Are quads or triangles better for games? I keep reading that triangles are bad to use, I still don't 100 percent understand why but I'm making some characters for a mobile game. Seeing as it is for games then would it be better to have quads or triangles or would it matter if it was mostly quads with some triangles?

I mainly ask because I'm modelling a hand and I'm having trouble connecting it to the wrist without using triangles.

You have to distinguish between modeling and later useage of the final result. Game models are usually modeled with quads first. Edgeloop tools for example doesn't work at a tri geometry. But then exported with a triangulated geometry to have the geometry as stable as possible.

Some game engines imports quads too. And when it's static geometry then it doesn't matter. But game engines doesn't necessarily import the quads with the same vertices order than what you had in Blender. And then the faces may bend into a wrong direction. So you usually triangulate it before export, and then check if all edges really points in the desired direction for your animation needs.

When it's a game model anyways, then you can also model with tris already. When it makes sense. As told, some tools works better with a quad geometry.


What's causing this pitting I applied a noise texture for some displacement on my cupcake, and now I'm getting weird artefacts. I, however, can't tell if this is due to my atrocious modeling skills or something in the nodes. It could be due to the way I unwrapped the model too though.
Secondary question: what's the semantic difference between model and mesh?

I know there's something going wrong in here.

The correct way to connect a procedural or B&W texture using a Displacement node is like this (no need for the Normal Map node - that is reserved for data from a "proper" normal map such as the purplish looking bitmap images I've sure you've seen):

However, if you are using EEVEE, or are only looking to generate the look of displacement (without needing a heavily subdivided mesh), you will probably find it works just as well to connect the texture through a Bump Node, and using it's output as Normal data:

To answer your second question - there is really no difference between a mesh and a model (two ways of describing the same thing), however some people might use the word model to imply a fully finished product (not just a mesh, but a textured mesh, or a mesh rigged for animation, etc...)


Hotkey to change select mode? I toggle between Vertex, Edge, and Face Select mode constantly. In a speed modeling session, this adds a lot of clicks.

I couldn't find any place to set a hotkey to change this setting. Is there one?

Try Ctrl+Tab  .

When the menu appears choose the appropriate letter:

V Vertex select

E Edge select

F Face select

Alternatively you can use numbers: 1, 2, and 3

The tooltip shows the Python in case you decide to assign a single keystroke.


can't figure out why part of UV map is stretching I am modeling a cabin in blender right now and while I was in the middle of texturing, I noticed that the texture is stretched only on one specific face, so I looked into it and found out that the UV map was stretching it for some reason, But my problem is, I can't find out WHY.  And more importantly, how to fix it.
Here is an image of the stretched face:

And here is an image of the stretched UV:

I've already tried adding seams,  I made sure there were no n-gons.  I'm not sure what else to do to fix it.
any help is appreciated!
Here is the file for anyone who wants it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZV1zwGXUIr2Z8AdgQBNfAvJRliQMHGam/view?usp=sharing
(I couldn't upload it with any of the textures because the file was too big)

Your topology is messy, when you unwrap Blender has no choice but to connect the faces, which gives stretched UVs. If we take a look at the corner we first see that the vertices are not connected, the face continues inwards:

Delete it, then you see that this edge floats:

Delete as well and cut again with the knife:

Now delete the face on the left and see, you have inner faces, delete them:

Now fill the hole:

Now unwrap again and your issue has disappeared:

There may be some other issues in your topology though, make sure that you don't have other inner faces, floating edges, etc... Another way to fix your UV problem quickly would have been to select one of the faces, then press ShiftG > Select Similar Normal to select all the faces of this wall, switch to side view and U > Project From View, but it would have left all the topology issues:


Subtle smoke under light ( eevee ) I know how to add volumetrically fog but I have no idea how to do this slow-moving smoke? that barely visible under light.
above image is a sample only.
thank you

I don't know if this is the right way to do it but I'm happy with the result.

Enable volumetric in Eevee.
Add lights.
Create a cube and scale/position it accordingly.
add material nodes to the cube.
Animate the texture using keyframes to move the smoke.


How to rig for game engines? I know how to rig characters for animation, but how to rig for game engines? I mean BGE, Unity, Unreal Engine, Cryengine, Stingray etc. Is rigging for games any different than for animation and how different? Also how to export the rig to OBJ or FBX so that it can be imported in these engines, do these file formats support rigging at all?

In the BGE you can use your rig as it is but you have to animate using the Action Editor. To play these animations you need to use the action actuator.

If you want to use the rig in Unity you simply just need to export the rig from Blender as *.fbx. Select 'Armatures' in the export options. When importing to Unity you have to select 'Rig' in the import settings.

I don't know much about CryEngine but you might consider taking a look at the addon 'CryBlend'.

As far as I know you can import *.fbx files in Stingray too, so it's the same steps I explained above for Unity.


Aligning two edge loops I'm new on character modelling, from the tutorial videos, I realized that the vertices at the center of the eye formed an edge loop when selected through Alt+Right Mouse Click.

Another example:

I'm assuming that good topology should have the effect above.
But mine do not occur in that way, when I select the bottom edge loop:

When I select the upper edge loop:

The effect I want to achieve is:

However my edge loops do not connects as one. Could anyone points out the problems causing this and provide some solutions to it?
I will be greatly appreciate to anyone whom responded, thank you!

The answer is easy. Blender has no idea which edge loops you consider to be connected. In Blender, connected means there have to be edges between the verts. Your top and bottom edgelines are not connected and logical, implied connections do not count. The local symmetry of the topology of your eyes isn't picked up by the selection tool.

You can use Box-, Lasso- or Circle Select or you can add to the selection using Loop Select more than once, SHIFTALTRMB. If you needed a certain selection a lot, you could even assign the verts to a vertex group and select them that way. But Loop Select will not bridge gaps. Your topology is not to blame.


Add Image Texture to a Cone I would like to create a party hat and skip the part where I manually add materials, instead I planned to add image textures. The problem is When I try to add a texture it does not show properly. This has been my 3rd question this week. Thank you very much for those who have answered my previous 2 questions I am learning Blender step by step with your help :)

Seeing as you are using cycles, You need to create a new material and head over to the node page. SHIFT_A and add an image texture. Find your image texture and make sure you assign your object through edit mode to the material you have chosen. NOw in edit mode press u and then click Smart UV Unwrap. If that looks funny just do U and unwrap.
Gl


Only part of the object is being scaled I'm trying to shrink a specific section of my design, which originally, I made like this:

When I use the shrink tool, I get this:

But from what I can tell when I open CURA, it's almost like I'm shrinking the inside and not the entire stem of the object? It looks like there's still an outside layer of the stem that isn't being shrunk, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

As pointed out int he comments above, you don't have the entire stem of the glass selected. To select it all, press Z to enable wireframe view. This will let you select through the mesh as well, not just what you can see. Then use the box select tool with B to select everything you want. Change back to solid view again with Z and the scaling will work as you expected.


AO baking for modular environments that will be moved/rotated? I need help in baking in such a way that my modular environment will line up regardless of direction or position. Can it be made internally or do I need xNormal or similar?

(Images are with diffuse on top)

Maybe you could change the AO distance to avoid that the shadows reach the border of the assets.
Go in Blender Render mode, in the World tab, search the Gather line and reduce the Attenuation Distance Value:

Even if the option are grey they will change the AO, also they work for Cycles.


How to best animate a licking tongue? I'm trying to animate a tongue that is licking an object.

First I thought the tongue could be a soft body colliding with the object that it is licking, however, with that many parameters and options, I didn't even know where to begin. I tried out a whole bunch of different configurations, but couldn't get it to look better than this sad result: https://streamable.com/va8sj

Then I though, since the whole animation does not have to be physically correct, I can just use an armature/bones. Turns out, although this has yielded the best result so far, it is very(!) hard to control the position of the tip of the tongue and at the same time achieve a fluid motion: https://streamable.com/bbzht

It would be way easier to control the tip of the tongue, so I tried inverse kinematics. This feels like the right approach, but I could not figure out how to control the bending of the tongue. https://streamable.com/608kt

Is there any way to use IK for the tip, and FK for the other end of the tongue?

What's the best way to do this?

That method works extremely well for all sorts of short bendy things, tails, tentacles, tongues, you name it. Only having 3 controllers for all of it makes animating a snap, too.

I just want to add, that a couple of modifiers in combination with the mesh are useful:
First, a Subdivision Surface Modifier, to make sure there is enough geometry there to be deformed and after the Armature Modifier a Corrective Smooth Modifier to resolve any warping and breaking that the Bendy Bone might inflict on the surface. They are prone to doing that.

Minor Update: you can make the rig a lot faster by making the armature move the lo-poly model and adding the Subdivision Surface Modifier AFTER the Armature Modifier. Sorry about that.


How can I get the triangles of a model? For reasons of collision detection, I am attempting to iterate through all the triangles in my model.

However, how can I get them with an OBJ file?

OBJ files start each vertex position information with a "V". I cannot see how to get a triangle of three vertices from that, since I can't know which vertices make up the triangle.

I don't care what order the triangles are iterated through in, as long as I am able to get the triangle. How can I get it?

