Edges with no handles? I used the bezel tool and then some of the vertices were inside the model so I merged them so ones that were on the edge and it ended up creating some odd lines that aren't attached to any edge handles?

Those aren't precisely "edges." Think of a sheet of paper that only has four corners. If you put two opposite corners too closely to each other, you get a fold. That's basically what's happening here. Choose "Face Select Mode" and select one of those faces. You'll notice that the selection goes across that edge. That's because it's just a "fold" not really an edge.

Behind the scenes, the best-kept secret of CGI is that *everything * is triangles. You never actually have a quad, you just have two triangles that orient themselves differently, to accommodate a given scenario. And at render-time, everything gets triangulated, anyway.

If you can find the related vertices, you should be able to unfold that face into something that's a bit more reasonable. The other option is to select the two verts that are connected by that fold and press j. This will split the face and create a real edge, and that might help it make a bit more sense.


Problem in selecting edge loops pressing alt key and then clicking right mouse button keeping cursor on smaller face always select vertical group of faces and keeping cursor on larger faces always select circumferential group of faces. I want to select all smaller faces on circumference. please see images to understand problem. thank you

Your problem arises because the ratio of the faces you click in combination with the perspective makes you klick the lower or upper part of the smaller faces while klicking the left or rightmost parts of the bigger ones. Try clicking on the edge that leads to the next face in the direction you want your selection to go.


Why does the "Checker Texture" node produce flicker with "Texture Coordinates Object"? What you see is a simple plan with no double faces, checked and I'm sure.

This happens only when the mesh is at the local coordinate Z-0 height, if I move the mesh in edit mode, the flicker disappears

I'd just like to know if I'm wrong, or there is a problem.
This with the "Brick texture" node does not happen, for example.

I'm using Blender 2.83 but it seems that even with 2.82 the problem is the same

That's simply because your plane is between 2 checkers.
The checker texture is a 3D texture which alternates also in the Z axis. If you go in edit mode and move your plane up and down you will see that.
You can also rotate it to get different patterns.

In "Generated" coordinates your plane is in the vertical middle of a checker. That's why there's no artifact there.


Best way to bake rigid body physics? I would like to save the locations and rotations (in the blend files itself or anywhere else) of the rigid body simulation, because I don't want to wait every time over and over again for blender to calculate whenever I press ⎇ AltA. I know there are a few options:

Bake to keyframes (in 'rigid body tools' bar at the left toolbar in 3d view/panel)
Bake (in 'rigid body cache' section, 'scenes' tab in 'properties' panel)
Bake all dynamics (same panel as 'Bake')

Which one is recommended? And what is exactly the difference between 'Bake' and 'Bake all dynamics'? Thanks :)

Bake (in the rigid body cache panel).

Storing the locations to keyframes on every frame is very inefficient and will make the size of your .blend skyrocket. The cache system used when baking is designed for exactly this purpose, and so is naturally more efficient.

Bake all dynamics will bake all physics simulations in the scene. This is useful for taking interactions between simulations into account without having to manually bake all the simulations in the right order. If you only have one simulation, then it's the same as Bake.


Custom nodes on GPU? I want to create a custom perlin noise node (NOT a node group, an actual scripted one), and be able to run it on GPU. Is this possible? OSL does not seem to be 100% supported on GPU, so is it still possible?
The idea is essentially to create a node similar to the Noise Texture or Musgrave Texture. Could I do this without OSL, or somehow compile it so it is available on GPU? I think all the standard nodes are in OSL, so what makes them work on GPU?

As far as I am aware there is still no support for OSL on GPU - if you enable the Open Shader Language checkbox then you are limited to CPU.

Perhaps if you can describe what you want to achieve with your custom noise node then someone might be able to offer a suggestion that would not require OSL.


How do I Select Vertices in 2.8 Beta? I was using Blender 2.79 for a little bit before I downloaded the 2.8 beta. So I'm still a beginner. But I'm a little confused. For some reason, when I'm in edit mode, and in vertex mode, when I try and select a vertex or multiple vertices, it won't select. I don't have this problem with Edge or Face mode either.

It should be left click. But, on the splash screen (screen when you open 2.8 with the galaxy picture at the top) you can change it. Mine was in right click for some reason, but I switched it. Or, you could go to user preferences (hotkey: “ctrl + ,”).

Another solution is switching the tool. In the viewport, check if your tool is the ‘select’ tool. Then you can select.

Hope it helps.


Extra vertices created when extruding and scaling? I'm new to Blender and Stack.

I'm making a face in blender and following along with one of the many youtube tutorials. I'm finding that when I select a row vertices and extrude and scale them everything appears fine most of the time. However when I come back to some later that I want to modify it appears theres an extra vertices in the same place with brings in a new face when I move it using G.

Am I doing something fundamentally wrong? I thought that maybe I was selecting multiple vertices when extruding but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

I also wondered if that when I'm looking at the model from the side, I could be selecting extra vertices on the extrude. It just doesn't make sense because when I go into solid mode, everything looks perfect. Except when I move some.

I've included a video of whats happening here

Thanks

You have multiple vertices on the same position. Selecting and moving on of them, reveals the other.

Make sure you are in Wireframe View mode. Toggle with Z.
Select the vertices which overlap each other. This can be done by pressing B an dragging a box select over them or by toggling the select all A which will (de)select all.
Do the remove doubles operation. Open up the specials menu in edit mode W and choose remove doubles R. This operation merges overlaying vertices together.


Where does my Python output go when I start Blender with a script in Windows? I'm starting Blender 2.79 with a --python flag to run a python script.

On a Mac, print() statements show up in the terminal window as expected. On Windows, when executing the same command in git bash, print() statements appear until the main Blender window opens and then output stops.

Where does console output go says on Windows output should go to the "Console Window," but when I select this menu option, the main Blender window loses focus and nothing else happens. (If I start Blender normally the Console Window appears as expected.)

Things that didn't work for me:

Writing to the console: How can I display what happens in the system console inside blender's console?
Starting blender.exe with the -con flag

Things that kind of worked:

Overriding print() as in Blender script run print to console works but only after I quit Blender. -_-
The redirect_stdout trick from How to redirect output from 'bpy.ops.*'? prints output if I capture it with stdout.seek(0); print(stdout.read()), but only after I quit Blender. -_-
os.system('echo test') works, but if it's possible to get regular python print statements working I'd like to know how.

Git Bash is different from regular terminals, as it tries to bridge the gap in behaviour between UNIX terminals and Windows' console (cmd.exe). Run winpty ./blender.exe to get more immediate output of your print() commands.

Note, however, that winpty seems to mangle filenames, so you have to resort to absolute paths in Windows notation to prevent this.


Get Correct Texture from Object So the problem is that the sword has a texture that works for what I need in blender, but I can't find out how to get the texture.

All I have is a drawing of one side of the sword, but in blender it is applied to both sides. I need to convert how it is displayed in blender into a texture.

You need to bake the texture:

Create a second UV map without overlapping. Create new image texture (press New in the UV / Image Editor view) and add it to your material node setup. Connect the new UV map to this texture vector slot using the Input / UV Map node, or in older versions of blender the Input / Attribute node. Select the new texture, so it becomes the active texture. Now you can bake texture to the second map, and then save it from the UV / Image Editor view.


Is there anything like Meshmixer's “Attract Tool” in Blender? In Meshmixer there is a tool called "Attract" where you designate a target mesh and an object mesh. With that tool, the object gets attracted to the target. This is a way to snap one mesh (very irregular and deformed) to another irregular and deformed mesh. Is there anything like this in Blender?

I need to clarify this even further: suppose you have a real object with a hole and want to create a piece, using 3D printing, to fill the hole and fix the object. For example: a plastic bottle with a hole in the lateral surface. Then you scan it to get a mesh into an .stl file. The "hole" in the mesh can be very irregular and the border edges are rounded, so the mesh does not behave as fine as in the built in meshes of Blender. So, I think in designing a piece that have "more or less" the form and shape of the hole and try to accommodate (deform) it to the form and shape of the hole in order to fit "exactly". The problem is that here you work with a mesh comming from an .stl file and the object can be very iregular, so is its hole also. I believe that this can be done in Blender, but... how? How do you create a mesh that fits the missing piece?

Here's a video of the tool in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTBTMJvUxw

This looks like a combination of Vertex Weights and a Shrinkwrap modifier.

On the object to be deformed, in its Data tab, Vertex Groups panel,
create a vertex group .. call it something like 'Shrinkwrap'
Assign vertices to it. Vertices can have a weight between 0 and 1 in the group, or not belong to the group at all.
One approach would be to assign only the vertices you want to deform
to the group, with weight 0....
Assign a Shrinkwrap modifier to the object, targeted on the object you want to shrink to,and affecting only the Vertex Group you've created.
Now in Weight Paint mode, you can hit 'Restrict' in the Tool tab > Options panel to protect vertices outside the Vertex Group from being affected..
.. and paint weight into the group. As you paint, the vertices will be drawn to the target.

There are numerous options .. in the modifier, and in the way you paint or assign weights to the vertices, (for instance, you can forget painting, and assign weights in Edit Mode) so really, it would be good to have a mooch in the docs and play with them, and if you get stuck and there's a particular way you'd like the tool-combination to behave, come back with a comment, and we can be more specific.


Why Faces eat each other? When I zoom out they look like faces eat each other. (also when rendering)

But when I zoom in they are normal... I don't know why?

This is caused by how object is calculated in z-buffer. People call them Z-fighting. I won't go too deep for it.

Imagine that there is a painter going to oil paint your scene. We Know that oil paint can stack on it to cover the color behind it, right? So we can draw the farthest thing first and cover it with the closer object. That is basically how your view-port been rendered.

And for some math reason, the calculating for the near and far value - z-buffer, will become inaccurate in certain distances (depend on which algorithm). In Blender, the far distances.

Then, the inaccurate result from two object will some time become overlap with same value. Causing the painter confused on what should he paint first. And that is what you see in your view port.

See this post as well: Cause of black artifacts in render?

And this one(point out by batFINGER): Faces become distorted, strange and look glitchy when looking through camera view


Parenting to an array end cap I have an array with two different objects as the StartCap and EndCap. So far everything works fine.

