How to animate a soft object while it is squashed on the floor? I need to animate a rotating soft object while it is squashed on the floor following the wavy shape of the floor.
Like in this video
https://youtu.be/cUsXyimUw6o?t=69 from 1:09 to 1:17
How I can do this?
Shape keys?
Physics?
Thanks

You could use a Lattice modifier to squish the object:

Create a lattice, scale it in Object mode so that it contains your cylinder, subdivide it in the Properties panel > Object Data > Resolution, give it 2 shapekeys. Give your cylinder a Lattice modifier with the lattice as Object. Select the empty, select its second shapekey and deform it Edit mode, the cylinder should deform as well. Back in Object mode, put the shapekey value at 1. Animate the cylinder.


When exporting to Unity, my model's mesh is messed up. I've tried normalizing, but that doesn't seem to work Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

Try to flip normals before exporting. In edit mode, select all faces and press ctrl+N


Text Fx addon doesn't work I just downloaded the Text Fx addon because I wanted to make a digital speedometer in an animation. I downloaded the addon as instructed and selected install inside Blender preferences. It had a caution symbol and told me that I needed to update 20 Blender 2.8x. So I updated to the newest version and it still said I needed an update. So I uninstalled it and tried installing it from a new source. This time I was not given an error but nothing new was in my add objects tab to add the text and there should have been an extra tab for text editing. So it hadn't actually installed? I am incredibly confused.

Add-ons usually give you an information where they are to find/use from. Most are in the right hand Sidebar opened with N.

Here the Text FX:

Location: "View3D > Tools" refers to the default Sidebar, as mentioned above.
The Add-on gives you the option to "add a text", which depending on the type/function you want chosen from the drop-down menu then generates an object in the 3D-View of Blender.


Curve modifier does not work when you merge another curve to the original curve I am trying to make a roller coaster. I started with making a single piece of track, then added an Array Modifier, then Curve Modifier (where my curve was a simple NURBS curve).

Now, wanted to add a nice spiral to the curve, so created a separate spiral (using special curves add on), converted the spline format to Nurbs, and then merged it to my original curve (by Alt + J).

As soon as I do that, the curve modifier stops working on my rail track and the track just forms straight line (as if with only the array modifier and no curve modifier).

I tried this with simple examples and this always happens. Whenever you add a curve to your current curve, the curve modifier stops working. Any help on this please ?

Here is the file in case needed https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mq1H64ShBL2adKhVeDP2mN5fVZcHl-4i/view?usp=sharing

The Curve Modifier only reads the first spline segment of the curve object.

Either join all segments into one continuous spline, or use separate objects for each stretch of track.

There are also a myriad of issues with your scene, one of each is unnapplied scale on the mesh. See my answer for common issues with the Curve Modifier

Besides that, the root of the problem seems to be extraneous geometry in your curves. Both of them seem to have loose vertex that unexpectedly make them multi spline curves causing unexpected behavior.

Erasing loose geometry and applying scales should solve your issues. TO easily erase all loose geometry, select one vertex of your main spline, then press Ctrl + L to select all linked vertex.

Afterwards press Ctrl + I to invert selection, effectively selecting all vertex that don't belong to the main spline, then you can erase them.


How do I make a curve that goes through a series of points? This seems simple (to Adobe Illustrator users maybe?) but how do I get a 2D curve to go through say 12 points. Such that each bezier handle is determined by the previous and next point in the row? "Path" in photoshop.

You can "draw" connected points by pressing Ctrl and the right mouse button. The bézier hadles will be calculated automatically.

Or you can use the grease pencil to draw and convert the strokes to curves.
Curve editing in blender is still quite rudimentary, for complex shapes it is a lot easier to use a vector drawing program (like inkscape, illustrator, etc), save the path as SVG and import into blender.


Viewport background images disappeared when .blend file closed and opened I loaded my background images to my model and placed them where I need them to be. I could not finish my project at that moment, so I saved it in hopes that I could return to it later. I opened the saved file and both the front view and side view images weren't there. However, all my settings stayed the same. My background images were still saved as datablocks in the blend file, but they wouldn't appear anywhere in the 3D view port. Why are my background images not displaying?

Some things to check for that would impact the visibility of your background images, besides being in the proper type of view (orthographic, as distinguished from perspective view) include the following.

If you used the background images panel in the properties shelf of the 3D viewport, are the background image files still on your computer in the same place as they were when you loaded them?

If the images are in the same location, is the background images panel activated in the new instance of Blender into which you loaded your previously saved file?

Are you looking at the right view in the 3D viewport? An image is only visible if Blender thinks it is looking at the same view, so that if you used the facility to rotate the image in any direction from one of the six background image views, even if you rotate it back to the original view, Blender will still think it's in a user view, and the image will not be visible. Try pressing the numpad keys for the view for which you have background images located: for example, if you have a top view, press the  Numpad-7 key; a left view, press CTRL-Numpad-3 .

It might expedite getting an answer if you upload your blend file to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com, and edit your question to provide a link to the blend file.


Combining parts to a single stl for cheaper printing I am trying to compine parts for 3 raspberry pi cases so I can print them as a single image and avoid paying a setup fee for every single one
I have stl files
When I import them to blender they float around in different sizes and locations
I'm just trying to get them all to fit on a 12 by 12 inch floor and have no clue how to do it
Googling didn't help much since I am a total newbie and don't even understand some of the jargon

If anyone can hep I'd really appreciate it

Welcome to the wonderful (and often confusing) world of Blender!

So, the first thing you'll need to do is right-click the default cube to select it.*

Hit S6 to scale the cube up by 6. Hit ↩ Return to finish. (You'll see Dimensions in the right panel go to 12 in each direction. We're pretending the units are inches.)
Set the cube's maximum draw type to Wire, this will avoid it getting in the way:

Ignore the cube for now.

Now, do you have a number pad? If not, you should probably go into the preferences (⌘, on a mac, ⌃ Ctrl+⌥ Alt+U elsewhere) and turn on Emulate Numpad in the Input tab. Be sure to hit the Save User Settings button, or you'll get a surprise when you restart Blender!
Hit 1 on the numpad, or the regular key if you've got Emulate Numpad turned on. This will align your view so you're looking straight on sideways. Then hit 5 on the numpad to switch to "orthographic mode"; this makes your view flat, like an architectural drawing. (There is no perspective; things that are far away look just as big as things that are up close.)
Turn on snapping with Shift+Tab. If it gives you trouble later, you can turn it off again.
For each case (I'm assuming they're all one piece here, please tell me if not):

Select it by right-clicking.
Hit G to Grab it, and then Z to only move it along the Z axis (up/down).
Move your mouse up/down until the bottom of the case is aligned with the floor, which is that red horizontal line going across your viewport.

Now you need that cube again.

Select it by right-clicking on its wire.
Press GZ and move it up 6 to align it with the floor.
Hit Numpad 7 to switch to top view.
Grab each case, like before except without the Z locking, and make sure it's inside the cube's walls.
If you want them to all be one piece, join them with Ctrl+J.
Delete the default cube with X. Now you're done! You can find STL export under the File menu.

Please note that I used A+B to mean "press B while holding A", and AB to mean "press A, then B".

*Yes, it's weird, but you get used to it. If you absolutely hate it, you can change it in the preferences. Just make sure to hit "save user settings" afterward.


Making an array object follow the shape of an object Im trying to replicate this little robot for practice as im very new to modeling.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/4ZEKN.jpg
At the top right of his head there is a vent. I tried making this using a plane. using an array then shrink wrapping it too the head. This mostly worked however when i extruded it to give it thickness, i need to add holding lines when i subdivided it and i would have had to do it manually for each piece added by the array. since you cant add geometry before you apply the shrink wrap i needed too do that first, but if i apply the shrinkwrap before the array it no longer forms too the head. Am I just going about this the wrong way?

Array modifier should not be needed.
I replicated your steps by making a plane above a sphere and subdividing and shaping it as needed. I also shrink wrapped it with the following settings:

I then applied the shrink wrap modifier and extruded the plane by 0.02. I made a rough selection of the holes that make up the grate. A fast way of doing this is to press C to create a selection circle and use the scroll wheel to make it very small. You can hold Shift + left-click to deselect faces.

Afterwards I extruded the selected faces by -0.01 (a value less than the initial extrusion). To get the proper materials set up without having to select everything all over again 2 materials were created, the first one being the base metal material that all the vertices will be assigned to by default, the second was the Pitch black material. With the selection still in place, Ctrl + Numpad + will expand the selection to the surrounding faces of the extrusion, you can then assign these faces to the second Pitch Black material.

For the Pitch Black material, simply hit Use Nodes and delete the default Principled BSDF and replace it with a Diffuse BSDF black color that will absorb zero light.

It should look good after that, you can make as many subdivisions as you want and make a proper metal material for the rest of the vent.

An alternative approach would be to extrude the vent from the actual sphere itself and disconnect it. That might flow with the sphere better if you don't like the shape that the plane takes.


Black triangles in mesh Hi all, I'm super new to Blendr (as in, day one) and I'm trying to edit a pre-existing mesh. I've managed to get through quite a bit of the learning curve but I can not seem to get rid of the two black triangles pictured here. I've tried going through so much of the forum for similar issues but so much terminology is brand new as well --

Long story short, can anyone give me a tip on what I'm looking at and how to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Often times faces appear darker if their normals are flipped. In computer games these faces are usually not rendered. Blender however makes sure that they are and hints to the user that the normals are flipped. To test if it's a normal issue you should check enable backface culling in the 3D views properties panel

Your faces however seem pitch black thus this could imply a few things:

Faces are assigned to a material which is pitch black
Faces are mapped to a black/empty region in your texture
You're seeing the vertex colors assigned to the vertices.

edit:


how to move these vertices out evenly ok, I don't know how to ask this question properly which is why I couldn't find a solution on google.

basically, I want just the middle vertices to pop out evenly that way I could give it a half circle depth. I included a picture to help make sense of what I'm trying to ask.
Thank you in advance!

