How to keep driver control objects in view of camera I have a scene in which a character's mouth is controlled by shape keys. There are three shape keys -- jaw, tongue and teeth -- and I have a simple driver for each which targets the Z world location of my control object -- an icosphere placed at world origin on the same layer as my scene.

The control icosphere is the first item in my outline above, and controls the mosasaur mouth shown.

From seeing tutorials, I know there is a way/ways to make control objects like this stay in view as a camera moves and panels, either on screen or at the bottom of the N panel.... in the locations I have indicated above.

I have no idea what this process is called, or how to do it... and I think my lack of vocabulary makes my Stack Exchange searchers useless....

So how can I keep a control object's settings (just Z location, in this case) somewhere so I can see and keyframe it as my muncher swims around?

Yes, he looks like an Orca.

UPDATE with screen grabs: Answer from Haunt_House was what I needed.

I created a custom property called Z_Height for my icosphere control object. I left the min and max values as theyy were, since that matched what my keyframes wanted.

I then updated my drivers to take the ["Z_Height"] value from the custom property.... and the keyframeable Z_Height property appears in the N panel. Thanks.

You can add a custom property to an object and have them drive your animation:

The trick is to enable the little pin in the upper left corner. That way the editor keeps displaying that panel.

If you want controls moving with the camera, you can parent them to the camera, disable rendering for them in the Outliner and use local space instead of world space in the driver variables. That way only relative movement towards the camera affects your animation and the camera can still move around.

I recommend empties between the camera and the controls. The empties swallow the offset between control and the camera and the controls start with zero regarding their parent empty. That means you don't have to use awkward offset values in the driver.


Inverted textures in True Terrain mesh I'm new to Blender and newer to the community. Please be kind with my ignorance.
I've created a landscape mesh with the True Terrain addon, looks really nice, but when I place the automatic textures of the addon it put them on the other side of the mesh. I've tried not using the texture given and add one with the shader editor, same issue. Also the normals of the mesh are facing the right direction. I've tried flippin them just in case, and same problem.
Another thing to happen is when i render on cycles the mesh it's all streched and looks like a mess, works nice with the displacement off, but the texture still inverted. Experimental render and displacement and bump options are both checked.
I've tested this with Blender 2.83 and 2.9

With displacement

Without displacement

Without displacement

Maybe try something like 2000m x 2000m x 500m (x, y, z) landscape dimensions but keep the sizes to 1 if you haven't already and see if that helps.


How can I make a fluid (smoke) follow a particle system? I'm using Blender 2.82.7 for this.  I need to make a tornado, I created the particle system, I created fluid physics, but when I make the final bake the system does not behave as I wanted and it spreads.  Is there also a way to save the cache?  It takes a long time and when I close Blender I need to bake again.  I'm using Blender 2.82's new Mantaflow system.

I found the issue is with the particle size. The default one is too big, if you reduce the size the smoke will be far better, I reduced the size to $0.01m$.

Change the particle size from: Particle Properties -> Particle Settings -> Viewport Display -> Size


Balloon Simulation - String is floating like balloon I'm trying to simulate balloons gathering under a tent. I've finally figured out the stiffness and gravity of the balloon using a combo of soft body and rigid body modifiers, but the string is now the only issue.

(View from bottom looking up)

The string just continues to gather at the top instead of hang down. How do I make the balloon have negative gravity, and the string have positive gravity? Or.. is there another solution for it to remain hanging down?

The eventual goal is to add maybe 50 balloons to the scene to have them fill the tent with their strings hanging down.

You can create two separate soft body simulations - one for the balloon and the other for the string - and link them together via the Copy Location constraint.

Start by creating the balloon and then, in Edit mode, select just the vertex where you want to attach the string. On the Mesh properties add a new Vertex Group and name it 'Knot'. Assign the selected vertex to the group.

Create the string as a separate mesh as a string of vertices (you can add thickness via a Skin modifier). In Edit mode, select just the 'top' vertex and, again, add a vertex group and assign the selected vertex to the group. In Object mode, add Soft Body and use the new group in the Goal properties so only that vertex is pinned. Increase the Default goal strength to 1.0. Also, set the origin of the 'string' mesh to the location of that top vertex.

Now, add a Copy Location constraint to the string, specifying the balloon as the Target. Set the Vertex Group on the constraint to the 'Knot' vertex group. This should result in the string being tied to and following the balloon while still being a separate soft body (so they can have different Field Weights (ie, negative gravity for the balloon, positive gravity for the string)).

This should produce a result similar to the following :


How do you make a torus 'telescope' open? So I have a torus, and I need it to "telescope" open -- kind of like Pacman's death animation, but with a torus instead of a sphere.

I'm very new to 3D modeling/animating so I really have no clue how to tackle this problem.  Any advice to help me get pointed in the right direction would be most appreciated :)

You could do this easily with a torus curve, if you dont mind the bezier curve object.

Just add a Bezier Curve Circle, make its handles Free type and erase the bottom half (or whichever suits your design).

Make it 2D type with None fill so it is like a torus.

Adjust the bevel radius and resolution as desired.
Add a Mirror modifier in the corresponding axis to mirror the animation.

You can now animate the aperture with the *Bevel Factor > Start and end factors.

Alternatively if symmetry is not your concern, you may simply turn the circle into an open shape by duplicating one of its vertex and erasing one segment, and then controlling both the Start and End Bevel Factor values independently.


Blender console formatted printing: Is there a maximum length? With the default cube mesh and Blender 2.77, if I run this code in console:

for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:])
        print("%f %f %f" % f.normal[:])
    print("\n")

I get the following output (truncated for brevity):

-1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000

-1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000
...

However, with this:

for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f\n" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:], f.normal[:])
    print("\n")

or even this:

for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[0], py.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[1], py.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[2], f.normal[0], f.normal[1], f.normal[2])
    print("\n")

I get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 3, in <module>
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Why can I print 3 floats easily but printing 6 floats doesn't work? Is Python's formatted printing different that C's (in this respect)? Or is it something Blender specific? Is there a maximum limit on how many 'arguments' the format string can take?

In python the string formatting operation ('%') accepts a single argument and in your first (working) example that's exactly what you've got as it's a single element with 3 components. in your other (not working) examples you're trying to pass multiple values to '%', each containing 3 values. Your solution is to simply combine them into a single tuple by appending them with the '+' operator :

for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f\n" % (bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:] + f.normal[:]))
    print("\n")


Is it possible model a perspective image in orthographic view I am new to blender and I am not clear that is it possible to model a perspective image in orthographic view because I never succeeded whenever I tried but I could see tutorials put up modeling a perspective image in orthographic view. I am not sure whether the image is perspective or orthographic. This is the link to one of the video    http://youtu.be/86JiuZpbi_w

Yes, but ...
You have to keep in mind that using photographs as reference images you will always have a bit of "distortion". Therefore use them only as loose reference, not as "set-in-stone-rules".

If you start for example in the front-view, adding all the faces they will be completly flat, and if looked from any other angle, they will appear as a big plane without any structure. Now if you switch to side-view and start moving the verticies horizontal you'll get more and more "3d-ish".

(maybe somebody can add explaining images to this answer)


Blender game engine data extract i am trying to connect Blender game engine to a PLC(programable logic controller) so i can control a robot with blender game engine, i dont know where to start to take de bge data outside of blender, get the object rotation/speed/scale and variables data outside of blender to connect it to matlab or the python console in windows, where should i look?, what i need to learn to do this data extraction, i know how to use python scripting inside bge already, i just need to know how to begin extracting data outside of blender.

You have to comunicate to your plc by a python socket (import socket) and stripe whatever you are sending from your local port (arduino) or the local port on you have the plc.


How do I get two armatures to follow? I have two seperate armatures I want to connect to eachother, CTRL-J adds the first armature to the second and the mesh still works as expected. But when I move the bones on one armature the bones on the other armature won't follow. So how could I get the bones to follow? The model is properly weight painted.

After you joined the two meshes, you must select in edit mode all the bones of the second armature and parent them to the "master" bone of the first armature, the one which moves all the others (choose "keep offset" option when asked to).


Make water wheel with hinges Could I make little 'doors' in the water wheel that rotate with the wheel itself, but can also rotate around their own hinge?

First set up your doors with the origin on the hinge edge, or us an empty. See this question for more info How do I create a hinged door?
Next Parent the little doors to the main water wheel.

In the above gif I have added an empty that is also parented to the water wheel. That empty is used to control the rotation of all the doors with a Copy Rotation constraint on each of the doors.


Blender 3D Game Projects? I am just beginning learning to use Blender and I was wondering if some of you have some sample game projects. Or if you know any good book, forum or videos tutorials for the last version of Blender (2.72). Thanks.

I would recommend that before you learn to use the blender game engine, you learn to use the normal blender engine so you can get the hang of the basics and it hugely minimizes some of avoidable mistakes - and if my experience was anything to go by, you'll make a ton.

I would recommend that you mess around with it, try to set yourself basic project and you'll slowly learn how to do new things and old things more efficiently.

Here are a few websites I would recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/user/CGAstym
https://www.youtube.com/user/GlebAlexandrov
http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/Game_Engine/Tutorials_index.html
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9057AB8E3C66AE80 and archived


How can I make a tile-able polygon background? How can I make a tileable polygon background?

Step 1: Modeling:

Start with a flat plane. Next, add some modifiers, first a sub surf (set the division to 6 or 8 & set the mode to simple), then a displace with a default cloud texture (set the strength to taste - you may want to adjust it after the next step), and finally, a decimate modifier. Adjust the ratio until the poly-gon pattern looks right:

Next it is time to define the edge that will be tiled.

First, apply all the modifiers, and then make any adjustments to the polygons (make ones that are too small and thin etc. the right shape).

