Toggle Subdivision modifier and smooth shading with one key Is there a hotkey, script or addon to globally toggle smooth shading and subD?

When modeling with subD's I like having the shading faceted, but obviously want to see it smooth when I turn the subD modifier on. I figured out how to use the Simplify to turn subD on/off on all meshes with one button, but this doesn't change the smoothing (1st picture). So I have to go into every object, select all and adjust smooth shading whenever I want to preview my model.

Is there a way to toggle [smooth shading off/subD off] and [smooth shading on/subD on] with one hotkey? In Modo this happens when pressing Tab (2nd picture).

You can get it using Python.

I used a template "Operator Simple". And I added subsurf and smooth to an object to know the names of this functions:

Next, I replaced default main() function by this functions:

def main(context):
        bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level=2)
        bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth()

It gives subsurf and smoth, but never gets back.

To create a toggle, you need to know about programming. I writed this code:

def main(context):
    test=True
    for md in context.active_object.modifiers:
        if(md.type=='SUBSURF'):
            if(md.levels==2):
                test=False;
                break
    if(test):
        bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level=2)
        bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth()
    else:
        bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level=0)
        bpy.ops.object.shade_flat()

It checks for subsurf level 2, and if finds, removes Subsurf and smooth.

Finally, I can use this function by finding it in spacebar menu:

Also, you can add sourtcut:

UPD: For making it works in Edit Mode

You noted what script doesn't work in Edit Mode. It is because shade_smooth() doesn't work in Edit Mode. So lets try to enter Object Mode, do subsurf and smooth operations and return to edit mode.

Get the current mode, and save:

if(context.mode!='OBJECT'):
    returnto=context.mode

Return to edit mode:

if(returnto):
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode=returnto)

Full code

(you can save it as .py file and install it like add-on):

bl_info = {
    "name": "Subsmoth",
    "author": "Subsmoth",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Toggle Subsurf and smooth",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View",
    }
import bpy

def main(context):
    test=True
    for md in context.active_object.modifiers:
        if(md.type=='SUBSURF'):
            if(md.levels==2):
                test=False;
                break
    returnto=False
    if(context.mode!='OBJECT'):
        returnto=context.mode
        if(returnto=='EDIT_MESH'):
            returnto='EDIT'
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    if(returnto=='EDIT' or returnto==False):
        if(test):
            bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level=2)
            bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth()
        else:
            bpy.ops.object.subdivision_set(level=0)
            bpy.ops.object.shade_flat()
    if(returnto):
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode=returnto)

class SubsmothOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.subsmooth"
    bl_label = "Subsmoth"

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

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Change material on part of object with other overlapping object I learned this trick sometime ago but I have forgot.  So what I want to do is add different material to an object using other object. For example I have two cubes. One has red material and one has blue material. By overlapping those cubes I'd want the material on the overlapping part of the red cube to turn into blue.

Sample image below. Actual use would be far more complex case with no matching edges to manually set materials

You can create 2 overlapping cubes. Create somewhere a third cube that will be the boolean object and make it invisible in render. Give your 2 first cubes 2 different colors, give them both a Boolean modifier with the third cube as Object. For the orange cube, choose the Difference option, for the blue one, choose Intersect.


Is there a way to copy UVs between maps on the same object, or merge maps into one? I just finished UV mapping a large object that was split into many parts, some parts were new and made in Blender, but the original object was built in another package, which uses a different default UV map name, so that when I joined the new objects to it, I ended up with multiple UV maps on the same object when I just wanted one.

Although I fixed my problem by undoing the merge and renaming the UV maps to all be the same before merging again, I would like to know if there is a correct way to copy UV data between different maps on the same object, or of merging multiple UV maps into one.

You can copy UV maps from one object to another (provided their vertex count and index match) by selecting one object, then shift+select the second.

I press spacebar - type in "UV" and select "Transfer UV Maps".

I'm not sure but I think the order is copy from object 1 to active object. You may have to experiment to find out the correct selection order (use UNDO). It will copy to the currently selected UV map in the "Object data" tab.


How to change the amount of zoom from the scroll wheel while viewing through the camera? One click of the scroll wheel zooms too much IMO. Is there a way I can get more precision zooming?

CtrlMiddle Click is for precise zooming.


How to create an animating Plasma ball in Blender? https://vimeo.com/69655239

I want to create this animating plasma effect in blender. If anyone knows how to make this please try to explain the steps. Thank you.

Using some modifiers (even if first though was about Animation Nodes):

The base mesh is a tube, larger at the two points connected to the inner and outer spheres. This mesh has its origin at the center of the sphere.
It is also parented to an empty, which is at the center too.
The empty rotation is animated.

This object has several modifiers:

One array which origin is an animated empty, so that we have several instances of this mesh around the center.

A second one with same principle to vary the rotations

.
Then two displacements, one for the main part (the tube), one for the part attached to the outer sphere.
These displacements use another empty as coordinates objects. When this empty is animated, it makes variations in the displacement.

The displacement itself is based on a distorted noise.
Finally, a shrinkwrap to make sure the extremity stays on the sphere surface and a subdivision.


HOw to make sonic shader in cycles? I am trying to make a shader like the blue shader below but can’t get it right. I have tried using a mix shader with two diffuse and a fresnel but it ends up way off from the what I’m trying to achieve.

What do you think of this picture?
I tryed to make it. just you need little more dark blue.


There something wrong with my trophy I use UV Sphere to make thìs trophy, and I choose the smooth, in Blender, it is quite good and smooth.

But when I export to .model file, and import to the Pes 2017 game, it shows the edges.

So there could be few reasons for that. The first that the game engine does not smooth shade the same way as blender viewport engine. You can try of course making it high poly, or at least minimalizing the angles between faces. Also I would check if material/texture is applied correctly and faces are not overlapping - that can cause the artefacts at angles as well.


Help with baking results in cycles I am a software engineer struggling with getting good in Blender. Currently I am trying to get better at baking, specifically in cycles. These are some screen shots from inside unreal engine. I have re-UVunwrapped this model a few times trying to get better results, and played with smoothing and seams. I also tried to correct some smoothing issues, things that look like glares across the model. I am wondering if these poor results are a result of UVunwrapping, Baking, the seams, or smoothing. Here is a link to the Blend file https://1drv.ms/u/s!Alrv4w-MciWDkY16VX5XIhvgJYUrpw

Thanks in advance

You are baking the normals form a high poly model, but it's not totally aligned with the low poly model.

You can see how the dark areas produced by the normals are where the high and the low poly models don't match.


Animation Mixamo's FBX in blender I'm trying import the character and animation from mixamo in blender.
Default pose my character is A-pose, but Mixamo's animation is T-pose.
Hand's bone is error when run animation.
Here's what happen when i try to run animation.

I had this problem and managed to fix it by doing this:

First you need to scale your model correctly to the size you want in Blender. Then while in object mode press A to select all and then press Ctrl+A and apply scale, rotation and location.
After that, export your model as an .obj.

Import it into Mixamo, animate it and then export it as a .dae.

Now, import the .dae into blender. Re-scale the model to what you had it as before and then it should work.


Viewport render is correct while rendering scene shows materials as white For some reason when I use the active render in my viewport everything is shown as it should. Then when I actually render the image some of my objects are shown as completely white.

I can't for the life of me figure out why. One of my objects has a texture as well that works perfectly in the viewport render but when I render the scene not only does it show up as only white but it shows no texture whatsoever.

Please help. I've searched through many forums and have not been able to run across anyone else having this problem.

Here is a sample:

One of the objects was hidden in the view but visible in the render  , you have to uncheck the camera icon in the outliner :

the render layer didn't include all scene layers, excluding some objects from the final render, for this you have to check these layers in the render-layers tab :


Having problems baking normal texture for large object I'm using Blender 2.93 nightly on Windows, and I have a kind of large model (500k triangles) that I'm trying to bake to a low-poly replica. I created the low-poly cylinder, positioned it on the model (just a bit larger), selected the model and the low-poly cylinder last, with the normals image already selected, and hit Bake. Blender sits at 0% for a while (about a minute?) and then with no errors, the bake status note vanishes. And the normals image is still all black (unmodified).
If I look at my task manager, I can see it's using 50% of my CPUs (16-core) and 30+ GB of my 32GB RAM, so it's hammering it pretty hard.
I tried both CPU and GPU bakes, same result. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Are there hidden places I should look for errors?

Turns out it was just running out of RAM (and it's a lot more than 500k tris, maybe 50m tris). I decimated the whole thing, which took a long time, and then I could bake -- just barely.


Hair is not visible in Object mode (Cycles and Eevee) - Blender 2.82b On Windows 10 in object mode strands have become invisible, but still renderable in render mode. On my working iMac everything is fine with the same blender file

In particle edit mode children hairs are not visible too.

Managed to fix it by switching to Eevee and selecting Strand instead of Strip, and switching back to Cycles


Snap to face didn't help as expected I did the following:

Imported my character from make human.
Added a plane. Moved it to center.
Split it in half. Removed the left half.
Enabled mirror.
In view display enabled in front.
Enabled snap to face.
Added a shrinkwrap modifier.
Extruded the t-shirt along the character.
Now when I disable "in front" in view display, the t-shirt seems to be below the character mesh.

I thought with snapping to face and the shrinkwrap modifier it would be over the character.

Now what are the options I have other than manually pulling out all the vertices?

Finally I did the following:

Applied shrinkWrap modifier.
Applied mirror modifier
Used ShirkFlatten and was able to scale the tshirt

But still few vertices were sticking to body object.

Then finally ended up clearing things. Selected faces from body object that will form tshirt and duplicated it. Then P to separate then Shrink Flatten. Used this as tshirt, it was easier this way.


Building sets and the "fourth wall" I'm currently experimenting with building a simple set (a room with a bed, nightstand, etc) with the idea of using it to generate backgrounds for a 2D art project.  I hate drawing backgrounds and I'm quite enjoying getting to grips with Blender.  :)

I've run into an issue with this though, in that the "room" is basically a big cube inside of which I'm putting the furniture.  It's also quite a small room so in order to create the shots I want the camera has to be "outside" the room.

