How do I apply a Blend4Web module similar to the plane flight preview? I am trying to make a load screen to fit my scene.

This has a custom load screen to fit the scene:
https://www.blend4web.com/en/demo/island/

This is the API:
https://www.blend4web.com/api_doc/module-preloader.html

But I can't find how to apply or use the API. How do I apply a Blend4Web module?

Please take a look at the source files of the Island demo you mentioned.

https://github.com/TriumphLLC/Blend4Web/tree/master/apps_dev/flight

Search for create_advanced_preloader in the flight.js file.


Background is not blending well In the Introduction to Camera Tracking tutorial by Blender Guru, in the first 40 minutes, he gives an introduction to Camera Tracking and then shows how to make a hole in a road. He did this in Blender Render, but I'm trying to do this in Cycles. Somehow, I made a few mistakes because this is my rendered image.

Notice how there is a huge shadow where my mask is. Any thoughts on what I can do better?

Here is the .blend file:

As I said in my comment, the problem is caused by your nodes for the plane. In BI, your plane rendered white with black cracks. In Cycles, you rendered black with white cracks, I believe. Also, your UV Mapping needed some touching up, as only part of the cracks image was actually showing. After fixing your nodes and the UV Mapping, I achieved the following result.

The following is the modified node setup for your plane mask. I used the Emission and Light Path > Is Camera Ray nodes to achieve the Shadeless effect provided in BI (logic from Import Images as Planes addon Cycles node setup). Then, I used the Alpha output of the cracks Image Texture to differentiate between white, normal, and cracks, black. I used the Alpha instead of the Color with Bright/Contrast to make a Fac: because in this case, there was a readily available B/W Fac: already.

Here is the .blend file. Note that I may have messed up several of your paths.

As an alternate solution, you can use the following compositing. Note the changes in the two nodes immediately following the mask's RenderLayer node. If you do this, do not utilize the above solution as well. I will say that this works slightly worse, but it's still reasonable.


Video Editor shows SVGs as transparent image - can this be fixed? Summary: If I add an SVG as a track to the video sequence editor, it is recognized as Type: image. But the content is not visible, it is just transparent.  This is shown on this screenshot:

Details: I am trying to create a training video that alternates footage and slides. Initially I used PNGs for slides, which worked flawlessly. I want to switch to SVG, so that I can edit the slides directly (rather than having to export PNGs. So I know that what I am trying works with PNGs

Blender lets me drag the SVGs into the Video Sequence Editor. They are recognized, as the border and transparency is shown. But the actual content is missing!

I am using Inkscape to create the SVGs. I tried both, Inkscape SVG and "Plain SVG". I created a super-simple test slide with nothing fancy on it. No luck.

Also, I set the document size to 1920x1080. As I read about size issue I filled the slide with a huge object. Nothing.

Is Blender not capable of this, or am I making a simple (stupid) mistake?

Thanks for helping!

You need to convert SVGs to a raster format (Tiff, PNG, JPG, EXR, etc) before you can load them into the VSE.

Support for SVGs is limited.

As an alternative you can load the SVGs (paths only) as curve objects into the 3D environment, and add a scene strip to the VSE.

For more info on support for SVGs read: Why can't I import a SVG file from Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape?


Operator arguments - Identification if object names are not unique? A lot operators use StringPropertys to reference objects by name. This works well for ID datablocks - no duplicate names allowed (although there can be issues with linked datablocks).

But not all objects are of type ID datablock, and unique names may not be enforced. Related operators may take a string for indentification however. Thus you may not act upon the right object.

If names aren't unique, one could use an integer to reference by index. But I wonder if there are any operators, which actually take a pointer to the right object (in C)? Like:

ot->prop = RNA_def_pointer(...);

Is it even possible to use pointers as operator properties? It would mean that python couldn't make any use of it, if I'm not mistaken (or could one pass a python object, and have C code figure out the pointer?).

Operators should never have pointer properties and as far as I know there aren't any that do.

Such pointers would not be valid after deleting objects or after undo/redo steps, which would give problems in the operator history stack when repeating operators for example.

Operators that take datablock names should usually be avoided for python scripting. It's better to edit the data directly than going through operators when possible, there's probably only a handful of cases where you need to do this.


Set curve to selected vertices So below I have a selected set of vertices. I want to have a curve with the exact shape of these vertices. How could I take a curve and line it up to the exact shape of the vertices I have selected?

Select said vertex in Edit Mode
Duplicate it with Shift+D
Separate them from the main shape with P > Selection
Exit Edit Mode, select the newly created "wire mesh" and press Alt+C > Curve from Mesh


Automation for baked rigid body dynamics baking, creating armatures, and transferring to armatures I would like to streamline the process of creating game ready baked rigid body simulations, and I am wondering if there already exists function, add-on, or script which does this. This would expand the possibility of having more complex effects (more dynamic bodies baked).

Specifically the purpose of whatever function, add-on, and script would be to create an armature at rest position, where there is a bone for every object in the scene, each of the bones' head is at the center of each object, and the tail is always pointing +Z. Afterwards a copy location and rotation constraint would be applied to each bone and linked to the appropriate object, afterwards, each object would be weighed under the vertex weight for the appropriate bone.

I'm not trying to request that someone create, although I'm sure others would appreciate it for creating their own simulations.

In terms of manually creating these simulations, it is a tedious process.
For reference, see this video in which a simulation is created for The Dark Mod:

Blender - bake physics to armature

https://blendermarket.com/products/ossim
This tool provides almost exactly what I am looking for.


How can I use for loop (or while loop) in python to move 50 objects with random beginning positions to specific positions I am a beginner of Blender. I want to use the blender to show how proteins form a microtubule. My code creates a piece of microtubule and some proteins on random positions. I want to put the random proteins on the microtubule.
My plan was using python to read the positions of my proteins and changing their positions to wherever I want, but the API is kind of confusing for me to read. I don't know how to express the 3D position of a random target in bpy.
Can someone please show me some material or the code to do this? Thank you very much.
import math
import bpy
from math import cos
from math import sin
from math import radians
from random import randint

#create random tubulins#
n=0
while n < 36:
    x = randint(-3, 3)
    y = randint(-3, 3)
    z = randint(-3, 3)
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.12, depth=0.176, enter_editmode=False, location=(x,y,z))
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[0] = 1.5708
    n = n + 1

#create microtubule#
for j in range(0, 5):
    for i in range(0,12):
        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.12, depth=0.176, enter_editmode=False, location=( 0.5*math.cos(math.radians(i*30)), 0.2*2*j, 0.5*math.sin(math.radians(i*30))))
        bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[0] = 1.5708

for l in range(0,12):
    for k in range(0,4):
        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.12, depth=0.176, enter_editmode=False, location=( 0.5*math.cos(math.radians(l*30)), 0.2*(2*k+1), 0.5*math.sin(math.radians(l*30))))
        bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[0] = 1.5708

