Displacement not working properly - following Blender Guru rope tutorial this is my first post so let me know if I'm doing something wrong.

I'm following this Blender Guru tutorial: https://youtu.be/1drRNphACMc?t=955

At the 15:55 mark he changes Displacement to True, which I've done, but my result doesn't look like his. Everything up until this point has, and I can't see any differences between what he's done and what I've done.

Mine looks like this instead:

And when he adds a Subdivision Surface modifier, it gets more bumps which make it look more ropey, but mine just goes back to looking completely smooth, like so:

Any advice on where I might be going wrong here?

You might have to set your displacement map to non color data in the node editor.

Here is an example of microdisplacement with the map set to color data:

And this is the same image, set to non color data:


Trying to texture a landscape with color ramp, but it won't work I am trying to texture a landscape with a color ramp, because I don't know how else to put two textures on a landscape.
But for some reason it's not, separating between white and black.

I figured out what was wrong. So I did ctrl shift T to view the the color ramp, and I must have clicked it twice because it was on alpha instead of color. Once I did ctrl shift T again to get it back on color it work like normal. Thanks for your help


How to unwrap a circular track For my banked road I sort of managed to make it look like it is a racing track.

I am really stuck with the pink part that is completely flat. I have a road texture and want to apply it to that, so that it follows the road

I think it should be easy but I don't know how to do it. I have searched but can't seem to find the right tutorial for this.

Use the Follow Active Quad UV unwrap option.

Click to select a segment of your track as the active face(s).
Tap A to select all other faces as well.
Press U to UV Unwrap and select Follow Active Quad

The track should be unwrapped properly with just a little adjustment needed.


Difference operation on Boolean modifier not showing once applied I have checked normals and removed doubles but still cannot get the Difference operation on Boolean modifier to work properly. The choker object is hollow, however I expected the modifier would still function using these two meshes. My aim is to cut a hole at the end of the choker. I am able to use the modifier using other basic shapes in a new file. How can I correct this problem? The choker object is hollow to save on material costs when used for 3D printing.

The simplest definition of Boolean with the Difference operation is that it eliminates the common region that is occupied by 2 geometries.

In your project, You may notice that both the geometries share a common region.

You added the modifier to the Cylinder with Choker as the target object.
Ultimately the some the Cylinder part will get removed as the modifier is for the Cylinder, not for the Choker. But you want a hole in the Choker.So the best solution is to add the Boolean modifier to the Choker, with Difference as the operation, and the target object as the Cylinder.

However there will still be some portion remaining in the bottom.

So you have to apply the modifier and delete it in Edit Mode. But you may have to apply the first 2 modifiers to get the desired result.

Hope this helped!


How to ensure all headers are at the top of the editors every time Please let me know if headers can be configured to be at the top all the time with a setting. I have setup all my editors as much as possible to do this and saved my preferences but often it comes back so I would like to know how to banish bottom headers for good.

BTW until we found out how to use screen layouts we found the bottom header defaults unusable and extremely confusing.

Script using bpy.ops.screen.region_flip

The following script flips all area headers in all screens in window to top.  To flip to bottom instead change if region.type == 'HEADER' and  not (region.y - area.y): to if region.type == 'HEADER' and (region.y - area.y): ie remove the not.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
c = {}  # override dictionary
window = context.window
c["window"] = window
for screen in bpy.data.screens:
    #window.screen = screen
    c["screen"] = screen
    for area in screen.areas:
        c["area"] = area
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'HEADER' and  not (region.y - area.y):
                c["region"] = region
                bpy.ops.screen.region_flip(c)

EDIT: note some, and in particular 3D areas, don't flip correctly and stay on bottom, but pro-port to be on top by the "flip to bottom" tooltip in UI. (only the tooltip toggles, not the header)


Where can I see and edit keyframes for texture properties? I am pretty new to blender and I want to animate the alpha value of a texture. (Actually I want to have an object appear and disappear in a pulsating way). I need to do it in eevee, NOT in cycles.

I have succeeded to change the opacity of an object by changing the alpha value of the texture:

And then switching to «alpha blend» within the textures settings:

So far so good.
Now I would want to create a pulsating animation between alpha 0.25 and 0.75. I found this post where it's said that I could create my animation with keyframes and then add a cyclic f-modifier.

The problem is, that I can't see my keyframes I am setting for the texture.
I can open up my timeline, go the desired frame and right-click on the alpha property:

This will indeed add a keyframe, and I can see that the texture is changing over time, but they keyframes don't show up in any view.

I tried to change to «Graph Editor» and deselected the «only selected»

But I can nowhere find the keyframes for my alpha property!

I would be super happy to know where I can edit them in a timeline-like way and how I can then add a cyclic f-modifier to that animation, changing between the values of 0.25 and 0.75.

Thank you for any help.

PS: I am using blender 2.81

I needed to deselect Selected Only from the Curve Editor header and use the search bar or enter all the nested properties of the material.

The material had to be selected within the project panel where you see all your object hierarchy.

After that I could add keyframes, and use Shift + E to add a Cycle F-Curve modifier.


Clear Blender materials slots I have a scene where a large number of redundant cycles materials have accumulated. I'd like to have them removed so that there's nothing left remaining in the materials slots at all.

I've tried all the methods I could find of deleting them so that they don't show up in the slots like this but none have worked so far.

That is selecting all objects w an active object as well and 'copy material to others', saving, closing re-opening, no luck. And the Ctrl L method as well.

Thanks in advance

You can try using the follow script

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils

I hope that script be of help for you


How to ease grease pencil animations between different keyframes I have been trying my hand at animating with grease pencils, but found that keyframes do not behave with grease pencils as they do with standard meshes. When you put a keyframe for the clouds in this picture for changing positions, it doesn't gradually calculate the position change from keyframe to the next keyframe like you would expect. Instead, it just jumps to the next position only when it hits the frame where you made the next keyframe. Kinda complicated, but here is a snapshot.

So a youtube suggested video showed how there is an interpolate button in the Grease Pencil Left Panel. This allows blender to calculate frames between keyframes. Here is a link to the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jULE3Gohi9I


human viewport parameters I am a newbie playing with the new Landscape mesh tool. My problem is, say, I generate 3000x3000 m(eters)^2 mesh of terrain. The human viewport would be expressed in cms at most, while blender's is arbitrary. Can I somehow view the terrain while modelling, at the height of a human, using human viewport parameters, not that of a god?

EDIT:
Both the answer(s) and the comments were very helpful, but also take a look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0mcAL3sWRM

You can change the view with this in the N panel:

Lens controls the field of view, start and end Clip control near and far.
For more control on left, right, bottom and top, you'll need to use a camera and change resolution. In viewport, it's display size.

for walk/fly mode, use shift+F. for parameters, in user prefs, input tab, view navigation : walk and gravity for a FPS like (WASD + V jump, space teleport) movement.

with gravity, you need a ground (plane or any object).


Relative distance 3d cursor on the right axis I have a problem and i can't find a solution. I have a face on my object. I want to align a vertice so that vertice is on the same plane of the face.
I created  a Trasform Orentation on the face so that i have the right axis where to move on the vertice. I also set the 3d cursor but when i want to put z=0 the vertices doesn't align with the face. I know that the problem is the local origin but i can't find any other method. I can move the vertices put all coordinates to 0 and restore x and y but it's a very dirty way.

If you want to snap all the vertices of the rim to the surface at once, you could assign them to a Vertex Group, temporarily P split the hatch off into a separate object, and give it a Shrinkwrap modifier, affecting only the vertex group, targeted on the surface.

If you align the hatch object-axes down the edge of interest,then you can use the modifier to project all the vertices in the desired direction. Apply the modifier, rejoin the objects.


Render Layer Z in orthogonal and perspective projection In my current Project, I use a Render Layer node and it's z output to obtain a depth image of the scene. My question now is, the distance obtained from this output, does give me the distance from the nearest object point to the camera plane. This is quite clear when using orthogonal projections where all rays run in parallel but what is this z-value when using perspective projection like in real cameras? Does blender already calculate the distance to the camera plane like shown in this image?

Or is it the distance along the ray?

Another question concerning this topic: Does anybody know an alternative way to obtain depth data in blender, different than using the render layer? (Unfortunately, This method does not work in background mode)

Quote from blenderguru

  View Z Depth and View Distance are very similar and most of the time it doesn’t really matter which you use. But to be thorough: the Z Depth is essentially a plane in line with the camera, and the Distance is literally the distance from the center of the camera emanating radially outwards.

This is for input, not for output but I assume that since the terminology is the same it should do the same calculation.

This brings me to the second question. You could use the above mentioned input on a separate render layer with a material override,


Is there a way to reduce the blur caused by denoising while still reduce noise Im trying to reduce noise on my renders by using the denoise feature, but it makes the image very blurry specially the metallic parts, even when I reduce denoise strength to 0.2 it still has no effect, clamping indirect to 0.5 also doesnt help much. Also can't really afford to go beyond 500 samples to reduce the noise further since I got a long 2000 frame animation. Any other tricks or suggestions? Thanks

The blur is an artifact of how denoising is performed. It can't always be totally removed, but can be controlled to a certain extent by adjusting the Denoising parameters found in the Render Layers Tab of the Properties window.  In the next screen shot I have moved denoise to the top of the tab. It is usually farther down.

The Diffuse, Glossy, Transmission and Subsurface parameters are flags that tell the denoiser to use those types of rays in calculating the replacement pixels. You can experiment with them to see if they help.

The Radius parameter sets the area of pixels around the pixel being denoised to consider when calculating the replacement color.

The strength parameter controls how much to consider the surrounding pixels.

The feature strength parameter controls the number of passes over the image the denoiser makes.

If you hover over each parameter it will give a brief summary of the effect caused by that parameter.


How to transmit uv and texture when using Tissue When I create a mesh using a tissue, the material and texture are transferred from the source mesh, but the UV is not transmitted.

