Get outside wireframe I am a begginer and have to make something like that:

With plane geometry I can easily make, but with curves the triangulation gets in the way...

How to make a wireframe only for external edges, anyone can help??
If I just delete the undesirable faces my external ones gets all bored.

I can get a mesh with only the edges if it helps, but I need to be able to assing materials to edges.

English ins't my language, sorry!

EDIT 1 ----

With @Martin Z I get this:

And that is great! But I need to close this gaps, any ideia?

EDIT 2 ----

With @Martin Z and @Carlo i successfully make this geometry! Thanks guys!
But with another geometry with a hole in it I can't...
My mesh come like this (left) and a apply the decimate modifi (right):

If I delete the edeges in blue (the left blue ones, with shouldn't exist), I end with holes in my mesh (blue right):

Any way to get the holes out? If I make one by one it could get much time, I have 62 geometry like this.

Thanks a lot!

You can use Wireframe or Skin modifiers(note that you can adjust the radius per vertex in the n panel while in edit mode for skin modifier or with ctrl+a).

With Wireframe modifier you'll have to keep an eye on your mesh edges. Use N-gons wisely in order to pass the operator just the edges you need. For the provided example, a solution could be something like:

As you see the trick is to not build a complete mesh, but just the faces that hold the right edges. You'll also be able to assign different materials to the edges with vertex paint without having to apply the modifier.

You can also select only edges you want, invert selection with ctrl+i, delete everything else, select all and delete only faces (x menu) and then you are left with edges only. Then from object mode you can convert them to curves(alt+c) and then you can add thickness to them:

If you wish once you are happy with them you may convert them back to polygons with the same shortcut alt+c.


Adaptive subdivision texture distortion I'm curious to know if the issue I'm experiencing in the included renders is the same as the issue described here.

My mesh is shown here:

Standard subdivision surface with texture here (what I expect to see):

When I change the subsurf modifier to "Adaptive", this happens (corners stretched):

It appears that the issue linked on the Blender dev site has been closed/archived.

My questions are:

Does this mean that textured models will need the double-subsurf approach described in the Blender ticket as a rule when adaptive subsurf is used?
Is my approach to "sharpening" the subsurfaced edges correct?  I followed this tutorial to implement the loop-cut-edge-slide technique and it's worked very well in the past.  Just wondering if there's an alternative approach with the introduction of the "adaptive" setting?

Adaptive doesn't work well so far with subdividing UVs so yes, likely one should apply usual Subsurf and then add another one with Adaptive turned on to bring amount of edges to the same quantity and avoid faces subdivision without UVs subdivision.

Although you can reduce the problem a bit (not all of it) by enabling Use Subsurf in the unwrap options while Subsurf modifier is present in modifier stack.

Then UV map will be changed accordingly to the level of subdivisions at the moment of unwrapping (you can unwrap with Subsurf at level 4 and then bring it back to 2, like is done in the example below):

First one from the left is original object with Wire turned on (with Subsurf modifier changing it).

Those 2 to the right are rendered copies - second from the left is its copy unwrapped with Use Subsurf, roundish defromations are almost only in the corners. Third one is usual unwrap without Use Subsurf with some strong deformations only except for the middle parts of faces.

If you aren't searching for some good looking subdivisions you can use Crease to make hard corners and avoid supporting loopcuts altogether (or crease supporting loopcuts thus leaving deformation between them and avoiding it in other areas). Working with UVs for Subsurf will become much easier.


Black pixels in render when using Cycles material I already tried adding more subivisions, tweaked the light bouncing parameters, etc, but I cannot get rid of the black pixels when using  Cycles material copied from a YouTube video.

Here is the source if someone wants to check it out:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1541106/spots.blend

Thanks!

I am not getting those spots when I render the scene.  Perhaps try rendering with the CPU instead of the GPU.

I rendered with the CPU.  My results:


Alternative Render engines can I use instead of Cycles for AMD Radeon GPUs? I am using Blender with the AMD 12 with Radeon R7. Blender renders using OpenCL but I would not call the performance fast.

I have only recently moved to this AMD 12 ideapad which I purchase on the understand that it was strong on graphics and it was my intention to use this laptop to work up scaled plans.

I have started to use blender to create the plans/models which is working well with the exception of the rendering process.

I understand that there are other rendering engines other than cycles that may work better with the AMD R7.

The trouble is that whilst various posts allude to this none so far have stated where they can be downloaded nor how to incorporate the render engine into blender.

If anyone has any ideas on this I would be very grateful if they would share.

Many Thanks.

I note that this has been marked as a duplicate. I am sure that it is I imagine that it is a common question. However the title of the question that this question is flagged as being a duplicate for is not something that I would have searched for as a newbie to blender. Hence this edit.

AMD GPUs have a long history of issues with blender cycles, unfortunately the support for those cards is not 100% due to issues with the drivers.

You can try other rendering engines like the ones listed on the Resources for Blender Some of them have addons that integrate the render engine directly to blender. Some of them you can use for free, others are commercial products.

External Render engines:

Luxrender  is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Supports Blender integration.
Yafaray is a free open-source raytracing engine which supports both biased an unbiased rendering methods. Supports Blender integration.
TheBounty is a free montecarlo raytracing engine. (fork of Yafaray)
Mitsuba is a research-oriented rendering system in the style of PBRT.
Appleseed is a modern, open source, physically-based renderer designed for production rendering.
Jot is a program that lets designers, artists and animators directly annotate 3D computer graphics models (and animation) for stylized (NPR) rendering [in real time].

A blender exporter and more up to date info can be found here.
Nox is a free stand-alone, physically-accurate state-of-an-art renderer. Windows only(open-source since 2014 but seems original authors abandoned).
Aqsis is a cross-platform 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard.
POV-ray is a high-quality, Free Software tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. Supports Blender integration.
PRMan Another cross platform integration of Pixar's RendermanProServer 20.0+ (Free for non-commercial use).
V-Ray for Blender An add-on that packages a .blend file and converts it into a format that V-Ray standalone knows how to render.
B-Maxwell
The B-Maxwell add-on is a basic exporter from Blender to Maxwell Render (Windows and Linux). "B-Maxwell add-on offers seamless integration with Maxwell Render and Blender"
Octane-Render Commercial plugin for blender available. GPU accelerated Unbiased rendering engine.


Create a Gradual Gradient with Gradient Texture Node On a texture painted character, I would like to have a gradual fade from light to dark.
But on trying all interpolation modes with the Gradient Texture Node, the gradient is still quite sharp.
How can one create a gradual gradient with the texture node?

I assume that you don't really want the emissions shader. At the moment the ColorRamp node doesn't really help the emission shader. The ColorRamp node only outputs black color everywhere because it has no input and the Fac is set to 0.645 where the color is black. Therefore the emission shader only outputs black.
I also assume that you don't want the Mapping to Displacement connection. A Displacement node should be connected to Displacement input of Material Output and it requires an image or some other kind of texture to work. Also it only works in Cycles and in Material Settings Surface Displacement should be set to Displacement or Displacement and Bump.
To add dark color to your image you could use a MixRGB node set to Multiply and connect it to your Gradient. To amplify the effect you could add a Math node set to Power. You could add an Invert node to have the shadow on the opposite side. The Mapping node seemed to work the best with default settings.


Firing missilein animation many times I have some objects (lamps, meshes) parented to an empty. I want to fire them from a specific location as a missile. (make a copy of them there.) In bge, this is pretty simple with the 'Add Object' actuator, but I want to do it in animation. Is there a clever way, using animation nodes and/or direct python, or should I manually keyframe the missile to appear in the right frame, depart, appear in the next firing frame... I have tried 'instancer node', but it added all the copies at the frame, when it was first executed, add didn't copy the parented objects, just the empty.

to instance a full hierarchy of objects the easiest way is to group them, add as a dupligroup on some layer and use this object as the AN instancer object -need to activate 'copy full object'-

you can animate the number of instances, so new objects appear on new frames, or you can have all there at the first frame and animate them scaling from zero...

to add more animation the easiest way would be generate it from AN, something simple and parametric, or have some cyclic animation in the objects... if you need to sync it to start time for each object it can be done also, but it's more complex

here's a test scene (AN 1.6) with some simple objects, made 100 instances of a dupligroup, then use a loop and a couple of delay nodes to first scale them, and then animate in random directions, the trick is to use instance index as seed and delay factor -the usual procedure with loops-

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16486113/Blender/archivos/temp/AN/AN%20cohetes.blend
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16486113/Blender/archivos/temp/AN/AN%20cohetes.png


How to render parts of the camera view and merge afterwards? I watched a video on youtube (I lost it) that shows rendering parts of the screen to combine them in a single image. I followed it to the point where I couldn't adjust the dimensions under the "set render border", but in the video he had dimensions and I have nothing.

I need it for 4K and 8K renders (without anti-aliasing), but my laptop can't handle it all at once and I don't have time for a 4 hour waiting so this feature will work perfectly.

I'm using version 2.76 so is it moved to another place or removed.
Maybe a bug?

Using python is probably the best way to split up the image into exact tiles, as mentioned by Campbell Barton:

  If you do some operation that requires precision (splitting the render into exact tiles for eg), you would be best to use Python for this anyway

At the moment you can try the Render Border Add-on. Although it's built to (re-)render an exact area of the image in order to save render time. For a single image you can animate 'Center X' and 'Center Y' properties to get the desired tiles:

To get 4 Tiles for instance:

Hit 'Reset the Render Border' to get the full frame
Divide 'R' and 'T' by 2 to get the first tile
Multiply 'Center X' by 3 to get the tile in the lower right corner
Then multiply 'Center Y' by 3 to get the upper right tile
Finally divide 'Center X' by 3 to get the tile in the upper left corner

Note: Unfortunately you cannot render this as animation, since Blender checks the size of the render border only once per render execution. So you'll need to render single frames and stitch it afterwards (by hand or using image tools such as ImageMagick):

Result

Also I'd highly recommend Brecht's instructions on how to render large image resolutions: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/16261/3710


Cloth is going through other Cloth I modeled a shirt and shorts and put them on my character. My character has a collision and they both have cloth simulations. The Shirt is slightly bigger than the pants so that it can rest on top of the pants. I pinned the top of the pants so that they wouldn't fall off but now whenever I play the cloth animation, the shirt goes through the pants and the pin. Do I have to add something to the cloth to make it so that one mesh doesn't go through another or is there something wrong with the pinning?