Apart from a list of vertices OBJ files also contain a list indices that make up a face. Look for lines that start with an "f". The vertices are enumerated by their occurrence in the file, starting with index 1.
Be aware that faces can consist of more than three vertices. You will have to split quads and n-gons if you want tris.

f 1 2 3         # a triangle that consists of the first, second and third vertex
f 2 3 4 5       # a quad consisting of the vertices 2 to 5
f 1 2 5 6 10 11 # an n-gon with six vertices

OBJ also supports relative indices. These indices are negative. For example an index of -1 would address the last vertex at the position of the face.
The following file would contain three triangles, consisting of the first three, the second three and the first, third and last vertex:

v  1.0 -1.0 -1.0
v  1.0 -1.0  1.0
v -1.0 -1.0  1.0
f -3 -2 -1
v -1.0 -1.0 -1.0
v  1.0  1.0 -1.0
v  1.0  1.0  1.0
f -3 -2 -1
f -6 -4 -1


Make photo fade out to black in the middle of a circle I need to have a photo fade out to black in a tunnel effect.  Kind of like the edges are becoming all black and you only see the circular photo in the middle which then goes to full black.  Can't find the term for it and not sure if this program will do it.  Any ideas? Thanks.

In the compositor add an image node and create an ellipse mask.

By animating the size of the mask (with and height) over time down to zero you can create an iris effect.

Animating the X and Y coordinates of the mask you can change where the center of the vignette ends:


How to determine whether a python script is hostile? In a recent release of blender a safeguard for python scripts has been introduced. This is to prevent python script from doing any damage to the system. Although I doubt that there are any blender users that want to wreck havoc. Blender now has a built in system for protecting against malicious scripts. I do not trust this system though. How can I determine if a python script is hostile manually?

So far this is what I have come up with:

import os there is no reason that a python script for blender needs this module, this allows the user to run cmd/terminal commands.

What other things are there to watch out for?

os isn't the only module that provides functions to remove files from filesystem etc., shutils can be used for such evil things too. Or you could somehow shell-execute system commands to do so.

Module imports can even be camouflaged like this:

evil_module = __import__(chr(int("".join(map(lambda x: str(x), [1]*3)))) + '\x73')

So you won't immediately know what it actually imports (os module in this case).

What is to be seen malicious also depends on your view. Like with any trojan, virus or whatever, they don't necessarily damange your system or delete things. A python script could open a network connection and send spam mails, or transmit information about your machine to an attacker.

There are many possibilities to abuse python, and bpy makes it rather worse - bpy.ops.wm.url_open(url="...") could be used to open a prepared website, that infects you with a drive-by download.

The best protection is it run scripts from trusted sources only.


If animation is 40 frames, should I cut it off at 39? If I am making an animation loop that is 40 frames and I start it at 0, do I need to end it at 39 or 40 to make it loop right?

Another way to ask the question might be, does the last frame count as a frame?

In short, yes. Frame 40 does count as a frame, unless you specifically tell the timeline or NLA editor to ignore it.


how to hide particle emitter but not particles Whenever I render out my particle sim, the particle emitter renders out as well. I've tried to disable it during renders using the camera icon in the Outliner view, but that disables the particles as well. How do I hide the particle emitter but not the particles?

In the Particle systems > Render tab, uncheck Emitter.


Rose gold material color for jewelry? I’m trying to render jewelry in rose gold. Just wondering if anyone knows a way or a color hex to achieve a look similar to the below image. Thank you for your time!

Basing creative decisions on scientific measurements

It is only possible to base your creative process and guesses on some scientific measurements while the results are never 'physically accurate' or 'correct' in CG. They should not be. Nobody actually needs this accuracy. It is OK to aim for a nice image that would be aesthetically pleasing and not to pursue physical accuracy that is most often impossible to achieve. Think of it this way - do you know the wavelengths of the primary colors of the monitor you are going to view the images on? I didn't think so. So let's not pretend anything about the images we create is even close to physically accurate.

If you wanted to use the data at https://refractiveindex.info to approximate the reflectance for the shader, you would need to know what the primary RGB color wavelengths you need are. I don't know what they should be, so let's just think that this random calculator that I just Googled gives us somewhat correct goals of what the ideal primary wavelengths for sRGB should be. It says red is around 610nm, green is around 550nm and blue is somewhere around 460nm. We can get the graphs for similar wavelengths at refractiveindex.info if we input the lengths here(in micrometers instead of nanometers though):

Only then you can take three different graphs like this one for all the primary wavelengths and replicate them using RGB Curves.

You should also ignore green and red lines representing different polarization, because in CG, we do not care about polarization at all. So only green lines for wavelengths representing red, green and blue colors.

But wait, what now? What should control our RGB Curves node? - you may ask.
And that would be a wonderful question. Whatever it is - it is clear that it certainly is not some UV coordinates! We have the graphs from refractiveindex.info for Reflectance and Angle of Incidence in degrees that go from 0° to 90° linearly. Nothing in Blender actually gives us that.

Layer Weight and Fresnel nodes do not give us brightness depending on the angle of incidence from 0° to 90° linearly.

We have to actually make it by taking the arc-sine of the dot product of incoming and normal vectors and divide it by half of pi and then inverting it by subtracting it from 1:

(Sorry for added confusion - I use Bump Map node to get the normal vector because I want a way to plug normal or bump maps to this whole thing later.) Obviously it is better to have this as a node group.

So now let's just assume there is some micro-roughness effect visible because of the way the gold is polished(no reason other than that it looks nice on metals) and add roughness variation depending on the facing angle of the surface and we have something similar to what gold might look. Obviously it needs to be lit nicely as well and have some environment to reflect:

To make rose gold you would mix that with something like 25% of copper.

Is this process worth it?

I am not so sure it is for every situation. It is time consuming and it is also questionable if the extra effort is better noticeable than just working with some good reference photos. If you googled 'Gold' and compared it to my render you would find all kinds of different colors. That is normal and to be expected. They are all lit differently in different environments therefore reflecting different things, taken with different cameras and also all post processed differently. I think it makes a lot of sense to better invest more time into presentation, the models and especially the lighting and composition of the renders to make an impact on the viewer. These things can ruin all the effort of inputting loads of measured numerical values if not done correctly. It is not about physics, it is about visual communication. And this is just roughly based on some measurements. The rendering process is not physically accurate by any measure. I do however think it can be a strong base on which one could build an image if one has the time to play with this.


Is there more than one way to unwrap in Blender? What are the different ways to unwrap besides marking seams on everything and unwrapping?

According to the manual:

Basic: Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Project from View

Advanced: Unwrap, Smart UV Project, Lightmap Pack, Follow Active Quads


Prevent water entering into boat? I'm new to blender (v2.92.2) and would like to know how to prevent the water from getting to the boat.
I have used an Ocean Modifier over a plane to create the ocean and modelled the boat.

When I use the difference bool tool by selecting the boat first and then the ocean, the boat disappears.

When I use the difference bool tool by selecting the ocean first and then the boat, the ocean and part of the boat disappear.

Should I be using something different?

You need to create a proxy mesh which you will not be rendering, that encompasses the body of the boat, then add a boolean modifier set to difference to the ocean and set to use the proxy mesh.
Example :

I duplicate the bowl object, increase the mesh's size so there is overlap in the bottom of the bowl.

Then select the ocean object, add a boolean modifier. Don't forget to set the solver to Fast, the Exact solver is pretty buggy.

Don't forget to parent the proxy mesh to the boat object so that it moves with it, and uncheck all the render properties for the proxy so it doesn't show up in rendered view.


Different materials for smoke How to apply diffuse, glossy or glass material to smoke in cycles without using volume materials?

This is not supported atm, it would require converting the smoke simulation to a mesh or some other structure (an SDF maybe). The smoke simulator can only feed Cycles 3d texture data, thus can only be represented as a volume.

Note that if you have access to Houdini or another tool with OpenVDB, you should be able to read Cycles OpenVDB smoke cache (new in 2.77), create a mesh from the cache, and export that back to Blender. But using Blender alone it is not possible to generate the correct data to use smoke sim ouput as a surface.


In Blender 2.92, I can't see the bloom effect like in the previous versions. Is there any settings to change that? In Blender 2.92 while using eevee render engine I still can't see the bloom effect, even when it is turned on. Is there any change in settings should I do, or it's a bug in that?

Activate bloom effect
Go to the material section and click over the surface option and select Emission.
Than you can change the strength on it.
Go to render mode and you can see your bloom effect.


How to measure face size in meters, centimeters or any units which is set? How can I measure the size of a face in edit mode?

Simply tick Length  under Mesh Display in the Properties side panel and it will show the length of the edges (also tick Area to show the area if there are any faces). These measurements will use the unit specified under Units in your Scene settings. The shown units are local units and are scaled to world units by the object's Scaling settings (see also Why do the measurements of this object seem erroneous?).

For something more extravagant, you can try the built-in Ruler/Protactor tool or Dolf's Caliper addon (install and usage instructions on the page).


Object Constraint - Object won't make a 360º rotation What I'm doing wrong here? Why is the gear like reseting its rotation?

https://imgur.com/vhGcLMh (Gif too heavy to upload here)

This is happening because that's how the Transformation constraint works w/r/t to rotation.
From the Blender Manual:

When using the rotation transform properties of the target as input, whatever the real values are, the constraint will always “take them back” into the (-180 to 180) range. E.g. if the target has a rotation of 420 degrees around its X axis, the values used as X input by the constraint will be:
((420+180)modulo360)−180=60−...
This is why this constraint is not really suited for gears!

You can use rigid body simulation to animate these properly, but that's beyond the scope of this answer.


source for The Mesh extra objects addon in latest version? Been trying to make dice using this: How do I create an 8 sided die from one object?

But I can't find the menu where you choose the shape of the object! Does anyone know how to do this in the latest version?

Would appreciate any help :)

Open the preferences (Edit > Preferences).

Switch to the Add-ons tab, search for Extra Objects and enabled the Add Mesh: Extra Objects add-on.

