Blender - apply image texture to specific parts of the object I've been trying for so long to apply an image texture to a specific part of an object in Blender for a while and I really need an opinion of an expert here.
So, my object looks like below (front, side and back):

What I want is to apply an image texture only to these specific parts of the object. I've tried so far:

to do it by using nodes (Material properties) - didn't worked as it apply the image texture to the whole object;
importing the texture paint, select the specific parts (using "Texture Paint" as object interaction mode), selected as "Mask Mapping" the option "Stencil" and applied - it worked somehow, however the image texture applied it's not the same on both faces (has different axes positions). Also, the above part of the object (the middle part between front and back) it stays always black.

Is there any way of doing this?

A solution is that first you make two material slots. Give one slot any other texture you want and the other slot the image texture you want to apply to a specific part of mesh. Then go to edit mode, select the parts of your mesh you wan't your material to appear on and then press apply after selcting the right material.
Here are some tutuorials from youtube for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms89wP8m4ZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXpbK2T1HJA


Select seams easy and fast way? Is there a way to select seams the easy and fast way?

I had to subdivide this part with 20 so it would bend well, but now its all black so its impossible to seam. I already zoomed in with DEL (numpad), but that doesnt make it easier to reach tiny parts. Also whenever i zoom in, the object just disappears, so im searching a way that or automatically selects the seams for me or a way where it select a few connecting points at once.

Pls explain step by step what to do, cause im just a beginner. Thanks for all the help here!

Yes, but working with such a high-poly mesh isn't advisable for a number of reasons.

Instead, consider using a Subsurf modifier. This allows you to work on the mesh in a low-poly state while still getting the nice smooth curves offered by a high-poly mesh:

That said, if you can manage to select one edge with a seam, then you can press ⇧ ShiftG > Seam to select all other seam edges. ⇧ ShiftB for Border Zoom and, if needed, a reduced minimum viewport clipping distance can help immensely with such a task:


How To Rotate some Vertices around a changed Pivot Point? I switched from Maya to Blender 2.8. In Maya there was the possibility to choose some Vertices and then change the PivotPoint for those Vertices and then Rotate around this Pivot Point. For Example i have a 3D Model in the T-Pose and i want to change it to the A-Pose. In Maya i normally pick the Vertices of the Arm then change the pivot Point to the shoulder and rotate around this pivot. How would you do that in Blender 2.8? I saw some Post for older Version of Blender where you use the 3D Cursor but i couldn't figure it out in 2.8.

If you don't want the shoulder to be part of the selection, you should use the 3D cursor. To place the 3D cursor at the origin of the object you want to orient about, click the object (or vertex, it works in edit mode too) and Shift+S to open the cursor menu.

Then you can select Cursor to Active, this will place the 3D cursor at the origin of the selected object. Then change the Pivot Point to 3D Cursor, and whatever you move/rotate will orient around the 3D Cursor.


Different Enviroment Map per object/layer. (Blender Engine) I hope this hasn't been asked previously, I was unable to find a similar question.
Is it possible to have different Environment Maps that affect specific objects or a way to have different Environment Maps per layer?
As an example of the desired result I cheated a .gif from Photoshop. Of 1 scene with 2 different Environment Maps.

Thank you! ♥

By using multiple scenes you can get the different parts and composite them together. Have one scene that renders the background you want, then another scene for the object with the environment you want reflected on it's surface, render this scene with the background as transparent then composite the objects onto the background.

You could setup multiple scenes to get different reflections for each object. The object index can help to mask out each object when compositing.


Rigged body appears distorted when moving I finally copied off the bones of a character I ripped from SFM, but when I rig them to the mesh itself (automatic weights option), when i move it in pose mode, it's heavily distorted aside from lower areas in the legs. Is there any way to fix this?

Seems that, some parts of your mesh are not attached to the bones,
Please try to use the Weight paint mode to add missing part of mesh to the respective bone.

Steps are shown below:

Red means full control, blue means no control, and in between those color, partial controls.


Bad normal map baking I'm trying to migrate from 3Ds Max to Blender and everything was good until the moment I started to learn baking process. I have a 6 faces cube as low poly and its subdivided copy as high poly. Using ray distance or cage gives no difference. What am I doing wrong?

If you have just started blender the struggle is real hahaha.
Jokes aside probably your ray distance is really big. Try from .010 too .100
See if it works.

Also remember that both high and lowpoly meshes need to be in the exact space.
And remember you need to check the selected active check box. and select first the highpoly, and then the lowpoly. then pressed bake, but i assume you already know that.

Goodluck.


Unable to run Blender on Ubuntu In pretty new to blender, and I installed the latest Ubuntu image on a machine to test it out. When I try to launch it from the console, I get the following error:

root@localhost:~# blender
libdc1394 error: Failed to initialize libdc1394
Color management: using fallback mode for management
Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":11.0".
connect failed: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
AL lib: alsa_open_playback: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
Xlib:  extension "XInputExtension" missing on display ":11.0".
X Error of failed request:  GLXBadRenderRequest
  Major opcode of failed request:  148 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  1 (X_GLXRender)
  Serial number of failed request:  310
  Current serial number in output stream:  310
root@localhost:~#

It's not clear from your question whether you installed Blender via the command line or by downloading the package.

I'm guessing you installed via the command line as you are encountering dependency issues.

Try downloading the latest release from blender.org, then just double click the executable icon 'blender' in the 'blender-2.7*' folder, or navigate to that directory and from the command line run: ./blender

To reiterate the comment above, you shouldn't be running this as root.


Why is cycles rendering blurry Boolean detail Would really appreciate some help figuring why the detail in this render is all blurry?The mesh was an imported svg, converted to mesh, cleaned up and the difference and mirror modifier applied.Thanks
blend file here

Thanks @Jackdaw,turns out it was a bevel modifier in the stack. Took it out and it was good to. Lesson of the day... Always check ya stack


Edges become sharp after flip normal I import a model from binary data and figure out that its normal vectors are in wrong direction. After flipping vectors, the faces do not look smooth like before although I try to use "Shading/Smooth faces" and "Clear sharps" feature. How could I do to make the face look smooth in this case? I attached the .blend file here. Thanks.
Download sample

Before flipping normals

After flipping normals

Your mesh has 211 double vertices that mess up the shading.

Select all vertices (Ctrl+A), disable Autosmooth and go:

Mesh > Clean up > Merge by distance (this will merge 211 double vertices)
Mesh > Normals > Recalculate outside
RMB > Shade Smooth

This will ensure you have a clean mesh, normals pointing out and proper shading.


Stupid Question: Multiselecting objects? I am working on this animation and just realized that around maybe 2 thousand objects are messed up with sequence of animation so how do I select all those objects? Kinda like Photoshop selection tool

Selection Brush:
You could use the selection brush of Blender with the C shortcut. To select use the Left mouse button and to deselect use the middle mouse button. Use the mouse wheel to increase the size of the cursor. Press Enter or Esc to confirm the selection

Selection Brush:

Lasso Selection Tool:
Hold down Ctrl and click and drag over your items. Let go of Left mouse button to confrim the selection

Lasso Tool:

Also you could do like the user m.ardito said using the Shift key to select mulptiple objects. Also if it's easier select all objects with A and deselect the objects you don't need to affect. Otherwise you could select of the of the right objects and invert your selection with Ctrl + I.


How to prevent accidentally dragging vertex on selection? When manually selecting a single vertex in Edit mode, I sometimes hold the mouse button down for a split second longer and end up dragging the vertex just a tiny bit. Most times I wont notice it.
This becomes a problem when faces are no longer flat.
Is there a method by which to avoid this? Perhaps a new key binding requiring a key press and mouse down to move a vertex?

Sounds like you are using the select mode "tweak" which has that behavior that you are describing, where you can click and drag the mesh, but you really want something that is more akin to the "box select" where you are just selecting, and not moving. You can click individual vertices in box select mode as well. The top left of the 3d viewport shows your select mode, and W cycles through them.
"tweak" select mode

"box" select mode

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/selecting.html#tool-select-box


"Edge slide" for bones? I have a number of bones which deform segments of the eyelash + eye skin which all radiate from a single point in XYZ space (aka the center of the eye-sphere) to various Snapped (to vertex) positions along the eye skin, like so. I want to put the heads where the tails currently are; this can be by flipping the bone around (so the tail goes where the head was; may require roll and/or driver adjustment) or sliding along the shaft (so that the tail protrudes past the eye into space). I can't scale since the heads are all at the same XYZ position and scaling from the center of all the bone tails would give a poor result. Is there a way for me to "edge slide" the heads along each bone shaft? Thanks!
EDIT: Am dumb and found out how to flip the head and tail designation of a bone shortly after asking (Edit -> Armature -> Switch Direction, aka Alt+F). The "edge slide for bones" question still stands, in cases where one might not want the new head position exactly at the tail position.

Is there a way for me to "edge slide" the heads along each bone shaft?

Yes.  Each bone's head and tail lie in a particular axis for that bone-- the Y axis.  So if you select a head and move it in that axis, you'll be edge sliding the head along the bone.
Switch to normal orientation, individual origins pivot.  (In edit mode, normal orientation will use each bone's local axes for the transform, while local orientation will use the armature's local axes.)  Select as many heads or tails as you want.  Translate constrained to Y axis (g Y move mouse confirm for me).


Why do the controls for materials look different? The first image, the material properties shows in one way.

On the second image, the material properties, is displayed in a different way

Why is it different?

could you tell me why this happens to me? thank you, regards

You are using two different render engines, in the first image you are using cycles, in the second blender internal.

more info:
Which engine in Blender should i start with?
How is Cycles different from Blender Internal?


