Motion Blur problems with wheels and Rigacar I am currently trying to learn how to use rigacar to create a scene of a car racing through the tunnel. I am having issues when I try to add motion blur to the wheels. With no motion blur, the wheels spin fine as seen below. But as soon as I add motion blur the wheels start to become transparent in some sections. This is not desirable because it makes the car seem to jerk around as you can see in the second video. It also isn't physically correct because the tire occupies the same space frame to frame, just different parts of the tire.

No settings have been changed between the renders besides motion blur. I have done tests without denoising, that isn't the problem. Increasing the sample amounts from 128 to 512 had no effect. The wheels are centered at their origin of rotation. I am using Rigacar car generator. The wheels are instances of a separate collection to speed up viewport rendering. With larger shutter settings (increased from .5 to .8) the effect becomes worse.
Edit: I have attached the blend file for anyone who can take a look at it.
Edit: I have done additional tests.
Removing the mesh lights and replacing them with actual lights does not fix the problem.
Removing all lights does not fix the problem.
Hiding the tunnel and rendering it against a blank background does not fix the problem.
Changing the camera angle does not fix the problem.
The wheels do not wobble in the viewport

The issue appears to be with the way that I created my instances. The origins of the instances of the wheels are at the center of the instances making them move smoothly in the viewport. However, the source of the instances has the origin of the tire set not at the center of the wheel.
To fix the problem: I applied all the modifiers on the tire tread and centered the tire's origin.
I also had to rebuild parts of the scene and the following paths in order to implement the new instances.


How do I access a custom transform orientation by name in Blender 2.8? bpy.data.scenes['NameOfScene'].orientations['NameOfSelectedOrientation'].matrix.to_euler()

Can't figure out new structure of file. Need to convert tiny add-on to 2.8 and i am not programmer.

Helper method to get the custom orientation by name from the slots.

Can currently find no way with python to get a list of scene orientations in 2.8. Without I see no way around using a  try except clause.

Here is a "dirty" little script that sets the queried orientation to active if it exists:  Returns the custom orientation from slot 0 then switches back to current.

The operator needs to be run in the context of the 3d view. I used the area type swapping techinique to do this.  Not sure why this is the case either, as it appears to set the orientation scene wide, not per space.  Can you tell I don't use custom orientations much lol

import bpy

def get_co(name, context=bpy.context):
    scene = context.scene
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    old_co = slots[0].type
    context.area.type = 'VIEW_3D'
    try:
        bpy.ops.transform.select_orientation(orientation=name)
        co = slots[0].custom_orientation
    except:
        co = None
    # should be ok and exist
    bpy.ops.transform.select_orientation(orientation=old_co)
    context.area.type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
    return co

co = get_co("xxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix)

Thought it would work same as material slots where the slot's material name doubles as the slot name, it appears to be the slot "type" in this instance.

Neither of the following methods work, as a custom orientation, although you can define many, only inhabits slot 0 if set as default (selected).

import bpy

def get_co(name, scene=bpy.context.scene):
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    for s in slots:
        if s.type == name:
            return s.custom_orientation
    return None

co = get_co("xxxxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix)

Similarly looking at custom orientation name

import bpy

def get_co(name, scene=bpy.context.scene):
    slots = scene.transform_orientation_slots
    for s in slots:
        if s.custom_orientation and s.custom_orientation.name == name:
            return s.custom_orientation
    return None

co = get_co("xxxxx")
if co:
    print(co.matrix.to_euler())


Adding a keyframed Brownian Motion to an object How can I give an object a motion like the particles' Brownian motion, keyframing the object location value for each frame?
Is there a better way than just using a random value?

You could add keyframe modifiers.

Add keyframe to the x,y,z positionsn at the beginning of the animation
Go to the Graph Editor -> right panel (press N to show it) -> "Modifiers" label -> Add Modifier -> Noise.
Do the operation 2 to the three keyframes (X, Y and Z positions).
In the Modifier panel (where you just added the modifier) of each keyframe (X, Y and Z) modify the noise properties in order to make them different each other and to set the Brownian motion as you want.


Apply linear transformation to a set of vertices If I have a mesh such as a detailed pyramid, whose corner vertices lie at the coordinates (0,0,0), (1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,0,1) (so along the coordinate axis), and I want to apply a linear transformation described by the matrix:

(i.e. converting it into a regular tetrahedron, with each angle equal to pi/3) what would the best way of doing it be? I thought that there would be some sort of transformation for this in the 'object' panel under transformations, but the scaling doesn't change the angles at all, and the delta scale doesn't seem to help either.

I found a simple solution to this particular problem, if you rotate the pyramid such that the largest face lies on the x-y plane and scale in the z-direction, you can create a regular tetrahedron.

I'm leaving the question open however, because I'm interested in how to apply general linear transformations to meshes.


Blender's world environment sky looks flat Has anyone addressed the Blender environment sky horizon? It occurs to me so many landscapes are childish refrigerator art (mine certainly included) because Blender's sky horizon is at zero degrees off the X,Y axis no matter what the camera's Z location.

I would say there needs to be a 'degrees off tangent.' If looking directly straight out is along a tangent plane, then the horizon of a sphere would fall some degrees away from that regardless of distance or diameter of the sphere. The higher you were, the greater the degrees. This might allow Blender artists to submit better landscapes?

You can adjust the coordinates of the Environment texture to manipulate the 'centreline' of the environment. This can be achieved with the following nodes :

Adjust the Mapping node to skew the coordinates in a specific direction. The Normalize node ensures the result is still a valid Normal for the environment texture.

Obviously there are limitations to this since the environment is effectively projected onto an infinite sphere - adjusting too far will noticeably reduce one half of the environment into an ever decreasing circle while stretching out the opposite side.


Is it possible to make a video texture repeat in the compositor? I have an animated overlay I want to use, and I have composited my project how I want, but I can't figure out how to make my animated overlays repeat. I want to know if there is a way to do this outside of the VSE if at all possible.

I am using the Video Clip node, but the video clip is only 57 frames long, and I need it to repeat for the full 400 frames of the animation. Can this be done outside of  the Video Sequence Editor in the video editing stages?

Load your video not using the Movie Clip Node but with the Image Sequence node (yes you can load video files in the image sequence clip).

Then enable the cyclic option and your video file will repeat on a loop.


Object doesn't show in render One of my students has designed a light saber and I can't figure out why the lightsaber is not showing up in the cycle render.  Could someone help me out?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6CUhZCXLU7nUHNWUHdNb1R4OVE/view?usp=sharing

Thank you

In the object data tab of the saber, set duplication to "None."


What is the best way to distort the shape of this leaf image plane? (i'm a complete beginner) I'm making a library of leaves. Once I have the image plane and all the maps assigned. What is the best method to distort the image plane to make the leaves look more natural/realistic shapes?

have not used Blender much in a long time either but hope this is what you're looking for.
I screen captured your leaf image used it as a reference to model a grid around it deleting the excess, made a material to map the image to the leaf, did a quick UV map , set displacement to bump, went into shading and changed settings to distort the surface.

rendered single leaf and it looked good , in object mode duplicated it nine times , took each leaf into edit mode > sculpt mode and used the elastic deform tool to distort the shape from flat plane.

I rendered both sides this is the bottom so it seemed to work good.


Problem with animating 6 objects combined into 1 I have 6 bullets and a revolver, the bullets I used CTRL+J to join them. I then animated a reloading scene. Then I wanted one of the bullets to shoot, not all 6 of them. So on frame 130, I took the 6 bullets and selected one of them and hit P+Selection so only that bullet is selectable. Then I animated it to shoot out of the gun, and then after animating it i played the animation and it shows all 6 bullets shooting out of the barrel, even though on frame 1 they are separate objects (I do not know why) and then beyond frame 130 the whole barrel shoots out..
Here is a video giving an example of my problem:

https://imgur.com/a/NgdPr

Why is it doing this and how can i fix it? Is their perhaps an addon that can fix this?

You should have to do it with separated bullets (objects).

This is my solution for your particular flow:

Create a shape key and you can animate that shape key.

See the image below:


Strange crease being formed from filling face? I modeled two planes separately for the top and bottom of the frog's mouth, but when I try to join them together by filling a face, it creates a strange seam that creases the entire face. I've tried an edge split modifier and I don't think there could be any internal faces causing it - I've tried removing doubles but to no avail.

Since the mesh is a plane, it's entirely flat. Solidifying it does not help either.

It looks like it's a harsh transition between normals.  You can get this even on the flattest of planes if the normals point in different directions:

it can happen easily when you're joining two separate areas like that, because it's not always immediately obvious which way Blender thinks the geometry faces.

Fortunately it's super easy to fix, if that's your issue...just select all faces, then go to Mesh->Normals->Recalculate Outside, and Blender should make all the normals face properly:

If Blender makes it inside out, you can just use Flip Normals (or Recalculate Inside) to flip it.

EDIT: To explain normals -

Normals are a vector that is always* perpendicular to a face. In computer graphics, they're used to decide how to shade the face, based on the angle of the light vs. the angle of the normal. If the normal is directly pointed at a light, the face will be completely bright, and obviously if it's facing away from a light it'll be dark.

If you think of an object, like a vase for example, the outside of the vase is mostly bright because it's exposed to light. However, if you look inside the vase, it's mostly dark because no light gets in there:

If you model a vase, and part of the outside is marked as inside, or vice versa, it'll look really weird. This is what you're seeing, because Blender tries to figure out which way the normal should face based on how you model it. If you model two pieces separately and then join together, Blender might've thought one of the pieces faced inward and the other outward.

