How do I export a render as a PNG with a color depth of 32 bit? I can only see two options: 8 bit and 16 bit. Saving it as 16 bit turns smooth gradients into ugly steps, so I would like to save it with a 32 (or 24, I don't really need the alpha) bit depth. How do I do this? I know that the information is in the render, as the render window shows no such step artifacts.

Image for clarity:

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format doesn't support more than 16-bit per sample in the color channel. You can use a format such as OpenEXR or Radiance HDR if you need 32-bit per sample in the color channel.

Section 4.1 Images explains this (emphasis mine):

  The reference image, which only exists conceptually, is a rectangular
  array of rectangular pixels, all having the same width and height, and
  all containing the same number of unsigned integer samples, either
  three (red, green, blue) or four (red, green, blue, alpha). The array
  of all samples of a particular kind (red, green, blue, or alpha) is
  called a channel. Each channel has a sample depth in the range 1 to
  16, which is the number of bits used by every sample in the channel.
  Different channels may have different sample depths. The red, green,
  and blue samples determine the intensities of the red, green, and blue
  components of the pixel's colour; if they are all zero, the pixel is
  black, and if they all have their maximum values (2sampledepth-1), the
  pixel is white. The alpha sample determines a pixel's degree of
  opacity, where zero means fully transparent and the maximum value
  means fully opaque. In a three-channel reference image all pixels are
  fully opaque. (It is also possible for a four-channel reference image
  to have all pixels fully opaque; the difference is that the latter has
  a specific alpha sample depth, whereas the former does not.) Each
  horizontal row of pixels is called a scanline. Pixels are ordered from
  left to right within each scanline, and scanlines are ordered from top
  to bottom. A PNG encoder may transform the source image directly into
  a PNG image, but conceptually it first transforms the source image
  into a reference image, then transforms the reference image into a PNG
  image. Depending on the type of source image, the transformation from
  the source image to a reference image may require the loss of
  information. That transformation is beyond the scope of this
  International Standard. The reference image, however, can always be
  recovered exactly from a PNG datastream.

Section 11.2.2 IHDR Image Header explains precisely what bit depths are allowed depending on the type of information that is stored.

  Bit depth is a single-byte integer giving the number of bits per
  sample or per palette index (not per pixel). Valid values are 1, 2, 4,
  8, and 16, although not all values are allowed for all colour types.
  See 6.1: Colour types and values.

  Colour type is a single-byte integer that defines the PNG image type.
  Valid values are 0, 2, 3, 4, and 6.

  Bit depth restrictions for each colour type are imposed to simplify
  implementations and to prohibit combinations that do not compress
  well. The allowed combinations are defined in Table 11.1.

Table 11.1 — Allowed combinations of colour type and bit depth
PNG image type       | Colour type | Allowed bit depths | Interpretation
Greyscale            | 0           | 1, 2, 4, 8, 16     | Each pixel is a greyscale sample
Truecolour           | 2           | 8, 16              | Each pixel is an R,G,B triple
Indexed-colour       | 3           | 1, 2, 4, 8         | Each pixel is a palette index; a PLTE chunk shall appear.
Greyscale with alpha | 4           | 8, 16              | Each pixel is a greyscale sample followed by an alpha sample.
Truecolour with alpha| 6           | 8, 16              | Each pixel is an R,G,B triple followed by an alpha sample.


How can Edge Loops stay aligned when using the Subsurf Modifier? I manually aligned each vertext of both marked edge loops in the first image shown (additional edge loops on mudguard and the doors). When a subsurf modifier is added the gap becomes too large as shown in the second image, is there a better technique than realign vertex by vertex after adding the modifier?

Set the edge Crease weight (Shift+E or Properties shelf Transform panel Mean Crease):

  Weighted edge creases for subdivision surfaces allows you to change the way Subsurf subdivides the geometry to give the edges a smooth or sharp appearance.

  The crease weight of selected edges can be changed using Transform Properties (N) and change the Median Transform slider. A higher value makes the edge “stronger” and more resistant to subsurf. Another way to remember it is that the weight refers to the edge’s sharpness. Edges with a higher weight will be deformed less by subsurf. Recall that the subsurfed shape is a product of all intersecting edges, so to make the edges of an area sharper, you have to increase the weight of all the surrounding edges.


How to UV Unwrap properly? (Boat) I'm fairly new to Blender, in fact, I've been '3d modelling' in Blender for no longer than 10 days.
While my 3d modelling skills are slowly getting sharpened I'm completely clueless on how I would unwrap this model I'm currently working on.
This is an asset for a game, by the way is far from be finished, but I wanted to test the components scales, so I though, let me chuck some materials and see how it look in the game with proper lighting and stuff... I couldn't be more disappointed with the results.
Here's my model in Blender:

And here's how it looks when I import it to my game using smart UV project or lightmap pack to generate the texture.

Like I said, I'm fairly new to Blender and based on the researches I did, it seems that I should be using seams although I also noticed that there are several different strategies, and I have no idea where to start from...
So if somebody could provide some sort of guidance, or point me into a tutorial, or something that would help me to solve this problem I would very much appreciate.
PS: I can link my 3d model if necessary.
Thanks!

For this kind of project you need to create some seams before the unwrap, then load a wood image texture that is tileable so that it can repeat without visible seam, in the UV Editor place the UV islands correctly on this image, load the image into an Image Texture node, plug this node into the Principled BSDF node, and to give a bit 3D bumps to your texture, plug a black and white version of your texture into a Bump node that you plug into the Normal socket of the Principled (or ideally, create a b&w displacement map from your wood texture with a software like CrazyBump). Of course the texture is improvable with a bit of glossiness etc...


Fluid not interacting with obstacle correctly Blender 2.8 Fluid acts as if the obstacle is in a different location and orientation. Any fixes?

I've checked your file and you need to aplly transforms yo all the objects that interact with your fluid simulation, also you should tweak some settings inside the parameters of fluids in order to get better results, also adding some geometry with simple subdiv (not catmull-clark).

Also use larger dimensions, Blender works better in simulations with larger objects.


Is there a way of easily identifying which mesh face a UV face corresponds to? Is there any simple way of telling which UV face corresponds to which 3D model face?

I created a room (in V 2.71) with a doorway and a window out of a hollowed cube and generated a UV mapping for it with "Smart UV project" but it is not obvious to me how to tell which face is, say, the floor or the left face of the door frame. I can highlight them in the main window to see which face gets highlighted in the UV window, but that's laborious and confusing.

And if my model gets a little more complicated, say I had more rooms and interior doorways, I know I'll end up with lots of tiny thin rectangles on the UV map often placed in really weird locations that don't correspond to the floorplan. Telling which is which will be really hard.

How is this done on complicated models?

You can eneable the "keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync" button, in the UV editor


Animation Nodes and Velocity VELOCITY
Animation Nodes have been very useful for me so far, but I am stumped as to how I can use an object or particle's velocity to influence other properties (like color, rotation, etc.).  There's plenty of documentation out there on how to calculate one axis, but I've yet to see how to accomplish this with objects that don't move in a straight line.  Any ideas?

You can get the velocity of particles from the Particle Data Node (The velocity output is hidden by default).

For objects, if its location is described by a parametric path, then the velocity is described by the "gradient" of the parametric equation (You will need some knowledge in differential calculus to get that, however, you may use a finite method that I shall describe in the following implementation).

Moreover, If the object is animated using blender's animation system, and thus described by F-Curves, then a discrete finite method can be used to compute the velocity. First, get the F-Curves of the object and get its info.

Then, find the F-Curves that represents the location of the objects by searching for the path location, then sort the indices based on their F-Curve data index such that they become in the order x, y, z. Then get the F-Curves at those indices.

Then, create a function that computes (Approximates) the derivative at some given time with a given epsilon. The function can be a Central Finite Difference Method. Notice that the function is the F-Curve.

Now, loop over the x, y, z F-Curves and compute their derivatives and compose a vector from the result, this vector is the velocity and its magnitude is the speed.


How can I make the 'delete' key immediately delete faces instead of displaying the 'delete' menu? I'm a beginner in blender. I want to delete a face, but pressing the X to delete the face brings up a menu like this:

I do not want to display the menu and delete the face each time I press X, I want to delete the selection as soon as I press X.
How can I make this happen?

There is no specific way to change that. The delete menu is important, because blender needs to know what part of your selction you want to delete, because there is a huge difference between deleting only the face and deleting all selected vertices.


Cannot "Baking the Wiggle" in Blender v2.92.0 When I try to "Bake the Wiggle", it gives me this error

I searched for a fix and tried one but it still doesn't work. Changing type of a rig but I don't have any RigType options.

Blender : 2.92.0
Wiggle Bones : 1.5-b16

Note: This error appears on all bones
Disabling "Additive Bake" solved the problem for me.

Disabling "Additive Bake" solved my problem!
I think there was a problem with the add-on, or the "compatibility" of the NLA. (?)

When you do an additive bake, it pushes your animation into an NLA strip and bakes the wiggle into the active action. — blenderartists.org

? = I don't know how blender's add-ons system is working, but reopening the editor or reload the same file can also solve the problem. (maybe a corrupted code sequence in the add-on)


Pressing "Play Animation" Not Doing Anything Original question:
I managed to model and rig my first character, and I'm now working on the animation, when I scrub through the keyframes in the timeline, the animation is working correctly, but when I press Play Animation - Spacebar, nothing happens, at all. I've tried a bunch of solutions already, but none of them seem to work.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
I have attached a screenshot of the scene and the .blend file below.

