Weird face after Boolean..? I used the Boolean modifier to make a hole in my gun and it looks like a shadery face covering up the hole. It's a bit hard to see and it isn't really a face. The hole i made goes through 3 meshes.

(You need to click on the pic to see the shady face)

Any solution?

It's because the 3 meshes' faces are overlapping. Move the faces of 2 of your 3 objects a tiny bit away (along normals or X/Y/Z).


Animation slider (driver?) Hello Blender Artists!

As said in my previous questions, I´m pretty new to Blender and 3D stuff; I made this very easy door animation you can see below a few days ago with simple keyframes for every single part, and quickly got tired of animating every single part again and again.

For a single open animation (the ~four seconds you can see below) I had to animate 42 parts with 2-10 keyframes! And now think of an animation where I have to open/close this door four or five times... no way.

So I want to ask if there is a way to "pack" all those single animations into a slider or something like that, where you have a "0" value (closed) and a "1" value (open) you can slide along. I´ve heard about drivers, but only found tutorials for SINGLE objects, so that´s why I´m asking here.

Is there any way to combine these keyframe animations into one, compact control thing?

Thank you very much beforehand for reading this through!

For a compact "control thing" you can use the dope sheet view. This will combine all object's animation data into one window for editing. In the dope sheet view you can reverse the animation data (for the door to reopen after closing) and then simply duplicate this new set of keyframes and voila 4 cycles of the door animation. Then again, it depends on what you are wanting to use this longer animation for, nevertheless, here is an excellent tutorial explaining the dope sheet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIWd0xfzxIc


Blender Reads Some Videos' Frames Incorrectly (duplicates + skipping) I'm attempting to use Blender as a precision video editing tool.  I have a few dozen short videos recorded with NVidia's screen recording software.  Ostensibly (according to NVidia), they are all recorded at 30 FPS, and each one plays back correctly in VLC.

About half of these videos behave correctly in the video sequence editor of my 30 FPS project.  I can scrub from one frame to the next in Blender, and each frame of the video clip appears correctly in the preview (and when rendered).

The other half behave quite oddly when scrubbing and rendering.  It's as if every even frame appears twice, and the odd frames are skipped.

This is not exactly what's happening, but that's what it seems like.  Certain frames are duplicated, while adjacent frames are skipped.

This causes the affected clips to render out slow and choppy.  Anyone have any suggestions for a remedy?

My sincere thanks for any insight,

Blender is very picky about source codecs. Try creating a proxy with timecode (bottom VSE Clip menu).
You could also try turning on MPEG preseek in the Strip Properties menu by entering a frame value higher than 0. This enables Blender to cache a portion of the source making it easier to decode. It may slow performance of playback

If that doesn't work try converting the media to a codec that Blender prefers. Make sure that the codec that you use has a fixed frame rate. Variable frame rate screen captures will fail.


Scale and dimensions problem importing to Unity I'm trying to import a simple plane mesh into Unity (to generate some map)

I have my simple plane that I want scale to be 1x1x1 and dimensions 50x50 but whatever I do; change dimensions scale changes i cannot make it align perfectly in Unity.

If i can align one edge; the other is not perfectly aligned.
I'm exporting as .blend file.

I've tried the following answer :How to align a cluster of points?

But i can't make all my points 'z to be 0; why ?
What am i missing here ?

From your question your trying to do 3 things at once. maybe some of these tips will help.

To keep the scale at 1,1,1  make your changes in Edit Mode, not Object Mode.

If your object is not scaled to 1,1,1 you can reset this with:
'Apply Scale'. 'ctrl+A -> scale'

To make your plane flat, select all the vertices and scale them on the Z to zero.

Same to align any row of vertices, select the row, and scale X to 0.

To put the plane at the Global Position z=0, Set your 3d cursor, and then snap the plane to it.


Is it possible to have a shader effect a specific area of a texture? I want to have it so the shader effects only a specific part of the texture.
like for example, a white surface never getting darker when in darkness.

And the white surfaces don't get covered by any cel shaded shaders. (Pictured here)

I'm really new to blender, so please bear with me

The Mix Shader can blend between two shaders. You can specify the area by a mask which is usually a black and white or a grayscale image. You can see on the right side you have to plug the mask to the "Fac" socket. The base shader (it's principled in my case but it can be anything) into the middle and the Emission into the last. The mask is the black and white umbrella in the UV editor. You have to make a black and white image about your texture or you can use your base color with a ColorRamp node.


Can't find the glow node I am trying to add glow to windows on a spaceship design. however, I cannot find anywhere half of the nodes I am seeing online, such as glare or glow. I have textures on my model but turning to cycle render turns it into a particle mess, and I have no idea what 'cycle renders means'. my question: can I find the right nodes in standard Blender Render mode? if not, how do I retain my previous model render look in Cycles Render?

The node editor window has three basic options:

The nodes you need are in the  compositing mode.

There is no need to switch to cycles to access the compositor.

Please read: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/node_editor/


Why cant i see the smoke effect? I was following a tutorial on YouTube beginner, and when I added quick smoke and hit play, nothing showed up.
I tried a bunch of different things but still cannot see smoke.
If its not showing do you think that means my laptop isn't able to support it, or is there something else going on that I'm not doing.

If you are talking about the Blender Guru video, this is the top comment from user  r19790606:

  If you can't see smoke and fire you probably use new version of
  blender (2.82). Correct instruction for 2.82:

  Add monkey
  select monkey in object mode
  F3 -> add Quick Smoke
  (different to video) select monkey
  choose Physics->Setting->Flow Type : "FIre + Smoke"
  (different to video) select "Smoke Domain" object
  in physics panel click "Bake Data" and wait... (progress in status bar on the bottom)
  after it 's finished click play to start animation.

  video: https://youtu.be/XN6ClIdL8yw

  ps : default only 50 frames are animated. you can change this in phisics->cache-> Frane End (you have to Resume or Free and Bake again ... see point 7)


Addons Not showing up in Toolbar (Blender 2.8 Alpha) After installing the addons in the user preferences, they don't show up anywhere in blender 2.8 except from workspace addons tab in the properties and clicking it doesnt do anything. In user preferences next to the addons list, it also says that "Upgrade to 2.8x required". Does that mean that we can't use any addons in 2.8 unless they are upgraded for 2.8 builds?

Blender 2.8 has yet to notify the add-on developers to make it compatible with 2.8. Currently, no or very few Add-ons work for this release. The release day for the beta version has been notified, check the website.

Link to the site : https://code.blender.org/2018/06/beyond-the-code-quest/


Does the Bone Selection Set Addon exist for Blender 2.8? The Blender Manual makes reference to an addon I desperately need, but can't find or load in the addon section of Preferences in Blender 2.82a.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/addons/animation/bone_selection_sets.html

It's occurred to me that it might be an out of date doc, and that this addon might be something that existed in 2.79 at the time of the doc's writing. Does anyone know if an updated version of this addon is around? Or if there is another addon that does the same thing?

The answer is yes. But the reason I couldn't find this add-on in the Preferences window is because I unknowingly had the Enabled Add-ons Only box checked, meaning that searches that I was performing in the filter field weren't finding the add-on I was looking for. How funny is that?


Trackers in re-linked footage don't match the features on video I've managed to get my footage re-linked to my project again after reformatting my PC, but I've noticed that all of my trackers keep moving around. Is there any way to fix this, or have I got to delete them all and start again? :-\ I'd rather not re-do them; tracking is not my favourite aspect of Blender.

Thanks

Save file:

Footage:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/09bq3u1tqzbkmic/Real_Footage.mov?dl=0

The trackers on the linked footage do not match with any trackable features in the video.

it looks like you are using some frame offset (the 1st frame in the composition and the 1st frame of the video file are not the same)
Somehow the offset information got lost in the re-link or at some point it changed in the file (my guessing powers are quite limited).
You might need to find the correct start frame manually by sliding the Offset (place the cursor over the Offset box, right click with the mouse and drag to visually find the point where your trackers and the image match correctly)
If you offset the image by 500 frames things line up better.


Ignore objects for navigation in viewport I'm facing an issue when trying to view some relatively small objects from a different angle by clicking the large planes by mistake which will throw me away from the object.
A temporary fix was hiding the large planes from the viewport but I'm struggling with this issue especially when working with materials from the materials panel on the right side because I need to see how they are interacting with the environment "the large planes".
is there any method to make Blender ignores any attempt to navigate through the large planes as if they were "hidden"?

You can make them unselectable.
In the outliner click on the funnel icon to open the filter controls. Enable the controls for selectability:
The arrow icon controls if an object is selectable.

Just for reference, the other icons are:
Selectability (mouse cursor icon)
This is useful for if you have placed something in the scene and do not want to accidentally select it when working on something else.
Eye hides object in the viewport
Camera prevents the object from rendering
Monitor: Hides the object in all viewports
Square with a circle: Holdout.
Twisted Arrow: Indirect light only
For more info on how to use the outliner read:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/outliner/index.html


How to animate rotation from a txt file I would like to animate a body using data I have collected in an external text file. How would I go about importing quaternion data and animating an object from it using a python script.

Here is a sample of the data:

0.90,0.13,-0.09,-0.41
0.90,0.11,-0.08,-0.40
0.91,0.10,-0.08,-0.40
0.91,0.09,-0.07,-0.40
0.91,0.08,-0.07,-0.40

It is in the format WXYZ where each line in the file would be a frame.

I managed to answer my own question but will post answer to help future people who have a similar question.

I used the answer to this question and this python script to animate the object:

import bpy
from mathutils import Quaternion

filename = 'input.txt'

file = open(filename, 'r')
lines = file.readlines()

frame_number = 0

ob = bpy.context.object
ob.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'

for i in lines:
    frame_number += 1
    q0, q1, q2, q3 = i.split(',')
    quat = float(q0), float(q1), float(q2), float(q3)

    ob.rotation_quaternion = quat
    ob.keyframe_insert('rotation_quaternion', frame=frame_number)

file.close()


2.8/Grease Pencil. How to flip a stroke horizontally? I only need to do this for a few strokes. Unfortunately, the Mirror modifier is being applied to the whole drawing.
Thanks guys,

DPC

In Edit mode, select the strokes you want to flip and scale them in -1. Thanks to dan2 from blenderartists.


