Glass material: object shown with strange artifacts I have an object that I've built using many circles, and then connecting the edge loops between them. I've tried to apply a glassy material, playing with transparency values, but the problem is that the parts where there are the circles are drawn differently:

I've already adjusted the normals. How could I eliminate these artifacts?

Update

There are no faces inside the edge loops. This is how the mesh looks in edit mode:

It looks to me like there are still faces left inside your mesh.
Like this:

What you need to do is delete those inside faces.  This can be done by just selecting the center vertex of each circle and hitting X on the keyboard and then selecting delete vertices.  Your final clean mesh should look like this:

Hope this helps!


texture painting one object also paints another & vise versa Whenever I texture paint a portion of one of my objects, it also paints part of another and vice versa. The objects are not parented and were never part of the same object, and I cannot think for the life of me how they might possibly be linked.

My x wing, the s foils (wings) on opposite x & z axes in the same objects, the problem applies to one of the 2 wing objects, but not the other

I'll ignore the symmetry you have active for now, as the UV problem i see should not be affected by it. Still, symmetry while painting on bad UV's can give headaches too, but more to that below.

From the picture, which is all i have to base my answer on, it looks like the UV's of all objects are on the same texture (one material for the entire X-Wing) and while they are unwrapped, not all faces belonging to a surface are together in islands. Some faces seem to be switched around. It's not possible to see in this picture, but i would guess that some of the UV's may be lying on top of each other and thus painting there paints on the underlying UV's, thus the object it belongs to as well.

I would suggest make a backup of the file and then generate new UV's, be it by doing it from the scratch, or by selecting already ok islands and moving them aside first to find the broken up ones and fixing them.

I'd go through the objects and select the surfaces in question, when the UV's show up highlighted, grab them and move them outside the texture frame, if you find UV's that are lying on top of another you found the problem. By re-positioning them so they do not overlap, you can fix the problem. Some UV's as i mentioned seem to be broken up and could be fixed as well. For that just select all the corresponding UV-faces and unwrap them again (you need to know how though, as UV unwrapping is a bit too much to explain here) You could try "Smart UV project", but mainly the overlapping UV's are to be re-positioned, as long as all UV's are packed anew and have some space around them, painting in the 3D-View should work fine. Having the faces of a surface in one island though makes for a cleaner picture and avoids some texturing problems in the long run.

Once all UV's are spread out and none are overlapping anymore, you can select them all and first "UV->Average Islands Scale" and then "UV->Pack Islands". That will bring the sizes of the UV's to an average in relation to the size of the faces on the object and then pack them on the texture frame.

Now you can paint to your hearts content.
Happy blending.


Particle and Fluid Forces driven by motion vector image data (XYZ vectors). Optical Flow I'm looking into how to achieve forces in Blender particles and fluids driven by motion vector image data.  Think "optical flow".  This is possible in Nuke, Houdini, and other packages.  It appears like the functionality may be there in Blender but I haven't been successful in getting it to work correctly.  I'm wondering if some of you out there have had success.  Thank you kindly for your help.

hmm just brainstorming.  Convert motion vectors to points use those points (make sure to keep points to a limited number) to act as effectors in a fluid sim. So you have to probably write a script that converts pixel location x,y,z data into points.  There is software out there but that's the extent of my knowledge on this.

I use this with the depth data from structure scanner to make a per frame point cloud.  It might work with standard motion vectors. Its a start.

https://github.com/arthare/stac_sample_decoder


How to change an unknown diameter of a hole to a specific size? I have a cube with several holes in it. Now I need to change the size of one hole to 6.34 mm diameter. What is the best way to do this?

Another way to achieve this is using the LoopTools addon's 'Circle tool'.

If the addon is not active on your system, go to the User Settings (CtrlAltU) > Addons > Mesh > LoopTools and activate it using the small checkbox on the right:

In Edit Mode select the loop or loops you want to resize, then either from the Tool Shelf > LoopTools or the Specials Menu (W > LoopTools) choose the 'Circle tool':

Toggle the "Radius" option on, then type in the radius you want (diameter / 2) for the hole:


is it possible to easily create this effect on a mesh i modeled from a single vertex? I recently started work on a sword hilt to which I was later going to add a different blade and handle style to, however as i modeled this mesh flat and from a single vertex extruded to reduce the challenge to myself of connecting individual meshes together correctly i got the shape mostly correct however i cannot create the smoothed/curved effect that can be seen in the following image in the indicated areas that lead into the sharper edges.

The arrows on the top image indicate the areas where the plastic or metal material curves into a sharp edge (the bottom arrow) and a flat side touching the blade (the top arrow)

the second image is an angle view of the mesh as it is currently, i have tested with marking shapr edges and smooth shading, and even the smooth modifier but they both resulted in a glitched out mesh that doesnt hold its shape at all even at sharp areas.

with further testing all day i found the only thing that will work even slightly is adding vertexes at angles as close as possible, no form of smoothing can be done however which is unfortunate but seems to be the best way. mainly the vertexes were needed to be scaled on the z axis just above the others with faces created from it in all the areas i needed it


How can I hide hidden topology with a hologram shader? I have a hologram shader that is mapped out like this in Eevee 2.9:

I've tried toggling Backface culling and other options. However, I still have a good of unseen topology being rendered through my hologram material:

How can I minimize this in the material?

Cycles
Light Path > Transparent Depth

Eevee
Material Properties > Settings > Blend Mode > Alpha Blend
Show Backface > OFF


How can I decrease the size of textures in my blend file programmatically? I'm new to blender.

I have a big .blend file and I need to decrease the size of the textures. How can I do it programmatically?

Asked many times

To quickly scale all images in .blend to given size:

import bpy
for img in bpy.data.images:
    try:
        # for empty render result image, etc.
        img.scale(512, 512) # (width, height)
    except:
        pass


Moving image in video editor I downloaded Blender today to try and edit videos. In the video I'm trying to edit I need to move a picture from one point to another in the time span from 0s to 7s plus 22frames (just an example, i need to move an image like 10 times within the whole video).

Is there a function for this? If so, how does it work?

My google searches only told me how to move the image in general and how to slide the image strip!

Use Transform strip: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/video_editing/sequencer/strips/effects/transform.html

Or use the add-on which will allow to do the image animations directly in the preview: https://github.com/doakey3/VSE_Transform_Tools


Why does the light not illuminate inside the building? As you can see the HDRI light doesn't penetrated inside the building even that the building is all perforated

For starters, the material on that structure is fairly rough, so indirect lighting will be scattered randomly.
Secondly, it doesn't seem like there's enough light coming in to create enough bounce lighting to fully illuminate the interior.

I would try making the mesh's material smoother, and maybe adding a spotlight or something to try and get more light coming inside.


Boolean glitch on object - Creates duplicate rather than subtracts I have a cube (on the right side of image) I wanted to slice out an oval from. No matter how I try it will NOT subtract. It actually creates a duplicate object (that what I wanted sliced) and JOINS that duplicate to the object it should have been sliced from. Annoying! So I created the same objects all over again and it worked just fine as you can see with the rectangular object on the left. So NBD. I just want some resolution as to WHY it won't work on the first dang object. Try it yourself. Blend file attached. (disregard the image behind the cube on the right side)

If you switch to Union it will do the Difference and vice versa that's even though the normals look okay the object in fact is inverted on the Y axis look at the scale on the Y it reads -0.5 just change it to 0.5 and it will work as intended


Black Glitches on rendered animation I have this sort of glitches all over my rendered animation.

Could it be a bitrate problem ?

I reproduced it here

I don't seem to be able to reproduce your issue, but seeing you are trying to render directly to video i suspect the problem is in encoding and would strongly advice to render as image sequence instead and then render the video from sequence, as described for example in How to render an animation as video in Blender? , which is better workflow in general as well.


python 2.8 - image texture stretch versus repeat In Blender/Python 2.8, I have added an image texture to an object.  The object is very wide which causes the image texture to stretch whereas I would like it to repeat.

The documentation (under "extension") seems to suggest that the default setting is for the texture to repeat rather than to stretch.  I would assume that because I am using the default that the texture would repeat rather than stretch.

Any suggestions as to how to prevent stretch in my code would be appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

def obj_texture(objname, filename, mat_name):
    materials = bpy.data.materials
    material = materials.get(mat_name)
    if not material:
        material = materials.new(mat_name)
    clear_material(material)
    material.use_nodes = True
    nodes = material.node_tree.nodes
    links = material.node_tree.links
    output = nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeOutputMaterial' )
    diffuse = nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeBsdfDiffuse' )
    path=TextureFolder+filename
    imgTex = bpy.data.images.load(path)
    node_texture = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeTexImage')
    node_texture.image = imgTex
    node_texture.location = 0,200

    tex_coord = nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexCoord') #NEW CODE @RJG

    links = material.node_tree.links

    link=links.new(tex_coord.outputs["Generated"], node_texture.inputs["Vector"]) #NEW CODE @RJG

    link = links.new(node_texture.outputs[0], nodes.get('Diffuse BSDF').inputs[0])
    link = links.new( diffuse.outputs['BSDF'], output.inputs['Surface'] )
    obj=bpy.data.objects[objname]
    obj.active_material=material

You need to create a Texture Coordinate node and connect it to the Image Texture node. This is necessary to provide a mapping for the 2D image onto the 3D model.

The Texture Coordinate node is created using:

tex_coord = nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexCoord')

Then link the appropriate coordinate type to your image texture. Usually this would be either UV for the coordinates created through UV unwrapping of your mesh or Generated for the automatically generated coordinates. Depending on what you choose, you'll have to use one of the following options to connect the sockets.

links.new(tex_coord.outputs["UV"], node_texture.inputs["Vector"])

or

links.new(tex_coord.outputs["Generated"], node_texture.inputs["Vector"])

The Extension of the Image Texture node doesn't have to be changed, since it is set to Repeat by default, just like the documentation says.


