Slightly edited Mesh disappears when activating Dyntopo in Sculpt Mode. Blender 2.8 Total newbie here. I was trying blenders 2.8 sculpting tools and i came across this situation.

I started a new sculpt file and began sculpting the default object that comes in it. Once i was satisfied with the overall shape, i tried to activate dyntopo to start working on the details. But once i activate dyntopo and select a tool or move in the viewport, the mesh disappears completely. I tried with a lot of different (dyntopo) settings but the problem persists.
  For a moment i thought it was a hardware issue, with my pc not being what you'd call super fast. But the funny thing is, when i started a new (sculpting) file with the same object and the same mesh density, BUT activating Dyntopo from the beginning, it works just fine!

Id really like to continue my original file. Or at least, id like to understand why this happens?

If i wasnt clear enough, what can i show you or tell you to be more specific?

By the way, sorry if my english is bad.

This is because for Sculpting you have to apply all the modifiers before applying dyntopo. I think It would solve your problem.


How to manually mirror armature in blender 2.78a? In all previous version, we used to mirror armature by copying one side, and then center 3D cursor to zero, and duplicate, and scale by -1. However I notice that in version 2.78, (correct me if I'm wrong) scaling -1 on x seems to work differently than before as it will caused unwanted rotation on bones. Is it happening to everyone else, and what do I do to prevent it?

As Mzidare said, you can try Symmetrize. Here's a mirroring technique that circumvents this problem:
You can enable X-Mirror, then extend from a central bone with E. The extension should occur symmetrically, and any changes to one should affect the other. I hope this helped :)


Help with Duplifaces I have used a plane and a diamond shape to duplicate ths diamond on a plane. It has worked successfully using Ctrl+P and duplication>faces however i want to get rid of the big diamond which was used for duplicating, is there a way to get rid of it? I have tried going into: object > apply > make duplicates real but it makes viewport and render slow again.

I would also like to know how to solve this correctly.

As far as I know it is a limitation of the current system and there is no way around it at the moment like shown here and here

From my experiments moving the original to another layer or hiding it also hides their duplicates.

One workaround is making duplicates real, but that slows things down as you already mentioned.
Another workaround as mentioned in the Blender manual is moving the duplicator object's center away to some place it doesn't bother you, and move the duplicate original along with it to the same position. It wont really hide it but you can move it out of view.
The way I generally do this is by using a particle system instead, make it emit from faces with the Unborn and Died option enabled in the Render panel, and manually match the particle count to the object's number of faces. This way you can hide the original particle, move to another layer or even put in anther scene without ill effects.

Maybe someone here has a better workaround than this, and I sure would love to hear it.


NLA editor gets tangled all up in Blender 2.75? Don't know what to do with this mess.
Plane.002 is just a still object in my scene. Don't know how It got an action strip.
I want to clean up NLA editor and action editor up by removing four actions indicated below. I tried to delete some of the action strips to remove the actions but other action got messed up.
Not quite understand the NLA editor yet. I'd like some one to clean up NLA and action editor for me and show me how the NLA editor works!
Thanks!

Blend file:

The NLA editor is complex I strongly recommend read the documentation. I will show how I cleanup the references to an action.

Blender NLA Doc

First you need to clean up the reference by deleting the tracks (start icon), select the  Plane.002 ActionStrip and the NlaTrack Action and press X to delete it (be sure to only select the ActionStrip and the NLATrack), Repeat the process for Plane.001 and Plane ActionStrip

Next select the ActionStrip Plane.002 and delete the Action by hold Shift+(press the icon) X. This will delete the reference to the Action. Repeat the same for Plane.001 and Plane ActionStrip

Note how Blender will warning you about the 0 references and that the Action will not be saved at the top most bar (or status bar near the windows title)

Finally save and re-open the file:

I can only summarize that you can save an Action an apply that Action to another object Note how I apply Skate -> Skate.001Action ActionStrip to Plane.002 object. The number 2 next to the action indicate that the ActionStrip have two references. the NLA does a lot more things.


How to animate the start position object on the wave modifier? So I have a scene where my object has the wave modifier and the start position object is an empty axis. Here's my wave modifier settings:

Here's what happens when drag the empty nearby:

but when the empty is animated as soon as it gets nearby, nothing happens:

Also if it helps I have a subdivision modifier above the wave one.

Do I have to apply the wave modifier? Is there something obvious I'm missing? Or can you simply not animate the start position object?

Thanks!

I tried reproducing what you have described and it seems to work fine.
Upon opening the file, press Alt+A to test the animation and try moving the non animated empty to see.

We can investigate more what is causing this but you shouldn't need to apply the modifier. In fact, applying it will remove the interaction between the empty and the mesh and just turn the sphere to the shape it is under the influence permanently.

Providing more details about how did you animate the empty would also help.


Rendering freestyle lines in Cycles I've been using BI to render objects as meshes using freestyle edges. I'm now trying to learn to use Cycles. Is it possible to render freestyle edges in Cycles? If so, how?

No, freestyle is not yet supported in Cycles (and I'm not sure it ever will be directly supported). You could work around the issue by using render layers and grabbing only the freestyle pass from BI:

Then mixing it with the Cycles pass in the compositor.


How do I scale down/zoom out an environment texture? I have a large environment texture of space that I'm using as the background of my scene.

However, when I try to use it in my render, I can only see a tiny part of it.

I want to scale down or "zoom out" on the texture, so I can see more of it in the rendered area. I tried to use a Mapping node and scale it that way, but it did nothing (I could rotate, but not scale).

This is my node setup:

Vector Mapping node is the way.

Make sure you are using an Environment Texture node connected to the Generated socket of a Texture Coordinate node. Then use the Vector Mapping X or Y scale to control it.

Make sure you scale only in one of the three axis, otherwise it will yield no visible effect. Also have in mind that this may introduce some stretching distortion, as spherical environment textures can't really be "zoomed out" in the traditional 2D image sense.


How to generate a full sprite sheet automatically I've been wondering how to render all animation frames at once for a full sprite sheet, instead of having to change the camera manually 8 times and render each direction (with the file manipulations that ensue).

I've learnt how to rotate easily the camera by parenting it to an empty objet at the center of the set (cf. How can I export a blender model as a sprite sheet?) and rotate that object with discrete steps of 45 or 90°.

But is there a way to tell Blender something like, for example : "render frames 30 to 52 of the animation, then rotate the camera 45°, then render frames 30 to 52 again, and so on until the camera has rotated 360°".

Maybe a Python script is necessary ? But I don't know Python at all and I've no idea where to start...

Perhaps putting a Cycles modifier on the animation fcurves so that the animation repeats for each of the different camera angles ( for 23 * 8 frames) would accomplish your mission:

The biggest stumbling block is making sure you have the right span of keyframes to control how many frames the cycle has.  You will probably find yourself adding keyframes at the beginning and ending of the loop (frame 30 and 53=52+1) to ensure that it loops correctly.


After entering a value for dimensions Blender shows zero I have a plane and when I enter a value in the Z dimension Blender shows me the value zero. Simply said I cannot enter a value in the Z dimension of this plane. But when I change the value of the Y dimension then in the viewport the Z dimension is changed. Anyone ?

As you can probably see the Z dimension of the plane is 10m but in the properties panel Blender says that the Y dimension is 10m

Dimensions are given in local view and your object is rotated around X. A way to see that is to activate the axis display option:

If you want to avoid that, the only way I know is what you stated in the comments: applying the rotation.


background clip not rendered in cycles anymore Good day.

I think this is the right place for my problem, since I read something similar to this here. Maybe a bit more confusing.

After a bit more than eight hours of trying to figure out it by myself I'm really in desperation.

I tried to learn about camera tracking with the help of a YT tutorial from Blender Guru (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPcT0dJmoY). Everything went fine till this one point when I again tried to render the scene to check the results. The problem: my background clip disappeared. So far - nothing special. I was sure that I did something wrong and just tried to figure out what it was.

Thankfully I safed a working copy before I started to refine my "hole in the street". A copy, where I just put a cubic hole in the street instead of a more complex shape.

This copy is still working. But the more advanced version doesn't. I spent a whole day of searching and comparing the two versions. And I'm pretty sure I am overlooking something. But I still can not find the mistake I certainly made.

One weird thing I need to mention: after the rendering the background sometimes "blinks" and shows up for a millisecond. But thats all.

I attached the picture of the failed version, since I am not allowed to add two pics in my post. But there is a successfull rendered simple "cubic hole" version.

I checked all the nodes, the scene settings and what not. I really hope someone in this great community is able to help!

I suggest going over the tutorial again in very precise detail. I did the tutorial a few months back (i think still november) and it worked fine. You have probably caused the problem to occur somehow.


Applied texture is deformed or pixelated? Blender noob here. When I apply a texture to my model, sometimes it becomes deformed (circles 1 and 2) or pixelated (circle 3), and sometimes it works perfectly (circle 4). I've tried changing the face to a different texture and back to the desired texture, but it doesn't change anything. This issue persists in textured and rendered viewport shading, as well as in the final rendering.

Before applying a texture to your object you have to properly uv-unwrap your object. You can do it by going into "Edit Mode" than hitting "U" on the keyboard and selecting "Unwrap" form the drop down menu.

With a complex model like yours a simple unwrap is not going to solve all of your issues.
So you should go get some more informations about uv-unwrapping from the Blender Wiki or other web tutorials.


A rigid body sim where at the end all objects textures make out a picture? Im not sure how to explain this, I've seen the effect done online multiple times.

For example, a bunch of balls simulated to fall on the ground, and once they settle if you look at the top of them all, its like they're perfectly organized to make out an image or word on their materials.

I guess the effect could be similar to this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5WAswaJRjw

The trick is simple: this is 'bake to the future'!

Once the simulation baked, go to the last frame and you'll know how to color the balls.

Here (but this is just an example as the materials could be totally different), I've assigned the object pass index knowing the positions at the last frame and used it to drive the color.


