Can I calculate the surface of a part of a mesh, confined by a square boundary? I have one single mesh object that consists of many little, randomly placed but non-overlapping circles, like so (top view):

The object was created by looping the bmesh.ops.create_cone(... ) -operator.
I need to calculate the surface of the (parts of) circles that are within the square boundaries drawn in the image, which is in this case a square of radius 2 centered around the origin.
I found this command in related questions

area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces if ...),

which works well if I leave out the if statement, but I don't know how I can include a statement to cut away all pieces of circles that are outside of the bounding box.

Edit: @batFINGER I made a minimal working example of two non-overlapping circles of radius 2. For the sake of clarity I did not include the part of the code that puts them in random places, but I just defined the centers manually in ccValids. Each circle has 64 segments, so since both circles belong to the same mesh data, Blender considers this single mesh object, consisting of two circles, to have 128 faces that are all shaped like pieces of pie.

ccValids = [(-1,2,0), (2,-2,0)]

bm = bmesh.new()
for c in ccValids:
    m = Matrix()
    bmesh.ops.create_cone(
        bm,
        diameter1 = cRad,
        diameter2 = 0,
        depth     = 0,
        segments  = 64,
        matrix    = m.Translation( c )
    )

l_d = bpy.data.meshes.new('LeafsM')
bm.to_mesh( l_d )
l_o = bpy.data.objects.new('LeafsO', l_d )
bpy.context.scene.objects.link( l_o )

Now let's say I want to know what part of the total surface of these two circles lies inside the square of radius 2, that is shown in the camera view below:

Clearly the parts of interest are not segment-shaped, so it won't be useful to base the calculation on the counting on segments.
Is there a way to perhaps "split" segments (thus the 128 faces) in an inside and an outside part first, and then count the surfaces of the parts that are inside?

Boolean Intersection modifier.

Given you are chopping aligned cylinders with an aligned box, the boolean modifier would be a much better way to go IMO.

Add a cube to the scene as the bounding box, scale in z to make sure it is taller than cylinders in z. Add a boolean intersection modifier to cylinders using cube as bounds.  A  copy of the cylinders mesh with the modifiers applied is calculated using  Object.to_mesh(...) This mesh can be loaded into a bmesh, to do face area calculations.

To only calculate the areas of the circular tops, would need to look at face normals being parallel to z axis or similar.

Result of running script. The result mesh on left in place, result in edit mode on right. The top face area is 2.5704, which is 64.26% of the square area (4).

Test script

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
TOL = 0.0001 # anle test
up = Vector((0, 0, 1))

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
obj = context.object
# add a new default cube
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0, 0, 0))
cube = context.object
cube.scale.z = 4
# add a boolean modifer to the obj
bmod = obj.modifiers.new(name="bbox", type='BOOLEAN')
bmod.operation = 'INTERSECT'
bmod.object = cube

scene.update()
# create a copy
copy_mesh = obj.to_mesh(scene, True, settings='PREVIEW')
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(copy_mesh)
area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces
        if f.normal.angle(up) < TOL)
print("Top face area:", area)
bm.free()
# clean up...
obj.modifiers.remove(bmod)

#scene.objects.unlink(cube)
# uncomment below to see mesh.
cube.data = copy_mesh
cube.scale.z = 1

Test run on cones. Bottom faces normals matched with -Z axis.  The sum of the areas of bottom edges of the mesh is 3.04279, 70.70% of a 2 x 2 square.


Arrows on a surface following a path I am quite new to Blender and I am trying to have arrows following a path snapped onto a surface. The arrows' direction must be normal to the surface. I tried so many different things, array + curves, particle etc. I just cannot make it happen. I attach what the surface in blue I have and the path I want the arrows the follow. You can see how the final result would look like

.

How would you procede?

Any help would be so very welcome!

Thank you very much

Unless I've misunderstood the question:

You could make cylinder (a ribbon) to shrinkwrap to the surface, and in its Object > Instancing panel, set its method to 'Faces'

Parent an appropriately oriented arrow-object to the ribbon, and Modifiers > Shrink-Wrap the ribbon to the surface by the projection method that best picks up the normals you're looking for.

You could even adjust the edges between the faces by hand, if you want finer control of the distribution of arrows. The ribbon does not have to be rendered, you can switch that off in the Instancing panel.


I'd like to scale something up to mark seams, how would I scale it the equivalent down? I will be scaling it by 50 - what would be the equivalent scaling it down?

You would scale it by 1/50 which equals 0.02


Expanding plane size while keeping existing vertices This is a workflow question. What is the fastest way to get the plane on the right starting with the plane on the left? I think in 3ds max you can select the vertex I have selected in the picture and "drag" out the plane, creating a plane inside a plane. Can you do this in blender? I know you can start with a larger plane and inset (I) but there must be a more efficient way.

Here's an alternate method that might be useful in some circumstances. In edit mode, select one of the vertices of the plane, and from the context menu of the snap tool (SHFT - S), select "Cursor to selected". Next, invert the selection (CTRL - I), to deselect the original vertex, and select the other three. Then set the pivot point to 3D cursor, extrude the selected vertices, and scale to the desired size.


Color palette as a replacement for the default color picker Is there a way around the default color picker (RGB, HSL etc.) with a list of colors aka a color palette with predefined colors - like Pantone in the desktop publishing field or RAL in the industrial designing field?

Say you would realize a more or less photo realistic exhibition stand from CAD files in blender, then you normally are bound to a limited list of RAL colors (or other - more international - color systems) for finish paintings on custom made furnitures and accessories like lamps, product displays and machine housings using complex shaders or in simple cases with a PxrDiffuse shader for wall paints with a RAL color.

Currently I'm evaluating a way through the renderman pipeline and clicking on any color field in the UI of the renderman shader nodes just brings up the default color widget.

What I'm doing now, is select the HEX panel on the color widget, then switch to an text file with a list of RAL colors in HEX format (which is also a little bit inaccurate, depending on the byte range of rgb values), select and copy the needed color to the clipbaord, switch back to blender and paste the corresponding color in the widget field. Doing this a lot in a day is a little bit boring and I'm wondering if there's a simpler way. (As a side note, blender says, that the HEX value is "gamma corrected" and as far as I know, isn't it better using deep colors with floats in such a high dynamic pipeline like renderman? But that seems like an other question.)

A quick research only pops up some add-ons with color palettes for painting modes in the 3D view or something similar.

Any hint is really welcome.

Thanks,
Timm

Ps: this renderman thingy in blender is an awesome piece of work!

Palettes are a rather nightmarish landscape because frankly, most folks don't understand what an encoded value represents.

That is, in software, an RGB triplet is an encoded representation of exactly two facets, both of which must be communicated via ancillary metadata beyond the three values themselves:

A value representing some degree of visual energy according to some typically unnamed and arbitrary scale. “What visual energy curve is applied to these values?”
Referencing typically unnamed and arbitrary coloured lights. “What colour of light do the three channels reference?”

That is, given an RGB triplet alone, you are missing the aforementioned two critical bits of metadata to decode an RGB triplet into meaningful data. Further, to close the loop, you would need the metadata of your existing context.

As you may have guessed, many palette formats store the arbitrary series of three values as their format, making the erroneous conclusion that such values have any meaning at all.

So the idea of a palette of swatches that has some meaning when used with some other arbitrary list of values is sadly delusional; in order to achieve this you must have an iron fisted controlled colour managed pipeline.

Pantone too suffers from this. Pantone is useful in so far that it references a series of spot printing inks. But how to communicate how a particular Pantone ink appears on a given paper under a given illuminant? A proper colour managed pipeline can accommodate this, but a random triplet of RGB values from some table or horrible website is woefully inadequate. It is a fool's errand and those that frequently seek such solutions by meticulously copying and pasting those RGB encoded values eventually wake up from the chemically induced haze and realize the complexity of any such endeavour.

In the end, there are tremendously complex transforms from a display referred subtractive system such as Pantone to a scene referred additive system such as the reference space that Cycles uses. Could you foreseeable bridge the two? Plausibly, but it would require quite a grasp on colour management and an application thereof.

TL;DR: Find precise chromaticity values for any given series of swatches in xyY and identify the illuminant / white point for the values. Transform the values to your working reference space, whatever it happens to be within your renderer. In Cycles default for example, this is assumed to be REC.709 lights with a D65 white point. Another option is to use an “All in one” RGB image (such as those used for 3D LUT generation), transform it carefully from the colourspace required to the destination, and then sample from that image.


Add walls to 2D floor plan I have the blueprint of a room in my flat as a planar 2D vertex, example:

I want to add walls to it that are going into the Z direction. I have tried several modifiers and searched with Google, but i have not come up with a fast and easy way to do it. Currently my method is to create a new, second vertex and measure all edge lengths, then recreate the shape and extrude it into the Z direction. There surely must be a better way, maybe with a modifier -- but  how?

Inset the face you have with I, invert the selection (since the area which was inset will remain selected) with Ctrl+I and then extrude.

Note that depending on the case you might need to change topology in the end to convert Ngons to something more appropriate. Though if no subdividing with modifiers like Subsurf is used then it won't be that necessary.


Link a Texture to Displace Modifier using Python I can add an object to a scene, and apply a Displace modifier to it using the following code:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()

bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='DISPLACE')

It's also easy to change some of the Modifiers attributes, like so:

bpy.context.object.modifiers["Displace"].strength =  1

However, I'm not sure how to link a texture to the modifier via Python. Tried the following code:

bpy.context.object.modifiers["Displace"].texture = 'Tex'

But it gives this error:

TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: DisplaceModifier.texture expected a Texture type, not str

Linking a texture to the modifier manually shows nothing in the Info window, so I'm not sure how to accomplish this using Python.

