Why is vertex snapping with auto merge enabled not merging vertices? I am watching this tutorial on youtube:

At the moment, the tutor is merging the hand's vertexes to the arm's vertexes; the problem is that when I try to merge them like that, they don't really get really well merged and end up having empty space between them. This is what I am saying:

.

How can I fix this? Thank you already!

The video is of 2.62, where this seems to work. In current versions of blender you need to disable Applied edit cage on your modifiers for snapping + auto-merge to work reliably:

I've reported this here.

However, in this case there are some potentially faster ways to merge these loops.
Loops with equal vertex count, but not necessarily even vertex placement:

Select both loops and press W> Bridge Edge loops (E)

Switch to edge select mode (CtrlTab> Edge) and select the newly created edge ring by pressing CtrlAltRMB over one of the new edges.

Press AltM> Collapse to collapse the selected edges.

Loops with lined up vertices, but not necessarily the same vertex count:

Press W> Remove doubles and up the merge distance in the redo panel (F6). This will result in triangles with uneven vertex counts, and it could produce tris even with equal vertex counts.


Looking to see if Blender is a good tool for an AI project I have an AI project that I'm working on. I have a machine learning algorithm for a robot, but I want to train it in simulation first. The experimental design is: The robot has a camera, and can see its own hand. It then makes random sequences of motor actions, and creates a causal link between what it saw in its camera, and the random set of motor actions.

I want a setup similar to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-c17RKh3uE1

What I want to know is, does the Blender game engine/python library give access to a camera and stream its input in real time, and is it possible to send motor sequences to a virtual arm? Or should I use a different tool? From the virtual camera, I don't require a raytracer, just having access to the pixel buffer is enough using, more over a high resolution isn't required, 1024x768 is plenty.

I can't test my models on a real arm/webcam due to funds. I am good with python, C and C++, I have written many export and mesh scripts for Blender, however I don't know how to set something like this up, or if it is possible. Any help/direction is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

In my mind, blender is a good fit for this sort of project. It has access to python allowing high level development and the use of many many libraries.

  What I want to know is, does the Blender game engine/python library give access to a camera

Yes - you can extract the pixels from a camera using the ImageRender refresh() method by passing in a buffer and pixel format. I have used this for a variety of purposes in the past, though not for robotics.
https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_78a_release/bge.texture.html#bge.texture.ImageRender.refresh

  and stream its input in real time,

You'd have to set something up

  and is it possible to send motor sequences to a virtual arm?

Yes. I wrote a minimal test scaffold for a UR5 robot arm. This allowed me to test a program intended for the actual hardware without needing the actual arm present. This was a huge help when trying to do a university project with limited lab time. I also somewhat sidestepped the project (with permission) by writing a blender script to generate the proper commands from the virtual setup....

  just having access to the pixel buffer is enough using, more over a high resolution isn't required, 1024x768 is plenty.

That should be possible - although you may find the GPU->CPU bottleneck on some hardware.

Some other things I have done with AI and blender include:

Testing IK solutions.
GUI's to display telemetry and provide control of various chassis,
Prototype control algorithms for hardware (eg four wheel omni-steer chassis - how do you co-ordinate the wheels?)
Robot hardware design - doing in in blender+BGE allows it to be tested inside the game engine before building it.


How to make fluids come out in a local coordinates? I'm trying to make a liquid simulation with Mantaflow where the flow of the liquid respects the flow object's local rotation, so it looks like water spraying in different directions.
It looks like the options on the flow object only work for 'world' coordinates and doesn't take into account the coordinates of the object.
How do I make the water 'fire' (like a hose) into a specific direction that uses local coordinates instead of world ones?

Why don't you rotate the flow generator?


Sphere renders look imperfect in Blender 2.79 I'm just trying out a very basic render whilst getting to grips with Blender

I've created a sphere and exported as a PNG, but the sphere looks quite wobbly and imperfect. I just exported it using the default HDTV settings.

See the attached image, I've drawn a perfect circle around it in Photoshop so you can see how off it is:

But when I view the sphere in 3D View in Blender it looks fine.

Any anyone see what the problem is?

You should use a "subdivision surface" modifier to add more geometry.
Check that the level of subdivision surface is the same between "viewport and render".


Why won't the compositor backdrop show the current composite result? Working through the Match Track Blend DVD and hitting every stupid branch on the way down.

I'm just about finished with the Two Point Track video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewq-rZEdhpg), only with some depressingly crappy luminance masking. I was trying to fix this when I realised that the Compositor backdrop was only showing the video footage, not the combined image (as seen in the image/render port, bottom left).

Does anybody know what I should be doing here? I should point out that I'm using Cycles instead of the Blender Internal (as in the video sequence) - as I'm trying to migrate most of my skills from Internal.

Many thanks in advance,

--Rev

The issue stems from having rendered the animation as a series of .pngs, then loading the .pngs into the video sequence editor to test how the finished work looked.

If Blender has a video/image strip loaded into the VSE, it will not render an image to the Render Layers as it knows that the VSE strip will ultimately overwrite this information.

Instead, the Render Layers node in the compositor will appear empty or blank, as in the image at the bottom of my question.

Hiding the strip in the VSE will not solve this problem. Either
1) in the Render tab of the Properties Editor, open the Post Performance panel and untick 'sequencer' or
2) delete the image strip in the Video Sequence Editor.

Hitting render should now cause your Render Layer to show your expected image.

Annoying, and not especially evident to the user, but it makes sense. =)

I found my solution on this page: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?274922-Camera-Tracking-render-layers-blank-source

Happy Blending!

--Rev


Make freestyle draw on curved edges I have a lego figure I ham trying to draw freestyle lines on (eevee)  and where the top of his body meets the front there is no line because it is curved but I want to put a freestyle line there

I would just edit the crease angle property so it detects the higher angles.


Accessing the RMB feature on a Mac laptop Please note: I realize this question is very similar to this one but I assert that it is not a dupe because it involves specific a hardware/OS combo! More importantly, this question is really about Mac laptop usage of a particular Blender feature, not necessarily about closing the default cube.

If you downvote or closevote this as a dupe, I at least ask that you add a comment that might help steer me in the right direction! But if you can't think of anything that would help me, then clearly this is a new aspect of an existing question, and I argue that this is grounds for this question being legitimate and not a dupe!!!

I am trying to get "the default cube" to go away on startup. Yes, I realize that once I remove it, that I can just update my default settings by entering Ctrl+U. That's not what I'm asking here.

In the answer to the question I linked above, the user stated that to remove the cube, select it by using the RMB (Right Mouse Button), then clicking X.

But on a Mac laptop, I have no right mouse button (RMB). All I have is a mouse pad. When I select the cube by clicking on it, all of the following have the same effect:

Clicking the cube on the left-side of the mouse pad
Clicking the cube on the right-side of the mouse pad
Hitting the Control button, and then clicking on the mouse pad
Hitting the Command button, and then clicking on the mouse pad

In all 4 of these scenarios, once I make the click on the mouse pad, and then hit X, I see the following screen:

When I select the Delete option, nothing happens. Where am I going awry?!?

Update:

I am in "Object Mode", but I noticed that when I click the cube it does not seem to be actually selected. That is, the cube does not have a thin orange border surrounding it. I think this is an important clue.

Yeah, it must be selected.

To select it with no RMB, you must change your user settings.

Now go to the "Input" tab and change to LEFT for select


Use of voxel data in Smoke/Fire Simulations I am trying to understand better how to create smoke/fire simulations in Blender. One of the crucial things in creating smoke/fire is how you build your smoke domain material.

Blender Internal makes use of "voxel data" to build the smoke domain material.

  Voxel data renders a voxel source, working very similarly to an image
  texture, but in 3D. Various input data source types are available
  (such as smoke voxel data, or external files), as well as various
  interpolation methods.

  Smoke Use smoke density and color as texture data. Flame Use flame
  temperature as texture data. Heat Use smoke heat as texture data.
  Values from -2.0 to 2.0 are used. Velocity Use smoke velocity as
  texture data.

In Cycles these simulation fields can be found in the .vdb files under the following names: color, density, heat, heat old, flame, fuel, react, velocity, shadow and texture coordinates. So I guess these simulation fields are also a sort of voxel data ?

My questions are:

are all voxel data always available in the smoke domain or is that determined by the flow type of the flow object ?
could you explain a bit more how these voxel data / simulation fields can be used in the set up of the smoke domain material

the Smoke Domain Materials I have seen so far only use density, flame and color for building the material. What could be the use of these other fields ? Could you maybe give an example ?

P.S I have studied the manual, I have seen the tutorial of Blender Guru.I want to have a deeper understanding of the Smoke Domain and the Smoke Domain Material

I will go ahead and post this although I am not sure that it will completely satisfy all points of your question. I found this to be an interesting question that allowed me to learn some new things as I researched it, so thank you for that.

I found the currently supported attributes for smoke and fire to be located at lines 1114-1120 of blender_session.cpp as a result of finding the commit from earlier this year where official support for velocity was added. Heat was added at roughly the same time, in this commit. You can see also in the 2.78 Cycles release notes here that official support was added for heat and velocity.
 I was not aware that they could also be seen in /addons/cycles/kernel/kernel_types.

The description for the heat attribute (from the commit where it was added) in cycles reads as follows:

  Similar to velocity, it was kind of supported by the mesh manager but
  was missing a code in BlenderSession to get actual values.

  In Cycles Heat is an attribute which goes from -1 to 1, where -1 is
  the coldest ever temperature, 1 is the hottest ever one.

Now to your main points(I'll do my best):

  are all voxel data always available in the smoke domain or is that
  determined by the flow type of the flow object ?

It appears that the data is there, but perhaps only to a certain degree, if you will. Smoke in cycles cannot become fire simply by accessing the appropriate attributes. That part would of course be determined by the flow type. To represent this, I did a test. In the following image, there are three domains that each share an identical material. The flow object in each domain is a plane, with flow type set as the text before it states. Note that here, I added the velocity attribute to flame to get the result I did with smoke. It is not clear to me exactly how velocity intended to be used, so forgive any inaccuracies in the material. I will edit and correct if I discover an error in the setup.

