Size still the same after removing groups I am very new to blender and have a model (an .obj file) where I want to remove some groups. Removing the groups are no problem, but when I then import the new file into the program where I'm using the model, with the groups removed, the resulting bounding box is still the same as when the groups were there (the groups are at "the end" of the model, so the size should be smaller).

It's like if the groups are still there, taking up space.
I have removed the groups by clicking on them in the scene and clicking "Delete". In the resulting .obj file I can find only the two groups that are still there. But for some reason the bounding box volume is the same as when the groups were there. Just to be clear, the bounding box is wrong in the other program I'm using. I can't find the bounding box in blender.

I have also moved the pivot point by following these instructions, and setting the pivot point to the center of the model (I think), by doing Tools -> Transform -> Set origin -> Set origin to center of mass (surface)

I have received these instructions from someone who has removed groups before, but I can't find what the last step means.

remove groups
move pivot
apply all transformations and rotations

One way in which you could be left with a bounding box larger than the remaining geometry would be if you deleted the objects while in Edit Mode. Then you would be left with objects with no geometry, but the objects would have their location, scale and rotation information still there.  If this is the case you would need to go to the Outliner to find the mesh-less objects and select them there and then Delete. If your deleted groups had parents, you'd need to open out the items in the Outliner in order to find them.


Green faces in sculpt mode but I don't think I did anything I was re-making an anvil following blender guru's tutorial(because I applied modifiers in wrong order and screw up without backup) but suddenly I saw gaping holes in my mesh and had a mini-panic and reverted back to my auto save. Then, I realized there are green faces where the holes were.
So, I thought maybe there are loose vertices or something so I went and looked in edit mode. But I couldn't find what was off about it.
I've tried to merge it by distance, smoothing it but it didn't do anything. I don't know why it's happening or what I've done wrong. But other side looks fine witch is making it more confusing.
I'm assuming it could be the multi-plane scrape tool, but other parts where I've used it are fine and I am stuck

I did a bit of searching and think I've found an answer.
Wacky, weird colors when entering sculpt mode (blender v2.83)
Basically, clock on the dropdown menu near the viewport mode selection, and deselect 'Face sets' This should do the job.
Hope this helps.


Export rigid body location without baking to keyframes I'm making simulation in blender for rigid body. I need object location in the current frame. I use following command

bpy.context.scene.frame_set(250)
bpy.data.objects['Object'].location

but this command returns the location corresponding to the initial frame.
Neither changes object location in Location panel during simulation. I know I can bake rigid body transformations to keyframes but I need another way to get location of object because baking takes long time for multiple objects. Is there any other command which can print object location after transformation without baking?

Yes, Location/Rotation/etc. returns the values visible in relevant fields of the object transform in the UI, kind of 'initial' transformation. To get final one, you can use:

bpy.context.scene.frame_set(250)
bpy.data.objects['Object'].matrix_world.translation

Note that:

This gives you absolute position of the object (world space), if you want its relative position (to parent e.g., local space), you'll have to use matrix_local.
You should bake physics simulation before using frame_set().


Grease Pencil strokes from movie clip editor not showing in 3D view Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I drew on top of a movie clip in the movie clip editor with the grease pencil. I have all those frames looking the way I want, but recently found out that I cannot render them that way, as it is only an in-memory representation of the strokes.

So, I went to the 3D view, put the grease pencil layers in my scene, and used the movie clip as a background image. My strokes don't show up there, even though I can draw new strokes that show up.

Is there a way to see the strokes I've made and to render them out?

movie clip editor:

3D view:

I figured out a workaround! So what I ended up doing was to write a small script to change all the 2D strokes I made to 3D strokes:

gp = bpy.context.scene.grease_pencil
for l in gp.layers:
    for f in l.frames:
        for s in f.strokes:
            s.draw_mode='3DSPACE'

For some reason which I do not know, the 3D strokes were the correct orientation when I viewed them from the top orthographic view. Then I scaled and moved my background image to be behind the strokes the same way I had it before.


Why do I get a "seam" using Mirror modifier? I started using Blender a few weeks ago and right now I'm starting my first project without a tutorial. I'm starting to create a character and the first thing that came to my mind was "It needs to have symmetry", so I used a Mirror modifier on my object and it has this "seam". In the image I used a Sphere because it is much more noticeable.

So, how can I fix it? And why does this happens?

You should turn on clipping, as Cebbi has already mentioned. Also, the subsurf modifier should go after the mirror modifier.

That should do it.


Sliding an edge while keeping connected 90 faces in same orientation? I'm self taught and just recently learned of the edge/vertices slide tool. I was wondering if it was possible to slide an edge, while keeping a perpendicular "lip/bevel?" in the same orientation as it slides. (ie keep the bevel face perpendicular.) I hope the below screenshot gives a better picture.

If this is not currently possible, what method would you recommend to move this edge/bevel inward as I slide the shown edge? In the end i need to have the same vertices count, and a texture is already applied to mesh.

Thanks for any recommendations  !

Edit:

ie welding it with a shifted edge?

Those are two different cases... In the first screenshot it's impossible to slide edge without affecting surrounding faces because of triangulated mesh. And as for the second one it's also impossible as you can only slide one edge (well, effectively).

If you haven't applied Rotation to the object you can simply change Transform Orientation to Local and move along selected axis:

But if you have it applied there are two methods to do this - regarding second case (quad based):

Snap selection to Edge Loop.

Create additional Edge Loop and place it where you want to 'slide' your selection.
Turn on Snapping: Vertex.
Move selection to created Edge Loop.
Remove Doubles and Dissolve remaining unnecessary edge.

Mesh Align Plus add-on.

Grab add-on from here: Mesh Align Plus and install it.

Go to Mesh Align Plus tab in Tool Shelf and select Quick Directional Slide section.
Uncheck Auto Grab Source from selected Vertices.
Grab Normal Coordinates.
Enter Multiplier value - it's small in my case.
Check Enable Experimental Mesh Ops.
Move selection by clicking Mesh Piece.


Blender array modifier changes material when applied I am trying to create a Street in Blender. Therefor I used the array modifier and created a sequence. The Street has a material which I created.
When I leave the modifier in the Stack, everything looks how I want it to be.

But when I press apply on the Modifier, it changes the fit of my material and makes it look striped.
I dont see any reason for that and dont know how to fix it.
It would be great if anyone could explain how I can prevent this without leaving the modifier unapplied.
Thanks!

This is a procedural texture (not an Image?) If so, it will default to using the Generated texture space. The Generated space measures 0-1 along the sides of an object's bounding box. However (I think inconsistently?), if an object is arrayed, the space takes its scale from the bounding box of a single element. When the Array modifier is applied, suddenly 0-1 is measured down the whole, (now single,) object.
You could use a Texture Coordinate node to put the texture into Object space. Then, you may have to tweak its scale, but it will be consistent, always considering the space of the entire array in Blender Units, (assuming no object-level scale transform,) applied or not.


Cannot edit mesh after rendering I'm really new to this. I could edit this file until I had rendered it and now I can't. Please can you help me.

I've also tried to register as a User this evening, but neither of the links in the two emails you have sent me have connected me back to the Sign up process.

Your question is not too clear.

If you cannot get back to the 3d view port,  press escape and it should take you back.

If you're renders are staying the same, uncheck sequencer shown below.

If none of these answered your question, please specify in more detail.


How do I make remove the "tufts" and get this to be better rounded? I have a model I'm making, with a mirror modifier and a subdivision surfaces modifier in use, where an ear has "tufts". How do I remove these "tufts" and make the edges connecting the ear to the head uniformly rounded, rather than hap-hardly rounded?

Here's an image of the ear's topology:

Here's the ear in object mode.

I've tried moving around the points manually, but that only makes it worse. I've tried scaling it on the y axis, but that doesn't help, either, because all the points, underneath the subdivision surfaces modifier, are in a line nice curved line, anyway. I've also tried subdividing the mesh then decimating it, but collapse, unsubdivide and planar ruin the mesh and planar makes a "tuft" worse.

Thank you.

Avoid using polygons with more than 4 edges(except on hard flat non deforming surfaces)....that is where your issues are coming from...there are no edges for the subdivisions to adhere to.


Hair offset when view is rotated Hair was fine, pivot was fine ... changed view from front to side ... notice how all child objects move on other pivots

some times the rigging jumps out the mesh and becomes all twisted
Sorry it took so long to get this back

I'm not sure if I can help. On my iMac behaviour is much weird than on your.

But definitely is incorrect dimensions you operate with - Location of your object in your file is
X = 119 Y = 448 Z = -28 (miles)
Clear Location Alt+G brings object to zero coordinates, it fixed glitching.

Than I wanted Apply Scale Ctrl+A that is always recommended, but it doesn't worked as supposed to. It brings scale to one as, but Dimension jumped back to original object scale (5 miles).
I had to use Apply Scale Deltas.
So try those steps if they help in your case as well.
From your View > Clip > End 1893939412 miles I see you fight with scale/dimension. In general - it is always better to Apply Scale. Also you have set in Scene Properties > Units > 0.0254 that is something I don't know what represent (since 1 km = 0.62137119224 mi), but I never used this feature.
After all this, when I tried add Hair Children worked fine.

BTW opening your file in 2.9x is even crazier disco :)


Blender 2.8 PNG image for material not showing transparency I know this has been asked a ton, but i cannot seem to find the answer. Basically, I am importing an OBJ with an mtl file. The colors of my model all show up correctly, however, I have an logo (.png w/ transparent bg i made in photoshop), but blender is coloring the transparent background with black. I cannot seem to find a way to fix this. Anyone have any ideas?

I'm using principled bsdf with image texture, alpha set to 1.0, and blend set to Alpha Blend. Messing with those settings did not produce any effects, except decreasing alpha fades the entire image out.
Thanks

"I'm using principled bsdf with image texture, alpha set to 1.0,"
That's Where the problem is, do not set the Alpha to 1.0, Instead of this Connect the Alpha Socket of Image Texture to the alpha of principled Bsdf. Like this in The Screenshot -

I hope this will work.


blender bge have chosshairs in center of viewport I have a simple little game I'm setting up, and I'm wondering, how do I put little cross-hairs in the center of the screen?

