Why are these fluid particles not being blocked correctly? I am doing this tutorial. I have this cylinder / lamp and an emitter plane (see arrow).

Just below the emitter plane I closed the cylinder with a face. And checked Size Deflect. Also the cylinder has Collision marked. Now the fluid particles should be blocked by the cylinder / lamp ? But as you can they are not. What should I change to block the fluid particles by the lamp ?

The most possible reason for that behaviour is non-manifold geometry.

When closing particles within the lamp by filling a face inside of the lamp, you create non-manifold mesh which might be hard to deal with for engine. Particles fly through from the bottom, where the face is created and which should block them.

To make the mesh as manifold one, first delete that inside face. Then you'll need to:

Solidify the mesh (either with Solidify modifier or by extruding geometry in Edit mode and scaling extrusion a bit inside).

Create a face which will block particles. For that, select edge loop, left from original face, bevel it with Ctrl+B and fill 2 new faces (they will be Ngons, however it doesn't really matter here).

Beveled edge loop:

Filling new faces:

Particles will  fly inside and collide with walls as expected:


What criteria is used to sort the outliner when "Sort Alphabetically" is off? What Criteria is used to sort the outliner when "Sort Alphabetically" is off? The order definitely changes when I toggle that setting, but I can't tell what the order is changing to.

For the default All Scenes filter and excluding remapping users, it becomes sorted top-down by last added. This is somewhat obvious if you disable the option and just add objects to the scene. No object type takes precedence. To make sure, also checked the source and it seems to do just that.


Orient local axis to match mesh's shape This seems like it should be easy, but I've searched SE and YouTube to no avail so far...

I have a mesh in my scene, representing a vehicle's drive shaft. Here it is, with everything else hidden:

However, the local axis (shown here) lines up with the scene's global axis, which isn't going to be useful when I try rotating the shaft around its length.

How can I transform the mesh's local axes so that, say, the x axis aligns with the drive shaft's length?

And if that's possible, are there any hints on how to make it exactly lined up so the shaft doesn't wobble when rotating? Thanks!

You may add a custom transform orientation based on your object's current orientation. In your case select the object in Object Mode, press Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar (or click a '+' button in a Transform Orientations panel of the Properties Shelf (N). It'll add a new orientation according to your object's position.

If you have more complicated object with the normals facing in different directions you may select the face/faces with desired angle/angles in Edit Mode and then press the buttons mentioned above. It'll orient the 3d gizmo according to the faces' position.

The newly added orientations (you may add as many as you like) are available in the Transform Orientation tab at the bottom bar of the 3D window.


Bevel works on one side but not the other I'm trying to make a curved indent. I did one side, but when I try to select and bevel the other side, it doesn't bevel.

Selected edge

Bevel applied

Here's my file if it's helpful: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3TF2HeeQRyWWkpVeVV5Vmc3T28/view?usp=sharing

Aand I found the answer by looking up a separate question I had (why were my planes different colors):

The normals weren't consistent, so I guess it was trying to bevel on the reverse side. I selected the whole model and used Make Normals Consistent, and then beveling works fine.


How do I make an ocean of independently moving objects? Let's say I have several objects and I want to parent them to a plane that has an ocean modifier on it. The problem I'm having is that the objects move as a group instead of independently of one another. So if I have a sphere, a cone, and a cylinder and I want the ocean to consist of these objects, I would like them to all be a part of the ocean and move independently of one another, but I get one of two results:

1). The block of objects do not move independently, they move as a block

2). I can get independent movement, but only if I delete object by object until I realize I'm just down to one.

I've tried to parent objects to individual vertices, but it didn't work.

Here are the steps I followed:

Line up all objects in the order I want them
Select all objects and select plane last. Parent objects to plane (ctr + p) (I've also tried going into edit mode on the plane and parenting one object to one vertices)
Under the object panel, I used Duplifaces to duplicate according to vertices (I've also tried faces)
I added an ocean modifier to the plane, set my resolution, depth, etc

But all objects move together as a bunch of small groups. This first image shows an example of how I might want the line-up/order to be. The second image shows a what this looks like if I parent the objects to the verts. Notice that they move in groups. The only way I can hide it is by making the resolution really high, but that is going to cost me in verts/rendering load.[![Objects I want moving independently][1]][1]
[![enter image description here][2]][2]

Edit: Duarte's solution down there works very well, but there's one issue in that the objects overlap one another. I'm using a 4x4 group and have the following settings/followed the following steps:

Create plane
Modify the plane with an ocean modifier
Group target objects together (I'm using a 4x4 configuration)
Add particle system
Under Particle System > Emission add a high number (I chose 5,000). Also, select "Verts" and tick the box for Use Modifier Stack
Under Particle System > Render: tick boxes for "Unborn" and "Die." Also, the target group in the "Dupligroup" field
Under the Ocean Modifier, mess with settings to suit your project. (I've got my resolution at 4, choppiness and scale are at 1, smallest w at .01, wind velocity at 30). The biggest thing here to mess with is probably the resolution.

I have three unique objects and it looks like they are overlapping and I can't figure out how to keep them from doing so. I mess with resolution, tick on and off things like global, but no luck. Here's an image of the current issue. You can see the image highlights both a blank space and a space where objects overlap. Edit: just kidding, Stack exchange won't let me post a third photo because my reputation is less than ten, so... you'll have to go off of description.

Use a particle system for your objects instead.

Create you ocean with whatever method you like (Ocean Modifier I suppose).
Add a particle system to it, make it emit from vertex and turn on Use Modifier Stack.

Under the Render settings make it use a group, then point it to a group containing all your objects. If you want them ordered just leave settings as is, if you want random positioning just tick the option Pick Random

Turn on the Unborn and Died option so all are visible.

Turn off the Random option (right bellow Vertex) so only one object is used per vertex, then check in the 3D View header under Object Mode how many vertex your object has, then adjust the particle count to match it exactly, so no wholes or overlaps happen.


New to sculpting. How do you add parts and connect them by sculpting? I'm  new to sculpting, and I'm trying to figure out how to add objects to the head to sculpt into the other parts of my character such as ears, neck, etc. Do you add the objects as separate parts, and how do you sculpt all the separate parts together?

If what you want to add is supposed to be a part of this object, it makes more sense to add it to this object itself in Sculpt mode, and not add a new object, because:

I don't think you can sculpt several objects at the same time for the moment.
If they are different objects it will be harder to make them look like they are one.

So for example if you want to add a neck to a head, use the Snake Hook brush (it allows you to easily deform the topology and add geometry):

If what you want to add is another object (like for example here a hat), you can choose to create a second object. I guess it also depends on your final purpose, you can sculpt everything within one object.


Why do all pieces of a model suddenly turn during Animation? I have a 3D-model in the collada (.dae) format. Its a class hierarchy of pieces. All rotation modifiers and correct parenting have been applied to the model previous to starting animating. The model is in t-pose. If you want to take  a look at it - here it is:

https://github.com/PicassoCT/MOSAIC/blob/master/objects3d/asset.DAE

Once i start animating, everything seems to work as expected, i can set keys, make  a first cycle. Then, in Animation view of a general blenderscene, if i click on a seemingly random piece of the model and apply a rotation, the same rotation is applied to all pieces, and to all piece positions depending on there parent.

The pieces look like a small planetary system, with the torso in the center.

Is this a bug, or do i use the rotation key system wrong? All rotations used are normal euler rotations. I will attach the blender files as another link:

Blender file with a rough walk cycle

Maybe deactivate the Proportional Editing option? Shortcut O to activate or deactivate.


How to convert an edge into a curved edge? I need to curve a single edge of a plane.
I tried vertex bevel but either it didn't work or I did some mistake.

The plane I have:

The shape I want:

As can be seen in above images I need to curve only one edge of a traingular shape plane.

I think we lack informations about what's the final goal, for example are you supposed to extrude, smooth, etc?

But if you want a simple flat shape, you can round the corners this way:

Delete the faces with a X > Only Faces.
Select the vertices that are supposed to be round.
Press shiftctrlB to bevel. Press + to increase the amount of segments, or do it on the bottom of the Tools panel (on the left of your 3D view).
Now fill the whole mesh with an F.
Finish the mesh with some additional vertices and edges if necessary, the knife tool is convenient for this purpose.


Blender video in which a scene is first untextured and then shows the textures as the video goes on I would like to make a video from a scene I have done in Blender. I would like these scene to first be renderend without textures, and then, as the video moves on, to get the textures on...Do you know how this could be done?

A simple version of this effect could be created using a combination of render layers and keyed compositing effects:

Step 1

Under the Render Layers panel, enable AO and Environment passes.

Step 2

In the Compositer, create this node setup and keyframe the Mix node property highlighted below to go from 1 to 0 over the course of your animation, or over whatever period you want your materials to appear.

For very complex scenes you may need to play around with rendering more layers and mixing in different nodes, but this method should get you most of the way there for a basic fade in effect.


Enabling IK stretch in the IK Constraint does nothing? Enabling IK stretch in the IK ConstraintS

Stretch in the IK Constraint does nothing?

One solution is to make the stretch value in

BONE > INVERSE KINEMETICS > STRETCH  to more than zero and not close to 1

I set it to 0.1 As seen in Pitchipoy rig set up

It has to be done for each bone in the chain


How to edit UVs for a mirrored effect on textures I have a hut model, here in blender from a game. I would like to export it to source engine.

It uses this texture below.

When I imported the model into blender, the textures didn't mirror like they do in the game I exported it from. They should look like this:

But when I export it, It actually looks like this in my editor:

It tried mirroring the texture itself in paint.net but that made it off center and look even worse.

My Only Option I guess is to manually edit the UVs So that it only covers the skull half of the texture. The other half is used for some other object in the level.
Can anyone show me how to do this? My UV editor looks like this below, when I select all the faces with that specific texture on.

For this, I dissolved the diagonal line going through the middle of my face. I then created a vertical loop cut down the centre of it, like so.

