Is it possible to import the outline or profile of something from a picture to use as a line in a wireframe? I have some engineering schematics for an aircraft I want to make a 3d model of.  These schematics includes cross-sections of the air foil at different parts of the aircraft, basically what you would get if thinly sliced the aircraft.  Is there a way to use the line in the airfoil cross section as part of a wireframe?

The cross section is very simple, it is basically just a black line drawn in a loop to form an oval like shape.

The air foil cross section as well as a cross section of the fuselage from the front view are below to give you an idea of what I want to do and use.

What you want to achieve can perfectly be done in Blender but there's a few caveats and things to have in mind before proceeding.

The first one is you can't use the images directly to model, you have to convert them into something usable as actual geometry in Blender.

You can import you images in a variety of ways

As an empty Add > Empty Image

As a textured plane File > Import > Image as Planes (make sure you activate the addon in the user preferences)
As a background images 3D View > Properties Shelf > Background Image

The real challenge here will be setting them to the correct size

As for the geometry itself

You can use bezier curves to easily trace over your shapes, they are the most adequate type of geometry for this type of shape, however they will make it a lot harder to actually model the shape of your airplane in 3D with a desirable topology in the future.

If you still like this method you can use the BSurfaces Addon to help you create the shapes from the bezier curves with correct topology

Ideally you would trace the shape of your sections with a mesh, taking care to always use the same number of segments over all cross sections, so that you can have a clean topology over your model in the end.

I have to leave a word of warning as final though, even though Blender is totally capable of doing this sort of work if you are looking for precision, and easy smooth surface transitions without having to care for topology and sewing seams, CAD-like solid modeling or NURBS based software are much more adequate tools for this sort of work.


Glass: Increase "Transmission Roughness" as the object behind goes far In the real world, there are some rough glasses that as objects behind them go away, they (the objects) become more blurry, but when we stick an object just behind this type of glass, it's almost shown clear (also some materials has this property in their reflections, that's another question).

For clarification, I photographed these examples:

When the object (my hand) is stuck behind the glass:

When the object goes a little far from the glass:

Bringing it farther:

How do you achieve this effect in Blender with Cycles engine? (mine is Blender v2.82)

Cycles is physically based so you don't need to add anything to a regular transmissive shader.
Add a Principled BSDF to you plane. Set the transmission to 1. You can tweak the IOR but the default value of 1.45 is fine for the purpose.

The setup:

Result :


Make a hole in the ground of a video which is camera-tracked? With my trial and error learning, I managed to track a video in Blender 2.67 and make a cube (the one which is there by default) appear on the "ground" (which is a table).

But how can I make a hole in the ground?

Edit:

I used the two buttons shown below:

The two functions seems to do a bunch of things to the scene, which seems to include setting the background and foreground layers, and adding a Ground object to the scene.

The problem is, what do I need to do to create a hole that appears to sink into the table?

Firstly, you need to create the shape of the inside of the hole and make sure the object is on the foreground layer.

After that, you need to crop the generated Ground object to remove an area which matches the opening of the hole.

Here is the result (not realistic, just to show that it works):

This is the way I did it. I guess this might not be the best way to do it, but it works.

I am not familiar with Blender terminology. If someone is willing to post a more detailed or better answer, I would be glad to accept it.


Visualise texture based on direction a surface is pointing using Cycles I would like to apply/blend a shader based on the direction a face is pointing. So basically, if the colors of the axes are used, a cube would look like this:

Ideally, also the negative and positive direction should be taken into account. That way the shader on the face pointing in the Z+ direction can be different from the one pointing in the Z- direction.

You can do something like this by plugging the "True Normal" output of the Geometry node into a Diffuse/Emission shader.

Although it is a vector output, it will give you a colour for each face depending upon its normal.


Flatten shading on cylinder This image shows two of the same curve, one beveled into a cylinder, and one extruded into a flat plane. The material is a Diffuse mixed with glossy at .1 fac.

The top cylinder gets a strong highlight down its length and visible shadows at the glancing edges due to it's curve. The flat one's gloss is much more spread out due to it being flat.

What i want is to render shading like the flat strand, but on the cylinder. It seems this should be possible with some sort of normal changing or the like? I want the effect of the flat ribbon, but if I actually use flat ribbons then they disappear at certain angles, whereas the cylinder always has the same thickness.

If I were working directly with the mesh, then I'd scale it on the view axis till it was flat. Can something like this be done to the normals within the material?

UPDATE:
Here's a picture showing the difference better. This is just the gloss, and I bent the bottom ribbon more to emphasize the difference.

The ribbon gets full lighting on it's whole surface because it is flat. The cylinder is less lit at glancing angles. I want to get the same sort of shading on the cylinder that I have on the ribbon.

This is gloss only with Incoming plugged into the normal socket. It is flattening things out, but has also fundamentally changed how the shading is working.

I believe you are after this shading effect:

It is possible with some vector math on normals. The goal is to change normals to be pointing towards camera, but the Incoming output from Geometry node will override all normals equally, ignoring in which direction the curve is heading. Luckily we can determine the local vector of the tube's direction:

Can I color a curve in Cycles by the direction it's running?

The rest is a matter of 2 vector cross products to get a vector incoming to camera but also orthogonal to the curve's direction:

If you want to do this on meshes, you will have to write your own OSL shader.


Armature moving points for no apparent reason I am experiencing some odd behaviour in my rig where vertices with 0 weight are moving when they shouldn't be. I have tried painting different weight onto those vertices but it does not seems to help.

blend file

There could be two solutions to this problem. However, you can fix this problem easily. Solution #1 Go into the vertex groups menu, select the vertex group  For the bone that is causing your problem,  go into edit mode for your character's object, select only the vertices you don't want to be effected by the bone, and press remove. this will remove any un-wanted vertices from the bone's influence.

Pressing assign will add any selected vertices to the vertex group with 100% influence.
Pressing remove will remove any selected vertices from the vertex group's influence

Solution #2 You have no weight for the vertex causing the problem on any of your foot bones. Thus, when you move the Thigh L bone, it moves the lower leg and all the foot bones with it, but because that single vertex has no weight, no bones will move it. to fix this, go into weight paint mode, select an appropriate foot bone, and paint on some weight. Or you can select that vertex, then select the bone's vertex group and click assign.


How can I turn off mirroring in sculpt mode? So, I am extremely new to blender, I am going to say outright. I have tried to fix this, but i can't seem to find any option that would fix the problem. When I sculpt on an object, it directly mirrors it, even though i have not enabled the mirror function, let alone touch it. I have double checked to make sure mirror wasn't on and it wasn't. and so on and so forth. I pretty much haven't changed any options or anything. if you could help me figure this out, that would be nice.

If you want to disable/enable symmetry when sculpting, go to sculpt mode, then select/deselect the axes in the tool panel under the Symmetry/Lock section.

See Also :
How to disable Symmetrize in Sculpt Mode?


Does parenting object A to object B mean A is the parent or is it the other way around? super basic question here. I'm looking at online guides and tutorials and the phrase "parent object A to object B" pops up a lot. I'm under the impression that this means that object A will become the parent of object B, but I've seen some guides that make it seen as if it were the other way around.
In general, when someone says "parent object A to object B" which object would becomes the parent?

When parenting an object. The object most recently selected will become the parent. And the other objects will be childs. For example, if you selected object "B" first, and then object "A" last, object "A" would be the parent, and object "B" would be the child.


How can I view the reference image behind a cube? I want to model an oven.
I want to use an image as a reference.
To do that, I use Image on a Plane:

The first thing I do is to add a cube to model this oven from it.
However, the geometry covers the reference image:

How do I make the cube transparent so that I can see the reference image again?
Thank you!


Video clip only imports first image in sequence When using the Movie Clip Editor and trying to import a sequence of images only the first image is included.

In image 1 you can see I have selected all the images

In image 2 you see I only have Frame 1 of 1   (1/1)
There should have been 81 images imported

Why am I not getting the rest

The answer to my question in case anyone else runs across this problem, was the sort order of the images

Image 1 shows I clicked on the display icon
Then I changed the display mode from sort by date to name of the images.
Not sure why date order did not work, but because it was in the wrong sequence only one image was imported.

In image 2 you can see all 81 frames (1/81) were imported. Compared to my original post where it showed only 1/1 frames


Second 3D View FOV ultra wide So I opened up another 3D view and for some reason the second 3d view is super wide and when I make more 3D view windows it's still ultra wide and I don't know how to fix it.

In the properties panel, press 'n' to bring that up and go to "view" and you can see the lens view in mm, the default is 35mm, so you can set it to that.


Why is the Default Screen layout not showing all objects? Whenever I change the layout to Default, it only shows one object. Do you have any idea why?

From the screenshots you posted, you can see that in the top-left corner it says "User Ortho (Local)", which means you are in Local View mode. Just press NumPad / to toggle it.


Use vertex path on one mesh to cut a hole in another mesh I am attempting to prepare a mesh for an acoustic simulation that requires a maximum edge of 4mm, with 1mm resolution at the ears.

The original mesh is @ 1mm res.

I'm aware of two techniques:

ReMesh
Sculpting with Simplify brush (and dynamic topology enabled)

I've tried both out.

My favourite is ReMesh, as it lets me precisely control the upper edge length:

But I require the ears to be at a higher density!

So, I duplicate, and remesh the duplicate to low resolution. Now I want to put the ears of the original onto the head of the Lo-Res.

Now I'm stuck, what next?

It would be wonderful if I could just use this path to cut the original mesh.

Maybe if I select the entire ear, and extrude slightly into the head and slightly out of the head, then I could perform Boolean operations using this extruded ear.

So I could do
  LoRes-mesh MINUS extruded-ear
  +
  original-mesh INTERSECT extruded-ear

I have to say, I don't like the sound of this.