I'm aware that in reality TV sets are built with 3 walls so that the camera can be placed where the action is to be shot from (hence "fourth wall" to refer to the audience) and I figured that'd be easy enough to do and indeed it is, but doing so involves deleting a face from the room cube.

If I want to move the camera somewhere else then that face needs to be put back and a different face needs to be deleted.  Complicating this is the fact that at some point the room will need windows, a door, etc, and there will be posters, pictures and other decorative items hung on the walls.  It'd be easy to delete a wall with those kinds of details and forget to replace it (or lose it in the undo buffer)

I thought of making each wall an object in its own right and hiding them, but this only hides them from the viewport.  They reappear in the render.

I considered making a transparent material and applying it to the wall I want to shoot the scene through.

This worked fairly well... except that I'm also using Freestyle to create a hand-drawn effect, and apparently the big cube in the way prevents Freestyle from applying line effects to anything behind it, even if the face I'm viewing through is invisible.

There has to be a simple way of managing this.  If so, what is it?  How to I create a room with walls (and other items) I can non-destructively remove from the scene so I can view the interior, without deleting the walls entirely?

I'm using Blender 2.81a. with Eevee serving as the render engine.

You can make each wall as a separate object.
Then just disable/enable them in the Viewport and Render

Use the toggles for Viewport/Render visibility

I know this is such a basic answer... but I've already built the walls...


Can I edit an armature's size through its bounding box? Let's say I have a human model and I want to give it a certain height. Currently I only see a way using the scale (either with the mouse or by editing the numbers) but I don't even know its initial size so I can only scale it approximately.
So is there a way to see a model's bounding box dimensions and edit them to resize the skeleton?

An armature object doesn't provide it's bounding box size. However the mesh object of your character does. You can scale your mesh object until the height is to your liking (the dimensions are visible in the properties sidebar). By selecting your armature, then shift selecting your mesh, the mesh object is active and will display it's dimensions as both objects get scaled together.

If your character is made of several items you will only see the size of the active object, a trick there is to add a cube and size it to the height you want, then use it as a reference and resize your character to fit.


Armature severely deformed mesh I've looked around on this forum and have not really found a solution to my particular issue. I have created a lego character and am trying to rig it. It has all worked except for the leg, which as you can see is blocky where I want it to be smooth.

I tried corrective smoothing, however it yields the following artifact. Any help or pointers to similar threads would be appreciated.

Also, here is a wireframe of the legs if necessary.

Thanks

I've fixed the issue. If anyone is having similar issues, you may have some topology that does not fit well with the bones. The solution that I found was to re-weight the armature and remove the corrective smoothing modifier from the entire mesh. I've found that for a mesh where the goal is to create a soft-bendy sort of pose, it's best to only use the corrective smoothing on specific vertex groups rather than the entire mesh.


Separate Collision Bounds How would I add a separate collision bound for a character in Blender Game? I want to be able to detect collisions on different areas of the body and have different amounts of damage done.

I'm not totally sure if what you are saying is possible. Someone else would have to comment on that.

However, I do know what I would do to fix it.

Create a new object for each section you would like. (Tip: perhapse you could use empties to avoid step 4)
Parent your new collision objects to the main object for which you are tracking collision.
Set up the scripts so that when one of these objects is hit, it sends a message to the parent object.
Set these collision objects to not be rendered and not affect physics simulations (gravity, collision, etc.)

I hope this method helps.

Thanks, Uncle Snail


Mapping an Aitoff projection onto a sphere Is it possible to map the attached image of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) onto the exterior of a sphere in Blender? The few tutorials I saw use either sphere projection or mark seam, but those do not seem to reproduce the shape of this projection in the UV/Image Editor. By the way this is called an Aitoff projection.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Hammer Projection

Nodes on left, UV map on right

A while back, sh*t like 6 years ago,  I wrote a number of map projections, including Mercator and among them the Hammer, close relation to Aitoff which I've cleaned up for blender 2.8

UVMap result on default UV sphere

To use, run the script in text editor, or install as addon. Adds a Hammer projection entry to the UV mesh edit mode menu.

from numpy import sin, cos, sinc, arccos
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix
from math import degrees, pi, sqrt
import bmesh
import bpy
bl_info = {
    "name": "Hammer Project",
    "author": "batFINGER",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Mesh > UV UnWrap > Hammer Project",
    "description": "UV Hammer Projection",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "UV",
}

class Spherical:

    def __init__(self, vert, north=(0, 0, 1), long0=(0, -1)):
        self.vert = vert
        self.north, self.long0 = Vector(north), Vector(long0)
        v = vert.co
        R = v.length
        lat = pi / 2 - self.north.angle(v)
        is_pole = v.xy.length < 0.0001

        long = 0 if is_pole else v.xy.angle_signed(long0)

        self.R = R
        self.lat = lat
        self.long = long

    def __repr__(self):
        return "%.3f, %.3f, %.3f" % (self.R,
                                     degrees(self.lat), degrees(self.long))

class HammerUV:
    def x2(self, lat, long):
        a = 2 * sqrt(2) * cos(lat) * sin(long / 2)
        b = sqrt(1 + cos(lat) * cos(long / 2))
        return a / b

    def y2(self, lat, long):
        a = sqrt(2) * sin(lat)
        b = sqrt(1 + cos(lat) * cos(long / 2))
        return a / b

    # Aitoff equations (no joy)
    def x(self, lat, long):
        a = arccos(cos(lat) * cos(long / 2))
        b = 2 * cos(lat) * sin(long / 2)
        return b / sinc(a)

    def y(self, lat, long):
        a = arccos(cos(lat) * cos(long / 2))
        b = sin(lat)
        return b / sinc(a)

    def uv(self, face, uv_layer):
        ''' Map a UV face '''
        # see if face is east / west
        c = face.calc_center_median()

        for l in face.loops:
            luv = l[uv_layer]
            # apply the location of the vertex as a UV
            p = self.pts[l.vert]

            lat, long = p.lat, p.long  # % longfix
            # quick hack for now.
            if l.vert.co.y > 0:
                if c.x < 0 and long > 0:
                    long = -long
                elif c.x > 0 and long < 0:
                    long = -long

            u, v = self.x2(lat, long), self.y2(lat, long)
            uv = self.translate + self.scale @ Vector((u, v))
            luv.uv = uv

    def calc_uv(self):
        bm = self.bm

        uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()

        bm.select_mode = {'FACE', 'VERT'}
        bm.select_flush_mode()
        bm.select_flush(True)
        # adjust UVs
        for f in bm.faces:
            self.uv(f, uv_layer)

    def __init__(self, me, bm):
        def pt(v):
            s = Spherical(v)
            return s

        # add a new uv map
        uv = me.uv_layers.new(name="Hammer")
        me.uv_layers.active = uv
        self.bm = bm
        # spherical coords for verts
        self.pts = {v: pt(v) for v in self.bm.verts}
        # radius average of calc'd s.R
        self.R = sum(s.R for s in self.pts.values()) / len(self.pts)

        # scale UV to [0, 1] make scale matrix
        scale_x = 0.5 / self.x2(0, pi)
        scale_y = 0.5 / self.y2(pi / 2, 0)
        self.scale = Matrix([[scale_x, 0], [0, scale_y]])
        # and transform vector
        self.translate = Vector((0.5, 0.5))

class UV_OT_HammerProject(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Create a Hammer Projection UV Map"""
    bl_idname = "uv.hammer_project"
    bl_label = "Hammer Project"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.mode == 'EDIT_MESH')

    def execute(self, context):
        obj = context.edit_object
        me = obj.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        merc = HammerUV(me, bm)
        merc.calc_uv()
        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def unwrapmenu(self, context):
    ''' menu item '''
    self.layout.operator("uv.hammer_project")

def register():
    # add to edit mesh > UV menu
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_uv_map.prepend(unwrapmenu)
    bpy.utils.register_class(UV_OT_HammerProject)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_uv_map.remove(unwrapmenu)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(UV_OT_HammerProject)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Since it is a UV mapping can also use it on other spherical meshes like the icosphere

I added the code for the Aitoff projection, but have not quite managed to get that one "steady", not sure about the sinc(...) method required for that one.

Using Nodes

In https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/159492/15543 dabbling in nodes I came up with a node setup to generate latitude longitude using object texture coordinates.

Basically the equivalent node setup to the script above, generating the UV and feeding into texture node.

Tissot index hammer projection image from wiki by Justin Kunimune CC BY-SA 4.0


how to resize an object to fit another? I'm trying to size the mesh outlined to the left object. What is the best way considering that the resizing needs to be proportional..

In this case you could use the absolute bounding box. Setting the dimensions of your right object to the dimensions of the left one should give pretty good results:

Note You'll probably have to watch out for the y value. Make sure to use the same ratio as for x and z to prevent the object from stretching.


Fluid bake crashing at high resolution divisions Having the resolution set to anything higher than 128 is a guaranteed crash, the higher the value the sooner the crash.

Just an idea, I had the same issue with smoke simulations. In Blender 2.90 and above the OpenVDB volume format comes with Advanced Settings. Here you can choose Compression Volumes "None", "Blosc" and "Zip". The default value is "Blosc".
After switching to "Zip", the baking works without any problems. "None" works, too. Only "Blosc" makes all my machines crash, no matter if laptop or my two PCs.
You can try this, but I have to admit that someone else here had similar issues like you with fluid simulations and it didn't help. But as you describe it, your fluid simulation behaves exactly like my smoke simulation.


i am lost how do i attach clothes to this character it is clipping out when i attach them how do i fix it I have been stuck on this for weeks I don't know what to do please help me

here is the character that I am trying to attach clothes to

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1y7cD74z12RPjHcyU-lvlk25dvGHo_v0t

hope that helps :)

First make sure that you're in Rest Pose: in Pose mode you can select all your bones and press altR and altG, or press the Rest Position button in the Properties panel > Data (then press back Pose Position button).
You need to remove a lot of overlaying vertices, so select your cloth mesh, go in Edit mode and press W > Remove Doubles. Increase the Merge Distance value on the bottom of the Tools panel (on the left of the 3D View).
Same thing for the rest of the character, remove doubles.
Now enable the Proportional Editing option on the bottom bar of the 3D View, and move the cloth vertices until it fits the arm. Actually you'd better have a proper topology to do this operation, i.e. quads and not thousands of tris.
Also select your armature and in Edit mode make the bones fit the arm.
Select your character meshes, then the armature, and parent the character meshes with ctrlP > With Automatic Weight.
It works.


