Movie sound/music editing : better solution than VSE? Third question of my concern about producing high quality short movies. The question is quite simple :

Is audio as weak as video in the VSE ? Is there another way of managing sound than the VSE ?

It would be convenient to use the VSE for audio, as it is (at least for me) intuitive and easy to work with. I know I could do the same work with like Audacity, but it seems really painful from my point of view. The only missing feature is a visualization of audio volume, but I'm guessing some add-ons exist for that.

There is an add-on for exporting the audio to Ardour: http://blendervelvets.org/en/blue-velvet/
And if you export the video as one file, it can be added to Ardour too, so you'll be editing the audio in a DAW while watching the video in sync. However, Ardour is only free, if you know how to build it yourself, or you'll have to pay "something".

Alternatively, there is an EDL export add-on(text-file), which will allow you to export info for one video track and four audio tracks, but ex. Davinci Resolve will not import audio from EDL files - in D.R. EDL files are only used for conforming video edits. https://github.com/tin2tin/ExportEDL

Third option add-on-wise is to use this add-on to roundtrip single audio clips in ex. Audacity: https://github.com/Joeboy/blender-addons/blob/master/open_strip_source.py This one does not work right away on Win 8, because you'll have to manually add the full path for audacity.exe. I might add some more functionality to this add-on, to make it more user-friendly.

Jack could be used on Linux to control an external volume monitor: https://audaspace.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/jack-transport/

Last option is to export each channel as a stem audio file(just one file pr. track with beep for sync) and import those in a DAW and make cuts where needed.


Object in texture mode looks like solid mode When I am in texture mode one of my objects looks like it is in solid mode. The model is textured like all other models in the scene, but it doesn't look like it is in texture mode.

Screenshot will explain better:

What this model looks like.
What all models should look like in texture mode.

Ensure that Maximum draw type is set to Textured in Properties > Object > Display:

See this answer for a 2.8 screenshot.


How can I avoid this camera tracking error? "Some data failed to reconstruct (see console for details)" I'm currently following Sebastien Konig's Match Track Blend DVD and have encountered a problem where despite matching camera type, lens type and trying to solve for distortion, I'm getting the following console messages when I try to Solve Camera Motion:

bpy.ops.clip.solve_camera()
Some data failed to reconstruct (see console for details)

And I'm getting an average Solve Error of 0.9561, where I'm used to getting .4 and below. So what's going on?

The related files can be found here.

This may be related to another question I've asked on the site - Why can I not select camera trackers in the graph view of the Movie Clip Editor?
I figured that the issues were different enough that I should give them different questions.

Many thanks to everyone who built and everyone who visits this site. StackExchange/Answers style-sites are very useful to me and I appreciate any time spent trying to answer the questions people ask here. (Thus ends that digression!)

Simple:
Here are a few measures to fix this issue:
Take good footage that isn't to shaky or blurred.
Double check that all of your tracks are accurate.
Add more accurate tracks.
Delete a track, then solve camera motion if it didn't help, chose a different track and then and repeat.
make sure that not all your tracks are on one single plane in space (eg. on a wall)
If all fails, then your shot is simply to difficult to solve.


Is there a way to re-orient normals? I need all my normals to be oriented in the same angle, but as you can see from my screenshot, the outer edge are turned one way and the inner edge are 90º offset, so I'm just wondering if there's a way to manually turn them?

By definition the face normals are perpendicular to the face and can't be adjusted to a specific rotation.

To alter the way the hair is emitted, you want to use something other than the normals to determine the initial direction, you can adjust this in the particle settings.

Enable the advanced option which makes the velocity panel available for hair particles. Set the normal value to 0.0 and change the emitter object values to the direction you want the hair to go.


Using a background image in UV editor? To trace tattoos with paint mode I have a 3D model which has it's own textures and UV. And I want to draw some tattoos on these textures.

But I want to display an reference image, on top in the UV editor (in paint mode). And then I want to trace the reference image, and I want the paint to go on the original texture.

Is this possible? Thank You.

All steps will be done in UV Image Editor (Paint Mode).

Create New Texture Mask, name it as you want.
Choose Mask Mapping > Stencil.
Go to Properties Panel > Texture.
Select Brush Mask - "Your texture name".
Load your tattoo image.

If you have it white on black color you can skip those steps.
Under Image Sampling Tab select Calculate.
Under Colors Tab check Ramp and switch color handles and adjust if needed.
Go back to UV Image Editor and trace your mask.

  Note: Manipulating Stencil in Mask mode is a bit different.

  Alt+RightClick - Move
  Shift+Alt+RightClick - Scale
  Ctrl+Alt+RightClick - Rotate


Remove Tracking Markers I have some footage I am testing out the motion tracker with, and the footage looks like to this:

As you can see, I have added many tracking markers to the head of the minifigure. I have added a new face onto the head, but unfortunately, I do not know a way of removing the old tracking markers.

Does anyone know of a good way of removing those, or a way to track the head without requiring all those tracking markers? You can see that I learned how to track the head from this question, though, sadly, I have to use 8-14 markers in order to get a proper track:

Motion tracking round objects

If it's impossible to remove the markers, or use a different method of tracking, does anyone have any tips on the best way to position the tracking markers?

Thanks in advance!

Removing the markers is quite simple:

What you need:

Scale accurate model of the mini-figures head
A million dollars and contacts at ILM :P

What you need to do

Align your model of the mini figure to the tracked head exactly even the slightest error can be catastrophic.
Project the image back onto the model head, using the UV project modifier. Be sure the create a UV map specifically for this purpose. It doesn't matter what it looks like since it will be overwritten. See image for settings.
Create a B&W matte on the model head, using texture paint, of where you wan't to remove the markers. Be sure to feather it. You may wan't to create a matte for each and every marker (see later steps), but it will be a pain.
Take your projected image, and move it up or down based on where available matching pixels are. You may need to do this on an individual marker bases. The example material only supports one direction.
Make the texture shadless (BTW, because of the complex mapping, I'd this in cycles, it will render pretty fast since it will only be an emission shader) be sure to make it transparent outside of the white areas of your matte.

Click for larger image

Render and composite over!
If it doesn't work, kiss your million bye bye and call up your buddies at ILM!

Final notes:

For best results you should update the texture on each frame, so that the paint over will animate with the reflections, which is why I recommended the UV project modifier.
If you have trouble, just ask which steps you need elaborated.
This will take some tweaking to make it look correct.


Why are there dots on Edges? Why are there dots on some of the edges while other edges do not have dots?

How do I remove these dots since they affect the subdivide smooth results?:

That means you have zero sized faces over those edges and you mesh topology is messy. Probably the leftover of unfinished operations or the result of some undesired zero sized extrude.

You can try and clean it up by selecting all with A and then with W Menu > Remove Doubles option.


duplicate a mesh on the top (many times) I want to duplicate a mesh many times on the top of it.

This is my object

and I want to have something like this:

I am very noob at the moment :) Thanks!

In the Properties menu at the right, go to the Modifiers section:

Select Add Modifier and select Array:

Change the Relative Offset value on the top (the X axis value) to 0:

Change the Relative Offset value on the bottom (Z axis) to 1:

Change the Count value to however many duplicates you want:

If you actually want the original object on the top like in your example, change the Relative Offset bottom value (Z axis) to -1 instead of 1.

The duplicates will not be editable as actual mesh by default. The advantage to this is that you can change all your settings as many times as you want, but if you want actual mesh duplicates click the Apply button on the Array modifier.


Add-on, how to format and use a custom path This is the addon I'm trying to modify
https://github.com/florianfelix/render_bbake

I'm using it to bake and export textures for meshes that were imported via fbx.

I want to add a path button to it that will allow me to specify a folder for all textures (of all objects/meshes) to be exported to.

I got the folder browse button in there.  But I don't know how to format the path before the add-on appends the mesh/ texture filename.

Here's the modified add-on:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B41y2IFAXw53bkVPb04yX3g2X2c/view?usp=drivesdk

These are the relevant changes:

added this property to the BBake_Scene_Data(PropertyGroup) class in batch_bake_object_data.py:

all_path = StringProperty(
name='All Path',
subtype='DIR_PATH',
default='',
description='Save all images of all objects in this folder',)

added this to the def draw call in batch_bake_ui.py:

row=box_global.row(align=False)
col.separator()
row.prop(scene_settings, 'all_path')

modified the testob(ob, context) function (gave it a new parameter so I could pass in the scene settings data object) in batch_bake_operators.py to this:

test = context.scene.bbake.all_path
if test:
    path = test
else:
    path = bpy.path.abspath(ob_settings.path)

if not os.path.isdir(path):
    try:
        os.makedirs(path)
    except:
        msg('FAILED to create bake Folder:%s\n for object "%s"\nSkipping.' %(path, ob.name))
    return False

Running this, having specified a folder, "all_path" (just a random empty folder on the desktop), I get a "no such file or directory" error.

Note:99.9% of the code is not mine. It belongs to the former maintainers of this plugin and/or florien/fenix)

Thanks a ton for any help!

Edit:  I'm guessing I'm either not getting the string from all_path the right way, or I'm not formatting it properly to work with os.path.isdir.

It appears I was out of context.

Replacing:
context.scene.bbake.all_path

With:
bpy.context.scene.bbake.all_path

returned the string I was looking for.


Problem with grease pencil How do i get rid of the grease pencil marks in blender? I put a couple marks on my mesh by mistake and i want to get rid of em all. I already tried using erase and it doesn't work.

You can find the Grease Pencil layers controller the Properties panel of the 3D Viewport

Press the button under the cursor in the picture to remove the acrive layer and, consequently, all the strokes contained in it.


ColorRamp following musgrave islands I'm trying to create islands using musgrave texture and i would like the ColorRamp colors to follow the shape of the islands that musgrave texture does.
for now i got this:

but i would like something like this (will manage colors later):

Can you guys tells me if it is possible and how to achieve it?