In the top navigation bar of Blender you can see a dropdown including the word "Scene". That's the scene you're currently in. Press the + sign to create a new one and call it "HUD" for example. In this scene you put a camera at the center looking towards the grid floor. Put the camera in orthographic view. Press 0 on the numpad to look through the camera and place a crosshair at the center as you like.

Now switch back to your default scene and add a logic brick with

Sensor: always (activate "true level triggering" to run each tick)
Controller: And
Actuator: Scene

On the actuator/scene brick change the mode to "Add overlay Scene" and for "scene" select the scene that you have created for your hud.

Press P to start the game and you should see your crosshair.


How to insert keyframe only "Available" in blender 2.78? There used to be a feature in insert keyframes pop up menu (press i).

Where is it now or how to achieve that in new blender 2.78?

This image is from internet i dont know which version of blender is this screen shot from. But this clears what i am looking for

The available function is still there.
It does require a pre-existing keying set to add keyframes to.

In this example there are no keyframes (therefore no keying sets)

Once I add a keyframe for location, then you can add more keyframes to that set with available.


Increasing frame rate without speeding up the cloth simulation I wanted to make my cloth animation less choppy, so I changed the frame rate of the whole scene from 30 to 60 fps:

But that only increased the speed of the whole animation (the animation didn't stretch over time). Can the cloth animation speed be independent of the frame rate? I just want it to be more precise.

Time remapping doesn't seem to work on the simulation.

In Blender 2.78, the speed for a cloth simulation can be adjusted here (Physics tab for a cloth object):

I did a quick test with a flag running at 24 FPS (normal speed), then changed the FPS to 60 which caused the simulation to run at a higher speed (unrealistic). Changing the "Multiplier" to a lower value reduced the speed while keeping the 60 FPS. If you change the FPS from 24 to 60 (2.5x) you need to have a multiplier of 1/2.5 = 0.4.

It seems the "base factor" is 24.

See the 2.78 release notes for more details.


Holdout Layer not using AlphaMaps in Blender 2.8 It seems that the HoldOut Option in Blender 2.8 does not use alphaMaps with transparency to create a proper holdout ? can somebody confirm this or do I have to tick some option to get this to work ?

or any Workaround ?

thx

Create two View Layers.
In the first one, check only Indirect Only for your Small_Bushes collection. Nothing else.

In the second view layer, disable your others collections with the checkbox to the left of the collection.

Add an alpha over node to mix the 2 layer.


How do I move an object using WASD (like walk mode) Using ShiftF you can move around using WASD and pressing Tab lets you have gravity which is good. How might I utilize this with objects. Locking to camera lets me do this but simply selecting an object does not let me do this.

You have to parent CtrlP the object you want to move to the active camera.

A few quirks about parented objects and walk mode: Make sure the object is not intersecting the camera; if it is the camera will fly away when the gravity is turned on. By default the object will inherent all the rotation from the camera, use Vertex parenting (in my linked parenting answer) if the rotation is not wanted.

Switch the view to camera view NumPad 0, then enter walk mode with ShiftF.
When you are done "walking around" your scene press Enter, that will move the camera to the place where you ended walk mode. Because the object is parented to the camera it will move along with the camera.

You should unparent AltP the object from the camera after you are done.


How to create a realistic shader for french fries? I'd like to create a realistic burger and I don't get how to create a shader for my french fries:

I tried adding procedural textures and displacements, subsurface scattering but unfortunately the shading doesn't look like realistic fries and too flat. Since I'm running out of ideas: What can I do to improve the shader to achieve a plausible and more realistic result?

Attached a blend with some fries and proper UV's:

The method I'd prefer for realism is microdisplacement.  Set your Cycles feature set to experimental so that you can use the Adaptive feature of the Subdivision Surface modifier.

And then set up your material for displacement and bump so that when you connect something to the displacement socket it modifies the mesh.

I used the same Noise Texture for both the Base Color and Displacement, so that I could make the areas with the most displacement a more golden brown.  The Scale values have to be adjusted for the scale you're working at.

I found that a Midlevel of 0 did some work to kind of puff up the model as though it had actually been deep fried, which was kind of fun.
Subsurface Radius value was 1, 1, 1 for this shot.
If that doesn't suit, or if a bunch of highly subdivided shapes are going to be too heavy for the final scene, I think it looks ok with Bump Only, you'd just have to do some work with the model to avoid it looking flat.  It looks like you have some pretty good shape variations to work with so maybe that's a place to start.


How can I render an animation where we can see through a mesh similar to 'in front'? Basically, I've created an animation of an apple tree growing. During part of the animation I want to be able to see the roots growing under the 'ground' mesh in my scene. The effect should look similar to the 'in front' property in Viewport Display. Is there a simple way to achieve this? Thank you in advance.

Here is one way you can do this.

First, set the camera type to Orthographic and make sure the X Rotation = 90 so that it is looking straight forward. You can play with the Orthographic Scale to zoom in and out.

Second, add a Geometry Node to your ground shader and connect that to a Separate XYZ node. Take the Y from the node and connect it to the Alpha of your shader.
You can plug the output to the first input of a Math node set to add to move where the cut-off happens by changing the second value.

Hope that helps!


Exception_Stack_Overflow error in Command Line Script I'm new user of Blender. I decided to give it a go in order to create a simple animation for a Youtube channel. I found a template, made the changes I wanted, and then saved it, but there's a problem when I go to render it. From the in-program window, I go to render it, and then the program immediately crashes. To work around this, I studied up on how to do it from the command line, and I was able to get it to work once, but the text came out all screwed up, so I needed to re-do it. Now, every time I go to render it from the command line, I get "EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW", and it fails. I have attached an image of the exact command line script after attempting to render the animation.

Computer Specs:
Dell Precision M4500 | Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit | Intel Core i7 | Q740 @ 1.73 GHz | 10.0 GB Ram

Thanks for the help!

Thanks for the help. As it turns out, the font I was using was overloading it. I erased all of the text, created a test file, and it rendered out just fine. Guess I will need to either find a different version of the same font, or find an entirely different font to use.


Show/Hide an Input Field based on a conditional when making an Addon I am writing a Blender Add-on which takes properties from configuration file and generates a tree based on the customization. The Add-On allows tweaking of certain properties, most notably whether the tree is monopodial (one canopy) or sympodial (multiple canopies).

If the tree is sympodial, I want the user to be able to select how many canopies are present in the Add-On. If the tree is monopodial, I want the fields to either be hidden or greyed out/locked for editing.

I've tried something like

row = box.row()
row.prop(scn, "Tree_Form")
if (tree_form == "Sympodial")
    row = box.row()
    row.prop(scn, "Num_Canopies")

But I haven't had success. Admittedly, I am a complete novice to Python and Blender Add-Ons in general.

Try this:

row = box.row()
row.prop(scn, "Tree_Form")
if scn.Tree_Form == "Sympodial": # the ':' is required
    row = box.row()
    row.prop(scn, "Num_Canopies")


Ball doesn't roll straight in Blender Game I'm trying to create a simple golf putt game using the Blender Game Engine as depicted here:

The problem is that the ball doesn't roll straight. If I launch the ball at about 5 degrees left-of-center, I'd expect it to stay on that path until it hits the hole or falls off the board.  Instead it takes a curved "S"-shaped path, apparently affected by the wires that can be seen when rendering the board material as wire.

The problem goes away if I don't cut the hole in the board, apparently because the wires are not present.

Below is a complete script that reproduces the problem. I'm using Blender 2.76 on Mac OS X and running the script at startup using "./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender myscript.py".  The problem also occurs for other versions including 2.72, 2.73 and 2.75.

The .blend file resulting from the script below is available here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wvwulkjq16au3rw/ball_roll_problem_v276.blend?dl=0
Just press the spacebar after starting the game to launch the ball, and you should see that it follows an "S" path rather than rolling straight.

An updated .blend file with improved mesh is available here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vvyb7kkvtk11u3g/ball_roll_problem_v276_remeshed.blend?dl=0
The improved mesh helps the problem, but the ball still doesn't roll straight;  the wires surrounding the hole still cause it to follow an "S" path.

Is there a way I can get the ball to roll straight?
Any help would be most appreciated!

import bpy
import inspect
from math import radians

#(0) Initialize:
bpy.context.window.screen = bpy.data.screens['Game Logic']
scene      = bpy.data.scenes[0]
scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_GAME'

#(1) Create a board using existing cube:
board          = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
board.name     = 'Board'
board.scale    = 2, 7, 0.1
board.location = 0, 0, -0.1
### cut a hole using boolean difference:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add( radius=0.4, location=(0,3,0) )
cylinder           = scene.objects[0]
modifier           = board.modifiers.new('hole_cutter', 'BOOLEAN')
modifier.object    = cylinder
modifier.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
### apply the modifier:
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = board
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier="hole_cutter")
scene.objects.unlink(cylinder)

#(2) Add a ball:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(size=0.1, location=(0, -6, 0.1))
ball       = scene.objects[0]
ball.name  = 'Ball'
### game settings:
ball.game.physics_type = 'RIGID_BODY'
ball.game.use_collision_bounds = True
ball.game.collision_margin = 0
ball.game.collision_bounds_type = 'SPHERE'
ball.game.mass         = 1
ball.game.radius       = 0.1
### game properties:
bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type='BOOL', name='launched')
ball.game.properties['launched'].value = False
### add controller:
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ball
bpy.ops.logic.sensor_add(type='ALWAYS')
bpy.ops.logic.controller_add(type='PYTHON')
sensor      = ball.game.sensors[-1]
controller  = ball.game.controllers[-1]
sensor.use_pulse_true_level = True
sensor.link(controller)
### add controller script:
def my_ball_controller():
    import bge
    scene       = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    ball        = scene.objects['Ball']
    SPACE_key   = bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE == bge.logic.keyboard.events[ bge.events.SPACEKEY ]
    if SPACE_key and not ball['launched']:
        ball.applyForce((-30, 300, 0), 0)
        ball['launched'] = True
bpy.data.texts.new('my_ball_controller')
script          = bpy.data.texts['my_ball_controller']
controller.text = script
lines           = inspect.getsourcelines( my_ball_controller )[0]
for line in lines[1:]:
    script.write( line[1:] )

#(3) Set camera location:
camera  = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
camera.location       = (0, -12, 3)
camera.rotation_euler = (radians(70), 0, 0)
### set camera view:
for screen in bpy.data.screens[3:5]:
    for area in screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            for space in area.spaces:
                space.region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'

As you have  noted the mesh is the issue , switch to wireframe view and launch the BGE to see how it get triangulated ( combined with some rounding errors ) it will cause the deviation of the ball.

