removing head from character mesh using another head mesh I have a mesh of a character body with a head. I also have another mesh with just the head (and part of the neck):

I would like to "cut off" the head of the character body (bottom mesh) so that the head mesh (top mesh) fits exactly in the empty space. Is there any way that I can tell Blender to cut exactly that head/neck shape out of the bottom mesh?
I tried to do this by manually deleting vertices, but I can't do it beacuse the faces don't line up exactly where I need to cut so I end up cutting too much.
Here is a close-up when the heads are stacked on top of each other. You can see the triangle faces on the body mesh don't match up exactly to the shaded gray area where the "head mesh" is sitting. If I try deleting vertices, it will delete the triangle faces leaving holes past the shaded gray area.

I also tried using a Boolean modifier when the 2 heads were stacked on top of each other but it didn't seem to work. I'm new to Blender and any help would be appreciated!

I think your best solution is brute vertex editing. Delete the head you want to get rid of by circle selecting the vertices and creating as smooth a transition as possible. In edit mode (of the body) you can even place the new head exactly where you want it. You can then refine the vertices and begin stitching them together.
A more complicated, but possibly faster, way would be to isolate the neck loop on the replacement head, separate it from the new head, convert it from a mesh into a curve, place it exactly above the body where you're going to be putting it (having already mostly removed the old head, and then using "Knife Project" to cut new geometry around the neck hole. You'll still have issues marrying the heights of the different vertices, which you'll have to do by hand, but it should be pretty closely aligned.
Good luck!
Hi, to follow up: You select the ring of vertices, hit [shift]+[D], then [P] to separate them from the new head object. Choose "by selected." Then click off. Select the ring of vertices that you've separated and go to OBJECT>CONVERT TO>CURVE
You will be left with a curve, which you can then use for knife project.


File size increases every time I save It seems that whenever I save my file, it gets bigger and bigger no matter what I do.  Why is this happening?  At first I thought baking might have been causing the problem, then I tried reducing the number of particles (smoke) to something much less and it still produced a massively large file.  Finally, I simply saved it without doing anything to the file and it still grew to the same huge file size.  I've attached a link to the .blend.

.blend file

Thanks!

The Cache of ParticleSystem saves with the file (apparently).

Removing ParticleSystem from Sphere.001 reduces the file size. Reducing the Number of Emitted Particle from 500000 to 1 does the same.

Detailed Steps

Select Sphere.001 on Layer 2.
Go to the Particle System Tab. As you can see it has 20 users. Remove the particle system.
Select the other users and remove the particle system from each. Plane_cell.013
,Plane_cell.461
,Plane_cell.464
,Plane_cell.464
,Plane_cell.543
,Plane_cell.545
,Plane_cell.623
,Plane_cell.627
,Plane_cell.648
,Plane_cell.713
,Plane_cell.728
,Plane_cell.743
,Plane_cell.754
,Plane_cell.757
,Plane_cell.763
,Plane_cell.771
,Plane_cell.834
,Plane_cell.854
,Plane_cell.875.
They are easy to locate in the outliner, since they have the modifier icon next to their name.

While it is best practice to create a separate cache directory, you may have assigned the particle system to some objects by accident, thus increasing the performance cost (more particle emitting objects).


How can I parent a mesh to a vertex group? I want my eyelashes to follow a strip on the lid but I can only parent it to 3 vertices of that polystrip. I tried the "child of constraint" and selected the vertex group that I want to constraint/parent it to but then the eyelashes are all of a sudden not in the place anymore where I wanted them ... what is a normal or working way to do that? Must be a pretty common issue I suppose.

Edit: I added a screenshot. I moved the lashes a bit away from the place that it should be to show it better. I basically just want to stick it to its place and have it move with the lid in sculpt and edit mode.

Add a Surface Deform modifier to the eye lashes object. Then set the modifier target to the head. Click the 'Bind' button.

Now any shapekeys or armatures that affect verts in the head mesh, will also affect the eyebrow mesh.

If you make any edits to the amount of vertices in either mesh, you need to re-bind in the modifier.

It should be noted that the modifier doesn't use vertex groups like you asked for specifically. Instead, it maps the vertices of its parent mesh, to the closes points of the target mesh. Those points may not exactly align with vertices.
However, in your specific use case it seems like the eyelash mesh, and the eye lid mesh match almost exactly. So, this shouldn't cause any noticeable render issues.


Remap the default hotkey for inserting keyframes Is there a possibility to override the default hotkey I for inserting keyframes for a parameter currently under the cursor?

You can change any Blender hotkey in the user preferences.  Just open the user prefrances menu (File > User Preferences or Ctrl+Alt+U) and go to the Input tab, then find the hotkey you want to change.


Blender 2.8 crashes while compiling scene enter link description hereI have a new Mac Book Pro - with 32 gig of ram plenty of disk space.  Every time I try to render a scene using cycles I get through 5-30 frames and blender crashes.  Any thoughts or help would be really appreciated.

This sort of situation is why it is often recommended that you render to an image sequence rather than to a video file. Once all frames have been rendered you can quickly convert the image sequence into a video format.

If blender crashes after 20 frames, then render 15 frames at a time. You could also use a script that will repeatedly start blender and render one (or 10) frame each time.

In the output panel you can enable placeholders and disable overwrite to get blender to only render frames that haven't been rendered yet, note that crashing in the middle of a render will leave the placeholder. This should allow it to continue rendering from where it was when it crashed.

When you have a blend file that causes blender to crash, consider submitting a bug report so that the developers can find why and find a fix for the next release.


Simple modeling rules to get sensible UV mapping I'm learning blender and came upon this small problem when trying to uv-unwrap the small hinge below.

I'll start by telling how I made it, as it might help answer the question.
I simply took a cube made it flat, and used the knife-tool to cut it in two.
This made the shape on the right (squared out?), where the front and the back are one n-gon (as I see it). But this produces the uvmap at the bottom right?

I then removed the face and build up the front and back with tris and quads, and the unwrap ended up as expected.

So my question is, how do I ensure that I do not end up in the same situation again, when modeling? I don't want to go back and having to add tris and/or quads to get a sensible unwrapping.
Are there some rule of thumb to follow, to ensure a good unwrapping result.

If you try unwrap flat surface - the best method for this is U -> Project from view (Bounds).

It just copy real position of vertexes from current view to UV, without any distortions.


Why is my model distorting when I weight paint? After importing a .OBG file and rigging it, when I weight paint, my model deforms. I use Blender v2.77 .

This is because you have moved some of the bones while in pose mode. While weight painting you are changing how the vertices of the mesh are being influenced by the bones.

To fix this, select the armature and go to pose mode. Then select every bone and press alt+g and alt+r to reset the location and rotation of each bone respectively. (alt+s to reset scale)

Then with your mesh selected and in weight paint mode, you shouldn't see any more deforms while painting because the armature is in its default position.


How can I duplicate a model and it's armature, so the rig still works? I need to make a duplicate of a character with its armature. When I try to duplicate the character, the duplicate remains associated with the original armature. When I make a duplicate of the armature, and try to associate the duplicate character with it, it fails. How can I accomplish this? Or is there a way to make duplicates of the character and the armature together, making the duplicate character associated with the duplicate armature?

Make sure you are in Object mode, then select both the character and the armature. First select one, then hold Shift while selecting the other, then duplicate with ShiftD


How to select a group of vertices in edit mode? Is it possible to select all faces of one of these groups in edit mode?

I tried my luck with this extension, but i wasn't able to figure out how that works. It just says "No Group" when i select a face and hit "Select".

You can select (or deselect) the faces of a Vertex group by pressing Select with the desired vertex group selected in Properties > Object Data > Vertex groups:

To select all the faces of an Object press A or 3D view > Header > Select > (De)select all.


Using mask as a garbage matte to hide an object I'm trying to use a mask to hide a part of a render layer, so that when the render layer is shown over a movie, some parts in the movie will appear to be in front of the render layer.

For example, assume I want to add a box to this image, so that it would look like it's behind the person:

I created the following simple object:

If I render the object, it looks great - the object is solid, everything else is transparent (I didn't use any 'sky'):

Now I create a mask to describe the standing person (or at least the part that would otherwise be covered by the box):

What I want now is to create a "hole" in the rendered box, so that when I use Alpha-over, the box look as if it's behind the person, but I can't find an easy way to do that. My first guess was to use 'Set alpha' to apply the mask (inverted) as an alpha for the rendered layer, but this doesn't look good:

The mask did create a "hole" where it should, but now all the other pixels are not transparent. How can I "retain" the transparent pixels while setting more pixels to be transparent based on the mask (use it as a matte)?

Note: I can do this with (I'm ashamed to say) some math work on the alpha channel, but it just doesn't seem right:

Thanks, and sorry for the [oh so] long question.

In your first attempt you are replacing the original alpha with the mask, you need to combine the original alpha (the render) with the new alpha (the mask):

Which would result in:

Based on this render and mask:

That's essentially what you're doing in your solution that doesn't 'seem right'. This is just a slightly simpler way of doing that.


How do i merge materials on a pre-textured model without breaking texture mapping I've imported a model into Blender, which is already fully textured. It looks great in Blender, but in the game the textures are off, because the game doesn't support having multiple textures per model.

To fix this, it seems I will have to merge the materials used by the model in blender so that the game only has to load one texture over the entire model. Everything I've seen says the way to do this is to unwrap the model and bake it, but unwrapping the model always scrambles the texture mappings, ruining everything. I've been looking at various sources for a solution, but they usually require a previously made UV map (which I don't have since the model has been imported) or suggest simply texturing it after the UV map has been made (again, not really an option).

Is there a solution for this? Or am I missing something? I'm still relatively new to blender, so the later option is entirely possible.

The coordinates you are using before uv unwrapping are called "generated" coordinates, and they aren't actually destroyed by unwrapping, just swapped out. If you look at the node setup you're using to make the procedural texture you started with, you'll notice the textures have inputs for the coordinate mapping. It's possible to manually set them back to generated coordinates without discarding your uv map, allowing you to bake the textures as originally designed.