Finally, grab all the vertices along the edges you wish to tile, and delete them:

Now we will need to cut an edge. Any spot works, I pick one near the left edge. Go into top view Numpad7, Then use the kinfe tool K, locked on an axis C. Click and drag up, and then hit enter.

Now we need to split the mesh along this edge. To do this, hit V and drag to the side, so that the edge comes away. Use RMB to put it back into place. Del-select everything with A, and hover over one of the halfs and hit L to select it.

Drag it over to the other side, and fill in the seem. The two opposing edges will now be contiguous when lined up.

Step 2: Shading

See this answer for details. This answer other may also be found useful.


How do I unwrap an over-complex mesh? The above is the part of my mesh(done by Dyntopo in sculpting) and I'm having a real hard time unwrapping it. I tried the add-on(Downloaded somewhere, not inside blender) that helps UV mapping in squares but that lags hard and it ended up as a linear single line UV. I spent 10 minutes just for adding three seems to the mesh and it's too backbreaking. Help pls :C

Normally such mesh should be retopologized.

But anyway if for whaterever reason you don't want or cannot do a propper retopology, you can just use Blender's automatic unwrapping features.

When you select your mesh in edit mode and press U, it brings up the UV mapping menu with plenty options.

In red I marked the automatic unwrap methods. They each automatically unwrap your selected mesh following different sets of rules and eventually with some options you can have a hand on. They each have some ideal situations they're good at.

The one you might like here is the Smart UV Project. It basically makes seams when adjacent faces form an angle superior to a chosen value (the default is 66).

You can click that and see how it goes. If there are too many cuts, lower the angle limit, vice versa. Try to find the right balance between the number of islands and the obtained distortion. If it's not an important mesh (which I guess it is if you don't retopologize it), you don't have to spend time on that, just make something that looks ok from afar and move on.

Learn more in the manual.


What might be causing this blocky shading on my model? I have a model that I sculpted and retopologised in another application, and then imported the retopologised mesh into Blender with a normal map.

The mesh is around 9200 verts, and I have smooth shading turned on.

I am getting an odd shading artifact in the form of jagged edges:

While the surface is not perfect, it seems more than smooth enough that this artifact should not be happening.

The object has a normal map applied (baked from the high quality sculpt), but I can turn that off an get the same thing:

Here is a shot of the wireframe:

Is this abnormal like I think it is? What might be causing it? I have checked the mesh for everything I can think of.

EDIT: I have made the file available here (20M, sorry):

The mesh is fine. The primary cause of the geometric shadow is the texture co-ordinates you have given the HDR environment. The simple HDR setup here...

...results in a smooth shadow.

As reference: Trouble Viewing Whole HDR Image as cycles world

The PBR node you have added obvious effects the edges...


How do I adjust the resolution of my render accurately? The resolution is off I just rendered an image with the 1920 x 1080 resolution, but when the image was done rendering it was 960 x 540.
I don't know why it is coming out different from the dimensions specified in the render, what is the reasoning behind that?
This is a Cycles Render, if that makes a difference.
My rendering setup below:

By default the resolution percentage is set to 50%. To fix just change to 100%. Setting is located under the resolution settings.


Shrinkwrap doing weird topology so Im trying to do a retopo of a model and Im having a problem.

I have a sculpted model, and now im trying to retopo this one with Shrinkwrap. First I have a mirror modifier and then a subdivision surface one, the last one is the Shrinkwrap.

My problem its that it makes weird things in the topology and i dont know what can be the problem.

This topology error happens as the same way in other parts of the model.

My personal preference is to use vertex snapping, not shrink-wrapping, as a form of retopology to avoid this kind of problem.

Often excessive subsurface and/or complex topology can lead to this problem. Keep in mind that the shrink-wrap modifier uses the normal of each of the faces of the  mesh to calculate the deformation, not necessarily its proximity to the original one. Make sure it makes sense looking at it without shrink-wrapping it.

Other possibilities include that your normals are not consistent or the shrink-wrapped mesh is not completely outside the object to be retopologized. But as previously said, just look at the mesh with the modifier turned off and adjust to make it as clear as possible what you want to do.

I would take a youtube tutorial on shrink-wrap retopology so you understand the concept completely before proceeding.


Is it possible to crease a NURBS vertex? I am learning how to make vector like graphics using a NURBS curve, and it looks like a very powerful method, except I can not find a way to 'crease' a vertex. The vertices are automatically smoothed, and my result looks like this:

I want to be able to make the circled areas sharper, while keeping all other parts the same.

In your example a bezier curve will make it easier to get 'sharp' points in your curve as the control handles for each point give more control over how the curve enters and leaves each point.

If you do need to use nurbs and also need a 'sharp' point you can place three points close together which reduces the smooth interpolation between points to what visually appears to be a point.

In edit mode if you zoom right in you can see -


Make a face from a mesh with a hole How can I create a face for extrusion with a hole inside in edit mode? In my case I want to extrude only the "C" from a mesh marked in blue and not the filled innside part.

I'm not sure what you basic mesh looks like, so it's hard to tell what you're supposed to do, I guess you can create edges between the existing vertices but I recomposed your shape with several successive extrusions along the  letter profile. To make an angle round I've selected an edge and use the bevel tool (ctrlB). When you have finished with the flat mesh, select all and extrude up (E). Is it what you want?

Edit: And oh yes, as Duarte explains, if you have the same amount of vertices on the internal and external edges, you can simply select them and press W > Bridge Edge Loops. If they don't have the same amount, create enough vertices to make the count equal. You can play with the bridge parameters on the bottom of the Tools panel, on the left of the 3D View.


Smoke not showing up in render? I am using 3 layers, a tornado (flow physics particle), some text that was converted into mesh so it could explode and get sucked in by the tornado. I also have a surface plane which is the only thing that appears in render, except for a vague hint of a colourless tornado.

This is the link to the blender file and two screenshots, I hope they will help show my problem.

For some odd reason the texture coordinates for your voxel texture are undefined:

Printing the value of the setting with python says that it's set to global, which is not the value you want anyway. Try setting it to generated.

For some reason I also needed to set the viewport maximum draw type to textured in order to get this to work in 2.72, which is extremely odd..

This was not needed in 2.69. I've reported this as a bug here. It has been fixed as of this commit, which will be in 2.73.

Also be sure to allow the voxel texture to influence the scattering color of the smoke, otherwise it will not be colored like you might expect:


How to copy color from webpage to Blender material surface color input value? Sometimes I see a nice color I like online and I'd like to be able to copy that color to an object in Blender.
I did try Firefox> Tools> Web Developer> Eyedropper to copy hex value,
but upon pasting into Blender material color field the color changes to something completely different than what I copied.
Just wondering if there's an easy way I'm overlooking.
Blender eyedropper only seems to work when clicking something inside Blender.
Thanks for any ideas.

Load an image in Image editor. Use the color picker to sample the color from the image.
All the objects are affected by the light. It will never be the same as sampled because the light and shadows. You have to play with lights and its RGB or HSV values to get close as possible.


What methods can be used to cut irregular shaped holes in flat beveled surfaces with clean topology? How do I fill these empty areas (left image) with no distortion(right image)?

I tried deleting all the faces and edges and then filling it which gave me a smooth flat surface around the holes but that method resulted in hard lines where the flat surface meets the bevel (the blue arrow), I want it to be a smooth transition (green arrow). I've tried marking that edge smooth and auto smooth with no avail. I'm having the best luck with the Subsurf modifier but I need better topology for that method to work well. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks!

Here's the file:

I don't know if this will help you (maybe post your blend file?) but I recently learned about the Offset Edges plugin (needs to be downloaded and installed from file).  This works something like the way I would expect the "Shrink/Fatten" tool to work with a loop of edges--it will extrude them (or duplicate them, or move them) inwards or outwards in a way that does not distort the outline of the loop.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/offset_edges

How you might use that here, in a sample file that is maybe a little like your example.

The face to be created is between the top edge of the cylinder and the surrounding square edge.

Since these are two separate edge loops, we will offset each of them separately.  First the square edge, using Mesh-->Edges-->Offset Edges-->Extrude

Then offset the circle loop using the same command:

Now we can fill our remaining face, either using Mesh-->Faces-->Fill or Mesh-->Edges-->Bridge Edge Loops:

Et voila, the ugly triangle topology of the filled flat face does not impact the edges (in this case) because it is "buffered" by a margin of proper topology.

How this may work out in your case is hard to say for certain, but it's worth a try.


How To Make V-key Toggle Between Vertex Paint And Object Mode? I am trying to set up V-Key as shortcut. But it is ignored in Vertex Paint Mode.
In Object Mode, I hover over Vertex Paint, right-click and add shortcut.
Great! I hit V-key, switches to Vertex Paint mode.
Now I hover over Object Mode, right-click and add shortcut.
Since I am trying to toggle states, I use same: V-Key

But, it does not switch back to Object Mode.
It seems that shortcuts are global, not bound to current view state.
So, can I make V-key a toggle between view modes?

It occurred to me I was trying to mimic the Tab-Key. So I looked that up in the Keymap. Then just did the same thing, but for Vertex Painting instead of Editing.
Preferences > Keymap > 3D View > Object Non-modal > Add New

Set object.mode_set
Assign V-Key binding
Then select option to make it a toggle.

Note: In Vertex Paint mode, V is already bound to 'Vertex Section' mask. I removed the default V-key shortcut from Keymap > 3D View > Vertex Paint.


Is it possible to bake materials to textures? I have this funny little goat model, and the colors and everything looks fine (I used assign material)

But then, if I change to texture mode, (I need it to have a texture, too)
because it has no texture, it looks like this!

How do I make a material a texture?