You have to add a collision to the pants as well, so the shirt knows, that it should collide with the pants and not go through. That should do the trick.
All the best Marco


Simple cycles texture node on a plane Setup

Here's what I tried:

Ctrl+n to create a new (empty) blend
Enter to confirm
Del to delete cube
Enter to confirm
Shift+a >> Mesh >> Plane to add a new plane
Right-click on the lamp
Del to delete the light
Enter to confirm
Select Cycles Render to use Cycles
Right-click on the plane
Open the Materials panel
Assign the existing material Material to the plane
Select Use Nodes on the material
Switch to the Compositor
Select the Texture node editor
Check Use Nodes
F12 to render

This produces:

Question

What steps are missing to render the checkerboard on the plane using Blender v2.74 (or greater)?

Notes

I tried to UV unwrap the plane as follows:

Numpad 7 to switch to top view
Tab to enter Edit mode
Switch to Edge select mode
Ctrl+e to Mark seam
u >> Unwrap to unwrap the plane
Tab to enter Object mode
F12 to render

No change.

I also added an emissive plane above the original plane. This brightened the original plane, as expected, but no checkerboard appeared:

The part you are missing is creating a material, assigning a shader to it and  using your texture as color.

This will create a node setup on for the material>

Adding a mapping node will allow you to control size and placement of the texture:


How can I make a non-handwriting text appearing like if someone writes it? I followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y59O7wunijo
 making a text with a Grease Pencil and then converting it to Bezier curve so I can control the text appearing by tweaking Bevel factor End parameter. However I need a printed text with fonts, I thought if I create a text and then convert it to Bezier Curve it would give me the same result, but it doesn`t work, nothing changes. Is there a way to achieve it?

This is how I did it (this may not be the best solution).

Bevel factor works with non-cyclic curves. So you need to do this one character at a time.

Create the text object of the character
convert to curve (alt + c)
uncheck cyclic (U) option in curve object data
Extrude the unconnected node to have a closing edge manually
increase depth to a non-zero value

Now you should be able to control the curve length with bevel factor.


Is it possible to set the framerate of an animated image texture? My project's frame rate is 24fps. I have an animated image texture that is a 64-frame image sequence. It needs to run at 18fps. Is there any way to do this? Here is how the texture is currently set up.

As far as I know you cannot set the framerate in the Node Editor differently for specific sequences (better answers welcome). If I understand the question correctly, you need your project to keep the 24 fps, right? If not, just set it to 18 fps if that's what you need for the image sequence.
If you instead want to play it slower than the project framerate, you could load the sequence into the Video Editor and add an Effect Strip > Speed Control to it.
Set the Speed Factor to 18/24 = 0.75 and stretch the sequence to a rounded 85 frames. Now render the 85 frames as a new image sequence so you can use it in your 24 fps project and it will be about 3.5 seconds long like it would have been at 18 fps. Unfortunately this results cross-fading images that are put inbetween the existing.
This is just a workaround in lack of a better solution. Of course you wouldn't have to re-render if you would only be working in the Video Editor combining multiple image sequences with different speeds - in this case you just keep them adjusted by the Speed Control Effect Strip.


Using Python to Copy Rotation of Pose Bones Description Of What I Am Doing

I am building a rig that uses both IK and FK controls. I want this rig to have a script which will set the rotations of my FK control bones to match the pose of the IK bones (similar to rigify).

My method is to do the following:

Name the IK and FK bones similarly
Use bpy to collect the FK bones I desire and find their corresponding IK counterparts
Set the pose matrices of the FK bones to their corresponding IK bones

Here is the code I use:

# ... code will define variables for armature and id for IK-chain

# move all FK bones to the current IK orientation
for bone in armature.bones:
    if "MCH-finger-fk." + IK_id in bone.name:
        ik_name = bone.name[:11] + "ik" + bone.name[13:]
        ik_bone = armature.bones[ik_name]
        bone.matrix = ik_bone.matrix

Results...

This almost works! The first bone in the FK sequence matches the corresponding IK bone perfectly. The remaining bones do not, but if I run it again, the next bone in the sequence will match! That is, the second time I run the script, the second bone in the FK chain will match its corresponding IK bone.

The pictures below will hopefully explain what I mean.

Before Script Execution

Script Executed Once

Script Executed Twice

Alas, I cannot have more than two links, due to my low reputation. Imagine moving the first separated bone to where it looks like it should go (the remaining bones move relative) in the previous image.

Observation

I assume this bug in my script has something to do with the fact that only the second time I execute the script, the bone data takes the parent matrix into account (since the pose is now in place).

My Question

Is there a nicer way to achieve what I am trying? In essence, I want to copy the world rotations of each bone. I tried looking for the source code of the COPY_ROTATION constraint, but I was unsuccessful.

See this section of the api documentation. Setting PoseBone.matrix probably does the calculations required for PoseBone.matrix_basis but does not update the value of the underlying DNA world matrix property, which is wierd. Here is a script which uses the scene.update method:

import bpy

class BoneMatrixCopier:
    def __init__(self, obj, scene):
        self.obj = obj
        self.scene = scene
        self.pose_bones = obj.pose.bones

    def update(self):
        self.obj.update_tag({'OBJECT'})
        self.scene.update()

    def get_ik_bone_name(self, name):
        return name.replace("Bone", "BoneIK")

    def copy_matrix(self, bone):
        self.update()
        bone.matrix = self.pose_bones[
            self.get_ik_bone_name(bone.name)
            ].matrix

    def copy_matrices(self, root_bone_name):
        root_bone = self.pose_bones[root_bone_name]

        self.copy_matrix(root_bone)
        for bone in root_bone.children_recursive:
            self.copy_matrix(bone)

bmc = BoneMatrixCopier(bpy.data.objects['Armature'], bpy.context.scene)
bmc.copy_matrices('Bone')


Which external renderer should I use for architectural visualization? I use Blender mainly for creating architectural renders. I love Cycles, it's nodes, quality, realism, everything about it, except for it's speed and noise.

An indoor night-time scene with a lot of small light-sources seemed almost impossible, somehow I've managed to do it but I had to pull all kinds of node-tricks to get a relative low-noise render and still lasted 5 hours per image (1800x1200) on a mid-high range GPU to get acceptable results.

Is there an alternative render engine for arch-viz? It doesn't have to be completely free, but has to work on GPU, should be well-integrated into Blender, node-based engines are preferred. Cycles would be perfect without the noise.

Thanks for any input, and sorry for asking but I have no time to try all the existing external renderers, since there are so many of them now.

Cheers!

You would choose a raytracer that has features that are required for architecture projects.

An example is YafaRay. YafaRay supports features like Global Illumination and Background Illumination which are specifically useful for architecture visualization.

Cycles has Global Illumination (since a few years ago) and I am not sure that it has as good Background Illumination as YafaRay.

YafaRay is distributed with an open license and you can use for free. It is designed to be used with Blender.


Is Freestyle Line Priority broken? I can't seem to get the freestyle line priority in the material properties tab to work. The color is always the same as the base color set in the view layer properties.
Here is the intended way for it to work: https://freestyleintegration.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/line-color-priority/

I'm stupid. I forgot to add a material modifier.


Blender - Alpha is Luminance equivalent Coming from Maya and Arnold there is a very simple selection box in the file read node (image texture equivalent) called Alpha is Luminance which allows to use the luminosity in the RGB values of a file to drive the alpha channel. Is there an equivalent function in Blender 2.8 and Cycles?

Cycles performs this conversion automatically when a color channel (yellow socket) is a connected to a float/scalar channel (grey socket). As a result, there is no need to have an option on image textures to replace the alpha channel with the merged color channels. You can simply plug the color output directly into the float channel and it will use the luminosity.


How can I make radial text sweep? I added an object - plane, rectangle.
Went to edit mode and deleted 3 edges, left only one.
Exit edit mode and added screw modifier to this edge.
This way I can animate drawing of circle with changing angle of screw modifier.

Since I need that this animation be rectangle and not circle, I added cube, hidden and not rendered. This cube is object for Boolean Intersect modifier for Edge.

With some Shift+D, little materials here and there, etc. final product is this:

Is there any chance that I can add text on grey rectangle which would also radial sweep appear? I'm googling all day and cannot find a way (newbie :) ).
One important thing - project is in Eevee, not in Cycles.
Thanks in advance.

Using shaders (Eevee here but works for Cycles too).

Top part:
Presuming Z is facing the camera, we take X and Y as base for the calculation.
Artan2 gives the angle between -pi and pi for each X and Y position.
Bottom part:
Now from 2 values the current frame and the amount of frames, translate that in order to have a value between 0 and pi.
Then translate it between 0 and -pi (for the left part) and between pi and 0 for the right part.
Transparency:
We compare that to the effective X Y angle and if OK (one or other into the good interval), set alpha to 1 (no transparency).

Another way, that can be considered less maths and/or more flexible is to use a gradient texture with radial mode:


How can I see the center of rotation of the 3D view? Suppose I moved the center of the 3D view using Shift + middle mouse drag. Now the center of rotation is no longer in the center of the 3D view. Where is the center of rotation exactly? How can I see it?

There may be another way but once you move the view if you press CTRL+ALT+Numpad 0 that will center a camera to the current view. The cameras position should now be the center of the rotation as well and you can get that info in the Item tab.


When I move the character's body, the movement is like an alien When I click on a character's body and move it, the movement is like an alien.
When I click the bones and move it, the movement is normal.
Why thus happen? give me an advice please.