I can manually edit the UV because the result in the above image is simple.

However, if the density of the pattern becomes more complicated, UV editing becomes too difficult.

Let me know if you have a way to transmit UVs in the Tissue or easily edit complex UV patterns.

--(new image)

With the small part of the mesh selected apply scale and rotation and unwrap the image.

Take a mesh that tissue is going to apply (i have taken a cube and subdivide few times)

Select the small mesh and hold shift and click Cube and click on tessellate in tool shelf

Now we got the new shape of the mesh from the Addon with no material and no uv applied to it. Go to edit mode and select all faces and Press Ctrl+N (flip Normal)

In the Edit mode Press L key on one face which select the small part of the mesh.

With the small face selected Press Shift+G -> Area

And now the complete mesh is selected

Press U to unwrap

And apply material on to it.


Hook to Empty Object on a Bezier Curve doesn't work I'm trying to animate a Bezier Curve to achieve a rope-ish kinda animation. I found out that using the hook modifier is probably the closest to what I'm looking for, but even after selecting the vertices and adding the hook modifier to empty object, even if I moved the empty object in object mode, the curve doesn't want to stretch.

Can anyone possibly tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Here's the blend file if it might help:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/roun672kchkhef0/Boxing%20Ring.zip?dl=0

First unhook the hooks, keep the empty's Subdivide the curve. Go to Object mode to select the empty and the curve you want to hook it to. Then go to Edit mode, select the middle vertex of the curve and press Ctrl + H to hook it.


Parts of my model are a different color to the rest I have a Problem with my first Blender model. As you can see in the images, the color of the legs are different to the rest of the model:

I haven't applied any modifiers besides the Subdivision Surface and Mirror.

Can anybody tell why it looks like that and how I can change it to the normal solid look?

okay i already got it  by extruding the mesh it with e (like duplicating).
notice that you should mark all faces, if you have the same problem.
llink to discription: Why are some faces in my mesh darker?


Sample Color From Viewport in Texture Paint Mode I have two objects I am trying to paint with two different materials. I'd like to sample from the viewport in order to maintain color choice, but cant do so -- it always tries to sample from the texture I'm currently painting on. The same goes for layers, it won't let me sample the layers below.

Is there an option to change this? A hotkey to tell it to sample from the viewport?

The hotkey is S.

It functions two ways, by holding S the current paint colour will be set to whatever is under the cursor. By clicking  RMB while holding S a new swatch will be added to the pallette. (see the end of these release notes)


How to get full file path to rendered image? I need to get full, absolute path to the image that has been rendered. Unfortunately bpy.path.abspath() returns only the folder path and not the disk. Same with all the other path functions - no disk.

There's a utility function:

  frame_path()
  RenderSettings.frame_path(frame=1)
  Return the absolute path to the filename to be written for a given frame

scene = bpy.context.scene
path = scene.render.frame_path(scene.frame_current)


Why is my sculpting brush texture/alpha being clipped? I am working on a set of brushes that use an Anchored stroke, but the texture used for my brush is not completely showing when I use the brush. If I increase the hardness it helps a little bit, but Blender is still clipping the edges.
Here's a quick capture that shows what I'm talking about:

Notice that the edges of the brush stroke are faded out, and you can't completely see the whole texture.
Here's the texture/alpha I'm using:

Here's the brush with different levels of hardness:

As you can see, even with a high hardness value, the alpha is still being clipped.
Is there a setting or toggle that I'm missing here? Can someone possibly tell me how to fix my alpha so it works correctly?
Thanks so much.

It looks like this is because of two things.
First is the default falloff settings. Just below the texture heading is a falloff heading, shown below:

The default is a smooth falloff, which has a strength of 0 at the edges, even at full hardness I believe. The solution is to switch to a constant falloff. Just be aware that this can cause hard edges on the brush if the texture suddenly gets cutoff...
Which is the second reason. The sculpt brush is round, and your texture is square, meaning that the "corners" of the square will be clipped. The solution is to increase the texture scaling values under the Texture heading. This will scale down the texture a bit so that the square image fits into the round brush.
An alternative is to make the texture itself have a larger black border, so if scaling doesn't work for some reason, that would be the next best thing I think.


How to fill element with color in texture painting? Is it possible to fill certain elements with color or tiled texture? By "element" I mean one island (for example, Ctrl+L does element/island selection in edit mode) For example, bucket tool in 3DCoat can do it. It is really helpful when texturing.

If you have selected your element or island with L in edit mode (selecting linked mesh), or if you have selected a vertex group in edit mode prior to entering Texture Paint mode, then you can certainly choose the Fill tool and drop paint into just that area provided you have enabled Face Selection Masking in the icon  in the 3d view header. In the Tool Options panel, you can choose how much bleed area you get past that selection, and you can choose to use or not use Cavity masking there as well if you are wanting some degree of edge wear.

For painting a pattern in a brush only in that area, the best mapping method here would be '3D' so that the pattern could be connected later to another part of the painting, respecting the mesh normals.


how to change a mesh given by mathematical function with time i.e. how to include the time parameter in the mathematical equation? I am trying to make an animation in which a mathematical function changes as a function of time. Given below are two images which are z math surfaces(from the "extra objects" add on) whose equations are:

$\sin x+\cos y$
$\sin x-\cos y$

The first image should change in the other for which the mathematical function can be given as $\sin x+t\cos y$, where $t$ varies from $1$ to $-1$

This is a simple mathematical surface parametrized in $t$ ($t$ obviously is a function of time and in our case a function the frame number).

Here I have picked up simple equations just to get the idea of implementing it and I actually intend to use it for more complex functions and even for the XYZ math surface.
How do I go about it?
(I would prefer a way without scripting but if I have to use scripting then please tell me in detail as to how to proceed with it.)

I would suggest using Animation Nodes for more interactive results.

The Grid Mesh node generates evenly spaced vectors (Which can act as your 2D coordinates plane).

I separate the vectors into their x,y,z components (Z is zero in the grid), for every vector I compute the equation you provided above in terms of the x and y values I extracted, then I form a new vector from the x, y and z where z is the value we computed, resulting in points that satisfy your function:

In order to make it a 3D mesh with faces, we use the original polygon indices and new vectors to make a mesh as follows, this is just how meshed are output to object:

Last step is to introduce the (t) in your equation, which will be time, we can use the animate float node with the starting and ending values -1, 1 respectively as you stated in the question. And of course Duration is the duration of the animation. Resulting in the animation as you see:

If you want to color the surface based on its z value, where the higher the point is the higher the red value and the slower it is the bluer it is, you can use the following shading node tree:


Custom Blender Camera Shape? Is it possible to have a custom Blender camera shape?

Like when rendering, the camera image outputs as a "triangle" shape? Or a polygon shape?

Is there a trick to making a custom picture shape without actually rendering a rectangle or a square?

The reason I am wondering is because this tutorial shows how to do it in OBS studio. So it might be possible to do in Blender.

If you know an answer, please share. I would really like to know.

Your rendered video will always be rectangular.
But you can add a mask over it, using the compositor

Create a black and white image using Blender/Photoshop/whatever
Add an RGB node, using the Mix node
Connect your BW image into the FAC input

How to connect a mask in compositor.
The RGB node changes the background color.


Creating a static smoke, saving it and making it interactable I've created a smoke simulation using quick smoke, I adjusted the values to my liking and ran the sim. (plane of smoke with a collider cube piercing it and the smoke being moved by the cube.) The sim runs about 250 frames and I saved and baked the smoke. What I don't know and cant seem to find any info on is
 how to save the frame 200 where the smoke looks the best, stop it from continuing the simulation, and use that smoke as a different object in another scene. Basically creating Cumulonimbus cloud,  like this https://i.stack.imgur.com/O2s15.jpg Then I'd like to have the cloud be interactable again as a smoke cloud with a plane flying through it. If anyone can help with how I can achieve this I would greatly appreciate it.

I found the solution I was looking for and thanks for the tip about baking. I'll post the link to what solved my problem. https://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quicktip-store-a-single-frame-from-your-blender-25-smoke-sim--cg-5366


How can I select random verts, not faces I want to select random verts for something in blender, but every time I try to do random selection, it gives me random face selection. I don't want to select faces, just random verts.

Probably your setting is in 'face selection' mode, as if in 'vertex selection' mode:


Make the viewport color match the color for the shader automatically In cycles is there any way to change the viewport color and the material color at the same time. When I change the material color I have to go down in the viewport select the I dropper match the color. Is there way to change both colors at once.

Not that I'm aware of. You could use the Material view to match the colors but that asks a lot more from your computer.
I did find a relevant script, but havent tested it myself. I just manually edit the colors :)
http://blendervisionpro.blogspot.be/2014/12/copy-cycles-color-to-viewport.html


Rotate two points on f-curve by opposite amounts If I have two points on a curve and I want to rotate the handles the same amount I can select both handles, choose pivot from individual centers and rotate them. However what if I want to rotate them in opposite directions?

One way to do this is to rotate one point by pressing R and specifying an angle, and rotate the other point with the inverse of that angle. Are there other ways to do this if you don't know what angle you want to rotate beforehand?

Can be done in 2 ways:

Selecting the first side inner handle and rotating it, then selecting the other side inner handle and pressing Shift+R to repeat the last rotation. Before doing anything else, press F9(F6 in blender 2.79) to open the options window. In that window you get the currently used angle, which if negativ needs to be made positive to mirror the rotation. Else other way around.

See in the little visual explanation:

The other way is by indirectly rotating through moving the handles:

You select the one side inner handle and press G followed by Y and move the handle to obtain the angle you want. After that you select the other sides inner handle and press Shift+R to repeat the movement, resulting in the exact same angle just mirrored. While rotation can also be repeated, it would be in the same direction and not result in a mirrored effect.

Little visual explanation:


What is the difference between "Pose" and "metarig" I am trying to learn riggin and I just addeda metarig and selected "parent with automatic weights".

