How to key frame a clear action parent/child and change pivot point I have two question on how I can key frame them.
I have a scene where a wagon looses two wheels.  The wheels are parented to the wagon.  A driver has been added to the wheels which rotates them as the wagon moves across the scene.

When I get to a spot on the time line, I have the wheels come off and tilt down as they fall.  I could do that without removing the relation ship to the wagon and I do want to preserve this forward movement.

I want to key frame the change of the parent relationship on the Y axis only at frame 814, so the wagon can tilt without tilting the wheels as shown in the picture.
I want to key frame a change in the pivot point of the wagon so it is the left side of the wagon so the left side does not rise up as the right side sinks to the ground.  The current center of the object is shown by the X Z axis in the photo

Wheel connected to wagon

A "Child Of" constraint will let you do what you want, if I've understood your question rightly.
In the constraint settings is a slider for Influence which can be key-framed (by right-clicking in the influence slider and choosing "insert keyframe"). A setting of 0 influence means the child will not follow the parent, and 1 means the parent affects it 100%.  You can have two constraints on the child so it has 2 parents - one with influence set to zero until you need it to take over influencing the child.
This constraint has location, rotation and scale axes which can be keyed by right-clicking in the box and selecting Insert Keyframe.

Edit: where it says "to to" in the picture, it should have said "go to"

Then click on those arrow heads next to there where Add Object Constraint is written, and you'll find the Child Of constraint.


2.8: How to texture paint some elements of mesh only? I'd like to know if there is a way to paint some parts, in my case the eyes of my model, without touching any other part.

I've tried to in Edit Mode select the UV Sphere, that is already joined with the body of my mesh, pressing CTRL + L and hide everything else.

But as soon as I change to Texture paint mode all my mesh appears again and when I paint I paint not only over the eyes but the hole body...

You can make use of the Face Select Mask setting to limit the effect of your texture paint to selected faces in Texture paint mode.
First image is the basic setup in Texture Paint.

Second image is turning on the Face Select Mask and making a selection on the model.

Third image shows a result with two areas painted, one selection active.


Armature with automatic weights problem. Object not following the bone properly I tried to parent bones with automatic weights and 1 part of my model is working properly(the green one), while other is kinda "broken"(the red one) when I try to move bones. I don't know if that's relevant, but the "broken" arm is actually a clone of the original arm. Could anyone help me fix this pls? I could add more detailed pictures if needed.

When Blender automatically generated the weight for the bones it must have not completely covered the area of the bone.  What you need to do is select the mesh and go into weight paint mode.  Select the vertex group for the bone that is having problems, set the weight to 1.000, and paint the area around the bone.  That should fix your problem.  Painting may be needed on more bones than just one.


making a bending object What kind of methods are there to make object behave like it would be a spring , a metallic object
that bends just a little when you move it around, or like a piece of metal string .?,
that bends just a little when you move it around ( with a added hook )
when trying cloth simulator or softbody i can´t get it to come inflexible inaf.

Rig your string with two bones at each end. Paint the Weight of how you want your spring to behave. For example: Heavy bending in the middle -> Red middle area to blue outter area.
then pin one bone to the hook.
Hope it helps. "weight paint" is the phrase you should look for


Flatten faces for plywood sheet cutting bit of a beginner here. I'm using Blender to design an electronic Cello. I want to flatten out the faces highlighted here so I can saw from a flat sheet of thin plywood which will then be wrapped to the 3D shape shown. I thought Mesh>Cleanup>MakePlanarFaces might work but sadly not. Any ideas?

I think I've found the answer. U (UV mapping) > S (Smart UV Project). Then with a bit of adjustment I get this, which seems to be what I want. Plus can export to SVG, using UVs>Export UV layout, which can then be imported as a mesh too.


Getting a Bleach Bypass Look in the Compositor What nodes should I add and what should I change in compositor to get a good bleach bypass film effect?
I would like to have a precise description of all nodes (for example, contrast-10).

The "bleach bypass look" can be replicated in its most simplest way by reducing saturation and increasing contrast of the image using bright/contrast node.

But instead to get a more detailed look what I would suggest is to:

have the image de-saturated slightly
have a copy of the original image de-saturated completely and boost
the contrast of this layer by carefully using an RGB curves node
the monochrome layer should be mixed with the first image using
"overlay" blending mode.

To adjust the contrast effect you would adjust the curve as desired and also the factor/strength of the mix/overlay node.

Full Size

In your example image the artist appears to have also used some sort of sharpening or detail enhancement to make details pop out more.


Hiding Bezier curve handles I use control right click to make shapes with bezier curves and the handles get in the way.  Is there a way to hide the handles.

I've looked and I can not find a way.

Look for the Curve Display settings on the 3D viewport (accessible by pressing N)

There you can disable the handles, or change how the normals are displayed


How do I achieve this kind of light star effect? I'm kinda new to Blender. Currently playing around with version 2.8 to practice some rendering. Is there a way to achieve this 'light-star' effect for the blooming objects with the emission? If there is an alternative way then it's fine too. See these images below for references. Thanks in advance:

You can connect it like this. Play around with the settings - "ghosts" looks good as well. The emission strength of the object being bloomed plays a factor also. See below:


delete properties in messed up file I am trying to delete properties which some plugin messed up.

I wanted to delete a property PN781673099840471551 with

del bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].PN781673099840471551

but that does not work, (type : bpy_struct)

are these strange properties blender related, they got somehow generated from loading and unloading a plugin. And I am stuck with some values inside my blender file which crash the plugin when loading. Is there anykind of tool to remove unwanted properties?

(What I did: I added somewhere in an plugin (RIB Mosaic) related panel an illegal value, and saved the blend file, and now the value is somehow stuck inside my blend file, so when trying to use the plugin again the plugin raises an exception...)

You can delete that property, the error you get is probably (here recreated):

>>> bpy.types.Scene.ragamuffin = bpy.props.IntProperty(default=1)

>>> bpy.types.Scene.ragamuffin
(<built-in function IntProperty>, {'default': 1, 'attr': 'ragamuffin'})

>>> bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].ragamuffin
1

>>> del bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].ragamuffin
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: bpy_struct: del not supported

But there's no guarantee that will make the scene work again..
removal anyway:

>>> del bpy.types.Scene.ragamuffin    # success!
>>> bpy.types.Scene.ragamuffin
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: type object 'Scene' has no attribute 'ragamuffin'

I can't for certain say what produced those properties, but it's worth having a look at the source of the plugin. For instance here RIBMosaic implements some unusual (not bad...just not standard bpy style) property registration techniques using exec. meaning you can't easily tell in advance exactly what the properties will be called.


Camera view doesn't match what it is actually pointing at https://streamable.com/2xhnkv
Whenever I put my view to the active camera it points in a completely different direction that it clearly isn't pointed in. This is extremely frustrating and I have no idea how to fix it. I have tried deleting the camera, duplicating it, making a new one and more and not sure what to do

Its hard to tell from the video, but it looks like you have two cameras in your scene. Go into the "Scene" tab and make sure you have the correct one set as the rendering camera.


How to compile blender add-on? I compiled Blender as python module successfully in Windows Platform.
I can now import bpy without problems from my script.
Now I would like use an add-on from my script but I receive this error:

  AttributeError: Calling operator "bpy.ops.importgis.georaster" error, could not be found.

Obviously, because I haven't compiled this add-on. How do I compile it?

I solved this by enabling addon:
    bpy.ops.wm.addon_enable(module="BlenderGIS-master")

About the title of the question: you cannot compile add-ons because they are written in Python*.

Your script causes this error because it wasn't registered with Blender. Use the normal way (i.e. the regular Blender UI) to enable your add-on, and be sure to save your preferences so that it stays enabled. Once that's done it should simply work, also with Blender compiled as a module.

(*) Little footnote: Python is compiled into bytecode, but by the Python runtime itself, and doesn't require any action from the user contrary to "compiled languages" like Go or C.


Don't know how to return to pose mode I don't know how to return to Pose Mode. I went to Edit mode and know the Pose Mode don't appear. I've made Ctrl + Tab but it doesn't work.

You have to select the armature to go back to pose mode, it looks like you have the mesh object selected instead.


applying multiple textures on the same face I would like to apply two different textures on the same face. I a window textures over which I would like to put a letter texture. I watched many tutorials but many are old. Moreover trying to apply a different texture on the same face after UV unwrapping seems to be impossible.
To add clarity I am adding images.

ok, all I want is those purple bars to disappear as shown in the image. I tried everything I simply couldn't achieve it.

[Note to moderator: I checked for this over the stack overflow many are just old and difficult to understand I would like the answer for blender versions 2.8+]

A common setup for attaching 2 textures to one face is to mix them in the shader graph. The setup below shows a very basic setup for 2 diffuse textures mixed together to form one. If your "superimposed" image (the letter in your case) has an alpha, you can connect it as a mask for the mix factor to place one image cleanly on the other. However, if it does not have an alpha mask, a general purpose (b&w) mask can usually be created pretty easily by converting the color map to b&w and using that. If you end up needing instructions for how to do this, I will be happy to add them.
See image below:

EDIT - Hey, I checked out your .blend file, but unfortuately, it didn't come wuth any images. Often it doesn't matter, but in this case, where the positioning of the one image is important, I need to see that image. To pack all the resources into the .blend file, go File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend. If you send me the file with the images, I should be able to help.
See below:

EDIT 2 - Hey. The problem was rather simple, you have UV islands in a place where they are getting info from the letter logo. See the image below.

I'll also upload the .blend file, but i'm not sure it will work becaus I had trouble packing the textures. At least you can see where I placed the islands.
File is here -
Hope this helps


When I add a Modifier, nothing happens When I click on wave in the modifier list, nothing happens. However when I click on the Subdivision Surface modifier this does work.

After I set the surface modifier to desired setting, and try to add a wave modifier, just the top of the object moves up and stays;nothing else happens.

When I add the wave modifier only, with no subdivision surface modifier, nothing happens. When I click apply in the wave modifier box I get this message," modifier disabled skipping apply. How can I activate the modifiers?  How can I fix this?

