My MixRGB node not working as expected I am placing a decal (round red light) and trying to apply a material everywhere else.

The Color1 input of my MixRGB node is sending through the manual color as if it had no connection.

When I move the connection to Color1 instead to the Output I see the expected material.

What I would like is for the red light to appear over the blue material.  The pink I do not want.

Also, why do I need the Diffuse Shader node after the MixRGB node?

Here is my blend file in case it is needed ....

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8ZnFrE6fxi_VVVwdnhaS2VwZ1k

Thanks for any insight.

Okay, I'm looking at your .blend now.

There isn't one easy "here's the problem!" sort of thing. It's more like a series of problems. So I will try to, while attempting to keep this as brief as possible, point out each of the problems I see with your material and try to help you get the effect I think you're aiming for.

(Nice zamboni, btw!)

The first thing is, this makes no sense:

Neither does this:

Do this instead:

Another no-no...

Do this to see your material:

Here is how you can combine two images using the alpha of a PNG:

One important thing to understand about both RGB and shader mix nodes is that when something is plugged into the Fac input any white image data is considered positive (or 1 if you like binary) and any black image data is considered negative (0). All shades of gray fall somewhere in between. If you know what a PNG's alpha channel looks like you can probably imagine how this is all working now. We have taken that grayscale channel and told Cycles we want that to factor a mix of colors or shaders instead of transparency. Another important thing to understand is that whatever is plugged into the upper socket is what will mask through as 0 and whatever is plugged into the lower socket will mask through as 1.

But wait, something's wrong...

There are no images in this .blend. Looks like you forgot to pack them before sharing. For the future, this can be done from File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend.

Let's look on Pixabay to see what image we might be able to substitute for a taillight...

A bright red magic mushroom! Perfect.

Pixabay image credit shout-out to "adege"

Make a transparent PNG, and we're up and running again.

(Providing transparent PNG below. Use responsibly.)

At this point you have all you need to show the decal on your material.

But since it is a light after all, let's take it a bit further.

Connect an Emission Shader like this so light will be emitted from only the non-transparent parts of the PNG:

And I saw you were trying to add some displacement with your original node setup, so let's add that back in the correct way.

I think you'll need to change the lighting in your scene before the bumps will be visible on your model, but you can see them in the material preview. Adjust the Noise Texture parameters to your liking. The Math Node (set to Multiply) tames the bump values.

Now everything is awesome!

Oh wait... the decal is upside-down.

We had better fix your UV map too.

Wow! That is one hell of a UV map.

Since you've already got the 2D Cursor in the right place and you have it set as your pivot point, we can just rotate this bad boy 180° and we'll be good to go.

Okay! And that concludes this answer. Phew! I think I broke a sweat writing this. Also experiencing some pupil dilation and my computer's display looks amazing; how odd. Anyway, good luck and happy blending!


Hide vertex colors in vertex painting view Simply put, I struggle with the same problem found on this unanswered question:
Hide Vertex Colors while painting

Is there a way to disable displaying vertex colors while in vertex color painting mode?

In vertex paint mode, simply change the rendering to either look dev or rendered:


Smoke won't render in cycles I'm having some trouble with a smoke simulation... I used quick smoke to simulate a candle and it viewed fine in the 3D view, but when I tried to render it, it showed up invisible.

Example images:

Solid view mode viewport:

Rendered view mode viewport:

Rendered via Camera:

Smoke Domain Material node setup:

Please note that I'm using the 'Quick Smoke' option, not manually creating my smoke.

Thanks, Flae.

I was using the GPU as render device.

I simply needed to change the render device to CPU, after which, it rendered perfectly.


Rigging: yaw + pitch problem I have a problem rigging a model I did.

I want to rig the base of the cannon so that it is divided into two pieces. I want the top part to be able to yaw and pitch, and the bottom one to not yaw, but still be able to pitch correctly (second picture).

Here is the original post: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?383916-Help-rigging-a-sci-fi-cannon

and here is the blend file:

I think you mean for the bottom element to yaw (turn left and right) but not to pitch (forward and back). Either way, you can lock any bone to the desired rotation by clicking on the appropriate padlock icon next to the x/y/z rotational axes for the bone at the top of the Properties panel.


CUDA Devices not showing up in "Render" tab (v. 2.78) I've gone into user settings > system and enabled both of my SLI GPUs for compute devices, however, as per the instructions, there is no "Device" drop-down to select a device in the render tab.

I have the newest version of CUDA as well as up-to-date GPU drivers. Do I need to install/configure blender for specific GPU support to enable this?

Switch to the cycles render engine:

On the info window

Select Cycles Render

and enable GPU Compute Device:


Blender 3D Rigging Bone Troubleshooting I know how to Rigging a Blender 3D, but after testing it, it worked well, but the right arm doesn't look like a problem in the armature, but it gets crumpled in a strange direction. And I thought it was the mirror, but it wasn't. I kept looking for a solution, but I couldn't find it. Please help me as soon as possible. Thank you very much. I'll leave a screenshot.
And Please Give .blend file

First, select the arms and Clear the Parent.

Now select the arm again and Set Parent To Bone.

I think the vertex groups are not painted well.

I repainted the meshes but the result was not so good.

The best thing I could do is to reparent the objects.

See the image below:

More:

It's a good practice, as soon as you unparented the objects, to delete all the vertex groups of that object.


cannot paint on texture So I've been doing the donut tutorial but for some reasons when I open blender back from where I left off, I can't paint on it now, it was perfectly fine before, does anyone know what's the problem here?

Remove your brush mask.

on a mask, Black means 0 and white means 1.
you are telling blender to not paint anything by setting a black mask.


My texture doesn't render I'm working on Cycles render. I first added a material, went to color and inputted my texture image. I then unwrapped my object and applied the texture. When I press "shift z" to have a preview render, my object got the nice little texture. But then when I click on render, my texture doesn't show, it's not just plain white.

shift z view

Render view

Any ideas on what i can do to solve this problem?

Thank youu

This is my settings.

(I added the texture in this one)

EDIT: This is not the right answer.

This is a common confusion that I wish Blender would clarify. Making a texture work in the viewport is not necessarily the same as making it work in the render.

The short answer is: you have to plug UV coordinates into the Vector slot of your texture node. If you have more than one UV Map, you have to do a bit of trickery (which is not at all obvious) to choose which UV map you plug in.

Documentation

To further the confusion, it's quite possible (and not terribly difficult) to make your object use a completely different image and UV map in the viewport than it does in the render.


my texture to shows up in solid mode but not material preview mode? I am trying to wrap a car model in Blender 2.9. I am new to blender but have used other 3D modeling programs and rendering programs. I have applied the image texture to my material, and I believe I have done it properly. It shows up when I am in solid mode and have texture enabled, but does not show up when I switch to material preview. below are pertinent screenshots. The way that the texture shows up in solid mode is EXACTLY the way I want it to look in material preview and rendered.EDIT I have plugged the texture into color instead of roughness, but now it shows up as just a solid color (see last image). scale is set to 1, 1, 1. the image is the correct size according to the UV mapping, so it should not need to be scaled.

As @scurest said in the comments, you need to reconnect the image texture node to the color input of the principled BSDF shader, instead of the roughness.
Currently, your image is controlling the roughness of the area it is unwrapped to, based off of the colors in the image. If you want this effect still, then simply leave it connected to roughness, and connect it to color. Therefore it will determine both color and roughness of the area it is unwrapped to.


Boolean doesn't work? I am trying to use the difference mode to make a hole.

But when I select Difference and the object it does this?

I removed all the doubles and recalculated normals on both objects but it still does this?

Blend file

It was a scale / normals problem : your objects scales were negative.

I applied rotations and scales ctrlA, then adjusted the normals (in edit mode ctrlN for both objects).

Then your model is ready for the boolean (difference) :


Modeling a picture frame I'm doing a VR Museum and I need to model some painting frames (picture for reference). I know how to make the basic structure of the frame, but the organic details are what's really bothering me. Is there any trick to do this kind of object or is my best bet sculpting, or something related to normal maps.

Thanks in advance!

You could also try geometric modelling, but if you know how to sculpt that is also my best bet. If you have a Displacement Texture you can make a base mesh with the Displace Modifier to get a first approximation. Either way if you are modeling for VR Realtime Rendering you should make a remeshed version for the final version.


How can I slow down or animate time? "I want to be able to switch my scene between fast and slow motion, or have all of it go into slow motion except the camera so I can pan through."

This is commonly asked for, and while there are some good solutions (How do I animate time?), I thought I would present mine.

This is a simple addon that using the scaling principle allowed by the NLA editor to space apart key frames, making an action take place over a greater time, slowing it down.

Its features:

Auto-baking
Works on rigid bodies
Automatically scales between any given keyframes and allows variable slowing

Installation:

Go to https://github.com/FreddieRa/BlenderAddons/blob/master/Slow.py
Click on "Raw" on the top left
Then right click anywhere and click "Save page as"
Save it as "Slow.py"
Go into Blender and go to "Addons" in user preferences and click "Install from file"
Navigate to where you saved the .py, and then tick the box when it appears in Blender

How to use it:

There are two different things this can be used on, normal animations, and rigid-body simulations.

For animations:
You don't need to do anything except have at least two keyframes.

For Rigid-body simulations: All you have to do is place a keyframe (of any type) at the start and end of the section you would like reversed. This is just so you can select part of the simulation, or all of it like in the picture. Keep in mind it will be baked and so the rigid-body nature will be removed, however this can be put back in afterwards.

Upon clicking "Slow" you will be presented with 4 options:

First Slow Frame - This is the frame from which the slow-motion will start

Last Slow Frame - This is the last frame that will be in slow-motion

Slow Factor - This is how much it will be slowed down by; 1 is nothing, 2 is half as fast

Global - If this is ticked, ALL objects in the scene will be slowed down

Example: Slowing down the middle frames of a rotating cube

How it works:

This works on the principle of scaling a block of keyframes, and shifting everything over to make space for the now-larger chunk. It is baked in order to provide enough keyframes to scale.