How about Knife Project, using the vertex path?

Got it!

<3 Blender :]

I did it using the Knife Project tool:

Load full resolution mesh
Duplicate to 'LoRes', hide the original, select the duplicate
Remesh to a low resolution
Edit Mode
Create a vertex path around ear using CTRL+Click
Copy these into a new 'cutpath' object:
   3dView ToolShelf -> Duplicate (click twice)
   3DViewMenu->Mesh->Vertices->Separate->Selection
Object Mode -> Select 'cutpath', SHIFT+Select 'LoRes'
Edit Mode -> Knife Project
Circle Select to select bits of the ear that got missed out

x to Delete verts

OK, now I have the LoRes mesh with the ear cutout.  Now I just have to use the same 'cutpath' to cut the ear from the original mesh, and stick it in.


A part of mesh turn into cyan in edit mode I am a newbie in blender. I just had a trouble with modeling.
I did a model in Zbrush, then I import that in maya to retopologize.
then I import the retopologized model into blender.
Problem is when I switch the mesh into edit mode, a part of mesh will become cyan color.
this is different from what I usually did.

Hanwen
Thanks

Those edges are marked as sharp. If faces & edges are marked as smooth blender will simulate a smooth edge. Shading is computed from the direction of the edge normals. They will merge into one when smoothed.

If you want rid of the blue lines (yellow in my viewport) select everything and set all edges to smooth. If you want to play around with smooth/sharp faces and edges set all faces to smooth and enable auto-smooth (and perhaps increase the angle to 180). The relevant buttons are marked in red below.


What elements go into a good material testing scene I've been searching a bit for the perfect material testing scene, so I'm curious, what are some of the most important elements in a material testing scene?

Make sure you have correct neutral lighting (a diffuse grey (50%)
sphere should render as diffuse grey (50%)).
You need some reflectors to judge reflections.
Maybe you should have an object with a stepped thickness so that you
can see how refraction behaves.
You could also setup additional renderlayers with different lighting
situations.
Maybe a grid on the floor to get the scale right (cm, dm, m)?
A McBeth chart of some sort?
A diffuse and a reflective sphere for reference in some corner?

I think SHED have some nice examples in their blog somewhere...


How to create fog in one specific area of a scene rather than using volume scatter to effect whole scene Title is self explanatory. Indoor scene where you can see the outside. Fog to be illuminated by streetlights.

Instead of editing the world to have scatter volume, you can just create a mesh and place it wherever you want, then remove the surface node, and add Volume Scatter to the volume. Then adjust the Density as you want.

Hope this helps.


What does "LOCKED_TRACK constraint reserved for Locked Track" mean? I am working on the rig of a jet-fighter with no bones, using empties to emulate a hinge for the different parts that flap up etc; for this I use two empties: one to act as a hinge, the other as target. I applied a locked track constraint to the hinge, but when I select the hinge empty and I apply the Locked track constraint I get the following cryptic error in the properties window where the actual constraint was suppose to be:

  LOCKED_TRACK constraint reserved for Locked Track.

I have researched the internet and I could not find any information on the error, just the wiki manual page that confirms that LOCKED TRACK is exactly what I need.

The little info I found did not address my problem at all, but ways of using the LOCKED TRACK constraint. Can anybody help?

I never used a Locked track constraint but using shape keys could be an alternative for animations without bones.

If you separate P the flaps and parent them to the plane Ctrl-P you could add two shape keys and animate them by keyframing the value:


How does one seamlessly loop an animation containing a Noise modifier? I've searched and found some ineffective "solutions" to the issue I am experiencing.

I am animating a flickering candle flame and there is probably a much easier/more effective way to do this, however, I'm extremely new to Blender and CGI in general.

I have an object that I applied my candle flame shader to and opted to use a Noise modifier in the Graph Editor to manipulate the X, Y and Z scale of said object.

Mixing in an emission shader to the object did not give the effect I was going for. I opted to add a point light behind the object and again, use a Noise modifier in the Graph Editor to manipulate the Power and Z location. I also added a low Watt point light in front of the object, to illuminate the front surface, since the light behind washed out the flame shader due to transparency. (I believe)

I've been able to closely match the power of the light to the flame "flicker" size as well.

Where I'm falling short is the seamless loop of the animation. My first and last frames are not even close so there is a stutter at the end/beginning of the animation loop.

I have tried to manually set keyframes at the start and end of the animation. (Did not work)
I have tried to use the Restrict Frame Range setting with just the Noise modifier. (Did not work)
I tried to switch from Eevee to Cycles and use the Restrict Frame Range setting with that as well. (Did not work)

I really want to stick with Eevee as the Render Engine using Blender 2.8.

I suppose the gist of all this are the questions I have.
1) Is there a more effective/more simple way to achieve this effect using Eevee?
2) Is there a way to make the loop seamless while using the Noise modifier without having to endlessly tinker with the Noise settings to align the first and last frames?

The video is here:
https://youtu.be/qjzqhZsvGBw

There is no audio since I don't have a mic yet.

To loop a noise-based animation
One approach, I can't guarantee it's the snappiest, but it has some advantages.
You could use the NLA editor, to make an action loopable, in much the same way as you would make an image tileable  in an image editing application. For an image, you might split it down the middle, swap left and right halves, and blend across the discontinuities at the center. Same here.
Here's a noise-based animation, 100 frames, which doesn't loop.

In the Graph Editor, take the curves with noise modifiers, and convert them to actual keyframes, by using Header menu  > Key > Sample Keyframes

Switch to a Dopesheet > Action Editor window, and crack open an NLA window below it. An action should automatically have been created, which you can Push Down to the NLA editor, as a working strip.

In the NLA editor, you can ShiftA add a track. Put the cursor halfway down your strip, select it, and Right-Click menu, or Y, split the strip under the cursor.

Now you can select the halves of the strip separately, drag one of them to the spare track, and swap the halves, so the cuts are against the ends of the animation. You will have to shorten the overall length, so there's an overlap between the strips:

To get the automatic mixing in the overlap between the strips you will have to set the Auto Blend in the NLA's N panel:

This example produced a looping 86-frame animation:

.. Which can be baked into an action in its own right by using 3D View > Header > Object > Animation > Bake Action. You can reuse and adjust the loopable noise action with other objects, so long as the same properties are being animated, or even cut and paste the keyframes between channels of different types.


_pickle.PicklingError: Can't pickle : attribute lookup Vector on builtins failed i get this error in every time i run my client code i tried to defined mathutils lib but i still get it

  File "Client.py", line 34, in
  _pickle.PicklingError: Can't pickle : attribute lookup Vector on builtins failed

#------------Setup--------------#
from pickle import dumps, loads
from mathutils import Vector
from GameLogic import *
import GameLogic as GameLogic
import bge
from socket import *
import socket
import pickle

cont = GameLogic.getCurrentController()
owner = cont.owner
#obj = cont.owner

if not owner['OneTime']:
  ServerIP = GameLogic.IP
  Serverport = 471
  Clientname = ''
  ClientPort = 472
  GameLogic.sClient = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
  GameLogic.sClient.bind((Clientname,ClientPort))
  GameLogic.host = (ServerIP,Serverport)
  GameLogic.sClient.setblocking(0)
  owner['OneTime'] = 1

PosYou = owner.worldPosition

scene = getCurrentScene()
Server = scene.objects["Server"]

PosServer = [0,0,0]
#------------RECEIVE/SEND--------------#
Data = pickle.dumps((PosYou))
GameLogic.sClient.sendto(Data,GameLogic.host)

try:
    Data, SRIP = GameLogic.sClient.recvfrom(1024)
    UPData = pickle.loads(Data)
    PosServer = [UPData[0],UPData[1],UPData[2]]
    Server.setPosition(PosServer)
except:
    pass
#---------------THE-END----------------#

Convert the vector to list

picklablePosition = list(owner.worldPosition)

and back

unpickledPositionAsList = [UPData[0],UPData[1],UPData[2]]
owner.worldPosition = unpickledPositionAsList # worldPosition accepts a 3-tuple list


Changing Size from small to big in array or duplication i want to have a couple of spheres from small to big along a curve/spline. Is there an easy way with modifiers etc. to do this?

Thanks a lot!

Yes you can do this using modifiers. You need an array and curve modifier.

Create a curve
Add a sphere
Add an empty (plain axis)
Select Sphere and add an array modifier

turn off Relative Offset
enable Object Offset and chose the empty

move the empty along a axis (possibly the positive x-axis)
scale the empty down a bit, you should see the spheres get smaller towards the end

Select the sphere and add a curve modifier to it. Choose your curve
Depending on the orientation of the curve and the translation of the empty the array may look wrong. In this case move the empty along the other axis. You can also apply the transforms of the sphere and the curve using Ctrl A


Rigging - Sword like object influenced by 2 bones As in topic. How to attach a sword to have it be influenced by two bones. Not off course in the same time.
I was fighting with "child-of" constraint, but with no luck. Well it works, but if I was in need to change bone influence form pelvis to left hand, it just fly away somewhere, so the transition wasn't seamless as I was expecting. I really don't have any idea on how to do this. I was experimenting a lot.

Basically Sword bone must follow pelvis bone, when it's not used, and need to follow hand bone, when the animation need it. Anyone, because it's driving Me crazy. It can even be via payed addon, anything.

Regards! :)

If there's only to be one parent switch, the Child of Constraint should do that, but for multiple switches or just plain simplicity, I'd be looking at (as you mentioned) visually switching between two swords, or even easier - splitting the project up between two or more Blend files, each taking over from the previous and each with the correct parent assigned. (Ctrl+P)
The transition would be simple enough.  As the hand would firstly have to move to the sword's handle you'd need to animate that in the 1st file with the pelvis as the parent.  Once the sword handle is gripped, that would be where the next Blend file takes over and with that running, the hand is the parent.
A similar case is here:
How can I copy animation from an object while it was attached as a child and then paste that animation to it after detaching it?