It works just like you described :).
You're just mixing two different Musgrave textures (one is set to 2D and one to 3D)
Use the same texture and it will work.


Why does Rendering Reflection + Refraction take much longer than Rendering them Separately? In Blender Internal, to simulate glass properly, you have to enable Glossy, (Mirror) and Refraction. (Raytraced Transparency)

However, rather than taking length of reflection only render + length of refraction only render (In this low resolution case, 00:03.33)
it takes much longer:

Material settings:

What is the technical reason for this? How might I render reflection + refraction faster? (maybe some technique of rendering separately and recombining?)

Enabling both reflection and refraction enables new light paths that are not rendered when only one of them is enabled. Instead of just reflection + reflection or refraction + refraction it now also has to render reflection + refraction and refraction + reflection.

Further, at each depth Blender will trace both a reflection and a refraction ray, which can make the number of rays to trace go up quickly. For ray depth 1, 2, 3, 4, .. you get 2, 4, 8, 16, .. rays.

Cycles on the other hand will randomly pick between tracing either a reflection or a refraction ray on each bounce. This avoids the quick increase in number of rays for a single sample, but it also means each individual sample contains more noise.


How do i delete faces and keep faces next to deleted faces smooth? Basically I am trying to delete faces from a place and doing so either by selecting deleting faces only or disolve faces makes the faces around the now deleted faces unsmooth and jagged.

Is there a way i can delete current faces, but keep faces around the deleted faces smooth?

This is the gif of the problem i have

You may try adding the extra loopcuts at the edge. Select the whole mesh with A and get rid of tris with Alt+J. Add two loopcuts (Ctrl+R) and place them very close to the edge. Then triangulate the mesh with Ctrl+T.

Result:

If you don't want to add extra geometry as above just check the Autosmooth checkbox in a Mesh Data header.


Umbrella animation, cloth penetration I'm triyng to animate an umbrella like a folding fan, i've hooked the cloth to the rods, it follows the rods and makes good folds after the solidify and subdivision modifiers, but the cloth is penetrated by the rods. I don't know how to solve this problem.. i've tried to change some physics value but the bake always went bad.
Images https://imgur.com/a/sBYO36q

I have been having the same problem, and already spend some nights of the last week on this. The best solution i found was to export and import the cloth simulation as described in this link. After that i put the fabric a little bit higher so that it doesn't collide anymore.
It is the best thing i come up with, but i hope someone comes with a better solution.
How can I bake the cloth simulation into keyframed vertices or shape keyed vertices?


How to get the mouse coordinates in 3space relative to the local coordinates of the active object? How to get the mouse coordinates in 3space relative to the local coordinates of the active object?

This code gives the position of the mouse relative to the world coordinates, and I need to get exactly local

view_vector = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_vector_3d(region, rv3d, coord)
loc = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_location_3d(region, rv3d, coord, view_vector)

You can obtain the mouse coordinates from a modal operator and use the current event information.

Here I used one of the script templates 'operator modal draw' with little modification in order to use and translate the mouse position.

Your question's relative parts of the code are commented below (please comment if you need more information):

import bpy
import bgl
import blf

from bpy_extras import view3d_utils

def draw_callback_px(self, context):
    font_id = 0
    blf.position(font_id, 15, 100, 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 12, 72)
    blf.draw(font_id, "Mouse position: " + str(self.mouse_pos[0]) + "/" + str(self.mouse_pos[1]) )
    blf.position(font_id, 15, 115, 0)
    blf.draw(font_id, "3D position from " + self.object.name + ": " + str(self.loc[0]) + "/" + str(self.loc[1]) + "/" + str(self.loc[2])  )

class ModalDrawOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Draw a line with the mouse"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal View3D Operator"

    def modal(self, context, event):
        context.area.tag_redraw()

        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':

            #Get the mouse position thanks to the event
            self.mouse_pos = [event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y]

            #Contextual active object, 2D and 3D regions
            self.object = bpy.context.object
            region = bpy.context.region
            region3D = bpy.context.space_data.region_3d

            #The direction indicated by the mouse position from the current view
            view_vector = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_vector_3d(region, region3D, self.mouse_pos)
            #The 3D location in this direction
            self.loc = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_location_3d(region, region3D, self.mouse_pos, view_vector)
            #The 3D location converted in object local coordinates
            self.loc = self.object.matrix_world.inverted() * self.loc

        elif event.type in {'ESC'}:
            bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_remove(self._handle, 'WINDOW')
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        if context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            args = (self, context)
            self._handle = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw_callback_px, args, 'WINDOW', 'POST_PIXEL')

            #Keeps mouse position current 3D location and current object for the draw callback
            #(not needed to make it self attribute if you don't want to use the callback)
            self.mouse_pos = [0,0]
            self.loc = [0,0,0]
            self.object = None

            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "View3D not found, cannot run operator")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Object origin is being set to wherever the 3d cursor is even if i move it. How do i fix it? the object origin is currently at the location of the 3d cursor. Right clicking moves the 3d cursor (i have left click to select on) but it also moves the object origin/rotation point. doing ctrl alt shft c and selecting any of the option does nothing. How do i set things so that the object origin just stays in the middle of the object.

Your Transform Pivot is just set to Pivot Cursor. Press Ctrl+, to go back to Median Transform. The Shortcut for Cursor Pivot is by the way . so you might accidently clicked it. This answer only applies if you are a beginner and you don't know what the object origin is. Your question doesn't provides an image so I just assumed it


Inherit particle animation birth time in particle systems in 2.90-3.0? Basically, I have shape keys for rain drops, splats etc all done in shader mapping. Whenever I pick these animated objects as particles then animation starts globally meaning that on frame 1 all of the animations start simultaneously.
How to make these particles inherit their birth time? Are there other any options rather than installing Animation Nodes?
upd:
I have tiled drops and splats so the only option to animate I've found was to import image as plane then animate mapping to make a loop. I've used constant interpolation so it animates as a sequence. Then I wanted to add numerous splats so particle system was used which emits my animated planes without gravity. However all of planes have same looped animation which starts globally. Meaning that splat loop does not start on birth but keeps playing from frame 1

you will hate the answer, but that's the only one i know:
make a collection for your movie-planes and render them as particles:

Copy and move your movie planes to that collection.

Change your startframe in the shader editor for each movie as you like:


If i scale down parts of my UV unwrap, how can I make the rest utilize the new space? For example I have a building to unwrap, i use smart uv project and in the resulting uv map the UV Island for the roof is too large and I can scale it down. after scaling it down how can I make the rest fill up the newly created space? I tried using the "pin" option on the scaled down roof uv island, then clicked smart uv project again, but that doesn't work. Is there any way to automatically make it fill up the new space?
Thanks!

So you want to arrange UV islands within the UV space.

Select the UV islands you want to arrange
Go UV > Pack Islands
Done


2.8 How to lasso select in edit mode? little help needed here if you don't mind?
So, in 2.79 I was very used to lasso selecting in edit mode - select, move, select, move etc.

But in 2.8 we now have a 'select' button and a 'move' button and I really haven't found a way to do both things at once in the seamless way I was able to in 2.79?

Do I really have to go all the way up to the top left corner of the screen and PRESS the select button, then go all the way back to the model (which is where I'd rather stay) to select it, then go all the way back to the top left corner of the screen again and PRESS the move button, then go all the....you get the idea?

In 2.79 I would hold ALT to drag a lasso around a bunch of verts then be straight back to moving those verts around, but in 2.8 I'm trecking all over the screen?

I know that personal work flows are very different and always hard to explain, but is anyone else feeling that the flow here isn't quite as fluid as in 2.79?

Cheers

Wayne

The workflows can in fact be even more seamless in 2.80 if you dedicate some time to learning the new functionality

No, you do not have to drag the mouse to the corner of the screen every time you want to perform some operation.

There is a whole lot of ways to do it now. I am not even sure I will be able to list them all, but:

You can have move tool active and Ctrl + right-click to use lasso select.
You can have any tool active and Ctrl + right-click to use lasso select and transform stuff with regular transform hotkeys G,R,S.
You can select Select Lasso tool from the toolbar and then use it without the move gizmo visible and transform stuff with the regular transform hotkeys G,R,S.
You can switch between tools using keyboard shortcuts: Shift+Space->2 for Select Lasso, Shift+Space->T, or G,R,S for transforms.
You can right-click on the Select Lasso and Move tools on the toolbar and choose Add To Quick Favorites and then access them from Quick favorites menu with Q.
You can assign any shortcuts you desire to them.


Hide specific wire line In this model using 2.70 with toon-rendering and freestyle some edges (circled in red in the image) are rendered that should not be rendered.

I am a old man came from very old blender, so please be specific!

How can i keep only these edges from rendering?

Finally i got it now.

Every face have a direction, some faces had a wrong side, so i had to flip the faces.


Tris vs quads in substance painter I've downloaded Substance painter a couple days ago. Online i've read that is better to triangulate your model before exporting it to substance painter and this has confused me a lot. What's the point of retopo in quads when dynotopo aready works with tris? And if I'm goingo to animate a subject and so that I'll need a good edge flow won't trianguating break this?
Thanks in advance and sorry for my poor english.

If you have a good quad edge flow and then triangulate it, it won't break its  quality to animate it.

I think internally all game engines triangulate the model anyways.

That being sad. I used Substance painter sporadically and did not triangulate the mesh before. It works fine.


Is there a way to minimize my boolean modifiers? I have a long corridor that I'm putting a bunch of windows in and, I have a cube put in where I want the windows with a simple boolean modifier setup to the object I'm wanting to penetrate  and it's working perfectly except I want to add a heap of windows to the wall and I don't want to have to add a billion boolean modifiers to the wall. Is there a way to do this?

Use the Array modifier on the window cube. Make sure to increase the relative distance to be greater than 1.0 otherwise, your cubes won't separate.


