How can I rename bones that have certain prefixes in their names in a script? I have a script made for 3dsmax that renames bones in batch like this:

(
    local nameMap = #( \

    dataPair "Bip01_" "",
    dataPair "Neck01" "Neck",
    dataPair "phy_anchor_Skirt_00" "Pelvis",

And so on and so forth. How can I make the same for blender? Does anybody have something working, so I can just change the name of the bones, and press 'Run Script'?

Because as far as I can do, it only change exact names and not part of the name, this is what I've got:

import bpy
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

namelist = [("Bip01_", "")]

for name, newname in namelist:
    # get the pose bone with name
    pb = obj.pose.bones.get(name)
    # continue if no bone of that name
    if pb is None:
        continue
    # rename
    pb.name = newname

What I would like that script to do is change ALL 'Bip01_' for nothing, like deleting a prefix.

You can have so called key-value pairs by using a dict. Script quickly tested against Rigify:

prefix_dict = {
        "Bip01_" : "",
        "Neck01" : "Neck",
        "phy_anchor_Skirt_00" : "Pelvis",
        "spine" : "Custom",
    }

import bpy

C = bpy.context
obj = C.object

# Bone Lookup
for key_bones in obj.pose.bones.keys():
    # Check for all the keys in prefix dict
    for key_pre in prefix_dict.keys():
        repl_value = prefix_dict[key_pre]
        if key_bones.startswith(key_pre):
            # Bone found
            bone = obj.pose.bones[key_bones]
            # Rename the bone!
            bone.name = bone.name.replace(key_pre, repl_value)


frame_change_pre handler not getting called for scene strip I've checked out similar questions and I believe that this is a distinct question. I'm attempting to update a text object every frame based on an attribute on another object so essentially I'm just using the code from this answer.
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
obj = scene.objects['Text']

def recalculate_text(scene):
    x = scene.objects['Cube'].location[0]
    obj.data.body = 'Distance in x-direction: {0:.1f} meters'.format(x)

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

My problem is that I'm referencing the scene that uses the frame_change_pre handlers from the sequencer as a scene strip. I attempted to refer to objects absolutely (as opposed to via the provided scene object):
import bpy

obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']

def recalculate_text(scene):
    x = bpy.data.objects['Cube'].location[0]
    obj.data.body = 'Distance in x-direction: {0:.1f} meters'.format(x)

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

But that hasn't worked either. The numbers just don't animate at all while rendering. (although the frame_change_pre handler works when I scrub around in the scene that has the Text object)
Any ideas about how to get a frame_change_pre handler to work with a scene strip?

The resolution to this problem was to use the frame_change_post callback to as described in this answer.


How to select all keyframes from left or right having current frame as pivot? I've been doing some animation with tons of keyframes and when I need to apply some change, I spend a lot of time selecting keyframes on dopesheet (pressing B, select all I want and perform change)

but this is very time consuming, I was hoping for some shortcut where I could select all keyframes from the left or right based on the current frame

script would work too,  I have to clue to start it by the way

any tips are welcome, thanks

Right click the key frame that should be the first of those you need selected and the hold Ctrl and either click the [ key for all keyframes on the left or the ] for all on the right (while Ctrl is held).


How to get cursor snap status in python? Is there a way to determine if the cursor /object  is currently snap on object? In this case on the face:

Closest Point on Mesh

Object.closest_point_on_mesh(...)

Takes a point in object space and returns the hit result, the location of hit, the normal of face hit and the face's index.

Alternatively could utilize mathutils.geometry.distance_point_to_plane(...), where each plane is defined by face center and face normal. Edit, this is somewhat flawed since the cursor can be on a faces plane but outside its edges, which would need to be tested for

Both these methods require the point to be in object space.  The 3d cursor location is in global space, convert using

pt = o.matrix_world.inverted() @ scene.cursor.location

Here is a verbose script using both methods.  The on_face boolean is true if cursor is on face of an object.

Note testing shows the tolerance TOL (distance from point to face) needs to be in the vicinity of 5e-5

import bpy
from mathutils.geometry import distance_point_to_plane as dp2p
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
TOL = 5e-5 # Tolerance

mesh_obs = [o for o in context.scene.objects if o.type == 'MESH']

for o in mesh_obs:
    me = o.data
    print(o.name, me.name)
    #cursor location in o's object space
    pt = o.matrix_world.inverted() @ scene.cursor.location

    # using closest point on mesh
    hit, loc, n, i = o.closest_point_on_mesh(pt, depsgraph=dg)

    print(i, (pt - loc).length)

    on_face = hit and (pt - loc).length < TOL
    print("closest point on mesh", on_face)

    # using distance point to plane for each face

    for p in me.polygons:
        print(p.index, dp2p(pt, p.center, p.normal))

    on_face = any(abs(dp2p(pt, p.center, p.normal)) < TOL
            for p in me.polygons)
    print("plane distance", on_face)

Result of running on default cube after clicking to snap cursor to face from view.

Cube Cube
3 2.1159816795005355e-05
closest point on mesh True
0 -0.9940524101257324
1 -1.0059475898742676
2 -1.1975289583206177
3 2.104043960571289e-05
4 -0.8024709224700928
5 -2.000020980834961
plane distance True

Related Snappping the 3D cursor to the surface and find the surface's face it was snapped to


Can you rotate bones within an IK Chain and allow the IK Target bone to move along with it? I have a robot arm rigged with an IK and down the chain of the IK there is a joint specifically for rotating on the bone's Y Axis that allows the entire lower arm to rotate. However once I move the arm into position with the target bone and then try to manually adjust that joints rotation it locks up because the target bone is stuck in place and won't adjust itself automatically. I know this is normal but is there a way to allow the target bone to move freely if another bone is pulling against it?

For those curious or if it helps at all I am trying to make the robot wave but the only way I can get that to happen is if the lower arm rotates. And I don't mean with a pole target either. Imagine bending your elbow to 90 degrees and rotating your hand.

Thank you!

I came up with another solution. I reduced the chain on the IK by a couple and then added IK to the top part of the robot's arm just above the rotator joint. Then I made the IK chain go the rest the way up the arm to the shoulder joint. now I have 2 controllers one that controls the shoulder and top arm location and then the bottom arm can move freely with its own controller bone.


object animation / keyframe moving wrong object? I'm animating a sliding door. I have two window panes and one frame.  They are not parented to each other and I have separated them from a single object. It is three total objects.  I cleared all location, applied locations to all three as well.

However, when I add a location keyframe to just ONE door to swing open, the whole frame moves along with that door object. I did NOT keyframe the frame object. Why are these other objects moving when I specifically key framed a totally different object for location change?

I have uploaded my blend file to google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzM6QGd0jb8YU0hiUTRVMS1BVmc/view?usp=sharing

The sliding door model is on layer 2 and i have attempted to make an animation in dope sheet called "sliding_door_open".  All I do is grab the left door, move it -2 direction on the X axis and insert location key frame, etc.

Ok, I'll write an answer so to be able to attach images and files.

As I wrote in the comments above, I tried your file and it just is wrongly keyframed, it has no other weird problems, to me.

What you have to do is reset the keyframes for the two sliding doors, and I'll show you how, below.

Your file hase several shapes, so I created a new empty blender file, and then just imported (appended) the three relevant objects from your file (cube.003, cube.004, cube.005), and since also their existing keyframes were imported, I use this as a starting point to reset animation for the sliding doors, as desired. But you should be able to use your file (I tried and it works also there).

This is what I imported (appended) from your file: there is a keyframe for the left door but is moving in the wrong direction (it goes to the right)

To restart from scratch, first I've deleted all existing keyframes for the door setup:

Then, at frame 1 I selected both doors, and inserted a keyframe there, for the starting position

This is what you get after (I also moved to frame 21)

Then I selected the left door and moved it X -2

And moved the right door to X +2

This is the desired final position, at the frame 21 so, let's add a keyframe for both selected doors:

The result is shown in the f-curve editor:

I'll add the file here for your reference:

Let me know if there something that needs to be explained more.


How to only show the faces of an object based on relation to another object I'd like to only show the faces of an object that another object can "see". So far I've been able to achieve this by putting a bounding box around the object I wan't to be partially seen and clipping it. Then having the bounding box offset a bit based on the position of my "Seeing" object.
This approach resulted in the following:

What I came up with sorta works but I want to achieve is something that hides the faces instead of doing a hard mask on it which makes it looks like it's been sliced through.
Desired effect

------ Update -------
Based on feedback from @ZargulTheWizard (thank you!) I was able to make some progress but still am not quite there.
Object into Alpha succeeded in revealing part of the object based on the cones position but 1) had a hard mask instead of hiding faces 2) would only reveal in one direction - the goal is to always have the side facing the cone be visible

Normal into Alpha gave me the visual effect I was hoping for in hiding entire faces instead of across them but does not react at all to the cone's being position.

I might try using the object as a texture coordinates and lining that up with the material alpha value, and then maybe throw in some back face culling so it is not visible from the inside.


How do I model a transfusion blood bag in Blender? I have been trying to model this asset for a few days but I cannot get it right.

As everybody can see in the image above (thanks to Jachym Michal) for modeling this object I used an image reference and a grid.
With my mesh as it is I have encontered with two mayor problems:

I have got the general shape down but with that messy topology I can't extrude it.
I have modeled the tubes of this thing (the cylindrical object that appear on the image) but I don't know how to joint it to the grid mesh.

For what I got it could be saved or should I start from scratch?

I hope that someone can help me out.

Postdata: I have attached the blend file for anyone who wants it.

Here are some tips for modeling a very simple blood bag.

1) Use Subdivision modifier to get that smooth shape.
2) Use Mirror modifier for perfect symmetry.
3) Keep quads everywhere, so you can use loop cuts

1) Inner and outer shape
- start with a simple plane and create the inner shape
- add loopcuts, move vertices.
- use Subdivision modifier to get the smooth shape.
- Use Mirror modifier for perfect symmetry and to save time.

use the same approach to create the outer shape
make sure it connects nicely to the inner shape and there are no n-gons

position some loopcuts for the tube openings.