Add a new Regular Solid object (Add > Mesh > Math Function > Regular Solid).

Open the Adjust Last Operation panel in the lower left corner of the 3D View.

Adjust the properties.


Access a blender file externally (from a python script) I have a folder named "3D" with all my blender projects from the past year and I wanted to rename this folder to "3D_old" but if I do this, all the textures from my projects stop working because all my paths are absolute.
to fix this issue, i can use the "file>external data>make all paths relatives" option but i would have to do it for approx. 150 .blend files. So I would like to know if it's possible to use python to open the blend files and change the paths automatically?

Only with Phyton isn't it possible I think, but with the BatchBlendChanger  Add-on it is.
You can download the Add-on here:
https://github.com/RivinHD/BatchBlendChanger
Explanation:

Start Blender and install the Add-on.
Activate the Add-on.
Search in the Search Menu (Shortcut: F3) for "Batch Import".
Now you should see a file selector.
Select all .blend files you want to change the path to relative.
Search in the Search Menu "Batch Start".
A Dialog box/Popup should appear with all you selected .blend files.
Press OK to start the process.

The process is running and could take a while with 150 files.
If Blender crashes, no problem, restart Blender again. The Process will run again at exactly the same position it was running before the crash.
You should you use the console to start blender. It's easier to restart with the console and you can watch the process.
Start Blender with the console:

open the console (cmd)
Navigate to the installation path of Blender
Start blender with the command "blender.exe -d"


Easy way to model spiral engraving (knurling) that is usually used on metal for better grip? What is the easiest way to model this diamond grip pattern into a cylinder?

Subdivide the area you want to engrave to have enough supporting geometry:

Subdivide it one more time - W > Subdivide:

Unsubdivide - Ctrl+E > Unsubdivide, choose Iterations: 1 in operator properties:

Select single face and select similar - Shift+G > Area:

Poke faces Alt+P and switch to vert select:

Select these 2 vertices:

Select similar - Shift+G > Amount of connecting edges:

Scale these in with Alt+S:

Mark sharp smoothing on the whole area.


Materials show up in solid view, but just appear black in material view I'm trying to apply some simple materials to different parts of a mesh. They don't have textures, just diffuse colour at present. In object mode, they show up in "solid" view, but in "material" view, they just show as solid black (in texture view, the mesh displays as white but shaded). How can I get the materials to show in "material" view?

Thanks.

Solid view, materials are visible:

Material view, everything is black (bottom half of material panel is visible):

Also, as a related point, when I tab into edit mode, I can only see the bone weights when in "solid" mode (and again, solid black in object mode), so I have no way of viewing the materials at all.

I have a light source, scale isn't negative, I'm not in local view, what have I messed up?

Make sure your light source diffuse and specular check box options are checked.  Later you can adjust more artistically.

If needed.  Delete all lights and materials and add new ones with no modifications except color.  Sometimes through experimenting we click many settings and do not know the click history.  Deleting and adding again may restore defaults.


Can you change the shader and font settings as a new default? I was wondering if you know how to change the default settings in Blender? When I change the "Viewport Shading" to render by pushing "Shift Z", then push "Shift Z" again to go back to "Solid", is it possible to have it go back to "Material" instead? I have tried looking up how to do this but nothing came up.

Also when I load a font, the view always goes to "Short List". Is there a way to change the default setting to "Thumbnails" so that every time I open a font it stays on "Thumbnails"?

I know its probably not a big deal clicking one extra button but it would be a lot easier for my workflow. Would you know anything about this? Thanks!

For the first question about the keyboard shortcuts

Go to Blender User preferences window [Ctrl+Alt+U] under the "Input Tab"
Search for "Context toggle values" in the search field.
Scroll down to the "3D View" category
You should see three entries by default for [Z] [Alt+Z] and [Shift+Z]
key combinations.
Expand each of them and change the strings in the "Value" fields to whatever you want.
In you case change the [Shift+Z] to toggle between "MATERIAL" and "RENDERED"


Text in my image file doesn't display properly in final render This happens to all the words.  Everything looks fine until I hit render.  I tried making a new material and plugging the image texture into the diffuse, nothing changed.  Not sure where to look to solve this.

Fixed! The model came from an AutoCAD software, not sure what happened but it looks like it duplicated the geometry and made it as one piece.  Hard to notice in the viewport. In the UV editor, I was able to isolate the appropriate faces and delete them. Thank you LukeD for the speedy response.


Always sensor/ python controller I do have a question
i have a python code that has some variables declarations and sensors identifying. also it has a function inside called RUN
my problem is that when i use an always sensor with a python controller, it only reads RUN function and it ignores the variables i declared before. even though it doesn't ignore the identified serialport.
how can i make the sensor reads the whole code once and loop the run function?

Script mode

Python controllers in Script mode execute the code starting with the first line of the script.

Module Mode

Python controllers in Module mode behave differently. At the first call the module initializes by running the module level code starting with the first line of the module. Be aware this runs once only!.

The code the Python controller is supposed to run is placed inside a function definition (def). This code gets executed at each trigger of the controller. The execution starts with the first line of the called function and ends when leaving the function (on return or latest at the end of the function definition).

You can declare module variables within module level code (code outside of the functions). This variables will persist as long as the module exist. Be aware things like current scene, current controller, or controller's owner should not be stored in a module variable. This can easily lead to confusing and hard to investigate behavior. Better read these data from context (bge.logic) inside the called function.

Example: imaging you have two objects that both call the module. When you store the reference to the current controller at module level, the variable will refer to the controller which executed the code first (e.g. controllerA). This will be plain incorrect when running the code from the other controller (controllerB) as the variable refers to controllerA.


Where does a .blend file store its user preferences? Last night windows updated and restarted computer while blender was rendering. Today that file will not run - freezes blender if I try to load it and so does the immediately previous .blend file.  If I could find the place where the preferences file is kept maybe I could fix this.

New information:
Strangely I ran the .blend1  version of the file and it works.  (I have lost some work because the .blend1 was an hour or two earlier and I can't remember how I did stuff)

In a previous 'freeze' problem I solved it by changing the names of the preferences.blend files in the  Appdata location, so I thought this time it was the same kind of problem and that there must be yet another place where the data is stored, but maybe same symptom but different cause.  Don't know what messed those files up (for both versions of blender 2.72b and 2.73)

Thank you very much for the effort you went to to explain.

PS- have changed windows setting to ask me before installing updates.

C:\Users\ [UserName] \AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender there are folders for each version (2.72, 2.73) where data is stored.

Appdata folder is hidden by default, you can change windows settings or enter the path it manually in explorer

It's not specific to your blend file but blender's preferences. A blend file stores it's data inside the blend files. But you can prevent some prefs to be loaded with unchecking "load UI" when opening a file.

Or you can change blender preferences unchecking "Load UI" and "aurorun python scripts".

Once the file is opened, you can check what's needed and save a clean version of it.


Softbody animation goes haywire later in my animation I am rendering newspapers(planes with softbodys) with a wind force field. It blows perfectly at the start but later on all the newspapers gets suck back and creates this worm.

"Welcome to the desert of the real..." (Morpheus in "The Matrix")... :)
Enable self-collision for the simulation and increase the value of "Distance".
And: Clear the cache...
This can be done by setting the upper frame value below the lower frame value temporarily.
Don't forget to set it back to the correct range of frames you later want to animate.
It does not hurt to enter something like 1....


Glittery smoke in render and viewport I'm rendering out this smoke sim and my smoke is glittery. Why?
My smoke's Resolution Division is 100 with a High Resolution Division of 2.
And it is a smoke sim based off of particles.

Here's a link to the material node setup.

I think those are fireflies.  They are a common problem with blender.  Here's a link to help you reduce them.

https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies?rq=fireflies


When I parent an object with a bone the object moves its place I went to the object tab and parented with a bone. but when I did this, the object rotated and moved. what should I do to fix this? (weirdly when the object moves its place the location which is displayed on the tab that appears when you click 'n' is the same)

You must have parented the object with a bone that is not in Rest pose, so first select your bone in Pose mode and altG, altR, altS to reset its location, rotation and scale.


How can I make it so only one object in a group is visible at a time? I want it so that if I make an object in a group visible, it automatically makes the others invisible.

This behavior can't be accomplished in current Blender versions through standard UI/ Tools. Something like this has yet to be written for Blender.

(Edited for being to vague.)


How Do I stop the Red and Green Cylinder from moving I don't know how to stop the cylinders from MOVING here's a video to show.
https://vimeo.com/282056594

How can I stop the green and red cylinder from moving back and forth?

Tell me if that simple solution could answer:

Create one unique armature from bottom to top with bones following your object shape.
Put your armature in Pose mode. Select an arm, then select its bone, and ctrl P > Bone to parent the arm to its bone. For the vertical arms, select the bone it is supposed to be part of and same thing, parent them.
Move your bones, the arms should follow in the right way.


How to combine two Blender projects I am making an apple with a face and I made the actual body and the face separate. Both parts are in different files and I was wondering how I can merge them into one file so I can attach them together.

just append the files from one file to another. just do FILE>APPEND and you are ready to import objects from one scene to aother


How to make sharp triangle hole using subdivision surface modifier? I wand to make a sharp triangle hole using subdivision surface.

I tried to add different position or combination of edge cuts inside this "hole" like this:

But this created strange looking things like:

I know that is something with triangle-shape polygons but I have no idea how to get rid of them.
What should I do?