How do I create a checkered material where the black parts are glass and the white are diffuse I am trying to create a material for a place that is like the checker texture but i want the black parts to be glass and the white parts to be diffuse.
Can i do this in blender ?

Just wanted to add a pic so it is clear for others


How can I use a driver for multiple objects? I made this little easy animation where a barrier opens automatically, if the car is near enough. I realized it with a distance driver.
Link: https://youtu.be/s78ClbPBHNM
Now I would like to add another car, where the barrier should open too. Is there a way to add more objects to a driver or how would you realize this?
My driver settings:

If your driver is: max(0, min(pi/2, 2-abs(v1))), where v1 variable points to the car's location component of the axis perpendicular to the gate, then you already use max which is the method to take the bigger out of two (or more) values.
So you can calculate the bar's rotation for all cars on the scene, and pass each to the max function so the bar is always as low as the closest object in the equation allows it to be. Therefore, the driver becomes max(max(0, min(pi/2, 2-abs(v1))), max(0, min(pi/2, 2-abs(v2))))

In your case you have to add distance2 to have a distance of the second car to the gate. Then you apply the above advice with max:
max(pi / 2 + (abs(distance/15) < 0.8) * (pi * 3/4 - abs(distance / 5)), pi / 2 + (abs(distance2/15) < 0.8) * (pi * 3/4 - abs(distance2 / 5)))


Pasting long strings into the script parameters for Add 3D Function Surface? I'm trying to use the script Add 3D Function Surface (specifically the Add X,Y,Z Function Surface feature) to produce some mathematical models for 3d printing.  The formulas for my paraemtrized surfaces are very long --- one of the simpler ones has over 4,000 characters.  Unfortunately, it appears that I can only paste 400 characters into each of the script parameter boxes.

Is there a way to get Blender to accept longer strings for each formula parameter?  I'd be willing to run the script from the command line, but I haven't figured out how to do this.

I'm running Blender 2.70 on a mac.  I'm also completely new to Blender, so let me know if there's additional information I can provide that will help.  Thanks in advance :-)

Bug report: https://developer.blender.org/T39924

I can't see any maxlen parameters in the script:

https://gitorious.org/blender-scripts/blender-3d-function-surface/source/add_mesh_3d_function_surface.py

And on Windows using Blender 2.70, I can store at least 1,000,000,000 characters in a StringProperty():

>>> C.scene.p = "x"*1000000000
>>> len(C.scene.p)
1000000000

The problem here is that there's a limit at layout level of 399 chars. You can actually type 400 and more letters into a text field, but you won't see the characters appear!

If you paste from clipboard, only the first 399 characters are taken. You can circumvent it by using python:

Go to Scripting screen
Call the XYZ Math Surface operator (parameter fields appear in Redo panel)
Create a new text datablock in the Text Editor
Add the following (substitute x_eq for the other equation fields):import bpybpy.context.active_operator.x_eq = ""
Place the cursor between the two "" quote marks and paste your formula
Click Run Script or hit AltP - it will assign the formula text to the operator's parameter field.
Click e.g. the handle of the U min property in the Redo to panel to force an update (it will not change the mesh based on the manually set equation automatically!). Don't activate any of the equation fields, it may truncate them again!


Bump map is not affected only my unwrapped faces I have unwrapped the faces where I wanna put my bump map (details of a pirelli's tire), the problem is that is affecting also the other faces even if I setted the image texture to clip. I scaled in UV editor the unwrap faces to let enough gap from the edge's border and the texture image.

I fixed a little bit by duplicate the rubber's material, added only on the second one the bump map and assigned this to selected faces, but in this way if then I will change some settings of the rubber's material (the first one) I have to copy every single new setting to the bumped material.


Blender 2.8 - CTRL+R not working(loop cut and slide tool) Pressing CTRL+R on the attached file does not activate the loop and cut tool.
Why is this tool not working in this context?

Thank you.

Your model is just one big N-GON, and the tool only works on quads. Check out this link to learn a little more about modeling with tris, quads and n-gons.

This is your model (remade by me) with much better topology.  The loop cut and slide tool will work correctly with this kind of topology.  Also, getting your model to look like this will give you some good modeling practice.


Exporting animation to Unity I’m quite new to Blender.

I made a simple scene with two cubes and animated only the top cube.

It seems to work in Blender, but when I import in Unity the two cubes are rotating, not just the one with the animation.

How can I fix this?

If you don't assign some verts to any bone those verts will be assigned to the root bone in Unity. You can't make this animation works in Unity with only one bone. So add an other static bone and assign the big cube's verts to it.


Calculating acceleration or velocity of a point on a rigid body? I have a rigid body simulation involving a solid body.

It is a simple simulation with a box shape on a plane. The plane is slid out from under the box so it falls due to gravity.

Due to friction with the plane, the body doesn't fall straight but falls head first.

Is it possible to obtain the time varying acceleration vector of any one vertex?

In rigid body simulations, external forces create two different kinds of effects on an object: linear acceleration and angular acceleration. Linear acceleration is how fast an object is moving incrementally, and angular acceleration is how fast an object is spinning incrementally.

To obtain the net external force on a single vertex or edge doesn't really make sense, because a vertex or edge doesn't have any volume and therefore doesn't have any mass. In the equation F=ma (Newton's second law of motion), solving for a, a=F/m, since a vertex or edge doesn't have any mass, the acceleration due to the force would be undefined, because you're dividing by 0. Forces have to be applied to masses. Therefore, when a rigid body is affected by a force, the force is applied throughout the entire mass, producing a linear and maybe angular acceleration.

To get the velocity vector, you need to use cross multiply the angular velocity with the vectorial distance of the vertex from the center of mass, and then add that to the linear velocity. (More info)

In script, it should look something like this:

v = object.getLinearVelocity(False)
omega = object.getAngularVelocity(False)
r = Vector((1,1,-1)) # offset of vertex (or point) from center of mass.

v_net = v + omega.cross(r)

Make sure you import the Vector class from mathutils


how to get camera exactly like in the z perspective view I'm making a text animation,in which in the end i want the camera to look exactly like when i look through the Z perspective view(numpad 7), so that the text seems 2d in the end.
how do i make the camera do this?

Top view for camera has no translation or rotation.
See.
Align camera to view precisely and automatically, without manual fiddling
How to convert current view as camera?

Oops, realized after making gif q asked for perspective rather than ortho. ie don't change to ortho, however ortho is IMO may be a better way to make text look 2D.
In the cameras property boxes, can clear both location and rotation, to have the camera facing downwards.
Via shortcuts / menu with
AltG  Object > Clear > Clear Location
AltR  Object > Clear > Clear Rotation
Then move up in $z$ and set camera type to perespective
Here is a script to do this, moving the camera to 2 bu directly above origin.
import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
cam = scene.camera

cam.matrix_world.identity()
cam.data.type = 'PERSP'
cam.matrix_world.translation.z = 2


Applied a subdivision modifier and imported in Substance Painter 2, the result is horrible I made this model in Blender. This is the low poly model:

And this is high poly. I added a subdivision modifier and applied it. You can see that the UV map actually updated as well:

And this is when I imported it in Substance Painter 2. I exported model as .FBX:

As you can see, the bottom part is horrible. I just want to render it clearly, but you can see that some kind of zig-zag lines in the model.

I adjusted the tolerance and hardness parameters but it doesn't seem to work.

How do I get a clean result when exporting the high-poly version where the subdivision surface modifier has been applied?

You should get all the faces that are meant to be flat together as one face. The bottom face on the cylinder in your case should look like a flat face, but because it's made out of a lot of faces, it doesn't.
Select one of the bottom faces:

press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F to select all the faces that are on a 0 degree angle of it:

Now hit X and choose 'Dissolve faces'. Now you have erased the unnecessary vertices:


Only one object has bloom when Z combining I have some trouble in the compositor and I need help. I made this super simple scene to demonstrate the problem:

Then what I did is render out the cube and the sphere separately into two images with transparent backgrounds. I used OpenEXR format with Z buffer enabled, and I connected the depth value of the render layer to the Z socket of the composite node. (Though I don't need depth values in this example, I do in my actual project.)

Then I Z combined the two images and also rendered out the floor plane and put the two objects on top of it with an alpha over node: (It is necessary to have a non-alpha background to get the bloom to show at all.)

An now you see the problem, only one object shows the bloom effect. If I swap around the image and Z values of the two objects, the bloom swaps as well for some reason:

I am absolutely unsure about what causes this behavior, by all means it should work in my opinion, both objects should have bloom no matter in what order they're combined, but they don't.
If you know a solution to this, please let me know!

Edit: With the colors set to black and white, you can see only one object is visible at a time:

Well, I found an answer myslef. Thanks to Bruno, I got the idea of combining the masks that the Z combine node creates for each object, so I made a setup like so:

It combines both objects' silhouettes to make a combined mask, and as you see, the depth values are correct as well.


Is it possible to stack two or more materials with transparency for textures? I have a model I want the "base" material to be Blue, and I want to apply a material with an image texture to some selected faces only. The image I want to apply has transparency, and I'd like that transparency to show through to the other (base/blue) material. I've had no luck with mixing a transparency shader using the alpha channel as the factor. I'm doubting whether its possible this way. If it's not possible, how should I go about doing this instead?
I wanted to use the material node, but that doesn't seem to be in blender any more.
Thanks in advance :)

My mask image:
White mask with transparency

In the material tab, go to Settings and change the Blend Mode from Opaque to Alpha Blend or other related Aplha options


Combine Sky texture with other layers with alpha channel I have a scene with two different render layers. The first one is a background with Sky texture. The second one is some images of mountains with alpha channel. For second layer I need Transparency to have an alpha channel to get a background with Sky texture as a sky. The thing is if I enable transparency, the first layer renders as one total alpha channel. If I disable transparency the second layer renders without alpha channel and I can't apply the first layer as sky because the second layer overlaps it by solid black. if I render them separately I lose one of them.