##add tubulins onto the microtubule, aka: adding key frames ##

for k in range(15):
    bpy.data.objects[k].select_set(True)
```

This script creates random points and mixes with points of helix. Here i used lerp() from mathutils to mix two points based on frame. You can replace helix points with vertices of cylinder.
import bpy
from random import randint
from mathutils import Vector
from math import sin, cos, pi

# create helix points
def helix(amount, radius, height, twist):
    points = []
    for i in range(amount):
        t = twist * 2 * pi * i/amount
        x = radius * sin(t)
        y = radius * cos(t)
        z = height * radius * t / amount
        points.append(Vector((x,y,z)))
    return points

# generate random points
def random_points(amount, min, max):
    randpoints = []
    for i in range(amount):
        x = randint(min, max)
        y = randint(min, max)
        z = randint(min, max)
        randpoints.append(Vector((x, y, z)))
    return randpoints

random_points = random_points(50, -3, 3)
final_points = helix(50, 0.2, 8, 8)

# get objects from collection
coll = bpy.data.collections.get("spheres")
objects = coll.objects

# clear previous animation data
for obj in objects:
    obj.animation_data_clear()

start = 1
end = 100
for f in range(start, end+1):
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(f)
    for i, obj in enumerate(objects):
        obj.scale = (0.1,0.1,0.1)
        obj.location = random_points[i].lerp(final_points[i], f/end) # vector1.lerp(vector2, factor)
        obj.keyframe_insert("location", frame = f) # insert location keyframe


Blender Eevee HDRI reflection makes the color surface of objects wrong I haven't been using Blender for a long time and keep coming back to some problems that give me headaches.
In this case I have the following parameters:

Render engine: Eevee
Integrated HDRI environment
My project is an apartment

Problem Eevee:
The underside of a surface takes on its color due to the reflection of the HDRI environment, that means my ceiling is not white, like the material properties, but olive green due to the reflection of the green background of my HDRI environment.
In my case, the underside of my floor is olive green which doesn't matter because I can't see the underside of the floor through the camera. The top of my floor has the right material property. So far so good. The problem is the ceiling, because the visible surface of the ceiling is not white, but olive green - see picture.
At first I thought I had a problem with two-sided surfaces and I only had to assign "flip normals" to the surface in Blender / Editmode / Mesh / Normals and the problem would be solved, but it wasn't.
The problem is really strange, since the reflection on the floor could still be explained to me but not on the ceiling, which means that the reflection shines through other meshes.
Cycles:
If I change the render engine Eevee to Cycles everything is as it should be - see picture.
Solution:
Do I have to change something in the settings? Can you help me?
Thomas

Unlike Cycles, Eevee is not capable of global illumination. The objects in your scene are only lit by the hdri - which does not create shadows. This means that the ceiling is just going to reflect the grass, even though other objects are in the way.
Setting up realistic lighting in Eevee is a science in itself, but to fix the ceiling it should be enough to set up an irradiance volume to represent the bounced light in your room.
To do this, add an "irradiance volume" and scale it on the respective axis so it just encompasses the whole room. Then, under "indirect lighting" in the "render" tab hit "bake indirect lighting". This will calculate the lighting conditions on each of the probes, which will then be used for reflections.

In the first picture you can see that the ceiling has the brown-ish look of my hdr. If i add an irradiance volume the room is properly lit, with the missing texture giving the light a pink hue.
But honestly, it takes quite some work to make lighting look realistic in eevee, especially if you want to use an hdri. I'd recommend using cycles for the final render and to check lighting, while limiting eevee for previews.


Duplicate while transforming object I'm looking for option for duplicate object, while moving. It works that way, that I grab the move arrow, or rotate, but instead of changing original object's position, it duplicates in new position I choose. I'm not talking about ctrl + D.
It's something like here: https://youtu.be/zzVoZ5WygW4?t=1m14s - user holds shift key and moves object to duplicate it. Is something like it in Blender?

Duplicating with ShiftD will create a duplicate of the selected object, and immediately activate the move tool, so all you have to do is drag the new object to the place you want it. The original object will stay unselected and in it's original position.

Note that all the copied objects are independent from each other.

To create linked duplicates use AltD, the tool behaves the same way but all duplicates are linked to the original mesh, so altering this one will affect all of them.


How to access to Scipy.special functions within the script window I would like to access the special functions in Scipy in the scripting window. I have looked at this and this and @polosson's answer in the first one suggests three possible ways to install a module in order to use it.

EDIT: My question is - HOW to install scipy.special into either the Blender Python path (which I should be able to find) or how to instal into a separate folder (which I would point to with the menu indicated in the third option of that answer).

Could someone take a moment to help me find a step-by-step way for me to start using scipy.special in the script window?  Thank You!

fyi I'm using Blender 2.70a on OSX 10.8.  Currently I run Python 2.7.6 using IDLE elsewhere in the computer, using this method (indicative of my current installation experience  == clicking and dragging).

You would need to install scipy into Blender's python installation I would imagine for this to work.

Here are some clear instructions on how to do so: Using 3rd party Python modules

Remember: Blender uses Python 3 so you will need to use the Python 3 version of scipy. The 2.7 version will not work.


Is there an easy way to make two flat objects coplanar? I'm working with multiple objects that are planes, such as an actual plane, an image imported as a plane, or text. At any time, I could be working with 2 or more of these objects and they could all be the same type or any of the ones I've listed.
I'm not talking about putting objects on an actual, existing mesh plane. I want them to be in the same plane, but that doesn't mean on the same face of an object or plane object.
I know how to match the rotation of two objects to make sure they have the same orientation. I want to go one step farther and make the objects coplanar. This plane will usually not line up with an axis or be even parallel to an axis. (For instance, X rotation might be 32.5°, Y rotation could be 12° and Z rotation could be 75.13°.)
I think it might be easiest to move the 3D cursor to a point on the plane and then moving the object center to the 3D cursor.
I'll be defining a plane with 4 coordinates for corners, but I'll be keeping those as variables and not using them to create an object. How can I pick a point in that plane or check when a point is in that plane?
While I'll be doing this in a script, I don't need actual code, I can work that out, but either a formula that can check if a point is in a plane or code to do it is welcome.

Define a plane by a point on the plane and its normal.
For example sake using 4 coordinates of plane as 4 points that make up the plane.
>>> ob = C.object
>>> ob
bpy.data.objects['Plane']

>>> mw = ob.matrix_world
>>> points = [mw @ v.co for v in ob.data.vertices]

Only need 3 points, $(a, b, c)$ to define a plane. All of these distinct points is on the plane. The normal is the cross product of any two non parallel vectors on the plane (b - a).cross(c - a)
The global plane coordinate and normal of example plane.
>>> plane_co = points[0]
>>> v1 = points[1] - plane_co
>>> v2 = points[2] - plane_co
>>> plane_no = (v1.cross(v2)).normalized()

Hence to make any plane aligned with another plane can align their two normals. To get the quaternion rotation required to rotate one vector to align with another.
>>> q = plane_no.rotation_difference(plane_no_2)

Matrix math to translate, rotate, scale with respect to a pivot point in Object mode
Finally there is a helper method mathutils.geometry.distance_point_to_plane
>>> geometry.distance_point_to_plane(
distance_point_to_plane(pt, plane_co, plane_no)
.. function:: distance_point_to_plane(pt, plane_co, plane_no)
Returns the signed distance between a point and a plane    (negative when below the normal).
:arg pt: Point
:type pt: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:arg plane_co: A point on the plane
:type plane_co: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:arg plane_no: The direction the plane is facing
:type plane_no: :class:`mathutils.Vector`
:rtype: float

which will give how far along the plane normal a point on another plane is to current plane.
Have used this in determining coplanar faces here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/53976/15543.


Problem with mesh after using Boolean Modifier After i apply the Boolean Modifier to cut a hole in my phone the surface of phone become stretched and some black shadows appear.

Thanks!

Your using smooth shading. This can be fixed by switching to flat shading or using a bevel modifier.


Armature bone rotation values not changing when using inverse kinematics I'm trying to have drivers activate based on certain bone rotation values. However when the bones are moved as a result of the IK setup their rotation values do not change at all.
Edit:
File
Shoulder_DV_.L should move when the Hand_IK_.L is.

So let's look at one driven bone:

Here, Spine01 is getting a Y quaternion driver based on the Z quaternion component of Core_IK.  I've rotated Core_IK a bit, and showed Spine01's transform in the sidebar, so that you can see that, yes, the driver is actually working-- that Y rotation field is non-zero, and since Core_IK's Z component is -0.082, it's doing what you told it to.
But unfortunately, doing what you told it to do, is doing nothing.  Why?  The short answer is that the Y component is the only component you're changing.  With quaternions, increasing the Y component alone is not the same thing as rotating in the local Y axis.
Quaternions are kind of weird.  Even though Blender lets you deal with their components individually, they're not really four separate numbers; quaternions are normalized, four-dimensional vectors.  If you want Spine01 to rotate, you need to also change at least the W component as well as the Y.  How much?  Well, (w^2 + Y^2)^0.5 = 1.  So, that's why they taught you algebra way back when, for this moment.
Other driven bones in the armature have similar issues.
What should you do?  You should change the rotation mode of the bones that you want driven to be Euler bones.  You can specify the rotation mode in properties/bone/transform/mode.  If you do that, your individual channels will represent rotation in a particular axis.  In the case of Spine01, which looks like you're only ever going to use drivers to control its roll, there's no advantage to quaternions over Eulers anyways.  The advantages to quaternion interpolation are only ever apparent when a bone rotates in more than one Euler axis.
Is there anything else you should change?  Yes.  Just as the Y quat component of Spine01 doesn't rotate anything, the Z quat component of Core_IK is not a very useful input to drive this rotation.  Here, you don't need to change the rotation mode of anything, you just need to change how Blender reads whatever transform you give it, by changing the mode in the "rot" variable for your driver.  You can leave Core_IK as a quaternion bone and still read its orientation as an Euler for purposes of rotating Spine01.


Why dont I see my texture on the object? I wanted to apply texture on some house following an tutorial, I'm sure I did all what was needed but still don't see the texture.

Here's a screenshot:

In cycles you to create materials using shaders.

Select the faces you want to use those materials, and assign the material to them with the assign button.

The image needs to be used as a texture by the shader using the mapping you've set up on the Texture coordinates.


Unsupported CUDA version 5.0 detected, you need CUDA 6.5 I've been happily using CUDA with cycles for a while now - set Cycles Renderer up top, then File->User Preferences->System->Compute Device=CUDA and in Preferences(bottom right panel)-> Render tab->Render section->Device=GPU Compute. Can then shift-z to use cycles to render the preview in addition to just rendering.

But firing it up today results in:

Unsupported CUDA version 5.0 detected, you need CUDA 6.5.

Which is strange, because:

> ls -la /usr/local/
cuda-5.0
cuda-6.0
cuda-6.5
cuda -> /usr/local/cuda-6.5

> export | grep -i cuda
declare -x CUDA_HOME="/usr/local/cuda"
declare -x LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/cuda/lib64"
declare -x PATH="/usr/local/cuda/bin:..."

> nvcc --version
nvcc: NVIDIA (R) Cuda compiler driver
Copyright (c) 2005-2014 NVIDIA Corporation
Built on Thu_Jul_17_21:41:27_CDT_2014
Cuda compilation tools, release 6.5, V6.5.12

As far as I can see my environment is already set for 6.5. I get the same for both the Fedora 21 package (2.72) and one I compiled from the source (2.73). How is blender finding the older version? I suspect I've done something to mess up my environment but can't find what it is. Any ideas?

Update:

strace shows blender goes straight to the cuda-5.0 directory, perhaps due to this:

> grep "/usr/local/cuda-5.0/" /usr/bin/blender
Binary file /usr/bin/blender matches

Reinstalling cuda-6.5 didn't fix it, but it did break my permissions, so:

sudo chmod -R o+rX /usr/local/cuda-6.5/

I have recently updated to nvidia driver 346.35, maybe that did something to my environment. Either way it seems like blender first looks in
/usr/local/cuda-5.0/bin/ for nvcc and then /usr/local/cuda/bin/ (this seems like a bug to me). If it finds cuda 6.5 first, either via simlinking cuda-5.0 to cuda-6.5 or moving/renaming the directory, I get hit with this error:

Compiling CUDA kernel ...
"/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc" -arch=sm_52 ...
nvcc fatal   : Value 'sm_52' is not defined for option 'gpu-architecture'

Similar blender error mentioned here and here, and theano error here. I have just moved from a gtx titan to a 980. Maybe that's related.

UPDATE: Yes, it's the new card. Going back to the titan works just fine. Surprised others don't have similar issues with the 980.

As your /usr/local/ directory shows you have installed multiple versions of CUDA (/usr/bin/nvidia-uninstall would only uninstall the last one). When upgrading I had first to uninstall all CUDA files:

From pre-installation-actions

Use the following command to uninstall a Toolkit runfile installation:

$ sudo /usr/local/cuda-X.Y/bin/uninstall_cuda_X.Y.pl

Use the following command to uninstall a Driver runfile installation:

$ sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-uninstall

Use the following commands to uninstall a RPM/Deb installation:

$ sudo apt-get --purge remove <package_name>          # Ubuntu
$ sudo yum remove <package_name>                      # Fedora/Redhat/CentOS
$ sudo zypper remove <package_name>                   # OpenSUSE/SLES

Check for remaining packages:

$ dpkg -l

and remove them also. After a re-install of the most recent version should work.