You have actually selected the Warp modifier instead of the Wave modifier.

For the Warpmodifier to work, you need to select two objects in the "from" and "to" dropdown menus.

If you have trouble with the Wave modifier, try adding more geometry like Samir Rahamtalla suggested (subdivision modifier before the wave modifier or manual subdivision in edit mode).

Further information (Blender Docs)


How to bevel corners and edges a different amount? I'd like to bevel the corners of my cube more than the edges of my cube.  Any way to achieve this?  Please see image of the two effects that I'd like to combine.

If I understand well, you want to round more the edges.

So you can inset individually the faces of a cube:

and add a subdivision surface:


Mesh does the mesh deform when I move a bone Why does my mesh not deform correctly when I move a bone?
Before rotating:

After rotating:

Here is the file (please don't use it/publish it and claim it as yours)

This problem occurs due to your last bottom child bone. You can solve this in weight painting mode. You just select top bone of leg and you see no color with white / blue/ yellow / red to your right leg mesh. just try to select bottom bone of left leg and see right leg shoe has some white color. So remove that white color in weight painting mode. solve problem.

** Edited **

First change your blend from subtract to mix i left brush panel show in first image.

then in second image you can see different color circle. In this you can see painted and not painted mesh by selecting bone with same color. Now You can easily paint your mesh and remove painted mesh with just increase and decrease weight from 0 to 1 in left brush panel.


How can I solve this problem, while baking a high poly to a low poly one? I'm trying to bake textures to a low poly, and here is a glitch I can not understand:

My low poly unwrap is fully split, and the high poly use object mapping (cube map)coordinate which is a small cube.

Developing with OpenGL, I could imagine it comes from a bad texture coordinate for this particular vertex, but how could I verify that in blender?

Thanks in advance.

edit

Here is the uv's:

I've set The island margin of smart uv, to make sure no overlapping occurs, but the glitch reapears
.
edit

here is the .blend:

edit
Maybe theres a trick with Object Mapping Coord, or a bug.

I've tried with generated mapping, no problems, But I would have preferred object mapping, for uniformity across models.

Finally, the way to solve this glitch is to set viewport shading to Rendered while baking.

This is clearly a bug in old rendering engine which seems solved in new Rendered viewport engine.


How do I fix camera weird mapping quirk? I've run into a bit of a problem when trying to do some camera mapping.
This is what happened:

As you can see, the mapping is not working well. As far as I know, when you project to view, it should work every time, is there something that I'm missing? I have tried remaking the plane, and resizing it, it seems that the bigger it is, the less accurate it is. Please help me, I want to finish this.

Nevermind, I just realized that I had to subdivide the plane because if you don't have enough polygons, project from view will produce bad/inaccurate results.


Animating car wheels, Separating object, Splitting a UV map I'm animating the wheels of a car. I can select the wheel in edit mode as shown but not in object mode.  When I separate the wheel from the car to rotate it the uv map for the wheel disappears but the rest of the uv map remains. There is one uv map for the car parts. I hope I'm being clear. Can anyone help please? I want to rotate the wheel with current uv mapping.

If you rotate the wheel in edit mode the coordinates of the verticies with respect to the UV are going to be rotated. I think you should be able to separate the wheels into a new mesh, then [TAB] out of edit mode and rotate the wheel. Just going by your pictures.


Gradient Texture Map to Ring Inset I am hoping this is a simple question....

I have a Gradient Texture,
I have a hollow circle mesh extruded to a ring,
I have an outside/outset and an inside/inset to the ring.

I am trying to map the gradient texture in a clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation to just the inset face, so that if you cut the ring and laid it flat the gradient would just be a simple left to right flat gradient.

Does anyone know the easiest way to do this?

If you are using Cycles render engine you could easily use a gradient texture as illustrated in the node setup bellow, though I am not sure it can be animated, as color ramp handles can't be keyframed as far as I know.

Has suggested by timaroberts, you can then animate this as desired by keyframing the position of the Color ramp handles in the Pos value.

Otherwise your best bet is probably unwrapping your mesh and animating the UV coordinates. You could then use a regular linear gradient with it.


How can I layer my textures in Blender? I am trying make a Victorian style dress for my model and I need a little help. I am trying to make shiny patterns using the nodes.I can't find any videos on this anywhere.

You can use a texture as a mixture factor.

Replace the noise texture with an image texture of you liking.

Change the diffuse for the fabric texture, and the glossy can be use for the shiny texture.


How to make two bones have the same rotation matrix? I have two bones. When i go in to pose mode an select each of them respectively, i can see that they have different coordinate systems / rotation matrices. How do i make them have the same Coordinate system / rotation matrix?
So the x-, y-, and z-axis is the same for each bone?

First select the bones you want to have the same coordinate system, make sure that the Active bone is the one rotation matrix you want to give to the other, now press CtrlN to open the 'Recalculate Roll' properties and choose Active Bone.


Problems with numpad operators I have a problem that's kind of weird. The numpad operation keys (+, -, *, /) dont work as expected. I cant do the math when transforming objects.

For example hitting G while object is selected, then X then 2 + 2 doesn't move the object 4 units on the X axis, instead - it moves it 22 units, like if that + hit was ignored.

I've noticed it when moving from Blender 2.68 to later versions.
(actually after installing 2.68 after the installation of 2.75, the 2.68 also works that way)

Is there anyway to get back the old functionality?

In Blender 2.75, you have to use expressions.

To evaluate any expression, you have to start with =

In your example: GX=2+2


How can I resize/move the "canvas" of an image in the compositor? As you can see, if I try to translate an image in the compositor, it does not affect the actual bounds of the image, only the pixels themselves.

The same thing happens when trying to scale an image:

So the image cannot be moved or scaled further than the actual dimensions of the image without clipping it.

The render border size does not seem to affect it: (Seen here with a gradient texture to define where the render dimensions are.)

For some reason skipping the blur node makes it work, but with it it gets cropped.

Aside from creating a lot of transparent space around the image in an external image editor or scaling the Pixels down with a Scale node,
How can I accomplish this?

There was a bug report on this where Ton said:

  Blender compositor is an extension of our render pipeline, animation frames by definition are always the same size.

  This is an issue we like to work on though, it's called "Canvas awareness" for compositor, where you can define a different output size for it than renders, and transform the renders inside the canvas freely.

There's currently two options:

Perform transforms in 3D and used to resulting render layer. The planes from images addon can help with the setup.
Perform a composite operation against an image of the desired size. The easiest way to generate one, is using the Mask node with a Fixed size.


Lens distortion algorithm in Movie Clip Editor Which lens undistortion algorithm is used in Blender?
I want to know more about these K1, K2, K3 parameters. How do they work? How they relate to each other. Why I need K2 and K3 if K1 does the job?
Any info will be usefull.

they are just the factors of parabolic and quadratic distortion, as well as a distortion of power 6. lens distortion has to be symmetric/isotrtopic, hence it can be written as function of a pixels distance to the center. this distance changes with an towards the center (=distortion).

The new distorted distance to the center is
D_r(r) = r+ k1*(r)^2 + k2*(r)^4 + k3*(r)^6

with r being the distance in pixels. So its rather just mathematical parameters, that approximate real lens distortion, than any parameters of real lenses present in your camera.


How to remove unwanted mark seams Can you anybody tell me how can I delete these mark seams please? In edit mode I can't find any mark seams but when I unwrap the model there they are! why? Ctrl+E - not working.

Those are pinned UV coordinates, they are not affected by future unwraps.

Select them and hit Alt+P to unpin. Unwrap afterwards.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/uv_image/uv_editing/layout_editing.html


Is it possible for Blender to interface with other software and hardware? Is it possible for Blender to interface with other software and hardware?

I would like to create a robot and have it display feedback on motor positions, etc, in Blender.

There's quite a few ways to do this, depending on your hardware. If you're using an Arduino that has wireless communication with your sensors, you can plug the Arduino to a PC running blender via USB and send data over serial communication.

A blender python script can access the serial data and use it to do whatever you want it to do (for instance control a character rig). Here's some more sample code on how to use the python serial (pyserial) library.

That's just one way related to one type of controller. If you specify more about what you're aiming for and what tools you're going to use, people will be able to provide you with better, more specific answers.


Why don't I see the full range of a color ramp gradient after using modulo? I'm trying to make a repeating color ramp around the outside of a cylinder (i.e., ten separate instances of black-purple-green). Unfortunately, I lose the spectrum of color ramp colours when I use the modulo function to repeat (I only get black-purple). Is there another way of doing this to get the full color ramp to repeat using a radial gradient texture?

Try this setup. The key is the MAP RANGE node.


How do I create a nice miter joint between these two pieces? I would like these two pieces to meet up at the correct angle so there is no overlap and no distance between them. I'm used to sketchup where I would have been able to use the snap to intersection functionality to drag the edge lines to the point where the pieces intersect. It doesn't seem like blender has snap to intersection functionality. What's an easy way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

As always, I'm open to correction, but creating miters at the ends of existing meshes is a fuss in Blender, unless the angle is at 45 degrees, and you can KC cut through with constraints, or ShiftCtrlAltS shear the ends of the stock pieces to a known extent. The shipped 'TinyCad' add-on can help, generating vertices at the intersections of edges, but even then, you'll find yourself creating guides of one sort or another to snap to, removing and creating faces by hand.

By far the quickest way to create miters is with polygonal curves. Create a track and a profile curve (possibly by AltC converting them from duplicated edges borrowed from existing meshes)

The profile curve will be swept along its local Z
Its origin will lie on the track curve
Set the track curve to 2D in its data tab, fill 'None'
Set the Bevel Object of the track curve to the profile curve..

...and miters will be formed at every corner. The rightmost object has beeen converted back to a mesh; you may have to hit CtrlN in Edit mode to make its normals consistent.


