What do I need to do to get started making 3D models of aircraft? Newb at this, took early retirement and now have a ton of time on my hands. I tried to find a better place to post this, but other options didn't look any better.

I want to start creating 3D models of aircraft of flight simulators.
I'm wondering besides Blender, what do I need to get started, do I need 3 views of the AC I want to model, to pull dimensions or measurements from?

A good place to get general advice is Blenderartists.org forums. Blender Stack Exchange is more for questions that can be answered fully and the answers should be based on facts and not opinions. So I will try to talk about some facts here, but obviously the answer will not follow the guidelines of the platform, that's going to be mostly my opinion.
It is a fact that you need to know what you are modelling in order to model it.
"Know" here might mean a few things: imagine, see, have some specifications, technical drawings and so on. Reference data is often underestimated. Do you need 3 views? I would say no, the views are not what you need, they are just the means of getting what you need, which is understanding, seeing, knowing the shapes and forms you need to model. This basically means that you need absolutely everything you are able to get about the object you are modelling: blueprints, technical drawings photos, videos, measurements, 3d scans - whatever you can get.
You also need skills to do 3d modelling
It's probably a very good idea to start learning with a specific project that gives you the motivation, but it is still necessary to familiarize yourself with the basics and tools available to you before jumping into it. You will find many great tutorials online on YouTube or elsewhere. See: https://www.blender.org/support/ for start - it is actually very useful. I would suggest going through all the items in the menus and making sure you understand what they do - that helps. I am talking about Object menu:

and all the menus and sub-menus in the 3d viewport's header that you get if you enter edit mode of a mesh:

That will get you started faster.
I would also advice starting learning modelling with something more simple than a plane and something that you can have in your hands while modelling and could also make all the reference images you need yourself. Lack of reference data is a big problem when modelling so when you start you might want to get it out of the way completely at first until you learn the tools at least. I see many beginners struggle with things advanced users would absolutely struggle too if they worked with the same amount of reference data. Good modellers know this and address this issue and that's why they are able to get better results easier.
You also need time and patience
You mentioned you have plenty of time - so that's great. I would just like to mention it because it is often a surprise just how much of it you need to learn and do this. There is probably going to be a lot of doing and re-doing stuff and re-doing it again at the beginning. This might get frustrating at times. I think it is important to know that this is how it goes - it's normal, and if you get frustrated during the process, you are doing it right. I do 3d modelling as part of my job every day for a while now and it still sometimes gets me - I fail and get frustrated from time to time. It's important to carry on and keep working until the job is done despite of it.


How do I achieve a Shader Similar to Super Hot's Furniture and Enemies? I've been playing around with cycle nodes for the better part of 2 days in Blender, but I'm getting no closer to my desired result. Instead, I'm getting washed out colors or terrible refractions.

I'm trying to get a shader close to what was used for Super Hot game, for rendering out some sprites for a cyber punk like game.

Here's the shader in question

This is what my model currently looks like.

The initial idea of the art direction was to have the world be represented by polygons roughly representing the volumes of the world. Everything would have a Glassy look with a careful color scheme to prevent the risk of color shock.

The models would be rendered into isometric sprites.

My initial process was because the model looks chisiled, I should try and make it a gem. Unfortunately, even though I am a programmer at heart, I have absolutely no experience with shaders.

I honestly do not care for photorealism... so I will be perfectly fine with any weird hacks. My main requirement is that many of the polygons will be well represented and there will be blown out highlights.

So... Can you show me the way?

A side note, some of the polygons are nonplanar, which causes that triangulated look in some areas, while other's were on purpose. Any tips here would be appreciated too.

Here's the blend:

It's a bit of a mess. I am sorry.

I think you may achieve similar effect using Layer Weight (Facing) node for a mixing factor of Diffuse and Glossy shaders. A little bit of compositing (adding Glare (Fog Glow) node) may be also needed.

Set up the nodes as pictured below (experiment with Layer Weight's Blend and Glossy shader's Roughness values). To achieve a stripped pattern add a Wave Texture (Bands) node and adjust it's scale.

My lighting setup: Two Area Lamps with pure white color- key light (Strenght-10000, Size-0.1) and fill light (Strenght-2000, Size-0.1).

To make it look better go to compositing nodes and add a Glare Node (Fog Glow) and increase its Threshold and Size.

Animated result:


Sun Lighting in Cycles render I'm following a tutorial but it appears to be in an older version of Blender, under the cycles render, I have my Lamp set to Sun but I am unable to find an option to control its strength, I've looked online but wasn't successful in finding and answer, can anyone help me?

Thanks,
Darren.

I found out, one has to enable Use Nodes button (either in Properties editor or in the Node editor with lamp selected) which will make Emission and Lamp Output nodes appear in the node tree used to control strength information.


Can't select bone in pose mode and object together I want to select a bone and an object and then go to weight paint mode, but Blender won't let me select the object when I'm in pose mode, the lock object mode in edit menu is unchecked. Why will it still not let me select one bone and the object together?

You don't need to have them selected together to enable weight painting for that particular bone. To have the settings for weight-painting a certain bone's affect on an object, you must select that bone in pose mode, and then just select the object the bone is controlling. There is no need to select them at the same time, as this can not be done in pose mode.


Multiple materials per polygon? I need a way to have multiple materials per polygon. Basically what I want is to have one "layer" of materials to create a colorID mask and another "layer" to export a mesh with the correct Texture Sets for Substance Painter (the latter creates a separate texture for each material the mesh has). In most of my cases the two don't match (I want multiple colorIDs on the same Texture Set-material) so I idealy need a way to have a single mesh, which I can dynamically change, while having two layers of materials on it, where I can disable/enable a single layer to make an export.

I thought of have a feeling that one can do it by splitting the object in blender into several objects and then writing a script that assigns a single material to each object, but It would be preferable for me to have a single object with two material layers.

Another idea I had is to use vertex groups, but they are invisible in viewport and should still be manually selected to apply materials every time before export (and I do export often). Maybe there is a modifier that can allow two cloned meshes on two different layers, both of which change whenever you change any of them, while maintaining unique materials on each layer?

Maybe this can be realised (if I understand your question correctly, that is) by utilizing Blenders ability to link materials to the object instead of the object data, as it does by default. What I'm talking about is this little dropdown here:

What that does is, it tells Blender to keep track of Material assignments by storing the assignment on the object instead of the object data (the mesh itself). The trick now is to use instances of the same object, and assign different sets of materials to those instances. You can instantiate the objects using Alt + D, and verify the presence of an instance if there is a number appearing at the mesh datablock:

Now, if you have a setup like this, which the three heads instanciated:

and you move a vertex in edit mode:

after getting back to object mode, you have this:

So you can now edit the mesh once, but export different objects with different materials at any time from it.


The properties window changed its layout to landscape I have a UI problem: the "properties" window changed into landscape format for some reason.

How can I fix it, without reloading the factory settings?

Right click right of the property tab title, roughly here:

Select Vertical from the dialog that appears.


Is the Principled shader a combo of all shaders? I heard that the new Principled shader is a combination of all the other shaders. Is it true? If yes, then can you please list all of the shaders/nodes that are obsolete now.

No. The Principled BSDF shader is a combination of several other shaders, but it is not a replacement for them. From the Blender Manual:

  It is based on the Disney principled model also known as the “PBR” shader, making it compatible with other software such as Pixar’s Renderman® and Unreal Engine®. Image textures painted or baked from software like Substance Painter® may be directly linked to the corresponding parameters in this shader

None of the current nodes are obsolete or deprecated. There are, however, two main advantages to this shader:

First, as you pointed out, it is a combination of the other shaders, using physically based formulae. This means that we can plug is colors and values without having to worry whether or not what we are creating looks realistic. (This means that it has built-in Fresnel).

This second advantage is that it uses Disney's standardized shading model, making it so that results with Cycles should match up with results in Renderman, Unreal and Substance Painter. This can save a lot of time, especially for someone who switches between software.

It isn't a replacement for any nodes, though, since it might be faster or simpler to just use more basic nodes.

Of the 16 other shading nodes (not including Add, Mix, and Principled), these 5 can be replicated with Principled BSDF:

Anisotropic BSDF
Diffuse BSDF
Glass BSDF (called Transmission)
Glossy BSDF (called Specular)
Subsurface Scattering1

Principled BSDF does not cover any Volumetric shaders, transparencies other than Glass, or more specialized effects like Velvet2, Toon, Ambient Occlusion, or Hair.

1 While this does simulate Subsurface Scattering, it does not use the same algorithms as the Cycles Subsurface Scattering node, see this answer.

2 The sheen property is meant to simulate cloth, and so is similar to the Velvet shader. The Velvet shader has more options though (and I assume slightly different equations), so I wouldn't consider it an exact duplicate.


Problem with recalculating normals in a complex mesh I have a mesh with a complex topology and some of the faces normals facing inwards.

I have tried to recalculate the normals with Ctrl+N but there are still faces that won't flip.

Any suggestions on what is going on with my mesh?

Problem

Part of your problem, and this is what's likely making Blender a little confused on how you want it calculated, is you have faces intersecting other faces. Blender doesn't really calculate that scenario well, because it can't tell which faces are inside and which are outside. However, you do have options available to you, if editing your mesh is either too much hassle or you absolutely must have it done this way. Your first option is to simply add a thickness modifier with a low value, apply, and recalculate it again. However, this is going to, at minimum, double your vertex count. It could play nicely without applying the modifier, but it's never done that for me (I hope you prove to be an exception). As well, you'll still have intersecting geometry, which is the crux of your problem.

