How can i add an extra object to a mesh/armature that i have forgotten to add to the mesh before i added the bones? i have a character that i parented to an armature but now i forgot to add one little object on the head beforehand. now i have tried parenting the extra object to the character and it works fine to move it in objectmode but whenever i move it in pose mode (and render it) the extra object wont come along
can anyone help me with this? :)

i couldn`t find where to delete a question but i have the answer for the problem, the object was still a bezier curve that's why it didnt work


Problems when rigging; only some of the object moves with rig even when automatically weighted? I have this character I am trying to rig. I created the rig, and did not apply automatic weight yet. I have his hair in a separate object, so I joined the character and his hair with Ctrl+J. I then added automatic weight to the armature, but some of his hair does not move with him.

How can I fix this? Ctrl+P Keep Offset gives a similar issue.

Here is the blender file:

(The normal blender upload site doesnt seem to be working... heres a Mediafire)

https://www.mediafire.com/?kab867zkkh6snb4

Select the hair, then a head bone and press Ctrl+P-->Set Parent to-->Bone.


bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor(use_offset=False) works manually (by using mouse and keyboard) but not using bpy Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "\Text", line 8, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.90\2.90\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 201, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor.poll() failed, context is incorrect
Error: Python script failed, check the message in the system console

I am typing in this command, because I already got selected object before snapping:
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor(use_offset=False)

The question is: why I can not snap selected object to 3d cursor using bpy python while being able to do it by using mouse and keyboard?

as @lemon says the answer is override the context
import bpy
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        override = bpy.context.copy()
        override['area'] = area
        override['region'] = area.regions[4]
        bpy.ops.view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor( override, use_offset=False)


How to smooth out the slope between two fragments? I have a model where the curve between the two surfaces needs to be smoothed.

The one near the left border of the red rectangle and the other on the opposite side. What I need to do, is change the angle between the two fragments.

I think the 2nd image speaks for itself. The red line shows how it looks right now and the green one shows the effect that I'm looking for.

Does anyone know how can I achieve the desired effect?

With your mesh selected go in to sculpt mode.

Choose the Smooth brush by pressing S, then LMB  and drag over the places you want smoothed.

If you do not want to use sculpt mode.

In edit mode, select all of the vertices, by pressing A A. Then click on the button on the tool shelf, on the Tools tab under Deform: called Smooth Vertex. You can adjust the number of iterations the smoothing runs in the bottom of the tool shelf, or by pressing F6.


Problem: modeling philips screw head using modifiers I am trying to model a screw head using boolean modifiers. I cannot get both tracks subtracted using solidified beveled faces. The second boolean operation fails if both tracks overlap (left) and succeeds if they don't. What is going on ?

What you could do is join both of your boolean objects into one mesh. Then you can apply the modifier. This might also happen because you didn't apply one before using the other.


How can I use Edge Creasing with OpenSubdiv? I see that OpenSubdiv has been integrated but could not find any material about using it for utilizing its edge creasing capability to create harder edges in subd-modeling instead of using support loops. Of course I fiddled around but could get no result, just strange shading as if it's not working properly.
It seems to makes subd and hard edges so much easier as shown here for example in 3ds Max (video by Arrimus 3D)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFckVSyvVy4

OpenSubdiv has not been completely implemented into Blender. It is currently only used for viewport playback speed for animators.

Official Document about it's implementation

Limitations
There are number of limitations which are not resolvable with the current OpenSubdiv release and current OpenGL profile of Blender itself:

Smooth normals aren't currently correct. This goes into limitations of GLSL level we can currently use in Blender and what OpenSubdiv can provide us. It's being worked on though with high priority.
No OSX support, Historically Blender is using rather old OpenGL API and OpenSubdiv is using OpenGL 4. This makes it impossible to make Blender working with OpenSubdiv on OSX due to policy from Apple which forces everyone to drop older OpenGL code if newer API is used in application.
No UV maps support in viewport. This limitation is caused by OpenSubdiv which currently doesn't have nice support of UV mapping evaluation on GPU and has no way to calculate UVs on CPU as well.
No generated coordinates support. Generated coordinates in blender requires calculation of undeformed mesh on CPU which makes it rather really complicated to use OpenSubdiv in such configuration because all it's data is on GPU.
Tools which requires having mesh on CPU (for example snap tools) will fail for OpenSubdiv mesh. This also includes areas like geometry primitive counter in the Info header.
Currently shading is limited to a single material only. This is easy to resolve from Blender side and will happen sooner than later.
Loose edges and vertices are not supported.
Auto split is not working yet
Loop normals are not supported yet as well


How to make procedural very large/detailed volcano I was looking for making a large scale Volcanic eruption, the tutorials I found are either too manual on the train generation or they are too detailed via sculpting that it's simply impractical for animation. If you guys can point out simple ways to make volcanic mountain and it's lava, it would be very helpful.

PS - the lava doesn't have to flow, just glowing. And scale/detail is what I'm looking for. Thank you in advance!
Edit: here's the reference render I'm trying to make procedurally

A volcano can be approximated using an ANT landscape and a shader.

Procedure: (tested on Blender 2.79b)

Create the landscape using an ANT mesh and choose the 'vulcano' preset. Note you may need to enable the add-on for ANT in 'user preferences'

Switch to cycles render.
Create a new material for the landscape.
Add the following shader. This shader works by adding a red glow to the creases in the landscape using the pointiness property of the geometry. The height is used to control how far down the landscape the 'lava' flows.

Blend file with an example is available here


Rigging telescopic pistons I've been attempting to rig a telescopic piston, but having some problems getting it to fully work as I want.

How I rig a regular piston:

Two bones for each end, Ctrl bone for controlling location and the aim bone for rotation, aiming at the opposite Ctrl bone. Aim is parented to Ctrl, kept offset. Pretty straight forward and works nicely.

In motion here

Simple synchronized telescopic piston:

This is essentially a copy of the previous version, only with the mid section added. It is using two copy location constraints to keep it in the middle of the top and bot bones. And a damped track constraint to keep it aligned correctly.

Video of it here
Now this method works and it's easy to add more sections to it by just duplicating the middle bone and tweaking the second copy location constraint.

But I would like to make a "regular" hydraulic telescope piston, with the different segments being pulled out one by one.

Some attempts:

Video of it

First attempt, the Center bone is using a damped track to keep it pointing in the right direction and a limit distance constraint to make the top part "pull" it out. It sort of works, but only when moving along one axis, drags behind as soon as the top is moved of axis.

Random manual attempt just to think a bit. One is just animating the objects the other is manually animating the position of the middle part.

Another attempt using the limit distance method. It's a lot of overlapping bones so not the easiest to see.

In motion here

This one also works along the Z-axis, but falls apart when going any other way.

Bone Section_03_Dist is parented to Section_03.
Section_03 has distance limited from the top bone(forgot to rename here, bone is named 03 here).
Section_02 has distance limited to Section_03_Dist, and Section_01 has its distance limited to Section_02_Dist.

Not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but it almost works and its somewhat oddly satisfying draging the chain around. I just cant figure out how to get them to remain in the correct location when moving away from the Z-axis.

So I figured this out while writing the question, so I'm just following up with my solutions here.

Solution for telescopic piston:

The solution was mostly like the last attempt in my post/question, but with the sections/segments parented to the bottom bone and figured I could just remove the _Dist bones I had. Think I was just mostly over complicating things in my head.

First I did was make all the cylinders an equal length. Here each chrome cylinder is 0.6m And make a duplicate where I moved every part to it's retracted position, each section here moves down 0.59.

The base/end parts are still made as before, base/end parented to respective _Loc bone with a Damped Track constrained to keep them pointed at each other.
The Mid bones are parented to the Base to inherit rotation.
Mid_01 has a Limit Distance constraint targeting the root/head of Mid_02.
Same with Mid_02 and 03 targeting the next bone.
Distance is of course set at 0.6 m to match the length of the sections.

Now this setup wont work when rigged in its extended position, it's just a bit easier to set things up when it's extended. So It's just to move everything down in edit mode. Also important to make sure none of the objects are parented to the bones when doing this. And moving corresponding bones/objects the same distance so everything still fits nicely together.

Screenshot showing it in edit mode, pose mode and only the mid sections, can become a bit cumbersome to deal with when there are many overlapping bones and objects.

The Piston_End_Loc bone also has two Limit Distance constraints to keep it from extending/retracting further than the geometry allows. First one tells it that it can't go further than 3.9 m away from the Base_Loc bone. And the other to keep it from getting closer than 0.95 m

Video of it moving

Now this works nicely, but this extends the the inner cylinder first and drags the rest out after it. Going by this video and some others, it seems it should be the other way around(found this just before I was going to post this..).

This is easily fixable by just clearing the parenting on the objects and flipping/rotating the rig around. Then moving the constraints from the Piston_End_Loc bone over to the Base_Loc bone as they have now flipped places(renaming the bones should probably be done if to keep things making sense).

We then finally have a perfectly fine working telescopic piston.

A bit more advanced synchronized telescopic piston:

For the synchronized version I copied over everything except the mid sections. Base and End bones keep all of their constraints.

First I added the _CpyLoc bone to both Base and End, both parented to their respective bones. And moved the Mid bones to the top of the sections, instead of the middle as I did in the first version. This is because I want the top of the cylinders to always remain between the two _CpyLoc bones.

Previously when I copied location from the Base/End bones you would have to awkwardly tweak the position and size of things for them to fit together.

Here I know that there is 5 sections so I can just set the influence on the second Copy Location constraint to 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8. I've subtracted a tiny bit to accommodate the bevel/edge of the cylinder.

Video of it here.

And a video of all three variations

Hope someone finds this useful, and that this somehow makes sense.

Here is my Blender file containing all different versions.


what is this panel and how can i make it gone? this panel appeared after i did something what I'm not sure, and also the '~' key stopped working with it. Doe's any one know how can i make it disappear, and make the '~' key back to work again like before? thanks.