It automatically gets the first and last keyframe of any animation and then simply selects the area between two . It also works on objects that are already baked.

Tips and Tricks;

If you want a "slo-mo" scene that the camera pans through at normal speed, copy your camera, delete it, use "Global" to slow everything, then paste your camera back in.
It works on things that are already baked, meaning that you can repeat it on the same object, allowing you to gradually get slower. This can be done by scaling initially between two values (40-80), and then again between two closer values (55-65).
Use it in conjunction with my Reverse-Time addon for awesome slow...backwards goodness (?)

So there you go, use it, mess around with it, it's all commented so you should be able to see what's going on. I welcome comments and suggested improvements.

This is only my second addon and so I will have made mistakes but I just hope this saves people "time" (aha) and can be used for interesting projects!

-Freddie


Cannot install addon, even after manually moving file into the Addons folder Version 2.72. This addon: http://pasteall.org/56112/python

I coped the code and pasted it into a notepad doc, saved as a python file.

I have tried installing through the installer, then manually have moved the file into C:\Users*Username*\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79 and F:\Blender\2.72\scripts\addons

My Blender is in the F directory rather than C.. is this complicating something? Basically the file is not showing up for me to check the box to activate it.

Okay, so I had to find another version of the file. Something was wrong with that one.. then I had to indent line 63.


What are all values in bound_box? I want to compute the total scene bounding box, so I can fit the scene in rendered image automatically. I have found bound_box. But why are there so many values

<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>
<bpy_float[3], Object.bound_box>

There should be 6 values (x_min,y_min,z_min) and (x_max,y_max,z_max)

You will get 8 values only,

>>> obj = bpy.context.active_object
>>> obj.bound_box
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].bound_box

>>> [v[:] for v in obj.bound_box]
[(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0),
 (-1.0, -1.0, 1.0),
 (-1.0, 1.0, 1.0),
 (-1.0, 1.0, -1.0),
 (1.0, -1.0, -1.0),
 (1.0, -1.0, 1.0),
 (1.0, 1.0, 1.0),
 (1.0, 1.0, -1.0)]

for Suzanne it would be:

Here's some code I wrote about 2 years ago to get x.min, x.max, etc., and distance over the axis for x, y and z. With instructions how to use it. (I have this tucked away in a module so I just import the function when I need it)

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

def bounds(obj, local=False):

    local_coords = obj.bound_box[:]
    om = obj.matrix_world

    if not local:
        worldify = lambda p: om * Vector(p[:])
        coords = [worldify(p).to_tuple() for p in local_coords]
    else:
        coords = [p[:] for p in local_coords]

    rotated = zip(*coords[::-1])

    push_axis = []
    for (axis, _list) in zip('xyz', rotated):
        info = lambda: None
        info.max = max(_list)
        info.min = min(_list)
        info.distance = info.max - info.min
        push_axis.append(info)

    import collections

    originals = dict(zip(['x', 'y', 'z'], push_axis))

    o_details = collections.namedtuple('object_details', 'x y z')
    return o_details(**originals)

"""
obj = bpy.context.object
object_details = bounds(obj)

a = object_details.z.max
b = object_details.z.min
c = object_details.z.distance

print(a, b, c)

"""


Blender 2.8 How to edit via the Python API an action and change keyframes An object has an action in its animation data, how can I edit its keyframes? When I print the snippet below, I see that there are 8 entries in the dictionary of fcurves (I assume that they are three entries for translation, 3 for rotation (euler) and 3 for scale). How can I edit each specific channel of this action? For example, how do I update the translation for the keyframes for channel Z-axis?

>> for key, value in bpy.data.actions['ActionName'].fcurves.items():
...     print(key, value)
...
0 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562788>
1 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562c88>
2 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562b88>
3 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562208>
4 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562a88>
5 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562f08>
6 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562888>
7 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299562d08>
8 <bpy_struct, FCurve at 0x7f2299690088>

The related answers (provided by @batFINGER) answered my question, but I provide here an example for completeness sake.

# Configuration
action_name = 'MyAction'
data_path = 'location'
index = 2                   # Z axis

# Find the appropriate action
action = bpy.data.actions.get(action_name)
if action:
    # From this action, retrieve the appropriate F-Curve
    fcurve = action.fcurves.find(data_path, index)
    if fcurve:
        # Iterate over all keyframes
        for kfp in fcurve.keyframe_points:
            # Print current keyframe info
            print('Frame = {:04}; Value = {}'.format(kfp.co[0], kfp.co[1]))
            # Change keyframe data
            # Push back in time by 2 frames
            kfp.co[0] += 2
            # Move F-Curve up by 1
            kpf.co[1] += 1


Cycles rendering double question: render quality and render time oh, smart ones,

I have a scene with 12,405 vertices and 9,766 faces which is a kitchen I'm designing for our house. I'm using Blender 2.76 on OS X 10.11.2 on an iMac Retina.

First, rendering quality:
My samples are set to 18 square samples for 324 AA passes. I am using the Progressive Refine with 64x64 tiles. Rendering quality is basically like a 120000 ISO on a digital camera - very, very grainy. My "camera" sensor is set to 35mm DSLR.

I have no Blender Phong lights in my scene, everything is set for Emission material, with 7 object light sources, trying to replicate the existing, real-world kitchen. The material's Emission light strength is 11 for Surface and 7 for Volume. I have attached one such render output.

I have read most other questions that have to do with "grainy cycles, help!" or "fireflies, help!", but none of the fixes suggested there actually visibly improved the quality (of course samples helps, but when I bumped sampling to some large number I ended up with unrealistic times). Why don't we see any graininess in e.g. Sintel?

Second, rendering time:
I have played with CPU rendering (8 threads since I have 8 cores), and also GPU rendering (this is my ATI video card). Overall, there is not much speed difference between my CPU and my GPU and both have extremely long times to render. For the 300+ samples above, I end up with about 40 minutes render time.

So, I said, it's definitely glass, reflections and what other complex objects I have in my scene. Therefore, I hid those from the render (no glass / windows, just plain cabinet boxes). Rendering time decreased only slightly.

How can I improve both issues? And finally, how can I "pack" the .blend so it contains the materials as well - if I want to, say, share it here for debugging?

Thanks,
Virgil

For interior scenes, I find that using portals can work well. Set up an area lamp in a window facing into the room. Set it to portal, and set up another opposite of it on the other side of the scene.
I also turn off caustics in my render settings, set light bounces no higher than 6-8 in most cases unless the first render just doesn't look right, and set my tile size to 16 x 16 to 18 x 18. Granted, I am using CPU, so this is more efficient for me I have found. For fireflies, I also set indirect clamp to a minimum of 1.01


What's wrong with the prefetching? I'm currently messing around with camera tracking and I've noticed a strange issue. Whenever I prefetch the footage, it works, but from frame 129-160, the blue line isn't there. On playback, once the footage reaches frame 129, it pauses briefly, prefetches those frames as it plays, and from frame 0-47, the blue line disappears instead. And then everything resets and repeats when it reloops the footage.

I'm not sure what's happened, but is there any way to fix this? I've attached my save.

You probably need to set a higher cache limit in your preferences. It is under the System tab. The default is 4 GB which may not be enough for what you're doing.


Floating Plastic bag in Air with Wind I tried to recreate a plastic bag after watching a tutorial but failed to achieve the desired look. The plastic bag is supposed to be floating and moving with the wind but instead, while playing the animation, the bag loses its form and kind of collapses even though self-collision is turned on. The physics of the object (plastic bag) is set to soft body and I added turbulent and wind to the scene.
best,
Jassim

Try using cloth instead of soft body. I think that gives you better behaviour and control.

Make sure you object is made out of quads and they have roughly the same sizes. Especially for bending animations it's crucial that quads are as undistorted as possible. Then maybe add a subd modifier before your simulation. Keep in mind that the subdivisions an object has the smaller the wrinkles of cloth animations will be so ideally you use a subd before the simulation to give it enough geometry to work with and add another one after the simulation to smoothen the result.


Rotate an object and move up local z axis at the same time I need to rotate these two objects around the same pivot point with the outer object sliding up it's local z axis and ending up inside the inner object. I have tried using a transformation constraint along with a copy rotation however the object gets moved up the z axis in world space (even after selecting local space in settings) which doesn't lead to my desired outcome. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

This is my setup with the constraints I thought would work:

Here is how the constraints work with undesired result:

This is how I want the constraints to work, with the object rotating and moving up it's local z axis at the same time:

So what you can do is:

Create your 2 objects. Create an empty where the rotation is supposed to happen. Parent object 1 to the empty, parent object 2 to object 1.

Give object 2 a Copy Transforms constraint with object 1 as Target.


How to create a dictionary of all values of addon parameters? I have a class PG_Parameters (PropertyGroup) where all the addon parameters are stored. I would like to create a dictionary, where keys are names of the properties and the values are the values of the properties.

Typically a dictionary of class variables could be created like this:

dict = {key:value for key, value in PG_Parameters.__dict__.items() if not key.startswith('__') and not callable(key)}

But the resulting dictionary is:

{'bl_rna': <bpy_struct, Struct("PG_Parameters")>}

But I would like to get:

{'my_int': 1, 'my_float': 2.3, 'my_string': "example_string"}

How could I approach this?

You can use __annotations__ to access your custom properties instead of your conditional list comprehension:

import bpy

my_props = bpy.context.scene.my_props  # Access your custom properties (Replace if needed)
props_dic = '{'  # Open dictionary
for prop_name in my_props.__annotations__:  # Loop over all custom properties names
    value = getattr(my_props, prop_name)  # Access this particular prop value
    value_str = f"'{value}'" if type(value) is str else str(value)  # Transform it to string or add commas if it is already a string
    props_dic += f"'{prop_name}': {value_str}, "  # Add a new entry in the dictionary
props_dic += '}'  # Close dictionary
print(props_dic)

Be aware though that it will only work for 'simple' values, like floats, strings and booleans. If you have more complexe values, like Vectors you will have to add that to your parsing method.