How can i fully remove fire flies? I turned off Reflective Caustics and Refractive Caustics but my image is still full of fireflies how can i fully remove them?

What I see in this image is noise, not fireflies. What you are seeing is a preview render at only 10 samples, which is nowhere near enough for an interior scene. Simply try rendering with more samples. You may need 1000 to 5000 samples to completely remove all the noise.


Creating realistic procedural wall plaster texture How do I make a simple procedural texture to get a result similar to this?

In real life its a traditional wall plaster that its not smooth.

It looks like this in real life.

You could use the Musgrave procedural noise node as displacement texture for a very simple plaster like surface. You can change the node settings to control how rough and detailed the plaster would be.


Cannot set value 'RGBA' to color_mode in Blender by script (Python) I use script to split render scene to smaller pieces (tiles) - by setting use_border = True. Then "tiles" are rendered, and after process finishing, I join "tiles" to final image. To make it easier, I use RGBA setting during render process. It works fine. But sometimes (for some input files) I get error: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: enum "RGBA" not found in ('BW', 'RGB')

I set value RGBA by command: bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.color_mode ='RGBA'

I get the error message during rendering demo file "Barcelona Pavillion" from this web page: www.blender.org/download/demo-files/

In Blender GUI I can change to RGBA mode for this file - even if I set border (by Ctrl+B) and render part of scene.

Do you have any idea how to set RGBA for this file by Python script ?

I use Blender version 2.79b

Runnable example:

import bpy

bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile (filepath="pavillon_barcelone_v1.2.blend", load_ui=False)

rndr = bpy.context.scene.render

rndr.use_border = True
rndr.use_crop_to_border = False

rndr.border_min_x = 0.3333
rndr.border_min_y = 0.3333
rndr.border_max_x = 0.6666
rndr.border_max_y = 0.6666
bpy.context.scene.cycles.device = 'CPU'

rndr.image_settings.color_mode ='RGBA'

result = bpy.ops.render.render (write_still=True)

Little mistake :-)
I haven't set output format. There was set JPEG and it has no transparency.

When I put this line (before RGBA assignment):

rndr.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'

script works.


about extruding vertex I saw this blender timelapse video on youtube and during the course,he was translating a vertex in z axis but vertexes around it randomly gravitates towards that particular vertex as well,I'm new into the blender,I've only saw similar feature in cinema4d but I couldn't find any clue on my own,if somebody knows how to achieve it please let me know,thanks]1

I think he's not extruding, just moving up, no? He must have activated the Proportional Editing option, and perhaps Random type?


Make a triangle with exact dimensions In other 3d modeling software I've used, it is very easy to create shapes with specific dimensions.

Here is a wedge with angles of 30 (at the smallest angle) 60 (at the middle sized angle) and 90 degrees, drawn in sketchup.

How would I model the same thing in blender? I can deform a cube to be a wedge, but the angle is not exactly 60 degrees

Create an arbitrary triangle:

Enable vertex Snap mode

Set the pivot point to 3D Cursor

Snap the 3D Cursor to one of the vertices ( I have choosen vertex (a) in the image below):

Select Vertex (c) and snap it to vertex (b)

R 60

Now the angle at vertex (a) has exactly 60°


Animated textures don't work in Blender viewport playback I am trying to animate in 2d. I do it with planes that have textures on them. I recently came up with the idea of having a plane with an image sequence of mouths because animating actual lip syncing by hand takes too long and isn't really necessary for what I'm trying to acomplish. However, when playing back the animation in textured viewport shading the animated texture stays at the last frame until the animation stops. I can use the arrow keys and it works fine as well as scrubbing through the timeline, just not when playing back the animation with alt+a. Can anyone help me with this problem?

It is a very, very, very, very well known limitation of the current system.

Viewport shaders are optimized for speed and performance for smooth playback and as responsive interaction as possible during animations.

Animated materials and textures require shader re-compilation, and this is a computationally expensive and resource heavy task, that is generally preformed on the CPU rather than the graphics card). Recompiling requires constant re-upload and sending data back and forth from the CPU to the GPU which is comparatively slow.

As such, they are pre-compiled before playback to avoid constant updates or refreshes, and during this process animations are suppressed to achieve faster updates and increased smoothness during playback.

It is a limitation that will likely be overcome in future 2.8 versions of Blender and the redesigned EEVEE viewport engine.

That being said, if you plan on rendering using the OpenGL renderer whether for your final output or animation previews, offline rendering will effectively update the animated materials and correctly render your movie.

If you only have a sequence of images or a movie strip as texture just turn on the option Auto Update in the image texture node


Keep getting .poll() Context is Incorrect Error even though I set the correct context I keep getting "Context is incorrect" errors even though I use an override.

Here is the .blend: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=50312

It has one of my models I am coding some Animation Managing Tools for.
I am trying to unlink multiple actions from an object.
For this I use a custom class object to refer to the actions.

I made a function that changes the active action for the object and then calls the function for pressing the X next to its name in the Dopesheet Editor "bpy.ops.action.unlink()".

For this I set the Execution Context to the Dopesheet Editor.

Now the strange thing is, that the first action gets unlinked but at the second it raises the error.

Debug Prints show that the area is set to the Dopesheet Editor.

Set action to None

Would simply use

if ob.animation_data:
    ob.animation_data.action = None

rather than

bpy.ops.action.unlink()

The former only needs reference to an object.

If you want to remove all animation from an object, actions, drivers and NLA then use

ob.animation_data_clear()

The error from question is caused by clearing the action on the object on first iteration and henceforth having no action to remove, it doesn't poll.


How to consistently texture one object with two materials and two colors? I want to texture one object with two different materials (independently of the mesh) like this for example:

I have one specular texture, one gloss/roughness texture, and one diffuse/albedo texture (the shading will be similar to this description).

If for example the red color should look like plastic and the red color should look like metal, I need to "link" the diffuse texture and the specular and roughness textures together, such that they have the edge between red and blue material exactly at the same point.
How can I do that?

you can mix shader to add two principled bsdf and use linear and noise like fac:


X-Axis Mirror mirrors the bones, but they appear on the same side So, my problem is this: I started building an armature for a character to do a walk cycle with Blender. Now with X-Axis Mirror ticked, the bones are mirrored but they appear on the same side of the mesh. Here's a picture of the problem:

So, I tried extruding the shoulder bone with Shift + E, and this is how it turned out. Blender automatically names these bones as _L and _R, why are they mirrored on the same side?

A more complete indication (than the comments):

Blender's convention for armature is mirroring along -X / +X axis.

-X is the right part of the character (on screen on the left when looking in front view)
+X is the left part (same principle)

To avoid complexity, it is good to rig your character using the same orientation and scale for both the armature and your character. And much preferably no rotation and no scale.


One part of the render layer glowing? Take a look at this pic. I want only the eyes to glow without the armor glowing too (The armor got a glossy shader).
How can I do that?

Use a pass index on the material for the eyes.

Enable material index on the layer passes.

Add a ID mask on the compositor and use the number of your material pass index to create a mask for the glow.

EDIT

To make the glow yellow you can add color to the mask and change the final mix node's mode to add:


Low poly mesh interrupting normal map in render I have been looking for a solution to my problem for 3 hours and unfortunately I can't find it anywhere, so I have to ask.

When I add a normal map with hi poly mesh, the edges of the object are obscured by the low poly mesh. It's looks like this:

Hi-poly mesh looks like this:

I also found this problem in a new open file:

hi poly mesh:

Any suggestions why the object does not display as it should?

-There are no duplicated objects below low poly mesh

-I tryed recalculate normals

-I have setup non color data

-I using Blender 2.79B

-Before beake i choose hi-poly mesh first

-It is already setup the same location for both objects

There is only so much a normal map can do, see for example this tutorial for an in depth explanation of how it works and what the limitations are. TLDW; changes to the silhouette cannot be represented in a normal map. For situations like your second example a normal map cannot give any close approximation of the original appearance. You could try vector displacement instead if you want.

That said, your first example should be doable with a normal map.

Make sure your low poly object is smooth shaded before baking.
Try adding a little geometry to sort of follow the contour of the high poly mesh (even simply beveling will help reduce terminator artifacts)


Volumetric gradient based on density? I am trying to make a material that is translucent at the surface and opaque in the middle.  How can I control the gradient?

I would like the gradient to correspond with the mesh; i.e. not simply radiate from the origin or something like that.  (If my model was a tree, the leaves and bark would be translucent while the branches and trunk, under a couple inches of bark, would be opaque.)

For reference, I am trying to replicate this glacial ice:

The absorption node seems to be what you are looking for.

You can also add surface shaders on top of the volume shaders, for example:


Image on Plane disappears at specific position I'm having a very strange situation here. I have an Image imported as a plane in 2.8, separated it and it's working fine, but the second I am getting the images close to where I want them to be they disappear and I am left with blank planes.

At first I thought it was due to the light, but using a light point outside of the model doesn't make this mess.

From image 2 to 3 I haven't changed anything at all, but the position of the planes on the X-axis and as long as I am not doing this inside of the corridor I have made this doesn't influent the texture at all, it really just happens in that corridor. Absolutely no clue, I am thankful for any thoughts on this one.

Hi was having a similar problem. I resolved my issue by: material properties > settings > blend mode then changing the blend mode to alpha clip
Hope this helps!


When bone moves across the y-axis, move bone2 across the x-axis I need to move the child across the x-axis when I move the parent across the y-axis. I think the Transformation Constraint is the one I need, and I couldn't figure out how to use it correctly. Here is my setup:

If possible, how do I get the side bones to move closer to the center bone when I move the center bone down the y-axis? And vise versa?