I then Went in the UV editor, selected all the edges of the left side of the face, and moved to be on the skull side of the texture.
All that's needed now is to download the UV: Magic UV Plugin, available in edit/preferences/add-ons, right click UV Unwrap Faces/Flip Rotate UV.
Done


Z-Axis blocked on MMB movement While panning the orbit with the MMB, the movement of the start-up file cube, as well as of any other object, is restricted only to the X and Y axes, while the Z axis is blocked. What have I done wrong? I could always move my objects with the MMB along all axes. Trying to reset, I have downloaded the latest version v2.79b but unfortunately the problem persists. I've searched for an answer, but found only ones that relate to extrusion
Thank you for your help.

You seem to be referencing the cameras movement in the viewport accessible via  MMB, as said in your comment.

  Mr Zak, the Z axis is blocked only when rotating the viewport.

By default, the Viewport Orbit Style is set to Turntable. For  a less restrictive Orbit Style, set it to Trackball.

  [The Orbit style sets] how Blender works when you rotate the 3D View by default when holding  MMB.

  Turntable
  Rotates the view keeping the horizon horizontal.

  This behaves like a potter’s wheel or record player where you have two axes of rotation available, and the world seems to have a better definition of what is “Up” and “Down” in it.

  The drawback to using the Turntable style is that you lose some flexibility when working with your objects. However, you gain the sense of “Up” and “Down” which can help if you are feeling disoriented.

  Trackball
  Is less restrictive, allowing any orientation.

Blender Manual

To set the Orbit style to Trackball, open the User Preferences window ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU and go to the Input rider. Then click on the Trackball button.


EVEE Lighting and Volume Scatter showing through walls I have a scene set up in EVEE with an object with a volume scatter material and a light on the outside. The light should only be coming through a window but there is volume being illuminated along the inside of the wall the light is shining on. Any ideas on how to fix it? Clamping volume in the render settings isn't working either.

Seems like Eevee sometimes really has some troubles with volumetric lighting. As they say here: https://developer.blender.org/T71208

I think this was a side effect of a previous bug (in 2.80). basically, the volumes were all shifted 1 voxel further from the camera. This was fixed but now this light leaking is just a side effect of the volume texture being low res.
There is little we can do to fix it. The workaround is to give more precision to the volume (increase samples in volumetric settings) and the shadow maps.

this is a sort of precision error.
This probably won't be fixed anytime soon.
Unless a new groundbreaking volumetric lighting approach is discovered, which is... quite unlikely? You can attempt to alleviate this by making the volumetric lighting texture more fine. This will however use more VRAM so be careful

I hope it will help.
These few quite similar cases may be helpful too:

https://developer.blender.org/T61654
https://blenderartists.org/t/why-spot-light-coming-throught-the-mesh/1227943
EEVEE 2.8 : the light goes through the egdes of a simple cube?


Blender Sapling Add-on Leaves not Showing up I am using the blender sapling add-on to try create a realistic tree. I checked the 'show leaves' box and made the leaf shape rectangular.

It looks like this.

Then with the box checked.

Will it work even though nothing shows up and if not, what can I do to make the leaves appear?

Leaf scale is too small, I increased it. I now see the leaves.


Is there any way to use input() or raw_input() functions in blender scripting? I'm trying to write a script which when run would ask the user for dimensions of different objects. But I came to know that the input and raw_input functions are not available in blender python api. Please help me out.

No simply there is not... but I have made this solution for you, it creates a entire menu that pops up and ask the info(scale/name) for the cube to be added. Here is the code:

import bpy
import mathutils as math

# This class is the actual dialog that pops up to create the cube
class AddCubeDialogOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.add_cube_dialog"
    bl_label = "Add Cube"

    # Here you declare everything you want to show in the dialog
    name = bpy.props.StringProperty(name = "Objects Name:", default = "Cube")
    scale = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(name = "Scale:", default = (1.0, 1.0, 1.0))

    # This is the method that is called when the ok button is pressed
    # which is what calls the AddCube() method
    def execute(self, context):
        AddCube(self.name, self.scale)
        self.report({'INFO'}, "Added Cube")
        return {'FINISHED'}

    # This is called when the operator is called, this "shows" the dialog
    def invoke(self, context, event):
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

# This method adds a cube to the current scene and then applys scale and
# name to the cube
def AddCube(name, scale):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active.name = name
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active.scale = scale

# Registers the cube dialog to blender so that it can be called
bpy.utils.register_class(AddCubeDialogOperator)

# Calls the menu when the script is ran
bpy.ops.object.add_cube_dialog('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

I tried to comment everything to make you understand it all, just reply if you don't understand something. If you run this code you should get something like:


Can you pack UV's according to material ID? I have A LOT of uv islands for a character and despite my best efforts, I can't optimize space well manually. is there a way to automatically pack uv's SUCH THAT islands with the same material are adjacent? Via a plugin or script or anything?

If you turn on the UV-edit mesh sync in the UV editor then you can select uv islands by materials in the materials tab. So select one material then hit Ctrl-P in the UV editor and repeat it with all of the materials.


Can't attach material to imported SVG in python If I import an SVG curve by python, always is working except of assign material. Manually I can assign any material, but by python nothing works. There is part of my code:

mat = bpy.data.materials.get("Z")
for emboss in embosses:
    emb_name = emboss[:-4]
    loadedSVG = bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath = embossDir + emboss, filter_glob=".svg")
    for obj in bpy.data.objects:
        if obj.tag == False:
            obj.name = emb_name
            obj.tag = True
            x, y, z = obj.dimensions
            if x >= y:
                needRatio = maxSize / x
            if y > x:
                needRatio = maxSize / y
            bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern = emb_name)
            bpy.data.objects[emb_name].scale = (needRatio, needRatio, needRatio)

            #two from my attempts, nothing works, material is correct
            bpy.data.objects[emb_name].materials = [mat]
            bpy.data.objects[emb_name].setMaterials([mat])
            #end of not-working code

            bpy.data.objects[emb_name].rotation_euler = (0, 0, math.radians(90))
            bpy.data.objects[emb_name].location = (-0.06864 + (maxSize - y * needRatio)/2, 1.18165 + (maxSize - x * needRatio)/2, 0.02419)
            bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

Only message "AttributeError: 'Object' object has no attribute 'materials'" in the system console.

I know that I'm doing some mistake, but I can't find anything three days in code but through the web too. Thanks for correcting my code.

Instead of:

        #two from my attempts, nothing works, material is correct
        bpy.data.objects[emb_name].materials = [mat]
        bpy.data.objects[emb_name].setMaterials([mat])
        #end of not-working code

Try:

        bpy.data.objects[emb_name].active_material = bpy.data.materials['Z']

If this still does not work, you may need to look at adding a material slot first.

        bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()


Rigging Mesh With Separate Parts Deforms Incorrectly I am trying to rig a vroid asset I exported from vroid studio:

So far so good. Now, this issue is that the exported vroid mesh object is actually comprised of separate sets of connected vertices. That is, the arm portion of the mesh has vertices that are all locally connected to themselves, but not to any vertices on, say, the torso. There are basically seams of overlapping or near overlapping vertices where the shoulder, leg/hip region, neck/skull area, et al.
This causes problems with deforming the mesh:

I think the problem is that the vertices on both sides of the mesh where the seams are at need to have exactly the same weight painting. And as you can see by the next photo, they currently do not:

My first instinct was to go into weight paint mode and just go over the area of the seam and set to 100% weight with a 50px brush. Unfortunately, this still produced smaller breaks in the mesh that didn't look good, and also ruined the deformation of mesh overall. I then tried to figure out a way to explicitly set the vertexes along the seams to have the same weight... but doing this using a painting brush seems... much harder than I feel like it should be.
For reasons that I won't go into right now, I don't want to merge the separate meshes into one mesh. I feel like this is also probably a coommon situation, but for the life of me I can't figure out the specific terminology to describe this situation well enough for duckduckgo to be of much use. (I have also searched on the other leading engines.)
Could somebody explain the proper way to handle this situation? Thanks in advance for your time.

Autoweights don't handle separated meshes well.  There are a number of reasons why manual weight painting might not work well or easily for your situation.  (Like occlusion, particularly if there's some ambiguity of that from coincident verts.)
What's the solution?  You don't have to merge your mesh, but what I'd recommend is making a temporary duplicate of your mesh and then merging the vertices in that.  Then you have a mesh that you can use autoweights on properly, that you can paint easily.
When you've got weights you want on your duplicate, then it's time to transfer the weights back onto the original.  Make sure your armature is in the rest position (and that you're not using any other modifiers on your duplicate.)  Use a data transfer modifier on your original, set it to affect vertex data, vertex groups, specify the duplicate as the target, copy by nearest vertex (nearest face interpolated is usually better, but here you may have slight inconsistencies in vertex position at the seams), hit the generate button, then apply the modifier.  After you do that, you can delete your duplicate; the original will have the same weights as the duplicate.


Blender Crash on .fbx export So I finally finished my 1st animation in blender and wanted to check it on UE4. I tried to export it but when I click export, doesn't technically crash but it stops responding and into "thinking" mode. It works when I disable animations but I need them. I'm mostly a beginner in this stuff so any help will be appreciated.

Edit: Deactivated "All Actions". It works now

I'm using blender version 2.79b on Windows 10.

Tips to avoid this:

Activate Selected Objects (not whole scene)
Activate only "Deform Bones" under Armature tab(so rig won't corrupt the FBX if many constraints, or loopback bones that might make it bug - will also export in a clean way, etc)
Disactivate "All Actions" from Animation tab (so that rig will export only it's aniamtion clips, not the whole scene animation
Make sure that SDS is at a reasonable level of Render Settings (1 or 2 max), SDS at 3 or 4 will take a long time to "Apply Modifiers" to the mesh - specially if it's a whole scene. You can optionally turn this "Apply Render setting modifiers" off under Geometries tab

Then export and the software won't have to think so hard or ultimately crash.