Further and further reading.


How to UV Correctly? I cannot find any useful tutorials somehow. My model has awful UVs and I want to know how to fix them. What is the workflow to fix this type of thing or a useful tutorial for it. I do not know much about UV unwrapping but I have marked seams and done a smart project. The normal UV project was terrible. The smart one was okay but had so many UV seams it was impossible to use.

These are for one of the answer discussions:

right click and click unwrap.
If you want it to look even better, click on uv>smart uv project.
This will take longer, but gives considerably better results than just simply unwrapping.


How to map a texture onto an object correctly? I want to make a flappy Bird clone for practice and fun but I am struggling with blender and how to use the UV Editor correctly.

The pictures speak for themselves:

As you can see I am trying to apply the texture in the picture onto the object. But when I unwrap the object the coordinates get kind of inverted onto the editor on the left. When I rotate my object nothing changes. Also the coordinates on the left do not match the object at all ? I hope you understand what I mean. How can I change the way my object is unwrapped so I can save time trying to map the picture onto the object.

Quick update:
@Duarte Farrajota Ramos
I tried the method in the link you provided and it took me back to step 1:

Why is the plane not transparent when I enabled "Use Alpha" everywhere I could in Blender ?

The "Project from view" UV projection is the one you want. Just make sure that first you are viewing the mesh face-on.


How to initiate "snapping" of an object to another with the presence of another object? I'm relatively new to Blender 3D so I'm not acutely aware of any limitations that may persist.

I was wondering how one could initiate snapping of objects together with the presence of another object. So for example, another object A comes along and picks up multiple object B and creates a organised chain of object B.

Thanks for your time!

Edit:

I'm hoping to create a simulation. Long story short, I'm creating a genetic algorithm integrated into blender, but that information for this question is irrelevant. In terms of what objects they are, a rigid body object A picking up another rigid body object B, like a magnet. Object A then collects more rigid object B and snaps them together in a chain, with the objects adjacently organized.

Here is a quick sketch of what I mean:

I would suggest working backwards with a bunch of offset copy location constraints. This will be a manual process for the most part (unless you want to script the major repetitive tasks) because it is not something that can be done easily and automatically with one of Blender's simulations.

If this is what you are going for, see the blend that I uploaded (of course the starting positions of the balls could be changed to whatever really easily to make them appear to be picked up instead of emitted.

To achieve what I did in the blend:

Animate "object A"
Add a copy location constraint to an "object B" that tracks to "object A"
Animate the "influence" of the cp loc constraint on "object B" for when you want it to "attach"
You can use the offset on the copy location constraint and simple location animations to achieve what I got in the demo


Can the 3D viewport display animated, textured material alpha)? Is there a way to make the viewport reflect an animated alpha of a texture (not material)?

I create a texture with Z-transaprency and Alpha set to 0.
I create a png texture that has transaprent parts and apply it.
I then animate the texture influence on "Color" and "Alpha".
Everything renders fine viewport - but only when I change values.

Scrubbing the timeline does not display the fade-out animation, which renders fine in the final output.

I use OpenGL constantly unless Forced to do otherwise.  I've also used it to fade out alpha layered texture pretty much as per your question, albeit with a 'mirror' or two.  You may have already done this, but others may find this useful.

The method is always to animate everything in the 3D window but place the textured model to be faded out in it's own layer.  This allows precise placement/scaling etc.  Objects that will conceal the fading object when it moves behind can be either duplicated in the extra layer, or masks setup to conceal it.

The cloud in this case is our fading object.

Once set up and animating properly, switch off the extra (cloud) layer and render the rest.

We render the cloud's layer next, only output that to alpha layered PNG files, and INTO A SEPERATE FOLDER!  Ensure you are indeed rendering with an alpha layer. (transparency)  At near top left of the 3D window is the "Render" drop-down.  "Render OpenGL image" most often gives you what's going to end up on the video.

Reset your output to it's final rendering folder, file type etc, and ensure the "Post output " is set to "Sequencer".

Go to the Video Editor and bring in the main video render onto the lower strip, the Alpha layered PNG files (as an image) onto one above it, and set the upper strip to "Alpha Over"

All that remains is to set keyframes on the upper strip to fade it in and out at the appropriate frame numbers.

Render that.  All of the renders only takes seconds, including the final one which of course must be from Blender's internal Renderer.

Hope this solves your problem...

PS:  It's also possible to mix the PNG video strip with a "Scene" strip and get the same result.  Unfortunately that has given me some grief in the past so I prefer to use two video strips.


How can I get only textures (with out shaders) from rendering image in Blender 2.8? I want to get Only texture with out shaders from rendering image.

In my rendering image.

I want to output a texture-only image like displayed inside the red frame of this image.

I want an image that looks like Solid in Viewport Shading and the colors are from textures.

Screenshots are not an option, because I want to match the size with the rendered image.

I can write Python, so I'm more glad if I can get it with a script.

1-You can enable color pass in view layer settings. And access it in compositing.

2-You can do screenshot of the solid with right size by doing Viewport render image.
Its in view menu of viewport.

3-About

  Just use the texture color directly to the surface output, with no
  shader in between. – lemon

With Node wrangler addon shift-click on texture in material editor to show just texture.
Or connect texture to emission shader and this shader to output node.


Making a custom stitch z brush I watched a video of blender guru on adding stitching to a couch.  He added a 2nd uv and overlaid a zbrush in the bump map and manually aligning the uv to match.  Is there a way I can make a texture paint brush to paint a bump map on a stitch to easily add stitching.  If so how do I do it and how do I create a texture of all the maps and UVs to import to unity.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

It seems a bit tedious to paint a b&w stitch directly in Blender but you can:

Create a stitch on a flat plane:

Choose the top view, in Solid mode, in the Viewport Shading panel, choose Matcap and choose the normal matcap:

In the View menu, choose Viewport Render Image:

In an image editor, only keep the normal map image:

Unwrap your object and use the image in an Image Texture plugged into a Normal map in order to create your stitch:


Play selected channel solo in VSE? Is it possible to play a channel solo in the VSE, through a shortcut or python? I mean like ex. hide/mute all unselected  channels?

No way to natively hide/mute channels. Only strips:

'H' & 'Alt+H' will mute/hide & unmute/unhide a strip.

'Shift+H & 'Shift + Alt + H" the same, but inverts selection.

However, this add-on can mute/hide entire channels:
https://github.com/venomgfx/addonitos/blob/master/space_sequencer_channel_tools.py


Gradient biased to black (it seems); why? Working on the solution for How to use transmissive voxels with color gradients? to be transmissive instead of reflective, I have a problem that I do not understand (Blender 2.79):

The gradient that is meant to be linear does not blend in a linear way in my eyes. Instead the gradient seems biased to wards black or darker colors. Even when I try to apply gamma correction, the gradient does not improve.

As I'm a beginner with blender, it's possible that I mad some mistake due to misunderstanding, so please tell me what I did wrong, and preferably how to fix it.

First here are the colors that should be blended (basically an RGB cube):

And here is how my attempts look:

Remark: The first image on the second row does not match the view angle of the cube in the first row, but the second one does.
Finally, this is my node setup (hoping that's enough for the expert to understand):

The result I'd like to see should be as smooth as this if possible:

Unfortunately the emissive version does not have smooth gradients:

In vertex color paint one can see the useful interpolation.  This may or may not be useful.  If you just want the gradient you could vertex color paint simple planes and use them as textures.  Blender Render.  Arrow indicates required setting.

For your example try to avoid negative coordinates relative to origin.

Nodes with exponent of 1.   Origin of cube in center of cube. Image above.  Negative Values possible for coordinates.  Not desirable for your goals.

Origin of cube is in the corner. Image Above. Zero or Positive Values for coordinates.  This origin works with your goals.

Make sure your placement of the cube has

one corner at (0,0,0) and origin is there as well.

one corner at (1,1,1)

You may want to research Barycentric Interpolation


Apply static bump map to normals in Blender 2.82 I'm new to Blender and graphics. I'm trying to apply a bump map to a mesh and export it in OBJ format, but I have two problems:

The .obj file nor the .mtl file contains any information about the bump map, in fact by reimporting the obj in blender the mesh doesn't have any bump mapping applied.
By looking into the obj, normals are just very slightly modified and there's no map_Bump entry in the mtl either.

If I undestood well the bump map needs to be computed and applied each time the mesh is imported in a software, using the bump image.
Is there a way to apply "statically" the bump map to the normals, so that the normals are modified just once using the bump image and saved with the mesh? So that I do not need to keep the image and recompute the bump map each time.

Thanks.

OBJ exporter is very basic. It's a format optimized for readability and compatibility. I don't think the Blender exporter checks for bump maps, it's fairly basic. In my test it did look for the diffuse map, but it mapped it like this: (inside the .mtl file) map_Kd G:\Libraries\Textures\CIMG2124.JPG So if we copied  it to your machine, the link would break. If at all possible, use .fbx, it's more versatile and better maintained.
Bump maps can't be "applied", every ray hitting your surface will take the normal map into account, meaning calculating its effects in realtime. The trick is to add detail without geometry. To bake the bump map, to your mesh (the opposite of what bump maps are for) you'd have to add tons of vertices. It does not modify the normals, it adds to the direction of the ray that's being reflected, depending on the pixel's color.


Fluid domain not baking I am new to blender and was taking this tut from:

Blender Tutorial - Realistic Fluid Simulation

to create a sim of fluid. However, the domain remains as it is and
   does not bake at all. Here's the

Blend File.

I have tried every solution from the internet I could find and yet it's unsolved.

Ok I have checked your file.. you can try doing what i did

I extruded the circle a bit and gave it a little volume..
try changing inflow velocity on x axis to 0.1m/s


mirror modifier kinda glitch i think this is a glitch or something.
i bought the Blender Game Asset Creation for my left over money on steam so i cant really get help there so i ask here instead.
i am stuck on the Blender: 5.2 UVs - Mirror Modifier video and this always seems to happen when i mirror the traffic cone.