You'd have to use constraints but i haven't actually used those yet. It gives the same effect as paint weights on a model but for bones.


Render only particle system? I've got this particle system of snowflakes inside the volume of a cube:

But when I render, the cube itself covers up the particles:

How do I tell Blender to only render the particle system, not the physical cube itself? (Cycles)

To avoid the emitter to be rendered, in the particles panel, go to the 'render' section and uncheck 'emitter':


How to achieve a realistic material for an operative phone screen? I'm trying to recreate an electronic device where the screen is ON - like this:

I can easily achieve the off version, just a glossy sharp black material, but as regards the "on" version, displaying an image that looks like it is behind a pane of glass and "emitting" a texture, so to speak, I have no idea.

Here's an alternative method that deals with :

Parallax (where the emissive part of the screen is behind the 'glass' surface
Surface reflections
Pixellation of the image
Scattering of the image into the 'glass'
Dimming due to viewing angle
Surface scratches

First to the parallax. This is the effect where the screen image moves in relation to the surface due to the viewing angle - due to being set behind the actual surface. This could be modelled by placing an additional (glass) surface in front of the 'emissive' surface but can actually be faked using vector maths similar to https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/84618/29586.

The Cross Product is used to generate a vector in the required direction of displacement of the image and the Dot Product is used to calculate the amount of displacement to apply. Adjusting the Emitter Depth value node controls the effective depth below the surface.

Next for the surface reflections - this is easy to achieve with a basic Fresnel arrangement to mix a Glossy shader with a small amount of roughness to slightly spread the reflections.

To make the image appear pixellated we can use the Modulo function to convert the input coordinates into discrete "steps". Some additional maths can detect when the point in the texture is close to the edge of one of these 'pixels' and 'black' it out so as to produce a dark border around each pixel.

The bright image projected onto the back of the glass may produce some scattering or 'glow' below the surface, spread out by adding some Noise to displace the coordinates.

This uses the same 'pixellation' as for the main image (without the black border as it's an unnecessary complication since the result will be blurred anyway). The 'blurred' image will be in the 'correct' place on the screen rather than being offset to simulate the light being projected towards the screen causing a glow or scatter due to its high 'straight-on' intensity. Keep the intensity quite low so the effect is quite subtle.

Many screen technologies have limitations in the viewing angle where the image will become distorted or fade out at shallow angles. More Vector Maths can be used to achieve this by using the Dot Product to compare the Normal with the Incoming ray and using a Color Ramp to allow this to be tuned to affect the visibility as the angle changes.

Finally, we can add some surface scratches which helps to bring out the parallax effect (as the emissive image will move in relation to the scratches). The surface scratches control the mixing in of a Glossy shader with a high roughness. This will look light when illuminated and will also block the emission to look darker the the scratches are obscuring the content on the screen (just like real scratches).

Bringing this all together produces the following material :

The cyan nodes indicate parameters you can adjust - eg, the 'depth' below the surface of the emissive screen, the pixellation factor, the brightness of the emission and the glow. Also, you can adjust the color ramp to change the rate and angle of the falloff due to viewing angle.

And the final result :

Blend file included :  (you'll need to add your own HDR for the environment)

Here's an example of a phone screen (screengrab from an iPhone) with a Bevel added to the edges of the mesh (which actually interacts with the parallax quite well when the image is close to the edge). (click to see at full resolution)


Plane is visible despite blend mode set to alpha blend I'm rendering in EEVEE, the material settings for the leaves are in alpha blend for the blend mode, and I've had this issue with my leaves. In the light the plane is still visible almost like a reflection. Alpha clip has no issues but the look is choppy so that wasn't a preferred option for me.

I'm unsure how to fix this issue.
I have volumetric scatter on in the world settings, shader is a diffuse, transparent and mix as the principled shader had the same results.

Is this just an issue with EEVEE or something else?

So I found the issue had to do with Volumetric lighting in the render properties. I had changed the light clamping to 0.050 and now the planes are no longer visible like the picture. The annoying thing is changes in the light or volumetric scatter setup has me needing to adjust the clamp to lower numbers. I decided to use cycles instead, longer render times but this issue is no longer present.


Adding special expressions in blender I have to add special effects once the game is completed.
Like medal popping out or confetti when the winner is declared.
The game is simple wrestling game in which two players are controlled using keys on keyboard.
Do I need to use python script for medal popping effect or confetti once the winner is declared ?

If yes,How can I achieve this?

Popping medal:

activate an edit actuator in Add Object mode


Cloth not touching surface i'm trying to get a tablecloth on a table but it kind of stays above without touching, how can i fix that please ?

Change the collision distance. There are distance settings in the Cloth, and also in the collision object. The total distance will be the two combined. Try adjusting both.


Blender resizing my image in half I have a problem. I'm trying to render an image and the resolution is 500x280. After I render the image and save it, for some reason the image gets resized to 250x140. I'm unsure why it happends.

Check Render Resolution Percentage

Factory settings have a percentage of the render size set to 50%, that means the to the values in the upper fields , a multiplyer of 0.50 units will be applied.

This feature it's very handy when it comes to build a quick preview keeping the final output proportions.

I you would like to render in full resolution just enter 100% as percentage.

Note: beware that the field accepts values also above 100. Count wisely the number of zeros.


Modelling Advice Using Boolean I spotted a tutorial on YT, modelling a keyboard Synthesizer. The Instructor (which actually says in the beginning is a novice blender user)is constantly using Boolean Operation to cut into the main shape, saying that Ngons wont matter, and if using another method loop cuts to make quads would take for ever. So would it be any benefit of me watching this tutorial or would it lead me astray from correct 3D modelling approach? Or are the Boolean cuts safe to use as long as there is no subdivision surface modifier applied to the mesh?

Thank you.

There is a great exercise that I came across from a YouTube tutorial by Josh Grambrell who demonstrates a great way to work with Booleans in a non-destructive workflow.
link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdQwmfPyuw0
But more importantly to answer your question a little closer, the youtuber gets his reference from an Artstation blog post by Frank Oczur Jr. who talks about different workflows using including subdivision modelling exercises. I'll post he link as well.
https://www.artstation.com/frankpolygon/blog/M7w7/sub-d-hard-surface-modeling-v-block-exercise-amp-tutorial
I won't try explain it myself as I'll probably butcher their work but both are really good reads and a video to watch which might help answer your question.
Hope this helps


Animation Nodes: Allign object to direction of vector path/Line path Made some random vector going in either x or y direction
 plus constant z increments
Made it pass through a loop and used a 'start/end/step' line generator to make location for the steps

how can i get the rotation between each vector to rotate the steps along the path

Red dots are the main turning point vectors & white dots are the steps

We will get this info by using the atan2() math function. We will use the x and y coordinates of your line starts and end.

In the loop where you initialize your line meshes, add a new parameter of type "Euler List". Disable the input and enable the output. Add a "Reassign" node on the right of your loop.

On the right, set this up :

So, we are getting the y Delta between the two points, then the x Delta. By using arctan2 we can get the angle on the x,y plane in radians.

We combine this angle into an Euler object with an equivalent rotation around Z axis, and add 90 degrees to it so the steps face the right direction.

We then fill a list with the same number of elements as we have steps. We then combine it with the previous list so that each vertex, and consequently each step, is associated with an angle.

Finally change your setup to accept the euler rotations. Don't forget to actually activate the rotations in the "Object Transforms Output" node.

Result (with a solidify modifier) :


Properties Dialog Box I am trying to add a button on the tool panel for material which should open the material editor in a dialog box, which should be resizeable.

I can do the button but am having trouble creating the dialog box.

I tried to Do this by making duplicate window and dislplaying the properties editor in full screen but it takes up the whole screen.

I can make simple scripts in blender but don' know how to this.

Any help is much apreciated.

import bpy
from bpy.types import Header

bpy.ops.wm.window_duplicate()
bpy.ops.screen.screen_full_area()
bpy.context.area.type='PROPERTIES'

This is where terminology is important (area vs. window). Your current Blender window is full screen, so duplicating that window results in another full screen window. You might have better success if you try the bpy.ops.screen.area_dupli() operator and duplicate the area that contains the existing Properties Editor in your layout. The only caveat is that you need to first set that as your active area.


Can I Import a Photo? Ok, so can I import a photo from my computer onto a canvas? I have a picture that I want to kind of trace over for the outline of a character in an animation. Am I able to import it so that I can do so?

You can download the add on "import image as plane"

then you can add a plane image with shift + a:

then you will have to choose your image and it will import it as a plane, turn material below the 3D viewport to see your image:

Another way is to use background image (press N to open the right panel on the 3D viewport) you will see your background image only with the orthographic view (hotkey 5) and front side or top view (depending what your choice on the background image panel):

Here the slider with the 0.1 and 2.4 value are for the lateral an vertical position.


What is the setting that changes wire frame thickness? Hi definition display makes my wire frame very very thin, is there a setting in blender that increases the visibility for wire frame?

In settings under system there is an option called "Virtual Pixel Mode".  Setting this to Double will increase the line width.  It also increases the size of the the UI elements, but on a high DPI display that's probably not a bad thing.


Loop cut not cutting correctly I'm trying to use a loop cut so that I can extrude a specific part of my mesh.
Problem is: When I use loop cut, it doesn't go all the way trough, show in the image.

How can I fix this?
Thanks in advance

You must have inner faces. Delete them, otherwise Blender doesn't know where to extend the loop cut.