To avoid that you have to add either a Subsurf modifier ( in simple mode ) or a Remesh modifier ( in sharp mode ) and apply it before adding the Boolean modifier this will limit the bad triangulation inside a small area ( all the mesh are triangulated when passed to the BGE)

#(1) Create a board using existing cube:
....
### add and apply subsurf
modifier           = board.modifiers.new('subsurf', 'SUBSURF')
modifier.levels    = 2
modifier.subdivision_type = 'SIMPLE'
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = board
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier="subsurf")

### cut a hole using boolean difference:
....


VSE: Shrink and overlay one video over another I have two videos, one is 1920x1080 and the other is 640x480.  I would like to scale the 640x480 one even smaller and overlay it in the corner of the larger one.

How can I do this in the VSE?

Just insert your FHD Base Video strip in the VSE, then on a channel above insert the SD Overlay strip and mute it (Strip - Mute Strips or just press H).

For preserving the aspect ratio and the original size of your SD Overlay strip you might need to check Image Offset in the Strip Input properties as well as your SD Overlay strip is not the same aspect ratio as your FDH Base Video (and as your project Resolution under Dimensions in a Properties View should be).

With the SD strip selected Add an Effect Strip - Transform with an Alpha Over Blend in the Edit Strip properties. And finally transform its Position and Scale (for preserving your aspect ratio you should check Uniform Scale) under the Effect Strip properties.

Instead of changing the Position in Percent (as per default) you can change the Translation Unit to Pixels in the same Effect Strip poperties if needed.

There is a great Tutorial of that on YouTube from Mikeycal Meyers.


smoke domain, original object material, how to make it show through smoke: AOQ So, continuing to experiment with Dynamics features, I am playing with the Smoke Domain.  I drop a cube and make it burst into flames on the way down, then bounce and roll with a hot "gasoline fire" effect, then the flames go out and we look at a smouldering wreck with wisps of gray smoke thinning out.  Everything looks great, except that the cube has lost its material/texture.

I had an original texture/material (metallic) which changed to a blackened and bubbled appearance after the flame-out;  I was hoping that this change would be visible in the animation but instead, the cube is blank matte gray at both start and end.  I am guessing this is because the smoke emitter function overrides the cube's original material and the cube is "smoke coloured" throughout.

So, is there any way to make original material/texture "show through" the smoke effect, so the object appears damaged and burnt by the end of the sequence, but recognisably the same paint job as at the start?

PS blend file attached below in thread.  In this version I think I got desperate and added an outer cube (just slightly larger) with the texture, but even that was masked by the gray smoke texture.  I can see the surface deform at the end (pitting) but no colour -- neither diffuse nor specular.

film at 11...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rootlessagrarian/31318078720/in/album-72157675807017632/

UPDATE:  Answered Own Question.  The solution, and it was probably too obvious for anyone even to suggest it 'cos you couldn't believe I was that dumb:   make the smoke emanate from Volume rather than from Surface.  Also, I had made an error in my lighting (accidentally turned up Ambient intensity) and the result was unlike anything I'd seen before :-)  a Blender N00by's life is full of surprises...

Just to remove this from Unanswered Questions, I am answering it myself.  Turns out it was a dumb question anyway.

Point 1:  when textures look weird and you are using BI, check the World carefully for environmental lighting.  This was 90 percent of my problem, just dumb n00b error.

Point 2:  the smoke effect seems to reveal more of the cube surfaces when I make the proportion of Volume smoke higher and the proportion of Face smoke lower, unsurprisingly.  Tweaking this enabled me to get pretty much the look I wanted.


How to Create Connecting & Disconnecting Fluid / Bubbles? I'd like to create this simulation in Blender, with different connecting and disconnecting bubbles splashing with fluid sims. Is it even possible? Do you please know what option in Blender creates this effect, that different bubbles gravitate towards each other when they're close?

https://www.shutterstock.com/cs/video/clip-23042995-3d-rendering-wave-swirl-ink-background-black

Thanks!

I'd recommend using Meta-Balls and a particle system in this case.

Step 1: We need a few Objects in the Scene to get started.

a Plane (our Emitter)
a Metaball (our Particle Object, this will be duplicated)
a Force Field (to get some turbulences going)

Step 2: We then add a particle system to our Plane, and set it to render an object, there we put in our meta-ball.

Step 3: We adjust some settings to our liking, i also turned off the gravity influence, then the particles will start rising. Mainly i'd change:

random particle scale
random velocity

We then get particles that emit at different speeds and sizes, once they are close to each other, they will merge, as metaballs do.

I've added my file for you, in order to get it looking nice i had to change the scale of the metaball object and particle, otherwise the divisions of them won't seem to work well and i got just some weird triangles floating around.

I'd recommend to take a look at the wiki regarding metaballs too (mainly resolution and threshold): https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/metas/index.html?highlight=metaball


node system and procedural in blender What node system add-ons,other than sverchok, animation nodes and every thing nodes are there in Blender. And, if available, procedural add-ons (not in a node interface) for modeling, animation, etc?

There was many attempts, blendgraph from Atom for example, but if you want to make real node tool you should do much of work. Motion tools was also node-based.
procedural geometry in addons without nodes is tissue from Alessandro Zomparelli (he participate also in sverchok and his tissue addon partially is adaptive polygons node, there is also adaptive edges node from Linus Yng and much the same from zeffii).
Procedural is also citymaker, prokitectura and many-many other in all of kind.


set one mesh as constraint for another I'm trying to make an animated model of the lungs breathing naturally. I have two separately meshes and I want to merge them together in a single model.

The first model is the lung surface (the ribcage) with the external motion animation. It dilates and contracts when breathing. The frames were created using shrinkwrap shapekeys.

The second model are the airways and blood vessels with the internal motion animation. The frames were created using an armature that deforms these internal structures. However, this movement does not consider the external motion from the ribcage, which leads to strange behavior near where the lung surface would be.

My question is, is there a fast way to use the first model (the lung surface) as a constraint for the second model? For example, in places near the surface, the mesh from the second model would follow the surface and deforms instead of following the internal motion pattern.

*EDIT Thanks for the replies. I don't think I was very clear about the problem, I have close to zero expertise with blender so I'm quite lost with the tools availiable. I will be adding some information and an image to get a better idea of what I'm trying to do. I will try the shrinkmap method meanwhile.

Initially I had only the second model (the one with the airways and the blood vessels). The motion pattern (and deformation) is calculated using a 3rd party software, creating the armature for the airways (in cyan in the image). While near the airways the blood vessels (the colored objects) are fine, at the endpoints I must consider the lung surface movement, more than the motion pattern from the armature. As it is the endpoints behaves incorrect, even piercing the rib cage at some locations.

What I was trying to do was creating an animation of the rib cage moving, and then merging this rib cage model with my armature, adding new constraints to it. Is it possible to combine these two somehow? I thought about using hooks but it would take quite a long time to do manually, since I would have to fix every endpoint of the blood vessels to a correspondent location at the rib cage model. Also, I'm using real CT data so the way the 3rd party software calculates the armature unfortunately cannot be changed

Kirbinator is on the right track. The "correct" way to do this is either to have them both in the same object, and deformed (animated) by the same armature, or to have two armatures that are both controlled by a third (you move one thing, and it moves both others).

You can just select both objects and press ctrlj to join them into one mesh, but that can be a little tricky. Experimenting with it wouldn't be hard.

Where you are now, though, it seems like the best solution would be a shrinkwrap modifier. You'll need to experiment with whether to shrinkwrap the lungs to the inside of the chest, or the chest to the outside of the lungs, but one of those should work.

The reason I mention this is that the shrinkwrap modifier has a setting for "Offset" which will shrinkwrap to a certain distance from the target, instead of to the target itself. So, for example, you could shrinkwrap the chest to the lungs, but with a 1cm gap.

IIRC, you said the lungs had the armature, in which case you'd want to shrinkwrap the chest to match the lungs. Either way, you'll want to shrinkwrap the one that is NOT rigged onto the one that is.

Hope that helps!


Is there a way to allocate more memory to GPU for the GPU Compute I have been working on a solution to a situation I currently have with rendering using the GPU. In the process, I find that my Card's GPU Memory is only 512MB

First Question, Could this be why when I attempt to render and the kernels start to load, that it just sits on the blank render screen then eventually crashes the computer?

Second question, Is there a way to allocate more memory to the GPU maybe from the internal RAM? Or do I need to get a GC With more memory? I do have another AMD with, I think, More memory.

Your computer already do this automatically. VRAM is only storing very frequently-used resources that need to be accessed in a very short amount of time. If/when the VRAM is used up, most computers will attempt to transfer some of the less important information your your RAM.

DirectX, AGP and PCI-Express cards do this automatically.

You could manually assign more RAM to be used exclusively by your GPU, but this requires a lot of internal knowledge about computers and you have to know exactly what you're doing, because you can really mess up your computer this way. I won't add links to any tools that can do this, because there are always people stupid enough to attempt this without proper knowledge (Not saying you are, but there are bound to be someone in the future at least).

If you really want to do this manually, research it until you can feel comfortable messing with the RAM, an find the tools yourself. I don't want to be responsible for you frying your RAM cards.

If you do not have the proper knowledge about how to do this (which very few computer users do), you're better off inserting/buying a new GPU with more VRAM.