You can understand If you watch my video. (https://www.youtube.com/embed/3sXA8kPZ970)

this model is rigged. control by using pose mode and moving the bones, they control the limbs.
some bones may point the elbows, hopefully, IK is set up, where you move a bone and the limb bends instead of you having to rotate
just control with the little gray knobs for that foot
each one corresponds to a moveable limb and/or jointthank Aoradon for https://docs.blender.org/manual/ko/dev/rigging/index.html


Background image is blurry I'm using a low resolution texture (128x64) from an old game as a background image to help me model but it gets blurry (or aliased I guess) which ruins everything.

I heard that one might need to increase the size of texture but if I do that then texture will get messed up and I want to keep all pixels of it in the same place without "JPGing" it.

Is it absolutely impossible to get sharp background image? Zooming doesn't help either. My version is 2.79

As workaround, you could get away with Import Image as Plane Addon which creates a simple plane that you can use as reference. It actually also creates a texture shader for which you can use interpolation as closest in the shader texture node.

If you still want to be able to position it in front and change the alpha not as convenient as the background image but, you can add transparent and a mix shader. And disable selection mode to let you select object located behind it.


How to render nodes + background image? I finished my work and I want to render everything. The object and the background.
I use the nodes to cast a shadow on the background image. I did this thanks to a tutorial on youtube. But the guy doesn't show how to save or how to render this final image made with the nodes.

Here are my nodes with the final image in the background and the result I'd like to get in my render:

Here is the result I get when I press the Render button:

As you can see, it only rendered my renderlayer, which contains the mesh plane and the strange rock and that's not what I want...

Connect the last node in your tree of nodes to both Compositor node and Viewer node, because the node which is connected to either Compositor or Viewer will be one acessible for preview in result.

Basically, Viewer allows you only to preview the result which you're working on, while Compositor will make this result to be actually rendered.

At the moment you have your original image connected to Compositor node which is why you get that not expected result. Also you have your composited image connected to Viewer node, and that's why you can preview eveything nicely.

Read more on difference between these nodes in wiki or in this related question: What is the difference between Viewer and a Compositor node.


Strange bone rotation after importing from unity I just exported an animation from Unity (which was part of the standard assets). Strangely, when imported into Blender, the rig was quite messed up (see picture).
This makes it quite difficult to skin the model again, and thus to do any animation.
Do you have any idea about why this happened and how could I possibly solve it?

Initially I was thinking that this may be a problem of rotation, but I am not really sure. And even if that's the case, how could I rotate each bone around each local axes when they are grouped together? (that is, without having to select and rotate each single bone one by one).

Just Restating the Answer to this question:

You might want to check the import settings for the armature. You can find it in the bottom left of the import screen. You could try to enable "Ignore Leaf Bones" and "Automatic Bone Orientation". – Ron Deijkers Sep 21

Please mark this as the best answer for future searches! (All credit to Ron Deijkers BTW).


Eevee shadow problem Recently I downloaded blender 2.8 for the new real-time render engine, but then I found out that the shadow in the eevee is really unexpected. Just like shown above, the quality of the shadow is bad and the movement of the shadow is also strange when I move the object.
The lamp is a sunlight, and the sphere and the plane are just preset meshes.
Could you tell me what adjustment do I need to create a normal shadow?

Look at that ! i had the exact same issue, and i found you can play with the softness of your light here...


how to adjust rigidbody settings for lots of objects I got a scene width lots of small objects (around 2000 icospheres).
I need to be able adjust rigid body settings for all those 2000 icospheres
Any idea on how to do that (perhaps by the use of python, but how ?)

Well it was easier then i thought it would be.
I created one example object and named it LikeMe, there i set all rigid body options. Then since all target objects have similair names (alls starting width Icosphere added a * at the end and did a select pattern, finalized width a copy of rigid body settings

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects["LikeMe"]
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Icosphere*", case_sensitive=True)
bpy.ops.rigidbody.object_settings_copy()


Can you bake materials (not textures) in Blender? I have a question about materials in Blender. Can you bake them? I know you can bake textures but can you bake materials you get after combining multiple nodes in Blender?

Do I need to create a texture from material?

I've tried to bake materials but it doesn't work how texture baking works.

I'm using glass material and I want it to behave like a glass when I bake it but it does not.

This is the node setup without the image texture node with bake texture in it.

This is the result I get which is not good for me because I need it to behave like the material in the Blender (like a foggy glass)

I've been looking for answers for 2 days now and everybody is talking about baking textures from image textures which I know how to do but nobody is talking about node materials being baked.

If anybody knows how to fix this or if it is possible at all can you please share. If it is not possible does anyone knows how they do the glass in games? What material or texture they use in a game engine?

You cannot bake the "node tree" itself to use it directly in the shader node editor of another program like Unity, Unreal engine or Substance painter.

But you can bake the resulting maps (albedo, roughness, metallic, alpha value...) and then apply them in another software as if they were regular textures.

See : for texture baking
How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake


Cutting a mesh in half I have a mesh which I have imported from an OBJ file. I would like to apply Material A to the section of the mesh which is on one side of a given plane, and apply Material B to the section of the mesh which is on the other side of that plane. A potential plane is indicated here as a blue line. Note that it does not necessarily intersect the centre.

To do this, I need to split the any faces which intersect this plane, and select all faces on one side of the plane so that I can apply a material to them. How can I do this in the current versions of Blender?

I've tried using the K knife tool in Z cut-through mode, but the cuts haven't been reliable. Even when they were, after the cut was finished I  couldn't figure out how to select only the faces on one side of the cut. (The details were too fine to be reliably selected with any tools I know, such as the C circle select tool.) I tried using the B selection tool, but it only selected the faces on the near-side of the mesh.

We used to have a procedure to cut a mesh using a plane in Blender 2.4, but it involved using mesh boolean tools which appear to have been replaced, and I can't figure out how to adapt it.

I would recommend using the bisect tool (new in Blender 2.69):

Enter edit mode (Tab), then press Space and type in Bisect, or select Bisect from the toolshelf (under Add).
Click and drag, to bisect the object.

Press F6 to bring up the options for the tool, and select clear inner, or clear outer depending on which half you don't want.

If you don't want to delete half, but just want to select it:

Instead of step 3, press H to hide the loop:

Hover over the half you want and press L to select linked vertices under the cursor:

Unhide everything (AltH), leaving you with one half of the object selected:


How to achieve translucent pomegranate material? Wanting to model a pomegranate kernel, I modelled two objects

The outer shell (red outer watery covering)
The seed (inner opaque whitish seed)

The seed

I want this to be opaque, but I don't want it's edge to have 100% opacity. I want it to blend with the outer shell more.

The outer shell

I played with IOR, transmission, alpha, subsurface scattering, roughness and specular.
I reached a point where I know what all these terms mean but I still am very indecisive to move forward. I feel there is something that I am doing wrong.

Desired result

Conclusion

I looked at various transparency node settings, tried using them but I am still not getting the fundamentals of nodes. How to use a particular node, how to decide which one to use over the other and how to cascade two or more nodes.

I am relatively new to CG, there are a lot of things that I am not aware of, nodes being one of them. Any sort of help or introduction to new concepts or link to articles/videos is welcomed.

Let's think like a photographer.

Proper lighting is essential - white background, strong backlight, fitting HDRi
Shader - Principled BSDF will do (let's keep it simple)
Use post-processing - adjusting midtone contrast, color-corrections

Outer Seed shader:

Roughness - pretty low, it needs to reflect environment and not
obstruct transmission
Clearcoat - just an artistic choice, as the outer seed has a thin glossy skin
Transmission - full 1
IOR - 1.6
Trans. rougness - 0,1 to distort the light a bit more

Notes:
When going for proper realism you'd use Volumetrics, Subsurface scattering and some textures for a more organic look.

But all things considered, proper lighting is everything here :).


Is there a name for a mesh has 4 vertices that is not flat Is this good to keep or should i avoid them?

For animation you should avoid such mesh, but if the mesh wouldn't be animated you could over look it. I don't know the name of such mesh for now but i will research on that.


God Rays through window pane: Cycles I'm creating a scene for a project and I wanted to go for the god ray effect achieved by the lights passing through the window. I added a mesh onto which volume scatter node was added, but still, even after fiddling with the volume scatter density, the desired effect couldn't be achieved. Also, the outline of the mesh on which the volume scatter node was applied is visible. For the environment, I used sky texture, and even after using a sun lamp, the results remain the same.
I use blender 2.90 and use the sun disk feature to light the environment. when setting the sun elevation to a specific degree, while rendering it automatically changes.
Heres a picture of the look that I'm going for (got it from blender guru tutorial)

and here's the render result of my project (ignore the noise)

Use a cuboid to surround the scene, and use a volume scatter node as volume. Nothing shoud be connected to the surface socket.
The default value of 1 for volume scatter is way too dense for practical use, so use a much smaller value.

Add a point light and make it very small (in this example is 0m) and very, very, very bright. The smaller the light, the more defined the shadows will be.

If you are using a glass material for the windows, you have to modify it so that it let's direct light go through it.

For more info on the glass shader read:
How to illuminate the dark areas behind glass in cycles
As for the noise... use a lot of samples.


Help needed with Facial Rigs I've looked all over the internet and I can't find any info on this, so I'm hoping I can get something here from you guys/gals.

I've been trying to do a good, functional, realistic facial rig, but I simply can't replicate what these people have done in these examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmgQfi6A0g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8xwec1Pj9k

Can someone please tell me on how I can manage to do something like that? I've tried doing it many times, but my characters facial expressions always end up looking super creepy for some reason. I just don't know what all of those bones are suppose to do or where to place them.

Can anyone explain it to me, or maybe you know of a guide/tutorial that does so?

I have compeletly run out of options here.

Here is my blend file: https://mega.nz/#!8BEFUKgQ!HJMxw4lTjZnVbbVguhnQnKhIOFazViRPuPz4X-kCUBo

I checked your file and the culprit is weight paint. The bones are fine for basics but for good control some constraints and extra control bones should be made.

It is hard to advise about weight paint. That is quite specific to every shape and desired deformations. It is something best learned through training or experience and observing already weighted meshes (for example from open Blender movies).