Press "T" ("Toolbar") to let it go away. The panel is made for people not know how to enter the displayed modes of manipulating objects.


what do these options affect? Because I wanted to know effect of options of world tab in properties editor, I set each color option as green, red, blue. Rendering image showed me only 'surface' option being meaningful. I want to know where I can see red(volume) and blue(viewport display) color.

The viewport display only displays in the 3D viewport. The surface and volume panels actually provide shortcuts to edit the world nodes, which you can also examine in the shader editor, when you set it to World.
Surface
The surface color of the world when rendering. This color will be visible in the background when rendering and will indirectly light objects. You can see the indirect lighting on the left face of the cube. To enter rendered mode, press Z in the 3D Viewport and choose Rendered.

Viewport Display
The surface color of the world when using the workbench renderer. This color will be visible in the background when not in rendered mode and will not indirectly light objects. You will only see this color in the background in solid or wireframe mode.
You will also have to enable its display in the Viewport Shading settings.
To enter solid mode, press Z in the 3D Viewport and choose Solid.

Volume
You have select a Background BSDF in the Surface Panel which gets connected to the world output Surface. You will have to select a fitting Volumetric BSDF in the volume panel, since it will get connected to the volume output. A volume scatter BSDF scatters light volumetrically.


Why does my depth render look so washed out despite the model having lots of depth? So I made a terrain map, and I'm trying to render it as a heightmap. Here is my setup so far;

Now heres the actual terrain itself;

Now my completed heightmap;

I can clearly tell that is not giving me all the depth detail there. How can I make it so it is actually an accurate heightmap? Thanks.

The "Depth"-pass uses the camera clipping range as bounds for its values.

So if your clipping range is much larger than the Z-dimension of your terrain, it will only occupy a small range of all possible values.
As all possible values are mapped to a value between 0 and 255 (at least on your screen, depending on your output format bitdepth you may get a finer resolution), you won't see much in your heightmap unless the camera range and the dimensions of your scene match.


Calculating final Bone/PoseBone matrices I'm writing an exporter and am trying to export the animations but I'm not certain of what space the matrices are in or what they're relative to (if anything) and the docs don't really give much info at all about any class variable.

I believe the Bind Pose matrix should come from PoseBone.bone.matrix_local. Since it's being called a 'local' matrix I would assume that it's relative to its parent but then the docs say it's in armature-space. What does this matrix really represent?

I'm trying to export the final pose matrix for each bone for a given frame but I tend to either have very incorrect matrices or they seem to not be inheriting a rotation somewhere.

rig_ui.py calculates a pose matrix like this:

rest = posebone.bone.matrix_local.inverted()
par_rest = posebone.bone.matrix_local.inverted()
par_inv = posebone.parent.matrix.inverted()
final = rest * par_rest * par_inv * posebone.matrix

This results in the armature pose seeming to lose an ancestor's rotation somewhere. What I don't understand is why none of the other scripts actually use ancestor's matrices if bone.matrix_local actually is relative to its parent. Won't it need to have accumulated every ancestor? Am I misunderstanding what space either bone.matrix_local or posebone.matrix is in?

Some scripts/exporters are also using the inverse of the pose bone's parent's matrix or the inverse of the bone's parent's matrix_local (before applying that to that bone's matrix_local which is not inverted). My understanding was that only the bind pose matrices need to be inverted and ALL of them must be inverted.

A straight-forward approach using convert_space() and a matrix to convert bone space:

import bpy

arma_ob = bpy.context.object
mesh_ob = bpy.data.objects['Suzanne']

pose_bone = bpy.context.active_pose_bone

bone_space = Matrix(((1,0,0,0),(0,0,1,0),(0,-1,0,0),(0,0,0,1)))
mat = arma_ob.convert_space(pose_bone, pose_bone.matrix, 'POSE', 'WORLD') * bone_space

mesh_ob.matrix_world = mat

Add a monkey and select a pose bone, then run the above script. Then Suzanne should look in pose bone direction. Note that bone direction is +Y, so it's (0,1,0) for a bone pointing upwards (Z).


Resize 2 parts of object with different ratio .

Hi all :)

I've an insole corresponding to a certain shoe size.
I need to resize this insole in order to have the right width for another shoe size.

The problem is that I've to resize (in x) the front and the back independently

For a specific case I need to increase front width by 12mm and back width by 4mm. But I need to keep an harmonious mesh.

Here's my blend file: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=47428

Do you have any idea?
Thanks a lot

Maxime

Select vertices on both sides of the mesh, press S > X > LeftClick. Then you can tweak settings in Tool Shelf (left side of the window - T) or by pressing F6.


How to render only visible object without using layering or doing some cumbersome steps? When i hide object how to automatically make them invisible in rendering ? i just want to do simple fast test every object i want to inspect. Moving object manually to layer is not fast workflow. Also manually turn off the camera icon in outliner will be to slow. Is there any setting that when i hide object , it also turn off visibility in rendering automatically ?

I just want to do fast on/off rendering some part of my model without have to deal with layering.

To render only some objects in viewport you can just go to the local view of the object by press /. To hide objects in render mode, just select the objects to be shown in the render or select the objects to be hidden from the render and press CtrlI to invert the selection (remember that objects to be hidden should not be selected) and then press W then select Restrict render unselected. Thus any unselected objects wont be rendered. To remove this, press W and press Clear all restrict render.


Cutting off a cone as if it is a light ray I am trying to draw this simulation drawing where the smaller box is a kind of light source, and the bigger box is a cardboard box which blocks off some off the light at the side(like limiting the extents of the light). This cardboard box has an opening at the front so light can pass through in front, but not at the side(hence, the majority of the light can pass through, but some at the side are blocked off)

I am trying to cut off those part of the cone where it is blocked by the cardboard walls. But i have tried several ways but just doesn't work....

Anyone has any idea how to do it?

I don't know if I got it but I'll try: the way you placed the "cone light" respect to the "box cage", makes me guess that the "box front face"  should be totally transparent, a sort of "window"...?

If so, the cone hits the sides of that "window", thus the exiting shape is limited by that (it will be straight), while the upper part of the cone is not hitting the box limit, so it will exit the box keeping its shape...

something like this? (the side part of the cone are straight)

here below I tried to use colors to explain better

the box is red
the cone part that exits the cube "untouched", without interfering with the window shape is blue
the cone part that exits the cube "cut", due to the window shape is yellow

I'll provide steps to reproduce if it is what you want (you'll need one boolean and scaling the "intersect" respect to the origin point)

Here are very detailed steps (it could seem somewhat too much, but since you're a beginner...)

we start with the two shapes (note the box has a "closed window", needed for the upcoming boolean modifier)

then we select the cone and insert a boolean modifer

with the cube as target and mode "intersect" (previously I wrote "difference", wrong)

as soon as you confirm, the cone shape is "cut" to the part that intersects the cube

now you'll need to "apply" this modifier (makes this "cut" permanent)

and you're left with this shape

seeing it within the cube wireframe confirms that it's been perfectly cut.

Note: I already palced the 3D cursor to this vertex (cone origin), and set pivot transform mode to "3D cursor". This will come handy later.

now we need to switch to face mode select and delete this face (only faces)

then you need to switch to vertex select mode and select this "ring" of vertices

now, a strange move: we need to start an "extrude" of these selected vertices, but nothing more, so press E, then immediately ESC or RMB) to stop the extrusion, leaving the extruded new vertices where they started from. WHy we need those new vertices to be exactly where the previous were, but independent, to be able to generate a new shape later...

then, you immediately start a scale operation with S: since you set the pivot transfor mode to 3D cursor, and the 3D cursor is at cone origin, the scale of those "extruded" vertices is made respect to the 3D cursor... which makes them follow the intended "projection" direction

and stop it, confirming, when you wish...

This leaves the part of the cone that is inside the box untouched, while the part exiting the cone "cut" by the box shape

You may finally want to remove the "window" face, and get the final result:

That's it: it's been a bit long, but hopefully easy to follow... ;)


Animal model Bone Heat Weighting Problem i've modeled a rat and i'm trying to get it parented to an armature through automatic weighting, since i dont have any experience with weight painting. The problem is anytime i try to parent them, with any type of armature, i get a warning with "bone heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones" written on it. After searching through the internet, i've seen a lot of people answering ways to resolve this problem, but none of them work with my personal project. What might this specific problem be? The model can be downloaded here.

Thanks in advance.

I've done a quick test, maybe it's just because your model is too tiny. Scale up the model and the armature until they get similar to the default cube, then apply (Ctrl A) rotation and scale to the model in object mode. Do the same with the armature.

This way Ctrl P with automatic weight should work.


How can I stop the 3D cursor hopping around when positioned in top, front, and right view? I've been trying to precisely position the 3D cursor, something I've always done by positioning it in one of the 3 standard ortho views, and then switching to another and positioning it again. Today it won't work. I press 1 on the number pad and position it nicely, press 7 and do it again, and when I press 1 again it is well above where I want it. Positioning it in 3 puts it off to the right. Every time it adjusts in exactly the same way, hopping around, but never maintains the position I gave it in the previous view.

I've tried checking any settings that could maybe affect it. I'm learning Blender and probably I've missed something, but I've never seen this behaviour before. I have v2.73. What should I do?

Edit: I saw in the answer to 'Precisely move the 3d cursor' that in the N panel in Edit Mode there is a section called 3d cursor, where numerical values are entered. So I placed the cursor in front view, switched to top view, and entered a numerical value for Y (because it only had to be 0 for Y). But that is a workaround and doesn't explain what is going on.

New versions of blender have added a default option on the cursor, snapping it to object's surface. In user preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U or File menu) interface tab, uncheck "cursor depth" to have your cursor free again!