If you're on a laptop, chances are that your internal GPU uses some of your RAM if it runs out of VRAM. If this is the case, you should upgrade your laptop's RAM capacity.

Final note

RAM is a lot slower than VRAM, so you'll notice some real slowdowns in the rendering times. Also, again, do not attempt manually assigning RAM to your GPU without proper knowledge about this.

Hope this helps.


How to save a packed image from a script I am trying to save a packed image (generated via texture painting). To do this, I call unpack(), which should save the image, but I can't find it on my hard drive (Linux, blender 2.73). Does there exist a way for further customization (such as setting the image file format, file name, directory to save into, ..)?

The docs reference unpack

Given an image with the super descriptive name 'Untitled':

>>> bpy.ops.image.unpack(id='Untitled')
Warning: AutoPack is enabled, so image will be packed again on file save
Info: Saved packed file to: /home/zeffii/Downloads/textures/dances_packed.png

{'FINISHED'}

If you look in console you'll see where it saved to.

But it is possible for certain to use plain old .save() too. Opening a .blend where the image is packed I did

bpy.data.images['Untitled'].filepath = '/home/zeffii/Desktop/some_name.png'
bpy.data.images['Untitled'].save()

And it stored straight to desktop

Things I don't know

How to save as a different file type, and how to force a different save directory for the unpack command.


How can I fly the camera in 2.8? I want to use the fly camera navigation in Blender 2.8, but I don't know how to do it. Shift + F doesn't work.
Thank you for your help.

The shortcut is SHIFT+` or you can use the menu View > Navigation > Fly Navigation

If you're looking for a shortcut you can search for them in the preferences (Edit > Preferences). They are searchable by name and key combination, depending what you've selected in the dropdown.


Exporting Images/Movies to Final Cut Pro X to apply LUTs i want to export my blender renders (doesn't matter if videos or image sequences) to Final Cut Pro X to apply LUTs on it. Now I'm not quite sure which rendering and output settings give the best results to me respectively are meant to be used for this. I'd like to get media like produced by log modes of HDR cameras. Should I use "linear raw" in the color management or is "Filmic Log Encoding Base" the better choice? For the look I should choose "none" because the others give me results with already applied LUTs, right?

I hope you understand my problem and I apologize for the awkward explanation but I'm new to this color grading stuff and still on the very beginning of my journey.

Thanks for your help!

Best Regards,
Janek

If you are trying to master for HDR displays, you'll need to start ideally from a scene referred encoding such as an EXR. This likely is a bit of a mess in FCPX if I had to wager, as most applications are mostly designed for display referred work.

LUTs are tricky things. That is, any LUT is designed for a very specific input and a very specific output. Trying to modify imagery with LUTs designed for other contexts is a bit of a messy ball of nightmare.

It is hard to offer any further help as the question lacks important details and context.


Track To Added Object If I set up two empties that can add specific new objects to the game every second, can the objects added by the first empty track the location of the objects added by the second empty?

If this can be done in Python, that would be awesome! Thanks guys for the help!

Rather than put the code in here, I'm providing the file. It's a little more hackish than I'd have preferred, but you can see how it works and clean it up if you wish.

It works with 3 objects: Scene Master, Enemy Generator and Bullet Generator. In an inactive scene I created an Enemy object and a Bullet object.

The Scene Master runs the script, which gets the generators, enemy base and bullet base. Every 180 seconds it adds an Enemy at the Enemy Generator position and a Bullet at the Bullet Generator position.

Enemies have a constant speed along the Y axis. Bullets have an unset Steering actuator with a constant speed roughly matching the corresponding Enemy. The Scene Master sets the new Bullet's steering target to the new Enemy. The Bullet then actuates its steering logic and starts chasing its corresponding Enemy.

Something I want to impress upon is that you can't target copies of objects by name. Each time you add a new Bullet or a new Enemy they'll all have the same name (Bullet or Enemy). So when we add the objects to the scene we do it while at the same time equating it to an object. This adds the object to the scene and creates a data object corresponding to the newly added version. This data object can be saved in a scene object's properties and accessed later, even if you add 3000 new versions of the same object.

http://dan.gslyr.com/blender/steering.blend


Why does recording an animation not record the initial position of an object? I am doing a simple animation. I click the record button in the bottom timeline and then move objects in the viewport. But somehow the yellow diamond mark ( recorder ) does not appear on 0/1. ie, the Record action won't recognize the initial position. I tried manually " add keyframes " at that point without success.
It would nice if anyone call tell me how to include the initial point of timeline also as a part of the animation.

I think what you are trying to do is 'keyframe'. First select the object you want to animate, press I on your keyboard while your cursor is somewhere in blender viewport and a menu will pop up, select 'LocRotScale' since you are a beginner, ignore the rest.
A yellow diamond symbol will be added on your timeline. (Note it will be hidden if you deselect the object, but not deleted. Select the object again to see it.)
This is called keyframing.


How do you hide UV seams? I made a simple low poly rock and want to do the textures with blender and export everything to UE4. However, when I apply a texture to my rock the UV seam is very obvious. I have tried using the clone tool in texture paint mode to hide the seam but it doesn't help. Is there a way to hide the seam?

Select your rock, in edit mode clear all seams, mark another set of seams different from the previous set, create a new UV map (name it "target"), unwrap the mesh, in the image editor create a new blank image and save it to the HD.

Go to the render tab, Bake tab: Bake Textures.
This procedure creates a 2D image - with visible seams - that can be doctored with a 2D image editor and then used as texture with the "target" UV map.
Make sure not to touch the borders of your new image while doctoring, or you'll create new visible seams.


Lighting in Cycles is not working properly When I try to work with Cycles my lighting doesn't show up and I see nothing in my viewport.

But when I switch to EEVEE everything works properly:

But when I try to render I get my model lighted but not by my light set up:

I am pretty new in Blender and I know I must be doing something wrong but I have no idea where is the problem.
You can download the file in this link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b6gHCYrIMrZFlJPKN0PrO1KmQaP2eyqV/view?usp=sharing

On the top right corner there is a play button:

This enables/disables viewport rendering, clicking it should start previewing your viewport render on cycles


Clothes not working with armature I'm trying to add some clothing to my charracter. Looked for some tutorials on yt, and it doesn't work. So, here's the mesh with clothing:

Now, I parent panties to armature with empty groups and add modifier "data transfer":

But this happens:

It definitely isn't perfect.

What do I do wrong?

OK, so all I did was to change a bit topology of model in spots where I wanted edges of clothes to be, next I selected faces on model and clicked shift+d and next right mouse button and separate by selection. I got new object, slightly alt+s it, solidyfy and change material. I got something like that:


Create mask for half of sphere I'm trying to create a rotatable mask for a sphere which I can rotate around the sphere using the mapping node. My aim is to make it look as though the sphere has a bright light shining on it (like the moon with the sun).

I have a mask which looks ok, but I'm not sure how to rotate it around the sphere with the mapping node. When I rotate it, the mask gets distorted.

Here is what I have so far:

Use the Object output of Texture Coordinate instead.

I've also applied a 0.5 offset on the X axis position so the shadow edge is centered on the sphere(this is equal to the value of the position of the 'black' color on the ColorRamp).
It'll now scale correctly when rotated around any axis, since it's reference is centered on the object.

If you want a softer or harder transition, change the position of the 'black' point on the ColorRamp - make sure not to forget to change the offset on the Mapping node as well.


Decal Machine Decal import How do I import decal packs? I have put some extra decals into the "My Decals" folder. None of them load. I am using 2.81a. I am running Win 10 64bit if this makes any difference.

What you needed here was to hit the little refresh arrows next to the library names in the add-on preferences.

For future reference there is a Discord channel for support.


Why am I unable to see AA sample when selected branch path tracing and unable to render animation when select GPU Compute on Mac? I reinstalled Blender and I'm still unable to see AA sample when I selected Branch Path Tracing.

Also, when I tried rendering it with GPU Compute, it comes out blank. I really need to figure out how to get the AA samples as I tried to render the animation on CPU 5000 render samples and looks the same (Which is blurry).I also tried rendering this animation on my Windows laptop and it took 7 hours to just render a 2 seconds animation which looks blurry.

Here's the link to my Blender file:

I cannot help with your GPU because I don't have access to your computer. However, I was able to figure out the bluriness.

Problem

In your scene, one of the first things I noticed was that it was inside an enclosed space. Bluriness in enclosed spaces can often be caused by low lighting.

Solution

I selected the area lamp near the top of the cabin and turned up the Emission Strength to 1000 from 300. I also turned the Max Bounces: to 1024.

I also optimized the .blend file.

I made some adjustments in the Render tab of the Properties panel, namely that I set the Max: and Min: Light Path Bounces to 0 (for faster rendering). I also turned the Filter Glossy: value to 0.7. Additionally, I changed the resolution to just 1920x1080 (1080p; you had it set to 4k which really won't make any difference except causing the rendering to take 4 times as long). Furthermore, I turned the Sampling > Settings: > Clamp Indirect: value to 3.00. I turned the AA render samples to 100. Lastly, I optimized the Tile Size for CPU rendering (Properties panel > Render Tab > Performance Drop Down Menu > Tiles:). If you want it to be optimized for GPU rendering, change each (x/y) from 16 to 256.

On my 8-year-old mac with CPU and not all the image textures, one frame (probably) took a bit under an hour (I didn't wait for it to finish). On my Nvidia 970 4GB STRIX, one frame took just 54 seconds and looked like this:

Final Notes

Here is the fixed up .blend file:

I don't generally offer this (haven't before), but if you can get me a .blend file with all the images included, I will render it for you. 90 frames x 1 min each = about 90 min. --A fellow Blender-using student.


How do i disable the bezier function in 2.8? changing to 2.8 is a nightmare, everything's in a different spot now, where can i disable the Bezier function so my animations don't start slow, speed up, then slow down at the end?

Just as before in the you can set the Extrapolation Mode for the channel in the Dope Sheet. For the keyframe you can set the Interpolation Mode. While the UI has changed the basic settings are the same. See: How do I make animations a steady speed?