If you use Flat shading, it doesn't matter (as much) which direction a face points because each polygon has its own color/value, and its own normal:

In Smooth shading, Blender tries to average the normals so you get nice shading across the model. This is why I put a * next to "always" above, because the normals at the vertices of the face can point in other directions besides perpendicular so that the color blends smoothly from one face to another. You can imagine then that trying to average opposite values won't work well, and that causes artifacts like what you experienced:

Recalculate Normals then tells Blender to try to figure out which direction the normals SHOULD face:

Much better.  Those few faces on the edges that have sharp edges are just because it can't do miracles if there aren't enough faces.  An Subdivision modifier would smooth those out, but it WON'T smooth out the flipped normals.

I also put the * next to "always" because you can purposely mess with the normals to get lighting effects. For example, that's how normal mapping works (hence the name). It moves the normals around to give the illusion of bumps or patterns on the surface that aren't really there.

Hope this helps!


Strange mesh behaviour when rendered I have a scene set up with the astronaut model (it's a standard humanoid mesh with a rigify rig applied) in one scene and the black hole in another joined using alpha over node.
The mesh seems to be okay in object mode but as soon as I render this happens in every frame.
In the render preview in viewport it's also looking as it's supposed to.
Here is the .blend file

Apparently the problem is with using the file on different computers.
I didn't even think it could be a problem.
When I render it on my laptop the astronaut has his limbs, but when I send it over to my friend computer he doesn't have them in the viewport.


Making a 3D Live Wallpaper with Blender only What I want to do is create 3D scene animation in Blender then turn it into live wallpaper on my laptop.

I did consider Wallpaper Engine but the question is - Can I use the 3D scene where the path of recording camera took place in Blender then import the file to Wallpaper Engine to make it a live Wallpaper?

Example:
Exo Zombies Carrier Lobby Theme

You can record it in Blender then save it as video file to be used in Wallpaper Engine.


Shining light through model in Blender 2.79, Cycles How can I make this kind of light?
Try to imagine plastic bottle of milk with light bulb inside of it, exact same thing (Like on picture)

Use principled shader. Go to TRANSMISSION set it to 1. Now it will look like crystal. Use roughness transmission to get it as you like. You can drive the effect using a mask or a texture with white vignetting effect on the sides and totally black on the middle so that light gets restrainted on the sides but passes clearly on the middle.


GPU rendering out of memory Why do I have "Out of memory" crash while GPU rendering with the memory peak of 356 when by graphic card has 2GB of memory?

As first I must say only for correctness: Does not matter, how much memory have you graphics card. Important is how much free memory have your graphics card, when you start render. Keep in mind: system need some video memory for running.

You are not only one who have this problem. I thing Blender have some issues with freeing VRAM. I used Win and now I'm using Linux and it's the same. What help is restart Blender.

About peak of used VRAM - I don't thing this is correct number in case of error. From my experiences, if Blender give you "out of memory" error, this number is incorrect. You can determine exact size of scene by switch to CPU rendering and you can see how much memory is really used for your scene.


Help/Advice on my UV Map I'm super new to Blender and I'm currently going through the process of making a model for Unity, and I've just finished a draft of my low-poly UV Map but I feel like I have way too many seams, but without the seams it becomes super stretched! It's a water cooler and I'm happy with a lot of the seams, but the cup dispenser and cup station are just super messy and I'm struggling to fix it! I've attached photos below and the project can be found here.
I'd love anyone's advice on how it looks so far and where I can improve, thanks!

You're absolutely right for GEs you want to keep the seam count als low as possible
It's a bit hard to tell from that angle, but

The one with the arrow, you can definetly remove. The one with the circle, I guess there you can save yourself some seams. Just think of the jpg as a piece of paper, if it's possible to cut and then wrap the paper around your model, there will be little to none distortion. That means all the vertical ones along the cylinder are crucial.


Problem flipping/duplicating keyframes I seem to be having issues with flipping and duplicating some keyframes. I've tried using Ctrl + C, Shift + Ctrl + V and duplicating keyframes in the Dope Sheet, but I can't get copied frames to work properly. I've already keyframed the motion of the left and right legs/feet, but whenever I try and duplicate what I've done for later in the timeline, such as the left leg, it gets stretched out of proportion. :-\ I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong or what I should be adjusting instead.

Any suggestions?

At least make sure that your armature is symmetrized. As you can see it is not. So in Edit mode select the left (or right) part and Symmetrize. Also, you'll have to correct the Pole Angle of some bones like the forearm, fingers...


How to create object instances with unique properties in Blender? Is it possible in Blender to create several instances of an object (Alt+D) and then to change some properties for one of them? (i.e. creating an instance with unique properties)
In particular, I am interested in created instances of "Text" object  with different text in them.

Alt + D creates a linked duplicate. You could just duplicate using Shift + D. Then each duplicate has its own copy of the properties and modifications are just to that object.

Alternately if you already have the linked duplicates (and only want have unique text), then go to one that you want to have a unique text and click the number button (number of users of this property). This creates a new data block, which you can then have different text (and text format) assigned to it.


How do I add Material Output node when it does not show up automatically? I'm in Cycles, with 'Use Nodes' selected and the basic node Material Output did not show up. How can I add Material Output it when it's not a menu option?

The node editor works with three different types of nodes.

By default the node editor is configured for compositing .

Change to the Material node editor :

More info:

https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/node_editor/introduction.html#node-tree-types

https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/node_editor/editor.html


How to animate a folding carton using only the vertices in edit mode? I am trying to animate a folding carton using only the vertices in edit mode, I find it easier for me. I tried following a video on Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyj0sJVd3Lw&list=PL1ufR-_dSlrGa-rN23kR_C0ACjpi-38JE&index=70&t=0s ) on how to do it but its in object mode, in edit mode I cannot insert a key frame :(

I would love to achieve what this package designer is doing ( https://www.behance.net/gallery/91695235/Organic-Soap-Packaging?tracking_source=search_projects_recommended%7Cpackage%20blender ), if you look at the animation video and what software tools he made it in; its Blender.

This would be a huge help if anyone out there know hows to I cannot find anything else.

* If you can answer this question and not relate it to another answered question that would be better because sometimes the related answers are outdated. I have the 2.82a version *

Here are some screenshots from my Mac I am having issues with:

Thank you.

Check this tutorial that uses AnimAll addon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvRA6z3z5bI


Get center of geometry for a group of objects, then point camera to that coordinate New to blender here, as the title suggests how would I use blender to do this without resorting to mathematical calculations?

To be clear center of geometry of a group of objects means the center of a box fitting the furtherest bounds of all objects.

EDIT: Yes, this is using python, I'm automating my renders

This is possible, but you will have to calculate the center.

The example below uses a rough approximation based on the volume of the objects bounding boxes.

from bpy import context
from mathutils import Vector

def point_the_camera(obj_camera, look_at, epsilon=1e-8):
    camera_matrix = obj_camera.matrix_world.copy()
    view_axis_src = camera_matrix.col[2].xyz.normalized()
    view_axis_dst = camera_matrix.to_translation() - look_at

    if view_axis_dst.length_squared < epsilon:
        print("looking into ourselves!")
        return
    view_axis_dst.normalize()

    axis = view_axis_src.cross(view_axis_dst)
    if axis.length_squared < epsilon:
        print("already aligned!")
        return

    axis.normalize()

    from mathutils import Matrix
    camera_matrix_rot = Matrix.Rotation(view_axis_src.angle(view_axis_dst), 3, axis)
    obj_camera.matrix_world = (
            Matrix.Translation(camera_matrix.to_translation()) *
            (camera_matrix_rot * camera_matrix.to_3x3()).to_4x4())

def derived_objects(scene, obj_base):
    obj_base.dupli_list_create(scene)
    obj_matrix_list = (
        [(obj_base, obj_base.matrix_world.copy())] +
        [(dob.object, dob.matrix.copy()) for dob in obj_base.dupli_list]
        )
    obj_base.dupli_list_clear()
    return obj_matrix_list

def main():

    scene = context.scene
    obj = context.object
    obj_camera = scene.camera

    center_accum = Vector()
    center_accum_volume = 0.0

    # objects without a bound-box (camera, lamp, etc).
    # have zero volume so won't influence the outcome.
    for obj_iter, matrix in derived_objects(scene, obj):
        print(matrix)
        box = obj_iter.bound_box

        # diagonal
        b_0 = matrix * Vector(box[0])
        b_1 = matrix * Vector(box[6])

        diag = b_0 - b_1
        diag_volume = diag.length ** 3.0
        diag_cent = ((b_0 + b_1) / 2) * diag_volume

        center_accum += diag_cent
        center_accum_volume += diag_volume

    # we have our center
    center = center_accum * (1.0 / center_accum_volume)

    ## Quick test
    # scene.cursor_location = center

    point_the_camera(obj_camera, center)

main()


Is it possible to set an object's origin with bpy.ops.transform.resize()? I would like to scale an object with object's origin in a certain location. Is it possible to set an object's origin with bpy.ops.transform.resize()?

I’ve examined the official API documentation, but method explanations are still quite scarce.

As far as I understand, there should be an option to set a pivot in float numbers (either in local or global coordininates).

You can use "center_override" for this. Here is the code:

bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(1, 1, 1), center_override=(42, 42, 42))

Happy Blending! :)


Forgot to make output So I rendered a whole intro. which took 4 hours, but I forgot to set the output. Where could I find this?

Note: I saw this while I was rendering, and the destination existed, but when I go to the destination the file isn't in there. Now I see an .exr file, what do I do with this? Sorry for being a newb.

First, despite the fact that it appears to be out of scope for the site, I'm answering this question because the question and your reputation on the site suggest to me that you are a beginning Blenderhead. Although it seems to me that your question is more about the operating system on your device, than about the internals of Blender, a beginner might not easily recognize where Blender ends, and the operating system begins. I would suggest you take the tour, and review the sections of the help center related to asking questions.

That written, the information in the question is a bit sparse. It would be helpful to know, for example, what OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) you are using. What I would try first in Windows is to open the a file folder window, and select the "Computer" option in the navigation pane on the left. In the search box in the upper right hand corner of the window, search for any file modified beginning with a time several hours before you started the render. For example, suppose you know you started the render within the past 12 hours, search for all files modified today. If the render got saved (and I'm not at all sure that it was) this search parameter should produce results for all such files the search finds on your computer, including any drives assigned a drive letter. The file you rendered to should be found in that list. The time modified should be about the same time as you started the render.