How to add curvy segments to objects? Assume the following model is the beginning of a car-like thing.

Now we want to begin adding the windows and roof. I want them to form a nice smooth curve on the edges, and came up with the following solution:

I create a bezier curve, align it as good as i can with the help of orthographic camera. then i extruded it to get the following:

After that I convert the curve to a mesh, join it with the car mesh and run "merge vertices by distance" to join the "alignment points". This looks so messy and it actually is. Now i have much n-gons, and it only gets a bigger mess when i add the missing faces.

How can I do such things in a better way? What is best practice here?

The best practice is to take the car you need to model 1 part at the time. If you notice the chasis is broken down into real life individual pieces. The door, the lights, everything is made out of pieces. Also, use references. Then just place objects closer together. No one looks for seams (that are not natural part) of the car's modeling.


How to add a single additional edge loop without a triangle I'm trying to add some geometry so that there is an additional face loop/edge, such as the example on the right (6 edges on bottom, 7 on top).  However, this introduces a triangle.  Is there a way to do this with quads, or with a triangle that doesn't interfere somehow? The middle example adds two additional edges (6 on bottom, 8 on top), but keeps the face loops functional.

If it is only possible to do with a triangle, is there a better method to maintain better face/edge loops and subsurf?

To change the flow its pretty straightforward. There are 3 methods that I use but here is the most simple:

Select the path of edges you want the flow to follow:

Once you have the path just bevel it (ctrl b).


Facial / body topology of this hunchbacked cartoon model? I have tried multiple times to do this but I am having a hard time getting it right.  I have a cartoon mummy that I want to model for use in a game using this as a reference:

As you can see the model itself is fairly simple.  However, I am having trouble figuring out how I would go about modeling the thing without the topology getting out of control.

There are a couple of things about this model that make it difficult to make:

It has a hunchback.  This means that the traditional "start with the face, then work your way back to the neck" style of facial modelling doesn't work effectively.
It has minimal facial features, and only one eye.  This means that the topology is often "irregular" in that half of the face is topologically different than the other half.
The clothes - how the heck do I add these in?  One method is to use the knife tool to "cut" the mummy robes out and extrude them on normals, but this would lead to terrible topology.

Can anyone give me any pointers?

Unfortunately, this site does not allow for me to give you specific tutorial-like instructions, but I will try my best to give tips and address some of the problems that will pop up.

Okay, for one, you are incorrect when you say

  This means that the traditional "start with the face, then work your way back to the neck" style of facial modelling doesn't work effectively.

starting on the head will work effectively, it just needs to be adapted to fit your needs. The mesh primitive you'll need is the cube.

Subdivide it twice in edit mode with "smoothness" turned up to 1.00.

I don't know why my image is skewed, but that's (almost)what it will look like.

You can use "Import images as planes" addon to put in your concept art.

By modelling the head separate from the body, all you will have to worry about is connections. Snap to vertex will be optimal for joining them.

another of your favorite tools, especially on joints and such, will be Ctrl + V > smooth vertex. this gets rid of nasty sharp angles.

Remember that when you model limbs, you will want to extrude the selected faces all the way to the end, and afterwards add loopcuts for detail.

The hands will be the hardest, just make sure to turn proportional editing to "Connected", to avoid screwing up the other fingers.

I used a mirror modifier for all of the modelling until the end when I applied the modifier and extruded an eye.

I wasn't trying to do the work for you!! but in questions like this, unless you state specific problems you run into, it's very hard to answer without going through it yourself. Heres the base-mesh I made if you want it.

Honestly, kudos for trying, but modelling your wrappings as part of the mesh is a no-go. You can either use brasshats idea of extruding a plane, or you can sculpt them on using Clay strips, Crease, and Flatten brushes. In order to do these wraps, you have several practical options.

Heres the best way i was able to find while making wraps.
Turn on face snapping (Shift+Tab).

Left click on the model to place the cursor there, now add a plane. delete all but one of its edges. you will now need to extrude the remaining edge around the head in the place that you want the wrap to be. Don't worry if it looks like crap and won't stay on the outside of the mesh right now! We're gonna fix it!

The modifier stack you'll be creating today will look like this.

The subdivision mod adds more vertexes for the others to work with. The Shirkwrap mods target is set to the mummy, and causes the wraps to follow it closer, just like ceram-wrap in the microwave. Lastly, the solidify modifier adds thickness to the wraps.

You can now go back into edit mode to fix problems. Any parts where the mummies head is poking through can be fixed by adding a loopcut Ctrl+R.

Now you are ready to add more wraps. repeat the process with varying thickness on the solidify in order to swaddle your mummy.


Is it possible to decrease the face count dramatically so I can continue working without crashing? I have an issue for the amount of faces I have, I have made a decent looking character with blender (just the head) so far. However, I finally get to the step where I need to add textures and I mark my seams and unwrap, my whole computer freezes and blender crashes. I have ~393, 000 faces.

I would really like to keep my work so far, instead of redoing it for the 4th time, is there any way I could keep my beautiful work of detail and awesomeness but decrease my faces.. but still keep my work, and have it still look good when I render it in Blender Render?

This is how it happened, I have a little issue with hitting the subdivide button alot, not the one in multi-resolution but the other one. And that's because I love detail.

Here is an image of the issue..

I would really like to add hair without the lag too~ :(

Another option is to set the "Display Type" to "wire" (in the "Object" tab)

Might not be exactly what you want, especially if you're texturing, but thought it would be good to mention it here... I've realized, looking back, that my work would have often been WAY easier if I had remembered the "wire" option, or, even better, the "box" option, on some of my projects... just thought I'd mention that.


No sound after export blender game in .exe? How to export with sound? How to export blender game in .exe with game sound? I created a basic game but it exported with no sound.

Blender does not bake any audio into the executable, it just stores the path to the files.

To ship the game with audio, put the audio files into the same folder as your .blend file (or a subfolder) before you load them into your game and when you open them in Blender make sure that 'Relative Path' is checked.
After exporting the game, just copy all audio files to the folder of the .exe (or a subfolder).


Can the clone brush sample surfaces facing away from the camera? I am touching up some textures on a high poly mesh from a 3D scanned truck.  The truck tire on the left side is missing color information, therefore I would like to clone the color information from the right side tire.

The problem is when I start painting onto the new tire, it doesn't sample the surface of the other side of the truck. Rather, it samples the same side of the truck simply because it's what you see in the viewport.

Is there a way to make the clone brush sample from the other side of a mesh, even when the camera isn't pointing directly at it?

If not, can anyone recommend a good workaround? I thought about doing a screen capture of the colored tire from a straight angle, then using that image to paint onto the other tire, but that seems kind of hacky.  I also thought about duplicating the colored tire and boolean-ing it in place of the non-colored tire. I also considered re-baking the uv-map and then taking it into GIMP/photoshop, but this is very arduous since the UV map from the scan is extremely arbitrary, not to mention it's a .OBJ with like 600k triangles.

Thanks in advance for any feedback you guys can give me!

If you want to clone from a surface directly behind the brush, then no, this isn't supported.

However, if its slightly offset - you can do something like this using hidden faces.

disable back-face culling in the project paint options panel.
enable face-masking in the header (MKey)
select faces on the clone source, then Hide with HKey.
select faces to paint onto(note that border select works well in both cases).
paint...

Another option would be to duplicate the geometry in editmode and move it so it can be used as a clone-source, though this is isn't very convenient.


unknown problem with my file, not possible to 3dprint in DXF or STL So, i need to make a 3d print of my project in blender, but they're is some kind of problem in my file that i don't understand, i asked somebody in a 3d printing store in my city but even him could not help me.
i'm just beginning with the program so maybe i did something wrong creating the object, and i know nothing about 3d printing aha..
i've been told that i have holes in my mesh but i can not find any, or maybe doing it wrong
Can somebody have a check ?

EDIT

Thankyou Carlo, now i understand the significance of manifold and watertight.

Unfortunately, i did not manage to fix the problem... I try a lot of different ways to fix it but did not get lucky.
and i don't have the version 2.80 blender to use the new tool.
i have tried many tied; delete and reconstruct some part and reconnect in many ways..

Not watertight mesh

One thing that may prevent a mesh from being printed, as you already pointed out, is the presence of "holes", which sholud be intended as parts of the mesh that create a discontinuity in the surface.

If you run the Select Boundary loop operator on the mesh:

You'll see that two main edge loops are not connected:

All the rideged surface on the top it's on its own. Being close to each other is not sufficient, you must join the two edgeloops.

A quick and dirty workaround could be to use the new Voxel Remesher tool to fix all the topology issues.

With a low cell size (something like 0.003 for example) you should be able to get an almost identical mesh.


When I add a subdivision modifier and smooth my model I get artifacts. Modeling a human head. Blender 2.80 I'm new to the Blender forum and 3D modeling in general. I am using Blender 2.80 (2019-05-03). I have followed a tutorial in order to model a head. When I add a subdivision modifier and smoothing I get these strange artifacts (see pics). Has anyone seen this and would you have any idea what's happening and how to fix it and avoid it in the future? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Thank you so much!

Blend file: HeadTutorial.blend Thanks again!

moonboots answered my question correctly. Shift + N is the "Make Normals Consistent" shortcut.

Blender 2.80 Normals documentation: Normals

Here is the "fixed" model after implementing the fix:

Thanks for the help, @moonbots!


"Shadow" Option isnt showing in the Lightning Settings Im using the latest Blender version and if I wanna configure my shadow options it doesnt show where its supposed to be as you can see in the picture. I remember thats its been working in the past so Im pretty sure I just did something to hide it but I cant figure out what it is. Id appreciate help a lot!

If you click on Light (in the Object Data Properties), you can then uncheck the Cast Shadow box. Alternatively you could select an individual object, go to Object properties, click on Visibility and uncheck the Shadow box. All this applies to Cycles, found in Render Properties > Render Engine.

If you set the Render Engine to EEVEE in the Render Properties, then you can click on Shadows a bit below it. Also then there is a Shadow section in the Object Data Properties if you select a light.

All these settings can be found in the Properties window.

EDIT: (as promised in comments)

If light goes down, shadow becomes longer:


How to create a script that simulates the blinking terminal cursor? I try to create a script that simulates the blinking of terminal cursor

layout.prop(text,'character')
if text.character
    layout.prop(text,'source_character')

def uptext(text):
if text.character > 0:
blinking = [" ",text.source_character]
character2 = random.choice(blinking)
character3 = character2

text.body = character3

but the blinking is very fast, I would like to know how to improve and to correct

consider .... pseudo code ...

    n = 1 // for slower use 2
    fps = 24 //frames per second .. change to suit you
    timeperiod = n * fps
    if (frame % timeperiod) > (.5 * timeperiod):
       then show cursor
       else do not show cursor
// frame is the current frame provided by Blender
// fps is the actual frames per second intended for final render

Please inspect and correct the pseudo code above


Pros and Cons of different-geometry variants of a character model I'm a graphics programmer but I like to dabble in modelling just to better understand how artists use the tools. For the first time, I've modelled and rigged a human character. So far I've modelled them in a SFW way, lacking genitalia, but I'd also like to use the model to render realistic nudes. How can I get both uses from my character? Ideally I'd like to be able to use the same pose on both variants.

I can think of a few options, but they all have pros and cons.

Model the genitals, then use a shape key to flatten them into the mesh. This seems most flexible, but my SFW version will have bad topology in that area because you can't change topology with shape keys.
Have the genitals as a separate object. This keeps the SFW version clean (pun intentional), but the realistic version will have intersecting geometry. Maybe that's not hard to handle if it's parented to the rig well.
Just save the two versions in different files. Then when I want to put them into a scene, I can link whichever version I want and switch between them. It seems like doing it this way I wouldn't be able to make any further changes (e.g. to fix up rigging problems that show up when I pose the character) because I couldn't make the exact same change in both files. This is a big issue for me because I'm not confident I've done a good job of the modelling and rigging.

Is there an option I've missed, or have I misunderstood one of the options? Maybe some pros or cons are much smaller than I've described and one of the options is clearly better to an experienced artist.

To answer comments: it's not an incredibly realistic model because I'm just not that good, but I'm modelling for offline rendering with a particle system for hair so I'm not worrying about polygon count. Baking the shape into a normal or displacement map might be fine for a female character but male genitals have more effect on the silhouette. I'm not really thinking of animations - more stills of static poses - but I'd like to keep open what I can try out as I go.

I know that workflows aren't really designed for going backwards and I have to commit to the polygons at some point, but I do keep having to go back when I find errors so I'd like to minimise that pain even if it limits me in other ways.

Regarding point 2.

It helps to know what is the center of focus and pick your battles.  More close view inspection may require more finesse.
Intersecting geometry is not necessarily an issue.  If you do not create excessive geometry.
If the area is not subject to intense scrutiny then no one will observe the minimized discontinuity of the clip-on curls .. I mean ummm ...embellishment.
Clearly game development would use textures and normal maps to simulate geometry and the audience does not protest very much


How to replace object with keeping it dimmensions / how to change dimension of an object to scale value I found that post intressting:
Is there any way to replace an object?
But I wonder if if it is possible to keep the size? (not scale) of exchanged objects? Or maybe change dimmensions to scale (reset dimmensions to 1x1x1 value and keep sizing by changing scale with simple math - moving value to scale field). Than my problem will be solved, but I have no idea how to do it. Anyone could help?
What I really need:
Exemple: I imported 1000 objects (as cylinders) that represents trees - height of a cylinder is a height of a tree, and XY is the crown diameter. I'd like to exchange these cylinders to a LowPoly tree model keeping XY-Z sizes. I know it may strech my input tree a little but I can accept it...
Is there a way to do that? Will be glad for suggestion.

My best try is 3 steps.
Replacing a cube with Suzanne, keeping exact dimensions.

Link Object Data (Ctrl + L > Object Data)
Copy dimensions of the Cube to one Suzanne (it gets slightly distorted)
Select all other monkeys, and copy object scale to them (RMB > Copy all to selected)

Linking Object Data, nothing new here.

Copy exact dimensions from Cube to Suzanne. And then copy the scale to the rest.


How to copy extrude/bevel data across multiple curve objects? I have imported 100 SVG objects (curves), these objects all need to have the exact extrude and bevel amounts.

I am not able to use CNTRL + L to link object data or text data without changing the actual object.

Does anyone know a quicker way to do this to all my objects?

Perhaps a python script (or any other way that is quicker than manually doing this)?

I want to thank @Carlo for this handy tip.

This can be used in many different areas of Blender (I will post more scenarios when I have time).

Shift Select all the objects you want to change.
With the last object selected make sure you hold down ALT and change the properties. This should affect all the objects you had selected.


python duplicate_move and snap_selected_to_cursor fails; context is incorrect I'm new to blender and python.  I thought I'd duplicate a cube I have at (-1, 0, 0 ) and snap it to my 3d cursor, which is at world origin.  Using the scripting view, I created commands found from the console
object = bpy.data.objects["MyCube"]
object.select_set(True)
selectedObject = bpy.context.selected_objects
print( "selectedObject = " + str(selectedObject))

bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY', center='MEDIAN')

bpy.ops.object.duplicate_move(OBJECT_OT_duplicate={"linked":False, "mode":'TRANSLATION'}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0, 0, 0), "orient_type":'GLOBAL', "orient_matrix":((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), "orient_matrix_type":'GLOBAL', "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "mirror":True, "use_proportional_edit":False, "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "use_proportional_connected":False, "use_proportional_projected":False, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "cursor_transform":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False, "use_accurate":False, "use_automerge_and_split":False})

context = bpy.context.area.type
print("Area Type = " + str(context))

bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor(use_offset=False)

which outputs:
selectedObject = [bpy.data.objects['MyCube']]
Area Type = TEXT_EDITOR
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\BlenderWork\Projects\TestOrWork\Cube20.blend\Text", line 38, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.91\2.91\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 132, in __call__
    ret = _op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor.poll() failed, context is incorrect

I'm assuming that this is happening because my area type is TEXT_EDITOR, which is where my script is running, NOT the 3dview.
Apparently more is needed then simply 'doing stuff' in the 3dview and copy/pasting commands into a script.
How do I fix this?  Thanks in advance

Figured it out - I needed to add
bpy.context.area.type = 'VIEW_3D'
to switch from the text editor to the 3dview, before snap_selected_to_cursor.


Select Box in 3d View edit mode brings up the move tool, not a select box Suddenly, when I click on the Select Box Tool in 3D Viewpoint with and item selected and in Edit mode, the Move tool (3 colored gimbal circles)comes up instead. In fact, it is happening in every variation of the select tool, so that I cannot select aything.

This can happen when you enable Object Gizmos in your viewport.

The gizmos are then visible even without selecting any transform tool.


Bump/normal/displacement maps with 3d photo my question is this, can I generate a displacement map from a 3d image, I have a 3d photo, or 2d stereo pair photos, so I've Not found any softwares or method to create a bump specular diplacement maps.

Can You help me ?
thanks

Looks like there's a program called Photosculpt that does what you want. Here's a link to their site. And here's a Youtube video of their software in action. There's a free trial and several price points, the cheapest of which is 139 Euros for an individual license.

Basically, you give it two photos of the same thing from slightly different angles and it spits out actual geometry as well as a normal map.


Turning off anti-aliasing: inconsistency between 'info' window and valid python commands I want to render an image without anti-aliasing.
Using the UI, I select the Workbench engine.
Then, under Sampling, I set Render to No Anti-Aliasing.

This displays the following commands in the info window:

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_WORKBENCH'
bpy.context.scene.render_aa = 'OFF'

When I try the same commands in the console, or in a stand-alone script, I get the following error:

AttributeError: 'Scene' object has no attribute 'render_aa'

Why is the info window lying to me?

Further, how can I turn off anti-aliasing in the Workbench engine with python?

The anti-aliasing for the Workbench engine can be turned off through:

bpy.context.scene.display.render_aa = 'OFF'

The API manual is very helpful for cases where the Python command is unclear. The render_aa property is part of the class bpy.types.SceneDisplay. Searching for this type shows that bpy.context.scene contains a reference to an object of that type.

The reason why the command is displayed incorrectly seems related to T69803. The Python tooltips are incomplete for PropertyGroups because RNA_path_full_property_py_ex()(rna_access.c) doesn't return a full path. This is also the reason why you see Python tooltips with missing parts like bpy.data.scenes["Scene"] ... render_aa for the Render anti-aliasing property in the UI.

TL;DR It's a bug.


How to set a given Island margin for UV? I am building assets in blender for use in UE4.

For UV maps and light maps I need to have 2 texels spacing around each island (i.e. 4 texels minimum between islands). To calculate what spacing I need in 0-1 space I use the formula 1/[lightmap size]*2 (e.g. 1/64*2 = 0.032 for a 64x64 map) to convert.

At first I naively plugged this value into the "Margin" parameter of the Unwrap function but this gave me a much too small margin in 0-1 space. Actually, A value of 1 (the maximum) for "Margin"  translates into a margin of 0.111 in 0-1 space. Hmm.

