Objects being deformed when in rendered view I built the scene using EEVEE render engine. Now I'm changing to cycles to get a more realistic scene. Though when I go in rendered view, all the objects are being deformed in weird ways. Even those with no modifier are being deformed. Is there something I'm missing here? I've applied the scale to everything as well.

.blend file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KH0PIg_iS_uwfC4A-2Vv2LPLHDDuCj6Q

In each material that have a bump node go to settings (on the material tab) → surface and change displace only to bump only. Then enter edit mode and come back to object mode to refresh the bump.


How can I find animation nodes in node editor? I cant find Animation Node in Node Editor in Blender 2.79. I cant reach step which is in the image below. Can you help me?

if you don't have animation node editor you should activate "animation node" in your preferences/add_ons

you can get it from https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes and install it

when you use object node in node editor, you should assign an existing object to it. you can't create new object with this object node.


Bones point towards ground Looking for a way/constraint to point bone towards ground, always. I am trying to build a robot leg with a toe, and when the leg moves up, the toe points down, unfortunately I am not able to find a way to do it other way than manually.

Thanks :)

You'll have to utilize more bones and constraints for this
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but maybe it can be a starting point.

The toe bones have a "Locked To" constraint which are tracking the "track_to" bone, I set up a foot bone which is what you will animate and the "track_to" bone will follow the foot bone along the ground which has "Copy Location" constraint on it. Download the Blend if you want to deconstruct the setup.

Bonus Gif


Blender is rendering an older version my project Blender is rendering an older version of my project, not the most recent one. I have made it using the Blender Render but it does not want to render in cycles either. A black and grey screen is rendered as if everything is transparent. Checked general camera, lighting and compute devises in case I messed something up but I can't find anything. All my textures and objects look normal, does anybody know what is wrong or what to check?

Ok added link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ah0brd38psfyb7i/Bathroom%20test%20upload.blend

This is because you have some sequencer strips in the VSE.

The Compositor and Sequence  settings are enabled by default, so if there is any data in the compositor or the sequencer blender will render from that instead of the scene.

From the wiki:

  If
  you are using the Compositor or Sequencer, you can tell Blender to
  process those effects instead of directly rendering the scene.

Disable Sequence in Render Settings > Post processing or remove the sequencer strips and it will render the scene instead:

version 2.8x


More noise WITH Light-Portals? I built a scene to test light portals.

I use a very bright HDRi to light the scene.
And used a closed cube with a very tiny hole, for the light to shine through.

The brighter the light, and the tinier the hole, the more noise you get.
Material is a basic white diffuse node.

In this test-scene an activated light-portal produces MORE Noise at the same sample-count (1000 samples)

What is happening ?

I thought Light-portals ALWAYS reduce the noise at the same sample count?

If you turn diffuse bounces to 0 (disabling indirect light), the source of the mystery reveals itself.

Here's 100 samples with no portal, and no diffuse bounces:

And the same, but with the portal:

So why is the full scene noisier when we turn on diffuse indirect light? The portal INCREASES the amount of light on each sample, thus increasing the number of diffuse bounces that return something instead of nothing. So you get more noise there. The combination of the small window and white walls mean the scene is almost entirely indirectly lit.

There's a few things you can do to speed this up. First of all, the portal is much bigger than the window. Shrink it to exactly the size of the window. And while we're at it, throw a solidify modifier on your room cube, that way you don't get the weird light leaks at corners. That's imperfect though, so you'll need to fake a lot more than that. Time to stop world indirect light entirely. Go to the world panel, and change bounces to 0:
The portal will still throw sunlight on the wall, but it won't keep bounceing around and making a ton of noise.

Finally, replace the missing lighting by making a copy of the portal (leave it in the exact same place), disable the portal option so it's a regular area light, and give it a sky color. Adjust power to taste. That gets the indirect lighting clean enough that the denoiser can take care of the rest. You can disable desnoising on all passes except diffuse indirect if you like:

And the result of all that, same 100 samples:

You don't have to use ALL these techniques of course, you use just some to get more realism at the cost of render time. For example, you could set world bounces to 1 instead of 0. Play around to get the performance/quality balance that works for your shot.


How can I draw a parallel line to other edge in a face? I wanted to divide a face with line b parallel to a. At first I tried 'loop cut and slide' but it did not work for unknown reason. Next time I tried 'edge slide' line c to the position b but failed again because edge sliding moved other edges(d, e) connected to c. And then I tried extrude edge c toward b but failed again because it made a additional face and edges. Finally I decided to use knife tool because I thought that knife tool might activate like 'pencil' tool in Sketchup(It's very easy to draw a parallel line with pencil tool in Sketchup due to it's auto-snapping). But I realized that drawing a parallel line with knife tool is impossible at that viewpoint because there's no option like parallel to other edge in knife tool. Knife tool has only 'angle constraint' option  and in orthographic front view(in which I can draw parallel line with angle constraint) I can't work because other structures are covered. How can I draw a parallel line to other edge easily?

There are a few methods, but usually the most intuitive is the knife tool. Put your view in orthographic and snap it so that the line you want to cut is either flat horizontal or vertical and use the angle constraint mode (c).

If there are things blocking your view of the cut just hide them (h). If the cut isn't aligned to one of the global axes then you can select a face with a parallel edge and snap you view to it with shift+numpad7/1/3.

In the case you have drawn though, I would just use the knife tool and cut the edge without worrying about getting it parallel. After the edge is cut grab the vertex at 'g', enable vertex snapping and constrain movement to z axis. Then snap it to the vertex at 'f'.


How to import an object across scenes (sort-of) I have already made the Cyodrake's Gaze for my animation, but I really don't want to have to do it all over again for scenes 6, 7, 31... and so forth.

Is there any way to copy/paste an object into scenes?

Thanks, Nefer007

To do that you just link the object to the new scene, and then make it a single user object.

Select object in Scene 1
In the Object menu, choose Make Links CTRL+L > Objects to Scene > Scene 2 (or whatever scene you want to link it to.
At this point the object is not a separate copy from the Scene 1 object. To make it separate, with the object selected, open the Object Menu, choose Make Single User >  Object (or one of the other options if appropriate)


How do you create a slice of ocean with an animated surface in blender 2.8? I am trying to do this...

... as featured in this post, but in blender 2.8.

The only way that I can get anywhere close is to create an ocean slightly larger in X & Y than the cube, but shorter in Z. Then add a boolean on the cube with the object as the ocean and the operation set to difference. However, I can then only remove the faces of the cube above the ocean once the boolean modifier is applied, which means that the animation won't work.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Simon

EDIT: Having downloaded blender 2.79 and added a boolean intersect to the cube I get similar behaviour to blender 2.8 when the solver is set to BMesh...

...but setting the solver to Carve gives me the desired result.

So it looks as if blender 2.8 (which has removed the solver Carve) cannot generate the desired result.

So the questions stands, how do you create a slice of ocean with an animated surface in blender 2.8?

Thanks (again),

Simon

Add a Plane and subdivide it couple of times
Select its border and add it to a new vertex group

Add all modifiers to the stack, pay attention to green highligts

Ocean should be Displace instead of Generate in order to utilize vertex group.

Vertex group later is displaced strictly on Z axis down below and cut by Cube via boolean Intersect.

Adjust Cube's scale as you need and enable Autosmooth (80 deg) in Plane settings to have a sharp corner at the cut.


Vertices that have a shared face in Python Is this possible to write the script that can determine if certain vertices have a shared face?
For example, if 3 random vertices of a mesh connected with each other with a face.

You can use bmesh to do that. BMesh offers facilities to navigate through verts/edges/faces.

So for instance:

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh( obj.data )

bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()

v1 = bm.verts[0]
v2 = bm.verts[1]
v3 = bm.verts[3]

inter = set( v1.link_faces ) & set( v2.link_faces ) & set( v3.link_faces )

print( inter )

ensure_lookup_table tells bmesh to prepare the data (you may want to use it too on bm.edges and bm.faces)

For more information, have a look to this documentation.


How can I procedurally narrow the pupil of an eye? I made eyes and need them for different animals.

How can I make the pupil narrow?

You currently have a node setup for one object to make the iris and the pupil. You would need to have just the iris as the background, and then another object parented to it to be the pupil. It would look like an eye, not two objects.


Edges not following the mesh in edit mode? Maya user moving to blender, not sure why my edges are being overlapped by the surfaces instead of following them.

Object mode displays the edges the way I would prefer to edit them.

You have a subdivision surface modifier on your mesh. By default that modifier does not change the display of the original mesh while in edit mode. Its personal preference I like to see the original mesh most of the time, but coming from max I can see why you want the edges on the mesh.

Just head to the Properties window, then the Modifiers tab and look a the  Subdivision modifier (Subsurf modifier in versions prior to 2.8).  Then simply tick the button highlighted in red "Adjust edit cage to modifier result."


How to render a large number of stacked glass sheets I am trying to render a large number of glass sheets stacked on top of each other (42 to be precise)

I bumped up the transmission bounces amount to 50 just to be sure. set up a simple 'office' environment with some area lights and 3 white walls to have some interesting refractions. I am also using HDRI as a light source.

Is there some general shader that would work well with this kind of setup (stacked glass)? Do i need to worry about different interfaces (Glass to glass, glass to air)?

See below images for the materials and sample render.

Light paths settings

Material on top side of the glass sheet (as you can see the difference is that i use 'Is transmission ray' instead of 'Is reflection ray', also i add an image with it's alpha as a factor, the image is a mostly transparent png image with some text on it)

Material on sides and bottom of the glass sheet

test render with above settings

I am aiming at maximum realism yet the glass still looks unrealistic and it is "dark" inside no matter how many transmission bounces i use, How can i improve it?

I attached slightly simplified scene so you can see roughly how i proceeded.

FIRSTLY, do you have photo reference? ;-) This render might actually BE really realistic, but your eye is fooled because your brain knows that it's fake. Also, photo reference will help you be specific about what changes to make.