2) Add some thickness
We need some thickness to create tube openings.
You can add some loopcuts inside the edge to better support the geometry.

3) Create tube openings  (you can apply the Mirror modifier before that)
- add a circle and prepare an empty the loop on your bodybag (by removing the faces inside)
- connect through Edge > Bridge Edge loops.
- make sure that the number of vertices is the same. (8 in my case)
- If you want more vertices in your circle, just add more loopcuts.

Add some loopcuts for sharper edges.

Here is the file:

And the reference image I used:


Why does a cross effect in the Video Sequence Editor overwrite a multiply effect? I have a problem in the VSE.

I would like to have some nice dark corners in movie so I added a white image with black corners and then added a multiply effect.

It works, but when I add 'fade to black' to that by crossing video with black colour, just before the crossing my dark corners disappear. Multiply stops as cross begins.

Why does this happen?

It sounds like your cross effect strip is being applied on top of the multiply effect strip.

The result of the effect strip completely overrides any strips below it. To work around this, use the cross effect strip to blend the multiply effect strip and the black color strip.

There are many variations on how to go about this, for example:

Method 1

Add a Multiply effect strip with the image and the video strips selected.
Add a Cross effect strip with the Multiply effect strip and the color strip selected.

Method 2

Add a Cross effect strip with the color strip and the video selected
Set the Blend of the image strip to Multiply in Properties region (N) > Edit strip > Blend

Method 3

Add a Multiply effect strip with the color strip and the video selected
Add a black color strip on top and keyframe the Opacity in Properties region (N) > Edit strip

Method 4

Without any effect strips:

Set the blend of the image to Multiply and move it above the video strip
Add a color strip on top and keyframe the Opacity.

Also see this question.


How do I make a glass texture with an outline? I am using cycles as my output for my creation, and currently, I am working on trying to make a glass ball with a white outline. I already separately tested the methods, however, when I try to put them together (by changing the solid material into a transparent, glass material), the outline will fill the entire shape instead of creating just an outline.

If there is a way to make glass with a real-time outline, please let me know! Thanks

The picture with the color wheel is the picture for the setup of the outline. For the outline, I used an addon called "Outline Helper" since many of the other ways to make outlines crashed Blender for me.

To illustrate the suggested solution using Fresnel.

Combine a Glass shader (for glass) and an Emission shader (for the outline)
Add Fresnel input to drive the visibility. Change IOR to control the line thickness.
Use Colorramp  set to Constant for sharp outline edge


Pixel Coordinates of Rendered Image with Python I need to get Pixel coordinates of a rendered image.
Here is explanation:

In the Image Editor, I can see the coordinates in the bottom left corner by right clicking in the image. Is it possible to get the coordinates with Python? I need them to setup many crop nodes.

It seems I found the way how to get pixel coordinates through Rendering Crop. Select a Crop Node and use the script.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
nodes = scene.node_tree.nodes
cropNode = nodes.active

if cropNode.type == 'CROP':
    nodes.active.min_x = scene.render.border_min_x * scene.render.resolution_x
    nodes.active.max_x = scene.render.border_max_x * scene.render.resolution_x
    nodes.active.min_y = scene.render.border_min_y * scene.render.resolution_y
    nodes.active.max_y = scene.render.border_max_y * scene.render.resolution_y


Is there a hotkey to set bevel weight? Is there a keyboard shortcut I can use to set the edge bevel weight?

You can add a shortcut in Edit Mode using the bar at the bottom of the 3D view.

The button in the menu for Edge Bevel Weight is under Mesh ‣ Edges ‣ Edge Bevel Weight.

Right-click the button and then select Add shortcut from the popup menu that appears. You can also do this with any other item in the menu or the toolbar on the left.

Also notice that the shortcut for the Edges menu is Ctrl E, so if you wanted you could type Ctrl E in the 3D view and select Edge Bevel Weight. You can also add a shortcut from this menu by right clicking and selecting 'Add Shortcut', as above.


texture coordinate node in blender - how to control textures with it Can simple textures be controlled using just texture coordinate node?
I'm using a simple texture for this experiment:

which I'd like to place at the side of an experimental sphere(with the texture as it is), the first result that I would get is:

the texture is distorted and so I would have to scale it down using the mapping node and the texture looks fine from top view:

However, if we look at the bottom the texture appears reflected:

after a long time, I figured out that the texture is split into equal sizes and are mirrored as can be seen below:

I'd only like to keep one but I don't know how.
There could be work arounds using an empty or partly uv unwrapping the mesh, But I'd like to know if there is a solution for this particular sort of problem using only the mapping node.

I believe you should be using the Generated coordinates for this rather than Object. The Generated coordinates range from 0.0 to 1.0 over the range of the object whereas the Object coordinates are in "object space" with 0 at the origin and positive values on one side of each axis and negative at the other - this is why you're seeing an oposite reflected image. You should then be able to scale it without seeing the reflected second image.

You should also set your Image Texture node Projection mode from Flat to Sphere.


How can I send someone a .blend file with cache folder included? I've been trying to send a person my .blend file with an external cache folder (.bphys format) to render a fire for me, and when he opens it, he can't connect the two. Any solutions?

Set blender to use relative paths.

Copy the folder with the cache on the same folder as the blend file.

Pack all the images used as textures.

Zip the folder with all those files into a single compressed file.

Send the zip file.


How to automate rendering of the same object with different textures? I know that a similar question have been answered a few years ago, but I really don't understand the answers or know how scripts works and where to put them.

I want to know if there's a simple way to automate the rendering process on the same OBJ but with different textures (.dds files)

I need to make rendered images of the same OBJ in the same angle but with 50 different textures, and save rendered images with different names (like: image1; image2; etc) and honestly I'm really lazy to do that without an automation.

I don't know if I'm clear, so I made a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBeKjvX3_uc&feature=youtu.be

Name your texture files as a sequence if they aren't, like this:

0001
0002
0003
0004
....

In the material editor, choose Image Sequence instead of Single Image and choose all your textures. If you are using using the Node Wrangler addon, you can add them through the add menu, Texture >> Image Sequence.

Set the end frame to the number of texture you have, and render the scene as an animation and you will get your model with different texture for each frame.


Node Shader and Principled BSDF not in the node list. I was excited about the Principled BSDF but it did not appear on the new download 2.78c. Along with this I was following a tutorial and discovered that when I hit shift A for adding nodes that the shader was not in the list.

Besides being in the wrong version of blender ( for the Principled BSDF you need version 2.79, currently only available as a test build), you are looking at the compositing nodes, not the ones for materials.


Adding/combining masks together? I am working on a Stop-Motion Project and am using Blender 2.8 to add green-screening effects via masking using the nodes.  In the image, the green screen has a similar shade of green to Doc-Ock, and have created a mask to prevent the shades from clashing.  The top mask been successfully combined with a powerpoint image, however I am have trouble adding the inverse of the mask to the image.  I am using Alpha Over, and the line that was used to create the mask is showing/cutting-out.  Is there a way to seamlessly combine the two masks?  I have tried using Add and Subtract via the Mix Node to no avail.  Any suggestions are appreciated!

Masks can be combined as images. Use a color mix node and add (or subract) different masks. In this example a couple of garbage mattes have been combined to be used by a single keying node.

Or you can combine the resulting image with others that have an alpha channel already using alpha over.

Or combine the alpha channels separately and associate them later using the set alpha node.


Volumetrics data into mesh Is there any way to convert volumetrics into mesh? I managed to recreate 3D structure from 177 serial images (confocal microscopy) using volumetrics, using guidelines found here

I'm not satisfied with the effect - the structures are blurry and I'm looking for sharp, defined edges.

Any unconventional way to convert this volumetric data into actual mesh?

It is possible to get sharp defined edges using volumetrics - see Give this mesh a uniform thickness on all the tubes and unions. Assuming your source data is to sufficient resolution then it should just be a matter of adjusting the Volume Sampling settings in the Render properties.

Decrease the Step Size to get better resolution. This is defined in blender units so pick a value that is close to the resolution of your data based on the size of the volume. If the number of steps does not span the volume then increase Max Steps to compensate.


Can I sculpt a mesh with another mesh in Blender? I do a lot of boolean operations on meshes during my design.
I was thinking about writing an add-on similar to Multi Tools, that would allow me to use actual meshes, not just (rectangles and polygons like in Multi Tools) to carve other meshes.
Here are some possible use cases:
- Add a mesh to the scene and set it as a Carve Tool in the properties window (on the right). The carve tool changes color in object mode to become red (all red).
- Move the carve tool towards another mesh. When the carve tool intersects the other mesh(es), they too becomes red. Validate the modification by pressing ENTER.
- Change the current operation using the spacebar between Union/Intersect/Difference.

Constraints:
1) The carving/sculpting operation preserves the modifier stack.
2) The carving tool should allow future reversals. One way to do this is as follow: the carving adds a Boolean modifier to the stack, hides the carving tool mesh (including rendering), renames it and parents it to the modified mesh.

Is there already such an add-on?

Thanks.

Done!
The BoolTool Addon fulfills all the use cases presented above and more.
Youtube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf2M1bxZYk0


Can an edge be solidified? An object consists of a single edge (two vertices). How can it be made visible when rendering? In other words, how can it be "solidified"?

It can be converted into a curve ( Object Mode > AltC > Curve from Mesh ) and then have its bevel and profile modified in various ways


sparkles are beneath the donat not above it following blender guru in his tutorial for beginners i couldn't make sparkles at the right way .. the hair is supposed to be above and under the icing but it's only above .. when i rendered as object and selected the sparkle it went beneath the icing and they are not able to seen from above but only in x-ray mode

got the solution from a guy in the comments here's the solution if any one faced same problem you need to click the arrow behind "source" and turn on "use modifier stack ..