Before adding the modifier:

After adding the modifier:

someone pls help i am a pretty noob in blender and i understand that this might be very easy.

Rotating an object can make the mirror axis un-intuitive. You can see current rotation in the transform panel, which is opened with N in the 3D viewport . You should apply rotation with Ctrl + A and then it will behave like you expect.


How do I combine/join/merge all vertices at the same location? So I imported this *.obj model file. It is a mesh that has all the faces exploded/split/whatever, meaning that the thing is a collection of separate polygons that are not connected to each other. There's hundreds of them. So I selected all the vertices with A and tried to merge them with Alt+M, which of course deleted the whole model, because it merged all the vertices into one. So at the location of each polygon corner can be up to six vertices, each belonging to a different face that are directly adjacent to each other, yet not connected to each other. Is there some sort of a smart functionality in Blender that recognizes duplicate (or more) vertices at same location and merges them?

I am quite a n00b at this, so please forgive me for not having the best grasp on the correct terminology.

You are looking for remove doubles. It can be found in the 3D view tool shelf while in edit mode.


How to close windows on the interface? I have never used blender before, and I don't know how to control the windows on the interface.

Ahah you are dragging the corners of the panels, actually increasing their number.
Quick dirty mode: see that long row of tabs up in the screen? Click one of those and you will have a cleaner view.
But you should learn to manage panels: so to remove panels, just click a corner again, one in between two panels that you want to unify, and move the mouse on the panel that you want to REMOVE. The other panel will take its place, and you will have one panel less.
Do this with all the panels that you don't want.
All those horizontal panels down there at the bottom of the GUI can be removed this way.
You have also activated the QUAD VIEW in the topmost panel. To deactivate it, go with the mouse cursor over that panel and press CTRL + ALT + Q.


Can the 'top' view be rotated by 180° around the Z-axis by default? Is it somehow possible to have the top view (Numpad 7) rotated by 180 degrees by default?

I can get the view I'm after using the key combination Numpad 7 then 12 x Numpad 6 (or 12 x Numpad 4).

I was hoping that there is some option or setting to rotate this default top-view orientation by 180° around the Z-axis?

There is no way to customize the default orientation as far I know (maybe some clever person could write a script and assign it to the numpad keys)

As an alternative you can change the default scene.

Rotate the view to where you need it, then press Ctrl+U to save the startup file. That way blender will always open with your preset view.

Make sure that the Load UI (load User Interface) box is enabled on the user preferences>file>load & save section.

You could also create custom layouts and save those as part of the startup file, that way instead of changing the views, change to the layout that has the orientation you want to use CtrlLeft or CtrlRight

See this related post: Can screen layouts be locked?


How to replace images in blender file? I downloaded a model from someone but noticed the textures take up way too much space. Is there a way I can replace this images with lower quality images without having to replace them in the shaders?

I suppose all the textures you're talking about are packed? What you could do is go in the File menu > External Data > Unpack All Into Files which will create a texture folder next to your file, replace all the high-quality images with low-quality, keeping the exact same name, then File menu > External Data > Pack All Into .blend.


Why does sliding edge makes it slide being mirrored? I have this cube with skewed faces:

I'd like to use Edge Slide tool with Even enabled to move the right edge (selected) to the left without it changing its angle (example). As per manual:

  Even E
      Forces the edge loop to match the shape of the adjacent edge loop. You can flip to the opposite vertex using F. Use Alt+Wheel to change the control edge.

However what I get is that selected edge becomes mirrored along vertical (in this case Z) axis and that's how it's slided:

Choosing control edge doesn't change that, control edge is selected correctly but it's just mirrored.
In the second part of the gif I enable Flip option of the Edge Slide to choose the unselected face as one the selected will match. It works as expected - the selected and edited face gets orientation of that face. It doesn't for the selected face.

Things like scale+rotation are applied and normals oriented outside.

Why does Edge Slide tool mirror the edge it is sliding?

From my admittedly limited testing I believe it is a side effect of being in face selection mode.

By selecting the whole side face instead of only the desired edges you are unintentionally also edge-sliding the vertical edges perpendicular to the view plane. Somehow the tool's geometry calculation probably gets confused trying to slide both loops at the same time while sharing the same corner vertex.

You can see it behaves as expected when selecting two edges only, but behaves unexpectedly if the side face is selected instead.


Getting the image of a texture node that feeds into a node group I have a Cycles material node group like this:

I can access the user-specified color (red) like this:

bpy.data.objects["Suzanne"].data.materials[0].node_tree.nodes.get("MyNodeGroup").inputs[0].default_value[:]

which gives...

(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

I can also hook an image-texture node into that node group like this:

However, bpy.data.objects["Suzanne"].data.materials[0].node_tree.nodes.get("MyNodeGroup").inputs[0].default_value[:] still gives (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0).

How can I access the image node? I'd like to get the associated filename and/or image. Thanks!

This is done with searching the node links for one that connects into the node input. The image node is on the other end of that link:

import bpy

mat = bpy.data.objects["Suzanne"].data.materials[0]

# get node input (socket)
socket = mat.node_tree.nodes.get("MyNodeGroup").inputs[0]

# get node link that connects into the socket
link = next(link for link in mat.node_tree.links if link.to_socket == socket)
# get the other node of that link
node = link.from_node

# get the image from node
image = node.image


Weird error preventing me from export after I move vertex/face/edge I've been recently working on something that's called "Frankensteining"in JK3 game in Blender. I downloaded the plugin suite (for import/export models from the game) and I started the work.

However! Everytime I edit a mesh in any way (move vertex, edge, or face - moving the object itself is okay) and try to export it, this is the error I get: http://scr.hu/22as/t58y6

The model doesn't export itself. I mean, the issue is horribly annoying, I can't do anything because of that (since I can't modify any meshes) and I have no idea how to fix the problem :/

The answer is that your mesh is lacking UV coordinates. Unwrap your mesh (in edit mode, select all vertices A and unwrap U - Unwrap

Then try your export again.


Weight painting is causing weird extrusions Just wanna give a heads up that I'm new to this
So I'm attempting to rig a mesh, however every time I attempt to weight paint it, it causes weird extrusions.
What the model should look like

What happens when I try to weight paint it

I have tried every possible option with the brush, stroke, falloff, etc. that I know of. If anyone knows what is causing this I would be very thankful. Also happy holidays.
Edit: So I apparently did not give enough info originally. I have been recommended to use blend exchange, which I now have. Yet again thank you for taking your time to help.

It looks like a Mixamo action... i.e. Y up. Their weight paint to start with is not good. You can not this also in their screen animations - the moves are problematic, hands cross the leg etc'
When you import it into Blender, it's even worse.
You can either try to re-target with a paid addon (eg:AutoProRig). But you would still need to have a solid blender rig to be the target.
Then, their meshes are triangulated and not with quads like blender which makes the weight painting task more tedious and less intuitive.
But even with a very good rig and proper mesh it is nearly impossible to use this rig as is. You need additional bones or else the meshes will cross each other.
I would suggest to try it on a simpler object before.


How to make a particle system where particles don't emit light? How can I make a particle system where particles don't emit light ?

Particle systems don't emit light by default, only if you add an emission material to it.

That looks like a Halo particle system, which renders as "blurred dots" in Blender internal.

Try disabling the Halo option under the Properties Editor > Particles > Render > Halo to something else like an object or group.

Alternatively add a new material to the object, set it to Halo type and assign it to the Particle System under Properties Editor > Particles > Render > Material menu. Control it's settings to match whatever effect you desire.


When I sculpt it doesn't show in object mode I am pretty new to blender. I am working on this character, however, everytime I switch from sculpt mode to object mode, it doesn't show the changes I made to the object in sculpt mode. I believe this might have started because I switched the "lock object mode" to off. I already turned it back on, but it still doesn't update. Please help.

Go to Object Mode, select the object, go to Modifier Properties and change Level Viewport value to bigger than zero until your modifications shows up in Object Mode.

This, it seems is an effect of using Multires modifier.
I found this solution in the answer Why is object mode slow but sculpt mode fast?


How to smooth a modal in blender 2.82 I am switching into the new blender 2.82 with the new layout and I cannot find out where the smooth option is please help me find the smooth option in the new blender layout.
if this is a duplicate question sorry.

You need to be in Object Mode and then either right-click on the mesh or expand the Object menu and select Shade Smooth.


How do you make a mitred corner? I'm working on making a triple glazing corner sample, and I want to be able to mitre the profile at 45 degrees so I can duplicate it, rotate it and join them to make an elbow. I've muddled through making the profile, but now I'm stuck on how to get that 45 degree angle.

I've had a look around Google, perhaps I'm not phrasing my question correctly but I cant find any answers. I did try creating a cube to use as a sort of cutting form, but Blender wouldn't let me use a Boolean modifier to do it. Any thoughts?

Thank you!

What I'm trying to achieve:

What I have at the moment:

I would suggest using the shear tool to do this.

With the vertices at one end selected go into the side view (shear deforms based on the view) ⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt⇧ ShiftS and then enter a value of 1 (or -1) to get a 45 degree angle. If your pivot point is set to median then you may need to move the edge sideways to re-align it or you can position the 3D cursor and set the pivot point before shearing.


Screw Modifier with different materials on faces I need to set a different material on the blue marked faces.
this material linked to the angle.
Thank you for your help.

As far as I know this is currently not possible with the Screw Modifier sadly. The modifier is not material slot aware, it has no Material Offset options like Solidify nor can Material Slots be stored on edges.

One possible workaround is duplicating the object, removing the Screw Modifier and assigning a new material to the new instance. Make sure the material slots are linked to Object (rather than Object Data) in the dropdown to the right.

You can still keep shape in sync between the two because they are duplicates, and you can now adjust section from the two caps too.

Optionally add a Mirror Modifier, or rotate another instanced duplicated to fill the opposite side.


