How to generate a 3D binary matrix after applying a remesh modifier I apply a Remesh modifier (Blocks) on a mesh and I want to generate a 3D binary matrix (voxelization) where each cell contains 0 (the cell does not belongs to the mesh) or 1 (the cells belongs to the mesh).

Alright, if I understood your question correctly, you want a lot of ones and     zeros from a 3D mesh. Here's a script:

import bpy

object = bpy.data.objects['Suzanne']
radius = 2.0
resolution = 20
file = open("C:\\tmp\\out.txt", 'w')

import mathutils
from mathutils import Vector
def pointInsideMesh(point,ob):
 axes = [ mathutils.Vector((1,0,0)) ]
 outside = False
 for axis in axes:
    mat = ob.matrix_world
    mat.invert()
    orig = mat*point
    count = 0
    while True:
        location,normal,index = ob.ray_cast(orig,orig+axis*10000.0)
        if index == -1: break
        count += 1
        orig = location + axis*0.00001
    if count%2 == 0:
    outside = True
    break
return not outside

bla = radius/resolution

out = ""

for z in range(-resolution, resolution):
    for y in range(-resolution, resolution):
        for x in range(-resolution, resolution):
            loc = Vector((x*bla, y*bla, z*bla))
            print(loc)
            if(pointInsideMesh(loc, object) == True):
                out += '1'
            else:
                out += '0'
        out += '\n'
    out += '\n'
file.write(out)
file.close()

Again, I'm not fully sure this will answer your question, but I had fun making this script.


Selecting Graph Editor from Shape Keys? I am refining a Shape Key animation but also working in Graph Editor.
Is there a way to select a Shape Key and have that specific Key highlight in the Graph Editor? Currently it does not do this so I need to select shape key then hunt down that key in graph editor, sort of a slow/impractical way to do this. Is there a setting to link them?

The graph editor won't filter based on the selected shapekey. The Show Only Selected option shows all animation related to the selected objects.

There is a filter option that can help you find an fcurve in large animations. Click the magnifying glass in the header and you get a text entry to use for filtering. You can also use ⎈ CtrlF.


strange texturing artefacts I made myself a procedural brushed metal texture. I use it to render CAD designed parts in blender. On most of the parts the texture looks great. But sometimes there are strange artefacts in the lightnig, as if the faces are not planar.
I've tried to retopoligize the mesh a bit, but somewhere, there are always this artefacts. The strange thing is, I symmetrized the mesh, and the mirrored faces look just fine.
Has someone a clue, what this could be?

Somehow flipping the normals solved the problem, But why?
edit: not really, only in edit mode it looks ok then. Outside it looks strange again.
The tile at the left side has normal like other co-planar faces. Rest of the row has normals flipped inside.
edit2: i found out, that it has something to do with the origin of the object. when i move the origin outside the object, the artifacts dissapear...


How to bake a fake SSS map (thickness map) I am creating a character and I want to bake a fake SSS map that I can combine with my albedo map for my character and save resources instead of calculating the SSS in real time.

Note: you must use a version above 2.79 to have access to the AO node: https://builder.blender.org/download/

Create an Emissive shader then add an Input > Ambient Occlusion. Check Inside and Only Local (surrounding objects won't affect the AO). For the distance I have used 0.4 on Suzanne but you can tweak it depending on the model and scale (don't forget to apply the scale with Ctrl + A > scale).

To add blood directly on your model:

add a Mix node and set the first color to black, connect the inverted AO to the second slot. The factor of the node allow you to adjust the amount of blood that will be visible.
Add another mix node, connect the previous mix node to the factor, do not display too much blood. Set the first color to the base color and the second to the blood color. For the blood you can use R: 0.7 GB: 0.1.
Optionally overlay it to an Input > Geometry Pointiness node, use a Converter > ColorRamp at 0.45-0.55 to contrast it.
Finally multiply it to an Ambient Occlusion map if you use an emissive shader, otherwise the AO will be added with your scene's lighting.

Tip: you can adjust the samples of the AO depending on how much visible it is to render or bake faster.


Should i animate the Color Setting of a lamp or its Strength? Im experimenting with eevee a bit and i was wondering if there was any difference between increasing the brightness of a lamp by using its Color Settings or by using its Strength/Power/Energy Setting.

Changing the color setting will change the emitted color while changing the strength will only change how powerfull the emission is. The difference might not be visible in the render, but AFAIK it will make a difference if you do compositing on your render or export exr/hdr pictures for editing on other softwares.


How to randomize scale of a node in blender? I've been trying to create effect of the grooves in the side of the brakes in blender.

I decided to use a wave texture set to rings filtered through a 'greater than' math node as a normal.
However, I couldn't find a way to randomize the width of the rings and the spaces between them (I figured the best way of doing so would be to find a way to unevenly distribute the scale). Is there any way of doing this?

Here is a solution using simple vector distance node and a 1D noise texture node.
This can then be used to feed a Bump or Displacement node.

The key reason why this work is the use of 1D noise texture which uses the distance from the circle center as the coordinate input value (W). 1D means it works on a line (2D is on plane and 3D in space..). The same way coordinate in 3D is driven by X Y and Z, for the 1D noise texture, that 1D coordinate is simply named W on the 1D noise texture.


Workflow to convert rendered images to video I have had recommendations to render images, rather than animation, so if an error occurs I do not need to rerender the entire sequence. I like the idea, but have had issues with high quality conversion of images into video. I have tried: ffmpeg, timelapseassembler, iMovie, Blender VSE. These can all do a decent job, but I find a lose quality in the images, relative to just rendering the straight workflow.

So to reword the question: "What is your workflow from rendered images to high quality video?"

The only tool I've ever needed is ffmpeg. Here is my standard "recipe" for command-line conversion:

To convert default Blender sequenced PNGs at 24fps to a lossless 24fps YUV420p colorspace, x264 format video:

ffmpeg -r 24 -i %04d.png -c:v libx264 -r 24 -pix_fmt yuv420p -qp 0 output.mp4

The quality is determined by "-qp", with 0 best (lossless) quality, 51 worst. Also, know that the first "-r" determines how long each PNG will be shown, while the second "-r" determines the actual framerate of the output video.

As an example using that same command above, but starting from 0100.png, with each image viewable for 5 seconds in a video with a framerate of 30fps, plus a forced-rescale to 1920x1080 thrown in too:

ffmpeg -r 1/5 -start_number 100 -i %04d.png -c:v libx264 -r 30 -s 1920x1080 -pix_fmt yuv420p -qp 0 output.mp4


Mask and convert color in photo/video I am very new to blender still.  I want to simply change the color of an object in the video.  I want to know if there is good way to do this.  I am including what I have to test.

There are many ways to do what you want.
Here are a few ideas:

Use a hue correct node, where you can select the color very precisely and change the hue (or saturation).

Use a chroma key to create a matte and then use that information to combine two differently colored versions of the same image.

Or use a mask to control the mix.


Removing internal mesh to make object hollow I followed steps to make an ellipse with multiple regular holes using cylinders (picture on left). How do I remove the internal cylinders from the ellipse (picture on right)?
I ideally want to end up with the ellipse hollow with a 1cm lining
.

If you model the cylinders as a separate object, you can use a boolean modifier on the sphere/ellipse to 'subtract' the cylinders. Then, if you turn off the cylinders (you don't have to delete them), you'll have the sphere/ellipse with holes where the cylinders should be.


Question about a driver rotation expression so I have a character with a skirt that's rigged. The skirt is positioned much higher up than the leg so once her leg/thigh reaches a certain height, I want her skirt bone that I have set up to also start rotating. I've managed to get the matching rotation occur with drivers, but at the moment I'm trying to set up an IF statement with the intention of: if the thigh bone is rotated 30.1 degrees on the Z axis, then start rotating (it would 30.1 or higher). I don't know much python, I do understand the fundamentals of creating variables and then plugging them into expressions which will then be evaluated.
Here's an image of my current driver setup

I'm a bit lost at this point, I have a value Zrt that perfectly represents the thigh bone's rotation and so once Zrt reaches a value of 30.1, then the dress bone would begin it's rotation.
Thank you in advance

Rotating how much?  What about when thigh bone isn't rotated that much?
The form of a single line "If" is something like the following:
((var * constant1) * (var>(30.1 * pi/1800))) + ((var * constant2) * (1.0- var>(30.1 * pi/180)))
What that's saying:
a) If var's rotation is greater than 30.1 degrees, output var * constant1.
b) Else, output var * constant2.
Constant2 can be zero.  You can understand this by recognizing that a statement like var>n returns 1 if the statement is true and 0 if it is false.  Multiplying 1.0 - whatever instead of flipping > for <= is just style in this case, but it's style informed by the situations where the things you're measuring aren't exactly 0 or 1.
And the reason for var>(30.1*pi/180) is because, for drivers, you're working with radians, not degrees.  (Don't ask me why, it's a developer decision than I don't necessarily agree with.)


One part of the model looks glossy? Why does the head look so shiny compared to the body? I haven't added any texture yet, I think. (I'm still new to blender) I tried changing the matcap but it still looks very glossy. How can I get rid of the glossy look?

You have to recalculate normals by selecting the whole object in edit mode and using the shortcut Ctrl+N.


How to apply scale to a multi user object I have two cushions, and one of the cushions is an instance of another(object data synchronized). So I wanted to unwrap the cushion, but it came out odd because the scale is wrong.So I am wondering: How to apply the scale to this object which is an instance of another one?(basically to a multi-user object)

You can't apply scale on multi-user object data. You will have to make the single user objects. U > Single User

You can relink the object data after applying the scale. See this answer for more information on relinking.


