Filling Hole in scanned ct - object So my problem is that I have an scanned object (CT scan) and there are some "errors". One of them is that there are holes in the object, which I don't want.

My first solution was just to put an object in it and modify it to match it. I want to ask you, whether there is a better methode to fill that hole? Any hints or ideas would be helpful.

I tried:
a) Delete Faces, Select edges and (f). Works
b) Add an object and some boolean operation. Works <- favorite till now

After trying with your file, I would do like this:

In edit mode, delete all vertices that shouldn't be there. This depends on how the original model was: if holes are scanning errors, some geometry is missing, because of the hole obviously, but the reconstruction also created some non-existing surface geometry to create that wrong hole.

After doing that, your mesh will be non manifold, but you should have - on each side of the whole - a "ring" of vertices that should be quite easy for you to fill with tools like Grid Fill, hopefully (I tried with one of your holes, I'll add images below to document.

This is the most "clean" method imho, and quite easy to do, but manually not automatic. And to reconstruct the missing geometry (eg with grid fill) you'll have to try to stick to your original object surface, visually from a reference... (or doing another scan of that area, perhaps?)

This is the hole I'm going to reconstruct:

In edit mode, I'm going to remove this geometry which should be wrong (not sure, it depends on the original object...)

after removing those vertices, you have two holes, now, one on each side!

so now you can select a ring on the first side, and try using "grid fill"

the "grid fill" default settings could be not optimal

but you can tweak them in the side panel until you reach a decent result

now you switch to the "other side" hole left before (from there we still see the last geometry created on the previous side by "grid fill", selected...)

now do the same, select a vertices ring and grid fill it

So, finally, the hole is now gone and you have this (on each side):

You can still tweak vertices and faces until satisfied. Then, move to another hole... :)

Hth


Condition "if" statement to change render engine modes I wanted to change the cycles render to Blender internal through a panel button but only want the panel button to appear only when the current render engine is cycles. How do I create the conditional statement ?

Here the code I'm trying but it's not working:

if context.scene.render.engine == {'CYCLES'}:
      layout.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

You don't want the curly braces around the string.

if context.scene.render.engine == 'CYCLES':
    layout.operator('render.set_internal')

Note that cycles and blender internal are not the only choices for render engine. It would be better to test if blender internal is the current engine.

if context.scene.render.engine != 'BLENDER_RENDER':
    layout.operator('render.set_internal')
else:
    layout.label(text='Blender render is active.')


How to move a path point over time My model includes a path (representing an arm of a little stick-man) with three points.  I want two of these points to remain fixed, and the third (the "hand") to move with time, as if he is waving.

I imagined I would be able to insert keyframes for the path's third point, but that doesn't seem to be possible.

Is there a way to move only one point in a path (i.e. change the path) with time?

Alternatively, is there another way I can achieve the effect please?

Yes you can do this easily by going into edit mode, selecting the vertex you want to animate, and pressing Ctrl+H > Hook to New Object. You can now animate the new Empty and that vertice will follow it's position exactly.


How do I remove a texture node from my animation after using it I am making an animation by using keyframes on the node sliders, for example i used a noise texture node and the scale goes from over 100 down to zero. I want to stop having the noise affect my texture after the frame where it gets to 0 and start using other ones, but if i remove or disconnect the noise it removes it from the whole animation. How can i get the noise to stop affecting it while letting it work for the first few frames?

You don't have to remove texture node.
Add Mix RGB node and animate Factor from 0 to 1 affect appearance of second texture node.

For some reason, captured gif didnt recorded Factor value, but it is there :)


Whiter white in cycles I'm trying to make a material for arena ice in cycles. I'd like to end up somewhere like this:

and am having trouble getting it white enough.

Here's what I've got so far:

It is seems like I need to give if a lot of light to get up around the amount of white where it should be; so much light that it washes out my stones.

I've got a 50% mix shader with white diffuse and white glossy inputs. Is there a way to make my ice whiter?

More light is what you need. Try to ensure that your lamps are not all placed near the stones, so as to give a more even illumination.

Keep in mind that the environment is directly affecting the brightness/color of reflective objects, so set the world color to at least a brighter gray, though white is probably to much.

Imagine (or look at reference images) the kind of ambient light there is reflected from the roof/walls and floor of a large, brightly lit ice rink/arena. Sort of a soft grayish white. Here's what I used for the image above (I didn't use any method to come up with this value, I just eyeballed it):

Note that enabling AO will really brighten things up, but I'm not sure that's what you want. (you can also use the AO pass to get finer control using the compositor)

There are a couple more things you can do to make your ice material look nicer:

Use the Layer Weight node to make reflections more intense at sharp angles.
Bump map the glossy shades separately from the diffuse shader, which is acting more like the floor under the ice. If you really wanted to be realistic you could use multiple objects and a glass shader, but it is quite unnecessary as separate bump mapping looks fine.
Use two glossy shaders, one for sharp reflections and one for softer reflections.

Here's the node setup used for the ice material in the above image:

Note that it is possible that the bump mapping in your material has gone wrong in some way, causing the gray ice. But it's impossible to say without at least seeing the nodes.


Dilate/expand vertex color mask? I'd like to use vertex colors in order to apply different shaders on a single object, instead of going through the whole process and drawing a 'black and white' texture (for 1000+ objects).

Obviously, the only limitation is that the mask shape depends on the topology of the object, so I'd like to know if there is a simple way to shift the edge in- or outwards (green shape in the picture).

Q: Is there any mechanism to dilate the shape?

This cannot be done in shader nodes, because to Dilate (paint) a point on surface one must know the color of surrounding area of that point. The node that samples Vertex Color does not allow for mapping vectors input to sample surrounding area:

That said, dilation/erosion on procedural or image textures would be possible using a dilation/erosion morphology kernel - similar to this edge detection:

Voronoi Cracks Fac?

So to do this on Vertex Colors, it has to be done on vertex/mesh level. I wrote you a little plugin that will work on all selected objects:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Vertex Color Expand",
    "author": "Jerryno",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Toolshelf > Vertex Color Expand",
    "description": "Dilate/Expand a vertex color",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Mesh",
    }

import bpy

def dilate(mesh, layer_name, color):
    if layer_name not in mesh.vertex_colors:
        return

    polys_to_be_painted = [False] * len(mesh.polygons)
    verts_to_be_painted = [False] * len(mesh.vertices)

    for poly_id in range(len(mesh.polygons)):
        for id, loop_id in enumerate(mesh.polygons[poly_id].loop_indices):
            vert_id = mesh.polygons[poly_id].vertices[id]
            if mesh.vertex_colors[layer_name].data[loop_id].color == color:
                polys_to_be_painted[poly_id] = True
                verts_to_be_painted[vert_id] = True

    for poly_id in range(len(mesh.polygons)):
        for id, loop_id in enumerate(mesh.polygons[poly_id].loop_indices):
            vert_id = mesh.polygons[poly_id].vertices[id]
            if polys_to_be_painted[poly_id] or verts_to_be_painted[vert_id]:
                mesh.vertex_colors[layer_name].data[loop_id].color = color
    return

class VCDilate(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "vertex_colors_dilate.dilate"
    bl_label = "Dilate/Expand"
    bl_description = ""

    def execute(self, context):
        for ob in context.selected_objects:
            dilate(ob.data,
                   context.scene.vertex_colors_dilate.layer_name,
                   context.scene.vertex_colors_dilate.color)
        return{'FINISHED'}

class VCDilateUI(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Vertex Color Dilate/Expand UI Panel"""
    bl_label = "Dilate/Expand"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"
    bl_category = "Vertex Colors"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        col.label(text="Target Layer:")
        col.prop(context.scene.vertex_colors_dilate, "layer_name", text="")
        col = layout.column()
        col.label(text="Target Color:")
        col.prop(context.scene.vertex_colors_dilate, "color", text="")
        col = layout.column(align = True)
        col.label(text="For All Selected Objects:")
        col.operator("vertex_colors_dilate.dilate")

class VCDilateProps(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    layer_name = bpy.props.StringProperty(default="Col")
    color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(default=(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), subtype='COLOR', soft_min=0, soft_max=1)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VCDilateUI)
    bpy.utils.register_class(VCDilateProps)
    bpy.utils.register_class(VCDilate)
    bpy.types.Scene.vertex_colors_dilate = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=VCDilateProps)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VCDilateUI)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VCDilateProps)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VCDilate)
    del bpy.types.Scene.vertex_colors_dilate

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Shift+L is not working properly I am working through the Blender tutorials by Blender Guru, and I am having trouble with linking the material of my doughnut sprinkles (objects) in Part 7 on particles; I'm using Blender 2.79b. As I go through, I have added the material to the first sprinkle. I unselect that sprinkle, then I Shift+Select the other sprinkles before selecting my sprinkle with the assigned material last (making it the active one). I press Shift+L, selected Material from the drop down menu, and all the sprinkles become unselected except the active one and none of the other sprinkles get the material assigned. I'm not sure what is going on here, and I can't find any suggestions. Now I can easily go through and select the individual sprinkles and assign the material, which is easy with a small number of objects, but if I want to create a scene with a large number of objects that are assigned the same material, that's not going to be so easy. Any idea what is going on here?

Here is the answer:

Use CTRL+L instead of Shift+L


Any good way to fix this particulat tri problem? I have a tri problem with my mesh and I wanna find out if it can be fixed in any way

EDIT: file--->

Do you mean you don't want any more triangle?

Select your edge
Subdivide it with W > Subdivide
Join the 2 vertices with J
Dissolve the edge with X > Dissolve Edges
Move the new vertice along its edge with G G


Fill UV squares completely in all margin I try to UV in a cubic model using Blender (v2.79).

I don't know how to do the same as this and must be like this:

The cubic model that I'm trying to UV like the previous even using Method: Angle-Based(These aren't the UV that I want):

What it should do?

To unwrap the UV, so that every Quad fills the UV space from (0, 0) to (1, 1), select the faces in the 3D View, press U and choose Reset from the unwrap dialog. (The bottom most option.)