Keyframe bones that are hidden and not selected I'm making some keyframes on a rig that has tweak bones. Most of my poses do not use the tweak bones, so I want them at rest pose. Occasionally a pose does need a tweak bone. This means that in every pose that uses the tweak bone, I need them keyframed at their needed position, and every pose that doesn't use a tweak bone, I have to keyframe them at Rest. And every time I scrub through an area where the tweak bones have a pose, they will stay in that pose even though they are hidden and accidentally get left on.

The result of all this is a lot of time spent hiding/showing tweak bone layers, and having to interact with them constantly, which is very inefficient.

I am looking for a way to keyframe them without having to show their layer and select them all. It seems my workflow would be much more efficient if it was possible to establish a group of bones, and be able to keyframe them all at once regardless of if they are showing or selected. It seems that the Whole Character option on the keyframe menu does this, but it also keyframes a ton of extra things that I don't want to keyframe.

Does anyone know a way to do this, or another solution to this problem?

"Tweaking" BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter class.

The class of the "whole character" keyingset, BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter,  is available at 2.79/scripts/startup/keyingsets_builtins.py It can be pretty much copied to make a new custom keying set for your "TWEAK" bones by only iterating over bones in hidden layers, and / or by name prefix etc. A small sample file with info on which bones and what paths to keyframe would clarify somewhat.

Test script below, adds keyframes to bones hidden either via bone.hide or via unshown layer.  Prints "generate <bone.name>" for each keyframed bone.

This example edits the class method KeyingSetInfo.iterator to only iterate over hidden bones.  The iterator method chooses what iterable, in this case pose bones, should have keyframes generated.

import bpy
from keyingsets_builtins import KeyingSetInfo, BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter

class CUSTOM_KSI_HiddenBones(KeyingSetInfo):
    """Insert a keyframe for all properties that are likely to get animated in a character rig """
    """(only selected bones)"""
    bl_idname = "HiddenBones"
    bl_label = "Whole Character (Hidden bones only)"

    # iterator - all bones regardless of selection
    def iterator(ksi, context, ks):
        # Use either the selected bones, or all of them if none are selected.
        bones = context.selected_pose_bones or context.active_object.pose.bones
        ob = context.active_object
        arm = ob.data
        def hidden(pb):
            bone = pb.bone
            # bone on these layers
            layers = [i for i, l in enumerate(bone.layers) if l]
            return bone.hide or not any(arm.layers[i] for i in layers)
        bones = [pb for pb in ob.pose.bones if hidden(pb)]
        for bone in bones:
            if bone.name.startswith(BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.badBonePrefixes):
                continue
            print("generate", bone.name)
            ksi.generate(context, ks, bone)

    # Poor man's subclassing. Blender breaks when we actually subclass BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.
    poll = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.poll
    generate = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.generate
    addProp = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.addProp
    doLoc = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doLoc
    doRot4d = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doRot4d
    doRot3d = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doRot3d
    doScale = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doScale
    doBBone = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doBBone
    doCustomProps = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.doCustomProps

classes = [CUSTOM_KSI_HiddenBones]

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

def unregister():
    from bpy.utils import unregister_class
    for cls in classes:
        unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

To make an iterator that selects bones in active bone group

bones = [pb for pb in ob.pose.bones
        if pb.bone_group == ob.pose.bone_groups.active]

Each pose bone has its keyframes generated using the KeyingSetInfo.generate method.  The generator keys in the desired keyframes for each iterable.  In example above that has been "poor man's subclassed" generate = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.generate from the whole character built in.

Let's have a look at the BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.generate method

    def generate(ksi, context, ks, bone):
        # loc, rot, scale - only include unlocked ones
        if not bone.bone.use_connect:
            ksi.doLoc(ks, bone)

        if bone.rotation_mode in {'QUATERNION', 'AXIS_ANGLE'}:
            ksi.doRot4d(ks, bone)
        else:
            ksi.doRot3d(ks, bone)
        ksi.doScale(ks, bone)

        # bbone properties?
        ksi.doBBone(context, ks, bone)

        # custom props?
        ksi.doCustomProps(ks, bone)

    # ----------------

Pretty straight forward. To remove custom properties from the keying set, could define (and hence override) the generate method, and remove or comment out ksi.doCustomProps(ks, bone) to have no custom properties keyed in.

Alternatively, could reuse the generate method and  set up a dummy method and define for each of the keyframes you wish to bypass, for example do nothing for  b-bones or custom properties.

def dummy(*args, **kwargs):
    return None

class CUSTOM_KSI_HiddenBones(KeyingSetInfo):
    ...
    generate = BUILTIN_KSI_WholeCharacter.generate
    doBBone = dummy
    doCustomProps = dummy
    ...


How can I reverse the direction of bones in my armature? I spent a lot of time building up my armature for my dragon model and then, after I was all done and started to refine it, I realized that the bones from the pelvis out to the end of the tail were pointing the wrong way - they need to have their heads pointing the other direction:

I don't want to have to delete these bones and start over.

Is there an easy way to switch the direction of the tail bones?

Switch Direction of Bones

Thankfully Blender has a simple command that will reverse the direction of selected bones called "Switch Direction". You can access this two different ways:

Select rig > Tab > select bones > Specials menu (W) > Switch Direction
Select rig > Tab > select bones > 3D View Header > Armature menu > Switch Direction


Adding stray hairs to hair particles? i'm not too sure if i worded it right, but i'm looking for a way to make hair look more spares in some areas so it has some stray fly away hairs

the first image is the look i'm going for, while the second is my current project file and what i've achieved so far. i've tried fiddling around with a few settings but i can't seem to find the right one just yet.

is there anyway to easily achieve this, or would they need to be added and styled by hand?

2.8 blend hair file on google drive

so, i found out the best way to do it. increase the roughness, but also increase the threshold as well. the roughness makes it more shaggy so it's not combed to a point, but the threshold makes sure that there are some combed hairs as ll


Extruding imported svg does only translate curve I created a svg in inkscape.

and imported it in blender.

Edit mode, with the display of handles turned off looks like

Selecting the curve by selecting one vertex and and pressing ctrl-L and pressing E to extrude it, restricting it by pressing Z does only result in translation.

I expected the mesh to become like a strip/band/wall.

The extrude curve menu that comes up shows some alternatives

...but changing to something else than translation here does not result in anything.

Why not?

Go to the object mode, press ALT+C and transform the curve into the mesh. Go to the edit mode and then extrude it along z-axis.


I imported an obj file into Blender and cannot add an uv wrap from a png file I'm use to modeling in Fusion 360 and then export the file into an obj. I practically use Blender as a rendering tool because Fusion isn't as powerful.

Overall still learning how to model in Blender but in a meantime would like to know how I can add an uv wrap from a png file onto an imported obj model.

To do this you must unwrap the .OBJ, (wavefront). You can do this by going to Edit Mode, selecting all of the faces by hitting 'A' on the keyboard, and pressing 'U' to unwrap. Then select unwrap or smart UV unwrap in the options drop down menu you get when hitting U, and you are done with the first step. The next step is to select a texture. By the way, you must be in Blender Cycles render mode to continue. Once you set your renderer to Cycles, go to the material settings for the object in the properties tab. Select whatever material you want for the object, and set the color to image texture. Then you can import your texture by clicking the file icon next to the image texture settings.


Tiny Parts of my Character are not moving when i move my whole armature. there are not even a vertices there either This is my first post here so tell me if I'm doing something wrong

My character When I move the central bone

I would reposition the character, selected the character and remove doubles. I know you said that there are no vertices there but something has to be there I would think.


Adding given number of objects to an area using Python I have an area (the large cylinder) where I want to be able to quickly add a varying amount of small cylinders to. Is there a way in Python I can do this by giving the dimensions of the cylinder and then the number of them across the space?

The devil might be in the detail.. but here's a base case of using a Particle System to scatter objects on a given area.

Create / Duplicate a face representing the area you want scattered with the objects
Create the object you want to be scattered.
In its Particle Settings tab, set the face to be a particle emitter.

There are lots of settings for particle emission, but most of them are self-explanatory, maybe after a bit of trial and error. Here are my settings for this example, trying to keep everything simple to begin with, everything else at default:

All the particles are emitted on frame 1, and have a lifetime of 1, so you have to be there on the timeline to see them.

This is the rotation setting that works for me, with my scattered object ('Cylinder') created with its local Z along its length.

Depending on what you want, at any stage, the particles can be made into real instances of the scattered object by hitting Convert in the emitter's Particle Settings modifier (in its modifier stack)

Be aware that if you copy the emitter, it will share the particle system with the original. As with other kinds of shared Data-Blocks in Blender, you can make it unique to the user by clicking the digit indicating the number of users under the list of Particle Settings at the top of its Particle Settings tab


Script that delete duplicated materials (from appending objects) and reassign the correct material I need to make a script that delete duplicated materials (from appending objects) and reassign the materials with the same names to the same material slots. Could you help me figuring out how to do it?

Something like that:

bpy.ops.wm.append (autoselect = True)
    #Check if 'bpy.context.active_object.active_material' has a dot on 4th position from the end (since duplicated material are renamed mat.001)
        #if condition true delete the mat
        #reassign mat with same name minus the 4 last characters of the name string on the same material slot

obj = bpy.context.active_object

for index in range(0, len(obj.material_slots.keys())):

    obj.active_material_index = index

    if "." in obj.active_material.name:

        mat = obj.active_material.name[:-4]
        bpy.data.materials.remove(obj.active_material)
        obj.data.materials[index] = bpy.data.materials[mat]

This work, I kind of cheated with the if "."


Deforming a mesh in realtime (Game Engine) I have a subdivided plane I want to act as a niveau map.

I want to change the niveau extremes' locations and want the map to display the niveau in the form of z=f(x,y) with x,y as the location of a significant niveau point and want to plot z to the plane with a function f of my choosing.

How can I change and apply the vert's location (z value)?

1) I'd like the changes to be real time. I'd like to show the movement of the niveaus with it.