Blend File
Update: it seems to be a local issue with my Blender config/hardware, as other users are able to open the .blend file and getting playback. I've also tried rebinding the Play Animation - Spacebar again, but that didn't make any difference. Perhaps I will try installing a new and fresh Blender, see if that works, but I'm still wondering why I'm not getting playback in the first place? Any help is much appreciated as I lack the necessary experience to know where to look for a solution.
Update 2: After some great pointers by @Moonboots I now know the issue has something to do with my preferences. After installing 2.91 and opening the .blend file in that version with Factory Settings, the animation plays, success! But if I load my personal config in the freshly installed 2.91, the problem arises again. Now I would still like to find out, what in my original config file is causing this issue, and fix it, as I really feel at home in my config. I've added screenshots and of the comparison between my personal config and the Factory settings and a link to my personal config, maybe one of you can spot the issue?
Link to download my personal config

I've left out the tabs that are probably not the cause of this issue (Themes, Input, Navigation, Keymap, Addons, Save & Load and Lights). If you think this can also be the cause of this issue let me know and I will upload screenshots of those tabs too.

Solution: It turns out the "Keymap" was actually the problem! I had disabled some parameters of the keymap, to give me a bit more space to assign keys myself. The specific parameter that was causing this issue was screen.animation_step > Timer > Timer 0. Restoring that to its original state, fixed the playback issue! Hope this helps for other people that have modified their keymaps!


How to make a rigid body system a static mesh? Is there a way to make a rigid body system a static mesh?

After you have run your rigid body simulation, you have to options for how to apply the sim to the mesh.

Your first option is to simply apply the visual transform of the object(s).
Move to the frame where the object is at the location you want to keep, then select the rigid body object and press CtrlA > "Visual Transform".

Your other option is to bake the rigid body simulation to key frames.
Select the rigid body object, then press the "Bake To Keyframes" button in the physics tab of the tool shelf. Set the range of frames you want, leave the "Frame Step" at 1, then press the OK button.


Mapping option disappeared in Blender 2.79 I'm perfectly aware of how to scale texture images, however my question is more referred to the layout of the change in the texture menu in the properties panel. In previous version of Blender, it was possible to do the mapping just by accessing Texture from the properties panel. However, in Blender 2.79 this is no longer possible and the only way to scale image textures is to manually add a mapping node in the node editor. Is it possible to get that feature back in the Texture panel? Thank you!

The behaviour of the Mapping rollout is the same as in the previous versions. Once you have Image Texture node (not important whether with opened image or not) you will find the Mapping rollout in the Properties editor > Textures tab:

Note that is isn't important how the texture node was added, either from the Properties editor > Material tab or from the Node editor window.

Make sure to choose name of the Image Texture node from the drop-down list of present textures in the top of the Texture tab in the Properties editor.
E.g. if you removed any node in the Node editor window and just selected Image Texture node, its mapping options won't be shown in the Textures tab, you'll need to choose it from the list.

Note also that displayed name in the drop-down list is the name of the Image Texture node (not the label). By default it is incrementing ".001", ".002" etc. Below I renamed the nodes and copied names into the labels for clarity:


Importing models from AutoCAD to Blender I am looking for a method to import my 3D models made in AutoCAD to Blender.
I have tried .stl and .fbx import but both of these triangulate the mesh and also I have to do a lot of clean up work to get rid of doubled geometry.
Is there a way to import those models in quad dominant form (the way blender handles the meshes)?
Below is the example when I import something in .FBX format

TL,DR
There is no quick one-button way to do that.
Long Answer
CAD models generally have either native NURBs or ACIS Solid based geometry, which are mathematical models describing surfaces, rather than polygon based meshes common in subdivision based modelling. Blender can neither read nor import any of those, and only has very basic support for builtin NURBS geometry.
File formats Blender can read are always mesh centric, like FBX, OBJ, STL or 3Ds, and most don't even support holding NURBS or solid data, like say IGES or STEP.
At export those models are always converted into meshes by the very CAD application, before they even reach Blender. There is no way to guarantee arbitrary CAD geometries can conform to a good quad based topology, let alone convert them cleanly. Even when there was, CAD application meshing algorithms aren't always the best or most efficient anyway.
MoI is an example of a CAD application with a relatively decent meshing algorithm, that outputs good quad based meshes, but even this fails to produce proper quad geometry on every occasion.
Good quad based topologies are purposefully planed from scratch along with your shape, and your model has to be built around them from the ground up to guarantee good results. Your mesh is your topology, not an afterthought or something you tack at the end.
There is no one-button-press solution to turn a triangulated topology into an elegant quad dominant edge-flow, good topology is an art, and there is no easy way to fix your models.
Possibe Solutions
You can try Retopology which is laregely a manual process
You can look into the Remesh Modifier which is semi automatic method, but has limitations and drawbacks. Can speed things up, but don't expect miracles, no automated solution will beat well thought out manual topology.
My experience is that dealing with model cleanups always ends up being more work than doing it cleanly from scratch.
You end up spending a lot of time doing menial tasks, micromanaging, dealing with corner cases and unforeseen consequences, for average end results at best. The same time would probably be best spent, learning good modeling techniques using proper topology and actually refining your work, rather that fixing issues after the fact.


How to slow down sensivity of grabbing objects via the user preferences I would like to slow down the sensitivity of the Grab function (G) in Blender. Is there a way to do that permanently, not just with holding down Shift or changing the scene scale?

There is no way to scale down the cursor speed in Blender when grabbing, (aside from holding shift as you've mentioned).


Python context error NameError: name 'context' is not defined The following is a script that is supposed to access UV info but it fails right away in both Object and Edit modes.  I fist tried using Bl-2.69.8, then 2.69 then 2.68 and it happens the same every time.  I've also tried adding bpy. to the beginning of context but the result is the same.

Can anyone clear this up?

What you're looking for is bpy.context, so the first line should be:

obj = bpy.context.active_object

It refers to the bpy module being imported in the first line.

You can also use this at the beginning of your scripts:

import bpy
from bpy import context

The entire script should look like this:

import bpy
import bmesh

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()
bm.faces.layers.tex.verify()

for f in bm.faces:
    for l in f.loops:
        luv = l[uv_layer]
        if luv.select:
            luv.uv = l.vert.co.xy

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)


Make object follow a path from a specific frame (not frame 0) I created a path (Shift + A: Curve -> Path) for an object to follow, and paired them together by selecting the path, the object, hitting Ctrl + P: Follow path). The object now follows the path, however, I would like this to happen from frame 50 and not from frame 0. I tried adjusting the evaluation time of the path, but blender won't let me add any keyframes to it - what's the usual approach to doing this?

Edit: Ok, actually you should rather unparent and give your object a Follow Path constraint with the curve as Target.

Then, when you press Animate Path, it moves your object.

You can ether play with the constraint Offset value to move it the way you want. In your case keep it at 0 at Frame 50.

Or you can select the curve, go in the Graph Editor, unfold the Bezier Curve track on the left, select the Evaluation Time, display the N panel, select the Modifiers tab, close the Generator.

Now keep the curve selected, go in the Properties editor > Data > Path Animation, play with the Evaluation Time value and create some keyframes to make the object move along the curve. In your case, keep the Evaluation Time at 0 until frame 50.


Why is material rendering transparent? Recently I followed some tutorials and made a project in Blender.
It's just a teddy bear and a donut with a fork I found online and a cup (some from Blender Guru).
The viewport shading material preview looks fine:

Even the viewport shading render preview looks fine:

But if you render it, the teddy bear is strangely transparent. and the icing flakes are not getting rendered.

You still can see a bit brown, but almost all of it is transparent, although the transparency is set to 0 and the icing flakes completely disappeared.
Is it because of the light bouncy thingy or something else?
You can find the Blender File and the assets here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JtaJ22KIKjfVMGCHEt4ZY-1SE6tTVLSo?usp=sharing
Thanks

This has happened to at least 3 times but seems like I don't remember it at all!
it took me a little while to figure it out.
The issue with the teddy bear is that, You have not enabled show emitter in the particle's section.
Hence the render shows just the hairs but not the bear which is emitting those hair particles!

As per the ice flakes I see a collection called sprinkles in particle selection but it seems to be deleted.
the name in the particles seems like just the cached name!


Does Camera.view_frame() return the correct size of near clip plane? I am writing a toy operator which select the visible vertices of a mesh from active camera.

My approach is to do a perspective projection on vertices of that mesh to NDC(Normalized Device Coordinates. It is a glossary from rasterization graphic API like OpenGL) and check that whether the NDC is in range of [-1, 1]^3.

I encounter a problem when I construct the projection matrix using camera.view_frame() function:
It seems that view_frame() returns double of the real size of camera's sensor.

I am confused with this behavior of view_frame().

Supplementary background:
I write a Blog post for details about this toy operator on http://linearconstraints.net/?p=53

And the full source code is on https://gist.github.com/thebusytypist/8900746

Note that I divide the left/right/bottom/top by 2 in line 75-76.

There's a utility function world_to_camera_view(), which makes it really easy to select the view frustum:

import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

def main(self, context):
    sce = context.scene
    cam = sce.camera
    ob = context.object
    me = ob.data
    mat = ob.matrix_world

    if not me.is_editmode:
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

    if not self.extend:
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')

    for v in bm.verts:
        x, y, z = world_to_camera_view(sce, cam, mat * v.co)
        if (0.0 <= x <= 1.0 and
            0.0 <= y <= 1.0 and
            (not self.clip or cam.data.clip_start < z < cam.data.clip_end)):
            v.select = True

    bm.select_flush(True)

class MESH_OT_select_view_frustum(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Select geometry in view frustum (uses active object and scene camera)"""
    bl_idname = "mesh.select_view_frustum"
    bl_label = "Select View Frustum"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    clip = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Clip",
        description="Take camera near and far clipping distances into account",
        default=True
    )

    extend = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Extend",
        description="Extend the current selection",
        default=False
    )

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.scene.camera is not None)

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Blender 2.8, Viewport objects visibility I was making a tunnel model for animation, but somewhere I may have done something wrong and now the objects in the viewport are displaying with the background and foreground flipped. The objects which should be hidden from view are visible and the foreground objects are hidden

From "background"  I do not mean background images but objects

Select the object in question, go Edit mode, flip normals and leave Edit mode.
Check "Clip start" and "Clip end" of the View port camera (which not visible
as an object...it is simply "there" :) ) which settings can be found on the right
side pane und View->View top most second and third entry.