The command you need is 'shrink/fatten' which shortcut is Alt+S :

Once done, you can tune it with the operator panel on the left, and check the 'offset even' option which gives a more even... offset...


Child object moves and rotates upon parenting to bone I am currently stuck with blender 2.8 (I know that is a beta right now but I remember having the same problem with 2.79 and I finally want to solve this).

I am trying to make an object a child of a bone. To do this I select the supposed child object then shift select the armature (that was made using rigify), switch to pose mode, select the parent bone and parent it with ctrl+p to the bone. When doing this the (carefully aligned) child objects is rotated and moved and I can't figure out why. I am sure the must be a way to do this without having to reposition the child after parenting.

I have applied all transformations to the child object and also checked to have reset all transformations on the pose.

Please check the images to see what I am talking of. Thanks for all the help you are providing and all the work done on blender.

before parenting

after parenting

Let the bone position it, then tweak.

In as much as you can position then parent, I am suggesting the opposite. The nature of parenting is to let the child inherit the transform of the parent.

If the object has no translation or rotation it will be at the location and rotation of its parent.

The head to tail axis of a bone is, +Y along the bones length. Align our child object to reflect this.

The "up" axis of our default cone is +Z, we want to make it point to "+Y".

The default cone, rotated and translated such that its origin (local  (0, 0, 0)) is  at the tip of cone, and it points in a +Y direction.  The cone is at global location (0, 0, 0)

If non-zero rotation apply the rotation.

Now we can parent to a bone and the cone will be tip to tail of bone.

cone parented to head bone of rigify bird metarig, adjusting the cones y location will slide it up and down the bone


How to save an image in uv editor even when closing blender? I have a palette image in my uv editor to color my models, but every time when I close blender, I have to reopen it again, is there a way to save it in my workplace without reopening it always?
THANKS

Setup your image(s) however you would like before modifying anything else in a new clean .blend file.
Press Ctrl+U to save the modified start-up file as the new default, and the images (along with any other changes, materials, objects, etc.) will be present going forward.
If you decide to go back to the default configuration, then you can Load Factory Settings
Documentation is here


How can i add a texture to billboard particles? I'm using a billboard-type particle in order to show a texture/plane look at the camera, the problem is i have the billboard option selected so i can't choose 'object' and the planes from the billboard are working great, but how can i add an object or a (single) texture in order to replace the gray plane the billboard offers?

As answered in the bug report by Brecht, billboards is a feature that is not supported by cycles and isn't planned to be added any time soon.

To get billboards working you need to be using the blender internal render engine. By default the material used for particles is the same material used on the object emitting the particles, you can change the material used for the billboards in the particle settings in the render panel.


Animation with unintentional black boxes I'm making an Animation with a Motion Track. In my preview render everything is fine, but when I render my scene in png there are black boxes in some pictures.

At the beginning of the animation these dots (showing the cities) appear. After that the lines move towards the city Höxter. At the end a street sign is falling on the position where all lines are ending.

These black boxes just appear when the second animation is running. I don't have any other meshes in my scene that could create these black boxes or cast shadows on the map.

How can I fix it?

.

Heres the blend file:

I downloaded my download file now, because user3800527 (thanks to you) told me, that its working on his pc. Now its working and there are no black boxes anymore. I can't tell exactly what the problem was. Maybe it just was a problem of blender.


How to output deep data? Is there a way to export world position pass, also object position pass (local), and deep pass ?

I have searched in the output tab but haven't found anything.

thanks a lot!

Passes are accessible in the view layer tab:

Though there are not world/object position passes yet, you can make them by hand like explained on this other topic. It explains only for the world position, but you can deduce how to do for others.


How can i disable a particle base object from render? So i made a bunch of trees and they all use particle systems for the foliage. The base foliage object that i used for the particles gets render with the scene, but if i disable its collection or the single object from render then all the trees lose their foliage as well in the render.
I'm looking for a way to hide only the base foliage mesh i used for the particle systems without losing also the particle systems in the render. I know that i could move what i don't need out of the camera view, but i want to keep it as simple and tidy as possible because it's a really heavy scene.

Disable "show emitter"

Will have effect in rendering only (not when viewport shading is set to rendered).
Seems I've misunderstood the question. To hide the original particle object, put it in another collection and disable this collection for rendering.

Note that if the PS instances are based on a collection, move this collection in another one and disable this last one for rendering.


Cannot see the armature in edit mode So i was working on a model for my school project, and it was all going well until this happened. I can see the armature in object or pose mode, but if i switch to edit mode, the armature dissappears. I can still see the origin of the armature, and all the animations are still playable, there isnt anything wrong with the armature i think, but in no way you can edit the armature. I tried googling about this issue, but apparently no one had such problem like i am having right now.
The armature is not hidden in any way, maybe its a bug, i have know idea. I wish i had a copy of this model to which i can always go back, but i guess i learned my lesson this time.
Here is the armature in object mode where it is visible:
Here is the armature in edit mode where it is not visible which is the reason why it cannot be edited, the origin point is still visible so i guess its still there.

I dont know how i got this problem, i was just working with the animations and was switching over to edit mode and couldn't see the armature anymore, very strange. If this problem persists i guess i'll just have to keep working on the model with the armature that i have lol.
Any help is appreciated, Thanks :)
Btw english isnt my best language so sorry for any mistakes.

Guess what... im holding another Major L, @FFeller just told me the solution, i thought it wasnt gonna work cause i just did so much other stuff to figure this out so i didnt thought this small thing can be the fix, but it was. Just pressed Alt + H. Veeerry weird why it didnt work earlier before i posted this question, cause i obviously have tried pressing alt+h, or maybe thats what i think i did and its just me being dumb.


User input to change materials properties I have been struglin with this and I can’t find a way to do it. :(
I have made a script that takes care of resetting the values of some of material properties in the whole scene, but now I would like to let the user to decide what is the new default value for all those properties. Since some materials could have their own texture map attached I can not delete all the materials a assing a new one with new values.
Specifically I would want to let the user change the values for the node input [4], [5] and [7]
Could anyone shed some light on this:
import bpy

class ResetAllMaterialsOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
  """Affects all Materials in the scene"""
  bl_idname = "material.reset_all_materials_operator"
  bl_label = "Reset all Materials"
  bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

  def execute(self, context):
    for mat in bpy.data.materials:
        if mat.use_nodes:
            for n in mat.node_tree.nodes:
                if n.type == "BSDF_PRINCIPLED" and n.label == "":
                        n.inputs[4].default_value = 0.75
                        n.inputs[5].default_value = 0.1
                        n.inputs[7].default_value = 0.5

                        for l in mat.node_tree.links:
                            if l.from_node.type == "TEX_IMAGE" and l.to_node.type == "BSDF_PRINCIPLED":
                                if l.to_socket.identifier == "Alpha":
                                    mat.node_tree.links.remove(l)
                        break

    return {'FINISHED'}

class testPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = "TEST 2"
    bl_label = "Test label"

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

        box = layout.box()
        row = box.column()
        row.operator("material.reset_all_materials_operator")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(testPanel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(ResetAllMaterialsOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(testPanel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ResetAllMaterialsOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Thanks in advance,
Juan

Annotate your operator.
Add properties to the operator containing the defaults to set, which can in themselves be set.
Have added the only the metallic property, and a draw method,

add more to suit.
import bpy
from bpy.props import FloatProperty

class ResetAllMaterialsOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Affects all Materials in the scene"""
    bl_idname = "material.reset_all_materials_operator"
    bl_label = "Reset all Materials"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    metallic = FloatProperty(
            name="Metallic",
            default=0.75,
            )

    def draw(self, context):
        self.layout.prop(self, "metallic")

    def execute(self, context):
        for mat in bpy.data.materials:
            if mat.use_nodes:
                for n in mat.node_tree.nodes:
                    if n.type == "BSDF_PRINCIPLED" and n.label == "":

                        n.inputs[4].default_value = self.metallic
                        n.inputs[5].default_value = 0.1
                        n.inputs[7].default_value = 0.5

                        for l in mat.node_tree.links:
                            if l.from_node.type == "TEX_IMAGE" and l.to_node.type == "BSDF_PRINCIPLED":
                                if l.to_socket.identifier == "Alpha":
                                    mat.node_tree.links.remove(l)
                        break

        return {'FINISHED'}

class TestPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_idname = "TEST_PT_test"
    bl_category = "TEST 2"
    bl_label = "Test label"

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

        box = layout.box()
        row = box.column()
        row.operator("material.reset_all_materials_operator")

classes = (TestPanel,  ResetAllMaterialsOperator)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


why i cant see tracking markers in 3d viewport I have just finished tracking and camera solving my footage. after setting up tracking scene, the markers are visible in the 3d viewport but only in the motion tracking panel.

but when i switch into the default panel, the markers are not there

how would I make the trackers appear in the default viewport? currently I haven't enabled "link empty to track"

On the Display Overlays drop down menu located to the left of the buttons you change Render modes(wireframe, previz and render) you'll find an option to turn on Motion Tracking overlays. Enable that and more options will be available underneath that to suit your preference.


Hair not moving when you move it's bone I parented a polygon hair made with bezier curves to my character's head, but, when I move the bone connected to the head, the hair doesn't move with it, what do I do?

I'm supposing that you parented your hair object to the head object and parented the head to an armature which include a "head" bone, weighted (automatically or manually) to the head vertices of your mesh.

When you move a bone you are moving the vertices of the mesh without affecting the origin of the object. If your hair is another object parented to the object called "head" it will not move as the Head origin is not moving.
To get the right movement you must select all of your hair objects, then Shift Select the Head Bone, then press Ctrl P and choose  "Bone" option.
In this way the bone movement will affect the head vertices and the hair origins in the same way.