How to combine Views of a Multi-View Camera in Composite I am trying to create a single stereoscopic image in which two camera angles are laid side by side, so that a Google Cardboard lense would converge the two. I have set up two Multi-View Cameras, (one for Left and one for Right), to create the two different views needed. I can use Switch View nodes and translate each of the views to their respective sides of the screen, and should theoretically be able to use Overlay to combine the two as shown below:

However, there seems to be no way to actually combine two views into a single image. If I try to save the resulting composite, it saves it as two files with Left and Right suffixes, but I want blender to do the work and combine the views into one single composite side by side. (I could go into photoshop and change it, but it seems like blender should have this functionality).If I go into the Composite Render Result, the image I get out still depends on the view that I select at the bottom. It appears that there is no Node that combines two views into one in this way.

Here you can see how I get two completely different results by choosing Left:

compared to Right:

even though it seems like the overlay should simply make them one. Also, hooking the Overlay result into both sockets of a Switch View Node does not combine them into one image, either.

I know there are several workarounds, such as setting up Render Layers with two completely different object orientations or two scenes, but I would like to know if there's any way to achieve this simple effect natively. Any help would be appreciated,

Graves Broderick.

You might have the intention of the node confused. The View Switch node is intended to combine two stereo images in compositing, not to split them. In the current Compositing Pipeline (which isn't suited for 3D Compositing) you have to save the images or use renderlayers to make unique changes for the left and the right side.

However you can easily view images side by side and save them.

in the non stereoscopic view mode, you can view the images individually by selecting their channels in the image editor

this button toggles individual image display and stereo image display mode

to view a stereo image side-by-side directly from Blender, make Blender fullscreen AltF11 then choose window > set stereo 3D and choose your desired viewing mode; Blenders whole interface will be side by side

with the "display the image in stereo 3d" toggle button you can switch to individual image display, while in side by side view

in other modes (e.g. anaglyph, interlaced) we don't have to make Blender fullscreen

All these viewing settings don't affect how the two images are handled internally. Once you want to save your image, you have to enter the method (with which the two images are combined) again.

Press F3 in the image editor to open up the save dialog. Under Views Format choose stereo 3d, then select the stereo mode (e.g. side-by-side).
(If your working in side-by-side you have the additional option to squeeze the images horizontally, so that the original render dimension will be respected.)


Compositor result won't show I have problem with compositor.

It doesn't show result in output render until I replug Image into Composite node.

I am rendering 2 layers, but it show only first layer, without anything modified, until I unplug and plug back into Image slot in Composite node. Then it shows correctly.

NODE SETUP:

EDIT:

Result doesn't show in render output. In Viewer it is visible.

EDIT 2:

Here is the blend file. Sorry for wrong file.

To enable compositing go to Post processing in the Render tab of the Properties Panel and:

check the Compositing option
uncheck the Sequencer option

this will process the render result through the compositing pipeline if the compositing nodes are enabled.


Rendering isn't stressing GPU I just went through a tutorial video to make an animation of 2 planets colliding. This is only my 3rd rendering, and the first one since I realized Blender wasn't using my GPU. I set to my CUDA based GPU (eVGA GTX 960 SSC 4GB AC2.0 blah blah blah), set the resolution preset to 1080p HDTV, 100% scale, and made sure I  set GPU Compute in the render settings as well.

Obviously I'm pretty new to this, but I was very surprised to see that the rendering process was only pushing my GPU clock to 539mHz (idle is about 125mHz, and rated base/boost clocks are 1279/1342mHz. Running Heaven benchmark earlier it was clearing 1400mHz on it's own (also, I have not overclocked it on my own, it's factory overclocked only). My CPU is also only getting 15% load on average.

The render was taking forever, so I did some research, cranked up my tiles sizes, and cut the render time by a full minute per frame. However, should the Cycles engine not be utilizing more of my GPU's power? I feel like if it were pushing the GPU, I should be able to reduce render time by at least half.

Below is a screenshot of RealTemp CPU monitoring and eVGA's PrecisionX 16 monitoring. Interestingly, my PC is running like ass while it renders the actual 3D objects, despite showing rather low loads on my CPU/GPU.

Thanks in advance for any information, and sorry if this has been answered and I couldn't find it!

Not all scenes will use 100% of the GPU, or 100% of the CPU or 100% of available Memory. Blender will use the computer resources depending on the scene's complexity. Simple scenes will not use the same resources as complicated ones.

3D rendering can be a very complex and resource hungry task, but a wide variety of factors determine render time and computer usage: The number of polygons and subdivisions, types of shaders, modifiers, number of textures, texture size, use of volumetrics, particles or physics simulations, the number of samples, bounces, the size of the rendered tiles, amount and speed of RAM, etc, etc and blah, blah, blah... Not all operations are performed by the GPU so even when rendering on GPU you'll have to wait for the CPU to complete certain processes.

Again, depending on the scene, cutting render time by one half might just be unrealistic. To render in almost half the time, the most viable solution is using two GPUs instead of one...

Finding the optimal settings for your system is a trial and error process. What works on one scene might not work for others. Test different tile sizes (start around 256x256 and see how that goes), play with the number of samples and options in path tracing, simplify, optimize, decimate, bake, use all possible tricks to keep things to your liking, with tolerable noise and within realistic rendering times.

In short: There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to cutting render time.


Colour picker Texture paint pie menu Is it possible to add the colour picker in the texture paint panel to a pie menu ?

Panels and Menus use the same methods to display properties and operators, the main difference is that a pie menu will show properties floating by themselves unless you create a box as a background for them.

To make your own pie menu start with the pie menu template that is included with blender.

To show a colour swatch that will pop-up a colour picker when clicked you use layout.prop() to display the colour property. To show the colour picker itself you can use layout.template_color_picker().

An example pie menu that shows both -

class ColourPie(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = 'Set Colours'
    bl_idname = 'OBJECT_MT_colour_pie'

    def draw(self, context):
        ts = context.tool_settings
        ups = ts.unified_paint_settings
        ptr = ups if ups.use_unified_color else ts.image_paint.brush

        pie = self.layout.menu_pie()
        row = pie.row()
        # add a colour swatch that can popup a colour picker
        row.prop(ptr, 'color')
        box = pie.box()
        #show the colour picker directly
        box.template_color_picker(ptr, 'color', value_slider=True)


Mesh bisect with fill doesn't place triangles for the cut surface My task is to import a closed mesh into Blender, apply Bisect with the fill option, with the desired result being that the new body would also be a complete mesh.

However, the result I get has the bisect face filled with "grey", but no mesh. And an STL exported from that is similarly missing triangles in that area.

Example: Starting STL, a cylindrical cup, imported into Blender:

After applying the bisect tool along a horizontal line (ie: a horizontal plane):

As can be seen, the face that was cut has no triangles. And if exported to STL, that area is missing, with the overall shape not being closed.

Have I missed some option in bisect that properly fills in the mesh? Is there some subsequent step that's needed?

The "Bisect" function did generate a surface at the cut area, though it's an N-gon, STL-export seems to not offer an option to triangulate N-gons automatically.

Solution:

You can select the cut surface in Edit mode with Face selection and then use "Triangulate Faces" in the "Face" Menu Ctrl+F. Or use the direct shortcut, in this case Ctrl+T.

Here an example:

This should do the trick.


Animation frames not being rendered repost with screenshot New to this but I've gone through the process of rendering an animation I made in F360. The result is 800 odd frames in a folder but none have been rendered (takes about 10 seconds!). Is there a setting I've missed?
Thanks
Philip.

I think you are confused on how things work.

Blender is mostly a 3D content creation app that lets you create geometry and virtual models. To those models you can add surfaces, assign materials and textures and place them in a virtual environment, so that you can then create scenes as if they were viewed with a virtual camera. Those scenes can then be rendered as images or a series of images that comprise an animation. Animations can be packaged in a video format like avi or mp4 or quicktime so that others can view them like a movie.

It seems to me that you created a scene in some other software and rendered it as an animation already in an avi container.

What you exported are a series of images.

Blender cannot recreate the elements you used to create those images, it only sees the pixels of each particular frame not the models used to create those images. From that particular "cartoon" file you won't be able to create more "realistic looking" images.

You need to go back to the original app and find out how to export the assets created in F360 in a format that Blender can read as geometry or as 3D objects, not images.

Find out how to export your scene in FBX format.

FBX scenes can be imported into blender.

Note that once you import the objects and camera into blender most likely you are going to need to re-create the materials so that you can do more "life like" rendered images and videos.


No CUDA option in system preferences - is it my driver? I have the latest version of Blender installed (2.69) on Debian stable, and in System Preferences there is no CUDA (GPU) option for compute device. The graphics card is Nvidia GeForce 430. It supports CUDA 2.1, so according to the wiki it should work. Looks like the Nvidia driver is at the newest version. Is it a bug or am I missing something?

Update: Still no answer. I've looked into the driver more: it's the most recent repository version, but the driver on the Nvidia website is newer (mine is 304.88, theirs is 331.38). Does anybody run Blender on Linux with Nvidia drivers from repository (not nouveau but the manufacturer drivers)?

Anna

P.S. I've seen a couple other threads with a similar question but in one the problem was resolved when Blender v.2.69 was installed and in another the card in question was explicitly among the ones no longer supported.

IT IS the driver! The Nvidia driver installed from repositories on Debian is old. I've installed the newest driver by using sgfxi (see manual here). Just shut down the X-server, ran the script without any options (for this graphics card you don't need to enable the compositing option, it is enabled by default), it installed without a glitch. And halleluja! - GPU option appeared in Blender.


Change vertex color by selection Is there a way to set the vertex color by selecting vertex or faces rather than painting? I know there is a way in maya, but I can't seem to find a way to do it in blender.

Yes, you can select vertex while in paint mode. Just switch to the select tool and change selection mode to vertex. Also note that if you select vertex in edit mode and then switch to paint mode, the selection is preserved and edit mode has better ways to make selections than paint mode does.

With your selection just set the colour you want and use the Paint->Set Vertex Colors menu.


Do i pose the root bone too? So this is more like a best practice question. I tried doing a walk cycle by creating a walk action and then repeating it in NLA editor over a root bone position change. But this looks very mechanical, and every now and then I'll see sliding back and forth. So now i usually do pose by pose . But in this scenario, my root stays at the initial spot in the scene, while the rest of the body/bones is all over the place. Is this the right way to do or should I always make sure that the root bone is always with the rest of the bones?