Next option: Duplicate your problematic model in object mode. DON'T MOVE IT. Add a Boolean modifier and change the setting to union. Select you original object from the drop down. Apply the modifier. Now hold shift and select your original model via the outliner window (the one at the top right that lists your objects). Join them together by using CTRL + J. Now go into edit mode of your new object and select everything. Finally, remove doubles by either searching for the function or using the option on the toolshelf (the same general area of the screen where you find the flip and recalculate normals options). You might should still add a very slight thickness to it to help with light calculation, but this should at least make it easier to fix your normal facing issue.


Render textured mesh of multiple materials without light I have a textured mesh of a house consisting of 94 materials. What I would like to do is render from the inside different sections of the mesh but without the effect of light. I want the rendered equirectangular image to show the actual colors of the texture without shadows or other casts of light which might potentially change the original color of the textures. What I am getting now is just a black rendering as there is no source of light inside the mesh.
Is this possible? I've seen different posts about doing this but only focusing on one material. How should I go about tackling a arbitrary amount of materials?
Thanks!

There are various ways of getting control over your shadow.  Shadows, ambient occlusion, and contrast can be controlled by nodes in the compositing window to to get the look you want.
I think that turning off the shadows cast by lights falling on the objects in your room, and turning on the ambient occlusion on these materials may help.
I am not sure exactly what nodes in the compositing editor you should add in order to control the shadows in the way you want, typical choices are mix nodes, or color ramps.


Extrude inward, while preserving faces When I extrude (vertex normals) outward, I give these faces some volume, making it no longer just plain flat faces:

https://gyazo.com/f21c91780b37273c3325a90b0a1ef6c5 (gif)

However, when I attempt to do the same but inward, you see that it does not give exactly the volume the way it does when I do it outward:

https://gyazo.com/5856edbaa9d5d491a2ad230f844078ab (gif)

I'm trying to create a shape similar to this:

I want to give the columns extrusion volume, but inward, not outward!

Make the basic shape

Add solidify modifier (with positive number)

Go in edit mode and select the top circle and Press Alt+D to duplicate

With duplicate just separate pressing "P"-> selection

Extrude the circle and to make extruding inside or inward

In the solidify modifier tab (with the same number just add a negative sign infront of it)


Depth of Field and Depth Pass problem I seem to be having some trouble getting the look I need from DOF. Below is a render I did with DOF enabled:

At first, everything looks fine, but, the corners of the glass box is also blurring, which is not what I want. I only need the background objects to be blurred. So then I looked for other ways of doing this. I settled with using the Depth pass and Defocus node. This is the result:

So great, the glass box is in focus and the background blurred. The problem now is that objects behind the glass box, like the objects in the background, isn’t blurred when looking at them through the glass box, which isn’t surprising considering how depth maps work,
So my question is, is there a way to use the Depth map with the other passes like glossy to get the result I want?
Here is my blend file
help.blend
Using Blender 2.91.2
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all
(Please note, this is a cross post from Blender Artist)

Depth of field requires a bit of knowledge to make it work to your advantage, as it is the combination of many factors:

Lens size

Sensor size

Focus distance

Aperture of the iris ($f$ stop)

Depth of field is not an absolute term, but is relative to the size of the final image, and there is also a subjective factor as it is usually defined by "the area where things are acceptably sharp", based on the size of circles of confusion
What you need to find is a combination of lens, distance and F stop where the elements you want are in focus and the rest is not.
To have a smaller area that is sharp and selective focus, a trick is to use a much larger sensor size than the default one, which will force you to use longer lenses to keep the same field of view. Longer lenses will have a shallower depth of field.
To find the right combination there are quite a few online calculators for depth of field, use your favorite search engine to find one that you like.
There is an addon for blender, developed by @p2or, to visualize the depth of field in blender. Read:
How to display F-stop limits in viewport?
I don't know if this works correctly in current versions.
Additional links:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field)
How do I set focus range?


What programs make a roughness map? It seems with the PBR materials that some tutorials are using a roughness map. Some say this is an inverted spectacular map but I don't really know that much about it. While is seems that people are using roughness maps I don't know how they are generating them or what programs they are using aside from  Substance B2M. If the roughness map seems to be used in Blender then what other programs create a roughness maps?

I don't own Photoshop so that option is out for me.

Thanks

For Specular based shader system you need:

specular texture (effects the reflection color)
glossiness texture (effects the reflection sharpness)

In Cycles is used roughness, which is inverse of glossiness
In Blender Internal it is called hardness

For Metalness based shader system you need:

roughness texture (effects the reflection sharpness, inverse of glossiness)
metalness texture (effects how much is surface dielectric or metal)

You can make PBR shaders with both systems and you can convert between them too. A good article about this all is on Marmoset's site.

You can create these textures in multiple ways:

directly paint them with any 2D capable application (Photoshop, Krita, Gimp, Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, just about almost everything.. MsPaint, ..)
generate them from photographs (N Render, Substance B2M, Quixel, etc.)
generate them from (procedural) material by baking (Substance Designer, Blender, 3DMax, Maya, ..)


Armature breaks apart my objects which are Ctr-J'd to form a solar panel array deploying? How do I prevent the bendiness? I tried rigid body constraints with no luck. Should I go back to that approach?

Do you need those little connection pieces at the hinges to stay together? If that is what's wrong, it's because you didn't merge the vertices. Or maybe you thought you did, but you have face-caps in the way (you might need to delete the faces where 2 pieces connect in order to merge the vertices).

I don't really notice any "bendiness" unless it is happening at those little pieces and I can't see it so well. You can fix that by weight painting each solar panel solid red for only it's associated bone's vertex groups (and paint that region solid blue for all other vertex groups): select the mesh, go to "weight paint" mode (chosen from same drop down as Edit/Object modes dropdown). Press the N key. Click the weight paint tab in that menu if it isn't already open. Scroll down until you see the part that lets you control the Falloff. Select "constant" falloff. This will paint vertices a solid color.

Now go into the Data panel (the tab on the right that looks like a green triangle) and you will see your vertex groups for each bone. Select and work on those one at a time, coloring each vertex between the 'hinges' solI'd red (or erasing color if necessary) so each bone affects ALL of just one panel and it's half of those little end pieces.

That will do it. Easier than it sounds. Might take you 5 minutes.


Sequence from another scene imported into current scene causes only audio to render I created a "blender scene" each for scene i am going to work Ex
"Sc_1","Sc_2","Sc_3"

Then i Create One more "Blender scene" called "Complete" and shift+A
add scenes "Sc_1","Sc_2","Sc_3"

I have set Render > Post-processing > Sequencer Only

When render or preview I see no image but hear audio. What could cause this?

In the VSE preview window (where the video should appear) check the display properties (N) and make sure that the OpenGL render is switched off. As it shows only the 3D view in place of the rendered output or that of the compositor.

While there check the proxy display value, it should be No Proxy 100%.


knife tool 2.8- used in past with no problems Vertices are not appearing when I drag with the knife tool across the object in edit mode. Am I missing a toggle somewhere? I would include a picture/screenshot but wouldn't really show you anything except knife hovering above the object.  I have used this tool with no problem before and I am thinking maybe there is something disabled that is critical to the tool.

In blender 2.8, the knife function does not work in view clip start 0.001, try to fix it to 0.01.


Rotate only an extrusion On this site:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?283909-ramp-modeling

Poster Kaluura gave an excellent demo of ramp building.  I've done a lot of complex shapes but I couldn't get the ramp to work and make the edges meet other objects in my scene properly.  This demo looks like it will do the trick and I understand most of the steps.  I'm actually stuck near the beginning however, because in step 2, he has a nice graphic and says "Extrude without moving. Rotate the extruded loopcut on the Z axis around the 3D cursor."

I can't seem to rotate the extruded face while leaving the original face in place.  Can someone more experienced and wiser translate this step for me?   Thanks.

You notice his cursor is offset to the left so when he rotates the face, it rotates around the cursor position instead of in-place.  To get that effect you need to make sure you are using 3D Cursor as your pivot point before rotating the face.  The button for pivot point is at the bottom of the 3D view next to the viewport shading button.


What do the new popover "Normals" in 2.80 do? How to use it? I noted a new popover in mesh edit mode:

I try to play with it, add custom split normals, auto smooth, but see nothing happens with model.

How to use it, or it just doesn't work?

It seems normals can be set with tools like Set From Faces, Average Normals, Point Normals to Target or Smoothen, but Set Strength or Face Select in the Mesh->Normals menu does not work at all unless Weighted Normal Modifier is added and Face Influence in it is enabled. Those Face Strength settings are the same as in Properties Editor's Active Tool and Workspace tab and they are for Set Strength in Mesh->Normals menu:

Keeping in mind how absolutely ridiculous and unnecessarily complex this functionality is, I would be surprised if it makes it into 2.80 release as it is now. Hopefully it will change to something a lot more logical.


How can I clear the weight from outsiders vertex when weight painting? I can not fix a problem with a vertex to which I can not eliminate the weight of a certain bone. The worst thing is that I can add weight, but never subtract weight.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Let's say we have a nice and happy cube

Oh no they got sick!

The doctor said that this cube needs to lose some weight and eat healthy paint :D

One way the cube decided to lose weight was to select all the vertices, it set the strenght to 0 and presses Shift + K  to apply the strenght to all the vertices

The little cube was surprised how quickly this method was, and so he wondered "is there another method" so he browsed on Google about health diets and found this other method with same results:

Select all the vertices you want to clear their weight, now select the vertex group of the bone that you desire to remove, now click on Remove and it will remove all weight from that bone

The little cube was very happy and decided to live a healthy life, found love, got married, and had children


issues with array modifier i am trying to model a car rim in blender. i modelled it with using mirror modifier and array. When creating some edge loops for sharp edges it is not appearing same on both sides of the mirror modifier instead Edge loop automatically get snaps to nearest vertex at the end of loop. I tried reducing the distance in array modifier, but its not helping. and also blender crashes when i do so. pls help. Screenshot attached for your reference

Both the mirror and array modifiers have settings to automatically merge vertices from the generated parts with the real vertices. When adding or adjusting vertices near the edge you sometimes need to disable these options for a while. Sometimes you also need to adjust the merge limit so that you don't get excessive merges happening.