Not able to use Boolean modifier on concentric cylinder and torus (normals seem ok) I'm using Boolean Modifier quite well so far, but this time I can't get it work properly. I guess it's sometihng I'm missing but I checked other answers for bolean modifiers and none of them seem to apply to my case. I have a concentric cylinder and a torus (I specify that they are concentric because if they are not concentric the modifier seems to work properly) I need to subtract the torus from the cylinder to create the housing for an O-Ring. The result are just more faces and vertexes added to the cylinder but the housing is not created. I checked normals and non-manifold but all seem to be ok. Anyone able to explain me what am I doing wrong? Sorry if duplicate, not able to find a proper answer.

Here an image that may explain the problem:

* My mistake: not "Binary mod" but "Boolean mod"

I hope it's clear what I wanted... instead of the same outer surface of the cylinder with more vertexes that you can see in the last picture I wanted a torus housing: a negative of the torus.

Here you can get my blend file

Boolean operators are known to have issues when dealing with complex interactions. Thus, it is advised to prep your meshes to minimize issues from the Boolean operator. This simply means giving the Boolean operator easy places to make cuts.

In your example, all you need to do is to add another torus with the same number of segments as the cylinder. This aligns all the torus edges to that of your cylinder, which eliminates the issue from the Boolean modifier.

Note how the wire-frames don't line up nicely in your torus, so the Boolean modifier will need to make a ton of cuts to try to modify the geometry.

I've added another torus below, this time matching the number of segments to the cylinder, and the boolean modifier works fine.

Another thing to note: having an excessive amount of vertices in close proximity to one another can also cause problems with the Boolean modifier, but that's easily fixed by scaling/moving one of the objects slightly.


How to check if a Blender subprocess is still running in background mode from a Python script? I have run a blender instance in the background using subprocess.Popen.
Now I want one panel to get visible only if there is a blender instance running in the background.

This is no different from regular subprocess use:
https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/subprocess.html

Use the return value of Popen and check it will poll()

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12057794 - though in your case you won't want to wait until poll finished.


"Animated vector" multiple object moves from CSV with animation nodes Newby question for the Anination Nodes experts if I may...
Trying to visualise time-sequence data for a series of objects that move in X & Y. I have used some of the great answers here to get close but I have 2 problems;

I can extract the new destination from a line and move the object but it just jumps rather than smoothly animated from where it was last to where it is moving to. Tried to hack it with a Annimate vector node but cant loop the Result vector back to the Start vector.

I can not convice the extacted object_ID to connect to the object connector of the "object Transforms Output" node.

Sure what I have done so far will make you cringe but hey ho, just learning. Eventual data will have ~500  Object ID's and 5000 odd moves for each one so automating this would be awesome.
Hope someone can help. Thanks

Create a Vector List from csv. Then traverse through points using Mix Vector List.


Editing lighting on the sides of a cylinder I'm creating a simple jar and lid in Cycles, but the sides of lid have this odd gradient effect I can't seem to get rid of. The highlights are only visible along the upper half of the sides. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well, so here are a couple of images.

This is the effect I want:

And this is what I currently have:

Here's the node setup, in case it helps. I'm want a glossy plastic effect:

I don't know if this is a problem with the material, the lighting setup, both, or something else entirely.

Edit: I don't think my question is necessarily a duplicate of Glossy reflections and smooth shading. That question has more to do with creating reflections on an object with both flat and beveled surfaces. I'm trying to get the appropriate lighting on the side of a cylinder.

Out of curiosity, I added 2 edge loops to the cylinder, and that seemed to fix the problem I was having with the lighting. I've only been using Blender for a few weeks, so I can't explain why that fixed it, but it did.

The wireframe with the additional edge loops highlighted:

And now the lighting affects the entire edge.


How to animate the fill colors of a 2D drawing? I'm learning Blender, and I have watched many useful tutorials, but I can't do something in the 2D animator. I'm hoping someone here could help. The video link below shows what I have.
I'm trying to get the colors to change during the animation.  I'm looking for flashing lights and colors. I tried all sorts of schemes with different materials and layers.
If someone could point me to a tutorial, I would very much appreciate it.  If someone could make a tutorial covering this problem, that would be even better.
I tried multiple layers, changing assigned materials, and the vector painting tool. I appreciate any help you can provide.
The animation

This might suit your needs:
In the Timeline window or Graph Editor window set the Playhead (the blue marker) on frame 1.
Go to the Material Properties of your object and select a material you want to have change color. In the same panel go to Surface > Fill and hover your mouse cursor over the color. Press I. You've now created a keyframe for animating this color, and it should show up as a diamond icon on the Timeline and as a point in the Graph Editor.
Now set the Playhead (blue marker) on frame 2 and go back to the the fill color of your material and change it to another color(. Mouse hover over it again and press I again.
Now set the Playhead (blue marker) on frame 3. Go back to the the fill color of your material and change it back to the first initial color (or possibly to another third color). Mouse hover over it again and press I again. (a third keyframe is needed because the next step does not seem to work with only two)
When you have a nice cycle of color change that you want to repeat, you could repeat this process manually, but less labor intensive is to do it using the Graph Editor.
Select all the keyframes in the Graph Editor, press Shift + E and choose Make Cyclic (F-Modifier). You've now added a modifier that can be found (or also could have been added) in the Modifier tab of the Graph Editor N-Panel. (you can extend or collapse it by pressing N in the graph Editor)

Now if you hit Play Animation on the Timeline the material will rapidly change color, giving a flashing effect.
If you want if to change color slower, select al the keyframes in the Graph Editor, press S (and then X) to scale the distance in time between them. That might look something like this:

Alternatively, if you would want a material to be one color for (for instance) 20 frames, and then instantly change to another color and remain that color for 20 frames. you can use two keyframes per color to indicate a length of time on the Timeline. That would look like this, with the keyframes of one color on the left side (of frame 21) and the keyframes of another on the right.

Hope that helps : )


Delete hidden object from commandline pythonscript He guys,

I'm working on a commandline-based puthon-script that imports an IFC-file and cleans it up.
So far i can import an IFC-file, do some clean-up and than save the file.
The only thing that i cant get my head around is the deleting of hidden objects.
These object are hidden in the 3D view and from the rendered view.
From within blender you can simply unhide and delete them.
Is there a way to delete thes objects from a commandline based python script.

You can use the command line to run blender and pass the below python script to it which will delete all unhidden objects:

import bpy
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if obj.hide == True:
        obj.hide = False
        obj.select = True
bpy.ops.object.delete()


How to create round boxy shape? This might be a stupid question, but how to model a shape like this?

Where the up part is roundy, but the down part is boxy.

You can use a base cube, then in edit mode, subdivide two edges and manually create a curve by moving the nodes with the "G" key. You can use the subdivision modifyer to smooth it and sculpt mode to create small irregularities in the bread. That is how I would go about this. Try looking up basic Blender tutorials on youtube to learn to use the program more effectively.


Is there an option to look at the exact front of a face? Is there an option to look at the exact front of a face? I want to put the file on a beamer to draw it big and make it out of wood.

To align the view to a face you need to select the face in Edit mode and press shift7. To align the camera to the view press ctrlalt0. If you want your camera to be orthographic, select it, go in the Properties editor > Data > Lens and choose Orthographic instead of Perspective.


Floor plane reflection For testing purposes I have created a simple HDRI with HDR Light Studio that is visible in the reflection of the box.

Now I want a floor plane reflecting the exact box above without interacting with the scene at all. But the reflection on the box has changed when the floor is visible.

In the "Objects"-Tab I can disable the glossy-rays for the floor so the reflection of the box looks as desired. But this way the reflected box won't show any reflections at all.

Is there an other workaround for it? Blender scene is added.

As for the reason why it is happening, it is because the main direction of where your HDRI's light is coming from is from the bottom right corner of your image, and the floor is blocking that.

In order to fix that, if you go to the node editor, change the view to world shader and add a mapping and texture coordinate node for your HDRI, you can adjust the tilt of the HDRI.  If you connect the generate output of the Texture Coordinate node to the input of the mapping node and the output of the mapping node to the input of the Environment Texture, then you can control the angle of the HDRI.

You can use the rotation values in the Mapping node to adjust the HDRI's angle.


How to push a box with physics engine by another object? I want to push a box by an animated character in Blender 2.8.
First I tried to animate the box by keyframes but this looks very unnatural.

I think this will look much more realistic when the animated character pushes the box with help of physic engine and collusion logic.

I played around with some settings regarding this in Collusion and Rigid Body. But it is pretty hard to understand what is going on there as a beginner.

Better if you use a copy location constraint on the box by a hand bone. You can set keyframes for the influence, so the character can release it.


Adaptive subdivision modifier causes high memory I'm modeling a bridge and because the scene is going pretty far in the distance  I decided to use the adaptive subdivision function.

I have an object that has an array modifier that repeat it self 100 times, the object has 32 verts what normally does not give me any problem to render.

Now if I render my scene its taking 15 minutes to even start rendering and blender is working on Building BVH <Object> and when its doing this my memory peaks at 12GB what is absurd for this scene.

What did I try:

disabling my HDRI and use a simple light setup.
removing verts up to where I had 4 verts left.
removing the material.

I have the feeling that I'm missing something.

Image of my modifier setup included

It looks like you might be better off not using adaptive subdivision. According to the docs, this property makes muti user objects single user objects, causing increased memory.

This might mean that its separating each iteration of the array (which would make sense as each one needs to be subdivided differently.)

Another solution might be to shorten your array a bit, then manually duplicate the array and lower the subsurf level.