When you create a walk cycle in Pose mode, don't move the root, keep it still, this way, when you'll be back in Object mode, you'll be able to move the whole armature and the root won't go back and forth, it will comply to the animation you will give it in Object mode (like typically follow a curve).

You can move the root bone if you don't plan to move your object in Object mode, but in this case it generally won't be a cycle.


Subdivision respecting adjacent edges I have this set of meshes that i use to generate my levels with.
Now, I have used a subdivision script in runtime with unity, but that is quite heavy.
I was thinking about doing the subdivision in Blender, but if I do it per mesh, the final mesh will end up looking full of holes.
Is there anyway I can subdivide the meshes here, keeping the corners of the mesh where they are?

You can mark edge creases to control the subdivision's interpolation: select an edge, press SHIFT + E, then drag your mouse and left-click to confirm.


Snap an animated rig to another static rig position while keeping the animation of the first one (MoCap, Kinect) I'm trying to make motion capture thanks to Royal Skies' tutorials, using a Xbox One Kinect. Here's the tutorial part (1,38min in total) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FGu-g8qsww
So I have a Kinect rig, which is animated.
I also have a character with his proper rig.
So I need to put every bone of the Animated Kinect Rig at the same position of their equivalents in my character rig. Then I just have to check that my animation still works well before linking both rigs together but it is not the subject here
So Royal Skies goes in Edit mode, select a bone and snap it to the correct position, in Front View.
If I do the same, and then check the animation of the Kinect Rig, it is completely messed up, especially because of the UpperArm Bones. Of course, before the snapping step in Edit Mode, the animation is perfectly captured by the Kinect rig. Please check my gif to see what it looks like : https://ibb.co/kSVmfBq (yes there's a big offset between the rigs while playing the animation but thats not a problem).
I have two ideas:

It is a Bone Roll problem. In fact, snapping a Kinect bone to the
position of my character's rig bones changes the bone roll. But
first, resetting the bone roll to the original one (by writing it on
paper before snapping a bone) does not fix the issue. Secondly, I
tried every "Recalculate Bone Roll" option, and it does not fix it
either. I really don't want to enter a "guess the bone roll angle"
game here.
My character rig is in A pose, whilst the Kinect rig is
in T pose. Maybe it is part of the issue. I don't want to set my
character to a T pose.

Anyway, can you help me please, I'm running out of ideas here...

To understand your problem, let we simplify: suppose that rotating the left arm from T pose to A pose is happening with a 45 degrees rot on X axis arm bone; 90 degrees will take the arm vertical, along the body. If the animation data store a value of 90 starting from a T pose, the same animation data will take the arm inside the body if applied to an A pose rig.
So there are many ways to solve the problem. The simpliest is to set your character to a rest T pose, matching the Kinect rig rest position (as it is in the video tutorial).
If you really don't want that you will have to create an empty in the loc of the Kinect bone and child of it. Then you set a copy rot constraint to your CharacterBone targeting the empty.
Once the setup is established you set the Kinect rig in rest pose and rotate the empty until the two arm bones are perfectly aligned in their T pose, so that when the animation says 0 degrees you get a T pose, when it says 45 degrees you get A pose, when it says 90 degrees you get the arm along the body, as expected.
You will have to trim the empty on the other 2 axis of rotation also, and repeat the operation for all involved bones.


Blender crashes when manipulating a large number of vertices with proportional editing enabled I have a sculpture with 250,000 vertices and I select the head (70,000 vertices) I would like to rotate the head 12 degrees around the z axis with proportional editing enabled so the neck and upper torso twist with it, when I do this Blender crashes on my computer. Is there any way around this problem? One way that seems to work is to deselect 95% of the vertices on the head, the trouble is I only know how to do this one vertice at a time!

It would probably be better to use a lattice modifier but if you wish to deselect vertices the following method seems to work for this example. Select the area you wish to manipulate then go to the 3D viewport header choose: Select > Random, go to the bottom of the tool shelf: enter Percent> 99% (for example) and Action> Deselect.You may need to add a few vertices to fill in any gaps. You can now manipulate using the proportional editing tool set to a largeish fall off without unwelcome lag or crashes.


How to make an ice lake with the Principled Shader? I know back in the day you would just use a Glossy Shader and mix in surface imperfections. I'm trying to do it now with the Principled Shader and the only way it seems to work is if I turn the Metallic setting to 1 but wouldn't that be incorrect as it's not a metal? I'm trying to achieve something like this.

Final:

Node setup & overview:

First of all you want to have Roughness value to be pretty low. I've used procedural Roughness map, but without it value around 0.05 will give good results. This is based on the ice you want to make.

Secondly, don't forget that clear ice is transparent, you'll need to add Transmission (like for glass). It don't need to be fully 1.0. Also ice has IOR value 1.309, I've forgot to change it.


Knife tool with Maya Settings My knife tool (with Maya presets) will not introduce a vertex with LMB, but automatically introduces them on edges when I cross them (despite not pressing LMB). When I switch to Blender presets, the knife tool works as advertised (clicking introduces new vertex, and not automatically when I cross an edge). How can I properly use the knife tool with Maya settings?

To fix this, in file> user preferences > input tab, search for the "knife" tool.

Under "Knife Topology Tool" it should say "Knife Tool Modal Map", click on the drop down arrow next to that and find the "Add Cut" shortcut.

drop down the "Add Cut" arrow and change the option that says "Press" to "Any"


How to keep the vertex normals after deleting an edge/face? When replacing sparse quads with a custom mesh, I create a "base vertex" on each quad, in order to cause a Particle Instance modifier to spawn the custom mesh at the right place (like for spawning leaves on a tree created by the Sapling addon).

However, when I delete the rest of the quad, just keeping the wanted vertex, its normal is modified, making the Particle Instance modifier instantiate the meshes with an incorrect rotation.

How can I keep the normal as it is (aligned to the quad's face) while removing the useless vertices?

here is an example blend file : http://www.pasteall.org/blend/23530

Goals:

new leaves must have the same orientation as the sapling one.
they must look natural : they must have their base touching the branches.
their must be exactly the same number of leaves in the particle instance modifier as in the sapling version.

A single vertex can't have a normal vector. A normal is the vector which is perpendicular to two other vectors (edges) the normal is calculated using the cross product.

A vertex normal is the average of all surfaces normals which contain a certain vertex, this does not mean that a vertex can have a normal.

Perhaps you could move the original quads to another (invisible) layer.


How to apply a transparent texture I have a transparent texture and I can't figure out how to apply that transparency to the object.

As you can see, the texture in the bottom right is transparent in places and solid in others.
But in render view the texture is just black.

You can see it better here.

Where Alpha = black = 0, the Transparent shader is used ; when alpha = white = 1, the Diffuse is used ; for intermediate value, they are mixed.


How to set the Physics Type? I have created a plane and I need to set the Physics Type of the object to NAVIGATION_MESH. I cant figure out, how I should do that. Below is the python script for generating this mesh and setting physics type but unfortunately its not working.

import bpy, mathutils

def create_custom_mesh(objname):
  # Define arrays for holding data
  myvertex = []
  myfaces = []
  zcord = 11.83068 # Constant Z Coordinate

  # vertex 0
  mypoint = [(-4.64863, -4.80997, zcord)]
  myvertex.extend(mypoint)
  # vertex 1
  mypoint = [(-4.02263, -4.80997, zcord)]
  myvertex.extend(mypoint)
  # vertex 2
  mypoint = [(-4.64863, -4.18397, zcord)]
  myvertex.extend(mypoint)
  # vertex 3
  mypoint = [(-4.02263, -4.18397, zcord)]
  myvertex.extend(mypoint)

  myface = [(0, 1, 3, 2)]
  myfaces.extend(myface)
  # Create mesh data
  mymesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(objname)
  # Create object
  myobject = bpy.data.objects.new(objname, mymesh)

  # Link object to scene
  bpy.context.scene.objects.link(myobject)
  # Generate mesh data
  mymesh.from_pydata(myvertex, [], myfaces)
  # Calculate the edges
  mymesh.update(calc_edges=True)
  return myobject

create_custom_mesh("route_plane")
bpy.data.objects['route_plane'].select = True
bpy.data.objects['route_plane'].game.physics_type == 'NAVIGATION_MESH'
print("---------------------------------------------")

What am I making wrong here, cause the object 'route_plane' gets created and being placed at the correct location in the scene but physics type is never set. I need to set the "Navigation Mesh" physics type on an existing object, like 'route_plane' (as in the above code). I can not generate the navigation mesh via the relevant button in the scene properties using GUI.

Please help me, thanks in advance !

The enum for a navigation mesh is 'NAVMESH' not 'NAVIGATION_MESH'.  The python console is your friend here.

>>> C.object.game.physics_type = 'SOMETHING_WRONG'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: enum "SOMETHING_WRONG" not found in ('NO_COLLISION', 'STATIC', 'DYNAMIC', 'RIGID_BODY', 'SOFT_BODY', 'OCCLUDER', 'SENSOR', 'NAVMESH', 'CHARACTER')

You weren't getting an error because you had the double equals == which is a boolean test

game.physics_type == 'NAVIGATION_MESH'

Which will equate to False, more commonly I make the mistake of one equals, if (x=y) lol.


Orthographic view graphical artifacts I'm having some problems with orthographic view which I don't know how to solve. Regardless of what mode I'm in (object or edit), I can see through my meshes as if x-ray was on. Rotating my view also causes strange artifacts on my meshes, like in the picture below, and they sometimes disappear entirely until I rotate the view again.

It makes it very hard to work with my meshes in orthographic view, and perspective view does not always satisfy my needs. Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks to gandalf3, I found out it was my clipping distance settings for the viewport. The ending distance was set too high. I've set it to 5000 and it's perfect now.


Why when importing an obj file nothing appears even when zooming? I have opened a new blender file and deleted the default cube, then imported an obj file . I did not see any thing so i selected it and i zoomed ,nothing appears.In the outliner i saw the object name ,But in the info panel i see that there isn't any verts/faces/edges.