Edge extruding instead of moving the mesh I am trying to transform an edge, but instead it extrudes as a new plane.

This only happens to some edges, and vertices, and I don´t understand why or how to make it move the way I want to. Very new to Blender, and help is appreciated

Hold shift while selecting and then extrude...PS. You need to have at least 1 edge selected for the extrude result not to be a plane!


Normal Flip Modifier I have 8 objects sharing the same mesh (linked duplicates) and I want half of them to have their normals flipped, so I am searching for a modifier that flips all the normals on an object before I set out to write my own.
The mesh is asymmetric, so I can't use a negative scale. The two normal directions need to be separate objects so I can export them to different files for render order reasons. I'd prefer not to have two meshes, as then I'd have to keep them in sync if I edit one.

One solution would be a Solidify Modifier.
All credits to @lemon for making it work.

Add Solidify Modifier
Set Normals > Flip, and Mode > Complex
Add Weld Modifier


Is it possible to get automatic smooth edges with flat faces without adding geometry? I'm new with Blender and this seems like a simple thing but I haven't been able to find the answer.

The only way I've been able to find to get smooth edges while retaining flat faces is to add extra edge loops as in the first answer to the question posted here: How to keep flat faces flat when using smooth shading

However, manually adding extra edge loops all over the place just to get smooth edges is not an option for my workflows. I need an entirely automatic way to get smooth edges of a certain thickness, similar to how it's possible to get beveled edges of a certain thickness automatically with the bevels modifier.

Here is a shape with automatic bevels. I need something similar, but with the edges being smooth.

Here it's changed to use smooth shading. This doesn't work since the faces are no longer flat.

Note:

The "Auto Smooth" setting in the Normals section of the Data pane for the object won't help here. It too will either smooth both edges and faces, or neither, depending on which angle is used.
Subdivision surface modifier doesn't work. It requires adding edge loops to control the width/size of the smooth edges so is not automatic.
The Smooth modifier doesn't work. This modifies the vertex positions rather than splitting the edges similar to bevels.
This is for use in a game, so any solution that produces results with lots of triangles won't work (like just using bevels with a high segment count). I basically need the same geometry as Bevels produce, just with normals that make the bevels smooth while retaining the faces flat.

Is this possible in Blender?

What should this look like:

From what I have gathered researching, no, it is not currently possible in an automated way inside Blender.

For what it's worth, it would not be hard to implement a solution for this in Blender. I ended up implementing a solution in a Unity AssetPostprocessor instead since that's what I'm familiar with.

The approach I took was to calculate smoothing (smooth vertex normals) using a different weighing method than Blender does. When averaging face normals together in order to calculate smooth vertex normals, it's possible to weight the normals according to the areas of the faces contributing to the vertex normal. This way larger faces contribute more to the normal than smaller faces. This fairly standard weighing approach already produced much improved results.

I ended up going a bit further and kept track of the largest area of the contributing faces. Then when calculating the average, I only included face normals in the average from faces with areas of at least a certain percentage of the largest contributing face. This mostly keeps the bevel faces from influencing the normals at all.

These techniques only work well when the bevel width is small compared to other details of an object. But it worked very well for me in any case.


Streching near edge on unwrapped mesh On the left view (rendered 3D) the material looks stretched and I can't figure out why that is happening, I expect it to work well. It's a fresh project and the plane object has a subdivision modifier applied with adaptive checked.

You have probably unwrapped the UV before you made the margin wider. Mesh changes require UV changes accordingly to avoid distortion. Best to avoid unwrapping unless no further changes to the mesh are planned.

Unwrapped the geometry:

Changed the mesh. The UVs are no more correct:

Corrected UVs:


How to make object appear only inside a defined region I want the green signs to move in the direction of the blue arrow as depicted in the following image, however it should be visible only inside the red area, as if it was fading in/out of the air as the signs pass through that region.

Is there a way to partially mask the object in my animation? I'm not sure if I can use the usual masks, because that texture is emissive and I want it to cast light on nearby objects only while it's visible.

There are other questions here, like Using an object as a clipping mask for another object that address a similar problem, however they don't work with the emissive nature of my object, nor there is the fading effect.

You can use Object coordinates of another mesh (set to not render) - or even an empty - to control the visibility of the text. This way when the text moves in relation to the other mesh it's visibility can be adjusted based on those translated coordinates. You can easily move and reorientate the other mesh in order to adjust the effect as desired.

Here's the material :

Note the Texture Coordinate node Object set to 'Cube'. This results in each coordinate being presented in relation to the other mesh rather than the text itself.

Adjust the Divide and Power nodes to adjust the drop-off and range of the fade-out.

This produces the following results :


Is there a way to "turn off" a modifier when passing through an Empty? I have an object being deformed and arrayed along a curve. I was wondering if it is possible to have the objects not be arrayed/deformed once the object enters into an empty's falloff radius, in this case being an empty sphere. Then, once the object leaves the sphere radius, the array/deform continues. Essentially, I do not want any objects (highlighted in this image) to be visible in the empty sphere, but to be visible outside the empty sphere. Any tips or workarounds would be helpful. Thank you!

Comment answer echo:
Attach a sphere to the empty with parenting, then hide that sphere from the render. Use a Boolean modifier on the array and the sphere as a target.


How do i get rid of the ugly cross splitting after seperating my faces I'm making a Faceplate for my Self FNAF character and while trying to seperate the mouth plates from the head plates this problem happens. As you can see this is before i hit the Y button to seperate the mouth faces from the Top FacePlates And this is AFTER. i hit the y button to seperate. Do you notice how that looks just weird. I Dont want that, I Need it so it looks flat on the bottom of the top faceplates. But the top of the Mouth faceplates look like they do with Y pressed now.

you can create Edge Creases,

Shift + E in the two edges (marked by purple Line)
It should work

Wiki about subdivision surface modifier and Edge Creases


Mathematical functions for mesh in Blender 2.8 beta Does somebody know if it is already possible in the beta 2.8 to use mathematical functions for the mesh? I could not find the Addon "Add Mesh: Extra Objects", which I uses in 2.79. Any other solution for this?

The addon is still there - you can find it in \scripts\addons\add_mesh_extra_objects within the Blender folder. However, it hasn't yet been updated to be compatible with Blender 2.8 and so is not shown in the list.

Within the __init__.py file within each addon is a section that defines the 'bl_info' that tells Blender about the addon :

bl_info = {
    "name": "Extra Objects",
    "author": "Multiple Authors",
    "version": (0, 3, 2),
    "blender": (2, 74, 5),
    "location": "View3D > Add > Mesh",
    "description": "Add extra mesh object types",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/"
                "Py/Scripts/Add_Mesh/Add_Extra",
    "category": "Add Mesh",
}

The version section tells Blender what versions this addon is compatible with - in this case 2.74.5. Normally an addon would be deemed to be compatible with anything greater than this version number but it appears that Blender 2.80 includes some changes that mean that only addons that are specifically targeted at 2.80 and later will be considered.

You can try to get an addon to be accepted by Blender by amending its __init__.py to change the version to (2,80,0) - and this will get it to be listed in the list of available addons - but it is likely to fail when you try and activate it.

For example, it appears that the bpy.utils.register_module(...) function has now been removed in preference to byp.utils.register_class(...) - so any addon that uses the older method will now need to be amended to use the new methods. This will require each addon writer to update his/her addon to make it compatible.


Bypass recursion limits in python I had a large issue where I needed thousands of layers of recursion, but python wouldn't let me. As I'm building this on a windows system, it also proved difficult to try and find the solution. In essence the recursion runs on the stack, and in non UNIX based systems it's hard to mess with the stack.

If you're looking for the most simple solution which works on UNIX:

import sys
sys.setrecursionlimit(20000)

However, as I mentioned, this did not work for me on windows. I needed to come up with solution or switch operating systems.

To solve this, I had the wild idea of using multithreading to give me multiple stacks. I didn't honestly know if this would work before I tried it. I hate multithreading generally, but this is a very basic version of that. I'm sure others can improve on it. In my final product I implement multithreading into my backtracking algorithm.

import threading

def recurThread(x,y,z):
    if x <= 1:
        y.append(x)
        if z[0] != 1:
            new_y = []
            z[0] -= 1
            new_t = threading.Thread(target=recurThread, args=(900, new_y, z))
            new_t.start()
            new_t.join()

            y += new_y
        else:
            return

    y.append(x)
    return recurThread(x-1, y, z)

y = []
z = [50]
x = threading.Thread(target=recurThread, args=(900, y, z))
x.start()
x.join()
total = 0
print(len(y))
for i in y:
    total += i

print(total)

This is the basic idea. Things to note are that if you want to get values back from the threads, you need to store them (and pass them) as mutable objects like lists.

The other thing to note if you're unfamiliar with threads (like I was) is that you need to .start() your thread. More importantly, .join() will wait for the thread to finish before continuing. This allows for the program to be run normally, just with this instance of a thread allowing you to cheat the stack limit.


Custom light falloff in Cycles I'm trying to create a point light with a stepped falloff. I know that in Blender Render, there is an option to customize falloff, but the falloff node in cycles only allows for linear, quadratic and constant.

Is there a way to make my own falloff curve or manually manipulate the light properties in Blender?

You can manipulate the Emission strength of the lamp based on the Ray Length from the Light Path node - this is precisely what the Light Falloff node does (you provide an emission Strength and it determines what the actual emission should be to achieve that result).

You can derive the different Light Falloff values from each other by either multiplying or dividing by the ray length to move up or down the scale. ie,

Quadratic * RayLength = Linear
Linear * RayLength = Constant
Constant / RayLength / RayLength = Quadratic

This allows you to get some interesting effects - for example, you could get Cubic falloff by simply dividing Quadratic by the RayLength.

To get a 'stepped' effect (where the falloff suddenly changes at regular intervals) you can use the Modulo maths function to give a stepped effect to the Ray Length as follows :

Adjusting the Modulo node will affect the size of the banding.