I had a similar issue and solved it this way. I was trying to create a blobbiness effect:

Make base object:

import bpy
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions = 6, size = 1.0, location = [0.,0.,0.])
base_geometry = bpy.data.objects['Icosphere']
base_geometry.name = 'Base_Geometry'

I add this by default, you can't apply modifiers in edit mode, this assumes the object is already selected:

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

Make texture:

tex = bpy.data.textures.new("Voronoi", 'VORONOI')
tex.distance_metric = 'DISTANCE_SQUARED'

Make the modifier, set settings, and apply:

modifier = base_geometry.modifiers.new(name="Displace", type='DISPLACE')
modifier.texture = bpy.data.textures['Voronoi']
modifier.strength = -0.2
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA',modifier='Displace')

Hope it helps


Create a curve on another curve I wonder how I can make a math curve/path representing an equation along another curve and make a camera follow it?

Final:

Overview:

Make sure you have enabled Add Mesh: Extra Objects addon.

Add Mesh > Math Function > Z Math Surface.

Set up math function:

Z Equation: sin(x)
X Subdivision: higher will give you better resolution
Y Subdivision: set it to the lowest (3)
X Size: this is your wave length
Y Size: wave width

Go to Edit Mode and delete left and right edge from the mesh.
In Object Mode hit Alt+C and Curve from Mesh/Text.
You can change Z height by scaling wave in Z axis or finding more suitable equation.

As for the second question you can find several answers here.

Camera angle should follow path angle
Camera - follow path and change rotation

Edit 1:

Curve on Curve.

Make sure both objects has set Origin to Center of the Mass.
Set cursor to selected 'road' object: Shift+S > Cursor to Selected.
Move Sine Wave to Cursor: Shift+S > Selection to Cursor.
Add Curve Modifier to Sine Wave, select 'road' path and choose -Y (could be different based on object rotation).
Move Sine Wave along Y Axis to position it as you need.

  Note:

  You have really low units scale in this scene, and thus Math Function
  can't create big wave (I didn't knew about such limitations). So you
  need to create Sine wave with maxed X Size and
  Subdivision and after that Scale object up, or just change scene
  scale.

Blend file 1:

Edit 2:

To properly use Sine Wave with Array Modifier you will need to pay attention while creating the wave to have beginning and end as close to X axis grid line as possible. Remember to check Merge option under Array Modifier and set it to the moment when vertices will join.

And for the Camera Follow Path, you can just use Curve and Array modifiers on unconverted mesh (right after creating and cleaning edges from Z Math), then apply modifiers and after that do step 5. from original answer.


Can Blender Render on Systems without a GUI? Is there any way to get blender to render on systems without a GUI?  Over the network on systems with a GUI?

I know of a service that will let you buy virtual servers that are charged by the hour, not the month, allowing to purchase extra performance on demand very cheaply!

The question itself is OS-agnostic, but in this case you can essentially respond in a any OS you would like.

Yes, this Blender supports this feature, which is frequently used on render-farms.

For reference, in Blender this is known as background mode.

I've had success rendering on a Linux cluster using SGE. Here, I render the first 1500 frames of an animation:

$ for n in `seq 1 1500`; do qbatch blender --background myblend.blend -x 1 -f $n; done

(note qbatch is just a script that submits a regular command line invocation to SGE for distribution to a compute node, so it's the stuff between "qbatch" and "done" that you're probably interested in)

Depending on the dynamics of your system, you may want to batch your renders differently, but you can adapt what I used.

Here is a page that describes some useful command line options: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/advanced/command_line/render.html


How to repeat a texture mirrored? I'm using the Blender render, and miss a texture repeat option I know from OpenGL. It is used in one model which has been finished poly-wise, but texture mapping is wrong.

Look at our good old Lakitu friend here, who has obvious texturing issues:

If you look at the UV mapping on the left, the source to the texturing issue becomes clear: It would be mapped correctly only if the texture would be repeated and mirrored outside its bounds (as if you would use GL_MIRRORED_REPEAT in OpenGL).

However, I do not find such an option in the texture repeat options of the Blender render. Can I only fix this by manually modifying the out-of-bounds UVs (mirroring them back into the texture space and splitting triangles spanning the texture borders)?

In order to repeat the texture, at the same time mirroring it, you should check 2 options in the Image Mapping scroll:

increase value of the Repeat slider to something more, than 1 (otherwise Mirror options will continue being disabled, like you've mentioned);
check Mirror X and / or Mirror Y checkboxes.

The texture will be repeating as the pattern, mirrored on selected axes.


Making a desk that open Hi I've been trying to make a desk for a game I'm making in unreal engine 4, but I've been having some problems. I made the drawer, and the cabinet separate objects, and wan't to animate them opening. I did that, and merged the object, but it started moving the desk, instead of just the drawer. How do I make the animation work?

I suspect that each part of your desk which articulates relative to any other part of the desk will need to be a separate object, and parented to some other appropriate part of the desk. But having written that , the exact method of associating the various parts of your desk so that they articulate as you expect in UE4 will be determined by the design of the UE4 game engine. I suggest that when you have completed all of the constituent parts of your desk that you ask about animating them on a forum devoted to UE4 topics.


Where is the color setting for disabled menu items? I somehow changed to color of disabled menu items, so that they are not grayed out unless you hover over them.

As you can see, the Search and submenu entries should be grayed out, but are only grayed out when hovering over them.

Changed color theme on the left and, the default color theme on the right.

What did I change that did this?

Some of the colors here re-use generic names (and it isn't always very logical)

See: Menu Item -> Color -> Inner


How to apply a glass shader on my imported geometry? I'm new to Blender so I'm doing all my modelling in Maya and transfer to Blender using wavefront obj. I have create a simple wine glas, no texture applied, just geometry. I can apply color to it but when I increase the transmission value nothing happens.

Do I need to import my .mtl file? Tried to unwrap the UV's as well.

Assuming you are using the Eevee renderer.

Go to Properties Editor > Render Properties tab and check Screen Space Reflections as well as Refraction. It brings a glass look to your material.

With Glass object selected go to Shader Editor > Properties panel N switch to Options tab and check Screen Space Refraction.
This enables other objects visible behind glass.


What is the shortcut to Select Linked Flat Faces in 2.8 Beta? In 2.79 it was SHIFT CTRL ALT F

Now I can't seem to find it?

you have to right click and assign your own in blender 2.80


Blend4Webs m_trans.set_matrix does not respect linear algebra I tried to scale an object alongside a specific dimension with the set_matrix function from the transform module in Blend4Web.

Phenomenon

Here is an example matrix applied by set_matrix

a 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
0 0 0 1

Let a be 0.1

Expectation: It should be scaled to 0.1 on X.

Result: It was scaled down approximately 0.8 on X, Y and Z.

Left is the original cube, the right is transformed with the matrix as defined above.

then I assigned different values to a, and find many anomalies, the two most noticeable:

The  transformation is not linear,
and happens on all 3D axes. (it should be carried out only on X)

The funniest case when a is zero, because in this setting the transformation matrix spans only to 2 dimensions, which should collapse the cube to a square... well it makes it a slightly smaller cube, but at least it collapsed my mind to the null space.

Reproduction

I made a self contained example in a project, you can extract it into your project folder. This reproduces what I described, the only difference that it changes 2 basis vectors to null vector instead of one.

Blender file

I changed two things on the default Blend4Web starter file:

Reseted the cube transformation to  the identity. (it is translated on Z by 1 on default scene )
turned on the physics on the cube object, so it can be transformed.

Code

The following code was written into the default Blend4Web JavaScript scaffolding, under the place your code here comment

var cube = m_scenes.get_object_by_name("cube");
// The cube object on default b4w scene is transformed by the identity.
var mat = m_trans.get_matrix(cube);
// Create a global function to update the cube transformation matrix
// from the inspector.
updateMatfromWindow(mat, cube);

console.log("identity: ");
mat4_pprint(mat);
mat[0] = 0;
mat[5] = 0;
console.log('collapsing to one dimension');
mat4_pprint(mat);
/**
* after this the cube should disaper. since it transformed by a matrix with a
* zero determinant.
*/
m_trans.set_matrix(cube, mat);

I also added some extra features for testing, so you can update the transformation matrix of the cube from the inspector, using the updateMat(ind, val), function, for example:

updateMat(12, 1) // will translate the cube 1 unit on x.

and a matrix pretty printer function.

My environment:

NixOS 17.09 “Hummingbird” (GNU/Linux)
Blender  2.79a
Blend4Web 17.12.0

As it turned out recent Blend4Web (17.12.0) does not support non-uniform scaling (it will be added with the next release). Which also means: its 4D matrix module does not expose the real transformation entity, which it usess at its deepest abstraction.

General workaround:

However Blend4Web supports non-uniform scale animations exported from blender, and it is also possible to jump to a specific animation frame. So make a appropriate scale animation and wrote a code which interpolates between its frames.

Example:

I wrote a window-scaleresponsive input range GUI element with this method, the relevant code snippet should be rather simple for someone with a basic knowledge about the Blend4Web SDK.

function registerSliderResize(railObj, knobObj, frameNum) {

  var etalonRatio = 16 / 9;

  function resize() {

    var ratio = window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight;
    var frameInd = Math.floor(ratio / etalonRatio * frameNum);

    if (frameInd > frameNum)
      frameInd = frameNum;
    else if (frameInd < 1)
      frameInd = 1;

    // invert frameInd
    frameInd = frameNum - frameInd;

    m_anim.apply(railObj, "rail-resize", m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.set_behavior(railObj, m_anim.AB_FINISH_STOP, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.play(railObj, null, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    console.log(frameInd);
    m_anim.set_frame(railObj, frameInd, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.stop(railObj, m_anim.SLOT_0);

    m_anim.apply(knobObj, "knob-resize", m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.set_behavior(railObj, m_anim.AB_FINISH_STOP, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.play(railObj, null, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    console.log(frameInd);
    m_anim.set_frame(railObj, frameInd, m_anim.SLOT_0);
    m_anim.stop(railObj, m_anim.SLOT_0);
  };

  resize();

  window.addEventListener("resize", resize);
}

The result:

Two non-uniformly scaled version of the same slider adapted to the window size, changed by Chromium inspector.