I think this could be a good start :

Another thing would be to do as much as you can from a bevel modifier with angle detection, weights and/or vertex groups. It has the advantage of being non-destructive and faster.


where is 'refresh sequencer' in the VSE of 2.8? I insert a scene from the 3d view into the VSE, and as expected it has specific frames where its displaying pure grey or just plain wrongly. 2.79 had a big fat "refresh sequencer" button, which you normally pound to fix this problem. I can't find anything of the sort under any of the tabs I find in the vse viewports. Where is it? And if it's not there how am I supposed to refresh the strips so I see the right thing? the control+r thing or whatever the hotkey for "refresh strip" never had anything to do with fixing this problem in 2.79 and it doesn't here either.


texture problem (going over the whole body) I followed a tutorial for the sims 3 to the sims 4 accessory conversion here, and everything was fine, until I had to add the texture on sims 4 studio.
The object was converted with the protect paint, rigs and everything, still, when I put the 'diffuse' texture on the sims 4 studio, it seems to overline the object itself and go on the whole body.
I thought this could be thanks to something I didn't do right in blender, so I figure it wouldn't hurt asking here.
I'm attaching via mediafire - the blender files and the diffuse and spec maps in case anyone wants to have a look here.

I think you problem is the UV, your Main character is using all the UV layout and your spider is using all the UV Layout too, once you export both as a single object your are getting only one UV Layout for both objects, you need to arrange your UV's before you move frome Blender

Hope that helps

Good Luck


Blender compositor canvas This time my question is quite straight forward. How can I set up a canvas in Blender compositor. I explain better. I have an image that's too big and need to be resized. The edges of the image are all the same color and I wish to resize it on an other monocrome image. Is it possible to create using the nodes a black [or white or any other color] filled image defining also the sizes?

Thank you for your answer
Have a nice day!

Go into the compositor, and add an Add > Distort > Scale node.


Render shadow on transparent background with Blender Render I need to render a model on a transparent background. The models have a light source so they should be casting a shadow on a surface (the XY plane). The purpose for this is to overlay the rendered images (out of blender) on an image of the actual surface, so I want to generate the render including a semi-transparent shadow.

I don´t have any problem rendering the models on transparent background, but I can not make a shadow appear. I tried adding a surface below the model so the shadow can fall on it, but now there's the problem of keeping the surface from rendering.

How can I render the shadow on a transparent background?

On the shadow catcher object, add a material and enable Shadows only in Material > Shadow:

This will make it so that only the shadows cast on the object are shown, the rest of the surface will be invisible, showing the sky behind it.

If you set the alpha to Transparent in Render settings > Shading, the sky will be rendered as image transparency.


Extrude bone from extruded bone I'm making a model for a person, and I need to do the upper/lower arm. I already extruded a bone from the spine for the upper arm, but when I extrude a bone from the upper arm, It also extrudes a bone from the spine. Can someone help?

The bone which head is selected will be extruded. While selecting the already extruded bone, the bone from which you have extruded remained selected.

How to:
In Edit Mode:
Deselect everything
Select bone head, which you want to extrude.
Extrude
Deselect everything
and so forth...


Block like surface when painting bump map So I painted bump map started with grey color with rgb values .5, and I painted with not full black color and I decreased strength to ~.15 when I took a look of what object look with bump map, it was ugly as I have low resolution image I tried all sizes for 1k to 4k and they give me same results, I tried saving as 16 bit it gave same results, tried plugging it in displacement input still no difference, how to overcome/fix this so it becomes smooth, and yes node is set to non color data.

p.s. on images strength of bump map is decreased to ~.2

When you generate a new bump texture image, be sure to tick the option 'Float Buffer' so that you use 32 bit instead of 8 bit or 16 bit image depth.


How to toggle selectable of multiple objects? How to toggle 'selectable' for multiple objects in outliner ? For example in outliner, if i select 50 objects, then pressing the 'selectable' button only turn on/off for current/single object. So how can i do it for multiple objects ?

OK, you've already added 'Selectable' to your visible restriction toggles in the outliner.

Create a new collection for the objects you want to make simultaneously selectable / non-selectable. Call it, say, 'S1'.
Select the objects of interest in the 3D view or the outliner, and ShiftM link them to 'S1'. (It's a link, not a move, it won't screw up your existing organisation.)
When you want to toggle the selectability of all the items linked in S1, Shift-click the dart icon next to the 'S1' folder.


How to darken crevices/grooves/engravings I'm making 3D models of weathered gravestones with photogrammetry and using the textureless model with simulated shadows to read the engravings:

It works pretty well, but it's much more legible if I make the engravings black and the surface white and don't depend on shadows.  For some stones, I figured out I can do this in Blender by importing the .obj file, and making a shader that divides the world into white and black by coordinates, then very carefully rotating and shifting the model until the surface is in the white zone and the engravings are in the black zone:

This is tedious, and doesn't work at all if the stone isn't perfectly flat, like if it bulges out in the middle, etc.  You can see how the area around "July" is darker because it's not quite flat there:

How can I make only the engravings dark and the flat parts white, in a way that ignores broad curvature and doesn't require me to rotate it to a specific angle?  Is there some kind of "color by local depth while ignoring global depth" shader?  Or "take the median position of the connected vertices within a certain radius and then shade based on Y depth relative to that median"?  Or "anything that can be touched by a 30 mm rolling ball is colored white and anything touched by a 5 mm rolling ball is colored gray and the rest is colored black" except with continuous color variation vs ball size.

I mentioned Pointiness in the comments and you said you tried it; the thing with Pointiness is that it's a bit hard to handle so you really need to "crush" the value down in something like a Color Ramp.  In this image, both of the stones are exactly the same model, but on the right hand side is the node graph you see below.  Note how the words are visible on the right and invisible on the left?  I squeezed the pointiness values in on both sides of that Color Ramp:

This might not be the exact solution you want, as the bumpiness of the surface and the edges of the stone also show up in my example due to the pointiness, but if you tweak that color ramp you might get the result you're after.  You can also tweak the Mix node to make it more or less subtle.
You can also try the "Advanced Pointiness" from that link I shared in the comments above.  It gets rid of the spottedness and might be more what you're looking for:

Where I have that "Noise" texture that would be where you put your actual texture; I just did that to give the cube some kind of texture.  To adjust the darkness, you can change that -10 to anywhere in the range -10 to 10 based on how sharp you want the color.  0 would be gray and likely invisible.


Normal baking, very weird results I'm trying to bake a high res Normal map into a low res one. The high res is a duplicate of the low res; I used Multiresolution modifier. I also sculpted my model, then applied the Multresmodifier and all other modifiers for all objects. I'm using a cage mesh, which is again a duplicate of the low poly. I used Alt + S to scale all faces on their normals, so they have the same poly count as the low res Normal map.

The thing is, this is not the first time I have ever baked normals, but I've never seen something like this (check the image). I've double checked everything: All objects have smooth shading, all faces in my low poly are selected, and the Texture node is active in low poly's material node editor. I'm sure there's a logical reason for this, I just can't find it.

The second image is of the cage I'm using.

Solved, I started a new file, appended the High res, Low res and the cage objects, and it worked as it should be, I don't know why this happened though.


Blender Script to Recalculate then set from face per object Hi I'm trying to find a script to use in Blender that would select each mesh one by one (I have 350 to do), go into edit mode, select all the faces, recalculate the normal's and then set from faces all the normal's.

I'm new to Blender scripts so any help would be greatly helpful!

I figured out how to do this using the following script.

import bpy

if bpy.context.selected_objects != []:
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects: #loop through all the selected objects
    if obj.type == 'MESH':
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle() #enter edit mode
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT') #select all objects elements
        bpy.ops.mesh.normals_make_consistent(inside=False) #recalc normals
        bpy.ops.mesh.set_normals_from_faces() #set from faces
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle() #exit edit mode


How can a vertex have a normal? I understand a normal to indicate the following information:

  normals are intersections which are perpendicular to the plane of your face

I understand this to be a vector. And that a shader uses this information to calculate how to render something to the screen. For instance, whether this plane would reflect light to the camera or not, which of course depends on its orientation. (Correct me if I am wrong).

Then I read that a vertex, by itself, can have normal data. This I do not understand. Maybe I completely miss the point and context, but: How can a single vertex, not being part of a line (or a plane), indicate a normal? I mean, a single vertex is dimensionless right. Would its normal not always come from the planes surrounding it? So it is more of a derived value, instead of an intrinsic value of the vertex itself?

The vertex normals will be the average of the adjacent faces' normals.
Look at the lower-right corner of the ear in each of the two head images showing "face" vs "vertex" normals:

Notice that the face normals from the image on the left, about the lower-right vertex, are moved and redrawn from that vertex on the image to the right.
I am not an expert in cgi but it is safe to assume that all normal vectors are the same size. A unit vector about the vertex can be found by adding the vectors tip-to-tail and dividing by the length. This unit vector would then be scaled up by whatever display length the user selected.


Is there a way to do this "splitscreen" partially-rendered effect? In this example (not my animation), the right half is rendered, while the left half is unrendered (like what you would see in the Viewport when set to Solid mode). As objects cross the center of the screen, they become rendered/unrendered.

This is done to show viewers what's going on behind the scenes, so they can see how the shot was constructed.

How could such an effect be created in Blender? I am particularly interested in doing the left half (the unrendered bit).

You may easily achieve this effect using Compositing Nodes. I'll show you how to do it both for a still image and animation.

STILL IMAGE

First select the Slot 1 in the UV Editor window and render your scene using a Full render (F12).

Then change the slot to Slot 2, but this time render the active viewport using the Open GL render. Remove all the materials from your model. Check the Only Render checkbox, located in a Display panel of the Properties Shelf (N) and click the camera icon located at the bottom bar of the 3D window.