Small black triangle appears during subdivide in combination with Sub Surface I have pretty standard mesh with a sub surface modifier (not applied).

Editing has been fine until now - now when I subdivide an edge (one cut) it creates a small black diamond around the new vertex. When I toggle 'Display in viewport' in the subsurf modifier the diamond disappears correspondingly so the two are related.
I also can't recreate this in a fresh scene with just the default cube.

Blender version 2.82.7 - any ideas?

It seems that you subdivided, just this edge. The result is a n-gon which will cause problems with the subsurface modifier. It even looks like the resulting vertex is not connected to both faces, so the subsurface-modifier sees this vertex as a corner and rounds it. Go into vertex-editing and find the 5th vertex (it's exactly where this weird triangle is) and dissolve this single vertex, by deleting it and choose the dissolve vertex option. After that find out if the face over and below that edge are connected, the easiest way to find out is to just move the edge, if both faces follow you are good, if not you will have to merge the faces with on common edge between. I hope I could help you with that. All the best Marco


Active rigid body objects fall through other passive rigid body objects I am designing a Galton Board, so I have a group of marbles, which are active rigid bodies, and then I also have a bunch of rectangles, which the balls are supposed to hit and then veer off.

And while this does happen to most of the balls, some of them either enter one of the rectangles on impact, or make it to the very bottom and fall through the floor.

Here I have an image of one of the frames:

The small rectangles represent the things off off which the balls are supposed bounce, and the tiny congested spheres represent the marbles. The panel on the right displays the physics settings for the balls.

As you can see, some of the balls are falling through the floor; while others have entered the rectangles.

And now here I have an image of the physics for everything else:

Extra Notes/Details: All of the marbles share the same Physics, every other object shares the same physics (they are passive & different from the marbles' physics), the scale of every single object is applied, and also that all of the objects except the marbles have a solidify modifier applied to them.

Blender Version: 2.79b, although I'm sure that this problem can be reproduced in Blender 2.8 as well.

Thanks.

Try to compose the collision of simpler collision shapes like spheres and cubes. Mesh collisions are expensive and unreliable. You can also try to increase the Rigid Body World to have more Steps Per Second. Sometimes you need to remove and recreate the Rigid Body on the problematic objects.


How setup Cycles Compute Device in console I am using blender 2.79, and I am trying to set up Cycles Compute Devices devices in system tab of user preferences menu in python console. What I can do is a list of available devices.

import _cycles
_cycles.available_devices()

and it shows an available device, but I can't find a way to set up this device in user preferences.

The setting I would like to change is marked by the red box.

In Blender 2.79 you can use:

import bpy

preferences = bpy.context.user_preferences
cycles_preferences = preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
cuda_devices, opencl_devices = cycles_preferences.get_devices()

cycles_preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA"

for device in cuda_devices:
    print('Activating {}'.format(device.name))
    device.use = True

In Blender 2.80 you can use:

import bpy

preferences = bpy.context.preferences
cycles_preferences = preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
cuda_devices, opencl_devices = cycles_preferences.get_devices()

cycles_preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA"

for device in cuda_devices:
    print(f'Activating {device.name}')
    device.use = True

Be aware that the script doesn't perform error handling for the case that the device isn't CUDA capable. You will get a TypeError with an OpenCL device.


Mantaflow: bake always crashes, cannot be resumed I have problems baking a smoke simulation with Mantaflow, I tried Blender 2.92 and 2.93 Alpha. When baking a (not very complex) simulation, Blender always crashes at around 30% of a 250 frames simulation. First of all I don't know why, because the domain resolution is only at 128, I've got and AMD Ryzen 3 at 16 GB RAM, a GTX1660 with 6 GB and more than 400 GB free disk space.
First of all, I've learned from tutorials that 128 is not a very high resolution for a good fire simulation. Is there a chance to tweak some settings so that the bake won't crash?
And if not, is there a chance to continue baking after a crash? I've set the cache to Resumable and when I hit Esc to stop baking, save my file and restart Blender I can resume baking where it stopped. The problem is, there comes the time when it crashes and although all files that were baked up to this moment are stored in the cache directory, hitting Resume will start from the frame that was baked when I last saved the file, not as far as it baked until it crashed.
Even worse, if I didn't stop baking and saved my file inbetween, there is not even a Resume button, I can only hit Bake Data and it starts from frame 1.
How can I tell Blender to resume after the finished frames?
I know that's actually two questions, but if one part could be answered the other becomes obsolete.

After realizing that there's no problem if I use Uni Cache (what I usually avoid) instead of OpenVDB I've found an answer myself even for OpenVDB. I don't know why nobody else is experiencing these problems because I'm using the default settings but if so, here's the simple thing I did:
In Blender 2.90 and above the OpenVDB volume format comes with Advanced Settings. Here you can choose Compression Volumes "None", "Blosc" and "Zip". The default value is "Blosc".
After switching to "Zip", the baking works without any problems. "None" works, too. Only "Blosc" makes all my machines crash.
The difference to Blender 2.83 LTS (which doesn't crash) is, there are no Advanced Settings in that version, probably it uses "Zip" or no compression instead of "Blosc".


How to render frames skipping every X , but leaving the filename increment by one I know how to skip frames in blender, but it seems the filename follows the skipped frames.  So if I want to render very 10 frames starting at 0 and finishing at 50.  I would like to see this

image0.png
iamge1.png
image2.png
image3.png
image4.png
image5.png

but this is what I get

image0.png
iamge10.png
image20.png
image30.png
image40.png
image50.png

You can use the 'Time remapping' slider to quickly adjust the global timing of the animation.

If you want to render every 10 frames, set the New time to 10 (100/10), and also set the end frame to 1/10th of the actual length.


How to extrude a bone using Blender's Python API? Assuming that I have selected a bone in the scene, how can I extrude it either from either tail or head and position the new bone somewhere in the space using Blender's Python API?

In Edit Mode, I tried the following but nothing happens:

newBoneLocation = (1, 1.5, 1.2)
bpy.ops.armature.extrude_move(ARMATURE_OT_extrude={"forked":False},
TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0, 0, 0),
"constraint_axis":(False, False, False),
"constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL',
"mirror":False,
"proportional":'DISABLED',
"proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH',
"proportional_size":1,
"snap":False,
"snap_target":'CLOSEST',
"snap_point":newBoneLocation,
"snap_align":False,
"snap_normal":(0, 0, 0),
"gpencil_strokes":False,
"texture_space":False,
"remove_on_cancel":False,
"release_confirm":False,
"use_accurate":False}`

I'm not sure if I should somehow select either the tail or the head in Edit Mode before executing the above command

It turns out it is not hard to do this using Python. I did it using the following instead:

newBoneLocation = (1, 1.5, 1.2)

bpy.ops.armature.extrude_move(ARMATURE_OT_extrude={"forked":False},
TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":newBoneLocation,
"constraint_axis":(False, False, False),
"constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL',
"mirror":False,
"proportional":'DISABLED',
"proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH',
"proportional_size":1,
"snap":False,
"snap_target":'CLOSEST',
"snap_point":(0, 0, 0),
"snap_align":False,
"snap_normal":(0, 0, 0),
"gpencil_strokes":False,
"texture_space":False,
"remove_on_cancel":False,
"release_confirm":False,
"use_accurate":False}`


How does blender work? I am new to 3D modelling and blender, I come from a programming background, I am fascinated by the kind of things blender can do. The more I use blender the more questions I have and the more confused I am, I am always thinking of how does blender do it? I am really interested in knowing how blender works internally but I understand that needs a lot of background in 3D modelling/Geometrical algorithms. Is there any resource that you would suggest that will help me make sense of what is happening in blender or 3D modelling? ex: How is a image texture mapped? How is occlusion handled? etc.

I think the main thing you will want to learn first are the basics of a computer graphics development. This generally means learning the basics of OpenGL programming. You will also need to go over some basic trigonometry and linear algebra for this. Once you understand these basics it should be a lot easier to just google for individual topics and find explanations.

I learnt most of this at my university introduction to computer graphics course, so maybe you could try looking at an online course covering these topics. I noticed a couple of online courses that look like they cover similar ground, although I haven't tried them myself, so I don't know the teaching quality:
https://www.coursera.org/course/webgl
https://www.edx.org/course/computer-graphics-uc-san-diegox-cse167x-1

When you get more familiar with the basics, you can try looking at blender's source code as well. I wouldn't recommend that for a complete beginner though, as it can be quite hard to follow in places.


Blender bge camera edge clipping aproach help i have this thing on the bge: "see the image"
\n
while the camera moves, the origin of my objects(tiled ground) reachs the edge of the camera" so blender stops rendering it because gets offscreen.

im a python intermediate user, know the bge "well enough".

movin the object origin would solve it momentaneusly, but i'll also have to repositionate the mesh... entering on triky calculations for bunch of objects instances.
this is the question:
is there a way to tell blender to clip [Camera settings] a little offscreen horizontally ??

you know... to render these tiles on the edge of the screen??

tryed tweaking the camera settings but with no clue.
multi resolution meshes but to increese the vertex count for an indeed  offscreen object seems stupid.
thinked on replace the meshes on smaller ones, s the same, just make gaps smaller but + calculation and trickering.

any idea will be apreciated...
thank you! have blend day ;)

here are some ideas google doped ive found useful

https://blenderartists.org/t/update-object-origin/553245

https://github.com/UPBGE/blender/issues/211

the best way seems to be adding other camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgXAv9csJu0&index=3&list=PLBF3FB2A571A6BB7C

dont know if i have to delete the questions...??? close thread..??
thanks for the help


I can't see textures in Game Engine I unwrapped the plane and cube using UV unwrap. I added an Image. My view is set to texture. But when I press P the textures are not shown. I cant figure out the problem.

I made the project using this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBVoKL3sbnw

This is my project file - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzymlv8wN9TiZ2Mwb2lDRWJCSHM

I saw many similar questions on this forum but cant figure out the problem. I am a beginner and any help would be appreciated.