If you don't find the file you rendered to in the list, it's possible that you failed to specify a location to which to save, and that you need to render the scene again.


Mathematics behind creating shapes using math nodes I have seen people are creating various shapes using math nodes in Blender. Not just simple shapes but very complex shapes for example like a batman logo. I have learned that they extract algebraic equation (for example y- mx + c =0) of the shape and then implement the equation using nodes in Blender.
Now my problem is I don't know how to extract equations from a shape. Forget about complex shapes, I even don't know for simple shapes. Can you please help me specifying what math topics I have to learn to achieve this. And how will I achieve these result?
Thanking you.

If you want to make simple shapes here is a recommendation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqijDcTdfZ8 but i can explain here , if you separate the xyz of texture coordinate using  a Separate xyz node and then connecting it to a compare node(math) , you can get a black strip on a black plane , this could be used to make a square by subtracting another such white stripe from it , i really recommend watching the given tutorial. IN the future , you might want to make your own shapes  and as you have mentioned in the link , the topic used in the equation is Linear and quadratic equations you can by the way trace equation in node , like say you have a value node , assume it to be x then adding math node to divide it by 7 , then square the result , it can be done , but if you want to verify the equation , proper linear and quadratic equation knowledge is needed to interpret them


How to move just one side of bones? Hello,

Can someon helçp with this? I need to move just the left side of the bones , but the right side moves as well, i have no idea how i activated this. I will add the file in the post

Your character still has an active mirror modifier. If you want to solve the problem, select your character, in the properties tab apply the mirror modifier, then shift select the armature, press Ctrl P and choose "with automatic weights".


Applying Logo to Sphere to move to Unity Ok, so I'm really stuck here and need some help everybody. I'm trying to color an icosphere yellow, then apply a red target (transparent png) to 6 sides of the ball (left, right, front, back, top, bottom) in Blender 2.9.
Using an icosphere from Blender, it's already unwrapped, but holy crap I cannot figure this out for the life of me. I've tried importing the image as a plane, shrinkwrapping and baking that with the texture. I've tried unwrapping just a section of the ball and apply something to it. I tried using nodes in materials to connect the image texture, I tried opening an image in the UV editor and positioning it there.
I either get a) nothing at all or b) a very dark, muddy image of everything combined when baking the texture. Neither shows up in Unity at all.  I dont need to attach the Blend file because it was just a ball, but I have attached the image I'm trying to use. If anybody can get me a little closer I would be super appreciative.
Thanks.

P.S. - This is my best attempt using a MixRGB shader and then dropping the whole Blend file into my Unity project folder:

in Edit mode select all vertices and Unwrap as Cube Projection
go to UV Editor and Scale the UV a bit up
go to Shader Editor and for Image node - change Repeat to Clip

Note: in this case I didn't use Texture Coordinates node since UV is used by default and Mapping node since positioning is controlled by UV Map
Unity
Im not experienced with Unity, so there is probably better way, but looks like

in Blender - Bake material into textures (Color (Albedo), Metalic, Normal, Ambient,  ... etc for PBR material)
export as FBX
in Unity import asset and assign baked texture to Albedo channel

Check documentation https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Materials.html
Also search Blender to Unity topic like here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/132340/2214


Keyframes for Light or Materials disappear Sometimes when I animate the strength of some sort of lamp or material, the keyframes for it appear in the dopesheet. This is useful especially when using the "display selected only" button. It makes it precise and clear to see what I am doing while animating.

Sometimes they appear in the dopesheet, but NOT with the selected mode. This is annoying, for I have to search the keyframes in huge amounts of channels and stuff. Almost impossible to work that way.

And sometimes they don't appear at all. Which is ... I don't have words :)

It might also happen, that they first appear, and after changing something (I have no Idea what) I can't use the 'selected only' tag anymore.

What you describe is the way blender works. The only selected option is just more specific than you are expecting. For the keyframes of a value from a node to be displayed the node has to be selected in the node tree as well as the object using the material being selected. So when animating objects and armatures the only selected option works rather well but for animated node values it can just make life difficult.

When not using only selected, you have other filter options to help find what you are working on. The datablock filters let you show just nodes (you want both material and nodes for material nodes). Clicking the magnifying glass shows a text input that lets you filter by channel name, you can also use ⎈ CtrlF and type the search string or clear it out to remove the filter. There is also an option to sort alphabetically but you will find it works on the object names and not each channel name.


No color while rendering smoke I'm just starting Blender and I have a problem with rendering smoke. I'm using blender 2.8. So while being in solid mode I can see animated colors, but once I switch to rendered mode it becomes grey.

As a test I've started a new project and got the same result. I used Quick effects to get smoke.

What should I do?

You need to type "color" in the Color Attribute box in the domain shader.


How to save an audio file I have a video where I deleted the animation part and I only have the sound.

When I try to save the file it saves as .blend, how can I save it as an mp3 file. I have already set the start up file to save as mp3.

Properties-->Render-->Audio and select the format in the windows (mp3 / flac ...) make sure properties-->Render-->post processing--> sequencer" is enable (if sequencer is the audio input)


Delete Action from List I would like to remove the actions that I do not need, every time I rename an action it multiplies into something else like  0 meteactionjargon. I have a list of actions that I do not need, and I wont to remove them from the list

Go to the Outliner window and type animation in the search window. Choose the object that has the action you want to delete, hover the cursor over Animation block and press RMB-->Clear Animation Data. Save your file. When you close and reopen it the action'll be no longer there.


Where can I obtain Blender 2.79c It appears a lot of people had this nightly build at some point, but I am unable to find the download anywhere, as it was nightly it seems undocumented. In need of the Vertex Alpha support they added to it, without updating to 2.8 just for this would be ideal.

From Blender's web page:

  Download latest builds from the 2.7 series

  Blender 2.79b is the last bugfix release in the 2.7 series.
  The last Blender 2.79 nightly build includes additional bug fixes and new
  features on top of 2.79b, which are part of 2.80 too.

So, I suppose this is the last nightly build: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.79/latest/


My mesh, triangles and sphere? I created this piece but I'd like to delete triangles to have a perfect result and use a Subsurf.
How I could to do to improve my mesh ?

Thank you so much !

it would be easier if you shared your file, but maybe you should choose another topology at the beginning, i.e. a cube that you subdivide instead of a UV sphere:


Cylinder with no cap ends invisible on the inside So I'm having this problem with a cylinder. It has no cap ends and the insides don't show up in edit mode. I've already tried flipping and recalculating normals, it did not worked. I've tried creating another cylinder, but it didn't worked too.

Image:

This is because you have Textured Solid ticked under Display in the Toolshelf. You use this feature when you want to display face assigned textures while in solid view.


camera not working properly when i press number pad 0 or select the camera it doesn't work .. it only select the plane and when i press number pad 0 again it just zoom in to the donut i restored shortcuts to it's default and that didn't help

If you unintentionally set a different object as the Camera (a plane in your case), you can reset it back to camera by either selecting your camera as the Camera in the Scene Properties tab, or you can select the camera and select View > Cameras > Set Active Object as Camera.

You also may want to disable your view locks:


Best way to make particle lines on cylinder I have a simple glass cylinder that has particle dots on the inside in line patterns going upwards. They will always start from a specific base line and have a random height.

They need to be procedurally generated, since I need to generate random images. What are your thoughts?

Here's a shader approach. I'm not going to illustrate the tree; it's (perhaps unnecessarily?) big, and most of it isn't interesting - it's just plumbing to recover things like cell-centers from a randomized cell-grid.
This though, is the principle that's being followed:

A 1D Voronoi texture gives us distances from randomly-distributed centers in the U dimension. (stripes, on the left).
Another 1D Voronoi texture gives us stripes in the V dimension in the same way. But this time, the texture is shifted per U-stripe, by adding a multiple of the 'R' of the random-per-stripe Color output of the first, U, Voronoi, to the V Voronoi's location in its one dimension. (shifted stripes, center)
The two Voronoi textures are intersected, by considering the U Voronoi and the shifted V Voronoi as the X and Y of a vector, and taking its length.
The Object Info node > Random output is used as a lookup into a White Noise texture to shift the entire space in which these texures are calculated. This gives a random-per-object result.
The linked .blend shows you the tree that does this, and a node group made from it.
The node group has the inputs:

Object Seed: randomizes the textures on all objects
X and Y 'Gaps' This modifies the 'Gappiness' - the average space between stripes, and dots-in-stripes.
X and Y Randomness. The lower these numbers, the more closely the texture approaches a regular grid. Tweaking this  a little can avoid dot-collisions.
Dot Size
Y BaseLine.  A margin below which dots will not appear, masked in such a way not to clip any dots. We could add a top margin that works the same way, if needed.

The Outputs are:

Mask. A mask of the dots, white out of black.
Distance: the distance of the shading-point from the nearest dot.
Cell center: the location of the center of the Voronoi cell containing the dot, in the original UV space. A sort of 2D 'Dot ID', could be useful for coloring dots separately, etc.

The group is used in the .blend to produce this:

If you go for this approach, with Node Wrangler enabled, you could Ctrl-Shift click around the nodes to figure out what the tree is up to.. and maybe improve it :)


Create good edge flow for subsurf on a plane I have a very mesh made in a single plane that I'd like to extrude down to create thickness and add supporting geometry to use a subsurface modifier while keeping the sharp edges. The problem is I can't get a nice edge flow so the supporting geometry doesn't reach some edges. How can I fix that?

After changinging the geometry to correct the previous problem other part of the mesh gets weird, which is prone to catching light in an unwanted way:

This method will need a lot of Proximity Loops and Supporting Loops but they are necessary to keep mesh clean without glitches on sharp corners (inside K).

You can try to add to the Base Topology three modifiers.

Solidify > Bevel (3 segments) > Subdivision surface. But this method has flaws like before mentioned glitches.


Problem parenting with Automatic Weights Recently, I've been working on this model that I imported into Blender from vg-resource.com. I'm no expert in Blender, just a beginner. The problem I'm faced with is when I attempt to parent with automatic weights, mesh to bones. The mesh turns 90 degrees on the Z Axis while the bones remain the same. Again, I'm a beginner and know only a bit of what most experts know about these issues. What I can say however is that I made changes to the model before parenting with automatic weights. All the vertices in the model were disconnected, so I connected them all individually. I thought it would save some time if I deleted half the model (without deleting the bones) and used a Mirror modifier to speed up the process.   This is the first time I've ever posted to this site so please bear with me. I've searched long and hard for an answer to this problem and have come up with nothing so I thought I'd ask the question myself in hopes that I get the answer.

In edit mode select all vertices, then press delete doubles in the tool panel (shortcut T). Then, in object mode, apply your mirror modifier, then apply rotation and scale of your model (ctrl A).

Then try parenting with automatic weights; if failing, you will have to weight it by hand, i.e. with the weight painting function.


After updating to Blender 2.68 Driver Scripts are no longer automatically excecuted When loading a .blend file the console window shows error messages like:

skipping driver 'x1*(1-x2)', automatic scripts are disabled
skipping driver 'x1*(1-x2*x3)', automatic scripts are disabled
skipping driver 'x1*(1-x2)', automatic scripts are disabled
skipping driver 'x1*(1-x2*x3)', automatic scripts are disabled

In the file browser the option Trusted Source can be set but isn't remembered when using File: Open Recent

Can the new security features switched off?

You can turn this setting off in the user preferences by unchecking Auto Run Python Scripts:

See the wiki for more information.


Add Bone Constraint [Pole Target] have problem First picture I use IK bone normally

next picture I use pole target but have problems can not rotation IK bone

I think you need to bend a bit your bone chain in Edit mode, and let it straight, so that it knows how to bend once in Pose mode, please tell me if I'm right.


Headless Eevee rendering Going off of this answer I am looking to run an Eevee render on an external server. How can I do this using VirtualGL? And what are the hardware requirements of this?

This may work (not quite knowing the context):

!apt-get install python-opengl -y

!apt install xvfb -y

!pip install pyvirtualdisplay

!pip install piglet

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
Display().start()

And you may not need piglet and xvfb, I have yet to test.

Source:
Answer by Shrawan Agrawal
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50107530/how-to-render-openai-gym-in-google-colab


UV Mapping behaves very weirdly I was trying to texture a car, but then I realized that some faces dont have their UV map applied.
I cant really explain what's happening. It looks like that there are two kinds of groups; when I select the entire model and apply a UV Map to it only one of the groups of faces actually uses it. The other stays with their current UV Map.

The car model: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz5XxZPILhgEc3h2NVk4QnZPalU/edit

There is a mode in the UV Editor called Sync Selection.  When Sync Selection is enabled; selecting the entire model in the 3D Viewport will select everything in the UV Editor;
however! when Sync Selection is disabled this will not happen.

To select everything when Sync is disabled you must first select everything in the 3D Viewport and then again in the UV Editor.  This mode allows you to work on UV coords independently but will often cause the problem you are describing.

Make sure that everything is selected in the UV Editor and then reapply the texture.
You might want to keep that little button activated all the time until you get used to it.


Cant remove emissionobject from orthographic view camera I have a camera placed in front of an emission object, but when I enter orthographic view in the camera, the object appears in from the camera thus blocking my scene? Ive turned off the emission objects camera ray visibility too?

I was using numpad 5 instead of making the camera othrographic - my mistake, thanks for the quick response!


I can see my model in solid view but I can't see then in rendered view and when I render the image I just finished Blender Guru's donut tutorial in 2.82 and I wanted to recreate a scene from MIDWAY. I downloaded a model of the Akagi, and one of a Dauntless dive bomber. The Akagi rendered great. (pic below)
But when I tried to render the dauntless, it just became transparent. Maybe its the texture? I joined the dauntless' parts before I rendered. (pic below) BTW I am using cycles. Here are the files.
Akagi: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/akagi-5fb1484e62a9417097dbd46f74095989
Dauntless: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/douglas-sbd-3-685c95ec16a94c1b8d500615e5d3ec0f
And here is my .blend: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tsxQ7Ur9suhdmytct4-fdjDyD3vC_Ode
EDIT: it shows up black in lookdev mode too.
Here is the material for the dauntless:

this is the transparent Dauntless in the rendered view

this is the rendered Akagi

Here is the material for the dauntless:

EDIT: it shows up black in lookdev mode too.

UPDATE: the reason the dauntless color is visible in solid view is because viewport display is set to navy blue. I changed it to neon green and this is the result, however I still don't know how to see the colors in rendered view mode.

If you are using blender 2.8 or higher there can be a "bug" when using older files where it doesn't show if things will be shown in renders. you can enable it manually like this.

A greyed-out camera means it won't show up in the render.


Move Render Region With Animation I am exporting my animation as single frames (.png) I need the contents of the exported frame to only be of the animated object. I am using Render Regions in conjunction with the Crop to Render Region checkbox checked.

This works great but as my object animates it moves outside the region of my Render Region.
Is there a way to get the Render Region to follow the animation? Or is there an alternative way to only render a particular area of your scene and keep it in sync with your object's movement during animation?
Here is an example of my current output where my cube leaves the Render Region:

I would like to see the cube in each frame exported.

It's not possible to have the render region track an object by default, however, I did make an add-on for this exact purpose: 'Animated Render Border',
available on the Blender Market here.

(Gif is from 2.79, but the add-on works with 2.8+.)
The add-on can track an object by looking at the object's bounding box, or more precisely, using its vertices (if it is a mesh, curve, armature (uses bones) or lattice). It can track collections of objects and it also has a mode to allow a more manual fine tuning ('Keyframe' mode).


Is there a way to "rescue" mesh that has very bad topology? I have a mesh with tons of ngons, non-manfold stuff, poles, and a decent amount of tris.
Should I just give up on the mesh, or can I somehow rescue it?

To deal with bad topology, but not having to start from scratch, It makes sense creating a new mesh and retopologizing. That is: using some form of vertex/edge/face snapping and/or a shrinkwrap modifier, you trace and receate your old mesh using proper topology. This technique is also useful when sculpting at a high poly count and then re-creating the mesh with less polygons.

It sounds daunting but in reality it is not a big deal at all.

Here are a few links that might help:

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/retopologize-nine-times-faster-shrink-wrap-modifier-blender/
https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/editing/retopo.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqYqkjimD8


Aligning bones' axes to the global axes I am using the quaternion rotation mode to rotate bones into poses for an animation. For some of my bones, when I increase the X value of the quaternion the bone rotates around the y axis instead. For other bones this does not happen.

I have set all my bone rolls to 0, in case that makes a difference. How can I make all of my bones rotate around the same axis when I modify the same value of their quaternion?

update:

I have discovered that in pose mode bones use the vector from their head to their tail as the y axis and the roll affects the orientation of the x and z axes. Still looking for a way to change these to the global axes.

You can recalculate roll, (Armature -> Bone Roll -> Recalculate Roll), or Shift+N

This can align bone roll to local or global space.


Shadows have lots of noise i only want the ropes shadow to show but there's lots of noise around that shows the thingies.

There are two ways to solve this problem. The most prominent problem is that it appears you need to increase the number of samples in your render settings (Render > Sampling > Samples). There are two values, respectively, the render and the preview samples. The default for rendering is 128 samples, and that is way too low to use in any render. The sample number is the number of paths to trace for each pixel. The higher the number, the more clear and less fuzzy your render will be, but the longer your render time will be. I would recommend changing that number to 1500 to start, and keep increasing it until you find a good balance between quality and render time.

If the above method increases your render time too much, you can try the denoiser (Render Layers > Denoising). The radius is the "sample size" and that can stay at default for the most part. The strength is the amount of denoising. Enabling denoising will allow you to reduce the number of samples, and save you some render time. I personally don't use denoising too much, as it can reduce the overall detail of your render. However, it can be a lifesaver if you don't have a beefy computer.

So basically, find a balance between render samples and the denoiser (optional) to find a quality that you like with a reasonable render time.

To learn more:

Samples- https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/settings/scene/render/integrator.html#sampling

Denoising-
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/settings/scene/render_layers/denoising.html


How to set the render-output using arbitrary values? When rendering, it can be useful to automate setting the output file path using existing data from within the blend file.

Is it possible to use variables in the render output path? eg,

//$(file)_$(scene)_$(camera)_####.png

Either from the interface or the command-line.

Note, this question is similar to How to show render-stamp for arbitrary values?

While Blender has no build-in support for this feature. You can do this using Python:

From Within Blender

Add a script into your file, call it render_path.py (for example).

Press Run Script (only need to do once)
Enable the Register option in the text editor (so it runs automatically).

Here is a sample script.

import bpy

def render_filepath_set(scene):
    scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(
            file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0],
            scene=scene.name,
            camera=scene.camera.name,
            )

bpy.app.handlers.render_init.append(render_filepath_set)

From the Command-Line

A similar method can be used, by running a script from the command line, first create a file.

render_path.py

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(
        file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0],
        scene=scene.name,
        camera=scene.camera.name,
        )

And run it with:

blender --background /d/untitled.blend --python render_path.py --render-anim

Or, you can avoid using a Python file and simply pass in the script on the command line (using --python-expr).

blender --background /d/untitled.blend --python-expr "import bpy; scene = bpy.context.scene; scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0], scene=scene.name, camera=scene.camera.name)"

This isn't practical to manually type in of course, but can be used when running Blender as an automated task (shell script / bat file... etc).