The problem is that the layer with the landscape and the clouds does not have an alpha channel (that is why the alpha over operation does not work). In the film section enable "transparent"

To use the background set on the world settings enable "environment" on the layer passes.

Then connect the environment socket of the rendered layer to the alpha over node to use as background:


Does bmesh guarantee order of vertex in a edge according to the time they were added I would like to represent directions in a single edge in a mesh similar to a curve.

However I cannot use curves themselves due to performance issues when dealing with huge amount of curves and not able to have more than 2 endpoints. Linked:
Creating/Handling pathfinding large world waypoints in Blender

So I am thinking to represent the order of vertices in an edge as direction. Then I would simply either expose the direction via a gl draw or in the UI panel and also allow to invert the direction by deleting the edge and adding it again in opposite order.

For instance, I add a place using the following code

    vertex1 = bm.verts.new((-0.5, -0.5, 0.0)) # 0
    vertex2 = bm.verts.new( (0.5, -0.5, 0.0)) # 1
    vertex3 = bm.verts.new( (0.5, 0.5, 0.0) ) # 2
    vertex4 = bm.verts.new( (-0.5, 0.5, 0.0)) # 3

    bm.verts.index_update()

    # How to create edges
    bm.edges.new( (vertex1, vertex2) ) # 0
    bm.edges.new( (vertex2, vertex3) ) # 1
    bm.edges.new( (vertex3, vertex4) ) # 2
    bm.edges.new( (vertex4, vertex1) ) # 3

Later when I access the bmesh again, using

    obj = bpy.context.edit_object
    me = obj.data
    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

    # are the vertices stored in edge guarentee'd to be
    # in order at the time they were added
    bm.edges[0].verts[0] == bm.verts[0]
    bm.edges[0].verts[1] == bm.verts[1]

I have tested it and it does seem correct for few of my test cases. However, I would like to be certain.

The order of both vertex indices stored in an edge (me.edges[#].verts), or the vertices references respectively (bm.edges[#].verts) should not change unless you make it so (by flipping an edge I guess).

That is because the order is important. Think of a line of 3 connected edges: if you flipped the vertices referenced by the middle edge, it would still look like the same edge. But both vertices would need to be switched (as in coordinates) - but that doesn't work because they are used by other edges.

(Unscientific) stress test:

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        break
else:
    raise Exception()

ctx = bpy.context.copy()
ctx["area"] = area
ctx["region"] = area.regions[-1]
bpy.ops.ed.undo_push(ctx)

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
print()
print()
t = {}
for e in me.edges:
    v1, v2 = e.vertices
    t[(v1, v2)] = "{: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} | {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f}".format(*(me.vertices[v1].co[:] + me.vertices[v2].co[:]))

bpy.ops.mesh.sort_elements(type='RANDOMIZE')

bpy.ops.ed.undo_push(ctx)
me.update()
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0,0,2))
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.ed.undo(ctx)
bpy.ops.mesh.sort_elements(type='RANDOMIZE')
bpy.ops.mesh.flip_normals()

for e in me.edges:
    v1, v2 = e.vertices
    if t[(v1, v2)] != "{: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} | {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f} {: 8.4f}".format(*(me.vertices[v1].co[:] + me.vertices[v2].co[:])):
        raise Exception()

The order of geometry elements is not guaranteed on the other hand (me..index / bm..index), although it is practically stable, as long as you add and remove in stack principle (last in, first out).

If a vertex / edge / face other than the one with the highest index is deleted, all elements with a higher index will shift to fill the gap.

There are also mesh operations to sort mesh elements based on properties like distance to camera, or randomize the indices even.

You could use a custom data layer to store an explicit order (e.g. bm.verts.layers.int), but beware of the value propagation: if you extrude a vertex for instance, that custom data will be carried over to the new vertex.

This patch might be interesting for you: https://developer.blender.org/T42865


How to convert normal map into bump map I wonder how to do that in Blender. I desire to extract images of bump maps from normal maps, so that I can re-work them in Krita or any other painting software.

There are no built in method that converts a Normal map to a Bump in Blender. It would be possible to write a python script to do this but it would take much research to be able to produce desirable results.

I only know of one tool that can do this and that is Substance Designer.


Multiple Textures in a Complex Object For example a material I'm working on a material that has a total of three links (a 3 in the texture name field).  Is there a way to discover which objects have the other two shared links.  This is driving me nuts.  I have over 200 objects in my model and I have no idea which objects are sharing links.  I need to make them discreet.  So I click and make it discreet but every time I enter the material, it shows up as "3" again.

I'd love a capability to right click (or something) on an object and see which other objects are sharing those materials.

But I don't think that feature exist, so where can I find the other two objects using the material so I can make them unique and texture each individually?????

I believe this happened when I accidentally joined objects that were accidentally selected and all the materials in joined objects now share the materials.  But when you separate the joined objects, each of the separated object have all the materials of the originally joined objects.

This is nuts.

OK, all joined object keep their materials.  I get it.  But at the same token, when you separate an object "P-by selection" it would be helpful (incredibly helpful) if the separated object only kept the materials it originally had and the remaining joined objects no longer included those materials.

I can't tell you how many times I've joined object that were that were accidentally selected behind the object I was trying to join.  Later, I now see I have multiple links and I have no idea which objects share those links so I can make them unique and move on with texturing.

Instead, I'm playing were in the world is Waldo with materials without knowing which are the ones that are linked.

Is there a way to identify which objects are sharing the same material??

Thanks

The search function in the outliner window should do the trick.

If you click on "Search" in the menu you can also switch between "Case sensitive" and "Complete match"


how to export each animation separately into gLTF 2.0? I am making a game with godot game engine(3d game), but my friend who is responsible of modeling and animating made all the animation in one blender file.

Now to continue working, how do I export each one of these animation separately in gLTF 2.0 format?

From the glTF addon docs:

glTF allows multiple animations per file, with animations targeted to particular objects at time of export. To ensure that an animation is included, either (a) make it the active Action on the object, (b) create a single-strip NLA track, or (c) stash the action.

You will need to create the NLA track or stash the action on each armature that you want that action to be available for, unless Godot has some ways of re-assigning the animations later.


What causes the gap in shadows underneath an object? In the following render:

You can see that the shadow of the pink plate on the table isn't complete, as if it is somehow lit. However, if I lift the plate substantially off the table, this problem goes away. I was wondering what causes this? Everything in the scene, except the plate, has no materials assigned, and my lighting setup is the standard one at boot up:

That's a point light. And the mesh of the plate looks like this:

Try enabling contact shadows;

You may also need to adjust the bias settings (also pictured)


Animation is exported, but does not appear along with the mesh of the object I did what was done in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWKOOoSKFK8

In the video is basically made 5 identical cubes, one on top of each other, and each with a bone.

Result:

In the video is also made an animation with the object. Similar to the movement of a tentacle or gasoline doll:

Object already in the Unreal 4:

I only have problem in the animation, no mesh appears:

Note that bone animation happens, but no mesh appears:

And also from what I understand, all bones are in the same place (paused animation):

Disabling this option, I could see the mesh in the animation:

However the animation does not happen and the bones are now not in the same place, but some are still not in the right position:

Warning that appears in the case where I can't see the mesh, but the bones move and are in the same place:

Warning that appears in the case where I can see the mesh, the bones are in different locations, but not completely correct and do not move:

If you're still after an answer, I have found a few different soloutions to various Blender>Unreal problems that when I combine, seem to work. Could be one of these:

Don't have fullstops in your bone names
Rename your Armature to anything else
Don't call your root bone 'Spine' (You've not done this. Could jut need to be carful eitheir way.)

Not sure if any of these help this particular issue, as mine is usually just everything importing microscopic.


Make a trail inside the bge I've tried do to draw a curve with the bge module, assuming I have a list of locations :

for i in range(1, len(positions) - 1):
    bge.render.drawLine(positions[i - 1], positions[i], (1, 0, 0))

But the following doesn't work at all. What is wrong with this ?
This is the piece of code I've written, and I'd like to be able to draw the trajectory of the object.

import bge

own = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
own["positions"] = []
own.applyForce((1, 1, 1), 0)
own["positions"].append(own.worldPosition)
for i in range(1, len(own["positions"]) - 1):
    bge.render.drawLine(own["positions"][i - 1], own["positions"][i], (1, 0, 0))

EDIT:

Changed the script according to Chebhou's answer:

import bge
own = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
if "positions" not in own :
    own["positions"] = []
own.applyForce((1, 1, 1), 0)
own["positions"].append(own.worldPosition.copy())
for i in range(1, len(own["positions"]) - 1):
    bge.render.drawLine(own["positions"][i - 1], own["positions"][i], (1, 0, 0))

positions variable is being cleared at every execution of the script by the line own["positions"] = [] to prevent this replace that line with :

if 'positions' not in own :
    own["positions"] = []

Edit :
The position list was not extended properly it was taking pointers to the object position to fix this replace own["positions"].append(own.position) with own["positions"].append(own.position.copy())


How to Make dusty effect on a surface? How to achieve dusty looking on a surface, making a particle system was my first opinion but then I changed my mind!

It would've cost too much and now I'm stuck.

There are a couple ways of doing this. Here's one way in cycles as your question didn't specify which engine you are using.

Start by adding an input>geometry node using the normal output.
Next, add a Separate XYZ node, you will be using the Z output.
A color ramp will be next, this will control the mix between the
dust layer and the rest of the material. Plug this and the preceding 2 nodes into the Fac of
the mix shader as shown below.
You can either use a diffuse shader colored as you want your dust, or
use a suitable image for your dust, it will go in the bottom input of
a mix shader.

Here is the node setup with an image texture, to use without, simply don't use it.

This is a suzanne with the above material:


Cannot get rid of shadow under transparent texture I'm using a png with a transparent back ground for a texture, and while the transparent portion appears to be transparent, there is still a shadow under it from certain angles - but no shadow with other angles.