Blender 2.8 texture paint brush presets I'm texturing a model, and I used a texture stencil to try it out. Now I can't make a new brush preset for solid colors or other textures, the only way I can do this is deleting the first texture. I think there is a way to make new brush presets but there is no + to add a new one.

In the tool properties panel with the current brush displayed, look for the number next to the name of the brush. Clicking it will create a single user copy, and in this copy you can delete the connection to the texture.


How can I turn a photo into individual mesh objects I have a simple photo of city lights at night. How can I convert the lights into meshes that I can manipulate.

Hmm, this is a tricky one. I've done something similar to this but it might be tricky to do without distorting the image. Here are the options that come to mind.

Cutting up the Mesh Manually:

This is probably the most obvious and most tedious option. Import the image as a plane, and meticulously cut apart the mesh using the knife tool, Boolean operators, or whatever else you can think of. Then separate them into individual objects (p in editmode). The texture should remained mapped appropriately.

Convert to SVG then import

This is what I would probably try first. When you import an SVG file in Blender, it imports the individual colors and segments separately. I know programs exist for converting a standard image to SVG (I can't recommend anything directly sorry) so try to find one and make an SVG version of your image then import that. It will import as a collection of curve objects.

Objects first

This is a weird one. Make your camera the exact same aspect ratio as your image, then set you image as the camera background. Then, create a mesh and edit the mesh so that you have created separate linked sets of vertices floating behind the positions of the lights on the image. Example mesh consisting of individual sets of vertices, but within the same object:

Once you have created all of your individual cells, select everything and use the UV map Projection From View option to generate a UV map that maps the image as seen from your camera. Then apply to the image as a texture for your objects using this UV Map.
Now, separate all the bits by selecting everything in Edit mode, hitting P, and selecting By Loose Parts. You should now have a bunch of individual objects all textured with appropriate bits of your image.

What are you trying to accomplish ultimately? If you want to create the illusion of a 3D scene you might want to look up some tutorials on camera mapping in Blender. Here is one from BlenderGuru.

Hope one of these works for you.


(Blender 2.8 Stable) Smoke Domain renders as cube in EEVEE I imagine this has come up before, and I am happy to have this question deleted (if I cannot do so myself):

When rendering smoke in EEVEE, the domain renders, rather than just the smoke. My steps for setting up the scene:

Create Domain cube
Select starting cube as Flow
Save file, then bake Cache.
Select Domain and apply Principled Volume material
Make sure that Volumetrics lighting effects (Volumetrics Lighting,
Volumetrics Shadow) are switched on.
Switch to Render mode in Viewport to make sure scene results look
appropriate what is desired.

Render mode shows that scene looks to render smoke appropriately, yet when I choose to make a final Image Render, all I get is the domain cube rather than the smoke.

Am I missing a step? What exactly am I missing?

I have followed multiple different video tutorials, though some are out-dated (including the Volumetrics check-box which no longer appears in the stable release).

--- Blend File Attachment ---

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZCC-eXvl32SeWA9MIYEjGJSipeoojYF/view?usp=sharing

You have a Principled BSDF shader connected to the surface of the domain object. Objects with volumetric materials generally should not have any shader connected to the surface slot. Simply remove the principled BSDF shader, and leave the principled volume shader, and it should work. I

You want your node setup to look like this:

Hope this helps!


PBR transparent fence texture node set-up not working Thanks in advance for your help!

I'm working with a transparent wire fence PBR texture, and I cannot get the space between the wires to be transparent. (I've also tried on a simple plane mesh - same results)

I've tried with two different materials:

Picture 1: https://www.texturecan.com/details/134/

Picture 2: https://cc0textures.com/view.php?tex=Fence06

What am I missing here?

on your "right panel" (just under the option "backface culling"), on "blend mode", it is set to "opaque". As you are using Eevee, click there and just choose another blend mode, like "alpha clip" or "alpha blend".


In Scripting mode,how do I select multiple bones? I've been stuck for a few hours on this problem and I can't seem to find any solution.

I want to select those two bones(abs bone is named "Bone.005" and leg bone is named "Bone") in Scripting mode,but when I do it with RMB + SHIFT RMB to select those two with the mouse I can't get any code line.

If someone can help me out,I would really appreciate !

This is a script which selects Bone and Bone.005 from Armature.003

import bpy

arm = bpy.data.objects['Armature.003']
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.armature.select_all(action='DESELECT')

bones_to_select = ['Bone','Bone.005']
for bone in arm.data.edit_bones:
    if bone.name in bones_to_select:
        bone.select = True


i am trying to make a globe but my simple deform modifier is not working i am trying to make a globe but my simple deform modifier is not working

The page linked by lemon works, but you need to rotate the plane of the image 90 degrees on the x first and then ctrl+a to apply rotation. Or apply the 180 wrap first to the z and then the 360 to the x.


Broken custom font mesh I'm trying to make Text in blender. I downloaded for example Work Sans font from Google fonts. In text properties I choosed downloaded .ttf files, but for some reason font is broken.

I'm using this font in Inkscape or Gimp without problems. Why it is so weird in Blender?
I also tries to convert it in multiple tools from TTF to TTF without results, or TTF to WOFF but this format is not supported. What else can I try?

Fixed :)
For every one else with this problem:
Previous attempts to use different format was a good idea, but WOFF was not supported, so I found out that blender supports also OTF. I downloaded pack from Fontsquirrel (otf by default) instead Gooogle fonts and it works :) Converting TTF to OTF would probably work too, but I did not tried this.
So short answer - use OTF instead TTF because TTF in Blender is buggy.

Edit: I found out that font format is not the case. Blender cannot handle glyphs in fonts with overlapping shapes (so for ex. "X" should be single mesh and not two crossed boxes one on top of another one). In my case same font from other source was fixed.
But we can fix this manually (merge shapes of glyph) in any font editor like glyphrstudio.com (online) or FontForge (desktop).


Transparency Issues Blender 2.79 As you can see below, when I select the mesh that uses my material the transparency works, but when I deselect the mesh or render the scene there is a halo of color around the black lines on the texture.

The color matches the background of the scene regardless of the color, so it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the texture itself. I've got similar textures working without this problem in other blend files.

Any ideas?

Edit: I've also noticed that even the grid lines are visible. It's like the transparency mask is ignoring the mesh directly behind it right around the black lines in the texture.

Here is a look at the material and texture settings:

In the transparent object's properties go down to the display tab. In there is a box called "Transparency" Ticking or unticking that may solve your problem.


How to render LINE particles in cycles render? I'm really struggling in visualizing line particles using cycles render...

I'm trying to visualize shortwave solar radiation in a city by using the LINE option (see figure) in the particle properties. I've also tried the OBJECT option, but when using this option the particles do not change direction when they collide with the mesh.

However when using the LINE option, the particles will not render in cycles.. Does anyone know a workaround to this problem?

LINE option in viewport:

LINE option in render:

As of Blender 2.82, Cycles only renders Objects and Collections as particles (Blender docs link here)

However, here's a solution that might be helpful.

You can create an object shaped like a line (a long rectangle):

And then use it as the Object your particle system is rendered as. Set the rotation to orient along the velocity, and make sure to check "Dynamic" in the rotation section so it updates the rotation as the particles move or bounce.

Here's a quick view of what that generates:

Hope that helps someone Googling this in the future-


Alternative way to Reset to Original Pose I just started weight painting
And have been rotating alot
I dont want to manually rotate it back

I know that you can just use Alt+R

But theres a problem it brings up AMD Settings

I dont have a PC of my own
So ive been working in this project in
A Internet Cafe

Is there an option to press on the Menu?

With your bone selected go into the pose menu and clear the transform on rotation. See pictures below.


Why is blender not rendering my object to scale? When I render my object, it is not producing the object at the same scale as in the camera viewport.
I imported this object as FBX and scaled it up in the viewport. I then applied scale to be safe. When I render the object, it comes out very small. I've also tried rendering other objects in this same file and they work fine, so it is something related to the object itself. The object also has an armature. Could this affect the scale?

Ok, I figured it out. This happened because the armature was animated and the render must have been rendering a different frame. Since I don't need the animation, I right clicked on the armature and removed the "Animation" entries. This solved the problem.


Why does moving the UV map not affect the image on my object? I'm following this to tutorial to add images to my objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiDrRa6JvQ0
But I have a problem, when I move the image mapping, it doesn't change the actual location from the object.

My Spanish is not the best, but since you have the "Equirectangular" option chosen for the projection which is not possible if you used Image Texture ("Imagen") for the color like it's shown in the tutorial, I guess you might have accidentally chosen Environment Texture ("Imagen de entorno"), which is suitable for the world background. So, simply choose "Imagen" in the color selection and open your picture.


Does the mirror modifier have to be applied in order to a complete a UV map of the model? I want to know if it's possible to have the complete UV map of an object while still retaining its mirror modifier. I have unwrapped the model, but it can only do so for the edited side.

I'm using Blender 2.75.

It depends.  The Mirror modifier extends UV's as well.  So if you have textures mapped to your model, it will map to both sides identically.  If you are fine with that, then no.

If you need to edit both sides independently, you will need to apply the modifier and further unwrap your model.


Cutting a hole in a "Plane" I decided to design my own room in blender, so made a room out of "Plane"-Objects. Now i need some holes in the "walls" as I want to make windows an doors.
I have absolut no idea which tool to use to cut something out of a "Plane" a name for a useful function would be enough, anything else should be findable with google.

Btw I'm an absolut beginner so please be precise.
Thank You

Assuming you want rectangular windows and doors:

1) Create a cube and adjust it to the required size of the window.

2) Move the cube so that it goes through the wall where you want the window to be.

3) With the cube still selected, use Ctrl-A, Rotation and Scale.

4) Select the wall object.

5) Go to the Modifiers tab (the one with the wrench on it).

6) Add a Boolean modifier.