How can I render an image with sharp and uniform color edges? I'm modeling a simple scene of black board (diffuse material) with red, green, yellow, and white squares (emission material) on it.

The following is a crop of the rendered result.

All the squares I modeled have same size, however after rendering, the last square shown in the image is smaller than the rest. One square has a lighter edge (marked #1).
I think this has something to do with anti-aliasing used in Blender cycles. The following is my rendering setting.

I want all the squares to have the same size in final rendered image and uniform color even in edges (like the first 4 squares shown in the image above).  I was searching for a solution but couldn't find one. Can anyone suggest a solution for me? Thank you all in advance.

It has been a while, but IIRC the method to get pixel precision is via our output resolution and the scale of your objects.

For example, if your resolution is 1920x1080, you can create a pixel precise plane if you set the plane's dimensions to 1.920 and 1.080. Note that if you use larger scales, your images will suffer from cubic interpolation that will degrade any textures you place on them.

An orthographic camera should flatten the perspectival transform to be pixel perfect.


Mass copy/paste with transform So, I am working on this simple animation, and need to mass copy and paste some buildings: each building is 7 units away from the last one horizontally. Is there any quick way to do this?

Use the array modifier in the modifiers tab.

Select the object you would like to copy and paste (or rather, make an array of) and then select the array modifier in the modifiers tab. Set the count value to however may copies you would like to make, then set the x, y, and z values under the relative offset check box (make sure it's checked) to however way you would like your object to be transformed.

Play around, experiment a little with the settings, and you will get the
hang of it.

Hope that helps.


Computer stuck on fluid baking I am trying to bake a fluid simulation of 1.45GB and my pc is stuck and stopped responding. What can I do? Will it help to increase my RAM amount to 16GB?

System specs:

Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview 64-bit
CPU - Intel Core i7 4770 @ 3.40GHz39 °C , Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM - 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard - Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H81M-S2PV (SOCKET 0) 28 °C
Graphics:

L1953TR (1280x1024@60Hz)
W2242 (1680x1050@60Hz)
SyncMaster (1280x1024@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (Gigabyte)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (MSI) 33 °C

Storage:

111GB Corsair Force LS SSD (SSD)    30 °C
931GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA100 (SATA) 34 °C

OMG 1.45 GB.Dude that's quite huge than what your machine could handle smoothly.That's the problem.Try decreasing the resolution of fluid.What exactly are you doing? Not trying to simulate an ocean or huge lake :-p .16 Gb probably won't handle that huge fluid smoothly either.Try to decrease the fluid size.


Can't connect two vertices with an edge I'm pretty new to Blender, and what didn't seem to be a challenge to anyone gives me bad trouble. I'm trying to connect two vertices with an edge, they are highlighted in the first picture. However, when I press F with those selected, the edges appear between them and the opposite end of their stroke, as seen in the second picture. What can I do to connect them? Thanks in advance!

As @Xylvier pointed out in the comments, I should have done CTRL+J to join the strokes.


How to increase the render distance (fire) How to increase render distance of fire effects?
I have big scene (and I can't make it smaller) and I have an explosion in it, but it is to far to be rendered correctly, I can see only flying particles but not fire (in smaller scene it is work fine) what should I do? I have increased clipping.

(I have blender 2,72)

Go to Proporties -> Camera and increase this number:

Make sure to increase End in Clipping. This will increase camera range!


Decreasing star count I am creating a completely procedural space with some stars, nebula, etc. The stars are generated by a Voronoi texture hooked up to a Color ramp - a pretty usual approach as far as I know. I would like to decrease the amount of stars in the scene.

The Color ramp connected to the Voronoi texture has three colors inside it as follows:

Black at position 0
White at 0.001
Black at 0.002

I have tried decreasing the amount of stars by setting the positions within the color ramp to lower values like 0, 0.0001 and 0.0002, but the amount of stars seems to stay the same.

I am fine with the size of the stars, I would like to just make fewer of them. Sadly, even after several hours of trying, I seem to be unable to achieve it. With that, I would be very grateful if anyone could give me some advice how to achieve this.

The node setup is below, the scene preview can be seen here Scene preview and the blend file is here Blender file. Using blender 2.8 with Cycles.

The node setup is pasted below:

A noise texture which fac is clamped by a less than reduces the influence of the second input of the add rgb.

More generally:

A noise texture is kind of random pixels, specially at high scale. From that, if we clamp its result by a less than or greater than (or colorramp), then you will pick a partial amount of this randomness.

In particular here, that gives us less stars.


Save objects in Object ID Properties (Blender 2.79) I saw that Blender 2.79 has the ability to save objects in properties using their id's. However, due to the limited documentation i can't figure out what i am doing wrong. I have included the code and the release notes where i found it below. Any help would be awesome!

class MyPropertyGroup(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
        custom_1 = bpy.types.Object
        custom_2 = bpy.props.IntProperty(name="My Int")

    bpy.utils.register_class(MyPropertyGroup)

    bpy.types.Scene.id_objects = PointerProperty(type=MyPropertyGroup)

# Call doesn't work
bpy.context.scene.id_objects.custom_1 = bpy.data.objects[0]

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/PythonAPI#Blender_2.79:_Python_API

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene

class MyPropertyGroup(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    obj_pointer = bpy.props.PointerProperty(name="Object", type=bpy.types.Object)
    custom_2 = bpy.props.IntProperty(name="My Int")

bpy.utils.register_class(MyPropertyGroup)

bpy.types.Scene.id_objects = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MyPropertyGroup)

scene.id_objects.obj_pointer = bpy.data.objects[0]
print(scene.id_objects.obj_pointer.name)


extruding 3 faces to get a wall i´m totally new to blender, so i want to learn the basics as good as possible.

My problem: I want to make just a simple Studio background with 1 floor and 2 walls by extruding 3 faces of a cube. (cube, delete 1 vertex, select 3 faces and extrude).
When i do so, the new walls are slanted or their origin is just 45° below the old origin.
I found a workaround: setting the 3d cursor to the first deleted vertex and then extruding the walls by 0, then scaling the new walls with my 3d cursor as center. But i want to do it just by extruding.
what am i doing/thinking wrong?

If you look in the upper left corner when you are doing the Extrude Along Normals you will see that you can change the behaviour. In this case you can press S or Alt to get Even Thickness.

Even Thickness is also an option in the Solidify Modifier.


Modelling for a game engine, stuff I should know? Good evening. I would like some help, if someone would be willing to tell me for what I should watch out and what I should know when I make a model for any kind of game Engine.

I do know I have to keep the model as simple as Its possible (poly count) and to use Normal maps to add complexion (...)

I remember that game engines see the structure of a model in triangles, Should I learn how to model in a triangles? or does Blender have build in conversion. I remember once hearing about other software that can convert a model while keeping the same structure,complexion, from quads to triangles (i don't think thats the proper way of saying it)

Any help would be nice, point me to a video, text or you can explain here.

Thank you for reading.

Unless you tell us what game engine you're aiming for, it will be hard to be specific.

However, you shouldn't try modelling with tris, it would be hard and pointless. With triangles you can't use loops, most tools won't work as intended (ie. Bevel, Inset...)

Either let the engine do the conversion (Unity, UE4, Godot, does it really well) ; or if you want more control, handle it yourself just before export (ie, Blender "Triangulate" modifier)


How to prevent Blender from disabling dyntopo when exiting/entering sculpt mode? This is one of the most annoying things while sculpting with Dyntopo enabled - it switches itself off automatically for various reasons eg. going from sculpt mode into object mode and then back into sculpt mode or undoing too far, to the state of affairs where Dyntopo was disabled.

I had to redo so much sculpting when I realized that nothing suddenly went wrong with my mesh but that I forgot to re-enable Dyntopo that it becomes a major pain. I am aware of the Ctrl + D shortcut to quickly enable Dyntopo, but it just too easy to forget about re-enabling it.

Is there a way to keep Dyntopo enabled by default or prevent it from switching off, maybe at least with some clever Pythong scripting?

This problem has finally been noticed by Blender developers and included in 2.78 release.

"Enable dyntopo re-entering sculpt mode"
https://developer.blender.org/D2059

Dynamic topology will be re-enabled automatically when entering sculpt mode, but only if uv's, vertex colors or triangulating won't be affected.


Is my mesh too complex? So I got a toilet model from blendswap, since I needed a toilet for a house. I then tried importing that .fbx file to UE4, but it freezed. Looked it up, and the most common answer was that the mesh is probably high poly. So my question is, is it high poly? The toilet is just a background object.

The picture might help to explain the problem.

Yes, your model is probably too detailed for a game scene background. Moreover, since it's a rather simplex geometry, the face count may be easily reduced with no noticeable effect on its appearance. As it was pointed out, you currently have almost 25,000 faces, that are unnecessarily too many for the surface of your toilet.

(Note: high-poly and low-poly mean high or low polygon count, polygons being your mesh's faces)

"Decimate" the number of faces

From the Properties window, Modifiers panel, click "Add modifier" and select "Decimate". Your face count is displayed as "Faces: Xxxx" on the bottom of the "Decimate" box.

The three methods (Collapse, Un-Subdivide and Planar) are described here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/generate/decimate.html

To see any effect, you must:

on "Collapse", reduce the ratio (try something around 0.33: it'll reduce the face count by two thirds)
on "Un-Subdivide", increase the number of iterations to 1 or 2
on "Planar", change the threshold angle to 3-4 degrees.

(choose one of the three, whichever looks the best)

When you change these values, you can see the updated number of faces updated under your slider. Also, your model gets updated live in the 3D-view. Choose the lowest number of faces that still keeps the appearance good and smooth enough.

Once you are done, hit "Apply" in the decimate box.


Shadows along edges of mesh in 3D View I have recently started using blender and one of the models I'm working on has dark shadows along edges. I started this model from scratch. I can't remember them being there when I first started the model, but I had trouble joining areas together and think I've pressed something I shouldn't have. However, there are so many options I'm not sure what I did.

Here is an image of what I mean

The one on the left has the shadow. As a test I started a new model, which is on the right in the image, and as you can see it doesn't have any shadows.

Also, occluded vertices partially show through the model. Occlusion doesn't work properly.

In orthogonal view small darkened triangles appear along the the edges.

I don't really want to start the model again from scratch so any ideas on how to remove this shadow would be great. Thanks.

The issue you are calling "shadow along edges" is more generally known as z-fighting   (if you want to search for more info on the topic).

In our manual we document this problem:

  A large clipping range will allow you to see both near and far objects, but reduces the depth precision.

To resolve, in the view settings you need to reduce clipping range.

set the Clip Start as high as you can before near geometry disappears.
set the Clip End as low as you can before far geometry disappears.

The Camera has its own start/end settings so you may want to adjust that too.

Note that typically you won't need to tweak this value often, it just needs to match the scene scale you use

A range between 0.1 -> 100.0 is fine if more model has dimensions of ~0.5 -> ~50 blender-units.

Note that some graphics cards cards suffer from this problem more than others because they use a lower bit-depth for their z-buffer.


how change mesh and vertex and edges color please help change mesh color for object mode and change edges/vetexes color for edit mode because I do not see vertexes and edges because it is black and edges in blueprint is black too !
https://imgur.com/gCV3DCZ

You can adjust the colors in User Preferences>>Themes>>3D View.


Adding Subdivision Surface Messes Up Geometry So I'm working on this geometric shape that looks like this:

I've converted to tris and then all my tris to quads. So there shouldn't be any ngons left in the geometry. I've also recalculated all my face normals from the outside.
Then I add my subdivision surface modifier and I get quite a few distortions/pinchings/crumplings:

and here is a view where I add more levels:

How do I go about making the geometry smooth out better? Do I need to do some topology type stuff? Or is my geometry all messed up and needs to be remade?
Edit:
here is the blend file -

Ok, so the first thing I noticed (by turning on face normal overlays) is that the normals were going all over the place. To me, this suggested duplicate faces, so I used a Merge By Distance operation (Press M (merge) in the viewport and select "distance"). I increased the "merge distance" to .0101 and it removed 521 duplicate vertices which solved most of the problem, but not all.

Upon investigating the rest, I noticed that there are a number of interior faces - faces inside your mesh. Also, for some reason, the second time I tested this, deleting the faces left some "loose edges" - floating lines that still made it look strange even though the faces were gone. If yours still looks strange after the subsurf is applied, look for these inside the mesh (I found a couple in the large "tank" section).

Regardless, deleting them seems to solve the rest.

There are also some areas on the outside that have duplicate edges (this could be an unwanted result of the merge operation, but I can't be sure.) Deleting them (not dissolving them) seemed to clean that up.

So this is mostly solved, but there are a couple of new N-gons you will have to deal with somehow:


Is it possible to change the model for an armature with animations present? So i have made some animation with a character i made, and there are like 5 animations. Now i have added some details to it and i would like to update the model and use the new one and keep all the animation. Is it possible?

Basicly the position it's all the same, the new model has only a tail added to it (It's humanoid like goblin).

Can i use automatic weight somehow or reatribute all the wieght manually. And how can i keep the animation?

EDIT

As you can see on the image the are identical, the white one is the new one and it's the one i want to swap.

Primary

Yes it is possible.

Assuming you have done [no] custom weight painting.  You can simply achieve the initial starting base pose state, delete the old armature modifier, and parent the new armature with automatic weights.

Deleting the armature modifier of the mesh wont delete the animations of the armature.  Armature modifier is different than the armature itself.  The armature is referenced in the armature modifier.  You can even parent the armature to 2 or more meshes.

To achieve a base position you can clear all the rotations and positions temporarily.  There are menu options such as [clear rotation] for bones of an armature. Consider having  frame 0 for that case.  You can render frames 1 to N which does not include frame 0.

If you are planning to replace one mesh entirely with the new mesh simply achieve your base position and parent the armature to the new mesh. Test.  Then delete your old mesh.  You may want to save multiple copies of your Blender file.  Blender allows you do make any mesh invisible to view or render which may be convenient in your case.

If you have done custom weight painting.  Just go into weight paint mode and paint the weight for the new bones and test.

Secondary

You picture appears to introduce a new question.  If you have two meshes you can join them with a menu selection [Join Meshes].  Makes sure you select the dominant mesh last.

If the meshes are two different objects you do not even need to join them.  The single armature can be the target of more than one armature modifier on two different meshes as stated above.


Eye colour from Adobe Fuse are almost washed out ]3

I'm very new to Blender and I just made my character in Adobe Fuse, and added some extra pieces of clothing in Blender. Whenever I go to the Material viewport shading as well as Rendered, the eye colour is heavily washed out. The eye colour in my UV map is much darker, so is there anything I might have missed? Do I have to make a separate UV map for the eyes?

EDIT: Added screenshots of nodes in the node editor. I'm using one UV map for the entire body, and separate ones for his coat and hat. I'm so sorry for any confusion I may cause, I'm very new to this

]5

can you disconnect all the other nodes so only the eye image texture is used? I suspect some other nodes are mixing and washing out the result. – rob 9 hours ago

@rob I made an account but I realised I couldn't reply back to this. But if you're reading this, it worked! Thank you so much for your help :)

Edit: the solution was to disconnect a node


Weird texture on surface of model I am currently making my own Overwatch Wallpaper and are doing the logo of it right now. So I have moddled a it and painted texture on it, as we know the design. But for any reason the texture is looking like this:

You can see the darker stroke in the bottom of the picture and on the left.
Why did it happen and how can I get rid of this? More pictures of the model following.

Untextured:

the mesh:

in paint mode:

and then the texture as a image itself.

I have found a solution to this. So I had to use two different materials for both the yellow top and the silver part of the logo. I heared that this issue is caused by too dense geometry there.


set mass of objects via python? I'm scripting this file that generates an environment containing objects of different masses, shapes, sizes and physics types. I'm having trouble setting the mass, though...

e.g.

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(location=(0,0,-20))
plane = bpy.data.objects["Plane"]
plane.scale=((200,200,200))
plane.game.physics_type = 'STATIC'
plane.static.mass = 20

^^^plane.static.mass doesn't work and neither does plane.mass. How do I do this/get it to also work for rigid body and soft body objects?

You need to find the right path to the data you are looking for, using the python tooltips in blender can help here, they are enabled by default but if they have been turned off you can enable them in preferences. Searching through blenders python api online can also help.

First let's clarify your use case, you are setting plane.game.physics_type so you may want to set the matching plane.game.mass both of which are only relevant for the game engine physics.

If you are using the interactive physics available in the 3Dviewport then you will want to use plane.rigid_body.type and plane.rigid_body.mass


I want to move background image and not this red circle thing I have a background image opened but I can't drag it to my preferred location, instead I keep moving this red circle cursor thing.
Like if I zoom in the image I can't move to the face or the feet

You can't drag a background image. To move it use the numbers in the background image section of the properties bar (You can bring this up by pressing N in the 3D viewport).

Zooming has nothing to do with panning. To pan around the 3D viewport use Shift + MMB.
The little red circle thing is the 3D cursor. It is for doing operations relitive to a point in space.

As a word of advice, I highly suggest you watch some tutorials on the 3D view and interface before worrying about things like background images.


How can I select unconnected vertices, edges, or faces that are nearby my current selection? I have a mesh which is a clump of grass comprised of stems and blades sticking from the stems. The blades are touching or nearly touching some faces of the stems but are not connected to them. They are all in one mesh together. I want to select some of those stems and then select only the blades that are sticking from them. I can select some faces of some stems and then "select more" to increase the selection to include all of the faces of only the stems I have selected. Then I want to be able to select any vertices that are in close proximity, though unconnected, to my current selection of faces. This will allow me to get some verts of the blades and then "select more" to get the whole blades. The entire grass clump is quite dense so it would be time consuming to manually search through it to only select those things I want. So how can I tell Blender to select any items that are nearby (short distance) any items of my current selection though are not connected? Thanks!

In Edit Mode you can hold L down while hovering the mouse over what you want to select. Then the whole piece of connected geometry will get selected, and you only have to move the mouse around a bit to pick up other pieces of unconnected geometry. Depending on what your setup looks like, this might help.


What does static/dynamic BVH do? In the render properties panel, under the performance rollout there is a setting for static vs. dynamic BVH.  I am simply wondering what this setting does.

From the Wiki:

  The raytracing acceleration structure used is a bounding volume hierarchy... This code includes spatial splits to make it more competitive with kd-trees.

Unfortunately, though I know quite a bit about cycles, this is totally Greek to me.

I couldn't really find much else useful on the web other than it may have some impact on animations only.  Can anybody explain this better (maybe starting with BVH in general)?

About BVH:

BVH creation is a method of space-partitioning to speed-up ray-tracing (or also collision detection, etc.). BVH itself is a node-tree data structure that wraps polygons in bounding-boxes based on spatial-hierarchy - thus Bounding Volume Hierarchy. You can compare how BVH looks (left) in contrast with Octree (right):

Space data structures eliminates potential ray intersection candidates by omitting geometric objects in bounding volumes which are not intersected by the current ray. It's still an area of active research (gpu friendly implementations) - there are many more types (kD-tree, BVH, BIH, Octree, Uniform Grid,..) and it often depends on what you need them for.

Here is link (.pdf) for more reading how BVH works for anyone interested.

Now static vs. dynamic option for view-port:

If you start view-port rendering BVH will be created. When the scene is changed (this counts object movement, geometry deforming, etc.) the static BVH needs to be completely rebuilded resulting in slower update times. But it renders faster. With dynamic BVH only a portion needs to be updated, which results in faster updating but it renders slower.

For rendering only static BVH is used, and the BVH tree can be also cached for faster re-renders (when for example only camera or materials changes) or cached for all animation frames for faster re-animations (if that's a word:)


blender 2.8 switch between cycles and eevee I know 2.8 is not yet released.
However I am at the limits of what blender 2.79 can do.
So I wonder how to set the recent 2.8 builds into cycles mode?

Here you go, this image is from Blender 2.8 BETA, just go to right panel and look at the little icons for the one that says "Render" when mouse hover it.


Bevel not...beveling properly I'm taking a course and the instructor has beveled an edge and I cannot get the same result. My bevel only bevels on segment on one side then the rest, about 4 or 5 segments bevel on the other side. Other words the bevel is not beveling evenly on the top of a cylinder. Pictures below

The bevel appears distorted because the mesh has non-uniform scaling.

You probably scaled the object along a specific axis e.g. S > X. If you instruction had done this in edit mode, the scale doesn't change, but if one scales it in object mode, the scale will remain unapplied non-destructively. The visual appearance is the same. You can apply the scale in object mode, then return to edit mode and bevel.

Leave edit mode and go into object mode ↹ Tab.
Press ⎈ CtrlA and choose Scale.
Go back into edit mode ↹ Tab, the bevel will work as expected.


Weird ribbing effect when applying Mirror and Subdivide modifiers on an object in 2.92 I've been following this tutorial with a friend of mine to help get a better grip on using Blender, but I'm having an issue when using 2.92.0, that my friend doesn't encounter in 2.83.1.
When using both the subdivide and mirror modifiers, this weird line shows up in the middle of the object (that, and it doesn't subdivide very evenly, for some reason.)

I borrowed the .blend file from my friend's project, and the "head" that she made doesn't have this issue when I open it. Using the same modifiers copied over from that to the shape I generated makes the problem occur again. We've checked and redone steps multiple times and there aren't any differences between our two projects outside of the version of Blender, so I'd like to know how I can fix this without just outright downgrading.
If you want to recreate my steps, follow the tutorial I sent from 0:48 to 2:55 with the Extra Objects plugin enabled.

If you recreate the steps of the tutorial, the result looks exactly like in the tutorial. What your friend accidentally did is doubling the center edge by hitting E for Extrude. Maybe she realised her error and pressed Esc or RMB to exit the Extrude, but unlike moving, rotating or scaling for example, the extra vertices remain created - aborting the function only keeps them in place, so they are directly lying on top of the old ones. To get rid of them, use A in Edit Mode to select all vertices, then M > Merge > By Distance.
The horizontal edge looks like there is an extra edge loop created above or below the original center edge. But they are doing nothing like that in the tutorial.


Blender doesn't render Cycles with GPU? I was messing around with effect and when I went to start a brand new scene to render something that doesn't use effects nothing shows up until I switch render with CPU?

As of now, you need a CUDA capable card in order to leverage GPU renders reliably.  OpenSL for AMD cards are hit or miss right now.  The rendering guide also suggests that your card may not have enough memory.

https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html


Shearing a group of objects [][3][![transformed object][3]][3]I have a group of objects and I need to give them all an equal shear  during an animation (like a matrix transformation).I tried using the lattice. It does distorts it(like a shearing) but it does not give an equal shear to all the objects.

The first image is of the object that I wish to transform.
The second image is of the object after it has been transformed but the objects itself seems to have become separate and this is not how a matrix transformation operates mathematically. Please help me to understand what is the lattice deform transformation doing and how to use it such that it is in accordance with matrix transformation.

I realised that if the lattice encloses the objects completely and if the options are changed from bspline to linear, it does the job.


Bake indirect lightmap After extensive research I still could not find a way to do this in Blender.
Does Blender support baking indirect lightmaps?
I'm not talking about lightmaps baked with a sky light. I'm talking about lightmaps which contain only bounce lighting (from direct lighting) and no direct lighting.
We need a separate direct and indirect lightmap for our game, so we can mix baked lighting correctly with dynamic lighting.

What we get (as a lightmap)

What we need (as a lightmap)

If you are baking with Cycles you just have to turn off the direct contribution when baking.


Baking to Filmic or Filmic Log in Blender 2.9? I’m trying to bake a texture I relit and as it’s a white texture, the lighting is blowing at places. In photography this is a typical sign of a camera with low dynamic range. I found some articles and tutorials pointing to the Filmic and Filmic Log profiles in Blender and indeed using one of them the image looks correct with no overexposed or blowing areas. But as far as I can see this is just a view setting. How do I bake more dynamic range?
How do I bake to Filmic or Filmic Log?
Thanks in advance.

When you save the baked image check Save as Render to apply the render view transformation.
Update
The PNG standard is an 8/16-bit integer format.  To preserve HDR information you must use a file format that supports floating point, which means Radiance HDR or OpenEXR in Blender's case.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/media/image_formats.html


Make the movemouse event back to left when get to the edge of right Just like we are using the middle mouse button to navigate the 3dview.
When we get to the right of the 3dview, it gets back to the left
Is there an easy way to do it?
Or we can just use the simple 'if else' to check when the mouse get to right and reset it to left
This is how I handle the mouse move envent in the modal, and it can only go to the edge of the window
radius: bpy.props.FloatProperty()

def modal(self, context, event):
    if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
        delta = self.first_mouse_x - event.mouse_region_x
        obj.Rad = self.radius - delta * 0.01

I got it...
add this bl_option to the operator class can make it
bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'GRAB_CURSOR', 'BLOCKING', 'UNDO'}
# GRAB_CURSOR + BLOCKING enables wrap-around mouse feature.

and then fix the mouse event by using mouse_x
if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
    self.mouseDX = self.mouseDX - event.mouse_x
    multiplier = 0.005 if event.shift else 0.02
    # multi offset
    offset = self.mouseDX
    obj.Rad -=  offset * multiplier
    # reset
    self.mouseDX = event.mouse_x

