Is this SpaceNavigator issue a Blender problem or an OS/Driver problem? On Windows I am able to use the 3Dconnexion Space Navigator just fine. I customized the functionality of the two side buttons.

On a Mac, however, no matter what settings I change in the System Preferences for 3Dconnexion, the buttons will not do what I want. They only open the blender NDOF settings menu.

Is there a plugin or something I need in order to get full functionality/customizability out of my 3D Space Navigator with Blender for Mac? I'd hate to switch to Windows from now on, but if that's what it takes, I'll just have to.

The short answer is: Blender doesn't look at the setting of the 3Dconnexion you make in the OS X system preferences for the SpaceNavigator or other 3D mice.

Without the Mac drivers from 3Dconnexion.com, Blender doesn't recognize the SpaceNavigator (It's spelled as one word/name, no typo). It will move the mouse cursor in a 2D style like in the Finder.
With the Mac OS X drivers / System panel installed, Blender recognizes the SpaceNavigator / 3D-mouse, but while orbiting, the axis from the mouse do not correspond to the axis in the application. This is because Blender assumes you want to move the viewport camera aka your screen preview. Most people will know this mode from FPS (First Person Shooter) games. This is generally called Camera Mode. This can be frustrating if you want to work on your model and therefore keep it centered (Object Mode view).
Fortunately, orbiting in Object Mode is possible. Select the object you want to rotate, if you have more than one, and hold down the CTRL key.

It took me a week to figure this all out. That's why I'm writing an in depth article about using the SpaceNavigator with Blender on Mac OS X on buijs.pro


Blender: Advanced character rig problem As the title says, I'm having an issue regarding my 3D-characters rig.

INFO: As you can see in the pictures below, my character has swords attached to his back. Each sword is connected to the hand using a child of constraint so I that I can make him grab the swords by setting the influence value to 1. In addition to that, both of the swords are parented to the upper-chest bone, so that they will follow the character as he moves.

PROBLEM: Now as I change the influence to 1 so that the hand is now controlling the sword, everything works as I want it to. I can move the hand to the wanted location, and the sword will follow it. However! When I move the chest, the sword will start to rotate around the upper-chests pivot point since that's where it's parented to from the beginning. Is there anyway I can get around this problem? If so, I'd be glad to know.

The problem is demonstrated in the pictures below.

PICTURE1: Both swords are parented to the upper chest bone, making them move togheter as I lean his upper chest forwards. Had to delete this picture since it didn't allow me to use more than 2 links/Pictures

PICTURE2: Set the child of constraint influence to 1 in order for the hand to fully controll the sword bone. I rotate the arm.

PICTURE3: As I rotate the chest, the swordbone starts to take another path compared to the hand! (problem)

You get double transformations:

1st from child_of
2nd from parent

When you enable the child_of for the hand, you need to disable the original parent. As this is not possible from pose mode, you need to make this relationship with child_of too, and switch between them in one frame when you need to change the parenting.


Compositor: How to crop an image into multiple versions? For cases where we want to batch process an image into multiple versions, it's fairly straightforward if only changing the scale. But if we want to vary the cropping things get complicated. This is because using the Scale node's Crop mode on either Render Size or Scene Size. Neither of these values can have multiple instances or be key-framed to change over time.

In the screen shot above, the resizing (cropping) only works correctly because the Render Size is set correctly.

But this can only be done once. Even if we create another scene with different render dimensions, only the current scene gets used by the Scale node.

Using the Scale node in Absolute mode causes stretching instead of cropping.

It seems like there should be a way to do this. Am I overlooking something?

Update: I've made some progress with the size by using a Translate node followed by a Crop node, but the crop is off-center.

This can't be done in Blender, because the image pixel dimensions will always be that of the Scene from which the Render button was pushed.

I used a File Output node to test this, saving rendered data from different Scenes, each with different render dimensions. Their dimensions were overridden by the dimensions of the main Scene.

I'll post the .blend for anyone curious. It's nothing special.

What this means is that even if you use nodes to get the scaling and cropping right, you will just end up with transparency around the image. (If scaling up your image will be clipped instead.)

This sort of task should be done with other software, such as imagemagick or Photoshop (using Actions). Here is how to do it with imagemagick using scripting.


How do you use an image in a blender animation? I'm making a video intro and I would like to use a logo (.png image) in the animation.

I tried using an Image Empty but I've learned that they don't render.

Any other ideas?

Import Images as Planes Add-on

This is an add-on bundled with Blender. Go to File > User Preferences > Addons and type Import Images as Planes. Check the add-on to enable it.

Cycles Render

Key Shift + A and select Mesh > Images as Planes. Find the image in the File Browser. On the lefthand side, choose either Diffuse or Emission considering that Emission does not require a light source but does not receive shadows (without a crazy amount of Compositing; see my answer here) and Diffuse does require a light source and, likewise, receives shadows. Click Import Images as Planes.

Blender Render

Key Shift + A and select Mesh > Images as Planes. Find the image in the File Browser. On the lefthand side, either check Shadeless or don't considering that Shadeless does not require a light source but does not receive shadows and not checking Shadeless does require a light source and, likewise, receives shadows. Click Import Images as Planes.


How to render objects only with their materials diffuse color or without lighting I am currently trying to write a python script with bpy and Blender 2.9 to render images of a couple of thousand wavefront objects with material information. I only need the "true colors" of the objects, without shading, so I first tried to disable all light sources in the scene, what I could not accomplish because I am completely new to blender.
What would be the best approach to achieve this? Is there a way to set a uniform light source like the Hemi Lamp in previous blender versions? Is there a way to pass only the diffuse color of the materials?
I am quite stuck at the moment and would really appreciate any advice and bpy code examples.

Just use an Emission shader. This will emit the intensity of the surface without responding to any surrounding light sources so will produce a pure "unshaded" colour.
Related: Node for setting render colour, regardless of lighting


Why is this hair particle system not properly into account the 'density' vertex group? Having trouble with hair particle system on a vertex group on version 2.74.

I have a single head mesh (post mirror-apply, already checked MeshLint and normals) with multires modifier on. I created a beard vertex group to control the area to grow my beard/mustache.

When I specify my beard vertex group under "density", the generated hair only stays in the vertex group area on one half of the mesh, and spreads outside the area and onto parts of the face, neck, and ears in the other half.

When I specify both "density" and "length" to my beard vertex group, the generated hair does stay in the vertex group area on both halves of the head mesh, but there are glaring bald spots despite having "Even Distribution" toggled on.

I'm hesitant on resorting to replicating and separating parts of my mesh in order to control hair growth, which gives me the expected correct behavior. How do I do this without resorting to this hack?

Not sure if anyone could provide any assistance on my problem.

You should use the Weight Paint mode to create your vertex group.
Make sure you Apply Transforms on your mesh aswell.

Regarding "separating part", creating 'scalps', I think it is a better way to go especially when using animated characters.

Post a blend file if you still struggle.

EDIT: The Particle tool has a known bug when used with subdivision surfaces, and Multires. So it's "normal" and is being solved.
(SOURCE: https://soundcloud.com/blender-institute/podcast-ep-006-flexirig @ 12:50mn)


Editing the inside of an object How can I get my view inside of an object so I can edit the inside in edit mode? For example, you create a block, but you want to edit how it looks inside (like a house), how can I do that?

To view an object from the inside, you have to be in the perspective camera mode, because you are not able to "enter" the object with an orthogonal camera.

The shortcut Numpad 5 let you switch between orthogonal camera and perspective camera.

also important is, to have backface culling disabled or else you wont see any backfaces . You can find it in the property panel in the 3dView (shortcut N).

But if you really want to edit a inside of an object, I would recommend to create faces which are pointing inward to prevent issues while rendering.


When I add a new object / mesh to the scene, I can't edit previous objects Complete newbie here, and I'm sure there's a simple explanation, but I've been following a tutorial, and this wasn't mentioned, and I can't find an answer (or maybe I'm not wording the question right in google).

Basically, I'm just messing around with some basic modeling (trying to make a head).

After getting the head about where I wanted it, I tried to add a circle mesh to start deforming for the "hair". However, while it will add and allow me to edit the circle, when I try to go back to the head itself, I can no longer access edit mode, only object mode.

I've tried moving the new object to a different layer after adding, adding it onto a new layer directly, but nothing seems to make a difference.

Ideally I would like them both to be visible, so that I can conform the new shape to the existing object, whilst keeping the option to go back and tweak the original object if needed (and it is).

Please help me figure this out, in the simplest terms possible, please. :p

You should go to object mode then right click the object you want to edit and then press tab ;).This will solve the problem.


Problen with Object not appearing in render i don´t know what`s happenig why isn´t rendering but in the last proyect everything was fine. Hope someone can help.

The grey Background with the grid means, there is no Image to preview. You did not actually start a Render. You can start a Render in the Header via Render > Render Image or by hitting F12.

You probably used View Render or F11, wich displays the last Render (in this Case None).


Why do the particles in my keyed particle system not hit 2 of the 8 faces of the target mesh? Why do the particles in my keyed particle system not go to 2 of the 8 faces of the target mesh?

I made the target mesh by duplicating the original 1 face 8 times and rotating them so they'd all be in a circle.

They all appear to be one considered 1 object by Blender when in Edit mode, but when in Object mode, 2 of the 8 faces are not:

Then, when I play the animation, particles do not go to those 2 faces (except for that one lone particle that goes to the uppermost face):

This is even weirder: if I duplicate a face that is getting hit by parcitles, move it very near some of the faces that aren't receiving particles, then those faces start getting hit!

Here is my blend file.

If I understand keyed particles correctly, they are particles whose position gets interpolated between a start particle of one particle system and a goal particle which belongs to another particle system. I guess something with the matching of the start and the goal particle goes wrong. I guess this is a bug.
To solve this problem, you can disable "Even Distribution" in your goal particle system:

The result looks like it should:

Considering the faces that seem to be unselected in Object mode: If you disable 'Only Render' in the display settings all faces are marked in object mode. Otherwise only the particles are painted in orange, but since the two faces do not get any particles, they don't light up.

Edit: The distribution also works correctly when you set Emit From to "Verts". But then it will only target the vertices of the faces, and that is probably not what you want.


If I Put In OpenEXR Frames For HDR Would I Be Able To Use Blender To Export The Video As HDR If I were to make 120 HDR Frames would I be able to use blender to export it as a HDR video?

Your EXRs are scene referred, and while Blender cannot encode to HDR10 or Dolby Vision, those EXRs are perfectly acceptable to encode to HDR via Resolve or like software.


.blend files 'magically' shrinking? Still trying to understand some audio/video sync issues, I noticed the following weird behaviour (that seems to be related to said issues) of Blender.

Sometimes just opening a .blend file (not modifying anything, and I mean anything) and then exiting (without saving) will cause Blender to silently modify this file, unless it is marked as read-only. Moreover it seems the case that when this happens, the modified .blend file is slightly smaller than the original file (around 3 kB). Also it seems that this 'phenomenon' always occurs when I have these strange audio video sync issues.

Hence I would like to know what causes Blender to silently modify .blend files, and which data it is that is being modified.

Reopening your file removes all datablock that have been created and then not used, nor marked as "Fake user".

I.e. you create two materials for an object, then assign only one of them.
The unused object remains as datablock with no users.
When you close the file and then reopen it, the unused datablock (i.e. the unused material) disappears.

I don't know if this is your case!

See Blenders manual section on: Garbage Collection


How can I change Blender's output image resolution? I am currently trying to make a normal map for a texture I made. That texture has a 2048x2048 resolution. When I bake the normal map and save it to my desktop, the resolution of the normal map is only 1024x1024... I want the resolution of the normal map to be the same as the resolution of the texture file.
I have played around with the render settings, specifically changed the render res to 2048x2048 and increased the percent to 100 and 200, and every time I get the same 1024x1024 resolution!
Please Help!

For texture backing the resolution of the target image is what's important. The first step for baking is to create a new image in the image viewer were the normal map will be stored.  Here you can set your desired resolution.  If you use cycles, you need to add the texture node to the material of the object you want to bake to and select the image you just created. Next you can go to the bake settings in the render tab, mark selected to active. Make sure you select the objects in the scene, the one that you want to bake to needs to be selected last (it has a bright orange outline). Then you can press the bake button and once it is finished, save the image from the image viewer.


Drawing a text - error with argument in function "write" From this piece of code:

# import game engine modules
from bge import render
from bge import logic
# import stand alone modules
import bgl
import blf

def init():
    """init function - runs once"""
    # create a new font object, use external ttf file
    font_path = logic.expandPath('C://Documents and Settings//Guillermo//Mis documentos//Google Drive//Gproyectos//Proyectos con Blender/Zeyada.ttf')
    # store the font indice - to use later
    logic.font_id = blf.load(font_path)

    # set the font drawing routine to run every frame
    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    scene.post_draw = [write]

def write():
    """write on screen"""
    width = render.getWindowWidth()
    height = render.getWindowHeight()

    # OpenGL setup
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_PROJECTION)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()
    bgl.gluOrtho2D(0, width, 0, height)
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_MODELVIEW)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()

    # BLF drawing routine
    font_id = logic.font_id
    blf.position(font_id, (width * 0.2), (height * 0.3), 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 50, 72)
    blf.draw(font_id,"Hello World!")

init()
write()

that it works fine, I want to make some changes so that I can enter the text to the write function through a variable.
So my code would be as follows:

# import game engine modules
from bge import render
from bge import logic
# import stand alone modules
import bgl
import blf

def init():
    """init function - runs once"""
    # create a new font object, use external ttf file
    font_path = logic.expandPath('C://Documents and Settings//Guillermo//Mis documentos//Google Drive//Gproyectos//Proyectos con Blender/Zeyada.ttf')
    # store the font indice - to use later
    logic.font_id = blf.load(font_path)

    # set the font drawing routine to run every frame
    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    scene.post_draw = [write]

def write(chain):
    """write on screen"""
    width = render.getWindowWidth()
    height = render.getWindowHeight()

    # OpenGL setup
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_PROJECTION)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()
    bgl.gluOrtho2D(0, width, 0, height)
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_MODELVIEW)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()

    # BLF drawing routine
    font_id = logic.font_id
    blf.position(font_id, (width * 0.2), (height * 0.3), 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 50, 72)
    blf.draw(font_id,chain)

init()
chain = "Hello citizen!"
write(chain)

however this piece of code doesn´t work. I can read a message from the console that say:

  Type error: write() missing 1 required positional argument: ´chain´

I don´t understand why it doesn´t work.

As commented, adding write() as a callback in post_draw means it cannot have a parameter.

One solution would be to use your script as a python module. Code at the top of the script will be run once at game start, allowing you to initialise your module variables, then functions in the module can be used as needed. To be a module, the name of the text block must end in .py. For your first code example, you don't need to call write() at the bottom of your script, just naming it with .py should be all you have to do for it to work.

You can then use it in a python controller, set as a module, and call one of the functions based on the attached sensor. In this example I read a game property when the sensor runs the update(cont) function to update the modules chain property, the controller calling the function is passed in this case.

Text block "drawtext.py" -

# import game engine modules
from bge import render, logic
# import stand alone modules
import bgl, blf

# create a new font object, use external ttf file
font_path = logic.expandPath('//bmonofont-i18n.ttf')
# store the font indice - to use later
font_id = blf.load(font_path)
chain = 'this is the message'

def write():
    """write on screen"""
    width = render.getWindowWidth()
    height = render.getWindowHeight()
    # OpenGL setup
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_PROJECTION)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()
    bgl.gluOrtho2D(0, width, 0, height)
    bgl.glMatrixMode(bgl.GL_MODELVIEW)
    bgl.glLoadIdentity()

    # BLF drawing routine
    blf.position(font_id, (width * 0.2), (height * 0.3), 0)
    blf.size(font_id, 50, 72)
    bgl.glColor4f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)
    blf.draw(font_id,chain)

def update(cont):
    own = cont.owner
    chain = own['msg']

# set the font drawing routine to run every frame
scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
scene.post_draw = [write]

You might use a property actuator to change the objects msg property, or a property sensor to run the update when the property changes. You can also import the module in another script and adjust the module property and call other functions.

import drawtext
drawtext.chain = 'New message'
drawtext.anotherfunc()


Change Viewport Display Color of selection/collection of objects - Only changing one Trying to make a simple script to change the viewport display colors of a selection of objects. (I like to keep track of things visually with color codes on objects.)
The script below will change the 'material color' of multiple objects, but will only change the Viewport Display color of the last selected object, which I've sussed out to be 'object color'
(Thanks for any tips, not much of a programmer at all)
import bpy

# Iterate over all the selected objects
for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    # Set the active materials diffuse color to the specified RGB
    o.active_material.diffuse_color = (0.8, 0.1, 0.0, 1)
    bpy.context.object.color = (0.8, 0.1, 0.0, 1)

It's even simpler than that ! Replace the last line with :
o.color = (0.8, 0.1, 0.0, 1)

FYI, the for loop iterates over all selected objects in the viewport, pretty straightforward.
Then the second line changes the material viewport display color. This is what you see when you set the Solid view mode to "Material". Be careful though, if your object doesn't have any active material, this will throw an error and terminate the script not so gracefully.

The last line is supposed to change the object viewport color, what you see when you set the mode to "Object".
Your script only takes the active object in the viewport, the one with the yellow outline. You rather want to change the color of each selected object, noted o inside the for loop.


Finger IK/FK not working properly I am trying to rig my character for animation but I can not figure out why my fingers aren't moving properly. They bend and twist unnaturally. I have weight painted the mesh, but I still can't get the fingers to move like a natural hand.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
The file is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UbgfYZLmnKiBVxWfa1WqsdUeqW77p8pf/view?usp=sharing

You need to give some weight corrections, see the weight of this bone, it should not influence the last phalanx:

You need to reassign the vertex groups correctly, either in Weight Paint mode, or with the vertex groups in the Properties panel > Object Data. You'll find these bones on this layer:


enable-autoexec option not working in ubuntu blender main.py:

import bpy
bpy.ops.wm.addon_enable(module="io_import_scene_mhx")
bpy.ops.import_scene.makehuman_mhx(filepath="~/Desktop/first_gen.mhx")

blender --background --enable-autoexec --python main.py

GIVES THE ERROR:
Error when loading MHX file ~/Desktop/first_gen.mhx:
Auto Run Python Scripts must be turned on.
It is found under
 File > User Preferences > File
Error: Not freed memory blocks: 4, total unfreed memory 0.000687 MB

I've installed it on aws where I do not have access to the GUI to go tick the Auto Execution in File > User Preference > File . How do I do it from the command line ? --enable_autoexec does not seem to work.
Are there other ways of setting UserPreferencesSystem.use_scripts_auto_execute to True ?

As explained here, the --python cli option will bypass the settings, allowing a script to alter the setting. You can set it in python with

bpy.context.user_preferences.system.use_scripts_auto_execute = True

Another way of setting preferences is the userpref.blend file. You can save one on your machine then copy it to your remote server. There are several places blender looks for the userpref.blend - LOCAL, USER, SYSTEM - in that order. If you manually install a pre-built copy then you can add your userpref.blend into the local folder which would be 2.76/config/userpref.blend next to blender itself. More likely you will want to add it to your home folder ~/.config/blender/2.76/config/userpref.blend If that fails you can also set environment variables with the paths to look for certain files.


Extra Sparkles / Missing Light Reflections Its been about 1 week of non stop tutorial watching and I'm so close to finishing my project, but I need some help before I reach the finish line. I have 2 questions and I have a feeling that they're linked so here it goes. I added a youtube link. In the video there's 2 video clips sequences. In the first one, in blender, when I look at the side of the red cone (bowl) in render mode, you can see a nice black kind of shading that isnt centered which makes it look "more real", same with the side of the blue piece with the spikes. As the camera pans up in blender render mode, theres a black shading which I feel looks cool as it makes it "realer"as the camera goes up. However, once I render it, both of them are gone. The bottom and the top piece with the spikes looks reflective and nice, but not the outer piece or cone. Why does it appear in my render mode but not the final render?

And in the second clip, as the camera pans into the center of the spikes, you see all this extra glossy "stationary" noise on the surface that doesn't really move with the rotation of the object along with excessive sparkling gloss on the inner outer wall near the spikes. Any help in making this look smoother or more reflectively real would greatly be appreciated as I learn this program better. Thanks guys

https://youtu.be/mXfKCoDAOeg

For the first issue, I'm 99% that Plane.002 is part of the lightbox that you've built.  You have it restricted from the viewport so that when you preview it, it casts a dark reflection on the object.  But when you render it, it's there. Try Restricting it from Rendering and see what you think.

For "stationary" noise or non-randomized noise, just use a random seed for each frame by checking this button:


How to prefetch video? I'm baffled and annoyed by Blender's playback speed. From searching the internet for the past hour or so, I've gathered you can somehow prefetch the video (I'm using the video sequencer) to make it faster. However for the love of me I can't find this option. I'm using the latest version of blender (2.80). I've read that pressing 'P'should do it but that just highlights my mouse with dotted lines.

How can I change my preferences so that blender will always prefetch the video?

You'll find it in the Preview sidebar:

Shortcut 'P' is for setting the preview range, and will not influence the playback speed.
If you do not want to mess with proxies(which is the natural next step), try lowering the resolution percentage:

Nb. make sure that the project resolution is set to match your footage, by selecting a movie strip and in the menu select Movie Strip > Set render size.


Attempting to stretch texture towards edges I am currently attempting to do a trick with texture mapping and noise texturing.  The effect I am trying to accomplish is to change the direction of the stretching on the noise bumps.

On the image below, the bumps get stretched out as they approach the edge of the sphere.  They stretch in a direction parallel to the edge.  What I want to do is have them stretched perpendicular to the edge, so that going longways with each bump it will point towards the edge more as the underlying surface points away from the camera.

The image below, a mockup made in GIMP with the Motion Blur (Zoom) filter, gives a rough idea of the effect I wish to accomplish.  The desired effect also should not rely upon baking or screen size/ratio, and it needs to work on organic shapes (I am just using a sphere for testing).  It also needs to work without OSL since I intend to use GPU rendering.

Below is the current node setup I am using.  Probably nowhere near close to what I need to do to get this to work.

Set up the nodes as pictured below. In Texture Coordinate node choose the Normal output. Select the Normal option in a Mapping node and experiment with its Scale settings.

Change the Z Scale to increase the stretch of a noise.

I used this technique to procedurally create the iris. Hope this is the effect you're looking for.

UPDATE: After playing with the nodes I found out a new solution, though I am not sure it's the proper way of doing it.


How can I duplicate an object along a path? I created a long mesh object and I selected an edge, hit ShiftD to duplicate then made it a separate object by pressing P. Continued with AltC to convert curve from mesh. So far so good. But I want to use the curve as path to duplicate an object along the mesh object but I cant seem to make it work. I tried a few ways with using array and curve modifier also using the duplication tab in the object property set on Frames.

It does duplicate the object I want but not along the path. Just what seems to me like random places or straight in a line. Maybe I did something wrong along the way? I wonder if this has something to do with pivot point and if so how would be a smart way to make the pivot points of both objects the same?

You have a couple of problems.

The curve and the object have been rotated and scaled in object mode but the transformations have not been applied. (select the curve in object mode and press CtrlA to apply rotation and scale, then do the same for the dragon's fin)

Why apply transformations? Read the following link: Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data?

The second issue is that the curve and the object you want to duplicate along it have their origins in different places. That will only give you headaches.

The origin for the curve and the replicated object must be in the same place.

Move the object so that it is in the exact same place as the curve. Select the curve, press Shift+S and select "Snap Cursor to Selected". Then select the Dragon's fin and press Shift+S again, but this time select "Snap Selection to Cursor".

Both objects are now in the same place and the array and curve should work the way you want.


How to combine Bump Maps? I'm trying to add a bump map with logo to noise texture Bump map.

I have a bump map created with Noise texture and then on top of that I want to add my bump logo (which also has it's own color on it.)

Is it possible within one material?

One way is to use 'daisy chaining' through the Normal input.

Daisy chaining bump maps.

Adding a different material to each part.


How to list vertices coordinates from selected edge I need to list the extremities of an edge. I've got a selected edge in edit mode and I need to list the coordinates. This will be very useful!

This because I'm looking for the rotation of an edge on the XY plane. I've already figured out how to get the angle but I need the two vertices coordinates to start the math.
Hope there is a built-in method!

Thank you for your attention.

This will display the  coordinates of the selected vertices of the selected object  ( you have the local and the world coordinates as @poor have noted )

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
#all selected vertices indecies
verts_ind = [i.index for i in obj.data.vertices if i.select]
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')

for i in verts_ind :
    local_co = obj.data.vertices[i].co
    world_co = obj.matrix_world * local_co
    print(world_co)


How to overcome flat look in Texture painting in 2.8 So I never actually used texture paint mode to paint texture but just maps for factors. Now when I want to paint texture when I fill it with color model have look like it's 2d because color is 100% diffuse and I can see any of crevices or wrinkles to know where I'm painting what, am I doing something wrong how to overcome this flat look?

Here is the example of sphere with 'sculpted' nose on it, in matcap and rendered mode you can clearly see polygons but when in texture paint when I look form front I have no idea where 'nose' is this is simple example but it's same when painting head when looking from front i have no idea where nose and cheeks are.

I figured It out all you need to do is to make sure that image is plugged into color input of material and then just turn down opacity for texture paint (image) Or just turn off all overlays.

And Voila!


Bake with Direct and Indirect but without shadows ? (later exported to Davinci Resolve) Using Blender 2.82

In the end i will be exporting to Davinci Resolve and doing my (main) lighting and shadowing there (so the camera work in Davinci casts the shadows at correct angles). I can not create the room textures i like in Davinci, so i will be using Blender.

As you can see in the image there is a room, sink and shelves (each there own objects). If i hide the sink and shelves, the wall texturing in Blender come out exactly as i want (lit but with no shadows) and i used that baked Diffuse image in Davinci.

The only way ive found not to have shadows (casted by sink and shelves) is by putting the objects into 'collections' and un-ticking the collection box. Ive tried hiding the objects via the eye button (hide/un-hide) but that dont work. Also under each objects 'Material -> Shadow Mode' ive tried setting to 'none' (which seams to work in Eevee) but does not in the Cycle engine when baking.

My question:
What is the best way to bake this so i can have the lighting from Blender, but without objects casting shadows. Even though my current method is working, it does not seam like the best/correct way.

The following is what i wanted to do.

While "in" the Cycles engine (option does not appear in Eevee), under:

Objects Properties -> Visibility -> Ray Visibility you can un-tick 'Shadow'


Problem with randomize transfom first of all, i have absolutely no clue what i am doing here. A whole day of tutorials and try and error.
I want to make the cubes move randomly on the z-axis in a fixed range (loc=0,0,2) and write keyframes every 5 frames.
The Problem: How can i tell the operator to calculate always from the same location?
e.g.: The Cube is at location (0,0,0), the operator starts by (0,0,0) the keyframe is inserted with a location of (0,0,x). The operator starts again, but unfortunately by (0,0,x) and not by (0,0,0).

Best Regards,
Rollo
import bpy
from random import randint

frame_number=0

for obj in bpy.data.collections['Cubes'].all_objects:
    obj.select_set(True)

for i in range(0,50):
    x = randint(0,1000)
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame_number)
    bpy.ops.object.randomize_transform(random_seed=x, loc=(0, 0, 2))
    bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='Location')
    frame_number +=5

Same thing using API methods.
Instead of using the operator calls can individually set each cube's z location to a random float value between 0 and 2, and insert a keyframe, in this case Z location at a designated frame. Notice not changing frame.
import bpy
from bpy import context
from random import uniform

#col = contxxt.collection
col = bpy.data.collections.get("Cubes")
if col:
    for frame_number in range(0 ,50, 5):
        for o in col.all_objects:
            o.location.z = uniform(0, 2)
            o.keyframe_insert("location", index=2, frame=frame_number) # z axis only

A transform, moves an object from where it is plus an amount, would be same as using
o.location.z += uniform(0, 2)

To have the value always zero on frame 0 could use
o.location.z = uniform(0, 2) if frame else 0

To insert all location keyframes, omit the index argument of Object.keyframe_insert
o.keyframe_insert("location", frame=frame_number)


How to create macro/record actions while modeling I'd like to record my actions and create a macro. I've tried allready two things:

1) copying actions from Info panel and pasting them to text aditor. Then adding the lines:

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix, Quaternion, Euler, Color

It works on the "Object" mode, but when I'm working on the "edit"mode, it does not record what vertice or face was selected. For example, if I'm creating box and then extruding the top face it looks like this:

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=1, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(-4.74089, -5.86062, 3.95351), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))
bpy.context.space_data.context = 'OBJECT'
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(MESH_OT_extrude_region={"mirror":False}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0, 0, 0.788862), "constraint_axis":(False, False, True), "constraint_orientation":'NORMAL', "mirror":False, "proportional":'DISABLED', "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False})
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, 0, -0.434886), constraint_axis=(False, False, True), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True) # I've slected another face and moved it. No information here on which one.

so there is no information on what face or vertex was moved or extruded.

2) Macro Recorder found here just doesn't work. It creates the template but do not record enything. All it produces is this:

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix, Quaternion, Euler, Color

class MacroOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "macro.macro"
    bl_label = "Macro"

    def execute(self, context):

        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

So, is there a way to record all actions, including face selection?

You can use "CommandRecorder" addon , its record actions while modeling too.

https://github.com/Muthird/CommandRecorder2.8


How do i make a flat circle I need to make a flat circle as a floor for one of my objects, but I don't know how to make a circle.

I have tried different methods, but they don't work.

I have tried to make a mesh circle but nothing comes there, so can anyone help me?

Add mesh circle, set the faces from ngon to triangles. Also make sure that you are NOT in wireframe. The circle should show in viewport + final render + viewport render. If it does not, please tell me! I would be happy to help further.
Here's a picture of setting this:
Before:  After

Here are pictures of the circle before and after:

After:


Can't use dyntopo in sculpt mode I'm working on creating a 3D creature using a cube as a base.  I've got the low poly version of the character created and am looking to use the sculpt brushes to enhance it.  However, I'm getting an error when I try to apply the dyntopo feature.  "Generative Modifier Detected.  Keeping modifiers will increase polycount"

I've tried to remove the modifiers to use dyntopo but that threw off the modeling I've already done.

Any ideas would be helpful and appreciated.
Thank you

What you see is actually a warning not an error, it will allow you to continue on but you may get odd results when you leave sculpt mode.

If you have modifiers that generate part of your model, like a mirror or skin modifier, you want to apply these modifiers, this will turn the generated data into real geometry that you can sculpt with.

For other modifiers like a subsurf, you will still get this warning, but it is better to remove the modifier, sculpt and then replace it if desired.

To apply modifiers, you should start at the top and click apply to remove each one you want to keep the results from.


How to make grease pencil draws permanent? I am using the grease pencil during animation creation to mark some specific places. However, some drawings dissapear everytime if I change to another frame.

Is it possible to make them persistent?

I figured it out, you have to go to the right menue and press on the button Frame locked


Is there an addon to enable export of Blender object to an Objective-C header? I have used a third party addon script to do this, but it is throwing an error:

  AttributeError: Mesh object does not contain faces attribute.

It complains about the line for face in object.data.faces:

It was originally written for Blender 2.57 and apparently no longer works.
Is there some other addon for 2.70?

Did you try the latest version? There's one called objc_blend_2.62, which does not contain .faces anywhere in the code - so seems to be compatible with 2.63+ (and funnily not with 2.62!)

Link: objc_blend_2.62 @ Github


Delete animation of object Sorry for a simple question, but I have animated the movement of a door; just a movement of the X axis. Turns out I'll do this in code instead, so I want to delete this animation. How do I delete an animation completely from an object?

For that matter, at this point I could just as well delete everything animation related, so any hint of how to do that would be OK.

The fastest way I know to delete all the animations of an object:

Select object
Press Spacebar or F3
Type "Remove anim"
The menu item "Remove Animation" will appear.
Using keyboard, select that menu item and press Enter or
Return.

V2.8+ : Alternatively after selecting the objects, go to Object > Animation > Clear Keyframes, and click again on the prompt asking you to Remove Animation.
I do this often. I wish I knew an even faster way. This way, you only need one mouse click, to select the object.


How to make a displacement map from existing 3d geometry In true stackexchange tradition. I am interested to see how people approach generating a good quality displacement map from existing 3D geometry. For completeness, list the qualities that make up a good displacement map. I'm not looking for links to external tutorials, but short descriptions of your methods are welcome.

My current method involves setting up a orthographic camera viewing the geometry, and setting the far and near clipping field to the extents of the geometry. Then render the image and extract the z-buffer by normalizing it so it becomes a grey scale and outputting that as a file from the compositor.

I will elaborate on my method as an answer, if no one offers a more convenient procedure.

The best way I know is to use Baking.
You must have your plane (or whatever the low-res object is) UV mapped with a new image assigned to all the faces you want to bake to (select faces in edit mode, select/reselect the image in the Image Editor).
Then in the Render settings, at the bottom is the bake panel.

Normalized allows you to specify a maximum distance
Selected to Active is important too, enable it to ensure the displacement is baked from all selected objects to the active/last selected object.
Example:

(Note that baking doesn't play nice with overlapping geometry - in this example the underneath of the sphere and torus was deleted, and the sphere moved up to ensure it doesn't collide with the torus. Not doing this will produce artifacts.)


Add-On Dev: Per-File Initialization (Issues Enabling Add-on After File Load) I've noticed a lot of add-on code using the load_post handler to serve as a sort of startup event. This makes a lot of sense, because many elements do not exist before that moment, and most add-ons need to associate with them.

But what about when an add-on is activated after the blend file is loaded? The normal startup sequence seems to be load_pre, addon.register, load_post, which allows us to sync with the file contents. But how do we detect when load_post happens before our add-on is registered?

I've tried accessing bpy.data.* and bpy.context.*, to try to detect any differences, but they are both restricted at normal startup. Is there a safe way to ask the environment if any scenes exist?

Edit: Just want to sum my problem up as a really simple question: How do I initialize add-on states that need to look at scene elements?

Add-ons can do per-file initialisation, if the add-on has some kind of panel in the UI somewhere.

You may notice various panels in Blender's UI have checkboxes next to the panel title. This is can be because they don't want to be active unless specifically turned on, but it can also be because they want to do some setup before being used:

This can be achieved in your own add-on by adding a draw_header function into the class that defines your panel:

def draw_header(self, context):

    self.layout.prop(context.scene, "addon_panel_enabled", text="")

The draw_header displays a boolean which I created and registered in the register function of the add-on:

bpy.types.Scene.addon_panel_enabled = bpy.props.BoolProperty(default=False, update=initialiseAddon)

The property has an update function called initialiseAddon which runs when the boolean is changed. It is in initialiseAddon that you can run your setup code.

Be aware, however, that this will run when the header checkbox is enabled and disabled. You could of course include code to make sure it only runs once by checking if the header boolean is true (the update function seems to be run after the value has been set):

def initialiseAddon(self, context):
    if context.scene.addon_panel_enabled:
        print("Only runs when enabling the checkbox")

Or just make another property which stores whether initialisation has been done or inspect your own data.

If you don't have a panel, then you should do initialisation in your operator when it first runs and again, have a scene property that stores whether setup has been done or not.

Full code (based on the UI Panel Simple template that comes with Blender):

import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

    def draw_header(self, context):

        self.layout.prop(context.scene, "addon_panel_enabled", text="")

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

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

def initialiseAddon(self, context):
    #Per file initialisation code here
    if context.scene.addon_panel_enabled == True:
        print("Only runs when enabling the checkbox")

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.addon_panel_enabled = bpy.props.BoolProperty(default=False, update=initialiseAddon)
    bpy.utils.register_class(HelloWorldPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HelloWorldPanel)
    del bpy.types.Scene.addon_panel_enabled

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Child - Parent positioning I'm working on a script that will add several child objects to a single parent object. One child each time the script is run. I want each child to be moved over and placed next to the previous child on the x-axis. I'm having trouble positioning the children relative to the parent.

How can I set the exact position of a child object relative to its parent object?

It should be as simple as

child.location = (x,y,z)


Origin to geometry does same thing as geometry to origin Anyone else got this same problem?

I got this tower of blocks which with I wanna do some collision stuff and I try to set each block to have its own origin/center, but when I do "Origin to geometry" it instead moves all blocks to origin point that they all have from original block which I multiplied with Array modifiers to make this tower...

"Origin to geometry" worked just day before, anyone got any idea what is causing this not to work? ...

Edit: Here's the .blend file. Thank you!

Edit2: Filename too long which derps the site (for me) and I can't download it, so here's better download link with shorter file .blend name:

I had this same issue as well, with a rigid body world activated.  I had to either move to frame 0 and then set the origin, or I could uncheck the rigid body world and then set the origin, or I could adjust the simulation start of the rigid body world to the same frame as the frame start in my output properties- and then set the origin.
Don't know why the rigid body system does this to the objects but at least there's a solution.


Rotate an object along face normal in the bge I have an empty that is at the center of the screen, it move to whatever you point at. An explanation on how to do so can be found here.

I am looking to have a plane or empty always face outwards of whatever object it is colliding with. If this can't be done with an empty, I would be fine with a plane.

Here's a picture of what I don't want: (like this but in-game)

Here's a picture of what I do want: (like this but in-game, used wireframe as you cannot see in textured) See the plane is rotated to match the cube's face.

I am basically looking for the empty/plane (preferably empty) to face the outside of whatever it is colliding with.

Set up the logic bricks as pictured above.

This script will move an object (the cone) to the location of ray.hitPosition and then rotate it to point along the ray.hitNormal using alignAxisToVect().
For this example, the cone is pointing along the positive z axis. If it was along a different axis, I would have to pass in the second parameter to alignAxisToVect().
import bge

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

ray = cont.sensors["Ray"]
cone = scene.objects["Cone"]

if ray.hitObject and cone is not ray.hitObject:
    cone.worldPosition = ray.hitPosition
    cone.alignAxisToVect(ray.hitNormal)

Example gif, showing the cone moving and rotating to match the underlying geometry in the game engine.

Blend File


Problem : Character fbx export has weird animation becaus of IK I made a character in blender and add few actions to that. Also i used IK for legs and every thing is okay in blender viewport and animations work well. But when i export it as *fbx , it’s legs becomes weird.
I cant understand what the problem is because I previously made character with IK for legs and it works well as *fbx. because In that succesfull case i added IK influences as keyframes. Also in that case i animate copy rotation influences for legs. But now for this case they doesn’t work.
I’ve tried a lot of solutions such as apply transform , bake animation. But none of them work and character always have weird legs.
here , what we see in blender :

and these are what we see in exprted *fbx :

Thanks my merciful God ! Solution Found !
I make the character like a 2D in (( X-Z Plane )). Its just like a 2D object.
So in fpx export settings and in Armature options , i set primary bone axis to X axis and secondary bone axis to Z axis.

Now legs are okay !


node wrangler while editing a group The awesome addon node wrangler works perfectly when I am trying to use a node viewer in material edition.
Except when I am editing a group:

I create a node group (CTRL G)
in my group on an image node for example: SHIFT CTRL CLICK... I can see the operation is called in console output (bpy.ops.node.nw_emission_viewer()), but nothing happen on my node.

Am I missing something or is a case for which the viewer cannot be created?

Maybe one specificity in my case, I am factorizing my materials: The group contains the output node

Thanks

With the node wrangler addon ⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift LMB connects the node to the material output node and adds an emission shader if the node output is not a shader. The material output node shouldn't be used inside a node group so node wrangler does not make that shortcut active when editing a node group.

You should have the material output node in the material node tree and connect the group output to the material output node, not have the material output node inside a node group.

It is not possible to make a connection from a node inside a group to the active material output node that is outside the group. As connecting the node to the group output does not guarantee that the output will then be connected to the material output and the group could be in use by several materials, it makes little sense to use it inside a node group.


Glass BSDF gets totally grey/white in cycles I have a little problem here:
As you can see I am using a Glass BDF in cycles. At the left you can see my cycles render output and at the left you can see my The viewport shading output. I would want it so i can see trough the glass into the box, but that wont work (even if IOR = 0). Could someone please help me?
greetings,
Sjondepon

In cycles, for a glass material you need to set the roughness to 0 and the IOR to 1.450 on a glass BSDF. For the viewport shading, it is not possible to make the glass transparent unless you switch to eevee rendering engine and adjust the materials (You'll have to learn about screen space reflections).
Edit: For more transparency:
With only glass shader:
With transparent and glass shader:


Blender 2.8 One God Ray Effect I am setting up lighting for a scene and I want one light to have a god ray effect, however, when I use the volume scatter on the scene it works for ALL lights. How do I isolate a spot light source for this effect or if there is any other way please let me know. Thanks.

In the View Layer Properties just enable in the Light Settings In
EEVEE: Light > Volume > check Light.
Cycles: Light > Volume > check Indirect.
Now when you click Render you will have a combined Pass and a Light Pass/Indirect Light Pass. It looks black and white because the volumetric light is isolated.
That Means you now have to disable all lights except the light used for the godray effect.
Then you can use the rendered Light Pass (with the isolated Direct Light from the godray) to mix it in the Compositor with the rendered scene (without any Volumetrics and all lights enabled excepts for the Godray Light).


Text VFX border color Hi does anyone know of a way to have an outline surrounding text in VFX edit? (Font border)

The reason for it is that such texts are better readable if placed over animations or movies with huge swings in brightness. And I kinda need that

I'll add scripting tag as well as maybe that's needed to get it

Using glow to create an outline with this add-on: https://gist.github.com/tin2tin/b8e7fb9156b5c5d54fdab5d808dc7c1f
Change the blur width to change the outline width and change the multiply value to change opacity.
Offset the position of the outline to make a drop shadow.


Animate Folding/Twisting Arrows of Recycle Pictogram I'm trying to set up an animation where a rectangular plane is deformed on a curve but I haven't been able to get anywhere close to the results I am looking for. Basically I want to animate the 3 arrows that form the triangular shaped recycle pictogram. The main difficulty I'm having is on how to deform the arrow geometry so that it folds like the arrows fold on the recycle pictogram.

My attempts so far have been with using curves and the curve modifier under the deform modifiers group. I tried making the fold by using the crtl+T command to tilt and twist the arrow where the fold happens. The result I got so far is OK but I'm wondering if there is a better way to rig this folding or twisting part. Controlling the fold with this method I've set up is finicky and I haven't figured out how to make the fold be tight and sharp while still maintaining a nice curvature along the arrow's geometry.

Thanks for the help.

Well, I forgot that the ribbon turns all the way over after I got this all set up so you can take it from here. Might take you 10, 15 minutes to align the spans. The hidden object "span.001" has all the segments layed out, you just have to rotate them into place using Normal orientation, with respect to Median. Once you have them how you like, bridge them together, make your arrowhead, and rotate the object 3 times about the origin.


What is the best way to convert VRay Reflection Maps to Roughness? VRay uses a slightly different material workflow that makes use of reflection maps. I know that you can convert a gloss map to roughness by simply inverting it. However I've read that reflection maps can not be directly converted to roughness, but often that's the only map provided (other than albedo/basecolor).

Is there any kind of hack or method to convert a VRay reflection map to Roughness?
How would you go about converting a VRay material properly to a Cycles material?

Thanks for any advice.

You can adjust the colors with a ColorRamp node.
The result won't be the same, but you can get close.
Left: Roughness Map
Right: Reflection map adjusted with ColorRamp


Where should I give feedback about the new Blender 2.80? Where can I give feedback about the Blender 2.80 beta? Right now I am testing it and I would like to give my feedback, because it is suggested I should do so on blender.org website.

You should look for that information on the same website - blender.org. There are links to developer forums on the download page at the bottom including this one: https://devtalk.blender.org/ There is a section called User Feedback in it:


How can I add more reflections to my glass material? I'm trying to reach a render like the one on the image below. It's a prism as you can see, and I already made the elements, but the reflections aren't the same.

Maybe it's the material, but I do not know. I already tried changing the object's position and lighting, but it didn't help. So I think it could be the material

Your material setup is wrong. On first glance you are feeding shader output to glass node color input.

Leave only 1 glass node connected to Shader output, delete the rest.

If you then need more reflections you can mix in a Glossy shader with Fresnel node.


How to create a seamlessly looping ocean Is there a way animate the ocean modifier so it loops continuously?

I would like to make an animation where the last frame seamlessly goes into the first without the ocean "jumping":

How can I achieve this?

From Haunt's trick bag:

  Instead of using one Ocean Modifier, use two identical ones. The following values are the ones used in this example.

Key Frames on frame 1 and frame 21. Since these frames will be identical, the loop will only include frames 1 to 20.

First Ocean Modifier:

Animate the time from 15 to 20
Animate the scale from 0.0 to 3.0

Second Ocean Modifier:

Animate the time from 20 to 25
Animate the scale from 3.0 to 0.0

  Since both Modifiers are identical, one starts exactly with the shape the other one ends with. And the scale is used to blend between them.

Set the interpolation in the F-graph Editor to Linear (T) to get a constant motion.
The Geometry of the second modifier must be set to Displace, to avoid overwriting the first.


Getting a perfect sphere in Blender? I'd like to create a sphere using a cube as a starting point. The way I'd normally go about that is to add a couple of subsurf modifiers and then apply them, however, this does not give a perfect sphere.

I recall seeing somewhere that somebody used a command after this process to make the rounded cube perfectly spherical, unfortunately I do not remember what this is.

Could somebody please inform me how to create this spherical shape in Blender using this basic technique?

Non-destructive way would be to use Subdivision Surface modifer along with Cast modifier set to Sphere > Factor > 1.


Camera Data "View Vector" Interpretation I am trying to develop some materials with interesting optical properties. In doing so, I am investigating the use of the "View Vector", however I do not understand it. Looking at the documentation, it says it is a (unit) vector pointing from the camera to the point on the object.

However, the following screenshot suggests something different. I would expect taking the dot product of the "View Vector" with the object normals should yield a value of 1 when the object surface faces the camera, and a value less than 1 elsewhere, specifically zero for parts of the object perpendicular to the camera viewpoint.

The 3 objects in the screenshot show a) behaviour different to that expected and b) seemingly inconsistent behaviour. What is going on here?

Thanks

The View Vector is in Camera space, but the Normal is in World space.

You need to transform one of the vectors to the other space if you need to compare them. I learned this now so I mark this question as helpful.

But this can apparently be simplified using the Incoming socket on the Geometry node. Incoming points towards the camera instead of from Camera towards geometry so the Absolute math node becomes redundant.


How do I hide these lines from automatic weight bones? So I'm making a Sonic model and I rigged the fingers with automatic weight bones, and these weird lines appeared. I'm trying to render it in OpenGL, but these lines won't disappear. Is there a way to hide them?


VSE: How to render a video with audio? I want to play a music strip with a video in the video editor but the video has no music when I play it.  I've rendered it but it still doesn't have sound.  How can I render and play the video with the sound track.

In blenders preferences under system you have a few options for the software used for sound, this may help playing sound from blender's VSE.

For the output video you need to check that you have selected an audio codec in the encoding options.


How to make mesh grow to create form I would like my mesh to grow to form this logo:

I created a curve and made the mesh grow along it. The problem in with the 45º edges. See here better:

Any hints please?

Edit:

I have tried using a Lattice but it is so difficult to model it. Is there a way to extrude a lattice?

Check out the kind of animation I need:

Your idea with the curve isn't bad at all, but for the form of the log you need to alter the geometry as well, I would suggest, create the logo as one mesh, create the shape as simple as possible, in this case just use a plane create the outline, cut the angles with the knife-tool and keep it with only quads, it should be very easy to create this mesh ;-)
When you have the finished mesh, create a few shape-keys, where you just move the vertices back to where they should start. Then insert Keyframes to your timeline, to control the different shape-keys. All the best Marco

For a better understanding here is a quick example of how I would do it.
Here is a little Video https://youtu.be/OW1WdF42yrk on how it would work. And here is a dropboxlink to the example file https://www.dropbox.com/s/aas26i1z0t2e5wa/Logo_folded.blend?dl=0

All the best Marco


Glossy shadder work differently on two obejcts I did face and after that I did retopology. And now glossy shader on lowpoly mesh is working differently than on other objects. Anyone know why is this happening? I didn't change anything in any options.
I just saw that this is not glossy shader problem but fresnal.

Ok. I found the answer. I had to flip normals.


How do I "look around" in a scene? Also, what's up with zooming? Noob here (be kind). I am coming to Blender because I would like to use it to primarily do Arch Viz renderings and fly through animations. I'm really loving blender so far, but one thing I'm not loving is the navigation in a scene. There are two things about it that are driving me crazy. One is I haven't found a good way to "stand" in an interior space I've modeled and "look around" inside the scene. All of the tutorials I've watch on navigation are super basic. They just cover zooming, panning, and orbiting, which are all fine if you are just needing to navigate around an object. But It gets really cumbersome when you are inside an object, like a room, and need to look all round. This is pretty important for arch viz. SO! does anyone have any tips on this that they can share with me? are there any exhaustive comprehensive navigation tutorials I can look at?
The other thing that I find frustrating with Blender navigation is the zoom seems to be exponential? Like when I use the mouse wheel to zoom in, it gets slower and slower and slower the closer I get to where I'm trying to go to the point that I am never able to actually get there. Is there a better way to zoom that is more linear?
Any tips and tricks from other people doing Arch Viz is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!

I'm not sure about the zooming, but a cool way to view your model from the inside is to use "Walk Navigation". You can do this by going to "View > Navigation > Walk Navigation", or just press shift-tilda. This allows you to view your scene like a first person shooter game, and it doesn't pan around it. You can also walk around in your scene with WASD, and if you want to be on the ground, you can press Tab to toggle gravity. To exit walk navigation mode, you can either right click to reset the view to what it was, or left click to set that view. This can also be good for deciding a good camera position.
I hope I didn't get too off-topic, these are just tips that might be useful. Hope this helps!


3D print tablet wall recessed mount incomplete I'm trying to make a simple 3D print of a recessed wall trim for a tablet. It isn't showing as a solid piece when I try to print. Can someone help me out?

without the curved ends

Newer

Normals Recalculate Outside

Edit Older Disregard

Use Make Normals Consistent.  This will help.


Ocean material not visible following this tutorial on youtube I cannot get my ocean visible as anything but blank white in rendered view. The London eye also has a very rough material and also only shows up as blank white. When I made the ocean in simulation I had to scale it up hugely to correspond to what I have made. Might this be the problem? should I be scaling everything down at this stage instead?

The problem is with your lamp's emission strength. Currently it's value is 600. That's too much. Select your Sun lamp and lower the emission strength.


CMU bvh animations and rigging I am wondering if i could get some tips from the wonderful people of this group. Does anybody have any experience working with CMU Mocap animation?
I am currently working with bvh files.

I have a rig already setup(rig assembled by a add-on called auto-rig pro) to which i am trying match the bones of my rig to the bvh. Auto rig pro has a remapping function for bvhs which I'm using but i get errors with this. The most common is twisted limbs and jittery animation.

I'm confused about the rotation of these bones and how to fix them of if i should use ik or fk when remapping.

Also I am researching how to fix the rest pose of the bvh armature, so that the mapping of the bones would result in a better animation but that lead to errors.

I tried using @batFINGER's script for resetting poses and all the post he did so far but I'm getting nowhere or at least i don' think I'm following it right.

Can anybody help? Thank you.

I have been wrestling with similar problems and I may start my own question, but in the spirit of cooperation and helping this is what I have found:

Rigify and Blender rigs do not work with CMU (without fixing the problems you mention)
Daz 3D rigs also import via FBX unreliably. The best way to get Daz characters into blender for animation is to bring them in via .dae (collada) and then exporting via obj or fbx and use mixamo for animations and for auto-rigging.
You can then retarget mixamo rigs using "bvh retargeter" to CMU - though not reliably. (https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/bvh-main.html)
N.B. you often get errors "rot & scale" when using bvh retargter. Do not use "transform rot and scale" - ONLY transform scale, otherwise you will get messed up results.
If using MB-LAb, it has it's own bvh importer and they work well with ACCAD bvh - but not so well with CMU. Do not use bvh retargeter.
If importing from MakeHuman, make sure to use the CMU skeleton.
Do not use FBX from MakeHuman to Blender, use the .mhx2 MakeHuman format and get the add-on for Blender for importing MakeHuman assets. You will get a perfectly compliant rig for CMU and BVH retargeter works perfectly with it.

Further notes;

The "rest pose" can look messed up, even though the "pose mode" works fine. I don't know why. In fact, avoid rest mode altogether unless someone else can bob and up tell us what it is useful for and when and why to use it.
Often the bvh's come with a T-pose at the beginning of the animation - it's best to use that, say for adding assets to a character.
"Daz Friendly" bvh's from cgspeed repository don't seem to work - in any configuration I can find, including with Daz 3d studio itself.
If you are struggling to parent an object to your character, you have to be in object mode with the armature in pose position then; object>select armature>switch to pose mode>select bone>parent to bone.

I hope this helps someone. I sure could have used this a week ago. It's a pretty convoluted situation.


VSE: Imported audio not in-sync with video after 10 minutes I use the Blender VSE for overlaying live video footage from a camcorder (with noisy audio from the camcorder) with good quality audio straight from the mixer, captured at a live event.

I need to manually align the two audio tracks, after which I remove the camcorders' original audio track.

However, after 10 minutes, there's a lag between the two. It slight, but annoying. After 20 minutes, it's symply out-of-sync.

Q: how can I avoid this difference?

Tried so far:
-The problem appears in both the preview and in the rendering. (so it's not just down to the av-sync button)
- The frame rate of Blender's rendering and the video match: 25 fps
- The recording frequencies of both the audio-file and the video file are 48000 Hz
- The video has a constant bit-rate

Camcorder track (video):

Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 50 tbc (default)

Audio track:

Stream #0:0: Audio: pcm_s16le ([1][0][0][0] / 0x0001), 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1536 kb/s

Bad sync between recording devices happens for many reasons, check out the wiki article

  Digital or analog audio video streams or video files usually contain some sort of explicit AV-sync timing, either in the form of interleaved video and audio data or by explicit relative time-stamping of data. The processing of data must respect the relative data timing by e.g. stretching between or interpolation of received data. If the processing does not respect the AV-sync error, it will increase whenever data gets lost because of transmission errors or because of missing or mis-timed processing.

As the audio has drifted away from your pictures without a common reference I would suggest looking for easily identifiable sync points in both recordings. Split the audio at that point and drag it back to match the video. Depending on how fast the drift occurs will indicate how many splits you require. It could be one every few minutes if you're unlucky.

You can try to apply a minimal amount of pitch control on the audio strip. This will speed up the playback of the media by a certain amount, but its hard to be accurate as the wave form won't reflect the change, unless you render it out and re-import it. Use Blender's Audio Mixdown function to achieve this.


Align particle objects relative to parent mesh I'm trying to put an object on the vertices of another object (crosses on a sphere) but I would like all the crosses to be parallel to the sphere's surface, not sticking out.

This is my current setup (using particles):

Use "align rotation with the snapping target" in the footer of the 3Dview. You can choose dot or plane for snapping your cross.
See image joint: snap.png.


Video on "Empty Image" doesnt show in Render? I added in different random videos (behold first screenshot) on an Empty Image Plane to see if it was the video or its position but the rendered view doesnt show my video even though it runs fine in the program. what am i missing?
any help much appreaciated!

No, empties as images will not render, just like images as background. They are used on the viewport as reference only.

To have renderable objects use images as planes instead.


Transparent BSDF cause noise in depth layer I have system that consumes depth and RGB output of Cycles renderer.
I can observe noise in depth maps when I use transparent BSDF with Mix shader and RGBA texture. Let's look at sample simple shader:

That shader is giving material that is transparent with level of transparency given by alpha channel of texture.
I am not happy with depth image, especially on edges (white dots):

Two factor has to be present to "depth" noise appears:

There must be some other object behind the part that is transparent.
The noise seems to be absent when alpha channel has only value 255 or 0.

A this moment I found some solutions:

using mist pass
using material override

First solution seems to give depth values in some bizzare scale (I need it linear in meters, like Z-pass) and the noise is still present.
Second solution is not acceptable, because removes desired feature.

I think that it is normal behavior, same issue appears in mist pass.
During mist pass / z-pass mixa shaders with transparent shader cause that some of rays do not contribute to image output. I resolved it introducing contrast node before mix shader to keep mixing rate 0 or 1.


Python: fix normal of a new polygon I've been working on retopo tools. I have created polygon loops with "bmesh.faces.new()". But i get a problem with face normal orientation. Some faces get inverted direction.

Here is my test:
http://youtu.be/AfsMQRLa7Zo

Here is the code where i create faces:
https://github.com/mifth/mifthtools/blob/4f3fec160c820dc66516a94ffa070261bafb9962/blender/addons/mira_tools/mi_curve_surfaces.py#L489-L501

Also, i added recalculation of normals "bmesh.ops.recalc_face_normals()"  but it did not help me.

It would be great if you have some ideas how to fix it. Thanks.

something like this would let you determine if the polygon is back or front facing in the current view context, given a bm and a polygon to check:

def is_front_facing(context, bm, polygon):
    """
    When deciding if a polygon is facing the camera, you need
    only calculate the dot product of the normal vector of
    that polygon, with a vector from the camera to one of the
    polygon's vertices.

    - If the dot product is less than zero, the polygon is facing the camera.
    - If the value is greater than zero, it is facing away from the camera.
    """

    region = context.region
    rv3d = context.space_data.region_3d

    # neat eye location code with the help of paleajed
    eye = Vector(rv3d.view_matrix[2][:3])
    eye.length = rv3d.view_distance
    eye_location = rv3d.view_location + eye

    pnormal = obj.matrix_world.to_3x3() * polygon.normal
    world_coordinate = obj.matrix_world * polygon.verts[0].co

    result_vector = eye_location - world_coordinate
    dot_value = pnormal.dot(result_vector)

    return not (dot_value < 0.0)

I ripped this out of some old code, it might help to see it in context if it doesn't work. It will be important to establish which rv3d to use, because a polygon that is back-facing if viewed from the top, will be reversed if viewed from the bottom.


Select all objects in a collection I have several objects in a collection. Some only carve others and should always be invisible. I want to select all objects in a collection, so that I can move it without changing its internal structure. Yet Collection -> Select objects selects only the visible ones. It makes no sense to me - the carvings should move together with the carved.

So I need to make temporarily visible all invisible objects one by one, then select objects, then move the collection, then deselect the objects which should be invisible. Time consuming and error prone.

Blender has multiple methods of choosing object visibility, eye, screen, camera. I tried different combinations, and it seems that both eye and camera exclude an object from "select in collection". Any method of having an object which is invisible on the screen and in the rendering, but can be selected as a member of a collection? Doesn't "select all in a collection" sound like a basic operation"?

You can select the first object in the collection and then go down to the last object and Shift select, this will select all objects that are between the two selected ones(even if their visibillity is set to off).


Creating array of holes I'm trying to model a "vent" like on an air conditioner and I am familiar with the BOOLEAN tool... So I know I can make a slab of metal out of a BOX and punch a hole in it using the BOOLEAN tool the make the grates on the vent. But here's the thing....

I need to make them in a 9 x 34 (h x v) pattern, and I'm trying to figure out how to do this without literally using the BOOLEAN tool 102 times and having to place them exactly where they need to go...

There has to be a way to automate this...  I've heard of the ARRAY MODIFIER.   Would using the ARRAY MODIFIER with the BOOLEAN tool be the way to approach this? Do I need to write a script in PYTHON?

Any advice?

Thanks

Yup thats what I would do. I'd apply the array modifier to your vent cutouts, then extrude them and add a boolean modifier.

1) Create the shape of your vents and apply a array modifier

2) You can adjust the distance between the shapes and add more of them here

Then just apply the array then boolean it to your vent.


Is there an easier way to create an inset extrude along a model? Wanted to create an extrude inward along this model, to make a path where it could be split into two halves later on for 3d printing. After fumbling with my horrible topology, the only way I could figure out how to make it look nice was to split the model along the edge, move the top half straight up a bit, and use Bridge Edge Loops to rejoin the halves. Is there an easier way to do this? First model I've made in Blender. I usually use a mix of Fusion360 and MeshMixer.

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!

Blender actually has a tool that does exactly what you're looking for. It's called Inset, and can used by selecting the section you want to inset, and pressing I.

Basically what this tool does is create an extra edge around the perimeter of your selection then slide the new edge inwards (towards the selection). Thus, it has a few limitations to know.

First, you will need an edge to select that is exactly where you want the split to be. It looks like you have this already.

Second, since the new edge will slide along existing edges, the thickness of the new face loop (what you were using Bridge Edge Loops to make) will be limited by how long the connecting edges are. If you have a really dense mesh for example, the new edges can't slide very far before colliding with existing vertices. What I'm trying to say is that you want to make sure that you mesh has "room" for the "path" that you're trying to add. The Inset tool only adds faces, it won't remove them.

Proper topology will help a lot, but it should work regardless. You might just have to do a bit of trial and error to see what you need to tweak.


Why mirroring and not rotation? I'm doing some basic tutorial from https://youtu.be/LCghBIUZyuM?list=PLWO2DQFscvE-CYIjCIYUZ71RAhYNgmwg6&t=440

Author uses mirroring on the x axis. I'd like to ask why? I understand that to show us the function of mirroring. But is there any other meaning to use it and not just rotation?

In the particular case of the teddy bear in the tutorial referenced by the original poster, because the leg and bottom of the leg objects are approximately symmetrical around the center axis of the leg, mirroring the object, and rotating the object will have similar results, except that it appears that mirroring may result in the normals of the faces of the object being flipped. With a more complex mesh, however, mirroring and rotating the objects will not have the same result. An example of this would be an exterior rear view mirror on an automobile, such as this one:

[

In this case, duplicating the object(s) and using the mirror tool (CTRL - M) will yield a right side rear view mirror. However duplicating the object(s) and then rotating it 180 degrees will not have the same result; instead the right side mirror will have the glass facing forward, and the mounting surface in the wrong orientation.

Note 1: Original photo at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Wing_mirror_with_indicator_light.JPG/297px-Wing_mirror_with_indicator_light.JPG


Curve modifier doesn't do anything I'm trying to model the nucleoprotein complex of influenza A which schematically looks like this:

I'm struggling with the modeling of the RNA part (the black string on the image). One of my objectives is to model 8 segments of precise size, so my RNA is made of a lightly modified cube ("nucleotide" in the blend file) with an applied array modifier. The RNA used in my blend is the shortest (890 nucleotides).

Using the Extra Objects Addon, I've been able to model a double helix structure. Then I've added a loop and merged the three curves.

The last step is to make the RNA taking the shape of the curve. So, I tried using the curve modifier (with different deformation axis, with array applied or not, with array on "fit curve") but nothing is changing. And I'm not sure about what is going wrong (the curve has a HUGE number of vertices, could it be the problem?). Have I made a stupid error, or should I use another method?

It appears that every vertex of the curve has a double that isn't connected. Go into edit mode on the curve, select one of the connected vertices(not the handle) and press Ctrl+L to select the linked ones, then Ctrl+I to invert the selection to get the disconnected vertices, and then delete them.

For some reason the array modifier still doesn't work with the fit curve option, but the simple alternative is to add an array modifier with fixed count and then a curve modifier below that.

You may also want to make the rna mesh object contain only a small number of nucleotides so that you can make the rna fit the length of the curve better.


Blender 2.81 with Nvidia Quadro 2000m I recently installed Blender - the latest update.
Never before used this software.

I have a relative old PC, HP 8560w with a quadro 2000m graphic card.
My first problem was an error with "no open GL" support.
I found latest nvidia drivers which supports my GPU (but they are no directly for that graphic card I have) and Blender started just well with no problems!

Then I go to GPU support tab and under CUDA I have no nvidia option to chose. I installed Blender 2.79 just to check and Yes I can chose my quadro 2000m over there.

As I understand my GPU has no support for CUDA which is required for latest blender so propably no way to render on GPU with Blender 2.80 for me.

So I have a few questions. I can't even properly model a simple house right now, but I need to know...

1) Blender 2.81 doesnt support CUDA on my nvidia rendering, but my GPU is overall seen by app (helpfull for advanced models and texturing)?
I mean I only lack GPU power in cycles rendering?

2) Can i export my models (with textures) back to 2.79 just to render with GPU on cycles?

My computer also does not support openGL. When I try to open Blender 2.80 or higher, I get an error "support for openGL 3.3 or higher required". Since I am using an Intel HD graphics 3000 chipset that can not be re-programmed to run openGL 3.3, I resulted to two solutions. 1) Only use Blender 2.79, or 2) Buy a new computer. And since I am only 12 years old with a limited budget, I decided to choose option one. In your case though, you can get a decent desktop with a good GPU and an intel i9 cpu plus 16gb of RAM for around 800$


UV Mapping External Texture Changes to a Black Diffuse in Texture Paint mode Okay, so I've seen the other answers to this here in Blender Exchange. However, as far as I can figure out those textures were not saved when created in texture paint mode.
I added an external texture to my object:

...then I switched to texture paint mode and the texture changes to a complete black texture:

However if I switch back the texture while in texture paint mode it still keeps my object black:

Is this a lighting problem? Or am I not importing the external image correctly? I have tried packing/saving the image after importing it and putting it on my UV Map and then switching to texture paint mode, but it still occurs.

Try changing the painting mode to Image and selecting your image in 3D view > tool shelf > Slots while in texture paint mode:


Add-on UI won't display! So I came across a little pickle whilst making a addon. I was making a "create object" type tool, which had a lofty number of custom properties, so I wanted both to organize it, and to figure out how to add a UI dropdown box that would allow to pick meshes from the scene, and re-use them as base meshes.

I did research as to how to make custom UI in my addons via the draw() function. I then implemented it, (The way I thought it worked.) and when I executed the custom addon, the custom tool WORKED but there were no bpy.props displayed. Here's my code at the time: (This isn't meant to have a toolbar hanging out in the 3d view all the time, but only show UI when the execute() function is called.)

#bl_info stuff here

import random
import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, AddonPreferences

class makeamazingthing(Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.make_amazing_thing"
    bl_label = "Make Amazing Thing"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER','UNDO'}

    prop1 = bpy.props.BoolProperty(name="Cool Prop", default=True)

    def execute(self,context):
        bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)
        return {'FINISHED'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):     #  determine whether an object is active. (It's meant to replace base objects.)
        ob = context.active_object
        return ob is not None and ob.mode == 'OBJECT'

    def draw(self,context): #This is used to draw the layout.
        layout=self.layout
        box = layout.box()
        box.prop(self,'prop1')

def add_object_button(self,context):
    self.layout.operator(makeamazingthing.bl_idname, icon='PLUGIN')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(makeamazingthing)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.append(add_object_button)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.remove(add_object_button)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(makeamazingthing)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Ok, I'm sorry if that's too much information, but I put it all up there because I have no idea what the problem is!! I've been doing research all day, watching and reading tutorials, but I can't find an answer!

For one, I'm not sure what to put in box.prop(self,'something?') under the draw() func. All the tutorials seem to be referring to the actual names with underspaces, and that didn't work. Not sure if it should.

Also in the original classname I tried adding the Panel toolbox along with the Operator toolbox;

class makeamazingthing(bpy.types.Operator,bpy.types.Panel):

(I know I could've just used bpy.types, but I didn't want to redo everything in the script right away.)

Also when everything failed, I tried commenting out the whole draw() function, getting rid of bpy.types.Panel in the class declaration, and UI STILL isn't showing! I assumed I reverted it to it's original state, but I guess not, because it isn't working.

Again, this isn't supposed to hang out in the toolbar, the UI is only meant to appear beneath the 3d view toolbox whenever the tool is actually used.

So any help to get this working again, with or without the fancy UI would be much appreciated.
And... any help as to get that dropdown menu that would allow me to pick an object from the scene would be much appreciated as well, but that's a lesser priority right now.

Thanks in advance!!!!!!

EDIT: OK I figured out what's wrong, but I'm still a little stuck, and this can still be useful for others who come across the same issue!

so the problem was the poll function (after @classmethod) where it tests to see if an object is selected before allowing the execute() function to even be available.
At the end of the execute() function I was deleting the selected object.
Basically, I killed my own poll() function and caused it to collapse on itself.
So now... I need to figure out how to make a selected object contextually relevant in order to allow the tool to even be available for use in blender, and still manage to delete it near the end of execute()... without it flopping on itself.

I will continue digging, and my problem is virtually solved, but any help will still be much appreciated!

OK, so I figured it out!

The poll() function was cutting out my UI, because it was checking if something was selected before allowing my addon to run, and I was deleting my selected object at the end of my execute() function.

Therefore, to fix it I simply selected one of the newly created objects (the original code creates several new objects) and THEN unlinked the original object. So something is always selected, therefore, poll() thinks the context is still correct, therefore letting my UI to continue displaying.


Animation Nodes. Distribute objects based on distance I have an Animation Nodes tree where I distribute characters based on random values on Y and Z axis as you can see below.

But viewing from that camera angle (the perspective view) the upper part of the picture is too dense.

So as long as I use the random function it distributes the characters "evenly" in space, but I need a control to decrease the amount of the objects based on the camera distance gradually. Is it possible with Animation Nodes?

I found a quite simple solution. The Map Range node has an interpolation input where we can plug the Interpolation from Curve Mapping node. So we can adjust the mapping of a random value with a curve. See below:


Camera rotates on Z angle (rolls) during following spline I have made an intricate path for my camera to follow based on the instructions in here, and it almost works fine, except that the camera rolls for apparently no reason. Is there any way to counter this?

The path:

The camera is placed exactly at the location of the first point of the curve, that is also the curve origin. The camera faces exactly the way the curve will start.

The camera is parented to the curve.

The curve is 3D, and the evaluation is already keyframed.

When the animation starts, the camera faces forward and is not tilted.

As the animation progresses, the camera always faces forward, but it start rolling left and right.
Is there a way to keep it straight during the whole animation? Or any way to control the tilt?

Thanks for the help!

You've got at least two options to control the roll of your camera as it follows the path.

Any curve has not only a longitudinal direction, but also a twist, interpolated between its control points. You can see it  by looking at the changing plane of the arrows which constitute the curve's Normal display. In edit mode, you can modify the twist by selecting control points, and after hitting CtrlT, winding the mouse around the selection. The camera will follow the twist.
For better and perhaps more intuitive control of the roll of your camera between control points, you can create an empty, and assign a 'Locked Track' constraint to the camera, with Y as the direction, and the empty as the target.
The empty then becomes a handle for the up direction of the camera,(which now ignores the twist of the path). How you control the empty is up to you.You can animate it, leave it stationary a long way off, make it follow the path too, so it's always easy to reach... all sorts.


Is it possible to create an array with angle changed like this? I need to create an array to make leaves for the palm tree. I tried to use it with empty object, but it always make the "circular" shape, wherever I set the position and origin of empty and object. The result I'd like to achive is shown below. This way I could have contron on the number and the size of the leaves.

I couldn't figure out a way to do it with the array modifier but,
you can start with one, them ShiftD and move it over a bit.
Then hold ShiftR to repeat the last step a couple times.
Then turn on proportional editing and rotate the last one.
Scroll the mouse wheel to increase the effected range and you can change the falloff type of the proportional editing.


Can I set object viewport colour from cycles nodes? I have a setup like this in a cycles material:

Is there a way to set the viewport colour using this ramp node?

So far, I just have a solid viewport color:

The material view still doesn't reflect the render:

Here's how they're coloured in the render:

Sadly you cannot set more than a single color per Material on an object in cycles, it is possible to get multiple colors as you showed in the LookDev (2.8) view mode.

the reason you do not see the random color array is because in cycles the random, just like the pointiness is only claculated in the render.


Making Cuts from Camera to Camera I have an animation where a cube goes from point A to B. When it reaches B, he will be out of sight from the camera.

How can I make a "cut", a.k.a., make the camera now show point B, where the cube is?

Kind of like transition from Scene 1 over to Scene 2; I don't have any scenes, though.

A way to do this is to use multiple cameras. Create multiple cameras with the views that you want. To switch the views, you have to create "Markers" in the Timeline. In the Timeline, go to the first frame of your animation. With your mouse hovering over the Timeline, press M. The creates a Marker at Frame 1. It looks like a little orange triangle:

Select the camera you want to be active. While keeping your cursor over the Timeline, press Ctrl + B to Bind the camera to the selected marker. Next, go to the frame you want to switch cameras at. Press M to add a second marker. Select your new active camera and your new marker. Press Ctrl + B in the Timeline to bind your second camera. Repeat as necessary.


How can I individually scale the voronoi color chunks? I'm trying to make sort of a granite slab material for flooring. And i've tried a lot of things, but none seem to make it look good, and using the image doesn't help either since there's changes in brightness.
My main idea was to use a voronoi texture as a base from where to build up. I get sort of close, but not really there.
It doesn't seem that hard in theory, but making all the layers from big chunks to small details makes it all the more difficult.
Could anyone tell me a way to start off? Maybe not even procedurally
Edit: I'll just ask a simple question where I can go on from, how can I decrease the size of the chunks individually in the voronoi color socket?

You are absolutely on the right track with the Voronoi textures - Just use 3 ones of different scale to get that random sized pebble effect. Clamp off some of the values with ColorRamps, so it's not too noisy, and when you multiply them together, use one as a mix factor (each time - hard to see on my second multiply node but its there) to reduce the influence of the overlaps.

The last step is to add a simple noise texture to give some color variance to the background:


How to render displacement of cycles material output into normal map? I'm using blender to render sprites to 2d game. I'm using render layers to separate output into different layers my game engine requires, including normal map:

However, when using a texture with displacement:

...it just doesn't show up on the normal output:

I suppose normal output has only geometry in it? How would I go about adding this texture to normal map?

Please note that I'm not baking sprites, I'm using full render output separated into layers. This is to enable animated normal map output.

EDIT:

This actually seems to work as expected in Blender 2.78a:

This seems to be a bug in Blender 2.79.

It is a bug in a version 2.79 (build 2017-09-11, 5bd8ac9). Same scene rendered fine in both 2.78a and latest build of 2.79 (build 2017-11-05, 8a72be7).


How to select parallel edges As in the title - how do I select edges that are parallel to the edge or edges that I preselected?
I don't mean selecting edge loops or rings. My mesh is triangulated, so I don't have any of them. I need to select edges that are mathematically parallel in model space.


Is there a way to look at the inside of a cube or other object? Is there any way that you can look at the inside of a cube and edit it from the inside? If so is there a way to see textured faces on the inside of a cube so they aren't transparent?

Another way is to use Clipping Border.

Press Alt-B to set the border. It will hide anything beyond the border from the original view angle, and show the inside of a mesh object.

When finished, press Alt-B again to clear the border.


Blender armature imported as FBX to UE4 doesn't keep bone offset I've created a character and rig and it looks and works fine in Blender, however after I export to FBX and import to UE4 the bones are shifted. One issue is that the root bone moves to the floor and seems to pull all the other bones down with it. Also there are a few bones that are parented to the root bone with an offset, shown by the dotted lines:

However in UE4 those bones become attached to the root bone. Is there a way to make them keep their offset on import? The bones move the mesh just fine but are in the wrong location. For example, when I select the bone that is visibly where the upper leg is, UE4 thinks it's the lower leg:

My transforms are all applied. Not quite sure what's going on here, any suggestions welcome. Thanks

You can create a new root bone, which will be parent af all others rig's bones, and set it on the floor, so that UE will not have to move anything. Similarly you can replace every "keep offset" option with a new bone, so that all the bones chains will not be "interrupted". UE requires a general root bone that will be placed at loc (0,0,0). Every bone is requested to be weighted to one mesh vertex at least. If some vertices are not weighted to any bone, they will be automatically fully assigned to the root bone.