Does rotation by exact angle become low-precise in blender? I faced a strange behavior of Blender while trying to make something like this:

in one of the projections. It's clear that angle B (see picture below) should be 60 degrees for trivial trigonometrical reasons: just assume that the side of the square has the length 1 and calculate sin(A). Also note that D-D1 is divided into two equal parts by the inclined segment.

I try to reproduce that in Blender in orthographic projection of 3d view. Steps:

Create a new file
Delete cube
Press numpad 1 to view XZ plane
Press numpad 5 to switch to orthographic projection
Shift+s -> Cursor to center to ensure that cursor is centered
Shift+a -> Mesh -> Plane, so in selected projection we see the new plane as a segment.
Press N and enter "-60" to "Rotation: Y:" in the panel appeared.
Enter "-0.5" to "Location: X:" in the same panel.
Scale to ensure that we didn't get the required picture.

After this steps I get the following (open image in new tab or window):

If we fulfill this image to squares like above (see fulfilled image below) and count smaller squares, then we get 10 squares in horizontal line and less than 18 squares in vertical line, so sine of A on the picture from blender is not equal to 1/2 (it's greater) => angle A itself is greater than 30 degrees, but angle B is equal to 60 degrees by our definition! So the sum of degree measures in triangles drawn in blender gets greater than 180 degrees.

Looks like a weird logic in blender. Or are there any mistakes in my argumentation and I don't understand something about Blender?

Note 1.

It's not a computational precision issue. We use plane of the default size and there is no bouncing if we zoom the scene either in or out.

Note 2.

Scaling the plane (i.e. lengthening it's projection) will homogeneously scale all construction and will not affect angles and trigonometric functions of them.

Explanation of the "paradox":

I confused lengths of what I have on the "paint" picture with what I want to get in blender. Of course, half-length of the inclined segment is not equal to 1 => sin(a) != 1/2.

It seems you have made a slight mathematical error.
The plane has a length of 2 (by default), so if you look at the diagram, the hypotenuse of one of the smaller right triangles is half the length of the plane, so it is $\frac{2}{2} = 1$ unit long.  Now, $\cos(60) = \frac{1}{2}$ so the shorter leg will have length $(1)\cos(60) = (1)\cdot(\frac{1}{2}) = \frac{1}{2}$.  Here is where you made a mistake: $\sin(60) = \frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$, so the longer leg will have length $(1)\cdot\sin(60) = \frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$, not $2$.
Since I stink at making mathematical diagrams on paint and that is all I have on my tablet, here is a diagram I drew:


Cycles: How do I add an input socket to a node in cycles? I would like to add an input socket to the offset field on the image sequence node in cycles. Can this be done without using open shading language?

No, those node inputs represent hooks within the code that gets executed by Cycles itself. Not even OSL is enough in this case, you'd need to modify the source code of Cycles itself to allow frame number to accept arbitrary shader input instead of a fixed value.


Is there a way to make the active selection more noticeable? I'd like to make the active selection color different because I can barely see it when I'm selecting faces. I have an object that I'm trying to UV map, and there are some tiny faces that haven't unwrapped the way I expected, which I can see in the UV map editor, but can't find in 3D view because the active selection is too hard to see.

Switch you view to user preferences. Select 3D View from the left.  You will find what you need
Consider Zooming.  Number Pad (.) period then you can zoom at center.
User preferences allows you increase the size of the outline and vertex dots


Problem with displacement on edge I have a problem with displacement on edge.
How can i solve this problem?

I use this setting for the cube.
Thanks

This is more or less a problem with the UV unwrapping of the object.
Go to edit mode and check out the UV layout with the subsurface modifier on.
If it looks messed up, then try to unwrap the object again, or use "Project from View". Only use project from view if you are not going to view the other side of the object. Play around with the UV layout until you get a nice result for the entire cube.


Change background color in render I am running the latest version of blender I can find (2.82).  I can't change the background of my rendered image (or the one I view for that matter) no matter what I do.  I've read all the previous times this question has been asked, but the answers looks very complicated and worse, the Blender versions used are different than mine with menus and settings in places that I can't find.  I've read the manual and looked at numerous help tutorials.  This can't be that complicated, can it?  Can someone tell me where to change the background color on the render? (I suppose it's too much to hope someone will someday allow me to right click on the background and pull up a color menu.) In the meantime, how is this done?

P.S., if it isn't obvious, I am a complete webtard and new to Blender. I just can't believe how frustratingly difficult it is to change the simplest things in this application. Though it is obvious that Blender is very powerful and the hard work of many contributors, it is completely non-obvious to me.  Any help will be appreciated.

In Cycles In your World properties change this color to whatever you want but it'll will affect how your objects are lit, if you don't want that just copy this node set up. In Eevee it's the same set up.


Index Error: BMElemSeq[index] I'm new to this and I don't know how to fix it, but what I'm doing is converting the script to 2.80. Eventually, I'm in the process where I make it compatible with blender 2.82, and now I'm facing this error when I try to import.
for v in range (len (verts)): bm.verts.new (verts[v])
    for c in range (faceNum):
        id = bm.verts
        ids = id[ind[c][0]], id[ind[c][1]], id[ind[c][2]] #error in this line
        bm.faces.new (ids)
    bm.to_mesh (me.data)
    n = 0
    datnum = me.data.uv_layers[0].data

I search everything on google and I can't find a solution to this problem. Thank you

sorry I made a screenshot of it but forgot to put it here.

# When your add/remove vert(s) in your mesh. You need add
bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()
# to your code

# When your add/remove egde(s) in your mesh. You need add
bm.edges.ensure_lookup_table()
# to your code

# When your add/remove face(s) in your mesh. You need add
bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()
# to your code


Scripting alternative to editing colour based on vertex coordinates using Nodes editor I am trying to add colour to a mesh object where the colour varies based on the z location of each vertex (similar to a heat map). I am able to do so using the nodes editor (cycles render)

into

using the following nodes.

Could someone please tell me how to achieve the same (or similar) result using scripting in a very simple way?
I have currently made this mesh in the following ways.

import bpy
from math import *

ob=bpy.data.objects['Grid']
for v in ob.data.vertices:
    v.co.z=-0.2*(((v.co.x)**2)-((v.co.y)**2))

I was hoping for a similar way to edit the colour of the mesh, where I select the vertices individually and then assign a colour to it based on the z location of the vertices. I am just not able to find the right python command to edit the vertex colour.

I have devised a way to do this kind of hassle free.

I include my .

To set up your scene like me, you need:

a plane with 1 subdivision per 1 meter centered around world origin
(limitations of math used)
a material 'Material.001' with Image Texture as the source for color

When you hit run script you should see

The function runs from -32 to +32 on the X and Y axes to make the script a bit easier thanks to vertices with integer X and Y coordinates, but we would typically require a finer grid around 0 and so I use (kind of improperly named) zScale when displacing the vertices

v.co.z = -0.2 * (((v.co.x * zScale) ** 2) - ((v.co.y * zScale) ** 2))

Feel free to adjust zScale to quickly preview how the script behaves when the Z extremities are more extreme.

How does it work

displace the vertices
get the min and max Z coordinates for coloring purposes (in separate for loop for clarity, could be done in one loop)
create a square image with the same amount of pixels, as there are vertices
loop over vertices and color pixels at XY coords matching the XY coords of vertex (that's why they are integer) based on the Z coordinate, utilizing the min and max Z coordinates to go from green to red
assign the texture

Edits I leave up to you

allow non-integer XY coordinates
you might want a fixed color scale, not an automatically adjusting as in my file
rotate the image (might be necessary for non-symmetrical functions, have not checked) seems to work correctly as is
always rewrite a single image file to reduce the clutter
add a script to set up the scene automatically for a drop-in capability
fixed resolution image for high density meshes (for speed reasons)

Alternative

The commented out section at the end of the code

I was playing with an idea to use the depth buffer to color the graph.

Set up an ortographic camera above the graph, looking down at it
render
use Viewer node to use the depth buffer in script
create image same size as the depth map
loop over pixels in depth map, assign colors to the new image based on that

Works even if you displace the vertices on the Z axis by hand.

References

The how does it work section should allow for the code to be reconstructed at any time, I will drop here some answers for reference:

creating and modifying images
editing material nodes
accessing 'Render Result' through the Viewer node


How to apply on subdivision modifier in 2.91 The 'apply' and 'copy' buttons are not available inside the subdivision modifier on the latest blender 2.91.0.  I am not understanding that from where can I access it.
I started off with a very blocky object and smoothed it out but it is very jagged for sculpting small details and I don't know why but the subdivide is not working.

Those options have been condensed into this dropdown menu.


Alpha Transparency Lightening and Volume Scatter I am using png images and the Images as Planes add-on to create background trees for a scene. This works fine until I try to combine this with Volume Scatter for a mist effect. The alpha portion of the images lightens, showing the rectangular outline of the image against the sky (hdri). I'm using Cycles Render. I have the density set to .02. If I set it to .005 the effect is not too noticeable, but the mist effect is minimal. Edit: I may have figured out a solution. In the side box of the Add Images as Planes add image window there is an option called Premultiplied, when I chose that, the effect seems to go away.

The outline shows up against the sky with the Volume scatter set at .02. It appears that where the two alpha images overlap the effect cancels out. Maybe a work around would be to add a large alpha plane over the whole scene.

The trees with no volume scatter.

I deleted my earlier "answers" as they turned out to be mostly useless. The answer seems to be to use Branched Path Tracing in the cycles render settings. This eliminates the effect of the alpha transparency outline of the images as planes showing up when using volume scatter.
Blender HD has an excellent tutorial on all the obscure settings in cycles render, explaining with great examples what each one does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhOdnOow6DY&t=394s


spray/foam/bubbles not showing in Mantaflow fluid simulation I have enabled spray, foam, and bubble particles in my simulation, but they don't appear in my renders.

Viewport: Detailed, foamy, dramatic crashing water.