This can produce the following result :

Here's another useful setup for adjusting the falloff using a Color Ramp - this time using Constant falloff so the 'maximum' illumination is not affected by distance (ie, purely based on the color ramp).

The Subtract and Divide maths nodes control the offset and scaling of where the color ramp is applied to the illumination and the color ramp controls the profile. For 'stepped' banding simply use Constant interpolation in the Color Ramp and configure the ramp with the required bands.


How to make partial glossy material without roughness? I want to make a background material like the photo below for a logo. I tried many different techniques but, none worked for me. It's like tinted glossy plastic. It is like it is having reflection of outside world but, not that much.. it is more like opacity. Reflections are partial. Not full reflective. glossy material is not working for logo either. Logo is shiny but when I create a glossy shader It reflects HDRI and looks like steel. If I increase roughness then reflectiveness goes off... I am confused what to do...
EDIT :  I tried to give metallic look of value 0.4 and roughness 0.08. But, even a small value of roughness blurs out the refelction. So, Roughness isn't the part of material. I tried to give clearcoat effect too. But, it didn't work.
This is viewport render , metallic 0.4, roughness 0.08 , clearcoat 1 but, still not working for me.

After messing with different value of roughness , specular and clearcoat I was able to achive the result I wanted.
above displayed result needed very small amount of specular and clearcoat. both set to 0.001 and roughness 0 with principled shader.


How do I replicate this asymmetrical bevel? I am rebuilding this mesh from scratch with primitives, but it has a bevel that is non-uniform:

CTRL + B on the top of a cylinder will add a uniform bevel across the whole top of the cylinder:

Any ideas how I would go about creating this type of bevel?

but bevel ( the destructive operator ) can do some cool stuff too.

make a cylinder, use the Knife tool (K) to cut a line at the right angle through the cylinder.

Press Z to set the mode to "cut straight through".
to make a straight cut: left click the start location, double left click at the final location to end the cut line. Hit Enter to finalize the cut.

inset a circle in the top, and drag it towards the side where you want the shortest radius. Then select the outer edges.

then Ctrl+B (bevel) and press M until the mode is percent. Then add segments using the mouse wheel.

look at the tool information bar at the bottom of the active 3dview.

If you can make it so all fillet edge pairs are similar in length, you'll get nice approximately "circular" fillets.


Is it possible to elongate particles based on velocity? I would like to elongate particles along their direction of movement proportional to their velocity. Is this possible?

So instead of this:

I'd like to have something that looks like this:

Half of the solution (read below) with animation nodes
I got close to the solution using animation nodes. It might be very easy to work on this to make it a complete solution but, I must admit, it's my first time using AN!

I've used Animation Nodes v2.0.
The plane (Plane) emits a particle system with 3 particles with a starting normal velocity and default newtonian physics. Particles must not be displayed via the particle system Render settings. In fact, we'll do it using animation nodes. I've also created a "water drop" mesh (Sphere) for duplication.
This is my animation node setup:

It creates as many copies of Sphere as there are (alive) particles, then it scales them along their Z axis by an amount proportional to each one's Velocity vector length. Finally, it rotates the instances to match the direction of the velocity.
HOWEVER, I am not able to pass a list of rotations to the "Transform Output" node, so I'm only passing ONE rotation, namely that of the first particle!!
If anyone knows how to pass a list of rotations instead of a single rotation, feel free to add a new answer.

Blend file (requires animation nodes):


duplicate mesh error in blender animation nodes2.1 i tried to duplicate mesh using "transform mesh "node,but i faced a issue as the below:

i don't know how to fix the issue?anyone has an idea,thank you!

You can use the Random List node instead, which populates the a list of arbitrary length with elements. Then you use the Transform Mesh node to transform the meshes based on the transforms as follows:


Display Zoom information In several graphics app such as Photoshop (or even other apps like Word), the view zoom is indicated at the bottom of the window:

Photoshop

Word for Mac

However, in Blender's image viewer, I haven't been able to find such a thing.

The only thing I could find is the View menu, which doesn't tell you which setting you are on but lets you click on one of them:

If I select "Zoom 1:1" then go return to the View menu, "Zoom 1:1" will not have a checkmark next to it

Is there a way to display the percentage of the zoom currently applied to the image editor?

Blender doesn't offer a way to show the zoom level but we can use python to display it if we want.

The simplest way is to add a panel -

import bpy
import math

class Image_PT_zoom(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "Image_PT_zoom"
    bl_label = "Image Zoom"
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        zoom = context.space_data.zoom[0]*100
        zoom_h = context.space_data.zoom[1]*100
        if math.isclose(zoom,zoom_h,rel_tol=0.001):
            self.layout.label(text="{:.1f}%".format(zoom))
        else:
            self.layout.label(text="Width:  {:.1f}%".format(zoom))
            self.layout.label(text="Height: {:.1f}%".format(zoom_h))

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

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

register()

You can find this as an addon here.


freebsd installs blender without cycles FreeBSD installs blender without cycles; but I assume cycles is just an addon.  Does anybody know the way to get it on there?  Thanks.

The default configuration for blender on FreeBSD does not include cycles. If you install using pkg install graphics/blender then it will not be enabled.

To enable cycles you will need to compile blender yourself (assuming you have ports installed).

cd /usr/ports/graphics/blender
make config
(enable cycles in the menu)
make install clean

Note that building blender might require other ports that you may not have installed yet (like devel/llvm34 if you also enable CYCLESOSL), these can be installed using pkg install instead of compiling them yourself.

After the make config step you can use make build-depends-list to see what is needed to build and check if you have them installed.

Cycles was disabled by default as there is sometimes an assert from boost that causes the build to fail. I find this only happens when generating the man page which can be removed from the Makefile.


How to "ground" a character's legs? I would like my character to stand on one leg.

On pose one it would be standing on the ground:

And on pose two it would be standing on its left leg kind of like this:

but when I select all the bones except the leg and then rotate the whole shape rotates and the leg doesn't seem grounded on the floor anymore:

I believe it has to do with parenting the bones? It's hard for me to know what to look for to solve this and I'm just a beginner with rigging. I've tried all sorts of things in the Bone Constraints panel but couldn't find one that did this. I also tried playing with weight painting but I think it messed things up more than anything else.

What are you looking for is called Inverse Kinematics (IK):

In edit mode extrude a new bone from the leg (I called it "Foot On Ground") which will be the target of the IK Chain. Set it to "non deform" (uncheck the relative button in the bone properties panel) and parent it to the chest bone.
In pose mode select the leg bone and assign her an IK constraint.
In the empty boxes select "Armature" (it's the name of your armature) and "Foot On Ground". Set the IK chain lenght to 2.
Now the IK chain, 2 bones long (leg and hip Left) will always "point" to the target bone (Foot on ground).

I suggest you to copy some simple estabilished rigs before building your own, trying to understand the basic concepts. Search for Nathan Vegdahl rigging serie (free on Youtube) for an amazing advanced rigging course, from scratch to humane rigging.


Node containing text? Is it possible to add a node to the middle of, say, a material, that just contains plaintext information for people viewing the node tree?

I know that it's possible to add a tooltip to frames, which are nice for organizing, but screen real estate for what I'm working on requires that the text be wrapped into the node itself; basically so that I can reference it without having to pop over to another viewer or such, sort of the equivalent of adding comments in a programming language.

No such composite node exists (I am assuming you want it for that pane, but most of these are in Material and Texture too). Here are all the different types of composite nodes in Blender.

Types of Composite Nodes
This section is organized by type of nodes, which are grouped based on
similar functions:

Input - Adds something to the node map, such as an image or a value.
Output - Displays the result in progress as a small image.
Color - Manipulates the colors of an image.
Vector - Manipulate the intensities and reflections of an image
Filters - Process the image to enhance it, working on adjacent pixels.
Converters - Separate the image into its component video, or convert formats.
Mattes - Generating mattes to mask off areas of an image.
Distortion - Changing the shape of the image.
Groups - User-defined groups of nodes.

At most you can change the name of the label.


Use custom texture multiple times with different settings I have made a woodgrain procedural texture and keep it in a blend file so it can be appended to materials in other projects. I am able to append the texture to a project and Add the node group to a material in a project. It has x,y,z inputs in order to align the grain with the object's geometry. All that works for a single use of the node group. I would like to use it for more than one object in the same scene but with different settings but unable to get it to work independently. I have unlinked materials for the objects but any adjustment to my texture carries over to all objects using the texture group.  I could store several versions of the texture and append them all but that doesn't feel right. Is this a limitation I have to accept or have I got it wrong?
Edit. I have found that independent instances of the appended node group can be achieved by ungrouping each instance, dispensing with the input block and using the sliders inside the nodes instead.

When you say different settings, do you mean just different orientations and scale or different tweaks to colors and normals (height, roughness, etc)?
If it's just different scale and orientation, you can alter your UV mesh orientation and scale, without changing your texture's mapping coordinates.
If it's different tweaks to colors and normals, you should copy the texture, as any change will alter its appearance everywhere in the scene.


Sculpting: How to join two ends (threads) of the SAME mesh? Good day, lovely community of BSE!
I obstacle a problem when taught my cousin a sculpting.

I tried to make a knot, like a cup handle, using Snake Hook sculpting brush. But when I tried to join two this threads, they doesn't interact with each other and saved their topology.

I understand that I can add a ring mesh and join it with a main model, but what about this particular situation? How to join two threads of one mesh?

As an alternative way, I could make a hole in solid bulge, is it possible without Boolean operations, like using brushes only?

Thanks!

From my own experience, i dont think you could use any brush to 'stick' 2 ends together. I haven't tried any Sculpt Brush add-ons, but i dont think you could join these 2 without adding another mesh and add a boolean modifier.