Letters not hit by light or causing shadows? Ive uploaded a screen shot of my session, where hopefully you can see the word i've next to a cube. I have a spot lamp above which can been seen hitting the cube. But the letters arnt affected in anyway. I was hoping the light would hit the letters and cast a shadow? Hope can I make this happen?

Many thanks,

J

here's link to the program, it's a new one with a similar problem. Theres a falling man but his shadows is square. Theres no material attached to the image? here's a screenshot:

Your letters are parallel to the light rays and therefore not lighted. Rotate the light or letters so that the the letters' surface is hit by light.


Need to re-render every time I change something in the compositor because of full sample Not long ago I have discovered the full sample feature on Blender.
The feature is great and helps a lot. The problem is that whenever I render a frame with Full sample, the image is anti-aliased, but if I change something in the compositor, the image becomes aliased and remain jagged unless I render the entire frame. It is slowing me down because sometimes it takes several hours for a frame to render. Is it just like that, is there any way to avoid re rendering?
Thank you!

One simple, however not ideal, is to save the final render to an external file; then loading it up and applying the composite to that.

I would recommend using a multilayer OpenEXR file; these however take up quite a lot of disk space.


What is a smoothness map? Is a smoothness map the same thing as a roughness map?

For example:

Smoothness is the opposite of roughness. If you have a smoothness map you can use the "Invert" node to plug it into a roughness input. You can find it under (shift+ a) Add -> Color -> Invert.

For example:


How can I move vertex to a virtual line? In the tutorial, it says you can press the G key and then the ALT key. It doesn't work.
I tried pressing C, but I can't. blender version is 2.90.1


Making realistic mold (fungus) in blender? so i have been trying to make realistic mold in blender for quite a while, as seen in the image the approach i've taken is making 2 image planes, one with a blurred white fur like texture to simulate the actual mold and one meant to look like mold stalks. both applied as a particle system, my main problem is the mold looks so flat, and the shadows dont really catch. does anybody have any tips for how to improve it? of if you feel that there may be a better way to simulate this please comment, i'm kinda stuck as to how to improve this so any advice helps

I'd suggest adding a hair particle system to the fruit.  After all, fungus looks very much like white hair.  If you turn on children and set it to interpolated, you can clump up the hairs and change other settings to make it more random and realistic.


Material driver works, but doesn't update in viewport I'm on Blender 2.79. When using drivers on node properties the material doesn't update on the Rendered/Material viewports until I force reload it.

My drivers are pulling custom object properties from a parent armature and running it through a scripted expression. This driver's output is then fed into the Y Scale of a Mapping node. It works wonderfully, the value updates immediately, but the viewport doesn't.

Starting point:

After changing the parent's custom property, the driver updates, the node value updates, but the material in the viewport doesn't:

After I hit SHIFT+Z twice to exit and reenter the Rendered mode, the material updates:

Another way to force the viewport update is to make a manual change to the material, like disconnecting a random node or changing the texture location, or to the drivers, as changing the type of a second driver. But automatically? No success so far.

What am I doing wrong?

After a long time fiddling with drivers and properties, I found a solution.

Create a custom property for the material you're manipulating with drivers

Add a driver to the property, and add your variables and scripted expressions to this driver

Reference the custom property in your node driver

Important: The intermediate custom property must be a material property. Custom object properties alone won't work.

Possibly related: Driver on material not updating.
Mainly the "not all drivers are created equal" statement. The issue I experienced is the inverse of what happened in this question, though.

For some strange reason, the existence of a custom material property with the script is what triggers the auto update. If you have two identical drivers with the script, one for a custom object property, another for a custom material property, and reference the object one, it'll work. As long there's an identical material driver doing the calculation, it'll work. You don't even need to reference it, it only needs to exist. Don't ask me why.


Adding smudges/fingerprints to a glass material I have a project here that uses a lot of glass panels and to bump up the realism, I added fingerprint textures. However, I still don't know how to add or combine them.

I got mud instead of fingerprints on my glass panels :(

I'm also planning to add a scratch texture and put fresnel on it so that it is affected by camera angles.

You can add smudges and fingerprints to glass by varying the Roughness with the following material :

Most of the above material is concerned with positioning the fingerprints on the bottle (ie, the upper branch from the Texture Coordinate node through to the first Multiply maths node). This takes the fingerprints image :

and positions it onto the glass by way of using the Object coordinates of an Image Empty - moving and rotating the Image Empty will control the location of the fingerprints within the following scene :

The Value node controls the 'strength' of the fingerprints and the Is Glossy Ray of the Light Path is used to prevent the fingerprint from producing glossy reflections from any light sources. This is fine tuned using a Power node (you could just as easily use a Color Ramp to allow manual adjustment) and fed into the Roughness.

This will result in anything viewed through the surface smear/fingerprint becoming distorted.

This can produce the following results (note the fingerprints and smudges on the closest bottle) :

Blend file attached.

EDIT : The above example is using a simple Glass shader for the glass and as it stands this will cast shadows. This is why the interior of your building is considerably darker in your example. In my example this wasn't too much of a problem but in your example the windows are effectively blocking the light from entering the interior space. You should mix in a Transparent shader based on the Is Shadow Ray light path property so as to make the glass transparent when determining shadows.

Your original material included this mix but the new one does not. Hopefully this will resolve your problem.


Fluid simulation flows out of the shell I'm simulating the fluid in a pipe as shown in the image below

I have set the inflow to -z axis and made the pipe a obstacle and also the volume initialization as shell.But still it flows outside of the pipe.

Can some one help me resolving this issue.

ive also added the quad view with properties of inflow and domain

Some options. See which may apply to your situations.

I am not sure I agree with the -z setting for inflow as you currently wrote. 0 or +y seems more appropriate.  Fluid will flow with gravity.
Make your pipe thicker or surround the spout with an outflow.
If the fluid is only visible coming out of the pipe use a smaller pipe spout with more thickness.  One pipe for obstacle and no render. Another distinct pipe for render and not a fluid component.  This may preserve more resolution.
Make your pipe thicker while preserving internal wall.
See Fatten Shrink on the Blender Menus in edit mode.


Texture Painting Not Appearing In Render Mode I've modeled a medieval Tankard here. It has been UV unwrapped and a wood texture applied to it. After doing so, I decided it would look nicer if the bulged portions were made of metal instead of wood. I opened texture paint mode, found a metal texture and attempted to paint the area.

But when rendered it does not appear

Decently new to Blender and am not sure how to fix. This is my first post on Stack Exchange

Figured it out. Needed to save the painted texture as a new image


Change Origin and rotate the frame of a mobile robot Apologies for a basic question posting. I don't have any experience with blender so its hard to search for solution with relevant keywords.
I have a robot model which actually is translated and rotated both. I have a few questions:

How can I make the body of the robot parent?
How to place the robot to origin(at the moment in air) and set its  heading in +ive x-axis, left +ive y-axis and z upwards when the robot is on flat surface.
Is there any way I can declare wheels as rotatable joints(Also may be how can I test it in blender)?

select the body, then shift+s, cursor to selected, shift+a, empty-axis, select axis-empty, ctrl+i, then select axis-empty again, right mouse button, parent, object.  This parents to the body position where the axis is and all items are parented to the axis, but are moveable individually.  Move the axis for scale, rotation of all, or just the individual parts.
save a new file doing this to not lose work changed from.  Then add bones BEFORE all this, to selected areas using car rigging methods (search for appropriate online).  You rotate the bones added to the wheels and so forth, that you also parent to the RIG-axis-empty created.
to position all at the world origin, after you have made an axis parent, select the axis, then shift+s, cursor to world origin, then shift+s, selection to cursor.


Shadow problems with point light radius When I increase the point light radius, it ends up creating artifacts on the textures for seemingly no reason.

Even though I I have High Quality Shadows (High bit-depth and cube map resolution).

I want to create a smooth texture just like the corner of the photo, but for some reason it ends up creating these squares with what looks like many "vertices".

Those are Shadow Terminator artifacts. The most common way to deal with them is adding more geometry, usually with a subdivision surface modifier.

But starting with blender 2.9 you can control the Shadow terminator aritfacts directly in the Object Properties. In the Shading section use the slider for Shadow Terminator Offset:


How are the creases/folds in this mesh for a sofa achieved? I'm trying to create a model of a particular sofa and am using a preview image of an existing 3D model as a reference, but I'm stuck on how they achieved the small creases on the surface that are highlighted in red, and the corresponding very tidy mesh. I know that no sculpting (at least not in ZBrush or other software) was involved as the model was made entirely in 3DS Max and I don't believe it has any sculpting capabilities, but I'm otherwise a bit lost about how they achieved this. Any advice would be great! Thanks

If you would like to achieve this effect with SCULPTING in Blender, a method that would definitely assist you is going to Sculpting >> Tools >> Crease  or using Blender's new Cloth Brushes.
Doing this without sculpting is also probably achievable, you will have to manually tweak the mesh to either pull or push vertices/faces to match the reference.
You also have the option to apply a normal map that has creases but personally I would find that a bit more tidious to do in Blender and would probably still require you to sculpt and bake the map yourself.


Rotating around two z axes I have created two spheres (earth and moon) and am trying to get the moon to rotate around the earth and spin on it's own axis. I set the moons origin to the earth and got it rotate around but when I try to get the moon to spin on its own axis it rotates at odd angles when I render it, it is clearly noticeable.

Is there anyway to spin an object on two different z axis.(hope that makes sense) cheers.

You'll probably want to use an extra empty object that you rotate the moon around. That way you can rotate the earth and the moon independently from each other. Before starting, reset the origins of your objects (ShiftCtrlAltC).

To do so:

Start by adding an empty object in the same location as your earth object (you can snap your cursor to the earth by using ShiftS > Cursor to Selected)
Select your moon object, then select your empty and parent it (CtrlP). You will notice that you can now rotate the moon with the empty, but the earth rotates separately.
Rotate the earth at the speed you want.
Rotate the moon.
To make the moon orbit around the earth, rotate the empty.

If you want to make the moon orbit copy the speed of the earth, you can use a copy rotation constraint on the empty (you can also set the percentage of the speed by adjusting the influence).


How do I get a simple deform modifier to twist from the bottom of the object instead of the middle? I'm trying to copy this animation I found online (first image) using blender 2.83. I'm using a combination of a shape key (to squash the cube), a simple deform modifier (to twist), and finally keyframing the cube for rotation. My issue is the deform modifier twists the entire cube - in the original animation the base stays locked. How might I go about this? Any suggestions would be greatly welcome. Thanks
PS - I also tried twisting the cube using a shape key but the end result would intersect itself and looked ugly.
This is my Blender File

You just have to slide your controlling empty 1 unit down.


Why objects with cloth modifier don't move after I parent them to moving empty? I created the mast of a ship with a sail, flag and several ropes. Sail, flag and some ropes have cloth modifier.

I parent them all to empty, but when I move empty, only the mast and ropes without the cloth modifier moves. And all of the objects that have cloth modifier remain in place. It looks parent does not work with them.

I am allready using pinned vertices, it works fine. But I need to be able to move the mast with a sail, not sail separately from the mast.

Why is this happening and how to fix it?

If there are pinned vertices in the cloth and the object doesn't move, a previous simulation is cached and blender is using this old cached data.

The simulation needs to be refreshed by playing the timeline or re-baking the simulation.


Sequence of Objects (one per frame) Is there a way to quickly setup a scene to show one object each frame? ie object A to render on frame 1, object B to object on frame 2, etc...(I just want to change a group of objects, but want the ground/room setting untouched). Thanks!

You can use script for it, with scene.frame.current combine with bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append()

Here is a simple script work in Blender 2.80, paste in text block and run it, it will loop the object hide value with the current frame:

import bpy

def ani_handler(scene):
    name = 'Cube'
    objs = [obj for obj in scene.objects.values() if name in obj.name]

    for i, obj in enumerate(objs):
        obj.hide_set(i != ((scene.frame_current-1) % len(objs))) # Blender 2.80
        # obj.hide = (i != ((scene.frame_current-1) % len(objs))) #Blender 2.79b

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(ani_handler)

if you want to try in Blender 2.79b below, change the # in head from 2.79b to line 2.80.

Change the 'Cube' to the name you want to specified ('' means no limit), if the object name contain the name, it will count toward this script.

Also if you run a previous script before, restart your blender to the clear the handlers.


change/create hotkeys for vertex\edge\face select I would like to create or change the hotkeys for the vertex select, edge select, and face select options. I know that they already have Ctrl+Tab+1, 2, and 3, but I don't like using them. They are a pain to use. I would like to change it to Alt+1, 2, and 3. I know you can use the python script to do a lot of these things but I don't really know how to set that up.

Is there a way to make these changes?

Can use the window manager context setting operators. The property that needs changing is
scene.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode

which is a 3 member collection.  All modes  (True, True, True), just verts (True, False, False).  To set verts alonr mesh_select_mode[0] = True.
To set them individually,  set vert select mode on. Leaves faces and edge mode as is.
bpy.ops.wm.context_set_boolean(
        data_path="scene.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode[0]",
        value=True)

to toggle
bpy.ops.wm.context_toggle(
        data_path="scene.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode[0]")

To set the mode to vert only
bpy.ops.wm.context_set_value(
        data_path="scene.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode",
        value="(True, False, False)")

or mesh.select_mode with no extend selection and vert type.
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(use_extend=False,
        use_expand=False,
        type='VERT')

Ok that looks good, add to 3Dview, mesh shortcuts.

Setup with wm.context_set_value
now Alt+1 will set to vert mode.


How to populate a menu using "path_menu"? There is an option in class bpy.types.Menu(bpy_struct) called path_menu which says it can be used to "Populate a menu from a list of paths."

I'd like to use this to populate a menu from a folder of text files. I can't find any examples of how to do this though. Could someone point me to a menu example that uses path_menu or demonstrate how I can use this? Thanks.

Ok. Seems there's a pretty straight forward example in space_text.py

class TEXT_MT_templates_py(Menu):
    bl_label = "Python"

    def draw(self, context):
        self.path_menu(
            bpy.utils.script_paths("templates_py"),
            "text.open",
            props_default={"internal": True},
        )

path_menu can be used within the main draw function. Would be great if I could figure out how to make the contents of self.path_menu a sub menu item (rather then enumerating out directly into the menu).

EDIT: Just to be clear, I mean "would be great if I could" create a sub menu from the path_menu contents directly within the original menu itself (without having to create a whole separate, other class menu to call on).


Gradient (spherical) on combined surfaces not working I am attempting to apply a spherical gradient texture to two combined surfaces with the aim to blend out the plane edges. The problem i am running into is I cannot get the gradient to appear. Instead there are black areas near the planes edges.
The first image is my issue visually and my node step up for the gradient.
The second image is my entire node setup for the combined surfaces, a noise texture, and the gradient texture.
Thank you to anyone who can shed light on this. Thank you for your time.

If your aim is to have the gradient make the textures you have mixed "fade off" into the distance, then your problem is likely that you have your Blend Mode set to Opaque. Change it to something like Alpha Blend. See Below:


Replace Bones with existing bones from other models | 1 animation for 2 differnt models i think there is a easy way to fix but i cant find it(Beginner).
So i have two different models; 1 Character and 1 weapon both of them have their own pose/bones but I can see that the bones/pose from the weapon are similar too the bones from the character. Now i want to use an  animation of both together but it will only apply to one of the models, not both. How can I fix it?

Select the armature that doesn't have the animation, create a dope sheet window, turn it to an action editor, select your animation in the drop down menu.


How do I fix the camera roll to its parent object? Blender 2.8 I have a space ship that follows a path across my scene with a few cameras to record it. One camera I would like to use for a sort of point of view effect when the ship enters a barrel roll, however, the camera does not roll with the ship.

Currently the camera is parented to an empty that tracks another empty just in front of the ship:

The camera empty and its target are parented to the ship so when the ship rotates I had assumed all of its children would too, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Things doing what they aren't supposed to:

My web of an outliner:

Looking back now I can see how moving the scene around the camera/ship might have been preferable but now I'm in too deep so I hope one of you can help.

Side note this is my first post so critique is welcome.

you could really easily just keayframe the rotation seperatly right? just go to the frames were you set your keyframes for the spaceship, copy all the rotation values, imput them in to your camera, and add a keyframe for rotation only


Making an edge parallel with another Edit: Changed the screenshots and some of the descriptions to be clearer

I was trying to make an edge parallel to another according to the slow, accurate way stated in this page: How to extrude a face parallel to another?

However although the vertex aligned itself with the pivot point, it went downwards, distorting the edge it was subdivided from.

I'd like to have all the bottom edges stay parallel to each other, i.e the parallel with the edge marked with red colour. The subdivided vertex, however, creates an angle on the now separated edge after aligning itself with the pivot point.

The edge I'm trying to create is marked blue in colour, and I need it to be parallel with the green edges while allowing the red edges to remain a straight line. The yellow point would be the subdivided vertex.

I need it to behave like a sliding vertex along the edge while parallel to the frontal slope (i.e the green edge marked above). Simply sliding the vertex won't work because I don't know if it's parallel with the green edge.

It's difficult to see from your screenshots, but what you may need to do is apply the object rotation and scale before you add that extra vertex.

Try this:

come out of Edit Mode and enter Object Mode again
with your object selected, hit CTRL+A
now select Rotation and Scale
enter Edit Mode and try again

Without this, Blender will often produce unexpected effects when editing the object further, particularly if you've scaled a primitive in one or two axis before editing it.

Good luck!


How to automate the conversion of objects generated by Python script to fbx or to obj? I've several Python scripts (around 6000 scripts). Each of them generates 3D objects.
I want to find a way to export these generated objects to either fbx or obj files.
Is there a way to do it using Blender in command line?
Py file example:
import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
obj = bpy.context.active_object
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type="VERT")
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action = 'DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')

obj.data.vertices[0].select = True
obj.data.vertices[1].select = True
obj.data.vertices[2].select = True
obj.data.vertices[3].select = True

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(MESH_OT_extrude_region={"use_normal_flip":False, "mirror":False}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(-0.220266, 0.10617, 0.490731), "orient_type":'GLOBAL', "orient_matrix":((5, 2, 3), (4, 1, 9), (6, 8, 7)), "orient_matrix_type":'GLOBAL', "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "mirror":False, "use_proportional_edit":False, "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "use_proportional_connected":False, "use_proportional_projected":False, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "cursor_transform":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False, "use_accurate":False})
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value= 10, orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(True, False, False), mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False, release_confirm=True)
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SUBSURF')
bpy.context.object.modifiers["Subdivision"].levels = 8

When I launch the script (("<your path to blender>\blender.exe" --background --python exportFbx.py -- "<your py file name>" "<your output directory>" )) I get this error on the command line:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\blender.exe" --background --python exportFbx.py -- "<Essai.py>" "C:\Users\user\Desktop\Bank2Son Zone Originale II\Command line"
Blender 2.81 (sub 16) (hash 26bd5ebd42e3 built 2019-11-20 16:33:00)
Read prefs: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.81\config\userpref.blend
AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 48000hz, got 44100hz instead
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\python
Warning: 'BatEx_PT_Panel' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix
register_class(...):
Warning: 'BatEx_PT_Panel' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix
OSError: Python file "C:\WINDOWS\system32\exportFbx.py" could not be opened: No such file or directory Blender quit

The following script will allow to execute Blender in command line as so:

"<your path to blender>\blender.exe" --background --python exportFbx.py -- "<your py file name>" "<your output directory>"

Thanks to this answer and considering:

"exportFbx.py" is the file where the script below is saved into
the command line is run where the script is
"your py file name" is the complete name of one of your object generating .py scripts
"your output directory" is the directory where to store the exported result

The script, in short:

Get the arguments
Compose the output file name
clear the scene
execute your .py script
exports

Each part is commented below. Save it as "exportFbx.py".

import bpy
import sys
import ntpath

#Extracts file name from file path
def get_filename(path):
    path, name = ntpath.split(path)
    return name or ntpath.basename(path)

#Clears the scene
def delete_all():
    bpy.ops.object.delete({"selected_objects":[o for o in bpy.context.scene.objects]} )

#Executes a py file
def exec_py_file(filepath):
    file = open(filepath)
    exec(file.read())

#Gets command line arguments
def get_args():
    argv = sys.argv
    argv = argv[argv.index("--") + 1:]
    return argv[0], argv[1]

#Obtain arguments
filepath, output_directory = get_args()

#Get the file name
filename = get_filename(filepath)

#Compose the fbx file name
output_filepath = ntpath.join( output_directory, filename + ".fbx")

#Clean the scene
delete_all()

#Run the py file
exec_py_file(filepath)

#Export to fbx
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath=output_filepath, check_existing=False, use_selection=False, use_mesh_modifiers=True)

Now you'll have to iterate over your py file using your operating system commands in order to apply the command line above to all the .py file.

In Windows Powershell, that can be something like (not tested):

$files = Get-ChildItem "<your path to py files\*.py"
foreach ($f in $files){
    $filename = $f.FullName
    "<your path to blender>\blender.exe" --background --python exportFbx.py -- "$filename" "<your output directory>"
}

If you run:

"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\blender.exe" --background --python exportFbx.py -- "<Essai.py>" "C:\Users\user\Desktop\Bank2Son Zone Originale II\Command line"

That won't work. You need to have:

"[The path to blender.exe]"
--background
--python
"[The path to exportFbx.py or just exportFbx.py if you run that in its directory]"
--
"[The path to one of your py file]"
"[The path to the output directory]"

Surely all what is inside "[]" above needs to be replaced by the good things as they are in your environment. And all that in one single line (I've separated things above for the explanation) with a space between each part.


Texture painted in Cycles Render, but the painted texture doesn't show up in Blender Game This is probably a silly question, but how can I see those painted bones and muscles to show in Blender Game as part of the mesh?

I painted in Cycles Render. Answer is probably something obvious that I am missing.

Thank you very much, by the way, great community here!

cycles render
blender game

Bob

You will need to set up game materials - the game engine doesn't use Cycles as a renderer, and that is why you paint or bake to image and then use those UV mapped textures to create the game assets.


How to setup character outlines to facilitate better topology? I a beginner modeler and had a question regarding my process creating 3D characters. For example, let's say I'm modelling a character's head. I typically start by having a front-facing and profile-view reference set up in Blender which I use to create an outline of the character's head. Then I'll rotate the camera and outline the character's head's profile the same way. When I do this, I use an arbitrary amount of vertices which I think may be causing my issue.
My issue is, when I start extruding vertices from these outlines and generating faces, the faces start to curl up and I don't know where the remaining faces should go. Here is an example of a character's head that I'm trying to model

I don't know if you can tell, but my process is that I select a vertex on the outline, extrude it in necessary direction (towards the center of the face), repeat with neighboring vertices, and create a face between four of them. This process starts to crumble a bit when you notice that I have so many faces starting to squeeze together/collapse as I try to connect them to the center of my character's face. Is it because I arbitrarily chose the vertex density of my character's outline? Should I try to keep the number of vertices I use for the head's outline to match up with the number of vertices I use for the character's profile so they can cleanly match up together?
Or is the problem that I can't simply expect to generate "rows" of faces cleanly like how I've been trying to. In my last model I made, I would resolve the same issue by creating somewhat ugly quads that made some parts of the character look awkward. Hopefully I made my issue clear, and thanks for reading.

This is a natural limitation to flat-plane 3-D (the current technology). Basically, one will end up with a few awkward quads or even tris, but this is normal. I recommend you look at others' models of similar characters, and check out the topology. You will need to start connecting things here, so think about "if this mesh were to deform, what parts of it would need to be bendable?" as you create the joining topology.
Beautify Faces might be useful for cleaning up and standardizing the topology once you're finished. :-)


Can I animate a model made in ZBrush? I'm new in game modeling and animation, and I really liked how ZBrush works, but blender is better in animation, much easier, but too difficult with modeling.

Can I animate a model made in zBrush?
If yes, how can I do it?.

Yes, you can, here is how:

Export your model from zbrush(id recommend a .obj).in blender you can open the .obj useing (File>Import>Wavefront Obj)

Now your model is ready for animation.

Note:
In zbursh it is important that you do not export a raw sculpt, since that will not work for animation in any software. Always retopoligize it.


Arrays of arrays along a path I am attempting to create a ring of several levels of benches through arrays only. Either this is a little too advanced for Blender or I am missing a step.

I create a cylinder as the back support. I create a cube and stretch it to be the "ramp" that the benches are attached to, and add an Array to make two of them. I create another cube to be one bench, then add an Array to make enough of them to fill the "ramp".

According to one tip of duplicating a group of objects I create a plane and parent these pieces to the plane, then add an Array and Curve to get the plane and its children to follow the curve I have set up. However, all the instances seem to sheer rather than rotate along the path.

How would I go about so that the set faces inward? Will I have to join all my instances together into one mesh? I heard that instances would speed things up but am I over-using it?

You didn't apply the scale of your plank objects, so when they twist they deform badly, just apply the scale with a CtrlA. By the way your setting seems a bit complicated, why not just make one unique object and maybe, if the deformation is not noticeable, duplicate it around with Array + Curve?


Filling Curves never work; Apply Rotation useless As the title implies, I can't ever fill a curve of mine.

I try to align the rotation with "Scaling + 0", closing the curve with "Alt + C", and applying the rotation via "Ctrl + A" yet nothing ever works. It keeps crushing it ala this user's mesh:
Fill Bezier Curves

Yet when they apply rotation themselves, it works for some reason as opposed to mine.
Is it because my curve has too many verts?
I want to fill with this method yet I can't find anything that works. I'd appreciate any help I can get.

Found that the mesh needs to be aligned ALONG the X and Y axis, as if it's lying on the ground for the fill to work.
All the sources I saw didn't clarify that, only that it "needs to align with the X and Y axis", so I took it as having a value of zero for the alignment in general.


Access for Shortcuts or Quickselection for Advanced Selection: new, extend, invert, intersect Is there an GUI way (e.g. Assign Shortcut) to have quick access to advances selection methods?
Or if not, is there an existing script or addon for this?

I'd like to get it into Hotkeys, PieMenus or QuickAccess.

I figured it out:

It's actually all in the keymap, except Invert Selection. So, I supplemented it.


Physical interaction between objects Is it possible with Blender to have a physical interaction (dealing with contacts) between objects?

For example:

I would like to make a sphere scratch another object and imprint a permanent plastic deformation on this object.
I would like a sphere enter inside a cylindrical part (with an elastic behavior) and expand it from the inside.

Is it possible to do this with Blender, or by combining Blender with external tools?

Yes, Blender is absolutely capable of doing this.  The feature you are looking for is called dynamic paint.

To do this simply select the object you want to deform, go to the physics tab, click on dynamic paint, and choose canvas.

Then just scroll down to the dynamic paint advanced rollout and choose displace under surface type.

Next, select the object you want to use to inflict the deformation and set it as a dynamic paint brush (just select brush instead of canvas).

Then you can animate the brush object to scratch across the canvas object and it will deform it.

A few tips for using dynamic paint:

You will want the canvas object to have plenty of subdivisions so that it has enough geometry to get deformed.
You may want to enable anti-aliasing and add some sub-steps on the canvas object for a smoother deformation, particularly if the brush object is moving fast.  This makes Blender sample the motion of the object between frames for smoother painting.


How to remove "jumps" of trackpoints in Camera tracking when moving them? Since I moved my trackpoints I got this jumps where the line of a trackpoint jumps from the red to the green curve(and the other way around).
This happened to points that I moved, so maybe that's the reason. Is there a simple solution, or do I have to replace all these trackpoints?

see blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14330/… –  cegaton 56 mins ago

So my answer is solved now I think. After reading this I know, that the "jumps" the lines are doing are caused by moving them. Because if you move one its speed increases immensely. And if the lines indicate the speed of a tracker, they will go up too. That's causing the jumps.

The other points where the red and the green line is connected. A new Trackpoint was created.


How do I create a squeeze tube packaging? I've just moved from Cinema4D to Blender and I would like to create a squeeze tube where it is rounded at the bottom and tapers into a thin ellipse at the top. In Cinema4D I used a loft nurb and a circle spline. I've found the cirlce path in Blender but how do I connect them to create this shape?

Thank you for any help.

Edit: I want to create packaging like the image below.

In this case I would not go with Curves as they aren't best choice in terms of modeling in Blender. My method is based upon simple plane which gives us very simple base geometry and allows to have nice top part of model. Starting with circle will give massive headache to close and straighten up this part of a mesh.

This is method I've used to model it:

Add a Plane - Shift + A > Mesh > Plane.
Go to Edit Mode.
Select all vertices, press E and extrude along Z axis.
Select top edge and press S > Y to squize it.
Extrude top edge along Z axis once more.

You should have now something like this:

Add Modifier > Subdivision surface and set it to 4-5 (preview and render).

Now we need to crease some edges.

Select all top vertices and set Mean Crease to about 0.6.

Do the same with bottom vertices but this time Mean Crease should be 0.3.
Add Loop Cut (CTRL + R then hover cursor over mesh) to 'main part' of the mesh and place it near bottom edge.
Choose Smooth Shading. Object Mode > Tools Panel (left side of the screen) > Shading > Smooth.

Here is blend file to play with:


My mouth deform connected to my mouth bone collapses when i move my head bone? The mouth bone is connected to what is clipping through the endo-teeth.

The mouth deform was connected to the bone through vertex weighting

If its rotated i want the mouth to look like when its rotated but the heads rotated.

But right now either way, mouth bone rotated or not, the deform for the mouth collapses when i rotate the head.

HOW CAN I FIX THIS?

Your head mesh is parented to the head bone. The mouth vertices are parented to the mouth bone, which is parented to the head bone. So, when you rotate the head bone, those vertices get a double rotation in space: one relative to the object position, and one relative to the vertices position.

Instead, the correct way is:

In object mode, select the head
Unparent the head from the head bone (Alt P, clear parents)
Shift select the armature, and parent the head to the armature (Ctrl P, with empty groups)
go to edit mode, select all vertices and remove all weights from all vertex groups.
Assign a weight of 1.0 to all vertices of the head, except thoose of the mouth, in the "head" vertex group
Assign a weight of 1.0 to all vertices of the mouth in the "mouth" vertex group
Assign a weight of 0.5 to all vertices that are between the head and the mouth in both "Head" and "mouth" vertex groups

I noticed also that you should recalculate normals of the head vertices, and resolve some topology issues, but that is another topic.


Navigation gizmo missing after loading a file I am using Blender 2.82a on Mac, and it seems every time I open this particular file, my navigation gizmo (viewport top right) along with the zoom, pan, and camera buttons that are usually below it are missing!

I have tried to Load Factory Settings, and they reappear in the new and empty file. But whenever I return to my Blender file they remain missing!

Not sure if it's a stupid question, and in reality it's just a hot-key that I may have accidentally pressed, but I am new to Blender and would really love the help with this!

Please and thank you!

The viewport nagivation gizmo can be activated in the Viewport Gizmos options by ticking the checkbox with the Navigate label.

If you don't want to load the UI layout and settings from an existing project, disable Load UI in the file browser as shown in this answer.


Softbody is clipping and shrinking when it comes in contact with an object (with collision enabled) I've recently been trying to make a softbody animation, and I have ramps that the ball falls down into. It rolls down fine, but when it reaches the end of it, the ball immediately shrinks and is attracted to the object. The ramp has collision enabled, I have tried recalculating normals, and changing the incline and rebaking it, but nothing seems to work.

The ball just seems to stay and then shrink a little bit, and will not just hop over the cylinder like it should.

Maybe the inner thickness of your collision object is too high and thus surmounts the outer thickness, effectively pulling every softbody-vertex into the collision object.
As far as I know the thickness values are actually in meters, if you didn't know that already.


Can I use Blender's Python API from a Python IDE? Is it possible to use Blender's Python API scripting directly from Python IDE? If so, how?.  I was looking forward to something that would allow me to help develop a game completely using python.

You can develop Blender Python add-ons from external IDE's easily, and without compiling Blender as a Python module. The often referenced method of compiling Blender as a Python module has long been defunct, and only works for certain OS's.

Most add-on developers work by opening a project in the 2.8x/scripts/addons/ directory of their Blender installation. From here, you can develop directly in Blender's filesystem from your favorite IDE, then hit F8 in Blender to refresh/re-compile your add-on live.

See this post for a more detailed discussion: The Best Way to Develop Blender Python Add-ons

F8 refreshes the addon list. To bind it to a hotkey in 2.8, insert the command preferences.addon_refresh.


How can I pin edges in sculpt mode? I want to maintain the edges of a surface pinned while I'm sculpting it to keep its positions. Is this possible?

Edges that I want to pin

After sculpt, the edges change its locations

Thanks for the comment! But the problem after hiding the edges, is that it generates a flat face. I want that part also constructed with a grid

Like lemon already suggested, the masking tools are your best choice. Yes, you will get the flat faces as well, just as with hiding them, but afterwards you can - with the mask still active - smooth the borders using the smooth brush.

on the bottom left of the screenshot you can see the Hide/Mask menu. Choose one that fits you best. My example is so simple I was able to use box select for this. Basically mask everything except the boundary.

after that, you'll see that the inner part turned black (that means it is masked), and the outer part is grey (editable).

We need the opposite, so we invert the mask with Ctrl + I

Now we can sculpt as we like, ignoring the fact that we get heavily distorted faces on the outside.

With the smooth brush, this can be fixed easily and with a lot of control!


What would be the best way to round an object to fit a shape? I'm trying to round the body for a helicopter I'm modeling using a side and front view, however I was wondering if there would be any easier way to do it than moving every single vertex.

Personally, I think that for this situation it would be best to round off the geometry in edit mode.  Especially since you will (presumably) be  modeling more details to the mesh such as windows, doors, tail, etc. you will want the mesh to be more contoured.

The way I would do this would be to use the smooth function and then tweak it a little with proportional editing.

To do this first go into edit mode and select everything, then bring up the specials menu with W and select smooth.  You can tweak the smoothing by going to the bottom of the left toolbar (T) or hitting F6.  I used the default smoothing value of 0.5, but increased the repeat value to 6.

Then I would tweak the mesh around using proportional editing, turn proportional editing on with O.  You can set the falloff curve in the footer of the 3D view and adjust the falloff radius with the scroll wheel.  You can go into wireframe view and line up your model with the background image to help with the tweaking process.

Here is what I came up with after a little tweaking.


How to make thorns (Crown of Thorns)? I’ve downloaded this model of a Crown of Thorns, but noticed that it’s got no thorns although the render image had them.

How can I make thorns for this model?

You may create the thorns fast using some modifiers.

Add two (or more) cylinders and place them next to each other. Model the spikes. Join cylinders with Ctrl+J in Object Mode. Press Shift+C to place the cursor in the center, then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C-->Origin to 3D Cursor. Press Ctrl+A-->Apply Rot&Scale. Add a Bezier Circle also (Add-->Curve-->Circle).

Select cylinders and add the Subsurf and Simple Deform modifiers. Add some subdivisions in Subsurf panel. Smooth the object using smooth shading in the Transform panel of the Tool Shelf (T). Set the Simple Deform type to Twist and set the angle to 180 degrees (or other value depending on your preferences).

Next add an Array modifier. Set its Z offset to 1.000. Check the Merge checkbox. Increase the Count number. Then add a Curve modifier and set the Bezier Circle as a target.

Remember of the proper order of the modifiers. This is the key to make it work as it should.

Finally select the Bezier Circle and go to the Curve header. Check the Stretch and Bounds Clamp checkboxes.

Try to add more cylinders and randomise the spikes positions and directions for the different results. You may also apply the modifiers (without Subsurf) at the end and randomize the size, shape and direction of each spike to make it look more realistic.


How can I get rid of a Blender element I cannot select? In object mode there is a blender element attached to a particular object which appears to be a vertex, though I'm working in a large scale, so it could be a small edge or face. I don't want it there, but I cannot seem to select the item in object mode, and it disappears in edit mode.

Check to see if you may have added a modifier to your object. Some modifiers, for example, the hook modifier, add empties that are used in the function of the modifier that show in object mode, but which cannot be selected in edit mode.


Mesh of vertices shown in viewport but not in render: how to render? I have a mesh which only consists of vertices. The mesh is essentially a point cloud. I can see the object in the viewport but I can't render it. I want to create a quick animation video where the camera moves around the object. How can I achieve it in the fastest/easiest way? Is there a way to render the viewport view?

I think I have an idea. Are the vertices joined together? What I mean is, are they considered one whole object? If so, you may be able to go to the properties panel, and scroll around in object context tab. There's an area there called "visibility". It has a checkbox that lets it be shown in renders. Perhaps it is unchecked by default? I hope this helps.


How do I cut a semicircle into a curved surface? How can I cut a semi-circle out of a curved surface, such as this:

As you can see from the picture, the circled area is one I'm having trouble with. I can't seem to find a way to cut a hole into a curved surface without messing up the topology. Could someone help me with this?

Cutting it without messing up the topology (ngons, tris, unwanted distortions, etc.) will be hard.
However, for your specific case I think you might have better luck building the shape by extruding/filling.
For example:

Duplicate a cylinder:

Select some of the edges along the top/bottom of the cylinder and press W>Bridge edge loops:

Repeat for the other side(s), then add a solidify and a subserf modifier:


Unknown Issues with Texture Painting? Not Working? 2.8 new to Blender here so I am more than willing to accept this as user error, however I would really love to learn and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I have watched 3 separate tutorials on youtube for texture painting in 2.8, and I follow all the instructions and up until I am able to actually start painting everything seems to be in order, and then the actual painting on the object does not work, nothing shows up(on the model or in the uv map).

For example I have gotten to 2:33 in this video and followed all rules and nothing comes past that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svzKoq3vew0&t=2s

Here is a screenshot of my workstation and model unwrapped for people who might be able to visually see what I'm doing wrong!

If this is not an appropriate place for this question, or is too novice of a problem I apologize, I tried finding this problem elsewhere and I didn't see anyone with the same issues. Thanks even if I cant find help!

The 'Normal' Problem here is usually that your Face Normals are pointed inward. To check this in 2.8, switch to Edit Mode and press the overlay icon to find the option to show Face Normals, and correct the direction in Edit Mode before returning to Texture Paint mode.

Happy Painting!!


How do I hide vertices not visible to the camera? I'm following a character modelling tutorial, and I noticed that the face of my character appears different to how it is in the video - I can see the vertices which are hidden to the camera, as if the material were translucent. Here is a screenshot of what I mean (in the right frame):

In the video, it appears in the following manner:

As you can see, none of the vertices which are hidden from the camera are visible. How can I achieve the same appearance in edit mode? I tried enabling backface culling although this did not work.

As per moonboots's comment, I had disabled Limit Selection to Visible, so I just needed to toggle this.


Wire-frames being rendered inside transparent objects Im sure it's probably a render option I need to turn on or off but I have an animation where we see a crane moving a sign.  As the sign comes closer to the camera, the crane disappears.  I keyframed the material to be transparent and also keyframed the eye ball (viewport visibility).  Most of the objects fade out but these black wireframes are left behind. When I switch to Render Viewport nothing is there but when I actually render, the wireframes are present.
Any ideas?

Not sure I completely understand, but if you want to hide items from the renderer you need to click on the little camera icon (hides in render), not the little eye icon (hides in viewport).


How to increase more speed of animation I want to increase the speed of my animation more. With the blade rotating still need more natural to speed so that the blade are not visible. I tried to add motion blur. And in the graph editor Interpolation mode as linear. What else needed to make my blades to speed more. Any suggestion. Thanks
https://imgur.com/a/LgXrHxg

at the last frame of animation increase z-rotation more and press i and add rotation keyframe

then change FrameRate in OutputProperties tab to max in my case 60fps so, it will look more realistic, also add motion blur.

It looked more realistic with fps increased.

Try balancing fps and z-rotation so, that it will be more realistic


How to add local attributes of an operator to a `bpy.app.handle`? I want to add local attributes of an operator to a bpy.app.handle.

So my solution was this:

import bpy

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Add a handle"""
    bl_idname = "object.add_handle"
    bl_label = "Simple Add Handle Operator"

    def handle(self, scene):
        frame = scene.frame_current
        if frame in self.param:
            print(frame, '=', self.param[frame])
        else:
            print("frame %d added to cache" % frame)
            self.param[frame] = "cached"

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.param = {self: 'my dict'}

        print(bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post)
        print(self.handle in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post) # Always False
        #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.clear()

        bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(self.handle)

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ModalOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.object.add_handle('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

To explain, I added a method of the operator to bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post. And I had to return 'RUNNING_MODAL' because any other would destroy the operator

I do not know if this solution is good, because when it registers the same operator consecutively, the previous one is not destroyed (since it was referenced in the handle function);
And it is also not easy to know if the handle has already been added and should be replaced.

So... How to fix these problems? Or how to get a better solution to add a context to a specific handle??

This can be done by defining a function in the namespace where your variables are accessible:

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.param = {self: 'my dict'}

        print(bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post)
        print(self.handle in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post) # Always False
        #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.clear()

        # local function that can access this namespace
        def handle_local(scene):
            # pass any vars you want
            self.handle(self, scene, context)

        bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(handle_local)

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

Note: the line print(self.handle in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post) is no longer correct, using a function defined each time makes this check more involved.


How do I use dyntopo and mirror together? Blender newbie here!

I made an animal following the method used in this youtube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjW6r10Mlqs

I now want to make it more detailed, so I tried sculpting on it. To get detail, I turned dyntopo on, but that turned the mirror modifier off. When I turned dyntopo off after I did some sculpting, and turned mirror back on, I noticed some holes formed around the 'seams'/ the edge where the mirrored sides meet.

Am I going about adding detail to the low poly creature in the right way? How can I fix these holes? Is there a way to keep mirror and dyntopo both on at the same time?

Thanks in advance!

You cannot effectively use the mirror modifier with dynamic typology (or sculpting in general, for that matter).

Remove the modifier and then under the Dyntopo settings in a sculpt mode, ensure the "Direction" setting is correct and click "Symmetrize". You may get some pinching down the mirror axis, but this can be smoothed out manually.

After that, go to "Symmetry/Lock" in the same panel and select the correct mirror axis.


How to render Compositing only by OpenGL? I do not use any object in my scene. All my Nodes are in the compositor, but when I render compositing by OpenGL I get only an empty screen.

I can use objects as simple trick, but I don't like that. I need output my compositing by opengl directly.

How can I render compositing by OpenGL only in blender?
- Using file node will use Blender Engine not Opengl
- When I press F12(Internal Blender engine) I see my compositing result.
- When I press Camera button(rendering by opengl ), I see nothing...empty viewport

That just not possible. OpenGL rendering only "saves" the current viewport content as an image. But when the only content created is in the Node Composit, that won't serve as a valid viewport content. Though there is a File Output Node for your Node Tree that you might use instead.


I can't see faces on my model in all modes I'm new to Blender and this community.
Sorry for bad English.
I created a model with Blender 2.78. When I finished (no texture, no animation, only a model with grey original starter color) I added smoke effect to see what happens.
From that moment I can no longer see faces. Only vertices and edges in all modes. I have tried all options, all modes, all buttons but nothing.
I can only see my model selected(orange lines) in each mode. I can select vertices, edges and faces but this last it's impossible to see.
Is it a bug? Must I redo all my model from the begining? Obviously don't answer me with a suggestion to try h,  alt+h...

Welcome @wiseman.

You must enable the draw type to texture.

See the image below:


Fluid ignores obstacle Hello I am trying to make something like this https://www.reddit.com/r/Simulated/comments/8rt6wx/frosting_a_cake/
(I know this uses flip fluids addon, I am trying to recreate something similar with blender fluid)
This is my problem.

Fluid just ignores my cake. Can anyone help me please?
download blend file

You have to activate the fluid modifier for your cake in the physics panel and set the type to "obstacle". Then you can choose if using the shell (surface), the volume of your obstacle, or both.

For your task I suggest to use shell volume initialization.

If nothing happen you probably have inverted normals. Try recalculate them.

Hope it helped you!

Cheers!


Cannot set vertex group to active with python while in background mode? I was trying to run blender in the background and run the python file to select a group and change it's size

here is the shell command I ran:

blender -b filename.blend -P pythonname.py

And inside pythonname.py I have this:

bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_set_active(group='Group')
bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_select()
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(float(val1),float(val2),float(val3)))
bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(filepath="/var/www/html/kiosk/stlv1.0/cylinder_savedcopy.stl")
bpy.ops.wm.quit_blender()

I was stopped at the active part.

For me it's not the operator that sets the active vertex group that fails, but the vertex group select. The reason is that the object needs to be in edit mode in order to run it:

import bpy
vgroups = bpy.context.object.vertex_groups
vgroups.active_index = vgroups["Group"].index
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_select()

You may also select the relevant vertices without operator:

import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object

vi = ob.vertex_groups.find("Group")

for v in ob.data.vertices:
    for g in v.groups:
        if g.group == vi:
            v.select = True

... but it only works in object mode. To transform the selection, you need to switch to edit mode or write a low-level replacement (requires object mode):

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data
vi = ob.vertex_groups.find("Group")

verts = [v for v in me.vertices for g in v.groups if g.group == vi]
center = sum(map(lambda v: v.co, verts), Vector()) / len(verts)

for v in verts:
   v.co = (v.co - center) * 2 + center


round sloped-flat Ceiling appears flat when rendering I have a round room with arches around the edges. The ceiling is weird shaped, however....

It goes from flat to sloping upwards, flat to upwards, flat, upwards, flat then there is a hole in the top acting as a window. The picture shown above shows what the ceiling looks like when Viewport Shading is set to Solid.

What the ceiling currently looks like when it is rendered. The Viewport shading was set to rendered.

The top of the ceiling from outside. You can see the shadows as the ceiling slopes down and flattens out.

My problem is that the ceiling appears flat from below while rendering. I'll provide the blendfile. Is there anyway to fix the flat looking ceiling?

I decided to remove the link to the blend file. Eventually 3d Renderings will hopefully be uploaded to sites to sell. I didn't want people to download the model just to have and edit. I'm not saying anyone will, however.

A cube, a plane, a circle, a sphere... Can you tell them apart?

Impossible to tell with flat light. In this case the light comes from behind the camera lighting everything everything evenly.

We have no clue of the depth of the objects without a shadow. Our brain sees these as bidimensional objects...

Making the light have a clear direction helps our brain understand the shapes better:


Render result different from material view I am designing a shield, the problem is, on the material view all looks wonderful, but once I change it to world or render the image it looks awful.

You can see it above how it looks, now if I change the view to the "Display Render Preview" it will look like this:

You guys can see that it is a new project, the only thing I did was set the texture to the cube, the plane and set the world
What an I missing?

As hatinacat2000 mentioned in the comments, reflective scenes look terrible untill you give them some complex lighting information. The best way to do this is by adding an HDRI environment to your scene.
HDRI's not only provide a picture background, they also give lighting and color information that is used in reflections.
To add an HDRI, go to the SHADING tab, change the selection from OBJECT to WORLD, add an ENVIRONMENT TEXTURE, and give it an image (equi-rectangular are preferred).
The HDRI's that come built in with blender are in the blender folder at ../2.83/datafiles/studiolights/world - (.exr files). However, other image formats such as .jpeg, and .png work as well. If you want a bigger selection, there are plenty of places on line to get them for free - one of the most popular is HDRI-Haven (https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/).


Simple undivided plane UV map not behaving as expected I’m running into a UV map error (or at least it’s not behaving as I expected it would). I have a simple plane with 4 points and I’ve set up the uv to a sqaure texture (images below). I would expect the texture to be applied evenly, following the trapezoid shape of the plane, and instead it’s sort of bending along the middle. I’ve tried applying visual and object transforms, but that hasn’t changed anything. I've also tried subdividing and triangulating the faces, only for it to continue to bend the texture in a way I wouldn't expect.
Does anyone know if this is how it’s supposed to be behaving or maybe I have a setting wrong? Thanks!