Convert Particle System to Mesh (Collection NOT Object)? I have searched far & wide for a solution to this problem with no luck and it seems very simple (I'm using Blender 2.8).

I am adding condensation to a cup using a particle system:

I'm having two problems:

I can't get the particles to appear only on the face of the cup, they end up all floating in the center of it as well (bad for file size, and I actually need the cup to be transparent in my final render / different program). In order to fix this, I want to convert them all to mesh and delete all of the extra drops on the inside / floating in the cup.
I have obviously found the particle system > render > object workflow that is tried and true, so I can select a single object as particle and then convert to mesh BUT - I am using a COLLECTION of objects and want to maintain the variety of size/shape/etc. If you select an object in that menu it only uses one shape to create the array, unfortunately blender will not let you hit "convert" in the particle options menu when the source is a collection rather than a single object.

My workflow:

Created 7 raindrops with smooth shading and grouped them in a collection
Added particles using Hair, and emitting from "faces" (settings below)
Now what?

EDIT:

I figured this out and it was quite simple - I did not have the correct piece of the layer (top layer) selected when attempting to convert the particles, I clicked the triangle shape symbol for the cup and it converted the collection for me.

I still cannot figure out how to apply the particles only to the exterior face of the cup, so they end up either floating in the volume, or on the interior face of the cup as well which is a problem for me.

Go to Modifiers tab and hit Convert.

After that you can select all created objects CTRL+J to join them as one object and use for Boolean.

EDIT:

To keep objects "above" faces you need to set object origin to bottom face as for example here:


Cleaning inner self-intersections I'm making a model of curved tube which have some self-intersections and wondering how to clean inner mesh in this area.
Inersect(Knife) tool with Self Intersect Source highlights the outer vertexes but they are non-closed so still need some work.
Maybe there is some semi-automatic way to clean it and leave only the outer shell?

The reason it doesn't cut clean is because this kind of curved tube has self-reverting faces in the corners :

You can fix it by using the knife, adding vertices and merging the closest vertices in those areas until you get this kind of result :

Then you should be able to select the self-intersected part of the tube with Ctrl+L :

I don't think there's any automated way to do this.


Strange mesh deformation when using the action editor? I have had this problem before and it's starting to happen again, but with a different mesh.
Note that it is scaled up a tiny bit.

When I create a new action called reload and animate only the hands it works, but as soon as I click on a different object and move the timeline bar it deforms everything:

There are no object constraints on anything and there is only one armature modifier on the arm. Other than that I have nothing.

YouTube video demonstrating the problem

While you can manually add an armature modifier to an object and set it up to work, the most common method is to start by setting the armature as the parent of the mesh object. While the armature is the parent, moving it in object mode will also move the mesh with it, keeping things aligned.

Once an armature is setup to deform a mesh object moving one of them without the other gives a weird deformation as seen in your screenshot. Even if the armature is the parent you can move the mesh object by itself and get the same bad deformation.

The further apart you move the armature and the mesh the worse the distortion is.

If you have the armature as the parent of the mesh then be sure to move the armature and not the mesh.

If you don't want to use parenting then you need to make sure you move both the armature and the mesh together.

Also scaling one without the other can produce the same result.

That applies to moving the two objects in object mode not moving the armature in pose mode.

One thing to watch is if you use automatic keyframing, you need to make sure you turn it off when you finish animating.


Tie camera location/view to texture appearance? my last question was too difficult so this hopefully this will be easier to answer :p
Is there a way to use a camera view or location data to determine whether or not a color/texture appears?

I plan to use a node equation that takes a blue color channel, and the higher the blue value, the easier the texture would show.

My end result would be looking like this, except the bright areas would be moved my the camera/view, rather than light rotation.
https://imgur.com/a/UL8ovqs
The setup is easy to replicate so I don't see the need for a .blend file, you could just texture paint certain parts of a sphere or cube blue to get the same result.
I hope this isn't too complicated since I have a tendency to ramble in my questions, I'd be grateful for any help!

It seems that you are looking for a channel which describes the angle of a surface with respect to the camera view. This is achieved by the Layer Weight and Fesnel nodes, found in the Input node category. The mixing can be controlled using the facing or IOR values of the Layer Weight and Fresnel nodes as well as a Color Ramp or Map Range node further tweaking/contrast. See the following node setup:


What's the usage of "Set/Get property" nodes in sverchok I found there is no input/output socket for this two nodes:

So I don't know how to use them....
I guess the original node is Eval Knieval, and it was divided into two seperate nodes:

But where is the input/output sockets?

It was indeed derived from Eval Knieval node, but we felt it was cleaner to have dedicated nodes for In and Out instead of a multi-purpose node that switches its outward appearance.

For Get and Set it's shockingly simple, you paste/type the attribute path you want to control and the node automatically detects what kind of Socket to add.


Can I sculpt a group of OBJs I have a group of OBJs (imported with vert order and poly groups intact),  specifically two upper arms and I want to sculpt one and have it mirrored on the other, but I do not want to combine them into a single OBJ, because I need to  export them separately, with their original vert order poly groups still intact.

I have them grouped, but when I go to sculpt mode I only have one OBJ selected,  and I can't seem to sculpt anything.

I'm probably missing something real obvious, or maybe trying to accomplish  something undo-able.

Any insight is appreciated.

Okay  a little trial and error,  and I've figured this out.  I need to export both  objects together from  the original program(not Blender),  keep  the vert order,  and poly groups intact. Import into  Blender, still keeping everything intact.

Go  ahead and sculpt it as I normally would.  Save the file, and delete one half of the object,  and then export that(also  keeping vert  group order,  and poly groups).  Do  NOT save.  Close the file, open it back up  and delete the other side and export.  I now have the original two models,  right and left,  with  all internal  names intact.


Adding material/mass to a mesh I have a blend file that I would like to add mass/material to.  I want to add 4mm of thickness to this hollow model. My goal is to 3D print the model, once it has some volume, so that I can glue the shells together to make a body for a custom action figure. How do I do this? I've attached pictures of my file. Thanks ever so much!

You need to use solidify modifier.

Here is its effect on a cut torus.
A positive thickness value adds a layer inside the model, while negative value adds to the outside.
Read more at: blender 2.82 Reference Manual


FBX Binary Export Action Issue I have a model with multiple animation 'actions', destined to be used in Unity3D.

Most of the actions export from Blender and import into Unity fine.

There are three actions, though, do not export from Blender unless the action is selected in the action editor, which means the other two do not export at all.

What would prevent an action from being exported unless it was currently selected? I can see no difference between these three actions and the other ones that export correctly.

For anyone else having this issue, I resolved it by removing some keyframes from the offending actions that were related to bones that no longer existed.

FBX exporter ignores actions if there are any errors in them, and I guess having those extra keyframes for non existent bones was messing it up.

If you have missing actions, check that all of your keyframes are related to existing bones.


Using a 32 bit grayscale TIFF in the displace modifier I have a problem with very obvious banding showing up when using a TIFF generated from an Digital Elevation Model in ArcGIS. The image you see uses an exported 24 bit TIFF. I think it could be solved if I can use an exported 32 bit grayscale TIFF from ArcGIS, but this won't load in Blender. I can also export the height data as an ASCII file, but see no way of using this, except by maybe writing a Python script.

I've read something about Blender being able to use OpenEXR, but I can't figure out how to convert my TIFF to this format. I'm on a Windows 7 machine. Can anyone help me, or know a way to solve this without converting to EXR?

You can convert a .tiff file to a .exr file using blender.

First switch to the Node editor

Next in the bottom panel you will see a box with 3 buttons in it click on the right one. Also enable 'use nodes' and 'backdrop'.

Next add an input. 'Shift + A' Input > Image. Navigate to your image you would like to convert.

Next add an output. 'Shift + A' Output > Composite.

You now should have something like this.

Thats all the nodes you need. Next you will need to change the render settings.

You will need to change the render size to the size of your image. You can get this by in you file browser RMB on the file properties > details. Change the output type to EXR (not multi-layer) and make sure that its set to 'float full' not 'float (half)' full is 32-bit half is 16-bit. Make you sure you know where you are saving the image.

Next hit render and wait for it to render. Should be pretty fast though.

If that does not work you can you use irfanview to export the tiff into a different file format. Here is how. First open irfanview.

Then open your file you want to convert.

Choose 'File' > 'Save As'

Chose where you want to save it and the format.


Can't add hair to particle system At the moment I am trying to make a mustache because I thought a hairy ball was to simple. I created a model in a "mustache shape" and added the hair. Now I have the problem that I can't add any hair by using the "Add" brush. I tied to change different values a bit but nothing seams to make it work.

Because I probably explained it poorly here is a video of the problem: https://youtu.be/1DHYQZPMXbc

I hope I made the problem I am having clear and that someone can help me with it.

I can't see your baking settings in the video, but this behavior can be caused if your particles aren't baked, or if they are baked to a Disk Cache.
From the Manual:

Only Frames Baked to Memory are Editable!
If you cannot edit the particles, check that you are not baking to a Disk Cache.

To change this, uncheck "Disk Cache" in your cache settings.


How to add textures to faces that are facing a certain direction Basically I have a crude maze-like object, but I want the textures of the floor and walls to be different.  How would I go about placing a texture on all faces point north, etc.

Assume I am a beginner, please.

In Cycles you can make a node setup like this:

What's happening is the Geometry node is providing the object's normal data (information about the directions its faces are pointing) in the form of color values. The Separate XYZ node is taking that all in but only returning the values for the Z axis (up and down). That data is then being used to factor between the red and blue.

In this example the factor is mixing two shader nodes, but it could just as easily be color nodes or any node that can receive a factor input.

If you wanted to change the direction you could use X or Y outputs instead of Z.