What am I doing wrong? How can I get rid of this "eclipse" shadow?

The texture in your picture is not fully transparent. Since the Transparent node is set to fully white, your texture is not fully transparent in its background. Otherwise the material setup is fine.

Notice the eclipse shadow only appears behind the texture and is the same color as the surrounding shadow. This means you probably have an error in your light path setup. A simple reason could be that the transparency passes is set to low, and Cycles cuts off the light rays not allowing them to pass through the transparent material often enough.

Fix this by increasing your Transparency bounces in Properties >Render >Light Paths:


Create custom graph and access values from Python I need to allow the user to create their own transfer function y = f(x)

(I will then use this transfer function to warp the scene)

Currently I'm using a mathematical formula:

y = exp( 1/(x^2 + 1) )

But it doesn't allow a (non-mathematical) artist to shape the curve, and it is awkward even for a mathematician to turn an arbitrary shape into a mathematical formula.

Ideally I would like the user to be able to draw the curve freehand, or maybe in the same manner as constructing curves in Blender.

In fact, can I get away with using Blender's existing curve tool? Say I create a new scene, I suppose I can then create a curve that is constrained to the xy axis. But then how could I get y = f(x) from a Python script?

And also, is there some 2D curve tool, that might allow the curve to be designed from within some panel?

Is there any solution path I'm missing?

After a bit of investigation it seems you can't use Graph Editor for "standalone" FCurves.
However, you can link them to any object and name them as you like. I used the default Cube in example below, but it might be as well an empty mesh.

Below script uses Cube as object that "holds" your curves within its animation_data.action. It creates them if they do not exist, and if they exists current one is picked.

import bpy

placeholder = bpy.context.scene.objects["Cube"]
if not placeholder.animation_data:
    placeholder.animation_data_create()
if not placeholder.animation_data.action:
    placeholder.animation_data.action = bpy.data.actions.get("curves") or bpy.data.actions.new("curves")
action = placeholder.animation_data.action

print(placeholder)
name = 'my_curve'

fcurves = action.fcurves
for f in fcurves:
    if f.data_path == name:
        break
else:
    f = action.fcurves.new( name )
    f.select = True
    f.keyframe_points.insert( 0, 0 )
    f.keyframe_points.insert( 100, 10 )

Then you have get to edit curve you can add points by duplicating existing ones using shift-d.

After shaping it you can use FCurve.evaluate() (API docs - bpy.types.FCurve). For example like this:

for i in range(100):
    print(i, f.evaluate(i))


Is there a way to deal with artifacts appearing in texture painting? I noticed that if I start painting a 3d model, after a while some "white spots" artifacts start to show up, and they become more and bigger the more times I pass a brush on top of them.

Here is the kind of artifact I'm talking about:

What I've noticed is this: Painting on the model directly through texture paint mode doesn't allow you to paint in the whole "image" of the texture that is being produced as you paint. In fact, the brush doesn't even paint on some pixels of the texture file that the UVs are laid on.
Check this image:

You can clearly see that part of the UV is laid on a part of the texture image that is white. And it's white because the brush can't paint on there.

Is there a way to avoid this artifact happening at all ? If not, is there an easy way to fix it, other than examining the texture pixel by pixel ? A texture can have millions of pixels, and it's like a fool's errand to try to "hunt" for bad pixels on the actual texture.

If a texel (texture pixel) is only partially covered by the UV shell, you can get this sort of error. You can see it happening in the second image. Blender has to guess whether to apply the texture or not, since it isn't clear from the UV map. To deal with this, texture paint has a function called "bleed" that will spray a little bit past the UV edge. It's located in the "options" tab of the T-panel while in texture paint mode:

When your brush crosses the edge of a UV shell, this will spray extra paint beyond the edge to pad this "vague" boundary of texels that are partially occupied by the UVs. The setting is how many pixels of padding it will make, here's some examples

Your issue is caused by either no bleed, or setting the number of bleed pixels too low.
You do need to make sure you have some amount of space between each UV shell, otherwise the padding for one UV shell will run onto a nearby UV shell.


How do you keep parts from showing through the skin on a transparent character? I'm currently making a character who will be mostly transparent.  I've gotten the face done, but I have an issue.  The teeth, eyes, and inner mouth are visible from behind.  I want them to be hidden unless you're looking directly at them.  Is there a way to do this?
Images of what I have so far of the character for reference.

Materials in Blender can be set to be transparent, so that light can pass through any objects using the material. Transparency is controlled using an “alpha” channel, where each pixel has an additional value, range 0-1, in addition to its RGB color values.
Transparency
So if you want an object to be transparent you could change (this can also be animated / keyed) the material and or alpha level of those objects you want to be transparent or solid.
Here's a detail link with a tutorial along with an example / walk through showing you how to do this.
Alpha / Transparency instructions
Video Link explaining Alpha / Transparency


Blender Internal models in Eevee I've been using Blender Internal (Blender Render) for the past years, and since that's not in the latest version of Blender, I wanted to ask if there was a way to render out my old models in Eevee without having to manually edit them to function properly. My biggest problem is that the textures don't show up (some of them were generated procedurally).

Thanks in advance!

No, that is not possible. Blender internal and eevee are way too different to be cross compatible. Materials can only be converted manually by baking the property maps or recreating the textures and functions in the node editor. You are better off keeping the latest version of 2.79 for your old files rather than porting them to 2.8x.


2.8 - Is it possible to assign (override) a material to a whole collection? I have a collection that contains linked assets.
I would like to override their materials and give them a unique material.
Is it possible to assign a material to a whole collection, and how ?

Thanks !

You can override the materials from linked sources that are part of the same collection, just the same way you can override not linked ones.
In the scene context section you can find the options for override, you can select a single material and that will be used for all objects.

From the blender manual:

Material Override
Overrides all material settings to use the Material chosen here.
Examples of where this might be used:
To check lighting by using a plain diffuse material on all objects.
Render a wireframe of the scene.
Create a custom render pass such as an anti-aliased matte or global coordinates.


How do I set influence radius to a specific size? When doing proportional edits in Blender is there a way to set the radius of influence to a specific size (e.g. 23) or do I have to use my mouse wheel and just try to get close?

As with most operations in blender, the redo panel (F9 in 2.8+ keymap, or  F6 for 2.7 keymap) provides the ability to adjust the operator immediately after it is run. Keep in mind, if you use another operator (scale, translate, etc before adjusting prop edit), then the ability to adjust is gone.
See the gif below:


How can I visualize progress in a panel?   I want to put a list with progression bars into a panel or somewhere else. Is it possible to place a custom image next to text? Or draw progress bars like the one in the header somewhere else?

I found this line in space_info.py:    layout.template_running_jobs()
but I'm not clear about how to find the corresponding code.

  My workarounds would be to use a crude text version of a progress bar or a slider. But my ideal thing would be a bar with colors of my own choosing.

No you can't (not without fairly bad hacks at least).

As of 2.69 this is a limitation in the Python API, layout.template_running_jobs() shows progress for blenders job system which Python has no access to.

You can however control the mouse cursor to display progress.


Convert animated bones into empties I just created a model (using for a game) that uses several unconnected bones within the same armature to animate the model.

It wasn't until I spent several hours modeling, that I realized the exporter (in this case it is a custom torque .dts exporter) doesn't work with armature/bone animations and only works with objects parented to empties; the empties are then key-frame animated.

Is there a way I can convert/copy all the bones into empties with the same animation movement?

Could try exporting the animation as a bvh, then importing back as empties, using the target Object option.

If that doesn't work could elaborate on https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1287/15543 to create a script to add empties to bone locations.


How to use boolean intersect with two plans and the mirror modifier These are two plans I want to cut to only keep the outside of the vertical plane. There is a mirror modifier applied on z axe. I tried to use the
Boolean Intersect Tool. So my question is how to use one plane (object) as a cutter to cut away from another plane (object).

I removed the mirror modifier and tried with 3D object but nothing happens as I hit CTRL+ F key Intersect(Boolean). I tried with the Intersect knife tool and "No Intersection found" diplays.
Thanks for your help.

Finally I found the problem: Boolean Intersect (and Knife Tool)  work only if the objects are joined.


Subdivision modifier renders with Viewport Subdivisions in Edit Mode Modelling a mask in Blender. Used subdivision modifier with 1 subdivision on the Viewport and 2 on the render. Like this:

I made sure the render and realtime buttons were active as can be seen above.

In object mode, behaviour is what I expected, 1 subdivision applied in the Viewport, 2 in the render, like so:

Object mode Viewport

Object mode Render

If I enter Edit Mode, the viewport still behaves as expected, but the render always shows the number of subdivisions set for viewport, like so:

Edit Mode Viewport

Edit Mode Render

I am new to Blender, do we have to exit Edit Mode and then render?

I am also new to Blender and noticed this recently. I believe it's due to the fact that you cannot apply modifiers (e.g. Subdivision Surface) while in Edit Mode. When you render, it still takes into account whether you're in Object or Edit Mode. So yes I believe you must be in Object mode for the modifier to be applied during the render.


How to correctly map random texture to an object? So I want to map the texture on the left to the object on the right. And because this texture was taken from the Internet and was not designed for this model you can see a lot of artifacts (blue lines). How can I map this texture to an object correctly so that this texture will be seen OK from all sides (except the bottom of the model)?

And if I can't do that then what is the best way to paint this texture yourself? Texture paint or maybe there are better (easier for the newbie) ways to do that?

Once unwrapped your mesh, go to the UV Editor and enlarge, rotate, the mesh to achieve what you're looking for.
Is easier this way, but also you can do the same on the Node editor with a:
"Texture cordinate" plugged into a "Mapping" plugged into the "image texture" which contains the image you're using.

Steps:

(in the node editor) Add a texture cordinate and mapping tab

Connect the UV slot of the Texture Cordinate into the Mapping

Then, plug the mapping into "Image Texture" node which contains the image you're using.

