Camera in 3D view somehow not working I just finished an animation project, and suddenly my camera is looking really weird.

The camera has 2 child of modifiers, to two empties (circle and sphere)
I haven't animated the camera at all, only animated the empties

I believe I have pressed a shortcut (I'm a noob and I dont know all of them).
I've searched around the internet but unfortunately cant find a solution, I dont even know what this is called.

hit STRG-ALT-NUMPAD0 to set the selected object as the active camera. Currently you have an object as the active camera. The small triangle above the camera tells you whether it is active or not (filled triangle = active, triangle with just contours = currently not active)


(Internal) fire Simulation with wind force field is too curvy I have this simple set up that I use every time when simulating Godzilla shooting his atomic breath, and the set up is basically like this. I have a cylinder that's a flow object, the domain, and a wind force field facing the direction of the breath being shot with a strength of 50. Sometimes I notice when I have a set up like this the fire curves too much, what I mean by this is that the flow of it bounces up and down crazily, like a sea or a flag. Is there a way to turn this down in the settings of the domain or flow object or even the forcefield? Thanks!

Here's a link to the settings for the force field, cylinder, and smoke domain. But you can see it curves a lot which I'm trying to make it not do.

http://imgur.com/a/Mx3ik

Adjust the Vorticity settings to affect the turbulance in the smoke or flame. From the Blender Manual pages :

  Vorticity
  Controls the amount of turbulence in the smoke. Higher values will make lots of small swirls, while lower values make smoother shapes.

Reduce Vorticity for a more stable flame.


How can I access, edit, add and remove Metaballs in Edit Mode with Animation Nodes? I'm working on a rather complex animation where I plan to use Metaballs to shape a certain geometry in combination with Animation Nodes. I have managed to get what I want by using the Object Instancer node, and the result looks just fine. But the Viewport becomes unbearable slow because of the high amount of Objects in the scene. The Polycount thanks to Metaball merging would not be an issue though.

To improve that interaction performance, I'd like to place, add and edit my metaballs in Edit Mode instead. Is this possible? Merging the Object Instances into one new target mesh would by the way also work for me, I just couldn't find a node that does this.

You can use a simple script as follows, you access the required metaball data block by name, clear its balls, and add new metaballs and edit their attributes like location and radius:

mball = bpy.data.metaballs[name]
mball.elements.clear()
for v, r in zip(locations, radii):
    ele = mball.elements.new()
    ele.co = v
    ele.radius = r

The API describe the possible attributes per ball.


UV coordinates are inaccurate Edit: Thank you @Gorgious, scaling the points to the 2D cursor worked. I hope blender updates Constrain to image bounds to work properly with UDIM tiles.

I'm trying to set the y-coordinate of a bunch of vertices to 0. (Some of my vertices are less than 0 and it causes issues in external software.) I select the vertices, and set all their y-coordinates to 0. I should not have to worry about floating point inaccuracy since 0 has a perfect representation. Yet entering 0 as the y-coordinate does not set them all to 0, most are a bit above or below.
If I try to set them one by one, the first one gets set to 0 properly, but then setting the adjacent one to 0 messes up the previous one again. What on earth is going on? Attached a picture of my UV layout and the vertices I'm trying to set.

Like most other fields in blender when you modify this value, you actually modify the mean (not median as sometimes stated in the tooltip...) value of all the vertices, not all their individual values.
You can use the scale transform tool to scale everything along 0. Use the 2D cursor as a pivot point to do it :


Why does fluid stick to the outflow object? Just setting up a basic fluid simulation with an inflow object and domain. The problem is that the fluid seems to stick to the inflow object, and when drops fall, they hit the bottom of the domain and almost immediately disappear. This is my goal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB5J4u0yMtQ

My setup and result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbOo8CDIfc&feature=youtu.be

In the example you showed, the velocity was probably set to something like 2.0 along the Z on the Inflow Sphere which means the water hits the top of the domain and runs down the sides.

Also with your Domain object, I would try experimenting with some settings.

These are the settings I set to create this scene effect. I don't know if this was more what you were looking for with yours.

I baked this with very low resolution. I'm sure with higher resolution, it would look much better but hopefully you can see the effect.


Can elements of a collection be moved up or down? Let’s say I want the NM.Top.Soil layer to be above Far.Mountain. I don’t see the way

The order is alphabetical, but you can use it as an advantage.
I frequently use codes at the beginning of my objects names to determine their order, like:

"AAA Cube"
"AAB Sphere"
"AAF Empty"

This way those object will always be at the top of their collection


Blender 2.8 (Python) - what does this console error mean It occurs when I am printing to disk a .jpg image of my scene:

AL lib:  (EE) ALCmmdevPlayback_mixerProc:  WaitForSingleObjectEx error:  0x102

My script just stalls out after the error message appears.

Anything I can do about it?

That error is coming from your OpenAL (Open Audio Library) which encounters a problem. It may be unrelated to your issue though. You can temporarily disable the sound system by starting Blender from the terminal with the -noaudio flag or set Audio Device to Null in the preferences (Edit > Preferences).

If your script still fails to write to disk it's likely a bug in your script and not caused by a problem with OpenAL. You can revert the changes in the preferences if that's the case. Should the problem disappear with the suggested settings, then it would be nice if could write a bug report (Help > Report a Bug in Blender).


How to attach an animation to an empty i have some keyframes on my object , and i want to control that from an empty , so that when i move the empty forward i plays the forward animation. How can i do that. I know that i must use drivers , but i don't know how to control animations with drivers . don't have to add the driver to the empty but to the object , but there isn't one single object , there are multiple of the
This is my mesh

This is the armature

You can use an "action" and "action constraint" on the armature to do that.

With the armature selected, go to the dope sheet, select the action editor and use the stash button. That will remove the animation from the armature but keep it in memory for later use.

Now, enter pose mode in the armature, select a bone, go to the constraints part, and add an action:

Parameters for the image above:

The empty as target with channel (X location) and location range
The action to apply with its frame range

Once done for one bone, select them all keeping the bone that has the constraint active, then go to the pose menu, constraints then copy constraints to selected bones.

Back in object mode, you can now select and move the empty to trigger the animation.


Simplify Blender GUI, FileWindow without info header I want to use Blender for a specific task where the user (not me) is just presented with a limited set of tools and nothing else.

Using the usual possibilities configuring the GUI lead my quite close to my target.

Q: When using a FileWindow the info(window) bar ist still on top I would like to remove that too. It seems that Fileops (like load or import) are opening a maximized window (like with Shift-Spacebar). So is there a method to avoid this for all fileoperations? e.g. open the FileWindow just in the window it was called

Here an image:

For my users this in the info bar (marked it red) is not usefull in this moment... They should not be able to change the render engine or browse the menu etc. but just open a file...

Thanks,
Carsten

No, there is no way to customize the window layout used when launching the file selector, unless you modify the C source code.

However Im not sure why this, specifically is such an important feature.

You could however, use Python's tkinter to launch a non-blender file-selector.

See:

https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/tkinter.html#module-tkinter
https://stackoverflow.com/a/15685836/432509


How do I delete edges inside my model? This is my first time working on modeling; but for some reason, there are edges connected inside the modeling and I'm not sure how to delete these.

You could select the verts that are connected to these edges and then hit X >> 'Edges'. But Edge Select Mode is much better for this. You can change the select mode in the header:

Now you can simply right click them and delete them.

The faster way that might work:

In Edge Select Mode, deselect everything with A, then hit CTRLALTSHIFTM. This will select all edges that do not have 2 faces attached to them.

But your Mesh has a Mirror Modifier, so you'd have to deselect those edges. Luckily there's a third option:

Be in Edge Select Mode, select one of these edges with a right click and then choose from the header menu:

'Select' >> 'Select similar' >> 'Amount of faces around an Edge'. All orphan edges will be selected and you can hit x >> 'Edges'.


How to access the search menu 2.8? (used to be spacebar in 2.79) In 2.79 the search menu is accessed pressing the spacebar

In 2.8 the space bar is used to play the timeline.

Where is the search menu now?

To access the search menu in 2.8 press F3


Smooth displaced mesh Whenever I use a Displace Modifier, it looks like it does no interpolation of my height map.

Green is how it should be, Red how it is. Notice how the mesh is dense. The texture I use as height-map is extremely smooth, it should produce a really nice mesh instead of this "aliasing effect".

I tried to set the number of vertices to the resolution of the height-map (Loop-cut x time on x-axis and y time on y-axis for a x*y height-map) but it produces the same strange mesh.

How can I get a good looking and precise displacement, independently of the mesh resolution ?

Solutions without the displacement modifier are accepted if they exist, but I must use the full resolution of my height-map as I must produce a precise work.

To clarify more what I'm looking for, here, nearly how it should looks like (not all the height-map points are used):

I made some further testing. Here a picture with 2 lines. Top left to down right is "anti-aliased" the other is not.

I tested it on a 512*512 vertices plane (510 Loop-cuts on x and 510 on y) Here is the result :

Strange enough, the line which is anti-aliased has more aliasing with the displacement modifier. Problem is, LIDAR datas are "antialiased" (data from real world, like a photo). Setting the colour space to linear improves the quality. In texture panel, a filter size above 2 creates nice but wrong geometry.

Since the displacement modifier uses textures, you can make use of texture sampling options which apply with the example you give.

In the texture's Image Sampling panel, make sure Interpolation is enabled, and increase the filter size (values between [1.5 ... 2.0] give quite smooth result, 3.0 and above are smooth but you loose definition).

You may also want to change the color-space of the image between linear/srgb.