Eevee render much too bright Beginner working through Grant Abitt's seashack tutes.
Eevee renders too bright. The colour is ridiculous. Like a nuclear bomb exploding overhead.
I turn down the world strength, I delete lights, I turn the sun down to zero, and it makes no difference. The render is still ridiculously bright.
If anyone can help, here's a link to the blend file.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kaz5jgkt4zl1914/AACu4HlwYoTb8ClGhusl-WEka?dl=0

In the Viewport Shading switch your settings back to default, and in the Render settings > Indirect lighting, delete the Lighting Cache.


Weird triangle pattern on edge of model Hi everyone I am trying to model a gun in blender and I am getting these wierd edge as you can see on the right hand side of the second image. There are some triangles or I don't know what that is. Does anyone know how to fix it?

From those images, I can only guess. Is it only visible in edit mode? Is it only on that edge? Have you tried to rule out usual suspects? Remove doubles, recalc normals?

Try this: add a bevel modifier to your object with segments > 2, does it disappear? if so you should be fine and this is only a viewport issue.


Blender noise texture scaled in z axis by default? Can someone confirm if this is normal behavior? It appears the noise texture by default is "squeezed" in the z axis. Below I am showing it as default and with scale up by 0.5 applied to lengthen in the z axis.

Default:

Corrected?:

Texture coordinates matters

No, by default the noise texture is isotropic. Here's a picture of it covering the default cube:

You are probably experiencing that "strange" behaviour becaues you are feeding the vector socket of the texture with a non-uniform vector fields.

As said in the manual, Generated texture:

  ... [automatically-generate] coordinates from the vertex positions of the mesh without deformation, keeping them sticking to the surface under animation. Range from 0.0 to 1. 0 over the bounding box of the undeformed mesh.

This means that if your object has a non-uniform bounding box (even a loose vertice counts), you'll get different density of the vector field in the 3d space to be able to guarantee the same range. A tall object will show a stretched texture upon the z-axis, while in a short (as in your case) will look squeezed.

See in this image sequance how altering the x-size of the object by modifying its mesh (e.g. moving some vertices) leads to a stretch of the texture on that axis.

If you want to keep the texture's size indipendent from the object's bounding box you should use Object Texture coordinates, maybe targeting an Empty if you want to keep the size consistent across multiple object (Object's Texture coordinates is object's transformations dipendent).


Mesh masking of blur I'm fairly new to using the compositor and I have this issues with having 2 renderlayers, one for the glare of the reflections. and one for the glare coming from the lights as some sort of glow basically.

now since those lights will sometimes be behind certain meshes and such, they shouldn't show through. how can I resolve this with still keeping the glare from the lights. but those little LEDS masked off by the mesh

as you can see, the practice file works great

but when I take the same steps in the actual model file I end up with this where the glare is not showing at all:

or this, this happens when I change the pass index to 1 in the ID mask node

would really love to hear what I can do next to resolve this. thanks in advance for your help!

I think you are looking for the ID Mask node.  For an example, I set up a simple scene with one object inside of the other.

If you go to the Render Layers tab and check the box next to the material index pass, it will now add a pass for all of the different material indexes.

Next, you have to set the indexes of your materials.  In the materials tab, go to the bottom of the material that you want to set the pass index of.  In the very bottom, under settings, there is a setting that says Pass Index.  You can set that to whatever number you want to use for that material.  The default for the background is 0, so I set my material pass indexes to 1 and 2.

After Rendering, open the compositor and get an ID Mask node.  Plug the IndexMA output from the Render Layers node into the input of the ID Mask node.  Then you can connect the Alpha output of the ID Mask node into the input of a viewer node to see the result.  You can then change the index value of the ID Mask node to whatever index you set your material indexes to.

You can then use the ID Mask node for what it says it is, a mask.


Animation in edit mode Is it possible to animate faces and edges in edit mode ?

For example, set a keyframe for face location and animate it till translated under z-axis 10 units, etc.

Similar question with edges.

You cannot animate directly in Edit Mode but you can make hooks that allow animation via Object Mode. You can do the same for edges. The hotkey is CTRLH


Visual C++ Runtime Error 2.69 Startup (Fresh Installation) I keep getting a visual C++ runtime error while starting up a fresh install of blender.... The following is a list of tasks that I have performed to try and fix the problem.

Uninstalling and Reinstalling Python 2.7.5
Uninstalling and Reinstalling Current Versions of C++
Used a working computer to compare versions of C++ and installed parallel versions of C++ clearing out my current list and using the working computer's versions and distributions (which were very hard to find considering on microsoft's website C++ 2008 only has one version available for download now)

Although version 2.63 works fine for me, I have just recently purchased an Addon that I would like to use for blender/Second Life called "Avastar" I can only use beta versions of this software with 2.63 as the stable version is only compatible with 2.69

After about 2-3 hours of installing and uninstalling software related to C++ and Python I've done a system restore and am now posting for help. Below are my current System Specs

AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.40 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
8GB DDR3
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Please note: I've tried installing both versions of blender (x64, x86) both Zip & Installer

Blender 2.69 uses and comes with Python 3 meaning that there is no necessity to install Python 2.7.5 or any other version at all. Due to the changed syntax, etc. you'll most likely run into syntax errors or non-executable code.


Blender VSE - How can I just render the audio to do some editing to it? I realize that I can use other programs to render out the audio of a video. But I'm trying to keep it all inside Blender for simplicity.

I've just tried deleting the video strip and rendering the audio strip. But that seems to be confusing Blender.

It's also taking about 30 seconds to render one second animation time when I do this.

Thanks for any help

Depending on how the video is encoded, you might be able to import video as a sound strip into the VSE.

Goto  Add -> Sound  and when the file selection screen opens, you will have to turn off file filtering.  (So you can select something more than 'sound' files.)

Then you can select a video file, and it will only import the sound.


Texture messes up after extruding a modified plane I want to make some 3d models of pixel art. I started by adding a plane, adding a texture to it, added loop cuts to my plane, 15 loop cuts because it's a 16x16 texture, then I selected the blank faces and deleted them.
As I extrude this plane, A > E > $0.1$, the texture messes up on the edge of the item, as shown below

Although not all faces mess up on the edge, a lot still do. I tried recalculating normals, unwrapping the object again, but I ended with the same problem, no change at all. Though I may have done it wrong, since I never did it before.
I tried smart UV project and cube projection, but they just mess it up even more.
Does anyone have a solution to this?

The error results from anti-aliasing / inaccuracy / interpolation of the UV across faces. A solution is to get each face to read from a single point in the image.
This involves a couple more steps than it should, IMO.. it should not be necessary to split the geometry to do this, seams should do the job... but still, in 2.91, they don't.
You've probably already done most of this.. starting in the flat, with a simple plane:

Subdivide your plane with 15 cuts for 16x16 pixels, as you have.
Edit mode, Edge, All selected, right-click menu > Edge Split
UV Edit.. U Unwrap > Project from View (Bounds)
With the pivot in the UV Edit window set to 2D cursor, select all, move faces so the bottom left of the map is at the bottom left of the texture, select the vertex there, and Shift S snap the cursor to it.
Scale the map in X and Y so each face covers a pixel..

And as above, switch pivot to 'Individual Origins', and scale the UV faces to 0.
Back in the 3D View, AltM Merge > By Distance, weld the faces in the geometry back together.

Now the result of an extrusion or Solidify modifier will be clean.


Audio and video segments are not the same length I have a bunch of videos recorded from a Samsung Galaxy S6. They all have a resolution of 3840x2160 and are supposed to be at 30fps. The weird thing is, some of the clips have video segments twice the length of the audio. In Blender my project's framerate is set to 30fps.

Looking at the source files in VLC, all the video framerates are about 30fps. Why is it that some of the files imported have video segments twice the length they should? For example, the video segment will be 400 frames, and the audio will be 200. I can set Blender's expected frame-rate to 60, which causes the a/v to line up. But then the video plays back poorly (since it was not 60fps to begin with, something is messed up).

Note the following information reported by VLC.

Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Resolution: 3840x2178
Display resolution: 3840x2160
Frame rate: 29.981651
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

Modern codecs like AVCHD  often are not well supported by Blender's decoder. You may find that these clips are frame segmented, which Blender incorrectly treats as sort of interlaced, thereby reducing the frame number but maintaining frame rate. Only solution is to transcode into a format that Blender does understand. Check out this thread for details on the effect of frame segmented media in Blender. Sorry.


How to get reflections from 3D to show up on real images Andrew Price released a nice tutorial on how to nicely put 3D objects on top of a real image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjWoglMYXBE

I have seen images, such as this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/blenderguru.com/uploads/2015/11/mercedes-benz_g-class-673x457.jpg which have 3D elements over images and have actual reflections from the object showing up on the wet asphalt.  How can this effect be achieved using render passes (or any other way)?

Here is another example (from Nathan Craddock):

Use emission shaders as a way to create a mask for the reflections.
(for more information see this answer)

Use two layers for the 3D layout:

Layer 1, containing the scene with all your objects, lights and reflective surfaces

Layer 2, containing the reflective surfaces and a copy of the objects to be reflected, but this copies should have an emission shader only.

On the render layers section create two Layers:

One render layer (I'll call it color) that holds the scene's Layer 1, excludes layer 2 and uses the combined pass.

A second render layer (I'll call it emitter reflection mask) that holds the scene's layer 2, excludes layer 1 and has Glossy Direct enabled, as well as Emission.

On the compositor, Use a color mix node to add the Emit and Glossy direct form the Emitter reflections mask layer. Use the result as alpha channel to composite the color pass over the backgorund image.

To make the reflection less perfect (which I think is what @troy_s suggested) you can take the Glossy direct information,  multiply it with some gray color in a color mix node, and add that to the composited image(You might even want to add some blur or other textures along the node tree too)...

Another example

(using the same scene as in this answer). Simple geometry.