What’s the difference between applying shape keys and saving shape keys? So I understand that once you have a pose, you can apply it as a shape key via the armature modifier. But what’s the difference between saving it and applying it? Is there any special reason one would want to save a shape key?

As explained if you hover over the function, with Apply, the modifier is removed, with Save, it is kept.


Mantaflow Alembic export for compositing I m new in bender and use it for flow simulation, I m trying to export a composition did with mantaflow to get the animation fusion 17.
i only have the domain's cube and not the simulation. Do you know if there is a possibility to save Alembic file of the simulation itself?
Thanks.

You will first need to bake the simulation, but once you've done that all you need to do is select the Domain and go File>Export>Alembic. Easy as that


Parts Of Object Hidden, Cannot Be Sculpted When I enter Sculpting mode, I found some vertices cannot not be sculpted.

I switch to edit mode and I found these vertices are hidden (?not sure).
I can press Alt +H to unhide these vertices. But when I switch back to sculpting mode, these vertices still cannot be sculpted.

Switch back to edit mode and this part is still hidden. (like fig.3)
How can I make these vertices available for sculpting?
What kind of function make this situation?

This recently happened to me and I believe this is a glitch. When I switch to tab mode I tried to reveal hidden Alt+H  the vertices. When I switch back to sculpting mode, I can't sculpt it.
Again, I believe this is a glitch. I tried to copy the mesh to 2.83 version, unhide the vertices, and copy it back to 2.9 version and it worked.
Edit: after that, whenever I add a mask the it will be invisible. I think it's a bug


Make specific color an emission I am trying to make the blue color on my model an emission so that it creates light and looks like it was just fired.
Here is the model:

Here is the node setup:

On the first color ramp (with the blue in it), change the alpha for the non-blue stops to zero. Then, pipe the output color into Emission Color, and the output alpha into Emission Strength.
Edit: Like this.


Making a wall made from glass bricks I need to make a frosted glass brick wall (see the example) for archvis picture. What is the best approach for it? Using just a cube with a texture of framing grout and glass shader for bricks will not make those clearly visible internal dividers on brick edges. Modelling the whole brick and making a wall from it will be time consuming and may probably lead to heavy geometry.

In both cases, a simple glass shader will absorb too much light for such a thick object, so what it is the better way for it?

Geometry should not be an issue here, glass shaders are noisy by nature and will probably have a bigger impact in your scene. If you use this technique and take advantage of instancing feature the memory consumption benefits should help mitigate the number of objects.

Make a simple box mesh with the desired dimensions of your brick, make sure you apply the scale.

Add three material slots with the following order: Clear Glass, Mortar, Frosted Glass.

Create materials accordingly as desired and assign clear glass to both front and back faces, and mortar to the remaining four rim faces around them. Two simple glass shader with different roughness values should suffice for both glass materials.

Now add two modifiers. One Solidify with the desired thickness; adjust the material offset to $2$, so the inner layer becomes all frosted glass.

Now add a Bevel modifier, to add some roundness; adjust radius as desired.

Now array the bricks with whichever method you like.

Either use an Array modifier: Quick and simple, no optimization and higher memory use.
Manually duplicate the object around: Instancing gives memory benefits, but ads lots of individual objects which may slow down the viewport and pollute your scene, making it harder to manage.
Use a particle system/Duplifaces. Array a simple plane and use either particles or duplifaces to distribute bricks along the faces. Harder to setup, memory benefits, and less individual objects to manage in the scene, but may still slow down the viewport.


Does the motion tracker follow a point if it changes colour throughout the video? Does the motion tracker follow a point if it changes colour throughout the video?
Like an colour changing led dangling from a pendulum or a firework mid-flight?

Ideally you want to track objects that do not shift in shape, color or brightness. There is some room however to do some adaptable tracking.

In the tracking settings use:

Pattern Match:

Previous frame.

Enable:

Prepass

and

Normalize.

If the changes are slow, those settings might help you to track an object that changes color or intensity. Note that if the changes are too drastic from frame to frame, you will need to track until the frame where the automatic tracking stops (or fails to be accurate), then manually re-position the tracker and continue the automatic process until it fails again and so on.

Blatant quote from the manual

  Pattern Match

  Pattern Match controls which patterns get tracked; to be more precise, the pattern from which frame is getting tracked. Here is an example which should make things clearer.

  The tracker algorithm receives two images inside the search area and the position of a point to be tracked in the first image. The tracker tries to find the position of that point from the first image in the second image.

  Now, this is how tracking of the sequence happens. The second image is always from a frame at which the position of marker is not known (next tracking frame). But a different first image (instead of the one that immediately precedes the second image in the footage) can be sent to the tracker.

  Keyframe

  An image created from a frame on which the track was keyframed. This configuration prevents sliding from the original position (because the position which best corresponds to the original pattern is returned by the tracker), but it can lead to small jumps and can lead to failures when the feature point is deformed due to camera motion (perspective transformation, for example).

  Previous Frame

  Keyframes for tracks are creating every frames, and tracking between keyframed image and next image is used. In this configuration the pattern is tracking between two neighboring frames. It allows dealing with cases of large transformations of the feature point but can lead to sliding from the original position, so it should be controlled.

  Prepass

  Enables a two pass tracking, where the first pass is a brute force tracking of location only, and the second pass will use tracking of the full motion model refining the first pass.

  Normalize

  Means patterns will be normalized by their average intensity while tracking, to make them invariant to illumination changes. An example where this is useful is a scene where a marker moves in the shadow of an object.


Seamless looping animation I'm trying to create an animate gif of a boat where there's no discontinuity between the end and the beginning. To do this, I need the sails and flags of the boat to return to approximately their starting location at the end of the animation. Most other questions of this type that I've seen involve something where the kind of motion tends to be cyclic, such as a person walking, or a wheel spinning. But the motion of sails and flags doesn't really fit that description. What can I do to achieve this? My blender file is here

Things like fire etc. I loop in post-production, turns out to be the easiest way and fastest. Just render a bigger chunk of the animation, split it in half and switch the halves. The ends are now seamless but in middle is a discontinuity. Overlap those two parts and blend them with opacity and by pixel-warping if needed (visible edges should be pixel-warped). Picking the right moment for blending is crucial.

Reversing frames and having a ping-pong animation will not work on flags, fire, etc. - That's why it needs to be blended.


How to hide wireframe while turning on the 'face selection mask' in texture paint? In texture paint , i hide some faces by turn on the 'face selection mask' button. But turning on this button will make the wireframe appear on the object surface. This is annoying, how can i hide the wireframe ?

The purpose of Face Selection Mask in Texture Paint is exactly what it says - to use the selection of faces to create paint areas that are active and allowing the user to limit the spray of paint on the model surface. The wireframe drawing on the surface informs the user of what they can select, and the change in object color when deselected allows the user to differentiate between the selected and deselected faces. Hiding the wireframe is not logical when using face selection masking, and getting rid of the wireframe is only possible by turning off the face selection mask mode.


How to adjust view clipping distance when using object as camera? When using an object (like a spot light) as the camera for easier positioning (using Ctrl-Num0), it seems like the view distance is set to only 40 units, often making a lot of the scene invisible:

Adjusting either the Clip End in the 3D View panel or in the actual camera (not the light) settings doesn't help.

It turns out this is actually a feature, of sorts.

When a lamp is set as a camera, the viewport is only rendered within the lamp's shadow buffer clipping extents; that is shadow_buffer_clip_startand shadow_buffer_clip_end.

Unfortunately, these properties are not presented in the GUI for every render engine, or even for every lamp type.

In 2.7x, they are only present in the game engine, on a spot or sun lamp:

In 2.8, using Eevee, only shadow_buffer_clip_start is displayed for point, spot and area lamps. To get shadow_buffer_clip_end, the lamp type must be sun.

As far as I am aware, these properties are not exposed to the GUI at all under BI or Cycles.

While this behavior does seem to be at least intentional, it probably could use some improvement. For instance, perhaps the view extents ought only to be clipped for engines and lamp types where the shadow buffer clipping is applicable. With that in mind, I've submitted a bug report here.


exporting an file as fbx fails I am trying to export as fbx and getting the following error:

I think it might be because the project has some missing files that I'm not able to delete. I tried to unlink or clear but it doesn't work and I have no meshes using them.
.

I had this problem, export as obj, reload start up file, import the obj then export as fbx.


Vertices not aligning I don't know how this is happening, but I just create a shape, scale it and then the vertices are not aligning. Any help is appreciate.
Here is an step by step process and a link to the video of it:

Create cube
Make it multiresolution
Scale it
Zoom view to sides and front
See the vertices not aligning
Get frustrated

Youtube video of my problem

This problem shouldn't harm your model in anyway, but if you want to fix it you should do the following:

Click on the drop-down next to the magnet, hot-key = Control + Shift + Tab:

Select the following options: Increment, Scale. It doesn't matter if you have selected Move and/or Rotate:

Click the magnet to activate snapping, hot-key = Shift + Tab. I don't have a picture for this, if you need it you can tell me. Instead of clicking the magnet, you can also hold Control while scaling.


Texture wrong in the sides of a plane with solidify modifier Hi!
This is something that bothers my a lot of times. I always end up creating a volume mesh instead of a plane with the solidify modifier to solve the problem but I was wondering if there is a way to solve this in an easy way. Now I'm working in the wall of a house and  I modeled it using a plane an extruding some of the edges, but now the textures of the sides of the windows are all wrong...
Thank you!

As @Chaudhry Yousuf suggests, you need to unwrap your mesh and apply your texture using its UV map.
You can find more info about UV map on the BlenderGuru's Youtube channel :
here, or here


Object pink in render (no textures are in use) I'm using cycles, with very basic Principled BSDF materials without any texture images. In the Material tab, the materials are shown just fine, but in when I render my object, all materials show up as pink (as though an image was missing).