Is it possible to set different textures and/or UV maps for the same mesh? I'm part of a small programming company, and we're designing assets for our first game. My assignment at the moment is to texture this mesh:

I had to look up a few tutorials on how to do this as I'm still fairly new to Blender(as well as game design), but after a few hours, I managed to construct a decent UV Map.

Now, here's where I start to run into a problem. Most of the mesh is separated into different islands, but once I start to do some texture painting, I select the faces I want to color using the bucket tool, and somehow the colors overlap onto other islands.
[
I'm thinking this has something to do with the fact that each island in the UV Editor is relatively close to one another(and also that I have the bleed factor set to 5 pixels), but it also raised a question: is it possible to assign multiple textures to the same mesh, and if so, do I have to make separate UV maps for each texture?
Basically, what I want to do here is create separate texture images for different parts of the same mesh. Like for example, I need one image for the walls of the arcade machine, and then another for the joystick and buttons.
I apologize if this has been asked before. I searched the web for an answer, but I couldn't find a solution that fit my needs.

Yes, you can layer multiple textures with multiple UV maps on a single object. Here I have a project from last year in which I did so. For this example, we'll look at the stitches ontop of the leather texture.
On the left is my default (base) UV map for the main texture. I've highlighted the strip where the stitches go so you can see how it changes on the next UV map.

To create a new UV map, simply click the "+" in the UV Maps section in the Object Data Properties Panel. Here is the second UV map for the stitches. As you can see I've straightened the UV islands. I've also shrunk down the rest of the UV's I don't need so they are out of the way (that's the black spot on the bottom right corner).

Once you have got these two UV maps, you'll need to load the node editor to combine the two. Here is my setup to combine the stitches and the leather:

You'll start with your Principled BSDF and Material Outpode node. Drag in the two image textures you plan to use and connect them to a MixRGB node (displayed as just Mix) as shown. Connect the Mix node to the Base Colour input on your Principled BSDF node. Finally, create an UV Map node, and edit its value to be the name of the UV map you want to layer on (not your base UV). Connect the UV output to the Vector input of the image to layer on.
I believe for the texture you layer on, you'll need to save it as a .png with everywhere except your texture being transparent.


How to change subdivisions after adding a grid I'm following this tutorial, when I use Add > Mesh > grid and then scale it, I get a grid with 9x9 squares:

To make the maze, I want the grid to have more squares (15x15 for e.g) however, no mater how big I scale it it remains 9x9 squares.

Is there a way to control the number of squares this grid has?

Immediately after adding the grid (See here for details as to why it has to be immediate) you can access various options at the bottom of the 3D toolbar (where it says Toggle Editmode in your screenshot) such as the x and y subdivisions:

You can also access these options (again, immediately after adding the grid) by pressing F6.

So you should:

Add the grid.
Increase x and y subdivisions as desired.
Then scale the grid up as much as you want.


Compositor: make the glare node effect only certain objects I want some objects to be affected by the glare node in my scene but not all of the objects in the scene to be effected by it. But the problem with that is the glare node is used in the render layers panel so it effects the whole scene when I put the glare node in when I only want the glare node to effect certain objects. Is there a way around this? (This is in blender cycles).

Example Image Above

If you render those objects on a separate layer you can apply the glare just apply glare to that render layer.

E.g.


Bone heat weighting problem, texture paint problem, blending model Hello fellow Blenders...

I am attempting to make my first model ever, however I am having some difficulties. I hope you can help me with the following.

Question 1:

Here is the link to the blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cvh9ajtpoxewl6o/leprechaunnotconnecting01.blend?dl=0

I first selected the object, then selected the armature, I pressed CRTL P, Set parent to - armature deform - with automatic weights, however I get the message: bone heat weighting failed to find solution for 1 or more bones. The envelope method seems to work but it lacks precision. When I bow the elbow afterwards, pretty much the entire model moves a bit.

Question 2:
Is it possible to unselect bones for your armature connecting to your mesh? Or does it need to be the entire armature at all times?

Question 3:
As you might have seen my leprechaun has a line in the middle. This is also visible in the 3D rendering software in the game. I copied it's other half. Is it possible to blend out this effect from splitting? So yes, how do I do this?

Question 4: When I texture paint my mesh, it seems to paint on 4 sides at the same time. Is there any solution to this? (try it on the download)

Much appreciated in advantage! Please take into consideration I am very new to this.

This model is very messy. Firstly append it to a new file to fix some viewport messed up settings and make it an appropriate size.

Secondly, automatic weights freak out because of the inverted normal, recalculate them.

Thirdly, clean up weights and pose and reapply parenting.

The model is still a mess

It is better to take the original and optimize it. https://free3d.com/3d-model/leprechaun-v1--543940.html

Make him T-pose for better results.

Optimize geometry. Better to remesh it. But I won't .

You can also unwrap and bake normals.

The automatic weights are not very suited for this. It might be better to use something more advanced, which is actually intended as an auto rigger. For example https://www.mixamo.com/

Choose T-pose to export

Or paid addon for Blender: https://blendermarket.com/products/auto-rig-pro But be prepared to still fix something manually.

And finally: do not let the frustration beat you

and have fun

 Animations from Mixamo


Nodes: Lighten/Darken "Crossfader" What I seek

I'm not sure if "crossfader" is the best way to describe it, but imagine black on one end, white on the other, and a grayscale image in the center. You can lighten or darken the image with a single slider.

I am trying to create a node setup that will either lighten or darken grayscale values, depending on whether an input slider is above or below 0.5. So at a value above 0.5 it would become lighter (with 1.0 fully white), and at a value below 0.5 it would become darker (with 0.0 fully black). If at 0.5 it should remain unchanged.

I'm looking for a solution that will work universally in Cycles or Blender Render, so it shouldn't rely on Shader nodes or other engine-specific nodes, but rather only make use of nodes involving math and color.

Why I need it

I'm trying to emulate the functionality of the Layer Weight node's Blend slider.

I know I can emulate most of the functionality of this node using the technique explained by Jerryno here. This gives output equivalent to the default 0.5 value. However there is no way to lighten or darken the result the way the Blend slider does.

Here is a comparison of the two node setups:

What I've tried

I first tried to use Math nodes to add or subtract from the 0.5 value and mix that, but I soon realized that's not the same process. Next, I tried using MixRGB nodes with Add and Multiply blend modes. I believe this is producing the correct result, but I can't figure out how to control them using a single slider centered at 0.5, since the lightening and darkening rely on different color blend modes. Here is a screen shot of my latest attempt:

The annotation "pretend this cannot be changed" is because, remember, the Layer Weight node will be replaced with the Blender Render incidence angle node setup, which has no Blend slider.

The annotation "how to combine" is because a simple mixing of color values will not suffice. Somehow Multiply must be used if less than 0.5 and Add must be used if higher than 0.5.

There's probably a simple mathematical solution I'm overlooking, but I'm stuck trying to figure out what it might be.

Hopefully I've explained this question well enough. Feel free to ask questions if anything is unclear.

Try this:

This mixes between the input and black (0) for the 0-.5 range, then mixes between the input and white (1) for the .5-1 range.

The "Lerp" nodegroup is as follows:

This multiplies one value by an inversion of the "Fac", and the other by the fac itself. Then adds the two together.

0 as the "Fac" returns the top input, while 1 as the "Fac" gives the bottom input. Values in between give a mix.

Note that this should work for extrapolating as well; "Fac" values outside of 0..1 will give a result "past" the input values. If you don't want that, clamp the Fac input to 0..1.


How to speed up only a part of an animation? I'm doing my first animation right now, so I'm not the best at such things :D yet. I'd like to know if it's possible to speed up only a selected part of my animation. I use a path in my animation that my character follows. Here is my blender file:  maybe you can tell what i did wrong or i need to do, to fix my problem, when you take a look at it.

I make an edit as it looks like you don't need to use a Follow Path constraint and a simple parentage is enough.

So, once you parented the object (in your case, the penguin's armature) to your curve, you will just play with the Evaluation Time value of your object, in the Properties panel > Data > Path Animation..
Go in the Properties panel > Data > Path Animation.
Select the Frames rate you want, 100 is good.
In the Timeline (or Dopesheet) window, point the cursor where you want the animation to begin, for example frame 1.
For this frame 1, choose the object position along the curve with the Evaluation Time value. Once it's good for you, put your mouse over the Evaluation Time value and press i to insert a keyframe.
Again, in the Timeline (or Dopesheet) window, point the cursor where you want the animation to change speed, for example frame 50.
For this frame 50, choose the object position along the curve with the Evaluation Time value. Once it's good for you, insert a keyframe with i.
Etc, etc, you can make your penguin move forward, backward, etc, at the speed you want.
You can change the transitions in the Graph Editor with T > Interpolations.

old answer, with the Follow Path constraint:

The speed has been automatically generated when you gave your object a Follow Path constraint. If you want to vary the speed of the object along the path, you need to:

Select the path, open the Graph Editor, on the left panel, unfold the BezierCurve menu and click on Evaluation Time.
On the right panel of the Graph Editor, Modifiers tab, you'll now see the Generator box that has been generated by the constraint. Delete it. Now your object don't move any more, but you'll be able to determine its speed manually.
Keep the path selected and go in the Properties panel > Data > Path Animation. If you change the Evaluation Time value you can see that the object moves along the curve.
Select the Frames rate you want, 100 is good.
In the Timeline (or Dopesheet) window, point the cursor where you want the animation to begin, for example frame 1.
For this frame 1, choose the object position along the curve with the Evaluation Time value. Once it's good for you, insert a keyframe with i.
Again, in the Timeline (or Dopesheet) window, point the cursor where you want the animation to change speed, for example frame 50.
For this frame 50, choose the object position along the curve with the Evaluation Time value. Once it's good for you, insert a keyframe with i.
Etc.


What are the colored/highlighted edges in edit mode? There are red and pink edges on my mesh.

What do these colored edges mean? How can I use them?

