Adding shiny gold material to a slice of bread I have a slice of bread inside a crusty loaf. Enclosed is the image (the outside crusty loaf is not shown) and the node editor.

The outside crusty loaf is completed. The problem lies only with the slice of bread, to which I wish to add shiny gold material, so that it looks as a slice of bread made of shiny gold.

I’d appreciate any advice, showing me how to do that.

Thank you,

As a rough first shot:

Use a tool like Materialize to generate a pseudo-height map from
your diffuse image of the bread
Having UV unwrapped your slice you can use the height map to bump-map the surface of the slice using a simple set of shader nodes something like this...

Here, if the height is less than a threshold, a fully transparent material is substituted for the gold, so as to poke  holes in the bread. You might feel you need actually to displace the surface of the slice in shading, too, if your shot is close-up, or at a raking angle.

Once you've provided an HDR environment to reflect from the metal surface, you get this sort of result.

As for the metal itself, you could substitute this principled shader for something more sophisticated: from approximating physically accurate to quite convincing.


Loop selection not including one edge I'm trying to select edges with loop selection, But there is part of edges isolated which seemed to be made when I bevelled.
But I want to them to be loop in order to bevel more.
There is no separated vertices so I cannot merge them by using Remove doubles.
How can I connect those three edges together?

The question you'd need to ask yourself is:

  "How does Blender know where a loop is running along anyways?"

Basically, a loop can only be found if there is four edges connecting to a point. See this GIF for illustration:

I'm selecting the two edges first which are the loop that I intend to select, then the two perpendicular edges that branch off from them. Loop selection takes a single edge as an input (the one you click on), and follows the path along this direction UNTIL there is a case where a different amount than four edges are forming a vertex point. Along this path, the edge that is "in the middle" will be the one considered to form the loop. As your beveled edge gives you a corner case where only three edges meet, loop selection stops there. How would Blender know if you want to go left or right?

To do the selection you want, try either Shortest Path select by Ctrl + RMB clicking, like this:

or select the faces which are inside the desired loop, and use the boundary select tool from the menu like this:


Why are particles only covering half of a face? Applying particles to a face, they are only being applied to half the face:

This occurs both with Eevee and Cycles. It also occurs in all viewport shading modes, and a full render. This occurs regardless of the seed used. The problem is not with the weight painting - in fact, the problem does not occur in weight painting mode:

It only occurs in object mode (and the full render). The split appears to be along the 45-degree angle between the x- and y-axes. How do I fix this please? Thank you.

Thanks to @no-can-do's comment:
Switching the positions of the modifiers fixes the problem. Just place the Particle modifier above the Subdivision modifier.


Override samples and branched path tracing Branched Path Tracing provides AA samples and multiplier samples for different rays: diffuse, glossy, etc. So Total sampling for each ray is defined as AA*multiplier.

But what is renderlayer's Override samples in this case? Does it override AA samples only or Total sample number?

The Render Layer 'Override' setting overrides the AA samples.

For example, setting the render layer override to 300 while having Diffuse branched path tracing samples set to 5 will result in 1500 Diffuse samples.

One interesting point to note is how the override interacts with the Square Samples setting as it overrides before the squaring takes place - so setting Override to, say, 300 with Square Samples enabled will be equivalent to setting to 90000 without squaring enabled.


Unexpected vertices when looping through meshes in Scene Collection I would like to loop through meshes in my Scene Collection to find the coordinates of Verts (single points added via Add Mesh Extra Objects addon) or the volume of a mesh (the default Cube).  I have code that will do each of these things separately, but when run together, the code which returns the coordinates of the single Vert instead returns the coordinates of the Cube's vertices.  I'm new to Blender and appreciate any help figuring out what the API is doing here.
Based on Batfinger's feedback (Select Meshes from Scene Collection without relying on name) this code prints the coordinates of a Vert:
import bmesh
import bpy

for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if i.type == 'MESH' and len(i.data.vertices) == 1:
        print(i.name, i.type)
        # Get the active mesh
        obj = bpy.context.edit_object

        me = obj.data

        # Get a BMesh representation
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        for v in bm.verts:
            print("vert location", v.co)
        pass

This code prints the volume of the Cube (has to be selected):
import bmesh
import bpy

for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if i.type == 'MESH' and len(i.data.vertices) > 1:
        print(i.name, i.type)

        #Get mesh data from the active object in the Scene Collection
        me = bpy.context.object.data

        #Create an empty BMesh
        bm = bmesh.new()
        #Fill Bmesh with the mesh data from the object
        bm.from_mesh(me)

        print('Volume:', bm.calc_volume(signed=False))
        bm.free()

However, when I combine the two statements, the Vert loop now prints the coordinates of the vertices from the Cube and not the Vert:
import bmesh
import bpy

#Vert loop
for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if i.type == 'MESH' and len(i.data.vertices) == 1:
        print(i.name, i.type)
        # Get the active mesh
        obj = bpy.context.edit_object

        me = obj.data

        # Get a BMesh representation
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        for v in bm.verts:
            print("vert location", v.co)
        bm.free()
        pass

#Volume loop
for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if i.type == 'MESH' and len(i.data.vertices) > 1:
        print(i.name, i.type)

        #Get mesh data from the active object in the Scene Collection
        me = bpy.context.object.data

        #Create an empty BMesh
        bm = bmesh.new()
        #Fill Bmesh with the mesh data from the object
        bm.from_mesh(me)

        print('Volume:', bm.calc_volume(signed=False))
        bm.free()

Results in:
Vert MESH
vert location <Vector (1.0000, 1.0000, 1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (1.0000, 1.0000, -1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (1.0000, -1.0000, 1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (1.0000, -1.0000, -1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (-1.0000, 1.0000, 1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (-1.0000, 1.0000, -1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (-1.0000, -1.0000, 1.0000)>
vert location <Vector (-1.0000, -1.0000, -1.0000)>
Cube MESH
Volume: 7.999999999999999

Your scripts are incorrect, you are ignoring scene objects and repeatedly printing data for the active object instead.
In both cases you are looping over scene objects with
for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:

Then you proceed to ignore them all by defining an "active object" with either obj = bpy.context.edit_object or me = bpy.context.object.data rather than iterate over i from the loops.
It should probably be something like me = i.data.


Is there a way to hide parts of an object? I currently am modeling a roof and the roof plates are overhanging at the corner. I marked the parts I want to hide.

Is there maybe the possibilty to place a Box or another object on those parts and tell the mesh that all parts of the object that overlap with the Box should be hidden?

Thanks

You can use boolean modifier to cut volumes with other volumes.

(In the pictures below, the black object has faces and is set to wireframe display for better overview.)


How to get rid of black lines over finished render images? there are unintntional black lines which appears only in final rendered image. how to get rid of it?

The problem is that you have enabled freestyle render wich is responsible for these black lines. So to fix the problem you have to look for „freestyle render“ in the render tab and disable it.


What is causing this reflection on a surface? (Blender Guru coffee cup tutorial) I am following a beginner tutorial on Blender Guru’s YouTube channel.
I am creating a glass cup with liquid inside, and I am using the Volume Absorption settings on the Material panel in order to create the desired effect on the liquid.
As far as I know, I’ve followed the tutorial exactly, but as you can see from the attached image. There is some odd yellow/gold band as the top front of the liquid.
Normally, I would experiment with different settings, but as a complete beginner, I don’t really know where to go and what to adjust. With my extremely limited experience, I think it is something to do with reflections, as it looks like there is something else going on with that area, but I haven’t really got a clue.
Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Thanks.

I think I managed to fix it. After experimenting with the scale of the liquid and HDRI and shading settings, I found out it was neither of these.
I hid the liquid by using the eye icon while in render view and I noticed the line was still there, and when I switched to object view, it still looked like there was a still a liquid shape. What I think I did was duplicate the vertices and right clicked rather than make a separate object. I then created a new liquid layer on top.
So what I did was click on the cup in Edit Mode and then Merge Vertices > By Distance. This effectively removed that additional liquid layer I had in the cup object.


Blender normals problem So, I have an object to which I preformed a boolean operation. The problem is that by doing that, some of the normals on the object are facing the wrong direction:

Now, the object looks fine in blender, but when exported to Unity, since faces cannot be double-sided, they appear facing the wrong direction and appear invisible:

So I tried recalculating the normals to see if it would fix that problem, which it did, but it created another one:

Now the object looks very weird and lit wrong, and I have no clue what's wrong. I've recalculated the normals again, I've flipped only the normals in the door part, but nothing seems to fix it. If someone can help I'd be very grateful.

The edges of the door arc aren't marked sharp like the other edges that are colored light blue. You can either mark these edges as well (select the edges then Ctrl+E > Mark Sharp) or set the shading to flat for the entire mesh.


Some pixels doesn't render on the image ID MASK LOOK FOR BOX TYPE IMAGES

I need to annotate each SINGLE plant separately from others, for accurate annotation, right now I've it scripted for ID MASK. It gives each object from a specifically named collection iterated ID pass, renders original scene in .png, and then renders and converts pixels (every pixel, which is not black) from every ID MASK image to .json. But as you can see it doesn't works as expected. Is there something similar I could do with cryptomatte? Again, For annotation I need to know in advance which objects which color will use or something like that to know exactly or define an object. maybe I can adjust emission shader or make my own so it can handle transparent textures correctly as well? or something along those lines

UPD cryptomatte works only when I render plants separately from scene
Look here cryptomatte whole scene vs cryptomatte plants only

Blender doesn't render all pixels on distant objects, it gets better when I make resolution higher, like 4k, but it doesnt fixes my problem, but makes image pixels better. Also raising sample doesnt help. I tried to render with denoising and AA in compositor, that didnt help.
How can I fix this, so it will render all object pixels on ID MASK using box pixel type? I need an alpha of an object as an ID MASK, for accurate object annotation.