Now, I want another object (let us call it ObjRight) to be offsetted from the EndCap object, so when I increase the Array Count, ObjRight will follow the EndCap as the array increase/decrease.

The easiest thing would be to just join the ObjRight with the EndCap but I need them to be separate objects where EndCap is ObjRight's parent.

Solution without drivers:
What about using a curve to define the length of your array ? You could then hook the last control point of your curve to your ObjRight. The solution isn't perfect as you would have a space between the OjRight and the Endcap but with a proper set up you could mask the problem (moving the ObjRight with fix increments snap to the grid for example).

Solution with drivers:
This solution (probably the best) would be to drive the ObjRight location (or an empty that you can use as a parent for ObjRight) by the array count.

Hope it makes sens. Let me know if you need clarification.


How to properly sharpen concave angle without affecting topology? Here I have this shape with 2 concave angles and I want to sharpen them without affecting the surrounding loops.
I dont want to use crease or edge split because it create a 100% sharp edge which I dont want.

It seems you are using modifiers: Solidify and Subsurf.

The problem here, is that you don't have any real edge to apply crease.

First you should apply the Solidify Modifier, then you could get the edge in the red circle you drawn.

The crease amount will influence the shape, from completly smooth to completly sharp.

Alternatively, you could select the edge and apply a Bevel.

Select the edge, W, Bevel

Set the amount and the other properties in the panel (T)


Can I "impress" one object's shape upon another object? I have a landscape, but it turns out it is rotated by approximately 15°. Yet, I like the shape of it.

I would very much like to transfer the shape (the height of the various points on this plane) onto another plane, that has its grid aligned with the world grid:

So, my question is
Is there a method to do this? If so, how?

Note:
Yes, I'm aware that some information would be lost, both on the non-overlapping edges and because the two grids don't exactly match up. Both this loss of information would still be much better than trying to recreate the height information by hand.

Note 2:
I have a feeling this should be possible with scripting, and I would be willing to try and program one, but for now, I would prefer some non-custom script solution :-)

Create your final grid mesh and place it above the original one. Add a ShrinkWrap modifier to added plane, pick the original mesh as target. Set the  Mode to Project and Direction to both negative and positive.
Make sure to add enough subdivisions for newly created plane to make it catch as many details  from the original one as possible.


Modelling technique, how is this workbench created In this demo file from the test files from blender.org,(direct download here) There's a classroom benchmark, If I try to select a desk, automatically the plane gets selected, the desks are not being emmitted as particles, because the modifier stack is empty. The stuff is not parented as I can't select the desk at all. It's not something made selectable because, there no such indication in the outliner. So, I'm confused what is this technique and I'd like to learn about it.

Please spare some moment to download this small file and help me know what is this and how and why is this done?

It's a linked dupligroup.

Dupligroup

A Dupligroup means that the plane (it could as well be an Empty) generate a group instance at his position. You can verify that in Object/Duplication. It allows to manipulate easily the whole desk, despite it is composed of several different objects ; and it's memory efficient (in Blender's mind, there is only ONE desk).

Link (linked library)

In the outliner, you can see the list of the different groups available, by selecting "Groups" instead of "All Scenes". As you may notice, the "file with an arrow" next to the name of the group indicate it is a Link : it refers to a group that is in another file (in assets/desks.blend).

You can open desks.blend, and try modifiy something on the desk (ie, change one of the materials). Save desks.blend, then open (or re-open) classroom.blend : all the desks have been modified.

Why?

There is many advantages in this workflow. It allow easy reuse of assets, it's flexible, it allow one artist to work on the assets and an other on the scene...

It's also efficient because the group is loaded in memory only one time. And the size of each blend file is kept small, this is easier to work with many small files than with a big one.

How?

In myAsset.blend, create your asset as you would usually, with different objects, modifiers, etc. Once finished, select all your objects and press Crtl+G to add them to a new group. Give the group a meaningful name (in the outliner, or in Object/Group). Put your asset at the center of the scene (0,0,0) because that will be his Origin.

In myScene.blend, click File/Link, navigate to myAsset.blend/Groups/myGroup. Now you have an instance of the group in your scene, you can manipulate it like any object. To add another instance, just press Shift+A /Group Instance/myGroup.


How to reset the center of rotation of the 3d view when it is not the center of the view Sometimes the 3d view rotation using the 3rd mouse button starts to rotate around an unusual point that is not very convenient.  I don't know why it starts doing this, but it usually starts when I'm zoomed in on a detailed part of a model and persists even after I zoomed out.

I've tried changing the rotation style back and forth from trackball and turntable.  I've tried restarting Blender, but that doesn't really help.  My main solution to this problem has been to abandon working on the projects that this happens too, which only works because I've been lucky enough to have this happen only on projects that can be abandoned.

Is this changing of the view rotation a common occurence?  Is there a way to reset the center of rotation for the 3d view?

To re-center the 3D view pivot to a more convenient point, select a vertex (or series of vertices) near the area you're working on and, in Edit Mode, hit Numpad . (the period key on the number pad). The view will now rotate around said element, avoiding those situations where it's nearly impossible to work on an area because you can't get a good look at it (when it rotates too far for you to focus on that area easily). You can also use this shortcut (called "View Selected" in the keymap) in Object Mode to fit the active object in the view and pivot around it.

You'll have to do this every so often as the geometry of your object changes (or the view behavior otherwise gets weird). I recommend using "Rotate Around Selection" under View Manipulation in File > User Preferences > Interface because it makes rotation behavior more predictable.

This shortcut is also helpful when dealing with this problem:Ctrl + Shift + MMB  (Dolly View) changes the view center (which the API calls the "Location" component of the 3D view), which is the source of the problem.

Also read this, it explains how the 3D view works and why your problem occurs (Credit to iKlsR for the link):
Why does the zoom sometimes stop at a point?


How can I project an object to a sphere My problem is, I don't know how to do a projection of an object to a sphere,
without making particle system.

If you don't understand my question, this is what I would like to do:

Project this landscape into the interior of the sphere.

It's like in the intro of Game of Thrones, there is an interior sphere with the map in 3d.

Edit: This is how it should look like:

But the method I used to do that is... a cloth simulation, this is not the best method, since it destroys all.

You can do this with a lattice and shrinkwrap modifiers.

Starting with a scene like this:

A landscape and a hemisphere

Add a lattice object, make it so it has only 1 subdivison on the W axis.
In edit mode make resize the lattice it so that it is slightly larger than the landscape.

Place the lattice so that it lays under your landscape, not touching but the very bottom vertices of the object.

Then select the landscape, add a lattice modifier and select the lattice as deforming object.

Select the lattice object and add a shrinkwrap modifier to it. Set the hemisphere as Target. Change the Mode to Project, Direction to negative on the Z axis.


How can I customize normal in this way? I want to have my beveled object to have fake-rounded edges:

The vertex normals should be vertical with the main surfaces, so that the original surfaces are rendered plain, and the beveled edge is rendered fine round.

However, if set to smooth, the auto-generated normals are like this:

The original large surface become not plain.

In addition, auto smooth option also won't give me the expected result. I also tried Normal Edit modifier, but seems it don't allow manual control on each individual vertices. So how can I get the effect I want?

Edinting normals will be implemented in the future, according to Blender Wiki.

You can try to use the split normals modifier on this way:

1) Create Empty Objects in the direction of your vertex normals.

2) Create a Group Vertex for those vertices which you want to have a perpendicular normal in the same face. For a cube you should create six groups, one per each main square face.

3) Create a Split Normals Modifier per each Group Vertex. Set mode to Directional , check Parallel Normals and select appropiate empty object for target and group vertex.

You will get an effect similar to rounded edges:

Finally you can apply all modifiers and your object will keep these normals.


Resolution Settings when Rendering Animation I finally found where the format menu is (yay) but when I rendered the animation it came out 360x240 size. It's going to be in a video displayed on large TV screen so that's not going to work. So now where do I adjust settings so it's 1280x720 when animation is rendered? I'm so so close and getting excited that I may end up being able to this for intro on my project. (Using the 20th Century Fox logo animation)

In the render panel go to Dimensions. There is a dropdown menu with some preset dimensions to choose from. In your case HDTV 720p. You can also manually set your X & Y dimensions in the resolution boxes. As cegaton mentioned make sure the resolution is also set to 100%.


Positioning objects around a sphere I'm working on a spaceship. its basic form is a Sphere, with an additional torus around it´s middle. The ship has 48 engine nozzles (is that the correct english term?) around the torus. (Using the mirror modifier I still have to work on 24 of them.) Is there a way to position objects- like the engine nozzles) with equal distance around the Sphere? They should all have a 15 degree "distance" along the same (z) axis, but so far i didn't find a simple way to do this. and with movements around the 3 axis its trial and - mostly error - and takes forever. I hope the description of my problem is more or less helpful. I'm no nativ speaker so that makes it a bit harder to find what I'm looking for.

Instead of working under a Mirror modifier, on 24 nozzles, you could be working under an Array modifier, on 1.

Cut out 1/48 of your spaceship. (If necessary, P temporarily split off the part of your spaceship you don't want to be duplicated in rotation)
Set up a rotational array: Object offset only, targeted on an empty at the spaceship origin, rotated through 360/48 degrees, 'Merge' and 'First and Last' checked
Get to work on the nozzle(s)

It can help to keep a copy of the torus before cutting the piece out, to Shrinkwrap to. In the cut-out section, create a Vertex Group of the vertices you want to remain on the surface of the original torus. Assign a Shrinkwrap modifier to the section, target the intact torus,affecting only that Vertex Group.


Why does my Properties panel cover my whole active 3D Viewport when I press P? Why does my Properties panel cover my whole active 3D Viewport when I press P? It never used to do this, it always toggled my Properties panel open and closed, as it should. But just starting today, when I press P, it covers my whole active viewport, but it doesn't even show any of the properties on the panel. Also interesting is that once the panel has covered the viewport, pressing P again will not close it again -- the only way to get it to close is press ESC, and then the panel just goes back to being open normally, not fully closed:

By the way, I'm using 2.70, and this problem continues even if I quit & restart Blender, and also if I reboot my computer.

