I can't open Blender 2.8 files after I save them. Because it tries to open with 2.79 Blender 2.79b is installed (from .exe) on my computer, currently. And I just downloaded the Blender 2.8 release candidate 2 (.zip).

When I create something in Blender 2.8, after I save it, I cannot open it again because the computer tries to open the blend file in version 2.79b. And manually selecting the 2.8 version from zip file does not work.

How can I open my blender 2.8 files? Do I have to delete Blender 2.79b?

You don't need to delete anything.
Just open blender 2.8, in the top menu select File > Open and open the file created in 2.8

If you want to permanently open all *.blend files with 2.8 you would need to modify your operating system's default applications (do a search online for that. Customizing the operating system is not a topic for this site).


how transpose imported key animation? I have 2 animations of the same object I try to merge in one. the problem is that each start at the same origin XYZ and I need the second one to in the continuity of the first one.

What I did so far is to open the 2nd animation, copy the keyframes from the graph editor, open the first one, go the last keyframes of its animation and paste in the graph editor the keyframes.

When I hit play I see the first animation playing and when the 1st keyframe of the 2nd animation start the object is "teleported" to the origin XYZ.
 I have no clue how to move the 2nd animation without having to redo each keyframe of it which would be a nightmare .

How do I do that?

thank you!

Render both anims and use VSE. Second strip starts where the first one ends. Render it and its done.


Wrong equirectangular panorama Why my panorama is wrong?

This is the cube with the camera inside.
Under the camera (and above too) 360 panorama is "shrunk":

This is the camera settings:

And this is the render result:

The scene looks like:

Blender file:

P.S. I used FSPViewer (FSoft) for view panorama render result.

Using your blend file (in blender 2.77a) the render was ok. Then using it as environment texture in world shader and viewport showed no pinching.

The problem seems to come from FSPViewer (sphere UV mapping).

EDIT:
Mapping an equirectangular texture on a UV sphere can't be done with UV unwrapping without pinching because of the tris at north and south poles. But you can use this setup:


keyframes disappeared? I'm using blender 2.69's VSE (Video Sequence Editor) to edit a simple video; and have run into problems with key frames.

I spent ages adding lots of key frames to make the brightness to fluctuate with the sound, then for some unknown reason, I lost all the key frames.

I've tried hovering over the graph editor and pressing the home button, but know joy; could I somehow have turned them off?
I have an earlier version of the blender file, that still has most of the working key frames in it, could I copy them back, and if so how?

After comparing settings on the earlier version file with the problem file, I managed to get an opacity to fade in on a strip; but I appear to have lost the key frames, in the graph editor, that made this work.

I did this by pressing the snowflake here

which resulted in the loss of the key frames (see below)

but it workes.

I then tried to add an additional key frame to control contrast on another strip, but it doesn't seem to work either. The contrast value doesn't change when you drag the play head over the transition, in the graph editor, see below:

I'm very confused, and frustrated that i don't seem to be able to get all my key frames working together.

any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

What you have done is to convert the frames in an "Action Strip" or "Action", to edit this frames select the "Action Strip" (the yellow one) and press Tab to edit it. I don't know if you can revert the "action strip" to "frames"

Also if you added another keyframe, the upper frame override the bottom one. What you need to do is to convert the new keyframes in "Actions Strip" and play with their properties.

Look at image 3 and search for the blending property, it define how it will apply over others "actions". After convert "frames" to "Actions" you can drag and drop to order the "Actions", start and end times, etc.


Unwanted line revealed during Cycles Render While rendering in Cycles, an unwanted line revealed on the green wall. It didn't show up in Eevee. In wireframe mode, it doesn't seem to be any problems either.

How should I resolve this?
Appreciate all the help. Thank you.

It's likely due to the fact that you used a boolean to make the wall. Booleans are notorious for ugly topology - for example, blender works best with quads (faces with four vertices only) and any more vertices (n-gons), or any less (tris), will often cause shading errors. That being said, take a look any of the (single) faces that makes up the door in your image - how many vertices can you count on those faces?
The solution in many cases, is to use a simpler object for your Boolean, which makes it easier to connect loose vertices manually. If you need things to be round, you can "round things out" using a Subdivision Surface Modifier and/or Smooth Shading if necessary.
In the image below, the "wall" on the left is made using a cylinder with 8 faces as the cutout object, and the wall on the right uses the default 32 face cylinder as the cutter.

Since the 8 sided cylinder leaves a much more workable number of new (extra) vertices, it is a trivial matter to connect them to the rest of the mesh in a manner that leaves only quads. Because of this, I was able to apply a Subdivision Surface modifier and Smooth Shading without incident.
While the wall on the right is technically capable of being connected in such a way that it leaves only quads, the sheer number make it a time consuming effort, and will leave your mesh much more subdivided than it originally was. Because of this, I left it in it's fresh post-boolean state (without making quads) to demonstrate why it's necessary. The topology is so bad that I cannot use a Subdivision Surface Modifier without serious mesh-breaking errors, and so I did not use one. I did Shade Smooth, but you can see the shading errors that are a result of the n-gon faces.
The TLDR is that Booleans leave "poor" topology that often must be connected to the rest of the mesh manually to convert it back to a quad-only state and avoid shading errors. To make the manual connection process easier, use a "cutter" object with as few faces as possible, and do the rest with other modifiers if necessary.


How can to do the inverse of explode modifier in Blender How can to do the inverse of explode modifier in Blender
like the text "CHRIS MACARI" at the beginning in this video

Here is a GIF of this section

You may do it using the Video Sequence Editor.

Go to the Video Sequence Editor window (Sequencer) and add the scene animation strip to it (Shift+A-->Scene-->Scene). Check the Backwards checkbox in the Filter panel of the properties shelf (press N being in the Video Sequence Editor window).

Press the Image Preview button to see the preview of your animation. Render animation with F12.


How to divide a face into a square grid? I need to do this for displacement mapping, subdivision gives a bad result and makes triangles distinguishable.

Related to: How to divide a circle into a square grid?

But I get the error "No other selected object found to use for projection".

Knife project  could help you:

subdivide a plane that will become your "shape cut" grid.

then over it (higer in Z) put you shape (just the outer edges, delete everything else)

then select
- first the cutting shape
- then (shift-select) also the background subdivided plane, then search and use "knife project"

then, your plane now has a cut shaped exactly as you want

just invert the selection,

and delete everyhing else

now of course you can extrude this mesh


How to create a mesh imprint of one object onto another? I have a mesh of an ocean wave which I am trying to create as a base for a model ship so I tried using the Boolean modifier to bisect the shape of the ship's hull from the ocean base. It seems to work for a solid cube mesh but for more complex meshes like the ocean wave it does not seem to be bisecting any part of the model. The aim is to 3D print out the base so that the ship fits into the ocean base. The first base on the left is a Benchy Wave not the imprint of the ship I want.

Select the ocean mesh
Apply a Decimate modifier (to the ocean mesh only) try a ratio of 0.2 to
start with.

Retry the Boolean modifier using the Difference option again.


3D track not tracking rotation? I've 3D tracked a scene and the positional tracking is amazing my model is staying exactly where it should be, but then my camera rotates, and for whatever reason instead of the model rotating it just slides sideways. I've set the y-axis, scale, floor, origin and wall and I have at least 20 trackers. What am I doing wrong?

If anyone sees this and knows what I did wrong I would appreciate it if you post, but for now, I just manually keyframes my model to stay in the right position so to avoid wasting peoples time I'm going to mark this as an answer.
Have a nice day!

I guess I'm waiting two days to be able to mark my own post as an answer.... Why?


How do you get the vertex manipulator to show up in Blender 2.90? I see in YouTube videos on blender that there is something called a manipulator. This allows for dragging and scaling on an axis. I cannot find this manipulator on my version of Blender. Here is a picture of what I am talking about:

How do I get that manipulator to show up in Blender 2.90?
This is the link to the video where I took this screenshot.

Activate the Move tool in the Toolbar :

Each tool have a specific manipulator.


Coordinate/attribute not working to mix textures through factor I am still quite new to blender, I am trying to make a small mountain scene with different textures on the higher points of the mountain vs the lower ones.

I am currently using a coordinate node with a colour ramp and mix node to control it. However, when I plug the colour ramp into the factor of the mix shader only one of the textures occupies the entire object. I tried a simpler way by using an attribute node and vertex groups but I had the same issue.

I've searched for an answer online but haven't found anything relating to this issue. I've also looked at several tutorials on this and I believe the node set-up is correct but they still wont play nicely together.

Any info as to what I'm doing wrong would be hugely helpful as this is a relatively small part of a larger scene and I don't want it to cause the whole thing to look janky lol

give it a look

Use the same method however, use vertex paint instead of weight. Use the Attribute Node and the name of the Vertex color layer (default is "Col"). For example, use pure black for rock and pure white vertex color for snow.

Also, not sure what kind of displacement you're trying to achieve but you cannot use a Mix RGB node as input to the Displacement output which expects a vector. Use the Displacement node in between.


How to create Wind effect on circle logo I am trying to animate a logo in the shape of a circle. The idea was to have it floating in the air and have some wind going through it.
What I have done so far:

I have used cloth simulation and the wind force field, which all works easily with a rectangular plane, but not so well with a circle.
I have also tried to subdivide the circle by hand, I have set gravity to a negative value and also used a Vertex Group (one vertex on the left) as a Pin Group but this all yields more comical results.

What I need help with:

How do I create the proper plane for the circular logo? It doesn't seem to work as well as the rectangular shape with subdivisions. I have already tried to cut out a circle from a subdivided plane with a boolean function but that has failed.
How can I achieve the circular shape to stay in place without pinning it to a spot or having it float away in negative gravity?

Images
Unfortunately I can't find a perfect example so you'll have to bear with the screenshots of my recent tries:
This the force field and the circle shape (pinned with one vertex on the left and negative gravity)

This is just an example of what it should look like on the front.