How to draw a node group in a layout panel using python I just made that node group and i just wanted that this node group should appear in Properties panel in 3d view which appears when 'N' Key is Pressed
this should look like this in materials tab

can any one tell me how to do that?

Already gave you a answer to this here https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-access-and-draw-the-node-group-input-slider-in-layout-panel/1185331/12

You had a material named "TestMat" and a group named "Group". It draws the group properties if there is a material and group with those names.


Animation Keyframes only appear in "NonLinear Animation" window Only just starting to learn blender animation so I'm trying to follow some basic tutorials with the FBX I'm using for my game in unity.
I was looking at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2ClFO3FAY
But when I perform the steps to add a keyframe, neither the dope sheet, nor the timeline populate. The keyframe does get added somewhere though, since my character still moves when scrubbing between frames. Eventually I found them in the "Nonlinear animation" window. So of course I started trying to figure out what that even is which led me down a whole different rabbit hole in which most people don't actually understand what it is either. So I tried to learn more about "NLA" which is... at least related if not the nonlinear animation window itself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SQdHehksJw&feature=share
But now I'm even more confused because the keyframes still appear on the dope sheet and everything just fine for this guy. Just not for me.
I'll be honest in that Blender is probably the most complex program I've ever tried to use for animation. Akeytsu, UMotion and Unity itself were far more straightforward. I would love to get this to be at least somewhat closer to the workflow I'm used to.
My steps:
Open new blender file
Import FBX
Open Animation tab
Select 1st frame in dopesheet/timeline/whatever
Rotate bone
click I => create keyframe (want to be more specific but now the I key doesn't bring up any prompt wth!)
Notice no new keyframes in any window except "Nonlinear Animation"
Version: 2.81a

No matter how many times I re-did all the steps the other day, it just would not work at all. Today everything seems fine and I've done absolutely nothing different.
Blender sure is a mystery ¯_(ツ)_/¯


How can I model a decorative serving tray? How can i model this? like beautiful line up modeling
I create the the outline and solidified it like this

But I don't know what to do afterwards.
I tried to bevel, but it doesn't work
Next I try to add subdivison surface, but my blender is dead....
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao4Yx0pJrqq5j8VghFhNK0cV_-NSEQ

You can:

Keep only a flat segment, simplify it as much as possible (actually it will depend on if you plan to use a Subdivision Surface modifier at the end) and mirror (enable the Clipping option of the Mirror modifier):

Create an empty a the center of the object, give your object an Array modifier, choose a Count of 8, disable Relative Offset, enbable Object Offset with the empty as Object:

Rotate the empty 45° on the Z axis:

Move the segment so that it doesn't overlap its instances, extrude inwards:

Extrude to give thickness with AltE > Extrude Faces Along Normals:

Make sure you don't create inner faces, if so, delete them:

Add geometry and bvels where needed:

Apply the modifiers, close the center, merge the vertices by distnace, stretch on the X axis:


Where do I find the polygon and vertices count for an object in Blender 2.8? Where do I find the polygon and vertices count for a specific object that I've selected in Blender 2.8? I'm looking for something like this:

Go into edit mode, select all the vertices of the object.
You should see the counts on the bottom of the window:

In some cases, the counts might not be visible by default. So if the counts aren't displaying for you, try right-clicking on the status bar and checking the box that says "Scene statistics." This should make them appear.


How to install Blender on a Intel Core i5 with Windows 7? I use a 2014 laptop with Intel Core i5(2010) with Windows 7 Pro Extended Support(2020)
I want to do modeling with Unity but I tried but it said you need a high level computer while i have a mid level

All you need is to go to the Blender.org website and there should be a big "Download" with the name of the most recent version. Just click that and it will take you to a download page where you select your operating system. If it doesn't ask it might detect what you have already. You most likely have 32 bit so if it asks for "16 bit or 32 bit" choose the 32 option. If that doesn't run you could try downloading the other version later. After you hit the big download button, it should proceed to download. If you are using Chrome or most causal web browsers you should be able to see it in progress on the bottom of your screen. When it is done you can select it.
The installer will show up and then you can just keep hitting "next" until you finish the installer. You should make sure the "Add shortcut to desktop" is checked. Then you can start it by starting the shortcut that is now on your desktop.
Your computer should be able to run Blender just fine. However, you might start seeing some lag if you start making anything too complex. If you are just starting out make simple things and if you want to make a lot of objects use different files instead of having everything in the same file. This will make sure Blender is only using the memory that you want it to.


Multiple hotkeys for the same function I'm trying to get a single function mapped to multiple hotkeys.

Specifically, I want to rotate the 3d view by holding shift+middle mouse button or the * key on the num key. (Pan has been moved to middle mouse)

Either solution works independently, but I have a problem that if I use the knife tool with * (my preferred solution because I cannot make a macro to press shift+middle mouse on my mouse) it will not rotate, so I would like in that instance to be able to press shift plus middle mouse even though normally I would like ot press *.

I see multiple "View3D.rotate" I can change the hotkey of, but only the first actually works.

Any advice? (Even telling me how to Macro my Naga mouse would be helpful ahah)

At the bottom of the 3D View input list, click on the "Add New" Button. A new command will then appear at the bottom of the listed named "None".
Click on the triangle to the left of the word "None" to expand the options for the command. Enter this text: view3d.rotate (as shown in the image below) and press Enter. At this point the name of the command will change from "None" to "Rotate View" and you can choose you input command.

You may also want to double check that the command is not already in use by searching for it in the "Key Bindings" search box at the top of the list. If it is in use you can just disable it by clicking on the checkmark next to its name. That way you won't have any conflicts... hopefully.


Image textures on planes are distorted I added a texture to a plane.
When rendered, the texture on the plane is all distorted.

I'd like for the texture to fit nicely on the plane.

In case I haven't submitted enough information (i.e. properties on the texture or plane), please comment, and I'll edit my post right away.

Looks like that rather than using UV coordinate mapping, use generated.

to


how can I mirror on sculpt mode? i try to do an animal tail, and whatever i do on one side doesn't go to the other side as well. how can i fix this?

In the Symmetry/Lock section, have you enabled a mirror axis?


Why is my uvmap created using uvproject modifier scaled up? I am trying to use uvproject modifier to copy uvmap to arrayed object from other object. For whatever reason the resulting uvmap is scaled up, like this:
https://i.imgur.com/t0t0E1N.png
Why doesn't it line up perfectly?

Here the file: https://www118.zippyshare.com/v/phZYwOET/file.html

I'm guessing the reason you have this problem is that:

The original object named Plane in the outliner has been scaled up by 5 from its original size.
The UV's of this Plane needs to be rotated by 90°.

The quickest way to fix this is to work with the Empty

Select the Empty.
Scale it up by a factor of 5. ( S  5 Enter )
Rotate along Z axis 90°. ( R Z 90° Enter )

The result of doing this should be as in the screen shot below:


Animation Nodes: the Si(x) function I'm searching how to do the Si(x) function with animation nodes.
It is not the sinus function but the indefinite integral of sinx/x which can't be written as the combinations of other elementary functions.

Sine Integral
The function, denoted $Si$, by definition is the antiderivative of $\frac{sin\ x}{x}$ from $0$ to the input point whose value is zero at $x = 0$. The sine integral definitions are
$$Si(x) = \int_0^x{\frac{sin\ t}{t}}\ dt$$
To put it simply, we want to compute integral with animation nodes as the $sin$ function is already available. One technique we can use is Numerical Integration, which is a technique for approximating a definite integral and also quite easy to implement inside animation nodes. There are various methods in numerical integration but for this example I will use two methods that won't use too much node.
Trapezoidal rule
The Trapezoidal rule works by approximating the region under graph of the given function as trapezium rather than rectangle.
Let $f(x)$ be continuous on $[a, b]$. We partition the interval $[a, b]$ into $N$ subintervals, each of width
$$\Delta x = \frac{b-a}{N}$$
The Trapezoidal rule for approximating $\int_a^b f(x)$ is given by
$$\int_a^b f(x)\ dx \approx \Delta x \Biggl(\sum_{j=1}^{N-1} f(x_j) + \frac{f(x_N) + f(x_0)}{2}\Biggr)$$
Where $x_j = a + j\Delta x$. Because $Si(0) = 0$, we can simplify the equation into the following
$$\frac{b}{N} \Biggl(\sum_{j=1}^{N-1} f(x_j) + \frac{f(x_N)}{2}\Biggr)$$
Notice that $\Delta x$ is also substituted by $\frac{b}{N}$ because $a$ is always zero in this case.
Implementation

The result for $Si(2\pi)$ with 2000 subintervals is $1.41804$. Let's compare with the result from WolframAlpha

To get more accurate approximation, try increase the subintervals.
Monte Carlo integration
Another technique for numerical integration is Monte Carlo integration. This technique is using random numbers instead of subintervals or midpoint. While Monte Carlo integration is usually used for higher-dimensional integrals (eg. in Machine Learning), we can also use it for one-dimensional integral. Beside that, we can implement this technique in animation nodes with just a few nodes.
$$\int_a^b f(x)\ dx \approx \frac{1}{N} \sum_{j=1}^N f(\bar x_j)$$
where $\bar x_j$ is $N$ uniform random numbers on $[a,b]$. Monte Carlo integration use uniform sampling and fortunately random number generator in animation nodes use uniform sampling. Maybe… Or is it?.
Implementation

Blend file for study and practice

Python
Scipy
Both techniques is not really accurate and a bit time consuming to make the node tree, another alternative is to use scipy. If your blender installation is using system-wide python and have scipy installed, you can use scipy.special.sici function or you can install scipy directly in blender.
from scipy.special import sici
# sici return two results, first is Si(x), second is Ci(x)
Result, _ = sici(Number) # Store in output variable

As you can see, using scipy is more accurate.