Just out of curiosity, what happens if you move the array below the subsurf? (Other than messing up your seams) Does that help with render times at all?


Interlace frame numbers with file output node I have a setup in the compositor that takes a piece of footage, does some operations, and outputs 3 difference files. Let's call them output A, B, and C. I have the file output node with added sockets to output each. What this gives me in the output folder is each output followed by the frame number. For example, frame 1 will give me A-0001.png, B-0001.png, C-0001.png.

What I would like is to alter the frame number appended to the output files so that instead I would have A-0001.png, B-0002.png, C-0003.png. Frame 2 would then give A-0004, B-0005, C-0006.

The end result would triple the number of frames of the animation and have them interlaced.

Is this possible with the file output node? Is it possible with a script?

I'm maybe wrong but it seems there is no way to avoid Blender (2.8) to remove the frame number and the extension of the filename with CompositorNodeOutputFile object, as I'm rendering by a python script I finally fixed it by renaming the files with os.rename combined with a regular expression just after render.


Composite image sequence only using one image in the sequence I am only getting a single frame of an image sequence used in my Compositor output frames.
I am trying to create a series of images from a single background (static) and an animation (png) sequence.  If I use the sequence of "anim 0884.png":

through "anim 1274.png"

, a file open seems to indicate a sequence "anim ####.png", but only seems to find a single frame (Frames set to '1'), including if I click on the Match Movie Length in the Node Item properties.

If I keep this setting I only get "anim 0884.png" used in all frames of the output "composite 0884.jpg" through "composite 1274.jpg". :

If I set the image sequence Frames=387, I only get the last frame "anim 1274.png" used in all frames:

What am I overlooking?   I need the composites to start at frame 884 because other animation occurs frames 1-883, that is rendered separately.
UPDATE:  I finally found a combination that worked for but it is not at all intuitive, and ... it ONLY works if I run it from the command line
(blender -b postRenderCompositing.blend -S Scene.compositing -s 884 -e 1050 -j 10 -a), not with ctrl-F12!

Here is a link to a zip containing the blend file and sample data:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/rucw94302txj6ce/postRenderCompositing.zip?dl=0

EDIT: The settings in the Image Sequence node are a bit different then I epxlained before - my answer only worked because I tested it with an image sequence starting at frame #1 - while yours beings with #884. So here's how it all works together:
Your mistake is, you have set an Offset of 883 in the Image Sequence node and set your animation to render from frame 884 to 1271 (my month and year of birth :D ), while at the same time you have set Start Frame set to 1 in the Image Sequence node - but your animation starts at frame 884.
What the three values Frames, Start Frame and Offset do is the following:

Frames tells Blender how many images are in that sequence
Start Frame tells Blender on which frame the sequence should begin to run
Offset tells Blender what to add to 1, to get the image number on the specified Start Frame

So, in order to make this work you must either render the animation from frame 884 to 1271 and make Blender believe you have 1271 images starting at frame 1, set
Frames = 1271, Start Frame = 1, Offset = 0
in the Image Sequence node. This will render on each frame the image with the same number as the frame. So image#0001 on frame  1, image#0002 on frame 2 etc. Since your image sequence starts at #0884, the frames 1-883 will stay empty and the frames will start getting rendered at frame 884. If you would have set Frames to 388, then Blender will stay at image#0388 until the end of the animation which is not what you want (because there is no image#0388).
Or the better and more correct way would be, you render your animation from 884 to 1271 and set the following values in the Image Sequence node:
Frames = 388, Start Frame = 884, Offset = 883.
This way you can set the actual number of images your sequence has, and Start Frame tells Blender on which frame you want to render the first image of your sequence. Since the first image is usually #0001, you have to enter the Offset to tell Blender you don't want to begin with image #0001, but with 1+883 i.e. image#0884.
Whatever the range of your animation might be, let's say you want an animation starting at frame 1 and ending at frame 3000 - that's not really relevant for the Image Sequence node. You can render frames 1-3000, and if you want your image sequence to begin at frame 100, then set Start Frame = 100. Blender assumes you want image#0001 on frame 100, so you need the Offset = 883 to correct that.


How to define a RGB color and specular color in Blender 2.74 using Python In my code below, I want to define a RGB color and specular color:

import bpy
from math import *

Name = 'Dimi'
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius = 0.5, depth = 1)
scj = bpy.context.scene
ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data
ob.name = Name

ma0 = bpy.data.materials.get("furniture")
ma = ma0.copy()
ma.name = 'furniture_' + Name
ob.data.materials.append(ma)

ncolor = []

for c in color:
 ncolor.append(c*0.003921)

#defining main color
ma.rgbCol = [ncolor[0]*0.962,ncolor[1]*0.962,ncolor[2]*0.962]
#defining specular color
specCol = [0,0,0]

But in:

#defining main color
ma.rgbCol = [ncolor[0]*0.962,ncolor[1]*0.962,ncolor[2]*0.962]
#defining specular color
specCol = [0,0,0]

That is a blender 2.49 code that I can't find how to make work in Blender 2.74

There's a couple of loose-ends in your script, but they aren't a problem for answering the question. The code you are trying to run uses attributes that no longer exist in Blender 2.5 and upwards. In the name of progress they have been replaced.

A few things i'd like to mention:

When you do material.copy() it already appends the new material to bpy.data.materials, you don't need to.

If you are using the old-school 'Blender Internal' render engine then you can set specular and diffuse for materials using:

material_reference.diffuse_color
material_reference.specular_color

code reduced looks like this

import bpy
from math import *

Name = 'Dimi'
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius = 0.5, depth = 1)
scj = bpy.context.scene
ob = bpy.context.object
ob.name = Name

ma0 = bpy.data.materials.get("furniture")
ma = ma0.copy()
ma.name = 'furniture_' + Name

ma.diffuse_color = (0.3, 0.9, 0.7)
ma.specular_color = (1,1,1)

ob.active_material = ma

If you want to script Cycles materials, have a good look at the search results for scripting cycles materials


Make UV map texture not follow mesh geometry? I created a character that has anormal eyes eyelids, and i had to create this kind of mesh for the eyes to fit on him. I Added a uv warp modifier to control the uv texture, but due to the mesh geometry that are a bit curved in the top, the eye texture gets distorted as I move it. Is there a way to make the texture not be affected by the mesh geometry?

Blender 2.79

Instead of using UV coordinates you can use the Object coordinates of an Empty. In this way, the position of the pupil is controlled by the empty (you should Parent the empty to the eye so that it stays in place as the character moves) and the shape remains undistorted despite the geometry. This can be achieved as follows :

Here the Texture Coordinate's Object socket is used with the Object set to the Empty. This means that each point on the surface is handles in coordinates in relation to the specified object (the Empty) instead of your mesh coordinates.
The Vector Math node set to Multiply is set to mask out the Z coordinate and the following Vector Math set to Distance returns the distance from the centre. The distance is passed into the Color Ramp to produce the eye pattern based on the distance from the centre. If need be you can scale the eye texture by changing the X and Y multipliers in the Multiply node or by scaling the Empty itself.
Moving and rotating the Empty will move the texture, with it always aligned with the empty's Z-axis (although you can pick a different axis by changing which channel is multiplied by zero in the Multiply node).

To use an image texture instead of generating the eye from the distance from the centre, you can use something like the following :

Here the UV coordinates are manipulated using a Vector node to map the centre by 0.5 in each of the X and Y directions. This is to centre the image onto the empty (otherwise it will correspond to the top-left coordinate since that is the 'origin' of the image texture space). The Mix node uses the image Alpha to fill in the surrounding space around the texture. Note also that the Image Texture node is set to Clip so as to have only a single image.

As an aside, the first example (using the distance from the centre) uses nodes that were introduced relatively recently and aren't available at some earlier versions of Blender - in particular the Multiply and Distance modes of the Vector Math node. While the new nodes are very convenient, there are other ways to achieve the same thing - but you have to perform the underlying maths manually rather than relying on the convenient new node functions.
For example, you can achieve the same effect at Blender 2.79 using the following nodes :

Here the Separate XYZ uses only the X and Y coordinates - effectively the same as multiplying Z by zero - while the Power Maths node (raising to the power of 2), the Add, the Power (to the power of 0.5) calculates the distance using Pythagoras (sqrt(x^2 + y^2)). The newer nodes offer a more convenient way by hiding the underlying maths.

Using your example Blend file I imported the material, images and meshes, re-located Empty.001 to near the surface and rotated it 90 degrees so its Z-axis pointed to the surface and scaled to size and produced the following result :


How important is a GPU for modeling? I don't plan to be doing much cycles rendering, but I wanted to know if a GPU is still important if I'm doing high-poly modeling.

I will assume you are talking about an external GPU in this case, say a Nvidia GTX 660 etc..
Excerpt from the Manual

...GPU rendering makes it possible to use your graphics card for
rendering, instead of the CPU. This can speed up rendering, because
modern GPUs are quite designed to do a lot of number crunching...

In short, No, you do not need an external GPU. Not to get too technical but except for drawing and viewport stuff amongst some other things, much of Blender's core functionality relies very little on a fully fledged GPU.
For modeling in your case, you are perfectly fine with just a decent CPU and an onboard graphics card that supports OpenGL (which in these modern times is pretty much every one of them).
Having one would be nice though as this can greatly improve the viewport performance among other things but it is not a major requirement unless you are going to be doing very heavy or demanding production work.

Graphics card note: Blender runs on all OpenGL compliant cards,
although there are some issues with cheap onboard cards (Intel, Via).
We therefore can't officially support and guarantee that Blender works
fine on those systems.

You can see the system requirements for Blender here.


How can I seperate the bones? I'm somewhat sorry if the answers to my questions seem obvious, but I've searched for, and couldn't find, a way to seperate the bones. I extruded them and now they are ONE object. I can't move them or change the position individually.