Materials contain amongst others a diffuse part. In short, this is the part that gives the model its colors. You can certainly bake specific parts of the assigned material to a texture in both Blender internal and Cycles. Since both methods differ from each other a little it would be good to know which render engine you use.


How do I get out of this weird zoom in/out? Can someone please diagnose this. I clicked on something on the keyboard but I don't remember what I pressed exactly.

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!
At the lower right corner of the 3D view, under the View heading, there is a setting called Lens that is currently set to 1. That is the focal length of the viewport camera, and should be set to something like 50 (the default in the current release of Blender).
Changing that value should solve the issue.


Blender using wrong GPU for 3D View (This is not about Rendering) I'm using two graphic cards in my system. I have recently replaced an old AMD gpu with a GT 710. Now blender is using the GT 710 instead of the much more powerful GTX 760. Blender now is painfullly slow and already stutters at 100k verts.

Anybody knows how I can choose what GPU Blender should run on?

Blender GPU settings as requested:

EDIT

All my programs start in Monitor 1. Blender starts in Monitor 4. Don't know why, but they are all connected to the GTC 760

What you want to do is control which GPU the OpenGL context is created on. Luckily the latest Nvidia Driver has a way to do that.

Open the Nvidia Control Panel, and navigate to this setting:


Constraint to glue two faces of two objects together? I am creating an animation of a bending beam. I want the beam to have an object attached to its end, with the proper orientation. Considering that object is, for instance, a cube, the effect I am looking for would be that one of the faces of the cube is glued to one of the faces of my beam mesh, so that the position and orientation is corrected as I change the bending angle during the animation. The effect I am looking for is similar to the snap operation, but I cannot figure out how to snap the objects automatically during the animation, as the beam mesh is modified. Is there a way to do this?

An example of what I am looking for:

A clean and simple option for this is Vertex Parenting, the 3 vertex variety, to maintain orientation.


Render Halo material with tranparent background I make a "shockwave" using Halo material. It looks nice only for the black background. If I check "Shading > Alpha > Transparent", render result is breaks down. How to fix it?

There are a couple of things to consider here:

First, Blender's viewer is currently broken for associated alpha, which is the default format the renderer produces.
That means that the viewer won't show the pixels that are both luminous and fully transparent (alpha zero, RGB not zero) from an image with associated alpha.

If you're going to composite that effect using Blender's compositor, just try an alpha over on a colour to judge whether your image transparency is correct instead of relying on the RGBA view of Blender's image viewer.

Also, you have to understand the kind of effect you're tying to achieve: This is a lighting effect that you want to be added to a background.

As easy as it sounds, adding that luminous element can be done via a simple add. You don't even need an alpha channel (because there is no occlussion), you can just add the RGB plate to the background and it look ok.

If you want to produce an RGBA image that can be composited with an alpha over anyway, keep in mind the following:

ONLY associated alpha (often called pre multiplied) allows the
compositing of pixels that are luminous and transparent, so choose a
file format that supports associated alpha (the most common for
visual effects is EXR)
It's impossible to produce that kind of alpha blending with
unassociated alpha, so formats like PNG are completely ruled out.
Image editing programs like Photoshop and GIMP work internally with
unassociated alpha, so they are not suitable for compositing that
kind of effects with alpha blending. You need to cheat and use an RGB
only image with an addition instead (those programs are also likely
to destroy the RGB information of every pixel with alpha=0, so be careful).


High poly from low poly with normal maps I have some low poly models with nice normal maps. Is it possible to create high poly model based on low poly model and normal map?

Subdivision surface doesn't work  in this case, as it will create high poly model from low poly, but it will not take normal map into account.

This is possible if you convert the normal map into a height map in a program like CrazyBump or AwesomeBump. What this will do is add bump to the low poly model and enable you to give a slightly more high poly look. This however, may not give the best results.


Glossy reflections and smooth shading I'm having a hard time creating a chrome object with flat faces but with smoothly bevelled edges.

If you start with the default cube, add a bevel modifier set to, say, 4 segments, set to smooth shading and render in cycles, then everything looks as expected. If you now add a glossy material with no roughness and an HDRI environment things don't look quite right - at least to my eye.

On the main faces inherited from the original cube the reflections are slightly bent. The bending is reduced if I increase the number of segments in the bevel modifier. At 100 (the max) things are just about OK. Adding loop cuts or a subsurf often makes things worse with some views revealing the triangulation used to render.

I think I understand the cause and that is due to the interpolation of the normal over the whole face which creates a slight curving of the reflection.

Adding an edge split and adjusting the angle works but adds sharp edges as you'd expect and the faces drop back to planar. Applying the bevel, selecting the large faces and making them planar adds a crease around them.

Explicitly modelling the bevel makes no difference.

Adding an inset face simply adds reflection weirdness to the outer "frame" faces that are created.

My objective is to have the main faces of my object flat mirrors and bevelled edges as close as possible to cylinders that smoothly join them.

Any thoughts?

Update

Here's a picture I constructed in PovRay to illustrate the issue, or rather to show what I'm aiming for:

Here's what I created in Blender 2.76rc3 using a bevel modifier with a segment count of 4:

And here with a segment count of 100:

This next image shows that making the centre panels flat shaded causes the normals to be split and thus display a discontinuity:

This next one shows that adding an inset face causes even more strangeness.

Here's my result using a subsurf - admittedly it could be improved but I was trying to avoid this method as it will not work with the target object that I really need to use the method on.

Finally, here is the result I managed to achieve using the Blend4Web normal editor to set the corner vertex normals of the main faces to be equal to the normal of the face.  I accidentally used a different radius.

This is the best so far but still I'm not happy with the process.  I thought at the start that I was doing something fundamentally wrong but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that this is just the way it is.

There are two common ways for modeling rounded corners. One, using a bevel modifier. Two, using a subdivision surface modifier. Both have advantages.

Bevel Modifier:

The bevel modifier's main problem is the sharp edge it gives on each side of the bevel as seen in the image below. It can look very 3Dish when using highly reflective shaders. But the advantage is that it keeps a relatively low polygon count in comparison to subdivision surfaces and keeps a better curvature by maintaining a perfectly circular curve.

To reduce distortion in the reflections, one can add edge loops to correct the normals so that they face directly outwards. See image below.

Subdivision Surface Modifier:

The advantage to the Subdivision Surface (sub-surf) modifier is the smooth transition of faces that the catmull-clark algorithm creates. But, to get noon-distorted results, you must have a high subdivision level, Causing polygon counts to double or quadruple.

In the end, neither are perfect. But the sub-surf modifier will give better results. At the cost of your render speed.

An example of the subdivision method:

An example of the bevel method with added edge loops to improve normals:


Scaling Rather than Moving Objects when Attached to Curve I'm following this tutorial on YouTube

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

And it gets to a point where I'm trying to move the tread onto the main object. The problem is every time I try to move the tread it's moving the origin instead of the object.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to move the object.

It goes from this:

To this:

OK, seems I've just figured it out and it's ridiculously simple.

Grab the tread AND the curve and then move.


Hair particles clumping in Cycles render First time posting :)

I'm relatively new to Blender, and I'm having trouble with hair particles rendering correctly.

This is my viewport render preview, which is the appearance I'm looking for:

And this is my render, where the hair clumps unexpectedly:

Can anyone suggest how I might fix this?

Here are my settings:

Thanks in advance.

This is caused by the particle children.
for every 10 hairs displayed in the preview you render 2000 hairs with the same propertys in the final render. Thats why it looks smooth and lumpy.


Rotoscope mask has different shape after rendering I am rotoscoping a scene and it looks fine in the compositor: the mask is bordering all the figure as in the picture 1
But when I render it the mask appears in a different location as shown in picture 2 (look left hand, up)

Can somebody please tell me what am I doing wrong? Node in picture 3

Thanks in advance.
Here is the file

If I render your file I get no problems with the mask being misaligned:

As for the rough edges by the armpit, those are part of the key from the green screen, they are not part of mask you are using as garbage matte.
The keying needs to be refined, so that you get better separation.

You might want to try blender.2.92 so that you don't have to convert from straight to premultiplied.
Read: How to put animated background to keyed video?
I suspect the issue could related to the kind of video compression, or how the image is being decoded by blender. Sometimes, depending on the codec used, blender fails to read the correct frame, and reads one frame ahead or one frame late.
Try prefetching the video, or rendering the video to an image sequence first, and use that image sequence to generate the key.
Please report back if the issue persists
See: Render is duplicating random frames when loaded into 3D tracker


How to avoid weird topology with shrink-wrap when trying to retopologize really high mesh I don't really know what i'm doing wrong in the whole process of sculpting and re-topology.
is not like it's a horrible topology but is not smooth.

It is has to do withe the fact that the mesh is 5 million polys and shrink wrap is not precis with that many polys and i should do it the hard way just using snap to faces?

The problem was as the i suspect, the topology was tooo high and messy
I find a good way to solve this problems, just decimate the mesh and then use this videos to get a better topology in just minutes for the shrink-wrap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBiR262Wdfc&ab_channel=GrantAbbitt


Is there a way to quickly replace left half of my sculpt with mirror image of right half? My sculpt model has become a little unsymmetrical and I'd like to replace the left half with a mirror image of the right.  I know there's an option for this under Dyntopo, but that leaves artifacts.  My center line is still in tact - is there something that will simply delete the left half of my model and replace it with the right?

You can try going into edit mode, then under mesh options, symmetrize. On the popup option choose direction of the symmetry (ie. -x to x)


Cycles render showing up black I am very new to blender (2.81) and have been following a number of different tutorials to produce this file.

Rendered images (cycles) were working fine but suddenly they now come up as black screens. I don’t understand as the rendered viewport view shows everything correctly!

I found a forum help post that gave a long list of things to try and fix this issues and I have attempted tthose I understood but none have worked.

Blend file:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13KHVJxB5VuuFE3hBDRyNraVbIl0MOxwn

If any of you kind folk could take a look and tell me what stupid mistake I have made I would be eternally grateful

There is one large object blocking your view.

In outliner go to MEGACUBE > POOL > Cube.001 and disable the Render Toggle.
You also see the object in viewport if you toggle the Eye icon.


How to update compositing nodes via script? I create some nodes in compositing via python script:

dbl_info = {
   "name": "Tmp Addon",
   "category": "All"
}
import bpy
class tmpAddon(bpy.types.Operator):
   bl_idname = "tmp.tmp_addon"
   bl_label = "tmpAddon"
   bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

def execute(self, context):
    if not bpy.context.scene.use_nodes:
        bpy.context.scene.use_nodes = True
    nodesField = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
    for currentNode in nodesField.nodes:
        nodesField.nodes.remove(currentNode)
    bpy.ops.image.open(filepath="d:/Blender/_TMP/Addon_tmp/p_1.png", directory = "d:/Blender/_TMP/Addon_tmp/")
    currentImageNode = nodesField.nodes.new(type = 'CompositorNodeImage')
    currentImageNode.image = bpy.data.images['p_1.png']
    currentImageNode.location = (0, 0)
    currentImageNode.name = 'p_1.png'
    currentOutputNode = nodesField.nodes.new(type = 'CompositorNodeComposite')
    currentOutputNode.location = (200, 0)
    nodesField.links.new(nodesField.nodes['p_1.png'].outputs['Image'], currentOutputNode.inputs['Image'])
    return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(tmpAddon)
def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(tmpAddon)
if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
    bpy.ops.tmp.tmp_addon()d

It works, but after executions created nodes are inactive:

after any manipulations (for example uncheck "Use Alpha" checkbox on Output node) all of nodes updates and become active

I found that if there is an opened window with compositing nodes during script execution, generated nodes updates, and work fine. But if there is no compositing nodes window during script run, nodes stay not updated after script execution.

How can I update compositing nodes via script and force them to work if there is no active compositing window during script execution?

Did you try to activate the composite node like this:

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.node_tree.nodes.active = scene.node_tree.nodes['Your composite node']
scene.render.use_compositing = True


Where is the "sync selection" option? When I try to select an island in a uv map it says "Cannot select linked when sync selection is enabled".

I know I have to disable it with this button:

But it is not here:

So where is it?

Your second screenshot is of the header in the 3D view, but the setting you are looking for is in the header of the UV/Image editor:


How to fix array after separate? Creating a cabinet. I have created a cabinet and array. I want to separate the door with array. As show below. When i select the door and hit separate the door loose the alignment. I have to adjust manually to fix the door. Any way to fix the door with array align after separating. Thanks
Gif

Make sure you use constant offset in the array modifier.


Making n-sided polygons in Blender 2.69 Is there anyway to create n-sided polygons in Blender without having to set the user preferences to 'enter edit mode' when adding a mesh. I'm asking this because there are times when I want add a cylinder mesh with n-gons on the top or to initialize a mesh previous to adding it to a scene.

Yes This is possible.

For a cylinder:

Press ShiftA> Add mesh > Cylinder
Press F6 and set the Cap Fill Type to Ngon.

If you are looking to do this from python:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=1, depth=2, end_fill_type='NGON', view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(-2.06615, -0.413393, 3.45981), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))

Or have a look at the bmesh api.

For doing this in the interface, usually one uses Edit mode (perhaps you could elaborate on why this doesn't work for you?). To create an ngon in edit mode, select the faces you wish to convert to a single face and press F.


I can not have environmental map and volume lighting at the same time? I am doing a scene, where I need to have a environmental texture as the background,and that texture is called an equirectangular map. I also need to have a volume lighting in the world as well. But when I add both the enviromental texture and the volume lighting, and when I render, I get a pure black render, with nothing on it.

These are my material notes for the world.

Does anybody, know if its possible to have both an environmental map, and volume lighting ? If so, how can I do it ?

Thank You

The light coming from environment map is infinitely far away, so it get's absorbed by any amount of volume.

Build a sky dome - sphere big enough with inverted normals. Assign and emission shader with environment texture node plugged into it with the hdr.

Set your volumetric environment like you want.

Tadaa! And yes, expect your render times to be infinite, hope you don't have any glass or glossy in the scene.)


How to scale the top of a mesh w/o distorting the structure How can I make the top I need the top of my build narrower than the bottom?  On the right, you can see the effect I am trying to achieve.  I needed to add windows to the original downloaded build so I just started over with a grid mesh so I could get everything even. Then mirrored and merged to get the four sides.  I tried morphing as suggested in a youtube video from a similar question on this site., but it flattened everything out.  It's not a cylinder so I can't simply circle select and scale.  I am sure there is some simple modifier for this, but I can't seem to frame the question in the proper format to search for it.

One way would be Proportional Scaling.

Select the top part and scale it, Keep Z=1 (to keep the height)
Enable proportional editing and set it to Linear
Use the slider to adjust the faloff distance


How can I create text with a neat quad topology for deformation? I was trying to do a simple text warp effect in Photoshop and the built-in effects didn't give me the exact shape I wanted, so I decided to give it a shot in Blender. Blender's versatility allowed me to easily warp and scale the text, but the problem is that the text mesh I created had extremely poor topology which doesn't deform well. Ideally, I would like to have a very even quad topology.

I can create the desired topology manually using the steps shown in the image below:

This allows me to use proportional editing lattice or bend modifier and get a clean deformation. However, this is quite time-consuming, so I was wondering if there is a simple function that will allow me to get a result similar to that shown in step 3. but a bit more automated to save time and allow iteration if I need to change the text? Basically, I need something like the dynamesh remesh feature of zbrush that takes an input mesh and slices it into an even grid. Does this exist in Blender?

Didn't realize this was a duplicate.

To expand on MrZak's comment.

A similiar geometry can be created with the help of the Remesh modifier.

Raise the Extrude property of the text to > 0.
Add a remesh modifier. Uncheck Remove Disconnected Pieces. Raise the octree depth untill the result becomes acceptable.
In the 3D view, press ⎇ AltC and choose convert to mesh. (You now have polygon geometry.)
In edit mode, remove half of the text to make a flat solid again.


Reference image moves "around" objects instead of sliding through them I am new to Blender, trying to work through the BlenderGuru tutorial here.  I have loaded the reference image of a coffee cup and would like to shape a cylindrical mesh to model the cup.  When I try to move the reference image, though, it seems to automatically move "out" in the y direction, as if it is sliding around the cylinder.  If I move it back to where its y coordinate is 0, and again try to move in the x direction only (using "g" and then "x" to slide in that direction), the y coordinate also changes.  Any thoughts on what is going on here?  It seems there is some physics constraint it is trying to enforce, which keeps the center of the reference image from entering the cylinder.

The image below shows my starting point.  The "Object Properties" window on the right hand side shows the y coordinate is zero.  The image has been oriented to the front by clicking numberpad-1.

When I try to move the reference image by clicking "g" and then "x" and then dragging toward the left, the intersection with the cylindrical shape clearly changes.  When I look at the "Object Properties" window, I see that the reference image has moved forward on the y axis, which I can confirm when I change my viewport to a side view.

Any pointers as to what is going on here, and how to fix it?  Thanks.

Disable the Snap option (magnet icon on the top menu bar), if you enable it, it will make the object you move stick to the selected mode.


using Mixamo/adobe fuse, Makehuman, and blender together This question is fairly simple, i recently found Fuse and decided to try it to see if i could animate and create characters easier than i can with blender (because i'm not great at blender) or Makehuman.

The question is, how can i get models with the textures, correct orientation, correct scale, and animations to import/export properly (mainly from fuse or Make human to blender for adjustments then back again.)?
  All information i can find is simply mixamo to blender but those result in models being giant, facing incorrectly (on back) and not having rigging in properly. i need to be able to use animations and textures primarily.

Use the mhx2 importer for blender: its an addon you need for make human...works great. For Fuse, they don't import well, but do import into UE4 fine so probably just a blender thing, I do my Mixamo/Fuse touchups in Unreal and Makehuman in Blender.


Is it possible to simulate tape measure bending with Soft Body physics? Metal tape measures behave in a very interesting way. When they are held out horizontally, for some length, they bend, but when they bend, both segments around the bend stay absolutely strait and the bend forms a fairly tight crease. I've been trying to create something to this effect to create a simulated corn leaf (part of a larger plant), and got stuck. How can I make this effect (for the tape measure)?

My best result so far is this:

Here is the blend file for testing:

Side note. I am only looking for a simulation solution. Not a rigging one.

Plastic deformation & Stiff quads

I made several changes to the provided Blendfile to achieve this result.

I'll try to summerize them focusing on the most important ones in a qualitative way, as to make a simulation look good what matter is the "whole":

Stiff quads should be enabled. The option will add to the face a "skew resistance", as material elements in the real world have. This way we ensure that the tape has more chanches of keeping his shape
Springs strenght increased (almost 1). Metal have quite big elastic deformations compared to other materoals, but the deformation of the elements at the simulation's scale is almost none, so we should make the springs between the faces as rigid as we can.
Spring Damp lowerd (and Goal Dampening too). Arbitrary dampening factors usually kills the simulation features in favor of its stabilty. I would generally try to keep them as low as possible.
Some Bending resistance. As you already did, must be present in order to give some consistency to the structure.
High Plastic Deformation factor. This is probably the key of the whole simulation. While the other feature were all made to give resistance to the tape, this is what brings it to the "breaking point". If enabled, each polygon will keep the occured deformation. Step by step, the structure is falling, bending the wings of the truss toward the outside, lowering the momentum of inertia of the section in the area near the fixed part, till it became so little that the section cant' resist anymore and the section becomes a hinge.

Other minor changes:

Geometry of the object (shorter and more compact section)
Resolution of the object (less polygon to have more control upon them and faster baking time :P )
Mass of the Soft Body.
Initial rotation of the bar (15°) (to increase the folding visibility)
Post simulation modifier & Matcap... for "beauty's sake"


Remove texture from object I have a little problem, I deleted texture from Texture tab, but it still appear on my object and if I save it and reload it still here.
I think it's a stupid thing but I'm using blender since yesterday and didn't find any help on web.

Thank you

Blender sometimes doesn't remove textures properly, and it requires several attempts to save and reload the blend file before they are removed permanently. To be sure that they are removed properly, do the following:

1) Go into the Properties editor > Textures context, highlight the texture you want to remove.

2) Click on the X button to the right of the field for the texture's datablock ID name: This will unlink it from the object it was assigned to, but it still remains in the blend file. To unlink the datablock from ALL objects in the file, hold down the Shift key while clicking on it.

3) Check your object. If you still see the texture on it, select the object and go into edit mode. Now select one of the faces that the texture is on.

4) Open the UV Map editor and check to see if the texture image is visible there. If it is, then go to the field in the menu header where the name of the texture's datablock ID is listed, and click on the X button to the right of it. When you do, your object should no longer be showing the texture:

5) In the Outliner window, change the display type in the header menu from All Scenes (or whatever you have it set to) to Orphaned Data

6) If there are any sub-menus listed for materials or images, open them and check to make sure that none of them have green checkmarks beside them. If they do, LMB click on the checkmark to remove it.

7) Now save the file and reload it. Look in the Outliner again to see if all the orphaned data has been removed. If it hasn't, continue to save and reload the file until it's all gone.

You should now have no problems with that texture.

NOTE: Never delete materials that have textures assigned to them unless you have unlinked the textures first.


Switch Object key "D" not working on sculpt mode 2.92 From what I've seen on the tutorial videos, simply pressing the "D" key on an inactive object while on sculpt mode should swap that object to active for scultping.
It does not work for me. I checked the keymap and tried other keys, but nothing. Tried selecting all objects or just one before entering Sculpt Mode. Tried different project files. One issue that I saw was that on previous builds you had to enable this feature on the experimental tab, but this is no longer an option in 2.92, which I assume meant the function was officially released.
Am I missing some step? How does this operation work?

I got it to work on the 2.93 alpha version currently out, by ticking Developer Extra options and enabling it on the Experimental Tab. Can't get it to work on 2.92 though, since the option isn't there.


animating a transforming elephant's trunk I have a rather simple 2D model of an elephant. However I want the trunk to behave in very specific way. As it honks, I want the trunk to bend upwards, but then in the second half of the animation kind of transform into a "pipe-structure" as the the very tip evolves into a horn (as seen in the picture I'm attaching). Can this be done by a relative newbie such as myself?

The trunk is a curve (path), shaped as a comical elephant's trunk and held skyward so it's upper end is also pointed forward.

The curve is "bevelled" with a curve-circle to make a cylinder curved upwards and pointing forward.

The resulting cylinder is converted to mesh.  It's side edges only are subdivided 63 times so we have plenty of vertices for it's curvature to be animated smoothly.

The "Cast" modifier is used on this in order to expand and 'trumpet' the end.  This is achieved by placing the "cast object" near the upper end and keyframing it's location so it oscillates. (approaches and leaves the cylinder's end rapidly)

The cast modifier's effect is to expand and retract the end much like a flexible trumpet.

The Empty's oscillitions are just 2 frames apart.  i.e. approach for two 2 frames, recede for 2 and so on for as long as required.

-==================-

Edit - 11/Dec 2018

For 2D trunk shaping -

Instead of using a circle for the bevel object, use instead, a plane (converted to a curve with ALT-C)

This will give us a square trunk.

Once squared, the bevel plane can have it's two lower control points deleted so the trunk ends up as a flat 2D curved object.

We keep the trunk as a curve object so it's control points when moved about with either shapekeys or "hooks", won't lose the biological curvature as it's reshaped.  Bones and rigging can also do this.


Check when Active Camera has changed Is there is a way to check when the Active camera has been changed?
I'd like to change some Scene settings depending on the camera you look through, and I'm looking for a way to know when a new camera is set as the active camera.

I'd prefer to avoid having to create a custom function to replace the "Set Active Object as Camera".

Thanks!

Properties updates and handlers

Added a scene pointer property (x_camera for want of a better
name) which points to a blender object type. The poll method lets it
be narrowed down to those of type 'CAMERA'
Scene.x_camera has an update method for when this object is changed
and changes scene camera to match.
Added the property to the UI in the scene panel. The benefit of this
approach is the user can choose a camera, and run code based on this
choice.
Next added a simple getter boolean property, cam_change that is
false when  our pointer property camera is not the scene camera
To handle other ways the active camera is set, eg keystrokes, or
markers, a handler is used. The scene update pre handler ticks over a
lot. Another boolean could be utilized to turn the handler on or off.

Test code below. Added a couple of convenience methods to uncomment and remove handlers and panel draw_methods.

import bpy
from bpy.props import PointerProperty, BoolProperty

def cam_changed(self):
    return self.x_camera is not self.camera

def cam_update(self, context):
    if self.cam_changed:
        self.camera = self.x_camera
        print("UI UPDATE")
    else:
        print("HANDER UPDATE")

def cam_update_handler(scene):
    if scene.cam_changed:
        scene.x_camera = scene.camera

def cam_poll(self, object):
    return object.type == 'CAMERA'

bpy.types.Scene.x_camera = PointerProperty(
        type=bpy.types.Object,
        update=cam_update,
        poll=cam_poll,
        )

bpy.types.Scene.cam_changed = BoolProperty(
        get=cam_changed
        )

def cam_draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    scene = context.scene
    row = layout.row()
    row.alert = scene.cam_changed
    row.prop(scene, "x_camera")

bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.prepend(cam_draw)

# handler

bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre.append(cam_update_handler)

def remove_handlers(prefix, handler):
    handlers = getattr(bpy.app.handlers, handler, [])
    remove = (h for h in handers
            if h.__name__.startswith(prefix))
    for h in remove:
        handlers.remove(h)

#emove_handlers("cam_", "scene_update_pre")

def remove_draw_funcs(prefix, panel):
    funcs = getattr(panel.draw, "_draw_funcs", [])
    remove = (f for f in funcs
            if f.__name__.startswith(prefix))
    for f in remove:
        panel.remove(f)

#remove_draw_funcs("cam_", bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene)


No object option when adding a geometry bevel to a curve? I'm trying to extrude a circle along a bezier curve. Normall i would create a specific object ( in this case a circle with 32 verts) and use that as the bevel object for my bezier curve to refer to.

However in 2.8, I go to select a 'bevel object' and just get a blank panel, no options at all ( there are several mesh objects in my scene). Any ideas why this might be?

Also, I can't select anything in the 'taper object' panel either - Nothing in the box at all.

Please help!

Sussed, it, Idiot me was using a mesh circle rather than a curve circle


Good way to add a backside to a grid (3D printing) I want to add a backing to a grid like structure. I'm wondering if what I did is a good way to do that. I first selected the faces that make up the grid and extruded them out 4mm. Then I closed off the inner rings of each grid square with faces (f). Finally I ended by closing off the outer rings of each grid square. What I'm wondering now is that inside of this backing there are sections that connect from one grid to another and so the back is not completely hollow.

The goal is to 3D print this model.

Maybe this picture will be more clear:

To fill the back face, first make sure you don't have any inner face, so select the face loop with alt right click and delete. Then with the same alt right click select the edges loops and fill the faces with F. Is it what you want?


Removing corrupt screen setting In the UI I for some reason have one Model and one Model.001 where the later on is corrupt. When selecting this screen the UI freezes and the only way to get out of it is to use the Ctrl←/→ keys.

The blend file is binary so I can't edit it out manually. Is there a way to remove this?

Blender 2.68a

Reload startup file Ctrl-N (or any file, actually) not containing the corrupted screen layout. Reopen the problematic file but clear Load UI checkbox, under Open Blender File settings group in the file open dialog. Then save the file.

With Load UI unchecked, Blender will reuse UI settings from previously opened file, for the file to be loaded.


Wrong faces being seperated from one another after unwrap Some faces that are connected through 'unseemed' edges still separate from the rest of the island when I use unwrap

If you look at the attacked image, the left most edge of the selected face was not set to have a seem so it should be connected to the rest of the island. But if you look at the UV window on the left you can see it was unwrapped as a single island off in the corner.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

.

Under UV mapping/Smart UV project/ Change the angle limit to something like 40 and run it again. Or a value like 80


How to project/imprint a texture using a mesh as its source I have been trying for days now to make a texture from a mesh pattern (Image B).

The ideal result would be to end with a texture (using the UVs from the Mesh A) with the pattern imprinted/baked/projected on to it from Mesh B

A - Mesh to texture:

B - Mesh pattern to use as texturing template

C - Desired result, Mesh A with Mesh B as texture

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

You can bake this. Give the texture mesh an emission material. Select the object, then the target object (SHIFT).

In an image editor create a new texture (square, left)
Add an image texture node to the material of the target object,
select your new texture. It does not have to be connected to
anything, but make sure it's active (clicked on)
In the render settings tab, copy my settings.
Press Bake.


How can I UV Unwrap a Minecraft box model? I'm trying to create the character from game Minecraft. It's simple and I finished it. Now I want to unwrap it like its texture file:

As you can see it's small (on size too) and it's box styled too. But when I try to unwrap for example face, I get a circular output... How can I unwrap my model like that?

You have to mark seams to create the unwrap like this. Select the edges you want to place seams on, then press Ctrl+E-->Mark Seam. For more tips about how to place seams right see: How to Place the Right Seams for UV Unwrapping. After placing seams to one side of your mesh apply the Mirror modifier. Alternatively you may start from appying it and then mark seams.

Next select the whole mesh (A) and press U-->Unwrap. As you can see you get the result similar to the one you provided. If you want to make it identical you have to experiment with seams placement.

Here's the .blend with my seams placement example:


How Do You Achieve Realistic Spinning for Exhaust Fans? I've been struggling for 2 days now trying to figure out how to approach this situation. I wanted to spin an exhaust fan that I modeled in 2.8 but the results is just not right.
My goal is to have a 10 second animation of a computer chassis where the exhaust fan is actually spinning at full speed.
Although I was able to spin it, it's not as fast (not realistic) as the GIF image below.
Is there like a filter to fake it?
Thanks
PS: how can i attach more than 1 image in a question? :)

There are a couple of ways which you can fake the effect for a fan blade spinning fast. One would be to use or create a texture which has the original appearance of a fast spinning blade and then jut animate that.

Another way and more than likely what you are looking for is to use a vector blur node in compositing to add the blur effect to the blades.

Here is a link for how this can be used.

Vector (Motion) Blur Node

You can also use the motion blur effect located in the render tab to create motion blur for the animation. Here is an example for how something like this can be done.

Blender Tutorial - How to Create Motion Blur For The Wheels


How swap views between multiple cameras? I have multiple cameras with an animation scene. I want to swap to their respective views while rendering the video.

So, essentially, my questions here are:

How do we get renders from multiple cameras?
How do we edit the renders in such a way that the output appears as though the camera is switching views?

This is a test file:

My scene is setup in a similar manner.

There are multiple different ways. These are only a few. They can also be mixed together.

(1).1 Bind the camera to a marker

You can do that by binding the camera to a marker on your timeline.

You can create markers on the timeline with the M key. Then select the camera you want to bind to that marker and hit Ctrl+B. As soon as your timeline reaches that marker the camera will switch. It is important that both the marker and the camera are selected.

(I forgot to turn the screencast keys on, see description above)

(1).2 Use multi-view (for stereoscopy)

You can enable multiple views in the Scene tab of the Properties panel. These are basically for stereoscopy-like effects, not for switching cameras, so I will only post a link to the manual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/workflows/multiview/index.html

(2).1 Use the video sequence editor

The fancier (and maybe better) way is be to render the scene multiple times with the different cameras activated. Save the single frames in a lossless format. Then you can easily import them to the video sequence editor as strips and use the cross blend mode. You can then adjust the opacity value with keyframes (hover and I)

video sequence editor (old gif)

Edit:

In this animation I use the camera override tool of the vse. You simply set up your scene and your cameras (with everything, including animations). Then in the video sequence editor add your scene strip multiple times (Shift+A) and set your camera override in the right panel.

Although I created a new scene (that was supposed to hold the scene strips). I forgot to switch back to that scene after switching to the vse. It is recommended to always use a separate scene for the sequencer! It may work in this example, but maybe not in bigger projects.

(2).2 Use the compositor

You can also add your frames to the compositor and mix them with very fancy effects. Then you can add this whole compositing scene to any video sequence editor. By the way: You can also add layers from other scenes directly to the compositor with the Render Layers node. But then you need to copy your scene and if I got you correct this is not what you want.

It is possible that this is not what you want, so choose your tools wisely.


How to cut a mesh by specifying the angle I wanna cut a mesh by specifying the angle, but knife mode only cut 45° with C key.

I want to cut by the angle around specifying the vertex.

It isn't currently supported yet, but still possible. You can say that the angle constrain is based on View coordiante, so let's try a tricky way:

Install Precise Align addon (not a must-have, but very effective here);
Select three vertices, including the specified vertex, click Create Empty button in Precise Align panel in the Tool Shelf (T). Click on Swap Empty Origin button to set it at the specified vertex if it hasn't been there. Also make sure Parent to Object is toggled;
Select the empty, ShiftNumpad 7 to Align its local Top view (Local Z axis towards viewer), thus you can make one adjacent edge visually horizontal (or vertical);
Keep the current point of view, R to rotate the empty along its own pivot point by a specified angle (or the complement/supplementary angle, depending on how you rotate it);
Select the mesh object, enter Edit mode, enable Knife tool, press C to constrain horizontally or vertically based on the view (screen) coordinate. Repeat it if needed.
Delete the empty. The mesh rotation will be regressed automatically.

A demo video for better understanding. It's not perfect, but works.


Why is there no outline in 3d View when I select an object? If I select an object, the outline does not show up in 3d View. I mean there is no highlight around the object so that you can recognize what's actually selected. How can i fixed it?

Go to the Filter Menu and enable Selectable in the Restriction Toggles list:

See: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/outliner.html#filter


How can I correct this beer material? I have a beer setup in my blender scene. It's a basic glass shader for the glass containing a fluid mesh with a glass + volume absorption material with a tint.

I don't understand why the fluid is rendering completely black.
Here's a render.

It's supposed to look more like this (froth and bubbles aside):

Here's the fluid node setup:

Here's the glass node setup:

I don't know what's going wrong. I've tried a couple of things.

Thanks for your help in advance. Please let me know if you need more information.

EDIT:
I've upped the light bounces and this is the finished result, thought you might want to see :) (obviously still needs some tweaking)

Even though you have 'Transmission' bounces set to 12 you are capping the 'Max' bounces to 4, meaning it's never doing 12 bounces. Here I have upped the 'Max' bounces to 6 and the liquid started to let light through:

If you want the liquid to use all 12 Transmission bounces you will have to set your 'Max' bounces to 12 as well.


How do I emit light from inside a object? I need to know how to make the buttons in my blender project look the same as in this photo. Mine all look pale, even with the emission material. Is there anyway I can get my buttons like this?

Cycles is a physically based render, and often the best approach is physical recreation.

Components:

Light source
Light cover

Light Source:

This would simply be an emission shader since it is literally a lightblub or LED. I took the button model, and scaled it down slightly on the X and Y axis. I then drastically scaled it on the z axis, and moved it down so the top of the source would to be flush with the of the panel that the button was set into.

Cover:

The cover allows light to pass through it, and is therefore Translucent so a simple translucent node will do the trick. It is also colored, which can be emulated by giving the translucent node a color:

The shape is also important: I added a small bevel to the edges to help see the look.

Final Image

Note

After some experimentation and some research, I discovered that using Sub Surface Scattering (SSS), and placing the light under the button instead of inside, would produce more accurate and better looking results. And it sure did... it also produced exponentially longer render times... even on GPU (using test build)!

Image with SSS:

The major difference is that the light source is under, not inside the button, and is scaled down on the X and Y axis. This method fixed the artifacts that were occurring on the corners, and is more technically accurate. I'd still use the first one, it is way way faster.


Different look of material with Mix Shader vs Mix RGB I am mixing colors and roughness of a Glossy shader through Layer weight node.

Material:

Mix Shader:

Mix RGB:

Why do the same properties used in two similar approaches give a very different renders? Colors more or less equal, but roughness difference is quite visible.

Mix shader use a very simple method to combine two shader output. It doesn't guarantee any real material based on physic light reproduce. You are actually using alpha compositing rather than reevaluate a BSDF shader. See the example below.

On the left we use Mix Shader to mix the Roughness between 1.0 and 0.0. Right we use real 0.5 value for a single Glossy BSDF.

You can see that the Glossy 100% reflection just blend into the rough one without any transition. This is totally impossible in real world unless a clear-coat is presented.

So if a single BSDF shader can do the job, don't try to mix other shader, just let it do the calculation and connect it to the output directly.


How can I model pagoda roof rafters arangement in blender I want to model pagoda roof like this picture by using modifier, not by manually placing each rafters one by one.

anyone have idea about this?

P.S : don't recommend array, curved array, object offset.

What you could do is use Instancing (Duplifaces in 2.7), a bit different from a simple Array + Curve as it won't distord your object:

Create a curve that follows the roof shape, put its origin at its beginning.

Create a plane, scale it as necessary, apply scale and rotation, make it follow the curve with Array + Curve modifiers.

Keep your plane selected and in the Properties > Object > Duplication (Instancing in 2.8), choose Faces. It means that the object that will be parented to the plane will be duplicated on its face.

Create your trunk, put its origin on one of its extremities, then put it on the exact same point as the curve origin, parent it to the plane, it will duplicate along (in my case it would need more plane to stick to your example though).


How can I exit graph editor I'm working on creating a looping rotation and the tutorial I was following had me use the graph editor at one point. I was really confused by the way that new windows are opened so in my attempts to close it i ended up creating several more. I also elected to hide the header because I thought they might be closed as a result. Long story short, I accidently closed the window I was working on and am left with a graph editor window with no heder and no way to switch back to 3d viewport mode. I can still view my models through the other windows like sculpt and model but I can't work on the animation. Is there anything I can do???

To make the header appear again, click the downward facing arrow on top the window :

Then, you can change the window type as usual.


Spherical Arrays in Blender 2.8 I am trying to create a spherical array in blender 2.8. (I am trying to make a liposome form two opposing lipids) I understand that in the previous blender versions I would have taken my object (here the lipid) and added a sphere. Then I would have used the "dupliface" function to make the array form the faces of the sphere. In Blender 2.8, this function is gone.

Can anyone help me? I greatly appreciate it!!

Try in the Object properties panel under 'Instancing', that seems to work as expected.


Character for Game Engine not working I am making a game where you walk around and gather items from various gathering spots. My initial problem was that my rigid body player was not colliding with my static plant model, then I thought to make my player a character physics type.

However, once I changed the physics, it no longer collided with my floor plane properly, and when I press a key to move the player, the motion does not stop (it is perpetual motion).

I've attached both of my .blend files. the first is with a rigid body physics type and the second is with character.

Here are the files: Rigid Body,
 Character

I figured out my issue but I will leave this up in case someone else has my problem.

To solve this keep the player as rigid body type and change the armature attached to a sensor physics type. Remember to add collision bounds to the armature and ensure that detect actors is checked on the armature and that the static object you wish to collide with is set as an actor (don't worry the armature will not collide with the model its attached to.)

Thank you to anyone who tried to help me and I hope that I saved someone some time fixing their game.


Export Distortion Node for Nuke or Natron? Just start playing with Blender tracking recently, and everything seems to be pretty good. Except,I couldn't find a good way to export distortion data to Nuke or Natron. I used to use PFTrack and export their own distortion data,and read it into nuke with plugin. I was wondering if Blender can do the same thing? How's everybody deal with this? STMap? or Render 3D scene with distortion?

Best,

Han

The undistort formula is starting at line 66, both polynomial and divison, in blender-2.78c\intern\libmv\libmv\simple_pipeline\distortion_models.h Seems pretty straight forward formula, can be implied to Nuke using Blink script, or to Natron using Shadertoy.


Achieving a photo-realistic scene with only built-in textures I am modeling many different type scenes and in each scene I have to work hard to find the perfect textures for individual objects in the scene. Obviously this is important because good texturing and modeling are the fundamental building blocks for photo-realistic scenes, but this may be easier if I found a
good way to use only built-in textures to in my final render. In this tutorial, tutor4u creates a very realistic looking planet from only built-in Blender textures, so I know this is possible. Here is my render of the planet:

What are some of the best ways to achieve these kinds of scenes (complex or simple) with only built-in textures?

(this response is more about the 'theory' of rendering planets and less about the technique)

The two principles I live by for making planets look better is minimal patterns and more detail. Starting with minimizing patterns, it's easy to make a planet that has a very visible repeating pattern, in this case it's most prevalent on the right planet. It's very obviously just a simple noise texture attached to a color ramp and it causes it to be very unnatural looking. Real planets generally do not have patterns like this on this scale, at least so visibly. I would recommend using a more complex mask for the color and bump. Essentially: combine different kinds of textures, with different scales. Using just one texture as you have here is too obvious, and adding more variety to the texture will make it much more natural. Blender has a few different procedural texture nodes to choose from, but no single one is really much good without mixing and balancing it against others. Try to aim for creating large "biomes" with different formations and colors in them. I'd recommend using larger scale textures as a mask for the different biomes, and textures with a smaller scale for the details. As for adding these details, definitely think about what sort of features you want your planet to have. Craters, mountains, ice caps, bodies of water, rivers, etc are all good examples of details that will bring your planet to life and make it more believable and interesting. Craters are easy to make with a Voronoi texture and color ramp. Ice caps can be mixed in using gradient textures. Rivers can be made with a noise texture and a color ramp that looks similar to this:

There is no written law for how to make different features and details, so play around with things and figure out what you like best!

With this image in particular, I personally would also work a bit on the lighting. The backlighting on the planets and vivid background picture aren't really photorealistic. I would make the background image much dimmer and remove any backlighting on the planets, as it wouldn't exist in real life (unless another star or planet was nearby to provide the light). This is an artistic choice, but to simulate reality better it is important to keep in mind how incredibly dim stars are, and no camera taking a picture of a planet like this would be able to capture surface detail and stars at the same time without one being far too dark or the other far too bright.

I hope this helped, and nice job on your render!


Bake hi-res diffuse texture onto low-poly version problem Hey guys, my problem is that when I do try to bake onto the low-poly version I endup with a blotchy texture and sometimes the program just crashes and closes itself.

Does anyone know the best way of baking a diffuse texture onto a low poly version without getting blotchy and low quality results?

In the image here I have two low-poly versions of the original high-poly, one of which is 'inside' the high-poly version on the left. Maybe you can see what I'm doing wrong here.

Thanks in advance :)

So I basically answered my own question. I just did a quick test on using the ray distance setting and it completely worked. See image above for results and instructions.

My apologies, I'm new to using this site as a member and had no idea where the 'answer question' button was located.


Bones stretches the body instead of rotating I followed a tutorial on rigging a character but do not achieve the same results. Re watched the video many times and still cant figure it out why some bones stretch instead of rolling. Do i need to enable something for the bones that have connection option turned off?

I don't know what you are trying to achieve, but usually you want the bones rotated, not moved. Your bones look like they are set up right, but you need to rotate the bones, not move them.


Alternative to the skin modifier - solid perferated pattern This is a problem I've encountered several times with blender and I've never found a good way of doing it - am I missing something?

I want to design a solid mesh pattern with holes - eg chicken wire, and apply/map/wrap it to form a shape.
The result needs to be a solid mesh that can be 3D printed - so a bump mask doesn't work.

I've create this using a wireframe mesh and the skin modifier, this is ok for a simple shapes but it's time consuming and doesn't work for complex shapes.

Is there an alternative method which would be printable?

You could use Array and Simple Deform modifiers:

Create a plane, subdivide it. Rotate it 45°.

Press i to inset, delete the inner faces.

Use the Snap and the Auto-Merge options to duplicate it.

Only keep one segment, duplicate it with the Array modifier.

Give it a Simple Deform modifier / Bend mode, 360° angle. If it's completely twisted it's probably because you haven't applied the rotation. You can modify the segment geometry until you're happy (add edge loops, thickness, etc).


How to recalculate transform and rotation from origin? I'm still fairly new at this, so I might be asking the wrong question, but here's what I'm trying to accomplish.

I made a ring of objects using an array modifier, which I then broke apart into individual objects.  I need to be able to use these as placeholders in code, so my goal is to read the transform and rotation of each one and place an object there.  The problem is, since these were created by breaking apart a composite object, all of them have their transform and rotation as all zeros.  How can I recalculate each object so that its transform is an offset from origin and its rotation is "correct"?  To illustrate:

If you look at the selected cube, what I would like is to recalculate the transform to be whatever the correct offset is from origin, and the rotation should be 30° on the Z axis.

Click Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C, then click Origin to Geometry


Does having lots of add-ons enabled slow down blender? Also, does it slow down the viewport?

Thanks!

As mentioned in the comments, the real answer will depend on what addons you enable. Many addons simply add an operator to perform a task and will not add any noticeable difference to the general use of blender, but it is possible for an addon to inject tasks into blenders handlers that will be run almost constantly, if these are slow then it can add a noticeable slow down to many areas of blender.

In general, the more you save as enabled so that they are loaded on startup, the longer blender will take to start, larger addons like animation nodes affect this more than most of the simple addons that are available. Once blender has started and is responding to user input you are unlikely to notice any difference with most addons that are available.

As you tagged your question as cycles related, addons aren't used by cycles and won't affect rendering times. OSL scripts added to a material can affect render times.


How to get updated vertex coordinates as object moves mesh = obj.meshes[0]

for index in range(mesh.numPolygons):  # iterate over faces
    polygon = mesh.getPolygon(index)
    polyMesh = polygon.getMesh()
    mat_index = polygon.getMaterialIndex()
    for poly_vert_index in range(polygon.getNumVertex()):
        mesh_vert_index = polygon.getVertexIndex(poly_vert_index)
        vertex = mesh.getVertex(mat_index, mesh_vert_index)
        print("Index ",index," polyIndex ",poly_vert_index," vertex ",mesh_vert_index," coord ",vertex.x)

As i move the object (by applying force) the coordinates of each vertex remain the same, how do i get the updated coordinates as the object moves and rotates. Also how do i get the updated face normals of the moving object?

Reading the mesh provides you with vertex data relative to the object the mesh belongs to = coordinates in Object Space.

As long as you do not deform the mesh this data will remain unchanged.

According to your question you want to get the data in Scene Space. This means it will change when you move or turn the object or one of it's parents.

Positional vectors

You can convert positional vectors from object space to scene space by multiplying them with the object transformation matrix:

positionInSceneSpace = owner.worldTransform * vertex.XYZ

Normal vector

The normal Vector is not a positional vector. It's purpose is to represent a direction rather than a position. Therefore you consider rotation transformation only:

normalInSceneSpace = owner.worldOrientation * vertex.normal


Texture paint stops working at shallow angle Texture painting stops to work when the angle to the surface you are painting on is to shallow.

Shallow Angle:

Larger Angle

Can i deactivate this ?
Or decrease the angle, after that it doesn't work anymore ?

You can turn off Occlude and Cull and Normal and then you will not have a problem painting at any angle, but that may or may not be what you are after.


Keyframe the ocean modifier time property I'm using blender 2.8 and i'm just now starting to code in blender and i'm trying to set a keyframe to the Time value in ocean modifier using python

import bpy
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(size=2, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='OCEAN')
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(1)

Use keyframe_insert

Two things here,

Add modifiers with Object.modifiers.new(...) returns a reference to
the modifier
Add keyframes with keyframe_insert(datapath) method.  Set the value, insert the keyframe.

Test script

import bpy
context = bpy.context
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(size=2, location=(0, 0, 0))
ob = context.object
om = ob.modifiers.new(name="Ocean", type='OCEAN')
# (frame, time) pairs
data = ((1, 1.0),
        (10, 3.0),
        (100, 33.0),
        )
for f, t in data:
    om.time = t
    om.keyframe_insert("time", frame=f)


how are games rendered in real-time gameplay? I hear it's done by some kind of maps. Are the polygons converted in sprites or they are with some kind of lighting information on them? How is it done?

The game engine uses openGL to render the image on screen. This is the same technology used to draw everything in blender's window. While video cards are designed to accelerate time consuming parts of openGL it is still common to keep the vertex count as low as possible to allow updating the window enough to get smooth animation. GLSL shading (that's openGL Shading Language) is also often used to get nicer results.

Maps is a fairly general term that is used in reference to the texturing used in the game engine. There are UVMaps that 'map' a location on a 3D model to a location on a 2d image. You can use several images on a finished model that are often referred to as maps. A normal map is an image containing details defining the 'surface distortion' this gives the appearance of detail that can cast shadows and highlights on the model without the extra geometry. A bump map is a simplified method of normal mapping. A specular map is an image that defines what parts of the model are shiny. Similarly a diffuse or texture map defines what diffuse colour is used at each part of the model.

Normally detailed models are created and then the detail is 'baked' onto these different 'maps' to be used during game play on a low poly model. This lets you do all the costly calculations at development time to give the game engine less work rendering the screen.

For the most part the texture options available when using the blender internal render engine are available when using the game engine. You can see the differences when you switch between the two, such as limited transparency, no mirror or subsurface scattering when using the game engine.


Mantaflow smoke behavior at boundaries In Mantaflow smoke simulations, the borders of the simulation act as boundaries whether "border collisions" are on or off.   Is this the expected behavior?  It seems like it should be considered a bug.

the domain walls yes.. if you add another object inside the domain, THAT object will be affected by the "collision on off"


Why is my texture appearing differently in texture mode compared to render display mode? I have a question. I needed to hide seam marks on my model so I used clone stamp. The problem is that it looks good in every display method (texture/material) except in "rendered" display method. Here are some pictures
How to make it visible in render method?

My guess would be that you haven't saved the image after texture painting and/or reloaded it so Cycles isn't seeing the updated texture yet.

If you are in texture paint mode you can choose 'Save All Images' from the 'Slots' tab of the toolbar to save any edited images to disk:

You can then reload the image node in the node editor by selecting the image node and from the 'Properties' panel (Press N while in the node editor) and choose the 'Reload' button:

Note: I have sometimes found the need to switch from rendered view to another view and then back to rendered view for the image texture to update.


Shrinkwrap or Boolean for die stamp template I'm new to blender and not sure what the right terminology would be. So please correct me and help me with that too.
What I have is a plane with a shape indented into it, which I want to use as a master template to create impressions in the faces of other surfaces on a cube. I'm thinking boolean operation for that but I'm lost on how to create the master die. I was thinking of shrinkwrap it onto a cube but that doesn't produce the positive mold I need for the boolean. I tried a boolean to the cube but didn't get what I wanted either.
Thank you,
Mark

Thanks to susu this is what I got for a result, just perject.

Avoid booleans, avoid shinkwrap, one will give you headaches with bad topology, the other will yield Z-fighting problems...
Use Instancing:
Create your basic shape.

Add a cube.

Select the cube, and select Instancing->Faces.

Deselect the cube and select your shape. With the shape still selected press and hold Shift, and select the cube.
Press Ctrl+P to parent the shape to the cube. Select "Parent to Object"
.

A cube with the basic shape on every face  will be created.

Then press Ctrl+A and select "Make Instances Real".

At that point you can go ahead and delete the cube.
The instances will become different objects but you can join them. Select all of them and pres Ctrl+J.


Transparency in Images as planes, Blender 2.8 i'd like to render a piece of paper, with a layer of transparent, glased ink. (see images below)
The thing is, i can't tune down the "alpha" settings in the Materials pannel, as it is already used by the "Images as planes" thing.
Every time i try to change something in the Materials pannel, it goes wild because of the transparency of the png image. I am using cycles.
I'm a beginner in Blender and would love to see how you guys would do it.
Thanks a lot!

Here is an image to clarify :)

Here is the file:

If you have a look at the Alpha channel (plug the Alpha output from the image into the Surface Node from the Material Output), you can see that alpha is stored as a black & white image.
White means fully opaque, black stands for fully transparent parts. But values in between are also possible!

So if you want the opaque parts to be partially transparent, you need to dim the white color to a grayish color. There are many ways to do this. For instance, mix the alpha channel with black color using a MixRGB node. If the factor is 0, the result will be the original image whereas a factor of 1 results in a completely black image (which means fully transparent).
Now that we have seen the effect this has, we can connect the mix output to the alpha input of the Principled BSDF. Then connect the BSDF output back to the material output. And there is the transparent image :)


Report: error Traceback (most recent calls last) there seems to be no answers for the error "Traceback (most recent calls last)" in blender 2.8. Reinstalling blender doesnt fix the problem. this error occurs by just left clicking in the viewport or when importing images into textures and backgrounds. It ruins blender. I have no idea how this has happened.
this is the error:

I do not want to install a new version of blender at the moment so that is out of the option. Please help. This error is really annoying. This must have something to do with a file directory but i am not sure. Thanks in advance.

Revert to Factory settings.
Set File > Defaults to "Factory Settings"


Is there a way to find out what is in the latest build? The release logs document the new features after a version has been released.

Is there a page which lists what of the announced features is already included in the latest build ?

I can't wait to test Multi-view (stereoscopic) render and display support.

Update

For bleeding edge changes and latest bug reports, even typo fixes you can access these feeds as well

https://twitter.com/BlenderLogs

https://twitter.com/BlenderBugs

There isn't a pretty or detailed view like the release logs for the latest builds, one way you can keep up to date with commits is to go to projects.blender.org developer.blender.org. As a new commit is made, it is updated there along with the revision number, files changed and or features added.

Additionally, if you are on twitter or Google+, Adventures in Blender posts about the latest additions or changes in detail with additional links at times. For example.

You can also now view the shortlog on git.blender.org for a quick summary of commits/fixes.


"traceback error" for some addons what does "traceback error" means , I am using some addon from the community, such as "speed retopo" or "bools for sculpt". I've 2.78c blender version. I am making a sculpting character, and I need to re-topologize and this warning appears and the addons don't work. I used to install the addons, I have a folder for addons and whenever I used to install them I "install from file" and search the location of my addons (c:documents/userX/addonsblender/-> "the specific addons (in rar or .py extension)--- in other words, I have .py extension and .rar extension from my files...(blender used to install them in the original folder of the typical installation)

The traceback is part of the programmer's tool kit which can be generated when the program has an abnormal termination. The traceback error documents exactly what problem was encountered, how the program got to that point, and exactly what the computer had been doing when the problem occurred. For the developer, it is an invaluable tool in tracking down a bug. For someone who is unfamiliar with the code and architecture of Blender and addons to Blender, it seems so much gobbledygook.

If you run into this type of traceback, and decide to file a bug report, making a screenshot of the traceback and including it with the bug report can be useful to someone who is going to try to fix the bug.


How can I use a green screen to add a video onto a moving plane? So, I've been working on my project for a little bit now.
I'll be holding some boards, and flip through them whilst superimposing videos on them.
I've grasped Plane Tracking, and how to project (superimpose) a video onto it!
But now I hear that using a green screen (as the plane) will be much easier later on, especially when it comes to masking out obstructions (such as fingers holding the screen).
I can manage that. I can get a nice green (or whatever other color) panel and hold it up to the camera.
So, I've gone up to the "Tracking" and "Creating a Plane Track" stage; I've finished those.
But, I can't find many tutorials telling me what to do afterwards!
I did find one, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGSKjFz4NVg), but it's an older version of Blender and some parts are a bit confusing.
Could someone point me to a tutorial that's updated, so I can simply follow along to achieve this simple effect?
I apologize again for the questions; The deadline is tight on this project and I only need to know how to do about 2 effects, nothing more.. I can do the rest in After Effects, which I actually know how to handle. Please help me!

No need to use afterFX for this.
The idea is quite simple.
You use green, or some color that is not present in the scene, to create a matte (or mask) that can be used to combine other elements in the scene.
In the compositor connect the image that has the green element add a keying node, select the key color and the node will output Image and Matte separately.
Use the Matte to control the mix between the tracked plane and the image.

Or use just use the mask and feed the original image. This setup will avoid correlated alpha issues.


Shadow darkness variations? In my scene, I have one object that's casting a very pleasantly dark shadow (not too dark, not too bright), and on another object, the shadows seem to be much lighter... Is there anything I'm missing or am I just being dumb... (And the material is nearly the same shade) The picture below (CYCLES) depicts a dark shadow on the big object, and light shadow on the small object.

And in the image below here (Rendered in EEVEE) The shadow darkness seems to switch.

Why do I get this feeling that the shadows are not cooperating equally in comparison to size and object.

I think that this is probably just because of the differences between Cycles and Eevee.  Eevee only "guestimates" the lighting, while Cycles calculates each beam of light and it's bounces. This is one of the reasons it is good to plan for which render engine you are planning on using before you start the lighting process.

BTW, I like your images. :)


Make particle system using settings on every faces of a mesh Im working on a grass project and wondering if there is an option to apply hair system on every faces of a mesh. Do Blender 2.79 have something to do it so i dont need to make multiple hair systems for differents meshes?

When i say "multiple hair system for different meshes", i have multiple meshes that have faces the same size, but those meshes are not the same size. So the smaller one will have more hair per faces. I just want all meshes having the same amount of hairs. Can you guys help me with it?

Very appreciate!

[Edit]

At this moment i understand that the number of particles is for the whole mesh, no matter the size of itself.

So here, the smaller mesh is 4 times smaller than the other one, so the particles will be 4 times more dense from the smaller mesh compared to the big one.

What im looking to do is something like this :

so all faces will have to same particule density.

I figured it out by using some settings in the particle system itself(If better result, please share it with me).

I assigned the same particle system to both planes here, small one got 1 face and big one got 4 faces as big as the small plane.

I cranked up the Hair number to 50k but assigned only 500 per face. So both planes got the same hair density.