Instead I am going to give steps to rig a face with Rigify addon, which makes things easier:

Insert a new armature, delete the bone. From Armature properties add the pitchipoy.super_face face template.

Align the face template to the face mesh (scale it to size in edit-mode, not with armature scale). The bones should sit on the surface. Turn on X symmetry while editing so both sides are the same.
From pose or object modes generate the final rig from the template. You can delete the template armature, it has no purpose now:

Bind your mesh to the generated rig with automatic vertex weights. The rig has enough control bones so it should turn out fine. If there are some issues these can be fixed by refining the vertex weights further.
You should now have nice controls and a rig menu with layers in tool shelf.


How can I create a script that runs continuously but does not block the interface? I would like to create a script that runs constantly throughout the life of a Blender session.  The problem is that Blender's interface "blocks" while the script is running.  As a trivial example, if I run the code below:

while True:
    continue

Then Blender freezes up, and I have to use xkill to stop it.  How may I create a script that may be running constantly but does not stop Blender from functioning normally?

What you are looking for is to create a modal operator. From the Wiki:

  A modal operator defines a Operator.modal function which running,
  handling events until it returns {'FINISHED'} or {'CANCELLED'}. Grab,
  Rotate, Scale and Fly-Mode are examples of modal operators. They are
  especially useful for interactive tools, your operator can have its
  own state where keys toggle options as the operator runs.

There is a template for the Modal Operator accessible from the Blender Text Editor.


How do I connect the Vincent rig to Vincent? I am following the steps on the website https://cloud.blender.org and here is what it says.

Put your 3D cursor in the Origin of your scene. Choose File > Link and browse the character file
Go to the Collections and select CH-Vincent.high. Make sure "Instance Collections" is enabled. Press Enter.
The Collection should appear instanced in the Viewport. Select it.
Choose Object > Relations > Make Proxy...
In the list, select RIG-Vincent. If the model is too heavy, enable Simplify in the Render Settings.
Pose the proxy armature to your liking and enjoy!

I am stuck on step 4. Where do I find Object > Relations > Make Proxy...?

On the header menu. If you still can't find it, please show a screenshot of your 3D view.


What will speed up renders more effectively?- more cores or higher clock speed? I am contemplating between the AMD FX6300 and AMD FX4350, the former being 6-core@3.5GHz and the latter being 4-core@4.2GHz

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-FX-Series%20FX-4350.html

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-FX-Series%20FX-6300.html

From what I read about in the past, more cores give you "better" rendering because of the parallelism. Regarding GPU rendering, the thing you also have to consider is whether you want this to be scalable and if your scene has a large memory footprint. Running out of GPU VRAM will essentially leave you without a GPU. If you're building a renderfarm, cores are the way to go. Plus, you can set the render to leave one or two cores free for other applications to use, so you'd be left with 4 or 5 cores on the 6, versus 2 cores on the 4. I personally use a 6-core Phenom II OCed to 3.72 GHz, which does everything I need it to and I can run background applications without issue. I can set the tile size up and get a reasonable looking preview pretty quickly without having to wait for two tiles at a time. Then, when I need to do a final render, I just set it back up to 6 cores and let it sit overnight or while I'm out.

tl;dr - I would say go with the 6.


How can I bake a metallic map off my model in Cycles? I have a model with several materials that I used to render a scene in Cycles. I wish now to put that model on SketchFab, but I need to bake my textures into single files for it. I successfully baked Roughness, Diffuse and Normals, but there's no option to bake metallic. How can I get this done?

Plug the metallic input into the roughness input of the principled shader and then bake the roughness map (texture) of the texture plugged in.
I hope it will work...


Texture with transparency becomes black I made a png file in Photoshop that only has R/G/B/A channel like this:

Then I'm going to use this as my texture in Blender in shader editor:

The final result is like this all black, where the text should've been in the red area,because I only unwrapped the center face

Why is mesh all black, even the left corner dots that represents all the rest faces, are black, the area in the texture is transparent, did blender treat transparent area as Black? The Png image doesn't have Alpha channel, only R/G/B, can some one help me to understand。
Edit:This is my original image,with only R/G/B channel, no Alpha channel, you can check how it looks in Photoshop from above checkerboard screen shot, the background is transparent, though no Alpha channel, no 4Th channel, it 's transparent and I suppose the RGB for the transparent is NULL, I'm not sure if transparent pixel can be R:null,G:null,B:null, if you know what I mean, it is common to control by using Alpha channel, but Photoshop can save transparent as NO RGB VALUE

Let's start with the very basics.
What you call "transparent" is an Alpha Channel at work.
The image you are creating has tree color channels (RGB) and a separate Alpha channel, that is used as a Mask to determine how the image is combined with others.

This is what the Alpha Channel looks like:

The alpha channel is nothing magic, it is just black and white image where the opacity is set by the white element (a value of $1$) and "transparency" by the black (a value of $0$), any gray elements would be "semi-transparent".
In blender RGB information and Alpha channels are accessed separately, in other words, you must plug the Alpha channel to something to determine what gets the RGB information and what doesn't.
The most basic setup is like this.

The color of the shader is provided by a mix RGB node, that is using the RGB info from the texture (color) and the alpha channel separately, as factor for the mix with a yellow color.
The alpha channel is used to determine what parts of the texture get what color. What is black on the alpha channel will be yellow, what is white in the alpha channel will have the color (RGB) information of the image texture used.
Or you can use the alpha channel to mix different shaders:

UV mapping.
By default blender creates a UV map when you create a cube, so there is a UV map already present in all of the other faces.

The simplest way to deal with would be creating a new material and assign it to that face, but if you want to keep using a single material for the whole thing, you can edit the UV map so that all of the other faces' UV map out is of the picture, and make sure that the extrapolation for the texture used in the material is set to clip, that way anything out of the 0-1 UV space will be ignored.

If the image contains an alpha channel usually blender will pick it up, but in case it doesn't you can enable it manually.


When I Render my image, the result is a Black Screen I am trying to make a simple ink drop animation. The image looks great in Preview, but when I Render a second later the screen is just black. I can't figure out why this is happening.

Here's the project file!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0iOn3LRcf5-YzBGRzlDQjgwQkE?usp=sharing

Would love some help!

You have enabled nodes for rendering but there is no render layer connected to the composite node.

Add a in input>render_layer node and plug it to the composite node to get some output.


shrinkwrap doesn't go all around a Cylinder So I was trying to Shrinkwrap an Array to a Cylinder and it doesn't go all the way. It only wraps to half of the Cylinder. So I looked at how to fix it. I found that you need to kind of help the Shrinkwrap by at least making the thing you want to Shrinkwrap be closer to the surface of the thing you want the Shrinkwrap to stick so I added a SimpleDeform so the Array would form a circle around the Cylinder. But, unfornately, it still only wraps half of it. I tried to lessen the Array but it would just make the Shrinkwrapped part stretched and I want to keep the number of Array and maybe even increase or decrease it without destroying the Shrinkwrap.

Also, if there's a way I could keep the shape of the ring which the top part is slightly going forward that would be helpful.
UPDATE:
So I tried what @Robin Betts suggested and wasn't able to get the same result the Target Normal Project part. I did however got the same result for the Weight Paint part but have to redo my topology as I didn't know that it's important for that process

Two questions..

(top row) You're using the wrong projection method in your Shrinkwrap modifier for this case.You have 'Project', along Y of the object space of your array (which is the same as the Y of your original element). Better to use 'Target Normal Project' (along the normals of the target) or 'Closest Surface Point'.
(bottom row) How to get an outward tilt of the peaks? The Shrinkwrap can be modulated by Vertex Weight. Assign a vertex group to the mesh, and weight it with lower values at the peaks. They will be influenced less, if you aim the  Shrinkwrap at the group.


Yet another Grid question K. I'm stumped. I'm building game pieces like walls and doors, etc. I have Units set to Millimeters > Metric > Unit Scale = 0.1000. My game pieces are measured in increments of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, etc units.

What settings do I use for Grid display so that (as I understand it) grid lines are very 1m and sub-division lines are every 16m. No matter what I change the grid is still seems to be 10x10. Hope that makes sense.

To adjust these, you just need to go to the overlays tab,

and adjust the scale, and the subdivisions to your liking.

I hope this is helpful, happy blending!


making a ball roll with drivers I want to "rig" a ball, so that it looks like it's rolling on the ground as I move it around.

So far I've parented the ball to an empty and set up drivers for the X and Y rotation, so that the ball will rotate along the y axis if I move it on the x axis, (and vice versa for the x-axis rotation.)
Well now, the rotation is fine if the ball rolls only along either the X or Y axis. As soon as it goes diagonal, the ball will rotate incorrectly.

I've uploaded the .blend file with what I've set up so far...
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35956

I've tried messing around with the transform space settings (local space, world space etc.) and also tried to set up a third driver for the Z rotation but I couldn't get it to work, so at this point I can't think of any solution to this, but I hope you guys can help me out :)

Thanks!

The problem with combining Euler rotations from different axes is that the order of rotations is significant. For example, rotating along the y-axis then the x-axis is not equivalent to rotating along the x-axis then the y-axis.

One way monkey looks to the right the other it points down

Since the final rotation is dependent upon the order of individual rotations, we are unable to absolutely determine the rotation from the x and y coordinates. However, if we assume that rotation only occurs perpendicular to displacement, we can approximate the appearance of an object rolling by rotating it when the location changes.