Also interesting is the fact that if the Tools panel is open when I press P, the Properties panel will cover even it:

What you are seeing is not the properties panel. The keyboard shortcut P start the blender game engine, "P" for play. If you were to add in some object and hit P this would be very apparent that it is not the properties panel.

Pressing P at the default scene.


Material skews and stretches when placed on a new object I created a galvanized texture. Worked great on one object. The next object I applied it to it stretched for some reason. I tried Cntrl A / Scale thinking that might reset the stretch but it did nothing. So here I am. I'm thinking a coordinates node or something?

Object Texture Coordinates with uniform scale

If a procedural texture has no input, by default it is mapped with Generated Texture Coordinates type which basically have a Z coordinate value of zero at the bottom face and 1 at the top faces.

As your object is tall, between the two faces there is a lot of space to be filled compared with the other object where the texture looks un-stretched.

To get rid of the dipandency from the geometry size I would suggest to use Object Texture Coordinates, which is based on the Origin location and Scale. Using a uniform scale for the object (e.g. 1,1,1, 0.2,0.2,0.2...or applying the scale with Crlt+A) will result in a isotropic texture mapping too.


How to prevent my operators changes to a scene from being saved to file My export operator modifies part of the scene before exporting, e. g. apply modifiers, fill holes in meshes. I have to be very careful to only save the scene before exporting. I'd like to prevent myself from accidencally saving the scene after the export.
Is there a way to undo everything the operator did?
Or another way, e. g. rename the scene? Mark it as un-saveable?

I ended up duplicating the meshes with bpy.ops.object.duplicate(). Requires the mesh to be selected and visible, for some reason, so I unhide it with o.hide_set(False).
I didn't delete the duplicates for testing, which resulted in an infinite loop when iterating over for o in context.scene.objects. So I collected all meshes first in a list, then iterated over that list.


Subdivision modification issue Sorry am asking away from home, so no pictures. But here's the deal.After using subdivision surface modifier, I can't sculpt the object when I switch back to edit mode, you'd still see the mesh covering the subdivided object. What do I do? Cause it seems that the subdivision doesn't actually help or work if I can't sculpt after that

It sounds to me like you're using the modifier but not applying it. If you click "Apply" on the subdivision surface modifier, it'll apply the modifier to the mesh and you should be able to see the difference in edit mode; after


How To Make A Stiped-Grate Material So I'm currently making a First Order TIE Fighter and I need help making the TIE's texture on its wings. Specifically this texture...

I'm not sure if I should somehow recreate the geometry of a grated-lines look, or use nodes to make simple bump texture. Can anyone give me a hand with some ideas?

I would do some manual loop cuts with Ctrl+R and then follow the instructions I wrote in this answer here


How to interpolate vertex colors in a cube? I have this model made out of cubes:

And I want to set the white cube some vertex colors, which correspond to the vertex's surrounding cube/cubes and interpolate between them. Note that this cube must be geometrically perfect, thus I don't want to be using any brushes or tools where I must draw freehand.
Is there any simple way of doing something like this?

In general - each vertex is usually used to store only one color. In your example one vertex consists from three colors. So the only one way to interpolate is to set average color.


Convert Object texture coords to Polar I am building a procedural eye texture setup based around Object coordinates. As part of the project, I am trying to re-create a setup that is normally used for UV textures.

This tutorial shows how to re-map Rectangular coords to Polar in order to have a procedural texture radiate out from the center of the eye: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Advanced_Tutorials/Procedural_Eyeball_in_Cycles

I am trying to re-create the same effect, but using Object Coords instead of UV. Is this possible?

You can convert Object coordinates into Polar coordinates using the 'arctangent' trigonometric function by using :

arctangent(y/x)

This will produce a result in Radians (where there are pi radians in 360 degrees) although without additional nodes it will only produce results for half the rotation (and will produce negative values).

The following nodes should produce a result that varies from 0.0 to 1.0 :

To explain this a bit, the Object coordinates are split into the separate X, Y, Z components and the Divide node used to generate Y / X. This is passed to the Arctangent node which produces the angle (in radians) between -pi/2 and pi/2 for half a rotation (for the second half it repeats -pi/2 to pi/2). This is divided by 2*pi to convert it to the range -0.25 to 0.25 and 0.25 added to shift the range to 0.0 to 0.5. The Less Than node is then used to detect the second half of the rotation and add 0.5, resulting in the full rotation mapping from 0.0 to 1.0 producing the result shown in the image above.

Blend file included

The other half of the polar coordinates is the distance from the origin. This is simple to achieve as sqrt(x^2 + y^2) as follows :

Combining these into a nodegroup to allow it to be easily reused results in the following :

Using the nodegroup to build a procedural eye texture can produce the following :

Blend file included


Why is the same texture rendering on all objects? Its a very simple scene that I'm trying to render, the first one I've got this far with at least.  There is a spinning globe in the center with 2 images imported as planes.  In the object view window everything looks fine when I play the animation but when I render the plane images take on the texture of the globe.  I'm not sure how to get the planes to display the right texture in the render. Thanks for any help!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dy0aia237rp9fz6/globe%20logo.blend?dl=0

Maybe in the Properties panel > Render Layers > Layer > Material, click on X to close the selected material


how to use a driver to drive object on object's local axis I have a rig with face keys.  i have a separate animation and i would like to use the animated data to drive the face keys.  problem is when my object rig turns the axis changes relative to world axis.  there is an option to use world axis or local axis but the local axis refers to the subject's local axis right?

question:  how do i use a driver to drive an object's data on the OBJECT's local axis?

AFAIK, you have two options:

Assign a Transform constraint to the object. This allows you to map a transform range of the source object to a transform range of the target object, in either their World or Local spaces.
More conventionally, parent the driven object to another one (often an Empty). Then the driven object's transform will be evaluated in its parent's space, in a driver expression. If the parent is aligned to the child when the relation is formed, that will be equivalent to the child's Local Space


How to animate a bone from it's current position - no matter which one - to a specific one? I want to make an animation where a bone rotates from any position to a specific position.

I've already made set of animations and each one starts form the idle position,
but I want to make the current animation start from the end of previous one. How can I do this?

If you want to have a better control over the animation you should use a Dope Sheet Editor.
In example below I rotate the arm bone and hand bone. The motion starts from 'idle' position and ends in 'bent' position. The yelow dots in Dope Sheet Editor window represent the keyframes.

If you want for example to reverse this motion you go to the last keyframe, hover the cursor over the Dope Sheet Editor window, press S and input the value -1. Now the motion starts from 'bent' pose.

The last thing you may do is to place the animation at the begining of the timeline. You can make it by pressing G button, while hovering the cursor over the Dope Sheet Editor window.


Adding segment to Bezier curve When I attempt to add a second segment to a Bezier curve, it creates it very small and folded back on itself, almost like a circle. I create it by selecting the end point of the first curve and then Ctrl + LMB. I've tried this is 2.77 and 2.78c and get the same results so it's obviously something I'm doing wrong. Trying to find the new end point is difficult and when I do hit on it and drag it away, it generally wanders off the flat plane. Thanks.

Maybe you want to use the Extrude operation.  Select the last control point on the curve and hit e.  You can then move your mouse around to choose where the new control point will go.


How to set Node's group color via Python? Could you tell me how to Node's group color via Python?
Something like this:

class AddButton(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "add.button"
bl_label = "Add PBR Group"

def execute(self, context):
    mat = bpy.data.materials.new('zheight')
    mat.use_nodes = True
    nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
   # print("execute")
   # print(self.filepath) # /home/addajr/Grafika/3D/textury/metal.jpg
    obj = bpy.context.object
    # change on cycles
    bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
    #Add a material slot
    bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()
    #Assign a material to the last slot
    obj.material_slots[obj.material_slots.__len__() - 1].material = MakeMaterial_1()

    ############ color ############
    C = bpy.context
    D = bpy.data

    compTree = C.scene.node_tree                   # Compositing node tree
    matTree  = D.materials[ mat.name ].node_tree # 'MyMaterial' material node tree

    t = matTree # For this example we'll use the compositing node tree

    ##########   add custom nodes ########
    nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
    group = bpy.data.node_groups.new(type="ShaderNodeTree", name="PBR")
    print( group.name )

    .
    .
    .
    .
    tree = bpy.context.object.active_material.node_tree
    group_node = tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeGroup")
    group_node.node_tree = group

    # Turn on custom color
    t.nodes[ group.name ].use_custom_color = True
    t.nodes[ group.name ].color = ( 1, 0.711485, 0.137081 )

    glossinessFactorInput = bpy.data.node_groups[ group.name ].inputs['Glossiness Factor']

    glossinessFactorInput.min_value     = -5.0
    glossinessFactorInput.max_value     = 5.0
    glossinessFactorInput.default_value = 1.5
    return {"FINISHED"}

A node group is also a node, so you set the node group's color the same way you do any other node:

import bpy
C = bpy.context
D = bpy.data

compTree = C.scene.node_tree                   # Compositing node tree
matTree  = D.materials['MyMaterial'].node_tree # 'MyMaterial' material node tree

t = compTree # For this example we'll use the compositing node tree

groupName = 'Group'

# Turn on custom color
t.nodes[ groupName ].use_custom_color = True

# Set group's color to pink
t.nodes[ groupName ].color = ( 0.5, 0.2, 0.75 )


Property Search Eye dropper I am able to create a prop_search in my panel, but I'm unable to add the eye-dropper the select my object in the scene directly.

layout.prop_search(self, "source", context.scene, "objects", text="")

There is currently no native way to do it. prop_search is a generally bad idea for linking objects since it stores only the name of the object, once you change it in the outliner the reference will get lost. I am using a custom made property for that purpose which stores a pointer to the object and it has a custom made eye dropper as well. https://github.com/WowDevTools/Blender-WMO-import-export-scripts
You can find it in this addon in idproperty folder. Let me know if you have any questions on how to use it. Besides, I heard they are adding proper object pointers into 2.79, so once it is out, you may consider replacing those custom properties with the official ones.


Blender 2.79: How do I save multiple animations? I'm working on a game for the Unity engine, and I've modeled and rigged the player character. He transforms in between two forms in gameplay, as seen below.