Now, tweak the rotation and size on the Mapping tab to achieve what you're looking for.

I hope this works for you.


Map array modified objects to underlaying surface I create a big grid of objects using 2 array modifier on my original mesh. The resulting objects shall be placed (snap) to another underlaying mesh which is bumpy.

Following the description of shrinkwrap it sounds like the tool to go to, but sadly half of the objects are either to far away from the surface or the meshes get unrecognizably stretched. Is there a way to place those objects without needing to do everything by hand? Preferably with the normals aligning correctly.

"The Shrinkwrap Modifier allows an object to “shrink” to the surface of another object. It moves each vertex of the object being modified to the closest position on the surface of the given mesh (using one of the three methods available)."

Create a simple array of a place object with the same settings as the array you already have.

Shrinkwrap that plane to the underlying bumpy mesh instead, then use Duplifaces or a particle system (if the former has too limited controls for what you want to achieve) to distribute the objects along the array.

Parent the duplicated object to the plane mesh with Ctrl + P, then activate Duplifaces under the Properties Window > Object > Duplication > Faces


Detach face through UV can we detach faces from the object through UV editor
What I want is to select the poly through UV and then detach them from the geometry

Sure. The easiest way is probably to enable the “UV Sync Selection” option, which is the button that looks like two diagonal arrows at the top left of the UV editor:

This will synchronize your UV selection with the selection of geometry in the 3D viewport. Then you can just select whichever faces you want to separate in the UV editor, move your mouse cursor to the 3D viewport, and press Y to split the faces within a single object or P to separate the faces into a new object.


How to display an skeletal animation in WebGL on web browser I want to load and display this animation model in WebGL on web browser.

blender file

I exported a JSON file as skeletal animation with an addon for three.js, and loaded it in WebGL, but it wasn't success.
I uploaded my three.js code

I referenced this cite, but I couldn't understand well.

You can try using the experimental feature for exporting morph/skeletal animation when using that addon. I think that's the key.


What is this hierarchy of an empty and a collection, and how do I get to the mesh inside? I got some plants from here and they are gorgeous. However, I ended up moving some files and the textures broke, so I diligently went back and fixed them one by one. The last bit was doing the stems and leaves of this plant here:

Now, the screenshot is what I see when I click-select the leaves. An empty at the bottom (see the stems, I think that's an empty, at least…) and a dark-orange selection border around the leaves. I figured the empty and the leaves mesh were parented so I looked into the side-thingy and this is what it looks like:

Now, that orange icon is one I'm not familiar with, and I can't find anything in the docs. I can't go into edit mode: no matter I many times I press TAB, the mode never changes, and in fact nothing other than Object mode is available in the top-left drop-down control in the viewport.

Suffice to say, this isn't giving me access to the material, so I can't fix the texture. I'm genuinely stumped. Any pointers?

The orange box icon is a Collection Instance.

It can't be edited, it's just a link to some other collection, that needs to be edited.
To import assets from other files, make sure to use  File > Append the collection.
Then it's imported with all objects as separate items.

Importing all objects as separate items using File > Append


IK restraint makes hand rotate weird in relation to gun, how to fix? So i'm trying to make a gun animation in blender, so I set up an arm rig and modeled a gun, the only problem is, is that the arm's IK constraint messes up rotation, so the hand won't rotate with the gun in the way I want.

(I'm new at this if you couldn't tell)

You need to change the rig. Now you have almost no control over wrist rotation. Also it's never a good start to have rig rotation and location different then 0,0,0 and scale different then 1. It will in almost every case cause problems after exporting to a game engine, so you need to fix this. As for the rig, you need to make IK targets of the hands chains to be exact copies of hand_l and hand_r bones, parented to the root bone. Then give both hand bones Copy Rotation constraint set to World Space > World Space and Bone target of appropriate IK target bone. This will give you more control and make your work easier.Also use Child of constraint for IK targets to follow gun bones, when you set up the grip (don't forget to click on set inverse after that or you will be disappointed)  It's hard to repeat rigging steps just by reading it and .gif would be to large, so here is a link with your file, but with fixed rig. Compare and learn.Happy New Year :)


Distorted Noise: Size smaller than 0.0001 I used a Displace modifier with a Distorted Noise, so it's working fine but when I try to set its size smaller than 0.0001, it doesn't change and keeps at the 0.0001 value. Here are the screenshots:

"Size" value of the Distorted Noise texture set to 0.0001 (it's shown as 0.000 in the UI because of precision limitations):

Trying to change it to 0.00002:

I hit Enter and then click on the editbox but it's not changed:

How do I fix that and use lower sizes (or should I use another way like texture nodes to scale that down?)?

I don't think your issue is Texture Size value, but not enough geometry of your object. Try to use SubSurf modifier before Displacement modifier.

BTW for such a small details I would use noise texture as Bump Map or for Microdisplacement.

Note: Quite strange for me is that textures for Displacement are different than for shaders - there is not this texture. On other hand, Noise texture node use opposite scale values, like 10000 for similar 0.0001 of Distortion Noise. And with node there in not problem set 1.000.000 :)


Texture doesnt render correctly when rendering final image I have some strange problem in my recent Blender project.

I modelled a room with some stuff in it and I added some simple wooden texture to the floor. When I am in the 3D view and change it to "rendered" everything renders correctly. When I hit Render through the menu, I have some weird effect on the floor, somehow its totally messed up.

Does anyone know why this happens? And do you may have some advices for me , to get a noise free interior scene with blender without sampling everything thousands of times?!

Thanks in advance! -Marten

Oh okay I figured it out. I had a hidden object at the same position as my floor. Woupsi..


Morphing a mesh between more than two shapes I want to morph a cube into a sphere, and the sphere into a cone, all in one animation.

Unless I am missing something, shape keys allow objects to go from A to B and back to A, or A to C and back to A, etc.

What is the most natural and efficient way to go from A to B to C?

You can set Shapekey B to depend on shapekey A, and shapekey C to depend on shapekey B.


How do I make a mirror? How do I make a mirror in BI or cycles? I have very little experience with materials. I am just wanting to experiment with mirrors in Blender. For example, What I am thinking is to make two opposite walls inside a cube both mirrors. Can blender handle that or even 4 walls as mirrors?

For Blender Cycles

Go to the materials tab, create a new material, where it says diffuse click and press glossy BSDF. Set the roughness to ~0.

 For Blender Internal

Go to the materials tab, create a new material, tick the mirror box and set reflectivity to 1 or a high number.

This is for the most basic mirror which just reflects. To make a more complicated one, learn a bit more about materials for Blender Internal and for Cycles learn about the types of shaders and the mix node.


What render engine to use with the VSE? I'm trying to figure out which render engine to use for the VSE only..

I'm unsure that something changes but maybe... the cycles one can use the GPU instead of game and internal?

There is a quite important difference when you render Video footage only:

Only with Blender Internal you have the option of using Anti-Aliasing.

And there is a bit of a speed gain or loss depending on your settings there. But it makes a huge difference as soon as you activate a Scale function of at least one Strip. Cranking the samples per pixel up there didn't really affect my image quality nor speed, so you could leave it at 5, but switching it off completely results in a performance increase, but a visible image quality decrease on edges.

GPU Usage is only available in Cycles though. And depending whether you want to include rendered footage from a Scene as well and what effect  you want to achieve (basically more photorealism vs. speed) you need to select your Engine accordingly.

So in your case I'd suggest you'd use Blender Internal.


Connecting cylindrical hallways cleanly I'm a newbie modeler and having trouble connecting two cylindrical hallways. Appreciate any help given!
So here's the problem, I have a torus and a cylinder both acting as hallways in an environment I'm building. I want the Torus to connect cleanly to the side of the cylinder without intersecting it, then to remove faces between the two on the cylinder so someone can pass between the two.

I managed to get the Torus to connect cleanly by putting a difference boolean modifier on it as shown below, but I'm not not sure how to cleanly cut the shape required to have them pass through to eachother.

I've tried using boolean modifiers in a variety of different ways to see if I could somehow achieve it that but had no success. At this point I'm really just looking for someone to point me in the right direction so I can research a way to do this. I know I could just do it with the knife cut but I'd like it to fit perfectly.
Thanks in advance for any help!

The point is to have the good amount of vertices so that the two can fit easily.

If the cylinder part exposes from top to bottom 9 vertices (ring of 16) then the torus should have 16 minor segments.
Once done,
Boolean approach
Place the two shapes like so, so that they overlap:

Add a boolean union modifier to the torus using the cylinder as object:

Apply it. Cuts should be good but you'll have unwanted vertices:

So delete them.
The result should look good but warning check for doubles and/or overlapping faces (there will be some) and remove them. All should be quad after that.
Knife project approach
Place the cylinder along the torus:

Use a circle of 16 vertices too at the place of the last torus ring:

Keep the circle selected and the cylinder active, in ortho view (like the picture above) and enter edit mode.
Choose the menu "mesh/knife project". That will make this cut on the cylinder:

Remove these edges and faces:

Join the cylinder and the torus, enter edit mode, select these parts as below and use the menu "edge/bridge edge loops".

So that the two parts are now connected.
Common part
Now some clean up:
Make the opposite part quad using a knife cut:

Add some bevel using loop cuts CtrlR on these 3 parts:


Adding a knee bone for better definition to Rigify metarig So i'm getting into some 3d modeling and learning to rig characters. Using rigify is pretty easy, but I'm trying to figure out how to add additional bones. I noticed by default the rig seems to lose volume in quite a few places so wanted to add some more bones for better control around some of those important areas.
This short video shows an interesting idea for preventing knee or elbow volume loss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbQX8C3lrHE
My deal is when I try this I get the following rigify error.
Blender File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rLOcRHm5gFsLCtbnDMAHBSxwnsvvgoZs/view?usp=sharing
RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'thigh.L': Heel bone not found.
Incorrect armature for type 'leg'
Is there a way to make this concept play nicely with Rigify? Seems like it would be easier in the long than floating bones to add volume or manually painting a bunch of weights.