On layer 1 just a plane to catch the reflections and the reflected object, lit by emitting planes with the background image.

On layer 2 the same scene, but with a copy of the object using an emission shader and no other lights.

Set the render layers as described above, that will allow us able to create mattes to separate the original object from the reflected one, and use those mattes to make the final combination of the CG element and the Image background.

The easy part is using the Emssions of the second layer to isolate the forground element.

If we were to compose that over the background using alpha over we'd get some refection... but it would be semi-transparent, making it unrealistic. In real life the reflection of the object would occlude the background...

To get rid of the reflections of the lights on the ground we need a piece that is clean of those reflections but has the reflection of our 3D object.
(I used a portion of right side of the image that does not have the reflection of the lights, that's why the rotate and transform node are for, but in other cases you might need to use photoshop or other image editor to crate a "clean" plate).

Then, combine the background image with the reflection.

Now mix it all together using the glossy direct information as factor for the mix:

To make the reflection on the less present you can change the factor level on the mix with the background plate:


Why is Blender slowing down? This is something I have never witnessed with any software before.
When I open Blender it works properly; I click on an object, vertex, etc., and it lights up immediately.
But after about half an hour of work it can take up to a full second before it lights up, and commands start to yield awkward results.
After an hour it can take up to 5 seconds before a clicked item lights up, and commands are yielding weirder results.
My processor is not being taxed in any way, nor is my memory.
I close the software and reopen it and everything works fine again. But after half an hour it slows down again.
Is this programmed in the free version to annoy people who can't pay for the pro version? Because I can't find any logical reason why the software slows down through time during usage.
Could anyone explain this?

The first thing that comes to mind is that Blender might get bogged down by the number of steps you have performed which it stores in RAM, in order for you to Undo your actions.
The default value for this is 32 steps, and you can change this in your Preferences:

As you can see, you can also set a memory limit to these steps.
There is no paid or pro version of Blender. There is no bad programming to pester people who don't pay for this software, there is no planned obsolescence - it's free and open source.


Object disappears in render view I use Blender v2.77 and Cycles Render. I have searched for answers, but the solutions didn't help me with my issue. I have one object, which I can see always, but when I choose render as display method, it is gone.

Here are 2 screenshots. It concerns the "SpirulinaEmitter".

I am a total newbie with Blender, so it might be an easy error. but I am totally stuck right here.

Any advice is welcome.

Well guys, I found the problem. I changed this at the very beginning when I watched a tutorial and of course, forgot about it:

The invisible object was a particle emitter. And I unchecked the "Emitter" box under Particles > Render!


How to deal with changing focus when 3d tracking I'm doing a 3D camera track on some footage, but my error margin stays on 0.3. My guess is the camera operator changes the focal distance while shooting. Does blender take this into account when solving? I refine the focus, k1, k2, focal length, Optical Center when I calculate the solve, but does it animate the focus in the scene?

If your error average is indeed 0.3 you have a decent track.

Now, to your question:

Currently blender can only work with footage with a that has no variations in focal length or zoom changes.

Changes in focus distance, as in when using a fixed focal length there is a focus rack,  might present problems as well. Depending on the lens, there might be some distortion called "breathing" (see this link for an example). When a lens "breaths" it means that there is indeed a change in the angle of coverage of the image when the lens is focusing to a close distance or to infinity.

Breathing is common in wide angle lenses and in zoom lenses that are not designed for motion pictures.

If the angle of coverage of the lens changes, blender cannot currently compensate for it.


Interior scene has a lot of noise, even with optimized settings I can't figure out why my scene is still so noise after I optimized the scene / lighting settings.

I have the following settings:

1. Sampling:

I increased the Sample size to 2056
I'm clamping direct and indirect light at value 7.0

2. Lightpath:

Caustics are on.
I use the preset Full Global Illumination
Lowering the diffuse does not help the gain in the render.

3. Portals & Area Lights:

The windows have Portals on them.
Each Portal also have an area lamp on them with a strength of 25 to create some more light.
Multiple Importance is enabled.

4. Sunlamp:

The scene has an Sunlamp with a strenght of 250.
Multiple Importance is enabled.

5. World Settings:

I have set the max bounces to 0. as suggested in this answer ( More noise with Light-portals )

*Note: I don't use the denoiser because I'm rendering on a render farm that splits the render in parts. So the denoiser does not work. *

Update:
Turning off caustics did not improve the render.

Question is: Can I reduce the noise in other ways then increase the sample size?

The "correct" way to reduce noise is to increase the sample size. You mentioned that this didn't completely solve the problem, but I would use the largest sample size you can reasonably afford (within your time constraints, patience, etc.). Also, I've heard that it's best to use powers of 2 for sample sizes. So maybe try 2048 instead of 2056...

Additionally, the latest versions of Blender have the denoise feature, which works better than an external noise reducer, because it has access to data not present in the final image. It will further reduce the noise in your image.

Regarding portals:

  They work best when most of the light in your scene comes indirectly from the environment through small windows. If your scene has large windows, uses many lamps or contains lots of complex materials, portals might actually slow the render down and introduce more noise.

(https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/using-portals-accelerate-render-times)

It seems that your windows could qualify as large (though you don't seem to have extremely complex materials), so maybe try a render without portals, and comparing the two in terms of noise and render time. I don't know which way will work best for your scene.

Finally, you could cheat and make the blinds in the windows invisible to all rays except camera rays (the opposite to this answer). This will make the result less physically accurate, but it will let in more light, and reduce the number of bounces light needs to get inside, resulting in a brighter and less noisy picture.


Locking an axis for a curve How would I lock an axis for a curve? I don't want the curve to go in a certain direction until I unlock it. I'm frequently finding that when I created a beveled curve, what looks like everything is on the same level, is actually higher and lower on the Z-Axis.

You could try setting the curve shape to 2D in Curve > Shape until you want to adjust it in Z axis:

Note that you will still be able to rotate the curve in Object Mode, so you can use this to lock the curve in any direction.

Another option is to fix the curve afterwards:

Select all the control points (A):

Scale to 0 on the axis you want to lock. E.g. SZ0
This will scale everything to be on a plane with the Pivot point, so you can easily control this by using the 3D cursor:


Depth images dont get saved I render multiple frames in blender, and if not the frames also, I at least want to save the depth maps, as an image. As can be seen in the screenshot I have attached, I have added a 'File Output' node that specifies that path to save the depth images.  But during rendering, only the frames get saved.
In the output properties, I set the output path for the frames to be saved.
What is it that I am doing wrong here?

If you just render pass. It should work as you described.
Possible reasons why it doesn't:

you don't have enabled Output Properties > Postprocessing > Pipeline > Compositor
or you don't have mark checkbox on top row of Compositor Editor > Use Nodes
or if you rendered only single image - these are not saved automatically (without add-on)

According to your screen, should be rendered only Depth pass.
To render and save final render (Composite node if enabled) and Depth pass (File Output node) at the same time on Render Animation action - node tree should look like this (for example):

Note: Composite node can be also replaced File Output node. Benefit is not only separate output file, but you can also specify different file format or directory.


how to merge faces to make the final face subdividable I'm wondering what's the proper way of merging adjacent faces so that the final face is subdividable by loopcuts or subdivide function. Cheers

For the example below, loopcuts are not displayed on the mesh and subdivide function splits only the edges but not the face

1/ is the face you are starting from
2/ is the result you have with a subdivision
3/ shows 1 triangulated (the inner geometry of the 1 ngon)
4/ the result that is obtained applying a subdivision to 3

You may proceed with a shape composed of 3 squares or rectangles, like this below :

1/ no more ngons but 3 quads
2/ the result after a subdivision


Texture not showing in Rig After the update of blender 2.8. A minecraft rig(Black Plasma's rig v2), I've been using not showing any texture(skin) on viewport and in rendered mode the texture(skin) is same on front and back of the rig. The minecraft rig works in Blender 2.79. It uses cycles.

The main reason is usually because Material is not selected under Viewport Shading.

But there may be other causes such as lighting, CPU/GPU usage, and other things.

*edit: This qualifies for blender 2.8 and 2.79


Background music doesn't play after restarting game My game has an always sensor connected to a sound actuator that plays the background music. After dying, you have the option to restart (which uses a basic game actuator restart). After restarting, the background music doesn't play that time around, even though all other sounds play fine. (the background music logic bricks are connected to the character btw)

I don't seem to be experiencing the same issues as you are. Maybe try putting the logic onto the camera or another object. Alternatively, you can enable early execution of the controller to make sure it's activating before it gets interrupted.

*woops! I forgot to embed my obnoxious screeching sound I was using instead of music in the blend file. You'll have to attach your own to the logic brick located on tha camera.


Blender File Changes Color After Move My blender materials change color if I move the file to a different computer. I have tried different ways of moving the file, but the result is always the same).

Technically, the materials are fine (they remain correct after move), but they render incorrectly (see Image).

I have tried packing the external data and it doesn't help.

Thoughts?  Thanks!

The reason you see this behavior is because the link to the texture is broken. I found that Blender has difficulty "remembering" the location of the texture when moving a file or even opening the same file on a different computer. Relink the textures should fix your problem.


BGE car game problem I have model two car.the first car is okay but the second car is flying when I turn right or left.

here is the blend file

many thanks for any answers.

Select 370z and hit ctrl+a and aplly scale and do this for its wheels , set wheels to no collision(physics tab). Also set Camera 2  camera object to 370z(logic actuator) if you are making split screen multiplayer game


Cutting rectangular hole in a cylinder with subsurf modifier? I have a cylinder and I want to cut a  rectangular hole in it,I do it but when adding a subsurf modifier to the object and add some proximity loops but I fact this problem as you see here

how can I fix this problem

You could try to select the edges of you rectangle and increase the Crease Weight in the Properties Panel  N.

If this doesn't work well you could subdivide the cylinder before cutting, this way the influence of the Subsurf Modifier would be more local.


Selecting a specific Collection by name and then deleting it I have been referred to a link which has already answered this, however the script in the linked page removes all of my collections.
My collection is called "Animation". I am not currently working in this collection. So I am wanting to select this collection and delete it.
The script i was referred to deletes everything. Thanks for the help...