A: Which bones are you trying to separate?
B: Why would you do that? :)

I think you're probably still in object mode if you're having that problem.

In object mode, press tab to change into edit mode so that you can modify the base/default position of the rig in relationship to the mesh you are trying to modify. If you want to separate a child bone from it's parent bone, say the forearm bone from the bicep bone, press y while that bone is selected. This will keep the bones as part of the same armature, but remove parenting inside the armature. To split them into separate armatures press P.

You should keep them all as one object, however, since they are all interacting with one mesh. What you are probably trying to do is simply enter pose or edit mode.

To go into pose mode press ctrl + tab.
To go into edit mode press tab.


How to get rid of the two vertex? I have established an edge route but have two extra vertex. How to get rid of them? I tried to connect them with the last one but the result is worse. I can't add new loop cut because I need a curve

Here is the next problem

Try pressing X on the 2 vertices that need to be deleted, and try Delete Vertices.
If that doesn't work, press X again, but click on Dissolve Vertices instead.


How do you call "animation_play()" from AN? When I run bpy.ops.screen.animation_play() directly from the script ("Run script" button), it plays the timeline and works fine. But if I try to run it from Animation Nodes, it gives me an error:

"Operator bpy.ops.screen.animation_play.poll() failed. Context is incorrect."

All I have in AN is a script node with an "integer" input (for "1" or "0" -> play or stop), then I connect an integer node to the subprogram of the script.

Here's my simple test script

# animStatus = 1    # only used when testing script alone

if animStatus == 1:
    bpy.ops.screen.animation_play()
elif animStatus == 0:
    bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=False)

Not really solved, but have received confirmation from Jacques Lucke that what I am trying to do (start/stop timeline with AN) is not something that AN was designed for, and is not recommended.


Texture painting from Plane to mesh? Like 3ds max Hey there stack exchange, I wasn't able to find this question or answer so I thought I would ask it because I am so very stuck.
I have been using various methods to create realistic faces but I've found none as good as using a projection of an image in 3ds. the problem is i know blender not 3ds and my friend has to help me a lot in 3ds.
My question is this, in the picture below is there a way I can clone brush or projection paint or take the texture on that plane and "paint" it onto the mesh head behind it. they are perfectly aligned already but nothing I try works.
any help would be very appreciated.

I don't know much about texture painting, but this looks like a projected UV map.

Add the image texture to your model
Put the camera in front
Add the UV project Modifier and target the camera


How to toggle grid lines that are displayed in wireframe mode? I'm following a Blender Guru tutorial on how to make a coffee cup. When looking at the cup in wireframe with xray & edit mode on, his screen has no extra gridlines between the vertices/face. Unlike mine which adds gridlines between everything. How do I remove them?

My screen:

Blender Guru:

I'm using Blender 2.82. This is the tutorial in I'm referencing https://youtu.be/7w-m13ykLN8?list=PLjEaoINr3zgEq0u2MzVgAaHEBt--xLB6U&t=429

What you see is the Subdivision Surface modifier effect on your mesh. Disable its visibility, or, as Frederik Steinmetz suggests, enable the Optimal Display option, but in that case keep in mind that you won't see the real mesh but its deformation through the modifier.


How To Make Volumetrics Round? I'm currently working on a spaceship render. The engines glow and emit light. I have cubes behind each thruster that contain volumetric properties, I want these to look like a subtle back burner or just some ambient light coming out from the thrusters.
As you can imagine, the engine thrusters are circular. I have my volumetric in a cube, and of course the gas is cubic. It is not the right shape I am trying to accomplish. I need the volume circular, or just soften edges.
I have attached an image of the render, with the problem of the square volumetric occurring, as well as a screenshot of the nodes I used for the volumetric shader.

You could just consider the box to be a vector space in which you can sculpt your flame, by making its [ density | emission strength | color ] a function of the box's X,Y and Z.
Keeping it simple, here .. This box measures 2x2x4 Blender Units with its origin in the center of its base, and X,Y, and Z are measured in Object space.

(Left) By setting the density to 1 - the XYZ length, you get a hemisphere:

(Center) You could scale the Z to get an ellipsoid:

(Right) You could split the Z off as a multiplier, and sculpt it with a curve:

Of course you could extend this principle to vary colors, get flames-within-flames, etc. etc.


How do I undo a key like NUM7? There are a number of NUM keys that show in a 'perfect view'.  After pressing one how do I go back?

I guess by "perfect view", you mean a view without perspective (aka Orthographic view). You can use NUM5 to switch between Perspective and Ortho.


Extrude and bevel an imported svg curve I exported an svg 1.1 file from Adobe Illustrator CS6. I joined all the shapes by pressing Ctrl+J. I set the curve shape to 2D. Then I extruded using the right hand side panel:

So far so good. But when I try to apply even a slight bevel, all hell breaks loose:

It does get less insane if I bring the bevel down by multiple factors of 10... But then I really don't have much of a bevel.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I using the wrong kind of object? Should I be doing this with meshes? Do my curves just need cleaning up?

Most likely your curves need cleanup.
Diagnosis
You mentioned joining all objects after import, make sure all segments are closed curves, not separate lose segments inside one bezier object.
I would advise checking for any loose vertices, and more importantly overlapping segments, which are the most likely to cause the artifacts similar to your screenshot. Besides that very tightly close vertices, very short segments, and mostly very sharp angles tend to cause problems with beveling.
Illustrator often adds filters and effects (like drop shadows, outlines, or contours) that when converted to SVG become loose curves overlapping the original shape that often cause issues. Make sure to disable or exclude them before exporting, or cleanup afterwards
In your case the most likely culprit is the the font objects. Check the text part of your logo, fonts are often sloppily designed or of low quality, or simply not prepared for 3D modeling and contain overlapping or very close together vertex which can cause problems.
Cleanup
To clean up the curves the best method I could think of consists of selecting one vertex belonging to a text character; make sure you select the right one as there are often several overlapping. Blender highlights the whole spline that vertex belongs to with a different color so make sure you are not selecting a duplicate by checking if the whole character is marked with a different color (as opposed to marking only the single vertex you select).
Then proceed to select all linked vertex by pressing Ctrl+L making it easy to hide them with H
You are then left only with the loose or duplicated vertex visible which can easily be discarded by deleting

Anyway here is the clean file, problems were as suspected the font objects


Set Mist Pass Distance I wanted to use the Mist Pass for the first time today. I have a scene [1 BE = 1 MM] which is pretty large, and I won't change the scale of single objects for the individual shaders are specified to that scale.

However, if I activate the checkbox in the camera tab to show the range (distance) of the Mist Pass, the little X-marker doesn't even exit the camera itself, thus the Mist Pass is a completely white image when rendering.

How and where can I set the distance of the Mist Pass? I didn't find any setting to change it, actually.

Thanks beforehand for your answers!

The "Mist Pass" is the properites windows under the world tab.


Color ramp node resets one color when rendering I am using a color ramp node to set the base colors for a vertex group. It works fine, but I have one problem with the selected colors.
As you can see in my screenshot, I have selected purple, blue, pink and white colors in my color ramp, but as soon as I press render image, the first color suddenly changes to black.
Here is the color ramp node before I start rendering:

As soon as I start rendering it changes to this:

I am using the cycles rendering engine.
Question: Why does this happen? Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for the help in advance!

@FFeller's comment was completely right!

Somehow, a key frame was created on that first color. After deleting it (right mouse button click on the color), the original color is used and it doesn't turn black on rendering.


Drawing moving object coordinate in x-z direction I try to use Blender to animate an object rolling down a hill and draw its free fall coordinate in x-z direction.

Is it possible to trace its path?

Thanks

If all that's required is to trace its path in the viewport (rather than actually including it in the render) then just selecting the object and clicking the Calculate button in the Motion Paths object properties panel will calculate the path and display it in the viewport.

If, however, you want to include the path in your render then you'll need to create it as actual geometry (eg, a curve that you can add a bevel). This can be achieved using particles (similar to @thibsert's answer) as detailed in How to add trailing light effect to finger tips?.


How can I reduce the vertices on this converted file? I have a file 500 MB in size with 4 million vertices that was converted to a .blend from a .ply. A large majority of the vertices really aren't necessary, as they are on the same plane. The file comes from scans of the lunar surface by an instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It has a lot of artifacts I need to smooth out, but first I need to get the vertex count down.

I tried using the decimate modifier. In order for my machine to handle it (and my machine is no slouch), I had to divide up the file into a lot of smaller objects. Then I tried using the 'planar' option, set at 5o. It worked, but the faces it leaves behind are a mess.

I tried using the 'collapse' option, but at the ratio 0.3 it leaves a great deal of artifacts of its own, and the vert count is still 87,000, on a small section of the file.

So does anyone have advice on the least grief-laden way to approach this task?

Because the mesh is fairly simplistic in terms of shape, I would recommend rendering out the Z-Pass/Z-Depth  (setting your camera to your top view before render), and saving that image. Then you can start with a new plane, and use the displace modifier, using that rendered image as the displacement texture. Once you have that in place, you could subdivide your mesh until it fits your needs, and add sub-surf modifiers to smooth it out.

I will attempt to circle back around to this post shortly, but as time allows, in order to post screenshots of the process, and step by step text to finalize this answer.

OK, sorry that this took so long, but I personally had to verify the steps to get this done, because it has been a little while since I have used this method, and I wanted to make sure that the steps were correct before posting.