Using Python to create a popup that changes an object based on the input So I found this example from another answer here. I'm new to programing and don't fully understand how it all flows. I've only used "def execute" to run stuff. I would like to create a class that creates a popup menu. I would like the popup to change the selected object when I adjust variable within it (without hitting okay). Is it even possible? I defined "athing" below to test. I want it to go to edit mode, select everything and divide. It says it can't modify blend data in this state. Thank you for the help.

class DialogOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
bl_idname = "object.dialog_operator"
bl_label = "Simple Dialog Operator"

my_float = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Some Floating Point")
my_bool = bpy.props.BoolProperty(name="Toggle Option")
my_string = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="String Value")

def execute(self, context):
    message = "Popup Values: %f, %d, '%s'" % \
        (self.my_float, self.my_bool, self.my_string)
    self.report({'INFO'}, message)
    return {'FINISHED'}

def check(self, context):
    return True

def athing(self, context):
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')

    #SUBDIVED VIA "subs" INPUT
    bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(smoothness=0)
    return {'FINISHED'}

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    layout.prop(self, "my_bool")
    if self.my_bool:
        layout.label("It's TRUE")
        layout.prop(self, "my_string")
        self.athing(self)

def invoke(self, context, event):
    wm = context.window_manager
    return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

Use an update method on a property.

Give that whole "athing" thing away. You CANNOT use draw methods to run code to update objects. (The you cannot modify blenddata in this state error)

You can define a button to click that calls an operator, or a property that when changed runs an update. .. which I believe is what you want update method on properties Example below, on changing my_bool if True will call the athing(self, context) method. self will be a reference tot the operator.

import bpy
class DialogOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.dialog_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Dialog Operator"

    def athing(self, context):
        if self.my_bool:
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
            bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
            bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(smoothness=0)
        return None

    my_float = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Some Floating Point")
    my_bool = bpy.props.BoolProperty(name="Toggle Option", update=athing)
    my_string = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="String Value")

    def execute(self, context):
        message = "Popup Values: %f, %d, '%s'" % \
            (self.my_float, self.my_bool, self.my_string)
        self.report({'INFO'}, message)
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def check(self, context):
        return True

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop(self, "my_bool")

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

bpy.utils.register_class(DialogOperator)
# test call
bpy.ops.object.dialog_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


Blender 2.8 PNG image is not transparent even with alpha blend and alpha nodes I have a transparent image that I created as a plane and I can't seem to get it to be transparent. I've saved the PNG with the color and alpha data and it still not transparent even with the nodes connected.
I am using Blender 2.81 please help!

You have to change the Blend Mode in the material settings and have to be in Rendered View.

Any of Alpha Clip, Alpha Hashed or Alpha Blend would work for a single image, but for a pixel perfect preview in EEVEE, Alpha Blend is required.

  Alpha Blending
  Use alpha blending to overlay the surface color on top of the previous color.


Why can't I edit image for UV Map after joining Objects? I have 2 problems:

How do you use the same UV image for multiple objects? It looks like each of my objects have different UV Images.
Why can't I edit UV Images when I joined all my objects? I can't edit all UV Images via Texture Paint mode and only 1 UV image is showing for 1 object.

UV unwrap the mesh and select the texture you want it to be mapped to

Split the screen, turn it into the UV Image Editor.

Go back to the 3D view editor, select all the faces in Edit mode by pressingA

And back in the UV Image Edit header, you can select the image you will use as the texture.

Here is a tutorial

To texture paint it, you need to apply the texture. This is example is in Blender render, are you using cycles?


VSE proxy and offset+crop I am trying to edit high resolution footage in VSE. To make it possible I need to use proxies for all strips. Due to high resolution I opted to get only 25% sized proxies which seem to have enough detail to do editing.

However now I am facing issue with cropping footage. When I enable proxies in preview it shows it scaled down.

This makes proxies rather useless as I can't see what will be the result of my transformations.
Is there a way to make use of proxies?

P.S. I am using blender 2.69

edit:

Below are images that show what I am talking about:

Default strip settings, no proxy and offset disabled. It gets stretched to fill frame (which screws up aspect ratio).

Enabling proxy makes quality lower, but framing is same.

Now enabling offset makes strip exceed frame as it is bigger than target resolution.

Now my problems comes here, as after enabling proxy I expected to see same part of image, but at lower quality. This is however what I got:

And unsurprisingly any translations/scaling when using proxy doesn't let me estimate what will happen to final render.

Actually, the normal crop and offset only work with the same strip that shown in the same panel.

However, you can add an Transform effect strip, it will work despite of resolution difference between proxy and original strip. Just be sure to have Transform strip selected. (Select the original strip, then ShiftA > Effect Strip... > Transform)


I can't import materials or textures from OBJ or 3DS I am trying to import an object and the zip file I obtained had the .OBJ plus the images that correspond to the materials, but when I import it and I go to the materials and/or textures of the object, they aren't there.

Also, I tried to import a 3DS file with its MTL, but when I open the materials window, the materials are there, with different names but they are all the same, therefore the object appears all grey.

I would really appreciate if someone could help me out!

Thank you very much for your time!

Strangely, I had a similar problem with 3DS in cycles, but was able to apply textures and materials perfectly in Blender render.

In Blender Render, I needed to play around in the materials and textures panel a little, opening one of the image files. The rest were automatically applied, but I needed to add a lamp to see it.

For Cycles, I had to open nodes and do the textures that way.


Water droplet particles appear dark and muddy (2.8) I made a particle system on this can to make it look "sweaty" but the water drops are far too dark for me. Is there any way to make it look clearer/lighter/more reflective?

I assume this is under Cycles.

Double-check that the Base Color is full white.  By default, a "fresh" Principled Shader uses 80% linear white (i.e., all RGB channels=0.8, not 1.0).  In addition, you'll want to change the IOR to 1.33, so the drops are water, not glass.

Beyond that, you can try replacing the Principled BSDF with a Refraction BSDF (also with 100% white color and IOR=1.33).  This looks brighter in some lighting conditions and darker in others -- overall, I think it looks brighter for drops viewed head-on.

If that's still not bright enough, you may want to try turning the alpha down a bit on the Principled BSDF or consider a Mix Shader to mix a Refraction (or Principled) BSDF and a Transparent BSDF, to let a little extra light through.

Here's a denoised render of four droplets, from left to right -- Principled BSDF with default 80% white and IOR=1.5, Principled BSDF with 100% white and IOR=1.33, Refraction BSDF with IOR=1.33, and mix 70%/30% (i.e., factor=0.3) of Refraction BSDF with Transpartent BSDF.


Exporting weight and bone elements to a text file I am sure this is a very simple thing to do. But because of my inexperience, I am having trouble with it. I havent gotten much from reading the blender python api. The answer was probably right in my face, but I just didnt know what to do. I just want to know how to make a script that exports weight values to a text file. As well as bone elements - like the rotation matrix (3x3 mat) the children of the bone and the offset of the bone. Oh and also the vertexGroups (like the vertices that each bone influences).

While the answer is in Blender's API docs, the relationships aren't clearly spelt out so you need to "get" some of the relationships to know how it fits together.

An armature can get confusing, there are EditBones that define the armature that you see in edit mode. Then you have PoseBones that are used when posing the bones in an animation.

You access EditBones through bpy.data.armatures['Armature'].edit_bones or while the armature is in edit mode with object.data.edit_bones, while you will find PoseBones in object.pose.bones.

While an EditBone does have a matrix property that combines the location and rotation of the bone, it relies mostly on the head, tail and roll properties of each bone and doesn't keep any rotation properties. The PoseBones use the head as the origin and then the rotation_mode to determine whether the rotation_euler, rotation_axis_angle or the rotation_quaternion property is used.

Both EditBones and PoseBones have a children property to list any children the bone may have.

An object has a list of it's vertex_groups and each vertex group has an index number.

A mesh object's data includes a list of it's vertices and each of these vertices has a groups property that lists the groups that the vertex is associated with. This list contains the group index (which matches the vertex group index above) and the weight used for each group. The group weight is the same value you edit using weight painting.

When an armature deforms a mesh it finds vertices that use a group with the same name as the bone and uses the weight to define how much to influence the vertex.

So while looping through the armature bones, using the bone name you can get the vertex group index for the bone, then get the vertices it influences.

import bpy

arm = bpy.data.objects['Armature']
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

obj_verts = obj.data.vertices
obj_group_names = [g.name for g in obj.vertex_groups]

for bone in arm.pose.bones:
    if bone.name not in obj_group_names:
        continue

    gidx = obj.vertex_groups[bone.name].index

    bone_verts = [v for v in obj_verts if gidx in [g.group for g in v.groups]]

    for v in bone_verts:
        w = v.groups[gidx].weight
        print('Vertex',v.index,'has a weight of',w,'for bone',bone.name)


Cannot animate viewport/render visibility I'm trying to animate a collection in 2.8 so that it hides at a certain point in the viewport and the render but when I hover over either icon it says that "hide_viewport/render cannot be animated." Do I have to enable something in user settings?

You can animate the "Show in Render" and "Show in Viewports" flags here:

For entire collection, you can link the Animation Data from one object to the others. Note that this will override other keyframes set on destination objects.


Crashing or very slow rendering I have recently started using Blender 2.8 after using 2.79 for some time. I used to render everything alright, but now, I changed from my old laptop to the new PC.

So, I am using the scene with the materials I have bought online, creating there an interior scene, but in many cases (not always though) eevee and cycles are either stuck for longer than it should (comparing to the old setup) or it crushes to the point that my screen simply turns off (screen is connected to the graphics card).

That is all just weird, because the specifications are very obviously way better than I used to have, but not it barely works.

My former laptop:

ASUS UX303U

Intel® Core™ i7 6500U Processor

DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM, OnBoard Memory 4 GB , DIMM Up to 12 G

Graphics card: Nvidia 940M

My new PC:

Self-assembled

AMD Ryzen 7 2700x eight-core

DDR4 2666MHz HyperX 16 gb (2x8gb)

Radeon RX580 (2 of them working on the AMD crossfire).