For this approach, we store the object's previous position in order to calculate the difference in location. We create a rotation matrix with the magnitude for the angle and the normal as its axis. Then, we combine the rotation matrix and extract its Euler rotation. The script makes a modal operator which rolls the active object when it is called.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix, Vector

class RollOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "transform.roll"
    bl_label = "Roll active object"

    def execute(self, context):
        dx = self.dx / 100
        dy = self.dy / 100

        matrix = Matrix.Rotation((dx**2 + dy**2)**.5, 4, Vector((-dy, dx, 0)))
        matrix *= context.object.matrix_world
        context.object.rotation_euler = matrix.to_euler('XYZ')
        context.object.location.x += dx
        context.object.location.y += dy
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':  # Apply
            self.dx = event.mouse_x - event.mouse_prev_x
            self.dy = event.mouse_y - event.mouse_prev_y
            self.execute(context)
        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':  # Confirm
            return {'FINISHED'}
        elif event.type in ('RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'):  # Cancel
            context.object.location = self.location
            context.object.rotation_euler = self.rotation_euler
            return {'CANCELLED'}
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        rotation = context.object.rotation_euler
        location = context.object.location
        self.location = location[0], location[1], location[2]
        self.rotation_euler = rotation[0], rotation[1], rotation[2]
        self.dx = 0
        self.dy = 0
        self.execute(context)
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

bpy.utils.register_class(RollOperator)

After running the script, add a shortcut key to start it. This one used ShiftQ in the 3D View.

With the operator, the monkey rolls as it moves.


Rigify torso box not working I've generated my armature with Rigify and it's working brilliantly except the torso box that's only influencing one leg. I'm thinking there's some bones or good parenting missing, but the few parenting attempts I've done got me nowhere.

I see one dotted parenting line going into the side of the box, but I can't recreate this in edit mode it seems.

Any ideas?

Try this. In pose mode select "foot.ik" control bone as shown in my image, and then go to rig main properties menu which is above rig layers thing.

Turn FK/IK slider to the right. Do the same thing for other foot. It should work now.


BGE: How do I make a sensor of one object trigger an actuator of another object? For example, let's think about a scene where there are two objects: "Door", and "Button". "Door" has an animation which makes it transform and "open" itself. Now, is there a way to program "Button" in such a way that if it collides with a particular material (for example, the skin of the player), it triggers a "Collision" sensor, and a controller attached to the "Collision" sensor activates an actuator in the "Door" object that makes it play the animation?

I hope the situation mentioned above is clear. Thanks.

Add a collision sensor in the button. There are 2 options there:

collision with the material of the player and
collision with a property that you can add to a player.

Then add an action actuator to the door. Remember that you should add the animation actuator to the object that is gonna get animated.

At last, connect them by dragging the "noodle" from the end of the sensor of object 1 to the start of the actuator of object 2. Remember to have them both selected so you can see both their SCAs.

In case those 2 can't be connected add manually a controller "And" and drag the noodle from the sensor to the start of the controller, and then drag the noodle from the end of the "And: controller to the start of the actuator.


Object in the back, visible in the front In the 3D view I have a tree behind a house, but despite that the tree is behind the house and way back in the scene, it's just in front of the camera! How come it's like this? I have used a skin modifier to create the tree. Other objects looks like they should depending on their position.

Here is a picture. The leafs on the tree are OK and not visible, just the
tree trunk and branches.

The Problem is that the x-ray was checked

when the x-ray is disabled the object in back can't be seen like in the photo and when it is enabled it goes front off everything.

For example the back cube (orange) isn't visible clearly because x-ray isn't checked

But in this photo it is checked look :

this checkbox is used in many things like making/creating/assinging bones without it we could not see the bones:

This Checkbox Can be found here : (Properties panel --> Object --> Display)


Hide Emitter not working in particles I tried to uncheck the "Show Emitter" checkbox under the Render tab, but the emitter is still visible.

The steps you made should hide the emitter from the final render but I'm guessing you mean whilst you're working in the viewport.
In the Properties panel, with the emitter selected uncheck both viewport and render (as needed) under Instancing > Faces:
Properties Panel > Object Properties > Instancing > Faces > (show instancer) viewport + render


How to reveal type of material nodes in 2.8 I'm having a hard time trying to figure out, which types of nodes were used in the creation of a shader/material in the node editor. I did download a Blend file from the web and was curious to analyze the shaders and nodes, but when I open the Node Editor I can only see the custom names of most nodes, and not their "type", which I would need to reconstruct and explore.
For example: I got a , which outputs a Factor and has a Texture, Thickness and Indentation. But I cant really figure out, which node this actually is.
Any help would be much appreciated!

This seems to be a Node Group.
It is not a node by itself - rather a kind of a directory/folder.

It contains a node tree, with different inputs and outputs.
To enter or leave it press ⇥ Tab or the little top right arrow

Inside of a node group.

It is used to organize complex node trees, or sharing node trees across materials.
You can also rename your group, or the nodes inside of it - so it's easier to navigate.

Further reading:
Node Groups Page in Blender Manual


Read csv file (converted from excel) and set variables x,y,z etc as the cell values How to set cell values as x,y,z,l,m,n,p,q,r variables in python without using pandas (ignore second set of coordinates)

So x=5000, y=300, z=2700, l=0.2, m=-1, n=0.1, p=0, q=0, r=0

import csv

def read_csv(file_name='your_file.csv'): # use \\ instead of \ in filepath
    with open(file_name) as csv_file:
        file = csv.reader(csv_file)
        return [i for i in file]

csvFileArray = read_csv()
row = csvFileArray[2]  # first row
x, y, z, l, m, n, p, q, r = row[1], row[2], row[3], row[4], row[5], row[6], row[7], row[8], row[9]