You need to make a material for your object—go to the Materials tab (looks like a ball) in the panel on the right and hit the plus button. Then to to the Textures tab, one to the right. You should be able to add your image there.


How to make realistic falling snow in blender cycles I have looked everywhere and I cannot find a tutorial on how to make realistic falling snow in cycles. I know it is fairly simple in blender render, but I cannot find out how to do it in cycles. I don't even know where to start, since particles do not show up automatically in cycles.

You could create a snow material using volumetrics using a material such as this :

Applying this to a Sphere produces something like this :

Create a particle system and adjust the properties to provide suitable snowfall - eg, increase Drag, Damp, Brownian in the Particle settings and possibly also add a Turbulence force - to get gently falling snowflakes and the sphere for each particle.

This can produce the following result :

Blend file :

Breaking down the volumetric material, this consists of two parts.

Firstly, a Voronoi texture is used to generate a branching structure by way of a Maths Greater Than filtering out those points greater than a specific value :

Note that the Light Path render properties in the right-hand panel have been adjusted to increase the Volume bounces. This improves the quality of the volumetric material (as light is allowed to bounce within the volume).

Secondly, the Generated coordinates are manipulated to generate a density that decreases the further the point is away from the centre. This is achieved by subtracting (0.5,0.5,0.5) from the 0.0 to 1.0 generated coordinate (so it varies from -0.5 to 0.5 with 0,0,0 being the origin), the Dot Product is used to calculate the square of the distance from the origin, the Power node takes the square root (ie d^0.5), then it's scaled by a factor of 2 so it matches the input range of the Color Ramp node. The Color Ramp values are reversed (click the double-ended arrow button) so that it reverses the range. This should produce the following :

These two parts are then combined into the final material so that the distance from the centre affects the density (so it's denser at the centre) and the 'width' of the branches (so they taper off as they get further from the centre).

Note that the Greater Than node has become a Less Than node in the final material due to the inputs being swapped over for better node layout.


How do I make hair particles appear on top of the emitter and not through it? How to make grass appear on top of ground not in middle?

Some things to verify when making grass or other hair objects from a mesh item:

Is object origin where you want the particle to attach to the ground?

Are you copying rotation? (You can, or can not, as Yoda would say... but be aware of what it is set for...)

Are you adding roundness or radius?

Is the object being used as a hair positioned weirdly relative to global axes?

Is there weirdness interjected by velocity or physics settings?

And I bet I am forgetting some... but the one I always start with is "where is my origin, and what is the object rotation?"


Converting .3mf to .blend My friend sent me a .3mf file to modify for him to 3d print. Is there a way i can convert it to a file type, that I can use in blender?

At the time of this writing (April 2017), it appears that this might need to make use of an external platform like Spin 3d from NCH Software; there does not presently seem to be a way to do it directly. However, that said, the 3MF format specification is open source, and I would expect that there will be, sooner or later, the possibility of direct import to, and direct export from, Blender.

Implementing either of these will take programming capabilities that are outside of my skillset, so I won't have direct involvement.


Split (shortcut `y`) face to limit loop cut? I was trying to vertically-cut only one face like the screenshot blow. I remembered that I saw a man of a fairly large Blender channel on YouTube using split (y) for that. Basically, he was creating a window on one side of the wall of a room by adding two lines vertically and two lines horizontally using loop cuts. But before he was using loop cut, he selected the wall (one face) and pressed y.

I created a plane and then added two horizontal loop cuts. Now I had 8 vertices. But when I selected the middle face and pressed y, the number of vertices became 12. Does this mean that there are duplicate vertices on the same places? I searched Google for a way to limit the loop cut and people were suggesting "subdivide". So, I created the same shape as the screenshot below by both 'y' + loop cut, and subdivision. The former resulted in 18 vertices, the latter resulted in 14 vertices.

So, in short, was it a good idea to use "split" (y) as the YouTube presenter to limit the loop cut to one face?

Using Split faces does create double vertices.
You can easily merge them after adding your loopcuts.

Split faces Y
Add loopcuts
Select All A > Merge by distance Alt+M


Bounding Box faces relative to world coordinates Is there a way to create a bounding box around an object so that, while still being minimal, it has its 6 faces parallel to the (x,y), (x,z) and (y,z) planes?

For example, when I rotate the monkey head object and toggle viewport render I get this rotated box, instead of a cube with faces parallel to the world planes. What am I missing here?

The end goal here would be to have the dimensions of the projection of a complex object onto the world planes. I thought that a bounding box would be the best way of finding these dimensions, but I might be wrong.

Any help in regard to this solutions are greatly appreciated.

You can obtain the result you want by applying (eventually temporary) the rotations of your object.

To do that simply use Ctrl+A and choose 'rotation'.

Once the dimensions are obtained, eventually come back to the original orientation with Ctrl+Z


How to show accidentally hidden menu bar? Here is the blender window I have:

As you see, it doesn't have the menu that is usually displayed at the top of the screen.

How can I get the menu back?

You probably Maximized the active window.

To go back, try hovering your cursor over the Main 3D view, and type in the following key combination:

Shift + Spacebar


Eevee shadow inaccuracy I am experimenting with making some animations in Eevee because it renders much faster.
I created a simple animation where a few discs roll around and slice through a larger object. The issue is with the discs is how the shadows are rendered. Here is a photo (the disc is using a glossy shader):

It may seem like the disc is hovering above the ground, but in reality, it is not. The reason it looks that way is that the shadows seem to be cut off near the contact point between the disc and the ground. This gives the illusion that it is floating. It is not. Using Cycles, this is made obvious.

With cycles, the shadows are much more accurately rendered. Can I achieve similar realism using Eevee? Are there some settings that I need to tweak? Or is it not possible for my case?

The Eevee "Contact Shadows" setting may help.  With the rendering engine set to Eevee, go to the light parameters for the light source casting the shadow.  There will be a "Shadow -> Contact Shadows" checkbox you can turn on, plus some settings you may need to adjust to get a good merge between the contact shadow and the other shadows.
Here's an example, with and without contact shadows turned on:
No contact:

With contact:


Fragments when rendering Volumetric Lighting in Eevee Ive tried rendering several shots using Volumetric option in Eevee but only in one case I encountered this error, where my volumtetrics get all choppy and fragmented.
I tried all sorts of settings, increasing sampling of render and volumetrics, turning off Density for the Principled Volume shader, just leaving Emission on, etc. I always get this choppy result.
Can anyone point me in a direction of a possible solution please? :-)
UPDATE: Weird thing is, this also happens when I turn off volumetrics completely... No idea what this is. Anyone experienced anything similar?

I solved the riddle, fortunately :-) From some reason, in the compositing section, a Glare option with Ghosts settings got activated. It probably got set up automatically when I was  fiddling with Eevee rendering settings? Anyway, I manually unconnected the node and that solved the problem :-)


Concentric circles evenly spaced in UV mode My model is a simple UV sphere made of 128 segments and 128 rings.

My UV map is made of a plain disc with concentric circles.

I would like to evenly space the circles (with a constant offset). How can I achieve this without taking care of the circles one by one ?

Thank you for your help.

ok the answer was pretty hard to find :P so what you basically wana do is to have a uv consist of concentric circles .This could be done if you select all the inner rings except the vertice at the mid of the concentric uv map and smooth them.But this can't be done in blender..... So what I did was to create 2 shape keys a key with the original mesh and an other one in which I smooth out all the inner rings (except the vertice in the center of the mesh).Then Uv unwram it and change the shape key value and you got it ! (I will upload a blend file with an exaple)
Also be sure to set the options so you achieve maximum smoothness

Edit: If you have many edje rings and dont want to select them by hand you can do
this:

So what you can do to select the rings is:Create a new shape key and transform your mesh similar to mines*(orange arrow) (note the red circle options) .Then do the options that are pointed with pink (you should change to ejde select mode purple) and after you click the option that the pink arrow is pointing you will have ALL the edje rings selected.

*What I did was to grab the midle vertice and pull it up


Modelling pollen 3d mesh I am kind of a noob in blender, who's trying to model a grain of pollen for an ai experiment. The pollen grain is this one:

And I don't know how to model that random wireframe that overlaps itself in blender, 'cause the blender wireframe modifier only lets me build a perfect wireframe with no overlapping.

I'm not native speaker so maybe some words are incorrect. Thank you if you can help me.

I'm not sure about what you mean with the random wireframe overlapping. To make this object I think you should fake the texture rather than model it, I see at least 2 ways:

With a Noise node > Height of a Bump node > Normal of a Diffuse. Here I've even mixed 2 noises in a MixRGB to give a bit more complexity. I also added a Layer Weight at the end, if necessary.

You could also create a repeatable texture from your original image. Unwrap your object, in the 3D view / Texture Paint mode, use the Stencil brush to paint on your object with your texture, and again use this with a Bump node.


How to create a 3D figure with turtle graphic style commands I'm new with Blender and I want to know if Blender has some "Turtle Graphics" style box.

I mean: the old Logo programming language used some commands like:

SETX=100 (put the cursor at X=100),
SETY=100 (put the cursor at Y=100),
FORWARD 45 (move the cursor 45 steps forward),
RIGHT 90 (change the forward direction to the right, 90 degrees)`,

etc.

Is there something like this in Blender?

The Blender User Interface is written in Python, and Python 3.4 is included in the most recent (2.76b as of this writing) distribution of Blender. I see from this page that Python has up through release 3.5 included an implementation of Turtle graphics, so the answer to your question is a qualified "Yes", though it might be that you have to do some fiddling around with the Python implemented in Blender to obtain this capability.


Meshes added depend on the viewport and are not placed on their default place It's quite hard for me to describe the issue in words.

I'm gonna drop these pics to explain the issue.

Say I have my 3d-view this way:

When I add a mesh, it's created and placed in the 3d-view this way:

I want it placed upon creation this way, however my 3d-view is directed to:

Open the tools panel (Press the T key) to have access to the creation parameters (or press F6 after adding your mesh). Make sure that the Align to view box is disabled.

If the question is about why is the mesh not created at the center of the grid, then the answer is that objects are created where the 3D cursor is on the scene.

To reset the 3D cursor to the center of the grid press Shift+C


Everything Disappears When I Come Out of Camera View I'm using Blender 2.83 on a Mac (OS Catalina 10.15.5) Every time I try to navigate out of camera view, everything disappears. I have "Orbit Around Selection" checked in my preferences, I've repeatedly tried frame all in view and the other navigation shortcuts to reset the view and nothing helps. When I go back to camera view, everything is there but the second I try to navigate around the model, the same thing happens. Am I forgetting to do something I was remembering to do yesterday?!

Actually I may have solved my own problem but wanted to keep the question active just in case anybody else was experiencing the problem. Turns out "View All" did end up solving the problem but I had to actually use the Home button rather than selecting the menu option. Live and learn! – Jim McNeill


Video Editor Rendering - 7 hours to render 22 mins of video / audio I've got what I think is a rendering issue and despite reading and watching many things on here and the internet in general, I can't fathom it out.

Firstly, I'm quite new to blender video editor and have only been using it for about 3 or 4 months now but am really enjoying using it.  I've rendered several videos on it all and from what I can remember, all seemed to go fine.

However, the last few videos I've edited and rendered (all circa 20 mins) have taken between 6 and 7 hours.  I have no idea if this is considered good or bad, but no mater what changes in blender I make, nothing changes regarding the render time and was wondering if the fine people on here could assist me please.

The last video I created in there was a combination of 2 video + audio files and 1 audio file.

Video 1 is a 22 min long game footage capture from my xbox one via an el gato HD60 capture device.  This video and audio is then soft cut into smaller sections in BVE with the audio being lowered on some of the cuts.

Video 2 is an 8 second long intro video + its audio with no adjustments.

Both of these videos are setup on the same strips while the 3rd file (audio only MP3) is setup on it's own strip.

The specs for each file and my hardware are as follows....

Video / audio 1:
22 mins long
.M4V
1920 x 1080
59.94 FPS
Stereo
48 kHz

Video / audio 2:
8 secs long
.MOV
1920 x 1080
59.94 FPS
Stereo
48 kHz

Audio file :
22 mins long
.MP3
Stereo
44.1 khz

Blender settings / output details:
Memory Cache Limit - 4gb on the laptop / 32gb on the PC
Interestingly, no mater what I set it to, BVE only seems to use half of it, however, again, no mater what I set it to in terms of size, it doesn't make any difference to the render time.

Dimensions:
1920 x 1080 (100% scaling)
59.94 FPS

Anti -Aliasing, Sampled Motion Blur, Shading:
All off

Performance:
Threads auto detect

Output:
H.264 RGB

Encoding:
MPEG4 H.264
Bitrate 6000

GOP size 30

Audio codec MP3
Bitrate 384

Hardware details:
PC -
Dell Precision T7400
Windows 10
56GB RAM
2.5ghz Xeon Quad Core CPU
AMD Radeon HD 6000 series (I think) (1gb)

Laptop -
Macbook Pro Early 2013
OSx 10.10.3
8GB RAM
2.4ghz i7
Geforce GT 650M 1gb
SSD

Something to note is that everything is being done from / to a WD Elements USB HDD (IE all blender and original video / audio files are on the drive + rendering to the drive), but this has always been the case, including on the earlier videos which seemed to render fine.
I've also tried rendering from the USB HDD to the PC SSD but there is no difference in time to render.

Hopefully there is enough info in here, but if anyone requires any more info, please just ask. :)
I Really want to keep using BVE for now as I've only been video editing for a short time and can't afford the bigger / more professional packages out there. :(

If you are rendering anything on the stock USB 2.0 ports, you should expect slow times.  You could get either a USB 3.0 or 3.1 card for your box or move all of your files to an internal media drive and work from there.


issues when baking normals in substance painter with a blender model I've created a model in Blender that I want to texture in Substance Painter.

As you can see in the picture, I've marked those edges as sharp and auto-smoothed the model, and then I beveled them in the high poly version of the same model in order to bake a normal map in SP. Problem is that I get some artifacts when baking normals.

After searching in order to solve the issue, I've found that it's a good thing to mark as seams the sharp edges on the model, but I still get the same result, maybe slightly better.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Should I remove the sharp edges from the HP model?

EDIT:

This is what it looks like without sharp edges or autosmooth on

with autosmooth / sharp edges

what happens in Unity if I don't auto-smooth the model

At what resolution you are baking your maps usually if you dont have visible artifacts on the normal map, and everything seems to be even, without any artifacting it may be your resolution if you are texturing at lower resolution like 1k for a small object, try to use 2k up to 4k for a standard game model, maybe if its not a game model but for a commercial or animation try 8k or 16k as its going to be close to the camera.

Also, if you are using the creasing option of blender DONT! unless you want a really sharp  edge, dont use it or you can create artifacts, i. If you want a crease that is not as sharp in your lowpoly add a subsurface modifier and add loops were you want the crease. You may need to redo the UVS though, maybe.

And one last thing, if you have the lowpoly and the highpoly models coming from blender make sure their origin points, the 3 axis manipulator is exactly the same. A slight change of positioning in one mesh or the other can cause severe artifacting. if they are not position right, just put the mesh that is out of place were the other mesh is preferibly if you can both meshes at The world's origin point and export it again.

I hope it helps I had those kind of issues everytime, the struggle to bake perfect and beutiful normal maps...sigh.

Goodluck.


Weight paint painting opposite side I am following a doughnut tutorial. The weighted paint is showing on the opposite side of the object I am painting. This is making it difficult as I have to keep going underneath the object to paint the top.

It's probably a normal problem, the normals must be flipped, you can check this with the Display Overlays panel > Geometry > Face Orientation, to fix this press ShiftN, it will recalculate outside.


Unconstrained extrusion? When I was performing Yellow Submarine lesson, I was suddenly able to extrude unconstrained. I.e., I was pressing E, then immediatedly new set of vertices appear and I was able to translate (drag) them in any direction.

After I finished extruding to one side and turned to extruding to another side, I lost this ability. Once I press E, new set of vertices appear, but I am able to move them only in vertical dimension. So, I press explicitly Y and after that I am able to move vertices in horizontal dimension. But in horizontal dimension only, i.e. I am not able to finetune vertically.

Video sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6he45jLFs

I am to stop extrusion process and adjust vertices separately.

How to call unconstrained extrusion in my case?

try pressing Y 2 times again (total of 3 times), until you are free to move the new geometry freely... every time you press Y you set other contraints for the transform.

after E you are "grabbing" along the face normal.
pressing Y 1st time puts you in "constraint to global Y"
pressing Y 2nd time puts you in "constraint to normal Y"
pressing Y 3rd time puts you in "no constraint at all"

you can see a feedback of these changes in the lower left corner of the 3d window, where coordinates change while you are moving...


MakeWalk fails to retarget an animation with the rigify armature PitchiPoy Version I'm trying to load a BVH motion capture files onto a rigged character with makewalk using this tutorial :

tutorial link

I'm using the rigify armature PitchiPoy Version without modifications,to avoid problems,but it does not work. How can I fix it ? thanks.

I had a similar issue with a ManuelbastionLab rig. The problem is due to the armature having bones that cannot be mapped by MakeWalk.

To solve it I moved the extra bones (in this case the breast bones) onto another layer.
To do this go into edit mode select the bones to move, pressM and select a layer that is invisible (this can be checked in the data tab).

The light grey layer with the dot will not be visible.

Then I imported the BVH without any trouble.


Turret Tracking with Polygon-Aligned sets of Objects in Animation Nodes 2.1 I'm attempting to add gun turret style tracking to objects that have been placed onto the polygons of another object using Animation Nodes 2.1. I'm currently attempting this with blender's built in constraints system, but that has not worked, which I'll detail later.

My setup consists of 5 objects, 1 object which has its polygons & polygon normals used to place the 3 next objects; the 2nd object is the static "base" of the turret; the 3rd object is the yaw aspect of the turret, which should only rotate around its local z axis, with the other 2 axes being locked; the the 4th object is the pitch aspect of the turret (the barrel, in this case a scaled cube), which should only rotate along its y axis (between -180° and 0°) and have the same z rotation as the yaw aspect, with only the x axis locked; the 5th object is an empty, to be tracked.

The pitch and yaw objects both have constraints set so that they'll track the empty with their appropriate axes locked, as described above. On their own, before animation nodes is involved, they track the empty as expected.

When I instantiate the appropriate number of objects, and place them on the polygons with Animation Nodes however, each instantiated object seems to lose the rotation of the polygon they're on. They do track the empty, but will rotate rotate around these incorrect local axes. I suspect that this may be because the constraints' transformations may apply before animation nodes' transformations apply.

Is there any way to work around this issue, or would it be possible to altogether avoid using blender's built in constraints system and instead simulate the effect entirely in animation nodes? The latter option seems that it'd be more flexible, however I do not know how to replicate the effect of blender's constraints in animation nodes while also maintaining the position on the objects on their polygons.

Here's a sample blend file:

I am going to discuss a pure Animation Nodes approach instead of of using constraints, because, as you said, it is simpler and more flexible.

Base

The base is simple, we instance the base object, position it based on the polygons centers, and orient it based on the polygons normals as follows:

Turret

For the turret, the same will apply, but we are going to use the vector directed from the turret to the target empty as the guide for the Direction To Rotation node. We can compute that vector by subtracting the centers from the target location as follows:

The output rotation matrix is something we will use later, so make sure to expose it as an output.

Barrel

The barrel have the same orientation as the turret but it can rotate around its local Y axis, to rotate the barrel around the local Y axis, we multiply the rotation matrix we computed before by a Y rotation matrix. The location is also the same except it is shifted along the normal slightly, to do this shifting, we simply add a scalar multiple of the normal to the location as follows:

Now the only thing left to do is to compute the angle at which we are going to rotate each barrel along the local Y axis. To compute that angle, we are going to compute the angle between the the vector along the length of the barrel and the vector directed from the barrel's location to the orthogonal projection of the target empty on the plane of barrel, this angle:

Does that make sense? We will implement that as follows:

There is something slightly wrong with this implementation, the angle is not directed, it is, in fact, the smallest angle between both vectors. To get the signed angle (Directed angle) we can either use the Quaternion Output or investigate the cross product, we will be using the cross product method here as it is simpler. We compute the cross product between the two vectors, normalize the output, subtract it from the normal of the plane, return the sign -1 if its length is close to zero and 1 if not, then multiply the signs to the angle as follows:

One last thing to do is clamp the rotation so that the barrel doesn't go through the base, and maybe expose the limits as parameters. So the final result is:

Blend file:


Node Editor Material Transparency Problem I've set up a material in the node editor that basically makes the mesh that it is applied to look act as if backface culling was turned on.
However my problem with this is that the Transparency setting is no longer effective, as is illustrated in the screenshot below. Although Transparency is only set to about 50 percent, the resulting material is still entirely opaque because of the node setup (which I got from a thread on this site and do not really understand tbh)

So my question is if anyone knows how I can set up the material as to allow me to influence and animate its transparency while retaining the 'quasi-backface culling' node setup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers folks!

Use a math node and set it to Minimum and plug the Alpha output and the Front/Back output to it then connect the result to the Alpha input of the Output node. this way the the back faces will be totally transparent and the front faces will have the alpha you set in the material tab.


Why rendering gets a faded color video? I am using blender 2.8, system Ubuntu
Here is the video codec of source file H264, MPEG-4 AVC
Frame rate 24

In blender, I set the output as
File format FFmpeg video
Encoding Container MPEG-4
Video codec H.264
Output Quality: High Quality

Why the video gets faded, or a dark shadow is formed after rendering?

Original video screenshot (screencast using Kazam):

Screenshot of video rendered by blender:

I also tried many other settings like AVI, but all are giving the same results.

The settings for the color management don't match with the color space for the images used.

If the colorspace for the original images is sRGB then set the View transform for sRGB (or "standard")

Read the following link:

Blender image output gets greyish touch


Frame issues past 250, problems baking new frames So I am rendering on Blender, a simple ball hitting a tower of blocks, but when trying to bake the frame limit to 500 instead of the default 250, the animation loops instead of continues. I have freed all the cache, I have re-baked, and nothing is fixing the animation. At this point, I have a looping 250 frame render instead of the 500 frame I was looking for. Any Ideas?

I found the problem, after changing a force limiter, the bake cache had to be flushed and reloaded. now it's fine.


the animation cursor is playing in a stepped movement. Even if there are no keyframes put the time-cursor is moving the same way. my fps rate is 30is the animation cursor is playing in a stepped movement. Even if there are no keyframes put the time-cursor is moving the same way.
Here is a video showing the issue

your fps are very low that could mean a hardware limitation, probably your system does not have the requirements to work at full with blender or could be a bug. check the minimun requirements to run blender HERE

If you wanna see your animation at full speed, render a preview (Go to View > Viewport Render Animation) Here is a video explaining that


Is it possible to both GPU and CPU render in the same Blender instance? I have a Quad core CPU, that renders 4 chunks at a time. I also have a GTX 1060, which renders one chunk at a time, but renders chunks about 4x faster than the CPU. Can I use these both in the same instance of Blender for rendering? So I would be rendering 5 Chunks at a time. Or maybe the GPU would assist CPU somehow? I know you can just open blender twice and do skip framing, but I want something more convenient.

Note that I want to use this for rendering with Cycles.

It is now possible.

In the latest versions of 2.79 (check for the daily builds) you can use Hybrid mode: GPU and CPU as compute devices simultaneously.

Tile sizes have also been optimized for smaller tiles in GPU.

As always... test before you commit...


How to use bpy ops that take a modifier Enum as an argument? One issue I'm having is specifically with the bpy.ops.object.hook_assign() method on a currently selected vertex.

mod_name = "Hook" + str(vertex_idx)
obj.modifiers.new(mod_name, type='HOOK')
obj.modifiers[mod_name].object = other_obj

bpy.ops.object.hook_assign(modifier=mod_name)

I am trying to tell blender which modifier in the stack to apply the operation to, but get the following message when I do it from the python console:

TypeError: Converting py args to operator properties:  enum "Hook0" not found in ()

Has anyone had any experience with using hook_assign() at all?  Sadly this functionality of hooking an object to another object's vertex is exactly what I need, and it isn't supported directly in the HookModifier object API.

Tested with the default scene in editmode with a single vertex selected.

 import bpy
 vertex_idx = 0
 obj = bpy.context.object
 other_obj = [o for o in bpy.context.scene.objects if o != obj][0]

 mod_name = "Hook" + str(vertex_idx)
 obj.modifiers.new(mod_name, type='HOOK')
 obj.modifiers[mod_name].object = other_obj

 bpy.ops.object.hook_assign(modifier=mod_name)

This worked for me, however this code shows a common mistake,

That is that you're assuming Blender is giving you the name you ask for,
There is no guarantee you get the name you ask for when creating new data. (it could be shortened or have a .001 added if the name exists already).

So best use the modifier name directly.

eg:

 mod = obj.modifiers.new("Hook" + str(vertex_idx), type='HOOK')
 mod.object = other_obj

 bpy.ops.object.hook_assign(modifier=mod.name)


Texture painting isn't showing up on mesh I am currently trying to paint a texture on my mesh and it is not working. i brought up the UV image editor, made an image texture, selected mesh and unwrapped it. I then created a material and selected my image texture as the color. I try to go into texture paint mode to start painting but nothing happens. I have tried to flip normals being i saw someone else have the same problem and that was their answer but not for mine. Any help?

This is my .blend file:

I have no problems painting with your file as is(just changed color) and I am on OSX El Capitan as well. I opened your file after download with 2.78a and just changed the color of the brush and started painting.


How do I set an objects position relative its parent? Does blender support parent relative coordinates?
How do I set an objects position relative its parent?

I am setting the coordinates of the ship (being a child of the bottle) to 0 0 0. Trying to change transform orientation of the 3d view gives no change, the ship goes to origin in any case.

You can use Alt+O to setup 0,0,0 coordinates at parent location.

The operator is called Clear Origin, for 2.8+ you can access it from the 3D View header menu under Object > Clear > Origin.


What are the hotkeys used in this video in Blender 2.69.1? I'm watching a video which appears to be quite old: http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/uv-unwrapping-and-texture-painting-in-blender-tutorial/

What I need to know is what the hotkeys he's using do, and what are they mapped to now. Hotkeys such as CtrlA, CtrlJ, CtrlV, AltF, and that's all I can think of right now.

When I tried using some of these hotkeys or pulling up a menu with one on the menu, they didn't seem to work. Perhaps they don't work with the current version of blender?

By the way: I am using Blender 2.72b. Internet connection where I am is slow ATM so I can't just download the latest.

CTRL + A in object mode with an object selected you can apply the location, rotation, scale. CTRL + J in object mode with at least two objects selected will  join the objects to one object CTRL + V in edit with some vertices or edges or faces selected mode gives a vertices menu ALT + F in edit mode with 4 edges selected fills it with a face (beauty fill).

The hotkeys are the same for version 2.62 and 2.75 so i guess they are the some for 2.72b


Alternative way of merging vertices Is there a faster shortcut than Alt+M for merge?
I have seen video examples where it was shown a line dragging from point A to B resulting merge.
It may be an add-on?

Thank you for any of you who will help me!

Ok so real answer is that in the video you link he's using an addon by Pitiwazou and he gives the links in the comments:

https://gumroad.com/l/pie_menu_editor

https://gumroad.com/l/wazou_rmb_pie_menu_v2

Old answer:

Maybe he was snapping a vertex to another one, with the Snap option (Vertices mode) and the Automatically Merge Vertices option enabled? You can even activate the snap tool with ctrl.


Help With Grab Brush In Sculpt Mode I want to do something similar to this

https://youtu.be/R-I2l1G8CaI?t=2m17s

I'm trying to grab the back of the "head" but what I get is something like this

My sculpt is mirrored along the x-axis and so is the one in the YouTube video. But when I try to grab the back of the head, it looks like a butt while that in the video does not. Please help.

As i gathered from the comments, your question has already been answered. For future readers:- Uncheck "Front faces only" in the brush tool settings


What is causing disabled options when adding a mesh/curve object to the scene? Sometimes when adding an object to the scene I see that all options (on toolbar or in window after pressing F6) are disabled. Can anyone tell me when can this happen? What is causing it and how to revert it - make it enabled again. It worked for me when I restarted Blender and reloaded the scene. However I would really like to know what can cause it?

It sounds like you may have disabled Global Undo
That panel is called the redo panel, because when you change a setting on it, blender actually redoes the previous operator with the new settings.
If blender can't undo the previous operator first, running it again will add it's effect on top of the result of the previous operator (which is not the desired effect at all).
So this panel is disabled when undo is not available.
For 2.8x and 2.9.
Edit > User preferences > System > Memory & Limits: Global Undo

For 2.7X use
CtrlAltU> User preferences > Editing:


Gradient transparency of normal map? Is it possible to make the normal map gradiently transparent? I need to do this Making Vertical Gradient, then make top half transparent , but not for the object, only its normal and specular map.

Why? Because I have one object with 2 different maps. I have got rid of the seams with texture paint, BUT the strength of the normal map differs, so seams are created. So I need to make them transparent where they meet, in order to get rid of them.

Channel the gradient into a MixRGB node where you mix the normal map color with a neutral blue color (and by neutral, i mean R=0.5, G=0.5, B=1.0, like the default input of a Normal Map node). You can of course use this to blend between the two normal maps too. To blend between normal maps correctly though, you should use Split XYZ nodes, add R/G values and multiply B values between the maps, and then do Combine XYZ again.


Is there a rule for where the origin point should be when modeling? During modeling my origin point, (object origin) has moved and it has me wondering where the best place to put it is.

When modeling in Blender is there a general rule or suggestion for where the origin point of an object should be?

Please elaborate with what purpose it serves. For example, is there a benefit to having the origin point at the bottom center rather than the absolute center? Explain what scenarios the origin point is useful for.

Related question: How can I put an object in the center of the viewport and on top of the floor?
(For those who want to know how to move the object origin to the bottom center)

The Object Origin is the 0,0,0 mark of the local coordinate system of your object. Imagine your object sits inside a glass shoebox and snugly fits in. The three axes (width, length and height) run parallel to the edges of the box. The Object Origin is the ball joint by which the shoebox is fastened to the room.

Here are some general rules of thumb that you can break as soon as you understand their limits:

When you mirror anything, the Object Origin should lie on the mirror plane. If you have a symmetrical creature, it's left ear should be just as far away from the OO as its right ear.
The OO is the point around which your object rotates. When you do simple stuff like a door and you don't need an armature, you can put the OO where the hinges would be. That way you can just rotate your door and it will move correctly.
The OO is also the center for scaling. So if you want something to stay on the ground and only grow upwards, the OO should be on the ground, not in its middle. Think of a bar chart.
In most cases, object origins should stay close to your mesh. Beginners often move stuff in Edit Mode and forget that the OO stays put and then wonder why rotations don't work as expected.
Some Modifiers make use of the OO. The Mirror Modifier usually uses it to determine where the mirror sits. When modifiers have more than one object to deal with, aligning their OOs can help. Try the Array Modifier with object offset. The Curve Modifier usually cares a great deal about where the OO is.
Since the OO is the pivot point of the mesh, you can think of it as its gravitational center. Rigid body simulations actually treat it that way. So putting it to the visually correct center of gravity can be interesting.
Sometimes it makes sense to not put the OO where the hinge is, maybe because the symmetry of the object has nothing to do with its rotation. Then just parent your object to an empty and you have, in a way, created an in between OO.

To summarize it all: Stay inside the mesh and or stay on the centerline and or put it where a hinge or COG would be, break those rules whenever the consequences are useful and elegant.


Blender exporting not working So, i was using blender and i was trying to export and obj. file. But it didn't work. It highlighted the file red and i put my mouse over the red and it said that (File name, overwrite existing) and there wasn't anything overwriting it, please help.

The reason it says "File name, overwrite existing" and the name is in red is because you are writing over another file.

In this case, you are overwriting the already saved "Cathy.obj" because it has the same exact name as the text in the red box. To not overwrite the file, change the name of the file you are exporting.


Editing an imported 3D character which was made with photo shoots I've received a .obj file which contains a model of a real person along with textures which was made with photo shoot as far as i know. I'm completely new with modeling those kind of objects. The object itself is a 800k tri whole human body, which looks really rough, bumpy etc, which i guess is the consequence of the photo shoot. It looks quite good when rendered tho, considering how it was made. I managed to reduce tris to 40k in MeshLab with model looking decent enough but I have little or no idea how to proceed from here. I'm supposed to eventually animate it to walk few steps and sit. But before i do the animation i would like to ask you guys/gals for some advice or tips in the following:

-if any of you had any experience in this kind of modeling, how did you "polish" out the model itself, make it more realistic like it should look in the end, i have some general ideas but i imagine it would take a whole lotta time.

-will joint defining be a big problem in this kind of object(regarding realistic animation), and if so, i'd appreciate some tips on how to animate these kind of object.

I apologize if this is a trivial question, i'm just really hooked into modelling and i'm still deep in the learning process. Thank You very much in advance!

It sounds like you have a 3d scan. Most likely the model will be completely unsuitable for animation in its current form.

You need to create a lower res model with topology suitable for animation using retopology. The basic idea of this is you create a new, simpler mesh, that follows the overall shape of the original mesh (usually using either the shrinkwrap modifier or the snap to surface function in edit mode).

The full details of this are too complicated for a single answer here but there are plenty of tutorials around on the net. I'm hesitant to recommend any because I haven't watched any of them myself. There is a paid CGCookie one, which will probably be decent, but I'm sure there is plenty of good free stuff on youtube.

Once this is done, you can bake normals/displacements/textures from your original model to the new model. http://www.blenderdiplom.com/en/tutorials/all-tutorials/585-normal-baking-using-the-blender-internal-renderer.html looks like a good starting point here.


Zipper chain along the curve I need zipper to go smoothly on the corner as on first picture, but it appears distorted when modelling.

Is there any solution to this except of rotating teeth manually?

Blend file:

In your .blend, you have a non-uniformly scaled object being arrayed and deformed down a non-uniformly scaled curve. This creates quite a tangle. It's better to start off in an orderly way, than to make adjustments, and then adjustments of adjustments,and so on....
If you're stealing the curve from a part of the another object, (here, the suitcase,) apply the scale of that object before doing it.
In general, to array and curve in a way that's easier to get your head round:

CtrlA > Apply the scale of all the objects involved. This is true of modelling in general. Modifiers and other effects are generally calculated in Object Space, which is measured in the dimensions before they are transformed by the object-level scale. So, while modelling, always scale the mesh in Edit Mode, or, if you must give the object a scale-transform in Object Mode, apply it as soon as possible.
Place the origin of the curve at its first vertex
Place the origin of the object to be deformed at the location in its mesh you would like to lie on the curve.
Place the object to be deformed at the curve's origin. (Not necessary, but perhaps makes the whole setup easier to understand)
Again, for convenience, align the orientation of the curve and the object. (The most convenient way to do this is apply the rotations of both, so they're both aligned to the world.)

Having done all that, you should get a result like the blue example below:

As you can see, there is still some wedge-deformation of the teeth as they go round the corner, but unless you're in extreme close-up, that should be good enough?
If you want to avoid all deformation of the teeth, you could use the method from this answer, (or numerous others on tank-tracks), and array a simple plane (which deforms), instead of the teeth, Then instance the teeth onto the plane-array's faces. The teeth won't deform. That's the green example.
However, you've modelled the teeth as a pair, and in the green example,that leaves a slightly odd gap between one pair and the next. So, you could instead model the teeth separately, and use the instancing method twice, (2 arrays), to get the red example.


Can I change the default increment amount for an object's Transform properties? In object mode when modifying scale, rotation or location of an object. How does one:

Choose the amount of units changed when clicking the small arrow in the "Object" --> "Transform" menu next to the current value? Is it even possible.
Example: your object's X location is -1.0000 and you want to modify it with (10,000 = 0.1) each click. (default change is 1,000 = 0.01)
Change the position, rotation or scale with the mouse and having even numbers when moving the object. With (Ctrl+mouse) you can move and snap the object every 1.0 unit, but it's kind of a large movement, and when normally using mouse to drag the object it results something like "-2.45459".
So is there any way other than making all symmetric objects in a huge scale where the Ctrl+ mouse snap 1.0 movement would be called smallish movement.

For both of these I tried to find a settings menu to change the default values, but I found nothing. Also the 2) can be done in some way, since I saw one guy in some video moving object while it snapped every 0.01 units.

1) I haven't found any way to change the increment factor when clicking the arrows in the transform panel. I use metric units and at every click it snaps 1 cm (for Location), it is 0.01 if you don't use any unit type.

Personally if I want to move , rotate or scale an object with smaller values, for example if I want to move it 0.5 mm on the X axis I type in the values: "G"(for grab) -> "X" (on X axis) -> ".0005"(for 0.5 mm) -> RETURN

2) Snapping.

By default snapping is set to "INCREMENT" and it means exactly an unit seen  in the 3D viewport. It doesn't have to be 1 Unit (Meter).
These snapping values are set by the grid seen when you are in ortographic view (NUMPAD 5 to toggle):

If you zoom in , you'll see the grid changing from 1 unit to 0.1 units and then to 0.01 units and so on as you zoom in and also the Indication in the upper Left corner will change from Meters to Centimeters, Millimeters. Now if you move an object holding CTRL the snap will be relative to those units.

To fine even more your snap you can hold CTRL + SHIFT while transforming and this will make the snap be 10x shorter.

P.S. You can change the type of element to snap to from increment to vertex, edge, face volume using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + TAB


Action users number confusion I created previously 2 actions (animations) of my model, which I use in Unity. They both have visible number "3" near the "F" letter button, which I click that action would be saved. When I am adding now new actions and clicking "F" button it always appear "visible users number" not as "3" but as "2". These actions, which have "2" instead of "3" are not visible when I importing them to Unity.

Is there possible to change this "visible users number" that my new actions would be the same as these ones, which have "3" buttons instead of "2"?

The number shown is called a user count. A user being defined as a data block (or object) in blender.

A new action will have one user, adding a fake user by clicking the 'F' button makes it 2 users, to get a third user you need to link it somewhere else, like to another object, a strip within the nla editor or an action constraint.

By dulicating an object with AltD (known as a linked copy) the new object will also be linked to the action. If this is the case then you may be importing the duplicate into unity not the one you added the new action to.


Why is my mesh not fully taking the location constraint serious? I animated the ROOT bone, and added a 'Limit Location' on the BottomRR set to be fixed on Z=0. But somehow the ROOT bone forces the mesh to dip under Z=0 during the rotation (while the bone BottomRR stays perfectly in place). How can I solve this?

I would say its due to the default f-curve created on the ROOT bone, change its type (channel) to 'linear Extrapolation' that could fix it, but you may have to add one of the 'modifiers' to it.
Also see this
Rotate a Cube on a Plane Using Drivers


Modelling a room from a reference image I need to model and render a scene from a reference image, which is an image of a corner of a room with some objects in it. I've modelled some of the objects and am now trying to model the room itself with walls, a ceiling and a floor. Is there a good method of lining up the walls, ceiling and floor relative to each other and setting the camera to the correct point according to the reference image or is eyeballing it the way I should be doing it?

Use fSpy. It’s designed specially for what your dealing with.
https://fspy.io/


Blender to create a "skin" for a model? I'm trying to create a 3D version of a skin for a phone, tablet, computer, etc., so I can render realistic looking images of them in Keyshot.  So I'm looking for a way to bring in a model of something like an iPhone (that either I create or purchase from someone), create a new part that would wrap around the area I need a skin to apply around, and keep a UV map of that skin so textures will wrap the way they would in real life.

Ideally I'd like to be able to create the skin part directly from the model of the device.

Is Blender a good tool to use for something like this, or should I be looking elsewhere?

I dont' know if this at least partly answers, but this is a "skin" I built around a "phone" mesh... obviously very simple, and rough, that fits it nicely, because I built it as said above, duplicating the "phone" mesh, cutting "holes" where necessary, and then scaling it up a bit in every direction...

then, the skin cover could be decorated as needed, rendered etc.


How to convert a text object directly to an ngon? Is there a way to convert a text object directly into an Ngon?

Very often when using text it's necessary to convert it to a mesh for further manipulation. However, the resulting mesh is full of triangles and generally a mess.  It would be ideal to simply have a resulting Ngon since it is a flat plane anyway.

No. But there is another way to achieve it.

Select the mesh and hit Spacebar to invoke the function search menu.
Search for limited dissolve and initiate it. You can change the parameters by hitting F6.

Also note:

After you do a limited dissolve there may still be some manual cleaning up to do.
Limited dissolve is also in the Delete menu accessible with X and Delete
Limited dissolve is the same as the Planar setting in the Decimate modifier, so this can be done non-destructively
Blender does not support N-gons with holes in them. you will have to have a split along it somewhere.
If the n-gon is not co-planar you may see artifacts.


After find missing files, my floor wont cast any shadow i'm working on this project of mine and i've moved the floor's texture files to another folder in order to organise my textures, but i forgot to pack the files into blender. i opened the file and and found the missing files,after that, i realised that my floor object is no longer casting the light/shadows as it should be! i have no idea why :S i have all the files back but i got this prob now

if just loaded your file, changed to rendered view.
result:

So there is nothing wrong with it. Maybe you checked another file?
Solution: Just download your uploaded file again and it will work! ;)


Can't bevel an intricate mesh I'm trying to make a world map around a sphere like the one on the left. The problem is that I can't bevel the edge as the more intricate curves overlap.

I've tried every way I could find on the internet to make the map (Displace Modifier as in here, Bolean Modifier, using the svg only as a curve, transforming the curve into a mesh, etc.)

The one on the left is using the Bolean Modifier but even using Bevel After Bolean (returns an error) or Bolean Bevel I can't seem to bevel the map edge. Maybe the back part being only one face could be one of the problems.

The one on the right is made from a Bolean of a plane with 50x100 loopcuts and the map curve transformed into a mesh and then with the bollean applied. After that I tried to bevel the edge but as expected the faces, edges whatever overlap.

I also tried loopcut arround (have to join hundreds of vertexes 2 by 2) so I could scale the part of the sides and then bevel it "by hand" but I can't scale it uniformly.

Can anyone please help me?

I can add the project file if needed, I just don't know how :/

Thank you!

If you're using mesh (and not other methods like Displacement modifier or Bump or Normal Maps), I'm not sure there's any easy way to fix bevels, maybe somebody will tell. Anyway, let say you have this shape:

To simplify it, use the Checker Deselect tool, play with the parameters to delete as many vertices as you want.

Once you're glad extrude the mesh, then bevel.

Now you need to bring some manual corrections where the edges are overlapping.

If you need to fatten the bottom, select it and use altS.

As I suppose your mesh is supposed to bend at the end, add some additional edge loops on the surface.


How do I re-Load Fluid Sim Cache? I baked a fluid Simulation and it saved the fluid cache above the blend file in a folder called: fluid_cache. But when I closed blender and reopened the project, I had to re-bake the simulation.

Is there a way to load the old cache files so I don't have to re-bake the simulation?

At least part of the answer to this question is:

Make sure that the .blend file you are opening is located in the same folder with the fluid_cache folder.


How to keyframe all the objects viewport/render visibility inside the selected collection via python code? How to keyframe all the objects viewport/render visibility inside the selected collection via python code? And there's a boolean there that you can just type "False" or "True" to decide whether unhide or not. I only have a little bit of knowledge of scripting, especially in blender python library. I was thinking of this after knowing collections viewport/render visibility can't be keyframed, because I want to keyframe the object collections that aren't needed in certain camera shots. But trying to make it myself takes long time now, that I have to meet a certain deadline to pass my project.

After several moments I just got it, but I know there maybe a cleaner approach
import bpy

for ob in bpy.context.collection.all_objects:

    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide_render")
    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide_viewport")
    if ob.hide_render == True:
        ob.hide_render = False
    else:
        ob.hide_render = True
    if ob.hide_viewport == True:
        ob.hide_viewport = False
    else:
        ob.hide_viewport = True


Where to find the Animation Properties? Hey guys so I was watching a youtube tutorial on basic animation (I'm just starting out) and then apparently my blender version is newer than his. So one thing he had was an animation tab in the properties panel. I don't seem to have one, is there anything you guys can do to help?

This Animation-window-preset should give you the "animation tab".

Alternatively, clicking on one of these items in the bottom-left corner in each subwindow, will open a menu of all availiable Editor-Types.


How do I select vertices that are directly under the other? I'd like to select vertices that are directly beneath the one I am selecting to save me the trouble from moving out of ortho view. It's mostly on simple shapes like the cube below.

Notice how the first image has two vertices selected. However, if the other side is not.

N http://puu.sh/kg0oN/a618eee709.png

I want to be able to select vertices like so without coming out of ortho mode:

Is there a way to do this?

In edit mode disable Limit Selection to Visible.

An alternative approach is to switch to Wireframe Mode with the Z key.

Blender 2.8

In 2.8, these tools have changed location:


How do I add a Clothing model to an unclothed model? So im trying to make a 2d game where the characters and graphics are 2d 'sprites' but i render them with blender.
I have a model of a man with no clothes and then a model of a windbreaker fitted to the man and the windbreaker is already fully done with the vertex weights and armature setup to the armature of the man so if i move the mans left arm up the windbreakers left arm moves up with him.
Now im trying to make the animations on the unclothed base model, and render them, then for example import the windbreaker i made into the blender scene so i can render the exact same animations but with the windbreaker instead. How do i do this? I tried some appending, some linking and exporting FBX + importing the windbreaker and it doesnt work.

I figured it out now

STEP 1
Unlink clothing from model
STEP 2
If its bigger and above the model, set x y z scales to .2525
Step 3
Append the object and parent it to main mesh with "Armature Deform" option, none of the ones below. ( Thats because i already weight painted the windbreaker )


Partial shape subtracting using the Boolean modifier I want to subtract the upper cylinder from object below.

Using the Boolean modifier in difference-mode, the complete object disappears.

Here is the Blender-File

PS. I am new and almost always objects react weird when i am following a tutorial (like Array around an object).

It looks like you need to fix/flip/recalculate your normals on the top cylinder. To fix it...

Select it

Tab into edit mode.

T to toggle the tool panel @ left.

Click the Shading/UV tab.

Click Flip Direction

Tab to toggle back to Object mode.

Ctrl + A >> Rotation & Scale.

Try your boolean operation again, make sure the difference option is set.


my python script says,"python script fail,look in console for now" my code:

import bge

def main():

    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    own = cont.owner

    #variables

    ACCEL=0.01
    MAXSPEED=1
    BRAKE=0.1
    TURN=0.5
    speed=0
    gear=1

    #sensors and actuators

    up = cont.sensors['u']
    back = cont.sensors['d']
    left = cont.sensors['l']
    right= cont.sensors['r']
    brake = cont.sensors['b']
    clutch= cont.sensors['c']
    gearUp = cont.sensors['g']
    move = cont.actuators['movement']

    ##############program##########

    #throttle

    if up.positive :
        speed+=ACCEL*gear

    #gearup

    if speed*gear >= MAXSPEED*gear and gearUp.positive:
        gear+=1

    #turn
    if left.positive:
        speed-=TURN
        motion.DRot(0,0,-10)

    if right.positive:
        speed-=TURN
        motion.DRot(0,0,10)

main()

I don't see an error in your script. I expect you are trying to run the script from blender's text editor to get the error, which in the console will show the error as ImportError: No module named 'bge'

To use a script in the game engine you need to assign it to a python controller, the controller will run the script as needed during game play.


Problem of extrusion with mirror This is my mesh (the cube) and the goal is to extrude the upper part

The idea is to get THIS FINAL RESULTS BELOW:

In order to achieve this goal, I used ,as always ALT + S, but the result was this one:

My question is: Alt + s works perfectly with all the mesh i used before: why in this case, with a mirror, i get that distorsion? Is there a way to fix it?

Thank you!

You need to switch "even thickness ON", after command starts...

eg: after pressing ALTS...

then pressing S or ALT, thus getting:

which it seems to be what you wish to obtain...


Do some materials appear to be darker at grazing angles ? When I walk on an asphalt road on a summer day and I look below me ( where I set my feet ) the area around my feet appear to be lighter than the area a few meters away.  I think I notice the same with brick walls. They appear to be darker to me at grazing angles.
But all theory I can find and what I experience in blender is that when you increase the roughness of a material, and/or you play with Fresnel  the materials created in blender show a lighter color at grazing angles.  See also the youtube videos about physically based rendering from CynicatPro at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlH00768JwqFtFtsTKBxnLwadWsNo36R-

I started to think that glossy materials might appear lighter at grazing angles and rough materials darker, but I am sure my theory is far from correct.  I hope anyone can tell me more about it.  Is it maybe that the bumpiness caused self shadowing when it comes to materials like roads and walls, and so they appear to be darker at grazing angles ?

It's not about being lighter or darker. It's that the material is more reflective at grazing angles. So if the surrounding environment is lighter than the object, the grazing angles will appear lighter. If the surrounding environment is darker it will appear darker. The material's lowest point of reflectivity is also a factor.

To understand why the material reflects more at grazing angles, take this example of a sphere with lots of tiny particles being emitted from it. These little shards reflect light more, whereas the sphere itself absorbs it more (as perceived from the viewing angle). This is a simulation of how roughness works. The "roughness" value of a shader simulates the effect of microscopic bumps on the surface of materials.

In the image below, the sky is a black and white gradient. Here we can see that the Fresnel effect is not lightening or darkening, but rather reflecting more or less. So areas of the sky that are more white are causing lighter edges and areas that are more black are causing darker ones.


step by step description on how to connect two objects with a hinge constraint Can someone point me to or give me  detailed step by step description on how to connect two objects with a hinge constraint?I am not sure which is the target.. the one that actually swings or the stationary one. Also the constraint icon doesn't move at all when both cubes move. So I get dashed lines from it to cubes. Also the different menu items on the left side and the properties side confuse me. When do I use them? Videos I see are simple, but I can't copy them.

As it is written in the Blender reference manual's page about Rigid Body Joint Constraint this kind of constraint..

  ... it is used by the physical part of the Blender Game Engine to simulate a joint between its owner and its target.

So the first step is to make sure you are using the Blender Game engine. You can always save the result of the animation by recording it in order to use outside the BGE.

Now, focusing on a simple scene composed by two cubes like the following:

assign to the cube that will not move a Rigid Body Joint constraint and choose Hinge as pivot type. At this point you have to consider the cube (mainly it's origin) as the "pivot", while the target field must be filled with the name of the object that will be affected by the constraint: in this case the blue cube, named "Cube_Moving".

You should think about the object that brings the constrint as the pivot controller, by default it is placed in its origin, but you can tweak the relative position of the hinge with the options in the right panel.

Going on, you'll have to remember that...

  ...the owner and target can only rotate around the X axis of the pivot (joint point).

So it'll be better to move the blue cube away from the X axis, or we'll not see the result of the constraint.

At this point we have to set up some physic for testing the constraint. As it is said by a note in the manual:

  In order for this constraint to work properly, both objects (so the owner and the target object) need to have Collision Bounds enabled.

Go to the physic tab, as shown in the pic above and enable the option for the grey cube, and then for the blue. We-ll also change the Physic Type from Static to Rigid Body for this object (we could also have can set it for both, it's just an example):

To sum up:

Blender Game
Assign constraint to the pivot controller and make it pointing to the Target
Collision Bounds enabled

Final result:


cloth modifier on a t-shirt I've tried to apply a cloth modifier on a t-shirt so that it could fit properly on the body and followed its movements. The problem is that the t-shirt appears to be shaken by some wind, even if there isn't any force field enabled. Does anybody have any advice to give me?
Hope I made my self clear!

If the model the t-shirt is on is moving and a collision object, I'm going to guess the movement isn't wind, but the effect of the momentum of previous movements staying in the system. I'd suggest posting your cloth settings, but I'm guessing you need to look specifically at the "damping setting" on the right side of the cloth settings.


eGPU + Blender + Cycles + Mac Hi I wanted know if anyone is using an external GPU with blender on a Mac successfully. Would anyone care if so what setup they have and any indication of benefits and pitfalls.

Thanks

I recently made this build, have a look. It has some bench marks from blender:
https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/macbook-pro-retina-15-inch-early-2013-akitio-node-1080-ti-external-monitor/#post-14571


Keyframing emission shader colour/strength using python I'm trying to animate the colour and strength properties of an emission shader based on external data using script. I add a cube and give it an emission shader. I can alter the strength property using:

bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes['Emission'].inputs['Strength'].default_value=1

I then try to add a keyframe on the strength property using:

bpy.context.active_object.active_material.keyframe_insert(data_path="nodes[\"Emission\"].inputs[1].default_value",frame=10)

But I can't get the correct data_path. I must be missing something fundamental here. I have quite limited scripting experience in blender.

Code suggestions gratefully received.

You need to get a bit closer to what you want to keyframe. It is the socket that keyframes one of it's values, not the material. So you want to tell the input socket to insert a keyframe.

So this slight variation of what you have will work (only over two lines for clarity) -

node = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes['Emission']
node.inputs[1].keyframe_insert(data_path="default_value",frame=10)


Script to add rigid body to object in scene? I'm trying to write a script to add rigid body objects to all objects in the scene. I found this question helpful: How do I add a rigidbody to an object with python?

But when I try the solutions I get a 'context is incorrect' error. I have tried changing the context: bpy.context.area.type = "VIEW_3D" but I still get the error. What is the correct context?

This worked for me:

candidate_list = [item.name for item in bpy.data.objects if item.type == "MESH"]
for object_name in candidate_list:
    bpy.data.objects[object_name].select = True
bpy.ops.rigidbody.objects_add(type='ACTIVE')

In the loop it selects all the objects that you want to add rigid_body to. Then add them in one go.


I can't add or subtract weight paint from some parts of the mesh I have this problem where weight paint is applied to the wrong vertices on my character mesh, for example, the left thigh bone has weight mainly on the right thigh area and the left arm but hardly has any on the left thigh area where it should. When I try to add or subtract from the right thigh nothing happens (but I can add to and subtract from the left arm)

As you can see the left thigh (which is selected) is completely blue ---I figure it should have been mostly red and everything else should have been blue

This is the blend file save, hope it works

https://www.mediafire.com/file/355jizou7ib54c9/male_character_1.blend/file

Just tried your scene: apply the mirror modifier on the mesh so the right leg becomes 'actual' geometry...
Cheers!


How to disable Pie menu when holding TAB in Blender 2.8? How can I disable Pie menu when holding TAB in Blender 2.8 ?

It appears always using my wacom tablet as blender recognise even the smallest "mouse" movement ...

Adjusting this is the same as previous versions, although the pie menu names have changed in 2.80 due to them becoming a permanent part of blender.

Before changing the key bindings, try adjusting the drag threshold, this will allow more movement before it considers you are dragging. This will be applied throughout blender, not just the mode menu.

If you still want to change the key bindings, you can use the filter to find key-binding entries that use the tab key.

You can then see the settings that are in place, you may want to delete the Call Pie Menu or assign it to a different shortcut, I use ⎈ Ctrl↹ Tab to bring up a mode menu.


Shader Turning Grey instead of White so I was following a tutorial on making detailed eyes, I don't know why but as I was making the shader, it's colouring the eye grey even though the gradient is clearly set to white?
Here's a picture of my shader,

As you can see, it's set to white, but even if I drag the gradient to fully white, it still looks a light grey...
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Edit: For reference, here is the tutorial I was following, https://youtu.be/E0JyyWeptSA?t=558
You can see even though it appears my settings are the exact same, his is a consistent white in the middle, whereas mine is a dark grey...

Set the Z translation to 0 instead of -0.5 in the mapping node. What you are seeing here is a cross-section along the bottom of the sphere gradient, instead of the middle cross-section.

Illustration :


The line of symmetry move when I adjust the size I created a cube and then 'ctrl + R' to create a line of symmetry for the cube (Vertical). Then I 'x' to delete the left vertical and add a modifier of mirror so that the cube could be adjust by only changing one side. But when i try to adjust the size by 's', the line of symmetry will move with other line as well, which I did not expect to happen. As shown:

But actually I want something like this:

Have I done something wrong?

The easiest way to fix weird mirroring is to create a new empty and use that as your line of symmetry by selecting it under Mirror Object

If it doesn't work as you expect this is usually faster than messing around with whatever it is.


Python draw with different Y axis I have an addon with that you can define widgets (like panels) that are drawn into the 3d view. The are defined using gpu module, that has this coordinate system:

So the widget would be at about (800, 100), but of course the user would rather define the panel like this (upper left hand corner is origin):

I already keep the x and y in a separate Python class and I paint the panel with the gpu module like this:

def update(self, x, y):

    self.x_screen = x
    self.y_screen = y

    indices = ((0, 1, 2), (0, 2, 3))

    # bottom left, top left, top right, bottom right
    vertices = (
                (self.x_screen, self.y_screen),
                (self.x_screen, self.y_screen - self.height),
                (self.x_screen + self.width, self.y_screen - self.height),
                (self.x_screen + self.width, self.y_screen))

    self.shader = gpu.shader.from_builtin('2D_UNIFORM_COLOR')
    self.batch_panel = batch_for_shader(self.shader, 'TRIS', {"pos" : vertices}, indices=indices)

Is there a nice way to convert the Y-axis so that I dont have to recalculate the Y-axis manually to define the vertices of the batch?

Ok guys, it wasnt that hard, just had to change about 4 parts in the code where I get the height of the area and do a simple height - y to get the y position (same for the mouse cursor)


Blender 2.8 refuses to run on my PC When I try to run Blender 2.8, I get the error "Device init failed: 0x80070490"

My Windows 10 PC has the following graphics card:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

According to the geforce.com site, the OpenGL version on this card is 4.4, which should be plenty for Blender 2.8. So why is it refusing to run?

Thanks in advance!!!

Try updating your driver. Sometimes older versions don't have the same support as newer ones.


Why aren't my creases working? When I adjust the mean crease or weight crease nothing happens except the selected edges go purple. Why isn't it working?

You need more vertices to be able to crease the edge. When you make a crease, you are creasing a seam not a boundary. I have included an animated demonstration:


EEVEE SSGI add-on question After trying out the eevee ssgi add-on, I started wondering if using the add-on is really necessary? Because you can just append the node groups to another project without needing to even install the add-on. The add-on really only is just a few sliders in the N menu, which can also be accessed in the node groups.
I'm mostly curious about this for the purposes of sending out projects to render farms which do not support add-ons.
aDd-oN

Yes true. That addon is not that necessary. Mostly all of addons doesn't make sense if we think that it can be done manually. But, add-ons are created with the soul purpose of making things easier than it is. If your render farm do not support the addons than it's up to you weather you want to use it or not.