Import fbx from Nuke/ Maya and have the correct orientation What is the proper way to import fbx from Nuke ? Does anyone has a successful experience ? I always fail to orient the scene properly. The best setup is to set FORWARD to -Z forward and set UP to Y up but the X axis is always reversed. Any trick for this ?

Thanks

I find a way to fix the rotation , this is my setup in fbx import parameter :  turn on manual orientation and set forwar to -Z forward and up to Y up. Then DO NOT use the camera directly , but used it as reference only. Create a new camera, go to constraint property and choose 'child of' and select the original camera as parent. now clear out all translation/rot/scale of the new camera and set X and Z rotation to 180. Now i can see through the new camera.


Why do I get different results for my H.264 encoded .mov videos depending on the file format + encoding settings i choose? TL;DR? --> read the bold parts only ;)

The question could also have been called: What is the difference between the settings "file format" in "output" and "Format" in "Encoding"? It is very close to this question and I think I got the answer from there.

But I am still left with my actual problem, which is this: from the VSE I want to render out an h.264 encoded video in a .mov container. as far as I see there are two options to achieve this:

1) select H.264 or MPEG in "output"--"file format to save the rendered image as" and then in "Encoding" select "Quicktime" as "Format" and "H.264" as "Codec".
(--> this will give you the option to select a target bitrate for the output file (nice!))

2) select "Qicktime" in "output"--"file format to save the rendered image as" and then H.264 in the new option "Video Codec" that pops up right below.
(--> this will give you a setting for the "Quality percentage" (awkward!))

When I compare similarly sized output files generated by 1) and 2), method 1) looks waaaaay better! (example: 2000 kb/s in 1) gives 4MB file vs. 25% in 2) 7MB file and still file 1) looks considerably better!)

The only problem with 1) is that the resulting .mov file is not fully compatible with OS X whereas file 2) is.
(Also, selecting "lossless output" in 1) generates a file that cannot be played with QT player in OS X (VLC will play it))

Why are 1) and 2) different (is it the VBR for only 1)?) and what should I do to get a high-quality, low-size fully QT-compatible file rendered out?

You appear to be confusing encoding systems with containers. AVI, MOV, etc. are containers. H.264, MPEG and many, many others are compression systems.

Blender's manual has some great reference info here: https://www.blender.org/manual/data_system/files/media/video_formats.html

VBR is better for most work since it allows the compresssor to alter the data rate (and therefore file size) according to the amount of detail. Rapidly changing shots require huge amounts of data whereas slowly changing ones require very little.

H.264 and MPEG-4 are very well supported and deliver excellent bang for your buck. (H.265 is better but requires serious processing power to encode.)

Another solution might be to render your video out in a low loss or (ideally) lossless format and then downconvert it in a dedicated system such as Handbrake (Www.handbrake.fr) which will give you presets or let you tinker with all manner of settings until you find something that fits your needs.


Physics not working as expected I want to drop an element on a plane. Here you can see what happens:

This is my blender file: https://easyupload.io/bh6k7d

I load the object in my python script and set it as a rigid body:

scene = bpy.context.scene
cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
plane = bpy.data.objects['Plane']

bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath=path)
obj.data = bpy.context.object.data
bpy.data.objects.remove(bpy.context.object)
scene.rigidbody_world.group.objects.link(obj)

The plane is set to rigid body passive.

I want the object to really fall onto the plane. Anyone knows what I am doing wrong?

You need to set the origin of the object to its center of mass else the simulation will become wonky.
Select your object.

obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

obj.select_set(True)

While the object is selected in object mode, right click > Set Origin > To center of mass.

bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CENTER_OF_VOLUME', center='MEDIAN')

Also, Apply scale with CTRL + A so that it is uniform at 1,1,1.

bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True)

Check the difference here between one cube with its origin to its center of mass and one which is off-center. (the two origins of each cube are the yellow dots) :


Vertices being moved by armature despite only moving bone having no weight When I move my critter's head, some vertices at the back of said head move along, creating a fold, despite having no weight assigned to the head bone (DEF-spine.011).

Rest pose and lack of weight shown here:
https://imgur.com/a/He6T31J

Rotated head bone shown here:
https://imgur.com/a/F8omPKH

The head bone is the only moving bone here and all the weight from vertices of that area is assigned to the first neck bone, which is stationary, so the area should stay flat. I used auto-normalize when weight painting and double checked all vertex groups to make sure there is no weight from some random bone.

I have no idea what's causing this and how to fix it, although I'm still new to blender so despite my effort to find out, it might be something obvious. Weight painting still "works", adding weight to the head bone in this situation will still move those vertices, but I can't seem to eliminate that fold at the back of the head when it's tilted back, regardless of what I do (it's not present in the rest pose).

In case it matters, the rig was generated by Rigify.

I checked other similar questions about mysterious weightless deformations and saw they usually still had some other sneaky bone with assigned weight or the observed bone's weight wasn't quite 0, but from what I can tell, that's not the case here.

Sure enough it was something basic. Rigify used bendy bones for the neck, so I guess with such a sharp angle between the head and first neck bone, that neck bendy bone got bent too much, causing this mess.


How to mirror an object in a 90 degree angle? So, I'm building a TARDIS...

I'm working on the details off the side, and want to then mirror it to the other side(the one adjacent to the one already detailed), so I don't need to do the door two times.
How can I do this?

You have to use an array modifier to rotate it 90 degrees, then mirror it along the X and Y axis:

Result:


Is there a hotkey modifier for G that sets rather than moves the coordinate? Is there a modifier for the G hotkey that sets the vertex global X/Y/Z location, rather than moves it relative to the current location?  (Something like GG X 12.5 to directly set the global X coord to 12.5).

I'm using blender to render a number of simple 2d textured shapes (orthographic projection) that directly face the camera.

I add many shapes to a single blend file so I can position them relative to each other and then render them using a script.

At present I have to position vertices by clicking on the Info panel, Transform section, X,Y,Z coordinate textboxes and manually typing.

I find this quite slow when I have to do this 20 plus times.

I can use vertex snapping (to other objects) sometimes, but this is no use for vertex locations that are not identical (ie offset).

This would be also useful in the UV Editor.  I would like to be able to select a vertex and simply set it's U or V in a similar way (ie to line the vertex up with the edge corners of a simple quad texture).

I've read the online documents for the Transform keyboard shortcuts and nothing like this is mentioned.

Unfortunately I think the closest you can get now (without some python custom operator stuff) is resetting to the origin (⎇ AltG) before moving the object. So:

⎇ AltG
GX X coordinate
GY Y coordinate
GZ Z coordinate


Why is my model showing different shading on a flat area around a hole? I tried to make a Scythe, and I wanted to cut holes in the shape, but I'm getting these dark areas around the hole. This happens a lot and it forces me to change my design and I don't want to change my design this time.

It looks to me like you simply have smooth shading turned on. In edit mode, in the 3d view, the toolbar on the left (in your picture it says "Add Meshes" at the top), go to the transform tab, and in the "Edit" section, look for a label called "Shading:". Under that, there should be two buttons, one says "smooth" and the other says "flat". Click the one that says "flat" and see if those dark patches go away.


Is it possible to change the default transparent color when texture painting? It seems that when exporting layers as png images in Photoshop, some elusive semi-transparent pixels may be saved as white and become quite apparent when imported as planes into blender.

This could be easily remedied by erasing their alpha in the texture paint mode; however, transparent becomes white:

This makes it very hard in most, and impossible in some, cases to tell where these stray pixels are and when I've gotten rid of them ("erasing alpha" is basically painting "white" over white).

Any way to get rid of the transparent white by either replacing it with a different colour, hiding it completely or replacing it by some Photoshop-style grid?

In your material settings for your image texture - the material in the Shading tab of the properties panel needs to have Z Transparency turned on for the GLSL viewport to allow you to 'see' the erase alpha as the background showing through.


Lost UI properties bar and can't get rid of other bars This properties bar:

disappeared when I accidentally opened the Grease pencil bar. Now the area where the properties bar looks like this:

I cannot collapse it, and I cannot get the properties toolbar back!
How would I do it?

I guess its something like this

Please save your file, close blender and re open it, open your blender file and un check the Load UI check box as shown below:

We are all set:

Best of luck!


Canceling render takes too much time I've been working on a small project that takes around 10 to 15 minutes to render.

At first, the canceling took a couple seconds to almost no time. But recently, the canceling time something takes almost 3 to 5 minutes! (I just tried it, and after 30 minutes it was still on the "cancelling.." screen.)

(Just the "canceling..." message to appear after I press "Esc" takes almost 20 seconds.)

This is pretty annoying and really puts me off rendering, is there any way to fix this?

EDIT: Here's the .blend file for anyone who wants to have a look -

I'll try to explain it in layman terms, hopefully it is not very far from the actual technical workings of a render engine. If someone with true programming inside knowledge wants to barge in, please do correct me if I'm wrong

While rendering Blender, and most rendering software for that matter, divides your image up into small digestible chunks, like buckets samples, or whatever method is more adequate for the current engine.

These chunks are then run through some sort of scheduling agent that queues them and sends them to the available processing units, be it a GPU, CPU core, one of several networked computers, a Farm or whatever.

The scheduler then waits for the processing units to churn through that data, produce the image slice and return them as rendered chunks to send in a new one afterwards.

Until that chunk is returned Blender has no control over that processing unit, all it can do is waiting for the returned information.

If you cancel a render Blender most of the time the only way to actually stop it is by not sending a new chunk, and even if a "cancel" signal can be sent, often the processing unit is busy and can't act on it until it finishes that chunk anyway.

The time until the signal is interpreted or the current chunk is finished is the delay you experience between pressing Cancel and actually stopping.

Following Scott Milner line of thought, the larger a render tile or bucket is, the longer it takes to render, so theoretically the longer the delay to cancel. The same applies for more complex algorithms like Branched Path Tracing which require more processing power and memory, and thus take longer to process.

