How to make a square grid for UV maps Since the shape is organic and not a pure cylinder every method I attempt when trying to make a UV map of a sleeve of a T-shirt I cannot get a square grid in the UV editor. This is the closest I got to having a grid. Ctrl+V just makes a mess. Besides editing every single point I have no idea how to achieve this. Pictured is half the sleeve mapped.

---UPDATE---

The suggestion of Follow active quads gives me a skewed diagonal irregular large on top smaller at the bottom grid.

New information, new problem:

It was suggested to use  the The UVSquares addon in the possible duplicate entry. I followed the UV squares addon tutorial, I didn't have an entry for "3D view: Screencast keys" so I found it and install it from file and activated it. Done! But I do not have the "Mesh: UVSquares" entry to activate once I installed from file the uv_squares.py

What can I check to get it to work?

Follow Active Quads will work in this case, but you need to pay attention to a few things to get a clean 90-degree unwrap.
In this method Blender takes the active face and lays out other selected faces around it, following its shape in UV space (not in 3D space). In other words, it is important how your active quad looks in the UV space.
If your mesh doesn't have a UV map (you didn't unwrap it), the active face is mapped to the size of UV space (a perfect square/rectangle) and other faces are placed around it accordingly.
But if your mesh already has a UV map, the active face is not mapped to the size of UV space, but rather its existing shape in UV space is used.
For example, if your UV map looks like this (notice the shape of the active quad):

the result of unwrapping with Follow Active Quads will look like this (notice how selected faces are following the shape of the active face):

To get a nice grid, you have to turn your active quad into a perfect rectangle in UV space. You can do that by editing the vertices manually, by resetting the UV map (U > Reset), or by using Lightmap Pack unwrap (U > Lightmap Pack > OK). I usually use Lightmap Pack unwrap in cases like this. It's fast and it fits all the faces into UV space (they are smaller, so after using Follow Active Quads the unwrapped grid isn't huge).
The result of using Lightmap Pack will look like this (notice the active face turned into a perfect rectangle).

Now it's OK to use Follow Active Quads - you should have a nice 90-degree grid:

To sum it up, here's your workflow:

Select all faces you want to unwrap.
Use Lightmap Pack unwrap (U > Lightmap Pack > OK).
With active quad selected use Follow Active Quads (U > Follow Active Quads).


Should you ALWAYS use Blender's subsurface modifier? I'm creating a spaceship right now and was wondering if it's always necessary to use a subsurface modifier?

I've used the modifier in my mesh so far, but it would be much easier to not use it. I hate constantly adding loop cuts in order to get edges

No.  Whether you should depends mainly on the intended use of the model and its geometry.

A model that only appears in the background may not need the benefit of the modifier and render time will be reduced if it is not present.

Not all models require the benefit. If all of the surfaces of a model are flat, like the boards in a picket fence, then the subsurf is not necessary and the rounding that gives realism to edges can be provided by a bevel modifier.

Not all that do require edge loops. Often a judicious application of the bevel modifier will produce good results, with the advantage that the bevel modifier is non destructive. This can provide advantages when creating or changing models.


How do I parent the head and the tail of a bone to two different meshes/empties? I want to copy the movement of my hand to blender. I tracked some points on my hand and linked the tracks to empties in the 3d viewport. Then I made bones between the markers. I tried parenting and use the "copy location" constraint to make the bone move with the markers. The problem is that if you try to copy the location of two markers, the bone will only move with one. I need the head and tail to stay at two different markers and follow them both. I hope you understand me.

thank you for your help

Here is a possible way using bones "stretching", in pose mode,  to their top/bottom empties (trackers), not sure you want this, but, anyway here is how it works:

I've set an armature copy location to the bottom tracker, so the head of the bottom bone follows it. But the pose mode contraint stretches to the top tracker, too.


Strange baked Ambient Occlusion texture result? I'm getting some strange results with a lot models within a blender file. The AO baked result looks like this:  (it's a car wheel).

But if I import a new copy of the model from an fbx file into the blender file, the baked AO result is fine, leading me to believe that my AO settings are correct, and that something with the models are wrong. I don't want to just use the newly imported model, since the old models have some slight modifications. With the old models, I did some testing with AO baking into the vertex, and probably some other stuff that I may have forgotten. The old models only have one other UV map (for their main texture) and the newly created UV map for the AO map, so I can't figure out what else may be causing the strange baking results.

Anyone seen this sort of issue before? I'm hoping that my old models have some problematic option set, that I may be overlooking.

Thank you!

I had other duplicate models overlapping causing the artifacts. D'oh! I thought that toggling the visibility of the other objects would prevent them from the AO calculations, but apparently I need to put the objects on separate layers to prevent affecting the AO calculation.
black artifacts when baking ambient occlusion


How to make a folded bath towel What would be a good way of creating the shape of a realistic folded towel?

Would you use cloth simulation or just model it?
I've no luck with either

Thanks for the help I figured it out by:

Creating the outline by bezier spline

Created the with by using the depth setting in the curve meny

Converting it to a mesh and moved half of the geometry to create the with of the towel

Removed the edges on the other side

Used the solidify modifier to create the with of the towel on the other side

Fine tuned the geometry so the fold isn't resting in mid air

Used hair particles for the strands


Problems with Enemy AI I am developing a simple ball game, where the sole objective is "Survive as long as you can from the enemy balls". So I gave my ball controls and set the enemy ball's AI to "path following". It seemed to work flawlessly, but now I am facing a problem where the enemy balls get stuck behind a wall and. You can understand the problem better by seeing this image,

Note: Red ball - Player, White balls - enemies

I tried to changing the game environment, set the enemy AI to "seek". But none of them worked.

So, How do I rectify this problem? Also, is there a way not to make the enemy balls come together as in the image?

You may have a problem with your navigation mesh. Make sure the navmesh is going around the wall. If it isn't you can punch a hole in it in edit mode, then reset index values in the Physics tab, and set Visualize on in the actuator to make sure it works. Hope this helps! If it doesn't you may want to check the navmesh normal up direction (It's the small "N" checkbox beside the up-direction listbox.)


Weight Painting - Stiff vs Flexible Deformation I have a rigged and weighted letter A. I particularly need to understand why, despite a nice gradient in the weight painting, a part of the deformation is nice and flexible (marked in green on the screenshot). And part is stiff like it's 100% weighted, though it looks like a gradient in the weight painting (marked red in the screenshot).

What I would like is that when I pose the bone, the deformation follows the weight-painting gradients on both sides. So it's flexible and smooth.

I would like to understand how to control this, so I'm more in control of the deformations.

I'm attaching a stripped down version of the .blend file.

What you're missing is another bone for the last horizontal part of the mesh, which will act as a "balance". In Blender Weights are always normalized, to distribute the movements between deforming bones, but if a vertex is weighted to one bone only, the normalization is calculated between a weight and zero: so a weight of 0.0001 and a weight of full 1.0 are treated the same way (both values are infinitely larger than zero).

The vertices in your "green zone" are affected by two bones, which blend their action, while the vertices in the "red zone" are affected by one bone only, leading to a "rigid" behaviour.


Is there an Echo effect for animating in blender? I used to be a heavy user of After Effects, I am wondering if there is a similar effect to echo in Blender. That is used for simultaneously showing a specific animation in the future and the past simultaneously.

Edit: In addition to Leanders answer below, is there a simple way to fade the transparency or change colors of the frames before and after.

Perhaps somehow linking the generator setup with the frame duplication to a transparency node?

Thank you

There is a function which creates a very close effect to the one you're describing.

In the Properties Panel, go to the object section and under Duplication, select Frames.

Duplicates of the object in its state from the specified Start and End frame are shown on all frames. To create the echo, set a keyframe on both properties.

Then, go to the graph editor and add a Generator modifier to both curves. By choosing a lower offset for the Start Frame property you will have a span of frames which are shown.

Start Frame = -10 + 1 * x
End   Frame =  10 + 1 * x


How can I align my points/models rotation along the model surface I'm using geometry nodes, and trying to align my instance geometry around a sphere, however my geometry is not rotating along the surface of the sphere. The geometry is sticking straight up. I know I can add rotation point to make them randomly rotate, however I want the geometry to align the same way the current point is sitting on the face of the sphere is. I tried using an "align rotation to vector" but no luck there.
Edit:
Here is an image of a test set up:
 https://i.imgur.com/efCrNml.png "geometry node"

Here is the blend file a basic setup with non working align rotation geometry nodes
https://www.mediafire.com/file/meai3z5j9z9m4av/Basic_Geometry_Node_Align_Not_Working.blend/file
Double edit: I missed that the the align rotation needed to be set all to 0. It's working  beautifully now. Thank you!

add a sphere and a cone to your scene.

add geometry node tree to your sphere

add this node tree:

adjust size of cone in edit mode

result


Animator Glitching when skipping from one key frame to another So I'm making a walk animation, and when I move directly from one key frame to another the mesh and armature glitch. Like when I press the button to skip forwards to the next frame from frame one to two the foot bone twists around on the x axis several times. Some thing similar happens when I move from two to one. But when I play the animation not glitches occur.
This makes it impossible to compare translation between frames.
How do I fix this? I have had problems with things like this in Unity and all I had to do was delete a cache of data to fix it. But I have no idea where you would do that with blender.
Also I would upload my blend file with this post but I don't know where to upload it too.

It is a cyclic dependency.

When you move the foot controler, the console output reads. (Screenshot at the end of the post.) Open the console from the infobar menu: Window > Toggle System Console on windows.

Dependency cycle detected:
  shin.L depends on thigh.L through Parent Relation.
  foot.L depends on shin.L through Parent Relation.
  IKKnee.L depends on foot.L through Parent Relation.
  thigh.L depends on IKKnee.L through IK Constraint.