Now I have two very similar things in the object outline "metarig" and "pose".  What is the difference between these two things?

Either way, if I delete one or both of them, the bones go away...

Every object in Blender has a transform/object-block and a data block refered to object and object data.

  Object
  Holds information about the position, rotation and size of a particular element.

  Object Data
  Holds everything else.

There are various object data types. An object's object data can be swapped to another and multiple objects can share the same data. A null object owns no object data.

Object-data of the type armature is similiar. Your object-data is named "metarig". You can edit it by entering edit mode. When we enter edit mode for a mesh object (like a cube), the outliner stays the same. However, when we enter edit mode for an armature the outliner provides more information. When in edit mode, the armature object-data expand into a hierarchy. This feature is very helpful for editing the armature type object-data, since the hierarchical structure is important. (Meshes or curves don't display any information in the outliner, but that's ok, since the 3D View is a sufficient representation.)

Unlike all other object types, object with armature object-data have a third mode: pose mode. The bones created in edit mode are accessible in pose mode as well, but no for editing, just for posing. The pose bones also store transformation properties, but these are relativ to the rest pose. The restpose is deduced from the bone setup in edit mode and can only be changed in edit mode.

Next to the armature object-data, an armature object always will have pose-data.

The Pose datablock stores the bones pose. You will notice that when we enter edit mode the posebones disappear, because we can't edit the pose in edit mode, only the armature's object-data.

Are posebones and editbones the same?

In terms of describing a hierarchy, they look very similiar. But editbones (stored in the object-data "metarig") contain the rest pose of the armature and posebones (stored in the pose-data "Pose") store the pose of the bones. The posebones are also those that get keyframed. Edit bones can't be keyframed since the rest pose is unique.

Obviously an armature without a rest pose (the basis for all transformations and deformations) or a pose (the actual transformations and deformations) would not work, which is why you need both and cannot delete either.


Finger Mesh Doesn't Follow Atmature I had a look other questions but non have fixed the issue.

Anyone have any ideas on what the issue could be?

The Hand.L shouldn't have full weights over the hand.

I had to redo auto weights on the hand bone then do auto weights on the finger bones


How to Add Background Images in 2.8 and later 2.81a here. I am trying to add a "background image" similar to how 2.7x-based this tutorial shows, so that I see a screen that looks something like this:

However I can't figure out how/where to access this screen in 2.81a as the UI is wildly different. Any ideas?

I am new to Blender so if you can provide a click-by-click list of instructions it would be enormously appreciated!

You can do this in Blender 2.81 by pressing Shift+A then going to Image > Reference. In all honesty, it doesn't matter whether you choose reference or background. The added image will be directly facing the viewport camera at the time of adding it, so align your viewport to the correct orientation you want the image to first.

When you select the image, you will have an Object Data Properties tab with a picture icon on the right side menu. Click on it and you can now change the settings for the image.

If you check Use Alpha and change the Transparency bar, you can change the transparency of the object. Changing Depth will cause the image to be displayed in front of or behind your objects. Changing Side will allow you to see it only from the front/back, useful if you have both front and back reference photos.

The Display Orthographic and Display Perspective checkboxes allow you to decide if you want to be able to see the reference in the respective view modes.

You might find that being able to select your reference image while editing is annoying. In the top right corner, click on the Filter button, and under Restriction Toggles, enable the Selectable option (its an icon of a cursor). Now, just disable the Selectable icon next to the reference image and you can no longer select it.


Issue removing Ngons from Interior im currently 3d modelling my first interior for a game for import into UE4 and im having issues with this particular situation. i have a complicated floorplan and want to add winodws and doorways without creating Ngons on the floor here is a picture to show an example

I know i could add an extra edge on the floor but considering i am going to have multiple windows and doorways this can get messy and its for a game so the lower the poly count the better, thanks!

If low poly count is important then I would suggest you modify your workflow a little to something like the following:

First create your outer walls with window and door openings, then optimize this by merging vertices that are not doing anything to the ones that are.

Next to create the inner walls use the solidify modifier.

Apply this and then add the floor.

Just realized that you said that you are only modeling interiors, so no need for solidify modifier.


How to bend legs at the knee and make them move independently? Follow up to: Why can't I get the foot and the ankle move with the rest of the leg?

1) How I can get the two legs to move independently? 2) How can I get the legs to bend at the knee in Pose Mode?

Thanks Tak

To get the two legs move independently you need to go into edit mode and turn the x-mirror off as shown below:

To control knee bending, you need to add a new bone for pole targeting as shown here:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/21385/2517


When I render in cycles my object is pink My object has a pinkish shade to it and I don't know why, when I open a new project it works fine but in this project it is like this. I tried to check for missing files but with no results, I applied some basic colors but the same thing. Ask for more information.
In eevee mode it is fine.
the shader nodes of one object, and in the composition is nothing

also if it helps

My file can be found here

Try hitting SPACEBAR to play the animation, even if there is no animations in the file, although difficult to say exactly what's going on without the blend file.


Where is this color node? I don't know how to put a color node with the chromatic gradient

RGB node

It's the usual RGB node you can find under the "Input" submenu, but the owner of the file is using a different Color Picker Type.

You can change the type from the User Preferences Panel.

The type in the provided images is

Square (SV+H)


In the folder how do I make blender files show a preview of themodel? In the folder where my models are saved, it used to display an image of that model in the icon but after updating my computer, it just displays the blender icon. Does anyone know how to change it so it shows a rendered preview of the model?

Here's a screenshot to show what I mean:

It used to display the model in the preview instead of the blender icon and I even tried rendering a view, saving it, closing blender and refreshing the folder but that didn't work.

Does anyone know how to do this? I'm using windows 10 and my computer model is an MSI all in one touchscsreen gaming PC. Also I think my GPU is intel and it comes with Nvidia but I turned it off since it kept messing with blender but this was way before this file display issue happened, so I don't think it's the cause.

Usually, it's done via the windows installer file but sometimes it doesn't work.

You can do it manually though, using command lines.

First, you have to navigate to your Blender installation folder, which by default is C:/Program files/Blender Foundation/Blender.
A simple way to do it is to right-click a Blender shortcut and hit "open file location". You can find one of these shortcuts on your desktop, or in your start menu by typing in "Blender" in the search bar.
Or, if Blender is already running, right-click its icon in the taskbar → Properties → file location.

Once in Blender's folder, click on the path, write "cmd" and press ⏎ Enter. This will open a windows command prompt in the current folder.

Then type in the following command and press ⏎ Enter:

blender -R

If it goes correctly, it should answer this:

Registering file extension...success (user)

You just need to close any windows explorer windows and open again to apply the changes.
Alternatively, you can also do this via the following command:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe && start explorer.exe

Note that it will do the registration only for the current user. If you want to do it for the entire system:

open the start menu
type in "cmd"
right-click the command line tools
"run as administrator"
run the command chdir "C:/Program files/Blender Foundation/Blender"(change your blender path if needed)
run the command blender -R
run the command taskkill /f /im explorer.exe && start explorer.exe
voilà


How to model text with ridges (car badge) So I've been learning some blender the past few months but up until now I have never really used edit mode or made some hardsurface modelling.
I am trying to replicate this

First I used solidworks to set the correct dimension and make the contour, however I cannot do the bevelled top on solidworks because they are not that regular (at least i do not know how to do it). Simply adding a bevel does not work since the inside and outside bevels are not that regular... so I threw it into blender to try this out.
However hardsurface modelling is not as easy as i tought ... After importing my stl into blender I have this topology

I have cleanned it out using decimate geometry and limited disolve to end up with this

All of them except the 0 looks ok, but when i try to apply a bevel it goes haywire...

Dunno whythat happens... does anyone know an easier way to achieve what I want ? Basically there is an offset centerline on each of the characters (it is not centered it tends to be closer to the inside part of each letter) and the outside and inside bevels must coincide with it.

The geometry is too tight and the bevel overlaps.
Making the ridge manually might be easier.

Add a line where you need the ridge to be
Move it up
Done.

Start by adding inner edges in your mesh Vertex > New Face (F).
Use triangles if needed.

Then select the inner edges and subdivide.
More complex cases may need manual correction.


How to hide all that not in camera field of view How to show only that part of the scene that can be seen from the camera and hide everything that does not fall into its field of vision.

I accidentally found this hotkey before, but I can not find it now.

Finally I found a solution. The hotkey is: Alt+B (Clipping Border)

Switch to camera view
Press Alt+B
Select camera view area by cross selection tool
Switch to 3d window
Voila!


Why is Limited Dissolve irregular? Why is Limited Dissolve irregular?

Tested on a simple circle:

It removes vertices, but not evenly as one might expect on a perfectly symmetrical mesh.

The method used in 2.68 only worked well for dissolving areas that were flat (in this case, vertices with co-linear edges) since it worked in a single pass, but wasn't good progressively reducing detail like in the example you show.

Committed an improved method r58879, This will be in any recent build or version 2.69.

Update:

The reason the result with 6 sides won't necessarily be equilateral hexagon is the order of dissolving vertices which have exactly the same difference in edge-angle (as with a circle) is undefined.

For this example to work the limited dissolve code would need to have checks to determine the order of dissolving vertices in the case where they have equal angles, There are a few ways this could be accomplished but I'm not convinced this is so important to support.

Such a case is fairly specific and not really the intended use of this tool, so I think its outside the scope of limited-dissolve to solve.

Though if it could be supported using the current dissolve code, I'm not totally against that either.


Make an object orbit another object indefinitely I am trying to make a moon orbit a planet.
I am capable of tracking a camera, however this seems different as I want to animation to continue at the same rate throughout the animation.

I have tried to add a new CURVE => CIRCLE. Then ADD CONSTRAINT, FOLLOW TRACK. however this does not work.. There is no option to track my circle/curve/path created.