UV: How to make selection vertical? In the UV mode I want to make the UV selection from curved to vertical. How can I do that in an automatic way?

Select the mesh part you want to unwrap, press U button to get unwrap menu and select Reset
Press U button again and select Follow Active Quads


How can I relocate the Transform tool in Sculpt mode (Blender2.81)? I tried to relocate the position of this tool but the same time my mesh (its unmasked part exactly) was also transformed.

Well If i mask out the whole object I can manipulate the tool's position, but I think it is an uneffective workflow to mask out the whole mesh everytime I would try to relocate the tool.

Is there any way to relocate the Tranform tool in Sculpt mode without affecting the unmasked part of the mesh?

Thank you for your answers!

I guess i wasn't clear enough but my problem only concerned with Sculpt mode.

However i've found a solution: Expand Mask by Topology (shift+a) and transform gizmo automatically jumps to middle of the unmasked are. IMO still an unintuitive and cumbersome method, but better than nothing. It'd be great If we can manipulate the tranform gizmo in sculpt mode independently.


Transfering add-ons between blender builds So, I got the blender 2.83 alpha build and, I have all of my bizillion add-ons on 2.82 beta. If I download a new version of 2.82, it will automatically update the newest version of 2.82 with all of my add-ons. But, if I download 2.83, since it's a different build, it will start from scratch. So basically my question is, Is there a way to transfer all of my add-ons/settings from my 2.82b build to my 2.83a build?

Once you get a new version of Blender you will see this welcome screen:

Here in bottom of this window you will see something like "Load 2.xx Settings". If you press on it, your settings, add-ons and configs will be properly copied.

What if don't you see this button on the welcome screen (pressed save settings before)?

Navigate to folder:

Linux

~/.config/blender

Mac

/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Blender/

Windows

%APPDATA%(Program files)\Blender Foundation\Blender

And remove folder with name equal newest version number. That makes blender launches "like first time", and you will get  "Load 2.xx Settings" button.


I made a model too tall, how do I chop the bottom part off? I made a ship model and mid-way into the making I said "Hey, that looks a lot like a rowboat". But I'm not sure how to delete the other half of the model that is too big.

Here's an image of the boat: (should be fairly obvious where I want to cut)

EDIT: I tried deleting all the vertices at the bottom, but that just created a large hole in the bottom.

This is probably not the most efficient way, but it's simple and clean.

I hit z to enter wireframe mode.
Then NumPad_1 to enter front view mode (depending on how your
boat is orientated, it could be NumPad 3, side view)
Then b to box select the bottom faces (one row before the
vertices you want to keeP)
Then x and Delete Vertices
Making sure I had the vertex select mode on, I clicked one
vertex away from the corner, held CTRL and right clicked the
point opposite it which was one vertex away from the opposite
corner. (Holding control while right-clicking selects the shortest
path between selections). I do the same for the other side of the
boat.
Then Space and type in Bridge Edge Loops
I hit CTRL + r to enter loop cut mode and hover my cursor over the newly made row of planks and type in the number of loop cuts I want to be made. I made it 2 because I had 2 middle vertices I needed to be joined with something. Then once the pink lines are where you want, hit Enter twice.
Finally, use b to box select, c to circle select, or simply
right-click the vertices left and hit f to join them into faces.
Do this by sets of 4, not all at once.

Or, try selecting the hole's perimeter with Alt + Right Click then hitting Space and typing in Grid Fill. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't.


Create a Mask with Nodes where There are Shadows (Cycles) I'm creating a Procedural Earth Shader, and I'd like to add city lights on the dark side of the Earth. I could just use a gradient texture, and map it to the dark side of the Earth, and use that as the factor for where the lights are. But I'd like to be able to rotate the Earth and the Sun Light, and have the city lights only show in the shadow area. Is there any way to do that with nodes? I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks!

In Cycles I used the following setup for my "Earth + Sun" model. First of all, I've got an Empty parented to my Earth object. The Empty has a Track To constraint, target is the sun object and Target Axis is -Z, so it's pointing away from the sun.
In the Earth material I use the Object output of a Texture Coordinate node with the Empty as object. A Separate XYZ gives the Z value. The "sunny side" of the Earth is equal or below zero and the shadow side is greater than zero. This I use as multiplier for the emission. Of course you can use a Color Ramp or other methods for sharper transitions or whatever. This is just to give the basic idea, you can always tweak here and there.

These are the objects:

This is the Z output I get from the Separate XYZ node as multiplier:

And my final node setup of the Earth material for this example (my real Earth model of course uses more complex textures etc):

Here are some examples how to tweak the transition from light to shadow. The above image of the Z output looks simply black on the one side, but since these are the object's texture coordinates the black part isn't simply 0 but goes from 0 in the middle to -1 on the outer edge. A Map Range node mapping the -1 to 1 range on a 0 to 1 range colored by a ramp shows this:

To make the transition sharper you can shrink down the range by changing the From Min and From Max values, e.g. to -0.1 and 0.1:

Or maybe you want to shift the city lights a little bit to the sunny side (people already turning on their lights as the daylight fades?), than you can do that by shifting the From Min and From Max values more to the negative side, like -0.3 and -0.1:

I guess you can imagine a lot more variations of manipulating this.


Motion blur in cycles How would I add motion blur to a cycles render scene? I have tried looking for youtube tutorials and using the vector blur node but nothing seems to work.

Enable motion blur in the properties window:

Be ready to increase the number of samples as well when you use motion blur.

For more information on all of the many options for motion blur please read the bmanual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/render_settings/motion_blur.html


How to activate ANOTHER object's actuator (Python)? Normally, we activate actuators like this:

controller = logic.getCurrentController()
actuator = controller.actuators['AddObject']
controller.activate(actuator)

This activates the actuator called "AddObject" that belongs to the current controller.

But let's suppose that I want my scene manager to tell objects to delete themselves. The "End Object" actuator has to be on the object to be deleted, not the object that's doing the deleting (unlike the Add Object). I add an "End Object" actuator called "EndObject" to the object I want to end, and then I use:

scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
cont = logic.getCurrentController()
for obj in scene.objects:
    if obj.name == "Critter":
        obj.actuators["EndObject"]
        ....

... and then what? Using:

act = obj.actuators["EndObject"]
obj.activate(act)

...doesn't work because obj doesn't have a function called activate, nor anything similar that I can find.

Any ideas? Am I using "End Object" incorrectly?

You do not do that. It is not supposed to "remote control" objects that way.

You can indeed connect logic bricks of different objects. But this quickly ends in a chaotic mess.

You can delete objects via endObject(). In difference to the actuator this does not need to be called by a controller of the object to be deleted.

Your sample could look like this:

import bge
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

for object in scene.objects:
    if object.name == "Critter":
        object.endObject()
        ...


On the physics tab when I switch to fire from smoke, and click back on domain it switches back to smoke? So I added a circle than went to "Object" than added the quick smoke effect, and then pressed "ALT+A" to start the animation at which point I do see smoke. This is where it gets weird.

I click on the domain than click on flow to adjust from smoke to fire. After that I click ALT+A and nothing happens. I than checked the other tabs "None" "Domain" etc, and when I went back to check "Flow" it switched the type back to smoke. I tried this a few different times, and restarted Blender 2.76. For some reason it won't switch to anything besides smoke... well it will, but it won't show anything and switches back once I'm on a different tab under physics.

Any insight into why this is happening would be great.

In summary: When I switch from smoke to fire or from smoke to fire+smoke nothing happens, and the value of smoke switches back to fire when I select a different tab besides "Flow".

When you setup smoke and flow type to fire, for the object, try to setup the domain with "adaptative" and "high resolution". In my crappy machine (intel card), at least, this is needed to see "fire"...


Storing variables from ui panel I am new to python and scripting for blender, I'm using 2.8. I would love go have a text box field in a UI panel that the user can enter a value and its stored on a variable. My full plan is to have multiple boxes for when you have to make repetitive scaling you can just enter the numbers once then apply them to any object you want.
Slightly related to that, how do you have the value of a variable displayed as text in the U

Quick and dirty:
bpy.context.scene['MyProperty'] = 5 # or 'yay' or whatever

You do not have to declare anything when using this method.But this is adding to the struct "scene", more practical:
bpy.types.Scene.MyProperty = 5 # registers a new variable to the scene
print(bpy.context.scene.MyProperty) # prints 5

Cleanest way I know of:
bpy.types.Scene.MyProperty = bpy.props.FloatProperty()

If you want to use it as part of an addon, you may want to check if MyProperty registered already, otherwise you risk overwriting settings from the previous session.
More information: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.props.html
To display your value, you can use any field with information, e.g.
def draw(self, context):
    self.layout.label(text=str(bpy.context.scene.MyProperty))

More info about panels here: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Panel.html


Benchmark optimal settings documentation I realize that hardware questions are off-topic here, but I think this question about documentation and optimization is not really hardware dependent - it's a question of being able to reproduce consistent results with different versions and installations of Blender.