I suggest parenting the IKKnee bones to the IKFoot bones. Then there will be a hierarchical dependency.


Python for Text migrating from 2.79 to 2.8 I have a Python script that changes the text in a blend. In 2.79 the script is:

s = bpy.context.scene
sed = s.sequence_editor
sequences = sed.sequences
f = s.objects['Text']
f.data.body = "New text in the field."

"Text" is the name of the field.
This works great.

However, in 2.8 I can use Add Text to do the job of placing the text. However, when I try using the above code, I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ec2-user/proj004/proj004master.py", line 27, in <module>
    f = s.objects['Text']
KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "Text" not found'

I am assuming that since I used Add Text I need to use something other than:

s = bpy.context.scene
sed = s.sequence_editor
sequences = sed.sequences

Does anybody know how I can make this work?

Turns out to be stupid simple:

bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all["Test"].text = "New text in the field."


Scripting Reverse Boolean So how would I script something that basically duplicated an object and took the last boolean modifier and reversed it while keeping the original modifier order? For example difference to intersect and vice versa?

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

obj = context.object.copy()

bool_mods = [m for m in obj.modifiers if m.type == 'BOOLEAN']

if len(bool_mods):
    mod = bool_mods[-1]
    if mod.operation == 'DIFFERENCE':
        mod.operation = 'INTERSECT'
    elif mod.operation == 'INTERSECT':
        mod.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'

scene.objects.link(obj)


How can i render only one object but still have the rest affecting it? Is there any way in blender, to render only one object from this big scene but still have the rest of the objects affecting it ?

I need to change material to this small piece but i dont wanna render the rest of the scene again. (its big)

You can toggle object visibility at render:

Or play for each object with Cycles settings (here in 2.79):

[EDIT]

You can also render just a portion of the screen (CTRL-B on 2.79, then draw the box around your object) which can work mostly if your object doesn't move much in an animation.

For batching Cycles settings, I guess a python script would work, but that's above my current paygrade.

You can probably find an easy way to run through the objects list and set cycles_visibility.diffuse, cycles_visibility.camera, etc.


Can you view 2 or more layers simultaneously? Is it possible in Blender to view 2 or more layers at once?

Thank You

Yes, to see more than one layer at a time shift-click on the other layers you want to view. It will make them visible without closing the others.


how to change a pose lib using script I want to make a button that changes the active poselib to another one from the list, a specific one. I look in the console and can't see any operator. any ideas?

Whoops, now to setting the pose lib

Simple operator that takes the name of the poselib (action) you want to make active, and sets it on the active object

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Change the Pose Lib"""
    bl_idname = "object.set_pose_lib"
    bl_label = "Set Pose Lib"
    name = StringProperty(options={'SKIP_SAVE'})

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        action = bpy.data.actions.get(self.name)
        if action:
            context.object.pose_library = action
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimpleOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Example of usage

import bpy

def draw_button(self, context):
    # change to a pose named "Pose"
    poselib = context.object.pose_library
    name = "PoseLib"
    op = self.layout.operator("object.set_pose_lib", text=name)
    op.name = name

bpy.types.DATA_PT_pose_library.append(draw_button)


Tracking markers are clustered together and too close to camera I tracked a shot (most of the markers in the screenshot are red because no marker stays in frame throughout the shot, so lots of markers pop in and lots of markers stop tracking but it still gives enough to solve) and the way I tracked it, the markers should be spaced out in 3D space. However, they are clustered together and too close to the camera. This might be caused by the strange width and height of the camera, but I'm not sure (the video I'm tracking is vertical)
Here's what it looks like when it's being tracked:

And here's what it looks like in the 3D view:

How do I fix this/why is it happening?

In the orientation panel place a larger distance value and press the apply scale button


Gaps in Mesh After Applying Modifiers I primarily use Blender for modeling 3D objects for use with a 3D printer. Most of my previous experience has been with simpler geometric models (like simple robots and the like) and I have recently started trying to make more organic objects. As part of the process I use boolean modifiers to reduce the amount of non-manifold geometry before printing. However, I've noticed that I get an issue where the meshes appear to be complete in solid view but not in wireframe view.

I'm not really sure where these holes come from, but they primarily seem to show up through the use of the Boolean modifier (this mesh was normal until I used the Boolean-Difference at the bottom). Once the mesh degenerates like this, I can no longer reliably combine it with other meshes. I'm hoping that this is a simple fix, but the problem is difficult to describe, so I haven't found a solution. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

The misleading representation of wires does not mean that your mesh has holes.

The inconsistent display of wires for faster viewport display can be "corrected" with the Draw All Edges option.

As you noted correctly, after the boolean modifier, the wire display is not consistent with the solid representation.

However, adding wire display in the Object's Properties Panel, shows the same wires in solid view.

To show all wires, enable Draw All Edges.

There are, however, many other tools, which are useful for cleaning objects. For example:

the Mesh Analysis Section of the Properties Panel in the 3D View

the "Select Non Manifold Geometry" option in the 3D View ⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift⎇ AltM
the 3D print toolbox addon


Particle effect showing only on one side of mirrored object I'm trying to create a fur particle effect on sonic the hedgehog, and I'm using weight paints to keep it in the areas I want.

Problem: I can only get the hair effect to show up on certain random areas on model, and only on one side.

I'm using a mirror effect to keep model symmetrical, but hair only shows on one side of the mirror.

I'm new used Blender, so I don't know what all the settings for the particle effects do.

Whats going on and how do I fix it?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3nnI6YdPSHcN19NZTdzRlk2b3c/view?usp=sharing

Have the mirror modifier be on top of the particle system.

Use the arrows top and down arrows on the right of the modifiers to re arrange the modifier stack.

Then in the particle system enable Use Modifier Stack


Set origin in modifier-stack im modeling a sort of complex tube right now. For this I model just a single patch and use array modifiers to get it to the right dimensions. After that I use a 'SimpleDeform -Bend' modifier to make it a tube.
Now I want to use a curve-deform modifier on this, but since the object center (origin) is not in the middle of the tube I get unpredictable results.

As a workaround I can apply the array- and simpledeform modifiers and set the origin manually before the curve-deform, but since I'm in early production I would rather keep that stuff as I have not decided yet on the dimensions and thus still like to have the modifiers available.

Any ideas? thx

edit: simple examplescene
and a screenshot....see how the curve is nicely in the center when the modifier stack is frozen

you have some options to try :

1- just move the curve and try to approximate the result you want

( moved the curve a little bit down )

2- use another modifiers stack to create the same shape

now you get the origin in the center of the circle

the modifiers used are :


How can I subdivide an edge at a specific point on an axis? Let's say I have a scenario like this, viewed from orthographic X perspective (num3):

Both objects are the same length, but the top line is a single, angled edge while the bottom line is flat and divided into six sections. I want to subdivide the top line by inserting a point at the same Y coordinate as the highlighted vertex of the bottom line, without disrupting the angle of the top line.
Subdividing the top edge will insert a new vertex, but only at the midpoint of the edge. With vertex snapping, I can drag the new vertex to the appropriate Y axis coordinate, but this disrupts the angle of the line because it does not affect the vertex's Z axis coordinates.

Edge slide is pretty much what I want, but I can't edge slide a single vertex. How can I make this work?

You can edge slide a single vertex.  Select it and type GG and then move it:

But if the sloped line has endpoints that have the same x coordinates as the bottom line, there's another way:
Subdivide the top line into the same number of segments as the bottom line:

Each new vertex in the sloped line has the same X coordinate as the corresponding vertex of the flat line.
There are various ways to select the vertices you want to remove.  One that works is to select the vertex you want to keep and then use CTRL+I to reverse the selection:

next shift-left-click on each of the end vertices to deselect them:

Then type x and select 'dissolve vertices' to get rid of the excess:

and you're left with what you want:

Notice that I had both lines share an endpoint.  This isn't necessary, and what I suggest would work in your example, so long as the two endpoints have the same X value


Why is my cloth simulation jagged? My cloth simulation sometimes works fine, but other times it does this.

This usually happens when the character jerks on to the cape suddenly.

The top of the cape dose have a vertex group with 100% power, pinning it to the character, and the rest of the cape has only 10% power so it stays near him.

If you know how to stop the cloth simulation from going jagged at points then please let me know.

Try increasing the number of Steps under the cloth's Quality setting. Don't be afraid to increase it 3 or 4-fold: the simulation time will just increase proportionally (it will take 3 or 4 times longer to simulate), not exponentially (like with sub-surface steps).

When you increase the Steps count to - say - 15, each frame is split by the simulation engine in 15 sub-frames for calculation purposes. This is very useful when the collision/pinning objects have sudden accelerations, because it allows for the engine to deal with them in a finer way, in this case one fifteenth at a time.

Here's a comparison between a Quality = 2 steps and a Quality = 30 steps simulation. As you can see, the sudden accelerations create persistent and unrealistic wrinkles in the low-quality cape, while the high-quality one effectively and rapidly smooths them out (please note: my cape only has the 100% pinning on the top edge, and not the additional 10% one).

Additionally, you may want to increase the Quality value in the Cloth collision panel, but this isn't as relevant as the cloth quality.


I connected colour to composite node directely, and there is a noise I've found a noise in my image, though (ideally) it should be perfectly clean.
So I made an experiment. (Blender version 2.90.1) New file, I set the render size 40 x 40 and changed "View Transform" from Filmic to Standard.
In Compositing tab, I connected RGB to Composite directly. The colour is (R,G,B = 0.40724).

After rendering, I can see (Barely Noticeable) noise in rendered image. But every pixel's colour displayed at the bottom line, which appears when I press right mouse button,  remained the same.

Render Result
Then I saved it to PNG file and compared to original colour.

Saved noise.png, Noise pattern is changed

Can I make this noise gone?