So, if you have any ideas why is this happening - let me know.
Thanks]1

You should probably reinstall blender. The reason your screen goes black is probably because when blender "crashes" he starts to pull huge amounts of ram so keep your task manager open and before he eats more than let's say 80% you force close it. If the problem keeps happening I can't really help you much. It's probably some system error.


How do i get the ocean modifier to animate? I have been going through many tutorials and even asked in BlenderArtists but no help. When I get to the point to insert keyframes a keyframe drop down menu appears instead. It has been very frustrating to figure it out

Insert keyframes for the "Time". Set the frame to 1, move your mouse on "Time" and press I

Change the frame, add some time and press I again.


Is it possible to export animations/actions separately from Blender to Unity I want to have a 'master rig' file in Unity that I can plug a separate animation into. So then I can go and edit a single animation without having to re-import the whole FBX with the rig, mesh, and animation.

The problem is that I have no idea how to export the FBX with just animation.

The single file FBX with all my actions works, it just annoying to have to rearrange the rotation, scale, and layers each time I replace the file.

Thanks in advance

If you're exporting to FBX manually from Blender, the checkbox Baked Animation will save the animation to the file. Keep in mind that you do have to select the Armature object type to export (and exclude everything else). The animations reference the armature for keyframes.
Alternatively, you can do this via Python script with the command:
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(... use_anim=True, ....)
I actually just published a blog post about exporting multiple FBX files for the purposes of importing into Unity. It's only Part 1, but I should have Part 2 written up sometime soon!
http://undertheweathersoftware.com/building-character-customization-part-1


Why can't I mirror some poses? For some reason I can't mirror some poses. The arms and the legs copy the mirror pose partially, and it looks totally weird when trying to mirror a whole animation. Is there a proper way to do this?

blend.file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36642

Depending on the axis I was going to use the most I changed some bones from the default rotation order to another axis rotation order (Euler XYZ to ZYX for example), but I forgot to change the rotation mode on the other side of the rig.

After fixing the rotation mode in both sides everything works fine:


How do you convert an expression that works in the console into a format a driver can make use of? I'm trying to convert the following expression for use in a driver expression:

1 if ( bpy.context.scene.frame_current == bpy.context.scene.frame_end ) else 0

So there's the "Give a man a fish" answer that expresses how to tell you're on the final frame of a render, and then there's the "Teach a man to fish" answer that more generally helps myself and everyone who follows learn how to make drivers work. But at this point I'll take whatever assistance a kind soul cares to render!

You can use a single line python expression as a driver, like an if-else statement.

1 if (bpy.context.scene.frame_current  == 1) else 0

The reason this fails, would be if python scripts have been disabled. You get this dialog after entering a python expression when python scripts are disabled. Click on "Allow Execution".

If you dismissed the dialog, enable Auto Run Python Scripts in the User Preferences under Save & Load.


How to fix outdated internal index table in an addon I downloaded Blur Weights addon, since it was made for blender 2.63 it is giving an error in blender 2.74 when trying to use it.

Why does this error happens and how can it be fixed to make outdated addons to work with newer versions of blender?

Addon link

This was added to speed up scripts. The Blender 2.73 release notes mention it and reference the commit that introduced it (in the Python API section)

A backwards compatible solution is the following addition before any code that accesses bm.verts / bm.edges / bm.faces indices explicitly. For clarity, that means if an addon has any code like this:

bm.verts[i]
bm.edges[i]
bm.faces[i]

Then preceding it must be a call to ensure_lookup_table. Often you'll only need to do one such call, and you'll want to stick it outside of any tight loops if possible.

if hasattr(bm.verts, "ensure_lookup_table"):
    bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()
    # only if you need to:
    # bm.edges.ensure_lookup_table()
    # bm.faces.ensure_lookup_table()

If you add new verts / edges / faces to the bm, and then subsequently do an indexed lookup you might find that you need to call ensure_lookup_table again.


Zoom--why does it stop so short of the primitive here? Start a new model
Shift D
Esc
Tools!Vector X:  -30
Manually pan the new faraway duplicate cube into the center of the screen
Manually zoom into that.  Zooming stops far short of it, is prevented from further nearing it

I guess you zoom with your mouse wheel?

This behavior is because the zoom you're using is based on a focus point, which is set on the first object. There are two ways to get around:

set your focus point to your other object with Numpad .
use a "dolly zoom", a zoom which moves your view and its focus point as the same time, with CtrlShiftMiddle mouse button drag


How to keep the circular part of the cone a circle whilst bending the rest? Ok as much as I have got the hang of it now there is one snagging issue when I warp the cone it don't keep the original straight edge all around at the back, it warps that to

How do I keep the back circle part of the cone straight and round all the way round but bend the rest of the shape

The simple answer is, the warp tool only works on selected vertices, so you could in theory leave the back ring of vertices of your cone unselected.  However, assuming you're using the method by @Haunt_House in this answer, I am not sure you will find the results satisfactory, because there will be a strangely shaped discontinuity between the warped and unwarped vertices.

Instead I think you might be better served by cleanly chopping off the back portion of your transformed cylinder.  There are a couple of ways you could do this.  You could create a cube and use the Boolean modifier in "Difference" mode:

Or, in edit mode, you could create a plane and scale and orient it for correct chopping:

Then position the plane where you want to make the cut:

Then select all vertices and choose Mesh-->Faces-->Intersect (Knife) and make sure the source is set to "Self Intersect" and the separate mode is set to "Cut".  This will result in a divided geometry in which you can move or delete unneeded sections (I have deleted the plane in the screenshots below because it is no longer needed):


Blender Can't detect 3D hardware accelerated Driver I have just installed blender 2.77a from blender.org om windows 8.1.
When i try to open blender it gives me an error as follows

Blender - Can't detect 3d hardware accelerated drivers.

I have checked my graphics card driver via windows update and it says my drivers are up to date. My graphics driver details are as follows (dxdiag) :

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
          Card name: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1)
       Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
          Chip type: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
           DAC type: Internal
        Device Type: Full Device
         Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2A42&SUBSYS_02631028&REV_07
     Display Memory: 1065 MB
   Dedicated Memory: 64 MB
      Shared Memory: 1001 MB
       Current Mode: 1280 x 800 (32 bit) (60Hz)
       Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
      Monitor Model: unknown
         Monitor Id: LPL0000
        Native Mode: 1280 x 800(p) (59.976Hz)
        Output Type: Internal
        Driver Name: igdumd64.dll,igd10umd64.dll,igdumd32,igd10umd32
Driver File Version: 8.15.0010.2702 (English)
     Driver Version: 8.15.10.2702
        DDI Version: 10
     Feature Levels: 10.0,9.1
       Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Graphics Preemption: DMA
 Compute Preemption: DMA
           Miracast: Not Supported
Hybrid Graphics GPU: Not Applicable
     Power P-states: Not Applicable
  Driver Attributes: Final Retail
   Driver Date/Size: 3/11/2013 15:49:02, 6593816 bytes
        WHQL Logo'd: Yes
D3D9 Overlay: Supported
            DXVA-HD: Supported
       DDraw Status: Enabled
         D3D Status: Enabled
         AGP Status: Enabled

Please tell me how i can solve this problem.

You should get "software" OpenGL:

Go to this link: http://download.blender.org/ftp/sergey/softwaregl/
Pick your OS version (86/64).
Put the opengl32.dll file into your top Blender installation folder (C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender). This should be the same location as your blender.exe file.

Blender should start.


Chamfer or bevel an edge with a smoothly varying depth, as if whittled or gouged out My goal is to create something like a "lark's tongue chamfer" along part of each of 4 edges of a cuboid. This would involve a bevel that has a variable depth that forms a smooth curve, starting at 0 depth, reaching some peak depth at the middle, and then returning to 0 at the other side. The main thing is that I would like to know different ways to control the depth as a curve.
Here's an example, sort of following a circular curve, but other shapes ("smooth", "sphere", "root", etc) would be desirable:

I've created this mesh, but my procedure was long and convoluted, and I'm sure there's a better way someone can suggest.
Additionally, can someone clarify for me: (a) Is there a name for this sort of bevel, chamfer, or shape in general?; (b) Later I want to round off all of the sharp edges (i.e. with a tiny bevel) and I want to (say) subdivide the surface to smooth it out, and for this I understand it might be important to avoid having the triangles shown in my image above, so what should be done about this?
Anyway, below is what I did, including screenshots of key steps. Apologies if the screenshots are not very clear at their default size, but the image itself is available as a larger version. Note that units are in metres...

Image A: Create a 2-metre plane, and go into Edit mode. Subdivide the face 8 times, creating a sheet as a 9x9 grid
Duplicate and move up by a known fixed amount on Z axis (e.g. 0.2m)
Image B: Repeat, duplicating the sheet copy that was made in step 3
Image C: Select the edge loop of the top-most sheet, then hide all but this selection (SHIFT+H). Go to top view, then select the middle-most edge segment of one side
Image D: Turn on Proportional Editing, set to "Sphere" mode. Move the selected edge inwards (i.e. on the X axis only) by 0.1, setting the proportional size to (say) 0.55
Image E: Repeat with the other 3 sides
Image F: Unhide everything with ALT+H. Select everything in the middle sheet now
Image G: Hide everything else with SHIFT+H. Go to top view, then select and delete all interior edges, leaving just the square outline edges. Select the middle edge of each side of the square
Image H: Go to side view and then move these edges again, this time down by -0.1 on Z axis with proportional size still the same as above
Image I: Unhide everything with ALT+H. Select all edges of the top sheet
Image J: Move the top sheet down to superimpose it on the middle sheet (making sure to turn off proportional editing)
Image K: Select the edge loops of the top sheet, and also the edge loops of the middle sheet
Image L: Click RMB and select "Bridge Edge Loops"
Image M: Select the edge loops of the middle sheet, and also of the bottom sheet, and then Bridge Edge Loops there, too
Image N: Select all, and then Mesh => Cleanup => Degenerate dissolve. Fix normals with SHIFT+N. Deselect all, and we're done!

What an amazingly detailed post!
Would something like this work for you?

To save too much adjustment in separate places, starting with 1/8
square tile, open on all the sides you can't see, here...
Assign Edge Bevel weights to the edges shown in shades of blue, all at 1 will do to start with...

Assign 2 Mirror modifiers, one about the Empty rotated  in Z by 45, and another in X,Y,and Z.

Assign a Bevel modifier, by width, limited by Weight, segments about 5, with a profile of about 0.15

Assign a second Bevel modifier, to hold the sharp edges under subdivision,limited by Angle, up around 80 degrees, and a Subdivision Surface modifier.

Tweak the Edge Bevel weights, and other Bevel parameters, to get the scalloped shape you want. If you can't get all the way there, you may have to apply the first Bevel modifier, and tweak that in the geometry, by hand.
Edit: Just noticed your first Bevel should probably have only 1 segment..


Composite interior and exterior separately I'm trying to make an interior scene where I want to composite the exterior separetely form the interior. So, before I go any further I want to set up the layers to accomplish this.

In Layer 1 I've got just the interior:

Layer 2, the Sun and the Earth without the atmosphere:

Layer 3, just the Atmosphere, which I need to blur.

How can I composite the interior and the exterior separately and the join them?
 I'm fairly new to compositing so I don't have a clear idea to do this, specially with the window in the way.

EDIT:

This is how I've set up the three different render layers:

Layer 1:

Layer 2:

Layer 3:

And this is the result using the Alpha Overlay in the Compositer:

Thanks,

With the help of Cegaton I've found the solution. The main problem was that the window is in the way so it has to be rendered separately. This way there's a hole in the first layer without the background so later on the Alpha Over node can be used.

So, in this case, four render layers are necessary:

Layer 1:

In this layer is the foreground, just the spaceship but without the Window, masking the rest so that there's a transparent hole in the window.

Layer 2:

In this layer it's the Earth without the Atmosphere.

Layer 3:

Just the atmosphere in layer three.

Layer 4:

Here is the Window:

And finally, here's the compositor node setup:


Can matcaps be used for all objects and not just selected objects? Update, in 2.71 and newer, there is no longer a limitation

I like to use Matcaps as they greatly improve the viewport performance and are good when editing to get an idea of what the object looks like textured. However, if I have multiple objects, only the selected object shows the Matcap.

Is it possible to use Matcaps for all objects, and not just the one selected?

You can do this by adding a new material and then adding an image texture to it, load in a matcap (grab some here from Blender's online src) or here from zBrush's free library and under Mapping in the texture tab set the coordinates to Normal.

Now in your scene, in the N panel under Display, change Shading to GLSL, switch the viewport shading to Texture with Alt + Z and add a Hemi lamp to your scene. Any objects with the material will now show as such.

To have all objects use matcaps just temporarily assign that material until you need to render etc. If you have multiple objects, you can quickly do this by selecting all the ones you want to apply it to then selecting the one with the material applied already and hit Ctrl + L and choose Materials.


Blender 2.9 weight-painting only selecting vertices rather than bones? I am desperately clawing at this file that suddenly stopped letting me select the bones while weight painting and now only selects the vertices on the mesh. I can not change any weight value on the model. I really don't know how to be any more descriptive than "it's only selecting mesh vertices in weight paint mode" because I had just made some weight edits a few minutes before and changed no settings, and now it's refusing to let me select any bones.

In order to select bones/vertex groups with Ctrl click while in weight paint mode, you have to select the rig in object mode, then shift select the mesh, then switch to weight paint mode.
If you can select only vertices and the paint isn't working, probably you have activated one of theese little buttons, which limit the action of the brush to selected vertices/faces only.


Cycles: "Image as plane" show shadow from other objects I have an image which has been added by Images as a plane. Now if I create a cube above the plane I want the shadow of the cube to be visible on the texture. How to do this?

Update: this is my plane in nodes view now:

There are two solutions. Option 1 is easier and better.

Option 1 (Diffuse)

When importing the the image, make sure that you have Diffuse selected under Material Settings on the left side.

Option 2 (Emission)

I have searched far and wide for a solution to test for a shadow so that one can use the Emission setting with some extra nodes, but eventually concluded that it cannot be done. The final word came from gandalf3's answer here. You can, however, do a workaround through RenderLayers, if you so desire.

Final result:

Nodes:

What I have setup are two RenderLayers. One with the cube and image (Scene), and one with a plane with identical dimensions to the image with a plain Diffuse BSDF material (Shadow). I also enabled Transparent under Properties panel > Render tab > Film drop down.

This is the .blend file:


Blender editor scaling problem I'm very new to Blender as this is the first time I am working with it. I'm following the following instructions to create a simple coffee cup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y__uzGKmxt8. However I got the problem when I wanted to scale the cup like the guy in the video did at 5:05. I got this:

How can I fix this?

Pivot Point

You set the 3D Cursor as transformation pivot point while the youtuber is using Median point (see the icon pointed by the mouse arrow in the orange box):

With the pivot point in the middle of selection he is able to scale the geometry from its center, not from side in your case. You can clearly see the pivot location by looking for the trasformation gizmo (colored arrows pointing towars axis)

You can change the pivot point in the button menu:


How can I do glowing halo particles/special effects in Cycles? Now, I've been wanting to create special effects in Blender (Cycles), but I don't know how to do it.

For example (just a picture I googled):

Or:

I can't figure out how to do this in Blender (specifically Cycles). Blender Internal had the 'halo' material, which would be one step ahead concerning special effects I suppose, but you don't get half the capability Cycles has.

I've been fiddling around with a lamp/light emitting object, and a sphere/other mesh with a volume scatter volume input, but that doesn't have very advanced results, and is incredibly grainy when rendered, unless you head upwards of 500 samples.

For example, this was a simple point lamp with a strength of 100 and a very large UV sphere with a volume scatter volume input. It took 15 seconds to render (at 150 samples) and still doesn't give me satisfactory results.

Is there any way to do special effects like this in Blender (especially Cycles)?

Thanks, Flaeon.

I was working on this clock anyway... Now it glows.

I moved the clocks “Bells” to layer 4 (It could be any other layer than the layer the clock mesh is on. In my case layer 1). I gave the bells mesh a material with “Emission”.

Then in the “Render Layers” panel I added a render layer and selected layer 4 and named it “Glow”. Although you don’t need to rename it.

Here's the node set up in the Compositor.


Buttons for custom properties don't refresh when changed by other parts of the script Dropdown list does not redraw when search operator changes it’s EnumProperty.
Here is simple example script.
Use search operator and see how dropdown list updated only on mouseover.

Important notes:

Do not suggest to use redraw_timer—it’s not recommended by documentation
I do not specifically need this combination of UI elements, I just need to have dropdown list with keyword search, if there is another UI element or combination of elements that would better suit the purpose then I will gladly use them instead
Do not suggest template_list this is not what I’m looking for, as I said: simple dropdown list with keyword search

Ideally this would worth without any explicit update or redraw calls, however - this issue can be resolved by tagging the area for redraw.

After the assignment call context.area.tag_redraw().

Note that normally its best to use context.region.tag_redraw() (which would redraw only the panel), however its not working in this case because this region isn't active when the pop-up executes.

You could store the region before executing the operator, but this is probably more hassle then its worth.


Can I render an image along the X axis - so it's completely flat? or not I'm an interior design student and wanted a section of what my room would look like from the side image, and was wondering if I could get a rendered section from completely the side (x-axis) or do I have to use the camera function and not get it completely to the side? ]1

Many thanks!

Select the camera and click the camera tab of the Properties Window.

Then under lens change the type from perspective to orthographic and adjust the orthographic scale to fit your scene.

Now you can press N  to adjust the location and rotation.
These settings should get you where you want to be:

Location: (10, 0, 0)
Rotation: (90, 0, 90)


loops around the ears? I ve some doubts, I am showing in this pictures, a model than I am using for game purpose.

can this edge loops affects if some of them are moving inside the ears? I ve seen many cg artist to do not mind about rings of edge loops around the ears.

and consider all the whole topology , may I change something?

Change the geometry of the ear to make the creases work. You may leave the edges of the mouth flow to the back of the head- it doesn't matter. The key here is to rearrange the edges flow in the way it creates a loop (see the example below).

Remember that you can always select the edges to crease then press the Shift+E to make them sharper.


Transform cylinder to flat plane - cylinder maze map I have object like this:

I want to cut it in half and flatten it to something like plane.
In other words I want create flat map of this maze - all simple ways are welcome.
file:

This might work..
It's a script which gets as close as I can to inverting the Simple Deform > Bend modifer
It's not very general, and makes some assumptions

The Cylindrical version is circular in XY, up in Z
That it has a cut gap at min Y around X=0. If there are coincident vertices where the gap is, in the illustration, the result can be usable, but untidy. (The script doesn't know the difference between 0 and 360 degrees)
The object has all its transforms applied, and its origin is at its XY center
The cylinder's minimum radius is < 100000 BUnits

Select the object in Object Mode, and run this:
import bpy
from math import atan2,sqrt

cyl = bpy.context.object
if cyl:
    flt = cyl.copy()
    me = flt.data.copy()
    flt.data = me

    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(flt)

min_r = 100000

for v in me.vertices:
    [x,y,z] = v.co
    r =  v.co.xy.length
    theta = atan2(x,y)
    v.co = (theta,r,z)
    min_r = min([r,min_r])

for v in me.vertices:
    v.co.x *= min_r
    v.co.y -= min_r

flt.location.y += min_r

Which should produce a straightened version (green, derived from blue,) scaled and located ready to be bent back by Simple Deform > Bend

The Bend modifier uses the bounding box of the straightened object. Because of the gap,the required bend is not quite 360 degrees. In the example .blend, the match is reached at about 356 degrees.

Lurking Pythonistas / bpyists are welcome to improve or correct the style of this script.


Properties, the Defaults for Property keys, and when to use get() First, I've encountered a confusing situation regarding property defaults and the use of getters. When I use a getter, I end up having to supply the default of the property a second time, even though the property has a default specified. Is this normal? Does a property's default attribute become obsolete once you define a getter for it?

Here is a simple situation to illustrate. The relevant lines are the getter() return value and the property default assignment:

flag_list=[
            ('A', "A", "Info", global_flag_a ),
            ('B', "B", "Info", global_flag_b ),
            ('C', "C", "Info", global_flag_c ),
            ('D', "D", "Info", global_flag_d ),
            ]

class PropsPrefs(bpy.types.AddonPreferences):

    # getter
    def getter(self):

        # must supply defaults a second time here?
        return self.get( "enum_flag_var", global_flag_a | global_flag_b | global_flag_c )

    # setter
    def setter(self,value):

        # assign new value if not none
        if value != 0:
            self["enum_flag_var"] = value

    # enum flag variable
    enum_flag_var : EnumProperty(
        name="flags",
        options={'ENUM_FLAG'},
        items=flag_list,
        description="info",
        default={'A', 'B', 'C'}, # never gets used?
        get=getter,
        set=setter
        )

My second area of confusion is why we need to use self.get("property") instead of self.property (as well as self["property"]) in certain situations? I'm assuming it is because these properties are generated at run-time as they are written to for the first time?

Would anyone be able to elaborate on how this works, and when to use one syntax over the other? Any documentation about this behavior? My current (limited) strategy is to use self.property until it throws an error, then switch to self.get("property"). But because of my lack of understanding, I have no way of knowing which of these situations might throw an error under different circumstances.

The default value will not be automatically applied when declaring a property with a getter and setter.

In Python you can use the .get() function when accessing a key in a dictionary that may not exist. It allows you to specify a second argument which will be used as default value in case the key cannot be found. This is necessary for your use case, because the key "enum_flag_var" may not yet exists in the bpy_struct dictionary. Accessing it using self["enum_flag_var"] will result in a KeyError.

KeyError: 'bpy_struct[key]: key "enum_flag_var" not found'

The key will exist once you've assigned a value to the property in your script or when the user sets a value in the UI. You cannot use self.property in the getter, because that would in turn also call the getter and therefore cause an infinite recursion. That's why the value is accessed through the dictionary.


small gap while drawing i am trying to follow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDJkIu8xvk4&t=655s tutorial to draw basic lime. but there is small gap in center of the lime which you can see . it is very frustrating, what is the worng with me although i follow tutorial carefully?

thanks,

As I said you have vertices overlaying, so select all and press W > Remove Doubles, it will merge these vertices. Also, you need to recalculate the normals because some are flipped, so select all and press ctrN.


How to create a gradient material across an object's local z-axis? I can't figure out how to get this to work exactly, but I'm guessing I'll need Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes.
I am trying to create a material that creates a gradient relative to an object's local z-axis. The idea would be that I could put this material on an object of arbitrary size, and the very bottom of the object might be red, and the very top might be green, with a gradient in between.
This is what I have so far, but the problem is that the material isn't relative to the mesh. If I put it on a smaller object, the whole thing might end up some yellow in the middle of the gradient, and if I put it on a larger object, I get a whole lot of red, a whole lot of green, and a tiny gradient in between.

Depending on what you’re looking for, you could get away with using Generated coordinates, which are normalized relative to the object’s bounding box:


How to change materials in animation? I want to animate the changing of materials my model.

After the first frame I want to around blocks (or just the colors of the blocks) to and from somewhere in the model.

Here is a picture of what I'm trying to do:

I'm going to import the .blend file into unity. I just want the animation to play over and over again (like a gif).

You can do this with a VideoTexture script, use the script at the bottom of this thread

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?189973-Changing-object-textures-in-game-engine-quot-on-the-fly-quot-(animated-textures)


Blender 2.79 Numeric Loading Cursor (like the timer or beachball, only with numbers) Blender has a special cursor when you run an operation that taxes the system. I always thought it was a progress counter, but the numbers do not add up.

Can anybody tell me, what those numbers in the rectangle are displaying?

In this example, I simply loaded in an OBJ. I would expect the numbers to go up to 100, but for some reason, they do not.

In short
You are reading: «33.33 percent, 66.66 percent, done», or more literally «3333 per ten thousand (‱), etc». These percentages don't necessarily correspond to a "fraction of the evaluation time", but more likely to a "fraction of the total number of steps", in this case: 3.
In detail
The cursor displays the current progress, mapped to the range 0 to 9999.
It is called, for instance, in $SOURCE/blender/makesrna/intern/rna_wm_api.c like this:
static void rna_progress_update(struct wmWindowManager *wm, float value)
{
  if (wm_progress_state.is_valid) {
    /* Map to cursor_time range [0,9999] */
    wmWindow *win = wm->winactive;
    if (win) {
              int val = (int)(10000 * (value - wm_progress_state.min) / (wm_progress_state.max - wm_progress_state.min));
              WM_cursor_time(win, val);
    }
  }
}

where a given "value" is compared to a "min" and a "max" and expressed as "val" in terms of a fraction of 10,000 of the (min, max) interval. The function WM_cursor_time from $SOURCE/blender/windowmanager/intern/wm_cursors.c takes care of "visualising" the cursor.
Of course script creators can pass to the cursor number mapped to 1-100, or 1-1000 if they want: "WM_cursor_time" doesn't check that the number is a fraction of 10000. So it really depends on context here!
In your case, probably the process of loading an OBJ has three checkpoints, that were hard-assigned to 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 and don't necessarily correspond linearly to their evaluation time. These fractions, mapped to 10000, with the decimal part ignored ("floor" rounding) are 3333, 6666 and 10000.
I speculate that what you are seeing are just the first two of these numbers while "10000" (999) is skipped because it's probably overridden by the next event.


understanding the simple deform modifier (TAPER - FACTOR) I'm trying to use the simple deform modifier to reproduce what the SHEAR operator does, in order to do so I'm using it in TAPER mode and locking one of the axis deformation, like that the object will deform correctly. My problem comes when I try to relate the angle deformation with the TAPER factor, with the SHEAR operator a value of 1 means the shear will be 45 degrees deformation but with the TAPER modifier I can't find the relation between angle and factor, somehow I think other variables are been considered as scale or object dimensions. Also the axis origin has an important role on how this modifier works.

So, can anyone offer a clear explanation on how this modifiers works?

Thanks

If you look at the source code of the simple deform modifier (1), the Taper transformation is done as follows. I assume that you selected the Z-axis as the deform axis.

scale = z * factor;
new_x = x + x * scale;
new_y = y + y * scale;
new_z = z;

So, every vertex of the object is scaled for the X and Y axis (unless, you have them locked). The z-coordinate remains untouched; maybe also the Y-coordinate, if you have locked it. You were right that the factor is mixed with other variables. As you can see, the factor is multiplied by the z coordinate. The further away a vertex is from the origin (as you suspected), the larger the scaling factor. At origin, z = 0, so the scaling is 0. At the top, z=1 (I assume!), so the scaling = factor. All vertices between origin and top are scaled between 0 and factor.

In the attached picture, I applied the taper modifier only to the group of top-right vertices. The origin of the cube is at the bottom. The factor is -1.000.

If the factor is -1.5, then

new_x = 1 + 1 * (1 * -1.5)= -0.5;

If you want the top-right vertices to collapse with the top-left vertices, the factor should be - 2; because

new_x = 1 + 1 * (1 * -2)= -1;

which is the x-location of the top-left vertices.


Default lightning, or how to adjust materials properties correctly Situation:
I always adjust my materials by hdri environment map. This method work well for me. But what if I want to share my materials, or sell it?
I search for some default lightning setup and I found this question with link to default scene used for material preview in material panel.

Problem:
When I adjust my material by this default scene, material looks too bright in hdri lighted scenes, just because this default material scene has low lightning compared to hdri lighted scene.

Question:
Is there some general standard how to "calibrating" materials?

I found solution in "Cycles Encyclopedia" written by Blender certified trainers Frederic Steinmetz and Gottfried Hofmann. (Available on blender store or blendermarket.) Authors use this "Blender Material Preview Scene" by Robìn Marin. So I thing this can be considered as default scene for Cycles material settings.


How to get a displaced mesh to orient correctly when bending it spherically? I'm making a planet Earth mesh that includes displaced surface according to a height map. So, I start off subdividing a 2x1y1z plane and displacing the z axis of the vertices according to the non-color of the heightmap. This results in a satisfactory result, having mountains in z>0, and sea depths in z<0. Then I bend the plane spherically by using the (bend) simple deform modifier around an empty object with rotation x=90d for 180 degrees, and for 360 degrees around another empty object that has rotations x=90, z=90. The mesh is curved spherically, but the mountains are "sunk in", i.e. it appears as the ocean depths are the heights, and the land surfaces and mountains are the depths. I've also tried setting the rotation of the empty objects to x=-90 and x=-90, z=-90 respectively, to have the plane bend in the opposite direction, but the result remains the same. I've also tried to bend the plane by -180 and -360 degrees respectively, in both permutations of the empty objects with the same faulty result.

An obvious solution would be to invert the colors of my heightmap, but I'd prefer to figure out where the problem lies first.
How can I get my displaced mountains to appear as mountains, i.e. to be further away from the sphere and protrude outwards from the sphere?

Flipping the strength of the displacement modifier did the trick, as pet Robin Betts' recommendation.


Straighten loop edges on a rounded object I'm trying to make these loop edges straight around this rounded cube so I can easily place a shrinkwrap-like packaging and make it look good.
I tried changing the size using different methods or sliding them but I can't get them to keep the curvature of the object.
In yellow, the edge loops I have now:

In pink, how I'd like the edge loops to look, but keeping the main object curvature:

You can use the Knife Project tool, to cut a new edge loop.
It will perfectly follow the object's curvature.

Add a plane and position it where you want the cut
Select the plane first and then your object
Go to edit mode and use Knife Project with Cut Through checked.

Note: The cut depends on your current view - front/side orthographic works best.

As Robin Betts kindly pointed out, it's better to put the cutting geometry outside of the object, which allows to cut multiple edges at once.

Projector parallel to viewing plane...

Here, a grid with its faces (only) deleted

.. so multiple edges cut simultaneously.