You can add knee bones to a Rigify rig but you need to do this to the generated rig, not to the meta rig.
(The meta rig is used by Rigify to define the location, shape, and size of the generated rig.
The generated rig will eventually be used for posing. It consists of numerous bones, such as deform bones (that deform the mesh and start with DEF- prefix in their names), control bones (for IK/FK), and mechanism bones, etc. All these bones can be found on the different bone layers.)
But Rigify has a custom property named "Rubber Tweak" for the shins (knees) and elbows that can give those areas more volume.
For comparison:

If you want to add an extra knee bone you can find the deform bones on bone layer 30. Add a knee bone between the thigh and the shin bone as described in the video:

Clear Parent (Alt+P) to separate them
select the ends of the bone, F to add the knee bone
rename it to DEF-knee.L
parent the shin bone to the new knee bone and check the connected checkbox

Additionally, you need to add 2 bone constraints to the new knee bone (switch to Pose mode, see  for details).

Rubber tweak option (right leg), extra knee bone (left leg)
Note: There is a bug (Blender 2.91), that makes Rigify not generate all needed layers. The bug happens now and then when you have edited the bones and press the Generate Rig button. Check if all layers are there before you proceed. Are Arm.R (IK) and Arm.L (FK) present? If they are missing have a look here:
Rigify->Generate Rig doesn't create all rig layers in the properties ui


Character Rigging and Mesh Deformations rotating and shrinking strangely around joint This time, I began to rig a mesh through weight painting and deformations so I could achieve an accurate effect to my liking. For all my characters before, I have used object rigging, (Without Vertex groups as I never needed to have some).

However, this time I have an arm with two bones, One for the forearm and one for the wrist. When I rotate the wrist, it works correctly, but once I rotate the forearm, there are a specific pair of circular vertices that work strangely.

Here is the weight paint and arm at rest position:

The Yellow and light blue ones deform once I rotate the bone.

Like so.
It is strange because I have an armature modifier applied to the object with preserved volume checked. Yet it seems as if those sets of vertices do not follow the command; they seem to be moving closer and closer to the joint whilst shrinking as I rotate the bone.

Here is what the weight values of the second bone are:

Any suggestions or wisdom would be appreciated, and I can always upload the .blend if you ask me to.
Thank you.

Here is the .blend file:

Select your Mesh and delete all vertex groups and all modifiers as shown:

Select your Mesh then select your armature using Shift+RightClick and hit Ctrl+P then choose With Empty Groups:

Switch to Pose Mode then select the two bones LWrist and LShoulder then select the mesh using Shift+RightClick as shown below:

Switch to weight painting mode and select Assign Automatic From Bones from the Weights menu as shown below:

Done, now the mesh will have weights assigned to these bones with good deformations as shown below:


Shortcut Without Confirmation Dialog I'm new to Blender and I'm trying to add a shortcut to "Set Parent To: Object"

I want the shortcut to go to the action directly without the confirmation dialog, but I can't seem to get it working. Since the shortcut is keyed directly to the menu item "Object", logically it should go there directly without the pop up dialog, right? At least I expected it to work that way.

The UI suggests that P is now connected to the Object action, but this is not the case:

I've removed all other bindings for P just to make sure

Preventing that this dialog appears seems not possible at the moment.

But you can define a 'custom operator' and 'create a shortcut' see: Create Shortcuts for Particle Edit Brushes?

For daily work I've converted this into an Add-on, which creates the shortcut automatically:

Install the Add-on via File > User Preferences > Add-ons. Once it's enabled you can press Shift+P for Set Parent to Object and also Shift+Alt+P for Keep Transform operation in Object Mode:

parent_shortcuts.py

bl_info = {
    "name": "Parenting Shortcuts",
    "description": "Parenting Shortcuts",
    "author": "poor",
    "version": (0, 0, 1),
    "blender": (2, 75, 0),
    "location": "3D View",
    "category": "3D View"
}

import bpy

# operators
class SetParentToObject(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.set_parent_object"
    bl_label = "Set Parent to Object"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type="OBJECT")
        return {'FINISHED'}

class SetParentKeepTransform(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.set_parent_keep"
    bl_label = "Set Parent to Object (Keep Transform)"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type="OBJECT", keep_transform=True)
        return {'FINISHED'}

addon_keymaps = []

# register
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SetParentToObject)
    bpy.utils.register_class(SetParentKeepTransform)

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    if kc:
        km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Object Mode', space_type='EMPTY')
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(SetParentToObject.bl_idname, type='P', value='PRESS', shift=True)
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(SetParentKeepTransform.bl_idname, type='P', value='PRESS', alt=True, shift=True)
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

# unregister
def unregister():

    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()

    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SetParentToObject)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SetParentKeepTransform)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How to get cloth + wind simulation in 2.80? I tried the regular flow of:

Creating a plane
Scaling to ~0.5mX0.5m, applying scaling
Subdividing by 10 cuts
Creating a vertex group out of one of the edges for pinning
Apply cloth simulation, use group as pin, preset set to "silk"

So far so good - the cloth hangs from the pinned group. Next I try to add wind by adding force field, set type to wind and shape to plane.

First, nothing really happens and my cloth doesn't seem to be affected by the wind at all. Second, unlike the tutorials I've seen, trying to rotate the force field direction rotates the cloth as well, which to my understanding shouldn't be happening.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

.blend link here

Ok, I figured it out. The field should be added through Add->Force Field->Wind and not through the physics pane of the cloth itself. That enables rotation. When I do that and set the strength to something like 5000 it works as expected.


Rotating the texture I have a problem where the texture is on the wrong side.I want it in the middle of the sphere (left arrow). Rotating it did not fix it either. I was wondering if anyone know how to fix this?

I can think of a couple of reasons this may happen.  When you mix noise into your coordinate space it can offset the object origin by some amount.  You can attempt to counteract this by adjusting the Location on the Mapping node.
In the case that rotation is not working correctly, it may help to add a second Mapping node behind it and do the rotation separately.  I think there is a set order of operations that you must override.


Textures not displaying in Solid Shading mode OK, a question for who ever is the Blender expert. I am using Blender on a Linux (Debian) machine. I just updated to 2.73 and have a problem. I can't get any image in solid view. No matter what I do I get nothing. 2.73 works fine on my windows machine but not on the Linux system.

This currently only works for Blender Render(Internal) since it's used for displaying textures that are being baked to and Cycles uses the Active Texture node to do this instead.

Up until last year, it was also used for Texture Painting, now Materials are used for this instead.

Whatever texture is assigned to the faces in the UV Image Editor is what will be displayed.


How to setup Auto Save? How do I get auto saves version saves / recovery to work?

Blender 2.71 just lost 15-40 minutes of work when the whole PC crashed.
I have auto save set to 1-2min.

I check the 2 other versions saved and they're both from the 25th.... I was working on the file for 40min to an hour not steady today 27th I try to recover but there's no auto saves for that whole hour?

All 3 versions of the file I had (Recover auto save and blend1 blend2) were from 2 days ago not when I was working on it today.

Here's a screenshot of settings mostly default:

The are three distinct backup systems. The autosave timer and the .blend1, .blend2 files are part of separate systems.

From my answer here:

  There are several backup systems in Blender:

  Temporary files (saved every 2 minutes by default)

  These will be saved in your temporary directory (specified in User
  preferences > File) with a random number as the name.

  You can quickly open an auto saved file by pressing File > Recover
  auto save, then selecting the auto saved file (the modification times
  can be very useful for determining which file to pick):

  You can adjust the interval at which these are saved in
  CtrlAltU User preferences > File >
  Auto save > Timer:

  Temporary quit files (saved on quit)

  These are also saved in your temporary directory, with the name
  quit.blend. You can quickly open it by pressing File > Recover
  last session:

  Persistent save files for reverting accidental/unwanted saves (saved when saving)

  These are saved as .blend1, .blend2, etc. files in the same
  directory as the current .blend. .blend1 will be the file as it was
  the save before your last save, .blend2 will be the save before the
  save before your last save, etc.

  To open these files, navigate to the directory where your file was
  saved and enable backup files in the display filter:

  You can configure the number of these to save in User preferences >
  File:

  Without knowing more about your particular situation (how long it's
  been, has tmp been cleared, how often did you save, etc.), it's hard
  to say which will work best. There's no risk to trying them all, beware that /tmp or \Temp is normally cleared out at some point,
  so get any useful backups out while you can.

On most Linux systems, /tmp is either stored in RAM or cleared on startup, so files will not survive a crash/reboot.
To avoid this, you can set your autosave directory to someplace besides /tmp. See this question for details.

On Windows Temp files are not deleted by default, so your backups should be floating around in there somewhere.


Learning Blender from basic to experts I want to learn blender from basic to expert all options. Are there DVD available to learn.

I recommend blenderguru.com like one of the above comments mentions, but for me just playing around with the program and getting familiar before jumping in to tutorials helps.


Using Python to animate a property of an addon I am using a Python script to create a number of text objects in Blender, and would like to have them use the Typewriter script so that they appear to be typing themselves out as the animation progresses. Here is my script so far:

import bpy, random

words = ['MANY', 'WORDS']
font = bpy.data.fonts.load('(path to font)')
mat = bpy.data.materials.get("Blue")

for n in range(len(words)):
    new_x = (random.random()*3.2)-1.6
    new_y = (random.random()*15)-10.5
    new_z = (random.random()*1.8)-0.9
    new_scale = (random.random()*0.125)+0.125
    new_time = round(random.random()*300)
    bpy.ops.object.text_add(location=(new_x, new_y, new_z), rotation=(1.5708, 0, 0))
    new_text = bpy.context.object
    new_text.scale = (new_scale, new_scale, new_scale)
    new_text.data.font = font
    new_text.data.align = 'CENTER'
    new_text.data.body = words[n-1]
    new_text.data.materials.append(mat)

To realise this, I would change the new_text.data.body to new_text.data.source_text and insert two keyframes for character_count - one at new_time with value 0, and one at new_time+60 with value of len(words[n-1]). However, when I run the following commands in the console:

>>> ob = bpy.context.object
>>> ob.keyframe_insert(data_path='character_count')

I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bpy_struct.keyframe_insert() property "character_count" not found

This is the data path I get when right-clicking on the field and selected "Copy Data Path", so I am reasonably sure that I have the right name. Can anyone advise me how I might resolve this? Many thanks.