What am I missing?

So apparently the answer is:

If everything looks pink in the render and there are no textures missing in the materials of the objects, the first thing to check should always be the HDRI lighting setup in the Node Editor:


How to make solid hair for girl (not strand by strand) How can I make the hair as such? It is not strand by strand as I've seen from tutorials.

Typically this is one or a couple of meshes, so it is mainly matter of picking the proper path rather than choosing a specific tool.
A way to approach would be sculpting indeed, if you prefer modeling it then create a rough mesh which will follow roughly the shape of the head, then extrude few faces to make this spiky ends of the strands and apply a subdivision modifier.
There must be plenty of examples out there, try the combination of keywords "sculpting hair mesh" either on google or youtube.


How to make joints for 3D printing? I have a hand that I want to make movable. I don't really understand how to make joints with blender. This is for 3D printing so they need to be outside not just armatures. I think I may need to cut the model where I want the joints to be and make a hinge type joint using cubes but I don't really know if that is right or how to do those things.

I think the quickest and probably easiest thing for you to do is as you said cut the joints in Blender and instead of making a hinge system make a pin system. So basically what i am saying is have like 2 parts with 2 holes which align in the right position and then just slide a 3D printed pin/Cylinder into it. This would allow you to move along a certain axis. However if you wanted something that could be rotated fully then i would suggest a ball and clasp type system. Now this could be trickier for the fingers but would almost certainly work for the hand to arm joint.

Hope this helps!


Remove Target Object reference from constraint with python I know how to set a constraint target via Python:

ob = bpy.data.objects["RightArmIKDataPoint"]
bpy.data.objects["MySkeleton"].pose.bones["RightArmIK"].constraints["MocapHook"].target = ob

However, I do not know how to unset this. I don't know what set the target to to be empty.

Simply set the the target property to None to clear the target field.

So in your example it would be:

...constraints["MocapHook"].target = None


Cut mesh at intersection I have an extruded rectangle that intersects the side of the cylinder. I need this extruded rectangle to cut a hole out of the side of the cylinder. Below is a picture:

(Ignore the middle segment)

I tried the Boolean modifier but it didn't work (yes, I tried all 3 options).

Boolean
The Boolean modifier needs a closed mesh to work properly, see the wiki:

This means that this modifier will only work properly for the
intersection of faces of the two meshes that will result in another
closed loop of edges (filled with faces), creating a new resulting
face topology.

(You can have an open mesh as long as the open parts do not intersect or interact with the boolean operation)
Removing the middle section of the cube should fix it:

You may also need to recalculate the normals (CtrlN)
Also ensure that:

The Modifier is applied to the cylinder.

The Operation is set to Difference:

Knife
In addition to the Knife project tool mentioned by Haunt_House, You may want to use the Knife tool for this:
In edit mode, press K to start the knife tool and C to enable Angle Constrain. (you may need to hold shift at some points to place a cut, due to the view not being aligned perfectly to the topology)

Modeling
Another simple way to do this is to use Loopcuts:
Press CtrlR and use the scrollwheel or the keyboard to set the number of cuts:

You can then use Edge slide (GG or CtrlE> Edge slide) to slide them into the correct position:

An advantage to this is that this does not produce N-gons (see this)


How to add thin wispy clouds or fog to my blender 3d scene of building When I add a smoke particles (clouds) it seems to be thick and an a certain elevation.  I'd like to have thin clouds around the tops of buildings.  Is there a different method?

Blender internal:
You could try the Cloud Generator addon. This is good for making 3D volumetric clouds, but note that it will only work for BI, as cycles does not yet have volumetric rendering.

Enable the Cloud generator addon in User preferences > Addons. This addon is bundled with blender by default, so it should be in the list:

Create a bounding shape for your cloud, then press Generate cloud in 3D view > Tool Shelf (T) > Cloud generator with it selected:

This will create a point cloud for the cloud and setup the volume materials.
For more info take a look at this tutorial on blender cookie.
Cycles:
Because cycles does not yet have volumetrics, you will have to fake it.
Here are some options:

Render the clouds in BI and mix in the compositor

Use a transparent plane with an image texture (may look okay when seen from a distance)

Related questions:

Volumetric Shading in Cycles

Creating volumetric lighting (crepuscular rays) in Cycles

Rendering smoke in Cycles?


How to rename instanced objects in animation nodes? I am using the 2.1.8 Animation Nodes + Extra Nodes build from https://blender.community/c/graphicall/ in Blender 2.90.1. I am using this build specifically because the Materials nodes are different and seem less functional in AN 2.2 (in particular, the Cycles attribute output node does not accept a Material input in 2.2, but in 2.1.8, the Material Attribute Output node does).
I am instancing materials and applying them to different metaball systems, which are all instanced from a single metaball. The metaballs all get the same name by default, with instance numbers: if the parent object is named "MBall" then the instances are "MBall.001", "MBall.002", etc. Because the objects are metaballs, this puts them into the same meta system, and the whole system uses the material of the parent ball. Therefore I must rename the instanced objects to assign individual materials.
This is how I did that:

It works but the project becomes very unstable and usually crashes on render. In the crash report file, the stack trace seems to indicate an issue (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) during renaming from within the node graph:
Stack trace:
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A7795820  blender::deg::`anonymous namespace'::deg_graph_node_tag_zero
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A7795E30  blender::deg::graph_id_tag_update
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A7796AF0  DEG_id_tag_update
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A76E9780  ED_node_tag_update_id
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A76E98A0  ED_node_tag_update_nodetree
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A725AD00  rna_NodeSocketStandard_value_update
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A7240C00  rna_property_update
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A723DB10  RNA_property_update
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A7337D40  pyrna_py_to_prop
blender.exe         :0x00007FF6A732F4E0  pyrna_struct_setattro
python37.dll        :0x00007FFB0D1B6D90  PyObject_SetAttr
...

Is this a bug or is there a different/better way to rename my objects?

This question is now moot but I'm not sure how to close it.
I believe that the problem I was experiencing here was due to using the AN+EN build for 2.83 LTS with Blender 2.90.1 instead.
I resolved my Cycles material issue in 2.90.1 with a simple script:
materialIn.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"].inputs[17].default_value = newColor
materialOut = materialIn

and now I'm just using the latest AN and EN in 2.90.1, without a lot of crashes.


How to create smiling/crying animation? I need to create a few models for my new game. A cube with a smiling face that gradually changes to a sad face and a cube with melting animation i.e melts completely within 10 seconds.

Is this possible with blender. If yes, then how?

You can do this with shape keys. First make the cube that had the smiling face. Then go to Properties > object data > shape keys and add a basis key. Now add another shape key.Go to the mesh and make the face to the frowning guy.  you can pan between the two keys slowly to make it form into the other.

The higher you set the value, the more frowny your guy will appear.


Differences in texture painting between 2.7 and 2.8 Why when I'm texture painting it looks so bad, I mean in 2.7 the same texture look good but in 2.8 its look like that.

It should give the same color as skin behind but instead it give this black color.

Is this because of low quality of texture? Why does it looks good in 2.7 but not in 2.8?

Painting with stencil.

Switch color space from RAW back to SRGB. Try it out. Additionally: Texture stencils will paint with the original color marked white. If you're trying to create details using a stencil, consider painting in a "layer" for oppacity or roughness instead of the direct color.


Blender Python erase whole Directory content After a week I made a nice Addon for Blender. For testing I run it with

import bpy
import sys

scriptdir = "S:Blender\Dev\Scripts\Addons\meshEdit"
sys.path.append(scriptdir)

# Test
filename = "S:\Scripts\Addons\meshEdit\meshEditorv7.py"
exec(compile(open(filename).read(), filename, 'exec'))

from Blender.
All Package-Files are located in the Folder 'scriptdir'.
After I finished i copy all Files to an other Folder (named 'S:\Setup Blender\AddOnes\meshEdit)
and install it as Addon 'meshEdit' from Blenders Preferences/Addons.

Everything works fine.

For testing i remove the Addon 'meshEdit'

After this I realize that Blender has removed EVERY Python-File in the Develope-Folder

"S:Blender\Dev\Scripts\Addons\meshEdit",

including ALL 5 backup copies Folders inside.

I thinks the reason for this the Codeline 'sys.path.append(scriptdir)'
So is there an other Way to testing an Addon and avoid this behaviour?

And is there a way to recover my work?

As well as the addons folder installed with blender you can have addons within blender's preferences folder. How to find the user config folder on each system is explained here.

Within the config folder for the current blender version, you can create a scripts/addons folder (which is where blender places scripts when you use the install from file button). Inside this addons folder, create and edit your addon. Your addon will show up in the addon list in preferences where you can enable/disable it after each change.

When you are happy with your edits, copy the addon to your backup folder. As the addon is edited in place you reduce the chance of erasing the wrong file and you can also remove/re-install blender without deleting your file.


Importing time-dependent mesh I have recently found that Mathematica (a mathematics software) may export .stl files, which may be used for Blender. This is very good for me because I am interested in mathematics visualization, and this team Mathematica-Blender seems to be most convenient for this purpose. However, I suppose that when working with animations, I will need curves or surfaces which move according to mathematic equations. See for example the figures in the following video:

Film Dimensions, Chapter 4

It is extremely easy to export just one mesh, allowing me to use Blender for mathematics pictures. But for animations, since Blender does not seem to support high mathematics, it would be great to export somehow a time-dependent mesh. Is there something like this available? More concretely, focusing on the Blender problem (and not in Mathematica), is there any file type from which Blender may import a time dependent mesh?

Any idea or suggestion will be welcome.