7) In the modifer properties, change Operation to Difference.

8) Click the Object field and choose the cube.

9) Click Apply.

10) Move the cube and the wall should now have a hole in it.


Engrave, Boolean Modifier how are you?
.
i am modeling a soap with engraved text on it, as shown in the attached image.
but when i use the Boolean modifier on the soap with the wanted text the whole mesh of the soap mess up as you see,
so please can you help me to solve this issue.
thanks in advance.

Here is a way to do it, tell me if it's clear:


Particle system domain box deforms the character (smoke effect) I've been trying to create an animation for a creature where he slams the ground and there' s shockwave effect right after the animation.

However, I moved the domain box, where the smoke effect takes place right under the creature that slams the ground and it suddenly deformed the creature (so the creature fitted right in the domain box somehow).

The domain box seems to have animations saved somehow. Maybe this might cause the problem.

I am not sure what causes it.

Your rig object has a non-uniform scale, giving the character a squished appearance.

To fix this, clear the keyframes on the scale (as the scale doesn't actually change, this won't affect the appearance of the animation), then copy the X or Y value to the Z value:

This shouldn't have been caused or otherwise had anything to do with the smoke simulation. Perhaps you may have accidentally changed the scale while Auto keyframe was enabled (as it is in your screenshot)?


Efficient way to delete all points below z = 0 on grid via Python script I am trying to create a bowl in Blender by using the Python scipt.  My method is as follows:

Clear cube in new file
Create UV sphere via Add --> Mesh --> UV Sphere
Tab (enter edit mode)
a' (unselect all points)
Highlight all vertices below the XY plane (Z < 0), and delete them.

Is there an efficient way to carry out step 5 via python scripting? Doing so in Blender and watching the Python script window doesn't help, since the selection is manual.

This small script loops through the vertices in the active object and deletes all the vertices that are below 0 on the local Z axis. The local axis starts at the object origin.
Just paste this in to the text editor in blender and with your UV sphere selected press the Run button.
import bpy

vert = bpy.context.object.data.vertices

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

for v in vert:
    v.select = v.co.z < 0

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.delete(type='VERT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')


A problem with going to Sculpting mode I'm trying to go to sculpting mode, but then my object becomes flat and solid-colored. How do I change it? It works okay when I try to access sculpting through  the list in the top-left corner, while it stays in Layout mode. Thanks in advance

PS When I change it to Flat, the object becomes all white.

If someone has a similar problem. Rolling back the drivers of my graphic card has helped.


Cursor location accessing methods Can you provide me with different methods, or at least one, for accessing the vector of cursor location?
I need anything but the one described in this line of code:

bpy.context.scene.cursor_location

I do not want to access any method in my code using "context"! My code reloads the modules recursively and Blender for no reason I know always loses context when I do so. By the way, lots of people are complaining about losing context in scripts and add-ons after reloading Blender (not in a direct way). If you have any suggestions I would be more than glad.

A .blend file can contain many scenes. Each scene has a .cursor_location attribute:

>>> {scene.name:scene.cursor_location for scene in bpy.data.scenes}
{'Scene': Vector((0.9819498062133789, -5.541140079498291, -6.299274444580078))}

If you know the name of the scene, (e.g. 'Scene'), you could use

bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].cursor_location


Cycles, shade based on proximity to another object's geometry I am trying to make a texture that changes color based on how close one object's geometry is to another.  I've faked an example below.

I intend to use this on objects more complicated than planes, so pre-computing distances isn't reasonable.  Ideally I'd like to be able to provide a list of objects that the proximity-shader is affected by.  In particular, I don't want an object's proximity to itself to affect shading.

Dynamic Paint is the perfect tool for what you're trying to achieve.Here you find all information on the topic you nead.In case from some reason this tutorial will disappear,I'm talking about this:


Blender export support for 3MF (or AMF) file format? As I am preparing some design to be printed on a full colour 3D-printer, I ran into the 3MF file format as a possible format supporting colour better than .STL.

see: http://www.3mf.io/what-is-3mf/,
see: also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20583998/info-about-3mf-file-format-for-3d-printing)

On the website there is also a link to an "Open Source Library": https://github.com/3mfconsortium, I didn't go into details (and I didn't check the Microsoft side (is their Open Source same as ours?)), but support for export to this format from Blender would be nice, i.m.h.o.

What about support from Blender to export in 3MF ? Can somebody shed light on this?

Thanks for reading and responding in advance!
Regards,
Wim.

This is a tough one. My concern about most of the answers that I see on the Blender forums is that people don't get that 3MF is NOT like STL, it allows for actual bitmaps for textures, not just one flat color.
So, I do have a workflow for you, that will at least get your model out, if you are running Windows 10.
Setup Blender to export to GLTF. Export a binary GLTF (GLB).
Open the Windows 3D builder app. It's free.
Open the GLTF with 3D Builder.
Then export a 3MF.
I tested it with Simplify3D and it seemed to work fine. The model sliced fairly easily.
    == John ==


How to make brick texture appear bumpy Which node should I add to this material to make the structure appear bumpy (mortar inset relative to the bricks)?

I tried various combinations like [Brick Texture] Fac > [Bump] Normal > Normal [BSDF] and [Brick Texture] Fac > [Bump] Normal > Displacement [Material Output] and [Brick Texture] Fac > Strength [Normal map] Normal > Normal [BSDF] and so on, but I didn't find one that had any effect.

The bump node converts a height to a normal map by reading grayscale gradients. If the height map is too sharp there isn't anything to create surface angle shifts.

Increase the mortar smooth to get a broader gradient at the brick edges


Deleting/Removing a 'Window'? I'm sorry, but I am not familiar with the name of the tools. So, I'm just going to put in an image instead showing my problem. Than I will add to it. Now, the red X's is what I was calling 'Windows'. How do I remove the ones I no longer need? Because so far, the only way I have found is saving.. closing out.. than reopening again. And I know there has to be a better way.

Thank you for your time.

Right click on the line that divides the two windows (See picture below)
Click "join area"
Mouse over the area you want to be deleted and click


Is there anyway to resize textures? My file size is quite large and takes forever to load all images into vram. I used a lot of ~3K PBR textures found on poliigon and I wish I used 1K textures instead. Is there anyway to select the textures of materials I want to resize and downscale them inside blender? Or similar workflow?
Best,

Select the object that has the image that you need to change from the viewport.

Go to the Editor Type and select Image Editor or press Shift + F10

Make sure the image is inside the square and go to Image > Resize

Hope that's what you are looking for.


Animation does not play I have imported an fbx that contains an animation.
However, it doesn't play in Blender.
I don't see why.
Can anybody help?
Thank you!
Here is the fbx.

Unfortunately the fbx file doesn't seem to contain any useful animation data. You can check the animation data with the graph editor.

On the other hand, if you check Force Connect Children and Automatic Bone Orientation, bone orientations will be aligned.


UVs on Blender and Substance Painter are different I have this problem with UVs,

In blender my UVs look like this:

For example Substance Painter UV looks like this:

There are weird spiky bits in the bottom right where as in Blender's UVs there aren't.

What is the problem? Can someone explain?

If you want to export your model to other softwares (like substance painter), you have to apply your modifier first.

When applied, you can see that your UV are broken, you have to re-unwrap.

Little tips after seeing your .blend : when you used mirror modifier, be sure to have all your half-mesh on the same side. This will prevent arrival of weird artefacts or bugs.


How to reset when creating new video editing file? Whenever I create a new video editing file in Blender 2.8, it already includes a file that I have previously cut and am finished with. How do I get the program to stop including that file and actually give me a brand new clean format?

When you start blender or create a new file, blender opens your startup.blend.

You can setup blender anyway you want and save the startup file and get the same contents each time you create a new file. You have managed to save your startup.blend after you added the ever present video track.

To set things up the way you want -

Start blender
Remove the VSE track (and any other items)
Go back to the screen layout you want to start with.
Use - File->Defaults->Save Startup File


Selecting vertices in reference to a plane, ex: Select all vertices to the right of the origin So I just learned about symmetrize, but don't want to start over on my mesh. Is there a way I can easily select the half I like less, delete it, and then use symmetrize and automerge doubles to have a perfectly even mesh?

Select one vertex in the middle of your model, then press Menu > Select > Side of Active and choose the axis and axis mode in the redo panel:


3D Stereo - Saving both Left and Right render images I wrote this code to save the render buffer:

bpy.ops.render.render(scene="Scene")
bpy.data.images['Render Result'].save_render('D:\\render.png')

But it doesn't work if I have a stereo camera.

Generally, if I click on Image > Save As Image Blender saves both the images adding _L and _R suffix to the filename if the Stereo 3D is enabled.

Some suggest on how to solve?

If you want to save the render result you can simply use the keyword argument write_still = True.

The saved image will conform to your view format settings in the render options panel. If you set the view format to Individual, the following lines will save two images named render_L.png and render_R.png.

bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].render.filepath = 'D:\\render.png'
bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)


How do I rescale an object to be a specified cm in length and have the rest of the object scale to accommodate? I just want to scale the entire object proportionally down to 120mm in length.

I have already set the units in the scene to be mm.

I see Object Mode > Transform > Dimensions but I don't see how to lock those dimensions to move with each other when I set a length.

I don't think there's a way of doing it directly.

I do it by:

CtrlA > Applying the scale of the object
Adjusting the known dimension in the 'Dimensions' panel
Copy and pasting the scale from the known dimension to the others in the 'Scale' panel
(CtrlA > Applying the scale of the object, again)

EDIT: 2.8 makes one way a bit easier...

Select the known dimension in the 'Scale' panel
Right-click and select 'Copy as Driver'
Right-click in the other scale fields and 'Paste Driver'

Now the known dimension will drive the other 2, when you adjust the known Dimension.