Any way to move two symmetrical edges / vertices / faces in opposite directions? I know of the mirror modifier, but say i just want to quickly select a pair (or multiple pairs) of symmetrical vertices / edges / faces of a model. A sword crossguard for example.

Is there anyway i can just simply select two edges / faces / vertices and transform them in opposite directions instead of in the same direction? (So that i can quickly and easily tweak a model without having to apply a mirror modifier)

If your model is aligned with one of the axes, you can scale your components (edges / verts / faces) along that axis if your pivot point is set to median point (default).


SVG import not showing up,why? I have a vector image that I want to animate in Blender. I imported the image from file but it does not show up on the Blender workspace. Do I have to tweak some settings in order for it to show up?

Usually when you import a SVG file it is extremely small (so small you cant see it). Draw a box select ("B", or choose it from the outliner) around the center of your screen and scale it up by a lot (You still may not see anything, scale it up again) after scaling two or even three times you will start to see it.

After you get it to the size you want dont forget to apply the scale (CTRL+A) "apply scale"


Firefly halo on glossy pass? Is there any way to remove fireflies from the edges on a glossy direct pass? (At the very edges of the popcorn container and haloing the popcorn kernels in the front)

I set the samples to 2000 and filter glossy: 0.5 in the render below. The light is set to multiple importance on.

Here is how to composite your scene. This may also resolve your other question: Posterized shadow pass in Cycles?

Since you only use Glossy and Diffuse shaders, we only need the glossy and diffuse passes enabled in the render passes.

What you are experiencing are not fireflies. These artefacts will not be visible after the correct compositing.

The reason for that is the premultiplication of very transparent pixels after anti-aliasing.

In some edge pixels the popcorn overlaps the box. In a pixel which the box covers just slightly and which is mainly filled by a popcorn the glossy color of the box will be close to 0. The Glossy is going to be multiplied by the Glossy Color. Hence it needs to be unpremultiplied. There are plenty of tutorials on premultiplication and unpremultiplication in compositing and why they are important. Here is an explanation of the technical background. Color correction also only works with unpremultiplied data. Your scene is fine.


What is wrong with my UV image repeating? So i was making an object and following a tutorial on unwrapping and texture painting. I followed everything correctly and got to where i am. As i was going to start with the gif making process (excuse the armature), i noticed something.

The texture continued onto it's back area which was odd (and pretty funny) to me because i never painted that on. When i had it all unwrapped onto the image texture and could see the entire outline of the body, not once did i paint on the extra faces.

I supplied my nodes too in case something is wrong with those but i have been searching through videos and forums looking for an answer and not once found one.

Thanks in advance!

As Mr Zak said, it's probably because of a bad unwrapping, some of your UV islands must overlap due to the unwrap method you've chosen, which can be ok in some cases but not if you decide to paint your character, because what you paint on a face will also be painted on another one.

You need to check your UV/Image Editor to understand what happened, typically I guess each of your back faces must fill the whole surface of the texture.

For your purpose the best and easiest way is to first select all the faces of your mesh and U unwrap with the Smart UV Project option: This way you're sure that you've got really distinct islands and none of your face will overlap another one on the UV/Image Editor.

Please select one of your back faces and look what happens, I guess something like this:


Blender 2.8 slow render under mesa-18.3.2 and xvfb How I can profile timings in Blender 2.8 Eevee engine rendering process?

I have blender 2.8 (nightly build) running inside docker container, with mesa-18.3.2 (build from sources) and gallium driver set to llvmpipe. OS: Ubuntu 18.10.

Under same docker container I test 2.79 and 2.8
Times differs 10x.
2.79: Time: 00:07.76 (Saving: 00:01.57)
2.80: Time: 01:12.40 (Saving: 00:02.29)

Too big difference here. Any ideas what should I check?

Thank you!

As was said by @Ignatiamus blender 2.80 heavily depends on GPU.
So after putting blender onto machine with GPU it starts working fast even inside docker.


How to design the following sequence How to design something similar to this ; Teaser Card, Ponniyin Selvan. Someone tell me where to begin with and the prerequisites ( Like the skills in blender that I must know to even begin such a thing).

Rendering Engine:

First of all prefer Cycles Rendering Engine.
In Cycles Render you make realistic objects, text, characters, etc. And the workflow is quiet simple(according to me).

Modifiers:

Modifiers may help saving lots of your time making objects really quick.

Materials

Main part comes on materials, Materials can be anything that make your render look like real world that are colors, textures. Play with some of the material and you'll get an idea how they work.

Animations:

Learn some of the simple keyframe animations.It is simply moving objects here and there.

The Internet Thing:

There are thousands of tutorials who teach how animations work, adding materials, modeling. Internet is vast and you can learn almost everything. Thanks to Blender Stack Exchange that it has experts that if you don't understand some topics or you have some problem regarding your render, modelling,etc. you are free to ask.
I suggest you to go for tutorials by Blender Guru,  He is awesome.

Hope my answer was clear to you.
All the Best. Happy Learning.


glb Import Error due to IDProperty limitation I am importing a .glb file into Blender and only the bone structure was imported, there are no model,texture or animation(which are supposedly there). I looked into it a little, but what is the best solution for this? I have other 4 models which also has the same issue. Thank you for any suggestions and solutions.
The error is as given:
Data are loaded, start creating Blender stuff
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\__init__.py", line 991, in execute
    return self.import_gltf2(context)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\__init__.py", line 1005, in import_gltf2
    if self.unit_import(path, import_settings) == {'FINISHED'}:
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\__init__.py", line 1025, in unit_import
    BlenderGlTF.create(gltf_importer)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_gltf.py", line 42, in create
    BlenderGlTF._create(gltf)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_gltf.py", line 49, in _create
    BlenderScene.create(gltf)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_scene.py", line 40, in create
    BlenderNode.create_vnode(gltf, 'root')
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_node.py", line 51, in create_vnode
    BlenderNode.create_vnode(gltf, child)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_node.py", line 51, in create_vnode
    BlenderNode.create_vnode(gltf, child)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_node.py", line 38, in create_vnode
    BlenderNode.create_object(gltf, vnode_id)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\imp\gltf2_blender_node.py", line 86, in create_object
    set_extras(obj, pynode.extras)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\com\gltf2_blender_extras.py", line 91, in set_extras
    blender_element[custom_property] = value
KeyError: 'the length of IDProperty names is limited to 63 characters'

location: <unknown location>:-1

This is a bug in the glTF importer. Importing fails if there is a long custom property name (Blender limits custom property names to 63 characters). I have reported it here. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.
In the meantime, you can apply a quick fix yourself which should let you import your models.
Open the file C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\2.92\scripts\addons\io_scene_gltf2\blender\com\gltf2_blender_extras.py in a text editor. Near the bottom you'll see this:
 try:
     blender_element[custom_property] = value
 except TypeError:
     print('Error setting property %s to value of type %s' % (custom_property, type(value)))

Replace TypeError with Exception and save the file. Restart Blender, and you should now be able to import.
This will discard any custom properties with too-long names, so I hope you didn't need them for anything.


Color change shows up in viewport but not when rendered I've been trying to do a liquid simulation in blender today and so far it's turning out pretty cool... My major issue is that I'm trying to get it to change color but when I go to render the image, the color change does not appear! When changing the colors I keyframed it so it should shift between colors but it doesn't appear to be working. I'm very confused because the color change seems to be working in the viewport, but not the final render. When using Eevee however, the colors change in both the viewport and the final render. (here is what that looks like https://gyazo.com/0007df9be2460216cc9c39d661efa79d)

When previewing the material, the material looks as if the colors weren't changing, and it is the same color as the final renders I've done so far... here are some examples of my issue:

What I see in viewport:

What I see in render:

Ok, so..... this was very quick I swear I've been searching for an answer for a very long time but like...

I switched the transparency and the SSS in the mix shader and it seemed to have worked...

I'm pretty sure it was because the SSS was being done in a principled shader so the color on that was overriding the color on the transparency...


Using a custom shape as bevel object I discover blender and python API for blender. I would like to create celtics works with blender using python (for cnc works). I found a way to create a sine curve and use a Bezier circle as the profile to extrude it, but what I would like is to use a rectangular shape.
Here is where I am:

And here is what I would like to have (I modified the profile manually):

Do you have any advices for me : Bezier vs NURBE, how to add a rectangular shape as bevel shape ...
Here is my code:
import bpy
import math
from bpy import context, data, ops

R = 1 # bevel radius

curve = bpy.data.curves.new('sinepath', type='CURVE')
curve.dimensions = '3D'
curve.resolution_u = 1
spline = curve.splines.new('NURBS')

for x in range(0, 1440):
    y = 20* math.sin(float(math.radians(x)))
    if ((x+90)//180)%2 == 1:
        z = 0.5 * abs(math.sin(float(math.radians(x -90))))
    else:
        z = -0.5 * abs(math.sin(float(math.radians(x -90))))
    # Add first point for start of Nurbs (needs extra point)
    if x == 0:
        spline.points[0].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y, z, 1)

    # Add point
    spline.points.add(1)
    spline.points[-1].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y,z,1)
    print ("x: " + str(x) + " y: " + str(y) + " z: " + str(z))
# Add end point
spline.points.add(1)
spline.points[-1].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y, 0, 1)

curveObject = bpy.data.objects.new('sinepath', curve)
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(curveObject)
bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_circle_add(radius=R, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))

cross_section = bpy.context.active_object
curveObject.data.bevel_object = cross_section
curveObject.data.use_fill_caps = True
curveObject.data.bevel_mode = 'OBJECT'

curve2 = bpy.data.curves.new('sinepath', type='CURVE')
curve2.dimensions = '3D'
curve2.resolution_u = 1
spline2 = curve.splines.new('NURBS')

for x in range(0, 1440):
    y = -20* math.sin(float(math.radians(x)))
    if ((x+90)//180)%2 == 1:
        z = -0.5 * abs(math.sin(float(math.radians(x -90))))
    else:
        z = 0.5 * abs(math.sin(float(math.radians(x -90))))
    # Add first point for start of Nurbs (needs extra point)
    if x == 0:
        spline2.points[0].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y, z, 1)