Render Settings

Engine: Cycles

Render Resolution: 1280x720

Samples: 128

Pixel type: Blackman-Harris

Pixel width: 0.01

Full Image:

Problem:

Additional info: ID_MASK of the object in compositor

Box type pixels looks so much better on the Image, but ID Mask dont recognize them, now how to fix this one?

Box type render:

Box Type ID Mask:

Box type Render 4k:

Box type 4k ID MASK:

Annotations

Here's an addon, which do almost what I needed, but it uses emission shader, which doesnt work with custom textures.

By annotation I mean assigning each pixel of the original (rendered) image a corresponding value of instanceId

Where instanceId maps a specific blender object.

Here's more examples:
Original Image without annotations:

Annotated Image:

For now I just need objectId and categories.

Right now I'm using ID masks which is the only reliable solution I've come up with.

As you can see I've tried a lot of other options such as:
Cryptomatte
Emission shader
Denoising
Playing with AlphaTreshold

Since ID masks don't work as reliable as I thought they would. I was thinking about writing my own shader that will use emission (to get the perfect color) and some magic to fix the transparent textures.

Here's why emission shader won't work in any case:

I know I should start a new question, but... how to achive a solid color with nodes? If there's a way to get a fully opaque color w/o aa or any kind of transparency? That would solve my problem perfectly.
Here's my node attempt:

Cryptomatte did the job, but it needs a manual nodes pre-setup

Don't use ID Masks
Just don't. They have little use, this is a really poorly designed feature. You simply cannot make a good mask with a 2bit color depth image.
Cryptomatte is the solution
Look into using Cryptomatte. You need to enable it's layers in the View Layer properties tab:

You can then get any masks easily using Cryptomatte node in the compositor and they will be a lot higher quality:


Align object's orientation -rotation, transform, and scale to another object's orientation I am using 2.8 and am wondering how do you align or snap an object's orientation to another object's orientation that has a different location, rotation, and scale- in a quick tool like way such as 3ds Max's align tool? -I know I can copy the transform values, and 'snap cursor to selected'->'snap selection to cursor' does not snap the rotation or scale values. Is there a script or current tool that will do this without much process? - thx.

Yeah that exists in Blender 2.8 as well as in 2.7.

Just select the object or objects you want to apply the rotation to first (press shift to select multiple objects).
Then also select the object you want to copy the rotation from at the very last.
Then open the Properties Region (menue on the right side , shortcut [n]).
There you hover over the rotation or location or scale and click the right mouse button. Then you select 'copy all to selected'. You can also only copy the one value you hover over by selecting 'copy single to selected'.


What exactly does the "Use 3D Viewport" rendering option do? There is an option when you press the shortcut to render (F12 by default) to Use 3D Viewport.
The tool tip describes this option as:

When inside a 3D viewport, use layers and camera of the viewport.

What is meant by "of the viewport"? Conversely, I don't see how a Camera or View Layer could not be of the Viewport - unless it's hidden. But if you Hide an object in the Viewport, it still gets rendered. So, what does this option do? Comparing renders when it's enabled and disabled, I'm not noticing a difference. Thanks.

As far as I can tell this is for use together with Local Camera feature of a viewport, or the now possible multi-window workflows.
Using local camera you can have any viewport display an arbitrary camera other than the one defined as active camera in the Scene tab of the Properties Editor.

Rendering from such viewport would potentially lead to unexpected behavior, as the produced image would not match the view angle currently visible in a 3D view, since by default Blender would be rendering the scene active camera, rather than the one you would be seeing through.
With Use 3D Viewport option checked you render what is actually displayed in the current 3D View the command originated from, using context as deps-graph source, regardless of default scene settings.
I suspect this possibly overrides other settings as well, like say rendering from another Blender window from the same session that has a different active view layer from the scene default one, or different visibility or collection states.


How to hide a mesh on render, but keep hiding polygon it was hiding? I'm using blender to render sprites for a game.
I have a character mesh, and a T-Shirt mesh, rendered with a transparent background.

I want to render the T-Shirt without the character, disabling the character I get this:

How to make the polygons that were hidden by the character transparent?

Set the pass index of the shirt to 1 (material tab>settings>pass index). Enable material index for the render layer (render layers tab>passes>material index). Go into the compositor (top bar where it says default, change it to compositing). Select use nodes and set up this node setup:

For the top image input on the Alpha Over node set A: to 0.


Why does baking a fluid sim use so little CPU? The CPU graph on my Windows machine barely moves up when I start a fluid sim bake, and the bake takes at least 10 minutes.

It's very different from rendering where I can see it max out all of the cores.

I also changed the render device from GPU to CPU wondering if it might be using the GPU for baking but that didn't change anything.

I have the slider for Simulation Threads at 0, which says it automatically figures out how many threads to use.  I tried changing it to how many cores I have but that didn't change anything.

When I open the Windows Resource Monitor it shows the usage for each core, and they're all low and just about exactly the same, about 1/8th of the graph's size.

My only guess is that the Intel CPU has only one floating point core and the baking is all floating point. (But then why have the Simulation Threads slider?)

There are two contributing factors. One is that the code for the fluid sim has not been rewritten to support take advantage of multi-threading. This means that only one, discreet process will be running.

The other factor is task-switching. Windows has literally hundreds of processes that need CPU time at any given moment. Each of these is queued for time on a processor. One will get switched onto the processor for a few milliseconds, and then it will be moved to the back of the line (sort of) to wait for its next turn. You have 100% of one process that's spending a quarter of its time on each core... but not simultaneously.

Now for the LONG answer...

An excellent metaphor is checking out at a grocery store.

The one special rule at this grocery store is that you can only pay for one item at a time. You pay for one item and then you go back to the line to wait to pay for another item. You keep going to the back of the line until you don't have any more items to pay for, which would be like when a program exits.

With a multi-core processor, you have one line, but several checkers. You go to whichever checker is available when your turn comes up. Blender is checking out a lot of items, but it's not limited to one lane, so it can go to any of the four checkers. Blender is showing 25% on each core because its one process is doing 100% of its work, split between 4 cores.

This is what happens when one program has one batch of things to do on the CPU.

But what if a program had a partner who could also check out some of the things, too? If a program could copy itself, it could give half of its batch of things to the copy and check out twice as often. This is what is meant by writing a program for multi-threading. It has explicitly have (create) a partner (thread).

If there's a partner, and if your batch of things can be split into two completely separate batches, then you can have two people waiting in line, each with half of the things. They get done twice as fast.

This is why GPU processing is so fast. It's streamlined for situations where you have 9000 of exactly the same kind of item to check out. The GPU has (random guess) 9000 check out lines. It will give 1 item to 9000 people, and check them all out at the same time. Done.

The trick is, the separate threads have to be (almost) completely separate programs. You can't split a ladder in half, and pay for half of it at one checker and half at the other. You also can't take two numbers that you want to add together and do one of them on one processor, and the other on another processor.

They can't share variables, they can't share memory space (sort of), they can't communicate with each other the way that different functions/methods do within the same program. This means if they're going to multi-thread, then the process has to be non-linear.

For example, if you and I were going to cooperate on adding a bunch of numbers, that'd be great. You add half of them, I'll add the other half, and we'll add our results together. We don't have to be synchronized, and neither of us has to know what the other is doing. We just add whatever the results are, and we'd get done in half the time.

Back to your original question, if you and I were going to cooperate on calculating where a particular molecule of water was during a particular second, we'd get almost no benefit over just one of us doing it. You'd have to wait for me to calculate a current position, before you could even begin calculating the next position. Then I'd have to wait on you, back and forth.

Some processes aren't suited to multi-threading. Other processes just have to find the right factor to split on, so that things can be done in parallel.


What is the best way to animate tension? I'm doing a tug of war animation where a rope is being pulled by both teams.  The rope should look like it has a lot of tension applied to it but I don't quite know where to start?
I tried applying a noise modifier to the graph editor but it still doesn't look quite right, it's shaking too much.  Is there a good way to animate tension because my method is what I've made up and I'm never right about these things.
Thanks.

You could use a bezier curve, make a middle vertex, hook the vertex to something using ctrl+h (empty works best), use a medium noise on z location of the empty and a low noise on x or y so it moves left to right, and as the rope gets tighter reduce the strength of the z and decrease the scale so its movements are faster and tighter
If you want more detail just ask.


Is there a way to ease keyframes as a whole rather than easing each component? Let's say I've got a cube that spins around and moves, like so: (click for higher quality)

In the graph editor, it looks like this.

Each axis of rotation and motion has its own line, but is there a way to manipulate the easing of the keyframe as a whole? It's nice to have the control over all aspects of the animation, but there are times where it's very inconvenient to have to manipulate every single axis to get a simple easing.

In Adobe Flash, you can manipulate the inbetween of two keyframes using this editor, regardless of the amount of scaling, rotation, and translating involved:

Is there something like that in Blender?

Part I.

To move many keyframes at once you can use the Dope Sheet editor instead of the Graph Editor.

In the Dope Sheet editor all actions are represented by little diamond markers. In the above screen shot the column of markers on the right (colored) are selected, and the ones on the left are not selected. Selecting, deselecting, grabbing, etc in this editor works the same way as in Blender's other editors.

Notice the order of hierarchy: The top row is for all objects in the scene. The second row is for just the "Cube" object. The third row "CubeAction" is for actions involving the object, such as LocRotScale transformations (but not for things like Material animation). The fourth row "LocRotScale" contains the actual animation keyframes and if you expand it you will see the individual rows/tracks for Location, Rotation, and Scale for each of the X/Y/Z axes.

So if you want to move just one axis you would expand "LocRotScale", find "X Location" for example and move just its individual marker. But to do what you described - moving all axes at once - you can just leave "LocRotScale" collapsed and drag that marker. All of the animation data will be moved together.