So my understanding is that you are attempting to make an object orbit around another one. In order to have this happen, the general workflow is to first make an Empty at the pivot point, parent an object to it, and then animate the Empty.

Here is how to do it:

Select the "center" object (the one the moon would orbit around) by clicking on it.
Press ShiftS and select "cursor to selected". That way, when we create the Empty (the point the moon will orbit around), it will be located on the Planet's origin.
Press ShiftA and add an Empty -> Plain Axes.
Select the Moon, then Shift-Click the Plain Axes and press CtrlP, and select "Keep Transform". This will make any transformations applied to the Plain Axes also apply to the Moon.
Now keyframe animate the Plane Axes however you want, and it will animate the Moon as it spins. Maybe add a Cycles Modifier to the animation graph so that it will repeat it forever.

Here is a quick gif that shows this entire process:


Blender Game cell shading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss04Dx93Qn0&index=1&list=LLq1KLPD4FszVI0eoW6XFUKw&t=0s

I was following the tutorial above as I am trying to make a Anime style character, After completing the cell shaded cube I tried it on my character and when duplicating the character when I try to scale it up it scales it upwards as appose to every direction.
s

Is there a way to do this? p.s I am new to blender.

The Scale operation works in relation to the object origin - so for a cube with the origin placed at the centre you get the desired effect - ie, you end up with a larger cube with faces parallel to the original and at a consistent distance.

For more complicated models this same technique does not work as you have found. One solution (depending on your mesh) is to use a Solidify modifier with a negative Thickness.

Another option (if the Solidify doesn't produce useful results) is to duplicate the original mesh and use a Shrinkwrap modifier on the duplicate, set with the original mesh as the Target. Set mode to Project and adjust the Offset for the thickness.


How to merge multiple empties into 1 average empty I'm looking for a way to create a new Empty in the average center of 2-3 other Empties. (See Image 1)

The original Empties come from motion capture points on an actor. I'll be using this new Empty to manipulate a bone within a rig. (See Image 2) The original Empties will be moving throughout the scene. IS this possible natively through Blender? Or will I need an Add-on or an original script?

Or is there another solution to my problem? Possibly using all 3 of the original empties to manipulate the joint? I've slipped slightly out of my depth here.

Using Blender 2.82

You can set the cursor to the midpoint of those Empties and create a new Empty at the cursor location:

Select your empties
Set the Transform Pivot Point to Median Point
Place the cursor at this middle point: Right Click to show the Object Context Menu > Snap > Cursor To Selected (or press Shift + S > Cursor To Selected)
Create the Empty: Shift + A > Empty


Add Custom Menu at Specific Location in the Header Blender has a built in template for adding a custom menu to the main header (INFO_HT_header). This can be found by going into the text editor under templates->Python->UI Menu.

Can I relocate this custom menu to be inserted between "Window" and "Help" sub menus? If so, how?

There is probably a more elegant way

Actually there is not. We can only append and prepend. If every stock entry was a draw callback in draw._draw_funcs, it would be possible to insert inbetween. Until then, there are only two hacks, which I wouldn't recommend for everyday use (rather stick to
iKlsR's solution):

Wrapping all UILayout calls - wiki link
Injecting modified layout code the hard way - included in addon code

Note that 1. works for a single addon only at a time, and 2. only works as long as there's just one addon replacing the code object of a certain bpy type.

Content from Blender wiki, by ideasman42:

This page shows how to intercept every draw call in blenders python ui which can be used for some UI tricks.

First heres an example of how to do just that.

Tested to work with Blender 2.70

Intercept UI draw/poll

This is a simple example of how to intercept poll and draw functions, without making any behavioral changes.

classes = ["Panel", "Menu", "Header"]

def draw_override(func_orig, self_real, context):
    print("override draw:", self_real)

    ret = func_orig(self_real, context)
    return ret

def poll_override(func_orig, cls, context):
    print("override poll:", func_orig.__self__)

    ret = func_orig(context)

    return ret

import bpy

for cls_name in classes:
    cls = getattr(bpy.types, cls_name)

    for subcls in cls.__subclasses__():
        if "draw" in subcls.__dict__:  # dont want to get parents draw()

            def replace_draw():
                # function also serves to hold draw_orig in a local namespace
                draw_orig = subcls.draw
                def draw(self, context):
                    return draw_override(draw_orig, self, context)
                subcls.draw = draw

            replace_draw()

        if "poll" in subcls.__dict__:  # dont want to get parents poll()
            def replace_poll():
                # function also serves to hold poll_orig in a local namespace
                poll_orig = subcls.poll
                def poll(cls, context):
                    return poll_override(poll_orig, cls, context)
                subcls.poll = classmethod(poll)

            replace_poll()

Override layout & functions

This is the extended from the above code but extended to subclass the layout type used within draw().

In this example operators and properties are filtered out based on their names, but all sorts of things are possible with this - modifying args to functions, changing text etc.

classes = ["Panel", "Menu", "Header"]

import bpy

UILayout = bpy.types.UILayout

op_blacklist = [
    "render.render",
    "object.modifier_add",
    "object.forcefield_toggle",
    ]

prop_blacklist = [
    "Object.location",
    "Object.scale",
    "Object.rotation_euler",
    "RenderSettings.display_mode",
    ]

def filter_operator(op_id):
    if op_id in op_blacklist:
        return False
    return True

def filter_prop(data, prop):
    prop_id = "%s.%s" % (data.__class__.__name__, prop)
    if prop_id in prop_blacklist:
        return False
    return True

class OperatorProperties_FAKE:
    pass

class UILayout_FAKE(bpy.types.UILayout):
    __slots__ = ()

    def __getattribute__(self, attr):
        # ensure we always pass down UILayout_FAKE instances
        if attr in ("row", "split", "column", "box", "column_flow"):
            real_func = UILayout.__getattribute__(self, attr)

            def dummy_func(*args, **kw):
                print("    wrapped", attr)
                ret = real_func(*args, **kw)
                return UILayout_FAKE(ret)
            return dummy_func

        elif attr in ("operator", "operator_menu_enum", "operator_enum"):
            real_func = UILayout.__getattribute__(self, attr)

            def dummy_func(*args, **kw):
                print("    wrapped", attr)
                if filter_operator(args[0]):
                    ret = real_func(*args, **kw)
                else:
                    # UILayout.__getattribute__(self, "label")()
                    # may need to be set
                    ret = OperatorProperties_FAKE()
                return ret
            return dummy_func
        elif attr in ("prop", "prop_enum"):
            real_func = UILayout.__getattribute__(self, attr)

            def dummy_func(*args, **kw):
                print("    wrapped", attr)
                if filter_prop(args[0], args[1]):
                    ret = real_func(*args, **kw)
                else:
                    ret = None
                return ret
            return dummy_func
        else:
            return UILayout.__getattribute__(self, attr)

        print(self, attr)

    def operator(*args, **kw):
        print("OP")
        return super().operator(*args, **kw)

def draw_override(func_orig, self_real, context):
    if 1:
        class Wrapper(self_real.__class__):
            def __getattribute__(self, attr):
                if attr == "layout":
                    ret = self_real.layout
                    return UILayout_FAKE(ret)
                else:
                    return super().__getattr__(self, attr)

            @property
            def layout(self):
                ret = self_real.layout
                print("wrapped")
                return ret
        print(1)
        self_wrap = Wrapper(self_real)
        ret = func_orig(self_wrap, context)
    else:
        # simple, no wrapping
        ret = func_orig(self_wrap, context)

    return ret

def poll_override(func_orig, context):

    ret = func_orig(context)

    return ret

for cls_name in classes:
    cls = getattr(bpy.types, cls_name)

    for subcls in cls.__subclasses__():
        if "draw" in subcls.__dict__:  # dont want to get parents draw()

            def replace_draw():
                # function also serves to hold draw_old in a local namespace
                draw_orig = subcls.draw

                def draw(self, context):
                    return draw_override(draw_orig, self, context)
                subcls.draw = draw

            replace_draw()

        if "poll" in subcls.__dict__:  # dont want to get parents poll()
            def replace_poll():
                # function also serves to hold draw_old in a local namespace
                poll_orig = subcls.poll

                def poll(context):
                    return poll_override(poll_orig, context)
                subcls.poll = classmethod(poll)

            replace_poll()

Relevant code from my experimental addon to inject an own menu after the Templates menu below.

It essentially determines the path of the file which defines the original layout getattr(bpy.types, "TEXT_HT_header").draw.__code__.co_filename, looks for a hard-coded piece of code row.menu("TEXT_MT_templates") starting from …draw.__code__.co_firstlineno - 1, gets hold of the draw function code and inserts its own piece of code which adds the custom menu (it has to adjust the indention to be valid).

Then it executes the new code (string) in isolation exec("".join(lines), {}, l) with locals backed by an initially empty object l = {}. The compiled draw function can then be accessed by l['draw'] and the original draw function can be substituted: getattr(bpy.types, "TEXT_HT_header").draw = l['draw'].