This was rather a simple question. In the Post Processing tab, reducing Dither to 0 will solve this problem.

Hope this will help somebody.


How to put an object at the outer end of each branch of a sapling? This tree, created with the Sapling addon, has some 500 branches.

And I need to select the outer end vertex of each of the branches, like this but not just with two branches, and create a vertex group with those vertices.

My end goal is to have a sphere placed with its centre located at the end vertex of each branch, and the tree is going to be beveled, so it will be visible in the render.

In the images the tree is still a curve. I've played with this for quite some time, and I've tried with the tree still being a curve object and converting it to a mesh object, but still the only way I've found is to manually select the outer end vertex of each individual branch. Is there a shortcut?
Or better yet, is there an even simpler way to get objects growing from the outer end of each branch, and only from there? Apart from that, the branches should be left bare.

The tree in the images isn't the exact one I'll be using for the scene I have in mind, but just a random one I used to try and figure out how to do this.

With help of lemon's initial comment, which pointed me in the right direction, I arrived at this solution.

Once you happy with the shape of your tree, select it and hit AltC then M to convert it to a mesh, then Tab into Edit mode. Hit A once or twice if needed to select all.

Hit CtrlV then D to remove doubles. Reduce the Merge Distance in the options panel in the lower left corner. Set it as low as it will go.

Select the end vertex of one branch, the hit ShiftG then O to select every vertex that has the same number of edges connected to it as the already selected one.

Instead of creating a vertex group, I duplicated the selected vertices (ShiftD) and then separated them into a new object (P then S). Now Tab out of Edit mode and hide the complete tree by clicking the eye next to its name in the Outliner.

Select the other "tree", which is just a cloud of unconnected vertices. You should see something like this.

Add a sphere (or whatever object you want at the ends of the branches). Hold Shift and select the vertex cloud. Now the sphere and the vertex cloud should both be selected, with the vertex cloud being the active object. Hit CtrlP then O. The vertex cloud is now the parent of the sphere. Select the vertex cloud and go into the Object tab of the Properties panel. Under Duplication, click Verts.

Scale the sphere (select it and hit S, drag the mouse until things look good, then hit Enter). You should now have something similar to this.

And if you unhide the original tree, by again clicking the eye next to its name in the Outliner, it should look like this.

The spheres in the tree are now just copies of the original sphere. The original sphere and the vertex cloud need to be left. They will be visible in the 3D view, but not in the render.
The duplicates can be made real, if you want or need to, by selecting the vertex cloud (i.e. the parent of the sphere which is being duplicated) and hitting ShiftCtrlA. After that you can delete the vertex cloud and the original sphere.


Moving vertices on a UV sphere I am new to Blender and just started making my own things after doing the donut.
For my "project" I need to cut out a shape in a UV sphere and set it back by a small amount, basically making a shaped indent in a sphere. I traced out the shape of the thing I needed to set back and here's where the problems arrived.
I had moved the vertices to trace out the shape, but now these moved vertices are no longer on the right axis and stick out. Example in the image below
Can I move these vertices in a way that they remain perfectly spherical. If so... how?

Welcome to Blender!  Be warned, cutting holes or indents into curved surfaces is a surprisingly difficult problem in hard-surface modelling.  You can take a look at a YouTube search for "blender cutting holes in curved surfaces" to get a sense of how complicated it can become.
You can move your vertices onto a perfect sphere using the Mesh -> Transform -> To Sphere tool.  However, applied directly using the usual "median as the pivot point", it would tend to deform the whole mesh toward your indentation (because there are more vertices there).  To apply it without modifying the rest of your mesh (much), and assuming the UV sphere's origin is still at the center of the sphere (should be, if you haven't moved it since adding the UV sphere mesh), you might want to try the following steps:

Move the 3D cursor to the UV sphere origin, if it's not already there.  To do this, in Object Mode, with the sphere selected, use ShiftS -> Cursor to Active.
Change the pivot point to the 3D cursor.  To do this, use "period", and select 3D Cursor.
Apply the "To Sphere" transform to all the vertices.  To do this, switch to Edit Mode, make sure you're in vertex selection mode with 1, use A to select the whole mesh, and use ShiftAltS for "To Sphere", and drag the mouse right until the "To Sphere" amount in the top left of the window hits 1.000, then left-click.
Change the pivot point back to median:  To do this, "period", then select Median Point.

That should place the points firmly on the sphere.  It may slightly increase or decrease the radius of the rest of the UV sphere, but it shouldn't deform it.
However, this probably won't fix your rendering problem as well as you're hoping.  There will still be pinching and minor imperfections even with all vertexes lying precisely on the sphere.  To get rid of these or at least minimize their effects, you'll need to learn about good mesh topology and the roles of quadrilaterals versus triangles and n-gons (faces with more than 4 sides) as well as "poles" (vertexes with more or less than 4 associated edges).
But, for a quick and dirty project with a couple of minor rendering blemishes, "To Sphere" might be good enough.  Good luck!


An object inside in another object with physics properties - rigid body I am trying to create a physics simulation, but I not succeed...
What settings should I use for rigid body if I want to create an object inside in another object with physics properties (rigid body)

After I click on play the simulation goes wrong...

Now the bottle is intersecting or passing through one another ...
I have tried:

checked the normals
keep the real life proportions (size, weight...)
applied all transforms for scale, position and rotation
set Origin > origin to geometry
increasing the Steps per second and Solver Iterations in the Rigid Body World settings (I tried with the maxima 1000 and 100)
set collision shape to Mesh and tried 0.4 or 0 as margins and source to final

For those who come here with this problem try setting the shape of the collision to mesh for the outside shape.

For your problem, I set the collision shape to convex hull for the inner bottle and it reacted normally. I don't know how attached you are to that setting but that might do it.


Make the "Ruler/Protractor" measurements to appear on renders I recently realized that blender have a "Ruler/Protractor" tool for precise measurements. Is there a way to make those measurements appear on final renders?
(By the way, is there a way to customize the transparency of those measurement value displays?)

Thanks in advance for replies.

(I am using cycle for render, but it is fine if I have to use Blender Internal for the measurements to appear)

A small trick is to temporarily increase the DPI value (located in User Preferences > System (maximum to 144), then maximize the 3D window and capture the screen. (Maximize the desktop resolution before that if possible).

However, you are right about the limit of resolution, so this is the last choice, I guess, unless capturing several parts and tiling them manually.


Get Bounding Box Lenght Of Curved Road Ok so I got this curved block

And I want to calculate it's exact length using bounding box. How can I do it?

Install the Measureit addon

For more details watch this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMAa5tG-l8
To download : https://github.com/Antonioya/blender/blob/40b63abde362555d0cf3cfb00454f0691871f144/measureit/measureit_v1_6_7.zip


Blender is just rendering a png I added as a plane instead of what the camera sees When I press render, it doesn't render what the camera sees, but instead a png image that I added as a plane (specifically a very heavily edited picture of my face).

I made sure the camera is set to the actual camera in the scene settings, and not the png.

I've also tried moving, deleting and re-adding the camera and nothing has helped.

Here's a Gdrive link to the file: intro.blend

You have selected the png file to be the source for the output (composite)

Select the rendered result.


Ripped models shows weird lines like this So I'm ripping models from a mobile game and when I import them into Blender there are always nodes and often lines like these that appear. What I want to know is what they are, their purpose and if it would be better if I kept them to help me rig this model.

The objects with the lines are blender objects that are called empties. They represent a single point and orientation in space, and are generally used as a marker for something else.

In this case, looking at their positions, I would guess that your importer is importing the bones in the mesh as empties, so these actually mark the bone positions. If this is the case you will probably see that many of the empties are parented to each other in a similar hierarchy as bones would be.


Is modeling something with an N-gon cap acceptable (i.e cylinders, cones etc.) I've seen tutorials where people will take a cylinder with an n-gon cap for the top and bottom while the middle portion has a bunch of subdivisions. I've seen people use these to model cups, mugs, poles, etc., but I was told and taught that N-gons were not okay. Would something like this merely be the exception to the rule. After all it's an option in both Maya and Blender, so if it wasn't acceptable I wouldn't expect it to even be an option. I'm searching for opinions/answers to this.

I think I've found the best method and that would be to just have the tops have intersections. The reason why is because when you smooth it, it will become all quads, which is not something that will happen when you smooth a cylinder with a flat top. Thank you everyone.


Blender as 3D real-time visualizer I am new to Blender and 3D graphics in general, and would like to know whether the software is the right choice for the following task: I would like to visualize position data coming from an external simulation (think many many cars driving around, possibly with lights) in real-time while adding lights and textures (e.g. a CAD model of a city, street lamps, etc.). At the same time, I would like to be able to zoom, pan, and rotate the view.

If possible, I also would like to eventually render the entire animation (maybe with higher quality effects, in this case position data can be extracted from a CSV, and the rendering does not have to be real-time).

The idea would be to be able to control the location of the cars and some of the parameters (e.g. the intensity of the car lights) from the external simulation. The scene would probably be created before directly in Blender (or just imported using compatible 3d-models). Ideally, the scene is embedded in an external graphical interface (e.g. a simplified 3d view that only allows to zoom and pan).

Is Blender the right software for this? If so, do you have any hints to get started (e.g. reads the section about Phython API, etc.).

Thank you very much,
Fede

The short answer is "yes."

The longer answer is "it depends on exactly how you want to do it."

If you can be a bit more specific about what kind of data you're wanting to import, that'd be really helpful. You can get just about anything you want into Blender, but it might be simpler to pre-process it with another application. Knowing what that is and where it comes from will help us to make some recommendations.

If you can be a bit more specific about your intended result, that'd be really helpful. Blender can do real-time 3D as well as feature-film-quality video... and anything in between. More information will make it easier to be more helpful.