Have in mind that lowering bucket size may negatively affect your render times, so you should weight the pros and cons of faster render or faster cancelling.


Imported OBJ will not move to grid I imported an OBJ from SweetHome3D to the latest version of Blender. When every object is selected (press A), I press "shift-S" to click "Selection -> To Grid". However, the single OBJ object will not move to the grid. I already have my camera positioned for the grid. I have never dealt with OBJ files; can I not move them?

Below is my car after applying SteveW's suggestion. The car is on the central grid (what ever you may call it), but it is broken. The grid is at the orange dot.

Because its already snapped to the grid.

To explain: OBJ is a mesh-only format, therefor there is no object center. Just geometry and the object center is always (0, 0, 0), so there is no snapping to do.

To do what I think you're asking, you can have blender calculate a new origin (in the toolbox Origin -> Origin to Geometry), then you can snap the objects to the grid.

You may also want to split the mesh by loose parts before doing this though OBJ may be already split up, depending on the import options.


Emission Volume with transparent background not rendering correctly Not sure what I am missing, I am using a wireframe modifier with material offset to 1.

The render preview window is the correct way I want.

This is what renders:

EEVEE seems to do it just fine.

EDIT: CEGATON comments below are correct.

Try using Z depth in the compositor to calculate transparency, instead of the Film > Transparent checkbox. I think blender is trying to calculate transparency using the surface of each material, so your volumetric material gets treated as if it is totally transparent (because it has no surface).

You can use a node setup like this:
The number in the less-than node makes it so that anything far enough away from the camera (at least 1000000 blender units in this case) gets drawn as transparent. For my test scene, the value 100 worked as well. Once you change this, you no longer need to use the "transparent" checkbox so you can uncheck it if you like.

This works because the world background has a Z depth of about 10000000000, as opposed to the Z depth of cube in my scene, which has Z depth ranging from about 5-9 (its faces are between 5 and 9 or so blender units away from the camera). Because the Z depth of the background and the stuff in the scene is so different, you can just pick a value in between and make everything transparent if the Z depth is higher than that value.


Exporting / importing .obj messes up the materials I have a problem. If I export the model with blender materials in to .obj format, and then import it back,all the materials persist, but are much darker then the original exported ones.

(left - original, right - import)

The thing is that there is a transparency property added, and all specular changed to black, as well as base colour darkened a bit. Also mirror property is set to 100%, and mirror colour to black.

What is wrong with this? Any way to fix it?

You cannot avoid some changes, simply because .OBJ (.MTL actually) shading model is not exactly the same as BI one (not talking about nodes here, if it’s relatively easy to import .mtl as a basic nodal shader, the reverse operation is practically impossible and hence not supported).

That said, several issues here were fixed in past months (regarding mutual influences between world and material especially), so suggest you try with the latest build from our buildbot, if not yet done. :)


One object turns gray in rendered/cycles view I know this has been asked before, but my issue doesn't seem to be the same as anyone else's. One of my objects renders just fine in the viewport and under Eevee, but disappears into the solid gray background when rendered with Cycles. It's still clipping the viewport grid that it sits on top of, but not the other objects in the scene.

There is no texture on this object, it is simply rendered as a material with a base colour and material properties.

So far, I've confirmed that:

The object's viewport display settings in the context menu are correct. (set to textured)
Changing material properties doesn't make any difference, and the material works fine on other objects in the scene.
The normals are "normal"
The lighting is adequate
The object ("Engine") is enabled in the view layer for rendering, viewport, everything.

I even deleted the object, loaded an old save, and copypasta'd it back into the scene. Same result. Really frustrating.

Does anyone know how I can get it back?

File: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52552

I was able to fix this after watching a few YouTube videos.

Above "Viewport Display" and within "Visibility" in the properties tab, there's special settings for "Ray Visibility" which is essentially for Cycles' ray-tracing algorithm.

Helpful to know about if you want coarse-grained control over rendering. (Use nodes/shading for fine control).


Blender to Unity: Model Rigging Issue I have a model that I created in Blender. I then created a bow and arrow and then parented it to the hand bone of the model so that it moves with the hand. When I use the .blend file in Unity, however,the bow and arrow shifts to some other position away from where it is supposed to be. I'm not entirely sure how Unity and Blender's co-ordinate systems differ so it might be that but I haven't really had this problem with other models before. Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Ok, so I've figured out what the problem is but I have no idea how to fix it (apologies for my poor modelling practices in advance because i'm fairly new to this)

This is my model in pose position:

This is my model in rest position:

I connected the bow to the skeleton by clicking on the bow rig > shift clicking on the hand bone > CNTRL+P > to bone. This works fine as the bow now moves with the skeleton and I can do whatever I need in the NLA editor.

Now, the issue is, when I use the .blend file in Unity, the bow is in the rest position of my model even though the skeleton is in pose position and performing the actions (so the bow is floating on the side).

I've tried connecting it differently. If I connect the bow instead of the bow rig to the model, then it is in the correct position in unity but then the bow rig detaches and so the bow animations don't play.

I've also thought the problem would be solved if I make the the current pose position my rest position but when I do that, the mesh reverts to the old rest position and moves very weirdly with the skeleton

I would really, really appreciated any help with this as it's been hindering my progress for the past few days.

If you want to apply the pose as rest pose and the model is already skinned, you need to apply the Armature modifier first, then apply the pose, then add a new Armature modifier from the modifier menu.

You can also probably join both the armatures together (CTRL-J) and parent the bow on a bone level.

But if you wanna have swap-able weapons, then the common practice is to have a dedicated weapon bone and copy it's global matrix to the weapon of choice in engine.


Objects are not exported I try to export a blender file into Maya. I was using FBX and OBJ files but it didn't work as expected.
When I watch at the model in Blender in solid mode some objects are displayed in solid mode, but the rest seems to be in wireframe. The objects in wireframe are not exported. The other Objects work fine.
http://www.filedropper.com/postepack
Has anybody an idea what is wrong with the model and how I can get them into Maya?
Thanks for the Help!!!

I took a look at your file.
You can see your objects in wireframe only because there are no faces in the object's data, they are only vertices and edges.

Quick solution to solve it would be to

select the object
TAB into edit mode
be in vertex select mode or edge select mode
select everything and fill with "F"

This works in most of the cases, sometimes you remain with some unfilled faces that you have to fill manually selecting usually two opposite edges and fill with "F".

I have tried this with a few objects and exported as .obj, opened it with a cad software and the filled objects are exported.


How to render an object as a transparent wireframe? I'm a psychology student (and 3D design noob) who's been tasked with designing items for a test of spatial ability like this example...

I've been playing around with Blender, and I've gotten this far...

So the shapes I want are there, but I'm having trouble getting out rendered on white with black outlines.

I tried changing the World Horizon Color to white, which fixes the background, but the cube object renders solid. Any ideas on how to get it outlined like in the example?

P.S. That "LS" in the example is meant to be a window. Any suggestions on how to accomplish that would also be wonderful; I haven't even attempted it yet.

One way you could do this is by using freestyle:

Create a transparent material and assign it to your objects:

Enable freestyle in Render settings:

In Render layers, set the line visibility to QI range and set the end to 1:

Think of the QI range like a sort of depth index; faces directly visible to the camera are 0, faces behind those faces are 1, faces behind those faces are 2, etc.

By only rendering lines on faces between 0 and 1 (inclusive), you can get a result like in your example image.

Or you could use wireframe materials:

See this question for details.


Prevent texture from scaling I've got a plane with its Base Color set to a texture (let it be 100x100 pixels). When I scale this plane the texture gets scaled too, which is not what I want.
How do I make Blender not to scale this texture no matter how big the plain is? I don't want it to be scaled beyond 100%.

Use "object" output from "texture coordinates" node:

Then to tune the texture position and scale, you can use the vector "mapping" node.
Also turn the image boundings to "clip" if you don't want it to repeat over the plane surface.

Alternatively, you can use another object as position, scale and rotation, as indicated here.

A link to the documentation.

Object
Uses an object as a source for coordinates. Often used with an empty,
this is an easy way to place a small image at a given point on
the object. This object can also be animated, to move a texture around
or through a surface.


How to render model with plain cartoon like colors I just started to work with blender, finished my first models and i want to do some advanced things.
My question is pretty simple: please see attached image. How do i achieve such rendering style in blender ( solid, plain cartoon-style colors) ? I'm not even sure how to google this, since i have no idea how this style is properly called.

Thanks!

That is quite easy. If using Blender Internal, simply make sure the ambient light is quite high so that shadow areas are not dark or black. Then set the Specularity value all the way down. That way the car will be red all over, but brighter red in the direction of the lamp.

For the headlights, set the material to Emit so that the colos will be completely flat.


How can I identify the trackers when reconstructing a scene I have made a scene in Blender but I have a hard time reconstructing it. I have a solve error of 0.2 which I know is really good but when I decide to set the floor it looks like this.

How do I properly know which of my trackers should be reconstructed into what?

Here is the blend file:

You can name the trackers on the movie clip editor.

Then enable 3D marker names on the 3D viewport.

Set the view to camera and load the tracked video clip as background image. It will all make sense then.


Can i create depth or bump maps from this image without sculpting or modeling? Is there a way for me to create the height or bump map of the design on this door without modeling or sculpting it or maybe a trim sheet?.

There is a website called CrazyBump which converts 2d images to 3d displacement maps its called CrazyBump! here's the website link to go check it out https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/


How to convert a text/curve to mesh with given maximum face size? I have a text object, which I am converting to a mesh; later I want to apply a shrinkwrap modifier to project the mesh-text onto a curved surface, so I would like to avoid very large faces (e.g. when converting letters like I or L, with long straight edges).

I am subdividing the resulting mesh to work around this, but this creates lots of unnecessary faces (as it is subdividing the small faces as well)

Is there an adaptive-subdividing tool which I can use to subdivide faces that are larger than a given threshold?