How can I make an animation of mesh pieces assembling (something like an explode modifier in reverse)? I am making an animation, and I need chunks of text that I've converted into a mesh to assemble from behind the camera's view. This is what needs to eventually come together:

Any thoughts on how I should do this? I thought of having the explode modifier go in reverse, or use a particle system, but thought I could inquire of another way.

Precondition
For this approach you will need the tiles as separate meshes (it doesn't appear to be your case).
To make an object into separate pieces (if they are already disconnected, but part of the same object), in Edit mode: select all the vertices (A), then P > "By loose parts". It's convenient to also select all the new meshes (that now share the same origin point) and do Object > Origin > Origin to center of mass.

Simple keyframed animation with a randomized starting point

Place your tiles in their final position.
Go to the last frame of the animation, select all the tiles, set a keyframe (I > "Location")

Go to the first frame.
Move the object to their average starting position behind the camera.

Hit Space for search (F3 in Blender 2.80), search "Randomize Transform".
In the tool parameters, adjust the "Location" values, especially along the direction parallel to the camera orientation.
Add a new keyframe (I > "Location")

Done! Final result seen from the camera:


Bug of the socket output, is not it? Input and output sockets do not work the same way. The picture seen sockets input and output node "ObjectProps". The socket input button is drawn, while the output socket - no. Who knows the reason? How to make a button in the output socket?

This is a missing feature of the node API. There is a patch for this ready and waiting, but since it changes the way node sockets look i want to wait for green light from scripters before committing to trunk.

See bf-committers thread

UPDATE: This feature has been added in trunk now (r60661). Socket draw functions are responsible for drawing only labels if that is the desired behavior, otherwise inputs and outputs draw the same way. See the API changes wiki page.


Cryptomatte outputs one or two colors only This may be me just being a Blender noobie, but when I try to render a Cryptomatte pass I only get one or two colors, usually green or white, with full alpha transparency for some reason (I had to check in the Image Editor to show RGB only so I could at least see what the pass rendered). The other passes seem to render OK, though.

Is there a setting I need to check or is it a bug? I'm using Blender 2.81a. Thanks in advance.

It's because you are using the pick plug instead of the image or matte plug


I can't select faces with left mouse button I tried following a tutorial to make something simple and ran in to a problem straight away.

From the default cube: I can select it in Object Mode (object turns orange). I switch to Edit Mode, I can only select a face with right click and not left. When I left click, no list of options appears as I expected there to be.

So I can't move on from there.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

This is characteristic to blender. With the left mouse button you change the position for the 3d cursor and with the right mouse button you can select objects.

In edit mode you can use the W shortcut, which give you a list of modelling actions. You can also use the left bar or the options in the menubar below.

Take a look at this tutorial about navigating in Blender:
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/learning-keyboard-mouse-navigation.php


How do I stop hair particles going through the body and the head? Target : I intend to have long lady hair that go swirling in the wind. I am trying to achieve that through hair dynamics.

Problem: Hair are going through mesh(body and head). I am using blender 2.77a. I have read other existing solutions, but none of them helped.

Solution 1: I am able to achieve mesh collisions(using some other object)with hair particles. But when I am placing some proxy object under head, thats not helping. I have tried collisions to be as slow as possible.Here's the link to similar approach.
Stop hair from falling through emitter mesh

Solution 2: I have also tried using force field but that didn't help either. As when wind comes into play, hair particle stop respecting body mesh.
I am newbie to the blender world, and I would appreciate any help from blender community.

Collision with the emitter is not supported yet (2.77).

But there is a workaround for this problem. So you want to collide the hair with the emitter but there is no self collision? Well but collision with other objects works, right? Right! So you simply have to duplicate the entire emitter mesh and set it to a "fake self collider!

How it is done:

Step 1: Duplicate the emitter mesh (select the Mesh and hit shift+D. Right Click to place the mesh at the
same position as the original mesh).
Step 2: Go to the Object Menu and deselect all Ray Visibilities. This way the duplication will not get rendered.
Step 2.5 (Optional): Now we want to eliminate the visibility of the duplication in the viewport. But simply restricting the view port visibility (by clicking the eye in the outliner) is not possible, because this way the collision may not be triggered.
Change the display mode from "textured" to "bounds" in the Object Display Settings. This way your duplicated mesh will only get displayed as a box and will not generate any annoying clipping artifacts.

Step 3: Enable collision on the duplicated object.

Step 4: Make sure everything is set up properly! In the modifier panel, the original emitter mesh should have the Armature at first position, followed by the Particles/Hair and followed by Subsurf.

Step 5: Also make sure the duplicated mesh has no Particle/Hair modifier. If it has one, you have to delete it in the particle panel!

Now your hair should collide correctly with the emitter!

If the hair still bugs into the body, try the following:
-in the hair dynamics setting, raise the "Quality" Amount (for me normally 5 Steps works just fine).
-in the collision settings of the collider, raise the "Outer face thickness" in the "Soft Body and Cloth" Settings.
-Raise the number of Subdivisions of the collider mesh (As i know, the collision does not get calculated by the faces of the collider but instead by the edges. If your mesh is to low poly the hair will slip through it)
-Raise the number of hair "segments" in the hair emitter settings.


How to render part of an image at a higher amount of samples How could I render part of my image at a higher amount of samples than the rest in Blender using Cycles Renderer?
What I want to do is render a certain portion of the image at a higher amount of samples (400) than the rest of the image (200). Is this possible in blender?
I know that there are multiple questions regarding only rendering one square of the image, however I am not sure how to render the border only?

There are two ways to do this.

1. Two Pass Render and Combine
One way is to render the whole image at 200 and then render just the selected area using border render to render the 400 sample area, and then combine them with the compositor or an image editor.

Pros: Good for small areas of an object, or large swaths of the scene involving multiple objects.
Cons: requires extra rendering to a small degree.

2. Use Render Layers to Set Different Sample Levels
The second solution, which would allow you to do it in one task would be to use render layers. If the objects that require 400 samples can be separated onto a different render layer than the rest of the scene, you can set a different sample amount per render layer.

Pros: Gives you more fine-tuned control over sample levels on an object level. Not limited to rectangular selections.
Cons: Can't render different portions of one object with different sample levels.

2b. Advanced Example
Here is an answer that extends the render layer answer above. It is more specific to your blend file and allows the rendering of the text and text shadows at the higher resolution.

The main idea is to separate all the items plus a shadow catcher plane across 4 render layers. This way you can set the sample amount for each layer.

Here's the final comp plus the separate rendered layers:

Here's the Render Layer set up:

Note that the Background layer is excluding the other 3 layers, and the ShadowCatcher layer excluding the Background layer.

Here's the composite node tree to combine the layers. Please note that I used the Shadow pass of the shadow plane, not the combined layer.


No option to choose Left/Right click select in the 2.8 Preferences I want to switch to right click but, there is no option to do that in the User Preferences. I should be located at the top of the Keymap section.

You appear to have been using an older version of 2.8 with a custom keymap prior. Even through reinstalled, the custom keymap was kept.

The way hopefully not to get the Preferences Panel at the top of the Keymaps is to switch to a default keymap like Blender which strangely also has a few of the changed keys which were in the custom keymap.very strange


Smooth part of mesh geometry / subsurf only faces on one side This is very specific task as I can see here.
The picture:
Need to make this selected part more smooth, better use subsurf with detached frame part, as you can see it. And mark upper and lower edges sharp to not be REALLY round. But the problem, it will be round anyway and also very much deformed quads all over the place.

What directly required is to add more transverse edges at selected area and move it to form more smooth surface. It only will make more same tris as you can see, but less long. Btw this element also requires smoothing upper edges row at both sides. And what is the thing, no modifier can do that. Catmull-Clark is pure mess of different shaped surface everytime.

And right here you gonna see wrong smoothing even with auxiliary edges.
Can you help me?

Actually found it myself

Just set corners of sharp edges to required crease level and they gonna be untouched.
So simply, experimenting gives surprises. Also somehow this time no random lines breaking, clearly new quads symmetrically follows the base shape.


Could I see a simple example of using a color picker in a script? I've seen a lot of variations of using color pickers, but I want to see just a simple, clear example of being able to bring up a color picker (with a default color set), pick a color, and being able to get the value from that color picker either as a return value after it's picked, or being able to access that value at another time.
One resource that has helped me some is this answer on another SE:Blender question. In that case, the script provided 5 color pickers. I edited it some, both to help me understand it and to make it work as just a single color picker:
import bpy

class ColorItem(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
                 name = "Color Picker",
                 subtype = "COLOR",
                 size = 4,
                 min = 0.0,
                 max = 1.0,
                 default = (1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0)
                 )

class ColorPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Scene properties window"""
    bl_label = "Colors"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_colors"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "scene"

    def draw(self, context):
        row = self.layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene.colors[0], "color", text='Pick Color')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ColorPanel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(ColorItem)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ColorPanel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ColorItem)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
    bpy.types.Scene.colors = bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type=ColorItem)
    bpy.context.scene.colors.add()

While just a simple example would provide me with what I need (again, with me being able to set the default color and being able to get the color value either as a return value or to get it when I need it), there are parts in this script I don't understand and would like to. Also, on that 2nd to last line, I'm not sure just how the object creation is done. By passing "type=ColorItem" to bpy.props.CollectionProperty(), is it returning an object of that class? (I'm assuming it does, but realize I don't understand all that's going on there.)
Also, on the last line, just what is being added to bpy.context.scene.colors?
I don't see the difference (in the last part) between "Scene" (2nd to last line) and using "scene," but capitalizing it instead of keeping it lower case. There's also the object in the draw subroutine context.scene.colors. Are they the same object?
When I've tried to figure out just what kind of object I'm working with, even with the ColorItem class in this code, I'm not clear how there are 16 of this item, and not just one, and why that class is not just a single floating point vector with 4 parts that makes up the color.
Any explanation of this that would clarify things for me would be a big help.

Just declare a FloatVectorProperty, set its subtype to 'COLOR' and add it to a panel or whatever.
my_color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
             name = "Color Picker",
             subtype = "COLOR",
             default = (1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0)
             size = 4
             )

In order to access the values of the property, you would have to create an Operator. Minimal working example, adds a new panel to the render settings, allows to pick a color as well as printing the values to the console. Further reading: How to create a custom UI?

import bpy

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

    def execute(self, context):
        clr = context.scene.mytool_color
        print (clr[0], clr[1], clr[2], clr[3])
        return {'FINISHED'}

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "render"

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

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene, "mytool_color")
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator(SimpleOperator.bl_idname)

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

    # Register the property per Scene, Object or whatever
    bpy.types.Scene.mytool_color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
                 name = "Color Picker",
                 subtype = "COLOR",
                 size = 4,
                 min = 0.0,
                 max = 1.0,
                 default = (1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0))

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

    del bpy.types.Scene.mytool_color

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Rolling paper with bones I'm trying to make rolling paper using bones. I'm using a curve, three bones and a plane. The bones are following the curve path but the plane which is subdivided does not make the right turn and it also not rolling. How should i achieve this?

Can somebody please help?

Regards Jerry.

There are no skin weights on the plane so that would need to be fixed. The weight painting will take some time to do since you need to do it by hand.

Also, you need to have much higher resolution on your mesh so it can deform properly and more bones to follow the curve to give a convincing result.

As a side note: It might be easier to solve this with a curve deformer directly attached to the mesh but I guess that you have reasons of doing this with bones.


How do I disable click-drag-click behavior in blender? I am used to moving things with "click-drag-release" (holding down the mouse button and releasing it at the desired location).

How can I get Blender to emulate that kind of behavior?

(right now i have to click, then move, then click again) I wish to instead just hold down the mouse button.

Go to User preferences, open Input tab, find 3D View > 3D View (Global) rollout.

Now scroll almost all the way down, until you find Translate (the one that uses tweak as a key-binding instead of keyboard).
Open that rollout and enable Confirm on release checkbox.


Boolean modifier difference but without filling in faces along the created "holes" Like the title says, I'm in need of some kind of modifier (since I'm doing a non-destructive workflow in order to parameterize a lot of things -- for the context, I'm creating a base for a modular tileset) that acts like the boolean modifier set to difference, but I want it to leave subtract (cut off along the volume border similar to a knife and delete all vertices within the volume). The reason for this is that I've got the tileset planned so that things will line up with pieces from neighbouring tiles, so the the final compositions will always be complete volumes, just not the pieces. But since the pieces end up as complete volumes if I use the current boolean operator, it causes the shading to get fucked up along the seams between tiles due to them having faces along the borders (not to mention that it results in a lot of redundant geometry that will never be seen). Any suggestions as to how I can accomplish this non-destructively?

You could add a Solidify Modifier before the Boolean. Also, add a Weld Modifier after the Boolean.
Use a very small Thickness in the Solidify and make sure the Distance in the Weld is high enough, so that the newly created vertices from the Solidify get welded back together.
Regarding the Shading: That should go away if you enable Auto Smooth.


Particles to follow my mesh hair style? I have a hair issue, I want the particles to follow the mesh hair model, is there a way to do that? The hair mesh is made in 4 parts: forehead, sides and back part. For example is it possible to select my forehead hair part and then tell to particles to transform it into particle system?

Cuz when rendered with diffuse, normal map and gloss it looks not so good, at the tip of the hair you can see how it forms as polygon, instead of looking natural hair.

I want to make the tip of the hair to look natural like on this photo of Mavis:

and I think particles is the only way to do that, so if I manage to make it follow the form of the hair model, then I delete the hair mesh and use only the particles.
Back views:

Your help is much appreciated!!!!

Tangent emission

1) Without Particles System

Depending on your project's need, an alternative approach would be to use an alpha mask to mask the tip of the polygons and not showing the borders. It's a common strategy to avoid particles.

2) With Particles System

If you want to use particles, you could instead take advantage of the Tangent Velocity emission properties. By default hairs are pointing toward the emission face's normal. Giving everything the punk & spikey look. To see the Velocity tab you'll have to enable Advanced options in the Particles system tab.

Once unwrapped your objec and controlled the flowing of the UV island like in the image below:

you just have to set the Normal velocity to 0 and transfer it previous value to the Tangent parameter (see the cursor), so hair particles will follow the direction given by the UV map.

Obiuvsly, this is just a starting point. If you would like to gentle set up the hair in a natural position, you'll have to comb them with the proper tools or run a physic simulation of the scene (you'll have to enable Hair Dynamics in the particle system and Collision for the "head" the object) like shown in the floowing image sequence:


How to merge textures into single image Hi, beginner here.

I have some mesh with 4 different UV maps. Each map has assigned a texture. Is there any way to join this textures into single image without changing their position?
Im working in Blender render.

Look up Blender Texture Atlas.

also,
You can create a new image, in the image editor, large enough to hold the resolution you want.
Then, create a new texture layer, to use the new image, and bake the original textures to the new Texture. You will just have to move the UV maps around so they don't overlap during baking.

Info on that here and here.


Microdisplacement problem I have 3 images for terrain - one main height map, one aplha selecting slopes (which I can replace with some nodes any time), and one height map of rocks for the slopes. Now I can use main height map for microdisplacement, no problem. But I want to have these details of rocks for the slopes too and everything rendered as microdisplacement. My PC won't handle traditionally displacing plane with main height map and then using microdisplacement for rocks only.

To clarify, I cannot mix both displacement textures with alpha fac because then rocks will only be elevated on z Axis, I want them to use normals of current mesh part they are displacing.

Here are main displacement and slope selection, I got rocks from cg textures so just imagine a simple rocks height map.

You can add the rocks hightmap to your Main hightmap, with a mix node (set to add, factor of 1), or a silmple math add node. Plug the output of the add node into the displacement socket. To control the strength of your displacement use a multiply node inbetween. (Values below 1 will reduce terrain hight, values above 1 will grow it.)
The slope information is only used for color, don't add that to the displacement. It will give you wrong results.


Best way to cut a hole through an object? I need to create a cylinder, cut in half, with a hole cut out of it. I'm very new to Blender, and I'm sure that there are many ways to achieve the same thing, but I used a boolean modifier to remove the hole from the cylinder. The problem is that in the shape that I have, after selecting smooth shading, there are some unwanted diagonal lines above and below the hole that you may be able to see in the image.

My question is, is there a more efficient way to do this without a Boolean modifier? I have heard that Boolean modifiers are not a great tool as they can result in 'bad topology' so I would appreciate it if someone could suggest a better way to do this. I would also like to know if it is possible to have the smooth shading without these strange lines around the hole.

Thanks!

Two things to make this work

Keep the geometry all quads
Keep the quads pointing the same way (all up)

Cutting the shape using Knife project. Boolean would work too.

Repair topology - make it all quads. Using loopcuts and adding new vertices.

Final result - added edges are marked blue.


How do I stop all objects from scaling? I'm new to Blender and making a scene with a few objects in it. Somehow I switched something on and all of my objects are scaling and/or moving when I adjust one thing. How can I turn this off? I don't think anything is grouped.

Here's a quick video of the problem.

press O then scale it will work just fine
you are enabling proportional editing
make sure you  turn it off


Change the "used UVLayer" in all materials in texture_slot 0 i have a model with multiple materials and i like to change the UV-Map for the texture slot "0"
I got it to work with only one material:

import bpy
bpy.data.materials["Wand_Putz_Weiss02.tif"].texture_slots[0].uv_layer = "UVMap"

or like this:

import bpy
bpy.context.object.active_material.texture_slots[0].uv_layer = "UVMap"

is there an way to change the "used uv layer" in all materials assigned to an object?
thank you very much for your help!

greetings,
simisoad

i got it to work... wrong syntax was the problem :) i not used to program with python.

here is my solution:

import bpy
for item in bpy.data.materials:
     for itextures in item.texture_slots:
        if itextures is not None:
            item.texture_slots[0].uv_layer = "UVMap"


displaying a URL on a surface I have a URL that may be an embedded video or a series of web animations(sort of like a slideshow) on a webpage and I am wondering if it's possible to display that within blender (e.g. on a panel or face of a cube)? Basically would it be possible to display a website within blender?

This is not possible in a direct and interactive way.

Firstly, Blender can connect to a URL and retrieve the raw html in text form. However, Blender cannot render this html into a visual format and then use it as an image texture. There may be online web services that render an html document into an image (like a screenshot), but Blender would then have to download that image before importing and applying it as a texture.

Secondly, images or videos that are sourced through a URL cannot be directly set as the texture source for a material. The files would have to be downloaded via python and then loaded via a local filepath value. This is possible but would require some steps with scripting, and would not be immediately interactive.

The same goes for a video file or a sequence of images. They would all have to be downloaded from the remote URL location before being able to be loaded into blender as textures.


Faking the speed/vector pass I want to use the Speed aka Vector pass in the compositor for some motion blur. Currently, it works based on rendering multiple frames. This is time consuming in Cycles. So I am wondering if there are any ways to fake it.

Since the output is a vector, it should just be an RGB or XYZ. Can this be faked with a material? Could you do something like make separate mesh and render it on a different layer with a shadeless material? Or rig up a widget that uses drivers and the position of an object to control a material? Has anyone tried this sort of thing before?

I don't really have enough info on how the speed pass works in order to know what the best method is. Can anyone shed some light on how it works and what would be necessary?

Vector Pass: Motion vectors for the vector blur node. The four components consist of 2D vectors giving the motion towards the next and previous frame position in pixel space. [ref: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/settings/scene/render_layers/passes.html ]

The VectorPass stores these 2 vectors using an RGBA only the node editor renders the socket as being a vector. The R+G channels are used to store the motion towards the previous frame. and the B+A channels are used to store the motion towards the next frame.

Your goal of influencing this in a material is possible by using a Transparency Shader and Emision Shader and mix those together.


How to tidy messy corners generated by solidify modifier? I use a mesh with cross section like 1 as input to solidify modifier, and I expect to have a result like 2. However, it gave me messy results in corner parts like 3. How can I tidy the messy corner in some simple way? Currently I made a self-crossover cut and manually remove the messy faces, which is pretty much work.

And this is the snapshot of actual result. I hide the outer shell and most flat parts of the inner shell, only showing the corner part to ease the editing procedure.

There is not any magic way to avoid the overlapping, even with a new complex Solidify Modifier (if I'm not mistaken).

When Solidify modifier was set to Complex mode with Thickness mode Fixed, you can try ...
Weld Modifier
It worked with small distances, but already here it started to change outer topology.

With higher value of Thickness ...

... you would have to apply Solidify modifier, select inner vertex and press L to select Linked and assign those to Vertex Group under Data Properties.

Than use this vertex group as a limit for modifier.

Remesh Modifier
But ... this Weld works only because of the big flat faces inside. Probably useless in your situation. You will probably more lucky with Remesh modifier > Voxel type.


Object delete handler Is there any way to call a function on object delete or on changing count of bpy.data.objects?
There is nothing suitable in bpy.app.handlers and I coudn't find something anywhere else.

Piotr commented that you could override the Delete operator, as described for a different purpose in this answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/28933/66651

I am using it to remove derivative objects. It works very well!

class delete_override(bpy.types.Operator):
    """delete objects and their derivatives"""
    bl_idname = "object.delete"
    bl_label = "Object Delete Operator"

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

    def execute(self, context):
        for obj in context.selected_objects:

            # replace with your function:
            my_function(obj)

            bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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


IK Handles Parented to Hip Controller While I'm very familiar with most of Blender's tools, I'm fairly new in regards to using it for character animation so forgive me if I come off as ignorant. Currently I am playing with the Ivan rig and trying to animate a scene for a university assessment, and there is a problem. See, while the hands are on an IK setting, they still appear to be connected to the hip controller, or rather any of the main controllers on the torso for that matter (excluding the neck and head controllers). I am trying to figure out how exactly I am able to separate those IK handles so that when I move the torso, the hands do not follow along and remain where they are.

I am also trying to figure out how to attach a prop to a character's hand on a pre-existing rig like this one. I understand you have to go through the bones to do so like in Maya. But I'm not too sure how to do it here. Again, I am ignorant to this so apologies if this is frustrating to some of you professional folks that know what you're doing, haha.

I've tried to search for solutions for these issues and yet I still haven't found any that truly sort me out. Any assistance regarding this would be very much appreciated! Thank you! :)

The solution to your first problem will require a look at the file. But your second one can be solved without seeing it. The most straightforward way to attach your props to your rigs is probably to create a Child Of constraint. With your prop selected in Object Mode, look for the Object Constraint tab in the Properties Panel. From the Add Object Constraint dropdown, find and select Child Of. For the Target, choose your armature. Once chosen, you have access to a new text field for choosing the bone itself within the armature that you want to become the prop's parent. You probably want to make the target the IK handle of the hand in this case. You may notice after choosing a bone in this field that the prop jumps wildly. Press Set Inverse to make it return to its original position. When you move the parent, the prop moves as well.
The reason we use a Child Of constraint instead of a direct parenting relationship (from the Set Parent To menu) is because you can't keyframe changes to direct parenting relationships. But you can keyframe a change to the influence of any constraint, by right-clicking on the Influence slider, and setting one. This allows you to turn off the effect of the constraint at will, such as in those cases where the prop is intended to be free of a character's grasp at the moment.


Is there a way to separate geometry that shares verts/edges? I thought it would be cool to use random selection and extrude along normals to make a sci-fi handle grip. Later, I found out that it didn't work quite the way I hoped and cannot be beveled. Is there some way to separate vertices like this:

Here's a quick example of the end result I hope to achieve.

I know I can extrude along individual faces instead of along normals, but I still want adjacent boxes to be attached.
There are too many to bother doing this by hand:

I'm still pretty new to Blender, so I appreciate any and all help/advice. Cheers :)

Once gone into the Non-Manifold mesh path, it's hard to get back.
I suggest an hack: after the selection, Inset faces a little bit.

Make sure that Individual checkbox isn't active:

Now, you have disconnected geometry you can easily extrude and bevel.


Is there any option to select all objects in scene and then apply all the modifiers together for every single object? I got a lot of objects, with different modifiers, can i apply the modifiers together but with individual values for each single object? (in order to save time?)

This will do what you want: Applies modifiers for all selected objects:

import bpy
import bmesh

for ob in [ob for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects if ob.type == 'MESH']:
    b_me = bmesh.new()
    b_me.from_object(ob, bpy.context.scene)
    b_me.to_mesh(ob.data)
    b_me.free()

    for mod in ob.modifiers:
        ob.modifiers.remove(mod)

To add modifier (wireframe) for all selected objects:

import bpy

for ob in [ob for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects if ob.type == 'MESH']:
    mod = ob.modifiers.new(name='Wire', type='WIREFRAME')
    mod.thickness = 0.02 # SET THIS


Where the Dyntopo button is located in Blender 2.8? I would like to know where the Dyntopo (dynamic topology) button for sculpt mode is located in Blender 2.8.


Trying to extend the animation system I'm trying to modify Blender to add something I call (informally) "bone inertia". It's a bit like having a soft body attached to a parent bone that's used to drive the child bone. The difference is that I really want to use my own "physics" instead of going through Blender's Soft Body physics.

So far, I've been trying to achieve this using Python. I've got a script that does the following:

Adds a few properties to bpy.types.PoseBone. I call them "Strength", "Inertia"
and "Limit". I animate those properties so that I can turn the
behavior on, off or tweak it in the middle of an animation.
Adds a panel to the bone property tab that exposes those properties (pose mode only).
Registers a callback to bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.

In the callback, I check to see if an animation is playing (bpy.context.window.screen.is_animation_playing). If it is, I scan all objects in the scene and apply my own "bone inertia physics" to every armature found. For each bone, I keep track of some state from the previous frame, eg. the velocity of the bone's tail and some other things. Ultimately, I overwrite each bone's location/orientation by setting the PoseBone's matrix attribute. If no animation is playing, I don't modify the bones at all. That way, the user can pose the armature as they normally would, but as soon as they hit Play, they see the "bone inertia" applied to what they've done. This workflow is convenient enough for me.

I finally got the bones behaving exactly the way I want, but there's one problem: the mesh doesn't follow the bone locations set in the frame_change_post callback. I realized that it's because the callback is invoked after the mesh's Armature modifier is already applied.

I'm a C++ programmer so I went ahead and starting hacking on the Blender source code. I added a new Python callback, "armature_update_post", that gets called at the end of BKE_pose_where_is (right after the armature gets updated). This didn't work very well, probably because BKE_pose_where_is is called in a background thread, causing timing issues. (For example, in the Python callback, bpy.context.window was randomly set to None. I didn't investigate it too deeply.)

Now I'm thinking of re-implementing my "bone inertia" physics in C. To do it, I'll have to add new properties to bPoseChannel, including the state I need to preserve between frames (velocity, etc.), and add some code to BKE_pose_where_is_bone. I'm not sure what issues I'll encounter using this approach yet. For example, I'm not sure if I can reliably determine whether the animation is playing or not at this point, because it will still be called in a background thread.

Can anyone give me some feedback on what I'm trying to do? Is there a better way to achieve what I want?

Thanks!

I got it working. Leaving the answer here in case somebody else is looking for a way to develop a similar kind of custom "armature animation modifier" (if I can call it that). Again if anyone sees a better way, let me know!

Basically, I dug a little deeper into why the armature_update_post Python callback (which I added to BKE_pose_where_is, as explained above) wasn't working reliably. The problem was that BKE_pose_where_is can be invoked from an arbitrary thread, and therefore the Python callback runs in an arbitrary thread. In this Python callback, I was checking bpy.context.window.screen.is_animation_playing but this doesn't work because bpy.context.window returns None if not called from the main thread. (See ctx_wm_python_context_get in context.c.) So instead, I decided to add yet another Python callback so that the UI can tell the script when animation playback starts & stops, and let the script keep track of the playback state itself.

Here's a summary of the approach I'm using now (based on Blender 2.78):

Add a new Python callback armature_update_post and invoke it from BKE_pose_where_is in armature.c.
Add a new Python callback animation_toggle and invoke it from ED_screen_animation_play in screen_ops.c.
In rna_pose.c, add a call to BKE_pose_where_is_bone at the end of rna_PoseChannel_matrix_set, so that when a PoseBone's matrix attribute is set from Python, the bone is fully updated right away (specifically the chan_mat member of bPoseChannel). This was necessary because rna_PoseChannel_matrix_set seems to leave the bPoseChannel in a partially updated state. If you don't do this, the whole approach doesn't work.
Handle the callbacks in the Python script. In armature_update_post, if animation is playing, modify the PoseBone matrices however you want, in parent-to-child order (basically just scan obj.pose.bones sequentially).

That's just the general approach at a high level. As you can see, I wasn't able to implement a pure Python solution -- I had to hack in C a little bit. The Python callback runs kind of slowly, so the playback rate in Blender slows down. I might move the logic into C later to speed it up, but for now, at least it's working.


EVEE: More than one Bloom Color I like using bloom, but I don't want all emission objects to have the same bloom color.  Is there a way to have different emitting materials to have different bloom colors?

The "Bloom Color" parameter is actually a filter. It determines to what extent emission colors create a Bloom Effect. If it is set to white, the emission colors will not get filtered and therefor every possible combination of RGB values will create the desired effect with the corresponding color. Basically, the color of the Bloom Effect is the product of "Bloom Color" and emission color.


How to Parent Bones to the Panels of a Dieline Package (Paper Folding) Anyways, I am trying to create a folding package with a simple dieline structure. Each flap has a bone in order for it to fold (rotate). (See dieline figure)

I have watched a tutorial on how to create bones and pair them to the flaps from its vertices in edit mode. Keep in mind this tutorial is outdated but the features are still there not sure if Blender evolved a feature where I am making an honest mistake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2fhnQlJqU&list=PL1ufR-_dSlrGa-rN23kR_C0ACjpi-38JE&index=13&ab_channel=BlenderForDesigners
The video where I am struggling starts at 11:10
Rigging process starts at 12:30
What he does is selects the box and selects the armature > crtl + P (to parent) > with empty groups > tab into edit mode with that panel > go to vertex groups > "select top points" then click assign > tab out of edit mode > select armature > pose mode (blue highlight) > rotate armature.
I've done these steps to the teeth and no good results. I can't move the armature in pose mode, I can only move it in object mode and when I do it only moves the single flap and not the rest along with the larger flap (see figure below).

Object mode it can but not with the rest:

So, at that point I thought its a parenting problem, checked out another video on YouTube to see how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_I4XWATOYk&list=PL1ufR-_dSlrGa-rN23kR_C0ACjpi-38JE&index=115
and still no success..
Not sure what to do at this point. If I could figure out how to do this, it will change my career. Here is the Blender file I am working on, maybe it can point out something I am missing. Thanks

Ditch the bones and make an object hierarchy.

Since each flap of your test file is a separate object would suggest can be done without the extra hassle of creating an armature.
For simplicity the face with the most folds is selected as the parent. Its origin is arbitrary and has been kept as the center of geometry.
Now for each flap connected to this, move its origin to the middle of the fold edge and parent to it.
And so on. In example the top flap is parented to the left flap which is parented to the bottom flap.
Make sure the rotation is applied on all the flaps.
Angle axis Rotation.
One of the rotation types available in blender is axis angle. ie how much to rotate about a particular axis, which is ideal in this case, since the fold determines the axis.

For example the front and bottom faces fold on the X axis. To keep the angle of fold direction desired positive, the -X axis is chosen for front flap.
Custom Rotation for a tilted aircraft flap
Driving the result.
Since for simple example, flat is angle 0 and folded is angle 90. Added a simple custom property "prop" to the bottom which goes from 0 (flat) to 90 degrees (pi / 2) folded and driven each child flap with it.

and here is the end result.

Same for armatures.

Slapped this together, thought I'd add it here.  Can make a single mesh where each edge between two flaps is exactly aligned down the axis of the hinge.
Makes an armature and puts in hinge bones with head in closest point on of edge to face center, and tail pointing towards the face center.  This will ensure that the bone always hinges on the X axis (1, 0, 0). With the mesh in XY plane the bone z axis matches the global z axis (or face normals)
All the hinge bones rotation modes are set to axis angle.
Each hinge bone is given a name with the edge index appended.
If a temp mesh is made as such, the location of the face center will become the bone tip. The actual objects can be parented to tip, or constraints used.
Added vertex groups to each face of the object.
Select the base face of the folding structure and run script.
import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix, Vector
from mathutils.geometry import intersect_point_line
import bmesh
context = bpy.context

def hinge(armob, ob, pb, face):
    arm = armob.data
    # add a bone from edge center to face center
    face.select_set(True)
    edges = [(l, f) for l in face.loops for f in l.edge.link_faces if not f.select]

    for l, f in edges:
        e = l.edge
        b = arm.edit_bones.new(f"Hinge_{f.index}")
        b.parent = pb
        pt, dist = intersect_point_line(
                f.calc_center_median(),
                e.verts[1].co,
                e.verts[0].co,
                )
        b.head = pt
        b.tail = f.calc_center_median()
        vg = (
                ob.vertex_groups.get(b.name) or
                ob.vertex_groups.new(name=b.name)
                )
        vg.add([v.index for v in f.verts], 1, 'ADD')
        hinge(armob, ob, b, f)

def make_armature(ob, face_index):
    me = ob.data
    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me).copy()

    face = bm.faces.active
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    bpy.ops.object.armature_add()
    arm = context.object

    mw = (
            ob.parent.matrix_world.copy() if ob.parent
            else ob.matrix_world.copy()
        )

    ob.matrix_parent_inverse.identity()
    #ob.matrix_world.identity()
    ob.parent = arm
    ob.matrix_parent_inverse = ob.matrix_world.inverted()
    ob.vertex_groups.clear()

    arm.matrix_world = ob.matrix_world
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
    b = arm.data.edit_bones[0]
    b.tail += face.calc_center_median()
    b.head += face.calc_center_median()
    hinge(arm, ob, b, face)

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    for pb in arm.pose.bones[1:]:

        pb.rotation_mode = 'AXIS_ANGLE'
        pb.rotation_axis_angle = (0, 1, 0, 0)
    ob.modifiers.clear()
    mod = ob.modifiers.new(
            "Hinger",
            type='ARMATURE',
            )
    mod.object = arm
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')
make_armature(context.object, 0)


Isolate light cast on a surface through glass I have a white plane and a glass object on top of it, with 2 spotlights casting light through the glass object. This causes a lot of light to be cast onto the white plane.

I want to turn the plane into alpha, either in the material or in post and isolate just the glass object and the cast light. Something like a shadow catcher, but for this refracted light instead of shadows. Is this possible?

Alpha masks will not work for this
Alpha is for blending one image on top of another so it will not work with light, because light should be added, not blended, but you can separate only the light information.
Separating light information
To separate light going through the glass object you would need to render it and then render a version without it. In this case it happens that the light that we need is going through glass, so if caustics are disabled the render will come out without it. Or if you wanted the light to be only from a specific light source you could disable the light source instead. You should just subtract the image without the light from the image with the light and you will be left with the light information that now could be added to another image. Note that it is important to work with 32bit color depth here.

Separating glass
Glass is a lot harder to separate since it has refractions and internal reflections. You can have a look at this post, but I ignore internal reflections here. the refractions are also not completely accurate, because they come from a plane and not from realistic directions. To have more accurate results, it would be possible to separate glass to components like internal reflections with render passes and light paths node in the materials so it can be reconstructed in a more acurate way with different refractions. That gets a bit complicated, let me know, if you wish to explore this further.


Can somebody explain me why I see this black thing everytime I try to viewport shading? I have been having this problem for few days and I can't fix it, can somebody explain me or at least fix this?

You have Image Texture nodes, but in those no texture selected. Thus resulting in the shaded view showing a black object.

Solution:

Either disconnect the "Image Texture" node and set a color, or
Click on the little icon left to the "New" button on the "Image Texture" node and select a texture already loaded in Blender, or if there is none yet,
Click on the "Open" button and navigate to the texture you want to use to then load it. Dragging a picture(texture) from the system explorer into the node area will also generate a "Image Texture" node.
Last but not least, if you want to paint a texture yourself, you can click on "New" and create a new texture with some parameters to be created and selected in the node. This means though, that you will most likely need to paint or work on that texture otherwise before you have some results.

That said, i believe the most likely case is that you may want to use a texture and just did not yet load it, so in that case you may want to go with option 3.


Switch child constraints I am dribbling a soccer ball. I have set a child constraint to the ball for the left foot. Works great, Mid motion the player changes to his right foot, How do I ensure I get the same effect with the right foot? I tried adding another child constraint to the relative bone but couldn't work it out

blender 2.8 child of

blender 2.8 child of two child left right foot.......ok

Set two child of objects to adjust the influence value to join the left right foot.


What does the "Height" map mean in Blender? i've been purchasing some textures of Textures.com. The thing is that some of these have a displacement and some others have something called "Height". At first i thought it was the same thing but after watching closely, they don't seem to be the same (or maybe i'm bad at observation).

The thing is that i need to know what does this map mean.
It's the same as a "displacement" map?

If not, where should i connect it in the node editor?

EDIT:

You can see the differences here:
https://www.textures.com/download/substance0043/127911?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials

The thing is that in a displacement map, a valour means sinking and the other lifting, but in the second texture group you can see that a black valour(which is sinking), is in a place where in the colour image is not sinking but lifting instead (a lifting flagstone).

You can see the same happening here in this texture pack:
https://www.textures.com/download/substance0045/127923?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials

While in this other, instead, the height map looks more like a displacement map:
https://www.textures.com/download/3dscans0027/126894?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials

Now you see what i mean?

The thing is that these texture (mostly or entirely, i guess), are made for Zbrush

I hope this clear the things up :)

Height map means that it has values of height from the surface mapped to color values in an image file. This usually means that black is the level of the surface and the lighter it gets the higher off the surface it is, however it could be implemented the other way around in some rendering engine and the maps could still be called the same.

This kind of a map can be used as a bump map or a displacement map depending on your needs and choice. Displacement maps can also consist of vectors. In that case 3 values are stored in the image to define the offset of the surface in 3 directions. In that case the displacement map would usually not be called a height map.

There is no real difference between a height map and a displacement map usually, however there is a small difference in the meaning of the names. A height map can be a displacement map as well as a bump map, however a displacement map does not necessarily need to be a height map. A bump map is pretty much always a height map. That is all as far as I know.


Blender 2.8 Text Editor OSL Script Node Update Disabled I found out what Open Shading Language was today and was excited to try it out, and it was working at first.  But at some point, I found that I could no longer press the "Script Node Update" button either in the Text Editor or in the Shader Editor's script node in order to actually use the scripts.  I've tried both Internal and External scripts, and I'm using the Templates, so it's not a syntax error in the OSL Script.  I also tried saving the file to see if that was the problem (as before, I was working just on new, unsaved files), but it still didn't work.
I just can't press the update button to actually use the Script node as the button is grayed out.  I can't figure out what I did to break it and how to fix it.

OSL scripts will compile only if you are rendering in Cycles, on the CPU.
When both of those are true, an 'Open Shading Language' checkbox becomes available in the Properties region, Render tab, just under 'Device' (CPU)


Fluid Simulation looks white I'm using Cycles Render (Blender 2.79)
I created a domain, a circle that works as an inflow. I baked the simulation, the fluid looks like milk. I selected the domain, created a material (used glass for surface and volume absorption as volume). I render and I still see milk as my fluid, what's going on?

I have a sun, and I'm trying to simulate gasoline.

Here's My File:

You added a material to the domain, but it is currently not in use since it is not assigned to any part of the mesh.

This is however an easy fix; just remove the other material from the domain by selecting it (the one named "Material") and clicking the minus button on the right hand side. Your fluid should now be using the material "vino.004" instead.


Fluid increase speed over time I have my fluid physics setup like so

How can I increase the "speed" over the course of the animation? I'm trying to mimic a garden hose being turned on.

You fluid simulation inflow has a

inflow velocity

this value can be animated with keyframes. You can increase or decrease velocity.

As well you may turn off the inflow with the enabled value.


How to get x,y,z location from a list with python? How to get location from a list with python?
list = ["Cube1","Cube2", "Cube3"]
How can I get the Y location for the list?
I can get it for each individual object:
C1= bpy.data.objects["Cube1"].location

But I don't know how to convert list to [(X,Y,Z),(X,Y,Z),(X,Y,Z)]

Assuming we have the default cube and three clones as our object names, we can build new lists for the locations, and the Y locations. You asked for both in the question and I was unsure which you actually wanted...
import bpy

list = ["Cube","Cube.001", "Cube.002", "Cube.003"]
locations = []
yLocs = []

for n in list:
    locations.append( bpy.data.objects[n].location )
    yLocs.append( bpy.data.objects[n].location.y )

print( locations )
print( yLocs )


Where are all the options? I am trying to make liquid and I need to go to inflow on fluid but it doesn't show. I only have four options to choose from and I should have more. I have searched everywhere and can't find the answer to this question.
This is what I have

This is what I need

If you choose Flow, you can immediately below that choose Flow Behaviour under Settings, there you have Inflow as an option.


Why Does My Other Software Exported Heightmap Displace My Mesh So Much In Blender? I created this with world machine and imported it into blender via a .tif height map and applied it to a subdivided plane with displacement.
But the scale is wrong! It seems that every value I have is twice as powerful as I need.

As you can see in this image, my imported height map in orange is twice as "sharp" compared to my original model exported in .obj from my software. And the two mountains have the same dimensions!
How can I counter this issue in blender?
I think that my white value and black values need to be twice as soft to correct this? Is this right?

This looks to me like a color transform is being applied your displacement map prior to displacement. Don't save your height map as sRGB. I would also save the file itself as OpenEXR. Don't use PNG / JPG / other garbage formats.
Lastly, make sure the color space value of your displacement map texture is set to "Non-Color" before hooking it up.


rendered video is different from preview I've been going through a video and trying to extract parts from it,rendering each part as segments. partly through I realized that the resulting files had a slightly different part than was being played in the previews. how can I make it so that the video I see and hear in the preview is the same video that gets written to the file?

I'm having the same issue. Turns out that the Proxy render size under View Settings, Really destroys the accuracy of the video in preview.
Notice how the 'Text' and 'Character' deviates from its original location.

Images and Videos are not affected, But  Text, Any sort of animation is affected.
The solution I found for myself is to fix all the glitches manually in full render settings.
Edit:
Turn on AV Sync. You will find it under Timeline-> Playback -> AV Sync (check mark).


Blender Rigging: Mesh's arm won't bend despite changing weight I made a fairly low-poly humanoid model, and I've succeeded in rigging one side of the model, but when I tried to rig the opposite side, the mesh wouldn't move with the armature's bones (at least not that much).
I've attached the blender file, and also attached an image displaying the problem. Does anyone know how I could fix this?

.blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uc5km8amd5p2201/thingyrigged2backup.blend?dl=0

The arm has some bad weight painting. If you look at the vertex weights panel you will find that eight bones effect the mesh movement for the arm, the most effect comes from Bone.005 which is the clavicle - between the neck and shoulder, and even a leg bone on the opposite side of the character is in the list. Bone.007 at the end of the arm only contributes 0.118 to the movement.

Use the panel to remove the effect from the unwanted groups. The copy button at the bottom will copy the weights from the active vertex to the other selected vertices. Note that it only copies the weights, any zero weighted bones will remain in the list and not be removed completely.


Save every other pixel of an image at half res I want to take an image of X resolution, and make a new image of .5X resolution consisting of every other pixel from the original image.

For example, if I had a 10 pixel image:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

then I'd want the new image to be:

1 3 5 7 9

Is there any way to do such a thing, and output it to a new image file?

In your case where you are looking for exactly ½ resolution there is a very simple solution, just use the scale node in the compositor.

This is a 20x20px image; enlarged 16 times (to show detail). Here is the original if you want to try it.

Now after going through the scale node, you can see that every other pixel from the original is in the scaled image (again scaled up 16 times).

All you have to do is set up the compositor nodes: Image, Scale, and Composite nodes.

However if you need every other pixel starting with the second row or column of pixels you can add in a translate node to move the image before you scale it. Then after the scale node move the image back to the center.

This node setup will give you every other pixel starting with the second column. (Use the Y axis for the rows).

Last set the render size to ½ the resolution of the input image. So for a 10 megapixel image you could type 3872/2 in the resolution X field. In the render tab of the properties window.


Mirror modifier not working? Following a tutorial, would like to mirror plane on the other side of her face..

Make sure in Object mode you press Ctrl-A and choose Apply Scale and Rotation, then back in edit mode you should be able to get the mirroring across the X axis.


Blender show array instances as wireframe I have an array in my scene and my computer has some trouble showing them in the viewport. Is there any way that I can get the instances to show up as a wireframe mesh or maybe even a point cloudor bounds?

There are some options. Create a linked duplicate with Alt D. Give it a copy location and copy rotation constraint with your actual object as target or just parent it. Disable rendering and selectability for your fake object in the outliner.Set the object Type of the array object to Wireframe or Boundbox in the Display panel of the Object Properties.

Now you have a fake object that won't bother you much and the whole array set to wireframe. Not ideal if you want to edit the object but going into Local Mode with Numpad/ temporarily gets rid of that, too. Or you don't make it unselectable and hide it.

Or you can put a Decimate or Remesh modifier on top of it all that doesn't get rendered. That way your Polycount gets reduced as well.


Why won't my creature parent to its armature When I try to parent my students armature, an error occurs that says, "Bone heat weighting error on more than one bone" I'm not sure how to correct this. I looked to see if it was symmetrical and it seems to be. Any help would be great. I copied the link so you can see the file.

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36448

Thanks!

Your armature's shape is extremely different from the creature's shape: so the algorithm that should assign weight automatically can't decide which vertices to assign to which bone.

In this case you should choose the "with empty groups" option: it will create an empty vertex group for every bone of your armature.

Then you will have to weight them manually. Using weight paint; or selecting a vertex group, in edit mode selecting the vertices you want to be moved, and click assign in the vertex group mesh tab of the properties panel.

The corrispondence between bones and vertex groups is made by names.


does more processors and cores help performance? These are my specs

-i3 @3.70 Ghz 2 cores 4 logical processors

-8 Gb Ram

-147 gb C: Drive

-1.81 Tb D: drive

when I use rendered view in blender the sampling is really slow (like 1 sample per second)
also, while using rendered view and moving around in the viewport, changing lighting, textures etc. the fps gets pretty low and there is also some lag.

will getting a pc with more processor sockets(2 maybe) help??
does ssd make a difference??

do processors with more cores help speed up sampling??

I watch youtube tutorials and they have really smooth movements in the software.

can someone suggest what sort of pc might help fix my problems.
what sort of budget should I have??

Cheers!

When it come to rendering, the key is the number of cores : two core are twice faster than one core. The frequency of each core is to be considered too.

The bad news is processors are expensive. Sure, a 1,000$ i9 will render faster than your i3 ; but not that fast. And motherboards with 2 sockets aren't cheap either.

The good news is, graphic cards have a lot of cores and are relatively cheap (thanks to the gaming industry). Each core is less powerful than a CPU one, but there are literally hundreds of cores. And nearly every motherboard allows to use two or more graphic cards. There are chances that you already own a compatible graphic card.

A good way to know which cards are best is to compare them using this benchmark : http://blenchmark.com/gpu-benchmarks

To use GPU instead of CPU for rendering, you need to set it in the User Preferences. In System/Cycles Compute Device, choose CUDA (for a NVidia card) or OpenCL (for AMD cards). This question has a really detailed answer about that topic.


Can't find my addon inside blender 2.90 (first addon) I was following the scripting for artist tutorials on blender youtube channel. I pretty much copied what they did but i can't find the addon inside blender. The installation works fine, i can even call it in the console, but i need to find it so i can assign to a hotkey.

Im am using blender 2.90 latest build.

bl_info = {
    "name": "DC Mirror",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 90, 0),
}

import bpy

class DCMirror(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.dc_mirror"
    bl_label = "DC Mirror"

    def execute(self, context):

        bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='MIRROR')
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].show_on_cage = True
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].use_bisect_axis[0] = True
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Mirror"].use_clip = True

        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

Addon requires a Category

Give an addon a category, for example sake and to match op name have given it the "Object" category, can use anything here, best to stick with those available if possible. IMO this is prob a mesh operator, that adds modifiers to mesh objects

bl_info = {
    "name": "DC Mirror",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 90, 0),
    "category": "Object",
}

We assign keymaps to run operators or assign properties. In addon this is "object.dc_mirror", below I've added a keymap to the window such that ShiftCtrlT calls the op.

After assingning it to "object_dc_mirror" notice how the name becomes "DC Mirror", this is confirmation the operator is registered and known to blender

And when run with a mesh object as context.  Tip: give the operator a poll method limiting it to only mesh objects.

Consult the docs re adding a keymap via code https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/scripting/addon_tutorial.html#keymap

Common logic error

Worth mentioning that there is an issue with your addon if run again, it will add a new mirror modifier, but only ever alter the properties of the one having name "Mirror"

Recommend instead

def execute(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    mm = ob.modifiers.new(name="Mirror", type='MIRROR')

    mm.show_on_cage = True
    mm.use_bisect_axis[0] = True # x axis
    mm.use_clip = True

    return {'FINISHED'}


Why is my mesh inversed when Imported to Unity? So I modeled this sword and all the parts were separate meshes. I used a mirror modifier when I was modeling and then I applied the modifier when I was done to make the parts into solid meshes.
Put a UV map on everything and it all looked good in Blender.

Then I put it into Unity and I got what you see in the picture. Part of the sword is inversed. Oddly, the inversed part actually maintains the proper silhouette. It maintains the correct shape, but then is shaded like the front half is missing.

Does anyone have an idea of what's going on and how to fix it?

Thanks,
James

One possible reason for this could be that the normals actually were inverted in Blender but if you have Backface Culling disabled then the mesh could look right even though it's not.  The lighting may look weird but the polygons will look like they are facing outwards.

Backface culling is an optimization that disables shading on polygons that are not supposed to ever be seen.

When in Edit Mode, you can activate a tool that will show you which direction the normals are pointing in.  Just make sure that the size is adjusted appropriately for the model's scale otherwise you may not see them.

To correct the normals, you can use Ctrl+n which is also shown in the following image as a toolbar button labeled Recalculate.

You can also selectively flip the direction of faces using the button labeled Flip Direction which can also be located in the Faces Menu Ctrl+f with the alternate name Flip Faces

(The different names are a mistake, both use bpy.ops.mesh.flip_normals())


Hide back faces in 3D View? How do you hide back faces so that you only see faces when its normal is facing the camera? When exporting it for use in a game, the face is rendered in only the direction of its normal, so this would be useful to have something similar.

You find the Backface Culling option in the Properties Panel N shading section while in Object Mode.

The effect with a default cube and one partially removed face.

When renderer is set to Game Engine the Backface Culling option is also available in the material's settings.


Boolean operation BUG? I can not properly cut out holes with boolean modifier. Difference or Union looks very similar. The object with which I want to cut (5 cylinders) after cutting always sticks on the shape that I want to cut (after choosing difference). Tried flipping normals and triangulation modifier on all shapes. But nothing helps! Begging for some wise words!

Use a Solidify modifier to give thickness to your plate, apply it, then try again. Boolean needs thickness. If you don't want to give thickness to your object, use the Knife Project tool.


Generate curve from equation I've been trying to design a dynamic sculpture which I can only define with exactitude through mathematical equations. Now, the equations yield only lines, like you can see in the animation below:

I want to use these blue lines as extrusion paths in blender. How can I do this?

The Add 3D Function Surface addon allows you to do exactly this. You can download this addon here. It also comes included in the built-in Extra Objects addon.

Once you have the addon installed, when you go to add a new mesh, you will have two additional options: 'Z function surface' and 'XYZ function surface'. If you select either of these, you will then be able to add parametric equations in the Toolbar menu to define your shape.

Example XYZ Function Surface:


Changing Boolean Solver in 2.78? How do I change the Boolean Solver (bmesh/carve) in blender 2.78?

Im using the difference boolean and the result is strange. i want to try the other solver, but I cannot figure out how to change it? Ive seen other people with the option to change it right next to the operation: box, but I dont have that.

What can I do to change the solver?

Check that you are really in version 2.78 - the option should be directly under...


VSE channel 0 as background of a scene I want the film I edit in the VSE to be the background of a scene to move objects inside a real moving landscape or to make a title. What settings ? Thanks.

To preview your clip in the 3D viewport, set it as a background image/movie.

To render your scene, add the scene as a layer in the VSE above your movie clip. Set the scenes blend mode to alpha over.

Alternatively to the VSE you could combine your clip and 3D scene in the compositor. It is the same principle.


How can I change blender´s 2.78 splash screen? I´m following this guide:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender/Windows/msvc/CMake
and so I got all the files for blender and I´m ready to change the splash screen on Blender 2.78a

So I read this:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.4/Doc/How_to/Edit_the_SplashScreen

But on the 2.78 dependencies, there´s no file "datatoc.py", instead there´s a "ctodata.py" file. So when I run the python command:

python ctodata.py splash.png

I get error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "ctodata.py", line 44, in
    data = fpin.read().rsplit("{")[-1].split("}")[0]
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode
    return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 968: char
acter maps to

Could someone help me out on how to change the splash screen on Blender 2.78a, please? Thanks.

I have meanwhile solved this one. The key is to rerun Cmake once you have modified the splash.png and splash_2x.png files. Cmake is where the conversion of the files happens. And that's why nothing happens when you just modify the files.

So modify the png files, clear cache in Cmake, configure in Cmake, generate in Cmake, then compile again.


tool "draw" not found for space "VIEW-3D running into a weird problem that could very well be me being a noob. I am following along with blender guru tutorial on the anvil. He gets to a point where he selects texture paint mode and his cursor and window goes into paint mode. In my blender 2.80 however, nothing happens but a little exclamation mark and a yellow text along the bottom says

Tool "draw" not found for space "VIEW-3D

the weird thing is that other projects seem to work just fine. Does anyone have a fix for this as I had put in a bit of time already into the model texturing/sculpting restarting would suck. much thanks ahead of time.

Solving this issue (not exactly an issue) in Blender 2.80 is actually very simple.

Before opening the Sculpting tab, go to Layout tab and be sure that in the Outliner, the reverse triangle icon on the left side of your object name, is highlighted. It should be gray in dark theme.

If not, simply click on it and select your object. Then open Sculpting tab and everything will be fine.


Unwrap doesn't work properly I've been working on a model and I want to unwrap it in order to apply textures.

Problem is, when I click on "unwrap", the model doesn't take all the space available, and some parts are stretched in a very weird way, even tho (I believe) the unwrap was done correctly, and anyway I think it'd be impossible for it to look like that, even if I made a mistake.

The scale is 1 1 1 (I've applied both rotation and scale).
Furthermore, when I click on "unwrap" once again, nothing changes, it looks like it is stuck, somehow.

Any ideas?
Thanks.

this is the stretched part of the model. As you can see,it's basically a cylinder, and you can notice my seams.

Go into orthogonal view
Go to the front view
Select the front faces
Go to UV and choose project from view
Rinse and repeat for the back and if necessary sides.
Remember you can select the individual UVs and move and scale them on the uv map.


Eevee render with blurred textures when not facing the camera I run into a problem while doing something in eevee and texture painting.
I noticed that a texture is not rendered properly when not facing directly to the camera. It is blurred and low res.
As you can see, the steps are blurred and ugly.

when facing the camera, it is all good

Is there a way to make step's texture looking good even if it is not facing the camera?

That is cause by low or lack of anisotropic filter. You could try increase the filtering through Blender Preferences located in:
Edit>Preferences
Then in Viewport tab, Under Textures you'll see Anisotropic Filter

Image example above: Anisotropic Filter - Off

Image example above: Anisotropic Filter - 16x


"Bake" all Particle systems into their object I have a blender project setup, it is simply a building and a pond that are sitting on a sculpted ground plane. The ground plane has several particle systems setup on it: big and little trees (for a forest), two kinds of grass, some reeds around the edge of the pond.
Then I have a camera that does a dolly move around the bank of the pond, while facing the building. The way the particle systems are setup is: a few parents and very many children that are generated at the time of render. All of the particles are static, (they don't change in any way through the extent of the dolly move).

So when rendering the ground plane particles have to be generated for EVERY frame of the animation even though the particles don't move or anything.

My question is this: is there a way for the children particles to be generated for the first frame and used again and again for the full duration of the animation?

I've done a lot of searching for baking in Blender, but that only has to do with textures (from what I've read). I've searched for "precompiling particles" but that didn't yield anything along the lines of what I was wanting. As you can tell, I'm not even sure what terminology I should be using. Any advice would be appreciated!

Here's a low frame-rate and "rough draft" of my animation: enter link description here

You can turn particles into real objects with the convert button in the particles modifier panel.

In this case I think what you may be looking for is BVH caching. Under Render Properties there is a Performance panel. There you will find an option to cache BVH. Blender internal has some different options.

From the 2.62 Release notes -

  For renders where only the camera or materials are changing, while meshes stay fixed, it is now possible to skip the sometimes slow BVH step, by enabling BVH Cache in the Performance panel. This will store the BVH on disk for subsequent (animation) renders of the same scene. Note that if the scene does change in the animation, enabling this option will make rendering somewhat slower.

From your sample animation this may not help as the mesh objects in the scene appears to be changing, unless you are making the materials transparent. If you do have this enabled then maybe disabling it will help.

One possibility may be to render the background animation and then composite the shed animation onto it. Another is to animate material transparency instead of object visibility.


How do I programmatically query the state of the timeline "record" button? I have a frame handler that should set keyframes if the record button is set. How do I check whether it's enabled via Python?

Thanks!

If you place the mouse cursor above the record button, you will see:

bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].tool_settings.use_keyframe_insert_auto


What would cause hair to be emitted only from object origin? I have this object that is emitting hair particles. I must have done something to it that cause the hair particles to be emitted from the object's origin instead of being distributed evenly across it. This only happens to new particle systems, the one I made before this change on the same object is not affected. I'm wondering if anybody can tell me what I changed? I've been comparing it to an older version of the object that does not do this for a few days now and I can't see any differences.

What I get (after change)

What I want (before change)

Just to clarify, if I change the location of the object origin like I did in the screenshot the hairs will always be emitted from the object origin. All new particle systems, even with default settings behave in the same way when used on this object. Particle systems that were created before the change on the same object are not affected. Particle systems on different objects do not behave in this way. To make it more confusing the 3D viewport only reflects this behavior seemingly randomly.

I just encountered this issue in blender and what I found out is than it is better to apply any modifiers, if you are using any, like the subsurface modifier. After i applied the modifiers the hairs vanished from the origin.

It is very important that you first remove the hair particle system from the object and then apply the modifiers, and then again apply the hair particle system.

I don't know for sure if this will work for you also, but better give it a try if you still have this issue.


How to use "Denoise" on a secondary rendered image I can achieve that by rendering the image 2 times, but only using denoise on the first image. But that would double my render time, so i can't do that.

I want to use denoise, but on some places of the image i don't want denoise so i want to erase the denoised image and reveal the underlying non denoised image in photoshop.
Maybe there is a way to use "denoise" on compositing stage.?

Is this possible?

Just create two render layers and turn on denoising only one of them. You will get both image the same time.


Glass shader appears black when touching another object Here are renders of the glass:

As you can see, the first image looks fine, but when the glass is broken and on the ground it appears black. How do I fix it? I have never had this issue in any other renders with cell-fractured glass.

Here is the material node setup:

For some reason, caustics were disabled, and turning them on fixed the problem.


Is it possible to use armatures with weight paint to shape a mesh permanently? As the question implies, I wish to deform my mesh permanently with armatures and weight painting so that the changes I made in pose mode are reflected in edit mode.

All modifiers can be applied with the apply button. Make a copy of your file for archive.  Press the apply button on the armature modifier.  You may need to apply more than one modifier.


Streaky artefacts, subsurf, how to avoid? How do I avoid strange streaky artifacts like these on the concave part of the object?

Tried to remove doubles and beveling with no effect

Avoid using n-gons (polygons with more than 4 vertices) those will not subdivide nicely..

Get rid of it (and the one on the other side of the object)

Add one more loop cut (so that you have an even number of vertices in the edge loop)

Select the edge ring, use Grid fill and set the span to something that makes sense.

Grid fill will create proper topology based on quads.

Repeat grid fill on the other side of the object.


How to connect two cylinders with a third one connecting the two? I am trying to make a sketch of an optical setup.
Currently I am using long cylinders as beampaths. (if anyone has better suggestions, those are also very welcome)

My problem is that I want to connect my beampaths, such that each one of them makes a full path (just like the light in the real setup) which seems to be astonishingly hard in blender. I would like to simply enter start and end point of the line, then create a cylinder along that, but could not yet find a way to do something like that and rather have to work with Euler angles.

The image shows the setup I have this far. Between the two lenses I want to show the four beams from the left being focused and exiting the lens setup, connecting to the right four paths.

If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a curve with a bevel object.

When you are in objectmode, i would recommend to start with a bezier curve. go to the curve properties and there you can give it "thinckness" with a so called bevel object(has to be also a curve object).

I assume that you need a circle for the cilindrical shape of the ray.

you can also change the diameter by adjusting the size of the bevel object.

for getting sharp angles in your curve you also have to change the handle type of the curves vertices to  vector (Shortcut: V).
therefore you have to be in editmode:

If you want to connect multiple objects together, select every object you want to join and then press CTRL+J.

BUT

It is not possible to "weld" multiple curves together, because a curve vertex can only connect to two curve segments.

The only way is, to convert the curves to meshes (ALT + C)
and then you are able to connect the parts via mesh modeling.


Set the correct orientation when exporting from Blender to Unity When exporting models from Blender into Unity one must take into account the handedness of both programs.

Blender considers Z vector as the UP vector, but Unity considers the Y vector as the UP.

Now, if you want a model who is facing up in Blender (along Z) to be facing up in Unity (along Y) when imported, people recommend this simple fix:

model your 3D model in Blender along the Y axis and apply the necessary rotation onto the model.

Now when working in Blender if you want to use Z as the UP vector, you simply transform your model by a positive 90 degree rotation around X (but don't apply the rotation).

I export my model using Blenders built-in FBX exporter with the default settings (UP = Y axis and FORWARD = -Z axis).

When imported into Unity, my model is facing upwards as expected along the Y axis.

But, what I don't understand is why my model is also rotated 180 degrees around the Y axis?

In the first image from Blender you can see that my cup handle pointed along the x axis aka right, but now is facing left (-X direction).

I had the exact same problem before, and i fixed it by doing the following:

Choose to export with FBX
Check "!EXPERIMENTAL! Apply Transform"
Import to Unity
See that the model is on the correct rotation.


Was Y-Axis IK Stretching removed in 2.79 RC2? The stretching I'm referring to is the slider seen here in the IK Constraints settings for individual bones, not the "Stretch To" constraint:

A while back (a little under a year ago now I think), I heard that the this stretch function got updated so that it will only stretch on the Y-Axis. Back in the day it didn't do that. So the Y-Axis stretching managed to stick around up until 2.79 RC2 rolled around. It seems that the feature has been reverted back to how it functioned back in the day, where stretching would enlarge the bones on all axis instead of the Y-Axis as shown in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGdM33ln9Sw

I suppose this could debatably be a bug, but it seems like this is an intentional reversion of a feature. All I want to figure out now is if (and how) I can get the 2.78 functionality of the stretchiness back into 2.79rc2 if it's at all possible, because my rig benefited greatly with this much simpler way to apply stretchy limbs to a rig.

I also was fond of this feature, but sadly it won't come back. The reason and solution is mentioned here:


Alt+Left mouse to orbit, while "pick with left mouse button" is enabled? A tough nut I guess. I am trying to make controls similar to Unity and Substance, but I can't make this happen. I can either have Alt+LMB orbiting OR LMB selection. Is there a way to have both?

Here is a best addon blender sensei download here

In this addon there are much of shortcut and much easy to use.
There are various tutorial in the webpage how to install and use.

Note : In this addon blender will work as a normal but the shortcut and display view change.


how to drag , move , elongate object in blender on mac I have installed blender for  making small logo . I have no prior idea of blender . The challenge i am facing is only PC i have is mac.

I am facing problem in moving  , dragging deleting objects on blender + mac.
As i do right click on cube( selected object)  in upper right window hierarchy , i m unable to see delete option. But on windows it shows delete  option in pop up menu.

Also , i m facing problem in changing shape of object ... i don't use mouse . Can  some one help me with the menu option where i can set length  width height of any object selected .

Please help .

Thanks in advance.

On a Mac Book Pro in the Blender “Outliner” move your cursor with the scratch pad over an object and while pressing “Command” and then clicking the scratch pad will open a drop down menu with options including “Delete”.

With your cursor in the 3D Viewport pressing “N” will toggle on and off transform options. In “Object Mode” move your cursor to an object in the 3D viewport and then while pressing the “Command” key click the object with the scratch pad to select it. Then hover your cursor over the appropriate Transform input field and click in it with the scratch pad. You can then enter numeric values to make changes in your object.


Triangles or Squares or both? Which polys are easier for to render and in number? Or what if there are more verts than 3 or 4? I have a question, I am aware that sometimes triangles can make a better curve, or close enough, using less polys, but which are would be less work to render? 1 square, or two triangles? So that being said, would it be best to make all faces of triangles, or triangles where necessary and save squares where squares more triangles than squares would be? What if it has more sides?

As far as I know, fundamentally speaking computers only understand triangles, nothing more.

So technically whatever you use will be converted to a three sided polygons only representation of the model at render time regardless. Having a triangle based mesh or a quad based mesh should not make a very significant difference at render time.

Storing a triagulated version of a mesh however will require more data and hence more memory and storage, because of the additional edge info that is being recorded. It should not be a very significant difference though, unless you have a very large and complex mesh.

Blue is quad based Suzane, orange is the same mesh triangulated

What you should be concerned with instead is good topology to make your models easy to work with, easy to edit or modify.

Quad based topologies are also good for animation, by being easier to rig and better at deformation based transforms, it makes them easier to texture through UV Unwrapping too.


How to control the line thickness of a drawn object with Grease P. (2.80) How to control the line thickness of a drawn object with Grease P. (2.80)

I scaled down a drawing, but now the line is too thin.

Thanks

The stroke thickness can be controlled in the adjustment section for the grease pencil layer.