Save both images to your computer.

Now go to the Node Editor, press the Compositing nodes button and check the Use Nodes and Backdrop checkboxes. Then set up the nodes as pictured below. First add two Image nodes (Shift+A-->Input-->Image) and open both images you've rendered. Next create a simple b&w texture in gimp (with the same resolution as rendered images).

Use it as a Factor for mixing two renders (add a Color node [Shift+A-->Color-->Mix] and plug the image to its Fac socket. Add a Viewer node (Shift+A-->Output-->Viewer) to see the compositing result.

ANIMATION

You may do it in similar way. Go to Render header and set up things as you like in Dimensions panel. In the Output panel choose the path to the folder you want your rendered frames to be saved (in my case I created a new folder and named it 'full render'). Change the file format to JPEG.

Now choose the Render Animation (Ctrl+F12).

When finished with rendering, change the path to another folder (I created a second one and called it 'openGL').

Press the OpenGL render animation button (the one next to OpenGL render button).

You have now two rendered image sequences in two folders. Set up the nodes as pictured below. Instead of adding Image nodes, add two Image Sequence ones (Shift+A-->Input-->Image Sequence). Load the rendered pictures for each of them.

With setup like this go once again to the Output panel, click on the file directory browser and create a new folder for the final animation. Change the file format to for example AVI Raw. Render your scene once again using F12 button.


Using difference modifier on two objects doesn't always work I want to use the difference boolean modifier to stamp in shapes on this lime. However it does not work for some of the characters. Only some of the radicals (pieces) are cut out. The picture shows one such example: the lower right J shaped piece is missing.

Is this the best way to approach this? The end result I am seeking is Chinese characters written on it.

For the boolean operation to work properly you need to fix the mesh first.

Select the text object
Go into edit mode, Tab
Select all, A
Remove the doubles, W -> Remove Doubles
Fix the normals, Ctrl N

Once you do this the boolean operation will work properly


How to extrude and scale with an even offset? I'm quite new to Blender, so forgive me if this is a dumb question. I don't even know hot to describe it properly, so:

Basically I want to extrude a rectangle and then scale it along two axis, but without keeping the proportions; I want to reduce them of the same quantity, so that I get something similar to the frame of a picture.

Using "Inset" is a method to do this.

Select the face to "extrude", then press I to inset.

You can then inset a face almost like extruding and scaling, but evenly.

The inset tool is also useful for many other things, but this is one of its benefits.

Note: If you have a face that you would like to add a frame to, select the face then press I. You do not need to delete the face or anything. The "inset" tool is designed to inset :P


Assign texture in texture paint - Cycles render This is probably a question with a very simple answer, but I am completely new to blender so I'm not used to the UI. I am making a low-poly landscape from a height map in cycles render and I'm selecting the surfaces I want to give a stone texture. I am following a tutorial but they are using a mac, so I can't find the assign button for the texture.

I'm running Blender 2.79b on Windows 10

In texture paint, try using the "slots" tab on the toolbar.  Here, you can change painting mode from material to image, then specify a particular image and UV map you'd like to use.

Be aware that this isn't the same thing as assigning a texture to a material for rendering purposes.


How do I disable the coloured lighting in the viewport in 2.8? When shaded in Look Dev mode, there's a kind of coloured lighting so the darker faces are yellow and the lighter faces are blue. Is there a way of disabling this so the shading is more greyscale like in 2.79? The faces of this cube should be in black and white only but the colours look very different in the viewport. Thanks.

The warm light comes from the studio light. You can either change to a different HDRI texture by clicking on the light probe image or enable Scene World to use the current configuration of the world background for Look Dev instead.


See-through jelly like substance shader I'm trying to recreate the little red balls on top of the gunkan sushi. So far I have this. Just a glass shader with a translucent shader added on top. I don't know if this makes any sense but if it doesn't please fill me in. Also ignore the rest of the render since it's obviously not final and just a test render.

Looking forward to your answers!

I tried SSS at first but was not happy with the results. I decided a glass shader looks much better.

I just used a Principled shader with transmission set to 1, for glass. Then I added some volume scatter with a slight orange color just so it doesn't look like glass and has some volume in the inside.

I did not do it here but I think slightly deforming the spheres will give it some more realism.


Render a template with 60fps I have a small problem with blender render, I have a template and I want to make it smooth so I set frame rate at 60 but it become so fast, how to fix it ??

All you have to do is increase the number of frames that your animation takes. Go to the dope sheet and select "action editor" now select all of your keyframes with A and press S and then press 2. This would slow down your animation by half.
Edit: I will add images to show you

As you can see, now the animation takes up double the amount of frames. Meaning it will take twice s long to complete, meaning it will be half as fast.


Microdisplacement skewed image Hi, I´ve been trying to get a microdisplacement on a plane from a .jpg 8 bit and a 16 bit .png with a resulting skewed image. How do I fix that?
Thanks.

Check that a displacement node is used before displacement and that your preview and render options allow for 1 pixel detail. Max subdivisions allows your displacement to be further refined at render time.
Don´t forget to add a displacement modifier on simple mode and check adaptive.


Toggle between states with a single button The enum function allows a button to toggle between two states. Is there a way to do that in code with a normal single button whose state is momentary?
For example, I am trying to select faces of a model, then deselect with a standard button, not a toggle button.

I've only gotten a theoretical function:

for f in bm.faces:
    if bm.faces[f.index].select == True:
        bm.faces[f.index].select = False
    else:
        bm.faces[f.index].select = True

This will test the first state, then the second which will make them both true. Is there a way to stop at the first state?

Pick the state to use before the loop.

set_state = bm.faces[0].select
for f in bm.faces:
    f.select = set_state

Note that within your loop f is the same as bm.faces[f.index]

Or if you want to loop through until you find the first selected, use break to stop the loop.

for f in bm.faces:
    print(f.index)
    if f.select:
        break

In blender's UI, pressing a button executes an operator. You can give an operator properties and set different values to be used when clicking each button in the UI. This also means you can have one button and choose which value it uses.

An operator with a boolean property -

class MySelector(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'mesh.my_select'
    bl_label = 'sample selecting'

    state = bpy.props.BoolProperty()

    def execute(self, context):
        obj = context.edit_object
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
        for f in bm.faces:
            f.select = self.state
        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(obj.data, True)

        return {'FINISHED'}

A panel to show the buttons -

class MySelectPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_MySelector"
    bl_label = "Selecting"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'

    def draw(self, context):
        row = self.layout.row()
        row.operator(MySelector.bl_idname, text='Deselect').state = False
        row.operator(MySelector.bl_idname, text='Select').state = True

It is also possible to set multiple properties for one button

    b = row.operator(MySelector.bl_idname, text='Deselect')
    b.state = False
    b.value2 = 'Use this value'


Horizontal lines showing in volume scatter shader I am creating a landscape scene, and to get clouds I scaled a cube by a lot in x/y directions and set its material as follows:

A quick render resulted in the following pattern:

It is possible to see transparent horizontal lines in the clouds. Above image was rendered with 16 samples. Higher sample counts (like 4096 or more) resulted in smoother, but still visible lines. What could be causing this? Note: a workaround by translating the vector or changing the scale (even slightly) is possible, but I'd like to know the underlaying cause.

Blend file

Volumetrics shader are simulated by "overlaying several layers of thickness". These are called samples. From the Blender reference manual's page:

  Step Size: Distance between volume shader samples when rendering the volume. Lower values give more accurate and detailed results but also increased render time.

Here's a default UV sphere showing the steps:

Your scene is quite big and deep, so you'll have to decrease the distance (increase the resolution) between these "planes" with the Step size property you can find in the Volume sampling panel in Render tab to hide this effect.

The purpose is to get a finer calculation of the procedural texture you are plugging in.


How to unwrap and bake object created with array modifier? Noob here!
I have a texture that applied to a plane

...and duplicated with an array modifier as so...

What I am trying to accomplish is bake the image(s) onto the resulting mesh.  Is there any way to do that?

Each time I try to UV unwrap the mesh it screws up the array textures and uses the single image.

My purpose for doing this is to bake the texture on an image an import into Unity.  Thanks for any help.

Array modifiers will duplicate the uv of the original mesh so any texture you are using on the base mesh will automatically duplicate it over to the array. If you are wanting for each segment to have its own individual texture then you will have to apply the modifier first before you can make adjustments individually.


How can I turn this math formula into a 3d model? how can i turn a 3d model made in surfer into a 3d file that i can print

I guess you could, but I can't think of efficient way of doing it. Your snowman is a procedural geometry, when most of the 3d computer graphics are based on triangles.
I think problem will be the precision, especially those equations describe volume rather than surface.
I've made quick test for the lemon from surfer example:

import bpy
import math

for x_ in range (-20,20):
    for y_ in range (-20,20):
        for z_ in range (-20,20):
            x = x_*0.05
            y = y_*0.05
            z = z_*0.05
            left = x**2 + z**2
            right = y**3*(1-y)**3

            if left-right<=0.05:
                bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(segments=3, ring_count=3, radius=0.005, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(x, y, z))

you could probably generate a point cloud, and then use Meshlab or CloudCompare to reconstruct the mesh from point cloud


Make hole with right topology My question is simple, but I cant find solid answer for this.
I can make hole in face like this:

But it makes a lot of 3 polygons faces.
or make hole like this:

Is it better to make holes in few seconds like on first picture with a lot of 3-gons or is it right to take time and make it like on second picture with all 4-gons? and why?
I looked at some youtube videos or websites, but they make hole and dont really say anything about topology.

It depends.  The answer to what's the "right" way to do things depends on what you need.  Obviously, one of the components to determining what's right is how much time it takes to do-- and doing your top, triangulated mesh takes very little time.
But doing the bottom, quad only mesh is superior for several reasons, that may or may not matter for your actual use:

The base meshes, with autosmooth at 90 degrees, are fine.  There's nothing wrong with the lazier mesh.  It has a few more vertices than the quad mesh, but then, it has more detail than the quad mesh.  It's important to notice that all those triangles are planar with each other-- basically, we're using autosmooth to separate the questionable components of our triangulated mesh to a single, flat-shaded plane, so the way our normals interpolate across the triangles doesn't matter.
But with subdivision, we see that the triangles aren't subidividing in the way we probably want.  Our quad mesh is smoother than our mesh that uses triangles.
In a fully smooth shaded mesh, we can see that the normals don't change evenly.  Where we have the tightly packed triangles, the normals change rapidly.  We can see the triangles if we look for them.  Again, our quad mesh is smoother, even with fewer vertices.
In our mesh with vertex color, we can again see that the vertex color doesn't change as evenly across the triangle mesh.  Even with fewer vertices, our quad mesh interpolates these values more properly.  (Which shouldn't be surprising, given what we saw for the smooth shaded normals-- vertex color and smooth shaded normals are both interpolated the same way, as is UV or any custom vertex data.)
So if you're not subdividing, and you're not using vertex color, and you're not using smooth-shaded normals across non-planar elements, and you're not replacing your smooth shaded normals with a normal map, or maybe if you're using a material that doesn't even care about normals like emission-- then there's nothing wrong with the triangulated mesh.  So the fact that it's easier makes it better.  But if those things aren't true, then you're likely to run into rendering artifacts that you don't want with the triangulated mesh, and then the quad mesh is preferable.
Note that deformation can affect this, but it can affect this both ways-- sometimes, you'd rather have triangles for animation, and sometimes, you'd rather have quads for animation.


How to make particle system animate in different key frames I have a water spray which sprays particles at a given frame range. In-between there's a break where the spraying stops but after certain frames I want my spray object to spray particles again. How can I do this using the particle system? because currently I only have one frame start and end option. I want the emission to take place between multiple frame ranges.

Try something like this. I used a sphere as an instanced particle. In the field of the Value Node, enter #frame which will make the value correspond to the current frame number as you animate.
I made a simple "solid until frame 100 - transparent until frame 200" setup using Math Nodes set to Greater Than as a mix factor for the transparent mixes. If you are using EEVEE, remember to change the Blend Mode of the material to something other than Opaque, and also disable the shadows under Shadow Mode (as they will be visible when transparent otherwise).


Why does reducing Resolution X increase my camera's FOV and increasing it reduce FOV? I want to create a square image for an album cover that combines a yet-to-be-taken real world photograph (probably taken with a Sony A7S camera) with some stuff I model in Blender. I want the lighting and shadows to match exactly.
To help me better frame my image, I decided to change the output dimensions of my blender project. I changed Resolution X to 1080 px. This appears to have increased the field of view -- Blender shows me more of the things in my scene, which seems backward somehow. I didn't really notice this at first. I set my camera's focal length to 50mm to match my real-world lens and proceeded to make an elaborate scene that looks good in the square frame. Here are two example images to demonstrate the FOV change. Here's the camera view in the default blender file:

Just changing the Resolution X increases the FOV vertically. This is counterintuitive.

Planning my photo shoot, and to make it easier to frame things properly during photography, I decided to change the Resolution X back to 1920. I want to see the blender scene to look exactly like the camera's screen, which is not square. I changed the Resolution X back up to 1920 px and the field of view shrank. Now my camera is cropping the top and bottom of my desired image.
To illustrate, I've moved the camera in the default blender file to closely frame the cube:

Changing Resolution X back to 1920 now reduces the field of view, chopping off the top and bottom of the cube.

I could easily move the camera in blender again, but now I'm really worried that my real-world camera image may look nothing like blender. Note that I didn't change any camera settings or any object locations, I just changed the output dimensions. Also, preparation for the photoshoot is a non-trivial process. Some of my blender objects are enormous and we will be simulating sight lines at the photo shoot by placing some stand-in objects (e.g., a ladder for a 40m building). If I have to move the camera at the actual photoshoot, all these stand-in objects would be in the wrong place and the sight lines would be ruined. I have to do a lot of trigonometric angle calculations to properly place lights and stuff.
So my main question is Why does reducing Resolution X increase my camera's FOV and increasing it reduce FOV?. My more important question is What settings, aside from camera focal length, must I set to ber sure my blender scene match my Sony A7S camera?

In short
If you set Focal Lenght and Sensor Size values matching your real-cam ... it should work. Those two values represent perspective (optics) behaviour, including FOV (sure without lens distortions and other optics defects). Dimension values (Resolution X/Y in px) are as naming states - about rendered dimension, that can be set as cropped or extended result over sensor FOV.

Closer
You have to stop think about render Dimension / Resolution parameters as something that represents real camera FOV. X/Y values here relates to sensor size only in sense of max Width or Height. The rest of format is "cropped" or "extended" over sensor FOV.
To limit rendered format to one of the real-cam sensor size (width / height) you have to choose under Camera Properties > Camera > Sensor Fit >  Horizontal or Vertical. Don't use Auto, this use squared size of sensor.

If you want to stay in range of real camera for example Sony A7S

go to Camera Properties > Camera > Sensor Fit, switch from Auto  to Horizontal or Vertical and set Sensor Size to 35.8 x 23.9 mm
go to Camera Properties > Lens and set appropriate Focal Length (here 35 mm)

These two parameters mimic your real cam. To see what real camera see (real FOV) enabled under Viewport Display > Sensor

Dashed rectangle is Sensor size, green square is Camera object in size 1920x1080 px when Sensor Fit > Horizontal. From that you can see that your sensor is able to capture movie file in 1920 x 1280 px (1.5 proportion).
Anymway with this setup blender camera should mimic real-cam FOV.
By changing X or Y values under Output Properties > Dimension > Resolution you can see only FOV-width is changing when Sensor Fit is set to Vertical or FOV-Height is changing when Sensor Fit is set to Horizontal.

So what is changing here is not Camera Field of View (FOV), but only resolution and aspect of rendered image.
I was always asking my self why this Dimension > Resolution is not a part of camera properties ... and here it is - they are two separate things. It looks confusing just because changing Output > Resolution is changing shape of Camera object in 3D view. That gives an impression I'm changing camera itself, but in reality it is more like you are cutting printed image by scissors or adding more canvas on sides, because sensor and all the optics is still the same unchanged in camera properties.
Any advanced explanation is welcomed, so in mean time ... I hope this helps a bit.
Also for more convenient work to match other real-cam setups try Real Camera addon.

Bug report – Viewport Display > Sensor enabled is working under 2.83, but not for any 2.9x. Since it is just for
reference it should not affect result, but make it hard to illustrate
for you what is real-cam FOV. I'm going to check if someone posted a
bug report.*


Vertices Disappeared I've created a UV Sphere and started modifying the vertices via the various editing tools. When I finished editing and went back into Edit mode, I noticed that some of the vertices have disappeared.
As you can see from the image, the center of the sphere appears to have no vertices.

Can anyone explain in what scenario this would occur?
Thanks for any help provided.

You could triangulate the face, poke it, or merge the vertices together. Also if you want the shape to be rounder, use the loop tools addon to make it a circle.


Select similar vertex in a symmetric mesh I'm looking for a way to speed up my work in blender, i have a mesh, decagon polygon. I want to select all the vertex similar like in the picture below. Is there a quick way to do this ? without doing everytime with mouse. I found the SHIFT+G option but it didn't resolve my problem. Thank you

The simplest way to select everything in that loop but vertices in the middle is to use Shift+G > By Length in Edge selection mode. Select one long edge from the loop and run Select Similar command.

Then convert that selection to the pattern shown on your screenshot by changing Selection mode to Vertex.
However this way may not be the best since it will select all the edges falling under the specified length threshold (length of the active edge).

Another way is to use Checker Deselect to deselect vertices you don't need to be selected according to certain pattern.

First select the edge loop with Alt+RMB on it. Then deselect and select again vertex in between long edges to make it active. Run Checker Deselect from Select menu in the viewport footer or from the Spacebar menu. Change its settings to Nth Selection - 2 (to deselect every 2nd element), Skip - 2 (to skip every 2 steps of selection) and Offset - to 2 (to offset the start of selection).


Principled BSDF image texture isn't appearing I try to add a pbr map right now and I need to add a image texture for that. I plugged the color imput of the image texture into the base Color of the Principled BSDF note. I also unwrapped the plane. As you can see in the picture no texture get shown up in the render. On the 3D view you also can see the material. But why does it not get rendered?

You are plugging a shader node (the Principled BSDF node) into another shader (Diffuse BSDF node). This is not how Cycles' shaders work. You should remove the Diffuse BSDF and things will start working.

Blender tries to imply you shouldn't do this by colouring the node sockets differently. A green output (indicating a 'shader') shouldn't be plugged into a yellow input socket (colour data). However, a green shader output socket should be plugged into a green input socket.