Those edges have been marked.
There are actually five types of markings you can apply to edges:

Red - UV Seam
Blue - Bevel Weight
Purple - Edge Crease
Cyan - Sharp Edge
Green - Freestyle Edge

You can mark edges yourself from Edit Mode using the Edge menu (Ctrl+E).

Colors in Blender 2.79:

Red - UV seam
Orange - Bevel weight
Pink - Edge crease
Blue - Sharp edge
Green - Freestyle edge


Where is gravity settings in 2.91? I'm trying to find the gravity controls. I need to either turn it off, or change the axis. Everything I have found states its on the Scene tab, but I don't see it at all.  but no screenshots, and nothing discusses 2.91.
I've been through all the sub menus and...nothing.
I'm trying to have a fluid squirt out of a nozzle and remain horizontal until it hits something.
Thanks.


Why did one of my textures turn pink? I followed this tutorial awhile back and successfully ended up with this image rendered in cycles.

Here's what my node setup looks like.

Recently, I came back to the scene to render it at a higher resolution. I rendered it and got this image out:

Why did the rock and sand textures turn pink?

Textures turn magenta when the shader fails to locate the image texture assigned to it. Double check the image paths for the rock and sand diffuse textures in the node tree. Reopen the images if it need be.

Hope it helps!


Is netrender only useful for multiple frames? Trying to speed-up render times on a large single-frame Cycles image by using netrender and a spare machine. The spare is running (in separate terminals) a master and a slave, and the main computer is running a client and another slave.

Pressing F12 from the client works to render the image, however only the slave on the client machine is used. Killing that slave will then cause the slave on the spare to be used. It does not appear possible to have them work in concert. Is it correct to conclude that netrender only divvies frames to slaves, not tiles?

AFAIK, it does not (yet):

From the wiki:

  Todo:
   Dispatch single frame as tiles

however, another fairly simple way to do this is to render relativity low samples on each machine with different seeds, then combine the images afterwards.
(see this post for more info)


Is there a way to switch the mesh selection mode by a shortcut? Is there a shortcut for switching between these three modes?

This can be accomplished by pressing Ctrl+Tab. This will bring up the shown popup, in which you can select either Vertex, Edge, or Face mode. Note that you can use V, E, and F or 1, 2, and 3 to complete the action using shortcuts.


Is there a way to select Non-Planar Faces? The "Clean up" toolbox can detect non-planar faces and split them. But I'd like to have a way to view them first! Is there an easy method of mass-selecting non-planar faces (like a trait selection)?

Thanks in advance, I hope someone helps me out!

Here is a script to run in edit mode,  It looks at all faces with > 3 vertices, defines a plane from the first 3 verts [v.co for v in ngon.verts[:3]] as input coords to determine its normal and ngon.verts[0].co is a point on the plane

If absolute distance from rest of vertices in ngon to defined plane is less than some tolerance the face is planar.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils.geometry import (
            distance_point_to_plane,
            normal)

context = bpy.context
obj = context.edit_object
mesh = obj.data

TOL = 0.001

# select None
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)
ngons = [f for f in bm.faces if len(f.verts) > 3]

for ngon in ngons:
    # define a plane from first 3 points
    co = ngon.verts[0].co
    norm = normal([v.co for v in ngon.verts[:3]])

    ngon.select =  not all(
        [abs(distance_point_to_plane(v.co, co, norm)) < TOL
        for v in ngon.verts[3:]])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh)

Result of running script with TOL = 0.1 on mesh made of cylinder, uv sphere, torus and monkey primitives.


Multiple texture colors on object Im new to blender and am learning to create characters.  I modeled this using good topology all around.(I THOUGHT)  to my surprise when I added the subdivision modifier, and went to sculpt, my object has theses different color faces.  I can sculpt and texture on the surface just fine but when i go to paint it or render it I just want to make sure that this odd looking thing is not trying to prepare me for a future problem. Ive checked my mesh, recalculated normals, did a smart uv unwrap, prayed and, even opened up a new blender and copied/paste the object.  Please help.  I know its user error so please show me the error in my ways.

I think these are face sets, as explained here by Blender Guru, they are a kind of masks that you can create in Sculpt mode in order to delimit certain areas:

To remove the face sets you can select the tool again, Ctrl left click on a grey area and paint on the colored areas. Or you can simply deactivate the option in the Viewport Overlays panel:


How to make Sapling addon settings reappear? The menu for settings disappears when I click on another menu. How do I make it visual again?

When modeling trees with the Sapling add-on, if I click Undo the settings disappear for the Sapling add-on.

This is standard behavior. You can not edit any settings after editing, moving, deselecting, etc. anything in the scene without the editing menu being removed.

More information


How do I set the bone length after setting a new bone matrix? In version 2.77a; the docs show that the edit_bone.matrix is no longer read only, but a note warns "does not include bone length". Luckily, edit_bones also have a property length you can set:

  length

  The distance from head to tail, when set the head is moved to fit the length.

With that in mind, I tried assigning the matrix, then setting the bone's length:

bone.matrix = bone_imatrix[0:16]
bone.length = 0.1

But when I check the transform of the bone, the bone.length = 0.1 doesn't reflect what the docs said: "head is moved to fit length". (Hopefully they'll allow moving the tail to fit instead of the head.)

Head and tail are still the same, making it invalid, and disappears as soon as I change the mode back to OBJECT.

I tried using bone.transform(bone_imatrix, True, True) but it does nothing (Odd):

print( bone_imatrix )
>> <Matrix 4x4 ( 0.0000, -0.0000, -1.0000, -0.0000)
               (-0.0000,  1.0000, -0.0000,  0.0000)
               ( 1.0000, -0.0000,  0.0000, -0.0000)
               (-0.0000,  1.9815, -0.5483,  1.0000)>

Here are the values I was expecting:

Question: Why is the matrix getting set but not the length? Is there a better way of assigning the bone matrix?

I am looking for a similar answer, but I may be able to help.

The "forward" (or "backward" if you see moving from head to tail as moving backward) vector direction is +Z (0,0,1), try setting head to (0,0,0), tail to (0,0,1) and then set length and matrix in that specific order.

The problem I am having is that the custom matrix I set, does not remain the same:

IOW: bone.matrix = custom.matrix, bone.matrix ~= custom.matrix BUT bone.matrix != custom.matrix

my current guess is that my custom matrix coming from a left hand coordinate system is something Blender "fixes" behind the scenes to an equivalent matrix, this however makes it hard to import a model and export to the exact same file that was imported on the first place.


Is there a way to address the shrink / fatten / radius values of individual vertices on a curve with animation nodes? I want to drive the fatness / thickness / radius of parts of a curve using a sound source and can't see a way to address the individual points / vertices in animation nodes...

I thought that I could possibly do it with shapekeys but they don't seem to hold that data (ie you change the radii on one shapekey and it affects all of them...)

cheers

Chris

If you are creating the spline in Animation Nodes, you can evaluate the sound falloff and use it the the radii input in either the Spline From Points node or Create From Edges node:

If you already have the curve and want to edit its radius, use the Set Radius node:


Trouble with Context for bpy.ops.transform.translate I am having trouble figuring out the correct context for bpy.ops.transform.translate. I am currently running a script that calls a create_bounding_box addon, which I figured out how to override the context for, but after it runs I can't perform a simple object translation.

Here is the relevant parts of the code:

  bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filename)
  for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
    screen = window.screen
    for area in screen.areas:
      if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
          override = bpy.context.copy()
          break
  bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
  bpy.ops.mesh.boundbox_add(override)
  bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=bpy.data.objects["BoundingBox"].location*-1)

boundbox_add is an addon, and the code is here https://github.com/sambler/addonsByMe/blob/master/create_bound_box.py

boundbox_add breaks if I don't either do the above (which I thought was overriding the context) or set bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.scene.objects[0].

After running boundbox_add, I get poll() error for transform stating that the context is wrong.

Could do it without using the transform.translate operator

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
# open another file.
bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath="/home/batfinger/3DModels/New.blend")

scene = bpy.context.scene
#scene.update()
objects = [o for o in scene.objects]
override = bpy.context.copy()
override["selected_objects"] = objects
override["object"] = objects[0]
bpy.ops.mesh.boundbox_add(override)
bbox = scene.objects.active

for o in objects:
    print(o.name)
    o.location -= bbox.location # origin after translate above

bbox.location -= bbox.location

or run for each scene in the file for scene in bpy.data.scenes

Not a fan of opening new blender file in script as above.  My suggestion would be to use a handler or run a batch command.


Why does my model's edges are too hard? Sorry for the question, but I honestly don't clearly understand this issue (well, not an issue at all). So, I modeled a simple door knob, with a considerable low topology because well, I didn't think I would need more, also, I've inspected some models with not-that-much geometry and they look smooth. But there is something that I'm clearly missing here, because the edges of the door knob looks way too hard. I've read on the site that it may be something about the normals? But pretty much all of them suggest to use Shift+E to apply an Edge Crease, which doesn't seem to make a difference.
This is my door knob. As you see, it looks like very low poly, instead of smooth. I should say that the door knob is part of a bigger model (a small wooden warehouse), and not a separate part on itself.

As an example, here's another door knob from a another model which it seems to have almost the same geometry, but this one looks smooth.

The texture and lighting on the second image make it seem smoother since it's harder to distinguish between the faces, even though it has very similar geometry.
To fix this issue, you can select the mesh, go to the Object menu at the top of the viewport, and click on shade smooth. This will make the object appear smooth even though it has fairly simple geometry. However, this approach can cause some issues with shading and lighting not appearing realistic.
If shading smooth doesn't fix the appearance well enough, try using a subdivision surface modifier to add more faces to the mesh and give it a rounder appearance. You can use this modifier and the shade smooth option for the best results.


Auto Back Culling on export After I created a model then export it.In other programs such as Iclone 6 or Substance painter.The Object loads up inverted or with Backing Culling set.But the thing is i did not check the box in blender under the shader tab to set Back Cull on the model.While working on the object in blender its ok but after a export to another program its inverted.How to i fix this exporting problem.Also if i export it to Maya 2013 it also looks ok.