    # Add point
    spline2.points.add(1)
    spline2.points[-1].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y,z,1)
    print ("x: " + str(x) + " y: " + str(y) + " z: " + str(z))
# Add end point
spline2.points.add(1)
spline2.points[-1].co = (x/(2*math.pi), y, 0, 1)

curveObject = bpy.data.objects.new('sinepath', curve)
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(curveObject)

curveObject.data.bevel_object = cross_section
curveObject.data.use_fill_caps = True
curveObject.data.bevel_mode = 'OBJECT'

Found a solution here:
Possible to add a plane using vertices via Python?
just add this line:
bpy.ops.object.convert(target='CURVE', keep_original= False)
return myobject


Can I create an OpenGL 1.1 game on Blender 2.78 32-bit Game Engine? Not Just OpenGl ES 1.1, is there a way to limit which OpenGL ES Blender will use, a warning of what the game is going to require or disable certain features so if a game Required OpenGL 2.0, with in-game settings can be Lowered to Require OpenGl 1.1 (Disabling Material or Converting Material to UVmaps to Texture when compiling game)

Cause I just wiki'd Opengl ES thinking to see OpenGl ES 1.1 & 1.0 for JarPhones, but saw
 - Nintendo 3DS under OpenGL ES 1.1 (In Which RE:Revelation 3DS is on)
 - while my 2012 phone is OpenGl ES 2.1 (SGH-T699, Adreno 225, can't play PS2 emulator called Play!)
 - PS2 has OpenGL ES 3 which my 2005 Dell D800 (Nvidia Go5650) Laptop could run PS2 emulators and so can the LG F3Q (2014, OpenGL ES 3, Adreno 305) which means Mobile is approx 6 years behind PC technology
 - OpenGL ES 3.x is on Adreno 300, 400 & 500 Series for Mobile
 - PS3 & PS4 might be 3.x - 4.x
 - My 2014 Laptop now has OpenGL 4.5

Kivy is multiple platform (Though having trouble with Android) as it uses Python (Cython) and Blender & Panda3D are the only 2 left with OpenGL & Python as pyOpenGL is broken.

I need to know cause I want to create a game that can possibly be ported to Kivy or Unity which can be ported to other systems...otherwise this can serve as a good lesson for learning how to script or create games as this is my first time in learning & using Python, using Blender and creating a Game.

The BGE runs on

Windows,
MacOS,
Linux.

Nintendo, PS2, Mobile phones do not run that platforms. So you can't use the BGE there even if there is a matching OpenGL support. (OpenGL is another requirement, not the only requirement)

  I want to create a game that can possibly be ported to Kivy or Unity which can be ported to other systems

I'm not sure how you interpret porting a game to another platform or to use different frameworks. You basically develop a completely new application that feels like the original one. So the "business" stays the same while the application is completely different.

It is nothing ...

  for learning how to script or create games

If the question in your mind is meant to be:

can I create BGE games on my mobile phone? the answer is no.
can I run my BGE game in my mobile phone? The answer is no.
can I transfer my BGE skills to other game engines that run on mobile phones? The answer is ... some of them:

concepts of game development.
scripting?

general concepts - yes
specific code - no
specific methods - not likely

[Edit]

  Can I create an OpenGL 1.1 game on Blender 2.78 32-bit Game Engine?

I can't tell. Accoring to this question Blender 2.77+ needs OpenGL 2.1. I have no idea if that is compatible with OpenGL 1.1.

The supported OSes remain the same as mentioned above (WinOs, MacOs, Linux).

You might try it out by setting up a Linux with OpenGL 1.1 only.


complex internal vertices i have managed to build this shape but i cant find a nice way to remove internal vertices. the "bean" was made with polyverts in the form of spheres so this shape is made from complete spheres and all the geometry is still there . i want to try printing it so need to remove all of that . any nice ideas . could not use the shrink wrap well for it .

thanks

BoolTool add-on

I'm not sure on what you mean by saying polyverts, but I'm am assuming that is something similar to parenting+vertex duplication...

So starting from a similar situation, after make the duplicate real, we have a plenty of different objects.

Download and install the BoolTool add-on that will allow us to merge all the objects with boolean operation.

Select all the objects, make the base mesh the active object (the biggest one: it's important that this object has at least a piece of volume in common with every sphere object) and choose from BoolTool tool tab the Direct Union tool.

It will take a while (depending on the number of spheres,their resolution and your hardware...for me about 15 minutes), but the result is quite good, clean and, above all, watertight.

Below a view of the insight. Notice how there is only a shell. The internal faces do not exist anymore.


Why there is gap between 2 face I have made triangular face and extrude and then array. With extrude face i have added a loopcut. I want to extrude the top part but when i extrude there is a gap between the corner of the edges. I apply rotation scale yet same problem. May i know the reason why there is gap and why its not extruded in same shape.

Gap between

The reason there is a gap is because when you use a modifier, the mesh editor is not aware of the other faces, and therefore they are not joined. As a result the face will behave like it is not connected. To get the behavior you desire, you will need to extrude by scaling.

Select the vertex at the center of your mesh
hit Shift-S>Cursor to selected
Set the pivot point to 3D cursor. (.)
Hit E to extrude, then S to scale, and Shift-Z to stop it from expanding vertically. Scale to taste.

Gif:

Note: There will be interior faces on the sides of your new extrusion, it would probably be best to remove them.


How do I create realistic lighting emiting from a bulb from a lamp I am a noob at blender and I created this scene(work-in-progress), and the study Lamp will be the only light source.

However, the light is filling the room and doesn't look realistic.
I want the bulb in the lamp holder to only emit light at the table(directional) and I don't know how to achieve this. have a look at this image to know what I mean:

The bulb is only emitting light at the bottom and top(since it is open) and no light is emitted like in my image(except soft light)
In a nutshell, how do I make the bulb throw light only at the table, like a spotlight? I want the rays visible.
EDIT: The first is my render. The second is an example image from google to better explain what I want.

With a "point" light as lamp and a fabric texture with translucent shader for the lampshade.

The point light is just a light (as suggested by OldMan in the comments):

The lampshade is composed of a fabric texture and a translucent shader:

"No more"... if you try replacing the point lamp by a sphere, this is working too, but the render is slower and more noisy.


Camera angle for 50% height hex grid I have a scene containing a hexagonal grid, with an orthographic camera.

At what angle should I put the camera so a rendered hex would exactly half the height in pixels that it would normally be if rendered from a straight top-down view?

I tried a 45 degree angle, but the top face was squashed to about 2/3rds instead of 1/2. I guestimated based on what looked right and got 55 degrees, but I need it to be exact.

60°

Orthographic camera projects rays that are perpendicular to its plane. The length of a projected segment can be calculated using trigonometry.

In the first example of the figure below (left), a camera sees the segment from the top. The "projected" length of the segment is equal to its true length. The more the camera starts to face the horizon, the shorter the projection will be.

From the second example (right) we can easily figure out what is the general formula to get the length of the segment's projection upon the camera plane.

$$
P = R\cos{\theta}
$$

Where $P$ is the length of the projection, $R$ is the real length and $\theta$ is the angle.

In your case:

$$
P = \frac{R}{2}
$$

Then we can write the general equation as:

$$
\frac{R}{2} = R\cos{\theta}
$$

This holds when (one of the infinite possible solutions):

$$
\theta = \arccos{\frac{1}{2}} = 60
$$

In fact, the only combination of angles that makes a right-angled triangle whose one side length is half that of the hypotenuse is the 30-60 Triangle.

As the camera in its "angular resting" position is facing downward, the angle considered in the previous equations is the same angle you should put in the X rotation field.


Can i bake a texture in headless mode? 2.80 I'm tring to bake an EMIT texture.
The script works inside blender, but when launched in headless mode (-b -p) gives me an
Error: No active image found, add a material or bake to an external file

an extract of the code:
        tree = mat.node_tree
        bake_node = tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
        bake_node.name = 'bake_node'

        img = bpy.data.images.new("_bake", 512, 512)
        bake_node.image = img

        # trying to select stuff to avoid the error...
        obj.select_set(True)
        obj.active_material = mat
        bake_node.select = True
        tree.nodes.active = bake_node

        bpy.ops.object.bake(type='EMIT')
        img.save_render(filepath=str(out_path))

as you can see i tried to activate the image in every way, but no luck.
I've also read that the external mode of the bake method (save_mode='EXTERNAL') is not really implemented (and, in fact, doesn't work).
Any idea?
Thanks.