2 questions:

What is the math behind the "Margin" parameter of the Unwrap function?
What is the process to get a margin of a given number of texels (besides trial and error which is time consuming)?

From my tests, CTRL + P works fine and gives the correct pixel separation where the Lightmap pack actually seems incorrect.

When using the Lightmap pack it seems that the separation is not based on pixels where packing it or setting it in the UV unwrap setting it seems correct to me.

Regards,
Kyle


How to create a sphere with an outer layer of removable pieces? I'm creating a video game which requires an inner sphere ("the core") and an outer sphere. The core is a solid icosphere, but the outer core must be made of individual triangular prisms that fit tightly to the core and each other. During the course of gameplay, the pieces of the outer core are removed one by one until the core is revealed.
After making my core, I tried to make a single triangular prism piece and to use it to construct my outer sphere, but I can't get the pieces to fit together right (see below).

I came to realize that the triangles are not all the same, so I've gone back to blender and extruded and then push/pulled all of my vertices to start an outer layer.

My question is: how can I easily connect all of these dots, create faces for each individual triangular prism (such that the normals are facing outward for each individual prism), and break them apart into individual objects so that I can save an outer sphere and import it into my game? And how can I do this with as little headache as possible?

You could create your icosphere, duplicate it with ShiftD, select one of the two, go in Edit mode, select all and split the faces (Mesh > Split > Faces by Edges):

Then extrude with E, press Enter right away, and scale up with Transform Pivot Point > Median Point selected:

Now you have your two objects, the core and the outer sphere. You can separate each piece of the outer sphere with P > By Loose Parts:

Each of these separate pieces will have the same origin, which I guess will help to position them correctly in the 3D space of your game.


How to render lightning in Cycles How can you render a lightning bolt using Cycles?

To create your lighting start with a mesh, you will need to add thickness to it, so apply a skin modifier, enter edit mode, and use CtrlA to scale the "thickness" of you mesh until your satisfied with you lighting.
There are now to approaches, the not so great looking and very very slow  material only approach, or the materials and composting approach which will go much faster and look way better
Material Only
Approach
Lighting lights up the whole sky, since what it is in essence doing, is illuminating dust and water/mist in the atmosphere with its very intense glow. In this solution we will replicate that by using volumemetric rendering. For this we will need two materials, lightning and atmosphere
lightning materal
For the lighting, we will only need a simple two node shader:

The emission will create a very bright white mesh, and it will have a blue cast on surrounding objects.
Atmosphere material
The atmosphere will have a "haze", in order to do this, we need to give the world a volume by adding two nodes, volume scatter and volume absorption. The volume scatter will cause the light to spread inside the world, while the volume absorption will cause the light to fade, stopping our lighting for illuminating the entire atmosphere. Balancing the density of the volume scatter & volume absorption is the key too a good result. Having the volume scatter be two dense will cause the lighting to white out the sky, while having the absorption two dense will cause the lighting glow to all but disappear. The ratio between them controls the spread of the lighting glow.

Result
Rendered at 50,000 samples, taking 50 minutes

Approach Downsides
Renders will appear noisy even at sample counts as high as 50,000, and render times can take hours. it also just doesn't look that good.
Material & Compositing
Approach
Because of the incredibly time consuming render times of the previous approach, and the difficulty of fine tuning, this in many ways is the superior approach. Instead of using volume, we will try to fake the light spreading by using blue nodes in the compositor.
The lightning material will stay the same as above, but this time we won't modify the world material at all. Instead we will go into the compositor to add the glow
Scene setup
Set the lightnings material index to 1, instead of 0.

Next check the Object Index pass in the Scene properties

Node setup

I used the Object index here, since its values were  1 - 0 vs the render had values of several thousand for the whites, since the lightning was set to realistic brightness levels. I then used curves to raise the brightness to acquire more glow. I then used the glare node to blur (thanks, gandalf3 for the tip), which gives the best blur, to add the glow that occurs in the lens. Atmosphere can also be a factor, but not in this case. Finally I colorized it by raising the blue channel using the curves, as well as the green channel (to a lesser extent).
Result
Rendered at 1 samples, taking 0.9 minutes (including calculating the compsiting)

Approach Downsides
The main issue with this is that the lighting will still appear as a white line to surrounding object in the scene.. this answer details workarounds for that issue, but be aware that this may complicate the scene
Bonus: Awsome lightning gif by gandalf3 (creating using the compositing technique)

Bonus #2: I rendered the volumetric lightning at One Million Samples, taking 15 hours, 14 min, and 26.9 Seconds... and it still has some noticeable noise:


Position of eyes and hair goes wrong after exporting I'm making a model in Blender and try to export it as collada file. This step goes well, but there are problems with the hair, eyes and eyebrows locations. As you see in the picture above the hair, eyes and eyebrows are positioned lower than what they are positioned pre-export.

I've attached the eyes, eyebrows and hair to the head bone and they move well when animating the model. It only happens after I export it. I don't know whether it's wrong to attach them to the top bone.

before exporting you need to set their world orgin to the same as the body orgin.

1)select the body
2)shift + s "cursor to selection"
3)select one of the other meshes(hair or eyes  or whatever order is not important)
4)shift + ctrl + alt + c(yes a crazy hot key) then select "origin to 3d cursor"
4a) you can alternatively just press space and do a search for "origin" and find it on the list
after that re-export your model...if that does not work, try to apply location, rotation, and scale...by selecting each object and using ctrl+a

I hope that helps, if not...just update here what the outcome was. It will help better diagnose the problem.


vertices tracking: movie clip editor Background:

I've a *.png sequence previously rendered: a moving computer
Now I wanna add the video to the monitor, so need to track the image sequence.
The *.blend file is the same one I rendered before but I don't want
to render the whole scene one more time.

How to use vertices groups previously created (monitor) as tracking points?

Any other solution to solve this job?

Since you already have the screen you just need to add a texture to it.

Select the face(s) that make the computer screen and press ShiftD to make a duplicate. separate as a new object (Press P ->separate selection).

On the new object enter edit mode
UV unwrap it.
Create an emitter material that uses the video as texture an uses UV coordinates for the mapping.

Move the object to a new layer and create new render layer that contains only the layer with the screen object.

On the compositor import the image sequence you pre-rendered and use an alpha over node to superimpose the render layers that contain the screen and the .PNG sequence as background.

Other option (not necesarily easier or as precise) would be to track the 4 edges of the screen on the videoclip editor and create a plane track

see: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/38332/1853  and Unable to "Create Plane Track"


find weight painting source I have a complex skeleton and a mesh bound together via weight painting.

I see a deformation on a vertex I don't want, but I am unable to find from which bone the deformation is.

Is there a way to find the bone (this the vertex group) involved in the deformation?
I thought I could use normalization to remove all assignation but I am not very familiar with it in Blender, could it do the trick? I there a better way?

Thanks a lot

Sometimes this kind of thing is hard to find. That can be due to a too big influence of one of the groups or a too low... or also because the vertex (or vertices) are not in the group.

To check that, you can go to edit mode, select one of the vertices involved in the problem and have a look at the panel on the right :

This panel allows you to change the values so that you can understand the way the weights need to be changed.

Note that you can select several vertices, but only the weights of the active one are given. But in this case, the panel allows to copy the weights of the active vertex to the selected ones.

About normalization : in my experience, yes this can be important to keep it. If you don't you may have unwanted results.
But normalization won't remove 'all assignation'. Normalization is a calculation so that the sum of the vertex weights is 1.

When you paint, you may have weights values like bone1 = 1 and bone2 = 0.6.
Normalization will do so bone1 = 1 / (1 + 0.6) and bone2 = 0.6 / (1 + 0.6) so that bone1 + bone2 = 1.


Blender (Cycles) Manual DOF Is is possible to increase the depth of field in cycles while keeping the same blur size? I know this is not physically correct, but in some renders this would be useful. Here is a demonstration of what I am looking for:
Normal Focus:

What I'm trying to achieve (New part shaded green):

Is this possible (Maybe with the compositor)? If so, how? Any help is appreciated.
An example for what this would be used for would be the following:
I have a somewhat lengthy main object that I want in focus. The other background objects are moderately close to the main object, but I want them to be blurred. If you increase the DOF blur to ensure the background objects aren't in focus, your main object is only partially in focus. The Depth of focus is too shallow to fit your main object. Now if you change to a wide DOF, the background objects would still be relatively clear which is not what you want. The solution is what I am describing; You would set a very shallow DOF, initially, so that the background is well out of focus, and then you would increase just the focus area to cover the main object but keep the blur amount the same.

One way to do this:

Set the depth of field to your liking and keep the focus on the object you want sharp, even if adjacent objects on the same focal plane look sharp.
Separate the object in focus in one layer and the rest a different layer.
Assign the layers to different render layers.
On the compositor choose the render layer with the objects you want to defocus, and add a blur node.
Mix the two layers back together.

If you want a bit finer control, use a defocus node instead of blur and control the blur using the Z information.

EDIT

Here's another solution to make "impossible" Depth of Field. Using a color ramp to modify the Z pass on a defocus node.This way you have absolute control on what goes in focus and how blury it gets!

