Need advice on turning a 2D image into a 3D model As promised post #2 for today, all about a particular piece of furniture that i am struggling with.

as you can see from the following picture there is a sign in on the back wall of the club that reads "Fatal Addictions"

At present that is just a flat image texture on a plane.

What I am TRYING (and failing) to create is the blood spatter in 3D.  not terribly prominent, but the idea is that the blood is a molded plastic relief which is maybe 6 inches deep in the real world with a backing box behind it, which would contain a light which would illuminate the blood spatter from behind (the blood being made of a plastic or glass type material).

I want it to look exactly like the original logo which I made in Photoshop for the original second life version, just all swanky and 3D and pretty

I have images of all the components  (The lettering and syringe are going to be modeled separately and the whole thing put together in layers)

here is the .png file of the blood spatter behind it.  I am sure there must be a way to turn something 2D into something 3D in blender, but I have yet to either find a video tutorial, or stumble across how to do it myself and it is getting quite frustrating.

Anyone with ideas or offers of help please get in touch. it would be greatly appreciated.

I started off by adding the image you posted as a material texture on a plane that was UV un-wrapped using the default option that shows up at the top of the list which is called Unwrap.

Then I unchecked the Color channel for this texture and used the Normal Channel instead.  Sometimes when adding a color or greyscale texture as a bump map will cause the effect to look inverted so if this happens then you can use a value of -1.0 instead of 1.0

The image at the left is the Tangent map I baked that captures the bump map as surface normals.

There was some noise in the baked image so I saved it and opened it with GIMP and blurred the tangent map using Gaussian Blur set to 10 pixels.  Now I reloaded this tangent map into Blender and replaced the image that you posted and changed the Mapping Type to Normal Map-> Tangent.  I also changed the -1.0 to +1.0 for the Normal value.

Here is now what it looks like after the blur.

For simple planes like this, it's fine to blur the normal map but for complex objects this will not work well since the seams will become immediately obvious even for a very subtle blur.

One thing I forgot to mention is that normal maps that are saved as .png are in sRGB format and if you plan to use Cycles then they should be set to non-color format.  It doesn't seem to matter for Blender Internal View-port drawing.


Invalid boundary region to join faces I have the following:

I'm trying to dissolve all of those edges so that face is unbroken, but when I select all of them and use Delete > Dissolve Edges, I get the 'Invalid boundary region to join faces' error.

If I dissolve them one at a time, it works, and I can get it down to two edges, like here:

But then those two get that error when I try to dissolve them both individually and at the same time.

How can I get rid of these edges and make this face smooth? This model is intended to be 3d printed eventually.

Having a hole in an NGon is not a good idea. faces have to be filled. An NGon is made of invisible triangles but the link between vertices has to exist! Leaving a few edges makes is possible without crossing the hole.

Your face is smooth (flat would be more exact), unless you want to subdivide it, what you'd better not do with an NGon. Having more edges is not a problem, it's a solution! it won't cause any problem printing it. (it still needs thickness)

NGons are just supposed to make things easier and clearer, some sort of shortcuts, but knowing what is topology and why you sometimes need more is crucial for doing things that looks good.


Extrude in same angle? I have 2 vertices I would like to extrude, but the previous vertices were not straight vertical or horizontal. I am not sure which angle I extruded them in. Is there anyway to extrude these 2 in the same direction as the previous vertices?

Option 1

If the face you are extruding from is planar one way to do this is to use a custom orientation which you can take from that face and use as a local coordinate system for future operations.

In the example I already had a "Transform Orientation" named Face, and Blender made a new one called "Face.001" so as not to override the old one.

Option 2

Select the edge you want to extrude, change the transform orientation in the tool below, to Normal. Hit Extrude, and press (X,Y, or Z) twice until you see an orientation line that matches the direction you want to translate the extrude edge in.


Cycles hard edges in retroreflective material within a face I have a problem with a retroreflective material in Cycles. When i render my scene it seems that some faces get rendered differently. The scene contains only one lightsource in form of an emitting Icosphere.

The following picture shows the used node setup.

Can anybody tell  me the reason for the effect and maybe a solution? I want to achieve a smooth lighting without hard edges, as it would occur in a real world.

This kind of symptom strikes me indicative of a normals problem. If blender believes that different parts of a flat surface are facing different ways (and therefor reflecting different amounts of light), check the normals.

Try disconnecting normal sockets on the shaders. If that gets rid of the artifacts, try previewing what you're passing into the normal inputs to see what exactly is wrong.


Why do some bones in this rig only update their position correctly when I press G? I'm rigging the tail of the bird Piero training course by CG Cookie and I'm doing Episode 29: piero rigging spine/wing. I'm rigging the wing and when I rotate/move a set of chained constraint bones, some of them don't follow the others and I have to restore them by pressing G again to fix it. Is this a bug? I think so, because the author of the tutorial Kent Trammell said that this is probably a bug of Blender. I wonder if someone else has highlighted this situation already. Also I'm using Blender 2.77 and Kent used Blender 2.68 on his tutorial. The bug is still there on 2.77. Check the attached video below to understand better. Thanks.

video : a bug in blender ?

When something doesn't update properly like this it is often caused by a Dependency Cycle. Opening the System Console with Window> Toggle System Console (this option is only available on Windows) you see the message:

Dependency cycle detected:
rig depends on MCH_armSpline.L through Spline IK.
MCH_armSpline.L depends on rig through Hook Modifier.

A dependency cycle is where "Object A" depends on "Object B" for its position, but "Object B" depends on "Object A" for its position. They each depend on each other and as Blender can't determine which object needs to be updated first, it stops updating them.
The Depsgraph - the part of blender which handles these object updates - is currently undergoing a major update and so this type of behaviour might not be an issue in future.
The current 'solution' is to avoid these types of rig hierarchies in the first place. Unfortunately, this is a fairly complex rig so I'm unable to see how you might solve this and still retain the rig's functionality, so you may want to contact the author of the tutorial with this information to see if they can offer a fix.


Color as Custom Property? With objects, there you can add Custom Properties to an object, though it only seems to let you specify numeric values.

Is there any way that I can add a color value as a custom property, such as through Blender's python API?

EDIT: To clarify what I am doing: I am making a set of character models for use in a web comic I am making.  The character models will be "generic" ones for ordinary characters (ie: bystanders, pedestrians, etc.).  What I want to do is put some color field properties onto the armature (which is the parent of all the model pieces and clothing), and then use drivers in the model pieces so that they can pull the color data for the clothing, eyes, and skin.

I wish to use this method because I want to use models in a linked fashion, where I import one or more generic models and set the colors in the scene they are used in after importing, so that I don't fill up my hard drive (or my cloud drive) with dozens of .blend files for every color variation I use.

EDIT 2: To clarify further, I wish for a solution that can be applied on a per-model basis, rather than needing to create an addon that adds the same set of properties to all models.

Here is condensed heavily edited sample add-on an artist requested t use blender as the middleman to mass convert vertex colors data from custom data source, the latter being removed as its not related to the question.

The color value was selected using FloatVectorProperty, specifically with subtype COLOR. This also has the advantage that if exposed through the UI is visualised by the nice UI Color wheel/hex-widget.

The code is split into properties.py and ui.py as this is done for ease of maintainance and separation of concerns, ie storage and display. You can store the custom property anywhere you want I choose object as per the question, the same applies for where the ui appears.

You can also combine it into one script, just need to change registration from module to class and supply each class name.

I generally use a properties group when working with multiple properties, but you can just define a single custom property to attach.
properties.py

import bpy
from bpy.props import FloatVectorProperty, StringProperty, PointerProperty

class ObjectProperties(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    @classmethod
    def register(cls):

        bpy.types.Object.custom = PointerProperty(
            name="Custom properties",
            description="Custom Properties for Objects",
            type=cls,
            )

        #Add in the properties you want
        cls.hexwidget = FloatVectorProperty(name="Hex Value",
                                        subtype='COLOR',
                                        default=[0.0,0.0,0.0])

        cls.test_string = StringProperty(name="Test String",
                                        default="I am a string")

    @classmethod
    def unregister(cls):
        del bpy.types.Object.custom

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

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

This module has specific registration handling as we prefer to get rid of custom info if the addon is not install, design decision.

Here is the UI which will display the value stored in the defined property
ui.py

import bpy

class UtilityPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Utilites Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_utilities"

    bl_space_type = "PROPERTIES"
    bl_region_type = "WINDOW"
    bl_context = "object"

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

        box = layout.box()
        row = box.row()
        row.prop(context.active_object.custom, "hexwidget")
        row = box.row()
        row.prop(context.active_object.custom, "test_string")

__init__.py for completeness

#--- ### Header
bl_info = {
    "name": "Custom Property: Color",
    "category": "Object",
}

import bpy
import bpy.props

from <folder_name> import ui, properties

def register():
    properties.register()
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    properties.unregister()
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

When enabled the add-on adds a custom propertygroup to each Object, which can be altered or expanded as you need.


I can't get emission shader to glow in Blender 2.83 Cycles I created a scene with balls surrounded by glowing lightning. The lightning is shrink-wrapped to the balls to give a Tesla-like effect (not that convincing - but it's the best I could come up with). Anyhow, the lightning shrink-wrapped to the balls is not glowing at all. The emission shader for the lightning material is set to 600 (I started out at 1 and progressively ratcheted it up trying to get an effect to no avail).
I've played around with all kinds of different settings in the Glare node of the Compositor, also to no avail. I changed the Filmic contrast level to high and very high contrast. No luck.
I tried with both a daytime and nighttime HDRI environment texture from HDRI Haven. No luck. I tried with no background texture at all. No luck. I also tried with and without a Volume Scatter node in the World settings. No luck.
The lightning uses a skin modifier mesh that I tried both applied and unapplied.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to get the lightning material glowing like lightning?
Thanks in advance

It's probably best to use a separate glow node just for the lightning in this case:

In the Render Layer options turn on Material Index In your material
under settings use a pass indes that you haven't used for anything
else.
Connect the index MA output to a glow node and add or screen
it back onto the original image.
You can also use the original
colors, if you multiply the image with the mask and let that glow.