Part II.

If you want to adjust just the ease of the curves specifically and not their position, you can select the keyframes in the Graph Editor and scale them along only the X axis. Their bezier handles will be moved closer to or farther from the keyframe points, thus altering the ease.

As a variation of this you can try scaling with the Pivot Point set to Individual Centers. You may find that scaling and rotating from individual centers gives you more control than simply scaling along X.


How to duplicate object with it's animation then relocate/rotate I want to duplicate an object along with it's animation but I want to use the duplicated object(s) somewhere else in the scene. Is this possible? I guess I would need to maintain the animation locally to the duplicated object but not sure how that works.

For example a ball rolling on it's x-axis is duplicated with it's animation. I want to move that duplicated ball so that it is the same animation but rolling on the y-axis.

One way is with a DupliGroup:

Group your object(s) with ⎈ CtrlG
Add a dupligroup with ⇧ ShiftA> Group Instance > name of your group.

This will create an empty which represents the origin point (0,0,0) of the space in which the duplicated group resides. By transforming this empty, you can transform the dupligroup:

Dupliobjects use instancing, which means this will also be very memory efficient.


Blending mode material in Cycles I'm looking for a blending mode effect for a material that works like blending modes in Photoshop and other editing programs - that means material affects everything behind with blending mode effect.

Renderers are coded to behave like materials in real world. They try to be physically correct.

Most of these effects you are describing are non-physical and cannot be achieved with real world materials. Some even don't conserve energy of light!

Only effect that can be done with materials is Multiply. An effect that can be done with lights would be Add.

This non-physically correct renderer can be surely made and programmed, but I don't know of any. I don't even know why anyone would have a need for something like that - what you want could be probably achieved in post-production using these blend modes on 2d layers.


How do I reduce the poly count of an existing 3D model? I have a question about 3d modeling.

I have ZERO experience in 3d imaging, modeling....none!

However, what I'd like to know (if possible) is how difficult is it to take a pre-existing 3d model and reduce the poly count?

I'm using a little Steam game called Table Top Simulator and it can allow only certain size of OBJ files. Most 3d models I see online are quite large and I'd like to reduce those images for personal use.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692037907&tscn=1464716182

Hopefully the link here shows exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. This person has themselves found online 3d models from various sites and reduced the poly count using 3D Studio Max.

I've heard Blender is more user friendly?

Anyways, if someone can push me in the right direction on how to reduced existing 3d models I would greatly appreciate it. I know this isn't a simple "follow this one tutorial and you're done", but I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into before I jump in (this is for personal game use only and nothing something I'm devoting a lot of time to....but, I do find the urge to learn much!)

Thanks to anyone that can help.

Another way to reduce vertex count is by sculpting out the excessive geometry.
note the low strength and the detailing mode set to collapse edges.

result :


Remove just the Location Is there a way to remove just the Location section of the keyframes of an object?  I have gotten into the habit of setting LocRotScale when setting them and want to change only location. without going keyframe by keyframe because of the strange offset flight of the object.

Make sure the object is selected and open a Dope Sheet window.

Each keyframe is represented by a diamond (white = Unselected, orange = Selected). You can use the usual tools to change the selection - eg, right-click to select a single keyframe, A for Select/Unselect All, Box Select (B), Shift for multiple select, etc. To Select all keyframes on a channel you can select one of the keyframes and then press L to select all linked keyframes on the same channel.

Select the keyframes you want to delete and press X to remove them.


Number of users of Node Group is wrong Maybe this is a silly question but I have a Node Group in a Material, and the node displays "2" as the number of users, but I only have 1 sphere in the scene, that's all, which is used to test the material. There are no other objects. So I wonder why the 2 users instead of 1.

I searched before asking the question and all I found is this, but since I'm a newbie I don't really know if it's about the same thing or not:
https://developer.blender.org/T39552

Thanks a lot

Select the material, press Shift+L and choose material.

This will select all the objects sharing that material.

If there are no selections either you have 2 material slots with the same material on your object or the object in question is in another scene.


Ways of sharing the same smoke cache datas between two different files? I'm working an a short 2min animation, fully smoked based, in order to emulate a kind of ink effect on all my characters, landscape, etc (all the object in the scene are smoke emitters). Obviously, the cache files takes a lot of disk space (I mean : a lot!!), and a lot of baking time.

Basically, I'd like to generate the smoke data once for each type of object, and re-use it every time I have the same kind of object in a (different) file.

For an example, if one of my scenes contains a mountain, emitting smoke, with specific smoke settings, for a specific number of frames etc., and another one contains another mountain, with a a completely different shape. Can I use the generated smoke cache from the first object with the second (assuming that I desire the same smoke settings on both)?

I know that ticking the "external path" option, and giving to it a path allow to reuse the generated smoke data.

But my question is: what will be shared exactly? Can I use the data between two files, containing different objects of different shapes, but with the same desired domain and flow settings, in order to save some disk space and baking time?

Actually I don't understand precisely what kind of exact information is stored in the ".bphys" cache files.

2.8x (Mantaflow solver)
Yes you can. Specify cache directory, set Type > All and Bake.

Open a new file and enable Smoke Physics for any object.

First set type All and Bake again, even there is nothing to simulate.
Second - now you can specify cache directory to previously baked cache

To keep smoke texture same care about correct XYZ proportions.
Blender doesn't care about objects geometry, just about object's Bounding Box as you can see.
2.79 (original answer)
Can I share the data between two files (different objects /shapes)?
Yes, you can.

Bake smoke simulation of "A.blend", into format you like/need (bphys/vdb)
open a new "B.blend" file
add a new Cube (or any other Mesh object), with the same Aspect Ratio as baked domain (= XYZ Dimension should be equally divided/multiplied), and enable Smoke sim in Physics Properties for it)
in Properties > Smoke Cache panel check External and set path to the baked sim folder
in the list of smoke simulations name existing cache same as your baked sim files from A file. Like here I named cache your_name

If you wouldn't name the A cache, blender creates a generic name, like "536D6F6B6520446F6D61696E", so copy that. But it's always better to name cache before baking to something that make a sense for you, so you can better recognise what cache you are attempting into a new blend.
IMPORTANT note: You can SCALE domain as you like, but in all directions to keep aspect ratio of original domain!!! Difference in proportion will cause disfunction of smoke visibility, so check that.
What will be shared?
As was mentioned - each baked file represents 3D texture per frame of voxel data. Assigning data to an object you can imagine as classic 2D image assigned to plane object - image fits to plane dimension - just in 3D. These data doesn't contain any geometry of mesh (like mountaine vertecies).
From your description is not clear what do you want to achieve exactly, to me. It seems to me you probably didn't catch the point of system. For sim you need one object to be emitter of smoke and second smoke domain that is something like environment (box) where all smoke happens. Emitter object only iniciate reaction inside domain and this "reaction" is represented as 3d texture data. These data are only smoke, and after bake independent on the emitter.
Here is what kind of data are baked in VDB format.
For more checkBlender Reference Manual


How to transform a mesh with many objects? I want to transform (location, rotation, scale and deform mesh) a triangle with 3 animated objects, each vertex of the triangle follows one object.

On this screenshot there are one tirangle whose follows 3 animated cubes that move from position 1 to position 2.

Is there a simple method to do that.

For example by join (or set parent ) each vertex of triangle with each object, but I don't know how to do this!

Thank you !

Hook and Vertex Parent.

Triangle in edit mode.

Select each vert, hit CtrlH and choose add new hook.  This creates an empty at the vert.

Repeat for other two verts.

For each empty,

Select empty, Shift select cube to parent to.
Go into edit mode, select one, two or three vertices then CtrlP To make vertex parent.

Note could cut out the "middle man" empty and hook directly to cubes.


Intersection of Particles in a Hair Particle System I have another question :D
So, currently I am planning to create a short film in Blender for my intermediate project at uni.
I am trying a few things out right now to tackle probable future problems already since my project is not green lit by prof. yet.
I have a few very low poly buildings and want to create a city line for a background shot later.
I use a Particle system with children. The problem I have is that all the buildings intersect and overlap. Looking for a solution, youtube and blendernation were not helpful at all unfortunately.
Do you have any idea how to solve this?
My result

What I am aiming for

Btw. if you have any tips or ideas how I could achieve my aim better and nicer and with more fidelity, I would highly appreciate it.
EDIT:
I solved my problem with Blue Noise Addon from Github!

I'm not sure there's a way to avoid particle overlapping (except maybe with the help of this tuto?), but you can:

Create several buildings, texture them. Put them into a collection called Buildings:

Create a plane (let's call it Generator) and give it a Particle System > Hair, activate the Advanced option,  choose the collection you've created as particle, give it an Emission > Number of 20:

In the Modifier panel > Particle Settings, click on Convert. It will generate instances, reorganize them so that they don't overlap, select all, make the objects single users and join them with J to create an object:

Come back to your Generator plane, generate a new combination, vary the Emission > Seed and the Render > Use Count settings so that it differs from the previous combination. Do the same as before in order to create a second object. Do it again several times, put all these objects in a collection called Master.

Create a new plane, subdivide it for example 10 times, give it a Particle > Hair, activate the Advanced option, choose Master as its particle, give it an Emission > Number as high as you have faces on this plane. In Emission > Source, deactivate Random Order, choose Particles/Face = 1.


2.82 Where is the "save this image" button in compositing It seem that there is no "save this image button" anymore in compositing. It was super usefull to me for saving my cryptomatte passes. I don't even now how to do it without that button.

Anyone can help ?

I'm guessing this is saving from the viewer node in the compositor?  Open up the image editor, switch to the 'Viewer Node' for the image, and then go to the header -> Image -> Save as...

I guess they added that button for convenience, but the feature has always been there :)


How can I take a snapshot of the last frame of a video? I have a video clip and I would like export the last frame for further processing with Gimp. How can I extract or take a snapshot of the last frame of a video?