2) Because of that they need to happen while the game runs

3) Yes I tried to find and change the objects vertices like this:

bpyobject=bpy.data.scenes[scenename].objects[bgeobject.name]
for vert in bpyobject.data.vertices:
    vert.co[2]=vert.co[2]+1
bpyobject.data.update()

But this only updates the mesh after the game engine ends.

Firstly you'll need to use the bge module, bpy data access wont work since the game engine stores its own data.

For this you will need to use KX_MeshProxy, In the link there is an example for changing a meshes vertex color, but from the API docs you can see how you could change location.

eg:
    from bge import logic

cont = logic.getCurrentController()
object = cont.owner

for mesh in object.meshes:
   for m_index in range(len(mesh.materials)):
      for v_index in range(mesh.getVertexArrayLength(m_index)):
         vertex = mesh.getVertex(m_index, v_index)
         vertex.XYZ = 1, 2, 3 * v_index

Note

that this isnt really optimal from Python, for a high poly mesh the Python script may slow down execution a lot, if the motion isnt so fast you could move N verts per script execution, so at least you dont get jerky playback which would happen if you simply execute the script less often.
You may want to look into GLSL vertex shaders, this is quite invovled but has the advantage that moving vertices about is offloaded onto the graphics card.


Install packages in Blender 2.80 using pip I'm trying to install numpy/scipy on Blender's internal python compiler.

On my computer, the python compiler is located at:

/Applications/blender 2.80/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.80/python

Running the commands:

cd /Applications/blender2.80/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.80/python
./bin/python3.7m -m ensurepip

I get:

Requirement already satisfied: setuptools in ./lib/python3.7/site-packages (39.0.1)
Requirement already satisfied: pip in ./lib/python3.7/site-packages (10.0.1)

This means that pip is already installed in Blender 2.80. However, from this point, I don't know how to proceed. Any help?

It is probably possible to use blender's built-in version of python to get a package using pip, but there are many difficulties with that route, as you are most likely finding yourself.

Luckily, blender also has an easier way to install python packages.

If you go to preferences > File Paths > Data (shown below), you can add python packages to blender.

The Scripts field can be used to specify a location for blender to look for external packages. You can install packages to any location (even using your system python), and then tell blender to just look for the packages in the folder with the python packages.

To quote from another answer, "Note that this folder must contain 3 sub-directories : addons, modules, and startup. So you can install the library in the modules folder."

Another option is to install packages into the lib subfolder inside the blender application. If your system python matches the blender python, you might be able to do that with normal pip while specifying a new install location.

See this answer for more details and strategies.


Animated object exported to fbx does not have any animation I have 2 animations currently on a sword that I have modeled and when I export the object as a fbx into my game engine Unity it seems to not bring the animations along with it. Here are the export settings:

and here is what it looks like when imported into Untiy:

As you can tell I am very new to blender and modeling in general so any tips on where I have gone wrong would be appreciated. Thanks! I apologize for the poor resolution on the second screenshot.

When exporting, tick Include Default Take. Also, since you aren't using bones, you should apply the scale on the model before exporting (CtrlA > Scale).

The animation(s) should now come over with the selected one (in Blender) as the default take.


The Pivot point of every object is glued to the 3d Cursor Sorry for that, but I have to interrupt your hopefully beautiful sunday, before I'm goin crazy.. :D In one of my projects (I'm a newbie) somehow I glued the pivot point of rotation to the 3d curosor (generally). If I select anything in my scene and push R, the center of the rotation is the 3d cursor, no exception. I attache some pictures, where you can see it. I'm sure somewhere somehow I used a shortkey accidentally, but google doesn't help, maybe you will. Extremly hard to work this way. Thank you!

You probably just changed your pivot point to 3D cursor.
It's the second dropdown menu on top of viewport.


How do I install Mira_Tools addon? I've put the MiraTools directory in the addons - nothing I can do will make it show in the addons ion user prefs. The *.py files are there, including init.py, but nogo. I can see all the other addons in that directory enabled & otherwise, vut not Mira_tools. Anyong got any ideas? I'm using Blender 2.78.

ok I am using the User Prefs, I've added addons before & they work. This one remains invisible.
I'm aware there are other addons in the pack. I have found the issue. I uninstalled V2.78, reinstalled it - still nogo. Then went to V2.79, still nogo. BUT on another machine using either 2.78 or 2.79, it works great. The issue is 32/64 bit OS (Windows) Mira works fine on my 32 bit machine. I have come across this before - there is still some bug between 32/64 bit directory listings (I'm sure it's an OS thing) where some files become invisible in that they won't "parse" but you can still see the listing in a dir. I've now seen this about 4 times, it screws me up once every two years, and it's still there. So - I appreciate your help, problem solved and - don't get caught!

From the information available on the Mira-Tools Wiki page:

Download the zip archive for the development version.
Unzip the downloaded file.
Copy mira_tools/blender/addons/mira_tools folder into your user addons folder.
Refresh Blender's add-ons and enable the add-on "MiraTools".

Apparently the ZIP they ship contains all kinds of data, it's not just a Blender add-on. This means that you cannot install it via Blender itself, but have to do it manually. Their issue #22 also complains about this.


Creating models from vertex groups I have a humanoid model with its parts like head, torzo, leg etc assigned to vertex groups with corresponding names. I want to make models from these vertex groups. Is there a way to accomplish this without deleting the other vertex groups.

It was as easy as selecting the vertices in the vertex group and pressing P key and selecting Selection from the drop down menu.


Material not rendering properly I'm quite new to Blender (I'm using 2.79), and I've been using the Principled BSDF (with Cycles). What I want is to use a mask (the image is temporary) to paint a motif on the side of the cup.
In the image below, I have 2 3D View, one with Rendered, the other with Material. Material is what I want, but why isn't it the same for the Rendered?
The Rendered one seems to be using the old version of the material, that I used before modifying the nodes to add the mask, which is also displayed in the Material preview on the right side.
The cup only has one Material, assigned to all its faces.
What is going on? How do I fix it?

Alright, I fixed it. Thanks Ray Mairlot for sending me related posts.

Instead of a Mix Shaders with Diffuse BSDF, I am now using a MixRGB, and it works perfectly.


How to loop cut a plan surface If we take a circle not a sphere and not a cylinder. A circle with 32 edges and make face with F and i want to divide that faces in 6 equal parts.  As Loop cut do not work on faces. How can we make it.

This is a nice example of a very unclear question. I actually got it completely different than the other two, as I had a piece of cake in mind like this:

You'll need 36 verts for this to work, and have the disc filled with an n-gon. Then, connecting the vertices opposite each other using J would do the trick.


How can I run a add-on from a python script I know how to enable the add-on through the script but I was wondering how to run the add-on. Meaning how do i use it through a script.

Imagine there is an addon installed called "my addon". It has a couple properties to control in the toolshelf, and an operator.

The properties are all in bpy.context.scene.

In your script/addon, you can access all these properties.

You can set properties by

bpy.context.scene.my_addon_string = "hey"

And call operators

bpy.ops.object.my_addon_op()

So with a combination of editing properties and running operators, you should be able to run the addon from another addon or script.


For loop splines amplified ! , why? How can I stop it? I am creating a for loop to connect pairs of objects by a Splines
To understand better image atoms in a molecule.
It seems that every time I create a new spline is in someway  taking in consideration some parameter of the spline before amplifying the result.
How can i stop it (I tried several things, also moving cursor thinking was some hidden dependence from the universe origin but it is not)  also if I convert the curve to mesh every time... still propagating the error.
def CREATE_BOUNDS_1(df_BND,PLUS_FACTOR):
                   #Manca assegnazione nome a oggetti
                   for index, row in df_BND.iterrows():
                       print('START - CREATE_BOUNDS_1')
                       bound_name = 'BOUND_'+str(int(row['BONDS_1']))+'_' +str(int(row['BONDS_2']))
                       print(bound_name)
                       BNDS_EXTR = [float(row['A1_CD_X'])+PLUS_FACTOR,float(row['A1_CD_Y']), float(row['A1_CD_Z']),float(0.0),float(row['A2_CD_X'])+PLUS_FACTOR,float(row['A2_CD_Y']), float(row['A2_CD_Z']),float(0.0) ]
                       print(BNDS_EXTR)
                       bpy.context.scene.cursor.location = (BNDS_EXTR[0],BNDS_EXTR[1],BNDS_EXTR[2]) #muve cursor
                       bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_curve_add()
                       obj = bpy.context.object
                       obj.data.dimensions  = '3D'
                       obj.data.fill_mode   = 'FULL'
                       obj.data.bevel_depth = 0.1
                       obj.data.bevel_resolution = 0
                       # set first point to centre of sphere1
                       bpy.context.scene.cursor_location = (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[0].select_left_handle = True
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[0].co = (BNDS_EXTR[0],BNDS_EXTR[1],BNDS_EXTR[2])
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[0].handle_left_type = 'VECTOR'
                       # set second point to centre of sphere2
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[1].select_right_handle = True
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[1].co = (BNDS_EXTR[4],BNDS_EXTR[5],BNDS_EXTR[6])
                       obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[1].handle_left_type = 'VECTOR'
                       #obj.data.splines[0].bezier_points[1].handle_right_type = 'VECTOR'
                       obj = bpy.context.selected_objects[-1]
                       obj.name = bound_name
                       CURRENT = bpy.data.objects.get(bound_name)
                       bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH', keep_original= False)
                       print(bound_name)
                       print('--------------------------------------------------')
                       bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
                       #bpy.data.curves.remuve()
                   return ('DONE')

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!
I resume the problem to be sure to be helpful:
you have a dataframe or 2 list of points , and you need to connect pairs of points. the faster way is to create splines between them but ....
..in my case blender was generating the connection in different position than expected and unexpected lengths ... but not really randomly .
The problem was  bpy.context.scene.cursor.location  that was not in the center of the world origin
The solution is to reset at every loop the position of the cursor in the center of the world origin.


How to add roughness to a surface using modifiers? I'm trying to make a roughened parchment-like material. I don't want to just use a texture, because I want to take a low-angle shot that lets me see the actual bumps in the surface.