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

for c in scene.collection.children:
    scene.collection.children.unlink(c)

Use Context

  So I am wanting to select this collection and delete it.

Further to Blender 2.80: Delete Collection or clear the intial scene in scripting mode

As is the case with most of blender making  active in the UI gives it context.

The context collection can be the scene collection so don't want to delete that.

import bpy
from bpy import context

remove_collection_objects = True

coll = context.collection
scene = context.scene

if coll:
    if remove_collection_objects:
        obs = [o for o in coll.objects if o.users == 1]
        while obs:
            bpy.data.objects.remove(obs.pop())

    if coll is not scene.collection:
        bpy.data.collections.remove(coll)

Remove named collection and its unique objects

Script below will remove the default scene collection "Collection 1" and all objects within it.

Change name to collection to remove and set the remove_collection_objects toggle.

import bpy
#from bpy import context

name = "Collection 1"
remove_collection_objects = True

#coll = context.collection #
coll = bpy.data.collections.get(name)

if coll:
    if remove_collection_objects:
        obs = [o for o in coll.objects if o.users == 1]
        while obs:
            bpy.data.objects.remove(obs.pop())

    bpy.data.collections.remove(coll)


No Sound for separate audio file Blender Video Editor New installation of Blender 2.78a
Windows 10

I have added a video file to the Video Sequence Editor and the sound plays without issue.

I have added a wav file but no sound is produced.  Then I tried an mp3 file and again no sound is produced.

No the audio is not set to muted.

Any ideas?

m.ardito hinted that the audio files might be corrupted, and apparently they were. Don't know how on a simple copy paste but it happened. So deleting the audio files and replacing them solved the issue.


Making two different bones copy different axis on a target bone's rotation I am trying to rig a hand, ready to animate.

I have a hand bone that can rotate on y and z axes, and I have two other bones.I want the first one to follow the hand's bone y rotation and the second one the z rotation.

The hand bone is the green one and the red needs to follow the y axis of the hand. The blue needs to follow the z axis of the hand.

I believe what you need is to copy rotation.
Under bone constraints, select copy rotation, and select the bone you want to take the rotation values from. You can also choose which axis to copy.

In your case, as you want the red bone to follow the hand bone's y axis, you would add a copy rotation on the red bone, and make the target the hand bone (green). Then you would uncheck the x and z boxes, so the red bone only looks at the hand bone's y rotation.
You would do the same with the blue bone. Add contraint, set target as hand bone, then make sure only z is selected.
If you are unsure of how to target the hand bone:

Under Target, select Armature
A new box will appear underneath, labelled Bone
In the Bone box, select the hand bone.

You can also use the eyedropper icon. Select it, on the right of the box, and click on your Armiture, in the 3D (main editor) view.


Textures black after importing obj file I've been having this issue for a good day or two. Whenever I import obj files to blender the textures are black. The version of blender I'm currently using is v2.74. I was wondering if someone could assist me on this because I'm trying to finish something for Garry's Mod.

You need to add a light to see (if everything is dark you can only see black).

You simply imported the mesh, there is nothing else in your scene. You have no lights in your scene. You (kind of) need a light to see your object.

For just a simple test render, or so you can see your object, just add a few lamps. If you add just one then the side in the shadow will still be black.


How do I resize a folded box without messing up the folds on the top or stretching out the squares (thus messing up mapping)? I'm using a classic folded box that has already been created by someone else.
I want to increase the height, but when I scale along the y axis, the folds on the top get stretched too much.

How do I just stretch the bottom of the box in height and leave the folds alone?

Edited for new issue: When I drag and stretch, all those little squares get messed up and then when I map a graphic onto it, it looks all stretched in that area.

There are many ways, a simple one is:

go in edit mode (tab)
select all edges in the base of the cube (xray mode can help you to select all the base)
G (to move the selection), Z (to block the movement only in the Z axis), move mouse to decide how far to move the base of the cube

HOW TO FIX THE UV:

fix the geometry in edit mode --> the texture is now stretched

go into UV editor, select the faces with stretched texture, go into UV editor, select the base nodes (the one that you moved to change the size of the box) and move them into the UV editor to fix the textures:


Noise Texture Glitch when using denoise Hey,everyone. I created a PBR FNaF plastic material and when I render it with low samples and use the Denoising feature,it blurs the Noise Texture and makes it really hard to see. It's supposed to look like the image above and not the one below. Can someone please tell me how to fix this without using high samples?

I figured it out. A kind person on Reddit suggested that I should tweak with the settings and he was right. Like with Clamping,I noticed that the Denoising filter has Direct and Indirect settings,both of which are always turned on. I tweaked the Glossy pass of the Denoising filter and it helped me out a lot. To prevent the Noise texture from blurring,you have to turn off the Direct pass and leave the Indirect pass alone.


Compositing: When using Alpha Over node, only one render layer appears! I'm new to compositing, so I'm unsure how simple this problem may be to solve; apologies in advance. Anyway, here we go.

My scene was too large to render, so I separated it into 3 different Render Layers-

The three layers seem to be rendering correctly, lighting and all, as the render progresses; I can see each individual layer as it should be, and have my Alpha Over nodes set up accordingly-

However, the final render saves to my computer as such-

Some final notes; I have transparency selected in the render panel, the render also doesn't work if I remove the "File Output" node, and I have it set to GPU render (though it's the same result even if I change to CPU render).

What am I doing wrong!?

You render layers seem fine, What I think is missing is compositing checked in the Post Processing Panel in the Render tab.

Edit you need to have all 3 layers active in order to work, in the scene part of the Layers Panel, only the layer  3 is active. Shif select the other two layers to enable them.


grab brush? on UV editor change radius Blender 2.8 How do you change the radius of the brush in the UV editor for grabbing UVs.  All I've found is F and Shift-F but, it doesn't change the UV brush radius.

I just answered my own question. You tap the F key or, hold Shift and tap F.

This may seem really obvious but, I am coming from using the brush in Autodesk Mudbox where the keys are B and M and you just hold them down.


Can I parent objects to parts of a group instance? Let's say I have a group of ten parts and I want to parent an object to one of the objects in a group instance. Is that possible?

No, an instance is just an empty object (with a DupliGroup).

You should place an empty where the target object is located within the group. Parent the empty to the group instance and then parent your object to the empty.


"No valid selected objects." - Preventing me from baking material When i move my mesh piece to another layer.
Blender either crashes on latest version.
or says this on older versions:  "No valid selected objects."

When i have it on the 1st layer however it does bake.
but its full of hidden objects that are interfering with my bake.
hence i am trying to bake on another layer.

Any idea?

In the bake options see if "Selected to active" is ticked ON.

This is multiple object bakes.  Tick if off and try again.

make sure yout TEXT Image node is slected too


Accessing the active custom node tree in a script I'd like to access the active custom custom node tree in the Python code.
It can be done through

    bpy.data.node_groups["name of the custom node tree"]

However there could be many node trees of the same type, so the name of the currently open node tree is unknown.

Although there could be any type of nodetrees in bpy.data.node_groups, their names are unique and used as Identifiers.

So bpy.data.node_groups['Name of the Nodetree'] means exactly the nodetree with that name, no matter what type it has.

About the active node_tree you need to use the Node Editor's context, either by checking if the active node or the active node_tree is a node_group.

For example, if you have a custom node in a node_tree, and you want to access the node_tree itself from that node, you can look in the context:

node_tree = bpy.context.space_data.edit_tree

This will return the current tree being edited in the editor.


Displacement node not working as expected I'm learning displacement node setups and I can't seem to get it to work properly. The height map seems not to be in sync with the rest of the maps, although I've checked with node wrangler that all maps are in the right place and overlaying without shifting.

I've plugged the Height map into a displacement node  with the color output in the displacement height input.

The material settings are set to displace only. All maps are connected to a mapping node and have the same coordinates. The model is UV unwrapped properly. The edges of the model are mean creased to full 1.0. I'm using cycles with GPU compute.

Q: Anyone know where this shift in displacement comes from?

Q: And as a bonus, how to make the displacement look better? I've subdivided the plane 30*30 and added a Subsurf modifier in setting 4 and it still looks jagged.

Texture settings:

On the Height Node:
- Change the space color on the height map from sRGB to non-color


how to stretch part of object How can I stretch a part of an object ?

I selected one side of the area I'm hoping to stretch (just want to add 2/3 cm) but if I press E (extrude) it's going in a weird angle, and don't seems to be the solution anyway.

How should I proceed?

Ok, I found something, but surly is not the right way to do it, also having some issue with this method:

Select one part of the side
SHIFT + D to duplicate
Delete the primary part of the side you just duplicate
in edit mode select the vertex you want to stretch.
press E then right click to cancel.
on the submenu add the value you want (4cm in Z in my case)
move it back together.

In my case it's not really smooth


How to save curve shape of cylinder with such deform? It's difficult for me to make clear this part of bullet.

I use cylinder with 16 vertices, add 2 horizontal loops "ctrl+r", insert "i" 2x loops. Then I extrude with individual origins and normal transform orientation polygons

Then I add subdivision surface and some loops to save form. But there are problem with entrance 5 edges in vertices and bad form of curve shape

How to save curve shape of cylinder with such deformations and to get it with clear topology?

LukeD, thanks for solution to the problem. Here's my result:

Try to avoid inset geometry on curved surfaces. Try something like this:


How to toggle between Flat and Smooth shading during animation? The Edge Split modifier doesn't give me desired results (even with angle set to 0 it looks different).

Animatable (custom property) toggle

import bpy

def toggle_shading(self, context=bpy.context):
    """Toggle smooth shading"""
    value = self["use_smooth"]
    if self.polygons[0].use_smooth is not value:
        for poly in self.polygons:
            poly.use_smooth = value

def frame_handler(scene):
    """Update shading on frame change"""
    for mesh in bpy.data.objects.data.meshes:
        try:
            toggle_shading(mesh)
        except KeyError:
            pass

bpy.types.Mesh.use_smooth = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
    description=toggle_shading.__doc__, update=toggle_shading)
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(frame_handler)

Paste the script above in the Text Editor, click Register and Run Script.

