these edges on this face, the face is not meant to be separated like this, on the other side it appears normal but on the side with the bolt two edges appear, when I try to dissolve them nothing happens, if I completely delete them the whole face disappears.

In wire frame view in case it helps:

If I fully delete one edge it makes the faces invisible but the other edge stays, as shown here:

Alright so, started messing around with the model trying to figure out what went wrong, it appears that the un-dissolvable lines appear after putting a hole in the model using the Boolean difference modifier, no idea why or how to avoid this but thought this might help in finding a way to get rid of the edges.

SOLUTION: Othoap Proto suggested that while in edit mode I select the faces that are separated by the two edges and then press "P/Seperate", by selection. The edges that where an issue then disappeared, all I had to do then was rejoin the two objects (Select the objects and press CTRl+J.) This worked for me and hopefully will for anyone else with the same issue.

There maybe extra vertex. In edit mode select all vertex and run "Remove Doubles" Or you will need to go corner by corner of the face and see it you need to merge any vertex.


EEVEE scene illuminated but no lights present in Render view I found a Tutorial by Blender Guru on Youtube, on doing architectural renders in EEVEE, so thought I'd give it a go.

For some reason, when I switch to render view, everything is illuminated, so adding lamps as he does in the tutorial doesn't have any effect.

Am I missing something simple? Even if I add a light it has no effect on the objects in the scene. (this is illustrated in the attached images.

The room is a cube with a solidify modifier added and a boolean modifier to create the window. The boolean object is set to bounds (all as in the tutorial.) Any Ideas what i'm doing wrong?

Simon

Here's the second one showing the lights not affecting objects

Also makes no difference if materials are added or not

Solved!!!

When I'd saved my own start up preferences, Id forgotten to delete a lighting Cache. I deleted it, re added my lamp and everything works again. Stupid error on my part


Filling a Void between two 2D objects (Meeple) I am trying to create Meeple in Blender.  I have the portrait of the meeple(s) designed as 2D images.
How far have I made it... I have an image inserted into Blender, I put a copy of that spaced away from it... I just want to know if I can fill the void in between those objects to quickly make a 3D object instead of shaping objects until it matches the shape...

Use a vectorial drawing program to trace the shape as path. Save as SVG.

Import to blender as SVG. (File > Import > Scalable Vector Graphics)

Use the Geometry section of the curve to create extrusion.

Done.
Read:
How to model an object with width and depth, based only on an image that shows the outline?


How can I animate bump or displacement node? Is it possible to animate the texture of the object? For example I would like to make bump vector's strength higher and texture to change a bit through animation, but I can find that you can animate only location of the vectors and you can not animate nodes properties itself. Please help :)

Of course you can animates all the settings you want in your nodes, you just need to put your cursor where you want the change to happen in the Timeline, then in the Node Editor put your mouse on the factor you want to change and press i to insert a keyframe. Now, move your cursor in the Timeline and again go back in the Node Editor, change the factor and press i to insert a new keyframe, etc.


How to put all armature bones under 1 root bone i have downloaded many arm rigs for my first person project in UE4. UE4 only allows for one root bone when importing. All of the arm rigs i have downloaded have many bones, rather than being children of 1 root bone. I have tried making a new bone, then setting it to the parent but the animation randomly flails and rotates when i try and move the IK handles. I was wondering if anyone knew how i could edit these to allow for 1 parent bone whilst not affecting the other child bones. I will not be moving the root bone at all if that matters.

Bone is the 'root' bone i added

When i try to move any of the IK handles, this happens, after i have added the root:
https://gyazo.com/202c9159a6b2081acb82beb3b39c03f1

When i move the IK handles before the root is added, they work fine and adjust properly.

can anybody tell me why this does not work and/or how i can fix it.

Note: i made the bone a parent by selecting all of them, the bone last then pressing CTRL+P and hitting keep offset. Here's a gif of what happens when i dont have a root bone:

Select only top level bones.

Select only bones that have no parent, to be children of the new root bone. As can be seen in the picture fore_arm has been re-parented from presumably upper_arm to the root bone via incorrectly selecting all and parenting to new root.

Suggest, after adding new root bone (before any parenting), select all other bones on the same level, and parent those to new root.

For means of demonstration have added the rigify human rig and deleted the spine root bone, then added a new bone "Root".

Shift-select the bones in same level in outliner, lastly "Root" , parent CtrlP and choose either connected to have children connected to Root without offset, or, probably in most cases, offset.


Blender 2.8 in Windows 10 I'm a long time Blender user, though not very technical.  Currently have 2.79 installed and working well.          When I try to use 2.8, it starts to boot, shows me a blank screen and closes.  I can open it on my Linux system, but not on Windows 10, 64 bit 16 gig of mem.  My graphics card is an ATI Radeon Pro WX7100 with 32 gig dedicated memory. Any help would really be appreciated.

2.8 is not released yet. I don't think it is very reasonable to expect technical support for installing software that is unfinished yet. You could try reinstalling graphics drivers, any other drivers that are not up to date on the PC, also you could try to re-download the latest build once in every few days and try if that works. Else than that - it is experimental software at this stage. Don't be surprised if it does not work yet.


Can Blender be used to render 80s style wireframe graphics and animations? I was considering buying AfterEffects before I realised that Blender also does animations, but before I start learning (and please excuse my ignorance) can I create graphics and animations in this 80s wireframe style? Here's a few examples of what I'd like to achieve.

Is this possible with Blender? And if so can anyone point me to some specific tutorials?

you can try the Wireframe node in cycles( produces a triangulated mesh ), using the following node setup :

and with some distortion and blur in the compositing :

solid view :

a test render :

another way is to use the wireframe modifier to get the real wireframe, and a simple material:

solid view :

the render result :


Matching pixel density ratios across multiple objects Just a quick question.

I have multiple objects that do the same thing and are probably going to have the same exact texture, but they are different sizes. for example I have floor tiles that are going to be 4x4, 2x4, and 1x1 etc. and they are going to be using the same texture. however when I UV unwrap them they have different pixel densities on each object.

Now to fix this what I have been doing is just placing the UV's of the smaller objects over the same position as the larger object and just proportionally editing them to sort of match up. for example I'll take the 4x4 floor tile UV's and place the 2x4 floor til UV's right on top then scale them directly in half in one direction to match the pixel density proportionally as the 4x4.

Is this the correct and only method of doing this or is there a better quicker strategy to tackling this?

You can easily achieve this with wonderful add-on TexTools. I'm using current version 1.2.0.

How to install add-on?

Here is a screenshot from add-on site with whole explanation (I'm posting this one just to keep it safe):

Steps:

Make a Material with texture (important!) or use Checker Map from add-on.
In UV Editor (where TexTools lives) set your texture size.
With one object selected use Texel Density picker.
Select all objects and apply Texel Density.


Cannot add modfiers to objects, don't appear on menu I'm able to apply them on some modifiers, the drop down tab to show all objects will ignore the ball, this seems to apply only to the modifier icons being red. I'm trying to apply a curve to the object. Do I need to apply something else beforehand?
On windows 10 x64, blender 2.92.2

curve: You found in: add-> Curve -> Like this image
but, I think you want to model your object right?


How do I create a Unity3d-compatible skybox in blender? I wish to create skybox textures for use in Unity3D, by baking environment materials to the textures.  How would I go about setting something like this up?

EDIT: I have tried simply putting a camera in the center of the scene and rotating it at 90 degree angles, and rendering to a square texture.  However, the texture edges are not aligned, so I think I can assume that the field of view is wrong.

I managed to figure this out on my own, based on what I had noted above.

Prior to beginning, you must have set up an Environment material to render, or have set up a surrounding scene to capture.  Once that is done, you set resolution of the render to a square texture, preferably with a power-of-two size (I set it to 1024).

Once the environment or scene is set up and ready to capture, the first step is to open the camera object's properties, and just below the Perspective/Orthographic/Panoramic selectors, you change the Lens Units from Millimeters to Field of View, and then set the field on the left to 90 degrees.

After that, set the camera's position to the center of the grid (0,0,0 coords), and set its rotation so that it is facing straight forward (rotation 90,0,0).  Then render, and save it as the Front texture.

Then rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise, and render as the "Right" texture (even though the camera is facing left).  Rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise again, and render that as the "Back" texture.  Rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise again, and render that as the "Left" texture.

Rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise again, and then you're back at the starting position.  Rotate the camera 90 degrees to point upwards (exact rotation should be 180,0,0), and render that as the "Up" texture.  Then rotate the camera 180 degrees to point downwards (exact rotation is 0,0,0) and render that as the "Down" texture.

After that, fire up the Unity3D editor.  Import each of the textures (which should be named according to direction).  Bring up each texture in the inspector, and make sure that Texture Type is set to Texture, and that Wrap Mode is set to Clamp.  Then, create a new Material asset, and in the inspector, set the Shader to "Skybox/6 Sided".  Then assign each of the textures to the corresponding slots, and you're done.


Where is GIS panel in Blender 2.82? Hej, what happened with GIS panel in Blender 2.82 ? It was so useful and in good place up to 2.81 - why is it gone? Even in Manual for 2.81 there is no word on GIS features. Can someone help me find it?

There is no built-in feature for GIS in Blender. Most likely you installed one of these Add-ons :

Blender GIS :
https://github.com/domlysz/BlenderGIS

or

Blender OSM :
https://github.com/vvoovv/blender-osm


How to merge two bones into one with preserved weights in Blender 2.9 I've seen old threads with Alt + M solution, in documentation armature -> merge,  but in 2.9 both ways doesn't work. I need to - obviously - delete second shin and 2nd thigh bone. Yup, rigify.

I managed to fix my skeleton by using Vertex Weight Mix modifier.
Simply:
A=bone which should stay |
B=the other one |
Vertex set=All |
Mix mode=Add
+2nd modif for other leg and apply both
Now disconnect bones to prevent its shifting during dissolving (simply uncheck connected checkbox in edit mode)
And finally dissolve additional bone with Ctrl + X


Blender settings and Windows drivers for OpenCL rendering I recently got a Radeon RX Vega 64, first time AMD GPU user, so I'm not quite sure how to set Blender up for it and/or the drivers I'll have to have installed in order for it to work correctly.

So far the performance has been quite erratic while on GPU rendering (on CPU it works fine). A lot of crashing.

1 - Apart from selecting my Video Card as a Cycles Compute Device I wanted to know if there is anything else I should make sure to set up within Blender.

2 - Also, and maybe more important, what kind of Windows drivers do I have to install for it to perform properly? I'm not familiarized with AMD drivers.

All information I find specifically for Blender, addresses problems pre-2.79.

Thank you.

Just go to http://support.amd.com and download the latest driver. You cant do much wrong. Other then that, there's no special setup needed.

Also: As you can see here, the OpenCL/AMD support in Blender got a huge leap with 2.79.


Adjusting the step of a UI element How can I adjust the "step" of a UI element, when clicking the arrows to the left or right?

Currently it moves in 1cm steps and I'd like it to be 1mm.

The step sizes for properties are programmed in and not easily user adjustable.

While clicking the arrows will always step in the same amount there are a couple of keys that can help if you drag the value instead of clicking each arrow. Holding shift while dragging will step in smaller sizes, Alt smaller again (generally half of shift steps) and together even slower.

These adjustments are dynamic, so you can start dragging the value to get close, then hold shift to slow it down to get the final value.


How do I generate pixel-art friendly UV maps? Here and here, you can see examples of what I'm trying to do in terms of texturing. The UV maps shown for these models appear to be very clean and uniform, pixel-friendly and keep distortion/artifacts to a minimum on the pixel art textures.
How can I do this myself? This is my model. Lightmap unpack looks like my best bet, but it is not pixel-aligned (I set 64 for image size). This results in "Export UV Layout" producing a very blurry image since the UV edges are in-between pixels in the 64x64 image it outputs, making it effectively impossible to create a proper pixel art texture for.
I've tried checking "Snap to Pixels," then pressing G to grab and release, hoping it would snap properly. Instead I simply get a noticeably distorted version of the original UV, which for some reason still outputs a blurry image (but slightly less so) on export.
When snapped to grid, the UV initially seems at least somewhat usable if still a little blurry. But the problem then is it's very misshapen-- what used to be squares now become rectangles, resulting in messed up face sizes on the UV and therefore inconsistent texture stretching (compare the first UV to the second and you should see the distortion).
I attempted to use the "pixel aligned" but distorted UV map and got this poor result, very stretched due to bad unpacking:

What's the most pixel-art friendly way to generate/export UVs and get results comparable to my two examples?
BEFORE YOU MARK THIS QUESTION AS A DUPLICATE OF THIS ONE, PLEASE READ:
Quote from the above question's answer:

As for distorted (as in stretched or compressed) textures it all as to do with the way you UVMap your textures.
If possible use the UV Map > Cube Projection which will cause minimal distortion, or UV Map > Project From view

This does not help me at all. Cube projection and project from view are not solutions and both result in a disaster of a UV map. Lightmap unpack is close but not all the way there, hence why I'm asking this question.
Blend:

Well I cannot promise this is the ideal technique, take it for what it's worth.

Edit: here's a more pixel art like render:

I decided to unwrap the model in the traditional way by marking seams.  This allows contiguous regions to be kept together on the UV map which makes the pixel editing more intuitive.

Unwrap with U-->Unwrap.

Next you will need to organize your texture space.  Your model has some non-straight edges, so I straightened them in the UV layout by selecting the points to be aligned and typing S-->X (or Y, as appropriate)-->0 (zero).  I moved the islands around to pack the texture into more or less a square, but I didn't scale any islands individually.  I decided to move the two side panels on top of one another to save texture space.  When everything was reasonably packed, I scaled the entire UV (i.e., all islands selected together) so it came to the edges of the UV space as much as possible.

I then exported this UV layout in SVG format.  Then, in GIMP, I created a new 64x64 bitmap, and imported the SVG as a path.  I chose "Merge imported paths" and "Scale imported paths to fit image" so I had a nice vector overlay for my texture editing.

I then painted my texture under the overlay.  I tried to fit the pixel boundaries of my texture to the UV grid overlay as well as reasonably possible, but exact alignment is not possible at this stage.  We'll fix the boundaries in the next step.

I exported the GIMP texture to a PNG.  Back in Blender, I imported the image to the model.  Then, in the UV/Image editor, I turned on "Snap to Pixels" (UVs-->Snap to Pixels) and moved individual vertices of the UV (corners, generally) manually to snap exactly to the pixels of my texture.  I did not attempt to snap the triangles of the "screen" area to exact pixels, the texture space isn't big enough; I just made sure the "screen" island as a whole fit over the appropriate area of the texture.

This is how the model looks with the texture:

Anyway, I hope at least some of those techniques meet your needs!

Edit: I thought you might like to see some pixel detail like in the image in your question.  Note that you should turn off "Interpolation" under "Image Sampling" in the Texture tab of the Properties window in order to see relatively sharp pixel edges.  Also I have found that changing the Filter to "Box" instead of "EWA" in the same tab/area also makes the edges crisper.

Another edit: it's not a fancy job, but I created a more arcade cabinet like pixel texture, the source for the animation at the top of this answer:


How can I make a light trail without using particles? I'm trying to replicate what this user was after, but without using particles. (I know the particles will work easier, it's just not what I want for this.)
Glowing Light Trail in Eevee
I've got an emission shader on my curve object, and a path for it to follow. It's animated along the path, and what I want to do is fade out the tail end (the Bevel Start) as the curve animates, to create a simple light trail using geometry.
I was trying to do this with mixing a transparency shader and an emission shader with a color ramp between them, but that only gives me a smooth transition across the entire object, instead of fading it along the path.
Here's the scene I'm working with: light trail testing geometry
and a couple screencaps of what I have, what I'm after (just an image edit) and my current shaders

You can use a mix between an Emission and a Transparent node and use a Gradient along the axis, with the Texture Coordinate UV socket.
If you're using Eevee you can use Bloom to make it look like a ray (the Emission Strength needs to be pushed high enough), if you're using Cycles you'll need to do it in the Compositor.


Noise in Cycles Interior Scene I am fairly new to blender and wanted to make something in Cycles, with the same kind of white lighting/style as this:

I modeled a little train station and rendered it in Cycles. It was incredibly grainy, and adding a bunch of area and point lights did not help.
Here is what I get with ~40 samples:

The noise is much less but still very present at 256 samples.

Here are my render settings (256 x 256 tiles):

What should I do to fix this? I took a look at some other answers on how to reduce noise, but they didn't really help. My scene is very simple, but still has a lot of noise.

Thanks, and apologies if this is a common question or one that is not meant for this site, this is my first question here so if there are any edits I should make, please tell me :)

Interior scenes to start with are very tough on Cycles, because there is so much mesh for Light Paths to bounce off of. For example, when I first tried to render Andrew Price's Subway in Cycles with no materials, I got this at 5,000 samples:

The fact is, interiors are tough on Cycles, but you can consider these things:

Only have mesh for what's in the frame. The more background behind the camera, the higher quality your renders will be.
256 samples is way too low to get any half decent results (except special cases). I render most everything at 500 samples minimum, 2,000 max.
Want a cheap and dirty way to reduce noise? Reduce your max bounces to 0, 1, possibly 2 and your min bounces to 0.
I know you want white, so make sure to have a Diffuse BSDF shader on everything, not just nothing. Materials will render better, though, if you want to lose them. This was my result of the same subway with materials:

Hope this helps and happy Blending!


Remove faces inside object So I have a cube coming back inside of another cube ( it's the trigger guard thing going inside the gun handle ) and I want it to not go inside ( merge with the handle ) thanks !

You can select individual faces in edit mode and delete them by pressing "X", then select "delete faces".

For this scenario you could also (with that face already selected)press "G" to grab and "Y" to lock it to the Y axis, then enable snap to faces and hover your mouse over the face that's black in the picture(it's normals appear to be inverted but that was not the question). .


Blurring HDRI maps in Blender 2.8 EEVEE How to blur HDRI images set to the environment? There is no definite way, I see many posts on the internet being quite misleading, like how to do it in compositing but it doesn't seem like it quite works.

In Cinema 4D, every texture you set to an material then to an environment object (sky) has a defaulted blur parameter, so you can "easily blur an HDRI" even though in theory you're blurring a material's texture.

I tried looking at compositing, film, with some tuts saying to do the work in compositing tab. Can anyone give me a definite 2019 answer to how to blur hdri environments directly inside blender? Without going to Photoshop I mean.

If you need the to render a Blurry HDRI, Try with Depth of Field.
But, if you need to blur de HDRI for the reflection, then use roughness inside the materials that you want to blur.

Hope that helps.

Good Luck


Making an emission shader which does NOT cast light So i tried gooogling and asking around in discord servers but no one is really helping nor understanding what I need.

To sum it up, I need an object to LOOK like the sun in 3d space, aka it needs to be very bright. "just put an emission shader on it duh!" well there's a problem! I have cell shading and the size of the object depends on how smooth the shadow is! So if I have one light source which is huge, casting a very huge smooth shading all over my cell shaded objects, it just looks weird.

So - a fake glowing object. I just need an object that looks like its glowing but does not cast a shadow. That's all.

That's easily solved. Find a tab in the emitter's Object Properties called "Cycles Settings".

There's a bunch of things there that you can tell Cycles not to do when it munches through the object. The interesting checkbox in this case is : Diffuse. That tells cycles: ignore diffuse reflection rays for this object.