To Get the Z-Pass Image Rendered

Go to top view using Numpad 7.
Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0 - to set your camera to the active view.
In the Render Panel, Adjust your render size to a proportion equal to your mesh dimensions.
Switch to the Data Panel (with your camera selected it's the one that looks like a movie camera - not the render panel).
Set your camera to Orthographic.
Copy the X & Y Locations to your camera's X & Y Locations.
Adjust your Orthographic Scale until the mesh fills the Camera.
Turn Limits on.
In your 3D View go to a front or side view and change the view to orthographic (Numpad 5).
Adjust clipping start to just above the mesh (the limit line will move toward the top as you increase the start value).
Adjust clipping end to just below the mesh (the far end of the limit line will move toward the bottom of the mesh as you decrease
the value).
Go into the Node Editor and into Compositing Mode.
Check 'Use Nodes' as soon as you do, there should be a 'Render Layers Node' as your input, and a 'Composite Node' as your output.
Add The following three nodes:

Add >> Vector >> Map Range
Add >> Color >> Mix
Add >> Output >> Viewer (optional - If using this make sure that you have backdrop checked in the compositor toolbar.)

From the 'Render Layer Node' Take 'Z' and input it into 'Value' of the 'Map Range Node'.
Set 'Min' & 'Max' to the same values that you clipped your camera to in steps 10 & 11.
Take the 'Value' Output of the 'Map Range' and input it into 'Fac' of the 'Mix Node'.
Verify that the top image is 100% white .
Set the bottom image to 100% black.
Take the 'Image' Output of the 'Mix Node' and input it into the 'Composite' & 'Viewer Node'.
Render and save this image for Displacement.

For the actual Displacement

I'm going to describe using the Images as Plane Add-on, as I believe it is the easiest method for this. If you don't have it enabled, please either enable it to follow along from the User Preferences, or Manually add your plane and UV unwrap it from the top view.

Add >> Mesh >> Images as Planes.
Browse to your saved file from the Z-Pass Instructions Above.
With the new Plane Selected, go into the Modifier Panel and Add the Displace Modifier.
For the Texture Just go into the drop down and select the image that you just imported via steps 1 and 2.
Set Texture Coordinates to UV.
In the Modifier (at the top) Enable 'Display Modifier In Edit Mode'.
Sub-Divide your Plane W >> S.
Adjust Mid Level & Strength to suit your liking.
Repeat Steps 7 & 8 Until you are satisfied with the outcome.

Note:

There are faster methods, such as Shrinkwrap, or Face Snapping your verts in edit mode, etc... BUT, once you actually do all these steps and get used to them, you will find that this is actually very quick as well.

However this method allows you to keep the detail information in texture form, and adjust your mesh topology up and down separately without worrying about losing information.

This also has great usage capacity when your camera moves away in distance, and you can modify it in a procedural driver sort of way to lessen poly-counts (via Sub-Surf Modifier Driver) in the rest of your scene (super useful for animation render times when things come in and out of focus or change in foreground/midground/background).


Having the visibility of IK/FK controls being driven by the IK/FK switch? I'd like some help making some slight tweaks and mods to this dank free BodyMechanic rig I found on blend swap;
https://www.blendswap.com/blend/19110
Basically I think it would be super useful to have it so that the visibility of the IK/FK controls are driven by the IK/FK switch. For example if your Left Hand is in FK, the IK controls automatically get hidden. Then if I switch to IK, the FK controls for that arm are hidden and the IK controls appear.
It would be a huge time saver and make the use of this rig that much more streamlined.
I don't know how that can be done, if anyone out there has an idea, your help would be much appreciated.
Thanks and a big ups to Vinchau, the dude who created the rig in the first place :D

You can hover on the IK_FK slider > right mouse button > copy as new driver.
Then select a bone of the IK controllers, go to the outliner, enable the visibility icon (screen shape), press dot in the numpad to highlight the selected bone, right click on the visibility icon and choose paste driver.
Repeat for the other IK bones.
Then, for the FK bones you will have to change the driver expression: paste the same on one of the control bones, edit driver and change it from average value to scripted expression and type in "1-IK_FK".
Then copy this new driver and paste it on the others FK bones.
Note that both IK and FK layers have to be permanently turned on (I've tried to work on layers visibility, but it doesn't work, I don't know why).
For values different from 0.0 and 1.0 both bone chains are visible (which I think is useful).


View camera not correct The camera is placed to see my scene from the front, like this:

But if I got to view and then camera, this is what I see:

What is the problem?

It looks like you do not have the camera set up as the active camera, you have an object set as camera.

So, select the camera by opening up the tree (left click on it):

Now, set it as the active camera by going to View -> Cameras -> Set Active Object as Camera.

Now you should have the camera working (as in it moves around in the animation)!  Jumping to a frame, it looks like this:


Is there a way to choose a beginning and ending edge and auto select all the edges in between? I have been using Blender for quite a long time and I just want to make sure that there isn't a better way of selecting edges, that I might not be aware of. It is so cumbersome to have to click every single edge when I don't want to select an entire edge loop but a portion of one instead. I was wondering if there is some way in to specify a start edge and an end edge and then be able to auto select every edge in between?

While this is not what this feature is intended for, on straight or simple meshes you can use Shortest Path from the Select menu with the two points selected or by selecting the starting point then selecting the end point while holding Ctrl. You can also incrementally add to your selection by holding Ctrl.


Check if a node exists using Python Is it possible to check to see if a certain node exists on a material from within Python, for example a diffuse node? I am using Cycles Material Nodes, not Blender Internal or Post-Processing.

You can use the bpy_prop_collection.get method which acts like pythons dict.get.

import bpy

mat = bpy.data.materials["MyMaterial"]
if mat.use_nodes:
    ntree = mat.node_tree
    node = ntree.nodes.get("Diffuse BSDF", None)
    if node is not None:
        print("We Found:", node)

This is similar to using:

node = ntree.nodes["Diffuse BSDF"]

However if the node isn't found you'll get an exception.


How can i edit a follow path constraint with the graph editor? I made a follow path constrait with a curve, does it already have a linear interpolation so i can edit it on graph editor? i need the linear interpolation.

When you use a follow path constraint the movement and select Animate Path, there are no keyframes, the movement is determined by a couple of parameters:

1-The number of Frames on the path animation and Evaluation Time of the curve the object is parented to. The default is to move the object through the complete length of the path in 100 frames.

2- A Generator Modifier in in the evaluation time that can be displayed the Graph Editor. The movement starting at 0 and increasing linerarly one unit in X (time) and one unit in (Evaluation time value)

So to determine the speed at which the object will travel through the path there are two options:

A.- Change the number of frames on the curves path animation parameter. Less frames will make the object travel faster across the path. More frames will make it go slower.

B.- Altering the slope of the curve on the generator. A steeper line will make the movement faster, a flatter will slow it down.


How to UV unwrap simple plane with very short one edge? I have disorted square, that that fill ground lying in camera view.
It should be image that will have more details close to camera.
When i shorten edge close to camera UV starts to create triangles that are not visible in UV editor.
Cutting plane to tris does not help.
Best effect gives subdivision of plane (but there are still some small disortions)

Is there any smart way to do that?

Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any way to do this in blender via UV unwrapping.

The way all 3D programs calculate 4 sided quads is to split them into triangles.

As you scale it, blender is automatically triangulating the four sided quad so it creates a diagonal split along the face in a preferred angle depending on which direction you move the vertices (it changes depending on the algorithm blender uses).

Therefore one triangle will maintain its scale and the other will be distorted as you scale the bottom edge of one of the triangles (which don't appear to be visible until you start scaling because there is no visible edge separating them).

I suggest two methods. You could either bake your image using your subdivided version to use for your image texture for your 4 sided quad or you could use GIMP or photoshop and morph the image along the bottom edge, using the tools there and you could export your UV map template as another layer to use to help line it up.

Like this:

Blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rmifrinjqmc34ba/UV%20plane%20stretching.blend?dl=0


Black border around scaled strip with alpha over When downscaling a strip in the VSE, black borders appears around visible edge pixels.
This is noticeable when overlaying (alpha over) the strip into a lighter background.

In this example, a yellow color strip is scaled down. The transform effects strip is scaled down and the mode is set to alpha over. Below both is a white color strip. Dark borders are visible at the edge of the strip.

This is also the scale with scaled normal images.

Most solution to similiar posts (this, this) suggest using masks, which may work in some cases, but appears to be a workaround rather than a solution.

The transform strip appears to not handle premultiplication/alpha over correctly with the bilinear.

No borders are visible with the cubic interpolation mode.


Model & Textures Loaded In - Textures Not Visible on Model Completely new to Blender. Fumbled my way this far. After hours of finding the model I was hunting down, ripping it, getting a python script so blender would import it, I cannot get the textures (which have loaded into blender) to apply to the model to ensure what I have is all correct as it should be.
Out of the bazillion check boxes and sliders, perhaps someone that knows what they are doing knows which specific button I'm not experienced enough to know to press?

Again I apologize if this is a dumb question. But I've spent hours to get to this point, am a bit frustrated, and am hoping I'm missing something obvious.

So I found the button. Bottom left of center, the one circled in the screenshot, selected texture, rendered as desired. It was just a simple "where's the button?"


How to calculate Animation frames without render? I have a python script where a cloth collides with a moving human body. During the animation of this scene, I need to obtain some data of the human's armature at specific frames, dependend on the frame step. Therefore I first render each frame with this line:

bpy.ops.render.render(animation = True)

where I obtain an image at each frame step which I do not really need. Next, I use this line to access the single frames:

bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame)ter code here

With rendering:

everything work perfectly but takes a lot of time. Also I do not need the image data obtained.

without pre rendering (and therefore calculating) the Animation:

the cloth object does not fall properly (it freezes actually) and only the human's movements are calculated at each frame as it should be. The cloth stays in its initial position.

As I am fairly new to Blender and Computer Graphics my question is:

Is there another/faster way to calculate the animation? Does this calculation imply rendering always? So far I thought rendering is just for obtaining a realistic looking image with shading and so on.

You can set the current frame to the start of the simulation, then press alt+A to let Blender play through the simulation. That should also cache the animation, without having to render everything.