Also: the blur node is your friend in this scenario.


How do I use blender masks to make it look like there is magic in my videos I'm working on learning how to use masks in blender. I would like to use the masks to make it appear as if there is magic in my videos. Such as when a person in the video lifts they're hand a certain way, magic comes out of it.

Be more specific, because as a fellow avid magical enthusiast, there are a plethora of ways you can make magical items. Adding emission to make it glow, adding volumetric shading (volume) around the mask to make it look spooky, a change in texture, and/or even distorting the mask is an effective way to make it look like it reacts to hand movements.


Properties (bpy.props) don't update with keyframes and drivers? My properties don't update (with the update function) when animating them using drivers or keyframe.
the value do change in the interface but no update signal is sent!
What am i suppose to do?
Did i missed something?
Is this a known python limitation ?
please don't tell me i need to use a handler to refresh every settings.. :-(

This issue has been brought up to the developers in a bug report https://developer.blender.org/T63793
It is a known limitation.
The reply from Dr Stüvel from the developers team :

The issue is that an object is not "tagged for update" in the
dependency graph when a custom property is changed by Python. "Tagged
for update" means that Blender understands that the object (and
everything that depends on it) should be updated. This is done for a
few reasons:
Tagging the object for update requires a reference to that object.
This is available for simple cases like some_ob["prop"], but not for
nested cases like some_ob["complex_prop"][3]["something"]. Updating
an object could mean recalculating its constraints and modifiers,
which can be expensive. This may not even be necessary for that
particular custom property, but when exactly this is or is not
necessary can be hard to determine. As a result, this could make
Blender slower than necessary.
After setting the custom property, call C.object.update_tag(). This
should take care of the updates not "being seen" by dependencies. It
won't trigger a full redraw of Blender's UI, though, so until that
happens things on screen may still show the old status.

So it might work on bpy.types.Object blender objects, but I don't see how to use it in property groups or in objects which have a number of dependencies.
I found that like you pointed in the comments, the set callback of the custom property is rightfully triggered, but not the update one. This is however a bit limiting since the set callback doesn't carry over the current context which may be necessary to have in the following update logic.


I have a seam in 'Shade Smooth' mode that I can't fix I am a bit of a novice when it comes to Blender and I'm having trouble fixing a very noticeable seam on a mirrored object (a head).
I've checked to see if there's vertices that haven't been merged near the seam to no such luck. I've changed the order of the modifiers (mirror and subdivision surface). "Clipping" and "Merge" are both enabled within the mirror modifier too. I've even copied and pasted one side of the head, flipped it and then tried to merge the vertices but that won't work either.

I hope this isn't a silly question, but I'm only a university student and would really appreciate the help!
Thank you! :)

Its caused by the subdivision modifier being used before the mirror modifier. Click and hold on the 6 dots by the top right of the modifier and drag the mirror modifier above the subdivision mod.
I am not 100% sure why having them in the wrong order makes that line appear, but changing the order fixed it for me. Also, it appears the line gets more pronounced the more subdivisions you have.


How to lock vertex to axis during bone rotation? I am very new to bones, and something I haven't been able to figure out is how to constraint vertices to certain axis.

Consider the following:

This is a simple model with some bones I added. Now, See what happens when I rotate the two middle bones:

I have circled where there is an undesirable deformation. What I would like to happen (but for these two bones only) is for the vertices to be constrained along Y. Basically, I want the vertices to slide along the edge, not rotate around the pivot. Everything else about this is fine to me; I just need the vertices along the edge that are connected to these bones to never move inward (or outward for that matter).

What are some ways to accomplish this?

Consider setting the deforming bone option Relation Parent [Inherit Rotation] False as depicted below.  The bone will still be moved by parent movement.

Here a parent bone is rotated.  Parent bone set to [deform] False.  This is an attempt to emulate your images in the question.

Below a bone constraint.

You can restrict bone axis movement.  In general restrict bones rather than vertices.

The default armature automatic weights were accepted.  Weight paint mode below.

The vertex density supports the curved images.


Fiting uv map to image I want to create a wall for a castle .Lets say that the image i want to fit to that wall is 4x4 (meters). And my mesh is 1.8(lenght)x5.3(height) [also in meters].

I assumed that the uv area (i dont know what it is called , the one i circled)
Is where the image is , which is 4x4 as mentioned.

So i smart unrapped it (stretch to uv bounds and correct aspect)

I also assumed that my uv unwrap is also 4v4 since my image fiting there was 4x4)
Pressed R: 90 ,  (for rotation) then S: .25 (to scale my object bounds to 1x1)
Then S: x 1.8 and S: y 5.3 to fit original size of mesh to image.
After that i did the same thing to another wall size 2.25x2.9 (meters) with the same picture and the result was that they had diffrent size of bricks.

Pls i would apprieciate any help / tip . im kinda new . (the project is to exported to unity and im telling that cause of the nodes) . THanks in advance

*What im trying to say is , how to fit the same image to driffrent wall sizes, and keep image-brick size the same.

what's up fellow beginner! Did you set the rotation and scale before unwrapping? In Object mode, select the Object and press Ctrl+A. Select Apply > Rotation & Scale. This is a helpful tip if you find your uv maps come out with weird aspect ratios.


How to transform an object into another How would you make a lizard smoothly transform into a fish in the blender cycles engine? I have seen animators do similar transformations like this and I have always wondered how. Whenever I try to look up how it is done there are no tutorials on it.

Austin H. the correct answer to this would be using shape keys. Jonathan Williamson from CGCookie has made an excellent tutorial on that some years ago. Here is a direct link to it on vimeo.


Make thick defined smoke I want to create very thick and defined white smoke. Should I model it with displacement or use the smoke simulator? Note: this is a still image.

It's a lot easier to get realistic results with the smoke simulator, however it will take longer.

A quick (and rather terrible) attempt at mesh smoke:

To create the mesh smoke I used a subsurfed cube with a displace and a remesh modifier, which I extruded randomly and duplicated around in edit mode.

Smoke sim:

There are some tricks to getting smoke sim bake times down for a still, for example you can use a faster time scale and/or a quick moving particle system as the emitter in order to get the smoke into position in a smaller number of frames.

To get a nice thick white smoke, try using larger number of volume bounces and a lot of light. In the above images I used 5 volume bounces and a strength 5 sun lamp.

You can set the bounces in Render settings > Light paths:

Also make sure you have a pretty dense volume shader with scattering.

For a smoke sim a simple way to tweak the density is with a multiply node:


How to add an Image to a plane that has a boolean modifier applied? I merged two plains so I can later rig it into a paper folder animation. I used the boolean modifier to unite the two plains. When I go into edit mode the two plains can still be selected individually so I then mapped an image onto one of the faces and the image shows up on the other face too. I haven't made any seams since the plains are still individual units inside edit mode. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

I'm not 100% sure it's clear from the questions what your aim is.

Asuming you'd like more control over how images are displayed on the final object I'd go with one of two options:

Apply the boolean modifier and work with separate faces in Edit mode
Use the same material to both planes (bool operands) but have different UV mappings for them, so that you can use separate areas of your image to texture the final united plane.

In the example below I did this to both planes with the same image texture applied (same material). However, one plane has UV square on the left side of the image while the other plane has UV on the right side.

You can hide the second plane and the final object would still look the same.

You could do different things then:

Shrink one of the UVs to a pixel sized square and locate it over the needed color to have a mono-coloured part

OR

Scale UV by -1 to reverse the mirror effect you have on your screenshot.

Hope this helps.


Mesh / object mode with Pie menu? The following command in edit or object mode is the same to create a new mesh cube:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add

I structured my pie this way but nothing happens - only when I am in edit mode.
I assume because mesh.primitive_cube_add is a mesh object? But it is the same readout in the console, when in object mode I press shift A and select the cube.

import bpy
from bpy.types import Menu

class NewPie(Menu):
    bl_label = "Select Mode"
    bl_idname = "mypie"
    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        pie = layout.menu_pie()
        pie.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

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

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name="Mesh")
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("wm.call_menu_pie", "E", "PRESS", shift=True, ctrl=True).properties.name="mypie"

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie(name="NewPie")

You have to add the shortcut to the Object Mode shortcuts so it would be captured when you are in object mode, so the register function would be like this :

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(NewPie)
    #Add shortcuts
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    #Edit Mode
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name="Mesh")
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("wm.call_menu_pie", "E", "PRESS",shift=True, ctrl=True).properties.name="mypie"
    #Object Mode
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name="Object Mode")
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("wm.call_menu_pie", "E", "PRESS", shift=True, ctrl=True).properties.name="mypie"


How can i fix this render issue? I have some problem with rendering. When I render it renders like this

But When I take a preview blender it looks good, like this;

If you want the blend file: Download

Sorry if you do not understand

The frame you need to see = 26, 32 34-36 and more

Anyway please help me

You have bad topology: essenciatlly non-manifold vertices and duplicated vertices.
It is noticeable in frame 32. If you disable the modifiers, change to solid mode, you will see the strange artifacts on the surface. I tried to dissolve the non-manifold vertexes and to remove double vertexes, then recalculate the normals, and problem is only slightly fixed. On my advise, the fastest way to fix, will be with retopology: you have to remake the head, but this time, you have to try to keep a simple geometry. Try to see some tutorials on how to do retopology faster. If you are in a hurry, and don't have time to do it correctly, you can cheat it by: while in edit mode > press T to open left menu, go to "shading/Uv's" tab> on shading the faces, select flat> press N to open the right menu > press A once or twice to select all the object> on the N menu, under Tranform tab, on edges data, decrease the "mean crease" to 0, and try a render (worked for me). Yet, if I were you, I would consider retopology in the future. Good luck.


mapping geometric shapes on surfaces with little distortion is there a simple way to map shapes, text, things like that to surfaces without distortion, or does it come down to cutting the image and fiddling with uvs? the method doesn't need to be game or animation compatible, just straight forward illustration. Below is a quick example. Or think continuous type on walls following the angles of a room (floor, walls, ceiling)
I guess i can work it out if you hint me in the right direction. If it's possible at all. Otherwise i'll do it manually straighten the UVs, and deal with seems ;)
Thx in advance!