When i opened the obj file in a text editor i found Mesh data in it. I tired this in all blender versions (2.78c/2.78.5/7.9). Can any one help how to view the mesh?

The first thing you have to check is if there are any objects on the Outliner Window.

If there are, that means that you've successfully imported something. Then is just a matter of finding where it is and at what scale it was imported.

Select the object in the outliner and pres Numpad Period to center the display on the object.

You might need to adjust the Clipping Distances on the 3D viewport's properties panel (N) if the object is too large or too small:

Blender 2.8x

Blender 2.7x

Sometimes the mesh can far away from the actual origin of the object. In that case it might take a bit longer to find the geometry, as the  Numpad period  will center the view on the origin. In that case you can enter Edit Mode Tab, press A to "select all" of the geometry and press  numpad Period  again this time to center on the selected vertices.

Read: Unable to see anything after importing .obj file and obj file not displayed properly


What are the keyboard shortcut for Knife Tool and Reroute Node for the Node Wrangler for Blender 2.8? For the Knife Tool, it used to be holding the Ctrl key and dragging across a node connection to cancel the node connections, while to create a reroute node, it was holding Shift and dragging across a node connection.

What are the new keyboard shortcut for Knife Tool and Reroute Node for the Node Wrangler for Blender 2.8?

As far as I can tell nothing has changed, the node wrangler works just fine.

Make sure the addon is enabled in the system preferences, it is not enabled by default. If you use it constantly make sure you save the preferences to make enable the addon permanently.

Then cut while pressing ⎈ Ctrl.

To reroute use ⇧ Shift and move the mouse across the connection.

To do lazy connect use ⎈ Ctrl
+⇧ Shift


Background video is way too bright when rendered So I've got 3 tracks that I've motion tracked and done my work to, but for all 3 theres the same issue; The background video looks fine in the "Rendered" mode, but when I render, it appears to have double the intensity of the original video file.

For 2/3 clips I was able to, by some miracle/messing around with render layers/masks, fix the problem. This 3rd clip however, is not working at all. I want to know if this is a common issue and learn the root of the problem.

Thanks so much!

So for this clip, I was able to fix it by turning off and on all the render passes (Z, Combine, Vector)... strange that it worked since I didn't actually change anything at all. Must be a small bug, no matter since it's easy to fix!


How can I create and project a symbol/rune on a sculpture? (like Blizzard's games) How can I create and project a symbol, rune or logo to a sculpture and make it look like it is from a Blizzard game? What are the sculpt brush settings to project it on any surface (flat or round), how to avoid artifacts and bad compression, keep the aspect ratio and hide the borders of the projected image?

Symbol preparation

You must draw the shape of your symbol in black with a sharp brush with a white background and add spikes. Use a big resolution to get less compression. If you are bad at drawing you can create the symbol in a 2D mesh in Blender. You can also use a text font, preferably that looks like the Unreal Engine font with spikes: https://www.dafont.com/

The silhouette should look like the U of the Unreal Engine logo:

For this demonstration I will download the Blender logo to show you how to convert it into an image you can project.

Here is the source image, like I said we must use an high resolution:

With a color ramp invert the image by inverting the sliders' position, then move the black slider to the position 0.01 and the white is at 0. Now we get a completely black silhouette on a white background. To make it more like a Blizzard rune sharp claws must be painted with sharp black and white brushes to make the peaks look like claws. As a reference you can imagine that you are converting it into a Shuriken weapon while keeping the initial symbol recognizable. This is the hardest part if you are bad at drawing.
Then use the Inner Glow technique that you can see here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/121470/23134, a Filter > Dilate/Erode in Threshold mode with both values at 50, this value depends on the thickness of the lines, resolution and the result you want. This effect allows to perform an inset on the symbol to improve his projection and the normal map baked from it.
Add a Color > Gamma node at 2.2, to convert it to Linear to have a flat slope when the image is projected.
Finally use a slight blur to avoid getting lines, this is especially useful if the resolution of your image is low to avoid getting aliasing.

Save the image, it is important that you save it in 32 bit float to avoid compression on the Inner Glow effect and Blur, otherwise the surface won't be smooth, so choose the OpenEXR format in Float (Full).

Projecting the symbol on a mesh

The symbol will be projected in Sculpt mode. You will need an high polycount to get as much details as possible. You can create a plane, in edit mode do W > Subdivide until you reach 1 million triangles.

In sculpt mode choose the Inflate brush
In Texture click on New and in the property panel at the right import the symbol. In Brush Mapping choose Stencil.
Set Sample Bias to -1 to avoid that the white background pulls the geometry, at the default 0 the middle grey doesn't move the geometry.
In Stroke choose Anchored.
In the Curve menu set it to the maximum effect, it must have no falloff, use the latest preset.
In the 3D view place the stencil on your image, hold Shift + right click to scale it. If you rotate it by mistake click on Reset Transform, then on Image Aspect.
Go in orthographic view, left click at the center of your stencil and drag the mouse to the exterior so it envelops the entire stencil. In perspective check the depth, you can adjust the strength to dig more or less.


Using subdivision surface cuts up my object? Let me just preface by saying that I'm very new to blender and I'm sorry if I don't use the correct terminology. I hope that I'm making sense with how I'm describing my issue.

So I have no idea why but whenever I use the subdivision surface modifier it cuts up parts of my object? I have no idea why and would like to know how I can fix this since I really need to use it for round parts of the object that need it. I did already use the edge split modifier and that helped a lot but now I would like to use the subdivision surface modifier. I already have tried doing smoothing on it but didn't give me the kind of help that the subdivision surface does for it. I did also try to separate the object and that did work, however, I need my object to be only one (sorry, I don't know how to explain this?) and splitting it up caused me a lot of trouble to fix it. Or, if there is another way to smooth my round top and bottom (besides bevel) then I would be so appreciative.

Here are some photos (Top is when the modifier is applied, bottom is in edit mode and the top sides are what I'm trying to smooth out):

Without seeing your blend file I can only make an assumption, but it appears as if you have a double-vertex edge on your cylinders. I can create a similar look by creating a circle, deleting half, duplicating it, rotating the duplicated half 180 degrees, joining them, extruding the shape, and then applying a subsurf.

Try going into edit mode, change to vertex mode (press 1), select all vertices by pressing A, right clicking and selecting Merge Vertices -> By Distance.

See if that resolves your cylinder issue.

Edit:

The issue is that you have an extra edge loop which has been folded over. You can either merge those vertices at both the top and bottom of each cylinder, or recreate the geometry with a better plan.


How to quickly fix (or avoid) the n-gons caused by boolean operation? I'm trying to model a pistol slide with grooves in it which is supposed to look like this:

What I did was creating an array of cubes and subtracting it from the slide with boolean modifier. This precedure ended up with multiple n-gons:

I thought those n-gons might cause some trouble later on, so I used the knife tool to manually cut all the faces into quads.

As there were only 7 grooves in the mesh, I didn't spend too much time doing this. But I wonder if there is a easier or better way to get the same result, in case the object is much more complex than the one I'm making.

Select the N-gons with Shift+G
CTRL+T
Alt+J

This is the fast and easy way. The minus is that it's not always all quads. And avoid Boolean if you can as corrections are required if you use it

OR, easier yet

Use CTRL+R once on the pointed edge and snap it to vertices before you OK it.

Btw. okaying answers gives you +2 reputation.


how to move, rotate and scale multiple objects in edit mode I can only go into edit mode on one object at a time in as far as i can figure out.

So if i have 10 objects, is there a way to move, rotate or scale all 10 of them together in edit mode?

I don't want to do it in object mode as that does nothing to the meshes and when i export fbx, all object mode stuff is gone.

thanks

You can modify your objects in OBJECT MODE, then apply the transformation to the mesh (CTRL + A).


Array With Function - Python I want to aplly an Array Modifier using a function based on the counter number, for example, X Displace = Count**2, I tried to use modifiers["Array"].constant_offset_displace[0] = modifiers["Array"].count**2, but the result is the count value squared, like the print:

The result that I was waiting was for the Instance 01 of the array modifier, x=1**2 (=1), to the instance 02, x=2**2 (=4), to the instance 03, x=3**2 (9) and so on... The grafic result is a curve, not a constant like happens on the print.

So, how can do this?

Thanks!

In python ** means exponent. So count**2 is count squared. For multiplication it is count*2. Is this what you want? Or am I understanding wrong?


Help with Level of Detail coding I am creating this fps game in the bge and since I was planning on having incredibly large terrain, I was planning on implementing some code for adding level of detail to the terrain mesh. I know people usually just replace the mesh with a premodeled mesh with fewer polygonsbut my issue is adding different lods on the same mesh. I was thinking of assigning a vertex group to the mesh based around the players location and using code to move the vertex group when the player moves and anything outside the vertex group would have a decimate modifier. However I am not sure how practical this is. Are there better, faster ways to do this? Thanx in advance for the answers.

You can do this on an object by object basis quite easily, there is a built in feature specifically for Level Of Detail configuration. Under the Object tab in the Properties panel, you will see a Level of Detail menu. Click Add, then select the mesh you want from the dropdown and set the distance you want it to become visible at.


How can I make Eevee renders more realistic? I'm struggling with a scene that contains different kinds of materials (metallic, plastic, painted walls, cemented floor ...etc) it looks awesome in Cycles but when I switch to Eevee the scene looks dull and totally unrealistic (not even remotely looking like Cycles). Now I'm aware that there are certain parameters that need to be enabled first, but I think I enabled pretty much everything, i.e "Screen Space Reflections", "Ambient Occlusion", and "soft Shadows" I also cranked up the Samples and enabled "Screen Space Refraction" on each and every material in the scene (even though there is no see-through objects in the scene) but no real results so far.

Is there more to that to achieve that nice fake realism in Eevee?

EDIT: Ok attached are the renders and the settings I use for Eeevee

EDIT: Find below the blend file and the splash screen of the build.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cqage42th8l9829/Reproducing_Error.blend/file

Well, I digged a little bit inside your .blend file.