Flipped keyframes - weird result (walk cycle) I'm working on walk cycle animation for a rigged character and I have a problem.

If I copy keyframes of the pose I made, and duplicate flipped keyframes via Ctrl+C -> Ctrl+Shift+V - I get a weird result, the legs are pointed to wrong directions and so on.

Why could it happen and how can I fix it?
Thank you in advance!

I believe that is the feature that allows you to copy keyframes and reverse the transformations of bones. Not sure exactly how it works but I use it for walk cycle. It reverses the initial pose of the character to form the middle pose of a walk cycle


copying texture onto identical object I have modeled a house and have already placed windows in different parts of the house. Each window consists of several objects. These windows (consisting of several objects) are identical and are only moved in their position. Now I want to texture only one window and all windows should get that texture. So if I change something on my "main"- or "master"- window/object all windows should get that change in texture as well. I don't want to have to texture each one individually.

Did I had to do something before copying or is it still possible? What I don't want is to texture it first and then copy it.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you in advance for the answers!

If all your windows are identical you can link their UV maps and materials. Better yet, you can link all the object data if you want them to be perfect clones of one another.

You can do this by selecting all your windows (make sure the last one selected/highlighted in yellow is the one with the proper material data) then press CtrlL and selecting Object Data, Materials, and/or Transfer UV Maps.


Cycles render no material in full render I can't render all materials in full render. All materials are just replaced with Marble (one of my materials). However, it works in viewport render.

Link:  https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1zTVV2u9-ZR4fEmytC-8yVmQ7eHPdbaHa6uDRXX2L_og/edit?usp=sharing

It sounds as if you have set a Material Override in the Render Layers tab > Layer panel > Material field. Clear it, and your materials should reappear.


How to get rid of this seam on my texture? On the side of the toe there is a change in color.

I don't know which texture it is. Whether its the normal map or the skin, I'm not sure. But when I go into texture paint mode, and select the blur tool, it barely changes when using it.

EDIT

I realized its the shape of the topology??? It goes all the way up the foot and cuts off at the front of the ankle in the shape of a seam formed by vertices on the foot

EDIT

It's also at the place where the map was separated into different sections. EG legs, arms etc

Things to check:

Creased? Turn on the display of creases (N > Mesh Display > Creases), then enter Edit Mode (Tab) and look for a blue line along that section. If you see the blue line, clear the crease (Edge Select Mode, Ctrl+E, Clear Crease)
Internal Face? Check to see if you an internally extruded face along that section. Hit Z to enter Wireframe Mode, switch to Face Select Mode, and look for a third face attached to that edge. If so, delete it (them).
Edge Split? Ensure you don't have an Edge-Split modifier with too low of a value (Properties > Modifiers > Edge Split)
Shade Flat? Select all faces surrounding the issue and hit W then Shade Smooth

I downloaded your blend and took a quick look. It doesn't appear to be any of the things I've listed, but seem to be (as you suggested) associated with the UV mapped textures. The area in question is along two non-contiguous UV segments. So, unless the pixels directly under both segments have identical colors, one would absolutely expect there to be such a discontinuity.

My suggestion is to re-project the geometry so as to avoid seams in your UV in prominent positions.


How to make each letter a single object? I shift+a and added a Text, then I alt+c to convert it into a mesh.

Even though the object is not interconnected, it is considered as a single object.

My goal is to make each letter a single object so I can perform a rotation animation on each one letter separately.

How do I separate them?

With converted Text to Mesh go to Edit Mode, Select All (A) then hit P and choose 'By loose parts'.


how to show all layers with hotkey (emulate numpad enabled) How can I show all layers with a hotkey? ~ key does not work. (correkt key according to blender wiki) https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_HotKeys/3D_View/Object_Mode
 - Because (I have sensei format and a swedish keyboard).
I want to quickly be able to view a background image only, hiding all objects, in use when sculpting to see my ref image for one second. - this is possible with show all layers hotkey, and so how can i find or change the hotkey for show all layers in the user pref? Thanks.

First check that you aren't in local view as this disables the 3Dview layers. When in local view you won't see the layer buttons in the 3Dview header and if you have the view name at the top of the viewport you will see (local) there.

You can find the shortcut settings in the Input Preferences, if you enter layers into the search box you will see a list of actions involving layers with the shortcut keys, clicking the key will allow you to change the shortcut used and then you can click Save User Settings to enable that shortcut each time you start blender.


How to lock object face a certain distance away from another object face? I tried searching for this on google but I came up empty. I want to know how to lock the object 2 5 inches away from the corner of object 1? I want it to stay 5 inches away even if I re-scale.

How do I lock "cube 2" 5 inches away from the edge of object 1?

Here is an image of what I want to do:

EDIT:
I want to offset "cube 2" 5 inches away from the bottom right vertex of "cube 1" no matter where "cube 1" is?

This is so if I move or scale "cube 1", "cube 2" would still be offset 5 inches from the bottom right vertex of "cube 1".

Set object2 origin point to its right bottom corner and you are free to scale in object mode.

Select object2, go to edit mode, select right bottom vertex, Shift+S > Cursor to selected.
Return to object mode Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C > Origin to 3D cursor.


How can I make the propeller to rotate? This is my propeller:

And I'm trying to make it rotating like in this video tutorial:

Propeller rotation

At 2:22 in the video he clicks on the automatic key frame button, so I did it too. Then I moved the frame green line to the end (250). Then clicked N and under Rotation I changed the 'z' axis to 5000. Then I moved the green bar back to frame 0 and clicked on Play but it's not rotating.

Also I saw he is using a bone? Or something so he could rotate first the propeller with the mouse before making the animation.

Not sure how I messed it up.

He pressed "G" to grab and then just clicked the mouse.  What that did is give Blender a detectable action.  In other words, if your grabbing then you're probably moving something, so Blender will automatically insert a keyframe at the current frame.  It's a little hacky.

A better (and more deliberate) way to do this, in my opinion, is to press i whenever you want to insert a keyframe.  Just select the action that you want to keyframe.  i works on almost everything, even things like shader nodes.  Using this method prevents you from keyframing things you never intended.

EDIT: There are whole videos and articles dedicated to keyframing.  But I'll add this: by default, Blender will "curve" the value.  In other words, say for instance a car... going from rest to full speed takes time.  In the same way, Blender automatically accelerates to the desired "speed" or value and then decelerates at the end.

You can change the interpolation to be linear in the Graph Editor:


How do I fill my bezier curve shape? I'm trying to create legs for my park bench in Blender. The shape is a bit complex to model, so I crafted it using bezier-curves.

However after selecting "Both" as my fill-option the shape fills up invertedly:

The idea is that the thin shapes get filled with the larger areas remaining open. It feels like regardless of what settings I poke at, nothing changes.

The Bezier-shape is being mirrored on the X-axis through a modifier, using clipping to make sure nothing overlaps.

Any hope of inverting Blenders fill to the reverse effect?

Thanks for all the suggestions! I found out that my mirror modifier wasn't melding the center vertices.

To fix my problem I had to delete the modifier, duplicate my Bezier-object, manually delete the center vertices and redefine the broken segments.


exporting a collection to re import into blender? Hi I am trying to re import a layer/collection back to a newer blender file. I noticed that I can not export as blender. I managed to export my collection as FBX, but all the modifiers got applied.

What I am trying to do is to import a layer into a blender newer file (with all the modifiers).

Is this possible ? Thanks

Bruno

You can append collections from an existing Blender project to another/new project by using File > Append. Select the .blend file that contains the collection that you want to append and open the Collection directory inside the file. Select the collections and click Append from Library.


How to create a mesh programmatically, without bmesh? I do not want to use BMesh this time.

I want to create a mesh programmatically, for this purpose I created this short script to see what I do wrong in my importer script. In this script I try to create a tetraeder. First I create the mesh, then define the vertices. Then I go for the polygons, but here I do something bad, because at the end I got no polygons defined.

The code:

mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Teszt")

mesh.vertices.add(4)
mesh.vertices[0].co = (0,0,0)
mesh.vertices[1].co = (2,0,0)
mesh.vertices[2].co = (1,2,0)
mesh.vertices[3].co = (1,1,3)

mesh.polygons.add(4)
mesh.polygons[0].vertices = (0,1,2)
mesh.polygons[1].vertices = (0,1,3)
mesh.polygons[2].vertices = (1,2,3)

mesh.polygons[3].vertices = (0,2,3)
print(len(mesh.polygons[3].vertices))

mesh.polygons[3].vertices = [0,2,3]
print(len(mesh.polygons[3].vertices))

#mesh.update()

#from bpy_extras import object_utils
#object_utils.object_data_add(bpy.context, mesh)

I am pretty new to Python, so it may be totally my fault, but when I check the len of (0,2,3), that is 3, when I execute mesh.polygons[3].vertices = (0,2,3) it says 0. No exception or error message, just shallows it.

When I try to update() or ...data_add( at the end, Blender simply exits.

So my question is: how to define the polygons properly (and without using bmesh)?


Solidify modifier issue for increasing thickness I am creating 3D model of iPhone Case.

I have created it. But now I want to increase thickness of it. I tried using solidify modifier. But it is not giving result as I want.

See below is the image with no thickness.

After using solidify modifier it is not applying properly on camera cut.

Please anyone tell me to how to do this.

Few things you can check:

Your topology of the case: make sure it has less or no triangles and has a smooth flow.
Try adding an edge split modifier.
Ctrl+N to reapply the normals of the faces.