Text block name must end with ".py" to activate the register functionality (run script on load).

In the Properties Window, under Object Data, Add a custom property with Property Name use_smooth and Property Value of 0.

You can now animate this value the toggle smooth shading.


save intermediate render result to OpenEXR not working (Cycles/ v.2.79) I want to render a single frame of a texture and then print it in the measurements 150x266cm at 300dpi, therefore I calculated a render resolution of 31488x17717px, which seems to be a bit of a problem with Blender.

I have tried rendering to TIFF but once it's done and I want to save it Blender crashes. Then I tried rendering to an EXR file with "Save Buffers" activated under the performance tab since I read in another thread that this will make Blender save the EXR file after each render tile is done (using single GPU) and even if Blender crashes (which t still does after finishing the last tile) I should still have a working file in my TEMP directory that I can use in Photoshop. Only thing is that no intermediate saves are being done, only a corrupted EXR file is being generated at the very end of the render process (not opening in PS and way too small).

I wonder what I am missing.

Anyone got an idea why this might be?

Thanks & greatful for any advice!

If Blender is crashing during super high-resolution render for whatever reason, consider using add-ons for precise region render, like blender-renderborder or accurate-render-border (not sure about their 2.8 compatibility) or with some python usage. Enabling Crop in render settings can also help.

Then stich small chunks into one image in PS, Gimp or other image editor.


Failed to load CUDA kernel: rendering crashes after few hundreds of iteration on GPU I'm running blender 2.92 via python on Ubuntu 18.04.5 bionic with RTX 2080 Ti GPUs.
I'm iteratively generating images using cycles. After I generate around 300 images the error in the following comes up and blender crashes. The RTX 2080 has 11GB and each rendering process only takes around 1GB in nvidia-smi so I don't think it's a GPU memory error.
Fra:1 Mem:123.13M (Peak 145.52M) | Time:00:00.16 | Mem:0.00M, Peak:0.00M | Scene, RenderLayer | Loading render kernels (may take a few minutes the first time)
Failed to load CUDA kernel from '/playpen3/home/jmincho/workspace/blender-2.92.0-linux64/2.92/scripts/addons/cycles/lib/kernel_sm_75.cubin' (File not found)

Refer to the Cycles GPU rendering documentation for possible solutions:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html

Failed to load CUDA kernel from '/playpen3/home/jmincho/workspace/blender-2.92.0-linux64/2.92/scripts/addons/cycles/lib/filter_sm_75.cubin' (File not found)
Invalid handle in cuModuleGetFunction( &functions.adaptive_stopping, cuModule, "kernel_cuda_adaptive_stopping") (device_cuda_impl.cpp:600)
Invalid handle in cuModuleGetFunction( &functions.adaptive_filter_x, cuModule, "kernel_cuda_adaptive_filter_x") (device_cuda_impl.cpp:602)
Invalid handle in cuModuleGetFunction( &functions.adaptive_filter_y, cuModule, "kernel_cuda_adaptive_filter_y") (device_cuda_impl.cpp:604)
Invalid handle in cuModuleGetFunction( &functions.adaptive_scale_samples, cuModule, "kernel_cuda_adaptive_scale_samples") (device_cuda_impl.cpp:606)
Writing: /tmp/base_scene.crash.txt
Unable to save '/tmp/base_scene.crash.txt': Too many open files
scandir: Too many open files

I don't know what actually causes the error. I confirmed scripts/addons/cycles/lib/kernel_sm_75.cubin exists in the mentioned path. As Too many open files is mentioned, I tried deleting files in /tmp/ but it didn't help either. Any tips or suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

As @RobertGützkow mentioned, it was because too many files were opened. Blender was unable to open the CUDA kernel after it reached the system's maximum file descriptor limit. ulimit -n gave me 1024. I increased the limit by ulimit -n 70000 and the error disappeared.


Add a group instance with python I have a group of objects named MyGroup. I can add a group instance with  Shift+A -> Group Instance -> MyGroup, but I can't figure out how to do it from python scripting.

I'd like to add an instance of MyGroup, calling it by it's name from a script on python.

Something like the bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add() operation, but instead of adding a plane, i want to add a group instance.

Is there any way I can do this? all I could find about groups was this http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_74_release/bpy.ops.group.html but it does not speak about adding group instances.

This creates instances of the group, it works by first adding an Empty, and setting its .dupli_type and .dupli_group attributes. I believe for all intents this is functionally equivalent to a group instance.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

group = bpy.data.groups['CubeGroup']
instance = bpy.data.objects.new('dupli_group', None)
instance.dupli_type = 'GROUP'
instance.dupli_group = group
scene.objects.link(instance)

(credit to: blenderartists.org user Atom)

For completeness, this is how to create groups via the API. This expects the name (string) of a group, and will add any objects in the objs collection to this group.

def to_group(named, objs):
    '''
    named:   (string) name of group to use, or to create if not present
    objs:    a collection of object references
    '''
    groups = bpy.data.groups

    # alias existing group, or generate new group and alias that
    group = groups.get(named, groups.new(named))

    for obj in objs:
        if obj.name not in group.objects:
            group.objects.link(obj)


Is it possible to have different background images for different visible layers? The title is pretty self explanatory, I am modeling two object on two different visible layers and I have blueprints for both of them, however I cannot find an option to limit the visibility of a background image to only one layer

This isn't possible by default with the Background Images subset in the Properties panel, whichever image you have set to a view is what will show across all layers.

An alternative however is to use Empties with their Display type set to Image as detailed in my answer here. This way you can just move the specific empty with the blueprint to the layer with the object you are working on. To have this not obscure or interfere with your work, just open the Outliner and restrict these from being selected (the cursor icon).

(Notice that I switch from Layer 1 to Layer 2)

A similar method to the above is to enable the Import Images as Planes addon and create two planes, one for each image. These can be placed in any layer, and display of the images can be enabled or disabled separately for each image by using the outliner window, or by careful placement of the planes in layers, and enabling or disabling the visibility of the layer.


When I open blender I have some issues When I open Blender this is what happens when I start a new project. How do I fix this issue? I also tried to add a Mesh, just as a circle and it did what the second picture shows. I don't even know how this happened.

It seems that your startup file has some issues. You can go back to the factory startup file by doing the following:

Go to File > Defaults > Load Factory Settings. This loads in the startup file that would come with a new installation of Blender.
Go to File > Defaults > Save Startup File. This saves the current .blend file (in this case, the factory one you just loaded) as the startup one.
If 1 and 2 do not solve your problem, you may also have to reset your preferences by going to Edit > Preferences (while in the factory file), click on the menu button in the bottom left corner, and click Save Preferences.
If 1, 2, and 3 still do not solve your problem, you may have to reinstall Blender.


Can I convert a heavily triangulated STL file to quads? I am looking to apply materials on a mesh model output by a 3D scanner, what are the things to keep in mind? The output can be a STL or CAD format.

If the STL file is heavily triangulated, can I convert them to quads? And also if it is high poly, is there a modifier that I can use to reduce the poly count?

3D scanned files are not only heavily triangulated, but also tend to have loads of polygons. As with every question, it depends on the purpose of your final result (still image, animation, 3D game asset, printing) if this is good or bad. Another important but missing information would be the kind of model we're talking about (thus my answer will be quite broad). Things can work on a 3D scan of a rock but that doesn't mean that they also work on a 3D scan of a person.

Blender offers some basic possibilities to convert triangles to quads (mainly the decimate modifier) but it only rarely does its job in a way that you could call the result a mesh with clean topology.

There are also tools out there which are specifically programmed with the goal of creating clean topologized meshes. Instant Meshes is one of them.

As someone whose primarily focus is creating game assets, I would  go the "hard" way and do the re-topology by hand, as it's shown in numerous tutorials around the internet. You could then use your scanned model as the high-poly model and bake all the medium details as a displacement map and all the fine details as a normal map. These models can also be used in still renderings, animations and of course in 3D printing.

Again, this answer is very broad due to the lack of information regarding the purpose and the form of the model in general.


Blender getting very slow in handling large data? I have a scene having 54000 planes in it. Blender is responding very slowly to the actions performed on this scene. Even the simple view changing operations done using middle mouse button are responding very slowly. And when i try to render them , blender stops working.

I think this is happening because of such large no. of planes having no connectivity between them at all, but 54000 planes is a very small number.

Can anyone tell me the exact reason of this problem and how to correct it to make blender more responsive with so many no. planes?

The answer to the question you asked is that 54000 individual objects is significantly different from 54000 polygons, so it's not surprising that Blender is having trouble with that many individual objects. There are some ways to improve viewport performance like turning on VBOs in the user preferences, but I don't think any of them will be terribly helpful at this point.

If all the planes were joined into one object, it'd probably perform much better, but it doesn't seem like that would be very helpful, for what you're doing.

The answer to the question you didn't ask ;-) is that this is a really expensive way to render a point cloud in Blender. There are two tools that will probably be very useful to you. One will get point clouds into Blender, and the other will skin point clouds in Blender. And this will probably be much more workable than your current solution ;-)

Hope that helps!


Get Bendy Bone base curve to match bezier curve I'm trying to get a bendy bone to match a 2 handled curve. The bendy bone setup is 3 bones: 1 bendy bone, and its head and tail bones. You can adjust the rotation of the head/tail in edit mode, and also adjust parameters like Ease In and Out to set the base pose of the bone. Here's a gif of manually adjusting a bone to match a bezier curve:

Here's the bezier curve. The left handle is 2 units from the control point on Y, and the right handle is 1 unit on X.

If we knew the relationship between the control point distances and the Ease In/Out values, then a script could snap the head/tail of the bone to a control point, and then align it with the handles, and then set some amount of Ease In/Out based on the distance to the handles to match the shape. But its not clear what the relationship between the values is. I used 2.58 and 1.34 to approximate it, but that's not exact (the base value being 1 in edit mode, and 0 in pose mode as they are added together.)