A reference to the original draw function should be stored so that it can be restored if necessary.

class DrawFuncStore:
    bpy_type = "TEXT_HT_header"
    bpy_type_class = getattr(bpy.types, bpy_type)
    draw = None

def insert_menu():
    insert_after = 'row.menu("TEXT_MT_templates")'
    insert_code  = '        row.menu("TEXT_MT_snippets")\n' \
                   '        from bpy.app.translations import pgettext_iface as iface_\n' # meh...
    DrawFuncStore.draw = DrawFuncStore.bpy_type_class.draw
    #module = bpy_type_class.__module__

    filepath = DrawFuncStore.bpy_type_class.draw.__code__.co_filename
    if filepath == "<string>":
        return
    try:
        file = open(filepath, "r")
        lines = file.readlines()
    except:
        append_menu()
        return

    line_start = DrawFuncStore.bpy_type_class.draw.__code__.co_firstlineno - 1

    for i in range(line_start, len(lines)):
        line = lines[i]
        if not line[0].isspace() and line.lstrip()[0] not in ("#", "\n", "\r"):
            break

    line_end = i

    # Unindent draw func by one level, since it won't sit inside a class
    lines = [l[4:] for l in lines[line_start:line_end]]

    for i, line in enumerate(lines, 1):
        if insert_after in line:
            #print("FOUND INSERT LINE")
            lines.insert(i, insert_code)
            break
    else:
        append_menu()
        return

    # Debug output
    #f = open("D:\\s.txt", "w").writelines(lines)

    l = {}
    exec("".join(lines), {}, l)
    #print(l)

    #bpy_type_class.draw.__code__ = code_object # Doesn't work, since a single func is not a module

    DrawFuncStore.bpy_type_class.draw = l['draw'] # exec defined our custom draw() func!

def append_menu():
    bpy.types.TEXT_MT_templates.prepend(draw_item)

def remove_menu():
    if DrawFuncStore.draw is not None:
        DrawFuncStore.bpy_type_class.draw = DrawFuncStore.draw
        DrawFuncStore.draw = None

    else:
        bpy.types.TEXT_MT_templates.remove(draw_item)


How would I make an Iridescent Yellow Chromate material? How can I make this rainbow looking iridescent yellow chromate plating found on metals?

Here's my approach to materials like this.
I stumbled across this method a little on accident.

The key to my approach:

Fresnel and Velvet, tend to act as polar opposites of each other which really help the extra control I look for. The trick is to use the velvet shader as a mix factor.

Fresnel tends to highlight places that are Z+, while velvet tends to highlight Z-. This gives us basic highlight(Fresnel)/mid (The rest of your material)/shadow control (Velvet).

The biggest help though is the Layer Weight Input Node, this one provides the gradual view transition, Fresnel and Velvet play on this one. Another plus on this one, is that it takes your point of view into account.

And last but not least Anisotropic is an almost guaranteed node for anything metal, not always though...

Here's the total Setup, and result.

Hope it helps, Kind Regards,

RRiggs

So after reading the answer, that was already given in the other post, and seeing that there was definitely a lot of scientific effort to get it correct, I decided to append this answer to help you out specifically with your desired color scheme while trying less to trick it with my method. After all it gave me an excuse to learn something new, so here it goes. Hope it gets you on your way.


Mesh arms twisted when connected to armature The arm of my mesh gets twisted by my armature, and I cannot rotate the bone that is causing it:

I cannot find anything online to help with this, not sure what is wrong.

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52715 (Models/Characters/Armature)

EDIT:

Your arms IKs have their pole targets set to your legs pole targets.
You forgot to set the pole angle to 180° on your right arm as you did on the left side.
Your Hand.R bone is rotated in pose mode. Go in pose mode and hit ⎇ AltR to reset its rotation.

For your IK chain to fold the right way, there are two things you can do:

Already fold the chain the way it's meant to fold in edit mode (just a little), so the IK solver knows in which direction to work;

If it's not enough, select the bone with the IK constraint in Pose mode, head over to the Bone tab, Inverse Kinematics panel, and lock the local axes you don't want that IK chain to fold on. Here for your left arm it's the Z axis you want to fold on, so lock the others. That's also where you can indicate minimum/maximum angles so your character don't look like he brokes his bones all the time.


Coupling particles textures and position I am generating a set of particles that follow a streamline and I would like the particles to change color according to their position along the line. The tricky part is that the streamline has a image texture shader and I would like the particles to be matching the texture.

Is there a simple way to do so?

Many thanks in advance!

Particles change color based on age / lifetime. I have left in transparency.  You can determine if position corresponds to that number.


How can I have a custom projection matrix? I want to use a different style of projection, to achieve this effect:

effect http://www.boacompra.com/uoljogos/images/screenshot/tibia/shot10.jpg

I know how to create a projection matrix for it, but I don't know how to set that matrix on blender. How is it possible?

Orthographic Camera Lens

In Blender, there are many settings that influence the way the camera views the scene, and hence how the scene is rendered. You can see these settings by selecting the camera in your scene, then looking in the Object Properties windnow:

Blender has three different Lenses cameras can use: Perspective, Orthographic, and Panoramic. The effect you are looking to achieve is called Orthographic projection/view.

To change a selected camera's Lens, do this:

Select the camera
In the Object Properties window, click on the Camera tab:

In this window, go to the Lens section and there you can select the Orthographic Lens:

Next, adjust the Orthographic Scale setting so your camera view includes everything you want it to:

NOTE: In order to keep the current view in Camera view when you adjust the camera's view, make sure you have Lock Camera To View enabled properly: when Lock Camera to View is enabled, the view will stay in Camera view when you pan or rotate the view. Otherwise, when you rotate the view, Blender will leave Camera view and go back into User view. To enable Lock Camera to View:

Properties panel (N) -> View section -> enable Lock Camera to View

You can read more about the different Camera settings in the Blender Manual here.


Event handlers in Blender I have a scene in blender with objects placed at strategic locations.The main object in the scene is just one human character. I would want to be able to have events such as:

Human character walks past a box and a script sends a response such as sound.

How do I go about implementing that in blender

You setup event triggers using game engine logic bricks within the Logic Editor window

There are several sensors available, collision and near would work. (Touch appears to have disappeared from recent versions) These sensors can then run python scripts or initiate other actions using available actuators.

A search on youtube for blender game engine tutorial will bring up several options to show you the basics of using the game engine.


What should I do to stop blender freezing on start-up, when its okay starting from a double click .blend file I was animating and asked blender to do a 15% render. It crashed. (2.73 with some add-ons activated)

Trying to re-launch Blender double click the Blender (windows7 start list) icon it showed a featureless grey screen and then freezes. (No splash screen)  (2.73  and 2.72b equally bad)

But if I double click a .blend file then 2.72b launches with old preferences and runs normally.

After using that method for a day I retried launching from the start menu.  This time 2.73 launches correctly and then freezes as soon as I try to do anything.
2.72b still goes immediately grey screen freeze.

I don't even know where I should be asking the question to try to find a solution.

W7 pro 64bit   Blender 2.73  and 2.72b  both 64 bit.  nvidea quadro   i7  -had been working noramally for last month, many many hours.

startup file can be messed up.

Open with a file that's ok, reload factory settings and save starup file.

If preferences (addons or anything) are messed up, do the same but open prefs and click save user settings.

If something's wrong in program data or manually added scripts/addons, explore C:\Users\ [userName] \AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender and delete everything (or move).

After a crash, blender files could be corrupted. You can uninstall-reinstall blender to fix them.

If nothing helps, you can check your disks (all where windows, blender and .blend files are) from explorer RMB on the disk you want to check, properties, tools tab, check now. In the pop up, check automatic repair, uncheck search and fix defective sectors (or something like that, translating). This won't last long.

If this fails at fixing, try to check fix defective sectors but it'll take more time and for windows disk, you'll need to restart (and wait).


Add an image import button in addon I have been writing an addon that utilizes an imported image.  So far the only way to import was to to to the UV/Image Editor and import the image. Then copy the name of the imported image to a text input in my addon.  This is cumbersome and I would rather have something that looks like this:

From which I can access the image through

bpy.data.images[<image name here>]

Is this possible to do? I have only been successful in accessing the image path, but that won't work for my script.

You can get access to the file browser in Blender by using the StringProperty with the subtype "FILE_PATH". As documented here. And example of using this would be

file_path = StringProperty(name = "File", subtype = "FILE_PATH")

Then you can just use file_path like this:

bpy.data.images.load(file_path) #most of the time you will have to do self.file_path

If you need to use that image elsewhere just set all that equal to a variable.


bpy text attributes: how to set, how to discover I have got this far with generating text objects (this code is embedded in a loop in which the value of c is being set to different strings and i is incrementing as you might expect)...

    bpy.ops.object.text_add(location=(i*1.05, 0, 3.0), rotation=(0, 0, 0))
    tx=bpy.context.object
    tx.name = 'Letter_{}'.format(c)
    tx.data.body = c
    tx.data.font = fnt
    tx.location=(i*1.05, 0.0, 1.0)

so far so good, but now I would like to deepen or extrude this text object preparatory to meshifying it and trying to incise it into a cube face using a boolean operator;  I have seen examples of this extrusion but they seem to be using a completely different api -- such as this snippet:

localTextObject = Text3d.New(myTextName) #Create a text object.
localTextObject.setText(myTextValue) #Set the copy for the text.
localTextObject.setExtrudeDepth(0.01) #Give it some depth

So:  my question is... given the api I'm using, can I set the Extrude Depth for my text object, and if so, what's the syntax?  and how, more generally, can I discover all the options that can be set in tx.data for example?  I have been googling for weary minutes and have not yet found the right reference, manpage or whatever that would show all the settable options.  Is the api introspective enough that I can dig into it from the python console?  if so, syntax please...

UPDATE:  at last I found the right keywords to retrieve this answer
Documentation for accessable object properties

I am happy now :-)

Text objects are Curves with the subclass TextCurve. To create a text object(without using bpy.ops):

font = bpy.data.curves.new('myFont', 'FONT') #this is the 'data' of the text.data in your code
text = bpy.data.objects.new('myText', font)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(text)
bpy.context.scene.update() #in your case do this outside the loop

To set the extrude:

font.extrude = 0.1


Render Problems with VSE I have been trying to render an animated movie I made and before the rendering was doing what it was supposed to be doing: doing a sequence render where it renders everything I did in the VSe and the 3D default view...

But that doesn't seem to be the case any more, I changed the render samples to 40 and I changed the resolution to 40%, now instead of doing a "Sequence Render" it's doing just a render... I want everything rendered out that I put into the VSE not just the Scene.

Make sure, under your Render Properties in the Post Processing panel you have Compositing and Sequencer checked.

Also make sure to hit Animation CtrlF12 for your Rendering, not just Render F12.