However, I have questions on how to save multiple animations, how to copy keyframes, if possible, and how to make different animation on different bones play at the same time. Does anybody know the answers to my questions?

You need to follow some tutorials about the Dope Sheet and the NLA windows.
The Dope Sheet window (in Action Editor mode) allows you to save, duplicate and create new actions: Click on the X button to close the action (it will still be selectable in the dropdown menu), once closed you'll have a New button to create new action, click on the sheet button to duplicate, click on the shield button to make sure that the action won't be removed even if it has no user.

The NLA window allows you to manage the different actions you've created in the Dope Sheet, just click on the Dope Sheet Push Down button and the action will appear in the NLA in the form of a strip, then you can move the strips wherever you want, the top strip being the one that will play prioritary by default. Click on the blue arrow button if you want to only show the strips of the selected object. You can access to all the strip options in the right panel (click N to display).


How to register a single property (not a property group) in blender 2.8? (Python API) How to register a single property (not a property group) in blender 2.8?

My attempt

This is what I am doing at the moment inside my addon __init__.py:

# ...
bpy.types.Material.myprop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MyProp)
# ...

with MyProp class:

class MyProp(bpy.types.Property):
    name: "Some name"
    description: "Some description"

The idea is so I can see access this property through:

bpy.data.materials['Material'].myprop

Here's the error I am getting when loading the add-on:

bpy.types.Material.myprop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=Myprop)
ValueError: bpy_struct "Material" registration error: myprop could not register

Silly me... This is what I was looking for:

bpy.types.Material.myprop = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="myprop")

Reference:

Assigning property to existing class


Curves and Booleans Woes The Story
I am attempting to make a 3d representation of the following SUPER complicated model in a 3d-printer(.stl) friendly way. (I know it's not great quality, but it's literally the best reference image I could find!)

I've been busting my ass and learning a lot through trial and error, but here's what I have so far.

As you can see, it's curvy as heck and has lots of intersecting/overlapping geometry. I think it actually looks pretty good on screen, but unfortunately it doesn't transfer well to .stl at all.
The Problem
With a shape this complicated, I knew there was no way I could shape the curves by hand. I found some tutorials on using array and curve modifiers and I really just jump in and messed up a lot before I finally figured out how to make it at least look presentable. But now I've run into a whole new problem.
My "clever" approach was to do the whole thing with just a couple winding curves and the mirror modifier then hopefully purge all the intersecting geometry with Boolean Difference modifiers.
The issue I'm having is Boolean difference is giving me frustratingly inconsistent results. I don't know how to troubleshoot it, and I don't know of any other approach to salvage this model I've already sunk several hours of time into.
For some parts of the model, it works great, Especially ones with the curves and the spheres. In other places, specifically that big center cylinder and the curves with each other, the boolean modifier generates extra surfaces and deletes others.
Everything I'm reading now says boolean modifiers only work well with consistent, basic shapes. But how can I do what I'm trying to do without them?
Thank you so much in advance! It's my first post here, but it won't be my last!
(edited to add the .blend file)

I have a method that may help you in this case.

This method works best if you don't have truly vertical surfaces, but there are workarounds to this if you are willing to adopt it in your meshes.

The first recommended step is to take the bottom most surfaces and scale them outward, so that you have a slight slope to your vertical walls.

The next step should solve the rest for you:
This is a fairly long step-by-step, so I chose to link to it from another post here, if this is a problem at all from the moderators, I would be glad to duplicate it here - just let me know.

After you recreate your mesh using the Z-Pass method, you should be able to easily re-scale your bottom most parts of the mesh to get it looking like you intended, if you so choose by applying the displacement modifier, and manipulating the bottom faces to be what you desire.


Blender Texture Paint a Voxel Model - 64px x 64px texture - Need Pencil/Voxel Brush I am trying to texture paint my voxel model (9k triangles). I managed to unwrap it and to create the texture.

The thing is I need solid colors and I need a voxel/pixel brush, also if I paint over a color the color becomes brighter which is weird. It has to overwrite the color.

Is there somewhere such an option for my needs?
- pencil
- Overwrite colors

I really struggle right now. Probably there is even a better workflow.

Below your color picker there is a Box named Blend and its set to add which is exactly what you said: It will make your color brighter every time. Set it to Normal or Mix (Im not home right now so I can't lookup)


what do i do about this? everything shows up in render mode but otherwise, this is all I see.

Looks like you set a Clipping Region by mistake. Hit Alt+B to cancel it.


Why does the UV/Image Editor remain empty after UV unwrapping? I have modeled a 430-face six-panel door in Blender. I now want to UV map it. I followed all of the steps in Neil Hirsig's videos on UV mapping: (1) drag-open a second window; (2) set it to UV/Image Editor mode; (3) go to my main window and select the door object; (4) Tab into Edit mode; (5) choose Face selection; (6) box-select all faces; (7) U-key and Unwrap>Cubic Projection ...

... and ...

... my UV map window remains empty. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

If I follow exactly the same steps with a plain cube, I get a UV map for the cube. Does Blender's UV mapping only work for simple objects?

I found my problem in an answer to this question. I had to click the X beside the Render Result, so it would display my UV Map.

Thank you all for your help! :-)


Camera Tracking - How to Reconstruct LocRotScale Marker To Empty? I tracked a bit of video footage with a LocRotScale marker and tried to Reconstruct it as an empty but the empty doesn't have the rotating and scaling data.
Now my Question:
Is it possible (and when yes how) to export a LocRotScale marker to an empty with rotation and scale?

Select your empty. Press F3 or spacebar for "SEARCH", type: "bake animation". Select Rotation, Scaling, etc.. Leave everything at default. Press OK.
In a new workspace window, switch to GRAPH EDITOR (shift F6). Select in your outliner the recently baked empty (if it's not already selected), you should open the eye icion in the graph editor, and find the channels you're interested in (rotationXYZ, and ScaleXYZ) now they should contain baked data.

From your question is not cleared if you did the tracking using blender tools of if you're importing it from another software. But at leas if you're inside blender, the previous described procedure should get data into your empty to track or follow.


Change Image sequence frame only every nth scene frame? Is it possible to only change the frame on a image sequence on every nth scene frame?

For example, if I have a 6 frame image sequence, and I want it to last 30 frames, It should only change to the next image every 5 scene frames.

Is this possible?

This is a image texture in cycles.

Another Way:

Add Image Texture Node with Image Sequence enabled.
Animate the Offset Parameter for animation.


Are there disadvantages to using a mesh deform modifier? I'm about to make an animated short using Blender for the first time and I'm contemplating if I should rig all my characters using a mesh deform modifier instead of the traditional direct bone rigging.

For the advantages I read about how you can have one character have many wardrobe changes or have many parts and you can make toony distortions.

Is there any disadvantages to using this system?
Is there something that I should be concerned about?
Does it slow down rendering in cycles?
Does it limit bend accuracy like the precise fold of the forearm?
Will the cage prevent a character's arm to press against their torso?
Or something else?

I don't think you can export it to other Software
It will take a little longer to calculate the mesh's deform so it might slow down the render a little but not more than some milliseconds
I do even think you can make better bends with that technique, at least that's in my experience
also if the cage starts intersecting when it's deformed it will still work


Random color in materials to not change when I copy the objects I have 100 balls with random colors. The nodes looks like this

When I copy these 100 balls (no matter if I use Shift + D or Ctrl + C) the color on the new 100 balls is different (that's what you should expect since the material has that randomizer in nodes).

But I need the color to be the same as it is on the original 100 balls.
How can I achieve that?

Maybe I can fixate the material somehow?

As Carlo's comment suggested, you could bake the color onto a texture.

Activate the Texture Atlas Addon.
Add an empty image texture.
Select all objects and unwrap them using the texture atlas addon.See the texture atlas documentation for more instructions on this addons usage.
Bake the Diffuse Color only using very few render samples!
Replace the Object Info random output with the image textures output.


Bezier-Spline with Python adds unwanted point I have a list of points, and want to add a Bezier-spline using these points.

Following is my code:

import bpy

name = "MyCurve"
numPoints = 4
points = [ [1,1,1], [-1,1,1], [-1,-1,1], [1,-1,-1] ]

curvedata = bpy.data.curves.new(name=name,type='CURVE')
curvedata.dimensions = '3D'
curvedata.fill_mode = 'FULL'
curvedata.bevel_depth = 0.045

ob = bpy.data.objects.new(name+"Obj", curvedata)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(ob)

polyline = curvedata.splines.new('BEZIER')
polyline.bezier_points.add(numPoints)
for num in range(numPoints):
    polyline.bezier_points[num].co = points[num]
polyline.resolution_u = 1

print( len(polyline.bezier_points))

Now my problem is, that this code adds another point. The printed value will be 5 not as I expected 4. The added point is after the other points and is the point (0, 0, 0). This is unwanted behavior.

What is wrong with my code?

My Blender version is 2.70 built 2014-03-19.

A new splines starts with a single point, it is not empty:

import bpy

curvedata = bpy.data.curves.new(name="Curve", type='CURVE')
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("CurveObj", curvedata)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(ob)

spline = curvedata.splines.new('BEZIER')
print(len(spline.bezier_points))
# Output: 1

The bezier spline has already a point, so you need to
.add() number of points you want to add minus 1.

polyline.bezier_points.add(len(points)-1)

By the way - you can assign the coordinates more efficiently like this:

from bpy_extras.io_utils import unpack_list
# ...
polyline.bezier_points.foreach_set("co", unpack_list(points))


I can't access the bones I'm want to animate this, but I can't access the bones, already turned on the "X-Ray"

This came from this site. In the description says it was rigged.

If you want to download the file. (You have to create an account to the site in order to download it, so I upload it on Google Drive if you want to download it. The size is 2 MB.)

The rig is on a layer you have hidden.  Layer nine. Right now you have X-ray on for the model; you may need to turn X-ray off of it before you will see the rig.

You need to have all layers you want to see visible. If you hold shift while selecting, you will be able to make multiple layers visible.


How to control the flow direction and fluid level? As you can see here, I intend to make a waterfall which is more or less has been successful. However, Once i start playing  the animation the water keeps filling up till the bounds of the domain.