As for the best place to start, I would NOT (perhaps surprisingly) recommend studying the Python API. It has a Python API. That's really about all you need to know. It can do anything Python can do, so technically you can literally do almost anything you want with Blender. You might even be able to write an Operating System with it... though I don't know how much help Blender would be in that process.

Generically, the best place to start would be the Blender Manual. Figure out what Blender does and how it does it. Then you will have a much better idea of whether or not you want to use it for your project.

Hope that helps!


Is there way to control opacity of selection/active color in 3DView? In the user preferences, color for selection and active object can be set, but there is no alpha slider, i.e. opacity is always 100%.

I want to match a slightly distorted texture onto an object using UV editing, but due to the selection mesh lines showing in the 3DView with 100% opacity, it is hard to do this with pixel accuracy.

It there a way to set opacity of the selected mesh (by default: orange) or an alternative solution for this use case?

No, this feature isn't currently available. Workarounds can be found in following questions: Remove selection overlays when Editing UVs?


Need help with basic armature stuff I´m a newbie with blender and this is probably very basic stuff I´m asking, but I really can´t get my head around this. I have a snakelike mesh I would like to slither in place like a wave but having two fixed points in the start and in the end of the mesh. How should I make this?  How do I make the fixed points? Thank you!

You already have the snake mesh, create a bezier curve, bend it in edit mode so it creates the pattern in which you want to slither it. Add the Curve modifier to the snake and choose the bezier curve you just created for the modifier, play around with the axis parameters. Once you get it right just move the bezier curve up and down (or back and forth), you'll get the slither.


How do you save materials that you create to use them later, in a different project? Say you download a texture files from some website. Then, in blender, use those images in node editor to create a material.

Or you just use existing nodes in Blender to create your own material.

How do you save that material to use it later in another project? I don't want to open up old projects, search for the materials and copy and paste its nodes it into my new projects. Is it possible to export those materials?

Just save it as .blend and use the append function (Edit>append and select the materials)


How can I print just the name of the camera and not the full structure? import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
activecamera = bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].camera

if activecamera == None:
    print("No Active Camera Selected")
else:
    print(activecamera)

And yes I'm old timer newbie!

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
active_camera = scene.camera

if active_camera:
    print(active_camera.name)
else:
    print("No Active Camera Selected")


Active dynamic rigid body object does not move since linked to armature i have tried everything and it does not move as an dynamic active object. clear parent does not help. it has an "child of" object constraint:

There is no passive object. at least not yet. the closest topic asked previously is this:
Object physics not working when moved with armature?
that says i have to parent the object, containing the active object. i have no "passive" objects to parent to something. the object is parented through constraint to the armature's left hand.
and it doesn't fix with applying scale:
Collision/Rigid body objects not moving an inch
and none of these helped:
Rigid Body Problem - objects not colliding
How do I Attach a Rigid Body to a Bone?
i have removed the "child of" and the object still is not dynamic. the "unlink" option at the context menu at the outliner of the linked object does not unlink it. With the "child of" constraint removed, it then can be unlinked through context menu, but still not moving when animated as a dynamic object. i have tested with a new file. results was that this odd problem occurs only when an item is linked to the armature (through any way), but the problem solves when item unlinked and removed from the armature as an linked object visually at the outliner. but in this blend file, doesn't work. it never moved as a dynamic object by any ways. my scene:

EDIT: Same happens to any item. idk how but before fixed that a new item [a cube] got dynamic physics but i forgot how and never got it to work again. here is a video of what i do.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f2eI25hs11jH8Vm5zJzgwCeHA_Ywqpup/view?usp=sharing
EDIT: I got it to work with starting from frame zero. but still not working on the object that was used first in the scene. The video of the same method, performed on an appended and just one part of the desired model from a backup of the blend file, unlinked and no parents, constraints. scale of all objects applied later and had no effect:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uunsfdHul5KR2D0OBMXWEC20y8swkwBR/view?usp=sharing

FINALLY FOUND OUT THE SOLUTION:
i have checked and tested anything, and saw that nothing, old or new, linked or not, objects, will not animate after frame 250. i could see the cache like down the timeline that stops after this frame.
according to this page ( https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/physics/rigid_body/world.html ), i have increased the Scene Properties/Rigid Body World/Cache/end from default 250 to the desired, in my case 1286, and started the whole animation from frame 0. and it cached all with the line below timeline and at last this was the result:

Here it is:


Blender supported 3D files that support armature I am just doing some research for an interactive app where I need some 3D assets. I dont have enoguh time to model all myself, so I have to use already existing assets. Since I dont have 3D Max, Cinema 4d or Maya, I have to use Blender for editing and adding further animations to my assets.

My Problem is, most assets I found so far are .3ds files, .obj or fbx.

My Question is: What 3D file formats support bones?

I want to use assets that are already rigged, so I dont have to rig and texture everything again.

Thanks in advance

Two possibilities depending on the tools used:

Use OBJ files in combination with BVH. BVH contains the skeleton,
and OBJ is capable of containing vertex weights
DAE which is one file that can contain both the weights and the
    skeleton. This is the best format IMO and is widely supported
    (although perhaps slightly less supported than OBJ/BHV).

If FBX is your only option, I've used a program that converts FBX to DAE.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=20481519


viewport denoising blender 2.83 macbook pro I'm a macbook pro user of blender 2.83
i'm trying to activate the viewport denoiser, but there is no way
anybody knows how to activate it?
my graphics are: Radeon Pro 555X 4 GB
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
Thank you!

As written here
In section about "OptiX Viewport Denoising"

To use this feature you need a NVIDIA RTX GPU and at least driver 441.87 (Windows) or 440.59 (Linux).


Set new bone length depending on the pose position not rest position I used the local coordinates of the armature newbone.tail = arm.matrix_world.inverted() * o.location to create a bone between its parent and an empty as shown below:

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
arm = bpy.data.objects['Armbvh']
newbonename = 'My_NewBoneMarker'

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

newbone = arm.data.edit_bones.new(newbonename)
parentbone = arm
o = scene.objects.get(newbonename)

newbone.tail = arm.matrix_world.inverted() * o.location
if newbone.name != 'Origin':
    newbone.use_connect =  True

newbone.parent = arm.data.edit_bones['ParentBone']
newbone.head = arm.data.edit_bones['ParentBone'].tail
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

The problem I'm facing is that the new bone is very big as shown below because the rest pose of the armature is at (0,0,0) so the newbone is created between the parentbone in edit mode and the empty which is a big distance as shown below. Any advice how to fix this? I want the bone to be created between the location of the bone in pose mode in frame 0 and the location of the empty as demonstrated below.

My .blend file can be found here:

This is the problem in edit mode (rest position):

Problem in Pose position:

This is what I where I want the new bone to be created to have a length between the parent bone in pose mode and the empty as shown below:

The principle is to take the delta between the previous bone (shoulder) tail and the empty's position (in local coordinate) in pose mode.

Then add this delta to the previous bone's tail in edit mode.

A point where I have spent a lot of time (as newbie here...): 'Vector' in Python is a pointer. So if you don't copy (v.copy()) the vector before you switch between pose and edit mode, the values are changed!

But from that, the result is finally simple:

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
arm = bpy.data.objects['Armbvh']
newbonename = 'My_NewBoneMarker'

empty = scene.objects.get(newbonename)
emptyInLocal = arm.matrix_world.inverted() * empty.location

#Get the parent bone in POSE MODE
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')

parentBonePose = arm.pose.bones['ParentBone']
parentBonePoseTail = parentBonePose.tail.copy() #Use copy() as if not switching to edit mode will change the values

#Go to edit mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

parentBoneEdit = arm.data.edit_bones['ParentBone']

newbone = arm.data.edit_bones.new(newbonename)

if newbone.name != 'Origin':
    newbone.use_connect =  True

newbone.parent = parentBoneEdit
newbone.head = parentBoneEdit.tail
#The tail is the head + the delta between the empty and the tail in pose mode
newbone.tail = newbone.head + (emptyInLocal - parentBonePoseTail)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')


Ice-Rock Spell Animation Nodes I'm trying to get effect below in Animation Nodes.
The effect seems simple enough, I just don't know how to set it up. Anyway thanks for looking.

Construct a small block of circular matrices to place stones.

Evaluate spline to get points on the path. Using loop we can scatter small block to these points.

Now randomly place stones from the collection to these matrices.

Add fade falloff with interpolation to control scale. you can also add delay falloff to animate increasing scale.


Use the same color for two materials? In my current project, made in Cycles, I would like to be able to use the same color for two completely different materials. That way, I can tweak the color easily and everything will still look fine. Is there any way to do this?

They are emissive materials.

Thanks in advance

One option would be to create an RGB node and then make a group out of it. Then add that group to the other materials. When you change the color in the grouped RGB node, it will change in all materials.


Color objects based on distance in Animation Nodes How do I set colors of objects based on their distances from some reference object, an empty for instance.

You can use the Set Vertex Color Node to color the objects, I will compute the distance between an empty and some objects, then loop over the objects, create a color based on the distance and set it:

The previous tree uses the distance as the hue, which produces:

But we can use it as the value for instance:

To use the vertex color as the color in a material, we check Vertex Color Paint in the material options:

Lastly, if you are using the Object Instancer Node to make the objects, make sure to check Deep Copy making each of the meshes independent. And of course, give the source object the required material.


How to get the 3D coordinates of the visible vertices in a rendered image in Blender I'm new to Blender and python and here is what I need:

I have a 3D model in Blender and I've set camera parameters to view a specified region of the model. The following is the rendered image:

I need to know the 3D coordinates of the vertices that are visible in the rendered image. Some of the points whose 3D coordinates I need are circled in RED in the figure.

I've some sources that mention using "bpy_extras.view3d_utils" function to extract the 3D coordinates from a rendered image, but I'm not able to code it in python.

Even if I manage to get the 3D coordinates of all the pixels in the rendered image, it should be a great help.

A partial solution, due to some approximation in ray cast (or some bug in my script?).

This solution uses 'world_to_camera_view' from bpy_extras.object_utils module. 'world_to_camera_view' returns the projection of a vertex in camera's coordinates, which means that the vertex is inside the camera view if the projected coordinates are between 0 and 1.

From that, the script is testing if the corresponding vertex is visible from the camera (and not hidden by another part of the mesh). To do that, it's using a ray cast from the camera location to the vertex.

Unfortunately, some of these ray casts fail... but this script is close to your need and that's why I provide it as an answer.

Hope that can help though.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from mathutils.bvhtree import BVHTree
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

# Create a BVH tree and return bvh and vertices in world coordinates
def BVHTreeAndVerticesInWorldFromObj( obj ):
    mWorld = obj.matrix_world
    vertsInWorld = [mWorld * v.co for v in obj.data.vertices]

    bvh = BVHTree.FromPolygons( vertsInWorld, [p.vertices for p in obj.data.polygons] )

    return bvh, vertsInWorld

# Deselect mesh polygons and vertices
def DeselectEdgesAndPolygons( obj ):
    for p in obj.data.polygons:
        p.select = False
    for e in obj.data.edges:
        e.select = False

# Get context elements: scene, camera and mesh
scene = bpy.context.scene
cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# Threshold to test if ray cast corresponds to the original vertex
limit = 0.0001

# Deselect mesh elements
DeselectEdgesAndPolygons( obj )

# In world coordinates, get a bvh tree and vertices
bvh, vertices = BVHTreeAndVerticesInWorldFromObj( obj )

print( '-------------------' )

for i, v in enumerate( vertices ):
    # Get the 2D projection of the vertex
    co2D = world_to_camera_view( scene, cam, v )

    # By default, deselect it
    obj.data.vertices[i].select = False

    # If inside the camera view
    if 0.0 <= co2D.x <= 1.0 and 0.0 <= co2D.y <= 1.0:
        # Try a ray cast, in order to test the vertex visibility from the camera
        location, normal, index, distance = bvh.ray_cast( cam.location, (v - cam.location).normalized() )
        # If the ray hits something and if this hit is close to the vertex, we assume this is the vertex
        if location and (v - location).length < limit:
            obj.data.vertices[i].select = True

del bvh


Flatten object without distorting it? So I've been using Blender for a solid 20 minutes, I have no prior 3d modeling experience other than one time like 4 years ago i made a cringe worthy knife cause why not. Anyway I have a sword I'm making just for fun to learn blender and right now its like a giant pointy stick

now all i know currently is extruding, scale, and somewhat mirroring. Now my question is how would I flatten this to make it more... sword like without having to do some edward elric human transmutation ending up with some Atrocity.

   But yes. I know I'm most likely using the wrong tool, and that's why I'm here ^-^. pls help me not make an alchemy Atrocity.

You can either scale the whole sword in object mode by selecting it and pressing S > X to scale along the X axis or,

If you prefer a little more detail select your sword, go into edit mode with Tab key, select only the faces corresponding to the blade part, and scale them along the X axis with S > X.

If you go with the first option of scaling in object mode don't forget to apply the scale afterwards by pressing Ctrl + A > Scale when you're done.

P.S. Scaling (and other modal operators in Blende) use the cursor distance to the center for the screen at the moment of invoking the operator for precision factor, so make sure your mouse is not too close to the center when calling the command or you may end up with an overly sensitive scaling factor that may yield weird results as in your second image.


My mouse is moving very hardly and slow, just at the moment i am rendering an image As Title says, My mouse is pretty snaily when Im rendering, even when Im not inside blender, it just makes my mouse go superslow, and it ruins my everyday rendering life.

Go to the task manager and begin to render something. Right click on the blender task that is taking the most processing power and press "go to details". When you have done that you should see a lot of programs and one of them will be marked(blender will be marked). Right click on it and go to 'set priority'  and set the priority to something low.

Now its fixed(hopefully) but your renders might take longer. Though I'm not sure if it's a noticeable amount slower.


How to undo applied subsurf? I applied the subdivision modifier a while ago.
But Blender can't take it anymore I really need to undo it!
I already start over a bit with the project but I really do not feel like making the wings all over again and the hair....can someone help me?

There is an option that could help you to "undo" an applied subdivision surface modifier, although the best options are already said in comments (ie: a real undo before closing the file or keeping an unapplied copy of the object):

here is how it works on a simple cube


Problem with the size of object in the blender interface after changing to a bigger monitor I recently changed my monitor with a bigger one. Windows normally controls the zoom of the apps, but I found some problems in blender. In edit mode for example the cross of the pointer is so small that I can't see it. I tried to increase the dpi from settings and the problem is partially resolved. Anyways, the arrow and other things are really small, so I can't work as well as I would in edit mode and so on. How can I solve this problem?

In order to enlarge the cursor size, font size and the overall windows, you can always go to User Preferences by pressing CTRL+ALT+U or by navigating through File drop-down menu. You will find many options there. Two such options are depicted below. Scale your blender Windows accordingly and check on Large Cursors. Navigate through other options and you will eventually get a good view of the cursor and Windows. Alternatively, you can also use Windows Magnifier to see Whats there on the screen from a fairly far distance. Don't forget to Save changes.


How to get the distance between two objects in the game engine? So far I could only find the method to get the current position of the objects. I think there is a method that returns the distance between them.

You can use mathutils.Vector locations

import bge

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
# the object the sensor is connected to
owner = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
# the other object you want to get the distance to
obj2 = scene.objects['obj_name']
length = (owner.worldPosition - obj2.worldPosition).length

print(length)

This allows for easier manipulation, so for example if you only want to measure distance on a map (without taking altitude into account) you can do.

length = (owner.worldPosition.xy - obj2.worldPosition.xy).length


Pack UVs without rotating them? I have an object with a UV unwrap, but there are overlapping parts. I want to pack islands to avoid any overlaps. However, the rotation of the islands matters due to using procedural textures. Pack Islands doesn't seem to give me any options, but is there a workaround or other tools that would let me stop overlapping UVs islands without rotating them?

UV Pack Islands operator has an option allow/forbid island rotation. Just press F6 after packing to adjust operator preferences like in 3D View operators.


Blender 2.8 Circular dependency error when baking textures I have a corridor. The corridor is made up of 2 pieces, a side, and a body(for testing purposes). The side and the body each have one material I UV unwrapped and then made visible in the EEVEE render through the node editor. After that, I have created a new UV map, and I also created a new image with the default settings. Following that, I switched from eevee to cycles because eevee doesn't have the bake option. What followed is a messed up texture bake, and an error reading out "Circular dependency error for cube.001 . I've read that I must disconnect the nodes of materials from the tree, but I did not understand which ones. I looked through a dozen videos and forum posts but couldn't figure it out, perhaps because I am a total noob as of right now.

So I've disconnected the node that is on the right, since I thought that it is what was specified in some forums. But what is resulted(just as I suspected) is a white bake that does not contain my two textures that I tried to bake.

I am close to the right answer however I am stuck. What do I need to do so I can remove all materials and then use a single one with the baked texture on it? Thank you in advance.

Alright, I figured this out! Hell yeah! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9airvjDaVh4

Just disconnect the TEXTURE node you are baking to. Then reconnect after it is finished baking. HTH.


object turns black when rotating in view Hi I i'm trying to render this logo out but I notice that it is black when it is sideways. No idea why it's doing this, any help or tips would be great. Thanks

[![enter image description here][2]][2]

When you see black artifacts on rendered model and you know that all normals are facing correct direction, then most likely it's still bad shading of faces. It will be present because of inappropriate topology of the mesh.

Taking into consideration your example, the reason for black artifacts is Ngon (face with more than 4 vertices, in your case n = 256) in the middle of the mesh. More than that, this face is non-planar (the vertices which form it aren't located on the same imaginary plane):

To fix this first make the face flat (and vertex loop which forms this face being located on flat "surface" too); then either inset the face (more a workaround than a solution) or fill it with new faces.

Start with flattening Ngon.
Use scaling along normals for that (press Alt+Space, choose Normal and scale, see How to flatten a face to avoid distortion (make an ngon planar) for more info).

Insetting Ngon

Once face is flat inset it to avoid presence of Ngon near the curved area of the mesh. Press I and change Thickness value of insetting.

However this isn't the best solution as the vertices will start overlapping when insetted further than half of the original Ngon. This way is easier though as it creates less geometry which is easier to select / handle with.

Fill with new faces

Delete the big face (choose Faces in Delete menu), select boundary loop and use Grid Fill via Ctrl+F or Mesh > Faces menu in 3D View header:

Note that this way create extra geometry at the cost of "all-quads". Beware that this can affect on render times / performance. Also it may be more difficult to handle with bigger amount of faces / verts. You may want to add created faces to a new vertex group while they are selected.

Do the same with second Ngon on the other side of mesh.


How can I change the transform by minimal code? I'm a beginner and I just want to set the location, rotation, and scale of the object.
I tried to get code by reverse engineering but when I moved, rotated, and scaled my object I saw complicated code.

if you want to get exact code you shouldn't change transform in view port.
when you change the transform in this panel it works:

Location
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
obj.location = (0,0,0)

Rotation
import bpy
import math

obj = bpy.context.object
obj.rotation_euler = (0,math.radians(90),0)

Scale
import bpy

obj= bpy.context.object
obj.scale = (1,1,1)


Rounding off a single corner of a cube There's many guides and approaches to rounding off edges or multiple vertexes of a cube. But I have not found a resource showing how to take a single corner of a cube and beveling it.
The closest I have come to reaching my goal is shown here.

I want the top side of the cube to have one rounded corner while the opposite face remains square.
The second image is taking from the cubes bottom side. It have become rounded at one corner, while I wanted it to remain square.

The remaining sides of the cube must be rounded off accordingly too. Providing a nice rounded corner, that can be placed upon another cube and have all their edges touch.

I'm still learning Blender so forgive me if I have missed the obvious.

Edit: To try and illustrate what I am aiming consider the two red blocks. The bottom side of the blocks are squares. They have however been rounded on each left and the back side. The nearest corner of the cubes seem to have been smoothed out.

I think that the "smooth" look of the corner is just a matter of shading (and shaders).

I suggest to simply model it as a cloister vault's corner. Any distortion of the profiles in my opinion would lead to a worse result.

If your boundary profiles are round, you can use the Bevel operator on the two top edge (shortcut Ctrl+B). Then add two (flattened) loopcuts near the corner and Remove Doubles.

Then control the shading (set it to smooth) by marking sharp edges  and adding an Edge split modifier as you can see in the first picture.


rendering: is a transparent material equivalent to a non-existent part? I would like to know if assigning a white transparent material on some parts of a mesh is equal to deleting thoses faces from the mesh; regarding the rendering times ?

I like to keep faces on my meshs and assigning a transparent material on it since it allows me to still be able to select edge loops, etc.

But I don't know it this is a good technique.

Thanks for your advices !

No, an "alphaed out area" is not the same as deleting those polygons.
In any raytracer (such as Cycles or Evee), a ray is cast (either from the light source into the camera or from the camera to the light source, I do believe, but somebody else can tell me if it's wrong, that in Blender we do the latter).
If this ray now has to go through one of these holes:
a.) If its cut out, it just goes through
b.) If its alpha, the ray hits the mesh, looks up the material, looks up the uv unwrapping, then decides that it has nothing to show and travels on with its path.
This said, adding a lot of more polygons to accomodate for the holes, will affect your blender file's size and the RAM usage.
There is no better or worse, its "case sensitive". For making trees, e.g. , some tutorials suggest to not use alphas, but cut the leave's plane to the mapped leaf texture (because then you could have ray intersecting hundres of leaves, but only in its alpha regions and slowing it down unneccessary).


Weird rectangular artifacts when using Radeon ProRender Any ideas why in viewport or rendering, I get these lighter colored artifacts on my screen? I tried disabling my GPU for render, but still happens.

I got the problem that looks pretty much like yours. Sounds stupid, but i fixed it by simply upscaling number of samples to 256. System specs: i3 8100, rx580 4gb 16gb ram windows 10 pro 1909.


Controlling Different Rotational Speed Of Two Interacting Objects enter link description hereI have a problem modeling a Geneva Gear with two rotating parts, a cam which is driving a spur gear. The cam rotates continually, but the spur gear rotates by the action of the cam. I either need to slow down the rotation of the spur gear or make it interactive with the cam. BTW, I'm a noob.

Please download Blender file and run animation. I am not going to render the animation. It's fine the way it is.

You can use drivers to achieve this. Here is a demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajMAvKRCTBg

Have fun!


Why does glass material not show in Blenders game engine when it is running? Why does glass material not show in Blenders game engine when it is running? I have recently been trying to create glass objects like windows for my game but when I run my game the glass material shows up black. I have done research and have found nothing but other things that has no to do with the answer I am looking for. So i figure coming here to ask my question is my last resort. So is there anyway to make glass material show up when blenders game engine is running?

First be warned the BGE is currently extremely buggy. Some settings lead to unreproducible effects. Sometimes GLSL renders everything white in the internal player but the external still works (Reloading the .blend or restarting Blender fixes this). Everytime I try to reproduce it with a saved file it doesn't happen (so I can't file a bug-report).

Setup of transparent material:

For other materials of faces that become visible through the transparency of the windows disable Backface Culling otherwise the faces wouldn't be rendered because Blender would assume that the faces aren't visible.

A simple scene with left window without faces and right window with z-tranparency material.

Shading Mode set to Multitexture:

Shading Mode set to GLSL

You find the Shading  Mode in the 3D Viewport's properties panel:

Demo .blend


How can you color smoke based on the smoke's temperature? As seen in the beginning of this video, the smoke is colored based on its temperature. I know how to use the attribute to color smoke based on flame and density, but how can I use it to color based on the smoke's temperature?

Blender Internal

As GiantCowFilms said, this isn't currently possible in Cycles (but probably will be in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future). In the meantime, it is possible with BI:

Setup your simulation. See How to simulate a gas? and the wiki for more detailed info.
Add a new material to the smoke domain, set the type to volume, and set the density to 0 (if you haven't already):

Note that this step is not needed if you used quick smoke to create your domain
Add a new texture, set the type to Voxel data, and select your domain object:

At the bottom of the texture settings, in the Influence panel, enable Density so that the texture influences the density of the texture:

Add another new texture, again with the type set to Voxel data and your domain object selected.  But this time set the source to Heat (there are also some fun options like Velocity). This will give you a black and white map of the temperature variations inside your smoke domain.

To colorize it, enable Ramp and set the color ramp to the colors of your liking. In my screenshot I moved the ends in a bit, as extreme temperatures like those at the ends of the ramp were not being reached in my simulation. (as an alternative to altering the color ramp, you could also increase the Contrast by adjusting the value slider below the ramp):

To make the color influence the color of the smoke, enable Reflection color and Transmission color in the influence panel:

Make sure the coordinates of both textures are set to Generated in Texture > Mapping. It should be by default, however I've noticed it behaving strangely recently (i.e. while writing this answer :P)

Result

(click on the image for a nicer version)

For some reason there is some flickering in the heat channel. I've noticed this with velocity before as well. (bug?)

Cycles

While it's not possible currently (as mentioned before), it is possible to create a similar effect to the video you linked in your question. By using the color blending features that were added since that video was made:

Set the color on the emitter objects:

This color can then be accessed via the attribute node:


How can I bake a rigid body simulation in 2.8? I' am completely new to blender. I've read the manual, but it only explains what baking is, but it's not clear how to do the baking itself.
In Cinema 4d it's as simple as going the the cache tab in the physics tag, and pressing bake. So either I' am completely blind or i don't know where to look.

It's in the Properties Panel > Scene > Rigid Body World > Cache


Exclude certain hair particles from face instancing I want to relocate faces of a mesh to the spline's points, which are extracted from hair particles. Face should be placed only at the end of spline, except some strands, where I want to have another face in the middle.

For this I made a loop to apply mask to extracted points:

Red outline - specific strands with 2 faces (defined by index)
Green outline - compare logic

Problem is that I need to specify more strands (from bigger project), and don't want to replicate outlined parts of nodetree for each strand. Like excluding of 300 strands means 300 inputs. There should be more optimized way to do it

You can use a boolean list as an iterator to switch between a list with only the end point and a list with a center point appended:

Of course you can also define the condition by the index of the spline. To do so, you can generate the boolean list as follows:

You start with a boolean list of Trues and turn the elements at the input indices to Falses. The parameter boolean list should be reassigned and used as an output.


MakerBot won't slice my model I need to make a casing for an Arduino device. Since I am new to Blender I am struggling a bit but I successfully managed to make a casing with a lid.

I also did some cleanup to prepare for 3D printing (I followed some Youtube tutorials).

But now when I export my model to .stl and try to slice it with Makerbot, I get an error

  messages.build.error.SliceException

What am I missing? I would be happy for any help

Here are some pictures an here is the file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pspotopopi91qy5/Casing.blend?dl=0

EDIT:

After supporting all orphaned vertices (thank you bertmoog for your answer) I could successfully slice the model. Now I have a problem, that MakerBot doesn't seem to slice all sides equally, though they are the same thickness.

It looks like this:

Should I thicken this side, or is there any less "hacky" solution?

You have (what looks to be) several orphaned edges in the model that I found by selecting all vertices in Vertex select mode, then switching to Face selection.  I can't say if this is what's causing the error because I don't have MakerBot, but I've removed the edges which serve no purpose.

EDIT (from your comment): With faces it's a little more complicated than just drawing an edge from point to point, especially when exporting to a different format/program.  The face needs to be planar (existing in a single plane) and no geometry should exist that doesn't support at least one particular face.  In your case, there were multiple 2D edges (in other words, they can't exist in real space... matter always exists in 3D) that I'm guessing Makerbot couldn't resolve because they weren't adding to the box's substance.

For the addition you made to the question, it looks like MakerBot isn't recognizing a face on the outside.  It also looks like it's missing the faces on the rim.  I deleted those faces, added two corner edges for more geometry, and then re-faced the rim and side.

Please try it and let me know, hopefully it will help.  If not, it's difficult to say what's going on:


how to color in 'wave' procedural texture (cycles) I'd like to add color to a 'wave' procedural texture.

Other procedural textures come with color options (like cheker e.g.) but this one doesn't.
I am new to the Cycles rendering engine and I don't know how to use nodes or combine them.

Is there a way to mix this with another shader so i get a colored procedural texture?

You can do this by putting the Color or Fac output of the texture through a Color Ramp Node and adjusting the colors and positions of the markers. This works both for Cycles and Blender Render
Cycles

Blender Render


How to change camera view size beginner here. Somehow I managed to reduce the camera view to this little square. How can I make it so the bounds are bigger? I've tried changing render dimensions,  focal length and camera sensor size, but this seems to only change the ratio. Simply scaling the camera does not work either.

Thnx

Home key for best fit, works for all panels.
Scroll up or down to adjust at your convenience.


How to create an operator to control the Radius of a spline and add a hotkey Blender has a hotkey to control the Tilt of a curve (Ctrl+T) but does not for the Radius.
When looking for Radius under User Preferences> Input I can't find it.
I was told it's because unlike the Tilt, the Radius does not have an operator.

How would I create an operator using the Operator template in blender for Radius so I can then map it to a hotkey?

There is a shortcut for controlling the radius of a curve, but it isn't that obvious.

You can do Alt+S to perform the Shrink/Fatten command and this will directly control the Radius value. It is actually listed in the Transform panel of the Toolbar (T).

Now if you're really set on seeing the process of making a new operator I've included the code below using the Operator Modal template in Blender's Text Editor (explanation below code):

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty, FloatProperty

#Code needed to make it an add-on
bl_info = {
    "name": "New Shrink/Fatten",
    "author": "Ray Mairlot",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    "location": "Space Key> Simple Modal Operator",
    "description": "",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "User Interface",
    }

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Move an object with the mouse, example"""
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

    first_mouse_x = IntProperty()
    original_values = []
    selected_points = []

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':

            #Calculate an offset based on the mouse position
            delta = self.first_mouse_x - event.mouse_x

            #Loop over points and assign this new radius
            for index, point in enumerate(self.selected_points):
                point.radius = self.original_values[index] + delta * 0.01

        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':
            #The operator has successfully finished, simply report 'Finished'
            return {'FINISHED'}

        elif event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:

            #The operator has been cancelled, restore the original data
            for index, point in enumerate(self.selected_points):
                point.radius = self.original_values[index]

            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):

        #Clear out values from a previous run of the operator
        self.original_values = []
        self.selected_points = []

        if context.object:
            self.first_mouse_x = event.mouse_x

            #Gather selected points by looping over the curve
            for spline in context.object.data.splines:
                for point in spline.bezier_points:
                    if point.select_control_point:
                        self.selected_points.append(point)
                        self.original_values.append(point.radius)

            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "No active object, could not finish")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

keymaps = []

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

    #Keymap registration
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Curve', space_type='EMPTY')
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new('object.modal_operator', 'Q', 'PRESS', alt=True)
    keymaps.append((km, kmi))

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalOperator)

    #Clearing out the keymaps when the add-on is removed
    for km, kmi in keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
        keymaps.clear()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Some explanation of the code:

A modal operator is a bit more complex than your standard operator as it has to allow interactivity, which means you have to handle the user inputting information and cancelling/confirming the end of the operator.

The basic idea of the script (shown in the invoke function) is that you loop through the bezier points of the curve, find which are selected, and store them (as the operator should probably only operate on the selected points). It also stores the original radius values in case the operator is cancelled and the original data needs to be restored (and so have an initial value to increase/decrease from).

Then, in the modal function we calculate a 'delta' (an offset - the default of the template is that it uses the x location of the mouse) to work out how much the radius should change based on mouse movement. We then loop over all the points again and assign a new value based on that delta.

If the operator is cancelled we loop over the points and restore the original data we stored at the beginning.

The keymaps are handled in the register() and unregister() functions which are run when the add-on is enabled or disabled respectively. To try and avoid overriding any existing shortcuts I am using Alt+Q to activate the operator.

It's not the simplest thing if this is your first script and many parts of the script can be improved (like not just using the 'x' position of the mouse to calculate the delta and making sure the selected object is a curve etc.), but this should give you a starting point to see which topics you need to research further.


Rotate Perspective in Ortho So when you push the numpad 3 key in ortho you swap to side view, is there a way to rotate my view 45 degrees from that view on the y axis? I am trying to use the knife project and would like to know how to rotate my camera in future scenarios.

You can rotate the view in the Y-axis in 15 degrees increments by holding down SHIFT + ALT and scrolling the mousewheel up/down.


How can to change verts values in the curve model? Hi Blender Developers and Users:

I have curve models with ply format as following specifications:

Verts: 177, Faces: 0; Tris: 0;

For example, I want change verts value from 177 to 200 (increasing)or to 150 (decreasing).
In other words, I want to interpolate points in these models.

How can I do it?

Please guide me;
Shahrokh

In general, you can't directly affect the vertices created by curves without writing those curves to mesh (alt c -> mesh from curve.)

However, you can increase or decrease the number of vertices created by a curve.  Increasing the resolution of the curve in properties/data/shape will create additional vertices along the length of a curve.  If your curve has a bevel, increasing its resolution creates additional vertices along the radius of the bevel.  If your object is using a bevel object, you can change the resolution of the bevel object instead.


Is it possible to apply texture on every object in a image Here is the picture (randomly chosen):

And here is the texture:

Is it possible to apply this texture to the surface of every object?

Yes, if all of them have UV coordinates then you can make a material that uses UV coordinates to map the image. If not, you can use a material that uses generated coordinates (if in Cycles, maybe use Box mapping) and then you can mention that material in the over ride field in the Render Layers dialog.

edit: I had assumed you meant objects created, but now I realize you might be talking about a found picture - in this sense, you would have to model proxies for every object and use material(s) that share that image texture.


How can i extrude a text or element to the sides correctly? I want to make a border for a text, with extrude option (no other option than that) because i will apply that too to another models that are plain like text later.

When i extrude the object, like on this example, i want to scale it but it moves to a single side, but i need it to be like a perfect border. of every element of the model, when i extrude them together.

And even, if possible extrude at the same time the inside part of the 'e'.

Edit: it's like using the Mesh Option 'Extrude individual' but not by separating the faces as different cubes, just like a general extrude, for creating a 'border'.

Thanks in regards.

I found a solution, to do what i wanted is to Scale Normals ( ALT + S)

Extruding along an edge without creating new faces


How to rig eyelid to follow non-spherical eyeball i would like to rig sonic eyelid just like in the games.

here is my eyelid.

Shapekeys and lattice would probably not give satisfying results, so you could use a system of bones and create a series of poses to open and close your eyes. Giving the curve of your eyes, 3 poses should be necessary and enough. You'll probably need to scale one or two bones so that it sticks to the eye and don't emerge out of the face. Also, you may need more bones if you want to be more precise (like 3 horizontal rows of 2 bones instead of 3x1).

The method: create 3 bones within your character armature and parent them to the head bone. Here there is one bone for each row of faces (I've simplified your mesh). Give them names like eyelid1_L, etc... Parent the mesh to the armature With Empty Groups, then assign each faces row to the vertex group it is supposed to be part of, i.e. the group with the name of the bone that is supposed to control it. Now when you'll move a bone, the corresponding part of the mesh will follow.


How to calculate specific liquid volume? I'm new to Blender and have a question regarding modeling of realistic scaled objects.
I'm modeling a complex shaped bottle and I would like to scale it (using metric values) to hold a specific volume of water.

More specifically:

I know the volume of water - 0.5 liters.
I have the bottle model.
I want to know the realistic dimensions in millimeters of the bottle model that would hold 0.5 liters(it's diameter along it's height etc).

Doing this with a simple shape (e.g. cube or cylinder) is easy to calculate but for a more complex object it's not.

Also, is it possible to simulate flow of a specific quantity of liquid? In that way I could fill the model and in a few iterations have the right proportions.

You could use a cube, to scale it that it has a volume of 500ml, calculate the 3rd root of 500 ~ 7.93 (this should be the edge-length) scale the cube to this size.
For a bottle you might want to model a funnel.

For the fluid simulation setup:

Set the cube as fluid
The vessel as obstacle
The funnel as obstacle

For all set the Rigid Body Collisions shape as Mesh.

Add a domain object as domain
Set the rigid body types to passive otherwise they will fall down.
Increase the resolution to ~90 (more would be better but extremely time consuming)
Bake the fluid sim.

After filling your vessel you can use the methods on exact measure as described here:
How to model effectively using exact measurements?.

Instead of pasting all settings I uploaded the .blend here


Why do my object collapses when moving armatures? I have rigged the model, when moving or rotating the bone my model deforms.

Weight paint of my model,

When manipulate the bone,

And I am pretty sure that I have weight painted model correctly, I used point weighting for this. Please someone help!
Blender file here.. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwKqh0sK7cfeOFBOMEZFTVNJMmM/view?usp=sharing

Actually, there is issues with the Weight Painting, the Armature and the mesh itself. I'll try to explain:

You did the weight painting for the left hand side of the character, and it seems to be fine, but what went wrong is mirroring it over correctly to the right hand side. When you rotate the hand joint there, some stray vertices in the legs move also, which should not happen. When I checked the vertex groups, the right hand joint was actually ok. It took me a while to find out that those vertices accidentally became members of one of the finger bones (PK.1.R). Since the finger bones change their location and orientation when you rotate the hand (they are a child of the hand bone), strange stuff happens on the legs. So here the weights need to be mirrored correctly over to the other side. Unfortunately, mirroring them using Blenders Mirror Vertex Weights tool failed for me when testing, I'm not sure why. Also check the center bones (spine bones for example), one of them is moving a finger, and all of them seem to affect parts of the face, which they surely shouldn't.

On the mesh I would question why the shirt has a thickness to it. Remember when you model that you also need to weight paint it correctly. From the inside, which is a pain! You can do yourself a favour and delete the inner faces, they never appear in a render anyways. Also in the helmet, it looks to me as if a vertex has been dissolved accidentally. That n-Gon in the back just shouldn't be there, you should have three quads instead.

And lastly, when using an Armature, unless you really intend to do so, make sure the Subsurf Modifier comes AFTER the armature in the stack. In your model, the Subsurf is on top of it, in Blender this means it is executed first, and the resulting Polygons will then be deformed by the armature. Not only does this make the calculation slower, and also the deformation gets a "chewing gum look" to it, it also has the catch that the amount of subdivisions can differ between viewport and render time. That means, the deformation will be calculated differently when you render than when you work on it, so you never see the final result correctly. If you swap the stack order, the hand deformation looks much better immediately.


Sculpt brush isn't drawing much detail I already subdivided a lot from the multiresolution modifier, and when I draw with the sculpt brush it doesn't sculpt details. What am I doing wrong?

As you can read on the upper right corner of your window, you,ve got 29.641 vertex, it's not enough for fine details. Try subdividing until you reach 1.000.000.
In object mode switch to "Smooth Shading".
If the computer gets slow, subdivide you model in different objects (P key in edit mode mode), and sculpt them one by one, using the multiresolution modifier to swithc between different levels of details.


How to turn up light bounces to infinity I'm trying to make an infinity mirror in blender. I've managed to make a two way mirror by using the back facing geometry input to apply two different materials to either side of a face. Everything works OK but I only get 6 layers of bounce between the two mirrored layers before it stops.

How can I turn the number of bounces up to infinity so that the light pattern continues on indefinitely or until it fades to black?

Thanks. Here is an example rendering:

Increase Transparency Bounces and Glossy Bounces in the Light paths

More info: Simulate Infinity mirror effect


Create smooth vertical gradient with Emission shader and Diffuse shader I am a absolute blender beginner. Today I created my first scene which was exactly what I wanted to achieve, but then I Ctrl+A to re-scale everything and added a particle system an boooom my perfect material didn't work after anymore. I am so desperate right now because I spent hours and hours to recreate what I have done before but it will not appear like before, although it was really "simple" :-) Pleeeease please help me to recreate my scene. This is what it looked like today in the morning (with me in the reflection sorry):

I made this scene by building simple mountains like in this tutorial.

Material of the mountain-plain = green Diffuse BSDF.
Right above the camera an Area lamp with size 16.000 and Strength 4000.00
World Setting: Volumne Scatter with a light blue color and Density 0.008
The moon (UV-Sphere) with an Emission Shader white color and Strength 1.100

For every single mountain I selected the faces, created a material and assigned it. For these materials I used the nodes as seen in this screenshot (this is what I tried to recreate):

What I am not sure of are the settings of the above black&white ColorRamp I think I used the Fresnel Node instead!? Important was, that in the color ColorRamp I used the same start color as I used for the mountain plain to achieve (so I thought) a smooth transition. It will not work out like before - I get hard color edges, not as much glowing as in the picture from earlier today..
Thanks for any help !!

Better method would be to use Separate XYZ node as a factor between Diffuse/Emission shader.

It basically take Z height of your mesh and assign material based on it.

You can control factor by Color Ramp node.

Edit:

First of all, issue is from Mapping Node. You need to switch it to Point, set Scale to 1, 1, 1, and lower Z Location value. This will be our 'starting' position. Also set Color Ramp to default state (black to the left, white to the right):

Now if you want to control gradient falloff we will use the simplest (I think) method for it by changing only Scale and Location Z values in Mapping Node.

Scale Z value will control gradient falloff - lower value smoother gradient.

Location Z value will move it up and down.

Look at some of these examples (Location Z and Scale Z noted on pictures):

And going further if you want smooth falloff (top left corner) and hard emission on top of it, you can move white value in Color Ramp node to the left a bit to tweak it.

Blend file:

Here are some of the examples, and little extra fun with Color Ramp node.


How to compile template_list with some object in scene 2.8 I was looking at this uilist, but I understand very little about how to replace materials with objects:

class MATERIAL_UL_Example(bpy.types.UIList):

    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname):
        ob = data
        slot = item
        ma = slot.material

        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:
            if ma:
                layout.prop(ma, "name", text= "", emboss=False, icon_value=icon)

and in the panel class:

row.template_list("MATERIAL_UL_Example", "", ob, "material_slots", ob, "active_material_index",rows = 3)

I was wondering how to compile a list for some objects in the scene, I would need to compile objects based on a string property or by name, something like:

for o in scene.object:
    if "My ob name" in o.name:
        #put this object into the list

Edit of previous.

From the related answer to one of your previous question, edited to display all objects in the scene collection.  (Class names still reflect material based nature of original)

Compare to original, and you'll see it's minimal change to display one collection or another.

import bpy

from bpy.types import PropertyGroup

from bpy.props import (
    CollectionProperty,
    IntProperty,
    BoolProperty,
    StringProperty,
    PointerProperty,
)

class MATERIAL_UL_extreme_matslot(bpy.types.UIList):

    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname):
        scene = data
        ob = item
        #print(data, item, active_data, active_propname)

        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:

            layout.prop(ob, "name", text="", emboss=False, icon_value=layout.icon(ob))

class SCENE_PT_materials(bpy.types.Panel):

    bl_label = "My label"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_materials"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "My Category"

    def draw(self, context):

        scn = context.scene
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        col.template_list(
            "MATERIAL_UL_extreme_matslot",
            "",
            scn,
            "objects",
            scn,
            "active_object_index")

classes = (,
           MATERIAL_UL_extreme_matslot,
           SCENE_PT_materials)

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)

    bpy.types.Scene.active_object_index = IntProperty()

def unregister():
    # fill this in.
    pass

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

To sum up the changes, The object that owns the collection is scene the collection "objects" -> scene.objects its item will be an object.

The active index is scene.active_object_index which I haven't set to anything.  Something like

scene.objects[:].index(context.object)

will set it to the active object.


How to make a growing text animation? I'm trying to replicate a text animation from GreyScaleGorilla (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMMNTaI4wD8&t=2s) but can't find the right way to do it in blender.
I tried beveling the text, transforming the text to curve or mesh and applying different modifiers, I even tried animation nodes. But as my nickname suggest I am a noob in blender so I need some guidance here.

Thank you very much.

Growing Text -   Rendered with OpenGL in Blender 2.77a -

Edit dated 3rd Dec. 2018 -

Whilst as you point out this is a trifle complex for your needs, I was remiss in the original answer below, not producing the final effect shown in your Youtube video link.

The original answer deals primarily with a method of 'box masking' to simulate mesh growth without disturbing that mesh and consequently avoiding the tendency to end up with ugly surface streaks.

This added section deals with the final visual effect you were hoping to achieve, albeit seeking a simpler solution.

For those who have watched the video and may be interested in how it might be achieved in Blender, most steps were as described below.

Viz - This new text was also extruded, converted to mesh, and parted to be individual letters, although I don't think the last step was entirely necessary.

The letters' forward and rear faces were removed to another layer so the originals end up as hollow shells.  (much as a cylinder without end caps)

These were 'solidified' with that modifier, ready for their removed faces in the other layer to be extruded, coloured black, and used to fill in the hollowed letters.

As for the growth animation of their white exterior, the method described below in the original answer was used again here.

-==============-

Original post -

This isn't exactly "Noob" territory but it does pretty much 'Write" the text as requested.

Rather than interfere with the text's mesh, I find it less troublesome to leave the text as is and wrap each letter in a similarly shaped 3D "invisibility cloak". (mask)

The mask's end-cap is then progressively moved back with some shape-shifting method made to follow a letter's contours, revealing that part of the mesh that progressively ends up outside the mask.

Mask Z fighting (with it's own surfaces) and shading distortions aren't of concern because of it's invisibility.

OpenGL masking is used here because they can be discriminatory and 3D meshed (bevelled) two essential elements for this effect.

To this end the text is converted to mesh and letters separated to become individual objects.

Within each, a "Curve Path" shaped the same as the letter is added and that bevelled using a square plane curve.  (The plane has no face and converted to a curve with ALT-C)

Letter segments or sections are therefore wrapped in a rectangular 'pipe' which is much the same shape as the letter it's concealing.  All of the masks are assigned the same Material Slot.
(For masking - Diffuse at half, Material --> Transparency --> Alpha set to 0.008, and both Speculars set to zero)

Because these 'pipes' are left as curve-paths, their start  "Resolution" slider in the path's Geometry tab, can be keyframed to roll back the pipe's end-cap and progressively reveal letters as though being newly formed or written.

With letters in such close proximity and when viewed at an angle, a mask can end up cutting holes in an adjacent and previously revealed letter.

Some knowledge therefore as to what makes these masks tick is going to be more than a little helpful, particularly in the way their discrimination works as related to the 'age' of objects to be masked.  It's what makes them so useful and allows letters already revealed to remain unscathed by 'younger' masks.

Read up on this here ->

How to put a mask into 3d space

If you prefer to use Blender's Internal Render then it's own layer masking or perhaps nodes will have to be employed, along with any post production necessary.  Similarly with Chroma Key.


With upgrade to 2.78a menu bar for 3d View window is at the top In the 3d View window I am referring to the menu bar where you can select between vertex, edge, or face select. With my upgrade to 2.78a that menu bar is at the top of the 3d View window and I would like it back on the bottom of the 3d view window. How may I do that please?

right click on the menu bar and select Header>Flip to bottom.


Path constraints problem I'm a beginner 3d modeler and animator that wish to take my animations more seriously this year. I wish to attempt at making a simple walk cycle that's following a path. But when I do path constraints my model is somewhere that I can't even find. I tried shift s on one of the vertices on the path and my armature model, didn't work. I used the follow path option, also didn't work. I'm not sure if it's the location that's the problem or I mess up on something, but anyone have any ideas what it is?
I looked up this issue, but they didn't help much either and that most of the solutions are mostly old.
Sorry, if I'm asking too much, I'm just really confused.
I'm not sure how to add a second image, but here what it looks like when I do path constraints.

Basically the constrained object (a mesh, a bone, an empty) has to be set (or keyframed) in the world origin location (0,0,0) when the follow path constraint is set up, so that in the first frame of the constrained action it will be exactly where the first point of the path is, and in the last on the last.
If you still have offset problems and you don't want to change your elements you can create  an empty, set it as path constrained, and parent the root bone of your armature to the empty, then move the root bone to the appropriate location on the first frame.