Filling box-like object with random objects I'm generating training data for a machine learning model using Blender. I want to train an RGB->RGB-D model on images of boxes that are filled with random objects. How would I automatically fill a cube-like area with random meshes?

You can use a particle system.

Create a new particle system on the cube, and tweak it's settings so the particles fill the cube (something like : "Emit From : Volume", "Physics : No", "Render/Unborn : checked", "Render/Emitter : unchecked".

Select all your random objects and add them to a group (Ctrl+G). Place them on an hidden layer.

In the particle system settings, in Render, select Group, then in Dupli Group select your group.


How can I create veins on skin I have this character's arm.

I want to have some veins in this pattern with a shape-key, meaning that the basis would be without the veins and when the shape-key is on, the veins would appear. I also don't want to have too many vertices, my computer isn't the best, and I have many other meshes in scene.

Any ideas on how to do this?

I'd do it in the material via a normal map / bump map.


Blender Edit mode not working correctly with OBS I've been having this issue were in blender edit mode would randomly stop working. I couldn't select anything (verts, edges, or faces) unless I went into wireframe mode. Edit mode simply wouldn't allow you to select anything while in solid mode.

After throwing a tantrum and asking "why" about 100+ times, I think I finally figured out something.

So if you're running Blender and OBS (streaming software) at the same time errors start to crop up just like this one. I tried restarting Blender, my computer, and OBS, but the result is still that same. As long as I'm streaming with OBS blender's edit mode stops working correctly.

Are there any fixes for this?

Do not tick multi-adapter compatibility. A friend helped me solve it.
Hope this helps guys.


Why can`t Blender move appended objects normally? Every group of objects I append from another project can't be moved in a normal way. It CAN move normally only on X axis but if I want Y or Z, every object goes it's own way, moving away from each other. Objects are NOT actually grouped (Ctrl J option), I just select them individually. Don't remember of activating smth unusual. Is there a way to change such a behavior? That`s not catastrophic but irritating.

It is looks like you activated local transform orientation:

in this case each object moves on it's own local axis.

If I'm not right, attach a screenshot.


Why is the HDRI reflection different and how do I control it? My objects have the same scale, but a different reflection area.
Even though the mesh is of similar size, the reflected area is different, so the result is different. I want to adjust the area reflected on the objects so that it is the same for all objects.
How can i control the environment reflections?

When using perspective camera, the reflections will never match.
To preview the same reflections, you can use local collections.

Put each glasses into a different collection, but give them the same coordinates (like 0,0,0)
Open multiple viewports side by side
Go View > Collections and choose which one to show for each viewport


With the particle system,when I render the carpet I see no bristles,but I see them in object mode I have a problem with the creation of a carpet using the particle system ; when I render it,I see no bristles,but I see them in object mode. But this problem appears only in the blender file in which I have copied and pasted the carpet,i.e. in the toilet blender file. Instead,in the carpet blender file where there is only the carpet,when I launch the rendering,I can see the bristles.

this is the carpet blender file.

this is the toilet blender file.

Because of applying scale to copied and scaled rug, your settings become wrong. To obtain the same result in toilet file as in carpet file, you would need to increase number of particles, hair length and thickness in particle settings. I can't give you exact numbers, cause it would require some experimentation.
In the meantime, what you can do fast and easy way, is to delete the carpet and copy it again from the carpet file, but this time only scale it without applying the scale. This way you'll get exactly the same look without changing settings.


When adding a new face, joining faces become reflective Having this problem with multiple meshes (so it's probably something easy I'm missing). I have these flat meshes I'm attempting to make into closed 3D objects. But the original vertex shapes become reflective and change colour when adding in a new face.

I'll select the vertexes for the edge of the face (pic 1) create a new face with F key (pic 2). But then BAM, all the faces that connected to those original vertexes have lost their colour and become shiny/reflective (pic 3).
(You can also see the colour change from pic 1 to 2)

I'm wondering if there is a fix for this, or if I'm doing something wrong. Cheers in advance.

Pic 1

Pic 2

Pic 3

The fill option is a bit mischievous some time. You may want to try grid fill and see if the same thing happens. It could be flipping your normals or maybe they are already flipped and it is showing back faced culling. You can check to see this in the material slot, there is a back faced culling viewing option.


Video Editing - System Resources not being used I need help getting blender to use up more of my system resources to render videos as it never seem to see it use more than 30% of my CPU and my GPU stays on idle (changed settings to use cuda).

It takes about 45min to render a 14min video, which I dont think is bad at all, but since I have a lot of system resources left, it would be nice to render faster.

System specs:

i5-3570k
8gb Ram
GTX 680 2GB

The video sequencer is doing all its editing in CPU currently (version 2.75). I do have a plan to move some operations to OpenGL. A lot of operations are also not multithreaded. Effect application is multithreaded for instance but scaling images to screen resolution, which is a big computational sink is not.


Can't move Objects just a little bit When I want to move sth or to scale an object, I can't move it just a little bit, it jumps to certain positions and I don't know why...

It sounds as if you've got Snap set to Increment... uncheck this button

During transformations:

Invert the Snap button's state by holding Ctrl

Gear down transformations, either in the numerical field, or in the 3D view, by holding Shift.


Bake Mesh Analysis to Texture I'm guessing this would be pretty difficult, but I was wondering if there was a way to get the mesh analysis data to save as a texture. Specifically the thickness setting. The idea being to "bake" the mesh analysis display to save as an image.

I assume there's probably some way to do it with scripting, but that it's probably over my head at the moment.

There is not such feature for now, but ... specifically speaking about Thickness there is an OSL shader by Róbert László Páli, which use the same type of measurement - depth along the normal of the surface.
Mesh Analysis - Thickness
with values Minimum (Red) = 0, Maximmum (Blue) = 1

OSL Shader
To set the same distance use Map Range node From Min = 0, From Max = 1

Thanks to Robin Betts for pointing me to Róbert's thread.


Blender 2.91.0: How to re-align the local axis of an object that has 0 rotations to the global axis? An object that has 0 rotations displays the local axis that's not aligned to the global axis.
Please see the following picture.

All parent objects have 0 rotations.
How can I re-align the local axis to the global axis?
The object itself has a few child objects, and that child objects' local axis and rotations must not be changed.
Blender version is 2.19.0.
UPDATE 1:
The object and it's parents' delta transform rotations are all 0 too.

UPDATE 2:
I've included the blender file that has the problem - using Blend-Exchange (Please see 'Front Arm' object):

Besides primary transformations blender has Delta Transform which useful in some cases.
It's located in Properties > Object > Transform > Delta Transform:

You can transfer primary transformations to deltas by applying them:

Blender hasn't Apply Delta Transform operator. You can only copy Delta transform to primary manually, reset deltas to default then Apply main transform to data.


How do I animate a hose along a path without deforming the lead it is attached to? I followed this tutorial:
http://www.rab3d.com/tut_blen_2-63_hooks.php 2
And got a nice hose and fitting with a tangent connection.
For an animation I’d like to move the whole thing along (inside) another, bigger hose.
The bigger hose is open on one side to show how the fitting plus small hose move along inside)
Like a camera mounted at the front of a long lead (camera should not deform...), inside some flexible tubing.
But I can’t seem to animate an empty along a path (‘follow path’ constraint works, but gives weird effects for the rest of the curve)…
Any ideas?
An example file here: https://mediviz.nl/tijdelijk/TubeTest.blend
Erik

I added a rig with a bendy bone to the front of the hose and that works.


How to have a string work with the keyboard events in the GE? Here's my simplified code:

import bge
from bge import logic

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
keyboard = bge.logic.keyboard
input_just_activated = bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED

primary_input_key = "SPACEKEY"
p = "bge.events." + primary_input_key

primary_input = keyboard.events[p]

if primary_input == input_just_activated:
    print("it worked!")

As the code suggests, I am trying to print "it worked!" into the console by keyboard input. It works when using keyboard.events[bge.events.SPACEKEY] as it is in its proper form, but when I change it to "bge.events." + primary_input_key it seems that it changes its form, making it no longer working. How can I have a string be converted to fit the game-engine's logic's keyboard input's form?

Design
You are mixing separate things. This leads to confusion, quirky design and in best case it does not work (as it is not supposed to work together).
Some things you need to know about
Keyboard events
Keyboard events consists of two attributes:

The status (pressed, released ...) and
the involved key.

Keys are no strings. Keys are hardware. Keys are identified by key-codes. Key codes are numbers (not strings).
As nobody wants you to remember all the numbers there are some constants for better understanding e.g. bge.events.SPACEKEY which is key-code 32.
So the working code would be:
p = bge.events.SPACEKEY
# which is
p = 32

I do not really understand what you are going to do. From what I see you try to create code from strings. This is possible. But not what you really want. Here you could do a "light" interpretation, by retrieving the attributes of a module:
getattr(bge.events, "SPACEKEY")

This can become handy when writing keyboard settings into a human readable file format.
Be Aware
The constants do not describe what is printed on the key. For example bge.events.YKEY is not necessarily the key with Y printed on. It describes the key-code (the number) of the key at that place.
To get the printed character on the key of your system you need to ask your OS. It can map the key-code to a string. This happens when you enter text anywhere - even in Blender.
The bad news
I have not found a way to map key-code to character through the OS keyboard mapping, neither with the BGE nor Python.


Snap transform pivot inside of selection I'm a Modo user trying out Blender 2.8. This is what I am trying to achieve:

Make a selection and activate the Transform(Move) tool
Snap the transform pivot to one of the vertices in the selection
Make the the transform pivot to snap to grid(or other snapping options)

The following gif demonstrates this in Modo:

Here is a screenshot from Blender 2.8 where I've been trying with different snapping options and using the cursor. Unfortunately I've not been able to achieve the correct snapping.

Is this possible in Blender 2.8?
Thanks.

I'm not at my computer right now, but I'm pretty sure I would...

