How do I scale from one side side only? How do I scale from one side side only?

I want to keep the left side of a object in place, but scale it smaller from the right.

See this screen shot:

I want it to end up like this:

But I had to scale and move to get that.

Set the Pivot Point to 3D Cursor and the 3D Cursor to the end that should not move while scaling.

For an exact position you may want to snap the 3D Cursor to the selection (Mesh -> Snap -> Cursor to Selection).


Can only select one metaball any others are only conneteced to the first Hi when I add in metaballs only one can be selected and moved, moving it rotates the other balls, and I can't move the others, this is only with metaballs. Here's a video showing what I mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMSJwpvO9PE&feature=youtu.be

Meta-objects, like many other objects, have an edit mode. In edit mode you can create more meta-objects that are part of the first, and will be transformed all together when they are transformed in object mode.

Meta-objects will still stick together regardless of the whether they have been created in object or edit mode


How to wrap tape around a object? So via the use of Curves > Curve spirals > Archimedian I've made the following:

Now I want to wrap the tape around the handle to fit the baseball bat mesh perfectly... problem is I can't seem to figure it out. I tried using Shrinkwrap but I only get the following:

It seems to join with my mess to mess it up. Anyway on how to do this but not manually scaling?

With pivot set to '3D Cursor', assuming the length of your baseball bat is in Z, and with the 'Loop Tools' built-in Add On enabled ...

Select a transverse edge loop near the bottom of your tape winding
ShiftS 'Cursor to Selected'
Select a vertical set of vertices spanning the height you will want your spiral

ShiftD duplicate that span (in real life,
right-click to leave it where it is, on the surface of your object)
W > Subdivide the selection. In the tool region, adjust the count to create as many vertices as you will eventually want on your spiral... (total turns * vertices per turn).

With the vertices in the profile selected, use W > Loop Tools > Space to distribute them evenly along your profile.
O .. switch on Proportional Editing. Set the Falloff Type to 'Linear'... Select the bottom vertex of your profile alone ... hit RZ.  Using the scroll-wheel, adjust the range of your proportional edit to include the top vertex of your profile.

With each wind of your mouse around the 3D cursor, you will introduce a new turn on your spiral, conforming to the surface of the bat.

Instead of doing this interactively, you could assign a Simple Deform > Twist modifier to the profile, which does the exact same thing. Set Axis to Z, and  Angle set to 360 * your number of turns. That way you can go back and adjust it later, if you need to.


How do I model this curvy spiral staircase? Can't figure out how to model this curvy spiral staircase. I initially tried freehanding it, but to no avail. I tried to figure out something with curves or the screw modifier, but it didn't work.

It seems like there should be an elegant way to do this, but I can't figure it out.

Well I think this is just supposed to be a spiral staircase, a fairly simple helix.

One way to model it would be to make a square "U" shape with three edges (e.g. delete one edge of a plane).  Rotate it so it's as shown in the image below (make sure to apply your rotation) and you'll want to offset the origin, in Edit Mode, just select the vertices and move G them to one side, which will leave the origin in place.

Then just add a Screw modifier as shown. I have set the Angle to negative to get the helix to twist the direction I want.

Edit: as per @Duarte Farrajota Ramos, an Edge Split modifier would be a good addition to distinguish between the sharp angles and the smoother surfaces.


Why this script doesn't run as expected? I want to have a function which deselects currently selected objects, selects a passed object, runs a callback function and then restores the selection.
For example in my scene I have two objects Red and Blue. I select the Red object, run this script:

context = bpy.context
data = bpy.data
red = data.objects['Red']
blue = data.objects['Blue']

def select_run_deselect(obj, callback):
    """Selects given obj, runs callback and restores selection"""
    selected_objects = context.selected_objects
    active_object = context.active_object
    #Deselect selected objects.
    for s in selected_objects:
        s.select_set(False)
    #Select given object.
    obj.select_set(True)
    context.view_layer.update()
    #Run callback.
    callback()
    #Restore selection
    obj.select_set(False)
    for obj in selected_objects:
        obj.select_set(True)
    active_object.select_set(True)

select_run_deselect(blue, lambda: print(context.active_object.name))

and expect the output to be "Blue", but it prints "Red" instead.

Set the active object with

context.view_layer.objects.active = obj

The active object can be active and unselected.


Bones symmetrize the wrong way? So I made this left side of the rig and I want to symmetrize it to the other side but I get this result? I've been trying to fix it but couldn't get it to work. Some help would be amazing!

The symmetry operation will happen on the armature's local X axis, but you probably rotated it 90° on its Z axis in Object mode, so the local X axis is not aligned with the global orientation any more. So cancel the symmetry, apply the rotation (CtrlA) and symmetrize again.


"Toggle Window Fullscreen" Hotkey missing in 2.8? On 2.79 i used to click alt+F11 if i remember correctly.On 2.8 i cannot find,even on Preferences/Keymap tab,a way to check or assign a key to this specific command..

Only way to toggle it is from Window topbar,as in picture

I even tried to search on keymap the word "full",and this is the result,that specific command is missing it seems...Is it even possible ?Is there another way i can manually assign it ?Cant find anything online about this specific command

In the Window menu, right click on "Toggle Window Fullscreen", then select "Assign Shortcut". Press the shortcut you want, and it's done.

Of course, this works with every menu element.


Dynamically assign a value to game property I am trying to make a weapon sight Dynamically scale depending on how far away the target is.

                                   Desired effect

However right now it does not scale. the sight stays the same because there the distance property does not change.

(the action it plays is simply an animation of the sight scaling with frame 1 really big and frame 100 very small)

Logic setup for sight.

The sight is on an overlay scene.
I already have a ray being cast from the camera and a script to move an empty to the hit position of the ray. The guns then tracks to that empty so it will always fire to the center of the screen. However the problem occurs when I try to get the distance between the world position of the camera, and the world position of the empty and assign it to the property Distance.

My question is this:

How can I get the distance between the camera's world position  and the empty's world position and assign that value to a game property?

always ------------This python

it will set distance.

import bge
from mathutils import Vector
cont = bge.logic.getCurrentConroller()

own = cont.owner

offset = Vector([100,0,0])

offset = own.worldPosition+(own.worldOrienation*offset)

##offset now is a point 100 units out on the objects x axis

Ray = own.rayCast(offset , own.worldPosition, 0, '',0,0,0)
## cast a ray to the offset point, 0 units past, looking for any property, not xray and
##  Not returning polydata

if Ray[0]:
## if you hit something
    own['Distance'] = own.getDistanceTo(Ray[1])
## if you dont hit something
else:
    own['Distance'] = own.getDistanceTo(offset)

about scale

in object

always--------------and------------copy distance from raycaster

Distance is changed------python below

import bge
cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own=cont.owner

own.localScale =[1-own['Distance']*.01,1-own['Distance']*.01,1-own['Distance']*.01]

Note,

Ray[1] = world Position Where Ray hit
Ray[0] = who it hit

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34899


How to set up accuracy of edge length overlay? Is there a way to somehow increase a number of digits in the fractional part of the edge length? For example, real length of the edge on the picture is 1.215mm. What can I do to make Blender display this length without rounding it off?

While it is not possible to increase the precision of the "Edge Length" overlay (as far as i know and after searching), there is a way to have a precise value displayed, BUT it's not "as easy" available and intuitive as activating the edge length.

What you may want to try is the "MeasureIT"-addon which comes with Blender.

It allows you to create a dynamic measurements.
I use Segment most the time to show the distance between 2 vertices (picture below).

As shown, the precision is set to 4 decimals after the point.

Expanding the shown measurement shows this:

Here you can deactivate it, change the color, size of the text, distance from object and many more things. Best to test and play around with to get the feel.

I hope it helps for your situation.


Can't turn off x-ray? I've somehow turned x-ray on for all objects in my project, or so it seems.
No matter which object I put in front of the others I will look right through all the layers of objects until I see the last object in the line.

I still see the objects in front, but when there's an object behind the "front-object", then I look through the front-object and see the objects behind it as if they were in front.

If I'm only looking at a single object (in this case a 3D-object), then I don't see the face I'm looking at, but I see the backside and the sides.

When I use the Blender Render, there's no problem, but when I switch to Blender Game Engine and press play, then I look through everything.

What is the problem?

Here are 4 examples of my problem:

you need to deactivate the X-RAY box in each object, I do not know exactly what could be the cause of this because you did not put a reference image and the information is very poor although it basically describes the problem

change this and correct another part of what is still seen with transparency, you have many errors not related to the question, it is no longer a question of only one answer, it has become a cluster of answers not directly related

to the animals, uncheck the box backface culling, in the tab Color / Game Settings / backface culling, in the Object / Display / Maximum Draw Type tab, all objects need are in SOLID


correct cycles node arrangement Good Afternoon! anyone have any suggestions on the correct node arrangement here? I've tried a couple but nothing is working. Thank you in advance for your help!

Here is how it is supposed to look. this pic is from Noesis, a program used for viewing and exporting game .DATs

here is the unrendered view in blender

here is the rendered view, and wherein the problem lies. I appreciate the help my friends!

EDIT: here is the .blend and textures
https://mega.nz/#F!zaxGCaCa!d09bEVsqxvSnL9_AoRMZSw

The exporter you are using, seems to have some problems:

First the alpha-channel for the texture with the bricks is wrong. The alpha channel with the bricks is set to transparent whereas it should be opaque.

While this could be controlled with a node setup, the bigger flaw is that the wall consist of two meshes, each with a plane occupying the same space which leads to z-fighting -

leading to artefacts in the final render.

To get to the final render I set up the nodes for alpha channel in cycles like explained in "How to apply textures with alpha channel?"

The problem with z-fighting is described here.

If you need to get this to work, I suggest, you clean up the geometry of the wall (remove the overlapping part, probably needs a fix for the UV-mapping as well) and set up the nodes with transparency to account for the alpha-channel, while excluding the brick texture.