I want it to fill only till this level, shown below, even if the waterfall(s) continues to flow.

In addition I want the water to follow this path/direction shown below.

I want this to look as realistic as possible, so how do I generate the water's froth?

This is my setup file:

Try creating a box as an outflow object, it will drain the exceeding liquid. After that adjust the inlfow rate to keep the level you need steady.


Export object to a 3ds file error I want to export the height-map to a .3ds file. I've tried doing this with export function and get the error

  blender object r cannot be written into a 3ds file.

I have read that this can be caused by having too many vertices (65536) and after much decimating I am now bellow this but I'm still getting the error. Is there any other cause for this error?

Screen shot of height-map:

Link for download of .blend file (http://1drv.ms/1R7sQLq)

The solution ...

I found out that your model have a total of 112,330 triangles.
and on the wiki it states that 3ds have these shortcomings:

All meshes must be made of triangles.
All texture filenames are limited to the 8.3 DOS format.
The number of vertices and polygons per mesh is limited to 65536.
Accurate vertex normals cannot be stored in the .3ds file. Instead "smoothing groups" are used so that the receiving program can recreate a  representation of the vertex normals.
Object, light and camera names are limited to 10 characters. Material names are limited to 16 characters.
Directional light sources are not supported.

WHY?
So why was it having problem exporting even though you have the faces count
at 24,000 and vertices at 56,000 range? Both numbers comply with the 3ds format's limitation. The problem is that all the faces needs to be triangles
, the export operation convert all non triangle surface to triangles before saving. Moreover, you can test this. If you do CTRL + T and triangulate your mesh in edit mode you will realise that your mesh exceed that limitation.

After triangulation it sits at 112,330 faces! Which is equal to the number of triangles. In the case of 3ds format, the triangles count is the number we want to keep an eye on.

HOW?
Notice the word per mesh ... that is our key to exporting high poly mesh.
What I did was break up your mesh into 3 portion and then export them in
one single 3ds file.

DOWNLOAD THE BLEND FILE HERE

Try exporting the file and reimporting into blender should give no more problems
now.

A Little History of Polygon
A long time ago in the early days of CGI, polygon refers to triangles.
It's not until much later, more artist prefers to work with 4 sided polygons
then 3 sided ones. (Less clutter on screen, better work flow!) Sometimes when we read about some legacy format that were created in the 1980s, polygon may very well meant triangles!


Color loss with Transparent Background I have transparent objects, with colors, like seen here:

If I switch on Render Settings -> Film -> Transparent Background, I loose all colors of my transparent objects:

I've already tried to get it with compositing running, but I dont get a renderpass with the color on it.
Someone have an idea why, and how to solve this?

As it's been said, your setup lacks a source of white light.

You can add such a source with a trick: an emissive and shadeless plane that is only visible through transparent objects, and completely transparent otherwise.

Add a plane big enough to fill your Camera view, place it in the background and parent it to the camera

Give it a material like the one in the figure below. The value in the Mix Shader to the left determines the maximum transparency that your objects will have in the rendered png (since this is a residual opacity of the plane itself).

The only rays we are interested in are the ones pointed towards the camera, so uncheck all the other rays from the Object > Cycles settings panel

The result

You can unveil the plane's trick by looking at its boundaries


How do I use polygons as hair in blender I am trying to make a Vocaloid in blender 2.74 and want to know if anyone could tell me how to make the hair particle system in to a object hair while being able to get a realistic and smooth motion when the hair moves. Like the one in the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FknMQ0mXECE I think they have used a different program. I want to use blender to make this as I would also like to learn how to rig the body better.

I am not much into animation, but by the look of it in the linked video I would say it has more in common with the behavior of fabric than with hair.

You could probably achieve that with a cloth simulation instead of a hair particle system, that way you can model your hair mesh the way you want and have it behave physically as if it were soft.


Trying to understand coordinate spaces in python In a sense I have "solved" my original problem but I don't understand why/how its solved.
I have a script that generates a number of objects and then attempts to create straight lines via a Nurbs path, adapted from the question/answer here.  Using Hooks is important because I want the 'lines' between objects to persist in relative terms to their parents.
The solution I've found is that if I create an otherwise unused empty object with defined coordinates (uncomment out line 52 bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=list(objA.location),)) everything works as expected.  If I remove this hack-ish work around though, the coordinates for the ends of the nurbs paths are all translated/scaled which is not the desired behavior.
I thought the "answer" might be related to object vs world space (and maybe it still is?) or maybe a misunderstanding of context, but this hail-Mary work around of mine worked so thought I'd quit while I was ahead/ask a more specific question: "why does this 'hack' work?" and perhaps "is there a better way?"
Code example showing the undesirable behavior (uncomment out line 52 to see correct behavior)
#names and locations used to drive example
pointDict ={'obj_0': (3.453742273151139, 0.5159551844564874,0.0),
            'obj_1': (12.792816730076403, -16.205364756872424,0.0),
            'obj_2': (14.709455272016719, -11.60690199900985,0.0),
            'obj_3': (8.69197652556564, -13.612261105632582,0.0),
            'obj_4': (9.52728618428947, 2.4890328748868917,0.0)}

import bpy
C = bpy.context
from itertools import combinations

#template cube to clone, used for minimum viable example
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=0.5, align='WORLD', location=(10.0,10.0,0.0), scale=(1, 1, 1))

baseCube = bpy.data.objects['Cube'] #known/assumed name

#clone base object with predetermined coordiantes
for keyName in pointDict:
    xVar, yVar, zVar = pointDict[keyName]
    objClone = baseCube.copy()
    objClone.name = keyName
    objClone.location.x = xVar
    objClone.location.y = yVar
    objClone.location.z = zVar
    C.collection.objects.link(objClone)

#create pair-wise line combinations between cubes
#and hook to cubes to maintain position/connections when moved at later point
# moddified from https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/194400/adding-a-hook-to-a-nurbs-path-with-python
pCounter = 0
for pair in combinations(list(pointDict.keys()),2):
    pCounter=+1

    objA = bpy.data.objects[pair[0]]
    objB = bpy.data.objects[pair[1]]

    path = bpy.data.curves.new('_path_{}'.format(pCounter), 'CURVE')
    path.dimensions = "3D"
    path.bevel_depth=0.05

    spline = path.splines.new(type='NURBS')
    spline.points.add(1)
    spline.use_endpoint_u = True
    spline.use_endpoint_v = True
    path_ob = bpy.data.objects.new('_Path_new_{}'.format(pCounter), path)

    spline.points[0].co = (list(objA.location)+[1.0])

    #not sure why adding this helps, but it fixes things??  uncoment following line to see "good" results
    #bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=list(objA.location),)
    hm1 = path_ob.modifiers.new(name=f"Hook_A",type='HOOK',)
    hm1.object = objA
    hm1.vertex_indices_set([0])
    #'Hook' first vertex of spline/path
    spline.points[1].co = (list(objB.location)+[1.0])
    hm2 = path_ob.modifiers.new(name=f"Hook_B",type='HOOK',)
    hm2.object = objB
    hm2.vertex_indices_set([1])

    C.collection.objects.link(path_ob)

Force an update.
Using the add empty object operator (or any operator) has the side effect of forcing a view_layer update.  In version < 2.8 this was a scene.update().
It can be the case in a script execution that object matrices are not yet updated when their values are being queried.
Updating the viewlayer in the same loop as the operator produces the same result as with operator, without operator. (circa line 30)
pCounter = 0
for pair in combinations(list(pointDict.keys()),2):
    pCounter = +1 # Did  you mean += 1
    bpy.context.view_layer.update()  # <== UPDATE
    objA = bpy.data.objects[pair[0]]


Slimy translucent material help? I want to create a material that is transparent but also has a "wet" or slimy look, like the bug in MiB 1 or the demogorgon from Stranger Things. I don't know if you could achieve this with a principled bsdf or what. Any suggestions are appreciated.

You can use a principled BSDF and make it translucent or transparent with the transmission settings. You can also use the clearcoat settings and clearcoat normal input to make it look different outside.


How to achieve "spherical" mapping in procedural materials? What I have:

What I would want (sorry for a terrible sketch):

How to convert object/generated coordinates in such way?

If you just want the longitudes, the answers linked by @moonboots will suffice.. if you want to map a 2D procedural texture to a sphere, this sort of setup will do the Y dimension (latitudes) as well..


Is there a 2.72 equivalent to 'no caustics'? This image is quite hard to see due to heavy caustics, however, I haven't had to render in Cycles since Blender 2.72 came out, and I can't for the life of me find 'no caustics'.

I tried un-checking the two boxes that looked like they took it's place, but that didn't seem to change anything.

It looks like this option was changed a bit. You can enable/disable caustics from reflections and from refraction (when light goes through transparent materials) separatly.

Just disable "Reflective Caustics" and "Refractive Caustics" in the Light Paths tab of the render settings.

UPDATE:

It seems that these settings do not work if you are using Branched Path Tracing. You can however play around with the Clamp Indirect value to trunkate high light values produced by reflected light.


Unwrapping the inside of a barrel I'm trying to UV unwrap the inside of a barrel I made.

The problem is, when I select the inside of my barrel, and use the
Mesh > UV Unwrap... > Cylinder Projection, I get a weird unwrapped form. How can I solve this?

Cylinder Projection is based on the angle of the view.

Try switching to front (Numpad 1) or side view (Numpad 3), then unwrapping again:


Blender Motion Blur deactivation for certain objects doesn´t work if I have set Motion Blur for rendering and deactivate it for a certain object in the object properties, the object is still blurred. The scene is a tracking shot from behind towards a boat that is cruising on the water. Motion blur should only be used on the water. I would be very happy for any help! I use Cycles for Rendering.
Kind Regards,
Tim

Vector Blur Solution
When using the Vector pass and the Vector Blur node, individual objects can easily be "unblurred" by mixing in the raw render which has no blur.
To enable the Vector pass, Motion Blur must be disabled.

The Vector pass an be enabled in Properties > View Layer Properties > Passes > Vector.

I have also enabled Object Index for creating the object mask, but using Cryptomatte would work even better.
My boat proxy object has its Pass Index set to 1 for this mask.