You can read more about node socket types here:

What is the meaning of the color of the node sockets in the node editor?


strange bones rotation in the animations when exporting in FBX for unity I'm trying to export some animations from blender 2.8 but something is going wrong. when I open the fbx preview some animations seem to be broken and others are ok, I tried to change the rotation method from quaternion to euler, something seem to be better but I still have those problems, I tried to see in forums for people with my same problem, there are some but no one of the solutions helped me, I still have this problem, I tried even to see if in the graph editor there are some problems but everything seems to be ok.
I don't know if this is because I use an IK skeleton with a lot of constraints or it's a bone problem, I'm not really good with blender.
I really don't know what to do, please, if someone knows what to do answer me.
Here are the settings for export i've used:

The problem was the quaternion rotation that was in conflict with the euler rotation (because i changed from quaternion rotation method to euler) and the only thing that I could do is to delete all the quaternion rotation keyframes and recalculate the roll of the bones in edit mode "shift+N" (recalculating the roll of all bones in the right way is important to export and mirror animations) because when blender is exporting in fbx it uses all the rotation keyframes and all the deforming/nondeforming bones deformations so sometimes you may see some graphics artifacts in animations so to avoid this there is an option in the armature tab when exporting called "only deform bones".


Fade out objects WITHOUT use of materials So I have a lot of objects with similar animations, but I want each one to fade out at a different time. I already have a lot of materials, so I don't want to make the list that much longer. Is there any way to fade out a specific object without use of materials? Thanks!

When you create your material, just add a transparency node and mix node. You don't need more materials, just add the shaders and key frame the transparency with the mix node. You can group them and reuse also to save time. That's for Cycles. If you use BI, just key frame the alpha in the output node of your material.


How to wait the finish of the bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT',animation=False, write_still=True)? What interests me is basically to stop the execution of my code until the end of the render but at the same time view the progress of the render, considering that the possibility of the "ESC" key that cancels the render.
I am looking on the internet but the situation is unclear to me, I found this:

Is it possible to make a sequence of renders and give the user the option to cancel the process through the UI at any given time?

but it seems quite complicated, I was wondering if there was a simpler solution to my specific case, as my situation is slightly different, as I don't want to render multiple.

Practically:

    ## my code
    ## my code
    bpy.ops.render.render ('INVOKE_DEFAULT', animation = False, write_still = True)
    ## if render is done:
    ###### my code
    ###### my code

Blender's API documentation shows how to use the application handlers. In order to execute a function after rendering is complete, you can use one of the following two handlers:

bpy.app.handlers.render_post - Executed once after each rendered frame
bpy.app.handlers.render_complete - Executed once after all frames have been rendered

The function you want to execute is appended to the list of handler functions through append(some_function), where some_function is a reference to a function. It needs to take one argument, because an object of bpy.types.Scene will be passed to the function. Example:

def some_function(dummy):
    print("some function")

bpy.app.handlers.render_post.append(some_function)

If you later want to remove the function from the list of handlers, simply use remove(some_function). Example:

bpy.app.handlers.render_post.remove(some_function)

import bpy

def some_function(dummy):
    print("some function")

def some_other_function(dummy):
    print("some other function")

# Will be executed once after each rendered frame
bpy.app.handlers.render_post.append(some_function)

# Will be executed once when the whole rendering process is completed
bpy.app.handlers.render_complete.append(some_other_function)

bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT', write_still = True)


Why is there no ouput in the System Console? I'm running Blender 2.78a on Windows. Running the python script shown below, there is no output in the system console.

How can I direct output to the console?

I now can conclude that the black system console window is with Blender 2.78a under PortableApps.com, running from a usb drive. When downloading the zip file directly from blender.org, and unzipping, the console works as described in the manual.


Is there a way to shrink particles to mesh surface? I attempted to create a dripping effect like this:

On a curved surface using this technique, however the long particles don't conform to the surface, looking very unrealistic (it looks particularly bad on sharp corners).

Is there another way to get this effect, or a way to use this technique on a curved surface?

In other words, I want to make the particles stick to the surface (while still being able to slide freely) and somehow leave trails behind them.

Image from Blender Guru

Sardi Pax released a tutorial for applying metaball particles as raindrops to glass, I believe there is no reason that prevents his method from being applied to a curved surface.
If this method is used instead of sculpted particles, they should conform to a non planar surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDte-IzvHlg


Blender to Poser 10 issue I am having an issue where I am trying to transfer my weapon from blender to Poser 10 and I get weird shapes in poser that don't match the figure in Blender.

Blender with weapon:

Then I make it an object using wavefront.

Poser 10 with the weapon imported from Blender, as you can see it does not match the blender image.

Why is Poser 10 doing that?

When exporting hard surface models from Blender to other formats it's almost always the case that you get "weird" shading or even distortions due to smoothing.

One method to prevent that is using "Auto-Smooth Normals" in the Object Data panel.

The two pictures show the same model in Blender and in FBX Review, the first one without "Auto-Smooth Normals", the second one got exported with this option activated.

You can read more about Smoothing in the Blender Maual.


Source engine weapon animation question This is a pretty specific question, so I'm hoping someone with source engine animation experience could answer and explain what exactly I should do.

I've been trying to remove the screen shake when reloading a custom weapon in Left 4 Dead 2. Default weapons do not have it, and I want to keep it that way, but still enjoy the beauty of custom models and animations.
The screen shake is added for realism by the model creator/author.

This video shows what I'm trying to get rid of

Note that it's a different game, but works on the same engine.

So I've taken it upon myself to fix this. I've downloaded Blender and tried to find the source of the problem. I've decompiled the weapon addon and found the file that contains the actual model and animations. I've gotten to the point where I found the animation files:

So the two animations that contain the screen shake is when you deploy the weapon and whilst reloading it. So I think the files deploy.smd and reload.smd fit the description. I don't know what the _layer.smd files are though, after opening them in Blender, they seemed exactly the same as the original.

So after inspecting the animation I think I've actually found the bone (sorry if my terms aren't correct, I'm completely new to the program) that adds the screen shake to the reload and weapon deploy animation.

The thing is that I don't know how to edit it at all, when I play the animation that bone moves ever so slightly which I think fits the small camera shaking that happens in the weapon's reload/deploy animation.
From experience with zbrush and a lot of mapping programs I'm guessing that the "bone" is linked with the camera somehow. So how do I brake that link?

I can add more info, screenshots or even screen vids of what I'm trying to acomplish if needed. Take note that I don't know how to do anything in Blender yet and it wasn't really my intention to learn the entire animating process. I'm just trying to fix this one specific thing..

Here is the actual full model /w animations

I don't know how to unparent it, but removing all the keyframes should remove the motion.

I did it to the file my self

Here is the file.

I would just replace the "_layer" version with that file as well, and rename it, just in case. There does not appear to be a difference though.

If you still want to know how to do it...

Here's how:

Switch to the dope sheet

Press a once or twice until all the keyframes are selected (highlighted in orange). (if they are already highlighted, press 'a' twice anyway, just in case a few weren't selected).

Note: That will get rid of all animation, and we just want to get rid of camera animation. You may have to box select b to just select the keyframes that are on the same row. You may have to expand the higherarchy (on the left) until you can click on the bone you want. There may be a location, rotation, and scale, instead of just a rotation like on my example. If there are, make sure you select all of them. Now drag a box around all those keyframes (after pushing b) so that they are all highlighted. (don't select the first column, allowing you to skip the next step of unselecting it.) (it will be white if it is not selected.)

Just as a check, the source engine may have glitches if there are no keyframes, so zoom in to see things better (scroll wheel) [you can click and drag the middle mouse button to move your view to the beginning of the animation] and hold shift while right clicking on the first keyframe (orange square) to deselect it (right click on the box at the same x location as).

Now it should look something like this.

Now press x on your keyboard, to delete the keyframes. (click delete)

It should now look something like this (except with more columns of keyframes.) The bone you are trying to remove the motion from should be the only one that has its keyframes (squares) removed. If it is not, there is something wrong.

That should be good. Check if the bone is not moving when you play the animation (make sure the other bones are still moving), and you should be good. Now save it and replace the old .smd with the new .smd. You may have to export.

Here is a video that can help you with importing and exporting .smd in Blender. I think it's all about the same still.


Reset multiple shape key values back to 0? If I have a bunch of shapekeys active at varying values, is there a faster way to reset every shape key's value back to 0 rather than do it one by one?

Yes, just click on the X button near the value field.

2.7:

and 2.8:


How to check if an object is deleted? For what I understood, I know that an object can be deleted by running bpy.ops.object.delete() when that object is active.

But how can I verify that the object is deleted?

For example:

o = bpy.context.active_object # object I want to delete
print(is_deleted(o)) # False
bpy.ops.object.delete()
print(is_deleted(o)) # True

What should I write in the function is_deleted?

I would do it by object name

def is_deleted(o):
    return not (o.name in bpy.data.objects)

# or instead of a function,
# obj will be None if the object isn't found,
# else it returns the obj reference
obj = bpy.data.objects.get(o.name)


How can I edit shapekey value without editing mesh? I accidentally set shapekey value to 1 while editing mesh, but I actually wanted to it to be 0.5 How can I change shapekey value and keep it's mesh shape? I want to slide to 0.5 value to get my mesh shape, not to 1 to get it.

Under the Value slider adjust the Range's Max to 2 and increase the Value to 2. Every other Shape Key value must be 0.

Then click on the little triangle under the minus button and select New Shape From Mix. This will create a new shapekey with what you wanted. Delete the original and reset the settings.


Function that prints the location of all the vertices of an active object I want to write a function that prints the location of all of the vertices of an active object.
I have a Cube and I want to print out the location of the 8 vertices of the cube.
I started doing this but I dont really know what I am doing.
def printVertices() :
       Cube = bpy.context.active_object
       lemesh = obj.data
       print(lesmesh.vertices[0].co.x)

Assuming your object is selected, the following code should work:
import bpy

for vert in bpy.context.active_object.data.vertices:
    print (vert.co)

I will also point out blender has an integrated terminal where you can type incomplete python statements (e.g bpy.context.active_object.data.) and press tab in order to print a display of the possible completions. This is very useful to quickly navigate over the properties of bpy objects and gain quick intuition on what you can and can't do.