I am doing texture baking in headless mode and it works for me. Not sure what is the problem with your script but here is my script:
import bpy
import logging
import sys

console_handler = logging.StreamHandler(sys.stdout)
log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
log.addHandler(console_handler)

cuda_devices, opencl_devices = bpy.context.preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.get_devices(
)

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = "CYCLES"
bpy.context.scene.cycles.device = "GPU"
bpy.context.preferences.addons["cycles"].preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA"

for device in cuda_devices:
    print(f'Activating {device.name}')
    device.use = True
    break

# need object mode for make_single_user
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
bpy.ops.object.make_single_user(
    type="ALL", object=False, obdata=False, material=True)

if 'dynamic' in bpy.data.collections:
    bpy.data.collections['dynamic'].hide_render = True

for object in list(bpy.data.objects):
    if object.active_material is None:
        log.warning("Object %s doesn't have a material. Skipping.", object.name)
        continue

    log.info("Working on %s", object.name)
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    object.select_set(True)

    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = object
    for slot in object.material_slots:
        if slot.material is None:
            continue

        material = slot.material
        if not material.use_nodes:
            log.warning(
                "Active Material of object %s doesn't use nodes. Skipping.", object.name)
            continue

        nodes = material.node_tree.nodes

        gltf = None
        shadow = None
        occlusion = None
        for node in nodes.values():
            if node.label == "Shadow":
                shadow = node
            elif node.label == "Occlusion":
                occlusion = node
            elif node.type == "GROUP" and node.node_tree and node.node_tree.name == "glTF Metallic Roughness":
                gltf = node

        if gltf is None:
            log.warning("Skipping %s: no gltf node defined", object.name)
            continue

        shadow_input = None
        occlusion_input = None
        for input in gltf.inputs:
            if input.name == "Shadow":
                shadow_input = input
            elif input.name == "Occlusion":
                occlusion_input = input

        if shadow_input is None:
            log.warning(
                "Skipping %s: gltf group doesn't define a shadow input", object.name)
            continue

        if occlusion_input is None:
            log.warning(
                "Skipping %s: gltf group doesn't define a occlusion input", object.name)
            continue

        shadow = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeTexImage")
        shadow.label = "Shadow"

        occlusion = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeTexImage")
        occlusion.label = "Occlusion"

        shadow_output = shadow.outputs[0]
        occlusion_output = occlusion.outputs[0]

        material.node_tree.links.new(shadow_input, shadow_output)
        material.node_tree.links.new(occlusion_input, occlusion_output)

        image = bpy.data.images.new("shadow", 256, 256)
        shadow.image = image

        nodes.active = shadow
        shadow.select = True

        bpy.ops.object.bake(type="SHADOW")
        image.pack()
        shadow.select = False

        image = bpy.data.images.new("occlusion", 256, 256)
        occlusion.image = image

        nodes.active = occlusion
        occlusion.select = True

        bpy.ops.object.bake(type="AO")
        image.pack()
        occlusion.select = False

    object.select_set(False)

bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile()

You can probably delete like 70% of it or so for your usecase. I am especially unsure if the CUDA stuff in the beginning even works. Also this is highly specific to my use case (all the stuff around the glTF node in there) but maybe it helps you solve your issue.


Rigging is not working in one Area, it has no affect on the mesh. Other areas fine I am focusing on character animation this week, and have a object that was not rigged in Blender files.  So I decided to rig it myself.
I had great success on MOST of the body.  However the mouth area is not working properly.
I did a re-rigging using Rigafy, and still no movement.  Everything else works as expected.
I am attaching the Blender file as well.  Normally I end up answering my own questions, but this one has me stymied.

Okay, thank you Blunder for pointing me in the right direction.
The issue is I added the lips and what-not AFTER I did the original parenting of armature to mesh.
I assumed (incorrectly) that generating rig would reparent. It did not. Reapplying the rig using rigafy did not, as I thought, recreate the parenting.  I needed to do both.  I will figure out the extra bones shortly.  Thanks.


apply one textures to others I'm modeled a a tree before some days and right now I'm trying to texture the leafs. Is it possible to just texture one of the hexagons as a leaf and to apply the texture of this one to the others ? Thank you.

As part of the same mesh, it would be very dificult, but you can separate the leafts into individual objects, that way you can put the same texture to all of them.

In order to do so, you must select all the leafts whit A and then Press P and choose by Loose Parts. then you can asing the same material to all the individual leafts.

It should be posible to use unwrap and uv textures to return them to the same object, but i'm  not so sure, so lets keep it that way, good luck.


how do i fill a blank keyframe with the keyframe that precedes it(note there are thousands of blank frames)? the dope sheet shows blank frames at frame 3 and 5

answer based on previous question

import bpy
import math
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')

# get keyframes of object list
def get_keyframes(obj_list):
    keyframes = []
    for obj in obj_list:
        anim = obj.animation_data
        if anim is not None and anim.action is not None:
            for fcu in anim.action.fcurves:
                for keyframe in fcu.keyframe_points:
                    x, y = keyframe.co
                    if x not in keyframes:
                        keyframes.append((math.ceil(x)))
    return keyframes

def get_without_keyframes(frames):
    s = bpy.context.scene.frame_start
    e = bpy.context.scene.frame_end

    k =[]

    while s <=e:
        if s not in frames:
            k.append(s)

        s+=1

    return k

# get all selected objects
selection = bpy.context.selected_objects

# check if selection is not empty
if selection:

    # get all frames with assigned keyframes
    keys = get_keyframes(selection)

    # print all keyframes
    print ("WHIT: ",keys.sort())
    print ("WHITout: ",get_without_keyframes(keys))

    # print first and last keyframe
    print ("{} {}".format("first keyframe:", keys[0]))
    print ("{} {}".format("last keyframe:", keys[-1]))

else:
    print ('nothing selected')


Spike particles that protrude outwards? I am trying to make a model of some sort of sea urchin, and I am using particles for the spines.  How can I make it so the spines go outwards from the center of the sphere?

In the Particle Properties tab check the box next to Advanced. After that it is possible to check the box next to Rotation. Under Rotation choose Normal-Tangent as the Orientation Axis.

Make sure to rotate the spike object in Edit Mode to get the desired alignment.
And it's also helpful to put the origin of the spike object at its base. (select the face at the base in Edit Mode, press Shift + S and choose Cursor to Selected. Then in Object Mode press the search key, F3 by default. Search "Set Origin" and choose Origin to 3D Cursor)


How to delete a scene with its content? I have two scenes and I want to delete one of them.

So I use the right-click menu to delete.

It works, but the problem is that the objects are still in the blender file. As we can see below, if I switch from All Scenes to Data-blocks in the Outliner it shows the sphere objects as well which were part of the deleted scene.

So is there a way to delete a scene with all its content (all the data-blocks)?

Blender uses a concept of 'users' of datablocks. When you create a sphere (or whatever) Blender creates the object and any associated datablocks (eg, the Mesh data) and links the object to the datablocks - ie, the object is a user of that datablock.

When you delete something (eg, an object, a scene) Blender removes the deleted item but leaves the datablocks outstanding - this is why the Sphere datablocks are still outstanding in your file, but they are 'unused'.

At the point of saving your .blend file, Blender checks each datablock to see if it has any users. Any datablock without users are automatically discarded at that point - so saving your file and then re-opening it should purge those 'unused' datablocks.

This purging of 'unused' datablocks can sometimes be a problem - eg, you have have created a number of elements (eg, animations or materials) that are not currently in use in your project. Left to its own devices, Blender will identify these as 'unused' and would purge them the next time you save your project. To avoid this you can add a 'Fake User' by clicking the 'F' against the material, action, etc. or in the Outliner. This 'fake' user ensures that the datablock is never purged as it is always flagged as 'in use'.

In summary, save your file and re-open it and those datablocks should no longer exist.


Is it possible to create a render layer with no depth of field? I find that using depth of field (DOF) distorts the render pass masks, especially for very out of focus objects with a low f-stop (large aperture).  I am trying to get around this by making a separate render layer with no DOF which I will only use for pass index masks.  But I have not found a way to use no DOF on a specific render layer.  So is it possible to tell blender to not use any DOF in a specific render layer, either directly or by using a different camera?

You can use multiple scenes:

Add a new scene by pressing the + at the top of the screen and selecting Link Objects:

This will link the objects into a new scene. This way modifying any object will change it in both scenes.
In the new scene, select the camera and unlink it from the first scene by pressing U> Object Data. Then set the camera's aperture size to 0 to disable DoF. Note that the aperture must be set to radius for this to work.
Then you can get the render results of both scenes in the compositor by using multiple renderlayer nodes:

Note that each scene has it's own compositing node tree, so it might be confusing if you have composite nodes in both scenes. I usually like to keep all the composite nodes in one scene.

If you add any new objects to one scene, they can be linked to the other scene by selecting them and pressing ⎈ CtrlL> Link objects to scene and then selecting the scene you want to link to.


Fluid Simulation: an object set as outflow doesn't remove all the "water" mesh I've set up a simple scene with an inflow source and an outflow object that the simulated mesh hits perfectly.
Here's a pic of my domain settings:

As you can see I'm using Fluid Particles setting but without any particle system outside this option. It gives me a more interesting and realistic result. The problem is this, however the Fluid Particle option gives me the desirable result in mesh definition, it also creates the secondary particle-mesh that doesn't get removed when it hits my outflow mesh and just goes through.
Here's the illustration:
 I even created an additional plane, you can see the black outline (it's solid, just set to wireframe render) and made it outflow, thinking that maybe my main mesh has some problems... didn't help.  What do you think is that a bug or I just missed something?

It does seem to be a bug and should be reported. Though it seems that there is currently no one maintaining the elbeem fluid sim code.

A possible work around would be to use a boolean modifier.

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=46863

Note that you'll need to bake first. I left the boolean modifier off (eye icon not checked) to illustrate that the boolean modifier removes the resultant fluid mesh, so you may need to tweak the boolean object to catch any particles/mesh that happen to move above the boolean object later in the animation.

Also, using a boolean modifier with a fluid sim mesh will likely really drag down the UI responsiveness.


Are there other ways to skin a mesh without Armature Deform with Automatic Weights? Because, I choose that option and it says "Failed to find solution for one or more bones". I, of course, put the rig inside the mesh. There is symmetry in my rig and they are appropriately named with bone.l or bone.r.. I tried several things.

I would be happy to provide any more details and thank you for any help you might provide.

You could parent the object to the armature with empty weights and then do the weights yourself. You might have better luck starting with a basic rig that is already linked into a shape and then match it up within your object and then try pairing it with automatic weights you might have better luck. Normally, it works, but there is always autorig pro, it has a smarter automatic weight painting system, you would probably like it.


