I can't create a UV map for this object and I don't know why (sphere unwrap) I have a horse model I'm working on. So far, so good.

Now I'm trying to add eyes with an iris texture. I added two spheres, assigned a material and a texture, but the UV Map is too small and needs to be resized (my horse now has insect eyes. Every face of the sphere has its own texture.)

When I try to apply/resize my UV Map (in Edit mode), here is what I get:

The sphere has a Material & texture, so it should work:

So, what am I doing wrong? TIA.

The faces of your sphere are overlapping in the UV Editor because you must have unwrapped with the Unwrap option (first one) without any seam on your mesh. The result is that each face displays the pupil. You should mark a seam on one of your sphere longitudes (select the edge and press CtrlE > Mark Seam), then select all and unwrap again (with the first option called Unwrap). This time it will take the seam into account. You can bring some corrections like scaling up and down the UV in the UV Editor and align it to the pupil.


Unable to select the right frame on 2d Blender I'm working on a short animation, and I have every key frame loaded up at the bottom of my screen. The only problem is, when I go to try to select a specific frame in order to do things like duplicate it, I'm unable to click the right frame. It always clicks one several frames to the left. It's nothing wrong with my laptop (to my knowledge), so is there a way to zoom into the frames on 2d blender? If not, can I highlight a single frame in some way that I don't already know? Thanks!

from the Blender documentation:
Adjusting the View
The Timeline can be panned by holding MMB, then dragging the area left or right.
You can zoom the Timeline by using Ctrl-MMB, the mouse Wheel, or pressing NumpadMinus and NumpadPlus.
You can also use the scrollbars, located at the bottom or the right of the editor, to pan and zoom the view.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/timeline.html#:~:text=The%20Timeline%20can%20be%20panned,pan%20and%20zoom%20the%20view.


Dynamic Enum Previews I want to add a few options to this python template which I found inside Blender-ui_previews_dynamic_enum.py
Here is the code:

import os
import bpy

def enum_previews_from_directory_items(self, context):
    """EnumProperty callback"""
    enum_items = []

    if context is None:
        return enum_items

    wm = context.window_manager
    directory = wm.my_previews_dir

    # Get the preview collection (defined in register func).
    pcoll = preview_collections["main"]

    if directory == pcoll.my_previews_dir:
        return pcoll.my_previews

    print("Scanning directory: %s" % directory)

    if directory and os.path.exists(directory):
        # Scan the directory for png files
        image_paths = []
        for fn in os.listdir(directory):
            if fn.lower().endswith(".png"):
                image_paths.append(fn)

        for i, name in enumerate(image_paths):
            # generates a thumbnail preview for a file.
            filepath = os.path.join(directory, name)
            thumb = pcoll.load(filepath, filepath, 'IMAGE')
            enum_items.append((name, name, "", thumb.icon_id, i))

    pcoll.my_previews = enum_items
    pcoll.my_previews_dir = directory
    return pcoll.my_previews

class PreviewsExamplePanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Previews Example Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_previews"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        wm = context.window_manager

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(wm, "my_previews_dir")

        row = layout.row()
        row.template_icon_view(wm, "my_previews")

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(wm, "my_previews")

# We can store multiple preview collections here,
# however in this example we only store "main"
preview_collections = {}

def register():
    from bpy.types import WindowManager
    from bpy.props import (
            StringProperty,
            EnumProperty,
            )

    WindowManager.my_previews_dir = StringProperty(
            name="Folder Path",
            subtype='DIR_PATH',
            default=""
            )

    WindowManager.my_previews = EnumProperty(
            items=enum_previews_from_directory_items,
            )

    # Note that preview collections returned by bpy.utils.previews
    # are regular Python objects - you can use them to store custom data.
    #
    # This is especially useful here, since:
    # - It avoids us regenerating the whole enum over and over.
    # - It can store enum_items' strings
    #   (remember you have to keep those strings somewhere in py,
    #   else they get freed and Blender references invalid memory!).
    import bpy.utils.previews
    pcoll = bpy.utils.previews.new()
    pcoll.my_previews_dir = ""
    pcoll.my_previews = ()

    preview_collections["main"] = pcoll

    bpy.utils.register_class(PreviewsExamplePanel)

def unregister():
    from bpy.types import WindowManager

    del WindowManager.my_previews

    for pcoll in preview_collections.values():
        bpy.utils.previews.remove(pcoll)
    preview_collections.clear()

    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PreviewsExamplePanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

This code will scan and use the png files from the directory and create the thumbnails of that.

Is there a way to specify the items before, with thumbnails, and on choosing a certain option from that menu, a change in the code takes place.....

Try using update methods.  Changing the dir would be the time to populate the list, changing the enum ... run some other code.  A lot of the code in the items callback can then be removed.

import os
import bpy

preview_collections = {}

def enum_previews_from_directory_items(self, context):
    pcoll = preview_collections.get("main")
    if not pcoll:
        return []

    if self.my_previews_dir == "": # use better default
        # put some code in here to populate default list
        print("MAKE A NEW THUMB LIST HERE")
        newlist = []
        '''
        # a list of items with name, filepath to image, and unique i

        thumb = pcoll.load(filepath, filepath, 'IMAGE')
        item = (name, name, "", thumb.icon_id, i)
        newlist.append(item)
        '''
        return newlist

    return pcoll.my_previews

class PreviewsExamplePanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Previews Example Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_previews"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        wm = context.window_manager

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(wm, "my_previews_dir")

        row = layout.row()
        row.template_icon_view(wm, "my_previews")

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(wm, "my_previews")

# We can store multiple preview collections here,
# however in this example we only store "main"

def preview_dir_update(wm, context):
    print("wm.my_previews_dir = %s" % wm.my_previews_dir)

    """EnumProperty callback"""
    enum_items = []

    wm = context.window_manager
    directory = wm.my_previews_dir

    # Get the preview collection (defined in register func).
    pcoll = preview_collections["main"]

    print("Scanning directory: %s" % directory)

    if directory and os.path.exists(directory):
        # Scan the directory for png files
        image_paths = []
        for fn in os.listdir(directory):
            if fn.lower().endswith(".png"):
                image_paths.append(fn)

        for i, name in enumerate(image_paths):
            # generates a thumbnail preview for a file.
            filepath = os.path.join(directory, name)
            thumb = pcoll.load(filepath, filepath, 'IMAGE')
            enum_items.append((name, name, "", thumb.icon_id, i))

    pcoll.my_previews = enum_items
    pcoll.my_previews_dir = directory

    return None

def preview_enum_update(wm, context):
    print("wm.my_previews = %s" % wm.my_previews)
    return None

def register():
    from bpy.types import WindowManager
    from bpy.props import (
            StringProperty,
            EnumProperty,
            )

    WindowManager.my_previews_dir = StringProperty(
            name="Folder Path",
            subtype='DIR_PATH',
            default="",
            update=preview_dir_update,
            )

    WindowManager.my_previews = EnumProperty(
            items=enum_previews_from_directory_items,
            update=preview_enum_update,
                )

    # Note that preview collections returned by bpy.utils.previews
    # are regular Python objects - you can use them to store custom data.
    #
    # This is especially useful here, since:
    # - It avoids us regenerating the whole enum over and over.
    # - It can store enum_items' strings
    #   (remember you have to keep those strings somewhere in py,
    #   else they get freed and Blender references invalid memory!).
    import bpy.utils.previews

    pcol = preview_collections.setdefault("main", bpy.utils.previews.new())

    bpy.utils.register_class(PreviewsExamplePanel)

def unregister():
    from bpy.types import WindowManager

    del WindowManager.my_previews

    for pcoll in preview_collections.values():
        bpy.utils.previews.remove(pcoll)
    preview_collections.clear()

    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PreviewsExamplePanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

You can get fancy with the update methods using the methods outlined here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/39624/15543


Animation Nodes Crashing and not loading properly again I was trying the animation nodes features, when I tried to render animation it crashed and, for my surprise, the whole node-set is red and "Undefined Socket" labelled.

I have seen your question and this is totally a bug that happened while rendering. This is probably not supposed to happen. Try closing blender and restarting your computer. If you are still facing this issue, try recreating the setup. I know it's hard to set it up again, but It is possible. I had to try 7 times just to simulate fire using materials and animating it, but the end result was great. So don't give up and do what I have said. If it doesn't work, try at least 10 times. If it still doesn't work, I think you are using a version of blender that can't support this kind of stuff. (Which is highly unlikely). And a tip for using this sight, don't put stuff or questions regarding the answer as an answer. You can comment on he question instead.
Cheerios,
Aster17


How can I go back to the original interface layout? I don't know what the hell I did I just want to get back to modelling

Save and close your file, fully close Blender and then open a new Blender instance with the correct default layout.

Then go to File > Open and browse to open your desired file, but before you open uncheck the Load UI option on the bottom left of the File Browser window.

If when you open Blender by default the layout is already messed up you may have to delete your Startup.blend file from the user preferences folder either under

Blender/2.##/config for portable installations or under
or %APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.##\config for formal installation, generally under C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\<VersionNumber>\config for Windows users


Displacement node doesn't show up on mesh correctly After looking online the past hour, I decided to make a post here. I am having trouble where the displacement in my render view is extremely different than the one in the material view. After looking online for tutorials and such, I always end up with the same problem too. I'm using Blender 2.79. Photos below

Material View

Render View

Nodes

Material view does not support actual mesh displacement, so you're just seeing your displacement map approximated as a bump map. Unless your displacement has a very small scale, a bump map approximation will be very different from the final displaced mesh.


How to emulate tracking to objects like the 'Nokia snake game'? Not sure if this question has already been asked, have looked around.

I'm hoping to track objects to a specific position, in a chain or a link behind the  main object(enemy) when they have been sensed or "picked-up" by the enemy.

Something like this:

I've tried using constraints:

(bge.logic.nuke) = (bge.logic.nuke). constraints.new (type= 'TRACK_TO')
(bge.logic.nuke).target = context.scene.objects.get("bullseye")

To attempt to track the object 'nuke' to the 'bullseye' once sensed by the 'bullseye'.

However, this doesn't seem to be an attribute in the bge module.I know I've done something wrong:

  AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'constraints'
  Python script error - object 'Empty', controller 'Python':
  Traceback (most recent call last):

Does anyone have any idea of any solutions?

Much appreciated, thanks.

No worries all, I found a website which describes perfectly what I wanted to do. My bad, ignore this!! Sorry.

For anyone else whom is dense, with poor research methods (like myself), please see this site:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Modeling/Objects/Tracking


Blender Python Console Commands not completing before next one is interpreted? I'm working with the default Blender file that has single cube object.
I'm rotating it with Python and adding keyframes.
The problem is that a bpy.ops.transform.rotate() seems to take some time to execute so when I paste in a series of commands a keyframe is created before the rotation actually happens.
If I paste commands in one at a time I get my expected animations. Is there a "finished" event, or "wait for last" command I can use?

This code pasted in the Console may show rotations on some of the keyframes and not on others, it is inconsistent.

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 0
bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert()

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 30

bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=1.5708, axis=(1, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(True, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=False)

bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert()

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 60

bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-1.5708, axis=(0, 1, 0), constraint_axis=(False, True, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=False)

bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert()

... and so on

Ditch the operators and use the API

Example script, rotates object 90 degrees about z axis. Inserts all keyframes of active keying set at frame 30.  Not using any operators or changing the frame, simply set a property and call keyframe_insert.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
from math import radians
context = bpy.context
ob = context.object
scene = context.scene
# emulate rotation op
R = Matrix.Rotation(radians(90), 4, 'Z') # rotate 90 about z axis
ob.matrix_world *= R

#emulate ops.anim.keyframe_insert
ks = scene.keying_sets.active
if ks:
    ks.refresh()
    for p in ks.paths:
        # check for entire array (index=-1)
        index = -1 if p.use_entire_array else p.array_index
        # insert keyframe
        ob.keyframe_insert(
                p.data_path,
                index=index,
                frame=30)

A method could be made using methods above that is passed the arguments object angle, axis and frame.

def rot_and_keyframe(ob, angle, axis, frame):
    ...

rot_and_keyframe(ob, radians(90), 'X', 30)
rot_and_keyframe(ob, radians(-90), 'Y', 60)


Blender 2.78c on CentOS python environment What I am trying to do

Trying to run python modules such as osgeo(GDAL), and others in blender.
  These modules have been installed on the system python environment using pip.

Things i have tried

Deleting blender python environment

Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding
ImportError: No module named 'encoding'

Tried symlinking system python to replace blender python

Tried copying python libraries into blender libraries

Tried both python3.5 and python3.6 - i believe blender uses 3.6

What happens

Regardless of my attempts i get either the module cannot be found or python locale error

Other Information

I am running CentOS 7.  Blender 2.78c from binaries x64(blender.org).

What doesn't makes sense to me is when I install on ubuntu using ppa I don't have this issue.  I am trying to avoid compiling from source if possible for reason i am not going to get into here.

Any help is appreciated.

**Updates**

Installing Pip into blender environment

Pip now working in blenders python environment.  gdal fails to compile with gcc error importing Python.h

Successfully symlinked system python to blender python:

/usr/lib/blender/2.78/python/bin/python3.5m  --> /usr/bin/python3.5m

Blender now runs off system python environment but still does not see gdal

If i run /usr/bin/python3.5m  --> import osgeo : it works

If i run /usr/lib/blender/2.78/python/bin/python3.5m --> import osgeo : fails to import

If you can, install from system repositories. I've heard that CentOS's isn't very good at this, and on Windows you can't, so here are some other solutions.

The first thing to try is deleting the python folder from the blender install. (you don't need to symlink it, remove it entirely) This should make it use the system python.

The next thing to try is to install pip inside blender. This isn't too hard to do, and is useful in many other cases (eg want a portable version of blender with a specific module)

Download get-pip.py and rename it to get_pip.py
Start blender's python runtime (inside blender/2.78/python/bin/) and run the executable (python3.5m on linux 2.78c) from a terminal.
Add your download folder to the path so python can find get_pip. Do this with:

import sys
sys.path.append('~/Downloads')  # Change path as required

Now you should be able to import get_pip, and run get_pip.main().
Then, to install things, you can use:

import pip
pip.main(['install', 'osgeo'])

You could try it from blender's built in console, but on the windows version this does funny things (like opening lots of instances of blender!),  so I haven't gone into detail.


Crisp edges on subsurface modifier Im trying to figure out how to make crisp edges on my mesh, without using loop cuts, which affect my  mesh. As seen in the example on top of the model, I deliberately added a bump and on the side, I extruded a section inwards. Now when I add the loop cuts to give it a more crisp edge, the loop cuts which go around my model, also affect my object making it to deform. I tried the Edge Crease method, but the extruded section remains like a circle shape, and not rectangle which I'd like. Any suggestions how to get a particular section more crisp with out affecting the rest of the mesh?

Thank you.

You can inset the 3x3 faces that surround the one you've extruded instead of extruding it. Once inset done extrude the inset.

Then add a loop inside of the hole to sharpen the borders:


How to achieve a retroreflector material in Blender Internal As the title says how can I achieve a retroreflector (like you would see on bikes and street signs) material in Blender Internal? I haven't been able to figure it out, is something impossible to do in Blender?

I'd like to pull off something like this:

Or this:

It is possible.

Retroreflectors reflect the light back in the direction it came from without regard of their surface normal.

In principle you can do it like this with a node material:

The material only uses Specular light and the surface normals are overwritten wih the View Vector of the active camera. This ensures that a specular reflection is only seen when the light comes from the direction of the View Vector.

The Multiply node is optional. It can be used in combination with the compositor to simulate the glow you can see in the photos.

I used these Specular properties:

These are the test results from this material setup:

Same direction of light and camera:

Light has a bit different direction:

Light outside reflective angle:

Of course real retroreflective materials have some ambient reflections too. For brevity I left them out. It is easy to add some ambient components in the node material.


Pack specific external file How can I pack exactly 1 specific file into the .blend on Blender 2.82?

In external data, I have many texture files. Some I use in all my .blend files and a few I only use in this .blend file.

Example:

scene1.blend
    wood.jpg (packed into scene1.blend)

scene2.blend
    marble.jpg (packed into scene2.blend)

sky.jpg (not packed in any blend file)
plastic.jpg (not packed in any blend file)

Create a fake user.
(From the blender manual:)

Since zero user data-blocks are not saved, there are times when you want to force the data to be kept irrespective of its users.
If you are building a blend-file to serve as a library of things that you intend to link to and from other files, you will need to make sure that they do not accidentally get deleted from the library file.
Do this by giving the data-blocks a Fake User. This prevents the user count from ever becoming zero: therefore, the data-block will not be deleted (since Blender does not keep track of how many other files link to this one).

Go into the image editor and click on the shield-looking icon:

Fake User (shield icon)
Keeps the data-block saved in the blend-file, even if it has no Real User. When activated an “F” will be shown before the name in the list.
Once a fake user has been created, the image can be packed into the .blend file.
An alternative use the outiner, enable the blend file browser, select the image and create a fake user for the image.


Aligning Particles in a direction I want to arrange ellipsoid-shaped particles shown in the picture filled inside a sphere.
In the same way aligned from one pole to other (bipolar)
How can we do this using particle system ? How to align like this ?

blender file

Add a particle system to a UV Sphere object set to emitter. Make sure the number of faces in each direction of your sphere matches the desired amount of ellipsoid loops you want in the final setup.

Under Source set to Faces, turn off Random Order and Even Distribution and set Particles per Face to $1$.

Under the Render panel pick your ellipsoid and turn on Object Rotation.
Manually adjust the rotation of the original ellipsoid object to match your desired rotation.
If you want a "volumetric" setup with several layers of ellipsoids inside the volume, onion skin your UV Sphere with several concentric layers by duplicating and scaling down the mesh.


Python Scripting : AttributeError : 'SpaceTextEditor ' object has no attribute 'context' I am trying to write a python script using the info panel.

The first part of the code is unwrapping a mesh which is executing successfully.

The second part is to change the viewport shading to MATERIAL which is used for rendering. But when I try to run the script I get this error .

Thirdly, I am trying to import a .png image. But its not being displayed in the UV Editor.

The code is shown below:

import bpy
   for obj in bpy.data.objects:
     if(obj.type == 'MESH'):
       bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
       bpy.ops.mesh.uv_texture_add()
       bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
       bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
       bpy.ops.uv.unwrap(method='ANGLE_BASED', margin=0.001)
       bpy.context.space_data.context = 'MATERIAL'
       bpy.ops.material.new()
       bpy.ops.image.open(filepath="//finger1.png", directory="C:\\Users\\KM\\Desktop\\blender\\Test 1\\", files=[{"name":"finger1.png", "name":"finger1.png"}], relative_path=True, show_multiview=False)

Anything regarding this would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

I am a big advocate of avoiding bpy.ops as much as possible.  I wrote an example at http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/load-image-texture.html which might help you understand how to use python to create a material using an image texture:

Here is the most important bit:

def material_for_texture(fname):
    img = bpy.data.images.load(fname)

    tex = bpy.data.textures.new(fname, 'IMAGE')
    tex.image = img

    mat = bpy.data.materials.new(fname)
    mat.texture_slots.add()
    ts = mat.texture_slots[0]
    ts.texture = tex
    ts.texture_coords = 'ORCO'

    return mat

fname = "/var/tmp/blender/mohawk-seal0001.png"
obj = bpy.context.active_object
mat = material_for_texture(fname)
if len(obj.data.materials)<1:
    obj.data.materials.append(mat)
else:
    obj.data.materials[0] = mat


Can I match my particle density to my displacement map? I have a plane which uses a noise texture as a displacement map.

I want to put some grass on the plane as particles and match the particle density to the displacement map but I can't find a way to link/save the texture. What is the correct process for this?

You can add a Mapping node, to better control the location/scale/rotation of your texture.

Noise texture always uses the same formula to calculate the noise.
So every instance of the noise texture looks the same.

Add a Mapping node, so you can precisely control the output.


Z depth pass in Cycles, rendering white Using Cycles as a render engine, I assigned an empty as a camera Track To target, and as the focus target in Depth of Field, yet rendering the scene, the depth pass is rendering all white, as if there's no depth of field, while the combined pass is rendering just fine, am I doing something wrong?

No, you're not doing anything wrong.
The Z-Pass is one of just a few, when not even the only pass that doesn't have a range from 0 to 1. It goes from almost Zero to infinity. Every pixels gets assigned a value that shows how far away it is compared to the camera.
If a pixel is 75 Blender Units away it gets assigned the value of 75.
If you output the Z-Pass through the viewer it will only show values between 0 and 1. Everything above 1, which is probably everything in your scene, will be shown as white.

If you are using nodes like Z-Combine it will work perfectly fine.
For other compositing purposes you'll want to use the Map-Range node:

Input the Z-Pass into the "Value". Than change the "From max" value to the object furthest away from your camera. You'll see the effect by cranking up the value.
For visualisation purposes only I recommend the Normalize-Node:

This node will take all values and shrink them down to a range between 0 and 1.
For Still images this probably is the easiest way, for animations use the method shown above.


Write Apple ProRes files from Blender? Blender can read Apple ProRes video files.

Is there any way to write to that format?

I use a video workflow with Final Cut Pro X and used Blender for some retouching and compositing and would like to send the clips back to FCP.

It is likely wiser to adopt an image based pipeline and assert that all of your color transforms and bit fidelity remain intact.
Using an image as an intermediate will be vastly more effective. The granularity required to handle the color primaries, bit depth, and transfer curve out of a codec correctly is not currently possible within Blender nor many other mainstream applications, and will often result in incorrect output. Well documented issues such as Quicktime's perceptual noise addition, incorrect transfer curve / gamma, inconsistent vendor flag reading, etc. all make for the stuff of nightmare when dealing with codecs.
If you are careful, you can easily step to an intermediate image format and use the Baptiste Coudurier FFMBC project to encode and decode ProRes with much more control, quality, and accuracy.
While it is a fork of FFMPEG, FFMBC extends the needs of the encoding and decoding of ProRes and DNxHD to meet media broadcast needs.
Further links:

https://code.google.com/p/ffmbc/


Only Emission shader is reflecting off glass, objects with Diffuse show up as black So even though I am not planning on using a Glass shader for the ground, I noticed that only objects that have Emission shaders attached are reflecting off the ground even though the Diffuse lit objects have the same level of brightness.

Basically everything that has a Diffuse shader shows up completely black.  I've outlined these areas in the image that I've attached.

It does seem somewhat logical that an emission shader would show up brighter in reflections but since the brightness is the same as the Diffuse lit objects it also seems very strange.

So is there a way to get the Diffuse lit objects to show up in reflections just as the Emission lit objects do?

Here's the .blend ~1.5MB http://www.pasteall.org/blend/30054

I've checked the Ray Visibility and everything is activated.

Probable Cause:

Your ground plane has Incorrect ray visibility settings In order to check if this is the issue, select your ground plane and diffuse objects. and make sure all the settings look like this:

If they don't, change them.

Also note that a Light path node could be the culprit as well.


Reverse directions of spacemouse I tried Blender today but my Spacemouse operated in reverse direction. Where can I change this setting?

You could try adjusting mouse settings in User preferences > Input (You can open the user preferences with CtrlAltU, or File > User preferences:

Invert Wheel Zoom Direction inverts the zoom direction when using the mouse wheel in the 3D view.
Invert Zoom Direction inverts the zoom direction when zooming by pressing CtrlMMB.

You could also try the solution posted in this thread on Blender Artists:

  RESOLVED: I received an answer to this question from Tehrasha in the
  Blender.org forum.

  Tehrasha pointed out that one of the buttons on the 3D mouse displays
  a settings menu with options to invert the axes.

  This works for me. The only thing on my wish list now is to remove the
  need to hold down SHIFT for panning actions, as this breaks the smooth
  flying effect of the 3D mouse (it interrupts any rotation). It's odd
  that zoom (forward / back) works regardless of SHIFT state.


(2.8/9XX) Addons show up in the list but not in the interface! I read lot of questions on forums and all, but mine is slightly different.
Sometimes I click install, choose the addon etc. Most of the time it appears in the list, but sometimes I only get a notification in the status bar "module installed..."
Now my real problem is that while it is installed in the preferences, it doesnt show up anywhere!
Just cant use it!
It was happening in 2.8x and still does in 2.9x (I tried the beta and 2.92 alpha as well)
I did not mind so much but I really need some of those now...
Which ones I tried?

Sverchok
2 addons for more sculpting brushes
animation nodes...

Any idea for me? :)
EDIT: I also tried while running blender as administrator (I am on windows 10)
Thx
pyrrhon

one of areas on screen you have to change to type Sverchok


Grass Particle System How do I do this without a base? I have learnt how to create random particles using objects (like grass), however these extrude from a base mesh/platform, How can I create random multiple objects (like grass) without extruding them from a particular base?

When I import this into UE4 it has a base and sits awkwardly on the landscape.

If you select the base mesh and go to the object modifiers tab, the particle system is there. If you then hit convert then it should duplicate the grass into a separate model, where then you could delete the base.


My lowest panel is changing from the editor window to the rendered view ORIGINAL:

Have made several videos successfully but suddenly my [render] button does nothing but change my lowest panel from the editor to the result view

http://i.imgur.com/dWC89iW.png

changes to

http://i.imgur.com/UJhUGJp.png

I also noticed it does pop up "Sequence Render" for a very fast moment in place of the blender version above preview. I've never had this happen before and when I try to find previous mentions for help I get bogged down in threads about 3d rendering. I've not changed my settings except to increase the Sequence/Clip Editor Cache. I've checked my properties to make sure those are the same as before. Dimensions, fps, start and end frames, output folder is correct, encoding is the h264 preset, ac3 audio.

It turns out the problem was that I had a combination of two issues.

Firstly, I have about 3 minutes of blank video so rather than showing black the preview window shows the gray background that is throughout Blender. This made me assume it wasn't working because it was not black, but really it was just transparent.

Secondly, I set it again, then left to make dinner. Turns out it takes a long time to start up (I guess). I've watching it right now and it is creating the video at about 2/3 speed of original footage in the preview. This is largest video in blender by about double in time and also my first 1080 rather than 720. I guess I was just too impatient.

The important thing is I learned some stuff today. :)


Rendering Ambient Occlusion onto alpha instead of white I am attempting to render a surface and it's AO shadow in a way where the darkest parts of the Ambient Occlusion remain, but the light portions are faded to alpha. What is the best way to do this?

For reference, I need the light gray in the image below to be replaced with alpha. Don't worry about the object casting the shadow, it is being protected by a mask.

Just figured out my own question. It seems like the best way to do this is to Bake AO, then use a color ramp node to get rid of the white and adjust the transition.


(Blender 2.8) Imported .obj files are translucent Just as the title describes, whenever I import .obj files and I use "Cycles" render in my viewport, they completely become translucent, or almost transparent, I'm wondering as to how to fix this problem but its been bothering me for more than a week now. Any suggestions?

Confused--are you talking about: 1) the helmets? 2) the graininess of the scene in the viewport? 3) the fact that thr controller-guy in the background has no legs?

If 1):
Preview mode is never as robust a's an actual render but I can tell by looking at it that the material assigned to the helmets is either not a realistic glass material or you need to give the helmets thickness to use it correctly (as with Blender''s Glass and PBR materials with glass settings.

Assuming the helmets have no thickness, first make sure the portion that is supposed to be glass is its own mesh. Once that is done, give it a Solidify modifier so that the surface has thickness. You may need to adjust the thickness or direction settings. You may need to flip the surface's normals in the Mesh dropdown menu whIle in edit mode (check if you need to do this before using the Solidify modifier).

2)
Preview render for Cycles is always grainy, but fast computers can mitigate that. You can preview in Look-Dev mode for a less CPU intensive studio lit preview.

3)
Check the material assigned to the guy in the background's legs. See if any connections or files are missing. If you just need him to have black legs, select all the faces in the legs and Assign whareverse matrial is on the astronaughts' legs. Or make and assign your own. Materials with textures will not look correct (although shouldn't be invisible) if the model does not have UV coordinates.


Freestyle rendering in EEVEE show's up on top of other greace pencil objects, how do i fix it? When I activate the Freestyle setting in the render tab for my 3D objects and render it, the render of the lines are on top of my other grease pencil objects and intersects them in an unwanted way. Is there a way to fix this? i've tried to change the origin point for all of the  3D and 2D objects but that did not fix it. Sorry if i'm not explaining the problem well, I'm happy to try and explain more.
I'm using Blender 2.93(beta) and the freestyle has a noise and a thickness modifier.
thank you for any suggestions.

I can imagine why this is happening: Grease Pencil is not considered by Freestyle at all. Thankfully, you can change freestyle to be “as render pass,” put the grease pencil objects on a separate view layer, and composite the Grease Pencil over the freestyle over the main view layer.


How do you apply a glossy node to a specific image texture when using alpha and RGB mix nodes? I bet it's an easy fix but considering I'm a newbie take it easy will ya, anyway here's my node setup.

the highlighted nodes contain the transparent image texture I'm attempting to make glossy.

As you're dealing with glossy, you're dealing with shaders, not color anymore, so you'll have to use the "mix shader" node instead of the "color mix" node. It also can be controlled by the alpha output. In my example only the second texture has glossy.


animation nodes - delay frame update I’m using animation nodes to randomize texture coordinates when the frame changes. Its working well, but I’d like to have it only update every nth frame, like not change for 15 frames or so. I’ve tried using ‘min time difference’ but that doesn’t seem to have an effect.

I’ve got the node tree set to Auto execution, and ‘frame changed’ is also checked (always, tree, and property are off) the min time diff is set to .5 which seems to be .5 seconds. I would think this would make it update only every 15 frames (at 30 fps) however the texture is updating every frame… how can I delay the change?

I know this can't work as shown, but here is what I've got. The viewer on math node show the frame it should wait for: 20. but I'm not sure how to get that to happen. once it gets to 20 it should pick another random frame by adding the the current time with the random number output, and so on.

You don't need conditional executions to achieve this effect, what you need is a constant seed for every nth interval. For instance, if I floor divide the time by 10, the result will be zero for the first 10 frames, 1 for the next 10 frames, 2 for the next 10 frames and so on. If I used the result of the floor division as seed, the random offset will be constants for every 10 frames.

If you want the length of the intervals to be random, we may use an approach as follows. We will initialize a variable with some integer--say zero, at each execution, we will replace that variable by another random integer if some boolean is true, that boolean has some probability $P$ of being true. The value of the variable is then constant for some interval that depends on $P$ and changes if the boolean is true. The implementation may be as follow:

AN.seed if hasattr(AN, "seed") else 0

The above expression checks if AN has a variable called seed, if it has, it returns its value, if not, it restuns zero.

AN.seed = (new if y else original)

This expression sets the variable to the frame number if the boolean y is true. The boolean is true if the value of a random variable $\in [0,1]$ of a uniform distribution is less than 0.1 (meaning the probability of being true is equal to 0.1). The probable length of the intervals is inversely proportional to the probability $P$.

Now all you have to do is to use the value of that variable as seed for the random generator and everything should work as you expect it to.


Why does parented to bone object copy location of tail instead of the head? If you parent any object to the bone in pose mode ALT+P and then clear its origin (ALT+G, ALT+O), object moves to the Tail, which is a bit strange, because Head is the origin of bone's transformation.

Any purpose why is it made that way?

I guess, this is natural behaviour of the bone. A set of two connected bones (parent+child) means that Head of child will copy location of parent's Tail.

Same thing with other objects.


Render out all scenes and save the output according to each scene's render settings I'm trying to make use of a python script that will render out all scenes and save the output according to each scene's render settings. I have a blender file with about 80 scenes. The original author of this post (https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/287/190) cited a way to accomplish this but the API has changed. When I run the below two lines I get this error

  'RenderSettings' object has no attribute 'RenderAnim'

for s in bpy.data.scenes:
    s.render.renderAnim()

How can I accomplish this in Blender 2.76b? Specifically, how can I render all scenes in a single blend so that each scene saves the output according to each scene's saved render settings?

you just loop through the scenes and execute the render operator :

import bpy

for s in bpy.data.scenes :
    bpy.context.screen.scene = s   #set as the active scene
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation = True) #render animation
    #bpy.ops.render.render()  # for still render


Best way to cut a groove around circumference of irregularly shaped object I've re-created a part for my bike, and I'm touching it up with Blender. It looks like this:

Now the real life object has a groove running around it, which I'd like to re-create. It looks like this:

As you can imagine, there are many faces on the object. I started going about it by just moving groups of faces, but this approach seems to be futile. What way would you recommend accomplishing this? Should I do a boolean with a bent and elongated torus shape? Bend a plane and extrude it and cut out the middle, and boolean with that?

Thanks for the help.

The first thing I would recommend is retopoligizing and cleaning up your mesh. CG Cookie literally released a whole flow on retopoligizing not long ago so I would recommend trying that out (it does cost however). The other thing you could use if you don't mind spending about $70 is retopoflow. Very good resource from the blender market.

It is important to keep topology into consideration because it firstly makes overall editing very easy, and it allows you to properly use the sub-surf modifier for a smooth finish.

Once you have retopologized this, you will have a very nice simple mesh. Creating a grove around it should not be difficult. Just add in some edge loops and extrude inwards.


How to make simple Fresnel in blender Open Shading Language? I'm beginner in osl I want to make simple fresnel by Open Shading Language:

my problem is I can't find view direction in osl documention

shader Fresnel
(
    output color Out = 0.0,
)
{
    vector Fresnel = 1.-dot(N,ViewDir);
    Out = Fresnel;
}

and this is my error

Line 11: error: 'ViewDir' was not declared in this scope

I want result like this:

I tried to transform but not work:

vector WorldPos = transform("camera","world",point(0,0,0));
vector CameraWorldPos = transform ("camera", "world",(1.,0.,0.));
vector viewDirection = CameraWorldPos - WorldPos;

The OSL global variable you're looking for is I

From the docs:

  vector I

  The incident ray direction, pointing from the viewing position to the
  shading position P.

So, what's called 'View Dir' in your illustration is -I

Note that the 'viewing position' is the origin of any ray, not just those originating at the viewpoint/camera

EDIT: however, this is the shader which works as you expected in your post:

shader naive_fresnel(

           normal Normal = N,
    output  float  Fac = 0.0

)
{
    Fac = 1.0 - dot(normalize(Normal),I);
}

... which means I must be pointing towards the viewpoint? (BTW, the dot-product produces a scalar value, not a vector)

Loosely speaking, to Cycles, being physically-based, everything is a light, either directly, by emission, or indirectly, by scattering or reflection.

In standard use, how rays are actually cast is down to the integrator, not the shaders. OSL provides no direct access to the direction to lamps: the notion is that this kind of 'fake' is not required, or desirable, in a physically-based renderer.


How to deal with masks and shadowcatcher when compositing 3D elements over an image or video? I am trying to add 3-D dog ears to a human being in a real life video clip background.
I have to mask a portion of the persons hair over the 3-D model ears I created. The problem is I also have to add a shadow that is cast from the ears over the mask. It seems like every combination I try in the compositor has bad results.
This is the image of my compositor attempts

This is the result where you can see some of the issues I'm having

I didn't check a Mask option, but seems to me more natural to use an Object as a Mask and Shadow Catcher in once, so shadow follow the shape.

Alpha Over node seems to be working as expected.

Notes:

Image in my 3Dviewport is an Empty object for a reference it doesn't influence a render. For the same effect (and probably easier) you can use image as bacgroud for camera (Camera Properties > Background Images) that can be video as well.
With Object ID pass or Cryptomatte you can separate shadow and adjust if needed.


Hdri is not showing in 3D view I've been using blender 2.8 for past two weeks but I can't use HDRI image as environment if I apply that I'm only getting a  color

In the World Options, select Environment Texture for Color and then select Hdri Image.

In the shader node, we attach the hdri image to the color in the background node.


How do I import my Hair emission particles with my object into another blender project? I just made a feather and i'm trying to to put this into another project i get the quill but not the hair emissions. what am i missing?

Importing to Other 3d Packages
If you're importing the object with hair into another program (3d package / game engine etc.) most likely you will want to convert the hair particles into real objects, see How can I convert a hair-particle system into 3D, editable objects? Note that particles won't be available for tweaking like particles because they won't be particles, rather than meshes.

Importing to Blender New Projects
If you want only to import object with particles into another Blender project then just import it as object with standard Link / Append operators (enter Objects folder while browsing main .blend file); modifiers will be imported as well along with the particle system.


Slight variance in floor (normal mapping?) What I am trying to achieve is

Semi-gloss floor (light grey E7E7E7)
Slight bumps and nicks in the floor (normal map?)

I've taken my floor plane and applied a normal map as seen here (LINK) but now I am trying to figure out...

How do I keep my Glossy BSFD shader of a light grey with roughness of 0.65 AND have the normal map laid out on top of that? When I appoint the normal map to a diffuse and the floor colour to glossy and mix them both, then I end up with a colour different than the floor should be (lighter)
How do I ensure the normal map disrupts the reflection of the Glossy BSFD?
How do I change the intensity of the normal map?

What I'm trying to do here is have a clean semi-gloss floor, but with slight varience

There are several things you could do, one way would be to put the Normal value into the Glossy BSDF shader as well as the diffuse:

However I would recommend using the Material Output node's Displacement input. I find that it works very well though in many instances, your type of scene especially.

Here is an example of what it does:

You can do this with any texture, from noise to musgrave to image to normal, they all work using this method. Now of course, the mesh profile will not change like with a real displacement modifier, but in your case, this doesn't matter, as you only want it to look like the bumps are there, and unless you put the camera right down next to the boards looking towards the horizon, you will never notice the difference, Much faster too.

You can also change the strength by using a Math node set to multiply:

You can find this node under Add > Converter > Math.

You can now change the height of the bumps by changing the lower Value up or down.

You can also use negative values to invert the bumps as well.

In your specific instance, you need to set up your nodes like this:

Then you might want to re-make your floor mesh, as currently it is made from many N-Gons. Anyways, be sure to change the Mix shader value, it is set so only the glossy will show (1.0 glossy shader)


Is there a way to repeat a set of actions on an object? In blender you can press shift+R in edit mode and repeat the last action. What if I wanted to repeat a set of actions similar to a macro?

One way is the repeat history F3. You can select the other object and redo the steps in the list one at a time. It's a bit tricky since the actions aren't numbered and repeating one changes the order.

What you could do is open a text editor, create a new textblock and type

import bpy

Then pull the info editor on top of the screen down. The lonely header up there is actually a full window/editor. In ancient times, the preferences were hidden in it. There are all the actions you performed in python form.

Just do what you wanted to do once with any object.

Then right click the commands you want to use in the info editor. They should turn blue. CTRLCCTRLV them into the text editor below the import statement.

Now you can perform the copied list of actions, provided they're compatible, with any selected object simply by pressing ALTP in the script window or using 'Run Script'.

There might be an addon for macros, but this is one way of creating your own.


Bool tool leaves parts after slicing How can I cut out the slice(bite) without leaving any teeths?

Select teeth
Select fish
Bool Tool - Slice
Delete the slice

I can't see any face orientation problems (shown in screenshot above)
I tried before slicing:

Deleting everything possible eg. rigs, poses, vertex groups
Ctrl+A Apply - All transforms
Shift+N Recalculate Normals

Similar problem though not solving my case: The difference boolean doesn't seem to work on a specific area

Use Boolean Modifier (instead Bool Tool) with Exact solver, plus enable Self - intersection, because those "red" teeth are overlapping.

... or in edit mode select all and with pivot point set to Individual Origins scale all teeth a bit so they don't overlap.

... and enable under Data Properties > Normals > Auto Smooth if you want to fix shading around edges.
Also I would highly suggest to use Un-Subdivide operator in edit mode, your topology is too dense. You can use Iterations up to 4 for shark and 4-6 for teeth. Result is pretty much the same with much lighter file and faster calculation. To make it smooth add Subdivision Modifier only for Shark before Boolean.


Water in a glass bottle error I'm having a bit of an issue trying to simulate water in a glass bottle. For some reason there seems to be some refraction that causes the water to bend upwards and creates a weird effect(a sort of upwards bump).

Can anyone please shed some light on this situation and explain why this is happening?

I have also attached the blend file below:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=6385EC1FC28C8087!337&authkey=!AGWj45uZHzTciRo&ithint=file%2cblend

Thanks.

What seems to be happening is the light is hitting the bottom of the glass, going through it, and then reflecting upwards hitting the top of the bottle, creating a weird reflection. The reflection changes based on the angle you look at the object.

I'm pretty sure that this is working how it's supposed to. It just looks weird to the eye. There are a few things you could check/do to fix it though.

Check to see if the liquid, is touching the glass. This is known to cause artifacts.
You could change the camera position or lighting to make it less
apparent.
You could also adjust light bounces in the light paths drop down in
the render panel. (this would decrease the realism, but you could lower the bounces so that the light doesn't reflect enough times to cause that reflection)

I think you might benefit from this tutorial. I linked it at the point where he started doing the liquid.


Can you find lost Nodes in the Node Editor? Just for fun I moved the Nodes in the Compositing tab by a freaking high x-Value and y-Value and in two Groups. Now I can't recover it!

When I press A (to select everything) and then G X It shows that their value is infinite. I tried using the three auto recovers that Blender always makes in hopes of it being an older version so I can restore it. No success..

I tried to move it back with the negative value that I originally set, but I cant figure out the value (And it doesn't seem to move when I press S to see their position! [An arrow points at the Nodes]!

I tried copy pasting, I tried to turn it into to a group, but you cant put Render Layer0. I tried to press Ctrl+F to find specific Nodes. I tried to press the . on the Numpad to go there but Blender always crashed, just like with the Ctrl+F thingy.

Now I cant access to my nodes in the Node Editor again, I cant change them etc. I just need to connect the last node to the "Composite" Node and then everything is done. The Only thing I know is that the Mix Node has 2 Keyframes at the beginning of the Animation, so it's the so called "fade". I also tried selecting everything and then pressing F, but then a whitescreen just appears.

Does anybody know how I can set the Location of them to 0 or how I can connect the last node to the Composite node?? Please, you would tremendously help me, because I do not want to reexperience the hours of work that I put into this!

EDIT: I don't know how to program in Python, so please if someone can, help would greatly be appreciated!

And before you try, make sure to press A so everything is selected!

The file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/pcw2gcdcufpd9qv/Template+by+Khovinc+and+Torulus.blend

If Blender crashes while centering the Node editor on the selected node then they are indeed moved to infinity and it's some sort of a bug so at least compositing might be better to be redone.

Still there's a way to move one node from somewhere you don't see to another one you can actially see with snapping in the Node Editor (just like in 3d viewport) with Shift+Tab and then choosing element to snap to.

With the node somewhere far away selected, choose Snap To X/Y to snap selected node to any border of the node to snap to. Then press G to move selected node and hover mouse over the node which is seen in the editor.

With this way the node from somewhere away will be moved to the current 2d viewport position.

It's also possible to select all the nodes, press S to scale and enter 0 to move them all to the same place (like written in your question), but the pivot point will be somewhere between the selected nodes so that's where they will be moved to (actually it might be not really important). Hence after scaling with nodes still selected press Numpad . (period) and you should see the nodes in the center of the editor.


program lagging terribly despite using 1% of CPU and only 134m of ram, any assistance would be great just installed blender onto my laptop, was working just fine on my ancient crippled pc yet now the whole program lags to an unusable degree, it takes five seconds to even open the file menu and the 3d navigation window is nearly unusable.

has anyone else had a similar issue and found a solution?

I had the same issue on my laptop until I installed the latest drivers for my GPU and set the Nvidia Control Panel to use the dedicated GPU for Blender.


Modify render settings for all scenes using python I have some basic render settings (border off, resolution, etc.) that I would like to have applied for all scenes in the .blend file using Python, via the -P command line switch.

I have tried:

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:

but it only operates on the active scene.

It works fine for me.

import bpy

for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    scene.render.resolution_x = 1920
    scene.render.resolution_y = 1080
    scene.render.resolution_percentage = 100
    scene.render.use_border = False

Placing this in a file (test.py) and running blender with

blender test.blend -P test.py

Opens blender with all the settings set to the values defined in the Python script, in both scenes.


Stop UV's Rotating when unwrapped I am trying to unwrap faces which are all exactly the same size. Some have slices through them, but that shouldn't matter should it?

I am trying to unwrap them to then overlap every single one so that I can make them share the same texture, however when I unwrap them they are all unwrapping at different rotations.

It's making it a pain to unwrap as it find it impossible and tedious to find out which direction the whole squares are facing.

https://imgur.com/Z1n4M5g

I suggest you use a single seam down the length of the silo (marked in red) and then do a normal UV unwrap. This way the UV layout is connected, and the texture space is used a lot more efficiently.

Generally speaking using overlapping UV is considered bad practice in Substance Painter, because it prevents Painter from baking proper AO maps and the results is generally very unpredictable.


What is "OptiX" and "OpenCL" in 2.81? I have seen two modes in 2.81 other than CUDA in the system settings - OptiX and OpenCL. What are they and how do I use them?

When I click on it, it's giving a message:

  No compatible GPU found for path tracing. Cycles will render on the CPU.

For both (OptiX and OpenCL), I have a graphic which is enabled in CUDA. How do I enable and use it?

Any suggestion, video tutorial, or help.

OptiX™ is for RTX series graphic cards that include a ray trace (RT) core. For example, RTX 2080Ti.
Nvidia provides some API to let a program best use this GPU hardware for best results and also benefit from the original paper published in 2010. If your GPU is not Nvidia or it is not RTX (for example,  GTX series), OptiX won't work. There is a Blender development blog post to explain it more.
And for OpenCL, it is for an AMD GPU to utilize the hardware since AMD doesn't support CUDA at all.
It is all listed in the user manual:

CUDA
If the system has a compatible NVIDIA CUDA device, it will show up an option for rendering with Cycles.
OpenCL
If the system has a compatible AMD OpenCL device, it will show up an option for rendering with Cycles.


are there any hot keys for changing through viewport mode like solid, render and wireframe I just wish to know if there are any hotkeys for viewport as it is a little slow to do it with a mouse, I would appreciate any help I can get.

Z will bring this menu:

And ShiftZ will toggle from the last selected solid view (solid, material preview or rendered) and wireframe.


Spin an object around a rotating axis? I want to spin my propeller blade along its axis, but this axis needs to rotate as part of the aircraft.

As you can see, the ducted fans rotate about a central axis and i want the propellers inside of them to rotate as well while spinning, but have no idea how to animate this

Parent propeller to the "stick" and parent the ducts to an empty put where the dot is. Rotate propeller locally and ducts globally (x axis). Done.


why "set parent to with automatic weight" can't work on mirror? I add bones on my created figure. I want to connect the body to the bones. I click on both and use  "set parent to with automatic weight", but the mirrored half part of body doesn't cover the bones. Why is that?

I just found out one way...First cancel mirror modifier, Second go to edit mode click A to select all, Third shift-D duplicate and S to scale on one axis by -1.Then use shift-J to connect both side.

Then it works for "automatic weight" process.


How can I get this shimmery/pearlescent fluid? I was wondering if it was possible to get this kind of pearlescent fluid color or whatever its called.

Try something like this. It's just a Noise Texture with the distortion and detail turned up, and flattened a bit on the Z-axis. I used the Noise as a Mix Factor for the colors and also used the colors for a bit of Subsurface Scattering. I used the inverse of the Noise for a bit of Transmission so the dark areas look more "gooey". I upped the Metallic value a bit as well, because polishes like that often contain a metallic "sheen: component.


Display Audio Meters in Video Sequence Editor? Is there any way to display audio meters in the Video Sequence Editor?
I mean something like this:

Pretty much every NLE has one, but I'm unable to find one in Blender's VSE.

This is not a built-in feature, but you can get an audio-meter in the VSE by installing this (essential) VSE add-on: https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF


How to import in a scene from FormZ? I am going to work together with an architect who works in FormZ.

The idea is that I take his output and make 3D visualisations in Blender.
FormZ can export .obj, .dfx and .3ds files. Those file formats can be imported into Blender right? Are there any (dis)advantages in using either one of those file formats (or put more simple; what is the preferred format) when my objective is to create 3D visualisations of architectural designs ?

Aliasguru commented:

  It depends on what version (free, jr or pro) and what OS your contact
  is using, but seen from the Blender side, OpenCollada and FBX would be
  the neatest choices.

As Aliasguru pointed out I should have included FBX and OpenCollada. So my question should be: FormZ can export .obj, .dfx, .3ds, .fbx and OpenCollada files. Those file formats can be imported into Blender right? Are there any (dis)advantages in using either one of those file formats (or put more simple; what is the preferred format) when my objective is to create 3D visualisations of architectural designs ?

After reading the answers on my question and doing some more research myself it seems that OBJ and FBX are the best candidates for exchanging 3D models. It is my understanding that OBJ is only able to exchange geometry data and FBX can do that but also exchange materials/textures data. So it looks like that FBX is the best candidate for archviz workflow with OBJ as a second best. Are the experts supporting this view ??

As advised I am now testing the files created in formZ. It appears that with OBJ and DXF you can only exchange geometry data and not materials/ UV's/ textures. I am not sure If I would want that but now I cannot see how the architect thinks the building should look like.

It appeared that the client was using a very old version of formZ and therefore no FBX export was possible. After testing I was most satisfied with the DXF format as it did exchange the geometry data the best.

As regard to the bounty ... in fact everybody helped me with their advises but the best advise was to do a lot of testing.

3Ds is mostly considered an aging and hopelessly outdated file format it has intrinsic limitations and is therefore not a good format overall.

There are caps on the number of vertex an object can have, it only supports triangles (no quads or ngons), naming is also limited.

That being said it is still commonly used and relatively well suited for small models and simple objects.

DXF is an exchange file format mostly created for CAD data consisting of lines, arcs, hatches, etc.. It has support for meshes and 3D geometry but is mostly inadequate format for mesh based data since it's focus is on 2D CAD drawing data, paper spaces, layouts, etc.

It may work well if you are importing only 2D drawings like elevations, plans, sections etc, to use as reference for modelling directly in Blender. Otherwise for actual mesh based 3D data it is not the best format.

From the three available, OBJ seems to be the most suited for what you seem to want to achieve. OBJ is also considered an old file format, but has less limitations, and is more versatile than 3Ds and very widely supported in most modelling applications.

Should suit your workflow well enough.


(Following Blender Guru Beginner Tutorial) Duplicating Object causes Object to be covered in Particles I am currently on Part 2, Level 2 of the Blender Guru Beginner Tutorial. He said to duplicate the Sprinkle, however when I do so (using Shift + D) my duplicated Sprinkle looks like this.

My original Sprinkle also has these Particle Settings, which his doesn't seem to have. I don't remember anymore when or how I added them (I'm assuming they appeared when I made them on the frosting), but don't seem to be affecting the original Sprinkle.

Deleting those Particle Settings on my sprinkle fixed the duplication issue. I am assuming I added those settings accidentially somehow without noticing and wasn't actually supposed to do so.

If anyone has a better answer with more insight, though, I appreciate any input.


Fluid simulation stuck I am new to blender. I am trying to make a simulation of a fluid that comes out from a pipe. However, it looks like it's stuck at the pipe, even though some of fluid comes out. Its weird.

My pipe has the solidify modifier and one face deleted for the fluid to come out. It has only fluid physics enabled, with the following settings:

Type: obstacle
Volume initialization: both
No export animation
Slip type: partial slip (amount:0.2), impact (factor:1)

My icosphere has physics enabled for fluid:

Type:inflow
Enabled
Volume initialization: volume
No export animation
No local coordinates
Inflow velocity: (x:-1, y:0, z:0)

The Blender file is available for download.

It seems like the fluid simulation objects were scaled in Object mode instead of Edit mode, and the scales haven't been applied using [Ctrl] + [a]
Also for a large domain you should probably start out with a resolution of at least 100.

Here's a blend file with the applied scales:


How to remove white color even tho the image is already transparent For some reason, the white color won't disappear even tho the image is already transparent, can anyone help me solve the problem here?

These are the basic settings to get the alpha work in Blender Internal: you must enanble transparency and set it to 0.0 in the material tab, and then let the image texture set it to matte only where colors are present. Also specular can be distracting.


Scale XZ according to Y position I'm trying to scale all vertices on the XZ axes according to their respective Y position.
Something like XZ Scale * Y Position * input value.
The idea is the higher the vertices are, the further outwards they should be.
Is there any way to do this?

That would be the Simple Deform > Taper modifier, which by default uses the object's own space, but can be set to use the origin and axes of any other object, typically an Empty.


Bone weight painting is linked to another bone So as you can see from the two screenshots, both the bones have the exact same weight paint. They are somehow linked. In other words, if I update the weight paint of one of these two bones, it updates it for both. How can I unlink them?

EDIT:

As you can see on the far left the multipaint is not checked and checking the auto normalize does not seem to do anything either.
It also just seems to be this one specific bone (highlighted with a blue arrow) and it seems to always be linked to the bone I was working on before

Blend file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1J26x1-2ROqum0nus15W_Fagv848jHuaD

Rigging geometry with armatures mainly depends on the armature modifier, vertex groups and the armature.

You can manually add the armature modifier to a mesh object and select an armature. The mesh object will deform based on it's vertex groups. Each bone of the armature (with the Deform checkbox checked) needs a vertex group with the same name. It will deform the vertices in that vertice group based on the weights in the group.

When parenting a mesh object to an armature you have the option for vertex groups to be created automatically. When you rename the armature bones, the vertex groups will be renamed as well. When you rename vertex groups, armature bone names stay the same: the links will be broken. When you add new bones, vertex groups will not be created automatically and the bones will influence nothing. Meaning if you want to add the deforming bone bone_13.l you have to create the vertex group bone_13.l. Then you can select the bone in weight paint mode and the associated vertex group will be selected as well, ready to be weight painted.


How to properly use ExportHelper's 'axis_conversion' method? I am building an XAML export script for Blender. I want to rotate the scene 90 degrees in the X axis to make it Y-up.

Currently I am using a matrix on a BMesh and that is rotating the models, but not the entire scene.

I've been looking at the ExportHelper method axis_conversion but I can't find an example of how you implement this. Not sure it's the correct thing to use in the first place.

Does anyone know of an example of using ExportHelper to do this, or know if I am on the right track using it.

Convert the axes of a scene using bpy_extras.io_utils.axis_conversion.

To convert such that both objects and their data, mesh in this case follow the new axis conversion, need to apply the conversion to both the object and its mesh data.

Image below shows Suzanne in blender default of Z up and -Y forward. With some translation, rotation and scale. Camera and Lamp are from default file.

Lets change the axis
As you pointed out in your answer the axis_conversion to Z forward Y up is a matter of rotating the axes -90 degrees about X.

>> [degrees(axis) for axis in axis_conversion("-Y", "Z", "Z", "Y").to_euler()]
[-90.00000250447816, -0.0, 0.0]

For example sake: Lets apply this axis conversion to all objects in the scene

import bpy
from bpy_extras.io_utils import axis_conversion
context = bpy.context
m = axis_conversion(from_forward='-Y',
        from_up='Z',
        to_forward='Z',
        to_up='Y').to_4x4()

scene = context.scene
for o in scene.objects:
    o.matrix_world = m * o.matrix_world

Image below shows the result.  Globally all objects are transformed to our new global scheme of Y up and Z forward.  Locally though, Suzanne is still Z up -Y forward.

To locally transform Suzanne to our new system rotate her vertex coordinates by the rotation, then rotate the object coordinates back accordingly. In this answer I prattled on about local and global coordinates. What we are doing here ultimately is applying the axis conversion rotation to Suzanne.

To apply rotation I've rotated the vertex coordinates by the axis transform rotation.  (In bmesh could use bmesh.ops.rotate(bm, geom=bm.verts[:], matrix = rot))

import bpy
from bpy_extras.io_utils import axis_conversion
context = bpy.context
m = axis_conversion(from_forward='-Y',
        from_up='Z',
        to_forward='Z',
        to_up='Y').to_4x4()

rot = m.to_quaternion().to_matrix()
irot = rot.to_4x4().inverted()

scene = context.scene
for o in scene.objects:
    o.matrix_world = m * o.matrix_world
    if o.type == 'MESH':
        # apply to mesh
        o.data.transform(rot)
        '''
        for v in o.data.vertices:
            v.co = rot * v.co
        '''
        # rotate globally inverse.
        o.matrix_world *= irot

Image below shows the result, now our axis conversion has been applied to both the objects globally, and mesh objects locally.


How do I make a sphere with 5 flat sides? What it says in the title, I'm trying to make a sphere with 5 flat sides so I can place a cone on top each one in a star esque pattern but I have no idea how to do so. Ideally they'd want to be equal in radius. Thanks for reading.

Another method:

Add a sphere (both types will work).
Add a cylinder with five verts:

Add a boolean modifier to the sphere and select the cylinder as the object:

Scaling the cylinder on the X and Y (SShiftZ) axes will change the radii of the flatten areas.
Apply the modifier and select the flat faces (the fastest was is probably by selecting one and pressing ShiftG> Area):

Press AltP and the select the center vertices:

Scale the vertices out (S). Then optionally set shading to smooth and add an edge split modifier:


Is there a way to render an object invisible but still have it block view? So I was messing around and was wondering if i could render this cube invisible but still have it cover the ball. When i disable make it not apear in the viewport it still renders there:

I was hoping it would come out sort of like this mock up:

Use the holdout shader. Just be wary it will also not render anything else covered by the shaded object. It will not even render world texture.

EDIT: [

This is in cycles, BTW
You find this by going to the material tab, go to surface, click "use nodes". The default shader is Diffuse BSDF, but you can change it using this menu. Use mix shaders in the node editor if you want to mix it with something. "With a Holdout shader, you're basically saying, 'there's nothing here, not even background." When Cycles renders a material with a Holdout shader, it makes that section of rendered image completely transparent, with an alpha of zero. This can be useful in compositing, as the effect can give you a 3D mask" - Blender for Dummies I threw together a quick sample render with very high contrast colors, just to show what I mean. Be careful though, as you can see the mesh with the holdout shader does still cast a shadow.


Blender 2.80_Is there a way to make Blender File Browser remember it's settings? I'm hoping there's a simple solution I'm overlooking to tell Blender 2.80 to remember it's File Browser settings (ex. display size, sort by date modified, etc.) Has this situation been remedied in Blender 2.80?

I know about these ideas:
How to make the file manager default to sorting by modification date?

Those potential solutions do not seem usable for me at this time due to my lack of knowing how to implement them. Also I think the addon referred to there gives an error at Blender preferences> addons> install addon, something like "addon needs upgrade to 2.80". Thanks for any ideas.

As of April 14 2019 commit  Blender 2.80 builds should have builtin ability to remember last used file browser display options globally per file type, as stated in D4479.


How to import a pose from a different file? I have a rigged "house cat" model created for me by an actual 3D artist, and sent to me as an .fbx.  It contains the mesh and the armature in a rest pose (A).  Later, the artist sent me a second .fbx containing the same armature, but in a different rest pose (B).  I need to import pose B from the second file into the first file for armature A.
I have appended the second file to the first (so it now has both armatures), gone into pose mode for B, selected all bones, pressed Ctrl-C, chosen "copy pose", gone into pose mode for A, and pressed Ctrl-V.  Nothing happened.  Just for good measure I selected all bones and tried Ctrl-V again, but with the same results.
I have linked the animation data between the two armatures, and attempted to use B's animations, actions, pose libraries, and poses on A, also to no effect.  I have attempted to use a "Copy Transforms" constraint, but end up with the entire armature A constrained to the size of B's hip bone, and still in the wrong pose.
I am using Blender 2.90.1 on Windows.  I have spent four days searching blender.stackexchange.com and the web in general looking for a way to do this, but cannot find a method that works.  I could use any hints, tips, suggestions, pointers, or anything at all that could help me get this to work.  There shall be many more poses over time for amature A, so I'm really hoping there's a solution easier than trying to manually position A overtop B, especially since I, myself, don't have an artistic bone in my body (horrible pun intended and regretted).
Thank you,
Bryon M. Elliott

You have to parent the armature to the mesh, select the mesh, and then select the object, and then do crtl+p and then parent with automatic weights.


Draw type stuck on wireframe and no model when rendered My draw type is not on wireframe but all I see is this:

What can I do to fix this?

Version 2.49b

edit: Link as requested

https://www.mediafire.com/?u93956gqgss45pk

It's very hard to understand how your models managed to end up like this but the reason they appear like that and don't render is because they have no faces. Blender won't render lone edges or vertices. Tab into Edit mode and select 4 vertices on any of the objects and press F to create a face.

I would recommend recreating the scene instead of trying to fill in the missing faces.


How to duplicate objects in animation? I want to copy some object in animation, like using a particle system.
I mean at frame 10 copy an object, then at frame 20 copy again, and the first object should not disappear.

It is like a particle system, but I would like to control more details.
Like Unity3D's Prefab and Instantiate.duplicate

The render visibility of an object or object hierarchy can be animated.  Thus the viewer will perceive the object to appear.  The object can be off camera or in a different layer.
Python is available to you.
One or more Particle systems is available and these particle systems can be coordinated by Python
Particle Instance is available


Why when I unwrap my model does the field for the Torso come out so strange? I have been trying for the last 2 hours, fiddling with where I have placed my seams and either the torso or the legs end up like this. If someone could please tell me what it is I am doing wrong.

I would like to note this is one of my first proper modeling projects with Blender and one of the first times I've used the unwrapping tool so I am unfamiliar with it.

Thanks for your help]1

I am pretty sure you are unwrapping the mesh wrong. You have it unwrapped in a sort of round ball shape on the UV map. If you unwrap it with cylinder projection, cube projection, or even just select one side of the chest and unwrap it that way, it will be more square-like/flat. That would work a bit better and you would not have stretched textures.


Mirrored circle not showing in edit-mode I am using Blender 2.78. I enabled "Display modifier" but it is still not visible in editmode.

Vertices not visible ....

vertices now visible in edit mode .....


How do you resurface these objects into one object? This question looked as if it were the answer, but when I tried to follow the answer, I didn't get the expected result.
How do I join two separate objects so I can edit them as one mesh?

Here is what happened.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2aijftpztba4li/tori.blend?dl=0

My next step was to mark the inner vertices of the torii and add another face, and also add a face to the ends.  Would I have to then have to manually delete the interior parts of the object to create a manifold?

If this is the effect you're looking to achieve

the way I managed it using the blend file you uploaded to dropbox was:

1) [if not already activated,] activate the Mesh:LoopTools addon by means of User Preferences > Addons > Mesh:LoopTools;

2) delete the outer edges joining the two torii in your blend file;

3) Select the each of the edge loops you did on the two torii by deselecting all vertices A key, followed by selecting the same edge loop you had selected on one torus, holding the shift key and selecting the same edge loop you had on the other torus; and

4) In the Edges menu (CTRLE key) choosing the "Bridge Edge Loops" option.

Caveats

As the screenshot shows, I performed these steps in 2.71. My memory on this is just a bit hazy, but it seems to me that up until some version of Blender (2.6?) the Mesh:LoopTools Addon may not have been included in the distribution, and you may need to find it and install it from the Blender Addons repository.

Your two torii seem to have the same number of segments; if the two torii do not have the same number of segments the results may not be shown as here, and you may need to adjust the results differently.

In order for this method to work, the two meshes you want to join need to be part of the same object. If you add the second torus to the first as a different object, the two torii need to be combined into the same object as in the method set out in the other question you cited, and then the expanded object manipulated in edit mode.


Why is my Smooth tool causing the surface of my sculpt to be reflective? While sculpting something - inexplicably after I boolean joined two meshes - the newly joined mesh has an issue where the smooth tool will cause the normals to become reflective!

I've tried recalculating surface normals to no effect. What the butt is going on?

The culprit is actually the Solidify modifier. When i applied the mirror I was under the impression that i needed to use solidify to make the mirrored geometry physical.

Solidify will make an internal geometry. when sculpting, i would only be hitting the upper mesh and it would clip through the lower.

Lesson learned: do NOT solidify objects you intend to add to a sculpt.


How fill face between irregular curves? Hello Blender Stack Exchange,

I am trying to fill a face between 4 surfaces. Two are straight edges and two are a curved line made up of short vertices that came from a SketchUp export.

The problem: I select the vertices on the top and bottom and fill the hole. It creates a strange face that ruins the curve. I would prefer it create some sort of complex curve. I want it to be smooth.

Images attached to better explain.

To deal with curves like that you need to use the Bridge Edge Loops tool.

If you use the fill tool (F) blender creates a very ugly Ngon on connecting all of the vertices like this:

Using bridge edge loop tool will give you the proper curve:


Driving an Object at Half the Speed of the main Object Hi I'm animating my Engines Rotating assemblies and I want to Drive the Cams at Half the Speed of the Crank (Example: Crank is going at 1 and the Cams are at 0.5) what is the operation to make this action happen

Use one property to drive many

In leiu of setting up a property for RPM of the engine, will use the current frame.  All drivers added will be a function of frame.
A simple driver to rotate one revolution per second on a file using 24 fps
2 * pi * frame / 24

A driver for half this rotational speed  would be
pi * frame / 24

To rotate in equal but opposite direction, negate the value.
Can create this  driver by typing   #2 * pi * frame / 24  directly into a property. The hash designates it is a driver. (turns purple) Only need the hash first time
Here are the six drivers I have added to create animation.

Turning off use selected in the drivers editor allows us to quickly navigate from one to another.
Instead of using frame could instead set up a custom property RPM and use that in any driver for a component driven by shaft revs.
PS. Not sure I have animated the correct items, but hopefully it shows the theory of using one property to drive many based on its value.


UV mapping node in the compositor. Why can't I subtract some pixels from the alpha channel with a mask? On trying to  answer this question, I can't subtract information from the alpha channel without running into borders that persist from the UV mapping node. Those borders come from the original image's alpha channel.
When I map a mask using the UV mapping node, I would have expected to get only the information from the mask in the image (meaning the mask on a black background), but the image gets some alpha information from the render layer as well. That information I cannot subtract from the alpha channel.
This is the setup I'm after, that shows the error:

and the result of the subtract operation:

If you look at the mask going through the UV map, there are some edges that are not part of the mask at all, but are the edges of the original alpha channel of the image used in the texture.
The object in the scene is just an EXR image imported as plane, mapped to a principled bsdf, that uses the Alpha channel of the image as Alpha on the shader.

Here's the blend file

EDIT:
If I ignore the alpha channel on the original image, the mask shows correctly, but now the edges of the UV map show.

This difference is in the original alpha channel.
Same view, same zoom level:


Where is the vertex weight panel in 2.77 "The Vertex Weights panel can be found in the right Properties region of the 3D View. It is available in Edit Mode and in Weight Paint Mode (when Vertex Selection masking is enabled as well). The panel is separated into the sections"

What does it mean by 3d view (is that the default view?)?
No vertex weights panel shows up at all. Yes I pressed N.

For the vertex weights panel (not to be confused with the vertex groups panel) to appear, you need to be in vertex select mode in edit mode and have a vertex that is associated with one or more vertex groups as the active selection. It should then appear on the 'N' panel.

For more info for others (the question quotes the manual):
https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/vertex_groups/weight_edit.html


2 different textures are overlaying (Blender Render) My goal is to model an object with 2 different textures(one from each side).

I have an original object that represents the external side (normals pointing to the outside). I then duplicated it and flipped the normals(so it represents the internal side). I also unchecked the checkbox 'Double Sided' in the Object Data.

Can anyone please help me to remove the overlaying texture?

You were correct in adding geometry. However, when vertices/faces share the exact same space in Blender, you will get artifacts that are drawn all of the mesh.

To fix this, simply adjust the geometry so it doesn't share the same space. You can scale it in (with S or AltS) or delete the inside geometry, add a solidify modifier and set the material index offset to the material index of the inside material:

(The material index is zero-based. Thus, the selected materials index is 1)

(Set the material index to 1)

Result:

(Object cut in half for demonstration purposes)


What is "Offset" in the fluid simulation "Bake" settings? I've only just recently started using blender (this is 2.78a) and am amazed at how much can be accomplished with it. I have been playing around with the fluid simulation, but all the different settings are a bit of a mystery, so I have a few questions, but I will start here with just one, and post others separately.