The blend file is here:


Apply subdivision surface modifier to one axis only (round edges) I have a mesh in Blender cut such that when I apply subdivision surface modifier, it will become round in the places I want it to. Here's the mesh created by using loop cuts on a basic cube:

Here's what it looks like when I do apply the subdivision surface modifier:

Predictably, the subdivision is applied in all "axes" (for a lack of a better term, this is not exactly about axes). I want to ideally see the subdivision to happen only around the loop of faces which make up the "walls" of the mesh - those intersected by the X and Y axes in the picture. Top top and bottom faces should stay flat except for their corners which should become round copying the roundness that has come about from subdividing the faces.
In a picture, I want this:

I achieved this by loop cutting the mesh along the band of faces which constitute the "walls" of it and setting the factor to .99 and -.99 on the two loop cuts. The subdivision surface modifier still introduces new geometry but it is so close together it visually looks like the top and bottom faces remained completely flat, with just a very slightly round corner where they meet the perpendicular faces to them.
This is a fine result, but I wonder if there is a tool / a way to do this which avoid introducing the unneeded geometry that I have here. I tried using the bevel tool and applying it to the 4 edges of the mesh, but when using that tool the roundness of the edge is not applied to the full extent of the faces to the sides of the edge, just half-way to each:

Am I missing some better technique / tool or is this the best way to go about this?
I am using Blender 2.83.

I'd use the bevel modifier instead. You can target specific mesh parts using bevel weights on edges or vertex groups.
Subdivision modifier doesn't support any form of targeting per say, you can add support loops or use creased to control the deformation on the mesh, but you can't prevent the modifier to operate on mesh parts.


Pin/Parent Vertex of OBJ1 to Vertex of OBJ2 Is it possible to parent/pin the vertice of one object to the vertice of another object? Essentially parenting, but on a vertice basis instead.

For example, two cubes have a corner overlap, those two vertices are pinned together. If I move the "parent" cube, the "child" cube's corner will distort, following.

This may seem like an odd question, because you can accomplish the effect with bones, but for my application, that would produce a ton of bones to manage, along with weight painting and such.

Any help is appreciated.

if you select two objects, you can hook a vertex from the last selected (after entering edit mode) to "selected object", ie to the last object selected (to its origin). You could move the origin to a vertex in this last object... but it's not ideal

Or, you can do this, perhaps better:

from the object 1 (the one that has the vertex you wish to pin to), select the vertex and move the 3d cursor there (Shift+S > "cursor to selected")
then add a new empty, and move it to the 3d cursor (Shift+S > "selected to cursor")
then parent the empty to the object 1
then selected the empty and then the object 2 with the vertex you wish to pin to the object 1 vertex
enter edit mode, and select the object 2 vertex to be pinned
from mesh > vertices > hooks > "hook to selected object" (the empty)

if I got it well...


Emit Hair Particle from Center of Face How can I emit objects from the center of a face, as shown?

When I try to emit from faces, they are randomly distributed.  None of the settings seem to allow for a placement of one object per face, evenly spaced.  This is how it looks:

As you can see, the objects are indeed spawning on the faces, but there are issues: some faces have multiple objects, others have none, and all are randomly positioned on their planes.

Emitting from vertices behaves in the desired fashion:

How can I achieve this behavior with face-centered object placement?

To make particles emitted evenly from each face's center set up the next things:

Uncheck Random in Particle System settings (which you already did, still for completeness).
Make sure the object which will be used as particle instance has origin in the center of its geometry.
If you don't this still will work but when scaling particles' size it will grow somewhat unexpected.
Set Particles/Face to 1 in Particle System settings (by default 0, i.e. automatic selection). This will mean that you ask particle system to emit only 1 particle per emitter's face.

This will work in a similar way for Emitter type of Particle System too.
Number of particles - in order all this to work it has to be not less than total number of faces of the emitter. It may be higher though (doesn't matter how much, Particle System will automaticallsy cut what's not needed).
This behaviour is less predictable if Even Distribution in Particle System settings is left being turned on. In order to make number of particles exactly fit amount of faces uncheck this option.


leave light trail on path behind particles I am trying to create an effect where a particle emitter moves around a path and leaves the path glowing I have the particles working and have tried a couple of solutions to generate the lit path, but neither are ideal.

Solution One

Add a second emitter to my spark emitter that has zero gravity and zero initial speed. This works, but the particles have to be large in size and numbers otherwise gaps appear along the path.

Solution Two

Give the curve a bevel and use the build modifier to match the frames taken by the emitter to complete its journey along the path. This would look much better, but the mesh that gets built up does not match the particle emitter position due to the way that build works.

I have tried searching for a tutorial on this sort of thing, but it's difficult to know exactly what to search for.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

try the build modifier on a curve (with some bevel applied on using the object data properties) if you wanna do something like that:


Simplest (fewest steps) way to measure diameter of a circle in edit mode? Is there a simple (fewer steps) to measure the diameter of a circle in edit mode?

In Edit Mode activate Edge Length from the 3D View > Overlays popover.

Extrude a single vertex and see the reported edge length.
Undo once (to avoid an invisble duplicate vertex).


How do I give objects with the same texture, a different viewport color? I made some kind of robot and I wanna make the armor red in viewport and the base parts of the robot blue. When I try to do this, all the objects with the same texture become that color and not only the ones I want. The robot has 300+ parts so I hope there's a rather fast way to solve this! :)

First, select one of the desired objects and give it a new material with a new color.

Then pick all the other elements you want to change the material on.  You can add to the current selection with Shift + Click.  Finally select the object with the new material.

Then you can press Ctrl + L and select Materials to carry the material of your last selection over to all the other selected objects.


MultiGPU Blender setup - Running Blender on one and rendering on another Is it possible to run Blender's interface on another GPU? I know you can run it on the integrated GPU, but can you do the same with a multi-GPU setup?

My idea comes from another question I asked recently - because of the high amount of vram the scene needs can't I dedicate 1 GPU to it and let the other handle the rendering, effectivly splitting vram usage.

You can assign your GPUs for rendering and display separately.
Just go to your User-Preferences, and in the System-Panel under Cycles Compute Device assign your secondary GPUs as render device, and disable the card that runs the display for rendering.


Why can't objects in Edit Mode have their own name? I've searched so long for the answer and all I ever see is the typical "press ctr + j to join objects, switch to Edit mode, and edit as one mesh", or "make duplicates", or "download the MultiEdit addon", etc.

But even as an 'advanced newbie' I already figured out how to edit several objects in Edit mode, but the problem is, they all share the ONE and SAME NAME.

Object mode assigns each object it's own name - but not in Edit mode.

Is this just the way Blender works? Does it not allow you to add objects with their own name (in Edit mode)?

Thanks SO much for this (possibly) over-obvious answer!!

Shelton

Blender uses a hierarchical structure to organize data.

Basically the confusion comes from the fact that you can Add a Mesh in Object Mode and Edit mode, but they are not the same.

So what is the difference?

When you add an mesh in Object Mode you are creating both, a mesh and an object. Objects created in object mode are independent of each other, meaning that they will be named with a unique name and will all have their own separate origin (or pivot point), and can be transformed independently.

As an example: Two objects created in object mode show as different objects in the outliner.

Meshes created in Edit Mode are part of the Active object, an already existing object that is being edited.

In this example, the monkey's mesh becomes part of the object called Cube and does not show in the outliner.

Objects can contain one or many meshes, connected or not.

All meshes within that object will share a common origin and will behave as what they are: a single object, meaning they will move, rotate and resize together when transformed in Object Mode.

To answer the question:

Objects must have unique names (blender will not allow the exact same name for different objects). Meshes within an object cannot have a name.

If you need to differentiate parts of an object, you can create vertex groups. Vertex groups can be named, but they will still be part of the same larger object that encloses them and cannot be selected directly in object mode.

To separate parts of a mesh and turn them into a new independent objects (with their own unique name and pivot point) you use the separate function (pressing P) and choosing if you want to separate by selection, unconnected parts or materials.


Why can't I see this curve's vertices? I'm new to Blender and I guess my problem is silly for many users, but anyway...
I must have accidentally changed a setting (via hotkeys) and now, when I create a curve (e.g. a bezier circle) and go to edit mode, I can't see the vertices of the curves. Instead, I see the bezier handles and the normal.

I can't find anything in the menus, searched on the web, tried to restore the settings and even downloaded again the app, but nothing to do.
How can I restore the usual visualization?
Thanx everybody.

Don't know of any shortcut to show and hide curve handles, or a way to turn them off by default in the settings (are you sure you didn't just add a mesh circle until now?).

But you can turn handles on or off through the Properties Panel (N) > Curve Display > Handle.

By the way, just for a bit of terminology and trivia:
These points on bezier curves are called Control Points, rather than Vertices (which are mesh points).


How Do You Make A Suggestion To Blender Developers? I get it.  The Bender Foundation probably gets thousands of suggestions to "improve" Blender's work flow or capabilities.  But I haven't yet found where suggestions can be forwarded.  Any ideas?

I have several suggestions, but there doesn't seem to be a way to submit them or give the developers my opinion as to how important they are.

For example, I love the fact that Blend is constantly adding new capabilities, but I wish they would skip a cycle and just focus on improving the workflow.  Too many times I'm faced with multiple steps in different panels to create something.

In too many cases, Blender is like, "Oh, if you want to do that then you need to do the following 6 steps each and every time.

OK, I get it.  Not everyone needs to streamline workflow according to me.

So, Blender, give me a macro capability where I can "record" the six steps I normally need to take in standard Blender so I can execute a macro to automate my custom workflow.  If there is at time I only need 3 of the 6 steps then I can do it manually or record another macro.

Come on guys, there are many things I do routinely that requires a number of specific steps that are the same each and every time.  Give me a macro capability to automate my custom routines within Blender.

I have perhaps 3 or 4 more suggestions that I think would streamline workflows that I don't think would take much programming effort.