The first thing I noticed is that you are in Look Dev shading, which isn't the Rendered shading:

Even though they can give similar results sometimes, you really have to get into Render shading to have a fair preview of your render.
In your case, just switching to rendered mode already makes a huge difference, you'll get a much closer result to cycles.

Also, I didn't get your HDRi embedded in the blend file, which gives me a pink render result, so I had to remove it in order to do my little tests.

The first thing I did was playing with your Sun's settings, precisely the Shadow Clip Start/End and Contact Shadow Distance. This is really only to "fit" the Sun properties to your scene. Look how the shadow looks when you change those settings, especially in walls' corners.

Once it's done, there is really only one thing to do: give Eevee what he needs to calculate your Indirect Lighting. If you're used to Cycles' raytraced physically unbiased lighting calculated on the fly, Eevee doesn't do that. It's closer to a video game engine: it will try to calculate things only as few as possible, and only where you want and when you ask him to do so.
So basically, you need to create at least two things: cubemaps and irradiance volumes. Those two objects can be found in the "Add Object" menu (Shift A) under the Light Probe submenu:

Place at least one Reflection Cubemap in the center of your room. For the irradiance volume, make sure every little orange dot is inside the room. If you intend to only show the little area with the shed, you can scale the irradiance volume to cover this area only, that would optimize your resources.

Once it's done, you just need to bake those indirect lighting informations. Head over to the Indirect Lighting panel of your render settings, and hit the "Bake Indirect Lighting" button. It may take a while.

And this is what I obtain just with those steps (cycles up, eevee down):

If you want to know more, I suggest you to do some research about Eevee and indirect lighting. There are also some videos on youtube where people convert their old Cycles projects to Eevee.


How to set origin to joint location? I have cut a hand into pieces. Now I wish to set the origin of each piece to the bone joint of the given body part as seen on the picture. I know I can place the cursor on the joint and set the origin this way, but is there a way to do it with a script. It would save me a lot of work!

In edit mode, select the joint (not the bone), SHIFT+S > cursor to selected, then in Object mode, go to the object menu Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D cursor.

Just note, the ctrl+shift+alt+c hotkey has been changed in blender version 2.8


How would I smooth a 90 degree pipe angle? I would like to smooth out this pipe. I know that I should have made it out of a curve. Is there any way to smooth the pipe?

Indeed it would be easier to deal with this type of geometry using Bezier Curves instead.
Otherwise just use the Bridge Edge Loops operator.
Erase the straight corner faces, select both end edge loops, call the Bridge Edge Loops from the Space Bar / F3 search, then adjust the number of cuts and smoothness as desired.


Applying Dupli-Objects Is it possible to bake dupliverts into one mesh for the BGE? (I have a large ground landscape that I use as the parent to duplicate trees, and the BGE doesn't support most modifiers.)

You can turn all the duplivert objects into real objects by selecting the object with dupliverts and choosing Object> Apply> Make Duplicates Real from the menu in the 3D view, or Ctrl+Shift+A .

Then select all the individual objects and press Ctrl+J to make them a single object.


Simplest way to create a database symbol I'm trying to model a database symbol like this

The only way I currently know how to do this is by starting with a flat cylinder and repeatedly extruding and scaling.

extrude
scale Z
scale .9
extrude
scale Z
scale 1.1

This is very tedious. How else could I accomplish this?

create a single piece out of a cylinder.

To make the edges less sharp read this question:

Weird deformation between large ngon and edge ring

Add an array modifier, and move the relative offset values for the Z axis like this.

Add a mix of glossy and anisotropic shaders.

EDIT Want an even simpler way?

Add a Curve->Circle.

Make it a 2D curve, fill in on both sides, give it some extrusion and bevel:

Add the array modifier, and texture.

For Info on how light a shiny object read this: Make a gold reflective object


Boolean or cuts without creating ngons I have one specific question and one general one.
The specific question:
Is there a way to boolean in a shape without creating a bunch of ngons? I want to cut a hole in the visor as seen in figure 1 and what I have is in figure 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2
More general question:
Could anyone comment on the topology of my object (keeping in mind I want to use it for 3d printing, but any advice is welcome). What could I have done better in the modeling/mesh creation. Like "you used this tool here, but it created some problems in the mesh, try this tool instead" I've attached a link:
Google Drive Download, ask if you'd like it emailed instead
I assume I am doing a few things wrong with my topology but I am not entirely sure what.
I am a blender novice and have watched a lot of Lydna vids and youtube vids and decided to cut my teeth by making a robot from a Studio Ghibli movie.
I thought I got the model looking pretty good, but when I attempted to 3d print it, I had some strange issues. Parts of my model were not printed. The structure underneath was, but the surface was not.
I assumed I had made some rookie mistakes, so I decided to go and try and remake portions of my mesh. This time I wanted to look at it in meshmixer to ensure everything was alright. Unfortunately, when I loaded it in, it looked even worse than what was printed out! It looks fine in Cura, but not Meshmixer... the oddness abounds.

Cut your hole >  in Edit Mode select the loop of faces inside the new hole > Ctrl+Numpad + to grow the selection once or twice > Ctrl+T for "triangulate faces" (or you can right click and it should be in the pop up menu; or go to the menu for 'faces') > Alt+J for "turn triangles into quads" (this is in the 'faces' menu too).

Not sure how well this will work for your needs, but it's quick.  GL OP


speed of for loop running I have a Mesh that should be change a several times via counter.

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
own = cont.owner

if own['build'] >= 0:
    own.replaceMesh('mon-stage1',True,False)
if own['build'] >= 25:
    own.replaceMesh('mon-stage2',True,False)
if own['build'] >= 50:
   own.replaceMesh('mon-stage3',True,False)
if own['build'] >= 100:
   own.replaceMesh('mon-stage4',True,False)

stage = 0

for stage in range(0,100):
    stage += 1
    print(stage)

The problem is that the counter (game property) is increasing too fast.
How can I make it slower?
For example, make a delay in 5 tics after each increasing of variable "stage".
"Skip" of Always sensor doesn't help. And I want to realize it through python (for loop).

Found my own solution.

stage = own['build']
stage += 0.5

if stage > 100:
    stage = 100
own['build'] = stage

But I'm interested to solve this with "for loop"


Accessing image texture connected to Cycles material Diffuse BSDF Hey guys, I'm writing an blender python exporter and want to be able to export supported cycles material configurations.

Starting simple - diffuse with an image texture input:

diffuse_BSDF = mtl.node_tree.nodes['Diffuse BSDF']

if diffuse_BSDF != None:
   input = diffuse_BSDF.inputs[0]

... then not sure how to access the image texture from input which is a NodeSocketColor.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

thanks to zeffii :

    diffuse_BSDF = mtl.node_tree.nodes.get('Diffuse BSDF')

    if diffuse_BSDF != None:
        # grab color input
        input = diffuse_BSDF.inputs[0]

        if input.is_linked:
            src = input.links[0].from_node
            if src.type == 'TEX_IMAGE':
                self.File.Write('tex_src:{}\n'.format(src.image.filepath))
            elif src.type == 'MIX_RGB':
                for i in src.inputs:
                    if i.type == 'RGBA':
                        if i.is_linked:
                            src_i = i.links[0].from_node
                            if src_i.type == 'TEX_IMAGE':
                                self.File.Write('tex_src:{}\n'.format(src_i.image.filepath))

(obviously the write function is script specific but maybe that's helpful to others)


How to get camera matrix frame by frame in animation? I am trying to create a 3D scene using blender. I have made a model and camera path using blender interface. However, I want camera matrix to be exported frame by frame as well.

I know using Python script interface might do the job. Thus, I am wondering if I can animate frame by frame and in processing each frame, I can output camera matrix as well.

I know bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True) can render all the frames at once. Is there a way that I can do frame-basis?

Any comments are appreciated.

import bpy
import os

scn = bpy.context.scene

for f in range(scn.frame_start, scn.frame_end + 1, scn.frame_step):

    # go to frame f
    scn.frame_set(f)

    # output the camera matrix on the current frame
    mat = scn.camera.matrix_world
    print(mat)

    # set the filepath
    scn.render.filepath = os.path.join("C:/my/path/to/file/basename", str(f).zfill(4)

    # render the current frame
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)


transform.rotate in Blender 2.8 The below script for blender 2.7x is not working with 2.80
How could I fix it? I got the message - "TypeError: Converting py args to operator properties: : keyword "axis" unrecognized".

bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=wheel_rotation_angle , axis=(wheel_rotation_x_axis, wheel_rotation_y_axis, wheel_rotation_z_axis), constraint_axis=(False, True, True))

Select the object in the 3D window ; key in r,x,30    to rotate 30 deg about the x-axis ; Visit the info window to see and copy/paste the equivalent python code.
I forgot which is local and which is global, i.e. experiment with r,x,30 or r,x,x,30
Note also the use of degrees with the keyboard, but radians in the script:
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=pi/6, orient_axis='Z',\ orient_type='LOCAL') verified with Blender 2.8
We have left off the numerous optional arguments in this example


How can I use both context and threading? Hi i'm thying threading with bpy this is my code:

import bpy
import threading

class Cubes(threading.Thread):

    def __init__(self):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)

    def run(self):

        scale = 0.2
        space = 0.2
        max_range = 6

        for i in range(0, max_range):

            bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius = 1, location=(0, 0, 1))
            bpy.ops.object.origin_set( type="ORIGIN_CURSOR" )

            bpy.context.active_object.scale.x = scale
            bpy.context.active_object.scale.y = scale
            bpy.context.active_object.scale.z = 5

            bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location = False, rotation = False, scale = True)
            bpy.context.active_object.location = (((i*scale*2)+(i*space))-(((max_range*scale*2)+(max_range*space)))/2,0,0)

        return

t = Cubes()
t.start()

but when i run this the console give me this error:

Exception in thread Thread-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\python\lib\threading.py", line 921, in _bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "C:\Users\Davide\Desktop\Sound_Visualizer.blend\Sound_Visualizer_Circular.py", line 40, in run
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'active_object'

Can someone help me?

It will not fully answer your question, but it might point you the right direction. The context which you are grabbing during script execution is not necessarily the 3D View context, which you get for instance when you call it from the Python console. Blenders context changes depending on the situation, that's why it was given that name I guess  :)

So, if you change your FOR loop to this, the script at least executes:

    for i in range(0, max_range):

        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius = 1, location=(0, 0, 1))
        bpy.ops.object.origin_set( type="ORIGIN_CURSOR" )

        # check what attributes the current context offers
        print(dir(bpy.context))

        # now grab a reference to the active object
        ao=bpy.context.scene.objects.active

        ao.scale.x = scale
        ao.scale.y = scale
        ao.scale.z = 5

        bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location = False, rotation = False, scale = True)
        ao.location = (((i*scale*2)+(i*space))-(((max_range*scale*2)+(max_range*space)))/2,0,0)

I've added this line on purpose:

    print(dir(bpy.context))

console output:

['__doc__', '__module__', '__slots__', 'area', 'bl_rna',
'blend_data', 'copy', 'mode', 'region', 'region_data',
'rna_type', 'scene', 'screen', 'space_data', 'tool_settings',
'user_preferences', 'window', 'window_manager']

in the console you can this way see what attributes you can access, and one of them is the current scene. so by calling the active object from there, I can access it:

    ao=bpy.context.scene.objects.active

The problem is not solved however. On my machine I get 5 Objects, but only one of them contains a mesh. I can only guess what's happening, I think it is a racing condition. Since each thread calls the active object, and each one creates a new active object, one thread might 'steal' it from the other, thus affecting its location and even object data.

Consider creating the objects you need directly in bpy.data and link them to the scene manually, this way you get a unique reference to the object directly. You'll find guides on how to do this here on this site. Good luck!


Flat material that isn't shadeless It is standard to create shadeless materials by using the emission shader, often with a Lightpath Is Camera Ray to prevent it from casting light on other objects. This creates a flat color regardless of lighting. It does not get any shadows cast on it, and doesn't have any shading on it.

I want to create a material that will not allow any shading on it (so no shadow terminator, same flat color) but WILL allow for shadows to be cast upon it, and most importantly, somehow responds to the overall light level in the scene. In other words, it can change in brightness when in well lit areas, but remains flat.

The purpose of this is to allow for flat shading, but also allow for low light and high key scenes. Currently, the emission based shadeless material will give the same color in a dark room as on a sunny day.

For a full example, consider this material on a character's face:
1)If the light was striking it directly, the whole face would be the same color, which should be the brightness you would have in the brightest area if using a regular diffuse shader.

2) If the character's face wasn't in direct light, it should all be the brightness of the darkest area if it was a regular diffuse shader.

3) If the character's face was strongly lit on one side but not the other (hatchet lighting), it should be fully bright on the bright area, and fully dark in the dark area, which could probably be achieved with some sort of color ramp or have it based on normal.

4) If another object casts a shadow on the object, it should only darken in the area the shadow is cast on, like a regular diffuse. The cast shadow shouldn't be factored into it's shading.

Ideally this would be solved within the material, but compositor options could also work.

We can use compositor tricks as you proposed.

Scene

I am going to set the scene such that the shadless objects are in one layer and the others in another.

Add another render layers to catch shading information:

I am going to create a new render layer with exactly the same layers but I am going to set the Material override to a material which is just a diffuse shader. And another one which with the same setting but with excluding the layer with the non shadless objects.

Shading layer:

Shadow layer:

Matrials

The material for the object should be as you described, an emission shader with camera ray as input.

Compositing setup

Since we enabled all passes, we cal selectively apply the only shading we want.

Example 1: Shadows that other object casted:

By subtracting the shadow if the shading layer from the shadow if the shadow layer and then inverting it, I get the shadows that were only casted from other objects and not the object itself.

Example 2: Adding highlights:

I can add the diffuse direct of the shadow layer to the result to get highlights and I can use Indirect lighting.

And you can play with passes to get exactly what you want.


(2.79) How do I make a plane transparent without making the texture transparent? I want to make the plane with the texture transparent, but I don't want the texture to be transparent. to be clear, the texture is a png file with some parts being transparent, but I cannot figure out how to make the plane transparent without making the texture transparent.
I'm using Blender version 2.79.

so actually I'm an idiot and forgot to use face textures and alpha face textures
I got it working
whoops


Alpha PNG as Texture with nodes -> isn't totally transparent I saw the threads on PNG alpha and made what It was recommended to do but I still have the problem although it brought me forward.

So I've a picture with transparent background (PNG), all seems ok for this picture.

I want to use it as a texture so I mapped it and it's maybe a bit deformed but seems also ok.

My problem is that the background is not totally black anymore but still on the edges.

Here is my node structure:

And here is the result:

I want to remove these black borders.

EDIT:

Here is the texture I want to apply:

EDIT 2:

The blend file of the project (all the present textures are not used).

Everything is working as it's supposed to. Those black borders you see are simply shadows cast by the mug onto itself because you've made a hole in the side with the transparency shader. It's easier to see from the side:

It seems like you're trying to do something like this:

You don't need a transparency shader because you're not making anything transparent - you simply need to make the background of the image the same colour as the rest of the mug, so just use a MixRGB node and the alpha of the image as the Fac.

You'll notice I added a math node as well - that's just to control how much of the glossy is being mixed in, since if you used the alpha directly without the math node it'd be mixing 100% glossy and 0% diffuse.


Text doesn't show up in render I made an intro, but when I render it the background shows up but the text doesn't. I fear I may have messed something up in the Compositor. What could cause this?

Click all images for full size.

This is the render layers for my scene

Compositor setup

The render

Blend file

You need to add a Composite node with the same input as your Viewer node.

In order for anything to be composited in the Render Image you must have the Composite node, otherwise the Compositor is skipped entirely.


Settings to improve video editor performance I've assigned more RAM via 'memory cache limit' and use 25% 'proxies' with timecodes, are there any other settings that can be tinkered with to improve playback in the VSE? My CPU is always very idle while using the VSE and I'm dropping frames from 30fps down to 5fps depending on the number of items in the sequencer. Anything else to be tinkered with? I'm not looking for other video editors, so no suggestions on that front please.

I'm also kinda confused what is happening here in blender. Is it only using a single CPU core for all the operations? Is that why the cpu is never going full-on? Like using ffmpeg.exe it'll grab literally all my cpu and ram when it does its operations, blender is only using my ram up when enough is assigned in memory cache limit. Is it a case of getting a faster singular cpu core and having more ram = better performance? Can I do anything with my GPU outside of render operations?

Using windows I don't see any performance change recorded in the taskbar when I do or don't use the proxy...but playback is always showing extreme performance changes between the two. Why is that? If blender is getting jittery and freezing for seconds at a time pushing framing by frame going to no proxy, but stable at 25% proxy....but the taskbar shows no difference between the two...what's that mean?

Blenders VSE is an area that has not seen many improvements over the years. As you see one of its drawbacks is the inability to use all available cpus.

Someone recently agreed to work on improvements to the VSE, so this should start to improve over the next releases, but the improvements done in time to be included with 2.80 are limited.


heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones Here is the link to my Blend file.

Picture:

It's nothing special but I cant figure out why I get problems rigging this mesh. It would be important and a great Help! Thanks for reading and I know there are a lot of guides answering this question but I tried all and it doesn't seem to work.

I know 2 situations where this problem raises:

When the Object consists of 2 or more separated (not connected) meshes which intersect. This could be solved by fixing the mesh topology, like connecting the intersecting meshes into one single mesh and by fixing your model to avoid the intersecting areas.
When the object has duplicate vertices. This can be solved by removing doubles in Edit Mode ( keyboard shortcut "W" -> Remove Doubles)

I do not know the exact reason why the algorithm fails in these cases and if there are other cases as well where it fails. However it must be related to ambiguities while calculating the weight ratios for the involved vertices.

I took a quick look into the blend file that was provided by the OP. I found the head of the character has many duplicate vertices (about 320). Removing doubles solved the issue in this particular case.


Paste X-flipped Pose half working I am working on a climbing cycle and i tried to Paste X-flipped pose and it seems that my lower body of the mesh worked not the top part? I done this before for my walk cycle and it has no problem. Is there an issue im not seeing?

The orientation of his right arm bones is bad:

In Edit mode select all these bones and ctrl R 180 to rotate 180° on their axis. Then, in Pose mode, go in the Properties panel > Bone Constraints > IK, you'll have to correct the IK Pole Angle -> 180°.

Or, simpler, in Edit mode, select all the left arm bones and go on the bottom menu bar > Armature > Symmetrize. Then, in Pose mode, go in the Properties panel > Bone Constraints > IK, you'll have to correct the IK Pole Angle -> 180°.

Now it works fine.


How To Create New Vertex or Segment When Extrude Passing or Intersection Other Object or Shape I am creating a computer table , To make the partition board (where the keyboard is kept). I added in two loop cuts on either leg and extruded the face formed by the loop cut as shown:

It is known that it can't make new vertex, edges, and faces when the extruded face passing through it. In short it can't merge with the middle leg.

In the left leg it has 3 face for each direction,  but the middle leg (since it don't have any loop cuts) still have only 1 face for each direction.(See the image)

Of course, the face or vertices count doesn't matter for the viewers of the final render...But for basic concept or fundamental, I think it's wrong??
So I hope you can help me to doing it right and clean.
Can you please point out what should I do. (if direct extrude is not recommended)
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

The easiest way to do it is by Bridging the Edge Loops.

Make two legs for the table:

Create two edge loops on both the legs by Ctrl+R. Make sure that it's perfectly aligned or else you will get a slope. To place the loopcuts perfectly hold down Ctrl while sliding the edge loop. Which will get you this:

Now select the faces as shown and press F3 and type in Bridge edge loops.

There you have it.


Damped Track constraint on bone lags So basically if you use a Damped Track constraint + Limit Distance constraint to move a bone with another one there is these strange bugs where the mesh doesn't move with it.

Especially when creating an animation this is a real problem because what happens is that you set up the keyframe for the thing and the mesh will move like it 1 frame later. At the actual keyframe it will have the position of the frame before and so on.