This is the node setup for the domain:

Click to enlarge

  could you explain a bit more how these voxel data / simulation fields
  can be used in the set up of the smoke domain material

According to the manual, flame is the density of any fire in the domain.   Of course, we can see that flame is the emission, and where we get the light for our fire.

density is the density of the smoke. This is a scalar value.

color is the color given to the smoke in the domain. Color and vector outputs give the same result, while factor gives an average of the channels.

The last two, heat and velocity are fairly undocumented as far as I have found. The only example of usage for heat I found was in a report on the tracker of all places. I have replicated that example here in the node setups posted. The only "official" explanation of them that I have found is what is in the commit where velocity was added for 2.78, as noted above.

  the Smoke Domain Materials I have seen so far only use density, flame
  and color for building the material. What could be the use of these
  other fields ? Could you maybe give an example ?

Certainly. Here is one using both the heat and velocity attributes:

Click to enlarge

The below (low sample) image is the result of the preceding node setup. Instead of using color for the smoke here, I instead used  velocity, and it turns out nicely. Heat is used to drive emission along with flame.

I have enjoyed learning as I have researched this,and I hope that this is helpful, and that perhaps I have answered at least some points of your question well enough.

Edit:

Here is the .blend file containing the domain materials shown above.


How to find an operator's source code? I am trying to call bpy.ops.object.parent_clear in blender background mode (no GUI) and it fails with an "context is incorrect" message. I would like to read the source code of the operator to better understand what is going on. I downloaded the source code of the blender 2.74 distribution. The error message indicates where the error occurs:

File ".../Resources/2.74/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 189, in  __call__
ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.parent_clear.poll() failed, context is incorrect

However, at that location one can only find

ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)

which is another call. Where do I find the actual implementation of parent_clear?

The naming scheme is object.parent_clear -> OBJECT_OT_parent_clear.

To find the source code you will usually find the declaration of the operator in the headerfile, somewhere in source/blender/editors/*, in this case it is source/blender/editors/object/object_intern.h

The comment points to the source file source/blender/editors/object/object_relations.c

 541 void OBJECT_OT_parent_clear(wmOperatorType *ot)
 542 {
 543         /* identifiers */
 544         ot->name = "Clear Parent";
 545         ot->description = "Clear the object's parenting";
 546         ot->idname = "OBJECT_OT_parent_clear";
 547
 548         /* api callbacks */
 549         ot->invoke = WM_menu_invoke;
 550         ot->exec = parent_clear_exec;
 551
 552         ot->poll = ED_operator_object_active_editable;
 553
 554         /* flags */
 555         ot->flag = OPTYPE_REGISTER | OPTYPE_UNDO;
 556
 557         ot->prop = RNA_def_enum(ot->srna, "type", prop_clear_parent_types, CLEAR_PARENT_ALL, "Type", "");
 558 }

The poll method checks for the right context. The exec method is located in the same file

 523 /* note, poll should check for editable scene */
 524 static int parent_clear_exec(bContext *C, wmOperator *op)
 525 {
 526         Main *bmain = CTX_data_main(C);
 527         const int type = RNA_enum_get(op->ptr, "type");
 528
 529         CTX_DATA_BEGIN (C, Object *, ob, selected_editable_objects)
 530         {
 531                 ED_object_parent_clear(ob, type);
 532         }
 533         CTX_DATA_END;
 534
 535         DAG_relations_tag_update(bmain);
 536         WM_event_add_notifier(C, NC_OBJECT | ND_TRANSFORM, NULL);
 537         WM_event_add_notifier(C, NC_OBJECT | ND_PARENT, NULL);
 538         return OPERATOR_FINISHED;
 539 }

I would recommend an IDE like QTCreator to follow the symbols though you might use grep/search the files manually.


Is there any way to make the spiral's depth from circle shape to solid flat shape? Basically I want to make it flat like the image shown below:

Starting from a mesh (the first image in your question), you can use a cast modifier, set it to cylinder and tune the factor value:


Why do I get a cube when I try the Fracture Modifier on a sphere? Heyhey,
if I try to fracture a cube, everything works well but if I try the same with a sphere I just get another fractured cube. Why is that?
Here is the result when I try to fracture a sphere

If you would have any idea of how to fix that I would be very glad.
My aim was to create something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noqxBQ2TZaU&list=PLI0-9khDuTlgFvhBndWQgJS18fq5TXXQy&index=16
Best regards
Fabrice

Seems you already downloaded the Fracture Modifier Build. Here is a general introduction tutorial for it (its from 2014 but the basic principles work still in the same way.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E0Nn_a6wCs

And the documentation site:

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Scorpion81/Fracture_Documentation

Or you could just try to run the cell-fracture script in object mode. You tried to run it in edit mode where it obviously is not supposed to run and errors out then. By the way, the cell fracture script is completely independent of the Fracture Modifier.

When you use the Fracture Modifier (FM), you get a faster version of cell fracture with a lot more customization options. The smashing spheres could be 2 Objects, with a FM each. Just hit execute Fracture on both and Alt-A and the simulation starts (the spheres will fall down). Then you can animate the spheres, set them to Animated and Triggered, and make each sphere a Trigger, too. Optionally you could also use constraints within the FM. Then, when the spheres collide, they will break apart as well.


how to approach making these granules? Ok, so I have to make this product in 3D, Im fine with modeling and texturing the container, what Im not sure of is how to approach the granules inside the container, its almost like a rough sand/ gravel look and feel only its white... any ideas on how to approach this?

Thank you in advance :)

So I found another way to approach this. Using the particle system in blender and using the hair type, I just sampled a granule that I made quickly and emitted it over an object which would have the same shape of the granule inside the bottle.

As you can see in the image, this seem like a decent approach, I still have to play around with the settings and the texture of the granule but i think it will get the job done nicely :)


Resuming rendering image sequence after blender crash I usually render my animation into image sequence format, It usually takes a lot of time, so I turn off my monitor and come back later to check the rendered result then find that blender crashed before rendering all the frames.

Since rendering can be done from the command prompt I thought about writing a script (running in my OS) to automatically restart rendering from the last successful rendered frame until all frames are finished*.

But I believe this problem is facing a lot of people out there, is there a way to deal with it? instead of reinventing the wheel?

for example if the total render time is 8 hours I don't want come back to check my computer every 20 minutes (some times this is not available I'm asleep or away from my PC)

Blender actually can do this already; if you disable Overwrite in Render settings > Output, Blender will skip rendering frames where the output file already exists.

See Does Blender resume rendering after returning from hibernation in Windows 7?

On linux you could write a short shell script to restart the render in case of a crash, e.g.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
while true; do
    blender $@ # $@ contains all the arguments passed to the shell script
done

Save it in a file (e.g. persistent_blender.sh), give it execute permissions and run it like so:

./persistent_blender.sh -b '/path/to/file.blend' -a

Where the arguments tell blender to render the animation of the specified file.

Of course you could make something much nicer and handle all sorts of things (such as stopping when all the output files exist and have a size > 0).


Why is my input slider not showing the actual slider in a node group? See this image:

I would like to have a slider for the "Less/More" value. Its range is from -1 to 1. The value itself updates, but Blender doesn't want to draw the actual blue slider.
What's the issue here?
Thanks in advance!

I figured it out. You have to create the input from a slider value in the first place. Here's an example gif:

You can't go back and change it after the fact.


Regain Blender Parameters Menu This question should apply to functions besides "Add Spiral", but this is just what I'm working on at the moment. In my example picture, I created an Archimedan spiral (Add > Curve > Curve Spirals > Archimedan) and rotated/scaled in on Object View to make it better fit the ponytail. Later I realized that I still needed to adjust one of the options originally present on the spiral's options menu (Radius Growth), but that menu is gone now. (It disappeared again when on another attempt, I made a curved line and fit the spiral to that via this.) Is there a way to recover that options menu without having to make a new shape? Alternatively (and this one WOULD be specific to my project), can I preview the spiral fit to that curve without losing that menu in the first place?

UPDATE: I'm running Blender 2.79b, and in attempting to follow Susu's answer, I find that the key parameters are missing (which is what required me to perform object transforms in the first place). Not sure how to recover those. (I also have an issue with the spiral's bezier shape not laying flush with the ponytail surface, but that one probably needs a new question.)

Short answer:
You can't go back to the creation parameters once you've made any transformation (rotate/scale).
Solution:
Delete the spiral, make a new one and use the parameter's options to place and rotate the spiral.


Object doesn't follow path Even if I set both origins to the same place, the object still doesn't follow the path but is miles away from it.

Back yourself up against unintended side-effects, and hit CtrlA > Clear Transform Menu > Clear Location. This will land your object's origin on the curve.


can I use ocean modifier on any custom shape? i am working on a ship in a bottle and want to animate the water inside the bottle with the ship floating on it. Is this possible with Blender 2.7a?

Yes.
Set the ocean modifier to displace instead of generate:

Note that your mesh must be pretty highly subdivided for it to work well.


Boolean Modifier (Difference) Issue Persists Even After Applying All Transformations, Recalcing Normals, and Fixing Non-Manifolds I've been wrestling with this issue for the past couple of hours. Here's the gist of it (version 2.8):

I'm trying to "shave off" a piece of my mesh, and have a designated "knife" object. I intend on using the boolean modifier for this. Before using the modifier, I made sure both objects were water tight with correctly facing normals. I also applied all transformations. Yet, I still have an issue.

After applying the modifier, the "knife" object only "traces out" the pieces of the mesh that I wanted to cut, and does not actually delete the intended vertices.

I've included a YouTube link to a 1-min video that describes what I'm talking about (https://bit.ly/337UaC6).

Here's also a link to the actual blender file:

I've also included some pictures of my "main" object:

Please let me know if I need to provide anything else. Any help is appreciated.

There are were inverted normals, so Shift+N to recalculate them.
Overlapping edges between boolean cutter and source object. This is healed by moving edge away from the cut. It's a front view: yellow edge is source, white is cutter:

Lots of ngons, so consider doing retopology. I added Triangulate modifier to make it more boolean-friendly:

Also keep boolean object's geometry as simple as posible, avoid excessive edges which doesn't contribute to final shape.


How can I UV unwrap a mesh based on its 3D perspective in the viewport? I am currently working on a mesh made up of many puzzle pieces. My end goal is to place a picture on the puzzle mesh. To do this, I have combined all puzzle pieces into a single mesh, with the intention being to then unwrap it based on a top-down perspective.

Here is my mesh:

Here is a top-down view, which is what I would like my mesh to look like when unwrapped:

I have tried a cube unwrap and smart UV project, but, neither one produces a mesh that allows me to easily place a picture on the puzzle by setting that picture to to be the texture.

I realize that the sides and bottom of the puzzle mesh may be problematic to unwrap, but, I don't care what is on those because they will not be visible in the final render. As such, any sort of errored out texture is fine provided I can render the rest of the mesh without, ie. crashing.

I am using Blender 2.77.

Enter edit mode
Select the face that you want to be unwrapped
Press U then choose "Project From View"
Note : "Project From View (Bounds)" will fit the UV to the texture space like the image down below


How to make objects follow a ellipse? (Duplication around ellipse) I am trying to make a Quidditch scene from Harry Potter.

So I am trying to make outer diagonal trees.
I used Array modifier Object offset, target to empty at center
I can make "Circle" but I can not make "Ellipse".

I tried to change Location, Rotation and Scale of Empty and Wood Object.
Thank you.
(Blender 2.90
Windows 10)

Create a plane, create a curve, scale the curve in Edit mode to make an ellipse, give the plane an Array and a Curve modifier with the curve as Curve Object:

Create your tower object, parent it to the plane. Select the plane, in the Properties panel > Object > Instancing, press on Faces, your tower will duplicate around the ellipse shape:

To make each instance independent, select the towers and press CtrlA > Make Instances Real. If you want them to not share the same mesh, go into the header menu > Object > Relations > Make Single User > Object & Data.


What's the best way to select the same region on multiple meshes? Let's say there's an area of space, and I want to remove all vertices which occur in this region. It's easy to do this for one mesh; I just go into edit mode, select and delete. Fine.

Now, I have a second mesh, and I want to delete all vertices which occur in exactly the same area of space for which I deleted vertices on the first one. My initial thought was to select both meshes to begin with, go into edit mode, select and delete. However, it seems that edit mode only works for one mesh at a time.

So, is there an easy way to do this without resorting to CSG or scripting?

Go into edit mode for each of your meshes and assign 1 vertex group for all vertices for each mesh. Also name them:

Now merge all the meshes into 1 with Ctrl+J. It will preserve the vert groups:

Delete the vertices you want.
Separate your meshes back with selecting each vertex group and P>Selection:


How to generate random integers in bge? I need to generate random integers in blender game engine using python. I don't want to use logic bricks for random generation. I just want plain python.
I'm using this to make something randomly select a sound to play.

Just regular old python, randint. Nothing special blender related for this one.

import random
random.randint(MinNubmer, MaxNumber)

You also could use the Random actuator. (but the pure python is simpler.)


How to return view window back to original location How can I return my view window back to the original location?

Specifically, I want to have options panel to the right of the view window.

Thank you!

Look here: Workspaces and use the Next button at the bottom to see more detail. Should answer your questions.


Parenting eyes moves them inwards I'm very new to blender and I've run into a problem that I don't know how to solve.

Here is the face of the character:

I recently added eyes to it and now I need them to follow the character when I animate it.

I added two new bones and placed them in the eyes. Then I selected the eyes > selected the bones > Ctrl+P > With Automatic Weights. Here is the result:

As you can see, the eyes move inwards slightly. How do I make them stay at the same place? Thanks.

First, select your armature, switch to Pose mode and come back to its Rest position.
Apply the Mirror modifier of your eye object.
Separate each eye with P two make 2 separate objects.
Select each eye and parent it with ctrl P to each eye bone.
It works.


have i toggled wireframe? Hi I seem to have toggled wireframe and I can't get out of it or is this wireframe at all? I hit Z and nothing changes

The most likely culprit is the object draw mode (Properties Window > Object Tab > Display > Maximum Draw Type)

Set it back to Textured if you want to be able to go to textured view (and to Solid if not).


How to use view_center_camera for fitting camera to 3D view? This function is supposedly the one for fitting the camera to 3D view with python(with mouse cursor hovering over the 3d view):

import bpy
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        if bpy.ops.view3d.view_center_camera.poll()
            bpy.ops.view3d.view_center_camera()

Hitting home keyboard-button activates view_center_camera function and does what it is supposed to, so the function seems correct and working.

It just doesn't work when I call the function from Python(like mentioned above). What is the correct way?

This code works in 2.80:
import bpy

def find_3d_area():
    for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            return area

area = find_3d_area()
if area:
    override = {
        'area': area,
        'region': area.regions[0],
    }
    if bpy.ops.view3d.view_center_camera.poll(override):
        bpy.ops.view3d.view_center_camera(override)

Blender operators have optional parameter "context". In almost all cases, you don't need to override it, but this case is somewhat special.
In this case, you have to override area and region. I'm not able to explain into the deep why exactly these two keys are needed. It's only the result of my debugging inside C code of Blender, and trial/error in Python.


Bind location of empty to vertex (after shapekeys) For a rather complex technical animation.
I need an empty to be locked to a vertex.
I cannot simply make create parent-root scenario, or use bones for this.
As the vertex is modified by complex animated shapekeys.
So how to achieve this ?

Well I found a solution, took me a while.
Since other people might get into this as well, here is the solution:

On the object with shapekey select a vertex, create a vertex group for it.
On the Empty use a Child-Of constraint, select the object and the new vertex group.

Note its even possible this way to copy rotation of that vertex as well.


How many ray tracing samples they used in theater animation? I am assuming that box office grade animation (Moana, Zootopia, etc.) used ray tracing physically based renderer like Blender's Cycles, and so the amount of tries to sample per pixel is needed. I would like to know what amount of sample setting they usually use to achieve that level of quality? Basically I have never seen anything like fireflies noise in theater like in my personal rendering.(If you know a rough number of computer specs, # of computer in a cluster they use that would be really helpful)

Depends.

The thing that you noticed was that it looked good. That is the target, not a certain number of samples.

You may have noticed for instance that a glass shader typically needs more samples than a diffuse shader. Once you have determined a ratio of samples that looks good (assuming you are using branched path-tracing which separates out the number of samples each type of shader uses per pass), then you can turn up the samples to produce higher quality results.

If you are trying to reduce fireflies, that is a separate question that has already been answered here.

Computer specs don't really matter either, as it is more a matter of what gets the job done in a certain amount of time within budget. The more computers and/or more powerful computers you throw at the "problem" of rendering, the easier it becomes to quickly produce animation.


Imported eye glasses twice one I can see through the other is opaque. Why? In the same file on the same level in the same viewport, importing the same object (a pair of glasses, OBJ) one has transparency the other doesn't seem to be able to go transparent even tho the preview orb is transparent. I even changed the material to the lens that was transparent and that did work either.

I haven't edited any any nodes.

The viewport shading is set to material.

What should I pay attention to in order to make the lenses show transparent.

The problem is actually just a viewport deficiency. If you switch to rendered view or render out a shot, all is well :)

Blender's viewport only attempts to make it look right...to see what's really happening, render it out.


Rendered animation plays faster than not rendered I just rendered the animation of my project and saw it for the first time. The problem is that the rendered animation plays faster than not rendered. Do you have any suggestions?

When you talk about a "rendered animation" I suppose you're talking about the video result in FFMEPG format or else, and not what you see in Rendered or Object mode in your 3D view. In your 3D scene, in Solid mode, if you have a heavy scene with a lot of objects, it won't be able to play 24 images per seconds. If you want to have an idea of what is the real speed you need to go in the Timeline window > Playback menu, and enable Frame Dropping option. It will respect the real speed but at the price of some frame droppings.


Object always appears in front of the other I'm having a problem with Blender where one object (bottom half) always appears in front of the other (top half). This doesn't occur when it is rendered.

http://imgur.com/a/NjKXX

It seems you have x-ray enabled for that object


Rigid Body objects pass through Basket I am just a beginner of blender. I use the function of rigid body but objects keep passing through the basket. I searched and tried different methods from the internet but still not successful. For your information, the basket has three pasts which are parent together.
Here is my file link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1baVak34Urbc6wQd-Der2rSoRO2KTZZU-/view?usp=sharing

In 2.9 there will be the Compound Parent shape, explained here by CGMatter, that may make things even more accurate, for the moment here is a solution with Convex Hull that works:

First, don't keep your vertical cylinder.
Also, join the trim of the basket to the basket, for the moment it is another object without any physics. If you join it to the basket it will be taken into account
In the Properties panel > Scene > Rigid Body World, increase a bit the Steps Per Second value up to 100, I don't know how it works exactly but it looks like it helps to simulate physics more accurately.
Select one of your lemon, in the Properties panel > Physics > Collisions > Shape, choose Convex Hull instead of Mesh.

Keep this lemon selected, select all the other lemons, for example with a ShiftL (Select Linked) > Material, and in the header menu > Object > Rigid Body, click on Copy From Active (by the way if all your lemons are the same you could have linked-duplicated them with AltD, but you can simply make a ShiftL > Object Data and all the objects share the same mesh).
Play the animation, it should work fine:


Strange artifacts during camera transition when rendering movie I'm rendering a movie from a series of PNGs with the video sequence editor and the H.264 codec. When the camera changes from the static position to moving there is a strange jitter artifact (see video).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzKe3AZGZG4 (Need to watch in 1080p to clearly see it)

This doesn't show up in the PNGs. Increasing the bitrate doesn't seem to help. I'm not really sure what the other encoding settings do. Is there a way to fix this?

It seems like the motion wasn't estimated correctly. As a workaround you could try to set the GOP Size (Keyframe interval) so that a keyframe is set when the movement starts.

This seems like an encoder/Blender bug. If such errors occurred at multiple times you could encode with a lossless video format and use one of the many third party video converters as a second step. Possibly with multipass encoding enabled.


Hotkeys have changed, how can I fix this? So I don't know what I have done or if I have installed something. I can't remember.
Pressing the TAB key opens this weird looking thing:

Pressing W doesn't ope the edge thing.
Those are my main concerns, and they have been killing me for a while now. I did download the blender supercharge layout, but I didn't install it directly into blender.
I don't know if this is part of any update blender has made but does anyone know how to change this.

Probably if you go to Edit >>> Preferences >>>> Load Factory Preferences

Hope that Helps

Good Luck


UV Unwrapping a Modified Model I modified an existing model by removing unwanted vertices, then selecting surrounding vertices and creating faces one triangle at a time (By pressing 'F').

On UV unwrapping the mesh, the faces which were added by me seem to stretch from the very bottom left of the map, shown below.

How do I create a face so it appears on the UV map as expected?

This kind of distortion often happens when you modify the mesh that has been unwrapped. You can try to unwrap once again after modification, or pin the vertices of islands you want to stay in the same position and then unwrap. In UV/Image Editor window select all the vertices except the distorted one and press P.

Now select the whole mesh (A) in a 3D View window and unwrap it. Being in UV/Image Editor window unpin all using ALT+P shortcut. The modified vertices should come back to their places.


How to avoid a double shape when extruding with the mirror modifier I'm following this tutorial from Andrew Price to create an Anvil and when I extrude a face it creates two shapes instead of one. I don't know where the problem comes from and how to solve it. See a screenshot here:

On his video when he extract it, it creates only one shape:

I don't know what I'm doing wrong and how to solve it. Thanks alot!

Press B when you inset the face that you are now extruding, so that the ends which are matching the other mirrored side are joined together at the middle. You might have missed the part where Andrew explained this problem in his tutorial at 07:12. He explains it quite well so sure you will understand.


Bezier curve taper on independent axes? In the simplified example below I have a straight bezier curve with a bezier circle specified as its bevel object to give a cylinder. I've added a taper object to vary the cylinder's width along its length.

I would really like the taper to vary independently across the horizontal and vertical axes, like this:

This doesn't seem to be possible since there's only one Taper object option, and no way to lock it to an axis as there is with the Simple Deform modifier. What would be the best way to do this? I suspect I would have to convert the object to a mesh and then scale by hand with proportional editing, but I'd really like to continue using curves because it'll be easier to get things accurate. Might this be possible, or are there other ways this could be done?

You could use a Lattice modifier, it works fine with beveled bezier (just keep in mind that when you create your lattice, adapt its size to the object in Object mode, not in Edit mode):


My Model Rotates When Animated I'm not too sure how to explain this. I've done the Alt+R to reset rotation, but when I am in pose mode, I move a bone, LocRot the whole armature, and the next frame it flips upside down. I have no clue why, and I can't find this online either. I've been searching for quite some time. I need to finish this animation, I have a deadline, but I can't figure this problem out and I'm too far to start over.

Might be a quaternion rotation issue.... if your bone is performing a full rotation at some point you will find it had to make a reverse rotation to get back to where it started..   try a different rotation method..  Unfortunately it means you might have to start animating from scratch


Hooking selected object to control point of Bezier curve via scripting I'm trying to hook an object - namely a cube, which is a Mesh - to a specified control point of a Bezier curve - which is a Curve - by scripting.
So I do the following and it doesn't work:

bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select = True # it has to be selected
bpy.data.objects['BezierCircle'].select = True # it has to be selected too
# and it has to be the active one as well
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['BezierCircle'].splines[0].bezier_points[0]

It says that it doesn't find the 'splines' attribute. OK, so if I change it to a curve, like this:

bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['BezierCircle'].select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.curves['BezierCircle'].splines[0].bezier_points[0]

then it says that it is expecting an Object, and not a BezierSplinePoint.

If it would be accepted, the following command should do the hooking:

bpy.ops.object.hook_add_selob(use_bone = False)

So that the Cube would be hooked to the control point I'm indexing.

Now what do you suggest I should do?

OK guys, I think I found the solution! Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImWd1-FxhE4

In case the video becomes deleted in the future for some reason, here is the key to selecting the desired control point: (just an example)

bpy.data.curves['BezierCurve'].splines[0].bezier_points[0].select_control_point = True

So basically there is this boolean data member of the control points called select_control_point and you just have to set it to true.


How to open an image editor window and display an image file in it? I'm looking to open a new image editor window and display a new image from a file in it -- all via python script. What is the best way to do this? Searched but only found how to load and display an image, but not how to do it in a separate window. Thanks.

Blender does not support creating a new window officially. However, there are some workarounds.

bpy.ops.screen.userpref_show()

One way is to open up a new User Preferences window and change its Area.type to 'IMAGE_EDITOR' using bpy.ops.screen.userpref_show() operator:

# Call user prefs window
bpy.ops.screen.userpref_show('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
# Change area type
area = bpy.context.window_manager.windows[-1].screen.areas[0]
area.type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'

bpy.ops.screen.area_dupli()

Another way is using bpy.ops.screen.area_dupli(), which creates a new window from a specific area of your screen. Find an area of interest, store the Area.type, set it to 'IMAGE_EDITOR' call the the opeator and reset the area:

# Copy context member
context = bpy.context.copy()

# Iterate through the areas
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type in ('IMAGE_EDITOR', 'VIEW_3D', 'NODE_EDITOR'):
        old_area = area.type        # Store current area type
        area.type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'  # Set the area to the Image editor
        context['area'] = area      # Override the area member
        bpy.ops.screen.area_dupli(context, 'INVOKE_DEFAULT')
        area.type = old_area        # Restore the old area
        break

Assigning the image

In order to display an image in that window, just load an image and assign its data block it to SpaceImageEditor.image eg using the active space: bpy.context.area.spaces.active.image = image. Complete example using the code to generate an image from: Is it possible to create image data and save to a file from a script?:

size = 640, 480
image = bpy.data.images.new("MyImage", width=size[0], height=size[1])

pixels = [None] * size[0] * size[1]
for x in range(size[0]):
    for y in range(size[1]):
        # assign RGBA to something useful
        r = x / size[0]
        g = y / size[1]
        b = (1 - r) * g
        a = 1.0

        pixels[(y * size[0]) + x] = [r, g, b, a]

pixels = [chan for px in pixels for chan in px]
image.pixels = pixels

# Call user prefs window
bpy.ops.screen.userpref_show('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
# Change area type
area = bpy.context.window_manager.windows[-1].screen.areas[0]
area.type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'

# Assign the image
bpy.context.area.spaces.active.image = image

Note: bpy.ops.render.view_show("INVOKE_DEFAULT") might be interesting as well.


How do I ensure a sequence of quaternions from matrix.decompose() is continuous? It seems that blender's Matrix decompose() function can exhibit some numerical "instability".  What I mean is that orientation matrices that are relatively close can have significantly different elements in their quaternion matrix that makes interpolated keyframing unusable.

The following simple python script will calculate a sequence of matrices representing rotations around the Z axis in a smooth manner.  It then decomposes the matrix into a quaternion, and inserts that as a keyframe.  When you view the resulting fcurves in blender you can see that the Z value jumps from -1 to 1 about halfway through the animation.

import bpy
from math import *
from mathutils import *

def matrix_for_time(t):
    theta = 2 * pi * t
    mat = Matrix([[cos(theta), sin(theta), 0],
                  [-sin(theta), cos(theta), 0],
                  [0, 0, 1]]).to_4x4()
    # for illustration we use rotation about Z axis,
    # but in the arbitrary case, the orientation could be for a pine cone bouncing down a hill.
    return mat

def mission(obj):
    res = 36
    qs = QuaternionStabilizer()
    for z in range(res):
        mat = matrix_for_time(z/res)
        (loc,quat,scale) = mat.decompose()

        obj.rotation_quaternion = qs.stabilize(quat)
        for ai in range(len(quat)):
            obj.keyframe_insert(frame=z*5, data_path="rotation_quaternion", index=ai)

mission(bpy.context.active_object)

" How to make a true linear quaternion rotation? " has some screenshots that imply quaternions aren't necessarily discontinuous.

Is there a technique for blender's python API to get a sequence of quaternions that can be keyframed and interpolated without discontinuity?  For bonus points: link to an article that explains this mathematical oddity and why decomposition works this way.

This technique should be usable with arbitrary orientation matrices, because they are calculated from something a little more complex than this simple Z rotation (in my specific case I'm flying along a bezier curve).

After doing a little more research I think I have found a technique that will work.  Examining the matrices that are computed from the quaternion led me to conclude that q and -q both represent the same orientation, so I compare both q and -q to the previous quaternion orientation and pick whichever one is closest in 4-space.  The following udpated code sample illustrates the technique:

import bpy
from math import *
from mathutils import *

def mission(obj):
    res = 36
    qs = QuaternionStabilizer()
    for z in range(res):
        theta = 2*pi *z / res
        mat = Matrix( [ [ cos(theta), sin(theta), 0],
                        [ -sin(theta), cos(theta), 0],
                        [ 0,0,1]]).to_4x4()
        (loc,quat,scale) = mat.decompose()

        obj.rotation_quaternion = qs.stabilize(quat)
        for ai in range(len(quat)):
            obj.keyframe_insert(frame=z*5, data_path="rotation_quaternion", index=ai)

class QuaternionStabilizer:
    def __init__(self):
        self.old=None

    def stabilize(self, q):
        if self.old is None:
            rval = q
        else:
            d1 = (self.old-q).magnitude
            d2 = (self.old+q).magnitude
            if (d1<d2):
                rval = q
            else:
                rval = -q
        self.old = rval
        return rval

mission(bpy.context.active_object)

And now my fcurves don't look discontinuous:

This will not give good results if your orientations are flailing about wildly, but that's a case of Garbage In Garbage Out.


How can I add a subdivision surface modifier to smooth the rounding of an object? I have a simple object with two rounded corners. The following screenshot shows the magnification of one of these corners. The corners were created with the bevel function.

Adding a subdivision surface modifier destroys the whole object.

Should I use more bevel segments from the beginning?

The object can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/t/JjbxccUV4YgI6zrG

You can solve this by using supporting geometry. In the case of your object, adding edge loops at the places I've highlighted will give a clean look with a subdivision surface. Be careful positioning the large rectangle loop, because It seemed to cause artifacts in the bottom left area if not placed just right.

Hope this helps.


Add vertices at the intersection of edges This question was asked many times before, but the most suggested solution "Use Auto Merge" didn't seem to do the trick for me.
I have a grid of overlapping edges as in the attached picture and want to create a vertex at each intersection. The edges do not have any vertices at the intersection point yet. What is the best way to do this?

You can indeed, select all the edges and  use the shipped add-on TinyCAD > XALL to put a vertex at the intersections of all the lines simultaneously. All those intersections have to be detected. This can get (Python) computationally expensive in more complex cases..
More Blenderish, here, IMO, would be to delete all those edges, start from a clean perimeter, and CtrlF  Face Menu > Grid Fill the empty rectangle, (constructing the intersections instead; much cheaper,) before X deleting 'Only Faces', if you want the bare edges.


How can I use Python to select one (spline control) point of a NURBS curve? How can I use Python to select one (spline control) point of a NURBS curve?
I want to select and then move each point to a desired location. If this is not possible, I am happy to start with the locations and create a NURBS curve that ‘joins the dots’.

IMO would join the dots.

I want to select and then move each point to a desired location.

If the idea is to take a set of points and  "join the dots" it is quite possibly a lot simpler to to create the spline.
Here is an example using NURBS answser from Create curve from Numpy Array using Python

Result displayed in EDIT mode, after running script in OBJECT mode
Set the coordinates as desired, run the script in object mode, creates a curve object with control points at the input coordinates.  Removes need to select points, mode toggle, and use operators.
Using numpy and in particular foreach_get(set) is going to be way quicker for a lot of points.
In this example have given each 4D NURB coordinate a weight w of 1.
import bpy
import numpy as np

def flatten(*args):
    c = np.empty(sum(arg.size for arg in args))
    l = len(args)
    for i, arg in enumerate(args):
        c[i::l] = arg
    return c

context = bpy.context

x, y, z = np.array(
    (
        (0, 0, 0),
        (1, 1, 1),
        (0, 1, 1),
        (0, 0, 1),
    )
).T

w = np.ones(len(x))
cu = bpy.data.curves.new(name="poly", type='CURVE')
cu.dimensions = '3D'

spline = cu.splines.new('NURBS') # poly type
# spline is created with one point add more to match data
spline.points.add(x.size - 1)
spline.points.foreach_set("co", flatten(x, y, z, w))

spline.use_endpoint_v = True
spline.use_endpoint_u = True
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("NURBS", cu)
context.collection.objects.link(ob)
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
ob.select_set(True)

And for example sake,

running a loop and changing the weight assigned to the 4th coordinate
for j in range(1, 100, 10):
    w = np.ones(len(x))
    w[3] = j

Note.
If the desired result is to have the curve pass through the control points, it may be an idea to choose a curve type other than NURBS.


Why are the textures bigger when rendered than they appear in the 3D view? I've added images to each side of the displayer. I must be missing a step because when I render the displayer the images are much larger than they appear in the perspective view.
Anyone know what I'm doing or not doing?
Here is my file https://www.dropbox.com/s/92tlcfv7cv5jpt5/uno-displayer.blend

Here's a link to it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/92tlcfv7cv5jpt5/uno-displayer.blend?dl=0
Thanks in advance for the help

The problem was with the UV-maps: you were resizing UVMAP.001 but the active for rendering was UVMAP. You just need to deactivate UVMAP and activate UVMAP.001 for rendering (it's the small camera next to the name)


Kelvin temperature from heat attribute When simulating fire, the heat attribute gives a scalar representing the heat, but the blackbody node, which converts a temperature to a color requires the heat to be specified in Kelvins, and the heat scalar is not in Kelvin.

My question is, therefor if there is an unambiguous way of converting the heat scalar to kelvin temperature if I already know what type of combustion this is (ie. is it a flame of a candle or burning barrel of oil)

Yes. Multiply it by 1000.

Temperature
Gives a scalar defining the temperature of the volume. Values in the range 0..1 map to 0..1000 kelvin. This may be used to render physically-based fire with the Blackbody or Principled Volume shaders. All three outputs are the same.

From https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/nodes/types/input/attribute.html
So the attribute node gives the temperature in Kelvins in the range [0,1000] mapped linearly to the range [0,1]. To change it back, you can simply multiply it by 1000.
Interestingly, what seems to refer explicitly to "Temperature" is actually referencing the "heat" attribute. using "temperature" in the attribute node simply returns 0, as if it were any undefined token.


How can I scale a UV Island within a precise border in my low-res texture? I'm having a bit of a specific issue that I can't seem to find an answer to.

For context, I'm trying to apply a low-res pixel texture to a blocky (Minecraft) character model. However, this model has a high amount of subdivisions around the limb joints, i.e. the elbows and knees, to allow for smooth bending.

The result is that my arm's UV island looks like this:

The subdivisions around the joint are smaller in size than the size of 1x1 pixel. This means that if I use Snap to Pixels on this island, these tiny subdivisions become squished/distorted.

Is it possible to have this island fit the arm texture perfectly, without the subdivisions losing their original shape and proportions?

Any help would highly appreciated! :)

here is an idea, but just to warn you, I am taking advantage of the "ANY help would be highly appreciated."  Hope it is worth it :)
I have a simple repeating texture:

Now I have created an example mesh like your arm:

What I have done to the corner edges is I have selected them, hit ctrl-E, and select "Mark Seam."  Then I selected the entire mesh and hit "u", and then I selected from the drop-down, "unwrap."
I then applied the texture to the arm.  Now select the entire mesh, go to the UV image editor, select all of the mesh in the UV editor window, and scale it to the appropriate size.
The texture will not be aligned on each side, however.  I fixed this by aligning it manually.  This is how: you select one whole side at a time, move over to the UV image editor, select the mesh, and move it on the x and y axis.  This will change the position that the texture is on the mesh, as shown below.  Make sure, when moving the texture, that you are moving the mesh on the UV image editor window, and NOT on the 3D view window.

This is a lot more manual work, and I hope that I did not lose you.  If I did, please say so, and I will edit this post.  Here is the result you will get:

If this doesn't exactly apply to your problem, then don't feel bad to clue me in, and I will try to help.


Create a "global" value for multiple settings Is it possible to create a single variable or defined value that can be used in multiple places -- and even in multiple ways?

Frame example:

** I would like to identify frame 250 as such a value. Some materials would, on that frame, have a mix shader move transparency to zero, and other mix shaders would move to 1.0 at that point. And then, if needed by the flow of the animation, I could change the "250" value to 300, with the resulting changes reflected in all places it is use.

** The same value would identify the point at which an object begins or ends a rotation or movement... or the point at which a light is turned on or off....

Value Example:

** I would like to define a value (either 0 to 1, a percentage, a numeric range or similar) and then animate that single value to drive nodes that accept a similar input. A single animated value/variable could control multiple ObjectID inputs, for example, and a 0 to 1 range could drive transparency and Film exposure.

Anyway: Can I make a "magic value box"? The specific use case I have in mind right now is responding as timeline changes are made -- causing the need to re-time events in lots of temporally related but operationally different areas: motion, value, VSE strip placement, etc.

All input welcome.

thanks
rg

Well, you need to know about Drivers.

Drivers are scripts which main purpose is to control properties with other properties. In example the rotation of one object is controlled with the location of another object.

Drivers can use properties, numbers, transformations, and scripts, to control the values of properties.

Using a F-Curve, the driver reads the value of the Driver Value and sets the value of the selected property it was added to.
So for example, if the Driver Value is 2.0 the property can be 0.5.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/ru/dev/animation/drivers/introduction.html


what's the precise name of command, 'shift + r'? Today, when I study blender with You tube video, I saw the hotkey 'shift+r', which seems to redo last action.

I want to know precise command name of it in case of forgetting that hot key.

If I know the precise name of it, i would find it with 'space bar'(what's the command name of this?).

The option is 'Repeat Last'. You can view and edit the shortcuts in the 'Input' section of the Blender Preferences.


Object showing throught other object in viewport My object is overlapping the other object in the viewport.
The smaller model in the 'back' is showing through the larger model. They both have mirror and subdiv modifiers on them.

Front view

Side view to show that the model is behind the larger one.

Uncheck X-Ray in Object->Display

if not, could you add the blend file, so I can check it?


Should I use Blender 2.44 rather than the latest version of Blender? Should I use/learn Blender 2.44?

I know I will probably catch flak for asking this question.  But I have not continued my self-paced Blender training with any diligence ever since the interface changed.  I picked up my The Essential Blender: Guide to 3D Creation with the Open Source Suite 2007 by Roland Hess and started to get excited again.  But as I move forward I feel if I ask for any help, I will be scorned for not using close to the latest version.  Is there an underground 2.44 group somewhere out there? :-D  I guess that was 2 questions

Downsides to using blender version 2.49 or older:

Interface is very different than versions after 2.5
Materials are set up differently, some of the functions have other names.
Animation and rigging will not translate properly to newer versions.
Keyboard shortcuts are different.
Most modern plugins will not work. Python scrip terms and versions might not be compatible.
Unstable, and has more bugs.
Possible incompatibilities using modern hardware or modern Operating Systems
No Cycles rendering possible.
Lacks major features to reduce time consuming tasks.
Some tutorials will use features you have, but you will have trouble finding them.
Many users on BSE, and on-line forums will not be unable to help you, as a lot of use never used that version (Surely a few have though)
Harder to find support.
If you find a bug, or blender crashes, you cannot report the crash/bug, and will have to find really old topics for help, or just end up working around the bug.
Generally not a good idea
Once you master the old version, you'll have to forget what you've learned and start over to learn newer versions.

Upsides to using older version:

Perhaps some features you loved are there that they removed (and if there is you can probably find someone made it into a plugin somewhere)

some plugins for older formats only work on older versions.

A different look.

Feel free to edit in other upsides/downsides.


Converting a script to an addon in 2.8 Hi so with some help i was able to get a pie menu script that does what i want when i run it. how would i set it up so i can run it in 2.8 with a hotkey? thanks for any help

import bpy
from bpy.types import Menu, Operator

# spawn an edit mode selection pie (run while object is in edit mode to get a valid output)

class AntiBevel(Operator):
    bl_idname = "anti.bevel"
    bl_label = "AntiBevel"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.shade_flat()
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_remove(modifier="Bevel")
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
        bpy.ops.mesh.mark_sharp(clear=True)
        bpy.ops.transform.edge_bevelweight(value=-1)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        return {'FINISHED'}

class HyperBevel(Operator):
    bl_idname = "hyper.bevel"
    bl_label = "HyperBevel"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(use_extend=False,use_expand=False, type='EDGE')
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
        bpy.ops.mesh.mark_sharp(clear=True)
        bpy.ops.transform.edge_bevelweight(value=-1)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(scale=True)
        bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth()
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_remove(modifier="Bevel")
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BEVEL')
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].limit_method = 'WEIGHT'
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].segments = 3
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        bpy.ops.mesh.edges_select_sharp()
        bpy.ops.mesh.mark_sharp()
        bpy.ops.transform.edge_bevelweight(value=1)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.context.object.data.use_auto_smooth = True
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].width = 0.02
        bpy.context.object.modifiers["Bevel"].use_clamp_overlap = False
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_up(modifier="Bevel")
        return {'FINISHED'}

class VIEW3D_PIE_template(Menu):
    # label is displayed at the center of the pie menu.
    bl_label = "Operators"

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

        pie = layout.menu_pie()
        pie.operator("hyper.bevel")
        pie.operator("anti.bevel")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_PIE_template)
    bpy.utils.register_class(HyperBevel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(AntiBevel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_PIE_template)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HyperBevel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(AntiBevel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie(name="VIEW3D_PIE_template")

To assign a hotkey you do not have to code :)

Go to Edit > Preferences > Keymap
Assuming you want to trigger the hotkey in edit mode, find 3D View > Mesh > Mesh (Global)

Scroll down until you find  + Add New  button. Click it and you should get

Expand and replace none in the identifier field with your operator id and assign the keyboard/mouse shortcut.

Go to edit mode and test!!


Weight painting basic character. Mesh distorting when moving - Newbie Last month I decided I wanted to learn a hobby so I picked up Blender. I've been slowly learning how to model, texture, weight paint and rig things and I am stumped. Most of the time I'm able to find a solution by reading through the forums but I can't seem to figure this out.

I have weight painted my basic character and thought I was all done. When I was posing it I noticed if I move the higher arm bone too high the characters hand deforms. This is what I've tried so far:

Finding other bones that might have been painted on accident that could cause distortion - Can't find ANY even though it seems like the most logical answer.
Smoothing out the vertexes - Has minimal affect. I can live with it but it creates an artifact in the hand that's ugly
Re-painting the arms - I've tried to no affect.
Re-painting the hands - I tried repainting them and it seems to fix it but then when I move the LOWER arms instead another distortion happens.

Distortion in the right and slightly in the left hands. Only happen if I pose the upper arm

Also on a side note is there a way to stop the weights from auto updating? Multiple times I've painstakingly painted a mart of my mesh to find that the previous portion updated as well.

Would Appreciate any help!

I uploaded the blender file here if anyone can take a look at it: https://ufile.io/lvc7i

Basically your mesh get distorted because every vertex is weighted to a lot of different bones: every pose will establish a different bones influence to every vertex, causing distortions.
Every vertex should be assigned to one bone only, except where you want a "fleshy organic" deformation (in which generally you have two bones affecting the joint).

Your case is difficult to resolve because you used a lot of vertices (300.000) while generally we have less (2-5.000 can be enough for your shapes) followed by a subsurf modifier to get smooth result: in this way it's easier to weight paint the control vertices and get smooth deformation exactly as you want.

By the way you have a lot of inverted normals (select all in edit mode and recalculate normals, to get correct behaviour when shading).

This is an example of body modelled with 224 vertices (instead of 10.000) then subsurfed with 2 subdivisions (with which the vertex count goes to 6.700 more or less, but the weight painting can be done relatively to 224 vertices only). Put the subsurf modifier after the armature modifier, so to smooth every posing artifact.


How to adjust viewport clipping I'm building a 3D model and it's huge but when I zoom out enough, it's clipped off sort of like when your camera clipping is too low. Is there a way to adjust the viewport clipping?
Reference image here.

It is in the right hand tool bar, under View tab. You can open it with N in Blender shortcuts or Ctrl + ] in Industry Standard shortcuts.


Linking objects produces weird results I'm doing a blender course in which I'm modeling a patch of grass. I had to make several patches using a Particle System and applying a Particle system and making several variations on the same patch using all the different settings for scaling, rotation etc.

Now I want to link all the individual strands in a patch together. I click one strand, then use Shift to select them all, then press Ctrl + J . And then Boom! This mumbo-jumbo appears.

I follow every step of the tutorial exactly as described, and also other tutorials on youtube on this subject. I have not been able to find anything about this particular error.

You don't have to do all this as Random option is available in the particle system settings in regard to the particles' scale and rotation. Use it.


Why don't effectors effect effectors? I'm working on a scene with two balls that attract each other, they collide, bounce around, etc.  I'm trying to do this by turning off gravity, setting each ball as an active rigid body and attaching a force field to it to attract the other ball.

This isn't working.  If I put a force field on one ball, the other ball moves towards it, but as a soon as I put force fields on both balls, they both stop moving.

I've dug into the code and found the source of the problem.  In blender/blenkernel/intern/rigidbody.c, there's a function rigidbody_update_sim_ob that includes the following code:

    /* update influence of effectors - but don't do it on an effector */
    /* only dynamic bodies need effector update */
    else if (rbo->type == RBO_TYPE_ACTIVE && ((ob->pd == NULL) || (ob->pd->forcefield == PFIELD_NULL))) {

...but this is exactly what I want!  I want an effector to effect an effector!

So, why is the code written like this?  Why can't an effector effect an effector?  Should this be an option?

You can work around this by parenting force-field empties to the rigid bodies instead of making the rigid-bodies effectors themselves:

Add the force field: ShiftA>Force field > Force.
Parent it to your rigid-body sphere. Select the force-field, then the sphere and press CtrlP> Object.

It is important that the force-field has the same rotation and location as the sphere.

The force-fields will not have any affect on the sphere they are parented to, as the center of mass of the sphere is in the same place as the center of the force-field. They will affect the other spheres though.

Example animation (click for html5 version):

Example .blend


how to bend straight faces to make a curve I would like to bend this part, so it looks like a nice curve. But instead it is grabbing this whole part.
I added a curve on picture, so that it is easier to understand what I want to achieve as a result. Bend this part alongside with curve

Here is a file to better understand my issue

Thank you very much for your help

There are different ways (as always) to try and get what you want to achieve.

To prepare I rotated the Mesh 90° around the X axis and applied the rotation. So we can watch it from Orthograpic Top View while editing (I just prefer that).

Like @AntonPg suggested:

Go into Edit Mode
Select the middle Edge
Activate Proportional Editing (experiment with the settings ..)
Press G and then Shift + Z to move the selected Edge only on the X and Y axis (without Z axis). Then move and adjust the proportional editing influence radius (MouseWheel).


How to loop an animation in Animation Nodes? I would like to loop an animation such that the final frame becomes the same as the initial frame. For instance, I would like to loop the following animation:

If repeat time rate of 45 frame, animation change direction each 45 frame. I change to 450 frame because my animation is total 450 frame. But repeat time does not work well.

You can use the Ping Pong option of the Repeat Time node as follows.


Is Blender future proof? I was a long time 3ds Max user who stopped doing 3d for quite some time. I am recently getting back into the scene and has seen much changes. I've yet to decide on using a software, but Blender is one of my top choices currently. One thing that does concern me is the open nature of Blender. Although it can be good for development, I am concerned that I have to be constantly up to date on its features. For example, if I pick up 3ds Max today, most of its main functions stay the same. I am not certain about Blender. So my question is, if I decide to learn and master Blender, but may leave it for a while only to come back later, will its main interfaces still stay the same or not? I understand this is impossible to predict, but just give an opinion backed up with good reasoning. Thank you.

Other than a very big change from 2.49 to 2.5, the interface and main functions of Blender have stayed the same for a long time.

The logic and workflow in which Blender operates seems to be very stable, and works perfectly across Operating Systems. It's worth noting tha it runs smoothly on a very wide variety of hardware. Modest or old computers will work just fine but it will make good use of the resources of a powerful computer.

As most programs, blender keeps improving with some eventual breakups and minor changes; but backwards compatibility in blender is superior to most software out there. It does not abandon its users to their own devices or makes the files incompatible to in order force users to use the newest version. Blender, being free/libre and open source, does not have to respond to a particular market share or stock holders... There is no planned obsolescence for monetary gain.

Big changes are made mostly to accommodate newer technologies or to make the program more versatile (and sometimes easier to use).

Blender does not force its users to monthly payments, nor does it have a "light" (crippled) version, an "intermediate", "pro" or creative suites for VIPs.  The same program can be used for a wide variety of purposes, from films and games, to 3D printing or Architectural rendering, or math or science visualizations.

So many people are using blender for all kinds of uses now, that commercial rendering engines are making ports to render blender projects. I can only see that kind of support growing, as blender is indeed getting wider recognition as a serious 3D tool. There are also some companies creating modified versions of blender for web content  creation, biology scientific modelling and easy game asset creation. There is a growing a number of render farm services and cloud computing companies that support Blender as well.

Something worth mentioning is that the Blender Foundation has kept every version of the software (dating to v1.0) available for download. So even if your file were to be outdated, you can always go to blender.org, download the version used to create the file and retrieve your information.

The path for Blender's future seems quite bright and the developers are very open about their intentions and their road map.

But foreseeing the future is beyond the scope of this site.

Will blender's technology outlast that of the blender in your kitchen? Probably not.

In the meantime if someone out there finds an add-on or a modifier to render the future in real-time please post it here.


How to create a pole to follow and empty with arbitrary origin I want my "pole" follow point B from point A with no stretching, this way

Intead of this I get this:

How can I follow the point B using the pole, keeping the point A as origin, and keeping the movement as you can see in the empty C

I'm not sure that's what you want because it's not clear to me but I give a try with this:

Create Bone1 and his child Bone2. Create Bone3 and his child Bone4. Give Bone2 an IK Constraint with Bone4 as Target. Now Bone2 sticks to Bone4.

For the rotation of Bone3: In the 3D View right panel (displayed with N), choose XYZ Euler instead of Quaternion. Create a keyframe at angle 0°, rotate the bone 180° and create a second keyframe, then in the Dopesheet press T > Linear and shiftE Linear Extrapolation to make the rotation perpetual.


Is there a way to hide bones that don't have vertex groups I need to hide bones that don't have any associated vertex groups, so I can select the bones that only have weight painted.

Weight is a property of vertex groups, so you can't have an automatic procedure to select and hide bones with or without weight. Anyway you can manually move all unwanted bones in a separate bone layer (M in pose mode), and make this layer visible or invisible.


Object face validity When creating objects for a game engine (unity) or in general I often come across a choice. I can make a face of my object be the way on the left or join the faces and have them as such on the right. Is the way on the right valid? Does it lead to any errors?

If it is wrong, why is it wrong and what are the consequences?

This is more of a modelling question, not specific to blender.

An n-gon like the one on the right will be transformed into triangles (triangulation) by Unity, and that triangulation is unpredictable. The insets might be covered by stray triangles, for example.

In general, any topology with concave polygons is problematic, because you don't know how it will be triangulated. Convex polygons, in the worst case, will only give shading artifacts.


Is there any way I can make a curve and/or a mesh from a wavefile? So I want to make a mesh surface based on a wave file. I have been trying to convert sound to curves so I could extrude it to a mesh plane, but I am relatively new to Blender so I am not sure how to do this. Do anyone have any suggestions for a solution?

I've done this myself in the past, but the way I did it was fairly indirect. I loaded the file into Audacity, and took a screenshot of the audio visualization. Then I opened that file in Inkscape and cropped the screenshot to just the part of the audio that I wanted. I traced the image and saved the file as an SVG. I then imported this SVG into blender. Here's what that looked like when finished.

If you need help with the intermediary steps, let me know. None of the steps are overly difficult, but using an unfamiliar program can always be a challenge. :)


Flip default face orientation of object I'm creating my first model and it's going fine so far. One thing though - I probably did something wrong in the beginning, and default orientation (normals) of faces is pointing inside the model. I can easuly fix it with Ctr+Shift+N, to set normals to point "inside" the model, which happens to be correct in my case. However if I create a new face, sometimes it creates flipped, so it always tried the default orientation, and I have to re-calculate normals again.

Can I somehow set Blender in such a way, that what he now thinks of a "normals pointing inside the model" to "normals pointing outside", which is correct (in my case)?

I didn't understand well, but you can try Alt + R to clear an object rotation, or Shift + C to set the cursor at the center.


How do I add a node to a frame using python I have a frame node and a couple of other nodes.

I want to add the nodes to the frame.

I can't find any examples of how to do this.

frame = nodes.new(type='NodeFrame')
glass = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeBsdfGlass')
trans = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeBsdfTransparent')

frame.nodes does not seem to exist so not sure.  Do I have to append to something?

I found the solution as shown below and thought I would post the answer to help others facing the same problem.  It is actually more obvious than I first thought.

glass.parent = frame
trans.parent = frame


How to create a face when only one vertex is selected? I was watching a video on retopology and saw the uploader extrude a mesh face in a way that I've not seen before.  He's in edit-vertex mode and has a partly completed mesh with an L-shaped bend along its edge.  He then selects the vertex on the inside corner of the L and then appears to click somewhere further out - and this causes an entire face to be created:

YouTube clip:
https://youtu.be/KNjCaizeal0?t=8m29s

I've been reading through the docs, but can't figure out what key I need to press to do this.  Does anyone know how to do this?

Looks like blender has an addon called 'f2' mode.  Enable it, and then you can create this sort of quad just by pressing F.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/F2


Can I define variables to be used in number buttons across the interface? In previous versions of blender, it was possible to use mathematical expressions containing "#frame" within - if I remember correctly - any number button. Every value controlled by #frame would then be updated frame by frame with the result of the formula.

By generalizing this concept, I wonder if it's possible to define (keyframe-able) variables in one place and then use them as inputs across the entire interface. For example, it would be handy to be able to define a "#clay" variable that simultaneously controls the factor of several Mix Shader nodes, but also determines the intensity of a couple of light sources, and possibly do other things such as reducing render samples and so on. This way, I could switch from realistic to clay render (or an in-between version) by adjusting that slider from 0 to 1.

Is it possible to do this without writing a script?

This is what drivers are for. You can use them to take some mathematical expression (or a bit of Python code) to determine the value of settings.

For more information on this topic, see the Drivers section of the Blender manual.


How to split complex mesh Blend file is hereIn the following picture I have a noise on a mesh, and a cylinder.

I want to cut the cylinder along the edges of the noise mesh.

I tried so many methods, nothing worked..

Assuming your desired end result is a solid cylinder with a textured top surface, perhaps there is another approach. Rather than using a Boolean to create the base, which is likely to generate artifacts, and badly-behaved geometry here, you could start with the whole cylinder.

Take your existing base-cylinder, and subdivide a top surface for it in some way. But whichever way, ensure there are at least some loops running around the circumference:

Assign the top surface to a vertex group.
Aim your Displace modifier at that vertex group. That way, it will displace the top surface of your cylinder, but not the rest.
Even then, there may be some sharp cut-offs of the displacement at the edges, leaving unrealistic thin slivers of displaced top-surface around the cylinder's circumference. So, in Edit Mode, you can edit the weights of the vertices in the group, giving them a falloff towards the outside:

(To edit weights in Edit Mode, select a loop of vertices. In the Item > Vertex Weights panel, adjust the weight of the active vertex, and hit the button to copy the weight to the rest of the loop)

So now you can get control over the depth of your procedural displacement as it approaches the edge of the cylinder:

You can see a couple of slivers sticking up at the back right of this render.. you could adjust the weights in these areas to get rid of them. You can edit the weights in other ways, if you want to achieve a different effect.


Particle system emitting from collision I'd like to know how to make a particle system only emit from where two meshes touch, regardless of mesh density. i.e. if a laser were to hit a mesh, sparks would be emitted from wherever the laser is touching the mesh.

Thanks in advance!

I will not dive deep into explaining, but show some basics.

Main thing here is to have dynamic Vertex group, created by Vertex Weight Modifier, that correspondes with collision spots.

Duplicate mesh you want to cut (in this case I prefer Alt+D to share data);
Create new vertex group, add all vertices in it;
Add Subsurf modifier with 2-4 levels of division. High levels produce more accurate collisions, but are slowing things down.
Add Vertex Weight Proximity modifier with Laser-mesh as target (set it to geometry - faces, adjust lowest/highest values).
Add Mask modifier with the same Vgroup as in previous modifier, but invert it with Arrows button near Vgroup name. At this step, all geometry that is too far from Laser faces will be cut off in order to emit only from intersections. NOTE: Mask modifier is needed, because Density option in PS is kind of glitchy with dynamic Vgroups.
If you need to render emitter object along with particles, you can optionally add Shrinkwrap modifier (target is original mesh) with a small offset
to avoid Z-fighting.
Add Particle System on top of it (it is important to enable Use Modifier Stack in PS settings, otherwise effect won't work). Also tweak Start frame to match the frame, where Laser intersects mesh first time. In other words Start frame should compensate travel time of Laser or mesh will emit particles too early.
Same purpose as in step "6". Add Laplacian Smooth modifier, it helps to smooth jagged geometry after Mask modifier did its job.

Open GL preview:


Transparent model when exporting fbx file to Unity So I have this shark model which I animated and ready to export it on fbx and transport it to Unity.

But When I put it on Unity, It looks transparent like this.

Many of the solutions online say that the problem is because of my faces, and they told me to recalculate it or something, but normals are just fine.
Is there any other solution?

here's the blend file:

Make sure you apply your rotation/scale/location. With the shark selected in object mode. Ctrl-A Location and Rotation/Scale before exporting


Streaking Behaviour of Lights - Render but not Viewport My scene in the viewport looks like this:

But the render comes out like this (hopefully the jpeg's not too bad):

I have no hidden lights, no random meshes. There should be no reason the lights "smear" as they do. I've thought about hiding the light from the reflection rays with the light path node, but I'm not sure how to do that and it seems entirely unnecessary. I see the second light from the left's reflection on the plane, but that's pretty easily solved (in the viewport, anyway) by just moving it back a bit. There's no weird compositing things going on either.
What's going on? Thanks.

It looks like the render is the physically correct way to render lights over that kind of surface. Looking up reference images of sunsets over an ocean show similar effects. To make the light not travel that far down the surface of your floor, you'll likely need to lower the power of the lights.
I wonder if the floor has a modifier on it that changes it's displacement that would only show up on a real render, and not in your viewport.


Select coordinates without a given z ? by using KDTREE Would it be possible to use the KDTree without taking into account the z-coordinate? According to the documentation, find(co) necessarily requires a vector (x,y,z) but what interests me is to find the nearest point in (x,y) without taking into account the z (which may really vary my result)

Arbitrarily set z

Using the example from https://docs.blender.org/api/master/mathutils.kdtree.html#module-mathutils.kdtree

Test script, find all verts within 1 local blender unit in mesh projected to z = 0 plane, from the 3d cursor projected to same plane.  Adjust z to suit.

import mathutils

# set the z of the xyplane
z = 0
# create a kd-tree from a mesh
from bpy import context
obj = context.object
mesh = obj.data
size = len(mesh.vertices)
kd = mathutils.kdtree.KDTree(size)

for v in mesh.vertices:
    kd.insert((v.co.x, v.co.y, z), v.index)

kd.balance()

# 3d cursor relative to the object data
co_find = context.scene.cursor.location @ obj.matrix_world.inverted()
# set the same to find nearest projected to that plane.
co_find.z = z

for co, index, dist in kd.find_range(co_find, 1):
    print(f"Vert[{index}].co[:] = {mesh.vertices[index].co} (xy dist = {dist})")

Test run cursor location in image, selects the vertices of leading edge of cube as seen from camera in default scene.

Vert[1].co = (1.0, -1.0, -1.0) (xy dist = 0.030091779306530952)
Vert[5].co = (0.9999993443489075, -1.0000005960464478, 1.0) (xy dist = 0.030092377215623856)


I cannot rotate objects with python script in animation So, i have an object, i have list of data, the translation nmovement is completely fine, but the rotational movement is not. It takes the last piece of data from the loop and sets the rotation according to that. I am at my wits end.
It is not datas fault. No matter what sequence i put there, it doesnt do anything. I put variable "line_count" for demonstration that it does nothing :D. It jut always rotates according to the last one.
code:
from math import *
from mathutils import *
from math import radians
import csv

myobj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# Clear all previous animation data
myobj.animation_data_clear()

# set first and last frame index
total_time = 50 # Animation should be 2*pi seconds long
fps = 24 # Frames per second (fps)
bpy.context.scene.frame_start = 0
bpy.context.scene.frame_end = 1001
myobj.location.x = 0
myobj.location.y = 0
myobj.location.z = 0
# loop of frames and insert keyframes every 10th frame

with open('C:/Users/ADMIN/Desktop/School/Advanced control/Quadcopter/Blah/href_input_h.csv') as csv_file:
    csv_reader = csv.reader(csv_file, delimiter=',')
    line_count = 0
    for row in csv_reader:
        bpy.context.scene.frame_set(line_count)
        myobj.location.x = 1
        myobj.location.y = 1
        myobj.location.z = 1
        myobj.rotation_euler.x = line_count

        # Insert new keyframe for "location" like this
        myobj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location")
        line_count += 1
    print(f'Processed {line_count} lines.') ```

Adding a keyframe for the rotation part was missing.
Just add:
myobj.keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_euler")


Why cycles uses so much mem? I’m using blender 2.81 and render in cycles(pretty low samples and resolution) my set up is cpu: amd x4 645 gpu: gts 450 and ram :4gb . So my question is :how can blender possibly use 8400+ mem ? I don’t even have that much Rendering animation as individual images(1-2mb in size) of total roughly 300 frames

The displayed unit is megabyte, therefore you're using approximately 8.4 GB. The value is based on the performed memory allocations and can be higher due than your RAM due to virtual memory and swapping. The operating system can use your hard drive to allocate additional memory, in case all available space on the RAM is already in use. If you're trying to access parts of the virtual memory, that is physically stored on the hard drive, it will cause a page fault and the operating system will load the memory from the hard drive. In order to load this memory, it will have to swap parts of the allocated space from RAM with the allocated space from disk. Swapping is slow since the data rate for a hard disk is lower and latency for I/O is significantly higher than accessing RAM. However the big benefit is that you can use more memory than the physically available RAM.


How to start and end an animation assigned keyframes sorry if this has been asked already, but how do you make an animation start and end at first and last assigned keyframes rather than specify a frame number for the start and end frames separately?

While working on my character animations, I always end up changing the scale, adding extra elements, etc. of my animations and it's always a bother to go back to the timeline window and set the start and end conditions to what I want. Is there a more convenient way of doing this?

Use the "preview range". You can call it via P:

It will set a temporary play range, which you can toggle with this little clock icon near the start/end frames:


Animate rotation axes independently I'm working on a simple walk cycle and I want to have my character looking around the scene. I already have key frames for the x axis rotation of the head so the character's head bobs as he walks, so is there any way for me to key frame just a single axis of the rotation, so the bob could stay in the x axis and I could have his head move in the z axis without the two interfering? If not, how could I achieve this effect? Do I animate the head rotations first then add the bobbing last? Thanks!

To insert a keyframe for a single axis, change the value of your axis in the properties panel (N), hover over it, right mouse button click it and select "Insert Single Keyframe".
This will allow you to change the value of a single axis while keeping the other values untouched.


Problem when importing .obj to Blender just a heads up im relatively new to Blender and in this case Sculptris. I wanted to make a simple first Model and i exported it from Sculptris and imported the wavefront(.obj) file into Blender and it came out like this:

As you can see, I added two models. These are basically the same but I followed the recommendation of another post about the same issue I found and reduced the Models Poly Count and tried to import that, I also tried to import the .obj File while "Keeping the Vert Order" but none of that worked.
Here is the referenced stackexchange post : .OBJ Import Error

So I wanted to ask you if anyone has a solution to this Problem and could help me out?

I want it to look like this, is there any way to have it displayed correctly in Blender?

There are Custom Split Normals creating artifacts in your mesh.
Go to Properties Window > Object Data Tab > Geometry Data Panel and press Clear Custom Split Normals Data
If for some reason you wish to keep those, disabling Auto Smooth under the Properties Window > Object Data Tab > Normals Panel > Auto Smooth seems to be a valid workaround.
Also, if you horse is to remain perfectly symmetric consider erasing half of the mesh and adding a Mirror modifier. Might save you some cleanup work and resources in the future.


Layout object placement A noob question: I scaled the default cube to 8m along x. If I set transform to 4m (in x), why isn't the object now just sitting on the ground plane? Isn't the origin of the object in the center by default?

To make it sit on the ground plane you need to move it in the Z axis. If your cube is 1m in height then setting 0.5 in Z will make it sit on the ground plane.


Where is the Volume "step size" in Blender 2.78? I'm trying to adjust volume step size for accuracy in Blender, but cannot find the "Volume Sampling" section in the newest version, 2.78. For reference, here's what I'm referring to:

It seems to not be there for 2.78

It is now moved to the geometry panel:

Properties Window > Render Context > Geometry Panel > Step Size


How to switch the camera to orthographic view? So the button that switches the current view from perspective/orthographic projection (Numpad 5 :) is not even there. And I want it to behave exactly the same as the main camera, so you can toggle the view with number 5 while looking through camera.
If you press number 5 while looking through camera view it cancels/jumps out of that camera view.
I could not find anything online, it might be very simple, but it's not when you don't know...

In the camera section of the Properties window (and with camera selected as active object), you can determine the kind of lens type you want.

When you select Orthographic perspective objects always appear at their actual size, regardless of distance. This means that parallel lines appear parallel, and do not converge like they do with Perspective.


Trying to edit the nose, but zooming in will display the vertices behind it The first one in the clip, I can get close to the nose just fine, but the second one, if I try to zoom in... then it displays like that?

How to fix that?

Maybe you can check what's going on, you can download it here.

Try to change the Clip Start of your scene in the 3D View Properties panel (activated with N, on the right of your 3D View window) > View > Clip > Start.


Emission material not showing in render EEVEE I don't know what's wrong with it but I have gave it a emission but it doesn't show up in the render view.

You can use the bloom pass and composite it in the Compositor.


How do I halve the width of a mesh while keeping it parallel to other edges (locking to an axis doesn't work)? I want to flatten this cube and keep it a rectangle, all edges parallel.

You can change dimensions of a mesh by going to the Transform panel and input values directly into the fields under 'Scale'.

If you input 0.5 in the fields, assuming your mesh was already at Scale 1 for X, Y and Z, then it will be halved in all three dimensions while retaining it's current rectangular shape, it's position and alignment to other object and everything else. It will just become smaller.

You can also just change one or two of the dimensions and keep the other ones intact if you wish.


Add extra hotkeys to the Annotate Tool? I'm trying to add a hotkey to the Annotate Tool so that I can hold down shift to draw a straight line.
I can find how to change the existing hotkey by searching for "annotate"

How can I add more hotkeys to the Annotate tool? (hold shift to draw straight lines mainly)

Edit
The default shortcut for annotate straight-lines is D + ALT + LMB.
Change the hotkeys for that keymap.


Configuring an object to ignore one light source I would like to configure an object to ignore one particular light source (sun) in Cycles - to receive no light from the sun. Is this possible? I've looked online, but most posts I found were either 5+ years old, or were unanswered.

I have made a sample file with a cube and a sphere in two different collections. I would like the sun to cast light only on the sphere, not on the cube.
Sample

After some reading through documentation, which is currently not entirely precise on this particular topic, I have found out and proved in practice that the way to solve my problem is indeed using two view layers. My scene now includes two collections - one contains the first set of objects and their light source, the other one includes the object that is not to be receiving light from the first collection's light sources. The view layers then control the visibility of each collection and its contents. This means that during render, each view layer/collection is rendered separately, and both rendered outputs are then combined together in compositing.


How do I get crystallize filter effect with the Blender compositor I'm new to the compositor and I'm trying to achieve this effect:

a little close up

I have tried using the pixelate, blur and directional blur nodes but the effect isn't the same, btw I got the example using the Crystallize filter in Photoshop

You could try using Blender's Displace node fed with a Voronoi texture. If the displacement is to rough then apply some gentle blur also driven by the texture.

To achieve the daubed paint effect I have added a Bilateral blur node to constrain the blur. I feed this with a mixture of the source image and the Voronoi texture.