You can use the NewTek MDD and PC2 formats (though you may have to enable their separate addons in the user preferences to get those import/export formats to appear).

This can be used in conjunction with the 'Mesh Cache' modifier to play back a sequence of external meshes:

There also appears to be a script to import .obj sequences as well, which tends to be a more common format, found here at BlenderArtists, but I am not  sure of any potential limitations it may have.


Animated rotation of plane to solid I was wondering if there was a way to animate the rotation of a plane to generate the solid of the rotation. This is to create an informative math video on Integration.

So, for example, taking a rectangle and rotating it 360 degrees on the x-axis at the base of the rectangle to 'reveal' by animation that it created a cylinder.

Thanks for any assistance.

Create a vertical plane, the pivot point have to be on the side of it.
Add a screw modifier
Select the first frame what you want on the timeline, type in 0 for angle, stay the mouse above the "Angle" box then hit "I"
Select the final frame on the timeline type in 360 for angle, stay the mouse above the "Angle" box then hit "I"

Fill the ends:

Duplicate the plane twice, delete the modifier from the new ones and add the same values on the same frames for the Z rotation as the screw modifier has, like you did it in the 3. and 4. steps.


Snap to closest vertext in object mode goes to bounding box My blender used to snap to vertex at closest to the object.
But suddenly it snapped to closest vertex from bounding box.
They said it is an expected behavior, but how to restore the behavior back to before?
i tried re installed it, back to default setting but nothing works
I used blender 2.8, 2.81
still the same

There are settings in the snap dropdown as shown, make sure you have them set to what you want to snap to


Batch exporting of multiple objects into separate STL files I have as scene with 45 objects, I am trying to write a script that will export all of the objects into separate STL files. Any ideas?

Here is a broken script I have right now:

import bpy
import os

# get the current path and make a new folder for the exported meshes
path = bpy.path.abspath('//1')
os.makedirs(path)

for object in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    # deselect all meshes
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

    # select the object
    object.select = True

    # export object with its name as file name
    bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filepath=str((path + object.name + '.stl')),   use_selection=True)

I am getting a "Python script fail, look in the console for now..." error.
PS. I'm using a mac.

Thank you for your help!!!

I actually found 3 issues with the original script:

Your path creation line did not check to see if the path already existed
Your stl export line used an incorrect parameter ("use_selection=true")
Your path variable did not include the ending backslash so it was concatenating the stl folder name and object name

Here's my version of the working script:

import bpy
import os

# get the current path and make a new folder for the exported meshes
path = bpy.path.abspath('//stlexport/')

if not os.path.exists(path):
    os.makedirs(path)

for object in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    # deselect all meshes
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

    # select the object
    object.select = True

    # export object with its name as file name
    fPath = str((path + object.name + '.stl'))

    #bpy.context.active_object = object
    bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filepath=fPath)


How do you rotate the local axes of an object? I've got an object whose local axes are not pointing the right way. Is it possible to correct the orientation of these axes?. This object has a pretty weird positioning and I would like to be able to move it on its own axes.

if you just want that the local axes points like the standard global orientation, you can just go in Object - Apply - rotation


how do I minimize a texture node using python? I am using the python API to create a node tree for a texture and I'd like to make many of the nodes minimized so they take up less space.  In the UI you accomplish this by clicking the triangle in the upper left corner of the node.

tex = bpy.data.textures['Tex']
n1 = tex.node_tree.nodes.new("TextureNodeDecompose")
n1.minimize() # there is no such function, so what do I do?

While Mr Zak pointed out what I assume is a workable solution, I happen to have a religious objection to using bpy.ops unless there is no other choice (because bpy.ops has cooties; and I bet a dollar that the length of code for a bpy.ops solution will probably be an order of magnitude longer than a non-bpy.ops solution).  Also: any bpy.ops solutions must include the python code required to prepare the UI context.

The mentioned operator changes a single property, which collapses the node to its space-saving variant. The property is called .hide, which is a bit counter-intuitive:

# Get texture
tex = bpy.data.textures['Tex']

# Enable node mode (if not already), otherwise .nodes will not exist
tex.use_nodes = True

# Create node and minimize it
n1 = tex.node_tree.nodes.new("TextureNodeDecompose")
n1.hide = True


Why is the fire not rendering when sphere (domain) in viewport is hidden? The actual question is basically what I'm asking.

The Sphere is the domain so the fire and other animations will be contained within it. I would like to hide this sphere for a much more realistic appearance to the scene, yet when the domain is hidden and I hit playback there is no fire animation, not even a flash. I also have the issue when switching between rendering modes.

Think of the fire as a object, and think of the domain as the renderer ~ you will not be able to see the fire without the domain. You can just bake the cache if it lags too much on raw playback.


Swirly bokeh like that of a Helios 44m 2/58? I recently discovered the Helios 44m, a lense which produces some awesome swirly bokeh effect unlike anything else I've seen. I can't get one for myself, but I was wondering if there's a way to recreate this? I know the basics about DOF and I can somewhat achieve bokeh in Blender, but that kind of effect would require something else, probably some compositing? Or is it much more simple? Anyone out there capable of achieving something like that? It'd be lovely for some vintage renders.

This answer will achieve a similar effect, not quite the same or as good as what you are probably looking for. The problem is I couldn't find a way to get the bokeh dots to 'light' up or contrast against the other ones more - essentially I couldn't get them to look more like bokeh dots... maybe less motion blur? I am not sure. With that being said, this may work well enough for whatever project you are doing. Hopefully, this answer can serve as a good starting point for you to build off of or give someone else an idea to build off of as they form their answer.

Essentially I will just be using tiny refraction circles with traditional depth of field combined with motion blur to achieve the swirling effect. Here are a couple of example renders that I added the effect.

How to achieve the swirly effect

We will follow these steps in making this swirly bokeh effect:

Make the small 'Bokeh Dots'
Adding Depth of Field
Adding Motion Blur
Compositing (Optional)

Make the Small Bokeh Dots

Create a circle and fill in the face
Put the circle close to the camera in your scene as shown in the pic with two array modifiers. Look at the picture for guidance on how big the circles should be and how to set up the modifiers. I find that the circle should be just big enough to fit 70 by 40 (array modifier values) on a 16:9 ratio camera.

Add a Material to the Circle and set the surface node to a refraction node with a Roughness value of 0, IOR value of 1.2ish and set the color to as white as you can go.
Apply the Array Modifiers and then go into Edit Mode and press p and select separate by loose parts - separating them may take a while!
In Object Mode with all the circles selected, go to View->Set Origin->Origin to Geometry.
Open search by hitting F3 (or space if you go legacy hotkeys) and type Randomize and click Randomize Transform.
On the bottom left, change the randomize transform settings and click "Scale Even" and change the x scale value to a value around .5 (or whatever you like). You could also mess with the random transform values a bit, not a lot, but a bit.

And boom you have small bokeh dots! (I skipped this step in the render with the white balls and monkey heads because the white balls were the bokeh)

Adding the Depth of Field & Motion Blur

Go to your camera and enable depth of field. Adjust the values to how you like. I find that distance values around .5 with F-Stop values of around 3 work well.

For the Motion blur

Press 0 to open your camera view, stay in camera view for the rest of the steps.
Select your camera and press i and click key frame rotation.
Go back one frame from the current, press r, type in -45, press enter, press i and click rotation.
Return to the current frame by going forward one frame. Then go foward one more frame and press r, type in 45 (this time its positive), press enter, press i and click rotation.
Return to current frame by going back one frame.
Go to the render panel and turn on motion blur. Set the shutter speed to around .05ish

 Optional Compositing

I noticed that the blur seemed a little more oil painty than the results so I attempted to make the render a little more oil painty using this post-processing trick. It is easier to set up than you think. For the color ramp, just select a point and keep pressing the plus button to add more points halfway in between. Then just change it to constant and duplicate it for all the RGB channels. This is the only post-processing that I could think of, maybe someone else will think of more.


Avoid selecting an object in the outliner using a callback I am working on an extension for exporting particle systems in blender to glTF. As my engine doesn't support as much stuff as blender, I am creating a template which exposes the properties that I support and internally modified blender properties.
That template is made of two objects, a frontend one which will show the properties and an internal one (which later will probably be some more), which have the actual blender stuff.

I want to avoid the user selecting the Kuesa.Particles.Internal object, to avoid the user modifying the internal particle system properties or changing stuff, which may break the exporter.
Although the selection is disabled, this only works on the 3d viewport, but not on the outliner. Is there anyway to avoid the selection of something in the outliner? If not, I was thinking on using some kind of callback. When something is selected, check if it has a custom property type with value Kuesa.Particles.Internal and in that case, select the parent. How would I do something like that?

Using msgbus
Similarly to https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/163258/15543 which uses the message bus to capture when an object is made active
How to get an event when an object is selected?
By way of example the test is if the object trying to be made active has a name that starts with "Cube"  The user could break this test by renaming, so choose something more rigorous, perhaps a collection of pointers to objects kept on the scene, or as mentioned a custom property, and hide the custom properties panel.
Also FWIW as mentioned prior am not a great advocate for an "exporter" that modifies the blend.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix

handle = object()

# Triggers when an object is made active
subscribe_to = bpy.types.LayerObjects, "active" #

def notify_test(context):
    ob = context.object
    #print(context.area) # always None
    if (ob and ob.name.startswith("Cube")):
        print("No select object:", ob.name)
        ob.select_set(False)
        context.view_layer.objects.active = ob.parent
        if ob.parent:
            ob.parent.select_set(True)

bpy.msgbus.subscribe_rna(
    key=subscribe_to,
    owner=handle,
    args=(bpy.context,),
    notify=notify_test,
)

bpy.msgbus.publish_rna(key=subscribe_to)


How to separate in object mode? I have successfully separated two rings out of a UV sphere using "separate" (Y key) option in Edit mode. But as soon as I switch to Object mode, there is no separation and the objected is treated as one. What can I do to separate it in Object mode for real?

You have made two different meshes but they are still parts of the same object. To make a new object, go back in Edit mode, select the separate mesh with L, then press P > Selection, this part will be a new object.

By the way, to create a separate object you don't have to separate the part of the mesh with Y or V, you can just select the part of the mesh you want to separate, then P (separate) > Selection.


Need help to recreate this shape in blender Could somebody here please help me make this 3d shape in blender. I have been struggling with this. There is a hollow cutout in the middle of the card.

Use Boolean modifier to do such Hollows in Mesh:

See how it woks:

You can do these on Default cube when Blender is Opened with Default Settings.
Just add two modifiers:
1. Bevel:

Add Subdivision Surface(Subsurf) Modifier..
And change the view and render both to 3.

Scale it according to your object by pressing S. If you want to scale your object particularly on one axis (after pressing S)pressX/Y/Z respectively.

Now Duplicate your object by Shift+D and pressY to move it only on Y axis.

Now scale the Duplicated cube down to Z axis, it depends on how much you wish the hollow size to be.Make sure you scale more on X axis to make whole visible from outside of the actual cube.

Now take the duplicated cube and move it inside the Actual cube by moving it on Y axis.(PressGandY)

  Now this is important.

Select the Actual cube and add Boolean modifier to it.

Go to Boolean Modifier Settings and select the duplicated cube. There's only one so it will show it only one. Select it.

Edit:
Click on the drop down in side of the selection:
Change it from Intersect to Difference.

Now apply the Boolean modifier of the Actual cube.

Now you can delete the duplicated cube you will see the Hollow in the cube.

You are done.

  If Bevel and Subsurface Modifiers don't work well for your mesh, you
  can just go to Edit Mode, Press A if your mesh is  not selected and
  Press Shift+Ctrl+B and scroll Mouse
  wheel to make changes, you will notice some changes in corners of your
  Cube, Plane,etc. It works same as the combination of Bevel and Subsurface Modifiers

Check out this Boolean.blend file.
Check Modifiers Stack.

  It is not necessary to duplicate and hollow, you can add any object
  like UV Sphere and do the same. But now UV sphere will act as
  Duplicated cube.  Imp: Add Boolean Modifier only to the object you
  want to hollow. Not which you are using to Hollow.

Happy Modelling!


Add GUI Elements to exporter window I'm currently writing my own exporter and want to add an info text to my export options.

Inspired by the obj-Exporter i use the ExportHelper class as a basis. Sadly I could not found any good information on how this actually works. From what I can see, it uses context.window_manager.fileselect_add(self) to open the file dialog, which will then automatically show all the properties of my class.

However I would like to have a bit more control over the GUI of my exporter. Is it possible to add more kinds of control element, just like in a panel? Like a text that explains some details, or a button that performs an additional action.

Add a draw method to the Operator class, eg in text editor file export operator template operator_file_export.py

class ExportSomeData(Operator, ExportHelper):
    """This appears in the tooltip of the operator and in the generated docs"""
    bl_idname = "export_test.some_data"  # important since its how bpy.ops.import_test.some_data is constructed
    bl_label = "Export Some Data"

    # ExportHelper mixin class uses this
    filename_ext = ".txt"

    filter_glob = StringProperty(
            default="*.txt",
            options={'HIDDEN'},
            maxlen=255,  # Max internal buffer length, longer would be clamped.
            )

    # List of operator properties, the attributes will be assigned
    # to the class instance from the operator settings before calling.
    use_setting = BoolProperty(
            name="Example Boolean",
            description="Example Tooltip",
            default=True,
            )

    type = EnumProperty(
            name="Example Enum",
            description="Choose between two items",
            items=(('OPT_A', "First Option", "Description one"),
                   ('OPT_B', "Second Option", "Description two")),
            default='OPT_A',
            )

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        row.label("Custom Draw Method")
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(self, "type")

    def execute(self, context):
        return write_some_data(context, self.filepath, self.use_setting)


How to interrupt a rendering which is not displayed in the UI to interact with? I created a script that renders and saves the selected objects. The script is quite large and I don't think it is necessary to post it completely.

def myRenderFunction(self,context):
    for o in context.selected_objects:
        ###some coordinates for camera position
        ###some functions to hide
        myPath = "C\:blah blah" + os.sep + o.name
        data_blocks = {o}
        bpy.data.libraries.write(myPath+".blend", data_blocks)
        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)
        context.scene.render.filepath = myPath

My issue is that I can't find a way to stop it once executed because Blender's Interface is completely frozen while rendering the images.

Q: How can I allow the user to stop the rendering process at any given time?

Minor code changes are required to make the code from the linked answer work for objects in selection.

Following modal operator is just some kind of barebone code, a good starting point using the timer though. Edit the render path according to your Operating System, run the script, select the objects in 3d view, press F3 and type Render multi...

import bpy

class Multi_Render(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Docstring"""
    bl_idname = "render.multi"
    bl_label = "Render multiple times"

    # Define some variables to register
    _timer = None
    shots = None
    stop = None
    rendering = None
    path = "/tmp/"       # Linux
    #path = "C:\\tmp\\"  # Windows

    # Define the handler functions. I use pre and
    # post to know if Blender "is rendering"
    def pre(self, dummy):
        self.rendering = True

    def post(self, dummy):
        self.shots.pop(0) # Remove current object from list
                          # Render next Object
        self.rendering = False

    def cancelled(self, dummy):
        self.stop = True

    def execute(self, context):
        # Define the variables during execution. This allows
        # to define when called from a button
        self.stop = False
        self.rendering = False

        # One shot per selected object
        self.shots = [o.name for o in context.selected_objects]

        context.scene.render.filepath = self.path

        bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(self.pre)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_post.append(self.post)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_cancel.append(self.cancelled)

        # The timer gets created and the modal handler
        # is added to the window manager
        self._timer = context.window_manager.event_timer_add(0.5, window=context.window)
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)

        return {"RUNNING_MODAL"}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'TIMER': # This event is signaled every half a second
                                  # and will start the render if available

            # If cancelled or no more shots to render, finish.
            if True in (not self.shots, self.stop is True):

                # We remove the handlers and the modal timer to clean everything
                bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.remove(self.pre)
                bpy.app.handlers.render_post.remove(self.post)
                bpy.app.handlers.render_cancel.remove(self.cancelled)
                context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self._timer)

                return {"FINISHED"} # I didn't separate the cancel and finish
                                    # events, because in my case I don't need to,
                                    # but you can create them as you need

            elif self.rendering is False: # Nothing is currently rendering.
                                          # Proceed to render.
                sc = context.scene

                # I'm using cameras named just as the output files,
                # but adapt to your needs
                #sc.camera = bpy.data.objects[self.shots[0]]

                sc.render.filepath = self.path + self.shots[0]
                bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

        return {"PASS_THROUGH"}
        # This is very important! If we used "RUNNING_MODAL", this new modal function
        # would prevent the use of the X button to cancel rendering, because this
        # button is managed by the modal function of the render operator,
        # not this new operator!

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    #bpy.ops.render.multi('INVOKE_DEFAULT') # Test call

Note: You don't necessarily have to use a for-loop, the post method removes each item from the list in case the rendering is finished. Also I suggest split up the process into 2 operators, one for rendering only and another one to manage the whole process.

In case you don't want the render window to show up for whatever reason, you can either set the display_mode to 'NONE' temporary:

    elif self.rendering is False: # Nothing is currently rendering.
                                  # Proceed to render.
        sc = context.scene
        sc.render.display_mode = 'NONE'

        sc.render.filepath = self.path + self.shots[0]
        bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

        # Reset display mode
        sc.render.display_mode = 'WINDOW'

and add a check for the ESC event to remove the timer:

def modal(self, context, event):

    if event.type in {'ESC'}:
        context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.remove(self.pre)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_post.remove(self.post)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_cancel.remove(self.cancelled)

        self.report({'WARNING'}, 'User interuption')
        return {'FINISHED'}
    ...

Or you can call render.render() without INVOKE_DEFAULT to execute the operator directly (without the UI), e.g. based on a given variable (notice that the progress bar does not show up):

        if render_window:
            bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)
        else:
            bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

Also you can add an invoke() method along with a BoolProperty() to the operator so the user can decide whether or not displaying the render window:

render_window: bpy.props.BoolProperty(
    name="Show Render Window",
    description="A bool property",
    default = False
)

def invoke(self, context, event): # Used for user interaction
    wm = context.window_manager
    return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

and add a condition for that within the modal method (before rendering):

    elif self.rendering is False: # Nothing is currently rendering.
                                  # Proceed to render.
        sc = context.scene

        if self.render_window == False:
            sc.render.display_mode = 'NONE'

        sc.render.filepath = self.path + self.shots[0]
        bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

        # Reset display mode
        sc.render.display_mode = 'WINDOW'

However, it is indeed tricky to make it work properly...


How do you create interactions with other objects? I have this little Ball i made up, however i have a problem, I can get the ball to interact with other object, however i cannot get the test objects to move from the impact, what am i doing wrong?

Edit:

I placed a cylinder in the scene however the ball when making the impact with the cylinder wraps itself around the cylinder, i do not want that, i need for the cylinder to knock over or have other objects in the path to interact with the ball

You need to use rigid body physics to do what you want.

Select your sphere, then add Dynamic Rigid Body to it as shown below:

Then select your ground plane and add Passive Rigid body to it as shown below:

This is the result, the sphere will fall and when it hits the plane it will land and stop as shown below:

Updated .blend file can be found here:


How to use existing UV unwrap texture on model I have character model extracted and it has separate diff, normal map textures etc. Is there any way to apply them as they are? Without manual adjustments?

If the masks on your textures based off of a texture map that was made from a UV map are different it will not look to good. If you are tiling textures and say you want a different normal under a stone albedo(diffuse) megascan texture, it would work fine, it would just bring a different shape out of the albedo map. However, from the sounds of it, with a character as you are saying, when dealing with UV's the uv mask on the texture maps created from the UV's must match character UV's or it will not look very good.


Blender 2.8 Evee problem with irradiance volume and reflection cube I am very new in Blender, in fact, um using blender for 4 days only, I used to work with MAX mostly, Only reason to do some experiments with blender because of the new (2.8) update.

I am facing a weird problem, whenever I use blender mesh, like box, sphere & then try to use reflection probe and irradiance volume for evee rendering, it works fine, but whenever I import a scene from 3ds max the reflection probe just start to blow the whole scene, take a look at the attached file, is there something that I am doing wrong or it just a glitch? I believe I am doing something wrong here

By the way if you want to study the scene i can share it with you

Thank you for stating your question clearly.
When you import .FBX files from MAX: Go to the object property tabs (to your right side of the screen) and locate the 3 vertex triangle icon. There you will see "normals tab". Uncheck "Custom normals".
Also, the MATERIAL which you´re importing from MAX is overriding the properties of a principled BSDF shader like Blender natively interprets. That is your "diffuse" material has probably a high value of white in its parameters (past 1). Solution: Go to your materials tab of your imported. .fbx object and delete the diffuse material (or any other weird network of materials in which these .fbx use to arrive at blender from max) and then SHIFT+A on the node editr, search for principled shader. Plug it into the Material output of your imported object. Voilá.

Thank you for your consideration to vote me as the answer by clicking to the left :the icon with a check mark and upvote this answer.

BFCT_Schiller


How to show Blender thumbnails in Linux (Ubuntu) I have installed the 2.8 version of blender through steam Ubuntu. Location in /home/myusername/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Blender. I can not understand where to copy blender-thumbnailer.py.

What's the "PATH" directory? In General I have a lot of projects associated with the work and with no preview I can find something).

Asking on behalf of a user who emailed me.

Save this file to: $HOME/.local/share/thumbnailers/blender.thumbnailer

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=blender-thumbnailer.py
Exec=blender-thumbnailer.py %u %o
MimeType=application/x-blender;

If you install Blender via Ubuntu's package manager, blender-thumbnailer.py will be in your PATH, otherwise you'll need to add it.

From what I can tell, you need to have blender-thumbnailer.py in your PATH for this to work.

See: How can I edit the $PATH on linux?

Note, it would be good to see if this could be simplified or even done automatically.


Dots show on Volume material So I've done the atmosphere, but the Volume material has given it loads of dots. I assume this is the resolution of the Volume light but is there a way to get rid of them without bumping up the resolution to over 100,000?

Try decreasing the Step size in the material settings:

Note that this will increase render time.


How do I switch the active camera during an animation? How do I switch active camera temporarily in the middle of an animation?
Thank you for the link, yes that is what I'm trying to do. But I'm not having much success. It seems that when I try to bind a camera to markers it binds that camera to ALL markers not just the marker I've selected. Note, I pressed A in between to clear all selected markers, then selected the marker I wanted by right-clicking on it. What might I be doing wrong?

Mark clint dion (apologies if I've got that wrong but I have to do this on a phone, its very fiddly and the part that had your name disappeared when I pressed  edit) yes, I appreciate what you are saying but I'm still very much a novice and I don't have all the terminology yet. I try to be clear but I don.'t always realise other possible interpretations exist which might cause confusion. Please forgive me for that
Best,
Gary

To set a temporary camera, you can unlock the camera & layers to the scene (button on the right hand side of the layers).

When this button is not pressed, you can set the active camera (Select camera, Ctrl+Numpad0) 'only for the current view'.


Model won't follow its armature in pose mode I've set up a rig and built it around my model, and I've linked it to my model but when I rotate the bones in pose mode, the character doesn't move with them.

My rig is the human meta rig that comes with rigify. I've seen tons of videos of it working. Why isn't it working on mine?

My character was made by creating different body parts and joining them together into the same object, then a texture was added by unwrapping them in texture mode.

try following these steps

after joining all the separate parts and the body mesh together, you should parent the body mesh to the armature by ( in object mode )

selecting the mesh then the armature and pressing Ctrl P
select Armature Deform >> With Automatic Weights
select only the mesh and go to Modifiers
deselect Bone Envelopes in the Armature Modifier

press Tab to enter Edit Mode and navigate to Vertex Groups
ensure only necessary vertices belong to each Vertex Group

press Tab to enter Object Mode
select the armature and press Ctrl Tab to enter Pose Mode
select a bone and move by pressing G or rotate by pressing R

hope this helps!


Rigging when bones must achieve conflicting goals I have a question and words seem to fail me when searching here for an answer. Although this is related to a swim cycle, it is a problem I have encountered before: How do I achieve more than one goal for a bone: For example, a constant Y rotation, with a Z rotation axis saved as a separate action?

Here are details: I have created a swim cycle, deflecting a tail along the Y axis of three bones:

I would like to be able to add a flutter on another axis -- say Z -- and have that action smoothly intersect with the underlying cycle whenever and wherever it is used. Here is a Z wiggle:

In fact, I would like to do that with a flutter on the primary (Y) axis, too:

What I get, however, is the situation where the flutter action -- placed higher than the tail cycle on the NLA editor -- works fine, but ends up leaving the tail cycle deformed by the last position of the flutter NLA event. In the image below, the Z flutter has left the tail kinked downward:

My hope was to create action clips that added special or non-repeating action to an underlying strip but ended the "new" action -- the flutter in my file -- with a smooth return to the position of the underlying strip -- my swim cycle... Sort of like "take this cyclical position and add 10 degrees Z rotation, then subtract the rotation until it blends into wherever the underlying action strip is.."

So, that, with a question mark after it, is my question. How to achieve?

To be able to 'ease out' of an action strip that's higher up the stack and back onto a lower strip's:

Ensure the higher strip's Extrapolation values (found in the properties bar) are set to Nothing.
Play with the Blend out fields (also in properties bar) to phase out of the Action strip's influence.  You can get a visual sense of how much easing is occurring by looking at the descending slope on the right part of the action strip (circled in picture).


Problem with sharp edges after subdivision surface modifier everybody. I I'm newbie in Blender(obviously=) )
I still got sharp edges after subdivision surface modifier.

New "smooth" surface (2) kinda attached to some vertices (1) of the mesh, creating ugly vertical edge.
Upper part of lightbulb (which was used to creat the lower by "E", RMB, P) have no such problems. There is no double vertices and no Ngons. I've added few horizontal loopcuts(ctrl+R) to sharpen horizontal edges of the mesh, but thats all. I did nothing to vertical edges.  Please help me. This  question drives me crasy. Thanks in advance.

Looks like I've found an answer. Don't know how, but all normals were mixed up, so modifier went crazy. Shift+N solved the problem.

Now I have the habit of checking normals before using any modifiers and posting simple questions =)).


How to select vertices belonging to both faces of two-sided plane? I have an object of zero thickness - a two-sided strip, composed of doubled faces, the duplicates with normals switched. It's already textured on both sides, and I need to animate it now.

And I have problem with its two-facedness. Be it vertex select by right click, face select, edge select, box select, brush select C, only one face is being selected.

When I press G to move the end, they split apart, like below. Only then can I select the other face's vertices and try to duplicate the prior move, which I'm not always able to (never mind doubling my workload).

How can I assure all (including duplicate) vertices at given position are selected?

"Doubled" edge or face selection info would be sufficient too. Also, this is for exporting to external tool, so I can't use Blender's built-in two-sidedness.

Turn of Limit Selection to Visible on the 3D View header while in edit mode to select occluded geometry.

You can also select all geometry by default if you switch from shader modes to wireframe mode.

Selection info shows on the Info Editor header, by default above the 3D view, giving you precise scene and selection statistics. It tells how many vertex/edges/faces/objects are in your scene, current object, and how many of those are seletcted

Also if you accidentally/intentionally  move only one at a time, you can then use snapping to perfectly match the first transform by pressing Ctrl while transforming, ensuring a perfect coincidence.


Weird fuzz/shading error on a render of a house model. Help? As you can see in the render above, there is some weird fuzz on the side of the house, as well as some sort of spiky shade in the triangular area. I would like to know what causes that fuzz.

More importantly, I want to fix the triangular area shading error. It really ruins the look of the house.

Here is another view of it.

How can I fix the fuzz shading and the shading error in the triangular part of the roof?
What is causing this? I already tried removing doubles and recalculating normals. The lighting is a combination of Environment Lighting of 0.760 and an Area Lamp shining directly on the front of the house.

The problem on the triangle of your house is that there are intersecting meshes. To fix the issue, go into edit mode and hit W>Remove Doubles. also make sure that you don't have an duplicate objects.

To fix the noise, change this setting:

The higher you set it, the less noise you will get, and the longer your render-times will become.


How to cut a mesh outline on another plane I'm going to be printing a prop gun in two halves and in order to glue it together perfectly, i want to print an outline mold of the gun so both halves can set straight.

I tried using the knife project tool but it doesn't cut the outline of the gun.

This is what using the tool normally is like:

It only cuts the trigger guard portion.

And this is what i would like to do:

I would like to cut only the outside of the of the mesh model onto the plane in the back, is there any way to accomplish this?

I can upload the file of the half gun if requested.

Here is the finished product, thank you:

I assume that the half-gun has a flat face on the side it's cut.

You can extrude that face out so that it goes through the plane and then subtract the gun from the plane.

Here's an example with a half-suzanne. With a bit of imagination, it looks a bit like a gun :-)

And here's the final result


When I swich scenes in blender game my scene gets darker If I run my game scene without the menu scene everything it's fine, but if I first run the menu scene of the game and then get in my game scene everything is darker and my lamps are different than the ones I set.

Make sure both scenes have the same settings (e.g. Shading Material Mode: MultiTexture/GLSL). The BGE will use the settings of the startup scene throughout the whole game.


How to soften/smooth mesh curves? I created mesh from a curve and I want now soften the curved parts of it like this selection.

I subdivided this part and moved vertices manually to get this:

But I'm sure there is some better way to do this.
Basically I want to make a flat road but i don't want to have million unnecessary vertices on straight parts.

You probably don't need all those subdivisions on the edges that run across the curve:

Aside from that, there are several ways you could go about doing this:
Spin
You could use the spin tool (⎇ AltR):

Position the 3D cursor ( LMB)

Spin (⎇ AltR)

Subdivide
Subdividing can work well if you only subdivide the edges that follow around the curve:

Unfortunately subdivide smooth doesn't seem to work in this case, so you'll still need to move the vertices manually.
Curves
You could also use a curve, then convert it to a mesh later with ⎇ AltC.

Add a curve

Add a straight curve as a bevel object

Extrude curve (E or ⎈ Ctrl LMB)

You should also be able to use bevel, but currently there seems to be a bug with beveling 2D planes in 2.72..


How to make lattice follow eye position so i was using latticed eye that works quite well with tracking etc but i have a problem when i change the head pose the eye will follow the head and the lattice wont like this :

i tried parenting the lattice but it messed my eye tracking instead, is there any solution for this?

Blend file : http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52093

Thankyou in advance

Select the lattice, shift select the armature, switch it to Pose mode, select the head bone, then ctrlP > Bone and it seems to work correctly.


change walk mode keys configuration I can't find the entries in User Preferences (input tab) to change the keys for navigating in 3D view, using walk navigation mode.

Currently it's bind to WASD keys, and since I have an AZERTY keyboard, it would be nicer to have ZQSD mapping to move the view.

Is it hard coded into Blender's source code ? Or do I miss the entries in User preferences ?

Nevermind, I finally found the entries in User preferences.

Into 'Input' tab, then into 3D view > View3D Walk Modal, all keys bindings are listed here.

Oddly, we can not find it using the search tool at the top...


Can you bake keyframes in BGE and have them work in cycles? I'm trying to make a physics simulation work in my animation I'm making in cycles and the easiest way I can think of doing it is by simulating in BGE and then transferring that into the cycles engine, can that be done?

In short, yes you can. It is as simple as activating a checkbox called Record Animation in the Menu, and then playing your game:

When you hit Esc to exit the game, it will take a little while, as then all keyframes are evaluated. Once done, you can select the object and edit keyframes in the Graph Editor, although it might not be great fun to do so:

Using clean channels or clean keyframes you can simplify the curve, but the risk is to change the animation too much:


Can't manage to succesfully UV unwrap house to get aligned brick textured walls I've started learning blender a few weeks ago and my desire is to model and render a brick house. I've followed a lot of tutorials on modelling and texturing. However, I can't manage to successfully line up the the brick texturing at the corners of the walls and at the windows as you might be able to see in the images I've added. I've tried to look up as much tutorials on UV-unwrapping but I keep bumping into the problem of lining up the bricks the right way.

I have added my blender model as well, I guess I have made mistakes with the seams and such. Could anyone help me and show me what I'm doing wrong? I'm very eager to learn :)

Kind regards,

Tomas

Blender file

Found that wrapping the UV map around the edge is the easiest way to get the bricks to line up. You just need to concentrate on the sides. Generally a sill covers the bottom layer and on the top - you can cheat more.

The image above shows the normal map which is used later to bump the texture...

...and this shows another building with rounded brick corners.

Some textures I made from baking walls of mesh bricks. Others I drew and composed in Gimp. You can see some of the trials here on the BlenderArtists thread.

Update: First step is to make sure your seams are marked for the unwrap - CTRLE if you haven't done that already. (You can see them marked red and just in the corners.) Then U to unwrap. I use Project from View as I think it's the quickest to get neat UV's, and then just scale ...

Select the recessed edges and scale them on the X axis in the UV editor...

These are the active buttons in the UV editor...


How can you cut shapes out of an object with other objects? I know this has been asked before but I seem to be struggling to use either the knife project tool or merging meshes and then separating out sections to cut pieces in a mesh. This is probably due to some fundamental misunderstanding but there must be an easier way to do this rather than making 1000 edge loops to line up with the curves.

Here's the sheet with pieces overlayed:

When I consolidate Ctrl + J then separate P you can see that the piece gets separated but the original base sheet remains untouched.
If anyone has any advice that would be much appreciated. I was hoping the knife project tool would be the easier way but whenever I use it only part of the piece gets cut not the entire thing.

The way I would usually do this is to make the cutting objects 3D and then join them with the object to be cut then use Intersect (Boolean) face tool.


How to make blood splatter effect in the Blender Game Engine I am trying to make a first person shooter, and what I need now is a blood splatter effect on the screen when the player has been shot by an enemy. Something like in Call of Duty and Uncharted.

How can I achieve something like this?

I prefer to use logic bricks but Python code would be fine too (But please explain the code).

Almost every game uses pre-rendered animated (sometimes) transparent textures applied to a quad attached to the camera rendered in front of everything else for such effects (the same way as a HUD is).
Such effects include, but are not limited to, rain drops, blood, damage (eg. red blinking emboss, injury texture, blood splatter).

It is both pointless and very CPU and GPU intensive to do it in 3D and/or in realtime. Pointless as since it is applied to the "camera" it follows the camera, so since it is viewed from one angle, there's no point in it being 3d rather than 2D and it is too CPU/GPU intensive to render it in realtime as fluid dynamics are still not fast enough for the average consumer GPU.

If you want the blood to increase as the health decreases, there are several design choices which can be used:

1) Apply several blood splatter textures on the same quad, on top of each other

2) As some games do it, just add a second red emboss texture quad on top of the blood quad as the damage increases. That texture can also be blinking (animate the transparency, or have the texture an animated video file or sequence of image files).

3) Have a blood animation where just a few blood drops flow to form a big blood pool and navigate to the corresponding frame as the damage increases (eg. if health is 100, set frame to 0, if 01, set frame to 120).


How can I copy an animation onto an other object? I have an animation in blender, I want this animation copied onto an other object, that it does the exact same thing as the other object. (the same animation)

Assuming it's just a key framed object and not a rigged object, your question was answered sufficiently here I think but I'll copy over Richard Marklew's answer just in case the link dies some time in the future but the hotkeys are still the same by then: "Select the cube with no animation, shift select the cube with the animation then Ctrl+L / Animation data (or Object / Make Links menu) to link the animation. Alternative you can use the Dopesheet set to Action Editor to apply any action to your object any action. You can then press the number to the right of the action to make it a single user so the animations are then no longer linked (or U in object mode)"

I will add also that you can accomplish a dynamically updating version of this with constraint modifiers.


Version 2.78, 3D view, Problems displaying a movie clip as background, how to fix it? I am using Blender Version 2.78,
in the default layout I did the following:

1 to go into front view
space to enter command: allign camera to viewport
n to open the box on the right
selected image>movie clip

However no movie clip showing up, I tried both orthographic and perspective mode, inside and outside the camera.
When I open an image as a background, it shows up on pressing 7 on the numpad. The movie clips I tried to open as background images already worked in blender inside the video sequence editor.

This is what I meant in comments above (if I got what you meant)

As said

also selecting "image" you can select a movie file, it should work anyway
or, using "movie" option, try disabling "camera clip" and select again the video through the "open" button


Animation not working in Unreal Engine 4 I'm very new to Blender and Unreal Engine. I'm trying to figure out why my Animations from Blender are not showing up in Unreal Engine 4. Here is a file that I made for testing it out.

When I'm importing the file to Unreal Engine 4 this shows up

The Mesh is showing up in UE4

But the Animation is not showing

This is what the Output Log of Blender says

The Error "Imported bone transform is different from original. Please check Output Log to see detail of error." is the one that I can't get rit off.

This is probably a simple question but I can't figure it out.

Thank you.

Hey I had a similar issue, this thread helped me fix it: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/736756/blender-animation-import-problem-empty-animations.html

If link dies the solution was,

  Turns out all I had to do was rename my character in blender from 'armature' to anything else.


What is a matcap and where is it located in blender 2.8? What is a matcap and where is it located in blender 2.8?

Matcap is a way of shading objects in the viewport.

It is located here, in the little dropdown box in the top right of the viewport.


Is there an addon or a trick to prevent objects from being placed inside of each other? I was trying to make a big cluster of balloons but it toke to much time to place every balloon in a random position without them intercepting. Is there anyting that can prevent this, like an addon that prevents objects or vertex groups of objects from intercepting?

You can use Rigid Body simulation, maybe combined with some forces to distribute balloons. That may take some time and experiments to make it right.

You can automate that by mass copying rigid body properties from one balloon to others. Please check Blender docs to know more about Rigid Bodies and Force Fields.

You can automate your work by writing small python script. Please note that a lot of commands you need can be taken from the console.

Depending on how "big" number of balloons you want using a particle system for instancing balloons can be quite good solution. To make balloons more diverse, there can be made several versions of them and grouped. Then you just need to use that group for instancing and adjust settings like number, size variation, etc. Unfortunately Blender currently does not directly support Rigid Bodies for Particle System instances so they need to be converted to objects first.