Using Hypergeometric Series
If you don't have or don't want to install scipy, this function will do without any external dependency and also quite accurate. Adapted from mpmath then simplified and this for epsilon value.
EPS = abs(7.0/3 - 4.0/3 - 1)  # 2.2204460492503131e-16 on 64bit CPU

def si_(z, *, maxterms: int = 6000):
    """Sine Integral"""
    oz = z
    z = -0.25*z*z
    s = t = 1.0
    k = 0
    while 1:
        t *= 0.5 + k  # coeffs[0] + k
        t /= 1.5 + k  # coeffs[1] + k
        t /= 1.5 + k  # coeffs[2] + k
        k += 1
        t /= k
        t *= z
        s += t
        if abs(t) < EPS:
            break
        if k > maxterms:
            raise Exception("Hypergeometric series converges too slowly. Try increasing maxterms.")
    return oz*s

Result = si_(Number)


Help regarding shadow/ reflection I had posted here earlier and received some useful tips. However, I have one concern that is still bothering me.

The shadow on this phase seems to be going from light to dark to light, along with a streak/ line of pink. Ideally, I would like this entire phase to be uniform or a gradual gradient. Maybe something like this:

is this the reflection from the sphere at the top and the plane down below? if so, how can i remove these reflections from interfering in the shadows. Could this be something completely different? I've kept the roughness of both the shapes quite high.
My new setup is:

Thank you in advance!

Both of your lights are very close to the ground. Try moving them up a bit, especially the point light.
You should also add a light on the other side of your object shining on the shadows. This light should be much softer and would soften up the shadows so they don't look so harsh.
There are lots of tutorials to help you with lighting out there. It might seem simple, but good lighting is much more complicated than you would imagine.


AVI Composite Export I wanted to increase the brightness/contrast of an AVI video I have.
What I did was go to the compositer, load the video file in the Movie Clip node, fixed what I wanted to fix but:

The quality of the video seems to have dropped, looks more pixellated.
I have no idea how to export the video file.

Does anybody know how to export a composited AVI file as an AVI or MP4 file?

Thank you.

As mentioned in the comment, use a file output node or connect your output to the composite node. It's important to make sure that you're telling Blender to use nodes, in the compositor windows make sure "use nodes" is checked.


Trampoline like effect using cloth modifier? Been trying a lot of methods to simulate a ball falling on a trampoline or elastic kinda substance( square plane) with its corners pinned but haven't had any sucess yet. Really specific about the objects bouncing back after falling on the cloth, tried emmision particles but those didn't seem to work either. Would really use some help rn!

(Blend file below)
Particles and cloth reacting to each other - (bouncing is adjustable)
If you're dealing with just a single object, either limit the emitter to a single particle or simply animate/keyframe the object itself to follow the cloth up and down. (Bezier interpolation works best with cloth)

The cloth is pinned by it's outer vertices.  When played, and with it's (cloth) structure slider set appropriately, gravity will make it sag, retract, sag etc at the center until finally coming to rest.
Once this is working as required, the cloth's motions can be 'Baked as Shapekeys' in the Modifier panel. (not the physics panel)
With that done, it's physics properties are lost and the cloth is ordinary mesh again but with shapekeys now stretching and unstretching it's vertices.
Add physics to this again but not as cloth, rather, just set it as a 'Collision' object this time so the particles will react to it as though it's hard ground which is sagging up and down.  It's sags and bounces will therefore take the particles up and down with it.
With the cloth now shapekeyed you have control over when the sags and retractions take place by setting shapekey values between zero & 1. (Geometry --> Shapekey tab, (press " i " to keyframe each)
As each subsequent sag would be less than the previous, set that shapekey value to less than 1.  If it's not to rise back to flat again, set the retraction shapekey values to something above zero.
Once the timing of the sags look normal, go into the Dopesheet and select all the shapekeys, then slide them left and right so the first sag coincides with the arrival of the first particles.  (See note below)
Because your shapekeyed mesh has been set as 'collision' object they won't (or shouldn't) go through it and will follow it up and down as it sags and retracts.
-===============-
A few points should be made here...
1.
When applying the cloth's sags as shapekeys, it's the most extended sag that get's recorded.  That's where the cloth will go down to when a shapekey value is set to 1.  Anything between 0 & 1 will sag the cloth to some point between fully sagged and fully retracted.
2.
Particle physics work on each particle's origin-point, not their mesh, meaning they usually half bury themselves into a collision object as a result.
3.
If you view from the side, you'll notice in this instance that the particles are not actually settling at the cloth but a significant distance above it.
There is an effective work-around that cures notes 2 & 3...
With the emulated cloth behaving as required and timed correctly, duplicate it and check that the copy doesn't have physics or cloth properties, but does inherit the original's shapekeys and therefore should be sagging and retracting in synch with the original.
Because it has no physics it's only animated scenery and not going to affect the particles.
Make the active cloth (collision object) invisible.
You can raise the (non-physic'd) duplicate so particles will actually sit in it's deepest sag and bounce up and down with it.
(For newbies, the invisible and real collision 'cloth' is still controlling their behavior)
-============-
Note -
It may be that the first few particles don't land in the cloth's center and therefore the first sag will appear to be self motivated.
The solution is to make a duplicate of the particle object (cube) in layer 2, move that to layer 1 and rescale it to the same size as the particles.
Animate this to fall down into the center of the sagged cloth and bounce up and down with it by making it follow the cloth's rises and falls. If that's too much bother, have it conveniently disappear behind the others after it's fall.


How do i connect two meshes together without ruining the topology I am having a lot of trouble connecting the hands and head to the body. They always have more edges than the body meaning I can't connect them through quads.

Is there some technique to make them connect to the body while still using quads?

Try to reduce the edge loops' amount using diamond quads. They're very helpful for making the mesh less dense in certain parts. Also helps to create the proper edge flow defining the model's shape in some cases. In the example pictured below I reduced the 24 vertices loop to 12 vertices loop.

Diamond pattern- loop reduction from 3-1, 5-1 and 5-3 examples:

Another loops reduction method is pictured below.

Loops reduction from 4-2, 6-2 and 7-3:

Note: The complete answer to your problem is in the link @LukeD provided in his comment, but since I've done this topology presentation for my friend some time ago I decided not to waste my efforts and share it with you. Hope it'll be helpful :).


Animation nodes - Vertex colors to transforms? I apologize if this looks as spamming, but I think this should be a different question, though I am trying to achieve similar goal. I want to be able to influence matrices with several different drivers at the same time, but have a possibility to mask out specific objects if need be.

I found that I can create vertex color sets to use as masks for mixing materials, but I was wondering if I can use them for transforms as well?

As you can see in the image below I took the object group (this group is a smaller part of a bigger one) and am coloring it with driver with falloff. But since they have the separate smaller group it masks the drivers effects on the unwanted objects. Set vertex color node has an output of object. It seemas that I am unable to find a node wich could separate parts of that node and take only the vertex color part for me to plug in to animate matrix node.

So Can I extract colors back from the vertex color set?

You can retrieve the color using the following code:

object.data.vertex_colors[layerName].data[0].color

Where object is your object and layerName is your vertex color name.


Anvil from Guru blender not exporting with all materials and textures to glb file for WebGL I cannot for the life of me figure out why my Anvil model from the famous Guru Blender series tutorial will not export to a glb file for use with WebGL. Since I made it in Blender 2.79b, I have been opening it up in Blender 2.8 and have tried exporting as a glb, gltf, and gltf with separate files.
None of them show all the textures, normal maps, and material design when using glTF Viewer online; the closest I have come is using the GLB packer, but it turns out unlike the Blender file render at all. I have had errors saying a node was empty, which I have no idea where that's at, and I also have had errors saying the images are not a power of 2. When resizing the images even to powers of 2, still doesn't work. I'm completely lost in the sauce.

glTF 2.0 has a specific PBR material model, for transfer to realtime rendering engines.  It cannot support arbitrary arrangements of Blender nodes, as WebGL wouldn't be able to handle realtime rendering of arbitrarily complex Blender nodes.  Instead, the glTF material definition has a strict number of fields, corresponding to a particular interpretation of physically-based materials.
The Blender Manual documents how to export materials to glTF.  The short version is, you'll need to adapt your material node setup to use primarily images connected to the Principled BSDF node.


Selecting Verts I dont want When selecting vertext points with the drag and select option, Blender will select Verts outside of the area I am trying to cover. I've been looking through multiple forums and they all say the same thing( To adjust these settings or turn off Minimaps) Nothing is working so far and this just started happening out of nowhere. Updated to current .79 version today and have the Nvidia drivers updated. Any other suggestions?

The Red circle shows what I want to select, the red X is the parts it is selecting that I don't want.

Using the box-select tool [b] in edit mode adds to the selection. That unwanted point was part of your previous selection. You can remove this by simply holding down [shift] and right clicking the unwanted vertex.

Whenever you want to make a new selection using the box-select, remember to first de-select everything by pressing the [a] key. The box-select tool shouldn't make any selections outside of its influence area.


How to bake follow path constraint to animation keyframes Hi everyone, I have been trying to bake a "follow path constraint" animation to keyframes in preparation for exporting to webgl formats. I have a path and I have added an object constraint "follow path" to my model, at which point it animates fine. I now have to bake this to key frames for use in webgl but i get nothing whatever I do with the bake options except an end and begining keyframe that are the same. I know this will be simple but I am just not seeing what I am doing wrong.
If you could provide any guidance I would be extremely greateful.
many thanks

You should enable visual keying, as it reads in tooltip: 'Keyframe from the final transformations (with constraints applied)'


How to duplicate a mesh within the Blender API I'm wondering how to achieve this operation:
Assuming I have a mesh :

solid = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=1)

I need to duplicate it (I want to do some operations on the solid_duplicated.data.vertices)

But as my scene is already full of meshes, I want to select the "solid" mesh before duplicating it.

Thanks.

unfortunately, that function just returns {'FINISHED'}

solid = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=1)

thus:

import bpy
import mathutils
from mathutils import Vector

# the added object becomes the "active_object", get a reference to it.
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions=1)
solid = bpy.context.active_object

# make a duplicate only of the mesh
ico_mesh_dup = solid.data.copy()

# make a new object, and reference the duplicated mesh.
solid_duplicate = bpy.data.objects.new('IcoSphere_duplicate', ico_mesh_dup)

# the object must be added to the scene
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(solid_duplicate)

# prove that the object is created by offsetting its location.
solid_duplicate.location = solid.location + Vector((2,0,0))

There's bmesh alternatives, but I think this will work for you.


Why is this script so slow? The First scripts adds empties to vertices and is quick.

The second script add bones and constraints to the empties,

why on large mesh does the second script bring blender to its knees?

import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
obj = context.edit_object
mesh = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)
empties = []
# selected verts
for v in [v for v in bm.verts if v.select]:
    empty = bpy.data.objects.new("Empty", None)
    empty.parent = obj
    empty.parent_type = 'VERTEX'
    empty.parent_vertices = [v.index] * 3
    scene.objects.link(empty)
    empty.matrix_parent_inverse.identity()
    empties.append((v.index, empty))

THE SECOND SCRIPT

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

Empty = [o for o in scene.objects if o.type == 'EMPTY']

for l in Empty:
    # add bone
    bpy.ops.object.armature_add(location=l.location)
    bpy.ops.object.posemode_toggle()
    bpy.ops.pose.constraint_add(type='COPY_LOCATION')
    bpy.context.object.pose.bones["Bone"].constraints["Copy Location"].target = l
    bpy.ops.object.posemode_toggle()

There are a few things to improve in your scripts.

for v in [v for v in bm.verts if v.select]:

Here you create a list of selected vertices, and then loop over that list. That list constructed using the list comprehension is unnecessary. Instead just write this:

for v in bm.verts:
    if not v.select:
        continue
    ...

The same goes for creating Empties in your second script. It's not necessary to first create the entire list in memory. Either use a generator expression or just use an if ...: continue construct.

The empties.append((v.index, empty)) adds items to a list that is never used. Better remove it.

In the second script you use operators where you could use regular functions. For example, use bpy.data.armatures.new(...) and link it to a new object, instead of using bpy.ops.object.armature_add(...). Every operator call creates an undo-step in memory, so it's much slower than using direct data access functions.

Here is the second script, which uses a single armature for all the bones, and as much direct data access (properties, function calls) as possible:

import bpy

C = bpy.context
try:
    arm_ob = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
except KeyError:
    arm = bpy.data.armatures.new('Armature')
    arm_ob = bpy.data.objects.new('Armature', arm)
    C.scene.objects.link(arm_ob)
else:
    arm = arm_ob.data

# Set to EDIT mode so we can add bones.
C.scene.objects.active = arm_ob
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

# Add the bones
for l in C.scene.objects:
    if l.type != 'EMPTY':
        continue

    bone = arm.edit_bones.new(l.name)
    bone.head = l.location
    bone.tail = bone.head
    bone.tail.z += 0.5

# Go to POSE mode so we can add constraints
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')
for bone in arm_ob.pose.bones:
    clc = bone.constraints.new('COPY_LOCATION')
    clc.target = C.scene.objects[bone.name]

The armature for the subdivided Suzanne below took around a second to create, and consists of 2012 bones:


Where did the left-hand toolbar go? It doesn't matter which mode I'm in (object or edit), or which tab (sculpting, modeling), the left hand toolbar is about 1/8th the size it should be, and none of the tools I need to manipulate the objects are there. I'm new to Blender, so I have no idea what I've done wrong. I just want to sculpt/smooth out the cushions on my mesh.

Thanks in advance for your help.

You changed to Object or Edit mode as you said, the combobox(button) where you can change to Object or Edit mode also offers the option for Sculpting Mode.

While the option to change to Sculpting mode is only available if an object that can be sculpted on is selected,(no camera, light, empty, etc..) that is to say generally only mesh objects can be sculpted on.

Here a little video showing the change to Sculpt mode:

Happy Blending.


How can i flip the Y axis of a normal map in the Blender Render texture tab? I have flipped the Y axis of a normal map to make it compatible with Unreal 4 but when i want to see how it looks in the Blender Render viewport the lighting is inverted. Is there an option to flip it in the viewport?

Invert the Y/green channel with RGB Curves


Keep all Animations Nodes instances in one layer I'm making a simple animation with AN but for compositing reasons I need to keep all instances of an object in the layer 1 and the rest of my objects in layer 2.

The answer is pretty simple, create a loop and add a Object list for Iterator and connect your object list from the Object Transform Output or whatever list you are using to the iteration, and use the Add > Object > Layer Visibility Output node and connect your Object output to it. and use the Type of "Single" and the number of your layer in the Layer Index, and if you want to keep it on several layers use the Multiple Type and select your desired layers.
Remember that layers have the index equal to the layer number minus one, so, they go from 0 to 19.
Illustrative image:


A question about color Please consider this image:

The color in the top swatch, labeled "original color" is made from an image I downloaded from the web. I cut out a bit of a colored area that I found appropriate, scaled the image to a size of 1 x 2 pixels, to average out the graininess of the image, then scaled it back up to get an average hue. According to the color picker tool in GIMP, the hex value for this color is 485938, but in the image it is actually 445735. The color in the second swatch is what I obtained when I set this as the foreground color in GIMP, and according to the GIMP color picker tool, the second swatch is, in fact, 485938. The color in the third swatch, labeled "Blender representation", is what showed in the diffuse panel of the Material Properties editor when I entered the same hex value as a hex value in the Blender Color chooser; however it displayed in the diffuse panel as 51a83f. The green color in the fourth swatch is the result when this diffuse color was applied to a series of objects, and rendered using Blender Internal; the color from the render is 2a5c20.

How do I get the bottom swatch to match one of the top two?

Timaroberts solution will not work because RGB encoded data is relative. That is, for every RGB colour space, the hex values will be different and therefore, without knowing what colour space a hex value is relative to, all degrees of accuracy including floating point representations will be wrong. Never, ever let someone tell you that using a different numerical representation such as hexadecimal or floating point values with many digits of accuracy will solve your colour confusion. No such approach can, and is rooted in misinformation.

This is a simple question to a long and winding path down colour, pixels, and management thereof.

There is also typically no "Blender Representation" but rather different views on the reference data. In this particular instance, the colours in the reference space are scene linear, and the viewport and UI elements may or may not be linearized values depending. There can also be a discrepancy with how OpenGL approximately renders a face versus the actual render.

You are also confusing a display referred imaging application (GIMP) to an application that uses an internally scene referred model (Blender Cycles) which will cause no end of fits for your poor brain.

TL;DR How a colour is stored / encoded as an RGB triplet has different forms and reasons. Within Blender, there are many, many different and diverging views of this reference data which may not align with each other or one's (seemingly reasonable) expectations.

Some answers that might help to illuminate the complex issues at hand:

Colour shift when viewing render outside of blender
When to use sRGB and when not to?


Armature Flip Name does not really work (Blender 2.79) I duplicated the bone then flip name, but it did not really work.
(Like the attached image below.)

The name of the bone was legUp.L.
After duplicating, the new bone's name was legUp.L.001.
Then I flipped name, and it became legUp.R.001.

Why didn't it remove .001?

Blender version:2.79

I notice that flipping names is working different now in 2.79 version.

After some testintgs now I see that it only works using  W  and selecting Symetrize. This really duplicate mirrored and flip the names.

See the image below:


Main mesh hides other objects My main mesh hides everything around it. For example, i cant see my character's eye in the eye socket nor the lashes above it . But when i render the meshes they are all there. Also, i cant see the bones in the mesh even when the x-ray is enabled. How can i solve this?

sounds like the meshes that you are looking for are probably hidden (since you cant view them in the viewport (object mode) but they appear in the renderer).

Check your outliner and get a closer look on the "visibility" button if it is turned on, the camera button (next to it) it is also a toggle responsible for the visibility of an object when the scenes is being rendered.

Also be ensured that the object is in the desired layer and this layer is visible.

A last option is that you may have changed the layers and the visibility
 in Render Layers tab. So you may need to take a look over there too.


cloth simulation messes up I make a character with 2 skirts.  The skirts has cloth simulation on.  When I make the character spin around, the inner skirt is fine, but the outer skirt collapses and get stuck on itself.  Please see the picture.
What are the possible causes?
Any possible way to fix this?

Thank you,

Whenever that's happened to me it's usually because there is an outdated bake on that mesh. Delete the bake and then Bake All Dynamics.


Particles Hair - Size params I study particles hair. And I can not see how the size param affects at particles. When I change it all stay the same.
Can you say or show me how does it affect?

Need to go these steps:

Set Particle Properties > Render > Render As : Object
Set object.
Play with controls.

I found the answer here.


Is there an easy way to swap a rigged character for an updated one? I have a character that's in a scene and I didn't like how he was weight painted and some anatomy needed to be tweaked, now it looks better than before. But I edited the model from its own file where it's just the character and not from the scene he is in. I was thinking there must be a way to update the old model to take over with the new version, considering it's not unusual that when there's a collaboration effort there's a need to update an asset.

Is there something for that kind of situation in Blender?

Manually, it ends up being a real challenge, copy, paste, parent, unparent, unbind, bind. I'm still trying to get it done, so far Blender crashing, not getting something done in the right order having to start over. Parts moving when unbinded as it was moved when binded. Now the fingers aren't bending as the modifiers are in the wrong order. Still at it. It's a real headache.

Okay, say you have a main character file complete with rig and extra shapes for your bones. Save your rig and character as a group, and then close.

Open your Scene file, and choose Link from the File menu. Browse to your character file, go to Groups, and choose the group that represents your character.
Once in scene, while selected, choose Object>Make Proxy and then choose your rig name from the menu. This will allow you to then use your rig in pose mode and key frame the bones, while protecting your character mesh from changes. Make your changes upstream in your character file and reopening your scene file will pull the changes in.