In the compositor, the object's mask can now be used to zero the Vector pass and mix in the raw render where necessary as seen in the node setup below.

The Dilate/Erode node is used to reduce the color bleed artifacts from the Vector Blur node.
Side-By-Side

my proxy scene with the blur removed on the right side of the arrow object


The bones in a model is affecting another model I made two models and both gave them bones. But one of the armatures is affecting the other armature. Is is because they both accidentally share the same pose library I gave em? If that's the case, i tried deleting the pose library, but it still appear in the animation screen. what do i do?

It sounds like both objects are parented to the same armature and/or are using the same armature object in the armature modifier. You will have to have a separate armature for each model. You should be able to simply select the proper armature in the armature modifier as well as in the relations section of the object tab of the properties window.


Object visible only from the bottom When I place my fbx file in unity it's only visible from the bottom, when I look at it from the top I can't see anything. How can I fix that?

This is how it looks in blender: https://imgur.com/a/F7uPO38

This is how it looks from the bottom in Unity: https://imgur.com/a/yAH2bRy

This is how it looks from the top in Unity: https://imgur.com/a/vEuQsPb

Most likely, the normals are facing the wrong direction. Unity doesn't render the backside of polygons, while blender does.

Try flipping the normals around. The reference for doing this is here.


Textures are only appearing on Texture Paint tab I imported a .DAE file with JPEG textures.
Blender is not showing these textures in any tab...

... except Texture Paint tab:

How to see the textures in all tabs?

Inside the viewport press Ctrl + Tab and select texture paint or press 9 and you will see the same view as in texture paint Work space.


Handler existence checking I need to run a script several times, which among other things adds a custom function to a handler list. How can I check that it doesn't eist already, so as not to have several identical functions in my handlers list, without clearing the list altogether?

This doesn't work.

import bpy

def test(self):
    print('test')

if not test in bpy.app.handlers.render_pre:
    bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(test)

You can use a list comprehension to check if your function already exists:

def myFunc():
    """Your function"""

if not myFunc.__name__ in [hand.__name__ for hand in bpy.app.handlers.save_pre]:
    bpy.app.handlers.save_pre.append(myFunc)

It'll get the function's name from the pointer for each function in your handler list. Then, you can compare it to your function's name.

[hand.__name__ for hand in bpy.app.handlers.save_pre]

It's equivalent to:

handlerList = []
for handler in bpy.app.handlers.save_pre:
    handlerList.append(handler.__name__)


Cut doesn't work on particular angles view I got a strange issue tonight. When i cut edges under a narrow angle it works well, but when i do it from the top view (perpendicularly), it doesn't show me the cut marker point (but it still cuts). Could anyone give me a clue how to solve it?

It's not too tough to solve this problem by switching to perspective view. This helps keep the knife from "catching" on geometry that you cannot see.


Noise Texture Stretching on Side of Cube I'm attempting to create a simple resized cube with a noise texture on all six sides.  The cube is just a default cube that is scaled down in the Z axis so it appears very short.

No matter what version of Blender I use, the top of the cube works completely fine, showing the noise texture as usual, but the sides of the cube appear like this (this screenshot is from Blender 2.7, but my main computer does the exact same on Blender 2.8):

Things I've already tried:
 - I've made sure that the UV unwrap is correctly scaled to the scale and rotation.

I've tried putting a texture on it, the texture lines up properly and doesn't stretch:
I've tried converting the noise texture to a bump map and a normal map, it doesn't change the result.
I've tried two different versions of Blender and 2 different machines

While I'm sure there is something very simple going on here that I'm missing because I'm inexperienced, I'm stuck and can't find any information on my errors.

Extra Images:
 - UV Unwrap:
 - Basic Node Setup:

Any help is appreciated.

You need to connect your UV map.

Image textures use generated coordinates by default - this makes your texture stretched.
Noise texture works fine with generated coordinates, so it looks okay in your case.

Solution:
1) Add a Texture coordinate node and a Mapping node.
2) Connect your UV map output.
3) Done

Comparison between different variants
Left - properly connected UV map
Center - texture without UV map connected (clearly distorted)
Right - Procedural textures work just fine


How to change range of "bake sound to f curves"? Alright, Im trying to modify the "damp" parameter of a particle system in accordance with the beats of an audio file. So far, I "insert keyframe" on the damp parameter, go to F curves and then select "bake sound to f curves."
My issue is it then only modulates between 0-1. I need the damp to modulate between 0.152 and maybe 0.4.
How can I alter the range of bake sound to f curves in Blender 2.8?

Add an Envelope modifier to the F-curve, and add one control point. Change the min and max values to flatten or raise the amplitude of curves and change Reference value to reposition the central axis of the curves


Can dictionaries be stored in globalDict? In the Blender API docs, it says only

  Python built in types such as int/string/bool/float/tuples/lists can be saved, GameObjects, Actuators etc will not work as expected.

No mention is made of whether dictionaries can be stored.

My own tests seem to indicate it is possible, and I have not yet had any Marshalling or other exceptions raised, but I would like to know if it is actually supported, or if I would be better off building an alternate implementation that does not require storing dicts.

The list is only an example of types -

  Python built in types such as int/string/bool/float/tuples/lists can be saved,

while it does not give a complete list of built-in types, a dictionary is a built-in python type so does belong to that list of types. While an int and float may be simpler types, a list or tuple would be equal to a dictionary in this context.

  GameObjects, Actuators etc will not work as expected.

This indicates the types defined by blender, most of which are not fully implemented the way that the python built-in types are, will not work as expected.

As the first line states can be saved which also implies being loaded back between games, I would expect the exact criteria to be types that are picklable, which would also mean that the items in the dictionary must also be built-in types, not blender types. Of course if you aren't actually saving the globalDict between games and just want to use it during game play then you should find these restrictions to be irrelevant.


Why is my cloth not subdivided correctly in the rendered image? Just trying to render some physics cloth / rubber. All modifiers are set to visible, with Sudivision as the first modifier in the stack, followed by Solidify and finally Cloth.

Have baked up to and past the frame I want to render. However, I'm getting the result to the right - can anybody give me a clue as to how to solve this issue?

So as it turns out, while I had increased the Subdivision in the Modifier Stack to 6 for Viewport, I had failed to change it from 2 for Render. (In the following image I have changed the Render Subdivisions from 2 to 6)

Thank you to the commentators, error lay between keyboard and chair.


Is there a way to get icon_value for the UIList using icon name from enum? I know that I can use icon_value = layout.icon(_context.object), and I also know how to implement custom icons in Blender. But what if I'm writing my own class, want to be able to store it as a template list and just want to use existing Blender icon as its icon in the template list? Is there any place in API where the full icons list is stored somehow? Can I perform in any way something like
for i, j in enumerate(bpy.app.all_blender_icons): # fake pass
    if j.name == "EVENT_M":
        return i

Of course I could just manually go over all int numbers and find out which one returns the icon I need, but it doesn't seem like a very good idea in any way.

Look at the icons addon.
If you look at the code to the Development Icons Addon will see that it uses data defined in that very UILayout.icon  development_icon_get.py Line 86 in version 1.4 method mentioned in question.
Which if crunched into python console
>>> icons = bpy.types.UILayout.bl_rna.functions[
...                 "prop"].parameters["icon"].enum_items.keys()

>>>
>>> icons
['NONE', 'QUESTION', 'ERROR', 'CANCEL', 'TRIA_RIGHT', 'TRIA_DOWN', 'TRIA_LEFT', 'TRIA_UP', ...

There are over 800
>>> len(icons)
802

Make a reverse lookup, name -> index
>>> icon_ref = {k : i for i, k in enumerate(icons)}
>>> icon_ref['XRAY']
563

Or using items()
>>> icons = bpy.types.UILayout.bl_rna.functions[
...                 "prop"].parameters["icon"].enum_items.items()
>>> icons[100]
('IMAGE', <bpy_struct, EnumPropertyItem("IMAGE") at 0xbb1c6c0>)


How to create UV and texture for egg shaped model I've searched and toyed with this for quite some time. I have a penguin who's body is egg shaped and I'm trying to do the UV and texture for it. If I use projection from view then it comes out nearly OK except for a few areas (see image). The problem is that it seems no matter how I change the UV's vertices I can't fix the offending areas.
I'm hoping someone can help.
Thanks!

Front view looks fine

Try to reproject your texture upon a catmull-clark subdivided version of the mesh with the subdivide UVs option disabled.

This way you should be able to have more faces (and so a higher projecting accuracy), while maintaining the same UV islands.

Before:

After:

In my testfile this process was able to mitigate the effect of the distortion.

Once reprojected the texture, you can obiuvsly delete the modifier and keep your vertex count untouched.


Cloth simulation not working properly Below is the cloth simulation image from blender and the settings I used for simulation. But I am not getting why the cloth is inflating after baking process and it shrinks from its original size.I tried every material but behavior is same.
Can anyone help me with this?

The problem is that your Distance setting is too high/large. There are two places where Distance is specified, and they are different settings.

One of them is the distance from the mesh that collision objects will be considered "colliding." If you set this too high, the mesh will behave as though it's colliding, even though it's not touching. If you set this too low, the mesh might move too far over the course of a frame, and the collision will never be detected.

The other place that Distance is specified is specifically for the cloth interacting with itself. Another part of the cloth that is within the specified distance will be considered "self-colliding." Similar principles apply.


Incorrect values when using the color picker? While painting, I use the color picker to pick one of the color on my object. However, the color picker does not pick the exact color that I have selected.

What am I doing wrong?

Viewport colors are affected by lighting and color profile.
To display unchanged colors in the viewport, you need to do two things:

use the Emission shader (it's not affected by lights)
change View Transform to Standard

(Or just open your image texture in Image Viewer and pick color from there.)


Apply all modifiers, .poll() a bpy operator with keyword argument? I would like to apply all modifiers to an object with python.

for mod in ob.modifiers:
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier = mod.name)

This works fine, unless for some reason the modifier is disabled, e.g.:

A Boolean modifier with no object
A Shrinkwrap modifier with no target

General Problem:

Other than knowing all of the possible attributes of every modifier and checking to make sure the modifier is valid, is there a way to bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply.poll() while specifying which modifier I want to apply?