The preview render its not the same as the final render Every time time I render, the preview render its not the same as the final render. You can see on the image, the preview render, show a lot shadow beyond the mountain and the final render its not the same.
Does anyone have a solution for this problem?

Delete Hidden Lights Because Blender renders even unchecked  lights


How to get the final volume & area of all selected objects (ignoring some faces)? The 3D print toolbox currently only outputs the volume/area of all faces.

How can I get the volume of selected mesh objects, ignoring certain faces?

Asking on behalf of a user who mailed me.

This can be done using the Python API to get the mesh with modifiers applied, then applying the transform matrix.
The following script applies to all selected objects, showing a popup with the final volume. Not that it does not use units or scene scale.
See is_face_volume for the method of checking if a face should be included in volume calculations.
import bpy
from bpy import context

# Quick way to test with/without hidden faces
USE_FILTER_FACES = True

def report_info(title="", message=""):
    # show in console
    print(title, message)
    # show in popup
    def draw_cb(self, context):
        self.layout.label(text=message)
    context.window_manager.popup_menu(draw_func=draw_cb, title=title, icon='INFO')

def is_face_skip(f):
    """Ignore faces that pass this test!"""
    return f.hide is False
    # You may want to filter based on material.
    # return f.material_index == 0

def bmesh_from_object_final(ob):
    import bmesh
    matrix = ob.matrix_world
    me = ob.to_mesh()
    me.transform(matrix)
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(me)
    if USE_FILTER_FACES:
        faces_remove = [f for f in bm.faces if not is_face_skip(f)]
        for f in faces_remove:
            bm.faces.remove(f)
    return (bm, matrix.is_negative)

def volume_and_area_from_object(ob):
    bm, is_negative = bmesh_from_object_final(ob)
    volume = bm.calc_volume(signed=True)
    area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces)
    bm.free()
    if is_negative:
        volume = -volume
    return volume, area

def main():
    volume = 0.0
    area = 0.0
    object_count = 0
    for ob in context.selected_objects:
        if ob.type != 'MESH':
            continue
        volume_single, area_single = volume_and_area_from_object(ob)
        volume += volume_single
        area += area_single
        object_count += 1
    volume = abs(volume)

    report_info(
        title="From %d object(s)" % object_count,
        message="Volume: %.4f, Area: %.4f" % (volume, area),
    )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()


Blender Cycles - Crash while synchronizing objects, Not even close to running out of memory I am trying to render a scene with 265,189 faces, using 4K textures. Half the time I try and render a frame, blender will suddenly close without an error message or crash log. I am rendering on GPU, but this error occurs on CPU as well.

Blender will close while "synchronizing objects"

here is what my task manager says while rendering:

Specs:

8 Gigabytes of ram

GTX 970 graphics card

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Here is what my command prompt says. This was after it successfully rendered 2 frames.

I managed to solve the problem by un-installing "jiggle armature 2" addon. I just completed a 250+ frame render with no crashes.


Scaling faces with drivers I'm starting to play with drivers but I can't do a simple thing. I created a driver to scale the faces of a cube, connected to the distance of an empty. The problem is that when the empty is near all the faces scale at the same time, instead I would like them to progressively scale (the ones closest to the empty begin to scale while the most distant remain with scales at 1). Is it possible using drivers?
Thank you all

I think the easiest thing for you to get this working is to do the following:

Separate all of the individual faces into their own objects.
Reset the origins of each face to their natural median point.
Parent all faces to another empty to make it easy to manipulate as a whole (move / rotate / etc...)

This step didn't work out all that well.

Change the driver on each object to calculate the distance between itself and the original empty you have shown.

I've included a file that demonstrates these instructions.

Here's the results:

Also for mass reproduction of the faces...

Make the driver work on a single face.
Alt + D duplicates with links, which preserves the driver data on the duplicated face


How to get wider view on orthographic camera? I want to catch a wider view of my model. I tried moving the camera back on y axis, but this seemed to do nothing. How can i come about this?

In red is how much i would like to see on render.

When using an orthographic camera the distance to the camera does not have any effect on the view.
Use Orthographic Scale to change the view instead.

The {Blender Manual](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/camera.html) illustrates the difference between perspective and orthographic cameras:

Perspective:
Focal Length/Field of View Control the field of view set by lens property or by angle as selected in the Lens Unit menu.

Orthographic Scale
Controls the size of objects projected on the image.

More info in this link:
What are the differences between Orthographic and Perspective views?


How can I copy frames from one action to another action? I have 3D model with an "Idle" action with a gun animation action. I click on the + button new action in the Action Editor and then rename it to "Walk" action. I create keyframes, but when I check the "Idle" action the keyframes are gone or deleted.

How can I make copy frames with security from one action to another action for not need make all work for new actions?

To solve this, you just have to put the armature(bones) to POSE MODE before copying the keyframes. Then copy (CTRL+C) the keyframes and paste (CTRL+V) to other action or a new action (+ button).


Meaning of Sun Lamp Size? In Cycles, a sun lamp is treated as infinitely far away - only the angle matters, not the position. Other lamps have their sizes defined in blender units: a point lamp with size 1 emits light from a area with size of 1. But if a sun lamp at infinity had a size of 1 blender unit, the angular arc of that sun would be nonexistent.

Clearly, when you change the size of a sun lamp, shadows get fuzzier or sharper. But what does that actually mean? What are you changing?

cegaton's answer nicely covers the practical impacts of the size setting (i.e. the shadows), but what you are actually setting is the apparent size of the sun lamp.
In other words, the size controls radius of the sun as seen by the camera (or any other light ray), regardless of distance.

To see this in action, create a perfectly reflective plane and point a sun lamp straight at it:

Enable Multiple Importance Sampling on the sun lamp to allow caustics, then look straight down at the plane in rendered view (so that the sun lamp should be reflected back towards you)

If you are not in ortho perspective (in which case the sun lamp will appear infinitely large), you should see a circle which varies in size depending on the sun lamp's size setting.

This circle — a reflection of the sun lamp — shows that the lamp always appears the same size regardless of the distance to the camera, unlike the reflection of a sphere positioned a finite distance away:

In this gif the sphere is invisible to camera rays, so in rendered view only its reflection is visible

So you could say the sun lamp size is defined in camera space, rather than world space.


Animation nodes execute on a condition I am trying to make animation node run on a specific frame. I compare the time info with the frame i want the node to execute on, and if they are equal, they return true. But I do not understand how do I execute an action if it returns true.

edit: Okay, so I used expression node to return a value if time info is equal to a specific frame. But is there another way?

There is a node called Switch, you plug in the condition, and 'if true' or 'if false', then connect the output to the rest of your nodes


BlenderKit Asset Bar turns black The BlenderKit Asset Bar turns all black, how can I fix or debug the issue?
After enabling BlenderKit, I started searching. The Asset Bar showed up and actually displayed models. But when I then moved the mouse (into 3D viewport / towards the bar), it turns all black. The green bar at the bottom of models (assumingly a "downloaded" indicator) is visible and so is the pop-up with the models' details (except that the image in the pop-up is all black, too).
Blender: 2.90.1 (portable), Windows 10 (64-bit)

Answering my own question after the issue went away without any intended action.
The bug tracking tool at https://developer.blender.org/ is a better source of information for such issues: a search for "blenderkit" reveals that other users had similar issues (not working, not displayed, even crashed), but many of these trouble tickets were then abandoned by the reporter.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Bug_Reports and https://youtu.be/JTD0OJq_rF4 are great sources on what to consider while debugging/reporting.


composition- managing distant view of large objects I'd like to simply create a mountain range,and the scene has to be fairly low angled. My test render for the scene is as shown below:

The mountains are approx 500 meters from the camera, and they need to appear big and in composition they should acquire 50% of the scene(i.e. with the horizon which is the lake in this case). Firstly I based this off of actual distance range in real life because I couldn't come with other ways, so I put the mountains 500m from camera and made them approx. 100ft tall but then they consumed the sky. Then I had to shrink them down. But, as you can see now the problem with the scene is that, the mountains look like small hills that I fairly close by and the horizon a small puddle, whereas I'd like them to appear far from the camera and the horizon should look like a vast ocean.

How do I achieve this? I'll attach the .blend below with the textures packed.

Here's the link

I think the main issue here is simply the viewpoint - in your scene the camera is actually about 54m above the surface of the lake; Suzanne is scales at 38m. As we (as humans) are used to viewing the world from about 1.5m above the 'floor', this throws out the perspective, giving the impression of a much smaller scene.

By simply moving the camera to about 2m from the surface of the lake you can get a much better perspective, making the mountains look much more distant :

Note that for added effect you could add a mist-pass in the compositor or blur based on distance for more realism.


How do you create the bone/armature structure for a 4-bar linkage? I have a four-bar linkage system in Blender and I need to animate it with bones and armatures. The meshes are in the initial position to start, I just need to create the constraints to keep all 4 linkages together. Normal bone structures are serial or tree linkages, with each child bone only having 1 parent bone. As I understand it, I need a way to make 4 bones all connect together. I do not know if there is a way to have multiple parents, or if there is a way of mimicking the parallel behavior with a serial manipulator. How do you create the bone setup and vertex groups for a parallel linkage? Does this make sense?
This is the wiki page for a four-bar linkage system, in case that helps.
Edit:
I see something similar here, but I don't quite get how they got to the answer. (Like a math question with an answer provided, but no work to show, as I understand it.)

Generally speaking, you'd create that via IK, which controls angles while keeping lengths constant:

That's your basic parallelogram IK, used for a lot of mechanical rigging. Note that it doesn't have to be a parallelogram-- if you build it with different lengths for your bones, different angles, it still behaves properly.
The IK target (and the first bone of the IK chain) is parented to root, while the last bone, "4", has a 4-bone-long IK bone constraint targeting the IK target.  No matter how you rotate the bones, the lengths will not change.
To adjust the structure, you rotate the IK controlled bones.