```


How to transform flat face to concave one - model palate? I'm relative new to blender.

I'm trying to model palate in blender. So far I managed to create flat face between gingivas as in picture below:

Now I'm trying to curve it to be more realistic, result is expected as:

So far I tried with lattice, but it's giving very angular edges.

How do I bend this face to be concave?

Isolate the ground plane (or remove it and create a new one. Then subdivide it and use Proportional Editing (Keyboard O in edit mode) to shape it to your liking.
EDIT: here the illustration: Youtube - Blender teeth modeling. It's just one way though. There might be better ways depending on the existing topology and what kind of quality you are trying to achieve.


Not possible to ADD SCENE at all - Video Editor No options to add a scene, at all.  Either a new one or existent.
I have tried with either complex animation and the default cube scene with one keyframe of displacement.  In both cases the same message "No items available" for creating a new scene.
I have rendered the full animation and it only allows me to insert movie strips and audio.
Version 2.90

First of all, make different scenes, each one with their animation.
Then make a new scene without any animation and open the Video Editing tab.
Finally, from the Video Editing tab, try to add a scene either by Shift+A with the mouse hovering on the Video Sequencer panel, or as you did, by clicking on the Add>Scene dropdown menu.
You should be able to find all scenes but the new one you're video editing from!


How do I freeze the wave modifier animation? I have an animated mesh with the wave modifier.
I want the mesh to be frozen in a certain point in time after it animates for a bit with the modifier.

I thought if I keyframed the speed value to 0 it would make the animation stop but it doesn't work like that at all.

Other way I can think of is to apply the modifier, but then I wouldn't have the animated part.

EDIT:
I have 500 objects with a shrinkwrap constraint that has the wave mesh as the target. This makes it impossible to use the solution of duplicating the wave mesh and keyframing a switch of the animated to the static geometry (as suggested in the comments) because the target of the shrinkwrap can't be animated.

Thank you!

You can freeze the wave by animating the 'Offset' field inversely to the frame advance.

Supposing you have a wave with a positive speed, and at frame 0, it has an Offset of 2. You want to freeze the wave between frame 100 and frame 140.

Then at frame 100, you want an Offset of 2, at frame 101 an Offset of 3, up to frame 140, an Offset of 142. (The offset direction seems topsy-turvy to me, but that's the way it is)

(You could either do this with a driver...)

Or, if there are no interfering variables,  keyframe the Offset value to 2 at frame 100, and 142 at frame 140.

Then go to the Graph Editor, hit T on the start and end keyframes, and set the interpolation to 'Linear' to get rid of the easing, which would screw the linear relationship you're looking for.


Blender Video Editing, Newbie, channel 0 Sorry, a very newbie question.

I'm trying to make a simple video with Blender, but I'm a bit confused about the Sequencer and what I think is channel 0.

After I drag in my video (about 3 mins), it will only play back in a loop on channel 0. This has an underlined dark red background. But though my video is longer than this, Blender appears to be in a loop (as defined by channel 0) for the first 10 seconds.

My workflow is simple, start blender, new video editing project, select video file and drag it into sequencer.

Then however long my video is, blender only plays back the first 10s in a loop which appears to be defined by an uneditable channel 0.

Whats going on? I know I'm missing something simple, but what is it?

Thanks

Thanks

I'm not sure of some of the "blender language" yet, but my problem was because I dropped a video in and then pressed space (as play).

At the top right pane of the screen is a panel that is described as "Scene" and has a drop down panel that is titled (?) Dimensions. I think this is what Leander described, but there appears to be nothing described as a "Properties Area". (What should I read to understand this?)

My problem was fixed by changing the "frame start" and "frame end" in said Dimensions drop-down panel to be something appropriate for the video I had dragged in.

I had referred to this as a channel 0 being the sort-of-blank channel underneath channel 1. I'm not yet sure of its proper name. But I see now that the "frame start", "frame end" combo selects a display area in the background of the channels, and that the area I refer to is in the foreground, and contains the text for markers and perhaps other things...

Thanks very much for the pointers, I'm hopefully on my way now.


AO node black artifacts There are black tris all over the mesh with the Ambuient Occlusion node connected. Changing distance or samples does not help.

The subsurface modifier reduces black tris a litte but they are still visible. Can this mesh be fixed somehow? There are no doubles and normals are recalculated.
Thanks!

With subsurf:

Nate suggested that you change the Auto Smooth value but in your file, this value panel is greyed out. This is because you have Custom Split Normals on your mesh.