Bump map painting does not work Painting the Bump map does not work in Texture Painting mode. I can see the normals I painted just after rendering, but not in 3D view. For my bump map texture I enabled Geometry Normal and disabled Diffuse Color, but still no bumps in preview. Does anyone got an idea how I can got bumps in 3D preview?

You need to switch the viewport shading to Texture, or press AltZ in 3D View.

There are generally five things that you should keep in mind to make sure bump effect can be previewed in the 3D Viewport, as shown below:

Regarding that, you just missed the 4th one. :)


Creating a cone that has depth with spherical dimples that are on the inside mesh only How can a create a cone with recessed spherical dimples on the inside mesh only (dimples similar to a golf ball).

I can create a cone with depth using the solidify modifier but how can I create recessed spherical dimples on the inside of the cone only?

Please note: this is going to be 3D printed so I need to have some depth.

Example of the dimples I'm trying to get on the inside mesh of the cone.

What you could do is: Create the pattern, repeat it on the X and Z axis with an Array modifier, create a second wall that will be the outside wall, give the object a Simple Deform modifier (Bend mode an 360°) to make it a cylinder. Keep a copy of the object somewhere, apply the the modifiers, join the top and bottom rims with a Bridge Edge Loops. Remove the doubles and clean the mesh. Now give the cylinder a Mesh Deform modifier with a cube as Object, scale and move down the top face of the cube so that it gives you a cone shape.

Problem with this solution is that the pattern tends to squeeze from the bottom to the top as the cone’s radius decreases. To avoid that you could first apply the 2 Array modifiers then move down the top edge with Proportional Editing enabled (Linear mode) so that it linearly squeezes the whole wall on the Z axis. Then give it the Simple Deform and Mesh Deform. This operation will compensate the Mesh Deform squeeze.


Load camera track from an external file (by Python script) what I need is to import a camera track from an external file and to do this in a Python script.
The external track is a sequence of camera poses (location + rotation) in world coordinates.
How to do this in Blender Python? Since the Camera Solver uses a constraint to do this, I was wondering if I have to use something similar, but I am not sure (and if not, why the camera solver uses a constraint?).

I know I can add to the camera a (location + rotation) keyframe for each frame, that is what I already did, but I am wondering why the camera solver does not do this and why and, as a consequence, if there is some reason I am not considering that makes the use of a constraint a better solution to keyframes. Blender devs added a specific constraint type for this, there must be a reason.

Something similar to this works for me, didn't test if this code runs without errors, but it may help you

import bpy
import numpy as np
dirPath = "C:/Users/examplepath/examplepath/examplepath/camera.blend/Object/"
nameList = ['Camera0','Camera1','Camera2','Camera3']

# [euler0, euler1, euler2, x, y, z]
cam0 = [77.487, -0.000244, 91.4015, 13.6156, 0.094522, 2.19869]
cam1 = [70.2677, -0.000819, 173.623, 1.1328, 11.1731, 3.33687]
cam2 = [85.5084, 0.000169, -90.6852, -12.8706, 0.355527, 1.29131]
cam3 = [74.6794, -0.002039, 11.1926, 3.2923, -15.5643, 4.444]

camList = [cam0, cam1, cam2, cam3]

def setupCamera(scene, c):
    pi = np.pi

    scene.camera.rotation_euler[0] = c[0] * (pi / 180.0)
    scene.camera.rotation_euler[1] = c[1] * (pi / 180.0)
    scene.camera.rotation_euler[2] = c[2] * (pi / 180.0)

    scene.camera.location.x = c[3]
    scene.camera.location.y = c[4]
    scene.camera.location.z = c[5]

    return

# Append cameras to the scene
for i in range(nameList.__len__()):
    bpy.ops.wm.append(filename=nameList[i], directory=dirPath)

scene = bpy.data.scenes["Scene"]

for i in range(camList.__len__()):
    bpy.ops.object.camera_add()
    newCamera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
    newCamera.name = 'c' + str(i)

    newCamera.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    scene.camera = newCamera

    config = camList[i]
    setupCamera(scene=scene, c=config)


Ink on Porous Paper or Water Bleed Effect I have seen some rather incredible results out there using smoke and dynamic paint, and as such, I am curious if anyone can come up with a clever simulation of ink onto paper, or, closely, ink into water.

Brief

Should create the look and effect of ink landing onto paper and dispersing via capillary action into the paper's texture.
It must be accomplished in 3D via Cycles, and be modifiable / controllable.
It should trace basic forms and result in an interpretable series of glyphs or shape.

Sample

The following video is very close to the goal, with the potential to not bind quite as tightly to the water's path:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_zbcVs419E#t=2m20s

Here is another sample of the fractal-like expansion as the ink spreads through the medium. Very similar to ink landing on very thin tissue paper:

https://youtu.be/Nox0EFM0xow

Here is another of ink onto parchment. Ideally the effect would be possible to get in closer for a macro shot to observe the actual dispersion through the paper:

http://www.gettyimages.ca/license/181844542

I figure one of the clever minds around here would be able to generate something close to a viable solution.

After messing with settings.

Basics:

To achieve 'ink drop on paper' effect we will be using Fluid System and Dynamic Paint. Fluid gives us nice control over drop shape. Blender units are used in this answer.

Set up:

Plane with dimensions 8x8 - this is our 'paper' - it must be subdivided number of times (higher is better) I'm using 2 Subsfurf modifiers, first set to 6 and second to 2 both set as Simple, they need to be over the Dynamic Paint modifier.
Sphere (16 segments, 8 rings, 0.3 size), moved by 3 units over Z axis (G > Z > 3) - this is our drop.
With selected Sphere hit Space search for Quick Fluid and apply.
Select Domain and Scale/Position it to cover whole plane.

Fluid:

Select 'paper' (plane) and in Properties tab choose Physics then select Fluid and set Type to Obstacle. Decrease Slip Type Amount to 0.1
Select Domain and under Fluid World > Viscosity Presets set Base to 2 and Exponent to 3. Under Fluid Boundry set Slip Type > Amount to 0.03

Exponent is very important here, if you want to preserve shape of your fluid you will need to set it to 0, and if you want to have random splatter set it higher.

Another important thing in Fluid Domain is Resolution, we will be using here 65 for preview but higher will give much better results

Dynamic Paint:

Brush

With selected Domain add Dynamic Paint (Physics tab).
Set Dynamic Paint to Brush and then Add Brush.
Change color if you want.
Under Dynamic Paint Source set Paint Source to Proximity, Falloff to Color Ramp and set Color Ramp as in the picture below:

Canvas

Select our 'paper' (plane) go to Physics tab and add Dynamic Paint > Canvas > Add Canvas.
Under Dynamic Paint Advanced set Dry Time to 25.
Under Dynamic Paint Initial Color choose Color and set it as you like.
Under Dynamic Paint Effects check Use Spread and set it to 0.5 then go to Drip and check it as well (it will give us control over the splatter by force fields).

Force field:

Add Force Field > Turbulence and set it to Strenght 10 and Flow 1.
Bake your fluid and play animation.

Domain and Fluid are hidden here.

Fluid resolution - 128 and some other sligt changes. This is from .blend file.

Final thoughts:

There are many things to play with in order to get higher resolution/better looking effect as I mentioned it above. Fluid resolution, mesh (paper) subdivision, substeps in Canvas. You could change Influance Scale and Radius Scale under Canvas > Dynamic Paint Advanced to have 'lighter look' of ink. It's all up to you. Now when you know the method it will be fun to mess with it.

Blend file:


Information about blender and its computer how r u, please can you me that which computer is best for Blender 2.8 for best result and which computer you use, What is specification of your computer, waiting for reply, thanks

Please follow this link to the Blender 2.8 Beta Hardware requirements page.
https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/

Hope that answers your question. If not, please come back!


Tracked video not showing in the 3D viewport in rendered mode When I try to composite this with my cg object it doesn't work. After completing the tracking I have set the tracking scene, but the video behind doesn't works or shows while in render mode(cycles).

but as you can see it does shows the tracker point but both things doesn't composite.

This is my node setup in the compositor.

To have a transparent background in the render layer, enable Film  Transparent.
I checked into the compositor and transparent render would have the checker background as shown here:

(For 2.7x)


The axes when I move/rotate/scale is different from those of the world I must've touched something wrong so my axes are acting weird. It seems like the axes are heading towards where the object is facing. How do I make them the same with the world axes?

You can choose whatever transform orientation you want to use instead of Local. if you are constraining transforms to some axis with shortcuts x, y, z or middle mouse button, you can just hit it again with Local orientation set to temporarily use global orientation anyway:

This works the other way around if you have global orientation selected as well.


How to find out if an object has an action with Python? How can I use Python to find out if all the selected objects have an action and do something then? If one or more of the selected objects don't have an action, I'd like to print an info/error message saying that "All the selected objects must have an action.".

It's easy to check if an object has shape keys or materials but Terminal says object of type 'Action' has no len()if I try to do this:

import bpy

o = bpy.context.object

if o.animation_data.action:
    num_of_actions = len( o.animation_data.action )
    print( "Number of actions: ", num_of_actions )

This helps a little bit but isn't the answer to my problem.

This is the best I can do (had some help from Jeremy for the logic bricks):

# This adds the logic bricks to objects that allow them to be playable in BGE, but only to the selected objects that have an action. Actionless objects are ignored.
# Credit goes mostly to Jeremy Behreandt

import bpy

frames_to_be_played = 9999

ops=bpy.ops
context=bpy.context

# Cache shortcuts.
ops_mesh = ops.mesh
ops_object = ops.object
ops_logic = ops.logic
scene = context.scene

selected = bpy.context.selected_objects

for obj in selected:
    ad = obj.animation_data
    if ad:
        if ad.action:
            bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj

            current_object = context.active_object

            # Cache shortcut to cube's game engine.
            game_engine = current_object.game

            # Add sensor.
            ops_logic.sensor_add(type='ALWAYS')
                                 #name='Always')
                                 #object=cube_name)
            sensor = game_engine.sensors[-1]

            # Add controller.
            ops_logic.controller_add(type='LOGIC_AND')
                                     #name='And')
                                     #object=cube_name)
            controller = game_engine.controllers[-1]

            # Add actuator.
            ops_logic.actuator_add(type='ACTION')
                                   #name='Action',
                                   #object=cube_name)
            actuator = game_engine.actuators[-1]

            # Set actuator action to cube's animation data action.
            actuator.action = current_object.animation_data.action

            # Play mode options are:
            # ['PLAY', 'PINGPONG', 'FLIPPER', 'LOOPSTOP', 'LOOPEND', 'PROPERTY']
            # 'PLAY' is the default.
            #actuator.play_mode = play_mode

            # Set frame end to scene end.
            #actuator.frame_end = scene.frame_end
            actuator.frame_end = frames_to_be_played

            # Link logic together.
            sensor.link(controller)
            actuator.link(controller)

The above script puts the logic bricks to the objects that have an action and ignores the ones that don't have an action, which is good, but not what I'm after.

The ideal case would be to cancel the whole process if even one of the selected objects is missing an action. And notify about that with a message by using this method, which is this snippet code:

import bpy

class RENDER_OT_test(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'render.actionerrormessage'
    bl_label = 'actionErrorMessage'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, 'Cancelling... All the selected objects must have an action.')
        return {'FINISHED'}

bpy.utils.register_class(RENDER_OT_test) # test call to the newly defined operator bpy.ops.render.actionerrormessage() - try out by running the script and pressing spacebar and typing actionErrorMessage

My friend managed to achieve this with a bit nicer code than my artistic approach :)

GitHub link

Code:

import bpy

#########################################################
# INSERT ACTION LOGIC BRICKS TO SELECTED OBJECTS SCRIPT #
#########################################################

#########################################################
# Note:
#
# Each of the selected objects must have a transform
# (Location/Rotation/Scale) action (animation/keyframes)
# before running this script. The action can be empty.
# Otherwise nothing will be inserted to the objects.
#########################################################

############
# Settings #
############

action_brick_start_frame = 0

action_brick_end_frame = 9999

# action_brick_end_frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_end
# Uncomment to set the Action Logic Brick end frame to be
# the end frame of the Timeline.

#############################################################
# Make sure that each of the selected objects has an action #
# Credit goes mostly to Sakari Ekroth                       #
#############################################################

selection = bpy.context.selected_objects
noActionObjs = []
for obj in selection:
  if not obj.animation_data or not obj.animation_data.action:
    noActionObjs.append(obj.name)

if len(noActionObjs) > 0:
  print ("Objects missing action: %s" % ", ".join(noActionObjs))
  def oops(self, context):
      self.layout.label("All of the selected objects must have an action. Cancelling... ")

  bpy.context.window_manager.popup_menu(oops, title="Error", icon='ERROR')
  print("All of the selected objects must have an action. Cancelling... ")

####################################################################
# The following adds the Logic Bricks to objects that allow them to
# be playable in Blender Game Engine, but only to the selected
# objects that have an action. Actionless objects are ignored.
# Credit goes mostly to Jeremy Behreandt
####################################################################

else:
  print("Inserting some Logic Bricks to the selected objects")
  ops = bpy.ops
  context = bpy.context

  # Cache shortcuts.
  ops_mesh = ops.mesh
  ops_object = ops.object
  ops_logic = ops.logic
  scene = context.scene

  for obj in selection:
    if obj.animation_data and obj.animation_data.action:

      bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
      current_object = context.active_object
      # Cache shortcut to cube's game engine.
      game_engine = current_object.game

      # Add sensor.
      ops_logic.sensor_add(type = "ALWAYS")
                            #name='Always')
                            #object=cube_name)
      sensor = game_engine.sensors[-1]

      # Add controller.
      ops_logic.controller_add(type = "LOGIC_AND")
                                #name='And')
                                #object=cube_name)
      controller = game_engine.controllers[-1]

      # Add actuator.
      ops_logic.actuator_add(type = "ACTION")
                              #name='Action',
                              #object=cube_name)
      actuator = game_engine.actuators[-1]

      # Set actuator action to cube's animation data action.
      actuator.action = current_object.animation_data.action

      # Play mode options are:
      # ['PLAY', 'PINGPONG', 'FLIPPER', 'LOOPSTOP', 'LOOPEND', 'PROPERTY']
      # 'PLAY' is the default.
      #actuator.play_mode = play_mode

      # Set frame start to scene end.
      actuator.frame_start = action_brick_start_frame

      # Set frame end to scene end.
      actuator.frame_end = action_brick_end_frame

      # Link logic together.
      sensor.link(controller)
      actuator.link(controller)


Material colour in BGE is different I highlighted the colour that i would like to get and the
colour on my loading screen in BGEngine. They are different!
 is it possible to have the same colour as from material panel?
Followed the advice of Crantisz, but still have  another colour (2nd screenshot)

The reason that you have different color - is shading. Shading model adds shadows and specular to the model, so color changes.

If you set material shading to shadless, and viewport shading display mode to Material, you will get exact same color as you set to diffuse.


Python script help - assign certain materials to some particular objects First post here. Using Blender 2.8 and learning the basic of scripting. Can someone help me with a assigning certain materials to some particular objects. Any help would be great, many thanks.

import bpy
objects = bpy.data.objects

material_01 = bpy.data.materials['red_material']
material_02 = bpy.data.materials['blue_material']
material_03 = bpy.data.materials['yellow_material']

for obj in objects:
    if 'Object_cube1' in obj.name:
        obj.data.materials[0] = material_01

for obj in objects:
    if 'Object_cube2' in obj.name:
        obj.data.materials[0] = material_02

for obj in objects:
    if 'Object_cube3' in obj.name:
        obj.data.materials[0] = material_03

for obj in objects:
    if 'Object_cube4' in obj.name:
        obj.data.materials[0] = material_01

Using get(name) and startswith(...)

Using the get method of a collection, objects and materials in this case,  if an object doesn't exist with  name it returns None which is boolean false.

Here I've made a helper method, and added a call to add default material "Material" to default cube object "Cube" or any name other starting with it, eg "Cube.001", but not "BigCube"

Taken a punt that you are looking for objects that start with those names, for which startswith is ideal.

import bpy

def assign_mat(ob_name, mat_name):
    mat = bpy.data.materials.get(mat_name)
    obs = [o for o in bpy.data.objects if o.name.startswith(ob_name)]
    for ob in obs:
        if mat:
            ob.data.materials[0] = mat
    return obs and mat

if assign_mat("Cube", "Material"):
    print("assigned Material to Cube[*]")

Recommend something like

pairs = (("Cube", "Material"),
         ("Blob", "BlobMaterial.001"),
         ("Cone", "Material"),
        )

for ob_name, mat_name in pairs:
    assign_mat(ob_name, mat_name)

If nothing is assigned

if not any(assign_mat(ob_name, mat_name) for ob_name, mat_name in pairs):
    print("Assigned Nothing????")


The next background image is not updated when I press on the button to go to the next frame I'm trying to make this tutorial :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmZ0gVLTTB4&t=180s

Go to minute 3:00,please. He loaded a list of png files and he gone until the last one. When he pressed the button to go on the latest frame,the background image on the 3D window of blender has been changed with the latest image on the list. I did the same,but in my case if I press the button to go on the next frame,I see always the first image of the list. Do you know why ? thanks.

PS : I added my blender file.

Not sure how many images are in your folder but you selected to just show 2 of them. Try bump up the number and see if it works. Your file did not have any images so could only test with my own samples but it works as advertised...


Facial movements distort the face of the character when auto-rigged in mixamo I tried to upload my exported model in mixamo and did an auto-rig. All the other parts seemed to be rigged nicely, apart from the face and the hair. As they move, the hair and head get distorted weirdly… Now, I have a list of questions :
A. I tried to export the auto-rigged mesh to blender again to see what is the problem. Would this be something to do with weight painting? Should I consider rigging without the hair and then parenting the hair to the head bone after the rigging is done? At this stage, I am not considering for a face rig, but just be able to have my mesh to replicate all the animations from mixamo so that I can use it in game engines.
B. Another factor that I am considering which might have caused this problem is that all the modifiers were not applied before the export from blender. Would this be the part of the problem?
C. Last but not least, when I uploaded the obj. file in mixamo initially, all the materials were lost. How do I import the mesh into mixamo with the materials and textures that I used to have in blender?
Here is the project file extracted from mixamo : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZm-1OJrRbtS6YWrBGpbd0CydHZA3zZl/view?usp=sharing[![enter image description here]1]1

Im not sure about the distortion, but if you want your materials to show up in Mixamo just take the .obj and the .mtl of the model and zip them. (select both files, right click, --> send to ---> Compressed Zip) Then upload the entire zipped folder in Mixamo


Why is the shoulder moving when I move the left forearm bone? I am trying to assign the weights of my armature to the mesh figure so I can create an animation. I'm not completely done yet but I noticed that when I'm in pose mode, once I move the left forearm, part of the right shoulder and the head move as well. Why is the the shoulder mesh moving when I move the forearm in pose mode?
blender file

Select the mesh, activate the two little buttons on the armature modifier so that it shows its effetc also in edit mode, then move the forearm in pose mode. Back to the mesh in edit mode select one of the vertices that is movin weird: in the "N" properties panel you will see that they have some weight from forearm bone (maybe 0.000001) and expecially from the f_pinky03.L bone: thoose weights are causing the unwanted deformation. So select all the weird vertices and remove all weights to have everything fine.

Remember that even a very tiny weight, if it's not "balanced" by another bigger one, will cause a big movement, because Blender does an automatic normalisation between all assigned weights.


Random text in a text Block Animation Nodes I know how to input text with animation nodes and make it appear randomly and typed, but I can not figure this out with a text block reader.  Is there a way to use say 5 paragraphs from a text block, and have the letters all randomize in the text block.  Currently when I use the text block and get length, it does not include the line breaks so It is one long line on its own.

So these 1's and 0's are all randomly generated, but say I want a line break every 38 characters, I can not figure out how to get that without having individual text input for every line.

I would like the text block to look like this but have all the 1's and 0's randomly genereate continually.