Can I make & Export an animated FBX mesh WITHOUT a skeleton / armature? I'm trying to model stylistic plants & trees, and i've made some simple animations to move them.
I've used modifiers and shape keys to achieve my desired effect.
Unfortunately, when exporting the FBX into Unreal Engine, the animation does not transfer correctly, even though it appears correct in the Blender timeline.
I have tried exporting as .MDD and importing again, which applies the motions as individual keyframes, but this does not play when importing into Unreal Engine. It seems that Unreal Engine requires a skeleton when displaying an animated mesh.
Does anyone have any advice for exporting an animated mesh with NO skeleton into a game engine?

you cant export animation without skeleton, you can use Mr Mannequins Tools plugin for blender if animation is not correct


Out of sync when I render whole the frames but it's OK when I render sub of it I have two video in blender with 30 frame/second for both of them. When I play the video in blender, everything is fine. When I use animation button for whole the frames, in the middle of video, audio and video are not sync, but when I do the same thing for just sub-frames (for example 200 frames), the output is Ok. I am totally confused and don't know what's the problem.

Blender has an integrated feature for this very problem. Under your timeline, you have a sync too. If you set this to 'Frame Dropping', it will skip some frames during playback if your fps rate is too slow. This way it keeps the video in sync with real time.


prevent add-on being enabled in lower Blender version than 2.8 is there a canonical solution to this?

I'm one of the developers of Sverchok and we are more frequently getting installation issues where people install the 2.79 version of Sverchok on Blender 2.8+. We maintain two different Sverchok codebases for Blender 2.79 and 2.8+, and they are massively, massively, different.

Is there anything simple we can stick in the __init__.py that will prevent the user from enabling the 2.79 version of the add-on in blender version 2.8.0 or above.

Blender 2.80 already protects against enabling incompatible add-ons. If the Blender version in the bl_info is too low, it will display a warning in the preferences. Blender will not run the register() function on these add-ons. However it does allow to tick the checkbox and the user may get the impression that it's properly enabled.

If you want to avoid that, you can check the Blender version and raise an exception in your __init__.py. This will prevent the checkbox from being enabled and the user gets an error message right away. I'm not sure if it will have the intended effect, since some users may not read or understand the error message.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Version Check Add-on",
    "author": "Robert Guetzkow",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Sidebar > My own addon",
    "description": "Checks if the correct version of Blender is used",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy

if bpy.app.version > (2, 79, 0):
    raise Exception("This add-on is incompatible with Blender versions newer than 2.79.\n"
                    "For Blender 2.8 please download the version from the following link:\n"
                    "[insert link here]")

class EXAMPLE_PT_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "My own addon"
    bl_category = "Name of your tab"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label("Congratulations, your Blender version is supported.")

classes = (EXAMPLE_PT_panel,)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Is it possible to keyframe visibility of every object in the scene at the exact same time in Blender 2.79? I have a huge scene and there's a glitch where everything becomes invisible to the camera and I want to keyframe everything to be visible without going 1 by 1.

You can run a small Python script to make all objects visible and insert keyframes:

import bpy

for every_object in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    every_object.hide = False
    every_object.hide_render = False
    every_object.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide")
    every_object.keyframe_insert(data_path="hide_render")

You would need to copy that into a new text block in the text editor in Blender and hit the Run Script button.

However I do not believe this will be of much help to you, unless the 'glitch' where everything becomes invisible to the camera is caused by you accidentally keying visibility of objects.

Glitches in Blender are really not that likely. Usually it is safe to assume that you did something wrong or did not do something right if you observe some glitch-like behavior. It would be logical to try to figure out what that was in order to fix it. That should at least be the first thing to do.


Disable double sided faces in Blender 3D View For Debugging purposes in Animations I would like to disable Blenders default both sided rendering of faces in the 3D view. Is this possible?

In Properties panel N find section "Shading" -> "Backface culling":


It is possible to mask a Image Texture with Emission? It is possible to mask a Image Texture with Emission on Blender, like adding soft borders or something and being able to control them, without having the need or external softwares?

As you can see, i have an image on my Render (The Sun, middle one), and i need to control the borders since are too hard and i do need a mask.

Set up the nodes as pictured below to achieve it. Just use a Gradient Texture as a mask. Set its type to Quadratic Sphere.


Light Path Node and Mix Shader I am watching this tutorial on Light Path Nodes and in the image below the Light Path node is connected to a Mix Shader.

When connecting the "Camera Ray" socket to the Mix Shader the lower Shader is selected as being the Camera Ray. Why is this ? Why is not the other Shader selected ?

The factor of the Mix Shader node is the fraction of the second shader that contributes to the output shader.  If the factor is 0.8 then the output shader will be 80% the second input and 20% the first input.

The Is Camera Ray output (along with most of the other Light Path outputs) is a boolean (true = 1, false = 0).  So if the ray is a camera ray (true), the value going to the mix factor will be 1 and the output will be 100% the second shader input.


Spin tool is not shown in toolbar when trying to spin a curve I am trying to find the spin tool in Blender version 2.68. It's not on the left panel. Should I check something in the preferences?

Here is a screenshot:

The spin tool does not work with curves, it's specifically made for meshes. There aren't really any alternatives other than rotating around the 3D cursor.

To rotate around the 3D cursor:

Press . to set the pivot point to the 3d cursor.
Position the cursor at the center of the turn.
Extrude e and rotate the curve.

Tweak the handles so it's curved:

If you don't care if the object is a curve you could convert it to a mesh (Altc) and work with it from there.


Strange liquid appearance inside glass I am trying to make a simple scene where there is a glass bottle with some liquid inside of it. To make the liquid, I just sliced a sphere in half, gave it a volume and glass shader, and put it inside the bottle.

When I rendered it (Blender Cycles 2.83 Beta), I noticed some very strange things appearing in the liquid. (Look below)

Here is the .blend- before discovering this issue, I wanted to replace the liquid with fluid simulation. The objects that you won't need to investigate should be hidden from view.

Here is a closer view with the problems labeled:

As you can see, the borders of the liquid inside the glass have a strange "pixelated" look that does not match the resolution of the image, nor does it look realistic.

For lighting, I am using a completely black environment. I added a red and blue light next to each other to use as the main lighting.

I can also guarantee that there are no intersecting surfaces. I have no idea why this is happening. I also couldn't find any other people who have experienced a similar issue.

How it looks depends on what liquid that is. The 'pixelation' is because of the mesh of the glass shaded flat. You need smooth shading for it. However there are many more problems here. There is only one interface for light traveling from glass to liquid here so there should be only one surface, not two with a gap between them and you need to take IOR into consideration which is different when light goes from glass to liquid than the 'regular' IOR that everyone is used to that is usually between the material and air. You will have to look into physics to make it look right. See: Liquid / glass interface IOR and normals in Cycles


How to copy F-Curve Modifier(s) from one object to multiple objects in Blender 2.8x I have an object that animates to float up and then starts slowly rocking in mid-air.

I achieved this by using the Noise modifier for the different location/rotation values and it looks good, my only challenge now is somehow copying all those different modifiers to 30 different individual objects but as far as I'm aware Blender doesn't support this functionality natively, so I looked online and came across this old post but I'm not sure entirely what I'm doing and if it even applies to 2.8x

If anyone could help me execute this efficiently I'll be so thankful!

If you're still wondering about this, here is a way that can speed things up hopefully.

Copy the modifier, select all the other objects and filter to show the curves you want to paste to, then select all the curves and hit paste. Now make sure the "Only Active" option is deselected and you're done.


How to rotate bone perpendicular to plane with parent bone If I have two bones, with one parented and connected to the other, How would I rotate the second bone around the axis perpendicular to the plane with it and the parent?

For instance, in the following image the desired axis of rotation would be the global Y-axis.

Obviously in this situation I could just hit R > Y, but how would I do this in a situation where the bones are not nicely lined up with the world axes?

Edit:

Here is something I have noticed, when I rotate a bone or selection of bones, it seems to only rotate the heads/tales of the bones around the pivot point, it doesn't actually rotate the bones themselves.  Here is an image describing what I mean.  I took 2 bones, duplicated them, and rotated each one a different amount.  Notice how in each case, the second bone has not rotated, it's sides are still parallel to the x and y axes.  It seems that if the bone actually rotated then rotating on the local coordinates of the bone would do what I want.

A bone and it's parent form a triangle, you can snap a polygon to it with vertex snap:

Next switch to Normal gizmo/manipulator and save the transform to use it on the bones:

It is not very convenient, maybe there is addon for it but I rarely need to do this.


How to get objects to follow camera rotation What I want to have done is have an object follow the camera's rotation so that the camera is always seeing a specific face. Think of it this way: of any of you have played Minecraft, you may have noticed that the particles that are rendered in-game can never be viewed from the side. The rotate when you rotate, because they're two-dimensional and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to see them from their very depth-less side. So to speak, what I'm actually trying to do is a Minecraft themed scene. I'm trying to imitate those particles rendering within Blender. Any ideas?
Thanks!

You could add a "Track to" constraint to your object. The target should be the camera, and the To/Up values depend on what's appropriate for your model.


Can't see animation after exporting to video I started using Blender a few days ago...

For some reason, after I rendered the animation to a video file, I was left with this grid (see screenshot). How do I go back to the 3D Viewport where I can edit the animation? The wierd thing is that I can see the camera's perspective just fine in the upper right. (I'm using Blender 2.77a)

Hover your cursor over the grid and key Esc until the grid goes away (probably twice).

What has happened is that because you selected Image Editor in the Properties panel > Render tab > Render dropdown, your computer rendered your video by switching the screen that was previously there (a 3D Viewport) to a UV/Image Editor.

I generally select New Window, because then you can simply X out of the window once it is done.