Is there a way to know when mesh topology is edited in Blender scripting API I would like to check mesh for any modifications in Scripting API in mesh topology, such as adding or deleting vertices/faces. Is there a callback or function that works for this purpose?

Yes, you can use Depsgraph and handlers (depsgraph_update_post/pre) for that. For example,

import bpy

def mesh_change_listener(scene, depsgraph):
    # check if we need to iterate through updates at all
    if not depsgraph.id_type_updated('MESH'):
        return

    for update in depsgraph.updates:
        if isinstance(update.id, bpy.types.Mesh):
            print('Mesh \"{}\" updated.'.format(update.id.name))
            do_your_stuff(update.id)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(mesh_change_listener)


Do you sculpt a character for a game with the clothing as one object or separate So I'm just beginning to try character modeling out for a game and I'm currently modeling an enemy. This enemy I plan to have some different variety: same body but different clothing. Problem is I am unsure how to go about it.

Do I sculpt the enemy without clothing and then make copies of that corresponding to how many variety I want? Or can I create 1 body and then I can create clothing separately? If that's the case, how does the retopology happen? Do so for the body and for any clothing separately?

If im asking some wrong question (because of unfamiliarity), please let me know.

Well, you could do it either way. However the usual approach is to have any changeable clothing be separate..

Often you wouldn't sculpt the clothing any way, because the shape of the mesh isn't important and will get deformed instead by the things under it using a simulation. As I said in my comment it's a bit complicated, so you really need to learn more about the cloth simulation system.

If you didn't want to use the simulation, either because you have very rigid clothes/armour or it's super tight against the character then I would probably model and retopo the character first plus rig it. For tight stuff, just duplicate and lift the retopoed surface from the relevant part of your character. Since it's tight fitting you can use the same bone weights for the most part and save a bunch of time.

But it all depends on what you need. For realistic clothes and armour it's best to model the body and then put the bits on of top of it. If you don't care then you could skip making any parts of the body that are fully covered.

If for example your character appears in three different sets of full plate/powered armour then you're probably better off just making three entire characters that just share a head or something. They may even need different animations if the clothing is sufficiently different.

There isn't really one right or wrong way. It's just having a base body that you can put different clothes on is more flexible and extendible, especially if they can share one animation set.


Creating hexagonal grid which is a manifold This is followup question based on this post.

I need to use Boolean operation on a hexagonal mesh. As Boolean does not work well with non-manifolds can you suggest a way to create hexagonal mesh which is a manifold?

My goal is to achieve intersection of "Torus.653" and "Graphene" in my scene. I am attaching my blender file below. I will be grateful if you could help me out. Blender file

You could create the hexagonal grid using the

add mesh extra objects Add-on

(Access the system preferences with Ctrl Alt U):

Then press ShiftA Add->Mesh->Extras->Honeycomb

And set the controls in the toolshelf to the size, nuber of columns and rows that you need for your project.

Use a solidify modifier to give it height and then use a bevel modifier to round the edges a bit.

The mesh will work fine with a boolean modifier:


How to make hair material different from the plane itself? In Cycles Render, I added hair to a plane (as I was making a grass field) and I don't seem to know how to make the actual flat plane's material different from the hairs themselves, because I'd like to make the plane have an image texture and the hairs have a yellow-like color to them, but of course, if I attempt to make the material yellow-ish, the plane AND the hairs will become yellow. I'm done with the plane, I just want to control the hairs' materials.

You can change the strand's material by adding another material slot in the materials pane, then go to particle settings panel > render rollout and select the new material in the material slot dropdown list.

Add a new material slot:

And select it in the particle settings:


Issues installing Oscurart addons I am attempting to install the Oscurart tools as found in https://github.com/oscurart/BlenderAddons. I tried other sources first but no luck with them either.

I have Blender 2.76 2015-Nov-04 on a Mac running 10.11.3

After downloading the zip file from GitHub I used install from file in the Add-ons pane of Blender's User Preferences to install the zip file. I don't get any notifications from Blender that I see as to a result but it goes back to the Add-ons list.

The files do all appear in ~/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.76/scripts/addons.

Quitting Blender and restarting it even with all three support levels selected and All categories the tools are no where to be found. I've looked at all the other answers related to installing addons I can find and have come up empty.

Does anyone have any clue what is going wrong?

The zip contains many add-ons, in this case the Install From File feature in User Preferences won't do the right thing. The zip on github isn't intended to be used with Install from File directly. Blender will unpack the content of that zip to a folder inside your addons folder, called Blender Addons-master.

Solution

First you should extract the zip to somewhere on your local disk, then use the Install from File option to navigate to that directory and pick the add-on you wish to install.

You know an add-on was added to Blender's collection when straight away after that procedure the add-on is shown in the panel -- waiting for you to enable it (it will be unticked until you do).

edit

One might more accurately describe that collection of add-ons as a collection of add-ons and scripts. Some of the Python files in the collection can't be installed as add-ons. Blender expects scripters to add a bl_info description to their code if they want to make the script available as an add-on for installation. Without bl_info Blender won't be recognized them. Scripts that don't have a bl_info can usually be run from Blender's text-editor, and they may or may not have any UI.


Why do rigidbodies snap back when keying "animated"? I know this question has been asked before, but no one has properly answered it. I am trying to animate two rigid bodies on a curve to hit each other at a certain point, but upon keying "Animated" tab to off, the involved rigid bodies snap back to a seemingly random position.
I have tried various solutions:

Baking both objects to keyframed animations rather than using the curves
Placing the rigidbodies into groups and animating those, only keying the rigidbody animation on and off on the actual physics object
Repeating the same baking process on the group after animating that on the curve
Applying transformations at different points along the animation.

If anyone has had this problem, do you have any solutions?
Below is the file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjmixkwa6j9zg4g/CarExport.blend?dl=0

The only way I can get  the effect you describe is when the objects are following the path directly.

When the physics is switched on by unticking the Animated box, we'd have two functions wrestling to control the same object and clearly they don't get along.
The usual way around this is to use an empty to follow the path and parent the object to that.  The physics will then be free of interference when the Animated box is keyframed off.

If I've misunderstood your query, leave a comment and I'll delete it.


Blender 2.8 Object first time settings I need to find these settings in blender 2.8. When you add new object (Blender 2.79) you have this object settings, down left. But in version 2.8 I can't find it.

I need to change sphere segments in blender 2.8.

Thanks for your help.

Things are a changin in 2.8

The creation parameters menu, for now, is at the bottom of the screen as a fixed window (supposedly will become a floating one at some point).


Smooth shading of different vertices I have this mesh:

I Bisect it, select one of the parts, and Separate>By Selection.

My problem is that because the vertices are not shared, there is a visible seam between the two parts. Is it possible to be seamless?

The whole mesh is smoothly shaded, but I've tried setting the bisection vertices and edges to flat shading (in order to have the same normals), as well as marking the edge as a seam and unwrapping, but it didn;t improve anything.

This is the result of mismatch in normals orientation.

Smooth shading averages normals of the vertices which compose the faces. On the surface where each face is connected to the neighbour face this will work as they share vertices and hence normals have the same orientation.
On the other hand when surface ends the normal of the vertex which is on the boundary loop won't be the same as above because it won't have neighbours to have the same average result of the normal vector orientation. Here's an example of a sphere with a segment cut out and left as part of the same object:

Blue lines show vertices normals' orientation. They are doubled and mismatch a bit where double vertices meet. And shading has visible artifacts there.

Often you will be advised to remove doubles to workaround that. If you need these as different meshes the easiest way is to split meshes into different objects in order to use modifier to transfer normals from one object to another, this is Data Transfer modifier.

After seperating segment into another object enter Edit mode, select boundary loop edge (Ctrl + E > Select Boundary Loop) and add it to a vertex group.

So that if you enter Weight Paint mode you will see red in the corners (weights of 1):

Do the same for the sphere itself:

Then add Data Transfer modifiers for both objects. Choose Sphere as source object for the segment and Sphere-segment for the Sphere object in its settings. Enable Face Corner Data checkbox to tell modifier what to transfer. Choose Custom Normals below. In the Vertex Group field choose groups created above. Set Mix Mode for the modifier on the sphere to Add, leave default Replace for the one on the segment. Enable AutoSmooth in the Object Data tab to make both modifiers work.

Now the cut out segment won't be seen as separate mesh.


How can I get the smoke in the render to look like it does in the viewport? I am new to blender, I have smoke rendering problem please help me.
In viewport the smoke looking very nice and realistic:

But when I render it looks completely unrealistic and looks noisy:

Please someone tell me how to fix this problem.

Increase the smoke resolution (divisions) and increse render samples,also set clamp indirect to something around 3. Check smoke high-res and experiment with divisions and strenght!


Removing all meshes from a collection with Python I have 2 collections in a scene (collection, items) both with objects (meshes, camera, lights). How can I select all objecst of type mesh from items and delete them?

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)

With that I can delete all from the scene but I want to limit it to delete all meshes from items. Probably I can if the collection name and type mesh but maybe there is a simpler way?

Don't think there is a simpler way (as you mentioned in the question).

Globally:

Get the collection
Iterate over mesh objects in the collection
Keep its inner mesh data
Remove the object

Then (optional):

Iterate over the collected meshes
Look if it has became orphean (no user)
If yes, delete it

Commented code:

import bpy

collection_name = "items"

# Get the collection from its name
collection = bpy.data.collections[collection_name]

# Will collect meshes from delete objects
meshes = set()

# Get objects in the collection if they are meshes
for obj in [o for o in collection.objects if o.type == 'MESH']:
    # Store the internal mesh
    meshes.add( obj.data )
    # Delete the object
    bpy.data.objects.remove( obj )

# Look at meshes that are orphean after objects removal
for mesh in [m for m in meshes if m.users == 0]:
    # Delete the meshes
    bpy.data.meshes.remove( mesh )


How to quit outer edge only wireframe I somehow managed to get wireframe looked like this:

How to change it back to default wireframe view?
Edit: here is the sample file.