In Python, you can use bpy.ops.screen.animation_play() to start playback. Append a function to bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post that checks the current frame number, and calls bpy.ops.screen.animation_play() again to stop playback and remove itself from frame_change_post.


Displacement using UV map affecting all maps, not just the one selected I'm relatively new to Blender and so I may just be missing something obvious.  What I'm trying to do is apply different displacement modifiers to each face of an object from image textures.  For example, taking the default cube and displacing each face with a different texture using UV maps.  The problem I'm getting is that adding a second UV map seems to affect the area covered by the first UV map as well as the area covered by itself.

Here is what I'm doing:

Start with the default cube and switch to edit mode and UV editing view.  (image)
Select one face of the cube and then open the image to be used as the UV map.  (image)
Unwrap > Project from View (Bounds).  Adjust points on image as necessary.  Subdivide several times.  (image)
Switch back to object mode and default view.
Add displacement modifier using the same texture image.  Set coordinates to UV and select the UV map.  Adjust the strength as desired, and apply.  (image)  (image)
Create a new UV map by going to Data > UV Maps and clicking the +.  (image)
Switch back to edit mode and UV editing layout.
Select the new UV map from the dropdown at the top.
Rotate the cube 180 degrees and select the face opposite of the first one mapped.  (image)
Open the image to be used as the second map/texture.  Unwrap and subdivide.  (image)
Switch back to object mode and default layout.
Apply displacement modifier the same way as before, this time using the second UV map which should cover the opposite face.  (image)

Now what happens is that the second displacement modifier correctly affects the second face of the cube, but it ALSO affects the first face as well.  (image)

My question is, how do I get the second displacement modifier to cover ONLY the second face?

When you create a second UV map in Blender, the operator (or better said, the + Button in the Mesh Data / UV Maps Panel) will create a COPY of the currently active UV map. If you rethink the steps you made, what happened is that you copied the UV map you created in the steps 1-5, and you cannot get rid of already unwrapped faces. And that's why you get the effect on both faces in step 12, you basically really have a UV map containing both sides of the Cube.

Try this: Start off with creating two UV maps on a new Cube as step number 1.  But make sure you create the UV map while in edit mode and no vertex or face selected! This will create a UV map where all UVs have the coordinates (0, 0). then do the unwrapping part for both of them as you did in your description. That should ensure that both UV maps are "totally empty" when you dig into the details.


Soldify modifier leaves gap instead of thickness? Hey so I'm trying to make eyebrows/eyelashes andnfollow tutorials but when I try to add a solidify modifier it doesn't make it thicker but it leaves a gap. How do i fix this? Thank you!

Since your mesh is just vertices and edges, the solidify modifier faithfully maintains the lack of faces. Therefore you will likely want to use 'Grid Fill' to fill in the shape with quads, or manually do so by selecting three connected edges on your loop and pressing 'f' to fill them in with a face (automatically creating the edge necessary to form a closed shape) and then repeating that process with using the new edge. Note that grid fill requires there to be an even number of verts, so try adding a new one if it causes an issue.


Why does cycle rendering only use one core from an AMD GPU? I am using Blender 2.77 and an R7 250 GPU on Windows.

Compute Device >> OpenCL (Oland).

OpenSubdiv >> (Tested with all).

Device >> GPU Compute.

That is the normal rendering behavior of a GPU.
GPUs don't have multiple discrete cores in the sense that a CPU has; GPUs have many (hundreds maybe thousands) small processing units that act together as a highly parallelized process that forms a single rendering bucket.
Since on it's own each single unit is relatively 'stupid' in the sense that it can only understand simple basic instructions they can't each alone process a full image, but their strength lies in the fact that they act together as a single 'processing thread' that may end up being faster than the multiple cores of your CPU (depending on the performance of hardware involved of course).
As Cegaton mentions bellow you would get multiple buckets if you had multiple graphics cards in your system without a pairing (SLI/Crossfire) solution.
Also as Gandalf says, for this reason GPUs tend to like larger bucket sizes while CPUs benefit from smaller ones, although due to the traditionally more limited amount of VRAM usually present in graphics cards, increasing too much will at some point start having a negative impact on rendering speed.


Pose change is not permanent I am changing the pose using R to rotate the model's arms.
It works, but as soon as I scrub the timeline, the change is undone.
How do I make it permanent? I thought it would automatically be applied to the selected keyframe.
Thank you!
Video of the failure

Blender has no reason to take the rotation you've made into account as you've not saved it with an Insert Keyframe (shortcut i).
If you want any transform to be automatically saved without the need of Insert Keyframe, you need to enable the Auto Keying option in the Timeline:

If you enable its Only Active Keying Set option, it will only take the selected transform into account:


Array modifier with object offset, rotate and scale at the same time I'm trying to use an array modifier on an object such that each copy is rotated 2° about the z-axis from the previous one, and then translated along the x and the z axis.

This is what I started with (the Empty at the origin is used to rotate and translate the object):

This is what happens after I rotate and translate the Empty (pivot point is set to median point) (doesn't matter whether I translate or rotate first, It still turns out like that):

The problem in the diagram above is that the translation on the x-axis does not happen; only the z-axis and the rotation is done right.  If the x-axis translation is done correctly, the track should align exactly, like in the diagram below.

This is the effect I want to achieve:

Here is my Blender file, if it helps.

Thanks!

If it fits your needs, an easier way to achieve that shape is probably using the screw modifier.

You would use a single 2 dimensional "U" shape, and use the screw modifier to basically "rotate" the object around the origin. You adjust the screw amount to make it also move up on the Z (or other chosen) axis.


Alternating colour striped material I'm attempting to understand how to use nodes and currently trying to create a material which involves a pair of alternating coloured stripes. Think of a barcode, or hazard stripes.

In my first attempt, I tried using a checker texture node, which took vector information from a mapping node. In this node, I used the point setting, and scaled it so that X and Y were .1, while Z was 1. The mapping vector information was then obtained from a generated texture coordinate node.

This seemed to be fine for two out of three axes, as the X and Y had stripes. However, I could not figure out how to apply the stripes to the Z axis, which remained a solid colour. I can see why this is so, but I don't know how to create an alternative solution.

Another limitation with what I tried is that if I were to set mapping rotation to 45 degrees for example, I would get solid colours on two axes, and triangular alternates on the third, which is definitely not what I'm trying to make.

So basically, how can I create a material which is striped in all axes, and can be rotated without any sort of distortion or deformation?

This can also be accomplished with the checker texture.


Texture Paint Diffuse and Normal Map Over Existing Diffuse and Normal Map I am texture painting a model. This model already has a texture and a normal map assigned, but I would like to paint another texture and normal map over this existing texture and normal map.

Here is a screenshot of what I am trying to do:

Is there a way to paint both the diffuse and normal map of the new texture together over the existing maps, or do I have to do both maps individually, like I am currently doing? A problem with doing each map individually, is that it is difficult to make sure both maps are painted identically.

I used two shaders input to a mix shader (cycles) and used two UV mappings - one is set to the default all faces overlapping for the tiled texture with normal map, and the other is for a smart UV unwrap for painting the stencil.

A normal Map node is for getting the bumps from the normal, and I chose blue for the original shader so it would contrast to see the effect.

Most people imagine that software like Substance Painter is projecting both the diffuse/albedo and the normal at the same time through the brush when it is actually similar to this set up using a stencil to reveal the automatic mapping.


How to turn off reflections on glass My scene has about 4 point lights which makes it reflect on the glass with white spots, you can see it in the picture. how do i fix it

Here is my lighting
I tried turning off glossy option in ray visibility but that didn't work
so how do i fix it

Glass is supposed to be transparent and reflective (and other thing  is refractive, can disperse and absorb light, etc). If you take away the reflections then it will no longer look like glass.
Instead of trying to suppress the reflections, you need to use them to your advantage, so that they feature the characteristics of your object.
Using point lights or very small sources will always result in the kind of ugly spots that you dislike.

That is the very reason why photographers never use point light sources to light shiny objects.
Do an internet search for articles on how to photograph glass and shiny objects. The same principles apply for 3D rendering.
Use large area lights and white panels to light the scene, so that the reflections are much larger and more pleasant (or less distracting). Here's a single very large area light on the same scene: you can see the transparency, reflectiveness, roundness of the object and the overall shape of the object inside the glass.

Delete all the lights you are using, set the world to a black environment, and start with a single large light and play with it, pay attention at what happens with the reflections and the shape of the object, move it and play with the size until you find something that you like, and that suits your needs. Strategically add more lights, or white or black planes, until you get the results you are after.
The same principles that apply to shiny objects can also be used on glass: You are not lighting the object but creating an environment that gets reflected on it.

Read also: Why does an object with a glossy shader render in black?


Setting the right context for an Outliner Operation I am trying to invoke bpy.ops.outliner.group_operation(type='LINK') in an addon but unable to get the right context.

From a bit of searching, it appears I would need to have the OUTLINER area active before calling the op, but cannot figure out how to do that.

How can I set the right context in order to call bpy.ops.outliner.group_operation()?

Edit: The ultimate objective is to 'Link Group objects to Scene' which is an option available in the context menu for a group.
I managed to make it run by overriding the context but it doesn't appear to actually do anything when run this way.