The backface culling settings in the viewport don't affect how the model is exported, their effect is limited to how the model is displayed in the viewport in Blender. The normal of a face can be used to decide if a face is drawn or not, faces pointing away from view can be skipped. I suspect that's what's happening in those programs which are displaying the model in an unexpected way.

Most likely you want to recalculate the normals of your model and make then all outward facing (in editmode, select all faces, then Ctrl+N), then save, then export.

If they are all pointing inwards, press Ctrl+F to get the Faces menu, and select Flip normals, then save, then export.

The mesh display panel has an option to show you the normals (here  displayed as light blue lines, the size of which is defined in the Size slider):


How does blender convert a color's value to a numeric value? I've been creating procedural materials in cycles likewise creating roughness textures but recently something's been bothering me. The Value showed in the HSV do not match with an actual numeric value, thus creating unexpected results.
In my current scene I have a gray color which has 0.5 as Value in the HSV sliders, but then if I connect that into roughness or any other slot that needs values I get a different result than if I input a value node with 0.5 as value (hopefully this paragraph made sense). So my question here would be, how to treat colored textures (roughness for instance) in order to get the correct output values (or at least the desired ones), meaning that if I have a texture with HSV showing 0.5, the actual value be 0.5.
Thanks in advance :).

A math value of 0.5 is like assigning RGB values of 0.5 each, which is a HSV value of 0.735.
I don't know the logic underneath this choice, I think it's about linear and logarithmic perception of light.


Surface area of an object How do I go about getting the surface area of an object in cm^2 in blender ?
Is there a tab I can find it or will it require a script?. Any help would be appreciated

There is an addon called the 3D Print Toolbox which is included in Blender that has this function. It can be found in the addons list in the User Preferences. Once you have the addon enabled, the new options will be in a new tab in the toolbar. At the top there is an area button that will calculate the surface area. I'm assuming your using centimeters as your units. If not, go to the scene tab, and in the Units panel switch the preset to centimeters. You may have to adjust the scale based on whatever you were working on. By default, centimeters are 100 times smaller than the default Blender units.

EDIT: IF you are working with different units already and don't want to mess things up you will have to do the conversion manually from whatever unit you are in, as the output units are always in whatever units the scene is using. There is probably a way to get around this by modifying the addon if you are so inclined though.


Scripting:How to correctly add a boolean modifer to an object? I am trying to cut a hole through a mesh-cube with a mesh-cylinder by adding a boolean modifier with a 'DIFFERENCE' value. what I have is =>

objkts = bpy.data.objects
cube = objkts['cube']
cylinder = objkts['cylinder']
bool = cube.modifiers.new(type='BOOLEAN',name='booly')
bool.object = cylinder
bool.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA',modifier='booly')
sc = bpy.context.scene
sc.objects.unlink(cylinder)

but it does nothing when I run the script, I mean the objects are still visible until I manually click apply @ the cube's modifier pane from the blender GUI

2.8 example

code run with camera (or any object) as the context object and neither the cube nor the cylinder selected.  Notice I've made the cylinder a little taller, doing with default cube and cylinder of same height same location can be dodgy with booleans

Since I have my nose in 2.8 here is an advanced-ish example for that version.  If you have just started then scripting 2.8 is a good idea going forward

Recommend using a collections get method to find objects. If there is no object named "Cube" in scene, scene.objects.get("Cube") will be None.
Quite likely your cube and cylinder have names with a capital C.  There is a bpy.data.objects.get("Cube") not bpy.data.objects.get("cube") Look for errors in the system console when writing scripts. [Find Link]
Operators are designed to work on context. In this case the context.object.  If cube is last selected and is active, then there is no need to get the cube object, it is implied. This is known as the operator context paradigm. Doing it this way would result in changing  code below such that

cube = context.object
# add modifiers etc

bool = cube.modifiers.new(...
...
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier=bool.name)

make an object active: run the script, no need to edit for a different objects.

To get around this (at times) can override context, 2.8 is proving far easier than prior to do this. Simply pass a dictionary with the required context properties, in this case "object" to the operator as first argument. See poll() failed, context incorrect? - Example: bpy.ops.view3d.background_image_add()
Even though the modifier is given the name "booly" .. if another is added with the same name somehow, it will be given the name "booly.001".  If the reference is used then bool.name will always be the name of the newly added modifier.

The code:

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
cube = scene.objects.get("Cube")
cyl = scene.objects.get("Cylinder")
if cube and cyl:
    bool = cube.modifiers.new(name='booly', type='BOOLEAN')
    bool.object = cyl
    bool.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(
            {"object": cube},
            apply_as='DATA',
            modifier=bool.name)

Some similar examples using 2.79

Boolean difference not making any diiference (Python scripting)


Where does light come from in a Cycles scene without lamps? Using the Blender Render, if you have no lamps, the objects are black.  With Cycles Render, even without any lamps, there is a small amount of light.

Here is a render of the same yellow monkey without any lamps present using the two render engines:

Where does this light come from?  Can you turn it off?

In cycles the World emits light. You can turn this off by setting the world color to black, or setting the Strength to 0 in Properties > World:

If you still want the background to appear as a color besides black, you can make the world emit light only for the camera by mixing two Background shaders based on the Is Camera Ray output of the Light Path node:

Result:


How to select the all the edges of a loop cut? In Maya when you hold shift and double click on the loop cut, it will select whole edges of loot cut making easier to move the whole loop or delete but how do you do it in Blender?

You can hold Alt and then select an edge of the loop cut. The rest of the loop cut will automatically be selected.


can't use different materials in one object (blender 2.82a) I am beginner in blender, I want to use different materials in an object.in order to do it , I have to select the face I want and assign the color but the result I see is different!

I want to create some green faces but when I assign the new material,the face gets disapeared!

I am using blender2.82a . is it a bug?

here is the file :

Im using 2.82.7, windows 10 and have had no such issues.
I opened up file, didnt change a thing, except switched workspaces and put the two 3d views in rendered and lookdev modes, seems to work fine for me.

Possibly you just need to tab out of edit to make it update a change properly.


Blender not starting I am using Windows 10 32-Bits, and whenever I start blender I get this error message:

I have tried re-starting it and also searching for the solution over the internet, but in vain, I have not found any solution.

Please help...

Intel Q45/Q43 Express Chipsets are Legacy Products. There is no Windows 10 Support above basic for them. Basic support means "it shows stuff on screen, but as no 3D acceleration in any form".

Check out Supported Operating Systems for Intel® Graphics Products and search for "Q45" and "Q43".

In short: You won't be able to run Blender or any other Software that depends on 3D accelerated Hardware (CAD, 3D Games) under Windows 10 on this machine.


why im getting this strip lines How to get rid of this strip lines.

Blend File

Below are my nodes. How can i adjust and disappear those lines.

uv mapping

I tried to adjust the coloramp but did not work. Any suggestion. Thanks

there is a "noise" node that is generating the problem. try to switch to 2d.

check this to more details:


Scale a face to always fit the same point in global space in an array modifier I'm new to Blender and trying to learn how to create very basic geometric objects for development in Unity.

I thought it would be a fun project to attempt to build a roller coaster rail using an array modifier. This worked fine, except I would like the main support cylinder to always be set at a set world space, or for lack of a better term 'the ground'.

In the image below, the brown line represents the ground.

I would be willing to rebuild the model and start again if necessary.

Sketchfab File

Some of possible solutions are to add one more modifier or to apply exhisting one and to continue working with mesh with changed geometry due to that.

Non-destructive way - adding Boolean

Place the rollercoaster where it should be; create ground plane and position it accordingly (so no flying meshes etc). Don't apply Array modifier; instead add one more to stack - Boolean.

Before:

After:

Note that you should position Boolean modifier after Array modifier, so there to be information for Boolean that rollercoaster is arrayed.

Note that Boolean is modifier dependent on mesh itself; results of its work depend on topology of your meshes, their complexity etc.
There are cases when Boolean modifier fails, see related question. That's why it's a good idea to check your meshes for both double vertices and non-manifold geometry. Also check them on Ngons which boolean might not like too.

Destructive way - apply Array

You may apply Array modifier and modifications made by it will become real. You can continue edit them in any possible way:

Turn on snapping, set it to Face mode, select bottom face of the rollercoaster's support, and grab it by Z axis;
It's possible to even join meshes, select all and use Mesh > Faces > Intersect function (when selecting all choose Self-Intersect mode of the operator in Last Operator panel or by pressing F6).

Joining faces may be undesirable, of course (you may separate them after cutting though).
you can add a loopcut to support, turn on again snapping and grab it by Z axis to position loopcut accordingly (pretty much the same as grabbing face).


Diffuse baking - extremly weird result (cycles) I try to bake the diffuse map of my box model in cycles render engine, but I get extremly weird results:

I made a short video:
https://youtu.be/bwoLJ8psZ2E

This is my model:

it is a model which consists of multiple smaller models which I have joined at the end, thus it has multiple materials:

First I created a new UV-Map and choosed Smart UV-Layout.

Then I created a new texture in the UV-Panel

Next I hit bake:

This is the result:

...and if I select the original UV-Map then it looks like this now:

I am not sure why this does not bake as expected.

If I do the same method with another model which has only one material, then it works without problems.

I solved it, I had to add the texture bakeResult0001 created at step #4 to each material as none connected image texture node, I also had to only check "color" in the bake settings, otherwise weird black spots were baked onto the texture.

I created a video: https://youtu.be/nOvtGUgWCA0


Camera following a rig question I am making a scene in Blender that involves a character walking into a diner. He simply opens the door, enters, and walks a few steps. However, the issue that I am facing is that I want the camera to start tracking the guy the moment he walks in. It may sound pretty simple, but I couldn't figure out how to have the camera follow the guy so that he's always in the center of the camera view. I don't want the camera to be static and rotate to the guy's direction, rather, I want it to move along as if it was on a track. The problem is that if I parent the camera to the rig, it will start following it and moving before the character reaches the middle of the screen (the camera is pointing at the door already).

As another possible solution, I created an empty which copies the rig movement and then added the Child Of constraint to the camera. I followed up by parenting the camera to the empty using this constraint and keyframing the influence so it kicks in when the guy is in the view center. It worked, but the camera snaps when the influence turns to 100%, so tweaked it a bit and Set Inverse many times until I had a shot where the camera follows the guy with no snapping, BUT it initiated the movement in a very linear way, I want the camera movement to start off smoothly, the interpolation modes did not solve the issue as the influence key frames are next to each other to eliminate the snapping issue.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

IF what you want is a rigid, mechanical way for the camera to follow the guy, you should put an empty where you want the camera to look, parent that empty to the guy (so that it follows him when he moves), and then add a "Track to..." constraint, with that empty as a target.

This will produce what you're asking for, but as Abedd pointed out, I don't think that's what you want.

This problem has been solved before, in two different ways. One way is to just make the camera do what you want it to do. It might mean you have a keyframe on every frame (probably not), but it'll look at what you want, when you want it to look there.

The REAL solution is a genuine camera rig. You build an armature for your camera that makes it move more like a real camera does. you build different rigs for handhelds, locked shots, crane shots, and Steadicam shots. There are also existing rigs that you could get from elsewhere. I'll bet there's one on BlendSwap, but I haven't looked.

The best solution for you, right now, is probably a really simple rig. Don't spend too much time trying to learn a new skill and new rig, just make an empty that's easy to move around and make your camera look at it. Then you can animate it and the camera at the same time. Don't parent the empty to anything, just use it to control where the camera is looking.


AN - How to create path for moving an object or an outline? I saw this diagram in Pinterest: lovely maths to create polynomials.
I wonder how to use Animation Nodes to move objects on the paths like those below — or even how to create outlines.
Being respectful of your time, I'd be interested in one or few examples.  Whatever else you suggest is welcome.

Thanks for posting this question.  The animation you found is very cool, and a fun practice project with animation nodes.

I made this mockup with just two circles, but the method can easily be extended to as many circles as desired.  Here are the AN nodes, in detail.

The animation is built around the large central circle centered at point A (0,0), which is a Bezier curve.  Since the circle is a bezier curve, you can use the AN Evaluate Spline node and find any point along the curve.

Using the Timeline Time Info node, animate location B along the curve using the Timeline Info Frame # / 360.  Using Modulo gives just the remainder, so it will repeat after 360 frames.

Using the center point of the circle and the animated point on the perimeter, draw radius line AB.

Use the Object Instancer to create a copy of the circle.  Using Object Transforms Output, rescale the second circle to 1/3 of the original size, and change location to point B.   As before, animate point C along the smaller circle, but this time using Frame/120 since it rotates 3x as fast.  Draw radius line BC as before.

To draw the curve, draw a horizontal line from C to D.  C(x,y) moves with the circles, and D moves vertically only.  D(x) is fixed, D(y) = C(y).

As D moves, it creates the curve E.  A very small plane is set up as a particle emitter, and its location is updated to follow point D.  Over time, emits particles which move to the right at a steady rate of speed.

By joining these particles into a spline using Spline from Points node, then smoothing it a bit, a nice curve emerges.

Here are shows the emitter settings I used.  Note that gravity is set to 0, and the particle velocity has a positive velocity on the Normal, dimension, so it emits directly out of its face, but 0 otherwise.  I've rotated the emitter so that it faces to the right (+X) in the diagram, so it will emit from it's face, in the +X direction.

Here is the .blend file.   It was created in Blender 2.79, using Animation Nodes 2.0.4.  I don't know if it's compatible with the more recent Blender or AN, but I hope you could reproduce this animation if needed.

HTH

-Z


Animating cylinder mesh distortion with bezier curve The goal: Animate change mesh cylinder shape to reflect the shape of a Bezier curve.
Example: Start with a straight cylinder, change shape until on frame 200, the result is an S curve.

The cylinder doesn't need to move from end to end, but "squirm" into shape.

You'll be able to do that, adding and tuning "shape keys": https://www.blender.org/manual/animation/shape_keys/index.html
You might find plenty tutorials on shape keys by modifiers, and shape keys by other shapes. After you have your shape keys set up, you just need to keyframe the "evaluation time", and Blender will interpolate the transition between the cilinder, to the "curved cilinder".
By the documentation, a shape key procedure is:

1.In Object Mode, add a new shape keys via the Shape Key panel with the + button. 2. “Basis” is the rest shape. “Key 1”, “Key 2”, etc.
will be the new shapes.
3. Switch to Edit Mode, select “Key 1” in the Shape Key panel.
4. Deform mesh as you want (do not remove or add vertices).
5. Select “Key 2”, the mesh will be changed to the rest shape. Transform “Key 2” and keep going for other shape keys. Switch back
to Object Mode. Set the Value for “Key 1”, “Key 2”, etc. to see the
transformation between the shape keys.


How to apply single material but to different and multiple objects? Probably a basic one, do you know how to apply once single material but on different objects?

1 material but multiple objects.

Thank you,
Waqas

Put the material you want on one object that is the active object and while having ALL the objects you want the material on selected you press Ctrl+L (Make Links) and select "Materials".


Help with curved groove on curved surface Been struggling with this for awhile, and finally decided to ask for help from the experts.

I have a cylinder onto which I'd like a groove at goes across it diagonally and also vertically down the cylinder. I'm having trouble visualizing how to do it, and still have good topology.

I've tried knife, knife project, moving individual verts, etc. Something tells me there is an easier and cleaner way to do it, so that I have clean topology and no shading artifacts. Am I right?

I've added two pictures of this scenario for reference.

As your shape is a cylinder, you could greatly simplify your work if you use a Simple Deform modifier:

Just create your shape as a flat map, avoid any ngons, make a topology that will allow you to add some edge loops when you'll need to sharp the angles.
Extrude what needs to be extruded.
Give it a Simple Deform modifier/Bend mode, with a Deform Angle of 360°.
Give it a Subdivision Surface modifier and a Smooth Shading.
To make the joint at the 360° junction, you'll need to apply the Simple Deform and then W > Remove Doubles.


Push vertices outside of other object/setting ceiling to location of vertices I am looking for a way of creating a sort of Z ceiling for the position of my vertices, but cannot find anything by searching. I am most likely not knowledgeable enough to know what keywords to search for.
I have a plane with a wave modifier appended.
Above it I have another plane.
I want the waving plane's vertices to be capped/constrained by the above plane. So that if a waving vertex tries to go above the Z of the above plane, it will be capped and placed on the above plane's Z.

Can use a "schrinkwrap modifier".

Using the following settings:

Projection, on the plane surface, along Z axis, for the Suzanne parts that become negative relative to it.


turn off rendering in outliner view I'm interested in removing one object's geometry from another. I should be able to do this with a boolean modifier on the larger object (the "car") targeting another object (the "window"). I would then like the window not to show when rendering. I expected to find this option in the outliner view (based on this forum post), but maybe this has changed in blender 2.80? In the outliner window, I see the "Hide in Viewport" option, but where is the option to hide it in the final render?

The icons can be hidden and shown with the "filter" dropdown.
@rjg linked to an answer to this effect. This question is a duplicate.


Why won't my rig show up? I tried animating with my Minecraft rig, and for the first few hours it was working and it even shows in the rendered view, but when I did put it on render view, the rig can't be seen. I don't know why it happens like that.

This is on the material viewport:

But when I put it on rendered:

Why does this happen? The rig isn't restricted to render too, so I'm very confused. Here is the file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/og2zy0v2fd072q8/running_steve.blend

I looked at it, you said it isn't render restricted, It IS. Your rig has a visibility driver system that turns its visibility on and off. I don't know where the controls are, I only know it because I see a lot of drivers going in and out of its restriction settings. I would just delete them if I were you. But if you wish to make use of this function, I think it's best to contact the author for manual.


How to control the thickness and darkness of lines when exporting UV Layout I exported an UV Layout from Blender 2.8 and imported in Photoshop in order to build a simple displacement map.
All the UV lines are not black but a kind of black to grey graduation.
The lines are not 1 pixel wide but 2 or three.
I have tried every setting I can do in the Export UV panel, but I got always the same.
Here you find the original UV layout in Blender 2.8:

And here you will find the snapshot out of Photoshop with the strange grayish lines:

BTW, I have the same issue editing the same file in GIMP or other graphic programs. So it seems that the Blender 2.8 exporter is creating this behavior.

I had a similar issue with the edge being 4px. There are a couple of options but none I can see to fix this. Preferences > theme > UV Image editor. You can change the vertex size but not the edge. Also on the overlays there are no specific size options in the Display As

Instead I exported the UV Map as .svg or .eps from here you can open in Adobe Illustrator which gives a sharp vector path. I would set the fill opacity to 0 to make sure there is no bleed from the black edge. You could open either of these formats in Ps but the same issue persists.

In Illustrator you can then adjust the stroke width from 1pt to 0.1pt and copy into Photoshop to give a single pixel width. Not perfect but the best I can see unless there is another option I am missing in Blender


Merge Two Objects without Applying Subsurf to Both I have two objects, one with a Subdivision surface object modifier, and one without. However, when I join them with Ctrl + J, the Subdivision surface modifier now affects both objects (not what I want).

Is there a way to join two objects with only the intended object being subject to a Subdivision surface object modifier?

Select the mesh with the Subdivision Surface modifier. In the Properties panel > Object modifiers tab > Subdivision Surface modifier, make sure the View: and Render: values are equal. Click the Apply button. The modifier should disappear from the stack. Now select one, then the other, then key Ctrl + J to join them.