I currently have the parchment represented using a single plane mesh. Is there a modifier I can use to deform the mesh in order to add roughness to it?

Yes, though you'll probably want to use two for maximum effect; I recommend applying a Subdivision surface modifier ('Simple', not 'Catmull-Clark'), and then applying a Displace modifier. If your geometry is sufficiently complex it should work fine.

The Subdivision Surface modifier adds vertices to your mesh, then the Displace modifier uses those vertices to add the roughness you're looking for.

Before Modifiers

After Modifiers

You can, of course, use different settings for the Displace texture if you want to achieve different kinds of roughness.


How to hide lamp reflection in EEVEE Lamps show up in reflections regardless of what object they are contained in. This is 100% inaccurate. To demonstrate this more clearly, I gave the triptych wall painting a mirror surface. You can see balls of light from the 3" point lamps inside the lamp shades, and a huge white plane that fills the window from an area lamp, which shows right through the curtain without any occlusion.

Ironically, switching on "Show Preview Plane" in the Reflection Plane removes the reflection of the lamps -- which should be the default behavior! Unfortunately, "Show Preview Plane" cannot be used for rendering, only for viewport debugging. But we desperately need that ability during rendering.

Does anyone know of a workaround for this, besides turning off specularity? Setting radius to 0, reduces the offending reflections to small specks, but as the images below show, it does not remove them. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

IMAGE 1: incorrect lamp reflections EEVEE

IMAGE 2: Point lamp radius set to 0, reflection still incorrect

IMAGE 3: Angle 2, showing area lamp reflection through curtain without occlusion

IMAGE 4: "Show Preview Plane" enabled on Reflection Plane. This is a screenshot, not a render, since this feature is not available during render. This is the look I need to achieve.

I thank God for one interesting and unexpected hack He showed me. This might help someone if your scene falls within the following criteria:

If you have a lamp inside some occluding geometry, AND the shadow of the occluder happens to fall across a mirror surface with a reflection plane applied, THEN you can increase the lamp's "Bleed Bias" (I used 0.05) and the SHADOW will actually erase the lamp from the mirror's reflection. Note this only works if the shadow falls across the mirror surface. Proof below:

With bleed bias at 0:

With bleed bias at 0.05:

With bleed bias at 0.05 and reflection plane on floor. Note how the reflection of the lamp shade improved, but now you lose the ability to see the mirror's reflections in the floor's reflection (no reflection of reflection). EDIT: Technically, from this angle, the floor would not reflect the mirror's reflection but rather the ceiling. Cycles confirms this. However, Eevee is still incorrect since the floor's reflection plane cannot reflect ANYTHING in the mirror's reflection planes.

EDIT: Here is the Blend file including one occluded light (inside the lampshade) and one non-occluded light floating in space. You can see that the shadow of the occluded light only erases itself, NOT the other light floating in space. Each light would need its own occluder.


how can I select Animation in Action Editor (Blender Python) i have a tiny problem, i search a Python Command the in [Dope Sheet > Action Editor]
choose/select a Animation (in Collection).

i saw the Python access bpy.data.actions["Walk_Anim"] but i can't find the exact reference.

her one example by my problem:

i use Blender v2.78 and i have the Animation:

" Crouch_Anim "
" Idle_Stand "
" Jump_Up "
" Walk_Anim "

my Skeleton use now "Walk_Anim" but i wish try to set him on "Idle_Stand" (but only with a Python Command)

my question is now, how is the right Python Command for the selecting the Animation in the Collection.

best regards
- TheDevil

P.s. i'm a newbie in BPy

The action editor displays the action of the currently selected object. Each object can only have one active action.

To alter the action used by an object, which is then displayed in the action editor, set the objects action property. The action is found in the objects animation_data

bpy.context.object.animation_data.action = bpy.data.action['Idle_Stand']


How to get to material nodes 2.8 I Am looking for where to edit my material nodes but I can only find the render nodes. I have been looking for quite some time now. I cant find the material node editor.
This is 2.8
Help?

In Blender 2.8x you have the option to switch between workspaces for particular tasks. Blender already includes one for creating materials and it is called Shading. The workspaces are listed as tabs in the top bar.

The benefit of using/creating workspaces is that you don't have to change the layout, create areas or switch editor types for a particular step of your workflow. Instead you can simply switch to a different workspace that is already prepared for the task.
You can of course still change the editor type like in Blender 2.79 and earlier. The editor for materials is the Shader Editor.


Color changes after joining two meshes Hi!
I'm a beginner in this and I'm having some troubles while sculpting which is after joining two meshes the color changes. I've been looking for answers everywhere and I often find the solution: select object/go to mesh/normals/recalculate outside... But the thing is it seems it doesn't work anymore, or at least I did it badly.
Besides, I don't know where's the option "normals" to then click recalculate outside, I only could find the shortkey (ctrl+n for recalculate outside) but again, it didn't work.
The version I'm using is 2.91.0... If you know the answer, please explain to me with details and images if it's possible, I don't know all the tools yet.
Thanks for reading :)

The green color is a Face Set that Blender automatically creates when you join two objects. Check out Face Set in the main menu of the Sculpt mode.
Face Sets can limit the effect of certain brushes in Sculpt mode, see brush options for details. There is also a Face Set brush to paint the color. That way you can highlight edge loops or important faces.
In the Viewport Overlays you can turn it on/off and set the transparency of the color.


How could I create this huge knotted blanket? I am modelling an interior scene and I need to create a blanket. Thing is, its made up of lots of small knots, and though usually I'd just use a texture, it seems really easy to tell that its not actual geometry.

I have tried using a displacement map but it ends up looking more like a plane with weird texturing then my actual goal. I have also tried creating a knot, then setting a plane as a rigid body, then setting the knot as a collision object, and running the animation. It simply just contours around it but in not high enough detail, and I cannot afford too many subdivisions. I'm honestly not sure what else to try..Can't even seem to find many textures like this one, anyone have any ideas?

Looking up closely to such a blanket:

You can see a knot structure (duhhh):

using array modifier we can recreate the complete blanket from this.

add a path curve
select the 2nd and 5th vertex and move them x(quantity) along the y-axis
select the 3th vertex and move it x/2 along the y-axis

you now have this curve:

you can also scale it along the x-axis to get a wider knot.

add a mirror modifier, and select the proper axis

you will now notice a issue, the top of the knot is not rounded but sharp.
To solve this:
-select 1st and second vertex, and subdivide once

move the newly created vertex to the first vertex, and then move the newly created vertex along the y-axis until the top is smooth enough.

repeat this process for last to vertecises too

you should now have something like this:

I will move the 3th and 4th vertex up by one so the knots fit in each other when we array them:

add an array modifier with relative y 1, and increase the count.
add another array modifier with relative x, and play a little with the value until it looks good, I will use 0.3
go under object data properties to geometry, under bevel increase depth to give the curve thickness.

If you make them too THICK they will start drifting apart from each other, you can change the first array modifier from relative to constant to fix this, but you will have to play with the values.
if you want to use it for cloth simulation you will have to convert it to mesh, before you do that reduce the quality of the curve or you will get a few million vertices.
press F3 and search for convert to, and it convert to mesh.
Final result:

sofa from DimitraPe


Where is the command box in the bottom left of the 3D viewport? noob question...I have seen the same question asked many times but not really answered. All tutorials I have seen for 2.8 feature a small black command box in the bottom left corner, it's full of options for each command you select. Basically, you can't do anything without it. However, I do not have this box, so I cannot modify any settings as I create a feature. How do you get this box to appear?
I have seen answers featuring 'its in the 3D viewport' and 'hit F9'...neither of these seem to be relevant, as I'm already in 3D viewport and F9 will only shows the command I'd previously selected, but with no options. What is the answer? Very frustrating, please help.

This box is called the Operator Panel. It only appears after you perform certain actions, and often "disappears" as soon as you click away from it or you use any kind of transformation (move, scale, rotate, or when you click on another object).
For example, if you add a cylinder (Shift+A > Mesh > Cylinder), before you do anything else, look in the bottom left corner - there will be a little text box that only says "Add Cylinder". Click this box and it will expand for more options. Once you've expanded it once, it should appear expanded for all actions until you shrink it again (eg: other things you do, like add a loop cut will cause this box to appear "fully opened"). But, it will still disappear when you click away.

Keep your eye out for this box as you perform different actions (both in object and edit mode) - you'll be surprised how much it appears. There are lots of options that you can make use of through this panel.
Alternatively, you can use a floating window with the same options by pressing F9


How do I distribute a stand-alone made with BGE (Blender Game Engine)? I have created a simple stand-alone using the BGE that I would like to distribute to various people in a manner that involves as little effort on their part as possible.

I can easily create my stand-alone and run it on the machine that I have created it on.  I'm using a PC.

However, when I move the files to another location within my computer, the runtime does not work.  I'm assuming that the BGE needs to know the exact path of the various .dll files to work properly.   I would like to be able send the entire package to a friend and have them unzip (or "install") the package and have it work.

Any ideas?  Am I doing anything wrong?

Thanks!

Before you export you should do File/External Data/Make All Files Relative and save.

This ensures the paths are relative to the current blend file.

Be aware: This influences the current blend only. When you link to blend files that refer to other files, this file needs to be changed too.

When you export from WinOS you need to deliver all files from your export directory to ensure all the libraries (.dll) are available.


Why does my boolean keep flickering? I'm using multiple modifiers and my boolean keeps flickering - sometimes it can't make the boolean work.

Flickering of surfaces within the 3DView is caused by overlapping faces. With a boolean modifier you get the new generated faces in the same location as the mesh used to perform the cut, leading to flickering.

Having a mirror modifier on a mesh that has faces on both sides of the mirrored centre line can also lead to flickering.

If you want to keep the boolean modifier and not apply it, you can place the cutting object onto another layer (M and select a layer) that is not active or you can hide the object from view (H)

You can also use the outliner to hide/unhide objects.

The eye for each item specifies whether it is visible in the 3DView, the cursor allows you to select the item in the 3DView and the camera is whether it shows up in the final render. Click any of these icons to turn them on/off.