Do you guys know this issue and maybe got a solution?

EDIT: Well, I managed the animation somehow.
When you move the bone once it will reset the weird position then you can cancel the move. Yet there is some strange issues with the positions, I don't even know how they emerge. Plus I don't know if the animation will run correctly in any situation or if there will be these slight position changes occurring and this sucks.

a) Maybe someone can tell me that the animation runs correctly when for example used multiple times and with interpolation to other animations in the bge hoping.

b) Maybe fix this issue Blender guys, not pointing a finger.

Just faced the same issue, check the constraints loading order, if you also have copy rotation on that lagging bone, make sure it's on top of the damped track constraints.


Procedural textures in 3d View I'm having trouble showing procedural textures (Checker Texture in particular) in 3d View. I can see it in render, but neither Material/Texture/Solid viewport shading helps to see in 3D :(
This is a screenshot with my issue. Please help.

This is normal. As long as there is no image file being used for texturing, you will not see results in other modes than rendered.


How can I select multiple edge loops? I know that I can select an edge loop in edit mode by pressing Alt and clicking on an edge.

But if I try to select multiple edge loops by holding down shift while selecting a second one, it does not work.

Why and what is the proper way to select multiple edge loops?

After selecting the first edge loop with AltRMB, just go on with ShiftAltRMB.


What is a non-manifold vertex? I am experiencing a lot of issues with the topology of a specific object I am modelling. Currently I have an issue with 'non-manifold vertices on it as shown by the screen shot below:

The mesh issue I have highlighted is found by operating Select>Select all by Trait>non-manifold and checking only the 'vertices' option in options menu as pictured in the bottom left of my screenshot.

I would specifically like to be able to identify what the tool Select all by Trait looks for when the 'vertices' option is selected, so I can better address my topology problem

I have read a fair bit about what can cause non-manifold geometry but simply non-manifold 'vertices' doesn't really mean a whole lot to me, can anyone shed any light

Here is the blend file:

N.B: I have recalculated internal and external normals as well as 'merged by distance' multiple times which doesn't seem to do anything

For anyone else with this problem the detailing of this is actually outlined in the blender docs here
The docs say:

Vertices:
Selects vertices that belong to wire and multiple face edges, isolated vertices, and vertices that belong to non-adjoining faces.

In the attempt not to repeat the good descriptions that exist elsewhere on this stack:

Wire edges: What are wire edges?
Multiple face edges:

Isolated vertices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertex_(graph_theory)#Types_of_vertices
Vertices which share non-adjoining faces:

N.B: if you hover over each option in the Select all by Trait menu you get a tooltip about each option:

This is all my best answer as to each scenario, if edits are required please go ahead


Color Only Non-Planar Faces Is there a technique to visualize the non-planar faces on a mesh. Similar to how the overlays panel allows an option to see "face orientation" in red or blue?

I don't think you can get that with standard tools. I would use a script to highlight (select in edit-mode) non coplanar faces:

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.active_object  # Get selected object

if obj:
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')  # Go into edit mode
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')  # Deselect everything

    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)  # Create bmesh object for easy mesh evaluation

    for f in bm.faces:  # Check all the faces
        # 3 points will always define a unique plane. We define its coordinates.
        A = f.verts[0]
        B = f.verts[1]
        C = f.verts[2]
        a1 = B.co.x - A.co.x
        b1 = B.co.y - A.co.y
        c1 = B.co.z - A.co.z
        a2 = C.co.x - A.co.x
        b2 = C.co.y - A.co.y
        c2 = C.co.z - A.co.z
        a = b1 * c2 - b2 * c1
        b = a2 * c1 - a1 * c2
        c = a1 * b2 - b1 * a2
        d = (- a * A.co.x - b * A.co.y - c * A.co.z)
        # Check if any point after the third one is a part of this plane (ie the distance to the plane is == 0)
        if len(f.verts) > 3:
            for v in f.verts[3::]:
                if a * v.co.x + b * v.co.y + c * v.co.z + d != 0:
                    f.select_set(True)  # If this vertex is not part of the base plane, select the face and break
                    break

    bmesh.update_edit_mesh(obj.data)

Illustration :

Also, if you want faces to highlight only if the vertices deviate from a certain threshold to to the base plane, you could insert it in the code :

Replace

if a * v.co.x + b * v.co.y + c * v.co.z + d != 0:

With

if abs(a * v.co.x + b * v.co.y + c * v.co.z + d) > 2 :  # Threshold

Note that this is not deterministic and could change depending on which vertices get evaluated to define the plane coordinates.

Further and further reading.


World appearing black For some reason, whenever I do a test render with Shift + Z, all I get is my character and the world is black. In the World properties, I have a Sky Texture with a strength of four, but it still shows as black. The only thing it effects is my character. Also, I'm wondering if this is related to why I can't get my character's shadows to render/show on a separate Render Layer...? I do have some Nodes set up, but deleting all of those hasn't fixed the issue, so I'm not sure if they're to blame.

Any advice?

I had this same issue with Blender 2.8

This worked for me :-

under View Layer tab, select Filter drop down and make sure that the Environment Checkbox is checked

Hope this helps


How to Add "px" as Unit to a Number Input? When I use the following line to add a number input:

row.prop(context.scene, 'output_size', text='Output size')

I get this result:

But my goal is to add "px" as a unit after the number like this:

The output_size should be an IntProperty that is declared with a subtype set to "PIXEL".

bpy.props.IntProperty(subtype="PIXEL")

bl_info = {
    "name": "Subtype example",
    "author": "Robert Guetzkow",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Sidebar > Example tab",
    "description": "Subtype example",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy

class ExampleSettings(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    output_size: bpy.props.IntProperty(description="Some elaborate description", default=1024, subtype="PIXEL")

class EXAMPLE_PT_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Panel"
    bl_category = "Example tab"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop(context.scene.example_settings, "output_size", text="Output size")

classes = (ExampleSettings, EXAMPLE_PT_panel)

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

def unregister():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)
    del bpy.types.Scene.example_settings

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


What are these small marks? What are these little marks on the arms of the model?

They randomly appeared after I pressed CTRL+V in Object Mode and I cant get rid of them, it also didn't let me undo so I'm kind of stuck.

Please take a look as marked with the red arrow;

Edges is seems to be pushed back, Try Alt + Click and bring it forward

Alternatively try, wireframe mode to view the all edges, by hitting Z key in edit mode or selecting Wireframe under viewport shading.


How to get accurate Z depth? I‘m struggling to render accurate depth maps of different 3D models using Cycles and was wondering  if anybody has/had similar problems and how she/he resolved them. I would greatly apprichiate help! :)

I attempted two different methods to obtain depth maps:
1) Via a camera node, exporting raw Z depth.
2) By rendering the Z pass and later convert them to paralell depths as in 1).
In both cases, I store the depth as OpenEXR files. It is my understanding that this is the go-to format in such cases as it is designed to store linear data and, thus, should not distort my Z depth information.

However, in both cases I run into the same problem: I still have inaccurate depth values. I experimented with a simple scene - just a flat plane that is fronto-paralell to the camera. On top of this plane I put a ramp. When rendering this simple scene, e.g. in case of 1), these inacuraccies manifest as staircase artefacts on the ramp.

The thing is, I need accurate Z depths to test my algorithms on this data. So I can't turn on anti-aliasing, since that would also smooth the depth boundaries between fore- and background objects.

EDIT:
blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/6241 & imgur.com/a/mj3JeTR

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Nici

If you want depth values that are parallel to the image plane, change the camera to orthographic projection. This will give accurate values in the Z-pass.

Edit:

Your error was having the file output node set to Float (Half) instead of Float (Full). Each file output node as its own settings! The reduced bit width resulted in the loss of precision.

Here is a little script for checking the values and displaying the normalized image. It requires OpenCV.

import cv2
import argparse

def image_values(path):
    """
    Print the pixel values of the column at the image center and display the normalized image.
    :param path: Path to image
    """
    print(path)
    img = cv2.imread(path, cv2.IMREAD_ANYDEPTH)
    (h, w) = img.shape
    print("image ({}, {})".format(h, w))
    img2 = cv2.normalize(img, None, 0., 1., cv2.NORM_MINMAX)
    for y in range(h):
            print("({},{}): {}".format(int(w/2), y, img[y, int(w/2)]))
    cv2.imshow('image', img2)
    cv2.waitKey(0)
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Analyze image values")
    parser.add_argument("--src", type=str, help="Image to load.", required=True)
    args = parser.parse_args()
    image_values(args.src)


How do I model the secondary reflection coming from the inside of the back surface of glass? This is not a duplicate of the tricky glass shader question.1 The tricky glass shader does not handle the features of this scene.

I've been trying to render an image to match the glass in the original photograph and failing. I've tried materials based on using the "tricky glass" glass and transparency nodes as well as materials based on using the refraction and glossy nodes. I've tried using Fresnel input and light paths to control mixes. I can get close with some fairly complex shaders but none of them do the job.

Below is the original photograph
and a recent render
.

I am aware of the modeling and lighting differences and haven't added the dirt and smudge textures yet. Taking those into account, there is still room for improvement.

The two problems that I am concentrating on right now:

Why is the glass so dark compared to the lazy susan?

How do I model reflections coming from the inside of the back face of the glass?

I can't share the original blend file because of licensing restrictions, but I have stripped out the licensed bits and can share that blend file.

Don't use Clamping (especially with such a low value of 1). It prevents the lights from being simulated realistically in something as complex as glass. Turning on Caustics also helps.

Here are some render comparison:

To me, the glass material is unnecessarily complex, unless you have a good reason to use it (for dispersion, etc), I suggest you looking into the Principled Shader. With one shader, we can achieve even better caustics and faster renders.


how do I make my textured objects look textured in my render? As you can see on this top image it looks textured. This is in textured mode in the Eevee engine and it looks exactly the same in Cycles.

This Image is what it looks like if it was rendered. It looks very different because it has no texture besides the brick texture. How do I make it look like the textured version?

Under the render panel/tab you must select to bake "Combined." My error was that I selected "Diffuse"