The character_count property is on the data part of the text object.  The Font panel is the data part for a text object, just as it is the mesh for a mesh object, armature for an armature object etc.

With a text object selected and in the console.

>>> C.object.data.keyframe_insert("character_count")
True


Associate Blender with file import in other format than .blend Is it possible to associate Blender (in Windows 7 and later) to open files as it would be done via Import. I often import files in .dae or .fbx format to Blender and I would like to import them simply by opening the file in Windows explorer. Is that possible?

If I simply associate that file with Blender, it opens Blender in a default state with the cube.

How about making a .bat file which will open blender and load a python script, which will load your object? I've made a little proof of concept.

First, the python script. Save it somewhere. It could be next to the .bat file.

import sys
import bpy

pathToImport = sys.argv[-1]

if pathToImport.endswith('fbx'):
    bpy.ops.import_scene.fbx(filepath=pathToImport)
elif pathToImport.endswith('dae'):
    bpy.ops.wm.collada_import(filePath=pathToImport)
elif pathToImport.endswith('obj'):
    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=pathToImport)
else:
    print('Add the specific format?')

As the import operators are not all in the same place (as you can see for the fbx and the collada) I've done this if/elif statement where you can add other formats.

Then the .bat file

SET blender="C:\bin\blender-2.70-windows64\blender.exe"
SET pythonOpenScript="R:\flavio\tmp\openAndImport.py"

%blender% -P %pythonOpenScript% -- %1

I set the paths to blender and to the python script here, easier to manage/change. The %1 at the end of the last line will be the fbx or collada file you want to open.

To finish, right click on any fbx file / properties go to the 'open with' and change it targeting the .bat. That will open the default blender scene and import your object. Any other fbx file should do the same thing. Proceed in the same way for .obj and .dae files.


blender python api custom GUI Blender version 2.83
I need create dialog window with User. Now i'm using context.wm.invoke_popup
but problem that This dialog window close when cursor to far from it and not resible.
Can i create GUI with Blender python API ?
Or give some info What do I need to do to prevent the dialog window from closing
context.wm.invoke_props_dialog is bad because there button 'ok' i don't need this.
My operator:
class EXAMPLE_OT_window(Operator):
    bl_idname = 'example.window'
    bl_label = 'Example'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', }
    bl_description = 'example_description'

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_popup(self, width=300)

    def execute(self, context):
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.separator()
        layout.label(text=self.bl_label)
        layout.separator()

Using panels in 2.8+
It's my opinion that many (including my previous self) get over enamoured with invoking modal dialog props dialogs.
Currently question code has some empty operator (execution wise) that is basically  a draw method. Often I see code where the functionality of the operator used to draw a popup could be replaced entirely by a group property and update methods on the individual properties, hence may as well put in panel code.
IMO if you want a nice stable UI use a panel
Since the advent of 2.8 there is  the ability to

absolutely size panel content

Popup a panel with an operator wm.popup_panel(...)

Popup a panel from draw method (no operator layout.popover(...)

Make child panels.

Here is an example which I've demonstrated in text editor.  (based from good old Hello World Panel template)
In the UI N panel (context.region == 'UI') the x ui width is set to 0 making the add cube operator button the width of the panel, if invoked from the FOOTER region then the panel is 20 wide.

import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "TEXT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        print(context.region.type)
        layout = self.layout
        layout.ui_units_x = 0 if context.region.type == 'UI' else 20
        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()

        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

def draw_panel(self, context):
    op = self.layout.operator("wm.call_panel")
    op.name = "TEXT_PT_hello"
    self.layout.popover("TEXT_PT_hello")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    bpy.types.TEXT_HT_footer.append(draw_panel)
    register()

Note: Given the desire is to have "popup" not close when mousing away, and be resizable consider opening a new window as discussed here
New window with Python API?


Sculpt mode not showing the vertices/faces of a mesh? I'm not sure why but my plane isn't showing any vertices or faces in sculpt mode. I'm trying to sculpt terrain, so I created a plane, and subdivided the surface, then applied that subdivision.

When I enter sculpt mode, it only shows the outline, although the sculpting changes take effect. How do I see the individual faces of the object and why aren't they showing up automatically?

In the Properties area in the Object tab under the Display panel check Draw all edges


BGE python: accessing Edge information in a mesh made of polylines (not polygons) In the Blender Game Engine I need to know if two vertexes are connected by and edge. However, the mesh is made of polylines (segments), not polygons, thus I can not use KX_MeshProxy.getPolygon(index). How can I access this information? The mesh in the picture is not the one I use, it is just an example.

The BGE does not know edges. The BGE knows polygons (faces) which are defined by 3 or 4 vertices.

An edge in this context is a semantic interpretation of a line between two vertices. It does not exist as object nor is it used anywhere. The render engine simply does not need it.

You need to know in the BGE the faces do not necessarily share the same vertices even when in Blender it seams like that.

I can give you a general guideline:

Iterate over the polygons of the mesh.
A polygon has 3 or 4 vertices. An "virtual" edge are two consecutive vertices plus the edge between the last and the first vertex. You will get as many edges as the polygon has vertices
Now you should have all edges (with begin and end vertices) of all polygons.
You can match them to each other by comparing the vertex positions. Be aware edges have a direction. You need to consider the reverse of an edge when comparing.


How to wrap a complex object with one continuous image? I'm hoping I'm not repeating a previous thread but I'm having a really tough time finding the right solution. I'd like to wrap an image (like an entire photo) around the surface of an object so that there are no breaks in the image or seams.

This is an example of what I'd like to achieve:

But every tutorial I've seen I have to unwrap the object, which then creates all of these seams and breaks up the image. And when I tried texturing painting it the image gets distorted. How can I maintain a smooth wrap of the image?

Thanks, guys!

What you're describing is UV Mapping. You need to create seams and unwrap a map of the 3D object. That doesn't mean the seams need to be visible. You can texture paint right over the seams and they won't show.
Image files are 2D, and this is why we must do this.

In the following screen shot, notice how I have painted green over a seam in Texture Paint Mode and on the 3D model it appears to be seamless? The break in continuity occurs on the 2D image instead, which you can see below.

Here's a .blend file of the screen shot if you want to examine it further.

You might be thinking "that's fine if you're painting, but what about photo textures?" There's a solution for that too. You can use "Stencil" Brush Mapping to paint an image onto your mesh (onto its texture, really), and also use the Clone Brush to blend the image across the seams.

Here is an example of how stenciling and cloning can be used to paint photo textures onto your 3D objects:

This is the result of just a couple of minutes spent playing around, so you can imagine the possibilities.


How to emit hair particles from other hairs I was trying to create moss (it's probably not moss, but still), and upon examining a patch of it from close, (IRL), I figured the easiest way to make it would be to have a particle systems that emits hairs, and them emit other hairs from each; however, I can't find a way to do this.

Is this possible (without the use of Particle Nodes, since the latest release was 2.62)?

It is possible to do this non-destructively, but you must be using a mesh object for your first object.

Add a particle system your base object, then set the Type to Object and select your initial hair object:

Add a hair particle system to the hair object:

The hair particles will also appear on each instance of the mesh object, but only in the render (this is probably a good thing :P).


how to make this cylinder model with holes Im just new to blender just few 2months learning. A file attached i want to make the holes on the cylinder. The holes on the cylinder and its just twisted and alternative. Any idea I want to know i have to make plan and twist it or i have make the cylinder and cut the hole. Just confused both not working

EDIT

thanks for reply. I have made the cylinder in other manner. I have taken the plan and subdivide 28 times. Then i got group of squares. i have made the square select and the checker select deleted the square and added sub modifier and bend 360 but the problem is that the at the edge of the plan y it has made the gap of one hole and not looks continuous. And plz tell me how to attach the blender file so that u know where im wrong. Mean time image attach

Create a cylynder, and subdivide it the number of times right to have one hole in every column; then add (CTRL R) some loop cut just to have square faces; select every face corresponding with the holes (you can try the checker deselect function) and delete them (X, Enter).

Then add a subsurf modifier, and you'll have your holes.

You can improve the mesh with a solidify modifier and playing with edge creases.

A lot of functions you use in edit mode have their parameters regulation in the "T" panel, left-down the 3D Window, as shown in the picture.


3d tracking: after render video is shorter than original (same fps and amount of frames) I made a 3D track.

When I render the sequence, with the same number of frames (even more) as the original video, and the same fps, I get the video which is shorter than the original. Where I made mistake and how to fix it?

Looks like I've just realized what the problem is. In the render settings are the same fps as in the original video, but when I export the rendered sequence in adobe premiere - FPS different! Why is this happening and how to fix it?

The problem is solved! Unrelated to Blender, but on Adobe Premiere. It was in the interpretation of the frame rate of sequence (in the project panel, right click on the clip-modify-interpret footage-assume this frame rate)


How can I make a ramification with curves? I'm using curves to make a ramification because I need to model 3D veins for another bigger model, the interior of the human body. Is there any way to make a ramification with (Bézier) curves, or should this be done in a different way?

Try Sapling tree generator, which is built in newest Blender version (user preferences -> addons -> search "sapling" -> enable (tick the box) -> in 3D view Shift+A -> curve :)
Play with the settings, and I'm sure, you'll find what you want ;)


How would I set up a smooth rotation for a angled object? I'm trying to set up a rotation on the z axis for a angled crown on a model I have.
I'm new to blender and have no idea how this would be done. I've set up a custom axis orientation but have no clue what to do after that. Would anyone be able to help? I've included the blend file.

Setting up properly oriented origins for orientated objects with rotation applied.

After the orientation is lost, if there is the possibility of planar faces, it can easily be recreated.

Create a face, which is perpedicular to your desired orientation axis. ↹ Tab > ⎇ Alt RMB > F
Since my faces median is even at the desired center, I snap the cursor to selected. ⇧ ShiftS > Cursor To Selected

Add a helper object, in my case a cube. ⇧ ShiftA > Cube

Apply all transformations of the helper cube.
Activate snapping and set it to Closest Face.

Snap ON
Faces
Closest
Align rotation ON
Project individual[ly] ON

Grab the cube G and by moving it onto the helper face, it will align itself.
Snap it to the cursor afterwards. ⇧ ShiftS > Selection to Cursor

Select the original object  RMB, then ⇧ Shift RMB select the helper object, and join them ⎈ CtrlJ. The will merge into one object which still holds the helper objects orientation.
Delete the unnecessary faces and vertices.


How can I stack all faces of an object on top of each other in the UV Image Editor? I've created a plane and subdivided it. Now in the UV image editor,  I want to unwrap and place all the rectangles on top of each other to share the same texture. Is it possible? If possible, please share your method.

In Edit mode select the subdivided plane:

Open the UV Mapping menu and choose the Reset option.
Each quad of the subdivided plane will now be    unwrapped and mapped to the complete UV space. (Each quad will be stacked one above the other).

After resetting the Uv's sometime one ot more of the islands will be incorrectly orientated to fix these :

In the 3D editor, Face select mode, select a face that needs to be corrected. In the UV editor the appropriate island will be displayed, Select this face with the A key then rotate plus or minus 90 or 180°.


How can I rotate object relative to it's local axis? I found a blender 3d model that I would like to use in the game I'm making, however, it's front is at 45' angle relative to it's local axis (see the attached picture). The game engine I'm using (Unity) is using the local axis to determine the front of the object when moving it and as a result the ship "drifts sideways" instead of moving forward.
Is it possible to rotate all the meshes of the ship relative to their local axis?

Applying the rotation will solve this issue.

Shortcut: CTRL + A

This will make the rotation to be equivalent to 0 degrees in each plane.
The selection will not be rotated, the current rotation will be considered to be the default rotation.


particle collision is weird whith sphere object I have a problem with a particle system and my sphere objects deep half way through my collision object, the screenshot is here:

If you have already have activated the Collision option on your surface, you will have to adjust the Particle Dampening value. Based on the size of the balls, you would want them to bounce and settle on the surface. If you want to keep the balls embeded into the surface on impact, just don't change anything. But activating the Collision option on the surface the particles are falling to would be your best bet.


Only half of the object is visible I have the problem that I cannot see the liquid as soon as the cup is visible. How do i solve this?

It looks like it has to do with overlapping faces, here is what happens if you move up the liquid a bit (you can move the cup but the liquid is parented to the cup so it will move along):


What is the most effective way to use displacement with Cycles? I have a PBR material with a normal map for some surface defects. I'm trying to use Displace to emboss some fonts but I'm just getting an outline instead of full depth.

Reference image:

Node set up:

Texture: (this is cropped the original is 2048x2048) Also, I've tried many combinations black on white/middle grey/alpha etc.

Mesh:

Result:

Add a glow effect in 2D editor like Gimp or Photoshop:

Next, create normal map using this image (in GIMP - normal map plugin)

Normal map gives mach better result:


Adjusting rig after generation (Rigify) I'm not an English speaker, sorry for mistakes.

I spend several weeks to create my first character, but few days ago i figured out that rig is set up incorrectly. Severals manipulator have wrong rotation. Look at the first screenshot.

It is the cause of wrong and unnatural arm movements and deformations. I can't fix rotation manually, because every time i try to do it, i get wrong deformations of my mesh and other troubles.
Do i have an ability to adjust rig after generation? What is the way to do it?

I tried to delete Armature modifiers, tried to clear parents and set it again - it isn't working.

After this, i decided to start from the very beginning and set up rig again. I did it correctly (as i think). Look at the second screen.

I set up bones exactly like they need to be set up. I mean that they follow my mesh and axis are correct. But after generation i get the same situation (1st screen). Why?
What am i doing wrong?

Yeah, maybe my rig isn't perfect, i can see that one bone have more length, but i think it isn't a case of my problem.

Unfortunately my answer got ignored, but I think i did it.

I've found out that i can adjust the skeleton. But there is the need to do a few steps:
1. Apply Armature modifier.
2. Select rig, go to edit mode and adjust all you need to adjust.
3. In pose mode apply current pose as rest pose.
4. Set Armature back.

It works for me. Yeah, i still didn't get the best result, but i'm trying. Maybe i'll add more information.


How to assign material to selected faces? I'm trying to recreate my room.
But i don't know how to get material to work on selected faces.

I know only way to do this,
and this is the result:

Just create your materials, then go into edit mode, you will see in the material properties panel that the assign button is now showing. Choose which faces that you want the material on. Choose the desired materials in the material properties panel and then click assign. If you are weight painting around materials for particle systems, it is more convenient to separate the selection and apply the material separately and then you can rejoin them if need be. Which you can do by right clicking on the faces selected and then go down to separate and click separate by selection. Then if you need to join them go to the object scroll down in object mode and you will find the join option there.


Boolean messing up UV I want to use boolean intersect, but after I did, it's uv is messed up.

This is the link for blender file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2NonO-YN8ayQ3FDdDVEdXdrYTA

Look at this picture, you can see 6 rounded cylinders with 1 cylinder has 6 vertices.

Now I apply boolean intersect. Result looks fine.

But when I unwrap the mesh, uv is totally messed up.

It's twisted and distorted. How to I fix this?

It's already passed 11 months, and what I understand for 11 months is boolean messing up topology and should be avoided as possible.

However sometimes it's really helpful to create really complicated geometry, and there are some ways to fix the messed geometry.

One way I worked was fill triangulated faces instead of NGON face, which NGON means the face that has 5 or more vertices, works fine in my case.

If the shape you want to create is possible to make without boolean, it's better to not using it, however if you really needed it, do carefully while treating the NGON faces that generated after boolean operation.


Constraints tool for Blender 2.8 I am new in blender. Now I watch tutorials and try to make it. Have problem with making this tutorial (He create a glass and destroy it with the bullet). To complete it I have to use the "Bullet Constraints Tools" (I need to tie the meshes so that they look like one object), but I can't find this or any kind like for Blender ver. 2.8. Here what I find: Bullet Constraints Tools, Bullet Constraints Builder.

Can I complete this tutorial without this tool, or there is another tool I can use that support Blender 2.8.

It looks like it has now been ported to Blender 2.8.
https://github.com/timothy-strange/bullet-constraints-tool


How to put a model in a T-pose automatically? Is there a way to force a model to a T-pose? I need my model to be in a T-pose so that I can export it to Unity for a humanoid rig. But putting a model in a T-pose manually is hard.

So is there a way to do this automatically (something except makewalk script)?

If the armature was created (Edit Mode) in T-pose, you can easily get it back in armature tab by clicking Rest Position button and get your pose again with Pose Position button.

If you need the T-pose as a pose, select all bones (with A ) in Pose Mode and Alt + R , Alt + G, Alt + S to clear all transforms. You can then create a T-pose in the Pose Library to activate it easily.


How to outset from edges/vertices? I want to use outset on edges or vertices, as I have made a path with vertices and want to outset it. But it appears inset, with or without the outset option, does not work on edges or vertices. This is what I have, where the black lines are edges on a face:

And this is what I want to turn it into:

I've already tried Offset Edge Slide and Bevel.

Use the bevel operator for this, by default Ctrl + B in mesh edit mode.

Add one additional loop or cut to the Bevel from the operator properties, either in the 3D View Toolshelf or by pressing F6 after running Bevel and increasing the number of cuts


getting mask data into shader network through python or any other way is it possible to fetch bpy.data.mask[] into cycle or blender internal shader as texture? Thanks.

I don't think there is a direct way to do this; Blender only has a Mask node in the render layer compositor, and not in the material compositor.


3d paint effect in Blender I'm quite new to Blender so I appreciate any and all help. I would like to know if it is possible to create something similar to this pictures in Blender. Thanks

The best way would be to use a series of curves with a custom bevel. Create your paint patterns as a texture (with transparency enabled), and apply them to the curves.
It should take (except for the textures) just a few minutes.
Make your curve(s), adjust them using both handles and vertex weight and tilt, then in the curve tab apply bevel (half) (rounded) or whatever profile you want.
I did this with a very simple paint smear.

This is the node setup for the transparency

And this is the png I used. I had to adjust the z rotation to make the stripes the long way.
To get brush texture--not shown here--you can just run the image into a bump node for height and throw that into normal on the principaled BSDF shader.


Is a triangle with 4 verts considered a quad? I was curious to know whether or not this shape is considered a quad or not?

Considering it is in the shape of a triangle but contains 4 verts, I wasn't sure whether it would be considered a tris or a quad.

Yes, it is a quad, even if two of the edges are exactly in a line. If, for example, you were to use triangulate (Ctrl + T while in Edit mode) you would find that it was split into two tris (hopefully from the bottom right point to the middle left one).

I generally find making tris into quads like this makes for a messier model, though, unless there is a reason for it. If it works with your mesh, then go for it, but if you are just doing something like this to have quads, I don't think it's a great idea (feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong).


Alt Z, or showing the material colors [material view] seem to have stopped working render view

materials view

texture view

solid view

Didn't go out of Cycles render, am not aware of doing any changes, what's happening? Now the only way that colors show is through Render view.
I'm cycling through posemode and edit mode BTW when this happened, any clues?

Since you stated that the only thing exhibiting that behavior is one object, you could try checking the object's Maximum Draw Type and set it to Textured. This setting can be found in Properties panel > Object tab > Display > Maximum Draw Type.

If that doesn't help, you can also upload the .blend file to here and allow the community to take a look at it.