I would use the UV Project modifier.

On the backdrop object just add the modifier.  You need to fill out three things (and make sure to check the Override Image option).

The image
The uv map (does not have to be a pretty UV map, you just need the slot)
The projector object. If you use a camera or a spot light as the projector the Scale values will control the size of the texture. For any other type of object they do nothing, the object scale controls the size.

The node to render this are the same as you would use for any image. The modifier is changing the UV map so the image gets rendered "projected."

It works really well (identically to how building projection works) which means you also get the real life "problems," off angle viewing will break the illusion. Also the focal length of the camera makes a difference (it will look perfect with an orthographic camera.)


How can I make a "Movie Clip" node start at a certain frame of the scene? When I use "Movie Clip" node in Blender 2.7, it always starts at Scene Frame 1. How can I change it in order to make it start at Frame 6, for instance? The movie clip I am using is a Movie FX for another video, and I want to use it with the Mix node.

Thanks

Replace the "movie clip" node for an "Input Image" node and use Movie as source.

Frames will give you control on the source's duration (in frames): How many frames do you want to use?

Start Frame is the frame in the scene at which the video clip will start playing.

Offset allows you to select the first frame of the video source.

Cyclic Will make the cycle of frames start over, if the number of frames is different that those on the scene or if you are using any offset. If you want to hold a frame, before or after the specified number of frames or freeze a frame you would need to disable this box.

Auto Refresh if disabled you will not see the sequence of images change.


Adding a Property to a CollectionProperty After Creating it O, I have this Collection Property:

class particle_instancer(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    particle_object = StringProperty (name = "Object", description = "")
    particle_material = StringProperty (name = "Material", description = "")

bpy.utils.register_class(particle_instancer)
bpy.types.Scene.particle_instancer = CollectionProperty(type = particle_instancer)

And then I have an operator that is supposed to add a StringProperty() to its first item.

If Instead of a CollectionProperty I used the scene as the "Container" for the properties, I could simply do:

bpy.types.Scene.my_prop = StringProperty()

I thought I could do:

bpy.types.particle_instancer.my_prop = StringProperty()

But this leads to nothing as the property doesn't get register and it doesn't give me any error StackTrace neither. So is it possible to do? If yes how could I do?

You can add properties to the PropertyGroup as follows:

bpy.types.Scene.particle_instancer[1]['type'].my_prop = bpy.props.StringProperty()

Internally, your bpy.types.Scene.particle_instancer is a tuple that will look like this:

(<built-in function CollectionProperty>, {'type': <class '__main__.particle_instancer'>, 'attr': 'particle_instancer'})

So, you can index the dict giving you access to the particle_instancer class, where you can add properties.

I got the idea to access the 'type' from this answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/28091/20051


My Base Color texture map is not displaying the black part The basecolor texture displays incorrectly. The black is missing.

The blend file can be found here along with the maps..
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1he7iaioOuj2cvQ6nS4zlD6a1k2lvqWVN?usp=sharing

Ok, I figured it out. my Subsurface slider was turned up too high..


Can we change the color of Ambient Occulsion? I am working on a simple train scene. I turned on the Ambient Occlusion option. I was actually expecting black shadows near the edges (a default type) but instead, there were yellow shades. Is there a way to fix this issue or to change the Ambient Occlusion color manually ??

If I right understand you need a node AO.

Cycles:

Eevee:

You may see tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB7l_IUcQn4


How To Add The Same Shader/Material To Multiple Objects? I want to apply or use the same material for multiple objects. How can I do this without doing it per object ? The target objects already have their own materials and I don't want to override them. I just want to add new material slot  and same material across multiple objects.
I can't use Ctrl+L to link material because it will replace existing material.
Any solution ?

The real case is, I'm building a house (3 floors) with basic furnitures. So I got many walls, floors, windows, doors, kitchen set , fence etc.
All these objects has their own basic material setup :

wall : concrete, white paint
door : wood panel, inox, black frame
window : glass, inox ,black frame, alluminium
etc.

There is a unique wall (wall A) has a material i want to copy.

wall A : concrete, white paint, SECTION

So I want to use this section material into all other objects on the scene (those other walls, doors, windows, kitchen set etc). There are many objects so I'm looking a way to apply this section material without manually applying per object. And I want to keep the existing material :

wall : concrete, white paint, SECTION
door : wood panel, inox, black frame, SECTION
window : glass, inox ,black frame, aluminum, SECTION

I can't find a way to apply selected material to multiple objects without replacing the existing material.
Thanks

import bpy

# Input material's name to append
matname = "SECTION"

if matname in bpy.data.materials :
    mat = bpy.data.materials[matname]
    objs= bpy.context.selected_objects
    for obj in objs :
        if obj.type == "MESH" :
            if matname not in obj.data.materials :
                obj.data.materials.append(mat)
else :
    print("Material '" + matname+ "' does not exist")


Why my blender user preferences input panel is blank? Can't figure it out why my blender user preferences input panel is blank? I use macbook pro?

Try resetting them to factory defualts:

  1) To reset interface AND the current opened file: File > Load Factory
  Settings;
  2) To open a file without loading its interface: File>
  Open, then untick the "Load UI" in the left of the File Browser
  window.

  Ctrl+U saves the current file as Blender default file (the one seen
  when Blender is opened).

  Seen at:
  http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=202110&page=1

Or try updating your version of blender by installing the most recent version:

  http://www.blender.org/download/

Hope that helps! :)


How to cast the shadow of the texture's alpha channel and not the actual geometry of the plane? So i have a simple bush scene in the blender render engine with a basic lamp and ground plane and i have also switched to material shading mode.
The Bushes

The bushes are basically alpha planes with a leaf texture on it, i duplicated and bunched them up together. The leaf textures was imported into blender using the "Import images as planes" addon so the alpha transparency showed up in the viewport.
The Shadows
As you can see the shadows that are being casted on the groundplane are of the actual geometry and there is no affect of the transparency in it.
The Lamp settings

Here are the lamp settings.
The Material settings of the bush

The Question
The shadows that are being casted on the groundplane are of the actual geometry and not of the alpha, how do i make it cast the shadow of the alpha and not the actual geometry of the alpha planes ?
Edit: My main goal is to produce the shadows in the material view mode and not the rendered view mode because i have to switch to blender game engine later.

Blender internal can be a bit confusing in that regard. The objects casting the shadows do not determine how those shadows are received in other objects. The receiving objects determine the quality of the shadow.

By default the receiving objects show the shadow of the pane, not of the texture.

The receiving objects  (in your case the ground plane) have to be set to receive transparent.


UV mapping not filling faces I have tried to map this simple object, but the uv mapping does not correspond to what i see in the textured object. It cuts the image a bit on top and a bit on the bottom of the faces. It does not fill the faces with the texture, even though i have mapped them correctly. Does anyone know what could be happening?
Thanks in advance.

This can be caused by a combination of subsurf and multiple materials.

You'll notice that when you assign the materials to a model with subsurf, in some cases they don't line up with the edit cage. In these cases, if you either apply the subsurf modifier to the edit cage or disable it completely, the materials line up with the topology:

To fix this distortion caused by the subsurf, add supporting geometry or creases.

For adding supporting geometry, the loop cut (⎈ CtrlR) and bevel (⎈ CtrlB) tools work pretty well.
You can change the crease weight of selected edges by pressing  ⇧ ShiftE.


How to extrude a region after I selected extrude vertices only? How to extrude a region after I selected extrude vertices only? I've tried changing 'Extrude>Vertices Only' to something else but I can't because I don't have another option than this one. Here's a screenshot with my problem:

This is how it was before choosing 'Vertices Only':

When you extruded with Vertices Only there were created new vertices connected to existing vertices of the region:

Selected vertices moved away to show what actually is present after extruding

So you don't have any other option to extrude other than Vertices Only from here because technically there aren't any mesh elements selected except for vertices not forming neither faces nor edges. It's possible to extrude only another vertex from existing vertex (connected with an edge to something else or not).

To avoid creating wrong types of geometry delete these created vertices and select the face to extrude from it one more time. If you didn't move vertices after extruding there's an easy way to remove them, select all in that area and run W > Remove Doubles.


Blender collision sensor is triggered twice I have this script with the module collision which is called when the player collides with any of two cylinders in the scene, the module increments the counter in a text object that in a separate scene that overlays the main scene

import bge

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

dynamicText = scene.objects['Text']

def collision():
    dynamicText.text = str(int(dynamicText.text)+1)

This the logic behind the cylinders that triggers the collision and send the message to the text object to increment the counter.

This is the login in the the text object

The problem is that the counter is incremented twice per collision, and I don’t see an obvious way to filter the second time the module is called.

This is the blend file.

If I remember correctly, collision sensors fire twice by design.  Once when set True, and another when False.

This isn't a problem when connected to an And or Not controller (because they check) but in a script you'll have to do something like this:

def collision(cont):
    # Loops through all connected sensors and returns if one is False
    # Basically makes it work like an And conroller.
    for sens in cont.sensors:
        if not sens.positive:
            return
    ...


Can hair particles acquire color from emitter's UV-mapped image? This is a bit convoluted (and I'm still wrapping my head around Blender in general) so bear with me:

I'm trying to create downy feathers on a robin.  I created a basic hair system, cranked up the clumping for a feathery look, made a few weight maps to control distribution and length, and so far so good: fluff achieved.

But what I'd really like to do at this point is to control the color of the fluff based on where it is on the model.  I have a texture mapped to the mesh already (to cover any bald spots that might show through) but that's not doing me much good since the fluff is covering it.

Do I have to make a separate system for the red breast?  Or is there an easier way?

Yes you can, In cycles.

In the hair's material, simply add an image texture, and plug it into the color factor as such:


How can I use a block size of 1m for different sized models using the remesh modifier? I have models that are different sizes, and I am using the Remesh modifier with block mode selected.

How can I keep the block size at a very specific size (1m in my case), regardless of the size of the model?

So for example;  2 separate spheres, one that is scaled down.  Remesh applied separately to both with block mode enabled.  They now have different sized blocks.

One way I found was to join them and then add the remesh modifier to them.  But I want to make sure they are always 1m sized blocks, and not have to rely on joining lots of models each time.

So in this first image they are separate objects with the modifier added.  Even though the remesh settings are the same, the block size compared to each object is different.

In this image below, I join them together then add the modifier.  This keeps all the blocks the same for both objects, but not at the size I want (1m blocks).  Plus I would need to join all my models I guess?

I read that drivers might be able to do this, but I couldn't understand how to set it up.

Here is a link to the images I found, but I don't quite understand what I am looking at:  https://imgur.com/a/h5lBV

Your illustrations are of a scripted expression driver, driving the 'Scale' property of a Remesh modifier with a function of the dimensions of the object to which it is assigned.

A complete description and examples of setting up drivers can be found here, but as a rough start:

Right-Click the 'Scale' field of your Remesh modifier, and select 'Add Driver' > 'Manually Create Later'
Make the object active, and open a Graph Editor window.
In its header, set the Graph Editor window to display 'Drivers'
You should see the 'Scale' driver in the left region; select it .. use N to open the property region on the right of the graph youmay have to fiddle with the graph region's width to get it to appear.

Now as a start, you could fill the panel as shown above. This is a tweak of the setup you illustrated, adjusted so the cubes will be 1 unit in width, whatever the size of your model, or octree depth.

Select 'Scripted Expression'. You may have to give it explicit permission to run in user prefs.. see here.

In this example,the model is called 'Suzanne'. (you can pick yours with the eyedropper). Here I've added 4 variables, using the driver UI: naming them dx,dy, and dz referring to the dimensions of the unmodified object, and od referring to the Octree Depth in the modifier, which I've named 'RM' in its own panel, to keep everything short.

In the modifier, the 'Scale' is (object size)/(modifier base cube size) where the object size is measured by its maximum dimension, and you can implicitly vary the base cube size. 'Octree Depth' is the number of times the base cube is subdivided to give your blocks. So this expression will yield blocks with one-unit sides: max(dx,dy,dz)/(2**od)

This is the result as Suzanne is scaled up: the blocks stay at 1 unit on the side, (the view is tracking back)


Unable to parent bones (not getting the 'keep offset' option) Here Im trying to parent the hand bone and the shoulder bone to the root bone. But every time I try to parent them the only option i get is "Connected" but i need the the "keep offset" option. If I try to parent it from the object mode using the pipette THIS happens. What am i supposed to do here? I've been trying to follow this tutorial but Im stuck at 2:09 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjAJHrLGvBE)

Okay, I got it. I just had to select the armature and the root bone and press Ctrl J (in object mode). Then go to Edit mode and select the bones accordingly AND IT WORKS!


How to automatically complete these edge loops? I'm still learning blender and I'd like to know if there's a faster way of creating these edges (marked in red) in my solid, continuing on the bottom face and up the backside, completing the loop, than manually using the knife to apply the cuts.

One of the method may be using a Knife Project tool. In Edit Mode select all the cross edges with Shift+Alt+RMB (with the edge select mode enabled). Duplicate them with Shift+D, then separate them with P-->Selection. Then, being in Object Mode rotate them along Y axis and scale them by Z axis. Now select the edges, then select the object and enter its Edit Mode (make sure you're in the side ortho view). Press Spacebar and type knife project. In a Tool Shelf (T) check the Cut Trough checkbox. Finally delete the edge loops with X.

Second method may be extruding the top part of the object and scaling it by 0. Select one of the bottom vetex in Edit Mode and snap the cursor to it (Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected). Change the pivot point type to 3D Cursor. Enable snapping tool (click magnet icon and set its type to Vertex). Select all the top vertices of the object, press E, Z (twice) and snap them to cursor. Next press S,Z,0. Finally remove doubles (select the whole mesh with A, then press W-->Remove Doubles) and recalculate normals (Ctrl+N).

Note: I don't know what your topology looks like, but if it looks like the one pictured below you may use a Grid Fill tool.


Weird shapes and lines on solid shapes and low light on cycles I'm new to blender and I have been using blender cycles the lighting is weird and low in my render and another issue is that my shaped are glitching out and showing random lines and shapes on solid objects. I thought It was connecting all vertices but I tested it by remaking the object but no luck.

From your picture, the shape glitching looks like Z-fighting. This happens when you have two objects (or faces of the same object) that occupy the same space. If it is Z-fighting, it will probably flicker when you move around in the viewport.

To fix it, try moving the object around. You can also try going into Edit mode, selecting all the vertices, and pressing W > Remove Doubles. (This is also good to do just on general principle—even just canceling a Shift+D will create duplicate vertices in the same spot.)

I don't know about the lighting issue; can you post a picture of the rendered view so I can see what it looks like?


Object turning grey in rendered view My sword looks fine in solid view, but when I go into rendered view, it turns completely grey.

I have mipmaps off, texture solid on and i have light.

It looks fine in solid view:

;

But when I switch to rendered view, the sword is entirely grey.

.

Link to file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36878
Link to Sword: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36888

The sword doesn't have a material assigned to it.
Create one and create a texture that uses the image using your UV mapping.


Mesh blacks out as I zoom out I imported this .obj from some site and after applying the provided textures the viewport does this.

Zoomed in on the mesh looks fine, but as I zoom out it gets all black. I think it has something to do with textures since it doesn't happen with non-textured surfaces.

here is the .blend

You just need to change the texture filetype to .png instead of.dds


How would you clean this mesh up? I inserted edge loops to create the 'windows' but I have now so many faces. What should I do to have a clean topology without changing the geometry?

If I remove the edges in the middle of the windows (Dissolve Edges option) I loose the geometry. So I don't know how I can clean this mesh up?

Here is the original geometry I want to keep.

ALT select edges in Edge Mode, and X - dissolve.

Update: In response to your Sub-div issue. Instead of just removing geometry, you might look at how you are modeling. In the example below I have made the windows edge loops. The one on the left is all quads, and the one on the right has one N-gon in the window - if you don't mind N-gons. The advantage of this geometry can be noted on the sides [top & bottom] where less faces are needed.


Extrude along three edges I am currently learning how to use Blender. I want to extrude this upper face along the three edges so that it extrudes into the tip of a pyramid, if that makes sense.
Hope you understand what I mean and can help me!

I don't think there's an extrusion, but there is an extension.. sliding those vertices along their edges, beyond the edges' original extents. That would be GG, either holding down Alt, or hitting C, to release the clamp.
The slide won't automatically stop at the point of the pyramid.. it can  go beyond it .. that may not be what you want.


How to copy vertex colors? I duplicated an object with ShiftD several times, then painted some vertex colors on one of the duplicates.

Unfortunately, I think I did this sort of backwards as I can't find a way to copy vertex colors from one object to another.

Is there any way to copy the vertex colors from one object to another identical object?

Vertex colors are object data, so can be copied/linked with CtrlL>Object Data.

This will copy/link all the object data (including mesh data) of the active object to the selected object(s). Doing this after duplicating with ShiftD is the same as duplicating with AltD.


How to render the shadow of an invisible object? Say I wanted to make a render of a ghost. The ghost must be invisible to the camera, but it must still cast a shadow on the ground. How can I block light from passing though an object that is invisible?

If you are using cycles you just have to disable camera visibility.

Alternatively you can make a shader that uses the camera ray as a mix factor for your figure's shader and a transparent one. The camera will not see the object but it will still cast a shadow.


Body is deforming badly, thinking it's because of Catmull-Clark I am very new to Blender, I watched a lot of tutorials and I'm trying to keep up and learn more, but I have been struggling with the following issue, I can't really find any answer and most of tutorials are really old.
So I am working for some models for a Dota SFM Animation. I have the models from Valve in .fbx format. They come rigged and everything is done. Basically, I got the model, tweaked some stuff (literally just scaled a couple of faces) and then retextured a bit. Everything good. But I think I created a problem after applying Catmull-Clark (I just want to improve their quality), because when I go back to Valve's SFM and animate, the body behaves very wierdly, it looks like there are literally no bones and everything is elastic.
Here I have some screenshots. I would like to know at least what causes this, where do I fix it. I really need a beginner explanation...
Here are the legs of my character in the default pose.

And then when I try to move them around a bit.... the legs just get completely deformed

And everything is like that really, feels like it's playdoh.
In my mind, what I'm guessing is when I applied Catmull-Clark I created more vertices/edges or something? And there are some unassigned vertices or something. No idea, but when using the model without Catmull-Clark, it works pretty much fine (I mean even before, Valve's models are a bit scuffed, but still way better than what I get). I really need the version with it though, it looks a lot smoother and better. As for the weight paint, I don't know, I am comparing both the old version and the new one and they're literally the same, so I'm not sure if it's from that?. I have no idea how to start on this, so everything is appreciated.
PS: If needed I can post the model but really I don't need someone to just fix it for me, because I'm going to do more models so I need to know how to fix it, so if you can please explain. Thanks a lot for reading (and sorry if it's an annoying question)
EDIT: The model:

So the biggest difference between your pictures is that in one, the armature is unposed, and in the other, the thighs appear to have been rotated 180 degrees.  The solution to that problem is, as the old doctor joke goes, "Don't do that."  If you want your model to look good, don't pose the model in poses that a real person could never match.  If that picture is from a realistic pose, you'd want to include that pose in the file to demonstrate the issue; I haven't been able to recreate it from your picture (with just a bit of effort.)
Your model does feel a little bit playdough-ey.  I can see what you're talking about.  In this case, the reason for that are the weights, which feel a little bit diffuse to me-- not sharp enough.  You might consider using a weights/smooth operation, on all groups, with a negative expand/contract, and see if that improves your experience of it.
One thing that you may not realize is that you've told Blender to subdivide the model after the armature modifier, but it's very unlikely that SFM has the real-time subdivision that Blender has (because CC subdivision is costly, and so game engines don't do it.)  If you're getting any subdivision on your export, it's probably being applied to the model before the armature.  Subdividing after an armature is usually preferable for animating purely in Blender, but if you want to get a feel for how it'll look in SFM, you'll want to drag the subdivision modifier up in the stack, to above the armature modifier.
Another thing I notice on this model, that may be contributing to your feelings about it, is that there's quite a bit of volume loss on the joints.  You might consider enabling "volume preservation" on the armature modifier-- but then again, you might not, as this might not be something supported by SFM (the game engine will be doing the deformation, and only in ways that it knows how.)  There are some ways to change the "topology" of a model to better hold the shape at the joints that don't require this, and you might consider researching joint topology.  You might also consider "corrective shapekeys", assuming shapekeys are supported by SFM.


subdivide all faces whose area is bigger than 1mm until each face area is smaller than 1mm I have a mesh as follows. I would like to subdivide all faces, where the area of each face is bigger than 1mm, until each of those faces has an area of no more than 1mm.

Is there a way to do that in Blender or any other software?

You can downdoad the model here https://gist.githubusercontent.com/umhan35/127041505840cf2259d98d2db37dea48/raw/45ffa8bf440fe393f0ed0913984b8cb8acf8c102/caddy.stl

Thanks!

Using the Dyntopo method:

The problem is the long edge

Yes, you can do this with Blender. Enter Sculpt mode and set the Dyntopo resolution to 1000 (divisor by blender units) Subdivide Edges, Constant Detail and press Detail Flood Fill.

Set the Refine Mode to Subdivide Edges so it only divide edges that are longer than the wanted length but leaves shorter. In that way you can keep the geometry intact instead of loosing definition.


Pixel Coordinates of Image with Python I need to get Pixel coordinates of an image. Here is explanation:

In the Image Editor, I can see the coordinates in the bottom left corner by clicking on the image. Is it possible to get the coordinates with Python? Solution for this question Pixel Coordinates of Rendered Image with Python doesn't help, because it works only for rendered image and I need this for any image.

Eeeeeeh… that answer sounds horribly complicated to me!

Assuming you are getting mouse coordinates from event e (from invoke or modal callbacks of an operator), and assuming that operator runs into the main ('WINDOW' type) region of the UVEditor space, something like that should work (code not tested):

region = C.region
reg_x, reg_y = e.mouse_region_x, e.mouse_region_y
img_size = C.space.image.size

uv_x, uv_y = region.view2d.region_to_view(reg_x, reg_y)

img_x, img_y = uv_x * img_size[0], uvèy * img_size[1]


Unable to export object to 3ds file I recently downloaded some models from the internet and I'm trying to export them to 3ds files. However, when I'm exporting them, I get an error saying:

object %r cannot be exported to a 3ds file

And, well, I'm a noob when it comes to blender, so I was wondering if somebody could fix this problem and get the two models exported to 3ds files.

This is one of the models. The other one I need exported to a 3ds file is included in the .zip file. (I need both of them exported to a 3ds file.)

You can download the models here.

Your models exceeded the max polygon limit for 3ds files, which is currently 65536. I've decimated the models for you to go below that number. You can download the zip here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mwxzr447792digb/Dragons.zip?dl=0

If you would like a more detailed explanation regarding 3ds exporting please visit this thread:

Export object to a 3ds file error

Have a nice day!


How to display line using Measurelt between two vertex I'm using Blender version 2.83.  I have enabled the Measurelt addon. I can view the distance between two vertex in the Measurelt panel, but I cannot figure out how to display the line and measurement in the 3D viewport.  In the picture I have select two vertex assigned them to group C and changed the color to red.

You need to click the Show measurements button.


how do I delete an add-on in 2.79? I installed an add-on, it didn't show up so I restarted Blender. It still didn't show up so I thought I'd load it again (I didn't check to see if it was in the add-on list). What happened is shown in the attached image.

Try going to both of the directories and just remove the files completely. Then try installing it again to the Blender Foundation directory, checking every time if the add-on is visible in the list.

Edit: as batFINGER said, deleting the Users...\measureit folder would also suffice presuming that is you main blender directory.


How do I make all these faces lay flat ? without changing the scale? I might just be overlooking a really obvious way to do this, but here's my issue. I want to make all of the triangles shown here completely flat. I know I could just scale them along the z axis but they need to be the exact size they are now.

This is the project I'm working on:

This is the top view of my project. They all look fine from here, but when you look at the side view:

You can see they're all at different angles. So is there a way that I can make them all completely flat without changing the scale?

First create a plane that you would like to align them all to.

Second If they are not already individual objects, go into edit mode and hit P to separate by loose parts.

Then enable snapping by clicking the magnet button and set up the settings as you see here:

Finally, select the parts in object mode hit G to move them. Put your cursor on the plane, then they should rotate to match the plane.


How do I make a new face from intersection of faces I created two objects, a hollow tube and a frame that I need to join so that the tube opens into the frame.  I joined the two objects where I want them and I'm trying to remove the faces of the frame to open it up to the inner walls of the tube.  I can't figure out how to put edges along the path where the frame's faces meet the tube's faces.

Well, I'd bet there was an easier way, but here's how I ended up solving this.  I created a new object from the vertices on the inside edge of the tube.  Then used that with a Boolean operation to cut a hole in the walls of the frame (though I had to move the frame away from the tube to make this work, then moved it back into place after the cut).


How can i slow down the Animation Speed of ALL Animations in a Project? Hey i made a Animation and everything is going way to fast, is there an option to slow down ALL Animations in a project and render it again but slower?

It depends on if you want to slow down the animations or the render:

To slow down the animations themselves, go into the Dopesheet, put your blue cursor at frame 0 (the cursor position will determine the operation center), select all and scale up with S + drag.

To slow down the render itself, i.e. increase the amount of frames as if you were shooting in slow motion, go into the Properties panel > Output > Dimensions and play with the Time Remapping values. The Old and New values allows you to set the ratio between the current speed and the one you want, for example to double the time you need to choose a ratio of 1(Old)/2(New), to add 20% choose 10/12 or 5/6, etc. If you’ve slowed down by a half you’ll need to double the Frame End value, otherwise you’ll only render half of the whole animation.


Eyes turn red when posing character I created a character, used rigify and now, when posing, the eyes turn red. Their texture kinda moves, however they don't when I just move them in Object mode.
The character does an animation, where he sits down (just basic for testing). I will provide the .blend file, knowing that it isn't really cleaned up and that there are some backups in it.
Google Drive for the blend

Frame 0

Frame 10

Frame 30 (moved the light a bit so you can see it better)

Procedural eyes + armature = bloody-red mess
The eyes are built procedurally. The shader makes heavy use of the object coordinates and is a bit prone to changes in the object's origin and scale.
You have parented the eyes to the armature. This applies an Armature modifier which deforms the mesh. The eyeballs don't get deformed but moved down when you play the sit-down animation. The origin (orange dot) stays where it is during the animation, just the mesh is moved. This finally messes up the procedural shader of the eyes. The iris disappears and the bloody back of the eye with all the veins begins to cover the entire eyeball.

How to fix Rigify eyes
In a nutshell: remove the Armature modifier from the eyeball objects and parent them to the bones MCH-eye.R and MCH-eye.L of the generated rig (not the metarig).
Make sure the origin of the eyeball is at the center and the bones of the metarig are at the center of the eyeballs else the eyes will stick out of the head when they are rotated. You can use the 3D Curser (Shift+S pie menu) to align them.
If the bones are a bit off re-generate the rig to have all relevant bones in the right place. Remember to make a backup copy of the mesh with the weight paint if you did already some weight paint. Then align the bones with the eyeballs, and re-generate the rig from the metarig.

Parent the eyeballs to the bones MCH-eye.R and MCH-eye.L of the rig. The MCH- bones are on layer 31. In Object mode, select the first eyeball, then select the rig additionally (eyeball is selected red, rig is selected in orange). Switch to Pose mode, select the bone, and parent the eyeball to the bone (Ctrl+P, Parent to  ... Bone).

Once you have (re-)generated the rig and parented the armature to the mesh you need to weight paint the eyelids (or transfer the weights from a backup copy if you already did this step).  See Why are my model's eyes deforming so badly? for details.
Hope this helps ...
I can see you ;-)


Creating a "bubble" shape lense for goggles I have made these spiderman styled goggle frames for a project I am working on, after modelling the frames I duplicated the inner edge of the goggle frames, split to a new layer and then inset this selection a few times and adjusted each inset edge loop to create a more pronounced curve shape for the lense. My question is if there is a way of making the bubble effect a little more pronounced, clean and even in curvature? I first attempted to add a sphere and distort to fit the shape of the frame but this looked worse than my current attempt which is the one I have attached.

If you have a nice number of vertices in the perimeter ( I think you do.. 12 on each side of the triangle?)

Then:

One inset
Delete inner face, and select new perimeter
CtrlF (Face Menu) > 'Grid Fill'..

.. can give you a nice topology, in which you can select a central vertex, and
 O Proportionally Edit it. Set the Transform Orientation to 'Normal', and GZZ bulge the vertices outwards.

If you need to conform to existing geometry, you can hide the outer edge-ring (blue in the picture) while you're doing the proportional edit.

If when you unhide the outer ring the transition is too sharp, you can select  all but the vertices on the perimeter and  CtrlV > 'Vertex Smooth' them.


2.8 Sculpting Resolution? Newbie sculpting question. When using dynotopo, it looks like a resolution of 10 is a low resolution? Am I understanding this correctly? If so, what number would be considered high resolution for final character detail? Cheers!

The size used by dynamic topology relates to the visible size of the mesh details. You can also think of it as distance between vertices.

So the smaller the size used, the smaller the details, which means more vertices in your mesh that are closer together.

What the size value refers to depends on the detail type selected :-

Relative Detail uses screen pixels
Constant Detail uses blender units
Brush Detail uses the brush size


How do I import a soft body bake into another project? I bake a soft body simulation with 'disk cache' and 'Use Library Path'. When I copy and paste the soft, baked mesh into another project file, or append it into another project file, the bake does not transfer.

I solved it.  Turn off disk cache. Turn off Use Library Path.


Why is my half resolution render taking a quarter of the time of the full one? I render an animation at 200 samples; $1920$ x $1080$, using Cycles.

A still takes about 2min44s to be rendered.  Tiles are $480$ x $360$.

I noticed that when doing half resolution renders, the same still would take only 43s, which means only 26 % of the full resolution time.

Is it a normal behaviour ?

That is simple math, area doesn't scale linearly, it has a quadratic relation to the dimensions of the shape, if you double the size you quadruple the area hence a four times the render time.

If the area of a $4 \times 4 = 16$ and you halve it then $2 \times 2 = 4$ which is one fourth

Hence you get a quarter of the area and consequently one fourth of pixels to calculate; that's about four times less computation power required leading to roughly one fourth of render time, give or take, for the same scene and settings.


How do you do an intrude instead of extrude? Lets say I want to decrease the height of the back of the chair, or all of its legs, how is the easier way to do it? I mean without cutting each of them into two pieces and deleting the remaining parts.
If I choose all the bottom faces of the legs, press E , and then drag up, it will create hollow spaces. Same thing probably applied for the back of the chair.

The answer is to simply just grab all the faces on the bottom of the chair, press G to grab them, and press Z afterwards to pull the faces only vertically. This isn't intruding, but just moving faces. Simply put, drag the faces up without pressing E, in the case of the chair legs. I hope this answers your question!
On another note...
if you press I, then inset faces, and then extrude, moving up into the mesh, it will create a hollow space with depth, rather than just 4 faces with no cap. This second response probably doesn't answer your question, but this is probably what 'Intrude' means in Blender.


What is the best view to sculpt in? Is it in the persective or orthographic view I tried sculpting a human head and according to the tutorials I watched, they normally sculpt in orthographic view and so I did so and in orthographic mode, my head models actually look good but once I switch to perspective mode then the model looks terrible, nothing is in the right proportion. I also tried exporting it to Unity in order to find out if it's only in Blender and in unity my model still looks weird.

I then tried to model in perspective mode and in that mode its extremely hard to sculpt so I want to know which mode is the right one to sculpt in so that I can continue sculpting.

There isn't necessarily a "correct" view to do anything in in blender.

However, know that in almost all cases, perspective view will be the view you will be viewing your model in afterwards, and is the physically correct way that people view the world.

Orthographic mode is really useful, especially if you want to be able to compare distances and look at a model directly from the side, but I don't usually need to do that in sculpting, so I would recommend perspective view.

If you could elaborate a little more on what you mean by "extremely hard to sculpt", I might be able to provide better advice.


Why does the satin fabric appear so metallic to me while it is a dielectric material It started with making a skin shader. I am still convinced that we see a rough colored gloss in skin a little bit. Which is in contrast to the theory that a material is either dielectric or a metal.

I even got more convinced when making a shader for fabric, there are some fabrics that appear quite metallic to me like Satin, some sports-wear, new carpets, and some more.  It feels like I can tell now how much of the rough colored gloss is present in a material like grass 5%, sand 10%, bricks 10%, satin 70%, skin 5%, some plastics 10% etc.

But this is in contrast with that theory that a material is either dielectric or a metal. Any idea what I think I'm seeing then ?

Maybe a theory is that for example in Satin, the light bounces in the grooves of the fabric, and this causes the reflections that reach my eye to now have some color influenced by the color of the fabric.

So I tried to simulate that in Blender:  A diffuse with a PBR reflection node (Cynicat Pro), and gave it Bump with a distorted wave texture with a very high scale (1000). The color of the gloss from the reflection node didn't change toward the color of the diffuse shader which was pink.

Then I tried to make the gloss more rough and that didn't work either. I tried that setup with 16 gloss bounces but that didn't have any effect.

So I am a bit confused, I hope some one is able to clarify what I believe I'm seeing. I made a thread on BA as well

The theory I had seems to be correct: the light bounces in the ridges of the fabric and give the gloss a color toward the diffuse.  We cannot simulate this in blender with a bumpmap or a normalmap. So I did an experiment with real geometrie.  Here two illustrations. First illustration shows that we cannot achieve this with a bumpmap. Second illustration shows that we can achieve this in blender only with real geometrie and enough light bounces.


Eevee reflections clipping at the edge in render but not viewport In rendered view(left) displays like how it should, however when rendered the reflection is clipped at the bottom(right). THe plane has a principled bsdf with 0 roughness and screen space refraction turned off. Screen space reflections are of course turned on, half res trace is turned off. I tried reducing edge fading to 0 but it didn't change anything. Anyone know how to fix this?

Turning on Overscan in Render Properties > Film solved the problem. Still not sure why camera view is different from the render though


What are the differences between proxying and parenting in ManuelLab? When it comes to ManuelLab, what are the differences between Proxying and parenting?

In ManuelLab, you may Proxy items to the mesh before Finalization. This means it will share the same origin point as the body, and when you pose the body and fit the proxy ater calibration, it will match the pose by location.

I am raising this topic because, time and time again, I have tried proxying clothes to the mesh, and while it worked and did exactly what it was supposed to, the sleeves also twisted with the arms, which is unnatural with clothes.

Parenting is much the same as proxying, only it moves as the skeleton does, not after fitting the proxy. They are quite similar, yes. However, when trying to do this with cloth meshes, use the play button to run a simulation (make sure to raise the frame count) and avoid proxying. This is especially meaningful for long-sleeved clothes. Short-sleeved clothes will be mostly fine.

This is no attempt to defame proxying (or even parenting), as I have found it plenty useful, but I have learned to keep in mind how cloth meshes will look, even to my absent-minded dismay, when proxying and expecting the ends to not twist around.
At this time, I am not sure if proxying works with motion capture, but I wager it would be plenty fantasic and useful if it does.


adding a boolean modifier to a rig/bone character so I was doing animation and wanted to add boolean to a character but I can't find the modifier tab is there any way I could add a boolean modifier? I've searched the web but couldn't find anything all I know is that it has to be a mesh but I don't know to change a bone/rig to a mesh while still keeping the animation

The armature is a separate object. If you look in the outliner, you will most likely find the character mesh object parented to the armature. You should be able to add a boolean modifier to that object.


How to remove background HDR of rendered image using compositing? How to remove background HDR of rendered image using compositing? I tried the below, and it doesn't seem to work.

The best way does not use compositing, but avoiding having a background image in the first place.

You would just go to Properties panel > Render tab > Film  and check Transparent.

By doing that your background will not be part of the render image and will be transparent through an Alpha channel:

Transparent enabled on the right

That being said, there is a way to do it using the following Compositing Nodes setup.

The Color Key takes out the black from the Environment pass. The Invert changes the matte map to preferable colors. The Alpha Over node actually adds the transparency.

The following .blend file is the one shown in the above Compositing Nodes screenshot.


How can X, Y, Z and W go above one in a quaternion animation on Blender? I am trying to import a collada file generated by Maya on Blender and that file was exported using what I think is the correct representation of a quaternion (x, y, z and w elements are between 0 and 1) and that file is not imported correctly by blender.

I am not an expert in mathematics but as far as I know, the elements x, y, z and w on quaternions are normalized, so they should never go above 1, they always vary between 0 and 1. So, Maya is correct.

When I create a quaternion animation on Blender, I see that Blender allows these elements to go above 1 and apparently the sky is the limit.

How can that be? Is there a way to make Blender work with quaternions between 0 and 1 and import that file correctly?

But....Blender does work with quaternions between 0 and 1.

There's an interesting video put out by Nathan Vegdahl (that's part of his Humane Rigging series) that discusses quaternions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRD0PgsY3pU&index=14&list=PLE211C8C41F1AFBAB
If you go to about 10:31 in the video, it talks about quaternions only being valid between 0 and 1. By 11:09, he mentions what Blender does with values greater than 1.

Not sure what would prevent the file from being imported correctly.


How would I save my objects as-is in the middle of a rigid body simulation I want to save my objects in place as a movable editable entity. I have been searching the internet for an answer, but I have failed to find one. I have this broken wall, that I used rigid body to make fall and I would like to save all of the rocks as a single object but nothing I do is working.  I've tried to bake, duplicate, and everything I do just resets them to before the animation.

The option you are looking for is 'Apply transformation' button under the physics tab in the toolbar of 3D view.

Select all the broken wall pieces and 'Apply transformation', when you are on the desired frame. After that, while all the pieces are still selected, click on that remove button. This removes the physics on these objects.You can join all these pieces with 'Ctrl + J', if you want to make them into one object.


Add modifier to all objects and change modifier-property Hi ladies and gentlemen,

I'm adding a decimate modifier to all objects in my scene and try to change the ratio-property afterwards on demand. I want all my objects to have a maximum of 1000 polygons, so my code for Blender looks as follows:

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    modDec = obj.modifiers.new("dec", type = "DECIMATE")
    if (modDec.face_count > 1000):
        modDec.ratio = 1000 / modDec.face_count

I actually thought this was pretty simple and straightforward but it won't work. All my objects get the modifier but the ratio remains "1". If I leave out the if-statement and just write something like modDec.ratio = 0.5 it works...the objects get the modifier and the ratio is actual 0.5. I don't get what's wrong with my code. Can someone please help me with this?

[EDIT] I forgot to mention that I work with Blender 2.78b. Sorry for that.

You have two problems.
First you are looping through all the objects, not just the mesh objects. So for example when the loop gets to a camera  it can not add the decimate modifier, and the script brakes.

Second issue with the data not being available (modDec.face_count). This is yet another scene update issue.

Here is the changed code.

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.type == "MESH":
        modDec = obj.modifiers.new("Decimate", type = "DECIMATE")
        bpy.context.scene.update()

        while modDec.face_count >= 1000:
            modDec.ratio *= 0.5
            bpy.context.scene.update()

Notice the if obj.type == "MESH": simple if statement that is only working on the mesh objects.

The real change is the two bpy.context.scene.update() lines. You need two because of the while statement.
Last thing I changed is your if(modDec.face_count > 1000): line. You need to keep changing the ratio while the face_count is bigger then 1000.

The way you were setting the ratio it did not actually get the face count down below 1000.


Can I use Project from view while having several images for different sides? I basically was following Ian Hubert "tutorial" https://youtu.be/xWq-ZPMhai8?t=30 , where he uses this function, so he textured 4 humans from their photos, but he also managed to texture their backs somehow, which I don`t understand how to do in this mode. Would be happy for claryfying!

What Ian Hubert does is a bit punky, but as his characters are far away it works fine. Basically I think he projects his mesh from view, then moves the vertices in the UV Editor so that the UV matches as much as possible with the picture:

Then, for the sides and back, he probably unwrap this faces and put the UV islands over a part of the picture that will texture correctly this part of the body:

At the end, if you plan to paint in Weight Paint mode to bring some corrections to the projected texture, duplicate your object, unwrap again, but this time with the Smart UV Project option (with a enough margin), give it a black image texture, bake the original. Now you can paint over the new object, for example with the Clone brush, without affecting the original picture, which could cause problems because overlapping UVs:


Duplicates Hotkey entries in Preference window? I just found out that I have all kinds of duplicated shortcut entries in my preference window.  Is this normal?  I tried to delete the duplicates, but what happens is, the actual hotkey gets deleted as well.  And whenever I delete one, it always scrambles the order of it.  No way of knowing which one is the actual.

I hope there is nothing to be concerned.  I do not notice any problem while working on models.

This looks like an addon problem to me. For ⇧ ShiftQ you have entries for call menu and call pie menu. I would say you have multiple addons adding the same shortcuts, or you have more than one copy of the same addon with different filenames. It could also be an addon that does not unregister itself properly leaving the shortcuts behind after you disable it.

An install of blender includes an addons folder that contains the official addons, then there are 3 places blender looks for data files, You could have a scripts/addons and scripts/addons_contrib in each location that can contain the same addon, if the same addon uses the same filename you will get an error saying you have duplicates, but it is possible to have the same addon saved with different filnames that can register without error and create the duplicate shortcut entries.

Expanding your duplicate keyboard entries will show the operator/menu name used by the duplicate which can give you some idea as to what addons are causing the problem. If the addon is not obvious by the name, the operator or menu name used for the shortcut can be used to search through files in the above directories to find where it originated.

If the name is two words separated by a . then this should match the bl_idname of the class used -

class CLIP_PIE_marker_pie(Menu):
    # Settings for the individual markers
    bl_label = "Marker Settings"
    bl_idname = "clip.marker_pie"

If you get a name like CLIP_PIE_marker_pie then it may match the class name or only part of it (the later part most likely) in the file. This is also an indication that the addon has been disabled but has not cleaned up it's keyboard shortcuts.

After finding and removing any duplicates you may also need to disable duplicate addons and remove duplicate shortcut entries, then "Save User Settings" so they stay disabled next time you start blender. You could also use File->Load Factory Settings, re-add your personal adjustments and then Save User Settings to get a clean start.


python subprocess to ffmpeg/ffprobe errors i'm having difficulties on an addon to help importing and organizing files in the VSE timeline. Basically, i want a little function to retrieve media informations, and return them. I found a lot of piece of code to do that online, but they all returned same kind of errors... Here's my code function :

import bpy
import subprocess
import shlex
import json

# function to find the resolution of the input video file
def findVideoMetada(pathToInputVideo):
    ffpath="C:\\Program Files\\ffmpeg-3.3.1-win64-static\\bin\\ffprobe.exe"

    cmd = ffpath+" -v quiet -print_format json -show_streams"
    args = shlex.split(cmd)
    args.append(pathToInputVideo)
    # run the ffprobe process, decode stdout into utf-8 & convert to JSON
    ffprobeOutput = subprocess.check_output(args).decode('utf-8')
    ffprobeOutput = json.loads(ffprobeOutput)

    # prints all the metadata available:
    import pprint
    pp = pprint.PrettyPrinter(indent=2)
    pp.pprint(ffprobeOutput)

    # for example, find height and width
    height = ffprobeOutput['streams'][0]['height']
    width = ffprobeOutput['streams'][0]['width']

    print(height, width)
    return height, width

file="C:\\Users\\tonton\\Documents\\TAF\\CODE\\work Blender Edit\\test sequence\\test_002.JPG"
print(findVideoMetada(file))

And here's a screenshot of the error,

i tried to put raw strings, to do several things to avoid spaces in the cmd launched by the subprocess, but it doesn't work...

Any idea about a solution ? :)
Thanks a lot !

This works fine on my machine (Win10, Blender 2.79, ffmpeg 3.2):

import bpy
import json
import subprocess

def find_video_metadata(video_path: str) -> (int, int):
    """Find the resolution of the input video file."""

    ffpath = r"C:\cygwin64\home\Sybren\ffmpeg\bin\ffprobe.exe"

    args = [ffpath] + "-v quiet -print_format json -show_streams".split() + [video_path]

    # run the ffprobe process, decode stdout into utf-8 & convert to JSON
    ffout = subprocess.check_output(args).decode('utf-8')
    ffinfo = json.loads(ffout)

    # prints all the metadata available:
    import pprint
    pp = pprint.PrettyPrinter(indent=2)
    pp.pprint(ffinfo)

    # for example, find height and width
    height = ffinfo['streams'][0]['height']
    width = ffinfo['streams'][0]['width']

    print(height, width)
    return height, width

fname = r"A:\RIP\prooi\title03.mkv"
print(find_video_metadata(fname))

I've changed a few things:

Not used shlex to parse the string we construct ourselves. Since you didn't quote the filenames containing the space, my bet is that shlex couldn't split it properly. By avoiding this altogether and constructing the argument list explicitly, it just works.
Using 'raw' strings using the r"" prefix avoids having to double every backslash.
I like using different names for different things. I split the doubly-used ffprobeOutput name into ffout (which is a bytes object) and ffinfo (which is a dict).
Not overriding the built-in name file.
Using PEP8 for naming (so no camel case for function names and local variable names).
I added type declarations to the function.
Turned the comment into a docstring, and removed the "function to" bit of it; the "def" keyword already indicates that it's a function, so there is no need to repeat that.


How to recreate this "default-like" look with Cycles? could somebody please help me to recreate this particular look with the cycles render engine?

I want to create this specific default-like look to present my 3D scans with all their fine details and render single images of it with a very high resolution.
It looks like a mixture between a clay-like material, sharp shadows and fine outlines.
I know, that this image was rendered with Marmoset Toolbag. I was able to get close to it with Workbench + Matcaps, but to render in high resolution I think cycles would be better?
I am very thankful for any ideas!

Go to "[your Blender installation
folder] \ [version]\datafiles\studiolights\matcap" and select your matcap.
make a node setup like above. (note that values in mapping node are changed)
add a sun.
from here on you can adjust the nodes and sun to mimic workbench more.

here is basic 2 matcap with sun strength to 3:

my node setup is sourced from this video: https://youtu.be/QdlBB4-uW_E


Shadow "Cast Only" option in Blender 2.8 seems to be missing I'm using Blender 2.82 and Cycles. I've got an object that I want to be invisible, but still cast a shadow.

I've done a fair bit of Googling, and as far as I can tell the "Cast Only" shadow option that used to exist in Blender 2.7 and earlier, no longer exists. I checked material properties and object properties. It's missing from the manual. If I uncheck "Show in Viewports/Renders", the shadow disappears too.

I realize there are some complex workflows described in other threads about how to accomplish this, but I was wondering if there's some obvious way to do it like before, that I'm missing.

Thanks!

Object Properties/Visibility/Ray Visibility/Camera on/off


How to animate weight-painting? I want that particles would appear from one corner, and like a wave would go through all the plane using vertex density. Basically just to animate the weight-painting. Is it possible do it, or maybe there is some other ways to make similar effect?

I think you're looking for the Vertex Weight Proximity modifier. It lets you assign vertex weights based on, for example, the distance to the target object's geometry, which you can animate per usual.


Render result is completely blank A scene I made is not rendering, at all.
This grey screen stays the same and nothing changes.

Here are my settings:
 [

Possible causes for blank output on rendering
Please follow the links in blue for further details
1 - No Surfaces

Make sure Surfaces is enabled otherwise Cycles has no geometry to render

2 - Objects have been disabled for rendering

Objects might have been disabled for rendering in the Outliner. To fix enable the camera icon in the outliner

The Eye icon is to toggle object visibility on the 3D viewport.
The Arrow Icon toggles selectability.
The Camera Icon toggles Rendering.

3 - Lights

There are no lights in scene.

To fix add some lights.

Lights are set at 0 power. To fix change the values to a higher number.

Lights have been disabled for rendering.

Enable the camera icon in outliner window.

The lights might might be blocked by objects in the scene

Lights have incorrect Shader Nodes with incoherent output

4 - Strips on the VSE

There are strips present in VSE and the Sequencer box enabled in Post-Processing. The VSE takes precedence over scene rendering.

To fix clear the strips on the VSE or disable the Sequencer box.

5 - Object or camera are in a different render layer

Objects might be in a layer that is not included as in the render Layers

To fix include the layer where the objects are as part of the render layers.
How Render Layers work

6 - Camera is blocked

The camera might be behind a wall or another object

An object in front of the camera might be restricted from viewport display, making the issue not apparent in the viewport or render preview.

Camera clipping might prevent surfaces very close to the camera from showing in the viewport but still prevent it from rendering correctly

If Backface Culling is enabled in the viewport surfaces might not block view in the viewport but still show in render.

7 - Camera is set incorrectly

The rendered image is that of the active camera's view. Not necessarily the view you have active in the 3d vieport. Press Numpad 0 to show camera view.

Active camera is aiming in a different direction.

Wrong camera being rendered.

You can have multiple cameras in the scene, but only one can be set as the active camera for rendering. Check that you are using the correct one.
In the Properties Window you can determine which camera is the active one

Or select the camera you want to make active in the viewport and press Ctrl+Numpad 0 to select the active camera.
8 - Object as Camera

An object in the scene has been set as camera.

To fix set the active camera back to an actual camera object.

9 - Output node disconnected

Output node in compositor might be disconnected. The composite node is the final output (not the viewer node).

10 - Wrong exposure

Film exposure is set to 0 (Cycles)
Unless you have a good reason to change it. This should be set at 1.

11 - Clip Distance

The clip distance for the camera is set incorrectly.
Make sure that you set the clip start and clip end so that the camera can see within a distance range that encompasses the scene. Geometry that is too close or further away than the set parameters will not render.

If your scene is too large or too small, if the scene is not within the range defined by the clip distance, then the camera will not "see the scene". Enable Display Limits on the camera to visualize the clip range.

12 - The scene is completely out of focus (blurry)

Focus for the camera set to 0 and lens aperture (f-stop) is set to a low value.

The scene is so out of focus that you only see gray or some color that is predominant in the scene.
To fix, change the distance value to the actual distance form the camera to your object, and maybe try a higher number for the f-stop.
To find where your camera is focusing you can enable display->Limits. If you move the focus you'll see a cross mark that indicates where the focus point is:

A trick you can do is use an empty. Move the empty to the place you want the camera to focus on and select the empty (or any other object as the focus target).

Also read also this related post: Why does my object not sow up ?


Make constraints to fit cylinder into centre of icosahedra joint This is a little cylinder I want to fit into the exact centre of joint of icosahedra. How to make proper constrains?

Distance from cylinder to each bend must be equal
Central axis of cylinder should be normal to circumscribed sphere.

untitled.blend

geodesic dome online

You can get there in three steps:

Select inner faces of the joint
Co Mesh > Snap > Cursor to selected (3D cursor is the center for new objects)
Add a cylinder with six sides - it will be precisely in the middle


3D desktop application with Blender I'm currently in the process of looking for the best tool to develop an application. Based on the following specification, I'd love to hear from you blender experts whether it's the right framework for my project.

I'd like to export the final product as both a .exe and .app file.
It's not a game but rather a mesh utility tool.
I'll be doing a lot of mesh modifications, solving intersections between planes and meshes - for example.
I'll need a UI for user
I'm proficient in Python.
I'll need tools such as Pandas, scipy and numpy.
I'll need to import/export 3D file.
All of the above will be required in final desktop app.

If Blender sounds like a plausible candidate, could you point me towards the modules I should be using (for mesh, UI...)? Any limitations I should be aware of?

If not, do you know an alternative?

Currently, I'm developing a web application that allows architects to load their models in a-frame (their models are decimated, processed and texture's are baked). I've been initially using c4d for this but I had a big limitation: I couldn't include python packages (I needed numpy). Then I decided to move to blender and It's working nicely.

I don't actually know how you could include blender in a .exe or .app file, but since blender it's open source and multi-platform, you should not have big problems. You'll probably have to download the repo from git and do some tweaking.

Since you will have to solve a lot of equations, you could consider using libigl https://libigl.github.io/
It's actually a header-only library (in C++ with a python interface) so you could actually use it along with blender, if you want to. I haven't done it, but I'm coding a mesh decimation algorithm with libigl to be include in blender (for academic purpose)

Hope this helped


Render_pre handler should run operator with transfrom_apply I wanna apply the rotation of an object, each time a certian case is true. The problem is, this has to work while an animation renders. So bevore it render the frame x, it checks if the case is true and if it is, then it applys the rotation of the object. I use this in my Rubik's cube rig. The apply_transfrom doesn't work in this case.

Here is the testing .blend:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hz8nxx87b3wucx4/untitled.blend?dl=0

Open the .blend, run the two script, and press F12. The goal is that the rotation is applied on all cubes.

Update: I found the solution myself. I use this script here: Apply mesh transformations to primitive_uv_sphere_add()

First see this and compare it with your code:

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

# call this only once
# it adds vector attribute to all Object entities
bpy.types.Object.vector = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty()

# design your callback function like this
def test(scenes):
    # select the group
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    for obj in bpy.data.groups['Würfel'].objects:
        obj.select = True

    # apply rotation
    bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=False)

    # store the locations
    for obj in bpy.data.groups['Würfel'].objects:
        loc = obj.location
        obj.vector = Vector((round(loc[0], 0), round(loc[1], 0), round(loc[2], 0)))

If you do a test call with test(bpy.context.scene) it should execute without errors.

If you do bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(test) it will work fine on every frame change.

When the objects go into render pipeline the transformations are already 'set/converted' so there is really no data to transform in the pre_render handler.


How to harden edges using subsurface modifier on corners (Mandalorian helmet) I'm trying to model a helmet using subsurface modifier, there is a section where the corners are projecting causing a bevel. I have mean crease the entire border section which didn't help. And also tried some perimeter around the mesh to see if that would make the corners more square but its ruining the topology. If I start adding more loops ( vertical & Horizontally) again its deforming the shape of the helmet. How can I get the corners more like the reference image?
I've also included the Blend file.

This topology gives a good result, it just needs a bit of adjustments at the end (like flatten on custom axis) to avoid pinching. I didn't try to fix the rest of the topology (but here is an answer that might help).


How to control materials on the Brick Texture? (Blender 2.8) I made a basic brick wall using

Texture Coordinates (Object) ⇒ Mapping ⇒ Brick Texture ⇒ Material Output

Now I want to refine that by adding surface bumps and better PBR texture rather than just "color".  But when I plug the Principled BSDF node into “Color1”, rather than having it just use white, I get nothing but a magenta result.

In the above node map, change it to plug Principled BSDF into Color1 and it does not work at all.

Don't connect sockets like that. Yellow outputs go to yellow inputs. Green to green and so on. Green is for shaders. The material output node is expecting a shader (green), not a texture in RGB (yellow).

Read:

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

and

Cycles - (Shader) Nodes - inputs outputs - What are the exact data types?

To have three different Shaders controlled by the brick texture the you can do the following: Use pure black (0) and white (1) for colors 1 and 2 in the brick node and either black or white for mortar.

First let's look at the output of the brick texture: black and white bricks (and some mixture depending on the value set in "Bias")

We want could use that value information as the fac to mix two different shaders Yellow Bricks and Red Bricks:

What were white bricks are now Red ones, and the black ones Yellow.

Now let's examine the contents of the Fac output from the Brick Texture:

That is the information of the "Mortar"

You can use that information to control yet another mix shader.

This way you can have a completely different shader for the mortar as well.

Additionally you can also use the Mortar as displacement.

If you need more separation between the color 1 and color 2 (so that there are less bricks that are a mix of the two colors) you can add a color ramp in between the color output of the texture and the first mix shader. That way you can control the contrast of the image for the mix.

From there on you can do whatever other adjustmets you want.

In case you are wondering... why are we connecting yellow outputs on gray input sockets? Doesn't that contradict the very first sentence on this answer? Yes there are cases where you can break the rules a little.

Yellow sockets are Red, Green, and Blue  color information (RGB)

Gray ones are a single channel (greyscale) info.

By turning the color 1 and 2 to black or white we are creating grayscale information, so that can be used in a gray socket.

Likewise if you plug a gray output socket to a yellow (color) input, all you will get is monochromatic information.


How to affix video overlay to 3D model? I'm looking to make a video demoing an iPhone app. I have an .mp4 file with a video of the interactions on the device. Now, I want to import it into Blender as a 3D plane and affix it to a model of an iPhone so it can be animated.

Here is an example of the effect I am looking for:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/162753618

Any pointers would be much appreciated!

Use the Image Texture Node for the material applied to the screen portion of the phone. The Image Texture Node accepts videos as well.

Remember to UV unwrap your object.


Arrows show wrong axes Arrows show wrong axes. Something went wrong with the axes and they began to show absolutely wrong directions. Maybe someone know how to fix this?

Change the transformation axis as indicated by the Yellow Arrow below.
Try the different selections to see the effects.

Transformation Axis.

Sometimes a stray keystroke can have an unintended effect.  So many keystrokes.


Texture on Each Side I placed a simple bump wave texture on my model but on the side faces it stretch:

this is the node setup:

Someone know how may i fix this problem an make the texture uniform all around the model?
Thanks a lot in advance.

To avoid distorted textures and have better control you can use a UV map.
Then you can rotate different parts depending on your needs.

Create a UV map for your mesh
Connect it using the Texture Coordinate node
Manipulate it either directly or using the Mapping Node.

Unwrap your Mesh. You can also move individual parts of your UV map.

Connect your UV map and use Mapping node to manipulate it


How do I make the pattern angle match the direction of the brushstroke? I just want the pattern for my brush to follow my brush strokes.
How do I make the pattern do the same thing as in the example? (On)

Craig D Jones is almost right, the answer is Rake.

Both sculpting and UV painting both have the same option that will do what I'm looking for.
The Rake option when checked makes the pattern follow the brush direction.