Toggle X-Ray on top row of 3DView Editor.

Or check JachymMichal's answer here.


Is filmic blender already included in Blender 2.8? Is filmic blender already included in Blender 2.8?  I'm referring to the filmic blender from sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/.  The blender guru had a tutorial on lighting.  In which, he mentioned downloading this for blender 2.79.

Thank you.

Yes, Blender includes the view transforms Filmic and Filmic Log. The implementation in Blender was originally created by Troy Sobotka, who independently continues the development in his own repository.


I wish to make a smooth motion like hips of belly dance I have moved the hip joint on a character, from center position then to a few edges of a circle, but dont know if I can smoothen the motion rather than the way it looks now which is trianglar.

I would rather make the motion as my diagram suggests. but I think you can use curve paths etc, not sure how. but more to simplicity of creation extra objects, is it possible to magically make blender fill in the gaps from where KF2-KF3 etc

Object = Hip on the RIG
KF1-KF6 = Locations blender has already been setup with.

my objective would be to auto create the filling keyframes inbetween KF2-KF3 and KF3-KF4 etc, maybe like subframes

I dont want to overload blender with a tonne of Keyframes... but to automate with some trick that keeps blender clean would help my animating process

thanks
Shaun

Note 1: It's not bad to have a lot of keyframes! You can easily get used to a key on every frame and grabbing large blocks of keyed animation. When animating over motion-captured or simulated data this is a common occurence. The graph editor should be intuitive, but not clean/tidy!
Note 2: A belly dancer's hips would likely move in an ∞ like shape or an ellipsoid, not in a circle (a very unnatural shape for movement).

A simple sin and cos function can be overlayed if the circular motion is happening on 2 axes only. Select the graphs, add a modifier each (sin and cosine), choose additive for both and set their phase multiplier to the same value. (You can type 1/pi in the phase multiplier field.)

If you want the movement on certain frames use the Restrict Frame Range functionality of the modifiers or keyframe the Influence.
When you want to edit the movement further you'll have to bake the action.
Another method is simply setting good keyframes and using interpolation to your advantage. Keying the four position (1, 0), (0, -1), (-1, 0) and (0, 1) gives us this awkward motion.

To fix this, make the extremes the start and end of the cycle and remove the breakdowns of the curve. Or rotation the Auto Clamped keys which prevent a smooth movement.


Is there a way to stop Cycles Computing Transparency? I'm trying out a method of rendering smoke in Blender Cycles through the use of Image Planes and Smoke Textures as Johnathon Lampel shows in his recent tutorial: http://www.blendernation.com/2015/07/04/faking-smoke-with-particles-in-cycles/

This is my current result:

And this is my node set-up:

As you can see, in order to prevent cycles from rendering transparent planes at the back of the particle system as black I've had to bump my Transparency Light Path Bounces up to a Max: value of 56, which in turn takes a while to render (1min 56secs on half-res 10 samples).

I feel that it should be possible for Cycles to simply disregard Transparency, so instead of computing it as a bounce, it just treats it as though it's not there, rendering the smoke image but not the alpha surrounding it. As a result this would drastically save on render times.

Does anyone know if this is possible? :)

Thanks!

From my knowledge of cycles, I don't think this is possible.

Think of it this way:  If you disable camera ray visibility it simply ignores the object when calculating ray collisions.  But a transparent shader is simply that: a shader.  And Cycles will only look at a surface's shader if a ray has already hit the surface, meaning the calculation you are trying to avoid has already been performed.  In other words, Cycles has to perform the collision algorithm to find out where the ray hits the surface to know if it is transparent.

To ignore transparent parts of objects you would first have to go through every shader in the scene looking for the pure white 100% transparent parts so that it just so you can ignore them in the ray-tracing step.  This process would be very computationally expensive and would probably far out-weigh the saved time in the ray collision calculation.

With that said, I am by no means a complete expert on cycles, so if anything I have said is incorrect please let me know.


Blender how to show in outliner only the objects that are on the layer selected in the layers box? Another way to ask this is how to show only one layer at a time in the outliner?

By selecting "Visible Layers" from the drop down menu at the top of the outliner, and selecting the layer(s) you want to see in the outliner.


Backside of object will not get dark, why not? I put only one spotlight to the left side of my photo setup and the ambience light (world) is set to full black. Ambient occlusion is at 0.33 and 120 m distance. Why does my object get light from the right side, when it should be almost black, similar to the preview in layout mode? There is no light coming from the right. I tried all types of nodes as described in similar questions here on this site but nothing comes near to the desired effect. I'm using version 2.9.2.

This shadow cannot be made if there is no light source at back side of the chair.

And given that there are multiple lights in your collection, I think you deactivated viewport visibility(Eye icon) only. Click the Filter icon, and click the "Camera" button to see render visibility.
If it's on, object will be seen in the render. Turn off the "Camera" button to disalbe the light in render.


Issues with Sixaxis controller in BGE I have a PS3 controller. I love that blender has support for sixaxis controllers out of the box but when I create a python script to view the data, there is a bit of a problem.

When both joysticks are 100% in the same direction, (ie: X = -32767 for both joysticks) the right joystick goes back to 0. (Even though the right stick is at full tilt, it reads as 0) 0-99 reads fine, and 100 only reads wrong when the left stick is also at full tilt in the same direction.

In profiling software and in games, this in not an issue. I am 100% confident at this point that it is not an issue with my controller, but with the driver for PS3 controllers.

My question is this: How can I direct blender to use the xbox 360 driver provided by my profiling software instead of the built in PS3 driver?

For clarification, I typically use something called DS3. It's controller profiling software that provides support for PS3 controllers. It provides a driver that mimics a wireless 360 controller. I use this for games that don't support PS3 controllers.

UpBGE fork of blender has much better controller support
Modern SDL2

It may solve your issue, while introducing you to many new capabilities.


How do I get a python reference to the viewport camera? I want do draw a line from one point to another using the blender opengl functions provided in bgl. Both points are in world coordinate system. I found a function in bpy_extras.object_utils called world_to_camera_view which needs a scene, a camera and a Vector of the point as a parameter.
I can get the scene from

bpy.context.scene

but how do I get the viewport camera?

Background: What I want to do is, to write a modal operator which lets the user move, rotate and zoom the camera in the viewport and the lines between the points in the viewport are drawn correctly. Its just an operator to learn drawing with bgl.

If you use 'PRE_VIEW' or 'POST_VIEW' as draw handler type, you will be in world space and can draw straight ahead. If you want to draw on top of everything ("X-Ray"), then calculate the 2d region coordinates and use 'POST_PIXEL' - there is a utility function for the conversion:

from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d

Here is a quick example that draws a line between 3D cursor and active object origin, using 'POST_VIEW', which will consider depth of other objects ('PRE_VIEW' would draw under everything else):

import bpy
import bgl
import blf

def draw_callback_px(self, context):

    ob = context.object
    if ob is None:
        return

    font_id = 0  # XXX, need to find out how best to get this.

    # draw some text
    blf.position(font_id, 15, 30, 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 20, 72)
    blf.draw(font_id, ob.name)

    # 50% alpha, 2 pixel width line
    bgl.glEnable(bgl.GL_BLEND)
    bgl.glColor4f(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5)
    bgl.glLineWidth(2)

    bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_LINE_STRIP)
    bgl.glVertex3f(*ob.matrix_world.translation)
    bgl.glVertex3f(*context.scene.cursor_location)
    bgl.glEnd()

    # restore opengl defaults
    bgl.glLineWidth(1)
    bgl.glDisable(bgl.GL_BLEND)
    bgl.glColor4f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

class ModalDrawOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Draw a line with the mouse"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal View3D Operator"

    def modal(self, context, event):
        context.area.tag_redraw()

        if event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:
            bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_remove(self._handle, 'WINDOW')
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        if context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            # the arguments we pass the the callback
            args = (self, context)
            # Add the region OpenGL drawing callback
            # draw in view space with 'POST_VIEW' and 'PRE_VIEW'
            self._handle = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw_callback_px, args, 'WINDOW', 'POST_VIEW')

            self.mouse_path = []

            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "View3D not found, cannot run operator")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalDrawOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalDrawOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            bpy.ops.view3d.modal_operator({'area': area}, 'INVOKE_DEFAULT')
            break


Nesting loops - passing index another misunderstanding I'm encountering is this - I'm trying to pass a list of the index inside a loop into another loop so I can travel through a long list - I've made a small demo of the problem I'm encountering as the actual file is a proper vipers nest of nodes.

I've attached an image and uploaded a file here

blend file

As you can see, Loop viewer can display only one loop, not both. It clears every time, than loop 1 takes new value.

If you want to see result of Loop 1, pass value to output of loop 2.


How to fix the shadow line in the middle of the face? This is not the first time i have this weird... shadow line? I can't understand what causes it and how to fix it.

This is probably due to how Blender is currently rendering your mesh's normals. A normal vector is a vector which is orthogonal to a plane. In this case, the faces of your mesh.
The configuration of your normals tells Blender how light should interact with the faces of your mesh. Is your face a flat surface, or is it meant to represent a rounded side of a cylinder or sphere? Is the face facing away from you, or toward you?
The first thing to check is whether or not you have any normals pointing the wrong way. In Edit mode, selecting everything with A, and press SHIFT+N to recalculate normals.
On more complex, or non-manifold geometry, this doesn't always work as desired. You can manually flip the normals of particular faces by selecting them and hitting ALT+N, then F.
Correcting Flipped Normals:

The next possibility is that Blender simply isn't displaying the normals in the way you want. Blender can display the accurate normal of each individual face (flat shading), or it can average these normals across faces (smooth shading). Finally, it can combine these two effects based on a cut-off angle.

You can switch between flat and smooth shading from the Object menu while in Object mode by selecting either Shade Flat or Shade Smooth. Auto Smooth is selected from the Object Data Properties tab of the Properties shelf.