Anyone know what the proper math would be to convert these? Or is there some other way to accomplish this? I have a complex hair setup that's already based on curves, and I want to generate a bone strand for each bit. So its not practical to do by hand.

Found the answer from a BA thread asking the same question. I've tested this, and it works.

The length of each handle (hlength1 and hlength2 respectively) is based on the “ Ease In/Out ” properties, the length of the bone, and a magic-number factor (“0.5f * sqrt(2) * kappa”, where kappa = the handle length – apparently this formula allows “for near-perfect circles”). i.e.,

hlength1 = ease_in * length * 0.390464f hlength2 = ease_out * length * 0.390464f

From https://blenderartists.org/t/bendy-bone-that-matches-a-curve/1218163/13?u=oscalon, referencing https://code.blender.org/2016/05/an-in-depth-look-at-how-b-bones-work-including-details-of-the-new-bendy-bones/


boolean slice no longer part of blender 2.8? I'm new to blender and I'm using it to sculpt an object for 3D printing. As part of the design I want to use a plane to boolean slice the object in two objects like in minute 1:30 in this tutorial:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H6_FRC5RdA , but for some reason I cannot find the same button in blender 2.8, has this function been moved, removed or replaced? Where is it now or what's the new approach to achieve this? The only options in the modifier menu are: insersect, union, difference. What happened to slice and subtract?

I know you can use knife and bisect, but I liked the boolean slice better because it seemed to be a better way to split objects in a more controlled manner. By the way I come from the engineering CAD world so this is all new to me.

Thanks,
Nestor

It's using the Bool Tool Plugin

The tools belong to the Bool Tool plugin. They do not come with the vanilla B 2.80, you'll have to install a compatible version of the plugin.

You can find it here:
https://gist.github.com/derappelt/603883d70a56c5d1f5080c2980bb5b9f

Then you should look for the Object menu, at the bottom you'll find the BoolTool operators you were looking for:


Rigging - Inverse Kinematics Snapping I'm confused with this, when I have the arm in my desired position (the rest position A1) the upper arm doesn't bend to meet the IK target bone, see A2.

But with the lower arm rotated in B1, when I move the IK target upwards, the arm bends to meet it, see B2.

Why is that? What can I do to fix?

According to your file, IK limits are defined. You need to unlock related axis, or set appropriate angle ranges for consistency, in order to avoid control conflicts.


Blender 2.8 can no longer import module from Textblock just downloaded todays Blender 2.8 build and it seems I can no longer import a function from another Textblock. Works well on a build from April 5th (haven't updated since then).

This simple example is not working in todays build:

Solved: there was an API change. Thanks to @alyawn for posting the solution here

This is how it works now:

something = bpy.data.texts['something.py'].as_module()


How do you move the vertices of one UV island without moving the same vertices part of the other one? When UV unwrapping, the some UV islands will share vertices with other islands. So when I select a vertex in one island that is shared with another island, both vertexes will be selected.
How do you move one UV island without moving the vertices of another island at the same time?

Switch to face mode in the UV editor, or make sure that UV Sync Selection is disabled, then switch to island mode or set sticky selection mode to Disabled.  All are options on buttons in the menu bar of a UV editor window.


How can I convert paths into one plane I'm trying to make a 3D version out of a logo, just for a bit of fun. I have an SVG of the logo which I've imported into blender and what I want is one surface where each closed path cuts into that surface so I can have each element at different levels.
What I've done is import the SVG, convert all of the paths to a mesh and join them all together as one object. I then did a limited dissolve to clean up the mesh. I get something like

Which is great but none of the paths of vertices is connected to any of the others, for example if I extrude one of the regions down then this is obscured by another region layered on top of it. Its just full of loads and loads of planes on top of each other. So can anyone help me with where I need to go from here? to make something like

Thanks very much!

Start by deselecting everything. Then move your cursor over a piece of your logo and press L this will select all connected vertices to the piece under your cursor. Now you can extrude E the selected section to the height you want.

Repeat this process for each piece. After extruding a section I would then hide it by selecting all linked vertices (the extrude will deselect the original vertices as you move the extruded side) and pressing H. When you are finished ⎇ AltH will un-hide the vertices.


How can I select multiple vertices and create faces with a single command If I am not wrong once I saw a tutorial, in which something similar was done, but I do not remember, as it was, nor, the tutorial that was, I leave some captures to better understand what I want to do.

I hope you can to understand me and I'm sorry for my bad english.

I know I can do this by selecting the vertices and pressing the f

But how can I do it by selecting multiple verties and doing them all at once, with a single command.

There is a command called Grid Fill which sort of does this, might be what you are looking for.

There is also an add-on included with Blender called F2 which (amoung other things) makes filling rows of faces easier. Have a look for some demos of how to use this on Youtube, it is a big time saver.


When to use Join vs Parent vs Group I’m a bit confused when to use/not use Parents, Groups or joining multiple objects into one object.

For example I have 500 trees which are 2D images on planes. There are 25 different tree images that are duplicated to make up the total tree population. Can each variety of tree be one object even though they are spread throughout the scene or should they be grouped or parented? Or can all the trees be one object or each tree an individual object? Or is there other methods I haven’t considered?

I know that any of these options will “work” but what is the proper way to organize the various objects in a scene and why?

My understanding is that there are reasons for easier identification and locating items but I’m also interested in how these different relationships can affect workflow and even viewport or rendering performance.

Not sure if it's what you're after, but you could put your 25 original trees in a collection, then have a particle system emit instances chosen randomly from that collection.


Help with rigging 3x3 bones and root in blender recently I started Blender and I want to recreate a simple rig I already did in Houdini. Unfortunately I am not able to recreate my setup so I am seeking advice on several issues.

First of all I have no idea how to add an IK chain for 3 bones. When I get the workflow correctly I have to edit my Armature in Edit Mode, then select the last bone -> Pose mode and there I can assign a Inverse Kinematics Constraint. But how does it work with three bones?

I have robot parts, so I don't need any envelope or weight. My geometry could be straight parented to a bone. How does that work in blender (does it?)

Root
   - Chain Goal (drives the very end of the bonechain)
   - Bone1
   - Geometry1
      - Bone2
      - Geometry2
         - Bone3
         - Geometry3

But how am I supposed to bind a chain end to an empty/circle for animating?

For a better understanding I enclosed some images what my rig needs to do. Any help, tips or links to tutorials would be highly appreciated. All I find is basic IK or guys trying to rig biped characters in 10 seconds ..

https://i.stack.imgur.com/kmGQG.gif
https://i.stack.imgur.com/n95wp.gif
https://i.stack.imgur.com/H5Zq4.gif

Thanks!
M

Here is a basic solution for this kind of armature:

Extrude a bone from the lower leg, unparent it, it will be the IK target, which will control the lower leg (IK bone). Duplicate the target to make the IK pole target (the bone that will give direction to the knee), parent it to the IK target.

In Pose mode give the lower leg an Ik constraint, assign it the target and pole target, give it a Pole Angle of 180° if necessary and a Chain Length of 3.

To give your bones some custom shapes, in Object mode create an object with the shape you want (example: a circle), then back to the armature, in Pose mode, select the bone you want to shape, in the Properties panel > Bone > Viewport Display > Custom Object > select the circle.


How to add copy of an object from a controller without Logic Brick being present? I mean without controller being connected to Edit Object > Add Object Brick. Furthermore, I need to add that object at a specific location, instead of putting it on top of the owner, since I will be adding more than one object so they can't be all at one location. I tried moving the owner but it cannot move and create objects more than once in a single frame for some reason, probably because it takes a frame to pass for a controller to reach a signal towards an actuator Brick. So I figured doing it from a controller might be a solution but I don't know how to do that.

How to add an object at a specific posistion in Blender Game Engine

import bge

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
object = scene.addObject("Sphere","Sphere")
object.worldPosition = [1,1,1]


How to model a tinfoil hat? (aluminium foil texture as a mesh) I want to model a tinfoil hat. What techniques should I use for modeling with tinfoil? I actually want the hat to be made of mesh (I don't want a texturing solution).

You may achieve it randomizing the mesh a bit using simple modeling tools, but it demands some experimenting to make it look good.

Model the hat starting from a cube subdivided with a subsurf modifier (4-5 subdivisions). Apply the modifier. Subdivide the hat (with W-->Subdivide) to create a dense geometry. With the all vertices selected press Ctrl+T to trangulate faces. Unselect everything with A, go to Select-->Random (set it's value to about 30-50%), then press Ctrl+E-->Rotate Edge CW. It'll give a bit randomness to the mesh's vertices positions.

Grab selected vertices upwards (G,Z), then scale them outwards a bit (S). Crease the selected vertices with Shift+E. Add a subsurf modifier and smooth the mesh (T-->Edit-->Shading-->Smooth).

Finally to randomize the look of the hat even more, select some vertices and press Ctrl+V-->Smooth Vertex.


Ploblem tiling a displacement map So i created this displacement map based on a mesh of windows i made. The map works fine but when i try to tile it there is those separating lines on the z axis. It does that whether i use the displacement modifier of the displacement slot of a shader.

Well, in the EXR image opened in Blender you can clearly see the lines in the top and bottom of the image, as well as in the viewport:

Just paint them away with Gimp, for example (which supports float EXR textures nowadays)


Create a periodic object I am drawing periodical objects with 10µm width with 10µm distance. I would normally use duplicate but it goes for around 2.5 cm. So is there any tool to create periodical objects?

Any help appreciated.

Use an array modifier.  Select the object you want to duplicate, and click on the wrench icon in the properties panel.  Then click Add Modifier, and select Array.  Then in the tab it brings up, select Relative Offset, and change it to what you want.  Finally, change Count to the number of duplicates you want.  Sorry that I can't upload any screenshots, but I'm rendering right now.


Background not appearing when rendering I'm trying to add a sky to my scene but it won't appear in the render. I've tried:

Adding a sky using the sky and atmosphere options when creating a sun lamp
Adding a sky by going to the world panel and using paper sky / blend sky

All I get is this default background:

Make sure Alpha is set to Sky in Render settings > Shading:

And Sky is enabled in Render Layers > Layer:


Why do I get a hard edge when mixing a Transparent and Glossy node with a Fresnel node? When I use Fresnel node to mix Transparent node and Glossy node I get a hard edge between these nodes.

However then I see Fresnel node and see the gradient mask, there is no hard edge.

Why mix gives me a hard edge? The same problem I have with some other nodes.

I use Blender 2.82 and Blender 2.81. Render - Cycles.

You can change the alpha blend mode, currently you are in Alpha Clip which rounds the alpha value to 0 for values < 0.5 and to 1 for values > 0.5.

Make sure your render engine is set to Eevee first :

Alpha Clip :

Alpha Blend :

If you want to tweak it further, add a Color ramp between the Fresnel and the mix shader, set to B spline interpolation, and move the white cursor way to the left :

Note you can get the same setup with a principled BSDF, which will be more physically correct :


Per-Vertex lighting in GLSL? How can I achieve per-vertex lighting (like in single/multi-texture shading) in GLSL with all of the other GLSL features (like buffer shadows, texture layers, etc.)? Bonus points if it can be done in the viewport.

I could bake the lights to v-cols but that is not realtime and I don't get any of the GLSL features (or hemi lamps for the matter) with single/multi-texture shading.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?389535-Light-shader-GLSL&p=3005199&viewfull=1#post3005199

looks like there is a example of what you seek in this thread
"
Hey, I add a few shader examples to the file: Light(1).blend
-reduce code for hemi light.
-lighting for all lightypes (use properties)

By the way will the lightype patch (with or without compatibility) find his way into official Blender in the future?

-different kinds of normalmapping like in Blender
-Vertex lighting (useful for things that don't need detailed lighting to get better performance)
-functions for all specular shading methods that are available in blender

And I make an example with lighting and a diffuse texture. I don't get it like in Blender maybe someone can help?

"

.blend inside thread


BGE: Overlapping alignAxisToVect v/s applyRotation I'm quite new at Blender (and Python) and I have had some problems with a project I'm doing. Right now I'm having a little problem with two methods:  aignAxisToVect and applyRotation.

I don't know why, but every time I swap between the Python controller's mode (module and script) one of the two methods works and the other doesn't.

Here I left a link with the blend file, I commented the part that generate the problem within PlanetaryGravity.py.

To further describe the situation: I have a planet with its own orbit (and the World's gravity set to 0) and an object (Cube) that is attracted by the artificial gravity force of the planet. The Cube has a Camera parented to it and I can rotate the camera up/down/left/right with the mouse. The keys W, S, A, D are used to move the Cube over the Planet.

Now, when I use a main() function to configure the Planet's gravity (within PlanetaryGravity.py ), I can rotate the Camera and the Cube with the mouse and move the Cube with the keys, but the Cube doesn't get align to the perpendicular vector to the Planet (so the local axis of the Cube don't change and it's not correctly positioned onto the Planet's surface).

On the other hand, when I delete the main() function and use the script mode for the Python controller, the Cube's axis does get aligned correctly, but I can't rotate the Cube with the mouse (not the camera).

At the end it looks like the method aignAxisToVect overwrites the changes made by the method applyRotation when trying to rotate the Cube with the mouse. So how can I get both the axis alignment and Cube rotation to work? Additionally, why doesn't aignAxisToVect work while Python controller mode is set to Module:PlanetaryGravity.main?

At the end it looks like the method aignAxisToVect overwrites the
  changes made by the method applyRotation

That should be correct, alignAxisToVect should be instantaneous and complete and can overwrite whatever rotation you have applied with the mouse. So you probably just want to change the order of execution.


Creating the look of "object " mode I would like to create a look for my model that is similar to the material of models in Blender "object"/"sculpt" mode.  I have tried using Glossy and Diffuse nodes to make "plastic" and "rubber" (according to online tutorials) but it ends up looking wrong; I want it to have a sort of rubber-putty 'sheen' rather than a plastic 'shine', if that makes any sense.  I am new to this, so there may be something obvious that I am missing.  Perhaps it is a matter of proper lighting, I am not sure.  Thank you for help!

Here's the similar effect I achieved mixing the Toon Shaders (see the nodes setup below). Although I don't know how to achieve the 100% accurate effect.

I used a three point lighting method in this case. You can see the light's setup below.


Baking objects always yields a black image I am new to Blender and I am trying to bake some models in order to export them to Unity, but I always get a black image as a result after baking.

Only the land is selected and I haven't connected the image texture node to the diffuse node, since it was like that in the tutorial videos I watched, though it didn't work either when I connected them. I have a sun lamp in the scene.

Used Smart UV unwrap:

You have to recalculate the Normals of your ground, I guess they were messed up: Enter in Edit mode, select all and ctrl N, then Bake again.


Inaccurate shading on object I am relatively new to Blender so please excuse me if this is rather amateur!

The bottom of my torus has poor surface quality, I have scaled the vertices down for a smaller (variable) tubular radius all the way around the torus and at the bottom the surface quality is awful, with inaccurate shading. Any ideas as to what is wrong and/or how I could fix this?

Thanks,
itsanate

These look like inverted faces.

Check your Face Orientation through the Overlay menu.
They should all be pointing outwards (blue color).

You can recalculate them through:
Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside


bpy: How do you find the corners of a camera frustum? ... by which I mean the vectors from a perspective camera's viewing point to the corners of the rendered rectangle, as displayed by the diagonal sides of a camera's rectangular pyramid in a 3D View. (Normalized if you like, in Camera Space, if you like.)
The angle and view_frame attributes of a Camera don't seem to carry this information, unless I'm mistaken?
There are quite a few answers on how to test whether a point is visible to a camera, that's not quite the same thing.
Better still, and perhaps of more general use to others, too, would be a diagram of how bpy refers to a camera: what a Camera's important attributes actually mean, in 3D / device / screen space.
EDIT: following @batFINGER's examples (I think?)..trying to get the render frame, I run this:
import bpy

scn = bpy.context.scene

rx = scn.render.resolution_x
ry = scn.render.resolution_y
cam_obj = scn.camera

if (cam_obj.name in bpy.data.cameras):

    cam_mw = cam_obj.matrix_world
    cam = cam_obj.data
    vf = cam.view_frame()
    world_frame = [cam_mw @ v for v in vf]

    print (rx,ry)
    for v in world_frame:
        print (v)

And, changing the render resolutions, visibly changing the shape of the frustum in the 3D view, I get these outputs:
1512 1371
<Vector (2.1208, -6.3833, 4.1026)>
<Vector (2.3175, -6.8641, 3.2482)>
<Vector (1.3703, -7.1821, 3.2090)>
<Vector (1.1736, -6.7013, 4.0635)>

427 1432
<Vector (2.1208, -6.3833, 4.1026)>
<Vector (2.3175, -6.8641, 3.2482)>
<Vector (1.3703, -7.1821, 3.2090)>
<Vector (1.1736, -6.7013, 4.0635)>

Which is puzzling me. There's no change in the frame as a consequence of changing the proportions of the render - (the change isn't even hidden in the camera's world transform..)
SOLUTION: the camera's .view_frame() method needs its optional named scene parameter to update.. until I know why, I don't fancy making that an answer..

Pass the scene to view frame
Think you got there in the end, here is @ideasman42's script modified to add empties to 5 points of frustum, for each camera object in scene.
All the info re resolution will come with the passed as keyword scene, else it defaults to None.
>>> C.scene.camera.data.view_frame(
view_frame()
Camera.view_frame(scene=None)
Return 4 points for the cameras frame (before object transformation)

Test script:
import bpy

def camera_as_planes(scene, obj):
    """
    Return planes in world-space which represent the camera view bounds.
    """
    from mathutils.geometry import normal
    print(obj.name)
    camera = obj.data
    # normalize to ignore camera scale
    matrix = obj.matrix_world.normalized()
    frame = [matrix @ v for v in camera.view_frame(scene=scene)]
    origin = matrix.to_translation()
    frame.append(origin)
    for p in frame:
        bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=p)

# test call
scene = bpy.context.scene
cams = [o for o in scene.objects if o.type == 'CAMERA']
for cam in cams:
    camera_as_planes(scene, cam)


Alpha Matte not keying out video? In this tutorial, Kenan Proffitt goes through the very simple process on how to use a matte key (picture 2) to key out a video with rotoscoping. I have duplicated his exact process by using a "Set Key" node with the video clip plugged into the "Image" input and the rotoscoped matte plugged into the "Alpha" input. (picture 1) It's fairly straightforward. But when I do that, the result is only half-way working. The rotoscope subject is perfectly still there while the background is only sort of transparent-not 100% transparent (picture 3). Why is this happening?

The alpha channel needs to be associated to the image. Use an Alpha Convert node and choose Straight to Premultiplied.


Exporting UV coordinates by face elements I'm trying to write my own export script, and I'm not sure how to reference the uv coordinates as an element array, similar to how .obj format works (ie. you have a list of all uv coordinates "vt s t" and each face selects the correct index). I looked at previous threads on similar things, but there doesn't seem to be anything similar to my issue. Do I need to hash all uv coordinates and compute the index for each face myself? Or is there a built-in way to do this? How does the .obj exporter work? Also, for further reference, is it possible to see the python source for the .obj exporter?

I found the .obj export source in /usr/share/blender It's probably different on your computer, the best place to see where you can find it is to go into user preference under Addons. It seems like the official exporter just creates a hash map of uv coordinates. This seems to be where the magic happens.

# Make our own list so it can be sorted to reduce context switching
    face_index_pairs = [(face, index) for index, face in enumerate(me.polygons)]
        uv = f_index = uv_index = uv_key = uv_val = uv_ls = None

        uv_face_mapping = [None] * len(face_index_pairs)

        uv_dict = {}
        uv_get = uv_dict.get
        for f, f_index in face_index_pairs:
            uv_ls = uv_face_mapping[f_index] = []
            for uv_index, l_index in enumerate(f.loop_indices):
                uv = uv_layer[l_index].uv
                uv_key = veckey2d(uv)
                uv_val = uv_get(uv_key)
                if uv_val is None:
                    uv_val = uv_dict[uv_key] = uv_unique_count
                    fw('vt %.6f %.6f\n' % uv[:])
                    uv_unique_count += 1
                uv_ls.append(uv_val)

Since I answered my own question, should this be deleted? I feel like this has some value to other people who may want to do something similar, as this is a specific and non-trivial task.


is it possible to assign a filter to apply only on a specified material I found out this custom filter with a bloom effect giving a glow effect. My question is, is it possible to make the filter specific to a specific material making it the only one glowing to simulate light glow?

Yes it is. Use material IDs to mask certain areas of the image.
I think the manual page gives you all the information and examples you need:

https://www.blender.org/manual/compositing/types/converter/id_mask.html


Cannot see mesh for reference images Blender 2.80 This is a new problem for several months. Cannot see mesh for reference images Blender 2.80. Did not have this problem with 2.79?

Background images as we used in 2.7x are not available in 2.80.

Now when we load a reference image, the image is attached to an empty which displays it in the viewport. As it is an object you can move it in front of or behind any other objects or hide it when not being used.

We can also make the image transparent by adjusting the image properties for the empty.

Note that cameras now have background image properties, this allows an image to always be aligned with the camera view. These settings have a depth option to display the image in front of or behind the scene.


Noisy scene even with 3K pass I know many many people have asked this before, but i really can't understand what is wrong...
I've tried everything:
raised passes up to 3k, added denoising, indirect clamping, multi sample resolution, raised and lowered light bounces, doubled the resolution in order to scale it down later, removed all light sources except the external, the light path node for the glass material then removed glass from windows...

Nothing worked, i can't get a nice image...

So, i'm asking you to have a look at my file (a corrected copy can be found in the answer)...
The HDR image can be found here.
All other textures should be generated with noises

Result with 2000 Passes after taking advantage of light portals

Since this is an interior scene with windows being the primary light source, you will want to use a feature called Light Portals.

Basically, you add an area lamp into each window, align it so that the plane of the lamp is in line with the plane of the window, scale the lamp up (using the size value in the lamp settings) to be the same size as the window, and then check the Portal option that is also found in the lamp settings.

These portals help Cycles figure out where the light is coming from, and can greatly reduce noise.

Here's a good video that goes over setting them up and how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LjLyTBbl6s.

EDIT: Here's an actual comparison of your scene. I added a portal at each window/door/skylight, and used the exact same settings as you had. The only difference was that I changed the dimension scaling from 200% to 50% and the samples from 2000 to 50, just so I could do this quickly.

Here is with no Portals and 50 samples. It took 38s to render on my GPU.

Now here is the result with a portal at each light source (even the ones outside the camera view). It took only 4 seconds longer at just over 42 seconds.

And I think those results speak for themselves... :)

Here's the file too if you want to look at what I did. You will have to relocate the HDRi though, as I had to set it to a different path on my system.

EDIT #2 I also noticed that you have a large number of light bounces. Since the portals really brighten up the image as well as reduce the noise, you can lower the bounces back down, and it will make your image even brighter, as well as render a bit faster. A max of 8 bounces and min of 3 gave this result and shaved just over a second off the time as well.

Do keep in mind that this is an interior scene, and the nature of interior scenes is that there are a lot of light bounces, especially when using multiple light sources. Keeping the bounces low will help with noise, brightness and render times, although for a good final render a few thousand samples will still be necessary.


Animation of two videos in Blender I am attempting to run one video over the top of another.  In the base video, I have a guy running down a street.  This video is on a plane.  I have a second video that I created with some pain to render a cheetah running with an alpha layer using WebM codec. I have inserted this video on a smaller plane and constrained the plane to the street of the first video using keyframes so that it appears that the cheetah is chasing the guy.  I am unable to get rid of the black background on the cheetah video. Any help would be grateful.  Running Blender 2.91

Check the alpha blend method on the cheetah clip material settings. I recommend “hashed.” If that is correct, check that in the material the alpha of the image is connected to the shader’s alpha somehow (using a mix shader node with the alpha connected to the factor, and a transparent shader node on one input, works good).


Bevel vertices on a flat subdivided plane I'm trying something that I managed before, but not anymore.
I have a subdiveded flat plane (which represents a grid) where I want to make a few more holes (see picture one).
If I select the vertices and then do  Ctrl + Shift + B, I don't get rounded corners but straight (see picture two).
My question is what am I doing wrong?
I'm using Blender 2.79, and I'm a beginner.

In 2.79 (or 2.9), I don't think you can have it in one step.
You can extrude along Z EZ, bevel the corner edges CtrlB, delete the extrusion X:


How to add glossy texture to Principled Shader? How can I add a glossy shader to the Principled Shader? I tried to Mix RGB the diffuse with the glossy and connect them to the base color (PRINCIPLED SHADER) but it doesn't work fine... How can I do?

I'm am so new here I hesitate to even chime in, but I have been (and this may not be the right way) adding the mix shader to the output of the principled shader and connecting emission shades to the other mix input with success.  I think it shoukd work with a glossy shader as well, but again I am super new here and this is my Virgin answer so I hope it helps.


About molecular add-on in Mac Im making some simulation in blender and get interested in molecular add-on. but it is not working in my computer. I'm using Mac Pro(10.13.2). And the blender version is 2.79. Someones says that add-on's version dosen't be a matter even if the blender is 2.79. But I couldn't find any information  about to add the add-on to Mac. I mean that I tried few times as Win's way but I failed.
 The add-on is downloaded on this website.(http://pyroevil.com/molecular-script-download/)

If you have any information about it, please help me. Thanks.

You don´t need to copy only the folder "addons" and the folder "molecular", if you try to copy both files that are in the folder "molecular" you can't install the addon.


Setting parent to armature with automatic weights deforms the mesh I'm following this rigging tutorial. Everything worked perfectly until 10:40, where the uploader asks to set parent with automatic weights. This completely deforms the mesh, as shown below.

aa http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62862049/Screenshots/023.png

bb http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62862049/Screenshots/024.png

What is wrong?

Link for the .blend

First of all try to align your bone. It can help a lot for a better rig. For doing that follow this step : show the axes of your bones, enter in the edit mode of your rig and align your bone with the roll property on the right pannel of the 3D view. You can see an exemple in the screen below!

Now you can do your automatic weight.
I looked a bit on your rig and apparently you played a bit with it. You have to reset all the roation of your bone in pose mode.

Go in pose mode, select all bones with a and types alt+r.

And now you have to play a bit with the pole angle of your IK modifier for align all your bone.

Normally with this 3 tips your armature has a better set up.


using phong_ramp as a factor? i found that in OSL there is a shader called phong_ramp that creates a color a ramp depending on the amount of light that a surface gets.

is there a way to use that phong_ramp as a factor output? or as any other thing, because working it as a shader is very clumsy, i would love to do a lot of things with it.

thanks!

Your problem is that phong_ramp doesn't actually internally calculate that factor; as a BSDF, it's a closure, which is a function to be called by the renderer, later, with more data available. So, while it may appear on the surface that it's internally calculating those colors, it's only setting up the material to provide an environment for their calculation during the actual ray-trace render. (OSL is completely ignorant of lighting.)

So, as much as I hate answering questions with a stout negative, no, you can't determine that factor from OSL. (It literally doesn't even exist yet.) However, if you're looking for a reflectance factor, it's fairly easy to calculate on its own. You do have the surface normal N, the incident ray from the viewer I, and while the light data may not be available you can always substitute in a parameter point, or even hard coded point, representing the anticipated light.

The Blinn-Phong algorithm, for all its brilliance, isn't that complicated to understand and is effectively cited in full on Wikipedia. I'm not sure what you're hoping to do with that factor but I wish you luck in doing it and hope this helps! Another thought might be to interpolate eight equidistant points between black and white for the shader, and simply multiply it by a color or other closure color to tune it, but it ultimately depends on what you're aiming for.


Best tile size on both cpu and gpu Recently did some testings with my pc setup (gtx 1660super, ryzen 2600 3.9ghz, 16gb 3200mhz). And was surprised by the fact that my gpu best performance was with 64x64 tile size. But not only that cpu alone was also showing best results with 64x64 tile size. The question is did the difference between tile sizes is gone with updates or something wrong with my pc or windows setup.

Blender 2.83; Windows 10 2004; very recent NVIDIA drivers

Starting from version 2.8

CUDA renders no longer need to use large tiles. In many cases rendering with a tile size of for example 32x32 will actually be faster now. When using denoising it may still be somewhat faster to user large tiles, but this comes with a high memory usage cost. (6da6f8d6da)

reference: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Cycles
For 2.83 new changes:

For GPU rendering, adaptive sampling sometimes needs a bigger tile size for good performance. For combined CPU + GPU rendering, tiles rendered on the CPU and GPU may not match exactly. We will investigate automatic solutions to these problems for future releases.

reference https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.83/Cycles


How are the Bones assigned to the Vertex_Groups in the API? I´m working on an export script for Blender and I´m currently stuck at exporting bone weights.

Here is what i have so far(excuse me if my Python is not that clean, the syntax is pretty new to me):

v0.Inf = [0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0]
for i,g in enumerate(face.vertices[0].groups):
  if not g.weight = 0.0:
    v0.Inf[i] = g.group + g.weight

As far as I understand this it should fill the 4 elements of my array with the sum of the group index and the weight of that particular vertex. (Note: It´s guaranteed that there are max. 4 groups)

But i´m running into some problems here: I have a test-file which has 3 vertex groups but 2 bones. How do i figure out which vertex group is assigned to which bone? There has to be some kind of connection. I can´t use the group name because the group can have a diffrent name than the bone, even if that´s a rare case.

Bones are matched to vertex groups based on names, that is the connection, they are not linked in another way.

for modifier in object.modifiers:
    if modifier.type == 'ARMATURE' and modifier.object:
        armature = modifier.object.data

        for bone in armature.bones:
            if bone.use_deform and bone.name in object.vertex_groups:
                print("'%s' used for armature deformation" % bone.name)