Can the compositor be used to batch process images? There are tools to batch process images already of course, (such as ImageMagick), but this isn't as flexible as Blender's compositor since they typically perform linear operations and don't have the control you get with a node-tree.

Is there some way to take point Blender at a directory of images (for example), and batch process them (using an existing compositor setup).

Yes, one not so elegant (no scripting :) but easy way to go about this would be to just use the Movie Clip node and point it to the directory with the images, pass it as input to your node group/compositor setup and render it out as an animation of stills or output each separately using the File Output node.

The only con or drawback to this approach is that the images need to be in a sequence for Blender to iterate through them.. img_001, img_002 ... img_00n or so you can scrub through in the clip editor or timeline but otherwise it should work as desired.


Cell Fracture Hallow Shards I was trying to make a rock-like texture for my mesh by using cell fracture, but every time I used the feature - the shards appeared hallow. Is there a procedure I missed; or is there something I need to do with this outer covering that normally appears after I apply the cell fracture?

Well, when I applied location, rotation, and scale - cell fracture worked perfectly. It was hard to find the answer via google lol.


UV maping a sphere to have stripes runing between both poles? I tried to map a country flag on a UV sphere, but I could not get it laid out the way how I wanted to see it. I used the Poland flag.
I wanted to map it exactly as you can see in picture 1.

But what I got was a result as you can see in these pictures.

The flag was looped at least 8 times on each half side of the sphere.
I could double that, but I could not go half of that, or less.
I wanted the flag to show up just 1 time at each half side of the sphere.
or maybe twice at each side, but not 8 times.
as you can see on the third picture, I tried to resize the UV map, but also then it would never go under 8 repeats.
How can I change this?

Here is the Poland flag texture.

If you do it backwards, so instead of unwrapping an icosphere you create a plane and turn it into a sphere, you have a lot more control on the results.
To turn a plane into a sphere see this answer

Unwrapping a plane will give you perfect UVs to do what you want:

.blend file

related:

What is the best way to unwrap a sphere?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/13927/1853


Modal Operator Fixes I am studying Python programming for Blender and recently started dealing with modal operators. The question I have is: There is a double call from the event of the modal operator for key-up and key-down of the specific keys. How can that be reduced to one call? Also, this is useful if it runs silently in the background without taking up resources. Is this the case for the modal operator, or are there caveats?

Here is the derivative code I'm working with that displays to the console:

import bpy

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

    def execute(self, context):
        print("This is the modal operator")
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'ESC':  # Confirm
            print("This is finished")
            return {'FINISHED'}
        elif event.alt:
            if event.type == 'P':  # Confirm
                print("This is a continuous pass through")
            return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        print("This is the invoker")

        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

bpy.ops.object.modal_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

Thanks again batFINGER

The following works great:

import bpy

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

    def execute(self, context):
        print("This is the modal operator")
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'ESC':  # Confirm
            print("This is finished")
            return {'FINISHED'}
 # .value == 'PRESS' will trigger the event once.
 # or do: if event.type == 'P' and if.event.value == 'PRESS':
        elif event.alt:
            if event.type == 'P':
                if.event.value == 'PRESS': # Confirm
                    print("This is a continuous pass through")
            return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        print("This is the invoker")

        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

bpy.ops.object.modal_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


How to fix the bone influencing other meshes I have boned a laptop and when I moved the bone for the screen, it goes fine, but a vertice on the laptop goes up or down all the time when i move the bone for the screen. How can I fix it though? I looked at it to see if there were any weight paint at that area but no.

In Edit mode, select the vertex, open the N panel, you'll see if the vertex is part of a vertex group it is not supposed to be part of, you can remove if from this group if you press the X button.

Blue doesn't mean the selected bone or group has no influence on these vertices, it might be a very low influence, to check the real zero influence in Weight Paint mode you need to display the Zero Weight option of the Viewport Overlays.


How to render a hdri on a separate layer What's the best way to combine 2 render layers with a HDRI background? I wanna have 3 layers and having one layer be denoised and have a separate layer just for the HDRI.

If  you simply enable the environment pass in a renderlayer, or add a single renderlayer using an empty scene layer to do so, you can achieve what you would like if I understand correctly what you are trying to do.

You will need to use transparent background, as you will need to use an Alpha Over node to combine the renderlayers to create the complete image.

Here is a simple example:

Click to enlarge

The sphere is on it's own scene/ renderlayer and not denoised, while the monkey and plane are also on their own layer, and denoised. As you asked for a separate layer, the hdri uses an empty layer with the environment pass enabled.

The critical part, as noted is using the environment pass to be able to retrieve the environment image after rendering.


How to make bones visible through only one object when im working with a rigged object. I use the xray mode to make it easier to see the skeleton inside the object. But if i want the object (which in this case is a human) to hold something, like a weapon. Its kinda hard to see where im supposed to place the weapon in his hand, because the armature is in my way, because i can see the skeleton through the weapon. So how would i make the skeleton only see through for the human?

You can't make object A always be displayed in front of B, but perspectively occluded by C in the current Blender.

The common practice is to create rigs (bones or custom shaped bones) that don't occlude by choosing wireframe shapes. A quick way to achieve this, is to set the Maximum Draw Type (under Properties Panel > Object Tab > Display Section) to Wire. The Armature will always be display as wireframe, making the objects "behind" it easy to see.


Animating a shape key that has been hooked to a driver I'm using VMComix's excellent fully rigged Porl character (https://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/14445) to experiment with character animation and have found all the sliders in the N menu that allow for animating common movements like making an open hand into a clench, etc.

However the character also has facial expressions - I'm trying to get him to go from basic facial expression in frame 1 to 'Jaw Drop' in frame 20.

I only seem to be able to activate the Jaw Drop from the Graph editor by switching type to 'Scripted Expression' and Expr to 1. However there doesn't seem to be any way to keyframe this.

I'm a Blender amateur and I get a feeling I'm overlooking something incredibly obvious .... any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Custom properties on face bone.

Would leave the drivers as, is and animate the custom property that drives the jaw.  In this case its the "jaw_down" prop on the "face" pose bone.  Can see this from  the driver variables in your screen shot, just below your red circle.

Select the face bone in pose mode and the custom properties are shown on bone properties panel (as in image below) or as stated in your q, in the 3d view properties panel N


Change animation time to match audio track I'm changing an animation simple youtube intro from 24fps to 60fps. The music in the intro plays at the right speed but the animation only lasts for the original time and hasn't changed its length with the new frame rate. So it is rendering what appears to be VERY QUICKLY while the music it was matched to is still playing I have a black screen because the animation is over. Is there an easy way to have the time of animation match the time the audio takes to play?

You'll need to scale the keyframes of all animated elements in the scene so the last ones end at frame 60.

Open the dope sheet editor and place the cursor (the green line) at frame one.
Select all the diamonds on the dopesheet so that they are all orange
Press S to scale and stop when the diamonds on frame 24 reach frame 60. Left Click to confirm.


How to convert current view as camera? In 3D view i often find myself getting the perfect spot for the camera ,but Crtl alt 0 always ruins it,it always changes the view a lot,and trying to get the same angle by moving camera is also impossible and incredibly time conssuming.

How do i convert PERFECTLY any current view into an active camera?It's no big deal if it changes resolution(once again,align camera to current view is not what i am looking for since it do not replicate exactly the current view)

I am a beginner so I don't know perfectly but you can use ⎈ Ctrl+⎇ Alt+0 then use ⇧ Shift+f then use the mouse and w a s d in keyboard to change the position. It's very useful


Blender 2.8 - Can't get weight painting to work as expected I'm trying to follow a weight rigging tutorial on YouTube, everything works fine until I get to weight painting. I'm trying to "draw" over parts of the model but I don't understand the results. Maybe I'm not in the right mode or something.

To add to that - the display looks funny. In the tutorial, when you switch to weight painting there's a gradient between hot red to cold blue to indicate the armature weight over the model.

Here's how it looks on my machine:

And here's hot it looks in the tutorial:

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks.

How I do it is.

go into edit mode
Select faces you want controlled
Select the shape key and assign the faces to it.

A quick video


How to assign PointerProperty in Operator through UI? I have multiple instances of class LayerSettings(bpy.types.PropertyGroup), which is simply a group of variables.  These are stored at the scene level (they're a predefined number, but many of them).  My operators work with different instances of the settings depending on which part of the UI they select (one button executes the operator with settings A, another does the same operator with settings B, etc.).

I'd like to pass the reference of the property group to these operators in the UI.

class SM_OT_image_calculator(bpy.types.Operator):

    layer: bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=LayerSettings)

    def execute(self, context):
        # use self.layer...

When I call the following in my panel:

layout.operator(SM_OT_image_calculator.bl_idname, text="Calculate Foreground").layer = layer_settings_arg

It gives me an error: attribute "layer" from "SM_OT_video_calculator" is read-only.  I can't find anything in the documentation or in StackExchange on how to assign properties (there's ones for a collection prop, but it has an add function that PointerProps don't).  I know hard-coding is an option for each instance, but that's hard to maintain and debug.

Is there a way to pass a reference of a property group instance to an operator, with the UI?

Aafter continuing researching, apparently operators can only take basic properties (e.g. string, bool, int, float), and PointerProperties only work if they’re stored within at the scene level (e.g. bpy.types.Scene) or inside a PropertyGroup.

So, short answer, it doesn't seem possible at this point (2.81a).

Anyways, my current workaround is making an EnumProperty on the panel that switches between the different instances of layers. Since the enum is stored at the scene level, all my operators can reference it freely and easily. It’s not as contained as I’d like, but it works.


Midi driven animation in blender 2.6 I am looking around for a script that will allow me to trigger animation based on a file input. I'm using blender 2.67b, all the scripts I have seen are for 2.49.

Any suggestions?

MIDI to IPO/Drivers
possibly: https://github.com/kwnetzwelt/midi_to_ipo (for blender 2.5 onwards)
It imports MIDI (per track) and converts it to IPO/drivers and comes with a well written getting started.rtf document.


How to do basic parametric modeling onto a spline I'm looking for a way to do some basic parametric modeling in blender.

I have 3 pieces i'd like to use as a base.
1 starting section, 1 middle and 1 ending.

Is it possible to generate a combined model onto a spline using the starting and end section to close off the model with one or more middle sections based on the total length of the spline?

Example:

Starting from this thread (Make a 3D tube with a bezier curve), I figured that the curve modifier had to be used somewhere. First the spline and the length however.

Use  the following spline settings:

For the length of your object, you can use the array modifier with "Fit Type" set to 'Fit Curve' and then select the curve you want to trace. Then pick your start & end cap. Next up append the curve modifier and take the beziercurve as the object. (deformation Axis = x)

Lastly figure out how to reposition your endcaps so the vertices close up. (I haven't fully grasped the math behind this myself).

EDIT: Considering the end caps. Turns out the array matches them perfectly when you just 'snap attach' them in edit mode to the middle section that you want to array. As in the picture below.


How would you create Pixel Art in blender without using a Shader? How would you create pixel art like this https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/B1inDVWIEAAm2XK.mp4 in Blender?
I understand Sean Young creates the original sprites in Photoshop and imports them, but how does he color them? Does he use planes as the structure of his sprites? It's just so vague to me, and I haven't found any sources online to how he created this.

GUYS I FINALLY WORKED IT OUT :D

After literally asking him online  through social media; he answered! Credits to Leon Cheung and Carlo for being correct on the whole process. He uses the Import > Image to Plane feature addon within Blender. Furthermore, he stated that instead of creating armatures and a rig for his assets, he uses plane animation to move each plane.

I'm really grateful to all the responses i received within the time of this post. Hope this finally cleared it all up <3

Here's something I created with the knowledge i gained:


Cannot use sculpting tools on specific part of a mesh I have been sculpting a mesh into a high-poly human form for a few days. I got to the head and my sculpting tools are barely able interact with it. I can only seem to interact with it on a macro scale and sometimes there are little spikes that the smooth tool cannot smooth. I can still interact like expected with any other part of the mesh but, not the head.

I've tried deleting all the vertices of the head and then filling the hole but, it creates a plane that I cannot interact with.

I tried using the boolean modifier to cut off the head and then start sculpting again but, I got the same result.

I tried recalculating all the normals on the head and it didn't work.

Also I have mirrored sculpting on and the head at times appears asymmetrical

Okay, so I enabled Dynotopo and now it works.


Set active object in Outliner In 3D view, click one of the selected objects while holding shift would set it as the active object. My question is how to do this in Outliners instead of 3D View? Because sometimes the object I want to set as active is very small or obstructed by other objects and it's hard to select in 3D View.

Hold Ctrl then click the object name in the ouliner.


Merging a path to another object I currently have a Square based pyramid and a path that's beveled by a Bezier circle. is there any way to merge these two objects. and if so do i need to merge the path or the bevel object to the pyramid.

This is my first real attempt at making a character model, so any advice is greatly appreciated.

You should try this one. Alt+C -> Mesh from curve then you can merge them by Ctrl+J


Volumetrics behind transparent objects in eevee I have a scene where I want to put an object with a volume renderer under glass, but I've discovered that my volumes don't seem to render when they're behind a transparent object.

I'm new to eevee, and relatively new to blender overall, so I don't know if this is an inherent limitation of the renderer or if there's a setting I need to change, or functionality I need to turn on.

Can I fix this?

Chris pointed me in the right direction - I had the blend mode set to opaque.  Changing it to multiply fixed my render.


How can I turn off gamma correction in 2.79b? I'm very new to Blender and 3D animation in general. Per BlenderGuru's advice, I've added the Filmic Log Encoding Base to Blender, if that matters. My project relies on very specific hexadecimal codes for colors, but every time I enter a code, it's "gamma corrected" to something visually very similar, but the code itself is different.

I'm working in Cycles with Glass and Velvet materials, if that matters.

How do I turn off gamma correction or otherwise ensure my hexademical codes remain unaltered?

It is not gamma correction that you are observing here. It is the rendering process itself.

This is fundamental part of the process and you cannot do anything about it. Color inputs describe various properties of surfaces and the rendering process attempts to calculate the colors that would be captured by a camera. An object of some specific color will have different colors on its surface depending on how it is lit, the glossiness of the surface, the angle it is viewed from and many many other factors. If you took a sample of some paint for example and you knew the matching reflectance values for the primary colors of your chosen color space and took a photograph of the sample and then viewed that photograph on your screen the color values would not match, because of shadows and highlights on the surface as well as lighting conditions. You cannot and should not try to avoid that. What you can do is try and match the color differences in relation to each other as much as it is possible (which it also actually isn't in practise, but that can be a good goal that makes sense).


Stereoscopic SBS is anaglyphic Trying to render an image with 2.76 and cycles in SBS (Squeezed Frame) or line-interleaved still renders that anaglyphic red/blue thing in the viewport. (To be more clear, I'm talking about the F12-render and the result in the image editor.) The result should be in real colors. What am I doing wrong?

Only when I save, it saves a image_L.jpg and an image_R.jpg. Those are in real colors but not line-interleaved nor side by sidy squeezed.

You can turn off anaglyphic view by pressing the icon at the bottom row (looks like a pair of glasses? with red/green lenses).

To save as one image, select "Save As Image". When deciding file name, you have a panel at the left, this is where you select the format of the output. The window in the rendering panel doesn't seem to do anything useful.


Adding Blender Datapaths together as strings and then executing the resulting string is it possible to somehow execute this, so that I get the status of the show_name option?

import bpy

a = "show_name"
b = "bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].objects['Cube']" + "." + a

You can use

eval(b)

eval() will take any valid Python expression string as argument.

To set a value, use

exec(c)

But be careful, exec() will execute ANY python code, so it is considered a very dangerous command, especially if the string is from user input.

I would advice rethinking how your code is setup, there is usually very little reason to access bpy in these fashion.


Why Cant I Sculpt Together These Joined Pieces? I'm in the middle of making my own game and right now and I'm trying to make a model for my main character(A Cat). But it seems I can't get this ear to work properly? Whenever I try to use the sculpting tool to join the two meshes together, I can't. No matter the brush they just don't want to touch each other. That makes no sense to me, they are joined, aren't they? I grabbed them all and used Ctrl + J, so why aren't they acting like one single object? Did I do something wrong?

They have been joined so they exist under the same mesh data block, but it looks like they are still separate islands.  Sculpting works on one island of verts that is a closed shape.
You could perhaps separate them back out, move them such that they intersect just a bit and run a union boolean on them.


Activating 2 or more bone layers at the same time with one button We can make a button toggle a bone layer( but possibly other types of layers such as protected layers) with code like this:

class RigLayers(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = 'POSE_PT_RigLayers'
    bl_label = "Rig Layers"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_context = "posemode"
    bl_category = CUSTOM_CATEGORY

    def draw(self, context):
        column = self.layout.column() #items are placed under each other in a column

        column.prop(context.active_object.data, 'layers', index=0, toggle=True, text='Root bone')
        column.prop(context.active_object.data, 'layers', index=1, toggle=True, text='FK bones')

but, how do we toggle mutiple layers with one button, is there a provided functionality or do we have to implement one ourselves(in what way if possible)?

Operator property

Here is a "dodgy" little operator that instead of passing a list of booleans, eg bone.layers = [True] * 32 (which would set all bone layers to True), uses a comma separated string of layer numbers, as the indices to toggle.

Test script for bone layers based on active pose bone.

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"
    layers : StringProperty()

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        pb = context.active_pose_bone
        bone = pb.bone
        layers = [int(l) for l in self.layers.split(",")]
        for l in layers:
            bone.layers[l] = not bone.layers[l]

        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

Obviously change the class names etc to better suit (from simple operator template)

Now in the layout can

layout = self.layout
op = self.layout.operator("object.simple_operator", text="18, 19")
op.layers = "18, 19"

to toggle layers 18 and 19.

Notes

Cannot turn off all layers, at least one has to be True.

Could extend above to include select, deselect as well as toggle (which it does now)


Remove sequence Text strip in Blender 2.80 In 2.80 I can add a Text effect strip with the following:

    effName = "eff" + tCStr[-3:]
    effName = sequences.new_effect(
        name=tField,
        type="TEXT",
        channel=tChan,
        frame_start=fStart,
        frame_end=fEnd)

That works fine.

However, I also need to remove the strip.

I can remove Image strips with:

sequences.remove(image_strip1)

And I can remove Sound strips with:

sequences.remove(sound_strip1)

I have tried all of the following to remove the Text strips with results as shown.

I'm sure there is a simple way to do this, or failing that, at least some way to do it.

Notes:

• effName is set to a range of values from eff000 to eff010

• tField is set to a range of values from Text0000 to Text0010

• xName is set to either effxxx or Textxxxx

sequences.remove_effect(xName)

AttributeError: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'remove_effect'

sequences.effect_strip_remove(xName)

AttributeError: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'effect_strip_remove'

sequences.remove(xName)

TypeError: Sequences.remove(): error with argument 1, "sequence" -  Function.sequence expected a Sequence type, not str

sequences.remove(eval(xName))

File "<'string>", line 1, in
NameError: name 'eff000' is not defined

sequences.remove(eval(xName))

File "<'string>", line 1, in
NameError: name 'Text0000' is not defined

You have to pass an object of type bpy.types.Sequence into bpy.types.Sequences.remove(). This means you can pass the return value of sequences.new_effect() into sequences.remove(). In the example in your question that reference would be stored in effName.

bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences.remove(effName)

If you don't have a reference to the sequence anymore, you will have to retrieve it from:

bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all

Update: Since there seems to be some misunderstanding about my explanation, you find a fully functional code example below. As I said before, you need to store the return value of new_effect() to later us it as input for remove().

import bpy

sequences = bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences

names = ['a', 'b', 'c']
tChan = 0
fStart = 0
fEnd = 50

text_effects = []

for name in names:
    text_effect_strip = sequences.new_effect(
        name=name,
        type='TEXT',
        channel=tChan,
        frame_start=fStart,
        frame_end=fEnd
    )
    text_effects.append(text_effect_strip)

for text_effect_strip in text_effects:
    sequences.remove(text_effect_strip)


How can I model a skirt? I’m a Blender beginner and I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how to make a skirt similar to the one in the picture below, just for extra background info cylinders were used to create the skirt. How do I model a cylinder to resemble the shape of a skirt. Thanks for the help, if someone answers! :)

Add a circle.
Add a subdivision surface modifier.
With all vertices selected, perform the Checker Deselect operation to select every 2nd vertex.
Scale the selected vertices inwards.
Select all and extrude them.
Select the resulting rings with Alt clicks and scale them accordingly.


Converting code to work in blender with sliders I have some Fragmentarium code that I would like to convert so it will work in Blender anyone have any ideas how I can do this?

The code is below:

#include "Progressive2D.frag"

#group Spiral
uniform int StripesNum; slider[1,10,100]
uniform int StripesAng; slider[-180,45,180]
uniform float StripesThinkness; slider[0,0.5,1]
uniform float CenterHole; slider[0,0.125,1]
uniform float OuterHole; slider[0,0.825,1]

const float pi = 3.141592653589793;

vec2 cLog(vec2 z)
{
return vec2(log(length(z)), atan(z.y, z.x));
}

vec3 color(vec2 p)
{
float t = radians(float(StripesAng));
float c = cos(t);
float s = sin(t);
mat2 m = mat2(c, -s, s, c);
vec2 q = m * cLog(p);
return vec3(float
( mod(float(StripesNum) * q.y / (sqrt(2.0) * pi), 1.0) < StripesThinkness
|| length(p) < CenterHole
|| length(p) > OuterHole
));

}

Here's the animation of the code working in Fragmentarium

Here's the animation of moire patterns, I'm trying to recreate this in Blender so I can animate multiple copies of spirals turning at different rates (along with using sliders to adjust variables) to produce different moire patterns.

Note:
// Progressive2D.frag This is a utlity / include for the program to set up anti-aliased 2D rendering.
Progressive2D.frag  code location

Fragment Shader Solution

If we multiply the normalized polar angle by some number representing the number of strips and take its modulo with 1, it will give us a number of sub-normalized polar angle spaces.

If I get the fragment that is less than some scalar ranging between zero and one representing the thickness, we will get sharp strips.

If I get the fragment that is less that some value representing one minus center hole radius and the fragments that is larger than some value representing one minus outer hole radius. And take both values and add them to the strips we get sharp hollow strips.

To better understand the previous step, notice that the addition of both values gives a mask as follows:

Now, notice that the final result is deformed somehow, this deformation is resulted from rotating the space such that the amount of rotation of each fragment is proportional to its distance from the center. The equation of rotation is as follows:

$$
\begin{aligned}
x^\prime &= x\cos \theta -y\sin \theta \\
y^\prime &= x\sin \theta +y\cos \theta
\end{aligned}
$$

Where $\theta$ is the amount of rotation which is proportional to the distance to the center. So, by rotating the space using the previous equations, we get:

Notice, that by rotating the space, I mean the space used to compute the strips. So, from all of this, we get the shader that you were hopping to get:

Animation Nodes Solution

If you want the output shape as a mesh, then Animation Nodes can be used. The circle node can be used to easily make sharp strips, this can be done using such a simple node tree:

Same as before, we should rotate the vertices of the mesh such that the rotation factor is proportional to the distance to the center of the space. There are multiple ways to do this in Animation Nodes, one way is to use matrices just like the code above uses, another is to use the equations we used above, a third is to use the high level nodes in AN like falloffs and such. In this answer, I shall I use matrices.

Simply compose a matrix composed of the mesh vertices and multiply it by a z-rotation matrix its value is proportional to the distance to the center. Then extract the new vertices locations and compose a mesh from them. Also, make sure to increase the amount of inner loops in the circle node, ensuring there is enough geometry to create the desired effect.

This gives the final result:

By duplicating the mesh and mirroring it, we get the pattern you are after. Same goes for the fragment solution.


How to disable the "Save Over" popup I'm accustomed to saving frequently using Ctrl+S in Blender. Each time I do this, Blender pops up the "Save Over?" button, which I have to click (or press Enter).

This gets in the flow of things. Is there a reasonably simple method to disable this behavior and just Save Over without prompting. (Reasonably simple meaning without modifying Blender's source code.)

To the best of my knowledge, this cannot be changed. Here are a few workarounds that might be helpful however.
Use a script
If you use the command bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile() and register a shortcut, you would just need to do a normal save once (for Blender to get the path) and after that, use CtrlShift + Y as I have done in the script below to save without any popups. (You can also change this if you want, see the commented line).
import bpy

class SaveWithoutPrompt(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.save_without_prompt"
    bl_label = "Save without prompt"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile()
        return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(SaveWithoutPrompt.bl_idname)

addon_kmaps = []

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

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Object Mode', space_type='EMPTY')
    # change the shortcut here..
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new(SaveWithoutPrompt.bl_idname, 'Y', 'PRESS', ctrl=True, shift=True)
    addon_kmaps.append(km)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SaveWithoutPrompt)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.remove(menu_func)

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    for km in addon_kmaps:
        wm.keyconfigs.addon.kmaps.remove(km)
    del addon_kmaps[:]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Set the autosave feature to save more often

You could have Blender save a copy of the file you are working on every minute. This runs in the background so no popups. You can find this feature under the File tab in your User Preferences.
Related, Blender saves a new file every time


Make transparent object not layer up itself I want to make object transparent, but the object itself should not be visible through itself. It's in an animation that rotates it, but at a certain angle I can see parts of the object through other parts of the object, which I don't want. So object should be transparent for everything in the scene, but this object. Below I pointed with red arrows those "whiter" pieces that are semitransparent white over semitransparent white which I don't want to get:

Currently it have 3 materials on it (front, back and sides) and transparency + backface culling is done like this:

For rendering I'm using Cycles engine and Blender 2.73.1. Is there anything I could do to make that happen? I think it got something to do with geometry settings but I have no idea what to set and how.

You can use the transmission depth which is number of transparent points the ray has passed through, this is on the Light path node:

The result image


convert cycles materials to blender render I created materials in cycles(assigned a color). I need convert cycles to internal, but when I do it, materials lose color and broke material(Node< none >).

How can i convert?

Thanks!

You could try disabling the "use nodes" option.


Assigning an empty parent object I wrote an operator to create an empty object and then make it a parent to the currently selected object.  However, when I assign the parent object, the child object moves unless it is at the origin.  How can I keep that from happening?  Here is some code that demonstrates the problem:

class ObjectTest(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "myops.object_test"
    bl_label = "Array of current object"

    def execute(self,context):

        origobj = bpy.context.active_object
        bpy.context.scene.cursor.location = origobj.location

        bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
        objparent=bpy.context.active_object
        objparent.name=origobj.name+"Array"
        origobj.parent=objparent
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I would like the empty parent object and the selected child object to be at the same location, not necessarily the origin.  I am trying to make a group of objects that can be moved together, and a parent seems like the best way.  I was using Blender 2.83, but I recently updated to 2.9.  Thanks for your help.

Set matrix_parent_inverse
See Does a child object inherit the matrix from the parent?
Key here is that the origin of local space is  calculated from the basis matrix (what you see in the transform UI) and its parent inverse matrix.
There are a number of ways to achieve desired result:

set the empties matrix world to that of the original
and set both the matrix_basis and matrix_parent_inverse of
original to identity. Equivalent to the one case that "didn't move"

By default blender sets the matrix parent inverse, so when parenting is removed the object maintains its prior transform.  Using first method will snap them back to origin.

Set parent matrix world to childs.
Maintain the current location by setting childs matrix_parent_inverse
to its inverted basis matrix.

Test script, method 2.
import bpy

class ObjectTest(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.test"
    bl_label = "Array of current object"

    def execute(self, context):

        ob = context.active_object

        bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
        mt = context.active_object
        mt.name = f"{ob.name}Array"
        mt.matrix_world = ob.matrix_world
        ob.parent = mt
        ob.matrix_parent_inverse = ob.matrix_basis.inverted()
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Consider extending this such to selected objects such that can add an empty parent to each, or one parent at active object and all other selected also become children.


How to evenly distribute same size holes across a stretched surface I need to make an object for a 3d printing project. The object needs to let water pass but block out bigger things like leaves and small pine cones. I already have the basic shape down, but i am struggling with getting evenly spaced, holes that are the same size.
I have tried using a particle system but it looks like you can't boolean a particle system.
Here is a picture of the shape i need holes cut into. The rectangles were my attempt at cutting with the particle system.

Does anyone know how i can achieve evenly spaced holes that are all the same size?

You could model this:

Establish Basic geometry, (mine is an extruded half round-cube) and reserve a highly-subdivided copy, you're going to shrinkwrap to it later
X Delete > Only Faces
Edge Menu > Subdivide

F refill the faces, and Face Menu > Poke them
Select one of the new vertices, and  Shift G Select Similar > Number of Connecting Edges. Deselect the ones you don't want to be holes.
CtrlShiftB Bevel the remaining
selected vertices, with an offset. Note the offset setting.

You can use the shipped add-on Loop Tools > Circle if necessary, to round the holes to a dimension slightly smaller than the bevel offset you noted. Delete the hole faces. Now you use the Srinkwrap modifier targeted on your reserved intact copy to ensure the surface has not been distorted by the edge subdivision, poking, etc, and apply it.
The rest is modifiers: Solidify, Bevel (by angle), Subdivision Surface...


How to properly import matterial in to scene? - python I'm trying to solve this hurdle >
import bpy

# path to the blend
filepath = "C:\\Users\\Master\\Desktop\\01_blend_2Mats_mix.blend"

link = False

currentMats = []

for mat in bpy.data.materials:
    currentMats.append(mat.name)

print("Current scene materials : ",currentMats)

newMats = []

with bpy.data.libraries.load(filepath, link=link) as (data_from, data_to):
    for material in data_from.materials:
        if material not in currentMats:
            newMats.append(material)
            data_to.materials = material

print("New matterials : ",newMats)

Now I got the list of new mats, or at least I think I got, but how can I now import it to the scene?
TIA

Just assign data_from.materials to data_to.materials:
import bpy

# Path to the blend
filepath = "//material-library.blend"

mats_current = [m.name for m in bpy.data.materials]

with bpy.data.libraries.load(filepath, link=False) as (data_from, data_to):
    data_to.materials = [mat for mat in data_from.materials if mat not in mats_current]

I recommend use the python console to verify the actual material count:
>>> len(bpy.data.materials)
67
>>> bpy.data.materials['
                        000_Interference Group']
                        1_layer_on_dielectric']
                        2_layers_on_dielectric']
                        3_layers_on_dielectric']
                        AR_glass']
                        Iron_heated_2']
                        Material']
                        STAINEDALUPROC']
                        aluminum_nk']
                        basic_interference_glass']
                        ...

API link: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.BlendDataLibraries.html


My mesh twists when I move a bone I made a character and skinned and rigged him, and used automatic weights. When I move the upper bone in arm the mesh gets twisted and weird.

Here is the link to download it

When a real human arm moves up, this is in this way :

Not in this way :

I think this is the main problem here.


How to stick a curve (with shape keys) on rig? I used curves to do my character's eyebrows and gave them some shape keys. But I didn't know that I coudln't give them an armature (the one for the character). Is there a way to keep the shape keys and making the curves followings the rig?

You can't assign curves to armatures directly nor can you weight paint.

Only workaround I know is using Hooks

You can either select your armature then enter Edit Mode on your curve, select all desired vertex and assign a hook, or manually add a hook modifier and assing the vertex afterwards.

You can hook to the whole armature, or you can hook to individual bones. Matching rotations will be an issue, but it should keep any shape keys working.


Why Eevee doesn't illuminate more than 128 lights in a scene in real-time? I don't know if it is a bug or a limitation of Eevee, but the bigger scenes actually needs more than 128 lights. Also, Eevee doesn't bake more than 64 irradiance volumes. If it is not a bug, is there a culling option how to deactivate those lights and light probes that are behind the cameras, behind any object without a visual of them on the camera?
Thanks.

This is a current limitation:

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/eevee/limitations.html

For your second question look here: Automatically hide everything out of camera view?


A smooth transition between edges of tho parts of mesh I wish to know is there a way to make a smooth transition between edges.  For example, I have two different meshes and if I combine these meshes in single mesh, subsurf will ruin overall shape of the object. So, I need to combine these meshes somehow, but with smooth transition between edges.
It must looks like this picture

The only way i imagened is to create some kind of retopo. I mean, I create new object and use old objects as a base for Shrinkwrap modifier. May be there is a simplier solution? Two buttons in ZBrush, for example? Something like "mask sharp regions" and "make edges less sharp", or somethiing like that. Thank you :-)

Why don't you build it from scratch without any boolean, shrinkwrap, retopo, etc?


Double faces for curve mesh I need to know how to do double face on objects created via curve mesh. I created this using curve path and used the "bevel object" on another curve. It created the slide that I needed. When I tried to import the 3D object as fbx for unity, the slide has face only on the surface but the moment you look from the bottom, it becomes transparent, obviously the face on the bottom is reversed. Please help.

Add a solidify modifier to the object, this will create two sides to the object.


How do I fix the camera in animation mode? I went into animation mode, and as usual, the panel on the side where it shows what the camera sees is there, but later, it is no longer showing the camera's view. How do I fix this?

Every time you click and drag move the mouse cursor, it goes off the camera view mode. You can fix it by repressing the button:

If you're trying to move the actual camera while viewing it(without it losing view[Viewing it live]), adjust the camera transformation here:


Will blender 2.8 official realise be able to run on computer with graphics driver that is lower then OpenGL 3.3 I have seen videos on the upcoming blender vision 2.8 and I would also like to expand with blender like everyone. I hope the developers won't let my laptop limits to keep me from developing my skills.

Thank you

It will not. As stated on the official page, minimum requirements demand at least a minimum supported OpenGl Version of 3.3.

A consensus was reached that this was required to allow supporting all new and upcoming features features of EEVEE viewport. This includes realistic graphics and high visual fidelity, higher viewport performance, better use of resources and take advantage of modern hardware and new graphics cards features, without many compromises for newer hardware.

Unfortunately this means dropping support for older cards and more dated hardware.

For AMD cards, versions prior to HD 2000 series (circa 2007) are no
longer supported
For NVidia cards this means cards older then the GeForce 8 series (G##8000 circa 2010) are no longer supported
For Intel integrated graphics cards you must have at least sixth generation IGP, generally on a i# 2#### processor or newer

Unfortunately if you have hardware older than the above mentioned cards, or that somehow doesn't support OpenGL 3.3 you won't be able to run version of Blender newer than 2.8#. You can try to upgrade your drivers to the newest supported version (unlikely, but some times support was later added to older cards).

You can always run versions from 2.79 and prior.


I'm having trouble getting my texture paint to show up in render/material preview I have this nice grainy white texture I've been using, and I want to draw some rust on it using texture paint. But the rust only shows up in solid mode view, and disappears when I switch to material preview or render view. Any clue on how to solve this issue?

Here's a video of the issue: https://youtu.be/6w2wEEKd0CU

Thanks!

At the material preview the things get really brighter and the colors that you used are shades of white. I think your problem is because of this.


Texture blurry when viewed at shallow angle I have this mesh with a full size texture added on one side. When I look at the texture at a shallow angle, texture further from view point gets extremely blurry, almost like I have some kind of depth of field filter on

How do I get my texture 100% sharp?

Those are caused by Mipmaps, it is an optimization technique to improve performance and rendering speed of the viewport. It works by automatically creating several copies of used image textures at different resolutions or sizes in GPU memory to speed up rendering.

The blurring is an unintentional side effect of the lower resolution used at larger distances or grazing angles. It is harmless and affects the viewport only, it will not affect your final render image.

If you don't like it you can deactivate them in User Preferences > System > OpenGL > Mipmaps or control GPU generation.


How to make an object point in its movement direction? (BGE) I tried to do it in with actuators, but so far either the animation gets stuck, or it hangs up on a direction if you let go of one of the keys. Help?

Edit: I added the logic I'm using so far. The actions are displaying one frame of the rotate animation, each frame is a different rotation. This was my workaround for the question above, but when I hold down and right, and let go of right, it stays in the same orientation but goes downwards. Is there any way I can either fix this setup, or is there a way I can make the object point in the direction it moves?

Edit #2: I changed the program, making a logic brick for each key, and another for each one not being pressed. It works, going left or right makes the block display the up/down frame but then quickly changes to the left/right frame. Also, The jumping doesn't seem to work moving diagonally, except when moving up and to the right. If you could take a look at the blend file and let me know what I did wrong, that would be great.

I made it diferent as you was doing it but i think its more easy this way.

Instead using animation i add 8 cubes rounding the cube player and make them vertex parented with no collition physics and add 8 edit object actuator set to track to for each cube.

Abd here the blend.


Network Render addon compositing issue 2.78

I have the network render addon setup but it is not working as expected. I have a blend file with a simple cube with a blur composite on it. Using Blender Render it produces the blurred cube. Sending it off to the master to get rendered causes a returned image(s) back to the client that is not blurred.

The master temp exr file is blurred on the server. The tmp exr output files on the slave is blurred, and the temp output.exr file on the client is blurred. However, the final animation/image (regardless of selected format) is not blurred.

in client.py line 446 and a few lines after...

result_path = os.path.join(bpy.path.abspath(netsettings.path), "output.exr")

        folder = os.path.split(result_path)[0]
        verifyCreateDir(folder)

        f = open(result_path, "wb")

        f.write(buf)

        f.close()

        result = self.begin_result(0, 0, x, y)
        result.load_from_file(result_path)
        self.end_result(result)

This writes out (on client) the output.exr file received from the master (file appears correct[blurred]). But the final output (PNG, AVI,whatever) that the client produces from this is NOT blurred (no composting). From the code I am assuming that self.end_result() loads the output.exr file and handles the integration into whatever format the client is wanting. However, I do not see how to use the composite layer.

The output.exr file has 3 layers (Composite.RGBA,RenderLayer.RGBA, RenderLayer.z). So, again, I am assuming the client is getting the wrong layer off the exr file or only using 1, but do not see where in the code this is happening.

The stdout from blender does show a warning for each output.exr it processes:

warning, channel with no rect set Composite.Combined.A

warning, channel with no rect set Composite.Combined.B

warning, channel with no rect set Composite.Combined.G

warning, channel with no rect set Composite.Combined.R

but the exr file does have a Composite.RenderLayer. Do I need to set something in the self.begin_result call to properly handle the it? set something in the result struc? Somehow set a rect for the Composite layer?

Thanks for any help.

Tracking things down led to client.py line 354

class NetworkRenderEngine(bpy.types.RenderEngine):
    bl_idname = 'NET_RENDER'
    bl_label = "Network Render"
    #bl_use_postprocess = False
    bl_use_postprocess = True #turning this to true enabled the blur and layer mask issue (not yet discussed)

I think the network render is a great feature, but could use some optimization. Seems to be a lot faster if you can use a shared directory, placeholders approach with no overwrite, and start multiple instances of blender on multiple machines (pretty fast renders). Cons: no management, oversight, and then have to manually put everything together at the end. Which is why I wanted to use Network Render since it has those features.  Might end up needing to custom scripts to maximize speed or integrate multiple calls to background blender render processes (not sure how to do that offhand from the given code)--if anyone has any thoughts on this, please forward them my way.


Select all faces parallel to ground Is there a way to select all faces in my mesh that have normals that point upwards, with a range of how much they need to be pointing upwards to be selected?I have a mesh of a house, and I want to add a solar panel material to all the faces that point upwards but the mesh just has too many faces to do it manually. It also has an inside that I do not want to be selected. I am not sure whether this  will involve scripting (I know absolutely nothing about scripting by the way)Preferably, my selection would look something like this:Thanks in advance for any advice anyone gives me.

I would use c for circle select and pick the top parts of the globes then either grow selection or use select similar.

Select similar which is Shift + g can be used to find faces with similar angles/direction which should be your best bet. Then just grow your selection using
Ctrl + +
More ways to select can be found here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/curves/selecting.html


Making weather effects in the BGE This type of snowfall looks nice:

If that example was made in Blender Internal or Cycles, I'd say particles were used - but particles clearly don't work in the BGE. How can a weather effect such as that be achieved in the Blender game Engine?

What a great question! It was actually surprisingly simple to make.
The texture:
I started by modeling a few snowflakes, and then used them as the display objects for a particle system. I then rendered out one frame with the screen covered nicely in snow:

Using the texture:
I then took that texture, and put it on a large transparent plane. The texture repeats way more than any normal should, but in this case it turned out fine. This plane is the most important part, and the settings are kind of hard to get right.

First, the face orientation must be set to Halo. This will make the plane track (along it's local X axis) to the player's camera. Second (but probably more importantly) the face's normal must be aligned to the object's local X axis so that it will face the camera correctly.
Now, regardless of the object's position or rotation, (because it only has one face with these settings) the face will always appear to the camera as if it were straight on.
The texture for this plane is a simple transparent texture. The Material's Z Transparency has an alpha of 0, and the texture's alpha influences the texture's transparency 100%. In this case, I have the snow texture influencing the material's color 10%, so that the base white color of the material is mostly used.
The physics settings and logic for this object is very simple. Physics type of no collision. Logic: Always - And - Motion (negative along the Z)

The snow plane is now done! if we press play, it should drop slowly, while facing the camera at all times.
The Empties to drop the plane
Now that we have a nice large snow plane, we can drop a few of them into the scene. We will basically be building a pseudo particle system, except that each particle has many, many flakes, instead of each particle being a single snowflake. (This is FAR less computationally expensive)
Now - we will need a few empties to periodically drop the snow planes. Use more empties packed closer together for more dense snowfall, fewer empties scattered further apart for less snowfall.

The empties have super simple logic: Random - And - Add Object (the snow plane.) Depending on how high up your empties are, you'll need a longer time for the snow to fall before being removed. There should be a long enough delay for the snow to fall entirely below the ground plane, as it looks really bad having snow falling from the sky and vanishing near the ground. While the difference is hardly noticeable, it helps to set a different seed for each empty, to make the randomness a little bit more random.
Positioning the Empties
These empties don't need to be scattered over the entire scene - that would waste computational power. It is enough to have the empties just above the character. Enter edit mode on your charter, and add a vertex at the character's object origin. Then, vertex parent all the empties to that vertex. (In this case to do a vertex parent, select the empties you want to parent, then select the object. Enter edit mode on that object. Select that one vertex, Press Ctrl + P, and click "vertex parent" Now, regardless of the character's location or rotation, the empties will stay in a fixed position relative to the character. If your character's physics type is set to dynamic or character, and there is no way it will ever rotate other than along the Z-axis, you can just use a normal parent for the empties.
The World Itself
You'll need fog set just right to make this effect go from nice to AWESOME. In this scene the following settings work, but depending on how dense you want to make your snowfall, you may want to tweak the fog settings to create the desired amount of visibility.

Of course, you'll also need a nice snow texture for the ground. It is kind of hard to get a good texture for this - I'm using a texture of ice to partially influence the material's color. This same texture controls the bump map.
I have a sky texture with the mapping set to reflection, also partially influencing the material's color.
All the important settings for the material:

And the snow plane in the scene:

Add in the snow, falling from a bunch of empties in the sky:

This is the very same method that was used to create the scene in the question. Settings are slightly different from those used in the following scene. To make lower visibility, make the fog end closer to the camera, and make the snow more dense:
Finished Scene

When combined with some wonderful explosions, the environment becomes Amazing.


Extrude faces of an icosphere from a python script I have an array of values and I need to extrude each face - faces[i] - of an icosphere with the amount of arr[i] in the direction of it's normal.

I managed to extrude the face I have selected by hand and managed to get the list of all faces of the mesh, but can't find a way to combine these solutions.

bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces takes a list of faces and extrudes them, leaving them in the original place with new joining geometry. If we take the ['faces'] part of the data returned by extrude_discrete_faces we have a list of faces that have been extruded, these are the 'original' faces only, not the extra joining faces.

For each of these extruded faces we take the face normal and multiply it by the distance you wish to move the face and use that in bmesh.ops.translate to position them where you want.

import bpy
import bmesh

# sample set for cube
extrude_values = [0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4,0.5,0.6]

obj = bpy.context.active_object
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data,face_normals=True)

extrude_faces = bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces(bm, faces=bm.faces)['faces']

for f_idx in range(len(extrude_faces)):
    dr = extrude_faces[f_idx].normal * extrude_values[f_idx]
    bmesh.ops.translate(bm, verts=extrude_faces[f_idx].verts, vec=dr)

bm.to_mesh(obj.data)
bm.free()
obj.data.update()


Dramatic changes in performance depending on selection I am working with a very large scene with a lot of poorly optimized objects (from sketchup.) I am trying to optimize my settings so that I can properly navigate the file to make necessary material changes, etc. I have done the usual things like turning off outline selected, and have achieved fairly good performance. However, there is a big problem.

My current setup is that various objects are broken down into 3 Layers, and each is the child of an empty to help organize them.

Normally, I can fly around the scene just fine without any performance impact. But as soon as I select any object other than the camera, my performance completely tanks! It takes 5-10 seconds to respond to any clicks or commands. This makes it almost impossible to select objects and change their materials, add them to groups, etc.

I am trying to understand why my performance can normally be okay, but then goes to nothing when interacting with objects.

I do not think I can share the specific file as it belongs to a client and cannot be freely distributed (and is 400+mb).

Any ideas what could be going on?

UPDATE: I can add new objects to the scene and select them without any performance impact.

Blender selection drawing method is notoriously slow. This well known among the devs and a known limitation of the current system.

Basically highlighting the selection outline doubles the required processing power of regular viewport drawing, yielding almost half the FPS.

Unless you plan on rewritting a whole viewport rendering engine code youself, or a new OpenGL realtime renderer there is not much one can do at the moment, as far as I know, other than await the 2.8 release and its modernized real time rendering based on EEVEE engine.

One possible workaround for the time being is turning off selection highlighting in the * 3D View Properties Region > Display > Outline Selected*, though it is not without its downsides. You won't really know what is currently selected or which is the active object while turned off.


How to convert from high poly to low poly I'm making a game in the unity engine and for my models i'm using blender 2.6. The thing is that i'm pretty new to graphics design (modeling, sculpting, etc) and by following some tutorials i've managed to make some very high poly meshes for my characters with the sculpt editor, the meshes have about 1.5M - 2M faces and of course a game character should be less than 30K faces so the game runs smoothly with good optimization on an average pc.

my question is how do i translate the details of the high poly stuff to low poly meshes (7k - 30k faces), i've heard about uv unwrapping and stuff but i'm not sure what is the process to follow.

i don't mind if the recommendation is very hard and for advanced users because the primary thing i want to do with this, is to learn.

One way to reduce mesh density is the decimate modifier, however for the workflow you want (creating a game asset) I think you want Retopology.

This is a workflow which gives your more control over the final result, however it will take longer as it is a manual process.

Some helpful addons and built in functionality for retopologizing your mesh:

Surface Snapping (feature)
Shrinkwrap modifier (feature)
Bsurfaces (bundled addon)
RetopoFlow (addon)

Some tutorials and reference material:

Bsurfaces demo
wiki page on retopologizing

After you have a lower topology mesh you can bake normal maps etc. to make it appear more detailed than it really is.


Python use to landscape generation How to do a python script to generate landscape in a script-based way?
I would like to create a script-based generation instead of cliquing and manually adjusting of properties.

Try the standard ANT Landscape addon that comes with Blender.


Fill with water and stones I am trying to build a meadow scene (based on Andrew Price's tuts) and I want to fill the riverbed with sticks and stones and in the end with water.

Referrence>

But I want to see through the water surface. So whats the best way to achieve that? With multiple particle systems or with a plane that I give a water effect? Any Thoughts?

Thnx

My choice would be.

For the river, Mesh Plane with animated water material.
Particle system as a tool to randomly distribute the stones and branches.