How to export a 2D stabilized movie clip? So, in the default view, I switched the 3D main view to "Movie Clip Editor".

I then added a video clip, made a bit of 2D image stabilization on it.
I'm happy with what I have now, and I'd like to save it to an output file.

In the properties, I've set start frame to 1, end frame to the ending frame of the video clip. In Post Processing, both Compositing and Sequencer is ticked. Output is set to h.264, etc.

Now, When I click "Animation" in the Render menu, It renders an empty, gray image, that is as long as I selected, but is not the video clip I've been editing.

So, how do I do that?

Also: Suppose I want to use that finished (stabilized) clip in the sequence editor, how do I put that clip into the sequence editor? The only way I can add clips like that, seems to be just adding the original source movie, but I want the clip I've been working on. How do I do that?

After setting up and tracking a video in the movie clip editor, you will want to use the tracking data to export an altered video. The adjusted video you see in the clip editor is only an in-memory adjusted version for feedback purposes.

To get a final adjusted video output you will need to setup some compositing nodes to adjust the "rendered" output. The minimum setup you will want is a movie clip input node, a 2D stabilization node and a composite node, a viewer node will let you preview the result behind the nodes if you enable the backdrop option.

Of course you can also add any other nodes to this for colour correction or adding 3D objects etc.

Now when you press render the result will match what is connected to the composite node.


Geforce 210 with Cycles? As a present I got the Asus Geforce 210. I know that it is a very cheap graphics card, but is it possible to use it for cycles rendering?

Your card is no longer supported supported starting with blender 2.67.
Quote from the manual:

  NVIDIA CUDA is supported for GPU rendering with NVIDIA graphics cards. We support graphics cards starting from GTX 4xx (computing capability 2.0).

And even if you made it work, (See this post) that card has only 16 cuda cores. Rendering on CPU is going much faster...


How can I make an object that is already animated follow a path correctly? I'm trying to make a 3d model that is already animated to follow a path.

Again, my model is already

I tried to shift select path -> Ctrl+p -> Follow Path or just add the follow path constrain, but no luck. I'm using a NurbsPath.

As a experiment I tried to do the same thing with a simple cube, and surprize is working ... what I'm doing wrong?

Demo file  -> http://flester.ro/demo.blend
Demo file2 -> http://flester.ro/demo1.blend

Your object is not parented to the path and doesn't have any constraint. To make it move along the path, you can simply parent it to the path, then select the path, in the Graph Editor > N panel > Modifiers, delete the Generator, then in Properties panel > Data > Path Animation, give some Frames, like for example 100, then play with the Evaluation Time and put some keyframes to move your object along the path at the speed you want.


Weird blender game engine python problem I was trying to create the illusion of a building being destroyed as soon as there is a collision using python. Everything seems to work fine when I use a cube, but it breaks as soon as I use the real building

I have attached a simple version of the problem which illustrates both the cube and the building. Whenever the "player" cube collides with the red cube, the addobject works perfectly. The same thing done with a building produces weird results. (Note they have the exact same settings and they both use the same python module)

Can someone please help me resolve this mystery. I have been cracking my head for ever. Here's the blend file
(Use the arrow keys to move the player cube and collide it with different objects)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3gajcxasv1c2dt/break_demo.blend?dl=0

ANSWER:

If anybody is stuck with a similar problem, then look into scaling. Here's my final code to get it done without using any empty's and rescaling in fly

def decimate(cont):
    self = cont.owner
    scene = self.scene
    self.scaling = [1,1,1]
    scene.addObject(placer_ID, self)
    self.endObject()

Also if it seems that the object gets added, but at the wrong location. Then it is due to the fact that the origin is not set. Try to set the origin to center of geometry or center of mass (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C). You have to set this by selecting the empty associated with the group. Look at this question for more details Replace objects with a group of objects using Python

There is one notable difference between the cube and the building -> The cube has a unit scale (1, 1, 1), but the building is scaled down. Since spawned objects adopt the local scale of the spawner, the behavior you observe, while not desired, is perfectly normal.

To get desired behavior, you need to specify a spawner object (typically an empty) with a unit scale, and use that to spawn the relevant group.

So, the script would now look like this:

def decimate(cont):
    self = cont.owner
    scene = self.scene
    spawner = scene.objects["Spawner"]
    spawner.worldPosition = self.worldPosition
    spawner.worldOrientation = self.worldOrientation
    scene.addObject("cube_parts", spawner)
    self.endObject()

Demo: break_demo_spawner.blend


Can't access "High Resolution" option in Physics Properties So, I was fooling around with beginner Blender tutorials and I was trying to learn how to set a monkey head on fire (random, I know).

Problem is, I'm supposed to check "High Resolution" in Physics Properties -> Fluid -> High Resolution, but the option doesn't even appear for me. I haven't tampered with the software in any way, is there a way to enable the option? I am using the latest version of Blender on a pretty outdated laptop, by the way.

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!

The "High Resolution" option no longer exists.

In recent updates to Blender, the fluid simulation tools (which is what handles liquids, smoke, fire, and anything else fluid) have been completely replaced. This happened in Blender 2.82. The new system uses something called MantaFlow, so any tutorials that use 2.82 or later, or specifically say MantaFlow, should be more relevant.

If you want to continue with that tutorial, I would just manually increase the resolution, which is all that the old "High Resolution" option did I believe.


Driver scripted expression problem Hello fellow blenderers.

In my recent work I try to create procedural football stadium using array modifiers. For that to work fluently I need to set up drivers and this is the point where problems start to appear. I have no idea how to force certain part of tribunes to move along with the rest. My knowledge of mathematics is rather poor and I can't crack what expression use to make it work.

The tribunes are driven by one empty that moves only on Z and Y axis. This Empty determines the height, width and angle of tribunes along with number of seats on it. Further it goes on Y axis then more rows of seats appear, Z axis determines the angle and height. Then I added the element with handrail - obviously it had to be separate object to make it appear every level of tribunes and not every row of seats. Problems start when I slide controllers to adjust width, and angle of tribunes - the handrail element simply does not follow along. I tried for couple days different combinations of expressions and nothing seems to work properly. I am attaching blend file - my drivers probably look like mess. Any other tips about drivers I could use in this project are much appreciated.

Cheers

video example

Blend

Why don't you just use the handrail as a Start Cap model :p


How to find non manifold edges I have this mesh:

With a python script, I'd like to select edge loops in the upper part first:

And the ones in the lower part:

So I can close them some way (by a face, or by adding more loops).
How can I do that with Blender SDK? Thank you.

EDIT: I mean, find the edges by starting from the object data, and not by using the editor...

Select 1 edge of that type
Shift+G >> Amount of Faces Around an Edge.

When you do this, Blender posts the following action it took in python.

As for the raw bmesh method of detecting this:

You can find the Reference in this Link

For getting the Horizontal & Vertical sets in two separate passes, I would inspect the verts like so:

Horizontal Case:

  All Edges Have the Same Z values for the start and end vertices.

Vertical Case:

  All Edges Have different Z values for the start and end vertices.


VRML 2 export not visible I am using Blender 2.7.8 on MacOS 10.12.3.

According to the wiki blender can export VRML2. And that's what I want to do.

I created an empty Blender file, imported an STL, applied a material and searched for the VRML2 entry in the "File -> Export" menu:

As you can see it's not there. But the (as far as I understand) responsible scripts are existing (location: /Applications/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.78/scripts/addons/io_scene_vrml2).

Can you please tell me why the export vrml option is missing?

Go in user preference and under add-on tab search and activate the  add-on VRML2Export


Why can't my materials show color? I need to add a texture? I've followed a lot of tutorials. Every time, in the tutorial they add a material and change the base color and the object changes color. But when I do that I get a pink -Texture Missing- type of color. What am I missing?

I guess I figured it out... if I change the surface from "Principled BSDF" to "Diffuse BSDF" then I can select the color I want. From what I understand, "Principled BSDF" is a shader that combines elements of many shaders. I guess, somewhere, something is going wrong on my computer. Therefore selecting a simpler shader works better. I am using an Intel i5 mobile processor with built in graphics.


Objects aren't visible when I render the image I asked this question earlier without too much context. I attached the file of my blender project to provide better info. Here is what I wrote in in my previous thread:
So when I render the lamp most of the meshes don't show up. All objects are set to be rendered so I don't know why this is happening. Also when I copy the lamp and paste it in a new blender window, the same objects that won't show up when rendered in the original file won't show up in object or edit mode.
I attached the file on the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw9YfCDmAT5BNGVGOU1aRnRKclU/view?usp=sharing

LAYERS

Do the following for every object from largest object to the smallest.  In the object panel / Relations click on layer (1) so it is dark as in the image above, the upper left layer rectangle of 20 possible.  Then click render.
These layers are coordinated with these Render Layer Settings

When a new simple file is created objects are on layer 1 and the render layer settings are showing at least layer 1.  Blender gives the user the flexibility to hide or show these layers at different times and phases.  It can be used as a feature or to create confusion.

If you want to know more you can now search at this website and blender.org and video site for information about [layers].  Quick Summary.  Every file can have multiple render layers.  Every render layer can select some of the twenty layers.  Every object can be on some render layers.  All 3 concepts must be coordinated with other hidden delights for an object to appear in the render.