How to make gauges for racing game? I am making a racing game and I want to know something:
How do I make gauges for my game. I have 6 gears on car set by states, but only way to visualiate them is game debug. But game debug is ugly- I want to make fancy gauges. How do I make them?

Assuming the gauges are in an overlay scene, you'll need to establish communication with message sensors.

Send a "gearUp" or "gearDown" message to the gauge when the gear changes
Put message sensors on the gauge that execute whatever action you desire

Here's a quick sample - use the up and down arrow keys to send messages.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19279604/static/misc/gauge_example.blend

If the gauges are in the same scene, then it's a whole lot easier.  You can shift+click multiple objects and connect gauge actuators directly to the gear controller.

EDIT

There really isn't a good way to copy properties between scenes with logic bricks.  Here's a Python example that can be adapted to your needs:

import bge

def copyProps(cont):
    # Get a reference to the object running the script
    own = cont.owner

    # Get a reference to the overlay scene
    overlay = bge.logic.getSceneList()[1]

    # Find the object in the overlay scene
    other = overlay.objects['Speedometer']

    # Copy the desired properties
    other['Text'] = own['speed']

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    copyProps(cont)


Mesh Deform Modifier Missing / not visible When I use a modifier, they work fine, but when I use the Mesh Deform Modifier it is not visible for some reason. When I move any other modifier, it becomes visible; if I let go of it, it turns back to being invisible.
Also the modifier underneath it become only togglable. Any other button I select ( The Drop Down menu with the options to move first or last, apply Modifier, etc...) aren't selectable.
I am also unable to duplicate the modifier
I have reinstalled Blender.
and it has changed nothing.
Edit:
After a few hours away, I came back to find it still the same.
However I did encounter the steps to generate the problem;
Make two Mesh Deform Modifiers and apply both to a mesh.
I first have an armature modifier, a corrective smooth modifier, subsurf, and then the two Mesh Deforms last.
I tried to rearrange the stack of the mods since I remember reading somewhere that the order in which the Modifiers are stacked yields undesirable results, and wouldn't I know it, just by rearranging the stacks the second mesh deform disappeared from the UI, so adjusting the stack generates this issue.
However, rearranging them, does not solve this one for me.
I will get a photo uploaded soon to show what I mean.

The first photo on top you can see the extra space between the modifiers
In the first image above you can see the modifiers are visible, but only when I select the upper right corner to move/ rearrange the modifiers within the Stack.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN ANSWER! I am only taking this matter elsewhere since this may be a legit bug worth reporting. I think I will keep this up in case anyone else has anything to contribute; but for the time being, I will be taking this issue up with Blender Stack exchange.


Blender Saves game as .blend when exporting as runtime, I made a simple game when I was bored, blender just saves it as a .blend file when I try to save it as a standalone game. I have the add-on and everything, but it just saves it as a .blend file. I saw one website that said I should copy certain files from the blender directory but I can't find that either. Does anyone know where I can find that directory, or does it work differently for linux, and if so, how do I save it as a standalone game?

I'm running Blender 2.78c with Ubuntu 16.04.

EDIT:
I saw this post Linux, Save As Game Engine Runtime not working and one of the answers says that I should check if the player path was filled in, and it is. I got curious and searched for the file, and couldn't find it. Could this be why the blender saves it as a .blend file?

You're probably exporting it wrong. Make sure you have the save as runtime addon enabled (User preferences>Addons>Game Engine). Without this you can't export as a game runtime, meaning people can't play it, like the issue you described.

Once that's done, make sure you are viewing the FIRST SCREEN you want the player to see. Splash screen, main menu, level 1, etc. When exporting, the scene you are currently viewing will be the first thing players see. Also make sure you have selected "Blender Game" under render engine options. Then you're good to export it.

NOTE: I'm on Windows, but should be the same with Linux, part from the .exe obviously.

Hope this helps.


Disable objects/collections in 2.8 doesn’t work I am trying to disable some objects in 2.8 with alt + click in the outliner, but it doesn’t work, ctrl + click to isolate works fine although.

How can I fix it? Or is it a bug?
I tried different 2.8 versions and I got the same problem.

Disable/hide is context-dependent

There is nothing to fix and it's also not a bug. The functions depend on what you use them on and what is in your scene collection.

If you hover over a collection, you can

Alt-Click to hide the collection from all viewports.
Shift-Click to hide the collection
Ctrl-Click to isolate the collection (hide all other collections).

If you hover over an object, you can

Alt-Click to disable only this object from all viewports.
Ctrl-Click to isolate only this object (hide all other objects from all collections, but not the collections themselves).

Obviously, you need more than one collection to isolate it, because there are no other collections to hide. Same goes for objects - no other objects in the scene, nothing to hide.


how can I get pure white color in blender? I recently tried to procedurally texture a white stone, like the ones that are usually kept for decorations in the garden but I just can't get the stone to be completely white with few random black bands. This is what I ended up to:

is there any way I can achieve the effect and with less flat bands like above and here is my very intuitive work in my node setup:

There are three main issues that prevent your stone from getting a brighter color:

Dim lighting: your light sources aren't strong enough to produce white colors, even from white materials. The best example here is the floor, which has a simple 0.8 gray material. If the floor is gray, there's no reason your stone will be white. Increase light intensity to fix this.
The wave texture produces some pretty dark bands, that will darken the entire material in any blending mode where dark colors darken the overall result (including the Overlay mode you're using). I put the wave texture through a color ramp to map the black into mid-light gray to fix this.
Even after moderating the wave texture, it helps to also reduce its influence in the following overlay node by toning down the Factor to 0.25.
And lastly, I added an RGB curves node to lighten the overall color as well.

On a general note, it's worth mentioning that you won't get a "pure white" color with so many bumps and overlayed textures that darken the overall result (Voronoi, Wave). But that's fine, because unless we're talking about a very smooth surface - like our floor here (instead of an ordinary natural stone), a perfectly white color will be unrealistic.


trying to create a bmesh from csv coordinate list Hello fellow Blender snakehandlers,

I have a list of coordinates in a csv file and I would like to create a mesh with only vertices from it.

When I run it, it throws the following error, which I can't decipher.
Any ideas on how to make this work? Thank you!

line 54, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\modules\bpy_types.py", line 429, in from_pydata
    self.vertices.foreach_set("co", tuple(chain.from_iterable(vertices)))
TypeError: couldn't access the py sequence

CSV

id,x,y,z,r,g,b
0,0.30778491,0.12740749,0.04903458,174.0,84.0,118.0

PYTHON

import bpy
import csv, os, bmesh, math

#filepaths
filepath = bpy.data.filepath
directory = os.path.dirname(filepath)

blendname = bpy.path.basename(bpy.data.filepath)
blendname = os.path.splitext(blendname)[0]
if blendname:
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = blendname
print(blendname)

some_dict = {}

# DO POINTS
csvpoints= directory+"/csv/3d-points.csv"
pointsReader = csv.reader(open(csvpoints, newline=''), delimiter=',')

#bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

obj = bpy.context.object

verts = []
edges = []
faces = []

for idx, row in enumerate(pointsReader):
    #print(idx, row)
    id = row[0]
    print("id = "+ id)
    x = row[1]
    print("x = " + x)
    y = row[2]
    print("y = " + y)
    z = row[3]
    print("z = " + z)
    vert = (x,y,z)
    verts.append(vert)

#create mesh and object
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("wave")
object = bpy.data.objects.new("wave",mesh)

#create mesh from python data
mesh.from_pydata(verts,[],[])
mesh.update(calc_edges=True)

#set mesh location
object.location = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(object)

The manuals suggest using the csvreader in a with block.

You made two mistakes.

You have to skip the first csv line, since it doesn't hold any values. (Or treat it differently.)
You have to parse the numeric values. float(row[0])

Working example.

import bpy
import csv, os, bmesh, math

#filepaths
filepath = bpy.data.filepath
directory = os.path.dirname(filepath)

verts = []
edges = []
faces = []

csvpoints= directory+"/points.csv"
pointsReader = csv.reader(open(csvpoints, newline=''), delimiter=',')

with open(csvpoints, 'rt', encoding="utf8") as csvfile:
    pointsReader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=',', quotechar='|')
    for idx, row in enumerate(pointsReader):
        if (idx > 0):
            vert = (float(row[0]), float(row[1]), float(row[2]))
            verts.append(vert)

obj = bpy.context.object

#create mesh and object
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("wave")
object = bpy.data.objects.new("wave",mesh)

#create mesh from python data
mesh.from_pydata(verts,[],[])
mesh.update(calc_edges=True)

#set mesh location
object.location = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(object)


Blender can denoise its own animations. Can it denoise a live shot? I have a drone with a small camera on it which can get noisy even with a rock-bottom ISO of 100. I have been experimenting with color correcting my drone videos in Blender and being able to denoise them as well  in the same program would be quite convenient. Is this possible?

Here I am, answering my own question. I have not found any way at all to use Blender to remove camera noise. The AI Denoise node now included with Blender does not affect live-action footage.


Is 100,000 faces a big render? How can I reduce it? I'm making a human body. It has 70,000 faces so far, and I still have to make the face. In weight paint mode, it lags. How can I reduce this without making it look less smooth?

100,000 is a lot of faces on a slow computer, but not too many on a fast computer (definitely not unrealistically high). As a general rule, always stay as low-poly as possible for as long as you can, and use a subdivision modifier to add the look of smoothness while maintaining an easy-to-edit lower-poly mesh for edit/weight paint/etc. modes. Don't apply the subdiv modifier unless you have to. If you can get away with it, never apply it. Rigs will live perfectly well underneath or on top of a subdiv modifier. Working like that helps your viewport stay nice and smooth!

In your case--since it seems you've already applied a smooth or two to your model, you may be able to reduce your poly-count by using the decimate modifier, but that's sort of hit or miss and may require a bit of touch-up.


python script to read in .csv file containing quaternion coordinates and turn it into a path/curve for an object to follow I am a highschool student working at a college's engineering department for the summer. I just began working in blender and have intermediate knowledge of python. Could anyone share a script that:

Read a .csv file of xyz coordinates and a .csv file of quaternion coordinates into python.
Turn these points into some type of curve or path that an object can then follow to model the path the coordinates map out

My .csv files (around 250 lines) have three and four points on each line. All the coordinates would need to be floats on account that they are decimals.

Here you can find both example .csv files: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/a1a4cbe6e959ac14e5af to play with. My code looks like:

import os
import bpy
import csv
from mathutils import Vector

def set_keyframes(obj, loc_txt, quat_txt):
    obj.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'

    with open(loc_txt, 'r') as loc_fh:
        with open(quat_txt, 'r') as quat_fh:
            r_loc = csv.reader(loc_fh, delimiter=',')
            r_quat = csv.reader(quat_fh, delimiter=',')

            i = 0

            for row_loc in r_loc:
                row_quat = r_quat.__next__()
                row_loc = [ float(x.strip()) for x in row_loc[:3]]
                row_quat = [ float(x.strip()) for x in row_quat[:4]]

                fr = 10+2*i

                obj.location = Vector(row_loc) * 10
                obj.rotation_quaternion = row_quat
                obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=fr)
                obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_quaternion", frame=fr)

                i += 1

base_folder =  '/Users/sharonshorak/Desktop/ARYA_PYTHON'

#  os.path.join  takes care of joining folder with filename.
positions = os.path.join(base_folder, 'xyzposition.csv')
quaternions = os.path.join(base_folder, 'quaternions.csv')

set_keyframes(bpy.context.active_object, positions, quaternions)

Your data was rather ugly, but I was able to write code that copes with the extra commas and spaces:

From http://www.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/csv-to-fcurve-loc-rot.html :

Here's an updated version that handles the situation where the location and quaternion .CSV files do not have the same number of lines.  This opens up more questions about why they differ.  Are they different sample rates or different time spans or both?

import bpy
import csv

def keyframe_location(obj, fname):
    with open(fname, 'r') as loc_fh:
        r_loc = csv.reader(loc_fh, delimiter=',')
        i = 0
        for row_loc in r_loc:
            row_loc = [ float(x.strip()) for x in row_loc[:3]]
            fr = 10+2*i
            obj.location = row_loc
            obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=fr)

            i = i+1

def keyframe_rotation(obj, fname):
    with open(fname, 'r') as quat_fh:
        r_quat = csv.reader(quat_fh, delimiter=',')
        i = 0
        obj.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'
        for row_quat in r_quat:
            row_quat = [ float(x.strip()) for x in row_quat[:4]]
            fr = 10+2*i
            obj.rotation_quaternion = row_quat
            obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_quaternion", frame=fr)

            i = i+1

def mission2(obj, loc_csv, quat_csv):
    """
     Use this version if the loc and quat .CSV files do not have the same number of lines.
     This opens up the question: why do they have differing numbers of lines?
     Are they covering the same time span at different frame rates, or do they cover different time spans?
    """
    keyframe_location(obj, loc_csv)
    keyframe_rotation(obj, quat_csv)

#
#

mission2(bpy.context.active_object, '/var/tmp/loc.txt', "/var/tmp/quat.txt")


Exported STL is empty in Slic3r I am having trouble exporting meshes as .stl files from blender, when I import the exported mesh into Slic3r nothing shows up. However when I import an already existing model into blender and then export that as a .stl, it works fine in Slic3r

blend file

stl file

You need to triangulate the mesh. Select the mesh you wish to export and add a Triangulate Modifier to it. Then in the .stl export dialogue enable Apply Modifiers.

.stl imported to slic3r

GIF


Baking - UV's Outside UV Window Don't Bake I want to bake an unwrapped mesh using a texture image.

It seems that the only part of the mesh being baked is the part inside the UV window.

I can't scale the UV's down because the texture will be too large for the final object.

It's a table made of wood planks - if I scale the UV's down, they're going to look huge.

Can I scale the image instead of the UV's, or is there a setting to allow baking outside the UV window with a repeated texture?

It's an 8k image.

Here's the result of my diffuse bake:

You can scale the image inside the Shader editor with the Mapping node, just make this setup:

Make sure you change X and Y scale together, so you don't stretch your texture one way and not the other.


Merging characters body parts with a different edge loop count I am just working on a new 3d Character for a little mobile Game. Since its best practice regarding performance to keep the polycount low, I am trying to figure out how to merge my hand with my arm since they have a different edge loop count.

The problem I ran into is, that the end of my arm needs way more detail (edge loops) than the arm itself (due to the fingers/claws). The arm is made of a simple cylinder shape with 8 Edge Loops. See the image below.

I than attached three fingers (or claws in this case) to the shaped arm, like so:

As you may see, the claws use more edge loops than the actual arm. And that's okay so far, since I want them to bend nicely. But the problem is to get from an edge loop count of 16 back to 8. The only way I came up with is to use triangles but I don't know if that is the correct way or if there is any other/better solution, since I read about the fact that you should avoid using triangles in character animation.

I will attach my workfile to this post so you guys can jump in and have a look on the character if you want to.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B89oIuOBdiu0Wi1MUUNjTUxUWTg/view?usp=sharing

I appreciate any kind of help with this issue:).

Here is an example of different topology you could use to transition from the octagonal arms to the three fingers. The four selected faces are the ones to pay most attention to.

Although, a triangle island surrounded all by quads won't hurt you once in a while. "All quads" is an ideal, it's not a set-in-stone rule. If the mesh can deform without trouble when animated, you're okay. But yeah, it's good to find quad solutions when possible.

I should also point out this loop of faces that only serves to aid the mesh definition when subdivided. You would probably want to do away with this in a model that is a low-poly game asset or something. I left it in as a buffer. You can take it or leave it.

Blend file to play with:


Append group with Python API I want to append a group with the Python API, like  I would normally do with File > append.

I already tested this solution: How to Link/Append a data-block using the Python API?, and this one: How to link/append with a Python script?.

When I use bpy.ops.wm.append() blender crashes, I don't know why (the path is valid because I can link objects with the second method).

When I use bpy.data.libraries.load() I can't find how to import a whole group (not a dupli-group).

By importing a group I mean append all the objects in the group by keeping their relations.

The code in the first answer you linked handles the data retrieval exactly as you want it (if you set the link flag to False, but it later on always instantiates the result. In plain English: The group you're looking for has been appended just fine, but it only exists within bpy.data so far, it is not connected to your scene yet. Just as with linked data, you can instantiate such a group. But if you want to instead link the objects to your current scene as well (which what the append command does by default), then you have to modify the lower part of the code a little:

import bpy

filepath = "//Source.blend"
group_name = "Test"
# link = False means append, link = True will link the group
link = False

# append the group defined in group_name from the .blend file
with bpy.data.libraries.load(filepath, link=link) as (data_src, data_dst):
    ## all groups
    # data_to.groups = data_from.groups

    # only append a single group we already know the name of
    data_dst.groups = [group_name]

    # link the objects contained in the group to your current scene
    # otherwise you won't ever see them!
for o in data_dst.groups[0].objects:
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(o)

    # for safety measures, update the scene
    # most likely only necessary from within an add-on
bpy.context.scene.update()

The example above appends a group called Test from a file called Source.blend located in the same folder as the file you're working in right now.

The operators around bpy.data.libraries.xxx are low-level functions. The benefit of that is they execute really fast, and you have nice access to the retrieved data later on via the data_dst variable, which contains a bunch of lists with the stuff you retrieved. The downside is that a low level function really only does this one task. What the coder decides to do with the retrieved data is totally up to him, that's why you manually need to link the objects to the scene.

You can read more about the topic on the API pages: https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_78_0/bpy.types.BlendDataLibraries.html?highlight=libraries#bpy.types.BlendDataLibraries.load


World nodes keyframes does not work Keyframing the node values works in the viewport but not in the final render (Eevee). I want to make World lighting continually darker. Blender only keeps the initial "Start frame" value throughout the animation. I tried multiple Blender versions. Any suggestions? Thank you.

If you add a Value Node to your graph, you can type #frame in the value field which will make the value correspond with the current frame as the frame changes. You could combine this with math nodes to set the timing and the direction (toward beginning or toward end) of the fade that you want. This example fades the background from bright white (At frame 0) to full black (at frame 250):


Can't figure out this shape I'm still very new to blender and i'm capable of doing some weird shapes but for the life of me i can't figure out what i need to do to obtain this shape. I almost had it but not quite and forgot to save, now i'm puzzled again. If someone could please give me some advice on how to get this shape i would GREATLY! appreciate it as it's vital to my model [I suppose every shape is lol].I've included a pic of the shape and a pic of the model I am working on
P.S  i'm not even a modeler  this just a hobby i recently got into and I'm loving the process of learning and creating.

I would start with a plane and then extrude the edge to create the basic shape:

Then add edge loops to get a decent quad mesh

Note that the loops going around are close to the edge.

Make sure the pivot point is at the top centre and the two verts are scaled to zero to make sure they are in line.

add a mirror modifier and apply it. Then add a couple of sharpening cuts on either side of the centre line.

Select all faces and extrude x 3 with the start and end extrude being close to the edge.

Add a subsurface x 2

I did this very quickly but you can adjust the initial block out verts to shape it with the image. The image is not great quality but I am sure you will do it better with more time.


Why does copy rotation constraint invert after 180 degrees I'm try to rig a low poly clock for blender, so I added a copy rotation constraint so the minute hand would automatically spin with the second hand, but when I rotate the second hand 180 degrees, the minute hand reverses its rotation.

Maybe you can alternatively do it with drivers instead.

Rather than add constrains use a driver on the rotation properties of the hour hand by right clicking them and choosing Add Driver > Manually Create Later

Then proceed to the Graph Editor, change to Drivers from the header, and choose the desired channel (Z in this case).
From there open the Properties Panel (N Key), Drivers tab choose the option Scripted Expression and add a new variable.
Use the Transform Chanel option, pick the other hand and choose its $Z$ Rotation. The scripted expression should read something along the lines of $var/12$ so it rotates at one twelfth of the angular speed.


Contrasted triangles on interface and transparent materials in viewport and material view System Information
Operating system: Linux-5.8.0-25-generic-x86_64-with-debian-bullseye-sid 64 Bits
Graphics card: AMD TURKS (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.8.0-25-generic, LLVM 11.0.0) X.Org 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.2.1
Blender Version
Broken: version: 2.90.1, branch: master, commit date: 2020-09-23 06:43, hash: rB3e85bb34d0d7
Worked: (newest version of Blender that worked as expected)
Short description of error
I get contrasted triangles throughout the interface, everywhere. Ill attach screenshot to understand the issue better. Some materials are also displayed transparent so matter what settings I tweak, and sometimes the model appears to have many black triangles inside it where there is no mesh, inside the empty spaces. I am sure this a graphical issue, but I have tried to install additional drivers and drivers from official sites and ppa's but nothing has worked.

TL;DR: Your GPU does not fulfill the minimum requirements for running Blender 2.8x or later.

"Turks" is part of the codename of multiple GPUs that have the TeraScale 2 micro-architecture:

Radeon HD 6570 (Turks Pro)
Radeon HD 6570 (Turks Pro)
Radeon HD 6670 (Turks XT)
Radeon HD 7510 (Turks LE)
Radeon HD 7570 (Turks Pro-L)
Radeon HD 7670 (Turks XT)
FirePro V3900 (Turks GL)
FirePro V4900 (Turks XT GL)
FirePro M2000 (Turks GL)

In order to run Blender properly, your hardware has to fulfill the minimum requirements. For AMD graphics cards the micro-architecture has to be at least GCN first generation or later. This is to ensure normal operation, GPU rendering has higher requirements. At the time of writing the minimum requirements for graphics card for Blender 2.8x and 2.9x are:

Supported Graphics Cards

NVIDIA: GeForce 400 and newer, Quadro Tesla GPU architecture and newer, including RTX-based cards, with NVIDIA drivers (list of all GeForce and Quadro GPUs)
AMD: GCN 1st gen and newer (list of all AMD GPUs)
Intel: Haswell and newer (list of all Intel GPUs)
macOS: version 10.13 or newer with supported hardware

Unfortunately, this means that your GPU is below the minimum requirements and not officially supported. You may still be able to run Blender, but graphics glitches or even crashes, due to issues with the graphics driver, may occur. Sometimes the graphic glitches can be resolved by installing a more recent graphics driver, if one is available.
Blender 2.79b is the last release that officially supported your GPU. Previous versions of Blender can be download from this page.


Screen capture with blender how do I record my screen with blender to answer questions? Do I need to use an external recorder or is there one built into blender?

To create a still image or screen grab of the interface you can press CtrlF3 and save the image.

You will be presented with the option to save to save the whole screen or just the active window.

To record a sequence of steps into a Gif file you need external sotfware.

Please read the link on meta: What is the process for creating gifs for questions and answers?

Note that when recording video you can only post a file that is under 2MB in size.


How to select layer in the object data instead of selecting the stroke in grease pencil? How to select layer in the object data instead of selecting the stroke?
The grease pencil layer cannot be selected either in the outliner or under the object data layer panel.
I tried to lock the other layers so as to isolate the target layer and use [select box] in [edit mode] to select it. I am wondering is there any quick way to select the target layer?

Since GP object is only one object you can't select layers individually in Object mode. If you want to do that, you have to separate the layer in Edit mode to make it a distinct object.


How to resolve the Z pass when rendering with subframes? Currently I'm trying to render my scenes by making use of subframes to save on rendertimes through rendering on multiple nodes.

But when I do this I'm having problems combining the chuncks from the Z pass.
As you can see in the combined image below the Z pass does not show correctly.
It seems to reset the nearest and farest point of each individual subframe.

How should I go about fixing this? I'm all out of ideas.
 Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Combined Z pass chuncks:

Example of the python script I'm using:

cat >subframe.py <<EOF
import bpy
bpy.context.scene.render.border_min_x = $SF_MIN_X
bpy.context.scene.render.border_max_x = $SF_MAX_X
bpy.context.scene.render.border_min_y = $SF_MIN_Y
bpy.context.scene.render.border_max_y = $SF_MAX_Y
bpy.context.scene.render.use_border = True

def add_subframe_to_fo_path(scene):
    scene.node_tree.nodes['File Output'].base_path = '$OUTDIR'
    for file_slot in scene.node_tree.nodes['File Output'].file_slots:
        file_slot.path=file_slot.path + '_X-' + str($SF_MIN_X) + '-' + str($SF_MAX_X) + '-Y-' + str($SF_MIN_Y) + '-' + str($SF_MAX_Y)

bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(add_subframe_to_fo_path)
EOF
blender -b *.blend -P subframe.py -F PNG -o $OUTDIR/frame_######_X-$SF_MIN_X-$SF_MAX_X-Y-$SF_MIN_Y-$SF_MAX_Y -s $START -e $END -j $STEP -t 0 -a

Node setup:

Hardware/software specifications:

Blender version nr:  2.78a
Render engine: Cycles
OS: Linux Ubuntu

Your Normalize Node is scaling the values so they range from minimum to maximum for each part individually. Leave it out and you should be fine. You could use a custom normalization scaling that is predefined and does not depend on the maximum and minimum of one subframe, or scale the Zpass of the whole image after merging.


hair not rendering in blender and it is not showing up in object mode either I have been having problems with the hair particle, for some reason the hair particles is now showing up as dots instead of hairs. I have no idea why it did this.

Can someone please help? I even tried to convert it to mesh which didn't work. I added the file as well so if anyone can show me what went wrong. File is too big to be uploaded through Blender Exchange.

In the particle settings under render, you have selected object but haven't chosen an object to use. I expect you want to change that to path. Then under that in the display settings where you have chosen path, change that to rendered.


Black holes / Water in glass I try to render mineral water bottle filled with water in Cycles. For testing purposes I use super simple model with absolute flat lighting filled with white color.

What is bothering me are the black spots on the render. I mean, I know there should be some strange curves generated by IOR, but in the complete white environment black patches should`nt appear.

What should I do, to avoid them? I`m attaching images with the render result.

I know that lighting and model are dull, but I use them to exclude any unnecesarry factors. My render settings are:

This is my latest bottle atempt with photo lighting. It looks better, but on the top of the bottle strange curves appeared. I think that it is caused by plastic rings on the bottle, but it look unnatural. I think that I`m missing something, because I still dont have control on this render behavior.

These "black spots" are actualy supposed to be there.

Look at these images with similar dark spots

It is actually more prevalent in thicker objects so if you really don't like it, try making the glass thinner

This images has a glass with much thicker walls.


rotation copied every second circle My question is pretty simple.

How to make an object copy rotation of another object with same speed but only every second circle. I know I can animate that using keyframes, but I need to have in constraint.

You could add a scripted driver to the desired rotation axis of the object with the intermittent rotation, using the following expresion:

var*(int((var/(2.0*pi))%2))

where the variable var, (or whatever you want to call it) refers to the relevant rotation (X,Y,or Z) of the driving object.

Here, the Z rotation of the triangle is  being driven by the expression, in which var refers to the the Z rotation of the square.

EDIT in response to your comment:

We can make the expression a little more general by implicitly casting True and False to 1 and 0:

var*(int((var/(2.0*pi))%3)==1)

In this version, the number where the 3 is determines the number of turns in the cycle, and the number where the 1 is says which of the turns to follow, with 0 as the last, counting back. So this example would make the driven object follow the driver on the second of every three turns.

So, in order to have alternating rotations, in the example below, the green triangle uses:

var*(int((var/(2.0*pi))%2)==1)

..and the yellow triangle uses:

var*(int((var/(2.0*pi))%2)==0)

Any more than this - say, "the second and fifth out of every seven".. and it would probably be tidier to write a little function, and add it to the driver_namespace.


Materials not applied after importing .obj (ShapeNet) I want to use Blender to generate a dataset of videos. As a basis I want to use ShapeNet.

When importing the .obj file, blender also correctly loads all the materials from the .mtl file. By that I mean that they are listed in the material tab of the properties window. But for some objects the materials are not correctly applied to the surfaces.

Example: The object with the ID 3dw.e480a15c22ee438753388b7ae6bc11aa should look like this:

However, if I just import the file in blender, the rendering will look something like that:

So, the colors of the knobs work, also the textures of the pillows, but the rest of the colors don't.

What seems strange to me is, that I cannot select the different faces and color them myself in blender. Also, if I move the main part of the bed, a frame of lines will remain there. Maybe this has something to do with the problem:

Similar problems occur for many objects. For example 3dw.b1696ffd98c753ccea88a0a7eb1222bb. There, the problem with the frame of lines does not occur and I can color the airplane afterwards, but it somehow does not load the materials when imported.

How can it be, that it works for some objects but for others it doesn't?

This problem with the materials in Blender with the ShapeNet objects seems to be a common one. This worked for me (I used ShapeNetSem):
You can convert your .obj models to .gltf format using the obj2gltf package. Be sure that the ShapeNet textures can be found during converting: I had to put all the .jpg texture images inside the same directory as the .obj and corresponding .mtl files (you can see which textures are needed for a model by opening its .mtl file in a text editor). Then import your .gltf models in Blender. They should now load properly.
On top of that, you can also try to turn off Backface Culling and Auto Smooth, in Blender. This wasn't necessary in my case, but I've read it helps for some people.


Some small parts of the mesh are unpaintable in texture paint I am trying to paint this leg blue, but some parts can not be painted(the white stripes on the blue leg). How do I solve this? I used smart uv project to unwrap the mesh.

Maybe try to increase the Bleed value in the Tools panel > Options > Project Paint. It gives your brush a bit margin around the borders of your UV islands.


How to make a crystal material? How to make a crystal material in cycles with the node editor?
Much like this -

Not exactly like the image because I'm trying to make an object with a light that is emitting from the center of the object lighting it towards the surface of the object as the light fades. And the object to be crystal like looking (the back faces to be visible too, like a real crystal). The "layer weight" node does something like that, but it shows the materials according to the camera angles and I don't want that. How can I achieve that?

Using volume rendering, you can emit light from inside a glass object. If you use a procedural gradient texture to control the strength, you get a nice effect:

If you bump up the IOR, it helps make it look more like a crystal:

Also see
Controlling volume density

Original answer:
You can make a glass object emit light on other objects without affecting the appearance of the object to the camera with a light path node:

If the incoming ray is a

Camera ray

Transmission ray

Glossy Ray

Then the glass shader is used. If it's not any of the above, then the emission shader is used. If the ray is hitting the back of a face, it always uses the glass shader.
If you want you could also add some emission which is visible to the camera, to make it appear more glowy:

If you want light to be emitted from inside the object, you can use the new volumetrics features:


Render wireframes with hidden wires? I need to render my models in wireframe (no solid). I first turned to the Wireframe modifier, it works great. Only I can see through to the wires at the back of the model. I need to render only the front-visible wires, otherwise it just clutters the view. Is it possible and how? (No matter if it's BI or Cycles in this case.)

Add a Geometry node and use the backfacing information to control the transparency of the object:

The inside "backfacing" geometry will be transparent and the "front facing" will use the wireframe.


way to customize face colors with the overlay face orientation In the > 2.8 version of blender, we have the face orientation overlay feature that colors front facing normaled faces with blue and back facing ones to red like so:

This is very useful, but also somewhat distracting at times. Is there a setting that lets us customize this color? Because sometimes I just find it more useful and wish there a material dark color because these flat colors sometimes are to much flat it's hard to distinguish and view.

Yes, you can change it in the preferences in "themes" part for the 3d viewport:


Strange distortion of the image after rendering When I look at the scene in the "rendered" mode everything is OK,

but when I render image to png file, I get this strange distortion.

Why is this happening and how to fix it?

The main reason for difference between the render and 3D View is modifiers that are disabled in view or have different setting for view and render.


Select vertices, edges, faces of individual objects I add 1 circle using this code

ret = bmesh.ops.create_circle(
        bm,
        cap_ends=False,
        radius=(10),
        segments=3,
        )
del ret
edges_start_a = bm.edges[:]
geom_start_a = bm.verts[:] + edges_start_a
verts_start_a = bm.verts[:]

When i add a second one using the same code only different variables

ret = bmesh.ops.create_circle(
        bm,
        cap_ends=False,
        radius=(10),
        segments=3,
        )
del ret
edges_start_b = bm.edges[:]
geom_start_b = bm.verts[:] + edges_start_b
verts_start_b = bm.verts[:]

All the variables of the second circle is combined with the first one
I.E. edges_start_b also has edges of edges_start_a in it

How can i split these? Or at least get the vertices and edges and faces of each individual circle?

I'm assuming, that bm is a bmesh object. Obviously, the bmesh object will hold all verts, edges and faces that you add to it with any operation.

You should improve the following

Don't del ret. It should be put in a global scope where ret is accessible later anyways. If it goes out of scope python will delete it automatically. You're using a dynamic interpreter language, so you can use its features. Even just not pointing to the return variable bmesh.ops.create_circle(bm, ... ) will delete the pointer.
Your code won't compile. Always post working code snippets (mwe) in question. You'll be saving everyone a lot of time. (A) Others won't have to rewrite your code and (B) your problem may be in the code you didn't post.
Read the documentation. The method bmesh.ops.create_circle actually return a dictionary with the newly created vertices.

From the api:

  Returns
  verts: output verts
  type list of (bmesh.types.BMVert)

  Return type
  dict with string keys

With the returned dict we can point to the verts. (Obviously, now that we're using the returned object ret don't delete it.)

verts = ret['verts']

Each vertex stores the linked edges.

verts[0].link_edges

The updated snippet could look like this.

import bmesh

bm = bmesh.new()

ret = bmesh.ops.create_circle(
        bm,
        cap_ends=False,
        radius=(10),
        segments=5,
        )
verts = ret['verts']

edges = set()
for vert in verts:
    for edge in vert.link_edges:
        edges.add(edge)

edges = list(edges)

So, what's going on at the end? Why are we creating a set() and then converting it to a list?

Each vertex of the circle, will have two link_edges. However, the connected vertices will share an edge. This means, that if we just add all of the linked edges into a big list, each edge will show up twice. That's why, I use a python set. In a set each element is unique. Adding items to a set with the add() method will not do anything if the element (the next edge) is already present in the set.


Is there a formula for processing a rendered area in compositor without affecting other areas? In various scenes I have areas that could be isolated using cryptomatte or material id or view layer and I want to effect that area only. With colorramp, the result applies color to the entire output rather than the isolated area. On a case by case basis, I can fiddle with the result using color key, alpha over, mix etc. and get an acceptable result. But, what I really want is a way to do this simply every time.
I tried using holdout shaders and view layers. For example, from back to front is:

background
torus
plane
sphere

So, I created view layers:
Background collection:
background + torus holdout + plane holdout + sphere holdout
Torus collection:
Torus + plane holdout + sphere holdout
Plane collection:
Plane + sphere holdout
Sphere collection:
Sphere
But this didn't work. Combining them, in compositor with Mix blend mode, the result does not show the background behind semi-transparent areas of the sphere. Plane does not show the torus in transparent areas, etc.
It seems to me like such an obviously needed thing, that I'm hoping there is a formula to achieve this in compositor. Is there?

Sorry long day ... I'm not sure if I catch the point ... if your issue is lost alpha after Colorramp add Set Aplha node behind. Colorramp is black&white node only.


Using 2 monitors on Mac pro I'm new to Blender and i'm using 2 monitors on a Mac pro,osX El capitan, I created a second window but it seems that Blender only recognize 1 monitor...
Is there a way to change this behaviour ?

Thanks by adance

Regards

Paul

Shift right click on the upper left corner of a window creates a floating window. Now you can drag that over to the second monitor.


How to ask Blender to return an angle of a tangent in a driver? My vehicle is driving along it’s locale Y-axis. When it encounters a hill the empty on the front lifts up and creates an angle with the empty at the rear.  How can I ask Blender to return the angle in a driver math expression for the vehicle to rotate on its X-axis. See image.
The Y is known as a fixed construction value of the verhicle (6 meter)
Z = ( z-location Empty Front) – (z-location Empty Rear)
To calculate the tangent in the driver :
Var_1 = z-location Empty Front
Var_2 = z-location Empty Rear
Expression for tangent : (Var_1 – Var_2) / 6
So I have the tangent, how do I get the angle ?
I tryed this : arctan((var_1-var_2)/6), but Blender sais ERROR : invalid Python expression

The python function is atan() not arctan(), and generally its better to use atan2(y, x) instead of atan(y/x) because the former won't generate division by zero.
Also note you have the hypotense so you want asin(var_1-var_2)/6) to get $\alpha$ since you haven't actually found Y. See https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/drivers/drivers_panel.html#simple-expressions


Blender Cycles quickly renders animation just black After making some improvements to a project that I have not previously had any problems with I proceeded to set up my render settings.

I then realised that I had been working in blender render instead of cycles. I don't know what the difference is between them really apart from I was able to do a lot more in blender render than in cycles.

So I made the changes I needed to make now that I was in cycles render and tried to render the animation. And this happened!!!!

Cycles Render uses a different node set-up for the materials then Blender Render. (You can check that for both Cycles Render and Blender Render by opening the Node Editor, with 'Use Nodes' enabled) After switching to Cycles Render,  it doesn't contain the materials you have set up in Blender Render. You must make the new materials in Cycles Render yourself.


Rigify error "NoneType" "Bones" when trying to Generate Rig I am trying to rig a character using Rigify but I run into this error when I hit "generate rig".
The error says "Generation has thrown an exception: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'bones'.
I have modified the rig in edit mode, however I have done so before with rigify and never ran into this problem.

Here is a link to the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dG_hfjoPC-0QzFdUP0qCrWlxB2T1Le3F/view?usp=sharing
Thank you in advance!

The problem is that for one reason or another the "Rig Type" is missing from your spine. Sometimes that happens due to a bug in Blender itself.
The fix is easy. In your MetaRig select the bone I have highlighted in the image. Make sure you're in Pose Mode! Go to Bone tab and under Rigify Type choose spines.basic_spine
Make sure your generated rig is visible and press Generate Rig. That should fix the non type error.

If you're interested, the error itself comes from the head/neck, because it has the "connect chain" option ON. This requires it to be snapped to another chain of bones. But since the Rig Type was missing, Rigify just ignores the Spine bone chain. And that produces the error.


Can't find settings for halo rendering I'm using Blender 2.81 and I can't find halo rendering or anything except surface even after changing the rendering engine to Cycles.

Starting with Blender version 2.8 the blender internal render engine has been discontinued. So there is and will not be an option like halos or wireframe anymore.
versions 2.79 and older:

To use something similar in the cycles render engine read:
Halo particles don't render in Cycles
How do you create an aura, or halo effect, like what was possible with the internal Blender Render Engine, in 2.80
Blender cycles won't render halo particles
and
What is a Point Density texture?


How do you find nodes in the animation workspace if scroll past them? I have zoomed out and scrolled past my node tree in the Animation nodes workspace now I can't find it is there any way to 'quick-travel' back to it?

Just answered my own question, can't seem to find a way to get an individual node but selecting all then 'numpad .' works.


Show length for surrounding edges as well With edge length displaying enabled I can see the length of the currently selected edges. Is there a way I can show the length of all edges without selecting them all?

While transforming the lengths of connected edges will show.

But there is no way to make them display at all times.


Blender 2.8 Cycles All Materials Same Color As Viewport I don't remember changing any settings that I don't know what are for. The color of all materials is exactly the same as the one of the viewport background, ignoring roughness etc. This also occurs in final render. Eevee works fine, problem is only when using Cycles.

What have I done wrong? Any solutions?

SOLVED
At some point I accidentally moved my objects to background layer. I had the transparent background turned on, so they got invisible. Moving them back to foreground solved the problem.


Technique to get a more organic shape from a base model head I am a novice, and have been watching this old Maya video to practice modeling faces.
Around the 30sec mark the modeler uses something like vertex relaxing after adding cuts to the brow, chin, and ear areas, completely improving the head to a more organic shape.
https://youtu.be/ac4qV2uIF3Q?t=29

How would I achieve this in Blender2.9? I have discovered that the relax tool has been merged into the Mesh:Loop Tools Add-on, but cannot achieve similar results.

The head is box-modeled from a uv-sphere. The video is a timelapse but you can follow along if you stop it after each step, basically after each second ;-)
Most of the time you only have to move vertices along the axis a bit and add new geometry with the knife tool (K in Edit mode). For the neck (a cylinder) add edge loops with Ctrl+R.

How to Get It In Shape
The mentioned relaxation of the vertices can be achieved in Blender with the Smooth brush, which also works with low-poly mesh. After you added the new edges switch to the Sculpt Mode. Select the brush with a very small strength (~0.08) and touch the top of the head, the forehead, cheeks and chin area.  The Smooth brush reduces the volume and the chin will get smaller if you touch it a few times.
The flat area of the ears can be pulled out slightly if you pull the pole and the vertices around it to the side. Use the Snake Hook brush or Elastic Deform brush. This will give the head a rounder appearance.
Then pull the outer vertex of the cheekbone downwards with the Snake Hook brush (alternatively, you can do this in Edit mode). Finally, move both vertices that form the cheekbone a bit forward, along the y-axis, to give them more volume.
That's it.
Later, when the mesh has a higher density, you can use the Smooth brush to smooth it, the Elastic Deform and the Inflate brushes to restore the volume and to adjust the shape.
The relax tool (in the Loop Tool add-on) is great to smooth edge loops. For example when you messed up the lips or the eyelids.
It is best to see the changes in the frontal view:


Use Python to join objects with hierarchy in outliner I'm trying to write a Python script that parses through the outliner to join meshes that have a hierarchy. Similar to the manual option to right-click an object in the outliner, do a "Select Hierarchy" and then do a CTRL-J to join the selected.

This is what I have so far, but I think I'm lacking API knowledge to get it right:

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

print("#################### JOIN HIERARCHIES ###################")

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') # Deselecting all

bpy.context.area.type = 'OUTLINER'

for ob in scene.objects:

    #scene.objects.active = ob

    #print("--", ob.name)

    if ob.type == 'MESH':

        bpy.ops.outliner.object_operation(type='SELECT_HIERARCHY')
        bpy.ops.object.join()
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') # Deselecting all

print("################## END JOIN HIERARCHIES #################")

Thanks in advance for your help!

If an object has no parent its parent attribute will be  None.  If it has children its len(ob.children) will be greater than 0.

Then we can select all top level obs as having no parent and children, select all their children, deselect non meshes and join

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
# select scene objects that have no parent and children
obs = [o for o in scene.objects if not o.parent and len(o.children)]

for o in obs:
    # deselect all
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    scene.objects.active = o
    # select all children recursively
    bpy.ops.object.select_grouped(type='CHILDREN_RECURSIVE')
    # select parent too
    o.select = True
    for so in context.selected_objects:
        #deselect if not mesh
        if so.type != 'MESH':
            so.select = False
    #if there are some mesh children
    if len(context.selected_objects):
        scene.objects.active = context.selected_objects[0]
        # join them
        bpy.ops.object.join()


Split vertex(s) in two, creating new faces I would like to be able to select vertices or edges and duplicate them, but also keep the faces filled.

My example:

So something like a Rip and fill function, but also creates the faces on both edges?

Bevel the edge and fill the faces manually, there is no such thing as a split and fill in Blender.


Moving a surface from one side of an object to the other I am trying to make a minecraft mouth. If I went simple I would have no questions, or if there was a tutorial or a tutorial for blender at least. But me being me I have to make one of if not the best rig out there. I am new to blender so to all of you who answer my questions I appreciate it for taking your time to answer all these simple questions for one rig.

Here is the mouth before the move (The program the guy did this in is Maya, but most things are the same):

Then here is the mouth after the move:

Select the faces for mouth, press Y to split;

Press S > X > -1 to give it a mirrored scale along its X axis. Done. (or CtrlM > X)

P.S.: I'm not so sure about the word "rig" you mentioned here, suppose you are trying to animate it, then I suggest using Blender's ShapeKey feature in this case. Demo file included.


Texture inside of texture? is there anyway to texture over another texture? for example: lets say i add a musgrave texture to a sphere and use a color ramp to separate the blacks and whites. kinda like this:

is there anyway to have a noise texture in the black parts and a wave texture in the white parts? i guess what i mean is: is there anyway to use a texture as bounds for another texture?

forgive my overuse of ":" please. my comma key broke lol.
thank you for any help.

Sure.  The output of the color ramp can be interpreted as a factor, which can be used as input to a color Mix node to mix two textures, like so:


How to render ground reflections without rendering the ground? I'd like to create a product shot like the following images for a client:

I'm relatively new to Blender, I don't know that much about render passes.
What I would like to do is render the bottle, with the reflection with a transparent background. I do'nt know if this is possible, if its not, maybe there is another way to get this result. Please keep in mind that I'm new to this program.

Not an answer strictly... but...

Use a mirror modifier:

Works for Cycles and Eevee ; )
You can improve it for instance using UV parameters of the modifier.
If you shift its U to 1:

that can give a clue that you can use in the shader, to obtain this for instance:

to use it you can make a node group that you can plug into the alpha input of the principled BSDF (node group as you may have several materials).

The top line uses UV X coordinate (U) to look if under 1 (the mirrored part is over 1 because of the parameter in the modifier).
The bottom line uses Z coordinate to tune a progressive value from 1 to 0 as Z goes down.


How to curve the edges of a plane? I've been looking around and i haven't quite found a way to do this yet without going through a lot of trouble.. I'm trying to curve a plane. To be clear,i'm not trying to do this: What is the fastest way to create a curved plane?

What i'm trying to do, is this:

What i want to do is put inward curves on all 4 edges, and possibly a curve on 'top' of the plane as well. I managed to get one inwards curve by using the Curve Modifier, but i haven't managed to get multiple curves at once by using this. also, it messes up the rest of the plane when i do that. So, is there a way to do this?

P.S. For anyone who wants to know, i'm trying to make a shadesail for a 3D house project. The last time i did a shadesail, I made it manually and it took AGES so i'm just trying to find a way around this problem. Thanks :)

Note: This is non destructive way to do such thing. You can always use
  Proportional Editing to directly model this shape.

Add a Plane and Subdivide it as much as you need/want.

Add Lattice and Scale it by 2.
Go to Lattice Data tab and set U: 3, V: 3, W: 1.

Add Lattice modifier to the Plane and choose Lattice as Object.

Go back to Lattice in Edit Mode, select needed vertices and Scale them down and also move center vertex on the Z axis.

Blend file:


My model is not reflecting any light / looks dark I was wondering if you could help me out... in the image I have 2 objs, the only difference between the two is that the one on the right is fully unwrapped while the one on the left is the default with no changes safe for the texture to compare the colors...

Both models have the same texture image and no nodes were modified in the process and yet the one with the unwrapped map looks completely dark as if it is reflecting no light at all. Could you help me understand what happened and if there's a way to fix it?

Thank you for your time!

It's a problem you may find with some imported files, you need to go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Geometry Data, and close Clear Custom Split Normals Data.


Texture On Plane Issue? I'm using a video as texture on a plane.  It's a 10 sec looping video, but is a fireplace and appears seamless.  The issue is, my project is nearly five minutes long, and I only need the video in three locations, lasting 70 sec, 1 sec and 35 sec, respectively.

I'm confused as to how to do this most efficiently, without having to run the video in the background for the entire project??

The video texture doesn't need to continuously run in the background, as blender draws or renders a frame where the texture is visible it will read the one relevant frame from the video that it needs, this is similar to it reading any other image textures in your scene. As you are using a small video it will most likely be cached in RAM while it is being used and have little impact on performance.

To prevent your fire from always being visible you can animate the visibility of your plane both in the viewport and the render.


How to use 2.8's default HDRi's in renders? Blender 2.8 contains a number of HDRi's in it by default for the LookDev. I'd like to know how to use them in final renders (EEVEE or Cycles), because quite frankly they appear fantastic.

The default HDR images can be found in your installation folder:

[Windows] - C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender <version>\<version>\Datafiles\Studiolights\World\
[MacOS] - /Applications/Blender/Contents/Resources/<version>/Datafiles/Studiolights/World/
[Linux] - /opt/Blender <version>/<version>/Datafiles/Studiolights/World/

In the World section, set the surface type to Background and the Color to use Environment Texture. Then select the HDR image you would like to use:


makehuman visemes to shape keys for unity I'm very new to blender so bare with me.

The idea is I am trying to get lip syncing to work with my unity game using facial shape keys made from blender.

I have imported a "makehuman" character (mhx2 format) to blender. I know I need Shape keys for a script in unity3d. I am struggling with trying to export shape keys from blender to unity (Exported character as fbx format from blender).

With makehuman import it comes with a whole bunch of visemes. I would be more than happy to export these as shape keys with my model. I have tried setting the viseme then going and manually adding a "New Shape From Mix" shape key. It comes in as 0 being what I want it to look like and 1 being too much. So I move the shape key min range to -1 and max to 0. This doesn't work because the shape key doesn't appear in unity.

Is there a way to export the preset visemes with my character as shape keys? Am I missing something simple?

Since there are not enough details in your question, there are many things that can go wrong.

Two things to note:

1) When you import mhx2 into Blender, you must choose to override the default settings at the import menu at the bottom left:

Override Exported Data: Checked;

Import Human Type: Base, Offset, Face Shapes;

Masking: Apply, Conservation Mask;

Rigging: Add Rig, Rig Type - Exported, Custom Shapes.

2) Make sure you export your model from Blender in a fbx file.

3) Import your fbx file into Unity. Before you drag it into the view/hierarchy, make sure that in Inspector you have the box ticked for importing face shapes - should be the default but just in case.

This tutorial is for a plugin for lip sync in Unity, which uses blend shapes/face shapes. You may or may not need it but the first half of the tutorial is very useful for your case. If you follow it step by step, you should be able to get the blend shapes/face shapes into Unity successfully.


How to use Blender in a way that allows easy modifications I am new to Blender
   I had just made my first 3d print job
question
suppose that my object is made of two basic objects
cube and cone
I had created a few duplications of these basic objects and then used a few union and diff operations.
Now that I got my 3d object printed
I realize that the cube should be smaller
I wish I could have change my first cube size and all other cube dimensions will change as well.

is there a method of work with Blender that allow that?
Thanks
Ori

Try the same thing again. However this time don't apply the boolean modifier on your original object set, just keep them active. You can take your original objects by duplication and hide them on a different layer. This way if you need to make a modification, you can duplicate them back to your working layer, make the desired changes, and on the working layer only apply the modifier(s).

So that you have a bit more visual context to what this means, here is the break-down:

Here are the ways that I split up the layers:

Layer 1 (Homerow 1) = The Active Layer

Layer 2 (Homerow 2) = The Stored Object Being Subtracted From

Layer 11 (Shift + Homerow 1) = The Stored Object Being Subtracted.

Here are the screen shots in the order listed:

Here is the modification workflow after you find the need to change something:


A new created face does not sharing the old one shading information I wish I could have a better topic title for this but I'm just a newbie and I don't know what people call it, so... I'm here with a short video to explain my problem.

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YOBvL1sIig

As you can see I try to edit the old model that I bought from other people. I can do a simple geometry and UV crafting but look like something wrong here.

The new faces I created didn't share the same shading information from the old one, you can simply separate those by looking at the different reflections on the model.

So, I'm begging for any help and thank you for sparing your valuable time with this topic

Select all faces and Recalculate Normals, it looks like the face normals are facing in different directions, recalculate normals should do the trick. All the best Marco


Best modeling workflow for painting textures I know how to model, however, would it be easier to texture everything with a shape (cube, sphere, etc.) or with a plane that is mirrored? I haven't found any answers online.

Can someone please help me on which modeling technique would be best for texturing and materials? I love using the plane because you only have to worry about a couple vertices meanwhile if you model with a cube it would be doubled but for some reason I feel using a cube would be better with texturing because if something is mirrored it would look exactly the same on the opposite side, and sometimes I wouldn't want that.

If you are creating materials for others, it is a common convention to test them on a shader ball. See this question: Cycles advanced shader ball?

However, if you already have a mesh, it is best to test the material on it. The reason is that only the simplest materials are 100% mesh-independent, the rest have to be adjusted to the mesh, for example the depth of subsurface scattering depends on the scale of the mesh.


Tesla C1060 not seen by Blender after install Sorry if this question has been asked but search results didn't show it.
I just bought a Nvidia C1060 Tesla card with 4GB memory, it's a fairly old card. I was hoping to use it with Blender but after install and driver install I do not see it listed as a choice in Blender. I did check device manager and it's there and installed correctly. Am I missing something here? I've also installed the Cuda drivers. This is a Noob question for sure but I thought Blender would automatically see it and give me the choice to use it.

Your card is not supported. It has a CUDA compute capability 1.3. Support for cards with compute capability less than 2.0 was dropped a few versions ago.
Quoting from the Blender manual:

CUDA
Nvidia CUDA is supported for GPU rendering with Nvidia graphics cards. We support graphics cards starting from GTX 4xx (computing capability 2.0).


How to align 2D UV map for wood slat ceiling Forgive me if this has been answered before, I am trying to align a UV map for a wood slat ceiling as you can see in the bottom image. I have tried aligning the UV map manually by rotating 90d but the slats don't align properly. What am I doing wrong?

Maybe a screenshot of your UV Editor would help to understand where the problem comes from.
Here is a try, I've unwraped the mesh, aligned the 2 parts and inverted one with SX-1. The small problem is that the planks may look a bit the same:

A solution would be to shift the UV a bit, it will work fine if all your planks have about the same width, otherwise they won't align anymore:


Identify difference in lighting between sheep it and local render in these two images This image is the result of the exact same file, one rendered on my computer and the other on sheep-it. The quality of lighting in the sheep-it version is superior, but I cannot understand what it actually is.

Rendered locally:

Rendered with sheep-it:

Animated gif of the above (6.8M download)

The local render is GPU (CUDA) but I tried a small part of it on the CPU (because it would take weeks to try rendering it all) and the lighting is the same. I have also tried Windows on the same computer and a Mac.

For a specific difference look at this detail. There is distinct difference in the shadows, as is on the upper bar shelf.

Reducing the intensity of the overhead lights does introduce those shadows but changes the overall image in other ways. Plus changing the value of one node in one material doesn't make sense. It's probably some global variable that is different.

Blender version is 2.78a downloaded from blender.org or the Thomas Schiex ppa (same result).

Doing a difference of the two images is a little more revealing:

What do you notice? For one, the light fixtures themselves are black. And there are no reflections of lights, only of other objects.Further, the direct shine from a light is seen through the glass (center right), but nowhere else. My guess is something in the sheep-it version has more indirect light. I'm not sure WHY this is the case, (I would expect it to render the file as is) but it may be using more diffuse/glossy bounces, or have increased/disabled the threshold for the "clamp indirect" setting.


Imported Image looks weird My problem is that when I import an image in blender the colors are weird. They don't look the same compared to the original image. If anyone has a solution please tell me.
Original Image

Blender Image

The problem is probably in color management. Go to the render tab, and look for color management. It is probably on filmic at the moment. Change it to standard, and the colors will be right.


Equivalent tool to MODO’s Falloff is there a tool in Blender or add-on that provides similar features to MODO’s falloff tool? For example I have a cube that I have added several edge loops and then scaled on the Y axis. I want to now curve the cube creating an insect like shape. In MODO I would apply a linear falloff and then rotate the cube, giving me a nice curve. I tried with the proportional editing option but I do not get the same level of success I get with the MODO tool. Am I just miss-using the proportional editing feature or there is a more suitable way.

Image below shows the falloff tool in Modo and the effect I would like to create in Blender.

Thanks !

There is an addon that provides similar functionality to what you described called Mira Tools by Paul Geraskin, here is a Video demonstrating how it works. You can get the addon from Github


Why does combined bake look different from render? I have a huge static scene, and I'm trying to bake a lot of the lighting so that the simple stuff will render faster (for an animation). ...and I'm getting some results that I don't expect.

The ground is baked using "combined" and it looks GREAT. It's entirely indistinguishable from a straight render. The only way I can tell the difference is a black border under the buildings, if the texture resolution is too low, but the point is it looks exactly the same whether I render with or without using the baked texture, but using the bake takes half as long to render. That's exactly what you want from baked lighting.

The problem comes in with the buildings. As you can see, the render WITHOUT the baked texture:

...looks very different from the render WITH the baked texture on one of the buildings:

The one building that I baked in this case looks darker than the unbaked one. I've done this with several buildings, from several different viewpoints, and using a variety of settings, but the results are always something like this.

Here is my material setup:

And just in case it matters, here's the image and UVs for that one building:

All the others are almost identical, but with their own images and materials. Any idea why the ground would look exactly the same baked and not, but the buildings look so different?

Well, I've been searching for an answer to this question for literally years, and just a few hours after I post a coherent question, I stumble upon the answer.

The baked texture can't imitate the roughness of the original shader. I'm using a roughness of 1.0 for the diffuse shader, but when I bake it, it has to be piped into an emission shader.

When I turn the roughness of the diffuse shader down to 0, it perfectly matches the baked texture.

My only thought is that roughness has something to do with the viewing angle, and the baked texture just can't take that into account, because it has to be baked from all angles.

Oh well...


Add-on Dev: Extract int value from Blender's enum flag set? Is there any way to extract an int value from one of Blender's ENUM_FLAG properties? Here are the definitions I have:

# binary flag values
class OpFlag:
    GA = 1<<0 # activator for asset mode
    LP = 1<<1 # activator for low poly mode
    HP = 1<<2 # activator for high poly mode
    CU = 1<<3 # activator for custom mode

# string based flag values for Blender controls
opflags=[
            ('GA', "Asset", "desc", OpFlag.GA ),
            ('LP', "Low", "desc", OpFlag.LP ),
            ('HP', "High", "desc", OpFlag.HP ),
            ('CU', "Custom", "desc", OpFlag.CU )
        ]

# property using flags
modes : EnumProperty(
    name = "Modes",
    options = {'ENUM_FLAG'},
    items = opflags,
    default={'GA','LP','HP','CU'}
    )

This is what I would like to be able to do, if possible:

control_op_flags = int( 0 ) # just to make it obvious this is an int
control_op_flags |= int( modes )

I read somewhere online that you can cast a Blender string-based enum value to int, but it doesn't seem to work with an enum-flags set. This is the error I get:

TypeError: int() argument must be a string, a bytes-like object or a number, not 'set'

Does anyone know how to convert an enum-flags set into a single int? I didn't consider it until just now, but is it possible to iterate the set and convert/OR all of the values together myself? Would that be the proper way to handle this? I've never iterated a set before, so going to investigate that now.

Edit Update: When I try to iterate the set and OR in one entry from it, I get the error ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'GA'.. Sounds like it is dealing with it purely as a string. I'm not sure how to associate it with my opflags list.

Thanks for any advice

You can access the value through the RNA properties. Assuming that you have stored modes in a PointerProperty and assigned to bpy.types.Scene.demo_tool (just an example), you can access it in the following way:

The first step is to get access to the RNA properties of demo_tool or in general the object that contains your EnumProperty. This will give us access to the underlying data structure of modes which contains the mapping to the integer values.

demo_tool = bpy.context.scene.demo_tool
items = demo_tool.bl_rna.properties["modes"].enum_items

The enum_items give you access to a collection (bpy_prop_collection) of EnumProperties which represent the valid (single) flags you can use. It allows a look-up with a key. For example the following code gives you the integer value for your 'LP' flag, by accessing the EnumPropertyItem.

items['LP'].value

Since you have a set of strings stored in modes when using options={'ENUM_FLAG'} you must iterate through it to get the integer value for each flag.

for flag in demo_tool.modes:
    print(f"{items[flag].value}")

Once you have the integers you can perform the boolean logic operations to create a single value.

import bpy

class DemoSettings(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    GA = 1 << 0  # activator for asset mode
    LP = 1 << 1  # activator for low poly mode
    HP = 1 << 2  # activator for high poly mode
    CU = 1 << 3  # activator for custom mode

    # string based flag values for Blender controls
    opflags = [
        ('GA', "Asset", "desc", GA),
        ('LP', "Low", "desc", LP),
        ('HP', "High", "desc", HP),
        ('CU', "Custom", "desc", CU)
    ]

    # property using flags
    modes: bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="Modes",
        options={'ENUM_FLAG'},
        items=opflags,
        default={'GA', 'LP', 'HP', 'CU'}
    )

class DEMO_PT_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the scene context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "My own addon"
    bl_category = "Name of your tab"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"

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

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(demo_tool, "modes")

        items = demo_tool.bl_rna.properties["modes"].enum_items

        flag_value = 0

        for flag in demo_tool.modes:
            flag_value |= items[flag].value

        row.label(text=str(flag_value))

classes = (DemoSettings,
           DEMO_PT_panel)

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)
    bpy.types.Scene.demo_tool = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=DemoSettings)

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How to remove some sort of constraint? Okay, so I downloaded a .blend of Tux Penguin, but because I'm too dumb to know how to remove some sort of transform lock thing that came with the model, I can't rig it the way I want to. For some bones, it is impossible to transform them, and attempting to do so will result in switching tools to the rotate tool instead.
How do I remove these locks?

This is the problem.

2 things : the first being constraints , Remove them for full accessibility.

The second being transform locks , They are in the objects tab. Make sure they are all deselected / unlocked


Mirroring Bones Rotates Bones! I labeled every bone with the .L and turned on x axis mirror, nothing happened. I set the cursor do the origin, duplicated bones and scaled them by -1 across the mesh and the new bone rolls were different for no reason. I tried going to the armature mirror option and still the new bones rotated for no reason. Why can't blender manage to execute a basic mirror function?

Symmetry is a wonderful operator for borns editing, so mirror constraints are not necessary. It can be used as follows.
In the edit mode, select L bone and press Armature > Symmetry in the header menu.


Dynamic paint Displace not rendering I have been trying for the past couple of hours to render an animation with dynamic paint displace, but while it works in the viewport, it does not show up in the render. These are a few things I have tried so far:

Check that the Canvas has enabled 'show in render'.
I don't have a subdivision surface modifier.

It works well in the preview, but when I try rendering it, the displacement on the mesh won't show. Does anyone have any possible solutions for this?

If it makes any difference, I'm trying to render it with Eevee on blender 2.81.

It was a dumb mistake, it turns out. I had rendered it without baking it. And when I baked it and then rendered it, it was rendering the image sequence I had previously rendered, so no changes were being displayed. It has been fixed now.


How can I change smoke colour? I am trying to make a smoke simulation which includes colored smoke. I have tried changing the smoke color in the domain of the simulation, but the color in rendered view mode doesn't change from the default.
How can I change it?

Blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j4otu6dl6b7hnl/geyzer.blend?dl=0

Select the smoke flow object and in the physics tab, click the option that says "Smoke Colour" a colour wheel will appear. Using the colour wheel and the lighten darken option to its right, pick your desired colour. Things I did:

added a white plane behind the simulation; it's easier to see.
moved the camera to a better angle
changed the smoke colour in the smoke flow object, not the domain.


Old 3D paint mode instead of Project Paint How do I switch off the Project Paint mode? The Project Paint mode is on by default and it seems there is no way to turn it off for painting around corners without projection.

It's no longer possible to disable Project Paint mode - the option was removed as of version 2.67.  Specifically:

  Disabling projection mode is no longer possible in 3d viewport. This was exactly equivalent to simply painting in the image editor, so it was removed as part of the painting code refactoring.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.67/Paint_System

However, this really isn't such a bad thing.  The best option, as far as I'm aware, is to enable Face Selection Masking for Painting while in Texture Paint mode.

With this enabled, you can now right-click on each face of your model (or Shift+RMB for multiple faces) to limit your brush strokes to those surfaces only.

Similarly, you can also use selection tools that would typically be available elsewhere, such as Circle select (C), Box select (B), or Select Linked via L while hovering mouse cursor over a surface to select the entire UV island with one button.

Whichever way you do it, your brush strokes will be limited to the selected faces.

The one downside is that this won't immediately give you the performance boost you might have appreciated by disabling Project Paint mode in the past - but hopefully that'll prove to be less and less of an issue as Blender continues to be optimized and hardware gets more powerful.


Blender GPU Support on Linux with AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 Mobile I have a Dell Precision 7740 running on Ubuntu 18.04 Linux with an AMD/ATI Radeon Pro WX 7100 graphics card and a much less powerful Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile). I'd like to utilize the graphics card to help speed up Blender renders. However, under the "System > Cycles Render Devices" setting, I see a "No compatible GPUS found for path tracking. Cycles will render on the CPU."

Given this card and os, what options do I have to optimize my renders and take full advantage of the GPU?

I've encountered the https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender-blender project. Is this a viable option? (Though I imagine it would be a different rendering engine to learn apart from Cycles and Eevee).

Any thoughts are much appreciated. Thank you

Here is the full output of lspci for the Radeon

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon Pro WX 7100 Mobile] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: Dell Ellesmere [Radeon Pro WX 7100]
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 205
    Memory at 4200000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8G]
    Memory at 4100000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=2M]
    I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
    Memory at b4400000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
    Expansion ROM at b4440000 [disabled] [size=128K]
    Capabilities: [48] Vendor Specific Information: Len=08 <?>
    Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
    Capabilities: [58] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=010 <?>
    Capabilities: [150] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [200] #15
    Capabilities: [270] #19
    Capabilities: [2b0] Address Translation Service (ATS)
    Capabilities: [2c0] Page Request Interface (PRI)
    Capabilities: [2d0] Process Address Space ID (PASID)
    Capabilities: [320] Latency Tolerance Reporting
    Capabilities: [328] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)
    Capabilities: [370] L1 PM Substates
    Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
    Kernel modules: amdgpu

Updated: Added a picture

By the looks of the lspci you're using the non pro AMD driver which is required for OpenCL at the moment.

The pro driver is available going to AMDs website and searching for drivers for your card. There is a download link for Ubuntu but the latest version they support is Ubuntu 18.04 (x86_64). You might also find you have to use a slightly older kernel version too.

Hopefully at somepoint we will get OpenCL support from the kernel amdgpu driver.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/professional-graphics/radeon-pro/radeon-pro-wx-x100-series/radeon-pro-wx-7100


How to get normal/displacement/ao maps for a part of a photo So I used a tool to create maps from a photo, turned out that the map of a cut out shape of the photo completes itself with the rest of the photo.

This is very bad, is there another way to get maps for a part of a photo?

Just the photo:

Normal map from it:

The cut out shape:

The normal map of the shape with autocompleted parts and a strange border on top:

An example with another shape which I only imported like this:

Its normal map is as it should be:

This shouldn't bother you much, since you probably have the original cut image, with all the removed parts transparent (?)

In that case you can use the alpha to either make a mask / selection and remove the useless bits from the generated maps in photoshop / gimp,

Or you can use the alpha from the cut color map in color mix nodes in the node editor. Either way it won't have any effect.


What causes fire to gradually turn off or disappear? I use blender 2.80 (The old smoke simulation). When I bake the last 251 frames of the movie, the fire works well then, it gradually turns off!

Click here to download the blend file.

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue:

Bake.
If you navigate before frame 9039 you will find the fire in the rendered image.
Around frame 9039, the fire gradually disappears or turns off.
At frame 9060, the fire completely disappears in the rendered image.

I need the fire to last until frame 9172 so the fire should be present in this range (8922-9172) without getting weak, disappearing, or turning off.

Q: What causes fire to gradually disappear?

In this case it is camera distance. But, instead usual camera distance, that is located in camera settings, this is volumetric distance, that can be adjusted in render settings


Draw text with Python in 3d coordinate system I know that I can use the blf module to draw 2d text, but is there a method to draw text at certain positions in 3d space?

I want to add a text right to a specific point in 3d.

Thx, I found an example in the MeasureIt addon and here is some code from my Fast Carve addon to draw 2d text:

rv3d = self._view_context.region_3d
region = self._view_context.region
pos_text = location_3d_to_region_2d(region, rv3d, self._center)

blf.position(2, pos_text[0], pos_text[1], 0)
blf.draw(2, "r: {0:.3f}".format(self._radius))


Colours underneath bleeding through when painting So very new to Blender.  I'm in the process of making a little cart for a roller coaster.

I unwrapped the seats and textured them and that was fine.
When attempting to texture the front of the coasters cab, it is revealing the colour grid I used underneath.
Can I use a separate image for each object? Or does the cushion and the coaster all need to be on one image?

Your model consists of at least two separate meshes.

Right now, the front of the coaster uses the same texture as the seats, which means you have to create either a new material for it or you need to adjust the UV layout for both meshes so they don't overlap.

One possible solution to use one material (and one texture) for all the meshes in your model would be using a Texture Atlas.

If you want to use two separate textures, you need to set up a separate material for each mesh.