Edit:
I have tried knife project on the plane like suggested in the comments. Have to remove the outer edges afterwards.

Edit 2:
It seems to work now, although I am still having trouble to get the edges really smooth and the plane itself to be absolutely smooth in the renderer. Still, thanks a lot for your input so far!

So as I said you can cut a grid with the Knife Project tool. Then to make it work properly, first create the pin group:

Choose Cloth > Cotton for example. Create a Force Field > Wind and a Force Field > Turbulence. Make the Wind rotate and vary its Strength value through time. Maybe also create a simple edge and give the circle object a Copy Scale constraint with the edge as Target, and change the height of the edge a bit so that the circle vary its height a bit as well, it will create more folds:


Can I jump to the previous/next keyframe but ignore Grease Pencil keyframes? I'm using a shortcut for the Jump to previous/next keyframe function, but when the scene's Grease Pencil is visible, Grease Pencil's keyframes are also in the timeline.

It interferes in jumping between keyframes of an object I am animating.

When I turn off Grease Pencil, the keyframe markers disappear. I can jump to only my object's keyframes again, but I lose the scene's Grease Pencil in the viewport.

So, I want to see the scene's Grease Pencil in the viewport but not see it's keyframes in the timeline.

Are there options to enable this?

By default blender 2.8 doesnt show greasepencil keyframes in the timeline viewer.

I found out in this post  that the keyframes a bit iffy on greasepencil in 2.8 but if you want to see them use the dopesheet instead of the timeline as the keyframe viewer. You can use up/down arrow keys to navigate between keyframes there.

You can do a dual split to have both dopesheets or a dopesheet/timeline to see both.

If your selected on a GreasePencil object... up/down will go through GP keyframes
If selected on a regular dopesheet object (e.g. mesh , curve etc...) up/down will go through normal frames.


Can Blender be used to composite HDR photos? So, I know Blender can render out to .hdr format. And I am also familiar with Blender's compositor. What I don't know much about is the processes or algorithms used to produce HDR photographs, or what sort of node setup would need to be constructed for this - if even possible.

For clarity, here is an example of what this process looks like in Photoshop, compositing three exposures:

I would like to do this with Blender's compositor.

What I usually do currently is render a Radiance HDR (.hdr) file out from Blender and then load it into a Mac application called Luminance HDR. There are some limitations with this though, so I am wondering if the same or similar results can be achieved within Blender.

Being able to use .hdr files would be ideal, but working from multiple bracketed exposures would be alright as well. I would like to know if there is a way to do this. Thanks.

I think the term you're looking for is tone mapping.

In the photography world, "HDR" is used loosely to describe the entire process of shooting multiple photos at different exposures, combining them into a 32-bit image with a high dynamic range, and then tone mapping it down to an 8-bit image that you can display nicely on your 8-bit monitor.

In the 3D world, we can render 32-bit images directly and therefore don't need to go through the process of combining exposures to make an HDR image (we already have one), so we can proceed straight to tone mapping.

There is a special node just for tone mapping actually:

And with a bit of tweaking you can do this:

If you'd like to play with it, here's the original .hdr file: http://adaptivesamples.com/files/original_untonemapped.hdr - this was made by taking several bracketed photos and merging them to an HDR, but the same method applies to raw 32-bit renders.


Animating the merging of multiple video strips I'm trying to achieve the merging of multiple video strips like in the following 15 sec in, to 16 sec in - caravan to boat clip. I think the clip has been animated with a vertical strip.

Could this animated area be achieved with masks in Blender?
If so, how would I go about achieving an animated visible video area, over another video?

There are a couple ways, but I would use masks:

With a strip selected, add a mask modifier in the properties region (N) by pressing Add strip modifier > Mask. I also like to set the alpha blending to alpha over:

You can either use another strip to control the selected strip's alpha channel. You could use a scene strip to generate such a map based on the render output of a scene, or you could use an animated mask.
To create a mask, use the UV/image editor with the mode set to mask. Press ⇧ ShiftA and select the type of mask to create.
To animate it, transform it with G (translate) S (scale) and R (rotate). Insert keyframes with I.

To move the keyframes around/delete them, you can use the dopesheet in mask mode:

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to get the image editor to update in realtime at the moment, so you'll have to manually refresh it by pressing F12. For that to work, the viewed image must be set to Render result.

Result:


Weird Gray Blotches Showing Up During Render Hi I am trying to render a model of Sintel. While using the render view port shading in the 3d view the eyes looks perfectly fine:

But when I actually render it, these grey splotches show up under her eyes:

Does anyone know what may be causing this? For reference, I downloaded this model from here: https://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66558.

You are rendering at very low sample counts. The splotches are probably created by the new denoising filter. Disabling it or incrementing your sample count should resolve this.


What do i do when i have two o more meshes and i want to join them I'm making a guitar, and i found that the easiest way was to make the body, the neck and other few details separatly. But i don't know much about how that affects the render and all that, i think that i have to join them, but the problem is.
If i ctrl+j and join them, would i need to join the two meshes by joining vertices or i can leave them like that and is all fine?. And example, here is the headstock of my guitar, i made the cylinders as an independent mesh and i find it difficult to join vertices.
How that would affect the end result?

You don't have to join the objects if you don't want.

If you need them to move together you could just parent them.

If you decide to join them, you don't necessarily have to connect the different meshes to have common vertices.

Think of it this way: In real life those are different pieces made of different materials and they are assembled together. The tuning pegs are plastic or metal attached to the wood on the guitar head. In reality they share no vertices, edges or faces.


Compositing: Can I have multiple masks in one composite? To have one mask on a comp it will follow this compositing node flow:

Render layerA of Mask (Alpha) -connects to- Mix (Factor)

Render layerB of BG (Image) -connects to-   Mix (Image1)

Render layerC of MaskBG (Image) -connects to- Mix (Image2)

From this one Mix node is created one complete image, but using just one masked area.

I need to create an image with multiple mask areas.  How do I do it?

The problem I run into is that I don't know what node I would need to combine multiple masks onto the one background image.

Please help.  :)

Stop looking!  I've worked it out.  :D

The answer is: Once you create one image using an alpha mask you then use this as your background layer for the NEXT alpha mask, and so on, and so on.

It felt like a puzzle in a computer game that I just solved. Now I'm on the next level.

Sweet!


How to have a clean slice With the Booltool addon. Im slice the mesh to get a top part separate. Im looking for this type of battery opening.

I tried to add a sphere and with booltool i tried to slice the mesh. The mesh get extracted with extra edge and the base mesh got union with it. Any other cool way to have slice the mesh.
I tried this with booltool addon (gif)

Move your Boolean Modifier above your EdgeSplit modifier and move the cutter Sphere just a tiny bit in a y-direction so there are no overlapping vertices.

If you want a copy of your cutter then you can copy it with Shift+d and in Object Properties under Viewport Display change Display As Textured.


White Lines on baked textures in Blender I unwrapped models using Blender Smart UV project (Island Margin : 0.06). After baking texture in blender render, when I zoom in and the model is big in the Blender viewport, everything is fine but when I zoom out, WHITE LINES appear on the model. I face the same issue when I export models in Unity. I also notice that these lines disappear when I uncheck Mipmap in Blender User preferences and "Generate Mip Map" in Unity. How can I fix it in Blender or Unity? Thanks

The white lines you see is the result of the downsampled MipMap versions of the textures that Unity creates for you. These are used to reduce aliasing when viewing detailed textures from distance. You should give the UV-islands more margins.


Soft bodies go through each other Help I'm trying to make soft bodies collide with each other but nothing seems to be working instead they just go through each other.

Enable „collision“ for the soft bodies.
Your second picture in your question shows it. You will find it under the physics tab.


Is there a way to convert a mesh's UV's into a second mesh using a script? So what I've been doing to bake Cycles depth maps is based on the following thread found on the BA.org forum and I've mentioned this here already but I'd like to take this a step further using a script but I'm not sure how to do this myself.

If you have a look at the following  thread, there is a method for creating Cycles Depth maps using an Orthographic camera but it's limited to planer objects.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?273033-Sculpting-with-UVs-and-displacements/page34

I've expanded this technique slightly by baking an objects' color as white and with no Margin overdraw so that I have a guide for using the above mentioned technique but in a more 3D way since the resulting texture will match up with the 3D Objects UV coordinates.

Basically, this is how I modeled the pillars on the following model.

and the setup looks like this.

The problem is that we have to be very careful around the UV Island boundaries because if the depth map does not match up perfectly with the UV's then the Displace modifier will make a big mess at all the seams.

So this brings me to the question.  How can we convert a UV coordinate set into an actual flat 3D mesh that would still match up perfectly with the UV's of the model they were created from.
Here is an image to help illustrate this.

So does anyone have some thoughts on how to make a script that can make this conversion from UV's to a new mesh that looks exactly like the UV's of the first model so that the Cycles Camera Depth map technique can be used to make perfectly aligned displacement UV maps?

X and Y should translate directly into the new meshs' X and Y positions and z would be set to be all 0's. This worked when I did it with GLSL so it should work here as well.

So I guess my question is how can we write a script using Blender Python that does this?

In Object Mode with an object selected (tested with an unwrapped cube)

import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object

def createMeshFromData(name, verts, faces):
    # Create mesh and object
    me = bpy.data.meshes.new(name+'Mesh')
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new(name, me)
    ob.show_name = True

    # Link object to scene and make active
    scn = bpy.context.scene
    scn.objects.link(ob)
    scn.objects.active = ob
    ob.select = True

    # Create mesh from given verts, faces.
    me.from_pydata(verts, [], faces)
    # Update mesh with new data
    me.update()
    return ob

out_verts=[]
out_faces=[]
for face in ob.data.polygons:
    oface=[]
    for vert, loop in zip(face.vertices, face.loop_indices):
        coord = ob.data.vertices[vert].normal
        normal = ob.data.vertices[vert].co
        uv = ob.data.uv_layers.active.data[loop].uv
        out_verts.append((uv.x*10,uv.y*10,0))
        oface.append(loop)
    print(oface)
    out_faces.append(oface)

createMeshFromData(ob.name + 'UVObj', out_verts, out_faces)

If you are using Blender 2.8 series, the script below does the exact same thing. Note that there is a size variable introduced to help scale the output mesh if needed:

import bpy

C = bpy.context
ob = C.object
size = 10.0

def createMeshFromData(name, verts, faces):
    # Create mesh and object
    me = bpy.data.meshes.new(name+'Mesh')
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new(name, me)
    ob.show_name = True

    # Link object to scene and make active
    C.view_layer.active_layer_collection.collection.objects.link(ob)
    C.view_layer.objects.active = ob
    ob.select_set(True)

    # Create mesh from given verts, faces.
    me.from_pydata(verts, [], faces)
    # Update mesh with new data
    me.update()
    return ob

out_verts=[]
out_faces=[]
for face in ob.data.polygons:
    oface=[]
    for vert, loop in zip(face.vertices, face.loop_indices):
        coord = ob.data.vertices[vert].normal
        normal = ob.data.vertices[vert].co
        uv = ob.data.uv_layers.active.data[loop].uv
        out_verts.append((uv.x*size,uv.y*size,0))
        oface.append(loop)
    print(oface)
    out_faces.append(oface)

createMeshFromData(ob.name + 'UVObj', out_verts, out_faces)

Result:


Hard-edged polygons with normal maps Background

I'm making a character for my game (with MakeHuman), and I wanted to add normal maps to the characters. I generated one low-poly character and then one high-poly using a bunch of Subsurf modifiers. I was able to use the new Cycles baking to bake normal maps mapping the low-poly object to the high-poly object.

Problem

I'm getting some odd artifacts and very hard-edged polygons when I'm applying them to the character, even with the character set to being completely "Smooth-shaded". Can anyone explain why this is happening and how to fix it?

(left) low-poly model, (right) high-poly model

(left)low-poly without normal map, (right) low-poly with normal map produces weird shading

EDIT: Here is the normal map I am using for the low-poly character that is causing the hard-edged polygons (32px margin):

Also, here is my node layout (using Cycles):

Sorry for any trouble, but I was able to find the answer in one of the Blender docs. The real culprit was the Image Texture I was using for body_normals.png:

  (emphasisis added by me)
  Generate a perturbed normal from an RGB normal map image. This is usually chained with an Image Texture node in the color input, to specify the normal map image. For tangent space normal maps, the UV coordinates for the image must match, and the image texture should be set to Non-Color mode to give correct results.

I guess I must have skipped over this part in this project. Switching to Non-Color data in the Image Texture fixed my problem :). Now there is are no hard-edged polygon shading weirdness anymore.


How to correctly unwrap complex shapes I want to unwrap this model to easily paint it but all unwrap types i've chosen produce bad UV, which cannot be used to properly draw textures.

Here's blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xj39adxwq3emkda/chefs_band.blend?dl=0

Final result:

Overview:

First of all you need to clean up this mesh to have only quad faces, without it this method won't work. This is a good practice and this is a proper topology. That will allow you to use modifiers, better UVs, animations etc.

Next you will need to Mark Seam in a place which wouldn't be seen much (back of the hand, or near the body).
After that select all and Unwrap the mesh.
Select one face and straighten it in UV Image Editor (W > Align Auto - two vertices at a time).
Again select whole mesh an Unwrap > Follow Active Quad.


Can the name field of the WindowManager´s "invoke_search_popup" method be reset? I´m using the "invoke_search_popup" method of the Window Manager to create a search box which enables me to find some items in a predefined collection of objects.

The thing is, that sometimes I switch from some type of collection to another. Let´s say that I first search in a collection of Objects, and then in a collection of Groups. If I just selected an Object the first time, on the next one it´s name will appear as a suggestion or as the "last item used" in the name field of the new Groups search box, filtering all search results.

I understand that this happens globally because the window manager instance is created once, and then on, used again and again. So I want to know if at least there is some way to recreate or reload the instance, so that the name field becomes empty again.

It happens that when working on long sessions it´s annoying to first have to delete the name field everytime to clean the search results.
I would like to have it clean everytime I call it, because it makes much more sense for the workflow I´m using. If there´s a way to achieve this, I could even clean it only when switching collections type, which is smarter.

Try this code. Select an item, and then, call the script again.

import bpy

class Operator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "operator.menu"
    bl_label = "Search"
    bl_description = "Whatever"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'INTERNAL'}
    bl_property = "enum"

    def scene_items(self, context):
        return [(ob.name, ob.name, '') for ob in bpy.data.objects]
    enum = bpy.props.EnumProperty(items=scene_items)

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, "The item just got selected")
        return {"FINISHED"}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        context.window_manager.invoke_search_popup(self)
        return {"FINISHED"}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
    bpy.ops.operator.menu("INVOKE_DEFAULT")

This got changed on Blender 2.79 due to a bug report I sent.
The popup menu doesn't show the last search anymore. It gets emptied, showing all the list again.
It would be cool though, if the scripter could be able to choose if he/she wants to clear the field or not, but maybe it will be necessary to file a feature request for that.


Learning Blender. Add custom hyperlink button to UI to navigate to browser Is there a simple way to add a hyperlink to a custom button (preferred) or menu in the Blender Gui?

My basic need at the moment is to open up links to documentation (especially hot keys https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Reference/Hotkeys/All)

You can use bpy.ops.wm.url_open() to open a url from a button.

For example, using the UI Panel Simple template (from the Text Editor> Templates> Python) you can add this to the draw method:

def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    row = layout.row()
    row.operator("wm.url_open", text="Open Link").url = "http://www.google.co.uk"

This will display a button whose sole purpose is to open a link. If you already have a button and just want to add this extra functionality, you can call the operator directly with:

bpy.ops.wm.url_open(url="http://www.google.co.uk")


Is it possible to begin/end parent relationship with animation or keyframe? I would like to have a parent/child relationship drive a camera pan dolly, but end the parent relationship at a set key frame.

Is it possible to keyframe or in another way animate and control parent/child relations?

This is one of the main purposes of the "child of" constraint. It's a constraint the transforms an object as though it was parented to the specified target. Like all constraints, you can keyframe the influence:

By default it will move the object to the target's location as well. Clicking "set inverse" will add an offset so the constrained object will "start" from its existing location.

Note that you can also select which transform channels the "parent" applies to, which is also not possible with true parenting. You can also have several child of constraints on the same object with different targets, and just animate which is active at a particular time. This is useful for an object that needs to be handed off from one character to another, or picked up off a conveyor belt or something like that.


Spline IK bake and export problem I’m having some trouble with SplineIK. I made a rope with bones, animated on a curve. I used spline IK and at the end I baked it before exporting. Everything works well in Blender before exporting, but after I export it (DAE, FBX, whatever) the result is completely different as it should be.

In the video you can see the difference between the correct animation (selected in pose mode) and the baked/exported/imported one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIEfzo7iqjo

Could someone help me solve this?

This is a scaling artifact that happens when Y-stretch is enabled. The bone scales get applied additively down the chain, because the bones are parented to each other, resulting in an odd shape.

What you need to do is: Copy the SplineIK bone chain, delete the SplineIK constraint in this new chain and unparent all the bones from each other. Than add copy transform constraints to every bone in the chain, targeting the matching bone in the SplineIKchain. Make this new chain deform the mesh, disable deform for all the bones in the original splineIK bone chain and enable only deform bones in export.


Get same bump from a photo to a model I've been tinkering with this for a while but can't seem to find a good answer to my problem. I need to recreate the Activity Center from Fisher Price photo-realistically and I'm not sure how to go around the small bump details it has. I've been trying with a normal map I got from a photograph and it works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know why it sometimes flips even if I didn't change anything. Also it's not giving me the quality I need.
I've tried getting a displacement map using CrazyBump but I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly?

With normal map after it flips itself:

Correct normal map (but still not good enough):

Displacement map I get from CrazyBump:

It just messes everything up, doesn't even add the details or anything. I find weird how it would do that given that the map itself is all blurry but it seems good in it's preview ??

Am I missing something? Is there another way? Since it's for rendering I don't really care for how to achieve it if it works. I'm using Marmoset Toolbag for rendering but Blender for the model and stuff.

I'm not familiar with Marmoset Toolbag, so I can't speak for that part. But there should be a setting in there somewhere that you can adjust the strength of your bump map. It is the settings in your 3rd screenshot I believe.

In blender it works like this at least, notice the first image has a high strength on the clouds, the second has a lowered value for the clouds.

I don't believe this is a question related to Blender however since you use a 3rd party renderer, and it's the renderer that handles bump maps and such.

Hope this helps.


Adding UV Mapping to Mesh I am trying to apply an image to a wavy mesh I created in Blender. I am not sure how to do this. I don't think I have any seams because its one panel so I tried just unwrapping which didn't work. Then I tried marking the edges as seams but this also failed to work. Where are the seams if any and how do I apply an image?

Blender has a difficult texture mapping system.

To view an image on a 3D model, you need to do the following:

Select a mesh object and go to Edit Mode.
If the mesh has not been unwrapped, define your seams (Ctrl + E > Mark Seams) and unwrap it (U). Only the selected faces will be unwrapped, so make sure you have what you want unwrapped selected. Also, only the Unwrap choice guarantees that faces will have the same more or less spacial layout in UV space as they have in the 3D mesh surface, seams included.

Switch to a UV Image Editor while still in Edit Mode.
If your mesh has been unwrapped and there are some faces selected in the 3D Viewport, these faces' uvs should appear in the UV Image Editor. If this does not happen, make sure there is no render result displayed on the UV Image Editor.
Now you can assign an image to your mesh by either opening a new one from the menu Image > Open, selecting an already opened image from the drop down menu or generating a new image from the menu Image > New.
This image will be applied to the selected faces. However, it may not appear in the 3D Viewport yet. For that to happen you have to set your 3D Viewport to Textured View by hovering the mouse inside it and pressing Alt + Z. You can also change it the view manually in the footer.

If you try to render your mesh, there will be no image on it. The image has simply been attached to the mesh's UV layer. To make the mesh render with this image, you need to explicitly create a material, add a texture and change the texture's type to Image, set the image, change the Mapping to UV and assign the texture to color.

Yes, it is long winded and confusing. Sorry :)


How to delete an image that was drag and dropped instead of added with Images as planes? i accidentally added an Image by drag and drop into 3d viewport instead of adding it with    add images as planes .It shows up only in orthographic view and in camera view but i can not select it and i don t see it in the Outliner.How can i delete it?

Press N
go to Background Image
delete image
END


Set custom location for import/export helper I have two buttons in my panel, one to import obj and one to import collada. I have two folders named 'obj_files' and 'collada_files' in two locations on my machine. I'm using importhelper, but I want when I press on the Import OBJ button, the obj_files folder will be the default path which shows up which is the location where I stored all the obj files in it instead of browsing for it, and the collada_files path when pressing the import collada button. I've tried

bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath = '/Users/UserA/Temp/obj_files/')

I've also tried the below but still didn't work:

class ImportOBJ(Operator, ImportHelper):
    """Import OBJ"""
    bl_idname = "io.importobj"
    bl_label = "Import OBJ"

    filename_ext = ".obj"
    filter_glob = StringProperty(
            default="*.obj",
            options={'HIDDEN'},
            maxlen=255,
            )
    filepath = bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="File Path",
        description="File path used for importing the OBJ file",
        maxlen= 1024,
        default= "/Users/UserA/Temp/obj_files/")

def execute(self, context):
    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath = self.properties.filepath)

My guess is you want the filebrowser to open at this location. My suggestion on this would be to set up default path properties in your addon preferences (if an addon).

class ImportDefaultPathsAddon(AddonPreferences):
    # this must match the addon name, use '__package__'
    # when defining this in a submodule of a python package.
    bl_idname = __name__

    default_obj_path = StringProperty(subtype='DIR_PATH')
    default_collada_path = StringProperty(subtype='DIR_PATH')

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text="Import Paths")
        layout.prop(self, "default_obj_path")
        layout.prop(self, "default_collada_path")

Then in your layouts, menu  or panel button

def draw(self, context):
    user_preferences = context.user_preferences
    addon_prefs = user_preferences.addons[__name__].preferences

    layout = self.layout
    op = layout.operator("import_scene.obj")
    op.filepath = addon_prefs.default_obj_path

    op = layout.operator("import_scene.collada")
    op.filepath = addon_prefs.default_collada_path

The user would need to set the paths when the addon is enabled.

PS I've looked at other methods of doing this, and can also suggest ditching the ImportHelper subclass altogether and write your own invoke and parameters.


How do I copy children of an object using copy() method, without messing up their positions? I am making a scene procedurally with python, and recently switched to the copy() method instead of duplicate_move(). With duplicate_move, all the children of the object reproduced faithfully and their positions relative to the parent were correct. However, with copy(), the children did not get included, so I had to make a series of nested loops going to the depth I needed for my model (four layers) and manually copy, assign parent, and link to scene with each child. This worked, with the exception that the positions of many of the children were wrong, they appeared to be offset vertically by some amount, but their transform data in the inspector panel appears to be the same.

Before we get into what I may have done wrong in my nested loops, is there any way to automatically do a deep copy of the entire hierarchy of an object using the copy() method?

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to include code. Here is the core of what I am currently doing.

actor_copy = actor.copy()
actor_copy.name = str(ID)
scene.objects.link(actor_copy)
if len(actor.particle_systems)>0:
    ps = actor.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
    actor_copy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps
for child in actor.children:
    child_copy = child.copy()
    child_copy.parent = actor_copy
    scene.objects.link(child_copy)
    if len(child.particle_systems)>0:
        ps = child.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
        child_copy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps
    for subchild in child.children:
        subchild_copy = subchild.copy()
        subchild_copy.parent = child_copy
        scene.objects.link(subchild_copy)
        if len(subchild.particle_systems)>0:
            ps = subchild.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
            subchild_copy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps
        for sub2child in subchild.children:
            sub2child_copy = sub2child.copy()
            sub2child_copy.parent = subchild_copy
            scene.objects.link(sub2child_copy)
            if len(sub2child.particle_systems)>0:
                ps = sub2child.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
                sub2child_copy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps
            for sub3child in sub2child.children:
                sub3child_copy = sub3child.copy()
                sub3child_copy.parent = sub2child_copy
                scene.objects.link(sub3child_copy)
                if len(sub3child.particle_systems)>0:
                    ps = sub3child.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
                    sub3child_copy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps

Apologies for the hack job, time was short and I'm still hoping this can all be thrown away in favor of the right pre-existing function call. But no, I did not know about matrix_parent_inverse, that sounds very promising, thank you!

Set the matrix_parent_inverse of the copy.
Thought I'd add a supplementary answer, using recursion to get all the children up to a certain level. Without it the code is going to get long and unwieldy for more levels.
import bpy

def copy_ob(ob, parent,  collection=bpy.context.collection):
    # copy ob
    copy = ob.copy()
    copy.parent = parent
    copy.matrix_parent_inverse = ob.matrix_parent_inverse.copy()
    # copy particle settings
    for ps in copy.particle_systems:
        ps.settings = ps.settings.copy()
    collection.objects.link(copy)
    return copy

def tree_copy(ob, parent, levels=3):
    def recurse(ob, parent, depth):
        if depth > levels:
            return
        copy = copy_ob(ob, parent)

        for child in ob.children:
            recurse(child, copy, depth + 1)
    recurse(ob, ob.parent, 0)

#test
tree_copy(bpy.context.object, None)


Fixing black faces in texture after using dyntopo Lately I have encountered a problem while sculpting a model created using photogrammetry. When I was using dyntopo to fix areas with wrong topology, newly created faces didn't dynamically unwrap and because of it there are black, not unwrapped spots on my mesh. What I tried to do was using clone brush, but as you may have guessed it didn't work at all because of the texture islands being randomly spread in the image. Also there is a significant part of environment textures which are useless and occupy image space. Here is one of four images used for texturing (just to show what they all look like, posting an image which is the most light-weight):  I'd be grateful for any tips on how to fix these black spots.
Thanks in advance

I have developed a workaround exactly for this (I also use meshroom by the way). Before you fix the topology with Dyntopo, create a backup of your mesh. When you are finished painting in the polygons, you can rebake the color information from the original mesh to the Dyntopo'd one.


How to render a scene with Cycles render and blender internal My problem is that I have made a in Blender render a plane with grass texture and I have made some rocks in a separate blender file with Cycles render. The problem is that when I do BR then it renders only the plane and the rocks are plain grey and when I do CR then the plane is grey but the rocks are looking good. Hopefully somebody can help me quick how to solve this issue

The video I used to do the rocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRDFMYfsIcU

The reason why you get gray a plane or rocks, is that materials are different in BI and Cycles, so to use, let's say Cycles, you have to "port" your materials (basicly remake them, with the tools availiable in the render engine); Since materials are different, when you switch between the renderers it applys a default materail to objects that don't have a propper one; That material just so happens to be gray.
So I don't think it's possible to mix them, without using the compositor and transparency.


Make two objects out of two pieces separated by boolean difference modifier I applied a boolean difference modifier to a rectangular object that removed a middle portion of it and I ended um with two parts. But now I want to select just one of the parts but both parts are selected, as they are still the same object. How can I separate them apart?
Thanks in advance,
Pedro

You will need to Apply the boolean modifier (it's a button in the modifier panel), then use the Spacebar menu to find the Separate operator, and choose the "By loose parts" option.


Array modifier - cap location qurestion I used an array modifier cap function.
However, the model shown using the cap is out of the coordinates of the building modeling as shown in the picture. please teach me.

Start and End cap position depends on their origin points.
Simply move their origins to align them.

Go Sidebar (S) > Tool > Affect Only Origins
Select your Start/End cap object and move their origin using the move tool
Done

(Please excuse the crude demonstration, I'm on a touchpad :)


edges with thickness and color Is there a way to vary the thickness and color of lines created by just edges and vertices?
I realize that a face can be defined and then color and material applied, but is there any way to apply a color to the edges?

No, apart from setting theme color and default line widths there is no way to color lines.

If this was necessary, it's possible to write a python script that draws an overlay on the mesh using custom-data to store colors on edges, but this is quite an involved solution and not really ideal, because higher detail meshes will draw more slowly(since Python is not very fast for these kinds of tasks).


How to stop rendering a renderlayer at any moment of the animation? I have 3 render layers that I'm compositing together in the 4th one. Everything works fine, but even if I don't see the layer in some specific moment blender still renders it. The problem is that I use the Cycles volumetric light for a short time then it disappears and we don't see it anymore but it still takes forever to render even though every single light in the layer fades to black. How can I make it stop rendering what I don't need anymore?

P.S. I know, I can render it part by part and then composite a video, I can even render it with image sequence to not to lose any quality with re-encoding video, but it would be wonderful if it could be done withing blender compositor and animation system.

Renderlayers have a checkbox next to them which controls whether or not the renderlayer is rendered.

This checkbox can be animated (like most options in blender) by pressing I while hovering over the check box or by pressing  RMB> Insert keyframe to insert a keyframe.

Note that this will make the renderlayer node not output an image, so your compositing setup must be carefully designed to account for that.

If the layer you want to toggle has no alpha transparency, a simple alpha over node will let you put another image in place of the renderlayer when it is not enabled (in this example, I used a mask node to provide a solid color the same size as the render):

If the layer does have alpha transparency, this won't work.

Instead you'll have to use an animated mix setup or something.


Cannot create Euro Symbol I am working with text (standard Blender font) on a Mac. No problem with the currency symbols for yen, dollar, pound but somehow I cannot create the euro symbol. It should be Alt2 on a mac. Blender displays the euro symbol in the Tool Shelf (Edit Mode), but when I toggle into Object Mode the glyph won't show up.

Blender's default font for Text Objects (called "BFont") doesn't have the Euro symbol (August 2015). Import a different font, one that does have the Euro € symbol.

obj = bpy.data.objects['some_text_object']
obj.data.body = chr(8364) * 4

This would show 4 Euro symbols, if the Glyph is present in the table.


part of the mesh become yellow when in sculpt mode I am using the newest version of blender (2.83). I modeled and sculpt the head mesh and body mesh separately. And after sculpting, I use boolean modifier combined 2 part of meshes. And then when I try to reenter the sculpt mode, my body part of the mesh becomes yellow. It said my mesh may not have uniform scale. I SOLVED THIS PROBLEM by applying the scale. However, the yellow color of my body mesh does not go off even I close blender and reopen it. Now there is no more warnings or errors showing, however the body mesh is still yellow. I am wondering what I did wrong and how to fix it. Thanks.

This is the new "Face Sets" feature, I think. It seems to be meant as an extension to the use cases currently covered by hiding and showing faces.
It does not seem to be particularly well documented, or to have much in the way of exposure in the user interface, at this point.
You probably did nothing wrong. I assume that the Boolean modifier probably automatically created two "Face Sets" corresponding to each mesh when they were joined.
To fix this problem, you can open the new "Face Sets" menu in the 3D view's Sculpt Mode header. The very last option says "Randomize Colors", and will randomly reassign each region of your mesh a new colour. You can repeat this operation until the colours of your mesh are no longer yellow. (I hope you like purple, red, blue, or green.)
Alternatively, you could also try one of the options under "Init Face Sets", or using the "Draw Face Sets" sculpting brush and holding CTRL from one area to paint over the rest of your mesh.


My rig performance is so slow! Hide Geometry in a referenced rig? I have quite a long project ahead of me and made my own rig, model etc.
The retopo is good, the rig not too heavy and I have a fairly good computer, nevertheless while animating I just can't get over 16frames/second (24f/s is my framerate)
I already tried all the tricks that come when googling the problem (simplify, playback speed, hiding everything except the rig, just one active viewport).
One guess might be, that my character has to many subtools (buttons, cornea etc etc) but since this is a referenced rig (via animation proxy) I can't touch the geometry in a scene. Hiding geometry in the original rig file also does nothing.
Is there any way to put geometry on a layer so the animator can hide parts of it in the rig?

this is something i experimented with a while ago:
i have a really high-poly character rig that posing any bone takes about 1 frame per second

so, i created 2 versions of the rig, 1 final render, and the other, low poly. same armature, same rig, but different meshes placed in separated collections

for this one, i duplicated the base meshes/ the ones that make the rig understandable, and decimate them with the decimate modifier to the bare minimum to understand what im animating and what the character is doing. i also found out that disabling collections give you a performance boost than just hiding stuff, you just gotta remember to re-enable them by the time youre rendering those.
and if youre really up for it, you can make drivers for all the modifiers you have on all meshes, so that when u disable the collection, you also disable the viewport visibility of modifiers for background objects, that with simplify its the luxury peak of performance, no frame dropping at all, annnnd! since its the same rig you dont have to transfer over the keyframes.
im using this trick on all my animatable character models ever since i started using it, the concept behind it was thanks to the Tangent Animation's Next Gen movie conference. where they used different rig versions to save on performance in heavy scenes.https://youtu.be/iZn3kCsw5D8?t=1436
soooo quick review!

high res version
low res version (both in their own collection)
drive viewport visibility of modifiers to turn them off when in background / not needed
simplify!
solid view
playback set to AV-Sync (this will force for animation to play at a consistant rate regardless of FPS, it can be a bit unstable on eevee)
last but not least, disable any unecesary things youre not using in the scene, you can also make a low res version of the environment youre animating the character in and do the same thing you do with characters. PERFORMANCE AHOY!

now.. i dont know much about proxy objects, but about anything inside a disabled collection pretty much doesnt exist so it should still apply.


How can I get this setup in Cycles (for cell shade) I'm using a material setup in Blender Internal for cell look. I want to use same setup for Cycles but I can't get exact same result.
In this setup; I can select shadow color and direction in color ramp. And also this setup works good in viewport.

You cannot get this exact setup because Cycles does not let you use lighting as a factor in your materials. There is no Lamp Data node in Cycles, and you cannot use a shader's output as an input for another shader or color like you can in Blender Internal. This is because Cycle's lighting and shading isn't calculated until render, so that data is not available. You can make a fake one by using drivers to feed the location of a lamp into value nodes, but it isn't very accurate.

You can still get pretty close by using a Toon Diffuse with a high size and low smooth. Probably .9 for Size, and .01 or .025 for smooth (which is very slight, really just for anti-aliasing.) Note that Cycles will be very sensitive to proper setup of Smooth shading, sharp edges, etc. For a model like that, be sure to use Autosmooth.

If you want your shadows recolored, you will have to do it in the compositor. You can Add the Diffuse Direct and Indirect passes to get a proper shadow mask (the normal Shadow Pass does not include mesh lights or bounce lighting). Then use that as a factor for a color mix or HSV node with hue/saturate adjustments. This works if your shadows are a darker version of your existing color, but it will not work if you want to change the shadow color to something specific on an individual basis (in which case you'd need to use ID masks to select each specific different area that needed a color, which is very inefficient.) Note that when you add these shading passes, the values will be way above 1. You may need to ramp or clamp them.

The other major element here is that your shadows do not get very dark in your image. This can be achieved either through world lighting, having lots of lamps or a scene for light to bounce off of, or with ambient occlusion. Or in the compositor, you can use RGB curves/color correction to lift the blacks of the whole image up to what you want, or you can re-combine the image from it's passes and ramp or use math nodes to control the minimum values.

Keep in mind however that bounce lighting will generally ruin a hard edged, flat cell look. And the whole point of Cycles is bounce light. It can do fine for more detailed toon styles, but if you want to keep things flat and simple, stick to BI.


Volumetric Lighting help I'm trying to render out an image with light emitting from an object, but I am very new to Cycles.

How can I achieve an effect like this easily?

It's only for a single frame, so it can be a simple fake to look like that. Thanks!

Nevermind! I solved it! I had to put cones jutting out with some shaders applied, and point lamps behind them. See some of the other volumetric lighting questions for the nodes to use!


How to find quicly a duplicated bone name I'm rigging the tail of the bird Piero training course of the CG Cookie and I made again and again the episode 29 : piero rigging spine. I created a new bone and I renamed it "MCH_mindsEye",as indicated by the tutorial,but that name has been converted immediately to "MCH_mindsEye.001",so probably already exists a bone with the first/same name. I tried to look where it could be but I didn't find it. What can I do ? I have also unhide all the bones that I had previously hidden,but that doesn't help.

Highlite it in the list as suggested, look in the 3D window for the gismo arrows.  That's where it should be, even when you cannot see it.  Sometimes these things appear as just a highlited dot in the 3D screen.

Good luck - it's a perplexing problem that one!


Importing from Corel Dream 3D? I have an old Corel (v8) Dream 3D model that I would like to import into Blender. I have been unsuccessful so far. Corel won't export to a usable file that Blender will pick up. Any ideas?

A little history followed by an educated guess...

CorelDream 3D was also sold as Ray Dream Designer and RDD is still a product owned by DAZ Productions, but it's sold under the name Carrara.

So, what I'm thinking is if any software still loads that file format, it would be one of the DAZ 3D products. You may even luck out and find that it'll load into Daz Studio which is free. If there's a demo version of Carrara, you might be able to load/export it from there if the demo version allows exporting. From there, you could export it as a Wavefront .obj file and bring it into Blender.

Failing that, if you can still get CorelDream 3D to run, load the model and do screenshots of front, side, top, etc. and load the screenshots as image planes into Blender and redo the model. Of course, if it's terribly complex, it may take some time.

Not a definitive answer, I know. I went down this same road with models from Sculpt-Animate 4D. Yeah, I know, nobody remembers that one :) I ended up recreating the models from scratch in Blender which didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would.

I hope you find a solution and that this has helped in at least some small way.


How Do I Move a Face Entirely on Its Own? I fairly new to blender and i'm trying to move a specific face on its own. When I have the face selected and use the move controls, it tugs the surrounding area with it. I was doing it before but I think I accidentally hit a shortcut, and now it no longer responds this way. How do I fix this?

I think that you want to duplicate the face. You want to move the face without affecting the rest of geometry. To do this select the face and press shift+D and place your face where you want.

After you have duplicated and you want to delete your original face, press X to delete and select Only faces.


Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data? I've watched several tutorials and very often they applied the location, rotation or scale to the object when they transformed it in Object Mode. They always said it is important, but why?

Short answer: it depends.

Applying transformation can be important but it mostly comes down to what you do intend to do with the objects.

Looking at this from a simplistic viewpoint, ideally it wouldn't matter and everything would work just fine even when scaled/rotated.

A good rule of thumb is:

  Apply rotation and scale to your models unless you have a reason not to.

Transformation is split up into translation/rotation/scale, generalizing on Blender's support:

rotated objects (well supported)
translated objects (well supported)
scaled objects (well supported)
non-uniform scaled objects
negative scaled objects

The last 2 can cause issues with modifiers, constraints and some tools. Even though for basic operations it works fine, there's rarely a good reason to have negative scale.

Considerations:

Most modifiers are applied before scale. So the effect of a bevel or solidify could be squashed with non-uniform scale. Armature and hook modifiers are an exception to this rule.
Negative scale will flip the object's normals (when an odd number of axes is flipped).
Most edit mode tools such as smooth-subdivide won't take non-uniform scale into account.
Rotation and scale can cause problems with armatures, especially when exporting to different formats.
Rigid body physics doesn't support scaled objects well (this could be seen as a bug, nevertheless as it stands it's not working well).
Scale applied after parenting will be applied to children, if you have complex parent/child setups - it's less trouble if you only scale objects when necessary.
Extreme scale values >1000.0 or <0.0001 (a large object scaled down or a small object scaled up) can cause floating point math precision issues when in edit mode, also for other calculations.

Areas scaled/transformed objects are fine:

Static scenery (maybe you want to have different sized rocks). Objects which don't move or interact with other objects via modifiers, constraints etc.
When it's intentional - an object stretches (animate scale with a bouncing ball).


How do the solid OpenGL lights found in the system preferences work? Where can I find a detailed explanation of this topic ?

For example, where the lights are located, which type of lights they are, which is the illumination model, etc.

All three are directional lights with the direction relative to the view angle (think sun lamps parented to the camera). The direction is controlled via the direction widget:

There are no differences between the three AFAIK, three was just the number chosen to be hardcoded in.

They will add to each other when their areas of illumination overlap.


How to automate a script execution on import actions? Basically, I would like a way to let the user select a file to import and then transparently execute a custom script.

Most of the time, I use Blender in a work flow. When I do some changes on my models in other programs (like a sculpt program), I would like to keep the work I've done in Blender (mostly materials and lightning). The mesh I import already has different materials assigned to different parts of the mesh like "skin", "hair", "cloth", etc... but I heavily modify and tweak them in Blender. When I reimport, the new imported mesh get a "skin.001", "hair.001", etc... which are really basic (mostly a diffuse colour). I then have to reassign every time materials myself.

I couldn't find a handler for Collada import and didn't find a way with modal operators.

Blender doesn't have these kinds of hooks, the closest thing you can get to this is to write your own operator that runs import, then your own code afterwards.

For Python importers you could customize the script to include your own functionality and in a few causes you could monkey patch the importer scripts. But basically this isn't supported.

See this question for more details:
Run additional code after user has executed and finished an operator


How to make group of vertices solid/frozen/rigid My apologies, my question may be a duplicate but I can't seem to find the correct terminology to phrase my question correctly.

During editing, is it possible to select a group of vertices and cause them to become 'solid'? As in, make it so that if I translate 1 vertex from the group, the entire group translates together, or if 1 vertex is rotated, the whole group rotates with it as a solid object.

Specifics: I have a model (model and example of what I'm aiming for included below) that I've been making and essentially I want to bend most of it into an arc shape, but I want a section of it to remain rigid so that it doesn't warp while I rotate the rest of it.

Option 1:

Separate the objects. In "object mode" hit "shift+d" to duplicate the object. Delete the vertices in one object, and the inverse vertices in the other. Then, while editing one, you do not affect another.

Option 2:

Deform your mesh with an Armature. Use 2 bones. One bone affects the rigid piece, the other bone affects the other parts. Pose the bones into the shape you want, and apply the armature. Use "vertex groups" to influence the deforms. A bone will affect vertices in a vertex group that has the same name as it.

Hopefully this can help you learn some terminology and put you on the right track.


How to adjust brightness and contrast on background images? Is there a way to adjust the brightness and contrast on background images?

This isn't possible at the moment, you'll have to edit the images separately before loading them in.

You could use textured planes instead of background images, and edit the texture in a material, however this has the disadvantage of only working in material view.


Hiding transform panel from 3D view properties 'UI' Panel from user? Almost everything is in the question. I've been browsing the web for a while and couldn't find out a way to hide or at least disable the Properties Transform Panel of the 'View_3D' area. Is there a way to redraw (override the draw) entirely this Panel, by the way? I need the user to be unable to transform the objects otherwise, but by using my custom tools. I've been able to remove every other Panel but this one. Any brilliant idea?

Also, is there a way to simply remove this whole area (and replace it by a new fresh one), or even better redraw completely the area?

I use this to draw it in the tool shelve

class ObjectTransformation(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Transformation"
    bl_idname = "Transformation"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Modeling Toolbox"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        obj = context.object
        row = layout.row()
        row.column().prop(obj, "location")
        row.column().prop(obj, "rotation_euler", text="Rotation")
        row.column().prop(obj, "scale")
        row = layout.row()
        #Calls the CTRL A menu
        #row.operator("wm.call_menu", text="Apply Tans").name="VIEW3D_MT_object_apply"
        row.operator("object.transform_apply", text="Apply Rot").rotation=True
        row.operator("object.transform_apply", text="Apply Scale").scale=True
        row = layout.row()
        row.column().prop(obj, "dimensions")


enabling node wrangler Blender 2.8 Well I am trying to make a project in blender. And im trying to enable my node wrangler if someone can help me with this problem.

The Node Wrangler add-on is shipped with Blender and can be enabled in the preferences.

Open the preferences (Edit > Preferences).

Select Add-ons in the preferences and search for "Node Wrangler". Enable Node Wrangler by clicking on the checkbox next to it.


Similate a vessel being filled with a liquid I would appreciate some help with the following:

I am trying to animate filling a non-uniform shaped mesh with a liquid. I do not want to use a fluid modifier. The end result I need is just a graphical simulation for a web page.

As you can see the vessel is an 'odd shape'

Any pointers towards a solution would be appreciated.

Thanks

Richard C

If you just want to raise the liqud level, you can have the inner shape with a volumetric material sat up as water and then make a cube and add wave modifier to it. Then add a boolean modifier to ineract with the inner shape of the Vessel. Then animate the cube to rise up in Z direction. (The inner shape of the vessel must be seperated object from the vessel) Also I suggest to retopology the mesh, it seems that there are some n-gons in your mesh that are causing some shadowing problems or could be wrong sided normals...


Roughness only in some parts how is it possible to apply roughness, in the water material, only in the highlighted part of the mesh?
Thank you

You could do this by creating a black and white mask and using it as the factor of a mix shader to mix the water with the rough water.

First add an image texture node.
Click new to add a black image.
Then plug this into the material output.
Then go to the texture paint workspace.
Paint the areas you want rough in white.
Save this black and white image.
Go back to the shading workspace.
Add a mix shader
Plug you black and white image into the fac input
Plug you water material into the top shader input of the mix shader node
Add another Principled BDSF shader and increase its roughness
Plug this into the bottom shader input of the mix shader node

This is the result you'll get:

Of course, from here you can make the rough shader more interesting with colour/bump/etc but this is the basic setup!


Can anyone tell me how to solve this issue with rigging and mesh? All bones are part of one armature, both arms are one object as well. I did automatic weight thing and the mesh on the right arm acts as it should, but one on the left does that weird thing as you can see. Am i doing something wrong or?

Fist thing, the scale is -1 on the X axis, so apply the scale of your object:

Once done, you need to check the normals, enable Face Orientation in the Viewport Overlays panel:

Blue show face normal orientation, red the opposite, as you can see the normals are flipped outside on the right arm. To recalculate the normals, go in Edit mode, select all and press AltN:


how to keep your model scale from an animation? I was animating a model and noticed that on a frame that the scale there looked a lot better then the current scale my model has by default. What I would like to know is how to I apply the scale of the model in that frame so that it's now the model's permanent scale if that makes sense?
This is the default model scale:
[![Model and character design are property of CraftyMaelyss][1]][1]
And this is the scale I want my model to be:
[![Model and character design are property of CraftyMaelyss][2]][2]
I read somewhere that Ctrl + A should do it, so I tried it and it didn't work. Does anyone know how to do this?

Choose the object (not the armature), go to the frame you want it to be and apply the armature modifier.


Shadeless node setup still making shades I am trying to make a shadeless material in cycles... I tried this setup which i read its supposed to make it shadeless, but still it is has some shades in it, do i need to do something else in order to make it shadeless?

I tried already this setup but it doesnt work.

I would suggest copying the node group from the Import Images as Planes addon that ships with Blender - import your image and choose the option for Shadeless, and you will see a node group that when expanded looks like this.


floating fluid with force fields Is there any way I can make fluid float in the air with force fields? I am trying to replicate this:

Also, is there any plugin that would help?

You do not need to use force fields to do this. You can use an object in the fluid domain with fluid controller settings. Once baking, the fluid domain will be attracted towards the control object (if you have set it's strength to do so). You can animate some of the settings for the controller so that the fluid moves around the object.


Armature deforms Mesh horribly I've been working on my 3d character in blender and have finished making a mesh and the character itself.

When I apply the armature to my character with automatic weights it gets messed up.

Before

After

This is because of vertex groups and weight painting. I just got through this myself.
if you assign and select a single vertex group in edit mode and then switch to weight painting mode you can change how the bones affect the model.

You can find vertex groups in the data tab of the properties panel.
in the vertex group section you can select a number of vertices and create a group. you can then name each group you create. for example

You could select all the vertices in the head of the mesh and create a group and name that group head. from here you can now weight paint your head vertex group.

To get to weight painting, make sure you have the vertex group selected in edit mode. click the menu where you choose edit/object mode and choose weight paint. this will allow you to paint on the influence the bone will have on the mesh.


How would I make each one of these faces a separate "plank?" Just curious how I would make each of these faces a separate, movable, solid, rectangle. Attempting to make a wooden shack. Thanks everyone :)

Here is a non destructive technique I like to use that works for simple cases, when you don't want to break the model apart or need to separate into different objects.

Add an Edge Split modifier to your base mesh
Solidify it a desired distance
Now add a Bevel modifier and limit it to Angle
Enter Edit Mode, select and the desired edges
Press Ctrl + E and Mark Sharp
Adjust Bevel distance as desired, if necessary disable Clamp


How Can I make a Fluid Simulation liquid become gooey or viscous? I would like to change the properties of a fluid sim so that the liquid behaves gooey viscous. Which parameters would I have to change to get a slow, gooey viscous fluid. Much like hot sugar candy (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEqvwnlMRvA).

I looked at some of the tutorials describing how to do honey, but they still look like water.

Also maybe there is an addon that does excatly that. I also would like to displace the mesh that results of this simulation by twisting it. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Primarily you want to adjust the viscosity settings. The smaller the viscosity the more watery the simulation. Note that the exponent value is negated so increasing the exponent makes the final value smaller.

You will also find that the real world size makes a difference. A real world size of 10.0 will give a watery result while a real world size of 0.2 will be closer to a slushy with the same viscosity.

As for twisting the result, it will depend on the effect you want. You could use a simple deform modifier or a lattice deform. With a thick fluid sim you may also be able to use a collision object that spins around.


What are these white dots around my wheel? I just started blender and wonder what are these white circles around my wheel.

Those are particles, you added a particle system.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos, 2020

To remove it ...

select the object
go to the Properties Area
go to the Particle Settings
click on the "-" symbol to remove the particle system.


What methods can I use to reduce such a visible seam? I never noticed this seam on my rocks till I decided to modify the main texture for them to emit light from some of the low spots. This is a texture on all 6 sides of a cube, and subdivided a few times.

What methods are available to reduce the visibility of this seam?

Edit: Looks like I use texture painting to do what I need! Only issue is is that some sort of symmetry mode is on where both sides of the seam mirror each other.

There are 2 methods worth looking into.

Blended box mapping (cycles / rendering only)Easy to enable and apply everywhere but adds noticeable blurring/blending.
Projection painting - use the clone tool in 3d to clone over the seamGives a lot of control but makes the texture specific to meshes UV's, and wont work for tiling textures. However it can be used anywhere UV textures are supported - exporting to game engines for eg.


I can't bridge/loft these vertices I'm trying to bridge/loft these 3 shapes and I can't see what I'm doing wrong. Thank you.

You cannot create faces or vertices that are shared across different objects. All vertices, edges and faces need to be part of the same object.

Select all of the circles, join them into a single object (shift select the objects to be joinede and press Ctrl+J). Once all vertices belong to a single object then you can use the bridge edge loops tool.


Popup Dialog StringProperty File Icons Do Nothing The dialog above is created with the code below. When I click on the file icon (see red arrow), nothing happens. Is there a proper way to get these to just work or at least point to a custom operator which invokes context.window_manager.fileselect_add(self) or something similar?

It really seems like the functionality I want should be built into the StringProperty when using FILE_PATH as a subtype... I must be missing something obvious.

What I am trying to do is execute a single operation that requires selecting more than one file path. I can invoke 2 fileselect_add's one after the other, but it becomes confusing because right when you click to accept the path the new path window opens immediately. It is just too confusing as to which one is being selected as there is really no way to customize the fileselect_add window to any usefull degree (as far as I am aware) to make it more obvious what the user is selecting.

Dialog code:

class mydialog(bpy.types.Operator):
        bl_idname = "tools.mydialog"
        bl_label = "My Dialog"

        inFilePath = StringProperty(name="input file", subtype="FILE_PATH")
        outFilePrefix = StringProperty(name="out prefix", subtype="FILE_PATH")

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

    def execute(self, context):
        print(self.inFilePath)
        print(self.outFilePrefix)
        return {'FINISHED'}

You can use a CollectionProperty if you really need to let the user select multiple files (in different folders).

The following code invokes a file selector, that let's you add the current filepath as well as the selected files to a list. It allows for several input/output paths. It won't add duplicates, and you can also remove entries.

(The example operator is derives from the File Export template, but Add Files doesn't make much sense for an export operation - use it for imports instead!).

import bpy
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper
from bpy.props import StringProperty, IntProperty, CollectionProperty
from bpy.types import Operator
from os.path import dirname, join

class AddFile(Operator):
    bl_idname = "export_test.add_file"
    bl_label = "Add File"

    filepath = StringProperty()

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        op = context.active_operator
        return op.filepath not in (f.name for f in op.file_list)

    def execute(self, context):
        item = context.active_operator.file_list.add()
        item.name = self.filepath
        return {'FINISHED'}

class AddFiles(Operator):
    bl_idname = "export_test.add_files"
    bl_label = "Add Files"

    filepaths = CollectionProperty(type=bpy.types.PropertyGroup)

    def execute(self, context):
        file_list = context.active_operator.file_list

        for fp in self.filepaths:
            if fp.name not in (f.name for f in file_list):
                item = file_list.add()
                item.name = fp.name
        return {'FINISHED'}

class RemoveFile(Operator):
    bl_idname = "export_test.remove_file"
    bl_label = "Remove File"

    index = IntProperty()

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return len(context.active_operator.file_list) > 0

    def execute(self, context):
        try:
            context.active_operator.file_list.remove(self.index)
        except IndexError:
            pass
        return {'FINISHED'}

class ExportSomeData(Operator, ExportHelper):
    """This appears in the tooltip of the operator and in the generated docs"""
    bl_idname = "export_test.some_data"
    bl_label = "Export Some Data"

    # ExportHelper mixin class uses this
    filename_ext = ".txt"

    filter_glob = StringProperty(
            default="*.txt",
            options={'HIDDEN'},
            )

    # special prop, blender fills it with all selected files if present
    files = CollectionProperty(type=bpy.types.PropertyGroup)

    file_list = CollectionProperty(type=bpy.types.PropertyGroup)
    file_list_index = IntProperty()

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

        row = layout.row(True)
        row.label(bpy.path.basename(self.filepath))

        row.operator(AddFile.bl_idname, icon='ZOOMIN').filepath = self.filepath

        props = row.operator(AddFiles.bl_idname, icon='ZOOMIN')
        folder = dirname(self.filepath)
        for f in self.files:
            item = props.filepaths.add()
            item.name = join(folder, f.name)

        row.operator(RemoveFile.bl_idname, icon='ZOOMOUT', text="").index = self.file_list_index

        layout.template_list("UI_UL_list", "AddFiles", self, "file_list", self, "file_list_index")

    def execute(self, context):
        for f in self.file_list:
            print(f.name)
        self.report({'WARNING'}, "\n".join(f.name for f in self.file_list))
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.export_test.some_data('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


Creating a 3d paint streak effect in Blender 2.8 First off, I'm quite new to Blender so I appreciate any and all help. I'm trying to make a 3D paint stroke effect like the one below but I've run into some problems.

The method this designer (Pawel Nolbert for reference) uses is actually painting on to transparent film, then photographing the twisted film to achieve this result. In Blender, I tried creating a paint streak then mapping it to a bezier curve to create a similar effect.

I hope this method will work well enough for what I'm trying to do, but I can't figure out my node setup to procedurally generate the multi-colored streaks across the brush stroke. My questions are 1) what's the best way to set up the nodes so the colors can be changed on the fly and 2) is there a better way to achieve this result altogether?

Thanks in advance!

Best way would be to create a texture, sculpting it is not the way to go in my opinion. I've actually done similar things in C4D. We would shoot real paint on camera on a white background, get rid of the background in photoshop and just assign it to a plane. Then you can do whatever you want with the plane, twist it and move it around. It's the easiest way and give the best result, you can just change color with a HUE node. Use the image to add displacement as well. An other way would be to create the texture fully procedurally but that's a bigger subject.

Give me 10 minutes I'll update my answer with an example .blend file.

EDIT:


Importing obj files from a list variable python Blender 2.8
windows 10

So the idea of this script is that it will look in a directory for a good 3 thousand or so object files and one by one import them do some things like recalculating normals and converting triangles. And then saving blend files. However I am very very new to python coding and am having a bit of trouble.

import math
import bpy
import mathutils
import os

# a list of all models in the directory all models
model_list = os.listdir("B:\Planetside LOA project\Assets\All Models")
# the total number of models to be used in the while loop
model_total = len(model_list)
# current selected model
model_select = 0
# path to the model directory

# stored path of directory and specific model file
target_path = "yeet"
# to store the model's name in memory for simplicity
temp_model_name = "dab"
# the name of the object minus .obj
cur_object = "yote"

while (model_select != 1):
    target_path = "'B:\\Planetside LOA project\\Assets\\All Models\\" + model_list[model_select] + "\\'"
    # imports the model
    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=target_path)
    # gets the name of the current object
    temp_model_name = model_list[model_select]
    # figures out the length of the filename minus 4 characters
    rem_obj = len(temp_model_name) - 4
    # stores cur object as the object name as it is imported into blender
    cur_object = "bpy.data.objects['" + temp_model_name[0:rem_obj] + "']"
    # selects the object that was imported
    cur_object.select = True

    model_select = model_select + 1

The while loop has been modified for testing purposes it would normally be model_select != model_total. The problem seemed to initially be with the target path string the backslashes where causing line continuation errors so I doubled them up after doing some research. Interesting note however I entered this line into the console

>>> str = "B:\Planetside LOA project\Assets\All Models"

the output is well confusing to say the least here is what it reads.

>>> str
'B:\\Planetside LOA project\\Assets\\All Models'

I have exactly zero idea why the output would double up the \s. Entering the same code with doubled slashes leads to the same output.
Just a side note that was confusing
Anyway the console spits an error about the script failing and to check the info console but there is no further information. And I am completely stumped.
here it is exactly not very informative

bpy.ops.text.run_script()
Python script failed, check the message in the system console

And there is no further console info. At least for my messed up string it gave me something.

Thats an "accident" of early 1980’s. The first version of MS DOS used the forward slash for command-line options. When Microsoft added support for folders in MS-DOS 2.0, the forward slash was already taken so they used a backslash instead. Still stuck with this incompatibility 39 years later.

Windows: C:\folder\file.txt

Most other OS: /folder/file.txt

But \ is an escape character in most OS, thats why you have to escape it and to escape it you use another \ so it becomes \\.

Using the variable os.path.sep will give you the correct one, so you can simply use it to build your paths. But if you know which os you are working on you can write it by hand, your choice.


Why is render stacking less efficient (noisier) than rendering normally? Why are stacked renders noisier than straight renders which have the same number of samples?

Using this technique for resuming noise based on the rate at which pixels change outlined on the wiki (further explained on BA), I have run some tests. I'm not sure I understood the entire measuring process correctly, so I hope I haven't measured anything wrong..

I rendered 7 images, all with different seeds. 5 at 10 samples, 1 at 50 and 1 at 40.

In the compositor I combined the 10 sample renders with a series of mix nodes with mix factors of .5, .33, .25, and .2:

As an interesting side note, the combined image has fewer fireflies than the straight render.

The setup of the "Noise Detect" node group is:

Now if I understood correctly, the brighter the pixel, the faster it changes (the more noisy).

The histogram for the straight render:

The histogram for the combined render:

And an overlay version. The straight render is orange (click for full size):

As you can see, except for occasional spikes (fireflies) the straight render is changing less, which means it's less noisy according to the above links.

Assuming my above tests are correct, what is the reason for this and is there a way to stack renders more efficiently?

Here is the blendfile used for testing.

Cycles uses Quasi Monte Carlo sampling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Monte_Carlo_method

That means it will try to evenly distribute samples so rendering converges faster. If you render multiple times with different seeds however then this even distribution is lost because it mixes different distributions without ensuring that the combined result is even too.

Since Blender 2.78 there is a sample offset command line option to avoid that problem, where you can set it so that each render uses a subset of samples from the same distribution.


Texture of an object unexpectedly stretched I assigned a texture to one face of an object. During the rendering it is stretched in one direction. What caused this error and how do I fix it?

Below is an image of a render on left and a material preview on right.

You have to UV unwrap it. Enter Edit mode, select the face, hit U, unwrap, this should fix the stretching.

Basically your texture is not correctly 'mapped' to your geometry. For a square face you want it to be square in UV space as well, here it most likely more of a rectangular shape.

Edit:
Your textures coordinates weren't correctly UV mapped, textures were projected based on your object bounding box (it's called 'generated', that's what blender does by default since it doesn't know how you want to project your textures). This is why you need to unwrap the face as described earlier and make sure you feed your noise textures vector inputs with proper data like so:


Blocky smoke simulation doesn't change shape or makes a dark flash I've been trying to make several smokes simuations.
I'always end up with 2 types of results :

1st one  is this strange compact & blocky  smoke that never change it's shape even if going upward....

what my smoke look's like

I've tried a few things to stop but nothing's working, changing resolution division or particle emmiter scale etc, standing still...

Or, but still rare, that my smoke do not form anything, but when my frames are re-looping, make a strange kind of "dark" flash and disappear the next 5 frames....

PS : i'm using Blender 2.9.1 & Cycles render engine.

Problem solved by turning Node Wrangler off, relaunching and baking again... idk why .....


Creating a Goldberg polyhedron in Blender currently I am working on a game idea for Unity and I want to use Blender as my modeling software for it.
The surface of my sphere like planet consists of separate tiles like you can see in this Goldberg polyhedron example:

https://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/?recipe=A10cD

By reading other posts from this community I was able to shape the polyhedron into a sphere but then realized after cutting out the separate tiles, that they were not proper hexagons or pentagons. With this type of polyhedron this should actually be possible.
Now I looked back at the model and found out, that the hexagonal and pentagonal faces actually are not proper flat surface but their vertices are somewhat off and this caused my tiling to make slightly deformed hexagons and pentagons.

Is there a way to create this and more complicated polyhedrons maybe in Blender itself, in which the surface tiles actually form a flat surface without some vertices sticking slightly out?

Thanks in advance.

// Edit
So I used the geodesic dome addon which can now be found under the extra objects addon.

I tried to cut out the single tiles but again the edges a weirdly formed.

I do not understand why it gives me these odd shapes after I subdivide the faces and cast a sphere modifier. The original geodesic dome has the proper proportions which are now somewhat altered.

Sorry for my bad english.

// Edit
Apparently I simply selected the wrong faces... maybe I should should make more frequent use of my brain^^

Should have realised that using the first approach I would get far to many tiles for the geodesic dome I was using...
Luckily it looks now far more like a football.

Thank you so much for putting me on the right track.

Yes in fact, there is an addon for unusual geometric Objects.

Enable the Geodesic Domes2 Addon in the Preferences.

Add a Geodesic Object

Configure the Geodesic Object as shown. (class2 increses the "subdivision")

If you create those shapes often, just add a preset. You won't have to specify all parameters every time

The nomrals are flipped, so go in EditMode and press [shift + N] to recalculate them.


How to make Blender render in real-time, as fast a computer game? I understand from this answer (https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/136757/how-do-modern-game-engines-achieve-real-time-rendering-vs-blenders-slow-rende#answer-136776) that

computer games (and libraries like three.js and babylon.js) simply project objects onto the camera, and can thus render instantly
whereas Blender does raytracing, which takes minutes per frame.

Is there any setting I can change to make Blender use the projection mode of rendering rather than raytracing?  I've already done all the rendering performance tricks and I'm still orders of magnitude away from real time.

The answer referenced above says Blender Internal renderer is much faster than Cycles, but Internal is being removed from Blender 2.8 onwards, so that's not a solution.

If there is no Blender solution, then would using Blender to make models and Unity to make animations be be the best plan?  I haven't used Unity but I assume it can do the speedy rendering thing.

Use the Blender 2.80 Beta Version to get a new render engine called Eevee. The engine is lighter in performance consumption and can do real  time rendering even more realistically than the traditional Blender Render engine. Note: Before you open the old Blender file in 2.80 Beta, then keep a backup copy. Because once you open or create a project in Blender 2.80 Beta then you can't open it again in older versions. The physics engine is not yet completed. So, don't use the physics engine in Blender 2.80 Beta. If there is a bug or a problem in a feature of Blender 2.80 Beta,  then download the next day's version to get a better working version of Blender 2.80 Beta.


Is V 2.79 available for Linux Ubuntu? Version 2.82a fails to render animation. I would like to go back to version 2.79 which worked. Is V 2.79 Ubuntu still available?
Where can I find a download for 2.79?

All previous Blender releases are can be downloaded here. Blender 2.79 was released for Linux, Windows and macOS.


Python add sound sequence result only one frame import bpy
from bpy import context
import os
print(os.getcwd())
scene = context.scene
print(scene)
if not scene.sequence_editor:
    scene.sequence_editor_create()
scene.sequence_editor.sequences.new_sound("digital", "~/sound/digtal.mp3", 1, 19)

Problem in invalid file path.

Короче надо так '//digital.mp3', а не '~/sound/digtal.mp3'

scene.sequence_editor.sequences.new_sound("digital", "//digtal.mp3", 1, 19)


Newb looking for project advice I am working on a tutorial of a rocket, it is going well but I would like to modify it. I know that there are a lot of ways to approach it but I am looking for the best way to make the inside of the rocket hollow so eventually you will be able to see something in the window.
If I start by making a hollow cube will it remain hollow even after I put it through many modifications and scalings?
Boolians?

The thing hollow is kind of uncertain naming. Blender use surface based model for manipulate, which only surfaces are defined in your scene. So yes, every thing you see in your model can be a hollow thing by its model properties.

Maybe you are asking a closed surface behavior after manipulating? In that case, making a shell for the rocket will be a better idea. Using Solidify Modifier can make the object getting a thickness shell surface. So when you look inside the rocket through the tiny window, the surface will not be the wrong direction (backface).

But when the backface is not a consideration. You don't need to solidify it if the view is OK with backface as below:


Bake Texture to New UVMap (2.92) i'm trying to reproduce this answer : Possible to bake texture to new UV map? in latest blender version (2.92)
The UV are baked on the texture but everything is black ( + transparency outside of the UV)
So i was wonderning, if something change in the process.
For theUVMap Camera i tried both but got the same result...

Thanks a lot !

You've chosen to bake with the Emit option, it will bake what's emitted, but your object doesn't use any Emission node. In the linked page, the Image Texture is plugged into a Viewer node, which acts like an Emission node. If you want to bake the Diffuse, choose Diffuse instead, and under Influence only enable Color.


Rig following another rig scaling constraint problems I've made a rig and then copied a part of that rig, the new copied rig will follow the part of the original rig that its copied from, its just scaled up, I've managed to do this with copy rotation constraints, however unless I also have copy scale the rig will scale uncontrollably aka it will stretch and squish even though the original isn't doing this.

But with copy scale I can no longer scale the new rig freely, keep in mind that I need to animate the scale of this new rig separately from the rig that its following.

Does anyone know how to achieve this?
to sum up I need to follow the animation of the old rig (achieved with copy rotation and copy scale), but I need to separately animate scale, and i can't since having copy scale off will result in squishing and stretching uncontrollably.

Further detail:
with copy scale off individual bones will stretch and squish resulting in some bones to have 0 length and some to be super long unlike the original rig where bones don't change length, turning it on keeps the length equal but disables scaling of any kind, including armature scale (the entire thing) which is the thing I need to animate.
The rig is made with rigify, and the new rig is copying a part of the made rigify

Thank you for your help!

Nevermind, i figured it out

I turned off copy scale, and then for every bone that was having scaling problems I also turned off any IK constraints they had, since the rig is following another its no use having ik constraints on it anyway