The whole project:

You can download the whole source code and the corresponding .blend file.


Add wetmaps to joined mesh Recently, I have been working on a rain animation for a school project in Blender 2.79. I created cobbled street tile using texture, generated normal maps, displacement map, UV unwrapped it (was just a square) etc. so it looks like this:

After that I created actual street using array modifier, then I used method descibed in the first answer from here to create one mesh joined from array.
I also have a particle system which serves as rain so in order to add wetmaps I created separate UV map for dynamic paint, this time unwrapping whole joined street.

So now I have a wetmap for whole street and now I'm stuck because I don't know how to apply it, because normally you would use it with material of the road, but the material seems to be the one from back when I was creating tiles. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it each part which was previously different tiles from array modifier uses one material but they use it separately (material is still applied in squares) and that is ok because otherwise everything would look very bad if material from tiles would now be applied to whole road.

But how do I now apply wetmap to joined mesh, because I can't use it in material from individual tiles since it's destined for them and not for joined street. And I can't change material for street because i will lose cobblestone look. Is there a way to combine different materials for one mesh - one for whole and one for its different parts? Or maybe I've done something wrong along the way and in order to use textures like that + wetmaps I need to do something differently?

While  a face of an object can have only one material, a material can use more than one UV Map, so you can add another UV map to the object to map images generated by Dynamic Paint on to the whole road. You've probably done half of this, but I'll go through the whole thing..

In the UV Maps panel of the road object's Data tab, hit '+' to add a new map. Give it a sensible name, and select it to make it active.
In the header of a UV edit window, you'll find the option to select which UV Map you're defining by the current unwrapping/editing session.. it should show the map you've made active. Unwrap the whole road to it. (Whichever way you like, but probably by looking orthogonally straight down at the road in Edit Mode, and U > 'Project from View - Bounds')
In your shader tree, replace the 'Texture Coordinate' node with two 'Input' > 'UV Map' nodes, one for the tiles, one for the road's Dynamic Paint image sequence. (This tree only illustrates the use of 2 maps, it's not meant to recommend how you might use the rain image sequence to affect the material)

In its Output panel, tell Dynamic Paint to use the all-road UV map when baking its image sequence. (Mine's called UV_All)

Then the tiles keep the mapping from before they were made into an array, and the rain falls on the whole road.


How to find if a point is inside a mesh? I need a python script that would help me determine if a point is inside a cylindrical mesh.

I tried the .pointInside(point, selected_all=False) but it is deprecated in the newer versions of blender and google search yielded a couple of scripts (below) and they don't work for me.

Ray-casting method: (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?228683-Point-in-mesh-scripts-not-working)

import bpy
import mathutils
def pointInsideMesh(point,ob):
 axes = [ mathutils.Vector((1,0,0)) ]
 outside = False
 for axis in axes:
    mat = ob.matrix_world
    mat.invert()
    orig = mat*point
    count = 0
    while True:
        location,normal,index = ob.ray_cast(orig,orig+axis*10000.0)
        if index == -1: break
        count += 1
        orig = location + axis*0.00001
    if count%2 == 0:
        outside = True
        break
return not outside
print(pointInsideMesh( mathutils.Vector((3,0,0)),bpy.context.active_object))

And one described here (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?228683-Point-in-mesh-scripts-not-working)

## normals should be pointing out
import bpy
obj = bpy.context.object
cur = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location.copy()
cur = obj.matrix_world.inverted() * cur
cpom = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(cur)
vec = cur - cpom[0]
dot = cpom[1].dot(vec)
if dot < 0.0: print(dot, 'inside')
else: print(dot, 'outside')

let's look at the documentation for object.ray_cast(start, end).
The ray_cast function returns 3 values:  (location, normal, index):

location, The hit location of this ray cast, float array of 3 items in [-inf, inf]
normal, The face normal at the ray cast hit location, float array of 3 items in [-inf, inf]
index, The face index, -1 when no intersection is found, int in [-inf, inf]

It will return the index of the first face encountered on the path between start and end Vectors.

If the start vector is outside of the Object, and the face index is -1, you already know the point is not inside the object.
But if it does return a face index, then you start counting how many consecutive faces it intersects by doing a ray_cast from the Vector of the  most recent intersection (plus a small offset towards the destination to push it away from the most recent face) to the end point.
When at some point the face index returns -1, you know there are no more faces between the checked point and the end point, then you add up the total number of intersections.

If that number is even, it went in and out, and is currently out.
If it's odd, it's still inside.

In code that might look something like this:
def is_inside(ray_origin, ray_destination, obj):

    # the matrix multiplations and inversions are only needed if you
    # have unapplied transforms, else they could be dropped. but it's handy
    # to have the algorithm take them into account, for generality.
    mat = obj.matrix_local.inverted()
    f = obj.ray_cast(mat * ray_origin, mat * ray_destination)
    loc, normal, face_idx = f

    if face_idx == -1:
        return False

    max_expected_intersections = 1000
    fudge_distance = 0.0001
    direction = (ray_destination - loc)
    dir_len = direction.length
    amount = fudge_distance / dir_len

    i = 1
    while (face_idx != -1):

        loc = loc.lerp(direction, amount)
        f = obj.ray_cast(mat * loc, mat * ray_destination)
        loc, normal, face_idx = f
        print(face_idx)
        if face_idx == -1:
            break
        i += 1
        if i > max_expected_intersections:
            break

    return not ((i % 2) == 0)

Here a test blend using Sverchok Scripted Node with that algorithm.

caveat: The fudge distance is not very nicely calculated, if might help precision to repeat the algorithm from a few randomly picked points around the object, and take the most common return value.
edit:
I just realized you can track the indices of intersected faces and adjust the fudge factor of the ray until the ray_cast no longer returns the index of a previously intersected face, letting it progress on..
Another approach
using obj.closest_point_on_mesh. Offered by Kosvor on sverchok issue tracker:
def is_inside(p, max_dist, obj):
    # max_dist = 1.84467e+19
    point, normal, face = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(p, max_dist)
    p2 = point-p
    v = p2.dot(normal)
    print(v)
    return not(v < 0.0)

this assumes all faces of the object are pointing outwards


Certain faces refuse to be selected, yet others on the same object slect fine Certain faces refuse to be selected (as the arrows points to), yet others on the same object select just fine as you can see by the one face on the bevel edge that is selected. What am I overlooking!?

Due to the way Blender detects selection, for large faces you sometimes need to click on or near the selection dot in the middle of a face to select it.


Is there a way to rotate the axes themselves? Is there a way to rotate the axes themselves? I want to rotate the global coordinate system, basically redefining the x and y axes 45 degrees from their original position.

Yes, if one fits your needs you can use a different transform orientation. If not, you can create a custom one.
Other transform orientation systems can be selected in 3D view > Header > Transform orientation:

Note that to transform a selection along the orientation set in 3D view > Header, you need to press the axis key twice, e.g. RYY. Otherwise Global coordinates will be used)
View
The orientation for the View setting is controlled by the angle of the view. See the wiki:

The manipulator will match the 3D view, Y → Up/Down, X → Left/Right, Z → Towards/Away from you.
This way you can constrain movement to one View axis with GXX.

You could use two 3D views, one to define the transform orientation, and another to actually view and interact with the scene.
Local
You could also try using local coordinates, which is defined by the rotation of the selected object(s). See the wiki:

The manipulator matches the object axis. Notice that, here, the
Manipulator is at a slight tilt (it is most visible on the object's
y-axis, the green arrow). This is due to our 15º rotation of the
object. This demonstrates the difference between local coordinates and
global coordinates. If we had rotated the object 90º along its x-axis,
we would see that the object's "Up" is the world's "Forward" -- or the
object's z-axis would now be the world's y-axis. This orientation has
an effect on many parts of the interface, so it is important to
understand the distinction.

Custom
You can also define arbitrary custom orientations based on the orientation of existing geometry, see my answer here.


how to edit the custom shape of te bones in blenrig In the BlenRig Add-on, I need to edit the custom bone shapes for the controls. I can't find the widget shapes that the controls refer to. Any Help pleas.

You can find the mesh objects that BlenRig uses for custom bone shapes on layer 20.


In BGE is it possible to leave a boolean function "unapplied" I am attempting to make an App using BGE where I can dynamically "slice" through complex object as if looking at it with a CT scanner.    To do this, I have created a "cube" that surrounds the object and I apply a boolean intersection modifier to the cube and complex object.   I have also created a mouse sensor and a very simple python script to move the cube when the mouse button is clicked.

When modeling the scene, the boolean modifier does not need to be "applied" and I can dynamically slice through the object.  However, when I (P)lay the Blender Game, the last boolean intersection remains, despite the fact that I can move the cube in the simulation.

Is there some way to not apply the modifier so that I can dynamically modify the position of the cube and the shape of the boolean intersection within the "Game?" and not just when modeling?

My alternate (unwieldy) solution, which I have not tested yet, is to constantly load a copy of the complex object, use the script to create the boolean intersect modifier and then to apply it.  This might be very sluggish, however.

I'm sure the boolean modifier is not supported in the BGE (2.79).


Is Eevee ignoring motion blur on particles? I have enabled motion blur on Eevee.
It works fine, but it seems that it is ignoring particles (and also meshes moving along a curve modifier).

By any chance, is there a way to make it work ?

Thanks

According to the documentation the object motion blur (particles as well) is not yet supported. It probably will be but we have to wait to get all the features in Eevee.

The only way is to use cycles now.


Adding a plastic cover over teeth (braces) I have model of teeth. I need to make a plastic like cover over it as shown in image below. Can anyone suggest how can I achieve this?
Thank you.