Select vertices to move
Press G to grab them
Press X or Y once, to restrain movement to that axis
Hold down ctrl to snap to grids
Zoom in a bit to snap to smaller grid squares or out to snap to larger ones


How to add a submenu to "Object" -> "Set Origin"? I tried to do the same thing as an existing answer but Under Object -> Set Origin. I mean, the Set Origin currently shows 5 elements. How can I append First Menu at the bottom of it so that the Set Origin would have 6 elements?
import bpy

class MyCustomMenu(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = "First Menu"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_MT_custom_menu"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text="Hello First Menu!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

def draw_menu(self, context):
    self.layout.menu(MyCustomMenu.bl_idname)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MyCustomMenu)
    #bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_curve_add.append(draw_menu)
    bpy.ops.object.origin_set.append(draw_menu) #Does not work.

def unregister():
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_curve_add.remove(draw_menu)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MyCustomMenu)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Adding a new op and / or overriding the old.
It is not a menu you can append to using method shown in linked answer. It is a menu created from the enum items available for type property of origin set operator.
layout.operator_menu_enum("object.origin_set", "type")

Not impossible, would need to overwrite (rewrite) set origin operator, or blenders UI code, both options I would not recommend. (Altering UI code is IMO a very slippery slope to go down) Writing a new operator with same bl_idname is a lesser of two evils. Low level versions of most options for origin type have been used as answers here. Do you want to go down this road?

In case that it is not that hacky, please show me an example to add a
menu there by creating a new operator with the same name

Ok let's go down that road. Overriding an operator is as simple as registering a new one with the same bl_idname

Ran the code first with bl_idname = "object.simple_operator" and the next time with origin set.  Simple is prepended atop menu, the latter replaces the enums of original in menu
The example below uses the simple operator template.  The options for the type property of the original are used to build the items of the new.
Have only added code to change origin for bottom center (using code from https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42110/15543 )
NOTE: test code below overrides the origin set operator.  Will most likely need to restart blender to get the old one back.
import bpy
from bpy.props import EnumProperty
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix

def origin_to_bottom(ob, matrix=Matrix()):
    me = ob.data
    mw = ob.matrix_world
    local_verts = [matrix @ Vector(v[:]) for v in ob.bound_box]
    o = sum(local_verts, Vector()) / 8
    o.z = min(v.z for v in local_verts)
    o = matrix.inverted() @ o
    me.transform(Matrix.Translation(-o))

    mw.translation = mw @ o

def main(context, origin_type):
    ob = context.object
    if origin_type == 'BOTTOM_CENTER':
        origin_to_bottom(ob)
    else:
        print(f"Add code for {origin_type}")

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    #bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_idname = "object.origin_set"  # override the old one
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"

    def items():
        items = []
        rna = bpy.ops.object.origin_set.get_rna_type()
        for i in rna.properties['type'].enum_items:
            items.append((i.identifier, i.name, i.description))
        items.append(('BOTTOM_CENTER', "Bottom Center", "Set origin to Bottom Center"))
        return items

    type : EnumProperty(
        items=items(),
        default=rna.properties['type'].default)

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

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

def draw_menu(self, context):
    self.layout.operator_menu_enum("object.simple_operator", "type")

def register():
    #bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.prepend(draw_menu)
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimpleOperator)

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Prepend another or overwrite the old?
Leaving the choice up to you. Not currently aware of a way to copy the execute method of a built in operator hence will need to rewrite each of the other origin types.  Some are covered in the links below.
My suggestion would be to not override, instead make a new operator that uses the bounding box as a coordinate system.  The origin (arbitrarily the) front bottom left corner and all other corners scaled such that opposite corner to origin is (1, 1, 1).  In this case bottom center would be (0.5, 0.5, 0)
The user could be given the option of choosing from predefined list (that sets the offset) or a custom option with popup to set the offset themselves. eg origin a third along bottom front edge of bbox set offset to  (1/ 3, 0, 0)
Related
How to compute the centroid of a mesh with triangular faces without using Blender's built-in functions?
Get center of geometry of an object
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/161823/origins-to-the-down-of-the-object-by-default/163258?r=SearchResults&s=6|8.6222#163258
Setting mesh's origin in python (2.8)


How to create lighting for an LED strip? I am creating a simple demo of LED strip animation in Blender. Currently I'm planning to use Blender Render, not Cycles (I'm less familiar with Cycles).

I have already created LED meshes themselves (just a tiny boxes along a curve) and now I'm thinking what would be the best way to add actual lights to make them look and work somewhat realistically (at least, as it's possible in Blender Render).

Additional problem is that I'm going to add a semitransparent screen object in front of these LEDs and I'll need to achieve an edge-lit effect - to make the colors of the LEDs blend on the screen.

Should I use a material with high emit value or should I create spotlights or pointlights? And what would be the easiest way to animate the LED colors for each individual LED?

For reference of what I would like to achieve, here are two videos:

a typical LED strip and how it lights up the environment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxsI63zWk2w
an edge-lit screen:
https://youtu.be/4-1X7HJCLcg?t=2m5s

Idle Chit-chat

I am not familiar with all the LED terms you used, so I just answered the bolded question. BR is a good engine, and although Cycles might be better, there is a great way to do it in each. Similarly, I will include instructions for both.

Blender Render

I believe it might be best to use a point/spot lamp inside the mesh and control the color/strength from the lamp settings AND shader Diffuse color settings.

Add a lamp inside your cubic mesh. Set the color and strength to the desired effect. Add a shader to the mesh. Change the Diffuse color to correspond with the lamp color. Change the Emit strength to 2, the max. Here's the key: Uncheck Traceable in the settings. Procedure described and explained further here around 40:00.

Cycles

Use an Emission shader and set the color and strength as desired. You will need to set the strength in the hundreds or thousands to see it light up. That's it; ta-da!

Hope this helps and happy Blending!


Blender 2.79 - grid issues! I seem to be a bit confused on how to explain the current issue I am having! Overall, this happens in Blender 2.8 and higher
All I can say is that my screenshots sort of explains the issue I am having, if someone would be able to tell me how to fix it! That would be terrific

I worked it out! Just had to divide the overall length by 2
Example: 24.200 m divide that by 2 = 12.100 m is where I needed to place a plane


No lights rendered in Eevee I'm very new to Blender and tried Blender 2.8.
My currently problem is that Eevee does not render the lights I placed in the scene as shown below:

The final render of Eevee:

The weird thing is that it works with Cycles:

In Eevee I enabled the options "Ambient Occlusion" and "Bloom".

Would be nice If someone could help me to render with Eevee :)

Edit:
Platform: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB
CPU: Intel i5 760

Solved by restarting blender (after computer was in standby)

It's working, make sure you have the latest 2.80.


how to generate square pyramids from the faces of a uv sphere There was a time I was messing around with blender and found a way to generate rectangular pyramids (each as a separate object) from each of the faces of a uv sphere. I remember it was just a click and not a set of procedures. Now I need to use that for a rigid body animation but I don't remember what I did.

Does any one know what I need to do to get that effect again?

Is this what you mean?

Start with the entire UV sphere selected A A
Poke the faces with AltP
Select just one of the new vertices. Press ShiftG > "Amount of connecting edges"  or from the 3D view header Select > Select Similar > "Amount of connecting edges". That will select the center vertex of each face.
Make sure the pivot point is set to Median Point, then scale S out.

Animated gif showing the above process.

Or maybe DupliFaces is more like what you want?

Model the prism object.
Now parent that to a UV sphere.
With the UV sphere selected. In the Object tab of the Properties window, scroll down to the Duplication section. Click on the Faces button.


Seeing odd texture artifacts while rendering on a EC2 machine with GPUs To save time, I set up an EC2 machine running Ubuntu with a Tesla K80 GPUs to render a scene saved in a blend file. I rendered in the background using this command:
blender -b room.blend -P set_gpu_for_rendering.py --render-output //test_ --render-format PNG --use-extension 1 --render-frame 1

While the rendering took just about 3 mins to complete, the wall looked really rough and significantly different from the original look of the texture see here. Also, the floor texture looks pretty good in comparison. So the problem doesn't seem to be an universal issue of using JPEG textures, which was my first thought.
I wonder if anyone has faced this or a similar issue of significantly different rendering when done on GPU vs on CPU.
While I'm also wondering if I'm setting all the parameters of cycles to render properly, what confuses me is that when I render the same blend file with same settings on my MacOS machine without GPU, it comes really good without any issues. See the attached image below. But it took 45 mins to render this scene.
Appreciate your help!

While I solved the problem by removing the displacement map from the PBR material, I'm not 100% certain why the issue wasn't affecting the rendering output when done using a CPU alone.
My understanding so far for why this worked:
Each wall is represented using a few triangles whereas the displacement map needs a finely divided mesh to cause micro displacements to make the surface looks like the material. With only a few large triangles to adjust, the algorithm is unable to do it correctly and the error manifests itself in the form fo this jagged surface.
Please feel free to comment if you know what might be happening here.


How to delete collections from the RigidBodyWorld list? I can't find the possibility to empty the collection list, how do you do it?

I found out how to do it, just go inside
Outliner -> OrphanData -> Collections

And click on the power button on the right

Save, close and restart blender.

I thought it was a bug, and thanks to everyone for trying to answer!


Wave/Displace Modifier in BGE? I'm trying to recreate the PS3 xmb wave in BGE and have hit some snags.
So first I made a subdivided plane. Then made an empty object and attached a displacement "cloud" map to its movements for the subdivided plane. Then on the graph editor I made a generator modifier with "+0.001" on the X axis. Then did the same for all the other orientations. Made a wave modifier on the X also. After tweaking the texturing on the wave the result is quite nice. Plays beautifully in the timeline, just doesn't play when the game engine is initiated.

I've set up an "Always" logic brick to the empty objects animation, witch is in turn connected to the displacement map of the wave. The modifiers don't work when the game starts, because it seems to just freeze the wave in place whenever I start it with P. I attached a cube to the empty object to make sure the animation was working and it was. So I'm assuming it has to do with the Modifiers. The intended result is more of a live "random" wave.