How to calculate the direction and up vector of a camera? I'm trying to implement a prototype for a custom render engine using blender as content creation tool. One remaining questions is: How can we calculate the direction and up vector of the camera by its actual position and rotation properly?

2.8x

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
up = cam.matrix_world.to_quaternion() @ Vector((0.0, 1.0, 0.0))
cam_direction = cam.matrix_world.to_quaternion() @ Vector((0.0, 0.0, -1.0))

2.7x

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
up = cam.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * Vector((0.0, 1.0, 0.0))
cam_direction = cam.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * Vector((0.0, 0.0, -1.0))


Displacement and Bump map control Is there a way to control where the displacement bump map does and does not affect. Would using the weight paint brush be good? The displacement bump map is made procedurally generated with texture coordinates, noise texture and a displacement map. I followed this tutorial made by Blender Guru. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh5gAQLtOls&t=456s

You can plug a map into the Scale input of the Displacement node.  You may want to do some math on the values as they go in.
I don't think weight paint is available through cycles nodes, but you should be able to use Dynamic Paint a la this answer.


Texture Paint: Pixelated after texture paint When i paint some textures on my UV-Texture, the image is sometimes pixelated. I don't know how i can adjust the best zoom size of the stencil texture. How can i ensure best quality?

Generally, you should be aware of two things:

The resolution of the background image.
The level of detail of the paint texture.

In your case, I'm not sure how big you build the background image, but if it's 2048 x 2048 px, then, in the current zoom level, the stencil texture may probably covers about 10% of the whole area, which means 648 x 648 px around, far from enough, isn't it?

Besides, your stencil texture seems sort of a gravel texture, which means the detail unit is quite small. Obviously, you need enough pixels on the background image to at least cover the detail of the a unit gravel, in order to preserve the original detail as you want.

My suggestion is: try not to have the background image over zoomed in while painting.


Hide mouse arrow on 2D paint mode When I'm painting in the Texture Paint mode, I can see both the blender pointer (showing the size of the selected tool) and also the system mouse pointer (which is an arrow), as shown in the attached screenshot. For me, this is very confusing.

Is there any way to hide that arrow on this mode?

You can get rid of the brush circle, but you can't get rid of the system cursor. Turn off 'Show Brush' in the Options tab.


Scaling along normals in Geometry Nodes I'm trying to use geometry nodes to scale up a duplicate mesh along each faces' normal to "thicken" up the mesh. This can be achieved manually by scaling a mesh with Alt+S (Scale along face normals).
This picture (green) shows what I'm trying to achieve through the Geometry Nodes (manually scaled along face normals):

Here is an example of why a simple transform won't achieve the effect I'm going for:

Is this it?
2 Attribute Vector Math nodes, and 1 temporary attribute to hold the offset.

'Scale' along normals might (strictly) be a misnomer... Solidify,  Displace, and AltS all translate vertices along normals.


Cycles Combined bake black spots I have created my textures in Substance Painter and applied them via nodes in cycles node editor.

However when I try to do a combined bake I get black spots on places where the normal map information are.

The normal map is created from high poly to low poly.

The problem was my high poly mesh being in the same scene. Even though it was hidden it botched the baking. After moving the high poly  to a different scene the problem disappeared.


How can I make a glowing iris (eye) material similar to these pictures? Is it possible to create such a material in Blender?

Thank you in advance!
My nodes of iris:

Here is a file and a screen shot - I extruded my circle and then applied scale and transformation (ctrl-A) before unwrapping the mesh and choosing Follow Active Quads and Even so that they would align liek you see in the lower left.
Then I made up a material to use a texture to stencil between the shaders to get emission area showing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m-ZLTv5bUzeDT5XOHaVbgBRGhAtu8maB/view?usp=sharing


How to 'scale' a texture image to the object I am a newbie (first started using Blender last week) and have created some objects (which together make up the model I require) and need to apply a texture image to each object. Following a video tutorial I have selected and applied a suitable texture image but the texture image appears too stretch along the Y axis. Looking at another video tutorial I went into 'UV editing', pressed Z and selected 'Material Preview', Selected the object (press A), and then attempted to apply scale by pressing S then X and also S then Y and dragged to what I considered correct. I checked the result on my image and the texture image is still stretched along the Y axis.
What am I doing wrong or not doing?
Lastly if I want to use an image with a vertical orientation to an object with a horizontal orientation can that be achieved inside Blender rather than me using an image editor to create a vertical image file?

[Added later]
Thanks to Marty's tutorial I now understand how to apply a texture/image to my object (easy once you have done it once) but having noticed that the placement of each face on the texture image affects the sharpness etc on the object. When I adjust the 'scale' on the X and Y axis to exceed the size of the object Blender then automatically adds more images to the object resulting in noticeable seams between each as the left side of the original image does not match the right side. Is there a way around this?

I am going to guess that you created a cube, stretched it along one axis, and then added a wood texture, something like this:  (I used a different wood texture but the idea is the same.)

You can tell whether you applied the scale by looking at the sidebar in object mode:

in this example I scaled Y by 10 but didn't apply the scale.  In object mode, CTRL-A brings up the apply menu.

Selecting scale fixes the scale:

But that doesn't fix the problem because you still have the default UV Map that was created when the cube was created.  So you need to create a new UV Map.  Here's the quick way to do that:
In edit mode, select all of the vertices of your rail.  Then use CTRL-E to bring up the edge menu.

select "Mark seams".  Your beam will now have red edges to indicate that ever edge is a seam:

Next you have to unwrap the beam.  Because all the seams are in place you can use the shortcut U-key U-key (typing U twice.  That'll give you a UV map that looks like this one more or less:

For me, this isn't enough, because the grain of the wood in the photo runs 90 degrees to the way wood would be cut for a beam.  To fix this I needed to rotate the UV map.  This is done by going into the UV edit window and then using the rotate and move tools to reposition the map.
The shortcut for this is 'a r 9 0 RETURN' to rotate and then 'g' to move.  left click to exit move -- this works just like in the 3d viewport

once that's done, my beam looks like this:

There is a lot more to UV unwrapping, like why I unwrapped each face separately, and other ways to manipulate the UV islands, but this answer is getting long.


Solidify a complex hollow object in Blender I am trying to solidify this object from the inside in Blender which was created using the Boolean modifier on a cylinder applied with five smaller radii and slightly longer cylinders. Using the solidify modifier doesn't work simply on this object as the holes begin to close after a certain thickness, nor does solidifying the cylinders before applying the Boolean modifier. I need to do this before I can duplicate particles having similar geometry and fill them into a container to simulate a packed bed packing.
As a second and maybe more important part to this question, does not solidifying this particle from the inside even matter from a physics/simulation perspective with regards to how the particles fall and interact with each other in the container?

Solid is a relative term : ) especially in 3D computer graphics. Everything that looks solid in (almost) any 3D environment on a computer is made up out of points(or vertices) in space with lines(or edges) between them, with planes(or faces) filling up the space between the lines. But nothing visually fills up the space between these elements, and it is essentially a shell. Even though properties like volume and mass are used in physics simulation, this shell is (partly) used to derive values for such properties. So there is no need for "solidifying the inside".
The Solidify modifier is a modeling tool and can be used to create such a shell around a mesh that might otherwise not be considered solid, like a plane with no thickness. The Solidify modifier can give a plane the appearance of a box which has thickness, and if it has no holes anywhere in its shell, is considered solid.


Random object transform in loop (Animation Nodes) how can I use AN to transform bunch of objects from one position to another in random order? Right now it looks like this:

So all fragments moves at the same time.

Greetings!

First step would be to shuffle your list of objects before passing it to the routine.
Second, you can use the index of the object as a delay for your start of the animation. If 1 frame is too short, you can use a multiplier to create more offset in the animation.

Here is the updated node tree with the added nodes.

And here is the result of the objects moving from point A to B.


TexDraw doesn't actually draw anything onto the model I'm quite a noob with blender so it probably has something to do with something I haven't ticked, so I'll give as much information as possible.

So I've built a very basic building to later export it into a game, I have made the UV and Unwrapped it, but when I'm trying to draw a texture into it by using Tex Draw, the texture doesn't actually get applied:

I don't know if it has something to do with the shading or what to be honest, here comes my shading settings too:

Here are the settings for the brush too

If there's anything I am missing please do let me know and I'll answer as soon as possible, I just really want to start with the texturing as I've been working hard (as hard as you can when you are a beginner really) in this model, thanks :D
Here's the .blend file:

You have created a Texture Mask, and as it is completely black you can't paint anything, you need to remove it:

Also maybe lower the stencil Opacity:

And make sure the normals are correctly flipped (ShiftN):


Make Particles Point Towards the Camera? How can I make all the particles in a particle system face the camera?

You can create a particle system with the following settings.I also made a short video demonstrating the effect.


Can't make cloth collide with object when cloth mesh is vertices & edges (no faces) [video example included] See this video for example: Watch video on YouTube.

When I try to create a scene with a mesh that has no faces (removed faces from a plane so that it is a line: edges with 5 vertices). It has a cloth modifier. Below it is a plane - subdivided a few times - with a cloth collision modifier. When I run the animation playback and move the cloth object, it passes through the collision object without being affected by it.

Is there a way I can make the cloth line be affected by the collision plane?

Thanks in advance!

While you can't do collisions with edge only mesh objects, to get around this I just add "tags" to my vertices. They are small triangular faces that allow for the collisions to be calculated.

Then I either enable collisions on my base mesh or add dummy faces with collisions parented to the base mesh.


How can I make a hollow cylinder faces to be smooth but not rounded just smooth? When I click on the left menu on Faces > Smooth it's making smooth but kind of rounded:

I want to keep it sharp as it was in the first screenshot but smooth.

Smooth shading works by averaging the angle between two faces/edes/vertecies. This allows for smooth looks while keeping geometry low.

There are multiple ways to retain sharpness in a model:

Adding an edge split modifier. This will add additional geometry to mark edges sharp that are above a certain angle
Clicking on the "Vertex" tab on the right hand menu (it looks like a little updside-down triangle) You'll find an option to hit "Auto Smooth". This doesn't add any additional geometry and is my recommended way of going about this.
If you don't want to go with either of the two previous options then you can add a bevel modifier set to 0 width. This doesn't make a lot of sense and performs the same function as the edge split modifier.
You can mark individual geometry as "Sharp" by hitting CTRL + E and selecting "Mark Sharp"


Is there a way to have my emission shader only affect the particle system? I have a scene that has a particle system and other objects. The particles are an object with a pure glossy shader. I have a plane that I have setup as an emission shader to reflect off the particles. However it is washing the other object in the scene. Is there a way to have my emission shader only affect the particle system?

Thanks

What you want is light groups. Well, the light groups feature hasn't been implemented in Cycles yet. If you wanna separate lighting on different objects, including particles, using Cycles, you might use render layers. Here's a solution for a practically the same question as yours.


Object Mesh is Disappearing in Edit Mode but is not Hidden I think I accidentally turned on a setting but I don't know how or which one.
The mesh of my object disappears in edit mode and it is not hidden.
In solid mode, my object looks like this:

But when I go to wireframe mode it only shows an outline of the object where I should see the mesh like this:

In my other projects, I can see the wireframe of the objects under edit mode like this.

As a result, I cannot select individual vertices, faces, and edges when I am in edit mode of that object.
These problems started occurring after I used the keyboard short cuts shift + D and P to duplicate and separate the object.
Thank you!

Let's try the most simple stuff, see if you haven't accidentally hide all, so in edit mode press Alt+H.
Other simple stuff is to press A and then press G and move around (if the mesh is in any case behind other object), you then must see a lot of orange points going around.
If that does not resolve the problem, in object mode set the Origin to the Geometry and in edit mode press Shift+S and (cursor to selection) and in view 3D cursor you can see the co-ordinates where the cursor goes, try to locate that and you must see the mesh, (don't press selection to cursor cause all your mesh will be compressed in one point)
If that does not solve, try to look in Object properties> viewport display > display as > and set to Textured or Solid.
If you can't see still, see if you are in preview or render mode so it could be a transparent texture issue so you must adjust your UV maps.
Feel free to give me a feedback if case that none of them not solve the problem.


GPU not showing up in Blender? Just installed Zorin OS (a Linux distrubution) and installed Blender. I am running this Linux alongside Windows 10. So I go to the system tab in Blender and see that my GPU is not listed!

Why is my Nvidia GTX 1050 not showing up in the system tab? Also Blender is super laggy for some reason, could it be connected?

You need to install nvidia-cuda-toolkit because blender uses this toolkit in order to drive your nvidia card.

apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

You should also make sure that your nvidia card is cuda compatible.

blender docs related to GPU.

list of nvidia graphics cards compatible with CUDA


When I go to the Node Editor to look at my object's material I can't find any nodes Whenever I open up Blender the material of the cube is already added and when I go to node editor I can't find any nodes. How can I make it so that my objects don't automatically get a material when I open Blender and I can see the nodes?

The cube you find when you start Blender has a default material called "Material". Check the "use nodes" checkbox to see them.


Transparency not working in cycles I have Blender 2.75 and I am working on a project. I want to import a transparent window texture but when I do this happens:

It doesn't look transparent in Blender. When I render it with a light and a green cube behind it this happens:

The bars are transparent but the background turned black. The same thing happens with another texture when I import it. The background of the texture is white and doesn't blend in with the brick texture:

How do I make these textures transparent the right way?

EDIT: When I add this node setup:

The 3rd texture (with the background not blending in) just shows all white and it's a black border when rendered.

There is no alpha channel behind the bars, just around the window.

This image shows the alpha channel you have on your image.
To make it transparent use the following node setup:

To make the black areas of the images transparent you need to edit the image on an image editor (like photoshop or gimp), or add acolor ramp to control the transparency on a new mix shader.


I can't select a bone on weight-paint I can't select a bone on weightpaint. I have done some work with out a problems and just like that it stopped working.

In weight paint I can select a bone and it will show me the weight which is associated, have but I can't move it and rotate it, the armature is just orange-outlined.

How can i fix this? Keep in mined that I already tried opening and closing Blender

An orange outline indicates object mode selection for the armature. You want the armature in pose mode (blue select outline) before you start weight painting so that you can select and move the bones while you paint.

Select the armature and go into pose mode.
Select the mesh and go into weight paint mode.

When weight painting, the action mouse button setting makes a difference.

 LMB will weight paint

If you are using Select with Right -

 RMB will select a bone

If you are using Select with Left -

⎈ Ctrl LMB will select a bone

While weight painting and the armature is in pose mode, G/S/R works with the active bone, not the object being painted.


I can't access sculpt vertex paint in 2.90 alpha I don't know, I downloaded it 3 times, and the sculpt vertex brush is just not there. I see all of the other sculpt mode brushes, but sculpt vertex paint is nowhere to be found.

Open user preferences

Under interface enable Develeper
Extras

After enabling the developer extras, Experimental will appear in
the menu enabling the experimental features making the options below
available (as of f319eec88186)


How to create an infinite plane in cycles? I have already found one similar question, however it doesn't correctly address what I am talking about.
Please see this, example to know exactly what I'm talking about.
I have only found this, and this, but both use a curved plane to do the trick, which would work unless the object is to be rotated(in animation) to view from every angle.

Yes, again we could rotate the object instead of the camera but, what about a large array of object, that would really distort the scene and setting the camera accordingly would be very difficult.

Setting the camera at this angle would be good even for a large array of objects:
, but what if we need a more acute view like this:
 , (even if we set the world background color to white this would be impossible to actually blend if taking the lighting into account, as it would emit light and the edges of planes would be visible.)

I don't know if there is a workaround with the lightpath node with this to only make the area where the shadow falls visible.
And I don't know how to take only the shadow information into the compositor to make this?

Primarily focusing two problems:
1) how to make such a world in cycles, infinite, only the shadow information and the object?
2) How to make such a world in cycles, infinite, only the shadow information and the object and a slight gradient in the infinite world?

Therefore, I resolved here.

It's not really possible to create a truly infinite plane in blender, but such a plane wouldn't help you isolate an object on a uniform background. Even an infinite plane still has a horizon.

Shadow Catcher

To isolate an object (with its shadow) against an arbitrary background, what you really want is a shadow catcher. This is an object which renders as alpha transparency except where shadows fall on it. With a large plane acting as a shadow catcher, we can easily render transparent images with shadows. Using an alpha-over node in the compositor, any background can then be inserted with ease:

Cycles doesn't quite have this feature yet, but development on it is well underway and a working version (used to produce the above image) should be in development builds soon.

Unless you care to compile blender yourself (it's not as hard as it sounds!), you'll have to wait for a little while yet to use this.

Bent backdrop

If you just want to mitigate the distracting contrast of a hard horizon, perhaps a backdrop with a bent bottom section such those used in studio photography will do:

See What is the fastest way to create a curved plane? for a wealth of techniques to create such a shape.

For your case of a turn-table animation, you could rotate the model itself, or, if you wish to keep the lighting constant relative to the model, you could orbit the camera around in a bowl-like shape:

Perfectly reflective plane

If you create a diffuse ground plane with a color (albedo) of 1, it will reflect all light that hits it. Provided the only source of light near the horizon is the sky, then it will reflect exactly the same amount of light as the sky emits, resulting in a seamless transition:

Compositing tricks

Using a combination of renderlayers, the shadow pass, and general node trickery, you can probably come up with something which works pretty well in your case. See the following questions for some examples:

Using scenes and render layers to composite an object isolated on white background with shadow
Render shadows over a transparent background in cycles
How to create a shadows pass in cycles?
Shadowless render pass
Cycles: Shadeless "Shadow-catcher" Material for Rendering onto Footage


BGE MakeHuman character hair disappears when close to edge of camera frame I have been working on a game using a MakeHuman character. Everything works fine except occasionally when the characters head is near the top of the camera's view it's hair will momentarily disappear and shortly reappear. It doesn't look like this happens with other parts of the character, just his hair.  I have been through the texture settings many times and am fairly convinced this is not a texture issue but something else that is causing this behaviour. I have tried multiple characters and they all act the same. The camera's focus is on the character's feet, so it's head often goes out of camera view.  Any suggestions? It's hard to post and example blend because it seems to be tied to the way my character moves, which is buried in a lot of code and controller only.

Background

The deformed mesh leaves the original bounding box. This let the renderer assume there is nothing to render, so it can save processing time.

On armature action playing the bounding box does not change with the mesh deformation. When you move the hair away from that box it can quickly be skipped from render.

Solution

Keep your deformed mesh within the original bounding box.

two basic ways to get that

ensure the animation stays within the limits
ensure the original bounding box is big enough the fit the deformations you want to play

The last point can be achieved by adding some isolated vertices to the mesh. (isolated vertices are not rendered).

Alternative

update the bounding box with python ... not recommended as it eats a lot of processing time.

Glossar

Bounding Box a box that fit tightly around a mesh (on global X,Y,Z coordinates)
Original Bounding Box the bounding box around the mesh with the pose when the object was loaded (the scene was loaded)

Reference

objects disappearing at edge of camera?


Denoising option grayed out I would like to use new denoising feature for cycles in blender. I downloaded latest build for blender (blender-2.78-81d7ff8-win64). When I open my project the option is present but grayed out, I can check it but it doesn't have any effect.
Any idea which setting blocks this feature, where to look? I have quite complex scene and it is hard to find what is wrong. When I create new project the option is not grayed out and works.

You should uncheck the Progressive Refine option (Under the Performance render properties panel) in order to enable and tweak Denoising settings for high quality renders.

Following are the details for this behavior.

Denoising is a post processing pass after the render tiles and layers are finished. It tries to remove fire flies and other noise by utilizing rendered data. It works best when there are enough samples rendered and saved in render buffers.

The progressive refinement display of an ongoing render is an interactive feedback tool and since it is not used for final renders but for quick turnaround renders for fine tuning wip settings, the denoising feature is disabled.

Denoising and Render Layers in Blender


Weird see through geometry in orthographic view I'm importing an object into blender and for some reason it looks fine when in perspective view but as soon as I switch to orthographic view some of the faces disappear/are rendered weird. I thought it might be a normal issue but recalculating them didn't yield anything.

Here is the object in perspective and here is the object in orhto

On the 3D View N panel > View > View > decrease the Clipping End, it was a bit too high (don't know why it has this effect though).


How to fix a rotation with bones I want to know how to fix rotation to simulate a (kind of) robotic arm, this way:

I have this mesh

I try to use bones to move using the cylinders as pivots to move it like this

Where "PIVOT" will be the handle to move all the parts

There is for cubes with two holes, and three cylinders, 7 meshes in total, and the bones.

But I only get this:

I don't know how to respect the rotation around the cylinders as pivot for the cubes and move that cylinders on the Z axis, to create a "robotic arm" movement.

Enable a complete IK Chain from the top pivot bone to the last moving bone, then, in the Inverse Kinematics bones tab, lock all rotations on the little "Cylinders" bones, and lock all rotations except the axis you need on the big "Cubes" bones (in my example, Z axis, enable axis visualization if needed).


How do i bake a material onto an image texture? Just did some texture painting and wasn't happy how the colours turned out so I added a colour ramp in the node editor, is there any way to bake the new colours made by the colour ramp onto the image texture?

Here I added a new image node with a large generated image texture, disconnected from the node chain. I added an Emission node to feed my adjusted painted texture into instead of the diffuse shader so that I could bake the Emit output and get the same color info without any shading added.


Jagged points on 2d model after rigging and trying to move bones I am quite new to blender 2d/3d, and I did this foot for a character.
I watched some tuts on YT about rigging and everything seemed fine, but then I realized that there are these jagged points when I try to bend the bones. So, I tried to weight paint the bones right (I had then assigned with automatic weights first).
Can you tell me where I am making my mistake or is there even a way out of this?

Edit Mode. I know that the mesh has too many vertex, but I thought I would need them for good weight painting

And here is the problem:

Weight painting:

I have this new foot now, with fewer vertex. I think though, that I can't do a proper weight paint here, bc there are no vertex inside the mesh, but only outside?
Actually, I tried this one, and then I subdivided the mesh to have these lots of vertex. was that wrong and how can I weight paint properly on this one?

Actually, the automatic weights do well, but for each bone, it is affecting also the other parts. when I try to paint it, it makes weird changes due to the lack of vertex.
But I know that I can't weight paint it properly without having these jagged edges again. :(


Why can't I get the camera view like in the tutorial? In this tutorial: Create a Realistic City - Blender Tutorial

At 10:36 he presses CtrlAltNumpad 0

When I do the same I get nothing but an empty view.
Then he goes back to object mode and can play with the camera zoom in out.

I'm now in edit mode and everything selected.

And more or less I'm in same position as he is.

Now when I press CtrlAltNumpad 0 I get this:

Not even close to what he did.

The clipping distance for the camera is probably too short. With the Camera selected, go to the Camera tab and adjust the End parameter to something more appropriate for the scale of the scene.

After you've done that, you can play with the position, focal length, and sensor size to get the look you're going for.


Trouble weight painting character I tried my best to rig my first character, but every time I try to weight paint something seems to go wrong. The automatic weights are ok but need some editing. However every time I try  to do  that I seem to make it worse instead of better.
What are perhaps some good tutorials to learn this?
Thank you for your time.

If I select the shoulder bone (the one that affects the mesh and that is on the first armature layer, not the one on the third armature layer), you can see that it influences the neck area (and also the head) when it should not.
Other bones affect the head as well. You need to correct this, for example with the weight paint brush in Subtract mode.
Also maybe simplify your mesh, it will make things easier, unless you have some good reason not to use a Subdivision Surface modifier. And why not simplify the armature as well?


How to animate stretchable muscles? I want to create animations of muscles on the human skeleton like this, especially from 17 seconds in.

How can I create stretchable objects/muscle with Blender? I've seen x-muscle system but I'm not sure if it's overkill since I basically just need a stretchable material. X-Muscle System creates a character's skin after adding muscles which isn't what I need.

Also does anyone recognise the software used for the linked video? I've seen that little white man character online somewhere but can't remember which software it was for.

I think you should use IK constraints, expecially with this stretch function:

Also "Mantain volume" bone constraint can be useful.


Can I move my position in video editor in 2.8 by clicking a mouse button anywhere? If I recall correctly, prior 2.8, I could click anywhere to change my position. Now I have to click the bar with timnecodes at the top. Can I change my preferences to do that again? I am not sure about the proper terminology so I made this image to explain myself better (feel free to edit my question with proper terminology).

Try Shift + Right Click will move the playhead to that frame.

For changing preferences: How to map "CHANGE FRAME" to mouse right click in Blender 2.80 in the VSE


How to import footage in the VSE for optimal playback and organization? How to import footage in VSE for optimal playback and organization, using proxies and workarounds?

HOW TO IMPORT FOOTAGE IN BLENDER FOR OPTIMAL PLAYBACK AND ORGANIZATION
When you want to edit videos in Blender, always, always use the option in the startup pop up:

If you use the tab to create a new workspace, your colors will be set to Filmic, and your colors will come out wrong(looking flat)

The View Transform to use is standard:

In the Video Editor workspace, though the file area looks nice, you can only drag and drop one file at the time(and only insert snapped to the playhead), and all of the file type import options are missing, so let’s get rid of that, by pulling in the corner.

On the other side we have the project and render settings. All info we need is the resolution, aspect and fps. These settings needs to be the same as the footage we plan to import. If there is a mismatch between the source footage and the project settings, we’ll experience a drop in playback rate, and we don’t want that.

So before importing our source footage we’ll need to download, install and use MediaInfo: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo to detect the settings of our footage:

And then make sure that the Blender project settings matches the metadata of the source files. When this is done the Properties region can be removed by pulling the corner of the neighbour over the region(the render settings can be accessed from the tabs).

It is recommended to import a single clip of the source footage and test if the footage plays frame accurate or not, if it doesn’t the VSE offers options to use caching.
Cache:
In the sidebar the there is the Cache Settings, in the Preview sidebar there is the Prefetch Cache option and in the View menu there is the options to show the cached areas in the Sequencer region as an orange line and finally there are Cache to disk options in the System Preferences. All of these elements can be useful for working with lots of effects or if ex. your footage is caching faster than your footage is playing. This is not the case for me and I’ll have to switch all of these elements off(to avoid processing loss) and go for rendering proxies.

Using Proxies:
A proxy is a rendered file in an edit friendly codec and typically in a lower resolution, to ensure an improved playback frame rate. In 2.90 https://builder.blender.org/download/ there is this simple menu in the Preview:

If you got a lot of footage I would recommend you to import this footage into a new(use copy to preserve settings) scene called ”Footage”, your first scene I would rename to ”Master Edit”. It can be done in the project header:

Now import all of your footage into this scene, by using the Add menu(yes, I know, it is odd to ”add”, when it is file related), and select Movie(yes, I know, it is odd to call footage ”Movie” when it actually is video).

If you project fps to match the footage it will align up nicely like this or if there is a mismatch the audio will be above and below(undo and fix the mismatch before importing again):

Now select all strips. Shortcut key: A and go to the Proxy menu and select Setup.

I prefer to use 50% because 25% is at most resolutions terrible to look at. When I okay this, these settings will be applied to all selected strips. Now I go to the Proxy menu again and select Rebuild(yes, I know, why isn’t it called build?).

And then Blender will start rendering the proxy files one by one:

When it is finished I go to the Proxy menu again and select Render Scene Size and select 50%, so now the preview will show the rendered 50% proxy file instead of the original and heavy file, and hopefully the playback rate will now be solid.

Since we imported all of our footage into a scene called “Footage”, we can now copy the strips we need, switch to “Master Edit” and paste them at playhead position. We just have to remember also in the “Master Edit” scene to set the Proxy Render Size to 50% in order to also view the proxy files here.


My PBR Texture looks better in Viewport than in the Render i'm rendering an Image of Bane's Mask in Blender. Its on a wet road, which looks high-res in viewport.
This road looks very flat and dry after rendering in Cycles.
Viewport result:

Render result:

This is because the material preview render in the viewport automatically uses an environment texture from “C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender/2.91/datafiles/studiolights/world” as the world background, but by default the rendered world background is solid grey. You can load one of these backgrounds and pipe it into the world’s background color with an Environment Texture node.


visual_transform_apply doesn't affect object in Python script I'm trying to run a rigid body physics simulation and record the results via a script, but I cannot get the post-simulation state of an object, even when I use bpy.ops.object.visual_transform_apply(). The strange part is that if I then use the Python console in the GUI to call bpy.ops.object.visual_transform_apply(), it works (it also works if I use the GUI's button to apply the visual transform: CTRL-A, Visual Transform). I've tried calling scene.update() everywhere, making sure the object is selected, etc., all to no avail.

Here is a minimal case of the problem (tested on Blender 2.71):

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.screen.scene
cube = scene.objects['Cube']
bpy.ops.rigidbody.objects_add(type='ACTIVE')
print('pre-simulation: ', cube.location)
bpy.ops.ptcache.bake_all(bake=True)
scene.frame_current = scene.frame_end
bpy.ops.object.visual_transform_apply()
print('post-simulation: ', cube.location)

Save the above code to a .py script and run it with:

blender -nosplash -P <script-name>.py

The script adds the cube as an active rigid body physical object, bakes the physics, applies the visual transform, and then reads the object's location. The output I get is:

pre-simulation:  <Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)>
post-simulation:  <Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)>

But the "Post-simulation:" line should show a large negative Z-coordinate, instead of 0.0000, because the object has fallen under gravity.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong? Is it a bug, or am I missing something? My only guess is that I'm not in the correct context...

Just setting the current frame is not enough:

scene.frame_current = scene.frame_end # does not work as expected

You need to set the frame as follows:

context = bpy.context # or whatever context you have
context.scene.frame_set(scene.frame_end)


Using Mask in VSE (Blender 2.77a) i was just having some issues with Blender. I wanted to edit a video clip in the VSE.
The filmed footage contains one person running through the woods a couple of times. I did not change the position or angle of the camera too much, so the background is mostly aligned - some changes in leaves for the wind etc excluded.
I thought i could just mask out the people moving and overlay all the three shots to combine them to one. But as the mask doesn't move in the VSE after being animated in the clip editor, I am stuck right here.

Maybe the best option would be if there was a tool to just find out which one is the background, have some tolerance to variations in leaves etc., and than mask it all out by this sort of clean plate. This would idealy leave me with a sequence that only contains the moving man that is different for all the three shots, and the rest is alpha so i can just drop two of those over the last one which will bring in the woods again.
Do you see any way to achieve what I'm trying to do?

Thank you for your help!

Actually you can animate mask in two ways:

By Inserting shape key for selected mask points:

By parenting one or more mask points to a tracking marker in Clip Editor. First select one or more mask points, then hold Shift and select the marker, press Ctrl P:

VSE Mask modifier effect will be synced with the changes.


Hotkey (or other quick way) to insert a keyframe for only one component of a vector-valued property? I want to keyframe only the x-value of the rotation while the y and z are being animated independently. (If you want to know why, I'm making the camera continuously revolve about the z-axis at the center of the scene and using the x rotation to change the polar angle at one part.)

I can achieve the effect using the dope sheet to delete the y and z keyframes after I use the I hotkey to create a keyframe for all three values, which is honestly not so bad, but it seems like there should be a Ctrl + I or some other way to have more fine control of keyframes without having to open the dope sheet.

One of those times when you discover the answer right after asking. Hopefully this helps others.

You just need to right-click the single value you want to add a keyframe to and select "Insert Single Keyframe".


Moiré patterns in viewport but not in render? When rendering overlapping meshes (I know this is bad practice, but in this case it is done purely out of curiosity) You get strange artifacts.

However, these differ from the viewport render and the F12 render:

Here is a screenshot of the viewport render in camera view:

And here is the render:

Why are these different?

Rendering has higher sampling per pixel, hence the precision, diminishing visible moire.


Does smooth and flat shading only effect view-port look or render too? I need to know before I render project and I am not sure about this!

Both smooth and flat shading will effect the final render of your project. Good Luck!


How to set chroma subsampling options? I'm asking in relation to the vse as a standalone, as well as the 3d viewport.

Where can I specify what chroma subsampling I want for my output? i.e. 4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0?

Are presets applied to each of the render options that aren't otherwise visible? What are these options?

I feel like I'm missing something. Is chroma subsampling a "physical" film only thing? I know you can select the sampling for your 3d renders, but I mean that's variable whereas chroma subsampling is like 3 main options. I'm guessing those are different things.

Do 3d renders not follow the convention of chroma subsampling. And when just using the video sequence editor then, do I not get the option of specifying a chroma subsampling? Is the chroma subsampling of the input video respected when output from the the vse?

That would depend on the codec you choose to encode.

As an extremely simplified explanation:

When you render an image, Blender generates the information for Red Green and Blue and Alpha in 32bit float. Which is a lot of information. That image is not compressed in any way and all color information is available before processing to be encoded and saved.

Why not save then all of that information?

Not only it would take a lot of disk space, but you would need an extremely powerful device to play that amount of information in real time and sustain uninterrupted video streaming.

Compression schemes or codecs were invented to deal with the problem. Codecs allow for smaller files and facilitate playback at a steady framerate.

The efficiency and quality of the pictures is then determined by the codec used in the compression. Compression means that some information has to be thrown out.

In other words: when you choose a codec, you are choosing a way to discard information from an image.

One of the many ways is by using less information on the red and blue channels of the image than the green channel.

From the Wikipedia:

  Chroma subsampling is the practice of encoding images by implementing less resolution for chroma information than for luma information, taking advantage of the human visual system's lower acuity for color differences than for luminance.

Different codecs use different ways to do chroma subsampling

For example, ProRes can have many flavors: 422, or 4444. ProRes422-variants use Chroma subsampling of 4:2:2 at 10 Bit Color depth. ProRes 4444 samples color in the 4:4:4 schema with a color depth of 12 Bit. Most DnxHD codecs use 422 but the ones with the higher bit depth will use 444. Different variants of Mpeg4 or H.265 will use 422 or 444.


Texture Paint: No brush on UV map (Left) I was following Blender Guru's 2.8 tutorial, when he got to texture painting.
It was going well until I tried painting on the UV map like he did.
I am literally missing the Bush tool from the Tool Bar.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Before any ask no the UV Map not the 3D view, I see the 3D view has it. But I need it in the UV map.

Because of confusion of whether I was in Texture Paint here is a closer view.
As I stated in a comment I used the 3D view to paint. Hence the discrepancies.

I think that the solution is in the headed - I assume that the top is what you have set to 'View' and the bottom is what you need set to 'Paint'


Any way to simulate a material to look like the viewport? I was wondering if there was anyway to get a material that looks like the matcap in eevee's viewport.

That kind of gradient look that catches shadows really well

Make Your Own MatCaps Render Cycles

In the Render Layer Node ( you just have to recharge the scene you're using )

Remember save file on .PNG


UV image editor, only drawing straight lines I think that accidentally I pressed some key, and now all I can draw is straight lines in this way.
I'm using a digital tablet, the other texture in this same scene paints correctly.
I don't know what function I pressed, help.

Maybe you accidentaly changed the paint stroke method to Line. Press E in the UV Editor window and change it to Space or do it in the Paint Stroke panel.

For other useful shortcuts please see this answer: Can I paint a texture within the UV viewport?


Blender Compatibility Script? Is there a script which can correct all compatibility breaks, (automatically looks what version of Blender the file was made with and adds whatever necessary to get it look like before)?

Example: Let's say normal map strength is now 10 times smaller. For files created prior to 2.67, just multiply the value with 10 after opening in a 2.67+ version, to get the effect the artist really created.

If not, is there a text file listing all those compatibility breaks so that we can understand why, when a file looks weird/wrong?

No, not as far as I know of.

Blender can load older files into newer Blender version, taking care of updating settings.

It's possible to write a script that changes the settings of a .blend file of course, but this would most likely be a workaround for problems in Blender's own conversion, so if there is really a bug there, it should be reported.

In other cases changes cant be easily converted since the settings are not 1:1 equivalent, so in those cases you probably have to accept some manual tweaking to get comparable settings.


No environment texture but there is one in the reflections ...something strange here. I have a scene with a node setup with no environment texture, but in all reflections i see one. The world tab and shader nodes are empty and it should be a dark, grey background. Background under the render -> film section is also not set to transparent. In both evee and cycles. I want to find the texture, since i somehow lost it in a later version of my scene.
...i thought at first i broke blender, since all reflections were gone as i used the undo function. But somehow this secret environment texture, which is not shown anywhere else as in the reflections of the object in the scene.
Any idea why this is happening or/and how i get the exact image background back?

You can see the built in HDRI by going to Material Preview, and turning up "World Opacity" under viewport shading options.

If you want to use one of the "preview" HDRI's that came with blender as a render-able HDRI, you can find them (.exr files) in the blender folder at ../2.82/datafiles/studiolights/world. The default (likely the one you saw) is forest.exr. Connect it to your world shader as an environment texture.
If you want other options, there are many free places to obtain them online. One of the most popular is HDRI Haven (https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/).


How to make all faces flip to the right/consistent direction? What's happening is that I have tried to flip the normals, inside and out, but there are always faces which have to be flipped!

Normals recalculated

Inside View

If I flip them again, all faces get flipped and end up horrible and, not working at all. So how can I make all of the faces flip to the right direction?

TL;DR: Select all and press ShiftN to Recalculate Normals (CtrlN in 2.7x and earlier).

I think this is problem you are having: some of the normals are always facing the wrong direction.
If you have the whole mesh selected when you flip normals then you are just toggling between the backwards faces and the correct faces, what faces are backwards. You are flipping the whole mesh, the correct parts will become backwards.
Whilst in Edit Mode, with the whole mesh selected, Recalculate the normals. That should fix the problem.
If recalculating the normals does not fix it, then you will have to go through your mesh and select only the faces that are backwards then flip normals.
I think you want the inside of the scope to point towards the inside. That is a case where Recalculate will probably not work. If the inside cylinder is unconnected from the rest of the mesh, then just hover the mouse over the inner cilinder and press L.


transparent Image texture render black I made a png image with transparent borders. I put it on my plane and did the nodes, it works fine in Evee, but when I turn it in Cycles, it renders black instead of transparent. Please, could you check my blend file and advice me?

Thank you

I checked your blend file.
Try out this node set up, it seems to work both in Eevee and Cycles for me.

Also I think you could use option 'Disable in Renders' for other objects in the same position if you want them out of your render image.


Importing rigify 2.79 rigs into 2.80 When trying to import a rigify rigged character from 2.79 to 2.80, the shapes disappear. Currently, the only way I know to retrieve them, is to go through the outliner, bone by bone and turn on wireframe. Has anyone found a better way to do this? Who would I contact in development to fix this? Thanks.

select all the bones shapes go in to mode edit-mode and go back to object-mode you will see...tell if it work


How do I harden the Noise Texture in Blender Cycles? I've been trying to make hard noise like in Blender Internal,but I'm clueless as how to do this in Blender Cycles. I want to harden the noise to create the glossy surface to the plastic like in Five Nights at Freddy's.

I've tried with a ColorRamp to replicate the image above,but it didn't work and ended up looking like the image below. And I've seen TayTay's tutorial but I didn't like how it turned out because it didn't look accurate. Can someone please help me? And to those of you who can,I'll give you a big,fat thumbs up.

                                                         -JeremiahTDK

This node setup turns Cycles noise into roughly the same as Blender Internal hard noise.

A comparison to how it looks in BI:

Note: To get the layered noise effect (increased depth) from BI, you will need to combine several copies of this node chain, with the noise texture at various scales, added together and adjusted with a multiply node at the end.


One Render layer with a transparent background and one with sky? How do you get one render layer to have a transparent background
and the other to have a sky?
I mean in the shading panel where it says "Alpha: Transparent (or) Sky"

Keep the Sky option on.

Then make two render layers. One with The sky option enabled.

And one without it:

The one with the sky disabled will have a transparent background.


Joining more objects breaks fill I'm new to Blender, and am building a flat surface to be extruded later (submarine deck).

I've designed an outline as a Bézier curve which I then converted to mesh. After that, I iteratively created the slots in the deck in the same manner. For convenience, I have placed the slots into groups, as you see, tagged with suffix numbers from 0 going left to right (stern to bow). Groups 0, 1, and 4 have been successfully integrated.

I join a group of slots to the outline, go to edit mode, and apply fill, and it works fine, as you see:

However, I seem to hit a brick wall at this point. When I try to add new slots (in this example, group numbered with suffix 2), the fill seems to break. I've tried different groups and even just tried to add single slots, to see whether one of them is somehow improperly designed, but I can't get past this point:

Is it likely something about the individual slot construction? They were all built from the same template, just adjusted in length....

Note: not sure whether it matters (like in fonts) but the outside outline was a clockwise curve, the two hatches (not joined here) are counterclockwise, and the slots were created using the circle curve feature and not altered.

EDIT: following suggestions below, I was able to achieve near-complete success (all but four slots of several hundred), as follows:

Build a clean main object.

extrude my outline to deeper than needed.
create a 'plank' from a cube, making it longer and wider than needed, but correct height.
select plank and apply boolean modifier 'intersection' using the outline.

For a given group of slots, create and apply a boolean 'difference' modifier in a similar fashion.

in a few cases, some fiddling about was required such as making groups smaller, doing them in a different order, or using 'face' rather than 'fill' before extruding the modifiers (though in most cases it made no difference).

End result:

note: after each application of a difference modifier group, I checked carefully for quirks in solid mode then examined the mesh in detail in wireframe mode; if I saw anything out of the ordinary I backed up and tried something else.

Ultimately, I was able to produce what I wanted and a clean (as far as I can see) topography, except for 4 slots where the boolean differences failed no matter what I did. I understand that these can be fussy, and I tried every trick I could find on the internet with no luck. But I think the last four can be done perhaps at the wireframe level (?) and can open another topic for that.

Here are several ways to do a series of slots on a surface:

Beginning with the grid:

Create a plane, subdivide it:

Extrude its border, round it with an AltShiftS (or give the outer shape you want).

Select the faces you want and extrude down.

Continue to work on the shape.

Knife Project:

Create your surface object.

Create a plane, subdivide itd.

Delete the faces only.

Put your grid object above the surface object. Select the grid then shift select the surface object, then go in Edit mode. Then in the header menu choose Mesh > Knife Project.

The operation has cut the grid on the surface. As you can see and as I explained, if you cut a shape within a shape, you necessarily have an edge connecting the inner shape with the outer border.

Bring some correction so that your surface has a proper topology, i.e. edges that connect to the border edge and quads rather than tris or ngons if possible. Use the join tool (J) to join vertices. Create vertices on the border edge if necessary.

select the faces you want and extrude down.

Continue to work your object.

Arrays and Boolean:

Create an array of cubes with 2 Array modifiers.

Apply the Array modifiers. Delete the cube you want.

Bring your submarine object, give it a Boolean modifier with the cubes object as Object.

Apply the Boolean modifier, bring some corrections to have a clean topology.


Transformation constraint does not contain mapping? As you can see on the pic, I don't have a parameter on my transformation constraint. in the video I follow the guy has an extra parameter called "mapping" which I don't have. I'm wondering if Blender removed this and replaced it with something else?
-I'm trying to get the wheels rotating when I move the main body bone in the animation timeline.

Check your axis.
Recently answered this question re bone drivers.

In the armature (data) properties viewport display tab, turn on Axes. Or use translate tool and put in LOCAL transform orientation mode. Your screenshot is in GLOBAL.  This will show the directions of the local axes. For bones Y is head to tail.

Bone on right is root bone, when moved locally in X, rotates other bone in Z.

Mapped from Local X location (0, 1) to Local Z rotation (0, 360), with Z source targeting X
Your axis alignment may differ, can only tell Y from screenshot. Change to suit, but have feeling your wheels will spin if you move car sideways 8).
Note, if you know the diameter of your wheel (d),  move pi x d for every rev. to make rotation look real.  Generally for wheels would spin a bone on its Y axis, but it's arbitrary.
PS. Whoops, May have got my mapping spinning wrong way, (negate a value in to or from) but you get the gist.)


Weird problem: Render time increases frame-by-frame I've encountered a very weird phenomenon which I have trouble with: When I render my scene (using the Cycles engine), the initial render time of the first frame is at around ~2 seconds. However, with each frame that is rendered after that, the render time increases by a few hundredths of seconds, sometimes a tenth of a second. After some time, the render time for a single frame has reached almost 1 minute.

The scene itself is not very complex, save for a (baked) particle system and some drivers (which cannot be the source of the problem, since I've created a version of the scene WITHOUT those objects for test purposes - and the same problem remains).

I'm rendering with version 2.79b on a Lenovo Thinkpad T550, which is sufficient since the scene is - as mentioned - not very complex.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated!

I think I've found the culprit: Through reverse-engineering, removal of geometry and exclusion of certain RenderLayers, I could determine that the increase in render time was caused by Curve objects (Bezier Circles). Once I'd converted those to regular meshes and did a re-render, the problem disappeared.


Keyframes - direct, shorter shortcut? I am new to blender and I am trying to figure out if instead of hitting "i" ("s" for industry compatible shortcuts), and then having to hover with mouse and chose "all channels" etc, I can have just one, single button on my keyboard that will do that?

Thanks!

If you want to assign a key that always inserts the LocRotScale key at the current time, you have to do the following:

Go in the Blender Preferences, under Keymap and search for "Insert Keyframe".
There will be an entry under Outliner, unfold the "Insert Keyframe" by clicking on the small triangle in front of the checkbox.

You need to copy the "anim.keyframe_insert" for your own new "one button function"
Clear the search and open/unfold the User Interface keymappings.
At the bottom of the list you will find a button "+ Add New", click that and it should look like this, a new keymap line with "none" set in it

Where there is "none" you paste the "anim.keyframe_insert", and once you confirm it, the keymap changes to this:

There is a darkened "Keying Set:" and a "Confirm Successful Insert" that needs some attention. Select the "LocRotScale" in the dropdown-menu of the "Keying Set" and unhook the "Confirm Successful Insert" option, it should now look like this:

Now there is only one thing left, assigning a key (hopefully not used yet) to have the functionality per "one button".
For that just click on the big button right beside the "anim.keyframe_insert" textfield and then press a key. You can afterwards add some modifiers like "Alt", "Ctrl" .. etc.
When done, you can test it without having to close the Blender Preferences to adjust it or find a better key.

Happy Blending


How to unwrap multiple planes and have them exactly overlap? I'm currently modeling a stadium for a game and am trying to find a quick way to get all the rows of seating to share a UV image. Each plane is the same height but differs in length, but I can just have the UV image repeat itself for longer planes.

Here you can see how I'd like each plane to land on the UV map, obviously differing in length.

I've just did a smart unwrap, but it lays them all out without overlapping. Is there a way to have them all overlap in the UV without having to painstakingly move each one by hand into the correct area? Even if they were all along the same X plane, not overlapping, that would work fine. Just now, they're stacked with spacing in between them which throws off most of the rows of seats, making them cut in half or floating and other issues.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

You can do this by using magic UV addon.

After enable addon go to edit mode, select one plane, unwrap it how you need, than press U -> copy/paste UV -> Copy UV

Next select all planes with same size and U -> copy/paste UV -> Paste UV

In this case you need to repeat this operation as many times as you have variations in length.

UPD Found this addon: Textools that can easily achieve your task:


How can I determine/calculate a circumcenter with 3 points I wanted to calculate the circumcenter of an object (for example of an cylinder).

For this purpose I use Z-mode to see the grid of an object and mark three points that are on the same circle. After this I calculate the circumcenter on paper and set my 3D cursor to those values.

Is there an addon/widget/plugin/script that I can add to Blender to archive the same without the hassle of manually calculating or can Blender do that by itself?

The main goal I have is to get the midpoint of a circle object in Blender. If the calculation with 3 points is unneeded and over complicating things tell me so please.

Furthermore sadly I do not find calculators online who support 3D vectors for this calculation. So If you can link me a calculator for tempory usage would be great too.

I have written such a tool, it creates a grease-pencil representation of the reconstructed circle if you can select 3 vertices of an incomplete circle. It also allows you to change the number of vertices of the new representation.

You can easily convert from grease pencil to mesh

6 mb example image


Cannot Rotate Objects in Object Mode Instead of the rotation being applied to the Object I get this Panel on the right hand side of the screen. It doesn't seem to do anything.