x = float(x)
y = float(y)
z = float(z)
l = float(l)
m = float(m)
n = float(n)
p = float(p)
q = float(q)
r = float(r)

```


Blender object sensor doesn't exist When spawning an object into a game, I check its hit objects from my master python script, accessing the object spawned in.

For some reason, the "Collision" sensor does not exist in the object, although I can put any controller into the object and that is accessible.

Heavily simplified code to explain what's going on:

c = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
o = c.owner
s = o.scene

sph = s.objects["Sphere"]

col = sph.sensors["Collision"]
# doesn't work

a = sph.controllers["And"]
# works for some reason

col = a.sensors["Collision"]
# also doesn't work

The code worked a few days ago, but has mysteriously stopped working and I am at a loss as to what's going on. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

When looking at the object, it may have controllers, but the actuators and sensors both return an empty list.

Edit: I had disabled collision on the object, please do not make the same mistake as me.

So, apparently I need to add an answer to mark it as solved.

Basically, if your object doesn't have collision enabled in physics, it cannot use the collision sensor. Sounds pretty obvious, but it's easy to forget about it.


How can I rig mesh (from particle) on armature? I got some mesh by particle.

(particle > Render > Dupi Object > 'ctrl+shift+A')

And I make a Armature, and parent meshes on that.
But..

I want to attach each vertex (in mesh) on each bones.
(so I used 'Set Parent to - with Automatic Weights')

But They moved like they were one object.

I want to treat them like normal polygon mesh, but they still have particle properties I think.
And I can't remove that properties.......
(because I don't know what is that)

Please help me.
How can I attach them on armature with Automatic Weights
like normal polygon mesh?

I got the answer.
They have multi user data. So they have set as like one object.

Unlink short Key = U 'make single user > object and data'


Change multiple custom properties simultaneously When I ⌥ Alt LMB on a transformations property, I can change multiple the property for multiple object with once input action. The property turns blue for the duration of the operation.

Is there a way to make this work for custom properties?

I don't believe it's possible by selecting both of the object. For a simple reason, one of the object may not have the property.

If you want to change multiple property at once you can add a driver between the property of the two (or many) objects.


Model turns Brown instead of a Texture I'm following a tutorial on YouTube but my model (and many others') turn brown when rendering (cycles render) instead of a wood texture. Here's what it looks like:

Interestingly, the text does have the texture:

EDIT Starts now: Here's the shader nodes:

And here's the .blend file!

I think I found the problem: instead of the texture - the same colour as the rendered model in the 'Render Layers' node, how do I fix this? This also happened after I started added the animation.

It turns out the answer is quite simple. All I needed to do is just go to the modifiers tab, scroll down to the 'Explode' section (I used a 'Quick Explode' animation, don't even ask me why it caused such a problem) and uncheck 'Cut Edges'. Thanks for the support and ideas, though, as this wouldn't be here for people who would need it in the future without all of your support.

Source:


What is the best way to model the interior of a vehicle as accurate as possible and what source should I use? so I want to model a bus a bus in blender and I already know how to model the exterior with blueprints however with the interior I'm not sure where to start since it is so complex and I want to model things such as the dashboard, steering wheel, seats, door, engine etc. There is no blueprint available for interior modelling so therefore Iam wondering what is the solution to model the interior of a real life vehicle with accuracy. Also I don't have photographs because they may have distortion and change the way how the object looks.

here is what the bus looks like

The best way to model the inside accurately is to find a reference image of each individual part of that particular bus or any other bus. This way you will have a good reference that isn't warped in any way. You would then model that part and can use it for your bus. The advantage of modeling the part as a separate object means that you can then use that part in other scenes as well.

For example here is a steering wheel reference from a VW Bus:


How can i get a smooth rendered surface (without weird vertex lines) The problem is, i want to render a smooth surface smootly, i use shade smooth but somehow it looks weird, i just want to have a polished curved and smooth sureface without that weird shading caused by smooth shading,shading flat isn't the option since the object is a cylinder

here you can see the lines, (compare it to the image above):

topology shots

flat shading

it looks more closer like the output i want but i want to conserve the round surfaces to maintain the cilinder shape, but playing with flat hard surfaces at same time to give it a better shape since it's a torso

edit:

I've been playing with shading between faces, and i got a better output

but still having issue trying to shade smooth and flat at the same time, some surfaces like this, what i want to achieve is a polished and round surface at the same time, tried using F key, to create a whole new face, it didn't worked out for me

what i want to achieve in the picture above is something like this:

Subsurf + Bevel is the way! , Kudos to Bithur for helping


Why is it making the same material for two different objects? When I was working on something, I wanted one of the objects to be solid and the other to be material. But when I finished making the first thing solid when I tried making the other thing material but it turned the first thing into material too. I searched up and tried some answers, but it didn't work, please help me.

Select the first object, and in the material panel, click on the + button (surrounded by a pink frame in the picture) to create a first material (named Material.001) and change its diffuse color.

Select the second object, and in the material panel, press again the + button to create a second material (named Material.002) and change its diffuse color.

Each object should have a different color.


How to export an FBX file with textures? Hi I am currently exporting FBX animated files from Blender 2.8, with textures mapped onto the model. I need to be able to zip everything so that the file can be imported into Adobe Aero but a problem occurs where only the colour texture is applied, no roughness or normals are there. My question is am I missing something at the Blender stage? I use Principled BSDF to assign the textures but maybe that isn't correct in this instance?
Any help would be great.

The FBX format can't do that, you will need to export your textures manually then plug them when importing your model.
If you want to export your model with the textures assigned to the Principled BSDF then import them automatically use the .glb (lighter, recommended) or .glTF file format.


Where did the material node go in Blender 2.8? I recently started using Blender and there used to be a Material node if you go to "Add > Input" in the shading editor before 2.8

In Blender 2.8 I cant find it.

I am probably  be being dumb right now but I've looked for an answer everywhere and can't find one anywhere.

Anyone know the answer

In 2.8, nodes are the constituent parts of a material. Shaders, textures, color and all the other nodes make up a material. If you want to create a new material from the shader editor, click the "New" button at the bottom or choose from existing materials to edit.

Or you can click the material tab on the side and call up the material panel.


Why my geometry disappears when switching to sculpt mode? When I go into the sculpting tab the meshes are not visible. The only things I see is camera and light.

Layout tab:

Sculpting tab:

Q: How to get the cube back?

What is the version of blender in your case? I check on mine version - it is ok, no such bug, default cube is visible. I have 2.81a


What's the difference between Normal and True Normal? In the Cycles node editor, for materials, you can get some information about the object, which the material is being applied to, by using a Geometry node.

Among others, you can get the objects Normal and... it's True Normal. This suggests that the first is fake or not as accurate, which makes no sense. This leads me to my question - what is the technical difference between an object's Normal and it's True Normal?

The Blender Wiki states that

  Normal = Shading normal at the surface (includes smooth normals and
  bump mapping).

  True Normal = Geometry or flat normal of the surface.

The normal value takes into account your shading technique, while the true normal uses the actual face direction.


Smooth vertices as a group I have a model made by 2 different people and I am now trying to polish some details myself. I would like to somehow smooth/round all selected vertices as group so that the curve is as nice as the upper one. Is there a way to do it?

use proportional editting. press 'O' as in Oscar on the keyboard. a little box in the top middle of the screen will highlight. next to that is a dropdown for curve shape or lack there of.
edit: you want to run a remesh modifier. yeah that looks like a nightmare.


Translation and rotation axes not locked I'm designing a 2D rigid body physics orthographic animation in Blender Game. It's simply a cube falling on and bouncing off a surface (first picture). The camera (in orthographic mode) is pointed parallel to the Y-axis. To this purpose, I locked the Y translation, as well as the X and Z rotation of the falling cube. So if all works well, all you should ever see of that cube is its camera facing face. However, apparently, it doesn't respect those restrictions when it bounces up from the surface (as demonstrated by the second picture. It rotated around the z-axis, and translated along the Y-axis). What did I overlook?

PS: I deleted the file and pictures in my previous question as it was not my own work (though freeware). Didn't feel comfortable with it. This is my own work, so no problem.

Go to Blender Render. Under the "object" tab, you can also fix translation and rotation, but now it will show in the preview animation (see picture). If you press "P" in your screen, you will also see the effect, but then in Blender Game.


Is pooling vram with Nvidia NV-Link actually possible? I'm trying to find out if pooling VRAM between multiple cards is actually possible--I've received conflicting information.
In a recent chat with NVidia tech support about my Quadro RTX 5000, I was told there is no way for me to pool vram with multiple cards.
However the Blender 2.9 User Guide says this:

Distribute Memory Across Devices
Allocates resources across multiple GPUs rather than duplicating data,
effectively freeing up space for larger scenes. Note that in order for
this option to be available, the GPUs must be connected together with
a high bandwidth communication protocol. Currently only NVLink on
Nvidia GPUs is supported.

Specifically, I'd love to pool VRAM while using Optix GPU rendering with Cycles. I would consider purchasing another Quadro RTX if I know for sure that it works.
Does anyone have definitive information on this?

TLDR: it is possible; Blender team should know better, as well as tech people at Nvidia.
The ability to pool memory depends on the implementation of the software using it for Geforce cards, and I understood that it can be automatic (I understand managed by the driver) with profesionnal display cards ie., Quadro (generations before Ampere), and later RTX A6000. For the non display professional/enterprise cards (A100, in DGX Station A100, DGX A100), it happens with a multiway nvlink.
Cards however must be of the same generation, The NVlink is updated from generation to generation and is not backward/forward compatible.
Test with Turing generation Geforce
Memory pooling works with Turing generation Geforce cards (2080, 2080Ti, Titan RTX), in GNU/Linux and Windows 10.
reference: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NVLink-on-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-2080-Ti-in-Windows-10-1253/
Comments on cuda 11.2 and pooled memory: Stream-ordered memory allocator
One of the highlights of CUDA 11.2 is the new stream-ordered CUDA memory allocator. This feature enables applications to order memory allocation and deallocation with other work launched into a CUDA stream such as kernel launches and asynchronous copies. This improves application performance by taking advantage of stream-ordering semantics to reuse memory allocations, using and managing memory pools to avoid expensive calls into the OS. The new asynchronous memory allocation and free API actions allow you to manage memory use as part of your application’s CUDA workflow. For many applications, this reduces the need for custom memory management abstractions, and makes it easier to create high-performance custom memory management for applications that need it. Moreover, this feature makes it easier to share memory pools across entities within an application.
cudaMallocAsync(&ptr, size, stream); // Allocates physical memory
kernel<<<...,stream>>>(ptr);
cudaFreeAsync(ptr, stream);          // releases memory back into a pool
cudaMallocAsync(&ptr, size, stream); // Reuses previously freed pointer
kernel<<<...,stream>>>(ptr);
cudaFreeAsync(ptr, stream);          // releases memory back into a pool
....                                 // Executes other work in the stream

As shown in this example, CUDA 11.2 introduces new stream-ordered versions of cudaMalloc and cudaFree—called cudaMallocAsync and cudaFreeAsync—which take a stream as an additional argument. The first call to cudaMallocAsync in the example allocates memory from the OS, but the subsequent call to cudaFreeAsync does not free it back to the OS. Instead, the memory is stored in a pool maintained by the CUDA driver, which allows the second call to cudaMallocAsync to reuse the memory previously freed, if it is of sufficient size.