You can generate lines individually then join them using a line break as follow:


How to separate hollow cylinder into rectangular cubes I have a hollow cylinder shown below. How do I cut them into rectangular pieces? I tried the seprate by loose parts but it doesn't work since all objects are in a single mesh.

You can achieve a more flexible result by using array modeifier. You can easily change all the pieces by editing one piece and changing the gap between pieces as you like.

First apply the solidify modifier and the create a piece of cube by deleting the rest as

After doing this add faces on two sides of the mesh by selecting edges around and pressing F

Now you have one piece of rectangle. Now add an empty -> Plain axes in the origin of the mesh. This empty will be used to rotate the array around the centre to create a perfect circle. So add it in the origin of the mesh that we have now.

Now add an array modifier in the mesh and uncheck object offset and check on relative offset and select the empty we created in object offset field. this will let us use empty we just created to control the mesh.

Now we can rotate the empty on Z axis to create as much gapping as we want between the pieces. You can play with the array count to create a cylinder like mesh with the rectangles.enter image description here

You can apply the array modifier and change individual pieces if that is what you want. I hope this helps.


Problem with my rig, the feet stick to the ground I'm a beginner and I'm following a tutorial but
the 3D person I try to rig has his feet stick to the ground and deform them.
What should I do ?
The project : https://pasteall.org/blend/55639e03aefb4f9fa2b227da6732c238
Thanks !

You need to select the bones called Bone.033.L and Bone.033.R and enable their Deform option (or assign these parts to the feet bones):

Actually you must have enabled the Deform option when you've parented, then you must have disabled it, it would have been better not to enable in the first place so that it was not taken into account during the parenting, IK controllers are not supposed to deform the mesh.
So it would be more logical to keep the Deform option disabled and assign this part to the foot bone.


How to wrap up an independent blender application with customized UI for clients who do not need to install blender? Suppose I create an blender application in blender: a default block with block parameter buttons from pressing "N" on the keyboard, as shown in Figure 1.

           Figure 1

So, users can change the parameters for different block views.

How can I wrap up the application with those parameter buttons only as a package (say, exe or msi or some other file) as shown in Figure 2

           Figure 2

for end users who don't need to install Blender. The end users just simply install the application, run it and get into the customized UI (Figure 2).

I have googled the web for it but no luck. Probably I used wrong keywords for googling.

Any suggestions?

Thank you very much in advance.

ouyang

This is possible without any significant modifications.

Download blender (the zipfile version)
Add your own 2.72/config/startup.blend, userpref.blend(depending on your configuration these files may have to be copied out of your personal settings into a directory relative to blender.exesee: https://www.blender.org/manual/installing_blender/directorylayout.html)
modify startup.blend so the view is organized as you like (you can match the view you've created fairly easily).
Any other runtime customizations you can add to a Python script in a text block (enable register, so it loads on startup).

You may also want to:

Disable the splash screen: Preferences -> Interface -> Show Splash
Rename blender.exe
Change the icon (shouldn't be so hard with a recourse editor, you could also make a custom build).


Proportional edit mode can't be activated Need to grab that selected vertex that you can see on the screenshot using "Proportional Editing". However, even though I activated this mode, every time when I press "G" and try to grab the vertex, the circle of proportional editing does not appear. Initially, there was a thought that circle is large a little bit so I was trying to use a scroll to make it more small, but there is not circle at all. How to solve this issue?

3D cursor should be aligned with the object you edit.


Blender Python convert units to imperial I'm writing a script that needs to make geometry using imperial units. The scene is set to imperial however this has no effect on Pythons end of things. I need to know the value that equates to an inch when using traslate functions.

Note this is not a duplicate of another question asking to get imperial lengh from Blender units.

If it isn't a duplicate q, the answer can certainly be gleaned from the q marked as dupe Is there a bpy function to convert from blender units to Imperial?

scale /= 0.3048  # BU to feet

which pretty much comes from 1bu = 1 metre

import bpy
import space_view3d_panel_measure as pm
scene = bpy.context.scene
uinfo = pm.getUnitsInfo()

def bu_to_inches(scene, d):
    scale = scene.unit_settings.scale_length
    # 1bu = 1 / 0.3048 ft
    return 12 * scale * d / 0.3048

def inches_to_bu(scene, d):
    return d / bu_to_inches(scene, 1)

# 1 bu in scene units
x = pm.convertDistance(1, uinfo)
print(x)
# 1 bu in inches
x = bu_to_inches(scene, 1)
print(x)

# 12.33 bu in scene units
x = pm.convertDistance(12.33, uinfo)
print(x)
# 12.33 bu in inches
x = bu_to_inches(scene, 12.33)
print(x)
# how many inches 12.33 bu is to bu
print(inches_to_bu(scene, x))
# how many bu 1 inch is
print(inches_to_bu(scene, 1))


Auto save images along with .blend Blender has a very irritating quirk in which it fails to save an image that you have painted on, when the .blend is saved. To fix this you have to remember to use "save as image", before you save the .blend. Is there anyway to automatically save the image when saving the .blend?

P.S.

A script free solution(or a script that runs whenever I save, no matter which button/keyboard short cut.)would be of great value!

This sample code will save external images before saving to .blend (overwrites the originals):

bl_info = {
    "name": "Auto-save external images",
    "author": "CoDEmanX",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 67, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Save image datablocks on saving .blend",
    "warning": "Works on external images only!",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "System"}

import bpy

def save_external_images(dummy):
    for img in bpy.data.images:
        img.save()

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.save_pre.append(save_external_images)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.save_pre.remove(save_external_images)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Make sure you enable this addon by default!

It does not work on internal image datablocks, unless you extent above code to save to an external file or maybe pack internally.


How to texture paint a mesh while it's transparent? So I finished modelling my mesh for a spaceship and moved on to texture painting it. The problem is that I'm following the design of an image in the background and I cannot see it while painting as the mesh is black. Is there some way to make it transparent so I can see the image while painting or...?

If it's just about seeing a reference image, which you loaded in as a Background image to a view, you can set the display of it to 'Front'. It's the Button under the 'Opacity' slider, by default it is set to 'Back':


Rigging Sphere with Hair to a cylinder with bones I'm having no luck parenting the below picture.

I have a sphere on top with hair (in orange) I have a arm with bones/armature. I'm able to parent the bones but I'm unable to connect the sphere with hair. Basically I want the sphere with hair to be locked to the arm and have the arm use the bones.
Any assistance would be appreciated. thank you!

Ok, i figured it out..
You need to follow the instructions on this video starting at 20 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5f18T7Rjmc
Basically you need to in object mode select the sphere with hair, then select the armature. Go to Post mode and select the bone you want the sphere hair to connect to. cntrl-p select bone.
done.


Adding more than one character using ManuelBastioniLab is there a way to create more than one character in the same scene by using MBLab? When I create the first one I do not not have the "Create Character " available anymore. I need to add more than one character and they need to have active pose as they need to be set accordingly.
Thanks for any help

I just tried it in a new .blend file, It is possible but I had to "Finalize" the first character created, and the second one was still editable.
Have you tried to create a .blend file per character and append them in a main scene file ? This way you can still play individually with your character and have full control of your scene.


Why is my render color vastly different to the color in the material preview mode? On the left side is my object in render mode and on the right is my object in preview mode
When I render, the donut body becomes this dark purple colour and I have no idea why. My icing also becomes much darker than it is in the preview.
Why is this the case?

without seeing the blend file my guess is that you might have changed the object color under Object Properties - Viewport Display and also applied a color as a material or node giving you two different results.


Sculpting leads to tear in center (blender 2.8) When attempting to sculpt on my current project, the center of the mesh distorts, as seen below.

Attempting to use the crease tool on the mesh does nothing UNTIL I get to the center, where the above change takes place. I tried several other tools and I get the same (or similar) results. Let it be noted, too, that I'm using a mirror modifier, and that center seam is where both sides meet, in case that's relevant.

Here is the .blend file, if it helps.

first of all, you must apply all your modifiers before going to sculpt mode, since you have a good base mesh, I recommend you to apply the mirror modifier, and replace the subdivision with the multiresolution modifier, which allows you to sculpt in a good amount of detail, give it 4 or 5 subdivision and everything should work just fine for you. Regards.


How can one have axis-view? I can't find a single guide/tutorial or any reply to help me out on this one.

So how to reset your view so that you can see the selected and focused object from "axis view" so that you can inspect it from x,y,z axis, and i'm not looking for close enough view. But 100% axis view.(for example behind you is x- and infront of you is x) (focused by numbad ","). So you can see it in "2D", meaning if it's a 3D square (with no self-rotation) you can be able to see only 1 side of it.

Z axis:
Numberpad 7 for Top View
CtrlNumberpad 7for Bottom View
X axis:
 Numpad 3 for Right View.
 CtrlNumpad 3 for Left View.
Y axis:
 Numpad 1  for Front View
CtrlNumpad 1 for Back View
Toggles
Numpad 5 toggles between Orthographic and Perspective view.
For best results, go into File -> User Preferences..., "Interface" tab, and make sure there is a checkmark on on Auto Perspective.  If that isn't set, you may end up with a perspective (instead of orthographic) view along the selected axis.
If your view isn't centered on the selected object, press the Numpad . (period) key.
More information on the manual page: Editors » 3D Viewport » Navigating » Navigation
Axis Gizmo
In Blender 2.80 and higher, an axis gizmo can be clicked to get Orthographic views:


Equivalent Mix fac to Fresnel? Normally we use Fresnel (either from the node or layerweight) to mix between Diffuse and Gloss shaders. This works best for normal shaders, but isn't always best for non-realistic shader setups, or multi layer materials. I am working on a shader setup that uses normal shaders mixed with fresnel, but also includes toon shaders with a flat mix fac.

I want to establish a relation between Fresnel IOR and a normal flat mix so that I can derive the flat mix from the IOR. In other words, I want to take the IOR input from my node group, do some math to it, and end up with a flat mix for my toon shaders that will be about equivalent in shininess to the IOR.

I understand that "shininess" isn't a particularly precise descriptor. Is there any particular math, or just general rules of thumb I can use, or do I just need to eyeball this?