I hate having to memorize: first go to this panel and do this, then scroll down and do this and this and this, then go to another panel and do these two things, etc.

Give me a macro capability to record all of the steps once and use it a hundred times.

Blender does include a macro capability - most of the operations you perform are output to a log window that's normally hidden off the top - drag the bottom edge of the top menu down to see it.

When you perform an action you'll see the equivalent python call in the log. You can copy the command and paste it either into a Console window or into a Text Editor text block to run as a python script (give a name ending in '.py' to tell Blender it's python code.

For example, add a cube, scale it, rotate it :

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(2, 1, 1), constraint_axis=(True, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=0.785398, axis=(0, 0, 1), constraint_axis=(False, False, True), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)


How to get 3d view grid properties? I am trying to store the grid scale, but keep getting an error for being in the text editor view.

I have tried

bpy.context.area.type = "VIEW_3D"
print(bpy.context.space_data.grid_scale)

but am getting an attribute error for "SpaceTextEditor" not having a "grid_scale". However, the space does change to the 3d view, so the first line is going through.

Any help is appreciated.

Your code works for me in 2.69, but there might be timing issues (grid_scale accessed but the view has not finished changing).

To get all 3D Views' grid_scale as a list, use:

grid_scales = [area.spaces[0].grid_scale for area in bpy.context.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D']


Keep only new faces from Blender Solidify modifier I am using the Solidify modifier from Blender. I just want to have the new surface that the modifier gave me. I dont see an option that its possible.
Is there a way how to do this?
Thank you
Simon

From what you said i have a feeling that you didn't apply the modifier

NOTE that you can't apply the modifier if you are in edit mode or the object is linked with another object


Stitch video with blender to make a 360 video I'm looking to use blender to stitch together multiple videos in order to create a 360 video. How would I go about doing this in blender? Just to be clear I'm not looking to render a 3D scene in 360 but rather take multiple videos taken from different angles and stitch them into a single 360 video.

This is not possible.

Here is a google search for possible free alternatives, I cannot, however recommend any of them: free 360 video stitching software


Copying mask key frames but different shape can I copy keyframes of one mask to another but with different starting shape? I need to move it only in x-axis and y-axis, I mean no need to further change the shape. Just to like parent this mask of 1st one. If yes, please tell me how.
Thankyou.

In the movie clip editor.

Select the vertices of the mask you want to move, then shift-select one of the control points of the other mask and press Ctrl+P to parent.

For example: this mask is parented to a tracking point.

If I create a second mask, and parent it to one of the points of the first mask, then they both move together.

If you don't want to create a new mask but duplicate an existing one. Just select the mask, and hit shift+D to duplicate it and move it where you want, all of the atributes and keyframes of the original mask will be duplicated.


How to get all keyframes for selected strip in python? Suppose we have an image strip in VSE and it has 2 keyframes for its opacity. How can I edit the values of each one of them via python?

Import the bpy module to access Blender's data.
import bpy

Context Method
If you just created the keyframes and are simply scripting in the text editor, you can look up the objects by context. You need to be certain that the strip has two keyframes and is selected (active) in the sequencer.
Get the active scene by context.
scene = bpy.context.scene

Get the active sequencer strip by context.
strip = scene.sequence_editor.active_strip

Lookup the fcurve connected to the data_path of the active strip with it's name and property. (Look at batFINGER's answer on how to construct the data_path more elegantly with strip.path_from_id("blend_alpha").)
data_path = 'sequence_editor.sequences_all["' + strip.name + '"].blend_alpha'
fcrv = scene.animation_data.action.fcurves.find(data_path)

Assign some values to the keyframe_points stored in the fcurve.
for i, y in [[0, 0.0], [1, 1.0]]:
    fcrv.keyframe_points[i].co.y = y
    fcrv.keyframe_points[i].handle_left.y = y
    fcrv.keyframe_points[i].handle_right.y = y

Force the sequencer to refresh.
bpy.ops.sequencer.refresh_all()

Data Method
If are trying to use this functionality from an addon or are unsure wether an active strip is selected or even if keyframes are present at all, you have to validate the data.
View code snippet from github.
Encapsulate the functionality in a method, which can be aborted, if a precondition is missing. The required parameters are:

the scene's name

the sequencer strip's name

the values which are used to overwrite the existing keyframes values
def modify_strip_keyframes(scene_name, strip_name, keyframe_values = [1.0, 0.0]):

Get the scene by name, but return if it doesn't exist.
    scene = bpy.data.scenes.get(scene_name)
    if scene == None:
        print("Scene not found.")
        return

Verify that there is animation_data and a sequence_editor. If there are no keyframes or no strips, these items will be None. (Calling properties of None will crash the script.)
    if (scene.animation_data == None or scene.sequence_editor == None):
        print("No strips with keyframes.")
        return

Get the strip by name and get the fcurve associated with it's blend_alpha (the opacity) property.
    strip = scene.sequence_editor.sequences.get(strip_name)
    if strip == None:
        print("Strip not found.")
        return

    data_path = 'sequence_editor.sequences_all["' + strip_name + '"].blend_alpha'
    fcrv = scene.animation_data.action.fcurves.find(data_path)

    if fcrv == None:
        print("No opacity keyframes found.")
        return

Verify that there are as many keyframe_points on the fcurve, as values have been supplied. Then loop over the points and assign the new values to the keyframe_point coordinates co.
    if len(fcrv.keyframe_points) != len(keyframe_values):
        print("The strip has " + str(len(fcrv.keyframe_points)) +
            " keys, but " + str(len(keyframe_values)) + " values were supplied.")
        return

    for i in range(len(fcrv.keyframe_points)):
        key = fcrv.keyframe_points[i]
        key.co.y = keyframe_values[i]
        key.handle_left.y = keyframe_values[i]
        key.handle_right.y = keyframe_values[i]
        key.handle_left.x = key.co.x
        key.handle_right.x = key.co.x

To execute the function, call it and refresh the sequencer to visualize the change.
modify_strip_keyframes("Scene", "cat", keyframe_values = [1, 0.5])
bpy.ops.sequencer.refresh_all()


Make rigid body collide with hair particles I have a ground plane set up with a hair particle system, it is set as a passive rigid body.
Now I want to be able to drop my Active rigid bodies, and have them collide and lay on top of the hair.

Further more I'm trying to find a way to make the hair particles mat down where the rigid bodies hit them.

As gandalf3 said, you can enable Collision on the rigid bodies, and set Hair Dynamics in the hair particle setting. (demo file)

You can also add Force Field to the Active rigid bodies to simulate the collision, since Hair particles react directly to force fields:


Boolean within the same object? The boolean modifier works on separate objects. But is there a way to boolean together multiple pieces of mesh within the same object?

Intersect faces leaves too much messy geometry.

Here's what I would try.

In object mode, make one copy of your original object for each separate part of the original object you want to use as a boolean operator with the original. If the object you want to boolean with itself has more than one mesh sub object, switch to edit mode, select each individual sub-object  containing portions you want to use as boolean operators, use the duplicate tool (SHFT-D) to make a copy of the sub-object, and then separate the duplicate of the sub-object into a new object using the P key, choosing the "Selection" option.

You will now have an original and one or more copies of the original, or portions of it. On one of the copies, select the parts of the mesh you want to use to operate on the original, perform the boolean operation, and then delete the copy. Repeat this for each part of the object that you want to use in a boolean operation. When completed you will have effectively used the object to perform the boolean with itself, and yet Blender will be satisfied that you are doing the operation between different objects.


How to display all mesh wire in flats faces? I want to display all wire in a mesh, but if the edges are in a flat face that are not shown... Here's a little example:

Do you know how to do that?

You need to use the draw all edges checkbox. It is directly under the wire checkbox!


How do you merge linked or appended objects into a single layer? After appending (not linking) a few objects from a different scene, the appended objects appear in all layers like this.

How does one put the appended objects on a single layer to turn on/off? After deleting the linked objects, the layers look like this:

An object can be present in more than one layer.

In the Relations section for the object you can select which ones to use.


Using alt+r in blender 2.8 I am trying to make spokes for a wheel and when I used 2.79 I used alt+r to automatically duplicate and rotate the mesh to make the amount I wanted but this shortcut doesn't work in 2.8. Does anyone know how to do the same thing?

The Spin tool still exists in Blender 2.8, you can find it in the toolbar. It does not have a shortcut in the default keymap. You would have to add it yourself or use the 2.7x keymap.


How to make a jelly material? I want to create a jelly bear in Blender, but I don't know how to set the specific parameters. Does anyone know how to make a jelly material?

I think you mean a gummy bear.  To do this I used Cycles and added a Glass Shader and Glossy Shader together with a Mix Shader.  I also added a transluscent shader with a second mix shader.  The light in the rendered picture is coming form the ground plane.


Is there a way to make my numpad be just a numpad? I use my numpad to type in exact parameters.  Quite often I've not quite gotten my field selected and when I hit a number my view changes to some weird angle or restriction I can't get out of and it's a pain to go figure out how to get back to exactly the thing I was looking at seconds before.  How do I make the numpad just for numbers?

Go to Blender Preferences > Keymap.

Set search type to Key-Binding and search for numpad.

Scroll down to 3D View, and press X for the keybinds for the numpad


How can I activate Shape in Tree tool? It seems that Shape option is not activate. How can I activate it?

Many thanks

I highly recommend using an improved version of Sapling that can be download from GitHub:
https://github.com/abpy/improved-sapling-tree-generator/archive/master.zip

Also, you can find this manual and presets useful too:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?395082-Blender-Sapling-Tree-Tutorial-%2528free-download%2529