Overriding the context finally worked for me, with the help of this
answer:

override = bpy.context.copy()
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'OUTLINER':
        override['area'] = area
bpy.ops.outliner.group_operation(override, type='LINK')


How to use select_circle in a modal operator to select faces in edit mode? I'm trying to write a small tool where I can "paint" a face selection and at the same time expand this selection to its shell (essentially what select_linked() does.
I have set this up as a modal operator and selecting works fine while using:
self.loc = [event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y]
bpy.ops.view3d.select(location=self.loc, extend=True)

Sadly I can't seem to get it to work with select_circle.
Simply doing:
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y, 10)

Gives me an exception: 1-3 args execution context is supported exception
I then tried to override the context like so:
override = context.copy()
override["x"] = event.mouse_region_x
override["y"] = event.mouse_region_y
override["radius"] = 10
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(override)

but this does not do anything..
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

selects but then the select_linked() does not work anymore :/
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle('EXEC_DEFAULT')

also doesn't seem to work.
The complete code for the addon is here: https://gist.github.com/sschoellhammer/bcafcb2cdec2e2aee08c6c0837a88559
I'm sorry, I'm still fairly new to blender scripting. If you have any pointers for me, please let me know!
Thanks so much!
seb

Ok I figured it out..
from:
(Is there a way to set the radius of the new circle select tool by python script)
def get_3d_area_and_region(self):
    self.view_3d_area = None
    self.view_3d_region = None
    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:  # Cycle through all the avaliable areas
        if area.type == "VIEW_3D":  # if area is called VIEW_3D
            for region in area.regions:  # Cycle through all the regions in that area
                if region.type == "WINDOW":  # if the region is WINDOW
                    self.view_3d_area = area  # save the area and region in variables
                    self.view_3d_region = region
                    return
    print ("Could not find area/region")

and then
override = context.copy()
            override['area'] = self.view_3d_area
            override['region'] = self.view_3d_region
            bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(override, x=event.mouse_region_x, y=event.mouse_region_y, radius=100)

I still don't really understand why the context area information of my own operator is not enough and I still have to query all the areas extra. Oh well, some day I will know more..:)


How to render single frame instead of repeating frames? I have an animation that has three(3) still images in it. Each image stays for 3 seconds and then switch to next image. I don't want to render same image for 3 seconds(That is 180 frames) but in animation video that same frame should stay for 3 seconds.
Any suggestions?

Just render your three images into picture files, then import them into your favorite video editing software and make them last any time you'd like.


Can gravity be disabled for a single object in the BGE? I created a scene with my camera parented to a player object and a few bouncing balls.
I want the player to stand still (in space) unless moved by user interaction and interact by the balls when hit.

As soon as the game engine starts my player is dragged by gravity I couldn't find a property to control the influence of gravity in KX_GameObject as suggested by this outdated BA Thread.

File or testing: .blend

You can do that with logic bricks alone. So you do not need a constantly running python script.

Assuming your object has a mass of 1.0:

activated once with an Alyways Sensor [with deactivated True Level Triggering]

Remarks

If you have a different mass and/or gravity, you multiply the gravity with the mass to get the counterforce: Force.z = gravity * mass
Ensure the counterforce is given in global coordinates ([L] must be disabled), otherwise you get a rocket.
Gravity is per convention a force along the global -Z axis. The counterforce must be along +Z (positive Z-coordinate)
Do not wonder that your floating object is moving when touched, that is normal. The only reason it would stop by itself would be air friction. This is not part of the gravity.
This method does not work with swimming/diving objects as the counter force would not be constant.


BGE Scripting minimap issue I am doing minimap and with script it should show You-are-here point with current position
the only problem is - the red point is always shown outside of the minimap region, although it is moving correctly.
but it should be on the location of a minimap!

what should i add to the simple code?
screenshot attached

I've tried your blend file, but it's too heavy to work with. I've made an example file exclusively to answer your question. Download it here.

What you need to create a minimap is understand the concept of a viewport and make both minimap and game map the same size, so the dot position will work as expected.

How It Works

The basic concept of a minimap is:

Create a Minimap scene, and the minimap object must be the same size as the game map. In this example, both have 200 meters on each side (delimited by the black borders).

Add the Minimap as overlay scene.

Set the viewport from Minimap scene's camera. Everything is detailed on the script minimap.py.

# Enable viewport use on map camera
camera.useViewport = True

# Pre process the viewport pixel coordinates
left = getWindowWidth() // 2
bottom = getWindowHeight() // 2
right = getWindowWidth()
top = getWindowHeight()

# Set viewport coordinates
camera.setViewport(left, bottom, right, top)

Store the player's position and rotation on globalDict.

# Store player position and rotation on globalDict
globalDict['position'] = list(own.worldPosition)
globalDict['rotation'] = list(own.localOrientation.to_euler())

Update the arrow representation from minimap based on values from globalDict.

# Check if values are present in globalDict
if 'position' in globalDict.keys() and 'rotation' in globalDict.keys():

    # Update arrow's position and rotation
    own.worldPosition = globalDict['position']
    own.localOrientation = globalDict['rotation']

Additional Notes

Every object from Game scene is a group instance from scene _LibScenery.
The Minimap is added as overlay scene automatically at game start on object PlayerCollision from scene _LibScenery.


imported rhino .obj shows 0 faces 0 verts 0 tris I'm exporting a model form rhino as an .obj importing it into blender, which then gives me no viewable model but is named in the scene collection?

is it something im doing wrong in rhino???

It looks like you've disabled the viewport visibility of your imported object, or it has been imported in a disabled state.

In the outliner, enable the "Viewport visibility" column/filter (Funnel icon > Monitor icon), then enable the Viewport visibility for your object.


How to reset the GUI - without using the menu...? Picture says all... The GUI is extremely small - how can I reset it??

Approach 1 (recommended)
Open the directory where Blender is installed and type cmd in the address bar and press enter. Then run the following command to start Blender and set the Resolution Scale to its default value.
.\blender.exe --python-expr "import bpy; bpy.context.preferences.view.ui_scale = 1.0"

If auto-saving for the preferences is disabled, you need to manually save them.

Open the preferences (Edit > Preferences).
Click on the hamburger icon in the lower left corner.
Select Save Preferences.

Approach 2
This will completely reset Blender to its factory default settings.
Open the directory where Blender is installed and type cmd in the address bar and press enter. Then run the following command to start Blender with the factory settings.
.\blender.exe --factory-startup

Next you need to manually save the settings.

Open the preferences (Edit > Preferences).
Click on the hamburger icon in the lower left corner.
Select Save Preferences.


Procedural generation of cavern floor for 3D printing I have started out creating a texture that I'm using to displace a mesh to create a cavern floor texture for 3D printing D&D floor tiles. The texture looks like this.

This results in a nice model that looks like this.

I've started using displace and boolean modifiers to chop up this 4x4 grid to make somewhat random passageways, but I'm now realizing that these same shapes are going to be in every tile and am wondering if there is a way to procedurally generate shapes like these.

I've started by creating an 8-sided plane on the surface. Then I've added two displace modifiers. One X axis and the other Y axis. I use the built in noise texture to displace each vertex in the n-gon. I then use the subdivide modifier to smooth out the n-gon and make it look more like an amoeba like in my original texture. I then use the solidify modifier on the n-gon to give it thickness. Finally I use an array modifier to make stacked copies using an object offset scaled at 90% and vertically offset in order to get the shrinking layer affect.

As you can see, the problem is, each layer is an exact copy of the layer below, just a bit smaller. I'd love to get some variation in the shape and maybe even number of "blobs" on each layer. Just as long as an upper blob doesn't overhang a lower blob.

Can any of you clever Blender users think up a way to procedurally generate something like this so that I can generate new shapes by quickly modifying something? With the noise generator it randomly changes things each refresh. With other generated textures I had to move a reference object. Either way works for me because it is so much easier than hand-drawing new textures.

The shape layers should ideally be on a multiple of 0.2mm because that is the layer height I'm using to 3d print these models. Each shape layer can be a 1 or more print layers thick. Also, I'd like each square to have shapes that terminate at mostly the same height so that minis can easily rest on top. I want each shape to fit within each square in the grid and I don't want shapes to be cut off by the grid because that looks ugly and inorganic.

Maybe make a random hill shape and then somehow slice it into layers?

Is this something that is too difficult for the modifiers and should be done with a python script?

All the best,
Brian

I found a way that works for me. I'm sure it could be made better with a few tweaks but I'll describe what I did. Essentially I want to generate topographical elevation lines on an arbitrary surface and then thicken the planes defined by those topo lines. Here's what I did.
I used a Voronoi texture, using distance squared and modified the ramp properties to invert the image and set the color stops to .35 and .5. I used an empty object scaled at 40x to map it to a displacement modifier. I could add a noise displacement modifier to this empty object to get the pattern to vary randomly if I wanted to.

Before applying the displacement modifier, I weighed the vertices based on their proximity to the edges of the tile. This kept from having ugly abrupt edges. I applied this displacement to all of the non-edge vertices in my surface plane. I then added a Laplacean Smooth to the same inner vertices. I hit it pretty hard with a Lambda Factor of 5 and Repeat 10.

Once I got the undulating surface looking good, I hit it with a Boolean Intersect with an object consisting of planes at every height that matched where I wanted a topo line. Finally I took this and solidified it up to the next topo surface. (You could also solidify it down if you wanted to.)

I then add the simple square base underneath and I'm set. This seems to be relatively simple computationally and gives great results. There are just two problems. Or maybe just one. Since the set of topo surfaces are all one object, the distance between them has to be the same so that when I solidify, the new surface can be coincident with the adjacent topo surface. So I grow each surface until it exactly reaches the next topo surface. This results in coincident surfaces though, which isn't really a clean model. Most slicers seem to do okay with it, but it nags me a little.
Likewise, if I wanted to vary the distance between topo surfaces, I could solidify down beyond the adjacent topo surface. But then I would have self-intersecting solids, and I know slicers don't usually like that.
Is there an easy way to somehow combine these individual, possibly intersecting tiers into one non-self-intersecting object using modifiers?
Honestly the coincident surfaces and even spacing of the topo lines aren't deal-breakers for me so really I'm okay. It's just a nagging little thing.


Is it possible to display volume of a mesh object? How can I display volume of any mesh object?

I can display length of an edge, the area of the face, but nothing for volume. Is it possible?

You can use the Print3D add-on for that. Activate it in user prefs (Ctrl-Alt-U) and it will appear in the Tool Shelf of the 3D View. Top line buttons let you calculate volume and total area.