^ UV map for the plane, snapped to pixels

^ how the plane is appearing

A face is always composed of 2 triangles, the oblique goes in a sense or in the other:

so if you give your face an image texture then deform the face by moving its vertices, the result may be unexpected deformations like this:

You have several solutions like creating directly the final quad shape instead of deforming a square face, or subdivide enough your square so that the deformation becomes not noticeable.


Animating plane with position, rotation and scale from data inside a text file I want to animate a plane xyz coordinates, its scale on xyz and its rotation on the z axis based on a text file data where each line its a frame.

Example text file:

2265.48 563.242 0 166.402 166.402 100 7.3225
2266.61 562.668 0 166.529 166.529 100 7.32268
2267.35 562.864 0 166.622 166.622 100 7.32859
...

Where the data is organized like this:

[x coordinate] [y coordinate] [z coordinate] [x scale] [y scale] [z scale] [z rotation]

I dont have experience in python so i would like a helping hand if possible.

Thanks for the help, i ended up using animation nodes to do that. Very easy to setup and work with the nodes. This thread also helped (it was basically what i wanted to do): Answer from [Can object parameters be set from data file?]


how do i change camera shortcut I updated to blender 2.79 the other day but it got rid of some of my presets. How do I make the camera shortcut to 0, not the num pad 0? I did it before but I forget.
I know how to change it but when I do it I hit save startup file, but when I open a new file its back to the default.

do I have to do it in user preferences?

In your preferences under input enable "emulate numpad". Save your preferences, not your startup file.


Why is the object not moving along the curve path? Yet again, I am have problem with the curve-modifier. So I did exactly (or at least I believe I did) as what others told me in my last question:
set origin of the curve to its geometry > set cursor to the curve > set origin of the tube to its geometry > move the tube to the cursor
And then I applied the curve-modifier and move it along the Z-axis. But for some reason, the tube ran out of the curve and they were not aligned any more. The same happened to the cylinder array that is supposed to run along the curve as well. I tried rotating the tube and change the axis, but it still didn't work.
Could anyone please point out what I missed in these steps? The file is attached as follows: the tube and cylin_array are the application of curve modifier, whereas the tube.001 and cylin_array.001 are after the application.

What you need to do when you want an object to correctly follow the curve is to put both the curve and the object origin at the exact same place. So here:

Select the curve, press ShiftS > Cursor to Selected
Select the object (for example tube) and press ShiftS > Selection to Cursor
Give your object a Curve modifier, find the right Deform Axis (here -Z)
The object is a bit shifted, it's because you've rotated it and didn't apply the rotation, you need to apply (ShiftA)
If you want the curve to go in the opposite direction, switch to Edit mode, right click and Switch Direction


How to make rig that reacts to gravity or seem to behave physically correct? Here's a nice, strangely familiar hat. It's rigged with three bones.

Let's say I want the hat to fall like a real hat would, and bounce around when the character which it's attached to moves. I could always do it manually, but that's no fun.

Is there any way to do this using Blender's physics system? I've seen some pretty clever jiggle-bone stuff using Bézier curves, Spline IK, and soft-body physics, but I've not found any way to make the curves act like a hat would, even after hours of playing with the settings.

How to make a cloth sim rig

The trick is getting the bones of your armature to follow the vertices of your cloth mesh. This can be achieved by parenting Empties to the verts and then setting those Empties as IK targets.

1. Make a mesh and give it a Vertex Group for cloth Pinning

The mesh is extremely simple - just a chain of edges, made in the shape you want your armature to be in its rest position.

Assign a vertex weight of 1 to the base vertex because the cap needs to stay pinned on the head and not fall off. Assign less and less vertex weight as the vertices get further from the base and closer to the tip. My cloth object has only three edges and four verts, so I assigned weights of 1, 0.5, 0.33, 0.15 (from base to tip). Pinning the cloth object with weights allows the hat to be more cloth-like in some areas (the tip) and more rigid in others (the base).

Add a Cloth Simulation to this mesh object.

In the Cloth Sim settings enable Pinning and choose your "Pinning" vertex group.

Play your scene's animation to check that the movement of this skeletal "cloth" is alright. Grab and rotate the object while animation is playing to see the effect.

2. Add Empties and parent them to the cloth's vertices

Add an Empty for each vertex except the base one. Use Snapping (ShiftS) to position them exactly where the vertices are (while in their rest position, frame 1).

If you want to change the Display Size of your Empties this can be done from the Empties Context.

First select an Empty, then Shift-select the cloth object, Tab into Edit Mode, select only the vertex that is to be the parent, and press CtrlP to make it a Vertex Parent. Repeat this process for each Empty. The location of the vertices now determines the location of the Empties.

3. Add an armature

Create a bone for each Edge of the cloth object's mesh. Snap the roots and tips of each bone to the vertices of the cloth object.

4. Add an IK Constraint to each bone

In Pose Mode select a bone and then click the Add Bone Constraint drop-down button to choose Inverse Kinematics. Set the Target for the IK Constraint to be the Empty which lies at the tip of that bone. Set the Chain Length to 1. Repeat this process for each bone.

Test your animation again and make sure the bones of the armature are moving with the cloth object.

You should have a rig that looks something like this:

5. Model the hat if you haven't already, and do some parenting

Parent the hat object to the Armature and choose Automatic Weights.

Parent the Armature and the cloth object to the character's head so that they will move with it.

Adjust the hat's vertex weights in the Weight Paint Editor if necessary.

End result:


Make only some keyframes linear I know you can make keyframes interpolation linear, constant, or Bezier, but this affects all of them.  How can I do this to just a few without dragging the handles?

Select the keyframes in the graph editor and press T> Linear. This will only affect the selected keyframes:


Circle with straight lines I'm attempting to make a circle with straight lines (in the picture) - I need it to remain whole.
Any advice on how to go about this? The bisector tool kept saying 'error: selected edges/faces required', but I've seen people cutting it by simply dragging across before?

You could try a UV Sphere with a Cast modifier set to Cuboid.

Moving the Subdivision Surface modifier before or after Cast will give different results, and the Factor affects how concave/convex the resulting mesh will be.


Blurry textures in the viewport I tried to create a Minecraft animation using blender. When I'm in material mode I see this, but when rendering it shows normal.

Please can anyone tell me what should I do to fix that? I have no idea where that problem is.

In the material nodes, on you image texture change linear to closest. This should fix it. Then also try going into material view mode.


Rigid body activates, before it interacts with another object I want the pitcher on character's hand get hit by a plate and fall and then I want other plates to destroy the rest of the character but everything falls apart even before plate hits anything.

yes learn how here:
1-3 // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEo_9AopfoQ

2-3 // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY7iJmqsJf8

3-3 // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0VJmmPPvwA

Enjoy!


VSE. I need to rotate image with arbitrary center pivot point that is not in the center of the image I know how to rotate with a transform strip, but I need to rotate around an arbitrary point that is not in the center of the image.

It is possible friend, just follow these steps

import your image file in Blender VSE
click image offset

Another step should be adding your transform strip to it but this is the place where you go wrong so before adding transform strip change these values by the formula -

x dimension =  (video dimension x - file dimension x)/2

y dimension =  (video dimension y - file dimension y)/2

so here my video dimensions are - (1920,1080)

and my image dimension are - (620,387)

so I will change these values -

to x = (1920-620)/2 = 650
   Y = (1080-387)/2 = 347

so what we did here is all because to put the pivot point of image file in center.

now add your transform strip and rotate

Now it will rotate from center
you can change the x and Y points of your transform strip to position your image anywhere but do not change the X Y points of original file .....Use transform strip only to position and rotation.


How can I permanently enable an addon in the userpref through Python? I'm trying to create an installer that installs a Blender addon from the terminal, something like this:
wget https://my-installer/install | python

In which the install script will download a zip for the appropriate blender version and I found the bpy.ops.preferences.addon_install and addon_enable operators.
My script gets run with blender --background --python _tmp_installer.py:
import bpy, os
p = os.path.abspath('blenderneuron.zip')
bpy.ops.preferences.addon_install(filepath=p, overwrite=True)
bpy.ops.preferences.addon_enable(module='blenderneuron')

The output of which I capture:
C:\Users\robin\Documents\GIT\BlenderNEURON>python < installer/install.py
Blender output: Blender 2.91.0 (hash 0f45cab862b8 built 2020-11-25 09:02:56)
Read prefs: C:\Users\robin\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.91\config\userpref.blend
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.91\2.91\python
Info: Modules Installed () from 'C:\\Users\\robin\\Documents\\GIT\\BlenderNEURON\\blenderneuron.zip' into 'C:\\Users\\robin\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.91\\scripts\\addons'
reloading addon: blenderneuron 1610983621.1903374 1610983643.3685155 'C:\\Users\\robin\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.91\\scripts\\addons\\blenderneuron\\__init__.py'
Modules Installed () from 'C:\\Users\\robin\\Documents\\GIT\\BlenderNEURON\\blenderneuron.zip' into 'C:\\Users\\robin\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.91\\scripts\\addons'
Info: Modules Installed () from 'C:\\Users\\robin\\Documents\\GIT\\BlenderNEURON\\blenderneuron.zip' into 'C:\\Users\\robin\\AppData\\Roaming\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.91\\scripts\\addons'

Blender quit

From which it seems like everything went OK. My add-on does get installed, and I see it in the list, but it isn't enabled. How can I make sure that it is enabled as if someone went to "Preferences > Addons" and clicked the checkmark there?

Enabling the addon modifies the user preferences, those need to be saved before Blender shuts down or the changes are lost the next time Blender starts. You can use bpy.ops.wm.save_userpref() to do so:
import bpy, os
p = os.path.abspath('blenderneuron.zip')
bpy.ops.preferences.addon_install(filepath=p, overwrite=True)
bpy.ops.preferences.addon_enable(module='blenderneuron')
bpy.ops.wm.save_userpref()