It took me a while searching the web and this site to realize why I was getting such poor results rendering the classroom benchmark scene on my new system that came with an NVIDIA GeForge GTX 1070. The default settings were set to render with the CPU, and when I tried to switch it to CUDA-based GPU rendering, things only got slower. Searching the web I found others had gotten it to render in about 7 minutes on the same hardware (GTX 1070). Finally I found the answer: increase the tile size. It seems like a lot of effort to figure out some basic configurations if you're not intimately familiar with how rendering works. And I still haven't matched the other benchmark. I'm at 8:38, and the other benchmark was at 7:47.

So my questions are:

Is there some way to know to what I should attribute this variation? My benchmark was on Blender 2.78c and the original was on 2.78a. So it could be that or something else.
Is there any documentation covering optimal settings for the benchmark scenes? I realize optimization is very dependent on hardware and scene, but especially for benchmark scenes on the most typical hardware, it would be useful to know how to reproduce consistent results so we can, for example, compare the performance of different versions of Blender.

Edit: The classroom scene I downloaded from https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/, and I just realized that it's not technically labeled as a benchmark.

Use the blenchmark Addon: http://blenchmark.com/article/benchmark-your-cpu-or-gpu. The istructions on how to install and use it are explained very clearly on the site

There are two basic settings: one for CPU and one for GPU, don't use the one for CPU to test a GPU.

The idea behind the blenchmark is to have a standardized set of parameters by which to compare systems. Just set the compute device, leave all other setting untouched and let it render.

Changing the settings for each machine would result in a comparison like watermelons and oranges.

Note that it is quite easy to render faster than the average results, as the blenchmark is designed to work on many different types of hardware and Is not optimized for any particular one and it is set to work on a very wide range of hardware.


How can my wheel gear and slider run With the help of physics motor and slider I want to rotate and slide my model.

With the reference image I want to rotate my gear and a red cube I want to slide or move with direction in the image.

The main trick with many rigidbody constraints is getting the constraint's empty aligned the way you want. Though before aligning anything, me must first create something to align:

Create a constraint

If you haven't already, add rigid body physics to your objects via 3D view > Tool Shelf (N) > Physics. Active objects will move, Passive objects won't.
Create a constraint between the objects by selecting them and clicking 3D view > Tool Shelf (T) > Physics > Constraints > Connect. This will create an empty with a rigid body constraint connecting the selected objects (for more advanced applications, this can be used on more than two objects at once).
In the redo menu, select Motor as the constraint type.
Select the newly created empty, and rotate it so its local X axis is aligned with the axis you want the motor to rotate around.
Enable Angular Motor in Properties > Physics

Now our the gear should rotate when we play the simulation:

Well, it did rotate, but it also fell down. To prevent that, we'll have to use a second constraint to actually attach it to the cylinder.

Use multiple constraints together

Add a second constraint by again following the steps above, but this time pick Hinge for the constraint type and rotate the hinge empty so that its local Z axis is aligned with the axis of rotation.
don't ask me why one is X and one is Z..

Once you get the correct empties oriented the right ways, your gear should now behave like this:

Apply the same process for a slider

The process for a motorized slider is very similar, but this time you'll want a Motor constraint set to Linear Motor instead of Angular Motor, and a Slider constraint instead of a Hinge constraint. This time both constraint empties should have their local X axes aligned with the axis along which the cube should slide.

Once you have this set up, try enabling and adjusting the Lower Upper limits on the hinge constraint. These control how far the cube is allowed to slide (in blender units).

If you want the cube to slide back and forth (or do anything besides move in one direction at a constant rate), you can drive or animate the Target Velocity of the linear motor constraint:


How to select objects and join them with Python My problem is that I have a scene with many objects , which are grouped into EMPTY, I need to take all of the objects in the parent (EMPTY) and unite them into a single object , if you do it manually, it takes a lot of time

Here's the pseudo code:

make sure nothing is selected to start off.

for every empty that has children:
    1. select all children of the empty
    2. set first child to active_object (or any child)
    3. invoke a bpy.ops.join
    4. deselect everything

Because you can't join anything to an Empty, You have to programmatically set a Mesh Object to be the Active Object then join other selected mesh objects to it.

Here's the python:

import bpy

# get the list of empties that have children
empties = [e for e in bpy.data.objects if e.type == 'EMPTY' and e.children]

# we need to deselect everything first
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for empty in empties:
    for obj in empty.children:
        obj.select = True
    joiner = empty.children[0]
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = joiner
    bpy.ops.object.join()

    # deselect everything before the next iteration
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')


How to make eye tracker for flat eyes that already applying lattice Im new at blender and i stumble this problem on my simple character project where the character using lattice / flat eye, is there any way to make an eye tracker to animate the character because the one tutorial i found need me to not applying the lattice modifier while my character already applied it and i havent found a way to do this with lattice modifier already applied, or is there realy no other way ?

blend file : http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52053

Thankyou

It is well explained here.

I don't think it is recommended to apply the Lattice modifier, and I think you should begin with a round sphere, not a flat sphere, otherwise it won't deform properly. So:

First create your lattice around your eye sphere. Keep the lattice cubic. Give your eye a Lattice modifier with the Lattice as Object. Give your lattice a basis shape key and create a second shape key.

Keep the lattice selected, go in Edit mode, select the second shape key, scale the lattice on the Y axis.

Back in Object mode, select the second shape key and push the value to 1, the eye should deform. Then bring it back to 0 for the moment.

Create a bone at the center of the eye, use the 3D cursor as Pivot Point to rotate it 90° so that it point forwards. Create a second bone that will be the target. Give the first bone a Track To constraint with this second bone as Target. Parent the eye to its bone, move the target, the eye should follow.


wrapping a complex mesh around another mesh So what I basically want to do is this building. I am modelling an asset for my game. It is supposed to be the main attraction in that point so vertex count might not be an issue.

This is my base structure. And I am trying to Wrap it with some thing like the next picture

I used two curves modifier. One was used to make exterior curve. And then used another curve to wrap around the perimeter. that got me the result I wanted


How do i correctly merge 2 edges that are have been mirrored? It's my first time trying to make a car on blender. I have created half of the object and then I have duplicated it. I used ctrl m to mirror it in the y axis. What would the best way to merge the two halves? I have tried to merge the vertices and just adding faces to the gaps but it becomes deformed because of the subsurface division modifier.

Sorry I'm not very good at explaining things.

What you can try is take an empty axis in the middle of your end of the 1st half of the car and mirror it accross that axis using a mirror modifier. (Axis not to be in middle of whole body but at the middle of edge where your car is cut half). don't forget to select the 2 axis across which the car would make sense.


Archimesh export as fbx leaves large box on windows and doors I am trying to export a mesh made with the Archimesh addon as an .fbx for use in Unreal engine. Whenever I export any room with a door or a window, the auto hole doesn't follow after export.

At first I figured it was just an issue with applying modifiers, so I dug through the outliner and applied all object modifiers that were available on my objects, but the large box surrounding windows and doors remains after export.

Is this possible to work through? I read somewhere online that people use archimesh to prototype levels in unity, so I imagine its possible to do the same with unreal engine.

The box is used by the boolean modifier to cut the hole in the wall for the door/window. After you have applied the modifiers, you can delete the objects called "CTRL_hole" to keep them from being exported.


"Linking" Armatures together I have created kind of a.. Robot in blender, a legged boat, complete with bones and all.

I have also created, in the same project a character, rigged and ready to go.
In my animation I would like for the character to stand on the boat. Is there a way for me to attach the character armature to the root bone of the boat and still have the character armature fully functional within itself?

Sorry for bad phrasing. I am having a hard time explaining my issuse.

You could give your robot armature a Child Of constraint and choose the root bone as parent, don't forget to click the constraint Set Inverse button so that the armature stays where it was.


Are there faster ways to switch pose modes? Am I missing something? Here's the problem I'm having with weight painting;
Typical operation:

Object mode
Select rig
Select edit
Select multiple bones
Object mode
Select mesh
Select weight paint mode
Use a function, like auto weights.

Oops, I'm in pose position. I need to be in rest position to use auto weights.

Object mode
Select rig
Go into data object properties
Change to rest
Select mesh
Weight mode.

You have to click like 8 things just to change one thing sometimes. Is there a faster way to change between all these modes?

Personally when I do weight painting (or any rigged mesh work really), I split and pin the Pose/Rest controls in their own pane at the far bottom right, with bone layers and IK toggles in the same pin. That way it's just a single click to get to rest pose and back no matter what objects I have selected.
In addition, this workflow might help out a bit:

Object Mode
Select Rig
Shift-select Mesh object(s)
Weight Paint Mode.

This should allow you to select any bone in weight paint mode, pose them and paint the related vertex weights in real time, with the armature panel pinned it makes it a lot easier to do operations that require rest pose.


Round values of a f-curve to be either 0 or 1 I would like to transform my baked f-curve in blender. I already scaled it so it's values are between 0 and 1 using the envelope-modifier.
Now i want to transform the f-curve in a way that all values under 0.5 will be set to 0 and all above will be set to 1.0 (so basically rounding the values). Is there a way to achieve this using the f-curve modifiers? I can only think of an difficult solution concluding writing a script.

Thank you for your help!

Add an Envelope Modifier with the following settings:

Reference Value: 0.5
Min: -0.5
Max: 0.5

Add a control point to the Envelope and use Min and Max bounds of “large” absolute value, but between the allowed range of -10000 and 10000, e.g.:

Frame: 0
Min: -9998
Max: 10000

Finally, add a Limits Modifier with Minimum Y of 0 and Maximum Y of 1.

The control point's Min and Max values are important when you care about the rounding of the input value 0.5.

With Min and Max equally distant away from the reference value of 0.5, the input value of 0.5 will not be modified.
e.g. Min = -9999, Max = 10000.
I used a slightly larger value of -9998 for Min so that the input of 0.5 will be rounded up.
You can use a slightly smaller value like -9999 to round the input of 0.5 down.

The size of the bounds will determine how well this method works for values which are close to the reference value. F-Curves with easing near it or keyframes obtained by simulation or experiment might produce numbers which will not be pushed all the way to the intended limits.
For example the image below shows the result of a sinusoidal ease-out over frames 0 to 10 with input values 0.499 to 0.5. Frame 9 ends up with a value of about 0.75 instead of 0.