How can I tilt a mesh like this? Consider:

How can I tilt a mesh like that? I have the mesh tilted, but I need to restore it so that it can be straight.

You can enable the Snap > Vertex option:

Then select the top 2 vertices, move along the axis (here X), keep pressing Ctrl to snap and snap to the bottom vertex:


Restrict viewport selection of a bone Is there a faster way to restrict viewport selection of a bone than navigating through armature hierarchy in the outliner and pressing the corresponding button next to the bone? It can be a bit cumbersome to go through the entire hierarchy if you have a lot of bones.

You can use bone layers and bone groups, to speed up navigation, selection and visibility (in pose mode).


Difference between compiled version and downloaded? Is there any advantages If I compile blender from source by default then download it. Faster build? Faster render? More stable? Etc?
Thx =)

The main reasons to build blender yourself are:

If you build from the latest sources, you get the very newest features. You'll also get the latest bugs, so save early and often, and keep the bug tracker open ;)
You can apply patches such as this one, and get features which aren't even in the official sources yet.

There are also some hardware-specific optimization tricks you can do depending on your compiler, but these can potentially make blender unstable. Also see the wiki.


Bevel Operation/Shading Problem Im making a guitar slanted guitar cabinet. Im having some weird bevel issues shown below.

The corners have a weird shading issue. This is whats happening at the corners:

I can kind of fix it by unchecking "loop slide" in the bevel operator, and i get this result:
It fixes most of the problem, but there is still a corner with weird shading.
My normals are all blue, no extra verts and scale is 1.000. No clue whats going on.
I added a basic cube and added an edge loop in the middle, then pulled one side back and still got the same thing:

Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks!
EDIT: i turned the bevel shape to 0.900 and the 2 effected corners are exaggerated. Why are just those 2 corners not beveling right?

I have recalculated the normals too and they are fine. I have started from scratch and then i get different results as to which corners have the "bad" shading

I can't point out the exact issue without the blend file. My best guess is that you should check the harden normals checkbox in the bevel or use the weighted normals modifier.


How to make object move but stay within another object? I want to make my donut drop, and at the center of donut there is a cylinder. I want to make it so when the donuts drop, they don't go off from the cylinder.

As you can see from the images, the donut is not in the same position on the cylinder anymore.

this is what you need to setup:

all the involved objects (plane, cylinder, toruses) must have rigid body enabled (to calculate gravity and collisions)
plane and cylinder must be passive, toruses active (they're moving)
all involved objects MUST have all transform applied

Plus, all objects (except plane perhaps) need to have the 'mesh' shape type setting, as shown in the picture. When you need to precisely evaluate complex geometries this is the best setting.
example:

then play the animation to get this:


Changing HDRI exposure within Blender I've been looking for some HDRs to use in an animation, and I realize that they're going to be exceptionally expensive.

This is why I'm wondering if I can change the exposure of an HDR from within Blender to get everything I can out of one HDR. The purpose of an HDR is to have a High Dynamic Range. This means I should be able to scale the exposure of the HDR and still have varying depths of light.

Here's a comparison between a jpeg(left) and an HDR(right) as an example of how HDRs have broader depths of light when the exposure is changed:

(Source: How to make your own HDRI)

Of course, this should already make sense if you're familiar with HDRs.

So I want to be able to use an HDR at multiple exposures. Is there any way I can change the exposure in Blender? I know there are some other programs that do that, but Blender should be able to do it.

Right now, I use the background node's "Strength" parameter to change the brightness, but that doesn't make the lighting of the objects in the scene darker or lighter respectively.

Given the answer of troy_s in this question here How to measure the dynamic range of an HDRi?, he states in the first paragraph that:

  An F-Stop is a halving and doubling of light, relative to the exposure
  referenced.

Now from my own trial and error testing in Blender, that's exactly what happens when you change the exposure value in Blenders color management settings:

If we now apply this thinking as a formula, for each color pixel this would mean to do the following for each color channel:

Pixel(x) = x * math.pow(exposure_value, 2)

Transferred into nodes, this could look like the following Node setup:

In a world node tree, you would now have something as easy as this if you transfer it into a node group:

You can find this node group, and also a similar one for the compositor to doodle around, in this Blend:


How to convert physics animation to a curve/path? Ok. I have a ball at the very top and a long curved tube leading down and I want to turn the ball's physics animation into a follow path animation. In order to do that I need to somehow make a path out of all location points in which the ball was during its fall down the tube. But I don't know how to do it...

One method of converting a motion into a path is detailed in How to add trailing light effect to finger tips - by adding a particle system to drop particles as a vertex moves through space and then running a script to convert that particle system into a path. I also created an add-on as part of this answer to make the process easier.

The add-on can be downloaded from here : Particles To Path add-on

Once you've installed and enabled the add-on and you have your trail of particles (disable gravity and interactions from your particle system and have it emit a single particle for each frame of the animation) you simply execute the Particles to Path function (press Space (Blender 2.79) or F3 (Blender 2.8) and start typing the name) :

This should then generate the required path which you can use for your Follow Path constraint.


How to get rid of fireflies coming from apartment windows? I've tried different settings of clamping, sun/no sun, lamps, emission, higher samples, etc... but I can't seem to get rid of them. Not keen on blur nodes or similar since I need to see the inside of the apartments > people, furniture, etc...
And I also need reflections from the windows so I don't want a hole instead of windows.

Download Blend file here: http://we.tl/2oPC7y4zdc

And please don't mark this as a duplicate cus I've tried finding answers here on blender.exchange, Blender Guru and YT without any luck as you can see.

Note: I'm a total noob. Just started Blender about a month ago.

See ref img >

I'm not sure that what you describe are fireflies but noise and pixelation resulting from rendering at a low resolution with low samples.

This is a render form your original file
just 100 samples at 50% resolution.
:

EDIT

Changing the glass of the windows to a node tree like this you can have transparency and reflections (look at the added emitter plane on the left).

Rendering with more samples at a higher resolution will give you a cleaner image.

For a deeper explanation on the nodes used please read this answer

Note the change with more samples and a higher resolution:

(click on the image to enlarge)


FIX(connect/merge) loose vertices after an edge split modifier I'm modeling a very high poly complex weapon, and I've applied an edge split modifier on it, so now most of my vertices are loose and I can't manually add bevel. I'm sure there should be another way apart from manually merging every. single. vertex.

Perhaps I can reverse the effect of the modifier somehow or at least there should be a way of merging edges.

go into edit mode
select everything by pressing A
press W
select remove doubles

Also, don't use the edge split modifier. If you want to smooth your mesh, i suggest using "auto smooth".


Texture is pinching and artifacting on the rounded edges of a mesh I have been designing easter eggs to be 3D printed with pattern textures on them and I have stumbled across an issue when adding a texture to the egg model. As you can see there are a lot of artifacts and pinching on the rounded corners. Is this due to the mesh not being uniform with quads?
Thank you very much in advance for your assistance.

Intro
Spheres can be generated with multiple approaches. Every approach has its down- and upsides. It depends what you are trying to achieve.

Sphere from Primitive Sphere
The problem here is the vertex on top.
After applying subdivision you will get some interesting topology, looks cool but it's maybe not what you are looking for. I call it the tomato topology.

Sphere from Icosphere
Subdivision can be done while you enter parameters for the icosphere. There will not be a tomato topology. But there is a catch, you can't do loopcuts nor loopselections. Also it can cause problems if you use it with boolean modifier. Short: The triangle faces are causing issues down the line.

Sphere from Cube
With this approach you will be able to have quad topology without tomatos.
Loop selection is also possible.


Following Path Bone Jumps at the end of the path When I select the bone, then Path, then ⎈ Ctrl+P Follow Path the bone goes straight to the end of the path.

I tried Clear origin, parent, offset etc etc but no luck.

Fixed it... I did a parenting from the bone to the mesh with Keep Transform...


Change Transparency Value of an Object in BGE with Keyboard In the Blender Game Engine, I have a cube as a window and have set it's Z Transparency value to .200. I would like to add Keyboard Sensor where when I hit a specific key in-game, G for example, it would change the transparency value of the cube to 1.0, like a solid wall. I would also like this to work in reverse as well, where if I hit G a second time, the transparency value would return back to it's original .200. I'm sure there's a simple solution to this that I am overlooking but any help would be appreciated, thank you!

Transparency animation

Go to first frame (1). Mouse cursor over Material/Transparency/Alpha I. The Alpha field will turn yellow.

go to last frame (21). The Alpha field should be green right now.
enter 1.0

Mouse cursor over Material/Transparency/Alpha I.The Alpha field will turn yellow.

Go back to frame 1 again.

Your material action is prepared. You can play the material action the same way as any other action. Here is one option:

Logic

Add an action actuator

setup start frame (1)
setup end frame (21)
setup action name (MaterialAction)
setup playback mode (Flipper)

Add a property

"opaque"
type: boolean

logic to toggle opaque

Keyboard sensor -> AND -> Property Actuator Toggle "opaque"

logic to play animation

Property Sensor Equal "opaque" True -> AND -> Action Actuator

I hope it helps


Animation not rendering through to the last frame using Eevee I am working on version 2.82a. I created an animation with 4 objects (3 are parented to 1 and that one has a rotation action. There is an "Image as Plane" object as a background that is a motion clip of some clouds that is well over 380 frames long. I completed the shot at 280 frames and rendered that out to PNG frames. Worked great and the AVI video file that I made from it look really good. But here is the problem. The shot was too short so I upped the end frame to 380 frames on both the timeline and the properties panel and then rendered out the PNGs to another folder. When the render got to the 282 it would only render black frames. The shot plays perfect in the Layout window and makes it al the way to the 380th frame. I though that maybe the background video was too short , but that proved to be wrong, I turned Blender off and rebooted but still no frame will render past 281 ? I have 4 lights in the scene, 2 point lights and 2 spot lights. the camera has a move which is basically a zoom out. All action and movement comes to a stop at frame 200 except the two point lights which move to create a sheen effect till the end of the scene. Oh and the background continues to play till the end. Again all of this looks great playing in the Layout Playback. Oh one other thing I have used Eevee only during this process. Hope that someone has had this issue and found a solution thanks for you help in advance.

Sounds to me like you are still rendering the image strip in the sequencer.
you can disable the sequence in the output options under post processing, then it should render the missing frames.


How do I remove all internal edges of a converted font to mesh? I have converted a font to a mesh and I would like to just have the outline.  I need to delete all the internal edges without going through all the pain like the image below.  The red arrow is a manual delete of one edge. I want all the internal edges gone. Is there a quick solution?

You may use Limited Dissolve option. In Edit Mode select the whole mesh (A), then press X-->Limited Dissolve.

You may need to remove some remaining edges manually though.


HDR white background Can i use HDR images, but with background colors? Not transparent.

İ have a scene with a hdr for lights and reflections, but i want background to stay white or other color. İs it possible?

İ found solution by myself, so if anyone else had this question, here you are


Images in the Render Layer nodes of the Compositor disappear Images in the Render Layer nodes of the compositor disappear each time a new layer is rendered. It only keeps the most recent rendered image. The other layer nodes are blank.

I've set up my scenes with layers correctly and the compositor setup is correct with the different layers.
The rendered layers show in the Image Editor.
Compositing is checked in the Post Processing options.
Transparent option is checked.
RGBA is checked for alpha channels.

I've searched for answers but no luck. I've wasted too much time trying to solve this.

OK solved. I was manually rendering each layer and the compositor was only reading the last render, which was whatever layer I had just done. I let the compositor do the work and it handled it.


How to manipulate individual median points in edit mode? Let's say I have some faces on the same plane that are part of a larger object and I only want to scale their individual median points outwards without deforming them. How do I achieve that? I noticed that there is the option "manipulate center points" but unfortunately that only exists in object mode.

From what I can tell from your rather unclear question, what you are looking for is the pivot point menu.
Select individual origins after selecting your faces, then you will be able to scale the faces around their center pivot point.

Like this:

Select Individual Origins

Using the default Median Point method
(scales around the net center of all selected faces)

Using the Individual Origins method
(scales around the individual faces origins)

If this is not what you were looking for, please let me know.


Visual imperfections while rendering with scattering atmosphere I've been experimenting with a photorealistic animation of an Earth-like planet, but I've been having a couple of rendering issues regarding the atmosphere volume material:

Visible red areas on the planet's night side, where it should be black. This is much less noticeable when switching from computing with my GTX 980 to a CPU compute, but still visible at certain angles.
The rendered volume appears to be as if it was rendering with a flat shading, as the edges of the geometry can be seen from the shaidngs of the areas close to the scattering area.

Here is a screnshot of the render result and the atmosphere setup. The planet doesn't have a night lights texture.

I'm clueless what could be the reason why this happens, as I followed the steps from here and from here. My best guess would be that I need to tweak the rendering settings a bit since it seems like the red areas are scattering miscalculations.

The problem with the 'red' scattering is due to how you are using the Volume Scatter shader - this should not generally be used on its own and should typically be combined with a Volume Absorption shader, otherwise it will producce unrealistic effects.

The 'scatter' node produces the result of the scattering in a volume whereas the 'absorption' node attenuates the light as it passes through to emulate losses due to actual absorption and also the losses due to scattering. Without combining the absorption with a Density at least as high as that used for scattering you will be breaking the usual laws of conservation of energy - effectively generating light from nowhere.

You should combine the absorption as follows :

The example is produced by two spheres - one with a diffuse shader and another (slightly larger) sphere with the volumetric material shown. Note that the density is much smaller than in your example - and ensure the volumetric 'Step' size is small enough to produce enough steps through the volume of your atmosphere.

See also https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/92327/29586 for a more realistic atmosphere (one that falls off realistically in relation to altitude).


Object Properties Viewport Display Color Question Under what circumstances is the color in the Object Properties Viewport Display panel used?  I know I can use materials to get color to show up, but I can't figure out what conditions this color value is used in (as witnessed in this screen snap).  Googling shows that it is somehow connected to an 'ObColor' setting, but I can't find that in 2.82.

Thanks.
David

I will iterate on the other answer and add that you can also use this color to add variation to different objects which use the same material, not only in workbench but also in Cycles and Eevee.
In this example I used the same Material on all three spheres. I just tweaked the Viewport Display Color of each object. This a very simple example but it can have multiple applications.

In this example I used the values of the color to add a roughness variation between the objects.

Actually, you can use the three channels of the color (Red, Green, Blue) to add even more variation ! This is all the same material but the Red channel drives the hue, the green channel drives the roughness and the blue channel drives the transmission.

This behavior can be key-framed. This can be used to animate materials per-object easily. Both cubes have the same material.

How-to animate it :


Checker-like Glitch on Cycles and Snow-like Glitch on Eevee Render I'm on blender 2.83.5  Today I tried to render my model here, it seems okay with no problems in render viewport

And then weird glitch appears as soon as I press F12 .. I did try to render on both render engines

Cycles Render - Checker like texture

EEVEE render - Snow like texture
So what is the cause of this glitch and how do I solve it? Thank you!
EDIT: the texture is painted manually on Texture Paint workspace. I've already unwrapped all the mesh

Solved by Jachym Michal, there's a backup collection hidden from viewport, but it was set to appear on render


How to enable animation of linked rigged object I made a simple stickman with joints. Works fine. Saved it as stickman.blend. I grouped CTRL+G the stickman+armature.

I made a new scene.blend file. I linked the group from the stickman with ctrl+alt+O into the scene. It is visible with all joints. So far so good. But I can not get it into Posemode. I think this is because it is "hard" linked to the stickman.blend. So I need a tip, how I can animate this in a new scene.

I don't want to simply append it to the scene, because when I make changes to the stickman they should also appear in my scene.

So for such a low level question. But after google/youtube I was out of an idea.

thanks for your help in advance

you have to use the Proxy Objects :

A proxy is a legal stand-in or substitute for the real thing. In Blender, when you make a linked copy (described above), you cannot edit the object; all you have is a link to it. You cannot add to it or change it, because its source is in another file that is not open.   Blender Manual

to convert the linked object into a Proxy Object you select the linked Object and hit Ctrl+Alt+P now you can animate the proxy object and it will get updated to the linked when you reload the file.


Is there a way to export an object without all of it's inside geometry? For example: If I had a cube and hidden inside it's bounds there was another, smaller cube and I joined/merged/combined them into one object, is there any specific action I can do to make the resulting object just the outer cube without any unnecessary inside clutter e.g. the smaller cube?

Of course we're not talking about something as simple as two cubes here, it's a model of an AK-47 assault rifle and I used a lot of parts to make it and there is a lot of said clutter. Removing all unwanted clutter manually is not something I'd like to do or even attempt.

So is this something Blender can do or do I need to look to mods or another piece of software?

Thank you in advance for answering.

I want to say the answer is no - for what you're describing.

Maybe there's a script out there that does it for you but it sounds like something you might have to write up yourself. ?

In my experience, I would typically hand-delete them, separate them.

It also sounds like a lot of work to fix and might need to look into another workflow method...

Good luck!


Unable to select bones during weight paint of one specific object I have been having an issue where I want to include a separate object (eye) and weight paint it to the same bone as the head. When I select the armature, and the eye object, then switch to weight paint, it will not allow me to ctrl click any bone. I am only able to have the entire armature selected and then paint the eye. Every other object on this model does not do this. What is missing from the eye that that the other objects have; why can I not select any bones to weight paint this object?

Because you probably haven't parented the object to the armature, for example choose to parent with the Armature Deform option, then select the armature, shift select the object, switch to Pose mode, select a bone and paint


Inverted detail size value There is something wrong with the detail size (sculpt mode) in my file. At first it worked properly, but i don't know why it started doing this:

It seems like, the detail size value is inverted, but i don't know why. With 20px resolution it makes much more polygons than with 3px, and it should be just the opposite. I don't know if i pressed any buttons by error or if it's a program bug.

I found a solution, that is copying all the stuff and paste them in a new file, and now it works ok again. But i really would like to know the reason for this problem, and if someone could tell me another solution, 'cause now i have to set again the background images in the correct place.

Thanks a lot

You have selected Constant Detail method. Look at tooltips, it has different meaning of resolution/detal size value


Run EnumProperty's update on animation keyframe change I have a script that a adds a dropdown menu that I want to later animate the values of. In the update of the EnumProperty I update some visibility filters depending on the item selected which works fine when flipping through the items in the drop down, but when I animate the value and it changes that way the "update" doesn't get called. Can I make it so it does?
Here is an example script
import bpy

class MYOBJECT_PT_Panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "My Object"
    bl_idname = "MYOBJECT_PT_Panel"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = "My Object"

    def draw(self, context):
        self.layout.prop(context.scene, "MyObjectList")

def print_to_console(scene, context):
    print(context.scene.MyObjectList)

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.MyObjectList = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="My Objects",
        items=[(x, x, "") for x in ["A", "B", "C"]],
        update=print_to_console
    )

    bpy.utils.register_class(MYOBJECT_PT_Panel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MYOBJECT_PT_Panel)
    del bpy.types.Scene.MyObjectList

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Then go into animate and key the property and scrub the frames, you can see that the print state ment doesn't get called.

I achieved a similar functionality by adding a handler to bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre. This will make the print_to_console print every frame I can then check "is the gui displaying the same value as the previous frame", and if not it is animated on this frame.


Fastest way to switch to and from viewports? Is there a faster way to swap viewports than to click the "current editor type for this area" button and find the thing we want and click it....?

I waste way too much time trying to find the thing I need, its not intuitive to me even after practice. I wanna quickswap the properties tab to the graph editor and back again....and to the uv editor and the node editor etc...

There hotkeys somewhere or a good addon?

Yes first at the top menu where it says default click the plus and name it graph editor now bottom left of blender change window to graph editor  Hold CNTRL on Keyboard and use left or right arrow keys to cycle threw work spaces
repeat this step adding all to the list. when your done setting up click file and save as  MyDefault.blend to desktop you will now have a new blender icon on desktop named MyDefault simply dubble click it and use as your default start up now every time you start up blender simply press CNTRL and arrow keys to switch work spaces.


How do I make a bone active using Python? How to make a selected bone active in POSE or EDIT mode? Thanks!

Understood how in edit mode.
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
arm = bpy.data.armatures['Armature']
bone = arm.edit_bones["Bone"]
arm.edit_bones.active = bone


my sculpting tool is kind a hard to use, anybody knows how to change? So, I am new to blender, actually to 3d softwares and started learning on blender, I was watching a "blender guru" video, was working on modeling mode, object mode etc and when reaches sculpting, in the video he does like the easiest thing on earth, but in my pc I need to use the stylus like 30x in the same area to make a bit diferrence.

Didn't found any solution online.
Anyone know how to help?

(Sorry bad english)

I didn't understand your question. Are you looking for better affordable options than stylus? I recommend you the wacom intuos pen & touch art. But unless you just want to sculpt in blender or to digital painting you will rarely need it I guess. I have the small model and I can't complain.

watch these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW79bRD6aj0&t=57s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fEFbzKz8-g


How to make single object blur Will i have made some render below is my image.

I want just my dice to be blur. Is it possible only my dice to be blur and have the rest of the scene to be as it is. I have searched for the video and tried in node tree defocus but fail to get the effect.

 What is lacking in my node so that i can just blur the dice. Any suggestion or help . Thanks

I cant see my dise

You can do compositing to selective parts of a scene by using render layers. In your case you need two render layers. The first one should contain your everything except the dice. The second one should contain your dice and have "sky" disabled. The red cube is in the normal render layer and the blue cube is in the blur render layer. Here is an example compositor setup to get the effect you want.


Any help removing a stubborn tri? I've got one stubborn tri on my mesh that wont go away, and was wondering if anyone could cast a quick look at it to see if its possible to make it into a quad?

I want to unwrap the mesh and then texture it in substance painter so I don't want any pinching. I'm still a newbie so forgive me.  I've spent probably too much time on this tri alone (haha) and whilst the Removing triangles and ngons is helpful, it doesn't help me massively.  I've tried with the knife but it ends up solving the problem but creating a new tri or ngon elsewhere.  I've tried loop cuts on either side and up and down but with same result.

Sorry if this is a repeat question

Blend file attached


bge.logic.getCurrentController not available in 2.71? I'm trying to script some things in version 2.71.

To get the controller of a script, I have tried bge.logic.getCurrentController , but bge apparently is not present (unable to import). I've also tried bpy.ops.logic.getCurrentController , but logic does not have getCurrentController

Is there something obvious I'm missing? or what new command replaced this functionality?
This roadblock is wasting a lot of time that could have been very productive.

Any help is appreciated

My understanding is that you must run your python script from a controller brick. The import will not work from the TEXT view. For example, the following simple script prints hello in the system console (Window->Toggle System Console) when the h key is pressed.

Clicking on the 'Run Script' button in the TEXT view will not work.


Assign automatic weights from bones does not work at all for me I'm trying to make the tutorial called "Eye Rigging in Blender" found here :

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

and it get a different result from the one reached on the tutorial. From minute 15.06 to minute 17.13 the author press W and then assign automatic weights from bonesand magically for every bone has been assigned a small colored area. But this does not happen to me,even if I have repeated a lot of times what he did. Can you explain to me why ? I add a small recorded video to show you what I do so you can understand where I'm wrong :

video : what I do

To solve bone heat weight failed issues:

1) remove doubles

2) disable bone deformation for bones that wont be deforming the mesh directly

3) apply location/rotation/scale for the armature and the mesh

4) apply the automatic weights


How can i create borders to an entire circuit/track? i'm making a highway based on a reference, and right now is working as a plane, but i need to make 'borders' for it, how can i make them? if i select all the edges, i can extrude them, but they still appear as planes, after that, how can i give them volume? or is there any other way to do it?

This is the highway i'm making, is a solid mesh, based on curves, but is still a plane (as you can see on the image of the right)

And this is what i want to achieve, those 'borders/blocks' around the edges of the highway itself.

Thanks in regards.

Select all the edges, extrude them and then you will have flat faces as borders. Select those faces (with face select mode) and extrude them upwards. You can extrude faces just like you can extrude vertices and lines.


Problems going back to original view? can't go back to the original object view. Got stuck with this image and can't go back.
Thanks

You've stacked and collapsed several 3d windows. Press on the tiny "+" on the bottom right of your 3D window to get back the horizontal menu bar


Partially semi-transparent texture in Cycles I have an image texture with a couple of parts that I'd like them to be semi-transparent. How can I achieve this? I know how to to make the whole texture semi-transparent and control it's transparency, but how can this be done for only a few parts of the texture?
In photoshop these parts aren't semi-transparent but I could make them, if it's necessary.

The general way you want to do this is by using the mix shader node to mix between your "solid" shader output (diffuse, glossy, principled, any shader you want) and a transparent chader node. By plugging the alpha channel of your image into the "Fac" setting of the mix shader node, the alpha channel of the image lets you control how transparent the result is. The alpha channel is what changes when you make parts of your image transparent in Photoshop. You can also use nodes like the noise or Musgrave texture nodes to procedurally generate transparent and opaque portions of the object. Just plug the factor output to the factor input on the mix shader node.

See this post for an example.


Animation keyframes visible only in NLA editor Not much to say about that. I've seen many similar questions but didn't solve the problem. Animation plays fine. It was visible earlier and I didn't do practically anything except switching views and trying some menu options.

You have "pushed down" the action and created a strip. Select the strip and press the Tab key to tweak it. As the manual says:

  The contents of Action strips can be edited, but you must be in Tweak Mode to do so. The keyframes of the action can then be edited in the Dope Sheet.

EDIT Also see this question: Can action strip converted back to keyframes?


Shadow options are not showing I am using the latest blender version but as i was trying to change the softness and exponent of my lamp shadows there was no option. It only showed the clip start and Bias. Any way i can bring these options back

I think the youtube video you are referring to, in commenting another answer, was realized using an older version of blender. I tried an old 2.80 I had installed, and it shows the options you're missing (they're missing in my 2.82a, too):

Those options are gone in 2.81. This release log (related to python API usage of those options) points this out and cites a developer change in code_ https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Python_API#EEVEE

Anyway it is always possible to download any previous version as a zip package, and just extract them in a folder and run them launching the blender file. You find all released versions here: https://download.blender.org/release/


how change background color in the diffuse color mode? Good day. I only need to display model color in viewport. However, when i enter into display only model color, my background becomes black. I tried to change that color in theme settings, also in editor type, but i have not found that function. Can you help me find where can i change that background color?

This pass is technical, used for checking renders, not for working. If you look up for texture editing with no shading affecting, you should try Flat shading with texture display:


Selecting the Texture in Texture Paint Mode I added a shader and use 3 image textures which are combined with mix RGB. How to choose the texture I want to paint in the 3d viewport when doing texture painting?

You are needing the Texture Slots tab in the Properties panel in the tool properties. Select the appropriate slot to determine where your paint will go. Here I am using two image textures set to box mapping and one black generated image as a UV mapped stencil between them.

I used an RGB Color Mix node to combine the two textures with Multiply mix mode, so that the rust adds to the original texture instead of replacing it.


Is it possible to play the rendered animation backwards continuously via the built in player? I have recently been using the various commands for the Ctrl+F11 (Play Rendered Animation) window, and it's great. However I have noticed that pressing the → key will keep cycling through the rendered frames, and that pressing the ← key (reverse) will result in the playback stopping at the first frame (0001).

Is it possible to change this behavior? And if not, does anybody know why it is set up this way?

When playing in build-in player, you can hold LMB then drag towards left / right for manual scrubbing. Some other commonly-used features:

P to toggle ping-pong mode.
0 to toggle loop.
Enter to start playing when paused.


I want to make a projector show an image displayed on surfaces I would like to make a scene where a movie projector displays an image onto a wall but the image will get projected onto obstacles or even characters that pass between the projection wall and the projector. I have no clue how to accomplish this effect in Blender or even someway to do it in post.

I don't even know if it is possible.

In your scene, add a lamp as the type spot.

With the lamp object selected go into the texture panel, under the lamp texture, add a texture with your image. You probably want to set Extension to Extend. Set the coordinates to object and input the lamp as the mapping object.

You can also set the spotlights shape to a square by ticking Sqare in the lamps settings.

Even overlapping projector lamps work.


Why is my Material Nodes -based blender internal texture not translucent like the other one? How do I work around it? I'm trying to animate a neon sign that blinks, but I'm having trouble with my materials.  Here's the .blend file

I am using the Blender Internal renderer.  In order to have a neon sign that blinks I created a material that uses nodes to alternate between two simple materials.

The "Fac" property on the mixes is animated using constant interpolation so it toggles between 0 and 1.

One of the materials (neon phase 2) works just fine.  Unfortunately, neon phase 1 (which is the "opposite") does not.  When it is off it is not translucent like glass.  It is a shiny opaque grey.

What is the critical difference between the two node-based materials that makes one work correctly, and the other be opaque all the time?  How do I fix it or work around it?

Thanks to Vailreth from IRC.  He noticed that the Transparency under Render Pipeline Options (which started out minimized) was not checked on the problem material:


Strange artifacts when animating rig When rendering in Cycles these will pop up every so often on this rig. In Eevee it looks fine. I went through the vertex groups to make sure there's no doubling up or anything like that. Has anyone encountered something like this when animating their rigs?

OK, so I figured it out. Apparently autosmooth in rigs doesn't work very well when animated with motion blur. Turned off motion blur and fixed my geometry w/  holding loops and everything is fine.