Render: Boring, blobby, uninspired, and frankly, icky.
The resolution divisions are set to 300, the cache type is set to "all," the "is resumable" box is ticked, and the flow behavior is set to "inflow." The simulation settings haven't otherwise been changed from their defaults. The wave crest particle sampling is set to 200 and the trapped bubble sampling is set to 20 by recommendation of another blender user. Other than that, I don't know what else could be causing this issue. Is it a shading thing? What am I missing here?

Your domain will now have several particle systems where you can define instance objects to be used as foam, bubbles, and spray.


How can I position bones in a model easily and precisely? I tried to position the hand bones of my rig / armature, but it was SO difficult to get all those little bones to align in 3D space accurately, even when I was using Quad View. After working on it for quite a while, I was SO frustrated I was ready to give up because I just couldn't get the bones positioned at all. Is there any way to do this quickly and easily?

Quick and Precise Bone Placement using Snap To

Positioning bones in a model can be quickly and easily achieved using two of Blender's Snap To commands:

Snap Selection to Cursor: this moves/snaps the selected object to the 3D Cursor (  )
SHIFTS -> Snap Selected to Cursor
Snap Cursor to Selected: this snaps the 3D Cursor to the selected object
SHIFTS -> Snap Cursor to Selected

For this method of bone placement, you will also want to enable two Interface preferences:

Zoom to Mouse Position: When enabled, the mouse pointer position becomes the focus point of zooming, instead of the 2D window center.
Rotate Around Selection: When enabled, the selected object becomes the rotation center of the viewport.

One other option that is very important is to make sure you can see your rig's bones even when they are inside the mesh. This is done by enabling X-Ray for your rig:

With these preferences enabled, you can now very easily examine your figure's mesh and begin to position the bones.

Positioning the Bones

There are 3 parts of a bone:

the Head (or Root)
the Body
the Tail (or Tip)

The key to this technique is to:

Find and select 2 vertices on opposite sides of your mesh's surface where you want to position the bone's tail:

NOTE: In order to see through the mesh, make sure "Limit Selection to Visible" is disabled:

Now, with those 2 points selected, use Snap 3D Cursor to Selected
SHIFTS -> Snap Cursor to Selected

This positions the 3D Cursor directly between the two selected vertices, exactly where we want to put the bone tail.
Now select the bone tail and snap it to the 3D Cursor:

Now we want to position the head of the bone at the tip of the finger. To do this, we select one vertex on the fingertip and snap the cursor to it:

Next, we snap the bone head to the 3D cursor:

The bone is now perfectly positioned.


Grease pencil 2.8, how to move strokes / curves / shapes between layers within the same GP objects After I draw for example a face, I want to move the hair to different layer, and the eyes to another layer, so I can move them forward or backward proportional to another elements of the drawing.

In edit mode, you can select strokes and assign them to the layer of your choice with the shortcut M or by going to the Stroke menu -> "Move to layer"


How to apply texture to an object face avoiding triangular mesh I am facing a problem,
as I apply a texture to the detached face of a cube.

Instead of being spread over the face,
it is repeated in mesh triangles & is distorted.

Could you suggest a way to solve this problem?

Thank you!

Select faces, hit U, Unwrap. Google search UV unwrapping, this is an important topic that you should learn and won't be explained in full here.


What does it mean to call applyimpulse on a point outside the object? I have a 1x1x1 cube in the scene and apply an impulse to point [20.0 0.0 0.0], which is outside the cube using applyImpulse function, but the cube moves. Could someone let me know what it means to apply the impulse to a point outside the object? I expected that the object does not move if the impulse is applied to an outside point.

Force at center

When you apply a force to the mass center of an object all the energy of the force will turn into a translation.

Force outside of the center

If you apply a force at a point outside the mass center the energy will turn into a translation of exactly that point.

Be aware each point of the mass want to keep their momentum. This acts like a counter force. That means there is a stronger counter force towards the mass center as there is more mass then of the other side of the point. The result is mix of angular and linear motion summed up by all forces (including the momentum).

As more far away the point is as more of the energy will result in rotation. As nearer the point is to the center of mass as more of the energy will result into translation (to the maximum of all energy goes into translation and nothing into rotation).

Question

  [...] what it means to apply the impulse to a point outside the object?

It does not matter. The physics model does not care your mesh. It uses it to define the dimensions and collision but not to calculate forces.

You can applying a force anywhere in space. It is assumed this force should be applied to the object (otherwise you would not try to apply it). This force will be taken into account when calculating the final linear and angular motions.

Keep in mind: This is a game engine. The physics engine is designed to provide fast but believable results. Checking if a point is outside of a surface mesh eats a lot of processing power and is not necessary. If you really need such check you can do perform it with some Python code.

I hope it helps a bit.


Mirror object - Rendering is not equal on both sides.. why? I have a object wich I have added mirror twice.. but when I render and bake the texture, it isn't the same on both sides.. why is that?

have found out what is wrong .. just silly me, had baked shadows and there was something wrong when I did that.. so it was my texture that was wrong.. ;)


How can I align vertices to an axis? I'm not sure how to ask this question. Basically, I built a part in the right half of my screen, looking at it from the Y perspective (numpad 1). I applied a mirror modifier, across the X axis. I left a gap in the middle so that I could more easily create the part. Now I want to scoot the part along the X axis so that there is no gap in the middle. I know how to move the whole part together, but how can I move it so that the leftmost vertices are exactly stuck together, completely eliminating the gap?

It's annoying that, in Edit Mode, Blender's Snap To : Increment doesn't have a Snap With option, otherwise this would be more intuitive.
In this case, if you have the shipped add-on  '3D View: Pie Menus' activated with the 'Origins' option, you can quickly set the origin of your object to the vertices of the desired mirror-plane from Edit Mode, and the mirrored half will jump to the original. Then you can AltG reset the object back to World 0.
But personally, rather than puzzle over each case, for more CAD-like snapping, my habit is to create temporary snap targets.

With snapping nearly always set to To : Vertex and With : Active, and the pivot set to 3D Cursor:

ShiftDX duplicate a single vertex..
SX0 scale the vertex to 0
Select the source vertex, (it will stay active), and L all the connected ones
GX Move the selected vertices, snapping to the temporary target
Delete, or merge, the target.

I wouldn't claim this is necessarily the quickest for this case, but the method is quite general. You can leave your pivot and snap settings as they are over most operations, and the sequence goes into muscle-memory.


Prevent mixing of weights in a bone Both bones enabled

I'm trying to add a bone to deform the character, so I could easily make it look fat or skinny. The problem is that the other bones seem to be affecting the result, even thought they are not moved (their weight maps cause the unwanted deformation). You can notice the deformation in the right side of the first picture. Can you explain me why is this and how can I prevent this?

This character is for a video game.

You can delete what vertex group each individual vertex belongs to

3D view Editor-->Edit mode-->(n) properties shelf-->vertex weights.

Imagine each vertex group = a muscle.

The more vertex groups control a single vertex= the more muscles are connected to that vertex .

So when you are trying to make the belly bigger with one muscle, the other muscles are still attached=you get uneven stretching.

And the muscle strength can only be changed manually in weight paint mode or by using the vertex weight modifier.


How can I create a group of non-intersecting objects? I'm trying to recreate steel brake cables coming out of a box. I tried to do it using the particle system, but I'm running into a couple of issues.

The ends of the cables are intersecting and I also tried to add variation in when the cables would stop, but that made some cables smaller than others.

Any tips on how I could make this?

One way out is to use rigid body. Add a cylinder and scale one of its bases up. Next, make it a passive rigid body and, in the outliner, click the camera icon next to the cylinder so that it's not rendered. All your cables should be active rigid bodies put inside the cylinder.


How to make procedural textures to follow geometry? I know this may be a very basic question, but I somehow got myself tangled up.

I'm trying to make procedural textures (like clouds) to follow the geometry of a simple model, for instance, a distorted plane.

I'm satarting from a plane and then adding twists and bends to it.

by now it's not working for me:
The texture grain will not follow the direction of the breaks, but will stay in the original direction, as in this picture.

These are the settings of the texture:

Maybe the problem is in the Mapping settings for the Projection and the Coordinates. Or maybe there's something I should set up with the geometry first (my guess is something with the UV's ¿?¿ which i know nothing about).

I appreciate any help or hints. As you may help me clarify i can edit the question to be more detailed and specific.

And here's a video, where it simply happens,

http://youtu.be/sxgwa-0e5Jw?t=46s

...And the author itself responds in one of the comments (mine by the way) That this happens because the texture is like "the pattern on a carpet" so it will naturally follow if you bend or twist it...
So maybe it's even as simple as I'm not using the right tools to twist and bend the plane..... (wich were just extrude and subdivide....)

Thanks in advance

Using UV mapping, This is often the most straightforward method since you can edit UV's directly and preview the changes realtime, However you only get 2D coordinates, but you have the advantage that the coordinates are editable and are stored per face-corner (they dont have to be contiguous). UV's are also well supported by many formats, game-engines and render-engines.

if your mesh has primarily a grid topology, then try the Follow-Active-Quads tool from the unwrap menu.

Using Generated mapping, this works when you deform a mesh by a modifier (ShapeKey, Lattice or Armature for example), the un-deformed mesh is used for texture coordinates.
Using TexMesh, see Mesh Data properties, This allows you to select another mesh to use for texture coordinates, this gives a lot of control but the vertex indices must match up. These have the advantage of allowing you to set XYZ coordinates, but you have to take care not to add/remove vertices from the mesh. While useful, this is a Blender specific feature.


Environmental Texture (HDRI Background) not Rendering in Cycles I am trying to make a Minecraft Animation using Cycles Render. Everything is fine, but when I try to render or animate the animation, the background is empty or black.

The only nodes that I used for the environmental texture are the 3 default ones, texture coordinate, and mapping (to move the background down and rotate a bit so that the sun would align with the HDRI image).

I have used this image before on other animations, and this is the first time this had happened. One thing that is different is the Blender version, but other than that everything is the same (file location / name, image location / name, etc.).
The regular image and camera settings are shown below.

If anybody knows how to resolve this problem, help would be gladly appreciated!

If you replace your diffuse shader with a background shader it should work.


How to Set Shape or Direction of Particle Trail I can't seem to make the trail into a cone shape.
Right now, the particles spread out from the emitter.
I want them to start at the emitter radius and move closer to each other - to have a cone shape, with the smaller radius being the path the Ball is taking (there's an actual hidden line the ball follows).

Please help

In your particular case (with a spherical emitter) you might be able to get away with simply reversing the sign of the initial particle Velocity along the Normal. With a positive Normal velocity the particles will spread out from the surface. However, a negative Normal velocity will start the particles in a direction towards the centre of your mesh so they will naturally converge on each other. You will need to tweak the strength, particle life span and/or damping so that they don't cross over.

EDIT : To retain the 'engulfing' effect of the emitted particles, you can emit the particles from a separate (non-rendered) mesh that surrounds the original object. This will allow the particles to be emitted a distance away from the surface so that they surround it rather than emanating from within.

Note that the emitter mesh is set to not render.

To fill in the gap between the surface and where the trail particles are emitted you can add a second particle system - emitting short lived particles from the surface to the point at which the trail particles are emitted. This will make the object appear to "fizz" with particles and will mask the fact that the trail particles are actually emitted at a distance from the surface. Increase the number of particles to get the desired density.

This can produce the following result :

You could add Brownian motion or a turbulance field or other fields so as to make the particle path less linear.
Blend file attached.


How to mirror in sculpt mode? I was working on a character legs with symetry enabled, as one leg was getting in the way I decided to hide it. But now that I unhided it, all the details are not in this leg.

My question is how to mirror what I have in one leg to the other one, just as I can do using dyntopo?

Switch to Edit Mode, A x 1 (or x 2) to select all elements;
Press Spacebar, search for Symmetrize;
Tweak Direction and Threshold in F6 panel.

NOTE: A partial selection will simply duplicate / mirror the selection. In your case, you just need a correction, so you should select all elements first.


Changing stereoscopic render output to "SIDEBYSIDE" with python I managed to change my output to stereoscopic (and fisheye) with this code:

bpy.context.scene.camera.data.type = 'PANO'
bpy.context.scene.camera.data.cycles.panorama_type = 'FISHEYE_EQUISOLID'
bpy.context.scene.camera.data.stereo.convergence_mode = 'PARALLEL'
bpy.context.scene.render.use_multiview = True
bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.views_format = 'STEREO_3D'

But I can't find a way to set the output to SIDEBYSIDE instead of single left and right images.

What am I missing?

I want to render the output in the background, but basicly need to do what these settings in the GUI do:

This setting gives me a single image with both L and R output side by side

That can be set with bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.stereo_3d_format.display_mode = 'SIDEBYSIDE' = 'SIDEBYSIDE'.

You can set other properties there too, like ...stereo_3d_format.use_sidebyside_crosseyed.

For more options, see the Stereo3dDisplay API documentation.


remove unassigned materials from an object... how do I do this? I'm currently using Blender 2.8 and the function to remove unassigned materials from a mesh doesn't seem to be available anywhere. In 2.79 there were 2 addon's that dealt with this, "Material Utils Specials" and "Amaranth". They both had options for cleaning out material slots on an object. What is the workflow in 2.8 for doing this?

If a material is not assigned then it could be in the orphan data, just purge your orphan data and that should do the trick


BLENDER & FBX Mocap Import not translating to Rig I created, rigged a character in blender using Blenders bone only meta rig (no IKs) set up.
I exported that character rig to animate in mobu storymode and then rendered it all in Unreal 4.
I now want to import those same FBX files back into blender for blender rendering.
I successfully can bring it the fbx (and its weapon prop) back into Blender (finally) at the correct scale and animation on the bones. When I use the action editor to put the mocap on my blender character (who has the exact same skeleton) The retarget is really strange, like all the rotations aren't there and/or there's an offset in the rotations based on the A-pose bind or something. It should be a simple and easy transfer.....they are the SAME skeleton. I've done fbx import, I've done blender action animation appending and I've done Copy-Past keys from the mocap skeleton to the character skeleton. They ALL result in the same mess on the character, even though the mocap skeleton looks perfect.
thoughts?
My character has No animation on it by default, No keys, and in A-Pose.
----UPDATE
For whatever reason, nothing seemed to remedy it. HOWEVER, doing a dep dive into researching different videos across different versions of Blender dealing with mocap animation, it appears as though its a known issue that if i want the mocap to retarget onto the skeleton correctly, then I need to have the character skeleton in the same position as the mocap animated skeleton bind pose (which reveals itself if you change the mocap animated skeleton to EDIT MODE. (I've noticed that the bind pose that gets revealed is different across other animations, even though its the same skeleton and fbx file source). But I can't figure out HOW to get that EDIT MODE pose PASTED onto the character rig. Or at least the proper method, assuming its a required action...
Also note, that I SUCCESSFULLY used the fbx animation in blender when I imported the fbx animated skeletons and used rotation bone constraints on EVERY BONE per character and props. Not a fun or scalable process, but it got the job done correctly.

In Motion Builder, when you add or change a reference object for a bone its rest pose is altered. This behaviour leads to a new rest position from which the animation is calculated.
A solution could be to set a keyframe on every bone in motion builder in its new rest pose, save it as FBX, import in Blender, apply this static animation, go to pose mode, select all bones and press ctrl A "Apply pose as rest pose", then use this rig to perform the real animation.


How do I make a missile that lands with the nose facing down in BGE? I'm having a tough time believing this question hasn't been asked before, but I haven't been able to find the answer I'm looking for.

So, I have a mortar style missile launcher in my game that adds an animated explosion ring wherever it hits, and it is oriented in relation to the nose of the missile. The only problem is that it rarely makes contact with a surface the way I want it to. Is there any way to make the nose of the missile always point in the direction it is travelling? I think this will solve the problem.

Pythons scripts are OK, but I'm sure there must be a way to do this from the properties already in Blender. Any answers or suggestions are highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Since your question is not 100% clear, I assume the following:

You are using rigid body physics on your rocket object
You want to point the "nose" of the rocket in the direction in which it is travelling

I did not find a solution with logic bricks to solve point 2, but a few pieces of python code in an old Blender Artist thread (see below 1), which did the job. My minimal example looks like this (*blend below):

It contains an Empty ("spawner"), which spits out the Rocket object (on layer 2) with rigid body physics with a certain velocity in the spawners Y-Axis, triggered by the SPACE Key. The rockets "Nose" is it's Y axis, as seen in the upper part of the screenshot. The python snippet attached to the rocket object now turns the Y axis (second argument of alignAxisToVect) in the direction of motion in every frame. In my example the rocket gets deleted on contact with the Plane object.

Update: The attached *blend uses rigid body physics on the rocket and convex hull collision bounds. This can be simplified to "dynamic" and "box" respectively, so the physics engine has less work to do.

Enjoy!

1 https://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-246103.html


Random object color via python I do some testing for further learning python.

My setup is an Empty that spawns a cube every 60 tics on a random position. Now what I want is those cubes also get a random color. This is my code for it (attached to the cube on a seperate layer)

def objColor():

    obstacle = scene.objects ["obstacle"]

    r = random.random()
    g = random.random()
    b = random.random()

    obstacle.color = (r,g,b,True)

What happens is that the first spawned cube gets a random color, but all others that follow don't. I assume that has something to do with blender changing the name of the following cubes to obstacle.001, 002 etc.

But how can I make sure that all the following cubes also get a random color?

Thanks for any help,
cheers

Yep, you are assigning all new random colours to the first object.

def get_random_color():
    ''' generate rgb using a list comprehension '''
    r, g, b = [random.random() for i in range(3)]
    return r, g, b, 1

then in the loop, once you create the object you get a reference to it.
somethng like:

obj = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
obj.color = get_random_color()

This way you will call a function to get random rgba on every new object


Can I "Set Active Object as Camera" without also forcing the 3D view to change position? (Blender 2.82a) What I want: To align one of several cameras in a scene to the current 3D view, regardless of which camera is currently active, and without leaving the 3D view.

How I am approaching this: I start by selecting a specific camera in the scene. Say I have three cameras, camera1, camera2 and camera3, and none of them are presently aligned to the current 3D view. Only one of them is active, of course. Say, camera1. I select camera2. Now, camera1, is still active, so I need to make camera2 active before I can use the "Align Active Camera to View" option. I know that I can manually change the active camera in the Scene Properties, but I want to do it from the 3D view. No problem. I simply press Ctrl-0 to make camera2 the active camera. But when I do, the 3D view switches to the view of camera2. As a consequence of this, I no longer have the original 3D view available. So I can't now press Ctrl-Alt-0 to align camera2 to the 3D view, because the current 3D view is now aligned to camera2's view, instead of the other way around.

What I'd like to know: Is there a way to make the selected camera the active camera--while remaining in the 3D view--without the current 3D view being changed as a result? This way, I could then press Ctrl-Alt-0, and get the now active camera to align to the current 3D view, which is what I want.

Part of the reason for this difficulty is that there would appear to be no UI-based means to align SELECTED cameras to the current view (or indeed, to anything else). Only ACTIVE cameras can be so aligned. If selected cameras could be aligned to the current 3D view, then the troublesome step which I have described above, where the 3D view is being aligned to the newly activated camera when I don't want it to be, would be a step that is avoided entirely. This would also mean me needing to perform one fewer steps in total. But that's a discussion for another day.

I am aware that several questions on this forum discuss the issue of camera alignment. But so far as I have seen, none of them specifically address the exact issue stated here, which is that pressing Ctrl-0 forces a change in the current 3D view, and I don't want it to do this.

There's no need to look through a camera to make it active.
Simply click the green camera icon and go View > Align View > Align Active camera to view.

The shortcut Ctrl + Numpad 0 automatically looks through active camera, which isn't what you want here.


Why is my smoke only generated for the first frame? I have a smoke sim that is moving, and has forces affecting it, all seems fine and it moves how I want it to, but the flow object isn't continually generating smoke!
It only does it for the first frame and then that's it.
Can anyone help?

Thank you to Eric Xue, answer was as commented: Type needed to be inflow, and not geometry!


Imported .obj - textures gone I have created a 3D Model in Cinema 4D and exported it to .obj (and a .mtl-file) with Riptide Pro.

When I import it in Blender (2.74) I cannot see the textures or materials. They are visible in the scene browser (Scrennshot) but not on the object. They also don't appear when I switch to other viewport shaders.

I want to export the model to a .JSON-Object for displaying it with webGL in a browser.

What can I do to make the textures and materials appear?

It is most likely that the view mode of 3d viewport is set to solid shading, and should be set to Textured shading instead.


Select or deselect with mouse gesture I can do this easy on Blender 2.79 I just hold Ctrl and drag the mouse to select some vertices and Ctrl + Shift to deselect. How can ahieve this in Blender 2.8?

To "draw select" like this in blender 2.8+, use Ctrl + Right Click (hold). Use Ctrl + Shift + Right Click to deselect.


How can i make the shoulder joint deform smoothly? When i deform it, this is the result:

I've tried with shape keys to "fix" it, but it doesn't solve anything (or maybe im just a noob).

I believe that is because the topology of the character is not good, maybe.

The point is that i want something like this

So, a good topology will solve the thing or... there's something more i should do for a good deformation of the shoulders (and any joint in general)?

You can go with bad topology, IMO. I’ve answered a similar problem here:
Realistic Rigging with real skeleton?
Basically, you need a shape key for every pose of the arm. Then blend between 2 shape keys, other then the Basis.

If you have questions, I’d be glad to answer them.


How do i get a specky looking metal through material nodes This question might be rather specific, but i'm trying to replicate my laptop in a 3D render.
(specifically, xiaomi notebook pro)
I cant seem to get the specky metal of the laptop. This is my current node, i thought increasing specular would give a "specular" look but didnt seem like it:

and result, which looks rather flat without character:

However, i was looking at more towards this result:
(a close up shot of the real metal)

(from afar)

My question is, what material nodes should I add to recreate this material?

To get a rough surface, you can use the Bump node.

Use a fine Noise Texture as a base (with UV or Object coords)
Add a Bump node and use Distance value to control the intensity
The Distance value is in meters. So I'd set it to around 0,0001.


Cannot select certain vertices Blender 2.79

No matter which mouse button I click, I cannot select or deselect any of the vertices on a curve. This seems to also apply to when I am editing vertices on a mesh and "Limit Selection to Visible" is disabled. However, the shortcut keys of "(De)Select All", "Invert Selection", and so on do work. I've tried rebooting the entire computer and still I have this problem.

Pressed every single side of the mouse.

Click with the other side of the Mouse

Press
a
 one or twice so that nothing is selected and the image looks dim not bright.  Its a toggle.

Then Click Only

Then use
b
for box select and you should see a difference.

My opinion is that everything is selected in you original question.

You can also press
W
then select subdivide to have more variation in your selection.

Perhaps you  already know this.


Importing of .mhx2 ( or .obj) files possible with python script? Does anybody now how to import a mhx2 human model into blender using python script? I alread was looking it up in the web but was not possible to find anything. The closest I got: blender script to import .obj file

Hopefully someone can help me.

you can use the following script to import mhx2 files into blender.

bpy.ops.import_scene.makehuman_mhx2(filepath="~/Desktop/myfile.mhx2")

make sure before running the script you have activated the makehuman import runtime addon in your blender.


Change parameter for whole selection It is common to want to change settings for many selected items at once. For some things, like scaling, it automatically affects everything you have selected. For other things, it only affects the active object. Is there a way to make it affect the entire selection?

For example, if I am changing the settings on some bones, and want to set the entire armature to not inherit rotation, I currently have to select every bone one at a time and do it manually. Is there a way to do it for the entire selection? I know I can write a script for it, but then I need to make a script for every parameter that I may want to change.

Another example would be locking/unlocking rotation/scale/location.

A way to copy parameters from the active object to the rest of the selection after making changes would work too. Rigid bodies can do this for rigid body settings, but is there a way to do it for other settings?

You can press Alt while clicking an option and it will apply that change to all of the selected items (in your case, bones) that have that option.


Hair physics and/or particle edit with particles rendered as objects I'm trying to make a creature with feathers and therefore will be rendering hair particles as an object. However, I would like the particles to be able to be combed/ react to gravity ect. It seems like you can only do such things when the hair particles are rendered as strands. Is that true?

Figured it out, I've just got to bake the simulation before I change the render type to object.


How to make armature edit mode match object mode? I've been trying to make Source model in blender completely animatable by using and modifying Source armature. I've Successfully imported it into Blender.

Right from the beginning I noticed that armature positions in edit mode and object modes are different. I thought that this wouldn't be a big problem since I wouldn't be using edit mode much.

When Trying to add additional bones as controlling bones for IKs and Pole targets, added bones would have correct position in the edit mode (in which I added the bones in) but wrong in object and pose mode.

I started trying various techniques to get armatures edit and object mode to match: I removed the armature modifier from the character model, applied physical geometry to mesh. Then in armature pose mode I applied pose as rest pose. Then I added back the armature modifier to the model object.

This seemingly worked fine as the bones and the mesh in the edit mode and object mode were having the same visible location. But when rendering, the final picture in the render was wrong. Even the rendered view in viewport was showing the correct position for everything, but in render, it appeared like I did nothing to fix the problem.

I discovered that it goes to wrong poses after render (or cancelling the render) and after opening saved file. I don't know what causes this.

By that time I had looked into numerous forums and everybody having the same problem had it because a modifier was turned off for render, but in my case the modifier was turned on.

Here is my .blend file for everyone to see. Since the problem comes back after opening the saved file, you won't be able to see what I did to fix it, but you can repeat my steps. Hope you get my point. Thank you in advance!

This is a file showcasing that the object mode and edit mode for mesh and armature aren't matching.

Here is total default file imported straight from CSGO, in case if you want to try something new.

The change in location during render or closing/opening the file is due to the animation, which is taken in account during render and opening the file.

The procedure for having your shoot as rest position for both the mesh and the armature is this:

Select the body mesh and apply the armature modifier.
Do the same for the hands mesh.
Select ALL bones in pose mode and apply pose as rest pose.
Turn off the animation in the action editor.
Add an armature modifier to the body mesh, choosing your skeleton as "object".
Do the same for the hands mesh.


Mesh in front of Grease Pencil: how to remove the outline? In my current project I have a GP character whose mouth is a mesh animated with shape keys. Problem is that the mesh has an outline around it when rendered that shows the background through. It looks like the same artefact as when compositing a transparent image without the alpha multiplied.
Here's a simple example I made to illustrate the problem:

The red blob is a grease pencil fill and the blue square is a plane. Here the outline is white because the world background is white but it would be the colour of whatever object is behind the GP object.
I'm using 2.93 alpha, but also tested with 2.82 and the problem was the same (if not worst).

It is a known issue: https://developer.blender.org/T78795
The workaround mentioned on the bug report is to disable anti-aliasing for EEVEE (Film > Filter Size = 0) and for Grease Pencil (Anti-Aliasing Threshold = 0). Which in turn means you'd have to render double the size then downscale the result to get anti-aliasing back.
EDIT: I came across a way to do this without losing GPencil anti-aliasing. Basically it requires isolating GP and Meshes in different View Layers and compositing them back together with a Z Combine node (as explained in my answer here), and disabling the node's "Z anti-aliasing". You still have to set EEVEE's Filter Size to zero but at least the edges of GPencil objects stay smooth without doubling render size.


Delete the upper surface of a cylinder with the api I want to delete the upper surface of a cylinder with the python api.
I tried this code:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(vertices=32, radius=3.0, depth=0.02, calc_uvs=True, enter_editmode=False)

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

bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type= 'FACE')

bpy.ops.mesh.delete(type='ONLY_FACE')

The result is that Blender deletes both surfaces the upper and the under. Any suggestions how to solve this?
Thx

Bmesh script.
can add primitives using bmesh.  The equivalent of add cylinder is bmesh.ops.create_cone(...) with both radii set to match.
As with the mesh operator the default for ends is NGON fill.
The top face will have a normal that is in +Z direction.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/96121
Test script, run in OBJECT mode.
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context

TOL = 1e-5

me = bpy.data.meshes.new("Open Cylinder")
bm = bmesh.new()
bmesh.ops.create_cone(
        bm,
        cap_ends=True,
        segments=32,
        diameter1=3,
        diameter2=3,
        depth=0.02,
        calc_uvs=True,
        )

f = next(
        (
            f for f in bm.faces
            if f.normal.angle((0, 0, 1)) < TOL
        ),
        None
        )

if f:
    bm.faces.remove(f)

bm.to_mesh(me)
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Open Cylinder", me)
context.collection.objects.link(ob)

For the case of a TRIFAN filled end would remove the middle vert, to remove the edges and faces in one fell swoop.
Alternatively could create cylinder without faces and fill only the bottom edge loop.


Is it possible to tweak round corners of UI? I haven't seen an option which allow to "rectangularize" some rounded corners of UI buttons. It is possible ?

Not yet,
but I dislike the rounded corners as well, I decided to fix this.
It's hardcoded, so I'm exposing a option that enables you to turn this on\off.

I've uploaded a patch here:
https://developer.blender.org/D2178

I have a example screenshot here showing it:


Is there a way to enter a precise amount of length or width for the measuring tool in Blender? I'm specifically talking about the Measure tool with the protractor icon. I wanted to resize my mesh to a specific length, but I'm having to tediously move the anchor points on it which is time consuming and inefficient. For example I'm trying to get an even 700 centimeters, but I keep getting around 701.554 or 699.4567 etc.

By displaying edge length in edit mode, you can view the edge length as you move a vertex. In 2.79 edge length can be enabled in the properties region N under Mesh Display, while in 2.80 it is in the viewport overlay menu in the header.

When you are moving a vertex, hold ⇧ Shift to slow down movement so that you can get the exact measurement you are after.

When you are trying to get the sum of multiple edges to equal a certain length, you can create a temporary edge and use snapping to align your vertex to the "measuring" vertex. Constraining movement to a single axis can also make this easier.


Make a mask from a black and white video I have created a black and white video of a transition that I want to use in the video editor but I see that the masking tools require a vector type object. Is it possible to simply use the black and white channels in the video I created to mask a video in the sequencer or to quickly create a vector mask from a black and white video to then be used in the video editor? Basically I want the top video layer to show in the white areas of the video and the bottom layer to show in the black area.

I will answer my own question by posting this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXsrkg31VRI


Baking details from a high-poly onto a texture of a low poly model I'm modelling a gun at the moment, and already have a texture colour map in mind. I'm going to use Cycles render, to create the materials using the same diffuse but with different brightnesses.
I know that I can bake normals by making a low and high poly version of the gun and then baking the normal maps via blender. I know normals create a sense of depth to an otherwise flat surface,
but how can I go about "baking" the details of the high poly (eg bolts) onto the low poly model, so that when I apply the normal map it will work well?
Thanks

The first thing to understand about this answer is that it's not really a new answer. This question has been asked and answered before plenty of times before - but it seems the part you are getting stuck on is how to bake from multiple objects to a single target object, so I will address that.

Before going any further, here are some resources to help you learn about texture baking in Cycles:

Resource 1
Resource 2
Resource 3
Resource 4

In your situation, you are aiming to bake from multiple Selected objects to a single Active object. What does that actually mean in Blender? Let's examine.

A Selected object is any object that you have selected, and it will be highlighted in orange (or in my case blue because my theme settings have been customized). The Active object is the last object you have selected, and it appears highlighted, usually in a lighter color.

Here are multiple Selected objects, parented to a single Active object.

(The parenting has been done simply to generate the dotted lines showing the relationships. You don't need to parent in order to bake.)

So, how to bake a texture? Let's get to it!

Select all of your high-poly/detail objects, and then lastly select your target low-poly object. (the lastly selected object will be the Active object.)

Go to the Render Context:

And adjust your Bake settings:

Make sure you've created an image texture in the UV/Image Editor, and that you have created a material that utilizes that image, and assigned it to your bake target object. Then R-Click to select the Image Texture node for that texture. Selecting it will tell Blender which texture to bake to, since materials will often contain more than one image texture.

For an image that will be a Normal Map, choose Non-Color Data. This is because the colors in a Normal Map are really vector information, not values to be interpreted as actual color.

Then back in your Bake settings, with selections made, and the bake target still as the Active object, click the Bake button.

You probably won't get the result you want at first, and this is because you must adjust the Ray Distance slider to suit the size of your meshes. Play with this value until you get it right. In cases with very tricky geometry you may need to bake at multiple ray distances and combine the best parts in an image editor like Photoshop or GIMP afterward.

Here's an example .blend.

While baking, leave the image data disconnected from the shader's Normal input. Then connect it after baking. Otherwise you'll see a warning about a "cyclical dependency", meaning the object you're trying to bake a texture to is depending on that texture in order to calculate its own bake.

I may add more details later, but hopefully this gives you a basic idea of how the process works.


How to spin in circle instances of metaballs? I am working on this loop. Here I have instances of metaballs wiggling location randomly, I duplicated this node tree twice more. Sub-question is how to think about making the random wiggle loop smoother and not so obvious when it restarts.

Now, I am wondering how to approach 3 bundles of wiggling metaballs to rotate around the center. Do I work with an empty? How does one take metaball node tree (shown above) and use it as an input to rotate around empty or something similar.

My approach is to use metaballs as dupliverts

This subprogram (bluish) creates user defined amount of pointclouds.
To loop animation I used a couple of identical vector Wiggle nodes, but one with subtracted evaluation to make a smooth transition back to initial position.
Another subprogram (green) is mixing every point between pointclouds from both Wiggle nodes.

This part of a tree controls central point rotation (same trick with looping of two Wiggle nodes was used previously) and location (for location I used Empty).
First node from left named as Animation Duration controls animation length before looping.
Distribute Matrices node produces locations for pointclouds. Right now it replicates along the circle, but could be any mesh if needed.
Two Animate nodes are mixing start/end positions and use sinusoidal interpolation to give smoother looping.

Parent Metaball to freshly created pointcloud mesh - Target and enable duplivert instancing in mesh's object properties. To hide original metaball use shader mask:


Blender to Unity Mesh Deformation Animations and model looks great in blender. I import into unity and it this deformation happens and I can't seem to get rid of it.The animations all play correctly in unity but the deformation on the hand is always present.
Things I don't know about

This model/rig uses plenty of IKs in blender so I am not sure if that translates into unity although i haven't had problems from it in the past
This model also uses the child-of constraint in blender and in the animations the influence value is changed.

Things I have tried.

Applying and reapplying LocRotScale
Removing re-applying armature
Messing around with unity model settings (i.e. rig from generic to legacy, mesh compression etc.)
Double checked weight painting and all vertices are correctly assigned.

the model can be downloaded here

The default importer is doing no such thing for me when I put it into Unity with the default (click + drag) importer.

I suspect that the issue is purely on Unity's side.  The version of Unity I am using is
2018.3.2f1.  You might want to try updating your Unity and Blender versions.


Cycles: Export each light into separate files Sorry in advance if this has been answered.

Is there a way to set each of my 3 lights (key, fill, rim) up in such a way that Blender will render them all individually?

I have looked into File output in Compositor, and have thought of Render Layers, but have come short of a solution?

It should be mentioned that my lights are not lamps, but planes with emission shaders.

You may noticed, that Cycles is lacking a certain Blender Internal functionality which would help this. Mesh lights don't have a This Layer Only option.

My suggestion would be to use a python script.

Reserve one layer each for your specific lights. Store the specific lamp objects on each layer. You mustn't have other objects in these layers, but the scene should still be intact if either of the layers was switched of.

In my example case I will place a key, fill and rim object respectively in layers 0, 1 and 2.

These settings are specified in an array at the beginning of the script.

import bpy

lightLayers = [
            [0, "key"],
            [1, "fill"],
            [2, "rim"]
            ]

layers = bpy.context.scene.layers
filePath = bpy.context.scene.render.filepath

for i in range(len(lightLayers)):
    for j in range(len(lightLayers)):
        layers[j] = 0
    layers[i] = 1
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = filePath + lightLayers[i][1] + "/" + lightLayers[i][1]
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = filePath

My render output is set to: "//images\".

Pressing Run Script will execute the script.

Each Light Layer is switched on, the others off (none Light Layers will not be affected), then the scene is rendered.

This will produce the following.


How to model a light source using a spectral distribution curve for the color My previous attempt was unclear so I'm rephrasing the question:

I'm making a promo video for a certain type of lighting and at one point, I'd like to show the difference in the spectral power distribution (see graph below) of the light output for each type of bulb.  In other words, I want to use the SPD to color the light emitted by the bulb into the room based on wavelength and output power.

I have the SPD, I just need to use it somehow to color the emission source.  This is all I can think of but it's not exactly mathematical and I'm not sure it really captures a realistic representation and I don't know if it just basically averages the colors together:

It produces this light:

But I would rather have the emitted light follow a curve similar to this if at all possible:

Thanks for your help.

To accomplish this you would require a wavelength to XYZ conversion, and then from XYZ to sRGB / REC.709 primaries conversion.

Make sure that you obtain linearized RGB values from your wavelengths. If you are using normalized wavelengths, display linear (0.0 to 1.0) would suffice.


How to render specific frames of an animation? I’m making a little movie with using multiple computers. I can't use the network so I've divided the frames of the animation over the computers. Unfortunately now there are frames missing.
What I'd like to do is using 1 machine to render all the missing frames. For example: 4-24-35-64-143 but ideally in such a way that I don't have to re-start blender multiple times.
Is this possible somehow?

The fastest way to do it is through command line. Go to the terminal, and execute:

<path_to_blender> -b <path_to_blendfile> -f <frame1> -f <frame2> -f <frame3> ...

Add as many -f switch as necessary. For your example, if Blender executable is already in the PATH variable, and the blend file's output format is already image sequence, the invocation would be:

blender -b filename.blend -f 4 -f 24 -f 35 -f 64 -f 143


Plane mesh and array modifier I'd like to use the array modifier with a plane mesh. When relative offset is set in the two directions that are parallel to the plane, it works. But, when the relative offset is set in the orthogonal direction (z axis in the following example), it does not seem to work. Did I miss something?

Thanks!

The Relative Offset uses the object's dimensions to generate the offset. Since the plane has no 'height' the generated copies are at the same level as the original. If you add some depth to the plane (extrude or add a Solidify modifier above the Array modifier) the Z offset will have an effect.

Use the Constant Offset (which uses absolute values) instead of Relative Offset (which uses the object dimensions) to control the array irrespective of the object's dimensions.


Calling an addon's Operator from Python - wm_operator_invoke: invalid operator call I seem to get two different behaviours from the Blender interface and from external scripts when trying to invoke my addon's operator function object.myaddonoperator()

import bpy

class MyAddonOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.myaddonoperator"
    bl_label = "My Addon"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        return context.mode == 'OBJECT'

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        do_stuff()

        return {'FINISHED'}

From the console within Blender, calling bpy.ops.object.myaddonoperator('INVOKE_DEFAULT') works just fine, but when using an external script with blender -b -P my_script.py, calling the same results in wm_operator_invoke: invalid operator call 'OBJECT_OT_myaddonoperator'.