Teeth plastic braces
In short - Solidify, Remesh, Boolean modifier

I used model from Blendswap. Teeths on this model are open on bottom part. For remeshing is necessary close the mesh topology (make manifold). Go to edit mode, select all and press Fill (F). Same for Gum object, just here is better to use Grid Fill.
Add modifiers

Solidify desired thickness
Remesh > Voxel > Size 0.01
Boolean > Difference > Object "Gum" (decrease Threshold 0 m)

Copy Object (just for safety) and Apply modifiers (cmd+A)
Because bottom part is after boolean operation filled, go to edit mode search for Sharp Edges > increase to 75 deg, press (V) Split, select one bottom face and press (L) Linked, (X) Delete
(or you can use Edge Split modifier for the same purpose)

Note:

I tried to make smooth transition between teeth, but you can make it more sharpen if you use Solidify only for the final result (so skip first Solidify and start directly with Remesh modifier).
Solidify used only at the end prevent brace to overlap gum as visible on the first image now, or use Solidify for Boolean operation on Gum object as well.
To select bottom part with Sharp Edge is a magic in this case :) Previously I spent several hours by selecting bottom part with Select Similar Co-planar that seemed to be fine but there left a lot of small parts around edge that raised as a lot of issues after Solidify on final mesh.


how to continuously rotate an image in the video editor I'm trying to make a very simple video of an image being continuously rotated, but the 2.6 manual on this seems to be outdated. In 2.70 there is no rotation start/end but just a constant angle. Could someone share how this is done in current versions?

not sure if this needs to be clarified but i'm importing the image in VSE as a strip (Shift-A -> Image), not splashing it on a plane and trying to capture that with the camera ... or something else

You add a transform effect strip then keyframe the start and end with rotation changes. Otherwise you can add a couple small rotation keyframes to check speed then add a Cycle modifier to the f-curve of the .blend that extends the animation out past the keyframes.
f-curve modifiers 2.6 wiki

  Cycles mode - Repeat with Offset
  : Repeats the curve data, but offsets the value of the first point to the value of the last point each cycle.


Is it possible to use 2 mouse buttons for key map? I'm very new to Blender and coming from a different software package it uses left mouse and middle mouse buttons together to zoom. Is it possible to assign both these mouse buttons to the 3D View (Global)/Zoom View key map?

Thanks for your time.

You can zoom in and out by using the scroll wheel as opposed to Ctrl + MMB.


bpy.ops.bridge_edge_loops() vs bmesh.ops.bridge_loops() Why is the bmesh bridge tool so limited?
There's no argument to control segments(number_cuts) and no argument to control interpolation.

Am I missing something? I was under the impression the bpy ops use the bmesh ops, but if that's the case, how does the bpy bridge tool, do these things? Are there undocumented arguments for the bmesh ops? I've tried the obvious ones, without luck.

Any pointers would be appreciated!

Rather late but was trying to work this out myself recently and thought this might be useful to anyone who comes across this issue in future. bpy.ops.bridge_edge_loops() functionality can be replicated by calling bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges() after bmesh.ops.bridge_loops()
e.g. to replicate bpy.ops.mesh.bridge_edge_loops(interpolation='LINEAR', smoothness=1, number_cuts=4)
ret = bmesh.ops.bridge_loops(bm, edges=bm.edges)
bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges(
    bm,
    edges=ret['edges'],
    smooth=1.0,
    smooth_fallof='LINEAR',
    cuts=4)


Compositing black pixels to transparent So I've rendered an animation with Transparent checked but I must have missed to set the saving mode for the .png to RGBA from RGB which has resulted in a black background instead of a transparent.

Is there any way for me to check for black pixels in the compositing and make them transparent, or do I just simple have to rerender it again with the correct format?

Thanks!

After your last node in the scene compositor, try adding a Chroma Key node (find it under Matte, Chroma Key). Set the Key color to black and play around with the rest of the settings.


What's up with this model? So, I was importing a model from Mario Odyssey into Blender, when this happened:

Is there any way to explain this?

It would be easier to see with the blend file here... but looks like all the bones in the Character are aligned to the normals.

Look in the Outliner if you can separte it from the geometry and try to build a armature scheme native from blender.


Can I save a partially rendered image and continue rendering it later? After my almost 20 hours still render crashed at 95% I decide to seek knowlage about secure my work a little bit better.
My questions are:

1) Can I partialy save my render?

2) It is possible to generate render and then upload it to cycles again and just render region to change some detalis? If the answer is yes how to to that and which format should I use (in vray it is something like .exr or something, you can upload that typ of image to  render engine and then render new scene with changed details). Currently I'm using .PNG

As far as I know, there is no way of pausing or stopping a render to resume later.
You can pause the cycles rendering in the realtime viewport, but not the final render.

The most you can do is 'pause' the whole application at OS level. But it doesn't solve the 're-render later' problem, and if it crashes anyway, same situation.
You might find this post useful too.

Firstly, I'd suggest using a render farm. Pixel Plow look to be the cheapest at the moment. You can use the cost calculator but it's looking like it would cost around $2 to render what you've got.

Another solution is to render it out in smaller parts using render region.
Go to output properties and tick 'render region'

Then switch to camera view, and you can drag the corners/edges to set the region to render.

What you could do is to render out regions and stitch together later.
So you could render maybe full height strips, say 8 or so, overlapping a bit to be safe. Then at least if you crash you'll only lose 2.5 hours.

But, for time it takes to do all that faffing, wait for it to render, stitch it all together in photoshop later etc. you might be better off spending a couple of dollars on render farm.


How to export a .FBX file　without any extra things ( and Import it in Unity)? Like the picture above, it is the model of Offcial_IA_MMD_Model. I used the mmd-tools adons to import it. The model contains physics simulations;mostly related to the skirt and the hair.

The setting I did to export the model as .FBX is the picture above.

I dragged the exported file in Unity but, it seems there is something wrong with the model. I think it may be displaying object related to the physical simulation. How to import the model like the first picture which contain the physical simulation without anything unneeded?

Select the meshes you want to export and make sure to tick "Selected Objects" in the export window


Can't rotate and scale anything After I animate one UV texture on plane with AnimAll add-on, I can't scale and rotate any object,in object mode.Only can scale and rotate if I select all in edit mod.
Please help

Maybe deactivate the Manipulate Center Points option?


Motion blur for fluid sim particles (Cycles)? I've got a fluid sim with pretty convincing motion blur by enabling vectors in the fluid domain and using a vector blur node in the compositor. this works nicely.

I also have a fluid sim object of type Particle. Under its particle settings I chose Rendered and assigned a Metaball object as the dupli object. It renders OK.
However, I can't get motion blur working for the particles.
I also tried enabling motion blur under the Cycles Render properties.
My guess would be that for every frame, the baked fluid particles are loaded without reference to their positions in the previous frame. Thus, to Blender they appear to be perfectly stationary

Is there a way to make it work, or what would be the best workaround? (eg. rendering the particles to a separate layer and blurring that layer

Another possible workaround might simply to render a video. we are talking about fast moving tiny droplets, the video codec might blur them, though probably in an ugly way

This is currently not supported (as of v2.82 / 2020)

See https://developer.blender.org/T19527


Nested For Loops: How do I access objects created in a nested for loop? I created a series of objects that spawn individually over a time line.  Something like a drop ship where one ship comes out at a time.

After all the objects are in their position, I want the to merge all at the same time back to one position.

So on the outer loop, I want it to take those objects and then change their final position and add a key frame to each one of them.

Is there a simple way to iterate over the objects created in the nested for loop or do I have to create a list, then iterate over that list on the first for loop?
I know this may be more of a coding question but was wondering if the the blender library could call all objects just created.

import bpy
import time
from random import randint

number = 10

for i in range(0,number):
    for i in range (0,number):  ##Create Batch of 10 Objects
        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(0,0,0)) ##Create UV Sphere
        bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='Location')  ##Add Keyframe for recently created Sphere
        x=randint(-10,10)
        y=randint(-2,2)
        z=randint(-10,-1)
        bpy.context.scene.frame_set(bpy.context.scene.frame_current + randint(1,10)) #Move Frame to a random Location
        bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(x,y,z))  #Move Object to new location
        bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='Location') #Add Keyframe for new Location
        x=randint(-10,10)
        y=randint(-10,10)
        y=randint(-2,2)
        z=randint(-10,10)
        bpy.context.scene.frame_set(bpy.context.scene.frame_current + randint(1,10))
        bpy.context.object.location = (x, y, z)
        bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='Location')

    #Now I want the objects that were created in the for loop, to all move together to one point at the same time.
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(bpy.context.scene.frame_current + 5)
    bpy.context.object.location = (0, 0, 0)
    bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='Location')

Create a list in a scope of the code where these objects will need to exist. Use the for loop to add them to you list. Access those objects from that list.


Inconsequent shading problem. Tipps for a Beginner I am new and try now to UV Map my model but in this process i see some problems on my model. Maybe u see whats the problem or have some advice for the next model to avoid this problems.

U see here that it looks like that my eye box isnt well connected with the rest but it is i delete some faces to connect it again manually.
Same Lines showing on the legs.

As u see on the following pictures the result after i shade it smooth.
I already tried as say above to delete some vertices and faces and stich them together again but it dont helped.

Hopefully u have any advice for me :)

Enter edit mode. Press "3" to filter to FACES. Press "A" to select all faces, click SHIFT+N (recalculate normals) and this will make all your faces coplanar to the average facing normals.
Second thing to check: Are all of your polygonal faces connected? Because they look like they don´t. Join each vertex by selecting 2 or more vertex and press ALT+M, select "center" and this will join the vertices for your poly face.


Object pose in camera coordinates I want to convert object pose (location and rotation) from world coordinate to the camera coordinate. Is there a function to convert not only the location but also the rotation of an object to camera coordinates in blender?

There are two ways to do this:

Parenting

just make your object a child of the cam, and it will copy its location and rotation.
select first the camera, then the object.
press Ctrl+p

Object constraints

drivers
Right-click on x/y/z location


Error: No module named ' .... ' I want to import .py files to my script. But I have this error message.
I´m not sure but I think I got it any time before. I don´t understand why now I can´t get it.

I have a file called "Hello_Test.blend" Inside I have a script called script_test_hello.py:

import module_test_hello
hello()

This is my module_test_hello.py file:

def hello():
    print("Hello World!")

All my files have the same path.

Blender cannot find your module because blender is searching for modules in the base path and your module is not there, so you need to append your modules path to
a path that blender can find it, so you need to execute some functions to do this.

import bpy
import sys
import os

# we get blend file path
filepath = bpy.data.filepath

# we get the directory relative to the blend file path
dir = os.path.dirname(filepath)

# we append our path to blender modules path
# we use if not statement to do this one time only
if not dir in sys.path:
   sys.path.append(dir )

# now blender is able to find our modules
import module_test_hello

# in case we edited our script file after blender had started
# we reload the module via imp module
import imp
imp.reload(module_test_hello)

# we call function from the module now
module_test_hello.hello()


subdivision surface modifier wrinkles mesh I'm using quads for an object, but when I use the subdivision surface modifier or even select "shade smooth" it gives these weird stripes. I have no clue how to make my object smooth now. I've checked all my normals, I've tried converting to tris and back, no luck there either.

Will upload blend file for inspection.

It may not be apparent in some views, but if you check face orientation your normals are inverted on half the mesh in a striped pattern.

A recalculate outside with everything selected should fix this.


Is my Inverse Kinematics not working correctly or is it working correctly? Here is how it looks like when it is on the ground.

Here is how it looks like when I move the bone up along the z axis. As you can notice the yellow bone moves to the right a little. How do I fix this? I want it to NOT move left nor right, but just simply up.

(Note that I have not done any weight painting yet so for now I am not trying to control the body with the bones)

This is how I have setted it up

Or is everything working the way I wanted to and there is no mistake?

If you make a 2 step vertical IK chain (controlled by a target bone), without any pole bone, and then in edit mode you move slightly the "knee" forward, in pose mode the bending of the chain will follow this slightly moved direction (tipically forward).

With a pole bone you can further control the direction of the bending.

Make sure that as seen in the image, the resting armature's knee (in edit mode not pose mode) is forward of the rest of the leg, ie: bent forward just a little. That way IK will bend it in the right direction.


How to install Pip for Blender's bundled Python? Blender comes with Python, and includes a stand-alone Python executable.
However pip is not part of the official Python distribution so it needs to be added separately.

How do you setup pip with Blender's bundled Python so it can be used to install Python packages from Pypi which are then available from inside Blender?
How would you use it to install a package?

Note, this is related to this question, but not a duplicate since its not about using pip as a library.

First of all, pip is not part of Python so it doesn't come by default with Blender.

It has to be installed for Blender's bundled Python even if you already have pip for some other version of Python on your system.For this get the get-pip.py file from the pip documentation

You'll find the blender python binary at:

/blender-path/2.xx/python/bin/python

Use this binary to run the get-pip.py. If you have it saved in your home directory the command to use should look something like this:

$ /path/to/blender/blender-path/2.xx/python/bin/python3 ~/get-pip.py

You should now have pip installed for blender. You use it with blenders python too and you have to point to the pip that was installed for blenders python. Both are in blenders folder tree and you use them like this:

$ /blender-path/2.xx/python/bin/python /blender-version/2.xx/python/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/pip install scipy

This installs scipy for your blenders python. Of course you have to adjust names according to the version you use, but it worked for me for 2.77.

I just tried to do this again and with a recent build I did not have to point to he installed pip, calling blenders python was enough, my command looked like:

/path/to/blenderspython/python pip install module

blender-2.8: pip is already included so the only step to do this for blender-2.8 is:

$ /path/to/blenderspython/pip install module


How to use API to get an object's constrained position? I'm using Blender 2.8 but this question probably applies to older versions as well.

Scenario:

I have an Empty located at the origin.
I have a Bezier Curve.
The Empty has a Follow Path constraint targeting the Bezier Curve. This
successfully causes the Empty to move along the path.

What I need is a way to access the modified location of the Empty after the constraint is applied. I only seem to be able to get to the original unconstrained location (0, 0, 0). E.g.

>>> D.objects['Empty'].location
Vector((0.0, 0.0, 0.0))

Help is appreciated.

After much digging around I believe for this simple case I can get what I need in D.objects['Empty'].matrix_local. E.g.

>>> D.objects['Empty'].matrix_local
Matrix(((1.0, 0.0, 0.0, -0.7031904458999634),
        (0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.29674994945526123),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))
>>> [D.objects['Empty'].matrix_local[i][3] for i in range(3)]
[-0.7031904458999634, 0.0, 0.29674994945526123]

There is also matrix_world (which is the same in this simple case). But if there is a better way to do this more generally, I hope someone will illuminate us.


how to display overall dimensions for furniture Is there a way to display a furniture design’s overall dimensions in Blender 3D for the purpose of presentation?  Please see attachment for visual.

When I import a wrl file into Blender, the furniture design consists of many parts.  The only way I know how to get the bounding box for the entire furniture is by joining all parts.  However, there seems to be no way to get the bounding box to illustrate its dimensions.  In Solidworks, the bound box can display dimensions.  Is there a similar function in Blender 3D?  Thank you very much!

In your specific case, the MeasureIt addon makes sense.
However, there are also different ways to measure stuff inside Blender UI.

Measure Tool (length and angles, set by mouse drag)
Measurement Overlay (measurement of selected geometry, like bounding boxes)


How to render a video with no proxy? I wanted to add text to this 120 second video. I rebuilt the proxy and made it 25% so that it would be easier on my computer. When I was done adding my text I went to the view section on the top right corner and turned the proxy back to "no proxy; render all(something like that)" I previewed the video to make sure that none of the texts were off screen(too big).

I went to render it and as soon as the first text appeared I canceled because the proxy was still at 25%
So I thought I should go to the strips and un-check the proxy section and un-highlight the percentage of the proxy.
Tried again... didn't work.
What should I do?

Here is the solution.

Go into the properties panel

Under the resolution (defaults to your screen resolution) you should see a percentage bar that ranges from 1% to 100%.

I think when you change the proxy settings blender automatically change that percentage to whatever proxy you chose.

Drag the bar back to 100%. make sure that your view properties are on without the proxy, full render and check your strips to make sure proxy/timecode is unchecked.

Configure your settings and you are ready to go!


Why can't I create a pipe from this curve? I have created a bezier curve and small circle. I want that circle take the shape of bezier curve so that the curve becomes a pipe. In the gif you will notice that its becoming flat, not like a pipe.
What is wrong with my settings?
Blend file

For this setup to work, your circle has to lay flat on Z axis.Like this:

And it has to have this rotation applied, so you can rotate it in object mode and press Ctrl+A and choose Rotation or rotate it in edit mode. It will have exactly the same effect.


Reconstruction Mode doesn't show up in movie clip editor I wanted to track some text to a short film. Everything was good I added two tracking points, but then I wanted to change to Reconstruction Mode, but it wasn't there. There only was Tracking and Mask mode.

The workflow for tracking has changed in recent versions. The Reconstruction options you are looking for are now on the Solve tab on the toolbar. Enable it by pressing T Or you can access them through the reconstruction menu.


Convert rigged armature into static object For 3d printing purposes, can I turn a rigged armature into a static object? If so, how?

You can try and apply the armature in the modifier's tab. There should be a button named "Apply".

If you're looking for a specific pose, just get the pose that you want and hit "Apply" and your mesh will get that pose permanently.


Fluid Simulation, make the fluid to be absorbed I have a fluid falling on top of a plane.

I want the fluid (water) to be absorbed by the plane, like a cloth would do.

How can i do that?

Thank you

Changing the Dynamic Paint Canvas type to "Displacement" and setting the "Displace Factor" to negative 1 (-1) gives this effect.

(*make sure the plane/canvas has enough subdivisions)


Incorrect Context error when calling bpy.ops.view3d.object_as_camera() I am using blender command line to render image . But before that I need to select active object as camera, which I am doing by calling bpy.ops.view3d.object_as_camera() .

However I am getting the wicked error
Operator bpy.ops.view3d.object_as_camera.poll() failed, context is incorrect

Now when I do the following in Python Console in blender , the active camera is selected

bpy.data.objects['Camera001-5'].select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['Camera001-5']
bpy.data.scenes[0].camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera001-5']
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        override = bpy.context.copy()
        override['area'] = area
        bpy.ops.view3d.object_as_camera(override)
        break

But when I run the script using blender command line, it gives error again.
What to do?

So it turns out -

I had to add area.spaces.active.region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'
this in the loop.

Got my answer on http://blenderartists.org/. Just sharing for the community.


Can I create deep divots in my mesh using sculpt brush? Is there a better way without booleans? The image below may help explain. I'm doing a watch band with stitched thread. Wherever the thread enters the band, I would like to just suggest a dark little hole where the needle punches through.

I was hoping to do this without making a million actual holes in the mesh, using booleans and subtracting the thread shape. It creates lots of ugliness in the mesh, non-manifold edges and shading issues.

I thought maybe I could texture paint in deep divots with the sculpt brush, and then bake that texture onto a tidy mesh.

But I can't seem to create the deep divots I want. the underlying mesh has been converted to lots of skinny triangles (due to dyntopo?) and when I try to make holes with a soft brush set to subtract, the result looks bad and wrinkles areas way outside the brush, causing lots of shading problems.

What's the best way to do this? paint black dots onto my watchband texture? That's gonna look fake up close. Re-do the mesh somehow so it's much smaller and finer? Am I just using the wrong brush (the default one)? Is some setting the reason my brush seems to affecting areas of the band way outside its radius, even with dyntopo and a resolution of 3 pixels?

Well, after banging away for a while I concluded that the brushes are not really made to creating deep pits like I was thinking, an that actually editing the mesh would make the realism I want. So I went back to an earlier version of the watch band, one with the subsurf modifier still intact, and added lots of loop cuts until most of my faces were squares and there were no long skinny triangles. Then I increased my subsurf level from 2 to 3, made a backup, and applied it. This gave me a ton of evenly distributed geometry to work with.

Then, rather than trying to do it with a brush, I simply went to the top-down view, in vertex select mode, used the circular selection tool, and just selected a blob of vertices near each entrance/exit point of the thread.

Next I did proportional editing mode, sharp falloff, used individual origins, and just did G, Z to move the select vertices downward to create little pits.

The result is what I had in mind and looks pretty good when rendered.


What are the advantages to animating eyes directly as objects as opposed to via an armature? I've been in the habit of using armatures to deform my eyes, due to other engines that I use.  Generally just solidly weighted to a single bone.  But I notice that this isn't popular, that many Blender artists prefer to keep their eyes free of any armature modifiers (bone parented to an eye master, or directly to the head, with object based constraints instead of bone based constraints.)

It seems like a lot of people take the attitude that armature-free eyes are the right way to do it, but I've never heard why.  I'm having trouble seeing any meaningful differences (tiny issues like mirror mod friendliness vs requiring blanket assignment to a vertex group.)  Can't find anything with a bit of Googling either.

Are there differences?  Is there a right way?  Are there times to prefer one method over another?

I will try to list some advantages which aren't opinion-based. There are basically four different methods of rigging the eyes.

Having a separate control object/armature for the eyes

Just for the record, this would be by far the worst idea. It includes
(1) having an extra armature for the eyes which is connected to the main armature
(2) having an extra object to control the eyes in conjuncture with another armature
(3) creating a rig without any armature.

To animate (in Blender), armatures have many benefits.

copy and paste poses
mirror poses
inbetweening tools (breakdown, push, relax)
propagate poses and using libraries
Even after connecting the armature to geometries, the bones rest position can be modified without a problem. If you are using standard objects which are connected by parenting, moving any of the will be a lengthy process which involves unparenting and reparenting.

Another disadvantage of multiple objects in combination with armature can be dependancy problems, where the order of influence is not supported by the way Blender is designed.

This method should only be used, when the desired deformation is not achievable with bones and shapekeys, in which case helper objects (like Lattices) are unavoidable. For non-deforming eyes, there's no reason to use anything other than bones.

Parenting both eyes to the head bone

This is includes most of the aforementioned problems. To reiterate

You won't be able to see all animation-relevant keyframes easily; the action editor works best with a single armature. Otherwise you would constantly have to select both objects to see the selections in the dopesheet, or find another way to organize the dopesheet. In extreme cases Animation Curves can be rearranged by renaming the, while the order in the dopesheet will depend on the actual objects' names.
You can't use the pose tools mentioned above. (Mirror, Copy, Pose ...)
You will have a hard time synchronizing events. The eyes and lids are always going to move in conjunction and it is important to have good access to both at the same time.
Pose bones have selection priority over geometry. If your meshes are not well positioned next to bones, you will have problems selecting both equally.
If you select a mesh-type object after selecting an armature, the armature gets highlighted as one, and you cannot see which bones are selected.

Parenting each eye to its individual control bone

The advantages mentioned above: the pose tools, the action editor behaviour, no dependancy problems
Access to bone constraints for the eye controls.
Scripts which interact with user selections get easier the bones matrix functions all act the same and the examined selection is a subset of the one armatures pose bones.

Controling the eyes with a single armature modifier

(*As expected, I'd prefer this approach wherever possible.)

All of the advantages of the previous method.
The influence of rig can be toggled on and off by toggling the visibility of the armature.
The eyes transformation are no longer relevant. Their origin can be set to (0, 0, 0). If they are accidentally moved, they can be reset. In Blender, on can not know where an objects origin is from only it's transform values. Next to Direct and Inverse Parenting the original location of the object will play into these values. With bones, their rest pose position is automatically "zerod out".
Exporting a rig (to fbx for example) is "safer", when all objects are zerod out. Combinations of parents can produce transformation which have to take many values on many objects into account (see previous bullet point). This is not always handled correctly by all exporter or other systems.
Finding the geometry in the outliner is easy, because it won't be hidden in the hierarchy.

Armatures work with Blenders linking and proxying system.

As always, there are exceptions: For some quick straight-to-the-point rigs, manipulating the objects may be an option.

I will try to include some more information, based an a comment:

  [eyes (which are not controled by an armature)] are controlled with an eye target, which the objects damped track. This is [...] basically the same as sticking a damped track on bones.

This holds true, unless - later on in production - more features get requested.

If the eyes are no radially symmetrical (due to a texture update), they will need an Up Vector, otherwise they would rotate in their sockets. This can be easily done with the Pole Vector of an IK constraints with bones. With objects, you will need more steps.
If the model of the eyeballs changes and needs different handling of various rotations, all previous animations are lost. With an armature, on could easily keep the animated Control Bones and transfer the data over to the deformation bone with a driver.
If the animation if supposed to be fixed1, there are no available controls. The eye_targets are going to be to far away to properly control the eyelid and eye interaction. In the case of armatures, and additional control bones can be added into the hierarchy, between the deforming bone and the bone, which is oriented by the target.

Also...
- the empties are still not going to be in the armatures action, making the pose tools (copy, breakdowns, mirror) and linking system (appending actions) useless.

1 An animation fixer is the animation assistant who will do the fine tuning on finished animations. Doing slight tweaks to prevent wrong interpolations or intersections of character and props.


Need help with texture bake and consolidating meshes for UNITY engine My friend is making a hobby game in Unity game engine and asked me to help with 3d models/animations.
I have zero experience except for this week of work and have made cups and clocks and hats etc (easy stuff).

I understand the modeling parts pretty ok, texturing somewhat ok, but baking not so ok.

Issues:

My friend wants NO SHADOWS OR LIGHTING (or just a single light) in my end products, but I don't know how to bake without the lights and get a clear texture bake.
I found some sites, but the options in properties and in materials they had I don't have in my blender v2.75 and so I'm lost.
He griped or I should say unity engine griped at my end products because they are in too many parts. Even after I use CtrlJ to add them together.  Unity says: too many mesh parts, it wants them all into 1.  So I'm very lost on this.

I Need help with:
Texture baking with out shadows and possible no lighting, but want clear textures.
How to consolidate/condense meshes into 1 file for unity.

Go to Bake Section in Properties Panel and choose "Diffuse Color", So that way your Baked Texture will not be affected by the lights and shadows.


I have been having an issue with proportional editing proportional editing tool stops working after making size adjustments to the doughnut in tutorial 2. it was working then just stopped I tried to reset to default didn't work so I uninstalled then did a fresh install but nothing helps. here is a link to a video showing what is happening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b2pGRT1XTk

It's a bit hard to tell what's going on ... (We can't read your mind, what is 'the doughnut in tutorial 2.'?).. but 2 points might help.

G and GG are different operations. G is Grab, a free translation in screen space. GG is Vertex Slide, which will slide selected vertices down adjacent edges. G can be proportional. Proportional Editing has no effect on GG.
When editing proportionally, you should be able to see a circle in the viewport representing the radius of the falloff. If you can't see it, and the whole object moves, the falloff is large enough to encompass all the object's vertices, and may be so large it is off-screen. Try using the scroll-wheel to bring it down into view.


rendering GPU load is decreasing Dont know where is problem, render image for 8 min, gpu max load, compute 100%, card temperature 70 degrees during render. And 5 min later same image, card compute 100%, but card temperature only 60 degrees, less power draw and render time 20 min... How is it possible?

edit: I found if I restart blender, first render take always 8 min. and if not restart every next render take 2x more time.. Its some bug?

It's possible that your card is decreasing the clockspeed because of high temperature.
You can use msi-afterburner (its free) to see all parameters of your gpu.
Maybe if you are rendering with gpu and cpu, the gpu doesnt render everything (stays cool) and cpu is slower (it takes longer).


Is there another way besides particles to make fire in the game engine? I would like to make high pressure jets of flame for a character in the game engine.

Here is my question:
What would be/is the most time efficient manner to do this in since particles aren't available in 'Blender Game'.

computer resources are no problem; I'd just like a good looking, timely way for flames.

You can add a transparent animated plane.
First off, you must change the Shading from Multitexture to GSL.

it must be tiled and evenly spaced like the image below

Because there are four tiles you would check the animated button, and choose one tile along the Y and 4 along the X

you also need to input a frames per second, and how many frames the animation should run for.

Blend file with working animated transparent plane


Cannot sculpt, created head from Plane I know this question had already been asked.

The normal brush in sculpt mode on Blender doesn't work

But that didn't help.

It's my first blender model, but i already sculpted the body, boots, gloves and other stuff without problems.

Here's the mesh+topology I try to sculpt

After switching to sculpt mode it looks like this, with a multi-res of 2

However, if i try to sculpt it, no matter what brush, nothing happens. Even with strength at 1.0 using the flatten tool, or using the Mask tool.

Applying a solodify didn't help.
Neither did deleting the multi res, duplicating the mesh and reapplying the multi-res.
Nor using subdivision first and then a multi-res.

I tried using Alt+C "Mesh from Curve/..." and still no success with sculpting.

After enableing dynotopo and trying to sculpt, a switch back to edit-mode showed new vertices. But no changes to the actual 3D form in Sculpt/obejct/edit mode. Only new vertices.

I always tried both my wacom tablet and my mouse.

I can still sculpt the character, boots and other stuff (hidden, but listed in the outliner) in the same Scene. These are created from a cube and not planes though.

What am I doing wrong? It should be possible to sculpt from a plane, I looked it up in tutorials and such.

I seem to have figured it out myself.

In object mode i applied rotation & scale with Ctrl+A.

afterwards it worked fine, sorry for troubeling you guys


Auto Keying does not respect Active Keying Set in 2.8 How can I make Auto Keying respect the active keying set in 2.8?

Manually inserting keyframes with i in the viewport uses the active keying set properly. But the auto keying feature looks at it, scoffs, and does whatever it wants. Is there another setting somewhere? Is this a known bug?

Any help is appreciated.

Steps to reproduce:

Open a fresh copy of blender v 2.80 (i use the Steam version)
While keeping primal cube selected, change bottom view to Dope Sheet
Change Context to Action Editor
Create a new action
Change the bottom view to timeline
Open the Keying dropdown, and change Active Keying Set to Rotation

Turn Auto Keying on
Rotate the cube in the main scene
In the timeline view, expand everything
You should see XYZ Location, Rotation and Scale keyframes

I would expect #10 to only have rotation keyframes. Nothing about Location or Scale.

Manually recording keyframes works fine:

Continue from step 6 above.

Rotate the cube in the main scene
Press i in the main scene
In the timeline view, expand everything
You should see XYZ Rotation only. Nothing about Location or Scale

Am I missing something? This makes auto keying useless for me :(

Thanks @moonboots for pointing out where it was in 2.79. After looking around, I realized am blind...

If you open the Keying dropdown I used in my example above, the same button does exist in 2.8, is placed next to Add & Replace, and once you toggle it on, the auto function will start respecting the Keying Set.


How to create a flat head screwdriver? So I'm a beginner at blender, and I'm having a hell of a time trying to create the flat head portion. I have one created, but it's a broken mesh. I can't insert loop cuts and all that business when trying to flesh out the details. Anyone have any tips or methods to do this correctly?

Thank you!

Shift+A Add Circle (Press F6 and set the vertices 6)

In the Edit Mode Press F key to fill the faces and extruded with the E key.

Now Add Plane and rotate little to get some shape and angle of the pointer of the screwdriver

In Edit mode of plane extrude the plane with the E key to some thickness to plane.

Now in Edit mode of the plane. Press Alt+D Duplicate the plane in X axis and move forward and press Ctrl+M to mirror the plane. Press Ctrl+N to flip normals.

Come out of the Edit Mode Select the Plane and Shift select the Extrude circle and Press Spacebar and type align object and press F6 and select x axis

Come out from Edit mode of Plane and select the extruded circle. Add Boolean Modifier. Select the Operation to Difference and object to plane. Apply the Modifier and delete the plane. Now you can get the shape of the pointer of screwdriver.


Drawing-Sword issues with animation What happens is that I have a sword that sits on the hip of a player-controlled knight character. I created a "draw sword" animation where the knight reaches and draws his sword. I have bone constraints so that when the frames align so that the knight's hand reaches the sword, the sword constraints to the knights hand. When playing the animation, out-of-game, everything works fine.

When I hit "P" to play the game I make my character draw his sword, but the sword doesn't move or change its constraint. Things to note are that the sword is an appended object from another file.

Does anyone have any experience with this issue and can help me fix it?

I read that, in the game engine, Child of is partially supported- you can parent to objects but not to bones.

Add an empty to the character's hand bone and also have another at the hip where the sword rests when sheathed, parented to the hip bone.

Then you could try parenting the sword armature (using child of constraint) to the empty. You could also try with the sword object itself, without the sword's armature.


Camera pivoting onto 3D Cursor rather than selected object Through the viewport, by pressing the NumpadPeriod (the decimal point on the numpad), the camera focuses on the 3D Cursor, rather than the vertices I have selected, how do I fix this issue?

I am using Blender v2.79.

I've fixed the problem by unselecting the "Lock the Cursor" function on the properties panel under "Views". I've also found that the function also effect's your camera when your rotating the view (middle mouse held down and moving the mouse), so it pivots around the 3D Cursor rather then just rotating the camera.


Black lines on texture I have a problem with texture. I have some black lines and I do not know how to fix this. Can you help me please?

This is most likely caused by your brush being limited to the boundaries of the UV islands. You have 2 ways to fix that :

increase the Bleed value in the Tool Shelf > Options tab
paint on a transparent background and once you're done painting, save the image, import it in the compositor and feed it through an Inpaint node

the latter being the best in complex models and textures but in your case the first is certainly sufficient.

However no matter how simple or complex your model is, you always need margins between your UV islands, even bigger ones if you're using bleed since without a big enough margin it can overlap to another island (which doesn't happen with Inpaint but still a small margin is obligatory).


Where is the animation play button in 2.7? I was used to press the play button for a preview of a rendered animation

,

all of a sudden (v2.7) there is an audio button  which opens a file dialog. Am I supposed to add all images into the VSE every time?

You can instead use the option in Info > Render > Play rendered animation, or press CtrlF11


Is it possible to make bones not show "In Front" of everything when in Pose Mode? I was hoping for my rig to not display in front of everything when in Pose Mode to reduce visual clutter. I've created control shapes that neatly fit around my deforming character so I don't need to see it through everything.
I've unchecked "In Front" in the Armature Tab under Viewport Display. This works while in object mode, but not in Pose Mode. I'm using 2.9 by the way.
Thank you! :)

Are you sure you unchecked BOTH "In Front" options?
Unless 2.9 has changed in that aspect relative to 2.82, you should have one in the Armature tab and one in the Object tab.

Either way, supposing it's a bug or something weird that you can't fix, you can always duplicate your viewport window and Uncheck Overlays - it removes the bones and leaves only the mesh so you can fiddle with the armature on the original window, and look at the other without any clutter, in real time.


Is it possible to transform an armature into a curve? I have a tunnel that I want a camera to go through, and want to replace the armature with a curve so it moves exactly on that path. I'd like the camera to also rotate to follow the bends of the tunnel. Using cycles.

Appreciate it, the problem I'm having now is that the camera follows the path, but after each turn, kind of snaps back or bumps, like a recoil of sorts. I reduced the size of the turns, but it still happens. And within the graph editor I can't change the interpolation mode, it's all greyed out. The only reason it looks kind of decent is because the camera is set to 15mm. Any ideas?

Yes, you can make the armature match the position of a bezier curve with a spline IK constraint.  Setting it up is a lot like making an IK constraint but with a couple extra steps.

1) Setup your bones.  It looks like you have done that already, though be warned: since it is an IK constraint it works from the tip of the hierarchy towards the Root, not the other way around.

2) Add a bezier curve and add the number of control points you want in the form of edge vertices.

3) Add some control objects for the curve.  Many people just add some empties for this purpose, but there is nothing stopping you from just making armature bones.  However: it is not a good idea to use bones from the Armature that is being controlled by the Spline IK, as it will likely create a cyclical dependency.

4) Hook those vertices of the curve to the control objects. (go into the curve's edit mode, click a vertex, ctrl+H, choose appropriate option).

5) Apply the Spline IK constraint to the last bone of the chain.  Configure "Chain Length" to match the number of bones in the curvy part of the armature.  Play with the other settings as you see fit.

When done, you should be left with a curvy poseable armature controlled with your control objects.  You can mess with the control handles of the curve by rotating and scaling your control objects.

The rig shown here is a bit more complicated, since I did want bones to control how this armature worked.  It involves creating two armatures, one parented to another, and the top level armature controls everything (including the Bezier curve).


Bevel Tool on two combined rectangles I want to apply the beveltool to this mesh:

To achieve a form like this:

But the rusult is this:

You see the gap between these to rectangles?

I want to get rid of that gap and i want a smooth inner corner (at the gap) but i don´t know how..

Thanks for your help!

Here's one way:

Scale a cube to a shape like in the first picture. Then cut a loop using the Loop Cut and Slide tool. (Picture 2.) Change the selection mode to Faces and select the end Face shown in picture 3. Press E to extrude, then drag away from the face to "pull out" a new section. Now you can use your bevel tool on the shape and there'll be no gap.


Update screen using python scripts I'm working on a new iterative algorithm for generating geometries. I'm trying to update the screen for each iteration on the screen to monitor the results (real-time); blender doesn't respond during the calculations.

Note: I tried this command but didn't work:
bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW', iterations=1,time_limit=0)

This is the right command (Problem Solved):
bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)


Can I set my pose position like the new rest position? I would like to move my armature from pose mode to another pose (a random one) and set the position I create like the new rest position. Is there a way in order to achieve this goal?

My armature is deforming a mesh so I want to deform the mesh too.

This is my mesh and its relative REST POSITION:

I want to change and set a new REST POSITION and I follow your advice;
I change my armature in pose mode and then click on Apply pose as Rest Pose:

The result is this one:

The armature resets the rest pose like I wanted, while the mesh - I can't understand why - comes back to the original position (the one set by the old rest pose).

Why doesn't it work?

Apply the armature modifier - armature in rest pose doesn't deform anything, so we need also a mesh to match the new rest pose.
Pose > Apply Pose as Rest Pose. This will set current pose as the rest pose. It sets only bones poses - constraints or custom properties in complicated or badly designed rigs might make the rig act weird with bones in different rest state!
Add the armature modifier back.


How to Sculpt a Brick Wall? I am trying to make a brick wall from this reference image:"Danish Brick wall.jpg" by Grey Geezer CC-BY-SA-3.0

I drew the mortar lines in sculpt mode, but the lines looked too jagged:

I changed the shading to smooth, but then the bricks looked blurry and there were dark spots in the mortar lines:

I can't even get the model to look right, nevermind the texture. How would I make this look proper?

How do you sculpt bricks? You don't. Seriously. Just Don't. There are easier ways.

I'll use the texture you picked for this answer, but there are plenty of sites where you can download pre-made repeating textures for free. (This one has terrible barrel distortion, and will look atrocious if you want it to tile.)

Danish Brick wall.jpg by Grey Geezer CC-BY-SA-3.0

I took that texture and tweaked it slightly in Photoshop to get this height map:

By using nothing more than a default plane (and a pile of modifiers) you can use that bump map to create this:

And by doing a bit of shading and lighting, you can get this result:

The stack of modifiers is fairly simple, but I would not generally recommend trying to go so detailed with the subdivision surface modifiers like I have here, unless you have a powerful CPU and a lot of ram. (It looks scary, but one at a time they are not so bad.)

The first Subdivision Surface modifier is simply to subdivide the plane, to make some geometry for the Displacement modifier to work with. The Displacement modifier takes the given height map texture and adjusts the height of all the vertices depending on the value of the nearest pixel. The second Subdivision Surface modifier cuts back any sharp edges created by the Displacement modifier. At this point there is a stupid number of vertices and faces in the object (there would be over 500,000 just in this section of wall!) so the Decimate modifier cuts that back to something sensible. (If your scene is going to be a closeup of something stuck to the wall, then being super detailed isn't necessarily bad). The final Smooth modifier evens out vertices along the Z axis which have large height difference to nearby vertices. This not only makes the mortar look smooth but it helps flatten out any uneven surfaces on the bricks. And finally, the material on the bricks themselves.

In this material, the image texture's default mapping is UV, so that does not need to be specified. (The plane's UV map simply has the one face filling the entire map). The color data  from the texture passes through a diffuse node and goes straight to the surface output, giving the color. But the color data from the texture also branches off and goes into a Hue/Saturation/Value node (with the value set to .2   - like the displacement modifier, the displacement output of a material takes the value of each pixel fed to it and creates the appearance of displacement on the surface of the material. Without toning down the texture's color data, the displacement would look utterly terrible. Multiplying the value by .2 in this case makes it look sensible.

Bonus crystal Suzanne on top!


Transform from ortho view to normal view I designed a character, for that, I used a blueprint.

The object looks very good in ortho view (when you press 5), but when you go back to the normal view, it looks strange.

How can I transform the object so that it looks in perspective view the same as in ortho view.

When I say ortho, I mean when you press 5

press "N" to enter the properties menu, go down to where it says View and increase the lens size, I remember hearing that can assist if your model looks distorted in the default camera.


Light going through edges of wall? So i started just recently learning Blender so keep that in mind.
I'm modeling a house and in Eevee rendered mode seems like light is coming in where my two walls meet.I checked for double edges, checked the normals and could not find the error. Yes my walls and floor are different objects and stacked on top of each other by eye but that could be the problem only for the bottom light intrusion. Ill add pictures so you better understand.

Any help welcome AF! Thank you!

Select the light you have -> properties editor->enable shadows and enable contact shadows in it.
It is only necessary for cycles render engine


Where is the setting for changing the appearance of armature bones? In 2.7x and earlier, it was a simple matter to change the appearance of armature bones from the fat/bulky pyramidal shapes they default to, to some other form.  Where is this function in 2.8x?  I've been looking all over the place to try and find it with no luck.

Same as before (unless it has changed in the latest versions?), Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display > Display As > B-Bones, etc.

If you want a custom shape, select the bone in Pose mode, then in the Properties panel > Bone > Viewport Display > Custom Object.


3D character not aligned to the world origin after deleting keyframes added by a BVH file and resetting the pose I would like to know why,even if I have removed all the keyframes added by a BVH file AND after resetting the pose with ALT + R ; ALT + S ; ALT + G,in object mode and in pose mode the 3d character is not aligned to the world origin,but in edit mode it is. What can I do to fix it ? Thanks.

This is what happened when I have removed the armature modifier from the mesh :

....when I move the mesh,the armature is still attached to it....

This is common with BVH files. There is a great app called bHacker which was created to solve these kinds of things.

http://www.bvhacker.com/

What you need to do is basically reset the origin on the BVH file so that the feet rest on the ground and the reprocess the animation by saving it out. It has been a number of years since I had to do this, so I don't remember the exact steps.

Luckiy I wrote a tutorial about this for 3D Artist Magazine back then and I think most of the steps are there.

https://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2011/03/free-blender-tutorial/

The issue is that even if you "apply pose to rest pose" in Blender it will just put the animation to that degree above the ground, which is not what you want. You could theoretically use some kind of workaround in Blender using NLA layers and rebake the animation to the ground after resetting the rest pose. So if BVHacker does not work, that would be the second best option. But NLA Layers can be very tricky to work with. It would require making an additive layer and animate the root bone down through the whole animation, and bake.

BVHacker is a much more elegant solution.


Paint With Image Projection in Texture Paint Mode I am comfortable painting in texture paint mode with standard brushes and masks, however how can I use an image as the brush color? Some reason I am not finding a succinct answer here on the site.

While using a Brush Texture you are painting with the source texture-color color-multiplyed by the Brush color (purple in the case below).

Just set it to Full White (RGB=1,1,1), raise the strenght to 1 and you'll be able to paint the exact colors stored in the texture.

If you need mix the colours of the texture with other textures, you can use the node editor:


bad camera angle (or trackers?) with aerial footage Got this drone footage to track of a big truck patio. Huge stuff. The drone is quarter-circling the warehouses, and I could get me 8 solid tracking points and the camera solved.

Set the floor with 3 trackers: ok.
Set the origin tracker: ok.
Set x and y axis: ok.
Link empties to track: ok.
Setup tracking scene: ok.

Alright, seems fine. I can see the trackers on the background image on my 3d viewport, they line up with the footage.

I can align the 3d model of the warehouses as well. but it won't keep aligned as I hit play.

Among other things, I tried, so far:

Rotating the setup;
Changing the height of the camera;
Changing the scale;
Manually correct the rotation on all axis;
Setting the solve method to tripod;
Scavenging an answer to a similar problem here on the forums: no
success.

The thing is that the markers position is accurate only from the top view (wich is not the camera's position). Footage was not captured top down, so it doesn't make any sense to me that the markers are top down. I don't even know if I'm making myself clear. Hehe.
But here's the weird alignment on the trackers to the camera:

It's flat, almost. And it really doesn't look like the angle the drone was relative to the ground.

What am I doing wrong? What is being missed? The parallax exist, doesn't it? Is there another approach to this? I tried the plane tracking, but in my research I figured that it wasn't the proper scenario for it.

Looking at the trackers spreading like that it makes me think that this is all incorrect, but then how one can track such a camera movement from aerial footage? We do have other takes from the same place, different views, but same alignment problem. The trackers kinda look flat.

Solve mode should not be tripod. Tripod solving is for when the camera is not moving, just rotating from a fixed position. Tripod solve will not result in 3D reconstruction, it will only solve the camera movement, but the trackers will not contain any depth information, they will be projected as in a sphere around the camera.
When the camera moves (as in advances forward of back, or is being displaced sideways or up or down), then use the Default Camera Solve.
As for how to proceed, most of it has been answered here.
Read the following link: get better results for camera tracking
Most problems with solving 3d information come from poor (inaccurate) tracking.  You need at least 8 trackers, but more can help you in this case. Track objects on the field around the buildings as well. Prioritize objects that move fast (in the foreground) and then track a few objects that are very far away.


character movement does not work in blender game engine I want my character to walk, but my character does not move, why?

Here is my blend file.
Press P to play and you will see the problem.

Unfortunately you can't use the Mirror Modifier with the BGE this way. When you apply the character's Mirror Modifier everything will work as expected. I only added this as an answer because Blender game character is not responding to game logic has no accepted answer.


How to make multiple strips for a wipe with Animation Nodes? This is my original strip in Moho Pro.

When I group strips while moving each a little to the left and delaying them each by a second or two, this is what I get. Now how do I reproduce that with Animation Nodes?

Use an inverse Delay Falloff to offset matrices by translating and scaling them along the x axis:


How can I get my materials to look like the materials in this photo? This artist that I follow uses Cinema 4D and creates some unique models but the thing I particularly like is the way the materials of his models look. I know he uses a different program than blender but it must be possible to get blender materials to look like his right?
This is the link to his twitter: https://twitter.com/creativecloud/status/1256438275696398336/photo/3

I looks a bit like a gum material, maybe try to increase the Roughness (here 0.9) so that you don't have too much reflection, and give it a bit of Subsurface (here 0.4) so that it is not too contrasted:


How can I add the glass stamp to the bottle? I'm trying to add this to my model but I can't figure out how to.

Import your image as a plane, Shrinkwrap it to the bottle and set Wrap Method to Project.

To get the circle around your logo you could just add a circle, extrude it a bit outwards to give it some width and similarly Shrinkwrap it to your bottle. To Shrinkwrap the circle rotate it towards the bottle. Then Solidify it the amount that looks good.

Next give your bottle a Union Boolean from your circle and Bevel it.


How do I bake flat textures using cycles? I would like to bake just the texture colors while using cycles. In blender internal I would pick "Textures" as bake type to accomplish this, but no such option is available in cycles. According to the documentation it seems the 'UV' bake type should do this but instead it seem to bake the uv coordinates or something like that.

Edit: I would like to clarify the use case. I have a game level that we normally bake with lots of lights using cycles which takes the order of 10 hours with lots of complex materials. We can also lower the samples / bounces settings to get a quicker, noisier result. But, we would also like to render just the the unlit texture colors to get a super fast, noiseless, flat version to see what textures will look like in the level. This is useful when we iterate the source textures frequently and the designers prefer this over the noisy version.

So ideally I would like to modify the materials as little as possible (not at all). It is certainly an option to have a script in our plugin modify them automatically, making the materials shadeless as suggested below, but that would turn the whole thing very complex which I would like to avoid.

To bake texture in Cycles without having any influence from objects and lights in the scene you need to choose Diffuse Color in Bake Type. The result is similar to baking shadeless material in Blender Internal.
From Cycles Render Baking documentation page: Render Baking

Diffuse Color/Direct/Indirect
Bakes the diffuse pass of a material. Diffuse Color is a property of the surface and independent of sampling refinement.


Full animation 2D/ How to change colours I am trying to draw on top of the 3D models. When opening 3d model and then selecting " 2D Full Canvas" I can draw well but I can not find how to change colours.

So my question how to change colours in "2D full Canvas mode" ?

Or how to get same template as you get when opening 2D animation from file menu ?

You can change the colour under Properties Editor > Material Tab.

In "2D Full Canvas" layout you don't see this editor.

Since you have some material set, you should switch between materials from 3D View > Properties (N) > Brush just press Pin button.


How to convert selected polygons to their boundary edges? For example I've selected this face

Then I need to convert to edge (border of selected faces)

Is there any way to do it automatically?

There's a menu item for this: Header > Select > Select Loops > Select Boundary Loop. Candidate for a shortcut, if you use it a lot.