How can i avoid making doubles when using subdivision modifier? Hello i learning blender and have a question about the subdivision modifier. I make the model as on the picture. I have a subdivision modifier on it.
I know i can use loop cuts to make the rods not pointy, but the problem is when i use it they create doubles, i dont know if doubles is so big problem, but i heard its not really wanted. I allso know i can slide the loop cut just a little bit before the end edge and then it will not make any double, but it feels a bit not totally correct doing it that way, i dont know lol?.
My question is if this is the way of doing this? or are there better ways?

Doubles are generally a bad thing, as they are difficult to properly select, can cause artefacts, prevent cleaning whole model with Remove Doubles and can cause accidental unwanted merge when moving things with auto merge on. Sliding the loopcut just a bit before the end instead is totally fine way to do that, i really don't see what incorrect you see in that.


How do I make a Blender render look glitchy? I am trying to make my YouTube intro look glitchy for a tutorial because the tutorial is about how to make glitch art in Gimp. I am using the Blender VSE to do my editing by the way. I was wondering if I could make my intro look like it was corrupted with the video editor or maybe compositing.

I looked around and found some answers to my problem. This method is for the Blender Internal renderer but it can be changed to work with Cycles very easily.

First, add the original movie/animation/image as a plane. In the plane's material settings set the shading to shadeless. Add a camera to the center of the world and clear its rotation. Move the camera up 5 Blender units. Align the plane in camera view so that it lines up with the camera borders. Add another plane 1 Blender unit above the plane that you are trying to distort. Scale it on the X and Y axis until it also fits the camera bounds (it's okay if it goes over a little bit.)

Visuals:

Go to a separate layer. Add a plane at the center of the world and while in camera view scale it down so that the plane is thin on the Y-axis and long on the X-axis (this depends on what you want but generally it's more believable this way.) Duplicate the plane several times. Every time you duplicate the plane, make sure that you change the size a little bit. Hit A on your keyboard until everything in that layer is selected and press Ctrl+G on your keyboard. After waiting a few seconds, (the more objects you have the longer this will take) everythings outlines should turn green or whatever the grouped color of your Blender theme is.

Visuals:

Next, create the material. Select one of the planes that you just created. In the properties panel go to the material tab. Click the "new" button. Under the shading option set it to shadeless and under transparency set it to raytrace. In the transparency settings set the alpha to 0 and the IOR to 4 (4 isn't necessary, it just gave me the best results.)

Visuals:

Next, go back to the layer with the camera and the video/image that you are trying to glitch. Select the second plane that is above the object that you are glitching and in the properties panel, go to the particle system tab. Create a new particle system. Set the start and end times to the length of the footage and do the same to the length of the animation. Depending on the length of the animation you will have to adjust the emission number value. Set the lifetime to 1 and the random value to .5. Under "physics" set it to "no." Under "render" set it to group and select your group that has the glitch particles. Move the animation 1 frame forward to see the objects. Set the size to a resonable value where the "glitchy" objects are covering a large portion of the image. Uncheck emitter. Check rotation and change the initial oriantation to something that makes your objects appear in the right orientation. For me it was object Y or even global Y. If there aren't enough particles covering your subject matter consider turning the emission number up some.

Visuals:

Now you should be able to configure the output and file format of your project and render it with F12 (for still images) or Ctrl+F12 (for an animation.)

My final result:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtl7UeVBkcI

For this render I also used Audacity to remix and distort the music. I did not go over this in my answer.

I hope that this worked for you too! I'll probably add a video tutorial to this later if/when I make it! ;)


Please can anyone tell me how i can model the areas in the red box I am trying to model the side wall light in the reference image can anyone help me?

You can use your image as Reference, extrude vertices along the shape:

Fill the faces:

Extrude upwards:

Extrude downwards to dig the sculpture, etc:


How to use normal maps with nodes in Blender Internal? In the file attached I have created 2 cubes:

Cube A (with regular - non-node-based material with normal map)
and Cube B (which tries to use same normal map but with node set
up).

I want to achieve same normal effect in a node set up.

How can I do that?

Test file: Node based normal map.blend

In order to use normal map in BI in particular you should have appropriate image - normal map.

Black&White image won't work for this purpose, it will work as a bump map (which is one used on Cube A in your example). Normal map uses RGB values to convert into orientation of given point on the surface; black&white image doesn't provide that information.
Normal map is an image in blueish hues which tells a given 'face' which orientation should it have with respect to its position within the overall structure of the object, and here's an example of one (with respect to this case):

There are different ways to create normal map based on this image, see How do I make a normal/displacement map when all I have is a photo?.
You can create it in Blender using the same way as in normal maps baking from sculpting with the only difference that image will be used instead. This may be not the best way, although it works for fast and dirty results.

Once you have that image use it as a texture for material of the object:

For more details about using normal maps in Blender Internal and Cycles see:

http://thezedlab.com/quick-reference-using-normal-maps-in-bi-and-cycles/
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/bake-normal-maps.php


Boolean Modifier Union Bug? I tried to put a cylinder and a box together and this happened:

Is this a bug in the new 2.8 or has blender always been like this?

I'm not looking for other "Blenderland" methods of making the same shape, I want to know how a union operation between two primitives can possibly create holes.

It's not a bug and it's not a Blender thing. Boolean algorithms are like that in most 3d software packages. Stored numbers are not infinitely precise in computers. Look into binary rounding errors if you want to know more. It just so happens that we can observe the consequences of these errors very clearly with boolean operations. Every time you have geometry that has vertices very close to each other or faces or edges that overlap and a boolean operation you may get unexpected results. This happens in all 3d software to some extent with polygonal modelling.

Try to avoid having surfaces that overlap in boolean operations. Sometimes you can make the parts bigger and still get the same boolean result but without errors. You may also move the objects very slightly to improve the results.

This is one of the main reasons you will see many experienced modellers avoid booleans altogether and/or dislike them in general.


Why does my Armature deform so incorrectly? I have been trying to create a rig for my model of a dragon (it is a school project). I have constraints on the eye, inverse kinematics on the legs, and a spline restriction on the tail.
I stupidly made the teeth as a separate object, sculpted the mouth to include the teeth, and then used Ctrl+J to make it a part of the dragon. Before using Ctrl+J, the teeth moved very weirdly but everything else worked. After joining the teeth everything went weird. How do I made this armature work?

In your armature, the lower jaw bone is too high, lower it. Also influence zone may be too big. Hence, lower jaw bone moves upper jaw and vice versa. If this doesn't work re-sculpt, in addition, the teeth but not as a separate object.Ctrl+J can mess things up as it is e.g. with texture mapping.


Make MouseLook actuator follow rig I have a simple character rig, and I want my Mouse Look actuator to work with my a bone in my character rig, not my object. How can I achieve this? I want my character head to look up when my mouse does. (Left and right does not matter)

Simply add the mouselook to the armature instead. After doing this, you will realize that the ENTIRE rig points to the center of the screen. Quite obviously, this would be undesirable.

To fix, go into edit mode, select the top half of the armature, and hit Ctrl+Alt+P. Then Tab out of edit-mode and Parent>Bone the top armature to the top bone in the lower armature. see this answer to do that if you can't figure it out.

Remove the mouselook from the bottom armature, or add it just too the top if you don't have it yet.


Bevel not uniform, despite applying transforms When using the Ctrl + B command, my bevels come out uneven for reasons I don't have the experience to troubleshoot. I have already applied all transforms on my object. My geometry is entirely manifold and the areas that I'm trying to bevel are literally just 90 degree corners, like on a cube. Pretty frustrating.

This is how the "Percent" bevel mode works. Change it to one of the other modes, such as "Offset":


Expanded List of Themes - Super Light Theme Is there an expanded list of Blender Themes hidden in settings anywhere?  I know plugins and themes for many software are hosted on their server to limit the download size.  Yes I know I can download themes myself but that still doesn't give me a list of themes to try.

I prefer a dark text on white background theme but there doesn't seem to be anything close in the 10ish default themes available.

There are a few more "contrib" themes which aren't included with official releases, but are bundled with development versions/daily builds. You can also download them individually here. Currently "white sky" is the only really light theme I'm aware of there.

Beyond those, there are plenty floating around on blenderartists among others.

To install a theme, drop it in $BLEND_DIR/scripts/presets/interface_theme where $BLEND_DIR depends on your platform and how you installed Blender.


all meshes are selected, yet they don't appear on UV EDITING as y'all can see, these are all my meshes selected (they are 3, separate, meshes)
when i go into UV EDITING MODE, select all three, they don't show up on left window D:
i've been trying for hours on end now with no sucess.
if i join them, they loose the textures and uv maps keep on not appearing.
for it to get to the other game, i have to join them, but with the textures already D:
the problem is: i can't see the uv map on the left, which is weird Ç=Ç
does anyone know how to solve it, please? :c
it would honest to goku mean the whole wide world -q
(i have to do it on blender 2.78 as it is the only version the game i'm converting to accepts it Ç=Ç)
edit: the uv maps now showing but not highlighting everythin', on the right or the left. when i join the mesh into one, it looses part of the mesh, even though it appears on the right, the uv map is nowhere to be seen.

The problem was the UV maps were all different names. When I renamed them, it solved everything, and then after I joined.