In trying to get multiple fluids to interact, I found that unfortunately, it is not possible, and the best one can get is: How to bake multiple fluid simulations in one scene?. However, in that answer, William Hopper mentions that to delay the start of the sim, one must change the "offset", but isn't that what "Time: Start" is for? What does each of these settings do?

My natural guess form the tooltip "Offset when reading baked cache" is so that one can have multiple baked domains in the same path, without having to do that workaround mentioned in the answer linked above.

This is pulled from another link on baking.

Simulate objects falling into water

original answer by gandalf3♦

The Offset just "offsets" the frames that are being read from the cache.

Time: Note that baking always starts on frame 1, these settings control the behavior of the fluid (e.g. for slow motion effects)

Start: The number of seconds into the simulation to start caching data.

End: The simulation time of the scene End frame in seconds.

Offset: Number of frames to offset reading of the cache. This is the only setting which you can still change after baking.


how to render visible armature IN BLENDER 2.79b

how can I render a render where the armature is visible and the mesh is hidden
Armature

You can't. The armature isn't a mesh or considered as a 'real' 3D object in Blender. It's a visual aide for positioning your mesh, nothing else. Thus why it cannot be rendered.

As said in the Blender Manual

  These shapes will never be rendered - like any bone, they are only visible in 3D Views.


Animating slicing up an object I'm animating slicing up something like this along the y axis:

I'm going to shave slices off the front until the whole block is gone.

My understanding is that the only way to do this is by having many pre-sliced meshes, moving them around together as one unit until it's time to make a "cut".

The above approach doesn't work because of the transparency:

What is the best approach I could take to animate slices coming off the front of this block?

Dissolve slice
Use a Boolean modifier with and animated intersection object:

Chop slice

Add a Boolean modifier to your mesh and set the target boolean object.
Shift+select the boolean object and Object | Parent | Object (or Ctrl+P, o).

You can now use the boolean object to move the mesh without affecting the boolean operation.

With them both still selected Object | Duplicate Linked (or Alt+D), cancel the translation (Esc) and change the boolean operation type of the new mesh to Difference.

You should now have two half's that can be moved separately.

Finally create a shape key on one of the boolean objects that you'll animate to enable/place the boolean/chop.


Material assign not lining up with vertices Hi Guys,
Can somebody explain to me why, when assigning a material to specific vertices, it doesn't seem to line up. Am I doing something wrong or is it supposed to be like this? Thanks!

Seems like you have subdivision modifier on your mesh.Which lowers the resulting vertices when it smooths the mesh.Try assigning after applying the subdivision modifier.


Does Blender support other Python implementations? I am aware that blender can use .py scripts. But sometimes these execute fairly slow, compared to compiled code. There are several other Python implementations, which support some level of JIT compilation:

IronPython:

  An open-source implementation of the Python programming language which is tightly integrated with the .NET Framework.

Jython:

  A Python implementation in the Java VM.

PyPy:

  A fast, compliant alternative implementation of the Python language
  An advantage of PyPy is, Speed: thanks to its Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, Python programs often run faster on PyPy.

Is there anyway to make use of these optimizations as far as Blender is concerned?

Short answer, None of the other implementations.

Blender isn't just using Python for scripting, it embeds the CPython interpreter using its C-API, something which other Python implimentations don't provide.

Note: PyPy has made a start on the CPython API, it may one day be usable with Blender, currently its incomplete..

In the near future - its unlikely we will have a drop-in replacement for CPython such as IronPython, PyPy, ShedSkin, Cython... etc.

Alternatives

Import a faster environment

numpy is the best example of this, but there are other Python modules which you can speedup your scripts and comes bundled with Blender.

Embed a faster environment

Embed a faster environment _in_ Python. eg:

http://github.com/dabeaz/bitey
http://www.llvmpy.org
http://code.google.com/p/py2llvm
http://numba.pydata.org
http://documen.tician.de/pyopencl
http://documen.tician.de/pycuda

... there are probably others.

The main downside to this is your limited to primitive types (also known as POD), (eg - bytes, ints, floats, doubles) - so you end up having to convert your data into structures both environments can handle, crunch numbers, then convert back and apply to your Blender data.
Depending on the task this may not be an issue, however it does limit what you can optimize.

Write in the C extension API

For lots of users this isnt an option and involves learning how to write extensions, in C/Python-API or in something like Cython, SWIG... etc. Listing here because in some cases a small part of the script can be ported to C/C++ for a large speedup.

This method has the potential to provide an API which executes very fast, the main downside is the time it takes to write such modules and having users install them (since they're compiled C/C++).

Call out to a faster environment

You could execute code from any other language/environment as an external process and communicate with it via pipes/sockets (or even just process files and read them back), this may be too cumbersome both from a developer perspective and the effort users have to make to setup such an environment, but it _can_ be done and in some cases its worth the effort.


Snap to grid using knife tool I have a situation where, after extruding an angled face, I need to make an edge of it flush with the grid lines. I tried to illustrate what I want to do with the image below. Note, the new location does not lie along the intersections of the grid, only along the X line, so I cannot use snap to grid.

I believe the best way to accomplish this would be with the knife tool, but I need a way to snap it to the grid in order to get accurate results. Is there such an option? Bisect would also work.

I am aware I could use a second object and intersect them to get this result, but I would prefer if a tool could accomplish what I need, as my current project will involve a lot of this.

(Edited)

Snap a 3D cursor anywhere on that X line you need.
Create a new plane.
Press R to rotate, then X to lock to X axis and rotate a plane so it would be intersecting your figure.
Go to modifiers tab and add boolen modifier.
Select your figure as an object.
Apply a modifier.

It should create a vertice on the intersection that you can use with snap tool.


4 vertex shape faces Good day everybody.

I've been having troubles with a phantom face that appears when moving a vertex from a figure inside. I'm not sure how to explain it.

I have this face:

And by moving a vertex inside bends the face and keeps it triangle shaped. I get the following result:

In my head it should keep the limits within the edges, but it's not doing that, I wonder if this is normal and i'm chasing a ghost or is that I missed a step somewhere.

Sorry for the nuisance ^-^

Select the face that is not behaving properly. Press 'x' and choose 'Only Faces'.
And fill it again with selecting two edges and press 'f'.

I hope this helps!


Can we mix CPU, Cuda GPU and OpenCL GPU for Cycles Render Farms We have a few machines sitting around, some are cpu only machines, while other have nvidia or AMD gpus. Can I get all these machines hooked up and use the fastest rendering method on each machine for Cycles? Basically, it will use gpus (either Cuda or OpenCL) and if there isn't a gpu, it will default to cpu? Thanks.

You should be able to configure the compute device on each machine, submit the render job, and have it "just work". In fact, this is the main reason why the compute device settings are in user preferences instead of scene settings: to allow them to be set per-machine, rather than per-scene. Two things to be mindful of:

The scene needs to be saved with "GPU compute" selected under render settings. This will set GPU-capable machines to use CUDA or OpenCL as set in user preferences, while CPU-only machines will fallback to CPU mode. However, if your workstation is a CPU-only machine, you will not be able to simply select this option. I could've sworn there was a question on Blender StackExchange somewhere about how to work around this particular issue, but I can't for the life of me find it, apologies.
Not all features/shaders are supported in OpenCL mode. There is no easy or automatic way to prevent your OpenCL-GPU machines from running a scene that needs these features. You will have to do it by hand. See this table for the current feature status: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/features.html

One way to handle this: if your render farm software supports machine groups, you may want to consider creating a "cycles safe features" group that contains all machines, then a second "cycles all features" group that only contains CPU/CUDA machines, and use the "all features" group for a job that needs features that aren't supported in OpenCL.


Cycles - What is the expected range of values for Displacement? Let's say I have the following [kinda boring] shader setup:

For what output values of the Voronoi Texture will the surface appear to be displaced outward? How about inward? In Houdini, negative values displace inward, positive values displace outward, and values of 0 don't displace at all. Is it the same in Cycles? Or is it a different range?

In Blender 0.5 is no displacement, 0 is inward, 1 is outward. But note that this will not displace the actual surface, it is just a Bumpmapping effect. Thus what is the 'no displacement' level is hard to tell.

To get real displacement you have to apply a 'Displace' modifier to the object. Here you can actually define what value is 'no displacement' and how sttrong the displacement is. Just make sure it is tessellated enough. Add a Subsurf modifier above for example:

The comparison of displacement in shader (left) to displacement using modifiers (right):

Edit:
As @gandalf3 mentioned in the comments, true displacement using nodes is available in cycles as an experimental feature. To activate it, first enable the 'Experimental' feature set in the rendering options:

Then go to the object data panel and set the displacement method to 'True' (1). This will give the same effect as adding a Displacement modifier to the object. To also get the fine tessellation effect of the Subsurf modifier enable 'Use Subdivition' (2). The 'Dicing Rate' controls how fine the mesh is tessellated.

However this method seems to displace the faces independently, which can lead to gaps in the surface:


Why does rigify generate my rig so small? I'm a beginner with Blender, I'm trying to use it to create some basic 3d character models for my program. I'm trying to use the plugin rigify to generate a rig to create animations for my character. I add a Human (Meta-rig) armature then scale it/move it to match my mesh. However, when I hit "generate" to create the rig, I get the following:

As you can see, the actual generated rig is way to small and burred within the model. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

Note: My object is at 0, 0, 0 and scaled 1, 1, 1.

You can just scale it as you would with other objects. While in object mode, select the armature and then press S to scale it.


Can particles be different objects/shapes? Cell fracture on an object products rigid bodies with different shapes/meshes. I was wondering if it was possible to assign particles to have different objects, rather than a single object applied to all particles?

Yes, they can. And yes, it is. ;-)

One way is to render a group of objects, rather than just one object.

If you create a group, you can assign that group in the particle settings of your emitter. By default, it will randomly choose one item from the group each time it creates a particle. But there are some other settings where you have a little control over how it chooses.

To create a group, select several objects and use the shortcut CTRLG. That will group the selected objects together. That group will have a name that you can use in the render section of the particle settings on the emitter (shown below).