The basic glass and transparent shaders aren't terribly realistic by default. You'll want to look into Physically Based glass shaders. It's a complicated subject, especially for Blender, but essentially you'll build your own shader with a transparent shader, a refraction shader (it doesn't do any reflection), and a glossy shader. You'll put these individual components together with mix shaders, modulating the factor on them with Fresnel or Layer Weight input.

The full details are a bit beyond the scope of this site, but searching for "physically based glass" should get you closer. Also looking at how people have built "fresnel glossy" shaders for Blender will be helpful because the principle is similar.

Here's a helpful link, for as long as it's available: http://www.chocofur.com/6-shadersamptextures.html

It would also be helpful to add a colored checker pattern and/or noise pattern behind and under the glass just for production, so you can see what's going on a little more easily. Then remove it once you get everything right. These stark white, grayscale environments can be very tricky.

Hope that helps!


Volume Absorption not working I am making a cup of coffee. I created the liquid as a mesh with transmission as 0 and applied volume absorption to the mesh in order to create that darker look, however, there is no change in the appearance of the liquid after applying the volume absorption.

I cannot figure out why the absorption is not applying. I have set the density to 584 so that can't be the issue. So why does the appearance of the liquid not change?

user1853's comment in pictures :)

Change Transmission to 1

... or use Glass shader instead of Principled BSDF.

The only weird thing is when I replicate your node, result is totally white, not transparent as yours ... hm. Some changes happened from 2.81?


does AVI RAW suppport sound in Blender? when I render my Blender Video Editor projects to AVI RAW, I don't get any sound in the output file.  I'm on version 2.78.5.

Go to File Format and choose FFmpeg vid – this opens the proper encoding options.


How do I get a colored object to glow on white? Emission works great when the environment is darker, but I'm having trouble getting a colored object to show up on my white surface. I tried lowering the roughness, but that ended up making it look more like a reflection. I know it's not realistic, but it's the effect I'm trying to go for.
This is where I'm at:

Switch the render engine to Cycles and Emission will cast light onto other objects as expected.

In Eevee, shift+A Add 'Light Probe' >'Irradiance Volume'

Scale it up so the inner bounding box surrounds the scene.
In Render Settings under 'Indirect Lighting' you'll have to 'Bake Indirect Lighting'

In this image I've already baked it so you can see the result. Hope that's what you're looking for.


Detect two objects colliding, and write the frame number when collision happened Yes, I know it is similar to this question, but I want further explanation.

I would like to detect two objects colliding, and write the frame number if on that frame the collision happened. Collision itself can be detected using the method described in the previous link, but I don't know on which 'operation', for example, 'scale' in the linked page, should I apply that driver.

Furthermore, I wonder I can run a simple python script for file writing, if a collision is detected using the driver method.

You can use Animation Nodes for this. We compute the distance between the two target objects, if the distance is smaller than the sum of the radii of their bounding sphere, we create a text from the current frame and if not create an empty text, we read an initially empty text block and append the result to it with a line break as separator (Though a separator of your choice can be used), then we write the output to the text block again. Now as soon as they collide, the frame will be written in a new line.


Check whether shortcut key exists/don't allow shortcut key to mutliple actions Is there an easy way to check whether a shortcut key exists already? I wanted to assign ctrl+s as "mark seam" but immediately realized that that was already the save shortcut. I'd like to be able to check whether there would be a double assignment, and if possible, not allow them.

Header > Edit > Preferences > Keymap ....

... search as shown, with a string representation of your shortcut.

You will be shown a list of context-dependent uses of the key combination.


Python API: bpy.context.selected_nodes gone? It seems like in the 2.73a version (and 2.74), bpy.context.selected_nodes method is not available despite the documentation showing it up. Does anyone have an idea on what could be happening ?

thanks!

You might be able to filter on node.select for your application:

mat = bpy.data.materials['checker']
nodes = [ n for n in mat.node_tree.nodes if n.select ]

Although, I'm not entirely sure how that works with node groups (where you have a compound node selected and tab into it and select other nodes).


How to render Backfacing Culling I have flipped normal of object, but unlucky, it didn't work in render. Is there way to fix it?

This what I want:

But I got this in render:

Two years late, but for reference :)

If you want to have backface culling in cycles you can use a material setup like this:

Which basically uses two materials, a diffuse one (or whichever one you want) and a transparent material (to cull backfacing surfaces). You just mix them using the backfacing output of the geometry node so that backfacing surfaces use the transparent material.


Receiving a shadow without casting one? I am trying to create a plane that will stop shadows that hit it, but will not cast a shadow itself. I am using Blender Internal and have tried a combination of "Receive", "Cast", "Shadows Only" and "Cast Only" to no avail.

Keeping "Receive" on but turning "Cast" off just allows shadows to pass through it.

In this image I'm trying to get 00 Caster to cast a shadow on 01 Blocker, and to have neither of them cast a shadow on 02 Receiver (which can receive shadows from other objects). Would Light Groups be a way of doing this?

Here's a link to the blend.

I replicated your setup and I think the answer is simply that, no it is not possible.

The closest you might get in my opinion would be disabling shadows for CASTER and/or BLOCKER by unchecking traceable in material options. And it fakes the desired effect but won't hold true in general - it is not "shadow blocking"

Using light groups you can achieve a similar effect, in that you might have two similar lights, one affecting CASTING and BLOCKER (but not RECEIVER), the other exclusively lighting the receiver. But this is not shadow blocking either.

What I understand is that you want it so that...
- if a backward ray (from RECEIVER to the light) hits blocker first, RECEIVER is illuminated regardless of anything else in between light and the receiver.
- if a backward ray doesn't hit blocker first, process shadows normally.

As far as I know, options to cast shadows without raytracing have been removed from Blender (no shadow maps anymore). I'm not sure what you might achieve with an older version (maybe pre-2.5x if my memory is correct).
This is relevant to your problem in that, in raytracing shadows are simply a by product of not receiving light. So I'm not saying that it's impossible with raytracing, but they would have to implement "shadow blocking" as a specific feature for this to work.


Connect vertices from inner circle to outer circle I'm trying to connect the inner circle to the outer circle in order to close the mesh but I can't. I've tried to select the edges/vertices of both circles and press F

but that doesn't seem to work, it creates two faces, one for the inner circle and another for the outer circle.

Now I could go individually and select four vertices (two from the inner and two from the outer circle) and connect them as you normally would but that seems like a pain in the ass. I'm pretty sure there's a more efficient way of doing this, can someone tell me what's the right way of connecting the inner circle to the outer circle, in order to close the mesh? Also, why is it doing this? Shouldn't it recognize immediately that I'm trying to connect the selected circles?

Thanks in advance.

You should use the Bridge Edge Loops tool.

You can get to it three ways:

CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops (CtrlE L)
W > Bridge Edge Loops (W E)
From the 3D view header Mesh > Edges > Bridge Edge Loops

alternatively, AltF then AltJ, which will "Beauty" fill the the hole with triangles, then convert the tris to quads.


If I look a fresnel node trough an emissive shader what reflectance curve do I see? Pretty all in the question, but to add a bit of detail, I'm asking this regarding to the reflectance curves of refractive.info website wich have P/S/non polarized curves.

I'm using Cycles fresnel to a color input of an emission shader.

Edit:

In fact I must be more precise, I'm looking without any transformation in the color management, so pure data, and I know I will not have the exact reflectance curve with this scene.

To be more precise, those are the curves I'm speaking about:

And to respond to @JtheNinja I assume the k fresnel coefficient extinction is the part of the curve that drop down before jumping to 1 on the P polarized.
If I'm right about the k, we have this hardcodded to the fresnel node:

My curve is x compressed at the end because it's hard to deal with grazing angles and making a linear progression. But you can see the curve drop down even with the default fresnel node.
At the begining I was choosing the non polarized but looking at the fresnel curves I have, they look closer to the P polarized, so the question remains.
What are P/S and non plolarized and which one to choose if I what to make fresnel with RGB curves?

I'm answering my own question because I start understanding a bit more about the topic of polarized light.
I'm niether a scientist nor a mathematician so I will simplify things but don't hesitate to correct me or give more information in the comment so I can update/complete the answer.

What I know :

After reading more about Polarization :

A ray light is a wave moving multiple directions, 2 plans x and y (non polarized)
A non polarized light is P polarized after bounced on a dielectric material (water/glass/plastic...).
Bounces on metals are non polarized.
We haven't have spectral rendering in Cycles, so the light isn't acting as a wave, no polarization of rgb light.

What I assume :

Light in Cycles must be think like non polarized
Defaut fresnel considerate that most light is polarized because it seems to  apply a P polarized curve on fresnel
Direct ray need non polarized fresnel curve, and after one bounce on dielectric surface, it need P polarized fresnel curve.

Edit :

The second assumption isn't right because I was assuming that the drop down of the curve was a sign of polarization, in fact it's a sign that default fresnel node isn't suitable for metallic shaders (dielectrics are ok).
The third assumption isn't right either, first because if a ray hasn't bounced on something there is no fresnel curve, second because polarized light is way more complicated than that, and we haven't got any way to know which ray is polarized or not. So the best choice is to use unpolarized curve.


Subsurface scattering field I have color A and color B and you want sub surface scattering.  My question is, on the "thickness" map, does pure white represent complete translucency or does grey?

White would mean I'm taking 100% of color B right?  Which means color A will not be present at all which isn't translucent.  So my guess is .50 (grey) is the true value if you want both colors?  Or am I wrong?

I already tried this with principle shader with red and blue creating purple with .5 (grey) sub surface scattering:

If I have white, I would be taking 100% of color B, thus there is no translucency with the red.

[

So my basic question is, when I make a sub surface scattering map, should I be using grey for max translucency?  Or is there something I'm missing here?  Because I have seen White areas in thickness maps before which makes no sense to me, you're just taking 100% of color B?

When Subsurface is 1, the Base color has no influence.
Still you can use  radius to extract different colors from the Subsurface color.

Why it doesn't work for you
You're using RGB Blue (0,0,1), so Red and Green cannot be extracted (as they're zero).

Example
I'm using some random Blue containing all three channels (RGB: 0.14, 0.19, 0.8):

Subsurface = 1 (so the base color has zero influence)
I can bring up plenty of Red from my Blue, using the Subsurface Radius.


Mask modifier not rendering I applied a mask modifier to a sphere object. When I preview the render, the object is visible with the mask showing correctly:

However, when I render the scene, the object is invisible:

Not sure if I should apply the modifier or not. I made sure the object was visible in ray visibility and no other object is in front of it.

Also, when I don't render the modifier, the object renders correctly.

Ok, it seems that if a mask modifier is used with a subdivision surface modifier, the render and the viewport subdivisions have to be the same. I think the problem it's related to the cache of the baked simulation.

When I do that, the object renders correctly.


Rotating repeated Image Texture/ Tile a Texture in 90° increments I am trying to figure out how to randomly rotate an image texture that I apply to a simple plane.
So basically, I have an image of tiles and I would like to have "the duplicates" to rotate randomly by scaling the UV Map.

After some days of researching I found some Videos and Blogs regarding this matter. Unfortunately neither of the proposed solutions were applicable to my problem. Most often, the solution was in regards in how to randomize an image texture over a large plane by rotating it in a random degrees (to tile a texture without repetition > BlenderGurus Video for example). In my case I just want to have the texture rotating in 90° increments. I'm relatively new to Blender and still learning how to use Nodes, so I would appreciate if somebody could help  me out or push me into the right direction, maybe even give me an alternative way of to this.
Thank You in advance

A possible node settings:

Use a "vector rotate" node with UV as input and a random rotation around z.
The random rotation is given by picking one random value per tile:

Take the floor part of the UV (so one value per tile)
Use a white noise to get a random value between 0 and 1
Multiply by 4 as we want 4 cases: 0, 90, 180, 270°
Take the floor of that to be aligned to the integer values
Multiply by pi/2 to obtain the rotation in radians


How to find unneeded/useless vertices In some of my Blender files there are unneeded / useless vertices.
The screenshot shows this:

The vertex is not needed. Is there a way to search the model to find such vertices?

Edit:

This section relates to the answer given below which is is a good solution.

I simulated a poor 3d model as show in the picture (The selected vertex is the culprit I am looking for)

Simply using Shift + G > Amount of connecting edges locates the poor vertex

The area around it is not selected, so it stands out. In this case I would manually delete the vertex and re-connect the vertices together in the surrounding area to fix this problematic area.

Enter edit mode select one such vertex like you did in your screenshot and press Shift + G > Select Similar > Amount of connecting Edges

Exercise some caution as this will automatically select all vertex that belong only to two edges as the selected one. Be sure to inspect all the selected vertex to make sure no desirable corner vertex are mistakenly selected.

Then you can safely use X > Dissolve Vertex to delete the non-destructively


How can a evenly spaced grid with a circular boundary be modeled? I can't loop cut a circle and if I use the knife tool to go across the vertices the edges won't be evenly spread.
I was originally thinking of loop cutting the circle, beveling those edges and then deleting the faces in between, but that proved impossible very quickly.

My next thought was to use a plane and use the knife project to cut a circle out from it, but stupid me then realized I would need the area AROUND the circle to be deleted from the plane and not the circle itself. Haven't worked with many circles (obviously).

Any guidance here would REALLY be appreciated. I'm totally stuck.

Grid first, then cut it by Knife Projecting a circle.

I would start by modeling the evenly spaced grid with a couple of Array modifier (one to repeat the geometry on the X axis and one on the Y). Check the Merge boxes to avoid obtain disconnected geometry.

Apply the two modifiers, then create the circle and Knife project it on the grid.

Invert selection and delete the unwanted faces. Now Inset the faces individually, Extrude, Mirror the result, and so on...

In my example I also Beveled the edges and added a Lattice modifier after some Simple Subdivison iterations as you can see in the modifier tab on the right.

Bonus:

You can loopcut a circle's faces if you model them properly (no tris, axial edge flow) as shown in the gif below:

but it would be trickyer to get an evely spaced grid because of the vertices distribution along the circle. That's why is better to model the grid first.


Using an object/curve as a stencil or mask of sorts for texture paint I'm currently trying to retexture a Spider-Man model I made, and the webbing on his suit are proving to be difficult. I modeled them first, and have been trying to use different methods of baking for them, none of which have really come out great. So now, I'm resorting to trying out texture paint, and simply tracing the webs isn't quite working out all that well. So I'm curious, is there any way I could use his 3D modeled webs as a mask of sorts while texture painting onto the suit model? Like, a way I could be in texture paint mode on the suit model, and if my brush went over a part of the webbing's model, it wouldn't paint onto the suit. Sorry if I didn't explain that quite right, thanks in advance!

You could bake an ambient occlusion pass to a texture that would give you black where the web intersects or touches the suit mesh.


Bulging Garden Hose Animation I am trying to create a setup that will let me send meshes along a path deforming a mesh that surrounds that same path. Pretty much like in a cartoon fluids travel on the inside of a strawer, bulging the strawer or garden hose or whatever object outward in the process.

I have found a video that illustrates the concept, but it is a setup for 3DS and I cannot replicate that in Blender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Iq_cTS1uo

So far, I have tried using the warp modifier, but that does not take the objects shape into consideration.

Is there a way to move one object through the other and displacing the outer object's vertices by those of the inner one?

The cast modifier should let you do exactly what is in the video, with only a couple of steps.

To set it up, you will need a hose object with fairly dense geometry, and an object to pass through the hose.

To set up the system, you will need to have the object (I'm going to use a sphere as an example since that was the object in the video) positioned at one end of the hose, and animated to move through it. I would think a curve would be the best way to animate the object, and you could also use the same curve to bend the hose.

Once you have the animation set up, simply add a cast modifier to the hose, select the sphere in the control object box and then adjust the radius until the hose completely covers the object.


Modeling Related Question How to model this piece?

I  am new to blender, I have tried many times but failed to get this shape of the piece especially the curve  inside the mesh.

Its a sniper model the name is Ai AS50  and here is what I have done so far as i wanted to block out this piece I have attached my work as well as the reference that I am using

I would use boolean operations to model the curved insets on the gun that you circled:

if you have a solid part of the gun:

Model a second object that is the shape you want your inset to be:

Position your second object to overlap your gun. Then add a boolean modifier set to difference to the gun shape, and select the second object. After hiding the second object, you will easily get a curved inset:


Diamond Material on Blender Render engine? Is there a way to create a convincing diamond like material on a render made with the Blender Render engine?
On the internet it seems to be dozens of tutorials for the Cycles Render engine, but as unbiased path tracing engine it's just way beyond what i'm looking for. Instead of realism I'm looking for a cartoonist looking refraction.
Something akin to THIS instead of THIS.
Thanks.

As suggested by user277143 I created a Gradient Texture using Photoshop and then overlapped the mesh to give an internal refraction effect. The effect is very subtle but is there.
On the screen shot you can see that I added (perhaps too many) flat meshes as light sources, additional to a Sun and Hemi lights, in order to create some additional reflection. (The Material reflective is 0.25)
I think it looks marvelous, just like I wanted it. :)

Edit: user277143 also suggested using Shade smooth (Ctrl+F > Alt+H), which I did, and the results on the borders are marvelous, albeit for some reason it changes the reflections on the flat areas. ;)


Alt+Shift+ not work for me I successfully select group of edges use Alt+RightMouseButton, but when I need highlight one more group of edges and use Shift+Alt+RightMouseButton, the old selection is deleted and the new selection is not highlighted (In theory, it action should save old selection and add new). How i can fix that?

Assuming it is not an issue with your keyboards shift key or an external program interfering with its function. (Network Mouse Applications usually interfere)

Goto User Preferences -> Input -> 3D View -> 3D View (Global) -> Activate Select Look for the Shift+Alt+Select Mouse Entry. It should have Toggle Selection and Enumerate checked. If it does not exist you have to create it or reset your whole keybindings.


Align Object to Vector using python I am trying to rotate an object using python, inline with a vector which gives me the direction I want (based on the difference between the last two coordinates of the curve I generated). I therefore have a vector which I'd like to align this object but not the XYZ angles. The options to specify rotation (XYZ Euler...) all seem to require some sort of angle definition. I've started playing with numpy with I'm not experienced enough to find the answer.
Would you be able to advise what would be the best way to align an object to a vector and (if necessary) how I could convert the vector coordinates in XYZ_Euler angles I could apply to the object?
for instance, Vector=[1,1,1] and I would like to rotate the object along this vector.
Thanks for your help

update
Thanks guys, DirectionVector.to_track_quat('X', 'Z') did the trick very nicely!
#define direction
Vector=(1,1,1)
DirectionVector = mathutils.Vector(Vector)
#apply rotation
bpy.context.object.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'
bpy.context.object.rotation_quaternion = DirectionVector.to_track_quat('Z','Y')

Try this:
DirectionVector.to_track_quat('X', 'Z').to_euler()

mathutils.Vector.to_track_quat in the docs


How to constrain an object to a compound child? I have a rigid-body vehicle made up of parts with compound collision enabled, so that the parts don't collide with each-other (for optimization purposes).

I'd like to constrain the rear wheel to a bit that rotates according to the whims of the player, but for some reason this doesn't work.

Here's an example .blend:

I'd like to get the Rear Wheel object to follow the Tail object when the player presses ← Left arrow and → Right arrow, while still rotating freely around its local Z axis.

I would've expected changing Rear Wheel's constraint target from Body to Tail to accomplish exactly this, however the constraint then doesn't work at all.

The issue can be clearly seen if you put it into physics visualization mode:

The physics engine never notices that the tail rotates!

Now, why is this? This is because compound objects don't necessarily update the physics mesh other than at game start. I'm not entirely sure of all the details, but you this issue with parenting and physics not always doing what you expect comes up quite regularly.

The reason why changing the constraint to the tail makes the joint fail entirely is that when the parent has 'compound' enabled, the child's mesh is appended to the parent's mesh, and a physics mesh is generated for the parent+child object. This physics object is assigned to the parent, and the child is ignored by the physics engine entirely.

As to the solution, There are two ways:

1) The first is to disable the parent's "compound" option, preventing the child from being ignored by the physics engine. Then the two objects collide, so one of them will have to be set to ghost to prevent the perpetual collision sending the parent and child flying.

2) The second method is to attach the child to the parent not by parenting, but with a second rigid body joint. The issue with this is that, if you wish to steer the tail, you have to create that constraint from python so you can use the rather poorly documented constraint.setParem() method to control it.
This is the method I use whenever I simulate vehicles, such as this n-wheel steer thing:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17630723/Blends/Rover-packed.blend
(I'm actually quite proud of the math controlling that vehicle. It calculates the wheel velocities and angles for a wheeled vehicle to move along a certain path with minimal wheel slip)


How do I pack textures for sending off to a render farm Whenever i try to send a project off to a render farm such as sheepit, it says it needs the textures packing with the file in order to render correctly.

How would I do this?

Go to File-Exernal Data-Pack All into blend.


Why the edges displayed in render As shown in the picture, why the square in the red circle looks lighter? I can see the edges in the middle. The normal is correct in edit mode. The shading smooth is is clicked. It looks good in materials.

Select the object in object mode and turn on smooth shading for the whole object.


How to merge all scene geometry into a single mesh? I would like to have all the geometry of a scene merged in one mesh. It should include curves, fonts, group instances, particles, with applied modifiers, etc...
obj.to_mesh doesn't work for group instances for example.

First make all duplis real, then convert all to mesh and join.

Object -> Apply -> Make Duplicates Real
Object -> Convert to -> Mesh (This applies mesh modifiers too)
Select the base object to join into (Shift+RMB)
Object -> Join

Shorthand: Ctrl+Shift+A -> Alt+C, M -> Shift+RMB -> Ctrl+J.

Note, You might want to first un-hide all objects, view all layers and make any linked data local too, thats if you want to apply to the entire scene and not just what you see.


How to use bpy.ops.macro - defining macro steps I found this code and tried to understand it. As far as I understand macro allows step by step execution. But I struggle to make it work right.

As far as I understand one has to define what each macro command is
and then generate an operator that works off each macro command - right?

Sadly the Blender Python manual does not explain the use of macro well, or I did not find it.

Here is the code I have:

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, Macro

# Our finalizing operator, shall run after transform
class Finalize(Operator):
    bl_idname = "test.finalize"
    bl_label = "Finalize"

    def execute(self, context):
        print("DONE!")
        return {'FINISHED'}

class Make(Operator):
    bl_idname = "test.make"
    bl_label = "Make"

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

# Macro operator to concatenate transform and our finalization
class Test(Macro):
    bl_idname = "TEST_OT_Test"
    bl_label = "Test Macro"

    def execute(self, context):
        # Note that we have to register classes first before populating
        # the Macro operator
        bpy.utils.register_class(Finalize)
        bpy.utils.register_class(Make)
        bpy.utils.register_class(Test)

        # The important bit: populate the macro operator with a sequence
        # of existing other operators
        Test.define("test.make")
        Test.define("test.finalize")
        return {'FINISHED'}

# BUTTON
class ObjectData(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Object + Mesh Data"
    bl_idname = "ObjectData"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Modeling Toolbox"

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

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        self.layout.operator("TEST_OT_Test")

# END
def register(): bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
def unregister(): bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Here is a corrected version: the Test.define needed different values.
Works perfect now - even including calling the transform and waiting till that is done so you script can continue with the next command/macro!

The transformation is started via calling Test.define("TRANSFORM_OT_translate") between the first and last macro step.

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, Macro

#End : Snap 3D Cursor and delete empty
class Finalize(Operator):
    bl_idname = "s3dc.finalize"
    bl_label = "Finalize S3DC"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected()
        bpy.ops.object.delete();
        print("DONE!")
        return {'FINISHED'}

#Start : Create the empty
class Make(Operator):
    bl_idname = "s3dc.make"
    bl_label = "Make S3DC"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
        print('Started')
        return {'FINISHED'}

#Execute : Start the macro sequence
class S3DC(Macro):
    bl_idname = "s3dc.trigger_macro"
    bl_label = "S3DC Macro Sequence"

# UI Button in Tool Shelfe
class ObjectData(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Object + Mesh Data"
    bl_idname = "ObjectData"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Modeling Toolbox"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("s3dc.trigger_macro", text="Run Set 3D Cursos macro")

# END
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

    S3DC.define("S3DC_OT_make")
    S3DC.define("TRANSFORM_OT_translate")  # This starts the transformation command
    S3DC.define("S3DC_OT_finalize")

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How to change object geometry over time in the same model from the command line? I'd like to write a python script can change (not delete and re-create) the geometry of an object AFTER the initial object has already been loaded by blender.

To clarify, here are the 3 basic steps:

I write a python file (import bpy, time, ...) that includes some geometric object.
Through the command line, I open blender and import the python file into blender.

  ~/tools/Blender-2.79-CellBlender/blender -P ~/src4/.../filename.py

blender opens, the initial geometry loads, then the geometry periodically changes as the python file runs through a time delayed function that changes the geometry of that object.

I don't want blender to open a new window every time the geometry changes, it should just update the existing model.

I believe this is called periodic display, but I couldn't find any helpful resources online.

I'm running Debian 8, Blender 2.79, python 3.7.3.

In case it's relevent, here's my python code that I'm importing in:

import bpy, time

#remove all default objects
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['Camera'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['Lamp'].select = True
bpy.ops.object.delete()

#time delayed loop that adds geometry. I want to CHANGE, not add the geometry.
for x in range(1,10):
    len = x
    #Define box
    verts = [(-len,.5,.3),
             (len,.5,.3),
             (len,-.5,.3),
             (-len,-.5,.3),
             (-len,.5,-.3),
             (len,.5,-.3),
             (len,-.5,-.3),
             (-len,-.5,-.3),
            ]
    faces = [(0, 1, 2, 3),(4,5,6,7),(0,4,7,3),(1,5,6,2),(0,1,5,4),(3,2,6,7)]
    edges = []

    my_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new('Meshy')
    my_object = bpy.data.objects.new('Objey', my_mesh)
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(my_object)
    my_mesh.update(calc_edges=True)
    time.sleep(1)

Right now it just waits 10 seconds to run through the loop, then opens blender with 9 separate boxes, as one would expect. As indicated above, this is not what I want to do.

Well, I still can't find a way to change an object, but I did find out how to delete the current object and create a slightly altered object for every frame.

The key is to use bpy.app.handlers:

import bpy, math

#remove all default objects
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['Camera'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['Lamp'].select = True
bpy.ops.object.delete()

#Define box
verts = [(0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         (0,0,0),
         ]
faces = [(0, 1, 2, 3),(4,5,6,7),(0,4,7,3),(1,5,6,2),(0,1,5,4),(3,2,6,7)]
edges = []

my_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new('Meshy')
my_object = bpy.data.objects.new('Objey', my_mesh)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(my_object)

my_mesh.from_pydata(verts, edges, faces)
my_mesh.update(calc_edges=True)

def change_geom(scene):
    #assign frame number
    f = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    #assign vertex values
    d = 5*math.sin(f/1000*180/3.141592)
    z = 1+math.sin(f/(250)*180/3.141592)

    #delete previous geometry
    bpy.data.objects['Objey'].select = True
    bpy.ops.object.delete()

    #create new geometry
    verts = [(-d,d,z),
             (d,d,z),
             (d,-d,z),
             (-d,-d,z),
             (-d,d,-z),
             (d,d,-z),
             (d,-d,-z),
             (-d,-d,-z),
            ]
    faces = [(0, 1, 2, 3),(4,5,6,7),(0,4,7,3),(1,5,6,2),(0,1,5,4),(3,2,6,7)]
    edges = []

    my_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new('Meshy')
    my_object = bpy.data.objects.new('Objey', my_mesh)
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(my_object)

    my_mesh.from_pydata(verts, edges, faces)

#calls the function every time you change frames
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(change_geom)

Still looking to find a way to alter existing geometry instead of re-creating it (which is way less efficient)!


Settings to fill an open container with objects I am trying to create a natural arrangement of rubber thimbles in a jar.  What is the easiest method of doing this?

I've tried various settings with the jar being passive and using the various collision types like box, cylinder and mesh but none seem to work.

I tried dropping the thimbles into the jar but they either stop early and spill over or go through the jar! Is it better to use some sort of particle distribution? Thanks.

You can use rigid body physics to do this, make sure of the following:

All modifiers that you want to affect the simulation are applied

The jar has thickness

The jar is set to Mesh collision type to allow objects inside of it

You may also want to enable Split impulse in Scene > Rigid body world to prevent intersecting objects flying apart at high speed.

To arrange the thimble objects above the jar you could use the Randomize Transform tool (Space> Randomize Transform)
Once you have simulated the objects falling into the container and you want to remove the physics but keep the location/rotation for a specific frame, you can do this by:

Select the objects you want to bake into posistion

Press Bake to keyframes in 3D view > Tool shelf (N) > Rigid body tools and set the Start and End frames to the frame you want to keep:

Press OK. This will remove the rigid body physics settings from all selected objects, and add a single keyframe on the specified frame.

You can then remove this keyframe (AltI).

Result:


texture paint isnt working in certain places I've been working on an axe, the 3D model is complete and I'm working on texturing. Most of it textured no problem but there is little bits that wont texture whatever I do.

I fixed It I just sighlighted the faces that had the bits of texcture missing and projected them from view and moved it to part of the image with the same colour


Get the ViewLayer of a Mesh If you wished to cull meshes/lights/cameras for export, based on the value of exclude value of the view layer of the collection that the object was in, how would you find the view layer?

While the names of the collection & view layer are the same, this much more complicated due view layers being able to be inside of view layers.

The tree of view layers starts at
bpy.context.window.view_layer.layer_collection for the master collection, the top level view layers are in .children, but each of those can also have .children.

Kind of seems like I would just need to resort to checking .visible_get() on the object.  Was already using that to indicate in the export whether the object should be visible on import though.

I do not know that a mesh can have more than one item for users_collection.  Assuming not then this works.

def shouldBeCulled(self, object):
    collectionName = object.users_collection[0].name
    return self.collectionExcluded(bpy.context.window.view_layer.layer_collection, collectionName)
# - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
def collectionExcluded(self, viewLayer, collectionName):
    print('looking for ' + collectionName + ' in ' + viewLayer.name)
    if collectionName == viewLayer.name:
        return viewLayer.exclude

    for childViewLayers in viewLayer.children:
        result = self.collectionExcluded(childViewLayers, collectionName)
        if result is not None:
            print('result for ' + collectionName + ' is ' + str(result))
            return result

    return None


Modelling from 1 object or more? I'm trying to learn how to use Blender, and thinking about making a model like the can in the photo. I'm thinking of starting it from a plane, extruding all over the model, and make it all from that.

But my question is: How can I make the round form of the tap, and make it morph into the box as in the picture.

Is this the right way of creating such a model? Or, is it better to use an extra cylinder for the tap, and the handle?

A Simplified Sample

One mesh for the body of the container.  Cap not included.

Above in a progression of left to right, top to bottom

Blue Cube Scaled
Yellow  Loop Cuts
Blue with faces deleted in the Handle area .. dark back faces
Yellow [Bridge Edge Loops] so the handle with internal edges are present
Blue Spout trough and crests with [Proportional Edit]
Yellow with Subdivision Surface Modifier which smooths the corners in this example.
For the round spout use [Extrude] and the add on ... Loop Tools.  That should be a different question.  Not shown in the above example.
Extrude will be useful for decorative ridges.  Not shown.

The above has no detailed instructions since a Video Tutorial would be an efficient use of time for someone very new to Blender. This was mentioned in the comment. This proposed answer is not a tutorial. It can serve as a discardable practice model.  Blender Stack Exchange is not focused on artistry, but rather technique, question and answer.  I am sure you can be more artistic in your work than the simple model above.  Inspect and Improve the sample.

Click to see larger image above.


Anyone know why my reflection is appearing noisy/weird I am trying to create a scene where the reflection of the pumpkin and the lights can be seen in the floors surface, but for some reason when I render it goes weird and goes really noisy. Is there a setting I can change to fix this, as I want a realistic reflection. It even happened like this with the bump map on the pumpkins surface.
It looks like this.

Any help would be great thanks!

Without looking at the nodes for the floor it's hard to be sure, but it looks like you gave the floor material a little bit of Roughness, which creates noise that becomes "blotchy" when the Denoiser tries to fix it.
Options you can try:

Set Roughness to zero (unless you really really wanted it)
Increase the samples of your render (if you can wait)
Stop using the built-in denoiser and use the compositor Denoiser instead (if you can't wait AND need the roughness to stay the way it is)


How do I fix these black seams on my object? Okay so this question sounds pretty weird but hear me out.

My problem is this:

Do you see the black seams running between parts of the texture? (It looks way worse when the camera is pointing from the bottom). This problem became a problem because I used the "Subdivide Smooth" tool on just the upper parts of the snow that didn't touch the stone. Above the seam is where I used subdivide smooth, and below the seam is where I didn't. Clearly the cause of this is that I used subdivide smooth on part of the mesh but not all of it, and the non-smooth and smooth parts of the mesh are interacting all weird.
Here is what the seam looks like in edit mode (A top down view),
Okay so the problem is pretty obvious here. Do you see the part of the mesh that juts out, yet isn't an edge? That's my "Seam" that is being incredibly annoying, I think the reason you get those black lines is because it's jutting out and casting a shadow onto the mesh below it.

Now I've found a "solution" to this problem. The solution is that I delete the face that has the seam, and then I make two smaller faces (this isn't a subdivision by the way, so I can't just automate this process). Here is an example of this:
Now I know what you're thinking. "Congrats you answered your own question, thanks for wasting my time." But the reality is that this problem is prevalent across the entire object and I'd have to do this process like, a thousand times, in order to fix the whole entire object. I'm just wondering if there might be a way to solve this problem in one go, rather than having to do each face individually.

I get this was long so thank you for your time.

First of all if you have holes that make those black lines, fill them by selecting everything in editmode, pressing Space and typing "Fill Holes" and Enter.

Next if you had no holes or if you successfully filled them press Space again and type "Degenerate Dissolve" and press Enter. Try to increase the Merge Distance in the Toolshelf if it does not work immediately.


Modeling curvy things with blender I am having a problem with modeling objects that have curves like ps4 controller, cars, etc.
is there an easy way to do that.

The main way of modeling curved things is to use Subdivision Surface modeling.  The idea of subsurf modeling is to model the basic blocky shape, then apply a Subdivision Surface modifier to the mesh.  Subsurf works by recursively subdividing and smoothing the mesh.  To make sharper corners you can add proximity cuts.  Proximity cuts are loop cuts (Ctrl+R) which are made close to corners in the mesh to tighten up the smoothing at that corner.

Here is a very simple example of a game controller like object which I have modeled.  You can see the base mesh is the black wireframe cage and the grey solid mesh is after subsurf.  Proximity cuts are highlighted in orange.


How to fit "n" identical objects in a circle? I have to fit some n identical cylinders in a circular cross-section of diameter D. I was trying to use the array modifier but that seems to work for duplicating on the curve and not inside the curve. Is there any way to achieve it from the GUI or any other alternative way using python?

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=49632
HERE is solution with maybe many of circles


Import/export 3ds format in Blender 2.8 I need to import and specially export in 3DS format. I know that I can import a file in 2.79 and the copy-paste to 2.8, but then when I copy-paste it back to 2.79 I'm having problems with textures missing.
Is there any way to import/export 3ds in 2.8 without using any other version or software like we did in 2.79? The extension is missing in the add-ons repository either.

As @robert-gützkow mentioned, the 3DS addon is still being worked on. It appears to work fine with Blender all the way up to version 2.92. It just hasn't been merged into the main build due to some technicalities that haven't been resolved.
The easiest place to get the current version of the addon is from the Github mirror.
Download all of the scripts (Code->Download .zip) and then pick a method to install the io_scene_3ds addon. Personally, I zipped up the io_scene_3ds directory and used the 'Install...' option to install io_scene_3ds.zip. You could alternatively dump the whole  blender-addons-contrib repository into your blender user scripts directory as discussed here: Installing an addon
Once the addon is installed the import/export menus will have a .3ds option.


Printing from List Comprehensions - I'm still not getting this - Help? Learning Process question:
This produces a list (which is great!!)
a = [x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")]
a
['00000000DE66']

print(a)
['00000000DE66']

However, trying to just Print based on the comprehension I get Syntax errors or generator object  returns.
    print((x.name) for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"))
    <generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001F6F5BD7F48>

    (x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"))
    <generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001F6F5CA87C8>

    print(([x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")]))
    []

    print([x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"])
    File "<blender_console>", line 1

    print([x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"])
                                                                                ^
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax

a = (x for x.name in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"))
a
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001F6F5CA87C8>

This is what I'm trying to produce through Comprehension:
for x in objects:
     if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"):
         print(x.name)

OutPut:
00000000DE66

So I can smack myself in the side of the head instead of thumping my forehead on the desktop, what am I doing wrong in my comprehension build ups?
Do I have to remove the "and"s and put in separate "if" statements?
That doesn't work either
a = (x.name for x in objects if not x.hide if not x.parent  if x.name not in mdlParent if x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"))
a
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001F6F5CA87C8>

a = (x for x.name in objects if not x.hide if not x.parent  if x.name not in mdlParent if x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT"))
a
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001F6F5BD7F48>

You assign a list comprehension to a variable:
a = [x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")]

and the variable prints correctly both when you invoke it in the terminal and when you pass it to the print statement. Why not then, replace the a in your print statement, with the expression that you assign to a? The result will be the same:
print([x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")])

However, you actually tried that and got an empty list as a result:
print(([x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")]))

Additional parentheses are irrelevant (and redundant), so it should work. I suspect something happened before you executed this line of code, so that it no longer produced the expected result. To confirm, just after executing this line, try to execute again the lines that work, that is
a = [x.name for x in objects if not x.hide and not x.parent and x.name not in mdlParent and x.type not in ("MESH", "CAMERA", "LIGHT")]
a

It's very important that you execute both of these lines, as executing only the second one wouldn't recalculate the result and only display the result that has been calculated during the previous state of the project.
If you still have problems, please upload your .blend file: Blend-exchange
Some explanation on the confusing stuff: a list comprehension has a form of [... for ...]. If you don't use square or curly brackets, then it's a generator expression, which is significantly different than comprehensions, because it's not evaluated in place but instead creates a generator object, which keeps its state so you can read from it one value at a time. So if you do (don't) [i for i in range(100000000000000000)] it will hang and eventually eat all memory. Meanwhile (i for i in range(100000000000000000)) creates an object not much heavier than the single line of code defining it.
For a generalized code:
for step_variable in an_iterable:
    if condition:
        print(step_variable)

In order to mimic it exactly with a oneliner, it is a common practice to do this:
print(*[step_variable for step_variable in an_iterable if condition], sep="\n")

In this case it doesn't matter [other than performance-wise] if you use a generator expression instead, because the asterisk operator * would consume it entirely. sep argument is set to the same as end argument (which defaults to "\n") to mimic multiple prints for each of the unpacked values by the asterisk operator *.


Fill a hole with a new vertex and then triangulate Hi have a mesh where each internal vertex has 6 neighbours. However there's a hole in the mesh I'd like to fill by creating a new vertex and then join the 6 closest neighbours, see picture below. Any suggestion how I can do that?

Basically I want to pass from a situation where I have the stuff in the red circle to a connectivity like the one highlighted in green.

Fill and Poke

Select the perimeter vertices (or edges) of the hole.
Fill with an ngon F
Poke the ngon ⎇ Alt P


UV unwrap proportions aren't consistent with model So I've applied Rotation and Scale to my model in object mode and when I unwrap in edit mode, some sections aren't holding the correct proportions. In the picture you can see what I'm talking about. I'm making a stadium and so the risers are a smaller dimension than the step. On some sections, it unwraps correctly but on others, the steps and risers appear to be the same size.

Is there anything that could be effecting this?

What ended up fixing the issue for me was to go to the Unwrap operation panel and switch it to Conformal instead of Angle.


Boundary smooth like in Recap Photo I'm fairly new to Blender. I'm wondering, does anyone know if a tool in blender that does what the Smooth Boundary tool does in Autodesk Recap Photo? This tool allows you to select a boundary edge on an object that is jagged mesh triangles and it will then modify the edge to make it smooth. If Blender doesn't have a tool, does anyone know how to achieve the same result in Blender?
Thanks

The smooth vertex tool might provide the help that you wish for.  It is on the tool panel (type "t" to open) under the "tools" tab (view first image).

You can then edit how the amount it smooths it and how many times to repeat the process.  (view second image).
You can also decide which axis it uses to smooth the vertices.  You do this by checking/unchecking the boxes underneath the smoothing settings (green circle on second image).

This may be what you wanted, and it may not.  If this did not help, please let me know, and I will do my best to help you.  Best of luck!


Extruding snaps back I'm using blender 2.8 for over 2 weeks now.

If I extrude a face, it snaps back into place. But only when the extrusion is under 0.200 meters.

I did check the "snapping" setting, but its not that.

Maybe you have automerge turned on, or with a too high threshold.

Turn it off or reduce the threshold in the Tool tab of the 3D Viewport sidebar


How can I manually fix nonplanar geometry? I'm going through a course on blender. The course teaches blender through the use of several projects. Right now I'm modeling a low-poly chess set, and we've arrived at the knight. Because we made the knight free-form (just extruding faces and edges up from the base), and because we want to stay as quad-based as possible (to preserve loop cuts), there are a lot of nonplanar faces.

I've modeled my knight, and would now like to fix the nonplanar quads. Most of them only need one or two vertices pushed a small distance (typically less than 0.05BU). My problem is that I can't push them the right way.

In all of the transform orientations (global, normal, gimbal, etc.) the axes never point in the exact direction I need to push the vertex. The closest I can come is the view oreintation, which isn't exact for those vertices not perpendicular/parallel to a side (front, top, right, etc.).

So how can I fix my faces? Is there a way to fix nonplanar quads? Do note that this is a low-poly model, meant to look blocky. The subdivision modifier will not be used.

Note that in the course, the instructor simply uses the edge split modifier. I don't like that, as it is not fixing the geometry, and my model still has triangulation on it (the modifier essentially does nothing). Even if it did work, I would prefer to actually fix the problem instead of pretending it's not there.

You can download the file here. Note that I am using the mirror modifier, which is why there is only half of a knight. You'll have to turn both modifiers off and turn mesh analysis on to see which faces are non-planar.

I will compile multiple methods here from various sources.

The methods for a single face will work for multiple faces if you choose
Individual Origins as the Pivot center for rotating/scaling. However, this will only work for faces which aren't adjacent. If they share common edges, the single face options will treat them as one large face.

Scale along normal (single face)

Select the vertices of a face, choose the Normal Transform Orientation, then scale along the Normal Z axis. You can do this with the scale manipulator or by pressing SZZ. You can make a single face planar by scaling to 0 with SZZ0.

LoopTools Flatten (single face)

If not already, activate the preinstalled LoopTools Addon. Select the face and choose the Fatten operation from the LoopTools addon. It is available in the 3DView toolshelf T under tools > LoopTools or in the specials menu W > LoopTools Flatten.

Make Planar Faces (multiple faces)

From this answer, there is a tool to make faces planar.

Shift single Vertex

In this answer is a script to make a face planar by only changing a single vertex. Select the three vertices of a face, which shouldn't change, then Shift select the vertex which should be shifted, marking it as the active vertex.
Then, call the Flatten Vertex operator (see the linked answer for details).

Note, that this will not update the Mesh Analysis display. But that will update after a Zero operation, like G0.


Is it possible to leave an object unrendered? This does sound strange but let me explain.

What I'm trying to do is an animation in blender that involves planets rotating and when I render the footage it looks okay except for one object, which looks better unrendered.

This object is a sphere with the hair particle effect but instead of hair strands, I've swapped them for uv spheres to make stars(I was following a tutorial) and when I rendered it, it didn't come out with the same realistic stars, just some very bland basic dots.

So this "space" sphere that acts as my background is what I want to leave unrendered while the rest is rendered.

This is the tutorial I followed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSeBoIDJV4&t=312s&list=PLrK_z0ZJOEyGDSGgNlr0Bk37rCXFchk4I&index=81

The issue I encountered with this tutorial is when he starts using nodes which doesn't work on my version of blender and I don't know what version the instructor is using P:

Also due to copyright I can't upload any part of this model.

Update:
I just upgraded to version 2.79 and I cannot find the render cycle option in the menu, is this what you meant?

You probably forgot to switch from Blender render to Cycles.

To switch from Blender render to Cycles, simply click on the drop-down menu near the top of the screen. It's right next to the little blender logo icon. Select "Cycles" Render from the list and you should be good.

Unless you have a version older than 2.42 (which was released in July of 2006), you have nodes. It's just a matter of opening the node view and selecting the correct material.

To open the node view, divide the 3d view area into two and then switch the second view's editor type to Node Editor.


Space planes evenly in an oval I have an oval and a couples of a planes I want to distribute with the same distance between them.

The oval is like this:

The planes like this:

So I tried already a lot of things. At first I started with cubes using arrays but they deformed. So I use the array and curve modifier to put planes into the oval and then parent the cubes. And that solved the problem of deformation but as I get closer of the X axis (X=0) the planes/cubes/whatever gets closer between each other compared to the near section of Y=0.

Example:

The idea is to copy this structure all around the oval (the distances between the exterior vertices are 3.10m):

(Yes, the first image got more planes at the base because I need them for references)

Dupliframes may be a good way for you here

First, ensure that the origin of your object is placed at the point of the object's mesh which you wish to lie on the curve. To make things easier, align your object so that, untransformed, the local axis you wish to follow the curve is on world Y. (You can change this later, but it's nice not to have to.)

On the plane (or tower) Object Properties > Duplication > check 'Frames'

On the curve, Curve Data > check 'Path animation' and the number of duplicates required in 'Frames', and check 'Follow' if you want the orientation of the duplicates to be tangential to the curve.

Be careful to apply any Object Mode scaling you may have  put on your curve.

Having parented the object to the curve 'Clear its Origin' (AltO, (letter'O')) You can do this at any time, to bring the object's and its duplicates' origins to lie on the curve).

If you need to correct the rotation of the master and its duplicates, with the pivot point set to 'Individual Origins',  rotate the master object around its own pivot point.

I'm confident the object centers are parametrically evenly spaced on the curve - (the tool gives a constant speed in animation) .. but there is a difference in spacing if you use the straight-line approximations to the curve, since, near Y=0 the straight line 'cuts the corner' more than near X=0.


How do i open this menu so i closed the menu on the right of the screen, the left is opened with "T" is there a shortcut to open the right one? And no not the one opened with "N".

See here :

Your could go to File >> Load Factory Settings

Or you could do the following:

Good Luck


After Blender is done installing, why doesn't it open? After I install Blender.exe and click "Finish" nothing happens. In the YouTube tutorials I have watched, everyone has had a cmd looking thing that pops up and then runs Blender.

All you need to do is to click your start menu, the Windows icon located in the bottom left corner, then select "All Programs" and Blender should be in the list.


How can I modify the Default Blender Keymap within my Add-on module registration code? Consider the following script block:
import bpy
wm = bpy.context.window_manager    # get window manager
_defaultkm = wm.keyconfigs.default.keymaps    # get default keymap

# try retrieving the keymap_item for the view3d.move operator
# unfortunately, keymap_items at register() time is always empty
_move = _defaultkm['3D View'].keymap_items.get('view3d.move')
_move.active = False    # disable that item

It's purpose is to disable a specific shortcut which is shipped with Blender. If you run this in the Text Editor within a Blender session, it works as I wished and disables one of the standard keymap items.
However, my issue is that I'd like to run that code within the register() function of an Add-on. Within that function, _defaultkm will hold a valid Python object, but keymap_items contains no items at all and get() always returns None, causing the last line of the code to fail. It's worth noting that this fails on all different tricks of retrieving keymaps (such as the one mentioned here), it seems as if I can only access my own Add-on keymaps from within the module registration code.
Is there a way to circumvent this?
Edit
I tried a solution using a persistent frame change handler, hooked up to the load_post event. Still, I was unable to access and change the keymap from there, the issue is the same.

I had similar problems when tried to modify default key maps with python.
The keymap_items collection was empty at startup script but after the start, items were accessible.

The problem was solved using thread and time.sleep
It is not the best approach but working..

The load_post handler didn't work for application start but worked for file open.

I didn't find any "start_post" handler method.

here is the first code (startup scripts folder):

import bpy

wm = bpy.context.window_manager
kc = wm.keyconfigs.default
km = kc.keymaps['Screen Editing']
print('item count:',len(km.keymap_items))

#> "item count: 0"

here is the solved version

import bpy,_thread,time

wm = bpy.context.window_manager
kc = wm.keyconfigs.default
km = kc.keymaps['Screen Editing']

def thrd_func():
    time.sleep(.1)
    print('item count:',len(km.keymap_items))

_thread.start_new_thread(thrd_func,())

#> "item count: 12"

and with handler

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def hand_func(arg):
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.default
    km = kc.keymaps['Screen Editing']
    print('item count:',len(km.keymap_items))

bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(hand_func)


AMD GPU Rendering R7 Series I have an AMD Radeon R7 200 series in my desktop, and was wondering if it was compatible for OpenCL GPU rendering in Blender? I have researched and researched but have been unable to have my question answered. Thanks!

My previous card was a R7 200 series, my actual card is a R9 200 series. While both cards actually seem to work with Blender, there are two major drawbacks.

The actual driver is faulty and renders "TV stripes" into your image (see https://community.amd.com/thread/198677)
Blender's development team (like many others) sadly seems to focus on NVIDIA, thus AMD GPU (OpenCL) rendering is not that optimized than NVIDIA's (CUDA) (see https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-Slow-OpenCL-AMDGPU)

Even with the "good" drivers I haven't experienced much faster rendering.

Update: I just tested the current driver hotfix 16.8.1 under Windows 7. They seem to work significantly faster and also the "TV stripes" seem to be gone. Linux test might follow by the end of the week.


Weight painting problem : when I move the head of my character,the cloak also move but it shouldn't I'm trying to weight paint correctly my character. It's a roman soldier. The problem arises when I move the head,because the cloak also moves with it,but it shouldn't. I'm using the rigify + pitchypoi armature. I don't know what's the deform bone that stop the cloak movement. Check the attached video for a better understanding. I have also added the blender file. Thanks.

video

blender file

If you want to simulate the cloak with the cloth simulator, you'll have to remodel it. This cloak was made for a still model, it was not meant to be simulated. Two points to keep in mind :

A cloth to be simulated should have a non distorted starting shape, since the simulation will perform the distortions on it. If you leave the base mesh distorted, the surface will be completely uneven. It will look like some parts of the fabric are stretched.
a cloth simulation only works if the cloth is single-sided. Your cloak has 2 sides. If you perform a cloth simulation on it, the simulator will still consider every face a piece of fabric. So you're basically telling it this mesh is a double cloak (except both sides are joined at their boundaries). To give thickness to a single-sided simulated cloth you have to use a solidify modifier after the cloth modifier.

As for attaching parts to your character, you have to combine pinning and hooking :

In pose mode, select the bone you want your pinned cloth to follow
Shift select your cloth
Tab to enter edit mode
select the vertices of your cloth you want to attach
create a new vertex group and assign the selected vertices
In the vertex operators (Ctrl+V), go in Hooks > "Hook to selected object bone"
Move the hook modifier on top of the cloth modifier
In the cloth properties, enable Pinning and select the vertex group you just created.

Here's a simple example of the result :

And here's the file used for this gif :


Is there a way to adapt False Color to be seen for color blind people? I have severe red/green protonopia and find the red and green to be the same when I use False Color mode to calibrate lighting exposure.

I'm wondering if there is a way to get numeric feedback on parts of a surface I point at or a way to change the colors used in False Color so that I may be able to see them better. Also if not I'm wondering where I could recommend these kind of features.

It would be nice to have a tooltip with a numeric representation of the exposure of where on a surface I am pointing, or shift the colors represented somehow.

The False Color view transform is defined in the filmic_false_color.spi3d and referenced by the OCIO configuration in config.ocio. In order to add custom 3D lookup tables as new view transforms, they have to be stored in the .spi3d format and the config.ocio has to be modified to references these new files.

Update 2020-02-17: The re-write of the tool is complete. It now includes a proper command line interface, it allows to create your own colormaps or to load colormaps from viscm. The release includes lookup tables that should be suitable for people with color vision deficiency. Turbo has been removed from the list of colormaps since it's not useful for people with achromatopsia and it would require to license all code under the Apache license. The matplotlib colormaps are still available.

Update 2020-02-05: The correct mapping of middle grey to the center of the colormap is applied and relative luminance is used for the mapping.

Update 2020-02-04: The lookup tables now have a distinct color for both the low and high clipping range.

I've implemented a lookup table generator that allows you to create your own false color view transforms. Detailed instructions for the installation, colormap creation, arguments for the command line interface and integration into Blender are provided in the README.md.

The first release also includes two false color view transforms, Ignis and Agnoscis, designed for people with color vision deficiency using viscm. Additionally they've been analyzed with Coblis. The generated .spi3d files and custom ocio.config can be downloaded here.

Examples

Test Scene - View Transform: Filmic

Test Scene - View Transform: False Color Ignis

Test Scene - View Transform: False Color Agnoscis

Test Scene - View Transform: False Color Dante (based on Inferno)

Ignis Evaluation

Agnoscis Evaluation

Exposure value to color, Ignis (l) and Agnoscis (r)

Installation

Download the .spi3d files and custom ocio.config from the release page.
Open Blender's directory and navigate to [2.8x]\datafiles\colormanagement (the 2.8x is a placeholder for your Blender version).
Rename the original ocio.config in that directory, e.g. to ocio_old.config
Copy the custom ocio.config into the [2.8x]\datafiles\colormanagement directory
Create a directory/folder named custom in [2.8x]\datafiles\colormanagement
Copy the .spi3d files into [2.8x]\datafiles\colormanagement\custom

Usage

The new view transforms should be available in Render Properties > Color Management > View Transforms after a successful installation.


Texturing Scalable Vector Graphics I am trying to make an extruded version of this image of Gary Smith,

so I used GIMP to cut him out of the picture and exported the path as an SVG file, and imported it to blender and set it as 2D. But when I try to texture it, I get a completely black model.

How do I texture it?

Edit Mode:

If i understood the question here are steps follow it

Import the SVG file
Convert the curve to mesh by press Alt + C and select curve from Mesh
Go to edit mode Press U and select Project from view (Bounds)
Make a new window as node editor and connect the image.
Assign the material to the mesh.


Timer that can interact with context.object? i'd like to create a timer that can interract with the active object.
every time the active object is not the same as the object in my pointer prop it automatically replace pointer object with the active object.

i don't understand why they restric us doing this kind of things.
how can i achieve something similar ?

class SCATTER_OT_terrain_is_active(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "scatter.terrain_is_active"
    bl_label = ""
    bl_description = "Constantly use the active object as Terrain"

    def execute(self, context):
        addon_prefs = bpy.context.preferences.addons[__name__].preferences
        C_Slots     = bpy.context.scene.C_Slots_settings

        addon_prefs.active_is_terrain = not addon_prefs.active_is_terrain

        if addon_prefs.active_is_terrain == True:
            print("start timer")
            bpy.app.timers.register(check_active)
        else: print("stop timer")
        return {'FINISHED'}

def check_active():
    addon_prefs = context.preferences.addons[__name__].preferences
    C_Slots     = bpy.context.scene.C_Slots_settings
    Active      = bpy.context.object

    print("check")
    if addon_prefs.active_is_terrain == False:
        return None

    if Active != C_Slots.Terrain_pointer:
        C_Slots.Terrain_pointer = Active
    return 0.65

with a handler it may work

import bpy, os

ao = None

def h(s):
    # just for testing, normally i won't use global
    global ao
    o = bpy.context.active_object
    if(ao != o):
        ao = o
        print(ao)
    if ao.name == "Cam Small":
        return None

bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(h)

but that doesn't really respond to the goal of the question


Blender 2.8 - AWS EC2 command line EEVEE render I have been trying to get this to work for a couple days now. I have an EC2 P2 instance with NVIDIA CUDA configured by default, its a Deep learning Ubuntu AMI. This OS does not have a GUI so everything is via terminal.

I downloaded Blender's 2.8 TAR file for Linux and set it up on the EC2 instance. And ran the following command from the directory where the TAR file is extracted:

 ./blender -b -noaudio /home/ubuntu/file.blend --render-output . --engine BLENDER_EEVEE --render-format PNG --verbose 4

All I see in the output is this:

Blender 2.80 (sub 75) (hash f6cb5f54494e built 2019-07-29 17:17:04)
found bundled python: /mnt/blender/blender-2.80-linux-glibc217-
x86_64/2.80/python
Read blend: /home/ubuntu/file.blend

Blender quit

Don't know why its quitting but I am unable to debug this any further. Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE:
As per @rjg's recommendation, ran the following command:

./blender -b -noaudio /home/ubuntu/file.blend --render-output . --engine BLENDER_EEVEE --render-format PNG -f 1 --verbose 4

Got the following error:

Blender 2.80 (sub 75) (hash f6cb5f54494e built 2019-07-29 17:17:04)
found bundled python: /home/ubuntu/blender/blender-2.80-linux-glibc217-
x86_64/2.80/python
Read blend: /home/ubuntu/file.blend
Unable to open a display
Aborted (core dumped)

The actual problem is that Eevee does not support headless rendering.

Besides that the command misses a flag that tells Blender to render. Right now it will just open the userpref.blend with your settings and then close.

If you want to render the first frame, your command needs to contain -f 1.

blender -b -noaudio -E BLENDER_EEVEE -o . -F PNG -f 1

  -f, --render-frame <frame>

  Render frame  and save it.

  + start frame relative, - end frame relative.
  A comma separated list of frames can also be used (no spaces).
  A range of frames can be expressed using .. separator between the first and last frames (inclusive).

All flags can be found in Blender's manual.


how to create an object in real time by extruding I want to extrude an object in blender game engine to model a terrain. Suggestions please.

You can't. The BGE does not support mesh creation.

You can modify the positions of vertexes (= mesh deformation). The vertices needs to exist already.


Why does the offset of a linked duplicated array modifier change? Number of modifiers are the same, value for relative offset is set to z +1.00

Expected result:
When I alt + D to duplicate the object with modifiers the height of the offset items will be the same.

Observed result:
After alt+D the number of items, the number of modifiers applied and all the modifier values are duplicated correctly, but the actual distance between each item is not correct on the duplicate objects

What I'm trying to accomplish:
I made one window and I'm trying to apply it to the whole building, using array modifier and shrinkwrap modifier.

It's still a little difficult to tell what's going on, even with the image, but I'll take a stab at it.

I think you're seeing an interaction between the shrinkwrap modifier and the array modifier. It's a little complicated, so I'll try to be clear.

The relative offset will move the next item in the array by a multiple of that item's own size. In your case, it moves "the item's z height * 1.0" So, if your item's height were to change, the next item in the list would still be exactly on top of it, because it's moving "one item's height." If you change that multiple to anything bigger than 1, you'll have a gap.

This works fine when each version of your array is the same. BUT you have a shrinkwrap modifier, which can change the size and shape of your mesh, if it needs to. It looks like your shrinkwrap is "reaching" to wrap itself to the nearest thing it can find. This makes your mesh bigger. Now "one item height" is much bigger than it used to be. Now it has to offset a lot more on the z-axis to get the next item ontop of the previous one.

To test this, change the windows that are working from relative offset to absolute offset. Find an absolute offset amount that gets those windows stacked correctly. Then change the other windows to absolute, and use the same amount. If I'm right, you should see all the windows stacking correctly.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will solve your problem. The real solution will be to get your shrinkwrap under control so that it's behaving correctly. If you fix that, then you can use relative or absolute and get the same result.


Screen Space Reflection Flickering During Animation I'm trying to eliminate the "bouncing" or flickering reflection of an animated object rendered using EEVEE.  I have a simple text object on a semi-reflective surface (specular 1.0, roughness 0.25) and screen space reflections enabled.  When the camera is motionless, the reflection appears fine, but once the camera begins to move even slightly, the reflections begin to bounce and jitter as seen in the clip below.  I'm somewhat (erroneously?) confident this is something to do with EEVEE's screen space reflections.  The bouncing disappears when I render in cycles.

So, what exactly is happening here?  I have played with each screen space reflection setting, but none seem to eliminate the flicker.  The Blender manual mentions using a reflection plane, but also mentions that you lose the effects of subsurface scattering, volumetrics, and screen space reflection/refraction, which is not desirable.

Maybe I've gone down the wrong rabbit hole, but other basic troubleshooting such as increasing samples doesn't have any effect.  Of course, turning off screen space reflections eliminates the problem ...and the reflection, which isn't desired.

Any thoughts?

This is why you should use EEVEE more as a low budget render, fast interaction before making the final render with Cycles.
EEVEE is real-time, therefore less quality. The flickering probably only gonna disappear if you turn off the screen space reflection and use raytraced reflections
You can also use later Blender releases that improve SSRF.
I've been using rasterized screen space effects elsewhere and that flickering appears constantly, so I confidently say it's inherent to kind of SS effects, so it's probably impossible to remove it completely, only to minimize by bumping EEVEE render settings.


obj file not displayed properly I've an issue with an obj file.
Importing this file in blender:
http://156.54.99.175/3d/model.obj
the mesh not appear. Only by rotating and zooming-out something apperas, but not the whole geometry.

With other CAD and obj viewer the mesh is displayed correctly.
What's wrong?

Thanks!

The object is there, the it's huge (like 500m tall) press Numpad Period to display it. If the object is showing partially you might need to adjust the clip distance. Then you should scale your model down to something more usable...


how can i make a model from several smaller objects I am not too advanced into blender but i was wondering how you could make a model like a person made of several smaller objects (like korg from thor: ragnarok but a lot less detailed)

You can join meshes by selecting two meshes and hit CTRL-J. After that go edit mode and tidy up the resulting mesh by removing overlaps and by adding connections.


Rotate camera around animation with separate motion blur? Hopefully I'm asking this question correctly. Essentially I would like to animate a scene (baseball player hitting ball), add motion blur, and then animate a camera rotating around the player, but with only the ball blurred. In the final video composition, I want the motion blur applied to the ball to not be affected by the movement of the camera, but just the movement of the ball.

I want to capture this as if it were a still movement of an action scene, not something in motion. So I don't want the ball to actually move in the animation, just look blurred.

In real life I think you would stage a bunch of cameras around the scene and take a photo with all of them at the exact same moment, so when you string them together it looks like the camera is rotating around a single moment in time.

What would be the best way to pull off something like this?

Bullet Time-without time

You can make a fake blur by distorting you key moving object. In this example I have used a lattice to bend the ball

Then modify your material with a graduated blend texture, to make the ball transparent at the end of its fake motion.

Then your blur will cast the right shadow in 3D space, while a vector blur would not.

In order to 'fill in' the centre of the blurred ball you can add a Volumetric shader - similar to rendering smoke - using the same 'Factor' used to mix between the Diffuse and Transparent shaders to drive the Density.

Maths nodes are used to manipulate the 'mix' factor to generate the Density and an RGB node can be used to ensure the same color us used for the Diffuse and the Volumetrics.

Increase the Render properties Light Path Volume bounces to 3 or 4 and this should produce the following results :


How to export Python animation to gltf from Blender 2.80? I have some 3d objects that I use Python code to rotate. In the Blender preview this works fine.

How can I export the animation caused by the Python code to gltf? The normal gltf export exposes the objects but not the animation.

The glTF exporter is looking for animation keyframes in the NLA tracks for export.  If you have custom Python code that's just writing to the object transform on the fly, that's not going to be found by the exporter.  Your Python code will need to create actual animation keyframes, such that the exporter can read those keyframes and write them into the glTF file.


Make Human to Blender with IK doesn't work as expected I'm exporting the character from MakeHuman with the MHX format with a rig "CMU mb" or the "Game Engine". Then I imported the file to blender overriding the exported data and selecting the MHX as the Rig Type

After that I go to the MHX2 Runtime panel and switch all the FK to IK.

My problem: it doesn't work, if I grab the hand (or any part) it doesn't work as expected.

My blender version is 2.78.
Any ideas? Thanks.

Enable Autorun python scripts in user preferences


How to create squared glow? There is this square glow effect that a very kind person did for me in Blender:

The issue is, how does one do this effect?

Is there an option to separate the glow?

Or would one have to create several transparent planes which overlay each other? This would be cumbersome?

Many thanks

That image was created with a bunch of overlapping transparent planes which were created by extruding parts of a circle:

Add a circle (Shift+A> Mesh > Circle. Note that you may want to increase the Vertices in the redo menu for a smother curve.) Then delete some of the vertices so you only have part of a circle:

Extrude (E) and cancel the transform to leave the extruded vertices where they are (Esc). Then scale along the normals with AltS so you have this shape:

Repeat steps 1 and 2 varying the amount of vertices you delete from the circle until you have several different sizes. Then duplicate (ShiftD) rotate (R) them around (make sure you move them slightly on the Z axis to avoid Z-fighting) so you have something like this:

Duplicate and rotate the entire bunch a couple times for good measure (again moving on the Z-axis) and add a couple circles for effect:

Add a material for additive blending (see How to get additive blending in cycles?):

Insert a rotation keyframe for all of them (press I> Rotation to insert a keyframe on the selected objects), then go to a later frame and run Randomize Transform (Space> Search > Randomize Transform). In the Redo menu at the bottom of the Tool shelf (N in the 3D view), Enable Randomize Rotation and set the Z to 180. Then insert another Rotation keyframe.

Result:
animated gif http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=65211
blendfile


"Track to" and animations at the same time? For this question, I am trying to merge two things together. For the first part, I would like to have my empty that fires bullets to fire at the center of the screen while also having a spray pattern (sort of like the bullets shoot randomly, but I use an animation). I asked a question on how to have my bullets be fired to the center of the screen, and I received a great answer. I use a ray and an empty at the end of it, and the empty collides with objects. The empty that fires the bullets just tracks to it. If you do not understand, you can look at the QA in depth here. For the second part, I would like to have my bullets be fired in a "spray pattern." I achieved this using an animation on my empty that fires the bullets. For the question, I am trying to merge both of these things together. I would like my empty to point at the center of the screen while shooting in a pattern. Would I just need to apply both and it would work? Would the animation need to be removed? If you have any idea of how to achieve this, please post anything below. Thank you!

You can achieve the behavior that you want by parenting your empty with the recoil animation to the empty that tracks to the center of the screen.

           Tracks to the center                         Emits projectiles + plays recoil animation

When your projectile emitting empty is parented to the tracking empty, it will still track to the center of the screen, and your bullets will vary in direction depending on your animation on that empty.

I think this is the effect you are trying to achieve


Camera view is too fast? So I'm working on a model which was previously huge so I downscaled it to a reasonable size but now I've encountered a problem with the camera. Normally I could slowly zoom in to work on details but now the camera moves way too fast and basically flies through the model.

I googled this and noticed someone mentioned "center of project" and I was wondering if anyone could further explain this and how to fix it? Also I know the Alt and Ctrol and Shift for controlling the speed of the camera but this has stopped working as well.

Also due to copyright reasons, I can't upload any part of the model. Sorry guys :(

If i get you correct, you are trying to move around the project using Shift+F,

If you are trying to zoom in and out, try Ctrl + MMB (Forward and backwards to zoom in and out)

Also if you want to edit specific area, press Keypad - . to zoom in to edge/ face or vertex after selecting them.

Set the clipping area of the camera to lowest-or 1mm (camera of the viewport, not in your actual camera which you use to render. Select N in you 3d space. you will get a menu on the Right*, from that look down towards middle to reach Clip options)