Change Text, Button, and Icon on Button Click With Python in Blender How can the text, icon, and a button state (toggle high or low) be changed when a button is clicked? Just for understanding the mechanics, I wanted to know the most verbose and least verbose way to change text on a button, text on a label, an icon, and a button state (toggle up/ down) from a single button click from a button that contains the said text, icon, toggle state, and visually associated label.

            import bpy
            from bpy.props import *

            def initSceneProperties(scn):
                stin = bpy.types.Scene

                stin.MyString1 = BoolProperty(
                    name = "String")
                scn['MyString1'] = "Test 1"

                stin.MyString2 = BoolProperty(
                    name = "String")
                scn['MyString2'] = "Test 2"
                return

            initSceneProperties(bpy.context.scene)

            #   Layout panel
            class LayoutPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
                bl_label = "Hide Tools"
                bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
                bl_region_type = "TOOL_PROPS"

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

                    layout.label("TEST")
            # First String
                    layout.prop(scn, 'MyString1', text="")
                    row = layout.row(align=True)
                    row.operator("my.button", text="1", icon="CANCEL", toggle=True)

            # Second String
                    layout.prop(scn, 'MyString2', text="")
                    row = layout.row(align=True)
                    row.operator("my.button", text="2", icon="CANCEL", toggle=True)

            #   Button
            class OBJECT_OT_Button(bpy.types.Operator):
                bl_idname = "my.button"
                bl_label = "Button"

                def execute(self, context):
                    scn = context.scene
                    layout = self.layout
                    icon = LayoutPanel.draw

                    if scn.MyString1 == "MyString2" | row.operator(toggle=True):
                        label = "TEST2"
                        icon.row.operator[icon] == "ERROR"
                        icon.row.operator[text] == "A"
                        icon.row.operator[toggle] = True
                    else:
                        scn.MyString1 == "MyString1"
                        label = "TEST1"
                        icon.row.operator[icon] == "CANCEL"
                        icon.row.operator[text] == "B"
                        icon.row.operator[toggle] = False
                    return{'FINISHED'}

            bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

I got it batFINGER

Thanks! Mine was verbose indeed, but alas not close.

import bpy
from bpy.props import *

def initSceneProperties(scn):
    bpy.types.Scene.MyBool = BoolProperty(
        name = "Boolean",
        description = "None")
    scn['MyBool'] = True
    return

initSceneProperties(bpy.context.scene)

class UIPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Property panel"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"

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

        if scn.MyBool:
            icon = 'X_VEC'
            txt = 'Cancel'
        else:
            icon = "PAUSE"
            txt = 'Pause'

        layout.prop(scn, 'MyBool', text=txt, icon=icon, toggle = True)
        layout.label(text= txt)

bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)


Disable Viewport center point, Navigation Guide How disable the blue center point in 3D viewport?
It should be a simple option somewhere. I've been look around the settings and internet but still no answer.

The center dot is called Navigation Guide.
Go to Preferences and uncheck the Show Navigation Guide
Edit > Preferences > Input > NDOF> Show Navigation Guide

Blender Manual
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.90/editors/preferences/input.html

Thank you Robert Gützkow for the answer in comment.


Game Logic and the delay sensor: how to make "delay" a random number This one is self explanitory, I simply want a delay sensor to be a random number between 60 and 120.

Anybody know the solution?

You can use a python script to change the delay to a different random value each time it fires.

import bge
import random

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

sens = cont.sensors['Delay']

sens.delay = random.randint(60,120)

Add the script to a text block in blender and connect a python controller to the delay sensor.


Strech Bone Constrain problem I have a bone with stretch constrain, when I try to move the target bone, the stretch bone goes crazy doing things not related wuth the movement i do with the mouse.

any idea how to solve it?

This issue have been solved by cleaning the parent of the target bone, wich was the stretching bone itself. This chain of parenting is not the correct usage of armature bones and constraints.


3 small holes on a sphere I've been trying for many days to make 3 small holes on a sphere without distorting it with a Subsurf modifier, i tried with shrinkwrap projecting, with hexagons, triangles, ngongs, booleans, to-sphere, there's something beyond my understanding :D
I would appreciate any help. thank you!

I began with a cube that I subdivided smooth several times. And actually I ended up with a sort of UV Sphere. But anyway you could include the 6 holes part anywhere in a smoothed cube, as shown with the second sphere.

Note that in my modifiers stack I've used a Mirror, then a Subsurf, then a Shrinkrwrap.

The Target of the Shrinkwrap is also a smooth subdivided cube (or UV Sphere),as big as my object. It allows my object to nicely stick to a spherical shape. In my screenshot I made it invisible, of course.


What it the meaning of  added by 3d view to the object name? Does anybody know what's the meaning of that suffix I've found while browsing a .blend file sent by a friend?

Every time you add a marker on the timeline, all the objects will include the suffix F (frame) and the number of the frame you added the marker to.
If you move to another frame, you can see that the suffix disappear.


How to achieve dramatic composition with low poly models? I started learning Blender a short time ago, and i want to achieve something like this:

But the only thing I can achieve is this:

I really don't like my result. How could I improve my skill, and get the desired result? Do you have any recommandations/tips or good places where to start learning(especially low poly)?

The following is help from a design perspective, more than a tutorial on how to achieve this all within blender, so an edit to do these things is more than welcome.

You've made some good headway and his chest and legs are looking great/similar to the reference. The feedback I'm going to provide is more thorough than it is a reflection of the quality of your work, so hang in there :)

Most important difference is the color scheme. Colors are VERY important. You can create a cool color scheme for free using Adobe's online color scheme app. (just google 'adobe kuler') the closer it resembles life, the less abrasive it will feel to the viewer.

There's a 3 point lighting set up on the original artwork. The back light (rim light) helps to subtly highlight the edge in the silhouette. The colour scheme for the original has a golden hour feel to it. Golden hour is a film term for the time of the day with the most beautiful warm colors appear to saturate the day. If you type in Golden hour into the 'explore' portion of kuler you'll find hundreds of variations.
On the other hand, your lighting setup looks a little too much like a desk lit table top in comparison, and the effect is a little mundane of a situation... I feel like you can do a lot better than that!

The next problem you'll need to tackle to get close to the quality of the original is the silhouette previously mentioned. Take the original into a image editor and trace a line around the form of the character and his accessories. See how even the silhouette ALONE says everything about the character, and in an interesting way?

Silhouette is paramount to a good character design, because a good character must be easily recognized and our easiest way to identify an object is through the silhouette.

See how easily you can identify an character with silhouette alone? It matters big time. So take a careful look at your character and see how you can push him so that he has a more interesting/unique silhouette, and somehow it'll appear cooler :). The rule of thumb for pushing, is choose the most interesting aspects of the character and make them read more.

Another point about silhouettes is that they can make or break a character depending on the intent. For instance, your character looks quite round and therefore cuddly, if you are going for a mean badass viking, you might want to try something a little more angular and foreboding.

The last big thing to address is that you seem to have a few too many continuous strips/groups of flat planes of geometry in your character. At the moment he looks a little lifeless. Adding extra dimension here and there will breath some character and life into your creation, like there is in the original. To do this, find pictures of strong men on google from different angles and pay close attention to the angles of their faces and muscles. Try not to go overboard, because too much detail = straying from that simplistic style. Just think of each triangle as though it's a brush stroke in a minimalist painting.

And on a minor note, the original artist has applied a film grain and vignette. The grain breaks up the subject a tad to make it seem less perfect, the vignette softens the corners and draws attention into the subject.

But you've made a fantastic start my friend, the quality is above average.


How to animate UV mask position in Blender Render? I'm trying to create an animation of a rising sun. I know it's easier to just make a whole object moving, but for a specific reasons I can't take this approach.

What I'm trying to achieve is to change UV mask Y position in time using keyframes. So I tried pressing i  button with mouse hovering a proper value, but what I get is a warning:

Button doesn't appear to have any property information attached (ptr.data = 000000000000, prop = 00000000000)

I think this printscreen might be a better explaination:

Summarizing, You have minimum three ways to transform UM map:

"Mapping" node in the node editor.
"Mapping" texture.
Use UVProject or UVWarp modifiers.


Rigify rig bone selection problem I have a question about Rigify rig bone selection.
When rigify generated done I switched to pose mode to make a key but i couldn't pick a bone what i wanted, just selected wrong bone. It seems weird so I tried to click other bone again but it selected wrong bone again. That seems like first child bone from root bone (I tried many time. Most of all the time it selected the root bone first).

It works fine when it turned off shapes checkbox in Display panel.(Attached image below. 2nd image)

I have no idea whether some options for bone selection toggled on or off(I think those options all probably default)

Isn't it normal.How can I fix this problem? Thanks

My Blender version is v2.77

I had the same problem -- digging around the blender bug tracker I found this ticket: https://developer.blender.org/T47940 which describes the problem.
I was also using open source gpu drivers.

This is fixed (at least for me) on the latest builds; not yet on the official version (2.77a).
If you still have the problem, try a newer version from here,
https://builder.blender.org/download/


Frames Shown in Movie Editor>Mask Mode does not Match Frames Shown in Compositor I've been tracking some footage for a project, and wanted to mask out some of the tracking markers I placed in the area I filmed.
The first tracking marker worked fine in regard to masking, but for some reason, the second one I tried to mask is mismatched with what I see in the compositor.
On frame 67, for example, you can see that the mask is exactly over the tracking marker in the movie clip editor,

but in the compositor, on the same frame, the mask is in the right place, but the compositor is showing the wrong frame - this also happens when I render the frame.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this?
Here are my compositor nodes:

I figured it out, and I figured I'd put it on here in case anyone else is having the same problem.
After tracking, I was putting my movie clip through an undistortion node to remove lens distortion, which was changing the positions of objects near the edges, which was why the tracking marker near the edge was so off. I just put my markers through the undistort as well, and now it works perfectly.


Understanding Blender Scale I've opened up the default scene in blender and from what I understand 1 Blender Unit is equivalent to 1 meter.

Now I exported a cube where I had the scale set to 0.025 on all axis. 0.025 is roughly equivalent to 1 inch. However when I imported this into scenekit via XCode and placed it into a scene it was twice the size of an equivalent Cube I created directly in XCode to match the same scale. The XCode generated cube was appearing at 1 inch (using some AR functionality here to verify the measurements)

Having toggled some scale menus in Blender to show units I can see that my 0.025 scale in blender is actually equivalent to 5cm or roughly 2 inches

If I used the dimensions window to explicitly set my dimensions to be 1 inch, it returns 0.013 as the scale (validating to me that it is double the size).

Being quite new to Blender I'm not sure how the scaling is meant to work. Can someone explain to me what's going on here?

Blender 2.8 Working 3d printer slicing settings

A) Scene Unit
   Unit System "Metric"
   Unit Scale > 1
   Length Milimeters

B) Exporting stl in millimeters :
In "Blender File View" > Transform > Scale 1000


Why doesn't choosing different object change Shading nodes? When I choose a different object I don't see the associated nodes in the Shading tab change. I can see the Preview changes but not the nodes, notice the diffuse material is the same:

Q: What am I doing wrong here?

You have pinned you node tree, that means that shader tree is always displayed for that editor regardless of 3D View selection.

Unpin it from the Shader Editor header by clicking the pin icon.
This is useful when comparing materials, if two Node Editors are open, or to make sure you are editing a certain material regardless of selection, like say editing a particle material when the emitter is selected, or editing the material when an collection instance is selected.


Animate an object array along a path with curve modifier I'm working on an industrial conveyor belt and trying to animate it but can't figure out how to make it run.

It's a single object with an array to multiply it, deformed with a curve modifier.

I tried pretty much avery axis to move it, but it either stays still or move on the side.

You can parent the belt to another object (an empty for instance).

Then simply move the empty in the appropriate axis (along x in the blend file attached below).

You can also move the object itself along the same axis.


How to prevent inside faces and non-looping edges when mirroring? I'm trying to create a model in Blender. It is symmetrical over the X and Y axes, so I used a mirror modifier over X and Y axis. However, when I apply the mirror, the edges don't "loop" and faces are created on the inside. This causes issues when UV unwrapping because on these edges seams are created even though I didn't mark them as seams.

I tried to prevent this from happening by turning off "clipping" in the mirror modifier and I've tried removing inside faces and non-manifolds.

https://imgur.com/a/PogTW

Model before applying mirror modifier.

The inside faces are probably due to the vertical edge at the far corner of your base model. Deleting that edge (and associated faces) should help. You don't need that geometry in your model, anyway.

For the surface vertices, did you try "remove doubles" with a sufficient margin to collapse the unwanted doubles, while keeping all others. It helps if your edge vertices are exactly on the XZ or YZ plane.


Why does fluid (water) stick to the top of an obstacle? In our simulation, Fluid (water) drops on an obstacle and splashes. It mostly works fine, but there is noticeable part which remains on top of the obstacle! In reality, there should be no water there, as you can see the shape of the obstacle is very rounded.

Is there a setting we are missing?

Our settings: Obstacle is no slip. Fluid is free slip (which, it was assumed, forces water not to stick to obstacle). Water. Baking resolution is 150.

See some frames:

Update:
based on accepted answer:

The no-slip for the obstacle is incorrect. No-slip as in not slippery so it is sticky.

From the wiki page on obstacles -

Noslip causes the fluid to stick to the obstacle (zero velocity).
Free(-slip) allows movement along the obstacle (only zero normal velocity).
Part(-slip) mixes both types, with 0 being mostly noslip, and 1 being identical to freeslip.


Make a sphere of cubes in Blender using python script Having trouble running code on Blender.  What this code is supposed to do is make a sphere of cubes.  It can make a circle just fine but is having troubles with the embedded while loop.  It runs through the inner loop fine and makes a circle (of radius 0), but does not go through the "phi" while loop to make a sphere.

import bpy
from bpy import context
from math import sin, cos, radians

cubeobject = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add

#get the cursor location in the scene
cursor = context.scene.cursor_location

#increase the radial distance of cubes in loop
RadDist = 5.0

#initialize some variables
xsize = 1.0
ysize = 1.0
zsize = 1.0
phi = 0
theta = 0.0
RadStep = 6.28/8.0
while phi < 3.14:
    while theta < 6.28:
        x = cursor.x + RadDist*cos(theta)*sin(phi+3.14/2)
        y = cursor.y + RadDist*sin(theta)*sin(phi+(3.14/2))
        z = cursor.z + RadDist*cos(phi)
        cubeobject(location = (x,y,z))
        #add cubes along the radial
        theta += RadStep
    #add cubes along the azimuthal
    phi += RadStep

theta = 0.0
phi = 0.0

I figured out the solution.  The issue was that once i got out of the embedded while loop the theta value remained at 6.28 instead of returning to 0.0  it was remedied by putting theta = 0.0 in the outer while loop.

lesson of the day When you leave a while loop the values you have made remain the same when you leave, remember to reinitialize them.

here is my sphere of cubes.


How do we use Stereo audio with the AAC codec? When rendering out a video in Blender 2.8, 2.81, and 2.82, the audio gets mixed down to mono despite being stereo when previewing, and is also about 200% the volume of the preview.
There are no options for Stereo/Mono in the output settings, all we have are Audio Codec, Bitrate, and Volume. I have the Bitrate set to 384 and the volume set to 1.
So how do I render out stereo audio using the AAC codec?

It turns out the problem was not with Blender, but with the player I was using to view my videos (JetAudio) which didn't employ the AAC codec correctly. When testing with VLC, the videos and audio work correctly so, in this case, Blender was not at fault.


How to get realistic dirt on metal? I'm trying to create a stainless steel metal with dust on it. There' something I'm not understanding. I'm using a sun lamp in my scene and the effect is pretty weak:

Hoewever, if, under viewport shading, I uncheck "Scene Lights" and "Scene World", I get this - which is much closer to what I'm going for (although still not great):

The problem is that I want to use the sun lamp and not an HDRI. Basically, I'm looking for a good way to add dirt to a vehicle in a scene lit with a sun lamp.

So one question is, why does the second image look so much better? How do I get the first image to look more like the second?

More importantly though, how can I get some realistic dirt and dust on a metal vehicle?

Thanks for any help!

Thanks for the responses everyone. I realize I was asking several things at once. Here's what I figured out:

The sun lamp was too dim. That's why the results were not comparable with the HDRI.
I had to really turn up the the "Strength" and "Distance" settings on the bump node to get some effect. And turning down the roughness setting allows the "Dirt" to look like it's sitting on top of the metal.

Unfortunately, the effect looks more like metal than dirt, but the questions I was asking in this thread are answered.

Edit: I found that inverting the Bump node, gave more of the look I was going for:


How can I fix this distortion on this HDRi background? I'm trying to learn how to implement HDRi images into my background to improve render quality, and such. Here is the issue I'm having.

I was wondering if anyone knew whether the black hole in the image was the result of poor image quality or if I am doing something wrong in the settings. Here's how I have it set right now. Am I doing it right?

Obviously I could just change the camera angle and hide that ugly thing, but if it's something I can fix, I'd like to learn how. Thanks in advance for any help you provide!

P.S. is there a way to get nice shadows with HDRi images, or do I have to set up lights to do something like that?

Edit:
Changing the Mode from Mirror Ball to Equirectangular gives me this:

HDRi's should just be plug and play, and your image seems to contain the very same spot on itself. Your settings also seem just fine, thus, it appears your image is not good.

To fix your problem, try using a true HDRi from a sight like https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/, and all should be dandy.


New to blender. Trying to position textures correctly on a mesh I have a mesh (a person) with different materials assigned to different parts. I have a png file of an eye iris. I have each eye on the model assigned with a different material so I can make sure I can position each one properly. Can someone help me figure out how to attach the file as a texture to the material and position it correctly on the eye? It keeps coming out out warped and twisted.

A bit hard to know without a screenshot, but here are my 2 cents:

Assuming you have already correctly unwraped the eye UV map, you need to add an Image Texture node to your shader with the Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes, like so:

On the Image Texture node, add your texture by clicking on the Open button.


Not able to apply the most simple screw modifier possible Add curve
Rotate as displayed in picture below
Add screw modifier

Tried other axis, got a dome instead of a ring
I want the result on the left but got the one on the right instead.

https://youtu.be/gbNo0odrSVg?t=31

The axis of the screw modifier is set to Y in the first example, but it’s set to Z in the second example. Change this, and everything should be fine.


How to make a fold while following a circle edge? Hi. New to Blender, so appreciate any help possible. I'm working on a yoghurt pot render (not the one shown), and the seal cover under the clear lid is a typical thin foil cover with a tab so as to pull it open. The image on the left is an example of what I mean. The dieline I'm working with is shown in the centre. As you can see the tab folds down from a section of the circular foil cover.

What is the best way to do this? I've already drawn my circle and extended the vertex on the X axis to create the square edge as a flat shape, but now want to fold this part down. Is it possible in Blender to rotate the tab section so that it folds along the edge of the circle, shown as a dotted line? I understand about moving the pivot point, but that's not working for me as it's only pivoting off one vertex point and not an edge, and is doing weird stuff to my shape.

An alternative would be to extend the vertex down 90 degrees on the Y axis, then adjust the heights of each vertex to get the basic shape and add a subdivision surface modifier and tweak with edge loops, but I was wondering if its possible to rotate/fold around the circle edge. Cheers.

If I understood the question. I have found 2 answers for it.

Answer 1

Add a circle and go in edit mode and press F to fill
faces.
Add a plane and go in edit mode and press W and subdivide once.
Delete 5 vertices and just have a square shape below.
Select the square and circle and press Ctrl+J (Join).
Go to edit mode and select the corner of the plane and press Ctrl+Shift+B (Bevel) and with the mouse wheel scroll to get segments.

Cleanup Geometry

Go to edit mode and select the verts of the curve and remove doubles and then Press F to fill faces.

Answer 2

Add a plane select to edges and Mean crease in the Properties panel (N) in edit mode.
Add Subsurf modifier view 6.
Add a cloth simulation with default value.

Smooth shading
Add a base cup shape and in physics panel add collision to it.
Play and stop the animation at a point where your satisfied.


Select object pattern and then selecting the object I import and object C27389_Part into the scene. I search the part by using bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="*_Part"). That's all good, however it is selected (in red outline) and not active (orange), so I cannot do anything with it at this stage. Please help. I have searched and yet cannot solve this simple riddle. bpy.context.scene.objects.active will not do it.

This works after selecting the pattern.
OB = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
OB.select_set(state=True)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = OB


Applying texture shows some weird artifacts I'm getting these weird spots on my model when they don't exist in my texture. What is causing this and how can I fix it?

These artifacts were caused by not having a big enough texture size for my texture. Once I made it a 4k image the issue was fixed.


Enable Collision for multiple objects Please note that the answers to other questions have not applied to this problem.

I have a large number of shards created in the Fracture Modifier that I've converted to Objects.  I want all of these objects to have Collision enabled.  There are too many to do one by one.

I've tried the suggestions in this forum.  None work.

Use Copy from Active (no go)
Ctrl-L (no go)

I've tried applying Collision before I apply the Fracture Modifier.  The resultant shards/objects do not maintain Collision.

I've tried the same procedure used to change the scale of multiple object (Select them all, Alt-Click on the x, y and z Scale settings).  It does not work for Collisions.

Thanks Duarte but your solution does not apply to Collisions.

Thx for any help.

Here's a quick python script to add the collision modifier for all selected objects. Just select all the objects to be made into collision objects and run the script, script is not at all optimized as it is using bpy.ops, so anything above 300 objects might take 1 or 2 secs to apply.
import bpy
for i in bpy.context.selected_objects:
     bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = i
     bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='COLLISION')


UV editor vert, edge and face selection modes as keybinds? How can I take that bpy.data.scenes python line and make a keybind of it?

There is already a shortcut for the UV selection type menu, it is Ctrl+Tab.

After pressing Ctrl+Tab you can right-click on Vertex, Edge, Face or Island and choose Add Shortcut.

This is much easier than trying to do it via the key-bindings editor as you can see from the complexity of the new shortcut after it is added:

To make these new shortcuts appear in all files go to File> User Preferences> Save User Settings.


How can I see two objects' keyframes at the same time on the dope sheet/action editor? I want to be able to see and modify the keyframes of just two objects at the same time in the timeline/dope sheet. When I select the action editor, it sends me to the single object.

In the dope sheet it shows me everything, but I only need those two.

You can limit the displayed channels in Dopesheet to selected object, by selecting the little arrow icon:


How do I make a transparent material display in the 3D view? How do I make a transparent material always display?
I have turned the transparency on but its clearly not showing in the 3D view.

In Cycles/Eevee and 2.8+ you need to set the Blend Mode to Alpha Blend in the Material Settings:

Then set the viewport render level to Material or Rendered.

In older versions of blender:
Enable Transparency in Properties > Object > Display:


How to remove a node from a frame? Frames are great for making node trees more understandable. However one annoying feature about them is that they trap any nodes that get accidentally dropped over them.
So how do I get a node out of a frame?

This is a simple one keyboard shortcut thing to do. With the "trapped" node, or nodes selected press AltP.

As the manual says:

  To remove them select the node(s) and use the Alt-P shortcut. This uses the same default keyboard bindings as Parenting and can be thought of as a similar concept.

If you really wanted to, you could always delete the frame node with Delete which would leave any nodes that were in the frame in place (the nodes inside the frame do not get deleted unless they are selected too).

Also you do not have to drop the nodes over the frame to get them in the frame. With the nodes selected and the frame active, press CtrlP (keeping with the parenting concept) to add them to the active frame.


Guided liquid Simulation I am a short movie director and after effects vfx artist and I'm just beginning with the blender vfx game.
In an upcoming short movie I want to realize a scene where the blood flowing out of a victims head forms readable letters on the floor. I tried a few things with the fluid sim but didn't quite get there...
I'd be very thankful for suggestions on how to approach this.
Thanks, over and out.

I think you are looking for Fluid Control.

I recommend reading the fluid simulation documentation in it's entirety.  It's not long, but covers the topic well and highlights some things to watch out for i.e making sure your obstacles are within the domain.

There are also endless tutorials on youtube and clones.


How to organize different animations when you didn't finish your scene yet? I want to have different scenes to create different movements of my objects. When I create or change an object, I want it to be created or changed in all these scenes. Only the animations shall not be linked.

Is there a way to link all objects without their animations between scenes?

So I may be wrong but here is what I think you should do from what I understand:

As you don't want to use the File > Link function and as you absolutely want to use Scenes, I think the best way to do it is to create a New Scene > Linked Copy mode, so that the objects stay linked from a scene to another, then you need to make linked duplications of your object (altD instead of shiftD), so that if you make any edit on one instance of this object, it will be replicated on all the other instances on all linked copy scene.

Why linked duplications? Because if you simply reuse the same object from a scene to another you won't be able to change the animation of one instance without changing the animation of all the other instances.


How can I create a wire-wove grid material in cycles? I'm trying to create a procedural cycles material which looks like a speaker of a mobile phone.
My attempt is by mixing two Wave Textures and rotating them by 45°. Any hints on how I can make it look more link my reference image?

Update
I used Blender 2.80 but the answer uses a newer one. I updated Blender to 2.93 in order to have the same settings on the nodes used.

I'm not super happy with this one, but when it comes down to it you might have to fiddle around with just about any solution that's given to you.  It's kind of the nature of procedural generation, so here goes.
This is based on another answer I did over here:
Sine wave on the environment texture
You can read through that for the whole discussion on this.  Here we do a Y Wave Texture influencing an X Wave Texture, and then reverse it to get a 90 degree rotation.  Then we add those two together and use it for the Alpha channel.

For this primitive plane, the scales should always be around the same (but they don't have to be exactly the same) and the Mix Factor controls the height of the wave.  So it should always be very close to 1, but how close depends on the scale of the wave textures.  You'll have to mess with them to get it to look right depending on the size of the mesh it's applied to.


Is it possible to alternate between the two colors in the Brick Node without any in-between shades? How can I use the Brick node to generate only bricks of color A or B without any in-between shades, and alternate between the two, right-to-left and top-to-bottom.

I assume it requires manipulation of the Bias value in some way or other, but I haven't been able to figure out what to use where it will have the desired effect.

Rather than connecting the brick texture to the colour input of your shader, you can use it to define the mix factor of different colours. With this approach you can use a colour ramp node to adjust the shading of the brick texture so you get less variation in the colour.

By connecting the fac of the brick node into a colour ramp you easily get a choice between brick and mortar (assuming you have a mortar size)

Then connect the colour output to a colour ramp that is set to constant interpolation and adjust the positions until you get a variation you are happy with.

Connecting the black and white colour from the colour ramps into the fac of the mix nodes lets you choose which colour is used.

Which leaves you with two brick colours and a mortar colour.


How can I make a timer? I would like to make a 7 minute timer, but I'm new to scripting and don't know how to. So can anyone help by sending a script that I could use.

Depends what you mean when you say timer. If you want a timer during your animation your best bet is to just calculate the corresponding keyframe. If you mean just a generic timer, the easiest way from within python is with threading.

import threading

def foo():
    print("times up")

timer = threading.Timer(7*60, foo)
timer.start()

see https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html#timer-objects for more details


How do you add a cool down timer? I'm working on a blender game with a character who can use certain abilities. With some of these abilities, I'd like to know how to add a cool down timer (e.g. 2 seconds) to them. How do I do this?

I suggest a timeout implementation.

Use a timer property to let the BGE count the time for you (timer properties always count upwards).

I suggest to use states to toggle between "ready" and "blocked" status.

State "ready".

In this state the operation can be activated at any time.

When the operation gets activated, you switch the state to "Blocked" and set the (negative) timeout value.

State "blocked"

In this state the operation should not be available.

All you do is wait until the timeout happens. You do this by measuring if time gets positive. When it does you switch to state "ready".

Conclusion

There are other ways to implement timeout. This one is a pretty efficient one as there is not really much to do rather than waiting on the events to happen. By using states you clearly separate the logic of both states.

I hope it helps


Finding the top / starting point of the node tree using Blender's Python API I am working on an exporter, for Babylon.JS, for a version of Blender which does not have the internal render (developing in 2.79 though).  For previous versions of the exporter, if a material with nodes was encountered, baking was just done right in the exporter.

Babylon.JS supports Physically Based Rendering (PBR), and materials similar for the internal render, so I want to try to map things when possible.

Leads me to, how do I know where to start walking the tree.  I could just run through the nodes checking for an output material like:

for shader in material.node_tree.nodes:
    shaderName = shader.bl_idname
    if shaderName == 'ShaderNodeOutputMaterial':
        # got it

Think there must be a better way.  Though it might be stupid, you can add more than one of that type, yet the UI knows which is the one hooked up.

Another way might look for a node which has no outputs, but I can see the same issue.

Yes, once I found the term active_output, I pointed straight to here

This question can probably be deleted.


How to change material from diffuse? I'm very new to Blender, and I've been watching the Blender Guru tutorials. I've gotten to the materials episode, and the person in the video has a dropdown menu to change the texture from Diffuse to Glossy or any number of others. I can't seem to find a way to change from Diffuse, and I'm very confused.

I'm in Blender 2.79 if that helps, thanks.

Maybe you need to switch from Blender Render to Cycles Render


IK rotation locking partially working So I'm making a fairly rigid robot where only the top most bone on the leg can rotation on Z and the everything below that can only rotate on the X, I read some other posts about not using rotation constraints but instead using the IK rotation lockers on the bone properties instead though it doesn't seem to work perfectly to how I imagine.

You can see here that the top bone which should only twist here is tilting. The other bones seem to work lock rotation perfectly.

Thanks for reading.

Figured it out. It was due to the Pole Target. Removing it resolved the issue.