How can I animate an edge loop? I have a simple gauge that I want to animate to make the green part fill the gauge progressively.

The whole gauge is also slowly rotating on its Y axis while this is happening.

I tried looking online for help, but couldn't find any.
I also looked for a long time in several places such as the Object panel to try and find the coordinates of this edge loop, but didn't find them.

I'm probably doing something wrong.

You may do this using Shape Keys.

Being in Object Mode go to the Data header and in a Shape Keys panel add a key (press the '+' button) and name it location. Enable the apply shapekeys in edit mode option. Now enter the Edit Mode, change the location key value to 1 and slide your edge loop along the object. Next set the location key value back to 0.

Go to frame 1 on your timeline, hover your cursor over the Value slider in a Shape Keys panel and press I to insert a keyframe.

Go to the next desired frame on your timeline, change the shapekey Value to 1 and press I again.

Now insert the keyframe for rotation. Being in Object Mode, in 3D window go to frame 1 and press I-->LocRotScale (or just Rotation).

Go to the next desired frame on your timeline, rotate your object (R) and press I-->LocRotScale again.

If you want a constant movement of your animation go to the Graph Editor, press T and change the keyframe interpolation type to Linear.

Remember, that you can change the duration of inserted keyframes animation. Go to the Dope Sheet Editor, select the desired action and place it (using G) wherever you like on a timeline. In my case I've increased the green gauge speed.


Why doesn't rigid body physics work properly after I add the Build modifier? I have a cube, a plane and a ball.

At first, I set the rigid body physics of the cube and the plane to passive and the ball to active. I set the strength of the force field physics of the cube to 0 at frame 1 and at frame 50, when the ball falls on the plane, I set it to -100. As expected, the ball falls on the plane and the cube attracts it.

But, after that I use the loop cut tool to cut the faces into multiple faces.

I add the Build modifier and set its start frame at 1 and length to 50.

But now, the ball doesn't hit the cube, but rather goes through it and falls into the bottom. Why does that happen?

I suggest to add an invisible wall to bypass the problem of the cube physics when the build modifier is attached to it. So the ball will collide and bounce on that wall.

This is a quick experiment where the cube acts the way you need (I don't know why it works):

https://filebin.net/zisptqbp3v67qm9c


Bevel Problems, need assistance Hi. Im using version 2.82.7 I believe. I want to put a bevel around the top edge of the letters all the way around the top edge, in which the edge and face move in towards the center like the cube on the right. I haven't been successful.
My first step was to add text, use a font, and make it look like I wanted. Then I converted it to a mesh, but I can't get the edge to bevel or scale in to the center?
thx

First, check if using the bevel modifier by itself works. Make sure your scale is applied as well.
If the bevel does work, you will need to create a vertex group with all the top faces of the text selected. You can then use that vertex group as a mask for the bevel modifier.
If the bevel modifier doesn't work, let me know and we can sort something out.
EDIT:
I did some experimentation, and it turns out that the text object in Blender has a bevel option! Simply just edit the bevel settings the way you want, then convert the text to mesh. You can then delete the bottom section of the text, re-extrude downwards, and voila!

The screenshot above is from Blender 2.92, and I see you're using 2.82. Most of the options should still be there, but if they aren't...
Then you'll have to retopologize your text and then apply a bevel modifier on that.


Delete only outer vertices from faces in a faces-and-edges-selection selection this is a one shell mesh that is not water-tight, in edit mode.

The selection was performed as it follows: Select All; Select Boundary Loop; Select More (3 times); Select Less (3 times).

The objetive is to delete the vertices inside the red loop so that the border of the mesh is smoother. Any idea how to do it?

Deleting faces works just fine

Script here:

import bpy

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.mesh.region_to_loop()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_more()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_more()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_more()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_less()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_less()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_less()
bpy.ops.mesh.delete(type='FACE')

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')


Blender 2.8, missing keymap settings after installation of blender 2.8 I cannot click on anything in the 3D view and the outliner tree structure. Besides all shortkeys are not working at all.

In the Settings of blender 2.8, the whole Keymap tab is empty. I reinstalled it and even tried to use the non install version - this problem still remain... (OS clean Windows 10 x64)

Any ideas :D ?

I had this same issue.
I discovered I had two versions of python installed and after deleting the oldest version, my issues were resolved. Do the same and hopefully it works.

To check if you have multiple versions of python installed you can go to the command prompt window and enter C:\Users\YourUserName>py -0 and it should list all your current installs.


Is there a way to remove "input sockets" from a custom node group? I made a node group but i only want to have the parameter and remove its input socket, is this possible?

Yes, Edit your group and expand the N-menu in the material nodes windows and select the socket you want to remove. Then press the X beside the name.


glossy surface when importing certains meshes I'm trying to import into Blender 2.9 some .fbx models exported from a 3D software called Noesis.
The issue I'm facing is that the models, once in Blender, look somewhat covered by a glossy/metallic surface, both in solid mode view and in material preview.
This is what I mean:

while this is what I would expect/like:

This second picture is done removing the material assigned to the object, to understand if the issue was related to the material itself, and indeed it looks so.
This last picture shows (on the left) the object as shown on Noesis (and how I'd like it to be), and on the right how it looks on Blender. As you can see, that glossy feel is there also in material view.

I tried importing the object in an online FBX viewer, and it looks glossy too, so I'd say it's not a Blender problem.
Do you know what it could be, and how I could fix that? (assuming that I can't edit any parameter during the export on Noesis)
thank you
blender file:

Check the Material Viewport Display, the Metallic value is 1, bring it back to 0:

Also, the material is 100% metallic, bring the value to 0 if you don't want any metallic effect:


Fluid Sim multi coloured domain I am trying to have 2 different coloured liquids splashing at each other, i have managed to colour one of them which colours both when i try to change the other it changes both. How do i get 2 different coloured in flows?

Unfortunately, what you are attempting to do isn't yet supported by the Blender Fluid Simulator. You can't have fluids with different properties/materials interact because the fluid properties and material are attributes of the domain rather than of the inflow objects.

As an alternative, you may choose to use Blender's SPH Fluid Simulator, which uses the particle system rather than the fluid sim.
Here's a previous answer to a question very similar to yours : Different materials for each fluid inflow?


Armature doesn't appear in Object Mode Whenever I change the Armature tab from Pose Mode to Object Mode , or Edit Mode to Object Mode. it doesn't work. The bone is also hidden as well. I tried to fix the armature to Object Mode and Using Ctrl + H to unhide the bone, didn't work too. But the vertex still fine. And I don't know how to fix it.

If anyone can fix it or have a link with the same topic will be very helpful.

tried using blender v2.79.4

I'm not sure what you've done, but it can be rectified by opening a fresh instance of Blender, pressing Ctrl+ O, unchecking 'Load UI' in the lower left hand corner of the screen, and then opening the file.

This will load the file without the changes you made to the user interface, which seem to be the cause of the problem.


How to control hair particle position? I am trying to make some grass. I want to have grass only near the edges of my plane and not on the center.

Is any way to do that?

Or I have to split the plane and make different objects?

Vertex Weights:
You can use Vertex Groups.

Subdivide your plane (W> Subdivide)

Deselect the middle with Circle select (C) and use MMB to deselect (or hold Shift and use LMB)

Add a vertex group and click Assign in Properties > Object data > Vertex Groups:

Select the vertex group in Properties > Particles > Vertex Groups:

Textures:
You can also use a Particle Texture. This does not require that you subdivide your mesh.

Add a particle texture to your object by clicking New in Properties > Particle system > Textures. Then switch to the texture tab.

Ensure that the the datablock type is set to Particle system.

Set the texture type to Blend

Set the Progression to Sphere

Enable Density in the Influence section so the texture influences the density of the particles.

Enable Ramp to control the texture with a color ramp.

Flip the ramp and adjust the stops so the particles are correctly placed.


Importing from Blender to Unity - Model looks different? I imported a model from blender to unity as an fbx file, but for some reason it looks different. I don't know how to really describe, so have some pictures:

Column in unity:

Column in blender:

And setting the mesh to smooth shading in blender makes it even worse:

Column in Unity: https:

What can I do to make this look better? Is there a trick to have the model seem as sharp as in the blender preview?

In Unity, pay attention to the color of the Sun lamp and match it to what you had in Blender. In Unity the result currently looks tinted towards green. This could also be because of the sky which constitutes to the color as well.

Texture definition is another probable key issue. Depending on how optimal your UV layouts are, you should be getting good results using high resolution textures like 2048 x 2048. In Blender you could bake the textures at 4k or 8k resolution, Unity by default imports images as 2k textures. You can adjust this per texture in the import options, so make sure it's currently not bottlenecking your quality if your textures are otherwise high quality. From the images it's not apparent but make sure to bake normal map and apply the normal map texture to your Unity material. When using a normal map, your model should always be set to smooth shading.


Limiting the roll on a rigid body cylinder joint chain I am trying to setup a rig that is based on rigid body shapes driving bones that then drive a mesh. The current setup is a chain of cylinders attached to each other with rigid body constraints (point type.) A chain of bones is child of an IKed to the cylinders, and a mesh strip is controlled by the bones. (See attached file.)

Currently is working well, except that the cylinders can roll over and twist the bones too much. I would like to limit the amount they can roll. This seems to be the local Z. I have tried the Limit Rotation constraint. This succeeds in having them stop rolling at a certain point, but then they fall over and begin rotating in other directions.

How can I stop their roll without this new poor behavior? The file is attached showing my setup. Is there a better way to do this?

All you really need to do is get rid of the Child Of constraints on all of your bones.

The other thing I did which will improve the accuracy of the simulation, is change the shape of the ridge body collision shapes, so that they are thinner and wider (they can also be much shorter).

In this picture I have the ridge body collision set to "Box", and as you can see it works fine.

For reference here is before and after.