It's hard to say what you're doing without more info, but if you are only attempting to rotate one object, make sure that you have Manipulate Center Points disabled:

Other than that, in Object Mode, simply press "R", use the mouse to rotate, then Left Click or press Enter to apply the rotation.  This toolbar on the side is for precision, after-the-fact editing.  Changing the angle will rotate the object.


Bending curve/object around another object I'm trying to make some 3d fx and I imported my basic svg file. Now I want to wrap it around the top surface of the object but I don't know how. Can somebody help me accomplish this?

Here's how I want it to look like (except not textured):

Have you tried the Curve modifier?

Create your shape. If it's a svg you'll need to convert it to a mesh and subdivide it a bit. Put its origin on its geometry.

Create a curve > circle. Put it at the same point as the shape origin.

Give your shape a Curve modifier, choose the circle as Object.

If you think that the shape is not long enough you can either scale the shape (on one axis or on all axis) or scale the circle.


How To Move Bones Back Into Original Position After Applying Shape Key i'm trying out bones and rigging and i've run into a little problem. I used 2 bones to move the blender monkey's ear and applied that as a shape key. However, the bones are now in that bent position but I want them in the original position so I can apply a different shape key. Is there any way to move it back in place without manually doing so or deleting the shape key? Thanks in advance

Try this

Select the armature and go back into pose mode.
Select the bones you want to reset and hit alt-r to reset rotation
and alt-g to reset position


How can I blend / flllet two objects of different shape? I have two objects of different shapes with complex forms but they can be approximated with something like this:

How can I make that the "cube" blends nicely into the cone (sometimes this is called filleting)?

I tried with metaballs but these don't work on different shapes. Also I tried to sculpt but it cannot be done very precisely and symmetrically.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Increase vertex density and Loop Tools Circle, Bridge

Various Stages of Editing.

Cube in Edit mode, Loop Cut on twice in X and Y Planes.  Delete Middle Squares of vertices
Think about vertex count of target Cylinder
Select Perimeter of hole and Loop Tools Circle in Tool Panel
Extrude in Z Axis
Loop Cut and Shape with Proportional Edit
The result is compatible with another Cylinder with same vertex count.
The Cylinder is not shown above, [Join] two separate objects if necessary
Use Bridge Tool to connect to perimeter of Cylinder
Bridge examples can be found by searching here at BSE


Bake displacement to alpha channel I'm trying to make efficient use of texture maps in my code and it would be ideal to bake the displacement of my mesh to the alpha channel of a normalmap. Is this possible (with the BI engine)? Is this a nodes thing? I've not used them before - a good ref or detailed answer would be greatly appreciated.

You can do this as a post process in the composite nodes, after all the baking is done, with a Separate and then a Combine RGB nodes.


Ugly deformation for wrist and shoulder with IK New here.

I've been implementing some basic IK stuff for a rig of mine. The arms, the legs, etc. Overall I'm happy with how it's been going, but there is a problem.

Whenever I go to push the rig's arms into a more complicated position (in this case, a casual "hands on hips" sort of pose) I end up with some very twisty deformation at the wrists and shoulders.

There's an option to "preserve volume" for the mesh on the armature modifier, and that would be a decent enough band-aid except I need to export the model into Unreal Engine, which won't accept modifiers.

I think this might be a common issue for newbs like me, but I haven't found a clear solution online yet. Hopefully someone here has some suggestions! Any help is appreciated.

EDIT: Here's a PasteAll link to the .blend file if anyone wants to take a direct look: Blend File Link.

Similar to L0Locks answer an alternative is to add a copy rotation modifier with 50% influence to the next bone up the chain. By setting the influence to 50% the rotation will blend with the rotated target bone providing a smoother transition. Definitely not perfect but good for a quick fix. Note: you may have to play with the axis invert setting depending on your rigs orientation.


Complex cable animation issue I'm making a cable animation.

The first attempt was to use curve modifier, but the issue here is that the connector gets deformed as well.
I've tried a different approach, by separating cable to parts and making connector "follow the curve" with constraints.
And now the connector and main part of the cable (red) are fine. But I can't get the tubes (green) to align to the holes of connector. I've tried to rotate it and so on, it's always misaligned at different points of the animation.
I've also attempted to use hooks to connect tubes to the connector, but it works only for short distances and doesn't fit the goal.
Any other approaches I can try?

Edit: So my solution is not completely accurate, because as you say the big cable and the tubes do not join at the same point of the plug.
*Create an empty at the cable end, select the empty, shift select the cable, go in Edit mode, select 3 vertices, press CtrlP:

Parent the plug to the empty:

Give the cable a Curve modifier, move the cable along the curve:


How do I use the "Proportional Falloff Tool" to create doughnut frosting as per youtube tutorial? Sorry if I am not posting this properly, its my first time posting and I am not sure the best place to ask questions like this as I seek to learn Blender.
I am following Andrew Price's tutorial here:
https://youtu.be/f5Gb1VK98Wc?list=PLjEaoINr3zgHs8uzT3yqe4iHGfkCmMJ0P&t=2045
And as he talks about at that timestamp, I am trying to make a random edge to the frosting on my doughnut using the proportional falloff tool.  I have turned it on and, like him, selected "random".
My problem comes when I scale my frosting as Andrew does in that Andrew achieves a very nice looking uneven edge to his frosting, however, on mine scaling the frosting object in as he shows, just barely scaled inside the doughnut so that there isnt overlap or globs sticking out of the doughnut, my frosting edge looks too smooth.
I have tried using the tool multiple times, using multiple vertices etc, but I cant achieve a look as wavy as his upon scaling.  What should I be doing?  I feel like this is a complicated question so not sure if there is any appropriate way to ask or any appropriate site since following the simple directions in the tutorial has not provided the desired results.
It does show some wave and so is more realistic than a smooth line, but I can't achieve it to the degree he does and I'd like to be able to properly use this tool.
Thank you!

Here you can see it was successful on the inside of the doughnut, but not the outside

Just change the proportional size with the mouse wheel or with PageUp or set it using the operator result:


When I do follow path, the object is not followed with SHP-Root When I do Car rigging and try to do follow path like this picture, the object is not followed with SHP-Root. just only SHP-Root is on path. I'm using blender 2.92 file and Rigacar v6.0 add-on. should I change my version of blender?

As I can see in your screenshot, all location, rotation and scale channels of your SHP-Root are locked. Unlock them clicking on their lock icon on the "N" properties panel.
Changing version of Blender doesn't matter at all.


Having trouble linking file Hello I seem to have lost my mesh data upon appending the file. The materials work and load correctly but the model itself is only a box now. I can view and edit the original model fine in the original file but linking or appending the file only leads to a box mesh. The other objects in scene come over correctly... or at least they used to.

I also don't know what happened to the scale, considering I did not change the grid I would have thought they would end up the same size. I had recently applied scale changes to the model and fear by applying the set scale I have corrupted the model.

Is there anything that can be done or what I be better off starting over? I will note that exporting luckily has the model export correctly and at the right scale, though I don't know how to reapply blender materials... As they don't come over with the same materials in a fbx format.

....

It appears if I merely duplicate my board in the original file it imports correctly, does anyone have an idea as to why? I have a second question, is it possible to unlock it so I can rotate it in scene? Linking and appending won't do much good if my models are frozen in place. :/ I suppose I can probably just duplicate the linked files duplicate and use that...

Though I still would like to know the correct way to deal with linking and appending files instead of duplicating things until I'm able to get them to work correctly because with a lot of files this could become very troublesome.

For library linking use groups. Let's I show an example:

In library file select all part in your object and press Ctrl+G. And in side T-menu or in F6 set name of the group:

In main scene file add group to the scene. It's like adding object, but you select "group" instead of "object".

After this you will get an empty object with duplication of linked group, that you can move, rotate and scale as a regular object:

And also you will get this instance in add menu:


How to disable reference images projection on top of all objects when rendering (blender render)? im pretty new to blender and modelling stuff but i do have a problem here which i cant solve and didnt find anyone with the same problem (maybe its too basic).

Whenever i render my scene it looks like the reference images i used in the past are projected on top of all of my objects in the scene. Those reference images are not used anymore and i removed them from all planes and "Background Images".
Here is how it looks like:

In that image i disabled the model itself just to be sure that it has nothing to do with it and created a new cube. But the outcome is the same.
Am i missing something that obvious here?

EDIT: Here is the link to my .blend file (i know the texture in it is nothing special...xD). I hope it has everything it needs. I packed the textures which i used previously as example.
To reproduce the issue you just need to switch to rendered mode (shift+z).

Blend File

You added texture to both your lamps, thus the image was projected onto the objects, which were lighted by those lamps. Image below explains how to check if you have a texture added to a lamp.


How do I rotate a group of vertices without deforming its shape? Does anybody know the hotkey combination to rotate a group of vertices 45° in edit mode without deforming the cylinder shape? I forgot this important tool, I remember that I could constrain the axes with the Alt key.

BTW see below the screen shot to understand better what I would like to achieve:

Its called Shear and is accessible through the hotkey ⇧ Shift⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltS or the menu entry
Object/Mesh/Curve/Surface ‣ Transform ‣ Shear


How do I merge vertices into another polygon? I'm new to Blender and I'm trying to make a low-poly wolf, but the problem I'm having is when I have to create a new polygon in between some vertices. I can't, for the love of me, figure this out. I tried to press ALT+M=>At Center, but that just jumbles up the vertices.

To create a new face (polygon), select the vertices or edges with Shift and right click, then press F.


i have 2 textures, how can i turn one the textures on and off? I have a snow image texture, and a dirt image texture. how can i set it up so I can control how much of the snow texture is showing? for example if i set a value to 0, no snow will be showing on the dirt. if i set it to 1, snow is all over.

One simple method is to add a Maths 'Add' node between your texture and the color ramp. This allows you in set an offset to the texture to raise or lower it so it's more towards one texture or the other - ie, negative values will be more one texture, 0.0 will be an even mix, positive values will be more of the other texture (with larger values pushing the mix more in that direction).