reference: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/enhancing-memory-allocation-with-new-cuda-11-2-features/


How can i enable composite node in python? though with the codes i have searched in google , it still doesn't solve the problem, i want to enable one specific composite node like this :

and this is the inactive state:

From inactive state to active state , there is only such script indicated in Google

scene = bpy.context.scene
compositing_node_tree = scene.node_tree
compositing_node_tree.nodes['os_composite'].select = True

But it just functions select node rather than enable node :

How can i enable this specific composite node in python?
Thanks if you have any ideas!

Set active node

Similarly to Set active image node with python

In the python console

C = bpy.context
D = bpy.data

>>> node = C.scene.node_tree.nodes['Composite']
>>> node.select = True
>>> C.scene.node_tree.nodes.active = node
>>>


Issue with subdivision surface I made a circle and then made a boolean cut into it with another circle. But when I apply the sub. surface, the outer circle is fine but the inner section changes into a weird quadrilateral. I want the cut to be in a shape of a circle. How do I solve this?

Remove the sub surface modifier
Delete the center edge on both sides
Select the big and small edge and press F to fill the edge. With the f2 addon just press F until it fill all the edge. Repeat on both sides
Then add the sub surface modifier
If you need smooth inner side add crease.


Is it possible to put an image on a liquid body? I'm trying to get a melting effect of an image by making a viscous liquid cube but I can't find any way to arrange a UV to the liquid. Is there a way around it?

You can use a UV project modifier. It can make an empty act as projector to beam an image onto an object.

This does the same thing as going into Edit Mode, looking at your object from above and choose Unwrap -> From View. However it does work with objects that don't even have/support a UV map.
EDIT: If you are not dead set on using a fluid animation, I would suggest Dynamic Paint waves. You can combine brushes that paint maps (as mask for your image) and a different brush to make waves. For further information I'd need a reference of what you are trying to achieve.
Also: You can try using a shrinkwrap modifier on a UV-Unwrapped plane that follows your fluid surface.


Switching visible objects via driver Let's say I have a armature bone with x position 0.

Let's also say I have three cubes, coloured red, blue, and green.

How can I make it so that:

When x is between 0 and 1, the only red cube is visible.
When x is between 1 and 2, the only blue cube is visible.
When x is between 2 and 3, the only green cube is visible.
etc.

To explain how I'll apply it:

I've imported a model from a video game, and the lip-sync system involves 10+ separate objects which I'd toggle on and off by using a single slider.

Below are three spheres with drivers indicated in the properties panel. Please notice the selected object named RenderMaster.  It is used in the drivers.

Below is a simple driver.  Please use copy driver, paste driver then modify for each object to which it is applied.  Not the most compact or elegant, and it will suffice for only 10 objects.  Please notice which sphere is selected so that the driver makes sense as you note the driver adjustments.  Please notice the numbers getting bigger in the Scripted Expression.  Modify and Improve to suit your tastes.

10 different Scripting Expressions.  These are intended for driver expressions in the image above one for each object.

Please test and verify

not((xloc <= 1) and (xloc > 0))

not((xloc <= 2) and (xloc > 1))

not((xloc <= 3) and (xloc > 2))

not((xloc <= 4) and (xloc > 3))

not((xloc <= 5) and (xloc > 4))

not((xloc <= 6) and (xloc > 5))

not((xloc <= 7) and (xloc > 6))

not((xloc <= 8) and (xloc > 7))

not((xloc <= 9) and (xloc > 8))

not((xloc <= 10) and (xloc > 9))


Unwanted bump on a mesh after Boolean and Subdivision Surface I did a hole in my mesh in Blender 2.82 with boolean modifier, and I made some changes about topology so that the subdivision surface modifier can work properly. I removed all the doubles, and I checked the normals, they are fine.

But the result isn't what I've expected. We can see a bump, right below the hole (in red on the image).

Does someone have any idea ? I don't have any problem when I do the same thing on a sphere. Thank You !

This is the kind of topology you need. It has ring-based loops of quads going around the hole.

It produces a rim with no bumps when you add your Subdivision Surface modifier.


How can I add an 'IK Solver' constraint? I'm just trying to do the beginners tutorial about creating a character and animation of it, it's the well known gingerbread man, but it is written for blender 2.4 and actual version is 2.73 and there are a lot of things which have changed. I have already created the model and just on the way to arrange the bones. I have weight-painted the arms and chest and now I'm in that part to get the feet working

Here is the actual tutorial page I'm working on:
 http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation/Lower_body_armature

In pose mode I should add an 'IK Solver' but I cannot find where to add such an constraint and even when I look into the different constraints I cannot find an 'IK Solver'. So this now is the point where I don't know how to go further on, because without this I cannot do entries into that panel and so I cannot go on with finishing the armature and testing it.

Anyone knows how this is to be handled using blender 2.73?
Any help would be appreciated.
BTW sorry for my English as I'm from Austria.
Thx in before for any advice.

What you're looking for is the Inverse Kinematics (IK) Constraint you find it in the properties while in Pose Mode.

You might also be interested in a more recent version of this tutorial: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Your_First_Animation

Constraints
IK


how complicated shapes uv mapping I made two objects. I cant make uv mapping well.
My objects have many faces. This is problem maybe.
I try to put wood texture to them.
It looks very bad.
I added my objects pictures in render, solid and edit mode.
How uv mapping can fix on my objects well?
or
How can I create those objects smart way?
note; I have used array modification for object 1.
both in cycles render
Thank you for help :)

Your objects are mostly flat, so the best solution seems to unwrap it with "Project from view" with viewport looking strait perpendicular to the surface. It will give you nice square map, which will allow you to use your reference directly. Maybe with some UV expanding and texture painting (with texture in stencil mode) on the most protruding parts.


No lights in scene, still lighting up I am making a house in Blender Cycles. In rendered mode, all shaders are somehow visible, even though I don't use any lamps. I do have an environment texture, however it shouldn't light up the inside of the house. Especially when there are no windows. Even if I set the background strength to 0, it still lights up the inside and outside of the house.

So now, if I add any lamps, I has nearly no impact on shadows, shaders, reflections etc.
What could be wrong with my scene?

Let me know if you have any questions on my settings that might help you find the problem.

File: https://www.mediafire.com/?cs3dl1xx56ih60a

These are the world settings:

For the Ambient occlusion I always use this node:

It usually works fine.

Objects may appear illuminated, if ...

they are illuminated by lamp objects
they are illuminated by mesh lights with emission shaders
they are emitting light completely or partially, if they have an emission shader
the wrongheaded use of an Add Shader in a material
they are illuminated by the world (background shader)
ambient occlusion is activated

The Ambient Occlusion is activated in your scene.
Uncheck Ambient Occlusion to disable it.
It is found under the World section of the Properties Panel.
Also make sure no light emitting objects are hidden by pressing AltH to unhide all objects.


Performance issues with new laptop I recently purchased a gaming laptop (Lenovo Ideapad Y700) with a quad-core 64-bit i5 6300HQ CPU (2.2-3.2 GHz, 6MB cache) with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU, 8GB 2133MHz DDR4 RAM, and a discrete nVidia Geforce GTX 680M GPU with 4GB DDR5 VRAM.

But whenever I start blender it's ridiculously sluggish... both UI responsiveness and rotating the camera in the viewport (even though it's just a non-shaded cube). I've tried starting Blender by right-clicking it and picking "Run with graphics processor > nVidia high performance graphics", I've tried going to "Preference > System" and changing it from CPU to CUDA (GTX 680M), I've tried changing the draw to full, overlap, overlap flip, triple buffer, etc... but all to no avail.

Has anyone here had similar problems? If so, how did you overcome it?

And does anyone have any suggestions as to what to try next? All my drivers are up to date.

Thank you in advance for any replies.

Turns out that the solution was to right-click the Blender shortcut and start the program with the integrated graphics (which still allows me to use the other GPU for CUDA).


Do I need to recompile blender when changing C++ Shaders for Cycles? I just needed to know the way of developing native cycles shaders (closures).
So, if I change, for example diffuse closure(another implementation of roughness), will I need to recompile Blender from source? Is that right?

This is correct, C++ shaders in Cycles require rebuilding Blender.

Note that OpenShadingLanguage is compiled using LLVM, so it should yield fairly good performance and doesn't require rebuilding Blender,


Animation Nodes - Offset object location I'm trying to Offset the location of grouped objects with a falloff object. I cannot use an instancer because in the final project all the objects are different.

Here is the basic setup : an empty which is the object falloff and 3 cubes (for testing purpose).

The goal is to have the cubes go up when the empty is moved near them.

Here is what I tried :

The issue is that all the 3 cubes are moving in the same time and I'd like them to move one by one, slightly after another.

The same setup works well with a text for example. Here an example with text at mid move of the object offset controler :

As you can see the Z value is different for each object.

Same position off the falloff controler but back with the 3 cubes :

It seems that when using functions of Animation nodes to generate objects, it sets the value "Initial transforms" which is then used to offset. But when I use my object this "Initial transforms" value are at zero, the same for all of 3 cubes and thus the offset is the same in the same time when the controller is moved...

I'm just a beginner with Animation Nodes so maybe I miss something obvious...

Ok I find the solution, you can update the "Initial Transforms" value. To do that:

Select the "Object ID key" node
Select the object that need to have the Initial Transforms update
In the Tool panel of the 3D view, go the the AN tab
Click on "From Current Transforms"

Repeat for each object and it works!


How to make clouds in cycles? I have a sci-fi scene with a floating platform and a camera that pans around the platform. I want to add clouds underneath. Since I am going to pan around the platform, I can't use an image texture for the clouds, However modeling a bunch of volumetrics clouds takes too long and after skimming a bunch of tutorials I couldn't find a material that worked right with my scene. any suggestions?

To model the clouds faster, use the add-on CloudGen that comes packaged with blender. It does the material for you and there are good preset options. If it is taking too long to render, render two shots: Your standard shot with the platform and then another one that is the clouds on a transparent background. Then, you can use the compositor to layer the two shots and if your camera is the same, it should look seamless.


Dragon Animation-500 bones tail, animation along a path problem I'm doing an animation for a chinese dragon, I'm new to path animation and I have a newbie problem.

The armature moves along the path but, while the head follows along, the tail bones aren't rotating according to the path, but inherit the rotation of the head.

I have tried detaching the tail bones from the head,
changing origin points to where they should rotate,
uncheching inherit rotation under Propeties/Bones,
Reapply the path to the single tail bones,
but the result is the same

Looked everywhere for a snake like tutorial but all I got were half baked explainations. even tried with a 5 bones no mesh armature, doesn't work either, I can't figure it out.

The rigging I did was very simple, with no IK and no control bone, since I needed this character for one specific task only, and basically to move like a roller coaster ride.

thanks for any halp you can give me

While it isn't quite as simple as telling the armature to follow the curve, you can use a splineIK constraint to make the armature deform along a curve, you still need to manually animate the different positions to make it follow the larger curve.

Once you have the armature with enough bones that it will bend to your liking, you select the tail of the last bone, go into pose mode and add a spline-IK constraint. Set the target as the curve that you want to use to deform the armature and the chain length to match how many bones you want it to control.

If you have setup the bones to go the opposite way to how the splineIK works you can use ⎇ AltF in edit mode to flip the direction of the bones.

Now the bones will deform to follow along with the curve as it is deformed.

In the example I have added an empty as a hook to each point in the curve to easily animate the location of each curve point.


Anomalies when I unwrap the UV mesh After successfully producing an Unwrapped UV map on my file, I saw anomalies so I looked at the Stack Exchange listing that came up when I typed my question, and found how to remove most of them by using  W> Remove Doubles.  That still left two dots (vertices?) that I don't know how to get rid of.  Can you help?

Here is the same map after removing the doubles:

Also, a related question is how to get a UV image that I next created, big enough to cover the UV Map.  (Does that make sense?)