I'm interested in solution on Mac or Linux.

On the frame you would like to save, press F12 to render (you can also press Render image in Render at the top of the window, or Render in Properties > Render settings > Render):

Then press F3 to save the resulting image.

Note that this will take other strips into account.


Is it possible to separate part of a joined mesh corresponding to it's assigned material? So like say I had a single mesh, that had multiple materials assigned to it, like a character or something, I want too be able to separate the vertices that have the correspond material assigned to them into their own mesh. I know you can use the "Selection" method by selecting your vertices in edit mode and then pressing "P", then click "Selection" and it separates into it's own mesh, but the problem is I have to select the correct vertices, it's not so easy when you are trying to do that when the character has so many subdivisions. So is there a way I can just separate the mesh that corresponds to the material it's assigned to?

Select a vertex/edge/face that has the material you want to separate, then press P and choose the Material option. This will separate any faces that have that material into a new object, and you only have to select one.


ImportError when loading Open3D module into Blender python console I have installed the Open3D module using pip into the interpreter of Blender 2.79b, which uses Python 3.5.3. If I open the Python interpreter from the system console everything works fine without any error message after importing the module.

However, if I open the embedded console of Blender and import Open3D I get the following error:

>>> import open3d
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/opt/blender-2.79b-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5/site-packages/open3d/__init__.py", line 35, in <module>
    from .open3d import * # py2 py3 compatible
ImportError: std::bad_cast

Furthermore, if I include something different before Open3D (eg, numpy) the error changes into this:

>>> import numpy
>>> import open3d
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/opt/blender-2.79b-linux-glibc219-x86_64/2.79/python/lib/python3.5/site-packages/open3d/__init__.py", line 35, in <module>
    from .open3d import * # py2 py3 compatible
ImportError: generic_type: cannot initialize type "VerbosityLevel": an object with that name is already defined

So far, I've tried Blender 2.79a, 2.79b and 2.80 with different versions of Open3D and numpy, but I'm not able to find a solution. Trying the newer Blender 2.80 (Python 3.7.0) the error changes again into:

>>> import open3d
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/opt/blender-2.80-linux-glibc217-x86_64/2.80/python/lib/python3.7/site-packages/open3d/__init__.py", line 28, in <module>
    from .open3d import * # py2 py3 compatible
ImportError: Invalid character class.

What could it be?
Thanks.

Environment

OS: Ubuntu 18.04, Python version: 3.5.3 / 3.7.0, Open3D version: 0.8.0.0

Blender 2.79b is installed in /opt/blender-2.79b-linux-glibc219-x86_64.
In order to install the package I ran the following commands:

cd /opt/blender-2.79b-linux-glibc219-x86_64
./2.79/python/bin/python3.5m 2.79/python/lib/python3.5/ensurepip
./2.79/python/bin/pip3.5 install open3d

Same commands for the 2.80 version.

After several attempts, I found a solution. In order to fix the ImportError, install Open3D v0.4.0.0:

pip3 install open3d-python==0.4.0.0

Note that the package name has changed: use open3d-python instead of open3d. Probably, the latest versions of Open3D have some bugs (see also this Open3D issue).


Why is my object look so weird in rendered mode? I have a table with a simple UV added as a material.
Here is my table in material view:

Below is my table in Rendered:

Any idea what I can do to fix?

This issue is called z-fighting. That means, that you have overlapping geometry. Most likely, you have objects in your scene, that are invisible for viewport rendering (the eye icon in the outliner), but visible for rendered view (the camera icon).


Moving one object causes other to move another (already tried unlinking) Problem:

I have situation like this:

http://postimg.org/image/7vjo0zbzt/f70ae78b/

When I move The highlithed object the green human object moves its component as well and it shoudln't.

http://postimg.org/image/n4xo6j23r/f63b3af1/

Objects are in no parent-child relationship.

Linked - maybe?

I thought that object may be linked. SO I tried unliking:
- I highlithed the object (but not green human)
- I pressed U --> Object
- Is that all you have to do to unlink objects?

Can you point me in what I am doing wrong?

Side question: How can I check if an object is linked with another object?

I had proportional editing on.

If you ever think your objects are acting as though they were linked and they aren't be sure to check if you haven't by mistake turned on proportional editing. Otherwise you may end up with situation like the one described above.


How to remove IK Target after a certain point without breaking the animation? I'm creating a siting animation for a dog, I used a IK target to lock his his right leg to a specific location when i was animating his left leg.
everything is fine and animation is going how I want it to, now I've reached a point that I'm done with left leg i want to start to move his right leg.
The IK Target doesn't let me do it. I'm looking for a way to remove this IK target, but keep all the effects it had on my animation from frame 1 to frame 31.
I tried animating the right leg by moving the IK target, but it didn't work as i expected it to, for example, the bone doesn't rotate the way i want when i try to rotate it using it's IK target.
other than that, moving the IK Target also moves other parts because they're not locked in a location with an IK.
Can someone please help me with this?
Thanks in advance,
Amirreza

I Found a solution for that.
Insert all the keyframes, Pose Mode > AA > I > Visual Location, Rotation & Scale
Then click on pose on the left top corner of the 3d viewport, Animation > Bake Action
Tick, Only selected Bones (because you pressed double A to select everything), visual keying and clear constraints. enter your start and end frame and hit OK
It'll bake an animation exactly like what you created and unlocks all the IK targets.
from now, you can make new IK Targets and do the rest of your animation.
Hope it helps someone
P.S.
Overwrite current action can help you append more baked animation to your timeline.
for example, you can use ik to hold a bone in a place and animate a part of your rig, and then unlock it and bake the animation, then lock another part of your rig and animate another part.
For doing that, you need to set the start frame in the bake action to the the end frame of the previously baked animation and enable overwrite current action. this will append baked animations to the end of timeline.


Why my Bevel move verticies along the edges instead of bevel them? At one side Bevel works perfectly, but with similar edge on another side is a mess.
The same problem with another edges. Bevel goes flat, verticies run along the edges.
I have no doubled verticies. Recalculating normals for all this verticies didn't helped. I have no inner faces. There are edges between all this verticies.

It was caused by one flipped face.

The Bevel tool was confused, not knowing which way to go.
Recalculate Normals, so they're all pointing outwards.
Then the Bevel tool will work correctly.

Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside


Unwanted edge around image used in a plane I have a problem with the imported image. as you can see the left picture is transparent and looks ok, but when I import it as image as Plane it gets an orange edge and I want to fix it but I don't even know why its there?

these are the nodes of the image as plane

You should make the emission shader aware of the Alpha information from the image. At present indeed, the antialiased border of the globe is emitting as it was fully opaque.

You can do so by connecting the Alpha socket to the Strength input of the emission shader, and adding a "Math>Convert" node in the middle, set to multiply by 0.8.

(in your setup, the second - half transparent - stripe would have wrongly appeared completely white)

[ As cegaton says, however, for your application the diffuse and add shaders can be removed altogether: your globe isn't supposed to diffuse received light. ]


How do I delete vertices that clip inside a mesh? I'm trying to merge the sculpt of this head together with this body.
I used a boolean modifier, applied it, and saved my work. I didn't realize until later that the mesh is still visible on the inside. I can no longer select linked with ctrl + L to separate the head from the body to start over, as it selects both the head and the body.

I did some research and found this. I tried to use Faces > Intersect (boolean), with no results. Instead, I see a message on the bottom right of Blender saying "no intersections found".

How do I get rid of the vertices from the head sculpt that clip through the body sculpt? Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I guess what I'm trying to ask is why isn't it letting me select linked?
The vertices here aren't merged, but whenever I press L to select linked, everything is selected.

What you want is do remove anything that goes inside your torso part , you can duplicate your head , if your head is a part of your torso but if it is a separate object in the edit mode you can select one face on the head and do CTRL+L to select the linked faces ,if you didnot merge any vertices of the head with the torso , this will work, and use one of the head to bool out(difference) the torso and then your second head will fit perfectly


Moving a bone in multiple keyframes So i have blender 2.83.3.
In my scene I have 600+ keyframes, and there is a bone that I want the move to a different location for 500 of those keyframes.
Is there a fast way to move those or do i have to more them keyframe by keyframe?
I thank anyone with more XP then me!

enable auto keying , and start , that small record type button next to play button on the left in the timeline


Adding a texture map to a beveled curve or path I really want to be able to apply mapping to a curve object. For instance a rope or pipe that has a repeated pattern along its length that follows it's twists and turns.

There must be a simple way to generate UV coordinates for such an object without converting it to a mesh and unwrapping it. Can anyone help?

Yes, you can. Just simply toggle the Use UV for mapping option in Properties Editor > Object Data Tab > Texture space panel.

For BI render

In order to use UV coordinate, you have to convert the curve object into a mesh object to store UV (AltC > 2). Just besure to have that optio toggled, which will automatically generate a neat UV (named Orco by default). and set Texture coornidate to UV:

If you don't want to convert the curve object into a mesh, for regular use, you have a nice option, by using Generated coodinate instead for texture:

For Cycles Render:

After toggling Use UV for mapping option, you can immidiately see the automatic Orco UV in 3D View, Cycles will by default use UV coordinate for both curve and mesh:


Blender 2.8 add object dialog disabled I'm using Blender for a couple of years now, and I recently installed Blender 2.8. I want to add a circle of 6 vertices, but when I add a circle, the 'Add Circle' dialog is disabled (screenshot below), and I can't change anything. This happens with every object I add to the scene. I haven't experienced anything like this in previous editions of Blender, and I can't find any setting to enable it. I've tried to restart Blender, and even reinstall it, but that didn't help. Is there any setting I'm missing that might be causing this?

