Blender Model Resizing after being Parented to Rig I am working on rigging a character in blender but have been running into an issue.  Whenever I parent with automatic weights the mesh to the armature, my mesh scales drastically (scale of 10+).

I've taken the following troubleshooting steps:

Ensure the origin of the mesh is at (0, 0, 0)
Apply all transformations to the mesh (location, rotation, and scale) with ctrl + a
Tried with both the rig generated from the Rigify add-on and a custom-made base rig, both of which exhibit the same issue

The mesh was imported from a .obj format from a model I bought online for a video project.  I've heard that there could be a potential problem here, if the base units between the program that made the file and blender differ.  However, I don't know how to check/fix this.

Any suggestions on how to fix this would be much appreciated!

Sincerely,

Alex

I know you would prefer a better solution, but: I know that .stl import has an option to use scene units, and it works for that format, helps sometimes to solve problems like this.

So maybe you could try to import the .obj, export in .stl, and then import the .stl using that option (or not, depending if any of the two fits).

Works since 2.73, afaik.


Bevelled Corner Topology Best Practice Very new to blender and just trying to make sure I don't learn any bad habits, so I'm wanting to understand which of these 4 topologies are best for a bevelled corner like this. I can't remember exactly what I did to get each result but I'm just wondering which I should be aiming for in the future.
Are there any pros/cons to each of these?
Maybe any of them would be ok and no need to worry about it?
(ignore the actual bevel itself, I'm more talking about how it joins to the rest of the mesh)
Corner 1:

Corner 2

Corner 3:

Corner 4:

Thanks

You don't say enough about your project, if it gives you the result you want in Rendered mode then all your solutions are ok, you don't even need all these additional edges, and with right click > Shade Smooth and Normals > Auto-Smooth option on, you can even get a smooth shape:

But for example if you give your object a Subdivision Surface modifier it may cause some artifacts, even with your edge loops, because it will try to smooth angles that are too orthogonal:

In that case you need to smooth the shape with more edge loops, bevels are helpful:

or:


Blender 2.74 Windows 64bit quits and displays hz issue Here is the message that gets displayed:

AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 4800hz instead
found bundled python: D:\Blender\2.74\python
Blender quit

I've reinstalled twice and get the same problem. Not sure what I should do to get the program back up and running.

It looks like it is having issues with the audio configuration.

Go to where Blender is installed in the Windows Explorer. The Default Installation Path is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender.

When inside the Blender Folder, hold down the Shift key, and right-click any folder inside the Blender Folder (the 2.74 folder will work just fine), then choose the option "Open Command Window here").

With the new command window open, you should have a prompt that looks like this:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender> or one reflecting the path to the Blender folder.

From that prompt, type:

blender.exe -noaudio (make sure there is a space between the "exe" and the "-". Blender should start like normal.

You can also set it to use a specific sound system:

blender.exe -setaudio SDL

Other options include, NULL, OPENAL, and JACK.

If it still crashes, start Blender with the debug flag to show any other errors or issues leading up to this error.

blender.exe -d


Change resolution of the rendered view ? how the rendered view work ? we can change the preview sample , the preview bounce , the preview subdivision , the preview texture size , but can we change the render view resolution?

i have this feeling its stuck on the native resolution of the display which is really bad if you want to have a quick real timme preview (5k screen here)

if its not possible ill do a topic on right click select

Itds "pixel size" option in propreties render tab , and its coming to 2.8


What happened to the selection and camera toggle buttons in the Scene Collection Window? There used to be all these icons for each of your object in the Scene Collection window. In this picture, there's the visibility, selectability, and a computer and camera icon (not sure what those last two do).

But in my current project (Blender 2.90), it only shows the eye (visibility toggle).

Does anyone have an explanation?

You can turn them on and off at the top under the Filter button where it says "restriction toggles".


eighth of a sphere with extremely high face count I want to create an eighth of a sphere with extremely high face count

I want about ~127 Million Faces.

the problem is that it takes a huge amount of memory, and creating an entire UV sphere and cutting faces out is too wasteful.

My question is:
Is there a way to create slice of a sphere without creating the entire sphere?

Regarding memory - I have 32GB of ram, is it enough for this task?

Edit:
I've been asked regarding my motivation for this strange task. I want to create an image of part of a ball in the size of the earth to simulate how things reflect on it in some conditions (angles, altitude etc...) and how the hight from the surface influence the roundness of the visible area, the exact amount of faces is, as a result, assuming every 1sqr km is a face (approximately, in the equator).

My calculation was:

Earth circumference: 40,075KM (segments)
Earth radius: 12,742KM
Earth diameter: 25,484KM (rings)

So since in UV sphere Segments X Rings = Faces we get 1021271300 faces for the entire sphere. and one-eighth of that equals 127658912.5.

Well this all sounds highly suspicious and unnecessary, but if you must.

Start with a Bezier Circle object.
After adding it enter edit mode and change all handle types to either Free or Aligned.

Afterwards erase the necessary vertex so only one quarter remains.

Once done add a Screw modifier to it and change the axis to $Y$, and adjust the angle to 90º.

You can now non destructively adjust the Subdivison levels on both directions, either from the Screw Modifier steps parameter or from the curve resolution..

You can maintain a lower level for both for viewport display purposes so it doesn't slow down to much, and higher levels for final rendering.

Edit:

You can achieve a similar result as above replacing the bezier curve circle by a single vertex mesh, then using two screw modifiers on different axis, overcoming the limits of curve resolution.

This has the added benefit of yielding a mesh base object (which is more flexible and better supported) and it is easier to control since all parameters can be controlled from the modifier stack


Evee not rendering properly I am trying to export this video project, but all i see when i export is a grey screen.
I am using Evee and have attached screenshots of all my settings. Hopefully someone can help! I have no other ideas about what i'm doing wrong here.

I figured out the issue. i went to the video sequencer and there was a random video file there which i needed to delete. i also checked my compositor window and linked the render layers directly to the composite node and everything started working properly. just in case someone else out there has a similar issue :)


How to change texture setting of displacement? I've upgraded to 2.82 and found that something in the shading tab has changed. I can't find the displacement settings.

so that all my displacement becomes 'bump only', how can I fix this?

I don't quite know if this is caused by a plugin.

here's all plugin I have:

You have to switch your render engine to "Cycles" in the render properties. True displacement is not available with Eeevee (yet?).


Use Blender Python Libraries Outside Blender I'm writing a file import/export plug-in for Blender and would like to work a lot of the file-handling pieces in ipython outside of Blender. Is it possible to
import mathutils

without running inside of Blender?

mathutils available as pip module, use
pip install mathutils


Can I influence the direction in which fire and smoke dissolve? I know how to control fire/smoke particles but flames and smoke always appear to be drifting upwards (i.e. positive global Z-axis) regardless.

I'm actually trying to create a sun-like fireball, i.e. I want the flames to emit outwards in all directions from a sphere. My particles are already doing this but the flames emitted from those particles are still drifting upwards only.

Is this possible at all with the latest release of Blender (2.69 at the time of this writing)?

Smoke and flames will drift upwards because there is a temperature difference between the smoke/flames and the surrounding air by default, and heat rises.

You can sort of disable this by setting the temperatures to be equal.

Domain settings

Set the Temperature Difference to 0 in the smoke domain settings:

This is all that is needed to make the smoke/fire stop drifting upwards, however more is needed to make it emit in all directions. I think you already have this part, but I wasn't sure so here it is anyway.

Since you are simulating a star, you may not want the smoke that is emitted with the flames by default (even when the flow object is set to only Fire)

You can disable this by setting Smoke to 0 in Domain Settings > Smoke Flames > Reaction:

Particle settings

You probably already know about the particle settings, but:

You can emit particles in all directions by using a sphere and increasing the Normal value which sets the starting velocity in the normal direction. This setting is in Particles > Velocity > Emitter Geometry:

Also ensure you disable Gravity for the particle system (As already mentioned by Mike Pan)
This can be done in Particles > Field Weights > Gravity:

Smoke Flow Settings

Select your particle system as the Flow source, and enable Initial Velocity so that the fire is "flung" by the particles (In other words, the fire will be emitted with the velocity already gained by the particle).

Depending on the speed of your particles, you may also want to increase the number of Subframes.

Result


Objects disappear when zooming in in perspective view? When I am in my camera view, I can see my scene objects fine. But when I go to the user perspective and zoom in on those objects, they disappear. How can I fix this?

The op is not in camera view, you have to lower your clip settings in the N panel View tab of the 3dview


How to create snow particle physics? Image 1:

Image 2:

Any help or thoughts would be awesome!

The closest thing blender has to your example is a great add on called molecular.
You can watch the demos on youtube to get a feel for what this add on can do.

molecular download

The documentation for molecular is on the same site.


Double sized icons in UI? I want to implement bigger buttons, with icons at it. Preferable double size of what we currently have. I can scale the button height by row.scale_y . But the size of icons is hardcoded to 16 pixels. Can be found in the source\blender\editors\include\UI_interface_icons.h

But you can scale the UI with the dpi settings in the user preferences. And then the icons becomes bigger with the rest of the UI. Question is, is there a Python way to scale icons bigger for just one UI element?

And in case not, is there another way to implement buttons with bigger icons by Python? I would even be happy about hints how to do this in the C code :)

I am still figuring out how to selectively edit icon size, but the line and file you are looking for is #define ICON_DEFAULT_HEIGHT 16 and #define ICON_DEFAULT_WIDTH_16 in UI_interface_icons.h. For example, changing this height and width to 32 instead of 16 will double all of your icons; it would be ideal if you're scaling the rest of your interface (e.g. button padding) proportionately. This works for Blender source version 2.79. Hope this helps!


How can I make a mouth open in Blender? I want to model an opening mouth. I don't know how and I don't find a good tutorial.

Thanks

FOR RETOPOLOGIZED MESHES
- USING SHAPE KEYS
Being in Object Mode create a new shape key and name it. Enter Edit Mode and press the apply shapekeys in edit mode button. Set the value of the key to 1. Now enable the proportional editing and set it's type to Connected. Select some vertices of the lower lip and press G, Z to open the mouth.

If you want to apply the shape key value to the mesh you may use Create duplicate for editing option. It will create a duplicate of your model, but with the applied shape keys as a Basis key.

Optionally you may add a bone to control the shape key's value. Add a Single Bone (Shift+A-->Armature-->Single Bone) and place it in front of mouth of your character. Select your model and add a Driver to your shape key (hover your cursor over shape key's value, press RMB and choose Add Driver option).

Now go to the Graph Editor, change its mode to Drivers and select the shape key's name in the panel on the left. Press N to open the properties shelf and in Drivers panel change the Type to Average Value. In Variable window choose Transform Channel. Now set up things as pictured below- in this case we want the Bone (which belongs to Armature) to control the shape key's value only if it'll be transformed using Local Yaxis

You may now select the bone, then go to Pose Mode and control the shape key's value changing the bone's position.

- USING BONES
Being in Object Mode add a Single Bone and place its base, where your model's jaw hinge is located. Select your model, then a bone and press Ctrl+P-->Parent-->With Automatic Weights.

Now go to Edit Mode, select the whole mesh A and press Remove button to set all weights to 0.

Now select the parts of a mesh you want to follow the bone's movement, change the Weight value to 1 and press Assign.

You may now assign specific weights values to desired vertices to make the deformations smooth. Enable Show Weights option in Mesh Display panel to see the weights in Edit Mode. Now assign desired weights to specific vertices. Remember that the higher the weight is, the more the painted area of the mesh will stick to/follow the bone.

You may also do it in a Weight Paint mode.


How to duplicate modifier on same object? I am using lattice modifier on an object and I just want to duplicate the modifier on the object its already applied. How do I do it ?

There is a Copy button near the top of any modifier:


How to disable x-ray for annotations (grease pencil) in 2.8? Is it even possible in 2.8? In 2.7 we had such ability, but now, when grease pencil and annotations are separate things, xray possible disable only for grease pencil, but not for annotations

This can be done with annotations programmatically. To my knowledge there's nowhere currently in the front end UI to do this for annotations though. Copy this line, go to the Scripting workspace, paste this in the console (place where you see >>) and press Enter.

bpy.data.grease_pencils['Annotations'].layers[0].show_in_front = False

Or this to change all existing annotation layers.

for layer in bpy.data.grease_pencils['Annotations'].layers: layer.show_in_front=False

I'm not sure why this was not kept accessible in the default UI for annotations. If it is somewhere (as of Blender 2.82), please someone let me know where. A fix for right now would be to paste in and run the code (after opening a new blank file) then go to File > Defaults > Save Startup File. You would have to run the code though for every new annotation layer you create, so maybe make a few dedicated layers and name them "non see-through" or something for when you want to use annotations that aren't see through.

Even if this option never returns to the default UI, would be pretty easy to create an addon that handles this. This will definitely be an option in the next version of Sensei Format.


How do I wrap text around a circle having it still standing up? I'm trying to make my text stand up while still following this bezier circle.
I know it looks like a complete utter mess, but all I want to know is how to make the text stand up (Like on the clock image) instead of being "skewed"

This relatively automated method places them automatically.

Create a simple plane object. In Edit Mode move about the Y axis the distance of your clock radius.
Aligned with the plane object center (not the geometry) add an empty object and rotate it $-30º$ about the Z axis.

Now add an Array modifier to the plane, set to Fixed Count and 12 iterations. Turn off all offsets and activate Object Offset pointing to the previously created empty object.

Create a bunch of numbers as separate (text or curve) objects. Center the text both vertically and horizontally for easier placement. Add them all to new collection (named "Numbers") containing those numbers exclusively.
Have in mind that the order in which you create your number objects is relevant. Particle sorting is as far as I can tell most likely obtained from chronological creation order, so the sequence you create your text objects in will directly influence the way numbers will be placed by the particle system, so when creating new objects or duplicating existing ones be sure to follow 1>2>3>...>12.
Now add a particle system to the plane set to Emitter, reduce the count to exactly $12$, turn on Use Modifiers, disable Random Order and Even Distribution and set the Particles/Face count to $1$.
Activate Rotation and under it set Orientation Axis to Object Y.

Under the Render panel pick Collection as Render As type and set the numbers collection as Instance Collection. Make sure Whole Collection, Pick Random and Global Coordinates are all off, and under Extra enable Unborn and Died.

Optionally turn off both Show Emitter and Render Emitter in the Viewport and Render panels.
This should ensure numbers are correctly placed at the right angles automatically for any arbitrary number of items without rotating them individually.


How to get rid of fireflies in my metallic materials / cycles (principled bsdf) i've been working on this Project for a while now and i am struggling with fireflies all over my metallic materials, I can easily get rid of them inside Photoshop but i would like to render an animation of the scene so i need cycles to render free fireflies frames.

I've tried:
-Increasing my samples and no matter how high i go fireflies keep apearing, they even appear more one my frame has reached 4000 samples

-tweaking my material node

-deactivating my reflective caustics

-tweaking light (scene is iluminated by an hdri, a sun lamp and 2 point lamps)

I think it may have something to do with the roughness map or maybe lightpaths or max bounces since there are a lot of reflective materials inside the scene but im not an expert in either so i cant find a solution

First try to set Strength in your Normal Map to something less. For example 0,02. If that won't do much, set Clamp Direct to 8 and Clamp Indirect to 6 in Sampling settings (image below). If that won't help either, or difference still won't be good enough, add to each metallic material on your scene Mix Shader in which mix your current setup with Transparent BSDF by Factor of Is Reflection Ray from Light Path node (also image below). Good luck.


Storage site for creations Where are the images/characters/models that someone creates stored?  Privately by the individual and/OR somewhere in Blender?

Typically, like most home computer programs, Blender stores what you create in the directory of your choice. When you press File->Save (as) or Ctrl+S to save the .blend file you'll get a File Save dialogue where you can pick where to save it and how to name it.

.blends are not stored inside the Blender App.


Organise collections in dope sheet As seen in the image I have 3 collections FG, Chara, Stroke. I need to organise such the the FG is at top, Chara is middle and Stroke is at bottom. I would like to do so without having to move on Y axis.

What I did was dump FLASH thinking and take up AFX thinking.
I made 3 collections FG, Character and BG. And arranged the same on the Y co ordinates as per their names. That provided me the hierarchy as needed.


Model's Limbs Shortening/Flattening When Bent I recently gave a model I've been working on a rig with Rigify. Although I know the weight paint needs to be adjusted along with upping the vertices, whenever I bend a limb such as a forearm, everything below the point of bending flattens and shortens. The farther your bend, the more exaggerated it becomes. Is this purely related to needing to adjust the weight paint and add more vertices or is there something else wrong? If it is just the weight paint and vertices, how do I remedy this problem? Below is a link to the model:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dUrLia-hmcwaU4eMz7sJOY7kR4WcfUfK/view?usp=sharing

Select your armature in Object mode, as you can see it has been scaled and therefore it stretches your mesh as soon as you move bones, so just apply the scale with a CtrlA and it will work fine.

As for your hair rigging, your hair is controlled by bones that are not supposed to control it, you need to assign it to the head vertex group:
Go in Edit mode, select the hair mesh (press L to automatically select the whole mesh):

Go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups, in the dropdown menu on the right of the vertex groups list, click on Remove From All Groups:

Select the group called Spine006 (it's the group that is controlled by your head bone, when you parent With Automatic Weight, vertex groups are automatically created with the name of the bone that is controlling them) and click on the Assign button:


How to make selections more visible Blender 2.8? In Blender 2.8's UI I cannot see what I am selecting.
This is Blender 2.79.

These are default settings in Blender 2.8.
I'm having a hard time seeing what vertices and what edges are selected, it is hard for me to distinguish the black Vertices from the orange ones.

With a bit of editing the Themes I managed to increase the contrast - at severe cost of general visibility of the rest of the model. I sacrificed all other contrasts to maximize it for selected vertices & edges.

Turning on X-Ray made the edges clearer but I do not want to worki with X-Ray on just for better visibility.

Turning Line Width to "Thick" in the Preferences makes the Outline stand out even further, however every edge becomes so fat it's it smothers all small details and kills the point of a 4k Monitor.

Select Edges (Highlighted) in Viewport Overlays makes selected edges & vertex look as of 2.79.


I don't know how I locked "view offset", but how do I unlock it? When I attempted to navigate within the 3D viewport by using the CTRL-numpad options, it didn't seem to work, and I noticed a message in the communication part of the main header that gave the usual warning sign (an exclamation point within a red edged yellow triangle), followed by the text "View offset is locked". The warning appeared and closed so quickly I was not able to obtain a screenshot.

I don't know what I did to cause this, and cannot find any information in the manual or other Blender documentation about this warning message. How do I unlock the "viewport offset"?

Check the "view" panel in the properties shelf of the 3D viewport. This error message can be caused if the user attempts to move the 3D viewport when there is an entry in the "Lock to Object" text box.


Some mesh-edges in object-mode aren't displayed So I have been extruding a cube to make a low poly banana and when I go from edit to object mode half the edges don't appear as well as half is dark.

I tried looking for an solution couldn't find one and its making me feel like I am doing something wrong so I decided to come here.

This is normal, as you are in wireframe mode. By default not all edges are displayed in wireframe mode.

To display all edges, enable Draw All Edges in Properties > Object > Display:

Or you could switch to solid view by pressing Z.


Where do I edit the the keyframes of a bezier curve path animation? I made the camera move on a bezier circle path using the following tutorial.

I would like to make the motion of the camera to be slow in the beginning and the end of the timeline, however, I couldn't find the the keyframes in the dope sheet. I also want to edit the motion curves in the graph editor, I couldn't do this as well. Any idea where can I find those modifications?

In the outliner, it shows that there is some keyframes for editing, I just couldn't find where to do it.

The reason you could not find the keyframes is because there aren't any!
See when you use the Follow Path command blender sets up the curve animation by using a generator. You can see this generator by opening up the properties panel in the graph editor, with the curve selected.

That is not what you want. You need just two regular keyframes. So delete that modifier (just click the X).
Now you can keyframe the curve Evaluation Time. Go to the first frame, set the Evaluation Time to 0 hover over the input field, and press I
Now go to frame 100 and set the evaluation time to 100, again hover over the input field, and press I.

Now in the graph editor you will see your animation (if the curve is still selected). You can drag out the ending keyframe to make the whole animation last longer (camera spin slower), but what you are really interested in is changing the curve. (By default the interpolation type is Bezier and that is what you want.)

With the generator you were getting a linear animation, with the bezier interpolated keyframes you have a nice easing at either end.


Emitter Particle System not using Density Vertex Group(Single Vertex Emitter) Blender ignores a "Single Vertex" vertex group ,  when assigned as emitter in the density panel of the particle system. It simply emits from the all the verts.
No other modifiers are applied to the emitting plane.

Because you've set Emission > Source > Faces, and as you've painted the central vertex it considers that all the faces that this vertex is part of will be affected. So you need to subdivide your plane a bit so that only the central face will be affected.


how to delete property from object If I have a property like bpy.types.Object.thing = BoolProperty() how would I go about removing it? I have tried del bpy.context.object.thing and bpy.context.object.remove("thing") and del bpy.context.object["thing"]. Do I just have to create a new object with this objects data? Or is there a way to delete them?

Your first command adds a new property to bpy.types.Object as in your altering the base class used for all objects. The next steps you are trying to remove a custom property from an individual object instance.

To add and remove a property from all objects -

bpy.types.Object.thing = bpy.props.BoolProperty()
del bpy.types.Object.thing


Lighting for the filament of a lightbulb I want the light of the filament of a lightbulb to  cast an orange glow on the objects around it, but I want the actual filament to be a bright white. What can I do? I am not experienced with Blender

Probably best to understand that the “white” in the core you are used to seeing isn’t “white” in most instances, but rather a particular colour.

We have grown to think that there is “white” at the core of many high emission objects due to learned aesthetics that largely stem from photographs. Candles, which are distinctly orangey, fires, the sun, etc. are all captured on film as blown out, which after adaptation, is a neutral white.

In raytracing, if you use a decent camera rendering transform, you can lean on it to generate exactly what you are hoping for. A wonderful example here is from Tynaud’s neon demonstration.

As you can see, the colour emitted is a rather saturated blue, yet the core naturally overexposes to a blown out white.

Lean on a good camera rendering transform and have your emission high enough.


How to stop texture curving around a hole? I'm developing a game in Unity and I use Blender to create my models. In my game I need a board with holes in it. I create holes by using a cylinder and a boolean modifier like this:

Then I apply my test texture to the board and it looks nice:

By default, the texture mapping coordinates is set to "Generated". But since I want the texture to transfer to Unity, I need to use UV coordinates and create a UV map for the model. I tried to select the top faces and unwrap, but the end result looks messy because the hole makes my texture to curve.

Is there a simple way to unwrap my board model so that the texture would ignore the hole and look like it did when using generated coordinates? I tried to modify the UV map by selecting different edges from the model and moving the vertices around the UV map but I can't figure out how to do it correctly. I need the texture applied only on the top of my board, if it helps anything.

Or maybe there is some way to import .blend files to Unity with generated coordinates, but I think I have to ask that from the Unity formus instead.

You could select upward faces, go in top view and hit U, Project From View (bounds) to fit the faces to your map, but then the other faces wouldn't be unwrapped, so you'd have to unwrap then separately.

If you're going to export it to Unity, you might as well triangulate the mesh inside Blender with CTRL + T before unwrapping, it may work better without NGons.


How create realistic semi gloss paint shader? How do I recreate the green surface shader?
Just the green parts, not the decals. I tried mixing a green diffuse and glossy shader with a layer weight node as the factor. Yet, I'm not able to get that surface.

**UPDATE : **
 using @LukeD 's solution I got it to this stage but it's not dark enough.

Final:

Overview:

Material itself is pretty simple even without using complicated PBR (but you can try it of course - look for CynicatPro) but the devil lays in details which are Bumps in this case.

You should work on them, as they are different for different parts of the Tank. Also Roughness map would be a good idea. Some parts are shinier then others.

This setup is just Diffuse mixed with Glossy by Fresnel and with procedural Bump Map.

You can try to use texture for bumps, same goes with roughness map.


What does the "normal" socket of displacement node do? I tried searching and there is no information about it.
Blender manual says "to do"
I did some experiment but still nothing is clear.
Thank you.

My best guess is that it doesn't do anything now but later you'll be able to displace geometry with a Normal Maps rather than a Bump Map. Which means it will at least save us the hassle of converting a normal map to a bump map, but hopefully this means that we'll get better looking displacement since normal map carries shading information as well as height.


eye target controller is not visible in CG Cookie Flex Rig I've been trying to test out the CG Cookie Flex Rig, but i faced a problem when i got to the face controllers. i can select the eye target controller but it's not visible on the 3D view. are there any possible ways to show the controller? it would be very annoying during the animation

Mine is visible, try to check the "hide" button or download the file from another site.


Spotlight cone has a black frame in all views I'm using Blender 2.8, using the Eevee render.  I have added a spotlight.  The cone and the 'light bulb' show as black lines in any view, it's a bit like a wireframe.  Any idea how to get rid of these lines?

To get rid of all overlays in preview render:

Disable "show cone" in the light settings

Disable "show overlays" in 3D View

Disable "show Gizmo" also in 3D View


Get out of "orange selection" mode All the objects in my scene are suddenly circled with a dark orange stroke.
I can't seem to modify, delete or even select some of them...

Just a beginner at Blender, but I couldn't get an answer anywhere I looked.

The reason you can't select other objects is because you are in Edit Mode.
The reason for the orange outlines is likely due to having entered edit mode (↹ Tab) while all objects were selected (A):

While in edit mode, you can edit the mesh of the Active object, but cannot move any other objects. To select a different active object for editing, you'll have to first toggle back to Object Mode (↹ Tab) before clicking an object with  RMB.

Also see the blender manual.


How to snap the right edge of a strip to the playhead instead of the left in video editor I am making a fade out on a shot. I am using a gamma cross from the shot to a color strip. I have positioned my playhead on the place I want the right edge of the color strip to be, but when I make it snap to the playhead, the left edge of the color strip snaps to it, not the right edge.

I am looking for a way to snap the right edge to the playhead. Maybe an add-on? Or a built-in method?

You can do the trick with if len(bpy.context.selected_sequences) > 0: bpy.ops.sequencer.snap(frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current - bpy.context.selected_sequences[0].frame_final_duration).
Unfortunately you cannot write something specific like an expression into the Frame field fo the RNA SEQUENCER_OT_snap when you use sequencer.snap as the operator identifier for a new key map item in your Input Configuration.
But here's a workaround based on another answer here with the advantage that you can use any scripts saved in text data blocks via a hotkey:
Workaround [use this line of code via a Sequencer Hotkey]
Preparations

Save the following Script as a *.py file onto your Computer:
import bpy

bl_info = {
    # modified version of zeffiis quick script runner, see https://gist.github.com/zeffii/2b488961226ee1ecefcf
    "name": "Sequencer Script Runner",
    "author": "Samoth",
    "version": (0, 1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 7, 6),
    "location": "Sequencer, Properties Panel (right)",
    "category": "Sequencer"
}

class GlobalScriptRunner(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "sequencer.script_runner"
    bl_label = "Sequencer Script Runner"

    def execute(self, context):
        # or put own script here...
        textblock_name = context.scene.global_script_to_run
        textblock = bpy.data.texts.get(textblock_name)
        if textblock:
            textblock_as_string = textblock.as_string()
            exec(textblock_as_string)
            return {'FINISHED'}
        else:
            return {'CANCELLED'}

class ScriptRunnerPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Sequencer Properties Panel"""
    bl_label = "Script Runner"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_script_runner"
    bl_space_type = 'SEQUENCE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label('Script to run from Shortcut')
        layout.prop_search(context.scene, "global_script_to_run",  bpy.data, "texts")

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.global_script_to_run = bpy.props.StringProperty()
    bpy.utils.register_class(GlobalScriptRunner)
    bpy.utils.register_class(ScriptRunnerPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(GlobalScriptRunner)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ScriptRunnerPanel)
    del bpy.types.Scene.global_script_to_run

Select it via Install from File... in the Blender User Preferences' (Ctrl Alt U) Add-ons tab and enable it.

Save the above Code line that does the trick into a new Text data block in a Text Editor view.

Usage

Assign a new Hotkey for the Add-on:

Select Sequencer and then Sequencer (Global) in the Input tab in Blenders User Preferences.
Scroll way down and Add New
Put sequencer.script_runner into the Operator Identifier Field
(You can see that it worked when the Key map events title will change to "Sequencer Script Runner" and the RNA changes to SEQUENCER_OT_script_runner)
Assign a Hotkey Combination, probably use Keyboard and Shift Alt S

Open a Properties Panel in the Video Sequence Editor
Select the above created Text data block via its name in the Script Runner panel
Just use the newly assigned Hotkey with some selected Strips (I tested it with a Color Strip) and enjoy ;-)

Explanation
You could put your Script lines directly into the Add-ons code into the def execute(self, context): block (where I placed the comment # or put own script here...) and omit the whole Panel creation stuff below. But this will reduce your abilities to this single usage example.
This way with the selectable Text data block you can save multiple ones, name them accordingly and run any selected one of them via the same Hotkey. And this has the huge advantage, that you can do context related stuff in there. You will notice that the above Script line won't work when you simply put it into a Text data block and hit Run Script (which already has a Hotkey assigned). That's due to your cursor not being above the VSE when you hit Run Script and therefore Blenders context is wrong for this to work properly. This isn't the case when you selected a Strip and then call the Script via this Add-on via the newly assigned Hotkey. Then you'd still be hovering over the VSE, so the context for the Script line is fine and it does what you asked for.


Denoiser slows rendering too much Suzanne on transparent background with 1 sample and denoiser is rendering slower than at 100 samples and no denoiser. PC specs: Ryzen7 1700 (stock), GTX 1050ti, Win10 64bit

v.2.79a, CPU+GPU, 1980p, 64px tile:

1 sample + denoiser (radius 10) - 00:40:35
100 samples - 00:12:47

What is wrong here?

Nothing is wrong, the denoising takes time, that's all.

In your blend, most of the area has literally nothing. The renderer notices that and renders those areas extremely fast. The denoiser still has to treat all the pixels, and does not know that there is nothing there.

As an exemple (CPU only, render size changed to 1080x1080):
100 samples, no denoise:
your file, ('as is') : ~11s  (GPU 6s)
with added background plane : ~33 s (GPU: 24s)

1 sample, default denoise settings:
your file, ('as is') : ~25s (GPU: 9s)
with added backgound : ~26 s (GPU: 10s)
(render of 1 sample w/o denoise takes <1s, with or w/o background)

I'm not going to give all the results, but for this scene, the denoising seems to add ~25s to the processing on CPU (on my system, and with the reduced output size!), independent of the presence of a background plane or the number of samples.


Rigging character; Keep Offset not working? I am trying to follow this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGvalWG8HBU

At 7:09 he makes the Leg IK bone keep it's offset against the Foot Bone. I am trying to do this, and I follow his steps but I do not get his result. Instead, I get this.

Additionally, the foot bone also clears it's parent and becomes separated. What am I doing wrong?

You have to jump into 'Pose Mode' right after parenting.  Then try rotating the bone.  From the looks of it, you have everything else right.


Is there a way to use custom procedural textures in Cycles? Is there support for generating procedural textures in Cycles using, say, Python scripting?

The built in procedural textures are very limited.

As mentioned, Open Shading Language is likely what you are after. The Blender Wiki has good OSL info. In addition, you may want to check out:

www.openshading.com

If OSL is not your thing, you may want to check out the many Blender procedural experiments (incl. Python) by Jimmy Gunawan at: blendersushi.blogspot.com


Align Two Mesh with same origin point I have two meshes  in my file found here:

I want my upper mesh m2 to have the same location, origin point and bounding box positions as the lower mesh m1. I have the below script which adjusts the size of the bounding box on y and z axis to match the lower mesh but how I can make it have the same position with the exact same origin point of the lower mesh so that they are exactly on top of each other. Any advice please?

So as shown below, using python I want the uppermesh m2 be positioned exactly on top of lower mesh m1 and after that set it's origin to be the exact place as the origin of m1.

import bpy

scene= bpy.context.scene
m1 = bpy.data.objects['m1']
m2 = bpy.data.objects['m2']

m1Bound = m1.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * m1.dimensions
m2Bound = m2.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * m2.dimensions
ratio = abs(m1Bound.y) / abs(m2Bound.y)
m2.scale *= ratio

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
m2.select = True
scene.objects.active = m2
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True)

m1Bound = m1.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * m1.dimensions
m2Bound = m2.matrix_world.to_quaternion() * m2.dimensions
ratio = abs(m1Bound.z) / abs(m2Bound.z)
m2.scale.z *= ratio

I was able to fix it by setting the origin to the centre of bounding box then copying location from m1 to m2 then applying location as shown below.

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
m2.select = True
scene.objects.active = m2
m1.select = True
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY', center='BOUNDS')
m2.location = m1.location
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=True, rotation=False, scale=False)


Make closed curve not closed. Blender 2.8 I have a closed curve. I want to open the closed curve to make it not a closed curve anymore. I made the curve closed by using Alt+C in Edit mode.

All you need to do is click Atl+C again to open the closed curve.


How can we explain texture effect on the point light My scene is a home consists of 4 walls(4 cube). I placed a light source at the same distance from the corner that joint wall 1 and wall 3 (45 degree). If I applied texture on walls, I obtain this image where the light reflected not exactly  symmetrically

but when i delete the texture of walls, I obtain this image where the light is reflected symmetrically. How can we explain this phenomenon ?

This is caused by the color of the Diffuse surface. A whiter surface reflects more light, while a grayer surface reflects less. The only difference between the below planes is the color, the distance from the light source and the other material options are identical.

As you can see the difference is quite pronounced. The whiter plane (right side) reflects much more light. When you use a texture to drive color, you are mixing the two of these, resulting in a more broken up diffuse shading.


Efficient way(s) to render point clouds of 3D scan datas in cycles Problem: I would like to render a 3D scan data (so no volume) containing only vertices (no faces or edges) with colour informations in cycles.

Tried so far: I tried particles (spawning spheres on each vertices) but I couldn't get the sphere to have the colour of the vertex it spawned from and with lots of points it's takes a lot of memory.
I tried hairs, but it looks like they only get the right colour when there are faces, they stay black if the mesh only has sparse points (bug ?)

Answers:
I'm opened to all suggestions. Exact looking techniques are better, but if there are some holes in the rendering it's ok. So using the above-mentioned techniques if you know the right parameters to save memory and have colour information is ok.
It can be a version of that solution : http://www.blensor.org/node/27 working in cycles.
Answers with GSoC Projects versions are ok (the OpenVDB or DingTo ones for example ?)

To be met:
I use a 20 000 000 point cloud data and I only have 8G memory, the solution must be memory-efficient. To give an Idea of how much can be used for so many points : the 3D scan program it comes from renders it using only 400M Memory.

May be you want to check out this link to render a colored point cloud in Blender-

https://visheshvision.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/rendering-a-colored-point-cloud-in-blender/


Ambient Occlusion vs Environment Lighting? What is the difference between ambient occlusion vs environment lighting?

To me it looks like environmental lighting turns an image texture(or single color) into a hemi lamp source that shines from all angles but casts no shadows.

While Ambient occlusion turns a single color into a hemi lamp source that shines from all angles but casts some shadows.

Difference being: one has the ability to cast shadows and the other has the ability to use a texture as a lamp?

Actually, it looks like  if you use environmental lighting, you automatically also use ambient occlusion just with less control over its shadows.

Im getting a circular error in my brain.
Can-Not-Compute

The manual says the difference is

  The difference is that Environment lighting takes into account the “ambient” parameter of the material shading settings, which indicates the amount of ambient light/color that that material receives.

But ambient occlusion has a similar setting called "Factor".

But the factor settings effects ambient occlusion for all objects while
the "ambient" parameter effects just a single texture.

Is that it?

Here is a scene in Blender Render with AO on:

and here is the same scene with environmental lighting on:

So again, what is the difference?

I wouldn't think of Ambient Occlusion as part of your scene lighting, it's really a tool to art direct your image, and (if you output it to a render pass) for extra flexibility in the post production of your image. As Duarte already mentioned it is not physically accurate but is much faster to calculate so it can be helpful to increase the visual appeal of the render.

If you look at many artists' making of videos, you'll generally see that the AO pass is added on in post and not usually as part of the scene render. It's technically a localized shadow effect that gives you more control over the contrast in crevices and surfaces that are close to each other.

I generally think of it as a tool to give you more control over the image, it's more of an art direction tool than a realistic lighting tool. I think it's more helpful to think of it that way. I know you can have AO enabled and combined into your raw render, but it's much more powerful as a post effect.


Export in object format via script. The default cube appears in the scene! I am importing a x3d file and then exporting in obj format using this simple script

import bpy,os

bpy.ops.import_scene.x3d(filepath='field.x3d', axis_forward='Z', axis_up='Y', filter_glob="*.x3d;*.wrl")

bpy.ops.export_scene.obj(filepath='test.obj')

However the resulting obj file contains the default cube! This is the x3d file:

This is the object file after the export:

Why that cube appears ? Does someone know how to avoid the cube in the object file?

Thank you very much for your help!

Have a look at the outliner in your first pic, the cube is there. Just delete the cube and it will no longer be exported.

Just because it isn't on a visible layer doesn't mean it wont be exported.


Where is the image Mapping tab? I am following this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7ajiCepus
(note at the 3:12 mark in the video is where the step I need help is)
I need to put a logo onto a trophy I made in Blender. I am following all the way to the point where in the tutorial he says to switch the mapping to UV. But I dont see a "mapping" window like his. I have Image Mapping, but no plain Mapping window. I really need help to get this done. I am on a deadline for a championship football game film. I got the trophy all set, I only need to get it textured and get this logo on there and I can finish.

This is because you're using Cycles, but the tutorial you linked is for Blender Internal Render. You can switch to BI by going to the 3D view's header and, to the left of the Blender logo, using the combo box to select Blender Render.


How to hide hdri background? I have added an hdri environment file and i want to use the lights and not the background image. Is there any option present to hide the image and just use the light source.

In the properties panel, World section, Ray Visibility tab, unceck the "Camera" option.


Armature keeps spinning around root bone in pose mode when I try to move anything I was following a tutorial on rigging (was pretty much done) and now my entire model keeps spinning around the main root bone if I try to move any bone at all. (first picture is where it originally was and still is while in Rest Position, second image is of how it changes when in Pose Position while in Pose Mode or Object mode, Edit Mode seems fine)

I tried clearing All Transforms or hitting the ALT+g, s, r while all were selected and that just caused it to spin in the same direction like everything else does as shown in this picture:

I was nearly finished with this video tutorial here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHAqk7OALw   and near the last part my issue began. 2:28:07 was the last time I was in edit mode and the pose was fine. Right after the little turrets he then went and parented 3 more bones and then he switches back to pose mode with no problem, I suspect somewhere in there is where the problem occurred on my end. I could have sworn I followed it correctly but maybe I went wrong somewhere I have no idea.

I couldn't find another issue like mine exactly so sorry if this question has been asked before, I'm still very new.

Edit: I checked in the video comments to see if it had happened to anyone else but I did not see any mention of it unfortunately.

Edit2: Picture for more detail on the yellow lines.

This spinning effect many times is caused by an incorrectly set up IK constraint. Please check the Tutorial again for two things:

to which bone is the target of the IK chain parented to? The target is the bone which you actually move by hand. It must not be a child of the bone chain which is deformed by the constraint
what is the chain length in your IK constraint? By default it is set to 0, meaning the IK constraint affects every bone in the hierachy, so each bone which is a parent of the bone which holds the constraint. Try setting it to 2 for a start and check the deformation. Chain length is the number of bones which are affected by the constraint, including the bone which holds the constraint


Blender in 3D printing I am starting a business in 3D printing and I would like to ask you about Blender as a software for creating models of houses. Is Blender a good choice for this business?
For example: I would get a contract from architect to create a model from 2D plan. And now: Is Blender a good choice for this type of business? Can I easily create a 3D model of that plan and print it or are there any problems like wall thickness and so on?

Yes, you can use Blender for 3D print modeling. Look for these addons:

"3DPrint Toolbox"
"Measureit"

These addons are not a must, but I highly recommend them, and I'm sure they will help you a lot.

Also I recommend these series:

https://store.blender.org/product/blender-for-3d-printing/

Is not free, but you save you a lot of time. You learn the correct workflow quick and with explanation, no like many people on YouTube who use Blender for two weeks (so they know almost nothing), and they think they can teach others :D


Scrolling zooms faster than it should I'm relatively new to blender and now face a navigation/viewing issue.
When I scroll it doesnt scroll like it normally would when you start a blank file. When I do nothing but scroll to zoom in and out it moved in and out way more than it should making it close to impossible to get to where I want to be.

Another, possibly related, problem appears when i'm moving the view in any way it starts to merge into the model showing me the inside. This is also the main reason in asking because its hard to get to that one point to be able move it to the right spot.

Select the objects or objects of interest.
Press Numpad .
(that is the period on the numpad)
Menu and Space bar alternatives which present a puzzle for me.

For blender 2.8-2.9:
The same action is now called "Frame Selected" and can be found in the view-menu of the 3d-viewport. The shortcut remains the same though.


Object doesnt look as it should in shading I cant seem to figure out but my model looks al wierd and washed out. it should look like the left one but it doesnt and i cant seem to find anyone else who has  this problem.

Your normals are not consistent.

You can fix this (as Ramos suggested) by selecting all your vertices in edit mode and pressing ctrln. This will attempt to automatically determine which side of your mesh is "outside" and make all the normals point outward, instead of inward.

You can confirm that this is the case by entering edit mode and turning on visible normals in the 'numeric' panel to the right of the 3D viewport.

More from the Manual:

  To show the normals of the faces, you can open the Transform Panel, find the Mesh display tab, and click on the small cube without the orange dot. You can also change the height of the axis that points the direction of the normal. The default is 0.1 .

If this doesn't work, you probably have non-manifold geometry.
What is non-manifold geometry?


2.8 Normal map and Texture issue Don't know if it's just because 2.8 is still in the process of making, but here's my problem. I have this man mesh (from cgtrader) that came with a normal map and this texture that matches it to put color in the right place. The problem: It comes out black. I've looked everywhere and this seems to be the right node setup, but help is appreciated. Thanks!

BTW here's the link to the mesh I downloaded if you wanna try: https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/character/man/3d-character-96a5df4b-49ab-411b-9e1d-fd6e47537e41

If you change the normal map node from 'Blender Object Space' to 'Tangent Space' and select the 'UV map'in the dropdown that appears, that should work.

If it still appears black, then something else must be wrong. No lights, that sort of thing. I've uploaded my file (which is working for me), so you can compare: character.blend


Create Liquid shooting from bottle in Blender 2.91 I followed several tutorials, but none seem to generate any liquid.  I am using 2.91.2 on OS 11.
I have a cube set up as a liquid domain and a disk set as fluid Inflow.
(see below).
The problem is that nothing happens when I bake.  It generates the bake without any particles.  I followed multiple tutorials.  I am using Eevee, but that should be okay.  Any suggestions appreciated.
One thing I noticed is that layout of the Fluid section differs slightly than ALL of the tutorials I have seen.  For example, flow type and flow behavior are two different dropdowns, and other subtle differences.
I got some of this working, but have two questions....
How do I hide the domain when it is NOT animating?
There are colored spheres showing up in my fluid.... not sure why.

You need to change the cache bake type to all:
This is what you have:

You need to change the type to all instead of modular:

Then you bake.
(I would also suggest you change the resolution to something in between 64 and 256 (Depending on how good your PC is))
Let me know if it works
Daniel


Can't create new pose library or add new poses to existing library I have a file with several armatures, which I duplicated, and tweaked each for another mesh. At some point I couldn't add more pose libraries or add new poses to existing one. Did I lock something somewhere?

Thanks in advance.

Looking at the screenshot you are in the object mode of the armature.

You must be in the pose mode of the armature in order to enable the button for creating a new pose library and adding poses to the library.


How to add a base bone after other bones have been created? What I'm trying to do is create a robotic hand. I created the mesh and added the bones for the fingers (following CG Cookies' tutorial on rigging fingers), but didn't add a bone for the "arm" part of the mesh.

I've tried adding the bone (the arm bone is named Bone.020), created a vertex group with the same name, then weight painted the part it should move, but that didn't work. I have tried parenting the finger bones to the arm bone, but that didn't work. I don't know what else to do. Any help is greatly appreciated.

View of the Object Data panel

View of the Bone panel

View of the Bone Constraints panel

Showing the fingers are working properly

The problem - Rotating the arm doesn't pivot where the "elbow" would be

Example of weight paint that works with thumb

The weight paint area for the arm and palm

Armature modifier in the modifiers panel

What is going on here is strange, and I can't really determine what is going on.  For whatever reason, no matter what I do, The hand does not follow that particular bone.

I just wound up remaking the bone, that seemed to get around whatever strangeness was happening.

I didn't bother rebuilding the parenting of the bones for the sake of this screenshot.


It Won't Render: Stuck on the 1st 4 tiles, played with Resolution, sample size and max steps with no luck So I'm at that step where I am finally ready to Render my first big project. Aaaaaand it's been stuck on the first 4 tiles for the last 2 hours?

I am using a MacBook Pro
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB

(I include these because I have no idea what affects a computers ability to render but I assume it's one of them, most liekly the graphics card).

So anyways here are the pictures, as you can see I played with changing the resolution, the sample size and the max steps to see if I got different results but it just keeps getting stuck at those 1st four tiles. I've rendered a few other small projects successfully but this was my first time changing some values. I assume i've managed to accidentally change the wrong values and thats causing some conflict thats either stopping the render itself or is making it just too much for my computer.

My goal was the render this particular picture at a good enough resolution and clarity that it could then be made into a poster. So i wanted the resolution to be good and the sampling to be high.

Since writing this there has been no change to any of the numbers at the top of the render result (the time left, etc)

Your screenshot indicates that you are using square samples. This means that for 500 square samples, this becomes 250,000!

This will consume quite a bit of resources, and very likely take quite some time. Unless you really want to render with that many samples, I would uncheck square samples, or change this to something more reasonable (like 45-55
). If this is your final render, perhaps 2000-3000 (not squared) may be sufficient.


How to make the panel detect that the operator has been executed correctly? NOTE : There are already two posts concerning this problem but I can't find an answer in them. I enclose the link that leads to it:
Answers

Hy everyone,

I have in my script, a panel and an operator. I try to make sure that when the operator executes it puts a interne boolean variable to "True" and then make some elements of the panel display. I manage to access the operator's variable from the panel but I can't set this variable to "True" in the operator's execute. test_bool stays at "false".

Have a nice day.

The code looks like this :

def _build_bones_list():

#code...

class OP_ListBones(bpy.types.Operator) :

    bl_idname = "object.oper_list_bones"
    bl_label = "list bones!"
    bl_description = "enregistre la liste des bones d'une armature"

    test_bool=False

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context) :
        #pass
        return True

    def execute(self, context) :

        _build_bones_list()
        self.test_bool= True #don't work
        return {'FINISHED'}

class InterfacePanel (bpy.types.Panel) :

    bl_label = "Parent Bones..."
    bl_idname = "VIEW_3D_PT_PARENT_BONES"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = "Parent bones"
    bl_description = "parentage robot mesh/bones"

    _bool_=False

    # --- interface_listener ---

    def interface_listener(self) :

        obj_select = bpy.context.selected_objects #list
        obj_ = bpy.context.object #obj selected

        l = self.layout
        c=l.column(align = False)

        if not obj_select or not obj_.type == "ARMATURE" :

            l.label(text ="select an armature!!")
            return

        elif obj_.type == "ARMATURE":

            #code...

            c.operator(OP_ListBones.bl_idname)

            #I'm trying to retrieve the boolean from the operator...
            self._bool_ = OP_ListBones.test_bool

            #code...

    # --- interface_parent ---

    def interface_parent(self) :

       #code...

    def draw(self, context) :

        if not self._bool_ :

            self.interface_listener()

        elif self._bool_ :

            self.interface_parent()

The add-on below demonstrates how to solves this by using a PropertyGroup that stores the state of the execution. The operator SCENE_OT_example toggles the value stored in bpy.context.scene.example_settings.success. In EXAMPLE_PT_panel  the draw() method is used to display a label depending on the value of bpy.context.scene.example_settings.success.

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

import bpy

class ExampleSettings(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    success: bpy.props.BoolProperty(description='Operator executed successfully.', default=False)
    executed: bpy.props.BoolProperty(description='Operator has been executed.', default=False)

class SCENE_OT_example(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "scene.example"
    bl_label = "Example Operator"
    bl_description = "Sets the success variable."
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    def execute(self, context):
        context.scene.example_settings.executed = True

        # Dummy function that toggles the value (True => False, False => True)
        context.scene.example_settings.success = not context.scene.example_settings.success
        return {"FINISHED"}

class EXAMPLE_PT_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Panel 1"
    bl_category = "Example tab"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_options = {"DEFAULT_CLOSED"}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator(SCENE_OT_example.bl_idname)

        if context.scene.example_settings.executed:
            if context.scene.example_settings.success:
                layout.label(text="Operator execution successful.")
            else:
                layout.label(text="Operator execution failed.")

classes = (ExampleSettings, SCENE_OT_example, EXAMPLE_PT_panel)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How can I make a plane's edges taper inwards? How can I deform one edge or multiple edges of a plane or cube so they are tapered in and rounded equally?

While in Edit mode, select the plane and subdivide it, by pressing W>Subdivide. You can press F6 to adjust the number of cuts. Then, use the Proportional Editing tool, enabled by pressing O, or by going to the 3D View header, and set it's falloff to Sphere.

Now, select the center face/vertex and scroll the mouse so the circle doesn't contain the corner vertices and scale to taste.


Removing Double Faces Hi.  I'm new to Blender and started making modeling, till I ran into a problem.

I need help to remove a "Double Skin" as shown in the screenshot, as well as those blue lines.

The issue happened as I joined two objects and added mirror modifier.  I already tried removing doubles as well as removing modifiers, but to no avail.

Thank You!

When removing doubles you need to have everything selected. If that still doesn't work try selecting a section of one 'skin' and pressing Ctrl+L to select everything connected to it and then delete it.


Attribute error while declaring correct variables I try to display the light type options inside the toolbar in a shelf.

So I copied the code from the Blender "ui.py" but I remain getting the error that for the light object I have not defined the attribute lamp right.

  AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'lamp'

class ObjectShading(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Light Shading"
    bl_idname = "LightShading"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Shading Toolbox"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.lamp

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

        lamp = context.lamp
        clamp = lamp.cycles
        cscene = context.scene.cycles

        layout.prop(lamp, "type", expand=True)

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(clamp, "cast_shadow")

What is it that I am missing or doing wrong here?

If I exchange lamp=context.lamp with lamp = context.active_object.data it works.

As the error suggests, there is no lamp property in bpy.context and as you found context.active_object.data gives you the properties you are after when a lamp is selected.

Unlike a camera, there is no "active" lamp and there could be hundreds of lamps in a scene. You will most likely want to test if the active object is a lamp and display it's properties if it is.

if context.active_object.type == 'LAMP':
    lamp = context.active_object.data
    layout.prop(lamp, "type", expand=True)


Camera shakes like heat shimmer or mirage Suddenly my camera has started to warble or shake when I play my animation (looks like heat waves/shimmer...).  There are no modifiers on the camera. It isn't noticeable in wireframe or solid viewport shading, but is very noticeable in look dev and rendered.  I'm using eevee, Blender 2.8.  Please help.  Thanks

Problem was, the camera's clip start was too small (0.001), which was fine for an interior shot, but as soon as the camera went outside it had to be set higher (0.100).
Cheers


How do I move an object with a curve modifier applied to it? To start, I have an example scene setup illustrating my setup.

I have a round-ended cylinder that I've applied a Simple Deformation to taper it, and then a Curve to make it into a hooked claw or talon shape.

This claw is going to be used 20 times, adding claws to a figure (not included in scene). The claws are to share the same UV map and vertex order, and will share a bunch of other fiddly little shape adjustments.
But, if I make a Linked or Object duplicate of the claw and try to translate and rotate the duplicate to where I want one of the finger or toe claws to be, it instead slides along the curve modifier.

I want to have 20 claw objects of various different origin points and XYZ rotations (and scalings!) to all have their curvature driven by one curve object, so that when I adjust curvature, they all stay in sync.

If I bake the curve in by Applying it, I can't adjust the curve any more. I can't bake the curve as a Shapekey, it's not on the top of the stack of modifiers and the Simple Deform: Taper will probably want to be adjusted for different variations of the claw. Anyways, curves/rotations are terrible as shape-keys.

Should I be using another approach?
Is there a way to make the duplicates make a real linked duplicate the parent mesh, where the only things I can adjust are the Transforms from the object view?

If you select both the claw and the deforming curve and press Alt+D to do a linked duplicate of both of them, wouldn't that fix it?

You can then move the claw to a new position by selecting the duplicate claw and the duplicate curve, doing any transformation you want to both of them.

Because you did a 'linked duplicate' you can then still edit any of the curve objects and they will all update.

Here I have duplicated the curve and claw several times (using 'linked duplicate'), scaled them, moved them and by going into edit mode of a single curve I can edit them all at once:


How to upscale final render (compositing) I am working on retro style graphics. How do I upscale my final render through compositor?

I'm rendering frames with 480x270 resolution and want to upscale it to 1920x1080 without interpolation (or with nearest neighbour).

I found a topic which suggested rendering 1920x1080, pixelate to 480x270 and then upscale to 1920x1080. This method is not suitable.

I don't know a way to do this without saving out your render as an image first. Basically, you'll render your image at 480 x 270 as normal, and save as an image. Then bring the render into the compositor; use the transform node with the "Nearest" setting from the dropdown menu; and for scale, just scale it enough to match the new resolution (480 x 270 to 1920 x 1080 is a scale value of 4).


flip/roll text around horizontal axis? I mean something like

I saw an animation, in which every text has multi-layers, and every layer rolls to a cylinder at different speed

thanks

You may have luck looking into the Curve modifier.  You can make a curve with flat and coiled shape keys. Then you can add a curve modifier to your text mesh and animate the transition between the two shape keys.


Subdivision Surface Strange face choice? I have been trying to model a pen clip back and running into a strange effect with the subdivision surface that I do not understand.  For some reason, the interpolated surface is dipping below the original geometry and then bending back up.  I can not figure out why it is doing this.  It is best shown with a picture.

You can see the dip down on the arc to the right side.  I would have thought it would be a smooth transition from the arc to the first set of control points.  I attempted to add some supporting geometry with the highlighted line.  But that did not seem to help.  Any thoughts?  I am just not sure where to start.

Blend File:

Updated Efforts

I have attempted to add some additional geometry.  This has fixed the original issue, but now I am getting some strange artifacts.  I will keep futzing with it but if anybody has a suggestion as to the correct type of supporting geometry I would love the suggestion.  Thanks again for everybody's help.  I learn something new every day.

The solution to this problem was to add the correct supporting geometry.  After some fiddling, I have found something that produced a nice smooth output.  What one should look for when this type of problem appears, as suggested by the comments on the question, is NGons.  Although blender has "full" support for NGons, the subdivision surface does not always play nicely.  Although I did not completely get rid of the NGons, I reduced the vertex count and the result is quite nice (I think).  Here is the result:


Select multiple overlapping islands in UV Editor? I want to select multiple overlapping islands all at once in UV Editing mode. 3dsmax can do this by clicking and dragging a window around my element, but I couldn't find a comparable function in Blender. Not being able to select in UV Editing by clicking and dragging a window is a huge missing feature, or I am not sure how to find it :/

See below:

I want to select the islands corresponding to the fan in the editor, which are around 12. I got them to overlap, but cannot select all of them at once.

You can use Box select, which is activated with B:

You can also use C for Circle Select and CtrlLMB for Lasso Select.

For more on selection tools in the UV editor, see the wiki.


How to repeat a cyclic animation of an object/armature from command line with Blender API I need to render a cyclic animation of an object-armature from the command line. At the moment I am stack on how to repeat the keyframes, ie how to copy the keyframes of the first time points and paste them at the end of the animation the same object. I was able to do that with 2 different functions. One uses 'NLA_EDITOR':
def extend_cyclic_animation_nla(obj, n_repeatitions):

    for obj_i in bpy.data.objects:
        obj_i.select = False

    bpy.context.area.type = 'NLA_EDITOR'
    bpy.ops.nla.action_pushdown(channel_index=1)
    obj.animation_data.nla_tracks["NlaTrack"].strips["Armature|mixamo.com|Layer0"].repeat = n_repeatitions
    bpy.context.area.type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'

The second function uses 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR':
def extend_cyclic_animation_dopesheet(obj, n_repeatitions, frame_end):

    for obj_i in bpy.data.objects:
        obj_i.select = False

    bpy.context.area.type = 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR'
    bpy.context.space_data.dopesheet.show_only_selected = True

    obj.select = True
    bpy.ops.action.copy()
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = frame_end
    for i in range(n_repeatitions):

        bpy.ops.action.paste()
        bpy.context.scene.frame_current += frame_end

    bpy.context.space_data.dopesheet.show_only_selected = False
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = tmp
    bpy.context.area.type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'

My problem is that they only work when I run them from the blender window. When I run them from the command line I get an error. the reason is that when I run the code from the command line in the background bpy.context.area seems to be set to None and None does not have an attribute 'type'. The error is:
bpy.context.area.type = 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR'
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'type'

So, My question is given an object with a cyclic animation data, how can I copy (or repeat) the keyframes of that object and paste them at the end of the same animation from the command line? I am using blender 2.79.

Maybe it'll help you
**>>In the Timeline panel, display the layer property containing the keyframes you want to copy.

Select one or more keyframes.

Choose Edit > Copy.

In the Timeline panel containing the destination layer, move the current-time indicator to the point in time where you want the keyframes to appear.**


Crumpled cloth/paper-like black artefacts on render I'm trying to get rid of these black artefacts that looks like crumpled paper.
From my kitchen scene below, it's mostly on the lower part of the render and you can find most of it at the right.

I have the nishita sky texture on
And these are my render settings:

Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!
Btw the lower right white cube is just a simple mesh—a white cube with the default material..

Is it possible that you are using a Musgrave-noise as input for a bump-node for your surfaces?
If so, you should add a "Clamp"-node in between, as Musgrave can deliver values outside the expected bounds.
(There used to be a great answer with this info some months ago, but I couldn't find it any more to link it here, sorry...)


Ocean modifier foam spray? Is there a way to make the ocean modifier fake foam spray? I already displace the water with dynamic paint, but I still am stumped as to how to create the foam. I'm assuming it's a particle system of some sort, but I'm not where to place the emitter or what general settings to change (I just need some general tips).

We need dynamic particle emission to do real foam spray. The foam mask in the Ocean Sim modifier was created to be ready once Blender caught up with that feature.

Once Lukas's Particle Nodes project is finished, it should allow for us to do that. http://phonybone.planetblender.org

The foam mask would be the source of the dynamic particle generation. The nice thing about the ocean mesh generated is that there are speed vectors associated with the waves, which I believe should also be able to be sampled and applied to the dynamic particles' starting velocities. Fingers crossed!


How can I have the bones of my armature find the most direct path when reseting their rotation? My character does a backflip and therefore the hip and abdomen bones have been rotated "360" degrees. Considering that the idle pose hasn't made these transformations if the end of the backflip animation were to be meshed back into the idle pose; the abdomen and hip bones would need to revert themselves by taking the long way around (i.e. rotate -"360" degrees) to reach their original orientation.

I tacked on a keyframe from the beginning of the animation to the end as a sample of what I assume would happen:

Is there any way to have the bones ignore the specifics of their original rotation to make a direct transition without needing to include a jump between two frames where I flip all the rotations manually?
(I think that would disturb the physics if i did add a 1 frame jump to reset the rotations anyways)
Or am I going about this wrong and there happens to be an option for this issue when animation meshing?

In this scenario I would try some workarounds, like having your backflip rotate from - 360 to 0, or create a copy of the idle in which the hip bones have a 360 rot vaue. But maybe a real Pro has a better answer!


How do I draw onto video with Grease Pencil in the VSE? I'm doing some video editing and would like to be able to draw directly onto the video in order to highlight objects, produce arrows, etc. It should be possible to do this with Grease Pencil, but I can't figure out how. How do I do this?
Looking for other people who've done this, it seems that it can be done, but I can't find any instructions. The obvious thing (drawing on the video with D held down) just creates an annotation rather than adding a Grease Pencil layer, and annotations seem to be ephemeral and are intended for notes to the editor rather than actual video edits --- I'd also expect them to belong to a strip, which they don't. I have found a few references to people who've created a 3D scene with the video projected onto a square and then used the 3D Grease Pencil to draw on that,  but that seems... wrong. Also, this appears to be for Blender 2.7.
But I keep finding refrences to people who've actually done this, so it does seem to be possible. Can anyone tell me how?
For reference: this is with Blender 2.82. I know that Grease Pencil has had a major overhaul since 2.80.

Afaik, annotations are not for output, but only for notes inside Blender and therefore can't be added to the exported video. However you can draw with grease pencil in the 3d view in a new scene and add that scene as a scene strip to the sequencer(check transparent and change blend mode to alpha over), and that will be in the exported file.
Btw. same question here: Grease Pencil to Video Sequencer
How to draw GP on top of video:

How to add a grease pencil scene to the vse:


Animate alpha in Cycles nodes I'm making a shader that combines two image textures based on the alpha channel of the texture on top.

Now I need a way to adjust and animate what comes from the alpha-output of the texture node and goes to the fac-input of the mix shader node. I need to make it fully transparent in the beginning and then slowly animate the opaque part in.

My problem is, the color nodes I've tried so far only seem to adjust RGB channels. Is there anything in the Cycles material nodes that can be used to adjust (and hopefully animate) the alpha output of a texture node?

Yes.

The alpha channel is just another array of values, just like the R,G, and B channels, or any other grey, yellow, or purple socket.

So any node which manipulates values can be used to manipulate the alpha channel. For example:

Note the keyframed input in the math node. It's animated from 0 to 1.

Will result in:


Save ik bones after bake action for backup Hi how do we save ik bones after baking action?

After baking action, normally i’ll delete the ik bones so i can work on another animation in another action.

Occasionally, i’ll need to enhance previous action with the previous ik bones. This is where i need to get bek previous ik bones config and bake its action again.

Thanks to @SergeL's answer, we can duplicate another copy of armature and bake it, then reassign it the newly created action to the armature.

In my case, I need to remove the ik contraint in bones for making another new animation, so I keep a backup of original armature and continue work on duplicated copy of armature after done baking action. At this point, we still can select which armature we wanna apply onto your 3D object, like this:

Here's the steps to work on new action without deleting your ik bones:

Duplicate selected armature to new copy.
Bake action using the duplicated armature (pose menu > animation > Bake action... under pose mode)
It should automatically assign the action to current duplicated armature.
Remove all ik contraints in duplicated armature.
Select your 3D object and goto its modifier. Select the duplicated armature in "Object" field under its armature modifier.
And now, you can work on new animation in a new action, without the ik bones constraints while keeping it as backup.


Importing and rendering 3D object am a complete noob when it comes to 3D and Blender. This is what I want to do:

I want to create some videos of 3D spaceship models. I have found several superb models on sketchfab and downloaded them. Now, I want to finalize them so I can use them in After Effects. When I import them into Blender, I get the solid. The colors and textures are exactly as I need them, so is it possible to import the entire model, not just the grey solid and export it in a different format, one that would be compatible with After Effects? Thanks for your patience with a total noob!!

Danny

To import OBJ (object) use this

To Export 3DS use this

Follow the image guide as far as I understand is what you are looking for, if you think you need more information be more specific in your question


Node Wrangler - No folder selected I'm new to this forum and to Blender as well. I'm starting to learn a little bit of Blender 2.8 and just tried to use the Node Wrangler add-on. I when try to click the 'Add Principled Setup' option on the Shader Editor I just have a `No Folder Selected' response. What I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

I might be wrong but I thinks it's as simple as you first have to click on the "principled BSDF" otherwise blender doesn't know where you want to add the principled set-up.

So just click on the node to make sure it's highlighted and try again!


Blender 2.81 toolbar selects tools randomly In Edit Mode, when I click on SHIFT+SPACE to make Blender 2.81a ToolBar appear, this is what happens

it automatically and randomly select one tool
the toolBar appears and disappears automatically
So I got to do SHIFT+SPACE twice to make the ToolBar appear and stay on the viewport so that I can choose the tool I want.
Is it normal? If not, How can I fix it?

⇧ ShiftSpace by default brings up the tools menu, this can be temperamental in how long it stays visible. Holding space down usually helps to keep it open.

The menu will normally show up positioned so that the last tool used is under the cursor, if the cursor is near the top or bottom of the window it gets moved so that it can be fully shown in the window. This can be part of what leads to it selecting a new (random?) tool and disappearing quickly.

You may find displaying the toolbar on the left side by pressing T to be easier.


Mesh imported to Unity is inside out I'm importing a mesh i made into unity before exporting I always rotate it by -90 degrees in the X axis, then set the orientation to Y forward and Z up so when the object is imported to unity the object's orientation will fit into unity's native orientation, However whenever I do this after being importing to Unity the mesh is inside out or transparent but When I don't do the rotation of -90 on the X axis the mesh loads correctly aside from the orientation of the mesh being incorrect and it doesn't match unity's native orientation, i really can't figure it out this is the first time I'm having this problem My setup usually works in the meshes i import to unity but this time i got this problem.

When you import into Unity, there is an option to calculate normals, instead of importing them. Have you tried that?

Blender also has an option to show surface normals, as well as recalculate normals to face in or out of the mesh.


Texture rendering incorrect on a parcticle in cycles So, I tried to do a pile of blueberries and something went wrong
I was using particle system with molecular addon
Textures are looking right in texture view

But when rendered

How can I fix this?

I got it!

The root of the problem was bad lighting and roughness at 0.2 in BSDF shader...


Load .dll texture plugin How can I load .dll texture plugin? I read this thread https://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2684 but it didn't help - I can't find any "load plugin" button.

First off, the forum you linked to was talking about version 2.3x. (If you look at the post's dates it was from 2004!) We are using 2.77 now, a lot has changed.

Back then, and up till 2.4x you could use texture plugins. There is no way to use a .dll texture in blender now.
There is OSL scripting in cycles, so you could recode one if you really want to.

Now a days, textures are used a little differently. See my answer to
How are texture maps imported into Blender? for how to import image textures in cycles, and blender internal.


How do I mirror what I am doing on one part/side of the mesh onto the other? I am trying to make a symmetrical mesh were everything I do on one side get mirrored onto the opposite side (opposite axis) side

I came across many tutorials explaining how to mirror what's on one mesh onto another but these are from pre 2.8 and what I neeed is for the same mesh to be mirrored just on different sides.

Basically you need to add Mirror modifier to your object. As mirror center you can use object origin point on any other object by select it in Mirror Object.

You can adjust object origin using Object > Tranform > Affect only > Origins


I made a texture and it's not working I made an image with text and drawings to simulate play pause and other audio buttons and made it black for using it like a mask; where one material is shown through the image and other material from everything else. However, it only shows one material and even using it like a normal image texture through the diffuse or something isn't working and doesn't show. I made it before with other renders and never had this problem if it is important I'm using blender 2.79

Your mix shader mix input should be feeded by alpha output of the texture, not from the color output (which gives you 0.0 for black and 0.0 for transparency).

Enable node wrangler addon and Ctrl click on nodes to see their output and check the nodes workflow.


command-line export data to php I need to open an STL file with Blender, run a script that finds it's dimensions and send them to a php page. All of this should essentially be done through command line or a python script.

So far I've been using cmd with this command:

blender -b C:\blenderTesting\test.blend -o C:\blenderTesting\ -P C:\blenderTesting\test.py

blender -b C:\blenderTesting\test.blend opens the file in blender

-o C:\blenderTesting\ sets the folder for the file to be saved to when finished

-P C:\blenderTesting\test.py runs the python script that finds the dimensions of the object

When I use the above command cmd returns, Error executing Python script from command-line: C:\blenderTesting\test.py (at line 231).

This is the end of the python script

def write(filename):
    outputFile = open(filename, "w")
    outputFile.write(String);
    outputFile.close()

This is line 231 of test.py

Blender.Window.FileSelector(write, "Export")

I'm assuming the problem is that since I'm running this script via Blender background mode it can't open the export window in Blender. I don't want to do this anyway, since I want the script to automatically save the data in a php file. So is there a way to change the ending (line 231) of the python script to automatically save the data without using the export window?

If not, could I accomplish this another way?

Thanks for the help!

You could run Blender through PHP, pass arguments (see here) and let Blender print JSON-encoded data wrapped by some text markers. Extract and parse the JSON-data with PHP and use it.

Example implementation:

https://github.com/CoDEmanX/blend_stats

Note that Blender.Window.FileSelector(...) is only valid in Blender 2.4x, API is completely different in 2.5x / 2.6x.


Object Mating (Relative positioning) Coming from a background in engineering, I have used software such as solidwords and Pro-E where you create each part and then combine them in assemblies with mates. Everything I have been able to find tutorial-wise for Blender is all about manually positioning things so that they "look good" from the angle of them camera (which I have found frequently breaks down if you move the camera). What is this even called in 3D art software (since as far as I can tell the term "mate" is exclusive to engineering modeling), and how does one achieve similar results in Blender, ie positioning multiple objects relative to each other in order to make things out of different movable parts or to ensure that things are actually touching rather than going through each other or floating? Tutorial video links welcome.

You can do this with my addon, Mesh Align Plus (mating, relative movement/positioning, and other abstract precision transformations are its specialties).

To mate an object (or a group of objects) to another, just grab a source and a destination plane, then hit apply (to the selected objects). The GIF below shows relative positioning of 4 separate bracket objects, along with some uniform-spacing after the mate operation:

[][3]

You can think of the "Source" and "Destination" planes as 3-dimensional guides for your alignment. You can grab these guides from anywhere: a real face, or 3 disconnected verts (or from separate meshes, or the 3d cursor in the advanced tools).

You can apply operators to object(s), or to mesh parts. And, you can apply an operator to completely separate/unrelated objects also (this is what makes multi-object editing/relative positioning in the GIF work).


How do I copy/Paste an object into another project and still have it colored I've downloaded some tree models and they're colored, and when I copy paste them into the scene I'm working on, they're uncolored.

Use Shift + F1 in the project you would like to copy it into. Navigate to the original .blend file, open the Objects folder, and select the objects you would like to append. Appending the objects will create new instances in your new .blend file, however, linking will preserve changes made to the original later.


Extend a face along another plane I have a simple skewed cube (see below) and I would like move "face A" along the plane of "face B" (the direction of the arrow) to simply extend the dimension of the cube in that direction.

If I try selecting "face A" and pressing G Y, the face moves along the global Y axis, not along the plane of "face B".  I've also tried various combinations of Local coordinates (eg G Y Y) with no luck.

I also tried extruding the face (e.g. E Y) but found the same issue.  If extrusion actually is the answer, that's fine as I could just dissolve the internal edges once extruded.

Some background.  I'm creating a number of simple geometric shapes I then render out (in orthographic projection) as 2D isometric building "blocks".  Other shapes include basic ramps, triangular corners etc.   Often, I need to make small adjustments to dimensions to get the exact rendering output I need.

I was able to achieve this by creating a custom orientation as suggested by @PGmath.  If there is a more direct approach please post an answer as it seems like there should be.

Anyway here's how to do it:

Go to edit mode and select an edge that is in the direction you want to move the face. In my case this was the edge in the diagram below the label 'B'.
Change the Orientation to 'Normal' and notice the X/Y/Z guides now conform to that edge.
Open the Properties window (press N) and scroll down to find "Transform Orientations".
Click the + button to create a new orientation based on the current selected edge/orientation.
Over on the left hand tools panel, scroll to the bottom and in 'Create Orientation' give the custom orientation a name.
Now, select the custom orientation in the Orientations drop-down at the bottom of the 3d view.
Go into face select mode and select face A.
Type G Y Y and move the face along the plane as required. (Pressing Y twice uses the custom orientation, once only uses the global orientation.)

Listen to the little robot man in this youtube video if you need more info on creating a custom orientation.

That works, but far easier would be to just select the face representing the plane to move along (B) and somehow tell Blender to constrain moving faces/edges/vertices along that plane.

I don't have the time or knowledge to write that myself, if anyone does it would be appreciated.


Calling Python Function from Console Would it be possible to call Python codes I wrote in Text Editor from the Python console so that I can interact with it?

If you name your script *.py in the text editor you can import it in the console as a module.

Beware - after you imported the script for the first time you can't import it again. If you make changes to the module you can use imp.reload or importlib.reload (for blender versions > 2.71 using python 3.4)


Missing Filmic Looks in Blender 2.81 Filmic has been shipped with Blender as a default render View Transform since 2.79a. I'm using Blender 2.81, but I'm missing the following Looks from the dropdown:

Base Contrast
Greyscale
False Colour

This is a screenshot from my computer showing the incomplete list:

They are still listed in the README inside the repo, so I guess they should still be included?

You can replace the ocio configuration from blender, and use the one used by the author of Filmic Blender directly

https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/

Alternatively, to use the Greyscale look, you can manually edit the config.ocio file in the colormanagement folder and add the following stanza in the looks section:

looks:
  - !<Look>
    name: Greyscale
    process_space: Filmic Log Encoding
    transform: !<MatrixTransform> {matrix: [0.2126729, 0.7151521, 0.0721750, 0, 0.2126729, 0.7151521, 0.0721750, 0, 0.2126729, 0.7151521, 0.0721750, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1]}


Many same extruded windows So I am looking for a way to extrude many similar windows in a wall. They should be exact size and stay on same distance from each other. How would you do that? Thanks.

As Lukasz-40sth said, you could use the Array modifier:

Create a plane, subdivide it.
Extrude your window.
Use 2 Array modifiers to repeat your object horizontally and vertically.
Work your window as much as you want until you're satisfied.
You can either keep or apply your modifiers.
If you want to apply, enable the Merge option of the modifier so that the adjacent vertices of your new object merge. If you didn't enable it, go in Edit mode, select all and Remove Doubles with W.


Blender 2.8 - WorkBench - Gradients appear very low quality I'm building some models for a game that doesn't have any light sources so all the shadows and highlights are painted into the texture. Because I don't need any light sources I'm using WorkBench as the Render Engine as my understanding is that this Render Engine just prints the texture on the model similar to how "Texture View" did it in previous versions. So far so good, but what I'm noticing is that the gradients from the texture are much lower quality when I'm viewing the render in the viewport than they are in the actual texture file. Any idea why that might be happening? Thanks!

Here's a screenshot of what I mean:

check your monitor/graphic driver color profile
check your image texture or it's color profile
check blender color management


How to get keyframes and related information? I'm a bit (or more...) lost about keyframes and fcurves information even if I have read this question and answers or others and tried to understand the related documentation.

What I'm trying to do is the following:

Looping along frames which have keyframes set on them (only these frames)
For each keyframe retrieve the related keyed objects (I'm interested in objects and bones only) and retrieve the keyframe information (location, rotation or scale only)

How to do that in Python?

I think it's something like that :

import bpy

for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects :
    if ob.type in ['MESH','ARMATURE'] and ob.animation_data:
        for fc in ob.animation_data.action.fcurves :
            if fc.data_path.endswith(('location','rotation_euler','rotation_quaternion','scale')):
                for key in fc.keyframe_points :
                    print('frame:',key.co[0],'value:',key.co[1])

Keyframe in blender are not store in one place. It's store on action related to object. You can look throw all keyframe on your blend file in bpy.data.actions. To filter by object type you have to look throw objects in your scene and find the related action


How to create eyeballs holes without messing up the mesh and the topology? How can I create this eye holes (the little black things around the eyes) Without messing up the topology? How may options do I have? I've alredy tried the Boolean Modifier

With Boolean Modifier:

Please answer with all the options. Thanks!

You need to create more mesh lines around the eyes in order for there to be more points that Blender can use to maintain the form. Each vertex is a point on the mesh that Blender uses to calculate the surface area, so if you have too few vertices, it can only calculate the shape based on those few points. Add more mesh lines and use the vertices on them to give Blender more points to work with.

There are many ways to add more mesh. Listing them here is not possible. Play around with the various mesh tools and consult the documents for explanations on how to use them.


How to keep Blender from adding frame numbers to output filename? When you render something, Blender will automatically append the frame number to all output files' names, producing filenames something like render_0001.png, render_0002.png, render_0003.png, etc.

For frames of an animation this is great, since it keeps the same file from being overwritten for each frame.  But for videos this is usually unnecessary.  Is there a way to keep Blender from adding the frame number to every render output file?

Simply put test.mp4 as the ouput not just test without the file extension.