Also, as to texture size - you will need to select all and scale down to fit inside that main square that represents the image area. Add an image and choose UV Grid or Color Grid instead of Blank, and you will see the way the mesh UVs overhanging the edge 'repeat' across the image, especially if you paint on the texture.


Smoke domain causes artefacts in non-density areas I get strange artefacts from the smoke domain where density should be zero but the domain box is over other collision objects in cycles (Blender 2.92 and 2.93 beta).  Res seems high enough.  For some reason, it seems to be caused by reflected rays of textured surfaces that are inside the smoke domain box.
I'm not sure what causes this to happen but I am trying to find a way around this.  If I disable the material input node, it goes away.  If I render with no smoke the objects are ok.  So the domain seems to affect the non-smoke area.  Any ideas?

Without a screenshot it's hard to tell, but I often see artifacts in smoke simulations even in tutorials because of too low transparency settings. Try to increase the Transparency value under Render Settings > Light Paths > Max Bounces. Maybe 32 or 64 or even 128. Important: Transparency, not Transmission (image is from a different question, the red framed part is important).


Get and Set Hide in viewport and Disable in viewport via Python API In my plugin I have an operator that needs to iterate through potentially 100's of objects that might be 'hidden in viewport' or 'disabled in viewport' and perform some operations  that require the object to be visible in viewport. Afterwards I want to restore whatever visibility the object had, so I need to both get and set these options.
 IE, get/set the status of these.
When I hover over the icons, both show the parameter bpy.context.object.hide_viewport. Obviously they can't both be the same parameter as they both do different things. How do I get and set 'hidden in viewport' and how do I get and set 'disabled in viewport' using the Python API?
Edit: I can see that both ObjectBase(bpy_struct) and Object(ID) have the hide_viewport property, however ObjectBase is documented as 'Temporarily hide in viewport' and Object is documented as 'Globally disable in viewports'. How do I access an Object's ObjectBase?

bpy.context.active_object.hide_viewport = True for MONITOR icon
bpy.context.active_object.hide_set(True) for EYE icon
for collections it's bit different
bpy.context.collection.hide_viewport = True will globally hide collection(MONITOR icon)
bpy.context.view_layer.layer_collection.children.get('Your_Collection_Name').hide_viewport = True wil hide collectiob locally (EYE icon)


How to create semicircle from sharp edge I need create from these edges semicircle. What can I do this?

Assuming you want to cut a hole in the shape of a semicircle, you can do it easily by erasing the two faces and adding a Subsurface modifier.

Then add two control edgeloops on the sides you want to be flat.

Alternatively, if want a drawn shape instead of a hole, just select one of the radial vertices and use the Spin modifier. The current position of the 3D Cursor will be used as the center.
Adjust settings like angle and number of segments as desired.


It is posible to obtain a armature from a Rig? I just installed rokoko. I am trying to retarget a Rig which armature has been already deleted but it seems that Rokoko only uses armature as a source.
Is there a way to convert the rig that I have to an Armature?

create a copy transforms constraint on each of your bones and set the rigged armature's bones as target. then bake the animation by selecting clear constraints.
for baking see baking with reference question


Dopesheet summary not showing Even though I have an armature with two actions and many keyframes assigned to it, my dopesheet summary is not showing. The button at the bottom of the dopesheet window should toggle the summary but it doesn't. I've also checked the NLA editor and have switch between the different views in Dopesheet window(Action editor and normal dopesheet view). Still empty.

Your dope sheet window scrolled down too far.  Press Home button to refresh the view


Can I use Weight Paint to Control Animation Properties? I'm thinking weight paint but maybe I mean Dynamic Paint or even something else I'm unaware of.  I have cell fractured a long thin cylinder which I am dropping onto a plane using Blender 2.71 Render (not BGE).  It has been rotated a little so that its contact with the plane starts at the lowest shard and works its way to the top.  Of course, the whole thing simply falls apart on first contact.  So, I use rigid body constraints and this works fine keeping it together.  What I want, however, is a progressive shatter as the cylinder shards come into contact.  In other words, I want the shards which have not yet reached the plane to stay intact. Keyframing this one shard at a time is tedious, prone to error, and all but impossible when there are hundreds of shards.

Can I use weight paint or anything else to control the enable function (or any other property or function) associated with the constraints to switch from enabled to not enabled as a function of time (or frame number)(in other words, as a function of color)?

I'm sure you could do this with weight paint, however, I think it might be overkill. Weight paint and dynamic paint is per vertex, and bullet collision settings are per object.

You can animate the constraint Enabled variable. and you can also add a driver.

The following code will work on an object I fractured using  Cell fracture, the object named "Cube". Then I used the Bullet Constraint tools 'Single constraint' to make the constraints.
This code won't work if you have used Empties to constrain the objects together.

Link to a blend file

Press alt A, you will see the box stays together.
Run the script (alt P in textblock) and then animate again. You will see the box stays together, until the plane moves above each object.

object_name = "Cube"

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    if  object_name+"_cell" in obj.name:
        driver = obj.rigid_body_constraint.driver_add('enabled')
        driver.driver.expression="this_obj<mask_obj"
        driver_variable = driver.driver.variables.new()
        driver_variable.name = "this_obj"
        driver_variable.type = 'TRANSFORMS'
        driver_variable.targets[0].transform_type = 'LOC_Z'
        driver_variable.targets[0].id = driver_variable.id_data

        driver_variable = driver.driver.variables.new()
        driver_variable.name = "mask_obj"
        driver_variable.type = 'TRANSFORMS'
        driver_variable.targets[0].transform_type = 'LOC_Z'
        driver_variable.targets[0].id = bpy.data.objects['mask']


Why is my smoke bright on the edges? I was doing some motion tracking and I implemented some smoke. Once I rendered the scene, there is this bright perimeter framing my smoke. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not but i would like to know how to remove it.

I don't know if this is your issue, but you should give it a try :D


Where is the common-sense button that aligns curve handles and resets them? All I want to do is make a simple spline IK. Apparently this is impossible because in order to construct one, I very expectedly have to move the curve handles. Moving the curve vertices automatically misaligns the handles so that they don't point towards each other to keep a straight line, even though they should.

I tried all kinds of selection to cursor and snapping techniques, none of which work because the lengths of the handles are no longer at their default value. How can I get blender to do what it is supposed to and construct a simple, straight segment of merely two handles pointed towards each other at their default length?

Edit Mode:

A Select all
V V Convert control points to Vector

With just 2 points, this will produce the straight line I think you're looking for? I do this to every Bezier curve on creation..  it just helps get off to a known, 'neutral' start.

After that, you might want to W S subdivide, (or, in 2.8 right click > Subdivide) to make more in-line vertices.


Is there an easy way to create a corner from disconnected edges? I would like to find an easy way to make Picture A look like Picture B without recreating the cube.  I can do this manually by removing faces and recreating the corner but it takes a lot of time and I have several models I need to do this on.  The target angles are all 90 degrees and all of the faces should be the same size.

Picture A

Picture B

Supposing that you have all non-instanced cubes, with different grid size, etc... so you can't use any trick and you have to model by hand your corner, there are two operators that can may help you:

"Run the previous action" (Shift+R) with automatic merge enabled
Grid fill

I'll start by deleting the messed part and than pick one of the edge path by selecting two vertex (Crtl+RMB), extrude once by snapping to the vertex grid, repeat with Shift+R several times and complete with a grid fill with appropriate parameters.


addon search available? dumb newby question: Is there a single website one can visit to do a search for an addon that does a desired effect? For just an example, to do a search for a modifier that adds window shutters to a wall.

thanks!

From that example, you seem to be looking for kitbashes/models. Kitbashes are essentially prebuilt parts that are typically focused around a specific style or theme such as industrial, sci-fi, gothic etc. These can greatly speed up your workflow. You can try poking around for free ones, but unfortunately, most of the quality kitbash/models need to be paid for.

Another thing of note: you still need modelling experience to use them. I'm not aware of any addon/program that will essentially build an entire model for you.

One great source of free models is the Sketchup 3D Warehouse. You're going to need a third-party program to convert the SketchUp files to importable ones for Blender. i3DConverter works for that.


Is there a way to hide the cycles shader node when using my own render plugin? I'm working on my own renderer plugin for Blender 2.8.
I have my own set of shader nodes.

Is there a way to hide the cycles shader node when my renderer is selected as the rendering engine in Blender?

Thanks

cycles is an addon that can be disabled in the user preferences.


How to combine multiple cubes with double faces? I'm to test a programming idea I have in Blender. I need to combine multiple cubes. I want to create lots of duplicate cubes, and then delete all faces that are doubled.

I know there is the remove double faces, but that doesn't do what I want. It leaves a single face where two faces were.

In this example, I want to join the two cubes, but where they join, I want both faces deleted since they can't be seen.

BMesh script.

Wrote the script for another robloxic type question, buggered if I can find it maybe didn't post an answer. Also note script is for blender 2.8, whereas your question image is clearly 2.79. If you are just starting out scripting in blender, my advice is to start using 2.8

Any way, here is a script to run in object mode with all the cubes you want to join selected.

Loads all selected objects into a global bmesh.  Make sure only cubes are selected, haven't tested for it as script expects selected objects to only be 8 vertex cubes.  Also added commented out code to select cubes based on their name starting with "Cube"

Tests if two faces have same center using a bvh tree loaded with the bmesh. The find_nearest_range method finds each face twice, hence 4 matches being a pair, and 2 matches being no match

A further more robust test would be checking opposite facing normals, and to be sure to be sure the vert coordinates of the face themselves.

If remove_originals is set to True then the original cube objects are removed.

If remove_doubles is set to True it will remove doubles.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
from mathutils.bvhtree import BVHTree

remove_originals = True
remove_doubles = True

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
# by selection
cubes = context.selected_objects
# by name
#cubes = [o for o in scene.objects if o.name.startswith("Cube")]

bm = bmesh.new()
for o in cubes:
    bm.from_mesh(o.data)
    bmesh.ops.transform(bm,
            verts=bm.verts[-8:],
            matrix=o.matrix_world
            )
if remove_originals:
    bpy.ops.object.delete()

bvhtree = BVHTree().FromBMesh(bm, epsilon=1e-7)
faces = bm.faces[:]

remove = list()
while faces:
    f = faces.pop()
    pair = bvhtree.find_nearest_range(f.calc_center_median(), 1e-4)
    if len(pair) > 2:
        # mark face for removal
        remove.extend(p[2] for p in pair)

bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()
bmesh.ops.delete(bm,
        geom=[bm.faces[i] for i in set(remove)],
        context='FACES_KEEP_BOUNDARY',
        )
if remove_doubles:
    bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(bm,
            verts=bm.verts,
            dist=1e-7)

me = bpy.data.meshes.new("CubeBoundaryFaces")
bm.to_mesh(me)
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("CubeBoundaryFaces", me)

scene.collection.objects.link(ob)
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
ob.select_set(True)

Note, would be for quicker,   as pointed out by subd guru @RobinBetts, to simply join, remove doubles then  remove interior faces, done via a script using the appropriate operators and object mode for them.

Another take would be to use the set of face indices to remove the faces from the original cubes without joining them. Since the compound bmesh faces will be in same order as the originals.

for i in set(remove):
    ob = cubes[i // 6] # 6 faces per cube
    f = ob.data.polygons[i % 6]


Is there a way to reset the camera to avoid clipping? During a session editing mesh creating shape keys, I could no longer get close up views due to clipping. Having tried a few solutions from the on-line manual I remain baffled. The only other objects in the scene are one light and one camera. Is there a way to reset the camera for close up viewing with no clipping?

If you press Num . (dot on numpad) Blender will center 3d-view around selection, and move view as close as it possible with considering of
cliping settings and size of bunch of selected objects