I had the same issue, you need to go Edit->Preferences->System and then add the check to Global Undo


Annoying uv or pbr map After sending project hey i'm having a problem with my pbr texture, i've baked it, everything looks fine, i'm working on the project in blender version 2.79
then I send the project to the client, when my client opens it, there is a strange texture, such as an irregular texture like the image I put in

[

]3
My client opens the project in blender 2.83, I think it's just a different version of the blender, then I installed blender 2.83 and opened my project, everything looks fine but why when my client opens it the texture becomes weird, so also uses unity

This is link for the file
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1taEKN33XByWa-eFgzsyOpS3JYOltuYe9/view?usp=sharing

This can happen when the Normal Map is set to sRGB (the values are then gamma corrected).
Make sure your client has it set to Non-Color.
It works just fine for me, Blender 2.83.


Keeping access to Vertices after deleting some other I'm working on a script that, at some point, gather some vertices index and access by storing them in an array but also delete some other vertices.

I know from what I understood that performing a delete operation format the vertices's index thus making the array I made irrelevant.

So my question is : How do I keep a way to access those vertices clean and up to date after deleting some other vertices ?

Also, my array order is important, so vertex 0 in my first array have to be vertex 0 in my final array.

Any help is welcome.

Mesh data layers

Instead of storing in an array could use an int data layer on the vertices.

Setting it up, object mode script.

import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context
obj = context.object
me = obj.data

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)
int_layer = bm.verts.layers.int

# custom int property on vert
selectionlayer = (int_layer.get("Selection")
        or int_layer.new("Selection"))

# assign verts indices to layer
for v in bm.verts:
    v[selectionlayer] = v.index

bm.to_mesh(me)
me.update()

Ok now each vertex has an integer in the layer that matches the index it once had.

To test..

Here is an edit mode script to test, remove some verts and run script

import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context
obj = context.edit_object
me = obj.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

int_layer = bm.verts.layers.int

selectionlayer = int_layer.get("Selection")

if selectionlayer:

    print([(v.index, v[selectionlayer]) for v in bm.verts])

After removing vert from default cube and running test script, I get [(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 5), (5, 6), (6, 7)] so it would appear I have deleted vertex previously known as "4"


Why is my custom background only going on blocks? CYCLES Why when i add a colored or in my case custom backround in cycles instead of the backround changng the color of my objects change?

In cycles, the Background BSDF is emitting rays and will affect the objects in the scene.

You have probably set your scene to transparent, which is why you can't see your background. Disable the Transparent property to see your background.

Using the Light Path node in the World material, it is possible to set a background, which doesn't influence the objects in the scene. This uses two background shaders. The first is visible to all objects in the scene, which is why it should be set to 0. The second is only visible to the camera. Plug your background setup into the second input of the mix node and connected the Is Camera Ray output to the Fac of the mix node.


better Curve/Text to Mesh generation? The triangulation process of Text to Mesh or Curve to Mesh generates some nasty topology.

I get why, but maybe it could be done a bit nicer? Since text is flat, have ngons instead of hundreds of triangles you'll need to modify anyway?

Another issue is when you then want to use the text as a Volume for particles, which for some reason behave weird when you have unusual topology even though they should be using the volume, not vertex or face positions.

It is possible to Remesh text. You'll be converting to a Mesh anyway if you want to add particles, so what you might do is:

extrude the Text object ( in the properties panel )
Add Remesh Modifier with appropriate settings, usually you need a low threshold.

Convert to Mesh: Alt+C in Object Mode -> Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text , this will apply the Remesh Modifier too
and you'll get this:


Is there a way to remove an objects reflection in eevee render? I'm using blender 2.92, is there a way to remove an object's reflection in eevee render? As you can see, the WINDOW of my model is color white, however I don't want it to reflect its color to the others parts of my train (like the area incircled in color red. Can someone help me?

It may not be right for your scene, but you can make a material invisible to reflections in EEVEE, as below. The nodes for the yellow emissive material are shown.

Unhecking 'Show Backface' in the material options prevents the back face from appearing to be overlaid on the object. Not sure why that's necessary, but it seems to be.


UV-mapping. How I can get the correct scale on the x axis? Does someone know how I can get the x-scale of the selceted faces of the UV exactly like the x-scale of the faces below?

.blend file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/d23anan0jl1y6mp/U-Bahn_Save_55.blend

Alright, here you go, I assume this is what you're looking for?

To achieve what I did in the above picture, you have to mark the seams on the sides of the curve, like so:

Notice how the edges I selected turns red. The red indicates edges that are UV seams, meaning that when you unwrap your mesh to a UV image, it "cuts" along the red lines.

Then you simply unwrap it with the "Follow Active Quads" option, and there you go!

Hope this helps.


Character modeling: character's front view appear at side view port in Blender I am new to Blender. I think i accidently click something and my model become like this. The character's front view appear at side view port and character's side view appear at front view port. What should i do in order to change everything back to normal? i mean turn character's front view back to front view port.

Rotate your object to make it fit the viewport - select it, press R to start rotating, right after that press Z to limit rotation to Z axis, next type in 90 on your keyboard to make it rotate 90 degree along Z axis.

Try it out, it might be I am giving you wrong degrees out of my head, just experiment, it should be fairly easy to figure out.

After that you might consider applying your rotation to the object (so it thinks that's its default rotation he is in right now) by pressing ctrl+A and selecting rotation.

You can also press N hotkey when having mouse cursor centered on 3d view - this way you will be able to see rotations, translations and scale under Transforms panel, and change them however you like.


Game development for 2.8 At which point are my current 2.78 files compatible with the upcoming 2.8 version? The models will be ok, but what bout the materials? Should I even bother setting them up if I plan on using the new Blender-Game PBR engine?

What about the logic brick? I read that the whole system of game logic will be rearranged and implement new more powerful physics.

So What aspect of my files should I be working on now and which should I leave aside until 2.8 comes out?

Thanks

It is pretty much unknown at this point, development hasn't really started on 2.8 version

They are not even finished with the design phase yet, so we don't even know how things are going to be, let alone if they will be compatible or if there will be any sort of "automatic conversion" compatibility layer.

Blender always strives to be as much backwards compatible as possible, though so your files are always guarantied to open, even if parts of it will be outdated or useless.

If any of the proposed changes are actually developed I am guessing cycles materials will mostly be compatible with the current version, mesh modeling and modifiers will probably be mostly compatible too, or at least modifiers will be converted to the hypothetical new "node system".
I am guessing any Blender internal or game engine materials, will be incompatible and need refactoring, probably the same with any game engine logic bricks.

This is at this point pretty much my opinion, based on a more-or-less-educated guess. I read development mailing lists discussions and commits daily, but I am no developer nor do I have any saying in the mater.

Anyway Blender 2.8 is at this point very blurry, undefined, and far away in time, it will probably be another year or more before we even see any working nightlies or alpha builds. If you want to do something you probably better use whatever available tools you have right now and worry about conversion later if you still need it then. In all likelihood you will be done with your project anyway by the time Blender 2.8 is out.


Texture Painting and Uv: how to control Target image? I am working on 3 objects: eyes, face and chest armor.

I have them on different layers and each one has a separate material and UV map. I have texture painted the eyes/face and when I switch to the UV mapped chest area and try to texture paint, it automatically switches the UV map to the one I used for the face and has the face texture on the chest.

If I switch to the UV map view and try to change the texture image to the blank chest one, it doesn't actually change on the model. I've tried setting up the nodes in cycles to assign the UV / texture I want to paint to, but it still stays at the face texture on the chest.

I'm sure I am missing a step / not setting it up right. What do I need to do?
Thanks.

Here are some images to help explain better:

This is the UV map and texture I want it to use:

And this is the UV map and texture it auto applies:

sharing some pictures and the .blend file could help a lot
(since i don't have enough rep to comment your question i said it here)

anyway i show you the steps hope it helps:

first you have to set up a few different uv maps:

one for the texture and a few more for sides, back, top, etc.

you can use ALT+B to cut the mesh so you only select the vertices that are visible from that angle

like this

then align the uv with pictures you want to copy from

after that go to texture paint mode and create a texture for the face

(explained in the picture)

hope it helps


How to bake a curvature map in Cycles? I want to bake a curvature map in Cycles but not by using the pointiness node which is dependent of the vertex density and not with a normal map to cavity ( How to convert a normal map into a curvature map ) because it creates artefacts.

I want to create a Concavity map that generates dark areas in concave shapes. Suzanne should bake like this (baked in Knald):

And i need to combine it with a Convexity map that highlights the peaks like this (baked in Knald):

I want the closest possible bake to the images i have posted above. I have used the Suzanne's default scale and a plane to bake it.

Maybe this helps. Baking an Edge map Using Ambient Occlusion https://youtu.be/RhMEBKuPYXY


Can I use Blender on Intel HD 530 dedicating an Nvidia GPU to Cycles? I'm trying to specify the build for a new PC, my current one is 5 years old and starting to show its age. It's going to be a multi-use machine for Gaming, Virtualisation, Coding, Blender and possibly even VR (Rift). Because of the shift to the cycles renderer I was thinking of going SLI (for the first time) so that I could dedicate one GPU to Cycles and leave the other for X. This would still give me an excellent gaming rig if I used, for example, 2x Geforce GTX 960 (4GB).

Now that I've started to look into the build, I see that the Intel Skylake CPU's also include an OpenGL capable GPU, e.g. the Intel HD 530, in the Core i5-6600, which is OpenGL 4.4, HLSL 5.1 and DX12 compatible.

My question is whether I could run Blender (on Linux) using just the Intel HD graphics for the X session (with OpenGL for Blender) and then dedicate a single Nvidia GPU for Cuda (for Cycles rendering). The Blender system requirements only state a need for OpenGL 3.2 [OK], but the Intel specs don't specify how much VRAM is available - Blender requires between 512M and 4G. The Intel spec sheets are very vague about Video Memory, a couple of sources quote 64MB or 128MB eDRAM so I assume the actual VRAM is borrowed from system memory but I can't find a solid figure for how much is available.

Does anyone have an Intel Skylake Core i5-6600 processor running Blender without a dedicated GPU? Or better with a GPU that is dedicated to Cuda/Cycles?

You can definitely do this. My son has an Ubuntu Desktop:
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS"

And this graphics card specifically:
$ lshw -c video
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: HD Graphics 530
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 06
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:134 memory:f6000000-f6ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:f000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

He's able to render cars for NR2003 using this setup.

NOTE: The render times can be long he constantly lets me know that they can take 1-2hrs but it is doable.
CPU Info
Here's his CPU info too just in case.
$ lscpu
Architecture:                    x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:                      Little Endian
Address sizes:                   39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):                          4
On-line CPU(s) list:             0-3
Thread(s) per core:              2
Core(s) per socket:              2
Socket(s):                       1
NUMA node(s):                    1
Vendor ID:                       GenuineIntel
CPU family:                      6
Model:                           94
Model name:                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz
Stepping:                        3
CPU MHz:                         800.052
CPU max MHz:                     3700.0000
CPU min MHz:                     800.0000
BogoMIPS:                        7399.70
Virtualization:                  VT-x
L1d cache:                       64 KiB
L1i cache:                       64 KiB
L2 cache:                        512 KiB
L3 cache:                        3 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s):               0-3


An object wouldn't render in cycles (all solutions on the topic I found don't work) So I ran into a peculiar problem while rendering my scene in cycles. I am creating an animation demonstrating what a mental object cut is (when an object is cut by a plane). The pictures below show the sequence of my animation.

The setup is as follows:

(1) The initial object in picture 1 is the object I cut with an ambient occlusion material. The cross-section is a separate object hidden from scene view and render (same material applied). The cutting plane has a transparency node mixed with the diffuse node, and I regulate the level of transparency in Mix Shaders node.

(2) I gradually change the transparency level of the cutting plane to make it appear (by keyframing the Mix shaders node).

(3) At a certain point, I make the initial object invisible for the scene and render and toggle on the visibility of a pre-modeled cross-section object place right where the plane would actually cut the object.

(4) Finally, I toggle the visibility of the text object.

Now, in render mode my animation looks good. But when I actually render it, it the first frame looks like this (compare it to the first picture in my post):

The same thing actually happens in Blender Internal (which I desperately turned to having tries other things).

What I've tried so far:

Render visibility is keyframed on/off correctly for all objects(not only viewport visibility)
Duplication is set to none
Normals are set correctly on the initial object
changing normals on the cutting plane did not help
Blender Internal yields the same result
Starting a project from scratch did not help
After some manipulations with toggling the visibility on/off, I came
to the conclusion that the what happens is that the plane actually
visually cuts part of the initial object and what is shown in the
render is the second part behind the plane.

So what's happening here? I'd be very grateful if anyone could offer some insights into this situation. I am attaching the link to my blend file.

Thanks!

The cutting plane is somehow overlapping geometry and causing Z Fighting artifacts.

Your $Intitial$ object as a Boolean modifier invisible to viewport and visible to rendering leading to different results.

Your scene also as a multitude of unrelated issues like using Hemi lamps which aren't truly supported in Cycles and a Sun lamp which doesn't really seem to be doing much besides illuminating the background, since you are using an ambient occlusion shader on your objects which doesn't interact with scene lighting.


Is there any advantage in keeping dual video cards? I just upgraded my graphics card from Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti to Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER.

Is there any advantage in leaving the 1660-Ti in? The 2070 has shown a 30% increase in benchmark so far!

Yes leave it! You can render with both cards, and the CPU too, all at once. Just make sure you go into Blender parameters and turn them on under Cycles render parameters.


real vertex count addon Are there any addons to get the REAL vertex count? e.g. if I have flat shading (which is default in blender tho) I will get way more vertices then blender shows on top of the window, and if I have UV seams it will increase even more.

I've found some scripts (not plugins) that count UV vertices, but it's not what I need. I don't know the api of the blender, so I can't write the addon myself in one day, and I have no time to learn.

Use Edge Split

Do not use hard shading, always use smooth shading on the whole object and use the edge split modifier instead. You can split edges based on angle or mark edges sharp with ctrl + e and mark sharp manually. This will make blender report the proper vertex count when no seams are present. Using the script that counts the UV vertices should give the proper vertex count with edge split and seams.


50% Grey at 0.5 instead of 0.18? why is it that 50% grey is at 0.5 instead of 0.18 in the color selection panels?
That doesn't feel consistent with a linear workflow I am used from other apps.

thx

The color wheel has three options. By default RGB, HSV and Hex(adecimal). The first option, RGB, uses linear color, but the second and the third are color managed. By default they uses the sRGB color space in you display device.

This question has been noticed by many blender users. You can see further details in this blender development task.

If you want to use linear color in all color wheel options, you need to modify the default set up for color management, and set None in the Display Device of you BLEND file.


Python 2.8 - how to assign a material in shading versus layout workspace In Blender/python 2.8, I have code that creates and assigns a material correctly in the Layout workspace (Workbench engine), but when I switch to Eevee or Cycles engine the material does not exist.  The solution appears to be that I must create the material a second time in the Shading workspace.

Question:  how can I rework my code (below) so that the material gets added in the Shading workspace as well?

def add_plane_material(MaterialsIndex, MaterialName, R, G, B):
    bpy.ops.material.new()
    bpy.data.materials[MaterialsIndex].name=MaterialName
    bpy.data.materials[MaterialName].diffuse_color=(R,G,B,1)
    bpy.context.object.data.materials.append(bpy.data.materials[MaterialName])

```

The following script allows you to create a material with the colors you'd like and assign it to a specific object. The material is only created once, if another material with the same name already exists that one is used. If it finds the expected shader node it sets the desired color. The first argument is the object you want the material assigned to, which can be retrieved e.g. through bpy.data.objects['NameOfYourObjectHere'].

def add_material(obj, material_name, r, g, b):
    material = bpy.data.materials.get(material_name)

    if material is None:
        material = bpy.data.materials.new(material_name)

    material.use_nodes = True
    principled_bsdf = material.node_tree.nodes.get('Principled BSDF')

    if principled_bsdf is not None:
        principled_bsdf.inputs[0].default_value = (r, g, b, 1)

    obj.active_material = material


How to model braided nylon sleeve I am trying to make a model of a braided nylon sleve which I want to use for kitbashing.

Here is what im trying to make

I know how to make the tube inside and everything, but I'm struggling with the braided nylon. I want to make the whole muscle straight and in a resting position so I can later deform it as desired.

I know that patterns like this are easy to replicate with normal map patterns in some software, but i am trying to make it as a high poly model I can use while concepting and kitbashing.

The biggest issue I am having is making a single segment that can easily be arrayed and modified so remains similar to it.

So far I have tried using a cylinder, cutting all the faces, modifying it and arraying it and twisting but it only turns out looking like a basic net.

If you could just direct me to what I could do, and you dont need to specifically say the button needed, I  know where everything is located and all the buttons, I  just need to figure out in which order/way should I go to make this.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Add a mesh circle to your scene
Extrude it vertically
Poke its faces with Alt + P
Remove the vertical edges by selecting one of them and pressing Shift + G > Select Grouped > by Direction
Remove the triangle faces with the same operator by Polygon Sides

Add an empty object to the scene
Add a Bezier Curve object too
Now add an Array modifier to the circle
Clear the pre-defined relative offset options
Check the Object Offset option
Pick the previously added empty object
Set it to Fit Curve mode
Pick the previously added Bezier Curve
Now adjust the Position of the Empty to match the rotation and the height
Move it up half the distance extruded in point 2

Rotate it about the Z axis $360°$ divided by twice the number of edges of the circle (by default a circle has 32 edges so $360° / (32 * 2) = 5.625°$)
Rotate the whole Circle + Empty in the Y axis $90$ degrees
Add a Curve modifier and pick the same curve used in the array
Now add a Wireframe modifier
Adjust the curve's shape as necessary

Control the dilation/contraction of the nylon sleeve with the curve vertex radius

Enter edit mode in the curve, select a vertex and press Alt + S by default.

Profit!


UV/Image Editor grid snapping What is the way of emulating the Snap to Grid feature from the 3D Viewport in the UV Image Editor? In my case, vertices of my mesh are never aligned with gridlines, which in turn results in some artifacts on whole scene.

Also there is not consistency in mesh shape if perform "Lightmap Pack" as can be seen from image. Some of the actual mesh faces are more kite shaped, but map as squares or rectangles when it's "Lightmap Pack" unwrapped.

You can use the texture image as a grid. In case you have no image loaded, create one. Then activate Snap to Pixel in the UV's menu. And when you move the UV vertices around in the UV Editor, then they will snap to the pixels of the image now.

For the other questions i would suggest to open other topics.


Emit map and mirror map? How can I texture emission and reflection? How can I make the light affect other things from the emit map? Also a mirror map? I want a part of the wall that shows reflection of a mirror.

EDIT

I'm so confused. I'm in the cycles render now, and when I try to paint a mirror, it repeats..

I tried a simple test: I created a 600x200 pixel png file, with the left half pure black and the right half pure white. Created a new emission material in Cycles and set the color to 'Image Texture', then loaded the png image as the texture. I placed the material on a quad and set that quad perpendicular to a flat surface and rendered. The half textured with white acted exactly like a bright light, shining white light over my flat surface. The half textured in black emitted no apparent light. Looks to me like it just works.

The blend for this texture emission can be found here:

The partial mirror is achievable by using a glossy BDSF shader with another UV-mapped texture feeding the 'Roughness' variable. I updated the blend to use this textured mirroring node setup. You can find it here:


Can't go into edit mode Help this is so silly is it me? What am I doing wrong? I made of gif of what is going on below, hopefully i'm doing something wrong.
https://gyazo.com/be75d6f44431243bee556584d811efc0

You just need to turn ON Viewport Overlays button next to display modes on 3d view header ...


Rotating various objects in different axis I am trying to model kind of a helicopter rotor like this

I would like to make it so that when I open one of the wings, the others open to. I want to make an animation like the wings are closed like this

and then open to the position that they are in the fistr picture, without having to manually rotate them every time. Any help?

You can add a driver to bind their rotation to the position of an empty:

Add an empty:

Right click and Add Single Driver to the appropriate axis of rotation on your blade. Repeat for each blade.

Open the graph editor and define your driver, for each blade:

I made the z location of my empty drive the x rotation of my blades.


Video footage as a material? I've been learning how to make planet from this course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g8XxmqSP90. Planets textures are used as materials over the surface of a sphere but I wanted to know. Is it possible to use moving video footage as a material on a sphere?

You can use a video as texture the same way you would use any other image texure


water simulation -Move water upward along a slope I want to make a simulation where water move upward along a topography opposite to what it does under normal gravity. I dont want just to water behave like smoke and go straight upward but to behave like fluid and crawl upward along slope
can any one help

In the Scene settings, switch off Gravity by unticking the checkbox. This will enable the Gravity settings in the Fluid Domain Settings. You can then adjust the gravity such that the 'uphill' becomes 'downhill' and the water naturally flows uphill.
Note that this depends on the topology being such that the water will naturally flow in the desired direction - eg, up an indented riverbed. If the situation is more complicated you may need to resort to other methods to 'Guide' the water along the path but this would risk making the motion less natural.


How to specify the size of a text box in a panel? Please consider the following image:

The text box with the value "127.0.0.1:56661" is just too big, it occupies a considerable percentage of the row in the panel leaving small space for the label "Some parameter". How can I specify the text box size?

Remove the property name of the text box (name = "",) and add a row.label(text="Some Parameter: ") above your row.prop(scene "Parameter Op String Box") in your panel build.


Setting active object through python issues I am working on an addon that creates siding, it also allows you to cut out rectangles in it for windows and doors. It uses Boolean modifiers for this. When you select bricks it cuts the brick then it cuts the mortar then it joins the two, but currently I am having trouble getting it to cut the mortar properly.

Run the code from the Text Editor, go to Add Mesh > JARCH Vis > Add Siding, then once the object is added go to Properties > Modifiers > JARCH Vis, then change the Material to bricks, click Cutouts and enter something like 5, 2, 2, 2.

You will notice how it does cut through the brick, but not through the mortar. The code for all this starts at line 1,524. It is like

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = mortar

isn't switching right, but if you check active object it is correct. So I don't know why the modifier is being applied to o but not mortar. Here is the python file

I have seen this issue when using a panel in the properties window to alter the active object. It would be related to the context.

The easy fix is to place your panel in the 3dview. This is just a matter of changing the panel's bl_space_type to VIEW_3D and bl_region_type to UI

It is possible that you can override the context to get it working, this answer explains that and links to more information.


Using an RGB map to assign various shaders in a material I am importing a RGB image into Blender and I would like to replace the colors of the image by materials (Glossy, Glass, or other complex Node setups).

For example I would replace the green with an iridescent material, the blue with a concrete texture, the red with a Glossy shader, etc...

I haven't found how to do that because I am not sure how to plus these directions into the image texture. I looked at my previous similar question, but this image I am working with now has no Alpha layer.

Final:

Example with Glossy, Glass and Emission shader.

Overview and Node setup:

You can do this by Separate RGB node which, well, is separating RGB channels. Then use them as masks for your materials.

  Important thing is that it would work even better if colors of the
  image would be pure RGB values. For example now red channel is R: 0.85
  G: 0.43 B: 0.43 and should be R: 1 G: 0 B: 0.

As a workaround for those color issue, you can add Math nodes and set them
to make channel only black and white (white should be selected channel). Example for green channel:

Edit:

1. Different materials.

You can change Diffuse shaders from original answer to any shader you want. They can have Image Textures, procedural textures, Bump Maps, anything you would normally do with texturing objects.

Going further with this:

I've created Node Group from original answer to make it even easier and less distracting for you:

As you can see here Image Texture is pure RGB and accordingly to the channels there are connected Principled Shaders (could be any shader).

Tweak Values are for non-pure RGB colors.

Blend file:

2. Different colors.

Simple answer is - no. You can't use this setup for images with other colors (except for black). There is possibility to create such setup but it will be mostly based on specific image rather then making one to rule them all.

This is because all colors are RGB based. You can try with Tweak Values but it will be pretty hard.

Also you can use only one color with this setup but only if everything else (background) is black.


Using alpha channel of generated images for cycles I am creating blank images within blender to add some fine detail, such as nails in wood boards. My blank image is black.

When I export the image and/or when I input it into image texture node in cycles, I cannot control the alpha channel, as it hasn't been saved.
When generating a new image, I am using all the default settings (including the option to create an alpha channel). Any suggestions on how to generate an image with usable alpha channel?

I'm not sure I understand the question entirely..

If you want an image with a transparent background,
Make sure you set the image background to completely transparent (assuming that is what you want)

When you save the image you also want to make sure you use an image format that supports alpha channels - png would be the most common.

The RGBA button enables saving the alpha channel and is only visible if the image format supports alpha.

(If you want to render the image, the RGBA button is in the render settings panel.).

You can then set up a simple material such as this:


create a surface from 5 points I have a model, and I accidentally deleted some vertices, and I need to get the surface back. The hole is outlined in red in this image. I have 5 vertices and have no idea how to make the surface.

Since your mesh is triangulated, you should create three triangle faces. For instance you could connect them in the following pattern.

In order to accomplish this, switch into Edit Mode (TAB) and enable Vertex Select.

Select the three vertices (and only the three vertices) that are supposed to form a face. Once they are selected press F to create the face. Deselect the vertices (ALT+A) and repeat with the next three vertices.


How do I animate low poly water? So I'm trying to make a low poly well and I wanted to make the water first. I don't want to have just a blue plane, I want it to actually move like water. How do I get some waves on it? It should have small waves since it's just a well not an ocean.

Depending on what you wish, one basic way could be using a wave modifier with a texture, maybe?

edit: to make only top vertices assign them to a vertex group, and set that "vertex group" name in the modifier:


How to invoke custom node operator I am trying to invoke a custom operator from a blender addon, e.g. this one. However, when I call it from the command line I am getting the following error message:
>>> bpy.ops.node.liexport('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/ttsesm/blender/blender-2.83.2-linux64/2.83/scripts/addons/vi-suite06/vi_operators.py", line 607, in invoke
    node = context.node
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'node'

location: /ttsesm/blender/blender-2.83.2-linux64/2.83/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py:199

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/ttsesm/blender/blender-2.83.2-linux64/2.83/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 199, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), C_dict, kw, C_exec, C_undo)
RuntimeError: Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/ttsesm/blender/blender-2.83.2-linux64/2.83/scripts/addons/vi-suite06/vi_operators.py", line 607, in invoke
    node = context.node
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'node'

from my understanding the explanation is related to what @batFINGER is describing here. But then my question would be how to invoke the operator from the script.
The operator is related with the Export button that you can see in the node below:

and which node I created with the following commands:
ng = bpy.data.node_groups.new('NodeTree', 'ViN')
context_node = ng.nodes.new(type="No_Li_Con")

The solution I've found was to to override the context.node call. The way I did it was by creating a dictionary with 'node' as the key and the node as the item, e.g.
override = {'node': bpy.data.node_groups[node_group_name].nodes['node_name']}
The operator can then be run with bpy.ops.node.ligexport(override, 'INVOKE_DEFAULT']).


Renders doesn't display in Node Editor while compositing I follow that tutorial step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3sSZ6W7rgQ
and had to stop around 44:00 - I had rendered my image and when I go into Node Editor there is no way to make backdrop shows up. I don't know what's going on. I'm using Blender v2.71. Please help me :)

TARDIS Maker comment is a solution to my problem, I just didn't connect render layers to a viewer node.


random place on a face with python I'm trying to place an object at a random place on a plane.
So far, I found out how to get the vertices locations in real world.
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.active_object
vert = obj.data.vertices

vertex_0 = obj.matrix_world @ vert[0].co
vertex_1 = obj.matrix_world @ vert[1].co
vertex_2 = obj.matrix_world @ vert[2].co
vertex_3 = obj.matrix_world @ vert[3].co

print(vertex_0, vertex_1)

But now, I'm stuck. How can I give an object coordinates somewhere between those vertices?
I can imagine how this would work in 2 dimensions, but with a rotated plane in 3D? My head explodes.
EDIT:
Another idea was to work in local space. Parent an object to the plane and work from there. But then will the child object be scaled with the parent object. And that is not what I want.
So I used the "Child of" constraint and disabled the scale like this:
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

# put the location on a vertex of the plane
obj.location = (-1,1,0)

# give the constraint to the selected object
obj.constraints.new('CHILD_OF')
obj.constraints["Child Of"].use_scale_x = False
obj.constraints["Child Of"].use_scale_y = False
obj.constraints["Child Of"].use_scale_z = False
obj.constraints["Child Of"].target = bpy.context.scene.objects['Plane']

But after clicking the "Clear Inverse" Button in the constraint, the objects location is not on the vertex of the plane how it should be (when the plane is scaled before the script is loaded). Instead, the origin of the object will be on the expected vertex, when the Scale X, Y and Z in the Constraint is enabled again. (Scale is disabled in the script).
So: How can I put an object on another object and having a child relationship without scaling but with the right location?

Use the local space.
The default plane in blender has local coordinates where x and y range from -1 to 1 and z is zero.
>>> me = C.object.data
>>> for v in me.vertices:
...     v.co[:]
...
(-1.0, -1.0, 0.0)
(1.0, -1.0, 0.0)
(-1.0, 1.0, 0.0)
(1.0, 1.0, 0.0)

With this arrangement can consider only the x, y coordinates effectively making it 2D within the plane z=0.
Hence any point with x and y randomly chosen from that range will be on the plane.
Simple test script, with an object that is the default plane "Plane" with any arbitrary global transform, and it will add an empty on its surface.
Multiplying this local point by the objects matrix world will ensure it is at a global location on the surface of planes current position.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix
from random import uniform
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

plane = scene.objects.get("Plane")
if plane:
    vec = Vector((uniform(-1, 1), uniform(-1, 1), 0))
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add(
            location = plane.matrix_world @ vec,
            )

Will re-iterate this relies on the plane having its original local or mesh coordinates in range explained above, making it a simple task to place an empty on its surface.
Via Parenting.
Another way to use local coordinates is via parenting. In this case need only set the local location of the empty within range above to have it on the plane. This will have the effect of aligning the axes of empty to plane.
if plane:
    vec = Vector((uniform(-1, 1), uniform(-1, 1), 0))
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
    mt = context.object
    mt.parent = plane
    mt.location = vec

To make the influence of the parent planes scale to empty unity for any subsequent children of the empty,.   Does a child object inherit the matrix from the parent?
if plane:
    mw = plane.matrix_world
    _, _, scale = mw.decompose()
    S = Matrix.Diagonal(scale.to_4d())
    vec = Vector((uniform(-1, 1), uniform(-1, 1), 0))
    bpy.ops.object.empty_add()
    mt = context.object
    mt.parent = plane
    mt.matrix_parent_inverse = S.inverted()
    mt.location = S @ vec

For an arbitrarily un axis aligned plane it is a bit more complex. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42352622/finding-points-within-a-bounding-box-with-numpy


Making glowing orb with light rays? Is there a way to make something like in the picture? I prefer using EEVEE and no compositing. Basically just a glowing orb with light rays.

Here are 2 ideas based on the same principle: create holes in an Icosphere, put a Point light inside and surround it with a Volumetric Scatter cube (density 0.04).

The first idea creates "transparent" holes using a voronoi texture node setup and uses the "Is Camera Ray?" Light path node to hide the holes to the camera. Quite versatile as it can be used on any object without modifying geometry.

Second idea: remove random faces in the back side of the icosphere. Allows to keep a simple material on the sphere but requires it to always face the camera to avoid seeing the holes.


Reduce the brightness of a lit area This room is currently lit, with a sun light and to a large part by the resulting bounce light.

I currently like the amount of bounce light, and how it shapes the light in the room.

BUT:

I want to reduce the brightness of the directly lit areas.

So i can whats happening in the areas that are directly lit.

Like that: (reduced sun-srength)

Is there a way to reduce the brightness of directly lit areas without reducing my sun-strength ?

Yes im usic the Filmic colour space.

You could render it with passes enabled and reconstruct the image with compositing. You then have the control of how much direct or indirect light you add to the compositing result:


Blender 2.76 AO bake partial black spots I was attempting to bake the AO for a pumpkin model but it end up baking the top of the model as black. I have checked that the normals are pointing the correct direction and that theres no overlapping vertices.

To assure you that the normal is correct,

How can I resolve this issue?

Possible cause n°1

Some of your top faces normals are probably pointing inward, so is taking in account the inside of the pumpking and not the outside in the face-proximity calculation.

I would firtstly try to Recalculate Normals by selecting all the faces with A while in Edit mode and then press Ctrl+N.

You can display the normal vector of each face with the option you can see in the Property panel, in the Mesh Display section.

Possible cause n°2

One of your renderable objects in the scene is partially overlapped with some faces of the object you are trying to bake. Baking process takes into account also the objects in the neighborhood.


Edit custom properties cycles_visibility After boolean operation with BoolTool addon new line appeared in cycles_visibility under custom properties. After that, object is no longer visible on render. How to remove this line?

I figured out how to fix this. Just add new property, than ckick "Edit". In "Property name" type cycles_visibility and in "Property value" erase "1.0".


Restore Graph Editor F-Curve Filter Location Moving to 2.8 I realized that the search bar for F-curve filter is now located inside an extra menu as shown below:

This is very counter-productive as animating requires you to filter out many curves several times. This makes it extra painful to change the filter. Is there a way to restore it's position to be outside on the bottom bar like in 2.78?

The filter entry is also always available at the top of the channel list in any of the animation editors.

This is the same filter property that is shown in the popup menu.


Bone Heat Weighting Error - Spikes I haven't come across an issue quite like this. I spent a bunch of time googling around to see why I was having this bone weight error, and I found the following solutions, which I tried and didn't work.

Making Manifold - This model is manifold and also doesn't have any intersecting faces.
Correct normals - All of the normals are correct
duplicate Vertices - Removed duplicate vertices
Fix Scale and rotation - Done

I thought it might also be the armature, but I tried armature I've used on other models and even tried this one on other models.

No matter what I do, I just get these spikes and I can't figure out what's going on.

Thanks for your help!

Blender File Here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SvZbrZb7fVsiZeaty9Y8w9GBrc69I_TR?usp=sharing

I figured out the solution, but I don't quite understand the problem. I needed to decimate the character before the issue resolved itself, so I guess the issue was that I just had too many vertices.


how to parent my sun to environment hdri? I set a keyframe for my hdri location via texture coordinates.
now I wanna make it parent to my sun so that the sun follows the hdri location.
I tracked my sun to my object and now want to parent my hdri to my sun.
please let me know if there is away.If not,I will draw a path and sync the rotation by that.
but If there is a way to parent the world rotation to light please let me know.
in cycle

One solution (and probably needlessly complicated) is driving the Sun rotation from the HDRI

Add nodes to your HDRI Mapping node like in the second image
Go Value node > RMB > Copy As New Driver and paste as Sun's Z rotation
The Value node rotates both HDRI + Sun (for animating)
The Add node rotates only HDRI


File not rendering in freestyle properly So this is my file:

And  this is how it's rendering:

I don't know any way of fixing this.

I just moved the line at the bottom down:


Import FBX - stretched model with animation I have an FBX character model with animation in it. Blender couldn't read it, so I've converted it using Autodesk FBX converter.
Now when I import this model into Blender, it is scaled up, rotated in relation to its skeleton and whole mesh is oddly stretched.

How it looks:

How do I fix it?

Pay attention to the bottom left of your Blender screen on import (you may need to scroll down to see it).

There are options for both the mesh and the armature here, and you need to play around with the axis settings to match your workflow.

If you still have questions/issues with this, please comment to state what they are, and fix up the question to show more specific requests where you are having the issues. That way this post can serve as a decent reference to help others, who may run into similar issues.

If you answer your own question, please detail what you did to solve the problem.


How to seperate clothing from the rest of the model Im very new to blender and am wondering whether there are any methods to seperate clothing (hair(particles), boots, gloves) from the rest of the model  as I am going to be animating my character and having him wearing a ghillie suit will make animating difficult.

There are two fundamental principles to 3D modeling. One is "don't model what can't be seen"; the other is "any part which needs to move independently of any other part needs to be a separate object  from every other part to which it moves in relation". Following these principles, your character will consist of multiple objects: a head, a separate jaw, likely separate eyes, a cap, a pair of hands, a pair of arms, a pair of feet, a pair of legs, and two or more objects  which, combined, make up the torso.

In fact, you will likely have multiple feet: perhaps a pair of combat boots, a pair of parade dress, and a pair of ghillie boots. You won't usually have bot bare feet and shod feet, because you can't usually see the feet through the shoes.


Difficulty Loading Images in UV Editor I cannot load an image in the UV/Image editor. I can find the image in the browser, and when I click "open image" the file name displays as if it has loaded, but I cannot see anything. I've tried lots of different image files and also both .png and .jpg files.
I'm using Blender 2.74.
Thanks!

If you click on the image in the UV editor (1 in the picture below), the name of the image pops up and if i'm correct the name is artwork_eatsheep.jpg.001.
Then open the properties tab (N). Under image you see the source (2), here you must locate the image on your computer and load it. Then it should work.


Getting the 0,0,0 point in the middle of the cameras view I apologize if this isnt in the right section, but I figured there would be some scripting involved to do this process.

What I am looking to do is get the 0,0,0 point to the middle of the camera. I would like to be able to maintain the angle at which the scene is at and not rotate the camera, but instead just have it so the 0,0,0 point becomes the middle of the cameras view.

Lets say this is the view after orienting the camera, and the 0,0,0 point is to the right of center in the camera view

I would like to be able to maintain the rotation of the camera that has been made, but get the view to snap so the 0,0,0 point is in the middle of the cameras view

Although the Track To constraint will always put the origin in the middle of the camera view, they will change the rotation of the camera, as it will stay fixed in place.

To keep the rotation we have to find a new location for the camera, presumably only moving within the camera's xy-plane, where it's viewing direction (the camera's z-axis) goes through the origin. This is a simple line-plane intersection problem:
Where is the intersection of the line l that goes through point l_0 (0,0,0) and the current xy camera plane, defined by normal vector n and point p_0?
l and n are the camera's z-vector, and p_0 is the camera's location.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

# get camera object
camera = bpy.context.blend_data.objects["Camera"]
# get camera viewing vector, which is also the normal vector of the
# camera's xy plane
cmat = camera.matrix_world
camera_z = Vector([cmat[i][2] for i in range(3)])

# this is the new center of the camera view
l_0 = Vector((0,0,0))
l = camera_z
n = camera_z
p_0 = camera.location

new_loc = (p_0 - l_0).dot(n)/l.dot(n) * l + l_0

camera.location = new_loc