It's not possible to change the control point's bounds beyond 10000, but if you work with values close to 0.5 you could duplicate the envelope modifier:


How do I render an Alpha Chanel Image I want to create a rendered image of a scene and in addition several alpha chanel images that are only 100% black and 100% white. The objects should be seperated from the background. My goal is to import those images to Photoshop for an overpaint and I need the alpha chanel images to quick select the different elements of the image like items, building etc.

How do I render those alpha chanel images?

Thanks in advance!

PS.: is it possible in blender to render only occlusion shadows in fron of a 100% white background?

To render a model as a matte black or white on a transparent background:

Firstly, for the black matte image, simply switch the lights off!  Locate the lamp being used in the Outliner panel at top right.  Click the eye and camera symbols off. (they're at the extreme right)

Next we make the background transparent -

At right in the properties panel (under the outliner panel) click on the camera icon. (at the left)

Go down to the shading tab, open that and at the right change "Sky" to 'Transparent'.

Close the tab and go down further, open the Post Processing tab and make sure both the sequencer and Compositor boxes are UNTICKED.  (precautionary step)  Close that tab   and -

Further down again, open the "Output" tab.  Set the format (just under 'Placeholders') to "PNG".  At the extreme right again you'll see a button called RGBA.  Highlight that (click on it).  That's your alpha channel.

While you're there check the output folder is where you want the image to end up.

We're almost set up but you might want to change the pixel resolution for your images and can do that back at the top.  Open the "Dimensions" tab and set the xy pixel sizes.  (I use the 100% option just under those slots and also make sure the "Time Remapping" figures remain at 100 & 100)

That's the output set.  Close the tabs, get back into the 3D window and press N.

The window's panel will appear.  Open its "Display" tab and tick the "Only Render" box.

If you're wanting to render using Blender's internal renderer you'll have to position the camera for the view you're after.

If you're a little on the lazy side like I am, you'll render it out as it appears already, using the OpenGL renderer which is much much faster, particularly for video.   That can be accessed at top left of the window from the (amazingly) "Render" menu !

To make sure the pic does render, change the timeline's frame range from 1 to 1.

Go back to the Render menu (at top) and click on "OpenGL Render Animation".

The pic will appear in the output folder.  When viewed in Gimp or Blender's Video Sequence Editor, you'll see the black model with a checker pattern behind it.  That's the alpha layer.

Make sure you rename the pic file because the white model is about to write using the same filename.

The white Model -

Change the Model's material colour (diffuse) to white with slider up all the way.

Turn the Specular slider back to zero.

Sllde the shading "Emit" slider to full. (2.00)  It often comes out a little brighter than 'shadeless' this way.

...and you're all set to go.  (You don't need the lights)

Render that out and you've got what you want !

The Blender file is attached, it's settings left at the white cube on transparent

Happy Blending!


Proper greasepencil animation workflow: How to manage "scenes"? What
I'm trying to figure out how to "correctly" manage multiple-scene grease pencil animations.
By multiple scene, I mean, maybe I drew an animated intro title, then I want cut to a street scene, then I want to cut to an indoor scene. Ideally I would like to be able to quickly preview and shift the cuts while animating, so I can fine-tune the cuts with the pacing of the animation.
The options I've considered so far:

Animate the visibility of all the grease pencil objects in the title to "hidden"

Awkward if there are lots of objects, clutters up timeline and makes it easy to accidentally miss an object when moving the keyframes later

Erase the strokes at the right time

Involves manually erasing every greasepencil object; also hard to edit after the fact?

Jump to a new camera somewhere else in 3D space

Seems like maybe the best option to me right now, but still feels "hackish", and could be awkward if working with large and 3D greasepencil scenes.

None of these really seem like the "right way" right? What am I missing?

I generally create an empty grease pencil keyframe (something like a single dot out of camera) and i move it at the end of the scene, so it acts like an "off" button for the active object. Hackish, but it works.


Why particles not seen in render Why i cant see particles or group of particles created. I created simple shape and added particles to it. And created group to that shape. To the mesh i have created particles and the above group i have assign. In the 3d view i see the mesh but no particles and in when i render i cant see particles (i have hide the mesh just to see the particles). What is missing why i cant see the particles in 3d view and in render view.

Download this file

Simple mesh created added particles created group

With the above group created assign to the mesh. Which is view in 3d view but no particles seen on it.

In render no particles seen which are assign. No Mesh No particles in final render

Any suggestion or help why particles not seen in render and 3d view. Thanks

Try checking the start and end frames of the particles, and the frame you are rendering.

Also check the Object Particle Size

Also check the particles render option to see if Emiter is set to Render


Shadow Catcher makes background objects invisible I am following this tutorial on 2.79c about Shadow Catcher features of the latest build of Blender 2.79.

My result is that the Shadow Catcher makes a "hole" in the object that is behind it. In my understanding, the Shadow Catcher would just not render but the shadows projected onto it would.

The way the Shadow Catcher works is, that it will catch the appearance of the shadow in the Alpha channel only. The RGB pixels of the Shadow catching object will always be black.

In your scene you're adding your reference image to the scene as a mesh plane in the background. The way you've setup your render layers unfortunately means that you're rendering that background mesh plane into the same render layer as the foreground objects. Now there's a shadow catching object in the front of it, and it - as stated above - does not consider whatever is behind it. It just returns "transparent pixels" (i.e. Alpha at zero) wherever there's no shadow to catch.

To fix it, first move your background image to a different layer, so you can have control over it. At the moment the BG plane is on the first layer, as you can see:

I moved it to the layer below (layer 11). Next, setup your render layer in a way that layer 11 is not being rendered at all (take a look on the right hand side, Layer section. There is Scene layers on the left, and the Layers to be included in this Renderlayer on the right):

The composition should work out of the box, though the needed footage was not included in the upload you gave, so I couldn't test it.

Here's the .blend file to experiment with:


set a specified vertex color to black via python how to set the vertex color in the center of the mesh to black and the rest of the vertices to red via python? a lot of the answers just tell me that i can color all the vertices in one face like that:

for poly in mesh.polygons:
for loop in poly.loop_indices:
    color_layer.data[loop].color = (0,0,0)

but how can I get the specified vertex in the center and set it's color? Thank you very much

supplement(my script is as follows):

import bpy
import bmesh

#create a hexagon
bpy.context.scene.cursor_location = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete()
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(vertices=6,fill_type='NGON')
ob=bpy.context.active_object
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.mesh.inset(thickness=0,depth=0)
bpy.ops.mesh.edge_collapse()

#I can select the center vertex in edit mode
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(ob.data)
verts_center=[v for v in bm.verts if len(v.link_edges)==6]

vertexColors=ob.data.vertex_colors.new().data

#when it comes to object mode or vertex paint mode, how do I change the color of the vertex I selected?

as I know, in this example, the vertex I select will have six vertex color data, how do I get those six data and set the color?

Look at the loop vert.
Using a method similar to Applying per-vertex colors to new Bmesh
import bpy
import bmesh
from random import uniform
context = bpy.context
mesh = context.object.data
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(mesh)

color_layer = bm.loops.layers.color.new("color")
red = (1, 0, 0, 1)
black = (0, 0, 0, 1)
for face in bm.faces:
    for loop in face.loops:
        print("Vert:", loop.vert.index)
        loop[color_layer] = black if len(loop.vert.link_edges) == 6 else red

bm.to_mesh(mesh)

Result of running on a pre-made mesh.


Even hair particle distribution I'm trying to get my hair particles to distribute evenly across a surface of a object.

The problem is that there's only three ways to distribute particles: Verts, Faces, and Volume. My mesh surface is not even in terms of vertices or faces, and volume just makes the objects go inside my mesh.

Is there any other way to do this?

So first I made a really messy mesh and added a Particle System with settings that shows dots instead of hair because this shows the uneven distribution more clearly.

Next I added a cube then applied a Sub-Surface Modifier with 3 iterations.   I also scaled it up so that it is completely outside of the mesh that it will be shrunk to.

Now I used the Shrinkwrap Modifier to fit the new mesh to the messy one. You can already see that the particle distribution is much more even.  I also used the Make Links tool Ctrl+L -> Modifiers to copy the hair particle system over to the new mesh.

I kept the modifier on and activated it's button for "Show Modifier while in Edit Mode" and also "Apply Modifier To Editing Cage during Edit Mode". They are right next to the Modifiers other visibility buttons.  Now I used the Smooth Vertex tool to even them out.  You can press F6 to bring up the interactive pop-up window for the Smooth Vertex tool and increase the number of iterations for smoothing until the extra sphere's quads are more even.  I also scaled this sphere using the Scale by Normals tool Alt+s so that it would be slightly below the surface of the model the hair is being applied to but if I recall correctly, there is a way to make the hair proxy object invisible while keeping the hair itself visible, I'll look that up when I get back and edit this post if I find how to do that.(Unless someone else posts that first)

To finish it off, I subdivided the mesh one more time and set the Particle Emitter to Verts because Faces was leaving obvious clumps.


Can't render out my node effect I had just recently switch from blender render to cycles and am having trouble with the node editor.I want some mist on my animation background.As you can see from the picture below , I did it but when i render it out to png , it does not have the effect that shows in the node editor. How do i get the effect for the png rendering?

In your node setup the viewer is connected to a mix node and the composite is not.

Plug the composite to the output of the mix node to it as well!


No option to use image as texture I'm using Blender 2.79 on windows through the steam app.  When I set a texture, I can only use a solid colour as there are no other options available.  There is no small circle visible on the right side of the colour pane that I've just watched many tutorials click and bring up a new menu where I would select what type of texture you want.  I'm in Blender Render mode.  I've restarted Blender multiple times.

In 'Blender Render' adding the texture in the Texture tab (The checkers next to the material tab) will automatically add it to the material.

The uploaders of the tutorials are probably using the cycles renderer for the tutorial which is why they had to add the texture in the material tab.


Hide geometry in render? Is there an easy way to hide only part of a mesh for rendering?

e.g. something like a "Delete" modifier, where you could delete vertices only for rendering, then remove it and get all your "deleted" geometry back.

Is there quick and simple way to do this?

To restrict parts of a mesh from rendering
You can make use of the Mask Modifier for this.

The Mask modifier allows certain parts of an object's mesh to be hidden from view (masked off), in effect making the parts of the mesh that are masked act as if they were no longer there.

This is probably the best way to go about this, any shader trick that selectively hides a mesh could cause problems depending on usage as transparent geometry is still outlined with Freestyle Line renderer for one. The mask modifier gets rid of it completely visually, but preserves physics etc.
To restrict an object from rendering
You can restrict entire objects from rendering by pressing the camera icon in the Outliner or by selecting the objects that you do want to render and using CtrlW > Restrict Render Unselected to restrict any unselected objects from rendering.
Alternatively you can exclude whole layers of objects via the render layer settings.


Texture is not rendering I have quite a bit of experience with blender and this is the first time I've run into troubles with texturing.

Quite simply, I have a mesh that I have UVmapped in the same way I always do, but no matter what I do, I can't get a texture to stick on it.

It shows up perfectly in the viewport, but not in the preview- or final render.

If I make another mesh, like a standard cube, with the same material, that mesh gets the texture just like normal.

.blend file included, along with a screenshot that shows everything I've just said.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/geb0vxlmbqzk1ef/amaryllis.blend?dl=0

You have experimental subdivision enabled in Properties > Object data:

It appears that it does not yet support UV maps, hence the experimental part..


If I'm modelling a circle to an exact size, how do I account for change in size with subsurf? Basically, if I'm following plans to make something an it has exact measurements, is there like a ratio to use to know how much smaller the subsurf version of the circle will be? Or if there an addon that makes a surdivision surface go to the edges of a circle?

Use object dimensions.
Can use the object dimensions.  Eg add a plane or circle and set subsurf. Set the subsurf of view to render.
For example sake added default plane
In the python console
>>> # level 0 subsurf
>>> C.object.dimensions
Vector((2.0, 2.0, 0.0))

>>> # level 1
>>> C.object.dimensions
Vector((1.8333334922790527, 1.8333334922790527, 0.0))

>>> # level 2
>>> C.object.dimensions
Vector((1.8333334922790527, 1.8333334922790527, 0.0))

Now set to desired radius
>>> C.object.dimensions = (2, 2, 0)
>>>

Setting dimensions is altering the scale accordingly, values will be around 2 / 1.83333
>>> C.object.scale
Vector((1.0909090042114258, 1.0909090042114258, 1.0))

Apply scale if need be, in which case the object with unit scale will be approx a 2 diameter circle when subsurf is 2.


I rendered the png sequence but the result video is jittery! I rendered my frames as png, and then imported in Premere Pro, but the video is playing jittery.

My friend changed blender frame rate to 30, is that the problem?

images are HD but video is not clear:

https://youtu.be/-97o-jyDDnY

You should use the Blender video editing mode for exporting videos.

Then press Shift-A to get drop down add-file menu, or click on the "Add" button.
(Sorry about the sloppy arrow. I didn't have enough time to draw a good one)
select the "Image" button and go to the file in the file browser that you want to add frames from, and press A to select all. If you only want to select certain frames, then you can shift click on a frame to select it too.
Now you need to go to the box labeled "Add image strip" in the bottom left corner, and set the frame start/stop to the amount of frames you want to import.
Now select add image strip in the top right corner.
Now you can select the output format like you would normal renders, but instead of exporting as png, you export the animation as a video format. Whatever works for you. Once it is done creating the video, you can watch it in the location you set it to render to. This is Blender's Sequence rendering mode, which is probably best for quick Blender animation videos.


How to create a controllable moss material for a photoscanned object? I'd like to apply a layer of moss over my photoscanned object that's realistic and doesn't take a performance hit.

realistic is relative and increadibly difficult to achive when compared to photoscanned

you can use particles and get very realistic result, but a heavy performance hit

or you use vertex paint, or mask paint to mask out the areas where you want the moss to then procedually add the moss in the material editor with nodes. not very realistic, but still quick and easy

but the best would be to paint the textures, this will take the lowest ammount of performace but the highest ammount of work


Location of selected vertex I use Blender 2.8 but after selecting a vertex, I can no find the location of the selected vertex?

Is there a place where I can know the x, y and z positions of the vertex?

Thanks

Edit mode with vertex selected, N key to toggle open the Properties panel > Item tab > Transform, Vertex


Why do some bones look like boxes and others like arrows? I've been looking at tutorials on how to rig a model and found this one.
Why does this guy's bones look like boxes while all the others look like triangular arrows? Is there a functional difference or just for ease of viewing? How do I enable/disable this display?

Here are the different shapes for an armature. Also the different controls for changing it. It is for you to decide what you want to use.

The one exception to this is that if you create your vertex weight from envelopes, you can view what will be affected with the envelope option. You must go into edit mode to see all details. More about it here:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Rigging/Armatures/Editing/Properties


Using BBones on Sketchfab I am animating my model using bendy bones. When I upload the model to Sketchfab, the bbones work like normal armatures. They loose their bendiness.

I noticed that bendy bones appear to be made up internally of normal armatures, so I was wondering if there was some way to explode out these 'internal armatures' once I am done animating, just so I can upload my model to Sketchfab.

Or maybe there is some other way to bake the animation?

Any help would be appreciated.

given that bendy-bones are specific to Blender, they aren't supported out of the box on Sketchfab. It may be worth posting this question to the forums at Sketchfab. Perhaps another Blender artist there has tried something similar?

https://forum.sketchfab.com/c/support/blender

Paul
Artist Evangelist, Sketchfab


How can I prevent one or more bones from being added to the key frame? Is there a method to prevent keyframing a bone even if it's selected? It would really help to prevent mistakes or to just remember what bones should be included in an action.

What I can think of is locking the properties that you want to not change: Loc, Rot, Scale. You can see there are padlock icons for that. But I'm not sure if I understand your problem correctly.


Need tips on hard surface curves im working on pot of greed from Yu Gi Oh. I have modeled the base mesh and was wondering if anyone has any tips on doing these curved  lines highlighted in the image below.

Thanks in advance!

You can add a Bezier curve, project its vertices on the surface using the face snapping option (as you grab a vertex, it will be projected onto the nearest face, according to the view), then create another curve to set the profile of the line (choose it as Bevel object).


Incorporating stills into a video I am incorporating still into a video using the VSE. When I put an image into the video and preview it the images is way deformed to fit into the output of the video settings. Is there a way to ask Blender to automatically fit the image into the video to match the output of say 1080 or 720? The stills I am using are of various sizes.

Thank you

There is an addon for blender available at https://github.com/mutantbob/blender-letterbox which can be used to quickly add and configure the necessary Effect Strip.

After you have installed this addon from the .py file (instructions) you can either use the Spacebar menu to invoke the letterbox operator, or find it in the Strip menu of the VSE panel.


Where does the render output go? I set up the render and have tried multiple 'write' locations...hell I even tried to send the output .png to the desktop...no joy...renders 1/2 an hour and I still can't locate a file. Help please.

Check your output setting in the render tab:

after the image has rendered it will be in your UV editor, then you just need to save as:


Force Cycles GPU rendering for a Render Farm So basically I'm on vacation for 2 weeks with a laptop without a CUDA device. I do have access to a render farm with GPU rendering support.

Now the problem is that I can't setup blender to render in GPU and send the file to the farm because the laptop doesn't support it.

The farm has script support if that info helps.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Send it to the farm that will let you change the settings or they will change it for you. Try GarageFarm.NET as they have super friendly support working 24/7


Joining instead of Cutting with BoolTool Ctrl Shift - Shortcut I have been using Blender to edit STL files for resin 3d Printing.
I have an object that I want to cut and I create the shape I want to cut out of it, but when I give the ⎈ Ctrl+⇧ Shift+ - command, the two objects are joined.
I select the cutting shape, hold ⇧ Shift and select the part to be cut, then give the ⎈ Ctrl+⇧ Shift+- command, and about 50% of the time it will join the items. The other 50% it will cut the way I want it to.
Why?

Use the Boolean modifier in Properties > Modifier Properties > Add Modifier > Boolean, and choose the object you want to cut with, in the menu for Object. I'm not sure what Ctrl Shift - shortcut does.


Text uv layer texture I'm trying to do something similar to this is Blender:

Animation here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BqQKtNmHsCw/

I've got the shape and animation working, but I can't figure out how to animate the text layer on the 4 different sides?

Here's an image of my shape so far:

I followed this to build the shape: How to animate text over a twisted mesh (or text flowing along an infinity loop)

Also I might need to smooth the object without interfering with the twist or rounding the sides?

Edit

This is how it looks when I follow the linked suggestion / open Robin Betts' file:

I'm not able to determine what Axis, origin the simple deform modifier uses. Is there an addon plugin that I need to install? (I'm using v.2.79)

The Material

A material is set up for the object, coloring an emission shader with an image in the object's UV space, through a Mapping node:

Unwrapping

If you're following a method something like this one, then you're just unwrapping flat surfaces, before they are modified:

There is a seam down every longitudinal edge, so it's just U unwrap, followed by rotating/scaling in the UV Editor.
Although the UV space has been set up to allow different text on every face, in this case the UV islands have been snapped over one another, so they all refer to the same region of the image.

Modifiers

After Twist and Bend modifiers are assigned as shown in the linked answer ..

Animation

Now the Location: X field of the Mapping node in the material can be keyframed between 0 and 1 to loop the translation of the UV texture space (trim the last  frame, where X = 1 = 0, to get a seamless loop):

Here, the loop is shown without the animated twist: only the text is being animated across its surface.

Here, with the twist as well..


How do I animate a cube turning into a sphere when it is moved through a plane. I want to create a transition between shapes when a a cube goes through flat plane and comes out a sphere but I don't know how to make it only half render.  I want to make the cube disappear as it moves through the plane.

Parent cube and sphere to an empty. Put two additional cubes below and above the sphere. Use the upper one as a boolean to eat the cube, use the lower one to eat the sphere. Use the empty to animate them.

Here's the setting in one picture: The Empty moves cube and sphere up or down, 'cubekiller' and 'spherekiller' are simple cubes who touch each other. You can put them on a disabled layer or disable rendering in the Outliner.

The modifier settings are straightforward

And the result:


Creating Normal maps from a Texture? Is it possible to create a Normal Map from a Texture, not a mesh? If so, how?

As I'm working on an Eye, and have already made the textures, I was wondering if it was possible to create Normal Maps out of those Textures.

Theory

First thing normal map generators do is to converts the input image into a grayscale image, even if it is colored, that is because color information is practically useless in the generation process, the algorithm used to convert the RGB colors into single values varies from a generator to another, so it is recommended that you convert your input image into grayscale before using the normal map generator, the reason will become clear in the next section.

Imagine the image as a grid of vertices, each vertex represents a pixel, the z location (height) of each vertex is equal to its value (Which is just a scalar not an RGB vector; because it is a grayscale image, remember). So we realize that the image is just a 2D function that associates a value to each point in space, except it is not a continuous function, since it is only defined on some discrete points in space. This surface we just described has normals at each vertex (just like your mesh has normals), and those normals is what a normal map stores, so the generator's job is to simply compute the normals of the surface and encode it in an image. It can be proven that the normals' components relates to partial derivatives of the surface using the equation:

\begin{equation}
\vec{N_x} = \frac{-\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}}{\sqrt{{\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}}^2 + {\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}}^2 +1 }} \\
\vec{N_y} = \frac{-\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}}{\sqrt{{\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}}^2 + {\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}}^2 +1 }}\\
\vec{N_z} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{{\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}}^2 + {\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}}^2 +1 }
}
\end{equation}

Where $F$ is the function that represents the surface and $N$ is the unit normal vector. Partial derivatives describes the steepness and direction of the surface and they can be computed using what is know as Symmetric Derivatives which I explained in more details in my answer
here.

Assuming we have the partial derivatives, we can compute the normal vector components using the previous equation. A normal map stores the $x$, $y$ and $z$ components of the normal vector into the $R$, $G$ and $B$ channels of the image respectively. If we attempted to do that, we will encounter a problem, the image can only store positive values that are less than one (Assuming a standard image format is used), the normal vector components will always be smaller than one because it is a unit vector, however the vector components can be negative denoting directions opposite to the fundamental vectors of the space, so we have to find a way to encode these data which belongs to the interval $[-1, 1]$ to the interval $[0, 1]$ which is the possible values for a pixel. This is a simple remapping task that can be performed using the equation:

$$
\begin{equation} R = \frac{(\vec{N}_x+1)}{2}\\G = \frac{(\vec{N}_y+1)}{2}\\\label{1} \end{equation}
$$

Where $R$ and $G$ are the red and green channels respectively, notice that we didn't perform the same remapping to the $z$ component because it is always positive, think about the surface that represents the image again, its normals will always be facing the positive direction of the $z$ axis. By using the previous equation, we get the RGB values for the normal map, so we are ready to do the implementation.

Implementation

We can make a node group that computes both the $\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}$ and $\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}$ partial derivatives given an input image. The implementation is as simple as a translation and a subtraction:

Refer to the article for more information, the rest of the implementation is as easy as applying the two equations above and creating an image out of the individual channels.

An example result


Is there a way to make the scale an actual representation of the measure system (metric) I use? I don't know why this is made as it is because it's totally not making ANY sense and broken as well. Why is scale a multiplication factor instead of a representation of real world values? [Metric system:] Why is a cube 2 meters at a scale of one?
I chose metric and set the unit scale to 0.5 so it would actually be what I enter it to be, but this blender is doing what it wants. First it acts like I want. Doing a cube of 20 x 12 x 1 meter works. Then I save everything open the project up a day later and when I add a second cube of the same size, it's not the same size as the object I created a day before. Even though the settings are still the same (metric and unit scale of 0.5). I can't believe that crap. i mean I understand it in a game engine like unity or unreal engine to be a factor instead of a unit, but not in a 3D modelling tool -.-

what is also not understandable is that when I create a cube of height (z) 4, I actually have to put in 4 into the location z field so it is on top of the grid even though the origin is in it's middle. so actually shouldn't i have to enter for the location just 2...

Is there any way to correct this so scale can actually be set in meters instead of a multiplication factor??? Can't understand that implementation at all, especially annoying when it's not working as it should

If you set up a unit scale for Blender, inputs will parse the strings you enter in any field which expects length.

Supposing you have set the units to meters, and the Unit Scale to .5 (at least, in my build)..

If you enter '1', Blender will always interpret that as 1 Blender Unit (50cm)
If you enter '1m' Blender will interpret that as 1 meter
You can enter '25cm' or '250mm' or '.25m' etc. to refer to that length
If you enter '1in' Blender will interpret that as 1 inch. Because you have declared your dimensions to be in meters, that will be translated to 2.54cm
You can even enter an expression like '25m / 4' to get 6.25 meters

I'm open to correction, but it is true that the last-used radius for object creation can not be made to persist in the .blend file, and reverts to 1 of your declared base unit when you reopen it. However, the last creation size requested (in the tool region) does persist within sessions, on a per-primitive basis.

These are deliberate choices on the part of the developers, not careless. There are many choices in Blender that I don't personally agree with, but in the vast majority of cases, if I stop to think about them, I can see the arguments for the choices having been made that way. Usually it's to do with 'cleanliness'.. i.e. consistency between different parts of what is, after all,  a large application. I have been pleasantly surprised by that consistency in Blender's way of thinking, compared to many proprietary applications, especially those with a long history of accretions .. :)


How to Flip a Mirror Modifier I can't figure out how to flip a Mirror Modifier along the Y axis, after it is mirrored.
Would love some advice on how to achieve this, per the below images:

Simply use the Array modifier instead.

Add an empty and flip it in X and Y axis
Add Array modifier > Object Offset and target the empty
Done

You can flip the empty either by scaling to -1 or through Object > Mirror


2 parallel planes, the front one is rotated, when view is rotated, portions of the plane on the back is visible through the plane on the front Any idea why the purple plane is showing through? These planes are parallel. Using Eevee. If I create this topology fresh I don't see the issue. But in this particular blender file, I somehow arrived at this problem and I don't remember what all I was trying. Which setting may be causing it?

good file
bad file

This is called z-fighting, and it's caused by blender not being able to properly decide which one to draw in front of the other.  You need some difference in the z coordinate, and if it's not large enough this can still happen at great distances due to floating point precision funkiness.


How to get a smooth look like this? I am making a rig in blender and have been looking at other rigs for inspiration. I came across an animator who's rig I really like. His rig has these smooth-like bends I can't see to replicate. This is what the smoothing looks like:
I might be overlooking a feature in blender, but I am pretty dumb and dont know all the tricks just yet. I am using Blender v2.90.1

Maybe try bendy bones? Select your armature and in the Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display, choose B-Bone. Then in Edit or Pose mode, select a bone and in in the Properties panel > Bone > Bendy Bones, increase the Segments amount:

Here is what it gives (compared to bones with one segment only), you can play with Ease In and Ease Out values:

You could also use more than 2 bones, some with one segment, others with several:

What you show is special though, as the outer sides are flat while the inner is round, so maybe a corrective shapekey for the inner curve and a driver to activate it?


GreasePencil goes trough a mesh in wireframe mode 2.79 Good day. I'm trying to use GP to trace some details on the mesh from the background image, which means I need to work in the wireframe mode. But it seems GP won't snap to surface properly:

A. Detail is drawn in Front Ortho view, seems okay.

B. Let's rotate the camera to check if the snapping is correct. Nope, it isn't. GP goes through the mesh as if there are holes in geometry.

Switching to the Solid mode seems to fix the issue:

But it is obv impossible to see the background image this way which defeats the whole purpose.
 Here are my current GP settings:

Could someone help? Thanks anyway.
 Regards.

Okay, the Related sidebar just provided one of the workarounds once the question was posted:

See background image through solid shading in edit mode

it is possible to remain in the Solid mode and then simply switch the background image from being on the back to be on the front. Then some opacity tweaks will do the rest.

Still if someone could point out where was my mistake in the default set up it'd be much appreciated as it will help me understand the GP workflow a bit better.


How to regain smooth shape whilst scaling a group of edges that contain both creased and non creased edges? I'm relatively new to Blender (self taught using these forums) but I've encountered a problem I can't seem to solve.

On the image below I've tried modeling a sliding button, and applied a Subsurf modifier to smoothen it, to keep the bottom part planar I've set the edge crease of the edges seen purple to 1.

Now I'd like to make the exterior ends of the button thinner than the middle part (as seen in the failed attempt). I did this by scaling the X axis of the region I wanted slimmer.

I've tried solving it by replacing my creased egdes by egde loops close to eachother but got somewhat of the same result. How do I scale a group of edges of wich some are creased and some are not without distorting my overall shape ?

Thanks in advance :)

It seems i've solved my own problem after more struggeling. The culprit was me in the end, that went for a crappy geometry (the triangles and such) once i started over clean keeping everything planar until the last steps, the isues were no more. the lesson at the end of the day was; go for squares, not triangles :D.


Import key configuration error -- simple problem? I'm interested in using Blender as a video editing software.
I found a decent tutorial introducing that topic and providing really useful key configuration file, which helps using Blender with a workflow similar to Final Cut Pro.

My problem is -- importing that particular configuration file ends each time with this error:

Here's a transcription of the essentials:

File "...\Blender\2.72\scripts\modules\bpy\utils.py", line 509, in keyconfig_set
    {"_file_":filepath})

File "...\FCP_KeyPreset.py", line 118, in <module>
   kmi.properties.left_right = False

TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: expected a string enum, not bool

Known facts:

I run Blender 2.72b on Windows 8.1 x64.
My Blender is fresh and clean -- I tried to import my key configuration moments after I installed Blender.
Author of the file is a Mac user and he definitely used older version of Blender, but I don't know which version.

The file can be found here: download link for key configuration file.
It might be worth noticing, that this preset is a part of a video tutorial, which can be found here: Video Editing in Blender - Introduction

halp plox :)

This is a change made in blender 2.72.

The select operator in the sequencer used to use a boolean value (True or False) to select before or after the current frame.

Now in 2.72 it can use 'NONE' 'LEFT' 'RIGHT' or 'MOUSE'. While the boolean values can be entered as True and False the enumerated values need to be in a quoted string.

I believe to get the closest match would be -

Find instances of

kmi.properties.left_right = True

and replace them with

kmi.properties.left_right = 'MOUSE'

and replace

kmi.properties.left_right = False

with

kmi.properties.left_right = 'NONE'

Of course you may want to experiment and adjust it as desired.


Extrude Faces Offset Snap I'm back with another super basic question.

I have four faces that I want to extrude inward(or outward) ten grid units. So I have done the following...

I want to snap the faces in or out and have them snap to each grid line, but no matter what options I check, the extrude won't line up with the grid.

These two pictures are snapped to -.9 and -1, but they don't line up with the grid

Set the pivot to "active element" and the transform orientation to "normal"
Select all four faces in Edit Mode.
Once they are selected, hit Alt+E and select "region (vertex normals)"
While the tool is active, hold Shift (to move in smaller increments) and Alt (to turn on even thickness), now it's possible to offset the faces in a predictable way

It moves two units each step instead of just one, but it's a workable solution. Also adjust the extrude settings to offset by just one unit:


Animation data override? I'm relatively new to Blender, and I'm creating an animation. I'm using some MoCap software to create animated rigs to then add to models for the animation.
My issue is I don't know how to add animation data after the previous animation is over.
In the gif I added, I want the model to finish the animation from one rig and continue with the other. Is there a way where I don't have override the previous animation data?
Gif of that I'm trying to achieve

What you need to do is push down your actions in the NLA windows and make the second action follow the first one. Maybe follow some tutorials on NLA because you may be a bit lost at the beginning, for example keep in mind that if you have an action playing in the Dope Sheet it will override the NLA actions.


rotation driver - skipping backwards after 90 degrees I know this is a radians/degrees issue, but I'm not sure how to solve it
I have two objects (needles in a gauge) that one should rotate at 10% of the other - it's an altimeter for an airplane model

video of the rotation problem

My driver :

What dumb thing am I doing wrong?

Use a single property driver variable

Using the transform channel type of driver variable with Eulers makes it ripe for gimbal lock.

Could someone please explain gimbal lock?

If instead single property is used

The equivalent of

driven_needle.rotation_euler.x = driving_needle.rotation_euler.x / 10

it will work as expected, so 90 degrees becomes 9, 180 -> `18'  and so on.


Use the controller object's geometry to influence hook As far as I'm aware, the Hook Modifier (when a mesh is used as the controller object) only uses the transformations of the mesh rather than its geometry. I want another mesh's vertices to be hooked to the controller object's vertices (think point A' of the other mesh is the same location as point A of the controller mesh). Is there a way to do this with the Hook Modifier?
Note: I cannot combine the meshes because the controller mesh is involved in a cloth simulation and there seems to be no way to exclude certain faces from collision, so I had to separate the hooked mesh from the controller in order for it to not collide. As such, I want the vertices of the hooked object to hook to the controller object's vertices.

If I understand correctly, what you could do is:
Create cube 1 and 2. In cube 1 select the vertex that is supposed to be the parent, assign it to a vertex group. Back to Object mode, put the 3D cursor on this point, create an empty, give it a Copy Location constraint with cube 1 as Target and the vertex as Vertex Group.
Now select the empty, shift select cube 2, go in Edit mode, select the vertex that is supposed to be the child, press CtrlH > Hook to Selected Object. It should work.


How to keep a bone in-between other bones? In my rig I would like to keep a bone in-between two other bones, so it is always in-between the two bones when rigging.

In the screenshot, the bone should always be between Bone 1 and Bone 2 when they are posed.
Is this possible? I tried looking through the different bone constraint, but can't figure out to use one or more of them to accomplish this result.

You need 4 constraints:

Copy 100% Location from 1st bone
Copy 50% Location from 2nd bone
Copy 100% Rotation from 1st bone
Copy 50% Rotation from 2nd bone

But if the reason for the middle bone is to fix the deformation, you should fix that in the weight painting. If the reason is to keep the volume of the middle part, then it is ok.


Extruding Vector Files in Blender I am sure this has been discussed quite a few times, but I found a tutorial recently doing the exact same thing as I did, but in my case my logo is messing up!

Here is the link to the workflow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mihkAGfnrWA

This is what it looks like after adding the solidify modifier:

I already recalced the normals of my spline, but besides that it messes up my spline shape, it had no effect.

Any suggestions on how to fix it?

SVG FILE

This has been answered before here Extrude and bevel an imported svg curve

It's most likely dirty geometry and duplicates/overlapping segments on curve export.
Before exporting from Illustrator or whatever vector drafting software you are using turn off any effects, filters, or outlines that may add additional geometry to the curve.

After importing enter edit mode and check for overlapping vertex or duplicated geometry and remove it.

Edit:

Although upon inspecting your SVG file in Inkscape it does show incomplete (the "S" part seems to be inverted or missing some nodes), I just tried importing it into Blender successfully with no problems.

You mentioned using the solidify modifier, so I'm assuming you converted it to mesh, which may be one of the problems. Try leaving it as a curve and use the builtin bezier tools like extrusion and beveling to achieve the volume and shape desired.
Also your curve seems to be very small, and scaled down. Try scaling it up considerably (in object mode by maybe a factor of 10 000) and afterwards press Ctrl + A Apply > Scale

Then enter edit mode, select all vertex and set their radius to 1 (on the Toolshelf>Tools>Curve Tools> Set Curve Radius button. You can then use the Extrude and bevel modification under the Properties Window > Object Data tab > Geometry

If you ultimately do need to convert your logo to mesh for whatever reason, before you do, go over all the straight (linear, non curved) segments of your logo and turn both their handles to vector by pressing V > Vector.

Illustrator seems to export linear segments in a non standard way with one of the curve handles overlapping its origin vertex, which results in lots of overlapping mesh geometry when converting to mesh, which i turn is what is causing the artifacts with the solidify modifier.


Why is my Eevee viewport render different from my full render? I'm a little confused why my Eevee render looks different from the viewport preview.

Above - Preview

Above - Render

Just a bit confused here. Any help appreciated.

To quote an answer I got elsewhere,

  What makes the rendered image look dark is the volume material of the
  particle emitter. However, the emitter is not shown because you have
  to enable “show emitter” in the particle options :slight_smile:
  Unfortunately, the “show emitter” checkbox doesnt have influece on the
  viewport so you always need to double check if it’s turned on or off.
   --eaNiiX


Is there a way I can make loop cuts of multiple (patterned) widths? I want to be able to make a loop cuts like this:

In this example, I just approximated the width between cuts, but I would really like to be exact.

I'm planning on modelling a Ka-Bar knife and I was planning on using this for the handle as shown here:

Obviously this image/diagram thing is a slight oversimplification of what I'm actually trying to do (I'll need an additional, smaller width, C, between A and B so I can scale A up or B down on the Y- and Z-axes in order to get the the little grooves), but for the purpose of my question, I think this simplification is fine.

Perhaps the bvevel tool can do the job ?

1: Use the Loop Cut tool to create the required number of divisions.

2: With these new loop cuts selected use the Bevel tool to give these loop cuts the desired width.


How to set texture with camera view With add image as plane i have add an image and in the texture coordinates i have set to camera. I want my image to be set in camera. In the view port it look set but when preview render the image gets smaller. How to set a background image with the camera. Any other alternative or something going wrong with my nodes. I dont want to scale or rate with the texture coordinates. as in the 3d view i can see it. Any suggestion or help how it works

When i rotate the camera with the background set. It small and get bigger and disappear. But not in the camera view.
https://imgur.com/a/B0DBwxr

the textured view ignores texture coordinates. just set the first node back to UV and it should work just fine.


How to load external modules/packages into blender python I have a bunch of modules that I had previously installed using pip to my system python 2.7. What do I need to do in order to be able to import this module in the blender python console, as well as within my python scripts in blender? (The module in question is called ProDy).

EDIT: I installed pyenv and installed the same version of python as my blender version (3.5.3) uses through it. I then made this version active, and installed the packages I need with pip3 install. I can load the packages in terminal, but not in the blender python console. What am I missing?

For pip-installable dependencies (like PyPI or wheels), all you need to do is the following:

Locate your Blender's Python binary path, let's call it <BPYTHON> (in my case 2.80/python/bin/python3.7m at the Blender installation).
Run the following to enable pip operations in bpython:

<BPYTHON> -m ensurepip
<BPYTHON> -m pip install --upgrade pip

Now any time you want to install a package simply call pip from bpython:

<BPYTHON> -m pip install <YOUR_PACKAGE>  # no --user needed
<BPYTHON> -m pip install <PATH/TO/WHEEL>.whl  # also works with wheels as expected

As usual, you just have to install a package once and uninstalling works the analogous way.

Blender's Python has its own environment, so this procedure will install the dependencies there (in my case the 2.80/python folder). AFAIK this will work irrespectively of your OS, system's Python version and Blender location so I found this to be most convenient. You can encounter some issues if installing cython-related packages like tkinter but this can also be fixed as I did here.

Let me know if this works out!
Cheers,
Andres