If you have overlapping faces from a mirror modifier then you need to remove the duplicate faces. This may involve deleting everything on one side of the mesh or just the few faces that have overlapped. The mirror modifier has a clipping option that can help line up vertices on the centre line of your mesh.


Bloom effect with a transparent background? I'm trying to use this render as an overlay on an image in Photoshop. I tested blend modes in photoshop, but didn't get the result I was looking for. When I set the alpha to transparency in the scene settings it just rendered the object but not the bloom.

This is the expected result but the black would be transparent:

When I do set the alpha to transparent I get this w/o the bloom:

Right now it isn't possible to render bloom on a transparent background, because the render results use premultiplied alpha.

So, what are some other methods of creating bloom on a transparent background that doesn't involve compositing in blender. I don't care what program I have to use to solve this problem.

Thanks.

I have tested many different combinations.
The best way to achieve it is to use post compositing.

With cycle follow the node setup with red arrows.
I also tried EEVEE, there is a BloomCol pass that you can check,
but this pass does not have tranparency, so using this or doing an alphaover node would kill your transparency. It does look fancier out of box.

but for transparency I think cycles is easier.
I am sorry if it looks messy, as I just figured it out, so I do not want to destroy my node setup.


Change brush outline color I am doing a simple texture paint. The problem is that, in the texture paint image, there are parts where it is completely white. This makes it pretty much impossible to see the brush outline unless I bring it out of the border. (I mean that little circle that shows how big your brush is). Is there a way to change its color so it is more visible?
Here is a gif for better understanding:


How do I change the focal length of a camera with python? I am importing a VRML file using Blender command line. I need to change the focal length of the camera using the command line.

How can I do that? I cannot find Python api for this.

Thanks.

It's in bpy.data.cameras['name of your camera object'].lens, or camera.angle (thanks @ideasman42).

Note that you must have a camera in the scene.


Blender nodes not compositing I'm making quick little scene for a friend and I have been following a YT video (youtube.com/watch?v=uFwdpPkenc4).
The guy is using Blender v2.5 and I'm using 2.78a. I've done essentially the same thing as him but my render layer nodes won't composite at the end. I do have my render set to composite along with having both my render view and composite nodes hooked up at the end.

If you think in terms of layers, this layer will be your background:

All other images will be composited on top so it doesn't need any transparency or alpha channel. Do not mask it and let the background be flat and uncut.

Over your background you are using a foreground layer. Use Alpha Over instead of Add.


How to achieve multiple emission color on one mesh..? I tried a color ramp node but its not working i also tried to mix two emission shader with mix node but result is not desired..

Like in the image

create different material slots and materials (emission shader) for the same mesh
go to edit mode, select some faces
select a material slot and press "assign" button
(this will assign the material only to selected faces)
(eevee/cycles)


Can I resize the camera window? I've been googling and trying to find an answer to my question, and I've tried the common answers I've found, but my problem persists so I thought I'd ask.
Can I make the camera window (where the red arrows are) larger? It would be nice to actually see something through that tiny window.

I've tried to resize the resolution in that red box but without luck, and the Lock to Camera View isn't doing much either.

Thanks in advance

Just uncheck Lock Camera to View and then zoom in.
Then you can enable the lock again.
No need to change your camera resolution.

The camera lock works like this:


How to use Scale and Extrude together? I'm trying to create this shape. I don't understand how does it work. If I use E+S I can't get the faces forming the perimeter with an angle less than 90°?

This can be done with insetting the faces. First select the faces you want to extrude. Then hit I button to bring Inset operator. In the operator panel, thickness value changes the scale and depth value you changes the extrusion depth.


Start & End Cap not working in blender, any ideas? For some odd reason I thought that just adding a start and end cap object would be easy with the Array modifier but I guess not. Any ideas?

The array start and end caps are placed using the same offset distance as each repetition.

The geometries position relative to the object origin plays a part in the positioning. Using a plane with each repetition spaced at 1.1 we can see that an end cap with an origin in the centre will match up with the array while a start cap with the mesh starting at the object centre will be disconnected from the array. Also note that if the original objects mesh is not centred around the origin it can also move the extremes of the final mesh which will require adjustments for the end caps to match up.


Change default size of User Preferences pop up window Is it possible to change the default size of the preferences popup window?

AFAIK no, but you can change any area's type to user preferences via the menu in the far left of the header:

You can then temporarily make it the size of the entire blender window by pressing
⎈ Ctrl↑ Up arrow. Toggle back to the previous screen layout with ⎈ Ctrl↑ Up arrow again.
(⎈ Ctrl↓ Down arrow works too)

If you just want to get to the prefs quickly with more screen real-estate, then perhaps this might help.


Color is not applied when drawing fonts in BGE with blf and bgl I am trying to get fonts rendered with different colors, but bgl.glColor4f (or any other variant of glColor) doesn't apply the color that I set with it. Please see https://github.com/eugenschindler/blender-examples/tree/master/HUDText for a reproduction of the problem (Blend file, Python script, and font).
According to other resources I found online, this example code should work, but I can't get it to work.
I've used Blender 2.73 and 2.75 and in both it doesn't work.
Does anybody have an idea what's going wrong?

The problem was lying in the Shading settings of Blender. By default, the shading is set to Multitexture, which makes the blf text be only black. If you set the shader to GLSL (see picture below), the colors behave exactly as you would expect them according to the python script that is in my example.


Visual programming with Blender Python Does anyone know if there is some sort of visual programming software for Blender?
I know there is one called "visual bpy". I watched a demonstration of it. It looks quite promising and should save us a lot of time when writing a GUI in Blender.
Unfortunately, I can't find link to obtain this software even though I've been searching for it diligently.

Any help would be appreciated.

Here is a direct download link for the script. It was in the description of the demo… there is also a small youtube playlist dedicated to it and the rig used is available on BlendSwap.


why are the hair particles showing up on the origin point? Ive tried many of the fixes ....but am still unable to solve this....im using 2.90.1 version and this has been happening to me since 2.83.
solutions ive tried:

applying scale and rotation
turning on use modifier stack in emission settings(solution found on stack exchange)

blend file download

another project with same error

Viewport of alternate project

hair is visible in wireframe mode

Just had the same problem. I've joined 2 objects (one with a modifier) and separated the meshes again into two objects. This copied a Bevel modifier on the object. The modifier caused the particle origin problem.
Either remove the modifier or tick the checkbox Use Modifier Stack in Emission → Source → Emit from.
This solved the issue and the particles are emitted from faces again.


How do you stretch an object from multiple vertices using a python script? This object here is supposed to a be a model of a p orbital in chemistry. I wish to cause it to elongate and widen at one end and narrow down at the other. Is there any way to do it that doesn't involve altering every vertex to get the required shape. This task will be handled by a script.

One method I thought of is a way of linking adjacent vertices for relative movement. Being a beginner at Blender, I have no clue if this is supported or not.

Thanks

Edit1 : Reason for requirement: This orbital is intended to stretch and deform like an electron cloud under the influence of an electric field. I was trying to model this behaviour using the script. For example, after each alternate frame, stretch the orbital 'x' amount to model an increasing electric field.

Any suggestions of a different approach to this is more than welcome.

It'll be something like this, assuming Icosphere at origin.
Note: you have to start in Edit mode for some reason, otherwise it throws an error.

import bpy
import bmesh

obj  = bpy.data.objects['Icosphere'] ## set name
mesh  = bpy.data.meshes['Icosphere']

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bm  = bmesh.from_edit_mesh( mesh )

minX  = 0
corners  = obj.bound_box
trans  = bpy.ops.transform

for corner in range(len(corners)):
  x = corners[corner][0]
  if x < minX:
    minX  = x

for v in range(len(bm.verts)):
  vert = bm.verts[v]
  if vert.co.x == minX:
    vert.select_set(1)
  else:
    vert.select_set(0)

trans.translate( value = (-5, 0, 0),
                 constraint_axis = (False, False, False),
                 constraint_orientation = 'GLOBAL',
                 mirror = False,
                 proportional = 'ENABLED',
                 proportional_edit_falloff = 'SMOOTH',
                 proportional_size = 2 )

trans.resize(value = (0.3, 0.3, 0.3),
             constraint_axis = (False, False, False),
             constraint_orientation = 'GLOBAL',
             mirror = False,
             proportional = 'ENABLED',
             proportional_edit_falloff = 'SMOOTH',
             proportional_size = 2 )


How to avoid intersections in an interlocking model? I have been trying to model an "interlocking" object similar to the  following references:

My last attempt turned out like this:

To model the object, I have done roughly the following:

Start with a regular solid (dodecahedron or icosahedron in most attempts).
Bevel the entire object slightly,  and delete large faces, and subdivide edges.
Duplicate the object and rotate
Scale and rotate along normals with proportional edit and
individual origin as pivot point until the object is in place
Add a solidify and subsurf modifier

The problem I am having, is that there are several intersections (some are circled in yellow) throughout the model.
It seems that the intersections are caused by duplicating and rotating the object as well as the solidify modifier.

Where might I be going wrong in my approach that I could avoid these intersections and achieve an object like the ones shown in the reference images?

I tried to achive that effect as well and I did stick to the modifier workflow. I added some array modifiers with merging enabled to make that shape and then i just modelled a path. I also added a solidify modifier and voilà. Got it.


Two 3d view windows: one in edit mode, one in object mode I want to display two 3d view windows at once. But I want one to be in Edit Mode, and the other in Object mode. However, when I change the mode of one window the other 3d view window automatically changes. How can I make it so changing the mode in one window does not affect the other window?

I will assume you want to have one area in object mode for a clean and overlay free preview, while still being able to edit your mesh as usual.

This can be achieved by disabling the overlays and gizmos in the top right of the 3d viewport.

This way edit mode is not disabled, but you don't have any wireframes or selection highlights. This should work for any other mode as well.

If you need the other area to be in object mode I'm afraid that is not possible as far as I know.