Try a remesh modifier with an octree depth of about 7. Uncheck "remove disconnected peices".

Make sure you have converted to mesh first.  This only works if the mesh has some substance to it (solidify modifier, or edit mode, select all, extrude).
Apply modifier to see results in edit mode, or check "display modifier in edit mode".


take screenshots programmatically in bge? import bge

from bge import render, logic

def makescreenshot():
    path = logic.expandPath("//")

    def main():

        cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
        own = cont.owner

        render.makeScreenshot(path+"image.png")

    main()
makescreenshot()

^This is the code I have to take a screenshot of the current scene and I want to connect this with an always sensor to the camera, but the only way I know to do so is by using bpy...is there any way to take screenshots using bpy or is there any way to add logic bricks using bge?

Thanks!

In Bge you can indeed add an always sensor and link it to the python script


Choosing the active selection tool I am new to Blender, and I keep running into a problem with 2.8. I use the LMB to select, because it feels more natural to me. When I am modeling, I sometimes (probably due to accidental hotkeys) end up with my active selection tool on the left menu being circle select instead of box select. I cannot find any intuitive way to change which selection tool is listed on the left menu, and therefore which one I can use as my active tool in the n-menu. This has been very frustrating, so any help is very much appreciated!

Never mind. I realized that the arrow below the select tool is not a menu to be clicked, but rather is one that must be dragged out. It then lets you change.


Mesh is warped when I add subdivision surface. No amount of loop cuts gets rid of it I am modeling something in blender, and I used a subdivision surface to make the edges smooth.  however, I have parts of the mesh that are deformed at sharp corners (See image below)
I tried adding loop cuts, and it doesn't really do anything.  Does anyone know how to fix this? any help is appreciated.  (PS, the link to my file is below)

After examining your file, I found 2 main problems - one easy to solve, and the other, a bit more time consuming, to say the least.
The first (easy to solve) issue seems to be that you have a good deal of duplicate vertices in your mesh (somewhere in the 400 area). To solve this, select the whole mesh in edit mode (A) and select mesh > clean up > merge by distance from the mesh menu at the top of the viewport.
The second (not so easily solved) issue has to do with the topology of the mesh. Specifically, your mesh has a good number of n-gon's (faces with more than 4 vertices) which is causing the majority of your issues. Blender favors quad-based topology, and though n-gon's or tri's are sometimes unavoidable, they are best kept towards the center of flat faces, otherwise they cause issues with any number of things, from Subdivision Surface Modifiers, to Shading.
The solution, then, is to do your best to re-topologize your mesh to contain primarily quad-based faces (especially near curved edges) . In the image below, I have begun this process by joining many of the vertices to make quad faces. (I did not finish, however, as it is a lot of work for an example), You can see that the areas that are made of quads behave better, and those that have more than 4 vertices do not. I was also able to better define the overall form of the shape by adding the edge loops I left highlighted.

It's better, but it still needs a lot of retopology work to be "perfect". You will need to spend some time adjusting it manually, I'm afraid. You can see from the image that there are still some artifacts where the the n-gons remain. Check YouTube for guides on topology if you need it.


How to implement "air-strafing" in the BGE? Introduction

What exactly is "air-strafing"?

Air strafing is a technique in which a player would sync strafe keys and mouse movements when in-air. (For example, if you press the right strafe key, you would move your mouse rightwards smoothly as you hold the key).
It had spawned an exploit - a player can exceed maximum velocity; this will give the player additional speed.
It was unintentionally created (as a bug) back in Quake.

Reasoning

So why exactly does air-strafing work? What is the specific anomaly/cause?

Instead of limiting velocity directly, only the projection of the current velocity onto acceleration is limited.
This way, in certain scenarios, the velocity projection is less than the actual velocity!

it's simple really,

just use seperate logic to apply forces on axis independently, and have each key only apply a cap to it's own directions

if keypressW.positive:
    if own.localLinearVelocity.x<10:
        own.applyForce((100,0,0),1)
if keypressE.positive:
    if own.localLinearVelocity.y<10:
        own.applyForce((0,100,0),1)

this way X(10) + Y(10) is greater then X(10) could ever be.


Get obj export settings (properties) from ExportOBJ class shown in the UI in python script When I start blender, create an e.g. cube and want to export this cube as obj I do this via:  File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj)
In the opened export dialog I see e.g. besides the last used file location the OBJ export properties like: Selection Only, Animation etc.
These properties are defined in "<<blender location>>/scripts/addons/io_scene_obj/__init__.py" where the ExportOBJ class is registered as operator I think.

If I export my scene as OBJ via the Wavefront (.obj) UI dialog blender saves the last set property state values like Selection Only.

How can I get those property values in a python script?
So for the Selection Only a boolean like: selection_only = bpy.ops.export_scene.obj.use_selection

Window manager methods

Prior to running python console code below I have exported the  scene to wavefront obj, set a filepath and chosen use selection.

>>> wm = C.window_manager

>>> props = wm.operator_properties_last("export_scene.obj")

Running auto-complete props.CtrlSpace

>>> props.
          as_pointer(

          ... cut for brevity...

          use_normals
          use_nurbs
          use_selection
          use_smooth_groups
          use_smooth_groups_bitflags
          use_triangles
          use_uvs
          use_vertex_groups
          values(
>>> props.

Can get any property value

>>> props.use_uvs
True

This is the default value for use_uvs

If however we iterate over items, will get those values last used that are non default.

>>> for k, v in props.items():
...     k, v
...
('filepath', '/home/batfinger/Desktop/untitled.obj')
('use_selection', 1)

To run the operator again using the same properties from code could simply make this a dictionary and pass it to the operator as kwargs

>>> d = {k : v for k, v in props.items()} # or d = dict(props.items())
>>> bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(**d)
Progress:   0.00%
    (  0.0003 sec |   0.0000 sec) OBJ Export path: '/home/batfinger/Desktop/untitled.obj'
Progress:   0.00%
Progress:   8.33%
Progress:  16.67%
Progress:  25.00%
Progress:  33.33%
Progress:  41.67%
Progress:  50.00%
          (  0.0044 sec |   0.0034 sec) Finished writing geometry of 'Cube'.
Progress:  50.00%
Progress:  50.00%
Progress:  50.00%
      (  0.0058 sec |   0.0051 sec) Finished exporting geometry, now exporting materials
Progress: 100.00%
NO NODES!
      (  0.0074 sec |   0.0067 sec) OBJ Export Finished
Progress: 100.00%
Progress: 100.00%
Progress: 100.00%
Progress: 100.00%

{'FINISHED'}


In Animation Nodes how can I have an integer value increase from 0 to 100 and back to 0? (0 -> 100 -> 0) I am trying to create a smooth animation loop with a Euler Wiggle node and I have been unable to figure it out.

My goal is to provide an increasing integer value to the Evolution property and then when it hits a max, say 100, it would decrease to 0. This would allow me to create a longer animation with the Video Sequence Editor and save me having to render an excessive amount of frames.

I cannot use a simple duplicate sequence in reverse to emulate the effect as there is a background element that maintains the same direction of movement.

There are two ways to do this, the mathematical way, and the simple method of using an linear mirror interpolation which I will describe here:

In that case, it will start at zero, start increasing till it reach 100 at half the duration, and then start decreasing till it reach zero again at the full duration.


Why i don't have a bolt mesh in blender? This is the tutorial i'm trying to follow: tutorial

And in minute 9:46 is when he is adding the bolt.

I'm trying to make a tutorial and in this part he is adding a bolt:

This is after he added the bolt:

And this is when i make Add > Mesh...but i don't have any bolt in the menu or in the sub menus:

The bolt object is available from an addon that is included with blender, as it isn't showing up, that would indicate you need to enable the addon.

In File->User Preferences under addons, search for bolt and then enable the bolt factory addon. If you click Save User Settings, it will be enabled every time you start blender.

When you first enable the addon you will find bolt at the bottom of the list but if you save it to always be enabled then you will find it under the default mesh objects.


How to write a script to copy one key frame at the time from one armature to another? I'm having issues loading Action from Armature A to Armature B because the first one has Euler rotation bones and the second has Quartenion.

If I manually copy all bones from Armature A and paste on Armature B in pose mode it works great.

but the Armature A bones has over 800 frames and I can't manually copy and paste each one of them.

Is there a way to write a python script to perform this by the Armature name?

I came across this script from this anwer: Question
and it works great if the armature of destination has Euler but since it is Quartenion if doesn't rotate.  I wanna use the code below but using the copy bones and paste instead of setting attributes.

import bpy

active_obj = bpy.context.object
ad = bpy.context.object.animation_data

properties = [p.identifier for p in ad.bl_rna.properties if not p.is_readonly]
objects = [o for o in bpy.context.selected_objects if o.type == active_obj.type]
objects.remove(active_obj)

for obj in objects :
    if obj.animation_data == None :
        obj.animation_data_create()
    ad2 = obj.animation_data

    for prop in properties:
        setattr(ad2, prop, getattr(ad, prop))

Here's an old brute force script of mine to convert euler kfps to quaternion.  Note it will add full wxyz keyframes for any frame that has any x, y or z euler rot keyframe point.

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
arm_obj = context.active_object
#arm_obj = scene.objects.get("ArmatureName") # None if doesn't exist
# all pose bones
for pb in arm_obj.pose.bones:
    if pb.rotation_mode == 'QUATERNION':
        continue
    frames = []
    fcurves = []
    dp = 'pose.bones["%s"].rotation_euler' % pb.name
    for index in [0, 1, 2]:
        # search for rotation euler kfps
        fc = arm_obj.animation_data.action.fcurves.find(dp, index=index)
        # make a list of frames that have euler rot keyframes
        if fc:
            frames.extend([kfp.co[0] for kfp in fc.keyframe_points])
            fcurves.append(fc)
    # run thru and keyframe in
    for f in set(frames):
        scene.frame_set(f)
        pb.rotation_quaternion = pb.matrix_channel.to_quaternion()
        pb.keyframe_insert("rotation_quaternion", frame=f)

    # clean up by removing euler fcurves (will coexist ok)
    '''
    for fc in fcurves:
        arm_obj.animation_data.fcurves.remove(fc)
    pb.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'
    '''


Update values of objects for python script? I'm completely new to blender and scripting and trying out some things:

I created a cube out of several smaller cubes (blue) and have one big cube called master (grey). The master cube overlaps with some of the smaller cubes.