What am I doing wrong?

To use the plugin in the way intended, execute() needs to be used instead of invoke(). The execute method can still use the invoke code by calling it with an event of None:

class MyAddonOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.myaddonoperator"
    bl_label = "My Addon"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        return context.mode == 'OBJECT'

    def execute(self, context):
        return self.invoke(context, None)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        do_stuff()

        return {'FINISHED'}

Now the addon can be called with bpy.ops.object.myaddonoperator('EXEC_DEFAULT')


Is it possible to make the remesh modifier block size constant? I am interested in using the Remesh modifier for stylized modelling, however there is a major flaw in the fact that the Remesh Modifier appears to only take vertices and face area etc. into account when calculating block sizes. I really would like to have a way to  make this size constant.

I am considering using Ctrl+J and vertex groups, however this would be a major pain. Is there any other way to do this? I am open to Python solutions as well.

Remesh modifer use the object's bounding box to determine the size of the block (combined with the scale and the octree depth)

If you want to use just the built-in tools and no python, a possible, dirty, workaround could consist in altering each object bounding box to a fixed the one of a "remeshing box".

Create a box of the wanted size, delete faces (deleting edges is optional) and assign to the object a Remesh modifer with the target resolution.

Create/pick one object, move it inside the box. Apply scale.

Join the object with a duplicate of your cage. This way the mesh will inherit the modifiers with all the settings.

You can edit the object freely until it stays inside the box defined by the vertices.

Cons:

The box can't be changed interactively.
You have to duplicate and join the remeshing box for each object.


How to convert equations to work with Blender and animation nodes? I have an equation that I'm trying to animate in Blender 2.79b

The equation is.
$$y=e^{{{\log \left(1-x^{{\it (S*T)}}\right)}\over{{\it (S*T)}}}}$$

Where:

T={1.12,0.96}  % The variable **T** would be a slider in blender*
={15.3039,10.3612,7.9153,6.3793,5.3019,4.4955,3.8656,3.3584,2.9405,2.5903,2.2926,2.0367,1.8146,1.6204,1.4496,1.2983,1.1638,1.04377,.93622,.83959,.75256,.67401,.603,.53871,.48045,.42762,.37969,.33619,.29673,.26094,.22852,.19917,.17265,.14874,.12722,.10791,.090664,.075316,.061733,.049793,.039383,.030399,.0227475,.0163414,.0111008,.0069525,.0038286,.0016664,.0004081}

My thought process / how I created it in Octave / Matlab

Step 1.
Evaluate the equation for several values of S and T to see if it works and plot.  See image below.

Step 2.
Evaluate the equation for all the given values of S and T and plot. See image below.

Step 3.
Duplicate object created in Step 2 so I can rotate them at different time values to create / animate different Moire patterns.  See image below.

I'm trying to reproduce it using Blender / Animation nodes. But I'm not sure how to correctly loop through all the different values of 'S'. Then duplicate that object for rotation.
See current Blender file / image below.

The goal is to create different equations and animate them to create different animated Moire patterns.  Something like the example animation below but using different patterns created with equations.

I tried following 3DSinghVFX answer but I had some issues with his/her step 3 some of the options are either missing or other nodes are being added for me anyone know why?  See animation below of what happens (I circled the things that are different in 3DSinghVFX answer in my animation when I tried to create them) I'm running Blender 2.79b.

This is very easy to do, here I'm showing for a simple equation, y = sin(W*x), where W is a parameter and x is an independent variable.

Step-1
Create two lists, one for the parameter (parameter-1 is as W in this case), and other for variable x. Make a loop using the parameter-1 list as iterator and x-values as an input list,

Step-2
Make a group node (Equation) for y = sin(W*x) equation which later helps you to easily replace with another equation if you want. I'm converting x and resultant y list into a vector list and as output from the group node.

Step-3
Then add this group node into the Parameter Loop which we created in the step-1, and you view the output vector with 3D viewer Node.

Step-4
Last step to convert group node vectors to splines (curves) using "Splines Form Points" node and then as output from the parameter loop. Use the Curve Object Output node to convert splines to a curve object which you can render.


Building Blender - single lib folder for many different builds? I need to build several independent "variants" of Blender (differently modified sources for the same target platform) and would like to use the same "lib" folder for all of them.
I cannot place them in the same "root" folder with the lib folder (the usual folder structure).

Essentially, I would like to have something like this:

MyBlenderDEVroot
   lib               <- this is where I'd like to have lib folder
   Variant1
      blender        <- Blender sources
      builds         <- build output folder
      mydocs
      mystuff
   Variant2
      blender        <- Blender sources
      builds         <- build output folder
      mydocs
      mystuff

I know that I can have differently named "blender" and "builds" folders (like blender_v1, builds_v1, blender_v2, builds_v2, etc.) in the same root but I want them fully separated.

I am targeting Windows and I use VS2013 with CMake.
I have no problems building Blender the "normal" way, just would like to avoid having the same mutli-GB lib folder repeated all over the place.

OK, I figured it out my self.

There are couple of lines in CMakeLists.txt that set the path to the lib folder one level relative to the source files folder (carried by the CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR variable).
To make it work with my example folder structure simply adding one more level solved the problem:

    if(NOT DEFINED LIBDIR)
        # Setup 64bit and 64bit windows systems
        if(CMAKE_CL_64)
            message(STATUS "64 bit compiler detected.")
            set(LIBDIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../../lib/win64_vc12)
        else()
            message(STATUS "32 bit compiler detected.")
            set(LIBDIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../../lib/windows_vc12)
        endif()
    else()
        message(STATUS using LIBDIR  ${LIBDIR})
    endif()

My real folder structure was a bit more complex and the common lib location was off the branch with sources so I made it a bit more complicated:

    # added this near the top of CMakeLists.txt for easy reference
    if(WIN32)
        set(COMMON_LIBPATH "C:/some_complex_path/CommonStuff/Blender/lib")
    endif()

    ...

    if(NOT DEFINED LIBDIR)
        # Setup 64bit and 64bit windows systems
        if(CMAKE_CL_64)
            message(STATUS "64 bit compiler detected.")
            if(COMMON_LIBPATH)
                message(STATUS "Using common lib path: " ${COMMON_LIBPATH})
                set(LIBDIR ${COMMON_LIBPATH}/../lib/win64_vc12)
            else()
                set(LIBDIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../lib/win64_vc12)
            endif()
        else()
            message(STATUS "32 bit compiler detected.")
            if(COMMON_LIBPATH)
                message(STATUS "Using common lib path: " ${COMMON_LIBPATH})
                set(LIBDIR ${COMMON_LIBPATH}/../lib/windows_vc12)
            else()
                set(LIBDIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../lib/windows_vc12)
            endif()
        endif()
    else()
        message(STATUS using LIBDIR  ${LIBDIR})
    endif()

You have to edit the CMakeLists.txt file in each source code folder (e.g. the standard "blender" folder).

As I am targeting Windows this applies to, you guessed it, Windows.


Python: How to Export All the UV Layouts in Blender Can anyone confirm this script works in 2.79b? (I can't use 2.8 at the moment) The script is supposed to export the UV layouts of all selected meshes at once to a specific folder, but I'm no coder, and I'm not having any luck with it yet.

Error Message:

Source: https://gifguide2code.com/2017/01/24/python-how-to-export-all-the-uv-layouts-in-blender/

import bpy

selObj = []

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
 selObj.append(obj.name)

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

i=0
while i < len(selObj):
 bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.scene.objects[selObj[i]]
 bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
 bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
 bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
 bpy.ops.uv.smart_project(angle_limit=66.0, island_margin=0.0, user_area_weight=0.0)
 f="C:\\Users\\Desktop\\UVLayouts\\" + bpy.data.objects[selObj[i]].name
 bpy.ops.uv.export_layout(filepath=f, mode='PNG', opacity=0)
 bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
 bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
 i+=1

To the answer

It won't work if the code in line 17 - "C:\\Users\\Desktop\\UVLayouts\\" doesn't exist on your computer as a Directory (or blender doesn't allowed to modify in that directory). You could change the path of it or create a directory on that location with the same naming.

The mechanism of how bpy.ops.uv.export_layout work on opening a file make this error. It use open, a python built-in function to deal with file.

It requires the parent folder of the filepath exist, as discussion in here.

You should check out the discussion carefully since that is a basic knowledge of python. And for my advise, you could always search the error in google, the answer for your problem is there most of the time. You need to search it with a good key words, in this case FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory will do the work.

The Script

As Martin Z point out, we should fix this script a little bit to make it more robust (for those not familiar with programming):

import bpy
import os

# You should change this varibale in "here" to match your own directory path
# use '/' or '\\' for hirecacy
target_dir = "C:/some/directory/"

selObj = []

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
 selObj.append(obj.name)

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

i=0
while i < len(selObj):
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.scene.objects[selObj[i]]
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
    bpy.ops.uv.smart_project(angle_limit=66.0, island_margin=0.0, user_area_weight=0.0)
    full_file_name=target_dir + bpy.data.objects[selObj[i]].name

    # This code detected whether target_dir exist, if not, then create it
    dirname = os.path.dirname(full_file_name)
    if not os.path.exists(dirname):
        os.makedirs(dirname)

    bpy.ops.uv.export_layout(filepath=full_file_name, mode='PNG', opacity=0)
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
    i+=1

Run this script in blender 2.7x text editor, and change target_dir = "C:/some/directory/" to your desired location. And still, strongly recommend to read the code carefully.


Yafaray: Shadow-catcher I have tracked footage in blender and placed a tank in the scene.  To get more realistic results, I switched over to Yafaray v3 render after setting up the tracking scene.

It seems that Yafaray can't use render layers, which breaks the node setup in blender.  How can I have the plane under the tank receive shadows but be transparent everywhere else, the way it occurs in blender internal and cycles?

Thanks,
Brody

Yes, it is possible to do this with the current YafaRay v3 versions. You can use the "Mask Object Index" render pass, for example, using the mask render pass that includes the shadows in the mask.

For example:

I have uploaded the example scene here: cornellbox-yafaray-shadow-mask.blend.zip

I hope this helps. Best regards!!


Hair does not show up in final render When I render the hair only the root shows up and not the hair. Please help and thank you for your time

Here's the .blend

The problem is you've set the Shape parameter value to 1 in the Cycles Hair Settings. According to the Blender wiki:

  A shape parameter that controls the transition in thickness between the root and tip. -1 gives a constant thickness equal to the root, 0 gives a linear transition and 1 gives an instantaneous transition to the tip radius.

What happens when you set that value to 1 is it makes the thickness of the hair strand the same as the tip radius, which in this case is 0. That's why it didn't show up in the render.

Change the Shape parameter value to 0 and it'll work.


How To Delete This Red Box on My Screen? I was editing my mesh and I wanted to only see a part of my mesh, so I pressed alt+B to only show a selected area. However, I did ctrl+B and created a red rectangle on my screen (I don't know what it does).
Does anybody know how to get it off?

The red checkered box is a render region.
It's used to render only parts of your screen.
You can clear it with Ctrl+Alt+B
Or through View > View Regions

Read: Render Border's related check boxes - How do they work?


Texture that doesn't get affected by scaling? I have a simple plane that acts as a health bar in my HUD. I am putting a texture on it, but when the plane scales down the texture also does. How can I have the texture not affected by scaling? Thanks!

I was able to do that with Texture/Mapping/Coordinates set to global.


Is it possible to make curves more visible in the 3D view? I'm trying to edit a camera path and a camera follow path, but I'm finding it quite hard to see the curves. Is there a way to change their color or make them thicker? I've also seen screenshots that show frame numbers along the curves—how do I enable that?

Just as Mr Zak suggested, you can give the curve in question a bevel object. You can adjust the thickness of the curve by scaling it.

Just switch off render for both of them and it shouldn't affect your scene.


Cannot find Background Images feature in Blender 2.8 Cannot find Background Images feature to add in a photo in Blender 2.8

Where is it?

Background images are gone in Blender 2.8+, at least in the traditional pre-2.7# sense.
The old system was aging and prone to failure as described in the Proposal: Replace background images with Image Empties in 2.8x, and it has been retired due to inherent limitations.
Information was stored as User Interface data, as such if you opened a file without the Load UI option checked they would appear to be missing, when in fact they simply weren't loaded.
Saving the file would then silently erase them, without warning or explicit user intervention leading to permanent data loss.
They were also hard to manipulate and had duplicate functionality, having thus been replaced by more modern and robust solutions.
Alternatives

Either use them as Empties like you could before, if you are using them as reference images to model over. This allows for greater control of size, position and display options.

Use them in the newly added Camera Background feature, if your goal is aligning a camera to an existing photo or matching perspectives, for later compositing a 3D scene over existing footage.

Import them as planes using the Import Images as Planes addon like
in previous versions

Workflow
You can now add most background images in Blender from a dedicated entry in the 3D View > Add > Image menu.

Three options are available if you manually activate the Import Images as Planes addon from Edit > User Preferences > Add-ons > Import Images as Planes). Background and Reference Images are basically different presets for the same underlying tool.

Reference - Act as regular objects, visible from both sides, non renderable

Background - Can be set to display always in front or background, non renderable

Image Plane - Actual renderable mesh with geometry and a material

You can control visibility settings from the Properties Window, like making it visible only for orthographic views, display always in front, adjust transparency and control backface culling for empty based solutions.
You can also use them from the new Camera Background feature, available in the Properties Window > Object Data > Background Images for any currently selected Camera object.

If you require a background image (other than an Image as Plane) to be visible in your render, either set it up a world shader, use a Spherical HDR as an environment map, images as planes for actual geometry, or render with a transparent background and overlay the result over your image through post processing using either the Blender Compositor or any external image editor.


How to combine or replace "Diffuse" BSDF with "Emission" on model that uses normal maps? I've figured out how to apply normal maps onto diffuse textures the correct way (thanks BSE :D), but now I've been searching on how I can use a normal map with an emission shader. I haven't found a proper solution after some digging, unfortunately.

Is there a way I could add or mix it in? I tried using a mix shader and connecting the emission shader that way, but it just makes the model grey-ish. Changing "color" from white to black has no effect, and changing the strength doesn't do anything neither.

Here's the setup I have going. Everything's spot-on except that I really need an emission shader. The point is to maintain my shadow-less & noise-less method like some of my other renders without any normal maps used. It also makes rendering time significantly quick. The top priority pretty much is to get that Emission shader in and also get it to work its magic, while maintaining the normal map.

And here's the model without its normal map, for additional reference.

Thanks!

You could use vector maths to affect the strength of the Emission based on how close the Incoming ray is to the Normal using a setup similar to the following :

Note that I've used a Bump node to generate the normal - rather than a normal map - but the same principle applies.

The Incoming ray is the ray (in world space) projecting from the camera to the surface. The Dot Product compares the Incoming ray with the Normal and produces an output that varies based on how closely those vectors are to being in the same direction. The Power node is set to 'Clamp' to prevent negative values (where the ray is effectively from the 'back' of the surface) and changing the Value allows the strength of the effect to be adjusted.

In order to change the direction of the apparent illumination and shadows you can add a Mapping node and set the rotation as desired :


Combining .exr files? Is it possible to composite multiple .exr files into a single .exr file?

For example, if one .exr file contains several passes and another contains only one pass could they be combined to contained all in one file?

Yes you can load several EXRs on the compositor and save all of their channels into individual layers on an OpenEXR multilayer.

Add a file output node, set it to OpenEXR muyltilayer and than add as many inputs as you need.

You can rename the channels as needed by double clicking on the name:

For more details see this answers:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/18406/1853

How can I render all render passes to files in Cycles?


Creating orthogonal axis in blender (geometric model) I'm not a blender expert, so I don't know how to do this quickly.
Is it possible to create quickly something like the following?

Regardless of the "Blend4Web" or "Blender" I'd literally like to istantiate these axis as geometric models in a scene, it doesn't seem to be a default model in blender.

What I'm trying to achieve is

Not exactly, but basically a couple of these reference frames two planes in front of each, a third plane and a couple of lines, maybe showing where the intersections happen.

Update: Something like the stuff below is more close to what I want:

I would create a Cube and position then delete unwanted Edges in Edit mode.

In Object Mode I would press Alt+C to convert the Object to a Curve from Mesh and then in the Data Tab for Curve, Fill: Full at a Depth and Resolution that suits my needs.

Once settled, I could color the axis or texture the object by converting it BACK to a Mesh from Curve so I was back on familiar ground (Curves have different behaviors).


Backup Blender addons and settings I'm moving my current workstation files to a brand new machine. Is there an addon or feature within blender to pack all settings and many addons downloaded/purchased/enables into a single folder?

Best,

Everything is already in a single folder. You could just install Blender and copy that old preferences folder. On Windows it's
C:\Users\[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\[VERSION NUMBER]\

This may exclude some more complex add-ons that come in few parts like some render engines.


Where are the keying set's keyframes in the dope sheet? With no keying set specified when I press I and select LocRot for example, it places keyframes on both dope sheet and F-curve graph editor.

However I started making my own keying set comprised of 3 shape keys value. When I press I, it only appears on the F-curve and not in the dope sheet. Any way to make it appears on the dope sheet too?

Oh, never mind. I was in Action Editor mode. That mode does not include shape keys and shape keys can't be included together in an action. There is an exclusive Shape Keys Editor mode with its own (special?) action or even Dope Sheet which you can see the shape keys.


Strange twisted bone with Copy Rotation I'm trying to use the Copy Rotation Constraint to let an armature copy another armature. The problem is, that the copied bone somehow is turned like 360 degrees around the x axis. What could I do to solve this problem?

Without the constraint, it looks like this:

After adding the constraint, it looks like this:

There are a few things you can do. First would be to adjust the "Roll" of bones in edit mode, then they will have the same starting rotation. You can also restrict rotation on the axis of weird twisting or in Copy Rotation Constraint properties set copy only to those axis that work properly, or if the rotation of bones on the twisting axis is exactly opposite, select Invert in Copy Rotation Constraint properties for this axis, but if you want to have easy life with the rig, use the first option.


Tip for create shine effect i am beginner in blender. I started modelling hard surface (roulette with slot machine reel). Now I want to add light effect (like light spirals, jet fires, ...) in cycles. I dont know create this effect in 3D now. I know only add this effect in phosothop now. But I whant to know add it in 3D in the future :) And I would animate this effect in the future too. Can you help me the best way to create this effect in ming with future plans?
image from blender

added effects in photoshop

There are several effects here. For the light rings effect, you can create a curve circle, give it depth in the Properties panel > Object Data > Geometry > Bevel, then give it a material with this node setup: Texture Coordinate (Object output) > Mapping (stretched on the correct axis) > Noise Texture (play with the Scale value) > ColorRamp as a factor in a Mix Shader between an Emission and a Transparent node. You can make it rotate with the Mapping rotation values.


How to view the Property Editor in Blender I am a beginner to blender and have somehow managed to hide the property editor in blender. Is there any way I can bring it back? Thanks

Edit: As @Jachym Michal points out, it is possible that the 3d view is maximized - use Ctrl+Space to toggle maximization.

If that does not fix the issue, perhaps you have indeed closed the other editors. All editors can be restored and rearranged as desired.

To add a new space, right-click the border of your existing space.

Then select "Vertical split" and specify the split location by clicking. You will now have a new editor. To change the editor type to properties, click the dropdown at the top-left corner of the editor and select the desired editor type: