How to create an Inner Glow node effect The Inner Glow effect is a filter that allows to soften the edge while keeping a clear line of the main silhouette at his center. It is heavily used by Blizzard and many other stylized studios to project decorations and text to an high poly sculpture with a stylized crack look like if a dagger was used to sculpt it.
Michael Vicente has made a tutorial about this technique in a PDF: https://www.pearltrees.com/s/file/preview/139604217/OrbBevelTIP.pdf or in a video: https://youtu.be/eGHU8DI6fo4?t=5183

I try to achieve this:

It is important that we get only thin lines and not holes in more complex and wider areas. If we look at the displacement horizontally it should look like a V with a thin tipping point.

And here is what he gets by projecting it, as you can see there is just a think line at the center and the depth is flat:

The final result after using the Polish modifier of ZBrush:

The source image for your tests:

With the Inner Glow effect:

Use the Erode Node

A simple Dilate/Erode node in Threshold mode with "Distance" set to the same value as "Edge" does exactly the right thing.

With the math node "Power" afterwards the result matches the image from the tutorial perfectly.

Additional explanation

Linearity of the gradient

The Threshold mode of the Dilate/Erode node has a linear falloff. Here is a proof:
In the viewer-result you see the texture above and the output of the erode node below.

Congruence of the results

Here is a proof that the result of photoshop's inner glow effect is the same as the result of my proposed node graph above. The differences still visible are caused by different image formats and scaling blurriness.


Plot graphs and play animation with bpy or bge I want to capture emg signals and through a dll plot a graph in  blender and run animations in a virtual arm(based on certain values dll). Should I use Blender Game Engine (using bge) or just run a script in Blender Render? Any idea how can I do this?

What you use will depend on what result you want to have.

You would most likely use the game engine if you want to watch your animation in real-time as the data is collected.

You would use a render engine (whether that is BI, Cycles, Luxrender...) if you want to capture the data then render the animation and watch the video you made hours or days after you captured the data. You can also do this in two stages, capture the data to file and then use that data to create the animation in blender. This options also gives you the flexibility to clean up or enhance the animation before you render the final video.

It is also possible to combine real-time viewing with an after the fact video. To do this you would have your script moving items in the 3dview as it is recording the animation for later rendering. Note that recording the animation for later adds some overhead that may slow down your "live" playback depending on the scene complexity.

This answer provides an example of collecting data from an external process without blocking blender. I expect it can be adapted for use in either scenario.


How do I animate spinning arm with spinning end I have a model that looks like this.

I want to animate it such that the arm with the blade swings around but at the same time the blade should rotate around when it reaches the middle like.

I'm not entirely sure how to set something like this up.

Set the origin of the arm at the point where you want it to rotate (note that I added a cylinder object as axis, that will be used later).

Select the blade, then shift select the arm, and press CtrlP to parent the blade to the arm.
This will make it move and  rotate with the arm.

Select the blade only and add a Copy Rotation constraint to it. On the Target object I selected the cylinder on which the arm spins, but it could be the main object as well or an emtpy.

The blade now follows the movement of the arm but the rotation on the Z axis determined by the cylinder object.


Which normal input socket should I use when I have a mix between shaders? Since we have the option to use normal maps in Cycles via the normal input socket, this question frequently pops in my head:

In the simplest mix, diffuse and glossy, should I connect the normal map to the diffuse or the glossy shader?

What about other shader mixes?

If you want to give the whole material a structured surface, put it into both. In over 90% of all cases, this is probably what you want.

But there are others:

If you want to material to look like the paint or glossy part is smooth and even and below that, there is a bumpy surface (application example: Wood finish in a car interiour), then add the normal map only to the diffuse shader of the shader.

If you want the material to look like it has a smooth general surface but a slightly scratched paint or top layer, it might make sense to only connect it to the glossy shader (probably the less frequently used case).


Offset animated color change over many objects? So I'm making an animation where I want about a dozen or so objects which all look the same to change their color, but with each object doing it at a different point, making a kind of swipe color change effect. But I don't want to make a bunch of different materials and animate each individual one. Help Please?

(01) (Difficult the first time) A color texture influence driver can be used ... with a numeric [custom property] .. 24, 48, 72 and so on ... on the objects ... object data.  This would not be a lengthy script.
You must locate the target of the script in the outliner datablocks view with great care as depicted below.  This requires effort because it is deep hierarchy .  Most people I  suspect have rarely used the datablocks view. The Blender UI debug info  will not behave as desired. Object location x, y, z scripts have better debug info.  If you attempt to write a texture driver from the properties window it will fail.  Blender will not give warning.  Note the driver is located on the Cube object not its material.  Below I typed a distinctive numeric value of .678, not 0 or 1,into the field to help me locate it in the datablock view.  Note the absence of the driver in the texture panel.

The final render will be correct.
Code

frame > 20

(02) Special case .. if the objects are static and identical with simple color... you may be able to join them and UV Map them together. Use a single texture that is an [image  sequence] to slide the color across them.  Your image sequence may need to be structured as twelve logical strips or color.

(03) Materials and textures are not the same .. I would consider 12 textures ... perhaps copying colors ... and keyframe the color influence of the texture. I am assuming you will not have more than 12.  (I am supposed to avoid asking for clarification according to the yellow box text).  This would avoid a lengthy script.

(04) The more objects you have the more utility of the driver or script.


Why is my viewport acting strangely? I have been using blender for a few weeks onw and i came across this viewport issue that happens whenever i go to wireframe or solid mode but not on material preview or rendered. this issue moves all the object in a sort of line pattern and makes other object vanish. this glitch makes it look as if any object not on the shadow was not there. I am using cycles on gpu compute with 256 samples on the render and 32 samples on the viewport and rendering tiles of 288x and y. I have a ryzen 5 2600 on the laetst driver, an rtx 2060 running on the latest game ready driver (aka Game ready driver Version 466.27), a b450M/ac on the newwest BIOS version, and a 480Gb SSD with only 50Gb of free storage left (dont know if it matters). I experienced this issue seemingly out of nowhere and i do not know what it caused it. I do have many modifiers active and some applied on several different objects. I also have many different objects as parents. any help is appreciated.

Looks like you activated the clipping region function by mistake. Just press Alt+B to "fix" it.


How to avoid terminator artifacts while still using smooth shading and the new pointiness attribute? I'm sure we're all familiar with the Cycles normal bug (aka terminator bug) that causes bad shading on sharp edges when smooth shading is set. The normal fixes to this are to use higher levels of subsurf (which lessens but does not remove the problem), or the Edge Split modifier which solves it by splitting the sharp edge.

I want to use the new Pointiness attribute in Cycles materials. However, it doesn't work on areas that are Edge Split, because the edge is now technically open. If I turn off edge split, then it works, but I'm hit with shading glitches again.

What can I do that would let me use pointiness and edge split (somehow get the pointiness data before the edge split is applied?) or counter the shading glitches in some way other than edge split?

Yes
You can use autosmooth (added in 2.71) instead of edge split:

It works exactly like edge split, but without actually splitting the edge.


bpy.data.object 'NurbsPath' name is "NurbsPath.001" and cannot be "NurbsPath" while bpy.data.curves name can be either "NurbsPath" or "NurbsPath.001" In python console if I

def selected_curves():
    print("active objects:")
    crvs = []
    for obj in bpy.data.objects:
        if obj.select:
            print( obj.name)
            print( obj.type)
            if obj.type == 'CURVE':
                print('is a curve' )

then call

selected_curves()

I get:

  active objects:
  NurbsPath.000
  CURVE is a curve
  NurbsPath.001
  CURVE is a curve
  NurbsPath.003
  CURVE is a curve

Then say try an lookup above in bpy.data.curves say:

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath.000']

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in
KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "NurbsPath.000" not found'

While:

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath']

yeilds

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath']

but

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath.001']

yeilds

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath.001']

as does

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath.003']

yeidling

bpy.data.curves['NurbsPath.003']

Why is object name NurbsPath, but curve name NurbsPath.001.  Is there some logic to this?

Some blender basics.

bpy.data.objects is a collection of objects of type bpy.types.Object, as is context.selected_objects and context.scene.objects.  The properties and methods of bpy.types.Object are available to all objects of any type.

Each object has a data part. When an object is created its type is set according to its data.  This cannot be changed, eg trying to give a 'CURVE' type object a 'MESH type data will result in an error.

Each object has only one data member.

>>> for ob in C.selected_objects:
...     ob.name, ob.type, ob.data, type(ob.data)
...
('Empty', 'EMPTY', None, <class 'NoneType'>)
('BezierCurve', 'CURVE', bpy.data.curves['BezierCurve'], <class 'bpy.types.Curve'>)
('Cube', 'MESH', bpy.data.meshes['Cube'], <class 'bpy_types.Mesh'>)

for example the curve type object above has one data member of type bpy.types.Curve.  All curve type objects in the file will be in the bpy.data.curves collection.  The curve object is not equivalent to the curve data object.

>>> D.objects['BezierCurve'] is D.curves['BezierCurve']
False

but rather the data part of the object.

>>> D.objects['BezierCurve'].data is D.curves['BezierCurve']
True

Can set the data to any other data of the same type.

>>> C.object.data
bpy.data.curves['BezierCurve']

>>> C.object.data = D.curves['BezierCurve.001']
>>> C.object.data
bpy.data.curves['BezierCurve.001']

Each data type, can be used by none or many objects.  There is no direct reference from a data object to its object. To find all the objects that use the "BezierCurve" data in a scene would  use something like

>>> [o for o in C.scene.objects if o.data is D.curves['BezierCurve']]
[bpy.data.objects['BezierCurve']]


How do I darken shadows from a shadow catcher in the compositor? I am working on a shot of a car sitting in a plane integrated into a video I shoot.
When I rendered the image sequence I separated the shadow from the car (when I was rendering the Car itself I disabled the Shadow catcher plane and vice versa) to give me more flexibility in compositing. Then I imported the shadow sequence and the car sequence in After effects.
When I am trying to darken the shadows more using curves the shadow is not affected with any change. I imported the sequence in blender compositor but the same thing happens.
Does anyone have an idea to solve this issue?

I would say, you should affect Alpha channel not the RGB values for correct result.

connect EXR alpha channel to RGB Curve node
to combine image and alpha channel back add Set Alpha node

RGB channels of Shadow Catcher probably does not contain any information at all.
Note: for images like PNG (without separate alpha channel listed) you can use Separate RGB node.


How to make a cross tee pipe fitting in Blender? When I try to do it, it looks VERY sloppy.  I assume there's an easy way, I just don't know how.

Here is kind of what I'm going for:

It can't have a lot of faces though so the Subdivide modifier is out of the question.  I don't mind if it's a little blocky but I just can't figure out how to merge cylinders like that.

Final:

I do know that you said you don't want to use Subdivision Surface modifier, but just check those numbers:

Steps:

Select four faces around a Cube.
In Tools Panel choose Extrude Individual and enter desired number or move your mouse (I've entered '1').
Delete selected faces.
Add Subdivision Surface modifier.
(Optional) Add Solidify modifier.
(Optional) In Data tab check AutoSmooth and set Angle to 60 degrees.


How do we access Vert, Norm and UV data then print to a text file using Blender/Python? Basically, I've been trying to implement the code from the following page but I'm having difficulty tying the subtleties together.

Get indices of vertices of triangulated faces in python

The block that is over a light gray rectangle is the array that will be passed to a VBO.  That is what I'd like that output from Blender to look like.

For the example code I am using, I would like to change every instance of the following:

print(indices)
or
print(plain_verts)

into something that will print to a text file in a specified folder on my hardrive.

***To address a comment that was made:***My question has nothing really to do with C/C++, what I am looking for is the Blender Python equivalent so that I can end up with the same file which is the Vertex, normals and uvCoords. In a 1 dimensional floating point array.  Basically I need a Python script that can emulate the following code.  I want to replace all the fluff below with a script that is run from within Blender.

So basically, how do I end up with text with a file that has something like the following in it?  By using Python in Blender.

For example it would be called  modelName.txt and would contain the following.

GLfloat modelName[] =
{
    vertex, normal, uv,      #Vertex 1
    vertex, normal, uv,      #Vertex 2
    vertex, normal, uv,      #Vertex 3
};


Automatic superposition of similar objects? Is there a way to superpose objects automatically by shape recognition or something like that in a way to compare their shape easily ? Thank you !

Selecting objects by mesh similarity isn't a feature that Blender currently offers. Theoretically this could be implemented through an add-on.

In edit mode there are option to select similar areas on the current mesh. This is not shape recognition though.


How to export step file? With default blender or any other addon. How can i export .STEP file. I have download the FREECAD software. Imported the file in Freecad and exported in STEP. It export but in folder no files created. Anyway or how to export step file. Thanks
Video exporting

This really should be in a different exchange server but...
Yes, I watched your video...
Using the Part workbench, click "Create shape from mesh" then select the new object and export it.
Blender creates mesh objects, FreeCAD operates on "solid" objects. They use very different internal mathematics to calculate the shape. STEP format is a "solid" format so it cannot operate on a mesh. You should use Google to learn about the differences, it's very interesting...


When I join two objects with logic, the logic from one is lost In Blender Game Engine (BGE):

I am new to the blender game engine.  I was making a small game of a ball moving and jumping.

Two Balls(Spheres) are the main objects. One is controlled by the keyboard  the other by joystick

I Was expecting that when the two spheres are joined together the controls will be added together also., so there will be one ball  controlled by both the keyboard And Joystick.  When I Join the balls I  get one control only.

Can anyone tell me how to join the two sphere without losing the logic on the other ball?

As far as I know Blender does not support merging logic bricks. It can completely replace it via a copy command.

As mentioned by Duarte Farrajota Ramos merging meshes does not care logic bricks.

I think it is possible via Blender Python. But I do not know if anyone ever created such an add-on.


Strange horizontal stripe on a surface with a Cycles material applied I am getting a strange horizontal stripe with rendering a curved surface with a wooden material applied by using the Cycles renderer. The picture below basically tells it all:

I've uploaded the Blender model here:
The Blender model for reproducing the problem

As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong neither with normals nor with the geometry itself at the location where the stripe appears. Nor does it seem to be a texture mapping issue since if I switch to the "textured" display in the main editor pane, the stripe goes away and I can see the texture mapped exactly the way I want.

I've also played a bit with the node editor for the material to check to see if there are certain nodes that could contribute to this strange effect, but to no avail :(

Hopefully someone experienced from the community could give me a hint what's going on since I seem to be out of further ideas to try.

Thanks!

I suggest that you turn off your current [sun] lamp for rendering.
Add a new [plane] with emission material and use this as a light source.
The visibility settings of the new [plane] should have camera visibility off depending on the placement.

All these actions should take 3 minutes or less when you have practiced them.


Texture isn't showing up I've spend all my yesterday painting a model, but today when I load it up the texture is no longer fully showing - instead, I only see the base color I picked when creating the texture. In the "Active Tool" I can still see the mini-icon of the the full texture, so I stil quite hope the work is not lost.
Thanks for any help, and sorry for my poor English

If you did not save the image texture externally first, you will not have access to the image when you reload the file. I only know this because I have done this many times myself!
In order to maintain the file, save it from the image editor:Image > Save As.
Then choose a location on your drive to save the image.
When you paint on it again, you will be able to see it when you reload the file, and remember to go to Image > Save every so often so you don't lose any work!


Using 3rd party Python modules I'm currently developing a script for Blender to handle Mesh Frequency Decomposition.

The script is nearly complete, but i need one more thing: The SciPy library to compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

Following the installation instructions on their site, I'm able to install it as well as Numpy. Numpy works fine, but I can't even import SciPy:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/CAF_FD.py", line 4, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'scipy'
Error: Python script fail, look in the console for now...

By the way, I'm working on Linux 64 bit and I've installed SciPy and Numpy with my package manager.

Edit: When I try to use SciPy with a terminal prompt, it works.

Python3.4 in Blender is bundled within Blender. It doesn't share libraries with system's python (see this related post).

So, to use extra libraries you need to install it into /blender/2.72/python/lib/python3.4/.

OR you can remove /blender/2.72/python and Blender will fallback to using the Python installed on the system (however the versions must be compatible).

OR you can specify a folder in the script input of the User preferences:

Note that this folder must contain 3 sub-directories : addons, modules, and startup. So you can install the library in the modules folder.

As Gandalf3 suggested, you can find more information in the wiki here.


Using Shapekeys in Unity after exporting FBX from Blender I've been trying to use a human based Yoshi model in unity. This model will be used for .VRM based animations. The model includes shapekeys for opening and closing the mouth, eyes and eyelids. In theory, these shapekeys work in unity and morph the geometry just as in blender. However, when adjusting a shape, all connected geometry gets darker and has the shader change the appearance of the model.
At first I considered that it only does so around non-quad and topologically inconsistent faces, but even after retopologizing it still occurs on the mesh that has shapekeys attached. Splitting the model based on geometry (only eyes and mouth are one merged geometry with all shapekeys affecting only that area, but not cheeks or the rest of the body for example) confirms that it only changes the shader on the connected geometry.

The above is an example of what happens when I apply all shapekeys. I did so to illustrate how strong the corruption can get. It is still not subtle, even with only one shapekey active; this is the worst case.
This is an example of the model in wakaru with applied VRM format and only one active Shapekey:

This is as subtle of an effect as I can get... I have also tried different shaders in unity itself, but all are distorted by using shapekeys... My thought is that the .fbx exporter loses some detail when exporting geometry to unity and believes that each shape contains additional info about vertex movement that isn't directly affected by a shapekey. So if I had a shapekey that moves the upper left eyelid down, it might try to set every other vertex that isn't modified to a slightly different value (potentially float truncation or something).
I suppose my question is: how do I export from Blender to Unity with shapekeys and without this distortion? Is there something I am doing wrong during the export process? Please let me know, I am stumped after re-topologizing and adjusting for hours without any success...
EDIT: I have tried a variety of fixes with normals. I have done a bunch of 3-d printing and know better than not to hit ctrl-n before and export ;). However, that doesn't really seem to be the problem. For testing purposes I inverted the normals to face the wrong way and the issue persisted on top of the object simply being culled (Please ignore missing textures, that's a leftover from my retopologizing and texturing with baked maps instead of geometry).
Here is an example with correct normals, inactive and active shapekeys:

and an example of incorrect normals, inactive and active shapekeys (plus from the back to see that faces are being culled due to incorrect normals):

I tried my plan B and simply imported the .blend file instead of the .fbx file since I assumed the exporter was modifying each shapekey. My hypothesis may be correct since the error is subtle to a point of negligibility (unless I activate more than 5 shapekeys at once). I consider this a solution: simply import the .blend instead of exporting a .fbx and re-importing it to unity.


Confused about requirements for rendering This is probably a small matter, but I'm new here and everything is still confusing. I have a Dell i5-3570 and nothing fancy for graphics yet. When I run a program called "GPU caps" it says that my setup has OpenCL level 1.2. But when I go to "Blender Preferences - System" if I ask to use OpenCL for rendering it says I don't have an OpenCL-compatible card and have to use CPU-only. (I tried to upgrade the driver, Intel said they have a new one but they won't install it because the manufacturer hasn't approved it, and I contacted the manufacturer and they said they won't bother evaluating the new driver because the system is too old, even though it's a quad running at 3.4 GHz.) It seems like the program ought to be able to correctly assess the hardware environment, what's my incentive to upgrade the GPU if it might not correctly recognize the new one either? Or is there just a minimum level of OpenCL the program has to see to say it's "compatible"? Thanks.

Im not 100% sure on this but you can try CUDA and check only your GPU (or both if you want). As far as I know, blender requires GCN generation 2 and up. Im not sure if that is the number you're referencing, but I would try CUDA first.


How to blend between textures easily using nodes? So, I have a system that basically allows me to blend several images together over time.

However, it is a horrible system.

There are keyframes tightly packed keyframes all over the dope sheet.  Here is it:

I manually wrote a GLSL shader to do this with OGRE3D back in the day,  could I plug that into blender?  I may have lost the code...

Thanks in advance.

Sure there is a simpler setup, you can exploit math nodes to do really cool stuff. What I think you want to do is to blend between all 3 textures but using only 1 animated property:

Here I used colors instead of textures but it is the same thing. You can also expand this setup for more than 3 inputs and still having to animate only 1 value.


Transparent texture makes the mesh transparent too Hi and thank you!
So I applied the skin textures on the body, then on edit mode selected the face area and applied a transparent PSD file with only eyes/mouth being opaque. We see them but the transparent area of the texture leaves a hole in his face... is there a way to fix this? Thank you!
I use Eevee and set alpha clip as a blending mode in texture settings.
Thank you!

So here is the answer:

Thank you to Susu and Rob Proctor for the help! :)


Can a mesh be used as a guide for hair? I'm my experiments with hair in the particles feature, I've seen certain ways one can shape hair, such as the manual and tedious usage of the particle edit mode functions, to using bezier curves as hair guides.

While curves do make the process significantly easier, it still seems limited. From what I've tried, it makes the hair take on a noodle-like shape. This got me wondering. If a curve could be used as a way to guide hair into a desired shape, why not a mesh?

Naturally, I tried to recreate the steps of using a curve guide, but with a mesh, but nothing happened. Is it not possible, or am I just not doing it correctly?

To clarify, the curve guide method is to create a curve, enable the curve's force field physics and set it to curve guide.

Running 2.8

I love curves. To make it look less noodle like, go to the curve circle and edit the shape of it. To give it more of a stand like appearance just copy some of the vertices in the circle detached from the original circle. It turns out beautifully, but don't be afraid to copy a lot of detached vertices. Also, another thing is the curve. That is what makes it thick and thin. I hope this was helpful.


Text and details on Objects I'd like to know how this text gets adapted onto these 3D models. Could it be a PNG  which gets mapped. Or is this text pre planned how it would be layout onto the model? what's the method involved in this technique? Would the text layout need to be the same ratio done with a graphic editor like Photoshop or Illustrator? and have the mesh modelled in the same metric unit so the text can later fall correctly in place? All information is appreciated, unfortunately my college instructors are really lame in giving information....

Thank you.

The way I see it, there are two distinct ways you could go about this, the image based solution, or the geometry based solution.
Both have advantages and disadvantages, which is best is up to you, depending on whatever end goal is planed for the model.

Image Based
This solution will use one or several image based textures mapped all over you surface.
Advantages

It is relatively easy to achieve
It can be light weight because it doesn't require additional geometry or objects
Relatively standard workflow using well known common texturing techniques
You can use a photo based textures to spare the trouble, or for added realism
You can use a custom made vector-based image textures (from say an illustration program like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator) for added accuracy
Will easily allow you to add scratches grunge or wear, if you want to give it a worn out aged look
Exports well to other applications like external render engines or game engines

Disadvantages

Requires image based textures (which can consume a lot of memory for high resolution quality)
Image based textures don't work well for high contrast details like text or line art, so it will likely require several very high-resolution images for closeups, which will be memory intensive
You will likely have to manually unwrap your meshes for proper texture coordinates which requires additional work, and may be difficult to guarantee accurate dimension relationships.
A good UV map will require proper topology, and/or carefully placed geometry elements with correct rotation orientations to get good real-world texture proportions correctly.
You can simplify by using generated texture coordinates if you don't need to  export the model, but it will still require separate geometry elements with correct transform orientations to get good real-world texture dimensions correctly.

Geometry Based Solution
This solution will use text and/or bezier curve objects overlayed all over your surface for details. This will work well if you designed the console yourself and already have (or are willing to make) vector based drawings of the prints and surface details yourself. Can be imported as SVGs from illustration or vector drawing applications.
Advantages

Very high degree of quality and accuracy
Sharp details, well suited for closeups
Depending on required detail may consume less memory than several high quality textures
Good for a clean "shiny new" look (like product rendering)
Easy to edit and tweak, can be modified directly in the 3D View
Suited if you already have vector illustrations or CAD drawings of the prints
May be optimized with instances for repeating geometry or similar parts
Compatible with different materials, using separate shaders for LEDs and lit parts or color prints.
No need to fuss around with UV mapping or texture coordinates
Poor topology tolerant

Disadvantages

Heavy geometry based solution, may result in high poly count, and/or high number of objects
High poly and poor topology are likely less suited for exporting to game engines, or real time visualization
Non standard workflow (poorly documented, harder to find help online)
Less suited for "non vector" details like scratches, grunge or other weathering effects (may still be added as an overlay).
May require additional manual work designing vector masks
Geometry produced by bezier curves will have intrinsically ugly topology


How to add an image texture/color as an overlay to a base texture at a specific part of the object and animate the texture/color alpha? I have this image texture wrapped around a UV Sphere. I would like to add a separate color/image texture in the area inside red circle marked and animate the alpha of the newly added texture inside red circle. Is there any method to do this?

You can use the same principle as this answer, and add a math node (or other) to control the decal the way you want.


Wierd Glitchy Render my rig wont render properly but when I view it in texture or material I can see the skin just fine. Can someone help me?

It looks like you textured your model using the Textured Mode. The problem is that those settings don't transfer back to your material settings. For example if you have the face and the clothes on different textures Textured mode will allow you to unwrap some faces on one texture and others on the other one but the Material will ignore that.
Make sure to work in the Material Mode and set your material to Shadeless so you can see the texture better.


Left Click doesn't work at all on Mac, even after reinstallation https://imgur.com/a/doGoj1m
For some reason, I can't use my left mouse button at all, as shown in the screen capture, it only works after I restore everything to factory defaults but it doesn't stay that way after I reopen blender.
I am using MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), 2.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB. I deleted completely and reinstalled blender twice and I am using the most recent version as of yesterday.

Alright after a long battle I managed to delete every single file related to blender on the computer and reinstalled and now it works. Considered the question solved.


How do I remove weight from a single bone in Blender How do I remove weight from a single bone in Blender. I tried the eraser tool, but it doesn't get everything. I know I'm supposed to go to vertex groups and set the weight to zero, but I don't know how. I know how to select the bone in vertex groups, but I don't know how to set the weight to zero.

If you want an individual bone to not have any influence on mesh deformations, you can go into the bone's settings and turn off deformation. just uncheck that checkbox and it wont move any vertices around anymore.

I don't know if this is exactly what you want but maybe it'll help. good luck with your rigging!


How to create a translucent image-as-plane I have imported an image as plane PNG in cycles render, with premultiplied alpha, emission and transparent. I would like to adjust its transparency.  How do I do this? Thank you!

You can add a Converter/math node between the alpha and the mix shader of the node tree.

Changing the values between 0 to 1, you can determine how the alpha affects the transparency. 0 will be fully transparent, 1 will be opaque.


Complex hierarchy - show selected object in outliner I have a file with assets that we bought for some game. They are organized in "groups" - parented to empty objects. There are many many of these "groups" with another "groups" inside of them. How do I find where the object is?

Fastest way I found is to select all the elements by hand in viewport and then in outliner use Search - Selected, unparent objects so they're outside of groups.

Clicking all the elements by hand is the main issue though. I'd like to select a building for example, and have it automatically selected in outliner so it's easy to select other elements grouped with it in outliner instead of selecting in viewport.

Photoshop does what I like - when object I click is in group, Layers panel opens this group and focuses view on that object layer. It should be like that in Blender imo. :< Any plugin for that or simple workaround?

It is already selected in the Outliner when you select an object in the viewport. You can press Numpad . to show active while you hover your mouse over the Outliner.


Weird lines across model when rendered in low resolution I'm getting these light colored lines mainly across the legs of my model but only when I render it at 96*96 px resolution (eevee). I only see them after I rendered them, they are not visible in the solid, material or rendered previews

Blend file:

I suspect the image textures are scaled down. The light marks are the "background" color of the image texture you are using. They appear precisely where your seams are.

I'm sure there is some setting that does this and it may not be a default setting.

You could work around this by dragging in the seams in your image texture more towards the center or maybe find an option, so the image texture won't be scaled down. Alternatively you could render at a higher resolution and later manually scale it down.


How to mask stabilized footage I have tracked and stabilized footage.
I used 2D Stabilization with Autoscale, then turned on Display Stabilization in the Display options. So far, so good.
Then created a mask on undistorted footage (Display Stabilization turned off - only then can see and edit the mask) and parented it to the tracked point used for stabilization (whole mask to single tracker point).

When I use this mask in compositing through the nodes, it is of course undistorted and since Stabilize 2D node info has no outputs, I can't pass Location influence and Autoscale values.
I can make the mask follow my tracker with the Track position node and some math nodes, but the Location influence and Autoscale is still a problem.

Is there any way to simply transform a mask to fit the Stabilize 2D distortion?

The first thing I suggest is turn off autoscale and do the scaling with a Transform node in the compositor, that way you'll have more control on the final output and composition.
You do have access to the Tracker information by adding a Track Position node and manually typing the name of the tracker you want to use. (Keep in mind that that same tracker has to be part of the set of trackers used for the 2D stabilization)
Some manual positioning might be necessary to place the mask on the right place, but after that the mask should follow the stabilized footage.

Here's a possible Node arrangement:


Bad quality .stl imprt I imported a .stl file into Blender and the resulting image looks fairly 'rough'. Any advice as to what can be done to improve the image quality?

Daniel

I ended up updating Blender to 2.81A - Importing the .stl now without any issues!

--Solved


How to create a 'ribbon wrapped' sphere? I am trying to turn the below 2D image of a "ribbon wrapped around a sphere" into a 3D model in Blender.

So far, adding wire frame does not give the results I need. I can break the image into a "front" and "back" but still lost in possibly mapping them to a sphere.

They are from an Illustrator file so I can import SVGs as well. Any advice on how to create this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

This shape being created in a 2D illustration program is not entirely possible in 3D without some distortion. That being said a close approximation may be achieved.

It's a bit of an involved process so I won't go into full details here, but I'll try to get the main steps. Here's the rough procedure of what I could come up with.

Create a bezier curve circle
Rotate it so it faces the front view
Rotate it 60º in the Z axis
Erase the back half
Duplicate it in edit mode so it is symmetrical along the Y axis
Repeat the process by duplicating the two half circles and rotating them 90º in Y axis so the produce the two frontal horizontal loops.
Now the tricky part is making sure you selecting the correct overlapping end vertex and connect them to the proper corresponding loose end by pressing the F key
Repeat the process 3 times. For the last closing loop just Toggle Cyclic option for the selected spline from the Properties Window
This will make half the necessary loops. Luckily the remaining ones are just a copy of the current ones rotated 45º along the Y axis, then scaled negatively -1 unit along the 7 axis to complete all the loops.

Afterwards you may add a flat segment bezier curve as Bevel Object to make the ribbon shape.

You may also optionally add a Shrinkwrap modifier to a sphere object to approximate the shape into a more accurate sphere.

If you want thickness a Solidify modifier after the Shrinkwrap will do the trick.


Realtime Anaglyphic viewport I've been trying to find if there is a way to achieve a realtime anaglyphic 3D viewport. I feel that this would be highly beneficial to a modeller by giving them a sense of depth with their model. I'm talking about one that would use the red and cyan glasses.
Are there plugins or anyway of achieving this?

This feature was added to Blender in version 2.75a.

To enable it, you have to be in Camera View, which you can enable by pressing Numpad 0. Optionally, you can lock the camera to your view by pressing selecting View > Lock Camera to View in the panel on the right-hand side of the 3D View (N).

To enable the Anaglyphic viewport, go to the Render Layers tab of the Properties panel, and check the Views checkbox. The default settings should be sufficient:

This is what it looks like:

For more detailed information, check out the relevant Blender Manual page.


How can I make a procedural polished granite material? I have made a polished granite material with a node setup. Using this photograph as reference, how can I improve this further?

Creating a Procedural Polished Granite Material

Guessing you're probably no longer in need of this effect, but thought I'd write a (hopefully) short tutorial in case anyone is interested in creating a Realistic Procedural Polished Granite Material in future.

This is the final setup and material that we'll be creating :D

(3mins49secs @ 750x1000px on CPU)

1. We'll start off this material by creating the procedural mottled texture that is present in granite stone (and in your reference image).

Firstly, let's create the lighter sections, using this node setup:

The nodes are fairly self explanatory, but we're essentially creating and distorting a noise texture using the slot attached to the Mapping node. We're then using the Color Ramp node to bump up the contrast by just the right amount. Underneath this we are mixing together some colour sampled from the reference using a Mix RGB controlled by another Noise Texture plugged into the Fac input. Finally we'll plug this into the first Color input of another Mix RGB node with the blending mode set to Screen and the bottom value set to white to give us our desired result... phew!

Next up is essentially repeating the last step a couple more times to get the darker shades of the granite, as well as the yellow (?!) ones.

As the nodes are pretty much exactly the same with just a few values changed, we can go ahead and simply press Shift+D to duplicate them, and move them below.

Again fairly self explanatory... but briefly, we'll use the Mapping node to essentially create a seed value for the noise, using the Location value to adjust this. The Noise Textures themselves are used to adjust the size of the noise, etc and once again the colours are sampled from the reference images.

The final part of this step is mixing these 3 outputs together. We'll do this by adding 2 more Mix RGB nodes with a Multiply blend mode, and connecting them accordingly. Don't worry about the white background, that will be cut out at the start of the next step :)

2. In this step we'll be finalising the granite base material. I won't go into details on every little section, but I'll explain the overall concepts.

So the extra Mix RGB > Multiply node is (as promised!) used to cut out that white and add in the creamy brown background colour. This colour is be plugged into a Diffuse BSDF shader, which is mixed with a Glossy BSDF shader using a Mix shader.

Next the crystal fleck mask is created. This is a simply case of using a scaled up Voronoi Texture thrown through a Color Ramp node plugged into the Fac input of the Mix shader. A simple step but it helps add another dimension of realism to the material :)

Finally, a procedural bump map is added to the Normal input of the diffuse and glossy shaders.

3. In this third and final step we'll be adding the final clear-coat (polish) effect to the granite material. Its fairly simple, but is slightly more involved than just mixing a glossy shader in... :)

The Voronoi setup is used to break up the reflections of the Glossy BSDF shader, adding a little bit of roughness here and there. The Noise bump Texture is used to add another level of surface texture. It's a (very... :P) subtle effect, but one that helps give the polish a slightly more 'painted' look.

Finally, we can add this coat over the Granite material, using another Mix shader controlled by a Layer Weight node. You can use a Fresnel node or other inputs to control this, but I used the Facing output because it looked pretty nice! ;)

So there we go! A sweet, fully procedural Polished Granite Material setup! :D

Hope it helps and don't forget to upvote/mark as the right answer if you liked it! :)


How to place match the floor of a picture with a plane using f-spy? I have this 3D ground and "image as plane" photo with fSpy camera, but it's look wrong on the legs, is there a way to make legs to touch the ground like in original photo? not sure in which direction to search

UPDATE:
I mean, I believe is right with fSpy, cause all geometry lines up in camera view, I guess I'm doing something wrong or impossible with "image as plane", wrong rotation or something?

Incorrect perspective reconstruction
Your reconstructed camera in the blendfile has different orientation from the one used in the source image. Just look at the angle between the floor ad the camera's horizon: yours is totally parallel.
The narrow focal lenght of the camera is not helping either in hiding the little differences.
Here's my reconstruction in fSpy:

And here the reconstruction of the scene.


I made a model but when rigged it doesn't move correctly So I made a model with a mirror modifier but realized that when I rigged it the arms would move in sync. So I remove the mirror modifier and copied the left side of the model to make the right side. but when I rigged it and started to move the bone that moves the neck and head the neck and head start to split in half. (Graphic I know, but I also made sure that both sides of the mesh where connected using Ctrl+J)

How to i make the rig move both left and right sides of the head and neck.

Here is a video of whats happening. https://youtu.be/R6cnYOal2Kw

The video is a little outdated so some of the problems where fixed like the T-Pose. But other than that I am new to blender and barely know what i am doing.

Ctrl J has the only effect to put all vertices (from two different "container"-objects) into one "container-object" only, but both half of the mesh will have thier own central line vertices. You can merge them selecting all vertices and using the "remove doubles" option.


Strange particle omission area in render (Internal) I'm trying to create a scene to render a skydome for a game in Blender Internal, and this strange rendering effect started occurring:

As you can see, there's a weird half-square on both sides of the image that's curved as though against the camera lens, where the cloud particles are completely cut out and there's a difference in colour in the World background. It also looks like there's a thin beam of light on the bottom of the squares which connects horizontally to each other.

The camera has a Field Of View of 90 degrees and the image output ratio is 1:1 (500x500 pixels). Mist is being used.

This is really bizarre and I've got no idea how to fix it or even what to describe it as. Could anyone help me?

Turns out the mist was actually affecting the particle emission volume, so the corners were being affected more by the mist and getting culled out closer towards the vertices. I solved this by just making it a perfect cube and adding power 4 subdivision surface. Not sure why mist affects an invisible particle volume in the first place, but it's for Internal so I guess I can't really complain... :P


How to keep wireframe in render? Layout view is what I'm after for the final animation render.
The pictures show the problem and difference between the two.
How to keep the wireframe view overlay when rendering animation?
Thanks so much!
as is in layout mode

rendered

camera view within layout

[

Figured it was the Gizmo/Overlay wireframe function that was making it look this way. When de-activating the overlay and adding the wireframe tool modifier I got roughly the same result I wanted.
This effect can be rendered via the view - render image/animation function within the layout.


problem with exporting 3d models as fbx i tried exporting in fbx format, but facing problem. please help me out

Not sure if that is your case but sometimes when there is not a proper flow of the loops in the modeling or when is not properly triangulated or quadrangulated that could happens.


Is there any place where I can find .blend files of car interior parts I want to know website where I can find 3D .blend interior car parts like steering wheels etc.
Please answer as soon as possible. I need this urgently for my fyp project.

Blendswap.com contains lots of free Blender models. You can find there some car parts too. E.g. http://www.blendswap.com/blends/tagged/car


True displacement mid level value I'm trying to use the Experimental True Displacement feature, but it seems that a grey value of .5 is not the default mid level?

I tried using a gradient map and also generated a displacement map for a little indent on a wall, But my results are that the wall in it's entirety gets displaced and puffs up.

Am I missing something? Is there a setting somewhere where I can pick the desired midlevel? Or can somebody tell me what color value can be used for zero displacement?

Thank you!

Ok silly me,

It seems that the color black is used for zero displacement. So you have to use a math node on your height map to generate negative displacement with negative color values.


Will importing user preferences from version 2.79b to 2.80 work and is it a good idea? So today I decided to join the hype and check 2.8 out even though I am the kind of person who does not like to try betas, because I hate change. And anyways I was already shocked by the difference of the keyboard shortcuts. My question is: Is it a good idea to import the preferences from 2.79b or would you guys advice me from doing it and if it's OK to do that, which file should I import and where is it in the Blender Foundation old files? It would be nice if someone showed me the path.

Whether or not you should import settings is an open ended question and pretty much opinion based and open to debate, which is not a good fit for this site's style of Q&A, so I'll try to answer from a more technical point of view.
Technical Point of View
From purely from a technical point of view, and the answer is: NO, you should not import your settings from 2.79 to 2.8# series.
Blender 2.8 changed considerably from 2.79, not only at UI level but also deep under-the-hood changes to the way it works internally.
Settings files made for 2.79 will not work well in 2.8, and will cause trouble that can go from mild inconveniences to severe issues.
At best you will get a non functional 2.8 build, or experience unavailable tools and missing functionality, and at worse you may encounter file corruption, crashes, permanent data loss and leave the application in unrecoverable states.
For example keymaps changed considerably, not only the keybindings themselves, but also internally the way they are stored and read, so they support the new Per-Keymap Preferences, left-click selection, collections, new Industry Compatible Keymap and all the new tools. Importing an old keymap will likely result in an error, but even if you were successful you would probably be met with all sorts of inconsistencies and missing shortcuts.
The UI also changed considerably with the introduction of the new Workspaces, toolbars, removal of screen layouts and new window management. If you import an old startup.blend file you will likely miss the new tailor made Workspaces and at worse get stuck in a corrupted screen layout.
New workflows ere also introduced and will be incomplete or missed entirely if you don't start with a clean slate.
Personal Preference
This is obviously highly debatable and open to opinion, but on a more personal side my answer would still probably be NO, you should not import your settings from 2.79 to 2.8# series.
Change is needed, and should be embraced so one can evolve and improve, otherwise will be stuck in the past and never fix our shortcomings. Blender has often been criticized for having a steep leaning curve, being hard to adopt, unfriendly for newcomers, and awkward to use along other industry tools or open source environments.
All changes made, even controversial ones, whether you personally like them or not, are trying to improve Blender, make it more friendly, faster, and easier to use.
If you don't keep up with times you will soon find yourself hopelessly outdated, behind the curve and stuck in the dark past we are trying to leave behind. On a more practical side you won't be able to easily follow online tutorials or guides, nor take advantage of all the new tools and improvements made.
Blender is also a constantly evolving tool, and an unapologetic one at that. If changes are needed they will be made, unlike some comercial "industry-standard" competitors who have to cling to the past for fear of ostracizing current customer base. Future versions will change further as needs arise and you will stray further from the present, so you are advised to get used to it and keep up with times.
On a more positive note changes can be hard, but I'm sure you and everyone else will overcome them easily, and with time get fluent at it.
If you dislike change that much, wait it out until 2.8 matures, and once the official release is out start learning it then. Things will be more stable and finalized by then and less likely to change further in the future so less energy is wasted.
You can also customize keymaps and preferences like you always did before, so if something important for your workflow is missing or changes, do add it back or modify as you see fit. Blender 2.8# even includes a new Quick Favorites menu that allows you to "pin" your favorite or frequently used actions for quick access.


I can't add a New library in Blender 2.8 I want to create my own library in order to have access to very complicated shading materials in all my projects.
So I go to materials, click "+" in Material Library VX, and then when I click "OK" an error message says "select a library" which makes no sense to me.

But whatever, I select Cycles library and try again. Blender tells me "Library added" but I can't see it even if I close and launch Blender again.

I know we can append materials from files but in the long run it's not possible for me to work without my library.

I really want a library for my own materials so please help :/

Why?
When you try to  create a new library with the add-on, it tries to create a new .blend file and since the add-on's directory is in Program Files folder(if you are on Windows) it does not have permissions to do so and fails.
Solutions
You could run Blender with administrative privileges by right-clicking it and choosing Run as administrator. This way it gains permissions to write the file in the current add-on's folder.
Or even better solotion
You could move the add-on from
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons
to
C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.81\scripts\addons\
where it will be able to write the files when started normally. Note that you have to move the add-on's folder (in this case C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\materials_library_vx\), and not copy it since if you had it in both places you would have a conflict.


Why do my normal maps look like trash? (in blender Cycles) I have created a Sculpt of a head with dynamic Typology, created a retypology. Uv unwrapped the low typology (no mirror modifiers). I then created a 2048 by 2048 new image to bake the normals to. I baked the image and here are my settings everything is smoothed with the generic smooth vertices toggle. I am sure that the normal maps should have better results than this from what i see other people getting on youtube I have put quite a bit of time into walking around in circles on the internet and in blender so help at this point would be very welcome.there is also a weird cuttle fish effect on the faces skin I dont know if that is just a product of the pixels but to me it looks obvious and ugly.
I just created this account to ask this question so i am yet to figure out how to post my blend file but hopefully i can solve that one.

First, if it isn't already, set your normal map texture to "non-color data." It doesn't work properly if it is set to color data.

If attaching the normal output to the normal input of the diffuse shader doesn't work, this node setup (courtesy of @david) will invert the normal map.


How to use a green texture map from a game character? I extracted a game character and along with it came this green texture map with the filename postfix Exp. is this engine specific or is can it be used somewhere in blender?

Well, I had the same question for the same reason and I finally worked it out. Apparently it's a Unity thing. What you're looking at is an RGBA texture map. G has ambient occlusion, R has metallic, B has something they call a "Detail Mask" but I didn't immediately get the purpose, and A has has the "smoothness" mask which is an inverse of roughness in the form of 1-sqrt(roughness). Here is more than you probably want to know: https://raytracing-docs.nvidia.com/mdl/api/html/mi_neuray_example_distilling_unity.html


Why Bezier Interplation of Blender is not as much dramatic and cinematic as of other softwares? I am working on a project and when i use bezier interpolation, it looks like linear interpolation in real time with no dramatic or cinematic effects at all on the objects. is there some settings which am i missing or is there any solution for this?

I don't know what you mean by "cinematic", but I will assume you want the animation speed to make more dynamic.
Go to the graph editor, and select all of the control points. At the top, switch the pivot to individual centers and scale all the control points up. This makes the curve much more dynamic wherever there are control points.


Is it possible to stream an animation in real time as it is being rendered? I'm trying to figure out how to livestream in real time the output of my animation. Is this something that is possible in blender? I'm trying to find a service or add on or something that can allow a cluster of blender renders take the frames and audio and stream them as they are being rendered.

differently from still images, where you need to save the render result intentionally, an animation is always "saved" by blender, either as image sequence or a movie file (if you didn't specify anything, by default is a png image sequence in /tmp folder).

So, to "stream" an animation you need to choose how you would "stream" a (predictable) amount of still frames or a (constantly changing, while frames are rendered) single movie file...

Add to that the fact that each frame usually needs seconds to days to render, depending on computing power and scene complexity, and I guess you can't count to stream a realtime animation while you are rendering it...

Of course you could use a video capture system to "stream" the rendering result window as a video stream to receivers, so that they could remotely see the progress of the rendering (in rendering realtime, not animation realtime)...

Maybe if you specify better what you need, a better answer can be given.


Can't seem to get dynamic paint waves to behave correctly I'm trying to create the waves made by a ship as is sails. I've had success doing this with vertex displacement, but as I'm going to use it in a large body of water and from a distance I can't subdivide the surface enough to keep everything running smoothly.

This why I'm trying to do this with dynamic paint and using the output image sequence in the displacement node of of a glossy texture which acts as the water surface.

While I get some result in the wake, I don't get the V shaped bow wave normally found in a wake. See my test scene below:

The settings I used:

The displacement map that resulted:

This is an example I found online of what it should look like:

Can anyone help me get this right?

the problem is the settings you are using ( the clear one is the smoothness which is killing all the ripples leaving only a sharp tail )  you have to adjust the settings according to the object speed and size to get the desired results :

using the following settings on the canvas (default plane with no subdivisions ) :

I get the following results :

 bake the dynamic paint and set the result as a  texture for the plane


How do I use shape keys to bake a soft body animation? I want to bake the soft body animation that can be placed in unity or unreal.
I also need the animation to loop. I know that you can you do loop key frames in graph editor. Is that possible with shape keys?

To convert a Soft Body animation into shape keys you can use the MDD importer/exporter. The Export option exports the soft body animation to a file and the Import option imports the file into a set of shape keys, along with keyframes to automatically control the shape keys to maintain the animation.

First, use the User Preferences option to enable the MDD importer/exporter addon by opening the Add-ons tab, typing 'MDD' into the search and enabling the Import-Export: NewTek MDD format add-on.

Next, select your soft-body object and use the 'File/Export/Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd)' option, specifying a filename to export the animation to.

Once exported, use the 'File/Import/Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd)' option to import the animation. This will create a set of shapekeys with keyframes. The keyframes automatically adjust the shape keys influence so as to activate/deactivate them to animate through the frames of the animation. At this point you can remove the Soft Body simulation.

You can adjust the keyframes on the shape keys to effectively 'blend' the animation at the start/end.

Here is a fantastic answer which uses a similar technique except that it uses a Mesh Cache modifier in place of the 'Import' step. By using two modifiers (with offset frames) the animation can be more easily blended at the start/end of the animation : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10661/29586


Blender Cycles Viewport Preview taking too long I am a user about 6 months into blender. Earlier I was doing my work on an i5 6200U with Intel HD 520, and now I have moved to a i5 7200U with Intel HD 620 graphics.
My cycles viewport rendering (you know, the noisy rendering if you move around the scene with cycles on) was pretty average on the i5 6200u, but now as I have moved to the new one, I am getting much slower viewport renders, although there is nothing to complain about the final image renders.
Viewport renders themselves, even on a simple scene, takes around 50 seconds to completely denoise! I have turned out viewport samples, but it doesn't seem to help.

This seems like a question about the performance of your specific components, which the Blender Stack Exchange is not able to help with as much.
You can reduce the viewport sample number (the default is 16) to shorten the time that it take to render (as you mentioned you did). You can also reduce the render samples and/or resolution of the camera to speed up the rendering process for rendering a final image or animation.
Here are a few things that may be causing slow viewport rendering times (not an exhaustive list):

Scenes with lots of objects and textures (remove any objects if possible)
Objects with high vertex/face count (use the minimum number of vertices possible)
High resolution textures on objects
Other applications using processor(s) in the background.

You can try fixing any of the above problems, edit using solid or material preview mode, and/or do your editing and modeling in Eevee before doing final edits and renders in Cycles.


Activate Rigid Body Physics at certain time? I've been trying to make a wrecking ball smash through a figure of sorts, not really sure what exactly but I made an example.
The problem I'm having is that the figure does indeed fall apart, but I would like it to stay put together until the ball hits it. I achieved this by using Cell Fracture on the figure and just using Rigid Body. Again, I just need a way for the figure to stay still until hit by the ball, and then have all of its pieces come apart.

If you are running a single simulation,

Keyframe the Rigid Body World Speed.

This is the simulation starting from frame 1.

Go to frame 1 and keyframe the Speed property of the Rigid Body World to 0. Keyframe it to 1 (or any other) on the desired starting frame.
Set the keyframe interpolation to constant.

The resulting simulation won't move untill the desired starting frame. (It moves with a speed of 0.)

Keyframe the Animated property

If you only want some objects to start simulating on a specific frame use the Animated option on these objects (as suggested by Mr Zak) as explained in this answer.

Setting and keying the animated property for each object individually may be tedious. Use this script.

import bpy

# get the current frame
fr = bpy.context.scene.frame_current

# get the selected objects
objs = bpy.context.selected_objects

# cycle through the selected objects
for o in objs:

    # set the "Animated" property to unchecked
    # change "False" to "True" if you want to check it
    o.rigid_body.kinematic = False

    # keyframe the "Animated" property
    o.rigid_body.keyframe_insert(data_path='kinematic', frame=(fr))

Paste the code into Blenders text editor. Move to a frame where the objects should remain stationary. Select them and (hovering over the text editor) press AltP to execute the script. The selected objects will now have a keyframe on the "Animated" Property of their rigid body.


Animate MakeHuman character with BVH using Three.js I'm trying to animate a mesh via it's skeleton on a webpage using a BVH. Here's the overall process of what I'm trying to do:

Make a character using MakeHuman and export (mhx format? seems to work best).
Import the character into Blender.
Retarget to a BVH using the MakeWalk plugin for Blender.
Export the character to json using the Three.js exporter.
Export the BVH (not sure if this is necessary, but I figured I might have better luck getting the BVH to match up with the skeleton after retargeting)
Load the character into a web page using Three.js
Animate the character using a BVH.

The animation looks great in blender. I'm trying to use the BVH viewer code from here modified to use the skeleton created by MakeHuman instead of it creating a skeleton from the BVH data. Whenever I try to animate the character, it gets very distorted.

Here's the desired result (more or less) rendered from Blender:

And this is what is happening on the webpage:

As you can see, it's getting totally messed up. I also had to zoom way out in order to see the whole image.

I've tried using different rigs, different file formats, resaving the BVH after retargeting, you name it. I also tried to follow the example here (scroll down to see the instructions), but it says to delete the armature modifiers and when I do that, no bones get exported and Three.js throws an error.

I am at a loss. Is there an up-to-date example somewhere that shows how to do what I'm trying to do?

The simplest process to achieve character animations, created from makehuman in Blender is the following:

1. Install makewalk. This is a Blender addon that should be contained in a folder called blendertools in your makehuman folder.

Drag the makewalk folder into your blender addons folder. On windows, it is c:\users*your_name*\appdata\roaming\blender foundation\blender\2.78\scripts\addons

Then, within blender, go to setting, addons, hit the refresh button on the bottom of the window, and search for makewalk, and enable it, then save your settings

2. Install the .mhx2 plugin to export from Makehuman and import into Blender. The addon consists of two seperate parts - one addon for makehuman and one for Blender.

Download information and instruction on how to install can be found here

3. Create your character in Makehuman, add a mocap skeleton, and export as mhx2, taking note of the setting shown below

4. Import the mxh2 model in blender.

5. Download motionbuilder compatible bvh files. Here is a source with thousands of motion capture files https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/cmu-bvh-conversion

6. In blender, with the makewalk addon, attach the bvh file to your character's armature.


Animation baking error To showcase the problem the easiest way, this is what the issue looks like: https://youtu.be/esihE0ob7U8
As you can see, the track chain makes a momentary 'jump' when the baked animation is played back inside unity to the extent that the gears may clip through the track (the issue is present both with .fbx and the original blender file if imported in Unity, as well as blender itself, if we just export and re-import an .fbx file)
Rig functions as follows:

We have a cyclic bezier curve with the correct track chain shape (named TrackChainCurve), parented to a root bone inside the armature;
There are two more straight curves named TrackChainCurve.L and TrackChainCurve.R with similar length to the TrackChainCurve and they are similarly parented to bones named Track.R and Track.L inside the same armature;
TrackChainCurve.L and TrackChainCurve.R have Curve modifiers attached to them, so that they take form of the original TrackChainCurve;
Track.R and Track.L copy location (with offset) of an 'alternate' root bone that always stays at the origin, so that whenever we move or rotate the main armature bones, the chain rotates and moves around as if the model is really moving using those chains;
On each side, there's a chain of bones with SplineIK constraint to repeat the movement from TrackChainCurve.L and TrackChainCurve.R. They have all scaling disabled, so that the skinned mesh does not stretch, it just wraps around the corresponding curves.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to Blender and I might be missing something...
Would appreciate any help

Ended up implementing equivalent inside Unity... I have more control that way anyway


75 vertices in Edit mode, 1.4 million in Object mode I'm taking a 3D modelling course at uni (it is obligatory). I don't have any experience with it, let alone interest.

I had to make a model of a sculpture, and when I sent it to my professor, they warned me I had over a million of vertices, which would be hard to process.

Using answers I found here, I reduced the number to 75. Not sure how it worked, but I used Limited dissolve.

Object mode still shows the 1.4 M vertices. What do I need to do?? I don't understand any of this.

Here is the model: https://www.dropbox.com/s/aszflttj5vzck7y/model.blend?dl=0

Cheers.

In your model there are a lot of duplicates of the same model. They are inside in each other.

Select the objects you need (left click while holding the Shift button). Then invert the selection (Ctrl + i). Then delete all extra objects (X)


How to UV unwrap holodeck model I'd like to create a holodeck like this in Blender:

The holodeck model used is from g3d. The screenshot is simply the obj file and a material applied to it. What's interesting is that the grid lines align nicely, even at the rounded corners.

The model itself seems to be a simple box with beveled corners (don't mind the door). A simple square texture over it:

Question: How is that kind of model and texture created in Blender? My guess is that the "magic" of the alignment is in the UV map. However, the uv map looks like this:

How can you create such a UV map in Blender, so that the square material texture fits so nicely on the walls and even on the rounded corners? None of the in-built UV unwrapping techniques seem to lead to the desired result.

I only need to know how to create that UV map (if it's the key to achieve that result). I do know how to model and texture it.

Overview:

It's fairly simple setup but there is a little thing you should be aware of at the start. Proportions of your model should be even or squared (I'm not sure how to put it). In this example it's a box 1x2x0.8m. When you put something like 1.12x2.43x0.63m pattern will not create perfect grid. Also remember to Apply Scale of your mesh.

Mesh and Seams:

  First of all it's a bad topology (ngons) but I've leaved it as is for
  simplicity sake.

For beveled corners you should use even number of Faces to have an Edge in the center of them.
Mark Seams in a way to cut off walls, floor and ceiling.

UV Map:

Select all and Unwrap the mesh (U > Unwrap).
Go to Image Editor, select UV Islands one by one (L while hovering over an island) and Snap them to the cursor by Shift+S > Selected to Cursor (Offset).

You can rotate islands that are vertically placed if you want but it's not necessary.

Lining up grid:

There are two methods to line up grid and resize it (I don't know how to do it perfectly).

You can just select all UV Islands and Scale them up/down.
You can use Mapping node to set the grid size. I've used this method.

Blend file:


Different Shader on same label So I am trying to get 3 different shaders on same label. So one is glossy, one mate and another one metallic. I tried using add, mix shader and what it does is just making shaders blended. I would like to have all of the at  100% on top of each other. As you see on the test image Red shader is transparent instead of 100%. How do I do this?

You can use a mix shader with the two label shaders as the shader inputs, and a black/white image as the factor input on the mix shader.

On the black/white image, where there is black, there will be 100% of one label. Where there is white, there will be 100% of the other label.

Edit to elaborate;

To achieve this result;

I used this node setup;

And these black/white textures;

I have packed the .blend file for examination:

Explanation

So, most of this is just simple UV mapping and textures.

The 3 label textures are fed UV Mapping nodes which are, themselves, all fed the same Texture Coordinate node.
There are two additional textures (which I painted directly in blender, but you can create them however you want) that are just black/white images, which define values between 0 and 1 (you could technically use some shade of gray to partially mix the textures, but since you specifically don't want that, you'll want to use either flat black or flat white)
I pass the black/white images through a RGB to BW converter because technically they're color images, and we just want values to feed to the MixRGB nodes (which can be found in the "color" section). This is the part right here that allows you to mix these labels without creating separate sharers for all of them. Important note: I noticed that you wanted one shader to be glossy, and another to be more diffused. This method can technically make that happen, but it would be much easier to use mix shaders for that. Happily, the black and white image examples in this file would work the same for mix shaders as they would for MixRGB nodes.

Also, on the black and white images; You'll see that one of them has white on the top 2/3rds, and the second has white on only the top 1/3rd. This effectively tells the first mix "Yes, also pass through the top third for later mixing"

Notes

I did this really quickly and dirty. If I'd spent more time on it, I would have defined separate UV maps for all the labels and the black/white mix value textures. Since I didn't do that, I used the UV Mapping nodes to squish the labels to the (mostly) correct proportions, and move them up and down on the (very tall) "can".


Using onboard video for monitor to save GPU ram? If the monitors plugged into the gpu use a fair amount gpu ram, would switching the monitor to the onboard video on motherboard decrease this usage on the gpu?
I have an i7 6700k 4.4ghz (oc'd) and an msi m5 with 32 gb of ddr4-3000. I have a simulation thats right above the edge of my memory cap on my gpu so I get that cudafail but, I really don't want to cpu render this.

The answer is yes. I was able to reduce my total gpu cost! almost 440mb going from 2 monitors on the gpu to a single on the motherboard. I also found I could split parts of my scene, into separate blends files by apending them into a new scene rendering as an openexr multi layer to save all my compositor data, and compositing the two scenes together in the final version. This cut my gpu memory cost in half.


how to rig this object (function compass)? I'm trying to make something like a compass which is used to draw functions on paper.

but I'm stuck and I have no idea how to rig it.
I want to make an animation to show how it works and I want to make an interactive bone so when the two legs move on their axis the parts in the middle move with them and become wider or thinner when the legs get separated or close to eachother.

Update: well I made an armature myself and it almost works. The only problem is I don't know how to pin those holes together.

the whole thing is I have rigged humans but I don't know how to rig mechanical parts.

Update 2: I tried to use a copy scale constraint to change the scale of both vertical and horizontal bones (middle ones) together but the problem is when I scale one of them up the other one will scale up as well (which is actually why its used for) but the other bone should be the smaller so the joints stay together.

How to inverse the copy scale constraint?

update 3: first of all sorry for the question itself its a bit confusing
so I made a animation of what I'm trying to do (it uses a simple armature)

I want to make an armature that by moving each of those legs in their axis
the rest of the object moves with it

The trick is to use IK constraints mostly. Here's my setup:

Main is the root bone
pointer is a child of tip 1
big 1 is a child of pointer
big 2 is a child of big 1
small 1 is a child of big 1, not connected
small 2 is a child of small 1
small target is a child of big 2, not connected, no inherited rotation
tip 1 is a child of Main, not connected
tip 2 is a child of small 1 but doesn't inherit rotation
tip 3 is a child of Main

tip 2 might need a copy rotation constraint to tip 1 or tip 3 if you rotate the whole rig other than around Z.

Main is there to move everything. A handle of sorts for the whole compass.

pointer has a locked track constraint pointing to tip 3. Since the IKs are parented to it, they act in local space and won't flip even if the compass turns upside down using Main.

big 2 has an IK Constraint pointing to tip 3, chain length 2, it's the classic and simplest arm or leg rig.
small 2 has an IK Constraint to small target, chain length 2. Same thing, just upside down and parented to the big IK bones.

Now the rig moves correctly whether you move tip 1 or tip 3.


How to iterate through all vertices of an object that contains multiple meshes? I've learned that an object may contain multiple meshes. I want to export all vertices from all meshes. How do I iterate through them?

Also, is there a simple way to know in advance the total count?  Other than doing 2 passes?

A mesh may consist of loose parts the following script will export all vertices and faces. The length is determined by pythons len() you would need to change the print statements to writing into a file.

Uncomment the dump method # dump(obj.data) to find out more on available properties you're interested in.

If you need also to get the edges of the mesh you could have a look at Python script to determine XYZ of tip of cone.

import bpy

def dump(obj, level=0):
   for attr in dir(obj):
       if hasattr( obj, "attr" ):
           print( "obj.%s = %s" % (attr, getattr(obj, attr)))
       else:
           print( attr )

#obj = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]  # particular object by name
obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.active # active object

# dump(obj.data)
mesh = obj.data
print("# of vertices=%d" % len(mesh.vertices))
for vert in mesh.vertices:
    print( 'v %f %f %f\n' % (vert.co.x, vert.co.y, vert.co.z) )

print("# of faces=%d" % len(mesh.polygons))

for face in mesh.polygons:
    print('face')
    #dump(face)
    for vert in face.vertices:
        print(vert)

Output format:

# of vertices=8
v 1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v -1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 0.999999 1.000000
v 0.999999 -1.000001 1.000000
v -1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
# of faces=6
face
0
1
2
3
face
4
7
6
5
face
0
4
5
1
face
1
5
6
2
face
2
6
7
3
face
4
0
3
7


Realistic rendering of mesh together with image? Apologies for this possibly too vague question, but are there some general guidelines to follow when rendering artificial 3D meshes together with an imported 2D image as the background?

In the attached Blender file (or rendered image), the cube looks so out-of-the-scene. Some reflection from the green background onto the cube should make the cube more realistic in the scene? I don't know how to put it in professional terms -- any suggestions are welcomed!

What would make the CG imagery feel integrated with the environment depicted in an image? Realistic and photorealistic are complicated and nuanced...
Let's start with the most important concept:
There is no shortcut or magic button in blender for "realism".
Uff... now that we've gotten that out of the way, on to some ideas where to start.
You can achieve extremely convincing results if you are willing to put a lot of hours into learning about imagery, light, materials, surfaces and how those work and interact with each other in the real world, and in the virtual CGI generated ones. The more effort you put into understanding the concepts listed above and the specifics of color representation in digital images, the easier and more rewarding it will be to create "realistic" renders.

Camera settings:
Camera height, rotation and lens (field of view) have to match those of the original camera used to take the picture (or video), as close as possible. Wrong perspective will break the illusion of the CG object being part of the image.
Having the correct information for the sensor size and lens will also help you determine the correct depth of field for the virtual camera in the 3D environment.
If the image used as background has the camera model and lens used as part of the EXIF tag, then you can use those values.
If you don't have access to such information you'll have to estimate it. See this post how do I align my grid to backfround footage? and How can I recreate geometry using a photograph? and Lens specs of smartphones for camera tracking in Blender for some ideas.
Materials:
Use Shaders and Textures that resemble those of the real world. Research the Albedo (reflectance) values of the materials and make those be the "color" of your shaders.
Materials in CG tend to be too perfect, objects in the real world always have imperfections and irregularities, like scratches, nicks, bumps or dirt. Paying special attention to those imperfections will make images seem more real. There are numerous ways to create scratches and dirt maps, along with bump and displacement maps to create cracks and dents.
You might also want to research the use of PBR shaders(Physically Based Rendering). Starting with version 2.79 cycles there is a Principled BSDF shader that allows for the creation of very realistic materials.
Light:
The complexity of the lighting of the environment you want to recreate has to be taken into account. You have to study the image carefully and understand where the main illumination is coming from and how the light is interacting with the objects. You can recreate it like they do in movie studios, by careful placement of lights with different characteristics (ie: big sources for the sky, smaller sources to have defined shadows and colors, etc) The hardest part is re-creating all of the many ways in which light reflects on to the environment and interacts with objects on the scene. In your example you would have a lot of green on the scene filtering trough and reflecting on the leaves on the trees, but you would also have a lot of reddish light reflected from the the ground. Plus some parts of the object would be lit more directly from the direct sunlight an others from light in the blue sky than others, and there will be many different intensities on the shadows depending on the size of the trees and the density of the foliage.
One way (but certainly not the only) to deal with complex lighting like the one on your example, is to use a High Dynamic Range image as environment for the scene. Ideally the HDR image would have been taken on the same place and is made of several exposures blended together. The idea behind using an image as environment is that every pixel of such image becomes an emitter and contributes to the overall lighting and coloring of the scene. Think of it as a big sphere that has the image of the surroundings mapped on to it, and that uses the light values of the original scene.
Additional geometry
Create additional objects that will interact with those objects being added. If your object is reflective, the reflection of other objects has to come from somewhere. Shadows that are cast on the object itself have to come from the occlusion of the light by other objects. Likewise the shadow of the object has to be projected on some geometry, like the ground in this case
Those new objects can be also invisible geometry (like the ground for example) if you use what is called a "Shadow Catcher", that will only generate the shadows to be composited on top of the background image.
Adding elements that belong in the environment will also help to make the integration more convincing. Things that interact with the object: dead leafs on top, random dust and debris, parts of the image occluding the object or the background image (like if you want the objects to feel that they are behind a tree for example), signs of moisture or mold, etc. If the object is glossy it should also reflect parts of the background. Use masks to create elements that are supposed to be in front of your objects
Rendering
The image used in the background is already compressed to deal with light in a non-linear way. The CG elements are created using linear light values, and have to be transformed to match the characteristics of the image on the backgound. You can use color correction tools like the ASC-CDL node to make the image feel more integrated with the background.
Using the Filmic-Blender set of curves for color management will make it easier to have an image that resembles the way cameras deal light in the real world. I strongly recommend reading through @troy_s ' post to get more details on the concepts of photorealism and color transformations.
Compositing
If you care for quality, you will discover very soon that most imagery in compressed formats (like jpg and most video shot with lots of compression) creates endless problems and is unsuitable for this kind of tasks. Try to work with high quality originals with little or no compression, high dynamic range and a high bit depth (images in 16bit or 32 bit float will give you more information and will lessen artifacts and images that use linear information as opposed to "gamma" corrected will be easier to integrate)
It is unlikely that you will get an image that is ready to be composited over a background convincingly using a single pass, so you need to be willing to learn how to modify alpha channels and use different passes like occlusion, indirect rays, reflections. On top of that sometimes you need several masks for solid objects and those that have semitransparent or blurry edges.
Other considerations for compositing are the characteristics of the image used in the background. CGI imagery should try to have the same overall noise structure flares and other imperfections as the original, like Adding some lens distortion and chromatic aberration. The goal is to match the quality and defects and peculiarities of the original image as close as possible.

Here's a very rough idea of a scene lit with an HDR as Environment texture:

Long story short: this is too large a topic to discuss on a single post, and there are plenty of resources out there, endless websites on VFX, books, magazines and rivers of ink devoted to what seems like a simple task.
A vast topic but endless source of fun and creative obsession... Good luck!


Blender - Plot viewport-independent 2D-Labels I am creating program that translates lithological data to colored 3D-columns which can be imported into Blender. Because the amount of single objects would be huge and disastrous on the readability in in the "outliner" (list of all objects), I am planning to accumulate them in one Wavefront (.obj) object. However, I would like to have labels (stations ids) for each lithological column. Blender seemingly only allows to display the name of objects in Object- and Edit-mode.

Is there a way to at least label all lithological columns differently while keeping all columns in one single object? Maybe there exist an addon or a niche in the Blender Python API. As far as I know there would be the possibility to write a Python addon which scales and rotates 3D-text-objects according to the viewport movement of the user. Still, I am looking for plain 2D-text and the functionality is somewhere within Blender already, but not necessarily in the Blender Python API.

Thank you in advance!

EDIT:
I intented to do it without the Blender Game Engine. The text should be displayed somewhere over or adjacent the lithological columns (which depends on the current viewport). It would be good if the labels could be switched on and off, to not always interfere with the final results. Additionally, it would be beneficial to preserved the labels in rendered images as well but this is not a necessity. Distance dependent scalability is also optional. The main purpose is to identify the columns/locations while working with them.

The features in blender for this task are not so advanced, so I would suggest one of two options...

Load in Empty objects and name them usefully, enabling the objects display -> name option in the object buttons.
(note, these names wont render)
Create 3d text objects for each name (reduce the curve resolution to ~4 or so, for faster display), these will render which is their main advantage.
(note, wont point towards the view though you could constrain them to face the camera).

You say that the amount of object would be huge and hard to view in the outliner. To workaround this you could...

Give them a parent, the outliner will nest them under the parent.
Put them on a second layer (probably a good idea anyway), then set the outliner to only view visible layers.

Other alternatives exist like using Python to draw text in the view-port or converting curve data to grease-pencil. But Im not sure these are worth the extra hassle of simply creating named empties or text objects.


How can I animate the sun in Sky Texture? I'm trying to keyframe the Sun Elevation and Sun Rotation from the Sky Texture Node but it doesn't work.
I'm setting at frame 1: Elevation 15, Position 1, and at frame 200: Elevation 50, Position 100.
When I click play, the Elevation and Position are set at about 70 and 160 and they are fixed. I guess they have something to do with the Sun position tab which tries to get the real status of the sun based on day/month/year, latitude/longitude, time, etc. Sadly I can't find a way to animate those variables.
Any solutions?

Animating in most parameters on blender is done by hovering over the value and pressing the letter I to insert a keyframe (or right click and choose to add a keyframe), then move to a different frame, change the value and add another keyframe.


Unwanted fluid simulation clumping I'm running this fluid simulation at a small scale (real-world scale) and I find that the water particles clump together into balls?

I can't seem to find the setting to make it more like a constant flow and would love a hint on what to tweak to achieve the goal?

The image below shows the unwanted status quo.

Thanks to the comments left on the question, I was able to solve this issue by increasing the resolution divisions on the domain.
Originally I was running it at +/-128, but had to bring it up to 256, 320, and even 512 until I started seeing the results I was hoping for.


How can I decrease x-ray alpha in 3D view? Is there any way I can decrease alpha opacity so the edges in the back are less visible?

Sure there is.
Just use the X-Ray slider in the Viewport Shader menu


How to display the material tab? I don't have a material tab in blender, like this one (the globe):

https://youtu.be/ITfkvQdWaRA?t=489

This is what I have:

How do I make it appear?

That's because you probably don't have selected your object. Select your object by right-clicking it and then it should appear the awaited tab.

In your case right-click the ground.


Subsurf on a crown. How can I smooth some edges and keep others sharp? How can I smooth all crown but don't smooth the top of the crown? I did a subdivision surface, but this didn't work. All crown became smooth and changed form.

Another approach:

Create a Z-scaled, subduvided UV sphere, and a capless cylinder, at the origin.
Give the cylinder a few horizontal loops,  and assign it a Srinkwrap modifier to the sphere; drag it down to a good-looking position in Z
Select the N,S,E,W vertices on the top loop of the Cylinder, and with Proportional Edit / Linear falloff, drag the points up in Z
Proportional off, Median Pivot Point, scale the bottom loop to 0 in Z
Assign a Solidify modifier, with 'Crease' set to 1 for Inner, Outer, and Rim.

The crease will hold against any subdivision.. after applying the modifiers you can extrude down the cylindrical headband, etc. (You might not even need subdivision, maybe AutoSmooth will do..)

EDIT: .... But as moonboots points out, it's worth taking a little time to put in a bevel after applying the Solidify and a level of subdivision around the rims, and then across the peaks and troughs, as shown:


Drawing a specific color in the image editor I'm trying to do something that seems very elementary but I can't figure it out: I want to make a 8x1 px bitmap and give each pixel a specific value in the Blender image editor. My first problem is that I can't resize the brush ('Draw' tool) small enough; it's always bigger than 1 pixel so I draw on other pixels. Secondly I can't find a blend mode that will just assign the color that I chose in the Color Picker; it always adjusts the existing color.

I think your falloff should be adjusted. Mine stops after radius 1 (2 is the diameter)
I was able to paint pixels successfully without modifying other pixels. Let me know if you need the blend file.
Cheers!


How to make foam / bubbles in liquid I'm trying to make some bubbles and foam in liquid. Something like in the image below.

I'm thinking about particles, but I don't know how to make bubbles of different sizes. I also don't know how to make the bigger bubbles on the top and the smaller ones on the bottom.

Maybe some smart shader? Do you have any ideas?

It looks like this would be possible to do with Boolean modifiers. Just create a sphere, deform it with modifiers so it looks more like a blob, then repeat it in a bubbly pattern within the fluid object. Once you've got all the bubbles where you want them, select them all and join them with CTRL + J. Then select the fluid, go to modifiers and add a Boolean modifier. Then select the bubbles under object. and apply.


Generated texture coordinates vs Unwrapped texture coordinates If you want to map an equirectangular image texture to a sphere - like a map of the earth to a sphere - is there any necessity to use an UV map ? Or can I simply use the generated texture coordinates ? In general, when do you choose for UV unwrapping and when to use generated texture coordinates ?

I don't think this question is a duplicate with this question because these answers all start with the uv unwrapping method and I want to know if UV unwrapping or generated texture coordinates works best for my specific question.
And I also would like to learn some general guidelines when choosing uv unwrapped vs generated texture coordinates

Each situation really determines what you should do.

In general

Using generated coordinates gives you less control, but is easier.
Using UV's is more precise, but harder, especially on complex meshes.

Now, I will use an example scene, to show some of the differences.

In this example, we will use:

Sphere one uses generated texture coordinates
Sphere two uses sphere projection, to create a UV map.

In this circumstance, I like the results of sphere 1 better than that of sphere 2.

When using generated texture coordinates, keep in mind what mode of texture projection you are using. I have a sphere, so I am using sphere projection. For other objects with complex meshes that you do not want to unwrap, box projection is usually a good option.

When looking at the UV map that was created through sphere projection on sphere two, you may notice that the unwrap is not perfect, and that is one of the advantages of using generated texture coordinates.

Also, remember that using UV or generated texture coordinates are not the only options. Using object coordinates can come in useful when you want the texture's projection to change based on the position of the object, such as when creating roof tiles. You may use a cracked texture, and want the cracks to be in a different place per tile.

So when deciding, just think about what your goals are, and what the easiest way to get there is. In the earth model case, I would use generated coordinates with sphere texture projection.


How to render fire in cycles? I don't understand how smoke is supposed to work in Blender 2.8 (Cycles rendering). No matter what I do, I cannot get a render of smoke. This is extremely weird, since the smoke renders perfectly fine in the 3D viewport:

I scoured the net and found this node setup that was supposed to fix the issue, but it doesn't actually do anything:

I followed the steps from this tutorial:

Add object
In object mode, Object -> Quick Effects -> Quick Smoke

And immediately, the effect will work in the 3D viewport in all modes, but it will never render. Please help me, I've been trying to solve this for 3 hours and nothing helps.

I tried making a smoke scene to see if I could answer this, and I had the same problem, I fixed it by baking the smoke simulation.  (go to the physics tab of the domain cube and under cache press bake.

I hope that fixes the problem.

As a side note, for an easier smoke and fire material, you can use the Principled Volume BSDF.  This can be used for smoke and fire.

Here's a picture of the node set up and the result.

The two settings you can change to change the look of the smoke is color and density.  I hope this is helpful to you. :)