How to keep shape of geometry when adjusting mesh? Using insets changes surrounding geometry.

The issue is that whenever insetting I or Extrude + Scale (E+S) the surrounding geometry changes.

Is there a way to accomplish this task without effecting the look of the surrounding mesh (or at least make it seem that the surrounding geometry belongs with the rest of the geometry).

I've attached some pictures:
click to enlarge

In the pictures notice how everything is smooth in image 1 but by image 4 the surrounding areas after the inset seem like something was modified. Now if I want to extrude that little section in image 4 inside the mesh and create a cave, the surrounding mesh will just look weird.

Whenever you have an object you want to smooth by adding geometry you should always try to work solely with quads (which you are doing right). However, vertexes which have more than 4 edges connected will result in an uneven smooth.

Topology like the image below is better but still not perfect. It really depends on what your end use is.
You, can add more or less sharpness by inserting 'edge loops' closer or further from the borders (which only works with good topology).

A better way going about modeling this would be something like the following image: (not perfect but should help you get on the right path)


Why are the control points/inner lines on the inside of cup leaking out when I zoom out? Zoomed out view: https://i.postimg.cc/9fzndvY0/image.png

When i zoom in: https://i.postimg.cc/3JHHFJqq/image.png

Wireframe view: https://i.postimg.cc/gj5JJ9sh/image.png

Blender file (the cup is on layer 2) : https://www95.zippyshare.com/v/2nyeVtve/file.html

Pretty sure I am doing something wrong here, I just don't know what it  is.

Could some help me identify it?

Set the clip end distance to a smaller value (it's in the view tab,
  press N if you can't find it)

Thanks @sacrish


Cycles Render Still fine, Animation Gray I have searched the forums some and am still coming up short on fixing my issue :(.

I am just getting back into blender after a few years break and have already hit a snag.

To the point.

I created a character/walk cycle and set up a scene.
I can render out a still image perfectly fine, but when I try to render out the animation, I only get gray images.

Above shows the image in object mode/rendered mode/ and the little OpenGL render active viewport button. I also have tried to show my settings and outline as best as possible.

Below is a split image. The top (red outline) is when I render out a still image (I stopped it mid render, just showing that it works fine) and the bottom part of the image shows when I try to render out the animation by selecting the animation button.

I have gotten the animation to render by impending the file in a new blend file, but would like to know how to fix it instead. I looked back at my earlier saves and they too are having the issue. I'm completely lost and would appreciate the help so much! I thank you kindly!

I also made sure there were no hidden objects that were blocking the view and made sure the clipping distance was completely fine for my setup.

EDIT

Added the .blend file

By looking at your .blend file, I've noticed that your character is on layer 1, while your RenderLayer is set to render only layer 2.

Selecting layers 1, 2 and 9 in the RenderLayer "Scene" checkboxes I managed to have the animation work fine.


Possible bug? Sculpt Mode -> Simplify Brush is affecting far side of mesh I am using the simplify brush with dynamic topology turned on, so that I can manually remesh my object, which is a head.

Everything works until I get to the ear, and try to reduce triangle density on the back of the ear (while leaving the front unchanged).

The problem I'm getting is that sometimes the brush punches through and starts operating on the far face. Even though I've checked "front faces only".

You can in the picture; I've been editing the back of the ear, and I've just turned it round to inspect the damage.

I'm guessing this is because the ear is thin?

Anyway, is there any way to prevent this?

It can be a bug, or something in developement.

For you question: You can use various Mask tools / operations to temporally "block" the areas from being affected. For example, There is a brush type called Mask (or press M to switch to it), and also a menu category called Hide/Mask on the 3d View header when in Sculpt mode.

However, to quickly meet what you need, you can ShiftCtrlLMB to drag the block area (it will be shown in dark grey). Then just paint. When finishing, clear the mask by AltM.


Mirror Modifier is visible in object mode but disappears in edit mode I made a circle in Blender and added a mirror modifier to it after deleting one-half of the circle. The mirror showed while in object mode, but when I switched to edit mode to start sculpting my character; the mirror disappeared.

How can I make the Mirror Modifier work properly?

You need to enable "Display modifier in edit mode". This icon is of a box with four orange corners, and can be found on the modifier node with the other visibility settings.

Box
Displays the modified geometry in edit mode, as well as the original geometry which you can edit.

Without:

And with:

If you enable the Triangle option next to the box one you can then also edit the transformation caused by the modifier on edit mode

Triangle
When enabled, the final modified geometry will be shown in edit mode and can be edited directly.

For a detailed description on the use of these options read this page of the Blender manual.


Bump map painting brush problem Hello i am trying to make a bump map but when ever i try to paint the brush gives me a ugly grainy look and i can't figure this out, i tried in a new project and it does the same thing

I checked for all those things but nothing works...

I'm just rewriting this whole answer i response to your edits, which reveal that the problem is with your node setup.

There are two (or more) ways to do one bump.  One is to use the displacement output with a material with bump displacement enabled.  The other is to use a bump map node to distort a normal and feed that into a shader.  Usually, not both (although there can be times for that as well.)

The easier, more typical way to do it is via displacement output.  Displacement expects a value.  Not a shader.  But you're plugging the output from a glossy BSDF into displacement.  That doesn't make any sense.

Here's proper node setup for bump mapping.  The image is 32 bit, which I recommend for bump textures, and I've just drawn manually, in UV edit paint mode, with brushes at default settings other than size.  Notice that to modulate the bump map, I've run it through a multiply (math) node, rather than using a bump node.  Although it can be a bad idea to run nodes from color to value, here it's fine, as it's just a grayscale image.


Cannot make plane follow bezier or path This is an really basic question, but I have been trying to solve it for for 45 minutes. Here is the blend file with the setup.

I've tried this Why doesn't the road follow the curve?
but it did not work.
The curve modifier, and above the array moddifier, with all the correct parameters, did not work.
Three possible scenarios:

The plane just disappeared
It go scaled massively
Even with applying the transforms, it still did not work.

what are you trying to do exactly? First you need to make some corrections: In Edit mode delete the vertex that is far away from your main plane, to do it select the plane with the lasso, then Ctrl i to inverse the selection and catch the lone vertex, then X to delete. Also in Object mode apply the scale of the plane and curve. Now as the plane is a bit shorter than the curve, if you ask a Fit Type > Fit Curve it will duplicate once. You can choose the curve in the Curve modifier. If the plane scales crazy, it's because the curve's vertex radius are very high, so in Edit mode select them and in the 3D View N panel bring them down to 1. And if you want the plane to begin at the beginning of the curve, put the origin of the curve at this point.


How to detect when object it is on-screen? bge I was wondering if it is possible to detect an object when is on-screen/visible to the camera? This feature should NOT detect an object when it's behind another object.

I highly doubt this question has been asked before. Please help...

This is easy enough from python by casting a ray from the camera to the object:

import bge
own = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
cam = own.scene.active_camera
own_screen_pos = cam.getScreenPosition(own)
result = cam.getScreenRay(*own_screen_pos, 100)
if result == own:
    print("The object can be seen")
else:
    print("The object cannot be seen")

Be aware this will only check the centerpoint of the object rather than the edges.


How can I learn basic anatomy/proportions good enough to where I can sculpt a basic head from scratch I did this but I got frustrated and quit.

I've found that when starting out modeling a head, it's helpful to insert a background image and simply draw the head by extruding a vertex around it. Then you can add depth to the head and make it look realistic. These two videos got me started with the basics of modeling a head from scratch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifFD8iD976g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LwQO_tWTAQ

To add a reference image to model from, first press numpad 1 to go to front view. If the view isn't already orthographic, press numpad 5 to switch to orthographic. Then, press the N key to open the right toolbar, and scroll down to "Background Images". Check the box, then expand the menu and click Add Image. Set the Axis as "Front", then click Open to open the image you want to use. Do the same thing for the left, right, and back views, but make sure the image you use for those views is truly of that part of the head. For example, make sure from the left orthographic view you can see the image of the left side of the head. Once the image is added, you can change the opacity of it with the slide under the background image menu.

Hope this helps!


Id map corner borders I am painting my model in substance painter. My end goal is to be able to have a clear black border at each corner. Line this:

After asking around, it was suggested to me to do an id map like below. The person who suggested that did it in 2 seconds, but didnt want to explain how he did it ... So I am asking here. Is it possible to isolate all the edges and then bake id map based on them in Blender? I have been struggling to do that for 3 days, but each method I try isnt nearly as clear/precise as the id map below.

Ok I finally figured it out. It is not as good as the color map from above, but its close enough... Here is what I did, if anyone has the same problem:
Add those nodes in the blender shader nodes and click on viewport shading (with cycles renderer) You can adjust the border from the bevel node.


Getting 0 Volume for object I am trying to calculate the volume of a 3D scanned object using the 3D Print add on.

The object was captured with a structure sensor/ipad and then imported to Blender (version 2.79). The scanned model is of a small box (~8x3x6cm), so simple at this stage. As the object didn't have a base when imported, I followed instructions from this web site to add a base using re-mesh and then smoothed.

I activated the 3D Print add on and changed to metric units with cm selected. I then asked the program to calculate the Volume of the object in the 3D Printing tab. The volume comes up as 0.0 cm³.

There are dimensions in the right hand side panel under "Transform" of 81.38x23.00x59.80 um. Again this isn't quite right as the dimensions should be about 80'000x30'000x60'000 um given my physically measured box.

Any help in getting the volume calculation function to work would be appreciated.

μm is Micrometre, one thousandth of a millimetre (0.001 mm or about 0.000039 inch).
If you try to calculate the volume of 81.38x23.00x59.80 um it will be around 0,0001mm3 or 0,0000001cm3 that is to small and rounded.

If you want to measure object in imperial units you need to go to scene tab and select this unit system from presets: