Purely Node Based Materials A while ago, I was searching for a leather texture online, when I came across a thread on Blender Artists where someone had made an extremely respectable leather texture with just Blender nodes. This was the result on the material preview sphere:

The only actual texture they used was a Wave texture. The rest was just Mapping nodes and other assorted math and vector converters. The person included two screenshots, from which I reproduced created the described node setup. The one modification I made was to add a Mapping node immediately after the Texture Coordinates node because I needed the texture for an elongated cylinder at the time. Here are the two shots:

Main setup.

Leather node group.

My question is: How does this node setup actually work, and could the logic be employed to make other textures? Does anyone know of other examples that exist or could be created (would love to see them)?

Also, as I realize this could be a pain to create (it was for me), I am including a .blend file with the node setup and some other gizmuhwhichets that I built at the time.

Does anyone know of other examples that exist

blendswap have alot of those procedural materials,
some examples:
-procedural wood
-procedural leather
-fabric
-clouds
-polystyrene
-metal


Additive color overlay Is there a way to add colors of objects when they are in front of each other from the camera?
(Maybe some freestyle option)

Like for example, a yellow plane moves over a blue Text, instead of disapearing, the Text turns green where they overlap.

Final & Overview:

  This is partial answer. It's solves question but not other possibilities.

You can Add or Mix Diffuse shader with Transparent shader. Diffuse should be color you want to have after mix and Transparent is a base color. Text has just Diffuse shader.

Why partial?

Well, it will work only with few colors (yellow + red = orange is working too). I don't know why, and I can't find a proper answer, but if you'll want to mix for example red with blue to get magenta it will fail.

Another con of this method is that you'll need to know how colors are mixing and set it manually.

I hope that someone could elaborate about this issue more. It's pretty interesting.


How do I get a mesh data-block with modifiers and shape keys applied in Blender 2.8? I'm trying to update an exporter to work with Blender 2.8 but can't seem to get a mesh data-block modified by modifiers or shape keys. It always gives me the base mesh.

I'm currently using Object.to_mesh(). But reading Object.data or bmesh.from_mesh(obj) all returns only the base mesh. So what is the new function to call for getting a mesh data-block with the modifiers and shape keys applied?

Just tested batFINGER's solutions. It's pretty convoluted and you have to call bm.clear() every time the mesh updates before calling the last two functions. It works but really doesn't feel like the intended way to do things. Digging a bit further I think I found the intended solution:

#We only have to do this once:
ob = bpy.context.active_object #getting the object we want.
dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #getting the dependency graph

#This has to be done every time the object updates:
ob = ob.evaluated_get(dg) #this gives us the evaluated version of the object. Aka with all modifiers and deformations applied.
me = ob.to_mesh() #turn it into the mesh data block we want.

Still annoying that we can't pick between preview and render for which version of the modifiers it applies (it seems to always pick preview). If there is a way to do that I would love to know.


Array modifier - edit base object I have a cylinder which I arrange in a grid, using 2 array modifiers: 1 to multiply along the x-axis and a second one to multiply along the y-axis.
I do this twice, and I can't get around why those arrays have different editing behaviour:

The first array, in Object mode, I can only click-select the base object in the scene, and in the N-menu (item transform), I can change the scale and dimension of that object. It will apply to the array-instances as well. This is the expected behaviour.
In my second array (which is exactly the same, and actually a copy of the first one, but this is now also what happens when I create the array from scratch), I can select any instance of the cylinder in the scene. And the item-transform menu shows the total dimension. I can NOT edit the base object!

Why is there different behaviour anyway? And how am I supposed to edit the base object to be applied for all instances? Obviously, I don't want to remove and re-create the array modifiers, just to edit the base object.
I'm very new (again) to blender, but I think for what I'm doing, I'm quite happy in Object mode. I am aware that I can edit the instance in Edit mode, but this one looks more like I'm not understanding something about the Object mode and arrays.
Updated Details
Here are some more details, trying to explain what behaviour I am looking for, and which is actually the behaviour I sometimes see as described in (1.)
So I'm starting with the default cube, and just to highlight which transform-dialog I'm talking about, it's dimensions are 2x2x2.

When I add an array modifier, I kind of expect to still being able to edit/transform the base object. But when I select, the object size is shown as 12x2x2. And when I transform the dimensions, the whole group/array is transformed.

However, in some cases, when I selected the base object, the transform dialog did show the dimensions of only that object, and allowed me to edit it's dimensions. Which then applied to all array-copies. This is the behavior I actually expected, but most of the times, the selection will be the whole group/array, not the single object.
I can't get to reproduce the "expected" behavior, but it was definitely there. Once, I had an array selected so that I could edit the base object - and then after saving the file, that behavior was gone.
This is unfortunately very blurry and I'm sorry for not being able to provide an example of "the good behavior". From the comments I understand that this actual behavior is expected, which also makes sense. Just confusing, that in some instances I could edit the base object.

I speculate that the problem lays in a slight missunderstanding of the concepts of object/edit mode and modifiers. For better understanding maby you should update your question and add some visualization what you want to accomplish exactly and what is not working as expected. Then if you put a comment under this answer i could take another look at it and edit my answer accordingly.
the only way to realy edit the array itself in object mode is via the thwo separate array modifiers. Relative offset values or object offset can produce diffrent results. Transformations will apply to the whole object+array-setup.
the other way would be to edit your base mesh in edit mode. This edit will get passed down first to the one array modifier and then also this result will get passed down as a whole to the next array modifier. Individual edits are not possible, as for they are not what array modifier is intended.
There are other ways of working with seriality and transformation offsets in it, so it would really help knowig what you want to suggest other solutions. :)


The blue area (weight painting) still moves when a bone is moved. Why the hell does this happen? FYI, this is a simple character model where the arms/legs etc are all boxes disconnected from another. There are no faces connecting the arms to the torso for example.

Because some vertices may appear blue but it doesn't mean there are not part of the vertex group, with an influence of 0.01 they will appear blue. If you want to have a real preview you need to switch the Viewport Overlay > Weight Paint > Zero Weight from None to Active. Now black is real 0%.

If you want to make sure that some parts of your mesh are not part of a vertex group, select these vertices in Edit mode and in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Group, select the group and click on Remove or Remove From All Groups.


Is Blender compatible with Windows 10? Will Blender still work on Windows 10, and if so, will the full screen functionality still work? Are there any issues with Blender and Windows 10 I should be aware of before upgrading?

I am running Blender 2.75 on Windows 10 now, the 10240 RTM release, and it is working without any issues compared to my previous run on Windows 8.1.1.


How to use Separate Text Object inside a "Subprogram"? I'm trying to create a "for each character of a text" loop.
I have a list of text objects as input and need to pass each object as parameter to the "Separate Text Object" node.
Is that possible? If not, is there a workaround?
P.S.: The screenshot is not accurate. I know I would have to call a subprogram after the "Separate Text Object" node. And that would result in a subprogram calling another subprogram (nested or recursively).

The Separate Text Object node actually outputs a list of each individual letter of the input text object. If you want to loop into each letter you have to use the output of the separate node as input in you loop node.

From there you can do any modifs to the letter you want. What you where trying to do could be implemented like this, and there is no need to nest loops.

If you get confused by the Object Id Key node: Object Initial Transforms, try to think about what would happen if was a single vector. All the letters would animate to the same position (as long as they have an individual origin).
The Object Initial Transforms takes the inital position of each letter and outputs the vector, so you can properly animate the text.

If you want to animate individual letters of mutliple text objects, there is no solution yet apart from making two different loops of the separate node. You can implement the group functionnality which is very useful when you have to repeat a process like there.

Maybe an input for the seperate individual letters will be implemented in future realeses.
Note that Jacques Luke now include a very nice Animate individual Letter template, which is basically the same node setup than the first image, but animating matrices.


Is there a way to automatically fit an armature to a mesh? I created a mesh in MakeHuman. For Unity I need an armature, but it needs to be fit inside the mesh. My mesh is in a weird position (not the T-pose) and I just cannot get all the fingers and joints to line up. Is there a way to make an armature automatically fit inside a mesh?

MakeHuman is able to export a fully rigged model, just enable the
the option in the export settings:

The complete process (including unity) is described here
Unity Import Using Blender and Rigify


Why is this bad topology happening i was trying to create my first room art , i started with a cube , deleting its one vertex , then i extruded three faces , finally , i started to model a sofa , but then i figured this bad topology at the corner of the sofas hand-rest

i tried to fix by changing the technique of miking it , earlier i  made by extruding the face , but then i also tried extruding edges , but the problem doesn't seem to vanish , here is a better shot in edit mode

the problem doesnt exist in edit mode
here is the file

There are a lot of faces overlapping, or vertices that seem to be part of a face but actually are not, etc, you didn't model it the right way. Also, as pointed out by Lemon, you use a Mirror modifier but your mesh go beyond the center of the mirroring. Maybe re-do it from scratch, and maybe follow some basic tutorials about modeling.
If I just take one example: If I select this vertex...

... and then move it...

... we can see that it was not part of the face.


128 samples with node denoiser animation still flickering I'm trying to do an animation but even if  I doubled the samples my video is flickering, in another topic they suggest me to increase the samples, so I moved from 64 to 128 samples but the result is almost the same.
I'm using a denoiser node, someone told me to try to render without it and then use a video denoiser, but I found a lot of videos tutorial where they use it even with less samples and they don't have this flickering problem so I think there's something not setted correctly in my file, can someone check it or give some advices?
Here you can find the file wth the folder texture and the animation video folder:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ubn2ejn51cre75v/AACMnkRHLIz4jDkintteO-eYa?dl=0

I played with light bounces, clamping, filter glossy and caustics settings and I tried to set it to the min possible value without loosing too many details; this have reduced a little bit the noise but still looked so bad.

Then I found a tutorial on youtube, so I removed the neons objects with emission shader and replace it with area lights, with this I've almost removed all the noise

Then I tried to switch from Path Tracing integrator sampling to the Branched Path Tracing and this completly removed almost all noise but increase a lot time render (from 3.00min to 15.00min)

So I tried to decrease the samples number (from 128 to 32) to decrease the time rendering, this added more noise but still look good

Now I will play with settings to adjust it more and increase details and then try to add a denoise node.


Blender 2.80 - Image Editor - how does Set Curves Point work? I have found two Set Curves Point entries in the keymap in the Image section in Blender 2.80.

Only the mask mode provides curves in the image editor. But here the hotkeys does exactly nothing. And we seem to have a key overriding problem here anyways. Since with ctrl + lmb you paint a freehand curve already with Mask add vertex and slide. Also a hotkey only functionality, to find in the keymanager.

Searching in the Blender Manual did not lead to any success. Only the Python API has a thin comment. This seems to be an old functionality, i have found the corresponding entry also in the 2.78 API.

bpy.ops.image.curves_point_set(point='BLACK_POINT')
Set black point or white point for curves

So we paint black or white points at curves. But how? Under what circumstances?

How is Set Curves Point meant to work?

Sometimes it's best to ask the developers directly. Thanks for the explanation.

This hotkeys is to pick the color under the mouse, and set the black and white level values in the curves sub panel in the Color Management panel.

To see the result you need to tick View as Render in the Image Panel in the sidebar.


Physics vs. Keyframes I am just starting out doing animation with keyframes so far.
I got a little bit confused with the following things and how they behave to each other.
We can make something move via Keyframes and Physics.  I feel like when I want to make an animation I simply don't know which part of blender I need to use.
I know, it's a very generic question but most of the tutorials just go into detail and don't really give an overview.

Keyframes for animation, and if you want something like a ball realistically falling, then that's when you use physics. Physics isn't used often, and is much more complicated than animation. I would suggest sticking to animation for now, and going into physics when you are more comfortable with it. Watch some tutorials on Youtube to help you.
Hope this helped.


How to stop blender game engine using Python upon reaching a condition in the script? I have the following script(pistonMover.py) which runs in the Blender "game engine" mode and I want to stop the game engine when posdiff is less than 0.0001.

import bge
import COM
import time as t

def calc_com():
    obj_list_real = []
    for item in bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects:
        try:
            if item.name.startswith('Cube') and item.name != 'Cube.004':
                temp_dict = {}
                temp_dict['x'] = item.worldPosition.x
                temp_dict['y'] = item.worldPosition.y
                temp_dict['z'] = item.worldPosition.z
                temp_dict['mass'] = item.mass
                #temp_dict['name'] = item.name
                obj_list_real.append(temp_dict)
            if item.name.startswith('obj_'):
                temp_dict = {}
                temp_dict['x'] = item.worldPosition.x
                temp_dict['y'] = item.worldPosition.y
                temp_dict['z'] = item.worldPosition.z
                temp_dict['mass'] = item.mass
                obj_list_real.append(temp_dict)
        except AttributeError:
            pass
    com = COM.COM(obj_list_real)
    return com

def getPistonpos():
    pistonpos = 0
    for item in bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects:
        if item.name == "Cylinder":
            pistonpos = item.worldPosition.y
            break
    return pistonpos

def main():
    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    player = cont.owner
    scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    keyboard = bge.logic.keyboard
    player.localPosition.y -=0.1
    pistonpos = 0
    flag = False
    try:
        pistonpos = bge.logic.globalDict['pistonpos']
        flag = True
    except KeyError:
        bge.logic.globalDict['pistonpos'] = getPistonpos()
    posdiff = abs(getPistonpos() - pistonpos)
    if posdiff < 0.0001 and flag:
        print(posdiff)
    bge.logic.globalDict['pistonpos'] = getPistonpos()
    if bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE == keyboard.events[bge.events.DOWNARROWKEY]:
        calc_com()

main()

I have tested this script and works perfectly but, I was unable to find a way to stop game engine anywhere. Also, I invoke this script using bpy.ops.wm.blenderplayer_start() from Blender in "render mode" using another script called "renderer.py". I want to do this since I want to run this simulation for 100 times and as I said, I want to stop it upon reaching a condition in every simulation.
Here's how my game logic looks like.

Thanks in advance!

It's very simple, you just have to connect a Game Actuator to your script Controller and set it to "Quit Game".

Add this actuator to your script by doing this:

gameactu = cont.actuators['Game']

if posdiff < 0.0001: # You can also try 0.0002
    cont.activate(gameactu) # I just try it works.

Here a picture:

You can do this without the Actuator, see the manual.


Is there any way to move/deform procedural work along a mesh as a normal texture would? I made a head and colored it proceduraly. Now I want to deform and move it, but the procedural work won't "follow" the mesh as a UV texture would. Is there any way to do it?

I don't work with scripts, so I would like a solution as "code-ignorant friendly" as possible, if possible.

By the way, it's all made with color ramps, math nodes, texture cords, mapping and (of course) procedural textures, and I don't want to bake anything (personal project). Guess this info may help.

Maybe constraints may work in some way, I guess. Didn't try it out yet though

Please ignore the left eye, I am still trying to figure out how to work with array mod alongside procedurals.

Nodes setup:

I am essentially using mappings set to texture to control where transitions made by the color ramps may occour and using it as mask to determine where each separated material will appear or how it will blend to the other materials. Nothing fancy.

Important

  I missed essential info before, the mesh in the "moved example" was transformed with lattice mod! I moved the mesh down just a little bit so I had no noticeable clue that could make me logically suspect the lattice, then proceeded to ask for help without further investigation.
  Through these 3 days I learned about coordinate spaces and understood further the texture coordinate node. Procedurals works with coordinates originated on something's origin, in this case the mesh's origin. That's the reason they don't deform with the mesh, but move with the coordinates.

  Also, this was my first time working with procedurals on this scale and manner, I didn't know the procedural work, with the presented nodes setup, was expected to behave perfectly as a UV texture as long as there's no deform on the mesh, only moves and rotation. And I didn't know about coordinate spaces yet. Then I realized that's the reason my question has no answers yet even tough it's "simple", maybe it's because everyone was thinking it was an issue they never saw, since they didn't know about the lattice.

Just bear with me, I am still a newbie afterall. Hehehe...

I just answered my question right now, there's no issue anymore, but you can still enlighten us more if you want

It was the lattice!

As you probably know, procedurals need some coordinate space to originate, and it can be something's origin or the world's point zero. In this case the nodes setup could generate a perfectly fine texture that could move along with the mesh as a UV, but since procedurals aren't really a texture but a "projection" (can't think of a better definition) they move with the mesh's coordinates, but not with the vertexes. And this means that as long there's no deformation on the mesh everything is fine... But the lattice was deforming the mesh...

Hope you find it useful if you're started on procedurals. For this, coordinate spaces are really important. I came up with a metaphor about it:

Think of procedurals as a beam of light made of x-rays that need something else's origin as it's emitter. As it reaches the mesh's surface, it illuminate the surface the way it wants then go right through the object and keep going, because it's x-ray. Changing the surface won't change the beam of light


Create alpha mask from intensity In Blender Compositor: how can I convert the black in an image to transparency?

Ultimate goal is to add one image A over image B without image A darkening image B.

What about using a mix node with the lighten blend mode?

If you want more control, then you can generate a grayscale map and use that to set the alpha with a set alpha node:


How to get photos or videos from tmp I started a render without fully reviewing all the settings and I left the file output as /tmp\ is there any way I can get these files out of the /tmp\ folder?

I just had to figure this out myself. If you're on Mac, go to Macintosh HD in the Finder, then you need to reveal hidden folders (Command+Shift+.). This will show the tmp folder. Organize by file type to see the pngs (or whatever file type you saved). Should be there!


how to copy a rig to another mesh I have two meshes in their own blend files, ones is a very muscular male and another one is a curvy female. I'm working on the rigging and animation of the female and I've managed to make some simple animations for testing. I want to transfer the rig of the female with its animations, shape keys and etc... to the male mesh.

how could I approach this?, I've already tried with shift-D but I think I did it wrong because
I couldn't transfer the rig to the other file.

I'm using blender 2.69.

Duplicating an armature with ShiftD only works while in object mode and it will only create a duplicate armature in the same file. Also CtrlC only copies the armature object in object mode, in pose mode it will copy the bone locations allowing you to copy the pose.

In your case, with two models in a separate files, you could also open the second blend file then Select Append from the file menu. Link will use the same armature while append will copy the armature into the current file.

When you select a blend file it will show the following list -

First go into object and select the armature you want. Then append again and go into Action and select the actions you want to import into the new file.

As for shape keys, they are part of the mesh object data. If the two mesh objects have similar topology you may be able to copy the shape keys between models. You could append the first mesh object and then try to copy the shapekeys then delete the first object.

I think you may find it easier to append the second object to the same file as the first one, duplicate the armature, copy shapekeys etc. Then save a duplicate copy of the blend and remove one model from each file.


How to get both UV maps to show up I'm new here. For the past week I've been trying to replicate my town's fire engine in blender, and all is going well. When I finish I will import the model into a game called emergency 4. However, I had to make 2 UV maps for the model, one for the front half and one for the back half as I could not fit everything on one. The problem is that I don't know how to get both UV maps to show up in blender. If I select the first UV map then only the front half of the fire engine is textured, and if I select the second UV map then only the second half of the fire engine is textured. This is shown below. My question is how do I get both to be selected and show at the same time.

I believe thts a problem with the UV Map itself u probally need to remap and divide the seams cutting the truck in half first.


Anisotropic BSDF formula in Cycles When you read formula regarding anisotropic GGX, for example here, you notice that the formula contains two roughness parameters for horizontal and vertical roughness. However, Cycles has only one roughness parameter but instead has another parameter named "Anisotropy." How exactly does this "Anisotropy" parameter mapped to the original formula with two roughness parameters?

Link to the corresponding code or shader is also greatly appreciated, as I'm not familiar with the code base.

Thank you in advance.

If you look at the source code for the Anisotropic BSDF, you can see how the separate RoughnessU and RoughnessV parameters are computed from the input Roughness and Anisotropy settings.


Switch between multiple lists stored in scene I recently started to learn Python and I started to develop a selection pie, which the user can quickly select objects and quickly switch between selection sets, like working with multiple character rigs and each rig has it's own selection set.

I'm trying to figure out what is the simplest way to switch between multiple lists, that can be stored in scene? I haven't figured out how to append objects to a ID property list, so I'm using a regular list, that the stored scene lists refer to and vice versa. But my functions refer to that temp list('curList'), which isn't stored in the scene.

So my problem is how I can have a function "know" what list it needs to stored and disconnect from the('curList'), before it switches to another list? I thought about saving all lists before making the switch, but I get an error that 'object can't be iterated' or something like that. But as an noob, I haven't figured out a way around that issue? :)

Here is a very simple example of what I'm trying to have functions do automatically.

import bpy

ctx = bpy.context
scn = ctx.scene
scn['list_a'] = ['']
scn['list_b'] = ['']
curList = []

curList = scn['list_a']       # tempList connects to sceneList
curList.append('Cube')

scn['list_a'] = curList       # current sceneList gets updates from temp
scn['list_a'] = scn['list_a'] # current sceneList disconnects from temp

curList = scn['list_b']       # tempList switches to another sceneList
# etc.

Any suggestions or tips are hugely appreciated! :)

This is my current solution that seems to work? But I'm sure there is a much better way out there!? :)

def list_obj_append(Id):
    global curList
    obj_selected = [o for o in bpy.data.objects if o.select]

    curList = scn["set_1"]
    scn["set_1"] = curList

    for ob in obj_selected:
        curList.append(ob.name + suffix[Id])

    scn["set_1"] = curList
    curList = scn["set_1"]

    return curList


Mirror Axis and Rotation of Whole Object So I am following a tutorial by Grant Abbitt and I have learned to use the mirror modifier. I have created a monster using the mirror modifier along the x axis seen below.

Now when I built the scene, my monster was facing the wrong direction as seen below.

I later successfully rotated the monster around by having the pivot point at the origin but that got me questioning how the monster was not distorted since it wasn't perfectly align with the x-axis (the mirror modifier). An example is here below where the monster is not aligned with the x-axis (mirror modifier) but still in tact, how is this possible? It got me more confused when people started associating the axis of the mirror as the symmetry of the object mirrored since it seemed to contract my photo below. Can someone help explain this?

If I understand correctly your question, it looks like you're confusing Global orientation with Local orientation. The Mirror modifier will mirror the mesh on the object's local X, Y or Z axis, not on the global X, Y or Z axis. So for example, if you mirror on the X (local) axis, here is what you have:

If I come back to Object mode and rotate the object on the Z axis, it won't mess up the mirror because my rotation was in Object mode and didn't affect the mesh on its own local axis. Here I've enabled the Transform Orientation display to make it clear, it displays the object own local orientation, you can see that it follows the object rotation, so the mirror effect won't mess up the mesh.

But if I come back to Edit mode and rotate the mesh on its Z axis it will mess up the object because this time I'm in Edit mode and the Mirror modifier takes the mesh local orientation into account!


What is the difference between passive and non-dynamic rigid bodies? A rigid body can be either active or passive, and an active rigid body can be dynamic or not:

The documentation says about the passive type the following:

  Object is directly controlled by animation system. Thus, this type is not available for Rigid Body Dynamics.

And about dynamic:

  Enables/disables rigid body simulation for object.

I see no difference between the two. As far as I can see, both of these mean that the object is not moving, but still participates in collisions.

Note that I know that there is already a similar (unanswered) question...: rigid bodies: passive vs not-dynamic

... but I decided to ask again, because I could not reproduce the scenario in that question (extruded planes behave for me the same as non-extruded).

EDIT As f59838 answered, there is a tutorial, where Andrew "Blender Guru" Price says that "We want our chain to swing, so we need the top link of the chain to be stationary. Select it then go to the Physics panel and uncheck Dynamic. This is different to Passive, because it’s still using it’s Mesh collision data but it won’t move."

I think this explanation is not correct, because passive objects also can have a Mesh setting for the collision shape. It is true that in this special case (toruses) it does not work - after a few strange movements, they fall - but this seems like a calculation error. In fact, if you double the Steps Per Sec in the Scene/Rigid Body World, the toruses won't fall (although the movements are still strange)

So yes, there is some difference, but it is not what Andrew said.

here you can find the subtle difference:

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/quick-tutorial-make-a-wrecking-ball-with-rigid-body-physics/

It says:

"We want our chain to swing, so we need the top link of the chain to be stationary. Select it then go to the Physics panel and uncheck Dynamic. This is different to Passive, because it’s still using it’s Mesh collision data but it won’t move."


How would I cut across a plane using a die-like mesh/curve? I'm in the process of creating a visual model of a product made using 2D CAD software. The .svg which I have imported into blender is the file sent to a laser cutter which would out cut across an acrylic sheet wherever there is a path in order to form the shape.

I was wondering if there is a way of cutting the plane such that the result would be similar to what would be carried out by the laser cutter (imagine the resultant shape being cut out of plane using a knife with runs along the path, if that makes sense)

I've tried to use the Boolean modifier to achieve the effect I am looking for but with limited success. It only seems to cut out a small section of the design for reasons which I do not understand:

To cut the shape on the plane with a curve object you can use Knife Project tool. Place your curve object above the plane, while its selected hold Shift and select the plane, switch to Top View, then Orthogonal View by hitting 5 on the Numeric Keypad and change to Edit Mode.

Then In Edit Mode select Knife Project in Tools tab.

To avoid errors in the mesh, before using Knife Project tool you can subdivide the plane few times or convert the curve object to mesh.


How can I do extreme squash and stretch of a character animation? Example: A character is about to jump, his body is almost completely round then the jump now he's long and thin.

I'm hoping I can do this in Blender and this is the idea I have.

I know you can't do this with great exaggeration with a bone rig so I have to delete the bones.

Transforming the bones deformations into shape keys for each frame then disable the armature.

Then making a new armature with a single bone with a constraint that keeps volume, place it at the base of the character and that bone is weight painted to the entire character. Now I can add an additional animation step on top of the existing animation.

That is the only way I can see this happening. Is that the way to do it or is there something better to get this effect? Is this method the only way I can do this in Blender?

I believe this youtube link would help.
Blender rigging tutorial, part3

In this video, it is accomplished by setting an empty as a parent of the object and squashing it.


Apply texture to a model via blender script I am trying to apply a texture to a model programmatically via script. Via GUI, it's easy enough to do (Blender 2.8):

Import model (obj file)
In model properties go to texture properties
Change "Base color option" to "Image texture"
"Open", then load dds file for the image texture

For writing the script, this is as far as I went:

import bpy

obj_path = '/my_path_to_files/mytest.obj'
tex_path = '/my_path_to_files/mytest.dds'

# import model and texture
bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=obj_path)#, axis_forward='-Y', axis_up='Z')
bpy.ops.image.open(filepath=tex_path)
# get reference to model and texture
myobj = bpy.data.objects['mytest']
mytex = bpy.data.images['mytest.dds']

# try to set the texture (doesn't work)
myobj_material_nodes = myobj.active_material.node_tree.nodes
node_texture = myobj_material_nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeTexImage')
node_texture.image = mytex

I don't know which properties I have to set to get this working. Or if I am in the right path at all. The properties set when doing via GUI are:

bl_description:
bl_height_default: 100.0
bl_height_max: 30.0
bl_height_min: 30.0
bl_icon: NONE
bl_idname: ShaderNodeTexImage
bl_label: Image Texture
bl_rna: <bpy_struct, Struct("ShaderNodeTexImage")>
bl_static_type: TEX_IMAGE
bl_width_default: 240.0
bl_width_max: 700.0
bl_width_min: 140.0
color: <Color (r=0.6080, g=0.6080, b=0.6080)>
color_mapping: <bpy_struct, ColorMapping at 0x7f752ae3e298>
dimensions: <Vector (0.0000, 0.0000)>
draw_buttons: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.draw_buttons()>
draw_buttons_ext: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.draw_buttons_ext()>
extension: REPEAT
height: 100.0
hide: False
image: <bpy_struct, Image("mytest.dds")>
image_user: <bpy_struct, ImageUser at 0x7f752ae3e5c8>
input_template: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.input_template()>
inputs: <bpy_collection[1], NodeInputs>
internal_links: <bpy_collection[0], ShaderNodeTexImage.internal_links>
interpolation: Linear
is_registered_node_type: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.is_registered_node_type()>
label:
location: <Vector (-280.0000, 280.0000)>
mute: False
name: Image Texture
output_template: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.output_template()>
outputs: <bpy_collection[2], NodeOutputs>
parent: None
poll: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.poll()>
poll_instance: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.poll_instance()>
projection: FLAT
projection_blend: 0.0
rna_type: <bpy_struct, Struct("ShaderNodeTexImage")>
select: True
show_options: True
show_preview: False
show_texture: True
socket_value_update: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.socket_value_update()>
texture_mapping: <bpy_struct, TexMapping at 0x7f752ae3e208>
type: TEX_IMAGE
update: <bpy_func ShaderNodeTexImage.update()>
use_custom_color: False
width: 240.0
width_hidden: 42.0

My question is, what would be a good, clean way of doing this?

What it was missing is a link between the shader and the texture. We can do it as follows:

myobj_material_links = myobj.active_material.node_tree.links
my_obj_shader = myobj_material_nodes.get('Principled BSDF')
myobj_material_links.new(my_obj_shader.inputs["Base Color"], node_texture.outputs["Color"])


Baking onto a 'project from view' UV I am modifying a building in a game (Empire Earth if you're interested). The model is fully 3D (image 1), but the texture is an isometric drawing (image 2).
I would like to bake shadows (generated by the surrounding objects and by itself) onto the ground (image 3).
Because my texture is isometric, I had to project the UV from view, so panels at the back overlap those in front on the UV map. This causes discontinuities to appear where is has double baked the same area (image 4).
Is there a way to have an output UV map that is different to the input UV map? Ideally my bake output would be unwrapped (image 5).

So the way to do this is as follows:
1: Make a new UV Map in Object Data Properties < UV Maps (make sure to select it).

2: Make a new image in the UV editor.

3: Arrange the new UV in the new image how you want it to be.

4: Add a UV Map node to the Shader Editor; connect it to the image texture node (mine is called 'Bake'); select the new UV Map (mine is called 'model-bake'). Select the new image in the image texture node (also called 'Bake').

5: Bake!


Downloaded and pre-rigged model is partially invisible in object mode So my friend send a model of his for me to work with, but when I open it the model is partially invisible and the bones are closer together.

But in edit mode the entire model is visible

I've had this problem with other downloaded models but usually higher quality ones.

Hehe, I just had to press the "Reload Trusted" button on the top.


How can I look up or create a shortcut? The edge slide function for example is only available through edge tool menu (CtrlE) or the search tool (Space)

When searching for "slide" in the preferences / input-tab no reference is found. When I try to add a new one I'm not able to map that function to a shortcut.

Can this be achieved another way?

Edge slide is indeed a special case, triggered through double G (grab mode -> edge slide). For this reason it doesn't show a key map entry.

You can however assign it yourself a key in the input configuration of user preferences. Under 3D View open the Mesh operator tree, scroll down and press Add New. In the first box write "transform.edge_slide", and give a key or key combo to trigger this. After that you should see the shortkey in the operator search menu as well. In the example image below I've used the equal sign.


What would be the best way(s) to reproduce this ´wireframe mesh´ (see picture below) without having a ridiculous amount of vertices if possible? I recently stumbled upon Vitaly Bulgarov's works and he did some mechs/robots with wireframes limbs (not sure about the name actually) like this one :

More references here in case you need : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/l46qz
I tried using combinations of Wireframe modifier + Subsurf modifier + bevel modifier, the problem is, with a simple small sized plane, you quickly reach 1 million vertices.
If you watch carefully, in the picture, the holes are not circular (which could be achieved by simply using the subsurf and doing inset > delete face so all holes are circles, though it also requires a lot of vertices), but here they are squary.
The biggest issue that I have is that the wireframe modifier gives very sharp/ugly geometry which I would like to avoid.
Any suggestions?

If you still want to stick with real geometry ... in this example:

add cylinder, Loop cut Ctrl+R
Un-Subdivide = 1 (to get rhombus pattern)
Bevel Cmd / Ctrl+B
Invert Selection Crtl+I
Delete Faces

Modifiers

Array Modifier
Solidify Modifier > Complex
Bevel Modifier > Width
Curve Modifier

3000 vert for segment, 63000 vert for object

Sure in case of your example you would have to apply Array and there is nothing more you can save on poly-count. So if you are looking for something more lighter shader is your way.


Rotating a 2d drawing so I can animate it the other way How do I draw a 2d animation in another direction without rotating the entire image? I want to select the head/face and rotate it in the opposite direction without making the camera rotate in the animation. Here is the image below...

In the Outliner select your grease pencil object. Item>Transform>Y scale = -1 will flip the object holding the drawing.


Typerror: 'vector' not callable I am tying to make a go-kart game in blender.
Im not even halfway completed but, my code doesnt seem to work.
please help.

this is the code:

import bge

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

#var
maxvel = 0.5     #const
brkvel = 0.05   #const
crsvel = 0.005  #const
accell = 0.001  #const

#inputs
w = cont.sensors['W']
s = cont.sensors['S']
a = cont.sensors['A']
d = cont.sensors['D']
space = cont.sensors['space']

#outputs
motion =    cont.actuators['motion']

        ##movement

    #accelerate
if w.positive:
    own['vel'] += accell
    motion.dLoc=([own['vel'],0.0,0.0])
    cont.activate(motion)

if space.positive and own['vel'] > 0 :
    own['vel'] -= brkvel
    motion.dLoc([own['vel'],0.0,0.0])
    cont.activate(motion)

At the last lines you didn't assigned the vector to the attribute dLoc with the = operator, but 'called' it with parentheses instead, as it were a method. Put the = and everything should be fine.

Also, you don't need to add parentheses on the vector. The script with several corrections as follows:

import bge

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

# Constants have UPPERCASE identifiers
MAXVEL = 0.5
BRKVEL = 0.05
CRSVEL = 0.005
ACCELL = 0.001

# Sensors
w = cont.sensors['W']
s = cont.sensors['S']
a = cont.sensors['A']
d = cont.sensors['D']
space = cont.sensors['space']

# Actuators
motion = cont.actuators['motion']

## Movement

# Accelerate
if w.positive:
    own['vel'] += ACCELL
    motion.dLoc = [own['vel'], 0.0, 0.0]
    cont.activate(motion)

if space.positive and own['vel'] > 0 :
    own['vel'] -= BRKVEL
    motion.dLoc = [own['vel'], 0.0, 0.0]
    cont.activate(motion)


Error when baking molecular script addon I was trying to make a simulation where two blocks made of icospheres collided, one being completely obliterated, the other intact with pieces of the other sticking to it. I had the entire particle system ready to go, all the settings tweaked. But when i go to bake the molecular script, it gives be an error.
My System is Windows Vista 32 bit and the version of the addon im using is molecular win32 v1.02
The error goes as follows:

  Traceback [most recent call last]
  File "C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.7.3\scripts\addons\molecular_init_.py" , line 600, in execute mol_report =cmolcore.init(mol_exportdata)
  NameError: name 'cmolcore' is not defined
  location: :-1

Is it a bug with the Win32 version of molecular? I did not download the 64 bit version by mistake. I made sure of that. Also it works perfectly when i run it on my Macbook.

The molecular addon (and the cube surfer from the same author) are not pure python addons, they also use a shared library that needs to be compiled and located in the same addon folder.

For windows this will be cmolcore.pyd which needs to be in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.7.3\scripts\addons\molecular\ If the library file is there then you may have downloaded the 64bit version by mistake.

If you still can't get it running you may need to compile a version specific to your machine. You can find the source files on github, read the cython docs for how and if you have any problems compiling ask for help on stackoverflow.


Baked the duplicate of rigid body object I simply create a simple simulation of a monkey (suzanne) falling on top of a grid. Now i just want to make a copy (duplicate) of the monkey and i want to bake the simulation of that copy. So i will then have two monkey with the same exact movement where one is rigid body simulated and the other is keyframed (baked).

The problem is : since they're occupied the same location in space, they will interact each other , so give me the wrong movement. How can i temporarily disable the original monkey so i can then bake the simulation of the copy properly ?

Use the collision groups (or Collisions/Collections in 2.80) in the physics panel. If you set the Suzanne copy to collision group 2 and set the grid to groups 1 &2, then both Suzannes will interact with the grid but not with each other.


Loop-cut won't go all the way around Alright so I've seen some postings about loop cuts and done some research. I am very new to blender and modeling overall. I am trying to loop cut this concrete barrier. Now I'm following a tutorial and kind of did my own thing in some areas. I cleaned it up following some instructions in another answer here on stack exchange.

I can't for the life of me figure out why I can loop cut around the whole bottom:

...but not the whole middle:

I see this marked as answered by another question. That question refers to ngons and inside faces. Now once again I'm totally new to this. I looked on the inside. I don't believe I have inside faces or any ngons by the terms I've read online in my research.

Here is a wireframe picture and the inside view:

Maybe I'm missing something the answers on other posts are saying. If so and you know what it is I'd be very appreciative of what it is.

This is because the bottom face doesn't have the proper geometry, the edge ring tool doesn't know where to direct the ring since there are several vertices (it is an ngon). You can only use this tool on quads (4 sided faces). So to fix, you can use the knife tool and rework the ngon into a large quad.

Additionally, there is also another problem, you have duplicate vertices at the point where the cut stops. To fix, first box select (B) the points shown below and use Alt + M > At Center to merge the duplicate points into one.

After you do that, use the Knife Tool (K) to create a quad as shown below. Press K and select one vertex then another and press Enter. Repeat for the other side and you should be able to add edge rings after.


Find the frame when passing a certain point on the path with the path animation Thanks for help.
I have a question about Animation Nodes.
I'm trying to make an animation like this:
Set some points on the spline and duplicate the object with Object instancer at those points.
When the empty that sets the Follow path passes that point, the duplicated object starts the action.
However, the start timing of the action does not go well, and it starts from the middle frame.
For example, I set the action from 0 to 30 frames, but it starts from 15 frames.
I think it would work if I could set the delay at the moment of passing the point to Delay of DelayTime, but I can't find that frame.
Is it possible to get the frame when passing a point on the path with the Follow path constraint animation?
I will attach a .blend file, so I would appreciate it if you could check it.
（Edited）
I would like to supplement the .Blend file.
See the Float List part of the annotation.
The object at the first point starts at 1 in 1 frame and ends at 45 frames.
As expected, the action is taking 45 frames.
But the object at the second point starts at 16 at 21 frames and ends at 49 frames.
I want it to end with 65 frames, but 16 frames are not enough.
Similarly, the second and subsequent objects are shortened by a few frames.
I want to fix this gap.
To start the action from the moment the empty passes each point, I thought I could use DelayTime to subtract the frame at that moment from Time info.
But that also seems to be a mistake.
So what I want to do is start the action the moment I pass each point on the path.
object1

object2

gif

Adjusted with Delay Action and Curve Interpolation.
I made an interpolation curve with reference to From Fcurve.
Thank you to everyone who looked at the question.


How to keyframe child of constraint in and out I am dribbling a soccer ball using child of constraint. In the image I would like to keyframe the ball where the arrow in drawn but when I try to keyframe it it still follows the child path, How do I fix this?

Whilst your project has the ball constrained as a Child of' the parent character (or foot) I've instead placed physics properties on the ball for the initial bounce and returned to physics when it enters the goal square.
Exactly the same process applies though and this will always work - give you a completely 'free-from-constraint'  ball with which to do as you wish.

The video (above) is what happened when kicked with the physics in play and for whatever reason would not behave as needed.

The second (below) when employing a duplicate to bypass the physics altogether..

The procedure -

When kicked, at the frame the foot comes into contact with the ball, stop the animation and duplicate the ball.

Immediately remove the copy's constraints, physics, animation, parentage, everything, so you end up with a free and unconstrained mesh.

Keyframe the copy's location and rotation.

In the Outliner, keyframe the original ball to invisible and the copy to visible.

Go back to frame 1 and keyframe the copy's loc/rot again.

Also reverse the visual switching in the outliner and keyframe that. (the original is to be seen at frame 1, the copy to be invisible)

Animate the copy and send it into the goal square. (emulate a bounce or two?)

-===============-

Whilst unnecessary, for demo purposes here, the original (physics) ball is switched back as the copy crosses the goal threshold.

Similarly in your project, you can also switch back to the child-ball at anytime.

Switching back - At the frame required...

Move the player-character so the two balls are at the same location. (or close)  Use SH-S to set the 3D cursor to the selected duplicate, then select the original ball  and send it  to the 3D cursor's location. (SH-S again)

This will place both at precisely the same location.  From there it's a simple matter to rotate the child-ball in all 3 axis' until they're aligned again.  I've found it easier to use wireframe mode and "Normal" orientation for this.  Always be in ORTHO view.

-================-

When the balls are textured you have to ensure this is matched at the switch-back frame also -

An easy way to do this is -

Temporarily remove the original ball's smoothing and texture.  Reassign one face to a bright colour before duplicating.  At the switch-back frame rotate both balls so their mis-coloured faces match up.

-===============-

Switching can take place between the two balls as often as needed, all without fear of some constraint's apron strings mucking you around.

The monkey video below has been freely switched back and forth between physics and animation several times, plus throwing in a path constraint for good measure, all without a single glitch.  It's a basic workaround but it always works.

Monkey Blend file is available if you want that.


Way to batch hide for render? How can I disable rendering for a large amount of objects quickly using, say a keyboard short cut. I want it to be equivalent to clicking the camera icon in the outliner.

Select the mesh, and press Ctrl+H. The mesh will still be visible in the viewport, but it will now be hidden in the render.

As you can see it is visible in the viewport render still:

However if I press F12 and render an image, it is hidden.

This works for any number of objects, just select them all, and press Ctrl+H. Notice also that Ctrl+Alt+H unhides the selected meshes from the final render.


animation nodes mix vector doesnt work How i can fix it?
I trying to make some morph with metaballs

Some nodes just don't accept lists. Nodes that accepts lists are said to be vectorized, on this case, this not isn't vectorized. You can either use another node to achieve the same result, or use a loop as follows:


Issue with UV mapping and Texture paint tools I'm very new to Blender so sorry if this is quite obvious. I've been using Darrin Lile's character modelling tutorials on YouTube. It was all fine up until texturing. To briefly explain what the issue is, when using the 'Texture Paint' mode in Blender (the one that allows you to paint directly onto the object), the paint is appearing on the opposite side of some parts. For example, if I add paint onto the stomach, it will appear on the character's back.

I'm hoping the solution is something very simple but it's possible I've messed something up with the UV maps. However, my UV map seemed fine.

If anyone could help with this that would be great. Thanks for reading!

Here's the download link to my model:

It's a Normal issue: Go in Edit mode, select all, and press ctrlN to recalculate the normals (shiftN in 2.8).


How to save an image without antialiasing in cycles? I think this question has been raised numerous of times, but I have yet not found an answer that works.

I'm rendering game graphics with cycles and I need them to be saved in RGB, without any alpha information what so ever.

Setup:

I want to save this picture, exactly as it appears here, with no alpha. But it always saves an antialiased version of it against black.

How can I save the image without antialiased result?

In 2.67 and 2.68a (I haven't checked 2.69+), the amount of AA present in the cycles render is controlled by the size of the Gaussian sample on the film.

The gaussian for the film is the amount of jitter that rays leaving the camera receive. If this is high, the pixel effectively samples a little circle of incoming light in the scene, and you get anti-aliasing. If this is small, then all the rays are almost the same, and you are sampling one single point on the film.

So to reduce or remove anti-aliasing in Cycles, turn down the Gaussian width in the Film section of the Render settings. Turning it to 0 will reset it to its minimum (currently 0.01 on my version, the default is 1.50), and rendering will give essentially a non AA image.

If you just want to avoid an aliased outline, then this isn't the right setting, do it in the compositor as per PeterT's answer.


Metallparts on package design I'm doing a pretty simple packaging design. A rectangular box with the graphics on.

My problem comes in parts that have metal foil punched into the design itself. Text and a some sort of swosch.

How do I get those parts metallic without affecting the paper parts with image texture?

You have already got your image map and UV done? Then all you need to add is the bump, roughness map for the emboss. For the metal look you will need a metallic map for the metal text. If you don't know what a metallic map is then you will have to do a quick search on shading for blender.


Is it possible to design a game in Blender? I was wondering if it´s possible to design a game in blender?

For example, can you design a level in Blender then export it to Unity?

It would seem to be easier to do it that way since Blender is dedicated to modelling and the interface in Unity looks quite complex.

Yes, you can do that. You can model every element of your game in Blender then export them into Unity, or any other game engine. The game itself would still have to be coded in Unity.

Blender 2.79, the current version, even has an internal game engine allowing you to design games that works in Blender itself.


How to make a sword appear from behind a tree in 2D Animation Hello, i am brand new to blender.
I am trying to make a short Stickman animation for learning purposes.
I would like to make the sword appear from behind the tree, and not in front of the tree as it does now.
I have been looking for tutorials, but i can't find any answers on how to do this.
I thought maybe i could make the tree a layer somehow and get the sword to be behind that layer, but dunno how.
The best clue i got was somebody talking about "shrinkwrap" tho, i don't think it's meant for stuff like this ?
Any tips would be a great help! :)

Best regards Mathias

If you press TAB to go to object mode, then duplicate the tree with SHIFT+D, then extrude (E), and fill (F):

between the vertices at the edges, to make an object that will cover the sword (or anything else), then make the material of this object just filled white (or whatever colour* your background is):

*I'm British so I spell it properly

then that should cover the sword perfectly behind the tree. If the sword is still in front the tree, then check that it is behind the tree in 3D space.


How to render with low quality How to change the quality of renders in python and save low quality render output?
Low quality, small size (not default size)

bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.image_settings.file_format = 'JPEG'
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.filepath = './'
bpy.ops.render.render(animation = False)
img = bpy.data.images[0]
img.save_render('wynik.jpg')


Animated objects as particles - Is there a way to tell them when to start their animations? I have this issue where I have an object with an animated material (also rigged meshes in another case), and using it as a hair type particle on a mesh. The problem is that all the particles animate at the exact same time, that is when the actual instanced object does. I’d like to be able to control when these particles start their animations. In my particular case I have a rectangular mesh, and I’d like to start the animation of the particles in the center where the object’s origin is, and gradually move out in a circle gradient. I kinda stuck here and really don't know how to solve this issue, so if you know any type of solution or approach to this issue please let me know!

Thanks!

Edit: added particle settings

In order to do this you will have to make a gradient texture which starts from white and slowly reaches to black with circle emerging from its centre(can be easily achieved by using a color ramp.) Then you will have to unwrap the face you want to apply particles on and place it in centre of unwrap grid and then apply the texture in length of particles under textures tab.
For editing the materials you will have to use only one object to be rendered as hair instead of a collection( if you want variety of hairs you can add displacement modifier and change it to local for random results). After this you can go into material tab and animate the material(press I while hovering over your mouse on color). Later on in animation you can add  random node in material or use multiple particle systems if you want to keep all the colours still there.


Copying Y scale value onto multiple objects The thickness (Y-axis) are all different value and I have been attempting to reset them all the a particular value without doing it one by one. I also tried using the copy attributes plugin but it only offers to copy all the scale values instead of just the ones for the Y value. Any thoughts how I can copy Y scale to multiple objects?

Here is a script (I don't know if there is another option) for now

copy and paste the script in the blender text editor
select the objects
the object with the right scale should the active object (yellow outline , others red )
in the text editor click Run Script

import bpy

s= bpy.context.object.scale[1]
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects :
    obj.scale[1] = s


how can I export object position info from blender to text file? how can I export objects position information from blender to a text file for every frame of an animation?

This will write the location x,y and z values of the active object(bpy.context.object) at every frame starting from the start frame and finishing with the end frame set in the render settings under Dimensions section, Frame Range. You can change that by changing the for loop's condition. You can format the output as you need as well, just keep in mind you need to convert values you wish to output to strings.

import bpy

file = open("C:\\SomeDirectoryBlenderHasPermissionToAccess\\SomeFile.txt", 'w')
scene = bpy.context.scene
loc = bpy.context.object.location
for frames in range(scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end+1):
    scene.frame_set(frames)
    file.write('Loacton at frame '+str(frames)+':('
    +str(loc.x)+', '+str(loc.y)+', '+str(loc.z)+')\n')
file.close()

If you needed to run it for all objects in the scene you would need a loop within a loop:

...

for every_object in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    for every_frame in range(scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end+1):
        scene.frame_set(every_frame)
        loc = every_object.location
        file.write('Loacton at frame '+str(every_frame)+':('
        +str(loc.x)+', '+str(loc.y)+', '+str(loc.z)+')\n')

...

You can find more info on working with strings here. www.w3schools.com is a wonderful resource in general when learning Python.

Blender Python documentation is usefull as well especially the search function there.

One more extremely useful place to learn is Blender itself. There are some very useful examples that come with Blender here:

Also auto complete function(ctrl+space) is extremely useful in the Python Console:


only PART of a spherical mesh not rendering uv texture Newbie trying to create an eyeball. Used a uv sphere, modified it a bit, unwrapped (added seams) and all seemed good in the 3d viewport shading's rendered mode, but in actual render the center of the eyeball is not displaying the texture properly. What am doing wrong? :/

One eye geometry is invisible in the viewport (eye outer), but visible for rendering. Open the Outliner and pay attention to the little eye and camera icons next to your objects. The eye makes an object appear in the viewport (and in rendered viewport display), the camera activates/deactivates an object for final rendering (F12 or animation rendering).

To make your eye inner geometry fully show in final render, you can either click the camera icon of eye outer and make the object disappear, or you can give it a glass shader and let the texture of eye inner show through.

In the viewport, you can use the shortcut Alth to bring back all hidden geometries and objects.


How to move all parts to the center, based on selected object I have a gun and its way to off center to use in a game, and I need it to be so that the sight is at the center so that the aim animation is at the center of the screen exactly. So How can I move the whole gun so that the sight is on the cursor or center? I Have many parts to the gun not just one part.

It sounds like you need to adjust the object pivot point? A lot of rotation and centering problems can happen if an object's pivot point is way off. In the image below, there is a gun and three separate objects. The gun is the parent, and the objects are children. You can see how the gun rotates around the pivot point, and the children follow.

Using the 3d cursor and the "Set Origin to 3D Cursor" option, you can place your object's pivot point wherever you like, including the barrel or sight. I hope this helps.


How to edit a custom property in a python script? I am creating a custom property on an Empty in a script, and then editing the property's data such as the name, limits, and Tooltip description.
I am using the commands echo'ed from the info panel when I perform these operations in the Blender UI.  While the object is selected and active I get these commands...

bpy.ops.wm.properties_add(data_path="object")
bpy.ops.wm.properties_edit(data_path="object", property="Scale", value="1.0", default="1.0", min=0, max=10, use_soft_limits=False, is_overridable_library=False, soft_min=0, soft_max=10, description="")

When using these commands in the script or Python console, the first "add" command succeeds, but the edit command fails.  I get this error message...

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/private/var/folders/z4/pm8ygsf16f1_kw3dsfpttthm0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/66464DE9-7039-455C-8E08-0581D47CFD84/d/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.80/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 201, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: Direct execution not supported

Is it possible to edit a custom property from a script, and what is the proper command, please.  Thanks.

_RNA_UI dictionary

As descibed here https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/43786/15543

import bpy

context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

if not obj.get('_RNA_UI'):
    obj['_RNA_UI'] = {}

# set it
obj["scale_factor"] = 1.0

# property attributes.for UI
obj['_RNA_UI']["scale_factor"] = {"description":"Scale Factor",
                  "default": 1.0,
                  "min":0.0,
                  "max":10.0,
                  "soft_min":0.0,
                  "soft_max":10.0,
                  "is_overridable_library":0,
                  }

# test UI in text editor footer

def draw(self, context):
    ob = context.object
    self.layout.prop(ob, '["scale_factor"]')

bpy.types.TEXT_HT_footer.append(draw)


Noisy edges on my animation I'm rendering an animation and don't know how to smooth these noisy edges - sampling is also high. I tried clamping to no avail.

Don't use branched path tracing.

If you really REALLY REALLY want to use branched path tracing, then you need to increase your Anti-Aliasing samples. For each ONE pass on one pixel, you're doing 1024 Diffuse samples, and 2048 Glossy samples, but only 1 AA sample. Your Diffuse and Glossy settings are multiplied by the number of AA samples you use. Secondly, your AA settings define how many "passes" each pixel is given. You're only making two passes.

...and don't use branched path tracing.

Editorial: The only reason I say not to use branched path tracing (BPT) is that it's a specialized tool for solving a particular problem. Using it for a situation like this is unnecessarily complicated and creates more problems than it solves. It's common for Blenderheads to use BPT because they think of it like a one-button-click that "makes things better," but there's only one thing that BPT can do better: render faster... sometimes.

Don't worry about speed until speed becomes the bottleneck that you need to solve right now. And BPT is only faster if you know how to set it up for your particular use-case. Otherwise, it's likely to create more problems than it solves.

It's like the old adage about optimizing code "The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet." — Michael A. Jackson

Similarly, the first rule of BPT should be "Don't use it," and the second rule (for experts only!) "Don't use it yet."


Mask out certain objects? I have several objects in a scene. I have a plane that is the closest object to the camera, and I want it to mask out one object while leaving the other object alone. I was using the mask transparency until I came to this problem. Any help? If it makes a difference, the objects are all animated

You can do this with Render Layers using the Layer Mask option.

In my example below I've created 3 objects, a plane, a monkey, and a cube. The plane is in front of both. The plane is on Layer 1, the monkey on Layer 2 and the Cube on Layer 3. There is a Render Layer set up for each object. The crucial part is that the Render Layer for the monkey has Layer 2 enabled, and also Mask Layer 1 enabled, which makes the plane mask out the monkey on this layer.

You can see in the rendered layers in the top panel, that the monkey layer is masked out, and that the cube is not masked out.


I want to see tool descriptions when I hover my mouse over them So I'm following tutorials to figure out and begin to use blender, but I have a problem. When they're going across the display, they'll hover the cursor over a tool, say for example Extrude Region and a little dialog box appears. In this case it reads: Extrude Region, Extrude freely or along an axis. However on my version, if I hover my cursor over the tool, I get no such dialog box. Since I'm new to the program, I'd like to be able to see them so I know what I'm clicking on. How to I make them appear?

To get tool descriptions, go to Preferences > Interface and enable Tooltips


Bend mesh tire tread After modelling a tread of a tire and applying an array modifier, Image "e" shows that the modelled tread needs a little bending to to make a everything line up as it should.
Tried simple deform modifier with different origins, settings and curves, but could not get it as I need it.

Problem solved. Used a circle as a target for the aray of treads with the array modifier. That worked but did not bend the tread mesh itself. Using a nurbs curve and a curve modifier also bended de mesh of the tread.


how to create UIList with auto-aligned three columns? I want to create nice-looking auto-adjusting UIList with three columns of data inside. Some of the values in columns are different in length. They are: float value, unit (usually 2-3 chars) and name of the corresponding object (could be longer, but nvm).

Here is the sample code:
First, I have a collection object defined like this:

class Area(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    id = IntProperty()
    area = FloatProperty(default=0.0, description='Area measured')
    atxt = StringProperty(default='0.0',description='Area converted to text and formatted')
    unit = StringProperty(default='',description='Unit item choosen from UnitTypes')
    name = StringProperty(default='',description='Object name which area is calculated')

Then I have a draw_item function, which is defined like this:

class AreaItemList(UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname):
        if self.layout_type in {'DEFAULT', 'COMPACT'}:
#           line = ('%-12s %4s %-s' % (item.atxt,item.unit,item.name))
#           layout.label(text = line)

            layout.prop(item,"atxt",emboss=False,text='')
            layout.prop(item,"unit",emboss=False,text='')
            layout.prop(item,"name",emboss=False,text='')
        elif self.layout_type in {'GRID'}:
            pass

Please note the commented section: it does work, but looks ugly, and there is no align in columns because of variable char length. So, the question is:
- how to make aligned columns in UIList?

It could be either by using layout.split (but it's hard to predict the split ratio, and there are three columns, and by the way - the documentation is pretty poor about this layout function), or either by using monospaced font and string formatting. How to do this? Any ideas?
Look of the list for the code from the comment:
http://storage3.static.itmages.com/i/16/0423/h_1461384717_4797711_d3f6576ba9.jpeg

By default when you place multiple items on the same row blender will give each item an equal portion of the row eg. three items get 33% of the row each. Due to the fluid nature of blender's layout, we can't specify an exact size of each column, they will get resized as the user resizes the layout.

You can use UILayout.split() to alter the percentage of a row that an item uses. To expand on my earlier answer to include an example of splitting three columns you can get the following result.

Note that the split works on the allocated space, the first split turns a row into two columns, the first column gets the percentage size of 60%, the remaining items then use the remaining 40%. I have then used split again so that the second column gets 30% of the available space - that is 30% of the remaining width after the first split not the entire row.

def draw(self, context):
    measure_size = 0.6
    unit_size = 0.3
    box = self.layout.box()
    col = box.column()

    row = col.split(percentage=measure_size)
    row.label(text='9.3000168000e+03')
    row = row.split(percentage=unit_size)
    row.label(text='in')
    row.label(text='Cube')

    row = col.split(percentage=measure_size)
    row.label(text='7.176e+00')
    row = row.split(percentage=unit_size)
    row.label(text='yd')
    row.label(text='Cube')


Different Cameras on different Viewports ? Blender 2.8 How to get this different cameras in different viewports in blender 2.8?

From docuemntaion:
"Local Camera
Active camera used in this view to override the (global) scene camera. The option is available only when lock local camera and layers toggle in the header is not"
enabled.

Where is this option lock local camera...?

In sidebar options (N button) you have to select Use Local Camera and select your camera. See image.


What is this artifact and how to avoid it? On a Sub.D cylinder(ngon "cap fill type"),i extruded the "cap" to make it round,then inset to flat it.When i apply a different color on the end part(as u see in the pic,sorry for my bad english)i found this artifact.

Only way i could fix was inset another face on it.But what it is and how to avoid it ? Thanks in advance

This is the sort of pattern that can arise in the transition between 'kite' quads and more regular quads under subdivision

If you can arrange for the transition to be inside a single-material region rather than at the boundary between materials, it doesn't show:

here, by I insetting the polar region

The Catmull-Clark subdivision algorithm drags newly-created edge-points away from the previous concentrations at one side of a face.. this shows the transition between Simple and Catmull-Clark subdivision:


Missing objects from old Blender in 2.8 (hidden in 2.79b and lost in 2.8) I am missing a bunch of objects when opening some old blender files (it has nothing to do with the collection visibility like in this post: Missing objects when opening old file in blender 2.8)

I just installed the 2.79b on another system to doublecheck the problem... and I can access all files in the old blender version - but I realized that the problematic objects were hidden in the old file.... So I made them visible and - guess what - they showed up in 2.8!

Funny thing is that 2.8 shows these objects as "visible" but greyed out...

I can share the .blend file but am not sure how this is normally done within stackexchange...

Appending the missing objects to the current file results in the same problem - the objects show up as "visible" but are greyed out - and cannot be found somewhere in the viewport...

This is rather frustrating because I have lots of old blender files where the visibility of objects is a thing of organizing my stuff ( I use blender only for modeling 3d printed stuff)... And blender 2.79b and 2.8 cannot co-exist as far as I know...

Any ideas?

Ok.. yeah... something new... thx @rjg to pointing into the right direction...

The restriction toggle let's me enable or disable single objects from the viewport - which has nothing to do with the objects visibility!

Turing the restriction thing on I was able to enable the object in the viewport:

I find it rather confusing that hidden objects (=visibilty!) in 2.79b become disabled (and NOT hidden) by opening in 2.8.  I would expect that a hidden object in 2.79 will be hidden in 2.8 and not disabled...

But great - something important learned about the switch from 2.7 to 2.8...


Why does this material crash Blender 2.81a Eevee on OS X El Capitan FYI: this on OS X El Capitan with Blender 2.81a.

I copied the attached material from a youtube tutorial for Blender 2.80.  I made some modifications to the original, but the only stickler seems to be the Bump map.  Every time I connect the Bump map normal output to to the shader's normal input, Blender goes off to beachball land.  Seems to work fine in 2.81a Cycles.

Is there something I'm missing or a bug I don't know about?

OS X El Capitan (10.11) doesn't meet the minimum requirements for Blender 2.8x. You need macOS 10.12 or later and a supported GPU.

  Blender is cross-platform, it runs on every major operating system:

  Windows 10, 8 and 7
  macOS 10.12+
  Linux


Render only a certain part of a frame, reuse the rest of the frame from the frame rendered before I have ~800 frames which are technically still. In these 800 frames, only a small section of it moves, is it possible to only render the first frame fully, then only re-render the small moving part of the 799 frames left and reuse the rest of the image from the first rendered frame?

I want this rendered for 800 frames

Only this part moves for those 800 frames

You can solve this by separating the foreground and background elements and rendering them separately, then using the compositor to re-combine them.

Result of this approach

First, render only the very background - the object(s) that is behind everything else, and save to file:

Then, make sure you set the background to transparent.

Then render the static foreground elements (the elements above everything else that aren't animated) and save to file:

Now you can render your dynamic, animated element separately from the rest. Make sure you render to an image sequence of PNGs with transparent background:

Now all you need to do is open the compositor and use alpha over nodes to composite the static and dynamic elements, then render it all out together to one video file (or a new image sequence):

Alternative node setup using Z combine:

You can find the blend file that was used for this answer here. Good luck!


Separating one face into two with an edge I am looking to separate the body of the sword into two faces, so that I can easily make the top half black and the bottom silver.

Simply adding an edge in the middle did not separate the blade into two.

I created the edge by directly connecting the vertex at the tip with the vertex near the handle, shown in the picture.

Any tips appreciated!

I'm guessing you created the edge with F? Try using the Connect Path tool instead (J):


Shader for see-through glass? I want to create a simple see-through glass but without the reflections and refraction.

Here is the issue:

The refraction makes it look like there is another chair in front of the original chair.

The normals are fine.
Geometry is fine.
The glass has thickness to it.

I played with the light path nodes and they give similar results.

And this didn't work, either.

This answer from CarlG on Blenderartists.org helped me:

  If you want manual glass on thick panes, all you need to do is setup the shader manually:
  Fresnel to mix between refraction shader and glossy (sharp is ok) shader. If you want to lower the reflections you just dial in a darker value. You can then mix in a transparency shader after that using LightPath/isShadowRay to eliminate it casting shadows, very useful if caustics is turned off and/or (?) if diffuse bounces are low.

  In real life dulling down the reflections are usually done by adding an anti glare coating to it, this tints the facing angles of the reflections slightly green (if you wear glasses, check them out if they have such a coating).

  However, for glass panes (equal thickness) using refraction is a huge waste of resources since refractions would be most evident near the edges (which you don't see). So the trick here is to replace the refraction shader with a transparency shader. You may need to invert IOR (in the fresnel node) for backfacing faces. Unless I need to see the double reflection from multiple layers of glass (not happened so far), I'll just use flat panes of glass.

  You can actually use refraction shader on thin panes as long as you feed its normal input from Geometry/Incoming. You'd still need to invert the IOR for backfacing faces though. This trick is useful if you want frosted glass at a fraction of the price for real frosted thick glass.

  Here is the setup I typically use for pretty much ALL glass I do (excluding glass vases and ornaments). If I need frosted I swap out the glass Transparency shader (I keep the shadow one) and feed it normal from Geometry/Incoming.


Curve text around cylinder I'm new to Blender so please excuse this question. I know there is already a question regarding this topic, however I'm having trouble with the solution posted there.

I want wo wrap text around a cylinder, but it should not be flat but "stand" on the curve, like this:

To do so, I created a bezier circle and used the "Text on curve" option to make the text follow the circle. Now it looks like this:

In the answer to the question I posted above, it says I should rotate the text on the x-axis to achieve the "standing" effect. However when I rotate it on the x-axis, it looks like this:

What am I doing wrong? Thanks for your help!

P.S. Please excuse my english, I'm not a native speaker! :)

Add a text and convert it to mesh. Add an empty and use Simple Deform modifier > Bend with the empty as origin and high, like 4, Deform factor. You may want, too,remesh and subdivide the text mesh.


Where can I find the viewer node for the shader editor? I am searching for this "viewer" node in shader editor...

The viewer node is a simple emission node, it is just created by the node wrangler addon. Once the node wrangler addon is enabled, the addon creates such a node when pressing Ctrl+Shift+RMB on the node.


BUG? Particles offset from emitter when using object I'm having an issue where the emitter particles are offset from the emitter geometry.  This seems to be a problem that's happened to someone at least once before way back in 2013 here:

https://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27408

I'm having the same issue.  If I use "halo" as the particle, the particles emit properly from the emitter object.  If I switch to "object" they are inexplicably offset from the emitter object.

First image is the halo's around the orange highlighted emitter object.  Second image is the particles offset in the -Z direction from the orange highlighted emitter object.  The only change I made is switching from "Halo" to "Object" in the "Render as" setting.  My particle objects are 3-vertex cones.  Nothing complicated.  None of the other settings have changed.

I'm in Blender 2.81 on Windows.

I kept running into this. In my case I had to:

Apply all offsets to both the emitter as well as all objects in my particle group

Set the origin to the geometry of all objects in my particle group as well as the emitter

Took me a while to figure this out


Creating a door: scale vertex group independently Please let me know if this is the correct question to ask and not an XY problem: Basically I am trying to create a door with dynamic height and width.

Bellow is my attempt: I'm creating an amateur with 6 bones, H_BOT, H_MID, H_TOP in order to scale the door vertically (scaling inheritance of bones are off), the same with L_LEFT, L_MID and L_RIGHT.

When I have only three bone by one axis (e.g. H_BOT, H_MID and H_TOP) I can scale only the middle part of the door, leaving the to bars on top and bottom with their height

The moment I add more bones of the other axis, the mesh will be distorted, affected by other bones.

My guess is that the weight of the vertex group are normalised despite being displayed as 1, so the scale ratio applied to them are only 1/4.

Thank you per advance,

Although it depends on what you make it for, it may be easier to use shape keys instead and control them via drivers.


Can't export transmission map I'm trying to export a ring that has some transparent parts, but when i open the file that i exported, my transmission map is not there anymore, so the ruby becomes opaque. (No matter the format .fbx , .gltf ...)

You plugged your Transmission map into Alpha input.
Alpha input considers white color as opaque.


Strange UV Unwrapping behaviour with Seams I get strange UV unwrapping behavior when Unwrapping any object that has Seams.
In the example below, I show the results of Unwrapping a simple beveled cube with and without Seams.

I understand that strange results can be shown in a UV Editor window if the scale of the object is not uniform. However, the scale of my object has not been changed and is at 1 in the example. If anyone knows what causes such a dramatic effect and has a solution then please let me know, because this problem is effectively making it impossible for me to texture my models properly.

I'm going to assume that this beveled cube was made from a Cube mesh.
When you add a Cube mesh to your scene, it automatically creates a UV map for you. Beveling the cube without unwrapping it after does not change this map by much (although it does result in some weird mapping).
However, when you made a seam and unwrapped the mesh, the old UV map was trashed. Blender now tries to figure out how to unwrap the whole mesh to a 2D space with the seams provided. However, Blender cannot do this because the provided seams are not sufficient.
Now, imagine your mesh was made of paper. You want to cut the paper at the appropriate edges so you can "unwrap" the paper to make it completely flat without tearing it. If you only cut the edges you marked as a seam, you cannot do this.
This is what Blender is doing. Because it cannot completely flatten the mesh, it gets confused and makes a whole mess of overlapping faces.
When marking seams, use the strategy above to try and place seams at the correct spots.


Saved pictures do not appear in my folders I have just recently started using blender and I am following a few tutorials to get a good idea of how to use the software. I saved a JPG file by selecting it and clicking save as but when I try to add the image as a texture it does not appear in any of my folders and I cannot access it, I tried changing what the files filter out but even when I have all files visible to select, I cannot find any of the images I saved in the folders I place them in. I have blender on Windows 10 and have the latest version as of July, 26 , 2016.

You don't specify what platform you are using (Win, MACos, Linux, or something else), but you can find the file using a OS level search. In the file system search engine use the name of file, and if you did not happen to have chosen a unique name for your image file, the date you created the file,  and the OS search facility should provide you the path to which you saved it. With that information, it should be easy to find the file, and perhaps move it to a more desirable location.

A little preventative effort goes far here. Before you start a project, create a home for it, and store all related elements in that folder as you make them.


Is it possible to invert the SSS shader effect? I need to achieve the effect of inverted SSS (the opposite to the one pictured below), where most of the scattering is inside the object, not outside. Tried using Color-->Invert and Math nodes. Tried using a negative values of SSS node also. Wonder if it's even possible to do in Blender?

Following on from what Yvain commented: "negative SSS" is basically an opaque material. If the surface is opaque, you can't see through any face to see if the volume gets lighter. If what you're after isn't a surface texture, it's probably a volume texture. And if you want something lighter in the middle of a volume than the volume's outer walls, you either need an Emission or Volume Scatter node in the Volume of your material Output, or a rough Glass surface shader with a light in the volume.


What should i do if my fluid falls through an object? I want to make a shoreline scene, but my fluid always falls through my "floor". I dont know why (it's my first time with fluid sim). Does anybody know what the problem is?

Try increasing domain resolution. Notice resolution has two settings : one for render (= what you see when you press f12), and one for preview (= what you actually see in your screenshots).

However, fluids are designed for smaller scale simulations (like, a bathtub, or maybe a small swimming pool). Maybe it's not the best solution for this case.


How can I tell what part of the model the UV map is from? (In Blender) I have a model in blender, and when I unwrap it, I noticed that there is a lot of stretch in one section.  How can I tell what section of the model this is from?

As you can see, there is one Huge green area that shows a many more vertex's than I was expecting to see.

Also, those boxes look huge.  Is everything the same scale?

UV Face Identification and Coordination

Image above.  Open two windows. One with the mesh in [edit mode]. We assume one UV. One with the UV image editor with the texture selected.  If you select faces of the mesh model you will see them highlighted in the UV editor window with the default settings.  You can change the setting indicated by the yellow arrow are to keep the Selection in Sync.  You may select faces in either the UV Image Editor or The 3D View Window with mesh in edit mode.

Notice the face selection mode.  The red seam allows the blender user to move the islands.

Face Size

Relative Face size in the UV Map and face size of the mesh model can be different and this is a flexible feature. Same scale is not necessary. We might imagine we want more detail in the face of some character than we want on the bottom of the foot.

Changing Island Size


Spinning curve vertices I'm trying to create a circular saw blade like the one pictured here, which I grabbed off blendswap.

I thought I might be able to create the handles for one of the teeth, then spin around the origin for the rest - there is no spin tool for curves though.

Is there a way to create this saw blade, without scripting?

Model a single tooth.

Add an Array modifier, and a Curve modifier to that tooth object.
Add a new circle curve ShiftA > Curve > Circle
Set the Fit Type of the array modifier to Fit Curve, and target the Bezier Circle (added in step 3). Also set the Object of the curve modifier to the Bezier Circle.

If the teeth overlap, you can scale the circle to get the teeth to line up perfectly.


How to create similar video in Blender with particle systems I want to create a similar video in Blender but I don't have much knowledge in Blender.
Thanks.

enter link description here

It looks like small white dots moving on the surface of transparent spheres, a simple way to recreate that could be to mix an Emission with a Transparent node, with a Voronoi Texture node as factor. To make them move, just use the Rotation values of the Mapping node. As you have dots going in different directions, you could simply duplicate the sphere, leave the duplication at the same place, rotate it a bit (RR), duplicate its material, change the Mapping values a bit, you'll have a group of new dots moving differently.


Mesh disappears when removing parent armature relation I have a mesh parented to an armature that I want to remove and re-rig with a new armature

New armature: kaini_rig in the scene tree top right. I'm basically just remaking the UE4 skeleton.

However, whenever I try what he does at 20:45 in this video - removing the parent armature from the mesh in the Relations section of the Object tab - the mesh totally disappears (this happens in 2.80 as well)

All I did in the above is press the X on the Parent field, where my mouse is. The eyeball icon is still active on the mesh, so I'm not sure why it is not showing. The same thing happens when I try to change the parent relation to my armature vs simply removing it.

Did you notice the mesh dimensions in the 3D view sidebar? It goes from meters and centimeters to centimeters and millimeters. It's not disappearing, but shrinking to such tiny dimensions you can't see it with the armature visible.

Instead of removing the parent at the Object panel, try the following: With the mesh selected and cursor on the 3D view, press Space, then Clear Parent > Clear and Keep Transformation.

That should preserve the transformations affecting the mesh while it was parented to the armature, what won't happen if you simply remove the parent from the panel.


Particles - Aligning particles to an SVG My friend asks me for help about aligning thousands of particles to an outline of an SVG.
Tell me, what do I have to do?
Progress:

What he wants to achieve:

How it would go:

As my friend said: "These are when the stars would stay in place in random seed, so the outline of the logo would form."

Does dots should appear in place (plus to add animated Camera movement backward to zoom-out) ...

Example is SVG converted to Mesh (only outline), Extruded a bit to get side faces and added Particle System Emitted from Faces, Physics > None ...
... or dots should fly from behind camera to front?

Particles > Keyed suggested by Blunder in comment.

No problem to extend answer or redirect you to somewhere for more details, when will be clear the particles motion.


Blender modeling: To sphere tool does not rounded the face of model I am beginner of Blender.I faced some problem as I try to modeling the tongue. I am trying to make the face become rounded but when i use sphere tool there is nothing change neither using loopTools to circle the faces (the faces will deleted)I dont know why this happened.

Can anyone tell me how to solve this?
Thank you in advanced for those who reply.

I found the solution by luck. Actually i forgot to click on the adjust edit cage to modifier.


Keep part of mesh square when applying subdivision surface I am applying a subsurface modifier to the body of my plane, I need to model the nose in such a way that it stays as sharp and square as possible. I don't see any vertex group option like in the displacement modifier, so I don't know how to achieve this.

Can this be done or should I separate the nose in to another piece without subsurf?

Non subsurf version

Subsurf version, I tried with mean crease 1.0 but still got rounded corners.

Subsurf is very dependent on how your topology flows. When you see an ugly pole that pinches your geometry that's when you got to rethink the topology. Poles are not evil but they are unavoidable as they control the flow of your topology but must be used sparingly, specially in organic or semi-organic surfaces. The pole in your geometry doesn't look right:

I would suggest changing the topology so you get better subdivision. The red lines control the flow and the blue lines reinforce the geometry to crease the edges:

Make sure to clean up triangles; you want all quads when possible.


Add two Principled BSDF with alpha I want to add two Principled BSDF in one material to one as texture 1 and principles for logo only with transparency to control roughness.

If I understood your question, you have to combine two different materials into one, using the alpha channel to mix between the two shaders.

In my example I created a material for all the faces except the zone of the logo, then duplicated it, assigned the dupli version to the faces of the logo zone, then added in the dupli version a new principled shader, with the image as base color.

Then I used alpha channel to mix between the two shaders.


How To Have Fine Control Over Rotating Objects I recently downloaded this jet from BlendSwap which has dual propellers on the wings. The propellers do spin on their own when the animation is played.

But when I do animations, at some point I'd probably make a plane or a helicopter to slowly start up its propellers/rotors before they reach top speed and the vehicle lifts off.

Is there any way to make a spinning object slowly gain rotational speed, hold it, then slowly decrease (like in a landing)? I tried a Transformation constraint to a spinning emtpy and keyframing the influence, but the results didn't seem to go well. . .

This rig is over complicated: it has an IK bone that follows an empty, which rotates following a curve (circle); the animation is controlled by the evaluation time parameter of the curve, which has a cycle modifier in the graph editor, that you can see if you select the curve (and can be animated by hand using the 0-100 values, but it's difficult to achieve a smooth transition between different speeds due to its cyclic mode.

I think it would be better to delete the circle, the IK bone and the rotating empty, then select the bone called "prop rotate.L" in the "Armature prop L", set it as "Euler XYZ", and animate its Y rotation. So you can control the speed of the rotators by a simple use of ease in and ease out of a bezier curve in the graph editor.


Get tooltips data from python? I am writing an addon popup that shows all the current shortcuts. This is context sensitive and I have it mostly done. However, I am not able to get much information from the other python addons.

Below is some of CoDEManX's code that collects a lot of the info I need.
However, it does not seem to collect anything for Python addons.

Is there a way to collect the same info that the tooltips do from within python?

mod, opname = idname.split(".")
idname_c = "{!s}_OT_{!s}".format(mod.upper(), opname)
idtype = getattr(bpy.types, idname_c)
description = idtype.bl_rna.description

Wow Blender/Python is really like an onion ( a rather large on at that ) and my eyes have been watering like made getting through the layers :)

Ok I finally ran grep in the scripts directory as I should have when pink vertex first sugessted it. Duh.
Line 340 in bl_extract_messages.py gives it up (code below). So it looks to me that if it doesn't have a bl_rna.description (or bl_description) then it uses the __doc__ part.
In the process I realised that the bulk of what I need is directly in the keymaps them selves as .name attribute of the individual keymap. This is derived from the bl_label that is in the op that is called by the new keymap definition line.

So I went round in circles when it was right under my nose.
Thanks again everyone.

    if bl_rna.description:
        process_msg(msgs, default_context, bl_rna.description, msgsrc, reports, check_ctxt_rna_tip, settings)
    elif cls.__doc__:  # XXX Some classes (like KeyingSetInfo subclasses) have void description... :(
        process_msg(msgs, default_context, cls.__doc__, msgsrc, reports, check_ctxt_rna_tip, settings)


Materials not showing up on my rig Hello everyone i recently have been working on a rig , every time i append the rig into my CYCLES rendered project it is gray ( meaning the rig) the rig seems to not have any materials what so ever. I am a huge noob so if you can please explain in dept because i do not understand some things as i am new to this. Thank You.

If you've set up your object materials in the Blender Internal render engine mode, and then switch to Cycles, the materials are not compatible.

You'll have to create new Cycles materials that match your BI (Blender Internal) versions, and apply them to the object instead of the BI versions.