Is there anyway to get the wave/displace modifier's to function during the game?

The answer for this is Very simple. Modifiers do not update in the game engine (Only the selected frame will display) and generated textures do not work in the BGE either. What you are trying to do will not work, at least with the current approach you are trying to use. This will obviously work the previewing it in the viewport, because modifiers and generated textures work for Blender Internal, just not the game engine. When you press P, only one frame of your plane with the modifier is displaying. View This question on why modifiers will not update in the game engine.


Images as emitters constantly come out dull. White emission not actually white. What am I doing wrong? I have been using Blender for a while but keep hitting this problem that I don't understand.  First of all, I don't understand why I white emission shader set to pure white is not actually white unless I blast up the strength to at least 10.

This is fine if something is just white, but if I want an image to show up, I cannot increase the strength without blasting out the image.  For example, I downloaded this smiley face and brought it into Blender, and then changed to an emitter.  How do I get it to look like the actual photo that I downloaded?

Help is much appreciated!!!

Set the color management as standard instead of filmic, and read this answer for detailed infos.

Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images


Extruding inwards without creating double faces I'm trying to extrude the selected face in Cube #1 by pressing E, left click then move along X axis. The desired result is Cube #3 but what I get is Cube #2. Is there any workaround for this as it seems a very simple problem and I find it weird that this function hasn't been implemented yet.
Thank you in advance!

Press Alt + E and select Extrude Manifold.  Blender will move all the edges of your selection back while creating a new face under the lip, just like you want.


Blender via RDP is super slow. Why? When I open blender on my old bad laptop, it works smooth. Even if there are hundreds of particles on the scene.

But when I open the same file on the powerful 64-core server via RDP (windows remote desktop), it is freaking slow. Just unbelievably slow. Each click takes 30-40 seconds to react. How can I fix it?

I've tried TeamViewer, but it is not working on the server (stucks on Initializing Display Parameters).

I can confirm the same behavior. In order to get Blender GUI to run on a remote machine I had to place an openGL file in the blender installation folder. I'm currently looking for a solution to this.


How to create coordinates axis I just started using Blender, and I can create and edit simple geometrical 3D objects. However, I tried unsuccesfully to create a simple coordinate axis, something like that:
   --|--|--|--|--|--
     -2 -1 0  1  2

(the horizontal line is supposed to be continous)
but funnily enough, can't figure out how to make it.
I tried with the 2D draw option, drawing a long horizontal line and small spaced vertical lines, but the vertical lines are spaced irregularly, I also tried creating grids, but I can't get rid off the "external" frame of the grid.
Any ideas ?

There are a couple of different ways you can do this...you can create the axis in Photoshop or Gimp and add it as an image on plane and then scale it, or you can use Blender geometry to model it.  Modeling it in Blender takes a bit more time but I think it gives you a bit more precision, it just depends on what you want to use it for.  The other advantage is that you can project your axis along a curve.
To model the major (and minor) tick marks in Blender, move the 3D cursor to 0,0,0 and add a plane.  The default dimensions for planes and cubes are 2m x 2m, so press S and .5 to scale it down by half:

The orange dot at the center of the X and Y axes are the origin of the object, you'll want to keep this at 0,0,0 for the time being.  Since you're new to Blender, an important concept to learn is to keep an eye on that origin and make sure that you're in Edit mode when editing the actual object (took me a little while to figure this out!).  Press tab to go into Edit mode, all of the verts should be selected.  Press G to move, X to lock to the X axis, and .5 so that one side of the plane will line up with X=0.  Notice that the orange dot is still on 0,0,0; if it isn't, that means you're not in Edit mode:

Press Ctrl-R to subdivide and move the mouse so the yellow preview line is on the Y axis.  Left click once, then slide the cut until it is close to the left edge (but still inside the plane) and left click to accept:

Use Ctrl-R to add another cut along the X axis, leave this one in the middle:

Change the selection type to Vertex (note that you're still in Edit mode):

Right-click somewhere in the scene to deselect everything and then select the two circled vertices (and ONLY the two selected vertices):

Delete the two selected vertices.  You'll be left with the two faces on the left side and a single edge down the middle.  You won't be able to see the edge in the middle but it maintains the 1m length along the X axis and keeps the origin at 0,0,0:

Now, tab back into object mode, go to the modifier tab on the right, and add an Array modifier:

Since the plane is 1m long along the X axis, increasing the count on the X axis will add 1m to the tick mark for each increase in count.  Of course, if you want a different measurement for each tick mark, you can go into edit mode, select all of the verts except for the one at the origin, and move them along the X axis as needed.  Here are the major tick marks:

To create the minor tick marks, while in object mode, press Shift-D to duplicate the plane and right click to leave it in the same place.  Tab back into edit mode and select all of the verts except the one at the origin.  Press S and Y and then .5 to make the tick smaller, then G, X, and -.5 to move the tick mark 0.5 meters along the X axis:

You can use the same Array modifier (this time with a relative offset of 2 on the X axis) to add more minor tick marks.
As for the labels, you can place text and individually edit the text to change the numbers but I don't know of a way to Array them and have them automatically increment.  That would be really useful but I don't know of an add-on to do it.  It isn't too hard to add the text, here it is:

Here's the axis with a Bezier curve created and a curve modifier added to each component:

Hope this helps!


How can I modify the thickness of an inset after it was done? Is there a way that I can alter the thickness of an inset after it was done?

This is not strictly possible, however, it is practically possible using the following easy steps.

Select the inset loop using alt + right click
Press G twice to enter edge slide mode
Move your mouse to resize as desired.

Note: as with any other action, you can also pressspace and type edge slide if you don't remember the shortcut.


Glare Node not act as Expected Do not understand why Only 1 part of my Emission Tube glow via Glare node in Compositing Tab.
Thanks in advance.

The glare node works based on a threshold value. Meaning only the pixels that have values larger than the set value will be affected by glare/bloom/glow.
Use a lower value until you get what you need.
Also, keep the mix at $0$. If you set it to $-1$ you are actually cancelling the effect completely.

Mix
Value to control how much of the effect is added on to the image. A value of -1 would give just the original image, $0$ gives a $50/50$ mix, and $1$ gives just the effect.
Threshold
Pixels brighter than this value will be affected by the glare filter.

(Form the blender manual)
Read Control light halos in the compositor based on emission level


How would I texture this lamp, especially the lamp shade? How should I texture this lamp so it looks like this?

It's Surprisingly simple. Just an image texture, for the pattern (like this one) and a Translucent BSDF node.  The trick is to put a lamp inside the shade (where the light bulb would go in real life.)

The layer weight node is how I made the darker edges. The RGB Curves node, inverts and changes the slope of the fresnel. Then the ColorRamp node is just to tone down the black (I'm using 0.05, instead of pure black).
The bottom three nodes are just the standard image texture nodes. The shade texture (a black and white image) get multiplied with the fresnel, and all that is plugged into the Translucent node. Next trick is the Mix Shader node with an empty socket. That is just making the whole material darker.


Create a "hard plastic" material node-setup in Blender and a bump mapping? How can I create a hard plastic material in Blender Cycles?

The exact material I want to create is the following (also the bump mapping):

Please add screenshots, and explaining it.
Thanks

Here's another node setup you could try...

It produces a waxy sort of plastic.

Here's what it looks like with some "bump" added:

But what's the point of giving you example node setups? If you don't really understand how Cycles' nodes work you won't be able to put together a recipe that conveys the look you want.

The real answer is: study Cycles a bit more to understand what the nodes do. Then you'll be able to create the material you are envisioning in your mind.

Once you feel comfortable using all of the common Cycles nodes, I suggest you do some research on PBR with Cycles. It will help you to get even more realistic results. But don't try to jump ahead, because if you don't first understand how Cycles works you will just get even more confused. I am mentioning this as a suggestion for the long term.


Modeling a wine glass with spin tool I am trying to model a wine glass with the spin tool. But the result looks more like a cup/beaker than a wine glass.

It is my understanding that the spin tool uses the 3D cursor as the pivot point. Not sure what I do wrong. The blender file is here

It is pretty simple. If you look at your scene from upwards you see it well:

Your silhuette / cross section / whatever you want to call it is offsetted on the Y axis. As spin pivots around the 3D cursor, you want it to look like this instead:

Now the results are as follows:

Also, for practicality's sake, I would encourage you to look into the screw modifier. It does the same thing as spin, but you can edit you cross section in real time. (These settings seem to work the best with your scene.)

Also, you have duplicate vertexes (the one selected, the second and third ones from up and the one at the boundary between the foot and the upper part of the glass). You can spot them when they break smoothing and by looking at the surrounding edges. If you select only one of the pair of vertexes as shown below, the edge starting from the other one (here the edge that goes down) doesen't get a gradient.

They can do all kinds of evil (though they may sometimes be used to guide subdivision). If you try smoothing the mesh in this scene, it looks weird. You can fix this by selecting all vertexes and doing W > Remove doubles. It looks like this when fixed:

I hope this helped.


Change origin point in edit mode without 3d cursor Is there a way to change origin point in edit mode without moving 3d cursor? If I remember correctly, there was a short cut in edit mode to move around the origin point. Does anyone know?

I don't know the shortcut but I do know how to do it without one.
In the top right corner, check Origins and with the move tool you can freely move your origin. When you are done check the Origins button again and you can move stuff around normally again.


rigify stretching bones I've recently had a problem and I want to know how to fix it.
My probleme is when I move the bones in rigify I don't want them to stretch, because when they stretch the leg or arm gets messy and taller than it should be.

My second question is: How do I deal with elbows controllers so that the arm looks real when rigging?
My third question is: How do I add eyes and face controllers to the rig so that I can control expressions of face without messing with the body rigs

The first two questions are related I will focus on them.
The stretching you face only appears with inverse kinematics (IK) when you move the control bone in a impossible position, this is used for cartonic exaggeration.

You can disable this by setting the Auto Stretch IK slider to 0.

The elbow has an IK-target which can be controlled as knees with a ball shaped control.


Can't get Blender to render smoke I am having somewhat of a problem. I get a real nice flame and smoke in the Viewport but when I render only the fire does. I've been to other forums and tried different things but can't figure out what it is.

This is a screenshot of the viewport

And this is a screenshot of the render

Here's the link to the blender file if it helps.

Thanks everyone.

Select the Flow object and make sure that the Flow Type: is set to Fire + Smoke. It is likely just set to Fire. If this doesn't help, consider uploading a .blend so someone can locate the problem more easily.

Edit:

Got it! The issue was in your nodes. I'm not quite sure what the issue was, but I replaced the current smoke nodes with this, which I plugged into the mix node that the other thing was previously plugged into:

The value in the multiply node affects how dense the smoke is. Here is the fixed .blend file:


hotkeys for blend settings? (overdrop, alpha under, cross, etc)? I'm looking specifically at the vse for this (if there are ones for the 3d viewport let me know tho). But is there a way to bind hotkeys for the "blend settings" found at the top section of any selected strip?

I know once you click on the blend settings and it displays them all (overdrop, multiply, add...etc..) you can type a key like "o" and overdrop automatically applies ( I cannot find a list of these anywhere either....so that would be appreciated as well if anyone finds one).

This is great, just the act of clicking the blend settings to begin with defeats the point to a large degree. I looked through the sequencer hotkeys list and of course nothing like this is listed there. Generally they are listed in some obscure place under some obscure name. So I'm wondering if they do exist and what these obscure places/names are.

Ideally I just want to click a key in the vse viewport or options (n) menu and have it automatically apply stuff like overdrop to the strip highlighted etc.

If there are hotkeys for effect strips as well that would be good to know (transform, speed control etc). Like I love the hotkeys for viewport changing shift+f1 etc, and rebinded those to f1/f2/f3, those were a godsend.

See this answer for how to create custom shortcuts. You can also use this method for looking up obsure keyboard shortcuts.

For performing transform operations on strips in the VSE, I recommend my fork of the VSE_Transform_Tools addon. For a lot of extra functions for the timeline area, I recommend the Blender Power Sequencer addon by GDquest.


Is a "Blender Game Engine" game built into native code or something higher level like python? When building a game made with the Blender Game Engine, is the resulting program native? If not what is it compiled into?

The binary that executes the game (i.e. Blenderplayer) is native code compiled from a combination of C and C++. I don't think there are any Python based Blender operators that run when you play a game. So yes it's completely 'native'.

If you choose to extend the game with Python script, which will be interpreted at runtime with a Python 3.3 (as of Blender 2.70) interpreter, then it will be a mix of 'native' component and interpreted scripts.

Unless you are doing some serious Python coding, the performance overhead of Python is very small.


Problem with normals / smooth shading ( visible triangles on flat surface ) I'm modeling a pistol and I've come across this weird problem with shading ( or normals, I don't know what is going on ).

The triangles are showing on flat surface. I search whole internet and haven't found a solution yet....

I know there are ngons ( I used boolean ) but is there any solution other than not using ngons?

Yup, it's the n-gons.  One workaround is to select the edges that you want be sharp, hit Ctrl-E, click "Mark Sharp", and then enable "auto-smooth" under the mesh data.
Hope that helps!


Animation Nodes: Dynamic Text? I am trying to make a stopwatch in Blender 2.79 with Animation Nodes and Cycles renderer.

I have an imported movie strip which is 30 fps, and in the animation nodes I am reading the frame number, then dividing by 30. As I play the strip I can see the number correctly track seconds via a viewer animation node.

I also have a text object. I have this as an overlay in one corner of my video strip when viewed in the video editor. Currently it just reads "0:00:00.00". What I am wondering (since I am new to python on Blender...and fairly new to Blender itself) is what the preferred method would be to bind my text object to be updated from the animation node? I have the decimal time in seconds within nodes, but I just do not know how to copy the information from the nodes to the text object.

Use the text object output node in BAN Blender Animation Nodes.
This is not a tutorial on BAN.


Different output image when I set "use_borders = True" - in python script I try to split render process (by python script) to several tiles and after finishing render process, join sub-results into one image. I set use_borders to True and I set min_x, min_y, max_x, max_y:

bpy.context.scene.render.use_border = True
bpy.context.scene.render.use_crop_to_border = True
bpy.context.scene.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'
bpy.context.scene.image_settings.color_mode ='RGBA'

bpy.context.scene.border_min_x = computed_min_x_for_tile
bpy.context.scene.border_min_y = computed_min_y_for_tile
bpy.context.scene.border_max_x = computed_max_x_for_tile
bpy.context.scene.border_max_y = computed_max_y_for_tile

But ... I get slightly different image than I expected.
I rendered the same scene in Blender GUI and via python script (splitting into tiles). Outputs are different.
You can see tiles borders - in image generated by python script.

I tried to set another properties (before render process), for example:

bpy.context.scene.render.use_compositing = True
bpy.context.scene.render.use_save_buffers = True
bpy.context.scene.render.use_full_sample = True
bpy.context.scene.render.use_render_cache = True
bpy.context.scene.render.dither_intensity = 1.5

No one helped.

Do you have any idea how to reach the same outputs ?
What property should I set or what sequence of steps should I do ?

Image rendered in Blender GUI:

Image rendered by python script (split, render, join):

It is caused (probably) by compositor. If I render part of image, compositor change only this one piece (tile) - without affecting another tiles. After joining them, seams can be seen.

To reduce seams I will render scene by scene (without using compositor - I will set bpy.context.scene.render.use_compositing = False), tile by tile (saved to erx-multilayer format) and then join outputs. Then I will change inputs in compositor (render layers will be replaced by images).
I hope it will work.


Cannot add modifiers? I am following one of Quill18's tutorials for Blender and Unity 3D. I have a very simple model with one object so far and need to add a second object.

The first model has multiple modifiers, the Mirror modifier being one of them. Now, I also need to apply the Mirror modifier to the new object.

Unfortunately, I don't see the option in the interface. When the first object is selected the relevant tab (spanner) exists and contains the correct modifiers and an "Add Modifier" button.

When the new object is selected, the tab also exists, but it is empty (doesn't contain any buttons whatsoever).

How can I add a modifier to the second object?

The .blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iyitaqp68cofen/Level1_2_objects.blend?dl=0

Screenshots:

I use Windows 7 Home Premium on a 64-bit laptop.

Your properties panel is scrolled down. Try scrolling up with the mouse wheel or the scroll bar:


How to apply UV map texture while keeping node shaders? How would I apply the UV map texture I have here to the object (in place of what's currently the colour) whilst still keeping my diffuse and glossy shader?

You would add a texture (image texture) node, and wire the color output of the image texture node into the color input on the diffuse node only. And leave the glossy color white.


Can't parent mesh to Armature So, for some prior context, I'm trying to rig a model I had previously sculpted, but it doesn't seem the mesh will parent onto the armature no matter what I try. I've selected both, ctrl+p, set parent, with automatic weights, then tried setting it manually in the armature.

However, this is my first attempt at rigging and it may be an easy fix.

I'd love if someone could give me a hand. Thanks!

Blend on Google Drive

Select the armature, you can see that you've parented it to the mesh, an object can't be both parent and child of another object, so deactivate the parentage. Also you'll need to remove doubles in your mesh, otherwise you won't be able to parent it.


How do I cite Blender builds/release correctly for Publications using Bibtex? I am writing articles and would like to cite Blender correctly. How should I do this?

EDIT

If you run R, and type citation(), you would get the following instantly;

 @Manual{,
    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
    author = {{R Core Team}},
    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
    address = {Vienna, Austria},
    year = {2013},
    url = {http://www.R-project.org/},
  }

And you can put this in Bibtex and cite R correctly. Is there an equivalent way of doing this in Blender to get an official/correct citation?

Blender has no functionality to do this, but you could use a Python script.

def citation():
    import bpy

    build_year = bpy.app.build_date.partition(b'-')[0].decode('ascii')

    return '''\
@Manual{,
   title = {Blender - a 3D modelling and rendering package},
   author = {{Blender Online Community}},
   organization = {Blender Foundation},
   address = {Blender Institute, Amsterdam},
   year = {%s},
   url = {http://www.blender.org},
 }''' % build_year

# test to see it works:
print(citation())


Merging vertices and other tools ignoring SubSurf in 2.80 I'm trying to connect two shapes in blender but whenever I try to connect the vertices, whether it's through merging them individually (alt + m), using the bridge tool, or through Remove Doubles (now called Merge by Distance), the vertices behave as if they aren't being affected by the subsurf modifier. Here's the shape without the modifier on:

And here it is with the modifier on:

Turning the modifier off or removing it, merging the vertices, then adding the modifier back still causes the same error. I assume this is a bug but I want to know if there's something I'm missing. In the meantime I suppose I'll have to model the entire shape as one piece.

The normals were flipped. Recalculating the normals using SHIFT+N fixes it.

Before

After


Can't bake in Render (or UV map) All of my textures are showing up on the texture viewer and correctly assigned, however it won't let me bake. I'd like to bake to an ambient occlusion, to add some shadows, but it won't let me, saying 'no image or textures found'.

Here is the .dae file :

https://ufile.io/5o0tr

Thanks!

Observing the dae file I found the UV-Map to be unsuitable for baking because it overlaps on itself, so I followed How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake to bake with cycles, which worked quite well.

Starting with imported .dae, UV-Unwrapping, setting up the bake target.

Node setup, render setup and intial render process.

Finishing the render finding overlaps, reducing overlap size

Final render

Complete workflow


Python Join Same Name function I'm getting this error and am not quite sure how to fix it

Please see below for my code....

def execute(self, context):
    for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        charlen = 15
        namestore_1 = obj.name[:charlen]
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
        for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            namestore_2 = ob.name[:charlen]
            if ob.type == 'MESH':
                if str(namestore_1) == (namestore_2):
                    ob.select = True
                else:
                    ob.select = False
    for selected in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        if selected.type == 'MESH':
            bpy.ops.object.join()

Thanks in advance for any help :) this ones been bugging me for a while!

[edit - updated code slightly for variable in place of number where the character lenght is involved]

An operator's execute(), invoke() or modal() methods must return a status as a set(). Also note that the return result must be one of {'RUNNING_MODAL', 'CANCELLED', 'FINISHED', 'PASS_THROUGH', ‘INTERFACE’}

The shortcut to creating a set is to wrap the item in curly braces {}.

def execute(self, context):
    # do stuff
    return {'FINISHED'}


Avoid distortions when creating projector effect Im my scene, a point light is right above a table, and the light is textured to mimic a projector.

However, the projection is slightly distorted. Is there a way to solve this problem?

The script node is only for changing the colour of the texture, it does not affect how the texture is mapped.

Wanted to add an answer here since this comes up first in google:

Between your Texture Coordinate node and your Mapping node, you should divide the X and Y parts of the normal vector by the Z part, and set the Z part to 1.

This was apparently reported as a bug in 2010, deemed expected behavior, and never fixed:

https://developer.blender.org/T22272

so thanks to the original reporter for the analysis and the solution.


F-Curves disappeared Before this is marked as a duplicate, I understand that similar questions have been asked both here and here, but their answers do not solve my problem, so I feel the need to ask as I can find no other solutions.
I have the animation view on, and all of my movements are displayed on my dope sheet, but the graph is blank. I remember seeing that it was there before, but now, when I go back to refine my movements, it is completely bare. I have turned the selections and the "ghost-mode" on and off, but nothing is happening.
Is there anything else that I could possibly try?

EDIT:
So, for the past couple of hours I have been messing around with the program and managed to make the graph values reappear... but by doing something that I had already tried repeatedly.

Below, I have both my dope sheet and graph, now working again.

Above I also have the selector circled. This is what I was messing with when I finally got the graph to return, but I had already selected all of the options inside it before with no success.
What made this time different?

Also, since it was asked, I am using the Rymdnisse Minecraft Character for this animation. Is this problem common with this rig or the pack's setup in particular?


How can I split the screen when the screen splitting widget is not visible? I know the basics of splitting the screen/creating more of them.
While I can split the windows at the right I can't do that on the left, because those typical lines on the left lower corner are missing. Can I make them appear somehow?

Try this:

Open new window by pulling the right top corner
Once you do that you should find the bottom left one in the new window
Pull the left bottom corner to close the old one which didn't have the bottom left pull option


Animate clouds texture for blender sky I added blue color to my world background and then add texture 'clouds'.
I set up options so it looks quite good.

But I'm animating flying jet and these clouds are static. When I move camera & jet clouds are always the same.
How I can easy fix it?

That really depends on the node setup. If you go to this tutorial and follow along with what it has to say, then there are specific drivers in the tutorial that will allow your clouds to move and be very flexible.

Here's the .blend file in which you can append from! Just make sure your project is in Cycles, and press Shift + F1 (append) and go to path\suppliedblend.blend\world\sky.
;)

EDIT:

Here are some further steps on how to animate the clouds without actually having to watch the tutorial. Now, when going to edit this answer, I realized that my supplied .blend file wasn't actually optimized to have these animate-able  properties. So, It's really quite simple to add that feature. Make an edit to the provided node setup and add a new node (Shift+A) and add a mapping node. (Vector>>Mapping) Put your node in between your Texture Coordinates node, and your Noise Texture node. That way, the mapping node will have the output of the texture coordinates node going into the input of the mapping node. It's output will then go into the input of the noise texture node. Simple. Once this has been added, to make your clouds move you just need to keyframe the location coordinates parameters. If you hover over one of the sliders and press I then you will have keyframed your value. Make sure that the other keyframe is far enough away from the first to achieve a realistic effect.


Driver "Transform space" option is mixing different rotations When frame is switching from 5 to 6, red monkey weirdly flips and green rotates well.
Red one is using empty's X rot Transform space as variable. Green - empty's data path of X rot.

Empty is keyframed for all rotation channels and it seems that Driver is mixing them like as World space

You can see how drastically driver value has changed (from 2.896 to -0.246), while empty was barely rotating

Is it a normal behaviour? And should I always stick to data path connection for driver in similiar cases?

While I'm not sure of the cause, if you clear the rotation of the empty and only rotate it on the x axis the issue stops.


Why are game engine properties changing 1 tick late? When I pull out a weapon (weapon-switch), a prop ("Timer_Activate") is set to 10, the number of frames for the weapon-switch animation. If you swap weapons, it will set the prop to 20, and the prop will drop every tick by 1 till it reaches 0. Once the prop is at 0, you can fire. The problem is, if you swap between a weapon, and you hold the fire-button, you will fire 1 bullet before the prop turns into 20. This happens all the time and can be a cheat to gain fast-firing weapons. How can I fix this "lag"? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Use my .blend to see the issue firsthand:
Press 1 or 2 for any of the 2 weapons, and make sure you are holding down left-click as you are swapping, you will fire 1 bullet, then the animation plays and the timer is set to 20.

If you cannot download the .blend or can't find the issue, be sure to check out a gif of the problem here. (The gif is slightly modified but you can still see the issue.):

Problem
The problem was that, your integer property Timer was still equal to 45 when the weapon was switched, for exactly one logic tick, allowing a shot to escape. Then, one tick later, the message actuator could deliver the message to assign the property Timer to 0.
Reason
The message system actually takes one logic tick from the time the actuator receives the positive pulse from the controller, to the time when the message sensor on the receiving end receives the message and sends the positive pulse to it's controller(s).
How to fix it
I have un-checked the the check boxes on all of the logic we aren't using so it will be easier to see the necessary change. (re-check them before testing)

Your end result should look like this, only without the actuators on Active_Determiner
Essentially, all you need to do is Delete the logic bricks marked by a red box, and connect the bricks where the Blue lines are.
This will completely cut out the message system, (and the one-tick delay) and directly connect the bricks instead.

result:
It works! - yay!

If you didn't understand that, don't feel bad (logic can be confusing.) here is the blend file in case you did get confused.


How to turn off image tiling in the game engine? I was wondering how to turn off image tiling for textures in the game engine. My UV map would make it tile right now (i.e. it's bigger than the map), but I can't figure out how to turn tiling off. I'm using the game engine with GLSL enabled.

In the UV Image Editor, bring up the properties toolshelf with N and under Game Properties, under the Clamp group, tick X and Y, you can now scale your map larger than your image without tiling your texture..


What is the purpose of the "Grid" object type? From what I can tell the grid object type is just a subdivided plane. What is the difference between adding a plane and subdividing it, and adding a "grid"? If there is some hidden difference what is it?

I don't think there is any difference, other than it's slightly  faster to add a grid than to add a plane and subdivide.

From the wiki:

  A standard grid is made out of n by m vertices. The resolution of the
  x-axis and y-axis can be specified in the context panel in the Tool
  Shelf which appears when the object is created; the higher the
  resolution, the more vertices are created. Example objects that can be
  created out of grids include landscapes (with the proportional editing
  tool or Displace modifier) and other organic surfaces. You can also
  obtain a grid when you create a plane and then use a subdivide
  modifier in Edit mode.

emphasis mine


how to properly export my character from blender to mixamo to apply animation I downloaded a character from mixamo and then in blender edit some changes in character but when i export the character in FBX and try to upload the character on mixamo it won't let me upload

I can't figure out what I am doing wrong
this is my character

I added the exo suit is it because of that?

solved it ! it turns out I had too many vertices in my model by decimating the mesh it got uploaded and perfectly rigged
Go to edit mode
Mesh->cleanUp->Decimate Geometry
decrease the ratio to reduce mesh size


Bone rotation skews geometry The problem is self explanatory

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f48syr0p0honsj7/gunlocker.blend?dl=0

The mesh has 2 vertex groups that deform the exact same area with the exact same weight, causing this weird stretching to happen. Simply fix this by removing the "knob" selected area from the "gunlockerdoor" vertex group (unlocking the vertex groups first, of course.)


I joined two objects together, but when I edit the object, they aren't completely joined I am currently making a bird in Blender, and I accidentally separated the wing of the bird from the body. After realizing I didn't need to separate the objects, I then rejoined them back together (control J).

Now I am adding bones to the object, but when the wings flap, you can see a hole in the bird's body where I separated the objects. How do I completely join the wing back to the body so this hole doesn't exist?

You have two edge loops that overlap perfectly, one on the body, the other on the wing. To fix the issue, select everything, then press W and choose remove doubles.


Is there a way to 'drive' lamps, similar to how you can 'drive' and control a camera in first person? In particular, I find the first person perspective and use of WASD very intuitive for when I'm positioning my camera in the scene.

I would like to know if there's a way to control lamps that same way in Blender?

I've used other software where you're able to control a light in the exact same way as you can the camera in blender and find it far easier and more intuitive to use then trying to move a light around in my scene by hand using the manipulators and rotation.

A quirk of Blender is that you can actually set any object to be the 'camera' and use the WASD movement controls while in Fly mode.

Select the object (e.g. a lamp) and press Ctrl+Numpad 0 to set it to be the camera. You will now be looking through the object like you would a camera object.
Press Shift+F to enter Fly mode and navigate freely.

The downside of this is that you will then have to reassign the actual camera as the scene's active camera afterwards (if you intend to render anything) either by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+Numpad 0 or by selecting it in the Scene panel in the Scene tab of the Properties Editor:


Module Import Error in the Standalone Player I am using Blender 2.71 and Ubuntu 14.04

I've got a module, external to Blender, installed thanks to its setup.py inside my /usr/local/lib/python3.4/dist-packages (the result of the build is an .so file).

After copying this one inside <my_blender_folder>/scripts/addons/ , it's working, but only when using the Embedded Player; When using the Standalone Player, the module is not found anymore.
I've tried to copy the .so file inside the folder where the Blender executable is, but it's not found either.

Why is this module not being found, when using the Standalone Player?

The module, to be correctly found by the standalone player, must be placed inside <my_blender_folder>/2.71/python/lib/python3.4/.

So it's completely different from the embedded player (used normally by hitting p in the game engine) (which is <my_blender_folder>/2.71/scripts/addons/)

I finally found it by using a import sys; print(sys.path) and using the standalone player.

This info doesn't seem to be found anywhere in the API docs strangely.


How to separate texture-alpha without premultiplying the color? I want preview some game assets via Cycles for the game Space Engineers. The game uses packed .dds textures where the color and alpha channels store unrelated information: diffuse color + metallness, normal map + glossiness (roughness, inverted).

I think my problem is this documented behavior of image-texture nodes:

  Color output:
  RGB color from image. If the image has alpha, the color is premultiplied with alpha if the Alpha output is used, and unpremultiplied or straight if the Alpha output is not used.

The result is that my shader nodes produce some strange artifacts when I use both image-texture outputs:

If I extract the alpha-channel of the textures into separate files and plug those in, the problem goes away. But I don't like doing that because it introduces an otherwise unnecessary conversion step to my workflow.

Here is what I already tried:

Making sure Alpha is set to Straight for each image. I think that only affects how Blender treats the data it reads from file, though.
Load the .dds into two separate image-datablocks. The first image has Use Alpha disabled and provides the RGB channels. The second one has Use Alpha enabled and provides the Alpha channel. This resulted in largely the same problem because it seems Blender optimizes internally and loads the same file only really once. I think that because toggling Use Alpha seems to affect the image-data of both images (without reflecting that in the UI).
Use a MixRGB node: Add the color (0,0,0,1) to the color output and clamp the result. This shouldn't change the color (because adding black does nothing) and remove any transparency (because 1 + anything is 1 when clamped). Sadly, that didn't do anything.

Am I out of luck and using the alpha output simply cannot be done without affecting the color output?

The workaround WorldSEnder mentioned above is the only solution:

  Duplicate each Texture Input node and get the RBG value from one, and the Alpha value from the other input.

The stance here seems to be that texture-files are simply not expected to contain unrelated information. The optimization to pack several unrelated channels into one texture-file to improve memory-locality on the GPU is just not that relevant to Blender to warrant a change to the behavior of Texture Input nodes.


Subsurf revealing a topology problem, but there isn’t one? There must be something wrong with the topology or some kind of settings I’m unaware of? I’ve tried merging by distance—there were no duplicates. Can someone help me understand what’s going on here?

This is the mesh.

This is with subsurf.

Ok, one more part to the issue. In the second to last image—that sharpened right hand edge—if I delete the faces and re-add them, it subdivides smoothly. If I do it all at once by bridging them as edge loops (which I suppose is the problem elsewhere) it looks as it does. Can someone help me understand why this is?

Thank you, Jachym Michal! It was inverted normals.

Mesh->Normals->Recalculate outside


Cycles: noise in dark sections I'm having trouble with noise.
Its mostly in dark sections, it doesen't look to bad in the picture but that's with 3000 path tracing samples. It's rendering at 1920x1080 and using  filmic blender at medium high contrast.

I guess the standard advice of making mesh light sources brighter and spot lamp sizes larger applies here, these would be the most "natural" ways of reducing noise[1].

If the Starmap is emitting light as an HDR, it might be a good idea to try Multiple Importance Sampling in Cycles.

But I do agree with you that one should expect a less noisy image at 3000 samples. Filmic blender actually doesn't affect Cycles contrary to popular belief.

Also, have a look at airenderer.com. It's a renderer that takes a noisy image (probably 200 samples is enough here) and gives you a more rendered result. It doesn't every type of scene well, but this looks like the type of scene this was built for.

sources: [1]blenderguru.com


Darkening/Lightening camera change effect How can I make the view darken to black before changing the camera and then fade back again after the view has changed - as in the linked video.
https://youtu.be/R70HeSY2q-U

Assuming Cycles renderer, the Film panel in the Render properties includes an Exposure setting. The Exposure effectively controls how much "light" is allowed into the camera.

Simply keyframe the Exposure from 1.0 to 0.0 in the few frames before your camera change and then keyframe back from 0.0 to 1.0 after, resulting in a fade to black on the 'old' view and fade from black for the 'new'.


Array modifier to achieve a partial object (ie. non-integer objects)? I often need a long string of objects followed by a variable size partial object at the end.  For example, a long line of brick objects.  There are times that I want an array 15.45 (for example) items long.  Any thoughts on how to do this without a second object that I just slice and append to the end?
Thanks for your help!
Erik

you can achieve this with a little overhead:

you created your array of e.g. a cube

you double that cube (before you add the array modifier)

you shorten the cube in edit mode as you need

you add that edited cube as cap end in the array modifier like here:


event "close program" Main question:

in my addon, i create a python-thread, for do not blocking UI. (1) its wrong?)

thread created on checkbox-"on", and destroyed on "off".
problem when checkbox is "on". when i close blender, blender does not close :)

i find this solutioin, but not work for me, callback not fired

i need thread for "filewatch", and do something on os "file-modified" event

how can I solve this problem?

sub question

i have a class extends from bpy.types.PropertyGroup and

checkbox-property = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
    name="Switch",
    description="",
    default=False,
    update=checkbox_update_handler
)

default=false not work in some cases.

how i can set always false, when blender\or new file startup

Thanks!

I found a solution also based on atexit,
but thread need property daemon=True.
Then python interpreter do not wait he will complete the work and fires atexit-callback


How To Bevel A Single Edge To A Flat Surface? I want to make this edge to like beveling to a flat surface.
I don't know if i got the term right.
See the image below:

So you could simply select this edge and bevel it?


How to extrude outwards? So I'm watching this tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPcT0dJmoY

And at 42:37 he instructs us to "Extrude outward". I'm not sure how to do this, because just scaling seems to not do what he's doing.

You can't really extrude outwards, it's actually a two step operation composed of an extrude and a scale commands.

Select the desired geometry and press E to extrude and immediately after Right Click to cancel the operation.

It will look like it id did nothing but it acualty created duplicate faces that are now overlapping the original.

Now just scale it outwards by pressing S.
You may optionaly press . (period key) before scaling to scale outwards relative to the 3D cursor position instead of the selection center.


Blurry interface - no settings changed Tried switching AA off inside blender but didn't help. I don't want to mess around with my gfx settings since ALL other APPS and GAMES work and DISPLAY 100% fine. Only blender is the issue.

Change the DPI setting for Blender exe?

Maybe override the setting inside here and use internal Blender scaling option


How can I solve problems with Remesh modifier? I used the Remesh modifier to turn an Ocean modifier blocky and this happened. What's going on?

The model shown below should just look like normal terrain, but it doesn't. There are walls covering it.

View from inside:

View from outside:

I guess it's not bug, as the Remesh Modifier page on Blender 2.79 Manual explain this problem and how to solve it :

Just add a Solidify Modifier, set the Thickness to 0.5, and make sure the Solidify Modifier is processed before the Remesh Modifier but after the Ocean Modifier. The order of the modifiers should be, from top to bottom : Ocean / Solidify / Remesh.


How do I select one of two imported models? I have two OBJ files.  I Imported the first, then imported the second right after.  When I try to do a shift-drag select on the second model, the first one gets highlighted as well.  Shift drag select doesn't even work on the first model.  How do I select the second only so I can move it next to the other?

Thanks for your time!

rebooted my system and when i got it back up, it was working fine.


Are weird shading artifacts normal with the subdivision modifier in edit mode? TLDNR: Are the circled thingies in the picture normal with a subdivision modifier while in edit mode? (note: subdivision set display modifier in edit mode)

I've been trying to create a character that I might like to use for a game in the future. I'm pretty new to blender and these "artifacts" (unsure if that's what they are) are slowing me down.

This problem doesn't show itself when in object mode, only in edit.  I'm using the mirror modifier and the subdiv modifier.  I've applied the mirror mod before the sub mod, due to some strange separation of vertices at the origin of my character.  However, I went back and forth to check, and with the subdiv mod before the mirror mod, these odd "artifacts" don't seem to show. I can't use that arrangement thought, because of the weird tearing problem D:

Any experienced blenderers out there that think they might have the solution to my problem?

PS/Side question: Should I just go ahead and continue making the model of my character, no matter the mistakes/ngons there might be, and then just go over it afterwards with some nice retopology afterwards?

It is completely normal that the subdivided surface crosses the original mesh's edges when they make a concave geometry, and this shouldn't be considered an issue with the mesh. This becomes evident in Edit Mode because, together with your subdivided mesh, you also see the un-subdivided wireframe:

That "artifact" is just the subdivided mesh "coming out" from the cage of the un-subdivided mesh. Nothing to worry about. This effect doesn't appear in Object Mode since, in that mode, you don't see the underlying un-subdivided geometry.

However, you have the option to see the effect of Subdivision Surface also on the Edit Mode's wireframe. There is a button () in the modifier panel for this:


Weird static-y appearance of object I'm working on some motion graphics that involves making text appear from behind objects and other text.

I was able to get the first word appear correctly using empties, texture mapping, and mix shaders. (I've been following this tutorial.)

However, when I attempted to use the same method, the second word ends up looking like this:

Does anyone know why this is/how I could fix it? I want the second word (Tech) to disappear/appear behind the first word (VES in the screenshot).

Materials:

Background surface is a plane set to Emission, Strength 2.0
First word (VES in the screenshot): Text object, node setup:

Second word (Tech in the screenshot, static-y): Text object, node setup:

Both text objects are located at exactly the same y-coordinate (0). To fix this move one of the text objects slightly along the y-axis after that the z-fighting artifacts will disappear.


Why is volume losing color when hidden behind glass and how do I make it keep its color? Everything is done in Cycles.

I created a very simple blue volume and gave it to a cube. I also added a principled shader to make the outside look like shiny glass.

The cube on the left has only the volume. The cube on the right has both the volume and principled shader.

As you can see, the glass causes the volume to lose all color. As it turns out, it is somewhat related to shadow casting, because if I turn off shadow casting by my sun lamp, the color returns to the right cube.

Why is this happening, and how do I keep the color of the volume without disabling the shadow casting on my light?

The Volume max bounces were set to zero in your project. Once you increase them it should give you the intended look.


How do I only render specific objects? I have an orange juice splash in a jug. I want to render only the jug and juice in order to edit it in photoshop. Can you please help me how to do that?
I want to have all light and shading effects that the other objects may cause on the jug but without having the actual objects in the render. I don't want the floor and background either.

Here is the scene rendered below, thanks.

Move all objects that you want to render in a separate layer.
Move all lights and anything affecting the objects in another separate layer.
Than click the second tab from your main editor (which says Render Layers). And select only the layers which you want to be rendered (the one which has the separated objects and the lights layer).


New in Blender (coming from Modo) I am trying to give it a try to Blender. After the 2.8 update I got totally in (visually) at least.

I am trying to explore the UI and I find a few differences that I am trying to understand. This is not a critic it is just doubts that I am trying to solve.

In Modo when I move a vertex or any other element of the geometry the "coordinates" are 0 from the beginning. For ex. If I grab an upper vertex of a cube and I click the move tool any units input will be 0+ X .
In blender the vertex of a cube has already the position in the space embedded, making my decitions little bit more complex. If I want to make a change in a vertex that vertex of the cube will not be 0, but 2m for example. Therefore If I want to move it 2mm ...I need to put 2002.

Is it possible to use it as in Modo ?

Is the boolean tool add-on working in 2.8 ?
Is there any shortcut to see my mesh subdivided view ? I mean in Modo when you press TAB it will swap to the subd version of that mesh. In Blender I need to open a modifier and activate it each time. I would like to have a short cut that that allows me to toggle the view of the subd vs regular mesh.
I am still not getting use to move the geometry parts with the shortcuts...I am coming from the product design field and I feel more comfortable moving things with a gizmo. Any option to have it always active when I press G ?
Is this the right forum to ask? There are several options in the official web. My apologies if this is not the right one.

Thanks so much for helping.

Welcome to blender.stackexchange. Please only post one question per post, you can post as many new questions as you want!

If you have the 3DView Transform Panel (N) open, it will show you the coordinates of a vertex. You can use an arithmethic operation if you want to offset a value. E.g. if the vertex is at (1, 2, 3) and you want to move it 4.5 units along Y, then you can simply double click into the Y field of the vertex transform. It will now read 2m followed by the cursor. Typing +4.5 and pressing ⏎ Enter will shift it to 6.5 as expected.

You can also use the operation properties which appears in the box after completing an operation. Press GY and confirm with  LMB to move the vertex along Y. The operation dialog will show

Move X       0m
     Y       0.12345m
     Z       0m

Now you can change the the relative value, by clicking on the individual field, entering it and confirming with ⏎ Enter or  LMB.

The BoolTools Addon is not yet updated for 2.8. (25.12.19)
In Object Mode (↹ Tab if you're in edit mode): Press ⎈ CtrlNumber to change the view level of the subdivision surface modifier. ⎈ Ctrl1 will be level one while ⎈ Ctrl0 will show no subdivision at all, etc...

The gizmo is enabled with the buttons on the left hand side T or with Space > G/R/S/3
Questions 1 - 4 are almost right for this forum, view the asking section for more info. They should however be split into several posts in the future. This question  may get closed for that reason. Question 5 however, does not have anything to do with the usage of Blender, but with the  usage of this forum. It belongs to meta.


Matcap materials as a material for render? Is it possible to use Matcap materials as an actual material for a model so that I can render with it? There are certain parts that I want to apply specific Matcaps textures to but I want to actually use them to render and not just for sculpting purposes.

Is this at all do-able?

For Blender Internal it's as easy as making a material shadeless and mapping the Matcap texture with Normal mapping:

For Cycles you need to stack some nodes to get the correct mapping:

Note: In versions 2.76rc3 and earlier this doesn't work when Open Shading Language and CPU rendering is enabled. The Vector Transform gives invalid output. This is a bug that has been fixed in the latest builds.

Important Update: From version 2.76 we now must change the Vector Transform Node's vector type from Point to Normal. Apparently it should not have worked with Point before, but it did because not all location information was being taken into account - now it is.


How to run Blender through RDP on Windows Server 2008 R2 - opengl error I want to render my blender project in rdp. But some error has appeared. What is the best solution for this problem? I've spent many hours trying to troubleshoot this problem.

To run Blender on a machine without OpenGl support, you would need to:

Download the opengl32.dll or opengl64.dll from this
link: http://download.blender.org/ftp/sergey/softwaregl/
Copy and paste the dll next to your blender.exe (the directory
would typically be: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender)
Run Blender

This enables Blender to open with software opengl legacy mode.


placing origin at end of Bezier Curve i have created a bezier curve, to make a corrugated sheet, and i am then trying to slide a thin cube mesh. i have placed the origin at one end of the the cube mesh and am trying to do the same with the bezier curve, but it will not move to the cursor which i have placed at the end point of the curve! how can i trick it into doing what i want, or any other method. Running OSX 10.15.6 and 2.83.3

Here are a few ways to do it:

Go to Preferences > Add-ons and search for "Curve Tools" and activate the Add Curve: Curve Tools add-on by checking the box next to it. In the 3D Viewport press N to extent the Tool Shelf and click the Edit tab. Then go to Curve Tools > One Curve and click the "Set origin to spline start"-button.

Select the curve, go into Edit Mode. Select the starting vertex. press Shift + S, and choose Cursor to Selected. Go into Object Mode. Press F3 (default search key) and type "Set Origin" and choose Origin to 3D Cursor.

In the 3D Viewport Header click the Snapping-button. (It is the icon next to the little magnet icon.) Choose Snap to Vertex. Then in the same header click Options and check the box next to Origins (uncheck it when you're done). Now hold Ctrl (or click the magnet icon) while moving the origin to snap it to the starting vertex.


How to create hotkeys for specific modes that override the default ones? "G" in object mode = move, while in Sculpting mode = Grab brush,

I want to edit the shortcuts for many brushes, but i'm having an issue, for example i want to remove the "S" key from the Smooth brush and assign it to the "Scrape" brush, but its not working, "S" is always smooth, even when i right click and remove shortcuts from it and add "S" to scrape, also, is there a place to see all shortcuts for every mode so that i don't accidentally override some important ones ?

thanks!

Maybe you know it already but if you go to edit menu>preference>keymap you'll have the choice of the shortcuts for every windows and mode. Also the trick I use is to right-click and assign shortcut when I'm navigating the menu bars.
Let me know if it works for you!
Cheers
Fred


How can I reset this? Disclaimer: When I'm referring to "it" I mean the Dark interface!!

I saw that Youtuber that had his Blender looking different. He then told me how he did that (It was something that comes with Blender).

I then activated it, but now i want to disable it. I already tried to reinstall Blender and even delete the Blender foundation folder but nothing worked...
Can you please help me?

You can change the theme from dark to light in the preferences. Open Edit > Preferences then go to Themes and select Light from the dropdown. The dark theme is the default in Blender 2.8.


Shader artifacts rendering in some spots of the mesh When I render my model in Cycles (I applied a dummy material just to check), there are some bad/glitched shadows in some spots.

Like this:

But, in shaded view (smooth shading applied to the whole mesh), it seems fine:

I checked the face normals, and they're fine, vertex normals look fine too:

This is a retopo of a sculpt I've made, it might not be perfect but there are no triangles or n-gons. It's also strange because those darker spots are triangular.
I also checked if there were two faces one over the other, but there are none. Everything looks fine.

I don't know what may be causing this, any help?

I think I should point out that this happens on more than one spot and only when the spot is in some degree of shadow. If it's lit it looks fine.

Those artifacts are showing up for a number of reasons.  The first is that you have polygons that are very non-planar and this will usually cause artifacts for lighting.

Here is an example that shows a quad but it's folded sharply and two distinct triangles can be seen when viewed along the plane of the quad.  Try and make sure to keep quads as flat as possible.  Non-planer quads will also give you problems with texture mapping so it's something to always look for and repair.

Another problem you are having is that you are rendering with a very low polygon model.  Cycles has difficulty dealing with models which are not subdivided at least a couple times.  It's best to use a subdivision surface (subsurf) modifier to handle this since it can be removed without affecting the base model or it can be applied so the model will be permanently sub-divided.
Here is a sequence of images that show the effect that various levels of subdivision can have on rendering artifacts.

Another way to deal with these rendering issues is to use more lights.  Global Illumination will also help since these areas will receive indirect light that will also help smooth things out.
The following image shows the effect of changing the angle of a single light source in order to show how the area is affected by direct illumination.

For the final image here, I did not alter the mesh at all but instead only relied on the Sub-Division Modifier at 1 iteration and also there are 3 lights as well as an environment map.  The ground also adds a bit of indirect light that helps to fill in the lighting for areas that the other lighting is not reaching.
This all adds up to a mesh that looks pretty decent even though the bash mesh is low poly and it has some fairly substantial non-planer errors.  If the Sub-D modifier is increased to use 2 iterations; the few problem areas that are still showing should no longer be perceptible.


Blender 2.8 create viewport similar to startup user perspective In CAD programs there are usually standard viewports that have buttons so as to find or easily return to a viewport. When you start a new blender file, it opens up in a somewhat isometric view of a cube. I am trying to return to this view or recreate it with an easy way to return to it as a default reference.

Thanks in advance.

If I've understood you correctly...
Start blender with no file loaded.
Arrange your viewport.
Then click on File->Defaults->Save Startup File

To return to certain viewport setups while working with blender try the following addon (here: Blender 2.80):


How to refresh loaded textures I am working on a scene, and using CrazyBump to export Displacement and Normal maps; I want to tweak the textures, but currently I need to restart Blender before they update.

Is it possible to refresh them, without restarting Blender?

With the texture displayed in the UV/image editor, press AltR or Header > Image > Reload image:

There is also a refresh button on the source selector for any image datablock. In the node editor, the full datablock settings are in the Properties region. To reveal this region, place your mouse over the node editor view and press N:


Why do my objects look like this in solid view? Everything seems to render fine however, in solid view all my objects have this choppy look. Am I doing something wrong?

@sobe608 was right, but for another reason. The faces are 'occupying the same place' .. but not in Object space; in the View volume. And they're at 'the same Z' (depth) in that volume, because the near and far clips are too far apart, resulting in floating-point numbers not having sufficient precision to distinguish points in the range.
TL;DR...
Change the clipping range in the viewport to the minimum that reasonably encloses your scene.


Multiply object and place at vertices with specific orientation I have this object:

And these vertices connected at their center:

I want to multiply the object and place mutiples of it at the center of the different vertices, and have all the multiples oriented with their Z-axis away from the center vertex; like so:

How would I go about doing this?

In the third image, the result is not perfect and the local Z-axis of the object is not aligned well.

You could use Dupliverts to add one copy of the object to each vertex, and then use a Constraint to orient them correctly.

Parent the rounded cylinder object to the vertex object by pressing CtrlP:

Enable Dupliverts in Properties > Object > Duplication with the vertex object selected and scale the rounded cylinder object down (S):

Select the rounded cylinder object and snap the 3D cursor to it with ShiftS:

Add an empty (ShiftA> Empty > Plain Axes), it should appear at the center of the rounded cylinder object (where the 3D cursor is). Then select the vertex object and press CtrlShiftA to make the dupliface objects real:

With one of the rounded cylinder objects selected, add a Track To constraint in Properties > Constraints and tweak the axes settings:

With the same rounded cylinder object selected, press ShiftL> Object Data to select all the other rounded cylinder objects, then copy the constraints by pressing 3D View > Header > Object > Constraints > Copy Constraints to Selected Objects:

If you then snap the vertex object to the 3D cursor, and then delete the two center rounded cylinder objects, you get this:

Removing the constraints
To "apply" the constraints to the object transforms, select all the rounded cylinder objects again:

Select one of them and press ShiftL> Object Data

Press CtrlA> Apply Visual Transform make their actual rotation the same as the constrained rotation.

Then remove the constraints:

Remove the constraint from one by pressing the X on the constraint in Properties > Constraints.

Copy it to the others with 3D View > Header > Object > Constraints > Copy Constraints to Selected Objects.


Changing dimensions of a Child I have this sphere with dimensions and scale as below

How can I set the dimensions at x = 12.720m y = 12.756m and z = 12.756m and the scales at x = 0.997 y = 1.000 and z = 1.000

I have been trying with scale either Scale or Dimensions or typing in numbers but cannot get it right. I would think that changing dimensions and scale for an object should be very simple but this dumbo cannot get it done. How to do this ?

If I enter the number 12.756 in the X Dimensions field then Blender makes this

I simply don't get it.

After discussion with Rick it appeared that I had some modifiers attached to my object but the big problem appeared to be that my object was the child of another object and the parent did not allow to perform step one of Rick. After Clear Parent it was possible to Make Parent again but now with Keep Transformation, which let me perform transformations on the child without the parent interfering :)

Revised per chat conversation to get down to the real problem.

The problem at its root had to do with a parent object relationship, and the sphere subordinate to this parent object was parented without the 'KEEP TRANSFORM' option. when this happens, the values begin to change in the scale of the subordinate, then the parent calculates what the subordinate should be and the subordinate changes its scale value automatically to adjust. So it became pretty unstable to adjust the values in the subordinate object.

To fix the root of the problem, we cleared the parent (Alt+P), then reparented the subordinate back to its original parent (via Ctrl+P >> Then clicked the 'Parent (keep transform)' option).

Then the rest of these steps worked in this scenario...

Change the dimensions to all be at full scale (12.756, 12.756, 12.756).
Then Apply the scale.
Then change your scale on X to 12.720/12.7560000000.

Appended per comments below:

(desired size) / (original size + 'appended zeros to go to the 10th decimal'), ENTER


UV Faces Proportionally Incorrect After Unwrap This is more of an annoyance than anything else but it's bugging me.  I have a simple object that when unwrapped, has a disproportional UV map.  I've tried everything that I can think of such as:
Merging duplicate vertices - none
Triangulation mesh
Limited resolve
Chopping up the corner areas into individual faces
Removed and replaced the back face
Recalculating normals
A bunch of other stuff that I can't remember
What am I missing?
The object has narrower faces at the bevels but the UV has every face at a consistent width:
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QLHL0.png" alt="
" />

Jachym was correct.  Selecting the Conformal method in the UV options solved it.


Non Color Data Procedural Normals So I was trying to reproduce this tutorial for Lightwave on Blender:
http://iaian7.com/lightwave/SoapFoamSurfacing

Basically the guy uses a node setup to get procedural Black&White bubbles which he then uses to generate Normal Maps using a custom setup.
You can get the same B&W bubbles using a Voronoi texture on Blender then using a Minimum(Math) node to isolate the shapes (or use a Color Ramp instead).

The problem is, if you feed the result of the B&W bubbles directly into a normal map node you get pure black, which is wrong.

When you input it firstly into a Bump node to convert B&W to normal values, then into a Normal Map node, the result is too dark, is as if you were using a normal image without selecting Non-Color-Data.

For comparison, this is the result using the following normal map image:

Here is the same, but with Non-Color-Data selected, and Color selected on the right:

As you can see, left is correct, right is wrong.

Then here is the node setup for procedural bubbles:

The result is not exactly the same pallette as a normal map image would be, but I tried keep going anyway.
This is the result of that bump node going into a glass shader:

As you can see, no "bubbliness" is present, they are kind of flat.
If you feed the Bump node into a Normal Map node, this is the result:

So I'm not being capable to reach a result similar to what I'd get with a regular normal map image. I wanted it to be procedural so that I could put it in any object instantly, without repetition no matter the size and shape.

At first I thought that the output of a Bump node was being interpreted as being Color Data, instead of Non-Color Data, so these are the things that I tried:

1) follow this node setup to convert from sRGB to Linear (and the inverse as well):https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?251208-sRGB-lt-gt-Linear-Nodegroup

These are the terrible results:

2)Then I tried using this node setup which is apparently for Procedural baking of normal maps on cycles: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?348799-Baking-Cycles-Procedural-Normals-to-Texture

This was the result:

Still too dark... apparently the node setup did nothing to "fix" the output of the bump map.

Anyone have any ideas?
This is the blend file:
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=46983

Regards

Overview:

I think that everything should be ok with just Bump node. There is a method to convert Height Map (B&W) to the same Normal Map as in your first image, but this produce the same results.

Comparison:

First my node setup:

  Bump_to_normal group is not mine, see Credits at the bottom.

In Texture Group Node there is Height Map created from Voronoi Texture.

Bump node:

Bump_to_normal node:

As you can see there is no difference at all, no matter from what map you feed Normal input in Glass node.

Solution:

I think your problem lays just in Distance value in Bump node. It's to high.

About Bump to Normal:

I can't tell you how this node setup is working, there is little to none info from the author (check Credits). But I'll show you how to set it up:

In Texture Node Group > Height Map Image set your Height map. It could be any B&W input. Image Texture, Texture Paint, Procedural, you name it.
Connect Bump_to_normal Node Group to Normal Map and then just to any Normal input you want.

Blend file:

Credits:

First of all this is not my work, it's from riceart41 on BlendSwap (download this file to make all of this to work). You can find more information on YouTube and on BlenderArtists.


Why can't I view all strips in Blender Sequence? I'm trying to edit a video in blender but it's a hassle if I am only able to see two layers of strips at a time. No matter if I zoom out or drag the editor bigger, I only can view two layers of strip. I know there has to be a way to view all layers at one (audio, transform, video, speed control, color strip) I know you can make a meta strip but not interested in that! Thank you


How to remove the edge of shadeless object? I am trying to somewhat paint my object to a pure color. However, there is always a contour around it like

On the top, there is mug that I changed to pure yellow. However, I can always see the black edge around it after rendering. Is there any way to remove it?

Appreciated!

I found the solution which is quite simple.

Basically, when I change the color in Diffuse, I input the RGB in the range of 0 to 1 instead of 0 to 255. I guess Blender has some algorithm to handle it, which I am not quite sure.


Fixing shadows in cycles without increasing subdivision I'm creating a dune model in blender with cycles and the shadows are kind of messed up. the model is only created from a subdivided plane and then using noise textures. it already has 1.7 million vertices so i don't want to increase the subdivision modifier any more. Do you have any ideas how to make the shadows "softer" without increasing subdivision?
Thanks in advance!

Using 2.90.1+ version of Blender, in Cycles rendering, you can change the shadow terminator offset:

This is per object, in the object property panel.
A link to the documentation.


Same animation to different objects Say I've got a dozen meshes and I want to animate some features that any mesh can have, regardless of their topology: render visibility, number of subsurface iterations, intensity of a displace modifier, Loc Rot and Scale, etc.

But I would like the same set of pre-determined effects, expressed in terms of keyframes (e.g. "enable visibility, then rotate Z by 30 degrees while increasing the decimate ratio"), to be applied to each object at a different (controlled) time.

Is this what the NLA editor is for? What would be a step-to-step way of doing this?

Once you have animated the first object, select the other objects, then the animated object so that it is the active object (highlighted a brighter orange). Then press ⎈ CtrlL and choose Animation Data, this will give each object the same action.

You could also select each object and set the action in the action editor.

In the NLA editor, click the double down arrows for each object to turn the action into an NLA strip for each object.

You can now select and move G each NLA strip so that each object is animated at a different time. You can also set the start and end frames in the properties region N.