I see that the poll() method expects

poll(self, *args).

Perhaps I can put something in for *args which will help

Work Around: I can get the modified mesh object.to_mesh()

The short answer is no, poll checks that the basic context is valid but it doesn't do extensive checks that every operation will succeed (It's often not trivial for tools to know this ahead of time)

You can simply use exception handling for this.

for mod in ob.modifiers:
    try:
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier=mod.name)
    except RuntimeError as ex:
        # print the error incase its important... but continue
        print(ex)

In this case I think you would be better off using,

bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH') - converting a mesh to a mesh will replace the mesh with a version that has modifiers applied.
Object.to_mesh() - gives you most control, uses Pythons internal API.


The texure of the rendered model looks different than in the viewport In my model, I I textured everything and it looks great

But when I render it, it looks like this

(I cleared all the other materials to see if that would fix)

The roof texture looks really weird now and I would like to know if there was some way to make the texture version show instead of the material version?

Generally you will have to set up materials in order to see UV images in the render, because for the rendering engine more parameters than the image and its mapping are needed. Create basic materials, assign the textures to them and use the UV map in the texture panel. This way it should be close to what you see in the texture view.


How to make this object child of another object, and conform to a curve at once? I have an Asteroid object. It's following a path with the Follow Path constraint. Now I have a Tail object. I need it to stick to the Asteroid object, and at once conform to a curve, the same path used for Follow Path constraint. It's supposed to be a comet.

I put a Child of constraint on the Tail object, and it now sticks to the Asteroid. But when I try to put a Curve modifier on it as well, it's jumps somewhere far away.

My question: how to properly achieve this effect. The Tail obviously has to follow the Asteroid. But it also has to follow the shape of the curve. Both at once.

I tried to achieve this effect through trial and error, testing this and that the best I can. But I can't get it to work.

See attached Blend file.

You can't do it this way, because an object with a Curve modifier will only correctly follow the curve if you move it on one of the 3 straight axis (X, Y or Z). If you move it on another axis, which happens if you ask him to follow an object which follows a curve, it will go messy.

I see at least 2 solutions, but maybe there are simpler ones?

1) Use a Curve modifier for your tail

In that case you must deparent the tail from the asteroïd. The asteroïd will follow the curve with a Follow Path constraint, and the tail will follow the curve with a Curve modifier. You must make sure that the tail have the same speed as the asteroïd, as if it was parented to it even if it's not, so you have to play with the Dopesheet keyframes and the Graph editor parameters.

2) Create an armature for your tail, that will follow the path

Create an armature with several bones and with the same length as your tail.
Parent your tail to this armature and place the armature at the beginning point of your curve.
Create an Empty a this beginning point, give it a Follow Path constraint with the curve as the Target.
Parent your armature to this Empty.
Duplicate this Empty with shift D + Enter, then, in its Follow Path constraint, change the Offset so that from Empty 0 to Empty 1 there will be the length of one of your armature bones.
Repeat the Duplicate + Offset operations so that you have as many Empty as your number of bones (+ the parent Empty)
Select the armature and, in Edit mode, give each bone a Track To constraint, with the right Empty as the Target.
Move each Empty along the curve with the Follow Path Offset, so that they are exactly at the position of their bone's head.
You can switch your armature from Octahedral display to B-Bones, and divide each bone in several Segments to smooth the shape of your tail.


Make particles stay on Plane I have created a particle effect that is influenced by a vortex.  Now I want to create a plane that is the parent of both of these object.  That way this plane controls the orientation of the emitter and the vortex.  However, when the plane is rotated, I want the moving particles to stay oriented so that they are on the plane, as if they are "sticking" to it.
The overall result should be a plane that has particles spinning in a vortex pattern. where u can rotate the plane and the particles will rotate along with it, giving the visual of a particle disk.
How do I make the particles orient with the plane at all times?

Opposing Wind Forces
Create two equal Wind force fields like in the image below.

Set the Strength of both fields to a high value and make sure that there is some falloff.

As long as these two forces are equal and parented to a plane (or any object), all particles should stay pretty close to the plane between the two force fields.


Create Shortcuts for Particle Edit Brushes? I didn't find a way to set this, even via the right-click menu. Anyone could advise some? Thanks. :)

I expanded gandalf3's example:

import bpy

items = [
    ("NONE"  , "None"  , "Don’t use any brush"         , 0),
    ("COMB"  , "Comb"  , "Comb hairs"                  , 1),
    ("SMOOTH", "Smooth", "Smooth hairs"                , 2),
    ("ADD"   , "Add"   , "Add hairs"                   , 3),
    ("LENGTH", "Length", "Make hairs longer or shorter", 4),
    ("PUFF"  , "Puff"  , "Make hairs stand up"         , 5),
    ("CUT"   , "Cut"   , "Cut hairs"                   , 6),
    ("WEIGHT", "Weight", "Weight hair particles"       , 7)
    ]

class PARTICLE_OT_select_brush(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Select a particle brush"""
    bl_idname = "particle.select_brush"
    bl_label  = "Particle Select Brush"

    brush = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
                name = "brush",
                default = "NONE",
                items = items
                )

    def execute(self, context):
        context.scene.tool_settings.particle_edit.tool = self.brush
        for region in context.area.regions:
            if region.type == "TOOLS":
                region.tag_redraw()
        return {'FINISHED'}

class VIEW3D_MT_particle_edit_select_brush(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = "Particle Select Brush"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        layout.operator_context = "INVOKE_REGION_WIN"

        for item in items:
            layout.operator(
                operator = "particle.select_brush",
                text = item[1],
                ).brush = item[0]

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(PARTICLE_OT_select_brush)
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_MT_particle_edit_select_brush)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_MT_particle_edit_select_brush)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PARTICLE_OT_select_brush)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    #register keys via script
    #might be better done via user preferences
    #see image below

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs['Blender User'].keymaps['Particle']

    keys = ("ONE","TWO","THREE","FOUR","FIVE","SIX","SEVEN","EIGHT")
    for item, key in zip(items, keys):
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(
            idname = "particle.select_brush",
            type = key,
            value = "PRESS",
            )
        kmi.properties.brush = item[0]

    kmi = km.keymap_items.new(
        idname = "wm.call_menu",
        type = "TAB",
        value = "PRESS",
        ctrl = True
        )
    kmi.properties.name = "VIEW3D_MT_particle_edit_select_brush"

You can bind keys to call a menu or directly choose a specific brush.


Imported Roblox obj Model looks weird I tried to import my Roblox character as an .obj. But after I imported it, it totally looks messed up (like holes in it). Usually it worked a while ago! I hope you can help me!

Try re-importing it from Roblox, if it was working before the problem might have been the file getting corrupted


What is the difference between bpy.props.CollectionProperty and bpy.props.PointerProperty? I noticed that bpy.props.CollectionProperty and bpy.props.PointerProperty can both be used to collect custom properties (as is shown here: http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_75_release/bpy.props.html).

There are also other examples on the internet, but I still can't figure out the difference between these two properties.

A collection is an array of a set of properties. Every element in the array has the same properties (with individual values).

A pointer property is used to organize properties. The sub-attribute the pointer property is stored at will hold a set of properties. It is not an array of properties however.

Scene.collection
  Scene.collection.add()
  Scene.collection.remove()
  Scene.collection ...()
  Scene.collection[0]
    Scene.collection[0].name # Foo
    Scene.collection[0].val # 123
  Scene.collection[1]
    Scene.collection[1].name # Bar
    Scene.collection[1].val # 234
  Scene.collection[...]
    Scene.collection[...].name # Baz
    Scene.collection[...].val # 345

Scene.pointer
  Scene.pointer.name # Foo
  Scene.pointer.val # 123


Some children positions are off, both when animating and rendering (but not when paused at any frame) I constructed a car where the tires are parented to the wheels and the weels are parented to the axes. These axes rotate with a simple driver on the world x location of the tires.
When moving the playhead 1 frame at the time, the positions are correct, but when playing the animation the tires lag behind (also when playing the animation backwards: the tires are sometimes catching up with their parents too slow)

While writing this question I realized the problem.
To have a more correct rotation of the weels when steering left or right, I set the driver to the x position of the tire,
creating a driver to a property of a child (of a child) caused the problem.
Instead I created an empty that is parented to the main steering object with an offset to the center of the wheel, resulting in a more correct rotation and preventing these delays


How can I fix slight imperfections that mess up the shadows? How can I fix these imperfections? They have happened to me a lot of times, but this is the worst one. I am making this model for another person so it is important that the model is good.

You can make the surface planar by making a custom transform orientation from a selected face that is flat on the right surface plane pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space, then you can select linked flat faces with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F ant adjust the Sharpness property in the Redo Last panel so that it includes the out of place faces making sure the first(active) face you selected is on the right plane and then if you set the Active Element as Pivot Center you can scale all the selected faces to 0 in the custom transform orientation's z axis. This will make the surface planar to the selected face.

You could also just use Normal transform orientation and it would scale everything according the active face's normal just fine, but I like setting it to custom because it then works in all situations for example even if I need to make the plane at a floating single vertex.


How do set an angular velocity to zero with python bge? I'm new to blender scripting, but not to blender or python. I am trying to set up a rotary inverted pendulum. The initial state of the pendulum is upright with an angular velocity of 0. I would like to run a simulation a few hundred times with different parameters and need to be able to "reset" the pendulum to its initial state after each episode.

I am aware of the bug/feature of setAngularVelocity in which you have to set to a vector of very small numbers and not 0 to stop a rotation, however it still does not work for me.

Here is the code that I use in a module. The function is called every other frame with an "Always" actuator. So the pole should fall freely for max_steps steps and then be stopped and brought upright. When I run the game engine it only acts like this the first time.

# Take action
base.setAngularVelocity([0,0,data.action], True)

# Get angle and speed
xyz = pole.localOrientation.to_euler()
roty = math.degrees(xyz[1])
spd = pole.getAngularVelocity(True) # True for local
spdy = spd[1]
print(spdy)

[...stuff...]

data.step   += 1

if data.step > data.max_steps or R == -50:
    data.action = 0
    data.step = 0
    pole.worldOrientation = ([1.0, 0.0, 0.0], [0.0, 1.0, 0.0], [0.0, 0.0, 1.0])
    base.setAngularVelocity([0.00001,0.00001,0.00001], True)
    pole.setAngularVelocity([0.00001,0.00001,0.00001], True)

Edit: I forgot to mention that setting the angular velocity for the base on line 2 works fine, but not in the if statement

It is not a bug. It is a feature ;).

Sometimes it is an annoying feature.

I tried various methods to get zero velocity.

A) parent/unparent ... restores the previous velocity.

B) disable/enable physics ... restores the previous velocity.

C) I found one (not so nice) way by experimenting:

def stop(owner):
    owner.setLinearVelocity([0,0,1])
    force = [0,0,-50.174276 * owner.mass]
    owner.applyForce(force)

It shows zero velocity with even 24 digits. I can't tell if that is really the case, but it looks like that.

Be aware, this velocity appears within the next frame as apply frame will not effect the object immediately (0,0,1) at frame t and (0,0,0) at frame t+1. Be aware this force counters gravity (9,8) for this one frame too.

[edit]
With taking gravity into account I get this:

def stop(owner):
    owner.setLinearVelocity([0,0,1])
    gravity = owner.scene.gravity
    force = -gravity.copy()
    force.z = (-59.974275 - (gravity.z)) * owner.mass
    owner.applyForce(force)

The frame rate has some influence too (I would expect -60 not -59.974275). But I can't find a formula on that.

Maybe it helps


Snap to face doesn't work I've been trying for a good 30 minutes now to simply snap a little object to a neighboring face, by following this simple explanation. Instead of going nuts I just thought I'd ask.

The result is never accurate, whatever I try: the smaller object always goes "through" the other mesh at an angle, rotates in every direction except the right one, etc.

I want the little piece to point outwards, with its largest flat face against one of the flat faces of the large shape - as in:

I've tried flipping normals, applying loc/rot/scale on and off, moving the origin of the object to the middle of the face I want it to snap to, tried every setting in the snap tools, but nothing helped.

What are the things to check when trying to snap an object to another, what am I missing?

Blend file:

First you need to adjust the rotation of the small object to be fitted on the surface with the correct angle as shown below:

After that, switch to edit mode of the big object and switch to Face selection and select the face as shown below:

Then hit Shift+S and select Cursor to Selected as shown below:

After that select the small object and hit again Shift+S and select Selected to Cursor this time and it will work as shown below:

Updated .blend file can be found here:


heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones I have the model of a man formed by jacket, trousers, shoes, hands and head, all joined with CTRL J.
When I go to create the armor he gives me "heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones". I tried to apply the scale, rotation, and location but nothing. I tried to remove doubles but nothing, and I even deleted a lot of faces, vertices and edges. I don't know what to do anymore!

Switch back to spare parts and parent them to the rig one by one, the automatic weights function wants a single mesh, with a mesh maden of multiple parts sometimes it works, more often not.

Consider also that manual weighting is often the best choice (weight painting and/or weight assigning in the vertex properties panel).


Can someone definitively describe the difference between the sculpt flatten, polish, and smooth brushes? Documentation for the sculpt brushes seems to be a bit spare.  In particular, I'm having trouble properly understanding the difference between flatten, polish, and smooth.

Also, hitting Shift seems to cause one of those to take effect when other brush types are selected.  This is convenient but I'm not sure I'm always getting consistent results.

It would be nice to have all brush types and options properly described somewhere.  I'm starting to learn the code base but I'm not far enough to really tell what the brushes actually do.

Thanks in advance.

Flatten tries to make all vertices align on one plane:

Smooth tries to align vertices to the average mesh surface:

Polish is basically a mixture of the two:

This is what I have observed from use and gathered from the Wiki.

When pressing Shift while using the Brush tool, you switch to Smooth mode, and while pressing Ctrl you switch from Add to Subtract mode, and the opposite as well.


How do you make a jagged circle edge smooth? I would like to make the edge of this mesh a smooth circle. Any suggestions?

To make it a smooth circle, first go into user preferences and enable an add-on called "Loop Tools" (search "loop" in the search box).

Select the edge you want to "straighten" into a circle, right click and select Loop Tools > Circle.

This should leave you with a clean circular edge.


Animation conflict in game engine I am just making a simple spaceship in game engine, I want the ship to bank as it moves left or right.

I added two animations to the key presses and this works fine, however, if both keys A and D are hit at the same time the animations completely break.

It is difficult to explain exactly what I mean, so here's the .blend

I must be missing something obvious here, any ideas?

I tried your file in BGE and UPBGE.
The bug still persists in BGE but seems completely fixed in UPBGE.
Commit Proof
https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge/commit/d05cb9bca5654a621a9daf7547fa031ab467ef85
https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge/commit/bd8f4cc4d6de396c902ee47261baba11bdd8f0a1


How to paint vertex alpha in the new version for unity? https://youtu.be/DMS1I-gJkzE

According to google, making bottom vertecies opaque and top ones transparent should fix the sliding grass issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QbpCZuGe7M

I tried following this tutorial, since blender recently got alpha paint feature, but I cant fix it. I tried making the bottom vertecies black and top white, I tried making top vertecties black and bottom white, I tried top vertecies transparent and bootm full opaque, I tried top vertecies full opaque and bottom vertecies full transparent, I tried top vertecies 1.0 weight and bottom vertecies 0.0 weight, I tried top vertecies 0.0 weight and bottom vertecies 1.0 weight.

Am I using it wrong? When I am painting the alpha, I can see the change in blener , I can see it get more transparent in vertex paint mode, but when I export it to unity, it still slides arround.

Are you using the latest 2.79? (if not 2.8)
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/1513940-blender-2-79c-finally-supports-the-vertex-paint-alpha-channel


How to mask out a object in motion tracked shot to put people behind things? I want to put the girl behind the cup. How can i mask the foot of the girl? This is a motion tracked shot that moves so it doesn't just stay still.

i figured out the answer. what you need to do is build the object you want to mask and then put it as in the background group and it will work


MultiFile Add-on with single python file I am making an add-on in blender that has one python file. In the past, I have been able to just import this add-on as a single python file by itself, but I need to use a .zip file for this because my add-on needs a .blend file to work. I have tried installing my current add-on as a zip with files as so:
addon.zip:
--addon.py
--addon.blend

But the add-on doesn't show up in Preferences. How do I make this work?
Thanks in advance!

Please see the included add-ons that come with Blender as examples. If you are on Windows, that will most likely be C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender [version number]\[version number]\scripts\addons\
If you go to any of the folders there, you will see what would be in the zip file if it was a zipped addon:

The main addon file is __init__.py, you have to have one like that.


How become shadow catcher more strong I´m using hdr lighting and a real picture with shadows (with shadow catcher method). The problems is the shadows produced from HDR is clear more then background picture. I´d like to obtein the same shadow or like, in the picture.

you can use Passes/Layers:

Pass 1: Background
Pass 2: Shadow Catcher + Holdout Shader for Object
Pass 3: Object with transparent Background and no Shadow Catcher

Then in your prefered compositing solution you can ramp Pass 2 for a darker shadow and combine then all.


Capture video from cameras in blender game engine for Artificial Intelligence I'm new to programming in blender game engine.
I want to investigate the Q-learning AI using blender game engine. For this purpose I want to make 3d pong. It will look something like this:

The game will contain two boards and one ball. I want to capture data from two cameras and feed it into the Convolutional network and find an optimal actions (Q-values) according them:

I was faced with the problem of obtaining images from cameras in blender game engine. Can anyone help me with this?

Ideally I need transform images to arrays and transfer data using sockets. But, as a last resort, I'll be happy with the option of saving images into folders.

I will not satisfied with the screenshots, using bge.render.makeScreenshot(filename), because I need multiple cameras.

If I succeed in this, I promise to make a tutorial in Youtube about it and share all source files ;)

Sorce files

Many thanks!!!

ADDITION:
I've tried to use script from this link:

from bge import logic, render

camList = logic.getCurrentScene().cameras
cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

cam1 = camList['Camera_LEFT']
cam2 = camList['Camera_RIGHT']

width = render.getWindowWidth()
height = render.getWindowHeight()

cam1.setViewport(0, 0, int(width/2), height)
cam2.setViewport(int(width/2), 0, width, height)

cam1.useViewport = True
cam2.useViewport = True

folder = '//image-#.png'
render.makeScreenshot(folder)

It gives me right view in viewport:

But, screenshot in my directory is still from 3d view (((:

Please, give the source files.

I found the answer!

Thanks ThaTimst3r for his video on YouTube: /watch?v=e4KNstJhFeA&index=1&list=LLNnIYCXmFzdsaND3RsqYSdA

We need to add two planes which we will use for our "screens". These screens need different textures. So, we need to link the materials of screens and cameras. For this purpose, in each screen, we create two properties: the material and the camera.

The values of properties have to be the same as name of material and name of camera respectively.

Next, in our code we will link them:

camera_name = obj['camera_property']

and

matID = texture.materialID(obj, 'MA'+obj['material_property'])

Let's render texure from camera:

renderToTexture = texture.Texture(obj, matID)
renderToTexture.source = texture.ImageRender(scene, cam)

So, final we have the effect what we need. We can even set the resolution of images:

enderToTexture.source.capsize = [500, 500]

And convert images to arrays:

imageArray = texture.imageToArray(renderToTexture.source, 'RGB')

Thats all, I think.

If you have comments, I will listen them with pleasure =)

All source files.


How do I get out of a node group? I did something I can't get out of! I selected nodes and thinking I'd group them I did a Cntrl + G. Not liking (or understanding) the result, I deleted the nodes. And I'm still left with a green cover that does not allow me to select nodes. :(

To enter and exit a node group press Tab

(Think of it like entering/exiting Edit Mode for node groups)

Form the manual:

  With a group node selected, Tab expands the node to a window frame, and the individual nodes within it are shown. You can move them around, play with their individual controls, re-thread them internally, etc. just like you can if they were a normal part of your editor window. You will not be able, though, to thread them to a node outside the group; you have to use the external sockets on the side of the group node. To add or remove nodes from the group, you need to ungroup them.