Hit the Clear Custom Split Normals Data button and then try reducing the Auto Smooth Angle to something like 12 to 15 and that hopefully will clear your AO artifacts problem.

Edited to propose a different "solution"

I have no idea why but when moving the mesh and its origin to the World Origin a lot of the problem disappears! Perhaps someone can explain why?

After separating (P) a small part of the original model (less taxing on my PC) and moving it along with its origin to the World Origin most of the shading (shadowing) issues just disappeared:

Next some Vertex Smoothing to smooth out some of the sharper edges:

And finally with the auto smooth option unchecked:


Creating 2D animations using 3D characters I am new to Blender and am just learning the basics. I want to create 2D animations using a single character. The 2D animations would portray different angles of the character. Hence, I thought creating a single 3D character and somehow using that in 2D would save me the work of redrawing the character again and again.

Is something like this possible using Blender? Or is it better to simply create the character in 2D multiple times with different angles?

Depends what you're good at. Of course Blender produces 2D images, and people have often done what you describe, so it's possible.
Freestyle helps you outline objects if you want to go for the hand-drawn feel and there are tons of toon shaders out there for drawing like colors.
You can also use grease pencil in Blender (it was vastly improved in 2.80) if you'd rather stick to pure 2D.


After import to Unity, all my normals are flipped I found someone with similar problem, but their answer doesn't work for me. Other than that, the net is full of advice how to flip normals programmatically to create interiors on the fly, but other than "Your normals are wrong", no help.

All my normals point outwards.
I exported the object to .obj, imported it into Unity, and got:

Did I apply the texture to the reverse side of the faces, or something like that? How do I fix it?

My guess would be that your object has negative scale in Object mode. As .obj does not store object transforms, the scale is applied on export and so causes the normals have negative direction as well.
To fix this, in Object Mode hit Ctrl + A  > Scale, then do the operation described in answer you already found (in Edit Mode hit Ctrl + N or Shift + N for 2.8+) and then re-export.


Zoom in to all objects in view using Python I have Python scripts that generate shapes and every time I run the script I want Blender to zoom in to the new objects in my 3D view, automatically.

I know that you can select everything with the A or the following python snippet:

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='TOGGLE')

The info view gives me this snippet.

I am working from a laptop so to toggle the perspective such that I can view everything that is selected I would press the \ button. How would I do this programmatically in Python? Also, why is the Python command for this not showing in the info view?

To zoom into your new objects you will want to deselect all at the start of your script, then ensure that each new object is selected as it is added. You may want to keep a list of each new object then select them when done, depending on what steps you use this may be the only way to have only new objects selected as some methods can alter the selection.

Once you have the new objects selected you can use bpy.ops.view3d.view_selected() to zoom in on them.

The numpad / that you ask about is local view which is available as bpy.ops.view3d.localview()

As for the info window, I'm not certain of the exact criteria of what gets shown there as not everything shows. Most undoable actions and view changes show up, simple things like navigating the view don't. But then you can rename an object in the object properties and it shows but rename in the outliner and it doesn't.


Python: How to get object's true length? I need to calculate object's 'length factor', for example:

... To achieve this, I need to get object's true length:

... But the 'dimensions' vector contains dimensions of bounding box, so it's different when we e.g. rotate the object.
I have a code that will calculate the 'length factor' value, the only problem is that the 'dimensions' values are from bounding box, not from the object itself. Here's the code:

dimensions = list(ob.dimensions)
maxDimension1 = max(dimensions)
dimensions.remove(maxDimension1)
maxDimension2 = max(dimensions)
lengthFactor = (maxDimension1/maxDimension2) - 1

I'd be grateful for some help.

You can use the below script to get the dimensions of the selected object:

x = bpy.context.object.dimensions[0]
y = bpy.context.object.dimensions[1]
z = bpy.context.object.dimensions[2]

which is controlled from the 3d view as shown below:


Rigging Error "Bone Heat Weighting: Failed to find solution for one or more bones" I want to connect bone with the mesh with automatic weights but when I press Ctrl+P->With automatic weights it brings me this error , I tried to remove doubles but the error hasn`t gone .

removee doubles

recalculate

remove all modifier

place the root bone to the center of the model

apply the subsurface modifier and parent them

apply the decimate planar modifier
Posible this will help?


How to make a truly smooth edges on low poly model? This is a cylinder scaled down on the bottom. It has 8 faces and has 'Shading' set to 'Smooth'. But it looks like that:

I've also tried Edge Split modifier and Auto Smooth option with max angle value and I still can't get perfectly smooth result.
I remember doing the exact same thing in 3dsMax back then (cylinder with 8 sides, perfectly smooth using smoothing groups) and it wasn't a problem.

These hard edges also show up when I export the model to Unreal Engine 4.

A normal map (baked from a high poly for instance) can solve the issue. So if you were going to use normal maps anyway, the problem will most likely become less prevalant.

Anyway, my process for setting up smooth and hard edges in Blender:

Select all faces and press W and choose Shade Smooth. Then for the edges you want to hard edges: Select those, and Ctrl+E, Mark Sharp. Add an Edge Split modifier. Uncheck 'Edge Angle' and make sure 'Sharp Edges' is checked.
As far as I know that's all you can do.

The rest is down to the shader and how it interpolates the normals between two connecting vertices. And the only simple way to take control of those normals is with a normal map.


how to make everything be turned off for Cycles Ray Visibility? The UI from UI.py generates all those check boxes

class ObjectModifier(bpy.types.Panel):
bl_label = "ObjectModifier"
bl_idname = "ObjectModifier"
bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
bl_category = "Claas"

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout

    scene = context.scene
    cscene = scene.cycles
    ob = context.object
    cob = ob.cycles
    visibility = ob.cycles_visibility

    layout.label(text="Ray Visibility:")
    flow = layout.column_flow()

    flow.prop(visibility, "camera")
    flow.prop(visibility, "diffuse")
    flow.prop(visibility, "glossy")
    flow.prop(visibility, "transmission")
    flow.prop(visibility, "scatter")

When I click camera I get this in the console read out:

bpy.context.object.cycles_visibility.camera = False

What would be a code to make all boxes be checked off or on.

The main function would be for making a light invisible or object invisible
during render time

There are a bunch of ways to do this. The TextEditor->Templates->Python->Operator simple has an example of the Operator syntax.

Here's a rather brutish interpretation of what you want:

import bpy

class ClaasVisibilitySwitch(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "claas.visibility_switch"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"

    func = bpy.props.IntProperty(description='0 is off, 1 is on')

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.object
        visibility = ob.cycles_visibility

        attributes = ["camera", "diffuse", "glossy", "transmission", "scatter"]
        for attr in attributes:
            setattr(visibility, attr, bool(self.func))

        return {'FINISHED'}

class ObjectModifier(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "ObjectModifier"
    bl_idname = "ObjectModifier"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Claas"

    # uncommenting this will make the panel be invisible if no
    # objects are selected/active.
    # @classmethod
    # def poll(cls, context):
    #     return context.active_object is not None

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        scene = context.scene
        cscene = scene.cycles
        ob = context.object

        # if you have a poll function like above, then early returns
        # like this aren't needed.
        if not context.object:
            layout.row().label('no active objects')
            # finish drawing early
            return

        cob = ob.cycles
        visibility = ob.cycles_visibility

        layout.label(text="Ray Visibility:")
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator('claas.visibility_switch',text='on').func = 1
        row.operator('claas.visibility_switch',text='off').func = 0

        flow = layout.column_flow()

        flow.prop(visibility, "camera")
        flow.prop(visibility, "diffuse")
        flow.prop(visibility, "glossy")
        flow.prop(visibility, "transmission")
        flow.prop(visibility, "scatter")

def register(): bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
def unregister(): bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
if __name__ == "__main__": register()

I imagine you might want a single button that has states, like a BoolProperty. Here's a not-fancy version using a scene Boolean.

import bpy

def bool_updates_scene(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    visibility = ob.cycles_visibility

    attributes = ["camera", "diffuse", "glossy", "transmission", "scatter"]
    state = bool(context.scene.claas_visibility_switch)
    for attr in attributes:
        setattr(visibility, attr, state)

class ObjectModifier(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "ObjectModifier"
    bl_idname = "ObjectModifier"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Claas"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        scene = context.scene
        cscene = scene.cycles
        ob = context.object

        if not context.object:
            layout.row().label('no active objects')
            # finish drawing early
            return

        cob = ob.cycles
        visibility = ob.cycles_visibility

        layout.label(text="Ray Visibility:")
        flow = layout.column_flow()
        flow.prop(scene, "claas_visibility_switch", text='All')
        flow.separator()
        flow.prop(visibility, "camera")
        flow.prop(visibility, "diffuse")
        flow.prop(visibility, "glossy")
        flow.prop(visibility, "transmission")
        flow.prop(visibility, "scatter")

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.claas_visibility_switch = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        update=bool_updates_scene
    )
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.Scene.claas_visibility_switch

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

making it look nice with a different Icon for each state should be a separate question.


Texture Paint won't paint the whole face - Bleed option seems to be off recently I've wanted to test out the Texture Paint Mode on Blender with some simple model (low poly stuff). I've been able to correctly (I assume) UV unwrap -manually and smart unwrap- my model to prepare it for texture painting. However when actually painting the model I've noticed some issues, whether trying to paint with a brush tool or the fill tool, some very small areas of faces of the model, whether having Face Selection Masking enabled or not, could not be painted:

I'm currently trying to paint on a 512x512 texture (don't know if the size matter) but, when trying to solve this problem, even with a resolution of 4096x4096 this problem still occurs, although it is less visible. I've also tried to mess around with the Bleed value by increasing it a little bit (from 2px-4px to 8px), and when I did that I noticed something else:

It seems that the "paint" is being applied with some rotation to it, and I don't think this is the expect result, so this might be the source of my problem.

Blend File

Indeed it seems there's been a regression since 2.76. I reported it here https://developer.blender.org/T52453

Meanwhile, here's how the bleeding algorithm works on triangles :

this explains the non parallelism between the UV edge and the bleeding edge

since the regression, the bleeding treats a quad as 2 triangles.

In any case, most of the times, the best method is to not use bleeding, but paint on a transparent image, export it, import it in the compositor and feed it through an Inpaint node. This gives an even thickness and prevents bleeding in other islands or inside the same island.


Get a path taken by a particle Is it possible to convert a baked particle system to a curve (or set of curves) representing the path taken by each of the particle?

Use the Btrace addon.

It allows you to trace particles and to also convert the paths to curves.


IK constraint causes crazy global rotation I was following a rigging tutorial (first minutes of third video) on a simple model I made earlier. But when I add an IK constraint on the bone shin.L to have the bone foot_IK.L become an IK controller, it gives very odd behavior.

When moving the foot around in Pose mode for a small amount, the IK seems to work fine, but when you move it further, the rotations go berserk. And even if i return the mouse back to where it started, the rotations keep being all messed up.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikrqtk7kh164c22/dusty_05_foot_bones_added.zip?dl=0

What did I do wrong?

Here is what I would say:

Select your armature, go in Properties > Data > Display > B-Bone, so that you can easily see your bones. Select all the bones in Edit mode and ctrl alt S to thin them.
In Edit mode, select the foot_IK.L and drag it back behind the foot so that you can see it. Also, rotate it 180° on the X axis so that its head is in the good position.
Now, the parentage is bad, neither the foot.L nor the foot_IK.L should be parented to the shin, and the foot.L should be parented to the foot_IK.L, so, in Edit mode: Select the foot_IK.L and alt P > Clear Parent and select the foot.L then select the foot_IK.L and ctrl P > Make Parent > Keep Offset.

It should work correctly.


How to specify the name of a node group when creating it from python? I have been creating node groups with the group_make operator, but there doesn't seem to be any way to set properties such as the label or name of the resulting group node.

This makes it difficult to access this node later, and be sure that one is accessing the correct node.

How can I specify node properties on creation?

You can use something like this:

node_grp = bpy.data.node_groups[-1] # to get last created group
node_grp.name = "Special Name" # to set a name


What does unwrapping a model do and why is it important? I am trying to learn how to make small games, and every time I watch a video it says that we need to unwrap it, but they never fully explain what unwrapping does or why we do it.  Is it necessary when exporting to UDK?

UV unwrapping is the process of 'unfolding' a mesh so that you can create a 2D texture which fits the 3D object. It is generally necessary if you wish to texture your object very accurately, either in Blender itself or in an external image editor. If the model is not unwrapped then Blender would have to use a different mapping method, but you generally have less control of how the image will be mapped using these methods and I do not think they would be compatible with game engines. For some uses, UVs might not be needed, but it is recommended if you need to add specific details.

In this example, the cube on the left has been 'unwrapped' to create the UV layout on the right:

The UV layout is the 2D representation of the cube, with each square on the right being a face of the mesh on the left. There are several ways to unwrap a mesh; the red lines on the cube on the left represent 'seams' which are where I have told Blender to separate the faces so it can be unfolded neatly.

While the mesh doesn't actually alter, you can think of this happening to create the UV layout:

I could then export this UV layout into an image editor, draw on top of it and then bring it back into blender:

When the texture is now applied to the object and the texture is set to use UV mapping (the unfolded layout), the texture will be folded back around the object:

UV unwrapping is a big subject but this should give you a starting point.

I do not use UDK, but I imagine that if you need to use textures you will need your model to be unwrapped.


How to UV map complicated bevels I am trying to UV map a wing but whenever I apply the texture, it completely bugs out. This is the second time I've modeled it so its not like the original file was corrupted or anything. Scale is at 1,1,1. As you can see from the pictures, I used bevels to make the shape. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Unwrap final geometry, or split faces, or mark additional seams

You are unwrapped a model, which means to assign to evry face (5 in your case) a portion of the UV space.

By beveling the edges, your geometry doesn't have still 5 faces, but a bit more. The UV informations about those new faces are coming from an interpolations of the previous faces UV, so it may happen that not all of them are corrects (expecially when your UV is made by disjoined pieces) as in you case:

In addition your geometry has some caharecteristics that make the effect come out. If it has been more compact on the X axis you would not have such distortion.

Solutions:

1) Apply all modifers ( or converto to mesh your mesh... with Alt+C, or at least the ones that have more impact on the geometry, and THAN unwrap your geometry (Suggested if suitable)

2) If you need to keep the modifiers in your workflow you can try to disconnect the triangular faces. With vertex disjoined there will surely be no wrong interpolation between the triangular faces and the others (but you have to add additional vertex bevel modifiers to smooth the spikes..)

3) Mark all edge as seams. In this way Blender will consider each face separately and it will not occour unexpected interpolation and your topology will remain clean. Anyway your UVs islands may result slightely overlapped or disjoined, so you'll have to re-unwrap in anycase, but at least you can "preview" the UV correctly without applying modifiers.


How to match camera perspective after modelling? I'm new to Blender and this is my first big project.

What I have: multiple objects (table and chairs) built using given dimensions to represent the interior of a dining room.

What I want: to arrange these objects and the camera so that they match the perspective of a photo of the real life scene.

What I've tried: I've added the real photo as a background image for the camera view for starters. I also drew some guide lines onto the image to get an idea of the where the perspective line lies. Many guides exist but these seem to nearly all revolve around building objects from scratch onto the background - matching objects to camera rather than camera to objects. I've spent hours rotating and zooming and tilting the camera and I can't seem to get close at all. I know manipulation of the shifts and focal length come into play but I've tried adjusting these and I have no idea whether I was making things better or worse

Here's the closest I've come, I've just been focusing on aligning the table as it's the central piece. You can still see the end of the real table sticking out and the furthest legs won't align, but the dimensions should be accurate.

I'd really appreciate some help or guidance!

I am new to blender but I was deep in photography. My suggestion is to set camera lens in blender to match it with the one which was used to take the real photo(check photo exif data). Also choose the same camera sensor size (!)as it will infulence lens angle of view (either 35 full frame or crop).   Blind guess for 35 full frame as standard. Then I would try to position camera and angle in blender so it will match the photo. Hope that it will help you.  Of course there could be some manipulation done with photo in post production (like perspectice correction done in software not with tilt shift lens). I may only guess that the room is not big enough so the lens are rather wide angle, on the other hand there is no barell distortion so there was some perspective corretion done with software.
So you can export a table render as well and correct its perpective a bit. I know this is not a perfect solution but it may work in this case if you fail matching it. Photo exif data would be a nice start point for me.
Also, remember that the photo might be cropped, so photo border don't have to match if your goal is perspective


Programmatically adding a Curve bevel_object In Blender, following this post, I notice that hovering over the Bevel Object dialogue box in the object properties for my curve object, I see the helpful python data for my circleObj object:

Python: Curve.bevel_object
bpy.data.curves[circleObj].bevel_object

What is the first reference to - I cannot see Curve object
referenced    in the API
When I search the Blender 2.76 API Wiki (or as far back as the site pages went before they redirect to a different blender page), for bpy.data.curves,
there returns nothing.

I want to use python to create thin pipework for my vectors, and I'm not turning up any programmatic methods equivalent to the blender SE post referenced above.  Anyone done this?  I've tried this:

tor0refCirc = vecCircle("tor0refCirc", 6, 1, "NOTHING", 1000.0, 1000.0, 1000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 19)
for circleName, circleObj in sorted(cAr.items()):
    circleObj.select = True
    bpy.ops.object.convert(target='CURVE', keep_original=False)
    bpy.data.curves[circleObj].bevel_object = tor0refCirc
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=True)
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
    bpy.ops.mesh.remove_doubles()
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)

where vecCircle is a function that just calls bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add to place a circle well out of the way of my scene  to act as the diameter reference for my bevel.

After your edit I have a few more thoughts. You can't use a Mesh object such as produced by the primitive_circle_add() as a bevel_object, it needs to be a curve. Either make a wrapper function for bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_curve_add, or include a small convert statement inside your vecCircle function (shown below).

In your loop the call to bpy.ops.object.convert doesn't complete and that's where you should start investigation, subsequent lines can be ignored until then.

Preconvert to Curve before a loop

Here's a massively simplified version of what you're doing. This is to get an understanding of how to bevel an object via a script. For simplicity I iterate over Curves here to emphasize where the problem is not!

import bpy

def vecCircle(name, verts, obj_type='MESH'):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(vertices=verts)
    obj = bpy.context.active_object
    obj.name = name
    if obj_type == 'CURVE':
        bpy.ops.object.convert(target='CURVE', keep_original=False)
    return obj

tor0refCirc = vecCircle("tor0refCirc", 6, 'CURVE')

beziers = [o for o in bpy.data.objects if o.type == 'CURVE']

for circleObj in beziers:
    circleName = circleObj.name
    circleObj.data.bevel_object = tor0refCirc

turns this:

into this:

Convert to Curve during the loop

But if your original objects are meshes, they do need to be converted either on-mass before the loop, or during the loop.

import bpy

def vecCircle(name, verts, obj_type='MESH'):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(vertices=verts)
    obj = bpy.context.active_object
    obj.name = name
    if obj_type == 'CURVE':
        bpy.ops.object.convert(target='CURVE', keep_original=False)
    return obj

tor0refCirc = vecCircle("tor0refCirc", 6, 'CURVE')

# ensure no selected objects
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

pre_beziers = [o for o in bpy.data.objects if not (o.name == 'tor0refCirc')]

for circleObj in pre_beziers:
    circleName = circleObj.name
    circleObj.select = True
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = circleObj   # << -- important
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
    bpy.ops.object.convert(target='CURVE', keep_original=False)
    circleObj.data.bevel_object = tor0refCirc
    circleObj.select = False

which turns Mesh into Curve before adding bevel_object:

like this  ( you might want to increase resolution 6 vertices may be too coarse)


How to get a proper elastic collision in a rigid body simulation I'm trying to make a rigid body based Newton's cradle in Blender 2.80. At the moment my setup looks like this:

The constraints are hinges, rotated so the balls can only move left to right. After some experiments I used the Sphere shape for the collision, mesh or convex hull don't give any kind of elastic collision. I tried several values for friction or bounciness, but none give the proper motion I expect. I also experimented with collision margins, to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I put the blend file on google drive if someone wants to look at what I'm doing wrong.
I tried looking for a tutorial on youtube, but none of the ones I saw used rigid body, I only found this final animation of what I would like to achieve, which does use it, so it should be doable.