I am now iterating through my small cubes and check with the help of this function (slightly updated):

def is_inside(p, obj):
    result, location, normal, index = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(p)
    p2 = location - p
    v = p2.dot(normal)

    return not(v <= 0.0)

If they are inside the master cube they turn green, of not they turn red. This works pretty well so far.

But now I want to move my master cube around to overlap with some other of the smaller cubes. If I run my script again it seems to check from the old position of the master and not the new one, because the same cubes as before are coloured green.

This is the situation after the second run of the script, where all visible small cubes should be red and the ones inside the grey cube should be green (FYI, they are not):

How can I get the function to work with the updated postion of the master cube? Do I have to update some other values that I am missing?

This is my code:

master = bpy.data.objects['Master']
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

# select all smaller cubes
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern='Cube.*')

# create colors
green = bpy.data.materials.new("GREEN")
green.diffuse_color = (0.0, 1.0, 0.0)

red = bpy.data.materials.new("RED")
red.diffuse_color = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)

for cube in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if isInside(cube.location, master):
        cube.active_material = green

    else:
        cube.active_material = red

Thanks in advance for any helpful tips!

It's not working because closest_point_on_mesh expects its parameter p in Object Space, not in World Space. That is, the p's coordinates should be measured along the local axes of obj, taking into account obj's axes'location, rotation, and scale. closest_point_on_mesh also returns the location and normal of the closest point in the Object Space of obj.

So long as master is not transformed, its Object Space is the same as World Space, and isInside will work. But it will always compare the position of p to where master was before it was transformed. In order to measure p in master's space, we have to apply the inverse transformation to p as the one that was applied to master.. If you like, we pull master back to the world origin, and maintain the same relative position (rotation, scale) of p to master as it had before we pulled it back.

import bpy
import mathutils

def world_to_obj(point,obj):
    mat_obj_xform = obj.matrix_world
    mat_to_local = obj.matrix_world.inverted()
    return mat_to_local * point

def is_inside(point, obj):
    p = world_to_obj(point, obj)
    hit, hit_location, normal_at_location, face_index = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(p)
    ray = hit_location - p
    dotproduct = ray.dot(normal_at_location)
    return (dotproduct > 0.0)

green = bpy.data.materials.get("GREEN")
if green is None:
    green = bpy.data.materials.new(name="GREEN")
    green.diffuse_color = (0.0, 1.0, 0.0)

red = bpy.data.materials.get("RED")
if red is None:
    red = bpy.data.materials.new(name="RED")
    red.diffuse_color = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)

master = bpy.data.objects['Master']
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern='Cube.*')

for cube in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    if is_inside(cube.location, master):
    #inside
        if cube.data.materials:
            cube.data.materials[0] = green
        else:
            ob.data.materials.append(green)
    else:
    #outside
        if cube.data.materials:
            cube.data.materials[0] = red
        else:
            cube.data.materials.append(red)

Forgive the long-winded variable names and grubby code.. I meant them to be a bit more explanatory. (I've also stopped the repeat creation of materials.)


How do I create a smooth curve along an edge on this model? I am trying to recreate a Toro Lantern, like the ref image below. I am trying to figure out how to create a smooth curve that goes up the neck of the Toro Lantern. I have tried edging a crease on it and subdividing it, but to no avail I cant reach the desired look I'm going for.

I would use an actual curve object in combination with a Screw Modifier.
First create a curve that will be one of four curve edges of your final object. Then in Edit Mode make it the shape you want, but also move it away form the origin in a way that will make the origin the center of your final object. (note the orange dot/origin in the gif image)
Then put a Screw Modifier on the curve object. Set the Axis to X, the Angle to 360, and the Steps to 4. Now if you manipulate the curve, all four curved edges change accordingly.

When you are happy with the shape press Alt + C and choose Mesh From Curve/Meta/Surf/Text, which changes your object to a mesh and applies the modifier.
Since the edge curve in your example image highlighted in white actually splits into two edges at some point, you might want to model this part manually as proposed by moonboots. You can select part of the edges of the curve, up to where the split would be split, and press Ctrl + B to bevel the curve and create the split. (in this example the top part would also have to be scaled down manually to make the curve flow nicely)


Ruler/protractor reports doubled measure Blender 2.79.
I draw a cube entering the measures manually as scale values.
Then if I select the Ruler/Protractor tool, I see a measure that is the double value against the entered value.
Why?

Scales values aren't dimensions. Scale works as a factor of the object's original dimensions.
I.E if you look at the default cube, its scales are 1:1:1, but if you look at its dimensions: 2:2:2.
If you set the scale at 2, the dimensions will be 4:4:4. If you set the sclaes to 0.5, dimensions will be 1:1:1.


Shrinkwrap mesh onto another mesh To model a costume inspired by the jacket bellow, I need to add the braide to it. I've tried doing so using the Shrinkwrap modifier (using the nearest surface point mode) but I have 3 issues:
1 - the braid has thickness, the Shrinkwrap modifier flattens the mesh. I thought of using a flat version of the braid then adding a solidify modifier but this would not be accurate, part of the braid goes on top  another part of the braid (like shoe laces)
2 - I have distortions. I tried adding a subdivision surface modifier which helps a bit but not entirely.
3 - the left part of the braid (the loop) shouldn't be on the jacket but rather over the edge of it, sort of "floating in the air".

Thanks for your help.

The next version of Blender, version 2.78, currently available here https://builder.blender.org/download/ will contain major improvements to the Grease Pencil. With these, you could get a really fast starting point for your example. The new release allows you to define specific brushes for GP, and also to smooth the stroke, which is what I'm using in this example.

First, enable the options like this (note that this is only available in the release stated earlier) and draw the curve onto the mesh directly by holding down the D key and click-dragging:

The smoothing option will, as soon as you let go of the mouse, smooth out the stroke, cleaning it up and making it usable for the next step.

Then, convert the pencil drawing to a curve:

Finally, add some bevelling, subdivide the mesh, and set the smoothing option:


What's the bets way to get an atmosphere effect? I want to create a big nature scene in cycles and want a bluish atmosphere so mountains and distant objects appear bluish. Here is an example of what I'm trying to achieve.  Notice how the mountains in the background have a definite blue hue to it. What would be the best way to achieve this? Thanks!

It's possible to do with Volumetrics and other effects, but generally not worth it for both render time and resulting quality. Your best bet would be compositing with Z pass (Z depth) or Mist pass. It would take some tutorials for in-depth compositor nodes for making it inside Blender, but overall the idea is: you render your scene image and another pass(Z or Mist)  - a black and white image which goes from black to white depending on the distance from camera to the most distant rendered object. Then you use that pass in compositing the final image with your rendered scene, either inside Blender Compositor with nodes or image editor (like Photoshop).


Browse button in StringProperty FILE_PATH not working I'm using context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self) to show a property dialog. One of the things I need is an export directory, so I added:

exportPath = StringProperty(name="Path", subtype='FILE_PATH') to the class.

The property does show up, and there is a button to click on as it should, but when I click on that button, nothing happens. Do I need to do something additional to make this work, or is this a bug?

Thanks!

You can't open the File / Directory view when the invoke_props_dialog itself is open, it's a blocking dialogue. I think this is mentioned in the documentation. (i'll try to find it and link here)


Normal Baking Showing Yellow I have a lightsaber hilt that I'm trying to bake. I made a low poly mesh first, then I added a subdivision surface modifier to my low poly mesh to make a high poly version. Because I added the subdivision surface modifier to the high poly one, it is smaller (generally) than my low-poly one. Both of the models are shaded smooth. Whenever I go to bake the normals, there are always yellow spots. Just as a note, most of the yellow pieces are cylindrical.

Please help me get rid of the yellow spots. Thank you :)

Here is what I'm getting so far:

Extrusion: .01m. Cage: Active. Margin: 1px.

Extrusion: 1m. Cage: Active. Margin: 1px.

Extrusion: 1m. Cage: Active. Margin: 16px.

Ray Distance: 1m. Cage: Disabled. Margin: 16px.

Ray Distance: .01m. Cage: Disabled. Margin: 16px.

Ray Distance: .01m. Cage: Disabled. Margin: 1px.

Edit: I have gone into edit mode, selected everything and recalculated the normals. It eliminated the worst of the yellow, but there are still a few lines hanging around.

I actually just went and baked the normal map with xNormal. Then, I imported it, created a new material and texture and hooked it up. It is a good quality, but I can tell it is jagged in some areas.

So, this is more of a workaround rather than a fix, but it's the solution that I'm probably going to be using from now on.


How do I give a texture a dark halo? I have an image with an alpha channel that I am using for a texture.  Right now I just use its alpha channel (that's the only thing checked in the influence panel).

I'd like to give it a "halo"/border.  Consider the following image where I take the outline of japan (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Japan_football_clubs_map_2011), and give it a black border (this uses an intermediate image from the compositor of a separate scene, very awkward):

My first instinct is to create a second plane underneath with a second version of the texture where I dilate (add pixels around the edge, ⟏ for those of you familiar with Image Algebra) the alpha channel for a dark material.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a node which performs dilation in the texture Node Editor.

I welcome suggestions of how to achieve this effect using blender.  (I am using BI, but if you want to answer with a screenshot of a node setup for Cycles I won't complain).

Use a Dilate/Erode node on the alpha channel in the compositor

with background the node setup would be something like this: