where is blender shader library UI? i am cinema4d and keyshot user and i wanted try blender
but i have a problem/confusion in blender

i am not talking about node editor for shader.

in cinema i have library and shader presets that i have saved over the years, when i want i can browse and add them to project and i can see what i have in the project and drag them to my objects

cinema4d ui

PROBLEM

i cant locate where the shader library UI is?
where is all the shaders added to project?

thanks in advance
please show me images if possible

edit 1 : latest beta 2.8

There something like that in Blender 2.79 internal render that am using.

Goto>File>Preferences>Add-on
Then activate "Material Library"

Then go to Object Material Property Tab, You will see the Material Library.

In that Material Library, choose the Render Engine, the Materials for the Selected Engine will be listed.

Screenshots coming soon


Move forward in orthographic view? How can I move the 3d view "forward" in orthographic mode? I don't want to magnify the image, I want to zoom like in perspective mode, so that the parts of the mesh that are near me disappear behind the camera, allowing me to see hidden parts of the mesh. In perspective I would simply zoom, but how can I do this in orthographic?

It seems that to do this you need to be looking from the Camera View and adjust the Camera settings.

Set your Camera to Orthographic Mode

The clipping Start and End will be controlled from these Camera settings, not the Viewport clipping settings.

Align Camera to View

CtrlAltNum 0

Rotating the view

Enable "Lock Camera to View"

(It's in your Properties Panel)

This lets you look around without popping out of Camera View.

Zooming the view

To zoom in and out you will probably need to move the Camera along its local Z axis by grabbing it. [If anyone knows a better way, please chime in in the comments] To do this, select the Camera, Grab G, then press ZZ and adjust using your mouse. Left Click to accept the position.

Note: Your Camera must be on a selected Layer in order for it to be grabbed.

Demonstration:

Some thoughts on workflow

If you will be spending a lot of time working like this you might want to keep an Outliner window up that always shows your "Camera" object so you can select it again any time you need to. You can do this by simply typing "Camera" into the search field and leaving it that way. You can still use the Outliner for other tasks in a separate window space.

If you find selecting and grabbing the Camera cumbersome, it may be worth considering whether you can see what you need to see by using another approach, such as hiding objects or masking part of objects using the Mask Modifier.


Is it possible to guide a smoke simulation along a curve? Is it possible to have smoke and flames, or just smoke, to flow in the direction of a curve?

I'm aware that I can use a particle system guided by the curve and then emit the smoke from the particles, but this will not do for the effect I'm trying to achieve since the flames still go up and not in the direction of the curve.

Also I'm aware that I can add a wind forcefield, but that will only push the flames not really guide them along the curve.

Yes, this is possible - you can use a Force forcefield set to act along a curve and set to a negative strength to draw the smoke to the curve as in the following example :

However, this isn't intuitive to set up as the 'curve' type is not normally available on Force fields - so this is possibly unintended behaviour - but useful nontheless. Note that this works on Blender 2.79b.
To set this up, first add a Curve Guide force - the Curve Guide doesn't actually affect the smoke simulation but does allow a curve to be defined for the direction of the force. Use Edit mode (Tab) to edit the curve into the desired shape.
Now, change the Type in the Force Field physics properties to Force. Since this force now has a defined curve you should see the addition 'Curve' option in the Shape drop-down list. Select this to have the force act along the curve.
Set a negative strength to have the curve draw the smoke together rather than blow it apart.
Here's the result :

Blend file included

EDIT : I recently discovered that it’s also possible to add the curved force another way - instead of ‘fudging’ the force type (as above) to get the curve you can simply add a curve to the scene (bezier, nurbs) and add the force to the curve using the Physics tab. This then allows you to set the force to Curve as described above. Similar applies for surfaces.

Further Edit : The provided file doesn't load correctly in more recent versions of Blender - it is not successfully converted to Mantaflow. Instead you can simply build the simulation as follows :

Use Quick Smoke on default cube
Shrink and move it to the desired location
Add a curve and and edit it to the required shape
Add a Force to it and set the strength to, say, -5
Set the force Shape to 'Curve'
Enable 'Noise' in the domain settings
Run the simulation


Model a tube with round ends and apply a colorful gradient I'd like to model a tube with both ends rounded. After that i want to add a colorful gradient to it.

I know a little about building a tube via bezier curves and a cylinder but the tube has open ends.

How would you try to model it?

Attached you find a picture what I would like to build.

You may achieve it using Curve Modifier for modeling and a Gradient node for material.

Add a Curve, subdivide it and make a patern. Then add a Cylinder and subdivide it with Ctrl+R (the more subdivisions the smoother mesh will look). Remember that Curve and a Cylinder have to have the origin points placed in the same position. Apply the Rotation ans Scale to both objects (Ctrl+A). Select the Cylinder, give it a Curve Modifier and set up its settings as pictured below. To make the Cylinder fit the Curve select the Curve, go to the Curve Data header, and check the Stretch and Bounds Clamp checkboxes.

Dissolve some of the Cylinder edges (X-->Dissolve Edges). Select the top face and press Ctrl+B to bevel it. Play with its settings for different results. Select the face on the other side of the Cylinder and press Shift+R to repeat the process.

Add Subsurf Modifier, then scale some of the Cylinder mesh parts using the proportional editing (Alt+O).

Set up nodes as pictured below. To recreate the reference image you may need to add some additional color lamps.


How to prevent legs from stretching when moving other parts of body? I wanted to move this part of the leg as highlighted in the image

As you can see this part of the leg becomes stretched and thinned really weirdly. Does anyone know how to prevent the leg from becoming thinned and stretched really weirdly and to prevent the dimensions from changing?

There are some tips to fix your problem.

subdivide
weight paint
preserve volume

1. subdivide

For a "good" rigging, your model seems to be too low poly. I suggest you add some loop cuts (near the joint) or add a subdivision surface modifier above the armature modifier.
Make sure that your new vertecies have appropriate vertex weights.

2. weight paint

By using weight painting, you can manipulate "the influence of the bone on a certain vertex". If some of your vertecies seem to move too much, decrease the vertex weight, mainly at the vertex paint mode.

3. preserve volume

At the Armature modifier panel, there is a check box labeled "preseve volume". Ticking it may improve your armature deform.


how could I turn active a bone in ui header? (blender 2.79) I want to make something like a feedback tool, but I can't assign the active bone in the ui Header.

What could I do to achieve it?

this is the code:

bl_info = {
    "name": "UI_Study",
    "description": "Study.",
    "author": "José Vargas",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    #"location": "VIEW3D_HT_header",
    #"warning": "", # used for warning icon and text in addons panel
    #"wiki_url": "http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/"
    #            "Scripts/My_Script",
    #"tracker_url": "https://developer.blender.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/2/",
    "support": "JV",
    "category": "Armature",
}

import bpy

class VIEW3D_HT_issue(bpy.types.Header):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'

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

        row = layout.row(align = True)

        obj = context.active_object
        s_bones = context.selected_pose_bones
        bone = context.active_bone
        mode = obj.mode

        if mode == 'POSE':
            if len(s_bones) > 1:
                row.alert = True
                ### remove it and use below
                row.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "GROUP_VERTEX")

                for b in s_bones:
                    b_nam = b.name
                    # armature
                    arm = bpy.data.armatures[obj.name]
                    # get the bone
                    d_bone = arm.bones.get(b_nam)
                    # make it active
                    ### star issue
                    arm.bones.active = d_bone
                    # check if it the active bone is using deform
                    bone = context.active_bone
                    # count the bones with use deform active
                    if bone.use_deform == True:
                        conta += 1
                # all
                if conta == len(s_bones):
                    rrow.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "FILE_TICK")
                # ones
                elif conta > 0 and conta != len(s_bones):
                    row.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "ERROR")
                # no ones
                elif conta == 0:
                    row.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "CANCEL")
                ##### end issue
            else:
                # this works well
                row.alert = False
                if bone:
                    if bone.use_deform == True:
                        row.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "FILE_TICK")
                    else:
                        row.prop(bone,"use_deform",text = "DEF", icon = "CANCEL")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_HT_issue)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_HT_issue)

# para correrlo como script
if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

this is the error:

line 45, in draw
AttributeError: Writing to ID classes in this context is not allowed: Armature, Armature datablock, error setting Armature.active

the file:
https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/KjNApQ8D

Select active bone in pose mode from UI

Use the draw method to draw UI elements only Cannot set properties of ID elements in draw method (the error arm.bones.active = d_bone ).

In general, Use operators or property update methods to assign values

To set the active bone in pose mode from the UI, can simply put the "active" property of the armature bones collection into the layout.

Below I've used a UI_Layout.prop_search there may be a template that also does similar.

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

        obj = context.object
        arm = obj.data

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop_search(arm.bones, "active", arm, "bones")


Armature not staying in place For some reason I'm not getting, the armature for the arms aren't staying in place when I move the root bone. I've added weights though, and they have vertex groups, so I'm not sure what's wrong. They just seem to 'fold' whenever I move the whole character.

I think that you first need to make some armature corrections :

Rotate your IK controller in Edit mode to make it more easy to handle.
Deactivate its Deform option as it is not supposed to influence the mesh.
Unparent it, it is not supposed to be child of the hand, it is supposed to be parented with offset to the root bone.
Select the hand and make it the child of the controller.
You may also need to move the Pole Target, and also deactivate Deform.

Now when you select the mesh in Weight Paint mode, you can see that the chest bone influences the arms while it is not supposed to, so use the brush to correct that.


Why does the measurement tool not snap to vertices? I want to now the width of an edge. So I tried to use the measurement tool and select two vertices. But to my surprise this it did not snap. Why doesn't the measurement tool snap to the vertices when I enable the snapping to vertices option?
Se also:
https://youtu.be/aIFSPqxgq0s

Hold Ctrl to enable snapping.
The Measure tool only snaps to vertices and edges.
Notice the bottom status bar gives you all available commands


How Use the rotation of a driver object to drive the 0-1 position of 12 driven objects I've specfied my question so its hopefully a bit clearer.
The idea is to use the rotation of a driver, to drive 12 driven objects.
This means that for every 30 degrees of rotation, a driven object goes from 0, to 1 and back to 0. Gradually.
What does this specificly look like for one driven object?
Driver rotates to 15 degrees. Driven object is on Tz = 0
Driver rotates to 30 degrees. Driven object gradualy moved to tz = 1
Driver rotates to 45 degrees. Driven object gradually moved to tz = 0
Driver rotation can be > 360
and only when it reaches the equivalent of 15-45 degrees, should driven object gradually move from 0, to 1, and back to 0

If you don't mind editing the drivers for every object individually its quit simple.
radians((LOWER_LIMIT <= (abs(degrees(var)) % 360) < UPPER_LIMIT) * 90)

with:

var = z rotation driver
UPPER_LIMIT = minumum rotation of driver to rotate object
LOWER_LIMIT = maximum rotation of driver to rotate object

How this works:

The comparisons return either a value 1 (True) or 0 (False)

NOTICE:  for the modulo to work you have to anable Auto run python script.
And to make it work gradually (totates 360d):
radians(LOWER_LIMIT <= (abs(degrees(var)) % 360) < UPPER_LIMIT) * (abs(degrees(var)) % 360 - LOWER_LIMIT) * 6

And if you want it to rotate back in opposite direction:
radians((LOWER_LIMIT <= abs(degrees(var)) % 360 < UPPER_LIMIT) * (-(1 / 15 ** 2) * (abs(degrees(var)) % 360 - LOWER_LIMIT - 15) ** 2 + 1) * 90)

Completely unrelated:
-binary counter
radians( ( ( degrees(var) % 2**(Driven_Object_Number))>2**(Driven_Object_Number-1))* 90)

here it is counting to 128


Can you perfectly line up one object with an array modifier with another object that has an array modifier? So here's the problem.  I want the cylinders to be smack in the middle of the cubes when giving them both an array modifier.  I know one way to make that happen, is to just join them together and give the new combined mesh an array modifier.  However, in order to use the cylinders as a boolean, the cylinder has to be a separate object (unless there's something I don't know).  But when I try to line up the cylinder to be in the middle of the other cubes by adjusting the spacing, it gets gradually more OFF center.

I'm asking because I'm once again, trying to put windows in a wall (not the basic type that could be done with the archimesh tool).  A while back I saw a video in which the person did this by having a mesh in the shape of the window placed in the middle of it, and doing a boolean (difference) operation on the wall to make a hole for the window with said mesh.  The only thing was, they only made one window for their example, and I'm attempting many on a big building wall.

So hopefully my question makes sense and someone can help me out by either letting me know if I can make that happen, or giving me another method of creating windows for walls.  Thank you for your time.

You need to use constant offset inside the array in both of them


Composition Input render layer I am planning to make a plane with heat distortion which is the same as http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/how-to-create-heat-distortion/#.VI5GlivF9jI
I followed all the steps but i can't add the input render layer in the compositor for the plane. Is there any neccessary thing needed to be done before using the compositor? It is my first time using compositor.
Here is the file , http://www.mediafire.com/download/mswmux40sugxjs3/help+plane.blend

You need to activate the compositor by checking the "use nodes" option in the node editor's menu header (make sure you have the composite tree selected!) It looks like this:

.

This has not been done in your file.


Noise Texture does not work with my mesh I'm new to Blender and following along with the Blender Guru's tutorial series for beginners, where you make a doughnut and coffee. I've been doing everything He does step by step. In Part 4 Level 2 of the series, he adds a Noise Texture.
In the video it works just fine for him, but when I do it, my mesh (the doughnut) turns pink indicating a problem. I have gone back and retraced my steps several times and I can't figure out what's wrong. I'm using version 2.82.7.

Can someone please tell me where I went wrong?

Hello I was just googling the same issue with donut turning up pink and posted about it here and someone very wise informed me Material previews are only in EEVEE and not Cycles: https://www.reddit.com/r/blenderhelp/comments/mne2lf/displacement_bumps_not_displaying_properly_while/
I notice you might have the same problem as me - change your top right Viewport shading from Material Preview to Rendered. That is what Andrew had in his tutorial and I simply overlooked it.
it solved the issue for me, hopefully for you too!


What do various property highlight color overlays mean? I have downloaded a free model for my current project and spotted those different colors on Scale, Rotation, Location, and other properties.
What do these different colors signify? What is the meaning of various possible color overlays on UI properties buttons?
The very same model after Ctrl + C Ctrl + V to my project file disappeared after a while.

Button colors reflect their respective property situation in relation to animation state.

Grey/Theme Colored - Unchanged, non animated value
Green - Property is animated but not keyframed at the current frame (notice the diamond outline decorator to the right)
Yellow - Property is animated and keyframed at the current frame (notice the filled diamond decorator to the right)
Orange - Value is changed but doesn't currently match the evaluated/keyframed animation for this frame. This happens when you changed the property but haven't yet keyframed the new value, it will jump back to the keyframed/evaluated value stored in the file if a new keyframed is not inserted, leading to potential data loss. The stronger orange color should warn the user of its unsaved state.
Blue - Property is overridden. This is only for libraries, or linked data from other external blend files. It means the value differs from the predefined default stored in the remote library, and has a new locally set data override (notice the overridden arrow decorator to the right).
Purple - Property has a Driver, an expression or simple math function that automatically controls its value according to input calculated from other properties/objects (notice the driven arrow decorator to the right).
Red - Error state (used more frequently in modifiers or constrains). The property either has an invalid value, is disabled or producing no visible effect. In the example below a Subdivision modifier has zero subdivisions both for viewport and rendered output and is thus effectively disabled for all intents and purposes. Despite no harmful errors occurring its name is shown red warning of its currently ineffective output.

Have in mind that all these colors are editable though, so while most themes try to stay close to these defaults, nothing stops them from using something completely different.


bpy.context not working as expected I had a script which included bpy.context. Once I'd built the script up with various other functions, it was no longer working properly.

Using advice from here: Problem with bpy.context.selected_objects I changed various lines to use bpy.context.scene.objects if o.select_get() instead of bpy.context.selected_objects.

That worked nicely when I substituted into several of my def functions. Unfortunately in one function I'm relying on a built-in module (not sure if that is the correct term):

from bl_operators.uvcalc_smart_project import main as uv_smart_project
uv_smart_project(bpy.context, .02, 30, 0.03, True, True)

That one no longer works either, but as it is a built-in module I can't easily go in and update the module to use o.select_get(). I get the error:

ob for ob in context.selected_editable_objects
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'selected_editable_objects'

If, after the main script fails, I run the two problematic lines in a separate text block, then it runs fine.

Edit:

I have used context = bpy.context throughout, as that seems to be a recurring comment around here. Also called the problematic script via a different text block, but no difference. Finally tried an override like this:

for window in context.window_manager.windows:
    screen = window.screen

    for area in screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            override = {'window': window, 'screen': screen, 'area': area}
            uv_smart_project(override, .02, 30, 0.03, True, True)

But that gives me 'dict' object has no attribute 'mode' and I can't see how to add the mode to the override (if that is even a thing).

Is there another way to set the context correctly? Arbitrary selection/activation of an object in the 3D view, maybe?

Thanks to iceythe on BlenderArtists I have resolved my problems in two ways. The first part is this:

for window in context.window_manager.windows:
    screen = window.screen

    for area in screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':

            tmp = bpy.context.copy()
            tmp.update(window=window, screen=screen, area=area)

            class Override:
                pass

            for key, val in tmp.items():
                setattr(Override, key, val)
            print('Unwrapping ...')
            from bl_operators.uvcalc_smart_project import main as uv_smart_project
            uv_smart_project(Override, .02, 30, 0.03, True, True)

            return

The second part was a problem caused by my using save/reopen to clear orphaned data blocks, whereas this avoids the problem by using the purge function (which I knew about but had struggled to implement via a script):

context = bpy.context

def override():
    for window in context.window_manager.windows:
        for area in window.screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'OUTLINER':
                override_dict = {}
                override_dict.update(area=area)
                return override_dict

def ClearAll():

    for c in context.scene.collection.children:
        context.scene.collection.children.unlink(c)

    for c in bpy.data.collections:
        if not c.users:
            bpy.data.collections.remove(c)

    for o in bpy.data.objects:
        try:
            bpy.data.objects.remove(o)
        except:
            print('All objects deleted')

    override_dict = override()
    if override_dict is not None:
        bpy.ops.outliner.orphans_purge(override_dict)


How to render cartoon style with completely flat colors? How to render perfect cartoons in blender? Whatever the engine is (internal or cycles) I always get that shading transition somewhere on the model.

The first picture is in blender internal render engine with the toon shading material and the second picture is in cycles render engine with the toon shader.

How can I get completely flat colors with no fancy shading variation?

These are the settings you need to change to set flat toon/cel shading. To get rid of aliasing with constant interpolation, in options panel, turn on Full Oversampling. There are limitations, noted them in the graphic.


Brick texture with any offset other than 1/2? So I'm trying to use Blender's brick texture to create other patterns than the basic 1/2 offset every 2 rows pattern (the default) as shown here:
Basic Default Brick Texture
I would like to be able to have each row offset 1/3 from the previous row, for example.  I would expect, looking at the controls available, that the "offset" and "frequency" values provide exactly that.  But instead it seems that "frequency" only sets how many rows are affected by the offset (i.e. 1 every N rows) and offset determines how much those affected rows are offset from the other, non-affected rows.  So setting frequency to 3 or above leads to "stacked" rows that are all identical.  I've never seen a brick wall built like that so I can't imagine that's very useful, or at least it shouldn't be the primary use case.

How do I create a brick texture that allows offsets of 1/N for each row?  For example, to create a pattern of 1/3 offset for every row, repeating every 3rd row, I would expect to set the offset to 0.333 and the frequency to 3 (although really, I think only one of those two inputs is needed but whatever).
For example, see the layout in the image below in the middle row on the right (with the smiley that says 33% offset).  How can I achieve that?

The trick to achieving different brick offsets with the standard Brick texture is to additionally offset each individual row - instead of allowing the brick texture to provide the offset. This can be achieved as follows :

Note that the Brick Texture is set with an Offset set to zero - this results in no offset for each subsequent layer of bricks. Additionally, the Scale and Brick Width and Row Height are being set by Value nodes - so we can use those values in our calculations (allowing the texture to still be adjusted without breaking our row offsets).
The key to the calculation is to use the Y coordinate to determine the 'row' of bricks. This is achieved using the Snap node (this will increment by 1 for each full row of bricks). The offset is then essentially calculated based on the row number (from the Snap) multiplied by 1/'Offset Fraction' - but with some additional maths to take account of the Brick Width and Scale.
With Offset Fraction set to '3' we get a repeating pattern every 3 rows - so offset by 1/3rd of a brick :


How to add two parents to a single child object in blender? I have a car tire and I want two different bones to control it's rotation and and turning respectively.For that I want to make the tire parent to both the bones.Please tell me the way to a two bones parent to tire.

An object can only have one parent. In the example you give, you want one wheel bone to control the wheel. This bone would be animated to rotate on its Y-axis, this bone is then parented to a steering bone that will "turn" the wheel bone, but does not directly move the wheel mesh.


Merging Two Faces in L Shape I'm unsure if this is possible, but I have 2 faces that make an L shape.  I'd like to make them one surface, but I'm not sure how.  The "f" key solution I've found online doesn't seem to work (where you dissolve the edge), I know it's not a box shape and that everything needs to be made up of triangles when all is said and done.

Any help is appreciated.

Additional info: Trying to make a game tray for 3d printing, so I'm operating under the assumption that all of these pieces have to be merged in to one chunk.

The two highlighted (orange) parts are the pieces I'm trying to join. Basically two boxes, one is a shorter box. I've Joined them, and went to edit them, but I'm not sure what to do from there

You can join the boxes by putting in horizontal edges to match across the join, merging vertices, and deleting internal faces.

However, I think you could save yourself quite a lot of trouble by planning ahead, and starting your model entirely in the flat.

Start by cutting edges, putting in loops, where you will eventually need to elevate your walls
To achieve the rounded corners, you may have to E extrude some edges upwards, to make thin walls. With CtrlB you can bevel the vertical edges in the corners you want to be rounded. You can then delete those walls before moving on.
You don't need to worry about quad topology, everything is in flat surfaces, no shading anomalies, this is for printing.
First step, select all the faces and  E extrude to make the floor
Subsequent steps, make selections of faces to extrude upwards to make thick walls, stopping at appropriate heights before reselecting, and extruding again.


How to make a menu like the Sculpt Brush/MatCap menu with Python? I'd like to make a menu with images like the sculpt brush menu and MatCap menu in Blender with Python. Can anybody walk me through it? Thanks.

The matcap menu is written in C, so you can't define your own menu in Python for showing arbitrary images.

To see where the menu is called...

Open the text editor view.
Right click on the menu, select Edit Source
the line of python script that shows the matcap is displayed.

See that this is a template which means its a preset UI.


Middle-mouse-button (to move the screen) does not work anymore It seems my MMB is completely broken in Blender (only in Blender) because not even combinations with this button worked. It worked fine just a week ago, but since i have downloaded 2.76 this problem occurred, even when i switched back to 2.75. I don't know if the download of 2.76 was the impact because i didn't use Blender 2 days before i have updated it.

How can i solve this problem?

Do you use Photoshop Elements in parallel to Blender? I once ran into such a problem and it is a known issue of PE that the right mouse kind of redirected. For me, it helped to stop PE.


How to separate an armature bone from an armature bone in an animation? Im doing an animation that uses a hand and a sword. The hand swings the sword alot thats why there is a bone from the hand connected to the sword, but problem is, i want to throw the sword in my animation, but I dont know any way on how to detach the sword from the hand.

If you want to separate the bones:

• Select the armature;

• Enter Edit Mode;

• Select the bone you want to separate;

• Hit "p";

• Click Separate bones.


slot into curved pipe I have a curved pipe.  This pipe will ultimately be fabricated as a thin-wall stainless steel pipe.  The pipe will be approximately 4" in diameter and 6' long.  I would like to know how to cut a slot 1" wide the full length of the pipe and keep the same exact curve.  Also, the curved pipe does not curve uniformly, it has a decreasing radius as you move to the two ends of the pipe.

Here is a top and side view of the pipe:

So what you could do is:

First duplicate your curve to keep a safe copy somewhere. Now give it enough resolution, you'll have to make some tests but your mesh seems already smooth.

Convert your curve to mesh (header menu > Object > Convert To)

Select the edge where you want the slot to be, bevel with CtrlB, delete the faces, you have your slot.

Give your pipe a Solidify modifier to give it thickness, apply the modifier if your object is supposed to be printed at the end.

To have an even smoother object you need to add geometry with the Subdivision Surface modifier. As it will round the corners you need to add edge loops to sharp them. Again, apply your modifier if the object is supposed to be printed at the end.


How change the Pie Menu Radius with python? I want to change the pie menu radius using python,
after some search I can access to that propertie using:

bpy.types.UserPreferencesView.bl_rna.properties['pie_menu_radius'].

but I can't change it

some help please! :D

And similar can be done for all other items on the User-Preferences -> Interface tab. (Warning doesn't update the visible value on the UI until you move your mouse, or trigger ui redraw some other way)

import bpy
prefs = bpy.context.user_preferences
prefs.view.pie_menu_radius = 80


How can I roll a cube (around its edges) with armatures? I want to set up an animation of a rolling cube for a video game.
The cube needs to roll/tumble to all its sides.

When I add bones to the cube, only the parent bone seems to make the whole cube rotate (obviously) but when I rotate the next 'child' bone, the parent bones stays put...

How can I connect all the bones with each other (like my skeleton is one stiff bunch of bones) in order to make the whole cube rotate when I rotate a child bone?

This is just what you need! This is a Wolfram Alpha widget that showe you the cylogons (roulletes on n-gons about a straight line). The square is a default option:

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TracingACyclogonRouletteOfAPolygonRollingAlongALine/

EDIT: I made a canned animation of this rolling motion here, maybe you can use it:

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=51926


In a fluid simulation, how can I make an "inflow" fluid type pour into a "fluid" fluid type in one simulation? For example, how could I have a water pump pour water (inflow) into an existing pool of water (fluid)?

Just make a longer animation, where you pour some water until your pool has enough inside, then stop the inflow with a keyframe and start it some time later. Then, only use the needed timeframe.


Volume emission not working in blender 2.8 eevee I got this fire shader a while back. from what I can remember it worked in eevee but now it doesn't. also a normal emission shader in the volume is not working either.

any suggestions?

update blender 2.8 and it worked again so most likely a bug.


Problem with armature with automatic weight I am relatively new to blender and was following this YT tutorial, everything was going well and my IK were working on the bones, but, when I tried to parent the bones to the mesh everything went chaotic. I have tried subsurf and mirroring but I might have done something wrong. Here's the before

and the after

I don't know if I can upload files (if I can please tell me) but I would preffer to know why it doesn't work, anyways here's the .BLEND file on Mediafire.

If automatic weight doesn't work, you need to adjust the weight paint of the bones manually https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9S-jhBIEiU


How to rename objects with python? I want to rename the number 1->picture (32) with python not the number 2->picture with the (3745), can someone help me with that ?

The item you tagged as (1) is the objects data block and can be changed via python with

bpy.data.objects['3745'].data.name = 'newName'

Instead of referring to an object directly by name you can access the active object's data block with

bpy.context.object.data.name = 'newName'


Is it possible to have Blender orbit with pivot point the mouse cursor? Often, I use the 3D cursor as my orbit pivot, via "Lock to Cursor".  This is great, but frequently I need to use the 3D cursor for something else.  For example, shifting the 3D cursor to the origin if I'm not at the origin will upset my perspective and I have to re-navigate back to where I was.  Even if I simply uncheck "Lock to Cursor", I may be transported to an unrecognizable location, but at least, it'll be somewhere I don't want to be right then.  Sometimes, I can select a particular object for my orbit pivot point and hit "," to set that as orbit pivot, and that's fine and good.  But if I'm in pose mode, I may not have something good to select, and this doesn't seem to work at all usefully in weight paint mode.

What I'd like is to have the projection of the mouse cursor onto the closest entity be the orbit pivot point.  Barring that, I'd like a way to use two 3D cursors.  Are there any good options here?

There can be only one 3D cursor. However, you can create different empties, and snap the 3D cursor to them. That way you can easily store and retrieve cursor positions.


Is there a way to make a one way mirror? (Cycles) I'm trying to create a reflection that will repeat an object so it looks like there are infinite but it is only reflecting. Just using white glossy shader doesn't work because it reflects outside.

I'm hoping I can do this with the camera set to orthographic. Probably not though.

You have to use the Geometry node to make difference in the face sides. Here is the guide what I've seen before: Backface culling in cycles

You can set the camera to orthographic in the camera settings in the properties tab.

I made a native file for this: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/6020/


How to emit light from base color of a wave texture node? So as you can see I am trying to recreate the added picture using wave texture node and I want only the red color to emit light. So that to do? and what should be the node set up?

If you want the red part to emit light, use the black and white component from your Wave Texture as the Mix Factor Between a red Emission Shader and whatever you want the rest to be (I left it as a default principled BSDF with a black BaseColor, but you can use whatever you want.)


Need tight corner, but end up getting pinched geometry! I'm looking to create the following surface with a tight radius corner, but the only way I know how to do that is to create loop cuts close to each other, which results in pinched geometry. Anyone know how to fix this? I've linked the file below.
Link To Blender File

I was able to solve the problem by copying the normal vectors of non-pinchy vertices and then pasting them to the pinchy vertices and flatten them out. I needed to do this separately for every problem vertex though. I don't know a way to do it all in one fell swoop. I tried to multi-select and paste, but it ended up breaking other normals by me trying to do too many at once.
Go into Edit Mode and select a vertex that has no pinch. Press Alt + n to bring up the Normals Menu, and then choose the Copy Vectors option. Now select a problem vertex. Go back to the same Normals menu and choose the Paste Vectors option. You may find that some trial and error is needed to ensure that you aren't making things worse, but in relatively short order, I had the smooth surface you see here.

There may be a more elegant solution. Anyway, hope this helps.


What is the expected format fo scripted drivers? After adding drivers to rotate the wheels when a car model is moved the wheels at one side of the car rotate clockwise (CW) but the wheels on the opposite side rotate counter-clockwise (CCW).

I want to animate the car and the wheels should move independently from the direction of movement. I first tried to use the distance to an empty like this, but it this leads to the CW/CCW problem. Changing the sign of the rotation would probably fix this, but it seems that there isn't an option for changing the sign of the driver value.

A scripted expression tested in the console window:

>>> print(bpy.data.objects['Mazda'].location.y)
-0.30693674087524414

Doesn't work in the script input field:

What format does Blender expect here?

It expects to not use direct data path but to use a variable like this:

The reason is for update purposes. With variable the driver knows what his dependencies are thus it knows what value to watch. Watching the whole bpy.data for changes is not efficient.

Here are examples what is allowed in the Expr. field. You can use number expressions with driver variables plus some build-in functions like sin, cos, min, max, frame, etc.(to see all of them put bpy.app.driver_namespace[' into console and hit Ctrl+Space)

You can also use custom python functions, where you can access bpy.data, but you need to add such functions to driver namespace first:

import bpy

def mazda_loc_y_func():
    return bpy.data.objects['Mazda'].location.y

# add function to driver_namespace
bpy.app.driver_namespace['mazdaY'] = mazda_loc_y_func

In the Expr. field you just type mazdaY(). Without the driver variable the driver might not update nicely though.


Distance to Viewport View-Camera How can I get the distance between specific points in the 3D View and the virtual camera of my viewport?

Using the distance, I could select the closest or furthest (farthest) vertex/object from my perspective view.

Answering my own question, although I still don't know the difference between perspective_matrix, window_matrix and view_matrix. I also would prefer more explanation on why we don't need to use the inverted matrix.)
This question came up while creating this answer.

Snapping an empty to the closest vertex of a cube. "Closest" meaning closest to the viewer.

First, loop through the areas or obtain a SpaceView3D by other means. The type of this area returns VIEW_3D. It's first space will be a VIEW_3D space. This space has a region_3d property, which has a perspective_matrix property.

The perspective_matrix appears to be the perspective view transform matrix. Mutliple a 3D Vector by the matrix, to get its position relativ to the camera.

Here is a working sample.

import bpy

# function returning the closest vertex of
# param 'ob' is an object in the scene with vertices
def get_closest_vertex_position(scene, ob):
    # get an area of type VIEW_3D
    areas = [a for a in bpy.context.screen.areas if a.type == 'VIEW_3D']
    if not len(areas):
        return

    region3d = areas[0].spaces[0].region_3d

    # get the view matrix
    view_mat_inv = region3d.view_matrix

    if region3d.is_perspective:
        vertices = [[v, (view_mat_inv*v.co).length] for v in ob.data.vertices]
    else:
        vertices = [[v, -(view_mat_inv*v.co).z] for v in ob.data.vertices]

    # use a lamda expression to get closest vertex
    return min(vertices, key = lambda x: x[1])[0].co


Realistic cube rigid boy physics I want a scene in which a cube falls to the ground. I want this to be realistic with bounces and so on. How do I do this?

Thanks in advance

Simply:

add a plane and set it to rigid body passive
add a cube somewhat over it, set it to rigid body active
just rotate the cube it a bit so that its bottom face is not exactly parallel to the plane... reality is never absolutely perfect. Adding to that, or otherwise, there are settings to make the plane more "bouncy" if you prefer: look under plane and cube rigid body settings and enhance "bounciness" (try 0.2- 0.4 to start for the cube, try 1 for the plane) at your taste.

Done, press ALTA

Obviously the bonciness depends also on the falling object shape: try a sphere...


Nothing displaying in view port shading Im currently new to blender so do forgive me if i dont get explain the correct terms.

Im following a simple tutorial online and im ive created a few objects (List in the top right corner) ive organised them into collections.

Now for some reason, all the objects i have created are disappeared. They only appear in render mode. Can someone please help me what ive done wrong?

Thanks

You just accidentally switched to Local view.

To get out go View > Local View > Toggle Local View
Shortcut: Numpad /

Blender Manual on Local View

  Local view isolates selected objects, so that they are the only ones visible in the viewport. This is useful for working on objects that are obscured by other ones, or to speed up the viewport performance in heavy scenes.


I can't move objects I imported an object into my model, and now I can't move anything! I can scale and rotate just fine, but whenever I try to move an object, it acts like the arrows aren't even there!

From your question it seems you use 3D manipulator to translate objects. In this case make sure proper mode of manipulator is checked - arrow as its icon for translating. You can choose multiple manipulators by clicking on icons with Shift.


How to use SSS texture in Blender 2.8? How do I properly connect the SSS texture in a Blender 2.8 using nodes?
Blender 2.8
Without and with the SSS texture:

Plug your Image Texture into the grey Subsurface socket of the Principled BSDF. To decrease its effect you can use a ColorRamp or a Math (Multiply) node between the Image Texture and the Principled BSDF.


Why do meshes disappear "behind" an Empty image? Blender version 2.77a (According to splash screen)

In this image, you can see the outline of a selected/active mesh on the right-hand side. The 2D background image is an "Empty" entity assigned to it an image.
On the left-hand side you should be able to make out the black outlines of non-selected/inactive meshes. Everything normal so far.

The left-hand meshes were created before the Empty was created. (I had the image opened in GIMP and modelling the mesh within blender on its own.) This is a brand new file. No fancy options or anything. Literally started blender, deleted startup stuff, changed the world grid properties, enabled Snapping (to increment), and then created a "Grid" for each room and using Extrude and Subdivide to shape it.

The final bit of context/info: the image has a Z of 0. The meshes start as "Grid" at 0, but I extrude walls 200 above, and water pits 200 below 0. So they're 400 tall with the middle/floor being at 0.

Now here is the problem:

When I deselect the right-hand mesh, it disappears from view. It is still there, and if I hit Z to make meshes solid again, it will reappear.

If I change the angle with Numpad 1, the mesh re-appears when not selected, but the lines that are supposed to overlap the image disappear "behind" it regardless of what angle I'm looking at. On the left of the third image you should be able to see black lines going over the bright blue. The black lines do not go over the bright blue on the right-hand mesh.

So the point I'm trying to make is: Why do meshes created after an "Empty (Image)" disappear behind it? What can be done to fix this unwanted behavior?

Your problem comes from the "X-Ray" object's display option.
I tried to reproduce what you described :

The object on the left has not the option checked :

The object on the right has it :


Mapping node doesn't work with normal map I want to scale the fabric bumps down and I've heard using the Mapping node is the way to go. However it's not doing anything at all in my case. Plugging it into the bump texture and it's all gone in the render for some reason.

Here's my .blend file.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10MT2yDEpkYqRXeAbCSkaTTMf9RlqoEV8

The problem is with what you've left off-screen: there is no input going into your mapping node.  Here's how I fixed it:

Mapping nodes can be used for all sorts of vectors, so they don't make any assumptions about what should go into them if you don't specify.  Texture nodes, on the other hand, try to take a best guess.

Additionally, notice that I specified a UV map for your tangent-space normal map node.

Finally, using mapping nodes with tiling normal maps in Blender is not ideal, because for whatever reason, no one has ever seen fit to provide a tangent input to the Normal Map node.  Appropriate tangents should go through the same mapping process as the UV coords reading the normal map.  For doing things like this, I would recommend using bump maps instead, which Blender handles more cleanly, or to create and edit an extra UV map instead of using a mapping node for the normal map.  http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ is a free tool that does a reasonable job of converting normal maps to height (displacement, bump) maps.


Middle verts snapping to other side of the model I have encountered problem with middle edge loop of my model.
Some vertices of that edge loop are snapping to other side along Y axis when I'm trying to move them.

Model was previously sculpted a bit, and I was using mirror and multi resolution modifiers.

I first time noticed this problem when I was weight painting chin of my human, the weight paint was appearing also on the neck of the character. I also checked previous versions of my project, and weight paint has nothing to do with this issue.

I'm stuck on this, please help ;(

On the image I selected whole edge loop and moved it along Y axis, ofc. there should be no gaps between vertices.

EDIT: After further checking it looks like whole mesh is weird, random parts are mirroring on X axis, even when I deleted all vertex groups, and have no active modifiers.

It looks like there were active X Mirror in edid mode, after dissabling it everything works just fine.

I never even imagined it could do weird stuff like that...


How can I add an object to a scene? I'm a beginner. I just want to add a generic sphere/cube or something to my scene but I can't find the exact menu for this? Literally googled "how to add an object to a scene in Blender" and couldn't find anything.

ShiftA Mesh > UV Sphere
3D View header Add > Mesh > UV Sphere
Toolshelf in the 3D View Create tab then the UV Sphere button.

And those are just the normal simple ways to add a sphere.

This question probably could be of some help, at least you'll have a cube...


2.8: How to add a button to the toolbar? What is the proper way to add a button to the toolbar just to be visible in object-mode?

I try to port an old addon to Blender 2.8 and I managed to add a button to the toolbar, but the button is visible in all modes and not just in object-mode.
This is how I add the button:

def add_button(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    butt = layout.operator("object.match_transform", text="Bla")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MatchTransformsOperator)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_tools_active.append(add_button)

Full code is here: Addon on Github

Campbell added some stuff to the API and had I been using the latest build I would have had access to a new code template:

# This example adds an object mode tool to the toolbar.
# This is just the circle-select and lasso tools tool.
import bpy
from bpy.utils.toolsystem import ToolDef
from bpy.types import WorkSpaceTool

class MyTool(WorkSpaceTool):
    bl_space_type='VIEW_3D'
    bl_context_mode='OBJECT'

    # The prefix of the idname should be your add-on name.
    bl_idname = "my_template.my_circle_select"
    bl_label = "My Circle Select"
    bl_description = (
        "This is a tooltip\n"
        "with multiple lines"
    )
    bl_icon = "ops.generic.select_circle"
    bl_widget = None
    bl_keymap = (
        ("view3d.select_circle", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS'},
         {"properties": [("wait_for_input", False)]}),
        ("view3d.select_circle", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "ctrl": True},
         {"properties": [("mode", 'SUB'), ("wait_for_input", False)]}),
    )

    def draw_settings(context, layout, tool):
        props = tool.operator_properties("view3d.select_circle")
        layout.prop(props, "mode")
        layout.prop(props, "radius")

class MyOtherTool(WorkSpaceTool):
    bl_space_type='VIEW_3D'
    bl_context_mode='OBJECT'

    bl_idname = "my_template.my_other_select"
    bl_label = "My Lasso Tool Select"
    bl_description = (
        "This is a tooltip\n"
        "with multiple lines"
    )
    bl_icon = "ops.generic.select_lasso"
    bl_widget = None
    bl_keymap = (
        ("view3d.select_lasso", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS'}, None),
        ("view3d.select_lasso", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "ctrl": True},
         {"properties": [("mode", 'SUB')]}),
    )

    def draw_settings(context, layout, tool):
        props = tool.operator_properties("view3d.select_lasso")
        layout.prop(props, "mode")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_tool(MyTool, after={"builtin.scale_cage"}, separator=True, group=True)
    bpy.utils.register_tool(MyOtherTool, after={MyTool.bl_idname})

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_tool(MyTool)
    bpy.utils.unregister_tool(MyOtherTool)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Blender 2.80 Show Seams, Sharp Edges etc. on 3d viewport I couldn't find where I could toggle on/off to show all sharp edges, UV seams, seams, creases on the model. Using Blender 2.8 Beta. Also, can I see normals on the individual edges, faces or vertex with adjustable sizes like it was in 2.79? I'm still trying to adapt 2.80 so go easy on me.

Thank you for your help.

You will find them all in the Overlays drop down menu :


Snow fall on grass: Cause emitted particle to stick to hair particle system, ideally unconverted I have a plane with a snow emitter system, and two cubes. The cubes are set as collision objects with lots of stickiness.

One of the two cubes is bare, the other has a hair system. The hairs are rendered from one simple blade of grass, which I also set as a collision object... rightly or wrongly.

The rendered scene has falling snow landing on both cubes more or less as expected... but I would like the snow to stick to hairs/grass blades on the second cube. Instead, it seems to fall onto the cube surface, where it is hidden by the blades.

Can this be done to an unconverted hair system?

Unfortunately, the short answer is "no, hair systems only interact with colliders, not other particle systems."

The slightly longer answer is that you might be able to make it LOOK like the particles are interacting with the hair if you set up a collision object that's within the hair. The particles could land on this invisible collision surface. Model the surface of your collision object to have some high-frequency bumps and you might be able to convince your viewer that the particles are landing in the hair.


Issue with faces after merged loops and move operation I forgot to turn off auto merge and therefore few edges of the two loops (transparent faces on the screenshot) merged into one. I dissolved the loop and added a new one. The grid was restored. But after i initiate move operation the faces are still not moving properly. Tried deleting vertices, edges, faces, still not working. Tried merging vertices by distance. Not a flip normals issue. What can i possibly do to fix it?

Fixed by deleting transparent faces and extruding them one by one from the faces which are going by the selected loop.


Blender Textures to Unity I doubt anyone will be able to help me as I have a feeling that the way I'm doing things might not be the most common way, it's just a solution that I found to my problem but I'll go ahead and describe my issue.

I have a scene that has a lot of objects, however many of them are copies. I'm trying to export everything in my scene to Unity so I figured that I first need to create a texture atlas to reduce the draw call by only having 1 material.

What I did was make a copy of each unique object and dragged it aside. Once I had one of each I joined all of these objects that I dragged away from my scene. I created a new UV map, unwrapped everything and then baked all of my textures on a new image. I then deleted all the materials and only kept the new UV, created a new material and used my atlas texture as the texture image. So far so good.

I then grouped up all my duplicates from my scene using ctrl+g so it's easier to select them. I then went to my joined objects and separated each by selection. Then I selected the group of duplicates from my scene and the object that I just separated which was now using the atlas and I linked my materials and uv map with the others that were the same. I did the same for every single object in my scene so that all of them were now using an atlas texture. All the objects in my scene basically copied the UV map and the material from the objects that were dragged aside and joined to create the atlas map.

Once I did all of this, I then took all of the objects from my scene and pasted them into a brand new blender document. I joined them and then I moved forward to import the object into Unity. In blender it only shows me as having 1 UV, 1 Material and 1 texture for all of these joined objects. In unity however the object comes with around 250 separate materials, one for each object that I joined. How can I remove all of these materials and have unity only use my 1 material with the texture atlas?

Thanks!

I'm not quite sure if this will work but it's worth a shot...
In Unity, delete all the materials except the one you want to use with the texture atlas. Make sure the texture for that material is actually your texture atlas. You will then notice that the mesh render's on most of the objects in Unity will look like the following:

All you should have to do is drag the same material that your texture atlas is on, onto that slot. Make sure to do that with all of your objects selected so you can do that all at once.


Is there a command port in Blender? Is there a command port in Blender?
In Maya or Max you can use a server that runs in the background of the application and evaluates a command if it receives any, It does not freeze the application but just stays there and waits for something to do.

Is there something like this in Blender?
regards.

Ok, so there's apparently no command port in Blender. I needed one, so I've created an addon that implements this functionality.
It can be found on github:

Sources
Release

I hope, that someone else will find it useful, or worthy of improving, I'm open for ideas


How to export a 3D model of just a particular frame? I created an animated cloth stimulation, so I need the object from a particular frame to be exported as a 3D model.

Go to the frame you want and apply your modifiers. Including your cloth modifier. If you have Interface: Modifier Tools Add-on enabled you can press Apply All. If not then you can press the little down arrow and Apply. Or select a modifier and press Ctrl+a. Remember to start from the top.

Now your cloth is frozen and can be used as any 3D-object and exported from File and Export.


How can a body transition between soft and rigid during animation? I would like to animate an object so that it transitions from being rigid to soft and back to rigid again. How can I achieve this?

As LukeD's comment suggested, you can animate the soft body stiffness.

I you want to key the rigid part yourself, use the soft body goal and animate its stiffness value.

Resulting in a transition between manually keyed animation and soft body simulation.

You can also animate the push and pull for the Soft Body Edges. Here, I animated them from low values (0.2, 0.4) to 0.999.

As you can see, in them second example, the object's origin stays motionless as it has no animation.


Muscular system in blender I would like to know if there is a tool or an addon in Blender that can help me to create a muscular system, i.e. a way to move the mesh (like the contraction of biceps).

I was watching this video but I'm not sure how well it works.

Any advice or should i use shape keys?

Do you need muscle jiggle? Thats the real question.

If yes you have to use softbody simulation. The Muscle Tools plugin is imho not very helpful, because it treats the muscles one by one and not like a whole muscular system. Here is how I would setup that:

How do you assign multiple shrinkwrap modifiers to rig muscles?.

If you don't need muscle jiggle than the simulation and shrinkwrap is just overcomplication and you can use bones and shapekeys to do everything. In that regard you can also use stretch maps and lattices for skin sliding.


Object not showing up in final render when using compositor Raw Blender newbie here, trying to make a lightning bolt effect above a plane. I followed the tutorial here to make a glowing effect on a jagged bezier curve, which looks pretty good. However, when I do my final render, the plane at the bottom of the layer does not get rendered.

The material of the plane has a pass index of 0, so the compositing effects you see are obviously not applied to that plane. Clearly I am misunderstanding the compositor because I thought that wiring the Image from the first node into the Alpha over node would combine the two images, but the final render only shows the lightning bolt without the ground, as shown below.

Can someone suggest to me how I can get the ground to render along with the lightning bolt? I am happy to provide additional information if needed, but I think the screenshot below is pretty comprehensive and there isn't much more to the project.

An Add node was needed to bing the rest of the objects into the scene:


Trying to add physics to leather strap on thors hammer I am attempting to add realistic physics to the leather strap on Thor's hammer. Photos for reference:

The strap is a bezier curve, with a soft body, and i am trying to constrain it to the bottom handle of the hammer. And as you can see i made a hole in the handle so i could actually fit the strap through, in case that helped with my physics. I tried using a point constraint and was messing around with some other physics tools, that i saw online, but i have not been able to achieve the goal i want, which is the strap to realistically hang from the handle. And more specifically, have one small section of the strap locked into place under that little handle object, and the other parts of the strap be able to stretch and fall. I want to be able to create an animation of the hammer swinging with the strap stretching, and other stuff like that.

If pictures aren't loading correctly try this google drive link click here (there's also a gif of what i want the hammer to be able to do with the strap -which is swing the hammer)

Also, researching online for this, the closest thing i could find to what i wanted is in this video if you care to take a look. click here or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Fy9DlFwsM

I can't explain how to get the soft-body physics to work, because I myself still don't entire understand soft-body physics.

However, I can give an alternate way that I know works.

-Instead of using a curve, create a mesh that is just a single edge-loop, no thickness.

-Add cloth physics to it.

-Select the vertices of the area that is inside the hammer handle (going a couple vertices outside the volume of the handle mesh will help avoid collision glitches as well as add to the stiff look), and add them to a vertex group.

-Under the cloth physics, toggle on "Pinning", and select the vertex group you just made.

-In the modifiers tab, you'll see a cloth physics modifier.  After this modifier (that is, below it), add a solidify modifier; increase the thickness as appropriate.

-Add collision physics to the hammer mesh.

-Parent the strap mesh to the hammer mesh.

-I found that cranking up the "Bending" parameter under the cloth physics goes a long way in emulating the stiff, cord-like physics of the real strap in the movies.


Unable to export textures with .obj files I have created a model and added textures to it using Cycles rendering engine. When I export to .obj file the textures are not saved with the object. I tried given copy in the path while exporting the textures are getting copied to the directory but I am unable to get the output. Also .obj, .mtl and all textures are stored in the same directory without spaces in their names. Am I doing something wrong?

Make sure the import and export properties are like below:

For importing make sure Image Search is checked:

For exporting make sure Write Materials is checked:


Why can't I pose my armature after setting a keyframe? I'm trying to use the Dope Sheet to animate a model I made, but after setting one keyframe (LocRot using the i key shortcut) any attempt to move any bone afterwards results in the bone being moved back to the position in the that one keyframe.

Make sure you are editing the bone and adding the keyframes in Pose Mode.

Go to the starting frame.
Make the Location/Rotation change you want on the bone
Press the i key and select Loc/Rot

This establishes your starting position and rotation.

Go to the end frame.
Make the Location/Rotation change on the bone.
Press the i key and select Loc/Rot.

This establishes your end position and rotation

Your animation should play as expected.


Get list from Animation Nodes using console Is it possible to get the outputs of a node from the Blender console?
For example, I can acces to this expression from Animation Nodes in the Blender console:
bpy.data.node_groups['NodeTree'].nodes["Expression.001"]

But I do not find a method to get the list from the console in order to be used in a custom addon.

You can try using Data Interface node to export data outside AN.


Emit each particle while scaling one after another How to emit each particle object, so that, say, each instance is scale = 0 when born, and scale = 1 when died? I remember we can do this in 2.49, but things seems being changed in 2.5+, in which the same action is being played simultaneously on all instances, instead of one after another.

Add a Texture under the Particle System:

Set it to gradient(Blend), set the mapping to Particle and influence Size:

This is what you get:

The rest is just setting the gradient and default particle size so when they die their size is 1. If they die at random then no, I think this cannot be done without some custom scripted particle generator with frame change handlers.


Light from smoke simulator doesn't travel outside domain Light emitted from the smoke simulator behaves normally inside of the domain but wont go outside it. Is there any way I can fix this or is it a bug?
Picture 1 is with light from fire and 2nd is with a point light.

I had the same problem. But after playing with the "Sampling"-settings of Cycle-renderer, I have by accident found the solution. Make sure that the number of "Diffuse" bounces is set to a minimum of 1. If it is 0, the light can´t pass through the domain.


graphics behind a PNG shows through After importing a few PNG files to Blender files successfully, I ran into a problem recently.  The PNG file I imported appeared "see through".  Please see attachments.  As you can see in the rendering the back wall and fake shadows behind the PNG file of the bench all appear in front of the bench.  I Also attached the texture settings for the bench PNG.  I don't have this problem in my other Blender files.  Does anyone know what might have caused this undesirable see through effect?  Thank you!

If you do not wish for the wood to be transparent, I suggest removing the Transparent BSDF, and perhaps changing the blend mode to Opaque;


Why does cloth simulation not work on a NURBS sphere which has been converted to a mesh? I have created two spheres:

A UV sphere with 48 segments and 24 rings
A NURBS sphere, which I converted to a mesh using Object -> Apply -> Visual Geometry to Mesh

I then enabled cloth simulation, with the default options, to both meshes.  I placed a plane beneath them with collision enabled.

When I play the animation, only the UV sphere animates.  In fact, the converted NURBS sphere doesn't even fall, as shown in the image below.  Why is the cloth animation not working?

To clarify, although the spheres clearly have different geometry, it doesn't appear that the NURBS sphere has anything preventing it from deforming:

In addition, I can force some very strange behaviour if I place a cube with collision enabled intersecting the spheres.  The UV sphere simply pops up above the cube, while the converted NURBS sphere goes INSANE and explodes!

I would be very grateful to anyone who could explain this behaviour and how I can use a converted NURBS object with a cloth simulation.

Found the problem:

Select the converted nurbs object, press Tab to go in edit mode, press A to select all elements. Now press Alt+M and select By Distance.

This will remove all the unnecessary vertices, that essentially made the sphere a patchwork become one closed object with no split faces.

The reason Cloth did not work is that it needs a structure, the nurbs sphere was though only patches of separate faces.


Exporting Textures for .obj file for Element 3D I'm new to blender.  I just modeled this shotgun shell and I want to use it for video purposes.  When I save it as an .obj file it comes with a .mtl file that Element 3D in After Effects doesn't recognize.  So when I upload it into Element 3D, the model is there but doesn't have any texture or color.  I "smart UV Unwrapped" each of the 4 parts of the shell.  Is there any way to get an image file of the entire shell that I can upload in Element 3D to make the shell look the way it does in the render view of Blender?

You need to bake your textures in order to use it inside Element 3D as diffuse, Normal and so.
Here is one tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut-KYKbnj8A&t=434s

Good Luck
pixldgblog.com


objects that can be modeled using only object mode This is my first time on blender stack exchange but i do have experience using blender. Im actually teaching a class regarding how to use blender but am out of ideas on objects people can make using only object mode. I've made a student of mine make a chair,(pretty obvious) a table, an ice-cream and a simple pencil but he is still not very comfortable in object mode. Any ideas?

Since this question is very unlike Blender.SE I am going to use a tool from other sites. Note, that this answer assumes, that the students have a basic interest and intrinsic motivation.
Frame Challenge
I think there are two dangerous assumptions in your question.

Students should only move on from object mode, when are comfortable using it.
You (the teacher) have to provide the content.

1. Show them a limited, but varying range of tools.
Moving solids around is too tedious to practice, untill you are a master of moving solids around.
Even for the very first lesson, I would include.

Materials: Just a single color, no nodes, no specular.
Edit Mode: Just the basic options in edit mode: GRS. They are the same as in object mode, but allow me to modify my starting blocks. Shearing a cube in object mode is complicated but very simple in edit mode.

Only teach the most basic interaction with an aspect. Students who wish to continue without fancy materials won't waste their time. Students are into complex materials will figure it out on their own or can request a 1 on 1. Students who want more faces in edit mode will be motivated to do their own research.
2. Let the students provide the content.
You, as the teacher, can set the task. It can simply be "modeling". It can also have a theme, like summer, space, vegetables ...
Anyone, who is willing to invest himself, can provide content. The students themselves will have to figure out, what they are able to model and what they want to include in their scene. Dictating their every move will only create an army of robots. Provide help with the tools but let them create their own content.
There are numerous games/activities to get going on ideas of what you want to create, but that is not in the scope of this answer.
Back to the question.

Anything
Using only solids, you can create anything. Hollow objects seems hard, but who knows what crazy solutions a student could come up with. Give them an example and set some constraints (time, content), but let individuals figure out their individual interests by themselves.
The following scene was create by only duplicating solids. I didn't even use snapping, I just aligned the view carefully. (Setting them up in a scene with an HDRI could be nice though.)


How to remove an Dissolved Edges without removing the Vertices? Шs it possible to adjust the removal of Dissolve Edges in the following way?

Before the operation open up the tools panel of the 3D View.TAfter the operation, uncheck Dissolve Verts.

Alternatively, remove Only Edges and Faces X, then fill in the missing faces.


Principled Shader - blue subsurface color for thin parts I am traying to render a character in blender. I am using Principled BSDF.
As a subsurface emthod I am using Random walk, since it gives more realistic results. Whole face is fine except eyelids. They become blue. I guess it is due to thin geometry. Any Ideas How to solve the problem?

--Edited--

Here is shader graph:

As Base color I use orangish colored texture. SubsurfaceFactor is a gray scale map. I used original Subsurface Radius values (1.0, 0.2, 0.1) multiplied by black color to steer the radius easily.

I get this thin geometry using boolean modifier. I subtracted eye shape from teh face shape to prevent flesh appearing in cornea.

Another problem are those strange speckles in shaded area? Does anybody know what cause them? I had same problem when I worked with Arnold Render, so probably something's wrong with my setup.

My 2 cents tweak to avoid blue patch on thin surface:

I adjusted the distance of the ambiance occlusion to be small enough to be near to zero on thin surfaces.
I disabled "only local" to prevent collisions with external objects to also add blue color around the collision surface.

Here is how my ao values look like:

As a result, from this:

... to no more makeup:


how can i connect two armature bones at the root? I can extrude a bone from the root of another - however in pose mode they come apart. How and can I connect two armature bones at the root?

I believe you are asking how to have 2 Armature bones with the SAME root---

OBJECT MODE>SHIFT+A - Add Armature

EDIT MODE> RMB Desired Root> E (to Extrude)

RESELECT THAT ROOT and Extrude Again.


How can I achieve this type of spherical unwrapping? How can I unwrap a sphere like this?

I can get about 1/3rds the way there by going to front view > selecting all faces > UV > "Project from View" But it's not at all optimized like the image above shows.
Here is a blend of the sphere with the UV mapping that I am trying to recreate here:

The idea is to deform a sphere and report its UVs on another sphere.
Use an icosphere with some subdivision (say 6).
In edit mode, change its tri to quads: select all and AltJ (this matters for the UV tranfer operation later).
Back in object mode, copy this sphere.
Enter edit mode, in front view, select the four faces at the center. Turn proportional editing on, scale and enlarge the proportional editing so that its around all the vertices.
You should have something like this:

Once done, in front view, edit mode, select all and unwrap U then "project from view (bounds)".
Back to object mode, select the original, shift select the scaled sphere and make links CtrlL and choose "transfer UV map".

And, voilà:

Other side:

Scaled UVs:


Drawing Using Grease Pencil Hotkeys I've just begun experimenting with the Grease pencil function. I find it a bit inconvenient that if there are default hotkeys defined, I can't find them. I'd like to be able to press a key or two, and be able to draw, press a different key combination, and be able to erase what I've drawn, and still a different key combinations, and be able to draw in polyline mode.  Does anyone have any key assignments for the grease pencil that they'd care to share with the me and the community?

I'd also like to be able to redefine the cursor for the Grease pencil's erase mode. As it is now, the erase cursor looks almost exactly like the circle select tool cursor: a white circle with a black dot. If we nominated a different color for the erase cursor in grease pencil, what color should we propose?

Hold D and press  LMB to draw
Hold D and press  RMB to erase
Hold ⎈ CtrlD and press  LMB to draw a line
Hold ⎈ CtrlD and press  RMB to draw a poly line

The shortcuts are in the tooltips:

Also note that the Circle select and Grease pencil erase circles are already subtly different:

Circle select Grease pencil


Boolean creates a hollow object I am trying to carve out some wear lines on a bullet, from where the barrel of a gun would cut into the metal. I am using a boolean modifier on the bullet, set to difference.

It cuts into the object ok, with the striations / wear lines in the right place, but the bullet is now hollow inside. Is there a better method to achieve something like this?

EDIT: Hollow effect appears when boolean object is close to flat end of bullet.

Ok, it turned out to be an issue with the original object being non-manifold on the example I posted.

When I replaced it with a simple torus (which was manifold) the error occurred again because there was accidentally an edge split modifier as well. When I moved boolean above the edge split, in the modifier panel, the hollow look disappeared.


How to change the default views of quad view in blender 2.8? I have the same question as How to change the default views of quad view? but for Blender 2.8 where you can not press N to display the View Properties.
I would like to have a 3ds max view and change the viewports accordingly.

Go to the 3D View header menu, under View > Area > Toggle Quad View.
Once in quad view, in the sidebar area under the View tab a new panel will appear with the Quad View options.


Why does blender render a single image instead of the whole video? I am trying to render an animation, and every time I go to render, it only renders one frame and stops. Please help.  I am stuck until I can fix this.

Thanks

Here are a few things to check:

The animation button in the render panel (or CtrlF12) is used for animation. The render button on the left (with a camera icon) will only render one frame.
Frame step. The default value is 1, meaning that it will render all of the frames in the specified range. Higher values will make the render/playbak skip frames. In any case it shouldn't be too high (it's too high in this screenshot, for example)
The Start and End frame determine the range of frames to be animated/rendered.

By the looks of your comments, these probably aren't your issue. However we might as well have them in an answer, since they're things that in general affect your symptoms.


Cycles Cuda out of memory on final render but not on preview I am trying to render my scene (F12) and after two minutes I get the error shown below.

However, when I render the preview, it seems to have no problem.

How can I fix this problem?

Using Blender 2.78c + Win10  Render Settings

Let me know if any more information is needed. I'm still trying to get the hang of blender

The Blender file and normal map

The difference and reason why it renders in previw and not in render is this setting:

In render the surface gets divided a lot more, so the geometry takes a lot of VRAM. Your scene takes 4.2 GB of it in render.

Also many other modifiers have separate settings for viewport/render, there may be objects hidden from preview etc.

Try to lower the quality till it fits in memory, or render on CPU or borrow/buy better GPU.


How do I set up a driver that will be effected by an object location and also changes based on that location So I want to a driver that will animate a shape key as another object moves along the y axis. But at a certain point, lets say past 6 units, I want the shape key to decrease instead.
How could I do this?

You can use the following formula:
max( 0, 1 - abs(y - 6) / 6)

max is used to stay above 0
abs(y - 6) is centered around 6, between 0 and 6 for y between 0 and 12
abs(y - 6) / 6, between 0 and 1


how to move cursor between viewports while extruding I'm following the "04 Nose Blocking" tutorial movie under "Learning Character Modeling" at cloud.blender.org. (particularly at time marker -2:11)

In this episode, the light-speed fast tutor manages to extrude the nose ridge in two different directions (x,y) in the same extrusion move.

It seems like the tutor is hopping with the cursor, dragging the extrusion, between two vies, front and right.

How is that done?
(I'm not referring to the 3Dcursor, just the little "+", controlling the actual dragging motion, connected to my mouse directly.)

Thanks for your reply! Well, it seems like I was fooled by the hidden efficiency of Blender: When I finish an extrude (left click), the new edge is still marked, so just scooting over to another viewport and pressing G will just shuffle that new edge around in another direction, like the extrude continued there. I totally missed out that the newly created edge is as movable as any other selected part. (Old Solid CAD modeller here, hard to get used to this...)


python - How to get armature from bone? In my python addon, I'm able to get the user's selected posebone and for reasons I need the armature it belongs to. How would I achieve this?

Python console.

Bit of "educated guesswork" going on very little from question. I'll try and cover all bases here

Using python console, C = bpy.context

The armature object has context, in pose mode

>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Armature']

>>> C.mode
'POSE'

The active pose bone

>>> pb = C.active_pose_bone
>>> pb
bpy.data.objects['Armature'].pose.bones["Bone"]

The pose bone belongs to the armature object which has context. Alternatively the id_data pointer tells us which ID object to which an object belongs.

>>> pb.id_data
bpy.data.objects['Armature']

The armature associated with this object.

>>> pb.id_data.data
bpy.data.armatures['Armature']

It would be really handy if in future you posted some pertinent code.


How to put this orange thing in the same place with selection? I can't solve the problem about having selection and this "orange stuff" in the same place. How to put this orange little thing in the same place with selection?

That little orange thing is the Object Origin of your object. It's 0,0,0 for the local coordinate system in which all verts of the object are kept.

It's the pivot point of the invisible shoe box in which your mesh lies.

When you move verts while being inside Edit Mode, the Object Origin stays where it is and like in this example ends up far away from the mesh.

In the tools to the left, you have the 'Set Origin' button. There you can select one of three choices. Move your mesh to where the OO is, Move the OO to the middle of the verts or place the OO where the 3D-Cursor currently is.

The real problem that you have here is that you probably dove into using Blender without learning the fundamental basics. What an Object Origin is belongs in that category. That will bite you a lot more often if you don't remedy it.


How to make wind only affect one object I am currently having some trouble with Blender right now (cycles). I have created a plane with a cloth simulation and a wind to move the plane.

I wanted to add this with the rest of my project I am working on, but when I add the wind and plane to my rainy scene, it completely changes the rain.

I created the rain with a particle simulator, and it is animated. I want to have the wind only affect the plane, but not the rain. Can anyone help?

Overview:

As far as I can see, your rain is made by using Particle System, so you will need to turn off Wind under Field Weights for it or for any other object you don't want to be affected by this Force Field.


What Are the Differences between Smoke Collision Types? What are the technical differences between Rigid, Static, and Animated smoke collision types?

In the Documentation, it says that:

  Smoke can collide with mesh objects, using the 'Collision' option in
  smoke. Currently only static collision objects are supported.

However, the other collision types are obviously doing something. If they are all simply acting the same, why is there currently an option to use the other types, and what will the differences be once the other types are implemented?

In reply to dukejib's answer,

Animated

I scaled the domain, so the smoke cannot go around the animated brick on the Y axis to make the effects of the brick passing through more obvious:

Here is the same test baked with different collision types:

Animated:

Rigid:

Static:

All are identical as far as I can tell.

Rigid

The same seems to be true with the rigid body test:

Rigid:

Animated:

Static:

Input from a developer or someone who can look at the code to see if these collision types really are the same would be nice. ;)

This is my theory:

"Static" means a non-animated, non-moving object

"Rigid" means a non-animated, (possibly) moving object

"Animated" means an animated (shape keys, armatures, etc.), (possibly) moving object.

Tests won't resolve the issue, since, as the original question points out, they're currently all the same.

Here's my theory: I've heard talk about using volumetrics in the game engine.  When that happens, the interactions between static, rigid, and animated objects is going to be essential - it would be a waste to calculate everything if you weren't having the smoke interact with animated objects, for instance.  My theory is that they are currently "the same" because it does not matter outside of the game engine - it doesn't have to be specified, and resources are not delegated real-time as they are in the game engine.  But in the game engine, you DO need to label an object as static, rigid, or animated - and that goes for smoke as well.  Essentially, the technical difference between all of the above would be the same for any other object in the game engine - a necessary setting that tells physics how to interact with it to optimize resources.


Image texture to SSS radius? I'd like to use an image texture to fully control my SSS radius in a Principled BSDF. However, given that the SSS radius input seems to want a vector output, I'm not entirely sure how to go about this.

Advice on solving this mystery would be welcome.

It's a vector because you can control the amount of scattering for R, G, and B separately if you wish.  It's a bit weird because there is also a "Subsurface Color", but if you set Subsurface color to white, you can see the effect of changing the Subsurface Radius vector:

if you don't want different behavior per RGB color, just pass the color of your image in for that vector.  Assuming it's a grayscale image the RGB values will be the same.

Note that it's not really a radius per se; you can't set it to ".5 inches" for example. It's more of a relative amount of scattering per color, and multiplied by the Subsurface value.


Change the number of bones in Limit Weights, in 2.7+ I'm trying to limit the number of bone-weights per vertex to 2 or 3, and there is an operator in Blender in the weight-paint mode (Tool pane) called "Limit Total". But there is no way to change the default number of 4 weights per vertex in the UI... that I can find at least. Is this a bug or omission in 2.7 or am I just UI-blind?

How to restrict vertex weights to no more than N number of Bones?

I can do it through the python console as the underlying operator has the arg "Limit=4" as default and can be changed, but it is somewhat inconvenient..

It is in the UI (you need UI glasses ) in the operator properties panel:


Weird lighting and how many tris for games I'm new to blender, I am looking to create a game using unreal 4.

That being said, how many tris are too much? currently working on a character's boots and am riding at over 2000 for just one of them...

Also, after working on the shape for a while the lighting is acting weird on just one part, as shown in the pictures.

Why? and how can I fix?

Thanks.

Generally you want to keep the rule to making a really high poly mesh and then baking the normals of the hi resolution mesh on a low poly version of it. So you get the illusion of a really high poly looking model in game. That's what all the next gen games are doing. If anything , it's defintely not the foot of a character you want to spend your polygons on ... any artist must know it's the face and the eyes of a character that would require the most details. Cos that's where your audience will focus on.

As for the feet of your character , it's not the shader looking strange but rather you need to improve the model, or rather improve on your observation of real life objects. You can use GLSL shader to improve the viewport's feedback while you sculpt. I will add a few images below.

You can observe here that I have a high poly model on the right. And a low poly one on the left. After sculpting I bake those information out onto the low poly version to get this ...

From here on out , I will leave it to you to run through google for tutorials
using keywords in your search eg. Blender Baking Normals and Blender High Density Mesh Sculpting and Blender Dynamic Topology Sculpting.


I need help with breaking a object Hey guys can someone tell me how to make a  pillar for example to fall apart into squares, like if someone hit it with a hammer?

Use the Cell Fracture add-on, it's the most common way to break stuff in Blender.

Once you've enabled it, click your object, press the spacebar and search "Cell Fracture".

It may change your object into something like this, depending on the settings you use for the fracturing.(if you can't see your fractured object, look at the next layer)

The fun part begins: select all the fractures and turn them all into Rigid Bodies, and check the "Animated". (make sure all of the fractures have the "Animated" checked, or else the whole thing will fall apart without collision)

Once you've set up your hammer or anything that breaks your object, make sure that is a Rigid Body too, with the "Animated" box checked.

Animate your colliding object through your breaking object, then you animate the "Animate" checkbox. If you don't know how to do that, just hover your mouse over the "Animated" checkbox and click I. Then go the the keyframe where your colliding object is just about to collide with your breaking object, then click I again. Go to the next keyframe, uncheck the "Animated" box and press I again. Now it works!

Do the same thing with your breaking object, but make sure it is well timed, because your breaking object might get destroyed before the impact. Now have fun and amuse yourself with your destroying things!


Rescaling/transform affects 2 objects instead of just the one selected? Whenever I try to create a new object and scale/transform it in object mode, it automatically selects another object and scales that object too without me selecting that object.
I think this has something to do with the origin of the object that is automatically selected given that it has the same origin as the new object created.
Note: The object that is automatically selected is not highlighted in the scene section and I cannot deselect it.
Any idea how I can fix this problem? Thanks!

Sounds like you added you new object in Edit mode. Press tab to toggle between edit mode and object mode.

If in fact you have one object, then in edit press P then choose loose parts. That will split the object in to multiple pieces.


How can I prevent blender from exporting fbx with-90 rotation on the x axis to unity? When I create something in blender and than I export it to unity as an fbx, it is rotated -90 degrees on the x axis to keep it correct rotation but can I export it with (0,0,0) rotation by default ? So it will be correctly rotated and its rotation would be (0,0,0).

If you don't want to use scripts, here is another workflow:

Select every object that will be exported, but no child-objects of these, even if they will be exported too
Rotate them by -90 degrees in the x-axis
Apply the rotation of every object that will be exported (the child-objects included)
Select the objects from (1) again and rotate them back by 90 degrees in the x-axis

Make sure that the pivot point for each rotation is the same (e.g. individual origins), so that the objects will end up in their original position and make sure that you apply the rotation of every object in one action, or else the rotation of the child-objects changes again.


Check if blender was compiled with openmp Is it possible to check if Blender was compiled with OpenMP? How? The installed package is

2.70+git201404250132.3b75d6c-0irie1~trusty1

In the Info Editor go to Help and choose System Info. Open the internal text editor and select the created file: system-info.txt. Under build flags look for -fopenmp.

Note that the build flags depend on your system. For gcc -fopenmp is needed to compile with openmp support.


Artefacts after rendering Hey guys im back with another artefactproblem, it seems like this forum loves this topic (0 replys to my last question regaring artefacts)

But to the end of this year i hope that a good soul helps me.
So lets start

Like you can see below, the rendering creates areas on my skin which are colored darker than the rest. My mesh is not the best, but i could be much worse so i cant figure out what causes these problem. Below you can see the rendered image. The mesh in viewport and leave you my .blend file.

So i hope you can help a new user like me .)

Best regards, Marc!

[.blend file is compressed and hair is removed]

The head is using Material.006 for the skin except for those areas coloured dark.
The dark areas (faces) have material.021 assigned to them!

Just a note to add:
Your mesh is using flat shading on all the faces (this is probably why you are needing 61.000+ vertices just for one ear).

I would suggest you set all faces to smooth shading: in Edit mode select all then open the Faces menu with Ctrl F and choose the Shade Smooth option.


How do I make the operator parameters panel appear in the sequence editor instead of the 3d view? I have an operator I wrote which adds letterboxing to VSE strips: letterbox.py

It has some parameters that I would like to expose to the user, but the operator parameters panel only appears in the tool shelf of the 3D view, which is not usually in use when doing VSE work.

How do I get blender to show these operator parameters somewhere that would be accessible to someone using a traditional VSE window layout?

When adjusting options is support, pressing F6 will bring up the operator options in most blender windows.

Another option may be to setup a panel in the properties sidebar that shows your operator options.


Call a function when new node link is created Is there any way to trigger a function call when a node link is created with another node? The called function should be able to access both the input and output nodes of the link created.

It would be helpful if possible in the Materials node tree and not the Compositor node tree.

If you are writing your own nodes:
Yes! You can add an update-function wich can handle input-tests.
Your update-function will be called on every change of the node, so on linking/unlinking it will be called. Here is how:

class MyNode(bpy.types.Node):
    bl_idname='MyNode'
    bl_label ='MyNode'
    # your update function must only take self
    def update(self):
        # your code here
        for skt in self.inputs:
            if skt.links:
                print("Input socket {} is linked".format(skt.name))

If you are using existent nodes:
No, probably not. You simply can not overwrite the nodes own update-functions.
They seem to be like a read-only-property returning a function to you.
Setting them wont work, no matter what.


How do I make an object emit from different points, and animate the emission location? I have made these objects in 3D. I would like to bounce random balls of light around inside them so that they collide between surfaces like they are inside a pinball machine.  I would like them to emit light which glows and flickers from within at random points across the vertices if possible.

Create a Particle System and use either the Dynamic Paint or the Point Density in Cycles. Both can create exacly what you want with some additional Material tweaking.


How to improve baking quality in cycles render engine? I'm trying to bake a texture with the size of 256*256 px but I get an awful result, so I increased the baking size into 1024*1024 px and the output was much better than before. The problem is that I need the texture to be 256*256 px that looks as good as a 1K texture resolution, because I'm going to use it in a mobile game, so large images will not work in such games. So is there a way to enhance the baking without increasing the pixels count?

Have you tried resizing the 1k image down to 256 in a image editor?

You not gonna get a very sharp image with such a low image resolution, I would try to manually unwrap the the object and give areas that need more detail more UV space on the image.
You can also try adding adding UV's on top of each other if they share a identical texture on the object, so instead of 2 separate UV's there's just 2 UV's on top of each other sharing the same image. :)


Armature Won't Parent to Mesh I am currently trying to add armature to a mesh that I took from the web to repose the body out of a t-pose and into a pose. Every try I've had at clearing the parent and then parenting with automatic weights doesn't seem to actually move the body while the bones correctly move. Any help as to what I'm missing is appreciated.

I assume the normals are correct and there is no hole in the mesh since its from the web.
Delete the vertex groups on the mesh and try scaling it up, the automatic weighting works better when the faces are more spread out.


How to add shortcut for 'Only Render'? How can I add a shortcut for the 'Only Render' checkbox in the Display section of the Properties pane?
I use the function a lot to get a better view on things and would save time if there was a shortcut for it.

In ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU> User preferences > Input, navigate to 3D view > 3D view (Global), then scroll to the bottom of 3D view > (Global) and click add new.

Put wm.context_toggle as the operator.
This is an operator which toggles a property given by a datapath parameter.

Put space_data.show_only_render as the datapath parameter (you can put stuff there even if it appears grayed out). You can get the datapath for any checkbox by right clicking on it and selecting Copy Data Path. The datapath can then be pasted with ⎈ CtrlV.

Assign a key combination which doesn't conflict with an existing shortcut (e.g. ⇧ ShiftQ)

Now pressing ⇧ ShiftQ (or whatever you assigned as the shortcut) in the 3D view will toggle show only render.


How can I create a shortcut to activate / deactivate multiple checkboxes? I would like to create a shortcut to activate/deactivate (Occlude, Cull and Normal) checkboxes at the same in Texture Paint mode with a single key.
Is it possible? or is scripting required for something like that?

Thanks!

Here's the script to do it. It currently toggles Backface Culling, MatCap, and Ambient Occlusion. I don't think there's a Normal toggle in object mode. did you mean in Edit Mode, toggling Face/Vertex Normals?

I've set up a key command to use SHIFT+SPACE but you can change that if you want.

import bpy

def main(context):

    area = bpy.context.area

    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        bpy.context.space_data.show_backface_culling = not bpy.context.space_data.show_backface_culling
        bpy.context.space_data.use_matcap = not bpy.context.space_data.use_matcap
        bpy.context.space_data.fx_settings.use_ssao = not bpy.context.space_data.fx_settings.use_ssao

class opToggleCheckboxes(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.toggle_checkboxes"
    bl_label = "Toggle Checkboxes"

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

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

addon_keymaps = []

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

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.active.keymaps['3D View']
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new(opToggleCheckboxes.bl_idname, 'SPACE', 'PRESS', shift=True)
    addon_keymaps.append(km)

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

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    for km in addon_keymaps:
        wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.remove(km)
    # clear the list
    del addon_keymaps[:]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()