The values of my example still need to be fine-tuned.

General Rigid Body Tips

Use the simplified rigid body shapes (where possible) and to stabilize the simulation, amplify the scene's scale. (Don't use objects smaller than 1 Blender Unit.)
Adjust the solver iterations. Too few iterations will result imperfect motions, to many will destabilize the simulation because floating point imprecisions will add up. (See this last paragraph.)

For Newton's Cradle

For the spheres you have correctly set the shape to Sphere. Increase the Bounciness to a high value ~ 1 and decrease the Friction to a low value ~0.
Add a small gap between the spheres!
To reduce extra velocity, enable Split Impulse in the Rigid Body World settings and use a Translation Damping value > 0 in the Rigid Bodies' Dynamics Settings.

The stability of the simulation seems to be a delicate interaction of Rigid Body World Iterations and Samples and the gap between the spheres.


Circular Array not working after modifiyng cube in 2.81 I'm trying to make this circular array of cubes that would sit on a UFO so it's sitting on an angle. It's working when I make a regular circular array of unmodified cubes, but as soon as I modify the cube to make the array with, it goes crazy, the locations are all off.I did set the cursor to the UFO's origin and the cube's origin to the cursor.Basically I am trying to make a circular array to use as a Boolean to cut some holes in the UFO.

Setting up for the array

Making the array with simple cubes

When I modify the cube and make the array

First shot:  Ctrl A > Apply the scale of the cube. (bake the scale into the mesh). Each iteration of the array will inherit the transform of the original, and apply it again, recursively. You want that for the rotation, but not the scale.


Making my building blocks modular I'm modelling the different parts of my scenes as modular building blocks. This way, I can make up different rooms/scenes starting from these different blocks. Basic building blocks are:

Wall:

Floor tile:

Door:

Open corner:

Closed corner:

There are more building blocks, but these are the basic ones. Main problem is that, when I build a scene, I somehow end up being unable to close my rooms using ONLY these building blocks. In the next screenshots you will appreciate this phenomena:

As you can see, it is impossible to close the red gap with a basic wall building block, without having an overlap between them.

Much in the same way, you can appreciate that the basic floor tiles building block will get past out of walls.

I have to choose between mantaining reusability (via building extra helper building blocks), or breaking this reusability by directly modifying each room separately.

Can you come up with a solution? I would really like to keep re-usability, since I'll be building dozens or more rooms, and I wouldn't really like to modify each of those independently.

Here are more screenshots of the room I'm building right now:

EDIT:
Solved! Thanks to @Carlo's indications about the Open Corner block, now my two problems have been solved very easily. In a nutshell, the problem was that I wasn't having into account the thickness of the Open Corner building block. Here is a screenshot of the new scene:

Modular assets need quite a lot of planing. First you need to specify a grid size. This might be a floor tile, it also might be bound to a certain measurement like the width of a door frame. Measured from the borders of your base grid, you then need to inset the interior walls and outset the exterior walls. The gap between will be the thickness of the wall.

The next point you need to consider carefully, is the center of your wall. If your grid starts at either the inside or the outside, your modules won't have the right size. You want to have Blender's grid lines exactly in the middle between your inner and your outer wall (see the green lines in the screenshot below. Also notice the slightly thicker lines of Blender's major Unit grid).

My walls are exactly two Blender Units wide. The floor tiles will then be perfect squares and also have two Blender units in width and height. The floor will overlap with the wall but it won't show from the outside, since it goes only to half the size of the wall's width.

There you go, perfectly matching tiles in all directions.

Here's a .blend file with a very basic setup.

PS: You also want to remove all hidden faces. They are unnecessary in nearly every setup, as long as you don't want to create gaps in the wall, where the sides are visible. The floor tiles in my file are just planes but the principle is the same as it is for the walls.


How do i put texture from images? I have downloaded texture and it contains diffuse,normal,height images/maps.How to use them in blender to get bumpy/3d texture?

The typical node arrangement looks like this. Remember to choose non-color for your metallic, roughness, normal, and displacement images. Also, remember all meshes must be UV unwrapped in order to display the materials properly.


How can I animate an object fading out? I used the Import Images as Planes addon to import an image. It works fine but how do I change the transparency? I want to animate the plane so that it fades in and out. Here is my current node setup:

You just need to add another Mix Shader node mixing the output of the first Mix Shader node with another transparency shader. Then you can keyframe the Fac amount on the new Mix Shader node to fade out the object (or more precisely to fade out this material wherever it is applied to the object).

As an extra note, you may want to control the speed of the fade by editing the Fac value transition in the Graph editor.


How to keep cloth from stretching infinitely? Trying to simulate a balloon on a cloth ribbon. However, the rising balloon stretches the cloth infinitely, while I want the cloth to keep the balloon down. I have played extensively with cloth settings, to no avail. Any help is appreciated.

Under the Stiffness tab in the cloth settings, turn up the Structural slider, that should fix it.
The Bending Model under Physical Properties must be set to Linear, otherwise, the slider will not show up.


Grease Pencil : How to prevent rounded stroke ends I came across a problem while doing 2D animation - I have drawn over the rough sketches of the frames with an ink pen, but I couldn't get the line to end without the end of the line being rounded so it's very difficult to connect one line to the other without having it look awkward. I've tried erasing it but blender only erases the lines in segments instead of that specific part of the line that I want to get rid of.
Is there any solution to this problem?

Since Blender Version 2.92 Alpha and onward (download V2.92) you can use the cutter tool to remove the caps of your lines.
From wiki.blender.org :

Patch note : https://developer.blender.org/rB2985a745bb01
Also there is an option to automerge strokes ends while drawing, in which you could be interested.

Disabled :

Enabled :

Patch note :
https://developer.blender.org/rBe9607f45d85d


Separate compositor glare With the help of the compositor I added glare to my object and managed to render it with alpha. But is there a way to separate the glare that was added on top?

In the end I want to have two images. One with the object and one with the glare.

If you move the Mix slider in the glare node to 1.000 it will only show the glare on a black background, you can then save the image.


Is there a fluid simulation update/re-write on the horizon? Blender's fluid simulation has seen very little love or significant advancement in recent times.  So, with the particle re-write and the 'nodifying' of simulations, will there be attention given to updating the code and algorithms for fluids?  Maybe even using GPU computational power?  There's a lot of much needed change coming to Blender, so I had to ask on this front.

There is the Manta Flow Project included on the GSOC 2014:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Romanp/GSoC_Mantaflow_Framework/Docs

But it seems that the project has been abandoned.


Volumetric scatter shader does not show light focused through lens correctly I am trying to make the light from a convex lens shine through haze in a volumetric scatter cylinder like this: https://www.behance.net/gallery/53917965/LENSES-TEST
I can see that my lens does concentrate a beam of light on the plane below the lens, however the volumetric cylinder below the lens depicts a perfectly even distribution of light...

Is there a way to make the volumetric light look like the scene linked above? Here is a wire frame to make it easier to understand how the scene is set up...

And the node setup for the volumetric scatter cylinder...

Here is how it looks if I enlarge the volumetric cylinder enough to envelope the entire scene. There should be a narrowing beam of light below the lens...

It is working, it's just not visible (yet).
Try using the branched path tracer to sample more volume bounces per sample:

Switch to the Branched Path Tracing integrator
Set the number of volume samples to something large (you may also want to increase the samples for some of the other passes as well)
Set the number of Anti-Aliasing samples. These correspond to the number of initial samples cast from each pixel (See What is branched path tracing and how is it useful? for more detail)
Note the total number of samples per pass (21000 volume samples, and still not nearly enough!).

Here is your file rendered with the settings shown above (to get a better caustic on the diffuse plane, try increasing the number of diffuse samples a bit):


Download a specific Blender source version from Git I've installed and use official Blender 2.79 on my Os X. Now I'd like to better understand its structure, and try some development. So I'm trying to download hash 5bd8ac9 11-09-17 from git (the hash shown on the splash screen) so my development is aligned with the official one.
Until now, no luck. I refer to https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Tools/Git page on Blender dev wiki. My question:

How can I download a specific Blender source repo aligned with the official one? In other words, can someone point me to Blender 2.79 git sources?

You can check out the versions Tags and commit hashes here:
https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/tags

git clone git://git.blender.org/blender.git (and be patient as
this is a monster repo!)
cd blender
git checkout v2.79 (or whatever version you need)

You can also fetch only a specific tag from blenger.org however, not sure that will save you much ban(note that the blender git repo does allow only fetch from tagged or head branch commits, no arbitrary commit from hash) following those instructions:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3489173/how-to-clone-git-repository-with-specific-revision-changeset

All that said, good luck with the build!


How to to get rid of outlines of light in my render? When I do the image render preview for my animation, I can see the light outlines in my image. Does anyone know how to get these to go away but still have the light be there and emitting light?
Thank you

You may have to disable the line in render, for that click the funnel icon in the top right of your screen,


begginers problem : why rotation/scaling/moving doesnt work on my mesh? I'm just starting out and I follow this chair tutorial to train myself.
I use blender 2.90.1
The tutorial :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP5CTAKckBI&list=PLjEaoINr3zgEL9UjPTLWQhLFAK7wVaRMR&index=3&t=1006s
at 18.35, we can see that it rotates the mesh without any problem.
I followed the tutorial to the letter, but I have a different result when I want to rotate my mesh :
1

2 ('R' action)

The part I mirrored doesn't move an inch. it's only the duplicated part that tilts as I want it to.
For info, if I apply the mirror modifier, it's not better.. The whole mesh doesn't want to lean at all !! :(
I also tried to move, resize, nothing works.
The chair leg seems blocked.
Whith ctrl A :

Why that ? how to fix this problem? .
Thank you very much in advance !!

Ohhhh yesss problem is finally resolved by myself.
here is the Error:
for some obscure reason, this box was checked :