If you're looking to calculate the Fresnel factor by yourself, a commonly used approximation is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlick's_approximation

This should give you a percentage of how much "gloss" there should be.


Legos falling into place and stacking up. Can someone point me in the right direction? I am making an animation to be projected onto a wall at a theater. I need to make legos fall from the top of the screen and land stacking up to form a wall. After that I will have the Legos movie logo crash through the wall of legos at the end.

What would be the best way to go about doing this?I tried using the particle emitter to let a bunch of legos fall randomly into place, but I was thinking it would look much nicer if they fell on top of one another forming a wall rather than just a bunch of pieces.

I've been trying different things out with little success. If you were given this project how would you go about doing it? I am a bit stuck right now trying to figure this out.

i made a small file for you  click here to download
i would use dupliverts on a distorted plane. the 4 distortion modifiers use a blend texture in several progressions, and are controlled by animated empties. this way the mesh gets to rest in the end.
its tricky to aniamte the plane using the empties, so that it looks accurate, but its surely much more straight forward than setting up a particle simulation, or even animation nodes.


Grease Pencil limitations So I'm wondering if its possible to do similar 3D mixed with 2D animations in blender 2.8, is it possible to do the whole process in blender because of the grease pencil?
Here is an example of what i mean.
https://youtu.be/Yuk3gZZyNrg

This style is totally possible with a combination of 3d,freestyle render and grease pencil.
The whole process can be done within Blender itself...including the compositing.

Here is a link to "Hero" a Blender and Grease pencil film to give you an idea of some of the possibilities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmSdY56VtY

But really...the sky is the limit.


How do I make one bone that controls the entire rotation and movement of the armature? (or do I need to do that?) I'm currently using Megaman from Legends to study rigging. The bone that I have selected above, I want to use to control the rotation and movement of the entire armature for animation. Now my question is this - do I need a bone to control the rotation and position of the armature with a bone (and how do I do that?), or should I just control the rotation and position of the armature in object mode?
Please note: I will be making a game (with a separate original character), so I will need the animation to transfer nicely into Unity.

Using object mode would achieve the same effect. You might need to animate the character in Unity. The position and rotation gets imported too. You could still use a parent object or an offset animation.
If you need bones you can try disabling the deform checkbox and creating a control for the rig with constraints.


Setting initial size of an object when added to a scene I am using Blender 2.93 alpha on Linux.
My world settings for measurement are in meter (metric), the unit scale is set to 1, so 1 meter is one blender unit (which should remain that way).
I am handling objects in the size up to some centimeters.
An added cube (for example) has an initial size of 2 meters.
This size often occupies my the screen and is much too big for my purpose. Additionally
some functions cannot be applied anymore, if the added object has been scaled.
Is there any way to modify the initial size of an object in a way, that added object
appear in a smaller size right from the beginning?

You have added a new object (for example, a cube) and first of all, expand the properties menu of the new object, as in the picture.

Please note that this menu is displayed once, when adding an object,
if you have done something with the object, then this menu is no
longer available.

In this case, you can "Apply" changes (object -> apply -> scale / or location / or rotation)


Weight painting causing animation issues in UE4, unsure how to fix Hello there!

I'm working on a game and I got Advanced Locomotion System V4 from the UE Marketplace (Here) which makes use of some really cool animation techniques that look great and has been brilliant with the default AnimMan model.

Skeleton

So, being happy with the system I set about adapting it to my character, starting with importing the skeleton into Blender and making it fit my character, as far as I can tell that went fine.

Weight Painting

From there I moved onto weight-painting which is where the issues are coming from, I believe.

Result + Issues

I then went on to retarget the animation blueprint in UE4 for this skeleton, the animations are working but with a number of serious issues.

The issues seem to be at joints, where the weight paints overlap.

Here the shoulders are too far forward and the back seems to bend oddly.

Conclusion

I am unsure what exactly is causing this, my only guess is that the weight paints are too sharp and need to be smoothed out a little? Any help is much appreciated and I thank all who took the time to read this.

When you're satisfied with the weight paint in Blender, in weight paint mode go to weight menu and use "Normalize all", and "Limit total" to 4 before exporting.
Blender accept all weight values and do an automatic normalization when some vertices sum more or less than 1.0 of total weight; exporting a non normalized paint can result in different weight ratios.
Limit total is necessary for Unity, maybe Unreal also has this limitation.


Lights not casting shadows/UV mapped images dark I am trying to simulate a small setting in a casino in Blender. I have a cube that has a green felt texture mapped to it (it's my table) and I have some playing cards on top of it (they are also textured with an image).
A couple of problems that I think are likely related:
So far I have been setting the textured surface on all the objects as Background Why? Because they show up nice and bright. If I use the default surface mode, I think Diffuse BSDF or Principled, the textures show up very dark.
I started playing around with some objects here because I’d like a realistic-looking scene with lighting directly overhead and my table or cards with textures aren’t getting lighter/darker nor casting any shadows.
I see people talk about a cast shadow or shadow option. I don’t see it. I see something called, contact shadows. I have a feeling that’s not it.
Stumbling around some forums I saw someone posted about “World lighting?” So I clicked on the down arrow under options for Viewport Shading. I unchecked Scene Lights and Scene World - doesn’t seem to help.
What else can I be checking for to figure out why…

Shadows aren’t showing
Texture mapped images aren’t getting lighter or darker depending on the light location
Why initially are the texture-mapped images are always dark unless in background mode.

Thanks.

It sounds like you need more/better lighting in your scene. Without light sources in the scene, the only lighting is the very dark world background which doesn't emit much light so everything looks very dark.
Additionally, shadows are very weak as what little light there is is coming evenly from all directions. Background shaders actually emit light (as you want the background to do, it simulates light coming from things outside your scene) which is why that makes the objects brighter, but I am guessing you don't really want all the objects in your scene to be emitting lights.
Try adding lamps (or emission materials on appropriate objects) in logical places in your scene.  If you could include some screenshots of your setup then we would be able to help your case more specifically.


Fabric Texture Magnified I'm new to texturing so I have a jpeg file of a fabric texture and applied it to my cloth. However it seems to be magnified a lot. How do I zoom out or make the fabric texture smaller? When I enlarge the UV map of the cloth on the left I notice its similar to the fabric texture tile

The texture is just a small section of a piece of cloth, so the UV map of the cloth should be a lot larger than the image. In the UV Editor window on the left scale the shirt UV by pressing S and dragging the mouse, hit Return to set the scale.
It also looks like the orientation of the fabric is perpendicular to your UVs. Press R to rotate, enter "90" for rotating 90° and hit Return to set the rotation.
The JPEG file should be a tileable texture so that repetition is not so obvious.


No "Surface" on Materials Properties Just learning Blender this week and Immediately I'm stuck at some point. I cannot add COLOR because under MATERIAL, there is no choice for SURFACE > COLOR.

I'm so stuck. Help :)

If you want to add a simple color in Blender Render open the Diffuse tab
If you want the Surface tab then switch to Cycle Render (on the topbar, the dropdown juste after "Scene")


How do I change the bone layer with a script? I wanted to make a small script that loops though all the bones in the selected armature and puts the ones that match into another bone layer.

for bone in bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[:]:
    if bone.name in ListOfBoneNames:
        #put that bone into bone layer 8

How do I put the bone onto bone layer 8? What is the function name for that?

When I do it manually, the console shows:

bpy.ops.pose.bone_layers(layers=(False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))

But I don't know how to use that in the script. Wherever I put it ("bone.bone_layers" or "bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[bone.name].bone_layers"), it says that the object doesn't have a "bone_layers" attribute.

bone.layers is an array of 32 boolean values tells you whether the bone is present on each of the 32 layers.

So you could add the line:  bone.layer[8] = True

for bone in bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[:]:
    if bone.name in ListOfBoneNames:
        bone.layer[8] = True  #put that bone into bone layer 8
        #could also remove the bone from other layers if you wanted!


How can I set a custom projection matrix for rendering? How can I set a camera projection matrix? I want to render a perspective like the old SimCity 1989:

For orthographic rendering Blender can't take a custom projection matrix, however you can shear an orthographic projection to get the desired results.

Use an orthographic camera, with the camera set at an angle (45 degrees on the X and Z axis).
In the render settings, set the Aspect X to sqrt(2)This will give something almost exactly what you're looking for, except that its rotated 45 degrees.
To correct the rotation, use the compositors Distort -> Transform node.

Notes:

rotating the image will loose some accuracy, so you'll want to render larger, then scale down.
in the compositor you can scale down by 1/sqrt(2) to avoid loosing the corners.
Depth/Mist won't work as you might want, however its probably possible to use a gradient and offset the depth in the compositor.


Green faces in edit mode I pressed something and then
The faces of my object appear green in edit mode. How can I revert that? Newly added objects appear with gray faces in edit mode.

It is not

a matcap
a material
a texture
vertex color
object color,

You have marked your face as a freestyle face.

Either unmark it, by  RMB selecting it and pressing ⎈ CtrlF in edit mode to open the face menu. In the face menu choose clear freestyle face. You can also untick Face Marks in the mesh display options, if you only want to hide the face marks.


How to add the Procedural Nebula shader to a new blend file I found a procedural nebular shader online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB1DS7ISoy0
I am new to blender I don't see this shader when I start 2.9, is this an addon, or how do i create the shader in a my current blend file.

Read the link on your question:

Download the blend file and open it from blender.
The rest of the "instructions" to use it are on the video
To use it in your own project you can copy the assets to this project or you can append the material from the downloaded file to an existing project.


Documentation on the mathematical models used by Blender physics engines I need to know which mathematical models Blender uses during rigid body simulation and fluid simulation (e.g. Lattice Boltzmann).

Is there something like that in the Blender manual or do I need to search in other "technical" manuals?

Rigid bodies

There is no mention of the underlying physics engine in the manual for the current version v2.81.

However, up until version 2.79, Blender used to have also a Game Engine, which shared the same physics with the general Rigid Body World used for animation. Its manual gave more away in terms of the underlying engine:

  Blender includes advanced physics simulation in the form of the Bullet Physics Engine (Bullet Physics). Most of your work will involve setting the right properties on the objects in your scene, then you can sit back and let the engine take over.

As far as I can tell, Blender still uses Bullet. Unfortunately, the Bullet documentation doesn't explain things from the first principles up: it rather explains the settings, API and examples.

Liquids

The current (up to Blender 2.81) fluid engine is based on Lattice Boltzmann (LBM) through the elbeem library.

However, it is being replaced (version 2.82) by a new fluid engine, Mantaflow.


What is the purpose of shift-f I was messing around with blender and hit Shift+F and a little cross hair thingy popped and then I hit G and it was like I was playing some first person game what is the purpose.

It is called "FLY Mode"
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/3dview/navigate/walk_fly.html#fly-mode
It is just another way to animate your camera. Like if you wanted to "fly" through a city.

Fly Mode -> Reference
Mode: All modes
Menu: View ‣ View Navigation ‣ Fly Navigation
Hotkey: Shift-F
On activation the mouse pointer will move at the center of the view, and a squared marker will appear – a sort of HUD...
Some of the options of Fly mode are influenced by the position of the mouse pointer relative to the center of the view itself, and the squared marker around this center provides a sort of “safe region” where you can place the mouse for it to have no effect on the view. The more you take the mouse pointer away from the marker, the more you pan, or track, etc.
Shortcuts

Move the mouse left/right to pan the view left/right or move it up/down to tilt the view up/down.

Move the view forward/backward: - WheelUp or NumpadPlus to accelerate the movement forward. - WheelDown or to NumpadMinus to accelerate the movement backward.
So if the view is already moving forward, WheelDown, NumpadMinus will eventually stop it and then move it backward, etc.

Drag the MMB to dolly. In this case the view can move laterally on its local axis at the moment you drag the mouse – quite obviously, dragging left/right/up/down makes the view dolly on the left/right/up/down respectively.

When you are happy with the new view, click LMB to confirm. In case you want to go back from where you started, press Esc or RMB, as usual.


Wave texture change values by python code I'm trying to change the values of Wave Texture (Shader Editor) by python:
I mean that I what to change the value of Distortion or Detail Scale by python code.
wave_texture = bpy.data.objects['plane'].active_material.node_tree.nodes['Wave Texture']

I stack at this point, how I get and set Distortion for example.

You can access a node input sockets by either their name or their rank using their inputs property:
distortion_socket = wave_texture.inputs['Distortion']

or
distortion_socket = wave_texture.inputs[2]

Then you can set the value using default_value (the value not given by a link):
distortion_socket.default_value = 2


Sequence editor split screen video output black I'm trying to create a split screen animation (from static images though) for a part of a video. I'm following along a tutorial on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KrnywS9_vs (a little older, but it should still work).

The general routine for this is:

Add both images as strip to the editor
Add a transform for each
Change effect > scale X to 0.5 for each (horizontal split)
Change the position of one to 25 and the others to -25
Change blend to add for both
Set opacity on the actual image strips to 0 (to hide the full sized)

Now, in the backdrop this looks actually fine, but in the output preview it is just empty (and renders to black). I can't really find a point at which it fails. Sometimes it's previewing until I change the opacity, sometimes only until I change the blend. [Solved the preview, see edit. Output still doesn't work.]

If I offset the strips by one frame, it does show the splits just fine, but one half empty/black (obviously).

Does somebody have an idea what I'm doing wrong here?

Render settings are default (50% 1080p), input images are png (480x540). Blender version 2.78.

I know that there is a problem with cycles in 2.78 not displaying png images as textures, but that shouldn't be the cause for this I think.

If more information are needed, tell me. (Or if somebody has a better question title.)

Edit:
Ok, little thing I found out: When I change the channels of preview to draw from ´color and alpha´ to just ´color´ in the vse it does preview correctly now. The output is still black.

Is sequencer output option selected in the scene render properties panel?


Snapping to grid get's messed up after scaling down vertexes I've been reading about snapping to grid and hopefully I'm doing it right.

Switching form units to meter measurements and setting the grid scale accordingly. Turning on Snap during transform and Absolute grid alignment.

Everything seem's to work fine until I scale something down (I'm aware that I have to reset (apply) the scale when resizing my whole model), but the problem seems to come up when I want to work with vertexes.

First I'm selecting, let's say 2 vertexes of my plane, scaling them down and it's okay. But then when I try to scale them up again they are snapping to completely new grid that I somehow created. I don't see any options to reset the scale in Edit Mode, also it would be such a pain to do it every time.

Here's a GIF that I recorded, this will help you better understand better what I'm trying to achieve and what I do step by step:
https://i.imgur.com/xAww7zS.gifv

I think the issue comes from a misunderstanding of when increment snapping works.

Grid snapping only works for translation operations, scaling and rotation use value increment snapping not grid snapping, since rotations and scaling can't always be forced to coincide with the grid without some distortion.

The fact that your first scale does alight with the grid is a coincidence because the starting plane edge was exactly 2 units in length, and the end vertex were both grid aligned to start with.

That resulted in increment snapped values randomly being fractions of 2 units, which matching the grid cells by chance. When scaling up again, the edge will have a random different length, and fractions of that value will no longer necessarily align with the grid.

Bottom line, if you want grid aligned vertex use translations, or manually match them after using other transformation tools.


How to display triangle count of visible meshes in scene? Is there a way to display the triangle count of just the visible meshes in the scene and exclude the objects that are hidden? I understand you can go into edit mode on a single mesh to see the triangle count for that mesh, but that's no good for multiple meshes.

any ideas?

cheers

There is no way to show tris count of only visible objects in Blender, however, you can use Python for that.

If you paste this into a new text block in the text editor and hit Run Script, you will have an operator that you can call from the Space menu if you start typing 'Tris Count For Visible Objects'. You can also copy it into a new text file using any text editor that supports UTF-8 encoding, save it to a .py file and install it as an add-on. It checks all objects in the scene and if they are not hidden in the 3d View and are mesh objects, it counts their triangles and then displays the results as info message in the header of the info panel briefly and in the logs of the info panel:

Here is the code:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Tris Count",
    "author": "Martynas Žiemys",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    "location": "Space menu > Tris Count For Visible Objects",
    "description": "Counts tris",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Mesh",
    }

import bpy

class TrisCount(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tris Count"""
    bl_idname = "scene.tris_count"
    bl_label = "Tris Count For Visible Objects"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.scene is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        tris_count = 0
        for o in bpy.context.scene.objects:
            if o.type == 'MESH' and not o.hide:
                for p in o.data.polygons:
                    if len(p.vertices) > 3:
                        tris_count = tris_count + len(p.vertices) - 2
                    else:
                        tris_count = tris_count +1
                    pass
        self.report({'INFO'}, 'Tris: ' + str(tris_count))
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Shortcut to execute a Macro or Script Is it possible to remap a key to call more than one operator at a time, or to execute a python script?

In my workflow I need to use two operators, one after the other:
Set the 3D cursor to selection, followed by set origin to 3D cursor.

I never use the 0 key to switch layers,so I thought it would be faster to make it "set origin to selection", but i don't know how to make it call those two in one go.
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected()
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')

If this works it would save me exactly 6 key presses:
Shift+S ,4, tab to go to object mode,Shiftctrlaltc,3,tab to go back to edit mode.

Thanks for any input

Edit : This works when executed from a text editor, now i just need to figure out a way to execute it with the 0 key.

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        context = bpy.context.copy()
        context['area'] = area
        context['region'] = area.regions[-1]
        bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected(context)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
        break

Here's a quick example adapted from the ObjectCursorArray tutorial in the API documentation.

You should be able to run this in the text editor, and then pressing Numpad 0 in Object view should result in the "do work here" text printing to the console window (in OSX/Linux you have to launch Blender from the terminal to see the console output).

Note: once you copy this script into blender, you may want to check that the tab structure is still correct for each line.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Work Macro",
    "category": "Object",
}

import bpy

class WorkMacro(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Work Macro"""
    bl_idname = "object.work_macro"
    bl_label = "Work Macro"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):

        print("do work here")

        return {'FINISHED'}

# store keymaps here to access after registration
addon_keymaps = []

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

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Object Mode', space_type='EMPTY')
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new(WorkMacro.bl_idname, 'NUMPAD_0', 'PRESS', ctrl=False, shift=False)
    addon_keymaps.append(km)

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

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    for km in addon_keymaps:
        wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.remove(km)
    # clear the list
    del addon_keymaps[:]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Is there any way to subdivide the faces going around the edge of this so that the curve is smoother? Butterfly knife trainer

The edge on this trainer butterfly knife model that I'm making is very rough (obviously).

However is there any way to add more subdivisions so as to smooth it out without using the smooth button? If not, then what is the best way? Thanks and have a great day!:D

First of, you should recalculate normals that seem to be going inwards instead of outwards (notice the slight blueish tint instead of gray)

This is how correct normals look.

Next up is to make the mesh more smooth so press Ctrl+F and shade smooth in Edit mode (or can be done in the T panel in object mode aswell)

Without any other work whatsoever the mesh looks... uh.. ugly

However only by adding a correctly set up bevel modifier, you get very good results with not much more geometry.

This is the bevel modifier of the above, please note that Width is subject to object size and obviously this knife would be a bit too large^^

This is how the wireframe of the above looks.

Alternatively you can also get visibly beveled (not rounded) edges by using only 1 segment in Bevel and turning Auto Smooth on at about 30-60 degrees. (notice I have profile 0 here and that is not necessary, it can be the default 0.5 because at 1 segment setting the profile doesn't play a role)

This is the modifier setup of the above.

And this is wireframe of the above.


Volumetric light causes lights to flicker in eevee I'm having a problem where the lights on my car (and the area lamp) are flickering when i play the animation. I used a cube with the principled volume settings and the flickering is only caused when this cube is active. I tried messing around with both the Volumetrics settings in the Render properties as in the Principled Volume shader.
It looks like the cones of light are flickering whenever the volumetric cube is active.
Does anyone know how to fix this issue?
I've added a video of how it looks and my settings.
Thanks in advance,
Alex
Video of render example: Video of Render Example

Settings

Settings

Seems like Eevee sometimes really has some troubles with volumetric lighting. As they say here: https://developer.blender.org/T71208

I think this was a side effect of a previous bug (in 2.80). basically, the volumes were all shifted 1 voxel further from the camera. This was fixed but now this light leaking is just a side effect of the volume texture being low res.
There is little we can do to fix it. The workaround is to give more precision to the volume (increase samples in volumetric settings) and the shadow maps.

this is a sort of precision error.
This probably won't be fixed anytime soon.
Unless a new groundbreaking volumetric lighting approach is discovered, which is... quite unlikely? You can attempt to alleviate this by making the volumetric lighting texture more fine. This will however use more VRAM so be careful

I hope it will help.
These few quite similar cases may be helpful too:

https://developer.blender.org/T61654
https://blenderartists.org/t/why-spot-light-coming-throught-the-mesh/1227943
EEVEE 2.8 : the light goes through the egdes of a simple cube?


Shader Editor Problem I want to use the shader Editor to give my objects color / color gradients but the objects doesnt react to anything I do in the shader editor.Yes, I made a check at "use Nodes"

You have deactivated the nodes for several materials, which is why the settings aren't applied. Click "Use Nodes" and it works.

Nodes are deactivated in the file. Notice that "Use Nodes" is gray.

Click on "Use Nodes" to activate

Changes are now being applied.


Importing OBJ with MTL and Image not working properly I'm trying to import an OBJ file that has associated MTL and PNG files. There's a similar question here, but the answer is not very helpful, I just see a big blob.

These are the files that I'm trying to import. Inside the textured meshes folder there's a few different versions of the object but none seem to import correctly with the texture applied.

I also don't have access to the material and object (as well as a few other) buttons. (see the picture)

Blender 2.71

1. Check the obj file
In your case the obj is not exported correctly. Obj is a human readable file format it is easy to find the issue. You can check this by open up the file in a text editor of your choice (sublime, gedit...).
To check referenced materials go to these lines:

mtllib [external .mtl file name]
usemtl [material name]

In your case mtllib line is correct, but usemtl is missing.
# OBJ FILE
...
f 3103/18700/18700 3081/18701/18700 3119/18702/18700
f 279/18703/18703 3118/18704/18703 274/18705/18703
f 265/18706/18706 3101/18707/18706 278/18708/18706

# usemtl material name (reference to the .mtl file)
usemtl MyMaterialName

You can find the material name in the mtl file in this line: newmtl [material name]
# MTL FILE
newmtl MyMaterialName
Ka 1.000 1.000 1.000     # white
Kd 1.000 1.000 1.000     # white
Ks 0.000 0.000 0.000     # black (off)
map_Ka myMap.jpg         # ambient texture map
...

As last step check if the paths to the textures are correct:
map_Ka my-texture.jpg                           # points to texture in obj folder
map_Ka /home/user/images/my-texture.jpg         # absolute path on unix
map_Ka C:\\Users\\user\\images\\my-texture.jpg  # absolute path on windows

Make sure that the filenames of your textures are correct and there are no white spaces in the paths itself. Instead of pointing to the 'absolute path', you can also try Blenders Find Missing Files operator. For further information about all the possibilities of obj's read this wikipedia article.
2. Apply the material
If the material is not applied to the imported object you can select it here:

3. Enable textures in the viewport

If your textures are pink, see: Why are all the textures in my file pink?
To display the texture in the viewport see: How to show textures in the 3D View editor?


How do I get particles to follow an animated path or armature? I'm doing this wormhole tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2WTH016rfk and I'm trying to get particles to also follow through the animated tunnel. Emitting from the far end and coming toward the camera. The problem is that the wormhole is wiggling around and the particles don't follow the animated path.

I was able to add a bezier curve and control it with the armature and use it as a curve guide force field. I controlled the position of the emitter with the armature as well.  particles don't stay on the curve when it wiggles around. And the curve doesn't follow the armature very well either.

Thank you for posting your question so clearly.

Time to get serious with particles: Select your tunnel, enter EDIT mode, switch to FACE selection filter, select all faces. Go to the MESH menu>NORMALS>Flip normals. Now all your normals should be pointing INSIDE your tunnel.

2) Switch back to OBJECT mode, now apply a SOLIDIFY MODIFIER, and make it thick enough so that when you deform your object it will deform correctly (like a real tunnel thickness)

3) Go to the dynamics tab and click COLLISION. Set friction to something like 0.2, 0.5

4) Now when you playback your animation, your (already working curve guide force) should be working and particles will not be able to scape the tunnel. Furthermore the expected behavior of the particles will react to the deformation of the tunnel.

Thank you for your consideration to vote this as the answer.

BFCT_Schiller


Can I use my 3D Luts with Flimic? I found this documentation → How can Blender be augmented to display color critical and accurate results?
However, this is outdated and does not work now.
How can I use the 3D Luts extracted from the calibration profile with Flimic in 2.83?

Yes, you can add your color LUTs at the end of the existing color transforms chain to have a more accurate display.
You can add the color profile LUT to the folder where all of the other LUTs for blender are, or edit the config.ocio to look for the luts in an aditional folder.
Next, you need to create new definitions or stanzas in the config.ocio  file based on the existing ones and concatenate the LUTs at the end of the color transform chain.
Use the color corrected view transforms to work in blender, but know that you need disable them for the final output, as you don't want to bake your monitor's curves into the file.
Here's an example of an added lut the medium contrast Look to make things look blueish
Note the name change and how a lut called testlut is added at the end of the transforms chain.
- !<Look>
name: Medium Low Contrast BLueTest
process_space: Filmic Log
transform: !<GroupTransform>
    children:
        - !<FileTransform> {src: filmic_to_0-60_1-04.spi1d, interpolation: linear}
        - !<FileTransform> {src: filmic_to_0-70_1-03.spi1d, interpolation: linear, direction: inverse}
        - !<FileTransform> {src: testlut.cube, interpolation: linear}


Blender Compressibility Unit Question What is the unit of compressibility in Blender?

Almost anything can be compressed under the right conditions regardless of whether it is a solid, liquid or gas. Put a different way, if you apply pressure to a liquid, gas, or even many solids their volume will decrease. The amount that the volume will decrease in response to (a certain) pressure is called "Compressibility".

The Blender physics engine can simulate this phenomenon to a limited extent, and the particular value you are asking about is the amount of compression due to gravitational pull. The documentation for this feature is here.

I hope this helps you.


can't fix mesh texture does anyone have a sloution? the texture on my object looks great and it's exactly what I want but the problem is the top of the mesh is so stretched and I tried everything to fix it but with no luck
I think the main reason why there are no vertexes on the top so how to add vertexes?

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/AswVrpBm

What you need to do is select the top faces, select one to make it active, unwrap with the Follow Active Quads option:

Then move the UVs so that the bricks match each other:


How do you execture the subdivide function on the multiresolution modifier in python? I have add the MULTIRES modifier to an object in Python and would like to trigger the "subdivide" function. Since in Python you define a modifier like so:

obj.modifiers.new(type='MULTIRES', name="test")
obj.modifiers['test'].subdivision_type = 'CATMULL_CLARK'

How do I call the subdivide function? The Python info window is not helping neither it just says: (bpy.ops.object.multires_subdivide(modifier="test")).

And all my current attempts throw errors:

bpy.ops.object.multires_subdivide(modifier="test")
obj.modifiers['test'].multires_subdivide(modifier="test")
obj.modifiers['test'].multires_subdivide()
obj.modifiers['test'].subdivide()

as you see in API

  bpy.ops.object.multires_subdivide(modifier="") Add a new level of
  subdivision

you can test this:

bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='MULTIRES')
bpy.context.object.modifiers["Multires"].name = "A"
bpy.context.object.modifiers["A"].subdivision_type = 'CATMULL_CLARK'
bpy.ops.object.multires_subdivide(modifier="A")


One material, different colors on objects I got the following set-up

My goal is to have these balls all the same material, but with a different colors. I don't want to rely on some random value; I want to assign on my own which object gets a particular color. How to accomplish this?

You can use the Pass Index to discriminate between objects with the same material.

In Object Properties > Relations, assign a Pass index to each object, between 1 and [ your number of distinct colors ]. You can assign the index to multiple selected objects by right-clicking the Pass Index field on the active object, and choosing 'Copy to Selected'.
Replace the RGB node in your tree with the nodes illustrated here:

The Divide is just to map the range of integers to 0.0 .. 1.0 for the color ramp, and the subtract nudges the point to make the tabs in the color ramp easier to place)

If you need the Pass index for something else, you can drive a Value node from a Custom Property, but that's not quite so convenient to assign.


Why won't the pivot point/3D cursor move to center of object anymore? When I started using Blender whenever I clicked an object the pivot point would immediately be at the center of whatever I clicked.

Now it just stays where it was last put and doesn't move until you manually do it.

How do I fix this?

You have you piviot point set wrong, try , on your keyboard:

In red is what you have it set to, in green are options that will achieve the result you want


Do i have to use bump mapping for this...? I'm creating a dragons head, and i just finished the tongue.
Now i want to give the tongue more "texture"...

For example, when i choose smooth lighting, it just looks smooth (obviously)
But can i somehow make the light look a bit more "dotted" like it would on a real tongue...?
Or must i create a bump map to get that effect?
I'm not trying to make it look super advanced, just not so smooth.

English is not my native language, so i don't know what this is actually called ;-;

Beside the usual diffuse, specular, and all the other textures - you can apply some depth to your object via the following:

1. Bump Mapping
Bump mapping adjusts the normals on a surface to make it appear that there are bumps, when there really aren't. Bump maps are grayscale. Bump mapping a Normal mapping both benefit from being able to create this illusion without needing additional geometry. A single plane can look very textured, even with just one polygon.

2. Normal Mapping
Normal mapping does the same thing as bump mapping, but with more precision and control. Normal maps use the red, green, and blue channels to encode x, y and z deflection angles for surface normals. They typically look bluish.

3. Displacement Mapping
Displacement mapping changes the position of vertices, based on an image texture. This has the advantage of providing real bumps, but requires more geometry. Displacement maps can be encoded either as grayscale like bump maps, or in color channels like normal maps. Many softwares allow bump maps and normal maps to be interpreted by displacement algorithms, for convenience.

It depends on the look you want to achieve which combination is best.
Hope this helps you a little bit.

Here, the left ball is using a bump map, the right one a displacement map.


How can I get "Plane.000" instead of "Plane"? Obviously it doesn't seem to be a problem for too many people, but to me it is simply looking wrong each time I see it.

In my opinion the first object should be called Plane.000 here automatically when every subsequent item is Plane.00x anyway.

And here the next plane should obviously be Plane.002 and not Plane.

Can I somewhere change Blender's behavior here?? (It is really looking very wrong to me...)

I don't recommend doing this, BUT here is a way to change blenders default naming behaviour.  The following needs to be "tightened up" for other names eg will make mistakes with names like "Planet", but will do as a simple example.

Open a new blender file, run the script below, then add or duplicate planes.  The scene_update_pre handler runs alot.  Any added plane, cube or sphere will be renamed to start at 000.

import bpy
prim_names = ["Plane", "Cube", "Sphere"]

def name_prims(scene):
    for name in prim_names:
        prims = [o for o in bpy.data.objects
                 if o.name.startswith(name)]
        newprim = scene.objects.get(name)
        if newprim:
            newprim.name = "%s.%03d" % (name, len(prims) - 1)

# make it a handler
bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre.append(name_prims)

Remove all scene update pre handlers with: (Note this will remove all handlers, this one and those added by addons, etc)

# remove all handlers
bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre.clear()

Otherwise remove it by name

my_handlers = [h for h in bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre
               if h.__name__.startswith("name_prims")]

for h in my_handlers:
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre.remove(h)


Why are my leaves dissappearing and turning black So I have a leaf material with transparent alpha, and I used a particle system to put it on an empty tree to make it look like it has leaves. The texture I used had a transparent background so I used a transparent material to make it actually transparent.

But this is what happens when I convert the particle system and join it with the tree. It's so annoying, it's happened once before when I tried to use the array modifier to an image with a transparent background and the background turns black despite having the right material. What do I do?

EDIT:

I'm pretty sure it now has something to do with UVs because I unwrapped the leaves again and the leaves were messed up. Is there like a short way to do this? When I join the leaves and the tree the UV resets.

I ran into this issue as well.  I started with the tree sapling, then added the leaves - like you did with alpha - same thing - after converting and removing the particle system, then joining, the leaves would not show in rendered mode.

I noticed that the sapling was generated wit it's own UV Map - "Orco" - once I deleted that UV Map, the join worked as expected.

I was pulling my hair out for a good while, and I don't have much to work with.


Is it possible to convert Matcap colours to vertex or material colours? What I would like to do is simply to apply a Matcap while editing, and then use its base colour as the colour of the object for test rendering etc. Is this possible?

To put it another way, if the Matcap is lime green, how can I make the object lime green (using vertex or material colours).

This is not possible, using blenders built-in matcaps.

However you could setup a material that uses a matcap image that uses normal mapping relative to a camera object, then bake this to vertex colors.


Copying UVs from a high to low poly model? I am working on several projects where each mesh has 3 LOD levels.

Originally I completed the Highest poly model, applied materials, uv mapped each mesh, duplicated the object and then optimized the duplicate. This worked fine and the material and UVs were set the same on all LODs.
Now I have been told that each object should only have one material and UV map. If I was simply to remove the materials the end result would be overlapping UVs, which is not acceptable obviously.

So I now face trying to match up the UVs from all the object LODs.Is there a way to copy the UVs from one object to another that has a different number of poly?

You can try the "transfer data" tool (the modifier also works, sometimes...).

Here is a "HD" mesh with UV and texture

And here is a LD mesh without UV

Select your LD mesh first and then add your HD mesh to the selection with Shift+Right click. The last selected object is considered as active.
Open the tools bar with T. In the Tool tab, scroll to Edit and click on "Data Transfer: DATA" button

Select "UV" in the menu.

Choose the options that looks the best.

The UV has been transferred from the HD mesh to LD mesh.

Now you can create the seams from UV islands from the UV menu in image editor.

The LD mesh has Seams, UV and the texture is OK


Attach cloth to solids and do animation I'm trying to build an animation of a sail rising up a mast. Effectively, the sail is in several segments, so realistically, each segment intersection will move at slightly different rates. It will also collect on the deck. (I'm sure you can visualize it.)

First, is there a way of parenting two armatures to one segment, one on the top edge and one on the bottom. I know that a single armature can be used with two bones, but they only "attach" to the center of the edges, not the whole edge.

Second, I can't seem to get the bones to run along a curve independently from each other. If I could do that (and the connect to the whole edges) I can keyframe the movements closely enough.

Any thoughts on how to do this?

You could try putting empties where you want to attach them to the cloth (you can parent vertices and empties), then parent the empties to the rope armature.


Image texture won't show on object 3D viewport I'm new to blender and having trouble showing my image texture on the object which is a .dae.
When I first imported it and selected the rig it already had the material and nodes attached with the diffuse and specular pngs selected.
When I see other tutorials showing how to add texture and render, whenever the base color node is attached to the principle the texture on the object shows, and I've tried viewing it in rendered mode however it is blank.
Could anyone help me with getting the texture to show on the object?

I figured it out myself.
It's an issue to do with my AMD GPU Driver I think, since I've had issues with blender not opening due to my drivers before and I tried this on my macbook and it worked fine.
I set performance to high quality normals in render properties and it shows the textures now - in material preview before it would be blank. I saw somewhere that rolling back drivers would help so I'll try that as well.
Thank you @gilu for your help though!


Add reflection to transparent cycles material I'm fairly new to Blender (V2.79) so a little help will be greatly appreciated. Please see attached image as reference. I'm trying to get the same shine/light reflection (C) on my transparent plastic (A) as I have on the 'printed' plastic (B). Thanks in advance.

By mixing transparency and the Principled BSDF, you're defining a shader that can return either reflection, or transparency, but never both. (and since you have mix factor=0.8, it will give transparency 80% of the time). So you're making the reflections transparent along with everything else. To get your desired result, you want a shader that gives glossy reflection normally, but returns transparency to any rays the gloss doesn't catch. Two different ways you can do this:

1) Get rid of the transparent BSDF and its mix shader, just keep the Principled BSDF node for A. This will leave your glassy Principled BSDF as the only shader. Since this a refractive shader, you will need thickness on your bread bag mesh. You can use a solidify modifier to achieve this. See here if you also need the alpha channel: Render Glass like materials with Alpha Channel to composite in external app

2) If you don't want/need refraction and don't want to deal with adding thickness or messing with ways to get alpha, you can replace the first Transparent/Principled BSDF mix with the shader described here: Render Glass like materials with Alpha Channel to composite in external app


Baked Textures Don't Look Like Render I'm having trouble baking textures: I want to bake my textures, since I'm making a simulation out of them, so I can't just render the entire scene.

I set up my UV Map and unwrapped the materials using the Smart UV Project option. I included the nodes in the pictures below just in case that might help.

So after the baking was finished, the actual texture seemed a whole lot darker than the render, as well as the shadows seemed misplaced.
The scene looks like the one on bottom left:

However, in the texture viewport, the scene oddly looks like this one at the bottom left:

In my bake settings, everything is checked except Selected to Active and Cage, with a margin of 16 px.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? I appreciate anyone's help in advance.

NOTE: This happened to all of the materials, I'm just showing the Dark Green material out of the 14 materials I have in this model.

First of all, you need to apply scale and rotation to all your objects

shift + a

You can't have any scales that are negative, also this is just a general practice I would advice you before rendering.
Note that sometimes you have to check if your object face normals are not inverted after applying a negative scale.

My computer has issues rendering right now but this was my result:

I also set the sun strength to 2.5, but that is up to you of course.


Strange behavior with Boolean Difference I'm getting strange behavior with Boolean Difference as per the attached file.

I'm trying to cut a notch into the U-shaped object using either of the two shapes on the right.

With the more complex shape, I can't get a notch at all.

With the simpler shape, I can get a notch, but not when it's exactly flush with the U-shaped object (I want to do it when the cutting shape is flush).

Please see the following file:

Any ideas? Many thanks!

How is your notch supposed to be? From what I experience:

You need to lower down your small cube a bit, otherwise its bottom face will overlap the U bottom face and it's a problem for the Boolean modifier. Now it works well.

For the second shape, it looks like it works correctly, what problem have you encountered?


Distributing hairs evenly along the surface I have UV sphere inside of which I distributed stars-spheres as hairs. But their current positions leaves a lot of blank black spots which maybe seem organic but I don't like. Is there any way to distribute them more evenly? It also seems to be what radius option in children depends on emitter size and it's scaling doesn't allow to get bigger radius option. Or am I wrong?

You might be looking for even distribution. It is located under the advanced settings.


UV Islands. how to distinguish them? If somebody knows:
when we pick two points on UV image and search for shortest way in 3D, than return selection of shortest path to UV, we have problem, that selected vertices not only from initial island, but also all vertices that share same points in 3D mesh. So, question to deselect other islends that not selected initially...

for f in bm.faces:
  for l in f.loops:
    luv = l[uv_layer]
    if luv.select:
        #???how to remember the island, then to return to it? Direct Link not suitable
        luv.uv = l.vert.co.xy

Isn't this simply how 'uv select sync' currently displays things rather than being a coding issue?

The only way to do this would be to disable 'uv select sync' and change the 'Sticky select mode' to 'Disabled' in the Image Editor header, as shown below:

The disadvantage is that the whole mesh will have to be selected to appear in the uv image editor. I'm not sure if this helps or not because I don't quite understand what you're looking to do, but thought I would add this information in case it does, seeing as you don't have any other answers.